Under the Shadow: Crystalline
May 20, 2047
Yellow Zone Y-6
It was a good day to be a ZOCOM commander, and Connor Liang was appreciating the reason why.
A triple-barreled sonic cannon plus four secondary weapon hardpoints. Layered armor comparable to a Harrier-class battleship. A built-in Tiberium refinery that could harvest fields simply by driving over them. There was no better war machine in the world than the Mammoth Armed Reclamation Vehicle, and now, one of them was his to command, as personally authorized by the commanding officer of ZOCOM.
"Best thing I've seen all month." Liang said to Taslimi, the two officers observing as a series of cranes lowered the main turret into the building-sized chassis, the air alive with the hums and grinding of heavy assembly. "I can't wait to get it moving."
"It's a beauty." Taslimi nodded in agreement. "But speaking of getting it moving…"
"What?"
"I was hoping this problem would get resolved before I had to tell you, but the MARV crew got held up. They're going to arrive late."
Liang spun around. "Held up by what? And how late?"
"I don't know. All I got was they're stuck at the San Diego International Airport, and there's a Ion Storm rolling through the Zone border right now. With the storm's forecast, that's at least two days."
"Will any good news come out of that damn place?" Liang spat, remembering the botched evacuation and dead civilians at the war's start. "I'm not letting my tank sit idle when there's a Nod base in my way. Besides, we can't wait here for long."
"I have an idea."
"Oh?"
"Come on, when I come to you with problems, I usually have solutions too."
Liang could think of at least three exceptions to that, but disregarded them in favor of the immediate. "Well, what's your bright idea?"
"Let's use the rescued POWs, especially Mammoth tank crews, for the MARV. I know there were at least twenty Mammoth crew, more than enough to drive this."
"You think they can drive a MARV?" Liang hadn't considered it before, but on paper, at least, it might work.
"How hard can it be for them? The MARV's design is derived from the Mark III's. Not that a Mark III has triple sonic cannons, a Tib refinery, or a repurposed ship turbine… or any other flagship features of our tank. However, it's Mammoth-derived! And to get this thing moving-" Taslimi pointed to the turret, now fully secured onto the chassis - "There's no one else more qualified in this regiment."
"It's worth a try. I'll talk to the tankers and figure something out." Liang turned around to leave, exiting the Reclamator Hub via elevator, hurrying towards his motor pool a short walk away. Major Korhonen and his fellow ex-POWs had painted black talon designs on their newly assembled Predator tanks, claiming the emblems would build a fearsome reputation among Nod. Liang suspected it was more of a nod to their Steel Talons heritage, but accepted the customization. ZOCOM was never known for excellent tank units; perhaps his regiment could be the exception. Perhaps the exception could save his life.
As he approached, dozens of heads turned - standing and sitting on their taloned tanks. Major Korhonen, standing on the foremost Predator, remained gaunt. At least his face was back to a healthy red and his extensive burn scars were covered in fresh bandages, insofar as Liang from tell from the Tiberium field suit every member of the battalion wore when outside. His regiment went through hundreds of air filters, armor plates, and other pieces of protective gear every day; maintenance alone took a massive chunk on their harvested resources, the cyclical irony that governed GDI operations worldwide.
"Major, I have a special assignment for you," Liang said. Korhonen hopped down, standing a little above Liang.
"Anything, sir."
"I've assembled a MARV for the upcoming assault, but its crew got stranded in San Diego. I need you and your ten best crew to operate the MARV instead."
Korhonen's eyes bulged. "You're serious, sir?"
"I am. The ZOCOM crew got held up in San Diego and aren't arriving for another day. With your background as a Mammoth commander, you should be able to operate the MARV at a bare minimum. So read these manuals while we get the tank ready. I'll have a crew of my four best engineers accompany you in case you need repairs or extra support."
Liang sent the bevy of technical and field manuals to Korhonen's tac-pad, who immediately ran to his men, giving the good news, causing a flurry of hands to rise into the air – for questions or volunteers, Liang didn't know, and wasn't too concerned. So long they got the tank moving and shooting, they would be doing enough.
