Serenity Valley, on the planet Turaxis II
March 5th, 2489
Despite the fact that Turaxis' star had set hours ago, Serenity Valley was illuminated by fire.
Explosions rippled down the natural chokepoint, accompanied by the staccato sounds of automatic rifles and the irregular clap of cannon fire. From the squat hills scattered inside the valley, soldiers in hulking power armor fired down on black-armored Kel-Morian Rippers as the latter attempted to push through the Confederate defenses with troop carriers and armor. A small number of delta-shaped Kel-Morian "Hellhound" fighters swooped down on any Confederates caught in the open, spraying the open ground with their burst lasers and flash-frying their targets inside their armor.
Staff Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds of the Confederate 57th Marine Outlanders Regiment charged up the slope of one of his unit's strongpoints. His armor's servos whirred as he stomped up the hill whilst clutching a massive gauss rifle in his gauntlets, and as he reached the top his helmet's golden visor slid open. Mal glanced to the right as he heard the familiar shriek of aircraft engines, and he watched as a squad of marines on an adjacent hill fall victim to a pass by one of the Hellhounds. He raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger as it swooped by less than thirty meters overhead, but if any of his shots connected the Hellhound took no notice of it. Need to find something bigger, he thought as he turned back to the bunker sitting atop the hill and hurried inside.
The building was in bad shape. A Kel-Morian rocket had cracked the top open like a can of sardines, and the bodies of three marines were scattered here and there. The bunker was still occupied, though; Mal saw half a dozen of brown-armored figures leaning against the firing slits on the northeast wall, spraying gauss spikes at the advancing Kel-Morians. "Short bursts!" one of them ordered, a woman by the sound of her voice. "Pick your targets!"
"Zoe!" Mal called as he moved to take position by one of the other Confederates, "That you?"
The woman looked over at him, and her visor lifted to reveal a dark-skinned woman with nonregulation hair filling the confines of her helmet. "Good to see you're still alive, sir," Corporal Zoe Alleyne replied, yelling to be heard over the chatter of weapons fire. A sudden blast outside shook the bunker–short round from one of our siege tanks, Mal guessed–and the marines instinctively covered their heads for a moment before opening fire again. "However long that lasts," she added.
"You get through to Colonel Vanderspool yet?" Mal asked as he ducked below the lip of the bunker to reload. "What'd he say about reinforcements?"
Zoe shook her head, crouching down to face him. "He said Command's holding the 321st until they can assess our status–"
"Our status?" Mal asked incredulously. "Our status is that we need some gorram reinforcements!"
He turned at the waist to glance at one of the other marines–CMC-300 powered suits were too bulky to let one look over their shoulder–and barked "Greene! Get over here!"
"Yes, sir!"
Zoe stood and stuck the barrel of her rifle through the firing slit as Greene shimmied over, keeping his helmet below the lip of the slit. Mal jerked a thumb at the transmitter sitting in the corner of the bunker. "Get on the horn with Vanderspool; tell him the Rippers are gonna run right through us if we don't get some support to close the gaps in our lines."
"He's not gonna budge without a lieutenant's authorization code, sir," Zoe pointed out, still methodically triggering burst after burst from her rifle.
Mal cursed under his breath and glanced around before moving over to the body of one of the bunker's former occupants. A quick check of the marine's dog tags confirmed his hunch, and he appropriated the man's dome-shaped helmet before handing it to Greene. "Here, you're Lieutenant Greene. Congratulations on your promotion, now get me some fekking reinforcements!"
The bunker shook from another hit, and pieces of debris rained down on the armored soldiers. One of them moaned in terror.
"Hey!" Mal snapped. "Stay focused!" As the other marines turned to look at him, he could see the fear in most of their eyes. Zoe, to her credit, displayed only the same grim determination she'd had for most of the war.
Mal knew they were close to snapping–the Outlanders had been fighting to hold onto the valley for close to a month with little relief–so he tried a different tactic. "The Kel-Morians said they were gonna waltz through this valley," he said, his voice solid and unwavering. "Remember that? Remember how we took those words and rammed it down their gorram throats? We've already done the impossible. We're mighty. Now all we gotta do is wait a little while longer. Command's gonna send in the Rangers to tear the Kay-Ems a new one, and all they need us to do is hold. So you hold."
