The Regency War: Part 9 - A Final Flame
Mehretu
Battle Roll 1: 89 24 GDI win
Battle Roll 2: 44 75 NOD win
The Order of the Remembrancer was stalking in the shadows once more. The Initiative had been working on something in secret. A great pair of structures were taking form in the moors of the former United Kingdom. Some fifty kilometers apart, each was ten stories and over the size of a city block, powered by a dedicated nuclear plant, and functionally closed off. Silent and hidden, with all transit to and from the complex being done by aircraft and offroad vehicle, these were true closed cities, with nearly all of the inhabitants committed to remain there for the duration of the project. In the lead was Kemal, his hood pulled up to conceal his features. Following him was Artyom Alekseyevich, his sniper rifle looking monstrous in the shadows, and a large crystal bisecting one of his eyes. Behind him was Natasha, rifle cradled across her body. Following her, a hunched figure, Haddi, its hands free and wrapped in mottled gray robes, riding an Afanc. Dragging the team was George McGee, the final core member of the order, his own rifle in hand, sweeping the rear aspect. Around them were a half dozen more Afancs, a covering force that would make some noise to distract from the retreat.
Amid the rolling hills and scrub of the moor, the Order was a strange sight, hiking single file as they closed on the site. Kemal was in the lead as they wove through layers of passive defenses, seeded with electronic sensors and physical booby traps. Slipping into the settlement, the Remembrancers circled around the outside. The entire place was relatively well lit by floodlights sweeping across the surrounding expanse, and nearly constantly patrolled, but any defense network has holes – especially for sufficiently skilled infiltrators. There were moments of shadow, an inattentive patrol or two, a guard finding comfort under a doorframe rather than heading out into the night. It was difficult, but each layer of the perimeter defenses was bypassed, one step at a time. As they approached the site, the team split up; Haddi and Artyom broke to the left, towards a hill that could overlook nearly everything, taking with them the other gana.
Dr. Ellen McLain wandered across her lab, going for the coffee pot after setting another one of the particle simulations into her computer system. It would take hours to run, even with her being one of only a half dozen people using the server stack in the basement. But she could feel that something was off – something wrong. Staring out from her slit window, a concession to the fact that daylight is actually good for humans, she noticed something moving in the shadows on the road across from her. As it broke cover, the outline became clearly bipedal and nonhuman. And that was enough to send her rushing for the panic button installed in every room. Flipping up the fragile plastic case, she pressed the big red button, before heading back to her desk for the GD45 stored there. The polymer grip felt good in her hands, the full magazine giving it a fairly hefty weight as she sheltered in place.
The alarm was silent, with the first thing that happened being a light going off in the squad rooms scattered around the complex, ordering everyone to head to containment stations. Against a lone infiltrator, the first and only step is to move to engage with whatever is on hand, whether that be rifles, pistols, or billy clubs, every minute that the infiltrator spends engaging with Initiative security assets is a minute they can't spend doing something else. The problem comes because the Brotherhood rarely sends in lone individuals, and the movement to engage often creates gaping holes in the perimeter. As the soldiers spread out, most carrying standard GD2 rifles, they encountered their foes.
Kemal twisted, lightning leaping from his hands as a pair of GDI soldiers turned the corner, their rifles coming from low ready to the shoulder, preparing to fire. His powers were weak here, far from the holy crystal. But they were enough for this, and a short surge of energy would be quieter than even a suppressed bullet. The two toppled, their bodies twitching as muscles spasmed and cooked.
"Fall back brothers, to the rally point," he barked, already headed in that direction as the rest of the Order wrapped around him, Natasha taking point, and McGee again dragging.
As the beehive rumbled into action below them, Haddi and Artyom watched and waited. While a heavy anti-materiel rifle was a very general purpose weapon, it was also far from being quiet. Especially without Initiative style railgun technology, opening fire now would only give away his position, and more than likely lead to someone laying mortars into his general vicinity. Instead, they held fire, scope and binoculars held tight to faces, keeping the three infiltrators well in sight.
"Artyom, be ready. I have a bad feeling about this," murmured Haddi, its muzzle glancing towards its companion.
As the three crossed the first of the defensive perimeters however, the sniper team was forced to take action. Crack, crack, crack. Three shots, out of the five in his magazine, the first slamming into the left front wheel of the Pitbull screaming towards the infiltration team, magazine full of fragmentation missiles. The second cracked the windshield, and the third punched a hole clear through, the bullet finding its mark from the spray of blood across the windshield. It was time to go.
With the first spotter shells falling around their heads, Artyom retreated down the hill, and before following Haddi barked orders: "Gana, aage hamala!".
The half-dozen Afancs lumbered forward, integrated weapons systems spitting fire downrange. Whether they were actually aiming or not was immaterial. They were simply to sow chaos and confusion, and do what damage they could before dying.
For Timothy Harkness, this job was supposed to be both easy, and more importantly safe. He had lost some fingers back in the Third Tib War, had tinnitus in his left ear from being too close to too much artillery going off, and his knees tended to pop when it got cold. But, well, work was work, and in a hidden city like this one, it was quiet work. Walk the patrol routes, make sure the nerds had their little luxuries, and keep his radio on. Now though, everything had gone to shit. There were infiltrators on the base, and a half dozen bastard children of the Terminator and a lizard were bearing down on him. Bringing his issue GD2 to his shoulder, he jammed up, firing the entire magazine in one long burst, ears hammering, bullets flying everywhere as the recoil kicked him around. Not one of the lizard beasts fell. Around him, burst after burst of fire streaked towards the Gana as they advanced. They dripped blood and multicolored fluids as they kept lumbering forwards – a slow, implacable mass of hatred that poured out their own fire, lasers flashing and machine guns roaring out defiance.
