Chapter Eight: Grit

"They said Langley was make or break. They were right, but they kind of forgot that everything in those first forty-eight hours was make or break. We held, or we died. With Nod, there is no middle ground."

-Sergeant Victor Merchan, Third Platoon, A Company, 4th Battalion, 5th Regiment 103rd GDI Recon Division

"That thing is huge." Private Evan Blunt stared up from behind the low wall as the enormous obsidian shape thundered past, red sensor apparatus gleaming as its arm-mounted cannon scanned for targets.

"I've seen bigger," Havoc replied, nonchalant, watching the Avatar through a set of binoculars that had previously belonged to a Nod officer. That man, and three of his subordinates, were now piled behind a dumpster and stripped of their gear.

It had been four hours since the zone walls had been breached, and Nod armor and troops were still pouring in. The GDI defenders were putting up a dogged resistance, but the sheer weight of Nod numbers and the speed of their assault was driving them back. Somewhere in the middle of all of this was a squad and a half of GDI infantry plucked from one foxhole or another, led by a man twice as old as the eldest soldier in the bunch, and with more combat experience in one ass-cheek than the rest of the group put together.

"You think we can take that thing down, sir?" asked Corporal Duggin, one of the Zone Security troopers who had survived the withdrawal. Duggin was a big man in his mid-twenties, carrying a GDM-12 9.5mm heavy machinegun, and kept his eyes on the alley behind them.

"Hell no," Colonel Parker replied. "And don't call me 'sir.' I'm retired." He lowered the binoculars, frowning.

"What we need are bigger guns, and that RPG isn't going to do much more than scratch that big stomper's paint. I'd go for a Mammoth tank, or a Godsend laser designator and a good uplink, but all we've got are these Nod piles of crap."

"IED, Colonel?" Blunt asked, an idea hitting him, and Parker glanced back to him. "Take off a leg, immobilize it?"

"Where we gonna get what we need?" he asked, and a second later, he was answered by the blast of firing Nod artillery nearby. A very, very evil grin spread across Havoc's face.

"Come on, boys, we're gonna go visit Santa's sleigh," he said, and moved away from the wall. The troops glanced between each other, and then moved to follow.


A five-man fireteam was moving down the street, moving past the parachute that marked where Skull Four had gone down. Lieutenant Enmas Fariq had managed to get himself unstrapped and away from the sheet of white cloth only moments before they'd arrived, and the Nod troops were fanning out, hunting for their prey. Chasing down enemy pilots was a time-honored tradition in modern warfare, and this war was no different.

He gripped his pistol tight in his right hand as he hurried down a nearby alley. Fariq could hear voices behind him, running boots over distant explosions. His eyes swept across the alley, looking for a doorway or something-

He heard a yell behind him, from the mouth of the alley, and spun. Fariq dropped to one knee, raising his pistol as he did so, and fired two shots before he could get proper sight alignment. His first round went high, skipping a chunk of masonry off one of the alley walls, while the second grazed the looming figure at the mouth of the alley as it raised its rifle. The Nod trooper recoiled, ducking for cover, and Fariq's next shot caught the trooper in the hip. The enemy soldier tumbled out of sight, just as two more appeared, firing as they came around the corner. Bullets slammed into the wall beside Fariq, and he dove behind a dumpster. The metal rang with hollow impacts, the Nod troops spraying the pilot's cover.

The gun blasts were then joined by a second set, with a slightly different pitch, and the Nod troops' fire slackened. Fariq poked his head just out of cover, to see the enemy soldiers firing down the street. It only lasted for a couple of seconds before the fanatics were cut down, and a few moments later two familiar and extremely comforting figures appeared at the mouth of the alley, clad in GDI fatigues and armor.

"Friendlies, at your twelve," Fariq yelled, holding up his hand and slowly rising. The two troopers jogged over, while other soldiers moved into the alley, covering the mouth.

"Sir, are you injured?" one of the soldiers asked, the insignia on the front of his armor identifying him as a Corporal Rodigo.

"No, I'm fine," Fariq replied, exhaling with relief that his pickup had arrived so quickly.

"Sir, we're your extraction team," Rodigo continued. "I'll ask you to stick with Private Jinna and PFC Terrence. Please retune personal radio to one seven two nine one." He pointed to the pair of soldiers, and Fariq nodded. Rodigo hurried to the mouth of the alley and crouched by his men, while Fariq knelt next to the two men appointed as his bodyguards.

"First Platoon, this is Bravo, we have the package," Rodigo was saying into his radio. "We are fourteen meters east of marker five."

"Copy, Bravo, Charlie is thirty meters to your south. More friendlies converging on your position."

The distant pop of gunfire trailed the last words of the conversation. A few seconds later, reports filtered in over the radio of C Company's Third Platoon engaging Nod forces a block south of their position. Fariq listened closely as he heard more reports from the GDI squads moving through the area, and within a few moments the picture became clear: a large Nod force, at least company-sized, was closing in on them from all directions.

"Bravo, we're moving inside," Rodigo ordered, and signaled three of his troops, the ones who weren't protecting Fariq, to secure the business behind them. As they moved out, the pilot edged forward and grabbed one of the M16 MkII rifles dropped by the Nod soldiers, stripping the dead man of his ammunition.

At the very least, Lieutenant Fariq intended to make a good accounting of himself.


First contact with the Nod troops west of Langley went to Charlie Squad, First Platoon, A Company. It was a twelve-minute firefight, with the six-man rifle squad and the platoon's four-man grenadier team, Echo, against a dozen Nod light militia. Firing first from cover, Charlie and Echo intercepted and eliminated half the Nod unit before forcing the rest of the militia to withdraw. The GDI troops suffered no losses.

Second contact went to the men of Bravo Squad, eliminating the Nod fireteam that had been chasing the Lieutenant, mere moments after Charlie and Echo engaged their opponents.

The third contact, before the Nod troops assaulted the extraction units in force, went to Charlie Squad, Third Platoon, C Company.

Rounds ripped through the air, cracking past Corporal Mitchell Colt as he moved up from cover. He immediately ducked and scrambled low, bullets deflecting off the reflective pavement at his feet and smashing into car windows. Colt slid into cover beside a low wall, with two more troops from Charlie dropping in beside him; PFCs Gillard and Jordan. Like Colt, Gillard carried a standard GD4 assault rifle with integral grenade launcher, while Jordan, one of the squad's two designated marksmen, had forgone the 40mm launcher for an improved optics array.

