Chapter Fifty-Four: Rock Paper Scissors, Tank
0130 hours, November 22, 2564 (Military Calendar) \
Sigma Octanus IV, Sigma Octanus System
South Docks, Côte d'Azur
"Toss me the cutting laser," Master Sergeant Harry Irons ordered Private Stan Leopold.
Private Leopold—the HQ staff driver—was kneeling right next to Irons's tool bag which had been stowed inside of his tank. He rifled through the bag for a second before producing a mini-cutting laser from within. He tossed it over to Irons, who caught it and immediately set to work.
"Rebs hit us with a rocket, it looks like," the tank commander observed as he set to work removing the damaged tread from his tank. "And even then, that rocket must have either hit the ground right near us or just barely grazed us…that's the only way I can think of how we could have survived with nothing but a thrown track."
Alex listened with mild interest. He had never fought in a tank before; he had always wanted to try, but had never gotten a chance during the Great War. Now, it looked like he was about to get one. He and Sam were standing on opposite ends of the right side of Master Sergeant Irons's M1-Delta Heavy Battle Tank, or 'Dragon', ready to keep the machine in the air when Irons gave the word.
The unlikely band of two Spartans, a tank commander, and an HQ staff command car driver had set out from their temporary warehouse hideout in the southern docks of Côte d'Azur fifteen minutes ago, dodging Insurrectionist patrols until they reached the place where Master Sergeant Irons's dragon had been hit.
Now, they waited for Irons to get his dragon up and running again. Luckily, no Insurrectionist patrols had come near—the Insurrectionists did not have very many forces in the docks—but Alex knew that he they couldn't be relying on that type of luck for very long.
Alex almost winced at the bright conflagration under the tank's belly from the cutting laser as Irons set to work separating the ruined tread from the areas of the dragon which it had been melted onto by the force of the rocket's explosion. The light was pretty much a beacon, begging any hostiles in the area to come and pay them a nice visit.
The rain would help keep the light of the welding laser under cover, but it wouldn't do much. Everyone would just have to hope that no Insurrectionist soldiers decided to come sniffing around until the dragon was ready to go.
"Either of you any good with engines?" the tank commander asked as he continued to cut away the ruined parts of the tread.
"Not with tank engines," Sam replied, after exchanging a helpless shrug with her husband.
"How about you, Nerves?" the tank commander directed the question at Private Leopold, the driver. Leopold was a thin, pale man. He was easily startled and always seemed to be twitching, earning himself the nickname 'Nerves' from Master Sergeant Irons.
"I can strip and repair a warthog engine or a command car's motor with one arm behind my back while blindfolded," the HQ staff driver replied with more confidence than Alex thought he was capable of possessing, "But I'm kinda rusty with tanks."
"No matter; rusty is better than ignorant," the tank commander reasoned. He paused for a second, swearing as a piece of separated metal fell from the underbelly, nearly braining him. "Take the auto-drill and get the engine panels off in the rear. Check to make sure everything's in proper order, then shut it all back up."
"Okay," Private Leopold did as he was told, pulling the appropriate tool out of Irons's tool bag and getting to his feet, heading around to the back of the tank and getting to work.
Irons continued cutting away at the ruined tread for another ten or so minutes before he gave a warning and lasered away the last section of torn and melted metal. The tread fell away, splaying out onto the road below. The dragon itself rocked, now having only one tread on one side to support itself on. As such, its right side—the side now without a tread—started to fall to the road, but Alex and Sam, still standing at their spots on either end of the tank's side, quickly caught it, holding it up.
The task of holding a tank partially in the air would have been a daunting one before the Ambroses had gotten their MJOLNIR, but now with the power armor it was actually not too difficult. Alex wouldn't want to be stuck holding it all day, but he and Sam would be able to manage for the next few minutes.
Private Leopold finished his inspection of the engine at about the same time. He called out that he could see nothing wrong with the dragon's motor, so he quickly put the armored engine panels back into place and returned to help Master Sergeant Irons out from under the dragon.
Irons pulled himself shakily to his feet, supporting himself on the tank's side. He pulled himself over to a large compartment under the rear of the tank, near the engines. He got back down to the ground and, after getting the power drill from Leopold, opened the compartment up.
A spare tank tread fell out, thudding onto the ground. "Quickly, quickly…" the tank commander breathed as Leopold heaved the tread out from under the tank.
"Movement down the street!" Sam hissed suddenly. Alex snapped his gaze over to where Sam had indicated. Sure enough, a patrol of four Insurrectionist soldiers supported by a warthog had rounded a corner several blocks down the street and were steadily heading towards the place where Irons's damaged tank was situated. They were too far away to spot the tank now, but it was only a matter of time.
"Let's hurry it up, people," Alex urged on the tank commander and the command car driver through clenched teeth.
"Steady…" Irons murmured as he lifted part of the replacement tread on over the wheels, pushing until he heard the satisfying thunk of the tread locking into place. He and Leopold continued to ease the replacement tread into its grooves around the wheels and mechanisms which it was propelled around to move the dragon.
