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Full Version: The End
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August 14, 826 A.S.
Planet New London

Two months ago, he swore that it’d be the last. After all he’d been through—the Taus, Nauru, the Sigmas, Sprague, Gran Canaria, Bering—he finally figured it was well past his time to retire, to put up his guns and slink away to a dusty apartment on Planet Manhattan. With all of the wealth amassed from years of combat pay and mercenary contracts, he had more than enough to live comfortably until his end of days, even after dividing up a hefty lump sum into four accounts for his imprisoned friends who still had nearly two more standard decades to serve on Sugarland. By most accounts, Tal Ravis’ story should’ve come to a quiet, peaceful end, his tale destined to be forgotten in the annals of time, and yet, here he stood once again, a certain mister Ravis, peering stoically over a sizeable crowd of Bretonian civilians who were huddled up under hastily-erected awnings, trying their hardest to stay out of another late summer’s rainstorm.

He couldn’t resist the temptation to answer the call of duty, not when it deposited a message into his Neural Net inbox. For better or worse, his performance on Gran Canaria, especially during the Battle of Las Palmas, had attracted a new offer from Cold Harbor to assist with defensive preparations on New London in anticipation of a Gallic landing. There, he’d be acting as an advisor, leveraging his storied combat experience to help train local forces on how to turn any attempts at a Gallic occupation into a hellish nightmare, and for two weeks or so, he enjoyed that luxury, not one to pass up the opportunity to head into the most hotly-contested conflict zone in the entire sector. But today, and from here on out, things would be different.

Despite nightly broadcasts proclaiming that the Gauls were on their last legs, that their fleets would break themselves attempting to take New London and that the Council was starting an offensive in their core systems, a general evacuation order had been placed for the entire planet while there was still time to escape. Now, the upper echelon, ready and waiting to teach the Gallic invaders the true horrors of war as it was fought in the Sirius Sector, had become little more than a glorified gate guard, idly watching over a designated assembly area while waiting for a Clydesdale to come and pick up several hundred of these newly-displaced refugees.

Standing upright at relative attention, he rolled his shoulders forward and sighed, surrounded only by quiet murmurs from the families before him and the steady pitter-patter of raindrops on the canvas awning that was currently keeping him dry. The checkpoint consisted of two Bretonian armored vehicles much like the ones he’d been exposed to on Gran Canaria, and was manned by a mixed skeleton crew of BAF and BPA personnel, along with himself, in a repurposed spaceport next to an old auditorium. Unlike the uniformed men and women standing beside him, he was dressed relatively simply, a black synthetic jacket and a pair of worn-out jeans underneath his plate carrier and rucksack, creating a stark contrast in appearance that emphasized his low-visibility role as an advisor, not a uniformed combatant—not that it mattered much anymore. He kept his thoughts rolling along in an effort to help pass the time, for the first wave of freighters should’ve been arriving any minute now, and began to let out a hefty yawn just as some distant thunder began rolling along the horizon.

Surprised was he, then, when the thunder continued, far longer than a typical New London rumble should’ve, and so his eyes came up and scanned the hazy skies, head pivoting about in an attempt to locate the source of the noise. Hopefully, it’d be the freighters arriving ahead of schedule, relieving them of this present duty in exchange for the next wave of refugees, but alas, his efforts turned up no signs of the distinctly round, inflated-looking Clydesdales. Instead, all he managed to find were two squinty silhouettes standing out against the clouds, the distant rumbling opening up to a roaring characteristic of aerospace fighter engines.

Get down, everybody get down!

One of his Bretonian colleagues, undoubtedly a veteran of many battles, must’ve spotted the same ordeal, calling out to the refugees before Tal could even identify the incoming craft as friend or foe. Immediately, the sea of people before him crashed to the ground, his ears beset upon by the muffled, panicked screams and shrieks of women and children, as he himself lowered to a squat, transitioning his rifle from low to high ready, head up in the skies and scanning for threats. Ominously, the sound grew louder until two Gallic fighters, identifiable by their skinny, tapered fuselages and forward-swept wings, screamed on past overhead, flying remarkably low to the ground in an attempt to try and avoid scanner detection. Tal instinctively snapped his rifle up into his shoulder pocket, acquiring the targets fairly quickly through his digital riflescope as they made off into the distance and flicking the fire selector to semi, but hesitated as he began to pull the trigger through the first stage, coming upon the wall and resting on it for a few seconds before he realized the futility of what he was about to do. Whatever those fighters were doing, it wasn’t looking for them, judging by how they all hadn’t gone up in flames yet, and so he let out a sigh of relief, backing down to low ready as he slowly stood up. So much for last legs, he thought, a hand reaching over to his comms.

