Chapter Seven: Flames of Nod

"A good officer sees numbers, locations, formulae, priorities, costs, and solutions. A bad officer sees people. War is dirty, violent, and unpleasant, but a good officer never, ever lets it become personal."

-Nod Battle Commander Logan Rawne

Chips of masonry screamed past him, scraping his face as blood rained down. Sergeant Mikhail Peskov dove through it, rolling to the ground as rounds whipped over is head, tearing into his squad. Private Encida toppled backward in three pieces, shattered by a railgun round from the guard towers ringing the infidel base, and the tall, spindly structures streamed a constant barrage of cracking rounds over their heads as they crawled through the dirt beneath the ceramic wall.

"Sound off, brothers!" he shouted as he rose into a low crouch. He heard a stream of yells from fireteam leaders behind him as they reached a corner, smoke billowing ahead from a nearby apartment complex. Two men dead, out of twenty. Acceptable. As he considered his losses, civilians ran past, screaming and clutching their belongings.

"Hold your fire, noncombatants," he snapped. No need to waste shots on them.

Peskov peeked around the corner of the concrete wall, and once he saw they were all clear, he chopped a hand forward. Behind him, Corporal Sandler moved up with his five-man fireteam, and they rounded the corner, heading for the burned out apartment building. They kept low, the guard tower still chopping railgun rounds over their heads, but its attention shifting back to the east, where they'd come from. The air shuddered as a pair of Vertigo bombers roared past unseen, and then delivered their payloads.

"Door clear," Sandler reported, and Peskov moved the second and third fireteams up, while keeping his own back to cover them. Once they reached cover, Peskov finally started toward the door. They reached the apartment building without incident, and the soldiers began to spread out, sweeping the area for GDI squatters.

"Sergeant, Three," came a call over the radio as Corporal Ginnis swept the east end of the building. "Infidel armor massing north of the supply base."

"Copy," Peskov said, and sent a quick burst back to headquarters as his men finished clearing the west side of the structure. "Squads, set up firing positions, but stay out of sight until the battalion signals for the next step of the assault." He got acknowledgements as his men scattered around the building. Militia units like his were the leading edge of the main Nod advance into Washington DC, probing enemy positions and determining where gaps and hard points were located.

They'd run into a hard point, it seemed. A GDI supply base, like a half-dozen small outposts just like it, was positioned in the western districts of the city, ringed by guard towers and protected by a small garrison of troops. They hadn't even known it was there a few minutes ago, as it was flanked by several apartment buildings and smoke filled the air over the ravaged city. Space within their precious Blue Zone was so limited the enemy had been forced to spread their bases across dozens of small plots in the city. It made it hard to take them all out with airstrikes without causing massive civilian losses.

"Sergeant, infidel infantry force, thirty meters north, advancing," called Sandler. "Count twenty men at least."

"Hold fire, let them advance," Peskov ordered, hurrying along the upper floor of the building. The building itself shook as an artillery shell exploded nearby. "Wei, where's the battalion?"

"Command says our infantry and armor are hundred meters south," replied the unit's communications trooper over the radio.

"Sergeant, infidel riflemen closing on the building," Sandler reported. "Fifteen meters out and advancing by fireteams."

"Close enough on both counts," Peskov hissed as he reached the north side of the building. "Engage, in the name of Kane!"

He reached a blasted window just as his men opened up. Two GDI soldiers were out in the open when they cut loose, and they were pummeled by dozens of rounds. Many of them bounced off the composite armor they wore, but one went down, blood erupting from his legs and a shoulder. The rest of the GDI unit returned fire within a matter of heartbeats, as one of the infidels ran forward to grab his comrade and drag him to safety. Peskov shouldered his rifle, aimed for the neck joints in the armor, and put two rounds into the rescuer's throat.

The GDI soldiers poured bullets into the facade, and the Nod troops replied. Peskov had a couple of men continue firing at the wounded man lying in the open, but kept them from actually finishing him. As expected, the infidels began to creep forward toward their wounded comrade, firing as they advanced. The injured man was trying to crawl to safety, and Peskov could see him reaching toward his comrades.

Peskov snorted. The sentimental fools. Only the faithless would try to save their wounded, fearing the death that would claim them. No brother of Nod was coward enough to ask his fellows to risk their lives to save him. Aid should only be granted to those who could be saved without risking greater death in the process.

Peskov snarled as he prosecuted the infidels with the wrath of the righteous. His rifle kicked, thudding against his shoulder, rounds deflecting off armor and cutting through flesh.


Return fire bit into the ceramic beneath her chin, and she ducked back. Splinters of masonry chipped past her, the scent of burning corpses wafting through the air. Private Mari Marona dropped the nearly empty magazine from her rifle and fumbled out a fresh one, cursing viciously.

