Act I
Chapter V: Hell March
"There was a little girl. Maybe, eight years old? I dunno. She'd lost both her legs. Just kept staring at them. Little stumps, cauterized by fire somehow. A little girl, all alone, looking at where her legs were, not understanding anything. Just . . . staring. Blank little eyes. Staring."
-Anonymous GDI soldier, Seattle, Washington
Missiles roared over burning vehicles and slammed into the base of the gleaming tower. The armor piercing warheads punched through the outer walls and detonated deep inside, ripping apart structural foundations. Gaping holes appearing in the sides of the central control tower as people attempted to flee, only to be gunned down by roaring machineguns and assault rifles. The tall building shuddered, and as it suffered under the constant hail of missiles and shells, chinks of it rained down on the ground, before the immense structure finally toppled over. It hung in the air for an instant, and as the attackers watched, it slowly fell, slamming into the concrete with an earthshaking roar, fracturing and collapsing under its own weight.
A throaty cheer went up from the soldiers of Nod, the Brothers and Sisters overrunning the unprepared GDI base. Tall railgun-armed watchtowers and squat Guardian cannons sat impotent, their power severed by Nod infiltrators, leaving the GDI airfields open and helpless before Nod's onslaught. Idle Firehawk attack jets and Orca aircraft sat on the tarmac, destroyed or scrapped at leisure by the advancing Nod soldiers, and those that were attempting to lift off were shattered under missile and machinegun barrages. Ruined hulks of crashed fighters and Ox transports littered the fields, amidst the fallen bodies of hundreds of soldiers. The GDI troops fought as best they could, but without their defenses and against the sheer numbers of Nod troops flooding the base, they were helpless.
Commander Logan Rawne watched, a gleeful smile on his face, the images of his men flowing before him like water, holographic displays dancing in front of his eyes. True warriors of Nod, who obeyed his orders without question or fear, pawns who trusted in his leadership; they did their jobs well. With the control tower destroyed, any hope of directing the GDI aircraft or coordinating base defense had already vanished. With Nod electronic countermeasures and interference flooding the radio bands, the GDI infidels were lost, confused, and broken. Nod looters and salvaging crew were following the advancing front, stripping the GDI base of any useful material.
His personal bodyguard detail followed him as he strode across the remnants of the base, well behind the advancing front of his main assault force. Heavily armed men in full body armor, the bodyguards resembled the frontline soldiers Nod had employed in the Second Tiberium War. With large numbers of disaffected people swelling the ranks of the Brotherhood over the last few years, it had become impossible to arm most of their troops to the same degree that the elite Nod soldiers had been in TW2; the bodyguard and special forces details were one of the few units still as well-armed as they had in Nod's past, with the majority of Nod troopers forming light infantry reminiscent of the Soviet and Allied armies of World War II.
An attack buggy could be heard approaching from behind, and Rawne turned, to see the vehicle closing. It paused next to him, the machinegunner in the back sweeping the area with his weapon as the vehicle's passenger climbed out.
"Commander!" the man said, circling around the vehicle. The insignia on his shoulder marked him as a Corporal, and he was carrying a datapad. "Sir, new dispatch from Ajay." With a nod Rawne took the pad, and hooked it to his personal command computer. Holographic details flashed across his line of sight, and he nodded again.
"Looks like our next target is Washington D.C. itself," he mused. "We should be able to hit the capital within the next twenty four hours, assuming our main assault forces continue their current advance." He looked up at the sky, frowning, and then peered in the general direction of the advancing assault. All he could see among the buildings and burning aircraft were plumes of smoke and tracer fire cutting across the hazy air. According to the holographic readouts, they had finished clearing the southern and eastern parts of Andrews Air Base, and were in the process of smashing the Orca maintenance and repair facilities on the north end of the base, as well as sweeping for and disposing of any GDI survivors of the initial attack. Within the hour they should be ready to withdraw, and with the entire Blue Zone under attack, GDI wouldn't be able to mobilize a counterattack, especially considering Andrews was their largest and most important air base in the region.
Rawne looked up and started issuing orders to his men, when the attack buggy next to him exploded, and he was launched backward, bowling over one of his own bodyguards.
The gate was hammered with force that made Private Blunt's bones shake as he cowered behind cover. Hundreds of missiles slammed into the wall around the Zone Security checkpoint, the roar of screaming engines and blasting detonations drowning out all other sound, even the panicked screaming of his own platoon. Rivers of blue-white and scarlet laser beams crisscrossed over the gate, boiling away sections of heavy ceramic and armor as the Nod armored force rolled onward.
There was no possibility of returning fire. A couple of years ago the Zone Security checkpoints had been fully armed with railguns and Guardian cannons, but those had been removed before Blunt had even joined. Now they had a couple of machineguns mounted in watchtowers, which had been the first targets of the Nod armor assault.
Blunt clutched his rifle tightly, trying to think of anything he could do against the relentless assault. There was movement next to him, and he looked up in time to see Private Jacobs speared by a scarlet bolt of light that sliced him in half across the waist, vaporizing a third of his body. Blunt found himself staring at the bisected remains of the soldier, unable to tear his eyes away from the smoking remains.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, and he jerked, spinning around, to see Sergeant Keith, commander of his platoon.
