Target Alpha. Supervolcano. Inner power plant.
"Blue-Two. Are you there?" John-117 asked as his vision started to blur. His breathing was heavy, and he didn't know how long he could go on. His chest wound was debilitating, no matter how much Bio-foam he used on his wounds. Every breath he took was more painfull than the last, and he was starting to feel drowsy. "Blue-Two. Confirm." John ordered. Fred was still slumped against the wall, unmoving, his armor filled with two dozen deep stab wounds, and the ground before him covered with blood.
John tried to crawl towards his comrade. Fred had been conscious only moments before. John couldn't lose him as well as Linda and Kelly. There was an unknown emotion nagging at John as he looked at the fallen Spartans of Blue Team. Pain shot through his chest as the plasma-scorched wound on his chest nearly tore itself open again. John broke his usually stoic silence with a pained groan. He kept crawling, scrambling with his legs to get back onto his feet. He couldn't get a solid grip, and each time he exerted himself too much, the pain in his chest would throw him back onto the cold hard floor.
Kelly's throat had been shot full of Biofoam, but there had been no movement or signs of life from her since she'd fallen. She and Linda now lay next to each other, pushed into an alcove John could guard more easily. Linda had gone into shock, but still had some signs of life. He had used the last of Blue Team's biofoam to fill the gaping hole in her chest.
John had gotten halfway over to Fred when he collapsed again, his breathing ragged, coughing up blood and pieces of his lungs. John overrode the safeties of his Mjolnir, and commanded it to move forward. The armor obeyed his commands and began to crawl forward, ignoring the protestations of John's chest. It felt like he was going to rip open his chest wound, but he persisted, driven by the need to provide medical aid to his fellow Spartan.
Just as he was about to reach Fred, the worst pain he'd ever felt in his life shot out of his chest. His arms went limp inside his armor, and his breathing stopped. John coughed and wheezed as his lungs filled with his own blood. The inside of his helmet started to fill with blood as he coughed against the inside of his visor. But his armor kept moving according to the mental commands, dragging John along with it.
He took heavy breaths until the pain faded away, he regained control over his heartbeat, and he began to move again. Each movement felt like pure agony, but he made it in the end, moving up next to Fred and sitting down next to him. He activated a diagnostic program for his Omni-tool and began to look Fred over for any wounds or damage that he might have missed.
Much to his chagrin, there was nothing. Fred had gone into shock, even with his Mjolnir armor doing everything it could to keep him alive.
John leaned against the wall next to Fred and began to sit down. His chest was getting worse by the second, and he had trouble breathing. All he could do was wait and hope for rescue.
Landing Zone Gamma.
Four Hundred Kilomets North-east of Target Alpha. (The Supervolcano)
"Incoming!" Nialla yelled as she tackled the Orbital Drop Shock Trooper aside with her jetpack. They tumbled forward into a large crater, rolling into it as a plasma mortar hit just beyond the lip of the crater. Turning a dozen men into charred husks surrounding a smoky black crater.
The Coalition had only barely begun to land its advance forces, and they had already come under a horrendous bombardment that was throwing their plans into disarray. She'd lost her squad during the drop, and was just trying to avoid getting killed in the plasma bombardment while the BATTLENET was established.
She glanced at the ODST, noting he had a gash in his armor that was letting the noxious atmosphere inside. "Your armor is compromised. Is your O2 still functional?" She asked the black-armored man. While Chi Rho's air pressure was tolerable for most carbon-based life, it consisted of what felt like naught but methane, sulfur, carbon dioxide, microscopic slivers of glass, and just enough oxygen to make death exceedingly slow. The ODST gave her a thumbs-up, and she pulled him to his feet. Patting the dust off his shoulders, and sending him on his way.
Crashed Turian transports containing vehicles and resupply pods lay scattered across the broken glass terrain. Nialla glanced around in a haze, still trying to find where the rest of her squad had dropped. She glanced over her shoulder, at the landing zone they'd ostensibly been sent to secure just a kilometer downhill. Dozens of dropships, and small shuttles were landing down one after the other, each of them dropping its cargo ramps to disgorge a tide of men and material which immediately got to work fortifying the landing zone.
Nialla took aim with her Phaeston in the direction her VI told her the BATTLENET had detected oncoming Covenant and immediately laid down suppressive fire. Her second burst caught a jackal wearing a mask in the throat, taking off its head. She zoomed in with her visor, noting that the enemy had appeared from what looked like a cave.