Across the room - the opulent little bedroom with its mattresses and tables and a mirror, of all things - Corporal Davale was firing his rifle out the second window. Private Feltan was down, bleeding from a pair of gunshot wounds in the chest, and Gunnes was with him, trying to patch up his injuries. It was up to her and the Corporal to do their work for their area. Firming her jaw, Marona rose back to the window.

GDI soldiers were scattered around the street below, moving by fireteams, pairs covering each other. A light machinegun was ripping up parts of the facade, throwing dust and chipped stone into the air. The GDI infidels were hard to see, moving fast, keeping behind vehicles or the corners of buildings or low walls, their drab gray-brown armor infuriatingly good at blending into the smoking hellscape.

There. Below, moving around a small cargo truck, two of the enemy. Marona raised her rifle, leaning forward enough for a good shot. She squeezed the trigger, loosing two quick bursts. The first tore up the mirrored street beside the lead trooper, but the second cut through his leg, two bullets tearing his left thigh to shreds. He dropped, shouting in pain, and she put another burst into the faceplate of his helmet. Blood and transparent shards erupted from his head and he flopped to the street, convincing her she'd killed the man.

A savagely hard punch collided with her shoulder, and Marona spun away, crying out in pain. She dropped to the carpeted floor of the apartment, rifle in her left hand and agony shooting up her right. She didn't even need to look to realize she'd been hit, and with a snarl, the private grabbed a vial from her belt. Popping the lid and extending the syringe, she jabbed it into her wound.

Shit, it hurt. The pain-killers were tortuously potent in their first few seconds, and she bit back a scream as they fried her nerve endings, dulling her pain receptors and filling the entire area with antiseptic cleanser, clotting agents, and muscle-rejuvenator. A few seconds after the initial spike of pain, it had faded into a dull ache, and the Nod soldier rose back to the window, gritting her teeth and hunting for more prey.

GDI troops were swarming in the street below by now. Missile fire was cutting past overhead, and she could hear explosions to the east as Nod units rolled up and engaged enemy armor. The storm was intensifying, and the longer they held on, the sooner their Brothers and Sisters would arrive. Then they would drive -

There was movement below, and Marona spotted the bulky backpacks, and the memory of her brother's last words seared into her mind, just before he'd been vaporized by-


"Grenadiers!" came a sudden yell of alarm from one of the troopers, and Peskov looked away from the pair of infidels he was firing at, to see another pair of GDI troops with heavy backpacks and short, stubby two-handed weapons moving up behind a low wall. They aimed their weapons at the Nod soldiers, and the Peskov yelled a warning.

"Get back!" he screamed, rising and running out of the blasted room he was in. "Get away from the windows!"

He heard acknowledgements, and then the foomp of launching grenades outside. The Nod soldier threw himself to the floor, and then there was sound and heat from below, followed by screaming. Peskov rose and started running deeper into the building.

"Squad, fall back and take up ambush positions," he called over the radio. "Casualty report!"

"Three, one down, one wounded."

"Two, I have one dead, another missing his leg." Curses and cries of pain sounded over the radio.

"Get the injured deeper inside," Peskov ordered as he hurried deeper into the building. "They'll be breaching soon. Prepare for close combat." He paused over a hole blasted in what had to be a living area, which afforded him a good view of the floor beneath him. Finding a vantage point protected by a halfway-collapsed wall, the Nod soldier braced his rifle.

He waited, listening, whispering a quiet prayer while listening over the comm, his men moving into positions throughout the structure. The infidels would advance soon, and they would deny them the precious minutes the rest of the battalion needed to advance.


The street was choked with debris, broken vehicles, and the dead. Civilian, infidel, faithful . . . the human corpses lay sprawled and twisted among the wrecks and ruins, some killed by shrapnel, others scorched down to the bone by searing flames. The scent of stinking death filled the air, blood staining the mirrored road surfaces where oil and other industrial fluids hadn't, or the burn marks of countless munitions hadn't touched yet.

Brother-Sergeant Venn Allen charged down the street, keeping an eye on his helmet's HUD as his unit dashed from vehicle to vehicle. Smoke filled the air, fires burning on all sides as spilled fuel and scorched vehicles were ignited. His fireproof cape hung close about him as he clutched the flamethrower rifle tightly.

The Black Hand slid forward, death incarnate, six squads of six men each, clad in heavy armor and wielding an assortment of laser and flame-based weaponry. Behind them were two hundred Nod militia, and to their west they could hear the advance of an armored company of Scorpion tanks supported by attack buggies and bikes. Vertigo bombers roared overhead, unseen in the chaos and smoke and cloaking fields.

A platoon of their lower-ranking brothers had moved though this area already, but had met GDI light armor and infantry short of the main highway cutting across the southern part of Washington DC. They had called for reinforcements, but that had been twenty minutes ago, and the radio had gone silent. No matter how faithless the GDI scum were, Allen respected their ability to kill. He had no doubt they had crushed the sixty men that had been leading the advance, and were no doubt either digging in or preparing a counter attack.