Harkness dropped to the ground as one turned towards him, and just in time as more fire ripped out, pockmarking a wall behind him.
Behind Kemal, McGee screamed out, his normally unflappable demeanor broken by a pair of impacts from 6.5mm Initiative fire, a lucky shot from one of the defenders. "Natasha, grab him," screamed Kemal, raising his hands once more – feeling for the power again. And around him bullets screamed, but none found their marks, curving in midair to avoid the group.
As Natasha grabbed the downed McGee, she switched to her pistol, shooting as she dragged her partner to cover. "He won't last long without medical treatment," she called out, as Kemal dove for cover of his own.
"He comes with us – we cannot allow our bodies to fall into these Infidels' hands!"
"Then cover me. There is a lot of ground to cross."
"Go!" As the three moved, Kemal blocked shot after shot, but before long they started slipping through, his focus weakening. "Oww. We can't keep this up. Have the gana done anything?"
"Looks like the last of them are going down now. Can only hope that Artyom and Haddi got out safe."
"Siktir," Kemal swore, "Nothing for it, we need to keep moving, and break contact. Think I can hold a shield again for a minute, maybe two."
As the group ran, GDI security forces chose not to pursue. Their job was here, protecting the base, and in any case, they were able to hand it off to the QRFs based out of cities all around them. Low flying Hammerheads buzzed the town mere tens of meters above the roofs as they began their search patterns. While they would not find the Order, they would find tracks leading east, and a hidden inlet in a sea cave in Fife, where there had obviously been some Brotherhood presence.
In southern Africa, GDI had been pushing up the western coast, driving towards Walvis Bay: one of Mehretu's ports, and a critical area for his continued support for commerce raiders and more broadly his support for overseas insurgencies. Marching north from prepared positions in the Blue Zone, some fifty thousand GDI soldiers, supported by a pair of Governor class cruisers, began to march north, driving forward into the teeth of Mehretu's position, with the intent to close Walvis Bay. While far too small a force to actually seize and hold the bay, for a torch operation, it was sufficient. Just get close enough to let the artillery work the dockyard over with a rain of shells and retreat.
The operation began simply, with little resistance as Mehretu avoided invoking the wrath of the heavy railguns mounted on both of the Governors, not to mention their missiles. Instead, they relied on traps, automated gun positions, and bands of minefields to slow and disrupt the Initiative advance. However, the first thing that went wrong was when a trio of small Brotherhood submarines began an attack run. Detected by a Hammerhead on ASW patrol over fifty kilometers out, the submarines began by salvoeing a storm of tube-launched popup missiles, twelve munitions streaking towards the leading Governor, with another dozen shortly behind them before diving towards the sea floor. The Governor slewed around, unmasking the laser as it began spitting fire towards the incoming missiles as they screamed over the horizon. One missile after another was burned from the sky, but three slipped through, into the teeth of the close in defenses. The destroyed missiles showered the lead ship with fragmentation, and one missile body skipped off the empty deck.
Four hours later, as the ground force contingent was picking their way through a dense minefield – notably slowing their progress, despite having brought up mine-clearing equipment and sensors, but they were still punching the alleys through – a second submarine attack came, this time with nine submarines once more volleying missiles into the Governors. Instead of waiting to acquire the targets and be detected themselves, they simply fired in the general direction of the ships, allowing the missiles' onboard seekers to acquire their targets. While some failed, enough achieved locks that dozens of missiles screamed in on the two ships. Once more lasers lashed out, and the ships began launching dozens of countermissiles of their own, picking up speed to keep the smoke from disrupting the laser blasts. Missiles splashed around the ships, but the lead took two direct hits and the rear three, with dozens more pockmarking the ships with fragmentation. Both were nearly blinded, with radar badly damaged and communications systems stripped away. With the ships increasingly battered, they had to be withdrawn, rather than risking coastal fast attack craft or further missile attacks. In addition, the close support hydrofoil complement, no longer covered by the Governors, had to fall back to their ports as well.
On the ground, a slow advance quickly stalled as Mehretu's soldiers advanced from inland positions, hitting first on the advance's flank and then slamming a door in the front. While not nearly as successful as Stahl's counteroffensive, it was still fundamentally a difficult fight, for both sides. The Initiative had the better of it to begin with, as the Brotherhood tried to maneuver in the face of massed artillery fire, but were constrained by their own defensive preparations. Losses were heavy, with multiple units shattering as they became trapped by reinforcements behind them pinning them in place, easy targets for GDI fires. But the tables soon turned. While the frontal attack had been poorly executed, the one to the Initiative's rear was far more skillfully done. Shadow teams, many prepositioned, and others simply gliding in below the radar proved lethal, especially in conjunction with rocket and tube artillery. One depot was blasted to shrapnel after a shadow team planted a beacon for one of Mehretu's rocket artillery batteries to fire upon. Others preyed upon the convoys heading into his territory, finding spots to launch missile attacks, or curves and dips to plant land mines in blind spots.
The GDI ground force's supply lines were battered, and Mehretu's artillery was beginning to turn its attention ever more towards front line units that were rapidly expending their ammunition loads – shot after shot going out towards bunkers and turrets, and digging out the ever persistent networks of lasers that the Brotherhood so loved to scatter everywhere. Rather than try to fight it out, the Initiative forces began to fall back, harried both by Mehretu's forces, and repeated missile attacks from the land and sea – where despite the efforts of ASW squadrons staged out of Springbok, the Brotherhood's submarines were able to range freely, especially as there were multiple antiaircraft missile pod equipped submarines warding off the worst of the attacks. The missile pods were relatively simple affairs. Effectively simple plastic canisters, they are designed to pop up to vertical orientation and then launch. With four missiles per pod, they would launch, come up to a few dozen meters above the surface, and then engage in a spiral search pattern using active radar to spot a target and engage. While of noticeably limited effectiveness, the system allowed a submarine to engage airborne targets without significant risk to itself. Rather than being able to come in low and slow, using their sensor packages to best effect, the Orcas were forced to stay high and fast, giving themselves the energy needed to avoid a missile attack.
