The Siege of Shanxi

Chapter Thirteen: The Battle of Four-Kilo-One

I don't own BioWare

"FIX BAYONETS! FIX BAYONETS ALONG THE LINE!" Nothis screamed over the sound of descending engines. "NOTHING GETS THROUGH!"

Norman fumbled for his bayonet, attaching it to the end of his rifle as the alien fire slackened. Barber cursed again as she moved to clear a jam. "Why aren't they shooting?"

"They're grouping up, prepping for a charge maybe?" Norman looked out along the foxholes. "Buckley! Hess! You still with me?"

A shaking hand got raised from a mortar crater a few yards away. A German voice answered. "Still alive, Sergeant, but I can't find Buckley!"

Norman propped himself up. "Anyone seen Private Buckley?"

A sardonic male voice came from a foxhole behind him. "I've got his head, Major Scatelli's boots and Captain Forsythe's left arm in here. Take your pick."

McDevitt's southern twang echoed down the line. "Keep your shirt on, Benny. Any of the officers still breathing?"

"Does Lieutenant Bryce count?"

"He was an officer, last I checked."

"Well, he's back at the aid station, but he won't be giving orders for a while. Poor bastard had his eardrums ruptured by a grenade blast."

"Ain't so bad."

"Is when shrapnel from the grenade tore his eyes to shreds."

McDevitt was silent for a few seconds. "Well, that's a mite more serious."

Norman put an unsteady hand into his top pocket, and found it empty. "Shit...Anyone got any cigarettes?"

A pack sailed over his head and landed in the bottom of his hole. "That shit'll kill ya, Sarge!"

"Unsubstantiated rumour!" He yelled back.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" The voice of the Company Sergeant Major rang out once again. "I SUGGEST YOU CHECK YOUR MAGS AND MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH ALMIGHTY GOD!"

"But Boss, I'm an atheist!" Someone shouted back.

"EVERYONE ELSE SAY A PRAYER FOR THAT 'EATHEN BASTARD!"

An almost hysterical wave of laughter hit Norman and the rest of the company, infectiously spreading from foxhole to foxhole.

And then the enemy opened fire again, and it stopped being funny.

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"Fox Three, Fox Three!" Tanya twisted her fight to the right as her missiles shot out of the internal weapons bay. "Missile away! Bogeys on my right!"

=And above us!= Corthock radioed in. =We have some survivors from VF-87 coming in. We could use their help.=

The voice of a Forward Air Controller distracted Tanya for a second, almost blinding her to the alien dropship that cut across her nose. Cursing in Russian, she pulled back on her joystick, barely missing the other craft.

=Whiskey Three-Three, this is Juliet-Sabre One= A woman's voice came across the open channel. =First-Fourteenth is in heavy contact at grid Four Kilo One. Confirming a Serpent Six, I say again, confirming emergency code Serpent Six! Over!=

There was a pause. Then Corthock came back online. =Juliet-Sabre One, this is Whiskey Three-Three. What the fuck is a Serpent Six? Over!=

There was another pause...and then a man's voice came online. =IT MEANS WE'RE BEING FUCKING OVERRUN YOU BASTARD! CARPET BOMB THE FUCKING PARK!=

=Copy all, copy all! Hang tight, we're coming fro you!= Corthock swapped frequencies, moving to the tactical channel. =All bombers, stack up in flights, obliterate the enemy LZ at Four Kilo One.=

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"They're coming up in force!" One of the riflemen in the forward foxholes screamed. "Where are the reinforcements?"

"They're reinforcing Romeo Company over on the left flank!"

A barrage of short range rockets threw up dirt and debris as the Marines ducked for cover. The aliens came through the smoke, firing short bursts. The riflemen in the forward foxholes stood up to engage with their bayonets. Both Marines and aliens were cut down as the rear machine guns opened fire.

"CEASE FIRE AT THE REAR!" Nothis bellowed. "DON'T GET OUT OF YOUR HOLES! IF THEY GET ON TOP OF YOU, LET THE PITS BEHIND YOU DEAL WITH THEM! YOU STAND UP, YOU DIE!"

"We need more men up front!" Sergeant Muscit yelled out, her voice cracking with strain as she choked on the dust. "Three or four!"

"Alenko coming up!" Norman shouted back, then turned to Barber. "Come on, let's go!"

"Fuck you!" Barber crouched lower over her machine gun, her hands gripping to it like it was a log in the middle of the ocean. "We go up there and we die!"

Norman didn't have time for argument or debate. He grabbed his sidearm and pressed it against Barber's head. "Die here or die up there, Corporal?"

She twisted her head, locked eyes with him, and saw pure murder in them. Hoisting her gun up, she charged forward and threw herself prone into another foxhole, jamming her finger down on the trigger. Her machine gun sounded like a buzzsaw, the steady stream of bullets cutting a swathe through the figures advancing in the smoke. "SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT..."