Shots cut down the street past the team of Nod elite, and they came to a quick crouch, weapons raised and hunting for targets. The audio trackers in Allen's armor highlighted the apartment complex across the street, twenty-five meters away.

More shots, and the metal of the burned-out car before him dented under the impacts. He raised a hand, gesturing toward the target, and the laser-equipped members of his unit opened fire. Another gesture, and the flamethrower troopers slipped forward. Across the street, the other Hands were doing the same, scarlet beams flashing out and burning holes in brick and ceramic walls. Moments later, conventional gunfire and rockets joined the barrage, the light infantry adding their weapons to the assault. Incoming fire ended abruptly, the infidels cowed by hundred of guns raging away at once.

Allen moved toward the structure where the shots had come from, and paused fifteen meters out, his flamethrower raised. He could have hit it at a much longer range, but this close was his preferred distance, ensuring he was close enough that the pressure of the jets would carry the fires deep inside the building. With two quick gestures, the other two flamethrower troops fanned out, and three jets of scorching, cleansing heat erupted, joined an instant later by over a dozen more.

Their work was quick and efficient. Tongues of blazing fire leapt from their weapons' nozzles, white-hot fury engulfing the building. Allen's men divided up the front of the four-story building into individual areas of responsibility, and they put quick jets of fire into each window and doorway they saw. Glass melted, paint blistered, and ceramic wept orange tears as it melted under their wrath.

He thought he heard screaming, but over the roar of the flames, he couldn't be sure.

The front of the apartment ablaze, Allen gestured again, and the laser rifle-equipped troopers advanced. The flame troopers lowered their weapons, turning off the pilot lights that ignited the high-pressure gases, and slid them into holsters on their backs beneath their cloaks before drawing laser pistols. The six-man unit moved up to the lower doorway, and Allen kicked it in, the metal bowing under the heat and the force of the sergeant's boot.

The Black Hand swept into the burning building, safe in their fireproof suits, and hunted for any survivors. Not a word was exchanged among the Nod elite as they prowled through the apartment, beams of ruby light cutting through disoriented, confused, and in some cases ignited infidel troops.

Allen sent the all-clear signal over the comm after they finished clearing the structure, and stepped out of the blazing structure, his flamethrower up and ready as they moved down an alley outside, hunting for more of the faithless to slaughter.


She crawled down the hallway, pain spiking through her leg. Snarling an oath that would make most soldiers blush, Private Mari Marona struggled to her feet. She could hear the screams of wounded men nearby, gunfire raging down below. Through the battered and blasted floor, she caught the voices of GDI soldiers as they assaulted the rooms below her.

A pang of fear shot up her, but Marona bit it down with a blast of simple, expedient hatred. She looked around the corridor, checking for her squadmates, but couldn't see much in the choking smoke after the grenade detonations. One hand gripping her rifle, she pulled down her goggles to ward off the particles in the air. Once she could see again, Marona started down the hallway, following the familiar shouts of one of the fireteam leaders somewhere ahead. Pain lanced up her left leg with each step.

Below, she heard gunfire and yells. A scream of pain, terse calls, boots slamming into wood floor panels. More gunfire, a grenade detonation.

She pushed on, looking for her squadmates, but didn't dare call out for them. Her rifle shook in her hand, and she called up her hate for their decadent, greedy lifestyle, cursing the infidels under her breath as her legs clomped and slid down the passage. It was the only way to ward off her fear.


"Squad Eight, confirm range and condition."

Corporal Emir's eyes flicked over his display, which showed a complex three-dimensional image of the surrounding cityscape.

"Confirm one hundred and three meters due west of our position, lat-long at . . . ." he rattle doff a string of numbers shown on his sensor display. "Fire for effect."

"Firing, standby," the voice replied, calm and collected. But then again, artillery operators were always calm and collected, sitting miles back from the front line, never getting stuck in like recon and spotter elements, like Emir's squad of recon bikes.

There was the distant rumble of rockets overhead, and Emir looked up between the buildings and over the blasted Predator tank his bike was nestled beside. Sheels and missiles fired from the distant artillery batteries screamed through the smoke and disappeared on the opposite side of the apartment complex. He heard the rumble of detonations and felt the tremors of the subsequent explosions. A whiff of pungent, burning flesh made its way through the air filter of his helmet, and he paused to fiddle with it, not wanting the damn thing to be leaking if a cloud of Tiberium dust settled over him.

"Fasood," he called as he worked on his helmet, "report BDA."

"Barracks complex is burning," came the call from his partner. "I see secondaries going off at the armory and motor pool. Lots of bodies." The last was delivered with a relish, and Emir nodded.

"Good job," he said, and switched back to battalion command frequency. "Command, target has been destroyed. No threats on my scope."

