"Director Granger, with Nod in retreat across the globe, how is GDI preparing for the possibility of another invasion by the Aliens?"
"Thank you for the question, Miss Wilson. Our top scientists are already analysing the wreckage of Alien ships and technology. The hope is we can reverse engineer them to give us an advantage against the Aliens, should they make another attempt at an invasion. We've also authorised the creation of a new program, the Search for Extra–Terrestrial Hostiles, to locate emergent threats.
But most importantly, what we need to do is stay united. Our survival as a species rests on that."
- Acting Director Jack Granger, 2049
Fort Triumph, Red Zone 7
[18/5/2056]
Fort Triumph barely lived up to either part of its name. The old town centre of Toppenish sat atop a crumbling mesa. It had been surrounded with rough barricades of rebar and concrete. A collection of Port-A-Shacks were visible behind the rudimentary fortifications. The modular accommodations resembled octagonal, metallic igloos, and gave the settlement more of a resemblance to a Martian colony than any place humans might live on Earth.
Lewis surveyed the ramshackle encampment through a pair of field binoculars. The skyline of the town, as it was, was defined by smokestacks; the telltale sign of a refinery operation. There were no weapons emplacements as far as he could see. He wasn't naive enough to assume that meant there were none; few survived in the Red Zones long without the protection of military hardway.
A proximity alarm sounded from the vehicle's driver compartment. Lewis lowered the sights of the binoculars to the alluvial plain. From across the barren fields a column of pale dust was billowing. Several accompanying streaks grew behind it. They were barrelling towards Lewis' small force at great speed.
Lewis sighed, and dropped down into the APC. He'd expected their presence would be discovered eventually, perched as they were on top of a plateau overlooking the old flood basin, but had hoped for longer to reconnoitre the enemy's position.
"Talk to me. What are we looking at?" Lewis asked of his subordinates.
"They look like militarised civilian vehicles sir; shouldn't be a threat."
"Get me eyes on them," he ordered.
A window appeared in the corner of Lewis' visor; a grainy video feed from one of their few functioning UAVs. It revealed a formation of small, ramshackle vehicles racing towards their position. A green reticle appeared around the leading vehicle. It flickered red as a target lock was achieved.
"Orders, sir?"
"Hold fire for now," Lewis waved down the drone technician. "But keep the missiles hot."
"Yessir."
Lewis clambered back out of the vehicle's hatch, and alighted on the crumbling stone surface of the mesa. There he awaited the envoy from Fort Triumph.
The buggies screeched to a halt fifty metres from the GDI point squad, kicking up a billowing cloud. A tall figure swathed in a thick cloak leaped from the lead vehicle, and strode towards the GDI soldiers, flanked by two men clothed in a mix of dark fatigues and heavy battle armour, wielding what appeared to be appropriated GD2 rifles. Notably, none of them seemed to be wearing any head protection against the inhospitable conditions of the contaminated landscape.
Lewis's point team brought their weapons to bear on the cloaked man, but he strode towards their line unfazed, until he was toe to toe with the soldiers. The pair nearest the man brought their rifles up, but he seemed unfazed.
He was tall, but willowy. Though he lacked the broad-chested bulk of a trained soldier, he possessed the wiry strength of one who has spent a lifetime scraping by on the outskirts. His skin was a deep brown, and the mane of hair that swept back from his broad forehead was inky black. His eyes, though, gleamed green. He cleared his throat before addressing the assembled soldiers in a rough drawl.
"Which of you son'bitches is in charge of this whole…. thang?" He took in the assembled formation of troops and armoured vehicles with a sweeping gesture. A gunner, perched in the turret of a nearby APC, raised his eyebrows and laughed in disbelief. "What a cocky bastard," he muttered. Lewis silenced the man with a wave.
"Commander Lewis, 19th Recon," Lewis spoke into his helmet microphone. His amplified voice echoed across the plateau. "Identify yourself."
"Well hell, Commander Lewis, 19th Recon. The fuck are you doing this far out in the Zone?"
"My taskforce is here on the orders of General Granger, to investigate the slaughter of GDI troops. I ask again, identify yourself!"
"You got an awful lot of chutzpah there, boy. I'm Governor Fields," he slapped his chest, "and I ain't gonna talk to no-one who's too cowardly to show me his face. Why don't you take that helmet off, and then we can chit-chat."
"You know I can't do that."
"No?" the Governor scoffed. "Maybe because you don't belong out here. So, why don't you take your little convoy, turn your ass around, and get the hell off my doorstep." The Governor turned on his heel and strode back towards the idling buggies.
