[u]Telescopes and Targeting Sights[/u] Veii, Capital Planet of the Republic of San Vesta Antevestoran System[hr] Outstanding. Simply incredible. Elias fussed over the fine dials of his telescope as he brought into focus this fireworks display the likes of which he had never laid eyes upon in his entire life. He shifted where he stood as he watched the most beautiful blossoms of red and orange bloom to life with regularity. He felt his breath catch in his throat as the odd blues and golds punctuated the display taking place above the largest city of the Republic’s moon, [i]Salernum[/i], and strained to follow the tiny streaks of orange and gold crisscrossing the show as the fireworks streaked to their beautiful conclusions. “Tessa! Tessa come here! You’ve got to see this… It’s… We’ll I can’t describe it, just bring Sebastian too!” Elias called out as he continued to soak in the awe-inspiring presentation taking place silently above Veii. He heard the rushed footsteps of his siblings first, followed by the soft voice of his younger brother Sebastian as Tessa dragged him from his slumber for one of his older brother's strange interests once again. He smiled to himself as Tessa insisted that whatever it was, Sebastian would enjoy it just like every other time she dragged him out of bed on Elias’ behalf and stepped back from the telescope as he smiled at them both. With a finger pointed toward the moon he ushered Sebastian to the eyepiece of the telescope, “Look look, Aquileia must be celebrating! They elected a new governor recently so maybe it’s for that…” his younger brother shrugged at the thought of something so boring as politics as he lowered his face to the telescope, “Maybe,” Elias said again, all too aware that Sebastian was only a ten-year-old, and things like elections held no sway or importance in his mind. He shifted his focus to Tessa as Sebastian began to make interested “Oohs” and “Ahs” from where he leaned into the eyepiece as he watched the spectacle. Tessa’s gaze was up toward the moon, her lips were drawn about her face in a tight frown, and, for a moment, Elias felt he could see her face in far better detail than he should have been able to at night. He watched all around him as stark shadows stretched across their backyard, an eerie blue light seeming to sprout from nothing as he witnessed daylight return to Veii nine hours early. His mind struggled to comprehend what was happening, though only a fraction of a second after it began the light receded and darkness returned to the night once more. His ruminations on the matter were cut short as Sebastian began to ask why the telescope had gone dark. Elias turned from Tessa, her stare still held firmly to the moon above them in silence, and moved his brother from the telescope and peered through the lens. He stared in disbelief at the massive cloud that had taken the place of Salernum’s capital city, unsure of what had happened he pulled himself away from the telescope with a shaky smile. “Maybe they made one of the fireworks with a bit too much bang,” he joked as he turned to Sebastian and noticed with horrifying clarity the vacant look in the boy's eyes as if his brother was simply seeing straight through him. “Sebastian?” he asked as he turned to Tessa for help, only to notice his sister too, staring vacantly into nothing as tears streamed down her cheeks, “Tessa?” he asked as his sister turned in the direction of his voice.[hr] This had to have been some bad going-away joke, some last-second [i]"Scare the LT shitless before he rotates out.”[/i] sort of extravagant prank. Buzzing him into work to join his Company in the field on his last week on Salernum was just straight cruel. His field fatigues were packed away and awaiting shipment up to the orbital stations for his move back to Veii, and he didn’t have nearly enough snacks or dip stuffed into his pockets to last him a full weekend in the field with his tankers. Yet here he was, standing on the side of some godforsaken backroad on the outskirts of Aquileia waiting for the inevitable text message “Haha, got you good Sir!” or “Joking joking, go back to the bars!” or any other number of lighthearted messages that would send him angrily packing back to the blonde he’d been chatting up Downtown just thirty minutes before. Instead of a text message, he turned to the rumbling of tank tracks and several dozen sets of headlights turning onto the road, the feeling of a joke all but disappearing from his mind as he became very suddenly sober. A number of [i]Goliath[/i] tanks rolled by followed by a couple of the Companies [i]Ample[/i] armored command vehicles before his own tank, [i]2-1[/i], or more affectionately named by her crew [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] came to a rolling stop in front of him. He scrambled up the side of the tank, hooking an arm around the main gun and hoisting himself up onto the turret before he slipped himself into the open tank commander hatch. With practiced ease, he got himself situated and slipped on the