Twelve hours later, Sergeant Zoe Lakatos took a fresh look at the MARV she was escorting, and decided to keep her distance. In the deep midnight, the superheavy tank wasn't so much a vehicle as a black hole. Its usual green and blue lights had been covered for this operation, but the grinding of its treads alone could probably be heard from a mile away.
Some other features of the tank stood out, too. Whenever she faced it, her armor's flashlights revealed a set of black talons painted on the side of the turret, and in addition, a crude speaker tower had been jury-rigged to the top. Whether to encourage their fellow GDI soldiers or taunt Nod, Lakatos didn't know.
"Do we have to stay so close to it?" Dehaven, their squad automatic grenadier, asked the question on everyone's mind, as the MARV plowed through the gutted remains of the long-lost suburban neighborhood. The main street of the town had been replaced by a gaping, four-meter wide chasm with Tiberium jutting like the teeth of a crocodile, an impassable obstacle to almost anything. But the MARV simply rolled parallel to the chasm, clearing it out as the onboard Tiberium refinery swallowed up the excess crystals. Behind it, eight Predators followed in its path, the main battle tanks lined up two-by-two, their massive main guns constantly turning, ready to respond to an ambush from any direction.
"Someone please say no," Kizier, nervously fiddling with her sonic grenade launcher, said.
"Just stay behind it, and we'll be alright." Lakatos tried to assure her squad, but secretly wished to stay away too. As armored as the Raiders were, she had to wonder if shellfire hitting the MARV would ricochet into them. The mental image sent a chill through her hands, the MARV rolling on completely unperturbed as people fell around it. And what if a Raider somehow fell in front of the MARV? Lakatos had saved a victim of crushing once, a soldier run over by a dozer-equipped Scorpion Tank, but sometimes wondered if she shouldn't have. Against a MARV's weight, there wouldn't be anything left to save.
Beyond the town lay their target: another Nod research facility. After rescuing the GDI prisoners in her previous mission, she'd gone in to help secure the lower levels of the "Hotel" lab. The sights had stayed for a long time. She, and everyone else, had thought the prisoners were in miserable enough shape, but those labs were on another layer of Hell entirely, antithetical to everything to her as a medic and a human being. Some of the scenes had kept her awake that entire night; most especially the little girl whose leg had been filled with blue Tiberium, as if whoever concocted the idea wanted to outcompete Satan's monstrosity. If the same person who ran that lab was here, Lakatos would be only happy to dispose of them.
Their plan this time was simple: crash through the front gate of the Nod base and destroy everything within. The MARV and Predators were the anchors of this attack, while three squads of Raiders, Lakatos' included, and an infantry company provided additional muscle.
On the edge of the town, reaching what looked like a football field, albeit with the bleachers rotted away by Tiberium, Lakatos raised her fist, freezing her Raiders while the MARV and other tanks trudged on.
"Dehaven, recon by fire," Lakatos ordered, her instincts suggesting that they were far from alone out here. At the very least, Nod had to have noticed the MARV by now.
Dehaven aimed her belt-fed automatic 40mm grenade launcher high and fired for several seconds, her launcher capable of firing two every second, forming an impressive wave of explosions across the field beyond.
Before the dust from the first explosions had settled, a crimson beam scorched the front of Lakatos chestpiece, and she hit the dirt with a grunt as careful, disciplined laser fire erupted all over.
"Contact front!" she reported to the entire GDI attack force. Predator cannons lit up the night the next second, producing a massive fireball as something was ignited into a conflagration, briefly illuminating the shadowed figures of dozens of Nod soldiers beyond.
"Dug in infantry, nine and two o clock, five hundred meters!" Williams called out.
"Fire and maneuver! Fire and maneuver!" Lakatos ordered, pointing towards a derelict brick structure just beyond the field as their eventual destination. From there, they might get a better shot at the entrenched Nod forces, though the tanks were also doing an appreciable job at tearing them apart.
