C48 Surrender Or Die
Some were hit mid air by AA fire, their bodies torn apart before they even reached the ground. Others twisted and maneuvered their chutes, dodging the worst of the flak.
But most? Most were landing.
The Grand Duke's vision swam with horror. His chest tightened. The ringing in his ears grew deafening.
"This... this can't be happening..."
The radio operator in the throne room screamed into his headset.
"ENEMY PARATROOPERS OVER THE CAPITAL! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK! I REPEAT, WE ARE UNDER ATT..."
BOOM!
The radio console exploded in a shower of sparks, hit by a fifty cal. round. The operator was flung backward, screaming.
The moment the radio operator hit the ground, screaming in pain, something impossible happened.
The massive glass windows of the palace's grand hall shattered inward as eleven figures slammed through them like meteorites, their parachutes still fluttering behind them like the tattered banners of war.
They landed in a perfect formation, the impact of their armored boots cracking the marble floor beneath them.
The Grand Duke's blood ran cold. These were not men. They were something else.
Their armor was monstrous, like something torn from both ancient history and a nightmare of the future.
Their skull faced helmets with round crimson visors stared forward, their crimson plumes and tattered from fighting half cloacks with Iron Fenrir emblems swaying as they moved in perfect synchronization.
The moment the first bullets left their guns, the throne room was drowned in the deafening roar of .50 caliber fire. The Imperator and his Death Squad didn't stop moving.
RATATATATATATATA!
The air filled with high caliber bullets each one ripping through flesh and armor like wet paper.
The palace guards opened fire with their submachine guns, but the pistol caliber rounds pinged harmlessly off the Death Squad's an Imperators exoskeleton armor.
They kept walking forward. Their crimson plumed helmets locked onto their targets.
BOOM!
A single burst from the Imperator's rifle split a man in half, his torso ripping clean off his legs. Another palace guard, desperate, raised a grenade.
BANG.
A single shot erased his head before he could even pull the pin.
The guards collapsed like wheat before the scythe. The sheer force of .50 caliber rounds turned bodies into ruin, limbs into shredded pulp, walls into blood splattered murals.
The Death Squad barely needed to aim.
One of them, Zero Seven, fired his entire mag into the crowd, sending dozens crumpling before they could even scream. He reloaded mid walk, slamming a fresh magazine in without breaking stride.
The ones who didn't drop their weapons? The ones who realized that bullets did nothing to stop their hunters?
They charged. Desperate. Screaming. One man, a former Teutonica legionnaire, lunged with his combat knife, aiming for the Imperator's throat.
Too slow. The Imperator caught his wrist mid swing, an squeezed.
CRACK.
The bone shattered like glass. The man's scream barely had time to leave his throat before the Imperator's other fist slammed into his chest, caving it inward with a sickening crunch.
His lifeless body crumpled at the Imperator's feet. Another charged with a bayonet, hoping to skewer one of the warriors in white skull faced helmets.
Zero One let him come. At the last second, he sidestepped, caught the rifle mid thrust, and twisted. The Teutonica soldier howled as his arms were bent backward, bones snapping under the pressure.
Zero One finished it with a knee to the skull. The moment the guard hit the ground, his caved In head was facing the wrong way.
It was over in seconds.
The Death Squad advanced, stepping over corpses, their barrel smoking weapons still aimed at anything that moved.
The Grand Duke had seen enough. The fat, trembling ruler finally moved. His instincts kicked in. He ran.
Stumbling past his dead men, shoving fallen bodies aside, he barely managed to reach the hidden entrance behind his throne.
With a trembling hand, he slammed his palm onto the concealed panel. The stone doorway slid open.
A dark tunnel stretched before him. Without hesitation, he bolted inside. Just as he took his first step into the tunnel, a hand clamped down on his shoulder like a steel vice.
"AAGH!"
Before he could even scream properly, his body was yanked backward with brutal force. He crashed onto the cold stone floor of the throne room, his robe tearing, his bejeweled crown tumbling off his head and rolling across the blood slick marble.