A line of fifteen automated human tank depots had been dropped from orbit and were already busy churning out tanks from packaged sets of components. Large man-sized components were lifted by mechanical arms, welded, drilled, and riveted, and then pushed off the assembly line and immediately boarded by their crews. Every possible measure to save space and get as many forces to the surface as possible were being taken. Each depot had ten tanks worth of tracks, hulls, and turrets, which they quickly assembled, after which the empty buildings were quickly being repurposed as repair shops. The engines of the parked spaceships threw up clouds of dust and glass as they waited for a gap in the incoming ships to let them run the gauntlet back up into orbit. Around the impromptu spaceport, what looked from the distance like a small city of prefabricated structures were rising up all around them.
There were dozens of small tank formations with the initial drop, all of them moving out in small groups of three or four, heading out in all directions to skirmish with the oncoming Covenant forces. They, in all likelihood, would not last for very long against a Covenant armored assault, but that wasn't their purpose. They were here just to buy time for the actual invasion force for get down to the planet.
The airwaves were thick with hundreds of ongoing conversations, orders, sitreps, and intelligence briefings as the landing forces rushed to deploy themselves before the Covenant could properly counter them. They almost looked like an uncoordinated mass, with just constant commands from their VI's and the BATTLENET telling them where to go. But it was an organized chaos. Squads converged upon their rendezvous points, while the order of battle was revamped by strategic AI at a moment's notice. The UNSC had insisted that the Turians use Smart AI to coordinate the mixed species BATTLENET, and in the end, the Hierarchy had conceded in exchange for a right to veto AI assigned to the Turian forces. Nialla was happy she didn't have to meet any of the smart AI the Turian generals had to use. She hated the damn things.
Nialla felt a knot of tension in her gut as she thought about all the soldiers who were likely to get shot down as their transports attempted to disgorge troops upon Chi Rho. The Coalition was making do with woefully inadequate bulk troop transports. There were just too many troops that needed to get to the surface, and not enough specialized landing ships. She continued towards where the BATTLENET told her the rest of her Squad was. She couldn't change the course of the battle, only fight it. That was something she was happy about.
"Sergeant Nialla. Have you seen the others?" She heard Pallonis call out to her.
The recently demoted general slid into cover next to Nialla, his Armiger armor still fresh and devoid of any nicks or scratches. The General of what had once been the 13th Palavan Drop Regiment had bumped himself down to a basic Armiger Havoc soldier to atone for his failure on Alluvion. "We're half a kilometer to the west. I came to get you. Yeltis is advancing towards the objective." As he spoke, a navigation marker appeared on Nialla's HUD. She nodded at him.
"then let's go. Remember to not skyline yourself, Pallonis." She took a running start, then jumped into the air, her armor's jets firing up and launching her forwards as she skimmed the ground. She flew high enough to not accidentally hit any fellow soldiers, but not so high as to risk skylining herself. Carbine rounds shot past her or bounced off her barriers, while plasma fire not aimed at her, splashed across her barriers multiple times. Her barriers came close to dropping, but held just long enough to recycle. She whirled around, flying with her feet facing towards the Covenant, so as to produce the smallest possible target for them to hit.
Nialla saw her squad racing across the ground on their packs, and headed towards them, angling to land in front of them. She tucked in and shut off her pack just as she hit the ground, rolling forward easily and hopping back onto her feet with a puff from her pack. A quick braking with her boot stopped her, and she re-ignited her pack, now leading the formation. Ravager squad gave her nary a glance, instead professionally filing into position behind her. Command over the local tactical network was transferred to her without
"Status report. My BATTLENET VI is still updating" She commanded over SQUADCOM, guiding the squad behind her up the large Hill that her BATTLENET marked as their destination. The TACMAP showed large Human formations having crossed the hill already and digging in at the base. She zoomed out with a mental command and noted that it was directly in the way of the Covenant and the landing zones. It would be important to hold the hill, lest the Covenant destroy the landing zone.
"The Anti-Air tower we were going to hit was never finished. But the Covenant resistance is heavier than we expected." Corporal Yeltis said. "The Covenant are beginning to get too close to comfort to the LZ. Snipers and artillery are taking a toll on us. Orbital surveillance reports- Scatter!" He yelled as a plasma mortar arced overhead and slammed down at what had been the center of their formation mere moments before.