With another shouted command, the Raiders blazed towards the structure, Dehaven firing off another long burst of utter devastation. Not that the sonic launchers of the other three Raiders were any less effective - each sonic explosion could stun and shock enemies in an area far beyond their lethal range, which was particularly useful for covering fire.
Behind the brick, Lakatos kept her squad focusing fire against the closer Nod positions. They were able to wipe out two machine gun nests and a rocket squad right before they could fire. In the meantime, all eight Predators had spread out and together were firing practically every second, alternating fire between their monstrous main and machine guns. Lakatos also noticed many of the tanks were sporting rocket pods, resembling the type used on Mammoth Tanks, sending off thin smoke trails into the fiery night.
"Aren't we missing something?" Kizier barked, in a brief interbellum of reloading.
"What do you mean?" Lakatos snapped back.
"The MARV! It hasn't done shit!"
Lakatos took a peek at the super-heavy tank, and realized, indeed, it hadn't fired a shot. It wasn't for lack of incoming fire - crimson lasers and variously-colored tracers were beaming into its frontal hull and turret, resembling a rave concert gone mad, and explosions began carving up the main road all around it.
"Told you!" Kizier said. "What's it waiting for?"
"Hey, I don't–"
THOOM!
The first shot sent Lakatos plummeting into the dirt, obscuring much of her visor. If it weren't for her armor's reactive audio sensors, she would have been rendered deaf.
THOOM! THOOM!
The second and third shots kept her there, even as she began to laugh with the rumbling of earth and massive sonic fire.
Back at the field base, Liang watched his MARV open fire, a stream of rude messages starting to broadcast from its speaker tower over hearable audio and radio frequencies alike. Then Taslimi gently patted him on the shoulder.
"A squad of Forgotten just arrived here," Taslimi said to him. "They have an urgent message, say it's from 'Nikander'. That's their leader, right?"
"Yeah. Let them inside the base. I'll go out to meet them. You take command."
As Taslimi settled in, Liang ran out, making sure to seal his field suit properly. Outside, two riflemen stood at attention, keeping their rifles at the low ready as Nikander stood in front of a nondescript buggy, his hands together laid in front of him. A few normal-sized mutants armed with light weapons stayed in the vehicle, curiously looking around the ZOCOM field base but making no moves otherwise. Perhaps that was because one of the base's Guardian Cannons had preemptively locked onto the buggy, the 105mm cannon more than capable of instantly demolishing the little vehicle.
Liang didn't waste time with pleasantries.
"Make it quick," he started, pointing back to his command post. "I'm fighting a battle out there."
"The Nod base you are attacking at the moment has Forgotten prisoners. I would like to rescue them."
Liang frowned. "I have a MARV that is tearing the base apart. I can't guarantee anything."
"Then I hope you will consider a change of plans. My bodyguards will assist in raiding the base buildings, and will not interfere with any other plans."
"Is that why they're gone?"
"Yes. They are already on their way, and will arrive shortly."
"You're that confident I'll say yes? Don't tell me this is your 'future-sight' or something."
Nikander only shrugged. "I would appreciate your permission and coordination."
"Fine." Liang gave in. "How many bodyguards did you send?"
"Four."
Liang might have laughed, but remembered the size and weapons of those mutants during his visits to their camp, rotary chainguns and all. Four mutants like that in the right place would be far from inconsequential.
"Okay," he said. "Do you know which buildings contain your prisoners?"
"I do." Nikander presented a paper map that Liang took very carefully. It was an accurate hand drawn portrait of the Nod base - only a little sloppier than Liang's satellite and air recon - albeit heavily annotated in neat handwriting. One word in particular stood out, circled on two central HQ buildings.
"Experimentation?" Liang looked up at Nikander. "Like the previous lab? With Matilda?"
"Possibly. I am not certain, which is why I did not tell you earlier."
"Next time, give me any possible leads. You know how important this is to me…"
Nikander nodded, and Liang began plotting out what forces he could use to conduct this new mission. He wouldn't miss any chance to follow up on his sister.