The Insurrectionist patrol moved nearer. Alex started to fidget. He longed to unsling his sniper rifle and take the enemies out right then and there; he would be able to do it in seconds, but that would mean dropping his side of the dragon, which would in turn damage the tank further. He was stuck. He could see Sam going through a similar dilemma.
Irons worked as fast as he could, feverishly directing Leopold and clicking the tread into place. He was about half-way done when the Insurrectionist patrol spotted the tank. A searchlight from the warthog snapped on, bathing the far side of the tank in a blinding white glow.
Alex could faintly hear the murmuring voices of the Insurrectionists as they spotted the tank, curiosity clear in their voice. Alex swore; he could tell that this was the first time that particular patrol had come through here; they had never spotted the tank before. No doubt they would have later reported it in to their command and the dragon would have been either taken in for study or destroyed.
Well, the four UNSC soldiers working on the dragon had no intention of allowing that to happen.
Leopold shimmied over to Sam's end of the tank and quickly started to work the tread into place around the wheel at the end. Luckily, the wheels had been oiled not too long before the tank had been temporarily put out of commission; the tread slid over the wheel without too much difficulty.
"Damn it, sergeant, hurry up!" Alex whispered as loud as he could to the two men below the tank.
"Steady…" Irons repeated himself, not wavering from his work.
Three-quarters of the way done.
The Insurrectionist patrol crossed the last street between themselves and the damaged dragon.
Irons told Leopold to keep working, pulling himself away from the tread and crawling out from under the dragon. "Give me your sniper rifle," the tank commander said to Alex. "You can't use it right now; I can."
"It's all yours," Alex gestured with his head for the tank commander to go ahead.
"Nerves, keep working on that tread," Irons ordered the command car driver, "If we don't get it fixed in the next few minutes, Insurrectionist reinforcements'll be tearing us a whole slough of new ones."
"Uh-huh," Leopold replied, only partially paying attention to the older tank commander. He did not speed up very much, though; replacing a tread was not a task which could be rushed.
Alex's arms were starting to feel tired. He had been holding up a tank for nearly ten minutes, now; no one could blame him or his wife for starting to feel sore.
Master Sergeant Irons peered through the scope of the sniper rifle. He was no sniper, but he could hold his own with a rifle. More to the point, he had operated a scorpion tank throughout the Great War. His highlight had been Delta Halo, towards the end of the war. Without going into explicit detail about his exploits in that particular battle, it was perfectly safe to assume that he hadn't survived Installation 05 because he was a poor shot with a tank barrel. Aiming and firing a tank barrel was not a simple business; gunners had to be skilled marksmen in their own way to take out enemy targets when their commanders spotted them.
If Irons could aim with the barrel of a tank, than he could damn well do the same thing with a sniper rifle.
Irons centered the crosshairs on the heads of one of the approaching Insurrectionists and squeezed the trigger. Proper snipers would never have been so hasty in taking the shot, but Irons was not a proper sniper. He saw an enemy, he killed him; simple as that.
The Insurrectionist soldier was thrown back by the force of the sniper round punching through his forehead, a spray of red flying away from the entry and exit wounds. The other three soldiers on the ground and the two in the warthog reacted almost instantaneously. The infantry dove for cover to avoid meeting the same fate as their comrade. The driver of the warthog ducked down below the windshield, retrieving a weapon he had stowed under the dashboard.
Irons squeezed off a second shot at the soldier manning the turret of the warthog, but the round went too low, clanking off of the metal protective shields set around the turret to protect the operator.
The tank commander risked a glance behind himself, checking up on Leopold's progress. The command car driver was nearly finished; he had one last meter of treads which were not yet secured to the wheels.
There was a light thudding noise, accompanied by the sound of something rolling.
Irons saw it coming towards him; a primed frag grenade, tossed by one of the soldiers under cover. Abandoning all sentiments of his personal safety, the tank commander pulled himself out from under the tank and intercepted the rolling grenade, snatching it up and lobbing back out into the street, where it exploded harmlessly in mid-air.
Weaponsfire began to erupt, aimed at the now-exposed tank commander. Irons, ignoring the white-hot pain burning from the bullet lodged in his back, pulled himself back under the dragon. He nearly made it in one piece.
As Irons dragged himself behind the treads, he felt something hit his leg. It was his left leg, the unwounded one. Immediately, his leg felt wet, and Irons knew that it wasn't from the rain.
The tank commander started swearing right afterwards when the pain of the new bullet wound registered in his brain.
"Shit!" Leopold shouted, slotting the last segment of the treads into place, "Sergeant's been hit!"
Irons barely heard him. The pain from the wound blotted out most of the sound. He howled like a wolf, letting loose a good amount of the obscenities which he kept in store for special circumstances, such as this.
Leopold shoved in the last part of the treads, waiting to hear the thunk which meant that it was locked into its groove. "Done!" the command car driver bawled.
Alex and Sam let go of the tank at the same time, letting the dragon fall back upon its new treads. Alex dove under the tank and retrieved his sniper rifle, clipping it to his back. He then tended to Irons while Sam pulled Leopold out.
