The Shores of Xanadu StarCraftHalo XOver

by avatar11792

Seven Behemoth-class Battlecruisers are discovered by the UNSC one year before the discovery of Slipspace FTL. Learning from the advanced technology of their foreign cousins, the UNSC begins to take their first steps into a larger world.

10. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight, Part One

Harvest, ODC One Becerra

2000 hours

July 4, 2492

Automated systems noted the objects emerging from warp space at the edge of the system, their fast yet limited minds recognizing the organic signatures from their first scans. Milliseconds before the computers alerted the human duty shift on station, security programs activated, and Harvest was automatically put on full alert.

"What the hell is going on?" said Commander Sheridan. "Why are we being put on alert?"

"Sir, Security Alert Crimson Omega has been activated. All forces in the sector are converging at Harvest due to communications warp pulse at 2001 hours."

"Shit." Crimson Omega meant only one thing. "Where are they coming from?"

"We're registering over…three million small contacts sir, more emerging every minute. They're coming from the outer rim, heading straight this way."

How do they know we're here, Sheridan wondered. "Are they Zerg?"

"Contacts registering now, sir, analyzing…organic profiles register positive for Zerg bio-organic features."

"Send out Alpha and Beta Squadrons immediately. I want a closer look. Activate point defense; alert all planetary forces that the Zerg are here, and to prepare for deployment. Send word to Halsey's Spartans, it's a good thing they haven't left yet."

"Yes sir. Alpha Squadron deployed, Beta following."

Alpha Squadron

En route

"So I says, "Isn't that state fashionable?"

"It's not funny Anymore Harley—"

"All right, cut the chatter ladies," the Wing Leader said. "Drop your socks and grab your throttle."

Alpha Squadron's afterburners kicked in, and the squadron tripled their speed. The fighters they were flying were the best of the best, Zephyrs from Iodite Industries. Along with old-school Wraith AA missiles as their standard munitions, Alpha Squadron also possessed Halo missile pods and laser packs for close-in strafing. Those were the standard anti-Zerg munitions per UNSC doctrine, a doctrine that had been broken out until now.

Wing Leader sighed. The evidence was incontrovertible, they were Zerg. "Zerg identified and locked. This one's all yours, Harley."

"Yeeeeee-haw!" Harley screamed as let loose his salvo of Wraith missiles. The other fighters, fourteen in all, followed suit, missiles screaming out to intercept the organic pulsating monstrosities. The creatures didn't even notice, missiles hitting them head-on and exploding in full fury. Dozens of transports broke open, spilling out even smaller creatures into the void, which withered and died.

"Open up with full laser packs. Command Central Becerra, they're Zerg for sure. Send out everything you've got!"

Roger Alpha Squadron. Beta Squadron inbound.

Coming in a pincer movement swooped Beta Squadron, their missile pods rippling out and carving a huge flank in the Zerg swarm's path. The hole filled up soon enough, but not before Beta Squadron fired off all of their Halo missile podsinto the gap, further decimating the Zerg's numbers.

It was only then that it seemed the Zerg bothered to notice the sting gnats in their flight path. Swarms of hundreds of what looked like serpents with immense black swept out towards both groups of fighters. "Mutalisks inbound," Harvey whispered. "Let's do this!" As the mutalisks engaged the fighters a vicious dogfight ensued, but one that was over quickly. The improved laser packs and reactors of Zephyr-class fighters quickly sliced through the mutalisks like they weren't even there, their thin skin boiled and cauterized. Harvey screamed in triumph as he got his first kill, but then his plane flew through the mutalisk's boiling guts, and his scream stopped as he noticed his canopy being eating away around him. "Becerra, all fighters! The Mutalisks got acid blood, they acid—"

Wing Leader lowered his head as Harvey's fighter blew apart. "This isn't going to be easy. Becerra, the mutalisks have acid blood like those xenomorph-things, request nuclear ordinance."

Roger. Nukes inbound, evac immediately.

"Alpha and Beta Squadrons, break off NOW! Head back to base and let the nukes do their job!" The tatter fighters, with gaps in their formations regrouped and accelerated ahead of the swarm…

...just as a Shiva-class nuclear missile streaked in and impacted the leading Zerg waves head on behind them. A white light filled the rear cameras. Wing Leader turned all cams off and sped away, shock waves from the blast threatening to throw his plane into a tailspin. He regained control slowly, and once he was back on course heading back to base he turned his cameras back on.

