Plasma_Wolf's Tweakblog

CHAPTER 1 - LOS ANGELES, 3844

War had finally arrived on planet Earth, the cradle of humanity. For all the time in the Infinite War, the people on Earth were at peace. Never had the UEF fought a major battle on their capital planet.

Many people here didn’t know how bad the war was. Simply because they didn’t care. The only stories they heard were Riley’s boasting speeches, about how the UEF would prevail in only a matter of years, months, weeks and eventually: days.

The ones who stood closer to the war were the people who were involved in the UEF’s military actions. From the commanders on the field to the EarthCom officers, ACU mechanics and the families who lost their son, daughter, brother or sister in a battle.

However, no ordinary civilian on Earth knew of the horrors of the war, like the Aeon cleansing operations. The military still propagated a nationalistic message. The War turned ordinary people into supreme commanders, heroes that kept the universe safe. The ones that made it into an ACU quickly learned the terrible truth but everyone who stayed safely on the home planet of the federation, remained ignorant.

However, now had the time come that they saw it was all an illusion. The Infinite War showed that mercy and compassion did not exist, survival could not be taken for granted, let alone Riley’s victory.

Several UEF commanders tried to evacuate the majority of Los Angeles’ citizens, while the Aeon knights relentlessly tore every building they could reach apart.

Harbingers and Titans clashed while the ACUs fired one overcharged shot after another. While they could cleanse without any resistance at first, the Illuminate pilots met their UEF match now.

Three commanders in particular did a very good job on holding the line against the Aeon hordes. Under direct orders of general Stirling, they did not yield a millimetre. As a team, they held the three to five odds they were up against. Supported by one of the best economy engineers, the two front commanders had the full ability of stopping the enemy.

It was strange, Jeff Lancet had only recently joined the military again and he still did an excellent job. It seemed that he only gained experience during the time he was gone.

The other two commanders were very capable of keeping all enemies busy. Eric Temera didn’t hesitate for a second, as he perfectly knew what he had to do. His task was simple, with the economy he had, he built as many Titan assault bots and Demolisher artillery, Wasps and Broadswords as possible and he used them at the front, destroying one enemy after another.

Still, under normal conditions, he could not manage to stop the endless stream of two of his enemies, something he had to do in order to hold the line.

Luckily, today’s battle couldn’t be further from the normal conditions. With Josh Funky at his side, all five of the enemies were continuously being hammered at their base. Josh managed to break through at a weak spot he found every time he sent a spy plane that scouted the enemy bases.

With an army of tier one artillery, obviously outmatched by the high-tech weaponry around, but very capable of dealing tremendous damage with their first and only shot, Funky continuously hampered the Aeon economy plants. It effectively forced the enemies to concentrate on their own base defences and that reduced the size of their assault forces.

The result eased the situation at the front, allowing Eric to stop what was left of the enemy stream, with Jeff’s support.

They missed only one thing, one element that could have allowed Funky to strike with even greater efficiency. The element that could’ve brought a swift victory to Eric. They missed the information one of their old friends could provide. They missed proper intel.

____________
Marisa and Leython didn’t arrive even close to their destination, they were too late for joining the war at the Hawaiian islands. Doctor Brackman had warned Leython when the battle had started but naturally Niihau and all the other islands were occupied by the three warring factions before Leython and Marisa had travelled.

They didn’t intend to skip one of the most important battles in human history though. Instead of fighting at Hawaii, they travelled to the western coast of North America. The simple reason for that was the sheer presence of the war here. Although it was very far away from Niihau, the UEF, Cybran and especially the Aeon forces fought to control the supplies that were meant for the battle of the so-called Black sun device.

Given the circumstances, Leython and Marisa thought it’d be best if they weren’t present on the same place at the same time. A Cybran ACU that didn’t fight with his Aeon counterpart was suspicious to say the least. Therefore, the two commanders deployed their bases far away from each other.

The battle of Los Angeles was fought between the Aeon and UEF, the Cybrans were not present. Apparently, they shared no interest in the city that housed millions. They should not forget that this place was relatively insignificant compared Hawaii. The supplies that Aeon and UEF commanders should provide, were now used to battle amongst each other. Leython had, only a few minutes ago, lost his spy plane when it scouted the city’s perimeter.

The UEF’s and Aeon’s most advanced weapons clashed while they met. Titan and Harbinger assault bots, Demolisher and Serenity artilleries alike, all units were destroyed. The one person who could claim the current front, had enough mass to reclaim for the rest of the battle. If the Aeon would gain that little section of ground, they’d soon be in control of the entire battle scene, they could then kill the millions of lives in the city.

