A Mentor of Old

[Miranda Frost]

The sound of limitless gunfire was not unknown to Miranda, nor was the feeling of a bullet boring through flesh and bone. Her eyes would open and her brow furrowed. Before her lay the Raiders' battle plan and a physical representation of the enemy forces. Upon the long sheet of parchment colored wooden blocks designated all known infantry divisions both hostile and friendly. The numbers were definitely on Miranda's side, but there lies the problem. She'd step from the table, her hands peeling back the entrance to the Officers' tent. The relentless desert sun beamed down upon her, its blinding light forcing the former Black Knight to bring her arm about to shield herself from its light. Her steel grey eyes gazed over the distance between her encampment and the enemy fortress.

 "Bah... Fortress..", she'd snarl under her breath. This damned fortification was much much more. Those walls of stone reached hundreds of meters up into the sky, far beyond any use of ladder and rope to scale it.   Atop its ramparts lined hundreds if not thousands of riflemen, ready for their advance. Massive machine gun batteries lay in wait among the face of the daunting walls. The walls could not be scaled and would be hard pressed to be breached meaning their only solace would be its lone entrance. Unfortunately that was not even the worse bit. The massive doors were at least a hundred meters from the base of the fortress, with a narrow bridge reaching into the neighboring dunes. Miranda had numbers for sure, but did that really matter with all of that firepower trained on her battle lines? Bah!

 It was dicey, but they had their own tools of battle. Miranda would turn towards the Raider council, a group of five raider warlords,  as they stood about discussing the plan of attack.  She'd  move closer to the table, her hands of steel resting upon the edge of the old oak table. "Do we have a plan?", she'd ask, her eyes glancing over the Lords.

 "Plan? Hardly!", Said Bo, Lord Commander of the army's berserker regiments, his meaty arms waving  a pint of ale with enough grace to surprisingly not spill its contents everywhere. "Send in my men, we'll dismantle those flimsy walls with our very grip! Ha Ha!"

 "Fool, they will be cut down before they even reach the walls.", Laughed Romarion, the Raiders's Commander of the army's tank regiments, or rather what was left of them. Miranda noted that most of what remained were from captured machines. It wouldn't be incorrect to say that their production of such war-machines were lacking.  "I say we concentrate  our remaining armor on one point of the wall and create an opening outside its kill-zone."

 "Aye, I agree, but let my penal divisions soften the Bastion.", Offered warden, the cold man waving his gauntlet. Miranda didn't like the idea of creating suicide battalions from conscripted prisoners but in this case she could see the benefit of their deaths benefiting the greater good. Miranda knew the deeds the wrought given a majority of them are imprisoned because of her purge of the Raider's compliment. They would have been put to death if it weren't for the other warlords dissuasion.