vyor
KITTY! \o/
So they've been Forgotten by Traveler?
Traveler [C&C3:KW Multicross SI]
So they've been Forgotten by Traveler?
Now here's the important question.
How does the other units "merge"? *Insert lenny face*
Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
By cuddling and holding hands. Truly sick and preposterous
Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
Hmm. Would having the Forgotten get ahold of some TW2 vehicles/equipment be too far-fetched? Thinking of kitting them out with a mix of Forgotten Mod and Tiberian Sun/Tiberium Essence GDI arsenals.
Fine, fine, I'll admit it. I just want to face off against anAT-ATMammoth Mark II.
Fine, fine, I'll admit it. I just want to face off against an
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
Yes, during TW2 they were using TW1 Mammoth tanks on occasion and a half-rebuilt MKII would be awesome to fight.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Not too far-fetched what with the whole 'first war tech in war 2' thing and the whole 'here's a husk of a Mammoth MK2" decorations on some of the skirmish maps etc.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
I'd say Carry-Alls are possible, but Banshees are unlikely. Unlike the GDI Mammoth MKIIs they were made by the losers of that war, and they were a fairly rare high tech weapon.
The subterranean flame tanks and APCs are also possible for them to have, but the issue of underground tiberium impeding their movement probably makes that function unavailable. That doesn't hurt them using the TW2 Devil's Tongue much, but GDI amphibious APCs are more likely to be used than the otherwise unremarkable Nod ones.
ltmauve
"Excuse me?"
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Um, not more dangerous than using your gravwell tech for anything, I'd say.
vyor
KITTY! \o/
That is inefficient as all fuck.
Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
How so? I was thinking a gravwell at the nozzle could help funnel extra airflow into the engine, and ratchet up its thrust by a bit more for low-cost atmo engines (all-Ichor fusion engines are expensive). A gravity-based air compressor, if you will.
Did I miss something?
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vyor
KITTY! \o/
What are you going to be powering it with?
ltmauve
"Excuse me?"
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh. I thought you meant interstellar ramscoops.
Yeah that's probably not the most effective idea, as you have to power the things, which would be better spent making the ship go faster.
17. Ow, My Eyes
Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
Writing is hard. Have an update (and some internet cookies).
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[Jericho Battery, delivery's here. Nine 60-round magazines as requested, where do you want these dropped off?]
[Johnson here, thanks for the goods as always. Just hand them over to the MRT crews and we'll take over.]
My unarmed Mechapede scuttled out of the emergent Wormhole and came to a stop beside a pair of GDI Mobile Repair Transports, the converted APCs using their maintenance winches to pry off and unpack the lead linings on the heavy autoloader pallets mounted onto the sides of the long biotank's segments. Nearby, one of the Juggernaut walkers making up Jericho Battery, with the name "Jackass" stencilled on the frontal face of its waist hub, rumbled into a crouch and popped their rear hatches and ejected its spent magazine, the oblong black cartridge careening from the Juggernaut's back in a trail of spiralling steam.
"OI! You idiots!" One of the techs on a MRT hollered as the car-sized metal brick hit the earth with a dull thud, waving angrily at the offending walker. "How many times do I have to tell you not to chuck your bloody mags like that!"
"Screw you too, Mitch!" came Jackass's enthusiastic reply.
I couldn't help but chuckle as Jericho Battery's little interplay washed over the airwaves, the Juggernaut team and their support crews lively as ever. Ever since our arrival, we'd been relegated to support and non-combat duties all across the AO, exploiting the Scrin's factional quirks (such as the ever-useful Wormhole) to support GDI operations throughout the area. Limited numbers of Stormriders were running reconnaissance patrols along the outskirts of the residential districts to watch for Nod foot soldiers going in and out of the area, while Mechapedes fitted with blank segments were serving as ammunition trains and heavy lifters, the biotanks carting their cargo through Warp Spheres to serve as a fast and nearly impregnable logistics chain.
Sure, everything had to be stored in thick lead casks before passing through or get a hefty dose of ionizing radiation from the Wormhole's energies, so transporting GDI forces straight through the portals were right out. We did have lots of free metal however, and the resident Construction Yard's internal fabricators were more than capable of churning out lead boxes by the dozens.
We'd make do.
On the wider front, things had pretty much ground to a halt ever since our arrival. With the sudden appearance of an instant base just sprouting up in the middle of their escape route, the Nod forces had evidently decided to turn back and turtle up for the moment, the captured MCV and its escorts backing off from the newly-established defensive lines and skulking back into hiding. Hence the mass employment of Jericho Battery and several other Juggernaut groups, fleets of V-35s had been flying in from the other bases in the region every five minutes or so and dropping off masses of troops for a massive armoured push into the infested city and the scores of Militants hiding within. We had LEGION cornered, and gradual grinders were something GDI did best.
[Johnson?] I queried the lead Juggernaut, the Johnson, my Mechapede turning its head to look at the towering mech. Or, more accurately, the knees of the five-storey-tall machine, as the Mechapede just didn't have the "neck" elevation to face the teeny little cockpit perched on the side of the walker's cannon assembly like a fruit. [How are things going on the front from here?]
[Not good at all, unfortunately.] The radio crackled as the Jericho Battery leader sighed. Thank goodness I could partition radio transmissions from audio inputs from my units, or I'd never hear the fellow in the midst of the constant drumroll of artillery fire in the background. [We've been firing damn near non-stop all this while, the boys on the ground just keep putting in fire orders all this while. Most of the calls are for hunkered-down Noddies in the city centre, business as usual, but we've got Sniper Teams feeding us co-ords for Scorpions and other heavier vehicles more and more lately.]
[Whatever it is, my gut's telling me that for a Jugg, especially a whole battery of Juggs, to need to put so many shells downrange means that some really bad shite's going on.]
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[This is Traveler to Alpha Squad, scouts are in position. No hostiles in range, you are clear to proceed.]
[Roger that Traveler, Alpha Squad moving.]