Norman followed her, staggering slightly as a bullet graced his shoulder, shearing off the ballistic plate covering his socket. He collapsed next to Barber, firing his rifle one handed until his magazine went dry.

He shoved the rifle aside, grabbing another one from underneath one of the dead bodies. The other Marine had two more clips of bullets, each one with a depleted uranium tip. Lucky bastard must have been tight with the quartermaster...well...unlucky bastard.

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Tanya pulled her joystick to the left, narrowly preventing a collision with an oncoming fighter. The dogfight here was even more chaotic than the one in orbit. Up there, less than eighty fighters had been entangled. Here, it was upwards of two hundred.

=Try and ignore their fighters!= She pulled onto the tail of a troop transport. =Take out their transports!=

=But ma'am, the fighters...=

=Their fighters can't take this planet away from us!= She berated the unfortunate owner of the voice. =But the soldiers on those transports can! Tubvoyu maht!=

Her mass accelerator cannon ripped gaping holes into the cargo bay of the transport. In her mind's eye, she pictured troops crammed close together, just waiting to charge out and help kill humans. She'd see to it that this particular batch never reached their destination.

The transport exploded, her rounds finally touching off its fuel tanks. She tried to turn to avoid the wreckage, but her blood lust had driven her too close to her prey. One piece smashed in her nose cone, while another sheered off her left wing. Her fight spun uncontrollably, descending toward the smoke.

Alistair saw it happening. =Flogger's hit! Flogger's going down!=

Either no one heard him or no one cared. With fighters and fighter-bombers crisscrossing the sky with smoke trails and tracer rounds, one lone fighter going down didn't draw much attention.

The first Adaptive Strike Fighters, loaded down with air-to-ground ordnance, screamed in from above as the first round of bombs were delivered to Grid Four Kilo One.

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Without warning, Barber's machine bucked out of her grip. Flipping onto its side, the barrel began to buck wildly. Grabbing the belt, Barber tore the ammunition free. "Motherfucker!"

"Fire your weapon, Corporal!" Norman ducked as a burst of enemy fire kicked up dirt around the edge of the foxhole.

"Can't do, Sarge," Barber dragged the gun into the bottom of the foxhole. "My barrel's red hot, it's cooking off my rounds! The cooling system's all clogged up. If I keep shooting I'm gonna deform the barrel!"

Alenko reached for his hydration pack on his back...and felt only a damp patch on his ballistic plating. "You got any water?"

"The preacher needed it for the wounded at the aid station."

"Shit." Norman checked his magazine. Still half full. "Here, take this and keep firing. Single shots only, only shoot at what you can hit."

"What are you going to do?" Barber glanced down the fore sight. "Spit on it?"

Norman didn't bother answer. Still lying prone in the hole, he turned on his side and reached for the zipper on his fatigue trousers. Twenty seconds later he brought the light machine gun back up and passed the grip to Barber.

The Corporal glanced at the steaming barrel of her weapon. "Did you just piss all over my gun, Sarge?"

"There are never problems, Corp," Norman retrieved his rifle. "Just opportunities."

Her reply, no doubt cutting and urine related, was lost in the explosion that followed as a pair of one thousand pound smart bombs landed on top of another wave of enemy troops.

The NCO tossed his rifle aside. Stupid bitch had jammed. He had cleaned, field stripped and coddled that rifle all the way from Earth, and it still mucked up on him right when he needed it the most. Almost out of rifle ammo anyway.

His pistol came up, his eyes scanning the smoke and fire for another wave. "Down to sidearm!"

"Me too!" A private in the next foxhole yelled as her rifle gave off the telltale click of an empty magazine. "Shit, there's more of them!"

"Get real small in your holes! Sergeant Major's bringing the bombs right on top of us!" McDevitt hurled his last grenade over the heads of his companions. "Get down dammit!"

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=You heard me, Lieutenant!= Corthock yelled at the new squadron leader of the fighter-bomber group. =Drop those thousand pounders as close to our lines as you can. Aliens are so close to friendlies that we can't tell the difference. Add Yellowstone to make things interesting!=

Yellowstone. The innocuous code name for one of the most feared air support weapons of all time. Napalm. Outlawed a dozen times in the last two centuries...but always introduced when the need was most dire. With modern facilities, it was dirt cheap to produce, easy enough for a plane to carry...and more effective as an anti-infantry weapon than a thousand conventional bombs. It was meant to be a threat a colonial garrison commander could use against rebels or pirates in lieu of nuclear weapons. A thousand gallons of napalm was almost as fearsome as a yellowcake uranium warhead to someone aware of its reputation.

A few flicked switches later and the planes carrying the Yellowstone canisters were armed and ready.

