"They say Reach was the worst battlefield in human history. Clearly they haven't been to Eden yet."

Brigadier General Deseron, Circa 2563


Chapter Five: A Storm of Sentinels


VANGUARD

September 8, 2563 (Estimated Military Time) \ UNSC Fortress City Eden.

Trenches. Again.

I should've seen it coming; I mean I watched the marines dig the damn things yesterday. I guess I just didn't see myself fighting inside them again; let alone commanding an entire battalion of soldiers as well. Admiral Briggs had put Deseron and me in charge of the trench lines, despite my complaints and protests.

And that meant that we were the only thing standing between the coming horde of Covenant and Eden's walls.

"This looks familiar…" Hercules chuckled as he placed his armored hands on the dirt wall below him. "Are ya gonna ask me to throw you into the air like a baseball again?"

"Fuck off, soldier." I told him, my mood turning sour. I was a Brigadier General, for fucks sake! I deserved to be on the city walls, commanding the main attack force alongside Tiger, Armstrong, Cutter, and every other goddamn commander in this damned place!

"Damn you Briggs…" I mumbled as I stood, allowing the overturned helmet filled with raw eggs to fall onto the ground. I had lost my appetite for breakfast.

The bitter wind clawed and snapped at my face and hair as I collected my helm, feeling chills and shivers course through my blood. I quickly placed the helm over my head and sealed it in place, sighing in pleasure as the internal heating system kicked in.

For once, I was warm.

And I couldn't say the same for the three hundred marines around me.

Soldiers were huddled into tight groups and shivering loudly as they manned their positions and weapons, their helms covered in snow and frost. There weren't enough cloaks to go around, so some marines were forced to rub their hands against their frigid arms to keep from freezing in their simple battle armor. Their faces were pale and their frowns were deep, but they knew their duty and what they may have to sacrifice to uphold it.

I snorted, taking off my own cloak and offering it to the closest marine. He thanked me gingerly and took the fur, wrapping it around his body and arms.

Less than two kilometers away marched the Covenant armada. Thousands upon thousands of the purple troops stomped through the snowy plains, followed by rolling Wraiths, ghosts, and dozens of phantom dropships that buzzed overhead. Three Covenant cruisers loomed in the gray sky, their hulking forms blocking out the weak sun and creating dim darkness across the plains.

We were outnumbered five-to-one. That was fact; not an estimate or a guess.

But Hood believed we'd survive, and so did Briggs, and Cutter, and Tiger, maybe not Armstrong, but Legacy did, and Gizmo: the list goes on.

I couldn't care less, to be honest. When your life is given a huge stamp that says 'YOU WILL DIE IN SIX MONTHS,' you stop caring about the little things in life.

All I cared about now was taking all of those Covie sons of bitches with me.

"The chain guns and heavy calibers are in place and ready to go. Snipers and rocket jockeys are providing support from the wall and every marine has a rifle and some grenades." Legacy-343 reported as she stepped up to my side, her silver helm masking her beauty.

"So are we ready?" I asked her. We weren't.

"As ready as we'll ever be. If this weather keeps up then we'll all die of frostbite and fever instead of Covenant weaponry." She sighed.

"Glad to see that you're still optimistic." I told her.

"Don't think about getting yourself killed here either, Jack. We still have a deal." She said, a smile no doubt on her face.

"No promises."

I lifted my head and peered behind the Spartan, spying Deseron as he made his way towards us; arms crossed over a thick cloak and frost forming on his short beard.

"Is everyone ready?" the Brigadier General asked as he stood beside me, his breaths exiting as small vaporous clouds.

"Not exactly, but we'll manage. How are you holding up?" I asked him.

"My ears are purple and all the sperm in my balls have frozen over." He grumbled, shaking icicles from his beard.

"That's gross." I chuckled, shaking my head.

"I've never been in command of this many marines before. Things were a lot easier when I only had to look after Delta. I'm afraid I'm gonna give a wrong order and get everyone killed." Deseron admitted, frowning.

