The Siege of Shanxi
Chapter Thirty Seven: Until Relieved
"Brigadier General Joaquim Williams. By order of the Prime Minister of the Systems Alliance, the Commander-in-Chief of her military services, the Admirals of her Fleets and the Ministers of her cabinet, you are hereby appointed as both commander of the Third Garrison Division of the Systems Alliance Marine Corps and commander of all military forces on the colonial world of Shanxi. Your standing orders are as follows. First, to firmly uphold all standards of discipline and behaviour of the troops under your command. Second, to faithfully carry out the lawful orders of the Colonial Governor as appointed by the Alliance Parliament and to be vigilant against upheaval and insurrection against his authority. Thirdly, to vigorously defend against any threat to the colonists under your protection. You will shield them against piracy, protect them against terrorism and insurgency, and should you face invasion by a superior force, you will hold until relieved."-Commandant Madalena Williams. 'General Order Thirty Six.'
"I saw the faces of the survivors when we brought them aboard the hospital ships. What I saw in their eyes has never made me more ashamed or more secretly thankful that I chose the Navy over the Marines." Fleet Admiral (Rtd) Kastanie Drescher, 'Once More Into the Black'
"The sharpest blade breaks when subjected to a hammer." Ancient turian proverb.
SUBTERRANEAN CENTRAL COMMAND
WEYATA MOUNTAIN, NORTH OF OUTREACH CITY
SENIOR OFFICER'S QUARTERS
Joaquim stared at the body armour lying on the bed. It had been years since he had worn a full set. Years spent out of the field, behind a desk, with a mug of coffee in his hand instead of a weapon. He felt a tinge of disgust at himself. For weeks his men had fought. Had bled. Had died while he sat back and made clever plans, exercised his 'tactical genius' while they held the line in his place.
That ended today. He'd given the order for all hands on deck. And that included himself.
The hardsuits they had left were for the frontline squads. Sighing slightly, Williams grabbed the vest and pulled it over his head, fastening the clips tightly to pull it in close. He'd collected a rifle and six magazines from the armoury, he clipped the rifle onto the slingpoint on his right shoulder and slotted the fully loaded mags into the shingles on his front. Grabbing his pistol belt he double checked his HCP on his right hand side and made sure his silver plated Colt was secure on his left. The thing was an antique, but there was no room for luggage and he would have hated to leave it behind.
The weight was unfamiliar, a little restrictive. He wouldn't be running very fast.
Then again, he reflected as he donned his helmet and fastened his chin strap, I wouldn't be running very fast anyway. He caught his reflection in the mirror and grimaced. There was a time when he'd put on his gear and it wouldn't weigh any more than an extra shirt. Where he'd strap on fifty kilos worth of weapons, armour and radios and stroll around a red zone like he was having a walk around the park. Now it felt like he was carrying around two of himself. A trim young officer had been replaced by a weary general with too many grey hairs on his head.
Dear God, how did I get so old?
His comm-link began beeping quickly. Williams was almost grateful for it, it took his mind off his reflection for a second.
"Send." He ordered quickly.
=Sir, we're picking up massed flying objects on approach from the southern quadrant on LADAR. Major Cunningham estimates that they're thirty minutes out!=
"Give the step off order. I'll be up shortly." Williams shot one last look at the mirror. "As fast as I can."
For some reason, his eyes drifted over to the framed photograph resting on his desk. It was a family portrait. Him, his wife, his son and his daughter-in-law. He was in full, crisp dress uniform, a brand new star on his collar from his promotion ceremony and the formation of the Third. He still had the formal, hand-written orders from the Commandant, signed off by the Fleet Admiral and the Chief Ministers.
The words were typical of his mother, crisp, neat and straight to the point. His mind drifted to the last words. Hold until relieved, he'd been told. He'd held. For weeks now he'd held and his men had died. No more. It was time to go home. All of them. Shanxi was lost. He had to save what he could.
But those words still echoed in his brain. He could see the faint outline of the writing still.
Hold until relieved.
-TSoS-
First Lieutenant Jessi Reyes had always loved tanks. From the second she'd seen her first tank at a UNAS Army recruiting demonstration she knew she was destined to drive around in one of the massive Odyssey Main Battle Tanks. Fifty tons of reinforced steel, ceramic and depleted uranium armour, reactive armour skin to increase urban survivability, and a one hundred and twenty millimetre smoothbore gun. It was quite a fearsome death machine.
The situation was horrible, of course. Absolutely terrible, Shanxi under attack, the garrison on the verge of complete destruction. Civilians in danger into the bargain.
But the sound of that twelve cylinder turbo charged diesel roaring to life was sweeter than her mother's voice to her, and there was no denying that fact. The squadron commander was relaying orders down from the regimental commander. Her hands were almost shaking as she flicked on her internal helmet display.
Her gunner, loader and driver were already set. Reyes was almost operating completely on instinct, mechanically relaying orders to the other three tanks in her troop. Harpy 1, 2, 3 and 4 were all ready to go.
The vanguard was already heading out, the Infantry Fighting Vehicles and Light Armoured Vehicles roaring out of the underground tunnels and up into formation on the surface. The reconnaissance screen was a necessary part of the battle, but Reyes private shuddered at the thought of going up into the battle with only a thirty millimetre light auto-cannon to protect her.
=Vanguard is clear and on the surface. Right flank will move out now.= Her squadron commander's voice gently nudged Reyes back into action.
She kept her voice from cracking somehow. "Take us out, Hopper. Extreme right of the formation."
Her driver clicked his comm twice in acknowledgement, then fed power to the engine. Harpy-One surged forward, leading the right flank contingent out of the tunnel they'd been waiting in for three hours and out into the night air.
