"Wartime requisition! All residents of this sector, pack all portable belongings and evacuate your dwellings immediately!"
"Detaching the module! Everyone, clear the area!"
"Module separation in three! Two! One!"
Against the resplendent, gilded dreadnoughts of the nobility, flesh and blood alone were insufficient.
It was not as if we could organize suicide squads to scale their hulls with ropes and iron hooks to seize the decks. Thus, we devised a strategy that was perhaps predictable, yet necessary.
We would retrofit our Nomadic City modules and wield them as warships.
"Mount the infantry cannons on the deck!"
"What if we lashed multiple rifles together to serve as organ guns?"
The detached modules of our great Nomadic Cities, along with the smaller nomadic hulls, became men-of-war once their decks were bristling with armaments and their plating reinforced. They were crude, industrial monsters.
Born from architecture rather than ballistics, they were slower than the aristocratic leviathans and their weaponry far leaner. However, our grand strategy did not rely on high-speed chases or fluid maneuvers of maneuver warfare, so these flaws were secondary.
Moreover, the Northern nobles' own warships had been seized through sailors' mutinies; our fleet was not composed entirely of jury-rigged city blocks. Intelligence estimated the noble fleet at twelve warships. Our own gathered strength stood at twenty-eight vessels—though only five were genuine, purpose-built warships. It was a sufficient number to envelop and annihilate the enemy.
While the militias and I drew the eyes of the nobles at Birmingham, pinning down their main host, our fleet would execute ramming maneuvers to shatter their formation. Once their naval support was neutralized, the enemy trapped within the industrial labyrinth of Birmingham would be systematically bled dry.
That was the calculus of our campaign.
To ensure this, the worker-militias required a weight of fire beyond their current means. The thousands of pipe guns, handmade flintlocks, and crude crossbows spilling out of household workshops and converted mills every day were not enough.
Therefore, we forged artillery.
Specifically, we prioritized light cannons over heavy siege engines. Since the crux of the battle would occur within the cramped urban confines, heavy artillery carried the unacceptable risk of fratricide by friendly fire.
"Load the canister shot!"
"Comrades! Do not fire until the enemy reaches the fountain! Until then, no one lays a finger on those triggers!"
Birmingham's foundries worked through the night in a state of total mobilization, prioritizing the mass production of these light pieces. Daily, they were deployed to every corner of the city, muzzles stuffed with lethal canister, lying in wait like metal beasts for their prey.
Simultaneously, we initiated clearance operations across the Great Southern Plains of Birmingham.
"Announcement from the Revolutionary Committee! Residents of the Maryline Cooperative Farm, evacuate to the north immediately! This is not a drill!"
The noble host, fueled by a rapacious desire for loot and merit, was highly likely to raze our cooperative farms and massacre the peasantry in their wake. Such a loss would dismantle the foundations of our autonomous Soviets and invite catastrophic ruin to our post-independence agricultural planning.
To preserve the structure of the collectives, the farmers had to be withdrawn to the rear. However, our evacuation policy was not purely humanitarian.
"From this sector to that, we must consolidate every Soviet in the vicinity. They will be conscripted into the militias for fortification work and mobilized into the factories to finalize our combat readiness."
"Comrade Wrangel, is such a thorough measures truly necessary?"
"To afford our workers the time to be hammered into soldiers, we must have the peasantry replace them at the machinery."
The secondary objective was 'mobilization'—conscripting the fleeing farmers to fill the vacuum left by the workers-turned-combatants in the industrial sector. Meanwhile, the most fervent youths among the Peasant Soviets volunteered for more dangerous duties.
"We are ready to offer our lives to the Revolution with the spirit of total self-sacrifice!"
"Please, send us to the front!"
Equipped with an intimate knowledge of the local geography, these rural sons were tasked with a singular mission: harassing the aristocratic supply lines across the Great Plains. The stage for the butchery was nearly set.
*********************************************************
"A tedious vista," muttered Duke Henry Windermere.
A seasoned military aristocrat and the acting commander of the Allied Nobility Army, he led a host of fifty thousand across the sprawling tundra. It was a massive coalition: his own Windermere forces, the armies of the Dukes of Caster, Normandy, and Gododdin, supplemented by a sea of bourgeois-hired sellswords and the levies of minor lords.