Lewis bristled. "The Mutant tribes are allowed to operate with autonomy in the Red Zones of North America by authority of the Global Defense Initiative. That autonomy does not extend to hostile actions against GDI forces in the Zone."
Fields rounded on Lewis, pointing a quivering finger at the GDI Commander. "You'd best be careful what accusations you're making, boy."
"I'm not accusing you of anything," Lewis reassured the irate man, though his private suspicions were only mounting. He drew his sidearm from its thigh holster with slow deliberate movements, and lay it on the roof of the APC. With palms raised, he asked, "Can I approach?" The Governor consulted his bodyguards, and nodded slowly. Lewis strode to the edge of the precipice, awkwardly swung his legs over it, and dropped. A puff of black dust shot up as his boots broke the crust of dried mud on the old lake bed.
Lewis clapped the point man of his own armed cordon on the shoulder. They shifted to let him pass, though he caught a glimpse of concern through their semi-opaque visor.
This close, the envoys from Fort Triumph seemed less like desperate scavengers, and more like … savage warriors.
Lewis tapped the flexi-tablet wrapped around his wrist. The curved screen flashed into life, displaying images of the ruined outpost. He flicked through the macabre slideshow with a finger, but Fields was unmoved. Next were the dead of Jackson's taskforce, their bodies feed stock for the ravenous crystal.
The Governor was inscrutable, but his mutant bodyguards shared a glance. The unfamiliar geometry of their faces and the ridges of scar tissue around their eyes made reading their expressions difficult for Lewis. He might as well try to parse a crocodile's intentions.
That changed when Lewis displayed the images of the bullet-ridden mutant corpses Terrence's team had transmitted. Fields rounded on the commander then, his face flushed with rage. A vein was pounding in his neck.
"All this proves to me is that your people have killed yet more mutants."
"Do you mind telling me what they were doing on a GDI base?" Lewis articulated slowly, determined not to let the man's fury and bluster unbalance him.
"You can drop a base from orbit wherever you want, but that don't make it your territory. My people are free to go where they please."
"Well, I hope you'll extend us the same courtesy, and let us search for the perpetrators inside Fort Triumph."
The Governor chuckled. "We're not fascists or fanatics here, 'kay? We don't want any part in your feud."
"So if my troops were to enter Fort Triumph they'd find no Nod sympathisers or smugglers based there?" Lewis countered sceptically.
"Hoho, you're welcome to try, but you'd find one hell of a fight on your hands." Fields clapped twice, a sharp sound that carried across the empty plains. A radiation alarm peaked in Lewis' suit. He quelled it, and scanned the horizon for the source.
A tapered metal spire in the shape of a scorpion's tail rose above the wall. In place of a stinger was a red focusing crystal. Lewis had missed the weapons emplacement amongst the refinery towers and smokestacks.
An Obelisk of Light. Lewis felt a visceral memory rise up, of entire squads being incinerated by a flash of crimson light. Even at this distance, a few sweeps from its beam would be enough to decimate his force.
"Brotherhood tech," he spat. "Still claiming neutrality?"
"Waste not," the man smiled. "Now, you got ten seconds to get the hell outta dodge, boy!" The crystal tip warmed to a bright crimson, and a deep hum he could feel in his guts came with it. That sound recalled the worst moments of the war; mired in a labyrinth of trenches and barbed wire in Eastern Europe, waiting for searing death to leap out and catch him.
"Back up," Lewis waved his team back. He heard the APCs revving as they were thrown into reverse. The Obelisk's fierce glow faded as it cooled down.
"Well alright alright," Fields drawled. "You made the smart call."
"We'll take that thing out from the air if we need to," Lewis warned Fields once he was safely ensconced inside his Command APC. The threat felt pathetic and limp even as it left his mouth.
On the screen, Fields lifted his gaze to something above Lewis' head. "Maybe you will, Commander, but your air support won't be able to get through the storm for another day or two. I doubt you'll still be here by then; your kind ain't built for these conditions."
—
Their formation rolled through the dust bowl. The visibility was steadily decreasing. Clouds of thick black dust were kicked up by the wind, and whipped into thick walls that occluded anything. The only sources of light were the headlamps of their vehicles, and an unearthly green glow that seemed to seep from beneath the ground.