Kelnare swerved far aside and whirled around, before she got control over her pack again. "Son of a bitch!" She yelled. "Flyboys are slacking if they're already shelling the base!" She said, clutching her shotgun tightly. "You were saying?" She asked Yeltis.
"They were ready for us and started hitting us the moment we hit the dirt." Yeltis growled. "We lost so many officers that the BATTLENET lost half its strategic cloud-computing capacity, and it redistribute itself across the surviving officers''
Upon hearing this, Nialla opened her tactical map with a thought, and examined the state of the frontline. She immediately noticed that a regiment of ODST's were dug in at the base of the slope, and were marked as engaged in hand to hand combat. Then a message lit up on her HUD. "Ravager Squad Reassigned to Cross-Drop-Battalion."
Well that made things nice and simple.
"Prepare to jump and to engage the enemy in CQC." Shotguns were drawn, Omni-blades were lit, and kinetic barriers cycled. Ravager squad closed in upon the enemy, then the moment the first Covenant weapons fire hit near them, Nialla yelled. "Death from above!" and boosted herself up into the sky, followed closely by her squad, which spread out into a wide formation.
From high up in the sky, Nialla had a good look at just what had happened to this former Human world. There was almost nothing but blackened glass as far as the eye could see, all except for a single massive city in the distance. The Assembly Yard was enormous, and put most Turian planetary industrial centers to shame in terms of opulence and defensive weaponry. Each skyscraper glowed ominously with the unmistakable tint of Covenant plasma lines, which made the city almost look like a massive living entity made from purple metal, with veins of plasma running all across its surface. From it marched what looked like an ocean of purple and blue, which was advancing towards the landing zones at full speed. From dozens of kilometers away, they already began firing their Wraith mortars, sending streams of plasma bolts towards the landing zones..
Nialla homed in on the ODST's she'd rushed to assist, flying towards them as fast as her armor would allow. Her strategic map was quickly starting to fill in as more processing power became available to the BATTLENET, and its capacities kept increasing. Tens of thousands of soldiers were fighting across a stretch of front several dozen kilometers wide, and multiple deep. The fighting was fluid, and composed mainly of pockets that went back and forth as the Coalition aggressively pushed the Covenant away from the landing zone, or was encircled by a Covenant counterattack and had to fight its way out. The ODST's had taken over a formation of large glass shards that protruded from the ground, and were using them as cover from the Covenant. The ground before the ODST's was littered with dead Grunts. Hundreds of them spread across wide piles which the Covenant was using for cover as they advanced.
The BATTLENET highlighted the squads of Brutes that were brandishing rifles that shot out molten spikes, and holding their dreaded Gravity Hammers, who were rushing across the open at a full sprint. They crashed into the ODST's and immediately began laying into them with their weapons. Bodies went flying, and IFF trackers began going dark one after the other. Grenades went off, Omni-blades were lit, and shotguns roared as the ODST' fought to repel the charge. A Brute in ornate Golden armor, and wielding a massive hammer charged right into the fray, shrugging off the fire from half a dozen ODST's as it turned men and women into red smears across the glassy ground. Nialla saw its shields flicker and nearly glow from the fully automatic blasts from one of the fallen ODST's shotguns. Nialla flew in for the kill, lighting her omni-blade and pulling back her arm to time the strike with a final thrust of her pack.
There was a loud meaty crunch as a heavily-armored Turian cyborg flew into a Brute at a hundred kilometers an hour and rammed an omni-blade into its skull. The creature went down as a bloody heap, slain instantly. She pulled out her pistol with a free hand and opened fire at the Covenant. Her shots impacted the unshielded chest of another Brute, causing it to scream in pain, only to quickly be silenced by the retort of Yeltis's sniper rifle.
The rest of her squad slammed down around her, immediately opening fire into the brutal melee. Shields flared and crackled, armor was ripped apart, and flesh tore open from the sustained firepower. Suddenly thrown at the Brutes. They wavered for but a moment, and the ODST's renewed their attacks, taking down several Brutes with shotgun blasts and Omni-Blade thrusts.
