Let's do another chapter draft
Again, remember that this is all unedited. I’m giving it to you raw. It’s a little sneak preview into what I’m working on for book Beta, like the two chapters I posted before this.
Anyhow, enjoy :)
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Conquest
Warsaw, Poland. June 12th, 2354
"Blow that fucker up! The one right there! No, you don’t have to use your sights, you can see him with your naked eye. Do you know your fucking job, or do I have to do it for you?"
As the supreme commander of the Coalition barked orders to the crew of his tank by shouting down the commander hatch, Thomas Haas huffed and panted to keep up on foot. The floor, if the rubble-strewn streets of Warsaw could be called that, was open to questions from the press, but the glory-hunting Are Nylund had no desire to stop his advance to accomodate them.
Thomas had initially thought it spite directed at journalism, forcing reporters to risk their necks out on the field of battle just so they could do the job they were hired to do. But the more time he spent with the Nylund’s First and Foremost, as the man had named the regiment that, rather unconventionally, fell under his direct command, the more Thomas had come around to the opposite view. Not all generals lead from the front line, after all, and certainly none of the ones who did lead the charge aboard their own tank. The steel monster’s six-mach railgun hummed as it powered up, glowing a bright blue along its barrel, then discharged with a sharp hiss like fire being quenched. A building blew up in the distance, showering debris across the street. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and in the prime of his life, Nylund turned with a grin to face the legion of journalists trailing him.
Indeed, this was a carefully crafted persona. The man wanted to be known as a hero, as a saviour, someone who could describe the sights and sounds of battle. The world had to known him as standing at the eye of the storm, not as someone who sat idly behind a desk, answering dull questions with poorly masked disinterest. No, Are Nylund meant to be the face of resurgent mankind, and the sort of hero who made winning look easy.
“That,” he said, pointing at the destruction to his back, “was a ferran sniper nest. You’ll find that they are expert marksmen, talented enough to put a bullet through the head of a man from that distance with as little as a side arm. We can’t have them putting my people down from safety, least of all innocent reporters. Howard Alexander would have my head!”
Thomas supposed that ‘the floor being open to questions’ was a loose definition of what was truly going on. Most press events were defined by dialogue, a back-and-forth between the audience and the speaker. But Nylund only said whatever it was that he wanted to say, leaving no opportunity unused for self-promotion, and never leaving a window for reporters to ask their own questions. Before anyone could speak, two tanks rolled up from behind the group and took up position on either side of their commander. Humming and hissing ensued, and entire rows of old apartment buildings came apart under their combined barrage. Blue streaks of rail fire cut through the air ripping holes through all they touched. Thomas could make out ferrans running away behind distant windows, buying themselves what little extra time they could to live.
Jets soared overhead and launched a volley of rockets into enforced positions behind the next block of buildings. Tall pillars of fire climbed up over rooftops, curling upward into mushrooms and transforming into thick clouds of smoke. The crisp smell of incineration assaulted Thomas’s senses, and he felt scattered ash sting his skin.
Nylund looked again at the group, but this time someone beat him to the first word. “Sir, do you ever feel like you risk yourself needlessly?”
“No,” came the brisk answer.
The reporter pressed his advantage, now that he’d gotten a foot in the door. “Then do you not believe that the Coalition is ignoring opportunities for diplomacy with the enemy? Your troops have conquered a lot of ground throughout the last few weeks, but no attempts have been—”
“Also no,” Nylund snapped. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the group. “let there be no mistake, ladies and getlemen. The machines are the enemy. We are not in the business of talking with them, we are in the business of killing them. You want talk, you go to Chelyabinsk and ask that clown Berenkov what he thinks.”
Evgeny Berenkov, the one human ally of the nation that called itself Ferra. Thomas had heard the man’s name drop before. Supposedly, a new generation of machines had set out from their Altaian holdout to come to his city’s aid. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. It seemed as unlikely a tale as they came, yet Nylund’s anger at Berenkov’s allegiance was genuine.
“Will Berenkov have to make a choice, one day?” asked another reporter.
Nylund laughed. “Forget one day. He has to make it now. As Warsaw falls, so will Minsk, Moscow, and every city between us and him. When we come knocking on his door, he better have his mind made up.”
The armoured column slowly rolled onto Warsaw’s central square, where the fighting was thickest. Surrounded by the blackened husks of old ofice buildings, soaring towers that had once been gleaming walls of glass, stood the old Palace of Culture and Science. Ferrans had reinforced each wing of the building also known as Stalin’s Cake, and muzzles flashed from behind windows and the fortifications surrounding the bottom floors. Thomas looked to his left and saw streams of blue railgun fire shoot out from the city’s old central station, the tunnels of which had been combed clean as part of an underground advance simultaneous with the surface offensive.
Squat, six-legged walker units lumbered out from behind a line of buildings to the right. They bore double-barrelled rail cannons that spat out volleys of shots at a rate that no tank could match. Advancing under the cover of the armour plating on their front legs, they were mobile bunkers, designed to desintegrate enemy lines by pressing ever closer without sacrificing lethality. They were the next generation of armour, few in number now, but soon the face of any Coalition offensive.
Thomas watched their shots cut through an entire ground-level floor. Rockets strike their flanks as the enemy returned fire, but did little to overcome their resilience.
In the walkers’ wake came another wave of infantry, their distinct white uniforms clear to see, the signature V-shape visors on their helmets giving the an aggressive appearance. It was a new kind of body armour they wore, supported on the inside by a lightweight exoskeleton that enhanced the soldier’s maneuverability and strength, and made them a better match for ferran combatants in close quarters.
“Sir,” Thomas called out over the noise, as he made well sure that he remained in cover behind the tank and out of sight of the enemy. “What’s your position on these recent technical innovations that we’ve made? Is there not a danger in returning to the technology that betrayed us once before?”
Nylund turned away from directing the battle, and gave him a sharp look. “We’ve picked up where the old world left off, Mr. Haas, but we do so responsibly. None of the machines you see us use are intelligent. None of the devices we use work without us. It’s human operators that helm our walkers and our tanks, it’s humans operators that fly our planes, and human operators that provide us with intel. The sin is not in using modern technology to accomplish our goals. It never was. The sin is in letting it do so autonomously, without human interference. I’ve submitted what I call the Protocol of Ability to Lord Alexander, a piece of law that will guard us against this slippery slope. This is a war won on all fronts, Mr. Haas. Legislative and martial.”
Another squadron of jets soared overhead, and came down on a strafing run towards the legacy of Joseph Stalin. Incendiary rounds carved into the side of the structure until a fire caught on and billowing flame engulfed it. Supports on the building’s southwestern face snapped, and slowly but surely the top half of the structure began to topple over. Soldiers looked for cover and hid behind the legs of walkers and the plating of tanks. Thousands of tonnes of stone and steel came crashing down on enemy positions, debris raining as dust engulfed the great square.
When the noise died down, blue lights once again began to zap, illuminating the fog.
Green eyes dimmed in the distance.
When the dust cleared, Nylund stood atop his vehicle, a widelegged stance with his arms in his sides. Artillery began to pound the banks of the Vistula river to his back, framing him with fire and destruction. It was a filmic shot, one that the man had no doubt anticipated. Cameras flashed as his grin grew ever wider.
“It’s out with the old and in with the new,” he said. “We are on a mission to destroy these machines. It’s the only way for mankind to achieve the greatness that awaits it.”
