Chimeran War

The Chimeran War was a worldwide conflict between humanity and the parasitic alien race known as the Chimera. The war began in December 1949 when the Chimera emerged from an extremely isolationist Russia and rapidly overtook both continents of Europe and Asia, eliminating and converting millions of the human population into Chimera in the process. The intentions of the Chimera other than global conquest were mostly unknown until the emergence of advanced alien artifacts and the so-called Chimeran tower network that led to the theory that the Chimera once inhabited Earth in prehistoric times and had motivations to use Earth for an unknown purpose.

The conflict had stretched for over four years, in which the Chimera made great stride in advancing and expanding across the planet for the purpose of activating the Chimeran tower network. In the wake of Operation Black Eden, the Chimera's intentions seemingly were to allow Earth to be reconquered by their parent species, the "Pure Chimera".

Origins
Some 60 million years ago, the alien parasitic race known as the Chimera had previously lived on Earth and was at war with another unknown alien race. This conflict heavily defeated the Chimera; in which the Chicxulub crater was a remaining evidence of this massive, cataclysmic conflict. In the aftermath the Chimera and its enemies abandoned Earth. All Chimeran and alien technologies, and other remnants of that war were left buried and undiscovered until the 20th century.

Prelude
By the early 20th century, the Chimera returned to seemingly reclaim Earth from humanity for global conquest and other reasons. It was widely agreed that the Chimera's presence on Earth was because of the Chimeran virus that was carried on the meteorite that caused the Tunguska Event in 1908. The virus then began to infect the local Siberians and other lifeforms; however, only one (local) account of the Chimera - a local shaman - was reported at this time, transforming after months of curious symptoms (the Crawler strain would eventually evolve to be rid of the months of symptoms and produce a faster result).

The Chimera were confined in Russia since 1908, where they built their strength and numbers from infecting the local people and wildlife around their point of origin. Sometime after the Great War, the Crawler strain evolved, and whole settlements began to be infected, which went unnoticed until the Chimera made their direct attack on Russia in 1927. It was during this time that Russia entered into a stringent isolationist state after the Great War and rising paranoia of supposed "anti-imperialist" influence and insurgency seeping into the nation. Because of this, the Russian government didn't appeal to the rest of the world for help in crushing the Chimera before they could amass their strength in full. However, Russia's military faired very inefficient against the Chimera, in which the government desperately turned to scientist Dr. Fyodor Malikov, who managed to create a vaccine that is immune to the Chimeran virus. Russia's surviving soldiers were vaccinated with Malikov's vaccine, and became an initial success allowing the soldiers to fairly match against the Chimera. But gradually by 1930, the soldiers severely mutated into crazed and feral cannibals known as the Cloven, who proceeded to desert. From the 1930s to the 1940s, Russia was conquered by the Chimera.

Fall of Europe
From the 1920s to the 1940s, Europe had been ignorant of the Chimera's existence due to Russia's self-isolationism, but remained suspicious of it's sudden silence and had prepared a military stratagem should Russia ever invade Europe. In December 1949, the Chimera broken through the Red Curtain and quickly bypassed Eastern Europe's static defenses, such as the Bratislava Line in Czechoslovakia. The Chimera's sudden invasion and appearance shocked and surprised United European Defence military forces. Initially, human forces had erroneously believed that the Chimera's presence were the result of a Russian military experiment gone wrong. Through the Chimera's swift devastation and advancement, the UED practically fell apart as European countries struggled to fend for themselves.

During the early phase of the invasion, mass influxes of Eastern European refugees frantically move westward and interned in cramped refugee camps in Western Europe, mostly in Germany. Czechoslovakia and Poland fell to the Chimera in late 1949 and early 1950. It is then noted during this time that UED intelligence noted a startling lack of refugees in cities that have fallen to the Chimera. Notably, less than a thousand people survived the fall of Poland's capital, Warsaw; a city of two million. This is attributed to the fact that many populated city centers were infected with the Chimeran virus through Spire missiles.