Irons had been hit in the lower left leg. He had been lucky to a degree; there were two bullet wounds, which meant that the round had gone right through and wasn't lodged in there somewhere. Alex patted Irons down and found his morphine syrette. He actually found four morphine shots, but he only used one, sticking the tank commander in the thigh.
Irons's colorful language calmed down into a mixture of pained grunts and mutterings as the pain-suppressant took root in his system. "Better…" the tank commander grunted. "Don't give me any more; I can't run this thing-" he gestured to the dragon above him- "if I'm too doped up to know which way is up."
"Why do you have multiple syrettes?" Alex asked as he tossed away the now-spent morphine shot, helping the tank commander out from under the dragon, ducking as another clatter of weaponsfire ground into the side armor of the dragon. "I thought standard issue was one syrette per soldier."
"Well, yes, it is," Irons gave a slight nod, pulling himself out from under the tank, Alex right behind him, "Me and others like me get extra," the tank commander explained, "Infantrymen usually stop a bullet or catch shrapnel on the battlefield; they take a syrette of morphine and they're set until they get to an aid station. Tank crewmen…bullets and shrapnel aren't much of a problem for us, but when we get wounded, we get wounded. Burns, dismemberment, you name it…when we get hit, it usually takes more than one morphine shot to tuck away the pain…and that's only when we survive getting hit, which isn't too often."
Alex gave a nod, seeing the sense in that. "Sorry if this hurts," the blue-eyed Spartan apologized as he picked the tank command up by his armpits.
Private Leopold and Sam had both climbed up on top of the dragon. Leopold popped the hatch and dropped down inside of the tank.
"Sam, help me with the sergeant!" Alex hollered up to his wife.
Sam got back over to the edge of the dragon's top and leaned down, grasping the tank commander under his arms as well, taking him from Alex and heaving him up onto the top of the tank. That prompted a smattering of expletives from the tank commander.
Irons apologized right after. "Not your fault, I know, but damn!"
Alex leapt up on top of the tank as well. He drew his magnum sidearm and loosed off several shots at the Insurrectionist soldiers peppering the side of the dragon with weaponsfire. The turret of the warthog opened up right after, sending a significantly larger amount of lead shooting at and over the tank. Alex and Sam's energy shields were constantly flaring up as they deflected the heavy rounds.
Sam lowered the sergeant down through the hatch immediately; the tank commander only needed a single hit from the warthog turret to become an instant cadaver.
Alex waited for Sam to climb down the hatch before leaping down as well. His energy shields, worn down by the constant fire from the warthog, failed as he reached the hatch. A bullet struck him in the shoulder as he leaped down through the hatch, putting a small dent into his armor.
Alex landed on the floor of the tank's interior, reaching up and shutting the cupola hatch. He stepped off of the commander's seat and helped Master Sergeant Irons into it.
The tank commander rubbed the arm-wrests of his chair, getting the old feeling back. He peered through the periscopes which allowed him to see what was happening outside of the dragon without physically looking out through the hatch, giving a satisfied nod when he could see clearly.
"Alright," the tank commander rasped, "I have jobs for all of you, and if you care about getting to the Black Hills in one piece you'll do them exactly right and exactly as I tell you. While you are in this machine, I am God, Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh, and Zeus all rolled into one. My word is law. When I give you an order, you will follow that order without question or complaint. If you hesitate, you will cost yourself not only your own life, but the lives of the rest of us. We are all part of this tank, now, and I am its brain. You all are Flood forms, and I am your Gravemind. Follow my orders, do as I say, and we may get out of this yet. Nerves, you're a driver; get into the driver's seat. The controls are similar to any vehicle's; you'll pick 'em up fast."
"If you say so, boss," Private Leopold took a seat in the driver's seat, which was situated in the front of the interior of the tank and to the left. A leopard-print seat cover was fastened over the seat and a large pair of dice—which people usually hung from the rear-view mirrors of cars—were draped over a screw in the wall right over the driver's viewport. Whoever the previous driver had been, he had certainly made the place his own.
"You Spartans will be operating the main cannon," Irons said next, turning to Sam and Alex. "Which one of you is the sniper?"
"Me," Alex replied.
"You will serve as the gunner. You will be the one to move and aim the main cannon. There is also a coaxial machinegun mounted on the main cannon which you can fire as an alternate weapon when you aren't firing shells. You will acquire the targets I call out, identify them, and then you will fire when I give the command; not a millisecond before or after. Understood?"
Alex gave a simple nod.
Irons next turned to Sam. "You will serve as his loader. When he requests a reload, he will call out the type of ammunition he needs. The second he does that, your job is to get a round of the appropriate type of ammunition and load it into the breech. The ammunition is stowed right next to the main cannon emplacement-" Irons gestured to the tank shells stacked against the wall off to the side- "Red-tipped shells are high-explosive, or 'HE'; they are geared towards destroying machinegun emplacements or obstacles. Blue-tipped means armor-piercing, or 'AP'; which is for enemy vehicles and armor. Finally, silver-tipped means canister, which is for taking down groups of infantry. Basically, the main cannon firing canister shot is pretty much God's shotgun, which is what us grease-monkeys call it. Can you remember that?"