“Station, this is Evergreen, we got what looks like, uh, Gallic scouts breaking through over assembly area one-fifty-two, heading southwest. We need those freighters down here as soon as possible, how copy?” he keyed through his headset, keeping his voice down as to not startle the crowd. In the meantime, his colleagues were trying to keep the civilians calm, telling them to stay down and stay quiet for the time being to somewhat mixed results, as expected. Those fighters weren’t supposed to be here, not unless the defensive perimeter was starting to crack under pressure, but as the explosions visible in the sky during clearer nights seemed to grow closer, it didn’t exactly come as much of a surprise to most people present.

...Evergreen, this is Station, we copy. Just sit tight, they’re thirty seconds out.
August 19, 826 A.S.
Planet New London

Gallia had chosen the nuclear option.

Three days ago, when the first Triumph broke through the Bretonian blockade and emerged from beyond cloud cover over the skies of Westminster, the wary garrison had halted evacuation efforts in favor of a planet-wide shelter-in-place order, a decision that potentially saved countless lives once the Warwolves began turning everything to ash. Tal, stationed some several thousand kilometers from ground zero, still had time to help his adjunct partner unit gather up as many civilians as possible and herd them into the basement of the same auditorium that they’d been flying non-stop transport flights out of for roughly 23 hours. They’d even gone as far as to go door-to-door for several blocks, forcibly evicting any remaining residents and using armored personnel carriers to ferry packs of people to the relative safety of their shelter, hunkering down in cover just moments before the first beams fell upon them. For two days and two nights, they weathered the storm, with hardly enough supply for themselves, let alone all of the civilians, and it was on the second night that they finally got the all-clear from BAF command.

Hungry, sleep-deprived, and heavily shaken by the intensity of the bombardment, a certain mister Ravis slowly stood up along the wall that he’d been sitting against for so long, reaching up to adjust his rifle sling so that his weapon rested more naturally across his body armor. Quietly, he exchanged nervous glances with one of his Bretonian colleagues, who in turn got up from her position on the floor, taking up her personal weapon and giving him a short, affirmative nod, whereupon Tal spun on his heels, drew his handgun, and began advancing on one of the exits, creeping up a staircase to the panic bar-equipped door that didn’t seem to be giving in no matter how hard he pushed. While keeping his weapon pointed in a safe direction, with many eager eyes on him and his actions under the dim red glow of emergency lighting, he reared back and pushed into the bar, leveraging his entire body weight to force over the debris blocking the door from the other side. The smell of burnt slag immediately rushed into the room, eliciting a strained cough from him that was quickly diverted into the gray blanket that he’d draped around his neck.

Taking a deep breath with the garment still over his mouth, he turned to the woman behind him, staring at her blankly for a few seconds before nodding his head towards the door. Reluctantly, she followed him up the stairs and out into the auditorium proper, but he didn’t blame her for hesitating. Preliminary damage reports over the radio didn’t sound particularly pretty, and though he didn’t personally have an attachment to the place, it was still the heart of the Crown, and to see it so carelessly reduced to rubble would undoubtedly shatter the morale of all those present.

Tal emerged from the shelter to near-total darkness, flicking on his FWG-5’s flashlight with his index finger and shining it around. Thankfully, most of the place remained relatively undamaged, with only part of the building having been grazed by a passing destroyer. It was enough to cause a partial cave-in that prevented him from opening the door normally, but aside from creating a hole through which the hazy night sky was visible, they were alright. Dinged up, but alright.

To go even further, Tal holstered his pistol and took up his rifle, holding it lazily at waist-level as he proceeded through a smoldering hole in the wall, taking care as to not trip and fall. From the street side, the view was ghastly: a distant firestorm casting a bright orange glow over the horizon, a malformed cityscape populating what was once a proud, bustling residential zone, and perhaps most haunting of all, utter silence, save for the passing wind. The APCs they had rode in on were now simply piles of mangled, melted metal parked on the curb, bearing no resemblance to their former selves bar their final resting places. Images of a battle long since passed, but one that he had absolutely no influence on. All he could do was watch on in horror as homes were razed to the ground, their inhabitants vaporized by a last-ditch attempt at getting the Bretonians to capitulate, and if not, to simply destroy what they, the Gallics, could not have.

From his position in the middle of the road, he took up the push-to-talk bungeed to the left shoulder strap of his plate carrier, thumbing the button down as he absent-mindedly stared off to the side.

“...Station, this is Evergreen. One-fifty-two is all accounted for, about forty people in the basement plus six more. How copy, over?”

Evergreen, this is Station. All vessels are currently occupied, but mark your position with green flares or smoke to signal for recovery. Station out.

Sighing, Tal patted down his placard until his hand wrapped around what he assumed was a flare, pulling it up and out of it’s loop so that he could unscrew the bottom cap to allow a single white ripcord to fall free. He grabbed it with authority and yanked straight down, igniting the device with a brilliant flash of white and green and abandoning it by tossing it about a foot or two down the street, wincing at the intensity of the heat and light it gave off.

All he could do now was wait.