The Landship's Debut

The mountains had become a closing fist. For two days, Gunnery Sergeant Jedediah Stone and his beleaguered team of Marines had been on the run, relentlessly hounded by the tightening Qing dragnet. They were no longer the hunters. They were the quarry. They moved through the rugged terrain, their exhaustion a heavy cloak on their shoulders, the sounds of their pursuers a constant, echoing threat. They could hear the horns of the Qing officers, the baying of dogs, the sheer, overwhelming noise of tens of thousands of soldiers crashing through the wilderness.

Stone had chosen their path deliberately. He was leading the massive search on a wild goose chase, pulling the bulk of the Qing forces away from the summit site, away from the prison camp, and deeper into the most difficult and defensible terrain he could find. He was buying time, though he no longer knew for what. It was a tactical retreat, but it felt like a death march.

Finally, he found the place he was looking for: a narrow, rocky canyon with steep, sheer walls, a natural fortress. It was a bottleneck, a place where a handful of determined men with modern rifles could hold off an army, at least for a while. It was a good place to make a stand. It was a good place to die.

"This is it," he announced to his men, his voice a low growl of finality. "We make our stand here. Find cover, set your fields of fire, and make every shot count. We're going to show them how United States Marines fight."

His men, gaunt and exhausted but with their resolve hardened to a diamond edge, took their positions among the boulders and crevices of the canyon. They were hopelessly outnumbered, but they were no longer running. They were ready to sell their lives at the highest possible price.

They did not have to wait long. The first waves of Qing infantry, soldiers from a regular army division, advanced on the canyon with a confident, almost contemptuous air. They were an overwhelming force, and they knew it. They charged forward, their officers shouting, their rifles firing wildly.

From their fortified positions, the Marines opened fire. Their shots were not wild. They were calm, aimed, and brutally effective. The crack of their Springfield rifles echoed in the canyon, each shot finding a mark. The charging Qing soldiers were cut down, their confident assault turning into a confused, bloody mess. The first wave broke and fled, leaving dozens of bodies littering the canyon floor.

The Qing commanders, shocked and infuriated by the effectiveness of the foreign devils' resistance, sent in a second wave, and then a third. Each time, the result was the same. The Marines' superior marksmanship and tactical discipline turned the canyon into a killing ground. They were inflicting staggering casualties, but their own ammunition was dwindling at an alarming rate.

In his command pavilion miles away, Qin Shi Huang listened to the frantic reports coming in over the field telephone. He was incandescent with rage. An entire division of his army was being held at bay, being bled dry, by a handful of foreign ghosts. They were embarrassing him. They were making his empire look weak, just as the world's attention was turning towards him.

He turned to Major Lin Kai, who stood waiting, his face pale with a mixture of fear and eager anticipation.

"Major," the Emperor said, his voice a low, dangerous hiss. "Your machine. The one you have shown me on the blueprints. The one you have assured me is functional. Is it ready for a field test?"

Lin Kai's heart leaped into his throat. "Yes, Your Majesty! The engine has been calibrated. The fuel tanks are full. The main cannon and machine guns are armed and loaded."

"Then deploy it," QSH commanded, his voice like the striking of a gong. "The time for games is over. I want these foreign devils erased from the face of the earth. I want their pathetic defiance crushed into dust. Show them the true power of the new China."

Back at the canyon, an eerie silence had fallen. The Qing infantry had pulled back beyond rifle range, their repeated assaults having failed. Stone and his men used the lull to reload their weapons and redistribute their dwindling ammunition, their bodies aching, their ears ringing.

Then, they heard a new sound.

It was not the sound of marching feet or shouting officers. It was a deep, grinding, mechanical roar, a sound that seemed to shake the very rock beneath them. It was the sound of something impossibly heavy, something unnatural, moving through the forest, crushing trees and grinding stone under its immense weight.

The Marines exchanged uneasy glances. They had never heard anything like it.

Then, it appeared.

It crested the ridge at the mouth of the canyon, a monster out of a madman's nightmare. It was a moving fortress of riveted, slate-grey steel, crawling forward on two massive, churning tracks that tore up the earth like giant ploughshares. It was low-slung, brutally geometric, and utterly alien. A turret on its top, housing a small cannon, swiveled slowly, scanning the canyon with a cold, mechanical menace. Machine guns protruded from armored sponsons on its sides.

Stone and his men stared in stunned, silent disbelief. They were seasoned soldiers who had seen the worst of what war could do. But they had no frame of reference for this. It was a weapon that simply should not exist.

"What in God's name is that?" Riley whispered, his voice filled with awe and terror.

The landship, the first of its kind in the world, began its inexorable advance into the canyon.

Stone recovered first. "Fire!" he roared.

The Marines opened up with their rifles, their shots ringing out in the sudden silence. The bullets sparked and ricocheted harmlessly off the thick, sloped armor of the advancing beast. It was like throwing pebbles at a battleship. The monster didn't even seem to notice.

It noticed them, however. The turret swiveled, its 37mm cannon locking onto a boulder where two of the Marines were taking cover. The cannon barked, a sharp, explosive crack. The shell struck the boulder, which erupted in a shower of granite shrapnel. The two men behind it were simply gone, their bodies shredded by the blast.

Then the machine guns opened up, spitting hot lead, their streams of fire sweeping across the canyon walls, kicking up dust and stone chips. The Marines were pinned down, forced to cower behind their meager cover as this unstoppable steel beast crawled towards them.

This was not a battle. It was an extermination. They were fighting a weapon from the future, an enemy that was immune to their attacks and could kill them at its leisure. Their courage, their skill, their discipline—all the virtues of a soldier—were rendered utterly meaningless in the face of this new, terrifying technology.

The landship advanced, its heavy machine guns hosing down the canyon. Another Marine, trying to change position, was caught in the open and stitched across the chest, his body thrown back like a rag doll.

Stone knew the position was lost. His fortress had become a tomb. "Scatter!" he screamed, his voice raw with desperation. "Fall back! Get to the high ground! Scatter!"

It was their only hope. To break and run, to flee in all directions, to pray that the monster was too slow to hunt them all down in the rugged terrain. The Marines abandoned their positions, scrambling up the steep canyon walls, seeking the shelter of the forest beyond.

Jedediah Stone, the last to leave, took one final look back at the relentless steel behemoth as it crushed its way over the bodies of his fallen men. He had come to China to fight a secret war of shadows and knives. He now found himself fighting a war of impossible machines, a war whose rules were being rewritten before his very eyes by a ruthless emperor and his terrifying new toys.