Chapter 1

Rotor blades whirling, the Black Hawk touched down. GI's poured from the helicopter, into the city of death. Alongside the regular GI's were new specially commissioned 'Guardians', armed with heavy rocket launchers to do serious damage to enemy armor. This was judgment day.

The vast majority of the surviving Allied forces had been scrambled to Moscow, tank battalions being 'shifted' in, as well as the airlift of thousands of allied troopers. This was a final gambit, a last chance to change the world.

Allied GI Charlie Helgram leapt from the chopper. His squad were before him, many already racing to take up positions in the antiquated buildings in the Moscow square. Flak blazed into the skies, as the battle for Moscow began in earnest. Far overhead, 4 friends began the flight of their lives.

Soviet tanks raced into the square, so intent on destroying the allied transports that they didn't notice the Pelt twins, the squad's two guardians, deploy their rocket launchers in the alleyway between two buildings. The first two missiles wrecked one Rhino; the second salvo finished off another. The third rhino ran straight into the massed guns bristling from the garrisoned buildings.

It was time to move; a bridgehead had been established, and the siren for an imminent chronoshift sounded in the squad's radios. Racing away from the target zone, the 3rd Enfield 'Rifles' regiment from a small suburb of London made for the fight.

Green squad was ambushed in a narrow street by soviet flamethrowers, the radio announced. It was a crippling loss for the other squads, their veteran troopers extinguished by a wash of flame. But the remainder pulled on, their mission to silence the flak cannons drawing such a toll on their air force.

The battle raged in the skies, and sweat ran down the faces of the Pelt twins, carrying their heavy equipment in the freezing air. Some of it froze, and distorted their faces like ice demons.

The sergeant was yelling, firing his assault rifle at a group of conscripts charging out of an alleyway. Despite the heavy casualties on the soviet side, 'Spikey' Peters bit the bullet, his frail body hitting the ground in a hail of bullets and blood. Charlie's heart flew to his throat, the enthusiastic young GI had not even finished his first battle. Charlie had once dated the boy's sister - he would have alot of explaining to do. Shrinking slightly at the idea of the expression on the attractive young woman's face, Charlie reloaded his weapon and continued. This was war. People died. Up close and personal. The life of a GI. Not some namby-pamby airforce pilot, who only saw the explosions that marked the death of their enemies and allies. This is where it really happened, where it hurt.

The team had reached the first emplacement now, guns blazing away the communist defenders. It was their job to silence the booming voices of the A-A emplacements, and by any means possible it would get done. Privates Gates, Wilson and Hayford - Greg, Mark, and Anthony to their friends - made it to the top, Charlie Helgram racing after them. James and Alf Pelt had deployed their rocket launchers to one side of the cannons, hoping that they could ward off the inevitable armored assault that the soviets would bring to bear. The rest of the squad, including Sergeant Miles, a grizzled but hardy veteran of the 2nd World War, garrisoned the bunker slightly to the west. The road ahead of them, flanked by tall buildings in the Russian style, lead straight towards the center of the city. Blinking away the snow that had began to fall onto his eyelids, Charlie could see across the city, towards the Kremlin.

Aircraft, both allied and soviet, dueled overhead in the freezing sky. The allied harriers were reaping a heavy toll on the requisitioned Yak Fighters that the soviets had drawn together to fight a frantic air defense of their capital, but the soviet flak emplacements, such as the one that Jawson, the demolitions man, was busy strapping C4 explosives to, were shooting down many of the proud allied pilots. Charlie wondered how the British Air force was doing; knowing that the elite pilots of the RAF lead by many veterans of the Battle of Britain had been drafted into this desperate bid. Jawson strapped the C4 to the last cannon, stepped back as he anticipated lifted the detonator above his head, in the ritual that the squad had used in many training exercises. Time seemed to slow, as the explosives expert looked up into the sky, a look of terror dawning on his face. The Pelt twins leapt up, sprinting away from the cannons in desperation, despite the heavy armour and weapons. A harrier fell from the sky, one wing shown away, spiraling out of control. The last thing Jawson saw was the face of the unconscious pilot, his neck severed by a flak burst, as the aircraft smashed into the explosive-rigged emplacement with a deafening explosion of sound and light.

To be continued…

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