blsteen: Yeah, she hates being called Lucy.
Boris: Mix. Usually I have an idea of what I want to happen, then play the game to see what happens. Of course, sometimes I have to change when the game changes things. This China case is a clear case of me making save edits to make sure the Rebels won.
4th Dimension: True, cannons would be more effective, but they're much harder to use in the short term. Volley guns just point and fire, not like cannons which take much longer to train.
Beowulf: Well, Chinese gunpowder was advanced - just unfocused. They never put anything into proper application for weaponry.
Another interesting post...I hope!
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TIANSHUN II PART 9
In the wake of the stunning victory at Fangdai, there was no Imperial forces between the Shang army and the capital. Armies coming from the south required months to finish their campaigns and begin the march north. As these armies departed the regions they had tried to hold disintegrated, and many fell under enemy control. To the north, many formerly Manchu provinces defected back to their former owners.
Meanwhile, the Imperial capital of Nanjiang had been poorly prepared for a siege, especially as some of the defenders had gone with the Emperor on his ill-fated campaign. Thus when the Shang army encircled the walls and begun to batter the walls there was little in the way of active defences.
However, the Emperor’s advisors, Hauritz, Channing and Cade became actively involved, repelling several attempts with the use of new technology. On the Shang side the developments were countered with even stronger technology, using the greater resources of the Shang dominions.
After a month sustained battering had opened deep breaches in the walls in several places and by the 11th of May the city lay open to assault.
XXX
11/5/1512
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Lucille asked for the tenth time during the night.
“I’m sure,” Talena replied. “Fancy coming along?”
Lucille smiled rather wanly. “I’m no soldier, Talena. I’m not the sort to escalade breaches. Of course, you have a few advantages there.”
“I was always rather reckless,” Talena admitted. “But if the city’s going to fall I want to be in the first wave. I can’t explain it...but I was there when Constantinople fell. The Empress...she was my friend. This is just like that...in reverse. That makes no sense I know but...” she trailed off.
Lucille just patted her arm. “Don’t worry, dear. I won’t stop you.”
Talena gave her a smirk. “Don’t think you could anyway, Blondie.”
“Victory does not just go to the ones with big muscles,” Lucille retorted. “Anyway...good luck. I’ll follow in the second wave.”
Talena paused for a moment. “Uhh...what do we actually do to Hauritz and the others? I mean, how do I kill them?”
Lucille seemed unsure how to answer. “Do you want to kill them? I don’t suppose they’ll surrender. If we capture them we could imprison them, I suppose.” Even she realised that she was skirting around the real issue.
“Would it be less cruel to kill them or to lock them up forever?” Talena asked flatly. “I was locked up in that hole for two years and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I know how long a hundred years is, and so do you.”
“Well, I’ve never encountered cases quite like you. However, the only possible choice you have is to destroy their bodies completely. My suggestion would be fire, hot and constant, once they are weakened.”
“Fire...alright. I just hope I’m not the one who gets flamed.”
It was still the middle of the night when the attack begun. However, the burning casks of oil fired by both sides, and the straw and pitch torches scattered about to guide the path ensured there was light.
In the moonlight, and with the fires reflecting up Talena could see the wall. It looked formidable, but not un-takeable.
A final volley of flaming missiles burned a few more buildings, and then the trumpets sounded. Talena drew her sword, looking from left to right at the Shang soldiers going with her. They looked nervous, as well they should. Storming a city was the hardest, most harrowing ordeal that a soldier could endure.
She was out, leading the charge. In her hands she carried one of the heavy three barrelled guns. It weighed a good twenty pounds, but she had decided to carry it regardless. It was a weapon perfect for the close assault, even if she couldn’t reload it after the first blast.
As soon as the troops came into the open the Imperial defenders opened up with a heavy volley of arrows and darts. Even holding their shields up, and protected by the darkness, Shang troops fell.
It was as Talena approached the breach that she realised something wasn’t right. There was plenty of arrows coming down from the walls, but there seemed to be no one on the breach. The truth didn’t dawn on her until it was too late. She was already on the breach’s lower slopes when there was a flash of fire.
What happened next was something she couldn’t quite remember. There was a flare, a sudden wind and she found herself on her back. Everything hurt, it was agonising. Slowly, painfully, she got to her feet.
The mine placed under the rubble had killed several dozen of the attacking Shang soldiers and disordered the others. Talena, despite her rapid healing, was feeling dazed but nonetheless grabbed a flag and waved it in the firelight.
“Forward! Attack!” It wasn’t the most original battle-cry in history, but it seemed to work. Soon she was leading a second attack.
The attacking wave flowed up the smoking slope of the breach under renewed archery. But then, from the wall above came a ribbon of flame which tore into the Shang. A flamethrower carried by two Imperials and commanded in person by Channing was looking for targets. His eyes met with Talena’s below.