Krukov
Battle Roll 3: 89 32 GDI win
Battle Roll 4: 17 5 GDI win
As the winter cold fully set in, and frost covered the ground, Initiative forces lurched forward once more. Over a century ago, an armored offensive on the other side of the country had (in very similar weather) ground to a halt, with many instances of their fuel literally freezing solid. For the Initiative however, it was a welcome reprieve – the solid frost provided a solid surface for treads to grip, and for higher speed convoys going cross country, liberated from the tyranny of the railhead. Initiative combat groups bulled their way forwards, tires and treads digging deep into frozen soil.
While last quarter's artillery tactics have become ever more common, they have been increasingly countered by GDI air supremacy, with Orcas able to act freely at low altitude, carrying full payloads – even some of the older, and not yet replaced A-15s being moved into more active roles due to the success of Initiative air superiority and SEAD/DEAD missions.
Otherwise, with the Brotherhood continuing to fall back, there have been multiple bursts of extremely high intensity fighting, as the Brotherhood retreated over caches of supplies. Even though some are decades old, the munitions are still usable, and they expend them in flurries of missiles and artillery fires rather than letting them fall into the Initiative's hands. Other caches have been rigged to blow when captured by the Initiative, with some resulting in multi-kiloton explosions as thousands of rigs wired together detonate effectively as one.
For Escoffier, the campaign has been a major success. While his defeats against Stahl had been damaging, here, against Krukov's subordinates he has been able to take fundamentally conventional tactics, and push on through. Breaking out of the mountain ranges on Siberia's eastern flank, and then driving across the frozen Lena River, GDI forces made good time, with leading elements over a hundred kilometers west of the river. Many of these were lighter elements, leading towards encirclements, and bypassing units to allow them to wither on the vine.
However, in December, a blizzard rolled in off the arctic, sheets of snow flying sideways, a great white cloud hugging the ground as temperatures dropped to levels that are difficult for even modern armies to fight in. The whipping winds and driving snow and sleet grounded Initiative airpower, and much of the Brotherhood's arsenal as well. But the Barghests kept flying, although much slower – reduced from the speeds of a modern jet fighter, to ones more reminiscent of prop planes over a century ago – their engines actively adapting to the harsh environment. Nearly invisible amid the storm, they were rarely seen before lancing blasts of plasma began impacting amid Initiative armored groups. Once that happened, all bets were off, as Initiative forces began to blaze away in that general direction, but even so, the loss ratios were noticeably one sided. Sensors blinded by the blizzard, and many effectively deafened by the debris and hail whipping against the composite hulls, GDI soldiers had few really effective means of countering the airborne threat.
On the ground, Initiative forces and Brotherhood units typically clashed at close range, combat teams effectively running into each other at distances of under a kilometer, with generally lethal results. With neither side able to use much infantry in these weather conditions, contact was most often done at the point of a heavy railgun shot, or under reconnaissance by fire. While supplies were easy enough to bring up, the road and rail networks to bring them up were far more problematic, with many stalling out as it was simply too cold for the construction elements to set properly.
Falling back, the Lena River and the Verkhoyansk range became the bastion of Initiative forces, allowing GDI to rest easier, and begin to bring up heavier sensors and anti-aircraft batteries. While still degraded from the storms, they had enough of a performance advantage against the mobile platforms that serve as the Initiative's front line, to begin significantly degrading the air attacks that had pushed the Initiative back. While still far from the lake and the gap, it was a strong position to hold up behind, and from which to drive south – cutting the link between Quinglian and Krukov, alongside handing the Initiative another glacier front to exploit. However, with the recent series of nuclear threats, regional command believes that it is better to allow the advance to rest here, on defensible terrain, rather than try to push beyond that.
Gideon
Battle Roll 5: 57 86 NOD win
Battle Roll 6: 72 28 GDI win
The American South, in a quarter that saw an uptick in Brotherhood activity, was particularly heavily engaged. With the Initiative push in the south stymied by fierce defenses, Gideon still had GDI forces sitting on the borders of his deepest territories, and having already been split into multiple directions, he faced the risk of being defeated in detail, especially as the shipments from the rest of the Brotherhood increasingly dried up as his forces suffered defeat after defeat, and few in the Brotherhood are willing to keep spending good resources after ones already expended.
Gideon knew ( at least conceptually) how to neutralize GDI's advantages in the operations to come. He waited until early December, shadowboxing with Initiative forces and demonstrating against their position the whole time. He waited for winter storms to come, blanketing the ground. While Initiative forces still flew, and still had round the clock close air support (these were no blizzards after all) it did degrade performance significantly, especially during the most intense portions of the storm that turned missile targeting from a science into an art.
Gideon had used the pauses created by the battles of Jacksonville and Southern Georgia well, with the breathing room allowing him to reconcentrate his forces near Dothan, north of Lake Seminole. Massing a force of mostly Centurions, although he also managed to form up nearly a full hundred Avatars, and about half that many Purifiers, he prepared to wage a campaign across Georgia, trying to cut the critical supply lines that ran from Savannah to the old town of Valdosta, now little more than a supply depot in the Southern tip of the Georgia salient. Driving east, if he could cut the rail lines, that would pocket at least tens, if not hundreds of thousands of GDI troops, and potentially wipe out a significant number of Mammoth tanks in one fell swoop.
