Teutonica: Black Birds

The Collapse

The sun broke through onto the embassy and I bolted. Radek made a move to stop me but the Sargent held him back.

I sprinted across the lawn and made for a street that had people eating an early breakfast on the outside patios. I began to yell a warning when a air raid siren cut through my voice with a wail. At first people just looked around with curiosity at the noise and then panic broke out, realisation dawning upon them.

"Out of my way!" Someone yelled above the panic and a military officer followed by a team of five conscripted men broke through the crowd. "Soldier report."
He took in my tattered uniform and raised his eyebrows. "The President is dead sir." I gasped, out of breath. His eyes bulged "What?"

The officer was unbelieving. I raised my voice. "The President is dead and there are Ravens in the city!" He swore and turned to his men as his radio crackled. "The garrison has been overrun! We need to fortify the northern streets!" The men began to run and the officer threw me a radio and pistol, a M9, by the look of it.

"Join up with the first unit to request aid or backup. That's an order!" He pushed passed the crowds that had now arisen early in the morning to the sound of sirens. My radio spoke in a Texan accent, causing me to flinch at the sudden voice at my hip. "This is beach fortifications and we are taking some mighty heavy losses due to these fly-bys. Requesting aid from any troopers in the immediate area." Where the hell are they launching planes from!? I sprinted to the nearest beach. Georgetown water park.

The fox hole was hastily put together on the deserted road over looking the rivers shore. A Sargent I assumed was the one who sent the S.O.S. was barking commands to his troopers. "Zach I want a report on our wounded pronto!" He grabbed another soldier and shook him. "I said I wanted jets on our locale ages ago Private! Where the hell are they!?" He shoved him aside and spotted me. "That's it? You're all they sent?" I snapped my hand to my forehead and responded. "Sir. Corporal Max Hunt. I heard your request via radio and have placed myself under your...sir?"

He was looking up and his hand grabbed me and threw me into the foxhole, his face urgent. "Get down if you want to live!" He dived down into the pavement and was still.

I looked up and found myself captivated and terrified by the sight that had torn itself out of the clouds that hide it from view. Thats solves the mystery of the launching point. "My God." I whispered.

A gigantic flying metal ship-like hulk descended as its 4 colossal jet engines blazed with an unholy glow, its underbelly littered with row upon row of holes I assumed ejection pods were launched. It was twice the size of what a flying Titanic would look like. The two bay doors its sides played host to were spiting out drop ships and strange jet fighters by the dozens. They looked to be based off a design of a German prototype many WW2 and especially EW3 survivors know all too well.

"Sir those are Hortons." "I know Corporal." He turned to one of his 15 men who occupied the foxhole with us and asked if the jets had made it, the man was also on his stomach like the rest of us and grunted as he crawled over to report. "They should be here soon sir." No sooner had he spoke when the sound of raw power boomed overhead as a formation of 30 F-22 Raptors charged into the swarm and proceeded to tear the smaller aircraft to shreds.

Cheers broke out among the men as all of us stood up to throw fists into the air. One Raptor broke and did a fly-by, turning off to pursue one of the flying wings that had separated from the swarm. Though the fighting looked to be going our way I noticed half of the original wing was shot down and the swarm kept replenishing.

The F-22 that had done the fly-by earlier had found a new target, but the newly acquired Horten did an odd manoeuvre which made it nearly turn on a dime. I then realized the Hortens were rotating their cockpits and wings separately, making full turns and using the jets as breaks and rederectors. It occurred to me that even though the flying wings were not as swift as the F-22s it brought a dangerous 3rd dimension to a dogfight. Come on guys hang in there.

Suddenly someone at the shore side wall let out a yell and the others scrambled to see what the fuss was about. I walked over with a M4 I had picked up from the ground and surveyed the water, I saw nothing. Then I paused wait, is that?

Helmeted heads broke from the water, a yellow lighthouse like glare coming out of glass face plates. Figures sealed in airtight suits made of inch thick steel grinded out of the depths. Black body gloves exposed within the joints gave off a wet sheen. I could hear the metal grating against metal as they moved their hydraulic driven legs.

The one in front shed his oxygen tank and pulled a modernized STG 44 from a water proof bag. With a foot long inch thick barrel and an impressive box magazine it was a scary looking weapon for sure. The leader at the head of a legion just walked out of the water like it was nothing.

He had nothing to show for his command save his left shoulder bell was extended in a point all the way to his elbow. I could see seaweed on his armoured shoulders, the steel looked like that on tea kettles. He spoke in a chilling voice that echoed through the beach in a flat metallic deadpan.

"Gentlemen." He addressed his legion while facing up the park at our dumbstruck platoon. "We have landed." He chambered a round with a Laud clack and his spotlight leveled with the Sargents terrified face. "Now it is your beaches we come to swinehound."
The guy next to me shit himself.

The Sargent snapped out of his trance and yelled a defiant order in the face of an army. "THROW THEM BACK IN THE SEA YOU DOGS!!" he snapped his hand forward to the enemy, his other holding his M4. "FIRE!" They snapped out of their terror and fired the weapons they had used to kill and protect since joining the Commonwealth corp for one final, rallying act of defiance.

"Run and warn the seashore garrison that the Teutos got through for me will ya!?" The Sargent yelled grinning, a man dropping beside him with a bullet to his now collapsed skull. I ran through the streets, heading for the ocean shore and last I saw of the Sargent who's name I will never know. He was standing alone surrounded by the dead, his face screaming in defiance as he fired the last clip of his M9 into the final of 40 metal bodies he stood upon. His last act was to draw the pin of his grenade. and screaming the anthem at the top of his lungs, surrounded by 10s of the plated soldiers of the sea, he went out in a blaze of glory.

Just kidding a frag got him the moment I stepped out of the hole.