To: General Robert King, Commander of Army Group Aldershot
From: Field Marshal Sven Herrmann, Commander of Sabre Theatre: Hijaxami
We are pleased to hear of your successful encirclement of the Desyiv capital, and we hope your men have enjoyed the brief reprieve from action after performing it. We also understand you report that your Group has recovered from an organizational and logistical perspective.
Now, I write to you personally to authorize an action you have most likely been anticipating. Generals Rockefeller and Beaudoin have been ordered to relieve your outer arm forces from duty on that front. They will be arriving tomorrow morning to begin the transfer of duty. That will leave the entirety of your Group to focus on the inner arm front – in other words, the capital city of Hijax itself.
Over the next 3 days, you are to reposition all forces at your command around the city. On the 4th day, you begin an advance to completely neutralize the city as a military threat. We hope you complete this task within 4 weeks of the start of battle.
AFS Zhukov stands by to assist in providing air support during this operation.
Further preparations will be organized over communications between my Headquarters, yours and the Headquarters of Army Groups Arlington County and Lille.
The Prime Minister has also sent a package for you. We assume you know how to deploy the contents of said package. We also request photographic records of when you or one of your men performs the deployment.
General Robert King: The part of King that had mourned the loss of his brothers, them going down in the defense of Valhalla, was grateful to lead the destruction of such a beloved city of the dracus barbarians, but the part of him that had stormed camps and taken down fortresses appreciated the difficult task before him.
Hijax, unlike most of the planet Desyiv, was an expected target of invasion, and was prepared accordingly. It was a citadel, wrapped in mines and guns, with enough food and shells to last the defenders months. And the defenders themselves were no pushover. The Overchief of Desyiv only allowed warriors with the right combination of brutal skill and fanatical loyalty to be part of his City Guard, the humans nicknaming them ‘Steelhides’. 250,000 of the best dracus fighters on Desyiv, armed with the best and most terrible weapons the Hierarchy could spawn, sitting inside a bunker the size of a metropolis.
Before they got at least some of the antiaircraft guns down, there would be no chance of air cover or dropping in reinforcements. Even when they broke through the outer line, human forces will be doing intense urban combat, against a foe with literally nothing to lose, not to even mention the millions of civilians that will be getting in the way.
But, there was the human race’s newfound strength to consider. King had 2.5 million men at his command, outnumbering the dracus 10-to-1. While the dracus stockpile was considerable, his was practically infinite, the capital being one of the only few strongholds left, and even it was now trapped. Fire support was overwhelmingly in his favour, fielding better guns and counting on AFS Zhukov and it’s many instruments of death. Morale was at an all-time high, everyone knowing that victory, at least in the core worlds, was inevitable.
King wondered about the ‘package’ that came with the letter, though. It was a crate, large enough for a heavy machine gun, he thought, sitting on the floor of his command post on the outskirts of the capital. What was very odd was the original source, the Prime Minister himself. King knew the capture of the capital of a core world would be as much a political victory as a military one, but didn’t pay much mind to those ramifications.
He approached the crate, spotting the two latches on the lid, and opened both. Lifting the lid up and away to fall on the backside of the crate, he eyed the contents – dozens, maybe a hundred, small, rectangular metal canisters. Picking one up, and popping off the top face, he examined what was inside, a small, folded piece of Navy Blue fabric. Having a good idea what it was, he unfolded the fabric, and a familiar sight fel before him. The Alliance banner, 28 White stars in a circle, around the 1 larger star in the centre, against the Navy Blue background. Looking back into the canister, he saw what looked to be a collapsible pole.
This little thing was about to go on one crazy journey.
Men! Our Ring of Steel has been ordered to crush this godforsaken city, and our humble little Corps has been given the green light for making the first stomp. By sunset, our guns will have delivered a million shells to the brutish cowards within. Before the end of the week, we will have torn apart and burned the sprawl separating us from the city’s black heart. Within the month, our forces and our banners will be the only things left standing, the dracus hoards having been taught the benefits of human industry. But right now, they squat in their little forts, pointing their little guns at us, still living in the delusion of final victory. Let’s give ’em a reality check!
