Chapter CIX: Pawn to Rook

1 Nov 0731 KST

Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea

Yeon-woo had crept through the maze of smashed structures, doubling back when he hit a dead end before trying a new plausible path forward. His efforts were duplicated by multiple pairs of scouts probing through the labyrinth trying to find a back door to those guard towers. The guard towers were really just a group of apartment and office buildings lucky enough to have retained some level of verticality over the past month. The closer they got the more mangled and clustered together the ruins became. They could get closer by taking the roads and alleyways alone but never close enough.

"We're going to have to try climbing over it." Hong-gi remarked as he brushed his hair back with his hand.

Yeon-woo looked back at Hong-gi disapprovingly. "You're giving up already?" he thought. There had to be a way through where they could keep down in between the ruined hulks of homes and buildings. Yeon-woo didn't want to get up and out in the open but it appeared like it was the only way. They looked around for a suitable point to climb over to get from one street to the next. It had to be something that wouldn't leave them exposed for long. Something with plenty of cover, something to shield them from the eyes in the tower. They could probably dart across a rooftop once only being sighted but quick enough to not get shot. Once they were noticed the guns would be trained in their direction thus making it ever more difficult to slink their way into position undetected.

After circling back and ascertaining their location within the maze Yeon-woo found a position he thought would be easy to cross between streets. On one side of their presumptive path forward lay a pile of large fractured concrete slabs and partially melted and resolidified steel beams rising up like pikes from a fine powder of crumbled cement granules, mortar sludge and dust. On the other side was a five story badly charred and crumbling brick building. The top three floors had broken off from the lower two and had fallen over onto the concrete mass yet remained mostly intact lying on its side. The collapsed building formed a roof over the gap between the two buildings which was filled with bricks and building materials that had been smashed to splinters and powder. There were two overturned cars stacked on top of each other on the side of the gap where Yeon-woo and Hong-gi stood. The ground beneath them was further sullied by the spots of dried up gasoline and oil that had drained from the vehicles. They stared nervously at their way forward. Passing through it would have been more akin to going through a tunnel than crawling over a rooftop of a mound of debris. The horizontal section of the building above should be enough to avoid being noticed by any watchful eyes in the guard towers. They could see straight through to the other side which led into a street that was otherwise inaccessible from any open alleyways or side streets. They knew at least the path was clear, an opening six feet high at its lowest point and four feet wide at its tightest squeeze. If this new street was to be a bust or a gain still remained to be seen; all they could do was try. They hesitated at first when they saw a couple of bricks fall loose from the fallen building into their pathway. How stable would this arrangement be they wondered? Eventually it would have to fall and become yet another unrecognizable mountain of debris in what had once been a thriving vibrant city.

"The longer we think about it the less we're going to want to do it." Hong-gi said letting out a deep breath before he started climbing on top of the cars to get onto the mounds of rubbish between the two ruined hulks.

Yeon-woo followed him and carefully they crossed between the two streets. A brick fell behind Yeon-woo which freaked him for a second or two as he turned around expecting to see a skitter or a human scout. Just as he realized there was no danger behind him a distant gunshot rang out. One shot, no return fire, apparently someone else had the same dumb idea they did.

"Great, so much for the element of surprised." complained Yeon-woo as they headed forward.

They slid down the pile of bricks and dust onto the next street to the west. This street was cloaked in the shadows cast by the ruins on all sides. The path to their south was blocked by debris, there was another narrow side street heading west seemingly clear and a somewhat clear path to the north which involved crawling over and under a large number of blown apart vehicles. There were also charred corpses in the street and in some of the vehicles. These weren't the recently deceased either. They had probably died in the initial attack, possibly due to acute radiation exposure and remained here ever since, rotting all the while as aliens passed through these streets in the weeks before this neighborhood had been taken over by the Empire. The bodies were badly decomposed, some of which had their remaining putrid flesh completely burned away leaving only skeletons behind. The two fighters moved through the path of the dead and headed north where they probed through a myriad of other streets, slowly creeping closer to the Imperial wall. The cautious gamble hadn't been a total bust after all; they hadn't stumbled into a completely sealed off hole surrounded by wreckage. There were plenty of paths from which they could try and stake their chances on. While they looked for a way forward several more gunshots could be heard. This time there was return fire. Someone had engaged the guard towers. A beamer passed overhead and remained completely ignorant of the gun battle beneath it. They aliens had at least learned how to let the dogs kill each other off for them apparently. If this had been in the earlier days of the invasion that fighter would have certainly gotten involved and obliterated both groups of human combatants. When the gunfire ceased Yeon-woo hoped that no one he knew had been hurt or killed. They climbed over an overturned bus, paying no mind to the bodies, bones and body parts amidst the wrecks of storefronts and cars along the broad thoroughfare they had just crossed.

