Zodhiss's Ice Cream Monster was merely the spark. Afghanistan was a powder keg waiting to blow.
He had, of course, anticipated something like this would happen. It was a classic example of regional instability.
This world's Afghanistan had the added complication of the Ten Rings, making an already volatile situation even more explosive. It only took the slightest friction to ignite a full-blown conflagration.
And now, the entirety of Afghanistan had erupted.
The U.S. forces stationed in the country, having tasted the sweetness of their surprise assault and successfully seizing fifteen Afghan villages from Ten Rings control, decided to press their advantage. They deployed an armored mechanized unit, with attack helicopters slated to provide air support.
After topping off their fuel tanks, the Apaches immediately proceeded to their holding positions. Once in place, they hovered silently in the air, roughly twenty kilometers from the target zone. As soon as the scout helicopters and Global Hawk drones pinpointed the enemy's exact location, the gunships would swoop in for the kill.
Three M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks locked onto targets two kilometers away. The tanks' fire control systems utilized a hunter-killer commander's independent thermal viewer. Unlike traditional setups, the sight and the main gun were independently stabilized and mounted separately.
Once the gunner aligned the reticle onto the target using the control yoke, the fire control computer automatically calculated the firing solution. It accounted for sensor data like wind speed, propellant temperature, target distance, angular velocity, and cant angle, then drove the gun servo system to adjust the barrel to the required lead position.
Moments later, the "gun ready" indicator lit up in the gunner's sight. They were cleared to fire.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The tanks shuddered violently with recoil.
Through his sight, the gunner watched three bright specks streak across the distance almost simultaneously and impact the targets.
Within the Ten Rings, chaos reigned supreme. They were fighting a three-front war: trying to contain the terrifying Ice Cream Monster, which ignored their bullets and shells as it rampaged through the poppy fields; fending off the ferocious firepower of the U.S. military; and holding back the fanatical, drug-fueled assaults of the Taliban.
Under this triple-pronged pressure, the Ten Rings would have been annihilated long ago if not for the substantial backing they received from the CIA, which gave them considerable depth and resources.
Even so, faced with the U.S. military's ruthless deployment of armored mechanized units and attack helicopters, the Ten Rings could barely mount a counteroffensive. The Americans' only notable loss was a single Apache helicopter, unlucky enough to be brought down by an RPG.
Incidentally, that RPG was an advanced model originally manufactured by Stark Industries. Its velocity far exceeded that of standard rocket-propelled grenades, making it nearly impossible to evade.
Just as the U.S. forces were advancing steadily, a missile slammed into one of the M1A2 Abrams tanks.
The missile tore through the tank's armor with contemptuous ease, obliterating it. From the Ten Rings' defensive line, a massive iron behemoth emerged.
"Son of a bitch! They have a War Machine!"
"Motherfucker, that's the Iron Monger!"
The American troops felt like their brains were short-circuiting. How in the hell did the Ten Rings get their hands on a War Machine Mark II variant like the Iron Monger?
Had that arms dealer Zodhiss actually sold War Machine suits to terrorists?
The Iron Monger charged forward. U.S. soldiers along its path scattered in panicked retreat. This was a joke, right? The Iron Monger's armor plating alone was nearly as thick as their torsos, and it was made of steel alloy. Their rifles and sniper rifles would do nothing but tickle it.
The Ten Rings leader, piloting the Iron Monger, snarled with rage as he activated the suit's right arm cannon.
It was a 20mm chain gun. When that beast roared to life, even reinforced concrete fortifications half a meter thick could not withstand its barrage. Everything in its path was mercilessly ripped apart into clouds of dust and debris.
And out here, there were no bunkers for these American soldiers to hide behind.
Men are not made of steel.
The lead soldiers were torn apart, flesh and blood scattering in a crimson mist. Against the terrifying, shredding power of the chain gun, human bodies were impossibly fragile. The hail of bullets brought death and simultaneously dismembered the fallen.
Amid the deafening roar, bodies were pulverized and mangled.
One soldier's head simply exploded.
According to the suit's onboard computer tracking ammunition expenditure, one hundred and sixty-four rounds had struck and passed through that single soldier's skull in that instant.
Another soldier realized he had been hit at the same moment he looked down in horror to see his abdomen and lower body completely severed from his torso. The storm of bullets slicing through the air had acted like an invisible guillotine, cleaving him cleanly in two.
A blur of mangled corpses flashed across the HUD, interspersed with shattered organs, bone fragments, severed limbs, and lifeless faces frozen in their final moments. The Ten Rings leader grinned savagely, preparing to continue his slaughter, when a tank shell slammed into his suit.
The Iron Monger's thick outer shell buckled inward from the impact, but the dent was only fist-deep. The force of the explosive shell knocked the suit back several meters, but that was the extent of the damage.
"Load! Switch to depleted uranium sabot!"
The tank commander barked the order.
The burly African American loader yanked an M829A2 APFSDS round from the ammunition rack and rammed it into the breech.
"Up!"
The loader shouted, signaling the gun was ready.
The accompanying Bradley infantry fighting vehicles opened fire, their M242 Bushmaster chain guns cycling at maximum rate. Tracer rounds streaked through the air like dazzling fireworks.
It was a lethal iron rain.
The relentless impacts staggered the Iron Monger, the concussive force making it difficult for the pilot to stabilize the suit, let alone return fire accurately.
Thwump!
The M829A2 sabot round struck the Iron Monger.
The Iron Monger's frontal armor had a physical thickness exceeding seven hundred millimeters. Even an armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot round, upon penetrating such a massive slab of composite armor, would typically liquefy from the intense friction generated.
This was a wall of despair that most rocket-propelled grenade warheads could not hope to breach.
But depleted uranium penetrators were a different breed.
The round nearly punched a gaping hole clean through the center of the Iron Monger's power source. The Ten Rings leader inside was doused with a spray of molten metal, superheated by the immense friction of the impact. He screamed in agony as the liquid metal seared through his flesh and bone, melting him alive inside his own war machine.
"Tssss... that looks like it hurt."
Zodhiss clicked his tongue from afar.
It wasn't a flaw in his product's design, per se. The main issue was that the Ten Rings leader had been too cheap to pay for the premium upgrades. Had he been willing to shell out a bit more cash for a secondary purchases coating, he would not have died such a gruesome death, nor would his armor have been breached so easily.
After all, a single millimeter of secondary purchases offered defensive properties comparable to a hundred millimeters of standard rolled homogeneous steel, along with excellent structural resilience. It just lacked the primary Adamantium's ability to absorb energy and self-repair.
If the Ten Rings leader, now presumably on his way to the Yellow Springs or some version of Hell, could hear that thought, one wonders what his reaction would be.
secondary purchases cost ten thousand dollars per gram. For a suit as massive as the Iron Monger, just imagine the price tag for a full coating.
/-\
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