Chapter Twenty-One: Storming the Beach
0400 Hours, December 20, 2552 (Military Calendar) \
Installation 00_The 'Ark', Near the Citadel
5 Klicks off of 'September' Beach
Spartan-III Alex-G004
My stomach was full of butterflies as we waited for the order to advance, though the rolling waves of the sea didn't do wonders to alleviate said butterflies, either. After an extensive—and still ongoing—naval battle above the Ark, I found myself sitting in an amphibious elephant in the middle of an ocean waiting for the brass to tell us to run straight into the Loyalist guns.
A two-pronged attack had been ordered on the Citadel, the structure on the Ark which controlled the activation of the Halo rings. One force, headed by Commander Keyes, would take down the generator towers providing power for the energy barrier protecting the Citadel. The other force, led by General Edward 'Ironguts' Eckhart comprising of the 77th and 117th Marine Regiments, would be going in by sea and securing a landing on a beachhead several kilometers away from the Citadel which we had dubbed 'September Beach'. From there that force would destroy the Loyalist AA network, allowing the Shadow of Intent to press forward and destroy the Citadel. My team would be accompanying the second force. After an extremely enlightening pelican ride from the Shadow of Intent to the Ark's surface, Flight Officer Hayliger, out pilot, had dropped us off in one of the fleet of dozens of amphibious M315-AAM Elephant HRVs floating in the ocean underneath the six UNSC vessels which had accompanied the Separatists through the Portal.
We were sharing our AAM Elephant with a squadron of twenty marines from Bravo Company of the 77th Regiment. They were a fun bunch of people, cracking jokes and boasting what they would do when they got back home. They were all led by a Japanese sergeant named Hasegawa. Mr. Peterson, the elderly man from the 77th's HQ Operator staff, was serving as the driver of our Elephant, manning the armored cockpit on the upper tier of the large vehicle.
I sat cross-legged in the back corner of our Elephant next to Sam and Robin, waiting for our orders. We had been waiting with the marines for half an hour now as the rest of the Elephants were prepped, some of them with scorpion tanks.
"I was stationed on the bridge of the Icy Resolve when we came in for our landing," Mr. Peterson, our Elephant's driver, explained to everyone as he slid down the ladder after prepping the Elephant's engines.
"You see what we're up against here?" Sergeant Hasegawa asked the older man.
Peterson gave a half nod, "Not very well—but our long range sensors picked up a lot of Covenant armor on the cliffs beyond the beachhead. Possibly some small resistance on the beach itself, but…well, the whole damn thing doesn't look good. Altogether, we could be facing some of the toughest resistance we've 'ad since Reach or Delta Halo. We're gonna lose a lot of boys today."
The marines fell silent, taking in Peterson's prediction. I didn't like it one bit either, but Peterson couldn't help what he saw. "Oh, the hell with it," Hasegawa shrugged, "We'll give it our best shot."
"Oo-rah!" the other marines chanted in unison.
"Yeah, oo-rah, lucky effing us…" Robin grumbled under his breath.
"One last time, eh?" I said to my old friends, giving Sam's hand a squeeze. Sam returned the gesture, but she seemed distant. She had a hand clasped over her abdomen and looked almost sick. "You alright?" I asked her.
She snapped back to reality and quickly regained her composure. "Yeah, I'm fine," she shrugged off my concern, "Just a little sea-sick, I guess."
I could tell that she was lying, but before I could press her for answers the COM system in our Elephant's cockpit crackled to life. "All units, this is General Eckhart," the grizzled general's voice issued from the COM for all of us to hear. The transmission was being sent to all of the other Elephants in the assault force as well. "We have one last part to play in this fight, in this whole war. Billions of lives, decades of constant warfare; it's all come down to this last fight. Here, on the Ark. You will secure a landing on September Beach, you will press through the Loyalist defenses, and you will destroy their AA batteries. We will play our part and secure our future as a race, as a species. If we fail, if Truth activates the Rings, we will be the last of our kind. This will not happen, marines. At least not on my watch," the marines chuckled quietly with each other at that, "This will be one for the history books, marines! Every man and woman who fights on this day is legend. We will be remembered for centuries, maybe millennia, as the ones who helped to save our race. The road ahead is not an easy one; many of us will not live to see another day, but you've known this since Day One. I would give up everything for Humanity, how about you, marines?!"