“Her! Kill that one!” he ordered. The flame nozzle turned towards her.
Talena didn’t even really know what to do. She felt afraid, remembering Lucille’s words, and whenever she was afraid she got angry also. She aimed her monstrous triple-barrelled gun up at the wall and pulled the trigger.
The three bullets with accompanying packed shrapnel blasted outwards, hitting the two flamethrower carriers just as they activated their machine. However, instead of the flames incinerating the Shang they were knocked to the side and rained flaming death down upon the Imperial defenders at the breach.
Talena saw Channing draw back, clutching his arm, and try to escape.
“Come on!” she cried and charged to the top of the breach. The disorganised Imperial troops there were still unsteady and tried to stand against the Shang charge, but were driven back. Many fell into the pools of burning oil left by Channing’s infernal machine.
Talena used the heavy gun as a club to beat down her opponents, one by one. The Imperials fell back from this insane, tireless woman, and Talena reached the top of the breach.
At this point it would have been sensible to finish off the Imperials before charging off, but Talena always had been a woman of impulsive passions. She turned and headed for the wall where Channing had been and started climbing. Imperial soldiers appeared above her, ready to hack at her exposed head.
However a hail of crossbow bolts from below hit these soldiers and either killed them or drove them back from the lip of the breach. Then, Talena was up and on the wall, and her sword was out.
What followed next was...blurred...for Talena. She remembered fighting. She remembered pain as she was wounded. Several times she fell, rose and continued to fight. Her beautifully made Chinese sword became notched and stained, and she became spattered with blood.
After a time period which she couldn’t accurately measure the wall was deserted aside from the bodies of seven Imperial soldiers, the rest having fled from her gory visage. Now, it was time for find Channing.
The Imperial City was in chaos. Civilians and soldiers ran from the walls, desperately trying to save themselves from the sack to come. Talena followed her instinct towards the palace. It was foolish to charge in alone, she knew, but this was HER vendetta. It had to be fulfilled.
It was as she was on a section of wall overlooking a burning area of palace that it happened. As she was passing an otherwise empty tower that she was attacked from behind. She had part sensed, part seen the flicker of movement, so she was turning when the blow struck. That meant that the knife stabbed into her shoulder rather then right into her back.
It was Cade, and he didn’t say a word as he launched a relentless assault on her with a long sword. With her left shoulder still bearing a knife blade, she was already hampered and in pain, but fought back as well as she could.
Cade came on, his blade cutting her several times, including once across the face. Enraged she pulled the knife from her own body and counter attacked. What followed was a brutal, physical, relentless battle. With both combatants virtually immortal it was the most terrible of combats.
In the future both Cade and Talena had been no strangers to melee combat. In the century since their arrival they had time and occasion to use it. The swords moved with lightning speed, their punches and kicks traded with bone jarring force.
Finally it was an underhand blow by Cade which turned the battle to him. As their blades locked he rammed his hand hard into Talena’s throat. In her second of being unable to breathe he pushed her down and sat atop her, trying to ram his recovered knife into her heart.
With one hand pinned beneath one of his legs she couldn’t stop him as the knife got closer and closer.
Desperately her pinned hand flailed for something...and found it. It was her gun, or one like it. She didn’t care. She pulled it from his belt, pressed the barrel to Cade’s side and pulled the trigger.
What happened was unexpected. Talena had expected the weapon to wound him for a few seconds, as all others had done, then healed. Instead he shuddered and reeled backwards. The bullet had torn through his right side, missed the heart, but pierced several other organs before exiting through his shoulder.
Cade seemed puzzled at first as Talena pushed him off. He touched a hand to the bloody wound and frowned. “It’s not...why?” he asked. He coughed, and blood dribbled from his mouth. Slowly, he fell forward to the ground.
Talena edged forward, fearing a trick, but he was dead. Then, before her horrified eyes a transformation occurred. The body of Cyrus Cade begun to decompose before her eyes, as if quite literally, a hundred years had passed in just a moment, as if time had finally been able to claim its rightful place.
In moments there was just a skeleton on the wall before her, dressed in still new clothes.
Talena was still staring at the ancient skeleton when Lucille arrived. She joined her friend. “How?” she asked.
Talena mutely held up the gun, her gun. “He didn’t heal. The bullet killed him. Nothing else did.”
Lucille took the weapon. “This weapon came from the future so it bears the same condition as you. It is not just you, but everything that came back with you. So, I guess this means this is the one weapon that can kill you...that we know.”
“Not so immortal after all, am I?” she said with a grimace.
“No one is truly immortal, dear. Come on.”
With that they left the skeleton and walked away arm-in-arm.
XXX
The Emperor Tianshun II was slain when his capital fell. Legend has it that he cast himself into a great fire so he would not be taken prisoner. With no heir his Empire passed to the nearest claimant, ironically the same man marching north with the army in Vietnam, Gaozhi of the Zheng family.