St. Louis, Missouri
As she strolled through what was once her home, Rebecca felt a sense of melancholy. A bitterness of the world she had lost the day the Druidth invaded. She was going to go to college and become a photographer, her photos displayed in high-end galleries around the world. They were supposed to bring her fame and fortune, enough money and clout to have her own apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City. People would beg her to use their products.
Now, though...
Now, her future was as uncertain as future of Humanity as a whole. The odds of a college taking her were slim for more reasons than she cared to count. And who would bother to pay thousands of dollars for her photos when people were having a hard time feeding themselves and would continue to do so for some time? To say nothing of New York, which looked to forever be under Druidth control.
She stopped and picked up a picture of her family. The frame was broken, the glass shattered, as if someone had thrown it against the floor but the photo itself was still intact. In the middle was her father, smiling in a pastel polo shirt in front of a grove of trees. His arms were around her mother in her favorite yellow sundress and her brother with a similar polo shirt. Rebecca was on the far right, next to her mother. She smiled sadly; she was twelve on that particular vacation and was the first time she worn a dress in public.
When the Druidth took the city the first thing they did was arrest all civil leaders and execute them. After installing a puppet ruler, who shot himself when American forces began moving on the city, the Druidth were pushed out. During the fighting Loyalist soldiers were quartered there. She could tell they cared little for the "One Percent" that used to live there. Urine coated the corners and cigarettes littered the floor. Burn marks where the cigarettes were crushed out dotted the walls in every room. The family portrait that hung above the grand fireplace in the living room was defaced with slurs and insults written on the canvas, her mother and fathers images drawn on as well.
Rebecca turned away in disgust when she saw a cartoon penis drawn next to her face with a perverted slogan written next to it. She was glad she convinced her father to let her leave town before it was too late. Even though she lost her parents, she and her brother were both still alive. If she had been here when the city fell there was no doubt she would have been killed as well. Or raped who knows how many times then killed.
A shiver crept up her spine at what could have been.
Making her way up the grand staircase, Rebecca stopped at her room, the first at the top of the stairs, and pushed the door open. Whoever occupied it after her was not a smoker as the scent that filled the rest of the house was absent. However there was a pile of pictures on the floor and when she turned on the light, three bulbs were out, she found they were mainly of her in her bikini from her trips to the falls with her friends. White, cloudy stains coated the glossy finish of the pictures which she was hesitant to touch.
Her lip curled up in disgust. "Fucking Perv."
She knew she should be helping bury the dead, the Loyalist and Druidth dead that were tagged with an ID number and rolled into a deep pit then covered with dirt. All of the Allied soldiers were respectfully sent home for a proper burial. As the daughter of a former pillar of the community, Rebecca knew it was her duty to help the people in all of the dirty work. To show them that she was one of them and that the hard days were soon over. But at the same time the people of the city that she was supposed to be helping were also the same people that either lowered their heads in submission or were the ones that eagerly helped the Druidth kill her family. The people of St. Louis could go to hell for all she cared.
Pulling open her closet doors she was relieved to see that most of her clothes remained unperturbed. And without mysterious stains. Careful of where she stepped, Rebecca closed the door and disrobed. She took a moment to examine her nude self in the full body mirror and remarked that she had improved somewhat. The ten pounds that every girl her age wished were gone were just that, and she even had some minor muscles forming. Her flame red hair was cut shorter than it was the last time she was in this house but that was for sanitary purposes since she had served as a nurse until recently. But everything else was the same. No large burn scars or pockmarking from shrapnel.
Satisfied, she pulled some clothes from her closest and dressed, grateful to have underwear that was not washed a hundred times or taken from Good Will.
A knock at the door made her jump. "Becca, You done?"
"Yeah, I was just changing." She moved to the door and opened it. Alex leaned against the railing in new clothes of his own, cradling a sawn-off shotgun. He had become her personal bodyguard. Rebecca did not want to think about how many people he might have shot with that gun already. "You ready to leave?"
"I have no reason to stay," Alex replied. He still had not told her how he had gotten back into the city. Or what happened to him while he was here.
