Chapter 20: To Hell and Back

0216 hours, April 21st 2526, (Military Calendar)/
Bytoften, Harvest

After a few minutes of driving through the heavy sleet, we approached a small, ruined town on our route to the northeast, and what we hoped was our battalion HQ.

The city's buildings were bold, skeletal figures against the backdrop of the hellish orange and black horizon. The clatter of human weapons clashed against the whine of alien plasma, and explosions reverberated dull thuds through the seat of the Warthog.

"Shit, did the Covenant get into the town?" Bender asked over the COM channel.

"How? The frontline is miles away," I responded, a frightening uncertainty washing over me. I wasn't ready to fight before I had to. My most recent near-death experience had taken away some confidence in my fighting ability, and that was what scared me the most.

Zeus' voice crackled over the COM, "The fuckers have been punching huge holes in our lines over the past couple days. Units are getting their flanks exposed and overrun by the hour. We are here to stop that, so if you boys wanna' get back to your battalion, you're gonna' have to go through good ol' Bytoften."

With no other options, we sucked it up and stayed with Goblin Team.

After dismounting the 'Hogs, the six of us proceeded into the ruined town of Bytoften, occupied by elements of the Marine 5th Recon Battalion and the 105th ODST Battalion. The Covenant had punched through a sector of the Mimir Line the day before and were channeled through a narrow ravine towards the once sleepy town. Nestled between two towering escarpments, Bytoften was one of the quickest ways to reach Utgard, and the one with the least resistance for the Covenant.

Staying close to the crumbling wall of a storefront, we worked our way down a long, dark street towards the roaring sound of battle. We ducked through the blackened husk of a building and emerged on the next block over. It was like we stepped through a portal. It was a large, flat area, surrounded on all sides by the tall, broken frames of the buildings that survived the planet's devastation. The street was built in an east-west direction. The ground was ravaged by thousands of shell craters, caused by both UNSC and Covenant artillery. The darkness was vanquished by the hundreds of brilliant flashes of light of both side's weapons, painting the surrounding buildings in a canvas of colours. I could make out the hundreds of black, shapeless masses cowering in the shell craters as the innumerable figures of Covenant troops advanced on their positions.

Within seconds blue and green plasma smashed against the concrete wall behind us, causing us to scramble for cover wherever we could find it. We all tumbled into a deep, water filled shell crater carved into the blackened earth a few meters away. It was about fifteen feet in diameter, and filled with a foot of brown water. We were greeted by yelps of surprise and fright by a group of ten dirty, terrified Marines cowering in the mud.

Several of them tried to crawl backwards up the side of the crater to try and escape us, but they failed. They all had the look of deer caught in headlights on their faces, their eyes so wide I thought their eyelids were gone. For a moment I believed they would shoot us, thinking we were the enemy, before Zeus grabbed hold of the sanest looking Marine and shook him to his senses.

"Who's in charge here?" the MARSOC team leader yelled in the man's face.

The Marine looked like he had gone mad, and with a trembling finger, pointed across the crater. A figure was sitting against the far wall of our refuge, his features indistinguishable in the low light. Just then, a flash illuminated the night sky, and cast a soft white light over the town. Someone had launched a flare.

The eerie white light cast long shadows over the town as it slowly drifted towards the ground, causing each individual raindrop to turn a brilliant silver colour. I looked back over to the sitting figure, and was horrified at what I saw. A mutilated corpse rested against the crater wall, water up to his midriff. His blue lips were curled back in the most gruesome smile I had ever seen. His skin was a sickening grey and his lifeless hands clutched at a massive, gaping hole in his stomach. The remains of his stomach and intestines spilled out of the hole in his body, floating on the surface of the water like something out of a horror movie. I looked away to prevent myself from vomiting.

"Everyone fall back! Fall back to the rally point!" an officer screamed over the TACCOM. Before we knew it, Marines were falling into our crater, scrambling over us, and up the other side. More than a few were killed and fell on top of me. I distinctly remember one fellow who tumbled over us, a pink crystalline shard through his neck. He was trampled into the bottom of the crater and subsequently drowned before we could reach him.

I was terrified. My brain was screaming, screeching with fear, and I felt like breaking down and crying. I felt like I couldn't move even if I tried. But before I knew it Bender was screaming in my face.

"Clarke! Get up, man! We have to go!" he grabbed my webbing and hauled me to my feet, and we slogged through the water and corpses and pulled ourselves over the top of the other side of the crater. The scene reminded me of rats pouring out of a sewer, the black shapes of men and women spilling out over the tops of holes and dashing towards the western end of the pitted street.

Plasma fizzed and cracked through the air around me, cutting down dozens of retreating Marines. I felt several shots zip past me, searing my armour, but I could do nothing and continued sprinting as fast as I could down the street, avoiding as many craters as I could. My legs felt like they were on fire, I heaved and gasped for breath, but I knew if I slowed I would be killed.