My little Assimilator blended in with the steel and metal of the low-level office building roof it was perched on, motionless like one of those gargoyle decorations found on older buildings. Through the engineer unit's vision, a small fleet of APCs and their escorting infantry began a slow push down into the wartorn residential area. So far, my pre-positioned net of stealthed Assimilators weren't picking up anything as they crept along the rooftops, moving just slow enough to not drop their camouflage.
Oh, wait. One of my Assimilators just picked up something on IR, it's spotted several figures huddling within one of the buildings. [Alpha Squad, spotted a group of people hiding in the third building from your right, the square gray one.]
[We hear you, we'll go check it out. Prep grenades!]
I couldn't help but wince as the troopers immediately went for their weapons, the squad's Grenadier pulling out a pair of rocket grenades. One sad fact of the Third Tiberium War was that with Nod's combat doctrine and the general chaos of the world, GDI often didn't have the luxury of forewarning whenever a Brotherhood raid was going to happen. What that translated to was civilians getting caught in the crossfire as GDI struggled to fend off spontaneous militant uprisings all over the place, having to both evacuate the civilians and fight off militant forces often smack in the middle of populated areas
Nod on the other hand gleefully exploited this fact, hiding their recruits in the middle of evacuating masses and launching ambushes on the evac teams, forcing them to open fire and more than once gunning down the whole crowd. In the end, GDI gradually gave up on evacuations in general and swarms of grieving relatives started throwing their weight into local Brotherhood cells as GDI and Nod forces exchanged fire without any care of mass casualties.
Guerrilla warfare at its finest.
Now, if there's any militants hiding in this particular bunch of refugees, please please please keep your head down.
"DOWN WITH THE GDI!"
Oh for crying out loud-
[Contact, we've got an enemy rocketeer! Grenadier, get rid of him quick!]
A previously unnoticed individual wearing a thick grey hoodie suddenly bolted to his feet and whipped out an RPG, leaning out the second-storey window he and the others were hiding in. As the rest of the Riflemen ducked behind the cover of their APC, a well-armoured soldier dashed out into the open, taking a pitcher's stance and hurling. The canister-shaped rocket grenades emitted sharp cracks as their micro-boosters ignited, the onboard targeting computers sending the little projectiles streaking into the window the militant ducked back into. A second later, two pings rang out and the window exploded.
Zooming in onto the blown-out wall of the building, my Assimilator swept the wreckage for survivors. The stark white blot created on its IR sensors by the grenades' detonations faded, leaving the structure glowing a dull green. No reds remained. [Traveler here, no survivors. They're all gone.]
[Roger that, Alpha Squad returning to course.]
Just business. Grisly business, but what could we do?
Alright, time to drop stealth and leapfrog to the next intersection. My Assimilator Teams coalesced into view as the little pistol-shrimp 'bots left their hiding spots, quickly picking their way across the rooftops ahead of the convoy with quick hops and bounds, their long manipulators and upgraded Articulated giving them impressive agility. Perfect for disposable scouting duties.
…wait, do you hear that?
[Enemy Units Sighted.]
Oh. OH.
From its vantage point on a taller building, one of my Assimilators caught first sight of a whole army of Brotherhood vehicles speeding into the area. Hordes of Raider Buggies and Attack Bikes mixed with an overwhelming bunch of assorted technicals raced through the streets of the Chinese city in a scene straight out of Mad Max, I could see trucks armed with machine guns and makeshift armouring, city cars loaded with gun-toting riders and-is that a bulldozer?!
RIGHT, TIME TO GO. [Alpha Squad, you've got a bloody motor-parade of Nod technicals bearing down on your position! De-ass area! DE-ASS AREA!]
[Hold position! Someone confirm that! Ryan, Jenkins! Go get some eyes up on that building!]
[Holy SHIT, sarge! I'm seeing Noddie vehicles everywhere! Lots of Buggies, Bikes and a shitton of technicals, closing fast!]
[Dammit, all of you get back in the vehicle! We're pulling out!]
From our spot further up in the street, I had a clearer picture. The horde of murderous vehicles were barely five minutes away or so, and at least twice as fast as the APC from what I remember. No way that the armoured bus would be able to outpace the likes of the Raiders and Bikes built specifically for fast raiding, the moment the Attack Bikes caught up Third Platoon would be minced. Pinging my Assimilators, my engineer units left their perches and began to descend-
With a flash and a static crackle, my battlefield overview shorted out.
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[Aaaaaaaah!]
[Shit, my radar's down!] Jackass was swearing into the comms as his Juggernaut's volley suddenly slew wildly off course, the three-shot barrage rocketing harmlessly into the horizon. Throughout Jericho Battery, similar incidents were occurring as the datafeeds between the Jerichos and the Sniper Teams in the field failed all of a sudden, leaving the artillery mechs blind to the battlefield at large. [Stupid cheap-ass piece of shit!]
[Boss!] One of techs on the ground radioed in. [Traveler's down!]
It never ends, Johnson thought as he slewed the turreted upper half of his Juggernaut to get a visual on their alien guest. The Mechapede unit that had carried their supplies lay sprawled out on the ground, the centipede vehicle rolling over on its side like a real dead bug. The otherworldly lights that once lit up its segmented hull had dimmed, and the Mechapede itself was completely still.
"Oh for Christ's sake." Johnson swore. This day just kept getting better and better. Gathering himself, the battery leader began issuing new orders to his men. [All walkers, pack up and hoof it back towards friendly lines! The Noddies must've shorted out our long-range sensors somehow, we're sitting ducks out here with radar dark like this! Tech crews, strip as many cartridges as you can from Traveler's unit and load them up on the MRTs, ditch the rest! Jericho Battery, we are LEAVING!]
Harsh buzzing sounds began to ring out as the ground crews sliced off the fasteners securing the autoloader cartridges to the Mechapede's body as the Jerichos rose from firing position, the kneecaps of their concave legs unclamping loudly as the limbs, well, unlimbered.
Heh.
So preoccupied with handling their mechs that none of the Jerichos bothered to look up. With the radar down as it was, nobody ever saw the handful of small, black shapes approaching from the distance.