"Do you think they can hear us?" Corporal Woo, her gunner, asked. His shaking hands betrayed his own nerves, Reyes instinctively reached out to steady him.
"Their artillery barrage has been going for half an hour. They should be pretty deaf to us right about now."
There was no way to know for sure and they both were aware of that. The column of light and heavy armour, with infantry squads clinging to their sides, made a distinctive sound of rolling tank treads and humming engines that would carry far on the night wind. All it would take was one turian keeping an ear out and the turian artillery would turn their whole column to scrap.
=Phase Line Copper achieved.= Her commander's voice had never been more welcome. =All squads, execute left wheel.=
The cooling system in Reyes' helmet had failed again, the sweat was dribbling into her eyes at a maddening rate and she didn't dare remove it with her eyes glued to the Blue Force tracker display in front of her. Right now the entire column was paralleling the edge of the minefield, keeping to the minimum safe distance by the smallest of margins. If she strayed too close to that field when it was command detonated then Reyes and the rest of Harpy 1 would be pulverised inside the hatch of their own tank by the shock wave of the blast.
The column accelerated, picking up speed as the light armour reached Report Line Iron and gave the all clear signal. Harpy Squad reached its position at the extreme right flank and turned inwards. The minefield was almost a kilometre wide at this point. One thousand metres away, the turian left flank was just visible. The flash of artillery pieces lightly illuminated the outline of tanks and troop carrying vehicles. Reyes wiped the sweat away from her forehead.
"When are we going?" She whispered. "Surely they'll have sentries out? They could pick us up any second?"
She realised she'd spoken out loud a second later when her squadron commander responded. =We go when the minefield detonates, Harpy-One. Hold your position.=
-TSoS-
Most of the command centre had already been evacuated, the techs and headquarters staff either joining the civilians in the evacuation or joining what was left of the garrison. Only a few remaining officers remained behind, erasing hard drives and crashing the computer banks of all non-essential systems.
Like the rest of the holdfast, it was a ghost town. Previously bustling, even chaotic corridors, barracks and dormitories had been emptied in the last few hours, their occupants hastily briefed and shown to their assembly areas. Anything that might be useful on the voyage was brought along. Anything that would just slow them down had been abandoned. The kitchens had been stripped of every last tin and satchel, the armouries emptied of every pistol and every bullet. In the place of supplies and weapons were left bags of clothes, toys, even the few pets that had been stowed away during the initial evacuation to the bunkers.
Chekova, still weak and in almost constant pain from her missing arm and the emergency surgery that had saved her life, had set her formidable mind to the logistics of their escape. She had worked out the ratios of the escorts that would guard the packets, the number of able bodied men and women required to assist the wounded and elderly, even the optimum number of evacuees to place on each ship.
Williams didn't know if he'd allowed her to keep working to take her mind off the pain, or permitted it because he couldn't afford to lose another member of his command staff. Gurung would have made her sleep. Ganju could always talk the division's officers into things even the general couldn't shift them on.
The loss of his friend had numbed him, then burned unbearably. And he could not say whether the rage was at the turians for killing Ganju, or at himself for sending him to his death. Maybe it didn't matter? They'd probably all be dead in an hour anyway.
Williams stood at the centre, running his fingers over the computer screen on the central table. "Looks like we're abandoning another command centre, eh Cunningham?"
The grey haired woman gave him a tired smile. "We abandon too many more and we're going too just look careless."
A flicker of a smile passed over the general's face. "Yes, well, this place has been good to us. As strange as it might sound I'm actually going to miss it."
Major Cunningham nodded. "You're right, sir. That does sound extremely strange."
"Yes, yes it does." Williams actually smiled at the joke, his voice wistful. "Sergeant Denny? How far out are the LADAR contacts?"
The tech looked up from his station. "Sir. Five to ten minutes."
"Colonel Pressly and his men are coming a long way to get us." Williams tapped the computer screen one last time. "It would be a shame not to be out there to greet them. Sergeant Denny, blow the minefield. Major Cunningham, come with me. It's time to go home."
-TSoS-
"All troops, brace for…"
The squadron commander's warning was too late. Reyes shut her eyes tight against the flash, but it was still strong enough to leave her seeing spots.
On both sides of the turian position, the minefield erupted. Anti-infantry, anti-armour, dual purpose, a rumbling field of fire swept across the desert plain, shrapnel whistling in every direction. Reyes even heard a few pieces ping off her hull.
The rumble of the shockwave hadn't even paused before the squadron commander gave his next order. "Advance!"
The armoured line came to life in a thunderclap of rage and fury, engines roared to full power and the tanks and armoured fighting vehicles surged forward.
"Mortar teams, dismount!"
Over two dozen three man mortar teams leapt off the backs of the vehicles they'd hitched onto. They'd barely set foot on the ground before they were running to form the extended firing line. Base plates were hammered down, tubes rested onto bipods, a junior member sprinted out to hammer in a firing stake at the tube commander's direction. The entirety of the magazine had been searched from top to bottom for every last 81 or 102mm bomb of every variety, the plastic crates now wrenched open and rounds stacked ready to drop.
The teams were well drilled and well rehearsed. Even with the fatigue of the of the week weighing on they moved with frantic efficiency. Every last tube was set and ready to fire two minutes after they'd jumped clear.
Further ahead, the heavy machine gunners leapt off their transports, accompanied by the rocket launchers of the Direct Fire Support Weapons detachment. Tripods were lowered and the teeth hammered into the ground, more firing stakes were run out and section commanders hastily ran between guns to align them to the pre-arranged beaten zones.
Reyes couldn't see the mad scramble around her tank, but the radio chatter gave her some comfort that the grunts were on the ball. The final squads were moving into position now, digging in shell scrapes and throwing down sandbags for improvised cover.