Lakatos watched the Obelisk of Light fall with unrestrained joy, as the MARV brought down the laser tower with multiple salvos from its main gun. With a sharp order, she brought her squad into the breach, following the massive tank, which was systematically demolishing the Nod buildings. She had gotten used to the THOOM of its firing, but not the results of whole walls completely shattered and caved in by each shell.
The enemy was, to her mild surprise, not in complete disarray. The MARV was still taking heavy fire, and car-sized sections of its front plate had been sheared or burnt off. But it kept moving on, as ignorant as a glacier to grass, wiping out a foxhole here, a laser turret there, and so on and so forth.
And the MARV's non-regulation speaker tower kept calling a stream of obscenities and taunts. There must have been a fine line between psychological warfare and sophomoric bullying, because it was getting increasingly hard to tell which was which.
"We're back, motherfuckers!" Korhonen's triumphant voice rang throughout the Nod base, as an Operations Center collapsed in a sonic-induced shockwave. "Stand and die, or run and die!"
"God, he's not going to shut up, is he?" Williams sighed.
"I preemptively diagnose him as losing his voice in ten minutes," Kizier opined. "Lakatos, what do you think?"
"Forward, GDI! Forward, ZOCOM! Kill them all!"
Lakatos shrugged her shoulders, her anti-air missile launchers moving up and down with the movement. "Maybe. But you heard the man. Let's go."
They spent the next minute sweeping for stragglers, staying close by the Predators as they rolled in behind the MARV. Casualties were low, though it seemed the enemy defense was limited; Lakatos guessed they had already evacuated most of the base and personnel. Still, there was a sense of satisfaction by smashing all things Nod.
Only a few buildings were left now. One of them was a Nod headquarters-type building, its squat shape resembling a can of sardines. Before it could be turned into rubble, Command interrupted with orders to Lakatos' unit and a rifle squad.
"Bravo Two, Easy Five, stand by. Forgotten special forces are inbound to your location. You will assault the central building with them and seek out civilian prisoners."
"Easy Five, roger that," a rifleman confirmed.
"Bravo Two, acknowledged." Lakatos replied. Forgotten 'special forces' could be interesting allies. She expected some unique transport to bring them over, and wasn't disappointed with a huge, eight-wheeled vehicle, marked with a Tiberium biohazard warning rather than the classic GDI eagle, recklessly plowing through rubble and coming to a halt a scant few meters away from the GDI infantry assembling.
"Is that an amphibious APC?" Kizier said, not quite believing.
The front door dropped open with a grinding hiss, and four men walked out. They were massive mutants, clad in repainted Black Hand armor minus the capes, and wielding automatic weapons that could have been pulled from aircraft. The lead man, tattooed with an array of crossed-out scorpions, and missing most of his nose and left ear, strode up to Lakatos.
"We will join you on your assault," he said, hefting his weapon to a ready position. His fearsome appearance was belied by his soft, almost beautiful voice. It could have been a singer's, and Lakatos could only wonder what kind of man he had been before mutation. Before she could ask, two of the mutants began marching off.
"Where are the other two going?" she asked.
"They will search elsewhere," the lead mutant told her as he put his helmet on, his voice slipping into modulated harshness. Seeing that triple-lense design so close made Lakatos shudder. "Together, we are enough."
"Okay then." Compared to eight Zone Raiders and ten riflemen, she disagreed, but extra firepower and warm bodies were always appreciated. With the rifle squad taking point, the Raiders and mutants prepared to enter the Nod headquarters building.
They broke into the first room without issue, opening into the standard Nod room colors of dim red and black, with the computer monitors displaying error messages as a stream of white text over a crimson background. Lakatos could never believe how Nod personnel lived in buildings like this. Didn't the dim red lighting strain their eyes, or make it hard to see obstacles jutting out?
But Lakatos had enough occupational hazards for her to worry about. Breaching the next door, the GDI and mutant group faced limited gunfire from a hasty barricade of turned-over steel benches. The leading riflemen killed nearly all of the Nod soldiers, then Dehaven launched a single 40mm and blew the rest of the barricade to bits.