"Burn in hell." Corthock murmured as he keyed his comm again. =Juliet Sabre-One. Yellowstone and high level bombers inbound. Twenty seconds till major strike, over.=

=Roger that= Juliet Sabre-One responded. =But I don't know whether we'll still be here in twenty seconds!=

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Norman shot the first alien down in his tracks with a full clip from his Heavy Combat Pistol. Barber dropped the next one, and the one behind him, before her belt ran out. The last one in the squad jumped into their foxhole, striking Barber across the side of the helmet with the butt of his rifle and kicking Norman to the ground.

The alien pointed the barrel of his rifle at Norman as the human struggled to free his Recon combat knife from his leg sheathe. But before the alien could pull the trigger or Norman reach his blade, the first napalm canister landed less than ten feet from the hole.

The initial blast itself was Biblical in its proportions, but it was nothing compared to the secondary effects. Flames swirled in every direction, greedily consuming everything that it touched. The alien standing in Norman's foxhole, still standing upright, was enveloped. The thing emitted a noise that sounded like a scream and a bird call combined as it toppled backwards.

At the bottom of the hole, Norman found himself gasping for air as the fire sucked all the oxygen away. His lungs felt raw as they inhaled the last remnants of heated oxygen, but he didn't dare jump up to find new air, not with the hungry flames swirling above his head.

For a few seconds, he could almost see Hell.

The concussive wave of another bomb blast disrupted the flames as quickly as they had sprung up. Norman didn't chance sneaking his head above the rim of the foxhole to find out what had happened, but he felt every single moment of it as multiple groupings of encased high explosive fell on the park. Modified daisy cutters, three thousand pound 'dumb' bombs, shrapnel bombs, sabot tipped missiles, all turned the lush Botanical Gardens into what began to resemble the surface of a very beleaguered moon.

Somebody managed to scream above the din of the explosions. "Put it out! PUT IT OUT!"

"Hold still!"

Norman could hear the voices coming from one of the foxholes on the far right. Who was in there? Corporal Bruenner and PFC...

"What the fuck, man? You just pissed all over my arm!"

"Yeah? Well the fire's out you dumb..."

A stray piece of shrapnel whistled through the air, cutting the speaker's voice off before his defence was finished.

"Mick! I'm sorry! Medic! MEDIC!"

"STAY DOWN!" Nothis sounded over the chaos. "EVERYONE STAY DOWN!"

"We've got wounded!"

"EVERYONE'S GOT WOUNDED! STAY DOWN OR WE'LL HAVE MORE DEAD!"

"This is ridiculous!" Somebody screamed. "Who the fuck are these guys anyway?"

Norman couldn't think up a satisfactory answer as he pressed himself closer into the bottom of his foxhole. The bombs didn't let up, the cries of the human wounded and dying joined by that of the alien attackers.

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In orbit, Admiral Fautan Xiliatus listened to the screams of the ground troops as they burned. Explosions, gunfire and screaming...never-ending screaming...were all that the comm links were receiving.

"General Arterius has issued congratulations to the fleet," Fautan's executive officer cleared his throat. "He says that we have gained a foothold on the enemy planet for acceptable losses. Having analysed the enemy defences, reconnaissance forces have determined that they possess no significant anti-ship weapons in the area of operations. We are to prepare to move into low orbit and prepare for orbital bombardment."

Fautan did not reply immediately. When he did, his mandibles moved slowly. "Acceptable losses?"

Tutmos did not even blink. "That is what he said, sir."

Protocol prevented Fautan from leaping across the deck and slapping the Commander senseless. He needed to know that the Commander saw through this as much as he did, that he recognised what was happening...that he possessed an ounce of compassion for the warriors slaughtering each other beneath him.

Tutmos remained motionless. "Shall I order the crew to prepare for descent?"

Fautan looked down at the new stripe on his arm. "Yes...of course. Inform the weapons crew to load high explosive torpedoes. And load a bombardment round into the main gun, not a ship buster."

"At your command," Tutmos nodded.

They had promised him a quick victory. Rapid, painless, efficient. A primitive people brought to heel without excessive conflict. This was not rapid, painless, or efficient. He had started this conflict at Relay 314. He had given warmongers his aid in staging this attack. This was his fault. The blood being spilled was on his talons. He bowed his head, two words hammering through his brain.

...

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Gurung watched the read out on the screen. "Damn."

Williams nodded bitterly. "Looks a little bleak."

Harper looked up. "Care to clue me in? We just bombed an enemy landing zone out of existence."

"And used up a lot of ordnance," Gurung indicated red dots on the map. "Our supply dumps are getting a lot of heat. I don't know if we'll be able to resupply all our bombers, certainly not for more than one or two more rounds."

"Still, First-Fourteenth has bought itself some time," Shepard pointed at a city zone marked in yellow. "First Militia Regiment has been overrun at the stadium, they're falling back to the line Pressly's Second-Fourteenth is setting up here. Once we get air support back on line, we can carpet bomb that LZ..."