Up ahead, he saw movement, and a few civilians ran across the street. A moment later, a large, black-painted motorcycle the size of most light civilian cars came around the corner of one of the apartment buildings. The heavy recon bike had more than half of its mass taken up by engines and the large, heavy-duty wheels, with most of the rest of the weight taken up by the sophisticated sensors mounted in its cockpit and the anti-air missiles set on its back. The bike's driver, and the thin metal plating and armor-glass encasing him, was almost an afterthought.

"You should have seen it, Emir!" yelled Fasood as he pulled up beside his partner. "Beautiful. Must have gotten at least a hundred of them!" Emir nodded, checking his radio, and listened to th incoming reports. A few moments later, his bike's display lit up with fresh orders.

"Huh," Emir mused, frowning, and Fasood whistled.

"That what I think it is?" he asked, and Emir nodded.

"It is," he confirmed. "Division wants us to clear the way for the rest of Strike Group Babylon. Up for some more artillery spotting?"

"Long as I'm the one who gets to paint the target," Fasood replied, and Emir nodded. He closed the armored cockpit around his seat, and revved up his motorcycle. The two recon bikes pulled out of their little nook and shot down the debris-choked street.


"Strike elements within spotting distance of the main target," reported one of the company commanders, and Commander Logan Rawne nodded as he stepped out of the light troop buggy. Before him hovered a dozen holograms, displaying feeds from various units advancing through the outer reaches of Washington DC.

The suburbs had fallen swiftly enough. They had not been hit hard by the Vertigo bombardments, meaning the roads were open and undamaged. Civilians had fled to their homes, and only a few GDI units had mustered out quickly enough to intercept the light armor and rapid-assault infantry units of Rawne's insurgent force. The majority of the GDI heavy armor and infantry was tied up to the west, in the middle of a meatgrinder with General Holt's armor divisions. In the meantime, a second combined armored and mechanized infantry force, totaling twenty thousand, was striking from the east, via the captured docks at Hampton Roads, under the command of Colonel Bane. Amidst it all, insurgent units hit whatever exposed and vulnerable infrastructure they could find. Those were Rawne's responsibility.

Distract the enemy with a broadsword, strike at his heart with a dagger.

Classic Nod strategy.

His advance units were rolling north, engaging GDI armor and infantry amidst the various business districts and apartment complexes while engineering crews established their forward bases. They'd taken a small baseball field and a few civilian structures near a subway terminal and were converting them into a forward command center and aid station, the perimeter manned by two companies' worth of militia led by several veteran units of the Black Hand. Low, long-barreled turrets were being set up, anti-infantry shredder emplacements and anti-armor laser turrets securing the street approaches as platoons of rocket and rifle-equipped militia took up positions inside structures and set up checkpoints.

His command center was abuzz with activity, the room filled with dozens of black-clad officers and technicians and alight with the red and yellow glow of holograms hovering over their heads. Rawne took it in with practiced ease, absorbing the pertinent information, calling up the casualty reports and confirming their logistics. The insurgent force thus far had suffered hundreds of losses as they moved into the city, but those casualties were a pinprick, and nothing compared to the meatgrinder in the west. On the other hand, they'd razed two GDI supply bases and taken a barracks complex, capturing hundreds of infidel troops. He rounded up a prisoner security detail to move them back past the main line of advance; the Confessors could do wonders with interrogations and conversion, and highly trained GDI infantrymen would be excellent recruits for the Black Hand if they could be convinced of the truth of Kane's gospel. If not, they made good training tools to inure the Brotherhood's soldiers to overcoming their natural human aversion to killing other people.

Two Tiberium spike farms and several large Tiberium storage silos had been captured, and engineering units were moving up to convert them as quickly as possible to their use. They would be vital to supplying and rearming their troops as they advanced through the city; Rawne expected GDI would stiffen their defense soon enough, and that the easiest parts of this campaign were quickly passing. They would need a steady flow of Tiberium to feed the local mini-factories and keep the men supplied.

Rawne finished assessing the battle, and after issuing orders to some of his reserve units, he scanned the Black Hand channels until he found a specific callsign, and grinned.

"Brother-Captain Alvarez," he said, sitting down in a chair in the middle of the operations center, the chair reserved for the commander, for him. "Surprised you're still kicking in this hellstorm." A barking laugh came back over the radio.

"This is nothing!" came the Black Hand officer's reply, over the roar of an explosion somewhere in the distance. "The riots in Rio and Mexico City were ten times more destructive than this little war."

"If you want to believe that," Rawne replied, grinning as he remembered the havoc he'd inflicted on GDI years ago. The casualties in that massive insurrection had totaled nearly a hundred thousand. It had been glorious.

"My Hands are advancing on the main GDI base protecting the White House," Jose added a moment later. "I'll save a few for you, eh? Rawne the Tank Hunter!" Rawne himself laughed, shaking his head.

