Under the Shadow: Broken Arrow


May 24, 2047

Near Las Vegas, Yellow Zone Y-6

Waiting inside his field command post, General Parnell recited the sequence in his head again and again, a sequence of numbers that many people would be willing to die for if only they knew they existed. Zero-one, two-nine, one-nine-nine-five. Zero-one, two-nine, one-nine-nine-five. How innocuous they seemed otherwise, but with them, Parnell possessed a power greater than his armored corps.

"What are you saying?" Vachon interrupted his thoughts, and he sat up a little in the dim light, the main room all but empty save for him and his second in command.

"Did I say that out loud?" Parnell frowned. It wasn't as if he distrusted Vachon in that sense, but he figured he'd best sleep soon if he were reciting military secrets out loud.

"You did," Vachon replied. "Are those numbers important?"

"They're codes. GDI nuclear codes, that is."

"I… what?" Vachon paused. "Nuclear codes?"

"Correct. Colonel Liang says it's the only way he can deny Nod Malmstrom's nukes."

"He wants to scrap Malmstrom's arsenal? Has he lost already?"

"Not scrap. Detonate."

Vachon paused, then completely froze for a moment. Parnell was glad he had a full view of her shocked face, a deer-in-headlights look if he'd ever seen one. It was a look he would remember for years.

"Excuse me?" she finally uttered.

"As a last resort, that is. Perhaps I should have said that earlier. If he's overrun, he'll detonate a nuke, which will destroy the rest within Malmstrom's bunkers. Considering his options, it's a desperate but effective strategy."

"Wouldn't that destroy his regiment, too?"

"Of course it would."

Vachon paused again, the plan coming together in her mind. "What about the Council?" she said. "We need to tell the Council about any possible nuclear weapon use."

"Absolutely not," Parnell replied instantly. "I'll tell them myself if that nuke goes off or is lost. Until then, we keep this in the dark – because I am staking everything on the Colonel not needing to detonate that nuke. Not a word of this goes out. Am I clear?"

Vachon bit her lip, but evidently understood. "Very well."

Parnell was fairly certain there was already enough evidence against him to get his stars stripped and himself thrown into prison, and he suspected it was only due to Mitchell's considerable influence with Director Boyle that it hadn't happened yet. This nuclear trick, if revealed, would all but force the Council's hand.

When the colonel called him again, Parnell was ready. Vachon quietly observed.

"You go first, sir," Liang said.

Parnell had long committed the codes to memory. "Unlock code authorization, W87: zero-one, two-nine, one-nine-nine-five."

"System unlocked," the attached EVA unit for the nuke chirped, in an ancient monotone that probably dated from the First Tiberium War, back when America handed over control of its nuclear arsenal to GDI rather than let Nod possibly acquire them, like they had with so many conventional American weapons. To ensure the nukes' security, the President's authority was negated and replaced by a GDI chain of command – one that Parnell, as theater commander, technically headed for Malmstrom. It was a fine technicality, and he wasn't sure how the Colonel had heard of it, but if it was going to prevent Nod from getting their dirty hands on nukes, his career was a small price to pay.

Next was his personal authorization, where a vocal analyzer and retinal scan data transmitted to the base confirmed his identity. He spoke slowly and carefully, not daring to make a mistake now – even one would lock down the nukes. "Primary authority, theater commander: Lieutenant General Robert Parnell, GDI Army, 9th Armored Corps."

Liang's voice was next, swift and crystal clear without a trace of doubt.

"Secondary authority, base commander: Colonel Connor Liang, Zone Operations Command, 9th Regiment."

"Authority registered," the EVA acknowledged. "Primary authority, please provide EAM."

"Emergency Action Message: Code Silver," Parnell said, his authorization for a limited tactical strike, the only authorization he had. And would most certainly lose if the Council caught wind of this operation.

"Authorized. Arming sequence commencing. Ready to detonate on command."

"It's ready," the Colonel confirmed. "Thank you, sir."

Parnell closed the link first, and leaned back against his chair. If he had such an opportunity in South Australia, denying the Black Hand their liquid Tiberium prize at the cost of his battalion, he would have taken it in a heartbeat. How could he have known they meant to detonate it all along, though?

So this battle was different…. Well, it had to be. Because Parnell would never let history repeat itself.


