Chapter Six, Part Two

The Chief was standing in the back of an M223 Command Vehicle looking over the tactical holo-table. The battle in orbit had ended almost half an hour earlier and now it was up to him to delay the Zerg long enough for the colony ship The Final Frontier to arrive to evacuate the civilians. Then the gloves would come off and the Zerg would be made to regret ever setting foot on a human world.

The invaders had done as expected, landing in several concentrated positions among the vast fields of grain that covered the surface of the small planet. Examining footage from both orbital surveillance satellites and several dozen orbiting Hummingbird URAVs he could already make out the disgusting creep that covered everything in reach. The hideous shapes of Zerg structures sprouted like diseased flora among the fields of pulsating purple/grey goo and were spitting out more and more Zerg at an almost terrifying pace.

At the moment the greatest threat was a major Zerg 'base' located within four hundred kilometers of Utgard. Almost a quarter of a million civilians were huddled in the city awaiting rescue and if the Zerg breached the defense perimeter the death toll would be enormous.

Turning to his 'officers', the members of his personal team, John sighed. "This is going to get messy. I'm going to have one of the battlecruisers begin orbital bombardment of the enemy position. Kelly, I want you to take command of Alpha Squad and hold the eastern approach to the Zerg base. William will take Beta to the west, Fred with Gamma to the north-east, Linda with Delta to the north-west. I'll hold the line with Grace, Sam and Maria between the base in the north and Utgard in the south. Each of you are to take one sixth of our forces to form your squads. I'll keep a third here. I don't care what you take but make sure you have some artillery with you."

Receiving nods of confirmation, John dismissed them before commented, "By the way, the Tyrannosaurus super-heavies are mine." They could all feel the feral grin on their commander's face and shared it. John liked his big guns.

Watching the map change as the various landers took off towards their assigned positions, the Chief could feel the subtle tension that came before a battle; his inner Raptus calling him to battle in its primitive lust for death. All around the makeshift base he could feel this tension spreading in lesser form among the men. It was so unnaturally quiet, birds and insects having been driven away by the Marine's earlier preparations.

Seeing that his forces were ready he made the call, "This is Spartan-117 to the TCSC Everest. Do you receive?"

"This is Admiral Cole. We read you Chief," replied the voice of the man almost two thousand kilometers above his head.

"I am requesting kinetic bombardment at the following coordinates," commented the Spartan, keying in a series of numbers on the console before him. "Sustain for five minutes."

"Roger that Chief. We'll have that place turned to dust faster than you can say 'Big red button of death'."

John smirked at that. "Understood. Standing by."

In low orbit above, the sleek, bird-like form of the three and a half kilometer long Marathon class battlecruiser rotated on its axis, bringing its forty-eight dorsal missile launchers in alignment for direct bombardment. Small jets of atmosphere escaped the silos as the hatches protecting the launchers opened. Gauss distortion shimmered as forty-eight missiles escaped their homes and plunged into the planet's atmosphere on a direct line for Zerg base 'alpha'. Little more than a rod of tungsten mounted to a rocket motor and guidance system, the weapons relied on the acceleration of gravity for their destructive power.

Below the Chief looked up, four dozen pillars of fire streaking like meteorites straight for the entrenched enemy location. Turning to the feed from one of the orbiting drones John was just in time to see the first missiles strike. The ground almost seemed to ripple outward from the impact site; Zerg creatures, structures and underground tunnels shattering from kinetic force far beyond what they could possibly tolerate. More and more missiles impacted, the overpressure causing ground and air units alike to explode in showers of gore, their acidic blood singing the surrounding cracked and contaminated ground. From the comparatively tiny roaches and Zerglings to the massive Ultralisks and Brutalisks nothing was immune to the destruction wrote by the simple rods of metal.

This bombardment continued for the allotted five minutes, the Everest's launchers firing one round each every five seconds. By the time it was over, the ground around the Zerg base had been reduced to a small mountain of jagged rock covered in incinerated creep and hissing acid. Moments passed and John wasn't surprised to discover some of the enemy creatures had survived, crawling out of their ruined position and trying to escape the scene.