Another lone gunshot rang out. They had to be getting close; that shot seemed rather close. By Yeon-woo's guess they were four or five blocks south of the towers and two blocks west. Once they got over the bus they could see the Empire's wall which confirmed their east-west position and once they weaved their way in a stair step pattern north they managed to sight the southern guard tower from around the corner. They had a way forward, now they had to double back and gather the troops. They also had to certainly find a way to draw away the attention of the snipers who were well on the lookout for them now thanks to some of the other groups.

Yeon-woo marked the trail as he and Hong-gi doubled back by scratching large arrow marks into cars or the sides of what little recognizable remained of buildings. As they headed back sporadic firefights were heard from various points all around them but mainly to the north and west of them. The defenders in the towers had most likely sighted threats coming at them from several directions. Surely now the element of surprise the 4th Korea had banked on was lost. They grabbed a few of the other teams as they made their way back to the long curving street which the 4th had established their main battle line within.

"You find anything?" Hong-gi asked one of the other teams they bumped into.

"Jack shit. Just about everywhere we turn it's blocked off. Tried going above but the bastards started shooting at us, tried going through one of the buildings but there was just too much shit blocking the way inside, even tried going under but the sewer system isn't fully intact anymore either." one of the two scouts replied.

"We saw them take down another pair a few blocks over that made a run for it. There was just too much open space on that rooftop. I told them they weren't going to make it but the stubborn shits didn't listen." the second scout added.

"We found a way through. It's a little nerve racking to go through but the shooters won't see you. Come with us and we'll all get through at once as soon as I report back to our commanders." Yeon-woo told the scouts.

The scouts joined behind them as did a few other teams that had given up the forward advance and were desperately looking for another way around. The returning scouts made their way back into the main lines and found Bremer and Min-ho back beside the main road leading towards the towers. The two leaders and the soldiers around them would peek around the corner and occasionally send some bullets down range when the opportunity presented itself. In return they hid from spatterings of gunfire sent back at them. After the skirmishing on the rooftops became more frequent between the Imperial guards and the 4th's scouts a truck and a jeep full of fighters came out from the mall complex behind the wall and advanced on the main lines until they were fired upon. From there the enemy troops debarked and took to fighting in the streets, gradually attempting to creep forward on foot, block by block. Looking down the road towards the tower Bremer could see smoke coming out of the hood of the truck about a half kilometer away. Further down the road behind the truck the jeep sat abandoned with a slain fighter clad in skitter skin sewn over body armor slumped over a mounted machine gun. Three bodies also lay in the street near the vehicles and two other dead Imperial fighters were on the ground between the vehicles and Bremer's position. By the last count of what he had seen there were at least seven living fighters out there hiding, slinking their way towards him. The sparking star patterned flash of gunfire coming from behind the burning truck forced Bremer back into hiding before he could take a shot at an enemy he did not see. Across the street Min-ho made up for Bremer's inaction and fired a sustained burst before he had to fall back behind his cover. Min-ho's barrage merely punched into the skin of the truck and failed to hit any human targets on the other side. As the 4th's leadership attempted to halt the counteroffensive skirmishing continued on the rooftops, with some teams hunkered down behind mounds of rubble, exposed metal frames, partial walls of crumbling structures and what remained of the transformers and HVAC units on top of the buildings. There were at least six heavy weapons batteries within the two towers and no fewer than forty additional troops with a combination of long range sniper rifles and standard military issue K2s.

"Please tell me you have some good news." Bremer said when he noticed Yeon-woo and several other teams of scouts return.

"Yes sir, we do. We found a route to the south tower but it might not be there for long." Hong-gi reported.

"There's half a building leaning over the top of it which could collapse at any second but it's the only path we can move through without being noticed." Yeon-woo added.

"You sure about that?" Bremer asked before quickly whipping around the corner and letting loose a short burst of gunfire before pulling himself back to safety.

"As sure as we'll ever be. We checked in with all the other groups we found and this is all any of us found." Hong-gi replied.