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*CLONK*
"Huh?" Jegan's pilot, distracted as he was by all the damn unclamping procedures for exiting the Juggernaut walker's "siege mode", as a bunch of Korean pilots hadcalled it, barely had the presence of mind to notice the odd sound of something hitting the windscreen. Grumbling about stupid birds and their suicidal tendencies, he looked up to one of the oddest sights he'd ever seen.
A black body-suited man clung on the canopy's reinforced surface like a smooshed bug, the little drawn-on eyes of his odd red mask turning to look at the dumbfounded pilot. Wordlessly, the figure reached behind him and pulled out a small rectangular block, slapping it to the transparent surface of the cockpit with a small thunk.
"What the fuck...?" Jegan rubbed his eyes, momentarily stunned by this random goof. Letting go of the windscreen, the body-suited man reached up and flipped off the stunned pilot with both hands as he backflipped out of sight.
The little block started beeping, a small red light appearing on its midsection.
"OH FUCK!" Jegan screamed as hereeled back in his seat, crossing his arms in front of him in a desperate move to fend off the satchel charge the fucker had pasted on his windscreen. "IT'S A SHADOW-!"
*BOOOOOOM*
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[Aaaaaaaah!]
"What the?!" Sergeant Arnold Coddington whipped around in surprise as several meaty thunks rang out behind him, cutting through the sudden static forming up over the comms. The confused soldier was confronted with the bizarre sight of a bunch of Traveler's drone units lying sprawled out on the pavement, a number of the somewhat damaged from falling off the roof and bleeding green liquids onto the asphalt. One of the things weakly wiggled its legs from its position, embedded headfirst into an abandoned car.
"Sarge! We've got company! Mix of Raiders and Bikes coming in hot, they're too quick for me to get a good shot!" Ryan, the squad AT-gunner called out over the radio, the harsh snap-roar of his FGM-90 firing in the background. Scuffling could be heard as the trooper strted moving, the harsh pinging of ricocheting bullets in the background. "Got no eyes on any command units and there's way more of them than I've got rockets, sarge! They'll be here in about a minute, tops!"
"Dammit!" Arnold cursed, unslinging his GD-2 and kicking in the door of the nearest house. "Ryan, Jenkins, stay where you are! Everyone else ditch the APC and get inside!" Roughly grabbing the shoulders of stunned infantrymen and shoving them in the direction of the doorway, he caught a glimpse of one of the Scrin lying barely a few feet away, manipulators waving weakly.
Arnold pressed his lips into a tight line. No one would know if he just left it lying there…
"Aw hell." Muttering a curse under his breath, he dashed over to the motionless alien, grabbing it by one of its "horns" and slinging it over his shoulder. The hard bony protrusion felt unnervingly cold to the touch, its surface lined with tiny ridges akin to veins. "Castro, help me get this thing into the building, leave the rest!"
As the two men hauled the unconscious alien into the sturdy apartment building, the first of the Attack Bikes were already roaring down the street. Third Platoon's evacuated APCs promptly took a quartet of missiles straight into its side even as the trio reached the doorway, the cheap plastic door slamming shut as the vehicles detonated, the APCs' turret guns flying off like a bottlecap and smacking against a lamppost.
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"…sound off."
"….reporting, … green."
"Amer here. Dropped …, five magazines left."
"Dhawan …, nailed in the leg by ... No blood, but it's bruising over bad."
"Rogers checking in, just saw Price run into one of the other buildings. All Alphas accounted for, sarge."
Ow shit bloody heck. My eyes.
Countless images and sounds flashed in my mind at blinding speeds, rendering me damn near blind and confused as heck. One moment I was looking at a Juggernaut (Jackass, I think) develop a sudden case of cockpit-boom-itis, next I was slamming headfirst into the archway of a Warp Sphere, spilling the metal held in my cargo bay, desperately trying to slow my descent before all million kilograms of me hit the city, listening to the faint murmurings of Third Platoon-
You ever try watching those security camera displays, you know the ones with the splitscreen and all? Something like that, except I'm seeing them all at once.
And I can't even blink.
Voice, what in the nine hells' going on?!
[Long-range scanners and battlefield overview have been disabled by an unknown warhead launched from the south.] Voice intoned, zooming in to a freeze-cam of a cloud of little blinking canisters attached to parachutes. [The delivery vehicle has deployed a large number of signal jammers over a large area at high altitude, disabling most long range signals of most varieties. Following disabling of battlefield overview, all units automatically switched to directly transmitting audio-visual feeds from their integrated sensors.]
Great, that was a Radio-Jamming Missile or something the Noddies launched back then, was it?
[Cross-references to existing blueprints stored in Unit: Giant Enemy Crab point to an 85% probability match.]
Well. Radar'll be down for a bit, that's a bummer. From my guess, they'll probably be mounting a breakthrough attempt while the whole lot of us are blind and deaf, taking advantage of all the chaos to hopefully weasel the damn Tacitus out of the place. Fat lot of good I'll be doing here in my half-blinded as I am now.
Ow heck, Voice. Can you, you know, switch this thing off or something?! It's burning my eyes!
[Acknowledged, Foreman. Switching to single first-person view.]
Ah, that's better. The mind-bendingly scrambled mess I was looking at resolved into the face of Alpha Squad's leader, repeatedly tapping my Assimilator's face.
[Stop that.] Reaching up with a manipulator, I snared the offending digit and pushed it away.
"Glad to see you back with us, Traveler." The surly man grunted as he shook his finger free, grabbing my manipulator and hoisting my unit to its feet. Keeping his back pressed against the wall, he leaned out and fired a grenade outside with a quick ptoom, ducking his head back immediately as a hail of bullets sliced in from the open window and spattered against the ceiling. "You went down all of a sudden just as our comms shorted out, know anything about that?"