The final attack came four hours later and was as ferocious as Colonel Liang could have expected. A time-on-target artillery barrage cleaved the southern frontline while Avatars led newly-arrived infantry, further augmented with more Confessor officers than ever before. This was not an attack that could or would back down.

While every battalion of his depleted regiment crawled back into position, trying to ignore the unburied corpses and ruined tanks all around, Liang watched his engineers make the final touches to his trump card. The nuke – or more accurately, its outer casing – was a dark green cone about his height and size. Now it was lined with a mess of wires and cables that made it look like a Frankenstein's monster, only exponentially more destructive.

Through his peripheral vision, he noticed a few more life signs blip to zero before his engineers declared the weapon ready and handed him the detonator, a repurposed C4 trigger used across the world in GDI, Nod, and irregular armies alike. Taslimi took over command for a minute when Liang headed for the base's private comms room, clutching the detonator tightly behind his back, and next hooking up Matilda's satellite phone from Yuma to the main screen. After entering the passcode, he spoke gently into the receiver.

"Matilda. I have something for you."

She instantly appeared on the bunker's main screen, her eyes flickering with pride. The background was somewhat blurred out, but it was definitely a Nod command center, probably close to the frontline. Good, Liang thought.

"Connor. Finally. Is it a white flag?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Before I show you, can I ask two questions?"

"If you think you're stalling for time, you're not. So go ahead. Ask me anything."

"Would you have ever joined GDI?"

She pursed her lips before replying. "Don't think yourself high and mighty for joining GDI. They reached you first after South Australia, like the Black Hand reached me first. That's all it came down to, to be realistic about it."

Liang sighed. He expected as much. "Second question: what will you do with my regiment if you win?"

"When, you mean. I'll take them prisoner, then send them off to Phoenix or wherever else my boss tells me to."

The girl with blue Tiberium in her leg came to Liang's mind again, along with Major Korhonen and the other rescued armored crews' horrible treatment in those "detention facilities". But Matilda went on talking.

"Anyways, what do you have for me? A present, perhaps?"

"No." Liang raised the detonator into view. Matilda frowned.

"What's that? Some magic trick? I don't fall for them any more, you know."

"Oh, this is much better than magic. This is the control switch to a five hundred kiloton W87 nuclear warhead. Thanks to an emergency authorization by General Parnell and modifications by my engineers, it is ready to detonate on my command. When I hit the trigger, it'll wipe out Malmstrom's bunkers and everything inside."

Matilda's jaw dropped. "You're bluffing."

"Want to bet on that?" Liang tapped his thumb on the trigger. Matilda shook her head, opening and closing her mouth several times before speaking.

"Are you insane?" she said. "You'd blow up your entire regiment!"

"Well, if you take one more step into this base, I'm pushing the button. It'd be a shame to come back empty handed, wouldn't it? That's even assuming you're out of the blast zone, which I doubt."

"You… you wouldn't dare!"

"You're welcome to bet."

"Then do it!" she suddenly screamed, making Liang slightly jump, his thumb just avoiding the trigger. "Blow yourself and your whole miserable regiment to hell! You're all talk and hot air when the time comes to make a hard choice!"

Liang took a deep breath, making sure to look at her dead in the eye when he next spoke. "Why don't you give yourself a minute to think about it? After all, this" – Liang waved the detonator in the screen's center – "isn't going anywhere. Neither am I."

He set the detonator into his jacket and closed the connection, heading back to the command bunker. Now for the moment of truth. If Matilda didn't believe him, if she overran him within hours or minutes as expected, was he ready to push the button?

Yes, he realized in surprisingly little time. This was his only choice. Setting off the nuke would demolish the rest of the arsenal, akin to scuttling a flagship or burning a cache of priceless intel. He would annihilate his regiment too, obviously, but ZOCOM was no stranger to horrendous casualties. It would be a worthy act that GDI would appropriately mourn and avenge in good time, because there was no way they would lose the war, partially due to Nod's paucity of superweapons: a paucity Liang would enforce with his life.

He arrived back at the command bunker to Taslimi giving the most pained smile he had ever seen his best friend offer.

"They're retreating," Taslimi said, next keying his communications to reflect some inter-squad dialogue.

"Enemy forces are retreating! We got them on the run, sir!"

"Yeah! Run, you fucking cowards!"

Liang laughed. If only his soldiers knew exactly why Nod was retreating. But he needed to take full advantage of the respite.