Lewis silently fumed. The Governor of Fort Triumph was, unfortunately, correct in his assessment that it was at least a day away from being able to safely fly through the Zone. A day of stewing in this blasted wasteland, unable to bring the butchers of Commander Jackson and the rest to justice. At least inside the sealed bubble of the APC's cabin he could remove that damned helmet. The cabin was hardly more luxurious though. His brow was drenched with sweat, and he was certain the only reason they weren't all complaining of the bodily stench was that they'd been stewing in it long enough to become immune.
Ahead of them the sky was alight with lightning, as the ion storm churned. "Better step on it," he told the driver, who nodded, and pressed down on the accelerator. The revving of the APC's engine was still insubstantial compared to the roar of the wind outside.
Lewis opened a communication channel with Terrence's scouting team.
"Hunter One, this is Hunter Actual. You better batten down the hatches, that storm looks nasty."
"Sir?" Lieutenant Terrence's voice was barely audible through the distortion. "The storm… already passed…" The transmission terminated in a squawk of static. Lewis looked to the comms technician for assistance, but the man only shook his head.
"Sir, the storm seems to be increasing in intensity," he reported, ensconced in his coffin of sensor displays. "It'll be on us before we reach the base."
"What? Isn't the storm coming from the east?" Lewis was perplexed.
"Uh, yes sir," the engineer tapped his display and frowned. Lewis unbuckled his seatbelt, and manoeuvred through the cramped space of the cabin to peer over the man's shoulder. The engineer indicated a splotch of bright pixels moving over a topographical map on one of his screens. That must be the fizzle of lightning from the encroaching ion storm. To the east of it, a green square indicated the FOB, safely out of the path of the storm.
"Did the damn thing change course?" he pondered out loud.
"It's not unheard of, sir," the technician replied.
"Hmm. Tight turning circle for a storm." Lewis wasn't convinced. "Alright, let's steer clear of it. If we come round to the south, we should be able to shelter behind this ridge and avoid the path of the storm." Lewis tapped a line of red pixels on the screen.
"Yes sir," the driver and comms tech replied in unison. The engineer began relaying the Commander's orders to the rest of the force through his headset. Lewis braced himself against the roof of the APC as it turned in a sharp circle.
A string of beeps issued from the communications array.
"Uh, sir," the engineer stammered. "The storm seems to have changed course," Sure enough, the vortex of pixels on the screen was shifting, extending tendrils of vapour towards them.
"Goddammit," Lewis spat. "Get me eyes on it now." The technician frantically typed, activating the drone launch sequence. There was a thump from the roof as the APC, followed by a fiery hiss as the UAV rocketed into the air.
A live video feed appeared in the corner of his vision. The image was heavy with visual distortions, caused by the intense radiation spewing from the storm. The disturbance in the dust appeared to be getting closer, a vortex of swirling dirt around a kilometre away. Small flashes of light burst from a column of brilliant illumination at the centre of the vortex. Lewis could see a column of its edges rippling continuously. Static crackled around the fringes of the image the dust devil crept inexorably closer.
"Can you focus on that?" Lewis asked the technician. The drone refocused its cameras, and their view of the image leapt forward. "Drop the exposure." The column of light resolved into a pattern of lightning bolts. They were striking around an object at the centre of the storm, something black, glassy… and moving.
"The hell is that?" Lewis whispered. "Can you get us a closer view?" The technician shook his head.
"Storm's playing havoc with the drones, sir," the engineer shouted over the rising howl of the winds. "It's a miracle they've stayed up this long. I'm getting a radar ping off whatever that is. Clocking relative speed at… 35 miles per hour." It's physical, at least; not a camera artefact.
"Get a missile lock on it, and fire at will."
"Yes sir." The team sprung into action, now that Lewis was speaking a language they understood. He exhaled a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding in, and let the tension of indecision leave his body. They were committed to the hostile course of action now.
"Platoon, this is Hunter Actual. Be advised, there is something inside the storm, some kind of entity. Prepare to fire on it."
"Hunter Actual, this is Sergeant Farley. You want us to fire into the storm, sir?" The commander of the other APC asked in disbelief.
"It's not a storm, Sergeant. There's something inside it, gaining on us."
The comms officer's console beeped again, confirming a radar lock.
Out in the storm, sparks flickered across the drone's metal casing, as static in the air discharged. With a flare of rocket motors igniting, a missile leapt from its belly, and into the storm. Its fiery contrail described a smooth arc through the desert air, before it sharply deflected at the last minute. Lewis watched as the missile detonated in a bloom of orange, which quickly dissipated into the whirling sands of the storm, though he couldn't see if it had struck anything solid.