I saw the reinforced barricades at the end of the street, marking the beginning of the reserve lines. I catapulted myself over a low sandbag wall and plummeted five feet down into a massive collective of shell craters, joined as one giant hole in the ground. Hundreds of Marines packed themselves into the relative safety of this hole, which was easily sixty feet in diameter, spanning the entire width of the road.

"Fucking hell! We're getting slaughtered out there!" Bender cursed as he slid down beside me, wheezing for breath. Machine gun positions along the edge of the crater poured down the length of the street, cutting swaths through the advancing ranks of Grunts and Jackals, but that didn't stop them. The shrieks and howls of dying Covenant joined with those of our own wounded. I felt like tearing my hair out and screaming at the top of my lungs. Screaming until it hurt. I was cold, wet, exhausted, and more terrified than I had ever been in my life.

The fact that I was scared intensified my fear tenfold.

This isn't me. I don't get scared.

I was with an unfamiliar unit in the middle of an unorganized and chaotic battle. It wasn't the first time that I thought that I was going to die.

Some Marines found their courage, while others fired their weapons in pure rage. Every time that I looked up at the soldiers holding the line against the Covenant, half a dozen of them were flung backwards, like a giant invisible hand swatting them away. They fell into the wet mud with tormenting wails and screeches, clawing at gruesome wounds or missing limbs.

I sank to my knees in the middle of that crater. I felt truly hopeless. I knew I was going to die there.

I looked around, accepting the inevitable, and took in the state of the Marines around me. Many of them were dead. The mud-caked corpses lay about in unnatural, hideous positions. Dismembered limbs were scattered about. Gallons of blood were mixed in with the churning mess at the bottom of the crater. Dozens of Marines wept, or sat motionless, or shambled around aimlessly.

A young Marine, younger than me, fell backwards, and sat crying in the water. He pulled out a Magnum and shot himself in the head.

"What the fuck do we do? Where is Zeus?!" Bender screamed frantically. I stared at the big man, wide-eyed. I didn't know what to do.

I have to pull myself together. I will die if I don't.

As if on cue, Gator and Zeus appeared out of the crowd.

"Troopers! Over here!" Zeus called, beckoning us over. He and Gator seemed like the only sane ones among us. I shuffled over, still in a dazed stupor. I composed myself as much as I could, trying to pull myself together enough to get the job done.

Gator thrust a large weapon into Bender's arms, "You and Clarke get up there and give those Jarheads a hand!"

"Where are you going?!" I yelled, rain streaming down my face.

"To give the Helljumpers a hand with clearing out some of those bastards!" he said walking backwards, before running after Zeus.

The gun in Bender's arms was an HMG-38, an old, belt-fed machine gun that was fairly outdated, but it still worked and could deal some serious damage. I have no recollection of accepting the belts of ammunition from Zeus, and the next thing I knew I was helping Bender set up the bipod on the machine gun at the lip of the crater. I had used these kinds of machine guns before, but it had only been in basic training and I struggled to remember how to load it.

Plasma bolts kicked up the mud around the top of the crater, causing us to duck below every time one landed near, which was often. We were packed shoulder-to-shoulder with the other Marines along the low wall of sandbags at the lip of the crater, and every time one of them fell, another replaced him or her immediately.

The street was a mountainous landscape of shell holes and countless bodies, illuminated by the white flare slowly dying out overhead. Hundreds of Covenant troops advanced on our positions, but we held our ground.

I loaded a belt of ammunition into the breech, and Bender slammed it shut, pushing the bolt forward and shouldered the machine gun. The string of cartridges slid through my hands with brutal rapidity, and the noise of the gun burst against my eardrums over the roar of battle. Our machine gun joined in with the other five, as well as the dozens of rifles and grenades cutting down the enemy.

"We need some damn artillery!" I screamed to Bender, who gritted his teeth and gave no reply. He transitioned from target to target, never taking his finger off the trigger. Grunts fell back with luminescent blue blood spurting from their wounds, and the energy shields carried by the Jackals gave under our combined fire.

In the blink of an eye, a beam of green plasma shot past me and grazed my neck, instantly cauterizing. I screamed out in pain, clutching the side of my neck with one hand.

"Clarke! Are you alright?" Bender cried out.

I barred my teeth, "Yeah, I'm fine. It just nicked me."

That pissed me off.

Streaks of smoke and fire shot out from the buildings on either side of the street, which I recognized as SPNKr missiles. The explosions killed several dozen aliens, who were too stunned to react. That was definitely the work of Goblin Team.

"They're retreating! Christ, they're retreating!" a Marine next to me yelled triumphantly. A chorus of "hoorahs" roared from the ranks of Marines.

Oh my God, they are retreating.

"We're out!" Bender yelped, taking his finger off the trigger for the first time. I quickly loaded another belt of ammunition into the breech, and Bender continued his output of death.

