AN: I specifically selected this time frame because, well, I never really BEAT command and conquer 3. Not that I'm a bad player, its just that I found online much more interesting than the story, sorry guys :p. I don't own it so I'm not going to lie there are quite possibly a LOT of story line mistakes here. I've done a little research as to which unit types are there so I don't think there will be that much of a problem. I've taken the liberty to add some things as well to make it more "real". Hope you guys enjoy it!
Lieutenant Colonel Dominico Varen, 22nd Global Defense Initiative Tactical Corp, was in a perfect position in a not so perfect situation. 22nd Tactical had seen action all over the blue zones since the outbreak of the massive Nod offensive. He'd lead several counter offensives and his men were professional, deadly, and experienced. No one could be called "rookie" any longer. The rookies had washed out the hard way. The unit had suffered roughly 15% losses in the past week, but he knew these were rather good odds.
A newspaper, half ripped and crumbled, fluttered by on a draft of radioactive wind. In bold letters: Destruction of the Philidelphia! The station had been blown away two weeks before.
He had seen it with his own eyes. Not like most of the others in the blue zones, he'd been leading that fated offensive into a yellow zone. 22nd Tactical, newly formed and eager for combat had spearheaded that assault, the Lt. Commander in charge of the entire operation saw to it that the men and women of the 22nd had their baptism of fire.
They'd been briefing outside as usual before a mission was green lighted, he'd gathered all of his lieutenants around. Orca gunships and were to roll in and soften up armored targets around a Nod insurgent base which, although small and insignificant looking, the Commander had not decided to take any chances. They'd roll in with APCs and IFVs shortly after with another Orca squadron on standby for rapid reaction, whether it be taking out tanks, turret spires or flattening a structure. They didn't have very good intel on that operation, much less than he would have even committed forces to Varen remembered. But Nod techies had gotten extremely good at jamming satellite uplinks in the past and were threatening to eliminate GDIs spying power. Eyes in the sky. This little rock in the middle of nowhere was supposed to house a satellite jamming system and so far, it appeared to be true. They couldn't activate their beacons to call in orbital kinetic strikes, they had virtually no clue where this base even was until air reconnaissance discovered them and even satellite based radio and cell phones were offline. It was a losing scenario that the Lt. Commander hoped to turn around.
Something had made him look up he remembered, a number of soldiers who had been spending the readiness time playing basketball outside had stopped their game to gawk skyward. For a day or so, they had a second sun, not as bright or hot but it was there. The mission was put on hold for the next week. Firehawk joint strike units scrambled and flew sorties to eliminate falling debris and wreckage.
The next week, they were green lighted. The men and women of the 22nd fell on that nod base like a thunderbolt. The crew of the Philadelphia had been avenged.
"Watch your step sir." One of his aides warned. Varen hardly even glanced at the irradiated green rocks near his feet. The suit he wore protected him; it was a small quantity but he knew any more and the radiation particles would slice his body like a magician cutting up his assistant, so dangerous were the newly discovered Omega rays that were trademark of Tiberium it would be as if the radiation suit the Lt. Colonel wore wasn't there. The aide called the HAZMAT team up to seal the mineral in a radiation proof box. It could be used and refined to power the generators in the city, he knew. Every little bit helped. But that wasn't the only thing he had to protect in this city. 22nd tactical had been spread thin, covering the entire area. A motley crew of infantry platoons, armored troop carriers, tanks and even 3 of its own air squadrons, this task force of maybe three thousand fine men and women might not have been enough to hold all of his objectives.
His most important objective, the massive hydroelectric dam outlying the city. If that fell, not only would he lose power but Nod forces might irradiate the water with tiberium in their sick quest for human evolution. It only took a few tons of rock, so the majority of their anti air defenses had been deployed around the dam and river. No more Vertigo bombers attempted to drop deadly payloads of tiberium into the reservoir. It was however, susceptible to commando raids, hence the twenty four hour platoon strength armed riflemen that guarded the perimeter. He didn't trust local police with this job at all.
Second, a satellite uplink that not only gave him to the second Intel on the surrounding areas but an ability to call for reinforcements and deploy them with pinpoint precision around the city. Yes, those Zone troopers, armored like tanks, were a nightmare against almost anything that stood in their way.
Third, this area was a vital handhold in the blue zone. Not only did it have a rather convenient pile of Tiberium located just outside the city, but it was a major operations base for the Initiative. This base had once held hundreds of thousands of fighting men and women and had been the planning sight for countless field operations. Now, Skinner Airfield was ripe for the taking and Nod knew it, if the small probes on their outer perimeter had been any hint.
Fourth, his tiberium power plants, armory and food storage facilities. They had enough dry stocks, weapons, ammunition and refined tiberium to last them maybe a year, but that wouldn't be so good if a stray bomb found its way on top of the powder kegs and blew it all sky high. Security was almost as high there as it was around the dam.
He had a civilian population to worry about as well, not just because that they were in danger of getting in the way of shooting, no. he had the problem of them actually shooting him. Was it only last week that a bus had slammed itself into one of the power nodes and detonated releasing, not only a high temperature explosion but a deadly nerve gas as well? He couldn't even begin to imagine how many more casualties he would have sustained if the winds hadn't been blowing the chemical fallout in a direction away from the city. He'd read the reports, field hospitals were choked with over a thousand patients. Most of them military men and women.
He had placed the surrounding city under martial law, a move that wasn't politically sound but it was strategically. He had moved all the civilians up and into the base where they wouldn't be in the way of crossfire. Most of them anyway, a few of the more adamant had stayed below, and the rebellious had disappeared, Varen assumed to join Nod militants.
But his city, while strategically secure in almost every way, with turret spires placed all over the city, sonic cannon placed on choking avenues and streets between the tall buildings and a rapid reaction team of five hundred fighting infantry, tanks and a third of his twenty four hammerhead gunships on constant alert, had several major disadvantages. The first and foremost was obvious. He was surrounded on all sides, massive Nod armored divisions that Varen nor any of the GDI's executives ever suspected they had and certainly not numbering in the hundreds of thousands had cut the blue zones as systematically as cutting cake. In effect Varen was an island of blue resistance in a sea burning red with angry hyped up religious evolutionary radicals that weren't above attacking noncombatants. He didn't know how many there were either and that scared him. he could have been fighting as many as a million troops although that was a ludicrous figure. Everyone thought it was ludicrous that Nod would have the ability to nuke the Philadelphia too, didn't they?
No, it wasn't the best of situations, maybe it was the worst. But he did have one advantage. The men and women of the 22nd wouldn't go down without a fight. It wasn't just the excruciating torture that they knew would await them if they surrendered, it was a matter of pride as well: "Victory in Death" was their unit creed, assumed on the day they had avenged the Philadelphia. They seemed to take it to heart, throwing themselves with an almost inhumane ferocity that Veran had seldom seen in Nod fanatics that strapped demo charges to their chests and rushed the forward bunkers of a GDI perimeter. They weren't fighting for their families, they were fighting for themselves and however shallow that might have sounded, it counted all the more in a battle.
If the only way to survive was to kill every single last one of those Nod bastards, then that's what his troops would do. They'd proven it and Lt. Colonel Veran hadn't earned his stars and stripes on false claims.