26 JANUARY 2528; 1300 HOURS / ASFOUR DELTA, ELDARI, ELFKYND SYSTEM
The air was thick with pink glass projectiles and bolts of plasma both sizzling blue and blinding green. Ariane kept her head low, holed up behind a rock with the rest of Dusk Team. Amelie whimpered softly as Trip and Adam worked on her ruined armor, trying to separate the chestplate from her skin without ripping the burned skin off completely.
Raven crouched right at the edge, ducking out now and then to fire at the enemy. Her aim with the sniper rifle was consistent and true, despite the circumstances, and the angry set of her shoulders. Nobody spoke to her, and the only member of the team brave enough to be within three feet of her was Johan, who was completely fearless and didn't care what the rest of the team thought regardless.
Amelie was not leading. Ariane wondered if she was even properly conscious. TEAMBIO said she was, and her constant sounds of pain backed the sensors' assessment, but she did not respond to any outside stimulus.
Ariane closed TEAMBIO and pulled up TACMAP. It was decidedly unhelpful. Other than the mass of red that was the enemy forces, there was very little to see. Dusk Team, situated so close together, was a small blob of yellow. A couple of other Spartan teams were also on the map, but they were scattered, and also taking refuge behind whatever cover they could find. Somebody was underground. Ariane checked who, and smiled.
Sadri-103 was, true to form, going it alone underneath enemy lines, assumedly carrying the kind of heavy explosives it would take to rip through such numbers. Sadri was a Solo – Kilo, in fact – and happened to be the only Solo who struggled to separate cover and enforcer. Sadri always preferred to work alone where he could, certain he was more capable on his own and would simply be slowed down by a team.
In fact, everybody knew, by now, that Sadri was a Solo, though only fellow Solos knew which one. It was not spoken of, simply accepted. And damned obvious. The go-it-alone tendencies, plus his superb conduct in battle, and the way he was never beaten in training exercises, all pointed to the one thing.
"I don't know what he's doing," Ariane said, "but Sadri's obviously got a plan. I doubt he's even told his team leader what he's doing."
"Knowing Sadri, probably not," Adam agreed. "But, also knowing Sadri, it's probably a good one."
"No doubt, but risky." Ariane edged towards the side of the rock not occupied by Raven and ducked out of cover for an instant, raining sniper slugs on the enemy. She didn't have time to watch the enemies fall, and had no idea whether her shots had even hit their marks. Clip empty, she took cover behind the rock again and reloaded.
"Five down," Raven told her. "Nice. Looks like you got a Zealot Elite, two of his cronies, and then two Jackals with one shot."
"Two Jackals?" Ariane was surprised. "No energy shields?"
"They have strange ones that only cover their forearms. Sort of look like their purpose is close-range skirmishing."
"Well, to differentiate, let's call them Skirmishers," Trip suggested, in his logical way that nobody could argue with.
"Makes sense," Adam agreed. He primed a grenade as he worked on Amelie's armor, and lobbed it over the rock without turning to face the enemy. Ariane heard the distinctive sounds of Jackals and Grunts panicking and leaping away from it, and then the almost-funny screams as it exploded and a good number of Grunts died.
"Good one, Adam," Raven said. "You got the one that hit Amelie." Her shoulders relaxed, just a little, and everyone relaxed a little accordingly. Raven's mood set the scene for the whole team, except Johan, partly because she was dangerous when she was angry.
A plasma grenade rolled into reach. Ariane grabbed it and primed it, then leaned out of cover and hurled it at an Elite whose gold armor indicated he was high-ranking, and, accordingly, tough. It stuck to his shoulder. Ariane took cover again, narrowly avoiding an overcharged bolt from a plasma pistol, and smiled in satisfaction when the grenade exploded, close enough that the shockwave from the blast thumped through the rock and the Spartans behind it.
Screeching filled the air, a sound as horribly familiar as it was haunting.
