Aswan's Fall Chapter 3
A/N: Look at the 'directed energy weapons' article in Wikipedia. How wonderful the world of general knowledge is. A tip o all writers – writing stories is a craft. It's a form of art in a sense as well as a sort of science if you will.
Do your research on what you're writing about so that you have good background material to work with. Another good source is the CnC Wiki.
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The Ion Cannon was the premier weapon of the GDI, the fact of its very existence so often a disincentive to Brotherhood High Command in their more rational moments. More accurate and precise than a nuclear warhead and without the associated political and ecological fallout of nuclear weapon use, it had served GDI's intentions well for decades.
A strategic weapon of vast destructive capability, the tremendous advantage it afforded the GDI over the decades had been nullified by Nod distributing their forces across wide areas of the globe, camouflaging them as much as possible among the civilian conglomerations of the Yellow Zones.
GDI could very well have destroyed the Nod forces if they wanted to, but the fact was that unlike the fanatics of the Brotherhood, the GDI was humane. They were simply not as ruthless as the enemy the fought and so were unwilling to enact the hard decisions that would have assured them absolute victory, if one could call it that.
Such decisions, if they had been taken, would also have been counter to the stated GDI goal of reclaiming the Yellow Zones from the ravages of the Tiberium ecology and in fact would have worsened it.
Ever since the Third Tiberium War, the Brotherhood of Nod had taken to installing Liquid Tiberium silos in all their major strategic facilities, making things that much harder for the GDI. This had resulted in them seeking alternative approaches.
The Ion Cannon was a strategic weapon and with good reason. As with all directed energy weapons, whether radiation or particle-based, in an Earth-standard atmosphere the beam tended to defocus around power densities of a megajoule per cubic centimetre due to plasma breakdown.This effect, called blooming, caused the beam to defocus and disperse energy into the atmosphere. It was an effect only worsened by cloud cover and weather phenomena such as fog,clouds, mist or dust. This resulted in it having to be a strategic weapon.
While possessing great potential as a tactical weapon, GDI simply didn't have the technology to miniaturise it to that level just yet, as below a certain power threshold it's effectiveness was severely affected .
In the interim, they'd decided on a different weapon system to utilise in scenarios that required more finesse than an ion cannon or nuclear weapon. Orbital hypervelocity railguns. Besides serving as artillery, they served to provide a formidable defensive layer that could literally shred anything short of a Scrin mothership to fragments.
Which was why Ltc. Jambu was rapidly linking up with Space Command on the distant cousin of the GDSS Gilgamesh – the TCSS Shanghai.
After the proposal of the construction of an orbital network of hypervelocity kinetic weapons, the SCO (Seoul Cooperation Organisation), a bloc of states within the GDI that consisted of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China and the Indian sub-continent (the few areas that weren't Red Zones at least), Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sulawesi, Australia and the South Pacific island nations had opted to construct their own system.
This was in no small part due to the lack of the North American zones willingness to share their technology with their allied nations. Another contributor was the fact that after the merger of the European Union and the states of North America, the European and North America Commands were constantly at each other's throats over issues such as funding, bureaucratic practices and what else.An example had been the refusal of the civilian government of the former United States of America to convert to the metric system, a problem that had been solved by the Europeans forcing it down the throats of the last Congress, which had subsequently been disbanded.
This generally tended to slow the development of weapons down as issues got politicised and caught up in the bureaucratic red tape of the two behemoths.
The SCO was designed as a bloc within GDI to protect its own interests in the areas of economics, ecology, legislation, scientific research and defence, a close alliance that could actually get things done.The end result had been that their orbital weapons system was fully operational several years ahead of the GDI's own, while the SCO was already prototyping their own flotilla of spaceborne warships in the event of a Scrin invasion.
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Rear Admiral Choi Gaesomun was a career military man who'd served a decade with the GDI at the start of it before being reassigned to the Korean navy's blockade operations in the Middle East, where he'd interdicted Nod shipments of weapons, narcotics and black market Tiberium.
After a successful career that demonstrated his competence and strategic acumen, he'd been reassigned to Navy TRADOC (Training and Doctrine) as Director (Operations) before being put in charge of the new space station and its attendant orbital networks.
