All around the streets, people were melting away until just a terrible black sludge remained. The mum remembered one last thing, the image of her child vanishing before her eyes before the world around her changed into a violet red and then nothing.
Atlantis watched with pleasure as his missiles successful hit all the major cities in the United Kingdom and China. The screens in front of him showed live satellite images of London and Edinburgh. The cities were deserted but on closer inspection piles of tar were evident on every street, in every abandoned car, and in nearly every house.
The situation room in Drakelow did not know how bad the attack was but as they desperately tried to contact London the feeling of dread grew as they could not get an answer.
Admiral Moorer knew they had to press home the attack, there was nothing to hold them back now as Atlantis had already fired his trump card. The Admiral ordered in a mass air strike as soon as was feasibly possible.
Operation Freedom
The Chinese and British tanks kept advancing until they came to a huge open expanse of dried out fields. The commanders left their vehicles as they peered through their binoculars.
“Bloody hell.” The British commander Thomas Speering cried. The commander was fifty-eight and had fought in the second world war in his favorite tank, the Cromwell but he had never seen anything like what was sat before his very eyes.
At the far end of the flat plain were rows upon rows of glistening tanks, most of them were either Tiger I or Panther tanks but every fifteenth tank was the monstrous Maus. The gigantic tanks turrets moved to lock onto their new targets.
“Battle stations!” Speering yelled as he jumped back into his tank. His Chinese counterparts had already begun the attack.
“Commander Xiu, will you rein your men back in, we need a coordinated assault on the Tiger I’s, repeat ignore the Maus.”
The commander received a message that he could not understand, “God damn it.” He said as he got on the radio “This is commander Speering of the 4th armored division. We have encountered a massive column of enemy armor, we are requested air support to grid reference 47, repeat reference 47.”
There was a long pause, “Roger that commander, don’t you worry Admiral Moorer has a surprise in store.”
The Chinese light tanks spread out and fired rapidly on the move but at the longer ranges, their shells were mostly ineffective. The Tigers were in their element though and fired from a stationary position. The powerful plasma rounds cut through the Chinese armor effortlessly.
Commander Speering’s tanks had not advanced yet and he had successfully reined in the remaining Chinese light tanks, whose division had suffered heavy losses. Plasma rounds crisscrossed the area.
The Vickers main battle tanks returned fire as best they could but their guns were unlikely to do much damage at the range they were fighting at.
They Aryan forces had not advanced either, they kept up a horrifying rate of fire that the British troops could not hope to contend with.
“Commander Speering, this is Commander Paul of the 5th Army.”
“Good to hear you voice Paul; we are in some shit here. I have never seen so many tanks on a single battlefield before.”
Paul laughed, “So I hear, we are cutting up from Baltimore to assist from the South. Try to keep their attention for as long as you can. We are setting up as much artillery as we can get our hands on.”
“Roger that Paul, we will do our best. Godspeed.”
The skies had cleared in the early afternoon and Speering could just make out a rumbling sound in the distance. It was hard to hear over the constant noise of the battle but it was definitely there.
“Commander Speering, confirm where your forces are?” A strange voice radioed through.
“Identify yourself!” Speering replied.
“This is Admiral Moorer, now commander please confirm your position.”
“Yes Sir, we are on grid reference 48, extremely close to 47.”
“Roger that Commander, Do not advance into 47, repeat do not advance into 47.”
“Roger that Sir.” Speering knew what that meant; he could barely contain his excitement.
The rumbling grew louder as masses of small black dots appeared on the horizon. They grew ever larger as they came closer. Vapor trails could be seen from the massive B-52 bombers who must have been least forty thousand feet up.
Speering’s crews let out a cheer as they watched the bombers fly overhead.
The massive cargo bay doors on the bombers opened and tons of ordinance tumbled from the sky. The ground began to shake as the bombs hit; huge explosions rocked the area sending balls of fire and black smoke into the air.
The B-52’s kept coming in waves as the huge bombers exacted revenge for their fallen friends. The ground shook violently as if it was about to cave in under the pressure of a massive earthquake.
A streak of plasma smashed into the side of a B-52, it impacted just above the right wing and completely severed it. The helpless bomber tumbled from the sky, black smoke trailed from the open wound.
The air filled with purple orbs that raced towards the mass of bombers. This time though the B-52’s did not split, they pressed home their attack. The superheated orbs smashed through the lightly armored bombers; planes started to fall from the sky.
The Me 262’s swooped in; they smelt blood as the easy prey was unprotected. The lead Me 262 opened up with his plasma cannon and the purple rounds streamed forwards like a swarm of angry hornets. The rounds hosed over the tail of a B-52 which just disintegrated under the fire.
The Aryan fighters plowed into the formation which still did not split, one 262 got too close to his prey and narrowly avoided colliding into its side, the pilot pulled the control stick as hard as he could and managed to spin away with only minor damage to the wing of his aircraft.
The bombs continued to fall and a group of Panther medium tanks was completely destroyed, they disappeared in a cloud of black and purple smoke which dissipated quickly to reveal the smoldering hulls.
B-52’s were falling from the sky at an alarming rate now as the agile Me 262’s scored easy kills. Silver jets streaked in low over the heads of Speering’s tanks. The jets rolled and then pulled up vertically.
A garbled Russian voice came over the radio but nobody could understand it. A B-52 crew tried desperately to shake the enemy fighter from their tail but the rear gunner was killed by the burning plasma and smoke billowed from the damaged area.
Suddenly the Me 262 disengaged from the bomber and rolled once as it tried to avoid a hail of bullets from below; It was too late though as the rounds tore through the wing and sent the engine into a massive explosion that looked like a miniature sun.
The B-52 pilot look around to see what had happened when he caught a glimpse of five MiG-21’s bursting into the battle, their cannons were blazing. The B-52 crews never thought they would be so glad to see a Soviet fighter.
Resource
Atlantis stood in the center of the control tower with his arms folded; he rested his tall frame on one of the control consoles as he studied the situation maps. The allied forces had advanced quite far from their beachheads and were heading towards Baltimore.
The large 1st Panzer army had stopped them in the large expanse of fields before they got too far. The army was made up of over three hundred tanks and was supported by two thousand infantry.
The allied forces were outnumbered. Atlantis was pleased.
On the Eastern battlefront, the Allies were struggling to maintain a beachhead, Atlantis had ordered in the heavy artillery so that they could be beaten back into the sea as quickly as possible.