"Yes," Sam's reply was; short, simple, and straight to the point. "What are the yellow-tipped ones?" she asked next, curious about the fourth color of ammunition she saw which Irons had not talked about.
"Nerve gas, but we won't be using that. Alright, any questions? Make 'em quick!" When no one spoke up, the tank commander gave a nod and said, "Good. Take your stations!"
Leopold, already in the driver's seat, fired up the dragon's engine as Sam and Alex manned the main cannon.
"Now, we do not have anyone to man the bow machinegun, so Alex; your coaxial machinegun will be our main anti-personnel defense weapon," Irons explained, "You'll have to be the one to take out the die-hards who will try charging us. Now then…Nerves, you have the wheel? Good; keep to this road for now and head north. I want to try to keep north here at least until we get past downtown Côte d'Azur; I really do not want to try to smash through that place."
Leopold quickly figured out the controls for moving the tank and got the dragon heading north in only a few seconds.
Irons kept a steady and unwavering eye out through the periscopes, on the lookout for anything unfriendly.
The weaponsfire from the Insurrectionist soldiers fell behind, fading into the distance.
Alex waited by the gun emplacement, counting the seconds as they slid by.
The warehouses and docks of the eastern reaches of Côte d'Azur passed by as the dragon rumbled up the street. It wasn't until five minutes later that the dragon began to encounter resistance. The soldier back at the wreckage site must have alerted their command to the presence of a hostile tank.
Leopold pushed the engine as far as it could go, sending the dragon forward at close to fifty miles per hour. On rugged terrain or open country, the dragon's top speed wouldn't have been able to comfortably exceed forty to forty-five miles per hour, but the tank could move much faster on paved roads.
"Alex, sink a few rounds from your machine gun into the bastards," Irons ordered the blue-eyed Spartan, peering at the squad of Insurrectionist soldiers which had opened fire with heavy machineguns from behind a line of wrecked cars.
Alex swiveled the dragon's turret tower around, taking aim with the main cannon and opening fire with the coaxial machinegun. The heavy rounds slammed into the still-smoldering wreckages, forcing the Insurrectionists' heads down.
"Don't pay too much attention to normal infantry," Irons advised, "What you need to keep an eye out for are rocket teams and enemy vehicles. We don't have time to go after every infantry squad we run into. Leave these guys alone when we pass them."
The tank commander kept on looking through his periscopes. Suddenly, he spotted movement, nearly invisible in the rain, but not enough to evade the tank commander's sharp eyes. "Front!" Irons called out. "One o' clock, next to the red warehouse!"
Alex peered through the gunsights and ended up spotting the same thing the tank commander had; an Insurrectionist tank, tucked away in a corner. "Identified," Alex replied, before saying to his wife, "Armor-piercing."
Sam selected a blue-tipped AP round and slid it into the breech, giving Alex a tap to signal that she was done.
"Fire!" Irons exclaimed.
Alex complied, pulling the triggers. The main cannon roared, firing off the AP round. The shell slammed into the Insurrectionist tank just as its turret had acquired the dragon in its sights, brewing up in an oily fireball which was quickly beaten down by the rain.
The dragon continued north, brushing past the rest of the Insurrectionist infantry. Alex opened fire at them with the coaxial machinegun, cutting down a group of three or four soldiers before the rest took the hint and dove for cover. By the time they popped their heads back up, the dragon was already fading into the misty rain.
"Front!" Irons called out again, spotting another tank in his periscopes. "Twelve o'clock, dead ahead!"
"Identified," Alex's response was, placing the gunsights right over the hostile armor. "Armor-piercing."
Sam slammed another AP round into the breech.
"Fire!"
Alex pulled the triggers and watched the enemy tank brew up. "Target destroyed," he concluded.
That was how it went for the next fifteen minutes, pushing north through the docks and taking out groups of infantry and the slower enemy tanks. Irons, Alex, and Sam repeated their ritual time and time again until the routine was finally broken by a faint whining, rushing sound.
Alex's ears perked up, sensing the whining sound. "Those sound like-"
"-Reb fightercraft, shit!" Irons shouted. "Nerves! Take a hard right, get going down that alleyway!"
"That alley's awfully narrow, sir!" Leopold shouted back.
"Exactly!"
Leopold did not question the order. He obeyed, turning the dragon to the right and temporarily exposing its weaker side armor to whatever lay further down the street. Nothing hit them as they slid into the alleyway and continued on towards the next street over.
The whine intensified and became a louder, deeper rushing noise. The noise grew nearer and nearer and reached a climax as it passed right over before fading into the distance. The missiles and ordinance from the air strike reduced the buildings on either side of the dragon to rubble, but none of them dropped directly into the alleyway, sparing the tank from immediate destruction.
The dragon was able to push through the debris for a time, but soon the debris became too densely packed, so the dragon simply rolled right over it, coming out on the other side right into a group of three Insurrectionist tanks.
One of the tanks opened fire, grazing the rear of the dragon.
"Flank speed! Flank speed!" Irons screamed at Leopold, who slammed down on the power pedals, sending the dragon lurching forward.