[Jammer missile. Took out all long range sensors and stunned me for a moment.] Leaning out of the window, I caught sight of a whole swarm of Nod fast-movers circling the building we were in and raking the concrete walls with gunfire, the rest of Third Platoon taking potshots at the offending vehicles from deeper within the building. Ohh crap, we've gotten pinned down by the War-Boy horde. One Flame Tank or Black Hand and we're all extra-crispy. [Best guess is that the Brotherhood's launching a big attack on FOB Alpha right about now to break the encirclement, got lots of heavy armour moving in all over the place. This is probably a rusher swarm that got distracted, decided to play with little old us.]
"Damn." Spitting over his shoulder the sergeant sagged against the wall. He seemed rather resigned, the fight slowly bleeding out of his battered body. "If the Noddies are hitting the base as you said, HQ's not going to have the time to go rescue a single platoon of mechanized infantry and we're pinned down tight. Second some Tib-worshipping hick with one of their fucking flamethrowers shows up, we're all toast. Literally."
Turning over to face my Assimilator, he gave a tired grin and racked his GD-2. "Only thing we can do now is take some of 'em with us, eh?"
Blinded to high heaven and disoriented as I was, there was nothing I could do. I'm already struggling with keeping the supply lines running back at FOB Alpha, there was no way I'm ever going to pull off a zerg rush under the damn jamming. Sad to say, but Third Platoon was screwed. [I'm sorry.] I lamely offered, a cold feeling in my "gut" as I stared at a dead man walking.
" 'salright, no hard feelings. Go pick up a gun or something, and we'll make these fuckers bleed."
Damn it. Damn it all.
Turning away as the sergeant I didn't even knew the name of resumed firing, I looked over my options. Three Assimilators huddled inside the building and a garrison of roughly six Riflemen. All the Assimilators could do was stealth (only while standing still, so utterly useless now), capture structures (capture what?) and run quite fast (locked down tight, no dice). Sure, their sensors were better than normal and all that jazz that made them passable scouts, but the Assimilators had absolutely nothing that could help us now.
For all the units to have in this sort of situation, why'd it have to be Assimilators?! Why couldn't I have gotten something with some firepower, Buzzers, maybe a Mastermind or something that could teleport-
Wait. Teleport.
…Voice? Do we have any reinforcement abilities or something along those lines?
[Compiling a list of quick-deployment assets available: Lightning Spikes, Buzzer Swarms, Reconstruction Drones, Shock Pods and the Mothership. Caution, current area is lacking in open areas to deploy Lightning Spike defense turrets safely.]
Yes, yes and… oh, Shock Pods? We have those?
[Affirmative, Foreman. Authorisation codes retrieved from assimilated Reaper-17 structures, Ichor Hub is willing to supply us the units as long as payment is made.]
Really now. I looted their hotline numbers off of their dead customer, and the folks back at Hub are willing to close both eyes and let business go on as usual.
And with the advanced sensor suites on the Assimilators…
Heh. Heheheheh.
Call up those assholes. We've got some troopers to rescue!
[Acknowledged, Foreman. Contacting manufacturing Cult.]
[Hey, sarge?] I crooned, rubbing the tips of my manipulators with glee. [I've got an offer you can't refuse…]
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Author's Note: WHEEEW that really took a lot out of me. Tried experimenting from a more character-driven style instead of regular first person, had tonnes of hangups with assorted minutae. Took nearly a whole week of on-off writing to get this done. hope it's worth it.
Yes, yes. Jericho Battery's really being raided by a bunch of Shadow Teams going all Attack on Titan on them with their glider packs and satchel charges. No kidding.
The joys of having a direct neural interface exposed to jamming. With command limited to the units beaming sensory data directly to the poor Foreman's brainmeats, suffice to say traditional Scrin zergrushes are out of the picture for the moment. GDI's going to be the star of the show this time round.
As always, thanks for reading! Comments and criticisms are always welcome!
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[Jericho Battery, delivery's here. Nine 60-round magazines as requested, where do you want these dropped off?]
[Johnson here, thanks for the goods as always. Just hand them over to the MRT crews and we'll take over.]
My unarmed Mechapede scuttled out of the emergent Wormhole and came to a stop beside a pair of GDI Mobile Repair Transports, the converted APCs using their maintenance winches to pry off and unpack the lead linings on the heavy autoloader pallets mounted onto the sides of the long biotank's segments. Nearby, one of the Juggernaut walkers making up Jericho Battery, with the name "Jackass" stencilled on the frontal face of its waist hub, rumbled into a crouch and popped their rear hatches and ejected its spent magazine, the oblong black cartridge careening from the Juggernaut's back in a trail of spiralling steam.
"OI! You idiots!" One of the techs on a MRT hollered as the car-sized metal brick hit the earth with a dull thud, waving angrily at the offending walker. "How many times do I have to tell you not to chuck your bloody mags like that!"
"Screw you too, Mitch!" came Jackass's enthusiastic reply.
I couldn't help but chuckle as Jericho Battery's little interplay washed over the airwaves, the Juggernaut team and their support crews lively as ever. Ever since our arrival, we'd been relegated to support and non-combat duties all across the AO, exploiting the Scrin's factional quirks (such as the ever-useful Wormhole) to support GDI operations throughout the area. Limited numbers of Stormriders were running reconnaissance patrols along the outskirts of the residential districts to watch for Nod foot soldiers going in and out of the area, while Mechapedes fitted with blank segments were serving as ammunition trains and heavy lifters, the biotanks carting their cargo through Warp Spheres to serve as a fast and nearly impregnable logistics chain.
Sure, everything had to be stored in thick lead casks before passing through or get a hefty dose of ionizing radiation from the Wormhole's energies, so transporting GDI forces straight through the portals were right out. We did have lots of free metal however, and the resident Construction Yard's internal fabricators were more than capable of churning out lead boxes by the dozens.
We'd make do.
