"Runner reporting in Sir!"
"Report soldier!"
"We've received signals from the outer outposts, that a sizeable force has be sighted."
"How big are we talking here?"
"Sorry Commander, I can't answer that all I do know if that the report that came in says that 4 different outposts set off flares at the same time."
"Huh, so whatever's behind the creation of that wall is making their move already? I'll send this information up to the ruling families you're on standby until further orders."
"Thank you sir!"
With that the soldier left the watch commander, who proceeded to leave his own office.
He'd serves in the armed forces his entire adult life fending off attack from the Mutant beasts, hearing stories from his Grand parents and parents about the horrors brough on by the zombie apocalypse and the rise of the beasts that followed in it's wake.
Using his clearance level he was allowed to pass through into the most secure parts of the city, arriving at the tallest of all the skyscrapers contained within.
This was the home of the ruling families as well as the cultivation everyone would pay everything they had to gain a spot within.
After entering the iron doors, he quickly walked over to the elevator before getting inside and choosing to head straight to the 20th floor.
Having arrived he was quickly greeted by a receptionist who asked for his reason in coming.
"I see. At the moment only two of the elders are available."
"That will have to do."
He walked into a conference room and took a seat awaiting the arrival of the two ruling elders.
The ruling families were the richest and most powerful families within Trent, they maintained their positions by continuing to produce high tier offspring and ensuring their families continued existence.
The watch commander continued to wait even downing a cup of tea that was offered to him.
At least until the door open and two men in their 60's entered the room.
In that instant he shot to his feet and saluted both men.
This was not only a show of respect against their position, but also their power both these men had achieved the 6th rank in their lifetimes and though they may look old they were just as spry as if they were still in their prime.
Awakened had elongated lifespans this was something humanity had known about for centuries but for the most part it was hidden from the general public at least until this godforsaken age where their elongated lifespan was seen as a boon and one to be heralded as they progressed step by step towards godhood.
"Watch Commander Anthony greets the Elders."
"Sit down Anthony, what have you brought for us today?"
The three men took up their seats as they got down to business.
"Elders, a report has come in that 4 of our outposts to the south-west have come under attack."
"South-west? That's away's off from that wall isn't it?"
"That it is, you'd think they'd target the outposts directly in front of them first wouldn't you?"
"It must be them, we've received no reports of suspicious beast activity within our territory, elders we need your permissions to send the assembled army to combat this force, we need to show those bastards we're not some weakings who can be pushed around. While we're at it we can get our hands on the weapons they've got that seem to be better than our own."
"Hmm… what he says is true."
"Indeed, we had planned to use the army to attack them anyways, so redirecting them so that the opposing armies clash isn't much different."
"So then…?"
"Yes we agree to send out the army, but we'll be leaving a more than adequate garrison force in case this is a trap meant to lure out our warriors only for them to hit us with their real force while our city is undefended."
"We shall inform General Ryan that he will lead our troops into glorious battle."
"I thank you Elders."
The watch commander offer up another salute before vacating the room.
"Good war can never come to soon to those ungrateful bastards who turned on us just because they managed to locate a lost military cache, we'll put those outpost bastards in their place and bring our own Cities to ever greater heights."
The watch commander chuckled haughtily to himself as we walked off down the city street until he'd returned back to his posting.
Never questioning the chances for their army to win in this upcoming fight.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
**General Ryan POV**
What the hell is this!
I was given command of this force of 100,000 awakened along with tanks and vehicles but the enemy humans we expected to encounter did not appear.
When we reached the location of the outpost me and my own elite force were to repel the invaders from what we happened upon was instead, the remains of an outpost still being ravaged by the mutant beasts, but these weren't like the ones from around here,
Firstly because aside from stampedes you'd never find mutant beasts working together towards a goal, and because the local beasts would typically be only 3rd to 4th rank with a couple up to the 7th ranks, but here we could tell the army of beasts we'd encountered were all mostly 5th ranks and up.
Most of our guns would be useless against an enemy like this, and even the bulk of our forces while being 3rd ranks which grouped up against 4th ranks could pull out a win, stood little to no chance of pulling off the same against 5th ranks let along 6th or 7th.
