Taylor's M240 Bravo chattered, belt links clattering to the floor of his fighting position as the treeline ahead of them erupted in gunfire and magical casting of explosion spells. Beside them, the Wiesels' 20mm autocannons were let to rip, one tracer every fifth shot in the burst allowing the German crews to adjust fire while the TOW-armed Wiesels stayed behind the berm.
The T80s that had rolled up with them were farther in the rear, their crews being forced to move while another 20mm-armed Wiesel dealt with the enemy drone above. A missile streaked through the night and skimmed the top of one of the tanks while the JSDF troops finally joined the defense at the front with the Marines.
Ivanov dropped into the same foxhole as Taylor and spoke, "Sorry for the spook!" before setting up his SAW's bipod and letting loose with 7,62x51mm rounds. Both men flooded their little hidey-hole with the hot brass and broken chains of the links as they fired. Their NVGs glowed, shining onto their eyes as one of them fired with an IR laser and the other simply utilized his helmet's VISR Goggles.
The Wiesels beside them utilized their thermal sights to pick out targets in the trees, with a Platoon of Russian infantry covering their flank on the right not far behind on expending their own ammunition. They were lucky they were in defilade and had the cover to protect themselves, while the enemy continued pounding their position.
A whistle echoed overhead and an explosion thumped behind the two men, washing both in dirt and creating a crater just in front of Richard. The man jumped over it, tossed two more cans of ammo to the men and then jumped into a foxhole next to them, calling out, "Rat bastards have Mortars and their mages are using Spells like fucking shells!"
"First time I'm fighting in the middle of the Night and the Hajis we're shooting hafta have NVGs, too!" Taylor complained, then knelt as he reloaded his M240, his assistant gunner beside him picking up a belt from the box below and slamming it home. Both men shut the top cover of the MG down and Taylor then rammed the bolt home.
Torres, who was taking cover farther ahead, behind a tree that was being ripped into by the enemy's own high-caliber rounds, replied to Taylor, "At least they've got dogshit aim!" before he pulled an M67 Frag off his belt, pulled the pin with his teeth and threw it back. The thump of the explosion came back as rapport alongside a few screams, though all were muffled by gunfire.
Itami and Shino fired their rifles, while Kurata, Tomita and the others prepped to lob their own grenades. Ahead, Rory danced amidst the gunfire, an unfiltered, maniacal giggle escaping her mouth as she cut into any Imperial troops attempting to push their position to engage in Melee. Blood stained the floor, men split in half at the waist by the massive halberd.
Delilah and half of the Warrior Bunny platoon of HITMAN-3 were with her, firing close-in weapons like pistols and wielding their blades proudly, too. Delilah herself felt the taste of battle as Emroy had envisioned it, up-close, body to body, blades drawing blood, but she was thankful to have her guns with her as well.
A Gauss shot snapped overhead, causing Rory to duck and look back. She saw the shot had impacted one of the T80s' turret sides, skimming it, ricocheting and slamming into the ground. The tank rolled back into cover, the crew audibly swearing over the com while their own BMPs rolled up next, 30mm autocannons ripping through the treeline.
"Where is Tyuule!?" Rory demanded, looking back at Lelei as she cast healing spells on wounded soldiers of the Russian military. Tuka, meanwhile, aimed and fired her bow at any figure she saw moving in the darkness.
Sarah beside Delilah replied, "Flanking!" as she dumped her spent DMR magazine and slapped in a fresh one, hitting the bolt home with her open palm and poking out again to fire her rifle. She continued, "Do you not remember, Your Holiness!?"
"Ah, yes! My bad!" Rory shot back with a hint of anger in her voice, before she switched her halberd to her left hand and thrust the tip through the chest of another Imperial soldier, skewering him on the spot. She gasped as she heard him roar in pain with a very animalic, very familiar cry, then yelped as a burst of automatic fire hit her, one round embedding itself in her hip.
Delilah snapped her pistol up and sniped the man's head clean off, gritting her teeth and growling in anger as Rory dropped the headless corpse. She bellowed indignantly, "BEASTMEN! WE HAVE BEASTMEN IN THE ENEMY'S RANKS, SISTERS!" with a fury that sent chills up just about everyone else's spines. In that single moment, the familiar Whiskey Bravos that the Allied Task Force had operated side-by-side with had turned into ferocious demons.
Bared fangs and drawn blades, crazed looks in their glimmering eyes and a fury seemingly matched only by their tenacity. Demons, almost. That is what the women of the Warrior Bunny Kingdom suddenly became. Their muscles tensed as they surged forth into the enemy line, dodging the enemy's fire even as their soldiers and Mages adjusted their aim.