"LT's dead! We need to pull out!" The words came in over his short-range radio and directly into his ears, and even then Blunt had a hard time hearing them. The private hesitated, and then nodded, and with another order from Keith, the Zone Security detachment broke away from the barriers, fleeing back inside the shelter of the walls.
Within a few moments, the surviving thirty-odd soldiers were jogging down the long internal passageways inside the outer walls, back toward the motor pool. The structure shook under the savage barrage, and the men were burdened with wounded - surprisingly few, but most of those hit in the opening barrage were beyond help.
"Where the hell did they come from?" Corporal David shouted as they entered a wide, open hangar lit by fluorescent lamps. Three armored personnel carriers and a pair of Pitbulls were sitting in the room, waiting for them.
"Must have been thousands of them," another trooper remarked, and Blunt nodded.
"Platoon, listen up," Sergeant Keith said over the radio, and the troopers looked up at his call.
"Just got a flash from Colonel Anderson," he added, referring to the commander of the local garrison brigade. "Nod's hitting us all across the Zone. We've got some new kind of stealth bombers tearing up everything inside the walls. We're falling back to defensive positions inside the wall. Get everyone on those APCs, we're going to need every weapon we have when Nod breaks through."
The troops quickly moved out, boarding the APCs. Ramps opened in the sides and rear of the six-wheeled, low-set vehicles, and the men clambered onto the vehicles. Blunt sat down on one of the padded seats, waiting for the rest of the troops to get on board. Within moments, the transports and the Pitbulls were starting up, and began to roll out of the garage. The wall was still shaking and shuddering under the barrage a few minutes later, when the remnants of the platoon burst out of the darkness of the wall interior and back out into the open air of the Blue Zone.
Blunt tapped a panel next to his head, and a firing slit opened in the side of the APC's armor. He peered out, and stared at the destruction he could see. Smoke was rising throughout the Zone, dust and fire filling the air as Nod bombers struck and fled. Sporadic anti-air fire was lancing up at them as GDI defenders reacted to the attack. Missiles and artillery arced over the top of the outer wall, slamming into civilian buildings all around them, and panicking people were running in every direction, abandoning their cars in the streets as the Nod marauders attacked indiscriminately.
Within a couple of minutes the APCs had reached the area Keith had been ordered to fall back to, a series of apartment complexes just inside the wall, with a clear line of sight on the checkpoint that was being hammered into dust. The vehicles came to a halt, and the troops disembarked into a whirlwind of half-controlled insanity as nearby GDI soldiers rushed to fortify their position in any way they could.
"Get those power generators set up!" shouted a man with a colonel's pins as the troops filed out of their vehicles. The man was fiddling with a Comcom and waving his hands frantically as a six-wheeled, heavy-duty truck settled into place on the center of the street. GDI soldiers and engineers hurried past as the truck's crew began to unpack the vehicle, converting it into a forward power plant and weapons control center. Transport vehicles laden with prefabricated weapons emplacements and towed guns rolled through the area as GDI infantry dug out foxholes, hastily assembled makeshift bunkers out of instacrete, and hurried into the buildings to set up weapons.
"Platoon, on me!" Sergeant Keith shouted, gathering the Zone Security troopers. "There's an aid station being set up fourteen klicks south of here; Second Squad, load the wounded into the casevac transports. Everyone else is with me." The troops moved out, grabbing the injured and carrying them through the chaos toward the waiting casualty evacuation trucks while the remainder followed their leader, who hurried into one of the nearby apartment complexes. Civilians were being herded out by GDI troopers, carrying their precious belongings, while soldiers moved through the building. Keith flashed the squads quick orders over their helmet HUDs, and Blunt was moving inside an apartment on the second floor, setting up a field of fire inside someone's bedroom.
He pushed some curtains out of the way and opened the apartment's window, and found himself looking down the street as his fireteam set up elsewhere in the apartment. Private Agels set up a light machinegun in the next room as someone else dropped canisters of ammunition on a table in the kitchen.
"Blunt, how's your ammo?" called Corporal Simons, and Blunt looked down, checking his gear.
"Don't think I even fired my weapon yet," he replied, and managed a strained chuckle. "Uh, seven full mags, but I don't have any frags, flamers, or smoke." Simons handed him a pair of fragmentation grenades, and behind them, another soldier hurried into the apartment, dropping an extra pack full of ammunition on a table in the main living room before taking position at another window.
Blunt looked out the window, trying to still his hammering heart as he heard the roar of Nod artillery ripping into the wall in front of them.
"Christ, its like the First Tiberium War," Simons muttered as a group of Predator tanks rolled into place below them, behind instacrete fortifications. An engineering detail was hastily setting up a Guardian cannon nearby, behind another set of sandbags and instacrete barriers, and rapid-fire railguns were being readied, hooked up to the command and control center that had been set up in the middle of the street.
"We won that one, too, didn't we?" Agels remarked, checking his machinegun, and Simons grunted as Blunt listened over the radio as GDI desperately tried to assemble their defense, and waited anxiously for the Nod forces to breach the barriers.