"Shots, direction?" Colt asked, checking his squad's positions. Private Falks and PFC Wells were twelve meters west, behind an overturned truck. Charlie had been moving up a side street and had reached a T-shaped intersection running west when the shots started.

"Seventy meters west, down the street," Wells called back. "I have movement, unknown number of hostiles."

"Alpha, we are taking fire," Colt called over his radio, moving up the wall while signaling Gillard and Jordan to hold position. Rounds skipped off the concrete wall, and he stepped over the sprawled body of a dead civilian, the man's head torn in half.

"Contact here," replied Sergeant Havers over the radio. "We're forty-five west of you, next street over, moving up. First, A, is reporting heavy contact too."

"Copy," Colt replied, checking his HUD. Personnel locators matched up with the sergeant's report, and his squad was advancing to flank the Nod troops shooting at them. "Charlie, see anything?"

"Multiple squads advancing toward us," Gillard replied, peering through his rifle's optics. "Advancing by fire-and-maneuver."

"Return fire," Colt ordered, and he'd barely spoken before Gillard squeezed off two quick single shots. The Corporal rose behind cover and sighted down his rifle's scope, zooming in on the Nod troops. Rounds cracked toward him, and he fired a quick burst before dropping back behind cover. A few meters down, Jordan let a burst loose, then a second one. Colt heard the chatter of Wells' GDM-12 loose a protracted burst, and then another one, interspersed with Falks' own fire. As they opened up, Colt rose again, sighting and firing another pair of bursts.

The sudden, staggered barrage of return fire caught several of the advancing Nod soldiers in the open. Colt took one in the torso with one of his bursts, ripping it open, and another dropped to the street as Gillard's single shot tore through his lungs. Others ducked and dove for cover as Wells' heavy machinegun sliced through the intersection, and fire from Falks and Jordan picked targets and sent at least two more enemy soldiers tumbling to the glossy pavement. Blood leaked on the mirrored surface, staining the street and sidewalks.

"Cover and advance," Colt snapped over the comm, stilling his nerves as best he could. "Falks, Jordan, move up."

The two riflemen broke off their fire and started forward, Falks cutting around the truck and Jordan moving around the wall. Both men bolted from cover to cover, with precise fire from their squadmates keeping the Nod force down the street pinned in place. Colt saw plentiful movement through his scope, and felt his blood begin to run cold even as he scored a beautiful mid-torso shot on a Nod trooper breaking from cover.

"Gillard, you seeing this?" he hissed. The marksman fired again, barely missing an enemy soldier peeking from a doorway. Wells' fire perforated the doorjamb and the man beyond, sending him toppling to the ground amidst a cloud of white dust and broken shards of ceramic.

"That's at least a platoon-sized-" Gillard's words stopped, and he was silent for a second, apparently spotting something with his augmented optics.

"God in heaven," the marksman said, his voice tinged with barely suppressed fear.

"What?" Colt asked.

"Black Hand!" Gillard breathed. "Black Hand squad, one hundred meters and closing!"


The engines rumbled, the screen before him was flashing, the cannon in his hands was thrumming with power, and the ground ahead of him was ablaze with the wash of gunfire and flames. His eyes flicked over his HUD, searching the ground below, and checking the firing vectors of his squad as they descended. Calculations, distances, targeting data and solutions, all of it rolled over his eyes, and as the information slid together, he felt a tiny jolt. Armored boots hit the pavement, and he took a couple of steps forward with the momentum of his jump.

A Nod armored truck was directly ahead, with one of their light raiding buggies next to it. The buggy's machinegun was whipping around when First Lieutenant Wallace raised his railgun and cored it with a single sound-shattering shot. The slug punched through the armor, pulping the driver and bisecting the gunner, before blasting out the back end of the buggy and tearing off one of the truck's tires.

Two more railgun rounds flashed past, hitting the truck, blasting its engine and its cargo compartment. Fire erupted from the vehicle. The last Zone Trooper in Wallace's squad fired past the truck, striking a Nod soldier running to cover. The shot was overkill; shooting infantry with anti-armor railguns was like crushing roaches with cars.

Wallace highlighted the burning truck ahead, and his troops moved up, taking cover behind it. The Lieutenant checked his satellite uplink, and cursed as he got a wash of static for his troubles. Local radar was being jammed too, and the smoke, dust, and electrical interference was playing hell with his suit's sensors. He could see enemy troops and vehicles, but exact positions were fuzzy, which made the Zone Troopers' favored lightning-fast pop-and-shoot tactics harder.

Hostile forces were everywhere in the hangar complex, and more Nod troops were streaming toward them. The air was thick with the black smoke of fuel fires and the occasional eerie green glow from scattered Tiberium, probably spread from Nod vehicles or aircraft that used liquid Tiberium fuel. Containment crews would need to be scrambled immediately after they drove the lunatics out of this place.

The far side of the truck rang and resounded with impacts as enemy troops opened fire from somewhere beyond. The blasts were powerful, concentrated individual shots of razor-sharp, high velocity flak, and bit into the wounded metal of the vehicle. Wallace considered stepping out to locate the enemy, but decided not to risk it. His armor was tough, but not invincible.

The Zone Troopers were agile, precision fire support. With their jumpjets and heavy railguns, they could direct devastating anti-armor fire anywhere on the battlefield. Yet that for all their firepower, Zone Troopers were clad in large, bulky suits of armor with delicate computer networks and sensors. They were big, they were clumsy, and their railguns took enormous amounts of the suits' limited power. The railguns themselves took long, painful seconds to recharge between shots, and for a Zone Trooper, a single missed shot could easily kill the soldier.

Wallace recognized his limitations on this battlefield, and didn't hesitate to call for backup.

"Zulu One, taking fire from shredders," Wallace called over the radio. "Does anyone have eyes on shooters?" Two seconds passed as Wallace's squad crouched, and he checked his radar and troop positions. Zulu Two was covering two squads of riflemen from Second Platoon as they swept a hangar, while Zulus Three, Four, and Five were supporting B Company's Predators, Pitbulls, and Guardian APCs as they met a Nod armor push near the main runway. Zulu Six was engaging Nod infantry with a platoon from C company to the east, near the ruins of the control tower.