The swarm's tiny holes had expanded enormously, creatures not torn apart but melted, vaporized under the nuke's immense blast radius. Wing Leader almost whipped his head back as another Shiva nuclear missile zipped past his fighter, then another, and another. Massive white lights further decimated the Swarm behind them.

More holes opened up in space, further massive groups of the creatures coming in even closer to Harvest than the last one. "Becerra One, we've got more swarms inbound. ETA to you is about ten minutes."

Roger. Head back to the roost, we'll take it from here.

"Roger. Heading back to base for rearmament."

Harvest, ODC One Becerra

"Activate the defense grid, I don't want anything to get through. Coordinate fire with the Athens and Malta ODCs and Armon and Tranquility PDCs on the ground. Launch all fighters, orders are to establish a defensive perimeter around the holes in our tactical net. What's the status of the Spartans and Marines on the ground?"

"The Spartans are preparing fire-zones, strike teams and air support, Commander, but they can't do much until we have a better idea of where the Zerg are going to land."

"At least they'll be on their toes. Are the Zerg in range of our railguns?"

"Ten seconds, Commander."

"Good, wait ten seconds past that, then fire at will, maximum spread!"

On the hull of the Becerra and its sister stations the Athens and Malta, retracted turrets slowly spun out and readied themselves. The massive dual-railgun defense turret was a work of engineering, with firing tubes over 20 meters long on each end, firing 20-ton fragmentation slugs made of Titanium-A and Neosteel and filled with explosives. As the round was accelerated to over .2c, the round detonated at a certain range, creating a hailstorm of razor-sharp superheated shrapnel.

With tens of thousands of these turrets covering the spherical ODC's surface, firing arcs could be easily established along virtually any vector, and over 2,000 turrets were slowly rotating towards the oncoming Zerg, rounds auto-loading into their chambers.

As the turrets fired, and the fighters launched, and the nukes detonated, the sky turned as to a star-lit night, and the heavens themselves shook with the fury of the incoming fire.

Chapter Eight, Part Two

Master Chief slung his rifle over his shoulder. The magnetic grapples on his back caught the gun, and that left MC's hands clear. The Spartans had been deployed to prepare ground defense and fire teams for the oncoming Zerg. The question was, where were the Zerg going to land and begin nesting? His superiors had guessed that they would descend full-force on Harvest's massive fields of wheat and other crops, as those would contain sufficient bio-mass to feed the expanding Creep.

So the Spartans had gone south, organizing the Marines from Armon and Tranquility PDCs into quick engineering and excavation squads. Using local bulldozers from the farmers and explosives they were carving out trenches and fallback positions for the conflict ahead. They were as fully prepared as they were going to be.

Master Chief looked up into the sky, accessing the local command datalink. The data streaming across his internal visor was bad. The ODCs were holding up their own, and with the PDC's assistance were causing horrific casualties, but there were too many Zerg for the local forces to totally eradicate. They were merely thinning out their total numbers, but the Athens and Malta ODCs were beginning to suffer damage from Zerg Mutalisks and Guardians, and their personnel were being evacuated. Chief shook his head; the odds of any of the crew surviving the descent to the surface was low, what with Zerg surrounding them as they went.

He turned his head, as the rumble of a Thunder-class Assault Tank (above) vibrated his suit. He saw Kelly, one of the fastest Spartans and his close friend, perched on top of the massive 80-ton monstrosity hitching a ride. She hopped off of the 16-meter long tank, her suit thudding onto the ground. She got her bearings, and Chief could tell that she was smiling underneath her helmet. "We've got the eastern ridge set up, Chief."

"Good." Chief looked up into the sky, where he could vaguely discern with his magnification scops in his helmet millions of vague, small black dots across an otherwise blue sky. "Get the Marines mobilized. I don't think we have too much time left."

Tranquility PDC

Command Center C&C

"Have we received clearance from Admiral Hopkins?"

"Data stream inbound, authentication codes verified and locked, sir. We're ready to fire at any time."

"Good. Ready the launch pads and get those nukes air bound as soon as possible. Target the thickest clumps of Zerg, if possible, but provide cover for the Athen's and Malta's crew."

