Artur Paendrag stood with his arms folded over his chest, cloak billowing in the embracing wind as he looked out at the ranks of humanity arrayed before him on a field of endless green. Gwendolyn stood to his right, resplendent in her warplate, while Elijah stood at his left, adorned in his blue plate, red-and-white stripes painted across the cuirass. Ricardo was attending to last-minute logistics, and Collette was organizing the triage arrangements, leaving the three of them and the collected Senators—cowed into proper obedience—on the stage that had been erected at the marshalling grounds.

  The preparations had taken them days, summoning units from across the Alliance and replacing them with cadets or trainee cadres to ensure the visible defenses of their territory never appeared slackened. It was a daring gambit, but with the Alliance’s soaring dominance in the years since the Incursion, it was a calculated risk. The only true threats against them were Fantasies, and most of those had already been crippled or annihilated in preparation for this very day.

  Artur knew what he would say, in a distant sense. He’d rehearsed it, practiced it, worked with Gwendolyn, Ricardo, Collette, and Elijah to refine it as needed. He’d not bothered with most of the Senate—but he’d run it by his Martial faction, and they’d agreed to do their part, to ensure the message was felt. Texas remained a core heart of Faith in the fallen United States, and Artur planned to use that to stoke a fire such as had never been lit before.

  “How do you feel?” his wife asked quietly, watching him with shrewd eyes. “You barely slept a wink last night, Artur.”

  “I’m fine,” he responded in an equally low voice, idly shifting his shoulders beneath the royal blue and gold of his Regalia. “Impatient, mostly. We’ve wasted too much time already.”

  “Leonidas will be fine, Artur,” Gwendolyn said calmly, her voice certain despite the worry she shared in kind. “He’s more like you than Reggie ever was. Our grandson is made of Paendrag steel.”

  Artur grunted and shook his head. “Moreso now than before. The look in his eyes when we saw him…”

  “He looked like you when you were his age,” Gwendolyn said with faint amusement, her shoulders shrugging with resignation. “Paendrag men. Your genes are prolific.”

  “If only Reggie inherited them,” he muttered in response.

  “Our son is gentle, but he’s not weak. He may be a colluder, but he’s done good work with the Coalition. We can be proud of that, as repulsive as his choice of allies is. That’s our blood at work.”

  Artur glanced at his wife and then nodded after a moment.

  “True enough. Kairi’s a legend, Reggie’s running his own faction with Mary, and we have the Alliance. I wonder what Leonidas might have achieved if we’d never lost him to begin with.”

  Gwendolyn smirked at the words and shook her head.

  “Elijah and Collette already weighed in on that. They remembered him from the Three Rivers. Tell him, Elijah.”

  At the use of his name, Artur’s second-in-command shifted, speaking in his gravelly rumble. “The boy would probably be a leader already,” he assented. “He’s just like you were twenty years ago, Artur, and he’s barely twenty-five.”

  Artur chuckled quietly in response and rolled his gaze over the assembled Seven Legions, each one numbering four cohorts of five hundred, with a thousand support staff to ensure their march remained dominant.

  “I suppose he is,” Artur admitted with naked pride. “My iron grandson.”

  “We’ll see him soon, husband,” Gwendolyn said warmly. “Very soon.”

  Artur nodded and fell silent as he let his thoughts subsume him, content to wait until the signal was given, and ponder his own thoughts. He considered what he’d say to Leonidas, how he’d have to explain the world to him. His grandson had always been resistant to the Faith he’d been raised in, despite absorbing its values. Artur would need to teach him the importance of its providence, especially in a world as benighted as Earth now was.

  He ruminated on that for several long minutes, until the moment finally arrived.

  “It’s time,” Elijah said at his side, his second-in-command’s voice gruff with coiled anticipation as he interrupted the Iron Duke’s ruminations. “Whenever you’re ready, Artur.”

  Artur glanced at his most loyal lieutenant, nodded, and then stepped forward.

  When he did, the ranks of the Alliance’s amassed might snapped to crisp attention.

  The Iron Duke did not speak immediately, instead allowing his blue eyes to roam over the assembled mass of Terran defiance with silent pride. His people, his people, arrayed in force such as what had once been commanded by his predecessors—all the way back to King Arthur Pendragon himself. It was glorious, it was proper, it was right. Their world had been invaded, demented, twisted beyond recognition, and it fell to them, all of them, to bring it back to order. Together.

  Finally, with a grim smile, Artur spoke.

  “Sons and Daughters of Humanity!” he roared, assuming a parade rest as his Regalia’s cloak fell across his shoulders and arms. “Most of you know me, many of you have fought with me—so allow me to be clear, direct, and outline precisely what the purpose is behind our gathering on this auspicious day.”

  The ranks of mankind watched him in silence, their steel warplate, studded jerkins, and blended modern tactical accoutrements catching the sunlight as they waited at silent attention.

  “Four years, six months, and three days. That is how long has passed since the System came to this world, to our world, and declared the so-called Integration of Humanity. Four years, six months, and three days have passed since our species was torn from the apex of industrial might and cast back into a supernatural dark age. Four years, six months, and three days—long enough for us to understand the true pain of absolute loss! Remember that timeline, brothers and sisters, for it is not merely the acknowledgement of our fall—it is the prophecy of our inevitable rise!”

  Artur looked across them all, and his booming voice rolled across them in a wave.

  “Like many of you, I was woefully unprepared for the tragedy that befell us. Like many of you, I had a family to protect, friends to aid, and loved ones I could not save before the nightmares stole them from us. Like many of you, proud children of Mother Terra, I was bereft of peace! ‘Why?’ I asked myself. ‘Why did God do this to His creation?’”