"That's why I'm here, my friend." I told him, patting him lightly on the shoulder.

"General!" Legacy called out, causing both Deseron and me to turn towards her.

She was pointing out towards the ocean of purple armor, her finger becoming covered in snow.

I turned my head, noticing what had caught her attention.

"They've stopped…" Deseron murmured as he watched the Covenant horde, realizing that their feet had ceased moving.

Whispers and murmurs erupted through the trenches as soldiers eyed the Covenant army cautiously, their hands never leaving the triggers of their weapons. Unease was beginning to fill the air like locusts, grabbing onto marines and never letting go.

I swallowed and turned to peer back at the massive wall behind us, spotting Admiral Briggs as she stood with pride atop the steel. Her ceremonial sword was gripped tightly in her hands, and her striking eyes were staring ahead.

I clicked the safety off of my rifle and took a deep breath, drowning the slight fear that had managed to creep its way into my heart.

"I've never been on a true battlefield before…" I heard Legacy whisper as she stood beside me.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Valor Team specializes in covert Black Operations, not open warzones." She explained, her breathing quickening.

"You'll be fine. It's kind of like riding a bike." I told her, turning back to the forces ahead of us. "You have to fall and break your legs before you learn to ride it properly."

An ear-splitting blare filled the cold wind and sent chills down my spine. Whispers erupted from the trench line, and Deseron shouted for them to cease.

Loud booms shook the ground as the blaring continued, its source lying somewhere amidst the lines of Covenant soldiers.

I cursed and stumbled as the very ground beneath me started to shake with growing strength.

"What's going on?!" Deseron shouted nearby as he struggled to stay standing.

A massive leg shot forth from amidst the host of covenant soldiers and stood amongst the gray sky, its purple armoring glimmering a vibrant color within the storm. The enormous leg bent at the makeshift knee and plummeted down onto the ground again, sending a new shockwave through the plains.

Marines around the trench line began to panic at the sight of the purple limb, shouting and screaming as they struggled to keep their morale.

Another purple leg shot out of the horde and slammed into the ground as well, followed shortly by two more. Within seconds four gigantic legs stood bent among the thousands of covenant soldiers, reaching at least fifty feet into the air and glimmering with ominous light.

The legs began to rise and straighten with the hiss of grinding metal, lifting the body of the dreaded machine into the air. Two metallic, curved horns jutted out of the machine's triangular head, and a glowing red orb formed the massive eye that sat in the center of its head. Jagged spikes stretched down its back and through its jointed, scorpion-like tail. A black pincer was attached to the tip of its tail, emanating a deathly crimson.

The colossus lifted its head and let out a bone-chilling shriek, its cry seeming to cause the very airwaves to vibrate furiously.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Deseron shouted to me as he shielded his ears from the intense shriek.

"I don't know…" I murmured, staring at the enormous beast.

Eight more legs shot out of the horde as two more of the colossus machines stood and faced us, their eyes burning as they towered over the thousands below.

The covenant soldiers raised their weapons into the air and let loose valiant roars of defiance, shaking the ground and the snow with their chants and cries.

As one they moved and charged towards Eden and the trenches; moving like a purple wave of strength and might.

"Fire! Let loose with everything you've got!" Van shouted as he watched the horde come, swallowing the creeping fear in his gut. His orders were carried along the line and soon the sound of gunfire trumpeted through the howling wind.

"Outgoing mortar and artillery strike!" Deseron shouted to Van over the shouts and the thunder of fire.

"Give em hell!" Van replied as he lifted his rifle and slapped a fresh magazine into the frame.

The world seemed to explode around him as the massive MAC cannons stationed upon the city walls fired and sent shells of burning death into the covenant ranks. Scorched bodies filled the air and craters of black char and fire were left in the snow as they bombarded the incoming horde.

The covenant braved the bombardments and continued their charge; coming dangerously close to the marines within the trenches. They opened fire with a variety of weapons as they plowed through the snow.

The colossal machines behind them soon began to take timid steps towards Eden's walls, causing the ground to shake with each step forward.

