"Two Destroyers are approaching and you want to send marines on raptors down to the surface! Have you lost your mind!? They'll be torn apart! If not by the warships then surely by the guns on the ground!" Howard virtually roared at The Blue standing across from him. "Well Colonel I don't know if you've noticed but those surviving ground forces are not exactly having a picnic! We can't afford to delay our arrival by fighting with petty escorts! We can easily crush them and get reinforcements to the ground if you didn't have such a weak stomach for combat!" The Imperial retorted back, a savage snarl in his voice. Howard looked about ready to throttle him to death. Price looked down at his plotting table, drowning out his bickering executive officers. The bulk of the enemy fleet had been driven away, as planned, but two Iconoclast destroyers had broken past the fleet and were on their way to intercept them. He knew Howard was right, they could indeed easily destroy them without risking
"Trojan 2-1, Trojan 2-1 this is Hawk 1, Callsign Duster. Come in." Slowly he approached the Vox and picked up the horn. "This is... This is Trojan 2-1. Aye. Captain Sorte of the 122nd Guard-P*F Infantry Battalion. Are you our Navy reinforcements?" The answer seemed obvious, but Sorte had to ask to settle his confused mind. "That's affirmative! You've got eight Shuttles with Marines inbound to your location. I suggest you clear an LZ for them to land. ETA three minutes." Thank the Emperor. "Roger that Duster, can you provide Close Air Support?" Please say yes. Sorte wasn't even completely sure he'd have the wafer thin defence he did have without some kind of heavy firepower. "You've got nine fighters and seventy strikers at your disposal Captain. We'll do what we can. Better tell your guys to get real small in their holes and mark your lines. We can't see friend from foe from up here." By the Throne! This keeps getting better! "Understood. Sorte out!" he threw down the mic, and lo
Sorte ripple-dropped cluster-bombs above the highest concentration of enemy troops he could find. Before the traitors could react, the area was saturated with hundreds of small bomblets which exploded on impact, severing limbs and ripping apart bodies. His wingmen executed expert rocket-strikes on the lightly armored APC's. Some managed to get a few shots off with their side-mounted lasguns, before getting gutted by armour-piercing rockets exploding inside and eviscerated anything in their way. All that was left behind being scored and gored earth, punctuated only by the screams of the dying and the burning wrecks of torn up APCs. The three strikers pulled up hard to rejoin the formation above, paired with las-shots and hard-rounds from below. A stray shot managed to graze the wing of Dusters plane, but did not do any damage worth thinking about. Duster's flight barely reached formation altitude before their place was filled by two other strikers bearing down on the enemy infantry,
Beta Company, Southern Flank, The Creek Bed- "Manny, where the hell are you?" the young soldier grunted under his breath. His long-time friend and comrade-in-arms had sped off to the munitions dump for spare charge-packs and ammo-mags. Throne knows where he was now, almost everyone in his squad was running low. Whatever they had left wouldn't last long. The sarge had ordered everyone on single-shot. Full auto would only waste precious ammo. Manny should have been back by now. The soldier hoped he would be back soon or he would run dry, the heretics where showing none of the restraint or hesitation they had around the Terminal and command centre. He had three magazines left, and the enemy was barely dozens of metres away from him. He'd already been forced to watch the trench line in front of him fall, the men within physically torn apart by the frenzied barely-human horde of renegades. Masses of enemy soldiers came charging towards his position. The Soldier knew what would happen if t
He was interrupted by a pained wailing and his name being called. He turned to see General Pallion and two of his fanatics entering his command centre, cutting down his unfortunate bodyguard. All dressed in the crimson red and bronze armour of all those who worshiped the god of violence and bloodshed. "Colonel Davis!" He screamed in a high, demented voice, "What is the meaning of this incompetence?" Davis wheezed out a sigh, a single racking cough shaking his body as flies escaped his bloated lungs. "Maybe if you stopped killing my body guards I would be more secure in my position! Besides, we could not have anticipated these... interlopers..." Davis trailed off, gesturing up to the speck in the sky, where Invictus watched and waited. "Do not trifle with me!" Pallion screamed "The death of a few unworthy 'soldiers' and the appearance of some petty weaklings do not justify your failure!" His voice suddenly dropped and became unnervingly calm, rumbling and deadly quality just below t
The Third World War began on August fifteenth, 2030. It only lasted three days. It was a war that ended with twenty-thousand nuclear warheads and a burning Earth. With over one billion fatalities, the Third World War was labelled the largest global catastrophe since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Another hundred million more died soon after, victims of the swift and deadly killer that was radiation sickness. Worldwide infrastructure failed in less than a day-everything from microchips to national power grids were fried by the blasts. It was an atrocity of the highest order. The ultimate crime against humanity. But this story is not about that war. This story is about what happened next after the bombs had dropped. Before we knew it, the scarred remnants of the world were once again united against a common threat. The nuclear fallout we had created would soon wipe us all from existence. Functioning technology was scarce, so countries began to collaborate once more. Without any ot
Report: Quinn The edge of a dried sea. Russia. Decommissioned nuclear facility. Designation: 'Lighthouse' I could hear explosions outside-loud, thunderous detonations that I didn't so much hear as feel in my bones. By now I should have been used to explosions, as they were quite common in my line of work. Still, the sound in my ears and the pressured feeling in my chest told me that only danger awaited below. I loved it. I slid into the mech's pilot seat with a sigh of delight and moved to run my hands through my hair, an old stress-induced habit I'd recently resumed. Of course, I found almost nothing; my new brown crew cut didn't offer much to touch. My fingers brushed up against something solid embedded in the nape of my neck. An IRON chip, stolen from its American manufacturers. It was about the size of a dime. I settled my hands back on the controls of the mech and waited. It was likely only a few seconds, but it felt like hours. The sleeve of my jumpsuit caught on the co
The Grendel attacked me almost immediately, weapons blazing. The mech's two-storey body was laughable in shape but advantageous from a tactical viewpoint. Its thick, bulbous body gave it heavy armour and a low center of gravity, and its weapons array was built directly into the center of its frame, making it harder to destroy. The tubby grey German mech fought less like its mythological namesake and more like a sumo wrestler-it was built to take a hit and remain standing. A single red light shone through its thick armour as it wobbled toward me, marking where its camera was hidden away. The chunky Grendel was a tough enemy for my flimsy Regiment, especially because it was carrying both a rotary railgun and a powerful howitzer cannon. Fortunately, I had a trick or two up my sleeve. An interchangeable weapons array had been the reason I had chosen to use a Regiment for my mission-though a Goliath would've been a better mech, the Regiment's mounted weapons were easily customizable. Most