"Banshees!" Trip yelled, forgetting about Amelie for the moment and hefting a rocket launcher. Adam did the same. Ariane opted for the Spartan Laser that Amelie had been carrying; Raven did not seem to notice, and kept on firing at the enemy infantry.
The ground nearby exploded in a radioactive mess of fuel rod and plasma that bounced off Ariane's armor, leaving little blackened pocks against the reflective surface. Three Marines were vaporized – there one second, simply gone the next.
"Yep," Adam said casually, "we're dead. Let's take the bastards to Hell with us!"
Trip grunted an affirmative and let off a rocket. It missed by mere inches, because the Banshee's pilot sent it into a barrel roll. Adam's backup hit home, and the Banshee exploded, its wreckage plowing into the Covenant line.
Ariane charged her weapon and had to lean backwards to get her shot as her target passed above her. The recoil from the chemical laser made her overbalance and, in a rare clumsy moment, fall flat on her back in the mud. She was back on her feet in less than half a second, and charging the laser again, keeping it aimed carefully at a Banshee as it approached, screaming above the UNSC troops and firing, not only its fuel rod cannon, but its plasma repeaters as well.
The laser gun kicked hard against her shoulder, and the beam melted a big hole right through the middle of the Banshee, which kept careering towards Dusk Team, but was now falling. Ariane grabbed Trip and yanked him into a low crouch up against the rock, but the gesture was unnecessary. The Banshee clipped the top of the rock, tumbled, and then crushed what sounded like an especially large Elite.
"Everybody down!" Sadri shouted over the comms. Ariane heard him panting and assumed he was sprinting away from something, probably the massive explosive charge he had most likely planted beneath the bulk of the Covenant troops. Dusk Team hit the deck. Ariane watched as a large portion of the rest of the UNSC troops did the same, and was tempted to berate the few who were stupid enough to ignore a Spartan's words, but there wasn't enough time.
The ground shook and nearly three seconds later, a heavy shockwave blasted the few surviving trees flat. The Marines stupid enough to still be standing were thrown like ragdolls away from what was left of the Covenant forces.
Blue and purple blood, bits of gore, and a whole lot of dirt rained down as Ariane led Dusk Team out of cover, taking advantage of the confusion to mop up the strays. Ariane's Spartan Laser cut down enemies in three long lines, and then ran out of charge. She threw it aside and, instead of reaching over her shoulder for her sniper rifle, grabbed a dead Elite's energy sword, activating it as soon as her fingers were curled around the handgrip and sprinting for the most cohesive cluster of Covenant troops.
Adam watched her in his peripheral vision, time moving so slowly that he vaguely took notice of the brief gaps between each bullet leaving his assault rifle, and a small part of his mind calculated exactly how long each short period of relative calm lasted. He fired at the enemy, and watched and took direction from the acting team leader, but his mind was elsewhere.
"Sadri – SADRI! Respond!" he bellowed into his comm mike, then controlled himself and restored his own professionalism. "Sierra one-oh-three, do you copy?"
Raven came up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, without pausing in her rate of fire. It was impressive, Adam thought, how she could shoot so quickly and so accurately from a sniper rifle, with only one hand on her gun. "Adam, I think he's gone. I don't know – he doesn't show up on our TEAMBIO anyway – but that blast…"
"He can't be," Adam denied, pulling away from Raven and putting a fist through a Spec-Ops Elite's skull as it tried to sneak up behind the Spartans. "Spartans never die." He clung to the lie that ONI had spread and the Spartans perpetuated, using it to keep himself together enough to fight.
"If only that were true," Raven noted sadly as an alarm sounded in both their helmets, informing them that Amelie's vitals were in the red and dropping. "Someone should go back to Amelie."
"I'll go," Adam volunteered. "I don't know how much use I would be in this battle anyway. You know Sadri was my friend."
Raven watched him as he turned back to the rock and sprinted to be near their leader. To defend what would be her body, soon enough. The sniper sighed and turned her attention back to the fight, then froze.
"…this is Sadri one-oh-three," Sadri's voice said in her ear. He coughed. "Status orange."
