Chapter XIV
A/N: First things first: I'M SORRY, FF WORLD! I SAID THAT ANAKIN AND AHSOKA WOULD SHOW UP IN THIS CHAPTER AND I DIDN'T KEEP MY WORD! WAAAAHHH! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!
But seriously guys; I'm sorry. I had planned on having A&A show up, but I had also planned on posting this and what will be Chapter XV as one. However, the battle here ended up taking far longer than I thought it would, and I couldn't lump the two together without creating some sort of Frankensteinian monster-chapter that's 15K+ words, which I REALLY don't want to spend the time to proofread.
So, next chapter, I REALLY PROMISE THIS TIME.
Anyways, in other news, Falling Skies is pretty cool. You should check it out.
Disclaimer: I wonder if lawyers actually peruse this site, looking for people to sue. Well guess what lawyers; all I own are my OCs and other original material! (gasp)
New Arcadia, Psi Olympus System, UNSC FLEETCOM Sector 6
Emerald Haven, Illerean Subcontinent
0022 hours, March 31st, 2593 (UNSC military calendar)
Darkness fell over the planet of New Arcadia as it had throughout time immemorial, a black curtain of night descending over the world. On the peninsula of the Illerean subcontinent, the proud city of Emerald Haven was no exception. The soft velvet of the night pressed in with a cool breeze that came off the Perrel River, and on any normal night, the riverbank would have been lined with people enjoying the peace and quiet of the night while lovers stared up at the stars.
Of course, the key words were, "on any normal night."
The night of March 31st, 2593, was anything but normal. And the city of Emerald Haven was anything but peaceful.
The whisper of the night breeze was inaudible now, drowned out by the thunder of artillery. Streams of anti-aircraft tracers and lasers rose into the air with ominous crackles and whines, seeking out the shapes of aircraft from both sides that dueled in the skies above. Occasionally a flare or star shell would rise into the air, fired from a spotter to illuminate the ground for further bombardment, rising into the night and burning with an intense light before the artificial sun disappeared as quickly as it had came. The symphony of the battlefield was omnipresent; even in the lulls of the artillery fire the snaps and rattles of UNSC weaponry could be heard doing battle with the whines and hisses of Imperial lasers, punctuated by the occasional sharp blast of a mortar.
The battlefield had a sound all its own, one that veterans never forgot.
Of course, one of the reasons they often never forgot it was that it was the last thing they heard before the massive amount of noise caused them to go deaf.
On the second floor of a low office building, Corporal Thomas Kilgore, UNSC Army Rangers, mused on that old saying, "war is hell." Never having experienced it before now, albeit in a few skirmishes with xeno-phobic terrorists, he had taken the adage at its face value. Now, surrounded by a war in all of its full and terrible glory, the ever-present chatter of machine-guns and the deafening blasts of artillery shells hitting their targets, he was considering proposing an addendum to the saying; "war is really, really, really, loud as hell!"
Thomas straightened up from behind the wall he was hiding behind, placing his M55-A on the frame of the long-ago-shattered window and squeezing off another quick burst at the mass of Imperial stormtroopers flitting around in the streets below. What with the uneven light provided by the mixing of darkness and the occasional overhead explosions of shells, even with his Low-Light Visual Amplification System activated, it was night impossible to tell if he actually hit his target. And besides, he had already ducked down, not a moment too soon as a burst of bright red lasers burned through the space he had just occupied, dazzling his eyes with their sudden brightness.
All around him, the Rangers of 1st Platoon, Delta Company, 175th Rangers Regiment were holed up on the second floor of this office building, doing their best to hold off the mass of Imperials that were attempting to advance down the street. The Rangers were taking shelter anywhere they could; behind shattered desks and windows alike. Shattered computers and office equipment rested on the floor, accompanied by mountains of shell casings. The repetitive crackle of assault rifles was omnipresent, accompanied by the staccato muzzle flashes, met and countered by the glare of red lasers streaking up from above. Several Rangers had already fallen victim to those deadly energy beams, their shields burned out and their armor blackened. A pair of medics were working on stabilizing a young woman in critical condition behind him, even as Thomas took a deep breath and summoned the willpower to stand up again, bringing up his assault rifle and acquiring a target. He fired a quick burst, and was rewarded with the sight of the targeted Imperial crumpling to the ground.
His hesitation to confirm the kill nearly became his undoing, however, as a burst of lasers slammed into his shields, dropping them to at least half. He swore and dropped as his helmet's HUD flashed a warning sign in the half-depleted shield bar as alarms whined in his ears, adding yet more noise to the cacophony around him.
He had been highlighted against the shattered window frame for only a few seconds, but the Imperials below had managed to fire off an accurate burst. The stormtroopers had gotten their position locked in solid.
"Sir!" he said over the COM, addressing Captain Kyle Barnett, the platoon and company leader, "they've got us locked in here! We've got to move or we're all going to get roasted!"
Barnett fired off a quick burst and turned to face Thomas, his expression hidden behind his opaque gold visor. "Negative, corporal," he said. "We've got to hold this street at all costs, or the Imps'll have a highway to drive straight into the downtown district!"
Thomas knew that Barnett didn't want to stay just as much as the next man, but he couldn't disobey a direct order. The UNSC forces all up and down this area were in the same boat; the Imperial attack on the city proper had come with surprising speed, aided by several large, six-legged walking tanks that had blitzed through the defenses in the outskirts and driven a wedge deep into the Eastern District. That attack had screwed up all cohesion in this section of the UNSC line as companies became separated from their parent units and mingled. The only thing holding them together now was a collective sense that they needed to hold their ground, and the men from different branches banded together to fight off the Imperial attack. The four companies of the 175th Rangers had gotten split up, and the COM networks was so choked full of battle chatter that trying to reach and rendezvous with each other was a futile effort. They had done the best with what they had, linking up with other separated troops and forming as cohesive a defense as they could. The melting pot of forces was visible even in this building; the Rangers occupied the second floor, a platoon of Marines were defending the entrance, and the last Thomas had heard, there was an Army sniper team set up on the roof.