In response, a lance of lightning leapt out from the maelstrom. For a moment, the drone was bathed in stark illumination as electrical fingers played almost tenderly across its surface. Then its turbofan pod belched smoke and fire. It began tumbling out of the sky in a lazy circle. Jagged shards of metal impacted the black sand of the desert, and stuck there quivering.
One by one, the feeds the drones flared with static, as they were taken out by targeted lightning strikes. This wasn't a freak weather effect. It was something intelligent; malicious.
"Lieutenant, bring up the final frames from that last drone. Good. Play it forward."
The frames jittered in slow motion on the screen. The footage jumped and stuttered like a stop motion film. There were maybe three clear frames in the entire segment. One showed a bolt of electricity so bright it overexposed the camera. Half the image was a distorted grid of fuzzy black bars. The next showed a blurred brown background, presumably the desert floor, as the drone wheeled about.
The last frame stopped Lewis' heart. Ice water flooded his veins.
Amidst the static, a figure could be discerned, standing at the heart of the storm. White light bloomed around it, throwing it into silhouette. Its shape was similar to that of a person, but there was no mistaking it for anything terrestrial. It was tall and slender, with limbs that bent in ways which would have been excruciating for any human. Its head was a jagged crystalline spire, of inhuman proportions. One of its curved limbs was outstretched towards the camera. White lightning emanated from its tip.
"What the fuck…" the engineer breathed.
Lewis gripped the back of the padded chair with clenched fists.
"The hell is it?" the driver shouted over his shoulder.
"Is that a mutant? I've heard they can call down storms-" Lewis cut the engineer off with a hand on his shoulder.
"No. This is something else."
The APC jumped from an impact. Lewis jerked forward, nearly smacking into the back of the technician's head.
The vehicle began to list, tipping to the left. The suspension jumped as it tried to smooth out their uneasy ride.
"I've lost pressure on the back left tires!" The driver shouted over the repetitive clanging coming from the rear of the vehicle.
The vehicle jumped again, and Lewis found himself whirling through the air. The wind was knocked out of him as he collided with the back of his unoccupied chair. When the cabin stopped spinning, he found himself sprawled across the front dashboard. In front of his face, the windscreen, three inches of bullet-resistant glass, was riddled with cracks. Through it, he could make out the disturbed earth illuminated by a single headlight. Deep furrows marked where the APC had tumbled to a halt.
There was an acrid scent in his nostrils, like burning plastic. Lewis struggled to focus; his vision was swimming. The smell was getting worse, and the air felt thick, like he was taking each breath through gauze. A series of small impacts pattered across his back.
Tiny particles were drifting through the cracks in the windscreen. Lewis' gaze was drawn to them. They were strangely beautiful, the way they glowed and floated on the wind.
"Sir!" The engineer was shaking him by the shoulder. Lewis blinked, trying to bring the man into focus. A full-face respirator covered his face.
"Sir, the cabin is breached!"
Lewis nodded numbly, and tried to lift himself from the dashboard. Everything ached. His limbs felt like they were encased in concrete. Seeing his struggle, the engineer helped Lewis to his feet. The commander took a step forward, but nearly collapsed as a lance of pain shot through his left ankle. He nearly toppled, but the engineer caught him under the armpits. With assistance, Lewis staggered to the rear wall of the cabin. His helmet had been flung from its mount on the wall, but the visor was miraculously intact. He donned the helmet, and heard that reassuring hiss as it sealed itself. Each breath felt lighter than the last.
With his head clearing, he was able to better take in the situation. The interior of the cabin was wrecked. The metal walls were crumpled by the impact. Displays were cracked, showing static, and a splash of something dark and viscous was coating the driver's side console. Lewis hobbled towards the driver, and put a hand on the man's shoulder. His helmeted head lolled to one side, limply. Lewis grimaced as he took in the sight of the man's body. A piece of the metal chassis had been sheared off. The impact had driven it through the driver's neck, severing the black rubber suit and the flesh beneath. Lewis sighed, and turned back towards the rear of the vehicle, leaving the fallen soldier strapped in his seat.
Lewis toggled the door to the rear compartment. It slid partway open, then jammed with a screech of tortured metal. Lewis grunted with displeasure, and began shimmying sideways through the crack.
The troop compartment was in disarray. A crate had torn free of its straps during the crash, smashing through the compartment like a cannonball. About half the squad had been injured, and were being tended to by their colleagues.