Bullets struck the corner near Bremer chipping away at the already cracked and crumbling brick and mortar pillar and wall section of what used to be a large shopping center. Tufts of dust and tiny bits of material flew out from the disintegrating building and made Bremer shield his eyes.

"Fuck it; we'll take what we can get." Bremer said.

"Yes sir." Yeon-woo replied.

"I've seen some of our men on the rooftops. What about them? Did any of the other teams make it through?" Bremer asked, recalling the ongoing skirmishes while waiting for the next opening to shoot back at those currently firing upon his position.

"I heard some got over but they aren't able to get back the way they came." Yeon-woo told him.

"If you find any of them when you head back make sure they are apprised of the plan and follow through with you. We need everyone we can on this." Bremer told him.

"So that's it? We're a go? You want us to go back and storm the towers now?" Hong-gi asked for clarification.

"Yes. Go down the line and get you as many men as you need." Bremer instructed them. "How long do you think it would take you guys to get into position to make a run on the south tower?" he asked.

"Twenty minutes tops, depends on how quickly we can get everyone together." Yeon-woo replied.

"We'll give you about thirty minutes and then we'll start making a direct advance down the street to draw their fire. Don't leave us waiting, we aren't going to last too long out there if we get exposed." Bremer said.

"Yes sir. Thank you sir." Yeon-woo replied and with that he and the other scouts jogged back down the line gathering up all the soldiers they could to follow them while Bremer, those around him and Min-ho's platoon on the other side prepared to feint a frontal assault.

"You going with them or us?" Bremer turned and asked Da-bin who was still sitting next to Moon-soo.

"I thought I'd just stay here with the doctor in case any of the bad guys broke through." Da-bin replied.

"The doctor's going with us." Bremer replied.

Da-bin gulped and swallowed his fear. He had wanted to sit this one out. He truly was not ready to face combat he thought. While he was on the other side he had managed to hide within the safety net the Empire provided, running relatively safe smash and grab operations and assisting in the reclamation of "tax assets." By the time he was considered to join in with a team on a direct assault against the aliens was around the time he decided to throw his lot in with his sister and Hong-gi to defect to the remnants of the military they had heard about which turned out to be the 4th Korea. He had always been around the fringes of the fight, never on the front line. So far luck had kept him from meeting the dogs of war head on and truly Da-bin didn't know if he could do it. He feared for his life of course, but he also feared that he would uncontrollably break and run if it got too intense, an act he assumed would have left him on his own and away from the protection he so desperately needed to stay alive in this troubling new world.

Bremer didn't notice Da-bin trembling mildly with fear when he turned to the doctor. "I want you to keep back a few blocks behind me with your kit on hand. Follow my lead and stay out of the line of fire as best you can. When you see someone go down I'll have someone go with you to pick them up and get them somewhere where you can treat them safely." Bremer informed Moon-soo. The doctor nodded in acknowledgement of his required duties.

"You, cover us and keep the doctor safe at all times." Bremer instructed Da-bin.

Da-bin reluctantly nodded and nervously prepared to follow close behind the charge into danger and possibly death. Bremer counted down the seconds, patiently waiting and craftily coordinating his forces while Yeon-woo's group advanced through the hidden passage towards the south tower. Da-bin waited too, dreading every minute that passed by. He wanted to freeze time, just to stop it right there or better yet turn it back. Every minute was adding on to the mounting terror within him. Every second ticked closer to him entering into the fray, being in the line of fire with really no idea of what to do when he got there. It was like waiting on the ascent of a roller coaster with the way the fear was building in him, only ten thousand times worse and this time unlike the roller coaster the fall after the climb would in fact be worse than the fear leading up to the ascent. Hope and pray as he might Da-bin could not stop the steady advance of time. Soon enough the attack was about to begin.

A soldier ran past him to join Bremer while they waited for the gunfire hurled their direction to die down. Bremer unclipped a smoke grenade from his belt and took it in hand, ready to pull the pin. First though he turned to the other soldier.

"Head back to Ji-hwan and tell his men to hold their position until Vargas arrives. Make sure he understands that whatever happens he is not to leave before that." Bremer commanded the soldier.

