Episode 1: A Newer Hope
Chapter 5: The Battle Of The Salt Lake
Taking off from Southern Utah, just north of Moab, 30 Blackhawk helicopters loaded with troops carrying all manner of improbable futuristic firearms flew towards their target in the Salt Lake Valley area, Hill Air Force Base. They were accompanied by another 20 Apache helicopters to provide heavy fire support, now retrofitted with bulky lascannons, since Thianna Frostborn had recalled that there were in fact some forgotten big guns in her magic storage bag.
The objective was to catch the PLA Ground Force off guard with the help of the ferocious giantess, who would rocket ahead of the helicopter convoy and rip and tear through enemy lines, dealing as much damage as possible, before the primary assault commenced.
Leaping out of a Black Hawk's transport bay roughly halfway to the final destination, the domineering warrior touched down with ground-shattering force, somehow completely unharmed, and strapped on an Alatus pattern Jump Pack, roaring through the air and passing by the choppers, before eventually disappearing from view.
General Stephen King spoke over the communications with all the soldiers preparing for battle, trying his best to invigorate and motivate the troops under his command:
"We'll arrive at our landing zone and begin the attack in approximately 75 minutes, or just over an hour, so lock and load, everybody! We fly for victory today! And if you meet your demise on this day, remember that death is nothing to fear. It is part of nature, a release from the pain and regret we experience as human beings. Duty is as heavy as a mountain, while death is as light as a feather. Carry this burden and shoulder our woes, for someday, we will all receive absolution, one way or another."
King's slightly nihilistic view may have been controversial among many of his comrades and colleagues, but it doubtlessly helped the warriors maintain group morale, as even they needed to be reminded that all this torment wouldn't be for nothing.
Lasguns fully charged and body armor tightly secured, the American guardsmen eagerly awaited the first battle where they would have a shot at turning the tide, letting the Axis know that the dream of freedom and justice would never die.
At the end of the day, you can kill men, women and children, and get away with it, but you can't kill an idea. Where there is darkness, there will always be light.
A short while later, at Hill Air Force Base:
At high noon, the People's Liberation Army was in the middle of taking inventory of all the weapons and vehicles it had stockpiled at the captured and immensely expanded former American military base, which included 30 stealth fighter jets, a total of 550 armored fighting vehicles, 160 helicopters of all types, and 240 conventional fighter jets.
This represented only a tiny portion of the Chinese military's complete arsenal, but the vehicles and aircraft being kept here were among the most advanced in the world, incorporating many experimental technologies, including robotic drone control systems, making drivers and pilots optional to some degree, as well as prototype directed-energy weapons, like the Dragon Eye laser, capable of melting an M1 Abrams into molten slag and vaporizing its exterior surface.
Needless to say, it was a formidable collection of cutting-edge death machines.
But nobody was prepared for what suddenly fell from the sky without any warning:
"Your worthless lives are mine to claim, skinwalker demons! This is retribution, this is karma! YOU WILL ALL DIE SCREAMING!!!"
Crashing down upon the command bunker's roof came a warrior without equal, who would not stop her bloody massacre until every "monster" around her was dead.
Thanks to Gunnery Sergeant Chin's somewhat inaccurate description of the enemy, Thianna believed that the Chinese government's soldiers were in truth, insidious demonic creatures who had shapeshifted into human forms to push their agendas.
Judging from the atrocities that Chinese and Russian forces had inflicted upon American civilians, she was perfectly reasonable to believe that these individuals were not actually human, and thus, she showed no mercy whatsoever, using every insane weapon and fighting technique at her disposal to decimate their ranks.
The grunts opened fire on her with bullpup assault rifles, combat shotguns, squad automatic weapons and submachine guns, but to no avail, as Thianna's thick ballistic plate and vibranium-laced coat fabric minimized the damage from these comically primitive armaments, and any bleeding she did endure was minor, easily repaired by her healing factor without any consequences.