"Strike Package Omega-59 inbound!" Deseron reported. Van nodded and looked to the sky.

A squad of six longsword appeared through the grey clouds and strafed over the covenant frontlines, dropping a myriad of explosives into the air before they were shot down by the covenant cruisers and the colossal machines.

The explosives detonated when they impacted with the ground and created a vast wall of fire that ravaged the covenant infantry and the snow.

Van squeezed the trigger and felled the soldiers that managed to crawl away from the searing flames, their bodies cooked and burning.

"LOOK OUT!" Legacy shouted as she grabbed him and threw him onto the ground. The world was engulfed in a display of intense light and heat as the ground became vaporized and melted.

Within seconds they were weightless; their limbs flailing as they fell through the cold air. Van shouted in pain when his back slammed against the hard trench floor, and Legacy soon found herself struggling to breathe as she lay on his chest.

A twenty yard crater marked where they had once stood: a massive hole of black snow and dirt that stretched as far back as the city walls.

Van grunted as he struggled to stand, grabbing Legacy by the shoulder and lifting her as well.

"Deseron!" he croaked as he searched for the remains of the soldier. He found none.

Marines were shouting and firing and cursing as they returned to their posts on the trench line, not even bothering to clear the crater of the dozens of dead carcasses that littered it.

Van looked out into the plains, realizing that the colossal closest to them was preparing for another attack.

"Somebody take that goddamn thing out before it destroys the entire trench line!" Van shouted as he shoved Legacy away and walked through the trench.

Hercules appeared by his side, a rocket launcher hefted upon his shoulder. "There's nothing we can do to stop those things without air support! They'll rip us to shreds before we can cause any real damage!"

"Then we're done," Van realized. It was hopeless. They could not win.

The colossal fired again, a red beam of concentrated energy slamming into the snow directly in front of the trench. The covenant soldiers charging around the blast radius were instantly vaporized and disintegrated.

"Here they come!"

"Get into positions!"

"Rifles up front, give em hell!"

Van turned and faced the coming army, pressing down the trigger and sending fire and bullets into the bodies of grunts and jackals. The marines around him laid down as much suppressive fire as they could, but the covenant offensive would neither falter nor slow their advance.

Another barrage from the MAC cannons decimated small pockets of the covenant armada, but more rose to replace the dead and continue the charge.

"Keep fighting! Don't give up!" Hercules shouted to the soldiers as they began to abandon their positions and run back towards the city.

It was hopeless.

The colossal machines were a mere kilometer away from reaching the city walls, and the massive cruiser above were preparing to glass the entire UNSC defensive.

They had lost.

Eden.

Spira.

Earth.

All had been lost.

"Incoming freighter!" Brigg's voice boomed through my helmet like defiant thunder. I ignored her words and kept on fighting, slapping my last magazine into my rifle.

There was no way a freighter would come to our rescue. We had no available air support.

Then I was proven wrong.

A great shadow was cast upon the plains, and the bitter skies were shrouded with looming darkness. I stopped and lifted my head, watching in awe as a massive ship of steel and iron descended from the grey clouds and the frost gales.

The marines around me roared and cheered as they watched the massive freighter descend. Cavalry had finally arrived.

"Something's wrong." The voice was Briggs.

There were multiple holes and hull breaches upon the freighter, and it fell through the air with fire and flames engulfing its frame. MAC cannons and heavy artillery shells were sent bombarding into the covenant legions, blowing large craters of charred rock into the snowy plains and vaporizing the soldiers around them.

The towering colossals lifted their glowing eyes to the ship and shot beams of concentrated energy into the sky. The ship screeched and wailed as the beams tore through its hull, yet it continued to fire upon the hordes of purple armor and flesh.

"What's going on?" I asked no one in particular as I activated my COMM and rejoined the fight.

"UNSC Battle-Freighter-0147, Delta Division Artillery-Vessel," replied Briggs again, her voice panicked. "Zeus's Hammer! That ship was destroyed over ten years ago back on the Ark!"

