"Today's contemplation; do not fear a glorious end, for did not the Prophet himself live again in death? A willing sacrifice for the cause is not the end, but a chance to live again in the Tiberian Future."
- Brotherhood Broadcast Network, June 5th 2035
Riga, Yellow Zone 1
[23/5/2056]
A convoy was waiting for Gideon when he reached the city wall. Several trucks idled, their exhaust fumes rising and mingling with the mist that hung over the streets. A number of kitted-out bikes stood on kickstands, while their riders rubbed gloved hands together, or shared nips of spirits from a hip flask for warmth.
One such rider detached himself from the huddle as Gideon's entourage approached. As they got closer, he recognised the pockmarked face of the courier who had delivered the Colonel's summons. The man greeted him with a smile, baring yellowing teeth, the animosity of yesterday's exchange apparently forgotten.
"Komandieris Gideon! It's a pleasure to be working alongside you for this mission. We didn't meet properly yesterday, but my name is Ingus. The Colonel speaks most highly of you, indeed."
Gideon returned the man's greeting with a curt nod and half a smile, while taking in the insignia on his leather riding jacket. A single star on his epaulette marked him as a Virs leitnants, nominally below Gideon's own rank, not that technical rank counted for much in the chaotic amalgam of guerillas and defunct armed forces of twenty-odd nations that made up Radic's cell of the Brotherhood. Yet this Ingus talked as if they were on equal footing - no doubt emboldened by being chosen as Radic's representative on this mission. Gideon's suspicions that he was being set up to fail deepened.
"Alright, we've been dawdling long enough!" He declared in a clear voice that cut through the morning air. "Let's load up and move out; we've got a lot of ground to cover today!" A clatter of
"We've set aside the lead vehicle for your detachment," Ingus said obsequiously, gesturing to an empty flatbed truck with a tarpaulin covering. Gideon frowned. So generous to offer me a basket to put all my eggs in.
"Thank you, but I'm not above riding with the men. Rodriguez - you can take the point vehicle. Dimitri, take the rear." The two men nodded, and strode to their assigned vehicles. Dimitri clambered onto the bed of the rear truck, and shoved aside a befuddled soldier with his stump. Ingus seemed taken aback, but could not protest without sparking a confrontation. DImitri smiled a gap-toothed smile from his perch atop the truck's bed.
"Road trip," he chimed in a sing-song voice.
—
Podlaskie Province, Yellow Zone 1
The journey became rougher as they travelled further from Riga. What little remained of the roads around the city gave way to a landscape of bare rock, cracked and pitted. Great chasms had been torn through the earth, and several times their convoy had to double back to avoid places where bridges had collapsed or the path was crowded by Tiberium growth.
As they cut a path steadily south, the sickly green glow of Tiberium rose on the horizon, and heavy storm clouds darkened the sky. The lead vehicle's headlights flickering on, and the rest of the convoy quickly followed suit. Their beams cast long shadows across the cratered landscape. Not long after, the Kid began to cough; a deep, hacking sound that rattled through the boy's thin frame. Gideon looked round in alarm. The Kid tried to wave away his superior's concern, but Gideon was having none of it. He clambered over the metal benches that had been welded onto the truck's tray and into the driver's compartment.
He scanned the truck's dashboard for an atmospheric meter, which he eventually found covered in grime. Its needle was stuck firmly in the green. He thumped the glass display, and the needle began to steadily climb into the yellow.
"Alright, masks on, now," he shouted over his shoulder at the troops. They dutifully complied, donning an assortment of clear plastic face shields, rebreathers, and old gas masks. The Kid pulled a red bandana up across his mouth. Gideon shook his head, and pulled his own rebreather off and pressed it into the Kid's hands. Radic might plan for me not to return, but I'll be damned if the Kid's gonna die under my watch too.
Gideon soon regretted his fit of altruism. The air felt… rougher… as it passed his throat. Every breath was a hard fought struggle. He pulled the collar of his jacket up around his chin, but he knew it was nothing more than a psychological crutch. They'd been travelling for hours now; surely they must be nearing their destination, but every time he checked his battered wristwatch, only a handful of minutes had crawled by.
Peals of far-off thunder soon became an omnipresent companion on their journey. The rhythmic booms put Gideon in mind of an artillery barrage. He realised he was clenching the roll cage with a white-knuckled fist, and released his grip. Abruptly, a harsh flash of lightning lit the sky so vividly that the glare obscured his view of the truck's interior. The driver swerved as a moment of panic seized him, and all but the most seasoned soldiers jumped in their seats.