The problem he now faced, was that the UEF and Aeon commanders knew about his presence, they would certainly search for his base. They’d have a hard time finding a completely stealthed fortress, but since it was immobile, his production and economy centres were bound to be discovered eventually.

In the meanwhile, Marisa found heavy UEF resistance from one enemy commander. In an instant, hundreds of units were destroyed when the seventh nuke, Marisa had counted that correctly, collided with one of the many air superiority fighters that swarmed the field while they protected the Aeon land forces.

Marisa had lost her front line in a cunning enemy missile strike. This commander knew what he was doing. Under normal conditions, she would never get in such a situation but like the three of Stirling’s best six had noticed, this was not a day of normal conditions.

She was on unknown ground, fighting with so much turmoil around her that she couldn’t call out for The Way properly, not for a minor element of a battle.

However, the Illuminate knight still noticed the major disturbances in the series of events. Something was wrong here and it was worse than her failure of noticing any immediate threat with The Way.

Regardless of the unknown catastrophe that was on this planet’s doorstep, she knew that her battle here was over. The enemy commander was pushing on and faced no resistance anymore. She was about to die if she couldn’t get away within a minute. Luckily, she could.

“Leython, I am coming to your base. I have lost all of my forces, the battle here is over. We should think of a plan of action if we want to play a major role in the War’s end. We have little of significance to do here.”

“Go ahead and get over here, Marisa. I’ve got enough territory to keep our ACUs safe. Just teleport and then we’ll continue our talk.” Leython was not all too happy with this, Marisa could tell so. However, she could tell that he accepted the fact that this happened. There was no way around it. She simply wasn’t a strategist like he was and her tactical abilities were not as good either. At least, not if she wasn’t in harmony with her battlefield.

Ten seconds later, she stood in the Cybran base, well hidden by stealth generators. She immediately spoke again: “Leython, I feel very bad about this battle. I do not know what is bound to happen but it is not good at all. It distracted me, keeping me worried and so it diminished my ability to fight.”

“Do you remember our battles. You were always as good as I was. Was your Way involved with that?”
“Definitely. I just cannot work as well in a real battle, so it seems. I am not in harmony, while you are. Do not forget that you have an advantage here. Your life was completely based on fighting and efficiency, according to your sword fighting. My philosophy is about peace.” Apologized Marisa for her failure.
“Then you have to fight with the intention of peace, ask yourself how to keep yourself safe but your enemy as well. That is what you did on Sinivar. We mustn’t forget that we are here to end the war, not just to kill others.”
“I get it now.” Said Marisa suddenly, a lot more confident. “I grew too ambitious, I probably thought that I was fighting an idiot, but turned out to be the idiot myself.”

“Well, you’ve found out what the problem is, just make sure that you’ve worked on that when we surprise the Avatar-of-War. In the meanwhile, think of that ‘bad’ thing that’s about to happen.”
“I will. Instead of the distraction, that will be the main topic in my mind.”

____________
Harm Dygonn was in the middle of the evacuation process. With ‘the middle’, he was thinking positively, since less than one per cent of Los Angeles’ population was away. The suburbs lay in ruins and more than one strategic missile had dominated the scenery already, blinding everyone, even those with their eyes closed.

He was one of the coordinators and found out that fighting against the mass who tried to leave the planet, panicking and wondering about how this could even happen, was a war that seemed to be as hard as the Infinite War itself.

Suddenly even more people panicked as they saw a Cybran spy plane passing by, not only the Aeon were after the city! Where were the UEF commanders they needed?! Harm contacted the person he needed:

“General Stirling, where is your support? I need more commanders up here, damnit!”
“I’ve got no commanders left. I’m sorry but everyone’s occupied all over North America.”
“Get someone. I don’t care who!”

“I can’t do anything, I’m sorry. We’re stuck in between fanatics and assassins. We’re outnumbered, so we’ll have to work hard and make the best of it. Good luck.” Stirling said and he closed the channel.

“Damnit. Damnit!” cursed Harm Dygonn under his breath. “People, we’ve got to move on with this. Get as many people away from Earth, send them to unimportant planets with UEF commanders on it. Then they’ll be safe.”
“Yes sir!” Answered his men immediately. They continued on their jobs, trying to get as many civilians out as soon as possible, but quantum wakes created a bottleneck that kept stalled the whole process.

