6-Commando

And we’re back.  By not-quite-so-popular-but-still-rather-vocal demand, I’m introducing Season Two with this recap.  I originally got the suggestion from a friend of mine who told me it was getting difficult to keep track of all the characters.  Fair enough.  So this is for you, man – The Story So Far.

I hope you also all appreciate the update to the website’s design – if anybody tuned in on Friday night you probably caught about six hours where the site was either down or in the midst of an upgrade.  For that, I apologize, but I usually do site tests and such on Friday nights, because that’s when traffic is at its lowest, and also because I’m a big dork who doesn’t have anywhere to be.  This time, the upgrades were a matter of necessity – a great big “Screw You, Jerkoff!” goes out to whoever has been spamming me with attempts to sell “Cheap Beats By Dre.”  He found some program loophole which I have now closed, and so he can just blow it out his ass from here on out.  But in the process, I had to reset a number of things that fouled up my original site design, so I took the opportunity to make the whole thing a bit smoother and easier to read.  So I hope you like it!  Just in time for Chapter 4.

Anyway, that’s enough’a my yakkin.  I’m off to bed.  Welcome back to 6-Commando, folks!  We’re back and better than ever!

And by the way, just in case you can’t read the text above (it was designed to resolve for print, you see, so…) here’s what it says, by way of summing up the first book:

At the end of the twentieth century, a long Cold War over ideology and natural resources threatens to drive two atomic superpowers, the UNA and the FSR, into a global conflict.  The source of tension: the Congolese Disrecognized Zone, where each side suspects the other of building up arsenals of weapons in preparation for an atomic war.

In the midst of these escalating tensions, Major Sarah Bronniford and her co-pilot Lieutenant Milo Placeman, a pilot with the UNA’s 6th Multinational Command, is captured by FSR Sergeant Alexei Vissarionov when their reconnaissance mission takes them too close to an enemy convoy.  An attempted rescue operation by Captain Stephen Santelli rapidly goes awry, and Colonel Conrad Haulley sends 6-Commando’s robotic “Rumbler” superheavy tank Mike-One-Echo into action as a show of force.  In the field, however, Mike suffers an apparent malfunction, and launches an unauthorized attack against FSR positions, far beyond his original orders. Major Thomas Rucker, the unit’s second-in-command, realizes the danger and attempts to recall him, but it is too late: thinking that Mike is part of a general attack, the FSR commander, Colonel Talinina, orders a tactical atomic strike to stop him before he reaches their lines.

In the wake of the atomic detonation, Sarah lies delerious and seriously wounded inside the radiation zone, where she is found by FSR medical troops and evacuated.  Major Rucker tries to determine what to do next, only to discover that events have already overtaken them: the UNA air forces appear in the skies, part of a counter-strike against the FSR missile sites.  Sarah regains consciousness in an FSR field hospital, where she is tended to by Dr. Petrov. The UNA air strike arrives, and as Sarah is evacuated to a shelter, Mike, damaged but undeterred, arrives to rescue her.  At the same time, in desperation, the FSR force launcehs its missiles before they are destroyed, triggering a global atomic war.

With Central Africa devastated, the remnants of 6-Commando take refuge in their underground base and attempt to locate survivors. Much to their surprise, they find Mike-One-Echo, barely mobile and badly malfunctioning, but carrying Sarah, unconscious but still alive, inside his armor. Mike at first seems inert, but when UNA medical team led by Dr. Haakman contemplates euthanasia to spare a dying Sarah from her suffering, Mike takes action, assuming control of the base and enlisting a distraught Major Rucker to bring Sarah to him, with promises that he can help her. With the base in chaos, Colonel Haulley and Lieutenant-Colonel Zaballa, who are undertaking a secret project of their own, find themselves at odds, as Zaballa begins to doubt their mission and its implications for the war they have just provoked. As he tries to determine what to do next, he receives an unexpected message from an unknown caller, and the crisis takes on a mysterious new dimension…