1657 hours, September 16th, 2542 (UNSC military calendar)
Akseli Memorial Hospital, Bhaakto City, Equatorial Plains Province, Alluvion
"Someone give me a SITREP!" General Pallonis of the 13th Palaven Legion barked as the basement turned command center shook. The Covenant armor and artillery in the southern districts were shelling the city center with everything they had, forcing the defenders to dig in deep in the ruined city.. Whole buildings were melting around them. The bombardment had to have severed a power line somewhere, as lights sputtered and the holotable, which Pallonis' ad hoc staff used to stay apprised of the situation, died.
It had all been so simple after New Ghent. Pallonis had led the 13th Palaven in several operations in the human Inner Colonies so far; five worlds had been cleared of Covenant thanks to their assistance. Each of those operations, while bloody, had been a success, but the battle for Alluvion was quickly turning into a vicious meat grinder.
The Coalition had been in control of Alluvion for just under a month, and had been in the process of evacuating its civilian population to the UNSC inner colonies. The 101st ODST Regiment and 13th Palaven Legion had been moving to the Bhaakto City Spaceport where they would board the transports that would take them into orbit and then to a new battle elsewhere, while the three million men of the 6th Scatha Legion would take over the garrison duties. To help them with that, the UNSC had deployed the 12th Marine Regiment, an assortment of other units and a small battlefleet that would use Alluvion as a base of operations. The warships took position in orbit while the transports and dropships ferried the troops to the planet below. In normal situations, there would have been traffic jams as civilian evacuation efforts and military landings jossled for priorities. But Alluvion had barely had any human civilian left by the time the Coalition arrived. All that remained was the remaining civilian population of the capital city, and a handful of remote towns. Then, just as the first wave of dropships was about to land and the second was launching, the Covenant attacked
The timing had been suspiciously perfect, down to a second: just as the slipspace listening post in the system shut down for a few minutes to perform scheduled maintenance, the Covenant moved in. Their assault carrier had jumped into orbit, weapons hot, and immediately launched fighters, dropships and drop pods, ignoring the warships in favor of the transport fleet and its attendant shuttles. Covenant strike craft, pulse lasers and plasma torpedoes killed over a million turian soldiers still in transit or already on final approach - mostly the former. It was a disaster, to say the least.
Things down on the ground hadn't been any easier. Almost simultaneously, the Covenant staged simultaneous attacks against various strategic locations on the planet. Going by scattered reports, those ranged from plasma and antimatter bombs levelling entire city blocks (and more often than not one facility or another) to raids against the outlying outposts by the Covenant special forces. Unlike normal Covenant attacks, they focused on military targets, not the remaining shelters containing the remaining civilians. He'd already lost quite a few officers, including two colonels, to such attacks. Some units reported heavy casualties; some went dark entirely.
And, of course, the Covenant drop pods had hit all over the city's southern ward. Despite heavy resistance by the Coalition forces deployed there, the Covenant advance force was working to secure a foothold while the remnants of the previous occupation force, smelling blood, surged from the hills.
He wished Major Leonard Ross was here; he'd had quite a good working relationship with the human But the Major and the surviving Marines from New Ghent had been recalled back to UNSC space to undergo retraining as ODSTs, in light of their exemplary performance. He'd just have to work with the Colonel of the 101st.
Or he would, if Colonel Williams wasn't leading from the front in accordance with some ODST custom he cited that dictated all officers command from the front. This wouldn't have been a problem, if not for the Covenant suddenly showing an unknown propensity for EWAR. The enemy had smuggled portable jammers into the city, significantly hampering communications between the turian and human forces. His technicians were working around the clock to compensate for this, while the Armigers and Cabal ran around hunting for the jammers. For now, he was using messenger drones, hardlines, and even runners.
"The second wave of Covenant dropships is landing around the capital, with a single massive cluster to the south. 101st ODST is currently contesting the primary enemy LZ alongside the remnants of the 81st UNSC Army Armored Regiment. The 1st Armored Brigade of the 13th Legion is moving to assist." Senior Lieutenant Gila Setina, a communications officer recently transferred from Admiral Karandis' command to assist in ground operations, reported. She was frantically at work at her station. A hot-tempered yet focused turian with an eye on promotions and growth, she'd worked hard; Karandis would be recommending her for advanced officer training soon. "Fleet is scrambling all fighters to provide cover to our forces. 6th Scatha units on the ground have regrouped and are moving to aid 101st ODST by attacking the Covenant landing site from the west. Surviving dropships are heading to land in the city itself." She paused. "The comm buoy has been destroyed before we could confirm if Command received our distress signal."
"Keep our birds in the air and have them do whatever they can to disrupt the landing!" the general ordered; he activated his omni-tool and tried to get the holo-table to work. After sputtering for a few seconds, it lit up.
The city was being mapped by swarms of recon and tactical drones to provide a real-time feed of the battle. Due to Covenant jamming, the drones were daisy-chaining their messages, leading to some delay, but it was within acceptable parameters. Until the Cabal could find and destroy the hidden jammers, it would have to do.