"W-what?!" I stammered, watching as the ship fell through the air like a comet. "How is that possible?"

"Van, call a full retreat!" Briggs ordered him, her voice cracking. "Call it now!"

"Why? What is it? What's going on?!" I demanded.

The marines around me were in a panicked frenzy, firing upon the oncoming covenant and trading glances up at the descending freighter. Legacy, Hercules, and Gizmo were nowhere to be found, and I feared that Deseron had lost his life during the first attack.

"Vanguard!" Briggs shouted, catching my attention. "That ship was overrun by the flood back on the Ark!"

Chunks and fragments of the ship were beginning to detach and fall like rain down towards the battlefield, and the ship was ever closer to impacting with the planet. Men, jackals, grunts, and elites all ran in fear as the ship came upon them, blocking out the sun and threatening to crush them all.

With a resounding clap of thunder and a haze of fire and flames the massive freighter slammed into a cowering colossal and fell onto the ground in a powerful shockwave. The planet seemed to wail and scream as the ship exploded and split into a thousand pieces, sending a deafening earthquake through the land and knocking me off of my feet.

The walls surrounding Eden cracked as long scars and tremors broke through their surface, and the large buildings threatened to shatter and fall upon the marines below them.

The air was filled with the shouts, screams, and bellow of pain and agony from the people scattered across the battlefield. Distant explosions killed countless more and filled the carrier winds with their screams.

Then there was silence. An eerie, unsettling, foreboding silence.

Then there was flood.

They leapt and ran and lunged out of the broken ship and the shattered fragments in hordes of hundreds, clawing and biting and crushing the helpless soldiers that cowered around them. They were men and women and elites that had been killed and consumed and changed by the green parasites, and they looked upon the battlefield with dead, lifeless eyes.

I stood and gazed upon the battered plains and the blood soaked snow, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. There was death, and suffering, and slaughter, and the shambling dead.

We were no longer at war with the covenant.

We were now at war with survival itself.

"Move, move, move!" I shouted to the marines crying and fleeing around me, shoving them back. "Get to the city walls!"

I needed to find my team. I needed to find Legacy.

The covenant armies and their colossals were busy dealing with the sudden arrival of the parasites, which would allow us time to retreat and regroup within the city.

I didn't have time to fear. I didn't have time to panic.

A scorched piece of the freighter's hull had crashed into a tuft of snow several yards to my left, and I looked over to find three marines shrieking in agony as a dozen green, bulbous blobs with tentacles pierced their armor and their necks and their flesh.

I quickly ran over and fired upon the small orbs, grimacing in disgust when they exploded and died. One of the marines had been stabbed in the eye by one of the parasites and he was reeling upon the snow, screaming in agony as the foreign alien ripped his face apart.

I offered him a bullet to end his suffering, and he died with a hole in his forehead and the remains of an alien upon his face.

I moved on, towards the far plains where the colossals stood and the shipwreck sat. the covenant legions ran about the plains as their purple armor became melded with the brown and the green and the black of the flood.

"Van we don't have a lot of time," I heard Briggs voice say. "The flood will attack the city before everyone is able to get to safety."

"I know," I told her, firing upon a lone flood form that had managed to crawl out of a fallen hull fragment. "But there's still time."

Briggs and the marines behind the wall were continuing to fire artillery shells upon the covenant and the flood, trying to buy us precious time to flee to the city.

I shouted my orders to the soldiers and marines running around me, but whether they heard me over the roars and the chaos, I did not know.

I found Hercules and Gizmo as they helped defend a small squad of marines against a pack of jogging flood forms. Hercules crushed their skulls and the orbs within their mangled chests while Gizmo fired upon them with his MA6D.

"Orders?" they asked me as I reached them. Thank god they were alive.

"Full retreat. The Admiral wants us indoors before the flood reach the walls," I told them.

They nodded and ran off to relay the message to the lieutenants and corporals still in the plains.

I pressed on, cursing and falling to the snow as I watched a colossal lean and fall to the plains in a wave of sleet and frost. Flood forms jumped away from the fallen mech by the dozens, and filled the air with their shrieks and roars as they slaughtered the people around them.