"Carpet bomb?" Roberts shook his head. "They'll put every bit of air cover they can over that bit of airspace. Our fighters won't even get close. We need to pull tanks and IFV units from the fighting at Katyan to retake that zone."

"Seventy First is already stretched to the limits, take away their armoured assets and they'll get slaughtered!" An artillery major snarled.

"Then pull everything out of Katyan, we need to fortify Outreach or we lose it." Roberts was beginning to sweat. The bunker's air conditioning wasn't of the highest quality.

"Brilliant idea, Commodore. Take two battalions of tanks and a regiment of light infantry and make them travel sixty miles over open highway." Gurung narrowed his eyes. "Our air support is almost non-existent, those men would be bombed into the ground. You had your chance to stop this attack in orbit and you failed, don't try and give us advice on how to run a ground war."

"This is what you call running a ground war?"

Williams slammed his hand on the table. "Both of you! Quiet!"

There was silence in the command room for a few seconds as the General stared both of them down. The tension that had been building since early morning had come to a head. Avoiding it was pointless, it had to be dealt with. Williams spoke in measured tones, careful to keep his voice neutral. "Bickering over strategy gets us nowhere. There will be no pissing contests in my command centre, is that clear?"

"Perfectly sir," Gurung's expression didn't budge an inch, neither did Roberts. Both of them knew better than to question the General's orders, but neither of them broke eye contact until Williams turned back to the tactical map.

"Sir, if I may?" Shepard tapped the screen, drawing a large circle around the whole city. "As you can see, the circle represents the war zone. If we break the city into roughly four parts, it works out something like this. In the top right, the stadium, where the enemy has established an impregnable landing zone. In the top left, the park...crater...where First-Fourteenth is currently regrouping after the airstrike. In the bottom left, our reserve forces occupying the entertainment district, tanks and infantry from Thirteenth Armoured. And in the bottom right, Third-Fourteenth in the industrial zone, still holding the spaceport."

He drew a smaller circle in the middle of his first one. "And here's us. City Centre, right underneath the high rise district, with Second-Fourteenth tooling up for a street fight around the skyscrapers."

Shepard looked at Williams. "We've bought ourselves a momentary lull, but we don't have the assets to exploit it. But, we are in the perfect position to rethink our battle strategy. It's clear to me that we can no longer fight this along conventional lines."

General Williams shook his head. "I disagree, Commander. I still have air cover and armour, along with a numerical advantage over my opponents."

"Your numerical advantage will be eliminated when the enemy deploy their next wave of reinforcements. And our situation is far more fragile than it seems," Shepard's eyes flared. "Thirty percent of First-Fourteenth are KIA, almost as many wounded. Their CO, XO and most of their officers are dead or dying. The enemy LZ is destroyed, but they've got multiple units still ensconced in that district. We have downed pilots all over the place, militia companies cut off from reinforcements and a battle plan that's been shot to shit."

"Gurung?" Williams continued to meet Shepard's gaze.

"Yes, sir?"

"Order Colonel Pressly to move his third battalion into position to reinforce First."

Gurung listened to his headset. "Can't do that, sir."

Williams turned to face him. "Why not?"

"Colonel Pressly is reporting that Second-Fourteenth has engaged enemy troops in pursuit of First Militia. The enemy is spreading out, encircling First-Fourteenth from their position at the stadium. First battalion is cut off and surrounded." Gurung lowered the headset. "Sir..."

"I know, I know..." Williams looked at the circle on the map. "We've lost the initiative."

"You have to admire them," Harper looked at the new tactical data. "Impressive tactics, encircling a battalion. Forces us to try and rescue them. They're looking to own this engagement, dictate the terms of the battle. How do we respond?"

The General was silent for a few seconds. When he looked up, there was a gleam in his eye. "We do something unexpected, that's what. Order all units to hold their ground. If necessary, they are to go hand to hand, but don't let the enemy break through to Central just yet. Shepard?"

"Sir?"

"Is your strike team ready?"

"Colonel Gurung's Gurkha squad, Harper's mercenaries and Colonel Borodin's Incident Response Team." Shepard rattled off. "Twelve good men and women, and they're itching for a fight."

"Now they've got one," Williams pointed at the upper left of the map. "I want you to break through to that cut off battalion. Find a way to lead them out, get them back to our lines. Think you can handle it?"

"The surface in that area is crawling with hostiles." Shepard indicated the traffic-cam footage. "We'll have to take the sewers."

"Sergeant Mulligan will get the codes for you," the General looked towards Harper. "I hope you're ready to get your feet a little muddy, Jack."

"You mean I have to earn my pay at last?" The mercenary stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. "Well, you couldn't keep paying me to sit around forever."