Ch. 17-454 - Infiltrations

-Also, the Shroudlord totally knows about vivus. There’s no need to hold back, so start border operations at night as you wish. However, no mass use of Area of Effect vivic magic, no deep thrusts, no surges. Concentrate on pushing back the edge of the Shroud, but make no attempts to hold the ground inside it. Coordinate with Sama and Briggs and the Chinese who are coming in from the east, and do this across a broad front. You want to wipe the lesser Shroudzones before threatening the big one,- I /told Morningflame.

“I’ll send out the orders today.” And aren’t there a fine number of lads who’d been chaffing at the chance to take out the millions of undead right over there, Flame thought to herself. She hadn’t spent all that damn time in India just to look at the things here and not burn them down!

They’d still have to be damn careful. The Congregants and Ministers commanding the undead were hellaciously powerful, and their negative energy blasts could easily one-shot normal troops, then instantly Animate them as undead. Identifying such creatures was one of the skills that kept you alive on the Russian Border...

But that’s what the Death Ward Amulets were for. She smiled to herself, golden eyes starting to burn as she considered that tonight was going to suddenly be much more exciting than previous nights...

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It was perhaps a bit sudden, but it certainly wasn’t overwhelming, as that night the Eastern Borderzone suddenly lit up across the thousand miles of its length.

There was no hurry, and there was a lot of care. Vivic-imbued Weapons, particularly sniper fire, accentuated with some long-range Rays and Shards and things, reached out and snuffed visible undead by the hundreds. Some artillery fire pre-centered and enhanced with True Seeking came down on the undead cannon and howitzer positions, and bathed them and their crews in vivic fire.

There was some immediate counterfire, of course, shots ringing out over the broken ground between their fortifications, and further Shrouded artillery positions sent literally screaming volleys out to break up any assault, even pounding at some of the forward walls.

True Seeking mortar teams took out their counterparts, and the most advanced artillery in the world did the same with the more distant positions firing at them. The Shrouded Dead didn’t have computer-aided targeting systems, backed up with True Seeking...

The fighting went on until midnight, and then slowly tapered off, save for the occasional sniper round here and there going off. Since the vivic shots drew a straight line back to the shooter, taking those shots was risky, and the sniper was almost instantly the center of a lot of return fire... which exposed more undead for other snipers to shoot at.

Sometimes the undead would send out sweeper squads, up to a hundred undead or more, to seize the landscape and surround those snipers. Alas, said snipers didn’t come alone, and those sweeper teams soon stained the trench-strewn, cratered landscape white as well.

When a wave of incorporeal shadows was sent out to surprise and suck the life out of the living soldiers, they ran into a wall of AoE damage spells that thoroughly obliterated them, as the Casters who’d been mostly quiet totally unloaded on them before pulling back.

When the sun rose the next day, soldiers moved out to do counts, and the estimates came back that across the entire border line nearly a hundred thousand undead had permanently bit it, along with hundreds of artillery pieces.

A couple of those howitzers were brought back for analysis, and indeed it was as Morningflame had related to them. If they weren’t visibly confirmed as firing, the cannons were just look-alikes without the complex casting and design to actually shoot anything, basically tubes on wheels intended to attract fire.

They didn’t even want to know how many fake cannons they’d destroyed over the years, but now it was moot. They hacked down the fakes with Hammer teams and left them strewn around for the undead to pick up, killed some gearbones and cogbeasts and Possessed vehicles, and withdrew before nightfall.

Notably, the edge of the Deadzone seemed to have been pushed back a couple feet...

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The following days were not as productive, as the undead rapidly learned their lessons. They couldn’t get any artillery into position, unless they could withdraw it further than the Hammer teams could penetrate, so they basically stopped trying unless they were willing to lose it all, or could move it very quickly out of range of retaliation.

The sweeping ghost plane patrols evaporated after they were utterly massacred on the first night, reappearing only deeper within the Deadzone where they might still be covered by nega-Lances or anti-aircraft guns.

It was now a game of cat-and-mouse between the undead and the elites among the living. Undead stealth and incorporeality went up against plenty of Skill Ranks, Favored Enemy bonuses, enhanced Perception, and Detect Evil or Undead. Snipers shot at one another, ambushes were sprung in no-man’s-land, and there were actual pushes into the Deadzone, feints and maneuvers, particularly hunting for the incorporeals who were the hugest threat to the living.

The living had the advantages of time to work, air power, support fire, and better weapons. The undead could all see in the dark, never got tired, were immune to morale issues, and never ran out of ammunition.

Magic warred and exploded against magic in the East of Europe as it had not for many years, but there was no serious attempt to push... although there were a lot more trap spells going off, laden with vivus, to greet the undead when they came back at night. The undead were laying mines everywhere, devices that only exploded when the living passed, so it was just a tit-for-tat scenario there.

The Healers were soon constantly busy, but again, the push was slow, and there was no intent to hold any ground, save that which the Shroud gave up naturally.

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The Chinese and Indians on the eastern and southern sides of the Shroudzone didn’t have much experience at all facing undead using semi-modern equipment, but they had Briggs, and a lot of quick advice. They were not stupid enough to go running up against undead who were using deathshot rifles and get themselves riddled with holes, so they dug tunnels and trenches for cover fire, infiltrated during the day, and then fought their way out the first few times as startled undead spawned around them.

Archers and Casters hunted incorps, while the undead learned what it meant to fight living who had a LOT of experience killing undead and weren’t afraid of them, their ghastly appearances, their negative energy attacks, or their ruthlessness.

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Vivic energy reached out and feasted, and soon enough the undead native to the outer Deadzones had all been fed to the Land, meaning that every night, the undead now had to march out from deeper in the Zone itself to take up positions. Still, no permanent artillery lines were moved into the Deadzone, as it was far too easy for the undead to mass up in great numbers and simply overwhelm such things, and we weren’t trying to hold ground.

The undead were even less happy when the portable Obelisks started coming out, radiating massive Interdictions and Stillflight areas, effectively shutting down any surprise attacks by incorporeals through the ground or walls or such things.

The undead had excellent communication, such as it was, with the lesser undead basically totally Dominated by Congregants and having unquestioning obedience from those nigh- or totally mindless undead below them. That also meant those undead had crap for initiative and flexible thinking, and were very slow to adapt to changing situations. Too, a total lack of fear meant they’d hold a position too long and not withdraw in time to save themselves, simply because a superior didn’t tell them to leave.

The message was repeated all the time: Get the Numbers down. Get the Numbers down. Don’t worry about killing all the tough stuff. Get the Numbers down.

The enemy could make more Constructs and Animated Machines. It couldn’t make more undead, unless we gave it the bodies to do so, and making sure we didn’t give it those bodies was naturally high on everyone’s priority list.

Reduce the number of undead, reduce the size of the Shroudzone. We had hundreds of millions of undead to kill, including all the former inhabitants of the Ukraine and central Russia who had not run away fast enough, before we even got to the dead March.

The numbers drove the size of the Shroudzones, drove the power of the Congregation and Dark Clergy, drove the Buffs they doled out, and their responsiveness and coordination.

In the midst of all this greatly renewed activity and sudden pressure from around, Sama and Briggs wandered into and out of the Shroudzone, and my, didn’t they leave a trail behind them.