The Imperial offensive hadn't faltered in the least, even after the bulk of those six-legged walkers were driven away by an armored counterattack, and the darkness became complete, they were still driving forward, supplemented by a seemingly endless swarm of stormtroopers and supporting armor.
Thomas shook his head. "Screw this," he muttered, and ejected his nearly-spent magazine, slapping in a fresh one and chambering the first round as he stood back up. "Come and get it!" he roared, bringing the weapon to his shoulder and opening fire in quick, accurate bursts on the mass of white-armored troopers below.
The firefight continued, never losing intensity as the battle raged on. For the soldiers on both sides, the battle raging in the rest of the city became irrelevant; all they could afford to focus on was what the enemy was doing in the next house over, across the next street, or around the next intersection corner. As Thomas sought cover yet again, he dimly remembered his history lessons covering the brutal fighting in a city called Stalingrad between the Soviets and the Nazis during the Second World War nearly six hundred years ago, when humanity had still been Earthbound. He remembered them saying that the fighting in the wreckage of the bombed city became so chaotic and ferocious that the Soviet commander at one point had reportedly said that every man was his own general, free to fight as best as he saw fit in the ruins of the city. He smiled, wondering at how history did indeed repeat itself.
And then a laser from an Imperial sniper rifle speared the man next to him, and the smile was wiped from his face in an instant. The man's shields flashed into existence and then vanished as he crumpled to the ground with a strangled cry.
Thomas dropped down, as did most of the Rangers in the room at the sudden sniper bolt. He accessed his CNM and brought up TEAMBIO, checking the man's vitals.
Amazingly, they were still there. Weak, but there.
"He's alive!" he yelled, and a medic came scrambling over to Thomas, halting under the window frame in a crouch. "Give us some cover fire!" the medic yelled.
"You heard the man," Barnett roared. "Give them some defilade!"
Reluctantly but obediently, the Rangers rose up and unleashed a hellish storm of fire in all directions to hopefully prevent the sniper from taking another shot as Thomas and the medic charged out side by side, slipping their hands under the man's arms and dragging him backwards out of the line of fire to rest against a support column. The medic quickly unsealed the man's helmet and peeled it off, revealing a young face with sweaty dark hair plastered to his scalp. There was blood on the inside of the helmet's visor, and around the man's mouth. Near his stomach, where the beam had struck, his fatigues were burned away and the armor plates of his suit were melted. The armor had taken the bulk of the beam-and probably saved his life by doing so-but some of the energy had still gotten through, leaving a blackened hole in his stomach, surrounded by flakes of cauterized blood. The medic quickly sprayed some biofoam into the wound, the expanding, tissue-regenerative fluid expanding and filling the cavity caused by the wound.
"He got me," the man coughed hoarsely, causing even more blood to be expelled from his mouth. "Damn sniper got me…"
Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas saw the medic shake his head almost imperceptibly. Concerned, he opened up a private COM channel to the medic so as not to alarm the wounded man. "Is he gonna be alright?" he asked.
"Not unless we get him to a CCP immediately," the medic said. "That biofoam's only going to hold him together for another few minutes, and this is beyond my ability to treat under these conditions."
"Are there any nearby?" Thomas persisted.
The medic frowned. "Last I heard, there were a couple platoons of Army troopers holed up in a warehouse across the street; I thought I heard some COM chatter about them setting up a CCP, but I never got to confirm it," he said, referring to a Casualty Collection Point, essentially a field triage.
"We'll have to give it a shot," Thomas said.
"Are you insane?" the medic hissed. "You'll have to cross the street!" he gestured wildly outside to the street below, swarming with stormtroopers and UNSC soldiers alike, all trading fire.
"And he'll die if I don't!" Thomas protested. "You said so yourself."
The medic stood resolutely silent for a moment, apparently torn between his oath to save lives and his desire to preserve his own.
"I'll do it," Thomas volunteered.
The medic looked at him. The man's visor was polarized, preventing Thomas from seeing his expression, but the quizzical tilt of his head and the tone of his voice told Thomas all needed to know. "You're one crazy son of a bitch, you know that, right?"
In any other set of circumstances, Thomas would have smiled. Now, he merely grunted. There was a silence between the two, during which the sounds of battle outside seemed to grow even louder. Thomas risked another glance over the window frame; the Imperial advance appeared to be gaining steam.
The wounded man coughed up more blood, gasping for air as he faded in and out of consciousness. "It's now or never," Thomas said.
That seemed to convince the medic, as he sighed and contacted Barnett on the COM. "Sir! Permission to evac the wounded?"
Barnett looked around, taking in the scene. "Just him?" An artillery blast punctuated his sentence, and outside, a nearby building toppled as a support beam was destroyed, crashing down onto the street.
The medic shrugged. "He's the only one bad enough to merit it," he shouted back.
"You'll need at least a squad of men for that," Barnett replied. "We can't spare that manpower right now!"
"Sir!" said Sergeant Vasquez, Thomas's squad leader. "We could do it."
Barnett glanced back and forth between the two men. "How bad is he?" he asked.
The medic looked back and winced. "Not too good, sir," he replied. "Critical. I've temporarily stabilized him, but unless we get him under a proper surgeon within the next few minutes, he'll be pushing up daisies."
Barnett sighed. "Fine. Vasquez, you and your squad escort them to the nearest CCP. If you can, try and link up with us afterwards."
"Understood, sir," Vasquez said, beginning to rise. As soon as he did so, however, another sniper rifle beam lanced through the air just above his helmet, causing him to drop to the ground again with a heartfelt cry of "Shit!"
"That sniper's got us keyed in," Barnett grunted. "Nobody's going nowhere until we take him out." Barnett switched COM channels from SQUADCOM to LOCCOM, so that all local forces would hear him. "Donnar, Kruzowski, you get a bead on that last shot?" he asked, addressing the sniper team on the roof.
"Negative," Kruzowski replied. "He's a clever little bastard; shiftin' around so we can't get a positive ID."
Barnett swore, and then his head snapped up. "Kilgore!" he said, and Thomas looked up. "What, sir?"
