Happy Hour

[closesecond]

It takes a while for Kane to notice the napkin, engrossed as he is in his EVA display and its reports of the layout of the proving ground where the GDI Mammoth Tank is being tested. The napkins have piled up five-high by the time he finally gets the message.

Kane sighs. "I suppose it was just a matter of time before you pressed me into service. Very well."

Idly he glances up at the calendar. To a man who has lived as many days as Kane, nearly every day of the year carries some significance, most of which the world has forgotten. But as the war against the imperialists rages across Europe, today feels especially significant.

He quickly begins writing the sign.


Madam Bar has enlisted me to be your bartender for this evening. It is, to my understanding, customary for guest bartenders to provide a discount on certain drinks. I shall not be doing so. However, since today is the anniversary of the First Battle of the Marne, I instead invite you to share with me this bottle of 1914 Lafite Rothschild, and drink in remembrance of the fallen.

- Jacob Caine

Comments

[death_gone_mad]

"Trench warfare." She thinks for a bit. "How does that work?"

[closesecond]

"Two armies settle into long defensive lines," Kane says. "They launch artillery at each other, and every once in a while one side decides to attack. Very little is accomplished except a lot of people dying."

[death_gone_mad]

"Oh..."

There's recognition in the way she says it, but a faint hidden bit of nostalgia.

"Like the stories of the god wars. Those were fronts that hardly moved from year to year," she says like a kid who has heard too many tales about the glories of war. "What is accomplished is that the front doesn't move and the lands beyond the front are saved from the fighting."

Safe to produce new bodies to feed into the combine of the Front. Safe, save for assassins and maddened murderers that stalk beyond the Front.

It was a hell of a way to be welcomed back into the world.

[closesecond]

"In a total war, no one is safe from the fighting," Kane says. "Modern warfare extends well beyond the front. It extends to factories, to farms, to villages whose children are never coming home."

Kane is keenly aware of the production necessities of war. It's why he made sure he perfected tiberium-based additive manufacturing before he began his own.

[death_gone_mad]

"How long ago was the first world war from your perspective?" she asks.

[closesecond]

"It ended eighty-two years ago," Kane says.