The authentication codes were for the 36 massive Polaris-class underground IPBM silos on the outskirts of the Tranquility PDC. Multiple hectares of land compose a PDC's land coverage, and the IPBMs took up over a third of that. Massive missiles designed to launch into outer space and nuke other planets, IPBMs had dozens of smaller nuclear warheads which would break off of the main missile and spread around causing maximum levels of damage. With the Athens and Malta on the verge of destruction, Admiral Hopkins, who had recently arrived with a fleet of Hyperion-class Battlecruisers in the edges of the system, felt that using the IPBMs to clear out the outer orbital would buy enough time for the ODC's crews to evac.

There was however a problem with this, one that Hopkins recognized but felt it was worth the risk anyway. Polaris-class IPBMs were designed for massive levels of destruction, and detonating the large missiles so close to the ODC's positions to clear out the Zerg would, via the force of their blast, push the ODC's wreckage out of orbit and force it to burn up in the atmosphere. This would cripple the defense net but, as Admiral Hopkins had pointed out to his superior officers only minutes before, the ODCs were basically crippled wrecks anyway.

With a massive rumble of unearthly fire, the Polaris missiles leapt from their earthly cradles, multi-gigaton weapons of mass destruction ready to vaporize and obliterate their opponents. The atmosphere slowly peeled away from the thin metal hulls, and sophisticate computers in the nose of the missile detected the bio-organic forms they had been tasked to find. The first Zerg rushed by, ignoring the large cylindrical object, as it wasn't hurting them or firing at them in any way. The 36 missiles rushed outward into space, past the ODCs, past even the ODC's maximum firing ranges, back into the depths where the numbers of Zerg were so thick they began to blot out the stars. They spread out in their travels, the smaller warheads onboard breaking off and, using thrusters, plunging farther and wider across the black seething masses. And detonated.

A second after the missile had detonated, it didn't matter whether the Zerg were blotting out the stars, because there were no more Zerg. A fountain of white heavenly flame washed over the Zerg swarms, and they were cleansed into subatomic vapor. The explosions continued and continued, the very arch of the sky from the perspective of Harvest showing pure white. The shock wave of subatomic particles began to dissipate as it raced outwards from the place of its birth, but it was still quite strong when it hit the Becerra ODC. Its already-tainted and scarred took the brunt of the blast full force, but the ODC remained operational. Its guns spun down, the railguns cooling as if in homage to such insane fires, but really to take advantage of the massive hole blown in the Zerg lines, if but for the few minutes it existed. Athens and Malta weren't so lucky, their shattered frames still getting hit by Zerg shattering in full under the blast's impact. Before the two stations fell, however, the self-destruct that had been activated blew, further purging the space above of Harvest of Zerg, shrapnel, burning up in the atmosphere.

Becerra's guns spun up into full auto-firing again as the small remnant of the Zerg finally arrived. Over 900,000 Zerg descended upon the southern hemisphere of Harvest, and despite all of Becerra's efforts, and the efforts of the PDCs below, the shores of pristine Harvest were introduced to the blight of the Zerg.

Chapter Eight, Part Three

Chief was riding shotgun on the side of a Warthog, Kelly on the back manning the minigun and Charles as the driver. Behind them rode the rest of the Spartans that were with them, their force having been divided in thirds and sent to the areas south of Armon. Behind them, in turn, rode the full strength of the 23rd and 456th Regiments, composed of over 3000 men in total and over 500 APCs, 230 Thunder-class Assault tanks, 337 Stinger hovertanks, and about 155 Dresden-class AA hovertanks.

The full force was stretched along the trail, a path across the savannah that had been blazed by a single swipe of an Hyperion-class Battlecruiser's lasers years ago. Though for the quiet whine of the hovertanks and APCs skimming down the road at over 75mph, the wilderness was silent, as if preparing for the upcoming conflict.

John 117 didn't have time for sight-seeing. He was busy coordinating with the other regiments as they proceeded to the crash sites where the Zerg forces were landing. "Admiral, do we have any guarantee of air support?"