The Chimeran expansion led to Italy being the final European continental nation to be conquered. UED forces established their line of defense at Genoa, culminating into the Siege of Genoa in January 1950. During the Siege, Italian soldiers were overwhelmed by the Chimera, whom they refer to as "the deathless plague." It is revealed here that Italian soldiers had their morale badly broken due to the Chimera's abilities and ferocity, in which hundreds committed suicide rather than to fight, die, and possibly become the "unholy" Chimera, contributing to the battle's loss (although it is unlikely it would have been won in the end). The end of the siege led to the Chimera taking control of Italy.

With the fall of mainland Europe in 1950, only the United Kingdom remained free from the Chimera's influence. However, any hopes the U.K. might be spared were soon dashed when the Chimera found their way across by burrowing under the English Channel in October 1950. The British military collapsed against the might of the Chimera; the primary headquarters of the British Army, Central Command, in London were taken out when, after failing to protect the base by conventional means, the Chimera re-diverted the River Thames into the sealed base: only two hundred men of fourteen thousand inside the facility survived. As the Chimera advanced across Britain, wiping out cities to infect and convert human into their population, as well as establishing their infrastructure, the tattered remnants of the British military abandoned the major population centers and retreated to scattered military bases and outposts throughout the country. Though they pursued a vicious and determined guerrilla campaign, their efforts were no major threat. Western Europe was lost; to all intents and purposes, the Chimera had won. However, the remnants of the UED in mainland Europe banded and waged a guerrilla war under Chimeran occupation as a resistance group known as the Maquis.

Operation: Morning Star
Following the fall of Europe to the Chimera, the British military, now reduced to fighting a guerrilla campaign in their own country, contacted the USA, hoping to make a deal that might allow them a chance to fight back against the Chimera. The deal, negotiated between US President Noah Grace and Captain Rachel Parker, the highest ranking surviving officer of the British military, in which an exchange for a total of 12,000 American soldiers being sent to reinforce the British war effort, the British would provide the Americans with intelligence and information on the Chimera, and including a powerful Chimeran creature, an Angel, that was captured by British Intelligence, for the Americans to study. The campaign, known as Operation: Morning Star, was fought from July 11-July 14 1951, and would become a key turning point in the war against the Chimera.

U.S. and British forces initiated Operation: Deliverance as the opening move of Morning Star; 5,000 American troops were to be flown into the city of York, where they intended to rendezvous with Captain Parker and exchange weapons, supplies and troops in exchange for the Angel. Unfortunately, Parker and her convoy were ambushed and taken prisoner by the Chimera in Manchester, and the rest of the British military were engaged in a full-scale battle to keep the Chimera from reclaiming it, in which Captain Parker was captured and taken to a conversion center in Grimsby. The American troops at York were on their own, fighting an enemy they knew little.

York had been chosen as the landing zone due to little Chimeran activity in the area. However, unknown to all until too late, Cloven forces lured a substantial Chimeran army to York, which was lying in wait for the Americans as they arrived. The landing turned into a massacre, with most of the troops shot down by anti-aircraft guns as they tried to land. The surviving American soldiers regrouped under the command of Captain Winters and seized control of an abandoned bus depot. They were able to repulse the Chimera long enough for tanks to arrive to reinforce them, but the Chimera responded with a spire attack that wiped out the remaining forces in seconds. Of the 5,000 troops dropped into York, only one survived; a sergeant called Nathan Hale, who survived being infected due to a partial immunity he had gained as a result of being a test subject in Project Abraham

Hale was taken, along with his infected comrades, to the Grimsby conversion center, where he was able to escape the facility, freeing Captain Parker (who had been imprisoned there since her capture in Manchester) in the process. The pair were able to summon a rescue, then flew direct to Manchester to join the battle in eventually recapturing the Angel. The creature was delivered to Northern Command in Cheshire, only to find it under attacked by Chimeran forces. The Angel was forced to be killed by Nathan Hale.