When the first wave of PLA soldiers ran out of ammunition, she gave them a murderous glare, and uttered a simple English phrase that they could understand perfectly, in spite of the language barrier:
"MY TURN."
Paralyzing fear struck the enemy like a thunderbolt, as Thianna whipped out a heavily modified plasma cannon, bristling with capacitors, coils, heat sinks and antennas, then returned fire with maximum prejudice.
Superheated explosive projectiles as hot as the largest stars burst forth and lit the landscape ablaze, instantly vaporizing dozens of fascists and burning alive hundreds more, all while obliterating scores of their combat vehicles, leaving behind charred corpses, glowing blood-splattered craters, and big piles of molten metal.
When the scorching smoke finally dispersed, due to Thianna firing off a few clips of freezing liquid nitrogen rounds from her hailpistol sidearm, a second wave of Red Nazis pressed the offensive and began activating drone-controlled armored fighting vehicles, clearly not getting the memo that any tactic they tried would be rendered useless by their enemy's superior weaponry and superhuman physical abilities.
The giantess unpacked another cutting-edge heavy weapon, this one looking rather like a portable mining drill of some sort with glowing green power cells attached to its sides.
As two infantry fighting vehicles and two main battle tanks pointed their big guns in her direction, their turrets swiveling into place, she let loose with a strobing emerald beam of concentrated gravitational force, crumpling and squashing all four metal behemoths into twisted wrecks, as if they were mere tin cans.
Then, when the Chinese troops least expected it, Thianna put away her heavy weapons, and issued a challenge they couldn't refuse.
Unsheathing a serrated mithril alloy combat knife, which would count as a very heavy two-handed sword in ordinary human hands, something that only the strongest men could lift, let alone swing, she gestured the PLA soldiers to come at her, flicking her melee weapon in invitation.
Being zealous practitioners of traditional Chinese martial arts and fanatical followers of ancient military codes of honor and loyalty, the puny humans were idiotic enough to believe that they would be able to swarm an absolute unit like Thianna Frostborn with a bayonet charge, and drown her in their own blood.
And so they charged forth in the glorious name of the empire... a very poor decision indeed, which is saying something, since they were going to die regardless if they engaged in melee combat or not.
Thianna had a sadistic grin on her face, and her bloodshot eyes stared into the empty souls of the egotistical conquerors and slave-takers. She was going to enjoy this little moment.
Moving with unnatural speed that belied her size and muscular girth, the Winter Soldier slashed and stabbed in a whirlwind of violent rage. Like a psychotic serial killer, each one of her blows was precisely targeted at her opponent's soft spots, where their nervous system would react the most to the jagged edges of her enormous knife and the searing heated tip of its blade.
Trooper after trooper was left bleeding out on the ground from all manner of orifices, their eyes and ears removed, their limbs dismembered, their anuses gushing visceral fluid, and their genitals torn clean off.
Had the massacre gone on for much longer, the PLA's high command would have been alerted, and regiments currently occupying nearby Idaho would be repositioned to help defend the airbase in the Salt Lake area.
But thankfully, the helicopters of the American resistance forces appeared on the scene just in time, jamming enemy communications and destabilizing the Chinese military's local electronic infrastructure and digital systems. This, of course, prevented reinforcements from being contacted and deployed, and kept the Axis from finding out about the sudden counterattack, meaning victory was almost at hand.
"LIBERTY OR DEATH!," Gunney Chin screamed as he jumped from the transport bay of his Blackhawk chopper, along with the rest of his unit, which he called the Copper Legion, named after Utah's famous copper mines, as well as being a Warhammer reference.
The Copper Legion turned their Lasguns on the enemy troops rushing Thianna, and delivered a hailstorm of colorful death, charring flesh, shattering bone and vaporizing blood.
Discarding his parachute in unison with his comrades, Gunnery Sergeant Chin fought in the center of the carnage, spraying the fascists with fully automatic laser fire, and then winced as a bullet narrowly grazed his head. Three more rounds passed by, and they struck an unfortunate man next to Luke in the chest and neck, killing him instantly in a grisly manner.