Admiral Hopkins looked haggard. His BCs had arrived in orbit of Harvest, but not in time to prevent the majority of the surviving Zerg from landing. His ships were coordinating from orbit the attempts to track the Zerg, but the Zerg it seems had immediately gone to ground, their bio-signatures virtually vanishing off the map. However, it was comparatively easy to spot where their main settlements were residing, as the slow but steady spread of the Creep started to swamp the southern reaches of Harvest. "We're launching our Seraphs and Pelicans to cover you, as well as orbital insertions of ODSTs with heavy weapons. We're not expecting much success with drawing their numbers to kill-zones 117, so we need you to draw off the main Zerg forces when they emerge."

"Understood. Spartan 117 out." Master Chief turned off the channel. Their force, however powerful, wasn't exactly ideally equipped to handle a Zerg force of this magnitude. Their target was the main Zerg hive cluster, and from the satellite images captured of the site it was clear that the Zerg were very busy, and growing their forces at unnaturally fast speeds, at an almost geometric progression. Master Chief wasn't entirely sure, at the Zerg's growth rates, that they'd be able to suppress their incursion. But, as always, he would do his best.

"Standard two by two?" Kelly asked quietly.

"No. We're going to lure them to the ridge," which overlooked the Zerg cluster. "It'll give us a clear shot of their main facilities, and give the Pelicans an ideal landing field on their outskirts if we can pulverize their defenses."

"If we can. There's very little information on their defenses, and what we do have came from another universe, so it may not necessarily be accurate."

"We'll make do. We're 12 miles from the ridge; make sure the Marines are ready."

"Roger." Kelly began radioing the Marine APCs, while Chief check his Gauss rifle one last time. He checked Charles' as well, earning a grunt of acknowledgement from the Spartan driver. Charles spoke a second later, "One wonders what these Zerg will be like in combat."

"Nasty." Chief could tell that from the close-in satellite pictures, a seas of talons and scythes and claws, ravenous fangs and drooling mandibles. Charles hadn't seen them yet, as he'd been busy driving along the charred trail in the wild they were on. "They make the Xenomorphs look tame by comparison."

"Nice."

Chief looked at his map. "Slow down, and pull off here. Send the APCs in stealth mode further down the trail, and we'll circle down from the ridge and set them up in a crossfire."

"Right." The Spartans pulled over, while the main force continued down the path. They selected their weapons, loading themselves down with every considerable heavy weapon possible, then silently slipped away into the shrubbery that remained. The stealth coating that had been recently applied to their armor shimmered, then the groups of over 80 Spartans shimmered and vanished. The shimmering groups split into three main groups, and approached at inhuman towards the edge of their cover.

Chief waved silently, his fellow Spartans capable of discerning his movements only by tracking systems in their armor. They stayed, and Chief slowly advanced. A sixth sense was telling him something was wrong. He slowly climbed a nearby tree thick with dead leaves, the bark flaking. He looked away, and a few yards away lay the first edges of a black-purple creep, the edges of the hive cluster. And…he froze, as he saw the looming twelve-foot tall massive figure of what could only be a Xenomorph.

John silently turned up his acoustic sensors, and could hear the creature sniffing the air, roaming the area, circling the tree. He had only seen Xenomorphs in videos of past conflicts, as none had been seen for over half a century. Nonetheless, John knew exactly what the creature was doing, both from a professional perspective and…something else, something more primal. It was looking for the Enemy, the smell of unknowns, the smell of the Enemy's blood. John shook his head; he was salivating, oddly enough. He shook his head once, then prepped himself. He needed to take the creature out before it could raise an alarm.

The Xenomorph turned just as 117 leaped at it. Armor-piercing claws raked John's visor as the armored figure leaped onto it, the shadowy figure and the man of iron rolling on the dying grass. Around them, the world was dying and for a moment it seemed that brothers long separated were only now being reunited. The moment passed, and the violence of the fight was obvious. The Spartan's gauntlets sought to get a purchase on the alien's smooth carapace, and the alien's claws raked across the Spartan's shielded visage to no avail. They parted, each looking a crack in the other's armor, to rend the foe's entrails from him. The alien hissed challenge, and the Spartan, in his helmet, bared his fangs in acceptance.