"This is 117 to all units. Kinetic bombardment sequence has been completed. Remaining enemy units are attempting to escape. Engage and terminate." Exiting his command vehicle, John retrieved his gauss rifle from his back, checking the weapon as he fell in among the slowly advancing mass of vehicles and soldiers. With five groups closing from five different directions, the nearby Zerg force was about to be crushed to paste. As they closed to within ten kilometers his detachment of Crucible class siege tanks and Blaze class rocket artillery stopped, readying their long range guns. Keying in the firing zones for each squad's artillery, John let the local battle AIs handle the precise targeting for each vehicle. Seconds later hundreds of tungsten flechette rounds and incendiary rockets soared over their heads and even more of the Zerg died.

By the time the assembled marines had engaged the target, the Zerg were in a sorry state. Most of the enemy creatures had long since been slaughtered and the assembled forces were more than happy to finish the job. Raising his gauss rifle, John drilled a nearby Hydralisk through the head, the creature's upper body ripped from its lower by the hypersonic projectile. Beside him the eerie shriek of the twin particle lasers mounted to a Tyrannosaurus class tank sounded as twin beams of death ripped one of the few surviving Ultralisks apart, the laser component burning through its tough carapace while the particle component disrupted the intra-molecular bonds that held it together on the most basic levels.

Five minutes later it was over and the orbiting drones confirmed that there were no remaining Zerg forces within fifty kilometers of their position. As the Athenas swept in to pick up the Marines and vehicles, John was surprised to see the shattered form of a Xenomorph queen among the dead Zerg bodies.

"That's not a good sign," commented Linda as she approached the scene, nearby Marines eying the dead alien suspiciously.

"So they have been assimilated," replied John. "I guess it explains the acidic blood and the attacks over the years."

"They were trying to soften us up," Kelly continued. "Weaken us for the eventual invasion."

"And here it is," concluded John. "We'll not see the end of this for a long, long time."


Utgard Outskirts

Two Days Later

Two days. Two days of combat, of victory and setbacks, of losses and pain. For John it had been the hardest two days of his life. Despite what he'd been created for, no Spartan had actually served in a true 'war' before. Combat situations yes, actions lasting weeks yes but an actual war? No.

In the two days since the Zerg's arrival they'd seen setback after setback. Orbital scans were showing that almost two thirds of Edda was now covered in creep. They'd lost Gladsheim city almost a day before but fortunately had been able to evacuate all of the hundred and fifty thousand civilians before that time. Images from the surviving Hummingbirds showed the once pristine city was lying in ruins, its graceful skyscrapers of metal, glass, stone and concrete covering in creep, debris from automobiles and the last few hours of hasty evacuation having been covered over by the pulsating organic carpet.

Looking back at the truly massive form of the colony ship hovering above Utgard, John was eternally grateful for its presence. So far there hadn't been a single civilian death despite the odds facing them. Injuries sure, some even critical, but not one innocent life had been taken. They only had a few thousand civilians left in the city and then they could abandon this position and pull back to the PDIs which had fortunately held against any attempts to capture them. The massive fortresses were more than able to defend themselves against the Zerg but as a precaution General Suffield had ordered all non-essential personnel evacuated along with the civilians. Within a few more hours the only people remaining on Harvest's surface would be the roughly twenty-five thousand surviving Marines.

After that the remaining forces would be evacuated and the warships in orbit would begin the systematic nuclear carpet bombing of each and every infested area on the planet. Being so deep within the Terran Commonwealth's space, HIGHCOM had decided that reducing most of the planet to radioactive glass would be necessary to prevent the planet from becoming the Commonwealth's version of Char, a launching point for a Zerg invasion of the rest of the inner colonies and of Earth itself.