British forces continued their war effort with exceptional aid from Nathan Hale, in which during Operation: Shear at Nottingham led to the partial discovery of a buried Chimeran tower, and soon to the extent of the Chimeran tower network discovered by Lieutenant Stephen Cartwright and Hale.

Given to the loss of Northern Command, Southern Command in Bristol was soon later attacked and destroyed, forcing the British to retreat to one of their last remaining outposts in Cardiff where shortly after their arrival, they received a radio transmission from Hale (who had left the British forces shortly after the evacuation of Southern Command to try and infiltrate into Chimeran territory). At the direction of Hale, who had managed to infiltrate deep into Chimeran territory and reached London, Captain Parker managed to convince the remaining American and British military forces under her command to launch a full-scale assault on London, in the hopes that destroying the Chimera's main tower inside the city would eradicate the Chimera's presence in Britain, culminating the Battle of London. After arriving in London nearly unscathed, the army advanced on the tower, pausing only to destroy Tower Bridge and Southwark Bridge so Chimera forces from outside the city couldn't interfere, then began to lay siege to the tower. Simultaneously, Hale along with several other soldiers, infiltrated the tower, to try to find a way to destroy it from the inside.

The battle was nothing short of a massacre, as human forces were swiftly routed, unable to hold back the unending legions of Chimera that emerged to defend the tower. However, the tide turned as Hale and the soldiers had managed to reach and overload the main tower's main reactor, causing it to go into a critical meltdown and creating a blinding explosion which destroyed the tower. The tower's destruction had several major consequences; in the immediate aftermath, Chimeran forces in London collapsed and died within minutes of the tower's detonation, unable to survive without the presence of the Angels that were killed inside the tower. The London tower's meltdown also triggered a chain reaction that destroyed every tower in Britain; for the first time in the war, the Chimera had suffered a major defeat. Britain was free from the Chimera's stranglehold on Europe, an event that marked a key point in the war.

With combat subsided, the British military began to rebuild their country's infrastructure, search for civilian survivors and try to better understand their enemy. Nathan Hale, the man responsible for this victory, was declared killed In action by the American military; though in truth, he was recovered a short time after the battle by SRPA Black Ops under the command of Major Richard Blake, who was under orders to reclaim any surviving personnel attached to Project Abraham. Hale was taken to Station Igloo in Iceland for debriefing and mandatory testing, only to find the base under attack from the Chimera. Hale and Blake crashlanded and joined the battle, assisting most of the SRPA personnel stationed there to escape, though their successes were somewhat marred by the escape of Daedalus, a high-ranking prisoner and the new de facto leader of the Chimera, who got loose in the confusion. Hale and Blake evacuated just before the base fell and fled back to America. Hale was assigned to SRPA's elite forces - the Sentinels - and became instrumental in preparing America for the inevitable Chimeran onslaught.

Operation Overstrike
Following the victory in London, the Maquis approached the British in requesting for their aid in destroying the central Chimeran tower in Paris, France in liberating Western Europe from Chimeran control. At the same time, Lieutenant Raine Bouchard approached disgraced Lieutenant James Grayson, who had deserted some months before, after suffering a nervous breakdown following finding his brother Johnny Grayson half-converted into a Chimera, and gone on a personal vendetta to destroy every conversion center he could find, who offered Grayson a reprieve in exchange for serving as a mercenary under command of the Maquis and provide them with information on the conversion centers. Initially uninterested, Grayson agreed after learning the Chimera had evolved a new conversion process.