A human 440 mm artillery battery in the northern ward was shelling the Covenant landing zone, wiping out whole columns of disembarking troops and wrecking armor, while turian artillery and UNSC missile batteries were firing non-stop at the targets being called in by forces on the field. Meanwhile, the pockets of Coalition troops stranded in the southern part of the city were mired in brutal urban combat as they fought their way back to the main Coalition force. As this was happening, Jiris IFVs were launching coordinated missile volleys at the Covenant dropships and fighters, taking out dozens of aircraft with each volley. Automated anti-air turrets placed across the rooftops opened fire at every Covenant target in range, lighting up the sky with tracer fire, missile contrails and lasers.
It was raining corpses across the city.
The Covenant's strategy was starting to become apparent. Bhaakto City was split into two parts: a suburb to the south, across the Ellana river, and a heavily industrialized north. Pallonis could not determine why they had landed south of the river, although that could be because it was the widest open area that was still close enough for even the Wraiths to provide fire support. The Covenant were forcing their way up the main roads from the southern part of the city, towards the bridges that crossed the Ellana river and allowed access to the city center. They weren't doing the usual tactic of a wide advance across the whole front. Instead they had concentrated their forces into a heavy spearhead that ground Bhaakto City down before it, while sending skirmishing forces to find weaknesses.
The rest of the Covenant forces that had landed turned out to primarily be Jackals and Elites, moving up in smaller groups that operated independently, searching for ways into the city, softening up defensive positions and going after targets of opportunity. More than one outpost reported cloaked Elites after successfully fending off an attack before going silent.
The Covenant was adapting to the Coalition. The revelation was chilling. They used their plasma mortars and air superiority to level the city in advance of the main ground assault and force the defenders to hunker down, then concentrated their best forces and forced the Coalition troops into close-quarters battle where the superior Elite heavy infantry could force their way through the defensive lines. As they did this, they sent skirmishing forces along the city's edges, looking for ways inside and providing a diversion. Any defensive force that put up a fight was systematically targeted by Special Ops elites… that is, if they didn't decide to call in artillery instead.
"I want constant updates on the progress of the Covenant landings, and their troop movements. We need to contest them before they get established. The 6th Scatha are to regroup, move up to the northern bank of the Ellana river and prepare to hold it against Covenant crossings. Send out search and rescue teams to link up with forces that are under jamming. Have the engineers demolish buildings to block enemy approach and lines of sight and force the enemy into killing zones. Have they mined the bridges and train tunnels?" As an officer nodded an affirmative, the turian general continued. "Good. Set the-"
Unmistakable sounds of plasma rifle fire, interspersed with report of mass accelerators, echoed through the room, cutting him off.
"Raid!" a turian voice yelled over the intercom. "Elite clo-" the scream was cut off by the sizzle of an energy sword slicing through flesh. The line went dead.
The command center immediately sprung into crisis mode. The human officers produced pistols and submachine guns, activating their barrier generator belts, while the turian officers put on their helmets and prepared their weapons - a mixture of rifles, shotguns and heavy pistols.
The door to the command center was slammed shut, locked with reinforced bars and barricaded with cabinets. Tables were kicked over and portable barrier generators were set up. Covenant Special Forces raids on command centers were something Coalition officers had grown to fear greatly. They were rare due to heavy protection detail major command nodes were usually assigned, but when they happened, few lived to tell the tale.
Standard procedure was for the Command Center to go under lockdown and prepare to defend themselves. The forces guarding the base would either fend off the raid or buy enough time for the officers to prepare defenses and destroy vital data.
"I'm encrypting the data and syncing the kill-programs to our heartbeats!" Setina yelled as she frantically entered several commands into her omni-tool, then moved the foldup computer off the table she was using and kicked the table over to provide some cover.
In the event most of the officers died, every hard drive would instantly wipe itself, and then the power governor would overload the electronics, burning them out. It was a precaution born out of experience gained back during the Krogan Rebellions.
From outside the door he could hear screaming, yelling, the sound of sizzling energy blades cutting through flesh and the resounding staccato of firearms, followed by thumps of mass accelerator rounds impacting concrete.
Then the door began to glow at the seams; the Covenant strike team was cutting their way in.
Pallonis' grip tightened on his Phaeston rifle. He had gone through his monthly marksmanship exams and did his hand to hand drills, but he hadn't fought on the front lines in over a decade; he had no illusions about his odds. So, he made peace with his life and prepared for what was to come, an unspoken battle cry on his lips. He would make his death count for something.
The door was kicked open, and the defenders opened fire. But there was nothing there, just an empty door. Pallonis immediately realized what would happen next.
"Prepare for fla-" He yelled, only to see a pair of grenades bounce around the corner into the room. He hit the deck. Then the grenades went off, blinding the defenders with a powerful flash of light. Some fell, covering their blinded eyes, as unshielded electronics were overloaded by the accompanying electromagnetic pulse and optics shut down to compensate for the flash.
