Titanfall: Hard Landing
Prologue: Setting The Story Straight
Space. The one place we could never reach, and the one place we wanted to go above all others. The stars above us were so far away, yet so close at the same time. You read the classical bullshit, you see astronomers, physicists, people who studied a place they could never reach. Why?
Now, I'm no shrink. I don't pretend to be. But what I do know is that man is obsessed with what's not on our home planet. It took us nearly two thousand years to invent the aeroplane, and then it took us fifty to get into space. See what I mean? From there, the sky was the limit. Literally.
First it was the moon landings, then the ISS, the Mars Rover. Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto, Uranus, all the god-knows how many moons. We explored our own solar system to the brink and found no life. Nothing, barely even traces of water on Mars could be found. But we were running out of time.
Earth was becoming overpopulated. Forests were cut down to make room, millions were cramped in country-scale slums, choking out a miserable existence. Food was running out, the ice caps were melting, the rivers drying out. Humanity was dying, and then warp travel came. It gave us a chance, to explore, to search, to find a new home. Humanity was born on Earth, but a brave few decided it would not die there.
The first explorers never came back. It took them 20 years to reach their destination, by which time their bodies had deteriorated too much to survive the home journey. So instead they sent a message. Mission successful. They had found life. Soon, people were flocking to these new planets, escaping the wasteland that humanity had called home. And with new land comes new business.
Philip Hammond was the first to realise that. This 20 year-old son of a multi-millionaire convinced his father that he could make a fortune in the newly formed Colonies. He founded the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation, and set sail for the stars. Construction, protection, clothing, food, the IMC controlled the entire area within 15 years.
The journey between Earth and the colony was a long one, and even the biggest ships needed to resupply on the way there, even in warp.
Hammond got arrogant, and hired an army of mercenaries to train his own private army. Add shit loads of BRD-01 'Spectres', automated infantry units, produced by Hammond Robotics naturally, and he had the power to conquer the entire sector. And he did.
Naturally, people didn't like that. But what could they do? The IMC had an army. The average farmer maybe had a rusted .22 to protect his land. So at first people were just pissed off. But there was peace. Not for long. Pissed off led to dissidence, dissidence led to hostility, hostility led to violence.
The Titan Wars began. The Militia, a rag-tag group of rusty veterans fed up of being oppressed and young firebrands who whipped up fervour, stole weapons, and began fighting back. Midnight raids, gaining equipment, assassinations, classic guerrilla warfare. Then the empire struck back. Search and destroy missions, torch and burn, the merc's went fucking ballistic against the militia, killing indiscriminately. Of course, that only gave the Militia more support.
Titans changed the war. Twenty-foot-tall, thousand-pound walking death machines, armed to the teeth with the latest weaponry. The first prototypes tore the Militia apart, so naturally, they stole the blueprints. Soon specialised troops from both sides were controlling the Titans, with advanced tech and training, including a form of parkour. These troops became known as Pilots, and they were the gods of war compared to the grunts. Pilots could go anyplace, anywhere and win. They were practically superstars, apart from the fact that they were virtually unknown.
The war reached a fever pitch with the IMS Odyssey. In 2346, Commander James MacAllen, the executive officer of the Odyssey, led a mutiny onboard the ship. The IMC's treatment of civilians was the catalyst for the betrayal. He seized control of the ship from its captain, Marcus Graves, and took on the IMC fleet. The Odyssey was by far the largest and most powerful ship in the fleet but it was badly outnumbered. It gave a good fight, but was eventually overwhelmed. MacAllen and a small handful of the mutineers escaped, but the majority were captured, and interred on the IMS Alcatraz. The ship crashed on the world Adraxis IV, where it remains to this day. Marcus Graves, the Odyssey's commanding officer, is now the Vice-Admiral in command of the IMC's frontier fleet.
The fighting continues sporadically to this day. The Militia 1st Fleet was recently ambushed by the IMC. They sustained heavy losses, and are unlikely to survive their next encounter with the IMC. Low on fuel, they head towards the Yuma system in search of fuel.
My name is Callan Andrews, and I am fifteen years old. My unit, the 205th Mechanized Infantry, has been deployed by the IMC to the Yuma system, to prepare defences for the inevitable Militia assault. It will be my first taste of war.
A/N: Hello readers!
Just like to apologise for two things here. 1, the weak ending, I didn't know how to finish the chapter. 2, the fact that I'm starting a new story instead of continuing my older ones.
This story will follow the Titanfall campaign loosely, with some time gaps, and will also act as a continuation. I hope I can flesh out the characters enough so that they seem like people and develop as time goes on. Hope you stick with it.