Chapter 10: Titan and Olympus
"Dude, how the fuck has this happened?"
"What do you mean how the fuck did this happen? It's the SDF, they're probably five steps ahead of us all the time!"
"Shut up! Keep your heads screwed and stop losing your nerve!"
"You heard the Staffie! Keep ya traps shut and stop acting like prats, will ya?"
It was relatively obvious that what the soldiers on the ground had just seen was more than intimidating. The Olympus Mons was the greatest ship ever known, only antagonised by their very own supercarrier, the Titan. In his crazed rush for help, Nick had called out for the help of the Tigris, and this rushed plan had just gotten one of the three ships left for UNSA in the Solar System destroyed.
Lyall was quiet in all of the chaos, trying to help the marines that had been injured or wounded in the chase to get to shelter or on the way through the refinery. Kashima was just across from him, and the pair of them were helping the same marine, the corporal known as Nunes.
"Nunes, c'mon stay with us…." Kashima ordered. "Listen up, you hardass, you're gonna make it through this!"
Lyall could barely hear the laughing cough from Nunes as she lay bleeding on the floor. The pair tried to stem the bleeding, but the medical officer with the attack force had already been blown to pieces when the Olympus Mons had made it's entrance.
The roaring of the engines could still be heard from the Olympus Mons that was right above them. The whining of dying engines could be heard from miles away as the corpse of the UNSA Tigris hung above them, a new addition to the battlefield they would be soon fighting on. Texeira had closed the door from inside the Cyclops combat robot he was in, making sure any SDF troops could not come around and kill them all.
Lyall could feel the grip that Nunes had on his arm slack a little, before falling to the floor. Of course, Kashima kept speaking to her, telling her to keep breathing. Yet, his words fell on wasted breathe. Nunes was already dead and she wasn't coming back any time soon. Omar and Brooks were trying to regather the marines and to keep them in the game. Texeira was stomping around, next to Devereaux.
Reyes was absolutely devastated. His hand was stuck across his glass faceplate, his rifle bouncing across his chest. In his fearful ordering, he had gone and killed at least two thousand people because of his foolishness. He was trying to speak, but all that was happening was the miming of the words. He was just mouthing them, not a single syllable could be heard of the words he was speaking.
"Nunes..." Kashima said. "Nunes is gone, Staff Sergeant."
Brooks shouted. "Fuck! Fucking shit! What's the plan, Staff Sergeant?"
"We don't die on our fuckin' knees! Not now, not any day!" Reyes finally said, gaining some kind of confidence.
"What about us, Captain?" Omar asked. "How is this gonna work?"
Taking to his feet, Sebastian began to speak once again. "Captain Reyes, call in your Retribution. I'll call in my Titan. Have the Ret bringing ground and air support, and I'll have the Titan keep the Olympus Mons distracted."
Lyall then turned to the crew members inside the Grizzly battle tank, all sitting on the tank itself as well as Texeira. "You guys, I want you to listen to Staff Sergeant Omar, he's giving orders until I'm back."
"Yessir!" The tank drivers and Texeira replied, getting to their stations and going to Omar for their new orders.
"Nora, Gator, bring in the Ret and get the marines and the SCAR teams ready!"
"Merrick, Li, get me one Vulture, and make it staffed bar the pilot. I'll fly it." Lyall ordered.
The men and women aboard the Retribution and the Titan all echoed their orders. It wasn't long until Reyes, Lyall and E3N had entered the nearby cargo elevator to the roof where they'd be able to reach their Vulture and the Jackal jets. On the ride, it was occupied by the silence more than any actual talking. That was until Admiral Kotch had decided to make another grand and glorious speech to the UNSA forces on Titan.
"Commander Lyall, Captain Reyes. There is no hope for you here on Titan, I have buried your brothers and I have hunted your sons. You cannot win, you have no hope of winning. Give up now, surrender and order your men to drop their weapons. Death is no disgrace!"
"That bastard..."
"You know him?" Reyes asked.
"Admiral Salen Kotch, youngest Admiral in the SDF Fleet. Commander of the Olympus Mons and overall general Martian piece of shit. We… we knew each other on Deimos. I was under orders from Admiral Raines, and he was under orders from Admiral Thies. It was weird, really really weird."
"How so?" E3N asked, his eye-flaps raising in curiosity.
"I was in SCAR at the time, Petty Officer. That was how me and Chief Devereaux met, on Deimos. Kotch was one of the best Skelter pilots in the SDF at the time, he'd shot down ships of all types. He was part of the force that shot down the UNSA Everest, and I was part of the force on the UNSA Minotaur. Both ships went up going down, but I had managed to survive." Lyall said.
He then began to continue to tell his tale as the elevator continued to move up the elevator shaft.