The battle opened with a series of Brotherhood victories, heavy formations smashing their way through GDI lines, lines of Centurions protecting Scorpions that laid potshots through the gaps in the shields. Pre-registered artillery and beacon guided shots hammering into GDI command and control centers, ammunition dumps detonating as shadow teams hit them one after another. While the total damage of the latter attacks was limited overall, the increase in the chaos was a major blow against the Initiative.
Colonel Vega was one of the less fortunate ones – holding a position directly in front of the core axis of attack – and was hit directly by the full weight of the hundreds of mechs, and even more tanks. While his men were fully entrenched, sat on the reverse slopes of ridges and settled into elaborate defensive works, it was still not enough to seriously slow the attack. Even with barrage after barrage of artillery fire, and what air support that could be had called in, Vega's forces were effectively shattered in a matter of hours as their positions were raked by lasers and plasma. Thrown back from their starting positions, GDI forces conducted a hundred-kilometer fighting retreat, as the Brotherhood's assault smashed into position after position. For much of this, GDI was simply trading empty space for time to reposition their superheavy battalions. A Mammoth battalion is simply not quick to move, especially along roadways. While each of the components can be reasonably nimble, moving the entire formation, especially against the flow of supplies, is difficult, time consuming, and frustrating, as convoys have to be diverted, supply depots refreshed, and all of the impediments of mid twenty first century warfare have to reorient.
At the incomplete fortress town of Albany, GDI forces effectively ran out of fuel. While previous generations of armored fighting vehicles could have liters per kilometer fuel efficiency, GDI typically relies on hybrid electric drives, for two main reasons. First is that electric motors have far better torque at low RPM, giving tanks and other vehicles significant responsiveness when maneuvering. Second, and more importantly, it drastically lowers the amount of fuel that they need, which means that the Initiative does not run out of fuel as soon as an offensive lurches over the Brotherhood's lines.
However, that fuel and logistics system can fail, especially during a retreat such as represented here. Even though Albany was far from complete – with gaping holes in the outer walls, unstocked armories, and a sum total of zero heavy artillery pieces to its name – it did have one great redeeming feature: ten thousand liters of standard fuel. With his 31st nearly dry, and Gideon's forces mere hours behind them, Colonel Martin Berteli chose to make a stand here, rather than try to make a further retreat to Tifton, or potentially to Waycross, sixty or two hundred kilometers away, on fuel tanks that were nearly empty.
Just north of Radium Springs, the fortress town is protected to its west and north by the Flint River. While fairly narrow (well under a hundred meters across) it was the anchor on which Berteli would hold. Of the half dozen bridges across the river strong enough to support a Scorpion, all had been blown. While the tanks and other AFVs refueled, Berteli's men set to digging fighting positions, running wires along networks of T-20 missiles loaded with HEAT and EFPs. Land mines were scattered among approaches to the fortress walls, and hastily dug fighting positions inside and outside.
While most of the handful of other cut off positions were simply bypassed, not worth Gideon stripping his already bare spearhead in his drive towards the Initiative's primary logistical line, Here, however, there was little choice. Albany protected one of the Initiative's more major feeder roads, a straight shot towards the critical axis, and the all important pipe and rail lines that fed GDI's advances south of Savannah. It would have to be forced, and quickly, before Initiative assets could rally, bring up artillery and air power, and smash the offensive.
Advancing across the front, the first forces to hit the defensive positions were relatively light gana forces, coordinated by conventional infantry picking their way through the ruins on the other side of the river. Mostly mounted up on Reckoners, they fell back after a few rounds of desultory fire – enough to realize that it was a heavy GDI force, not a rearguard looking to break contact if pressed. Over the course of the afternoon, the battle slowly escalated, with increasing artillery fire pounding down on the entrenched position. While much of it was too light to meaningfully damage the fortress town, many of the entrenchments had to be abandoned and the forces pulled back.
As Gideon's main force arrived, they immediately launched into a series of assaults: Centurions, Avatars and Purifiers raking the base with shells, lasers, and bolts of coherent plasma, staying as far back from the front line as they could, and making good use of their height to make their shots. At the same time, batteries of beam cannons moved up, taking positions north of the river, and raking their own shots down the length of the Initiative line. The emplaced missiles – those not destroyed by shrapnel or blast effect – roared out, sending one Centurion toppling to the ground. Others raised their shields, blasts rippling against them, and dropping one but others stood firm as they survived hit after hit. At the same time, the Predators fired their own rounds, in a slow, measured pace: crack, crack, crack, crack. The sonic booms and streaks of ferrous rounds blasting through the thick atmosphere, seeking tarkets kilometers away. It was too little, raging against certainty.
Vehicle after vehicle was knocked out under the withering hail of fire. The Guardians took the worst of it, with no part of them meaningfully proof against plasma fire, and many of them unable to maneuver, their tanks drained to fuel the railguns of heavier assets. Following the first raking, Gideon's men launched into a frontal assault with lighter assets. While the position could certainly be reduced by a sufficient barrage of the 155mm guns of the Spectres, that would take time, and more importantly a vast supply of artillery shells. Gideon had neither. Every hour wasted fighting this position was an hour not on the road towards destiny, and an hour for GDI to reposition its heavy armor into blocking positions, and prepare to engage in the kind of set piece battles that the Brotherhood has nearly always lost. At the same time, they needed to preserve the heavy armor that would be critical to remaining astride the supply lines rather than being bullied off before the Initiative troops ran out of supplies.