Pallonis' helmet went dark as well; he couldn't see anything, but he heard plasma grenades going off and energy blades striking flesh and metal. He screamed at the top of his lungs and fired on full auto at where he remembered the doorway was, hoping it could buy him some time. Seconds stretched into eternity as he expected a killing blow to land on him. He heard plasma whizzing around him, people screaming, the slashing of energy swords.
A few impossibly long moments later - later, going through mission recorder data, Pallonis would discover that only five seconds had passed since the flash - the helmet's microcameras rebooted and he saw a charnel house.
An Elite with two energy swords had leapt into the room. Moving like water flowing across freshly cut stone, the alien slashed through the guards facing the doorway with quick precise strikes, sidestepping omni-blade thrusts and sending a defender flying with a kick that instantly shattered the human's neck.
Another Elite followed, wielding a plasma rifle in each hand and moving with fluid grace of an Asari dancer. He fired each rifle at a different target, each shot expertly aimed, going after the more lightly armed human officers, with the odd shots fired at the armored turian officers being long, precise bursts from both rifles at the same time. Once the barriers collapsed, plasma bolts blew off limbs, flashed blood to steam and boiled turians alive inside their armor. The commander center was filled with frantic gunfire and the screams of the dying.
The human officers and guards in the room had taken the worst of it, as the intruders singled them out and used their superior strength, speed and reach to dismantle the defenders in close quarters and evade return fire. Another plasma grenade flew in, landing near the server stacks the humans were using as cover. Some brave - or, perhaps, dazed - aide rolled out of cover, picked up the laptop the grenade was stuck to and made to throw it back even as others around him frantically scrambled for new cover. The grenade blew up in his hands, burning him and those around him that weren't fast enough to crisp.
Meanwhile, Pallonis managed to land a few hits on the first Elite. His target turned around, noticed Pallonis firing at him and rushed in, dodging many of Pallonis' frantic shots and crossing his energy swords to shield himself from the rest.. The bullets were flash-vaporized on impact. The general felt fear grip his heart: he didn't know the Elites could do that. Time slowed as the Elite closed in, blades raised for a killing blow as the Phaeston overheated and vented steam...
The unmistakable report of a human shotgun thundered from his left as the Elite staggered, his shield collapsing. The elite turned his head just as another slug hit, wrecking his helmet and breaking his momentum. Pallonis turned his head to the left and saw his savior: an ODST was standing behind the now-wrecked holotable. He pumped his shotgun and fired again, this time smashing the Elite's shoulder and staggering him even more. Roaring in pain and anger, the beast used the momentum to pivot slightly and throw his off-hand weapon at the ODST. The latter dove sideways, and the plasma blade merely severed his arm at the shoulder instead of his head.
Unfortunately for the Elite, the ODST distracted him for a few crucial seconds. Desperation lending him strength, Pallonis sprung to his feet, activating the Phaeston's bayonet, and thrust the flash-forged blade in the attacker's throat. The creature gurgled and sagged, both energy swords burning themselves out.
"This is for Madrigal, hinge-head," the ODST spat, getting to his feet with the help of his remaining arm before drawing a pistol.
At this moment, the third Elite entered the fray, this one wielding one of the fearsome Covenant needle rifles, and opened fire, two shots taking out a turian guard's barriers and the third penetrating his helmet and blowing up inside. One of the human aides picked up the fallen turian's rifle and returned fire, only for a needle to dig into his torso and blow him apart.
The ODST who had saved Pallonis opened fire with a Magnum in his left hand, taking down the shields of the rifle-wielding Spec Ops Elite with half a magazine of explosive rounds. The alien returned fire, the first two needles collapsing the ODST's barriers and the third one lodging itself in the trooper's armor before exploding and tearing a hole in his abdomen. The distraction cost the Elite as the others concentrated their fire; with his shields disabled, he went down in seconds.
The surviving Elite turned to retreat, somehow almost running backward as he fired his twin plasma rifles, as the defenders' return fire chased him and the first responders burst through the other entrance He holstered one of the rifles and threw a plasma grenade into the room as he dove through the door. It landed right in front of Pallonis. Even as he made to jump to safety, the rational part of his mind pointed out that he would never leave the blast radius in time and that even kinetic barriers wouldn't be of much help this close.
However, the end never came as the wounded one-armed ODST's leapt forward, trailing intestines, shoved the general out of the way with his sole arm and threw himself on top of the grenade. He screamed "For Madrigal!" as the plasma consumed him. The ODST's barriers and body absorbed much of the blast's energy; some heat still bled through, but it was survivable, only scorching the surface of Pallonis's armor. When the flash faded, there was naught but ash.
Pallonis was stunned for a moment by the sacrifice, but quickly resolved to make it count. He got to his feet and turned to look at what was left of the command center. Most of the equipment was ruined, and the ground was littered with bodies. Humans and turians lay dead or dying on the ground - two thirds of his staff, gone in less than a minute. Even as ODSTs streamed in and secured the area, he quickly roused the survivors to action.
"Call in the engineers and medics immediately. Whoever can walk, salvage what equipment you can, destroy what you can't and help the critically wounded. After that, report back to me. We are heading for the secondary command post."