The Plains of Pluto
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 13
Devnum
Lucilla walked with purpose, her head up and her face set like stone, as she crossed the courtyard and started up the steps toward the Imperial Forum. Ministers and others with business inside the palace complex moved out of her way when they saw her, and not simply out of deference.
She ignored them. She was there on a mission and the flood of telegraph messages routed through the port of Kalb had made it all the more imperative.
Not that there still weren’t obstacles. One, in fact, was hustling down the steps to intercept her even as she neared the entrance to the seat of the Imperial Senate.
“Empress, I implore you to reconsider,” Taenaris said, as worked up as she’d ever seen him. “This will make it even harder for us to get your bill through and it could alienate many of our supporters. They are still on edge from your last performance. This is a bad idea.”
Lucilla didn’t even slow down. “Bad ideas are all we have left.”
She left him to follow in her wake. She knew he meant well, and he was an excellent politician, but he was as short-sighted as his colleagues. They’d grown complacent over the years of peace and had forgotten that inaction was the death of a people.
She could almost feel the tension as she entered the chamber and made her way to the open central floor. Senators huddled in small groups, having hushed but agitated conversations. As they should be. She knew that news of the attacks hadn’t stayed secret. Word was already spreading through the city like wildfire.
Taking her place, Lucilla paused to allow the groups to break up and the men to take their seats. Most did so quickly, probably eager to find out what exactly happened and what she was going to do about it. Others were less prompt.
Petty shows of independence for men who had forgotten how they got their positions and to whom they owed their allegiance.
“Honored senators of the Britannic Empire, by now, I am certain you have heard about the treachery of the Ptolemies and their cowardly attacks on our ports. I wish I could tell you that we saw this coming or that we were prepared for this, but I cannot.”
This was clearly not what the men had hoped she would say, as several gave their comrades side-eyed glances of worry.
“I can tell you that it could have been worse. While I cannot divulge all of the intelligence we are working with, we managed to raid a meeting between smugglers and high-level Egyptian officials several weeks ago that seems to have forced their plan into action early. Yes, the coordinated attacks on Maleth, Cyprus, and the trading outposts on the border of Egyptian territory were terrible and costly, but they have not crippled us. Our major ports and military outposts in the region remain safe and still able to prosecute the war. That being said, I think it is time this body considers its role in allowing these events to happen. The Ptolemies are opportunists. They did not join us in the fight against Carthage until they were certain we were going to win, and they would not have joined either side now if they weren’t equally certain. We gave them that certainty. The endless debating and hesitation, instead of doing what we had to do, showed how weak we were and made them believe that we were not willing to do everything we could to stop this invasion.”
A murmur of discontent rippled through the chamber at the accusation, but Lucilla ignored it and pressed on. “That weakness, and the defections it allowed, has caused the situation to become even more dire than it was when I spoke to you a month ago, begging for you to do what you knew we had to do. With Egypt and Greece now fully aligned with the Easterners, our manpower problem has become even more untenable and our strategic position has been severely compromised. Instead of being stopped near the borders of Sarmatia, the enemy now has multiple avenues for invasion. They are able to use Greece as a springboard into the continent and Egypt as their gateway to the Middle Sea. Instead of having to fight on one front, long as it is, we now must fight on three.”
At least several of the senators had the good sense to shift uncomfortably, looking nervous at their role in the failure of the Empire to protect itself.
“I want to make the current military situation very clear. Our forces are stretched thin having to fight on multiple fronts across two continents. Eastern fleets persistently attempt to push northward along the African coast. They are testing us at every turn. We cannot afford to remain complacent in the face of such aggression. If we fail to act today, it will not be me who brings you tyranny, but the Easterners who will bring chains, swords, and fire to our lands. Our way of life, our freedoms, everything we have built and cherished, stands on the precipice of destruction. The only thing that will stop them is to sign the act of conscription and allow us to start getting the manpower we desperately need into the legions in time to stop this.”
They had to know where she was going with her speech, but it wasn’t until she named the conscription law that they reacted, with almost half the senators yelling in protest.
“We will never agree to this kind of law!” one shouted, his face red with anger. “It goes against everything we stand for!”
“You will agree to this,” she said, speaking over him and the other shouting men. “You will agree to it because it is what you have to do. You will do it because it is your duty to your people and your Empire. I will not stand by while you neglect that duty. So I give you this one chance. Pass the necessary emergency measure, or I will dissolve this senate and appoint new representatives who grasp the severity of the crisis we face.”
The chamber erupted in outrage. Senators leaped to their feet, shouting accusations and protests.
“Tyrant! You would destroy the very thing you claim to protect!”