GD2s, light machine guns, and a hailstorm of fire from the RWS mounts on the Predators met the attackers and felled many; but the gana were tough, Afancs marching forwards as bullets pelted them like hail, responding with blazing lasers and machine guns of their own. Over their heads, lasers and plasma bolts spat into the holes, cutting gaping openings in the defense line. After six hours of bloody fighting, they were forced to retreat into the interior of the town, the soldiers of the 31st abandoned many of their vehicles, and retreated into the guts of the fortress town. They had bled Gideon, held the main thrust for hours, but now had little choice but to hunker down and try to survive until relieved.
The air war had rapidly become incredibly messy. Local airbases had been early targets for stay-behind shadow teams, while bases to the north had been hit by barrages of Tiberium-tipped missiles. While only a relatively small fraction of the Initiative air force in the region was grounded or destroyed, the impacts rippled through the air force across the region. In the air, as on the ground, one of the core principles is concentration of forces. The more assets that can be put on a single target, the more effective they will be. Two on two is a fair fight. Three on two is far from it, and four on two and beyond offer increasingly lopsided results. With the maneuverability and capability of Barghest and Barghest Bis fighters, alongside missile- and laser-equipped Venoms, GDI at this point prefers to deploy masses of fighters in single strikes, overwhelming one area, rather than try to sustain air superiority everywhere.
With the forces available so reduced, first priority had to go to escorting air evacuation convoys – pulling groups like the Albany construction crew, and other civilian teams out of the combat space and back to safety, and clearing the way for the Initiative to engage freely. Second was air superiority operations, hunting enemy fighter groups in an attempt to attrit them down, and destroy Gideon's air forces. Third priority was battlefield interdiction and close air support, meaning, in an environment with drastically reduced overall air force effectiveness, it was not happening to any reliable degree.
Bypassing the survivors in Albany, Gideon marched onwards, towards the crossroads at Tifton, where he faced a choice. Turn south and march towards Valdosta and the supply depot there, or march east, and cut off a massed pocket of GDI troops, potentially wiping out the best that the North American Blue Zones had to offer in one fell swoop. Unusually for Gideon, and potentially a result of shake-ups in his advisory council, he turned south, driving for the more achievable goal, and once more stealing a march on the Initiative.
Since Gideon had begun his offensive, GDI had begun to substantially redistribute its forces, amalgamating broken up units into new combat groups, bringing superheavy battalions away from the southern front and shifting them to protect the all important supply bases. Unfortunately, the shift was too aggressive, stripping forces from the south to defend the east, pulling forces so that they could situate for a retreat northward, and shrinking the forces in the potential pocket.
Advancing south down the old Interstate 75, Gideon's forces found themselves profoundly unlucky. Two of the superheavy battalions that had been savaged in the failed assault on Jacksonville had not yet been pulled back, and were instead entrenched across the interstate. The 75th, under Lieutenant Colonel Katie Brown, and the 301st under Lieutenant Colonel Huvra Mehta were both significantly understrength, with the former boasting a total of 37 functional tanks plus nine partially functional (mostly impaired mobility), and the latter 45, plus seven partially functional, compared to a paper strength of 58. While both are primarily Mammoth formations, they were supplemented by a mechanized brigade providing much needed infantry support, that was situated to protect Valdosta until the last of its supplies had been moved north, towards Savannah.
The first contact was made by the 75th, where a leading entrenched platoon of Mammoths made contact with a company of Centurions. Railguns lashed out, knocking down the Centurion's bucklers, and then plowing shot after shot into the hulls, hammer blows tearing the mechs apart via sheer kinetic energy. With first contact being made at under half a kilometer's range, even those shots that did not penetrate the Centurion's shield hammered the mechs, with multiple Centurions being knocked down or having their shield-arm torn off as salvo after salvo ripped into them. Following up the railguns, short ranged missiles streaked in and among the formation, many causing rippling secondary explosions as they found weak points, although most simply wasted themselves into non critical systems. In return, streaks of plasma and biprop slugs hit on and around the Mammoths, dug hull down into a reverse slope, with only their turret front exposed, sending shot skipping off, and splashing the plasma.
As the column deployed into something akin to a line of battle, the conflict spread, with concentrations of Initiative forces being hammered into scrap by locally superior Brotherhood forces. While the initial engagement was at effectively point blank range, the average was far longer, with laser and plasma armed walkers using gullies as cover to allow them to take pot shots from well protected positions. From starting positions tens of kilometers north of Valdosta, Gideon's men hammered into the Initiative's right flank, bending it back as the entire line retreated under fire. While Mammoth tanks are singularly resilient beasts – with slabs of armor over redundant systems, designed to take the worst the Brotherhood has to offer and survive anything short of a near-direct hit by a nuclear blast – they are not invincible, and armor degrades quite rapidly under the repeated slings and arrows of a determined attacker. Layers of ablat, an APS turret, and smart piloting can extend their service, but over the course of the morning attack, twenty seven Mammoth tanks were killed, and a further thirteen disabled and abandoned. Casualties among the supporting elements – ants running around the ankles of giants – were worse.
Because of Valdosta's position and importance to the Initiative, it had a quite substantial artillery complement of its own, plus the garrison's force of mobile guns. Beyond that, it also boasted a quite comprehensive anti-aircraft artillery group. However, it had also been under constant attack. When fighting the Brotherhood, the front line could move by tens of kilometers, and Valdosta – being only a hundred and ten kilometers from the sea, and a hundred and fifty from Jacksonville – made a tempting target for Brotherhood commanders all across Gideon's remaining territory, and a common target for aborted deep penetration raids.
Beyond that, Gideon's forces had been reinventing an old technique, dumb toss bombing. Across most of the world, toss bombing, especially by crews inexperienced in the technique, is usually considered hideously wasteful of munitions, flight hours, and escorts. Most of the world is not Valdosta. Caught between a need to provide physical security, a need to harden the position against air attacks, and a need to move massive amounts of material quickly, Valdosta as a whole was a massive target. Even with the horrific CEPs of old world war two era level bombers, anything that got hit would be a meaningful target, and only a few bombs would not at least inconvenience the defenders.