"Heath, stop us here," Master Sergeant Julian Davis ordered as he peered through the forward sensors of the turret. A dozen different sensors fed data to him at once, and he flicked through them quickly.
"Stopping," replied the Predator's driver, sitting beside Davis. Private First Class Michael Heath slowed the Predator Main Battle Tank as it neared the firing line with the rest of Golf Company. Davis settled into his command chair, and pulled his head back from the sensor displays, peering around the cramped interior of his Predator. Behind him, the Predator's gunner, Corporal Wilkins, drummed his hands nervously on the side of his control console for the heavy cannon that took up half the turret's space.
Ahead of them were a series of hastily constructed barriers and bunkers, the GDI soldiers having only a matter of minutes to assemble their defensive position. It had been less than half an hour since the open transmission from Kane, and in that time Davis and his tank crew had scrambled to get their Predator ready for battle and to the front. Half the vehicle's checklist still needed to be finished, but they had no time to run through the entire maintenance routine; they barely had time to get their tank platoon to the defensive point Colonel Anderson had been assembling.
"Wilkins, we're loaded?" Davis ordered, and the gunner grunted, nodding.
"Main cannon's loaded, sarge," the soldier reported, and Davis nodded. targeting data spilled across his monitor, and he tapped a few buttons. The in-turret radio squawked, and all three men put a finger to their ears; even idling, the Predator's engine nearly drowned out the radios.
"Platoon, stand ready," came the call from Lieutenant Brooks. "Wall sensor feeds report breaches in several locations near the checkpoint. they'll be coming through any second."
"Ranger Five-Seven, Copy," Davis replied quickly, and looked around the interior of his tank, at the grim faces of his troops. Wilkins stopped his nervous drumming on the sides of his instruments, and Heath tightened his grip on the tank's steering wheel. There were a few moments of silence, and Wilkins glanced over his instruments.
"Hope my girl's alright," he muttered, and Davis nodded. The Corporal had just bought a ring for his girlfriend a few days ago, and the tank commander could see the determination on his gunner's face to survive and get it to her. Davis knew he'd do his damndest to make sure they all lived through this.
"Second Platoon, multiple breaches at-" came a call over the radio, and all three men tensed up, snapping to their stations as the words were cut off by a shout of shock and a sudden, intense roar. The sensors showed a massive thermal eruption along the length of the wall, and then telemetry data from the local EVA flashed onto Davis' monitor.
"Receiving target, Scorpion tank, three degrees left, one-point-one down, eight hundred meters!" Davis shouted as an image appeared on his sensor. The turret shifted as Wilkins brought the cannon to bear.
"Clear target," Wilkins replied. "Firing!" The Predator shuddered, the blast from the cannon filling the enclosed turret, and the telemetry data changed.
"That's a hit," Heath called back, watching the battle as it progressed. The Predator's sensors were already reporting the hit to the local EVA, who was wasting no time feeding them fresh telemetry.
"Second target, Scorpion! Two-point-four degrees left, seven hundred forty meters!" Davis ordered. There was a clank and the rumble of working machinery nearby as the heavy ammunition loaders slid a new shell into place. The air was filled with roars and explosions, missiles flying through the air from both sides, and machineguns and cannons blasting away. Scarlet bolts of light sliced through the air from the billowing smoke of the caving wall.
"Clear target!" Wilkins confirmed. "Firing!" The tank shook again, but it felt like only one shudder in a sea of chaos as hordes of Nod warriors and weapons poured through the breach.
"Cover, cover!"
"GDI armor and infantry, flanking west of our position!"
He felt arms hook underneath him, and the baking heat and pungent scent of burning bodies as he was dragged backwards.
"Commander is secured," came another impersonal, filtered voice, and the report of laser rifles nearby shook Rawne, cutting through the haze that had filled his head. A scream of pain sounded nearby.
"Hail is down," reported Sergeant Park, the leader of the bodyguard detail, as Rawne sat up, scrabbling for his pistol. His men were taking cover behind the burning wreckage of the destroyed attack buggy. Bullets pockmarked the area around them, pinning down Rawne and the three remaining bodyguards.
"What are they carrying?" Rawne asked as he reactivated his personal computer. Shaped light danced in front of his eyes, and he quickly began locating the nearest units and rerouting them to his position.
"Two APCs, with rifle infantry," reported one of the bodyguards, in between bursts from his laser rifle. Scarlet bolts lanced out from the squad's position, searing through any GDI troopers who showed themselves. "But they have to have some kind of anti-armor weaponry, sir."
"We can't stay here," Rawne hissed, knowing that with numerical and fire superiority, the GDI troops could quickly surround and overwhelm them. The laser weapons of his guards were effective against light infantry, but the heavy armor typical of GDI vehicles was too thick to easily disable.
"Forty meters southeast," replied another bodyguard, pointing toward what remained of a V-35 Ox. It was bigger and would give them a lot more cover against missile attacks, and there were several hangars directly behind it that they could retreat to.
"That's across open ground," Rawne muttered, and glanced to his men, who did not reply. They all knew the danger, but at the same time, they knew their duty and their overriding priority.