"Run across the room!" Barnett yelled.
"What!"
"You heard me the first time, damnit," Barnett roared. "Run across the damn room! Someone needs to draw out that sniper or you guys'll never make it ten feet!"
Thomas sputtered. "That's suicide, sir!"
"You were all gung-ho to run across the street just a minute ago," the medic reminded him, and Thomas flipped the man the bird.
"Kilgore!" Barnett barked. "It's now or never!"
"Oh, this is such bullshit," Thomas muttered to himself, his hands shaking as he rose into a crouch and slid his M55 over his back. "What's plan B?"
"Plan B is to not screw up Plan A!" Barnett responded immediately.
With those comforting words in mind, Thomas sent up a silent prayer and got into position.
Thomas had been in track and soccer in his high school days, so he thought he was a pretty good runner, but the object here was not speed, but to draw out the sniper. In order to do so, he had to move fast enough so that it appeared his flight was genuine, but not so fast as to make it impossible for the sniper to take the shot.
Purposely slowing yourself down when someone was taking potshots at you was rather hard to do, Thomas found out. He had to resist the urge to make a full-blown sprint across the room, sweating like a mule as he ran in long, loping strides, his head forward, staring resolutely at the ground.
He made three-quarters of the way across, and was beginning to wonder if this was all for naught, if the Imperial sniper had recognized the diversion for what it was and left well enough alone. He was nearing the end of the room where a large vending machine sat-somehow with the glass still not shattered-against the wall, blocking anyone's view from the outside. If the sniper was going to take his shot, he would have to take it soon.
Thomas swore and stumbled as a ruby-red beam drilled into the floor near his foot, setting the plush blue carpeting of the office alight. His shields flared and dropped to zero as the laser scarred his boot. He fell face-first, putting out his hands to arrest his fall and dragging himself the next few feet behind cover where he put his back to the vending machine and tried to calm himself down as his shields recharged.
Dimly, he heard Barnett ask, "Did you guys get that?"
"Uh, negative," came the reply. "We've got a light rain moving in up here; the light's getting refracted."
"Oh, there is now way in hell I'm doing that again!" Thomas swore, banging the back of his head against the vending machine.
"Uh, hold on, captain," Kruzowski said again. "Switching to thermal scans." There was a moment of silence, and then the spotter's voice returned triumphantly. "Never mind, sir, we found him. He must have thought he wounded your man, and he's waiting for you guys to go pull him out of cover so he can take another shot."
"Then peg him!" Barnett ordered.
000
On the roof of the building the Rangers were holed up in, two men lay prone, one armed with an assault rifle and clutching a small computer that was sheltered from the approaching rain by a hand, while the other fiddled with the bipod that supported the massively long rifle he wielded. UNSC sniper teams were renowned for their professionalism and skill, and this team had already claimed a dozen lives so far, mainly enemy platoon and target leaders. The goal of a UNSC sniper was to completely debilitate an enemy force before they even set foot on the battlefield, and while that goal may not have been accomplished, it looked like Corporal Steffen Donnar and Private Michael Kruzowski would have plenty of time to make up for it. Their latest target was an enemy sniper, just like them, who had been raising all kinds of hell with the friendly forces below. He was smart, changing position after each shot and firing from a new angle so as to better disguise himself from the enemy. The hunt had been an exhilarating one, and the enemy had finally made his mistake. He had gotten greedy, secure and comfortable with the fact that no one had found him yet, and decided that there was no harm that could come from staying in position to wait for one more shot.
It was to be his undoing. Kruzowski's M98 Cartographer spotting scope had a thermal scan function, and as the approaching rain cooled the night air even further, the enemy's signature stood out like a sore thumb on the twelfth floor of an apartment building down the street, settled in a grotto caused by a shell that had carved out part of the building's wall.
A good hiding spot, but not good enough to save him.
"Then peg him!" the Ranger lieutenant ordered over the COM, his voice rather loud in their helmets.
"With pleasure," Corporal Stefan Donnar responded, reaching out to make one final adjustment to the windage allocation on his SRS-99 sniper rifle. The Oracle-9 scope usually made such small adjustments automatically, but when this rain had moved in, the piece malfunctioned for some reason, forcing Donnar and his spotter, Private Michael Kruzowski, to perform such calculations and adjustments manually. It was not a big deal to them; ever since the twentieth century, when the art of sniping really began to become specialized and developed, snipers had been trained to take into account dozens of factors before taking the one vital shot that could change the course of a battle, ranging from humidity to barometric pressure, windage, bullet drop, muzzle velocity, barrel angle, distance to target, rain and other environmental differences, and a myriad of other factors. Donnar's mind factored the math like a calculator, recording all stats possible into his datapad.
"Final read?" Donnar asked as he placed his eye to the scope of the sniper rifle, blinding himself to the rest of the world. This, when a sniper placed their helmet visor to the scope and disregarded all else, was when spotters were most needed. If necessary, Donnar could perform the math and observations required to hit his target by himself; he had done so at regular intervals before. But this moment of ironically supreme weakness when a sniper was poised on the edge of taking a shot, was when he could not watch his back, which was the creed of any experienced marksman.
"Target hasn't moved," Kruzowski responded as he peered through the lens of the spotting scope. While their helmet's HUDs offered up to a 10x magnification factor, they did not have all the cool gadgets and applications that came bundled up in a Cartographer spotting scope. "Distance to target is steady at nine hundred twenty-six meters."
Donnar nodded. The laser rangefinder on his Oracle-9 had told him the same thing, but hearing the phrase verbally said helped confirm accuracy of data. And if there was anything snipers did well, it was caution.
"Preparing to fire on target," Donnar said, his voice quieting as he entered the sort of Zen-like state proficient snipers achieved before a kill. You had to plot the path of the bullet to its target over and over again in your mind, to see the perfect shot, in order to make any last-minute adjustments. Kruzowski noted the change in his partner's tone and said nothing, allowing Donnar to "do his thing".