"My troops are still taking care of the main GDI presence in the southern districts of the city. When we get finished here, I'll move my men to grid Bravo Six Seven and link up with Bane's troops for the assault on the Pentagon. I want you there."

"No promises," Jose replied, chuckling. "Alvarez out."

"Wait, Jose," Rawne called over the radio, before his friend finished.

"Yes?"

"Do me a favor, for our friend, Ajay," Rawne said. "I promised him I'd do this, but I don't think I'll be able to."

"What is it?"

"When you take the White House, hang a Nod banner in the Oval Office, would you? And send me a capture."

"Will do, my friend. Alvarez out."


Brother-Captain Alvarez closed the link to his friend and turned to look down the street. He froze, listened for a moment to his command-frequency radio, and then dropped to one knee as he detected motion ahead, down the street.

The air overhead was split as a shell lanced past, and the shockwave of its passing nearly threw the Black Hand off his feet. It slammed into one of the GDI light vehicles up ahead - "Pitbulls" they were called - and punched right through its thin armor. The entire vehicle skewed around wildly, and the missile packs on its rear half cooked off a second later, the explosion ripping the remains of the vehicle in half.

Jose felt the rumble emanating through the street as one of the Scorpion tanks rolled past, its hull-mounted cannon blasting a second shot down the street and shattering a storefront where an enemy rifle squad was setting up a defensive position. The Black Hand rose, checked the status of the company he led, and signaled an advance ahead. He rose and started to move forward, beside the scarab-like tank leading the Nod armored thrust down the street, his laser rifle in hand.

The cannon roared again, the sound dampeners in Jose's helmet nearly overpowered by the roar of the tank's main weapon. Ahead, another building's face shattered inward, and the bodies of infidel troops went flying.

"Second, third squad, advance through those buildings there," Jose ordered, highlighting two multi-story businesses on one side of the street. "Fourth, move up the left side of the street. First, fifth, stick with me on the right side. All armor, maintain advance while we cover you!"

Machinegun fire cut across the street as another GDI squad set up defensive points somewhere in the buildings ahead. Missiles lanced out of the haze, screaming through the dust and hammering the street. Shrapnel skipped off Jose's armor, and the overpressure from one of the detonations sent a pair of his men flying.

He caught a flash of thermal imagery on his helmet display and zoomed in on a third-story window. His laser rifle rose to his shoulder, a target acquired, and Jose fired on the form with the heavy weapon. Scarlet beams flashed into existence, bisecting the enemy soldier and sending him toppling back behind cover, his missile launcher dropping into the street below. More blood-red bolts of light cut down the street as the Black Hand traded fire with their foes, intermixed with the occasional rush of scathing heat and fire from flamethrowers. The buildings second squad were clearing were alive with flashes of gunfire, lasers, and explosions.

A crack of the sound barrier's protests filled the air, and the second Scorpion in the mass of advancing Nod armor lurched to the side, its armor neatly cored by a hole the size of Jose's head. The turret was locked in place and the vehicle was stalled out, its engine disabled. A miniscule trail of superheated steam traced back up the street, and through the haze, Jose spotted the low, crouching form of GDI armor.

"Predator!" he warned, just as the Scorpion beside him opened fire. The shell struck the side of the GDI tank as it rotated its turret, but did little more than skip off its heavy armor. The enemy tank's barrel settled over the Scorpion, and Jose saw the armored cables and the mounted power generator feeding into its railgun. Just their foul luck that they'd encountered one of the upgraded infidel units.

Jose leapt away just as the GDI armor fired, and the railgun shell slammed into the Scorpion, punching straight through its armor plating and puncturing the ammo compartment. The entire magazine cooked off in a half-second, blasting the light tank into hundreds of screaming fragments. Jose was nearly shredded by the shrapnel, but his faith saw him through, for none of the tank's ripped components cut into him as he hit the ground. He quickly scrambled to his feet and dove behind a parked car. The Scorpion's cannon, twisted by the fire and heat, tumbled past him.

"All armor, GDI tank with railgun, one hundred and twenty meters down the street," he warned.

"Understood, Brother-Captain," called Captain Tennen, the commander of the company of Scorpions and other light armor units. "Cover us, we will engage!"

"Understood," Jose replied, cursing under his breath. The armor captain pressed his advance, and that advance was going to be bloody. That railgun could easily knock out any of their Scorpions with a single shot, and these relatively tight confines meant it took only a few tank corpses to block the roads.

"Enemy infantry," called one of Jose's squad commanders. "One hundred meters and closing under armor fire."

"All squads, acknowledge," Jose responded, and he heard the replied form his squad commanders as they noted the infidel troops. Laser fire scythed up the street as they started to engage. The air cracked again as a line of superheated air struck the immobilized Scorpion behind them, this time coring its fuel cells and setting the tank ablaze. More armor rolled up on either side of the tank's corpse, crunching over the burning remnants of the lead tank, their hull-mounted cannons blasting.