crew helmet as he keyed into the tank's onboard communications system. “Nice of you to join us, Sir,” Lance Corporal Leon, the [i]Cruel Intentions’[/i] gunner chimed in with a smile as he sized up his Lieutenant’s choice of outfit, “Gray stripes, a bold choice,” he laughed as Lance Corporal Timon, his Loader, joined in with a laugh. “Gray stripes?” came the voice of Private Flavian, [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] driver, from his separated section at the front of the tank, obviously looking for some sort of explanation of what was being talked about in the turret since he couldn’t see for himself. “Yeah yeah very funny,” Lieutenant Julienne Stavros agreed as he settled himself into his seat, “so what is this all about? Couldn’t survive a weekend of training without me?” “Think you ought to get up on the net and talk to 6, Sir.” Stavros obliged, flipping a few switches and keying his mic as he spoke, “2 Actual checking in, can I get some sort of a reason I’m here and not drinking Downtown, Over?” There was a short lapse of silence before Lieutenant Colonel Calliene came over the radio, “2 Actual, 6. Nice of you to join us, standby to copy brief.” Stavros recoiled at the derision in his Commander's voice and obliged as she began to talk. “HADES is on Salernum, it’s a small contingent, first we’ve seen of em here. A training flight spotted them by accident as they were cutting across the Valestides Plains and flew back fast as they could to let Command know. Best Intelligence can give us is a Company minus, some twelve Taurons and around a hundred Canceron and Picon chassis each.” Stavros shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he listened to his Company Commanders' brief while the [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] rolled on behind the column of armor. “Entire Battalion is out to stop these Shinies before they break the Plains and make for Aquileia. Alpha and Charlie Companies will take our flanks, while we in good old Bravo will make up the center that these assholes break themselves on. Command was even nice enough to send out some engineers and dig us fighting positions while we mustered back at the motor pool. Maintain radio silence from this point forward until we engage. Stick to standard procedure and we’ll come out on top, easily. Good hunting, 6 out.” The radio fell silent and Stavros sagged into his seat as the implications of HADES’ presence on Salernum set into his mind. “Can’t be that bad right? Couple hundred Shinies against us? They’ll be smashed to scrap in no time,” Leon quipped as he nervously checked and rechecked his sights calibrations. “We’ll either kick them back to Halcyon or we won’t have to worry about anything for what could be the short remainder of the rest of our lives, that’s for certain,” Stavros stated as he sat back up in his seat and began to check the [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] systems. “Great,” Leon replied with forced enthusiasm to his tank commander's pessimism.[hr] “Contact, two seven zero, HADES chassis!” Leon called out as Stavros slid down into his seat from his place outside the hatch and pushed his face into the commander's sight. He found himself looking at some twenty HADES chassis coming over a small rise in the field before his company's position. He licked his lips as he traversed the gun from his position, laying in the sights on the chassis at the center of the formation of drones. It was a Tauron chassis, a massive thing, nearly a story and a half tall and propelled on four clambering legs. It sported four guns to the [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] one and seemed to sweep the land in front of it with four vicious red eyes. He watched in fascination as it loped along the plain with almost animal-like movements and waited as it neared its doom. “GUNNER, SABOT, TAURON IN VIEW!” he yelled without keying his mic as he released control of the turret back to Leon. “IDENTIFIED,” came Leon’s response as the turret smoothly continued tracking the quadrupedal machine. “UP!” Timon yelled as he cleared himself away from the cannon and slapped the safety off with a gloved hand. There was a brief period where Stavros felt as though the drones before him had certainly passed into the kill-zone, that they were being allowed to needlessly close on his tank and his platoon's positions. He itched to let Leon free, to let the [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] fulfill her purpose in life, but he held his tongue. A moment later the radio creaked to life in his ears. “6 all elements. Weapons free.” “FIRE!” “ON THE WAAAAAY!” The [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] cannon barked with fury as it fired and Stavros watched as the Tauron in view lurched over and came to a grinding halt belching flame out of the newly created hole in its front. “TARGET, CEASE FIRE!” Stavros yelled as he propped himself up in his open hatch and surveyed the two other tanks in his platoon, 2-2 and 2-3, both of which had