Lewis picked up a rifle from a rack near the door, and shouted over the roar of the storm.
"Alright people," he called out. "We're sitting ducks here, so we're gonna make a break for the cover of that ridge." He called up a map of the nearby area on the platoon video feed and marked the ridge with a waypoint.
"Second and Third squad," he addressed the members of his team in the surviving APCs. "I want suppressing fire on whatever that thing is. Keep it distracted. Fourth squad, bring your vehicle-" A loud blast sounded from the cabin, and the wrecked transport shook again. Lewis didn't look back. "Bring your vehicle around from the north and evac the wounded. Give our rear ramp some cover."
Lewis turned to those soldiers in the troop compartment that were still upright. "First squad, help Four with the wounded then take the flank. Stay low, get to cover, then lay down fire on that bastard." The shaken soldiers nodded in response.
A chorus of affirmatives and yes sirs followed. Lewis limped to the back of the compartment and punched the door release. Flashing amber lights filled the interior of the troop bay as the ramp descended. It halted around a foot off the ground. Harsh strobes of lightning arced across the rectangle of dark sky that was framed by the exit. Yellow muzzle flashes from the turrets of the APCs answered them.
Two points of white illumination appeared through the gloom, like a diver surfacing from a turbulent sea. They bloomed into a pair of headlights; bright cones that sliced through the whirlwind of sand kicked up by the storm. A spray of dirt flew up as Fourth Squad's APC skidded to a halt, its bulky form shielding Lewis' team from the worst of the storm.
"Go, go!" Lewis called out over the radio. The rear ramp of the friendly vehicle lowered, discharging a handful of armoured figures. They ducked their heads as a finger of lightning danced across the dark sky. The wounded were helped to their feet, and into the back of the functional APC. Lewis followed them out, careful not to put his full weight on his injured left foot. A Corporal from Fourth Squad helped him up the ramp of the waiting transport. Lewis collapsed gratefully into the seat nearest the door.
When all the injured were loaded into the APC, it moved off. The thick wheels spun in the loose earth a few times, kicking up spurts of dust, before they gained traction. With one and a half squads crammed inside, the troop bay was crowded. The soldiers jostled against each other as they rode over the broken terrain.
As the APC swung around, the raging storm came into view, filling the rear cabin with its harsh brilliance. It was close enough now that Lewis could see the figure striding through its heart with his unaided eyes. The air around them thrummed with power, and even through his environment suit Lewis felt his skin prickle with static.
"Sweet Jesus…" breathed the young Private in the seat beside him. Lewis found himself agreeing with her assessment. Short of any practical way to lift morale, Lewis did what he did best and fired off a burst at the figure within the storm clouds. The young soldier beside him jerked at the loud report of the rifle, then raised her own and added to the barrage. It had been drilled into him at the Officer Academy; soldiers expect decisive action from their commanding officers.
A withering hail of bullets poured from the back of the APC. It would have been enough to fell any human foe, but against the creature in the maelstrom it was like pissing in the wind. A handful of sparks burst from the whirlwind, but they were just as likely to be electrical discharges as bullet ricochets.
The three surviving vehicles climbed to the top of the ridge, their gears grinding as they mounted the rocky outcrop. The craggy protrusions of stone offered some minimal cover from the barrage of electricity, and gave the soldiers a commanding view of the surrounding terrain.
The storm was advancing relentlessly. As the whirlwind battered the edges of the mesa, splinters of rock were blasted into the air. They hurtled in all directions at deadly speed. Lewis felt something collide his helmet. His neck snapped back with the impact, and smacked against the bulkhead of the APC. Stars exploded behind his eyes, and his ears rang with a shrill tone. He felt a pair of hands pulling him out of the line of fire. He let them guide him to the hard floor of the APC.
Lewis stared blankly, the wide-eyed stare of the suddenly blinded. Eventually they began to clear, leaving half of his vision as a black void. Everything left of his nose was lost in a wedge of darkness. Am I blind? he thought desperately. He raised a hand to grope at the faceplate of his helmet, sure that he would find it shattered, and his eye socket an empty ruin. Instead, his hand met a rough wedge of stone. The arrow-shaped shard had embedded itself in Lewis' visor. He boggled at the jagged point of rock, which had come to a stop a bare inch from his eye. He swore, grateful that the helmet muffled his indignity.
