Disclaimer: The game Command and Conquer is the property of Westwood studios and Nintendo 64. No profit is being made by this piece. The Original characters such as Duke Taggert, Eric Johnson and John Bakerman are mine so if you want to use them, please ask
Authors note: You may have noticed that the extent of the Command and Conquer technology you see in this story is a Mammoth tank. I have done this because I believe that the technology in most Command and Conquer games is stupid and too specialized to really do any good.
Now, onto the story…
Shots rang out in town 172. Nod troopers tried to make an organized retreat, but they were taking serious losses. Eric Johnson regarded the GDI troopers through the scope of his M21 rifle. The troopers did not wear rank to confuse snipers, but it was obvious who was actually in command.
The man with the M1911 was obviously an officer; he was also shouting orders to everyone in sight. He tried to run across some of the rubble, but only tripped and ended up falling to his knees. Eric centered the crosshairs on his chest and fired. The softnose round made contact with his chest and punched it out in a haze of red.
By this time he could hear the Nod CH-47 Chinook helicopters coming in to evac the Nod units in the field. An APC moved down the square, raking the Nod units. Its fifty-cal devastated the running Nod troops.
Eric aimed for the exposed gunner standing out of the roof hatch on top of the APC. He fired one 7.62 round, the softnose cut through his helmet. The man slumped and fell into the interior of the APC. The vehicle commander and the crew inside frantically shoved the man's body back up the hatch, giving Eric ample time to fire indiscriminately into the hatch and terrorize the crew inside.
The tracked APC made a slow turn and rolled back down the street to get under cover. Eric reached into his ghillie suit and came up with a fresh magazine. He slapped it into the M21 and chambered the first round. He looked back through the scope at the village. In his scope he saw a young boy dart out from around a hut and run down a rocky outcropping. His mother came around the hut and tried to chase her son out onto the rocks, but a young GDI trooper held her back. He shot the trooper through the head just as the mother drew a revolver out to try to protect herself.
Two troopers came around the corner and saw the dead GDI soldier and the mother with the revolver. They raised their M4 carbines and cut down the woman before she could explain herself. Some of the fire was sidetracked and ended up hitting the child as well. One trooper moved down to the woman's body and kicked the revolver away from her. He then looked at where the dead GDI soldier's body was and then realized that the woman could not have hit him that way from where she was standing when they found her. He looked almost directly at Eric, just as he pulled the trigger. The man took the round in the gut and went down. His partner dived behind an outcropping of rocks.
The man that had been gut shot was not dead, he lay on the ground, pleading for his friend to come and save him. His friend was obviously torn between saving his own life and going out to get his friend. Eric kept an eye on his through the sniper scope of his rifle. He saw the man's arm come around the rock, as if throwing something. A cylindrical object rolled down the rubble and began to spout thick clouds of green smoke.
Once the smoke was thick enough to block his line of sight, the trooper would dash out, save his friend and get back under cover. Eric reached up on top of the scope and hit a switch. Instantly the world through the scope was bathed in black, blues, reds, greens, etc. showing body heat. Most of the buildings were warm from being in the sun all day, but he could clearly see the trooper lying on the ground. The woman and boy's cooling bodies, and the hot smoke canister, in which a chemical reaction was taking place to make the green smoke. He watched as the unknowing trooper came out from under cover to save his friend. Eric's M21 spoke and carved a hole in the trooper's chest.
Eric slid forward on his stomach to get a better position. Once he was far enough away he stood up and walked to stretch his sore muscles. He walked to his position and then propped up his rifle and looked through the scope.
The GDI troops were clearing the houses on either side of the square. One trooper would bash the door open with a sledgehammer and then the others would move in and clear the place of any hostiles.
As he watched, a man that was obviously a commander strolled out, talking to the troops, and throwing commands around. Eric fired one round, taking the man in the chest. He then set the rifle down, ready for a lunch break.
Master Sergeant Duke Taggert peered out around the corner of the wall of the building to make sure the passage was clear of any GDI troops. When he was sure that the street was clear, he waved the Nod Buggy forward. The vehicle drove into the deserted town square, leaving tire tracks in the sand as it went.
The sun burned down of them, the Sahara desert was a wasteland with only a few villages, until 2002, when the tiberium began to appear. The tiberium had adapted to two climates, desert and woodland-grassland. At first the small towns were the only ones who claimed it, then the towns grew and got larger and richer. The Brotherhood of Nod and the Global Defense Initiative arrived at the same time. The conflicts that arose threatened to start the third world war, so the UN quickly turned the Global Defense Initiative into a military movement. It was originally all Special Forces, code named Black Ops Nine, but now included most of the regular military and reserves.
