Chapter 17-453: The Russian Shroudzone

Being posted to the Russian Shroud Border was not a quiet posting. It wasn’t just the air force that had to be active, but the infantry forces, too.

If the Shroudlord moved up artillery and tanks and vehicles, those things would all be left behind during the day. If they set up walls, the walls remained, too.

All those things could also be destroyed.

As a result, the Shroudzone border was always active, with undead building stuff up during the night, and the living coming in and destroying it during the day. The undead would haul the rubble away, send it through the ghoulish factories that were recycling old steel and materials over and over, or bring in new raw materials from what mines still produced them, remake it all into new vehicles powered by negative energy, and send it all back out.

The undead naturally put in a lot of death traps, and Constructs who could act while the sun was out were also encountered regularly. The troops here were experts in demolition, precise artillery targeting, finding sneaky shit, and getting the Hell out of there alive.

Tellingly, the only use of vivus so far was in the aerial forces and removal of incorps by snipers when they ventured out beyond the undead walls.

The brass had taken a calculated risk on getting rid of the undead pilots, thereby allowing us to establish tentative air superiority. It didn’t matter how many planes the enemy made if the enslaved pilots didn’t come back.

The tactic seemed to be working, as the numbers of Russian ghost planes had started falling quickly along the thousand-mile border area recently. In particular, several prominent Russian undead Aces with unique paint jobs on their prop jobs had failed to return after being shot down.

The Shroudlord had responded by using gangs of nigh-invisible incorporeals to supplement the planes. A swarm of them could literally grab the soul of a pilot who flew through them and drag it right out of their body.

The rapid proliferation of Eagle Eyes and Devilsight spells countered that pretty easily, although a literal wall of the incorps could still be a deathtrap. There were literally millions of them, after all.

On the ground, the big thing was the improvement in magical Weapons.

Since they had so much demolition to do, the squads going in used more adamantine Weapons than any other place in the world. Those Weapons suddenly getting Construct-Bane, Sundering, and Breaking meant the surprise enemies that popped up could be killed much more easily, and things that might have taken explosives to break reasonably before could now be disabled or ruined with just muscle power hacking at them.

More Disks meant being able to carry in more stuff, and carry out any wounded, without having to suicide-immolate yourself. More Levels meant moving faster and with more agility, enabling them to cover more ground and assure themselves they could get out of there.

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-You know you’re being played, right?-

Morningflame had the rank of colonel, although her duties were almost always on a battle line, not managing a battalion or anything. Once the situation in the Far East died down, she had requested reinstatement and reassignment to the Eastern Front, and the military had been very happy to have her, her uncle, and her cousins there. Azaia and our mother Morningfire were working on Buffing people up on the German Shroud, which was building up numbers of newbs who came east when it was time.

The Blood of the Irish was working down Gulagzones, which also still had plenty of fresh volunteers working on them, but the Blood were primed to move on at any time. The younger Irish who hadn’t made Seven would work on the Gulags until they did, and then join the early fighters who’d all become awesomely competent in the younger folks’ eyes.

Being a colonel was plenty high enough rank to pull information on encounters and battle stats for the past decades. The generals knew that giving it to Morningflame meant letting me learn the information, which they complained about publicly and were privately quite happy to let me see.

Flame sighed as virtual reams of paper shuffled past in front of her, numbers circled and highlighted, spread across the battlezones. -How so?- she /asked fatalistically.

-The average number of Constructs, traps, and vehicles the forces there have destroyed over the last thirty years has statistically remained just about the same.- I let her ponder that, but it didn’t take long.

-Standard doctrine means always keeping a reserve, and if we assume their production capability hasn’t gone down, that means their reserve has been growing,- Flame /analyzed quickly. -That... probably applies to all forms of munitions, doesn’t it?-

-Yes. Negative-powered stuff doesn’t need to be maintained; it’s basically powered and sustained by enslaved spirits from the Shroud, which is why it doesn’t work under the sun. There’s no increasing cost for having more and more and more of the stuff to the undead, they just keep making it and working.

-I’m guessing the Shroudlord has entire battalions and more of fully Animated War Machines of various types you’ve not seen, hundreds of thousands of cannons, and ambulatory automatic weapon devices. It’s been tossing off gear-hounds, bone golems, stone guardians, and other simple Constructs as a constant distraction.

-The Shroud is a huge power source of magical energy, and the spirits within are slaves to be made use of. Where we would use goldweight to Seal and make such things, it just uses more power and the dead, the materials required are ambiguous.

-Also...- She frowned as I /trailed off, -I saw no encounters with Fiends whatsoever in these fights. That’s not totally unreasonable during the day, but the odds that it would not have Fiends enslaved to it, or recycled and made into nightwalkers, are so low as to be ignored.