"Tape, I need tape!" He called out. The engineer wordlessly pressed a thick roll of black electrical adhesive into Lewis' waiting hand. He worked up his courage with a series of deep breaths in quick succession, and wrenched the sliver of rock free. It clattered onto the floor of the APC, and bounced off of the open ramp. Air hissed through the gap, and his helmet filled with a tangy, metallic scent. Lewis peeled a strip of tape off, and slapped it indelicately over the hole. He layered several more strips over it, until he was satisfied the hiss of gases had ceased.
It wasn't pretty, and he still couldn't see much out of his left eye, but it was enough to keep him breathing for the next few minutes, or however long they had left to live.
"We need more firepower," Lewis called out over the platoon channel. A bolt of white light leaped out and slagged the bulkhead behind him. He rolled away from the blistering heat of the glowing metal.
"Should we retreat to the FOB?" Lieutenant Fuller asked in reply. Lewis shook his head, and immediately regretted the gesture as his neck throbbed.
"Negative; Terrence doesn't have anything heavier than we do. We'd just be bringing a massacre to their doorstep. Retreat to Fort Triumph!" Lewis saw confusion on the faces around him, followed by dawning realisation. He repeated his order, and felt the APC shift beneath him as it wheeled around. Despite the bands of static that obscured it, his radar map showed the two remaining vehicles falling into formation behind him.
On flatter ground, the three transports outpaced their pursuer easily, but it stalked after them relentlessly. The baked mud of the basin cracked in their wake, sending columns of dust trailing behind them. The flashes of lightning dimmed, but didn't disappear. Their foe was still on their heels.
Fort Triumph re-emerged through a veil of billowing dust. Its jagged silhouette was black against the sky, its structures merged into one indistinguishable mass by the gloom. A flaming red eye appeared through that darkness; the tip of the Obelisk of Light, glowing with destructive energy.
"Fort Triumph, hold your fire, repeat, hold your fire! This is Commander Lewis of the GDI 19th Recon, we are fleeing an unknown foe! Requesting your assistance."
The Obelisk continued to pulse with its blood-red glow. A pit of fear began to growl in Lewis' gut. Was he leading the men and women who had put their lives into his hands away from possible danger into imminent death? This will be a quick end at least.
The dwindling APCs of Bravo Company were still barrelling towards Fort Triumph. The Obelisk loomed large before them; a pyramidal icon of destruction that dominated the top of the mesa. Lewis was on the verge of calling off the advance, and wheeling his APC around in an attempt to outmanoeuvre the storm, when the glowing beacon of death before him.
The Obelisk's red glow dimmed. The fiery tip cooled, and till it was the dull grey of the stormy sky. A whoop of relief went up from the harried GDI forces. The driver floored the vehicle's accelerator, and its roar joined the chorus. The formation barrelled up an earthen ramp that rose up to meet the mesa the small town was built on.
Chains rattled, and a welded mass of scrap metal that served as the settlement's gate rose. Lewis felt the APC shudder as it passed under the barrier. A sharp clang rang out as something was torn off the top. A problem for later. Before the vehicle had ceased moving he was hobbling out of it, calling for Governor Fields. The burly man emerged from the base of a watchtower near the gate, flanked by his armoured bodyguards.
"Sorry for the abrupt entrance, Governor, but we could sure use that Obelisk right about now," Lewis said.
For once the mutant leader was speechless. Beneath his bushy beard, the corners of his mouth were tight.
Lewis sighed. "You were bluffing, right?" Fields at least had the good grace to look chagrined.
"The laser makes a good deterrent…" he spread his hands in an apologetic gesture. Lewis cut him off, and turned to the technician, who was clambering out of the APC. He beckoned the man over.
"Can you get this thing online?"
"I'm an engineer, not a miracle worker," the hard-hatted man protested.
"Is that a no? We don't have time for an alternative."
The engineer threw up his hands "I'd have to get a look at the damage! I'm not familiar with Nod tech…" Lewis nodded, and snapped his fingers at one of Field's bodyguards. "Show this man to the Obelisk'." The odd pair vanished between the corrugated iron walls of the shanty town.
"Woah, now hold on! You can't just drive in here and start ordering my men-" Fields objected.
"Then we're all dead when that thing reaches us." Fields ground his teeth in outraged silence for a few moments. "Now, do you have any heavy weapons that aren't broken?" The Governor nodded.
"Yeah, we got a couple o' railguns. Use 'em for hunting." The admission stunned Lewis, but he was grateful for whatever assets they could get their hands on.
"Alright, give them to your best sharpshooters, and have them post up on the watchtowers by the gate." Lewis didn't give Fields the time to question his orders, and simply turned to address his ragged formation of soldiers and vehicles.
