Nick S. Thomas
Battle Earth VIII
Prologue
Life in peacetime hadn't been what Mitch Taylor had either expected or hoped for, but it wasn't to last anyway. Four years of lying idle as a propaganda puppet had built his appetite for action, but that also came in a form he could not have anticipated.
War had been declared by one group of humans against another. The kind of war Taylor was all too familiar with in history books but had zero experience in the real world. Tsengal's revelation about the Krys agents living among them had resulted in his death before the proof of such could save them from a new world war.
It had been a month since war had been declared by the European Alliance against their former colleagues in the Union of European Nations. The rest of the world was yet to pick sides, and neither had made any determined attempt to cross one another's borders.
A great war was coming, and all the time the threat loomed over them from the alien invaders. The threat of Erdogan, a grand leader of the alien forces Taylor only knew by reputation. But for now, all Taylor could do was face what was in front of him.
Chapter 1
Taylor sat inside the remnants of a stone building that had recently been demolished after having clearly stood for hundreds of years. He couldn't make out what it used to be, as there was little left to identify. A road sign lay across the rubble beside him; it was in German and meant little to him.
"Damn thing nearly took my fucking head off," he stated.
Grey grunted in response without even looking up at him. He'd just heated water on a stove and was busy pouring the hot liquid into a mug.
"Not one of you can go a half hour without a cup of tea, can you?" Taylor continued. "Random road sign could have killed me, but no never mind, your tea is more important."
"Huh?" he asked, as he finally finished making the tea and looked over in surprise, having clearly not listened to a word.
"No matter," responded Taylor. "I don't know why you insist on boiling the water yourself. Our flasks will do the job in ten seconds without all the fuss. And you still carry tea bags around with you? You're an anachronism, Captain."
He smiled in response.
"Dear Colonel, there is far more to enjoying a cup of tea than merely pouring it down your throat."
Grey lifted the mug to his mouth, and Taylor could not help but be amused by the look of content and concentration on his face as he did so. But as the folded edge of the mug met with the Captain's lips, a cry rang out from nearby.
"Incoming!"
Before either of them could react, an explosion ripped through an adjacent building and sent dust and debris hurtling through the air. In the moment of silence after the blast, Taylor looked back to Grey who sat precisely where he had been and still holding his mug. He was covered in a thick grey cloud of dust, looking in disgust at his freshly made beverage floating with dirt. Taylor couldn't help but laugh.
"Shit!" Grey swore, throwing down the mug in disgust; his further expletives drowned out by a barrage that engulfed their position, forcing him to jump for cover. He landed down in a crater they had expanded into a trench.
"See, you could have drunk it by now if you'd used the flask!" yelled Taylor.
"That's a big help!"
Explosions hit all around their position but to little effect with the deep dugouts they had created. Taylor looked at his watch and counted the minutes to when the firing stopped.
"Three minutes."
"Same shit, different day," replied Grey.
He stumbled out of the trench; satisfied in the knowledge the attack was over, shook as much dust off as he could and picked up his mug, looking at it in disgust.
"Have to start all over again."
Taylor ignored him and carried on with his own train of thought. "That sign must have been blown a few clicks to have got here, this side of the border."
"Yeah, or it was dragged here by a vehicle a few years back, or collected as a memento from whoever occupied this place. Maybe they stole it and put it up on display in their office?"
"Now you're just making shit up."
"Well there are few certainties here, aren’t there? Except for the fact they bomb us for three minutes every six hours, which seems pointless in itself as they aren’t following it up with anything."
Taylor stood up tall over the wreckage as Grey continued to curse and tried to wash out his precious mug. "You spoke too soon."
Grey looked up and was surprised to see Taylor's face was deadly serious.
"Down!" he shouted. He jumped down onto Grey, causing the mug to fly from his hands. A second after they hit the scattered debris, an explosion erupted above them on one of the remaining walls. As the dust settled, the two rolled over into their trench once again, the gunfire intensifying.
"That's no artillery," said Grey.
"No, an armoured column."
"I don't see how that's our problem."
"It is once they’re on top of us."
Taylor crept to the edge of the trench to look over cautiously at the wide expanse before them. The small town they had occupied was in the middle of a broad flat plain, with little cover except for the remains of the buildings and those defences they had dug themselves. Grey joined him. As they looked out, a couple of marines jumped in behind them.
"We got half the German army coming down the road, Colonel!"
He didn't respond but studied the scene around them. A dozen armoured vehicles had come up over the crest a klick ahead, and more were pouring over.
"Never thought I'd see it," he muttered.
"What?" Grey asked.
"A conventional army coming at us, a human army."
"I don't think that's all it is," replied Grey, studying the incoming forces.
From between the vehicles, they spotted Mechs swarming over the crest towards them and using the vehicles for cover.
A volley of their own guns thundered across the plain and hit the incoming forces. Three tanks burst into flames, and the bodies of Mech soldiers were thrown into the air.
"How can they not see this is wrong?" asked Grey.
"God knows how many humans on that side are even still actually human. There are forces at work here which are forcing us to fight each other."
"What are we gonna do about it?"
"What do you do when someone attacks you, Captain?"
"Fight back."
"Sure, then you have your answer."
"But... those are people, not aliens."
"And now they're the enemy, and they'll blow your head off if you don't do the same to them first. Remember that, Captain. They might all as well be Krys as far as we're concerned."
A burst of shots rushed over their heads, forcing the two of them to duck down.
"A broad daylight attack, they're getting pretty ambitious, aren't they?" yelled Grey.
Taylor looked back at the sweeping advance heading their way.
"Maybe they got a right to be."
He turned back to see Jafar had reached their position, but he had not heard him coming, though it was hard to hear anything over the gunfire.
"You see that, mate," said Grey to him. "A few thousand of your kind, and they're coming for you."
"They're coming for all of us," replied Taylor. "All right, get the RATs ready."
Jafar looked confused by the term.
"Reitech Anti-tank. Latest baby in the arsenal," replied Grey, turning away to radio in the orders.
Jafar looked over to the next trench as the orders were relayed and could see one of the troops lifting up a shoulder-mounted weapon. It looked like little more than a pipe with handles.