Ariane cut a Jackal in half with her energy sword, listening in on the comm chatter. The comms exploded into chaos at Sadri's declaration, and she muttered a string of expletives under her breath, cutting through more enemy troops as she waited for a moment of relative calm.
Eventually, it came. "SILENCE!" she bellowed, aware that, with Amelie dying, she was now the leader of a Spartan team, and therefore held a position of authority on this battlefield. The silence she demanded came. "All right. Dusk Three, on me. Four and Five, find Sadri. Six, stay with Amelie. Spartan teams, form up on the right flank. Snap Frost will transfer co-ordinates for a nav marker. Marines, Helljumpers, give these bastards a taste of Hell!"
Technically, she was not the ranking officer on this battlefield – she was only a Chief Petty Officer, promoted last year for her exceptional conduct – but she was a Spartan, and she spoke with the most authority anybody had heard since the battle had turned desperate. When Ariane spoke, the soldiers listened. Acknowledgement lights blinked green in her HUD – the Spartans acknowledging and accepting her orders – and the Marines clicked their comms. The Helljumpers ignored her, but that was familiar and a welcome distraction from the chaos.
"You know," Frost said to her, "this will earn you either another promotion, or a reprimand."
"Oh, I know," she replied with a smile, as Trip battled his way towards her through a pocket of Covenant resistance. "You know, for all that Sadri's bomb killed, there still are a hell of a lot of Covies here."
"Still outnumbered," Frost agreed sourly. "Watch the suicide squad over there."
Ariane swore and scooped up a pistol from the ground, firing at the Grunts that ran at her, their arms in the air, stubby little hands curled around glowing blue plasma grenades.
Amelie's vitals flatlined, and a moment later her dot disappeared from TACMAP. Adam swore violently on the comms, and then paused, and asked for orders.
"Catch up with Four and Five," Ariane told him. "There'll be a lot of rock and rubble to dig through before they can get Sadri out of there, and they'll appreciate the help."
Adam's acknowledgement light winked amber, and then green. He would do it, but he was not happy about it. She sighed, thinking that he would complain no matter what order she gave him right then. As his form streaked away from the rock, an explosion bloomed behind it, obliterating Amelie's body. Ariane sighed and moved the dead Spartan's name over to the MIA list.
"Is this just for revenge, or do you have some greater purpose in mind?" Trip asked her as he reached her position and paused beside her.
"Both," she growled, throwing the now-empty pistol aside. She put her left fist through an Elite's breastplate and deep into its chest, letting Amelie's loss anger her, and using the anger to increase her strength. As she was pulling it out, she grabbed the smashed edge of the Elite's armor, and threw it into another, hard enough that she heard the satisfying crack as the second Elite's spine snapped. "Raven, Johan and Adam will need us to help them out sooner rather than later, but I will not remove our team from the battle entirely."
Trip nodded in approval of her use of the word 'our'. Amelie had always said 'my team', which implied ownership. "I assume you have a plan for this battle that requires our… particular talents."
"I do indeed. I needed another Spartan who can work alone as effectively as in a team. Sadri would have been my first choice, but only because him going it alone would raise no eyebrows, no questions."
"I'm all ears."
Ariane found that phrase amusing. All ears, really? What about arms, and legs, and brain, and other important body parts? "I need your brain for this one, too, Trip," she joked with false levity. "This will be a think-on-the-fly type of plan. We still have an objective. The original plan going FUBAR doesn't change that."
"I like that. FUBAR. It describes the situation pretty accurately, don't you think? So we still have to break in to the Covenant supercarrier and steal whatever the hell it is Amsterdam wanted us to steal."
"Exactly. I know exactly how I'm going to get the team into the supercarrier, but things get tricky from there. Behind enemy lines, in a slipspace-capable enemy ship that's crawling with the bastards… it's not going to be easy. Getting out will be next to near impossible, even for us."
"That was always up to us, though."