The British and the Maquis initiated Operation Overstrike on August 1951 which began to a disastrous start with much of the first wave of the operation was shot down by Chimeran Gun Towers built along the coast of France and Germany. The combined British and Maquis forces were able to destroy these defenses and land in Rotterdam, and then reinforcing the Maquis' key stronghold in Luxembourg. The Chimera would later discovered the Luxembourg base and launched a full-scale attack. There Lieutenant Bouchard, along with her father Claude Bouchard were able to finish a serum that would halt the Chimera's new conversion process by eliminating the Carrier strain, though Claude was killed in the battle, and Grayson discovered that Raine had purposefully allowed herself to be infected to perfect the serum. With Luxembourg lost, the Maquis fell back to their final stronghold in Reims, where they began to plan for their final attack on Paris. Grayson tried to warn his Maquis superior, Mallery of Raine's infection, but the colonel refused to believe him and had him locked up for insubordination. However, Grayson was freed by his two former commanding officers; Colonel Rachel Parker and Major Stephen Cartwright.

Battle of Paris
The battle for Paris was fought on two fronts; while Parker and Cartwright led a full-scale attack on the Chimeran tower, Bouchard and Mallery would try to infiltrate a structure called the Chrysalis Lair, the central hub of the Chimera's new conversion process. Having warned Parker and Cartwright of Bouchard's infection, Grayson was given a second vial of serum in case she failed and orders to infiltrate the Chrysalis lair.

Using abandoned catacombs to reach Paris, Grayson reached the Chrysalis Lair, only to find that Mallery and Bouchard had both been infected and both betrayed the Maquis to the Chimera. Grayson killed them both and used the serum to infect the conversion process; the new conversion process was stopped, but in her last moments, Bouchard's human identity overcame her new Chimeran persona and warned Grayson this was but a temporary victory at best, for the Chimera had already evolved a third method to convert humans; not only that, but they had already conquered worlds beyond Earth and they were simply too advanced to defeat. Soon after, the virus consumed Bouchard and Grayson killed her as an act of mercy.

The battle of Paris ended in victory for human forces; the Paris tower was destroyed and, just as similar in London, set off a chain reaction that freed much of Western Europe from the Chimera (though they still retained the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and Russia). Even more concerning, the Chimera began constructing fleets of airborne battleships preparing for a new assault. In the wake of the victory, James Grayson was promoted to colonel with the Maquis to replace Mallery and Bouchard, then with British forces under the command of Parker and Cartwright, began to work to liberate Eastern Europe from the Chimera. Their ultimate goal was reaching Russia in the efforts of uncovering source of the Chimera's invasion, in the hope it might yield some yet-undiscovered information or insight into their enemy.

Interwar Years
From 1952-1953, not long after the conclusion of Operation: Overstrike, British and Maquis forces under the command of Colonels Parker and Grayson launched a full-scale attack on Warsaw with the intent of liberating it, and Poland, from the Chimera. The battle ended in a human victory; the tower was destroyed on June 12th, 1953, but at a great cost to the British and Maquis, who suffered severe losses, notably Colonel James Grayson, who disappeared in the battle and has since been declared MIA: however, unknown to all, Grayson survived and managed to infiltrate Russia, though he was somehow infected with the Chimeran virus. His fate, at present, remains unknown.

Concurrently, the Chimera, despite the loss of the towers there, launched attacks on both Axbridge and Bracknell, hoping to both regain a foothold in Britain and force Parker to divert troops back to the defence of Britain, causing a reduction of troop numbers in Europe that the Chimera could overwhelm at their leisure. Fortunately, the actions of Specter Team thwarted the Chimera's plan, both preventing them from starting a new invasion of Britain and weakening the defences of the towers in Europe.