The target still hadn't moved, apparently either supremely confident or asleep. Donnar refused to think of the enemy as any more than targets. It was all part of the mindset of a sniper; you had to ignore the fact that the man behind your scope was in fact a person, that he had a family, friends, maybe children that would mourn his loss. You had to dehumanize yourself in order to take lives in that manner; after all, it was one thing to kill a man when he is charging at you with an assault rifle in hand, quite another to pick a man off arbitrarily and without warning while perched atop some derelict eyrie a mile away. That difficulty had been erased somewhat when the Covenant had entered the picture, as it was much easier on the mind to kill faceless aliens who were committing genocide against you than it was to end the life of a fellow human being, but while the Imperials were alien in many ways, they were still humans.
It was now or never.
"Firing on target," Donnar said, his voice detached, emotionless. His finger tightened, slowly caressing the trigger, hovering on the edge of the pound and a half of pressure required to fire the 14.5x114mm round chambered inside the rifle.
Was this all a man's life was worth? Twenty-four ounces of pressure to erase years of existence? What was life, even, if it could be erased by a motion as simple as flexing a finger?
Donnar squeezed the trigger.
The SRS-99 sniper rifle had a long and rich history with the United Nations Space Command; first introduced in 2460, it remained in service over a century later. It was originally intended for anti-matériel work; the massive 14.5x114mm Armor-Piercing, Fin-Stabalized, Discarding-Sabot rounds it chambered mimicked the technology found in tank shells, and made the SRS an unholy terror against lightly-armored vehicles. Some field reports contained accounts of the APFSDS rounds being capable of gutting a Warthog FAV from stem to stern, including passing directly through the engine block. With the introduction of the Covenant and the energy shields they sported, it had quickly gained a following among UNSC snipers as one of the few weapons capable of penetrating an Elite's energy shields and killing it in a single shot, if aimed correctly. It had nearly-overnight replaced the M392 DMR as the primary long-range weapon of the UNSC, a role that it had kept since the end of the Human-Covenant War in 2553.
Some called it overkill. Donnar preferred to call it "insurance."
The SRS-99 fired, an earsplitting crack echoing through the air. The rifle kicked back against Donnar's armored shoulder, and Donnar kept his eye on the scope, following the vapor trail of the shot.
The 14.5x114mm round crossed the distance between the two snipers in less than a second. Donnar's calculations had been correct, and the round was directly on target. It took the enemy sniper directly in the upper torso, punching through the man's armor and leaving a gaping hole in his chest. The man fell backwards, his rifle clattering to the floor below, dead before the sound of the shot had even reached his ears; the reds, oranges, and yellows of his body on the thermal display slowly faded to subdued greens and blues.
"Confirm target eliminated," Donnar said.
"Confirmed," Kruzowski grunted. "He's deader than Elvis. Great shot."
Donnar said nothing, merely ejected the magazine and checked it. Three shots remaining. He slid it back in as Kruzowski reported their success. "Let's relocate."
000
The crack of an SRS-99 sniper rifle firing was audible even over the din of the battle raging outside, and a moment later the COM buzzed with the report that the enemy sniper was confirmed dead. Thomas Kilgore sighed with relief as he inspected his boot, noting with chagrin the scarring on the side. Had that snapshot been a bit higher, he likely would have lost his foot.
"Alright!" Barnett said as the Rangers that had pinned down returned to their feet and began to resume firing on the Imperials below. "Get out of here! We'll cover you!"
Thomas scrambled to his feet, scuttling over to the wounded man where the medic had produced a roll-out stretcher from his pack, snapping it open and handing the other end to Thomas.
"Up you go," the medic said, maintain a quiet monologue with the wounded Ranger to keep the man's spirit up. "Easy, easy, there you go," he said as they rolled the man onto the stretcher. As they did so, Thomas realized that he hadn't asked the man his name.
Private Alan Eastman, the man's HUD ID said. Thomas didn't know him personally, but that was no excuse to not give his best. Eastman was slipping in and out of consciousness as he clung to a thread of life, the wound in his stomach sapping his strength even as the biofoam holding him together expanded within him.
"You ready?" Vasquez asked, the other Rangers from Thomas's squad clustered around him. Thomas was able to pick out his friend Private Giancamo Feltrinelli among the crowd, and the Italian gave him an encouraging nod.
"Yeah," the medic replied as he strapped Eastman to the stretcher, lifting up his end. Thomas did the same, grunting slightly. "Let's go."
Vasquez split the squad into two sections, a vanguard and a rearguard to flank the two stretcher-bearers. The other Rangers gave them cover fire as they left the room, pounding down the flight of stairs to the bottom floor where a platoon of Marines from the 43rd.
"Friendlies coming down!" Vasquez announced in that booming voice of his over the COM.
Not that it would have mattered. Most of the jarheads were focused on staying alive, firing out the slits in the barricaded windows. Several wounded lay in a corner where another medic was tending to them.
The dead were left to lay where they fell.
The platoon leader turned to them as they entered, identified on their HUDs as 2nd Lieutenant Harrow. The Rangers, with their gold visors and urban ACUs, stood out like sore thumbs among the Marines.
"Where're you headed?" Harrow asked as she fired her assault rifle out the window at a group of stormtroopers trying to advance down the street. The Marine showed a bit more respect to the Rangers than Marines normally gave to Army personnel; Special Forces tended to get that respect from just about everyone they met.
"Got a man heavily wounded," Vasquez replied with a grunt, indicating the semi-conscious Eastman. "Heard there's a CCP across the street in that warehouse, was wondering if you jarheads would be so kind as to give us some covering fire."
"We'll do what we can," Harrow responded, but her sentence was cut off by a cry of "Incoming!" from another Marine. Everyone immediately hit the floor just in time to feel the building tremble as an Imperial heavy turbolaser cannon hit several floors up. Luckily, the structure was reinforced, so it didn't come tumbling down, but Thomas could hear the metal frame groan under the sudden stress.
Slowly, as masonry rained down outside, Harrow and the other Marines rose to their feet. "Shelling's been going on all night," she said, "but it got really bad in the past half-hour. The Imps must have moved up some artillery, because they've been dropping lasers around here like the rain."
