Tear A Path 245 Strategy Talks

The air of haughtiness around him dissipated as he seemed to visibly shrink under her gaze. His straight back now bent at an angle, as if prepared to nod and bow at the slightest command.

"So, tell me about the situation." Grendolyn commanded, taking step by step as she stood over his table overlooking their strategies.

As she reached the center, she hooked her foot on one of the chair legs and pulled it forward to cushion her descending derrière.

Travis wanted to say something the moment she sat on his seat, but the words immediately got stuck on his throat.

"Uh-hm! We have evacuated the range of fire, those guys have done this several times before so we've prepped all those living on the edge to evacuate at a moment's notice." Travis said, his eyes twitching a little at the end of those words.

"But...?" Grendolyn connected the words he was too troubled to say.

"This is not like the usual times." Taking one of the charts he spread it on the table.

"Usually a squad of them come around and shoot about 4-5 of those weapons in and run away..." Looking at the chart, Grendolyn had to say she was impressed. Even if his way of doing things didn't fit with her, he was thorough.

"What about these, the first few times. There were barrages of more than twenty shots especially at the start." Grendolyn replied.

"Yes, but that was only up to the first three." Travis pointed out. "I think it's because at that point we had just been introduced to the weapons and they considered it was the best time to hurt us the most before we were able to respond to it."

"After that they considerably limited their attacks with hit and runs, at that point those were more like hara.s.sment than attacks. The combined damage from any 10 of the consecutive barrages numbered less than 5 people every time. But that's not what I'm concerned about." His fingers shifted to further down the chart.

Before he even had the chance to state it, Grendolyn had already found the problem. "Their attacks never lasted more than 30 minutes, how long..."

"2 hours and then some which..." Travis answered.

"Means they have an agenda this time." Grendolyn completed the sentence. "And they have backing, I'm pretty sure from these numbers that all those time before, they were trying to save on resources. For some reason that backing decided to give them more supplies or else they wouldn't be doing this even if they could."

She wasn't wrong. At a time like this using weapons that had limited ammo was expensive as the harvesting of raw materials was difficult considering that the earth's geography had changed and suitable replacement materials had yet been put through enough tests to determine their qualities.

In fact, each mortar sh.e.l.l used here could be valued at a little south of half a million dollars.

Grendolyn still looked troubled, there was something missing from this piece. "But even if they had a lot more supply, why would they waste it like this. By now they should know that attacks like this aren't doing much damage so they might as well be burning money."

"But if the point is not to hurt ya directly, they're..."

"Trying to stalk for time!" This time Travis's strategic mind connected the dots. "Men! Forget about putting out the fires, Mages form a path through the flames, we have to reach the walls now!" He was going to rush out in a panic.

But at the last second, just as he was about to step out the door Ode had tackled him to the ground.

Before he could even ask why he did it a flurry of bullets had flown through where he was just standing and riddled the wall behind it with holes.

They hadn't had time to react before a dark green ball like object was lobbed into the opening in the door. Bouncing a few times before rolling to a stop right at their feet.

They didn't recognize what it was exactly but their sense of danger told them death was collecting them right now.