"Commander is moving," Park declared. "Wilkes, Sabes, covering fire." Acknowledgements sounded over the radio, and both remaining bodyguards opened up, loosing a fusillade of laser fire on the GDI troops and vehicles. At the same moment, Park and Rawne rose and bolted for cover, the sergeant laying down suppressive fire as he kept between his charge and the enemy. Return fire ripped through the air from the APCs, but most of it remained focused on the two bodyguards behind cover, whose furious barrage of light kept up the illusion that there were a lot more soldiers behind their cover.
Fire cut past the pair, but Rawne managed to reach the downed Ox without being hit. He checked his holographic displays again, to see that his reinforcements were closing in fast; already, a group of attack motorcycles was cutting past, firing rockets and machineguns at the APCs and pulling their fire away.
"Commander!" came a call over the radio from Wilkins. "Infidel squad, circling around your cover north!" Park leapt around in front of Rawne at the warning, shouldering his rifle, and the weapon screamed. Scarlet bolts cut through the air, blasting into the gray-white camouflage of a GDI soldier as he came around the Ox. The man fell backwards, his torso armor reduced to molten slag and his rifle spraying wildly into the air.
Rawne crouched and dropped to the left, extending his pistol hand out and bracing the weapon with his left hand as he his the tarmac. A pair of GDI soldiers were coming around the Ox, and the weapon erupted in a bolt of blue-white light, tearing through the man's right shoulder and burning his arm clean off. The second one was dispatched by another burst from Park's rifle. By that point the rest of the GDI squad was piling around the edge of the destroyed Ox, their weapons blazing.
Rawne's pistol barked again, coring a GDI soldier through his helmet's optics and vaporizing his head. Beside him, Park let out a grunt of agony and dropped to one knee, even as bullets skipped off his heavy battle suit. Blood leaked out over the black and red plating, but he continued firing, burning down another infidel, this one carrying a missile launcher. Two more shots from Rawne finished off the last GDI soldier as he began to pull back.
"Sergeant!" Rawne said, rising and crouching next to the wounded bodyguard. Park waved a hand and started to stand, the built-in medical gear pumping bio-regenerative foam into his wounds.
"I'll live, commander," he replied, and started forward, toward the corner the GDI troops had come from. He stepped over the bodies as Rawne covered the other side. "Clear."
"GDI troops advancing toward our position, using APCs for cover," called Sabes over the radio. His voice betrayed none of the fear or apprehension that had had to be feeling as the enemy closed in. "Armor on those APCs is too heavy for our weapons."
"Copy," Sergeant Park replied. "Hold position and keep them occupied while I evac the Commander."
"Belay that," Rawne replied, and Park looked up, to see his commander picking up one of the dropped GDI missile launchers. He grinned to his bodyguard as he checked and shouldered the weapon. "They were going to flank us and use these on our entrenched position. I say we turn the tables."
"Agreed, sir," Park replied, and scooped up a second missile launcher. The weapon, an FGM-90, was more complex than the RPG-43s favored by Nod infantry, and had an advanced, complicated optics array to interface with GDI helmets. Neither soldier could really use the more advanced options of the launcher, and instead used the mounted iron sights on the side of the weapons.
Both Rawne and Park crouched beside the Ox, the weapons ready, and as they waited, a pair of low, angular shapes rolled forward, long-barreled, twin-linked machineguns mounted on turrets atop their six-wheeled, armored frames. The APCs were splitting up, shrugging off laser fire from the pinned Nod soldiers as they offered cover and supporting fire for two more groups of GDI soldiers.
"Fire!" Rawne hissed, and both men depressed the triggers on their weapons. The launchers roared, and missiles lanced out on tails of flaming exhaust. The warheads slammed into the side of the lead APC, the first missile exploding against and breaching the outer armor layers, while the second shattered the plating and penetrated. The APC went up in a flume of fire, the entire vehicle catching alight, and several GDI soldiers nearby were blasted off their feet by the detonations. Moving quickly, Rawne and Park reloaded their stolen weapons and shouldered them again, aiming at the second APC. The topside turret began to turn toward them, but before it could open up, both men let loose a second volley and dove for cover behind the Ox. Once again, the missiles penetrated the armor and set the GDI vehicle ablaze.
Cheers erupted over the radio as more laser fire cut down a knot of GDI soldiers, and amidst the smoke and fire, the surviving troops began to fall back -
-and ran headlong into literally hundreds of Nod soldiers with supporting vehicles as Rawne's reinforcements finally arrived. A furious barrage of gunfire and missiles slammed into the broken GDI troops, and Rawne watched with satisfaction as they were cut off and surrounded.
"Advance and purify!" Rawne ordered over the radio, dropping the stolen missile launcher. "Leave none of these infidels alive!"
"Fire fire fire!" The order echoed in Blunt's ears as he saw the wall shudder and collapse, bolts of flame and light ripping through the ceramic and metal structure and scattering hundreds of tons of debris. Billowing smoke and ash and dust flowed forth, obscuring his view, and lances of scarlet energy cut through the haze, slicing into the ground and the buildings all around them. Blunt numbly raised his GD2 and squeezed the trigger, feeling the reassuring kick and report as the building shook, the array of GDI weaponry answering the Nod assault with fury and vigor.