Alex called for another AP round and, once Sam loaded it in, took aim at the nearest tank which hadn't fired and pulled the triggers, sending that tank on a one-way trip to oblivion.
A second tank opened fire, but the dragon was moving fast enough that the enemy gunner miscalculated and ended up shooting through the space which the dragon had been occupying a split-second prior.
"Take the first one out!" Irons ordered, "It's done reloading by now!"
"Armor-piercing, hurry!" Alex didn't bother replying to the tank commander, instead hollering over to his wife, who complied, slamming yet another AP round into the breach.
An Insurrectionist heavy machinegun opened fire somewhere up front, its bullets clattering off of the dragon's frontal armor.
Alex fired the main cannon, destroying the Insurrectionist which had opened fire first. The empty shell casing clanged out onto the floor and Sam was already slamming in another round of AP. Alex fired one last time, finishing off the final tank.
"Targets eliminated," the blue-eyed Spartan reported, peering at the burning wreckages through the gunsights.
Master Sergeant Irons watched the two Spartans manning the main cannon with something bordering fascination. He had served with many other men who had been very good at what they did, but these two Spartans took firing the main cannon to a new level; they could do it faster and much more efficiently than a normal gun crew would ever have been able to do.
It was like getting a premium software update for his tank's gun. With his normal crew—Irons respected all of those men and had every faith in them—Irons would never had been able to take out those three tanks in quick succession like the Spartans had been able to do without losing his own tank in the process.
Irons pushed those thoughts to a corner of his mind and focused on the matters at hand. He peered through the periscopes and spotted the bright muzzle flashes of the heavy machinegun emplacement firing at the front of the tank. "Front!" he hummed out, "Eleven o' clock!"
Alex swung the turret tower over to the left and acquired his next target, centering the gunsights on the clattering heavy machinegun, wondering what the gunners were hoping to prove by peppering the tank like they were. "Identified!" the blue-eyed Spartan exclaimed. "High-explosive!"
"Mixing it up, I see," Sam chuckled, sliding a red-tipped HE shell into the breech.
"Fire!" Irons barked.
Alex pulled the triggers and the main cannon rocked again. A large explosion tore through the ruined vehicles and brick wall covering the gun emplacement, kicking up a large cloud of dust which was quickly wiped away by the rain, but the gun kept right on firing.
"Give me another one," Alex said to Sam. The red-haired Spartan reloaded the main cannon with another round of HE.
The main cannon fired again. There was a second explosion, then silence. The enemy machinegun was gone.
"Target destroyed," Alex reported. "Stubborn bastard..."
The dragon moved onwards, pushing north whenever and wherever it could, cutting east when it faced staunch resistance ahead.
The Insurrectionists tried to wipe them out from the air four more times, each time met with as much success as the first attempt. During the last two incidents, they ended up hurting their own men and materiél instead of Irons's tank.
"How are things holding up, Nerves?" Irons hollered over to the driver.
"I think I've gotten the hang of this pretty well, sir," Leopold replied, "Long as you keep the Rebs from blowing the shit out of the tank's front, I'll be fine."
Almost on cue, there was a loud explosion right in front of the dragon as it continued to rumble down the residential street which it was on.
"Rocket team!" Irons warned, searching for them through the periscopes. "Nerves, keep the pedal to the metal; we're harder to hit if we're moving fast!"
Another rocket slammed into the front of the tank, rocking the whole of the interior. The frontal armor was the strongest part of the dragon, however; it was able to deflect the rocket without too much difficulty. Had the rocket hit the side or rear armor it would have been a different story.
"Side, two o' clock!" Irons barked suddenly, spotting movement in the place where he thought the rockets to have come from, "Second-story window on the far left!"
"High-explosive," Alex said to his wife.
"Coming right up," Sam slammed a red-tipped round of HE into the breech, giving her husband a quick tap.
"Fire!"
Alex pulled the triggers. The main cannon vented its fury on the window where the rocket team had fired out its last two shots. The window and the walls around it disintegrated in the blast, blowing a large hole in the unlucky house of which they were a part.
"Canister!" Alex called out.
Sam slid a silver-tipped shell into the breech.
Alex focused in on the hole with his gunsights, patiently waiting. Sure enough, the rocket team—which had wisely taken cover after unloading its ordinance—appeared back in the opening, about to fire again. Alex was waiting for them. He squeezed the triggers.
The canister shot sprayed into the hole in the house. Alex had seen what shotgun blasts did to people at closer range; it wasn't pretty. Watching what the canister shot did to the two or three Insurrectionist soldiers in the rocket team was at least ten times worse. "Targets now in pieces all over the floor and walls…" Alex muttered.
The dragon kept right on pushing through the heart of Côte d'Azur. On the way, Irons's dragon ran into many more Insurrectionist tanks, but—with Spartans manning the main cannon—had managed to fight off every single one without any impossible snags.
The dragon met a new adversary as it began to push through the industrial sector near the northern outskirts; warthogs with Gauss cannons.
The tank rocked as it was hit by the powerful mini-MAC cannon projectiles. The armor began to weaken and buckle as it took on this new threat; the dragon would not be able to take this punishment for very long.