"Let's go." Leaving the house, Rebecca stopped and took the picture of them from the broken frame. She considered burning the place down, cleansing the world of the taint the Loyalist soldiers had left upon it. But with the battered city the way it is after all of the fighting, buildings smashed and collapsed or burnt, that would not be a good idea. And besides, it was large enough to shelter dozens.
Rebecca and her brother stepped out into the early February air, smoke and death wafted on the breeze. She was glad she thought to take a jacket from her closet. What she was going to do now, was anyone's guess.
Moscow, Russia
"All we have to do is wait!" Visi Is-Hen Rama called across his Squad Speak. "The reinforcements from the Qin-Lan will be here soon. All we have to do is wait long enough and they will be here to relieve us!"
No one believed him. Or if they did, the unspoken question was How many of us will be left when they do?
His troopers were at their end. The original plan was to touch down in Moscow but the air defenses were too heavy. After loosing half their number before even setting foot on the ground they diverted to Voronezh to the south and fought their way it. Those were the easy days.
Since then, they had fought street to street and house to house with the Russians as they threw tens of thousands of their own people at them to die. He looked at his own men. Their armor was cracked in places and filthy. Many of them had to scavenge new pieces from their dead comrades as supply in the area had been cut off long ago. Many of his troopers also were forced to use Human weapons as the supply of plasma rounds was also dangerously low. Rama looked down at his own armor; his left shoulder pauldron was shattered from a bullet. Uniform Code demanded it be replaced immediately but with what?
There was thirty-thousand Druidth in Moscow and probably not even enough food to feed them till the end of the week. And at this point he was a Visi, and officer in charge of a hundred men, only in name. Beyond that there was a problem with their rounds; they cooled in the frozen air too quickly and were often less than fatal. Equipment broke or somehow malfunctioned. Food, what little there was, froze solid. Even their suit heaters were having a hard time keeping them above freezing.
Behind them, shielded by the skeletal remains of skyscrapers, Druidth artillery fired a few salvos before falling silent again. Shells for the guns were in to short supply to be able to sustain a heavy bombardment. Instead the Battery Officers would fire a few shells at random intervals in the hopes of disrupting the Russians. The majority of the guns, however, were kept on stand-by with their fire zones zeroed in around the Druidth perimeter.
Far in the outskirts of the city, where the Druidth had not been for some time, a rapid booming could be heard. Rama instantly knew what was coming and shouted, "Incoming!"
He managed to crawl into one of the pits in the wall of the trench just before the first artillery shells fell. Each blasted even larger holes out of the earth, flinging dirt and debris around while shrapnel found those unlucky enough to find a hiding spot in time. When the barrage did not end after thirty seconds, Rama settled in. He knew the shells would fall for some time now.
London, England
The Cora banked sharply, cutting its speed before slowing to a stop. Hovering in mid-air, the crew chief opened the side door and kicked out a coiled rope. Quickly, Ezca grabbed the rope and slid down, landing on the rooftop below, his boots crunching on the small stones the builders had placed to protect it. The rest of his squad had roped down with him, leaving the Cora with nothing to do but rise into the sky and fly off, ropes hanging from the belly.
Less than two days had passed since he had reported in what Kas had told him, leaving out the part about the officer and the Kyros faction. Since then his entire unit had been transferred to the Intelligence Division and they had worked to locate the safe house the thieves had used. Why Kas was willing to sell them out, Ezca did not know.
Sekert passed him as she moved to the rooftop access door, her rifle raised and ready to fire. Ezca watched her with suspicion. Her involvement was something else that was left in the dark. He still was not sure how far he should trust her now. But trust her he must, as the second he withheld even the slightest bit of information from the Intelligence goons his fate was sealed. Now, he was focused on finding the Anti-Matter Bomb that Kas had given his word was here. Preferably before it turned him to ash.
With a nod, Yaris kicked in the door and moved in, followed by Sekert, Maxo, and finally Ezca. The stairwell was dark, the light having gone out years before their arrival, but was no obstacle to the low-light equipment in their helmets.
"Second floor down," He relayed to his team. "Fifth on the left."
It took no time for the four soldiers to reach the apartment in question, the door adorned with Human letters and numbers. None of them could read it so it meant little. What did matter was what lay within.