These boy scouts you’ve labeled ‘Steelhides’ think they are the biggest, meanest bunch around. I would offer them a human history book, but I think it would be better if you were to teach by action. Remember your roots, the feats performed by your ancestors. By either ingenious technology or hardheaded stubbornness, we’ve came to dominate our home planet, to bend it to our will. By either calculated risk or courage fueled by madness, we left Earth and tamed the stars. By both military prowess and focused rage, we will reduce this pathetic Hierarchy to rubble!
Also remember their history. How they spread across systems like locusts, eating up worlds and churning out cesspools of feuds, tribes and wars of profit. How from since the time we built the Pyramids, they had funded criminals and terrorists, raiding and enslaving the innocent! Fate has decided that we will be the generation that will free the Galaxy from these monsters, to rout their armies and topple their dictators. We have been blessed with wealth, born of hard work and ingenuity, and when they had decided we would be better off as chained thralls, we melted down everything we had and remolded it into a force rivaled by none.
If they still believe they have a chance in hell of winning this damn war, break their dogma, then break their bones! If they stay put and fight, overwhelm them, drop every horror you have onto them! If they try to retreat, to fall back, strike them down when they make the mistake of showing their backs to a human being! And if they try to surrender, to repent the evils they have done, look into their eyes, remember the faces of those you have lost to their deeds, and the uncounted billions that have suffered over thousands of years, and pull the trigger! All batteries, open fire!
Captain John Henry: In front of him, dracus Steelhides sitting high and pretty on nicely defended machine gun post, separated from Henry’s position by 50 metres of mines and barbed wire. Behind him, the dead and dying remains of a third of his men, lying where they fell, either at the hands of the dracus machine gunners mowing them down, or mortar strikes and yet more mines blowing them limb from limb. At his sides are his men, the survivors of Green Company. It was their task of punching a hole through the dracus wall of Anti-tank guns, protected inside concrete bunkers, to allow Armor to make their way in and around the dracus positions.
There was no stop to the carnage happening around him. Every two seconds, an explosion of a mortar round would ring through the air, often accompanied by the sound of screaming, followed by silence as they were either overcame with shock, got hit by the machine guns, or bled out. The line Green Company managed to reach, a bank of earth just in front of the wire, was much safer than the empty killing box they just had to sprint across, but would still get them killed if they stayed there. They would have to move forward somehow.
“Corporal! We need some heavy fire on that gun nest, ASAP!”
“Aye, Sir! Brown! Aim that damn bazooka towards some apes, will ya?!” The always eloquent Corporal Hobbes directed at his section’s Direct Fire Support Specialist, Private Brown.
“Yes, Sir! Firing now!” Brown, lying prone the same as most of the troops on the line, quickly gets up into a crouching position, aiming his Mag-Rail bazooka towards the nest directly in front of him. Pulling the trigger, the high-explosive round comes screaming out of the barrel, and explodes on the nest, making it collapse and disintegrate in front of the dracus troops inhabiting it.
“Open fire!”
Soldiers of Green Company take the initiative and lay fire on the now-exposed dracus soldiers, cutting them down before they can duck behind cover. Brown, just as quickly as he rose, collapsed back into prone position, before another machine gun found him.
“Good work! We might just have a breakthrough here! Now what do we do with this barbed wire?!”
“We could crush the wire, Captain, if we had some goddamn tanks!” Lieutenant Monroe helpfully suggested. Monroe was second-in-command of Green Company, and had worked with Henry since before the war.
“Not ’till we deal with those ATs. How many Bangalores have we got?!”
“About enough for 3 big breaches! What do you say, 1-per-platoon?!”
“I would prefer to spread out more, but we make do with what we’ve got! Start laying the Bangalores, 1-per-platoon!”