Jose rose and ran forward under the blaze of outgoing shells, reaching the corner of a building and taking cover behind it. Machinegun fire chopped down the street, and pieces of masonry were torn free of the wall as he stood behind it. Beside him, he sensed a few more of his comrades, lining up beside him against the wall. Two other Hands lay dead in the street, their armor shredded by enemy fire. He waited until the Scorpions fired another volley, and the GDI armor retorted - shattering the crew compartment of one of the Nod tanks in turn - and rolled around the corner.

He jogged up the street, firing as he ran, spotting targets on his HUD's infrared display. Jose thought he managed to wing one of the GDI troops - now less than eighty meters away - as he slid in behind an overturned truck. One of his Hands dropped to his knees, firing a couple of shots, and then toppled over as enemy fire intersected his faceplate. The others piled in behind him, and began shooting as well. Jose shot to his feet and ran around the side of the vehicle, hurrying for a doorway a few meters ahead while his fireteam covered him.

Round skipped off the reflective pavement at his feet, and two deflected off his body armor. A line of fire cut through his flying cape, shredding part of it, but he reached the corner safely and began firing. His sights fell over another GDI soldier, ducking back behind cover to reload, and a crimson beam cut through his upper torso.

There was a flash of light, and a plume of flame, and down the street, the GDI tank's rear portions were set ablaze. Three Nod tanks rolled up the street, firing as they advanced, their shells hammering the GDI vehicle's heavy armor as it tried to retreat, backing up the street. The trio of Scorpions fired on the infidel vehicle at once, with one shell blasting out the targeting sensors mounted on the front of the tank, and the other two crashing into the turret and penetrating. The Predator's upper portion blew apart a couple of seconds later as its ammunition cooked off.

A cheer ran up the Nod lines from the regular infantry, and Jose permitted himself a grim smile as he covered the rest of his fireteam's advance. The Nod tanks dashed forward, Scorpion cannons blasting at the GDI infantry as they scrambled for cover, and Jose gunned down any he saw. Missiles and bullets flew back and forth from the GDI and Nod positions, and the Brotherhood ground onward, seizing the Zone block by bloody block.


The infidels moved into the room below, three men, rifles out and spreading through the chamber, sweeping for hostiles. Peskov grinned, sighted one man's helmet, and squeezed the trigger.

The burst slammed into his helmet, and the GDI trooper jerked back. A second burst put another volley into his throat and faceplate, and them man toppled to the debris-strewn floor. Immediately, the Nod soldier ducked back, and a second later bullets cut through where he'd been standing. The Nod trooper drew a grenade from his belt and primed it, before tossing it over his cover. There were shouts from below, followed by the detonation, and by that time Peskov had already retreated further into the building.

Gunshots slammed into the ceramic around him, infidel troops pursuing Peskov on the same floor. He dove through a doorway and rolled over as he hit the carpet, firing behind him. There were shouts and a cry of pain, and he hurried through the room beyond - a mostly intact living room - and came into a hallway lined with windows on one side.

Two GDI soldiers emerged from a doorway a few meters further down, sweeping into the corridor, and Peskov leapt at them, emptying his rifle's magazine as he closed. One man went down, and the Nod soldier crashed into the second, dragging him down in a tangle of limbs and armor plating. Cursing and snarling, Peskov pulled his knife out of its sheath as the GDI trooper rolled over on top of him, pinning him to the floor. The knife jabbed up, inside the enemy soldier's armpit, and his body jerked. With a savage grunt, the Nod fighter pushed the dying man off him, drew his sidearm, and shot the writhing soldier in the face.

Peskov stood up, and then fell to the floor, his right leg going numb. The sergeant looked down, and pain erupted up the length of his body as he saw his leg had been severed at the calf, blasted in two, the flesh partially cauterized by the sheer speed and heat of the round that had hit him.

Sniper. It had to have been a sniper, shooting through the windows with one of their damned railgun rifles. GDI and their goddamned railguns.

Gritting through the pain, the Nod soldier began pulling himself along the floor, away from where he fell. A second later, a portion of the wall exploded, a round cutting through right where he'd fallen seconds earlier. Whoever the sniper was, he was smart.

Through the pain and the blood streaming from his blasted leg, Peskov heard voices and boots on the thin carpet just up the corridor. He gritted his teeth, sat up, and shouldered his rifle as GDI troops stormed into the passage.

"Kane lives!" he shouted.

Gunfire filled the hall.


Brother-Sergeant Allen dropped to one knee, snapping a hand forward, pointing with two fingers. A pair of armored forms slipped past, Brother-Corporals Gill and Bensworth sweeping ahead with laser and flame rifles shouldered. They advanced down the street, pausing beside a blasted car. A GDI soldier lay beside it, riddled with bullets. Gill drew his sidearm and shot the body in the throat, just to be sure.