"We need to consolidate what we can, while we have the time. Get the convalescent back onto the line, and make sure everyone has enough ammo," he ordered. "She's not going to take this lying down."

Taslimi nodded. "What do you think she'll try? Shadow Teams? A Commando? Anything in the line can be a target, – the nuke, detonator, or yourself."

"Then move the nuke to the command bunker. I'll never be more than a few paces away, and that'll simplify security too."

"You want to work and sleep next to a nuke? I can't see a problem with that." Taslimi deadpanned. "For my future kids, I'll be in the next room over."


Parnell looked up from his map and deeply exhaled as the Black Hand division withdrew. He was deeply impressed by the Colonel's decision to risk destroying his regiment with a nuclear warhead, following his orders to buy time as well as anyone could have asked. That creativity and daring was what the Steel Talons were all about. It would have made Mitchell proud: he made a mental note to report the whole truth to his old mentor at the first chance possible.

Departing the command room, he was suddenly struck with a burst of inspiration, and called a staff car to bring him to the regiments' staging area. After a five-minute drive, he got out to survey the scene: a field of almost two hundred Predator Tanks and more than two thousand infantry, the reinforcing regiments to be deployed to Malmstrom the moment the skies were clear.

Most of the tanks were outfitted with railguns, the wicked black barrels soaking all light of the afternoon sun, plus secondary missile pods for support duty. At the far edge of the field, twelve Orca Dropships were loaded up with infantry: a fully-loaded company fit in each of their cavernous cargo holds, presently left open for ventilation's sake. He imagined most of the infantrymen were playing cards or otherwise idling. The Steel Talons' best poker players came from the QRF, after all.

But as he approached the tankers, they began to stand and salute; some even cheered him. With a welcome like that, Parnell kknew he had to at least say hello. He decided he could spare a few moments to begin chatting with the crews, and as he did and moments turned into full minutes, memories of his Titan commander days came rushing back. It was strange, listening to all his men's stories. He had read hundreds of books detailing the stories of men going to war, from ancient Greece to the Tiberium Wars, but so rarely talked to his own. Perhaps that could change now.

A sergeant showed off a double-barreled Gatling cannon lifted from some old Chinese arsenal, with similar weapons attached to the other Predators of his company. With their Gatlings, railguns, and missile pods, that company looked ready for anything.

At the next, the crew offered him a tour of their vehicle, and Parnell, more bemused than anything, accepted their offer, climbing inside through the tight hatches and listening to the eager commander describe his vehicle as if it were an unruly child: an exceedingly deadly child, but one needing naptime and entertainment all the same.

Parnell didn't fail to notice that painfully few of these men were originally Steel Talons. Most of the surviving ex-Steel Talons, depleted after the hard fighting across California and the Yellow Zone, volunteered to drop into Malmstrom, and Parnell was all too aware of what was happening there.

Many of the crews here hailed from the 56th Armored, which had driven Nod from Brazil and the Amazon Desert. Good tankers respected each other anywhere, and it Parnell had gained a reputation among the GDI armored corps as someone who got shit done, some forgivable defeats and bad incidents aside. Hence, the cheering that made his heart all warm and fuzzy, not that he'd admit it to anyone.

He wasn't sure how long he was talking, or to use the formal term, "inspecting" the soldiers here – at least twenty minutes – but when an alert suddenly buzzed at his wrist, he quickly excused himself to hear the words he had been waiting for the past two days.

"The air lane is open," Vachon told him. He had never been so happy to hear her, and quickly broadcast the long-awaited order to his waiting regiments.

"Commence operation!"

At once, crews scrambled to secure what little they had remaining outside their Predators as V-35s pushed their engines to startup. The Orca Dropships began to seal their cargo doors as the soldiers hurriedly packed their cards and re-checked their rifles. Stepping away and covering his ears as the sounds of preparation reached a crescendo, Parnell looked to the north. In three hours, victory would be his.

It was up to the Colonel now.


Over some fitful hours punctuated by artillery harassment, Liang had managed to get some spurts of sleep next to his nuke. His few lucid moments were spent reflecting on his sister's words.

"GDI reached you first after South Australia, like the Black Hand reached me first."

After the explosion, after almost everyone in his hometown was dying from Tiberium fallout, he had cowered in his house until a team of armored GDI troopers knocked on his door, offering a hand and an environmental survival mask. Would he have opened the door to Nod troopers? Maybe. And then what? He didn't dwell on it further.