Seeing this specific gory sight, while lost in the haze of war, Gunney Chin briefly regained an old memory, remembering who the fallen soldier used to be.
"Holy shit, that was my next door neighbor, Connor McDougal! At least he went down fighting, and died somewhat quickly. Rest in power, my old friend."
Snapping out of his little daydream in order to retain awareness of his bloody surroundings, he resumed his mission, removing the two spent battery packs of his lasgun and replacing them with fresh, fully charged magazines.
After several minutes of intense mid-range firefights, enemy armored vehicles once again joined the hectic combat, this time with actual human drivers and gunners. They immediately fired on the Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, forcing the Americans to act quickly, as losing their source of fire support and aerial transportation would spell disaster.
Instinctively knowing what to do, the American infantry and aircrew concentrated all their firepower on the Chinese tanks. Lasguns and laspistols of all shapes and sizes punched fiery holes into thick armor plating, frying the delicate electrical components inside.
Meanwhile, hovering over the skirmish, Blackhawks viciously strafed the armored vehicles with photonic blasts from door-mounted E-Web heavy repeating lasers, while Apaches struck back at their ground-based tormentors with a retaliatory salvo of star-hot plasma blobs.
In spite of bearing the most advanced composite and reactive armor of the 21st century, the tanks didn't stand a chance against continuous exposure to massed lasgun attacks- Thianna's assistance had turned an impossible, overwhelming task into something relatively trivial.
The slaughter only stopped once all the rank-and-file Chinese infantry and non-commissioned officers were all dead, with the handful of commissioned officers being the only ones still alive.
This decision was deliberate, as Thianna had something special planned for them.
"Alright, everybody! Now that the deed is done, we need to find a proper way to dispose of the leaders of this wretched horde of inhuman beasts! And I've got one punishment in particular that might just be perfectly suited for their crimes."
None of the American soldiers spoke. They just closed their eyes, hoping that it wouldn't be any more gruesome and grotesque than what they had already seen.
Gunnery Sergeant Chin, however, knew exactly what Thianna was planning to do with the Chinese army commanders, being the only person here who had extensive knowledge of Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons lore.
He certainly didn't complain, though, seeing as these were the people directly responsible for ordering the horrific slaughterfest in Utah and Colorado that mentally scarred him for life, in addition to killing his wife and children in front of him.
Before she condemned the guilty officers to a fate far worse than death, the blood-soaked Amazonian warrior spoke to one of them, arguably the most infamous of the lot, and he answered.
"So... General Li Qiaoming. What do you have to say for yourself? You ordered the disgustingly cruel deaths of countless people... soldiers, alongside innocent men, women, and children. You not only mercilessly butchered anyone who stood in your way, but ANYONE WHO YOU DEEMED AS BENEATH YOU!!!"
"I was only doing it... for the good of our people. For the pride and honor of my nation and its glorious empire."
Thianna's face twisted in pure disgust, contempt and odium. Then she twisted the corrupt General's right arm until all the bones in it fractured and splintered in an agonizing manner.
"Pride? Honor?! YOU DO NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF THOSE WORDS! You are a pathetic coward, like all cruel men. You have told lies beyond count, planned what any sane person would consider pure evil, and inflicted untold suffering upon the weak and the defenseless, hatred for hatred's sake. Rest in PAIN, General. May you experience the agony and misery of every person you have ever done harm to."
She pressed a single-use button on one of her gauntlets, causing a small rift between realities to open up, the ominous blackness within causing everyone in a radius of several kilometers to feel an unexplainable, tingling, chilling discomfort.
Thianna then took the restrained Chinese Red Army commanders and hurled them all into the pitch-black portal, their screams being cut off after a few seconds.
"What did you do to them?," Buster Nimitz asked, his skin still feeling abnormally cold. "I wouldn't really know, I'm not Gunney Chin."
"Let's just say I put them in the hands of the most twisted, cruel and deranged individuals in all of the known universe. Basically, a bunch of devil-horned elves. I felt that being used as a test subject for Drukhari lab experiments would be quite fitting karma indeed. They are going to scream and wail in tortured spasms for a very, very long time, and no one will ever answer their cries for mercy."