Pallonis rushed forward and lit his omni-bayonet, firing at the most heavily armored of the Brutes as he moved. He cut half its hand off with a precise slash, then maneuvered the barrel of his rifle towards the Brute's chest and opened fire. The Brute roared as blood spurted from its back from an armor-piercing round passing through. The Brute dropped its weapon and punched Pallonis with enough force to send him flying, only for the Turian to engage his jets and re-assert his footing. The Brute slammed into him, grabbing him tightly around the waist with enough force to begin crushing the former General's armor. Pallonis pulled back his right arm and lit his omni-blade, then stabbed it upwards into the Brute's skull. The Brute, however, refused to die, and knocked Pallonis down with a headbutt, then began to pound its fists into Pallonis's chest, denting it. A woman in black armor rushed forward, holding something in her right hand. She punched it into a wound in the Brute's back with a blur of blue power. Then grabbed the Brute in a biotic field, and threw it aside as the grenade detonated inside.
The Asari reached out for the direction the Brutes advanced, and raised a barrier before her. The ODST's which had remained behind cover now stood up, and opened fire through the barrier. The ODST's shotguns roared mightily, blowing off limbs or pulping brute chests. Nialla noted that they were Batarial AT-12 shotguns. However, each of them looked different from the other. Some had modified sights, others had changes to the grip or barrel, while others had been noticeably remodeled to look more "human." The man marked by her HUD as a "Sergeant Edward Buck" was standing atop a dead Brute Chieftain, holding its Gravity Hammer. He rushed forward and brought it down on a Brute with a spike rifle that was drawing a bead on a squadmate, resulting in a shower of gore.
"Troopers. We're not taking one step back!" The ODST yelled, then rammed the blade at the base of the Gravity Hammer into the ground. Another Asari appeared inside a pack of Brutes in a blast of blue energy. Shifting energy fields tore through armor and flesh, vaporizing the Brute standing where she'd appeared, and wounding the surrounding ones. The Commando's blade lashed out, the biotic field around the blade cutting wide gashes through the flesh of her opponents, as she struck out with a combination of biotic infused martial arts, and precise cuts and thrusts of her blade.
Nialla pulled Pallonis up from the ground. "Did you not get the briefing?! Don't engage a brute in close quarters unless you have to!" She scolded as she picked up his fallen weapon and shoved it into his hands. "With me!" she yelled for those around her to hear. She pushed forward, trying to drive the Brutes away before the next wave hit.
From the hill behind them, squads of Turians in black armor opened fire down the hills with Machine Guns set into the glass, firing into the Brutes from multiple directions and catching them in a deadly crossfire that finally took the wind out of their charge, The Brutes began to falter and slowly back off in the face of determined resistance.
Nialla whirled around as a spray of spikes slammed into her barriers, and gunned the attacker down with a stream of incendiary rounds. The brute roared and charged forward, not seeming to notice its burning hide. Kelnara slammed into the side of the Brute with a blast from her thrusters, sending it sprawling. She quickly put the barrel against the nape of the Brute's neck and fired. Kelnara offered Nialla a quick fistbump, which Nialla promptly ignored. Nialla moved up next to the ODST leader, continuing to fire into the attacking Brutes. What had minutes before been a well defensible formation of rocks and glass, was quickly turning into a charnel house as the Covenant attack intensified. The parched ground eagerly drank up the blood of the fallen, turning into a sucking black and red mire.
A drop pod slammed into the ground. Quickly followed by another, and another, and another. Dozens more ODST's piled out of their pods and sprung into motion. Nialla's augmented senses noted the flood of hand signals, quick terse commands, and point to point transmissions shared by the human soldiers as the new arrivals began to fortify their position. The first wave of ODST's were already gathering the tags of the fallen, restocking their supplies, and refilling their air tanks.
A Covenant Seraph slammed into the ground just fifty meters from the fight, detonating and sending out a spray of shrapnel that spattered across Biotic barriers. One of the Asari was knocked off her feet by a larger chunk, and promptly began venting her frustrations with an angry tirade of crude vocabulary and curse words. An ODST medic ran up to the Asari, but ignored her when seeing she wasn't wounded.
Nialla offered a hand to the Commando, and pulled her up to her feet. "New unit?" Nialla asked while superheated spiker rounds flew overhead. She was glancing at what looked like a mixed insignia showing a Human, Turian, and an Asari skull stacked on top of each other with a sword stuck through them.