An all-clear flashed on Allen's HUD, and he ordered the second pair of his six-man unit forward. The Black Hand spread out, moving across the street with speed and efficiency. Allen's eyes flicked over his display, marking the presence of the light militia infantry following his Hand pickets, clearing the buildings behind them.

The street was secured, and Allen took the lead, pushing past his covering troops with Corporal Gill at his back. They plunged into a nearby alleyway, and then the audio scanners of his helmet picked up gunfire ahead. A quick thought had his HUD updating with the audio profiles of the weapons, revealing several different weapons being discharged about fifty meters ahead, inside a blasted structure. Half of them were GD4s, the rest mostly M-16 Mark IIs. A check of his maps showed Nod scout units and platoons had advanced into this area a few minutes before, ahead of a mechanized push by Babylon Group.

His troops filed into the alley behind him as the Black Hand officer pressed forward. He contacted other Hand units, warning them of the possible GDI contacts up ahead, and then advanced, cape billowing behind his armor as Kane's elite continued their inexorable advance.


The first infidel collapsed backward, blood erupting from his neck. Peskov held down the trigger on his rifle, spraying the passage, but was aware of more gunfire from behind him. The GDI soldiers dropped back behind cover, sending quick bursts and single shots down the corridor, ripping up the masonry around Peskov. Bursts lanced up and down the passage, and the Nod sergeant felt his weapon run empty, clicking in the chaotic firestorm. Snarling a curse at the infidels, he dropped the rifle and drew his sidearm.

A hand grabbed him by the shoulder of his fatigues as he fired away, his rounds wildly deflecting off the doorways and walls around the infidels. There was the roar of a rifle being fired directly overhead, suppressive fire ripping through the corridor. He kept firing and shouting litanies of hate at his enemies as he was pulled into a doorway.

He looked up, and saw one of his soldiers, bleeding from multiple wounds, including one to her leg. Her brown hair was loose and singed, and her eyes were shielded by a pair of goggles.

"Marona," he grunted, and she nodded as she reloaded her weapon frantically. "Where is the rest of the squad?"

"I didn't see any alive," she replied, and leaned out, firing a burst. "I think we're the only survivors."

"Well, fuck me if I'm dying like this without a fight," he snarled, starting to crawl toward the door, reloading his pistol clumsily. Marona leaned back to say something when she saw movement down the passage. She jerked back-

A muffled pow exploded in the corridor outside, and the woman let out a scream of pain as the fragmentation grenade went off. Shrapnel dug into her light flak armor, seared along her cheek, and punched through her goggles.

Private Marona flopped to the floor, screaming and clawing at her eyes, blood streaming through her fingers. Peskov twisted back toward the door raising his pistol as a GDI trooper came around, rifle high as he began clearing the room. The weapon jerked down toward the prone Nod soldiers.

Peskov squeezed the trigger, his sights already aligned. The first round slammed into the GDI soldier's rebreather, mounted over his nose, chin, and mouth, and the man's head snapped back from the force of the impact. Another shot put a round into his neck, and he toppled backward, gagging and choking.

A second soldier was sweeping into the room, sidestepping around his fallen comrade and firing. Rounds splintered into the concrete floor beside Peskov, and pain lanced through his gun arm as a bullet bit into his bicep. He fired at the same time, ignoring the pain, a round scoring the infidel's shoulder and skipping off the armor. A second shot deflected off the plating on the soldier's flank, but flew up into the man's armpit. He let out a cry, falling to the side.

More gunfire erupted from beside him, and Peskov saw Marona's pistol firing in his peripheral vision as he kept shooting. Blind shots went toward the door, half of them hitting the wall in the woman's agonizing blindness. Peskov fired again, putting another round into the wounded trooper's helmet and penetrating.

Outside, he heard the GDI soldiers shouting something, and he heard the words he feared the most.

"Frag out!"


Up the corridor, he spotted motion, and raised his pistol.

There was a flash of scarlet light, and Brother-Sergeant Allen moved forward, firing his laser pistol. Beside him, Brother-Corporal Gill scythed shots up the passage with his rifle, and their shots seared through GDI plate armor like it was paper. they kept firing, beams lighting up the hallway with bloody illumination, followed by short, tortured screams.

As he moved up, he saw the crumpled enemy troopers were lying around a doorway, and he and Gill swept into the room beyond. There was nothing standing in the room, but on the floor . . . .

"Medical," he hissed over the comm, marking this position, and gestured to Gill while stepping back out into the corridor. He swept the passage beyond, and crouched, covering the approach.


Peskov looked up, shocked to see the enormous figure towering over him, and then turning away. Clad in heavy black armor, with a flying red cape tattered from gunfire, his visor glittering with blood red damnation and condemnation for their enemies.

A Black Hand of Kane.