They charged, and in a flurry of moves the Spartan disoriented the alien with a flurry of swift chops to its throat and head. It armored shell took the blows, and a microsecond later the massive tail whipped on John's back and smashed him to the ground. He turned around in mid-fall and smashed his pointed fingers into the throat, caving it in. The alien reeled back, screeching pain, and John leaped on it and yanked with every ounce of strength he possessed. He ripped the alien's head clean off, acid from the hole spilling and burning the ground. He quickly took dirt and put it on top to accelerate its reaction. When the smoking and hissing stopped, he went back and motioned his companions forward. They silently pointed to the carcass. John shrugged, then motioned to move forward.

The Spartans made it to their designated attack point in plenty of time. John's Gauss rifle, rocket launcher, and his Gauss pistol were laid out in front of John as he perched behind a rock outcropping, and the Spartans did the same. They collectively peeked their heads over the edge, and looked out over the plain.

The Zerg had been very busy establishing a front. Massive structures composed of sinew, shell, and slime littered the landscape, and creatures from nightmare crawled, slithered, or raced across it. There were many of the creatures that the Dominion had deemed Zerglings, horse-sized armor-plated dogs with fangs and claws. There were Hydralisks moving around, moving in coordinated groups, their snake-like lower halves and large carapaced heads bobbing silently. There were many other creatures around, unidentified in nature, but there were many Xenomorphs already. There was even an Ultralisk, far away on the edge of the plain but visible due to its massive stature, its tusks scooping up Creep and its maw ingesting it.

Chief crouched back down, then turned to his comrades. "Charles, Amy, take the flanks. Adam, send word to the Marines to commence their attack, and to get word to Admiral Hopkins that they're beginning. Everybody else, ready your rifles." The Spartans nodded, and moved accordingly. Chief waved in a quick flick of his wrist to the other Spartans, who had taken up hiding behind other large boulders and such. In their suits, the Zerg certainly couldn't smell them.

Chief raised his rifle, priming the explosive rounds first. "Let's go."

Chapter Eight, Part Four

The world slowed as the Master Chief stepped away from the rock. The movement of the Zerg stopped, his very breathing paused; his entire world was focused on one thing, and one thing only.

His first shot caught a Zergling in the eye. It entered the creature's brain, and the bullet exploded. The Zerg's head came clean off, burning through the Creep producing an acrid stench that the Spartan could not smell. The Zerg paused, a hundred thousand heads turned as one towards his location, then the very earth trembled as they all flew at him.

"Now," Chief said, and fired again.

The entirety of the Spartans, warriors bred and born, stepped out from their cover, weapons cocked and firing. From John's limited vision, he could dimly dsetect the firing of rockets and the massive guns of the Marines and their APCs in the distance on their left, on another ridge behind a line of dead trees. Chief fired, and fired again, taking one Zerg exactly per shot. Heads and limbs exploded in perfect synchronicity, a chorus of death.

Amy and Charles, on the flanks, pulled out their M8-3 Rocket Launchers and fired. One round, then another, streaked into the oncoming swarm, causing the earth and Creep to bulge then shred in violent explosions. Through the smoke of the burning Creep and the shrieks of the dying, the Spartans continued firing, making an ideal distraction.

Then he sensed it. The few hundred tanks of various sorts that they had brought with them barreled down the ridgeline, coming to a halt at the bottom and opening up with autocannons and 150mm railgun fire. The tanks primary cannons, varied as they were, targeted the lone Ultralisk first as a good test target. The creature, gaping holes torn in its hide from the first preliminary rounds, attempted to charge the tanks in defense but was gunned down by a second salvo of rounds. Further tanks were blasting the closest buildings in range and farther out, which were firing back by emitting guided spores of sorts at the tanks, and spikes rippling through the ground from unseen structures, striking and shredding the tank's non-existant underside armor plating. The tanks retreated quickly but a dozen didn't make it time, their engines exploding as the spikes hit their fuel lines and ruptured them.

The APCs came in behind them on their elevated ground, and anti-personnel rockets and rapid-fire automated 20mm chainguns began firing at full blast. By this point, the very ground of the hive cluster it seemed had exploded in what appeared to be sleeping burrowed creatures, the entirety of the3 fury of the Swarm channeled at the UNSC positions. It was a wave of flesh and fangs, eager for the Terran's flesh.