The IFV screen was closing to their initial firing positions as Reyes finally reached her marker off to the flank of the main infantry line. The rest of Harpy was assembled around her, barrels aimed squarely at the faint shapes of turian vehicles faintly glowing through her thermal sights.
Reyes licked her dry lips again. "These waits are killing me."
Her crew grunted in agreement.
-TSoS-
Septimus struggled back to his feet, his hands still trembling from the sudden shock. "What in the blazing core was that?"
Captain Quintus was already on his radio. "Detonations, sir. En masse. The minefields on both sides were triggered."
"Captain Dejaka found the frequency? Used it without warning?" Septimus grabbed around for his helmet. "I'll have him cashiered!"
"Captain Dejaka is dead, sir." Quintus replied shakily. "His minefield clearance team was in the middle of Minefield Alpha, still working on recovering intact mines for examination. Colonel Senpral reports that the western flank of his forces has sustained considerable damage from the detonation. He'll send a damage assessment soon, but the bulk of his remaining vehicles are now tied down in casualty collection. 13th got hit hard, sir."
"Right, right." Oraka clenched his fists, closed his eyes and began to breathe again. His heart rate had accelerated too rapidly, destabilising his thoughts. He would need to lower it if he was to regain the initiative that General Williams had so suddenly seized from him. "Order our right flank to dig in like a dreadnaught is about to crash into them, just in case this is a feint. Get me Colonel Harkus, we'll shift the 25th to the western flank and drive back at them with everything we can muster. If the humans wish to force a decisive engagement then we will oblige them, but on our terms not theirs. And I…"
He paused, raising his head upwards. "Do you hear that?"
Quintus frowned, confused. "I don't understand, what are you…?"
The faint whine that Oraka had caught began to escalate into a low pitched rumble that began to shake the shelter, the sand and Oraka's very bones. He dashed outside, looking at the night sky for the answer.
He was treated to the side of a wide-bodied transport ship roaring directly over his headquarters, the massive engines of the behemoth uprooting tents and even knocking over light vehicles as it descended toward a landing zone out of Septimus' sight.
"Is it human reinforcements?" Quintus squinted at the other vessels descending toward the plain. "How did they get past the blockade?"
"I don't…it's not…?" Septimus shook himself out of his daze. "Get me Colonel Actus! We need air support now!"
-TSoS-
Major Khafagey leapt off the side of the tank he was riding on with the rest of his command team. "Signallers, set up on the reverse slope. Where's the MFC?"
"Right here, sir!" Two sergeants sprinted up to him. "There's another two up on the line."
The bearded officer nodded. "Good. Link up with the Joint Fires Team, you're free to engage any and all targets from light skinned vehicles down to dismounted infantry. Captain Kelly! Why aren't my machine guns firing?"
The roar of the 10.5mm and 12.7mm guns firing from fixed tripods was his answer.
The dull thuds of heavy anti-tank missiles and the lighter roars of anti-infantry HE rounds permeated the machine gun fire, the direct fire support weapons beginning to engage the first pockets of enemy troops advancing toward the landing zone.
Khafagey could hear engines whining as the evacuation ships set down behind him and shivered at the idea of leaving Shanxi. When he had first come to the planet, he had fully believed he would die here an old man, retired and contented on his own land. Now, the thought of dying on this accursed pile of rock filled him with dread. He wasn't dying here. Not today, not this close to escape. But he'd certainly be willing to sacrifice a few litres of blood to prevent the turians from breaking through to the LZ.
"Sir!" His personal signaller handed him the handpiece of his radio. "IFVs have engaged enemy light armour on the right flank. We're engaging enemy dismounts eight hundred metres out and closing."
Khafagey grabbed the handset. "All callsigns, this is Diamond-Niner. They know we're here. Hit them with everything you've got. Show them no mercy."
-TSos-
A tidal wave of humanity swept from the tunnels under the mountain toward the landing zone. Three hundred and two thousand humans of every age ran, rode or were carried toward their salvation. The sick and elderly were carried on trucks, children were hefted onto the shoulders of their fathers, each mob loosely guided by a marshal and a handful of the garrison.
Harper found himself playing traffic cop, the troops in his improvised company more focused on maintaining separation from other packets than on actually fighting. And there was fighting aplenty by the sounds of it. The crash of light artillery and heavy machine guns was loud enough to be heard even in the chaos surrounding him.
Amazingly enough, no one had been trampled to death yet. The crowd was desperate, but not riotous. People tripped, people fell, but they were almost immediately yanked back to their feet. Every man, every woman, every last child helped their neighbour, pushing and encouraging as they closed with the transport ships.
Harper was a cynic, Harper was selfish, Harper was two steps away from malignant narcissism.
Harper was humbled by their selflessness.
Seven ships were landing. Three of them were the behemoth Ark-class colonial carriers that could fit a full fifty thousand colonists each. The other four were the smaller Refuge-class, each one rated for twenty five thousand colonists. Since their combined tonnage was exactly fifty thousand short of what was needed, Harper grimly acknowledged the certain reality that some of the people he was escorting would be left behind.
The sacrifices yet to be made were enough to crack even his hard heart. The vessels were not carrying farming equipment, portable power plants or any of the other thousands of tons of equipment that usually occupied space in the hold. There was a chance that some of the excess could still be loaded on. But even then, some would not. Old men and women with more white in their hair than grey had volunteered in place of their sons and daughters. Fifteen year old children had stubbornly insisted they were three or four years older. There wasn't even enough weapons for them. They were simply walking with the crowd, each one wearing a blue armband to indicate their status. They would help with the loading, assist with the departure, then be left behind.
If the choice was enough to sicken even Harper, he hated imagining what the General must have felt.