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  Artur looked heavenward for a moment, as if seeking an answer, before finally returning his gaze to the assembled army, rank after rank, like the Legions of old. He saw eyes harden; he saw some weeping without motion; he saw many tightening their stances or subtly bowing their heads in furious remembrance. Pain, he reflected grimly, was the great unifier—Humanity had plenty of pain.

  “No answer came,” he continued furiously a moment later, “for there is no answer to be given! There is no guidance, for this is no simple challenge! This, my fierce patriots, is a crucible! God made us in His image, and in His infinite wisdom, He understood the indomitable might that lurks within the heart of all Humanity! This System is little more than a new means to test the worth of our mettle. Noah had the flood, and we, in kind, have inherited our own Apocalypse!”

  Artur set his expression, his white beard caressed by the wind, and looked across the eyes of those staring at him in silent adherence. They were all good Americans, sons and daughters of a fallen titan, bereft of purpose until he gave it to them, with God as his strength. In the end, it always came down to Faith.

  “Some of you may ask why! You may question the need for this travail and wonder at the horrifying brutality of our new existence. I do not have an answer that will assuage your hearts, my noble kin, only a truth that may yet steel them against what is to come! Our world has been suborned, invaded by malevolent aliens born of dark powers. Our planet, our homeworld, our cradle has been violated by the encroachment of unnatural and unwelcome usurpers, intent on stealing your birthright!”

  A boom of sound came as armored and attired feet slammed into the earth in unison, and Artur nodded in tacit approval. The cowardly Civilian Senators would never understand. This, this was the truth of mankind. Righteous fury given form and function.

  “Yes, they are perilous indeed, these misbegotten wretches of foreign stars. We, the people of Terra, made in God’s own image, have been issued a challenge by our Creator! We, the children of the greatest nation this world has ever seen, have been confronted by an evil that no conventional force of arms can defeat! So, what then are we to do? Are we to surrender? Are we to roll over and die as they desire us to?”

  Another boom of impact came, followed by a thunderous “NO!” from the assembled.

  “Are we to accept the ignominity of this most vicious of usurpations?”

  Once again the boom, once more the roar of “NO!” from fifteen thousand throats.

  “Good,” Artur said with a proud nod, lifting his chin. “I tell you truly, I stand here, and I am a man afraid! Not of death, my brave countrymen, nor of pain. I am afraid, children of Terra, because I see the surrender in the eyes of those beyond our Alliance! I see the collusion, the cooperation, the meek defeatism of those that should be standing with us, and I tell you with truth, I weep for humanity!”

  Silence greeted his words, and Artur shifted, raising his fist before him.

  “My own son! My very own flesh and blood aligns with these invaders! Am I, then, to go silently to that fate? Am I to be weakened by my own child’s refusal to accept reality? Should I surrender, warriors of the Alliance? Should I retreat?”

  The most thunderous boom of all followed, accompanied by a cry of “NO!” that shook the earth.

  “Yes,” Artur said in agreement, and folded his hand at the base of his spine again. “It was said by Thomas Jefferson that we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness!” Artur roared. “Men! People of mankind! Humanity, my brothers and sisters, not these alien pretenders that seek the desecration of all we hold dear!”

  Artur lifted his arms, throwing back his cloak as he spoke.

  “And today, upon this hallowed and God-given soil, we make the same pledge! All Humanity are created equal! All Humanity are endowed by the Creator! All Humanity are given the right to Life, Liberty, and Happiness! Today, soldiers of the Alliance, we take back what was stolen from us—one miserable alien infestation at a time! Today, we march, not for personal glory, but for the promise of a Terra once more united under the glory of its only native heirs!”

  Boots started to pound in the dirt as he spoke, and Artur could feel Ricardo’s subtle hand in the pre-planned coordination. A pulse, then a beat, and finally a thunder of sound as fifteen thousand feet hammered their mother world’s soil.

  “So now is the hour!” Artur declared, reaching across his body to draw his bastard sword and hold it aloft as the metal gleamed in the sun. “Now is the time! By wrath and by ruin! By the names of all those you hold dear! By the will of the martyred fallen! I am Artur Mordred Paendrag, Iron Duke of the Three Rivers, President of the Humanity Alliance, and I command you now, my most valiant patriots: do not go gently into that good night!”

  The boots rose to a thunderous beat, and fists slammed against breastplates.

  “Do not fade with cowardice into the annals of history!”

  A roar of voices met his words, and Artur felt his heart roar.

  “Rage, my brothers and sisters! Rage against the Dying of the Light!”

  The voices built in intensity, shaking the world with their fury.

  “This is our manifest destiny! This is the will of the righteous dead! This is the crucible of the Lord our God!”

  Howls met his words, and Artur laughed uproariously into the sunlight.

  “By my order, march forth, with fury and God in your hearts! This is the new Crusade! This is our act of devotion! THIS IS THE HOUR OF OUR ENDLESS VICTORIES TO COME! FOR TERRA! FOR OUR BLUE AND PURE WORLD!”

  The voices hit a crescendo, and Artur roared out across them all.

  “FOR HUMANITY!”

  The response roar shook Artur where he stood as fifteen thousand voices, his wife and Elijah among them, thrust their fists to the sky.

  “FOR TERRA! FOR OUR BLUE AND PURE WORLD! FOR HUMANITY!”

  Artur smiled and pointed his blade to the northern horizon.

  “All Legions!” he commanded at the climax. “To victory, in the name of God!”

  “TO VICTORY, IN THE NAME OF GOD!”

  Artur turned at last as his officers began to roar their orders, and turned to rejoin his wife and second where they awaited him on the stage; Gwendolyn’s features flushed with euphoric approval, and Elijah’s set into stoic certainty.

  I’m coming, Leonidas, he said softly into his own heart. Pop’s coming to save you, my boy. Just hold on a little longer.

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