Still they had a few more hours before that could happen and the Zerg had established yet another base nearby. John snorted at that. 'You'd think they'd learn after the last six times,' he grumbled in the privacy of his own mind. Six times they'd overrun Zerg bases threatening Utgard in the past two days. Six times the orbiting battlecruisers had turned the land on which those bases rested to ash via orbital bombardment, all the while they keep up a steady suppression of the Zerg across the rest of the planet using tactical nuclear missiles. Yet still they came and still they tried.

"Well here we go again," he commented as his forces moved out towards the Zerg position. They'd long since stopped using the Athenas as the Zerg had drastically upped the number of Mutalisks and spore crawlers in the area. Not enough to threaten the heavily armored vehicles of the TCMC, but enough that they had to move in large columns to concentrate their anti-air firepower.

Silently walking beside one of the six remaining Tyrannosaurus super-heavies left on the planet, nicknamed Bob by the marines, the Chief hoped that this would be their last major battle. Even Spartans got tired and after two solid days of fighting he felt a bone-deep weariness. Most of the Marines were keeping themselves awake with stims, caffeine and looted candy from Utgard's numerous convenience stores. Unfortunately, even stimulants couldn't compensate for the lack of sleep and it was becoming dangerous for them to stay awake much longer while in active combat. You missed things that way and that could get you and your comrades killed.

Halting the column, John decided to scout ahead. Most of their URAVs had long since been shot down and satellite surveillance could only get you so far. Activating his cloak, the Spartan sprinted forward. He may not have been as fast as Kelly but he could get by. His sixth sense told him something was wrong and so he stopped to climb a dead tree, its base coated in creep and its leaves having long since turned brown and mostly fallen off.

Nearby he could see the form of a Raptus, clearly a scout, and he realized that was the reason his instincts had warned him. Turning up the gain on his acoustic sensors, he could hear the black creature sniffing the air, roaming the area and circling closer to his tree. He'd fought plenty of these things in the past two days and both his experience and something more primal in his DNA knew what it was doing. It was searching, looking for its prey, the smell of the unknown, the smell of blood. John shook his head at that realizing he'd been drooling slightly at the thought. That was a clear sign his base instincts were getting the better of him. He needed sleep.

Shaking off the primal calling in his blood, he prepared himself for the upcoming battle. Replacing the rifle on his back, John held his arms up in what looked to be a boxing form, priming the twin emitters on his forearms. The Xenomorph had just turned to his position when John struck, twin blades of pure psionic energy bursting forth from his extremities and slicing into the predator before him. The technology had been refined from study of recovered Protoss Zealot armor and was fairly common within the TCMC.

Still, the powerful animal before him wouldn't go down easily, grappling and slicing its razor sharp claws across his shields to no effect. Backing off and ripping his blades out of the creature, the Spartan erupted in a flurry of moves that left the alien in several pieces, its acidic blood spilling out of the few non-cauterized wounds to scorch the ground at his feet. Signaling the Marines to move forward, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In doing so he missed the looks of awe on their faces as he stood over the dismembered alien, his twin blades swirling threateningly around his clenched fists.

Shrugging, John turned away, ignoring the small part of his mind that wanted to howl like a wolf at the kill.


The battle for the Zerg base had gone much like the others. They'd encircled the base and proceeded to crush whatever was left after the bombardment. Replacing his rifle's magazine, he watched as the massive form of The Final Frontier took off, the last of the civilians having boarded. All around him the Athena assault landers were setting down, loading personnel and vehicles for their trip off the defiled planet. The same was happening at the six PDIs, their defense systems set to automatic as their inhabitants packed up and left.

Stepping onto one of the landed A-Variant Pelican drop-ships that had been brought in to handle overflow, John took a seat and idly buckled his crash harness. As the last of the landed craft took off, he stared out the open rear hatch to witness the first of the nuclear missiles rain down upon the torn and blasted hellscape that most of Harvest had become. The flash was a spectacular thing to witness, and as his helmet polarized, he could see more of the fireballs raining down from the sky. Another landed right in the middle of the ruins of Gladsheim, the hundred and fifty year old city erased from existence by atomic fire.

Closing the hatch, the Chief leaned back in his seat. He couldn't shake the feeling that this would be a long, long war.