His long legs ate up the ground, his group rapidly moving to the Refuge closest to the combat zone. Harper breathed a sigh of relief as the ramp dropped down and a flood of humans in motley armour and uniforms raced off the vessel and began to help the first of his charges aboard.
"Jack Harper as I live and breathe!"
Jack heard the distinctive Alabama twang before a short man with large arms and a gigantic moustache practically tackled him. "Bob?"
McDevitt grinned like a maniac. "Like the surprise we brought you, Jack?"
"I honestly didn't think you'd make it." The merc confessed with a sheepish smile. And he hadn't. At all.
"Oh, same with you and your little dash for Weyata." McDevitt laughed back. "Colonel Pressly was damn near sick with laughter when you wandered off with that forlorn look on your face."
"He make it?"
"He landed with the Rosalind, closer to the Mountain. Me and Norm have got the bulk of the resistance fighters here with us. Where do you need us?"
Harper gestured in the vague direction of the battle. "Bring your best fighters and follow my company. Have the rest dig in a skirmish line and be ready to support us when we have to high tail it back here."
The high powered whine of gunships overhead caused both men to duck, but the shapes were heading toward the battlefield, not coming from it. The last of the garrison's air power had been committed.
Harper shook his head. "When I said I wanted to die rich, I kind of thought I'd have the chance to spend the money first."
-TSoS-
"Fire!" Reyes snarled as her sights locked on the enemy turret. Her main gun roared, the 120mm gun punching a neat hole through the weakened armour of their target and detonating inside.
"Good kill!" Harpy-Two confirmed enthusiastically. "That's four of the bastards!"
"It's just light armour so far." Reyes cautioned. "They haven't committed their big rigs yet."
"Where the hell are they?" Her gunner hissed. "We're chewing up their infantry and light armour. Where the hell are the tanks?"
Reyes attention was caught by her viewscreen. "Hold up, there's something…"
Twenty metres from them, Harpy-Two exploded without warning. Reyes cursed. "Enemy fast-movers, they've got air support on station."
"What about the AA screen?"
"Probably got dropped to let our own birds through." Reyes zeroed in on the slowly moving shapes of the enemy armoured counter attack. "Fire the engines up to max, we've got to get in close."
Her driver twisted around. "How close?"
"Close enough to touch turrets, their air support can't hit us if we're driving next to them." Reyes grabbed at her blue force tracker to check the locations of the other tanks in the squadron.
Hopper looked at her incredulously. "At that range we won't last long against those tanks!"
"We'll last longer than we will against those fast movers." Reyes shot back. "And we just might take a few of them with us!"
-TSoS-
Septimus watched grimly as the enemy gunships made almost suicidally low strafing runs on armour, infantry and artillery pieces alike. He could hear the whine of repulsor-lift engines, but also the steady rhythm of rotary wing aircraft. The primitive design might have made him laugh if he hadn't been quietly cursing the effectiveness.
"You're telling me that the flyboys can't hit those flying tin cans with anything?"
The question was directed at the beleaguered Captain Quintus, his aide co-ordinating information now from six different radio operators. "What I'm hearing, sir, is that none of their weapons systems are designed to hit a target flying that low, that slow, without so much as a repulsor engine signature to lock on to. Instead they are requesting permission to target the transport ships."
Oraka didn't have to be a tactical genius to figure out the enemy scheme of manoeuvre. The reports coming from the rear echelon combined with the intelligence gathered by overhead recon was enough to piece it together. Williams was evacuating, trying to make a run for it with his civilians and what was left of his men. The move was pure desperation, an insane gamble that his motley forces could hold a thin line against the weight of the Legion on open ground in the time it would take him to load the transports. Oraka was willing to be he could beat that time. There was no need to fire on the transports when he would capture them from the ground anyway.
At least, that would be the reason he gave General Arterius for yet again refusing to fire on civilians.
Septimus had felt woozy, irritable and thirsty in rapid succession ever since the General had departed with his personal guard for the crash zone. An hour earlier he'd felt so feverish that Quintus had summoned a field surgeon. The surgeon gave him a clean bill of health, but Septimus still felt no better.
It was the order. The cursed order eating away at him from the inside. Distracting him, slowing him, causing him to falter. The human breakout was the only thing keeping him from trying to raise Admiral Jhirx to inform her that the General had quite clearly lost control of his faculties.
Given that his uncle was one of Jhirx's admirals, he hoped that she might agree to intercede and retract the order. He hoped.
There'd been precious little hope from the start of the campaign, let alone the amount he needed right now. He'd have to ask Williams where he got his from.
"Instruct all pilots to disregard the enemy transports unless fired upon by those vessels." He finally gave the order. "Keep trying force down tactics, provide reconnaissance and by burning Palaven, get those damned primitive boxes off my men!"
-TSoS-
"Come on, come on, let's go!" A marshal's roar practically ruptured Joaquim's eardrum as he walked past the red faced woman directing the flow of traffic. "Do you people want a ride back to Earth or not?"
Earth. Now there was a prospect. Five Alliance fleets protecting the approaching relays, plus the Home Fleet manned by the collective navies of Earth's nation-states. And the massive armies of China, Europe, Africa and America that could actually mount a decent resistance against a turian invasion.
Joaquim longed for a tenth of the troops currently sleeping and twiddling their thumbs back on Earth. Just a tenth of those bored soldiers could have held Shanxi till kingdom come.
Chekova was carried off the truck he'd just dismounted, the medic at her side glued to the monitors on the side of her stretcher. Despite her injuries, Chekova grabbed at Joaquim's arm as she passed by him. "General…"
"Colonel." Joaquim offered her the best smile he could muster. "You should sleep. Save your energy for the flight back to Earth."
"Why aren't you already onboard, sir?" The woman croaked.
"I'll be onboard as soon as the last civilian is." Patting her shoulder, Joaquim nodded at her escorts. "I'll be right behind you, Colonel."