Nod had forced the villages into allegiance with them; while GDI stated that anyone found claiming loyalty to Nod would be put to death and vice versa for Nod. GDI went as far as to implement a policy put anyone processing Tiberium to death, saying that they had the right to all of the tiberium in the world.
He shook his head. That was why they were here, to destroy a GDI friendly base, but first they had to Scout it out to ensure that no more processed tiberium remained into it.
He gripped his AK-47 tightly and scanned the tops of the buildings for snipers. There was movement at one of the buildings as the village leader stepped out. Taggert's corporal stepped out to talk to the man, being the only one that spoke the rag-head language of this country.
He corporal and the man were in the middle of a heated argument. Finally his corporal shook his head, pulled the M1911 that was at his side and shot the man in his head.
Before the man's body hit the ground, sniper fire lanced out from the windows of several buildings. Taggert dived behind the Nod Buggy for cover, then returned fire with his AK-47. The M60 gunner began laying down fire from on top of the buggy.
Broken glass and splinters of wood fell from the sides of the buildings as the 7.62 by 59 rounds buried themselves into the buildings windows and the building within. The corporal fell to the ground holding open a hole the size of a baseball in his gut. A sniper had shot him. Taggert bounded over the side of the buggy and rushed out, firing as he went. He grabbed the man's combat webbing and hauled him around the side of a building.
He reached into the man's front pocket and took out the morphine injection within. He jammed in into the man's arm and saw relief in his eyes as the painkiller took effect. The man still looked around frantically as if he didn't understand what had happened and he was now beginning to cough up blood.
Taggert had done everything he could. They didn't have a squad medic; he had been killed long ago. Injecting morphine was the extent of Taggert's first aid capabilities.
Taggert dropped his clip and slipped in another as he prepared to run and take the offensive towards the buildings. He darted out zigzagging to avoid the fire from the windows. He dropped near one of the doors of the buildings and enjoyed a quick moment where he wasn't being shot at. Then the door that he was standing next to opened and the barrel of a gun poked out. Taggert took out a frag grenade and pulled the pin. The spoon flipped off and he counted to three then tossed the explosive into the door. The grenade went off with a deafening BOOM! The door blew off its hinges and hit someone that was hiding behind it.
Smoke poured out of the building and horrified screams came from inside the building. He took out another grenade and tossed it in. The second explosion silenced the screaming villagers.
He moved to the side of the door, making sure that his AK was ready to go then moved into the building. Inside, there was a half dozen mutilated bodies of villagers and shrapnel marked walls. A small fire was burning in the corner.
Taggert cleared the building, and then walked back outside. The fallen corporal was getting limited medical attention from a private that seemed to know what he was doing.
They lifted the corporal into the Nod Buggy, and then he waved the rest of his squad onto him. "We have to search this place for tiberium, so we may be here for a while if we find any tunnel networks. Find water, find food, and try to find some gasoline for the Nod Buggy. If a civilian tries to stop you, kill them.
They branched out over the village. They found a communal well and in one building they found about ten plastic gas cans full of water, stored for a drought, they figured.
Taggert marched up to one building and kicked the rickety door down and stormed in, backed up by two privates. Inside a woman went into hysterics, pleading him not to hurt her family. He ignored her and fount the door to the cellar. He checked inside of it and found that it held enough food for a few days. He closed the door and walked back up the stairs.
He stepped back into the main room and discovered a man there that he had never seen before. The man was yelling at him in his foreign language and holding up a revolver. When he saw Taggert he snapped up the revolver, but Taggert let loose a burst from his AK and sliced the man down the middle. The wife screamed and ran towards the body. Taggert emptied about fifteen rounds into the woman, spraying her internal organs and blood over every surface of the home. The woman spat out a lungful of blood and dropped down onto her husband's body.
Taggert walked outside, reloading his AK as he went. The Nod Buggy came roaring towards him. It came to a hard stop and a Private First Class got out from behind the wheel. "The civilians had a GDI issue radio. They got off a message before we could stop them."
"Damn," cursed Taggert. "Unexpected, but we will have to deal with it. They'll send a helicopter for recon and a tank or two. We can't lose this position or Nod will lose its foothold on this territory. What can we use against tanks?"
The PFC looked in the back of the Buggy. "We have two RPGs, three LAWs left and an old bazooka with five new Depleted Uranium rounds. Plus an M79 along with a few antipersonnel mines.
Taggert nodded. "That should be enough to repel anything that they can commit at first.
They moved out, setting up the traps. They stripped the M60 off the Nod Buggy and set it up in a building that could cover almost all the fields of fire. They put antipersonnel mines on all the more heavily used roads that led into the building and then a few in the square as well.