"They know we're here," Laimonis muttered under his breath. A silver scorpion-tail pendant was clutched in his hand.
"Don't be daft, it's just an Ion Storm," the woman beside him chided him, but the pious man shook his head.
"Who do you think called down the Storm?"
The militawoman didn't deign to grace that ominous rhetorical with a response.
The truck's undercarriage rattled as they passed over the pockmarked asphalt of an abandoned town square. The road was littered with rusted car hulks, from which dark stains had spread like blood. The battered facades of buildings stood silent sentinel over their passage, their empty windows like black eye sockets. Gideon thought he saw a glimmer of movement within the shadowed depths, but when he took a second look it was as dark as ever.
"What kind of people would choose to live out here?" The Kid asked in a trembling voice.
Ingus scowled behind his face shield, and looked as if he would have spat, if not for the mask.
"The kind that aren't human any more."
—
Ingus called a halt to their progression a few miles on from the abandoned town. The road had once again become little more than a muddy rut, and the storm kept threatening to sweep down over their position. Gideon emerged from the truck, coughing heavily into his elbow to muffle the sound. Ingus gestured to a nearby hill with a nod of his head. Gideon and the other guerilla fighters crouched low, and clambered up the slick incline. They stopped just below the summit of the hill and peered down into the mutant encampment.
It was a ramshackle cluster of shacks and debris, enclosed by a barricade of sharpened metal spikes. The opalescent, cyclopean head of an Alien Tripod was mounted over what passed for the settlement's gate.
"Don't worry, it's not functional," Ingus advised. "They have only a single watchtower; there." He pointed to what appeared to be a shipping container, standing on its end. Metal corrugations and a machine gun of some sort had been crudely mounted to its summit.
"Do they have any sensors?" the Kid asked from a place at his commander's elbow.
Gideon shook his head. "Wouldn't work this far into the Zone. Background radiation is too strong." He stifled another cough.
"The savages won't know we're coming." Ingus bared his teeth behind his transparent mask in a nasty grin. It lent his lean face the look of a hungry rodent. As they spoke, Ingus' guerillas were unpacking a heavy bundle of equipment from the back of a truck. A piece of threadbare canvas was pulled back to reveal a plain metal tube, and a sturdy tripod.
"Woah, what's the mortar for?" Gideon hissed. "I thought we were meant to put the fear of Kane into the mutants, not level their whole camp!"
Ingus shrugged. "It doesn't make much difference to the Colonel. A few dead mutants will send a strong message to the survivors. Anyway, it's only a last resort, if you need fire support."
Or you'll use it to drop a mountainside on me, Gideon thought bitterly. Ingus seemed to see the indecision in his face, because he leaned close to Gideon, and said in a low, dangerous voice: "I don't want to have to report to Radic that you lost your nerve. Now come on, let's take them!"
"I don't think you will," an electronically filtered voice intruded.
Gideon whirled around, trying to find the source of the voice. The hillside was rippling with light as half a dozen figures came into existence,clad in the form-fitting, high-tech armour of a Shadow Team. Shimmering patterns ran across the reflective plating that covered their slender suits of armour. Each of them held a vicious-looking laser rifle, which were levelled at the crudely-armed militia.
"Now, traitors," the robotic voice addressed them. "Throw down your weapons, and you will be granted a quick death."
Gideon heard a harsh shriek. He instinctively looked around for some monstrous creature barrelling down on them, but it was the sound of the mortar being swivelled on its rusty mount. With a thunderous woomp the projectile left the barrel, and tore through the air. The hillside exploded in a shower of scalding mud. By the time the debris had cleared, the Shadows had vanished again.
The small hollow was consumed by crimson light as the Shadows opened fire. Gideon flung himself in the direction of the truck. Mud splattered his grey coveralls as he hit the ground and dove behind a tire. He drew his weapon from its holster, and cast around frantically for a sign of their assailants. The air rippled as they moved, as though with a heat haze, but by the time Gideon had raised his weapon, the shimmers had vanished.
All around, Ingus' guerillas were falling prone in the sodden earth, as the Shadows cut them down with ruthless efficiency. There was another shriek as the mortar was brought to bear on its rusty tripod. A flash of ruby light lanced out, and bisected the barrel of the mortar. The projectile detonated as the intense heat cooked off its explosive payload. The soldier manning it was cut in half by a hail of jagged shrapnel and a roiling fireball. The cloud of black smoke curled skyward, revealing the twisted remnants of the metal cylinder.