But against beasts we humans were at a disadvantage in terms of mobilty, the beasts were always faster so at this range the minute we spotted them, they were already well aware of our presence if we tried to retreat they'd attack so our only chance was to deal enough of a blow to force them back giving us the chance to also retreat.
"Soldiers! Prepare yourself, for today we get revenge for the death of your brothers and sisters, slaughtered like they were animals!"
"Raaaaaa"
"Do you want to lay down your arms and become food for the beasts?"
"Nooooooo Sir!!!!"
"Then fight till your last breath, fight for your lives, and fight for the future of humanity!"
Boom Boom Boom
The cannons of the Achilles tanks all sounded off, while the men's rifles let loose a reverberating ratatatata as they fired constantly while rushing forward.
Opposite the men, the beasts had formed ranks and the speediest of them had started charging forwards, wolves bearing their teeth, lumbering behind were bears snarling anticipating the meal to come.
The total count would place this single beast army at close to 300,000 and it was comprised of more than 6 different species, had they been in hiding biding their time before they could attack the humans?
No rather it's probably those bastards behind the wall, they'd betrayed humanity and allied themselves with the beasts, that allowed then to assemble such a large army without the families knowing about it.
As the two sides began to clash against one another, the humans were quickly gutted and torn limb from limb.
Their machine gun fire simply annoying the beasts as the bullets bounced off failing to penetrate their pelts.
Some of the beasts were blow up completely by the cannon fire unleased by the tanks, but the total number was not as good as Ryan would have hoped for.
After entering close quarters combat the soldiers all drew swords and clashed with the beasts, the battle had turned into a melee, with the earth recently released from winters icy grip now being wetted by the blood of beast and man alike until the brown earth was died black, and the grasses just starting to grow to be painted a dark glistening red.
The beasts advanced unit suffered many casualties however upon the arrival of the slower moving bears these mobile forces began to weave their way through the battlefield killing with speed.
The casualties mounted and before even the 2nd hour had passed Ryan's forces were nearing the breaking point, already his men had been forced to turn their weapons against their own forces attempting to flee the battle field.
This reserve acted as a barrier forcing the army to fight on, defeat here not only would carry with it shame and dishonor but also embolden the beasts to chase after them, and if the battles at the other outpost sites was the same as here, they'd have led the beasts right to their front door.
Endangering the very Fortress city itself, to do so was a betrayal of humanity.
General Ryan continued to watch his forces falling from his seated postion atop a tank, his teeth gritted as he knew this battle was already lost, more than 40% of his men had already fallen either to death or injury unable to continue the fight.
Back at Axiom Jake was also watching over the entire battlefield, the beast forces were estimated to have been just over 1 million, combatting this excessive number was only 100,000 humans and each side split it's forces into 4th.
Each time humanity faced an uphill struggle of a 2:1 battle on top of the fact that the beasts themselves were higher in terms of general strength, but humanity had their advanced technology.
This expectation for a pitched even battle was lost on Jake.
Aside from the initial clash, which resulted in near even casualties the favor quickly shifted towards the beasts.
Human lifesigns were fading all over, and the first three human forces quickly started their retreat after only just over an hour of fighting, with only a portion of the beasts giving chase after the routing humans.
However on the 4th battlefield while their odds were not any better and their casualties getting worse they did not retreat.
Back on earth typically after you'd lost 20% of your forces you'd retreat and if you hadn't by the time you got to 30% your forces would be at risk of routing.
However whomever was leading this force had managed to keep their men fighting all the way till only 60% remained.
A full hour extra of fighting compared to the other forces, it was only at this point that the humans began to pull back, and the beasts let them.
Fatigue still affected those of transcedance, though those of a higher rank had a higher limit of stamina but having to fight constantly for hours on end would wear anyone down.
**General Ryan POV**
We suffered a complete defeat, I'm down to only around half of my army, if we'd pulled back sooner there would be more of us left, but the beasts would surely chase after us.
