Explanatory notes: I posted all these a year ago in the Command and Conquer forums. I have made a few editorial changes. There are currently seven installments done. I prefer to call them "Installments" instead of "Chapters" because they're not exactly chapter organized. Hope u enjoy them, and I'll post the others after I do some more proofreading. Until next time. And yes, I know their long.
Installment I
The Scrin Invasion had been going on worldwide for many months, with relatively low casualty rates, among the Scrin that is. However Foreman 7432 is dismayed to hear of an outpost that seams to have repelled every attack set upon it. His Recon specialist, a buzzer from the 321 planet of the Scrrin system has just given him the report of the lay of the land.
It was known as expanded Red Zone 23. It is a land pitted with boulders and cliffs, Tiberium every few miles, but recently there has been an unprecedented decrease in tiberium field output and toxicity levels. Also there was little activity reported around the area. Foreman 7432 was boggled because the outpost commander must have known they were smack dab next to a big blue flowing roaring liquid, that would spray up in a horrid torrent of mist and waves. He found the sight terrible to look on, but knew these weak humans couldn't drive their "Mammoth tanks" across it. O how he disliked those Mammoth tanks, he had lost an entire strike force, and the base it was guarding, composed of 10 buzzers, 30 disintegrators, 5 Tripods and 10 Storm Riders, 2 drone ships, 4 Gravity stabilizers and Overlord knew what to about 15 of these armored slow moving goliaths, supported by 3, only 3 behemoths with rocket men in them. Foreman 7432 would grind his gnashers every time he recalled that debacle. He would not make the same mistakes here, he swore to himself that he would crush this out post like the time the Overlord's wrath was encored upon a particularly defiant Blue zone, which dare to have the edacity to kill one of his fellow Foreman, O yes he would leave his mark upon Scrinish lore, like his father did when he was here 65 Million years ago to exterminate some oversize lizards.
He gave a vicious war cry that was heard all the way in red zone 1. He began to form up his troops. Meanwhile in the outpost, that was actually a base, commander Stark was eyeing the rising Storm clouds that seemed to be gathering directly above him. He hoped it wasn't one of those Mythical Ion storms that had seemingly disappeared, ever since the end of the 2nd Tiberium war. He was also glad that it wasn't an artificial Ion storm secreted by the city sized Scrin carrier ships. Rain pelted his Tiberium field suit, and ran in rivulets down his pants. O how he missed the days of the Cabal insurrection, Cabal was an enemy he could understand, a machine that had simply run out of control, he was privileged to be one of the corporals at the time to fight and protect Trotoss & Dr. Boudreau. Now he was an old hardened veteran which found it hard to comprehend the strange alien Scrin. He wanted to just Nuke the encroaching Scrin forces and get on with his duties, but most of the nukes were stolen by Nod, and the few left were locked up underneath the pentagon for a last stand offensive. He couldn't understand why his platoon was denied an Ion Cannon up link. Maybe it was because his base of Command was in a Red Zone. Priority seemed to go to the Blue zones, then a few critical hand picked yellow zones. If any Red zone commander was lucky they would receive an EMP control center. Unfortunately his base was not one of those lucky few. "Dam Politics" he cursed.
Stark and his men were aware of the immanent Scrin assault on their base. It was just a matter of how long they would have to wait. Every passing day frayed his commander's nerves, knowing he was going to die, and not able to prevent it just ate at him, day after agonizing day. At the start of the this campaign his troops were high in morale, they had the latest in Zocom technology, Zone shatterers, Zone orcas, ample numbers of field suits, Sonic & EMP grenades, 50 Mammoth tanks, and enough c4 to get into fort knocks, and probably enough to make an underground railroad to China . But after time and time again of throwing the invaders back he knew it was just a matter of time before the Scrin crushed his last stand, and discovered the covert research facility nested within the Niagara Falls.