Yet, excluding his own retainers, the quality of the soldiery was wretched—industrial waste in the shape of men. When he summoned his officers, they arrived smelling of cheap gin. He had sought the expertise of Sarkaz mercenary bands, only to find 'warbands' comprised of a single Sarkaz leading a rabble of curs.
Even the scions of the great houses and their knights—men supposed to be paragons of martial prowess—proved to be vainglorious fools with more muscle than wit. Amidst this disarray, the petty barons and viscounts, convinced of their inevitable triumph, did nothing but hounded him to accelerate the march.
His only solace was found in one person.
"Father, the host is prepared for the next stage of the march."
"Ah, Amfielice. You have returned."
Amfielice Windermere was his daughter and his primary mental anchor in this quagmire. Though her blade lacked the final polish of experience, her martial potential rivaled his own, and her striking presence made her the undisputed heir to the Windermere Duchy. He had brought her to the northern front to blood her in the realities of war.
Now, however, he feared he had only invited her to witness a first defeat or, perhaps worse, a Pyrrhic victory that would tarnish her name forever. That a commander of his repute could harbor such doubts spoke volumes of the Coalition's rot.
The Duke let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Father, what weighs on your mind?"
"It is nothing. Age is merely catching up to me. Return to your quarters and rest; we shall dine together this evening."
With a strained smile, he dismissed his daughter and lit a cigarette. The tobacco tasted like ash.
"In the end... can this war even be won?"
The whisper was so low even his closest vassals could not hear. For days, the monotonous march continued across a landscape of abandonment.
"Another farmstead, found completely empty!"
"There are red banners here, my lord... and markings labeled 'Cooperative Soviet'."
"Argh! It's a trap! Get back!"
Dozens of farmhouses were encountered, each a hollow shell. To prevent a total collapse of discipline, the Duke had forbidden looting, but his subordinate units ignored the edict. Those who broke ranks were met with ingenious cruelty: poisoned wells that left dozens gasping their last breaths, and hidden snipers that claimed the life of a baron in an instant.
In one instance, a ceramic jar filled with powder and a tripwire ignition caused the entire magazine of a landship to detonate in a cascading roar. It was a carnival of incompetence and subterranean resistance.
As they forced their advance, their supply lines grew precariously thin, becoming frequent targets for unseen raiders.
"The baggage train has been raided again."
"Everything was taken. It is a miracle the soldiers were spared at all."
"A week without supplies? This is preposterous! It defies logic!"
Normally, Duke Windermere was a man of cold, rational deduction.
"Capturing the rebel leadership will not solve this, I fear. Amfielice, come here. Do you see these?"
"...The Soviets, Father?"
"Indeed. These 'Soviets' have organized the peasantry into a shadow army. How can we possibly crush a people who have become a weapon?"
"I... I do not know..."
But the man he once was had eroded. Under the incessant demands of the Royal Court, the military pressure from Leithanien on his own borders, and the hunger gnawing at his troops, he succumbed to a choice his younger self would have spat upon.
"They say the traitor-chief Vladimir is in Birmingham, yes? We will launch an all-out assault on the city. Capture the head, and the body will surely wither!"
"Father?" Amfielice blinked in confusion. His spirit was fraying.
"But Father," she said, her voice wavering, "did you not tell me only days ago that catching the ringleaders would not end this insurgency? This requires a more measured—"
The Duke was no longer listening.
"Hmph. Daughter... if one is to be 'Duke Windermere,' one must endure much to become as hard as cold steel. It seems you have much to learn in that regard."
He turned a gaze on her that was devoid of warmth. Amfielice shivered, her hand tightening on the hilt of her blade. "Forgive my impertinence, Father," she whispered before retreating to her quarters.
Watching her leave, the Duke stepped out onto the bridge. Through his glass, a forest of black smoke began to mar the horizon.
A metropolitan beast, belching industrial soot from a thousand chimneys, appeared at the vanguard of his fleet.
.
.
.
Birmingham lay before them.