"Good work guys, let's keep it up," Lakatos told everyone. The riflemen assented with grunts as they reloaded their rifles and underslung shotguns.
The next rooms were a combination of storage, research, and lockers. One room looked much like the prison Laktos had raided in her previous mission, but it was completely devoid of people - in fact, it looked remarkably new, as if constructed mere days or even hours ago. Had Nod been expanding their 'research' operations? She could only hope someone smarter would be able to make something out of this place, and proceeded to a set of reinforced doors with some trepidation. The doors were thick enough, or perhaps made of the right material, to block any thermal or radar scans within. Whatever was inside had to be highly valuable to Nod.
With the riflemen still in front, she directed her squad to take up positions flanking the door, to move in the moment the breaching charges went off. As before, the riflemen planted the charges, and after a quick countdown, hit the trigger.
The doors blew open to a final stand, but Lakatos didn't realize it was hers. She only had time to register the triple-red lenses and capes before six streams of fire poured into their room.
The riflemen died first, from burns or their own grenades cooking off on their body armor. Kizier died next, hit full-on by multiple streams. She had enough time to scream, louder than Lakatos had ever heard her speak, before she died. Dehaven toppled backwards towards Lakatos as her helmet was entombed in fire, pawing at a face that was ceasing to exist.
But Dehaven's fall at least protected Lakatos from the worst of the fire – only a few spurts landed on her left arm, but even that little Tiberium-enhanced napalm started to melt away her ceramic plating, threatening to take her entire arm before it sputtered out. Some dumb instinct caused Lakatos to drop to the ground, a stop-drop-roll memory from grade school that she instantly realized the sheer idiocy of, but it was too late – or was it?
From her fallen position, she saw the two mutants still standing, filling the entryway with bullets that dropped the Black Hand where they stood. How had they survived the flame where almost none of the GDI soldiers had? Then the mutants stepped forwards, chestplates and three-visored helmets steaming with dissipated heat, practically glowing in the smoke that filled the room.
Their armor. Their Black Hand armor.
"Did you know?" Lakatos whispered. The lead mutant nodded.
"Nikander warned us," he said.
"Who's Nikander?"
He didn't answer, and she decided not to press it further, and looked to see her arm was still intact, though most of the ceramic had sloughed off. Dehaven and Kizier were both dead, if their melted bodies didn't make that glaringly obvious. Williams had somehow survived unscathed, but when Lakatos asked for her condition, she didn't react. She simply stared at the burned bodies of her other Raiders and the other GDI soldiers, not moving a muscle or saying a word.
"Williams?" Lakatos croaked, unable to muster her voice to speak any louder. When Williams didn't reply, she crawl-walked over, only to hear a series of repeated whispers.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
Lakatos gave one final check and left her colleague behind and followed the Forgotten in the room that Black Hand had nearly killed them all for. It was a lab room like the one at the previous base, and stock standard lab equipment lay around, although some of their odd tubes and spikes still looked cut straight from science fiction. Additional computer screens displayed more error messages, thought a careful analysis would reveal they were in the final throes of a data purge.
She didn't notice the prisoners at first, about a dozen ragged mutants in ceramic-lined chains, and missed the heartfelt reunion with the mutant soldiers, as the creak of a door opening sent her into combat mode – and she charged straight into a white-haired man, punching him into the wall with a bone-cracking impact. Lakatos clenched her first. How easy it would be to grab his neck and-
"I surrender! We surrender!" the man gasped for breath, and only then did Lakatos notice three other people, also dressed in lab coats but much younger, recoiling away from her. Lab assistants, perhaps? She released her grip, and the scientist she pinned spoke again. "Don't kill me! I have - information! I can help!"
"Ma'am," one of the assistants asked, in a very respectful tone. "You will treat us as prisoners of war, right?"
Kizier burning to death, screaming louder than she had ever spoken in her life.