On the wider front, things had pretty much ground to a halt ever since our arrival. With the sudden appearance of an instant base just sprouting up in the middle of their escape route, the Nod forces had evidently decided to turn back and turtle up for the moment, the captured MCV and its escorts backing off from the newly-established defensive lines and skulking back into hiding. Hence the mass employment of Jericho Battery and several other Juggernaut groups, fleets of V-35s had been flying in from the other bases in the region every five minutes or so and dropping off masses of troops for a massive armoured push into the infested city and the scores of Militants hiding within. We had LEGION cornered, and gradual grinders were something GDI did best.
[Johnson?] I queried the lead Juggernaut, the Johnson, my Mechapede turning its head to look at the towering mech. Or, more accurately, the knees of the five-storey-tall machine, as the Mechapede just didn't have the "neck" elevation to face the teeny little cockpit perched on the side of the walker's cannon assembly like a fruit. [How are things going on the front from here?]
[Not good at all, unfortunately.] The radio crackled as the Jericho Battery leader sighed. Thank goodness I could partition radio transmissions from audio inputs from my units, or I'd never hear the fellow in the midst of the constant drumroll of artillery fire in the background. [We've been firing damn near non-stop all this while, the boys on the ground just keep putting in fire orders all this while. Most of the calls are for hunkered-down Noddies in the city centre, business as usual, but we've got Sniper Teams feeding us co-ords for Scorpions and other heavier vehicles more and more lately.]
[Whatever it is, my gut's telling me that for a Jugg, especially a whole battery of Juggs, to need to put so many shells downrange means that some really bad shite's going on.]
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[This is Traveler to Alpha Squad, scouts are in position. No hostiles in range, you are clear to proceed.]
[Roger that Traveler, Alpha Squad moving.]
My little Assimilator blended in with the steel and metal of the low-level office building roof it was perched on, motionless like one of those gargoyle decorations found on older buildings. Through the engineer unit's vision, a small fleet of APCs and their escorting infantry began a slow push down into the wartorn residential area. So far, my pre-positioned net of stealthed Assimilators weren't picking up anything as they crept along the rooftops, moving just slow enough to not drop their camouflage.
Oh, wait. One of my Assimilators just picked up something on IR, it's spotted several figures huddling within one of the buildings. [Alpha Squad, spotted a group of people hiding in the third building from your right, the square gray one.]
[We hear you, we'll go check it out. Prep grenades!]
I couldn't help but wince as the troopers immediately went for their weapons, the squad's Grenadier pulling out a pair of rocket grenades. One sad fact of the Third Tiberium War was that with Nod's combat doctrine and the general chaos of the world, GDI often didn't have the luxury of forewarning whenever a Brotherhood raid was going to happen. What that translated to was civilians getting caught in the crossfire as GDI struggled to fend off spontaneous militant uprisings all over the place, having to both evacuate the civilians and fight off militant forces often smack in the middle of populated areas
Nod on the other hand gleefully exploited this fact, hiding their recruits in the middle of evacuating masses and launching ambushes on the evac teams, forcing them to open fire and more than once gunning down the whole crowd. In the end, GDI gradually gave up on evacuations in general and swarms of grieving relatives started throwing their weight into local Brotherhood cells as GDI and Nod forces exchanged fire without any care of mass casualties.
Guerrilla warfare at its finest.
Now, if there's any militants hiding in this particular bunch of refugees, please please please keep your head down.
"DOWN WITH THE GDI!"
Oh for crying out loud-
[Contact, we've got an enemy rocketeer! Grenadier, get rid of him quick!]
A previously unnoticed individual wearing a thick grey hoodie suddenly bolted to his feet and whipped out an RPG, leaning out the second-storey window he and the others were hiding in. As the rest of the Riflemen ducked behind the cover of their APC, a well-armoured soldier dashed out into the open, taking a pitcher's stance and hurling. The canister-shaped rocket grenades emitted sharp cracks as their micro-boosters ignited, the onboard targeting computers sending the little projectiles streaking into the window the militant ducked back into. A second later, two pings rang out and the window exploded.
Zooming in onto the blown-out wall of the building, my Assimilator swept the wreckage for survivors. The stark white blot created on its IR sensors by the grenades' detonations faded, leaving the structure glowing a dull green. No reds remained. [Traveler here, no survivors. They're all gone.]
[Roger that, Alpha Squad returning to course.]
Just business. Grisly business, but what could we do?
Alright, time to drop stealth and leapfrog to the next intersection. My Assimilator Teams coalesced into view as the little pistol-shrimp 'bots left their hiding spots, quickly picking their way across the rooftops ahead of the convoy with quick hops and bounds, their long manipulators and upgraded Articulated giving them impressive agility. Perfect for disposable scouting duties.
…wait, do you hear that?
[Enemy Units Sighted.]
Oh. OH.
From its vantage point on a taller building, one of my Assimilators caught first sight of a whole army of Brotherhood vehicles speeding into the area. Hordes of Raider Buggies and Attack Bikes mixed with an overwhelming bunch of assorted technicals raced through the streets of the Chinese city in a scene straight out of Mad Max, I could see trucks armed with machine guns and makeshift armouring, city cars loaded with gun-toting riders and-is that a bulldozer?!
RIGHT, TIME TO GO. [Alpha Squad, you've got a bloody motor-parade of Nod technicals bearing down on your position! De-ass area! DE-ASS AREA!]
[Hold position! Someone confirm that! Ryan, Jenkins! Go get some eyes up on that building!]
[Holy SHIT, sarge! I'm seeing Noddie vehicles everywhere! Lots of Buggies, Bikes and a shitton of technicals, closing fast!]
[Dammit, all of you get back in the vehicle! We're pulling out!]
From our spot further up in the street, I had a clearer picture. The horde of murderous vehicles were barely five minutes away or so, and at least twice as fast as the APC from what I remember. No way that the armoured bus would be able to outpace the likes of the Raiders and Bikes built specifically for fast raiding, the moment the Attack Bikes caught up Third Platoon would be minced. Pinging my Assimilators, my engineer units left their perches and began to descend-
With a flash and a static crackle, my battlefield overview shorted out.
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[Aaaaaaaah!]