With in a few hours his hand picked Sniper team scouts reported a massive Scrin troop movement composed of Disintegrators, corrupters, Tripods, unidentifiable huge capitol ships, and some that they didn't even recognize. Stark knew it had struck fear into his scouts, "they should arrive in 3 days march" he said, Stark knew a 3 day march for a human army would be a one day march for a Scrin force, he told the scout to inform is lieutenants, and said: "Don't worry, we will deal with them like we dealt with all the others who came before them, they shall have the same fate. Tell the troops to Lock and Load." This seemed to reassure the sniper and he left. Alone once more Stark stared at the horizon, squinting his eyes to see if he could catch a glimpse of the horde, knowing his attempt was futile, he looked again at the gathering clouds and wondered if his time had finally come. It has been a 2week hiatus since the last attacks, so is this the big one? He thought and continued to ponder. He held the fate of the soldiers in his hands and would not squander them in a half ***ed attempt.
Stark gathered all his troops in the courtyard in front of the base a few minutes after the report. "I'm not going to lie to u guys, this one will be one hell of a sour candy, you'll want to give up and surrender, but all of us know Scrin never take prisoners, they kill indiscriminately, they will raze our structures, and find the secret we have safeguarded for General Granger. I received this assignment with the highest honors, you men are the best of what can be afforded to train you, and with boyle with the purse strings, and the support of rich desperate house wives, we have turned out quite a good defending force. We have done this for almost 14 months, fending of dozens of attack by Scrin and Nod alike, are we going to let this force walk all over us? Or are we going to fight? We'll pound them into the ground like all the others. Lets make a lasting impression!" And they cheered; they set about their duties with a renewed zeal and confidence; which hadn't been seen since the 1st attacks. He was almost able to convince himself, but not quite.
2 days later the sun rose on a damp soggy morning, Foreman 7432was seething, he was going to burst, nothing was going right, he had planned to attack the settlement 26 hours ago but things just kept breaking. Half the shield generators would not work and hundreds of the plasma disks were reverting to their original gas, solid and liquid states, due to improper storage and handling. He skinned the shock troopers responsible and fed them to his Tiberium fiends and his prized Proton Energy pucker fish. Among these set backs were an unexplained refinery reactor melt down witch destroyed his entire supply of powdered Icore. Buy the time his underlings managed to fix everything it had cost his army 26 hours in marching time. He arrived in sight of the waterside base in a terrible rage. He sent his 1st wave out.
During all this time Stark and his men were euphoric, they prepared and went over the up coming battle predictions again and again, the entire base was filled with bravado and good cheer. Then the 1st wave struck. They heard it from the stationed sentries and the automated watchtowers, guardian cannons, sonic emitters, and AA batteries. The troops poured out of their bunkers with rifles, and rockets in their hands. Each taking the time to put on their fields suits and ammo packs. They ran toward the on coming horde with no fear, just determination.
Stark stood in the center of the front line, firing his rapid fire machine gun, and planting C4 where it was needed. He signaled the Zorcas and Fire hawks, the battle field lit up like Christmas. Scrin infantry fell left and right. A group of buzzers and shock troopers managed to break through the perimeter of the base defenses and reached Stark. He aimed and fired, right in the middle of them, and they scattered, seconds later cut down by a volley of sniper fire. Scrin screeched and growled all around them, most of them cut short, dieing for a war they never wanted, but had no choice to disobey.
Wave after wave of Scrin infantry and vehicles bashed the defenders, slowly chipping away at their armor, their hope, and morale. The battle went on for most of the day. Continuing waves of green and blue creatures and their terrible weaponry advanced, cutting down scores of GDI troops. The Sonics still cut a swath of destruction through the ground foes, but the enemy was getting smarter, lining up perpendicular to the Sonic waves thus they minimized casualties. The sound of Tungsten shells firing sporadically peppered the battle, Storm riders went down in droves, but unfortunately most of the predator tanks, and APCs were destroyed. The shattererss remained in a flanking position on each side of the troops. None of them could afford the time to use their overload beams, so they just fired normal sonics. Pitbulls roamed around the battlefield erratically shooting anything and everything, with their missiles and mortars. But many of them were destroyed by the rare tripod, and devour + corrupter combo. This proved too much for most of the pit bulls and they retreated in a flurry, 3/4 of them where destroyed or damaged. the seemed to be no more Scrin infantry and only vehicles advancing, along with the rare tripods. Sonic and EMP grenades spat out toward the horde, killing and slowing them down, but the Scrin still advanced.