Stacked up on either side of the door, Maxo took a small device out of his belt. The device was the shape of a tear drop and roughly the size of his hand. He stuck it to the door and depressed a switch. Inside Ezca's helmet, and Maxo's since he was the operator, a small video frame appeared in the lower left-hand corner of his visor.
Using subsonic pulses, the device acted like a sonar beacon and showed him everything in the room. Moderate furnishings filled the rooms. The sonar picked up five bodies in the room, three in the main room and two more in the rear bedroom. A pile of weapons, Druidth and Human, lay stacked in one of the smaller rooms, and, while he could not be sure, Ezca believed that all of the occupants were armed.
Gesturing to Yaris, she took two bars the length of her forearms and slapped them on either side of the door. A quick tap on her wrist computer and the breeching charges detonated, blowing the lock to pieces and shattering the hinges. Falling inward with a heavy thud, the door soon served as a mat to Druidth boots as they stormed in, weapons raised.
Without bothering to wait for the first three to raise any form of defense, Yaris and Ezca shot them down with a salvo of plasma, some of the rounds straying and burning into the brick wall. Maxo and Sekert were the next through and they broke off to the right. The door to the rear bedroom flew open with two middle aged Human men coming out, shotguns in their hands. Maxo fired four times, twice for each. Instead of the usual deadly plasma, hers was loaded with stun darts, a gel charged with electricity that stuck to the target and caused all the muscles to contract at once.
Both men dropped in convulsions, the one in the rear fired his shotgun into the ceiling as he fell. And with that the entire assault was over. Total elapsed time: forty-seven seconds. Ezca radioed in and the Cora returned. Meanwhile, the rest of the unit was busy finding a pair of chairs and tying the two unconscious men to them.
"I don't envy them when they wake up," Maxo said.
"The hell with them," Yaris replied. "If they didn't want to be shot maybe they should have just embraced the King."
Ezca was quiet, standing with his arms crossed against the back wall. Sekert had her helmet off and was tinkering with some part on her armor. They all heard the Cora land on the roof and waited for the Intelligence Officer to enter the room. They all snapped to attention when he did, arrogantly wearing just a cloth uniform and carrying a case with him.
A heavy rain had started outside, fat drops of water splattering against the filthy glass windows. Before long, wet spots appeared on the wall.
"Maxo, Yaris, Sekert. Wait outside," Ezca ordered when he watched the Officer set his case on the table next to the first man who was beginning to regain consciousness.
"Good," He said when they were gone. "I find some don't have the stomach for this. And they usually get in my way." A small number of sharp instruments, followed by a few blunter ones, made an emergence from the case. With their sharp edges for cutting and teeth for gripping their purpose was not unclear. Just seeing them made Ezca cringe.
When the stun rounds had worn off and both men were awake, Ezca was instructed to place a gag on one. He wrapped the mesh band around the man's head, and it auto tightened until he could not open his jaw. His eyes stabbed at Ezca like orbs of pure hate.
The Officer pulled a curved blade from the table and approached the first. "Now, my name is Kto-Rey Nule. And I am a very high ranking officer in His Majesties Kings Guard Intelligence Division. You are being detained on the suspicion of harboring our enemy and stealing weapons. Now, what is your name?"
Ezca noticed that Nule had the two part first name that showed he was a high born noble. While he watched he idly wondered what brought him into the Kings Guards. The man stared him down and smirked. "Robert Grenn, Field Agent in His Majesties King of England Military Intelligence, Section Five."
"Ah, a fellow military man. Good, that will save us some time. Now," Nule put the blade against Grenn's restrained arm. He pressed the blade in until crimson blood showed and began running to the floor. Grenn's face contracted in pain. "Where is the bomb?"
Through gritted teeth, Grenn cursed, "Fuck you."
Nule tsked and slowly pushed the blade up Grenn's arm. Ezca tried not to imagine how much agony it was causing him nor how tough the Human man must have been to just sit there and bear it. Nule stopped halfway up and withdrew the blade. It returned to the table, glistening with blood, before he picked up a spreader.
"I will cause you immense amounts of pain, Mr. Robert. Or you can comply and die quickly, this I promise." If Nule showed any kind of remorse or that he was even slightly bothered by what he was doing Ezca missed it.