Master Chief slammed in a fresh clip of explosive rounds, then ducked as hypersonic razor-sharp spines whistled past his helmet embedding in the dead trees beyond. "Hydralisks! Get into cover!" The Spartans mostly made it, Charles keeling over with a massive bony spine embedded in his helmet visor. Chief dragged his body behind the boulder, then took out his rocket launcher and fired into the dense Zerg formations. Each blast took out a few dozen Zerg at a time, but the Zerg were flooding into the now-empty plain, which had been cleared of the defensive structures by the tanks.

"Foehammer, now's a good time for your move," Chief said calmly as he fired the last of his rocket rounds. They were going to be overwhelmed at this rate, despite their accuracy.

"Roger. Cover your heads, rounds inbound." Chief and the Spartans ducked behind their cover as rockets fired from the sky itself it seemed, the FAE rounds spraying liquid explosive death over the Zerg. Their screams if anything quadrupled in volume, and Chief was forced to drop his acoustic sensor's acuity in defense. Then he heard Foehammer screaming, and he raised his head quickly.

The dropships were coming in, but there were strange bulbous creatures which were firing sprays of brown goo from the ground at the dropships. As Chief watched in horror, the acid spray started eating through the dropship's thick armor plating, and the dropship wobbled in its place. He saw Marines jumping without gear into the Swarm as the dropship fell, swallowed by a sea of ravenous arms and legs as the burning dropship came and unleashed the final fires upon them all. "Spartans, target those creatures!" The remaining rockets streaked out and eliminated them, as well as a considerable number of hydralisks.

There was a temporary clear space, and ROD Pods streaked down, burning the very air underneath them. Those Zerg which might have been still alive were incinerated under the ROD's deceleration thrusters, and the massive pods crashed down, spewing out ODSTs in their thick powered armor covered with shoulder-mounted rockets and 10mm chainguns. They opened fire at point-blank range, causing a hail of fire across the frontal Zerg lines and a wave of corresponding dead flesh in response.

Chief heard a hiss to his left, a faint faint sound. He turned and fired just a large snake-like creature with wings leapt from the trees, unfolding its wings. It spat a large worm-like object at him which tried to latch on, but Chief blew the worm away then fired on the mutalisk. There were great swarms of them in the trees, and Matt began setting the trees on fire with his Defoliant Projector to drive them out. The fire spread, and Chief was astonished as he saw thousands of Mutalisks rise up behind them, accompanied by large floating sacks that must be Overlords. "Target the Overlords!" he shouted, then dived to his left as the mutalisks fired. He fired with his rifle into the nearest overlord as his comrades did the same, their explosive rounds tearing through the skin of the Overlord and making it reel in shock, then explode from the inside. The Mutalisks which were right on top of them reeled in the air, and the Chief and his Spartans took vicious advantage of their confusion.

He kneeled next to Kelly. "The Overlords must be controlling them, spread the word!" Their external comms were being jammed, so she merely nodded at his words then sprinted to the ODSTs, who were also taking advantage of the Zerg lines' reeling. With vicious enthusiasm, Chief and the Spartans continued firing, first focusing on the Zerg line, then occasionally taking out an Overlord when the Zerg seemed to be getting their act together. The death would cause them to reel in confusion again, and cooperating with the ODSTs and the tanks which had been raining fire down all this time, they were thinning out the Zerg hive considerably.

All of a sudden, a large clump of over 200 mutalisks broke free of their disorientation and flew toward the tanks. Hurried rounds flew by, only striking a few causing them to explode in mid-flight, but the rest continued. They never caught the Anti-Aircraft Dresden-class hovertanks which had stayed behind the rest not firing, their rockets swarms catching the mutalisks over 100 meters away and destroying them in totality. Acid rained down on the ground from their passage, and indeed burning disintegrating Creep and dirt filled the plain with a plume of light smoke.

Chief saw the Zerg lines thinning, and swung his arm. "Spartans, advance! Cover the ODSTs!" They joined their heavier-armed brothers on the battlefield, spraying an orgy of destruction into what remained of the Zerg. Thousands of Zerglings continued to charge forward, but the ones not blasted by chaingun fire and explosive rockets went down to flamethrower and rifle, shotgun, and gauntleted fists.

Within the hour, the main Zerg cluster in this area had been eliminated of 99 of its combat forces, and as the Spartans and surviving Marines retreated to rearm and regroup at Armon Base, the Zerg cluster was firebombed, and the entire site was nuked repeatedly by Battlecruisers from orbit. After all, it was the only way to be sure.