GDI HIGH-COMMAND
THE AEGIS, GIBRALTAR
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
11:45 GST
The command center was a cacophony of panicked voices and screaming telemetry alarms.
"Signal lost on Alpha!"
"Thermal bloom in Sector 7 increasing by 15%!"
"Sir, we can't get a lock! The mountain is scrambling the SAT-COM!"
General McCaffrey didn't yell. He didn't panic. He stood in the center of the storm, his face carved from granite, watching the chaos with the cold, predatory eyes of a man who had been fighting wars since the Cold War.
He was an old horse. But old horses knew how to kick the stable door down.
"Shut the fuck up!" McCaffrey's voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the room like a whip crack.
The technicians froze. Silence snapped back into place.
McCaffrey walked over to the Naval Comms officer, a young Lieutenant whose hands were shaking over his console. McCaffrey placed a hand on the console, leaning in.
"Lieutenant," McCaffrey said, his voice low and dangerous. "Get me the Captain of the UNS Alliance. Now."
"Sir, the interference—"
"I don't give a shit about the magnetic interference," McCaffrey snarled. "Use the VLF (Very Low Frequency) array. Use Morse code if you have to. Just get me Halloway on the line."
He turned to Sir Malcolm Hayes, who was watching with a raised eyebrow.
"We aren't playing tag anymore, Malcolm. If that mountain is a hatchery, I'm not waiting for the babies to crawl out. I'm putting a gun to its head."
"You're authorizing a bombardment?" Hayes asked.
"I'm authorizing an insurance policy." McCaffrey turned back to the tactical map. "Comms officer! Get me the 101st Airborne detachment at Bedrock. I want Bravo and Charlie teams spun up. Full combat load. Extra munitions. If Alpha is stuck in a meat grinder, we're going to jam the gears."
"How do we talk to them, sir?" the Comm Officer asked, sweat dripping down his nose. "Radio is dead in that zone."
McCaffrey narrowed his eyes. He looked at the map. The magnetic field was a dome. Radio waves bounced off it.
"Light," McCaffrey muttered.
"Sir?"
"Lasers," McCaffrey barked. "The interference fucks with radio waves. It doesn't fuck with a beam of light. Get a drone swarm in the air. Daisy-chain them. Line of sight. We bounce a laser signal from Bedrock to the drone, drone to drone, drone to Alpha Team's receiver. It's archaic, it requires perfect alignment, but it will work."
He slammed his fist on the table.
"Get it done. I want that mountain surrounded, silenced, and terrified within the hour."
THE LEVIATHAN AWAKES
OFF THE COAST OF SECTOR 7 (THE IRON COAST)
BRIDGE OF THE 'UNS ALLIANCE' (RAIL-DREADNOUGHT CLASS)
12:00 LOCAL TIME
The ocean here was black. Not dark blue—black. The water was heavy with metallic silt and oil-slick residue from the industrial runoff of the ancient Architect ruins.
Captain Halloway gripped the railing of the bridge.
"Conn, make turns for two-zero knots. Come right to heading zero-three-zero. Bring us parallel to the coast."
"Aye, Captain. Rudder right standard."
The UNS Alliance was the pride of the new Global Navy. A monster of steel and composite armor, built not for fighting other ships, but for fighting Godzillas.
Her main batteries weren't gunpowder. They were Dual-300mm Magnetic Railguns. They fired solid tungsten slugs at Mach 7.
"We have the signal from Gibraltar, sir," the Tactical Officer reported. "Priority One. Fire Mission: 'Broken Earth'."
Halloway looked out the blast-shielded windows.
Five miles away, the Magnetic Peak pierced the sky. The lightning arcing around it was visible even at noon. It looked like a cancerous spike driven into the heart of the world.
"Targeting solution?" Halloway asked.
"Rough, sir. The magnetic field is messing with the radar lock. We have to aim optically."
"Do it," Halloway ordered. "Spin up the capacitors. Load the 'Bunker Buster' rounds. If Alpha Team fails... we are going to turn that mountain into a crater."
A low hum began to vibrate through the deck plates of the massive ship. The sound of megawatts of power being channeled into the rails.
The turret rotated slowly, the massive barrels elevating.
The Alliance wasn't just watching anymore. It was waiting for the excuse to pull the trigger.
SECTOR 7 (THE IRON COAST)
THE SILENT FOREST - ELEVATION 2,500 FEET
12:15 LOCAL TIME
"Watch your fucking step!" Captain Russo hissed, grabbing Dr. Kovač by the webbing of her vest and hauling her over a jagged root.
The terrain was a nightmare. The petrified trees grew close together, forcing Alpha Team to move single-file. The ground was slick with the yellow ichor of the hatchlings they had killed a mile back, mixed with the black ash that fell constantly from the sky.
Harris Brown took point.
He moved with a terrifying economy of motion. The HK417 was pressed into his shoulder, scanning.
The loss of the minigun had changed him. He wasn't a walking turret anymore. He was a hunter.
Hungry, the Mask whispered into his skull. The air tastes like copper. Like fear.
"Shut up," Harris rumbled internally. "Focus."
"My Geiger counter is screaming," Volkov grunted from the rear, wiping grime off his heavy machine gun. "But it's not radiation. It's... magic. The mana density here is lethal. If we didn't have these suits, our skin would be melting off right now."
"Stow the chatter," Russo snapped. "Eyes up."
They reached a clearing. Or what used to be a clearing.
It was a graveyard.
Scattered across the black rocks were the remnants of Shadow Company.
Skeletons picked clean of meat, still wearing tattered black tactical gear. Rusted rifles lay in the dirt.
But it wasn't just decay. It was desecration. The bones were arranged.
Stacked.