fired at nearly the same time 2-1 had. He brought his binoculars to his face and surveyed the killing field, a smile growing across his lips as he counted six burning Taurons, twice as many Cancerons in similar states, and a number of Picons being chewed apart by the gauss cannons of the battalions [i]Ample’s[/i]. First blood for the good guys, he thought as he breathed a sigh of relief and the tension in his shoulders released just a little. “Good shooting, keep scanning,” he stated proudly to his crew as he took up his radio to check on 2-2 and 2-3. He was about to key the mic when someone else came over the battalion net. “Incoming!” The world around Stavros diffused into a mirage of flashing lights and heat as the invaders answered for the deaths of their own.[/hr] [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] chewed its way down a residential road in reverse, the jolt of vehicles being flattened beneath her treads and pushed aside like toy cars only an afterthought in Stavros’ mind as he scanned the dead zones between the houses as they flashed by in time with [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] main gun. “All 2 elements, reform Vanix Square at best speed, Battalion is forming a new defensive line.” He listened as the other two tanks under his command responded and turned himself back to the digital map on the screen to his front. He felt his stomach churning as he updated to the newest positions of friend and foe. Alpha Company was no longer even counted amongst the friendly units, and Charlie Company was fairing only slightly better, having been reduced to just a single platoon and a few lone Ample’s running amok in the next neighborhood over. Bravo Company had had it the easiest, by far, he realized as he noticed only two tanks lost to his company's name. It was a miracle, considering what they’d held against. Sixteen regiments had come at them after the artillery barrage. Seventeen hundred Taurons, and far too many Cancerons to count, not to mention the withering rocket and missile barrage from the Virgon chassis that followed a few minutes after. That the entire battalion hadn’t been completely wiped from the face of Salernum was an act of God as far as Stavros was concerned. Unfortunately, God could only do so much for a single tanker and his crew, and so the Battalion had fought for two and a half hours as rear forces rushed to set a new defensive line. Or at least that had been the plan. He cursed to himself that this had been allowed to happen as the tank came to a grinding halt on the far side of Vanix Square. He took stock of his surroundings with only the tanks of his own platoon coming to rest on either side of him. “No one’s fuckin here!” Leon called as he raised himself out of his own hatch and surveyed the empty square. The lights were still on, a number of carnival rides stood idle as their lights flashed happily for someone to come and ride them, and somewhere Stavros couldn’t quite see beyond the rides something was on fire deeper in the square. He turned to the direction they’d just come in and took in the sight in the distance. The orange glow of fires lit the horizon, punctuated by the acrid black smoke of burning vehicles and structures. The view was interlaced with staccato tracer fire and the flash of near-constant explosions. Had he now known any better, he may have considered himself lucky to be witness to such an awe-inspiring sight. Instead, he pushed himself back down into his seat and took up the radio, “6, 2 Actual, in place at Vanix, over.” The radio hissed to life in his ear, the return muddled and choppy as the jamming of the HADES drones attempted to cut communications entirely. “2 Actual, this is 5, 6 is gone. The Company is scattered, attempting to reform at Vanix with haste. Hold, Out,” the radio crackled off and Stavros simply stared for a while at nothing in particular. “Where’s the rest of the damn regiment! Those dumb fuckin infantry? Where the fuck is [i]everyone[/i]?!” Leon exclaimed to the world outside the tank before Timon pulled him back inside. “They’re not coming,” Stavros stated as a fact, “The entire city is under siege, everyone is fighting, we’re not getting any help here,” he said as he pushed the screen in front of him around for his gunner and loader to see. Their eyes went wide as the realization set in, only for Timon to push the screen away with a forced smile. “As long as everyone else is just as fucked as we are, I’m good,” he smirked. “Same here,” Leon at his side agreed, followed by a simple “yeah” from Flavian upfront. “As long as we’re all in agreement then,” Stavros stated as he sat up in his seat and keyed his mic to organize his tanks into fighting order.[hr] The drones came in at a trickle at first, a Tauron here, a handful of Picons there. A few Virgons that had seemingly lost their escorts even rounded a two-story residential right in the sights of 2-3 at some point, and the resulting detonations had completely leveled half a block of homes. And though some friendly units managed to slip into the Square, it hadn’t been enough to mount any real concerted defense of the suburbs. 