Torres balked, lowering his rifle and looking back at Richard as he ran up. He asked the Bunny Queen's consort, "Dude, what the fuck's gotten into them!?" only freezing as he heard the first scream of a hostile Mage, followed by a gargle of blood. Amidst 20mm cannons and small arms fire from both sides, blood was drawn.
Rory watched the women charge in, their flanking force making contact with the rear of the enemy's formation with the same ferocity as Delilah's task group. Even as they exchanged fire with the enemy, the entire unit stared in muted awe at the sheer ferocity of their compatriots. Tyuule's blade bit the hip of an enemy Beastman armed with a captured AK. She grit her teeth, bloodshot eyes glaring at the white-furred anthropomorphized wolf-like being as she dug the blade deeper into his hip. He snarled at her.
She pinned him against a tree, kicked him in the groin and barked something in their language that was so filled with rage that not even their standard translators could pick it up. Delilah and Sarah were quick to join in, planting their own Kukri-like swords into the chest of the man and splitting him open from three different directions.
Bullets zipped over their heads and one hit Sarah in the shoulder, causing the girl to roar a bellowing, angered roar as she primed and hefted a grenade. The distant thump bequeathed the next wave of attacks from the Warrior Bunnies. Blasts of fire were dodged, explosive magicks avoided and bullets only struck armor or narrowly etched non-lethal wounds into the women's bodies.
Though driven by Adrenaline, it was rather obvious to the advancing joint task force that was moving in behind their Shock Troopers that there was rhyme and reason to the women's assaults. The DMR-armed women like Delilah stopped to snipe enemy MG positions, or the Grenadiers fired their under-barrel launchers at the enemy units. They advanced at a staggered pace, waiting for their allies to catch up and only struck when they felt weakness in the enemy's defenses.
It was terrifyingly relentless. Blades swished and audibly connected with plate armor, only to punch through with a previously-unheard-of strength. Blood painted the steel as it began to chip and dent, all while trails of spent casings and blood smears painted the trees. The Russians and Americans were mesmerized, if not also terrified by the sight, while the German light infantry beside them watched in horror.
Rory laughed heartily at the sight, pride welling in her chest while Tuka and Lelei, both of whom had only heard of the sheer strength which these strong tribe women could unleash in wars. It was a reason that the Imperials had previously had trouble fully subjugating them, instead letting them serve as mercenary Shock Troops for their Auxiliary forces.
Lelei herself trembled a little, watching the kind queen Tyuule turned into an Adrenaline-fueled warrior monster, her previously calm features morphed into a look of pure disdain for the enemy, accentuated by the pure white fangs of her species being bared into a nigh-inhuman grimace. She watched Delilah stagger forward as a Beastman swung his own knife down and managed to skim the girl's tail.
Enraged at the loss of a part of her, the brown-haired second-in-command spun her left-hand blade, having the tip face down, before she plunged it deep into the eye socket of the dog-headed man. A howl of pain echoed as the full moon broke through the clouds overhead, lighting the battlefield below in a pallid white glow that mixed with the running rivers of red.
Richard pushed up beside Tyuule, firing his rifle and putting down a kid. Behind him, Torres, Itami and all three of their squads advanced, with the Russians defending the right flank and the Germans taking the left. He and Tyuule took cover together and, for the first time in Richard's life, he didn't recognize the woman staring at him.
Not until her expression softened…
"... This must be odd for you…" She spoke, her voice low, as she reloaded her own rifle.
He nodded, "It is… What's going on?"
"We will brief everyone once we're done here," She replied, then primed a newly-acquired Plasma grenade. She lobbed it overhead, the blue-glowing sphere of energy suddenly attaching itself to the body of a terrified Sapien Sunrise human soldier. It exploded, leaving only a cauterized stump where his upper body was, lower half collapsing dead moments later.
"Not a big fan of beastmen…?" He shot back, then poked out and fired. Beside him, Rosie ran up and fired her shotgun, while Stavrov, Ivanov, Kurokawa, Kuribayashi and Taylor rocked up to provide covering fire. Two MGs, a shotgun, a new rifle and Ikari's sniper thundering in the distance. The enemy's corpses were piling up, fast. Most were, however, locals armed with old and captured guns.
Sarah snapped back, "We've got a long and complicated history with these fuckers…" before hefting her blade and looking at the edge in the moonlight. She mumbled, "Gonna need to sharpen this as soon as we're done… Bastards…" then she stowed it and pulled forth her rifle again. Richard, Henry and Itami all shared a look of sheer concern, before they rallied their squads and, with the help of the Wiesels, pushed on through.