When the gunfire subsided he looked over at Min-ho and his team assembled across the street. Bremer nodded and motioned slightly that the attack was about to commence. Min-ho and a sizeable squad of soldiers had gathered together ready to join Bremer in the forward thrust. The vehicles would be left behind under the guard of Sun-mi and her own squad. There would be no protecting these valuable assets in a direct assault so it was pointless to commit them to the attack. They would prove far more useful when the Imperial walls were down and their amassed armies were being overrun with skitters. Likewise Bremer left his vehicles behind with a small contingent of soldiers to guard them as well. Seo-hyun and Seung-hwa would also wait with their vehicles on the advance wing of the northern line. Ahead of them Min-ji would lead a squad to the rear of the Imperial advance forces and take them out to give Bremer a softer path forward leaving only the towers to contend with. That was where the smoke grenade came in. At this range he could easily obfuscate their vision and throw off their aim. They would be reduced to spraying bullets if they were even that wasteful to use mech capable ammo before Bremer and company closed into range of their smaller arms. Gunfire erupted from behind the Imperial advance lines followed by retaliatory fire in the other direction. That was Bremer's cue; he then pulled the pin on the smoke grenade and tossed it into the street where it spewed out a reddish orange cloud of smoke which quickly filled the entire breadth of the road and drifted along the breeze towards the Imperial gate. Bremer and Min-ho's team charged forward into foolhardy gunfire from the towers. The heavy bullets crashed into the ground all around them. One happened to go through a soldier's boot and tear off two of the man's middle toes.

"I'm alright! I'm alright!" the wounded man grunted as he hobbled towards cover behind a beat up red car riddled with bullet holes.

Da-bin and the doctor were right behind him. The doctor went first and didn't look back to see that Da-bin had not followed him but instead remained paralyzed with fear in the relative safety of the side street. The thick orange smoke soon consumed the image of the doctor from Da-bin's sight as he started breathing sharply, gasping with shortness of breath as the full weight of his panic set it.

The wounded man meanwhile fired through the car window towards enemy soldiers which he could not even see through the smoke but could hear as they clashed with Min-ji's unit. Bremer and Min-ho ran ahead, diving into side streets before they got ahead of the smokescreen. At the leading edge of the smoke they had a clear shot of the last two fighters of the Imperial advance force. Min-ho shot one through the back of the neck, just above the skitter skin flak jacket he wore and below the man's helmet. Min-ji took out the other one but without the same precision instead just lacing several bullets through the man's armored chest until a couple managed to penetrate through for the kill. The south tower burst forth with six guns on full auto towards Min-ji's position, tearing apart the already ravaged rubble she and her team retreated behind. Meanwhile Bremer and his advance squad darted ahead drawing fire from the north tower. The north tower was caught off guard as was too late to hit any of the 4th Korea fighters before they hid out of sight in the mountainous pile of building materials that had fallen into another side street which had once been a rather nice residential complex.

Moon-soo reached the wounded man and had him take his shoe off. The toes were completely severed, one of which was obliterated in full now only a lumpy mess of flesh at the end of the fighter's torn up sock. There wasn't anything Moon-soo could do about salvaging the toes so he only got to work on cleaning the wound and stopping the bleeding.

"You stay right here. Crawl over between those buildings if you have to but don't go charging in on that foot ok?" Moon-soo instructed the soldier who grunted and acknowledged him.

He didn't have a chance to notice that Da-bin wasn't with him before he heard a soldier cry out "Medic!" from beyond the auburn drifts of smoke. Da-bin then picked up his kit and ran on ahead through the smoke. To his benefit the Imperial towers were focused in the direction of Bremer's, Min-ji's and Min-ho's groups who were now pinned down by a heavy barrage of gunfire.

"Medic!" screamed a second soldier. This time Moon-soo saw a man dragging a woman who was barely conscious and had been shot multiple times through the abdomen in between two mangled stacks of housing and automotive fragments. Moon-soo ran to the nearest victim and got to work trying to stabilize her. "Man down!" yet a third soldier shouted as a chain of bullets smashed through the right knee cap, skimmed the right hip and tore into the flesh of the right shoulder of a man running for the next closest cover on their advance. The first wounded man who had been struck in the ribs by shrapnel caused my gunfire tearing apart an already badly damaged car was lying next to Bremer who looked momentarily across the street to see Da-bin at work on another patient. He noticed that Da-bin was not present but did not have time to process that before he had to return fire towards the north tower in an effort to get them to expend more of their bullets in his direction though he had virtually no chance of hitting an enemy target from where he stood.