"Yeah, but Amelie had the plan for that, and she never told any of us. Frost is trying to hack into her personal holoport, but it's slow going. Amelie was a damn good programmer, and she knew exactly what AIs are capable of. Her holoport's systems are specifically designed to keep AIs out."
"Meaning we have to see what's up there and plan for ourselves when the time comes." Trip whirled and leapt onto an Elite's shoulders, forcing it to the ground, then planted one foot on its back, between its shoulders, and pulled its head upwards with all his strength. The head was ripped from the body, and purple blood spilled out in shocking quantities.
"Planning on the fly has always been a Spartan specialty," Ariane said, "but I don't think we've been sent into a situation this bad before." She dropped the now-depleted energy sword and picked up a pair of plasma rifles, firing them both into a large Zealot Elite. They overheated just after the Zealot's shields went down, and she dashed in close, dodging a plasma grenade. The Zealot spun and aimed a powerful roundhouse kick at her, which she ducked underneath, grabbing his other leg and yanking it from underneath him. He fell with a roar of fury, and Trip shot him in the face with a shotgun.
"Where did you get that from?" Ariane asked him, surprised.
"Dead Marine. No idea how he got this far through enemy lines, or why, but I don't really care. I have his gun." Trip allowed himself to enjoy the satisfying boom of the shotgun as he downed an Elite's shields with one shell, and then ripped through the bastard's body with a second. Deft fingers reloaded the weapon in less time than it would have taken to pick up a new one.
Johan's acknowledgement light suddenly burned a bright, alarming red. Ariane gestured at Trip to follow, and then changed direction and sprinted for his position. "What is it?"
"We're pinned down, taking heavy fire. Request reinforcements immediately!"
"On my way. Dawn Team, break off to Rally Point Charlie and assist."
"Sir," Dawn Leader acknowledged. "Ah, sir, we gotta snag."
Ariane felt her heart stop, and then kick back into action at double speed. "What is it?"
"Never seen this before, but we got eight half-size Hunters, all with full-size assault cannons. They already got Dawn Five and Dawn Six is in trouble."
"Disengage, Spartan," Ariane ordered. "There are other teams who are also more than capable of taking care of Hunters. Even eight of them."
"Negative, sir, no can do! The other teams are all but buried, and these Hunters will demolish the Marines if they get through our line."
Ariane shrugged. She had no real authority over the Spartan teams here, despite the fact that she outranked all of them. She was no John, not even close, and he was the only one they considered worthy of leading them. Besides, John would probably have left them be. "Do what you have to, Dawn Leader."
"Thank you."
Trip leapt over the wreckage of a Warthog, snatching some ammunition off one of its dead passengers, and flicked his acknowledgement light green. "I have eyes on. We've flanked them."
"Let's do this," Ariane said, opting for her sniper rifle. "Go on ahead. I'll cover you."
"On it." Trip sprinted for the enemies ahead, firing from his assault rifle as he ran.
Ariane dropped into a crouch and held her breath to steady her aim. She fired, and her body instinctively absorbed the recoil. Four Grunts and an Elite fell, the trail from the sniper round still visible in the air. She fired again, and again, not even pausing to watch her targets fall before she lined up the next shot.
"Here comes the cavalry," Raven commented over the comms, and soon the air around the enemy was crisscrossed with the gas trails from sniper rounds and the battle was punctuated often by the loud crack of the sniper rifles. "Ah, boss, Adam's…"
"I know, Raven. I'm watching him, and he won't be allowed to do anything stupid."
"Dibs on the last one!" Johan called as the Covenant force dwindled. Ariane smiled to herself when there were two left, and in the way they so often did, Ariane and Raven picked two separate targets, and fired at exactly the same time.
"Well damn," Raven said, "looks like there was no last one."
Johan shrugged one shoulder, already digging through rubble. Ariane sprinted forward and joined them, listening to the sounds of battle behind her. It was going well – more of the pop-pop-pop of UNSC weapons drifted across the distance than the distinctive sounds of each Covenant weapon – although she could still hear the sound of Hunter assault cannons discharging now and then.