Thanks to those noble men and women sacrifice we managed to pullback with the tanks providing cover and the beasts left us alone.
But as we found out later we were the only force to have done this.
Out of our 25,000 troops we lost more than 10,000 however the numbers reported to me from the other divisions who encountered beasts at the other outpost locations had far fewer casualties, but stating longer battle times.
These reports of course were false, they were lying to cover up their cowardice turning their backs on the enemy to save their own sorry hides.
"General, what should we do now?"
"We have no choice, we must head back, we're low on ammunition and we've many wounded in need of rest. Plus we need to let the city know what's coming."
"Don't worry general, we'll send a runner."
"Good, and make sure to break out some hot food for the men, they'll need it after a day like today."
"Yes Sir."
The man offered a salute before leaving the generals tent.
We'll be finished if the beasts attack us in the night, better for the men to potentiall die on a full stomach even if it means we'll be feeding the enemy better while we're at it.
** Beast POV **
"Hahahaha Did you see that, those pitiful humans I'm surprised our brothers haven't wiped them out of these lands long ago!"
Within on of the partially destroyed building of the outposts a hulking bear spoke loudly to himself.
Reveling in their victory not only in destroying the outpost but also repelling the counter-attack by the humans.
Sitting on the counter before him was a collection of arms.
Picking one of them up with his paws he dug into his meal.
"Pack Leader, sorry to bother you during your meal, but the Wolves have come with news of the other sites."
"Perfect send them in, we can share in our spoils!"
Not bothering to put down the arm, he kept chomping bite after bite till there was nothing much left than bones.
"Greetings Bruno, seems things went well here?"
"Haaaa as if we could be brought low by mere humans! Here I offer you all some meat after your long trip."
The 3 wolves present were standing on their hind legs with dexterity in their front paws to reach out and accept the human remains they'd been offered.
The four dining in the fading light.
"So how're things with the others?"
"All good, only the lowest ranked force suffered many losses, seems the humans there had some backbone fighting much longer than the other did."
"Huh, good! Better that they last a bit longer it'll make me hungrier to fill my belly up with their meat!"
"Gehehehe, we also bring word from the Lord's a small force is to attack the human camp at night, while our main forces will rest up before pursing them in the morning."
"We should just kill them now."
"No! The lord's need us to be patient, these humans are devious afterall each time we beat them back they always come back stronger, we need to make sure we deal the finishing blow without giving them a 2nd chance."
"Guh fine, fine more meat for us to eat while we wait to retock on our dwindling human meats.
**Commander POV**
"Commander Jake, it seems the battle is over now. The humans have lost, they've pulled back about 100km's and begun to rejoin forces, looking at their formations they'll be setting up a camp for the night rather than carring on back to the City."
"Zoe… it's just Jake."
"Uh… oh well sorry, Jake… Sir…"
"*Sigh* Old habits die hard as they say, anyways that good, we'll keep an eye on the situation for now, the loss of four outposts is quite a blow but not one we need to worry about, how about the beasts?"
"Com… Jake they seems to have only sent out a meager force to nip at Trent's forces heels, the rest are back within what remains of the outposts recovering and taking in the dead."
"So the beasts are intelligent enough to know they cannot just keep going hammering away until they die from exhaustion…"
"Should we send in our forces to wipe them out now that they are exhausted?"
"No, doing that would only help the humans and from what our spy's told us this army was meant to come against us."
"They deserve to grind each other into the dirt for standing against you and not falling to their knees!"
"Hahaha don't worry Eva, if they cannot serve a purpose in the new world they shall be estinguished in the ruins of the old."
""Yes Sir!""
"Now then that's all we can do for today we'll leave it up to the others for now, and take rest ourselves. Gunther let me know if anything major happens, but unless it does we are not to be disturbed."
"Yes Mein Commander!"
War certainly is hell, but disappointing my woman would surely bring about an even bigger hell.
And so behind the locked door of my penthouse suite another kind of battle began with the odds also being 2:1 but unlike the earlier battle the underdog would pull out the win, and the larger force would be left thoroughly exhausted at their meager resistance.
Heh Heh Heh