The weapon ran empty in the span of a second, and it took Blunt a moment to even realize it had gone silent. He ducked behind cover, fumbling for a fresh magazine, a chunk of masonry flying past as a round impacted nearby. The building shook again, dust filling the room as something detonated a floor below, and he slid a fresh box into the magazine well of his rifle. Rising, Blunt pointed his rifle in the general direction of the enemy and opened fire again, his heart hammering almost as fast as his rifle.
There was movement inside the chaos and fire, and then something emerged from the smoke and dust. Blunt was expecting to see tanks or other armored vehicles breaching the gap, but what burst forth from the dust was like nothing he had ever seen outside videos from the Second Tiberium War.
The ground shook with their footsteps as a half dozen tall, humanoid shapes swept out of the ruins of the wall, missiles and cannon shot bouncing harmlessly off obsidian-black armor. Their right arms were raised as they advanced, and blindingly-bright beams of scarlet light lanced out from cannons the size of small vehicles. The front line of tanks and cannon emplacements took the barrage of energy head on, and composite armor evaporated, the tank crews immolated in a searing river of laser fire.
"What the hell are those things?" Agels screamed as Blunt stared in awestruck horror. The immense walkers were eating enough fire to kill a Mammoth tank without even slowing down, and behind them came a wave of vehicles; Scorpion tanks, attack motorcycles and buggies, and trucks laden with hundreds of soldiers. One of the war machines turned, a wide array of stylized red sensors on its front sweeping over their apartment building, and the walker's arm pointed at their position.
"Down!" screamed Simons, and the order shook Blunt out of his petrified stare. He threw himself down to the floor as blinding light swept through the apartment complex, burning away flesh, ceramic, and steel.
"Avatars," Davis breathed as his tank shook again. As he watched, the shell bounced harmlessly off the lead walker's front armor, and it turned, loosing another bolt of light on a bunker. The concrete was vaporized, along with the men inside, ammunition cooking off and hurling pieces of debris into the air.
"Sarge?" Wilkins asked, and Davis shook his head, remembering the intelligence briefings on intercepted blueprints regarding Nod's walker fleet. He quickly shifted his sensors, lighting up a new target as the building next to him shook, debris raining down around them. EVA's transmissions were suddenly cut off as a beam lanced past, and he knew that the forward command center had probably taken that blast.
"Shift down one-point-three degrees, point-one-five degrees right," he ordered. "Target Nod walker's leg, six hundred and eighteen meters!"
"Clear target!" Wilkins replied, and the Predator shuddered. Through the sensors, Davis saw the shell slam into the walker's left leg, blasting a piece of armor plating away.
"No penetration! Maintain fire on target!" Davis ordered, and Wilkins nodded.
"Clear target, firing!" Once more, the Predator shook, and this time, the walker paused in its advance, portions of its leg armor blasted away to reveal components underneath.
Then, as he watched, the walker sidestepped, faster than he believed such a weapon was capable of, and as it did so, another scarlet bolt lanced out, searing through the reflective road ahead of them.
"No target!" Wilkins reported as he tried to turn the turret toward the maneuvering walker. There was a squawk in Davis ears as he heard his gunner's call, and the tank commander frowned, checking his screen.
"All GDI forces, withdraw to Defense Point Bravo!" came the yell over the radio, which was authenticated as belonging to Colonel Anderson. "Repeat, withdraw to DP Bravo! We can't hold them here! Regroup and reform at DP Bravo!"
"Heath, get us moving, reverse!" Davis ordered, and the driver immediately threw the Predator into full reverse. "Wilkins, fire at will!"
"Copy, Sarge," the gunner replied, and the tank shuddered as he punished an oncoming Scorpion tank. Another shell bounced off their forward armor, and a laser beam slashed past them, bisecting a street sign as Heath swung the vehicle around.
The command network had to have been trashed if the Colonel was giving them general orders like this, Davis realized grimly as they began to pull back. Even worse, he realized moments later, was how few of their Predators were even able to withdraw; smoking remnants of ruined vehicles littered the area as they gave ground before the implacable Nod advance.
"On your feet or you're dead!" yelled Corporal Simons, grabbing Blunt by the shoulder plate of his armor and hauling him to his feet. The Zone Security trooper opened his eyes as he tried to stand, gripping his rifle so tightly that his fingers were hurting. The apartment's wall has been burned away, leaving a glowing gash in the side of the building. A pair of smoking boots and a molten hunk of metal were all that remained of Agels and his machinegun. Below, dozens of vehicles and hundreds of soldiers could be seen, streaming toward the GDI defenses.
"Platoon, Nod infantry, lower floors!" came Sergeant Keith over the radio. "Everyone, pull out! Get out of the building before you're overrun!"
Blunt and Simons were rushing out of the door seconds later, and running down the hallway. They could hear gunfire below, and several other GDI troopers were hurrying into the hallway as they reached the door leading to the stairwell.