"Zulu One, Two Bravo," came a reply over the radio, a woman's voice. There was a burst of gunfire. The speaker's name flashed over Wallace's HUD: Corporal Welkan, in charge of Second Platoon's Bravo Squad.

"Spotted shooters, with emplaced shredders, eighty meters northeast of your position," she continued. Wallace checked his map.

"Hangar bay?" he called back. The truck shook with another impact from the heavy weapons.

"Yeah," she answered. Wallace targeted that location, and knew his squadmates were doing the same. He waited the second and a half it took for his onboard computer to calculate the firing angles and vector, and then signaled his troops.

Two Zone Troopers swept around on either side of the truck, raising their railguns as they moved. As one, their rifles fell on the hangar bay indicated, where a group of Nod troops were clustered around a single large, multi-barreled heavy weapon nearly twice a man's height. The shredder emplacement turned to face the Zone Troopers, and then evaporated as four supersonic slugs cracked the sound barrier and blew it apart.

"Hangar entrance is clear," Wallace called over the radio, sweeping the area with his railgun and scanning for hostiles.

"Copy that," Welkan replied. "Bravo, advance and cover, secure that hangar! Zulu One, can you cover us?"

"With pleasure, Corporal," Wallace replied. Behind him, the Lieutenant spotted the six-man rifle squad detaching from cover and advancing by pairs. They came up beside the heavily armored troopers and hurried past, stacking up beside the side door. Wallace quietly tapped into their helmet camera feeds and spread it to the rest of his squad. There was a flash of a breaching charge, and the riflemen piled into the room beyond, weapons high. As soon as they entered, Wallace began receiving a collated image of the interior of the structure, and spotted gunfire coming from a catwalk directly overhead. Welkan's riflemen exchanged flurries of fire with the Nod troops inside.

"Zulu One, indirect cover fire, my lead," Wallace commanded, elevating his railgun. He had a rough idea of where the Nod shooters were based on the riflemen's cameras. His troops did the same, and fired as one.

Four railgun rounds ripped through the outer skin of the hangar, slashed across the room beyond, and hammered the catwalk. Unsurprisingly, none of the rounds hit the Nod soldiers, but the projectiles shook and twisted the catwalk, pitching at least one Nod trooper off the walkway and disorienting the others. Welkan's riflemen took the brief respite by the throat, a fullisade of shots tearing into the Nod troops overhead and killing three of them. The rest either tried to retreat or stand their ground, but by that time Wallace's aim had been corrected and his railgun was recharged.

The next barrage punched through the walls and tore part of the catwalk free, spilling a quartet of Nod troopers to the floor some fifteen meters below. Wallace didn't see their impacts on the helmet cameras, but his imagination filled in the details.

Two minutes later, Welkan's squad reported the hangar clear, with no casualties. Seconds after they received the all-clear, Wallace and his Zone Troopers received new orders, and jetted away to another hotspot on the smoke-stained battlefield, trading thanks with the rifleman squad.


"Scorpion, two-ten meters!"

"Clear target! Fire!"

As he heard those words shouted in his left ear, Corporal Tanner dropped to his knees. Twenty meters to his right, Avenger One-Two, callsign "Hard Knock," shattered the air with a thunderblast that sent waves of displaced air over the Corporal's armor plating, shaking his bones. If his ears hadn't been protected by his helmet, they would have been popped by the changing air pressure. As it was, they were left ringing.

Two hundred and ten meters away, a Nod Scorpion lurched as its drive section flew apart.

Tanner rose, shouldering his rifle, and dashed forward to an overturned truck, with Private Hall mirroring his movement ten meters to his right. Once he hit cover, Tanner covered his fire sector and waved the next two troopers forward. The rumble of the Predator's topside machinegun filled the air as the gunner hosed Nod positions across the runway. Enemy troops had taken position near the fuel processing and storage center, fortifying the area, apparently well aware that the Predators couldn't fire directly on them with their main guns. A stray shell hitting the fuel tanks could wipe out half the airbase.

Nod taking cover in areas that couldn't be directly bombarded wasn't anything new. They'd done it since the First Tiberium War, back when they had an iron grip over the media and could turn every civilian casualty into a Stalin-esque atrocity. GDI knew how to deal with this, and the Commander had issued orders to the effect.

Tanner and the rest of Alpha Squad, First Platoon, C Company had moved into position to provide covering fire, along with two other platoons from A Company. Sniper, rifle, and machinegun fire roared up and down their end of the runway, the small arms keeping the Nod troops occupied while not risking penetration of the armored fuel tanks.

At the same time, the four Predators of B Company's First platoon bolted forward, rolling across the tarmac with pintle-mounted machineguns raking the Nod positions. Enemy fire rang off the armor of the medium tanks, and a pair of rockets screamed out of the Nod fortifications, exploding against the hull of the Avenger One-Two. All four tanks brought their machineguns to bear against the point the missiles had emerged from, hosing the area with a storm of rounds that chewed up a cluster of transport trucks and baggage carts.

The Predators took fire from nearly every Nod position, even taking flak shells from the emplaced shredder cannons. That was fine, though. The tanks were tough, and more importantly, they were simply a distraction.

B Company's Fourth Platoon, in a quintet of Guardian APCs, was already rolling up behind the Predators, using them as a shield, and while Nod troops focused their fire on the tanks, the six-wheeled armored vehicles hit the eastern end of the Nod positions. The Guardians were almost on top of the Nod troops before announcing their presence with the twin heavy machineguns on top of their hulls, and then the armored vehicles rammed the hasty barricades Nod had erected. Overturned trucks and collections of crates and empty fuel drums were thrown aside, and a few Nod soldiers were crushed under the massive wheels of the combat vehicles.

Side and rear-mounted hatches dropped down on the sides of the APCs facing away from the enemy, and the riflemen of Fourth Platoon stormed down the ramps, circling around the vehicles with weapons up and firing.

The soldiers in these squads were specialists in close assault, clad in heavy composite armor and adept at fighting from APCs. They were "armored fist" units: GDI's weapon of choice for breaching enemy lines and overpowering enemy troops in tight, intense combat inside their own lines.