Since the beginning of the offensive out west, attacks on Valdosta from the remaining forces had been stepped up significantly, with strike after strike coming in nearly round the clock, significantly degrading the entrenched defenses. When the Brotherhood's artillery battery arrived in the north, the forty odd Spectres in his artillery park were able to open fire with devastating effect, hammering shot after shot into the hardened artillery surrounding Valdosta. While the first three salvos were noticeably effective, after that point, the Spectres were forced to spend much more time scooting than shooting, and Initiative counterbattery was increasingly effective, slowly degrading the incoming fire, as gun after gun was knocked out. By late morning, the Initiative artillery was able to turn its attention to the front lines. While the total tube count was relatively low – a bit over thirty surviving gun systems – they were invaluable, especially against Gideon's Avatars, which had been primarily hanging back, and using repeated laser hits to disable or destroy Mammoths, even in entrenched positions.
Gideon, despite his successes early in the day, was on a time limit. With his forces localized and fully engaged with Initiative heavies, other forces – those pulled back to shield the supply lines, including a full armored division – began to collapse in, attempting to encircle Gideon's army themselves. From Waycross, an armored brigade pushed down Route 84, sprinting down the well prepared roads at over fifty kilometers per hour, before deploying in a hammer blow to Gideon's left flank, Centurions evaporating as they took shot after shot into their less protected flanks and rear. From Cordele a pair of mechanized battalions hit Gideon's supply train, skirmishing with Gideon's light assets as they did so.
As the afternoon wore on, Initiative artillery and action had knocked out nearly a third of Gideon's mechs, and about a fifth of his other forces, leaving him in a singularly poor position. With the failure to achieve breakthrough north of Valdosta, the short retreat route – through the supply depot, to the Florida coast – was not an option. A long retreat retracing his previous route was likewise not tenable as he would be harried the whole way; and with the last of the winter storm cluster fading, and GDI's air force rapidly repairing the damages done to it, much of that retreat would be done under constant air attack. Gideon had little choice but to make a cross-country retreat westward, and try to stage a breakthrough elsewhere, somewhere north of the Florida-Georgia line.
Retreat was difficult; engaged on three sides, Gideon's forces had to peel away, sacrificing some units to save others. While Gana are easily replaced, other parts were far more problematic, especially with the reduction of Gideon's industrial base. The first priority had to be the Avatars – the heavy mechs both a symbol of Gideon's favor with the Brotherhood at large, and a hard core of supporters to defend him against potential upstarts. Aside from that, it was the logistical force that was the most valuable. The others could be sacrificed if need be. Harassed and attacked for the rest of the day, Gideon managed to break contact near dusk, and marched overnight, pausing only to loot the abandoned fortress town construction site at Cairo, before marching south once more.
"Our journey has been one of sacrifice and hardship. We met the Infidels at their strongest, and to come up wanting now is no failure in Kane's plan or your faith. We were never promised that our journey would be one of comfort, ease, or endless victory. Instead, we were promised only that our faith and service would, in the end, be rewarded. But neither is ignoring what we have learned from these trials. And we have learned, brothers and sisters of NOD. We have learned how to better defeat GDIs soulless hordes of metal. We have learned to strengthen our spirits for the eternal struggle to bring the enlightenment of Tiberium to the lost, blind, and the damned living under GDI's machine-state. Remember, brothers and sisters, we fight not just for ourselves, but for all the future generations who yearn for the freedom and possibility that only the Brotherhood of Nod can bring them! We will not let their oppressive empire rest. We will return to show them the way. We will bring them the light. For we are the ones with the knowledge of salvation, and the conviction of faith in our hearts! In due time, we will show them...the Wrath of Kane."
- Gideon
The end result of the campaign in North America was not quite an untrammeled victory. However, it has been a grand victory with far reaching consequences. While Gideon remains a relatively significant warlord, he is far from the ranks of the great powers in the Brotherhood. With his armies all but annihilated, his air forces spent, and his ports increasingly closed off, the strategic situation for him is incredibly grim. His power now rests on his stockpiles of atomic arms, and his tiberium arsenal. Completing the conquest will require fundamental revisions to how GDI prepares to fight wars, as he is pushed into a corner, and while there is no doubt that GDI can win, it is an open question how much it will cost, with casualties likely to start well into the millions if the situation becomes untenable.
Reynaldo
Battle Roll 7: 45 81 NOD win
Battle Roll 8: 37 69 NOD win
Operations in the European Theater of Operations have gone distinctly poorly for GDI, with Reynaldo's forces stepping up aggression, a constant thundering drumbeat of drone strike, missile ambush, and a hundred other arms. While little of this has been able to throw GDI back from the core of Reynaldo's remaining territories, it has slowed the advance. Instead, operations have focused almost entirely on striking at GDI's backline and civilian operations. Many of these strikes have focused on various assets associated with the logistics operations, while others tend to do more to spread fear than anything else.
The worst are ersatz buzzer swarms, knife weapons easily slipped into pockets or otherwise concealed until activated and racing towards and through the nearest warm body. Most attacks have, fortunately been small-scale: six to twelve of these buzz blades being launched, either remotely or using a suicide bomber, typically in a crowded urban setting. While overall damage has been near universally low, with the worst being about a hundred casualties, it is the image and the implications that are far more worrying. Any GDI citizen can remember the buzzer swarms of the Scrin war descending on urban population centers, even hardened ones, and slowly tearing through the vents, slipping in through the seals; the screaming of metal being rent apart before the butchery began. The sound is eerily similar – not quite the same, but similar – in these latter day blades, although they do have their own failings. The biggest being a simple lack of energy. A Scrin buzzer would keep going until enough of the swarm was destroyed that their programming failed. These however, fall out of the sky in a matter of minutes. But in those minutes, they are potent terror weapons.
