Will you ever continue this?

Writing is fine, but I was hoping for the story to feature GDI and NOD's reaction to the Scrin 'invasion'. So disappointing.

I doubt that even AI controlled close defense and missile fires would withstand sustained missile attack. It's only as good as it's sensors...

Poor guy.

Looks the the brotherhood has some morals.

Always found it so silly when some media tried to present a walker-type vehicle as superior to a threaded design, when in fact it would be inferior to it in every way that mattered? Bigger profile, weaker armor (since its distributed over larger surface area), lower speed, lower stability, much higher cost.

I wonder if legion is in this story?

This is, and has always been, and might always be, my favorite CnC fanfic.

KANE VIVE! VIVA KANE!

"Nod on Nod violence, when will it end?" - Anonymous Nod Militant.

"Until next chapter . . ." And we still wait. It's a shame, because I quite enjoyed the later elements of the story. I like seeing the life of the commanders away from the battlefield, and decisions they have to make. You did Nod justice with it's internal struggles, even if you were unsatisfied with it. I hope with the news of the remasters in the works that'll you'll come back to that, but I'm prepared for the worst to say the least. Good story though even if left incomplete.

Okay, so I'm super late to the party and not sure if this will be read or not, but the story is simply too epic not to leave a review on. I fell in love with the C&C universe a long time ago, but back in the day I never came across too much in the way of fanfiction detailing it. At least, not in great, gritty, and gut-punchingly powerful detail like this one does.

This did not feel like a fanfic. This felt like a true-to-life novel written in the C&C universe. Not only are the characters interesting, but the simple fact that it goes to such lengths to show the war from both sides while also capturing the near-apocalyptic madness and confusion of the Third Tiberium War is just awesome. As in, the old and original definition of awesome. Awe inspiring.

Then, of course, comes the action. I have seen a lot of stories that skimp on the fighting, and a lot of others that focus on it way to much leading to it reading as a mundane been-there-done-that exchange. Somehow, despite the fact that this story is almost entirely built up of a couple very long and very detailed engagements, it never feels dull or drawn out. The life-or-death tension is on point, and the growing exhaustion of the soldiers who have been lasting through it all is palpable. The variety of combat scenarios and the tactical acumen makes for an awesome read (at least on the GDI side, will touch on that later). In short, it doesn't even matter if a lot of it is small-scale carnage or large-scale devastation. Even the unimportant skirmishes have more impact than most stories have in their climactic finale. It feels tight and real and meaningful. Basically, even if some of it does come across as action-p**n, it's the kind that's so good you watch it for the story.

On the GDI side of things, it was pretty incredible. The power of armored units, heroic last-stands, and the sheer amount of DETAIL (capitalized for emphasis) on the tech and equipment they brought to the field was phenomenal. The troops, including a certain super-commando of course, made for compelling warriors holding out against a tide of enemies that had taken them completely off guard. In short, it did exactly as advertised and took the insanity of the situation and slammed it full-tilt into the reader's face so that they could feel the same madness as the characters.

That said, there were a few things I thought could use some improvement, namely on the Nod side of things. I'll preface this by saying that ***I fully admit to being a total Nod fanboy*** so please take my criticisms with a grain of salt but I did feel that their perspective was a lot weaker than the GDI writing, and not just in terms of the narrative.

To put it simply, the whole fight felt largely one-sided. You'd hear about GDI losing ground again and again and again, but in each battle the kills/deaths would be almost totally skewed in GDI's favor. Obviously that makes some sense as Nod makes such heavy use of poorly trained militia, but the fact that it is skewed to the point of literally being several hundred Nod dead to one or two GDI lost in a lot of cases really made it feel like the pressure that GDI was under wasn't nearly as bad as it tried to come across some times.

Going to stop for a moment and make it clear that it is not nearly so one-sided as a lot of other stories can be, but the fact that you see several points throughout the story where 6 GDI infantrymen rack up kills in the triple digits on the Nod soldiers who kind of just file into their bullets kind of kills the feeling that you try to build up when showing it from the Nod perspective. Even the new recruits on their first deployments manage to cut enormous swathes out of the Nod forces. And when the Nod elites start moving up, they just feel... underwhelming. Kind of coming from the fact that there's so much terror and fear built up around the Black Hand, but then when they engage the GDI forces, they seem to be pretty clunky and unwieldy. Sure they push the riflemen back a bit at a time, and they take more bullets to go down, but the fact that they are continuously shown to miss shots on fleeing troops over open ground despite their augments (and have reactions slow enough to even let a terrified prisoner cripple one and make her escape with a stolen rifle) clashes with the reactions of the GDI soldiers.

I think a good example would be the Commando. It is a bit disheartening to see the GDI Commando casually annihilate Avatars, Specters, entire infantry regiments, and assassinate Nod commanders (yes, I know Havoc isn't exactly normal even by Commando standards, but still) where as the Nod version takes ages to pick apart a single rifle squad (why was she playing with them during one of the most important pushes in the initial battle when she was supposed to be clearing the way for Nod soldiers?), nearly lets one escape from her, and then just kind of gets wasted by a sniper who happened to catch a glimpse of her while he was looking for other targets. Made for a pretty lopsided comparison, especially given the sheer terror that the GDI troops were experiencing only to come up with such an anti-climactic performance on her part.

There were also a couple inconsistencies, such as earlier on in the story Black Hand were being dropped by pot-shots from riflemen while later on they were tanking full volleys fairly easily except for their optics systems. Not that I'm complaining that they got a better showing down the line, but it kind of stood out.

Ultimately, even Kane himself acknowledges that Nod had suffered millions of casualties in that battle alone. That is an astronomical number of losses, and even though Nod has tons of cheap, replaceable troops at their beck and call, they don't have an unlimited amount. Those were horrific losses on their side, especially given that GDI had such an enormous advantage in that k/d rate and was starting to field a thousand Mammoth Tanks during their push back against Nod (who were only rocking a couple dozen Avatars). Vance Mother F***ing Stubbs approves, by the way.

All in all though, my minor gripes aside, this was a fantastic story. The action was incredible and the writing quality was in a class of it's own. Great narrative buildup, great development, and a wide cast of memorable characters. Well, mostly memorable. There were some that didn't leave much impression/were hard to keep track of, but that's an inevitable side effect of having such a huge body-count. I'm only sad that the story was never fully finished (and *maybe* just a *little* that we never really got to see some of the missions where Nod won some decisive victories rather than getting ground down and pushed back). Terrific story, and thank you for putting forth the time and effort to create it.

What a wonderful job you did here, you are the only author I have been able to find who can do a Command and Conquer story correctly.

It's really sad that you're not writing this story anymore. I would love to see your take on Sarajevo, the battles with Scrin, and even the Scrin campaign from the Foreman's perspective.

Was replaying some C&C and got this chant into my head. The idea being, a Confessor. Or some other ranked Nod field commander, is psyching up their troops. If you ever pick this back up, feel free to use it.

Officer: "WE FIGHT!"
Troops: "FOR NOD!"
Officer: "WE LIVE!"
Troops: "FOR NOD!"
Officer: "WE DIE!"
Troops: "FOR NOD!"

i love the the poem on top, 'Rendezvous with Death' hss to be my favorite poem.