Mal looked at the faces of the other marines, seeing that their fear was slowly receding with his words. "You hold!" he bellowed. "Go!"
Thus reinvigorated, the marines turned back to the line and renewed their efforts at holding the Kel-Morians back. As Greene knelt next to the transmitter digging through the codes on the lieutenant's helmet, Mal waved at Zoe to follow him. "Calling in the Rangers won't do much good if those Hellhounds fry us before we get reinforced," he said, dropping his visor. "Time to go duck-hunting."
Zoe nodded, sealing her own helmet as Mal exited the bunker. Before following, she turned to another Outlander from her squad, a kid named Bendis. He was curled into the corner of the bunker with his helmet open. His eyes were wide, locked onto the ground in front of him in terror as he murmured something she couldn't make out.
"Bendis," Zoe called. When he didn't respond, she raised her voice. "Bendis!"
The youth jerked slightly at the sharpness of her tone, but otherwise displayed no visible reaction. He continued to mutter under his breath, rocking slightly back and forth.
"Damn it," Zoe hissed. He's lost it.
She turned and ducked out of the building, hot on Mal's heels as he trudged down the dirt slope.
Mal ran from cover to cover on his way down the hill as the battle continued to rage in all directions. Screams and frantic requests for assistance cluttered the comm, so he cut his connection to the command net and opened a direct link to Zoe's suit. "Kel-Morons've gotta have triple-A set up in the troughs somewhere," he reasoned. "They'll be expecting us to call for air support, so they'll be hiding the batteries between the hills and waiting for the dropships to show up before knocking'em out of the sky. We find one, then we bring down those Hellhounds."
"Sounds like a plan, sir," Zoe said over the radio.
Mal slowed as they reached the foot of the hill. He crouched behind the wreckage of a bipedal Goliath combat walker, its canopy shattered and its left leg mangled by a laser fire, as Zoe caught up with him. Above, he could see one of the Hellhounds circling for a run at a nearby strongpoint. The bunker was already burning from repeated hits, and as Mal watched a pair of marines emerged, their armor trailing smoke and fire but otherwise intact.
Unfortunately the Hellhound's pilot spotted them as well, and before they had made it a dozen meters from the burning structure the strike craft swooped down and unleashed a barrage of laser bolts, stitching the ground around them and throwing up particles of glass. The marines stumbled and fell, clutching at burn wounds until small-arms fire from a nearby Ripper punctured their helmets and ended their misery.
Mal raised his rifle, resting it on the Goliath's undamaged leg as he centered his sights on the Kel-Morian. The Ripper was preoccupied with stripping the marines of their ammo and supplies so Mal returned the favor on behalf of his fellow Outlanders, triggering a burst from his Impaler. The magnetically accelerated spikes tore through the Ripper's angular black armor–Mal thanked God each day that the Kel-Morians didn't have the industrial base to mass-produce power armor like the Confederacy–and sent him spinning to the ground.
"See anything?" he asked, lowering his weapon and scanning the battlefield.
"Nothing yet, sir," Zoe replied. "We might want to–wait, I got something. Two o'clock north."
Mal turned to look in the direction Zoe was pointing and saw what she was talking about. A tracked Kel-Morian APC was rolling along the trough between two hills, escorted by a pair of regular army grunts.
"Looks like it's got a flak turret mounted on top," Zoe noted. "Think that'll do?"
"It'll have to," Mal replied. The APC was about thirty meters away, and the troopers hadn't seen either of them yet. "Zoe, go possum. Wait for it to pass us by, then hit the grunts. I'll get the tracks."
"Roger that."
Mal shifted, placing his back against the Goliath's leg and letting his rifle fall slack. Next to him Zoe rolled onto her side and let her arms droop, as if in death. Hopefully the Kel-Morians would pass by the two of them and mistake them for just another pair of corpses without looking too hard.
Hopefully.
Within moments Mal could hear the rumble of the APC behind him as it drew closer. He couldn't hear the crunch of the Kel-Morians' boots, but he knew they had to be there. He slowed his breathing–though he knew that there was no way the troopers could hear or see him breathing inside his armor–and carefully craned his neck inside his helmet to look in Zoe's direction. Wait for it…
The APC had to be within five meters by now; Mal could feel the ground vibrating softly as it rolled closer. The sound reached a peak, and just when he felt that it was beginning to fade he shouted "Now!"