Driven by curiosity, Thomas glanced outside, his LLVAS system allowing him to pick out what was going on outside.
The street was in chaos, covered with dead bodies from both sides. Rubble and debris lay strewn across it along with the burning wrecks of cars, behind which groups of soldiers huddled and fired at each other even as the rain began to beat down even harder outside, occasionally hissing and turning to steam as Imperial lasers screamed through the air.
"Marines!" Harrow called. "Covering fire, on my mark!" She gave a nod to the Rangers and turned back, clutching her rifle.
"Three!"
Thomas felt his hands begin to sweat inside his gauntlets. He tightened his grip on the stretcher as the squad of Rangers escorting them settled into a ready stance, weapons up.
"Two!"
Behind him on the stretcher, Eastman groaned and attempted to roll over before being stopped by the cuffs on his arms as he slipped back into unconsciousness. He was fading fast.
"One!"
Thomas crouched, coiling the muscles in his legs as he prepared to spring forward.
"Mark!" Harrow called.
The Marines opened fire, placing their weapons against the frames of shattered windows and heaps of rubble by holes blown in the wall and laying down a vicious field of covering fire on the Imperials scrambling down the street.
"Go! Go! Go!" Vasquez yelled, and the Rangers dashed forward, scrambling out the gaping hole where the door used to be and into the driving rain outside. The Rangers fired quick bursts from their M55s, hoping to capitalize on the defilade the Marines had provided and keep the Imperials cowering.
As soon as their feet hit the pavement of the street, everything went straight to hell.
An F-86E Strike Hawk flashed overhead, and a moment later, an explosion blossomed in the upper floors of a skyscraper directly above where an Imperial spotter team for their mobile artillery had set up. Windows shattered as flame expanded out, sucking in nearby oxygen to feed the flames before it was extinguished by the rain. Debris rained down, some chunks of steel and masonry as large as a man. Thomas ducked his head as they ran through the hail of rubble, praying that none of the larger chunks would hit them; it would be a damn shame to have survived lasers just to die from a falling rock.
Luckily, his prayers were answered, and none of the larger chunks hit them. Still, the Rangers were pelted with dust and debris, and a softball-sized piece of warped metal impacted on Thomas's right shoulder pauldron, causing him to grunt and stumble as his shoulder was numbed by the impact.
No sooner had the Rangers stumbled through the falling debris as they made it to the halfway point across the street then Vasquez roared over the COM, "Imp tank! Get down!"
Thomas's eyes widened, and the Rangers dove for shelter between the shattered hulk of a car in front of them and a mound of debris and rubble piled on top of torn-up highway sections behind them. They huddled back against the pile of rubble, hopoing the car in front of them would screen them from the tank's view.
The Imperial tank was sleek and quiet; it floated down the street with nary a whisper to betray its presence. It was a basically rectangular design, with two prongs on the front. The hull rose near the back where a turret was mounted. Several laser cannons emerged from low on the hull.
"Oh shit, oh shit," muttered Private Raymond Monton, beginning to shake back and forth. "Oh shit! Shit! Oh, shit shit shit shit shit-"
"Private!" Vasquez hissed. "Shut up!"
Monton turned to face the sergeant. "We're gonna die, Sarge," he whispered. "WE're gonna die we're gonna die we're gonna-"
"Private!" Vasquez practically roared, slapping Monton's helmet. The young private finally, blessedly fell silent. "We are not going to die-get down!"
The Rangers huddled their backs against the rubble pile as the Imperial tank's turret fired, a green energy beam cutting through the rain and dark to sweep over a pair of Army troopers running across the street, one toting an M41 rocket launcher. Their shields flared into existence and then vanished, overloaded instantly by the energy. The two troopers disappeared, their forms highlighted for a split-second.
"We might die," Vasquez finished, apparently not having taken the "inspiring confidence" class during NCO training.
"We've gotta move," the medic said, "we've got to get him to that warehouse!" He gestured towards the Hanson Warehouse on the other side of the street, where the Army CCP reportedly was.
"If we move, that thing'll cut us down in a second!" Vasquez argued. "Did you see that?"
"I saw it fine," the medic hissed. "But this man is dying right here!"
"That's no reason for us to join him because we were too stupid to think of a plan!" Vasquez insisted. "We have to destroy that tank before we can move."
"Destroy it with what?" the medic asked. "We have no heavy weapons other than a single GL," he said, gesturing to Specialist Rahjeed Upta, who toted an M55-B with an underslung 40mm grenade launcher.
"We'll think of something," Vasquez said, trying to sound confident. "We're Rangers."
"Yeah," the medic said. "Rangers. Not Spartans."
Thomas risked a peek around the car that screened them from the tank. "Uh, guys?" he said. "It's moving up."
Vasquez glanced out and swore. Thomas swallowed as the Imperial tank floated up the street, small-arms fire from desperate UNSC soldiers bouncing off its armor as it occasionally fired dazzling lasers into windows. A squad of stormtroopers moved in front of it, sweeping the area for mines as the tank roared towards them-
Wait. Thomas frowned. Roared? Imperial tanks relied on repulsorlift engines, which were almost completely silent.
Then what was that persistent roaring sound Thomas was hearing? He checked his helmet's hearing actuators, found that there was nothing wrong with them.
Then why was the sound getting louder?
"You guys hearing this?" he asked, having to yell even into the COM to make himself heard.
"Check your motion tracker!" Vasquez howled back.
Thomas's eyes flicked down to the circle in the corner of his HUD as he waited for the tracker to refresh. When it did, he blinked as he saw a massive yellow-friendly-signature.
It was almost directly on top of them.
"What the-?" Thomas began, rising up to look behind the mound of rubble.
"Get down!" Feltrinelli yelled, pulling Thomas back to the ground just in time.
The roaring culminated as an M808C Super Scorpion rolled up the debris pile behind them, rotating and leveling its turret to face the Imperial tank. The Scorpion was perched on the pile behind them, so that Thomas could literally look up and see the armored underbelly of the tank.
