Home Fires – Chapter Twenty-One: Zenith
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Highlight reels from gun cameras, helmet visors, and embedded servitors flooded the info-net of Altea, showing the heroic raid against the hated Orks.
A smaller, shorter, more grandiose parade was broadcast across the globe, though few outside the city had the means to see it.
Volunteers for PDF conscription surged.
Morale was at an all-time high.
Antonius grimaced. This was horrible.
This was not a war. It was a siege. The city had been granted a reprieve, true. Resources had been gathered. A line had been drawn.
This was going to be the highest point the defender had during the siege, and Antonius knew it.
Every single bullet fired, every calorie consumed, every defender slain was one grain of sand falling in an hourglass.
Eventually, those grains of sand would run out. There were only so many meals, even on restricted rations. There were only so many bullets, and some needed to be fired every time the Orks probed their defenses. There were only so many people able to adequately carry a weapon of some kind.
And there was only so much morale.
The victory in the raid was like topping off a fuel tank. The meter was as high as it could go. There was only one way the needle could swing: down.
Any of those resources bottoming out would spell doom for the defenders. No one could fight off an Ork if they were too busy scrounging for enough calories to stay alive. No one could fire a lasgun without a power cell that had charge. Lines couldn’t be drawn if no one stood on them. Lines couldn’t be held if the men and women on those lines didn’t believe they could hold.
Antonius looked at the estimates. Based on what he had, the city could hold back the invaders for three months at the worst, or a year at best. The error in that estimate was based on the Orks’ ability to find ways around Antonius’ defenses. No one man could outthink an entire enemy army, so Antonius issued orders to outsource solutions to the populace. His first was to advertise a week’s rations to citizens that identified weaknesses in the city’s defenses. Next, he began personally awarding medals for valor to PDF soldiers, sometimes even at random. He even had several manufactorums converted into corpse starch processing plants. No idea was too outrageous, save those that were heresy. A myriad of actions transformed the city from a center of commerce into a fortress ready to make the Orks pay for every inch they took.
This bought him another month in the worst calculations, six on the outside.
This would get ugly.
This would get desperate.
And it would happen fast.