The second Hand crouched beside Marona, producing bandages and medical supplies, and wordlessly began to attend to her grievous eyes wounds while the first kept the hallways covered. Peskov let the adrenaline start to flow away, and began to feel cold. He looked down at his bisected leg, the wound partially cauterized by the heat of the railgun round that had torn it off.

His arms felt weak, and he let himself slump down to the floor, darkness claiming him. He saw the Hand turn his head to face him, the visor regarding the fallen soldier with mechanical detachment for a moment, and then Sergeant Peskov slid into the shadows.


"Jose? You got good news for me?"

Brother-Captain Jose Alvarez fired two shots from his rifle, coring the torso armor of a GDI soldier in a window one hundred and nine meters ahead.

"Very good news," he replied, dropping back behind cover. He waited until the Scorpion company loosed another volley before speaking.

"We're within half a kilometer of the objective," he reported, standing back up and peering over the battlefield beyond. A full thirty-nine Scorpion tanks, supported by close to a thousand Nod infantry and two companies of Black Hand, were ripping through the outer perimeter of the GDI Logistics Command Center, and enormous and important-looking building that towered overhead. Vertigo bombers screamed past in the air somewhere above them, releasing their payloads somewhere out of sight. GDI troops were falling back or being cut down where they stood, their watchtowers and anti-armor cannons being shattered under the massed Nod armor assault. As he watched, two of the Scorpions burst into flames at the hands of a pair of Predator tanks, but the return fire was a devastating barrage of shells and missiles that obliterated the offending armor.

And beyond the unrelenting assault, the fleeing defenders, and the vulnerable GDI building, Brother Captain Alvarez saw his true target: the White House.

"You see it?" Rawne asked, and Jose nodded.

"We will claim it for Nod within the hour," he hissed. "Just make sure the camera crews are ready to show us in our moment of triumph."


GDI InOps Archives - Classified: Eyes Only - Report on Brotherhood of Nod Factional Organization

Abstract: One of the Brotherhood's most troubling tendencies is its capability to survive damage to its overall hierarchy and command structure. Elimination of key Nod officers does little to slow the Brotherhood down, with the noted exception of the death of Kane at the end of the Second Tiberium War and his apparent death in the First. This is in part due to the semi-independent nature of the Brotherhood's armies and factions. Each of the highest-ranking Nod officers (often referred to as Kane's "Inner Circle") commands a large portion of Nod's forces, but each officer operates on their own.

This organizational doctrine is believed to have originated in the First Tiberium War, where Nod assembled much of its army from disparate military and mercenary organizations across the globe, and a strong degree of local autonomy was required to keep these semi-independent groups loyal and able to operate without central control. An example of this would be General Gideon Raveshaw's Black Hand units, which operated largely outside the control of other Nod officers, answering only to Kane himself. With their defeat in the First Tiberium War, high-ranking Nod officers began to assert more direct control, bringing large territories under their heel, but at the same time bringing the individual Nod commanders into conflict over how to best carry on their operations without the guidance of Kane to direct them. GDI attempted to exploit this by manipulating each officer against the other, and this worked well until Anton Slavik, Raveshaw's successor in command of the Black Hand, chose to overthrow General Hassan, uniting the Brotherhood's disparate factions under the banner of Kane.

By now, InOps has confirmed that there ware several dozen individual military factions within the Brotherhood vying for control. Each faction has its own particular officer it follows, and these officers have built up cults of personality around themselves. The troops in these armies are believed to owe near-absolute loyalty to their leaders, with only the memory of Kane himself standing above them. Among these officers are men such as the Black Hand commander Marcion, or General Killian Qatar, who is suspected to have reached a near-parity with Kane himself in how highly regarded she is within Nod . . . .

--


Author's Notes: Sorry about the delay in putting this out. I got sidetracked by a lot of concerns, and other projects.

To respond to a point in a few of the reviews regarding walkers . . . well, I'll state it in no uncertain terms. I don't like walkers. That is, I don't like humanoid walkers. Quadrapedal or more leggy walkers are cool, but humanoid ones I just don't like all that much, from a purely militaristic standpoint of blunt practicality. There's all the standard reasons why no one has seriously considered using walkers as combat vehicles, like the logistics problems relating to constant maintenance of their legs, weight distribution, height vulnerability, the massive vulnerability of their legs, and so on. Walkers are not practical weapons, especially not the - and I am completely unafraid to say this - the downright retarded walker designs in Command and Conquer. The Titan (both new and old versions) make my head hurt wondering who designed them, and the Avatar is just plain silly. So a bit of warning: that contempt for humanoid walkers might show in the next few chapters. I'm going to show why GDI abandoned them, and why Nod is using them now, and why I feel tanks outclass them.

Now, that said, the upcoming chapters are going to have some serious combat in them, as well as some character development. Mostly, though, we're heading for the Pentagon seige, but that's still a few chapters away. Got to have some lead-in, which will include a certain aging commando doing something that is going to have Nod in a huffy tizzy...

Until next chapter . . . .