Corporal Herren Bendis ran from the side of his APC under the covering fire of a dozen machineguns, both light and heavy. Behind him he counted PFCs Garth and Enkis, the latter carrying his GDM-12. Bendis fired from his hip as he ran for one of the garages beside the fuel depot, understanding that fire superiority used in conjunction with raw momentum was their best weapon in this corner of the battlefield. Behind and around him, half of Fourth Platoon's riflemen stormed forward under the cover of the Guardians and their squadmates, and quickly drove the surprised Nod light infantry backward. A dozen of the enemy were left dead by the time Bendis reached the garage's side entrance.

"Bravo Squad, stack up!" he yelled over the radio. Every squad had an area of responsibility; Bravo had been tasked with clearing the garages beside the fuel depot, receiving their orders less than a minute before the Guardians had stormed the enemy's flank, meaning that less than three minutes ago he had no idea he'd be planting a concussive charge on the door in front of him. Seconds later, the rest of Bravo was lined up behind him, the rear two troopers swinging around to cover their backs. The Corporal finished attaching the explosive and spun around behind Garth, who was going to be point man in the assault.

"Blowing charge!" Bendis shouted, blasting the door inward. The world around him shook, smoke flashing past his helmet's visor, and then he was rushing forward.

"Breaching!" shouted Garth as he rolled into the room beyond, rushing through the smoke with his rifle up, covering the right and stepping forward. Bendis was right behind him, charging straight in, and felt PFC Alquis to his rear, rushing in and taking the left.

Gunfire flashed, close, loud, and vicious. Bendis spun toward the shots and the movement, and felt impacts along his torso, rounds flattening against his heavy ceramic body armor. His rifle replied as soon as Bendis spotted movement, and there was a spray of blood.

Shouts, gunfire, flashes of chaos, movement. Bendis heard his heartbeat pumping above it all, his breathing ragged and tight and omnipresent. Smoke choked his eyesight through his visor, and he didn't have time to think of turning on his thermals. There was only gunfire, his squad, the enemy, cover, and moving forward. He knew his sector, and cut into it, firing at another source of movement. An enemy went down screaming, and Bendis didn't hesitate to fire a second pair of shots into the downed trooper.

Boots hammered the floor as Bravo surged across the interior of the garage, blood running down the concrete as they swept and cleared. The chaos did nothing to slow them; they had trained for close-assault since they'd graduated from Boot, and could clear a room like this blindfolded. Every movement was rote, hammered muscle memory forged by a century of experience in close-combat room-clearing.

Bendis was then at the far end of the garage, standing over a fallen Nod trooper. He wasn't sure if the body was dead, and put another burst into the man's chest.

"Clear!" he shouted.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

"All clear!" Bendis called, checking his squad's status on his HUD. No injuries. Nine dead Nod soldiers. A new objective flashed across his HUD, and Bendis got his squad together and back outside the garage, heading north toward the main fuel tanks seventy meters away. He didn't have time to catch his breath or let the adrenaline dissipate. He had momentum, and he damn well intended to use it.

On the other end of the Nod flank, Fifth Platoon had struck, their APCs punching through the Nod resistance on their end and pinning a company-sized enemy force between two advancing GDI armored fist platoons, with three more rifle platoons charging across the tarmac behind the advancing Predators.

Within fifteen minutes, the fuel depot had been cleared. Nod had taken one hundred and six casualties. The armored fists of B Company's Fourth and Fifth Platoons lost only three men.


" . . . and as you can probably see, its hard to penetrate the smoke and chaos down here," called reporter Emily Wong into her headset. "We've seen large numbers of what look like Nod soldiers moving through the streets here with some kind of tanks supporting them. I think you can hear it back there, but there's a constant rumble of artillery fire. I can feel it in my bones, I'm sure Tim can too."

They were standing at a corner somewhere in the eastern part of Washington D.C. Black and gray smoke and dust filled the air overhead and around them, debris and civilian bodies scattered across the reflective pavement. She tried not to stare at them.

"Emily, can you see any GDI presence where you are?" She grimaced, trying to make out the buzzing in her headset as she looked into her cameraman's face. Just twenty years ago, camera crews carried handheld video recorders, but Tim, a bulky dark-skinned man in a heavy set of webbing and a blue cap, wore all the gear on him, including a headset with multiple cameras set around the goggles in his eyes, a computer mounted on his chest and recording gear on his back.

"I haven't encountered any real numbers of GDI soldiers since the assault started," she replied, looking down the street. "The GDI troops I did encounter were in full retreat, and that was three hours ago. Nod soldiers are everywhere out here. Right now I can see what looks like a couple of Nod armored vehicles and some troops down the street, heading away from my position, and-"

THOOM!

"Ah, shit! I think that sound you just heard is some kind of Nod artillery vehicle," Emily said, wincing. "Sorry about the cursing, Ed."

"That's fine Emily. Just keep telling us what you see."

She nodded, and peeked around the corner, before waving Tim forward. So much for covering the spaghetti festival they had been planning downtown today. Now she was running through a hell storm with maybe ten other sets of reporters who had been out in the city when the Zone Wall had been destroyed, and was now caught in the chaos of the invasion. She didn't even know if the other field reporters were still alive, but Nod troops had made a point of completely avoiding Emily and Tim as they reported on the invasion.

The shocking roar of another artillery blast sounded ahead, and they reached the edge of an apartment complex. Emily looked around the corner, and spotted one of the hulking Nod cannons set up down the street, surrounded by what looked like a dozen troops.

"Okay, I found the artillery emplacement," she called over her headset. "Tim, can you get a shot of that thing?"

"Sure," he replied, leaning around the corner. Tim was a good man, who'd apparently served in the GDI Army for a few years as a radio operator a decade ago. It took a lot to perturb him; his nonplussed reaction to the corpses they'd encountered had done a lot to calm Emily's own nerves.

The other thing that helped calm her down was the handgun Tim wore inside his vest. W3N cameramen were certified in self-defense and had the duty of protecting their reporters.

"You see it, Ed?" Emily asked, and he came back in her ears.

"Yes, Emily, we see it."

"I don't have any idea what its firing at, but-"

THOOM!

"-y ears! Jesus!" Emily heard a wild ringing in her head, and it took a second for her hearing to come back. As it returned, she heard something else over the background havoc of war: gunfire.