A deafening chorus of "OO-RAH!!!" swept through our fleet of Elephants from the throats and voices of the 2,500 marines and ODSTs in our assault force.
"Well then what are you waiting for, marines; do you want to live forever?! Let's end this goddamn war, here and now! All units, advance!"
Sam, Robin, and I all stood up, inspecting our weapons one last time. I bent down and grabbed my helmet, putting it over my head and sealing it, polarizing the blue faceplate so nothing could see through it. My teammates did likewise. Em and Tyrone, who had been sitting on the upper tier, jumped down and joined us and the marines.
Mr. Peterson sprang to his feet and clambered up the ladder on the side of the Elephant's interior up to the upper tier. "If any of you have Gods you wanna pray to, do it now," the old man suggested to us as he strode into the armored cockpit and took the controls.
The Elephant lurched forward as Peterson fired up the engines, sending us off on a one-way trip to September Beach five kilometers away. The spray of the ocean dampened the interior of the Elephant as we accelerated to full speed. The shimmering energy barrier and the mountains in the distance grew larger and larger as we drew near.
"Didn't they do something like this in one of those old wars on Earth the teachers kept rambling on about in History class?" one of the marines asked, the whole situation triggering memories.
"Who really gives a shit, Emerson?" one of the marine's buddies rolled his eyes, "History ain't gonna help us not get hit by plasmafire out there."
Our Elephant and the nearly two hundred others continued towards September beach for ten minutes without any problems. Once we were within sight of the actual beach, however, things started getting hairy. The Loyalists must have had a contingent of wraith tanks stationed along the cliffs beyond the beach because a shower of large glowing plasma bolts arced up high into the sky before coming back down on us. Most of the wraith shots impacted the water harmlessly, but several got lucky and clipped some of our Elephants.
More wraith shots soared into the sky and plasma turret fire from fixed positions and ghosts cut through the air all around us as the Loyalist defenders finally unloaded on us. I heard Mr. Peterson utter a dark curse when a string of plasmafire peppered the windshield. The windshield wasn't made of glass; it was some transparent polymer, so it held, but was still blackened by the fire. "Can't see a goddamn thing…" Peterson growled as he activated the windshield wipers and cleaners, which managed to clear away most of the ash.
As we neared the beach the waves began to get choppier, forced upwards by the rising land. The Elephant lurched and fell as we crested the breakers. "Thirty seconds!" Peterson called out from the cockpit.
"Listen up! The moment that ramp drops, we are to fan out and assume a covered offensive position one hundred yards up the beach," Hasegawa said to his men, shouting so that he could be heard, "There are numerous boulders and rock formations all over September, so we won't be out in the complete open! Any questions?!"
"Twenty seconds!" Peterson shouted.
"Good luck out there, all of you," Tyrone said to us over our private COM channel.
As we waited, more plasma bolts fell out of the sky, more of them hitting their targets. The Elephant next to us was hit, exploding in a fiery inferno. I saw two or three survivors leap into the ocean, but that was it.
Suddenly, a bright bluish-purple particle beam tore through the air and hit one of the marines in the head, boring right through. The marine was killed instantly, flopping backwards onto the floor. Only a jackal with a beam rifle could have done that. "Snipers!" I screamed, "Keep your heads down!" The dead marine's buddies all swore and hit the deck, not giving the jackal another shot. More plasma fire and beam rifle shots crisscrossed the air above our Elephant, but they didn't land inside. I heard more explosions as more Elephants were hit. We had to get out of this thing soon or we'd all be cooked.
"Ten seconds!"
The Elephant slowed down a bit as we neared the beachhead. Finally, I felt the Elephant lurch as we hit the sand. Peterson beached the Elephant as far as possible before dropping the doors. "GO, GO, GO!" Hasegawa shouted.
The moment the deployment doors at the front of the Elephant opened, a storm of plasmafire ripped through. Five marines went down instantly, and several more were heavily wounded. "Move up! MOVE UP!" Hasegawa screamed. My team pushed forward alongside the surviving marines while I climbed up onto the upper tier of the Elephant. I crouched just below the rim of the protective armored edge of the Elephant, adjusting my scope for the appropriate distances. I saw similar scenes unfolding all up and down the rest of the beach; Elephants from the first wave landing, opening their doors, and having a good amount of the marines inside them slaughtered before they could even make it out into the beach. Those who survived dove for cover behind the boulders and rock formations which dotted the beach, returning sporadic fire. Interference or jamming signals rendered our COM systems useless. Every squad had been split up, even my team had been scattered in the chaos of the initial landing. From what I saw, Em and Robin had been separated from Sam and Tyrone, then separated from each other. Of the twenty marines who had been in our Elephant, only Hasegawa and three others had survived.