"You're all talk and hot air when the time comes to make a hard choice!"

Not true, as he had just proved. That admission of victory did little to settle his shaking hands, but he managed to sit upright in the command room, his eyes glued to the screen that showed minimal enemy activity – all thanks to his gambit. In the meanwhile, he received a few more drop pods of Zone infantry and medical supplies, and no Phantom fighters rose to intercept them.

He'd fallen asleep again when a firm hand landed on his shoulder.

"Get out of this room, or it'll drive you insane," Taslimi muttered into his ear. "Or sick, or dead."

"You sure?" Liang looked at Taslimi's deep-sunken eyes; the same look went for every other soldier in the room. Lieutenant Colonel Mebarki was exhibit two – her hair was a mess of brown dried blood and white ash. After nearly losing her hearing, and life, when blasted by a mortar shell, she'd moved into the bunker full-time.

"I am sure." Taslimi kept his voice low enough to avoid others eavesdropping, with the ambient hum and buzz of the still-active room. "You need to relax."

"Not anymore than you. I'm all right."

"You're on the verge of cracking. I can see it, Sergeant Kama can see it, and I think almost everyone else here can too. Come on. Let's get something to eat, at least."

"All right. All right." Liang tried to get up, and almost lost his balance, nearly falling back into his chair. At the crash and shift, he suddenly felt many eyes on him, but tried to ignore them.

He couldn't ignore what he saw in the base halls, however: a barely controlled frenzy of movement, of soldiers running back and forth moving ammunition and fuel and the wounded from room to room. Some personnel stopped to salute him, and those that did regarded him with a hard, careful gaze expected of any siege survivor. He wasn't so much a commander to them as he was a fellow fugitive, united by shared crushing experience rather than the strictly defined chain of command.

There was a kinship in here, one that Liang had often dreamed about in his younger days, experienced well enough in the first months of war, but now… now he regretted, to some extent. The price for this brotherhood was too high. What value could the band of brothers have for orphans?

The walk to the base cafeteria took less time than he imagined, and then he was sitting down, with an unappetizing plate of bean curd, brown rice, and ketchup set in front of him. Taslimi began wolfing down the same meal, but Liang hesitated.

"What are you thinking about?" Taslimi asked.

"How did we get here? I mean, look at us. Can you believe it? Not even three months ago, we were just working in a Red Zone. It was dangerous, sure, but not like this. Never like this, with my damn family all tangled up too." Taslimi paused eating, but let Liang continue. "I'm trying to remember what Mitchell told me, all those weeks ago. When you care for your people, you do not discount the possibility of sacrificing them, I think. But what worries me is that I didn't use these lives well: not my regiment, not the black talons, not anyone. If we lose, that nullifies everything I've done."

"We haven't lost yet," Taslimi pointed out immediately. "We've still got the nuke. Which was your idea."

"We haven't won yet either," Liang replied.

Taslimi let that thought hang, and Liang waited for his reply.

"Hell, I'd stop worrying. Every other officer in ZOCOM, if not all of GDI and even Nod, has had to have thought something similar. So instead focus on what we do best: winning the ZOCOM way. Because so far, we've been doing just that."

"Sure." Liang remained a little unconvinced. Taslimi could evidently see as much.

"Look at us. We held off a fucking Black Hand division for two days. I don't know any other ZOCOM regiments with that claim to fame. We're holding, and reinforcements are already on their way, and in a few hours, we will be flying home as heroes. Well deserved heroes, at that, because the first thing I'm doing when I'm back in San Diego is recommending a dozen soldiers here for the Medal of Honor, and maybe put us all in for a Director's Unit Citation while I'm at it."

Liang hadn't even considered that. "You'd do that, really?"

"Damn right I will. Gotta make myself useful somehow."

Liang tried to smile, and his lips barely curved. It didn't last as a shouted warning sent a tsunami of ice through his veins.

"Sir! A stealth alarm just went off inside!" a soldier cried out.

"Inside? Where?" Liang and Taslimi leaped to their feet, their carbines out in an instant, fingers already tapping against triggers.

"Command center!"

Liang scrambled away. Taslimi muttered something about 'fucking stealth' and followed him, with two riflemen leading the way. When they reached the doors of the command center, Liang saw a subtle distortion of light in the adjacent hall.

"There!" he snapped, spraying down range. Most of the bullets harmlessly cracked against the reinforced walls, but a single one glanced against a shimmer – a Nod Commando. No one else could have possibly infiltrated the bunkers.