In the aftermath of the explosion, Gideon could hear nothing over the ringing of his ears. The Kid appeared in front of him, his face pale with shock beneath the gas mask. Gideon couldn't hear a word the Kid was saying; he was staring past the young man's shoulder at two depressions in the ground behind him. Two oblong prints had appeared in the mud.
"Get down!" Gideon shouted, and threw himself at the Kid, pushing his subordinate into the soft earth. A second later, he felt a laser sear through the air above him. The heat dissipated, and Gideon's arm shot up, bearing his machine pistol. He would have only one chance at this. A mote of red light still lingered in the air ahead, a visual artefact of the lingering radiation, distorting the light-bending fields of the stealth suit.
Gideon centred his sights on that patch of flickering illumination, and pulled the trigger. The bullets tore through the air and sparked as they hit something. A mangled lump of metal fell to the ground, sparking; the laser rifle. The gloved hand that had been clutching it became visible as the optical glitch spread. The Shadow's agonised yelp was rendered into an inhuman shriek by their suit's vocoder. Beads of crimson blood spilled from between the armour plating of their shredded hand.
Gideon leapt to his feet and ran to the intermittently translucent figure, his boots slipping in the slick mix of blood and muck. He wrapped an arm around the wounded warrior's neck, while levelling his still-smoking machine pistol at the side of their head.
"Alright, everyone STOP!" he barked over the din of battle. The sharp discharge of laser rifles ceased immediately. The rattle of small-arms fire carried on for a moment, before tailing off like a thunderstorm crossing the horizon. Gideon saw wet footprints appear in muddy ground as the remaining cloaked assassins fanned out to surround him.
"Back up, I see you!" he shouted, and aggressively jammed the muzzle of his weapon against his captive's to emphasise his point. Gideon dragged the figure out of the bombed-out depression, and began backing up the steep slope, fighting to keep his captive between himself and the approaching Shadows. The footsteps slowed, but didn't cease.
"Now, why don't we all just calmly talk this out?"
Colours ran through the murky air like streaks of wet paint. A lithe figure, clad in black, reflective chitin coalesced before him. A claw-like laser pistol was held loosely in their right hand.
"Talk? What use do we have for the words of heretics?" the grating, digitised voice mocked. Yet they didn't raise the pistol. Gideon knew that only sheer audacity was keeping him from being gunned down.
"I'm a loyal follower of Kane!" he shouted defiantly.
The Shadow's laughter was distorted into a harsh metallic bark. "And yet you follow Radic's heresy, and fight alongside his underlings?"
Gideon's head whirled as he grasped for the words that would keep him alive a little longer. Every breath he took in this poisonous air made it harder to think straight.
"Not by choice," he gritted his teeth. From the corner of his eye he saw Ingus frowning through his mask. Gideon stifled a cough, and tightened his grip around his captive's throat.
The uncloaked Shadow shook their head. "Deeds, not words, reveal the truth," they declared, as they raised the laser pistol.
Seized by an impulsive fit, GIdeon raised his own firearm in response, and depressed the trigger. A burst of automatic fire tore through the air.
Ingus clutched at his wounded stomach. Dark blood was gushing out through the grey of his fatigues. He took a faltering step forward, and fell face first into the mud.
The muzzle of the Shadow's pistol remained pointed at Gideon, but they didn't fire. Gideon relaxed his grip on his captive. The armoured figure slipped from his grasp. As they dashed away, the panels of their suit flickered and assumed the appearance of the landscape.
"We good?" Gideon asked, holding his smoking weapon aloft.
The Shadow nodded, slowly. "It is good to see you return to the path of the Messiah, Brother."
Gideon lowered his machine pistol, and took a cautious step forward. When it wasn't immediately met with a fusillade of laser fire, he quickened his stride. He placed a hand on Ingus' prone form, and rolled the man over onto his back. A viscous mix of blood and earth coated the fallen Lieutenant's uniform, and obscured his once-translucent breathing mask.
Gideon loosened the straps holding the mask to Ingus' head, and peeled it away from his sweat-soaked brow. To his shock, the man was still breathing. Anguish swam in Ingus' squinting eyes as he fixed Gideon with an expression of utter loathing.
"I'll be sure to speak most highly of your sacrifice to the Colonel," Gideon whispered in the dying man's ear, then donned his stolen mask.