Dehaven's missing face and body, torn apart by her own grenades.
Williams slumped over, rendered catatonic by a few seconds of horror.
Part of her wanted to put her sonic grenade launcher in the lead scientist's mouth and fire. The shell wouldn't explode immediately; he would have a few lucid moments to realize he was a dead man before his head would resemble a microwaved egg. Instead, she backed off a moment and reported the status of the mission.
"Fireteam Bravo-Two to Command, we've secured the command center." Lakatos called, quieter than usual. Fireteam? What fireteam did she have left?
"Confirmed," the Colonel's voice answered. "Detain all personnel and prepare them for retrieval."
As the mutants secured their people and wrecked the lab, she grabbed the lead scientist by his collar and marched him and his pathetic fellows outside. At the front entrance where she emerged, the MARV sat parked a short distance away, apparently inert – until its turret rotated and pointed its cannon straight at the group. Lakatos froze up until a hatch on the front opened and two men jumped out, both armed with carbines.
"Who are they?" the lead scientist said, but Lakatos recognized both of the tankers. Even with green goggles on, the eyes of the former POWs screamed bloody murder.
"Don't remember us?" Major Korhonen growled at the new Nod prisoners, whose faces began to pale.
"Wait, please, you don't need to-" the scientist asked, before Korhonen smashed the butt of his carbine into the scientist's face, waited for him to look up, then hit him again even more forcefully, knocking him into the ground. Korhonen then planted his boot on the man's neck and arimed his carbine.
"Because I remember you," Korhonen continued. "And what you did to us."
"I'm a scientist!" he groaned. "Everything I did was for the better. You have to understand!"
"I understand you took away and killed a dozen of my men. And broadcast their dying screams to make the rest of us break sooner."
"That was an experiment! A wrongful experiment, yes, but - ahh!"
That scream came from Korhonen slowly pushing a huge, diamond-pointed knife into his shoulder. Lakatos hoped he wouldn't cut any of the arteries. That would make her job much harder.
"Besides!" the scientist yelped. "It wasn't just me!"
"Speak faster, I'm not done with this knife."
"There was my boss. She's really in charge. In charge of it all."
"The woman?" Lakatos didn't miss the shift in tone, to someone listening very carefully.
"Yes! Yes! You saw her too! She's the one who ordered me to do everything! All of it!"
"How convenient to blame the missing boss." Korhonen's voice went back to its usual bitterness, and he twisted the knife. "The woman can wait. You're full of shit, and I'm going to empty it all out."
"What are you doing?" one of the Nod assistants demanded to Korhonen, stepping in front of him and actually pushing him off the downed scientist. "We surrendered! You have to treat us with some dignity!"
Korhonen answered by drawing his pistol and shooting her twice in the face. A bit of eyeball landed on Lakato's grenade launcher.
"So did we," Korhonen said to the headless corpse. "Look where that got us."
Liang was dispassionately observing the rude interaction between the Major and prisoners, wondering whether to interfere before any more people were executed, or let the self-admitted perpetrator of the atrocities suffer a little longer, as he very much deserved. Then a second video screen popped up on his command computer, "source unknown" according to EVA.
"I think your Major will kill him, if he hasn't died of fright already," Matilda commented. "That saves you and I both the work."
Once more, his sister had somehow set up a personal connection to him. Taslimi was out of the room debriefing several Orca pilots and Kama was out seeing the wounded, leaving Liang alone to face her. Perfect timing as usual.
"Matilda!" Liang snapped. "Did you know about this? What was going on here and in the other lab?"
"What do you think?" Matilda rolled her eyes at him. "I told you already, aside from commanding my division, my speciality is Tiberium weapons research. I don't have time to poke people's eyes out for fun."
"If you're lying to me-"
"I'm not, which is why I didn't mind leaving this base to rot when your MARV came in. Let your soldiers have their fun. We have something more important to discuss."
"What now?"
"I want to give you one more chance."
"To join Nod?"
