Chapter 26: Battle

Date: April 18, 3658

Location: Haven Forest - South Side

As the sun rose higher above the horizon and the morning birds began their songs, a loud explosion was heard around the entire area of Haven Forest followed by a blazing fire as the metal head's new nest went up in flames, and as the surviving residents of the nest began to flee from their home the sounds of gunfire could be heard. The turrets lit up the area with firepower as the larger monstrous metal heads rushed out of the nest screeching in pain from the homemade bombs when one suddenly stepped onto a buried land mine, which set off a chain reaction. As the first went off the other two dozen exploded which caused blood, body parts and dirt to shoot up into the air. Pained cries from the creatures hit filled the air as the turrets suddenly stopped shooting.

Tess held her vulcan gun, ready to begin shooting. As the seconds passed oh so slowly, she felt her trigger finger twitch as she waited and waited; but nothing was coming out of the nest from her side. Her men held their positions, nobody wanting to be the reason for failing this mission. A sudden noise from the sky caught her attention. Lifting her eyes skyward she saw dozens of drones lifting into the air and heading their way.

"DRONES!" Tess yelled as she fired the arc weilder, the electrical current frying the nervous system of any drone metal head who was dumb enough to not dodge the onslaught.

Next to her, the soldiers began firing their weapons. A loud bang behind her told Tess that her sniper division was hard at work to ensure nobody would be killed by the flying swarm. Her attention was then drawn to the spider type metal heads as they began to come up out of the ground. 'Shit,' she cursed mentally as she began to pull her men back to a secondary location. Men located in the thicker area of the forest spotted the arachnid metal heads and began to blast them with their normal blaster mods. Not liking the results, Tess switched her gun mods to a scatter gun mod and smiled as the concussive rounds shattered the creatures' insides and splattered them on the ground. A blast from the northern side of the nest told Tess that Jinx and his men were running into a similar problem with their enemies.

One of her squads could be head over the comm. system yelling. "This is Echo Bravo. We need assistance! We're being overrun by Stingers!"

"Echo Bravo, this is Team Leader Omega," Tess spoke to the frightened soldier. "Shoot them between the eyes and don't stop firing until every last one of those bastards are killed. Don't lose focus!"

"We are ma'am!" he yelled. "But these didn't come out of the nest. These came out from behind us in the caves!"

Tess' eyes widened. They'd forgotten that there would probably be more metal heads in the surrounding area. Just because they hadn't seen the enemy didn't mean they weren't there. "Don't lose focus, I'm headed your way."

"No ma'am," came another voice she recognized. "My men and I will do it."

"Lieutenant Major Davis Dickens," she said his name with authority. "Make sure you get those men to safety ASAP!"

"That's the plan ma'am!" He yelled back with a smile displayed on his lips. Turning to his men, Dickens gave them a signal to head towards the caves that were in the western section of the forest, just beyond the back side of the nest.

Location: Haven Forest - North Side

Jinx threw a plasmite grenade over his head. The resulting screech made him smile as he took a puff from his cigar. The other two demolition experts who were with him had climbed up the side of the cliff that the cave was carved into. They were sniping off the small fry enemy one by one. They had yet to see any sentinels or see any camouflaged metal heads. The infrared goggles that Keira had given everybody made it impossible for the enemy to hit from them. The smoke in the air made it hard to breathe or see properly. The goggles helped – a lot.

Pulling his bayonet dagger from its sheath, he peered out of the cave and spotted a single sentinel patrol with its back to him. These metal heads held a staff weapon that shot red electricity out of them. Rarely did one get caught, and if they were, the weapon was always destroyed. Remembering his old special forces training he came up behind the bastard dug his knife to the hilt into the back of the enemy's head, the metal head gave a gurgle as it died. Dropping the weapon from its hands, Jinx quickly pulled his knife out of the creature's skull and picked up its staff weapon. 'The girl's will like this,' he thought, thinking of Keira and Tess. Those two were like two peas in a pod. Strapping the weapon onto his back, he went back into his hiding place.

Location: Haven Forest - West Side

When Dickens and his five men arrived at the caves, he found that he was glad for the air filters that were built within his armor's helmet as the sight of men with their intestine's falling out of their body cavities was almost too much to bear. He heard Hickens and Tel'v both make gagging sounds as they found two more men in the same condition.

"We have three KIA's Team Alpha," he said over the channel to Torn.

A sad sigh was heard from their leader. "Tag them to be transported out of here." A sudden curse was heard from the older man. "Fuck this shit," he heard Torn throw something that made a ding. "Kill those sentries damnit!" A slew of gunfire was heard over the comm., followed by an explosion from a grenade before it went dead on their end.