"Find her, and take her down!" he demanded.

The riflemen and Taslimi scrambled forward, some of them firing quick single shots. Liang sprinted back to the command room – and the first thing he noticed was how the wiring of the nuke was completely shorn off, cut into smoking ribbons, with the warhead itself lying completely inert. The command systems were also almost completely destroyed, slashed into pieces or shattered. And then, he realized none of the staff were alive, most of them victims of high-power laser fire. At his feet, Lieutenant Colonel Mebarki laid dead, a cauterized gash on her neck and a broken shotgun to her right.

Liang looked up at the only intact command computer left to see dozens of red markers converging onto the base. Taslimi stepped inside and froze at the carnage.

"My trick ran its shelf life," Liang pointed out. "Did you get the Commando?"

"No," Taslimi admitted, averting his gaze at the corpses. "I considered locking down the halls, but the hospital was too close by. I couldn't risk trapping her in there."

Liang shook his head. "Nevermind that, we have a bigger problem."

"Fully agreed." Taslimi reloaded his carbine. "What's the plan?"

No ground given, only blood taken. That was what Liang said when the battle began, when admonishing his troops to hold the line. That had to change, he realized now. In less than an hour, GDI tanks would land and sweep the field. So if he retreated into the bunker system now, Nod's armor and aircraft would be essentially useless. It might take more time for the Black Hand to bring in their flamethrowers and other room-clearing weapons. And knowing their nuclear prize was so close, the enemy would have to be extra careful overall – that caution would slow them down. A tactical withdrawal might buy him that hour.

"We fall back," Liang decided. "We have to fall back into the tunnels. I'll issue the order. Make sure everyone follows it – and make sure they understand this isn't a retreat."

His mind flashed back to the dusk hours on Laguna Mountain, watching his troops flee from overwhelming attack, the green soldiers too terrified to think about the wider collapse they nearly caused. Here, that would not happen.

So Liang issued his orders and his troops began to scramble back inside in relatively good order. Despite the loss of his staff and command computers, Liang managed to establish links with surviving platoon and company commanders, giving him a reasonably accurate count and disposition of his troops. According to the numbers, he was at about sixty percent effective strength, much of that provided by the walking wounded.

He had little time to appreciate them, though. In less than ten minutes, proximity alerts to Malmstrom's tunnel system began sounding.

"Regiment, prepare for close combat," Liang ordered. He looked east upon the rising sun through one of the last security cameras intact. It was a beautiful morning, he reflected, the sight of its golden rays shining across the barren lands of Great Falls. He wondered if Matilda would ever let him see the sun, if he were taken alive. Probably not, he figured. Then again, would he let her ever see the sun if their roles were reversed? Definitely not.

With that, the soldiers of his regiment began their most hellish fight yet. Black Hand vanguards set up breaching charges and tried to storm in, as GDI troopers retaliated with grenades, claymore mines, and sonic barriers. Dozens of men died before they took a single step inside Malmstrom's interior, the base proving its defensive worth to the bitter end.

Not that the Black Hand were deterred in the slightest. They assaulted more entryways, brought extra flamethrowers and thermobaric grenades, and slowly pushed the ZOCOM troops back, who brought a little more time by activating fire extinguishers and wall-mounted sentry guns. In response, Nod began cutting power across the base. Combined with his rising officer losses, it made Liang increasingly blind and deaf as the battle progressed.

He lost track of Colonel Guindo soon, cut off in a secondary armory as several thermobaric grenades were tossed inside. The room completely collapsed and no survivors were reported. Only minutes later, Colonel Laurent demanded that Liang seal him and two rifle squads in an armory to stall three teams of Black Hand. Liang agreed, perhaps too quickly, but he had no real choice. Neither did Laurent, perhaps.

Through more final stands and redundant security systems, his regiment managed to buy minutes, and sometimes seconds. When a whole company was cut off from communications, Taslimi volunteered to go out and find them – Liang hesitated but let his friend go, hoping it wouldn't be for the last time.

It also left him completely alone as the enemy pressed even closer to the nuclear storage and his own command post, deserted as it was. Then a proximity alarm only ten meters away suddenly sounded. One of the few remaining security cameras revealed two walking wounded riflemen on guard gunned down, then the cameras were shot.