"Yes. My promise is the same – fair treatment and a safe place with me, away from GDI's prying eyes and predictable vengeance."
"Then my answer is the same: hell no." Liang looked back upon the shattered base his MARV had leveled, wondering how much value, if any, did Matilda have for this place, or the people inside. How much was she willing to lose for a chance at him? Was he really that valuable? He also didn't fully believe her denial about knowing the crimes inside, and the Major had mentioned something about a woman being present for the crimes against the POWs.
She sighed, shaking her head. "I should have taken you alive at Lake Havasu and conversed later. I was too optimistic then. I don't know why I'm giving you one last chance, but I hope you at least appreciate it."
"Was that supposed to persuade me? I'll say it again: hell no. Now tell me something I don't know, or get out of my sight."
She looked almost offended at his outburst, but went on. "Look, without a civil agreement, I know how this ends - with a lot of dead people, and one of us in the other's custody. Either I'll capture you, or you'll capture me. If you just take the time to think, it's still the same outcome – us having a proper conversation, no stray commandos to interrupt. It's up to you how many people will die before we have this conversation."
"And what makes you think I'd even take you alive? I burned down this base with a MARV, and if we ever fight again, I won't hold back. I could bury you and let the Earth spit you up next century."
Her eyebrows shot up in alarm. "I called to talk, not make base threats. Besides, you're in no place to threaten me."
"Don't be sure of that."
"Think, Connor, think. Why don't you think more? If you kill me, think of what it will cost you, and what you'll have left. I found my answer a long time ago, and you better have yours soon."
With that, she closed the call, a second before Taslimi stepped back in the command room. Before Taslimi could say a word, Liang began to pour everything out.
"I need help," Liang started, still looking at the blank screen, mired in confusion and sheer frustration at his ridiculous situation. "There's something very important I need to tell you. Something I've been keeping from you."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's a Nod commander. She's been talking to me."
Taslimi frowned, taking a seat right next to Liang. "Who?"
"Do you remember the commander who taunted us at Las Vegas? When we were attacking the roads with the Mammoth battalion, a Nod commander called us."
"That woman with Tib weapons, right. What about her?"
"Yes." Liang struggled with what to say next, before settling on the simplest truth. "She's my little sister."
Taslimi's expression ran from surprise to shock to horror in a moment. Liang tried to explain himself, and the explanation, pent up for weeks, spilled out in full.
"Her name is Matilda. She's three years younger than me. I thought she died in the South Australia Disaster, but the Black Hand must have picked her up, because they turned her into a die-hard Nod fanatic. She's also the same one who coordinated the Lake Havasu insurrection and tried to take me alive. And possibly the same person who oversaw these 'research' facilities."
"I knew there was something up." He stood up, tapping his feet against the floor. "You've been acting weirder than usual since we deployed out here. But your sister? Really?"
"Yeah. Really." Liang slumped in his chair, awaiting judgment.
"Well, all right." Taslimi stood up. "That doesn't change a thing. You're the Colonel, you call the shots, and so long you keep us alive, I don't care who we're fighting."
"What? Shouldn't you be outraged? Furious?"
"I am! For not telling anyone earlier. Now that I know… well, Liang, what does it really change? Come on. We're still hunting a dangerous Nod leader. We'd still like to take her alive to face justice. And because you and I command the best regiment in the Yellow Zone, we're going to make it happen."
Liang had thought Taslimi might try to relieve him, or arrest him, or any of the punishments deserved for a commander who withheld vital information like this. "I owe you one," he admitted, settling back in his seat.
Taslimi energetically shook his head. "You owe me a lot more than one. Because I have a lead on her."
"First – thank you. Second – what do you mean?"
"I came in here to tell you that an Orca detected an enemy air group on long-range radar heading north, and I took a second look at the data. It's a convoy of Venoms and Carryalls, maybe battalion-sized, on their way towards Utah. I only confirmed it because they beamed a precise transmission to this base, communicating with someone here. From what you just told me, that must have been your sister."
"Sounds like it. I think that's how she talked to me before."