Suddenly the ground shook and out from the hangers marched a long line of Mammoth tanks, taking care of most of the vehicles, they exploded in a spark of flame and smoke, those who got too close were pounded into the ground by the mighty treads of the Mammoths. Foreman 7432 muttered a curse under his breath as he saw the line of mammoths approaching his front lines, he cursed vehemently and stared in mounting horror as the mammoths crushed his lines and lines of tanks, some of them fled and were able to return for repairs, but most of them just fired and died. He was furiously frustrated; if the shields had been fixed on the tripods he could sweep the floor with those moving piles of scrap metal. Then he noticed something he had over looked through out all this time, the Mammoths were firing cannon shells, not the destructive "rail Guns" he had always feared, but common normal cannon fodder, he instantly did a recalculation and realized his force of shielded & non Shielded tripods just might be able to take care of this pesky problem. He sent them Forth.
Stark was actually thinking he might live to see another battle, he saw the Scrin forces flee and tremble under the treads of the mammoth tanks, he had never understood why they didn't have Rail guns, he thought it was unfair, but he had grown to live with it. And most of the time it made no difference, the enemy could either handle the non rail gun mammoths or not, it was a simple as that, black or white. But as soon as he saw the army of tripods come into view, his concerns and fears all resurfaced. Curses High Command and their red tape balance regulations. He had fought tripods before and never in such big numbers, he and a few of his daring commando buddies would just run out there under covering fire and C4 their assess, but with buzzers attached it was suicide, he had only C4ed a buzzered tripod once, and it ad nearly got him, he woke up in the base armory with dozens of cuts all over him, lucky none of them cut any veins, or he would have died then and there.
A cry over the radio jerked him into the present battle, the tripods were advancing and the Mammoths were retreating, putting on reverse rotors, and trying to get the hell out of there. Every vehicle driver was told of the ways of EMP, the tripod is the only heavy vehicle with EMPing ability. Stark wondered why about half the tripods had no shields, the tripods had come out moments before and half of them had no shields? it made little sense to Stark. He sent a squadron of hammerheads with zone raiders to deal with them. It did quite nicely until the Capitol ships arrived. Sonic grenades flew out windows, rockets followed.
Planetary Assault Carriers and Warships pounded the retreating mammoths and the on coming hammerheads. Some of the hammerheads went down with out even firing a shot. Slingshots ran around like kindergarteners on sugar, attempting to take down the capitol ships. More Scin vehicles approached over the horizon. Times like this Stark wished he had juggernauts, but regulations were regulations. The lack of available artillery was probably due to the balancing of GDI resources. Understandable, but sure as hell was debilitating.
Stark was getting desperate and called the local support power center; he called in a few air strikes, which left stars sparkling in his eyes. And used the EMP on the on coming ships and Tripods, half of the tripods, those with out shields went out like a candle, but the Ships continued to advance, Stark had called for reinforcements from GDI high command, which was now in Washington DC, but no one answered his memo. He stood there with the few men he had left and fired at the oncoming tripods, then he ordered a charge, once the Scrin were in range of all the base defenses, they charged, stark in the lead, getting his C4 ready, and all the remaining troops behind him, riffles blazing, a total of 30 troops remained, along with 10 mammoths to fight the last stand of Commander Edward Gregory Stark. As the lasers pinged and bounced around the battle field, Stark had one last glimpse of the sky, and it was storming like he had never seen it in all of his 58 years, lightning crackled and thunder rolled, And Stark went to his death not afraid, because he knew he had done his best.
Hours later after the clean up crew had cleaned up the battlefield and ransackedthe base, Foreman 7432 was still angry; the clouds above didn't do him justice. He had lost 2/3 of his remaining attack force and for what? Nothing, a pile of metal, and a mysterious blue liquid that sloshed around him and chilled his feet, making them numb, when he stepped in it. He had lost over 10,000 thousand credits invested in his army which was now 2/3 destroyed, he wanted to eat something, maybe a human, maybe an indigenous animal, something he could sink his teeth in and smell the aroma of. He knew this was just how he got when he didn't get to sniff his Icore powder, but it was gone, he knew the Supervisor would not be pleased when he heard of Forman 7432's lack of discovering new Intel, he raged and speared a fish that happened to jump out of the water, with is claws. He was despondent, until one of his personal guard found something behind the waterfall, while the guard was taking a Scrinish leak.
During all his time on Earth, Foreman 7432 smiled for the first time.