“Sir, we’ve got to find other planets to send the civilians to. The planets we’re sending the people to at this moment are suffering from quantum wakes as well. Here, it is probably less of a bottleneck because–” One of Harm’s officers said, but he was cut off already:
“I know why we’re suffering less here than at Pollux or any other receiving planet, but where else can we send the citizens to?”

____________
Several Cybran spy planes passed the battlefield again. Jeff was worried about what they wanted here. What would they win by joining the biggest battle near Los Angeles? Why would they want to learn about the Aeon’s goal to destroy the UEF commanders? Surely they knew that their only goal was to cleanse the city?

“Jeff, we’re going to need more support.” Josh Funky said, waking the economy specialist up from his thoughts. “We’ve got five Colossi coming for us and we’ll never be able to stop them unless we can come up with something special.”

“I’ll build tactical missile launchers, rush the construction of some missiles and stab their eyes out.” Jeff said.
“That’ll not work anymore,” Answered Eric Temera before lieutenant Lancet could start on his work. “The Colossi’s weak point has been taken care of, that’s been done more than a year ago. We’ll have to take these five units down in another way. Hurry up and help us, don’t concentrate on further expanding your economy.”

“Then I’ll construct a missile silo, the nuke will damage the Colossi for twenty five per cent. You will have to scratch them enough so that my missile will finish them.” Jeff said, returning on the problem at hand. “If I can launch my missile before the enemy experimental are damaged enough, retreat your forces for some seconds and take care of those left standing after the missile’s explosion.” Jeff immediately sent all of his nearby engineers at work for a strategic missile silo. The structure was expensive, but because the lieutenant had a massive economy, he was able to support constructing it in less than a minute.

Nonetheless, the situation was dire. The Colossi were going to break the front and, even though they’d probably go down, the rest of the Aeon forces would easily destroy the UEF’s bases, kill all three of them and cleanse the city.
More Cybran spy planes arrived, they captured images of the frontlines and the UEF bases. Neither of the Federation’s commanders could see that the Aeon knights had suffered the same attack on their privacy.

“Now why would the Cybrans even bother to see how we’re going to lose?” Captain Temera said while he sent wave after wave of Titan assault bots on the enemy assault bots. Major Funky did the same, but by sending dozens of transports to strike from the rear. It broke the enemy force in two. All enemy tier three bots changed directions, they turned around and concentrated on the Titans.

“I don’t know,” said Josh, “but we might stand a chance after all. I’ll keep the enemy assault bots busy for as long as possible.” The major sent the took the siege assault bots deeper into the enemy zone so that the enemy equivalents would take longer before they reached the frontlines that their experimental counterparts would clean up, creating a bigger interval between the enemy assault waves.

____________
Templar Halley knew exactly what was going on. The omni sensor she had constructed showed that the UEF assault bots moved away from the army that her fellow pilots sent in for the kill. They already ordered their Harbingers to pursuit, but as both unit types walked with the same speed, neither of them would catch up if one ran away in time.

“Hold on, I have got a better idea. Use all air units we have got. That will be enough to take the enemy bots down, especially with our current production rate. We will soften the enemy force up and then we finish it as soon as the units reach our base. Turn the Harbingers around so that our second wave will arrive shortly after the Sacred Assault Bots are destroyed.”

“Why do you keep saying that, Templar Halley? Five Colossi are more than capable of doing the job.” One of her subordinates said.
“Do never assume such a thing, it will be your downfall to take this matter lightly. We also do not know what the Cybran commander is up to, just like we do not know anything about the enemy reserves. If my guess is right, the Colossi will be destroyed by a strategic missile. Observe how they are concentrating their tier three gunships on all experimental units at the same moment, while they could better take down one at a time.”

“I understand, they are weakening the units so one gigantic blast can finish them off at the same time. That is also a reason for not sending the Harbingers in at exactly the same moment. Those would instantly be destroyed by a missile.” An unknown voice said in a cold tone. This knight must have joined the battle only minutes ago, but why did Halley not get a single notification about it?

“Who are you? Why did I not hear about you?” Halley asked. As if it weren’t enough, she just realised that this knight had to be on the field for longer than just a few minutes, as she was sending two flying fortresses in, to join the Colossi.
“I am Marisa Gawain.”

