Map 4: Status of the front on day seven of the Ordenite invasion of North Panooly.
Day seven...
— The Storm Subsides, Northeastern Holy PanoolyBehind them lay the irradiated wasteland of Guamlumpeiron, to the east lay the golden oriental North Panooly beaches, and before them stood the Ordenite horde. Even with last-minute Zarbian reinforcements, the line that stretched from the Jumanotan Frontier to the western edge of the Delapescan Peninsula was beginning to buckle. With perhaps a week more of time, North Panooly would have unconditionally fallen to the Reich. It was a week it seemed they no longer had, for suddenly the Wehrmacht's once seemingly unstoppable offensive came to a grinding, screeching halt. Had North Panooly been saved?
Truth be told, the Macabean position was still as tenuous as the slippery, desperate grip of a man about to fall to his death. Holding an ad hoc defensive line that ran the northern third of Delapesca, and the remaining lands east of the Guamlumpeiron ruins, were the four Zarbian auxiliary divisions that had been air-lifted into the combat zone three days before. They were at full strength personnel-wise, but some of their heavier equipment had not made it with them. Furthermore, they were reinforcing a 2nd PRA division that had been decimated during the previous days of fighting. If their hopeless counter-attack, in support of the18th Arca division, hadn't already chewed through their ranks, the subsequent onslaught that followed the 18th's eradication made sure that there were barely even bones left. They had perhaps two regiments worth of healthy men left; no more than three thousand, really. Together with the Zarbians, these one hundred and thirty thousand men or so held a front manned by an estimated two hundred thousand Waffen SS.
West of what was once the vibrant city of Guamlumpeiron was an area that ran to the Jumanotan Frontier and which was held by thirty thousand battered infantrymen and the remnants of two Arca brigades that had already been viciously fighting for six days. Their destruction was imminent until, just as it had elsewhere along the front, the bulk of the Wehrmacht ceased their advanced and pulled out from their frontline positions.
After a series of mild attacks by poorly seasoned South Panooly Defense Forces, the front fell silent. But, even in silence there was always violence.
Sporadic gunfire continued to erupt from either side. As Macabeans, Ordenites, and South Panoolies licked their wounds and dug in, they did not shy away from probing each other's defenses either. After all, when an enemy sits on his heel, prepared to recoil, what better strategy than to nip and test his capabilities?
Villages became the sites of small skirmishes between infantry companies and tank platoons. Some days the Macabean edge of the front would erupt in a hail of artillery fire, and others it was the Wehrmacht's holdings that'd shake with the thunder of battle. The Zarbians proved overeager. Elite, well-drilled, and well-armed, the Ordenite Waffen SS proved a strong and intimidating foe — they were the crack military units of the Fourth Reich, after all. Zarbian attacks were defeated almost every time and often with heavy losses at that. These men had all seen combat in Indras for months at a time, but the insurgents were a different, weaker enemy altogether and so were the Waffen SS superior in all senses. This would be a violent sort of bloodying for the auxiliaries. Still, the Zarbians probed, as an enemy on his toes was better than one poised to consume you left uncontested.
At night, the wounded cried where they lay. If they did not succumb to the loss of blood, it was the salivating carrion critters that woud ultimately get them.
In the meantime, the weak and severely understrength Macabean
regulares, Linces, and Nakíl's that held the battered line entrenched themselves as best they could. Any last artillery guns, fixed or mechanized, were fortified behind thick mounds of tightly packed dirt and rubble, as were the tanks and other armored vehicles. Here the jungle was dense, green, and crawling with snakes. They could fall into an open hatch or an unsuspecting soldier, and that said nothing of hungry, prowling pumas which tip-toed around man-placed mines and grenade traps. With gritted teeth, the Macabeans made their last stand where it would hurt the Ordenites the most to root them out.
Curiously, it was on the Jumanotan Frontier where the situation was the tensest. Orange-Stoner and Finkirk personnel had been arrayed along the border in a series of fortifications, trenches, and forward operating bases, and there was a noticeable anxiety among them. Despite the auxiliary division deployed to the isthmus in aid of counter-insurgency efforts there, Jumanota's ambiguous territorial status had left room for dangerous levels of uncertainty. Would the Macabeans attempt to cross over the Frontier if they were pushed up against by Wehrmacht forces? Would the Golden Throne attempt to use Jumanota as a jumping-off point for an operational counter-stroke? Or, would the Reich see it as an extension of North Panooly and thus invade it? There were too many variables, too many ambiguities, and if the war spilled over the Frontier it could cause ripples elsewhere — Tarn's mercenary firms had cultivated themselves a formidable force and the question was whether they would use it if a company like Navitek paid them to.