An ear-splitting wail filled the air and I lifted my head, my heart skipping a beat as I looked upon the large colossal that towered directly above me. Its eye was lowered and glowing a bright red, and I cursed as I stood and struggled to get away.

The world flash red with bright light and I was once again weightless. The snow and the sky tumbled through my vision as I fell back to the ground, coughing as blood filled my lungs.

The ground shook violently as the colossal came to stand above me again, roaring defiantly as its massive eye came mere feet away from crushing my face.

"GRAAAH!" I shouted as I lifted my leg and kicked it with all my might. I shuffled away and sprinted through the snow, feeling the air heat up as the machine prepared to fire again.

I looked back in time to see the colossal become shrouded in fire and tongues of smoke as artillery slugs bombarded its form and it struggled to stay afoot.

I slid to the ground and hoisted a covenant fuel rod cannon onto my shoulder, squeezing down the trigger and praying that the weapon would fire.

"Fuck one-liners!" I shouted in defiance as the cannon flared and sent three blasts of green energy towards the colossal. The projectiles struck true and exploded upon the colossal's eye, sending it flying backwards with force.

The machine wobbled and fell down to the ground with a mighty crash.

I stood and caught my breath, my heart racing.

"Jack!" a voice screamed through my COMM.

Legacy.

"Where are you?!" I asked her as quickly, my mind racing.

A NAV marker appeared on my HUD and I quickly ran towards it, disregarding the marines and the flood and the covenant soldiers around me.

"Van where are you going?!" Briggs demanded, but I ignored her.

I was not willing to lose another Spartan.

I stopped and fired upon a group of elites that had crossed my path, tearing their bodies to shreds and covering the snow with their gore. Two flood forms had been chasing close behind them and I felled them as well before continuing on.

I reached a small clearing in the plains that was surrounded by hull pieces of Zeus' Hammer and stopped.

There, within the scorched snow and the pillars of fire and the charred shards of metal, stood Auron; clad in white armor and wielding a long energy sword in his left hand. He glared upon me with those familiar cold eyes, as if glad that I had finally arrived.

Legacy-343 was held in his right hand, her feet dangling above the ground as he held her in place.

I shook my head, dropping my rifle and falling to my knees. I had seen this before, and I knew how it would end.

The memory was unbearable.

"Does it depress you, demon?" he asked in a snide voice, crushing Legacy's head within his claws. "To know just how weak you truly are?"

"No…" I murmured, shaking my head.

"I'll admit that the appearance of the parasite was an unseen distraction. I didn't realize that you pathetic humans had grown so desperate to defeat me. But it makes no difference, demon, we've stopped the parasite before and we can do it again."

Auron lifted Legacy higher and raised the energy sword, preparing to send it deep within the Spartan's chest.

"No!" I shouted, reaching out towards the Spartan to no avail.

"She will die, and I shall rise!"

Auron stopped suddenly. He coughed and droplets of blood flew from his lips and melded with the snow. Legacy was released and she fell to the ground, her breathing sporadic as she kicked her way away from the sangheili swordsman and towards me.

A blade of black, tempered steel had protruded from Auron's chest, cleaving through his armor and sending him to his knees. Auron gasped for air and gripped at the blade, his eyes wide with shock.

"I'm afraid the tables have turned," came a familiar voice as the blade was pulled from Auron's chest.

Auron fell to the ground, wheezing and gasping for air as he flailed and twitched upon the snow.

A Spartan clad in solid black armor stood above the sangheili warrior. He had pale skin and long black hair, and his face was cluttered with white scars. His armor was dented and scratched and charred, yet he wore it uncaring. His right arm was made of steel and spiked guards, and he held the black sword tightly in his metal fingers.

With abnormal speed the Spartan lifted the sword and brought it down upon Auron's neck, cleaving through his throat and separating his head from his body.

"You should've killed me when you had the chance," Zeke spat as he whipped the blade through the air and sprayed the swordsman's blood across the deep snow.