"These nice people have lent us their laser. We're gonna keep them safe until it's up and running. Now, we don't know what this thing is, or how much punishment it can take. But by God are we gonna kill it if we can!"
A raucous cheer went up from the GDI soldiers. The mutants that scurried around the fringes of the courtyard behind the gate regarded the display of bravado with sneers and suspicion. A squad of figures in mismatched armour filtered into the square, carrying an assortment of heavy weapons that looked as rough and worn as their owners. Lewis had expected long range rifles, but these were anti-tank weapons.
"You said you used these for hunting," Lewis remarked incredulously, gesturing at a twin-barrelled beast being hefted easily by a mutant sharpshooter.
"Yup," Fields replied simply. Lewis shook his head in amazement. What the hell are they hunting? Interrogating that train of thought could wait for later, if there was a later. What they needed was a thorough inventory of everything on hand. Lewis would have to leverage
"Do you have some kind of explosives? Something we can use to mine the ramp and stop the enemy from reaching the gate?"
"Railguns and small arms is all we got," Fields replied sombrely. Having his bluff called seemed to have drained most of the pompous bravado from the man.
"What about back there?" Lewis cocked a thumb in the direction of the Refinery complex. A forest of smokestacks belched fire as they processed valuable Tiberium crystals, and burned off the toxic byproducts. "Fabrication plant that size, you must have some excess volatiles."
"Well, we used to bottle the gases , sell 'em as fuel. Then y'all made trafficking in Liquid T a crime, so," he shrugged, and looked back at the gaseous candle over the Refinery. Lewis doubted the anti-authority Governor would bend so easily to GDI sanctions, but they didn't have time to indulge in mutual distrust.
"Okay, so there's nothing stored at… wait, stop the Refinery, immediately!" Lewis shouted as a moment of realisation hit him. "Get the crews to collect any Vinifera that hasn't been processed yet, load it into hoppers, and bring it to the gate."
"What? You're talking about us throwing our best harvest out the door!"
"You'll be compensated, if we survive this."
Fields spat and cursed. "You're gonna be the death of us, boy," he warned Lewis with a pointed finger, but relayed the orders nonetheless.
The Harvester hoppers were crude metal boxes, piled high with broken shards of crystal. An unearthly blue radiance spilled from the open tops, lighting the rough faces of the men and women dragging them through the dusty street. Even from a distance, the display on Lewis' HUD warped and crackled with a wash of static. The GDI soldiers jumped back as they noticed the crates being dragged past. They clung to the walls and gave the mutant handlers a wide berth.
Patchy weld lines marked the corners of the boxes. Putting their faith in scavenger metalwork seemed completely foolhardy, now that Lewis could see their handiwork up close. He half expected the crates to crack open, and their volatile cargo to spill out over the rough road, scattering them all like confetti.
He was nearly proved right when the lead crate caught on a corner of broken asphalt. The leader of the procession tugged on the edge of the hopper, trying to pull it past the obstruction. Crystal tinkled as they rattled off the walls of the container. The chimes were almost musical in the way they echoed off the hard metal. A foreman with a ridge of scar tissue across his brow ran to the head of the formation and slapped the man across the back of the head. After a heated argument, the foreman took the lead, and carefully guided the delicate cargo around the obstacle.
"You'd better be right about this," Fields remarked darkly. "That's our richest yield in months."
"You'll have bigger problems if I'm not."
The gate was raised two feet off the ground, and the teams of mutants wrestled the hoppers under it and onto the ramp. The whirlwind was nearly upon them, tearing across the silty plain. Lewis glimpsed glowing slivers of Tiberium crystal whipping past at colossal speeds and embedding themselves in the concrete of the gatehouse. Something brushed against his arm, and he felt a sudden stab of pain. The whirling detritus had torn through the thick off-white environment suit that made up the outer layer of his gear. Lewis slapped his hand across the wound, and shuffled back behind a sturdy concrete pillar.
Once the crates were half way down, the crews abandoned them, and sprinted back behind the safety of the barricade. The vivid blue crystals inside caught the light of the approaching storm, and reflected it. It was a dazzling light show, and a reminder of the potential energy stored inside each crystal.
Lewis hobbled to the foot of the watchtower, and called up its echoing stairwell.
"Alright, the Tiberium is in place. If that thing gets up onto the ramp, aim for the hoppers and blow it to kingdom come!"