Liang didn't need that camera anymore to know that an enemy squad was headed straight for him, and grabbed a semiautomatic shotgun in response. Hiding behind a console as he heard of the echo of incoming footsteps, Liang aimed forwards, his finger already beginning to apply a little force to the trigger.

"Come on," he muttered. "Come and kill me."

The door exploded open with a blinding flash and he squeezed his eyes shut, blindly sticking his shotgun out and firing semi-automatic into the breach. Screams sounded from the other end, then gunfire – but nothing hit him.

"Colonel Liang!" a familiar voice urgently shouted, a tiny voice that rapidly grew much deeper as Liang's own hearing came back and he lowered the shotgun.

"Master Sergeant?" Liang had never been so relieved to hear Kama.

"It's me! Are you all right, Colonel?"

"Yeah, I am!" He stood up and walked out of his cover, where Kama and several other armored riflemen stood over eight fallen Nod soldiers. "What about you?"

Somebody shouted a warning, and out of Liang's peripheral vision, he only just noticed one of the bloodied Nod soldiers raising a grenade. Liang was tackled to the floor before he could open his mouth, the pressure wave washing over him. When he came to a moment later, he clenched his fists and moved his toes, relieved that he could still feel all his digits. He then felt his sergeant shielding him – and saw Kama's metal leg blown away, shredded by the grenade.

"You saved my life," Liang said dumbly.

"I hope so," Kama replied, shifting away and letting Liang rise to his feet.

"If this is where we die," Liang began. "I'm glad it's with you all."

"Likewise, sir," Kama replied. Liang and a rifleman propped Sergeant Kama up against a wall. Several fresh spurts of gunfire caused the little group to reach for their weapons anew, but when they'd stared for a few awkward moments, the gunfire having faded and no signs of incoming Nod troops, they lowered their guard – for about three seconds before Taslimi's urgent voice sounded in Liang's earpiece.

"Colonel, come in!"

"Taslimi?! What's going on?"

"I've found the cut off group but the nuclear storage is compromised! Saboteurs are breaking into one of the rooms now! They have some specialized vehicle with them – whatever it is, they're in place to start hauling those nukes out of here!"

Liang bit back some curses. "Okay, who's left? And where are you?"

"I'm in a maintenance hatch, about two halls away. About forty of these soldiers are combat capable."

A far cry from the eighteen hundred they'd started with, but Liang would have to make do. "I have an idea. What entrance did they use to access the storage room?"

"Echo, without a doubt," Taslimi answered instantly. "They took the shortest route possible. Do you want to ambush them as they exit?"

"I will. Meet me at Foxtrot. Bring everyone who can hold a rifle."

"I'm on my way."

Liang repeated the order – "All personnel in my sector, regroup at entrance Foxtrot!" – and motioned for his ragtag squad to follow. Kama stayed behind, promising to cover their backs, and this time Liang desperately hoped they would see each other again. Korhonen, at least that man was a weapon and little else, but Liang's Master Sergeant was so much more – a damn good man and an advisor like no other. Even as hundreds of GDI personnel died around them, surely Kama would survive.

Liang met up with Taslimi moments later. Taslimi's face was covered with blood, but Liang didn't think that was his – it looked more like someone had exploded nearby. Liang didn't press for answers as the other soldiers arrived, bringing him to platoon strength.

"I'll take point," Taslimi offered.

"No. I will." Liang muscled his way to the front, and looked upon his last command. For all he knew, these were literally the last men and women of his regiment. Could he still complete his mission? Could he stop his sister, source of this entire mess?

He led his group forward without a word, right to the entrance. Signs of battle littered their march: spent casings, grenade blast patterns, and too many fallen GDI troopers, some of whom begged for help. Liang left behind a few soldiers to treat them, but largely forged on. At any moment, Liang wondered if his group was about to walk into an ambush. But he reached the Foxtrot entrance unscathed, and peered out of its viewhole to see Echo, its one-ton door completely blown side. As he watched, Black Hand soldiers emerged first, most of their armor visibly damaged. A little vehicle, vaguely resembling a forklift, followed them. Four of the dark-green W87 warheads were strapped to its back.

"They're coming out now." Liang told them. "On my mark."

Coming up just behind was a lithe figure, in a hybrid lab coat and military jacket, with a black ponytail swirling behind her fast but judged movements. It was her - Matilda.

