A New Beginning

A New Beginning is the final mission in the Nod campaign of. GDI failed to prevent Nod from launching the three ICBMs in the climatic battle to destroy the Philadelphia, allowing Kane to launch his World Altering Missile.

CABAL briefing
In order for our ICBMs to shoot down the Philadelphia, they must be able to triangulate the station's position. Our spies have placed beacons at the optimal deployment locations. Once the launchers have been moved to the beacons, the station's fate is sealed and the Temple of Nod may be built. Move with all due haste. If the Philadelphia is able to complete three orbits, it will lock onto our position and destroy Kane's plans.


 * Objective One: Deploy ICBM launchers at the three beacons.

Background
Kane's vision was nearly complete. However the last obstacle standing in the way to Nod's ultimate goal was the GDSS Philadelphia. If the space station located the World Altering Missile before Nod could launch it then Kane's plan would fail.

The closest point for Nod to make a successful strike against the Philadelphia was at the icy regions of Hammerfest in Norway. Nod spies infiltrated the area and placed three beacons for the Nod ICBMs to launch a missile against the Philadelphia.

Unfortunately GDI had a strong presence in the area and would go at any costs to prevent Nod from destroying their orbital command center. What was worse was that Hammerfest base was led by GDI's most successful field commander Michael McNeil. However Nod had managed to persuade (or rather seduced) his brother Jake McNeil to switch off the Firestorm defense grid and allow a Nod force to enter Hammerfest. Slavik managed to gain access to GDI's ion cannon in a previous operation but CABAL warned that it had to fire once before Nod could successfully hijack GDI's superweapon.

A rude doorknock
A Nod buggy pretended to pursue Jake back to Hammerfest. The GDI guards switched off the Firestorm barrier to let Jake in but the buggy got caught up in the defense grid and destroyed when the guards activated in again. Jake however deactivated the Firestorm barrier much to the guards' astonishment. The rest of the Nod escorts arrived and wiped out the guards and captured the GDI border posts. As predicted GDI fired their ion cannon once on a refinery that had just been captured by Nod but found that Nod had taken control of the network.

Positioning the ICBMs
The beacons were placed at three different points in the region. The first one was close to where the Nod forces bunkered down on and so they immediately deployed one of the ICBMs there. The other two were located much further away and scouting parties reported that they were near the main GDI bases before transmission was lost. Also Slavik only had three hours to deploy the ICBMs before the Philadelphia completed its third and final orbit of the planet. Rather than just rushing into the bases, Nod called on their full arsenal, including their Cluster Missiles and the hijacked ion cannon to systematically destroy the GDI bases. However GDI stubbornly held on and even made heavy assaults on the Nod positions, also making use of their full arsenal including the Mammoth Mk. II. However Slavik's clever use of tactics forced GDI to crumble even in a war of attrition. One of their secondary bases was demolished, leaving clear to deploy their second ICBM. Stealth tank recon on the southeast ICBM emplacement area reported that they discover a hastily deployed GDI base across the bridge that are easily destroyed or takeovered. A clean takeover would yield GDI Orca transport useful in recapturing the ICBM position on the far Northwest across the bridge.

With the final beacon located at the back of the main Hammerfest base and the Philadelphia starting its final orbital run, Nod was forced to punch through the GDI defenses to deploy their last ICBM with their main difficulties is to pass over the GDI base which only accessible through a bridge and heavily guarded land route on the east side of the base. GDI tried unsuccessfully to reconnect itself to the ion cannon network but still put on a brave last stand against the Nod besiegers. However Nod's Cluster Missiles and the hijacked ion cannon soon created a hole in the defenses and the Nod forces poured into the base and destroyed it. Commander McNeil was captured in the process and the third ICBM was deployed.

A New Beginning
A battered McNeil was brought before Slavik, who finally overcame his greatest adversary. As both commanders watched on, the ICBMs destroyed the Philadelphia, much to McNeil's despair. Kane then gave a final speech before launching his World Altering Missile. As the missile exploded into the atmosphere, Kane disappeared into thin air, having achieved his goal of Ascension. Meanwhile the whole planet was coated by Tiberium.

Trivia

 * Inconsistency: while the battle was fought entirely in a snowy environment near Hammerfest, the final in-game FMV cutscene depicting the launch of ICBM featured a tundra/desert background instead. It is possible that in during the early development stage of the game, Nod's mission about intercepting GDSS Philadelphia was located in another location on the globe, presumably near Cairo where Kane's current headquarters and the WAM are located, however it was either too costly or too time consuming to make the change before the game's commercial release.
 * An ICBM in real sense of the term is designed as a land to land missile which have great range (inter continental) and using ballistic principles in the process. Nod presumably modified the ICBM so that they now can be used as limited anti satellite (namely Philadelphia) purpose. The ICBM title is kept to preserve the secrecy of Nod's plan.