Grenn took a deep breath and focused on Nule, pain clouding his eyes. "It's too late you fucking Drid. It's already in play. And I—"Grenn's jaw jerked sharply to the side and he began to foam at the mouth. "Am already dead..."
He began to spasm while Nule cursed in Druidth. The Officer kicked Grenn in the chest, knocking him to the flood where he landed, still tied to the chair, next to his fallen comrades. Nule pulled his side arm from its holster and pressed the barrel against the second man's head.
"What did he mean 'it's already in play'?" He demanded. Even with the gag on, Ezca knew he wouldn't talk.
Nule was about to pull the trigger when all sound disappeared. Next, the air was pressed out of his chest and suddenly he was forced to the floor by some unseen and undeniable force as the windows shattered. All the furniture that was not affixed to the wall had its legs blow out in a shower of splinters and met him on the floor. Pressure warning began blaring inside his helmet and, while he was unable to move, he had a prefect view of Nule and the second man being crushed alive by the pressure.
Little by little the force ebbed away, letting the sound rush back into the world like water flooding into a void. As soon as he could manage, Ezca was back on his feet and to the door where he saw the rest of his squad picking themselves up.
He slapped the broadband selector on his radio and shouted, "What the hell just happened? Can anyone respond?" Unfortunately, his was one voice among thousands and all were asking the same thing. He left the channel open so he could hear any updates and motioned for everyone to get to the roof.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Ezca cared not for discipline nor security. Bursting from the stairwell he was horrified, but not all that surprised, to see the Cora laying with its belly on the roof, the engine struts snapped off. The pilots dead in their seats.
"By the King..." Maxo breathed.
His head snapped around to see where he was. Ezca walked to the corner that faced the northwest. Where the airport had been, and the tens of thousands of fresh soldiers that would help win the war, there was nothing. The land was flat, the buildings knocked down, and everyone in the epicenter dead.
Ezca took of his helmet and set it on the waist high brick wall that surrounded the roof top. "That's it, we're finished."
"We can still beat them, Kantotally," Yaris defended.
"No, you weren't there. You didn't see his eyes," Ezca remembered the look in the Humans eyes downstairs. That defiant stare that said 'you will never beat us'. And then there was the whole affair with the poison and Grenn. "No matter what we do, we will never win."
Druidth Global Headquarters
Australian Outback
"How bad is it?" Ae-yok asked in his office. His computer still displayed the reports of the destruction of Heathrow Airport by the stolen Anti-Matter Bombs. He was well aware of how bad it was exactly, one hundred percent. But it helped to hear it from someone else, though he was not sure why; perhaps just to help hammer the fact home.
Zora sat back in his chair and watched the sun rise on the horizon. While only a few hours had passed since the attack it was already considered the next day in Australia thanks to the planets time zones. Something the Humans had actually developed that the Druidth had not. On Vasgyhrr it was the same time all across the planet so to not inconvenience the King. Across from him Kira, the head of the Kings Guard, sat smugly, slowly sipping his tea.
"We've lost seventy percent of the Qin-Lan forces. Ninety percent of the new equipment. The only place we actually came out okay was with the consumables: They were being stored elsewhere for a broader distribution." Zora clarified.
"What steps are we taking to ensure this does not happen again?" Ae-yok asked. He only need to look to the door to remind himself that they were all on edge, a pair of Kings Guardsmen and Army Special Forces stood to either side. Had Ka-Zaka been there a pair of Druidth Marines would have been there as well. Unfortunately, his friend was forced by protocol to remain in his offices in Tokyo to preserve the continuity of Druidth government should the DGH go up in flames as well.
"Well, all weapons of mass destruction have been located and secured. And their detonation cores have been located and moved to local, but separate, sites." Zora said. "And while that is a problem we now have bigger issues..."
Ae-yok sighed and rubbed his eyes. There was a bottle of Lenine, fine liquor from the Kings distillery that was given to him on the day of his appointment to the post. He was saving it for the day total victory was declared and was going to share it with his friends and colleagues. Now, he would have settle for an armistice to drink it.
"I do not like that pause."