The world spun.
Pain flared across his back, his lungs heaved for air, and as he desperately tried to crawl away, a shadow loomed over him.
He turned his pale, sweat drenched face upward. And there he stood. The Imperator.
His massive, armored figure dominated the ruined throne room, his crimson plumed helmet with specks of blood on his white skull shaped face plate stark against the smoke filled air.
The Imperator let his massive rifle hang loose from the sling strapped across his chest. Then, with an almost casual motion, he lifted both hands and unlatched his helmet.
A sharp hiss of depressurization escaped the seals. The helmet came off. And the man underneath… smiled.
A slow, deliberate grin. Not one of amusement. Not one of malice. But a smirk of a man who already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask.
The Imperator squatted down, resting his armored elbows on his armored knees, staring at the Grand Duke like a gangster come to collect his debt with interest.
The Grand Duke couldn't move. His heart pounded. His entire body trembled. For the first time, he realized. He was truly afraid.
The no older than eighteen Imperator reached into one of the now empty mag pouches on his harness, pulling out a crushed pack of cigarettes.
He tapped one out, placing it between his lips. A click of a zippo lighter, and the cigarette flared to life.
He took a slow, deep drag. Then, exhaled smoke right into the Grand Duke's face. Finally, he spoke.
"You've got two choices."
The words were spoken slowly, deliberately. The Grand Duke sucked in a breath, nodding frantically. The Imperator continued.
"One."
He lifted an armored finger.
"I kill you here and now. And that means I'll have to do the rest the hard way. That means more blood, more corpses, more of your and mine people dying for nothing. You'll die, they'll die, and your little kingdom will crumble whether you like it or not."
He took another drag of his cigarette.
"Or…"
The Grand Duke's throat bobbed. The Imperator's crimson eyes with yellow pupils glowed like molten iron as he leaned in closer.
"Or, you surrender. Right here. Right now. You tell your soldiers to lay down their arms, you order every last one of them to stand down, and you get to live."
He took another long pull of his cigarette, exhaling slowly.
"So, which is it going to be?"
The Grand Duke's hands shook. His entire body was drenched in sweat. His breath came in ragged, shallow gasps.
He wanted to speak. To curse. To scream. To fight back. But instead. He collapsed forward, his forehead hitting the ground.
His shoulders shook. His voice trembled. And he whispered.
"I… I surrender."
The Imperator grinned.
"Good, good alright stand up man, no need to keep groveling like that Im not a sadist"
The Imeprator said as he effortlessly pulled of the grand duke and patted of his non existent dust of his clothes like a true big brother.
But In the Grand Dukes eyes the nonchalant smiling face and actions were more scarier than anything.
F*ck nima, not a sadist?! More like a bonafied psycho!
The trembling like a leaf In a storm grand duke thought with tears rolling down his cheeks as he looked at the thing In a form of a youth even younger than him.
...
The modified Panzer II with white Roman numerals III painted on the side of It's turret sat idling behind the remains of a shattered by It's canon building, its hull hidden beneath the shadows of a ruined café.
Inside, Decanus wiped the blood from his brow cut open by stray shrapnel with a gloved hand, his fingers gripping the edge of the turret hatch as he squinted toward the battlefield ahead.
The battle for the Teutonica capital was still raging, street by street, block by block. Gunfire cracked in the distance, punctuated by the deep, rumbling booms of panzer canons discharging It's payload.
But here? Here in his sector, the fighting had ground to a halt. For the moment. Commander Nevra with his newly replenished first contubernium from the survivors of the first paratrooper cohort ran over.
"Heavy machine gun nest at our twelve, a hundred meters out. It's pinning us down. We need armor aupport"
Commander Nevra roared while pointing with his finger, hearing this Decanus gave a thumb up while reaching for the internal comm switch linked to his crew.
"Load HE. We've got a machine gun nest to clear."