Another weapon that has seen increasing use has been various forms of plasma munition. While GDI has gotten very good at sniffing out the particular aromatic compounds specific to most explosive munitions, plasma devices – very similar to the ones produced by the Initiative – are much harder to spot from a distance, being both small (with the most common device around the size of a modern mobile phone) and looking to most sensors more like electronics than explosives. While still extremely rare, these weapons have been used in over a hundred attacks across the European theater, although few have hit particularly hard targets.
For Maria Stavrakas it had been a slow war. With the MARV project on a back burner, and the overall military goals focused far more on the assembly of millions of fiddly bits, she had been stuck in Paris, doing paperwork. Well, more specifically she had been stuck in the Fort Mont-Valerian, first built in 1841, used as a prison and execution ground by the Nazis in the 1940s, effectively demolished during the Second Tiberium War, rebuilt in 2037 as an Initiative fortress, and had remained in Initiative hands ever since. Paris had shrunk in the decades, from a global city, home of one of the greatest art museums in the world, a place of culture and learning, to a hard bitten cluster of fortresses and arcologies, buildings huddled along the Seine, many built to withstand artillery bombardment.
For the fortress itself, it is very nearly the same pattern as used in the fortress towns. A series of gun mounts, although these were more like hollows, designed for the Juggernaut series. A set of barracks blocks, a motor pool, the works.
In the evenings though, Paris was still Paris. There were still theaters putting on performances (although usually significantly more amateur and often far more muscular than the original playwrights envisioned) There was still art, there was still music, and cafes. Even in the darkest days of the Third Tiberium War, in the bomb shelters, bands struck up the gay tunes of the past. And on the Ile Saint-Louis, there was one of Stavrakas's favorite places. A Senegalese cafe. "Coffee" bowls of peanuts, thiéboudiene served in massive bowls to an entire table at once. There were only two rules. No ranks, and leave your fights at the door.
One night in late December, as Maria dismounted the Guardian that had taken her to the center of Paris, held late by paperwork, the cafe exploded, flames burning through the dining room from the kitchen, and the doors blowing open. Although most of the blast channeled out into the street and the building did not collapse, there were few survivors in the building. The flying glass cut down more victims of the strike, but by sheer happenstance, Stavrakas had dismounted a few buildings earlier and had not been injured.
Combat in the ETO has also gone poorly, with the Brotherhood increasingly able to use augmented infantry forces to bleed GDI units. While unable to actually take and hold terrain against a determined GDI push, it has been an ever more bloody affair, between rapidly increasing payloads among the shadow teams harassing GDI's artillery park, increasing numbers of remote activated anti-tank missiles, and ever more phantom components coming from some unknown actor. Almost certainly new Brotherhood technology, but the precise mechanics are infuriatingly opaque. Similarly, in the air, while GDI has nearly uncontested air supremacy, able to put three to four fighters in the sky for every one of the Brotherhood's, operations are still bleeding fighters at an ever higher rate. Laser air defenses, longer ranged surface to air missile systems and other new hardware has turned the offensives ever bloodier, to the point where theater command is ready to allow things to stall out, rather than continue onwards.
Minor Raiders Battle Roll 9: 79 22 GDI win
Raider operations have been forced back and reduced in intensity significantly. While GDI is facing severe difficulties in actually following this up with measures to reduce raider activity long term, due to a shortage of ships, it is able to maintain the logistical throughput.
The merchantman conversions have been problematic. While they did get their first kill, a small Brotherhood submarine that had been detected off the coast of Kamchatka, and credited to the Hammerhead squadron of GDIS Kivu as part of a multiple squadron interception, they have also had a wide variety of issues.
To begin with, they have had chronic morale problems, with many across the navy seeing them as more of a punishment detail than anything else. Otherwise, in too hot or too cold climates, the elevators have a tendency to jam, and in rough seas they roll like pigs, with too much of their weight high up. While they will begin taking over some of the safe convoy routes, they are still distinctly vulnerable, with two already damaged by Brotherhood attack. They are currently operating in relatively safe waters, areas like the Northern Atlantic or Northern Pacific, where while maintaining a sufficient air guard on a round the clock basis from land based aircraft is prohibitively costly in terms of flight hours, a carrier can easily maintain an air patrol while not having to worry about strike operations.
Anti-submarine warfare is a slow and grinding affair. Around the world, GDI ships and aircraft have to contend with difficult and often unproductive patrols, with a bare few moments of excitement.
Richard Moran stared out over his battle plot. Sixty aircraft in the skies, right now – ten V-35s acting as sweepers, another forty Hammerheads, and ten Orcas situated to dive upon a detected submarine at top speed and hammer the area with munitions until it slunk away or died. ASW Group Falklands had a full four wings, and conducted operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five point two six days a year. They were hunting the black whales: Falaks. Some of the deceptively toughest submarines to ever float. GDI munitions hurt them, Moran knew that much, but somehow, they could take multiple hits from air dropped torpedoes and survive. There had been six Falak probables in the last quarter. One potential kill, another claimed but discounted. The other four had gotten away more or less unscathed, a combination of being at the edge of his effective antisubmarine range, and the limited ability to loiter with the potential for others to slip through his nets.