"Wait, Ed, can you see this?" she said, peering back at the artillery emplacement, where the soldiers surrounding it were firing at something she couldn't see. The armored buggy beside the artillery was burning, apparently hit by something when the cannon had been firing.

As she watched, narrating the battle as best she could, which meant repeating what was obviously being recorded, the Nod soldiers were quickly cut down or fled back behind the artillery cannon, and what looked like armored GDI troops appeared in the street, firing and advancing. The GDI troops split up, flanking and pinning down the Nod soldiers, quickly surrounding the artillery gun. A three-man group, led by a large man not clad in armor like the rest, ran up on top of the artillery and began firing into the open hatches before the crew had dogged them shut.

A minute later, the gun battle was over, and the GDI troops were quickly hauling what looked like artillery shells out of the silenced gun.

"Come on, Tim," Emily said rising and moving up the street toward the GDI troops, who spotted her almost instantly. Two men pointed guns at her and walked toward her, keeping them trained on her and Tim even when they saw they were unarmed.

"Relax," she called holding her hands up. "Emily Wong, W3N!"

"Colonel, press team," reported one of the two soldiers as they got closer. After a couple of seconds, the man looked up and waved for her and Tim to go toward the artillery gun.

"Colonel says you need to turn off your transmitter now," he said, his words firm but direct, and backed up by his imposing-looking gun. Emily turned to Tim, who was already hitting buttons on his wrist controls.

"Sorry, Ed, gotta turn off for now," she apologized over her headset, and then pulled it off. Tim nodded as he finished, and the troops waved them ahead. By now the GDI soldiers had grabbed what looked like two dozen artillery shells from the gun, and one of the men was wiring two of the shells together.

"What the hell are you two doing?" demanded the man atop the artillery gun, and Emily's eyes widened as she recognized the voice of the speaker.

"Nick?" she said, recognizing W3N's favored conservative speaker, who loomed above her with a submachinegun in his hands and wearing a stolen set of combat webbing holding a dozen different pouches of ammunition. A bulky Nod missile launcher was on his back.

"You're the Colonel?" she asked, remembering his old military rank before he'd been retired.

"Yeah," Nick Parker replied. "These kids insist on calling me that. That damn thing transmitting?"

"No sir," replied Tim, shaking his head. Though he'd been on alert since the first explosions, right now he was showing his military bearing even more clearly than usual.

"Why did you have us-" Emily started.

"Nod's going to have some jerks watching the news feeds," Parker said, reached down as the soldier wiring the shells held them up. "Free military intelligence from W3N reporters in the field."

"Oh, God," Emily said, realizing what that meant. "Nod probably knows you're-"

"Yep," Parker said, hitting a switch the trooper had fixed to the top of the shells. "Fifteen second fuse! Get moving!"

Immediately the GDI soldiers broke their perimeter and started running toward the alleys they had emerged from. Tim and Emily followed suit, while Parker casually tossed the shells into the crew hatch of the artillery gun before hopping off the armor. He ran after them into the alley, and the war machine blew apart as the shells detonated, hurling plating and setting off secondary blasts as the ammunition cooked off.

"What the hell are you doing out here, Nick?" Emily asked after her hearing came back. The GDI group, about a dozen men total when not including the press team, was hurrying up some back alleys in another direction. Every man carried a couple of artillery shells snatched from the gun.

"Fighting the good fight, Emily," Nick replied with a grin. Somewhere in the distance, they could hear more explosions, and the roar of a blasting Nod energy cannon.

"What's that?" she asked, to which Nick's grin expanded.

"There's a Nod Avatar a couple kilometers that way, providing support fire," he explained. He patted a couple of shells fixed to his webbing. "And we're going to kill it. Stick around, have Tim here shoot us in action."

Emily's eyes widened. The chance to get combat footage from the front lines like this . . . she wasn't an embedded reporter, and never thought she'd get a chance to shoot footage or make reports from combat with troops in the field. Most battle footage was at long range, showing troops shooting at targets out of sight, but what Parker was promising . . . .

"You bet I'm going to get a story off of this, Nick," she said, and he chuckled as they ran down the alley.


There were things that sent a primal fear through human beings. Deep rumbling sounds, the image of claws or stingers, fire, the slight but disturbing distortion of human features some dubbed the "uncanny valley." These were natural fears, fundamental parts of human instinct created to protect humans from natural threats.

In the GDI armed forces, there was a similar primal fear, forged from a mixture of battlefield reports, mess hall stories, rumors, and propaganda. Every infantryman had developed it during training or deployment, in one way or another, a fundamental and near-universal boogieman terror that manifested at that moment in Corporal Mitchell Colt's heart.

The Black Hand of Nod.

"Target the Black Hand," he ordered over his radio. "Target the Black Hand!" There was a moment's gasp of paralyzed fear from the rest of his squad as they were registering the threat ahead of them.

"Target everyone!" Colt shouted desperately, and pulled his rifle's trigger. "Somebody FIRE!"

That last command managed to jolt the squad, and Wells cut loose with his GDM-12. He loosed a long, wild three-second burst, and at the end of it the rest of the squad was firing down the street. Colt had no idea if they hit any of the Black Hand, as his rifle ran out of ammunition within a few moments, and he had to scrabble a fresh magazine from one of the pouches on his torso armor.

The militia troops started moving ahead once more. The Nod soldiers had sensed the burst of fear in the GDI troops, or maybe they had been bolstered by the presence of the Black Hand, who were striding forward from one piece of cover to the next, but standing tall all the same - as if inviting the GDI troops to dare shoot them. The mere presence of the Black Hand soldiers was shaking the defenders' morale badly, and throwing off their aim just as effectively. The stress of battle and the near-instinctual fear of the Black Hand was hitting them hard, and Colt realized that he needed to get his squad back under his command before they broke completely.

Then a ruby-red beam intersected with Gillard's head, and his helmet exploded. Bits of ceramic and metal pinged off Colt's armor, steam rising from the decapitated stump that was the marksman's neck, and his body slumped behind the concrete wall. Bursts of flash-boiled concrete erupted into the air as more laser beams cut into the wall Colt was crouched behind.

"Lasers!" shouted Wells, near panic in his voice. "They're firing-"

"Shut the fuck up and keep shooting!" Colt snarled over the radio, and moved down a dozen feet. He leaned up, searching for a target through his rifle's scope. "They're only human! Keep firing!"