Still faintly protesting, Chekova was carried onboard as another colonel walked off. Between the two of them, Joaquim was hard pressed to decide which was in worse shape. Chekova's missing arm notwithstanding, the newly arrived Pressly look half a skeleton, his always lanky frame almost skeletal in the harsh light cast by the powerful landing beacons.
Joaquim found his hand seized and shaken furiously by his newly returned regimental commander. "Matt!"
"Joe." Pressly grinned. "Thanks for sending the rescue party, was getting mighty sick of their food up there."
This time Joaquim didn't have to force the smile that rose to his lips. "Well, I suppose it wasn't a total loss if we got you back."
Pressly nodded. "Hell of a thing Ganju did, getting us all off that piece of tin. We'll raise a glass in his honour at Starways Bar on Arcturus."
"That sounds like an idea." Joaquim slapped him on the shoulder. "What shape are the ships in? Will we have enough room to fit everyone?"
The older officer weighed the question. "Everyone keeps giving me different numbers. Best I can figure, we cram everyone in and leave it to fate."
"Seems to me that's been our entire battle plan so far?"
"Well why stop now when it's working so well?"
Despite himself, Williams laughed at the absurdity. "Look at us. Two old bastards with no actual units to command. All the fighting is being done by sergeants at this point."
The whine of an air to air missile and the explosion of one of the circling gunships sobered both of them up instantly. Pressly's mouth hardened as he gestured toward the battlefield, where the sounds of heavy gunfire and the roar of armoured vehicles was only growing louder. "Something tells me there'll be plenty of knife work for us before dawn comes."
-TSoS-
"Come right, right again." Reyes fired off another HEAT round and swore as it bounced off the barriers of another turian tank. "Harpy-Three, target my last, light him up."
There was no reply for a second, then the alien hover-tank reeled and detonated, Harpy-Three rumbling past it to crash into another squad of dismounted infantry. –Harpy-One, this is Three, that was our last HEAT round. We're down to anti-infantry shells and canister.-
"Copy that." Reyes grunted as the tank lurched under her feet, then swerved to avoid the burning wreck of Harpy-Four. They'd been playing chicken with turian armour for less than five minutes and she'd already lost another tank. Staying out of the way of the fast movers was costing them dearly, but going back meant death. They'd already lost the gunner, now she had taken over.
All the armour the garrison had left was now wreaking havoc in the half-organised turian line. From what she could see it looked like the turians had been planning to meet armour with armour, and now had to re-organise their own armour to root the human tanks out of their infantry advance.
It was an all out tank brawl, and Reyes was winning by her own count. But the aliens fought like madmen. They hurled det-packs and satchel charges under tank treads, climbed up and hacked away at turret hatches, tried to roll grenades down the gunbarrels. They were being killed or wounded by the dozen, but they were also crippling what was left of the human armoured advance.
Reyes traversed her co-ax over an anti-tank crew and grunted with satisfaction as the whole group fell in a cloud of smoke. Her eyes searched feverishly for any more tanks to support them, any strongpoints that she could crash the tank into and use as cover. Nothing presented itself. "There's nothing out here but death. We need to pull back!"
Hopper swore as another detpack went off near them. "No argument from me, I think I can see a way...tank! Left side, left side!"
The turret swung left, Reyes fired almost on instinct and screamed with mixed surprise and frustration as the round bounced off the enemy shields. "Reload!"
The enemy tank fired wild, but Reyes still felt her vehicle shudder and spin out. She kept the sight fixed on the join between turret and hull and waited for the loader to slide home the next shell.
The two tanks fired almost simultaneously, the enemy shot glancing off Harpy-One's forward sloped armour while her own gutted the enemy behemoth. She slumped back in her chair, almost tearing her helmet off in her eagerness to breathe freely. "We have to go, that first shot went through our tracks."
Hopper flinched as he looked at the scope. "Are you sure you want to go out there?"
"No, but it beats dying in this tin can." Reyes grabbed her sidearm and racked the slide. "We'll go out the bottom, crawl our way out. You ready?"
The driver looked down at his sidearm. "No."
Reyes grinned weakly. "Me neither."
The three surviving crew of Harpy-One wriggled out through the lower hatch and lay beneath the treads. Out in front of them they could see armoured legs flashing to and fro across their field of view. A few more random shots hit the tank, but the battle seemed to be pushing further on.
Finally the sounds of battle began to fade. Reyes led the way, scurrying out from under the tank and setting off at a low run.
"Do you know where you're going?" Hopper hissed from behind her.
"Sure, I think we'll be able to flank around the fight and get back to the…ships?" Reyes paused as she crested the rise. "On second thought, I think I got the direction wrong."
"Why do you say…that?" Hopper dropped his sidearm and followed Reyes in kneeling down and putting his hands on his head.
What looked like a whole alien army was standing practically right in front of them. Hundreds of figures in black, blue and grey armour, columns of tanks and APCs, the entire turian front had shifted.
Despite herself, Reyes was almost glad when she was surrounded, frisked and cuffed. How in the hell could the thin green line hope to hold back the might of a force like this?
-TSoS-
"Keep peeling back!" Khafagey roared, lifting his own rifle to fire a burst at a vague target in the chaos. "Mortars, fire all remaining rounds, then go! Go!"
Some tubes were already spent. Firing at almost maximum elevation, the bombs were barely dropping ahead of the infantry as they pulled back. The last of the machine gunners were dropping into place next to the mortar tubes, hastily slapping on their last belts as the remaining Marines raced up the slope and threw themselves flat.
"Fire!" Khafagey dumped his magazine, his bullets tearing through armour and flesh. The rest of his makeshift company emptied their weapons along with him, machine guns firing protracted bursts into the massed enemy infantry, too caught up in their pursuit to fan out.