The Scorpion's coaxial fifty sputtered to life, sending hot shell casings raining down on the Rangers huddled against the rubble pile as the .50 caliber rounds cut the Imperial tank's stormtrooper escort to pieces.
Thomas wondered if the tankers even knew that there was a squad of Rangers sitting literally right underneath it, and he desperately hoped that the Scorpion driver didn't decided to drive over the rubble pile completely.
The Imperial tank reacted to the appearance of this new threat with admirable swiftness, scooting quickly to the side as its turret raked a green laser over the Scorpion. Thomas felt the ambient heat jump as the laser swept overhead, steam filling the air as nearby rain evaporated.
When the laser terminated, however, the Scorpion appeared to be unaffected. The reactive armor had done its job, and the only sign that the laser had ever touched it was a long black scorch mark across the front of its turret.
Thomas's eyes widened as he realized what the Scorpion's next move would be, and he desperately turned his helmet's hearing actuator down to its lowest level.
Too late. The Scorpion fired, a tongue of flame belching from the barrel as the tank recoiled back down the incline of rubble. Down the street, the Imperial tank dropped to the ground as the HEAT shell smashed into it before detonating in a fireball.
And then the soundwave from the explosion hit them.
It came first as a sudden blast of white noise, followed by…nothing. The effects of having a 125mm high-velocity M98A2 cannon fired only a few meters above one's head tended to be rather deafening. The shockwave rattled every bone in Thomas's body as pain blossomed in his ears, pulsing through his brain and giving him a headache for the ages.
Vasquez was yelling at him, his mouth moving open and shut soundlessly as he wildly waved his arms. Thomas couldn't hear him, but he got the gist of what the sergeant was trying to impart as the group of Rangers began to get up, taking advantage of the destruction of the Imperial tank to sprint the remaining distance across the street to the Hanson warehouse. Formerly used to store various dry goods, it was now the site of an impromptu Army command post and casualty collection point.
The column of Rangers ducked into the shelter of the building. Thomas's head was now ringing impossibly, but that was a good sign; it meant his hearing was returning.
"You alright?" the medic asked as he shifted his grip on Eastman's stretcher, causing the wounded man to groan.
Thomas knew he shouldn't smile, given the situation, so he made sure his visor was polarized before responding, "I can hear bells ringing."
"Friendlies coming in," Vasquez broadcasted over the COM, and led the squad of Rangers into the warehouse.
They were immediately met by a pair of Army troopers, beleaguered and visibly shaken, both griping assault rifles. Thomas's HUD tagged them as members of the 31st ID.
What the hell? The 31st was supposed to be on the northern end of the city. These guys were way off from their commands.
Thomas glanced around the room, and noted that the other dozen or so troopers guarding the shattered windows and gaping holes in the walls were a motley mix of all different parent units, mixed together and following the chain of command by rank alone. He even spotted a group of Marines sandbagging a window on the upper floor while their comrades hauled up an M247-H machine gun.
"What are you doing here-" the higher-ranking of the two troopers began, but the medic spoke up, cutting him off.
"We've got a man in critical condition here," he said. "Rumor on the COMs is that you fellas have a CCP set up here." He glanced around the room, seeing only weary soldiers trading fire with the Imperials still trying to advance down the street. "Is that true?"
"Yeah, it's in the basement," the trooper responded. "Follow us."
Thomas sighed in relief and checked Eastman's vitals once again as they followed the pair of Army troopers down a flight of stairs to the basement below. He was still hanging on, but just barely. He hoped that the medical officers presiding knew their stuff.
They reached the bottom of the stairs, revealing a large basement room, now reinforced by sandbags against the walls. While it had been previously used as a storage area by the company that had owned the warehouse, it had now been converted into an impromptu field hospital. Rows upon rows of cots filled the room, filled with wounded Army troopers, Marines, and even a few Chair Force jocks. All of them had varying degrees of injuries, some minor, some serious. Medics flitted between the patients, administering biofoam and antiseptic while the seriously wounded soldiers were prepped for surgery in the rooms off to the side where the surgeons and doctors worked their magic. Dried blood stained the clothes of the medical workers, and the groans of wounded men filled the room, sounding for all the world like the chorus of the damned.
Thomas shuddered. While modern medical technology allowed for patients to in some instances be literally brought back from the dead, the process was never pleasant.
"Who's in charge here?" Vasquez bellowed, and several medical officers shot annoyed looks in their direction.
"I am," came a voice, and the Rangers looked over to see a tall, balding man in a white medical coat now daubed with red approaching them. He had the insignia of a light colonel on his shoulders.
No surprise; doctors were usually given high ranks so that they could overrule the protestations of unruly subjects.
"Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Gotthrey, at your service," the man said, his voice strained. "You have a new patient?"
"Yeah," the medic spoke up, "took a sniper beam to the gut about ten minutes ago-"
Gotthrey elbowed past the team, taking in the state of the man before him and muttering to himself. Thomas caught only a few snippets of the monologue, but what he did was dire: "…internal trauma…cauterized…flash-vaporization again…damn lasers…"
"How's it look, Doc?" Vasquez began, but Gotthrey straightened, cutting him off again.
"No time," the light colonel said. "We've got to get this man to the ICU. Orderly! New patient to the burn trauma center!"
"Yes, sir!" came the cry of a young man, a 2nd Lieutenant, who dashed over with a gurney, delicately lifting Eastman's groaning form off the stretcher and onto the wheeled table and dashing away.
Thomas turned around to thank Lieutenant Colonel Gotthrey, but the doctor had already vanished among the throng of activity.
As they left, Thomas saw Vasquez manage to grab another medic on the arm and ask, "What's going on here? Why are these men in so much pain?"
Thomas barely caught the man's response; "We ran out of painkillers about half an hour ago."
Thomas swallowed and said another prayer that he didn't have to make a trip to the CCP himself.
The squad climbed back up to the main floor and were steeling themselves for another charge back across the street to rejoin their platoon when a trooper came rushing up to them.
"Ah, Rangers!" he said. "You're just what we need!"
Thomas frowned; the trooper was listed on his HUD as part of the 244th Weapons Battalion of the 167th Brigade Combat Team, 31st ID. "Sorry, private," he said, "we've got to get back to our platoon."