By 1952, the Chimera have spread across Africa at a staggering pace. The Chimera launched a series of initial attacks via airships along the northern coasts on April 6th. At the time, military analysis believed that Africa would prove too hot for the Chimera to survive beyond the coastal regions. However, the Chimera have evolved newer strains of the hybrid virus along with more advanced heat radiation implants that allow their troops to withstand much higher temperatures. Once the Chimera established footholds along the coast they were able to quickly build large quantities of infrastructure, including conversion centers, and factories for producing drones, Stalkers and dropships. In the last few days the Chimera have swept across Africa with truly unimaginable speed. According to British aerial reconnaissance, Chimeran forces have already begun excavation of at least twenty-three towers across the continent. Although their fuel reserves are dangerously low, the British have used naval aircraft carriers to evacuate over 170,000 African civilians from the Northern and Western coasts in the past twelve days.

On July 30th, U.S. Military forces in Panama City sighted four Chimeran airships flying southeast toward Colombia. In the ensuing three days the airships blanketed the continent with wave after wave of spire attacks. U.S. reconnaissance estimates that the Chimeran targeted every city with population over 100,000. The Chimera then proceeded to excavate Chimeran towers across the continent.

Invasion of the United States
In August 1951, the United States was first invaded by the Chimera when nearly the entire New England territory was besieged by Spire missiles and becoming the first Gray Zone on American soil. Initially, the infestation was quarantined. Months before, Canada was invaded by the Chimera with similar results to New England, but on a greater scale. This posed a greater threat to America's Northwestern regions.

In October 1951, the American Northwest fell to the Chimera from massive Spire bombardments. In late 1951, no longer believing a military victory to be possible against the Chimera, U.S. President Grace decided to enact Project Omega; a top-secret contingency plan that proposed negotiating a truce with the Chimera. The plan required Daedalus, since he was the only Chimeran entity capable of intelligent communication, and so he was captured and brought to the negotiations at a secret military facility in Sheridan, Wyoming. Negotiations began in December 1951, culminating on December 25th when Grace made Daedalus the ultimate offer: that the Chimera could have the rest of the world, provided they left the United States in peace. However, seconds later, Nathan Hale, having returned from a hunt for Henry Walker, Secretary of War, whom Grace had labelled a traitor, and whom Hale had found dead in a conversion center in Madison, Wisconsin. Having learned the truth about Project Omega from recordings of Walker's body, and realising what Grace intended to do, Hale executed Grace on the spot for his planned betrayal of mankind, while Daedalus made good use of the confusion to escape. In the aftermath of this debacle, Grace's death was passed off as due to a sudden illness, Vice-President Harvey McCullen was sworn in as President and the truth about Omega was covered up.

From 1952-53, the USA began making preperations for the inevitable Chimeran onslaught. By July 1952, the Liberty Defense Perimeter, a safe zone in the middle of America for the nation's society to outlast and defend against the inevitable invasion, was completed, and plans were drawn up to begin evacuating civilians to within it. Many other measures were taken to prepare America for the Chimeran onslaught, including a repeal on the immigration ban to help bolster troop numbers, the enaction of Project Aloha, the evacuation of several hundred thousand civilians to Hawaii, and numerous military strikes into gray territory to slow the mobilisation of Chimera forces.

Finally, on May 15th, 1953, the Chimeran fleet invaded the west and east coasts of the United States. In their purpose, the fleet commanded by Daedalus intended to not only occupy the country but to similarly unearth and activate the Chimeran towers for the Chimera's unknown purpose. Though SRPA and the American military fought hard, and made the Chimera pay dearly for every inch of ground they gained, by May 28th, the Liberty Defense Perimeter fell to the invaders, causing the deaths of 63-80 million people, including President McCullen and his cabinet.