Withing this environment of spiraling uncertainty, the remnants of Macabean North Panooly teetered on the edge of ruin and glory. If the counter-offensive to come was unsuccessful then whatever balance remained would surely be lost and the Satrapy would fall to the Reich.
— A Two-Front War: Tugayalpa KesselDrogau had heard rumors, tall tales of the infected, but he had never seen one with his own frightened eyes.
Its — one has hard pressed to call it a 'him' or a 'her' — large, lopsided muscles had in places ripped through pale, cracked skin that had long since been drained of blood. Snarling like a rabid dog all the while, its face dripped with a thick, mucous-green drool that traveled down the chin and cheeks like a struggling, gurgling fountain. As it stepped closer, Drogau could see the red vains that had come to dominate the
thing's eyes, so that not even an ounce of white was left. Indeed, one struggled to find even the cornea, as the only other color was the red-tinged grayness of large disk-like pupils that, despite their movement, seemed lifeless and most certainly souless.
These 'things' felt no urge but the one to kill. Drogau found this out soon after his battalion, holding a cluster of small towns around the Taguyalpa 'q-zone', had been encircled and cut off by Wehrmacht panzergrenadiers the previous day. The quarantined zones had fallen victim to the war just as much as anything else in North Panooly had, and whether they were maintained at all nowadays was a question better asked of the Ordenites. Only around Tugayalpa were the Macabeans still cordoning off the small infected area, where over the previous months thousands of...creatures...dying, decaying from exposure to KN755 had been herded into like cattle. Now the abandoned town's perimeter was held by no more than one hundred men posted in makeshift pillboxes and hidden machinegun nests. The remainder — most of the regiment's strength — dug in on the main line, that facing their Ordenite enemies. Their faces were grim. Today could be their last.
It was certainly Komor's.
A terrifying roar was all the warning he got when a three hundred pound
thing pounced upon him like a savage lion while their platoon was on patrol around the inner perimeter. A powerful swipe of its arm was enough to knock poor Komor unconcious, and by the time Drogau and the rest of the platoon had pumped enough metal into it to kill it, the young, innocent Komor had had his entrails torn out and chewed to bits.
Even as this
thing lay dying, its brown-tinged blood oozing out from the dozens of wounds that peppered it like large pores, it seethed and writhed. Bared teeth were like broad knives, and its eyes were so strained that they looked as if they were about to explode from out of their sockets. Drogau shook as he watched it die. It wasn't that he hadn't seen war, or violence, before that day. Indeed, he had seen plenty of it, having fought in the Zarbian March and Theohuanacu. Drogau had been posted to the Guffingfordi Frontier when tensions were highest with Stevid. He was no stranger to the most petrifying, mortifying qualities of battle, like the blade-like flash of pain that shoots through one's git as you stare down an opponent only two feet away, his rifle pointed at you and his face showing no chance of mercy or hesitation. Drogau had walked to the edge of death and had come back. But, never had he seen something like this.
Unsurprisingly then when they all unloaded their magazines on the thing like jittery little schoolgirls.
The monster's twitching, bloodshot eyes suddenly shifted and peered into his, and he felt violated by a terror so great that it made him want to empty his bowls right there, no matter what hole his bile game out of. Strangely, the fear did not subside as the creature's life slowly sucked out of it. Those unnatural movements it made as it died only made it seem even less human and more monstrous. Drogau was glad when
Leutnant Gámara tossed a grenade between the monster and the floor, even after chunks of its colorless, rotting meat landed on his uniform.
Poor Komor's body was blown to bits along with it, but when the sick, gargling sounds of the infected creature had finally ceased all seemed better. Still, most men could not help but dart their eyes in the direction the 'animal' had come from, searching in the smoking ruins for more of its kind.