The wall of lead ceased as suddenly as it had begun, but the turians were halted for the briefest of moments and Khafagey seized that moment with both hands. "Break contact! Withdraw to the ships!"
Even half exhausted, his men were revitalised by the mention of the ships. Picking themselves back up, the company raced backwards, pausing only to toss det-packs next to equipment too heavy to run with. Mortar tubes and heavy machine guns were destroyed, anything else was flung aside in their haste to escape. Most of the militia were discarding their body armour, and Khafagey himself didn't have the breath to curse them for it.
Rifle almost falling out of his grip, Khafagey sprinted as fast as his short legs would carry him. Each tortured breath made him want to stop and rest, each whine of the odd, angry shot convinced him to keep up his pace. Just a few hundred more metres and he could get aboard a transport ship, leave this accursed place behind.
Someone grabbed him as he ran past the next defensive line. Sucking down air, Khafagey was surprised to see it was Harper. He thought the mercenary would have been first in line for evacuation.
"How many?" The taller man had iron in his voice instead of laughter, steel in his eyes instead of mockery. Khafagey half-appreciated the change.
"Fucking hundreds of them." He replied tersely. "We ran out of ammo faster than they ran out of men."
Harper looked past him at the advancing turians. "Can you spare any of your men?"
"These men were promised places on the transports in exchange for serving in the vanguard." Khafagey drew himself up. "But if I order them to stand, they will stand."
Harper shot a brief look at the exhausted members of Khafagey's retreating company and shook his head. "No, you get to the transports. We'll be right behind you."
Part of Khafagey was ashamed for simply nodding and running. The other half was simply certain that even if Harper had asked, he did not have the strength left to face another enemy attack. A quick glance at the crumbling line of Harper's infantry confirmed what he already knew, the fight was going out of the battered garrison faster than the transports could load and evacuate.
-TSoS-
Quintus sprinted from the command APC to where Colonel Oraka stood, field glasses in hand, surveying the retreating enemy and the advancing troops of the 13th PHI. Not for the last time he wished his commander would command from a hardened headquarters instead of an exposed ridgeline. Bravery had its merits, but so did not dying from a stray mortar round.
"Sir. Our active LADAR indicates the first of the enemy transport ships are beginning to lift off. The fighters are again requesting permission to engage."
"An unarmed transport ship?" Oraka spared him a brief look. "Where's your sense of sport, Captain?"
"Sir? They're getting away."
"Nonsense. We'll simply have a cruiser interdict them in orbit. Go through our headquarters in the main city. Tell them to type up a proper request for orbital support, make sure you calculate the interdiction co-ordinates correctly and instruct them they are not to fire on those ships under any circumstances. I believe they may be carrying precious resources."
Quintus turned to sprint back to the APC, but Oraka laid a hand on his arm. "With precision, if you please, Captain. I don't need Admiral Jhirx reprimanding me for shoddy radio work."
Confused, but nodding anyway, Quintus slowly walked back to the radios. Not for the first time that night, he wondered if the Colonel was feeling quite himself.
-TSoS-
The airburst round was as unexpected as it was brutally effective. Cunningham, standing almost within arm's reach of Joaquim, clutched the side of her head with a scream and toppled to the ground.
Grabbing a field dressing, Joaquim pried Cunningham's hand away from the bloody mess. "Let me see!"
Gently pressing the dressing down, Joaquim wrapped the bandages around her skull. The coagulant in the bandage would do the rest. "It was just an ear. You're going to be alright."
He grabbed a medic and pointed at one of the last two transports still sitting on the sand. "Get her onboard now."
Pressly was kneeling with a signaller when Joaquim found him. "Joe! You went offline?"
"Airburst round took out Cunningham and my signaller." The general could feel spikes of pain in shoulder and grimly acknowledged that there was probably some shrapnel in there. "What's the situation."
"I've lost contact with the last of our armour. One last company is holding the ridgeline under Harper, but the turians are massing for a breakthrough."
"What about the civilians?"
Pressly actually managed a smile. "Just a few hundred left to go. We won't leave behind nearly as many as…"
The sound of massed gunfire caused both of their heads to turn. Human shaped figures were sprinting toward them from the last defensive line, closely pursued by armoured fighting vehicles and dismounted infantry.
Joaquim's earpiece crackled to life with Harper's voice. "…line is breaking! It's breaking! Get the last ships in the air."
Joaquim pressed his hand against his ear. "All troops, get to your transports! Now!"
Harper snapped back almost immediately. "Negative! We need every last man to hold until the ships lift off! Get everyone else onboard. And that means you!"
Harper didn't dare say it over the comm, but the meaning was clear. Williams was to get what was left of the command team aboard the transports. But that time had come and gone. Not with the turians only a two minute dash away from the last ships. Not when the ships needed those minutes to close their ramps and secure for lift off.
Standing up, he looked around him. A dozen or so medics, signallers and officers were still huddled around. Not much of a battlefield reserve, but it would have to do. "Sergeant Kee, get the colours."
The NCO nodded, the man's eyes flashing with new determination. "Yes, sir!"
The division banner and the Alliance flag were both cased in blue silk. Williams had never stood taller than when the division had been formally assembled for the first time on Earth in front of a crowd of thousands. The colours of the Third Division had been laid on a makeshift altar of the divisional band's drums and a priest, a rabbi and an imam had each blessed and consecrated the slips of cloth and the men and women who served under them to the service and protection of mankind.
Junior officers with white gloves and polished swords had borne the two banners in review past the massed ranks of the Marines, closely guarded by the division's most senior sergeants and warrant officers. Those two officers were dead by now, and the escorts gone to the dirt along with them. But the colours were still there, and the heart of the Third had not broken yet.