"Me and Kotch were the only people left, of both forces. We had a nice little chat, and after that it was quite amicable. It was a friendly rivalry at best, even despite the war crimes. That was until Europa."
"Europa? Where the SCAR Team went down?" E3N asked.
"Yeah, did you guys know about that?"
Before E3N and Reyes could reply, the elevator had hit the top floor and the trio marched out to the roof where they could see the magnificently scary titanium chassis of the Olympus Mons. The turrets and missile silos were bombing most of the refinery, destroying any area that was occupied by anyone, no matter if they were SDF or UNSA forces.
The trio stowed their weapons as Salter flew down, and Reyes and E3N leapt into the other Jackal, before flying off with Salter and to the control and regulation centre. Soon after, the Vulture Heavy Gunship had hovered down and Lyall soon jumped in, taking the pilot seat.
"All UNSA forces, this Vulture Actual." Lyall began. "Pile into the Vulture, were going for a gunrun!"
Lyall quickly got used to the joystick that was used as a rudder, quickly adjusting to the lack of twin joysticks unlike a Jackal or a Raven. Lyall quickly checked the loadout, and noticed the Vulture was packed to the brim with all types of weaponry, like the ARGENT V Missile systems and GAU-23 Gauss system that Lyall could see peering leering over the glass like some kind of ever-present threat.
Yet it was not a threat to Lyall, it was a threat to the SDF bastards that were trying to kill them.
"Fair winds, Vulture Actual!" Texeira roared over the radio.
As the Cyclops pilot spoke, there was a heavy thudding over the roof of the Vulture, before Lyall could see the Cyclops leap off the roof and into a SDF Hyena Troop Carrier. Texeira released the Cyclops' entire payload into the carrier, and soon the carrier dropped from the sky with Texeira still clinging onto the frame, killing all aboard. It soon occurred to Lyall why Texeira had done what he did.
If he had not, the Vulture would never have had enough time to take off with the Grizzly tank still attached.
The Vulture quickly began to rise through the air, and the first thing that Lyall noticed was that he was definitely outnumbered by the amount of Skelters in the air. However, it was not air-superiority that the Vulture excelled at.
It was ground attack, and there was plenty of ground to be attacked.
"Gunners, focus fire on all SDF forces on the ground. Fire everything at them!" Lyall yelled over the radio.
The rumbling of the 40mm cannons was heard throughout the ship, and soon a series of explosions could be seen all over the battlefield. Men and machine flew through the air, wires and body parts flying apart as the explosions tore them apart. It was then when Lyall let loose on the ARGENT V missiles, watching as the four missile pods released their payloads, and as four missiles from each pod flew through air into the SDF soldiers on the ground.
"Confirmed hit, Commander." Usef said. "Never seen one of these beasts before, it new?"
"You'd be surprise what the jar-heads can cook up on the Titan, Staff Sergeant!"
Kashima laughed. "Gotta get the Retribution some of these, holy shit look!"
Just above the Olympus Mons, there was a small feint little glow. It looked like a mix of blue and purple, and that was a very distinct mix of colours, at least from what the soldiers on the battlefield could see. The glow began to grow further, and soon it was large enough to resemble a small slipspace drop-hole.
Which meant ships were coming in.
There was a thunderous roar from further in the sky, and from the purple drop-hole emerged the great UNSA supercarrier.
The Titan.
"Christ almighty!" Brooks exclaimed. "That's yours, Commander? That's bigger than the Independence!"
"That there, Corporal, is the UNSA Titan. The only super-carrier class ship for the UNSA. It's something to keep the SDF on their toes."
Next to the Titan soon erupted the small carrier that was the UNSA Retribution. It moved a lot faster than the Titan, soon making a nose dive to get in firing range of the Olympus Mons and the refinery.
"Commander, it's Merrick!" Lyall heard from his radio. "We have our firing solutions, so does the Ret. Permission to fire on the Mons and the refinery?"
"Permission granted, Flight Lieutenant."
"Copy, Commander! Ready for danger close!"
There was a loud rumbling once more, although it was quieter than the rumbling of cannons inside the Vulture. Shells and missiles were flung from both the Titan and the Retribution, flying down and hitting the refinery just below the Vulture as well as hitting the massive chassis of the Olympus Mons that was lingering above them.
"Commander Lyall, this Ret. Command. SCAR Teams one through three are joining the fight! Can you read SCAR One-One?" The man known as Gator said.
"Solid copy, Ret. Gimme a minute." Lyall replied. "Captain Reyes, the Titan and the Retribution are here, Ret. Command cannot get a solid radio connection with you, can you confirm?"
"I can confirm, Vulture Actual!" Reyes said over the radio. "The refinery control is down, destroyed by the Tigris wreck. We're running search and rescue right now!"
"S&R? Are there survivors from the Tigris?" Lyall asked.
"Affirmative, Commander Lyall."