Of course, had they been wearing their armor Komor may still have been alive. But it had been some time since they had power armor to wear. The suits ate power like a tank and, even before being cut off, the regiment was having a hard time keeping its soldiers' suits in combat-ready conditions. The fighting had been bad and few armor modules had been left unshattered. Eventually, Drogau and his comrades had learned to part ways with their armor and, with more difficulty, the power assist of their suits. Unfortunately, there weren't enough combat vests to go around either. More often than not, they fought in their BDUs now.
Against the Wehrmacht, fighting without armor was dangerous enough. But, truth be told, it wasn't them that the men feared. No, at least the Reich's soldiers were human. Besides, fresh probing attacks on perimeter positions during yesterday's evening had been performed by SPDF forces, not by the Wehrmacht. The South Panoolies were not bad soldiers — not as bad as their northern compatriots —, but they weren't exactly on par with their allies either. No, it wasn't for them that the Macabean
regulares slept with one eye open at night. It wasn't because of them that patrols along the inner perimeter were given to the regiment's best soldiers. No, it was the infected that instilled the
regulares with a feeling of absolute, unquenchable dread; it was the fear of 'the monsters' that caused them to flinch with every unexplained movement in the dark, shadow-swallowed brush under the moon's dim light.
Even those who had never seen one with their own eyes had learned of their legend. They had heard the story of the one soldier who was torn in half from the waist when he ventured, against orders, into Tugayalpa, looking for a girl that he had heard cry out from the rubble. Or that of the captain who lost his genitals when they were bitten off, along with half of his pelvis, when one of those creatures jumped out from the bush he was peeing on. They would all soon know the story of Komor, as well.
Perhaps the regiment could only afford to place a hundred men along the inner perimeter, but these always tended to be the most vigilant hundred, for this foe was, and would be, forever etched into their mind.
— The Siege of Panooly CityPanooly City slowly died beneath the glowing embers of burning buildings. Her people were going insane under the pressures of survival, and the pogroms had only made things worse. The dead littered the empty, desolate streets. Some were soldiers struck by artillery, but most were civilians who had suffered terrible fates. Some were politicians of the old regime that had thought themselves safe in the capital, where the white man had dominated for centuries, but most weren't politicians at all — they were simply white and, these days, that seemed to be crime enough. There weren't enough hands to bury or burn all the dead, and so bodies left ignored rotted away under the uncompromising heat of the sun and the inhospitable fires of battle. Disease and plague were rampant, and supplies, medicine and otherwise, were unlikely to arrive anytime soon. The situation was deteriorating and
quickly.
Gunfire echoed from all directions like bad feedback. Day and night, Macabean and PRA forces clashed with SPDF and Wehrmacht units that had penetrated into the surrounding suburbs, inching forward by the hour. They fought over intersections, apartment blocks, and even churches, armed to the teeth and as determined as they were. Back and forth they went, driving each other out of every nook and cranny, both sides killing one another with merciless impunity.
Somewhere, in a western suburb, a barefoot colored child stepped in a puddle of thick, red blood with a splash, as he ran from one collapsed building to another. It could have very well been his parents'.
A long, throbbing wail split through dark clouds like a howl and it ended finally with an earth-shaking explosion that erupted to the north. The Ordenites had been lobbing 800mm shells into Panooly City for over three days, leveling apartment blocks and flattening rows of homes out on the fringes of the city. It was a constant terror suffered by whites and coloreds alike, and they had escaped in hordes into the subways, until over thousand men, women, and children who had been sleeping there were killed by a gargantuan artillery shell that struck the old, inadequate station and caused it to collapse. Panic sowed into the crowd, and if they had stayed indoors before, now they huddled in the deepest, darkest corners of their bedrooms, praying for the battle to end. They trembled knowing that even there, even in the smallest crawlspace that they could find, they were not safe.
It wasn't just the artillery shells. Macabean and PRA forces used what they needed, when they needed, and that included apartments and homes. The Macabean
regulares were well behaved, but away from their officers the Theohuanacans were prone to unsavory crimes, and that was not to speak of North Panooly soldiers. One must understand that the Panooly have always been a persecuted people, ever since the first colonists had arrived from across the great sea three centuries before. Their hatred of the whites had been ingrained in them by their very victims. If a male looked the wrong way, he'd be gunned down. White women were not safe. Shrill screams permeated the nights.