"Bender, Clarke, relocate, bastards are trying to punch through on the left flank," Zeus said over the COMM.

I hung the belts of ammunition around my neck and detached the bipod. The barrel of the HMG was burning hot, only mildly cooled by the sleet. Bender bit the bullet and grabbed it, biting his tongue to prevent himself from crying out.

"You okay?" I yelled to him, but he simply nodded, barring his teeth.

We made our way down the line and through the buildings to our left, passing by dozens of Marines, both wounded and fighting, preventing the Covenant from coming through the ruined structures. We emerged on the next street over, which was in a similar state to the previous, if not worse.

We spotted Zeus, Gator, and one of the other members of Goblin team, Hazard, hunkered down in a small shell crater, periodically returning fire to the advancing Covenant. We ran doubled over towards them, and hurled ourselves down into the muddy hole.

"Glad you boys could make it," Zeus yelled, spraying a trio of Grunts with an SMG. "Get your MG set up before our not-so-lovely guests stop you from having a choice."

I looked around the crater briefly, "Where's Boomer?"

Gator and Hazard both gave me momentary solemn expressions before turning their attention back to the battle. I looked over at Zeus and he simply shook his head.

Steeling ourselves, we set ourselves up again, Bender taking aim down the length of the machine gun and opening up into an advancing Elite. The blue-armoured alien emitted a low warble before collapsing into the muck, purple blood spilling from its wounds.

With the sudden presence of another MG, the Covenant advance was caught off guard and turned part of their attention towards us, which allowed the other Marines and ODSTs an open opportunity to cut them down. The tide of the battle had turned.

We are winning. Goddamnit, we are actually winning.

The bulbous shape of a Wraith moved up the length of the street, launching crackling blue balls of plasma towards our position.

"Oh shit," Gator uttered.

"Gator, Hazard, grab some rockos and take that sonofabitch out. We'll draw his fire from here," Zeus ordered. The two other members of Goblin Team each took a rocket launcher and dashed from the crater.

The Wraith, now less than two hundred feet away, fired at the pair of MARSOC operators from its secondary turret. Mud and rock flew up around the feet of Gator and Hazard as they dashed towards a wrecked Warthog for cover. ODSTs moved up to covered their advance. Bender continued to suppress any aliens in our vicinity who dared to poke their heads up from cover.

Almost simultaneously, Gator and Hazard popped up from behind the Warthog and fired their rockets the Wraith. The first rocket hit the main gun of the Wraith, rendering it virtually ineffective. Moments later, the second missile punched through the side of the alien tank, causing it to erupt in a brilliant blue and white explosion, falling to the ground with a heavy thud.

Cheers and whoops from the ODSTs and Marines filled the street, as the handful of surviving Covenant troops retreated down the dark, rainy street. The white light from the flare died out, and the street fell into darkness aside from the heavy fire from our weapons, fires from destroyed vehicles and the sporadic shots from the retreating aliens.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Zeus called down the line. Dull orange and blue light was cast down the street from the wrecked vehicles. The entire town was eerily quiet, aside from the heavy rain, the distant clatter of battle, and the cries from the wounded ahead of us - both human and alien. The barrel of our HMG hissed softly from the sleet pouring down on its burning hot barrel, a heavy cloud of steam billowing into the air.

"Is it over?" Bender muttered, breaking the silence.

I unslung my battle rifle from my shoulder, and scanned the street. I couldn't see a single live alien.

"I-I think so," I said reluctantly. Gator and Hazard ran double time back to our crater and slid in beside us. Gator squatted down into the bottom of the water-filled crater, now above our knees. He rested his head against the wall of the hole, and we all followed suit. The older O'Grady brother took a small, ancient pocket watch from inside his jacket and stroked its exterior. I sat in the water up to my stomach and placed my rifle across my knees. Zeus pulled out a pack of cigarettes, put one in his mouth, and passed the pack around.

When the pack was in my hands, I stared at its crumpled exterior. I hadn't killed a single alien since my first engagement at the Mimir Line, but I felt like I had just fallen into hell and climbed back out again.

I pulled a cigarette out of the pack, and with trembling fingers put it in my mouth. Shaking, I took a lighter from Bender and lit it. I sucked in the smoke and exhaled slowly, coughing lightly. It didn't matter; I took a deeper pull the second time. A felt somewhat more relaxed.

I stared up at the dark, stormy night sky. Somewhere out there, Maddy and Jen were sitting at home on Charybdis, safe from... this.

What the hell am I doing here?

I looked over at the horrendous vista of death that this small town had become. The mountainous, muddy, rocky, street was strewn with hunks of metal and wrecked vehicles. Bodies from both sides literally carpeted the street. Many corpses were mashed and mangled into the terrain, their blood, entrails, and brains churned into the ground.

Bender took back his lighter and tucked it into a pocket, "I thought you didn't smoke?" I took another deep drag of the cigarette.

"I don't."