[Book 10: Immortal Indignant]

Aziz jerked violently in fright as hundreds of alarms howled in the forward warning base. The command centre he was reading his book in froze for a moment, and then broke down into a flurry as unit after unit of troops were activated. At the same time, the monitoring staff, who had been talking over some well-earned lunch, dropped whatever they were eating and flew to the artefact prominently displayed in the centre, which was projecting the land bridge that led to the Great Divide.

No one really needed to ask anything — alarms like these only sounded when unidentified personnel broke into the early warning perimeter— but the sheer scale of these alarms could only mean that either multiple huge energy signatures had broken through the Great Divide, or entire armies were crossing over.

“Status report!” Marie’s voice lashed out, right before the marshal herself flew through an open window, and the hectic bustle seemed to settle down into a measure of orderliness.

A bespectacled captain spoke. “Ma’am, twenty huge signatures have broken through the perimeter at Sectors H-8 and H-7. Accompanying them is a Demigod who has a divinity index that cannot be measured, as well as three other Paragons!”

Aziz frowned, but before he could voice his doubt, Marie had beaten him to it.

“Three Paragons and one Demigod?” Marie asked. “That’s not an invasion force. Elaborate on the twenty huge signatures.”

“We’re waiting on visual confirmation by our scout teams, ma’am.” He held onto a small square plate that had glass in the middle; it was a standard-issue Display artefact that had been released two and a half years ago for general use. His fingers flew rapidly across the Display’s screen, which was currently showing a photo of twenty huge floating things.

“Results?”

“Ma’am, they seem to be Ark-class Locomotives,” the captain replied.

“Twenty of them? And they broke through the Great Divide somehow?” Marie asked. “Scramble Avalanche and get them on the scene. Set ROE for refugees.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

One-third of the assembled regiment at the parade square took to the skies as the marshal turned away to approach Aziz. A small smile was on her face, cutting a stark contrast to the worried expressions everyone else had.

“What’s with that smile?” Aziz asked.

“Don’t you get it?” Marie replied, her grin widening. For a moment, Aziz felt like kneading that annoyingly-smug face of hers, before sighing.

“Fine, I’ll bite. What am I supposed to get?” he asked.

“Those Ark-class Locomotives…other than the Mortal Light Dynasty and the Republic of Francois, what other power might have it?” Marie asked. “And more importantly, who from the Five Lands was on the other side of the Great Divide to begin with?”

“You mean…” His eyes widened. “Ark City?!”

“Why else would I get Avalanche to treat them as refugees?” Marie replied. “It can only be them, right? Still, the fact that they were able to cross the Great Divide is really impressive. And they have as many Locomotives as us too.”

“I see.” He paused for a moment. “In that case, we should direct them to a port, then.”

“We can’t do that. There’s no port big enough to accommodate twenty Locomotives at once,” the marshal replied. “We might have to split them up or something, but I don’t think they’ll really like that.”

“A makeshift LZ?”

“Good idea. We’ll go with that, then.” Turning around, she issued a few more orders. Thunderbolt and Stardust dispersed for a few minutes, before gathering back into the parade square with a whole bunch of odds and ends in their hands.

Aziz glanced at the sheer amount of materiel both the troops of Thunderbolt and Stardust were holding, and rolled his eyes. He had personally written doctrines to deal with all kinds of situations.

Extracting high-value targets from warzones? That was a staple of special forces, so he naturally had done some work on them.

Pacifying little children who lost their parents? He’d written one up after encountering three such cases in Twilight Elysium. No one really used it, however.

Building makeshift landing zones for Locomotives? First thing he did after the new year.

As a whole, the colonel assessed himself to have adequately prepared for all kinds of situations, but this was the first time that he’d encountered the need for emergency landing zones for a virtual fleet of Locomotives. He had a feeling that the world was trying to tell him something, and he didn’t like the message he was getting from them at all.

“Do we really need so much items for makeshift LZs?” Colonel Felix popped his head into the window that Marie flew in front, his face one of doubt. “Stocktaking’s going to be a pain.”

“Didn’t expect someone to literally multiple the checklist I provided by twenty,” Aziz replied, “but redundancy is nice.”

“Yeah, well, you’re now the deputy division commander,” Colonel Felix replied darkly. “I literally answer to you in any discrepancy in Stardust’s stockpile. Of course you’ll say that.”

“You wanna switch with me? I don’t mind at all,” Aziz replied. “I haven’t had more than three hours of sleep ever since I got promoted. I don’t mind swapping with you — we’re both full colonels after all!”

Felix’s face twisted. “I’d rather not, then.”

Aziz cursed beneath his breath, and promised himself to entice Felix to take his position once everything was over. After exchanging a few more rounds of banter with the commander of Stardust, he chased Felix away and returned to his writing.

He picked up his pen, and then placed it down a moment later. He’d penned paper after paper in his time as a senior officer, adding to a rather impressive portfolio of papers about air tactics co-authored with Marie. Other than that time, back in the East, he hadn’t conducted much in the way of training anymore, and simply maintaining his own fighting abilities was all he could do.

Shadows flitted across the command centre as the rest of the Republic’s First Aerial Division made their way towards the Ark-class Locomotives, which had stopped moving some time ago. Marie was handling the newcomers…although Aziz had a feeling that he would be pulled along for the ride anyway.