"Sierra one-oh-three," Ariane said, "report."
"Status orange," Sadri coughed. Ariane frowned. He sounded weaker than he had immediately after the explosion.
"Pick up the pace," she told her team, hooking her fingers under the edge of a large slab. She heaved upwards; it took all her strength to lift the rock, but lift it she did, and Trip and Johan joined her as she shoved the edge as high as she could, and then started moving closer to the far edge, beneath the slab. Together, they flipped it over, revealing a tunnel. Ruined, but cavernous, the tunnel bore the same markings on the walls as some of the deepest tunnels in Castle Base, back on Reach. Tunnels that nobody but the Spartans dared explore.
It was dark in the tunnel, but that did not deter Ariane, who jumped down, landing silent and catlike in the heavy blackness. She could not see, so instead of waiting for her eyes to adjust, she switched on her night vision, and, as always, closed her eyes for the instant that her HUD flashed bright, blinding green.
She opened them to see Sadri leaning against a wall, helmet off, grinning at her. He laughed. "Ha, boom! That was the best one yet, don't you agree?"
Ariane shook her head slowly, with a resigned sigh. "Sadri. Report to the forward supply base for medical attention."
"Aw, come on, I must've taken out three quarters of the bastards."
"We appreciate your efforts, Sadri, as always, but you're injured." She checked TACMAP, selected Sadri's dot, and examined his vitals. "Badly. You need urgent medical care."
Sadri looked down at himself in surprise. "Do I?"
"Yes. Now go, no more protest!"
Sadri shrugged and did as he was ordered, still sniggering about the explosion he had brought about. Ariane outranked him, in both his identities, and who was he to argue? But that was an excellent boom, and it satisfied him on a very childish level. He noticed the pain, vaguely, but didn't care.
Ariane watched as Sadri climbed up the rubble and out of the tunnel, shaking her head. He was certainly unique, she thought, casting about for his helmet.
"Ah, Ariane?" Trip asked her over the comm. "Were you planning on making it onto that supercarrier today?"
"I have to find the pyromaniac's helmet," she replied, trying not to laugh. "What is it with him and explosives?"
"I can honestly say I have no idea. Far as I can remember, he's always been like that."
"One of these days someone will have to restrict his access to anything that goes boom," Raven commented. "Sadri is the only Spartan I can confidently say will most likely not fall to an enemy weapon, but only because he's more likely to die because he set off an explosion that was too big, on a fuse that was too short."
"Sadly, that's true," Johan agreed, sounding like he wished there was some way he could argue with Raven's point. It was an ever-present part of the team dynamic. Johan went out of his way to irritate Raven, mostly by disagreeing with everything she said.
"Johan," Adam said, "you actually agree with Raven on something? Are you feeling all right?"
Johan snorted. "That Sadri's an idiot? Of course I agree with Raven about that."
"Enough," Ariane cut in. "Sadri is just as capable as anyone. So what if he has a weakness for explosives? I seem to recall Johan shares it."
"Shut up," was Johan's eloquent retort. The set of his shoulders indicated embarrassment, and Ariane was distinctly reminded of a scolded child. It was the first child-like thing she had ever seen Johan do, even at the very beginning when they had all been between five and seven years old. His unshakable maturity had bothered her back then, and though it had since ceased making her nervous, she still kept a sharp eye on him. Nobody knew much about his childhood, but it had evidently been unpleasant.
"Eyes up, Spartans," she said, an order that reminded them to be professional at the same time as it prepared them for their orders. "That supercarrier above us is our target. You all remember the mission brief. This SNAFU has changed nothing. We still have a priority objective."
"How are we going to get up there?" Raven wondered.
"Here's the plan. The Covenant are deploying their troops via a gravity lift. That would be the obvious entry point. We're not taking it."
A silent mutter ran through the team, as everybody shifted, taking in her words. Trip shifted all his weight to his right leg, a clear indication he disapproved. "That only leaves incredibly risky options that may or may not work."