"Then let's make sure we're ready to track her down. I'll make sure the regiment is ready for immediate air transport."
"To stop her?"
"Of course. Wherever she's going, we should be prepared to follow." Taslimi paused. "If that convoy is going north…"
Liang nodded. "What the hell is up north?"
An hour later, General Parnell was looking at the answer, and didn't like it one bit.
"Malmstrom AFB." He sucked in his breath. "Shit. I should've guessed."
"That's the nuclear base, isn't it?" Vachon sat up straight.
"It is. Goddamn Black Hand are always after my WMDs." Parnell pulled up an image of the base through his EVA unit, and briefly appreciated the icon of the GDI Global Strike Command before snapping back to his awful reality – of a division-sized force of the Nod elite assembling to attack the storage site for nuclear missiles. Though the Council had sworn off the use of nuclear weapons decades ago, GDI still retained over eight hundred warheads of varying payloads, just in case the Council changed their minds, one hundred of which were located in Malmstrom.
"What do we have in reserve?" Vachon asked, leaning into the nearest monitor, which displayed the estimated time of arrival of the Black Hand strike force: three hours.
"Not much," Parnell said. In the past twenty four hours alone, he'd dealt with:
One, a major armor attack led by upgraded Avatars that was only blunted through the orbital drop of a Zone Trooper platoon. More than half of the Troopers were killed or wounded in the long, vicious battle that followed and Parnell hoped Orbital Command wouldn't hold the losses against him.
Two, an insurrection in the town of Baker that overran the GDI garrison in an hour and hung a dozen captured riflemen on the main street. He'd sent a mechanized infantry battalion to pacify the town, with rules of engagement set to the bare minimum.
Three, a pack of Stealth Tanks that had already demolished a ten-truck supply convoy and threatened the entire Interstate Ten highway. He'd deployed multiple Pitbull and Orca patrols to sweep the road, but they had yet to turn up anything save for landmines.
Four, an upset stomach from undercooked rations that made him feel as if someone was sliding a piece of hot shrapnel in and out of his gut every ten minutes. It wasn't exactly as 'dangerous' as the actual Nod attacks but it made him feel just as bad.
Now, crisis number five. With this imminent attack at Malmstrom, Parnell was facing the possibility of losing nuclear weapons to Nod. This blew his previous problems out of the water. The enemy had never assaulted a Yellow Zone nuclear base before; those bases were armed to the teeth and designed to slaughter anything that so much thought of trespassing. That a Nod army in this theater were preparing to assault Malmstrom could only mean pure desperation for their situation or incredible contempt for him. He hoped it was the former.
But maybe it was the latter, as all of the previous attacks had left him stretched in ten different directions, leaving him with a badly depleted reserve. Most of his infantry units were too heavily spread out to muster in time, and his armored division, savaged in the battle at Hopi, was far from full strength. Even as heavily upgraded Mammoths rolled out the war factories in San Diego and San Francisco, even as veteran crews from North Africa and Brazil were flown in daily to replace his losses, he needed something now: at least a regiment of reasonable strength and the transport ability to reach the distant nuclear base. With those lofty parameters in mind, Parnell searched for any unit that might fit the bill.
In seconds, EVA had pulled up a match: the ZOCOM 9th Regiment, commanded by Colonel C. Liang and Lieutenant Colonel R. Taslimi. Personnel strength: just under eighteen hundred, typical for a ZOCOM regiment save for an attached tank company. They were also already preparing themselves for air transport. Whether they had some intel Parnell lacked or simply were on high alert, Parnell didn't know and didn't care.
"Get me a line to that regiment," Parnell ordered. He thought for a moment what hell awaited them, but put away the thought for now. All he needed now were their lives, and the time they would buy.
Author's Note: After a tad too long, welcome back to Under the Shadow!
We're now on the cusp of a very important battle, which I've been teasing for far too long. Admittedly, I can't say for certain if I can keep a consistent publishing schedule as before, but I remain committed to finishing this story with quality chapters. Stay tuned!