He rolled along the walker's leg, bringing his rifle up as he did so. The APC was a couple of meters to his left, along with one of the Kel-Morian grunts. The trooper saw Mal move and whirled, bringing his slugthrower up to deal with this unexpected threat from his flank, only to dance in place as Zoe sprayed his torso with spikes. The second trooper charged around from the other side of the APC and took a similar burst before flopping to the ground.
Mal lowered his sights until they rested on the rear wheel of the APC, then squeezed the trigger. Armor-piercing gauss spikes ripped through the wheel, then the track resting on top of it. He continued to fire, holding down the trigger and slowly tracking the rifle forward along the vehicle's base until three of the wheels were torn away. The carrier screeched to a halt as the ruined track jammed itself between the working wheels.
"Go!"
Zoe and Mal leapt to their feet and ran forward, slamming up against the APC's damaged for cover. Even through his helmet, mal could hear the Kel-Morian crew shouting as they tried to figure out what was wrong with their vehicle. "Clean it out," he told Zoe as he dropped his rifle and clambered up onto the carrier's hull. It groaned under the weight of his armor, and the suspension sagged several centimeters.
Below him, Zoe reached for one of the cylindrical grenades on her belt. She flicked the pin away with her thumb before grabbing the handle on the crew hatch and wrenching it open. A panicked shot from one of the Kel-Morians inside blew into the dirt, but before they could pour out of the APC Zoe tossed the fragmentation grenade inside and slammed the hatch shut again. One of the drivers shouted a warning.
There was a muffled crack from inside, and the crew fell silent.
Mal settled into position atop the APC as he wrestled with the twin-barreled flak gun in front of him. The weapon hadn't been designed with an eight-foot armored marine in mind, but he'd found a stable position to fire from, and the holographic crosshairs were just as visible with his visor down. He clamped his hands over the controls and traversed the cannon until it was facing the first Hellhound.
The fighter was still circling, looking for its next target, when the first high-explosive shell detonated a few meters to its left. Shrapnel tore through its wing, but before the pilot could think about conducting evasive maneuvers the second shell hit its fuselage dead center and blasted the strike craft out of the sky.
Mal swung the cannons around, sweeping the sky for the next Hellhound. He spotted one pulling into the air from a recent attack run on a Confederate bunker and brought the gun mount to bear, taking the time to lead the fast-moving fighter before opening fire again.
The cannons fired, one after the other, ejecting shells steadily like a metronome. The first few shots missed their target by several meters, and the Hellhound cut down on its turn to face the commandeered APC even as more shells traced their way across the night sky. It jinked left and right in an attempt to throw off his aim.
Come on, come on, Mal thought as he tried to keep his sights steady. That's it, get over here. Gimme a bigger target.
The Hellhound was closing fast now, and Mal estimated that it was within six hundred meters when a lucky shell blasted through its right side and took the entire wing off at the roots. Mal whooped as the fighter began a slow roll along its central axis. "Yeah!"
Then he saw that it wasn't changing course. "Oh, ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng…"
He glanced down at Zoe; she had retreated to cover him from the Goliath and hadn't seen the Hellhound's ballistic descent. "Zoe!"
His partner glanced up just in time to see Mal leap off the APC's hull and land heavily on the ground. He grabbed his rifle and sprinted forward. "Drop drop drop!" he shouted.
Zoe obeyed, dropping flat on her stomach behind the wreckage of the Goliath as Mal dove over the walker's intact leg. He landed hard on his chest with a crunch of armor on dirt–
And the Hellhound smashed into the ground meters away from the APC.
The impact rattled Mal's teeth, and he felt a wave of heat wash over him. Debris clanged against his armor, and a particularly large piece smacked against the back of his helmet and left his head ringing.
The roar from the explosion subsided after a few moments, and after his head stopped pounding like a drum Mal eased up onto his elbows and rolled onto his back. The wreckage from the Hellhound was scattered all around them in a twenty meter area, and the APC had been blasted apart by the crash. Grunting, he shifted into a seating position…and only then did he notice the meter-long spike of jagged noesteel that had impaled itself in the dirt below where his armor's crotch guard had been.
He stared at it for a moment, then looked over at Zoe. She was staggering to her feet, shaking her helmet to clear her head. When she looked over at him, Mal lifted the visor on his helmet and pointed at the debris between his legs.