The door flew open, and a man clad in militia fatigues burst through the portal, a rifle in hand. He was practically right on top of Blunt, and let out an inarticulate roar as he tried to cave in the trooper's skull. Fortunately, Blunt was still wearing his helmet, and the rifle butt bounced off, only dazing the soldier, and he snapped up his GD2, clashing against the Nod warrior's rifle. They fell backward, clearing the door, and gunfire filled the hallway as Simons blasted away at threats beyond the doorway.
Blunt's training kicked in as he fell back, and he snapped the GD2 down and to his right. The Nod soldier's weapon followed, and Blunt swept his weapon back up, smashing the butt of the rifle into his foe's jaw. The man tumbled backward, and Blunt fired from the hip, a burst of rounds punching through the man's stomach and chest at point blank range.
The soldier stared down at the corpse for a moment, panting heavily as blood dripped off his plate armor.
"Blunt, come on!" shouted Simons as he moved through the door ahead, sweeping the area beyond with his rifle. The Zone Security trooper looked up, and shook himself out of his momentary shock, and followed the Corporal and the other GDI soldiers. He stepped over several more Nod corpses in the stairwell landing beyond, and heard gunfire below.
They hurried down the stairwell, but as they descended to the third floor, Simons held up a hand. An instant later, gunfire slashed up the stairwell at them,a nd the troopers fell back against the wall.
"Nod troops have overrun the lower levels," he muttered, and Blunt nodded. More gunfire ripped up the passage, and the private pulled a grenade from his belt. He popped the pin and dropped it down the shaft, and the subsequent explosion was chased by Nod screams. Simons opened the third floor door, and they followed him, the last two troopers covering the door after they passed through.
"How are we getting out?" Blunt asked as they heard more shots outside, followed by an explosion.
"Fire escape," Simons replied, pointing down the hallway, and Blunt nodded, seeing a window that led to the external staircase. The GDI troops hurried up the passage toward the window, and a burst of gunfire dealt with the glass window. As the troopers startled piling out, the door to the stairwell flew open, and bullets slammed into the walls around them. Blunt and two other troopers returned fire, and cut down a pair of Nod soldiers moving into the hallway.
"Go go go!" Blunt yelled, and the remaining troops scrambled outside, even as more nod fighters were charging into the hallway, screaming dogmatic ephitets at the GDI soldiers. A burst bounced off his shoulder plate as Blunt shot another man in the chest, and then he ducked through the window. Another soldier outside popped and threw an incendiary grenade into the hallway he had just departed, throwing up a wall of flame that would deter pursuit.
Moments later, the surviving soldiers, a dozen men all told, had gotten outside the apartment complex. Simon, the highest-ranking trooper remaining, quickly got them moving away from the building, the soldiers jogging up an alley and out onto a street opening away from the battle around the breach.
They paused at the alley entrance, Simons trying to bring up communications on his helmet, but finally shaking his head.
"Comms are being jammed," he muttered. "Can't get in touch with Sergeant Keith, if he's even still alive."
"What do we do?" asked another soldier as Blunt covered the rear end of the alley.
"Defense Point Bravo is a kilometer east of here," Simons said, pointing. "If we stay out of sight, we might be able to hump it there without-"
"Tank!" shouted another soldier, and they started to duck back inside the alley as a Nod Scorpion tank rolled around the corner. The scarab-like vehicle spotted them s they took cover, however, and a shell slammed into the building to their left.
"Fall back!" Simons shouted. "Get out of the alley, we're dead if we-"
His order was cut off by an explosion outside, and the Scorpion shattered as a missile slammed into its unarmored rear. As the tank's remnants burned, the soldiers spotted a man jogging around the side of the vehicle, sweeping the area with one of Nod's RPG-43 launchers. He wasn't clad in militia fatigues, and in fact looked like a civilian, but he carried the weapon with practiced ease. A moment later, he spotted the GDI troopers and waved toward them.
After only a moment's hesitation, Simons piled his troops out of the alley, and ran up toward the civilian with the rocket launcher.
"Thanks for the save," he offered, and the civilian - a man who looked like he was three times Simons' age - grinned and nodded.
"Doing what I could to help," he replied. "Name's Parker, but you can call me Havoc. Let's get the hell out of here before more Nod troops show up. I'm low on ammo for this thing anyway."
"Commander," Ajay said, his face appearing on the holographic display. "Heard you had a close call back there."
"We overextended ourselves," Logan Rawne replied, sitting in the passenger seat of one of another raiding buggy as it rolled across the opulent greenery of the Blue Zone they were so busily sacking. "GDI troops flanked our position, but we dealt with them."
"Good to hear," the intelligence agent replied with a nod, and then looked down at something outside the display. "Looks like with Andrews Air Base taken out, you've castrated GDI's air power in the region." He grinned. "I love that word, castrate. Okay, anyway, Kane's sent down some fresh orders. We need to hit GDI right where it hurts, knock out their morale before we go in for the kill."
"Where are we headed?" Rawne asked, checking the maps on his display. Overhead, pair of bat-winged Vertigo bombers flew past, heading back to their launch sites Kentucky to reload and refuel.
