This story takes place before the formation of the Federation, after contact was established between Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti but before political unification was achieved.
General Shin, son of Shor, of the House of Frink, Clan Tiger surveyed the battlefield before him. On either side of the field stood a force of parahumans so utterly convinced as to the righteousness of their cause to fight unto their own demises. He fought for the glory of Queen Seria, the duly elected monarch of Schwarswelt, and his cousin. The scum facing him now were the last remnants of the rebel clans who defied the rule of the unified kingdom forged by his great-grandfather Hideo. His forces had hounded them across the continent, facing their warriors in the fields and city streets alike, his spies unveiling clever traps and turning dissatisfied vassals against their lords to join with them. The Rebels had done the same, of course, but with their inferior numbers and weapons it had barely sufficed to hold the Royalists at bay for this long.
Shin drew out his spyglass and sought out the line moving out of the city towards the trenches hastily constructed to slow down his forces. As he focused he noticed not only soldiers and cavalry warriors, but a significant number of siege tanks. The latter surprised him, the Rebels hadn’t acquired the self-propelled armored vehicles until long after his own clan had and conventional battle doctrine placed them at the other end of a siege. Shin replaced his spyglass and checked his own forces’ progress on building trenches, they had finished two trenches and were half done with a third, the Rebels would be here within the hour. But what were the Rebels planning with those tanks of theirs?
The general left his observation post and called for a messenger to find the Pallas envoy and bring her to him. After ten minutes the messenger returned, alone. “The lady’s guards say that she is busy meditating and is not to be disturbed.”
Shin scowled at the messenger, who wilted under his glare. “Take me to them, I wish to have a word with those guards of hers.” After a moment of hesitation the messenger headed off to the far end of the camp, the general following close behind.
Several minutes later the general walked up to a massive tent situated as far from the main battle line as it was possible to be without lying outside the camp’s defensive perimeter. Flanking the entrance were two massive parahumans with four legs and two arms and covered head to foot in silver filigree-laced armor that concealed their features. The nearer of the two turned to face Shin as he approached. “The envoy is not to be disturbed at this time.” The guard stated flatly.
“This is urgent,” General Shin replied. He was unsure of what caste these guards were, or even how the Republic of Pallas’ caste system was organized, but most taur clans in Schwarswelt were serfs, and he could not help thinking that he was being told off by a mere peasant. No matter how armored they were. “The battle will be commencing very soon and I need her advice,” his voice raised with his aggravation and indignation, “immediately!”
A voice came out from the interior of the tent. “Oh, fine! Let him in.” The guards held back the tent flaps for Shin to enter and he did so, with visible annoyance. Envoy Sharlin Fairhold de Argentum was a silver fox, like the rest of Pallas’ ruling clan, but her tail had some odd ring-like patterns he’d noticed a few times, and as she hastily donned her robes Shin thought he spotted something on her stomach that he could have sworn was a marsupial pouch. The envoy fastened the edge of her robe and finally addressed him. “Let me guess,” she sniped, “you want me to explain once again how to use the technology we gave you because these troublesome insurgents have surprised you?”
General Shin groaned inwardly, the Republic’s envoys had always been this dismissive towards the people of the Kingdom, he suspected their government felt the same and kept sending hybrids to them to show it. No matter their claims of “outgrowing” the stigma against interbreeding. He gritted his teeth and told her, “the Rebels are deploying tanks, more than we expected them to have.”
“Hmm,” Sharlin considered the situation, “it’s not too surprising, when you think about it. They’ve been pillaging archaeological digs for decades, the Lostech artifacts could have easily included armored vehicles or even manufactories. Not to mention the raids on your supply routes to capture your tanks.”
The general dismissed the feeling of inadequacy that the envoy tried to project on him. Of course the Ancients would have had weapons to rival those that Pallas had gifted them, the stories indicated the Ancients were no strangers to war while the Republic ludicrously claimed to have fought only a single war in the past millennium. “That wasn’t all,” Shin continued. “They’re defending from a siege, why use them now?”
“Siege?” Sharlin seemed to barely hold herself back from bursting into laughter. “You’ve had those things for most of a century now and you still think of them as siege weapons?”
“Well, what are they then if not siege weapons?” Shin exclaimed, anger rising. “Please do enlighten this ignorant savage.”
“For one thing,” Sharlin answered, ignoring the obvious barb, “they can scale the trenches your troops so hastily erected around this little camp as easily as the ones around the city.” Shin nodded, he’d considered that possibility but thought the camp’s mobility diminished the effectiveness of that plan. “Secondly, they can outpace those lizards your highborn warriors insist on continuing to ride and trample more infantrymen under their treads.”
“I had heard something along those lines.” Shin admitted, “there was talk about using armored vehicles as warrior mounts but some thought it unfitting for the high-born to rely on common-birth drivers.” And also to work siege engines, but he kept that to himself.
‘Well, that’s a particularly silly move,” Sharlin added. “Because the cannons on tanks are better suited to killing tanks than anything your troops or warriors carry on them. You could duel each other to your heart’s content.”
General Shin froze as he realized what the envoy was telling him, but then his training took over and he dashed back out into the camp. “Messenger!” He called out, and a coyote youth answered. “Rouse the siege tanksmen and have them ready their machines to move out. I’ll be there to speak with them soon.” As the boy ran off, the tiger general considered how rapidly the face of war was changing.