Meanwhile the messenger had relayed Bremer's orders to Ji-hwan who waited at the absolute rear of the 4th Korea's formation. He nervously looked down the street to the east at the cloud of orange smoke drifting slowly away from him, obscuring his vision from the sights which produced the wretched sounds of battle beyond the cloud. He then looked down the street to his south, where he expected Vargas to be coming from and saw nothing. "Where was he? What is taking so long?" Ji-hwan wondered. It hadn't been unusually long yet considering what Vargas had to do but Ji-hwan was getting extremely impatient; if Vargas did not show up with those alien reinforcements to plow through the Empire today would likely go very badly for them.

Now from a rooftop of one of the few mostly intact structures in the area even further to the north and east of Ji-hwan and the 4th Korea's rear line a lone skitter hunched down behind some large pieces of metallic debris and a blown transformer and curiously observed the battle. The aliens were learning or so it seemed. Humans fighting amongst themselves were of no concern to their plans though the violent acts of such an irrational species disgusted the aliens. Nonetheless their plans had to proceed uninterrupted so their involvement, no matter how much they wished to clamp down and stop the animals from destroying such precious resources, namely themselves, was unwise as it would only refocus the humans to unite against them thus putting their plans at risk for further delay, delays which their masters would not tolerate.

While Bremer's charge was halted, pinned down by a steady barrage of ceaseless automatic weapons fire, Yeon-woo and Hong-gi amassed an army to storm the towers, first the south and then the more difficult one to the north across the street. They gathered up around fifty men and women for the job, leaving the rest with their vehicles in preparation for the assault on the main base. Among those that joined with Yeon-woo's squad were Jenkins, Meyers, Pearson, Myung-yong and Seo-jun.

Myung-yong carried the punch for the team in the form of several RPGs and their launcher. A few other soldiers carried grenades and flash bangs for effect as well but most of them were equipped with standard K1As or K2 rifles. The lack of heavy weapons was of no concern however as the intention was to capture the towers not reduce them to the state of all the surrounding structures. Upon their capture the 4th's fighters would undoubtedly seize upon a fresh treasure trove of heavy weapons to fill that deficiency in Yeon-woo's strike team.

Their good fortune held as the precarious structure held as their unit moved into position and they remained unnoticed with a clear view of the tower as Bremer, Min-ho and Min-ji continued a determined and convincing feint to draw the enemy's fire.

"Alright! Let's finish this!" Myung-yong asserted as he loaded an RPG into his launcher.

"Wait! Wait!" Yeon-woo stopped him.

Myung-yong looked at him strangely, what was his angle the gruff man wondered. "That's not how we're going to do this. We're going to go in there and take those towers room by room." Yeon-woo explained.

"That's fucking stupid!" Myung-yong protested. "We go in there and people are going to get themselves killed, our people! We got to go all out on there now or we'll never get through this shit before the bugs come!" Myung-yong insisted, defiantly raising the rocket launcher onto his shoulder.

"We've got spiders on the way and if you think they'll just go after the Empire when they get here you've gone mad." Yeon-woo upbraided him.

"Them fuckers ain't firing rockets at us and you know damn well they got em. They be knowing them chicken walkers be coming for 'em. We best have ourselves the same smarts y'know? We can't exactly afford to waste our big boom booms either." Jenkins sassed Myung-yong as Hong-gi stepped forward and pushed down on the rocket launcher convincing Myung-yong to lower it.

Myung-yong wasn't convinced however. He only pretended to stand down; what he did next he did because he believed that it would save lives on his side. He quickly raised his rocket launcher and without bothering to aim fired it towards the north tower.

"What? No!" exclaimed Yeon-woo.

As the rocket slammed into the front door at the base of the north tower setting fire to what little charred flammables remained within and fracturing an already damaged superstructure even further Yeon-woo's men dashed out of the line of sight before the startled tower guards to redirect fire in their direction. Pearson who stumbled and fell down after being frightened by the unexpected rocket launch was gunned down soon after he stood back up and never reached the safety of the adjoining streets. Light machine gun rounds perforated his chest, neck, head and legs in several places leaving his blood flowing out of the multitude of wounds onto the street like water through a strainer. An act intended to save lives had already cost the 4th Korea one. In the confusion however Myung-yong had vanished taking their rockets with him leaving no one there for the rest of the unit to blame.

"Dammit that impetuous little bastard!" cursed Yeon-woo.

"He ain't exactly little y'know." Jenkins corrected him. A bit of battlefield humor to keep his mind off the fact one of his boys had just been turned into a pile of red pulpy Swiss cheese out there.