"Ever been to the White House, Commander?" Ajay asked with a wide grin, and the Commander mirrored it a moment later.
The Comcom beeped, and laser projectors flashed to life, feeding Karrde information directly from his communications link. He had settled down into a chair at the front of the Ox transport, monitoring the situation as their pilots hurried to get Fourth Battalion where it might do some good.
"Talk to me, Lieutenant," Karrde said as he recognized the face of the woman on the other end of the line. Lieutenant Kirce James was seated behind her desk, with a myriad of officers and soldiers hurrying around her as she tried to sort out the incoming information.
"We don't have much in the way of good news, Commander," she replied, looking up at the camera on her desk. "Communications are a mess right now. I've got reports of Nod forces everywhere; we've got several breaches along the zone walls, and what looks like thousands of Nod flyers all over the place. I'm guessing we're looking at millions of Nod troops, pouring through and flying over the perimeter. All our defensive positions are being overrun or pulling back. I'm uploading what I've got." The Comcom vibrated as data transferred into the device, and Karrde started to look through it, shaking his head as he did so.
Nod's attack was massive and overwhelming, and there were immense numbers of troops breaching their defenses up and down the coast. But what worried him the most were what looked like rapid insurgent forces moving around deep inside the B-2. They had already assaulted and overrun several critical sites and sacked several monuments. Reports were filtering in of Nod troops landing at and overrunning Hampton Roads Navy Base, and Andrews Air Force base had stopped transmitting shortly after reporting Nod troops breaching their perimeter. Without Andrews, many of the air units scrambled to fend off the Nod attack wouldn't have a place to land . . . .
"Lieutenant James," Karrde said, bringing her image back up. "We need to re-establish air support and take out these insurgent troops operating inside our lines. Do we still have any intact airbases in the region?"
"One moment," Kirce replied, and after a couple of seconds of hammering at her keyboard, she nodded.
"Langely is still online, though they are reporting Nod insurgent troops attacking at several points along their perimeter," she replied. "I've also got reports that a large Nod force is advancing from Hampton Roads to reinforce the insurgent units already at Langley." Karrde nodded.
"Keep trying to reestablish comms with the Pentagon," he ordered, and then switched to the battalion-wide frequency.
"Fourth, listen up," he said. "Nod has overrun parts of B-2 and we've lost over half our airbases. Langley is the only intact air base we've got left, and we're going to make sure we keep it. Load up and get ready for a hot drop, people."
He looked around the troop bay, to see grim but determined faces looking back at him. the troops were getting over their shock at the sudden invasion, and though a few of the younger ones were still white faced, the majority of them were eager to do what they could to fight back.
Major Koen popped in on the command frequency as Karrde finished and was going over the maps of the area around Langley.
"Got a plan, Commander?" he asked, and Karrde grunted.
"Kill every last one of the goddamn Nod sons of bitches, for a start," he replied, and Koen nodded.
"Sounds good, sir."
GDI Science Report - Classified - Eyes Only
Subject: Tiberium Evolution Analysis
Author: Edward Jerod, M.D.
Abstract: One of the key difficulties in understanding Tiberium comes from its seemingly schizophrenic nature. It continues to defy scientific analysis because it is an inconsistent, constantly-changing conundrum whose rules and behavior seem to alter every decade. However, in analyzing the behavior of this substance and the information we have managed to decode from the Tacitus, I have noted a disturbing trend.
In the years following the initial arrival of Tiberium in 1995, we came to know it as a plant-like lifeform, organic and spreading rapidly across the face of the globe via unclear but extremely swift means. It was initially believed that Tiberium itself was a plant-like entity, but in analyzing its nature, we have come to realize that the organic structures we encountered were not Tiberium itself, but a mutation of grassy and flowering plants used to further its spread. Much like the "blossom trees" that developed from natural trees, the plant-like lifeforms that we harvested so readily were nothing but tools used by the actual mutagenic substance to spread itself, placing roots throughout the landscape that allowed more of the crystals to form and more plants to be altered to fit the alien substance's requirements. Tiberium itself turned out to be the valuable crystals we were refining, a primitive and less-advanced form of the current type that could not spread without first converting these plants as a vector.
Up to and past the Second Tiberium War we continued seeing examples of Tiberium's insidious growth and transformation. Doctor Ignatio Mobeius was correct in his assessment that Tiberium was transforming the Earth, for we saw new lifeforms rising up to adapt to the Tiberium spread: the visceroid, the Tiberium fiends, the floaters, and most strikingly, the mutant humans known as the Forgotten. New strains of Tiberium appeared, and for the first time we saw direct transformation of material such as rock into slabs of the crystalline substance. This was but a herald of what we suspected was coming in the following years.