She let them yell and vent. She’d known how that would go over, and she didn’t care. This was what had to happen if she was going to ensure the Empire continued to stand. So she faced them, unmoved and impassive.
When their shouts finally began to fade, she said, “I say again, you have this one chance. Next time I come before this body, you will either willingly sign this law, or I will show you the steel of my resolve. The choice is yours, senators.”
Eastern Germania
“Why bother? They haven’t moved in days,” a voice behind Gundomar said as he peered through a narrow firing slit in the earthen wall of the trench.
While the man was right in that the Easterners had been very quiet recently, except for the occasional exchange of rifle fire to make sure everyone kept their heads down, the attitude was very wrong.
This was the hardest problem with this new form of warfare. When they were marching from pitched battle to pitched battle, the men were always doing something. Active. It at least gave them something to focus on, even if it was coming up with new complaints about how much they had to march each day.
In the trenches, there were long days of nothing happening, just sitting in one spot, waiting for the enemy to do something. It bred complacency, which was as dangerous as any rifle bullet.
“Which doesn’t mean you won’t see any action today. Or tomorrow. So keep your wits about you, because when they come running, you’re going to want to be ready.”
As if on cue, a rifle crack split the air. A legionnaire, a fresh-faced recruit barely old enough to shave, ducked as a bullet whistled overhead.
“Gods!” Cassius exclaimed, his face pale. “That was close!”
Two soldiers who’d been standing near a firing step nearby quickly rose up and returned fire before hopping back down. There was no way of knowing where the transgressing bullet had come from, so their fire had been generally in the direction of the enemy trench. It, in turn, caused a few more bullets to come their way again, each much too high to be a threat.
This was the way of it, men shooting blindly back and forth, hoping to get lucky and not wanting to stay visible for long enough to become a target.
Mostly, it gave them something to do and to talk about to break the tedium.
“Can’t hit the broad side of a barn, can you?” one of the men teased, elbowing the other in the ribs.
“Like you’re any better. At least I hit the logs in front of their trench. Your shot went way over.”
They went back and forth like this for several minutes until one of the younger men near them, a replacement who’d joined a few weeks prior, yelped. For a moment, they all thought something had happened, although the boy had been sitting on the ground, so it was unlikely that shrapnel or a bullet could have gotten him.
They figured out what the boy was screaming about when a large rat scurried between his feet, disappearing into a gap in the trenchwork. The young soldier’s face flushed red as the veterans around him burst into laughter.
“Scared of a little rat, boy?” one of the optios chuckled. “Wait till you see what the enemy’s got in store for us.”
Gundomar could appreciate a little humor and camaraderie among the men, but all of them had taken their eyes off the observation slits. He’d just opened his mouth to reprimand them for their inattention when the world exploded.
The first shell hit maybe a hundred paces away, straight in the trench, showering them with dirt and splinters. He was looking in that direction when the shell exploded, and he saw a soldier, he couldn’t tell who, literally torn apart by the force of the explosion before the concussive force threw Gundomar sideways, slamming him against the trench wall.
For a moment, all he could hear was a high-pitched ringing. The world was covered in a sea of dust, making it impossible to see anything. His senses returned slowly, including hearing the screams of his men.
Gundomar pushed himself up, his vision blurry and unfocused. He blinked hard, trying to clear the grit from his eyes.
“Incoming!” someone shouted.
Another explosion rocked the trench, a little further out, on the ground behind the trench this time. Gundomar felt the heat of the blast, fire and concussive force washed over the trench, causing all of the men still standing to duck.
“Take cover!” Gundomar bellowed, stumbling forward, grabbing soldiers and pushing them towards whatever shelter they could find. “Get down!”
The air was thick with dust and smoke, making it hard to breathe. Gundomar coughed violently, tasting copper in his mouth. He wiped his face, his hand coming away streaked with blood, whether his own or someone else’s, he couldn’t tell.
“Medic!” The cry came from further down the line. “We need a medic here!”
Gundomar turned to see a legionnaire crawling towards him, one leg missing and the other a mangled mess of flesh and bone, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
“Mama,” he whimpered, his face ashen. “Oh gods! Mama! Please, someone!”
Before Gundomar could reach him, another shell landed nearby, on the rim of the trench a dozen paces away. The explosion threw up a shower of dirt and debris, momentarily obscuring his view. When the dust settled, Aulus lay motionless, half-buried under a collapsed section of the trench.
Other men had been closer, and he could see hands sticking out of the logs, rock, and dirt rearranged by the explosion.
“Dig them out! There are men trapped under there!”
“We’re coming for you!” one of the soldiers shouted encouragingly as they dug. “Hold on, lads! We’ll get you out!”
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