"Incoming shells!!!"
Boom!
A shell slammed into the jungle. T'Challa snapped his eyes open to find his personal guard shaking him hard.
"…Prince! They've snapped out of it!"
Boom!
Several artillery blasts overlapped. Watching the dirt and debris erupt, T'Challa's mind still hadn't fully recovered from the concussion caused by the shockwave.
He turned to look beside him—
A massive crater had been blown open next to the electromagnetic cannon by naval gunfire. Most of the spider-silk concrete foundation was exposed. The gunner had lost half his body, screaming as he was carried away on a stretcher.
The Wakandan heir was trained physically and martially, and every warrior of the Royal Guard was the same—many of them seasoned by real combat, having carried out peacekeeping missions across Africa. Some might even have greater raw combat capability than him.
But in this moment, he realized something:
On a battlefield like this, many people weren't eliminated because they lacked skill.
They were eliminated because they were unlucky.
He focused on the battlefield command system.
All twelve electromagnetic cannons were still online—only their position had been hit!
Drone feedback showed that the bombardment was fierce but inaccurate. T'Challa had simply been the unluckiest one, right on the edge of the fire zone.
And the bombardment area was shifting.
Clearly, the enemy intended to blanket the entire jungle with overwhelming firepower, crippling the artillery positions.
As much as he hated to admit it, U.S. firepower really could be this reckless.
Worry filled his guard's eyes. What kind of heir to the throne went to the front line?
"Prince, you should withdraw. Leave this place to us!"
T'Challa heard the words, but his concussion stretched every sound, pulling it long and distant.
Thoughts surged through his head.
Electronic warfare was bidirectional. U.S. warships had radar jamming systems—but so did they.
Those drones in the air didn't require wireless guidance. Limited by size, they couldn't jam wide frequency bands like ship-borne systems, but their onboard AI could still block unshielded frequencies used by U.S. forces.
And most importantly—
They could interfere with satellite signals.
Real-time positioning had become unreliable in this war, errors growing massive. But Wakanda's newest drone arrays compensated for this—there was deviation, but the data remained stable and timely.
Enemy firepower was overwhelming—
But it was effectively blind fire.
Not only were the warships relying purely on visual targeting, the enemy's air and ground forces hadn't fully entered the battlefield yet.
Most of the aircraft aboard the Truman were covering another front.
On that front, the African Union had no troops at all. In just a few hours, it would likely fall completely.
T'Challa knew it clearly:
This was the best possible moment to strike.
They had to seize it.
He snapped back to himself, shook off his guard's hands, and looked toward the distance.
Armed helicopters and transport aircraft were crossing the coastline, heading straight for the electromagnetic cannon positions.
"We keep firing. Keep attacking! Hold the position!!" His voice boomed through the helmet's amplifier. "Launch the drones!!"
[T'Challa: They're close enough. Launch the drones!]
[T'Challa: Launch the drone bombs!]
His roar flooded the combat channel. Still dazed by the blasts, T'Challa kept repeating the orders.
But repetition was far better than freezing in shock.
Hidden along the coast, in the jungle, among rocks, drone carrier vehicles tore away their camouflage in unison.
These vehicles were only slightly larger than standard armored transports, but their rear cargo bays occupied most of the volume.
At the command, the bays lifted like missile silos.
From the front, blue light shimmered along the magnetic rails.
These were electromagnetic launch tracks—used to catapult fixed-wing drones loaded with explosives.
[Name: Falcon Strike Drone]
[Carbon fiber, armor-piercing alloy, full-power turbofan, fixed-wing, autonomous AI]
[Description: Fixed-wing drone accelerated via internal electromagnetic launch rails. After target lock, wings deploy for sustained acceleration. Destroys targets through direct impact and explosive payload; highly effective against armored units.]
[Maximum speed: 250 km/h]
[Development Lab: Advanced Mechanics Laboratory]
[Developers: Leo, Dr. Toomes]
[Technology Points Awarded: 500]
[Current Technology Points: 14,500]
Bang—
Along the coastline, the sound of catapult launches was drowned out by artillery fire.
Long, slender drones shot out at 100 km/h. Once airborne sensors locked onto targets, the fixed wings snapped fully open, and the turbofans roared to maximum output.
"What the hell is that?"
Onboard the warship, observers only saw a massive swarm burst from the coast—like a cloud of missile-bees.
But how could impoverished Africa possibly have swarm missiles?
Before the thought could settle, the drones accelerated sharply, locking onto every transport aircraft approaching the shore.
At speeds of up to 250 km/h, they slammed straight into the transports. The armor-piercing alloy noses punched into the fuselages—
Boom!
Explosions erupted almost simultaneously, flames painting the sky red.
"What the hell—"
"Soldier, that's what I want to know! What the hell are those things?!"
The captain's roar snapped the stunned observer back to reality.
"I—I guess… drones?"
Drones?
The captain rolled the word around in his mind.
The Gulf War had shown the world the power of U.S. forces—enemies dying under mysterious bombardment.
Information warfare had since become every nation's obsession.
As a Gulf War veteran, he sensed the outline of the next evolution of war—
Autonomous steel soldiers.
And drones that resembled missiles, yet were far more precise and agile.
Drones would change the future of warfare.
Boom!