Now, Tiberium has changed again, evolving as it always has, this time shedding the shell of organic mutations. It now infests the ground itself, spreading outwards slowly, reaching into the mantle of our world, converting everything it touches into more of itself. It has transformed entire regions of this world into alien landscapes, cracked, broken, and hellish environments, with glaciers of pure green crystal rising up into the sky like alien monoliths - a source of unimaginable wealth if any dared to tread the Red Zones. In many ways, this new Tiberium is an even greater boon for our economy than the older forms, which were rich in base minerals. This new form, in the process of conversion, breaks down all material it absorbs, creating a gestalt, uniform crystalline structure. Once harvested, processed, and treated, it forms a base material that can be literally converted into any element, provided it is supplied to the proper nanomachine factory. This base material, once converted to a liquid form, can also be used as a fuel in next-generation reactors - or, as has been seen in several documented skirmishes against the Brotherhood of Nod, utilized as a weapon with potentially higher yields than thermonuclear warheads.
Why has Tiberium constantly changed? It has continued to alter the world, but its changes and evolutions have always driven it forward in directions that would further its growth and spread. Now it is altering our very world, creating alien realms where no natural creature can survive . . . and it is my personal and fearful suspicion that this not an accident. Tiberium's spread has been an ordered process, a constant, step-by-step growth and transformation, mutating everything it has touched in a manner that defies simple unguided and exponential growth and evolution.
There is a purpose behind this horror we look upon every day, and I shudder when I attempt to imagine what that purpose may yet be.
-
I apologize for how long this chapter took to finish.
As you may have noticed, this particular part of the story will not be perfectly following the in-game chronology of events; this is deliberate, as I have plans for the siege of the Pentagon. While it was fine from a gameplay standpoint - it's the second mission of the game, after all - I felt that from a dramatic standpoint, the battle outside the Pentagon needs to be a little more...desperate.
Now, rather than lambasting DeCandido (that'll be saved for later chapters) for this particular author's note, I wanted to respond to a few relatively recent and fascinatingly insightful reviews. Now, I want to establish this early on, to make my particular viewpoint clear: I don't really care about things that were "cut out" of Tiberium Wars - e.g. the Forgotten, which is a big beef I know some people have. I feel that Tiberian Sun was the mutants' moment to shine, and even in Firestorm they were being sidelined - Umagon's devolution and Tratos' assassination, for example, really cut them out of the plotline. I personally feel that each Command and Conquer game is centered on GDI and Nod, with other tertiary elements showing up in each part of the series to show more of the universe; in Dawn, it was Tiberium itself, while in Sun, it was the Forgotten, and in Firestorm, CABAL. In Wars, its now the Scrin. With the rise of the Scrin being the new, important part of the series, other elements, like the Forgotten and CABAL, are relegated to the wayside; I don't think this is a bad thing, but rather, a natural direction the series is taking as it develops.
That being said, while the game understandably focuses less on the mutants in favor of the much more important arrival of the Scrin, don't think that this story will be relegating the mutants completely to the wayside. While I will be keeping Tiberium as it appears in the game, I am not going to be taking it as the extremely lethal bullshit that DeCandido made it out to be in the novel; I have choice words to offer on the scientific implausibility of quite a bit of his nonsense for later chapters - rad-showers, poisonous Tiberium atmosphere, and Tiberium in the water among them.
Now regarding some commentary on my use of DeCandido's slang terminology - it was actually one of the few things in the novel that I liked, as it made things seem quite a bit more real to me. Of course it sounds corny and silly - its slang. Slang does sound corny, silly, and idiotic when observed from the outside, and I'm not going to deny that. But there is some precedent for its use in the game, as a few lines of soldier dialogue make reference to "tib" and the GDI harvester's completetion quote even makes reference to a "tib-zone." Besides, this is Command and Conquer we're talking about here. Any possible complaints about corniness were rendered null and void when Renegade came out; CNC is built on corny, over-the-top dialogue and language.
Avatars...well, wait and see :D
And the Stealth Tank - oh, man. I actually had a rant about this, but that was a positive rant, as the way the Stealth Tank works in-game is one of the most plausible and realistic designs for a weapon like that I can possibly imagine. The main reason a vehicle like the Stealth Tank would not fire all of its missiles at once in real life is, ironically, because missiles fired by such a tank would typically only require one or two hits to disable a real tank or AFV (unlike in video games, real life doesn't have vehicle "hit points" - its usually a case of either you penetrate the armor and kill the tank, or you don't, or you damage some external system or the treads or something and disable that system.) Much like the real life MRLS, the Stealth Tank would fire its rockets in rapid succession, one or two at each of several targets, all within a matter of seconds, and then scoot away. In real life, something like the Stealth Tank could jump and knock out an entire armored platoon in seconds, and packs of STs...well, let's just say that GDI is incredibly fortunate to go up against these things in a video game where their hit points let them survive such barrages. And the other issue with firing all your missiles at once is that the rocket exhaust from so many missiles firing at once would literally melt and warp the launchers. That's also why the MRLS fires one missile at a time, and in-game, the Pitbull fires two missiles from opposite launchers. Combined with its low profile and the missile launchers mounted on top - enabling a hull down position in a huge range of terrain - the Stealth Tank in Tiberium Wars would be a horrifying weapon to fight in real life.
Or, say, in this story. :P
I was also going to make some drawn-out commentary on GDI and Nod's respective morality and ethics, but that would make this author commentary extend on for far too long. Ya'll are going to have to wait on that for next chapter.
Until next chapter . . . .