-Matthew P.O.V.-

I watched as my scouts narrowly avoided being sandwiched between Wolven and a wolf horde. My hands clenched the metal railing, tense as the last scout escaped, literally having sprinted and jumped off of a ledge into Shade, catching him expertly before Wolven could reach it. Richard was still a concern, making his way straight south away from Wolven.

I quietly directed Shade to run by and pick him up, Wolven was a good deal faster than expected. Most of my scouts at this point would be able to outrun it with basic kits, but now we had a better idea. We needed to evac a few of those that had no real means of mobility. Stealth would be less useful here, we needed to harass Wolven, wear it down and prevent it from leaving at all.

Ideally, we could kill it long before it would ever reach the walls. But, given the size of the thing, I highly doubted we could do any such thing.

“Alright, Team Leaders on me in ten minutes.” I sent the order through our communication network. ReaperNet was useful for information and communication throughout the organization, we’d of course be coordinating with it. I sorted through personnel, selecting or excluding people based off of information I could glean from their general equipment. Not all information was available from them, there were pieces of equipment that could be listed as confidential, Richard Nordsen being one of them. It was uncommon, and the only ones whom I’d seen so far that had restricted lists were people who might not have wanted to be harassed by people for more advanced technologies.

It seemed that the fact that the obelisks were restricting purchases was getting out faster than I’d expected.

No matter, we’d be able to keep some of our ability to adapt with our organization and lesser sharing features. I dread to think what other cities might be dealing with right now. Any city that didn’t have a primary group right about now would be ripe for takeover, using benefits of advanced technology to draw in more talent, and potentially snowball from there.

I shook my head, ‘I have much more to worry about right now than some city that we may or may not even live to see.’

“Boss,” a man spoke up next to me, “My team is stocked and ready.”

I turned to the source of the voice. I was surprised that someone was gung-ho about going out to fight Wolven, but I was less surprised about who it was that was volunteering. “Richard Borham,” the tough, grizzled man with an unlit cigar tickled my fancy for action heroes in that moment. I reeled in my amusement quickly, noting the steel glint in his eye and the way his stance spoke of clear determination. He, along with Tabitha, Ziek, and Yomar had killed their way to the Hive Queen in the mines. He wore what appeared to be a heavy power armor, my own a fairly lightweight power armor all things considered. It made him half a head taller than me, and I had to appreciate the aesthetic that he went with.

“Team Red Dawn, ready for action,” he grinned, seeing my eyes rest on the rising sun image. It was framed in black, with a swirling mix of red and orange beaming from a sun creeping over the horizon.

I smiled, “Good, then head northward. I have locations marked on your map for the forward teams to attack. Keep flexible though. And I assume your team are all mobile?”

He nodded, gesturing over his shoulder. There were five others, one of whom was Yomar who was currently wearing a lightweight version of a power armor. They were fairly vanilla in terms of equipment, for now, but that’d change after all of this was over and we got our R&D department really up and running. The team was tense, but in the kind of readied spring sort of way. None of them were strangers to deadly situations, and I felt like Yomar might even be a little bit too excited about the prospect of going back out into the fray.

Even so, I couldn’t say that was a bad thing these days.

“Make sure to check in and update as the situation develops. Coordinate with the other teams, we’ll use you as the marker to determine how aggressive we can be.” I nodded to them.

They returned the gesture as Richard Borham led the group out. A few other teams were on standby already, some I knew by name, others by reputation.

Louis’ newly named team, Wayward Wanderer’s, seemed apt considering their most recent disappearance. A high ranking team leader, Jeremy Strauss and his team Last Call, were gathered as well, a team that I had high hopes for given the fact that they’d managed to rack up an impressive contribution score without so much as a complaint nor report of injury.

Another one, who had recently come into their own in the Legion by no small amount of heavy weaponry, was Patrick Bentley and his team Iron Chariot. They were eight members strong and beyond that were all mech enthusiasts. Every one of them were bedecked in a mech suit - when not in our HQ anyways - and hefted a considerable amount of hardware to reflect that fact.

There were several other teams, and I acknowledged them all by name as they approached. I broke down the battle plan, though the general information and concept of using hit and run and delaying tactics was well known. I updated them on the known speed of Wolven, primarily, but also made certain that they understood that no one needed to be a hero just yet. We were dealing damage and staggering fights for as long as possible, in no way did I want a direct engagement. We’d wait until we hit the wall for that, when we could bring the full might of the Legion and Bulwark down on it.

As the team leaders moved off, collecting their members, I turned my attention back to the map. Overall, things were going per expectations. None of us really guessed that Wolven would be easy to deal with, but every bit of information we could glean from it at this point would save us trouble in the long run. And given that a thirty meter long wall was the only thing that currently stood on the northern side of the city, I’d say that we’d need to keep it occupied for quite some time.