"Aye, Corporal!" Wells managed after a couple of seconds. Colt peered down the street and caught one of the Black Hand as he stepped out of cover, raising a laser rifle to his shoulder. Colt squeezed off a burst as his sights settled over the Nod shock trooper's helmet. The GD4 kicked in his hands, and the rounds went downrange.

And did nothing.

Just like their Avatars, the Black Hand came outfitted with the latest in Nod composite armor technology, created in processing furnaces using liquid Tiberium-fueled plasma and reinforced with carbon nanotubes. The armor shrugged off Colt's bullets like they were insects.

"Oh, balls," he breathed, firing another burst that managed to scuff the black paint and rip a hole in the Hand's cape. He keyed his radio.

"Command, we have Black Hand units advancing on our position!" He fired another burst, this time at a Nod soldier carrying a light machinegun, and the man belly-flopped to the reflective pavement. One of the Hands stepped out of cover, holding what looked like a flamethrower in one hand, and grabbed the fallen machinegun. He turned and tossed it to another Nod militant.

"Wells, Hand in the open, take him!" Colt ordered, firing on the Hand. His rifle clattered and ran empty, and Colt ducked back behind cover. The wall of the building behind him was then dotted with several explosions as laser beams cut toward where he'd been taking cover. Colt dragged a fresh magazine out and duck-walked down the wall to where Gillard's beheaded body fell. Out in the street, he heard the rumble of Wells' machinegun opening up, and the sporadic fire from Falks and Jordan's GD4s.

"No effect," Wells cried over the radio. His machinegun stopped firing, and he screamed a desperate curse. "Goddamn empty!"

Colt slid the fresh magazine into his rifle and grabbed Gillard's weapon. The optics array atop his GD4 was detachable, and Colt quickly removed it before sliding it onto his own weapon's optics rail. He rose and sighted down his rifle at the enemy, his HUD updating as the scope synced with his armor.

Colt managed to get a good, clear view of one of the Hands with a laser rifle calmly stepping out of cover, raising his weapon, and firing.

Much closer, Wells had placed the belt of his GDM-12's new box magazine into the weapon. He closed the machinegun and was cranking back the charging handle when his torso turned into steam. The machinegunner toppled backward, dead before he knew he'd been hit.

"Charlie, confirm Black Hand," Sergeant Havers called over the radio.

"Black Hand confirmed," Colt roared, firing his rifle at the Hand that killed Wells. "I have two men down! Squad is at half-strength, request reinforcements!"

"Copy, Charlie, we're trying to get close. We have heavy contact here as well." Havers paused. "Recommend withdrawal!"

Rounds impacted the hand's armor, skipping off the metal plating, and the figure turned the gleaming red optics of his helmet toward Colt. A chill ran down his spine, as if the Hand was looking past his helmet and through flesh and bone, and then Colt squeezed the rifle's trigger.

The red optical cluster on the Hand's helmet shattered, and the shock trooper recoiled. Colt's heart skipped a beat, and he fired another shot as the man stumbled backward. That round deflected off the soldier's armor, and the Hand straightened, the optics array dark and dead. His sight compromised and bullets hitting him, the Hand fell back behind cover.

Well, that was better than nothing. More importantly, the rest of the Hands had slowed down and were taking cover as well, apparently now conscious of the danger of incoming fire. And with the Hands slowing, the regular Nod infantry seemed to be hesitating as well.

"Falks, Jordan, fall back!" Colt hissed, breaking cover to run around the wall and grab Wells' machinegun. He stepped over the steaming body, the torso armor blackened and cratered where the beam had blasted through, and hefted the dead trooper's GDM-12. He braced the weapon on the side of the car and fired two long bursts of covering fire while the remaining pair of soldiers broke off and retreated.

"Where to?" Jordan was calling as he moved to safety. Colt momentarily considered one of the buildings, but then remembered the Nod troops carrying flamethrowers. Bad idea.

"Fall back down the street," he ordered, firing the machinegun to keep the enemy suppressed. He wasn't doing too great a job; Nod troops were advancing wherever he wasn't firing, and the street was too wide to cover everywhere. He reopened his radio channel to Alpha.

"Alpha, Charlie is withdrawing," he reported, and gave them their current location.

"Understood, Charlie," Havers replied. "Prepare to-"

Whatever he said next was drowned out when a searing beam struck the GDM-12 Colt was carrying, melting the barrel instantly and cooking off the entire box magazine. Colt fell back off his feet as rounded exploded out of the box and belt, flying everywhere.

"Shit!" he hissed, and scrambled back away from the truck as more laser beams slashed into it, the Black Hand regaining their aggression and pressing up the street. Colt grabbed his GD4 off the pavement and hurried back up the street, even as Nod soldiers poured around the corner with weapons blazing.


The pavement was bathed in ruby light as photons deflected off the omnipresent dust choking the air. Emily imagined it was like running on top of a long strip of bloodstained plate glass, though in some places the bloodstains were all too real. She averted her eyes from the bodies lying in the streets; a young teenage couple crushed under an overturned car., a series of fire-blackened corpses near a section of horrifically scorched pavement, a dead dog crumpled in yard with two legs missing, and an unidentifiable body that was far, far too small to be an adult.

This was war, Emily realized, a sickening feeling rolling up her body. She'd only seen reports of the devastation from the First Tiberium War, and was just a child living in Hokkaido during the Second Tiberium War, and had been spared the worst fighting. This was the first time she'd been in a real warzone before. The senseless nature of the slaughter, the unthinking violence, all of it numbed Emily even as it revolted her.

The reporter and Tim kept close behind the GDI insurgent team, with Havoc in the lead. They moved up the street in a scattered, loose formation, hugging cover. None of them seemed overly concerned with the news team, only glancing back from time to time. Emily got the impression they considered their tag-a-longs to be little more than unnecessary luggage.

At least Tim was keeping his cameras trained on the troops when he could get a clear angle. Emily wished she'd had one of those camera drones that the big-name reporters used. Heck, Havoc could have used those for scouting, and Emily would have actually been useful instead of just being a civilian chasing them around.

Still, he seemed to know where he was going, though precisely where he was headed reminded Emily of all the stories he told her of his service in the last two wars. She'd dismissed most of them, as he'd always told her that the "details are classified" and he "couldn't name specifics" or "the records on that mission are sealed." In her experience, anyone who told stories with those attached to them was full of shit.