Dickens chuckled at the ex-KG commander's use of the language. Soldiers were always so colorful when it came to battle. "Alright, let's find those last three boys and bring them home safely," he told his men before they spread themselves out into a search formation.

Slowly they made their way through the cave system. They came into contact with a few stinger scorpion type metal heads but nothing big enough to gut a man like those three had been. The caves went deep underground, a shaking from above made them all pause in their pursuit. Nobody moved a muscle until the shaking stopped. Thankfully the cavern ceiling seemed to be able to take the sudden earthquake.

Dickens switched his goggles on his helmet over to night vision while his men kept the infrared on theirs. They pushed forward until they came to a huge cavern filled with eggs. "Fuck," he heard Tel'v curse and had to concur with that assessment. In the center of the egg nest was a huge egg that was the size of Freedom HQ, and next to it were the three missing marines unconscious but otherwise unharmed. However, getting to them was going to be tricky as there were five crab heads guarding the makeshift nest. Ducking behind a large egg, he opened a comm. line with Jinx.

"Team Omega, this is Dickens. I need assistance in making a bomb big enough to crack a really big egg." Silence answered him.

"Could you repeat that there request?" came the ex-special ops officer. "Cause it sounded like ya wanted to blow up an egg?"

"We have a huge ass egg in the caves that's big enough to be the next metal head leader's egg," Dickens said, sounding a bit upset that nobody had any intel on this thing. "So yeah, I wanna blow it up."

"What kind of grenades do ya have kid?" Jinx inquired as his mind began to think up ways to destroy a metal head leader egg.

"I've got eight plasma, six powder and two plasmite," he stated as his men looked through their scopes on their assault rifles, keeping tabs on both friendlies and the enemy.

"Yer team mates?" was Jinx's next question.

Dickens turned to his fellow soldiers who began laying their own grenades down. "Okay. I've got thirty-two plasma, twenty powder and ten plasmite."

There was a chuckle from the pyro expert. "OOOH!" he moaned. "Yer gonna have fun." He chuckled again. "Anybody got tape or rope." He smiled before continuing. "Okay. Place the plasmite together. Tape them up or use rope. Then wrap the powder grenades around those and finally place the plasma ones next them. Make sure they're in a circle and wrapped tightly." He waited a second. "Next place the bomb on the egg and run like hell after you trigger one of the grenades." He chuckled. "Have fun kiddies."

Dickens shook his head before signing off. Looking at Ash, he saw that she'd been following directions to the T. Once the bomb was finished, it was as big as beach ball and as heavy as a lurker. "First thing's first," he said. "We kill the crabs, get the men out of here and then I'll set the bomb off."

"Think we have time for all that sir?" Ashtar asked looking at his sister who was smiling under her helmet at him.

"We make time," Dicken's stated as he lined up his first shot with the head of the biggest crab head who wore gold armor which made him stand out. 'He's the commander,' he thought. 'He's definitely bigger than the rest.' His finger pulled the trigger, the first shot made impact with an invisible force field. 'Shit!'

"They've got a barrier shield!" he yelled in the comm. gaining curses from his men. The canon's that the crab heads held began to fire in their direction. Staying low, Dickens moved in order to bring the heat away from his men. He saw Tel'v move the opposite direction and together they began to pummel the shields with bullets. As soon as the shields dropped the smaller crab heads began to shoot at them when suddenly the big golden one's head exploded as Jorge shot him with his armor piercing bullets. Unfortunately, those bullets didn't pierce the shield around the big egg; however they did do a good job at killing the smaller ones. As soon as they were dead the team ran up to the egg and began to assess how badly the three captive men were.

Ash and her brother Ashtar both moved the bomb into place at the base of the egg after Dickens had found the shield generator and destroyed it. That was when the smaller eggs began to wobble. Dickens growled lowly. "Get them out of here!" he yelled, causing his team to pick the injured men up, hell with their wounds.

Staying behind, Dickens smirked under his helmet as the first egg opened to reveal a stinger, the next was a drone. Pulling his pistol out he began to shoot each one. He was buying his people time. Each time his gun went off was another second his people got further away from the blast zone. Seeing the larger ones were beginning to crack, Dickens quickly turned around, pulled a pin and then ran as fast as he could. He knew he only had ten seconds to get as far away as he could, and hoped that him buying time for his men would count towards something. One question boggled his mind though: Why were the eggs down here and not in the actual nest?