Lyall could not reply to the familiar voice of Captain Maureen Ferran as he felt the Grizzly below the Vulture fire it's gun. The power of the Grizzly's gun was too much for the Vulture even, and the gunship flew backwards as the gun fired, causing Lyall to press the joystick forward. He almost felt the joystick break off as he forced the Vulture forward as he released more missiles.
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Nick ran faster than he had before. The Tigris was falling apart, and since the refinery control centre had been completely destroyed, he had knew what to do with the Tigris. He wasn't just going to leave the still-living men and women aboard the Tigris to die just because of his stupid mistake.
No, the Tigris went down because of him.
And it was up to Nick Reyes to fix the mistake that he had made.
Well, he did fix it as much as he could. The lifeboats had failed to launch but they were built to withstand a massive crash like the one the Tigris had went through. Scrambling from the Jackal, Nick took his RPR and ran along the body of the Tigris until he could get inside. Jumping down a service tunnel, he had began to open the life pods until he found the boiling liquid that was beginning to envelop the Tigris' metal carcass.
He thought he was going to die.
The Tigris had shifted whilst he was inside, whilst E3N and Salter were outside of the ship still inside the comfort of the Jackals.
"Ferran, I'm so sorry!" Nick said as he broke open her lifeboat, pulling her out.
"Apologies can happen out of the battle, not now." Ferran said, drawing her Kendall 44.
Nick was quite surprised by the adamant nature of Captain Ferran. She was so much older than Nick, and she fought like she was made to be a SCAR fighter. She joined the remainders of her crew on the chassis of the ship, and soon Nick and Ferran were fighting off the SDF on the body of the sinking UNSA Tigris.
"Commander Lyall, fancy trying to help us get off the Tigris? It's sinking!"
"I'm almost there, Reyes, just wait!"
"The Tigris is fucking sinking, Lyall!" Nick replied over the radio, a bullet whizzing right past his head.
There was a loud thundering sound, the sound of the Vulture flying right above them. Nick swore he could have seen tank gunners, climbing out of what appeared to be a Grizzly tank. As soon as the last one crawled in, the Vulture ended up dropping the Grizzly like some kind of make shift battering ram, running down the SDF soldiers firing on them before the tank itself flew off the body of the Tigris.
As Nick poked his head up, he noticed his Jackal was gone and soon E3N was running towards them, gesturing to Nick to move backwards. The surviving Tigris crew as well as Nick, Ferran and E3N ran towards the stern, as the Vulture hovered just over the edge. The crew members leapt from the body of the Tigris, before E3N grabbed Ferran by the hips and with one horrified shriek from Ferran leapt through the air and into the open cabin of the Vulture.
Soon, Nick followed, and with one quick leap into the Vulture he pushed past and into the cockpit of the Vulture, taking the co-pilot seat next to Commander Lyall.
"Captain Reyes."
"Commander Lyall."
The two soldiers went through the regular pre-flight checks as Lyall began to send some responsibilities of the Vulture to the SCAR Leader and the Captain of the Retribution. As they flew back to the main refinery, the main storage tower was now exposed. Turning the key in place to activate the Gauss cannons, he looked at Nick.
"Wanna do the honours?" Lyall asked?
"Thank you very much, Commander."
Pressing the metaphorical big red button, the twin gauss cannons shot through the main storage and the tower blew up in a plume of white smoke. He could hear a loud amount of cheers over the radio until the small screen on the Vulture opened up, and the screen was making itself out of gold flashes of light and static.
Like before, it was Salen Kotch.
"Commander Lyall, it seems like I have neglected to speak to my intelligence operatives a little longer than I should have."
"Or your intelligence operatives is just really shit."
"Ah, Sebastien. Ever the bluntest UNSA soldier I ever had the displeasure of meeting."
"Ah, Kotch. Always the arrogant, self-serving shitpile of an Admiral I ever knew. Who's cock did you have to nibble on to get the promotion?"
"Petty insults will get you nowhere, Commander. You have lost this war, Sebastian. You may have beaten Thies on Deimos and we may have gone down on Phobos together, but that is all in the past. They are merely pages of your history, a history that will soon be lost to the ages in favour of a better civilisation. A Martian civilisation."
"This is coming from someone who has lost two capital ships, five members of the council and just lost a crucial fuel station, Kotch. Rethink your words, you idiot."
"You may have beaten us back for now, Sebastian, but we still have the Mons, I still have the F-SpAr plans. You will lose, don't fight this."
"Yeah, yeah, go fuck yourself."
"Mars Aeturnum."
It was not long before the screen cut off and Lyall, Reyes and everyone was sitting in silence until the Vulture docked with the Retribution. Lyall was silent as he took a Raven back to the Titan with the crew members of the Tigris and the Titan with him.
The mission was accomplished, at the loss of his marines and some valuable machinery.
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