The fact that he was leading a twelve-man unit on a charge against a twenty-meter tall walking slab of metal spewing laser beams from its arms made her reconsider his stories.

It took them close to an hour of careful movement through back alleys and unoccupied roads to reach their destination. Twice Parker called for a halt, and once he pulled a few of his men to move out ahead and eliminate Nod troops in their path. When she asked why they were encountering so few troops, Havoc shrugged.

"From what it looks like, they're throwing everything in their main assault force against our defenses," he said. "They're keeping the support elements, like the artillery, supply, and air support units back. We're in a narrow strip of ground between the two."

"So, we go too far in either direction and we walk into a Nod army," Emily added, and he grinned.

"I kind of hope we do," he said, and the reporter honestly wondered if Parker was being serious or just kidding.

The Avatar they were hunting had taken up a position at the near end of a wide park, where the trees were scorched and burning. Past the smoke and flames, Emily spotted what looked like a battle raging between GDI and Nod armor and infantry within the park itself and the streets beyond. The Avatar was using its height and powerful long-range laser cannons to blast GDI defenders and cover the Nod tanks and troops. Its position and size gave it a commanding view of the open area, and its armor allowed it to shrug off the occasional shell that exploded against its plating.

The Avatar itself was in no real danger. Even this close to the front, it was safe from anything short of a massed armor charge that breached the Nod lines, which at that point were rolling over the beleaguered GDI defenders. Even then, as Emily watched its cannon blast away with eye-hurtingly bright ribbons of crimson energy, she would have guessed one of these legged monsters could fight off a dozen Predator tanks.

As such, the walker had only a token defense force to protect it. A perimeter of a dozen Nod light infantry with the mismatched militia fatigues and odd assortment of personalized gear and weapons had formed a loose perimeter, with most of the troops sitting or lounging around. Half of them didn't even have their weapons in hand, and only a few were watching their surroundings. Two light buggies also sat nearby, one with its gun traversing the area, the other unmanned; its driver and gunner were sitting on a crate of ammunition and smoking cigarettes. A large truck, doubtless what the paltry security troops had arrived in, was parked nearby, a single man standing in the bed and serving as lookout.

"Sloppy," Havoc muttered, shaking his head. The Avatar fired again. The Nod troops were lightly-trained militia, after all. Devoted to the cause, certainly, but still a bit lax on discipline. Then again, they had an Avatar looming overhead and an army dealing with the only threats in the area. They doubtless thought they could relax a bit.

Havoc liked it when they relaxed. He liked it a lot.

It took five minutes for the little insurgent team to set up. Parker said he had a knack for off-the-cuff plans, and this was no different. Emily asked the former commando what his plan was, to which he shrugged and patted the rocket launcher he carried.

"Bang boom," he replied with a smile.

Havoc's plan involved significantly more boom than that, as well as copious amounts of bang. Two teams of four men split off down side alleys and took up firing positions on either end of the lax Nod perimeter. The remaining group, four more troops and Havoc himself, moved forward, close to the undisciplined Nod troops. Emily crouched beside Tim, watching a safe distance away, her breath tight in her throat.

The signal to attack came with the roar of Parker's missile launcher firing, a plume of smoke tracing a line from him to the watchful Nod buggy. Even as the vehicle's armor buckled inward, flames and shrapnel blasting from its interior, Havoc had already pulled the second rocket off the launcher's lug and fitted it, spinning toward the second buggy. That one took the screaming missile dead in the center of its front windshield, the front half blasted apart. Shrapnel the size of a man's arm lashed out, slicing the vehicle's smoking crew to bloody tatters before they'd had time to do more than look up.

The infantry perimeter caught fire from two directions at once. Of the dozen or so Nod troops Emily could see, half were killed in seconds, most of them the ones that were armed. The rest dove for cover, pulling sidearms or grabbing their rifles. Then, Emily finally got all the affirmation she needed that Nick Parker's insane stories of his commando exploits were true.

Havoc and the four GDI troopers he kept with him leapt from behind the cars and building corners they were using for cover and charged. They didn't yell or rush out guns blazing, but they rose from cover as one, rifles in hand, and bounded out into the street, straight for the Avatar.

Emily almost shot to her feet so she could get a better view, but Tim grabbed her and pulled her back down; he knew what happened to people who poked their heads up without warning in a firefight.

The Nod soldiers were crouching behind cover, mostly cars, crates, and their truck, returning fire as best they could, but were suppressed by massed volleys of incoming shots from two directions. They were wholly unprepared when the armored GDI troops led by Havoc rushed around one side of their positions and fell upon them from the side. Rifles blazed as bursts of close range automatic fire erupted. Emily heard cries of agony and saw blood spraying over the visors of the GDI troops, who fired from the hip into their enemies. One armored soldier fell back, raising his rifle as a Nod trooper leapt at him, screaming in panicked frenzy. Their weapons collided, and she saw the GDI trooper snap his rifle butt across into the Nod soldier's face, cracking his jaw and sending him tot he pavement, followed by a boot to the back. Even over the chaotic gunfire and thunder of distant battle, Emily swore she heard the enemy trooper's backbone break as the heavy boot drove into his body.

Havoc didn't even stop to engage the enemy. He leapt over a crate, firing his submachinegun one-handed into a Nod soldier who was rising up, and ran past the falling corpse. In his other hand Havoc carried a bundle of the artillery shells they'd stolen from the Nod gun miles away. He bolted straight for the Avatar, looming up above like a brooding god.

It hadn't even seemed to notice the chaos at its feet; the war machine instead continued to casually loose incandescent beams of blinding red destruction into the distance. The ants at its toes were of no concern, even when one of those ants reached its side and leapt up, grabbing a seam in its armor plating.

Havoc slung his submachinegun and pulled with one aged but muscular arm, hauling himself up two meters. He planted his feet against the walker's leg and raised the bag of artillery shells. One side of it he'd sprayed with one of the standard-issue adhesive coating bottles GDI troopers carried for planting mines and bombs just like this one, and he slapped it against the armor. As soon as he'd done so, Havoc dropped back to the ground, and sprinted toward the troops, who had finished off the last Nod guards.

