Chapter Thirty-Six: Assume the Worst

1642 Hours, January 17, 2558. Near the City of Redwood Falls, Planet Khan. "The Interrupted Retribution," Outer Colonies. Day Twenty-Eight of the New Age of Warfare

The forest was oddly quiet as I crept through ahead of my battalion, dressed in full combat gear with my DMR up and ready for anything that might jump out at us. It was another beautiful day on the Outer Colony world following an exceedingly pleasant night, and yet despite that, I still found myself feeling anxious and sweating a little underneath the bulk of my equipment. It wasn't from the exertion, though - a lot of it was from the pain of my wounds, and just straight-up nervous fear. I swallowed it down and focused on what lay ahead.

A whisper went through the COM then.

"Major Cooper?"

I quickly went into a crouch, signaling the Marines behind me to do the same, before I answered. "Go ahead, Shawn. Any activity yet?"

"No, ma'am. Not on this side at least. And I'm pretty sure if the 904th had engaged, we'd be hearing it from here."

"I agree," I replied. "Something must be up. Wait one, Captain."

"Will do, Major."

After switching to the battalion-wide channel, I said, "Marines, listen up. This is Major Cooper. The head element is just arriving at the complex, but no one's come out to greet us yet. Standby and watch for any suspicious activity - a movement, a sound, anything. And most of all, be vigilant for booby traps. The rebs are known to set those around their buildings. So stay alert."

Acknowledgment lights winked green across my HUD, but I still felt tense. I knew it was my combat instincts kicking in, honed over years spent on various battlefields fighting a number of different enemies. Atom, my old Elite ally, had ingrained in me even more to always trust it, and I'd carried that faith in it since. Unfortunately for me, it'd never let me down before.

It wasn't right that the insurgents hadn't noticed yet that we were on approach in broad daylight. Something was brewing.

After spending another moment in still silence, straining to hear anything out of place in the forest, I finally gave up and clicked the COM again, this time to my best friend. "Hayden? It's Cooper. Do you read?"

"Gotcha, Natalie," came the instant reply. "All quiet on our end, too. Be careful. This is when it gets bad."

I snorted lightly. "Tell me about it. My instincts are practically sending up red flares in warning."

The other major chuckled. "Good instincts. Just follow my lead, Cooper. We'll enter first and let you know if we need backup. Be ready."

"Always am, buddy."

As usual, the wait was torturous, but something I'd had to deal with countless times before now. I kept my guard up all the while, scanning everything I could see past the trees with my eyes as well as the sensors in my helmet, but it still came back negative. Not so much as an animal squeak sounded.

Then there was an explosion.

In the moment I ducked out of reflex, although in the next second, my mind told me it was a small one on the other side of the rebel HQ based on the sound. Still, my best friend was over there, and I feared for his safety and that of his Marines.

"Oliver?"

"I'm fine!" came the instant reply. "Someone just set off a trip wire here! Watch it! This could be - "

Major Hayden didn't get to finish what he was about to say. Even as he spoke, tens of insurgents suddenly came rushing out of every single entrance to the compound and ran straight for us, weapons to bear and trigger fingers ready.

"Oh, shit!" I yelled.

Propelling myself immediately to the ground, I landed with hard thump that forced the air out of my lungs and made me see stars for a good minute. My shot-up shoulder was throbbing harshly beneath my gear, while my heart hammered loud in my chest, still not fully healed yet from the sniper rounds that had passed through my body close by. Knowing how badly bullet wounds hurt now, though, I was in no way itching to be riddled with rounds again. I'd take the pain from a fall in full battle rattle over getting pierced with lead any day.

"Marines, open up!" I shouted then from my prone position. "Now!"

The sounds of chaos around me only grew louder as the dozens of Marines hiding between the trees behind me opened up now as well, countering the sudden hail of bullets the rebs were firing at us. But unlike what was being thrown towards us, I had my men and women firing non-lethals only. In contrast, everything the insurgents squeezed off our way was as deadly as you could get. I knew we'd have to stay low and move our way up slowly in order to take them down.

So that's what I did myself. Gritting my teeth against the sharp pain, I used my right arm to crawl along the ground to get into better position - without getting myself shot through a second time. All the while, I held onto my gun with my left, but my injured side was still weaker than the other. Twice I dropped my DMR in the red dirt and had to pick it back up as I moved forward through the forest, cursing under my breath as I did so. Then, finally, I reached what I'd been aiming for - a huge, thick fallen tree trunk. I quickly propped my rifle up on the top, searched for a target, and let loose a rapid burst.