I pressed myself against the Elephant's side and rested the barrel of my sniper rifle on the rim. Sniping the jackal snipers was much easier now because they were busy picking off the survivors on the beach instead of hunting for me. There were at least twenty of them, all lined up on the cliffs, so I had to aim high. I was able to take four of them out before Peterson had to move the Elephant away from the beach to make room for the second wave. I reloaded my rifle and leaped off the top of the Elephant, splashing down into the water. I waded through the surf and reached the beach, setting off towards the nearest rock formation at my fastest sprint. The surviving Elephants of the first wave had all pulled away and the second wave was about to land. There were many more Elephants in the second wave because of the Loyalists having to expend much of their concentration on us, the ones who survived the first landing.
I lined up my sights and took down the remaining jackal snipers one by one, probably saving the lives of quite a few marines in the process. I tried to take down the mounted heavy plasma turret and light plasma cannon positions, but every time I sniped the grunt or brute manning the heavy support weapons another would always take its place.
Less than a minute later, the second wave of marines landed. The Elephants' deployment doors fell open and the squadrons of marines poured out, wading through the dirty waters and stepping over the strewn corpses of their comrades from the first wave. Several of them threw up on the spot while others only just managed to keep it in, but most of them were able to advance up the beachhead.
September Beach was the only beachhead suitable for landing on for at least a dozen kilometers. It was basically a break in the cliffs which formed the coast of the central landmass. It was two klicks long and ran inland half a klick before running into steep foothills. The remaining distance to the Loyalist AA batteries was thought to be ten kilometers, but it was really only five. The scouts had miscalculated the distance to the mountains which the AA batteries were in. After pushing through the foothills we would have to advance through the small range of mountains beyond them before we made it to the AA batteries. If we ever made it off the beach, that is.
Bolstered by the second wave, we began to finally get a defensive line started, but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't take down the mounted turrets by ourselves; we needed to completely destroy them, not just kill their gunners. Just as it seemed we were doomed to an eternal stalemate, brutes emerged from cover behind the rock formations further up the beach, led by a chieftain wielding a gravity hammer.
I heard surprised shouts from all along our line as the brutes charged us. I slung my sniper rifle over my back and wielded my M7 caseless SMG; I couldn't get a clear shot at the attacking aliens without potentially shooting a marine, so I decided to get some closer fighting in. I broke cover and sprinted forward, dodging the resulting hail of plasmafire, to join the marines at the head of our advance who were pinned down. I blew past the marines and dove for cover behind a boulder as the charging brutes fired their spikers at me. The glowing yellow projectiles thudded into the rock and sand all around me. Three brutes sprinted around the boulder I was behind and came at me all at once. I barely had time to raise my SMG, let alone fire it. I squeezed off a quick burst, which clanged harmlessly against the first brute's helmet. That first brute leaped the remaining distance and slapped the SMG out of my hands. I delivered a swift kick to the brute's midsection, temporarily stunning it. I mentally swore to myself—kicking brutes like that really hurt my leg. It was comparable to kicking a solid brick wall, but I had little choice in this case. I quickly drew my magnum sidearm and jammed it under the stunned brute's chin, blowing its brains sky-high.
With brute number one down, I unslung my sniper rifle and brought it around to face number two. I wielded it like a stave and dealt a heavy blow to its head, following up with a single shot. I didn't bother aiming through the scope or lining up with the sights, I fired my sniper rifle from the hip. Now, all that no-scope training that I had endured back on Onyx seemed to be paying off. The round tore through the brute's helm, killing it instantly.
I whipped around to face brute number three, but it had already reached me while I was occupied with its two friends. The brute lashed out first, striking my left arm. My eyes stung with tears as I felt the bones fracture like half-broken twigs. The brute struck me again, this time in the abdomen. I went down hard, collapsing face-down into the sand, gasping for breath. The brute gripped my shoulder and flipped me onto my back while drawing its mauler sidearm. It aimed its weapon straight at my face and gave a satisfied chuckle. Its finger tightened around the trigger and a loud BANG rang out. I instantly tensed up, waiting for the agony of the mauler shell to tear into my torso…but it never came. The brute had stopped laughing. In fact, it had stopped doing everything; it just stood there, its expression frozen on its face. Then it pitched forward into the sand, unmoving— revealing Tyrone, who had been standing behind it. I sat up and noticed that the entire back of the brute's head was gone, blown away. Tyrone, his shotgun still smoking, held out a hand and hauled me to my feet.
