RTS System in the Apocalypse: New World

Bastion One sped toward the base, dust trailing off behind it.

”Bastion One approaching base. Watcher Four, do you copy?”

”Watcher Four copies. You’re good to go, Bastion One.”

The outer barricade came into view.

Two Army Soldiers stood behind stacked concrete blocks and welded metal plates. A Machine Gunner watched from the second floor of a half-repaired warehouse, his muzzle angled toward the road. Farther behind them, a Guardian APC sat with its autocannon turned aside, not aimed at Bastion One, but ready to move at the slightest change.

My outer defenses are uglier by the day, Hans thought as he observed the base through the Radar map.

The Engineers had done what they could.

Damaged barriers had been restored. Broken road sections had been cleared or patched. Metal plates had been welded over gaps that should have remained closed. Even the crude choke points along the outer line had been reinforced enough to delay infected, vehicles, or idiots who thought driving straight through a military base was a good idea.

The base had grown too quickly.

At first, a few blocked roads, patrol routes, and armed soldiers were enough.

Zombies would not negotiate through the gates, nor would they follow the pathing as how it happened in games.

Real life was different.

And more importantly, his current situation was no longer simple.

Cell 7 had left, but he had reason to suspect they had seen part of the operation.

Nearby survivors had probably felt the artillery and psychic pressure one way or another.

His base was no longer a quiet foothold hiding in the northwestern industrial sector.

It was becoming a lighthouse near a dead city, drawing not only infected, but survivors and parties with various interests.

Hans leaned back slightly.

Engineers could repair roads and strengthen barriers.

They could not turn an improvised perimeter into a proper fortress by welding scrap metal forever.

Once there were enough resources, he would need to renovate the outer line properly.

Sensor coverage.

Command outposts.

Layered checkpoints.

And eventually, real defensive structures instead of glorified junk walls.

Bastion One passed through the outer line.

The crude barricade closed behind them, metal scraping against concrete with an ugly noise that made Hans’s eyebrow twitch.

The Guardian APC rolled deeper into the base. Through the viewport and Radar overlay, he saw the familiar pieces of his territory unfolding one after another.

Hans leaned back on his seat and closed his eyes. He did not speak for the rest of the ride. There were too many things he had to arrange and re-arrange.

Bastion One stopped near the Command Room.

The ramp lowered.

Hans stepped out first.

Callum followed behind him without a word, his armor still carrying traces of black fluid and dust from the hive wound. The nearby soldiers saluted, remaining silent throughout.

Hans entered the Command Room without slowing down. The doors closed after Callum entered.

The sound of engines, patrols, and distant industrial noise from the Strategic Facilities faded behind the walls.

Only then did Hans exhaled.

The central map was already active.

Grefort unfolded across the table, layered in black, gray, red, blue, and faint structural outlines. The western edge carried fresh scars from the operation.

The dead hive zone pulsed with warning marks, unstable underground sections, collapsed structures, and scattered red markers that had failed to join the red tide for unknown reasons.

The highway itself was full of blue marks now.

Hans stared at the Radar map, then back to the map in front of him.

One hive was dead. Many more remain.

Their positions unknown to him. Their abilities and weaknesses unknown to him.

He realized that each hive encounter brought him different scenarios to deal with. Even though artillery shells could handle most of the hive problem but that was naive.

What if the hive was far enough that his artillery could not reach?

Or if it dug deep enough that the earth acted as its solid shield?

Or if it could shift its position that artilleries could not alter their trajectories on time, and the hive would simply toy with his army?

This new one felt weird.

Hans could not put it into words immediately, but the hive had been intelligent in ways the previous ones had not shown as clearly.

The first hive had been dangerous because Hans was weaker.

Spores, visual distortion, muddled thoughts, collapsing structures, and sudden ambushes. Back then, every wrong step could have buried his soldiers before they understood what they were facing.

The second hive had been larger. Wider infestation. Deeper roots. More bodies, and more flesh.

But by then, Hans’s army had grown too quickly. Artillery, tanks, infantry, and System coordination had crushed the difference before the hive could show whatever tricks it might have prepared.

This third one was not the largest. But its psychic wave was extremely strong.

Its advantage lay on the fact that it was near the city center. The closer it was, the more infected it could have called.

Strange, Hans narrowed his eyes. He scanned the city map once more and realized that something did not fit.

The third hive had been close to the western commercial districts.

Westgate District. That was what the locals called that side of Grefort which Hans almost nearly had forgotten.

Before the apocalypse, Westgate was not the largest district, but it was one of the busier ones.

Offices, shopping streets, service apartments, hotels, small warehouses, delivery hubs, parking buildings, and commuter roads packed themselves together. It was the case of some poorly paid urban planner wasting space so badly because someone pressured them to do so.

To the north, the city changed color.

Commercial blocks slowly gave way to older industrial roads, repair depots, freight yards, storage lots, and factories that belonged to the northern industrial sectors.

Some northeastern pockets even had shanties squeezed between old work zones, where people lived too close to metal walls, drainage canals, and places that a normal city person would not want to be in.

The northwest was where those two worlds touched. Not fully commercial, but not fully industrial either.

It was crowded enough to have many people.

And to Hans, that was the problem. He stared at the hive zone again.

If the hive had been sitting near Westgate, then its available food should have been enormous.

Workers, shoppers, drivers, office staff, guards, tenants, passersby, people trapped in malls and parking buildings after the first day. The infected count can only be said to be very high.

The wave that answered its dying call was large, but not army-ending.

Hans tapped the edge of the map.

Some infected reacted.

The rest remained unresponsive.

Terrain blocking their pathing?

He raised a brow.

Or are they under another hive’s control?