I hit the insurgent I'd been gunning for in the gut, and the man fell backward from the impact, wheezing and rolling on the ground from the pain. Part of me felt bad, but a side of me that remembered waking up in massive pain myself in the medical wing after being unconscious for three days didn't. I remembered the video clip Willis had shown me of our kids last night, too, and recalled the painful thought of what they would've done without me if I hadn't woken up at all - if Doc Reynolds hadn't been there once again to save my skin and bring me back from the brink. All of that invigorated me and I suddenly turned away from the man and locked onto another target, then squeezed the trigger again.

Unlike the rebels, I knew I wasn't killing anyone, and that made what I was doing now all the more easy to do. I was angry, though never enough to want them dead. I just needed them incapacitated so they weren't killing me - or my Marines.

"Major, heads up!"

The shout came just as I was turning my sights on a third reb. Glancing up out of instinct while I ducked back behind my cover, I saw the helmeted head of a figure run up onto the rooftop of the complex and start to set up a machine gun. Two more insurgents appeared beside him in the next split-second, and then the heavy weapon fired.

A storm of lead suddenly chewed up the entire front side of the giant tree trunk I was behind, sending splinters and wood fragments high into the air and shooting off at all sides. As I crouched beneath it, half hugging the ground around my DMR and half pressed against the massive log, I could feel the force of the rapid shots buzzing in my ears and reverberating across my armor plates through my whole body.

It was like having someone go crazy with a chainsaw right next to you. I could barely hear myself think, but I knew in the moment that even my thick cover wouldn't last long against another couple barrages like that. Soon, the gunner had to reload, and that's when I keyed my COM.

"Snipers, it's your turn! Take that MG out! The rest of you, stay the hell down until that thing's out of commission, then we move up! Wait for my signal!"

There were no acknowledgment lights this time since everyone was too focused on the fight. But I knew they'd heard and gotten the orders. Just a few seconds later, I heard a sudden sharp crack go through the air, and I watched as one of the insurgents beside the gunner went down in an instant, a spray of blood emerging from the back of his head. Then there was another crack, and the other rebel went down in much the same fashion.

I'd made a command decision to supply my battalion's sharpshooters with real bullets. Some things I couldn't afford to spare, and those were enemies with heavy weapons that could deal a serious amount of damage to my men. And, much like my husband, I found that in regards to things like that, I didn't feel as regretful as I thought I would. Weapons like MGs - and the insurgents manning them - really just needed to be put out of commission. Permanently.

When I risked peeking up from behind my cover again, I saw the gunner on the rooftop getting antsy now as he jerked back to cock the weapon. To his credit, though, he didn't abandon his post, and instead dug in more fiercely as he pointed the barrel back at me. Under the circumstances, I couldn't say I was flattered by the attention, but then again, I had little reason to worry. An instant later, just as the reb was about to let off the first burp of the newly reloaded gun, he was shot through the chest and fell back against the cement, dead.

"Nice work, sharpshooters!" I yelled through the COM then. "Marines, let's go!"

I winced a little as I got up, the fear and stress of the moment making my chest ache, but even without turning around to look, I knew I had the might of hundreds of Marines at my back, ready to do what was needed. On the other side, Major Hayden had the same. And somewhere in the skies above was Willis, on-call for any additional backup my friend and I couldn't provide each other.

We already knew thanks to Matthew and Lieutenant Lloyd's efforts how many rebels we were facing here. The enemy had a lot of tricks up their sleeve, too, but we had the numbers. And it was time to end the poking and prodding and harassing and flat-out assault they'd been bothering us with since before we'd even landed on Khan. Whether they wanted the help or not, the UNSC was here to stay. And this was our last resort now to bring that point across.

As I sprinted for the closest entrance now, I thought of everything our outpost had gone through, both while we'd still been on Earth and since our arrival. We'd come to Khan to help, and none of what we'd been forced to endure here because of that had been justifiable. It still made my blood boil to think that after the Human-Covenant War, more fighting was the rebels' answer to everything rather than cooperative diplomacy.

My best friend had died in the war for humanity's sake - to keep the human race alive and prevent our extinction as a species. So had my father, my mother, my older sister, countless friends and colleagues, and even Willis and I ourselves had come close to the ultimate sacrifice many times. I couldn't think it was all for nothing, just to have our species survive to be at each other's throats again four years later. It was time for things to change. Here. Now.

And yet, as I was running towards the complex to fire off non-lethals at my fellow human beings that I'd fought for years to protect, something happened that made all of us think twice about what we were doing.

A very familiar sounding shwoop went through the forest then. I'd heard it enough times during the war to instantly know what it was - even before I saw the giant blue orb coming towards the building.

"Everybody down, now!"