"NOW!" Liang slammed the door opening control, and his force charged forwards, dispersing towards the few available cover around, mostly destroyed GDI vehicles. Liang took cover behind a wrecked Titan, laid sideways on its hull with its legs blown off.

Opening with a volley of rifle grenades, his group killed most of the Black Hand and forced the rest to the ground, who quickly responded with accurate laser fire, his men making the same dying screams Liang had heard too often. At least someone put a missile into the nuke transport – nobody would be moving those warheads now.

"Give them hell!" Taslimi screamed to those left.

The rest of the Black Hand went down, but the shootout was attracting a hell lot of attention. While no artillery landed around them, perhaps fearful of damaging the stalled nuclear truck, multiple platoons of Nod infantry were closing in, pouring fire into the rapidly depleting number of Liang's soldiers. Even Matilda had a laser carbine out, firing disciplined bursts that would've made any range instructor proud.

A rifleman to Liang's right was beamed in the face and fell without further word. To Liang's left, Taslimi took a hit to his shoulder and fell down with a shocked cry. At that, Liang suddenly realized how precious few soldiers were left around him – the bark of their GD2 rifles was so much quieter than it had been just a minute ago.

"Keep attacking!" he shouted, but he wasn't sure if anyone could hear him.

He turned around to see one of the last riflemen fall, grasping at a burning hole cut through his composite chestplate, the rest of the armor already scourged and on the verge of falling apart.

"Surrender, GDI! You have no chance!" he heard one of the Nod troopers shout, the voice heavily amplified. Liang wanted to shoot the soldier, but a flare of exhaustion forced him to cease firing.

I'm a fucking idiot, he thought to himself. What had he really expected, trying to take on a whole division with one platoon? It was remarkable enough that he'd even gotten out of the tunnel alive. The rest of his regiment was being slaughtered and he had no right to expect a different fate.

For a moment, he took in the sight of the enemy all around him. Masses of light infantry and Confessors were already spread out in dug-in positions. Further deployed were innumerable Scorpion Tanks, with their black hulls, long-barreled 105mm cannons, and jagged dozer blades protruding out front. And a few Avatar and Purifier walkers were standing together, the ten-meter tall walkers looming over the smoldering battlefield with a presence unmatched by anything save for a Mammoth Tank or MARV.

Any sane man should have fled, weeped, or gone catatonic at the sight. But Liang refused. After all, this wasn't his first time facing a Nod army. And he believed it would not be his last, because the Nod force was already turning around to meet his salvation and their doom.

It came with a sound he'd grown familiar with first in the rising hours on Laguna Mountain: a deep, throaty growl that resembled jet engines but more grounded. And when the first flares of railgun sabots smashed into the Nod walkers, air bleeding blue from the hypersonic violations, Liang roared his approval. The lead Avatar fell, one of its legs shot out, before six more sabots not a blink apart from each other blasted off the other leg and sent it face-first into the blood-streaked earth.

The advancing Predator Tanks became a tide of armor that crashed into the Black Hand division, the open terrain a perfect place to do their grisly work, mowing down exposed men with their machine guns and launching airburst rockets against survivors. But the GDI counterattack wasn't limited to terra firma; in the utterly clear sky above, dark silhouettes resolved into Firehawks and Orcas, armored in gleaming ceramic white. Sonic barrages and firebombs rained all across the base perimeter, engulfing Nod vehicles and personnel alike in blue and orange destruction.

Liang looked to his more immediate surroundings, and what he saw satisfied him further: his sister staring alone, staring at the battlefield she'd lost.

Then a series of oval shadows fell over them, followed by the eruptions of firebombs perilously close to their position. In what felt like a bare moment later, the lead Predator burst out of the smoke, so close Liang could read the tank's kill marks: about thirty tanks and trucks, four walkers, and one… submarine? Liang wasn't sure what to make of that, even as its tracks sprayed red as it ran over a fleeing Nod trooper.

But within the flames and smoke, Liang lost track of Matilda, not that it really mattered. With GDI in control of the air and ground, escape would be impossible. Part of him wanted to go and find her and at least make sure she would be taken alive. With Parnell's tanks here, there were going to be few prisoners taken today. And he could admit to himself that he desperately wanted to talk to her and find out everything.

But, Liang decided, there was no need to. He'd won, and that was the only thing that mattered now.


A few hours later, Parnell and Vachon, under heavy escort, landed at Malmstrom. The generals had decided it'd be instructive to visit the battleground and gain some personal insights to the largest operation in the theater since the battle at Hopi.