Of course, Panooly City had always been a stronghold of the colonial regime. Templeton had been only an extension of those who had ruled before him, and the country he oversaw had always been one to protect the white minority. And while much of the pre-war colonial population had since then fled to Theohuanacu, Guffingford, or South Panooly, so many remained that they could not possibly be bullied without a fight. It was here that the Hakara Hunters were born.
Armed with TK-60s, Hali-42s and -53s, and an assortment of other small arms scavenged from dead bodies or purchased through black markets, the white-exclusive Hakara Hunters crept through dreary city streets and waited within the rubble, looking to prey on roving indigenous death squads. If one side was violent, the other was even more so. They fed off of each other, competing for the most gruesome, bloodiest ambush or the most bone-chilling massacre. A small war within a war had developed, with the Hakara Hunters and the informal militias clashing with each other at an alarmingly accelerating rate. Macabean
regulares and Theohuanacan auxiliaries intervened where they could, but with the city fully encircled and the Ordenites pushing to crush the Macabeans' organized resistance, Panooly City's social fabric was unraveling. If the capital did not fall apart now, its postwar future was looking equally as bleak regardless.
In the chaos of it all, a dark-skinned man wearing dirty, ripped jeans and dirt-encased sandals stabbed an older white male in the neck, a spurt of blood erupting onto his face as the adrenaline screamed out of him.
While the populace resorted to eating itself alive, a bitter battle had developed in the suburbs and, despite the Wehrmacht's partial withdrawal to South Panooly, the fighting had not lost its intensity when the enemy's ranks had been replaced by SPDF. Attacks had lost in efficiency and in frequency, but where they occurred they were just as quick and deadly as they had always been.
Trench lines were dug across boulevards and intersections leading to important buildings, and a well-protected urban pillbox could just as well be one's coffin. A well-thrown grenade could mangle an entire squad of men huddled together, which defended the last inch of ground like lions defending their pride. In the close, uncomfortable combat that pervaded the battle, knives were just as common as firearms and men grappled with each other with instinctual, but all the same inhuman, aggression. Throats were cut, tendons slashed, and sometimes what it took to survive was pummeling another man twenty times 'til he collapsed and bled out. War brought the most savage out of humanity, but war was Elysium compared to what Panooly City had become.
Had it been confined to the suburbs perhaps there would have been a thin veneer of a silver lining. But the city's center, with its historic colonial splendor now largely reduced to rubble and barely-standing ruins thanks to the incessant aerial and artillery bombardment the city had suffered since almost the beginning of the war. Buildings stood with half-torn façades across a toothless skyline.
And for what? What had been gained in thanks to this tragedy?
— Operation David's FuryThree squadrons of three tilt-rotors a piece sliced through the haze of smoke rising from the jungle ablaze below. These were small aircraft and their contents were completely enclosed within its sleek, seemingly seamless shape. Its rotors whipped around in relative silence, though the roar of fire and war would have been sufficient to mask the noise of their approach alone. The
régulies were on the move.
The earth shuddered and a bright flash eclipsed the horizon until all that was left was one massive artillery round followed by the flaming tail of a rocket engine. What had spat that oversized shell protruded from a far cover of tree-tops like a rifle from out of the brush, aiming to kill. 'Goliath,' the Ordenites called it. And a goliath it was. If the size of its shells had not been evidence enough, satellite images confirmed it as an enormous colossus of an artillery gun which sat on a built-up rail carriage with its very own defense system to boot. These defenses included carriage-mounted machine guns and various-caliber anti-air cannons that could cut through a man on the ground just as well as it could through the steel skin of an aircraft flying low overhead. Indeed, the Goliath's defenders, aided by nearby SAM batteries, had already taught a squadron of canopy-skipping Falcons a lesson in humility, downing two of the Laerihans' multi-role fighters and forcing the third and fourth to turn back empty-handed.
That particular failed incursion had at least led to the discovery of an attached garrison of unknown size. This, coupled with the gun's crew, could mean that the area was crawling with up to three hundred Wehrmacht personnel. Additional on-site reconnaissance by a squad of Mekugian
régulies had uncovered a little more of their nature, but nothing much all things considered. The attackers would be wading in the dark.
Ninety of them in all flew briskly in the quickly cooling night, where the moon was just barely creeping into position as it followed a sun which was descending slowly into a slumber.