He was also a man who'd harboured a distrust of the GDI, like many people from outside the European and North American Blue Zones. So it had been surprising to say the least when the GDSS Gilgamesh had opened communications with his station and asked for his aid.
The plasma screen showed a young man of Southeast Asian descent in his mid 30's with the markings of a Lieutenant Colonel, dressed in the uniform of the Singapore Armed Forces. Gaesomun looked into the face of his old protege, a man he'd helped instruct in OCS more than a decade before.
If it involved Jambu, it put Choi more at ease than with mavericks like Philip Ricardo or the notorious Graham brothers, a trio of brothers who served in the North America Command and were known for their unorthodoxy. In his entire career, the ones whom Gaesomun had respected the most were Javier Vega and Robert Jambu, the first his comrade, the second his student.
"Good to see you Jambu. Anything I can help you with?" Jambu asked, the private link over which they talked encrypted and filtered. He already suspected it had to do with the situation down in Aswan, word of which had rapidly spread through Asia Command.
"It's more like an under-the-table deal sir. You know that railgun system you have in orbit?"
Choi cocked his eyebrow. "The one that's classified and officially is still in the prototype stages but actually works? Let me guess, you need help to extricate your Guardsmen from the situation in Aswan."
Jambu's eyes lit up. "Affirmative sir."
"Send the targeting information to the bridge. I'll approve the firing. Besides, the boys in R & D are always harping on about having it field tested. This is the perfect opportunity."
"Just watch our for the civilian areas sir."
"Don't worry. It'll be minimal. Besides, we got better targeting software than anything the Americans or Europeans could ever hope for. "
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Hasan assessed the situation currently facing them. 3 of them versus 12 Yellow Zone gangbangers. Any statistician would have said the odds were against them. Hasan begged to differ.
Rather, it was 12 Aswani gangsters versus 2 elite GDI Pathfinders of the 2nd Singapore Guards and a super-soldier reject who could still move and react faster than any normal human could ever hope. As he prepared to move, watching the barrels of the rifles and pistols as they rose, taking aim at them, the concrete floor moved.
Simultaneously, all the windows shattered into fragments, breaking the tension as the gangsters and pathfinders rushed to seek cover. Nano-glands flooding his system with adrenaline and countless other hormones, Hasan lunged into action.
He entered the fugue state that distinguished his hyper-alert, faster-than-human state of perception, the glass fragments falling slowly in relation to him, as he saw the specks of dust glint in the reflected light.The sounds of his comrades were muted, their mouths opening and closing in slow motion as they shouted unintelligibly at the gangsters The gangsters were even slower, eyes blinking with incomprehension at the blur of motion that he'd become.
In 3 seconds, 4 of them were dead, a full third of their number. His fighting knife glistening with blood, he stabbed another through the neck, the serrated edges of the sharp ceramic blade ripping through muscle, tendon and ligament as it sawed against bone.
Whipping around, he saw the blood flow in slow motion, like the still frame of a film. The next opponent was a massive Nubian, a tattoo of the Brotherhood's scorpion tail inked into his cheek, dark brown, nearly ebony skin stretched over massive musculature, both arms cybernetic. His eyes were glazed over with a thin blue-red film, the sign of an 'Eye Candy' addict.He lashed out with his arms and Hasan dodged, receiving a glancing blow from one of them to his head. He stumbled and fell to the floor, tumbling and rolling as he sought to stand before two massive men launched themselves at him, kicking him in the ribs.
He rolled with the blows, stabbing another man in the thigh while kicking out the Nubian's knee, watching him collapse in a writhing mess of pain.
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Gerard and Zach opened fire opened fire on them the instant Hasan struck, emptying their magazines in fully automatic fire. Even firing from the hip, this close to them they couldn't hope to miss.The gangsters themselves were in disarray after the surprise assault by Hasan. It was over in a matter of seconds, the gangsters either dead, too injured to fight back or engaged in a struggle with Hasan.
The big Nubian attempted to strangle Hasan, getting him into a headlock, before Zach used his rifle butt to deliver a devastating stroke to his skull. The Nubian went out like a light, before Hasan ruthlessly finished him off, ramming his dagger through the Nubian's neck and into his brain.