"First Cross-Drop Battalion. I don't think we officially exist yet." The Asari said, raising a hand that stopped a metal spike in place before it embedded itself in her head. She balled the fist, pulling the spike in closer, then punched forward, throwing it like a spear of blue fire through the large boulder its shooter had been hiding behind. The spike went straight through the rock, followed by a painful roar. "Sisters. Cover. Now!" The Asari commanded, and her Commando sisters began using their biotic powers to rip deep holes into the ground, stacking Brute bodies for cover, or pulling down some of the larger rocks and laying them on their sides.
Nialla looked up for the first time in the fight and saw a scene of carnage. There were no fighters or bombers to be seen, instead there were nothing but streams of missiles, mass accelerator rounds, and plasma projectiles flying back and forth as aerial forces duelling beyond visual range. It looked like nothing less, than the sky being on fire.
Then the ground started to rumble. In the distance, a shape rose from beneath the surface, and then another, and another. Large mounds of sand and glass broke apart to reveal the Scarabs that had been hidden beneath them. Dozens of Scarabs were rising from beneath the sands, their glowing green eyes lighting up and aiming towards the approaching ships, catching them dead-to-rights.
Something slammed into the lead Scarab and knocked its head back, causing the shot to go wild. This was quickly followed by another impact that blew off one of its legs, and then another, almost tripping the Scarab over before it stabilized itself.
The Scarabs adjusted their aim, turning their guns towards where the projectiles had come from, when another volley of railgun rounds hit them, tearing off legs or digging deep into nanolaminate armor. A formation of UNSC Cobra tanks with double-barreled railguns had crested the hill, and opened fire immediately as they thundered into range. Next came the Grizzly Tanks, their cannons roaring, and each shell finding its mark in the armored hide of a Scarab, or blowing apart a Wraith tank in a single shot.
The Covenant opened fire at the new arrivals, and enough plasma to melt cities was fired at the largest collection of tanks Nialla had ever seen which stretched almost as far as she could see. UNSC Grizzly tanks were leading Scorpion and Cobra tanks advanced in wide formations, their combined firepower bringing the Scarab advance to a halt, which had forgotten about the incoming dropships and instead engaged the heavy armor with wide sweeps of their plasma cannons that melted their way through tank armor as if it were butter.
Heavy Kodiak artillery rounds arced overhead and slammed down on formations of Covenant infantry, while a flight of Sparrowhawks fired their missiles and lasers from extreme ranges. A flight of AC-220 vultures dove in from orbit, their two twin autocannons churning up the earth and ripping apart the armored hides of the Covenant Scarabs. The Scarabs returned fire, having completely forgotten about the soft soldiers before them. Flights of banshees and Seraph fighters launched, to be met by just as many UNSC Longsword fighters.
"I didn't even know we had so many Grizzly tanks left." Buck muttered as a second wave of tanks emerged from the landing zones.
Nialla laughed, and pointed at Buck. "Its good to see you used the time we bought you properly. This is fuckin beautiful!"
Turian Tanks and APC's drove out of the hangar bays of descending ships, igniting their thrusters and slowing themselves down before they crashed into the ground. A cheer went up through the drop soldiers as wave after wave of grav-chute, dropships, and tanks began to either descend from orbit or drive up from the landing zone.
The Covenant armor roared to life and charged forward to meet the Coalition. Their soldiery screaming over speakers or beneath breathing masks. The real ground battle of Chi Rho was beginning.
-
Target Alpha. Supervolcano. Inner power plant.
A loud bang woke John. He strained to open his eyes, seeing an Elite standing before him with an energy sword drawn. It dropped to the side, a neat hole in its head. He had trouble making out what happened, when he noticed someone else standing over him. He slowly looked at who it was.
He thought he was hallucinating when he saw Samara kneeling before him, her armored faceplate covered with large splatters of Elite blood. She was saying something that John couldn't properly make out. She turned around and yelled something to someone he couldn't see. An Asari with the markings of a Medic looked him over, distress plain on her face, shaking her head and waving her Omni-tool over his body. "Stay with me. Your heart is failing. I need to insert a quick fix." The Asari fabricated a small round device with short sharp spikes on it, with her omni-tool, and thrust it into the wound on John's chest, directly onto his heart.
