Excerpt from Where Freedom Reigns vol. 2: The Wrath Of God
The Eastern Front - 0600 Hours MT
The battle for Denver, which would encompass the biggest and most brutal tank engagement in the history of the world, began like an opus for the apocalypse. The conductor was the devil himself, who had slipped silently through the open gates of hell and had taken his place on the high plains of Colorado, directly between the combatants. The first downward stroke of his baton unleashed a merciless salvo of Union artillery and rocket fire that crashed without warning upon the Continental's southern army, obliterating men, machines, and every other living thing on the desert flats, twenty kilometers northwest of Strasburg. It quickly built into an unrelenting crescendo of death and destruction that rained down upon the Continental forces for two hours before the dawn, filling the night sky with an unbroken series of blinding flashes, billowing clouds of strobe-lit smoke, and seismic concussions, all of which could be seen for fifty kilometers and felt for a hundred. Then as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped, and the world became deathly quiet, as the curtain of darkness fell upon the theater of war. There was no wind, no movement, nor any other sign of life, and no line of demarcation between the savaged, smoldering earth and the dark and unforgiving sky. It was as if the world was holding its breath, waiting for the beginning of the end.
And so it came. Softly, with a deceptive innocence about it that belied its sinister purpose, a faint rumbling sound penetrated the stillness, muted at first, but gradually growing louder and louder, until it became so powerful, so profoundly visceral, that it might have been God's chair sliding across the floor of heaven. Simultaneously, the ground began to shake, sending tiny pebbles dancing across hard-packed soil, while sagebrush branches trembled in timid harmony. At last, the veil of night released its grip upon the world, and a pastel wash of pink and yellow crept slowly over the horizon, like watercolors seeping up a celestial blotter. And the final act of the battle for Colorado began. With an unstoppable sense of purpose, a long, low line of main battle tanks began their westward advance, silhouetted against the thin, red dawn, gathering speed as they went. They swept across the plains in a symphony of shock and awe until at last, in a thunderous collision of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, the two armies crashed headlong into each other. And the innocent pawns of lesser kings began to die, while high overhead, angels wept.
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