"Ok, that big fucking pile of. . .where the hell is he?" Yeon-woo snarled.

"He's gone. I don't know where he went." Hong-gi replied.

While the attack force waited Myung-yong had slipped away to a hiding place along the main road leading in where he had a clean shot at the north tower from the corner of said spot. He ducked under a concrete slab to conceal his position as Bremer and Min-ho's forces once again drew fire towards their feigned assault which had advanced a few more blocks with only a couple minor casualties thanks to Myung-yong's foolhardy attack. As it turned out the lower floor of the north tower was vacant so the rocket attack was in essence ineffective and the support structure for the building remained strong. During the brief diversion Moon-soo had also managed to jump between patients on the other side of the street. His first he was unable to save and the woman died in the arms of her fellow soldier. The second, the man with the shrapnel in his ribs he was able to treat and he now was working on the third. Since then the injured continued to stack up and down the line he had five more patients to tend to that would likely be able to live to fight another day. Two others Moon-soo had deemed lost causes and sadly due to time constraints he consigned them to die. He was so busy that it still hadn't occurred to him that his protector was still cowering in the rear behind a slowly dissipating security blanket of fiery orange smoke.

Myung-yong went to load his rocket launcher and realized that he had dropped a rocket during his retreat to this location which left him with only three. Careless, he thought but two was all he needed, one for each tower if he placed them right and then a third for good measure. Before he could fire the first one though he was spotted and a massive burst of gunfire broke down the slab he hunched down behind. Myung-yong crawled away from the enemy's line of sight and carelessly left the rocket he had intended to load behind. As his cover was pounded to dust an errant bullet struck the rocket and caused it to explode collapsing the nearby wreckage and debris around Myung-yong. Myung-yong waited in order to give the impression the blast had killed him before he would make another attempt. After firing on the feint advance and on a creeping side sweep by Yeon-woo's group the Imperials gave Myung-yong the breathing room he needed to re-emerge from the rubble. He launched the rocket but it missed by a hair and buzzed past the south tower eventually impacting a defunct modern van somewhere in the open cleared out plot of ground beyond the towers. A stupid mistake, he had been forced to take the shot in too much of a hurry. Pinned down by machine gun fire he was unable to line up the shot properly and that's why he whiffed it he told himself. There were just too many of those assholes up there for the 4th to get an opening Myung-yong believed. There was one particular window on the 7th floor which was giving him the most grief though snipers were also clipping the 4th's positions from various locations on the 3rd, 4th and 11th floors as well.

He now was down to one RPG, if he was to contribute anything to this fight and avoid cut down on the blood required to pay to take those towers he had to make it count. One rocket, how best to use it he thought. Instead of going for the obvious target of the window on the north tower from which a good portion of the heavy machine gun fire had been coming at them from he ducked back down the alleyway, away from the line of fire. He then took aim at a different target, one with less of likelihood to hit it at that. He launched the rocket at the beamer that had been circling over the area as it made its approach over the two towers yet again. By some act of god the beamer did not react quickly enough to the rocket being fired. Perhaps the aliens had become too lazy or arrogant or believed the humans were simply ignoring them. Whatever the reason the beamer took the hit in the lower right side of the craft and began to lose altitude until it buzzed over the top of the north tower, flaking off bits of its underside as it passed by and then slammed into the south tower. The beamer exploded into a million pieces and filled several floors with fire, shrapnel and debris. The floors collapsed in places and buried Imperial fighters beneath them. It didn't appear that the whole thing would give way but certainly the structure had been shaken by the damage done.

In the confusion following the beamer crash amidst the smoke and dust clouds obscuring them from the gunners in the north tower several 4th Korea soldiers led by Hong-gi stormed through the side doors and windows of the south tower. It had turned out that Myung-yong's aggression might work out for them after all. Another beamer that had apparently been irked by the loss of the first beamer dove down out of nowhere and strafed both the 4th and imperial positions. A searing blast of blue energy sliced through the rubble around Da-bin causing him to run scared down the line. The continued barrage fried a 4th Korea fighter and blasted the left arm off a woman reaching to reload her weapon before the blast knocked her aside. Moon-soo would be quickly summoned to her side by the familiar cry of "Medic!"