—
Ten minutes later the first of the tanks were mobilizing out of camp to meet the enemy tanks on the field. The tank crews had met his announcement that they were to engage in the field of battle with mixed reactions. Most of them were species of the craftswork caste; rats, raccoons, foxes, monkeys, etc; rather than warriors like his own species. But while many of the tanksmen were worried about the risk of engaging in active battle there were some crews who felt that their efforts had been underappreciated and were eager to finally achieve some glory in combat. It was possible some even held a glimmer of hope that they could be granted warrior status and land rights. That was ludicrous, of course, more likely that once the frontline value of their mounts were realized some of the highborn warriors would be placed in command positions on tanks, if there were enough to fill them.
One of his Lieutenants, a leopardess by the name of Ayami Mercer, sidled up next to Shin, “are you sure about this, General?”
Shin didn’t break his view away from the tanks advancing towards each other to address her. “I know it’s unconventional,” he replied. “But how many other weapons can you name that can penetrate their armor?”
“I don’t know their names, but I do know that the Republic’s traders offered them.” Mercer answered. “Some traders visited my uncle’s estate when I was a child and showed off some weapons they wanted to sell. They had a rifle that could punch a hole through half a meter of steel with a single shot, and another gun with three rotating barrels that seemed to spew out bullets like water from a firehose.”
The general had heard rumors of similar things, but he wasn’t on the board that approved new weapons for the National Army. House Guards, however, were less uniform in armament than the Army, with the wealthier Houses arming their troops with Republic-made guns and armor, while some of the poorest Houses still used crossbows. The fact that the opposition forces were composed of the Guards of all the Houses loyal to the Rebel Clans and that he didn’t know what they had armed themselves with was starting to disturb him. He asked her, “did your uncle buy any of those weapons by any chance?”
“He bought one of the rifles for hunting sea-dracols, but he said that the multi-barreled gun was too ‘unsporting’ or something.” The lieutenant replied. “The multi-barrel required two men to carry and needed to be set up on a stand of some kind before firing anyways.”
As their tanks approached the forward line of trenches a detachment of infantry rose and advanced ahead of them to clear the way. They had not gone 10 meters when all of a sudden a line of fire erupted from the lead enemy tank, most of it went wide but still a third of the line fell backwards while the rest quickly dropped to the ground and took what cover they could. Shin focused his spyglass on the lead tank and he spied a small secondary turret below the main gun, its barrel seemed to be spinning at high speed as it spat out tracer bullets at an astonishing pace. The Royalist tanks stopped at the loss of their escort, but then one tank raised its main gun high and fired a shell into the air. The others followed suit. Shin pointed out the lead tank’s gun seconds before it was smashed by the first of the three shells to strike the vehicle.
“Yes,” Mercer confirmed, “that looks like the second weapon the traders showed my uncle.” The second shell split open the main turret, and the third detonated the ammo magazine, producing a fireball and shockwave that knocked the surrounding rebel infantry flat. Other shells had similar effects on the rest of the first rank of rebel tanks, stray shells cratered the landscape and scattered infantry, many in pieces. “It seems like a rather undignified way to die, doesn’t it?”
“You say that as if there was a dignified way to die.” Shin turned to see the Republic’s envoy approaching them, flanked by her bodyguards.
General Shin scowled, annoyed beyond reason. “Lady Fairhold,” he addressed her, “come to view the fruits of your Republic’s labors?”
Sharlin looked slightly confused by his statement. “What could you possibly mean?”
“This!” He exclaimed, pointing at the battlefield. “This destruction, this carnage, all wrought with your weapons.”
“Our weapons?” Sharlin Fairhold de Argentum almost seemed to laugh at him. “We haven’t sold you any weapons that weren’t invented by the humans nearly two thousand years ago. You would have re-invented or salvaged them on your own eventually.”
“Don’t you try making excuses.” General Shin retorted. “You have turned war from a honorable and glorious endeavor into a slaughterhouse. Those tanks aren’t even driven by warriors, they’re engineers!”
“War? Glorious?” The vulpine ambassador stared incredulously at the tiger general. “You are killing people en masse, does dying from having your guts cut out by a sword rather than a bomb make death any less painful?” She turned to face the continuing battle before them, focusing intently on the tanks.
Shin struggled to come up with a retort as Sharlin stood there and watched the battle. “Men deserve to face their opponent, not just be cut down like wheat or crushed by an unstoppable force.”
Sharlin said nothing for several minutes, then said, almost as a non sequitur, “it is fortunate your tanks are driven by engineers rather than warriors. Clearly the enemy lacked that foresight.” Shin scanned the cratered surface of the field, none of the Rebel tanks remained intact and their infantry were scattered, the Royalists hadn’t even taken to the field. “Because your new chariots are maintained by parahumans with a greater sense of ballistic trajectories than “glory”, you have won this battle with minimal loss of life on your side. Try to show some gratitude.”
General Shin son of Shor of the House of Frink, Clan Tiger could not bring himself to publicly admit that she was right, even though inwardly he knew it was so.
The Para-Imperium 