Below, the fighting continued on as it had for days. Despite the Macabean bombing campaign, Ordenite artillery still enjoyed the protection of a formidable air-defense system that had not yet been completely cracked by the
Laerihans. Artillery guns and anti-air batteries boomed incessantly, battering Panooly City with a hellish barrage that seemed to go on forever. It defied the
Laerihans' air campaign.
The Reich had done a good job of protecting its radars and it had a reserve that, although in the process of being depleted, still made it very difficult to dismantle the network. 7th
Mosso had harassed where it could, attacking SAM batteries and artillery sites, but the Wehrmacht's withdrawal into South Panooly had made these operations significantly harder and the
mosso's strength had fallen to just over one hundred and fifty men. The efforts of the unit's
koro kirim,
régulies, and
grup koda were instead changed to focus on the Wehrmacht's logistics system, as well as on the extraction of friendly soldiers whose units had been overrun by the previous days' lightning advance. Behind-the-lines raids on combat positions were left almost exclusively to the Imbrinumian operatives who had just recently been inserted into the combat zone to guide their own air campaign over South Panooly.
No matter, theater command would find another way to approach the Ordenite artillery and air defense problem, and especially Goliath. Urseline IX, an eleven hundred-man strong
tabor (battalion) if Killian
régulies, was flown into the northernmost allied-held sector of North Panooly in the morning of the previous day. Urseline's distinguished
Bandag Grieve, or Grieve Company, was chosen for the strike.
As the world groaned around them, the nine tilt-rotors stealthily dropped their power armored contents at three separate landing zones about nine kilometers north of the target. The thirty men in each group quickly moved through narrow, muddy jungle paths to convene at a pre-determined location a further seven kilometers south. Each
pieletón moved separately and individually to minimize detection and attrition. The less men tied down by an inadvertent Ordenite patrol the better. Besides, if one column was found its purpose could be confused with any of the 7th
Mosso's small units which had been terrorizing these parts since the beginning of the war. With their extensive training, they would certainly say as much, if tortured.
All ninety congregated at last where they had agreed to, at a small cave next to a winding river that cut the surrounding jungle in two. The remote location was found by the 7th during one of their movements and then relayed to the battlefield network via an encrypted satellite transmission. Easily defendable and relatively isolated from known enemy patrol routes, it made an excellent rally point.
They quickly moved on to slowly close in on Goliath, advancing through chest-high brush and foliage that crept with venomous snakes and poisonous spiders. Encased in metals and polymers, the Killian
régulies seemed not to notice.
Once but a few hundred meters from their targets, the force split to conduct the attack in two groups. The oepration was designed as a straightforward in-and-out raid, and as such any heavy fighting would fatally bog the mission down and condemn it to abortion. A firefight that could not be dissolved quickly was one that invited Ordenite reinforcements, after all. Accounting for this, forty
régulies assaulted the garrison without warning, surrounding it on three sides with a fire team of four on the unguarded end to shoot withdrawing enemies as they came to rally outside, in case they decided to regroup and reinforce Goliath's crew, or to retreat. This would temporarily neutralize an immediate source of heavy and organized resistance.
In the meantime, the other fifty Killian operatives positioned themselves out-of-sight and just on the edge of the clearing around the giant gun's rail emplacement.
One of them, who was wading crouched through thick, twisting tropical plants, removed from his pack a hard-cased laptop and another a small device that he mounted on two bipods. When set up, the Killian with the device flicked something on its belly and out from it shot a wire-thin laser that was practically transparent. The one with the laptop gave hushed directions and the other one adjusted the laser as needed. Finally, the device's position was adequate enough for the two of them to stop and wait...
...Hours before, just off the eastern, cliff-facing wall of North Point's Stirborough Castle circled a GLI-34 Albatross. It was well-guarded by two Lu-45 Hawks that orbited around it with a deadly grace. When the sun completely disappeared, a tanker rendezvoused with the GLI-34 as the latter's flight path straightened out in the direction of the Gordonopian-occupied Thacu Islands.
The refueling happened quickly, and the tanker soon disengaged and circled back to its air base somewhere in northern Theohuanacu. The two fighters that had been protecting the Albatross turned back to escort it. Two more Hawks had come to relieve them and follow the bomber on its route. It was a flight of several hours as the three-bird formation rumbled above the great Macabean fleet, which had reconvened, as
Hurkán Mateo weakened and passed east, to once again enforce the blockade on South Panooly with aggravated vigilance. Then, just as the northernmost tip of Thacu archipelago came into view, the Albatross turned its nose just enough to point it toward South Panooly.