-It has to have Fiends slaved to it. The stories of the Fall are disjointed and hyped, but the descriptions of some of the creatures clearly indicate Fiends, especially with them Teleporting around and true batlike wings.

-It’s showing none of its true power to you. The damage the Hammer teams are doing is just a tax and a smokescreen to make you think you’re containing it. In actuality, you’re destroying what it lets be destroyed. I even wonder if most of the stuff you’re seeing is actually non-functional, and those occasional artillery shows are just that, the one in a hundred that’s real making sure you think they are dangerous.-

Flame’s nostrils flared and her golden eyes narrowed as she considered the data. “Timelessness and mortal fatigue,” she said aloud, sighing as she realized what was happening. -It’s taking advantage of us being alive.-

-Not that hard to do if you were once alive yourself,- I /noted.

-We have been severely underestimating it, then.- She didn’t bother to hide her dread.

-There’s more to it than just that, of course...- I /went on, and she just sighed again.

-Isn’t there always? Do I want to hear the bad news?-

-Bad news before bad things is actually really good news. It saves a lot of lives.- I /waited for her to grimly acknowledge that before going on, -That’s a full Dead March with over a hundred million undead bound to it. It is totally capable of blanketing negative energy through the March, and cancelling out all ambient magic and higher chi. Combine that with a horrific amount of necrotech reserves, and what do you think you have?-

She swallowed as she watched a replay of the Greyfields coming down from my memory, and how much it had nerfed magic-heavy attacking forces. -It’s a slaughter waiting to happen...-

-And your response to them is?-

Her golden eyes sharpened instantly. -We should find the hidden reserves and destroy them!-

-It’s got actual Construct anti-aircraft guns designed solely to keep you from deep scouting its territory. I can’t imagine why it would invest in so many thousands of the things all around itself.-

It was true. No matter what direction the aerial scouts came from, they ran into a literal wall of ack-ack fire. None had ever successfully returned from a scouting trip to the inner areas of the Shroud during the day.

She took a deep breath. -So there was a reason you saved all those extra nukes.-

-It’s a very disciplined, dominating micromanager. That’s apparent just by the design of its walls, the deployment patterns, patrols, and this long-term planning. It will be storing those reserves in centralized areas, because that way they are easy to deploy to expected combat zones. While it could certainly manage decentralized storage, all that would do is make them slower and farther away from any fighting which is going to come up.-

-How do you propose to locate them, then?- Flame had to /ask. -Flying in, even invisible, doesn’t work! We’ve tried!-

-And naturally no mortal would be insane enough to attempt a ground incursion into a Shroudzone.-

Flame found herself grinning hard. -You actually know people who would do that?- She could barely believe it.

-The Brothers of the Bone and the Scythe walk among the dead all the time. They aren’t afraid of Shroudzones at all.-

She blinked, processing that, and not having much experience with the Void Brothers. -But... won’t they seem out of place? Not... fitting in?-

-Bonescythes fit in among the dead. Even if they aren’t part of the great pattern, individual unintelligent undead will just think they are where they are supposed to be. It would take a suspicious Congregant, something told to look for them, to actually recognize that they are out of place... and they have to see them first, and be looking.

-More to the point, they are the subtle hand. If we do something more, erm, pointed, like, oh, send a Sama Rantha in there with her own brand of violent stealth, we will have a fine distraction.-

Morningflame had seen Sama Rantha fighting, and knew how fast she could move. Moreover, she didn’t rely on magic, and great numbers simply meant great rampaging.

“She’ll probably enjoy the chance to stretch her legs,” she mused, despite herself.

-She’s a Cleave Train, rolling down the track.

Rolling, rolling, never looking back.

Oiled with blood across the field of war,

Spreading a crimson spray of gore,

Tremble, oh ohhhh oh, Tremble, she comes...-

-Is someone looking for me?- Sama /popped in, smiling mentally. Killing intent spread through the local Markspace, and Colonel Brigette Morningflame suppressed a twitch despite herself. She had seen for herself what happened when those too-blue eyes lit up and Sama smiled widely.

There was nothing Sama liked to do better than slaughter things that needed to die in a Good Cause without worry or restraint.

-We’d like you to put down a new Train Line through the Moscow Shroudzone as a big ol’ diversion for a bunch of Bonescythes scouting out the military assets it is hiding,- I /said shamelessly. -You ready to lay some fresh red rails?-

-Oh! OH. Ohhhhhhh...- Sama’s mental eyes glazed over. -Can Mah Fuzzy come? We can compete for who makes the longest track.-

-Well, it’s better than a race to completion, so, sure.-

-YES!!! FUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZYYYYYY!...- Sama’s /voice trailed off in the Markspace, and Flame just shook her head.