Panting heavily, he leaned against the wall before tremors started to shake his body. He began to cough harshly, phlegm mixed with spittle drooling from his mouth as he hacked away. Tersely, he tried to grab his nebuliser before it fell to his feet.He dropped to his knees and grabbed it, putting it to his mouth and breathing in deeply as he inhaled it, the counter-agent entering his system and stabilising it. Wheezing, he leaned against the wall, body emanating heat, skin slick with sweat and eyes heavy with fatigue. His body burned with a need for carbohydrates and sugars.
Gerard and Zach shared a look. It wasn't everyday that one of your close friends suddenly gained superhuman attributes and they weren't dumb. Contrary to popular thinking, one had to be relatively smart before entering the Special Forces, qualifying with at least a higher diploma or associate degree before they even bothered to look at you. In essence, GDI wanted killers who could quote Einstein and have a competent understanding of complex numbers.
They'd heard rumours of a super-soldier program through the military grapevine. While the Nod cyborg super-soldiers were common knowledge to the media, there had always been speculation about the existence of a GDI program to accomplish the same.
Leaning against the wall, they took a short breather. When Hasan could breathe properly, he looked at them.
"I suppose that explains why you never needed to sleep so much and always had so much stamina. Project Bahadur I presume?" Zach said, meeting Hasan's gaze.
"One of their rejects. Two thirds of the volunteers who took part either died from the side effects like cancer, were crippled or suffered some form of psychosis. I was one of the lucky ones. I had everything they were looking for except for the little fact that my body is either rejecting it or accepting it at random times. If I push my self too far like just now...well, you saw what happened."
"Hm. So the rumours were true. That's GDI for you" Gerard said. "Listen Hasan, you ok?"
Hasan struggled to get up, taking the extended hand offered by Gerard. In the distance they heard the sounds of the bombardment continue. Looking at the gangsters who were moaning in pain, Gerard gave Zach and Hasan a look. Hasan glanced at the injured and nodded. It was unspoken.
The gangsters, despite being non-combatants under GDI ROE (Rules of Engagement), posed a threat to them if they remained alive. For the Pathfinders to remain alive, they had to die. Pulling out their pistols, they fixed the silencers to the barrels.
There was no such thing as the innocent side in a war as far as Hasan was concerned, only the side which performed the lesser evils and managed to survive.
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Stripping the dead gangsters of their clothes, they put on their clothes while dressing some of the corpses in their GDI uniforms. Wrapping clothes around their heads to protect against the cool dusk, they made their way through the ruins, rifles wrapped in rags. They'd hid out on the outskirts during daylight to avoid being caught, finishing their last packet of combat rations.
Cut off behind enemy lines, they could hear the rumble of hypersonic rounds falling from orbit impacting the earth. As far as they could tell, the GDI had managed to destroy the artillery positions that had pinned down the Guards, who'd managed to evacuate on foot with moderate casualties after 48 hours of sustained bombardment.
At the very least, that was all they could interpret from the scrambled transmissions they'd managed to pick up on their radio from Nod and GDI frequencies through all the interference. Now it was not their fellow Guardsmen they had to worry about. It was themselves
Slinging their weapons, they made to move deeper into Aswan, the way back crawling with Nod patrols eager to capture the infiltrators. Ironically, they only way they could survive was if they continued to move forward, deeper into Aswan.
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Read Admiral Choi stared in amazement at the print out. They'd utterly devastated the Nod positions, but GDI forces in the region had been badly mauled as well. With the ion storm not lessening for another day, any assault had to be postponed until tomorrow.
The Guards had withdrawn to holding positions further south, upstream of the Nile, with the rescued companies rotated out from active duty for rest. From their forward operating base south of Aswan, close to Abu Sombol, they would strike once the ion storm lifted.
The scientists had been overjoyed to test out their orbital artillery and the results had exceeded expectations. The only problem was that they'd exhausted the entire stockpile of ammunition for the system. According to intelligence reports and scans from the Gilgamesh, the outer air and ground defences had been utterly smashed from the nearly continuous bombardment.