Grasping the case of the division banner with his filthy and bloody hands, Joaquim pulled it free. Beside him, another Marine was wrenching the case off the Alliance banner. The two bearers, Sergeant Kee and a weary looking medic, looked at him for direction.
"Follow me."
The colours had the desired effect on the troops fleeing past them toward the ships. Men who had run for safety did an about face, their faces flushed from exhaustion, but the shame of running whilst Joaquim and his small party headed toward the front being too much for them to bear.
Pressly had other ideas, the man shoving his way to where Joaquim grimly marched at the head of his colour party. Grabbing him by the front of his body armour, the colonel tried to pull him back.
"Are you mad? Are you mad?!" Pressly was practically screaming the words. "You can still get out! Let me do this! You can still get out!"
Joaquim threw Pressly's hands off him, strangely calm in the face of his friend's helpless rage. "Hold until relieved, Colonel. Those were my orders. Hold until relieved."
"Alenko!" Pressly snapped at one of his men. "The general has taken leave of his senses. Get him onboard. Carry him if you have to!"
"Belay that order!" Joaquim kept walking, his eyes fixed on the approaching firefight. Bullets were snapping overhead as the turians pushed forward. Somehow his nerve didn't break. "The ramp is already closing."
A quick glance was all Pressly needed to confirm Joaquim's guess. "General!" His voice cracked. "You don't need to die here."
"No." Joaquim halted at the top of a sand dune, cocking his rifle and taking a knee as his small band spread out along the crest and aimed over the heads of their retreating comrades. "But my men need to be here while those ships take off. And I need to be with my men."
He took aim, locked in on a target in grey armour and fired his first shots of the war.
-TSoS-
Oraka advanced on foot, his protection party that Fennik had assembled clustered around him in diamond formation. It would have been safer to roll forward in the APC. It would have been logical to simply remain completely behind the lines until the battle was over. It wasn't in him to do either of those things.
He wanted to see the end. For the first time in perhaps his entire career, he truly understood the nature of war. For an officer who had served in sixteen different conflict zones, that was something that took him by surprise. Thirty years since the start of his mandatory service and only now did he finally understand that war wasn't a peacekeeping mission, or an anti-piracy patrol, or even a raid on a slave camp. This was pure attrition warfare and it made him sick.
The wounded were everywhere, turian and human alike. The medics were moving up, the field ambulances frantically administering stripping away armour, applying bandages and transfusions. For the human wounded there was nothing. The transfusions were all turian blood, the coagulating agents were all wrong, even the painkillers would be ineffective. Some of the more compassionate turians were moving amongst the wounded, trying to treat the humans with whatever first aid supplies the humans were carrying on them. Water, some bandages, even trying to comfort the wounded and dying as they moaned and screamed.
Something about the way a human screamed chilled Septimus' blood. It wasn't just a sound of pain. It was rage, fear and despair rolled into one. He'd first noticed it in the city during the main advance. But there had been captured human doctors and medics to tend to them in the city. It hadn't occurred to Septimus to bring those same specialists out here to treat the captured. Death he could live with. Useless, meaningless deaths he was finding harder to stomach.
"What are we doing here Fennik?" His eyes glanced over a young human man wailing pitifully as he tried to hold in his own entrails. "What are we doing here?"
He forced himself to keep looking at the dead and dying as he passed them. He would not hide from this, the work of his hands. General Arterius had ordered him to attack, but Septimus had followed those orders almost without hesitation. Desolas was the architect of this brutality, but Septimus had set his hands to the tools to do it. So he would not look away from the end result.
Hadn't he wanted this? To win the battle, the war and the glory? Was not the pride of a job well done, a distasteful duty performed well, the very meaning of his life? Well here it was. Duty done, battle won, war ending. He couldn't refuse his prize now just because it was messier than expected.
"Never look away." He murmured, his eyes drinking in the fresh horrors the fighting had wrought. "Watch it, you coward."
-TSoS-
Joaquim had killed his first man at twenty three. On patrol in the Afghan Neutral Zone in the aftermath of the Sino-Pakistan-Indian War, leading his platoon on a stabilisation patrol during a period that the media insisted afterwards had been simply peacekeeping operations.
The thirteen hour firefight against whatever group of sponsored insurgents had been in ascendancy that month hadn't felt much like keeping the peace. The fighting had gotten so bad that even Joaquim had been forced to fight at close quarters instead of commanding his men. He'd fired at targets at long range, tossed a few grenades at them when they started getting real close. But he hadn't known for sure that he'd killed anyone.
Not until he turned to see three infiltrators sneaking up on his pit from a breach in the line.
He'd shot two before the third knocked his rifle out of his hands. But that was back then, when he'd been fit and strong as a bull. He'd broken that insurgent's nose and spear tackled him almost immediately. Hell, his neck might have broken even before Joaquim had grabbed his knife and driven it through the side of his attacker's temple.
That was back then. The turian that tackled Joaquim to the ground and began trying to drive his own knife into the general's skull wasn't likely to be that easy.
"Get off me you ugly son of a…" He saw stars as the turian drove his fist into his cheek. "Assist! Assist!"
It was a desperate cry for help, one that was unlikely to be answered as the battle raged on around him, but Joaquim was too fatigued to calculate the odds of a rescue. He pawed at his own knife, trapped on his belt by the weight of the alien. The alien had lost its helmet, which allowed Joaquim to land a few solid punches, but the turian rewarded his diligence by attempting to bite the offending arm.
Left hand half freed, Joaquim wrenched a rifle magazine out and smacked it against the turian's face. By chance or by aim, the edge drove into the soft matter of the eyeball, the turian reflexively lifting his hands to his face at the sudden attack.