The impact was worse than anything I'd seen since Voi. After the incoming plasma round drowned out my words, it hit the side of the rebel HQ with bone-rattling force, sending super-heated shards of glass, wood, and concrete flying everywhere. All of it happened before my body even touched the ground.

For what seemed like a long time, I was deprived of my senses as my ears rang, my vision blurred, and all I could smell was choked out by smoke. All I could feel was the shockwave. And the sudden pain in my chest was excruciating.

Somehow a coherent thought made its way through the muddled haze: I'd been way too close to the blast. It became apparent when I finally opened my eyes and had to blink several times to be able to get a clear picture out of them. I blinked again at the red dirt, coughed it out of my lungs while my helmet's systems tried to compensate, and then I saw the blood. But it wasn't mine.

At least six dead bodies lay strewn around me - four rebels and two Marines. Each had a gaping wound to the head or gut, or a blown-off limb beneath the big black crumbled section of building the Wraith tank blast had blown out. Even before the sight made my stomach churn, the smell hit me as the air was finally filtered, and I almost gagged. All the years I'd been in combat had never dampened that reaction to gore.

I felt someone grip my shoulder before I could really get sick. It was Staff Sergeant Porter.

"Major Cooper, ma'am? Are you all right?"

My tongue felt like lead in my mouth as I stared at the mangled bodies, but slowly, I nodded. "Yeah, Staff. Thanks. I just - "

I didn't know how to finish that, so I grunted against the pain as I pushed myself up and tried to focus. I needed to get into contact with Hayden, find out what the hell was going on. And why a former Covenant tank was suddenly being used against us. Had the rebels traded with the Jackals for that? Were the remaining Jackals using it? All of the speculation made my muddled brain hurt.

When I finally stood on unsteady legs, my aide gripped my good shoulder and gave me a light shake to bring me around again.

"Ma'am? Are you sure you're okay?"

I tried to answer but then clutched at the armor covering my chest. It hurt bad now, worse than my wounded shoulder. Between last night and the current battle, I knew that I probably wasn't doing myself any favors in the getting better department. But I found that I was sweating all of a sudden, and my breathing was coming in rapid gasps instead of being regular and even. Porter reacted right away and placed an arm around me.

"Hang on, Major. I'll get you to Doc."

"No," I protested with effort. "I...need to..."

"You need a break for now, ma'am. At the very least. Medic!"

Though I was feeling terrible, my mind rationalized that Reynolds was probably up to his neck in patients since the plasma round had landed amongst us. I didn't want to bother him with whatever was going on with me, but I found it hard to decline treatment when I couldn't breathe well. With effort, Staff Sergeant Porter finally pushed me through the middle of the pack away from the HQ - and the main fight - and sat me down carefully on the ground against a tree.

"Ma'am?"

Once seated in the dirt with my legs stretched out in front of me and my rifle across my lap, I felt like I could finally get some air again. I was sure these were side effects of my recent gunshot wounds and not anything new cropping up, but it was still a little unnerving to deal with while taking heavy fire from the rebs - and possibly someone else now, too. And without Doc Reynolds available yet to tell me exactly what it was, the situation was made even worse.

When I didn't answer, Porter figured I was really in trouble. I heard him key the COM to my XO. "Captain Harris, this is Staff Sergeant Porter. Be advised, the major's been incapacitated. Battalion is yours for now, sir." Then my long-time aide looked down at me again. "All due respect, Major, but did the medic clear you for combat duties this soon?"

I wanted to wave his new question away, but all I managed was some sort of vague gesture that didn't resemble anything in particular. So I was forced to speak. "No...Staff. He didn't. But I'm...okay."

Technically, I should've still been in my bed recovering in Columbia's medical wing, but I wasn't about to tell him that.

In the next moment, I watched Porter open his mouth to reply, saw the frown on his face, and could almost intuit what he was about to say. Yet I never actually heard the words, because another shwoop sound came through the trees instead.

"Incoming!" the staff sergeant shouted.

I nearly had the wind knocked out of me for the second time today when my aide barreled into me, trying to cover my body from the blast or any shrapnel that might emerge our way. It was a reflex, and one I understood very well, but the new plasma round didn't hit anywhere near us. Like the first one, it hit closer to the building - and judging by the number of barked orders and pained screams coming through the COM soon after, it wreaked havoc among our lines as well as the rebs'.

Since no one was getting the information to me yet, I opened up a private channel myself to Major Hayden. That's when a general broadcast interrupted the signal. I didn't have to read the name and rank flashing across my HUD to know who it was.

"All UNSC ground units, this is Captain William Hawk overhead, callsign Talon," my husband said. "Those are in fact Wraith tanks on approach, Marines. And they're attacking both sides. It's the - "

"It's the Storm," I whispered under my breath at the same time.