Of course, none of this amazed the Rear Admiral. It was the fact that a small group of Pathfinders had managed to infiltrate Aswan and survive when by all rights they should have died. They'd been the ones to notify the Gilgamesh of their position and he'd gladly directed some artillery support their way. The admiral unconsciously scratched the Pathfinder badge on his own uniform. He'd been among the first batch of Pathfinder instructors, bringing his naval expertise to the job. 'Once a pathfinder, always a pathfinder' as he was fond of saying.
He sincerely hoped that they survived.
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In Yellow Zone territories controlled by Nod, guns were legal and their trade unregulated, Nod only asking for a cut of the profits from the merchants who traded in them. The trio had regretfully had to ditch their rifles among the ruins, having exhausted all their ammo. As such, they were now using venerable Avtomat Kalashnikova Model 1974 or AK 74's.
A product of 20th century Russian design, it was a rugged and enduring design that was surprisingly accurate once the electronics were upgraded. Chambered for 5.45 mm rounds, most modern military and police ballistic armours could defeat it with ease. However it had no problems shredding through Visceroids, Fiends or unarmoured human beings for that matter.
Gerard's gun was an entirely different matter. Grinning like a lunatic, he clutched his prize in his arms; an USAS-13 automatic shotgun, produced by Daewoo Heavy Industries of Korea, renowned for their discovery of synthetic hydrocarbons or artificial fossil fuels.A generational improvement over the underrated but incredibly powerful USAS-12, it was made of a carbon fibre composite that gave it a tremendous strength to weight ratio. With excellent weight distribution and mechanical ruggedness, it was a 12-gauge automatic shotgun that could shred anything short of Scorpion armour depending on the ammunition load. Chambered for 10 round box or 20 round drum magazines, Gerard held it like a schoolboy cradling a porn rag.
Zach carried the radio, stripped down and hidden in his backpack. Trooping through the ruins, they circled around and made their way back through the ruins, now pockmarked with craters from the earlier bombardment. Hasan had thought the orbital artillery system was still in the testing stages. Obviously he'd been mistaken.
By now it was inevitable that they'd have to mix with the civilian population of Aswan. They'd run out of room to manoeuvre and had no other choice. In the cratered wasteland towards the river, Nod patrols of Black Hand elite scoured both banks for any sign of them.
Hasan raised his fist and made a circle, pointing to a derelict building that bordered on a busy street. Faces concealed, they dashed to the back of the building before peering around the corner. At that moment a Nod buggy took the corner, filled with off-duty soldiers.
Reversing into a lot just off the main road, they clambered out, eager expressions on their face. Ducking back into cover, Hasan beckoned for Zach and Gerard to cover him before peeking out again. The soldiers were gone, their buggy locked. Looking as non-threatening as possible, Hasan sidled up to the main street and did a double-take at the explosion of noise and light that encountered him.
Before his eyes was the seediest environment he'd ever seen in his life. Neon lights blazed in all their glory, promises of carnal pleasure emanating from holographic projectors mounted on buildings. Pornographic sounds and sights galore infiltrated his senses, sex shops and seedy bars dotting the entire street.
He'd just walked into the infamous Midnight Carnival, possibly the seediest sex district in the entire world, its nearest rival the Patpong and Soi Cowboy districts of Old Bangkok, now a wasteland of concrete ruins and Tiberium.
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"Here's your money. Now leave" Hasan tersely told the girl. She was a waifish little thing, barely more than 14 and already plying the trade. Using money filched from the gangsters they'd killed earlier, Hasan, Gerard and Zach had eaten a light meal and rented a cheap but relatively clean room in one of the less seedy hotels dotting the district.
Looking at the guns lying across the bed and the packets of white powder on the table, her eyes lit up before Hasan slammed the door in her face.
"Well, that's done" Hasan stated as he collapsed into the chair. Zach and Gerard were taking power naps, sprawled across the bed. Hasan hadn't realised how hungry he was until the first morsel of bread had entered his mouth. He'd paid the girl to accompany them, looking like a trio of gentleman about to share a woman between the three of them.
The packets of white powder were their alibis. Liberated from the bodies of the nameless gangsters who'd presumably been drug dealers, Hasan guessed it to be high-grade heroin. The sort of stuff that could earn you 20 years in the Blue Zones of Europe or the death penalty in the Asian zones.