"Armor-piercing!" Alex snapped, waiting for his wife to load up the cannon. He sighted the first Gauss warthog and squeezed the triggers. The warthog was blown twenty feet into the air, fire bursting from the hole which the AP round had torn into its chassis.
Two more rounds of AP finished off the other two Gauss warthogs. The dragon had taken damage to its right side and its frontal armor was starting to weaken. The left-side tread had taken a light hit, but was still functioning normally for the time being.
Insurrectionist resistance increased as the dragon advanced towards their front lines north of the city.
The northern outskirts of Côte d'Azur were not quite as bad as the residential districts had been; they were more open with less places to hide a tank or a rocket team.
Several more groups of warthogs—some of them Gauss models, the rest customary ones with M41 LAAGs—also attacked the dragon, but Alex was able to drive them off with high-explosive rounds and the coaxial machinegun.
Heavy machineguns would erupt to life in every other house, but HE rounds silenced them for good. Every once in a while, Master Sergeant Irons would sneak a glance behind the tank and survey the trail of destruction they were leaving. He found that he was truly surprised; he had not really expected to come this far.
As they moved forward, the pain of his bullet wounds began to trouble him once more; his morphine was wearing off. However, he dared not take another syrette of the narcotic; he would not be able to command the dragon if his mind was wandering around in its own little dreamworld. He continued to ignore the pain, calling out targets and keeping the tank running.
Finally, the dragon emerged from the northern outskirts of Côte d'Azur into the grassy fields between the city and the Black Hills.
The COM unit began to crackle, picking up snippets and fragments of chatter between UNSC troops. They were getting close.
The dragon kept on advancing north until the trenches and foxholes and fortifications of the Insurrectionists' front lines came into view. They were only lightly manned, without armor supporting them. The bulk of the forces stationed there must be further up ahead, closer to the UNSC lines.
"Looks like we got here right in the middle of a night assault," Irons observed, "Couldn't have asked for a better time! Keep her moving, Nerves!"
"At least we're safe from artillery for now; they wouldn't shell their own lines," Sam reasoned.
Almost on cue, the whistling, rushing sounder of the higher-pitched Insurrectionist artillery filled the air, growing louder and louder until it reached a climax and slammed into the ground in front of the advancing dragon. The sudden force of the explosions was enough to send Alex and Sam sprawling.
"Well, I've been wrong before…" Sam muttered.
Alex clambered back up to his feet, gingerly massaging his now-sore shoulder. He helped Sam back up and hurried back to his station at the controls of the main cannon, just in time for Irons to call out a target.
"Front! Anti-armor emplacements at ten o'clock!"
Alex swiveled the turret of the M1-Delta over to the left, peering through the gunsights and spotting Irons's target. Sure enough, there was a concentration of anti-tank cannons set in a depression behind the line of trenches, ready for use in the event of a possible UNSC counterattack. Now, their crews were frantically trying to spin them around to face Irons's dragon.
Several high-explosive shells put them out of commission permanently; the anti-tank guns, and their former crews.
As Irons's dragon slid by the burning wrecks of the anti-tank guns, pretty much every Insurrectionist still manning their lines finally took notice of the hostile machine of death stabbing them right through their back. A blizzard of weaponsfire converged on the tank, but everything clanked harmlessly off of the armor.
"You'd think they would learn by now that shooting us just wastes ammo…" Leopold grumbled, manipulating the driving controls of the tank to turn it to the side so as to avoid driving right into an artillery shell pit.
"Yeah, you'd think…" Irons agreed. He shrugged as he watched the hapless Insurrectionists through his periscopes. "Until I get this bucket of bolts a new paint job, they can keep right on shooting for all I care-" the tank commander broke off as he spotted something off to the side. "Rocket teams at three o'clock!" the master sergeant barked.
Alex swiveled the turret back over to the right and found Irons's intended. Two three-man rocket teams were sprinting towards the nearest foxholes, rocket launchers armed and ready to fire.
"Identified!" Alex sang out. "Canister!"
"Give 'em Hell," Sam slammed the requested round into the breech, giving her husband the 'ready' pat on his shoulder.
Alex pulled the triggers and watched as God's shotgun tore through the rocket team. Two of them caught the blast head-on and were ripped apart and another two caught the fringes. Alex opened fire with the coaxial machinegun and cut those two down, along with a third, unharmed Magisterial Guardsman. The last Insurrectionist was able to scramble away before he met the same fate. Alex squeezed off a burst at the one remaining rocket launcher and destroyed it, preventing anyone from picking it up and hitting the dragon from behind.
It took two more minutes to navigate through the maze of trenches and fortifications which formed the Insurrectionist lines. From what Alex could see from his limited view of the universe through the gunsights, he considered himself and the others very lucky that the section of the Insurrectionist lines which they had chanced upon was currently out north attacking the UNSC lines in the Black Hills. Had they been fully armed and manned, the Spartan honestly didn't think they would have gotten this far.