Accompanied by several rifle squads and a GDI Commando, the duo began to walk around the perimeter first, which remained nearly as active as it had been while it was a war zone. Heavy-duty bulldozers had been shipped over to dig the mass graves for the dead Nod troops, who were briefly searched for IDs, tattoos, and other identifying features before the dozers covered them up. Parnell, looking at the miserable sight, considered that their families would never be allowed to visit their graves. There would be no flowers or coins at crosses, no little children carefully stepping along the graves of their never-seen fathers, and certainly no marble memorials to moments of valor. Just the fading echoes of over two thousand dead men.

Parnell's foot stopped on an intact head, its body nowhere to be seen, and he crouched down to get a better look. It was of an early-twenties man, judging by the light facial hair, and his face was frozen in a determined shout.

"What do you think he was doing?" Vachon asked, more curious than disgusted.

"Encouraging his fellows on." Parnell looked more closely at the expression. It might have been one of pain, come to think of it. "Or, feeling the explosion that took his head."

"Hmmm." Vachon considered it. Neither of them were strangers to death. "Speaking of, I think his body is over here."

Parnell walked over, where Vachon pointed to a headless torso and legs, clad in modern Nod body armor. It didn't provide a clue to his last actions, but the wounds were consistent with an explosion.

"Pathetic," he muttered. He despised his enemies, and he despised their ability to cause damage, as seen from the bodies of a few unburied ZOCOM troops a short distance away. With Malmstrom Base squarely in a Yellow Zone, he'd donned a Tiberium field suit almost identical to the ones they wore, and the resemblance unsettled him much more than he would have liked to admit. At least the regiment, or rather what was left of it, had been fully evacuated by now. They had earned their rest.

Though for too many, it was eternal. Parnell next approached a foxhole, where a single dead GDI sniper was sprawled on her back, facing the sky; her blank eyes were the same color as her shattered green goggles. Parnell noted that she had been shot multiple times at close range, her corpse left in a dried pool of her own blood.

Death doesn't care about appearances, his late father's words echoed. Indeed.

He and Vachon began to head inside the base perimeter, where human corpses gave way for the crushed wrecks of Predators, Titans, and Purifiers: the defining feature of his profession rendered into the hulks they were ultimately fated into.

He approached one Titan, half-buried in a massive shell crater. Its hull number and emblems had been completely burned off, and for all he knew, it could have served with him in Australia, perhaps even at the Disaster. Nearby was a disabled Predator, its front hull completely melted away by heavy laser fire, incinerated crew and components mixed together in a virtually unrecognizable mess. Most interestingly, a set of triple black talons was painted on its turret, defiantly lunging towards its final enemy.

"What are those black talons? I've seen it on the other tanks under ZOCOM command here," Vachon pointed out. "But that's not a ZOCOM emblem."

Parnell understood right away. "You're correct. It was a joke, of sorts, in the Steel Talons. As we said, the only time we'd willingly wear black, given that we were always deployed in hot climates, was to Nod's funeral: hence, black talons. A shitty joke in retrospect, but our joke nonetheless."

"I see."

He stepped closer to the dead Predator, taking a deep breath of the awful smell of burned metal and bodies. Did he know this crew once? Unlikely as it was, he felt a stirring of kinship. He loved the Steel Talons, yes, mainly because they were brutally capable warriors that had never failed him. But they also had the heart to remember a joke from thirteen years ago.

Yet he had gotten so many of them killed. Looking at this grave of sorts, he felt a surge of mixed emotion he'd suppressed for decades.

Of pride and sorrow both. Of a fierce desire to remember, to ensure what the actions here were not in vain. That he was their leader, not just their commander. That the men and women who died under his command would be remembered.

That they were only human, too.


Incoming Transmission...

Source: Taipan Six-One

Priority: Able

Scramble Index: Quebec-Kilo-3

This will be my final message. I'm about to be overrun, damn that Parnell and damn ZOCOM… But they don't know. He doesn't know…*unintelligible*... Systems delivery to Temple Prime is en route already. Tell Kane I did not fail him…*garbled*...

Now to see what GDI has in store for me… they'll take me alive, won't they…?

Transmission Offline...


Author's Note: Man, it is good to be back. I hope that you enjoyed this story arc originally inspired by C&C Rivals, and stay tuned for the next chapter!