She flew a while longer until her bay doors opened. A long cruise missile came tumbling out and, when its rocket suddenly came alight, it zoomed away toward the distance. but not until another one came down following it.
Five missiles were fired in all. They traveled the 1,100–1,400 kilometers at a frightening pace, bullying their way over a red and orange battlefield already contaminated to the neck with artillery fire, local aerial battles, and the brutal allied bombing campaign. One was soon knocked out of the sky by a missile launched from a SAM battery on the surface and a second one fell shortly afterward. Then, 'Goliath' came into their view...
...Lined up at the edge of the treeline, the waiting
régulies heard the hiss of the SAM battery mere seconds before they saw the rippling fire of the launcher emptying its trailer. The damn thing had been hidden behind thick foliage. In the distance, there were two explosions and the trees shook for a fleeting moment. By then, the smoke around the battery and the gun had cleared. Just as the attack had seemed a failure, though, the fifth and final missile appeared suddenly as it dove straight at the giant rail-mounted artillery gun. And just as victory was about to be declared, and just before the missile was about to crash into the emplacement and destroy it, a here to hidden trailer-mounted CIWS tore it to shreds.
With that, the fifty men along the treeline pounced. The CIWS was struck by three TA-80 light missiles coming from three different so that when it turned to engage one the other two struck from behind. Neither was the SAM battery forgotten. It was suppressed with mortar fire before the vehicle could be destroyed with a well-placed rocket.
Nearby, the battle between the garrison and the
régulies platoon intensified. But that unfolding skirmish was succeeding in keeping the garrisoned Wehrmacht away from their prized gun.
Goliath's crew, for their part, were pinned down by a squad applying an intense suppressing fire with automatic weapons, including a heavy 13.3mm machinegun. Many of the crewmen were armed themselves and they, of course, fired back. Those without weapons at the ready quickly found one. It was a resistance that was slowly silenced, as the other four squads of Killian
régulies crept closer and the defenders gradually backed into an ever-shrinking area. Still, despite the elite warriors they were facing, the Ordenites were putting up a remarkable and brave fight. Behind walls and from within impromptu structures they stood their ground.
With a hailstorm of rockets and grenades, the area to the rail-mounted cannon was slowly cleared. Goliath itself was pocked with bullet holes and scoured by rocket impacts. With a screeching creak, its barrel began to crack around the base and the stress was so much that it continued to shrilly screech and wail until the thick steel cannon cracked in two. The barrel hit the floor with such a great thud that it sent smoke, dust, and debris in all directions until visibility had fallen to almost nil.
A loud cheer went up amongst the Killians and they pressed their opponents harder, clustering the remaining crewmen together and showering them with bullets and mortar fire. But just as they were about to snatch victory a cry came from the rear. Gunfire unexpectedly erupted from out of the brush. With hardly a warning a platoon of Wehrmacht infantrymen struck the flank. It was the quick action of the superbly-trained Killians that allowed them to hold and stave off the instinct to flee. But the firefight was bogging down. Fearing that there were other unaccounted for patrols nearby, and knowing that Goliath would be out of action until the barrel could be replaced, the Killians withdrew back into the dark, impenetrable forest and allowed the Ordenites to follow if they dared. There, they did short work of those who foolishly chose to engage.
The formation fighting the garrison disengaged as well, melting toward a different direction. They would rendezvous with the rest of their
bandag at the rally point, but not before committing to a winding retreat to shake off any pursuers.
— Operation Hunter's StrikeCalm seas welcomed an armada of catamaran landing craft as these approached the tree-bound shores of South Panooly. If seen from the sky's limitless expanse, one would see three distinct swarm-like groups headed towards three separate beaches that traveled down the country's western coast in quick succession. Most spectacular of all were the four raiding
eskúadra that spanned behind them, just north of the Thacu Islands, which breathed a charring inferno of direct fire.