“Impossible.” Said Halley. “Gawain died in the trap that the Avatar-of-War had set out for her. She was a danger to Marxon’s excellent plan and had to be removed from the scene for good for the Aeon’s destiny to be successful.”
“The Aeon’s destiny? We are not destined to kill billions of people, do you realise that? You are currently taking part in the worst genocide that humanity could ever come up with!” Marisa replied, her voice cracking like a whip. “And now you try to cleanse this city, but I will stop you.”

“How can you?” Halley asked. “You do not understand the truth. You do not understand Marxon.”
“Wrong. I understand the truth better than Marxon, I also understand Marxon’s intentions completely. However, I do not understand the Avatar-of-War himself, you are right about that. The fact that you do not know of a better way to end this war than with the violence you permit yourself to be consumed by... It saddens me. I can only hope that you will survive the final hours and learn the proper means to an end. Until then, I will not hesitate to thwart your assault.”

And on those words, Marisa closed the channel. As she had expected, the CZARs wouldn’t last long against the UEF fighters, but that was exactly the plan.

With a thundering sound, the flying fortresses crashed directly on top of the Colossi, taking out several UEF broadswords as well. The Colossi took a lethal blow though, one that would soon be accompanied by the strategic weapon Jeff had launched some seconds ago.

“Contact the Avatar-of-War, inform him that Marisa Gawain is still alive!” Halley said ferociously.
“I will do it immediately, but I am not sure about the time we can speak with him. We must be quick with our message.”

____________
“That was a big crash. I’ll ask major Funky about the situation while you will continue with the evacuation. I’ll be right back.” Said Harm Dygonn immediately after they heard the deafening sound of the Crashing air fortresses.

Harm turned around and left the highest level of his observation tower. One story lower, he found the main communications centre and contacted Josh Funky: “Major Funky, what is going on out there?”
“Two Aeon experimental air units have just given the citizens of Los Angeles some more time. They crashed on their Galactic Colossi and allowed us finish those bots off with a nuke.”
“I thought you had the front under control.” Dygonn said.
“We have been capable to stop them for as long as there is a weak point in their defences. We , especially I, can’t do much now they’ve taken care of that. Now they’re simply outnumbering us with five to three in all aspects, except for our superior strategies. That won’t help us much though.”

“I get it, so the battle will be at an end soon?” Harm asked sadly, losing hope about the outcome of the battle.
“We have got a strategic missile launcher, so we can still take their assaults on in a crude way but I am not sure about the time we can still hold out.” Josh answered.

“Understood, I will double my effort but considering your situation, I doubt that we can get may people away so soon. The quantum gates work hard but by far not at their full potential because the destinations cannot cope with so many civilian transports coming.”
“Send them somewhere else.”

“I’d love to, but what options do we have left. If we send them to the Aeon zone, we can just as well leave them here to be killed.”
“Send them to an empty planet. We’ve got plenty in the quarantine zone.” Suggested Josh.
“We all know that those planets’ locations are forgotten by now. Recovering them is not impossible but it takes too long. I’ll have someone work on it just in case though.” Answered Harm.
“You can send them to Sethis if you want, or any other planet we evacuated within the last years. Those are neglected by the Aeon and the UEF ever since, but it’ll be a piece of cake to recover their location.”

“I’ll work on it immediately. I’ll leave the battle to you. Good luck.”

____________
“Why would you think that those Aeon airships suddenly arrived to crash on the Colossi?” Asked Jeff.
“I have no idea but why would we care?” Temera said. “The problem at hand is far more important than the matter of stuff crashing on other stuff?”
“You are right, captain Temera, but we still have to wonder... Was this coincidence or not? If it wasn’t, the ones that controlled the flying fortresses might want to do more than just stopping that assault. They might assist us in a counter-attack.” Jeff replied.

Before Eric could question Jeff further, Josh intervened: “We’ll find that out eventually, now we will concentrate on our biggest problem. Jeff, you will build new mobile factories, include mobile shield generators as well. We’ll need more than ten to protect one Fatboy, I want the Aeon to do some extra work on taking them down.”

“Understood, major.” Jeff said. “I assume that I have concentrate on the nukes as well?”
“Yes, of course.” Replied the major. “Eric, you’ll be massing more and more units. I’ll do the same and search for an enemy weak point again. I’m not expecting it to find one but it’s good to try.”

Before either of the three UEF commanders could continue, an all too familiar voice sounded in their ACUs, by a public channel that originated from an unknown place. They realised though, that the channel’s source was coming from a Cybran ACU: “I have already found a weak point, Josh.”