20mm autocannons raked the enemy's positions as they finally got to the leaders of the unit:A formation of three Warthogs, one of which aimed its Gauss cannon and fired. One Wiesel was struck, its ammunition load ignited and the tiny vehicle exploded, blossoming into a flower of shrapnel, twisted steel and vaporized crew.
"Fuck!" Richard barked, "Ikari! SNIPE THAT FUCKING GUNNER!"
An affirmative huff, followed by the sight of the petite Japanese-descended sniper leaping into a prone position caused Richard to pause. The young woman zeroed in on the enemy gunner as he aimed for one of the BMPs cresting the hill, then she shot. The bullet snapped and punched clean through the steel-pot helmet of the enemy, spraying his blood, brains and skull high.
The reply was fire from the gatling cannons on the backs of two other modified Warthogs and the mounted grenade launcher of a captured Humvee, 40mm airburst rounds raining shrapnel around the teams and wounding several of them. Torres poked out from behind his tree cover, aimed his rifle and shot at the grenadier. The bullets struck the armored turret, sparks flying, but the gunner ducked.
The Innie vehicles spun about on their wheels and began to drive off into the darkness, dodging automatic 30mm cannon fire from the BMPs and 20mms from surviving Wiesels. One TOW-armed Wiesel rolled up, the gunner jumping to his feet, switching on the vehicle's thermals, aiming and firing.
With a cough and a gust of rearward smoke and fire, a TOW-2A missile launched from the tube and screamed forward on its guidance wire. The SACLOS-based munition, tipped with the detonation sensor and surrounded by stabilizing fins across its body, lanced forward toward the straggling Humvee.
The almost six-kilogram warhead detonated the moment the round made contact with the rear of the transport. A superheated jet of molten metal punched clean through the rear at an angle, spraying molten droplets across the entire hold of the up-armored four-wheeler. It then punched through the console, into the engine and melted it, with a few shards of shrapnel impacting one of the 40mm grenade boxes below the gunner.
Revenge was had for the Wiesel destroyed by enemy fire, the captured Humvee exploding up and outward as munitions and fuel cooked and expanded outward at the same time. Shrapnel sprayed onto the back of one of the other Warthog gunners. The man collapsed at his gun station, fell off the truck and presumably died on impact.
As the night settled, two fires burned. One was the destroyed Wiesel behind the allied line. The other, a dead, captured vehicle in the distance. Spent casings and dead bodies littered both the forest and the former positions of the enemy, blood pooling at the feet of the groups of soldiers. One of the Russians approached, quipping, "... I guess we now know:'Dont fuck with Whiskey Bravos'..."
A few quiet chuckles echoed from all save the Warrior Bunnies, of whom Delilah was now being tended to by the squads' medics. She winced, then looked up at Tyuule and said, "Sitting down is going to be a pain for the next few days," then she cast a glance back at the soldiers starting to remove bodies from the fighting area and grinning as she saw the corpse of the Beastman she'd shot the head off, "But that's a whole platoon less of them…"
"Yeah…" Tyuule replied, staring at the fire, her face impassive. The flames danced in her tired eyes. She wiped sweat from her brow, shifted her rifle onto her back, then turned to the three Lieutenants and everyone else, telling them, "Our people have a long-standing rivalry with the Beastmen:A race of conquering thugs, rapists and pillagers that I'm sure Prince Zorzal feels quite at home with."
She crossed her arms to her chest and continued, "Some years ago, our peoples used to fight together. We were mercenaries for the Empire. They? They were Thralls, warriors from a conquered kingdom. One of their finest generals and I faced off due to particular 'issues' about land when I first became Queen and she had just won her first campaign. The blood we drew that day filled the goblet of animosity that lead to what you've seen tonight."
Then, she sighed deeply, "For this reason, I ask you all never to intervene in our fights if we engage them. If they are here, that means she is here… And that means the fight ahead of us will grow worse. Beastmen are treacherous creatures. Their word has no meaning to us. If they surrender, it is just to bide their time and stab us in the back."
"Tyuule, wait-" Richard started. She cast a glance his way that bore a single request. 'Be quiet'.
"We have fought them before. You have not…" She spoke, then pointed at the husk of the Wiesel and said, "And worse than this will happen to you if you don't listen to us… I'm begging you and all of our leadership to understand this. Radio it in, tell them we need to move fast if we hope to seize the Capital. Otherwise, we should dig back in for the night at the edge of the treeline."