Like a warning.
"Jesus Christ," Rakesh whispered, stepping over a ribcage. "They didn't just eat them. They played with them."
"Spiders don't play," Kovač said, her voice trembling. "This is a territory marker. Pheromones and bone. It tells other hives to fuck off."
Harris knelt by a skull. It had been crushed from the top down.
He felt the heat through his gloves.
"They're close," Harris said. "I can hear them inside the walls."
Suddenly, Russo's radio—which had been hissing static for an hour—chirped.
A clear, synthesized tone.
Then, a voice.
"Alpha Actual, this is Bedrock Control. Do you read? Over."
Russo nearly dropped his rifle. He grabbed the handset.
"Control! I read you! How the hell are you punching through the static?"
"Laser-relay established, Alpha. Listen closely. McCaffrey is sending the cavalry. You have reinforcements inbound. ETA 10 mikes."
"Reinforcements?" Russo looked up at the swirling, lightning-choked sky. "How? They can't fly in this shit! The EMP will drop a chopper out of the sky!"
"Not a chopper," Control replied. "Look down. Not up."
THE CALVARY COMES LOWTHE CANYON FLOOR
12:25 LOCAL TIME
A roar echoed through the canyon below them.
It wasn't the thwock-thwock of rotors. It was the screaming whine of turbines and the crunch of gravel.
Two V-22 Ospreys, modified for "Nap-of-the-Earth" flight, tore around the bend of the mountain.
They weren't flying. They were skimming.
They were fifty feet off the ground, weaving between the petrified spires like speeder bikes. By staying this low, they were using the rock itself to shield their avionics from the worst of the magnetic storm above.
"Crazy bastards," Volkov grinned. "Those are the Night Stalkers."
The Ospreys flared, rotating their engines upward. They didn't land—the ground was too uneven. They hovered ten feet above a rock shelf, kicking up a whirlwind of ash and dust.
Ropes dropped.
Bodies slid down. Fast.
Bravo Team and Charlie Team hit the ground running.
Twenty fresh operators.
Ten US Army Rangers. Ten Russian Spetsnaz.
They were loaded for bear. Heavy rucksacks, AT-4 rocket launchers, flamethrowers.
The lead Osprey kicked out a pallet. It slammed onto the rock with a metallic thud.
Then the birds banked hard, screaming back down the canyon before the lightning could fry them.
A massive man with a thick beard and a cigar clamped between his teeth walked up to Russo.
Master Sergeant "Big Mike" O'Connor.
"Captain Russo!" O'Connor yelled over the fading engine noise. "McCaffrey sends his regards! And some fucking ammo!"
Russo looked at the twenty men forming a perimeter. He felt a weight lift off his chest.
"Good to see you, Mike. We were about to run dry."
O'Connor looked past Russo. He saw Harris.
The Sergeant stopped chewing his cigar.
Harris was standing by the cliff edge, reloading a magazine. The Demon Mask was stark white against the grey rock, the fused skin around his neck looking like scar tissue. He looked less like a soldier and more like a gargoyle that had climbed down from a cathedral to kill sinners.
"Is that him?" O'Connor whispered. " The Asset?"
"That's him," Russo said. "Don't stare. He doesn't like it."
O'Connor swallowed. "He looks like a fucking nightmare."
"He's our nightmare," Russo corrected. "Get that pallet open."
LOCKED AND LOADED
THE RESUPPLY
12:40 LOCAL TIME
The pallet was like Christmas morning in Hell.
Rakesh and Rahul were restocking their grenades. Volkov was practically making love to a fresh belt of 7.62mm ammo for his PKM.
Harris walked over to the crate. The Rangers from Bravo Team parted like the Red Sea, giving him a wide berth. They watched him with a mix of awe and terror.
Harris ignored them. He looked into the crate.
There were stacks of 7.62x51mm AP (Armor Piercing) magazines for his HK417.
But next to them was something else.
A M320 Grenade Launcher module. And a bandolier of 40mm High-Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) rounds.
Harris picked up the launcher. His hands moved with mechanical precision, snapping it onto the under-barrel rail of his rifle.
Click.
He draped the bandolier over his chest.
He picked up ten magazines, shoving them into his vest until the pouches bulged.
"Russo," Harris rumbled.
The sound of his voice made O'Connor jump. It was deep, distorted, vibrating in the chest cavity of everyone nearby.
"Yeah, Asset?" Russo asked, checking his map.
"The Doctor says the nest is inside the peak," Harris said, pointing a grey finger at a gaping cave mouth five hundred meters up the slope. "Narrow tunnels. Close quarters."
"Yeah. It's going to be a fatal funnel."
"Not for us," Harris said. He patted the grenade launcher. "We knock."
Russo turned to the assembled force. Thirty men. Two Gorkhas. One Scientist. One Asset.
"Alright, listen up!" Russo barked. "We have the numbers now. Bravo, take the left flank. Charlie, right flank. Alpha, up the gut. We are pushing the cave mouth. McCaffrey has a battleship parked off the coast ready to turn this mountain into a parking lot if we fail. So let's not fuck this up!"
"Hoo-ah!" The Rangers yelled.
"Ura!" The Russians shouted.
Harris didn't shout.
He just turned toward the mountain.
The heat signatures on his HUD were pulsing. The Spider Matriarch was waking up.
Let them come, the Mask hissed. We will turn their nest into a tomb.
"Move out," Harris ordered.
And for the first time, nobody questioned who was really in charge. The General might be calling the shots from Gibraltar, but on the mountain, the Monster was the King.
As they began the final ascent, the ground shook again.
A screech echoed from the cave mouth.
It was loud enough to crack the stone.
The Matriarch knew they were coming. And she was hungry too.