[Shit, my radar's down!] Jackass was swearing into the comms as his Juggernaut's volley suddenly slew wildly off course, the three-shot barrage rocketing harmlessly into the horizon. Throughout Jericho Battery, similar incidents were occurring as the datafeeds between the Jerichos and the Sniper Teams in the field failed all of a sudden, leaving the artillery mechs blind to the battlefield at large. [Stupid cheap-ass piece of shit!]
[Boss!] One of techs on the ground radioed in. [Traveler's down!]
It never ends, Johnson thought as he slewed the turreted upper half of his Juggernaut to get a visual on their alien guest. The Mechapede unit that had carried their supplies lay sprawled out on the ground, the centipede vehicle rolling over on its side like a real dead bug. The otherworldly lights that once lit up its segmented hull had dimmed, and the Mechapede itself was completely still.
"Oh for Christ's sake." Johnson swore. This day just kept getting better and better. Gathering himself, the battery leader began issuing new orders to his men. [All walkers, pack up and hoof it back towards friendly lines! The Noddies must've shorted out our long-range sensors somehow, we're sitting ducks out here with radar dark like this! Tech crews, strip as many cartridges as you can from Traveler's unit and load them up on the MRTs, ditch the rest! Jericho Battery, we are LEAVING!]
Harsh buzzing sounds began to ring out as the ground crews sliced off the fasteners securing the autoloader cartridges to the Mechapede's body as the Jerichos rose from firing position, the kneecaps of their concave legs unclamping loudly as the limbs, well, unlimbered.
Heh.
So preoccupied with handling their mechs that none of the Jerichos bothered to look up. With the radar down as it was, nobody ever saw the handful of small, black shapes approaching from the distance.
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*CLONK*
"Huh?" Jegan's pilot, distracted as he was by all the damn unclamping procedures for exiting the Juggernaut walker's "siege mode", as a bunch of Korean pilots hadcalled it, barely had the presence of mind to notice the odd sound of something hitting the windscreen. Grumbling about stupid birds and their suicidal tendencies, he looked up to one of the oddest sights he'd ever seen.
A black body-suited man clung on the canopy's reinforced surface like a smooshed bug, the little drawn-on eyes of his odd red mask turning to look at the dumbfounded pilot. Wordlessly, the figure reached behind him and pulled out a small rectangular block, slapping it to the transparent surface of the cockpit with a small thunk.
"What the fuck...?" Jegan rubbed his eyes, momentarily stunned by this random goof. Letting go of the windscreen, the body-suited man reached up and flipped off the stunned pilot with both hands as he backflipped out of sight.
The little block started beeping, a small red light appearing on its midsection.
"OH FUCK!" Jegan screamed as hereeled back in his seat, crossing his arms in front of him in a desperate move to fend off the satchel charge the fucker had pasted on his windscreen. "IT'S A SHADOW-!"
*BOOOOOOM*
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[Aaaaaaaah!]
"What the?!" Sergeant Arnold Coddington whipped around in surprise as several meaty thunks rang out behind him, cutting through the sudden static forming up over the comms. The confused soldier was confronted with the bizarre sight of a bunch of Traveler's drone units lying sprawled out on the pavement, a number of the somewhat damaged from falling off the roof and bleeding green liquids onto the asphalt. One of the things weakly wiggled its legs from its position, embedded headfirst into an abandoned car.
"Sarge! We've got company! Mix of Raiders and Bikes coming in hot, they're too quick for me to get a good shot!" Ryan, the squad AT-gunner called out over the radio, the harsh snap-roar of his FGM-90 firing in the background. Scuffling could be heard as the trooper strted moving, the harsh pinging of ricocheting bullets in the background. "Got no eyes on any command units and there's way more of them than I've got rockets, sarge! They'll be here in about a minute, tops!"
"Dammit!" Arnold cursed, unslinging his GD-2 and kicking in the door of the nearest house. "Ryan, Jenkins, stay where you are! Everyone else ditch the APC and get inside!" Roughly grabbing the shoulders of stunned infantrymen and shoving them in the direction of the doorway, he caught a glimpse of one of the Scrin lying barely a few feet away, manipulators waving weakly.
Arnold pressed his lips into a tight line. No one would know if he just left it lying there…
"Aw hell." Muttering a curse under his breath, he dashed over to the motionless alien, grabbing it by one of its "horns" and slinging it over his shoulder. The hard bony protrusion felt unnervingly cold to the touch, its surface lined with tiny ridges akin to veins. "Castro, help me get this thing into the building, leave the rest!"
As the two men hauled the unconscious alien into the sturdy apartment building, the first of the Attack Bikes were already roaring down the street. Third Platoon's evacuated APCs promptly took a quartet of missiles straight into its side even as the trio reached the doorway, the cheap plastic door slamming shut as the vehicles detonated, the APCs' turret guns flying off like a bottlecap and smacking against a lamppost.
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"…sound off."
"….reporting, … green."
"Amer here. Dropped …, five magazines left."
"Dhawan …, nailed in the leg by ... No blood, but it's bruising over bad."
"Rogers checking in, just saw Price run into one of the other buildings. All Alphas accounted for, sarge."
Ow shit bloody heck. My eyes.
Countless images and sounds flashed in my mind at blinding speeds, rendering me damn near blind and confused as heck. One moment I was looking at a Juggernaut (Jackass, I think) develop a sudden case of cockpit-boom-itis, next I was slamming headfirst into the archway of a Warp Sphere, spilling the metal held in my cargo bay, desperately trying to slow my descent before all million kilograms of me hit the city, listening to the faint murmurings of Third Platoon-
You ever try watching those security camera displays, you know the ones with the splitscreen and all? Something like that, except I'm seeing them all at once.
And I can't even blink.
Voice, what in the nine hells' going on?!
[Long-range scanners and battlefield overview have been disabled by an unknown warhead launched from the south.] Voice intoned, zooming in to a freeze-cam of a cloud of little blinking canisters attached to parachutes. [The delivery vehicle has deployed a large number of signal jammers over a large area at high altitude, disabling most long range signals of most varieties. Following disabling of battlefield overview, all units automatically switched to directly transmitting audio-visual feeds from their integrated sensors.]