Hell, everyone in the renegade tank was surprised they had gotten this far at all. If a person had been told to cast bets on the survival of a group of people in a tank who had to fight their way through a heavily occupied city and enemy lines whilst battling enemy tanks, dodging artillery, and evading air strikes…well, any sane person would have bet against their survival.
On the other hand, the whole concept of what Sam, Alex, Irons, and Leopold were doing was anything but sane. At times, in this kind of war, survival needs a good dose of insanity to go with the logical and the reasonable. Irons's crew was taking that to the extreme.
There was an explosion off to the left as the dragon rumbled away from the Insurrectionist lines and into the fields to the north. Dirt and earth showered all over the dragon and a smoking crater appeared in the ground where the shell had hit.
"Orders?" Alex asked as more explosions erupted all around the tank, making the ground shake like the San Andreas Fault on Earth.
"Those are long-range artillery rounds," Irons observed, listening closely to the whistle of the artillery as it arced through the sky. "Nothing we can do about it except keep right on moving."
It took twenty minutes to reach the Black Hills. The expanse of high, rugged hills and small mountains lay north of Côte d'Azur across a large expanse of fields and meadows, through which Irons's dragon encountered little resistance. The fighting didn't pick up again until the dragon neared Mount Araquiel, the small mountain which was set a small distance behind the first few kilometers of foothills which made up the southern reaches of the Black Hills.
The First Expeditionary Force had lines all throughout the taller hills behind the first few kilometers of foothills and bumps. Mount Araquiel formed the keystone of the UNSC lines in the southern Black Hills and those in the east. The Insurrectionists seemed to have attempted a surprise attack under cover of night to drive the marines off of that mountain, but that obviously seemed to have failed.
Irons checked his watch. 0514 Hours; quarter after five in the morning. The horizon in the east lightened a miniscule bit, but because of the thick, dark rain clouds which were still pouring out their essence upon the west coast of the Alsace landmass, the rising of the sun really didn't do anything to brighten the night.
It didn't really matter though; the Insurrectionist assault force—which appeared to be division-sized—had come equipped with bright lights to guide their attack. The UNSC lines on Mount Araquiel had similar lights, shining them upon the attacking Insurrectionist soldiers so that the marines could see what they were shooting at.
"Front!" Irons called out. "Hostile armor at one o'clock, behind the hedges!"
"Identified!" Alex replied, turning the turret over to the correct direction, fixing the Insurrectionist tank in his sights. The enemy tank was clearly a straggler; Alex could see flashes from the barrels of more enemy tanks further up towards Mount Araquiel. "Armor piercing!"
Sam pushed the blue-tipped AP round into the breech. "Loaded!"
"Fire!" Irons ordered.
Alex pulled the triggers and watched the fruits of his aiming take root. The AP round tore right into the Insurrectionist tank's rear armor. The enemy tank's command turret was blown at least ten feet into the air, propelled by a great cloud of fire and smoke as it brewed up. No way in hell the tank's crew survived that.
As the dragon climbed the first foothills of the Black Hills, it encountered impromptu artillery, mortar, and anti-armor emplacements, hastily set up to support the infantry and tanks now assaulting the UNSC lines on and around Mount Araquiel. Several rounds of high-explosive put an end to the ones which Irons's dragon ran into.
Alex kept up a steady stream of fire with the coaxial machinegun on the advancing infantry which the dragon came up behind. Irons called out the locations of more tanks and rocket teams and Alex took them out quickly, taking most of them by surprise.
Time slid by once more as the crew of Irons's dragon 'settled' back into the repetitive ritual of destroying tank after tank, killing rocket team after rocket team, firing shell after shell after shell. Leopold was the only one who was immune to that sense of time distortion; as the driver, he constantly had to avoid the many obstacles which were springing up in front of him every second.
Master Sergeant Irons lost track of how many times he peered through his periscopes and called for the destruction of an Insurrectionist tank or the death of another group of soldiers. He could hear the sound of his own voice interspersed with Alex's as the blue-eyed Spartan responded to his commands and acted upon them.
At one point, Irons became aware of a strange lack of Insurrectionist armor or personnel in front of his dragon. Frowning, he popped open the hatch above his head and stood up painfully, sticking his head and shoulders out of the cupola of the dragon. He brought his field glasses to his eyes, making sure they were set for night vision.
The pattering of the rain against his helmet filled his head with a constant tap tap tap. Irons took a deep breath of fresh air and scanned the area in front of his advancing dragon. His confusion was compounded; the periscopes were functioning perfectly; there were no Insurrectionists in front of his tank any longer.
A loud rushing noise filled the air, followed up by an explosion off to the right. Irons ducked back down into the interior of his tank, shutting the hatch over his head. He cocked his head and listened, noticing something else. Several more explosions rocked the tank, but that was not his concern; he was listening to the noises they made as they shot through the air. They were definitely from anti-tank emplacements, but the pitch was different; it was lower, faster than Insurrectionist anti-tank shells.
"Those are UNSC guns firing at us!" Sam exclaimed suddenly, recognizing the irregularity of the sound as well.
"All they see is a tank coming towards them from the Insurrectionist lines; they must think we're one of them," Alex reasoned.