The weight displaced, Joe went for his knife, driving the blackened steel up into the turian's neck, then wrenching out against and going for the spot where the ear should have been. His relief was short lived as the weight of the dead alien now settled fully on his battered body.
As he lay underneath the armoured corpse of his attacker, Joaquim let out an exhausted sigh. Seconds of fighting had stretched out into almost minutes. Both sides were dying in droves, but the last of the ships were lifting off. There was nothing left to do but die. That part was guaranteed. It was dying well that concerned him now.
His eyes caught new movement and sound above even the chaos of the battle. Pressly had grabbed the Alliance banner and was waving it furiously as he stood at the top of the ridgeline. "Rally, Third! Rally to the colours!"
Joaquim found new strength, pushing the turian corpse off him and staggering up the rise. "Rally to the colours!"
"Rally to the colours!" Others were taking up the call. Harper, Petrovsky, young McLeod. Alenko and McDevitt together again. The soldiers of the militia and the Marines of his division coming together in a ragged line at the top of the hill. Battered and weary, their defiance inspired something in those who had turned to flee.
Williams seized the divisional banner and stood next to Pressly, the red flag and silver falcon poised to strike flapping furiously in the wind alongside the Alliance field of white stars on a black backing. The sun which had been threatening to rise did so now, the warmth behind him casting away the last shadows of the night.
No more than a hundred men still held the hill as the turians charged upwards, their armour glinting in the dawn sun, their charge promising to sweep the fragile last stand from its feet.
Williams fished his last magazine out of his mag pouch and slotted it into his pistol. "Now, boys! Hold the line!"
He racked back the slide on his pistol as a peculiar thought struck him.
'Frank…my son…I'll never get to meet your child. I'll never meet my granddaughter.'
The accompanying bolt of sorrow almost completely undid him. Joaquim's hand wrapped around the polished wood in his grip, forcing himself to stay upright as he leaned on it. Fear threatened to completely overwhelm his senses. Every part of his rational mind screamed that he would not survive the next few minutes and all his animal instincts begged to him to run.
But there was blood and steel in him yet. He would not run.
He lifted his voice in one last, desperate shout. "For Earth, boys! For Earth and the Alliance!"
The cry echoed along the line, a feeble yell in the face of armoured oblivion, but there nonetheless. "For the Alliance!"
The turians were on them in seconds. At point blank range, shotguns and machine guns joined together in a bloody symphony, accented by the screams of the wounded and cries of the dying. Almost immediately Williams found himself attacked by a quartet of turians. He felled the first with a barrage of pistol rounds. The second caught a blast from Petrovsky's shotgun and the third collapsed under pistol fire from Pressly. Harper tackled the fourth before he could bring his shotgun to bear on Williams.
More turians tried for the banners, but somehow the small honour guard that had formed around the colours still held its ground. Every second seemed an hour as Williams fired his pistol one handed, accuracy not mattering in the slightest since the enemy was almost close enough to reach out and press the muzzle against.
Seeing a turian aiming at McLeod's back, Williams opened fire. The slide locked back empty after two rounds, Joaquim forced to watch as the turian tackled the boy to the ground with a horrifying crunch of broken bones.
The rattle of automatic weapons signalled the arrival of a new group of turians, these ones all in black. The leader seemed fixated on the colours, his rifle raising with deadly purpose to aim directly at Joaquim's chest. Pistol dangling empty from his hand, Joe saw his death in that black muzzle. Somehow it didn't seem acceptable to drop the colours and dive for another weapon, even if the end result would be the same.
He breathed, watched the turian's finger tighten-
-and had his view of the afterlife blocked by Pressly. Swinging his body in front of Joaquim's, Pressly twisted in agony as the bullets entered his back. The Alliance banner fell from his gnarled fingers, blood pouring in rivers from the exit wounds in his chest and stomach. Joaquim grabbed at him with his free hand, unable to believe it.
"Not you." The words felt like they were spoken by a stranger's mouth. "Not both of you."
"General…" Pressly gasped, his hands grasping at Joaquim's armour. "Joe, I'm…"
He never finished the sentence. Colonel Matthias Pressly fell, collapsing to the sand, the blood flow stilling as his old heart finally stopped.
The world disappeared as Joaquim sank to his knees, his mouth opened in a soundless cry, trying to form a wordless prayer.
The Alliance had abandoned them. Reinforcements would never come.
And God had abandoned him to the corpses of his men.
He could hear the firing around him dying away. The turians had stopped shooting. Instead there were sounds of scuffling, muffled curses as the last human combatants were wrestled to the ground and restrained.
Williams brought his eyes back into focus as a pair of turian boots stepped in front of him. His eyes travelled upwards, rolling over the blue armour until his eyes found the face of Septimus Oraka staring down at him.
The look was almost pitying, and stung Joaquim to his feet faster than any bite might have. Oraka's eyes roamed over the battered and bloody general, then to the men and women finally being cuffed and frisked around them. Finally they returned to Joaquim.
"Have you had your fill of blood, General?"
Joaquim's left hand fell to his hip and the antiquated Colt still resting in his other holster. Oraka did not even flinch. Joaquim flicked off the retention strap and slowly drew the pistol. The bodyguards surrounding Oraka shifted uneasily.
The pistol fell to the ground, bouncing harmlessly on the sand. Joaquim held out the division banner toward Oraka. "I surrender the Third Division of the Systems Alliance Marine Corps and the Systems Alliance Colony of Shanxi to you, Colonel Oraka."
Oraka accepted the banner. His face remained impassive for a few moments longer, a flicker of something dark lingering behind his eyes, a flicker of something Joaquim shuddered to consider.
The turian bowed his head, as if in thought. When he raised it again, the darkness was gone. "On behalf of Desolas Arterius, General of the Seventh Legion…on behalf of the Turian Hierarchy, I accept your surrender with honour."
"It is done."