She followed his gaze and stared for a moment, then shook her head in resignation as Mal started giggling.
They double-timed it back up the hill to the bunker, running on adrenaline and Mal's ecstatic disbelief.
"You saw that, right?" he asked insistently. "Your helmet cam got all that?"
"Yes, sir, I saw it."
"Good. Gotta see if Jumper'll paint a pair of Kay-Em birds on my armor after this…"
"Wait, what's wrong with your helmet cams?"
"Nothing, just didn't think anyone'd believe me if I didn't have a witness."
Zoe sighed.
The bunker was still intact–well, as intact as they'd left it–but Mal couldn't see any muzzle flashes emerging from the firing slits. Not a good sign. The door was crumpled inward and jammed shut, so he and Zoe set aside their rifles and grabbed the leading edge. "One, two…" mal said before heaving. The suits augmented their strength, and the door eventually groaned open.
Mal activated the lights mounted on his chestpiece as he and Zoe stepped inside. "Greene, what's the status of our…"
His voice trailed off as he saw several brown-armored figures lying along the firing slit, unmoving. Another was on his stomach by the transmitter, but when Mal stomped over and rolled Greene onto his back he saw that a gauss spike had punched through the man's visor and into his head, killing him instantly.
He sighed. "Zoe," he called, gesturing at the transmitter. The corporal nodded, then jerked a thumb at the corner wordlessly before moving over to take Greene's place.
Mal looked over and saw that Bendis was still hunched in the same place they'd left him, still holding onto his rifle like a drowning man with a rope. He moved over to kneel in front of the youth and opened his visor. "Bendis. Hey kid, you there?"
Bendis looked up after a moment, and Mal could see that he was trembling inside his suit. "Snap out of it, boy," Mal said. "We're holding this valley no matter what, you hear?"
Bendis' gaze returned to the floor, and after a moment he mumbled "We're gonna die."
"No we ain't," Mal replied, standing to retrieve his rifle before grabbing Bendis' arm and hauling him up. "We ain't gonna die here today, Bendis. You know why?"
Bendis looked into Mal's face, as if searching. He shook his head.
"Because," Mal continued, reaching for a fresh magazine for his Impaler, "we are way too pretty to die. Huh? You think God's gonna go and let a couple'a studs like us bite a bullet from some motherless Kel-Morian dogface?"
A smile tugged at the corner of Bendis' mouth, but died before blooming as he looked down again. "We're gonna die," he repeated, to himself more than Mal.
Before Mal could think of something to shake Bendis out of his depression, a familiar sound rose over the cacophony of war outside. He grinned. "You don't wanna listen to me?" he asked Bendis. "Fine. Listen to that. That there's the sound of the Colonial Rangers, comin' to send the Kel-Morians back into their holes pissin' their pants."
Mal turned towards Zoe, who had the lieutenant's helmet pressed up against her own in order to hear the status updates it was broadcasting. "Corporal, let the 321st know that we got friendlies mixed with Kay-Ems down he–"
"It's not the 321st," Zoe said in disbelief. He glanced up at him, and for the first time in a long time Mal saw real fear in her eyes. "It's the Fifth Fleet."
"What?" Mal asked in bewilderment. "The hell are they…we don't need air support, we need reinfor–"
A flash from outside caught his attention, and Mal turned towards the firing slit. Bendis and Zoe looked as well, and the three of them moved closer to get a better view.
Ships were appearing in the skies above the valley. Mal recognized the hammerhead profiles of Behemoth-class battlecruisers, T-shaped CF/A-17 Wraith starfighters, and other Confederate attack vessels as they descended from orbit until they were a few kilometers above the ground. For a moment they hung there, suspended by the blue-white light of their thrusters.
Then they fired.
The battlecruisers indiscriminately sprayed laser fire from their batteries, and the fighters dove down to blanket the hills and troughs with air-to-ground missiles. Explosions bloomed across Serenity Valley, followed by dozens of thunderclaps as the shock waves reached the bunker. Kel-Morian and Confederate troops alike were caught in the barrage as the fleet laid waste to their own position.
Through it all, Mal watched and never looked away. Not when the rockets began to fall around the bunker, not when an errant gauss spike buried itself in Private Bendis' gut, and not when the bombardment stopped and the cries for help started.
He never looked away.