When they were finished the town was perfectly normal. They had covered all their booby traps with sand, and now they sat in the buildings, camouflaged and waiting.
It came first as a hum, then in the distance they could see as a single Bell UH-1N helicopter came in low over the desert. It came in over the buildings and hovered, creating small tornadoes of sand.
It moved overtop of the building that Taggert was on and paused. Taggert flipped open the LAW and aimed it at the base of the chopper. He pressed down on the firing button. The LAW shot out of the tube and hit the bottom of the chopper almost dead on. The pilot of the chopper tried to pull up to avoid hitting the buildings, but it was too late. The helicopters nose touched the roof of the building and went through. It exploded throwing shrapnel around Taggert. The rotor blades snapped off and were sent flying, deadly if they hit anyone.
The helicopter sunk into the building and exploded again as flames reached its fuel and ordinance tanks. Taggert was hurled off the top of the building and onto the ground below. Luckily his flak jacket took most of the impact and the fall was not that far.
Taggert got up in time to see the pilot of the helicopter stumble out of the door, on fire and screaming. Taggert pumped five rounds into him to put him down. He then darted towards another building as he saw a medium tanks approach him from over the sand dunes surrounding the town. Then, it fired. The 100mm HE shells cut into the ground in front of him, putting up huge gouts of flame and sand.
The standard GDI medium tank or the 'Leopard' as it was known before the war, was the perfect combination of firepower and mobility. The UN had taken about a thousand aging Leopards and fixed them, adding more armor and better armaments, then handing them over to GDI.
Behind the tank came an APC probably filled with troops. The tank rolled into the square just as Taggert reached the roof of the building that he was running for. A loudspeaker mounted on the front of the Medium tank exploded with sound. "Nod troops. Surrender yourselves to us and you will be treated with kindness and charity. However this option is only open to you once. Deny us and we will fight to the death."
Taggert leaned over the side of the building as troops began to disgorge from the APC. He set his AK-47 down and picked up the RPG that was on the roof. He brought it to his shoulder and fired it at the tank. The armor-piercing grenade shot out and broke through the tank's armor. The turret exploded sending shrapnel into the troops exiting the APC. Many were knocked down and rolled around on the ground, screaming in pain.
The M60 on one of the other building opened fire on the troops. The medium machine gun cut into the near-defenseless soldiers. One man stepped on a mine as he ran for cover. With a puff of compressed air, the green canister popped up and exploded, stitching several troops with red-hot shrapnel. Several men screamed that had been hit by shrapnel that did not kill them.
Taggert stood over the top of the building and raked several troops that were running for cover with his AK-47. A glance at the condition of the ground troops told him that the M60 was doing its job.
It was a slaughter. The GDI troops had almost no cover except for the APC and the still burning hulk of the tank that he had hit with the RPG.
The soldiers began to retreat, but then they panicked and ran. They were quickly cut down. The APC took off a full speed, though.
Taggert threw the rope that he had taken with him down the face of the building and then slid down it. They had to take that APC; it could further their goals or at least provide some gasoline for the travel ahead of them. As he slid to the bottom of the rope, the APC hit an anti-personnel mine. The mine exploded directly under the track and it blew the tread off of one side.
The one operating track drove the inoperable on into the ground and jammed the APC so it could not move. The Nod troopers approached it carefully and slowly. One Private climbed on top of the vehicle and opened the gunner's hatch on top. He dropped one of their grenades into the crew pit and then threw himself off. There was a violent, muffled explosion and then thick black smoke started pouring out of the hatch. The smell of chordite and burning human flesh was thick in the smoke. The crew pit was separated from the drivers control pit, so it might still be drivable if they could repair the track.
He popped the side door. In the front seat, a GDI trooper cowered, holding up a Beretta to defend himself with. Taggert reached in and hauled the man out. "Don't worry, were not going to hurt you." He said.
That made the man relax a little as they disarmed him of his weapons and combat webbing. They then pushed the man out past the town square. "Walk out two thousand paces, then you can go where you want." He said, tying a blindfold around the man's eyes.
He waited until the man was about twenty paces away, and then fired three quick rounds from his AK-47, hitting the man squarely in the back. He tumbled to the sand and did not move.
Taggert turned back to the APC where one of his men was looking at the APC's treads. "Can you fix it?" He asked.
"I think so, if we can salvage a length of track from the Medium tank. There's a repair kit in the APC so I should be okay."
"Good," he said. "We'll have to get out of here quick, when they realize that they don't have radio contact with their men, they'll send something else."