The first to arrive were a squadron of Orcas down on the deck, skimming mere meters above the waves, and salvoing off their lightweight torpedoes. Twelve launches – six shallow, six deep – followed up by circling around and lacing a second salvo through the space. Each torpedo would run a zig zag course, sweeping its active sonar back and forth. This crisscross pattern made it difficult for a submarine to avoid all of the torpedoes launched, and each of them was relatively cheap to make. While certainly more complicated than most systems launched by either side, they were far cheaper than lives potentially wasted by trying less indiscriminate tactics. There were no detonations.
The follow up was a pair of V-35s, loaded down with ASW equipment. Releasing a pair of towed sonar systems, they wandered, low and slow, keeping their sensors in the water to see if they could locate the submarine. But after two hours and no signals, they had to return home, another fruitless hunt, another contact that had gone deep and silent, waiting for a gap to escape out of. While it certainly sounded like a Falak, the multiple overlapping propeller sounds, it would only be counted as a probable without a harder confirmation.
Moran turned away from the plot, wandering over to the kettle, setting it on to brew another pot of tea. While there would probably be no more this shift, he had a feeling that he would need to be alert for yet more contacts and more targets for him to coordinate in on.
Overall Battle Roll 10: 92 92 Tie GDI Win
This quarter, the Brotherhood of Nod shifted to a very active defense, drawing on their stockpiles not yet exhausted by this war and the Third Tiberium War. Rather than trying to push into Blue and Green Zones, the effort was to dislodge GDI from their strategic positions and free up lines of communication and transit otherwise disrupted by the presence of Initiative forces. GDI comparatively, especially following the near nuclear breakout, focused on dressing their lines, finding better positions, and in many cases fell back, looking for good terrain to defend from rather than engage more actively.
In South America, Stahl has done little, while shadowboxing has continued to some degree, neither side wishes to commit. While he is among the few warlords to have not stood up any significant nuclear forces, the lines are currently static enough that he is not feeling pressured by the harvesting operations in the same way that the others are. The South American front has started to be a resting space, a location where worn out and used up units can be rotated for a time to rebuild and train, while fresh units are rotated onto more active battlefields, like the North American Yellow Zone.
In the South Pacific, operations have continued. While GDI forces have overall been weakened, the end of the Brotherhood in Eastern Australia has meant that a series of new airbases, including multikilometer airstrips for Aurora bombers, have begun construction. While currently going slowly, the process is likely to rapidly increase overall Aurora capacity within the next few years, including possibly making strikes on the Rajanaga viable.
Bintang has been able to continue commerce raiding activity without significant defeat from the Initiative. Attacks against convoys in the South Atlantic have continued, with about two thirds of convoys suffering significant losses. While not every submarine spotted leads to an attack, running the gap is considered to be one of the harshest duties in the Initiative navy.
In the Himalayan Blue Zone, a new attack vector has opened up: underminers. The mountain ranges that provide the Initiative's defensive perimeter are a warren of bunkers, caches, and outposts, the results of decades of work fortifying the zone. Taking a page from Krukov, and seemingly the technology as well, the Indian warlords have begun sending in small squads of troops, almost entirely Gana based, into the tunnels using underminers as the primary attack vector. Bursting into the deeps, the tunnelers have to be dug out by hand, with most combat occurring in the depths using little more than rifle and grenade. The attackers are a new breed: small, fast, still lizard-like, but fundamentally dangerous and uncanny.
Avish Devi rolled up his prayer rug. Lightweight, thin, worn to the plastic backing where his knees had found the same spots time and time and time again. But it was his, and had been with him for over a decade, packed into the same simple frame backpack issued to every soldier. A special thing that meant the quartermaster had been paying attention to his file information. What was also his was a GLS-70 sniper rifle. A railgun, it had been marketed as the future of GDI armaments when Devi had seen it on screen as a child. It was more of a dead end. Hard to operate, with more dials and gizmos than anyone sane would ever put on a rifle. But in the hands of an expert, it could sing. Avish had dialed his down again and again, finding a sweet spot a mere half a meter below the speed of sound. While it cut into his range, against Gana, a mere single decibel could be the difference between being loud enough to detect and quiet enough to slip away.
His position was a hide on some rock nobody had decided on a particular name for, overlooking one of the highways that once led into the Blue Zone. He remembered the ride, bumpy, hands holding the backpack with all his worldly possessions as the radio crackled with the sounds of Delhi falling to a Brotherhood offensive. Shaking his head, he refocused, breathing in as a column of Gana marched by below. Behind them, a stunted cowled figure barked orders in a hissing voice – a parabolic microphone picked up its bastardized Hindi, guttural and hissing. His finger took up the slack on the trigger as he risked letting his sight lase the target – one thousand five hundred meters away, two hundred and fifty meter drop, three hundred and twenty meters per second of velocity for his round. Breathe in. Settle, aim. Breathe out. Pull.
The bullet lofted on a high rainbow arc, Devi almost imagined he could see it flying through the air over the next just-under-four seconds as he packed up his hide, while his partners took their shots. For something like this, more rounds were better – and while each carried a five round clip of smart rounds, these were simpler dumb rounds, with a lifting body to make them shoot flatter at extreme low velocities. Rolling up his pad, he slung it over his shoulder, and began climbing up the side of the mountain, keeping to a narrow goat track. There would be other mountains, other hides.
The bullet began to fall, streaking downward and gaining speed as it plunged towards the target, a handful of others behind it in case the first missed. This hooded figure was uncanny, going from urging on the shuffling masses to dodging away, dropping with near unnatural speed to the ground, digitigrade legs giving it the ability to scrabble aside as the bullets dropped towards it. One spanged off the rock, another buried itself in a nearby Afanc, its course diverted by a stray air current. Others splashed around the target, but none managed to make a hit. Devi cursed quietly under his breath as the mountainside was lit up by scattered fires, lasers and bullets cracking above his head and below his feet, scattered all across the stone face he was climbing.