Operation Black Eden
By June 1953, the Chimera had all but overrun America; the remnants of the American military and government took refuge, along with three million civilians, in their last stronghold at the Baton Rouge Protection Camp in Louisiana. Having seemingly achieved victory, the Chimeran fleet had headed south, and was now gathered over the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico, where power from the towers across the world was being channeled into Daedalus's flagship. At the direction of Dr. Fyodor Malikov, who suggested detonating a nuclear weapon at the fleet's heart might destroy the entire fleet and thwart whatever plan the Chimera intended to enact, Major Richard Blake took charge of a nuclear fission bomb created by SRPA NT, in preparation for the USA's final gambit; Operation: Black Eden. Blake gave orders that the military would convene at the town of Cocodrie, Louisiana to find a way to reach the fleet, as well as ordering that Nathan Hale, who having been near-fatally injured in a failed attempt by Echo Team to assassinate Daedalus at the Holar Tower six weeks before, be awoken from his medically-induced coma. Though by that stage the virus in Hale's system had progressed so far he would survive only three hours before succumbing once awoken, Blake believed Hale was one of the best chances they had to ensure victory.

Black Eden initially hit a snag when Blake's convoy was ambushed by Stalkers en route to Cocodrie and he was separated from it; fortunately, the team escorting the bomb were able to get it to the town and rendezvous with Hale and Capelli, the only two Sentinels in the immediate area. Locating Blake en route, the trio, along with X-Ray Squad, transported the bomb to a nearby Chimeran shuttle depot, overran the defenders and secured a shuttle, which they then used to infiltrate Daedalus's flagship undetected. Once onboard, the team split into two groups; Blake and X-Ray Squad took the bomb and proceeded towards the reactor; their objective, to get the bomb within 500ft of the ship's reactor and detonated, while Hale and Capelli were to deactivate and destroy any Chimeran defences between the transport team and the reactor.

Unfortunately, in the process, disaster struck; Blake and X-Ray Squad were caught and killed in an ambush, and the bomb was captured by the Chimera. Assuming the Chimera intended to dispose of the bomb, Hale, directed via radio by Capelli, pursued the bomb, only to discover they were taken it to the reactor to Daedalus, who wished to examine the weapon personally. Making his way to Daedalus's inner sanctum at the reactor, Hale fought his way through Hybrid defenders and Daedalus's telekinetic assaults, and engaged Daedalus in a final battle; Hale directed his fire at the pylons of the reactor, which released a deadly electrical charge, fatally electrocuting Daedalus.

Once Daedalus was dead, Hale activated the bomb, and he and Capelli evacuated from the ship seconds before the nuclear weapon detonated. The flagship was obliterated by the explosion, while the electromagnetic pulse triggered by the blast wiped out the remnants of the Chimeran fleet. However, too late humanity discovered something terrible had happened; despite what SRPA had done the bomb's detonation created a large surge throughout the tower network to New York City which opened a wormhole to another part of space that is placed near a couple of orbiting planets/moons, presumably the Chimeran home world.

Chimeran victory
Following the events of Operation: Black Eden resulted in a spell of humanity's downfall, as by 1957, 90% of the human population were killed or converted in the conflict and the Chimera has conquered the entire planet. Without the need for human hosts for conversion, the Chimera had began an exterminating campaign in wiping out what is left of the human race. The surviving human population was forced into a guerrilla war in an effort for survival. Furthermore, the Chimera initiated a terraforming operation in cooling Earth into a harsh, colder environment from utilizing the tower network powered by the wormhole.

Uprising among the Chimeran ranks
Due to there being nothing to fight for, many Chimeran strains lost their purpose and turned Feral, this caused a civil war between the Military Chimera and the Feral ones and caused a lot of deaths on both sides, this helped the Humans because the Chimera seemed more interested in hunting down the feral chimera than looking for humans and helped the humans live and breed and rebuild their population in the United States.

Human victory and Aftermath
Joseph Capelli's actions in destroying the New York tower, and thus the wormhole, seem to have nullified the Chimeran victory, proving to be the turning point of the war as well as they are able to once again develop professional, organized military forces to fight against the Chimera and rebuild cities and landmarks, such as the Statue of Liberty in New York. This is disputable, but the credits heavily imply that this is so, as they would not be able to perform these actions if the Chimera were as strong as they were before. If humanity did not fully defeat them, it has certainly been able to effectively resist the Chimera at this point.