An hour later, though, it seemed that our hopes were well founded. I could see that Team Red Dawn had made contact, and their opening salvo was nothing short of vicious. They’d waited at the top of a hill until Wolven crested the other side, bulky reaper modified assault rifles, light machine guns, and… whatever hideous gun Richard himself had. It had a massive triangular barrel and looked like it was belt fed to large pack on his back. It looked even more heavily modified than anything I expected to see out of Reaper gear, and it didn’t take long to realize why.

He’d personally bastardized whatever this used to be. It had some vague reminiscence to a gatling-gun, but the barrel was just too different to be anything of the sort. Yomar stood off to the side, ready to pitch hardened iron blades through the air, apparently lacking much of a ranged option. His biting axes, however, had seen considerable upgrades, edges glowing with heat even in their steel cradles.

I didn’t have to wait long to guess at their effectiveness. The team opened fire the moment Wolven’s mass crested the hill, completely ignoring any tree cover. It became apparent why they didn’t care about trees mere moments later. Most of the cover seemed to evaporate in a shower of splinters, Richard’s cannon firing what had to have been flechette rounds, tearing through wood and flesh alike at ridiculous tempo. It was a grotesque abomination of a shotgun, and was complemented by high speed tumbling rounds from assault rifles on either side.

Yomar’s weapon of choice was somewhat more effective than I’d considered, the man simply turning and throwing slightly bent pieces of metal, vaguely resembling boomerangs. He had a small pile of them in a temporary metal storage bin that he’d had on his back. Being that the hill adjacent was 100 meters away, I was impressed with their ability to deal so much damage to Wolven.

From the remote viewing being allowed through Red Dawn, I could recount the exact moment when Wolven’s surprise at the attack seemed to distort into howling outrage.

Which, as it turned out, was nearly instantly. The many parts that made up the shell of the abomination within surged forward a few meters, the outer edge suddenly ceasing there. The sheer amount of deadly shrapnel quickly reduced that forward edge to quivering mulch, sloughing off without Wolven able to stop it. I felt a particularly unkind grin spread across my face at the sight, knowing that the amount of damage they were dealing was comparable to what my team had done to it in that box canyon.

Then, I watched as Wolven began to rise like a wave, one that snarled and glistened with freshly spilled blood. It surged forward, picking up speed as the increased mass simply piled higher and higher, picking up speed.

“Alright, remember, as planned.” Richard spoke calmly, continuing to shell Wolven without pausing, the barrel of his gun glowing cherry red.

At that point, I watched as Yomar’s grin expanded. Almost feverishly he threw more and more of the metal weapons, one-handing them now that he was more familiar with their weight. He wasn’t aiming at anything in particular, it’d be hard to miss Wolven, especially now that it was ten meters tall, rising all the while.

Then, at Richard’s signal, they all fell back. They left plenty of room for them to maneuver, much to Wolven’s obvious anger. It had lost dozens of wolf puppets in that exchange, and not having received anything in return seemed to infuriate it.

Which made the next moment all the more sweet. It hit the hill they’d been at a few seconds later, Richards team already moved to a further hill to repeat the same maneuver. Wolven’s bulked mass moved forward.

Onto the mines that Red Dawn had left behind.

The explosions rocked with piled mass of the living catastrophe, and moments later, Yomar licked a button of his own, each boomerang of iron packed with a simple explosive in a highly pressurized container. Said pieces now spread throughout the mass that was Wolven and the ground beneath it. Muffled explosions and acrid smoke belched into the air as the beast reeled back. Even among the whimpering, I saw that many of the wolves in the formation seemed to be glaring at us. Contemptuously it regarded them, it’s wild anger suddenly cooling to something more controlled.

“Alright, get ready for round tw-” Richard began before yelling out, “Incoming!”

A large mass surged through the air, hurtling towards them like a meteor. The team quickly disengaged from the hill, bailing out backwards as the row of mines they’d set on this hill began to explode.

I held my breath, reflexively checking vitals through ReaperNet. No one was dead, but their vitals were sharply elevated.

“Everyone up! Fall back now!” Richard shouted out, already up and moving, dragging one of his comrades whom was armored much more lightly, a red blossoming from their side. It seemed to be a fairly shallow hit, but I couldn’t tell much more. New Dawn fell back rapidly, one of the other members throwing down a handful of explosives behind them.

That was information for future assaults, if nothing else. ‘I’m glad nobody died there, though. That was just dumb luck.’

“New Dawn is to fall back to a rally point. We have new information on Wolven’s abilities, be sure to go over it carefully before you engage. It’s learning from us, so let’s give it something new to chew on.”

In spite of what could be called a mixed result on the first skirmish, I couldn’t help but smile. We had, after all, plenty of teams eager to join in on the attack.