"Hold on," the man said. "Can you help us, just for a moment? We're trying to set up a mortar on the roof of the warehouse, but an Imperial dropship just landed a squad of stormtroopers up there and we need someone to clear 'em out."
"Listen, kid," Vasquez said, holding up a hand. "There's plenty of guys here to help you with that; we've got to get back to our CO."
"But you're Rangers," the private persisted. "Special Forces! You're the best guys we've got here." When Vasquez still didn't seem convinced, he persisted, "if we get this vantage point on the warehouse roof, we can lay down saturation fire on any Imps trying to get up the street. We could turn the tide!"
"But first you need someone to clean out the rats," Vasquez finished and sighed, trying his level best not to facepalm in front of the private.
Two more men approached, carrying the components for an 81mm M99 Man-Portable Artillery Unit, another private and a staff sergeant.
"If you're gonna help us, you better make your decision fast," the staff sergeant grunted as he shifted the weight of the mortar barrel on his back. "Command's screaming in my ear to get set up ASAP."
Vasquez groaned. "Ah, what the hell, we'll do it," he said. "I doubt Barnett'll be able to contact us through the alphabet soup on the COMs anyways."
"Thank you, sir," the private began, but Vasquez cut him off. "Don't thank us yet," he said ominously. "Come on, squad. Let's go."
Thomas took a deep breath and slid a fresh magazine into his M55 as he followed Vasquez at a trot up the stairs to the roof of the warehouse. Hopefully they made it up before the Imperials came down.
"All right, let's do this," Feltrinelli said next to him, and Thomas grinned. "Plastic boys don't stand a chance."
The squad of Rangers stormed to the top of the stairs, where a single iron door stood between them and the roof of the warehouse. Shouting and scuffling could be heard on the other side of the door as the Imperials prepared to breach it.
The Rangers would have to beat them to it.
"Breaching!" Vasquez yelled, raising his foot and delivering a thunderous kick to the door.
Aided by the strength-amplifying circuits in their armor and the minor physical augmentations given to all Special Ops personnel, the average Army Rangers was more than capable of busting down an iron door with a well-placed kick. For Sergeant Antonio Vasquez, six feet four inches tall and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle, it was child's play.
The door crashed to the ground, revealing a squad of white-armored Imperials standing behind. Their leader looked up, and had it not been for the full-faced helmets they wore, Thomas would have sworn that his eyes would be bugged out of his head as he scrambled for his blaster.
Vasquez was faster, delivering a single 7.62mm round to the stormtrooper's forehead and sending him to the ground in a crumpled heap.
And then the shooting started.
The Rangers fanned out immediately into the lashing rain, seeking cover behind the large ventilation blocks and maintenance sheds as their shields glowed, absorbing the deadly lasers the Imperials sent their way. Thomas sprinted to cover, utilizing his HUD's targeting reticle to acquire and take down a stormtrooper even as he ran. He skidded to a stop behind a shed, allowing his shields a brief moment to recharge before leaning back around the corner to open fire on the Imperials, sending accurate three-round bursts into the chests of the stormtroopers.
The firefight was over in a single, hectic minute, the resounding bang of an M9 frag grenade sounding an end to the conflict. Thomas sighed and reloaded as the mortar team rushed up, the staff sergeant offering his profuse thanks as they deployed the M99 MPAU against the roof.
The Rangers got low to avoid skylining themselves against the edge of the building roof and providing easy targets for enemy snipers. The battle on the street still raged with even more ferocity, if that was even possible.
Thomas wondered if, when all of this was over, if anyone would remember the countless men that had died on both sides, all to secure one little street that hardly anyone remembered the name of, as the street signs had been knocked down long ago. This was why all soldiers hated urban combat. The enemy could be lurking anywhere, atop a soaring skyscraper or burrowed invisibly into a pile of rubble. Sometimes soldiers even had to watch their feet for mines or devious enemies using the sewers to flank them. It required you to be constantly alert, and so drained your endurance at a breakneck pace. Panic set in quickly for inexperienced soldiers. They started to see enemies at every corner, ghosts under every rock pile and phantoms on every skyscraper. Veterans saw many a brash young recruit fresh out of basic transformed into a shivering nervous wreck by the end of a week. Fear-induced paranoia reduced even hardened veterans into shambles with that landmark thousand-meter stare indicative of shock. And if a soldier was lucky enough to survive the conflict, the up-close and personal manner of urban fighting left many survivors haunted by nightmares for the rest of their lives.
The mortar team had set up by now, loading the first round into the M99. Thomas couldn't help but listen in as the artillerists went to work.
"Target!" the staff sergeant said. "Imperial light tank. Distance, two hundred thirty-one yards, lateral displacement minus twenty-six. Declination thirty degrees! Fire!"
"Firing!" the gunner announced, and there was a low thump and a burst of smoke from the barrel of the MPAU, followed by the familiar wail of a mortar shell in flight as the 81mm projectile ascended rapidly through the air, climbing to the apex of its arc before it stalled and came plunging back down to earth with a banshee scream.
Thomas couldn't help but raise his head to watch as the 81mm mortar shell slammed into the pavement just a dozen meters to the right of the Imperial light tank, which skittered to the side in alarm as the explosion tore a crater in the pavement.
"Correction!" the staff sergeant called without missing a beat as he used a laser rangefinder to acquire the tank again. "Lateral displacement minus thirty-two from right! Declination plus thirty-two degrees from standard!" The private in charge of aiming spun the traverse and elevation wheels to keep up with his superior's commands. "Fire!"
"Firing!" the gunner announced again, and the scene from before repeated itself. This time, however, with one principal difference.
The 81mm shell rose and fell once again, like a hammer falling down upon its unfortunate prey. This time, the Imperial tank wasn't as lucky, and the mortar shell impacted just to its right, the explosion tipping the tank up and tearing a massive rent in the hull. Smoke poured out of the tank as it crashed to the ground, its repulsorlifts disabled, and an M41 rocket team down the street finished the job, putting a 102mm rocket into the motionless tank.