Foolishly an Imperial .50 cal redirected its fire towards the craft as it approached the structure from a low altitude. The alien fighter sent its jagged energy pulses into the fortified floors of the north tower turning many of their fighters into ash and their weapons into molten slag before enough rounds managed to shave enough material off the fighter to cause it to abruptly lose altitude and crash.

Myung-yong shirked back when a burst of machine gun fire struck near him and he retreated down the side street away from the tower. The gunfire however was not his greatest concern as the damaged beamer slammed into the ground on top of him, breaking apart into innumerable pieces painted with ash and the blended remnants of what had been Myung-yong.

With their strongest fighting position in the north tower decimated and Hong-gi's squad storming the south tower the Imperials in the north tower fired two rockets into the weakened third floor of the south tower. The explosions tore through the load bearing members still supporting the rest of the building which resulted in the upper floors giving way to the structure's total collapse. They were teetering on losing the gate as it was and should Hong-gi's men gain control of the weapons within the south tower the way into the compound would have been clear for the full strength of the 4th's forces to come rolling on in. The Imperials weren't going to give the position away to the 4th to hold against them, even if it meant using valuable explosive ordinance.

The building fell into pile of rubble just like all the rest around it entombing Hong-gi and his squad within it. Smoke and dust spread outward like a great wave upon the streets following the collapse of the tower. Coughing and shielding their faces Bremer, Min-ho, Min-ji and Yeon-woo all led their groups in closer surrounding the beleaguered north tower the Empire was desperately trying to hold onto.

As if their situation wasn't dire enough three more beamers swung in to make precise attack runs on the north tower. The aliens didn't wish to keep the humans from killing each other only they had assigned the towers to be a danger to their flyover patrols and had mandated their destruction hence why a surgical strafing run was being performed rather than carpet bombing the whole area. The 4th Korea seemed to know this, that they were being used by the aliens to take out the Empire and probably would be taken out themselves if they were victorious, and for the present time used that knowledge to their advantage. Bremer had each squad hold position and wait for the alien air power to deal with the tower. He explicitly urged his fighters not to fire upon the aliens lest they be provoked into seeing his ground forces as a threat as well. Maybe the aliens were learning that all humans weren't one and the same or maybe they were just assuming that those on foot lacked the capabilities to do them any real harm. After all the alien strategy thus far did not seem to paint them as cruel exterminators rather it appeared as if they only wanted to reduce or eliminate humanity's ability to resist them. They had to play along with the perception that the soldiers on foot at least on their side of the wall were incapable of doing the flyers any harm; this way the aliens would be handing them a victory. It wasn't the victory they wanted but it was the victory they were going to get.

Now with alien air power abuzz and the 4th reaching dangerously close to taking control of the eastern gate the Imperial forces dispatched two van loads and an RV full of soldiers from a partially erect concrete parking garage adjacent to the mall. A heavy machine gun mounted on top of the RV and operated through the sun roof provided cover fire as the vans swung around and unloaded their fighters at the base of the towers before speeding back towards the garage. A beamer swept in and dive bombed one of the vans only to be hit on its periphery with a rocket launched from the side door of the other van. The impact damaged the beamer, affecting it's in flight stability but did not bring it down. Instead it ascended rapidly and accelerated forward, leaving a trail of smoke streaming from the base of one of its "butterfly wings" which eventually was put out by the onboard fire suppression system prior to the beamer disappearing from view. The two other beamers lit up the north tower, once of which being taken out by Imperial ground fire and crashing onto the street in between where Bremer and Min-ho were standing. They each looked at the crumpled up mid-section of the alien fighter between them expecting to have to bash the head in of some spaceman pilot once he, she or it emerged from the wreckage. They were a little disappointed when nothing came out. Then their disappointment turned to action when the remaining beamer passed the tower, did a rapid 180 in midair and fired upon the base of the tower causing it to fall over in a westward direction. Like a bolt of lightning the beamer then shot straight up into the sky leaving the Imperial retaliatory fire to criss cross through nothing but air where the craft once stood. This decisive blow left the Imperial ground forces vulnerable to attack. The path was clear and only this small contingent of soldiers and an RV converted into a ghetto tank remained in the path of Vargas' incoming alien army which by Bremer's count if all went to plan should be arriving any minute now. Before the dust had settled Bremer issued the call to attack and he, Yeon-woo, Min-ho and Min-ji all charged forth from their positions to engage the enemy. The walls were down, the cavalry would be arriving soon and then the real battle to end this petty power struggle and unify the human resistance within the city and its environs would begin.