A Bangalore Blade was, quite simply, a long band of plastic explosive wrapped in Aluminum strips. When placed into a web of barbed wire and detonated, the Aluminum shatters into shrapnel, which cuts apart the wire.
Along the line, men quickly throw Bangalores into the wire in front of them, minding the two nests still flanking them.
“Gather what ammunition you can! Jones, we have wounded here, come an–“, cried Corporal Mill, before she and the wounded Private Taylor were both torn apart by a mortar shell. What remained of their bodies collapsed on top of the men of their own section, covering them in blood.
“Motherfuckers! Keep your bloody heads down, ladies, or we’ll be next!”, the new leader of Mill’s section barked.
Henry was starting to get sick of having his men get picked off with impunity. Time to bring the fight to the dracus. “Screw this! FIRE IN THE HOLE!” With a click on the detonator, each pile of Bangalores ignited, shredding apart the mess of wire with high-speed strips of Aluminum and blowing the pieces apart in the explosion, leaving 3 wide gaps in the wire for Green Company to advance.
“Move, move, move! C’mon, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?!”
The dracus Steelhides manning the nests were treated to the sight of a human wave. As soon as they made it through the wire, the humans spread out, sprinting and sidestepping their way across the 50 metre-wide no-man’s land, making every effort to follow an unpredictable pathway and evade the machine guns. Sprint, duck behind tank spike, sprint, dodge recently dug ground indicating a landmine, keep sprinting, duck inside crater, sprint, sidestep, sprint, until finally reaching the end goal, the dracus warriors sitting in their nests
The crews manning the heavy machine guns turn to their rifles when the humans close the gap. The increasing number of humans that’ve made it across bring up their own weapons on the dracus crews. Light machine gunners make impromptu foxholes out of craters, keeping the dracus down under cover while yet more close the gap. Now it is the humans with the advantage.
“Open fire! Punch through, even if it kills you!”
With the advantage in numbers and firepower, the humans wittle down the dracus, until every last one had collapsed under the constant fire. All that was left of this section of defences was the bunkers and their largely ineffective AT-guns.
“Quick, surround the bunkers! Don’t let them escape! Flame Section, I want everything in those bunkers Medium Rare!”
“Understood, Sir! You heard him, blast open those doors!”
The last moments of the Anti-Tank crew involved a new-found fear of the human’s capabilities, followed by a deafening ring from the bunker door being blown open, then the unquantifiable pain of being cooked alive. Their only reprieve was that it was over quickly – by the time most gave out, half of their fingers were already ash.
Henry, him and his company having finally cleared the defended, gave a sigh of relief. “Thank Christ Almighty! Alright, Colonel Radcliff, this is Green Company, we’ve punched a hole, I repeat, we have punched a hole. You are clear to send in the tanks.”
“Understood, Henry, good work out there. Just make sure the dracus don’t take it back, and we’ll be through in 10 minutes. Radcliff out.”
“Just a couple more weeks of this, and we retire to Montenegro, won’t we, Captain?”
Henry turns to see Lieutenant Monroe, sipping on his water canister. “C’mon, Lieutenant, we only just got you potty-trained. You’re not leaving the Fleets behind already, are you?”
“Heh, I would recommend it in your case, John, before you have a heart attack or something.”
“What, and leave you in charge? I’m a hardass bastard, but I’m not that rough on the men.”
While Henry and Monroe continued their friendly ribbing, a rather dark thought crossed Henry’s mind. Henry was considered the “old man” of the company, and he was, but he wasn’t even 40 years old yet. Monroe himself was barely beyond 30. The men and women of Green Company had seen previous action before, and had more than a few firefights in their time, but even then, most of them were younger than 25, a few officers in the 25-30 range. Boys that were still in university when war was declared were now being hauled out, piece by piece, from the minefields behind him. This was still within the first few days of taking the city, and thousands of kids have already died.