"Danger-close!" he screamed, his augmented legs carrying him a lot faster than Emily imagined they hsould have for a man his age. That was the last she saw at that point, for Tim grabbed her and pulled her back behind cover.

"What does 'danger-close' mean?" she asked, and he gritted his teeth. She heard the GDI soldiers running back behind cover nearby, and then the world became noise and shocking tremors. She covered her ears, the roar of the explosion so powerful she only caught a brief bit of it before all sound became replaced by a painful ringing. A couple of seconds later, another tremor shot through the ground.

She rose shakily, and saw the godlike walker lying facedown, its arms scrabbling against the pavement and dirt as it tried to stand, the leg Parker had bombed blown to a smoking stump. Havoc was running back toward it, a second bag of artillery shells in hand. The ringing was starting to subside, and as she watched, he ran around toward the walker's front, right next to its front, slapping the bag of explosives onto its hull. He seemed to wait for it to push itself high enough up that the sensor arrays on the front of the black war machine could see him, and grinned.

He raised a one-finger salute, and even with her ears still ringing, Emily heard what he said next clear as day.

"I got a present for ya!"

Then he broke and ran. The Avatar tried to turn and raise its weapon, but with its leg disabled, it couldn't move far enough around to fire before Havoc dove behind the Nod truck.

The front end of the Avatar caved in as the shells went off, shattering its front and obliterating the crew inside. The metallic monster was lifted up a few meters before crashing back down to the pavement, its arms pointing out at odd angle. Fire burned inside its crew compartment, issuing black smoke into the sky.

"Let's get moving!" Havoc yelled as he jogged back to the group. "I get the feeling the local Noddies are going to have their thongs in a knot over this one!"

"Tim," Emily said, looking to her cameraman as they rose and hurried back the way they'd come. "Tell me you got that."

"I did," he assured her. "You bet your ass I did."


Brotherhood Data Archives - Intelligence Report - Global Defense Initiative Powered Armor Research Report: "Zone" Class Armor Units

Abstract: The Global Defense Initiative's predecessors started powered armor development some time in the past, initially basing technological development of mobile power sources on the "shock trooper" units developed by Stalin's Soviet army in World War II, utilizing the Tesla Coil technology they deployed to great effect against the Allies. Difficulties in miniaturizing these power sources limited development until the miracle of Tiberium fell upon us in 1995. With the divine crystal in their hands, GDI's science researchers, particularly Doctor Mobeius, developed crude but effective powered armor.

Continued development of powered armor technology branched out into several directions, with GDI constructing the ungainly but grievously effective "Wolverine" units and the airborne "Jump-jet" armor suits, which allowed for unexpectedly quick raids on our forces, who were primarily accustomed to GDI's powerful but ponderous heavy armor strikes. By this point, GDI had further refined their armor and have combined a number of their more destructive technologies into "Zone" armors.

The Zone armor units are divided into several classes, the two most common of which are the Zone Troopers and the Zone Raiders. All Zone armor comes equipped with full NBC protection and integrated and advanced computer systems that calculate firing vectors and process targeting and terrain data at high speeds, and are equipped with jump-jet technology that makes them extremely mobile. "Trooper" armor units also feature larger backpack power plants and anti-armor railguns, and are used for high mobility precision anti-armor work. "Raider" units, on the other hand, are equipped with rapid-fire sonic grenade launchers and light anti-air missile launchers. Both types are used in conjunction with infantry and armor elements for support duties, and rarely operate alone due to their specialized nature.

Both breeds of "Zone" armors are extremely dangerous, but have a high cost associated with their miniaturized power plants and high-end weaponry. Also, they require specialized training. We project that this will result in limited deployment for most conventional GDI units, though heavy assault forces, reconassiance elements, and units that will operate in high-Tiberium areas may have a higher ratio of Zone armor to regular troopers . . . .

-


Author's Notes: You may have noticed the addition of a quote at the top of the chapter. This chapter isn't terribly unique in that regard; I've gone back and done some editing to previous chapters here and there.

The next chapter is going to be primarily from the GDI perspective again, covering the rest of the assault on the airfield, the rescue of the downed pilot, Colt's (and Third Platoon's) battle against the Black Hand, and some good old fashioned "Ooh-rah!" from the GDIMC. Also, expect to see more from Karrde and General Granger. This chapter was also originally slated to include naval combat between Conway's battlegroup and the Nod fleet. Unfortunately, I discovered I suck at writing naval battles, and rather than subject you guys to subpar writing, the naval battles are likely going to get scrapped.

There's going to be a sort of shift in focus in regards to my writing in this story, as I'm going to be exploring more than just the straightforward action of the games. There's still going to be plenty of violence and combat, but I'm also interested in exploring some of the more humanitarian aspects of the war and the Tiberium universe as a whole, as well as developing the soldiers themselves. This story kind of started out as a reaction to DeCandido's shitfest of a novelization, but its growing on me into something more.

Incidentally, I was annoyed at how the reporters in the novelization had access to those little marble camera drones, but GDI troops never used them for recon - or any UAVs in general. Those damn camera drones would have been ridiculously useful in a couple of the scenarios in the novel, like the assault on the convention center.

And in the last chapter, I noticed someone finally made a connection that I've beenw anting to elaborate on. One of my primary influences in writing this story is Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40K books, particularly his Gaunt's Ghosts series. Necropolis and Honour Guard have, in particular, been a big influence on this story. I've made a few references to 40K thus far - obviously, the use of "Brother-Sergeant" and such for Nod, which is a throwback to the Space Marines, and the "armored fist" platoons. Another big influence for me (particularly for this chapter) is Evan Wright's nonfiction book Generation Kill, which gives a rather fascinating and extremely human look into the operations of the modern military from the sharp end of the stick, and the kind of chaotic, brutal and senseless struggle a modern war really feels like.

To answer another important question, I will be making references to Kane's Wrath, and will probably be using most of the units, e.g. Spectres in this chapter, Hammerheads next chapter, along with probably Zone Raiders, Slingshots, and Shatter tanks later on (I refuse to call them "Shatterers." Seriously, try to say that and not make it sound stupid.) However, just as TW's storyline can exist without Kane's Wrath, so too will this story primarily be about Tiberium Wars, not the secondary battles taking place in the background. I'll be using elements of it, at least.

Until next chapter . . . .