He switched on the television, a simple liquid crystal display monitor. He flipped through the channels, watching the financial news as well as the local propaganda channels espousing the glory of Cain and the evils of the GDI. The news spoke of dead infiltrators, switching to news feed of the gangsters they'd shot.
Hasan chuckled wearily. Once they discovered who the corpses actually were, it'd be too late for the Brotherhood. Drifting off to sleep, he failed to notice the camera hidden in the air conditioning shaft as it panned to the packets of heroin on the table...
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Meera Sinclair was the personal assistant and attache to Dr Merovin, Chief Scientist and Director of Projects in the Aswan base. She was also a deep cover agent of GDI InOps, having been secretly sending back information to them for the past 3 years. She'd only been recently promoted to her post as attache to Dr Gideon Merovin and to date it was her most important assignment. Unfortunately she'd been unable to contact her handlers for several months due to the sensitivity of her posting.
Ever since the Scrin War, the Brotherhood had been spending a generous amount of money on research into interstellar travel and teleportation, finally achieving a breakthrough in the form of phase gates.
Phase gates were a device that carved a path through dimensional space and operated based on the principles of quantum mechanics and superstring theory. Essentially, they twisted dimensions of reality more compressed than space-time to transport a person from one location to another, even if it was impossible under conventional physics.
They manipulated 'probability' so that while it was impossible for an entity to be in that location, they made it so probable that it became possible and ultimately, a reality. At least, that was the easiest way to explain in in plain English to laymen.
Dr Merovin had just finished a session with his favourite whore and Meera sniffed in disgust. For all his scientific brilliance, Dr Merovin had an addiction to women and drugs. The fact that he was who he was enable him to get away with it.
A young 14 year old girl he'd sampled earlier had mentioned accompanying a trio of men to a room earlier, only to be dismissed. Drug traffickers in this case. She'd only been too eager to mention the heroin they were carrying for a promise of a share.
So now Meera stood outside the room with a posse of bodyguards backing her up, Dr Merovin behind her, eagerly licking his lips in anticipation of the heroin high.
"Come on Meera, surely you can keep your boss company for a little thing like this can't you? After all, its your job to look after me isn't it?" groveled Dr Merovin.
"No" Meera finished, casting him a dark look. She found him a disgusting pervert that offended her sensibilities, but that didn't stop her from being professional. Calm,cool and detached, just like they'd taught her at InOps.
She knocked on the door and waited for it to open, only to be met by a shotgun to the face. She looked down its barrel unperturbed.
"My employer here would like to sample your product. I presume we can cut a deal?" she said, voice calm and authoritative.
A gruff voice that sounded very familiar came from the room. Deep and husky, it was a harsh tone.
"Just you and your client. You're Brotherhood people. Not good for business. Rent the room directly above us. Same number. We'll come to you. We keep our guns. Nod people can't be trusted with our product." Meera felt increasingly uncomfortable. That voice sounded suspiciously like an old lover of hers.
The man had a point though. The Brotherhood soldiers had a reputation for undercutting the freelance traffickers and running off with their profits, the traffickers and smugglers unable to do a thing beyond sucking it up and carrying on with business.
She nodded and waved her hands to the soldiers, trigger fingers itching for a fight. The Brotherhood maintained a compact with the traffickers, the big cartels maintaining a monopoly on the supply of such drugs as cocaine, heroin and cannabis in different areas. The last thing they needed was to draw attention here.
These men were seemingly freelancers by all indications, which meant that they could be under contract to any of the cartels in the city. The Brotherhood generally avoided killing contractors of the major cartels for the simple reason that it made life easier. While the Brotherhood could wipe them out, the cartels were a major source of income and allowed the Brotherhood to better control the social conditions in Aswan.
"Agreed. Meet us in Room 615 in 15 minutes."
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Zach leaned against the wall. It just never ended. First they'd infiltrated Aswan and killed a bunch of gangbangers before taking their drugs and now they had a Nod official, a high-ranking one by all indications, buying drugs from them.If it wasn't so ridiculous he would have laughed.
But the best thing had to be that his ex-girlfriend had been standing outside the door and negotiating with them, dressed to kill, in a Nod officer's uniform. They'd exchanged one situation for another. Out of the Tiberium field, into the path of an ion cannon, skirting the edge of a nuclear warhead and now they were in the jaws of Nod.