Great, that was a Radio-Jamming Missile or something the Noddies launched back then, was it?
[Cross-references to existing blueprints stored in Unit: Giant Enemy Crab point to an 85% probability match.]
Well. Radar'll be down for a bit, that's a bummer. From my guess, they'll probably be mounting a breakthrough attempt while the whole lot of us are blind and deaf, taking advantage of all the chaos to hopefully weasel the damn Tacitus out of the place. Fat lot of good I'll be doing here in my half-blinded as I am now.
Ow heck, Voice. Can you, you know, switch this thing off or something?! It's burning my eyes!
[Acknowledged, Foreman. Switching to single first-person view.]
Ah, that's better. The mind-bendingly scrambled mess I was looking at resolved into the face of Alpha Squad's leader, repeatedly tapping my Assimilator's face.
[Stop that.] Reaching up with a manipulator, I snared the offending digit and pushed it away.
"Glad to see you back with us, Traveler." The surly man grunted as he shook his finger free, grabbing my manipulator and hoisting my unit to its feet. Keeping his back pressed against the wall, he leaned out and fired a grenade outside with a quick ptoom, ducking his head back immediately as a hail of bullets sliced in from the open window and spattered against the ceiling. "You went down all of a sudden just as our comms shorted out, know anything about that?"
[Jammer missile. Took out all long range sensors and stunned me for a moment.] Leaning out of the window, I caught sight of a whole swarm of Nod fast-movers circling the building we were in and raking the concrete walls with gunfire, the rest of Third Platoon taking potshots at the offending vehicles from deeper within the building. Ohh crap, we've gotten pinned down by the War-Boy horde. One Flame Tank or Black Hand and we're all extra-crispy. [Best guess is that the Brotherhood's launching a big attack on FOB Alpha right about now to break the encirclement, got lots of heavy armour moving in all over the place. This is probably a rusher swarm that got distracted, decided to play with little old us.]
"Damn." Spitting over his shoulder the sergeant sagged against the wall. He seemed rather resigned, the fight slowly bleeding out of his battered body. "If the Noddies are hitting the base as you said, HQ's not going to have the time to go rescue a single platoon of mechanized infantry and we're pinned down tight. Second some Tib-worshipping hick with one of their fucking flamethrowers shows up, we're all toast. Literally."
Turning over to face my Assimilator, he gave a tired grin and racked his GD-2. "Only thing we can do now is take some of 'em with us, eh?"
Blinded to high heaven and disoriented as I was, there was nothing I could do. I'm already struggling with keeping the supply lines running back at FOB Alpha, there was no way I'm ever going to pull off a zerg rush under the damn jamming. Sad to say, but Third Platoon was screwed. [I'm sorry.] I lamely offered, a cold feeling in my "gut" as I stared at a dead man walking.
" 'salright, no hard feelings. Go pick up a gun or something, and we'll make these fuckers bleed."
Damn it. Damn it all.
Turning away as the sergeant I didn't even knew the name of resumed firing, I looked over my options. Three Assimilators huddled inside the building and a garrison of roughly six Riflemen. All the Assimilators could do was stealth (only while standing still, so utterly useless now), capture structures (capture what?) and run quite fast (locked down tight, no dice). Sure, their sensors were better than normal and all that jazz that made them passable scouts, but the Assimilators had absolutely nothing that could help us now.
For all the units to have in this sort of situation, why'd it have to be Assimilators?! Why couldn't I have gotten something with some firepower, Buzzers, maybe a Mastermind or something that could teleport-
Wait. Teleport.
…Voice? Do we have any reinforcement abilities or something along those lines?
[Compiling a list of quick-deployment assets available: Lightning Spikes, Buzzer Swarms, Reconstruction Drones, Shock Pods and the Mothership. Caution, current area is lacking in open areas to deploy Lightning Spike defense turrets safely.]
Yes, yes and… oh, Shock Pods? We have those?
[Affirmative, Foreman. Authorisation codes retrieved from assimilated Reaper-17 structures, Ichor Hub is willing to supply us the units as long as payment is made.]
Really now. I looted their hotline numbers off of their dead customer, and the folks back at Hub are willing to close both eyes and let business go on as usual.
And with the advanced sensor suites on the Assimilators…
Heh. Heheheheh.
Call up those assholes. We've got some troopers to rescue!
[Acknowledged, Foreman. Contacting manufacturing Cult.]
[Hey, sarge?] I crooned, rubbing the tips of my manipulators with glee. [I've got an offer you can't refuse…]
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Author's Note: WHEEEW that really took a lot out of me. Tried experimenting from a more character-driven style instead of regular first person, had tonnes of hangups with assorted minutae. Took nearly a whole week of on-off writing to get this done. hope it's worth it.
Yes, yes. Jericho Battery's really being raided by a bunch of Shadow Teams going all Attack on Titan on them with their glider packs and satchel charges. No kidding.
The joys of having a direct neural interface exposed to jamming. With command limited to the units beaming sensory data directly to the poor Foreman's brainmeats, suffice to say traditional Scrin zergrushes are out of the picture for the moment. GDI's going to be the star of the show this time round.
As always, thanks for reading! Comments and criticisms are always welcome!
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Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
Trivia: The eyes thing about the Shadow Team member's mask was inspired by my past confusion about the Shadow Team's unit icon. I really thought that the guys wore opaque red masks with angry slant-eyes painted on them.
Edit: Wow. Much senpais. Very honourabu. Such squeee. Wow.
Edit: Wow. Much senpais. Very honourabu. Such squeee. Wow.
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Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
EDIT: Added some additional banter and retconned Jackass's death. Someone with a callsign like that is destined for Great Things(tm).
Also, Gundam reference because why not.
*beat*
"IT'S A GUNDAAAAM-" *Librarian KIA*
Also, Gundam reference because why not.