Sergeant Lucas Chin shook his head in sorrowful regret.
"To think that just a little over 3 years ago, I was eating Detroit-style pizza, visiting Comic Cons, and playing video games with family members from both my side of the tree and my wife's side... will things ever go back to the way they once were?"
"I can't tell you anything for certain, soldier," General Stephen King replied. "We signed up for this, after all, and history shows that as long as there are human beings on this planet, there will be wars- which is something, deep down inside, that I still refuse to believe, no matter how much evidence there is to prove me wrong."
"The only thing I can really tell you is that we are going to make the monsters and demons who did this to us PAY DEARLY for every crime they have committed. Maybe then, if this ceaseless strife somehow ends, long after our deaths, there will be a faint hope for peace shining defiantly in the overwhelming backdrop of darkness."
"In the meantime," Thianna concluded, "let's take all these military assets, vehicles, weapons and equipment and all, then return to our base of operations to plan our next move. During the skirmish, I caught sight of a distant airstrip where hundreds of cargo drones were casually parked, ready to be flown with payloads the size and weight of a medium-sized tank. It would be highly recommended to take control of every drone, for the purpose of seizing as much loot as possible."
"Affirmative, Winter Soldier," Buster Nimitz responded, using the title that Gunney Chin had made him somewhat familiar with. "Once we've loaded our new flotilla of drones up with cargo and combat vehicles, we will destroy the rest of the assets here, and terminate all digital communications and radio traffic, to deny our enemies of any possible resource. Then, and only then, we'll take some time to enjoy our first hard-earned victory."
Bonus Segment: The Sweet Taste Of Victory, At Last
Late at night, back at Area 666
After that one-sided bloodbath, General Stephen King was mostly satisfied with recapturing Hill Air Force Base and grabbing everything worth taking from its equipment stockpile, but he did point out one mistake that Thianna made- the fact that she should have kept one of the PLA officers alive so the Americans could interrogate him.
"We're on a good start here, with all these valuable assets and armaments secured, but I think there is one thing we forgot to do."
"What might that be, comrade?"
"Interrogating one of the enemy commanders would've been a boon for us, given the intel we could extract. That serrated, super-heated knife of yours could have come in real handy if we made a different decision earlier."
"Damn, you're right! Although there's no use in complaining about spilled goat milk. I already threw every single one of those bastards into the hell which they deserved! Even then, with all said and done, I still lament that I couldn't give one of the fascists the Dark Eldar treatment myself."
Then President Campbell stepped into the barracks, drawing the attention of his soldiers.
The troops were in the middle of inspecting and preparing their cutting-edge wargear for the next mission, with guidance from Thianna (who had handed out standard-issue Astra Militarum field service manuals, containing instructions on how to properly maintain and repair directed-energy weapons of all types,) so were surprised to see the commander-in-chief paying them a visit.
Gunney Chin was the first to notice.
"Ah, Mr. President! Ni hao ma, how are you? We're in the middle of learning how to maximize the potential of Lasgun battery packs. Is there another assignment for our forces to tackle? I mean, we are kind of busy right now, but we will be locked and loaded at a moment's notice, when we are most needed!"
"That's just splendid to hear, Gunnery Sergeant. Because we've got BIG PLANS for tomorrow. The Dreamforge will be our trump card, our chance to turn this disaster around and take back our country, and in due time, restore peace to this world."
The sergeant agreed wholeheartedly.
"Then there's no time to lose. Hurry up, everybody! Get those big guns in working order!" We have a war to win!"
"YES SIR!," the other Marines in the room shouted in unison, not wanting to let down Gunney Chin or the commander-in-chief.
As promising as this outcome proved to be, it was merely the first battle of the war to end all wars... the heroes have a long, hard road ahead of them.
Will they prevail, or will they lose what little hope they have left? Time will tell...
-EPISODE 1 END-