She sighed and mumbled something in her language, then said to everyone, "Let's move."
Royal Palace. The War Room
Despite the opulence of the place, Lieutenant Lee, soldier of the PLA, could not help but think of this place as a gilded cage. High-hung tapestries, the fancy purple-colored flags of the Empire and the large bed she had been given, not to mention extravagant clothing and warm food. All a ploy to get her to talk.
She'd seen this plenty of times before. Assisted the moment her own sister was dealing with some less-than-stellar defectors in her Tank Division. Wait, no, Defector is the wrong word to use. Slackers, more like. Forcing them to do their jobs wasn't working, so promising a little something nice while keeping them constrained to the army had worked fine.
It was what the Imps and Innies here were trying to do to her, as well. The rat bastards thought that if she talked instead of being handed over to Zorzal to be some sort of plaything for him, she'd co-operate. She had considered it, then realized that the prospects weren't exactly good for her either way. Being captured was not a death sentence, obviously, but…
She missed home. And her friends.
Maybe she could esc-... Her mind froze as she heard the door behind her creak open. Turning back, she saw the silver-haired Beastwoman, a more humanoid, less anthropomorphized and furry one, approaching her. Hand resting underneath her ornate toga, the woman spoke in clear English, "Apologies for my tardiness, Lieutenant. I wished to speak to you again."
"Are you going to keep trying to get me to talk?" Lee asked as she sat down on her bed.
"No. You will talk when the time comes," The General replied, then picked up a goblet and poured herself and her 'guest' wine. Sitting down next to Lee, she handed her the other goblet and told her, "I am here to discuss your allies, however. The Sapien Sunrise soldiers speak of the UNSC having forged an alliance with the Warrior Bunny Kingdoms… Can you confirm it?"
"We've seen a few hanging out at our base, yes," The Lieutenant replied, taking the goblet, "Why?"
The woman sighed deeply, "That means my discussions with the Emperor and his children have been proven correct. Zorzal's ambition did get him burned. And with what I understood from Her Highness, the Princess? The Queen of the Warrior Bunnies is running the show as a soldier alongside the Sapien Sunrise's enemy. Yes?"
"Yes… I think so," Lee replied, "This stuff is all basic knowledge, though. You could've waded out into a battlefield and… Seen…" She paused next, eyes locking onto a glistening azure gem laced with symbols, wrapped around the Wolf-woman's neck. It glowed a peculiar, if enchanting blue, with the symbols seeming almost three-dimensional.
The General hummed, felt the gem and looked at it, then stated, "This trinket has been passed down through generations of my family. It has won us a great deal of battles… And I won it back from Zorzal after he stole it. Eye it all you like, but steal it and I will hand you to my men… And you will find them less pleasant bedfellows than even Zorzal."
Lee twitched and shook her head, defending herself, "I was just looking… It almost looks like some symbols off the Gate."
"Because, as legend goes, my great great grandfather seized this from one of the ancient shrines of another tribe. One dedicated to the Mother of the Gods," The General spoke, looking it over between three fingers, "It bears magical power the likes of which few have seen if it can allow me to shift the tides in my favor."
"So, don't touch the magical cheat code artifact… Noted," Sighed Lee. She plopped back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling as the General stood to her feet. Looking up, she told her, "Why'd you take me?"
"Hm?" Claudia raised a brow, her right ear twitching.
"... Why take me from the dungeons? Save me from Zorzal and the others?" Lee inquired, "Like, I get you need an officer to answer your questions and help you formulate tactics, but you picked one of the lowest level COs in a standard military formation. I lead platoon-strength elements into battle. Biggest number I had under my direct command was twenty men…"
"I dislike Zorzal and his animalistic cronies for one," The woman answered. She continued, "And even a low-ranking officer is more useful as an information source than as a sex slave for someone as debauched as the Crown Prince. Add to that, I want to understand the people we're fighting. It helps me think of counters."
Lee chuckled a little, awkward, "Well, we're as weird and varied as they come. More and more nations are joining the UN Special Region mission… Hell, far as I know, most of the major players in world Politics are already here. We're not one unified world like those Spacer folks… And even they seem to be multicultural to a degree."
"I see," Claudia hummed, "Then this should indeed be interesting. Thank you, Lieutenant. Rest well…" then she walked through the door and shut it behind her. It clicked shut, then clicked thrice more as the woman locked the door, leaving Sam Lee with her thoughts and her thoughts alone once more.
She needed to get out of there…