The Imperial tank exploded, coming apart in a hail of metal, and the Rangers cheered. AS helpless as they were in close combat, these artillerists knew their stuff.
The staff sergeant ignored the celebration and continued without pause. "Target, Imperial infantry. Distance, one hundred eighty six yards. Lateral displacement plus eighteen degrees from previous! Declination minus ten degrees from previous! Fire!"
"Firing!"
This time, the shell came down upon a hapless group of Imperial soldiers advancing along the edge of the street. It detonated square in the middle of the formation, the Imperial platoon coming apart in a flash of flame and flurry of severed limbs.
The process repeated itself, the mortar crew systematically destroying any Imperial target that presented itself. The enemy was bewildered by the sudden hail of deadly explosives raining from the sky, and had no idea how to respond. The surviving UNSC forces along the street rallied at the sudden shift in momentum and began to push forward, expelling the Imperials from the houses they had occupied as the enemy assault began to lose steam. The M808C that had nearly deafened Thomas and his squad earlier rolled down the street, sending deadly canister shells filled with hundreds of metal pellets that the UNSC soldiers referred to as "God's shotgun" into any building deemed too dangerous to enter.
Thomas grinned as the Imperial forces began to retreat, cutting their losses and falling back. Maybe they could actually win this, now.
The staff sergeant looked over at Vasquez. "Command's telling me to give you all some hearty congratulations," he said, "they're saying you may have just helped win this battle."
"A little premature," Vasquez grunted, hiding the fact that he was intrigued.
"They sound serious," the staff sergeant said. "They're saying that this street was vital to our operational defense of the city, and there may be some medals in order."
Thomas raised an eyebrow at that, glad for his opaque gold visor that hid his expression from the other artillerists who were staring at the Rangers with semi-awed expressions. Medals?
Thomas liked to say he wasn't vain, but he did have a Purple Heart already, a result of a shrapnel wound to his side suffered during a skirmish with a group of xenos several years back, and he'd be lying through his teeth if he said he wouldn't mind an addition to that collection.
"Well, we'll see about that," Vasquez said, turning his gaze to the smoking, ruined skyline of the cityscape stretched out around them. "Command's always had a habit of-HOLY SHIT!"
"Sir!" Thomas said, rushing forward to where Vasquez stood, gripping the railing of the warehouse roof. "What is it-?"
Thomas's words fell dead in his mouth as he followed Vasquez's gaze to the outskirts of the Eastern District, and then his chin hit the bottom of his helmet.
Stomping through the ruined houses and buildings of the outskirts was a massive…thing. Thomas swore as he laid eyes upon it. It was a massive walking machine, at least twenty meters tall and shaped like a huge beast. It had a large, grey body with four mechanical legs that smashed through walls and houses like paper as they bore the gargantuan machine of war closer to its target. A small "head" protruded from the front of the body, bristling with heavy laser cannons.
Behind him, Feltrinelli uttered a heartfelt curse as Thomas swept his gaze around, using his LLVAS and his HUD's 10x zoom feature to pick out eight more of the monolithic steel titans stomping towards them. The first one he had observed crashed through a courtyard surrounding an elaborate hotel, crushing the concrete walls like paper beneath its clawed legs as it stomped towards the street they had just so painstakingly retaken.
"What the hell is it?" Lance Corporal Austin Heffer whispered, his voice part fear and part awe.
"It's a big-ass camel, tank. Thing," Specialist Upta responded, fingering his M55-B nervously. The Rangers had all seen the walkers the Imperials had deployed earlier in the battle, but those had possessed six legs, and been considerably shorter and less formidable-looking. "It might not be the best idea to be on the roof right now…"
Below, the street was a scene of chaos as the UNSC soldiers below discerned the approaching monster and began scrambling for cover. Hoping to provide its allies with a bit of a distraction, the Scorpion below fired, the projectile crossing the distance to the massive Imperial war machine.
The 125mm High-Explosive Anti-Tank shell was designed specifically to combat armored vehicles, and Thomas felt confident that the round would at least to some damage to the metal behemoth.
He was correct; the shell did some damage. It burst against the durasteel side of the Imperial walker with all the impact of a fiery snowball, leaving behind only a single tear in the metal and a large scorch mark to mark its passing.
"Impossible," Vasquez whispered.
"Apparently not," Upta said.
The Imperial walker slowly rotated its head to face the threat, peering down almost arrogantly from its high perch upon the single tank that had dared to challenge it. The commander of the Scorpion had wisely decided to retreat, and the M808C was beginning to drive backwards at incredible speed when the walker appeared to brace itself, lowered its head slightly, and spat out a series of brilliant ruby lasers the size of small buildings.
The lasers impacted on the Scorpion, swallowing it up in scarlet light. There was a massive explosion, and when the lasers passed, the tank was gone.
It seemed wrong that eighty-plus tons of steel could vanish in an instant, but vanish it did. There was nothing left to suggest the Scorpion had ever existed save for a large smoking crater and a few scattered bits of metal.
Thomas watched in fascinated horror, rooted to the spot and unable to move as his blood chilled. He remembered horror stories that veterans of the Great War told about the Covenant Scarabs, how they clambered over any obstacle and wasted any opposition thrown at them. Now it looked like the Imperials had resurrected a ghost from the past.
"Take it down!" the staff sergeant bellowed, referring to the mortar. "We've got to get off the roof!"
As he spoke, the other walkers in the distance began to fire, their scarlet beams flashing in the darkness and creating a hellishly-shifting half-light that played hideous shadows against the shattered walls of buildings.
"Let's go!" Vasquez yelled, turning around and beginning to run towards the stairs. "Now would be a very good time to leave!"
A/N: No, I have NOT overpowered the AT-AT. I mean, think about it; they took freaking heavy laser cannon bolts to the side during the Battle of Hoth and didn't even acknowledge them. Admittedly, a 125mm HEAT shell is going to do a bit of damage, but unless you can land one on the neck or a leg joint or put two in the same spot, you're not going to bring down a twenty-meter tall walker with a single shot.
Anyways, please review!