A squad of Asari in black armor was laying down covering fire in the direction of the bridge Blue Team had destroyed. John's hearing was starting to return. "Justicar Samara. I am losing whole squads to those freaks!" One of the Asari yelled. Firing fully automatically. "Make the call. Can we get them out or not!?"
She didn't have a chance to react. John saw a Hoplite charge through the firepower the Asari had thrown at it, with its hardlight shield, and moving so quickly John could barely see it, ramming the rip of an energy spear through the neck of the Asari. The Hoplit whirled around, using the blades on both sides of the staff, cutting through every Commando holding the hallway in a single movement that mortally wounded each of them. It glanced over at Samara and rushed towards the Justicar.
Samara reached out for the Hoplite, surrounding it with a field of biotic energy, the attacker slowed down, but kept advancing. Samara groaned in exertion as she aimed both hands at the attacker, trying to throw it back. The Hoplite was thrown back , but flipped around in the air and charged again, firing a plasma pistol at Samara that splashed against her barriers. Samara's biotic fields seemed to have trouble properly forming around the Hoplite.
Samara rushed forward in a blur of blue light, drawing her Commando sword and nearly beheading the Hoplite before it raised its weapon to block the attack.
The Justicar and Hoplite clashed so fast and so quickly that it looked like a roaring ball of blue energy around the two of them. The Justicar managed to cut the energy spear in half, but failed to land a followup before the Hoplite drew a backup energy sword. The Hoplite unleashed a flurry of blows with its energy sword and the sharpened sides of its shield.
Samara backed off, her movements sped up by her biotic powers as she seemed to almost dance her way out of each of the Hoplite's strikes. But the Justicar was slowing down, and her movement growing sloppier. Suddenly the Hoplite successfully fainted Samara and cut her across the chest, sending her sprawling backwards. The Hoplite leaped forward to deliver a killing blow.
When Samara grabbed both its weapons with her hands. A biotic field encased Samara's hand as she grabbed the Energy sword by the blade and the Hoplite's shield arm around its wrists. The Asari slowly rose to her feet, forcing the struggling hoplite down to its knees.
She pulled.
The Hoplite's arms were ripped free. And before it could make a sound, Samara rammed the Hoplite's energy sword through its head.
Samara backed off, turning towards the Asari Medic, and the Commandos holding the other entrances. John slowly turned to look at what Samara was looking at. The hallway leading to the reactor was a storm of blue biotic explosions and a frantic melee as other Commandos finished off another of the Hoplites and its Elite escorts. More than a dozen Commandos lay spread through the corridor, with only two Hoplites and their Elite escorts to show for it. Samara looked tired and exhausted, and she had a hand across her armor's chest. She straightened up and yelled. "Serrice Guard. Gather the wounded and evacuate immediately. Nihlus has secured an escape craft." Samara began to move, moving with fluid grace as she led her Commandos away.
John felt a glow surround his body as one of the Asari medics lifted him up. The pain in his chest was unbearable, but he slowly forced himself to his feet, much to the surprise of the Medic. "Get the others." He ordered sternly and forced himself to run alongside Samara. He avoided the levitating members of Blue Team, and focused on the task at hand. The pain was incredible, but he forced himself through it. He wouldn't sit this out. "Sitrep." He said.
Samara looked surprised for but a moment, but then her normally aloof persona re-asserted itself. She looked worried. "Badly. The last transmission we received was that Elites with red blades were hunting the Spartans deployed to the other Assembly Yards. We lost all contact with everyone deployed to target Beta and Epsilon, while only Gamma managed to complete their mission." She grit her teeth in pain. "Nihlus and the Specters managed to steal a dropship and are hiding it nearby."
"What about the objective? Is there another strike force coming?" He asked.
If we're evacuating. What will stop the Covenant forces from sallying out and attacking other landing zones?
"It's scrapped. We can't beat these things." Samara showed a tiny hint of desperation in her speech. "This new threat slaughtered every other Special Forces deployment except for Nihlus and a handful of Blackwatch agents. We'll head into the open, board their dropship, and then fly away before the Covenant get their anti-air working again, or we meet more of these things."
John took the realization in. He almost had difficulty believing it, but it was right in front of him. As hard as he tried, he couldn't think of a way they might still accomplish their mission. But there was nothing they could do. The Covenant had held the Assembly Yard, and forced the Coalition to retreat.
The Spartans had been defeated, and many good soldiers would die because of it.