2-2 had been the first hit, a clean volley from a single Tauron tore through the turret and atomized everything within in the ensuing ammunition explosion, 2-3 had returned the gesture in kind a couple of seconds later, leaving the Tauron a burning wreck some 600 meters distant. Next had been a pair of Ample’s that had taken up positions behind the paltry selection of tanks. They were picked open by a streaking volley of missiles from Virgons somewhere out behind the homes on the other side of the square. Their turrets and roofs came open as if someone had taken a can opener to them, revealing only an inferno within. Stavros didn’t count any crew bailing out, and had turned his attention back to the opposite side of the square as the whining sound of mechanical walkers began to overtake the drone of his own tanks engine.[hr] Sixteen minutes. They had held Vanix Square for sixteen minutes. Stavros slammed his fist into the side of the turret as he was jostled about where he sat. “2-3, Actual, make for Vanix Elementary. Salernum is lost, over,” he radioed to his only other remaining tank with a scowl. “3 copies,” came the dejected response from Sergeant Trier, commander of 2-3. Salernum was lost. He read the priority message again, disbelief fighting with the cold reality he had come to know all too well in the fighting of the last four hours, and felt rage and anguish all at once. The Western and Southern approaches to Aquileia had held well enough, but the Eastern and Northern defenses had crumbled against a near-endless onslaught of drones. And when Command had finally had the thought to order a redeployment of parts of the Western and Southern defensive lines it was already too late to make a difference as the forces of HADES filtered into the tight confines of the city's suburbs and outer sprawl. The choice to evacuate, to abandon all of Salernum, had come quickly. Mercifully, even. There’d been enough time to organize civilians to freighters and transports, and what little resistance that Stavros and his boys put up had easily led to thousands saved. But it hadn’t been enough. Leon had reported civilian cars on thermals several times on the opposite side of Vanix Square, out on the other side of Vestan control, out amongst those quadruped horrors. They’d even tried a few times to signal cars as they screamed by with flashlights, but no one ever noticed or cared enough to stop for the terrifying tanks of their own army attempting to save them. By all accounts, nearly 60% of Aquileia’s population was already bound for Veii aboard ships, but that still left some three million within the city limits, not to mention those in the smaller cities and towns spread across the moon. Yet here they were, tearing up residential roads in an all-out sprint to an evacuation site that was dangerously close to the advancing drones.[hr] [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] led the way into the remnants of a grade school playground, pockmarked by artillery fire and a number of burning Taurons as Stavros and his small contingent of survivors raced for the maw of a waiting heavy freighter across the Racket Field. Stavros pulled himself up out of the tank hatch and was immediately assaulted by the heat of the spacecraft's exhaust and the roar of its engines. He could make out vague outlines of people in the cockpit far above his head, and as he rolled in under the freighter he caught the terrified gaze of a crew member as he waved them forward into the cargo bay. “All elements load in, make it fit, don’t care how don’t care where,” Stavros radioed to the small convoy of vehicles he had scraped together in the past hour. With a lurch, Flavian gunned the [i]Cruel Intentions[/i] up the ramp and into the dimly lit cargo bay with a little too much power. The tank roared forward and over a number of small shipping crates before coming to an inglorious halt against the far-side wall. Behind them, the rest of the surviving vehicles followed in a similar fashion. Thirty more minutes they spent in Aquileia, in that dying city. As the freighter's crew, his ragtag group of tankers, and a chewed up platoon of infantry they’d picked up along the way chained down the vehicles and took on more survivors. But once the work was done the freighter crew insisted they had to leave. Stavros had fought this notion at first, arguing that the longer they stayed the more people would come. But as time went on, and fewer and fewer survivors came clambering up the ramp, Stavros finally gave in. He’d watched the death of Aquileia. From behind the shielded windows of the freighter’s bridge in orbit above Salernum. He’d watched as a small star sprang to life. At one moment there was a city and the next a boiling inferno. He watched as the light faded and the mushroom cloud grew. And then he could watch no longer as the freighter fell out of view of the cloud and the catastrophe it represented.