Satisfied that even the disorganised militia of Fort Triumph could handle these simple orders, Lewis opened a radio channel to the engineer.
"Talk to me, Scotty. Can you get the laser online?"
"The power regulator is busted, so whenever the capacitors begin charging, its computer starts seeing power spikes and shuts down. I can bypass the safety protocols, but an unregulated power surge would burn out the internal machinery."
Lewis was losing patience with the engineer's waffling. "I'm not hearing an answer there. Can you fix it or not?"
The engineer sighed, a sound that was swallowed up by the rising static. "No, I can get it done, I just want you to appreciate how difficult it is. We'll only get one shot."
"Let's hope that's enough." Lewis killed the transmission.
The unearthly figure was level with the hoppers now. It cocked its head as it passed them, as if listening to the reverberations of the crystals within. The vortex of crackling lightning seemed to slow, and for the first time in what seemed like days, Lewis could hear something other than the howl of the wind.
"Fire!" He shouted. The brief respite was shattered by a fusillade of anti-armour railguns. A dozen shells impacted the packed earth of the ramp. Fountains of dirt shot up into the air. The hoppers were knocked over, their contents spilling out over torn earth. The crack of weapons' discharge was followed by a sound like shattering glass. The metal hoppers deformed, then broke apart in a blur. A brilliant flare of light ripped across the ramp, obscuring the scene. The militia on the walkway shielded their eyes, or threw themselves down to avoid the pieces of metal shrapnel that hurtled over their heads.
As the cloud of debris cleared, a fine rain of earth and crystalline fragments pattered across the outer fringes of Fort Triumph. The violence of the storm that followed the creature seemed to have abated, but Lewis wasn't about to take it on faith. He hobbled to the watchtower, and began clumsily climbing its metal rungs, clenching his teeth every time his ankle throbbed. From the top of the tower, he could see the concrete barricade that Fort Triumph's defenders stood on, and past it, to where the lower portion of the ramp terminated in a wide crater. At the epicentre of the detonation, a tangled mass of bent metal rubble glowed with residual heat. Lewis' visor magnified the image. One of the creature's twisted arms was visible beneath the rubble. As he watched, it twitched, sparking and spasming like a broken machine.
"It's still moving! Is that Obelisk ready to go?"
"Nearly! I just need a minute!" The Engineer's voice was so faint through the distortion that he may as well have been shouting from the other side of the city. The onyx shell of the creature pulsed with an electric blue glow, and tongues of lightning flickered out across the barricade.
"We don't have a minute!" Lewis shouted back. "Are you reloaded?" he asked the company of mutant sharpshooters. They nodded, and hefted their misappropriated turrets. "Then fire!" A rhythm of sharp cracks echoed across the mesa, and the prone monster jerked with a dozen bone-breaking impacts. Its glossy carapace cracked, and greenish ichor spewed from the wounds. Before the last sharpshooter could take his shot, a finger of lightning reached over the parapet and across his weapon. The intense heat of the electrical bolt slagged the conductive rails, fusing them together. A finger depressed the trigger, and rather than tearing through the air, the shell caught in the barrel, and detonated.
The concrete wall was shattered, sending bodies toppling over the edge. The ozone scent of electrical discharge mingled with the coppery smell of blood. A mist was all that remained of the man and anyone standing too close to him. Surely that must be the worst of it, Lewis thought. His heart plummeted when the floor beneath him began to vibrate. A deep hum built up, shaking the walls of the watchtower. Lewis gripped his rifle and sent a burst of automatic fire rattling towards the insectoid monster, determined not to die idly.
With a bassy tone that Lewis felt more than heard, and a glow so bright it outshone the sun, the Obelisk unleashed a beam of energy. Its beam sliced down like a fiery sword, and struck the heart of the pit. Crimson brilliance filled the crater - the cleansing light of pure annihilation.
The Obelisk spoke, and silence followed. The tower's crystalline tail had darkened to an oily black. Smoke poured from between the armoured plates on its spine. The engineer staggered out from an archway at the base of the tower, wiping soot from his visor.
"Did we kill it?" He seemed half delirious with shock, his question almost a laugh.
"Yeah, yeah I think we got it." Lewis replied. More than anything, he wanted to take off his helmet and wipe the sweat from his brow.
When enough time had passed that it seemed safe to emerge, the gate was raised once more, revealing an expanse of cratered ground. Where the creature had been, there was a long scorch mark and a few piles of ash. Fragments of opalescent chitin were scattered across the ruined ramp.
"But what the hell did we just kill?"