"The Covenant will not be expecting us to fly in on one of their birds. We are going to capture an enemy dropship. We are going to fly it close to the supercarrier. And then we are going to abandon it once we are within the supercarrier's shields and sneak in through the entrance on the top."
Johan looked up again. "Sounds simple enough."
"Problems – capturing the dropship. Ensuring they don't figure it out before we get there. And then remaining undetected on a Covenant supercarrier crawling with enemies, stealing the object, overloading the slipspace drive, and getting the hell out of there. Throw it at me, team."
"Capturing the dropship will be the easy part," Raven said. "We'll need to send our fastest Spartan – that's me – to kill the pilot before they can take off. The rest of us will have to kill the Covies in the transport bays."
Trip twitched his right hand, a subtle demand for attention. "Frost and Liara can help keep up the pretense. With Frost's hacking skills and Liara's translation skills, they'll be unbeatable working together. The Covenant will never suspect a thing."
Everybody looked at Adam. He shrugged. "I have nothing. Remaining undetected with that many enemies all hunting us will be incredibly difficult, if not entirely impossible, unless we can steal some Covie active camo systems and somehow integrate them into our armor. Finding the av-cam tech we need will be difficult."
"It's a good plan, Adam," Ariane said. "So – new problem, finding av-cam tech to steal. Solvable?"
"Kill some Spec-Ops Elites without overloading their av-cam first," Johan suggested. "Do we have the time to integrate it?"
"That will be simple, if you follow our directions," Liara said, using Trip's comms to address the team. "Snap Frost and myself have studied Covenant technology in depth, and have devised theoretical methods by which certain aspects may be integrated into UNSC systems with little or no modifications."
The team fell silent for a few seconds. The brief silence felt as if it stretched an eternity. Ariane eyed the supercarrier, noting with interest that her bionic eye automatically calculated entry points and potential threat.
"Stealing the object is part of remaining undetected," Johan finally said. "But overloading the slipspace drive? Do we even know where that is?"
"We'll find it," Ariane said confidently. "Overloading it should not be difficult, from what little we know about Covenant slipspace tech. That part is a side mission from ONI, as you all recall, and they are more interested in destroying this supercarrier than clipping its wings. Capturing it essentially intact would be, no doubt, rewarded, but is at this point impossible with the force we have available to us."
"Not that hard to take over the bridge, lock the doors, and vent atmosphere from the rest of the ship," Johan disagreed. "Then only the Grunts would be left, and it's not like we can't handle a few Grunts."
"A few," Ariane said, "but not a few hundred thousand. This is a situation in which we have good Intel indicating that the numbers are simply overwhelming. Besides, it would be a nice big explosion."
Johan murmured his approval and found a fuel rod gun in the rubble. He shook some of the dirt off it and brushed soot off the side. "Fully loaded. Score."
"The biggest challenge I can see is getting off the supercarrier," Raven said. "They'll know we're there, by then. Thoughts?"
"I can't see how we can really plan for it, considering that although our intelligence is reliable for numbers, and where the object will be, I have nothing on escape pods, or dropships, or other means of getting off the supercarrier," Ariane rolled her shoulders, indicating a clear 'I don't know'. "We need to be able to plan on the fly for this one, because I really have no idea what will happen once we are on board."
"We'll most likely lose more Spartans," Trip said. "If any of you is uncomfortable with the risk, you are welcome to stay behind. We only really need one of us to make the slipspace drive."
What was left unsaid, as always, meant a lot more than what was said. Nobody had to make it out alive, and there was a strong chance nobody would. Ariane watched the team, looking for any clues in their body language that might point towards reluctance. There were none – in fact, Johan looked eager.
"We're coming," said Adam. "Didn't think you could split up the dream team that easy, did you, Trip?"
"Doesn't bother us that we don't have an escape clause planned," Johan added. "Seems pretty standard, to me. Run headlong into Hell, not knowing whether we'll get out when the job's done, and not really caring anyway. Same old, same old."
"Well said," Raven agreed.