Kira put his tea down and cleared his throat. "The Seventy-Fifth Corps is surrounded in Central Europe. Fifty thousand men running out of ammunition and encircled by four times their number. There is also the matter of the Thirty-Ninth Corps with another thirty thousand in Eastern Europe. And they are down to using Human weapons. The Qin-Lan were supposed to save them but it doesn't look like that will happen now."
If he could, Ae-yok would hit the man for his arrogance. He never did like the Kings Guard Commandant; he was rash, and arrogant. Always spending the lives of his men wantonly for little reward and often blaming the Army for his failures. The question of why he was still in command could be answered by one word: birth. His parents were high ranking nobles with the Kings ear and they kept him in a position of pride even though he could not inherit their holdings. Judging by how often he messed up it was also no wonder as to why he enlisted to begin with.
"And if only the Guard could put their superior numbers and equipment to use and lend a hand..."
Kira shifted in his seat, a sour expression now on his face. Turning back to Zora, he asked, "What about the fleet commander? What does he say about this?"
"Typical new arrival. He blames it all on us. Wants to enact the Tul-Bi Protocol and cut our losses. I told him to respect the chain of command but—"
"But he probably will not listen and will end up smashing his armada into the planet killing us all, correct?" Kira finished. Though it was obvious he was in it to save his own skin he was still right. "Should I have him arrested?"
Zoning out, Ae-yok played the whole chain of events in his head from the arrest of the fleet commander to those loyal to him, which would be everyone, demanding his release. Since it was their fault so many of the Qin-Lan were now dead the rest of them would rebel causing a rift and giving the Humans an advantage. No, that would not do.
Shaking his head, Ae-yok said, "No, that would cause as many problems that it would solve. If not more. We need to show them that we are being proactive about this. That we are hurting the enemy as badly...no, worse, than they hurt us. Use the chemical weapon, use all of it, and use it wherever it would do the most damage."
Leaning forward in his chair, Zora jotted a few notes on his datapad. "So Europe for sure. We could make a gap in the enemy lines and resupply the Seventy-Fifth. Russia for sure for the Thirty-Ninth."
"The Russians have been such a pain in our side that I would recommend we use enough of the weapon to subdue them permanently," Kira added.
While he did agree that they should eliminate the second largest army, Ae-yok also knew that they did not bring enough of the raw materials with them to synthesize more. What they had was all there was. Of course, he could also order the tactical use of Anti-Matter Bombs, especially since the local populace has now witnessed their power. Perhaps a few of them blasting over wild civilian population centers would finally make them see reason and surrender.
It could work, he decided. But there were too many difficulties to make it feasible. Off the top of his head he knew about transportation. The bombs were extremely heavy with only two ways to transport them, by land or by air in one of their long range heavy bombers, the Maki. But the Maki were slow, and defenseless which would require additional planes to ensure their arrival; and if he knew the Humans he knew they would not let a dozen planes into their airspace without a fight. Then there was the problem of the Anti-Matter bombs being so hard to damage. If they shot down a Maki and recovered it then they would have another bomb to use against the Druidth. Which left transportation by ground. And as far as he knew, they were more likely to surrender tomorrow than let a convoy past their lines.
"Only use what is necessary," He finally decided. "It is too valuable of a tool to use so frivolously."
"Since we're using it so sparingly we should also redivide our forces. We have too many Loyalists that are not doing anything exceedingly productive for the war effort. I recommend we reorganize them with some of our officers leading them and send them forward." Zora suggested. "If we pull our own soldiers back to secured zones and use them to fortify our positions while using the Loyalists to hold off, and hopefully damage, the Human armies we might be able to hold on long enough for the rest of the reinforcements to arrive."
Kira stood and straightened his tunic. He had had enough of the meeting and seeing that it was coming to a close was determined to leave and begin preparations for deploying the chemical weapons. "Not like they have much choice. They know the risks when they sign up and now they have a choice: die in combat or die when they're captured."
"A bleak choice for them, but useful for us." Ae-yok made a note on his own datapad to contact Ka-Zaka about finding and shooting down the pirated vessel that was still floating around somewhere like a coiled serpent, just waiting to strike.