*beat*
"IT'S A GUNDAAAAM-" *Librarian KIA*
You don't know about the Doge? Oh, you poor thing.I'll be honest, that dog right there, is the best part of this chapter, even more if your EVA equivalent use it as avatar
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Dolly Fail Fail
Boss Leader
- Location
- Within dreams and memories
You should definitely use a Doge as travelers avatar, the people you meet who don't understand will be confused, and those that do will either be laughing their asses off or seething with rage.
Ylamona
Konlulu~
Ehh, which part that said i don't know about that dog?
Though it'll really good when dealing with kane or LEGION, just use doge as avatar
Omake: Rise (and fall) of the Yashima
Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
North African coast, Red Zone R-1
Improvised Testing Grounds
Improvised Testing Grounds
The primary emitter of the kludged-together prototype activated with a harsh buzz, the densely packed rod of purified Ichor lighting up with a crimson glow as the generators in the Beam Cannon chassis fed millions of kilowatts of electrical energy to the hungry crystal. Mounted within a thick, tubelike casing of lead, the loose ions emitted by the disintegrating "fuel-rod" bounced around within the mirror-coated inner surface of the tube as the rest of the "rod" spontaneously sublimed into ionized gas. Pressure mounted as the last of the Ichor was consumed to leave an airtight electrically-charged canister of concentrated ionized gas, capped with two mirrors on either end as electrical energy continued to flow into the assembly. The signature hum of the Nod-designed technology appeared as the gas pressure and ionic radiation levels within the sealed tube built up to ridiculous concentrations, the Beam Cannon's weapons diagnostics system lighting up with a bright green "READY" icon.
At the pull of a trigger, the frontal high-reflector mirror retracted, exposing the focusing lens behind it to the bore tube. Likewise, similar HR mirrors separating the bore tube and the other seven focusing chambers connected to it withdrew with soft clicks.
A loud "shh-CRACK" rang out as the bore tube's deadly contents flung a solid beam of excited photons and loose ions at the concave lens, the optical lens refracting the mass into a connected focusing chamber. The one-way lenses separating the main bore tube and the other seven chambers, serving as both beam focusers and "valves", directing the extra particles emitted as the beam cleaved right into the mass of ionized Ichor gas contained in the focusing chambers, setting off a chain reaction that dumped more loads of energetic photons and ions into the growing hell-light. On and on the stream of energy surged through the assembly, picking up additions along the way and speeding towards its final destination, a larger magnifier lens waiting at the end of the barrel's length.
Halfway through the assembly, the beam connected with Lens Five, installed a scant few degrees off-center.
The beam, now reaching hellish levels of energy concentration, skewed off its intended path and sunk its fangs into the rim of Lens Six at full force. Intended to contain the wrath of only a single chamber's worth of photon energy, the mirrored inner surface of Segment Six's chamber failed almost instantaneously as six Beam Cannons' worth of laser chewed into the reflective material and cooked it to vapour within nanoseconds. The entire assembly became awash with an angry red light as an incredibly deadly superbeam clawed its way out of the assembly's midsection, the beam lancing off into the horizon and all but coring a low-hanging thunderhead by dint of instant vaporisation. The rest of the assembly promptly began to slag itself from the sheer heat pouring out of the gaping breach in the weapon's insulation, causing the beam to oscillate wildly and tearing open the steaming wound even further.
Finally, the linked Beam Cannon units had had enough. Exposed to unbelievable amounts of strain from the barrel's rupture, the domelike hub units heated up and cooked off their internal generators like giant bags of popcorn. A chain of explosions erupted from the prototype as the Beam Cannons underwent a daisy-chain of catastrophic failures, each segment of the weapon all but vanishing in a superheated plume of ionic Ichor gas that scorched everything within 200 meters into stretches of steaming glass.
Dammit, what now?! That's the fifth one already, for goodness's sake!
[Sensor logs indicate a major containment breach along Segment Six, resulting from misdirection of the beam by a misaligned Lens Five, off-center by four-point-five degrees. Resulting misdirection caused the beam to reflect off of Lens Number Six and come in contact with Segment Six's chamber, which underwent catastrophic failure when exposed to energies far in excess of its maximum tolerances.
Thermal bleed-off from the breach proceeded to circumvent the Units' insulation and heat the generators to unsafe levels, resulting in immediate meltdown and detonation.]
Oh bloody hell, back to the drawing board then. Call up the blueprint files again and help me fix that part, will you?
[Affirmative, Foreman. Editing files.]
And thus the Yashima Chain-Laser Artillery's predecessor, the Assembly1 (ver. 5.0) DEW Prototype "Chernobyl" got canned in true Commander fashion.
Stay safe and MAD SCIENCE, everyone!
Over fifty visceroids were harmed in the making of this film.
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- Location
- Arizona
Huh. I was wondering why the story went off track. Then I noticed that it says Omake at the top. Ok then.
Did you write an Omake featuring a gratuitous explosion/meltdown so you could contribute to 4th of July? Assuming you are American, of course.
...or you could just be a typical member of this site, who dreams of Mr. Torgue narrating a Michael Bay film, amplified to the Nth degree.
EDIT: bwahahaha! Spell check replaced Mr. Torgue with "Mr. Forgive"! LolNope!
Did you write an Omake featuring a gratuitous explosion/meltdown so you could contribute to 4th of July? Assuming you are American, of course.
...or you could just be a typical member of this site, who dreams of Mr. Torgue narrating a Michael Bay film, amplified to the Nth degree.
EDIT: bwahahaha! Spell check replaced Mr. Torgue with "Mr. Forgive"! LolNope!
Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
Explosions for their own sake, also to highlight the kludged-together nature of the SI's tech. So far every new unit or the weapon are basically reskinned/MacGyvered abominations against all known safety guidelines, sown together a la Frankenstein by copious amounts of fused Assimilators.
This will be important later, especially when Traveler's units (especially the bigger ones) start aging. Also, space rigour and fusion reactors.
In the C&Cverse, people don't die when they're killed. They explode.
Fret not, I'll stick to the actual plot for a while here onwards.
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