Three fleet groups had kept a tight blockade of South Panooly since the beginning of the war, excepting a brief relaxing of the pickett as a result of Hurricane Mateo. Although they could not stave off all tragedies, like that which befell the 18th arca brigade, their incessant fire support was possibly the key reason why the entirety of North Panooly hadn't yet been overrun by enemy forces. Indeed, they had been pounding Wehrmacht positions in both the north and the south for seven days now, relenting only when forced to by the bad weather. The
kríermada would play a key role in the counter-invasion, for which
Kríergruppe 'Ixchel' — which had already been assigned the role of denying the waters around the Thacu Islands to the Kriegsmarine — had donated the bulk of a
kríerflot's offensive power. Battlecruisers and battleships alike struck targets as far deep as 10–20 kilometers to harass Wehrmacht units which were likely to react to the amphibious landings that were just about to make landfall.
Beneath this hellish, fiery blizzard of destruction pushed on the landing craft. Any soldier who could peek over their vessel's metallic walls now saw the hazy, flickering, mirage-like beaches before them, and behind those beaches lay the ocean of untamed, overgrown wilds that was South Panooly's rainforest. The craft traveled at twenty knots, closing the distance between them and their target quickly. It couldn't come soon enough for the infantrymen within those boats. Some looked at their feet and others swallowed nervously. For most, this would be their first taste of combat.
Lucky for them, they would be aided by three teams of twelve
Koro Kirim apiece who had traveled from their inland area of operations. With them, the offshore bombardment gained precision.
The voyage to the shore was not a short one, but when the craft finally began their final approach they toggled an array of water jets that sped them up to the very edge of the water. As soon as they were in position, men, tanks, and APCs began to pour out of them. The beaches were left undefended, except for the sudden thunderous belch of enemy artillery that peppered the landing party's positions and sprayed them with razor-sharp shrapnel. Wearing only their uniforms and an armored vest, these infantrymen — Zarbians — wore no power armor on this day, for it could not be afforded to them when there was the Gothic theater to prepare. Large-cannoned warships responded in kind with deadly intensity, as they concentrated their fire to pummel a few batteries at a time. Under this criss-cross of fire the man and their supported vehicles moved up the beaches and into the small shoreline towns through which ran a narrow coastal highway that connected them together.
Each beach received a regiment's worth of infantry supported by a company of the Nakíl 1A3Ms. These heavy, nearly seventy tonne beasts paved the path, with the heavy APCs sporting their deadly 45mm autocannons following up from behind. Dismounted infantry used the big metal vehicles as cover as they trotted into empty streets which were beset by a deep, relative silence. The cannon fire was still withering, and the enemy artillery was still pounding the area as it could, but the only people who allowed themselves to be seen were those who peeked out from their windows or from their balconies to see the advancing Macabean army.
Loyalties would have to be guessed for the time being. These beach-front municipalities tended to be disproportionately white-owned, but they were summer flats and often rented out to the poorer classes, which were overrepresented by the colored. And the possibility of hidden Ordenites waiting to spring a merciless ambush never escaped the mind of the Macabean on the ground.
While landing craft returned to their ships for refueling and to be loaded up again with men and material, the three separate regiments quickly secured their first-hour objectives. They seized key buildings in the towns they were occupying and posted men on important intersections, and even on street corners where they could keep an eye on movement in and out of the apartment buildings that flanked the narrow streets. Larger spaces were commandeered almost immediately so that they could be used as temporary supply depots and barracks, at least until larger inland towns and cities were captured.
A second wave, using a second batch of CLCs, washed up on the three beaches about an hour into the operation, and this would continue throughout the morning and into even the evening. Indeed, within the next four days a total of half-a-million soldiers would be landed on the western side of South Panooly, if all went well. They would be supported by 1.5 million allied troops who were being inserted by their own supporting naval forces. But for those who had just come off the beaches and had poured into the adjacent region, those forces to come were still only a plan, not a reality. For them, the only reality was the next objective.
Men and women in uniform worked without even the briefest pause to prepare for the next phase. UAVs were launched for reconnaissance work and self-propelled artillery guns that had rolled up into town joined their naval brethren in suppressing the Ordenite cannons which boldly continued to harass the invasion forces.
As soon as the next wave came to reinforce them, the forces that were slowly accumulating onshore began to fan out and advance toward their primary first-day targets. These were larger towns or smaller cities perhaps 15—20 kilometers inland, and although every man there wished beneath his breath that they be just as undefended as these strips of sand they had just stormed, they knew deep inside that the Wehrmacht had a hidden card to play — because there was no way they were just going to let the Macabeans have such a dangerous beachhead without a good fight.