"Sir, what should I do?!" Leopold cried from the driver's seat as another barrage of explosions rocked the tank, throwing dirt and debris all over the place. The command car driver was wrestling with the controls of the dragon to keep it moving forward. "We're going to be in range of our own rockets soon! I really don't want to-"
"Keep us steady, Nerves!" Irons interrupted the startled driver.
"Could we contact our lines with our COM systems?" Alex suggested.
Irons shook his head. "No, we'd be memories before word got to our gunners that we aren't Rebs."
The tank commander fell silent for a second, quickly thinking up a possible solution to his new problem. He twisted around in his chair, addressing the two Spartans at the main cannon controls behind his station. "Sam! Next to the ammo stockpile, there's a strongbox with small-arms ammunition and flares!" the tank commander said quickly, "Open the box and toss me two of the green flares! Hurry! Make sure they're green!"
Sam moved fast, wasting no time in hurrying over to the indicated compartment in the corner of the tank. She opened it and rummaged through the magazines and cartridges inside until she found a medium-sized, dynamite-shaped cylinder. She checked the tip of the stick, but it was red. She threw it away, digging deeper until she found another, similar cylinder with a green tip. She dug out another green-tipped cylinder and tossed the pair over to Irons, who caught them with both hands.
Irons pushed open the hatch once more and thrust his head and shoulder out of the cupola of the dragon. Insurrectionist weaponsfire clattered off of the rear of the dragon. That worried Irons. Not the weaponsfire, but the fact that the rear of his tank was exposed to the Insurrectionists. All it would take was one lucky AP shot from a tank or anti-armor gun or rocket launcher, and that would be the end. Done, finished, finito.
Irons pushed those thoughts from his mind. He struck the flares and lit them. He held one flare in each hand and thrust them up into the air. The burning green beacons cut through the darkness and the rain. The Insurrectionists would be able to see them, but the important thing was that the UNSC could see them as well.
Irons waved the flares through the air, keeping balance as his tank climbed up the slopes of Mount Araquiel towards the UNSC trenches, which were only visible because of the lights which shone from them. Flashes of weaponsfire were also visible all up and down the UNSC lines as the Insurrectionists well over to the right and left crashed into them, trying to break them.
However, Irons's dragon's unexpected thrust through the rear of the Insurrectionist assault had pretty much destroyed most of the organization of the assault. His armored push, aided by the darkness, the rain, and by the element of surprise, had pretty much sliced the Insurrectionist assault in half.
Irons held the two burning green flares in the air and signaled with them, moving them in a fixed series of positions, similar to how ancient naval officers—back when naval warfare was centered around the oceans and not space—would communicate with flag signals.
Irons kept at it as long as he could, repeating the same motions with the flares over and over again until a clattering of weaponsfire from behind forced him back down into the tank. He cast the flares away and shut the hatch over his head, resting back into his chair.
"You've done it!" Leopold exclaimed, listening to the chatter over the COM. "They saw your signal, whatever it was, and are redirecting their fire! They're confused as hell, but they know we're one of theirs!"
Emphasizing the command car driver's conclusions, the explosions buffeting the dragon gradually ceased.
Irons shakily stood back up, riding with his head and shoulder out of the cupola as his dragon arrived at the UNSC lines. The marines manning the lines all offered him respectful salutes and nods as his tank rumbled past. He could see respect, awe, and admiration in the faces of all of those marines. Apt, considering that his surprise attack on the rear of the Insurrectionist assault had spared them all a hell of a lot of trouble.
Irons's whole escapade would be the source of gossip and conversation for weeks once word got out. Surviving the retreat out of Côte d'Azur after getting shot, getting his tank up and running against all odds, breaking through and out of the Insurrectionist lines, reaching the Black Hills, and surviving all that… All in a day's work. Irons's mouth curved in a bitter smile at that. He would have one hell of a story to tell to his old crew when he got them back. Hell, when his daughter had kids, he would probably tell that one when he was a grandfather.
Leopold maneuvered the dragon through the lines and pulled the tank to a halt when it reached what appeared to be a regimental HQ. He killed the engines.
Irons breathed a sigh of relief, releasing the breath he had been holding ever since the beginning of his tank's odyssey several hours ago, back in the docks of Côte d'Azur. He looked each and every one of the others in his tank in the eye and said, "It's been an honor, boys and girls. If any one of you end up in the Tank Corps, you're welcome in my dragon any day."
Alex allowed himself a small grin. He would even save his dark, vengeful feelings towards the airheads in the Seventh Fleet who had decided to drop him and his wife right into the Lion's Den for later; they could wait. Right now, he was just grateful to be in one piece.
"Well, Ace," Sam came up next to her husband, heading towards the hatch. "Looks like we're home."
Alex gave a quiet nod. He waited for Sam to help Irons up and out of the hatch. After she climbed through, he followed her, standing up on top of the dragon and stretching, embracing the rain.
Several figures emerged from the regimental HQ nearby, heading right for the tank. Alex acknowledged them with an informal wave, hopping off of the tank and moving up with his wife to meet them. Here we go again…