"Third wave is about to land!" he shouted over the battle, "We're pressing to the hills when they advance! Your arm okay?!"
"No!" I shouted back, retrieving my SMG, "It's not okay, I can't use it very well, but I can still fight, don't worry about me! Where's the rest of our team?!"
"I don't know; we got separated when our Elephant landed! I've seen everyone but Em, though!"
Tyrone and I hunkered down behind our boulder and waited roughly thirty seconds for our next wave of reinforcements. Sure enough, right on time, the third wave arrived. Two dozen Elephants, all of them bearing M808B Main Battle Tanks, or 'Scorpions' as the common soldiers referred to them as, beached onto the shore and dropped their doors. The tanks rolled out and advanced up the beaches. As they moved forward, their main cannons swiveled and fired as they acquired their targets, sending heavy 90 millimeter tungsten armor-piercing ballistic-capped rounds barreling into the Loyalist turret positions, blowing them sky-high.
The attacking brutes had been wiped out by now, allowing us to advance without directly running into anything except plasmafire from the remaining turrets. The tanks passed our position, followed by all of the surviving marines. "Move!" Ty shouted, getting to his feet and hauling me after him.
The tank drivers expertly moved their scorpions up the beach, taking out Loyalist defenses and dodging plasma bolts fired by the wraiths beyond the hills. We joined the marines in the charge to the foothills, sprinting through the sand through the plasmafire coming from the remaining plasma cannons. By the time we had reached the grass of the foothills, the tanks had taken out all of the turrets and Loyalist ground forces. Tyrone and I were the first to climb to the top of the first hill, just in time to see the last of the Loyalist wraiths vanish into the mountains nearly five kilometers away. All that was left was a small purple tower-like structure. Whatever it was, it was destroyed by the first scorpion to crest the hill. It must have been what the Loyalists had been using to jam our signals, because the moment it went up in flames our COM systems began to work again.
The channels were flooded with requests for medics, sit-reps to superior officers, etc. etc. I tuned it all out and switched to the private channel which my team shared. "Team Rapier, this is Tyrone…just wanna make sure you're all alive, so check in. I've already got Alex, so everyone else give me an 'okay'."
"I'm good…more or less…" Robin responded, followed by a "Yeah, I'm good," from Sam. I sighed in relief once I heard her voice.
"Em, we don't have all day, acknowledge!" Tyrone raised his voice, but there was no response from Em. "Anyone seen Em?" a note of worry started to creep into Ty's voice. Sam and Robin both reported back 'negative'. Just then, a new voice spoke on our channel, the familiar Manchester-accented voice belonging to Captain Ian McCandlish. "Team Rapier…there's somethin' you ought to see."
"Come on," Ty murmured, leading me back down towards the beach. We headed down to the spot where our Elephant had originally dropped us, then several hundred yards up and to the right to the place where Captain McCandlish had told us to come. A small group of silent, somber marines were clustered around Captain McCandlish and Doc. Hoffman from the ODST Spec. Ops squad. They were crouching over a smaller body clad in ODST armor. I noted the silver rapier symbol engraved on the helmet. "Oh no…" I whispered.
Ty bent down and removed the helmet, revealing the motionless, unmoving face of Emma-G132. Her body was riddled with numerous plasma burns; it had been a plasma cannon that took her down. She had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was shaken to my core, utterly speechless. I had seen fellow spartans die, and that had been painful enough, but Em was family to me…the others of Team Rapier are all family to me…and to lose one of them was just…indescribable.
It took us half an hour to storm September Beach. Half an hour…it was such an interesting increment of time. People usually take 'half an hour' for granted, but when nearly one thousand lives are extinguished in half an hour, initial perspectives tend to change. Sometimes you could blink your eye and that 'half an hour' would pass, other times it would drag on for years. 2,500 marines and five spartans attacked September beach half an hour ago, only 1,600 marines and four spartans would be leaving it. I think we all knew which kind of half hour the last one had been.