Location: Haven Forest - East Side

Keira kept up a steady volley of bullets as sentries, sentinels and arthropods came out of the ground and trees nearby. The sentries and sentinels returned fire in vain attempts to distract them from the escaping smaller fries, but that didn't work as many of the smaller metal heads were being killed by the gas bombs that Torn had laid about the area. The helmets that everybody was wearing kept them safe from the gas toxins. Some were harmless to elves, but most was some sort of nerve gas that would kill anything. Everybody was blinded by the dust, smoke from the first explosion or from the gas, making Keira glad that she'd installed infrared goggles into the helmet gear that everybody wore.

Suddenly the bullets for her vulcan fury ran dry, forcing Keira to switch mods and go to her scatter gun, concussive rounds did a lot of damage to the inner organs of metal heads. The smaller ones only took one blast to kill them, sentries it took three rounds, but crab heads; it usually took three rounds and even then it was safer to use a fourth just as a precaution. Upon hearing a cry, Keira turned her head and spotted a stinger trying to overtake a soldier. Grabbing her dagger that Torn had handed he earlier, she pulled it from its sheath and stabbed the creature through its torso before assisting in helping the soldier stand.

It was then she felt a shaking under her feet. Turning, she spotted Torn looking down. It didn't make sense. There were no fault lines near Haven to warrant an earthquake, unless...

'SHIT!' Her mind screamed. "RUN!" she yelled as she pushed the soldier she'd just help out of the way. Behind her the ground exploded as a metalpede burst out of the ground.

"FUCK!" she heard the man next to her curse and could only concur with the word he had used.

They were truly fucked if these creatures were here as well. The only thing that could take out one of these things was a wastelander. Her eyes widened for a millisecond as she recalled a prototype weapon she had been working on for the peacemaker. Flicking the switch on her gun she swapped her scatter gun mod for the peacemaker and flipped a switch for it to change into the peacemaker bomb she had been working on.

"EVERYONE DOWN!" she yelled, causing everybody to look at her like she was insane, even Torn thought she was crazy. But as she leveled her weapon at the charging monster, everybody did as she commanded. As the shot blasted out of her gun, Keira jumped behind a boulder. The shot connected with the giant metalpede's torso and like that a hot sizzling flash of light exploded in the area. When the heat and light settled, all the soldiers turned to see nothing but ash and destruction laying waste to a once beautifully green area of the forest.

Cheers erupted as everybody began clapping Keira on the back and shoulders for not only killing those they'd been fighting but leveling what was left of the nest. Keira on the other hand looked blankly at the destruction she'd caused. She had never intended her mod to be that strong. Well, at least it worked in case it was needed again. Looking down at the bullet counter she saw that, that single shot had taken nearly half of the dark eco used for the peacemaker rounds. Yes, it was destructive, but at a cost.

Suddenly the ground began to shake once more when an explosion was heard coming from the caves in the western section of Haven Forest.

Location: Haven City - Freedom HQ

Ashelin looked at the video of the battle in Haven Forest from her office. It would seem her once-upon-a-time lover had taken things into his own hands and had gone against the Haven Counsel to destroy the metal head nest; for which she was thankful for. Taryn had been feeding her footage of the battle from the drone that had been hovering above the forest. She was thankful that most everyone seemed to have made it out of there, for now.

She pressed a couple of buttons on her console and erased the file completely, never noticing that in the corner of the console a recording application had recorded the battle from the file and had saved it before she had erased it. The application then vanished from the console with a blink as the file was sent to the main data bank hidden in the old electric station where thousands of tiny robots were filing information away for their master. Slowly a holographic display unit came to life. A small elf AI appeared on it as it began watching the battle that played out before him. Nodding he sent to file away to be looked at upon another time.

The AI was male with bifocal glasses on. He wore engineering clothing with suspenders holding up his pants and a lab coat over his shoulders. A name tag on the coat read Dr. Vincent, who had been the head scientist during Baron Praxis' reign. He had been considered brilliant but a bit paranoid during his living life. Now as an AI, he was eccentric, but a bit more stable than he once had been. For months he'd been keeping track of his friends and their whereabouts in order to ascertain whether or not he should show them he was still very much alive.

"I believe it's time I appear before my old acquaintances," he said to nobody but himself. A line of comm. numbers appeared in front of him with an image of the person next it. A line of numbers became highlighted next to an image of a young blond/green haired woman and tri color red haired male. Nodding the AI elf began to sequence of dialing the number.

M-Angel: I had a heck of a time posting this chapter, but it finally uploaded correctly. I'm procrastinating by writing this chapter for this story. I really should've finished my other story, but I couldn't get this battle scene out of my mind. I hope everybody liked it!

xoxoangii: Let us know what you thought of the battle!