The ship suddenly lurched upward violently. Inside the room, the captain's head slammed into the wall, tearing open a gash as blood spilled everywhere—
This was no time to write battlefield theory papers.
The fight wasn't over.
"…Damn it, we need to counterattack! Command—"
[—static—]
[Forced landing—static—provide cover.]
Whoosh—
Dozens of amphibious assault ships surged forward at full speed, pushing through the artillery barrage, following the second wave of armed transports and helicopters toward the shore!
They were forcing a landing under fire!
On assault ships and attack boats, steel soldiers raised their weapons skyward. Together with ship-borne CIWS, they formed a dense curtain of metal, intercepting suicide drones diving at the vehicles.
"Damn it… keep shelling!"
After all, it wasn't them advancing under fire.
But he'd forgotten one thing—
The ship had jolted violently just moments earlier.
Bang!
A crewman burst into the room, terror written across his face.
"Captain! Our bow's been blown open!"
In two minutes, seventy-two electromagnetic rounds had been fired.
One destroyer had been split in half.
Another was burning fiercely—barely afloat, and clearly only moments away from being hit again.
The final shot—
An electromagnetic cannon near T'Challa detonated violently. Shrapnel scattered everywhere. By sheer luck, no one was hit.
But the effect was decisive.
"We hit them!"
Thanks to the projectile's special construction, the plasma-state warhead eliminated partial-damage scenarios like deflection.
The high-temperature plasma layer melted straight through outer armor, letting the penetrator wreak havoc inside.
This shot nearly crippled the cruiser.
The bow-mounted navigation radar and sensor arrays were shattered beyond recognition.
After two minutes of continuous firing, the cannon barrels were completely overheated and had to be replaced.
Only two drone carrier vehicles remained.
Africa lacked a complete industrial system.
Most of these high-end components were handcrafted—built by workers with extremely sensitive neural responses, equipped with brain-machine interfaces and skill-chips.
Each piece was a work of exhaustion and sacrifice.
For weaker nations, replacing advanced machinery with skilled manual labor was common.
Brain-machine interfaces had pushed that to its absolute limit.
Three drone bomb carriers, thirty drones each.
One carrier's entire load had already been expended.
The remaining drones had to be redirected to more critical fronts.
Sensing the gap in firepower, two U.S. amphibious assault ships surged forward at full speed, plowing past friendly wreckage, ignoring soldiers' screams—
Their sole objective was to storm the shore and overwhelm it with sheer numbers of heavily armed steel soldiers.
At the same time, armed transports and helicopters crossed the drone-bombardment line in the sky.
The outermost drone carrier vehicles began retreating.
But could they really outrun aircraft?
Closer.
Closer.
"Prince, three positions have been hit, and two more have electromagnetic feedline failures."
The most terrifying thing on a battlefield had happened:
Weapon malfunction.
The Rattlesnake Electromagnetic Cannon had only just left the laboratory.
The prototype hadn't even undergone a full test cycle.
Most craftsmen lacked precision machining experience, forced into competence through stacked skill-chips.
Who knew what was actually wrong with the malfunctioning cannons?
Fortunately, the nuclear reactors buried beneath the soil hadn't exploded.
"Replace the barrels!"
T'Challa turned and waved to his guards, then bent down and grabbed the barrel himself—
That last bombardment had been lucky. The cannon hadn't been destroyed.
It was crooked.
The gunner and loader had each lost half their bodies.
But the cannon could still fire.
"I said keep firing!"
Boom!
At the far end of the jungle, fire and dirt surged skyward.
The Royal Guard said nothing more, following their prince to man the turrets.
T'Challa realized something then—
The enemy had already bombarded this area.
That meant their carpet-bombing sweep likely wouldn't return here.
Which meant—
They might be the ones who survived to the end.
"But Prince… how long do we have to hold?"
"Until the carrier's escorts lose all pursuit and cover capability. Then release the second defensive drone wave.
We will never retreat!!!"
Clack.
The barrel slid into the breech. The locking mechanism engaged.
T'Challa grabbed the magnetic-rail rifle at his side—
"Fire!"
Boom!
Shells streaked endlessly through the air.
Assault ships and boats charged across a sea choked with wreckage, pushing toward land. Countless bullets and missiles poured out, intercepting drones trying to strike the transports.
Drones attempted to breach the metal storm.
Explosions erupted sometimes midair, sometimes against assault boats or transport aircraft.
Iron rain fell—some toward the sky, some into sea and soil—every fragment trailing flame.
Civilians in the port had lost the will to flee.
Some clutched one another, sobbing and trembling in terror.
Others emptied their minds, watching a spectacle no force of nature could ever create.
The sun began to set.
Against the skyline, explosions flickered endlessly, darkening the city's outline.
The African Union had done everything it could.
But the enemy was too many.
Too strong.
Boom!
Above the port, an armed transport aircraft was struck by a drone, punched through the fireball, and slammed straight into the ground.
The metal beast rolled and skidded, finally stopping against a pile of ruins.
Clack.
Burning metal plating was smashed open by equally metallic arms.
Thud.
Heavy footsteps announced a successful landing.
[Jarvis: Begin assembling forces.]
High above, unseen, fighter aircraft also moved into position.
The northern front no longer needed their support.