Chapter I
The first thing he heard was the thrum of engines, but whether they were his or some other craft's was a mystery to Reyes. The second thing he heard was Ethan's voice mixing with Nora's, a voice that was accompanied by his body shaking slightly as his vision finally started returning.
"I'm alright, I'm alright." he announced, only to jolt again as the Raven shuddered and fell further into the shopping center they had crashed into. As he was still recovering from the sudden motion, the sound of class breaking and machine gun fire caught his attention. To his horror, the Warden dropship, workhorse of SDF's ground troops, was gunning down civilians as SDF soldiers on the ground began mopping up the massacre.
Unfortunately, they noticed that the smoldering, precariously perched Raven had survivors inside and they immediately used their boost rigs to jump onto the cracked canopy.
The first trooper earned an armor piercing round through his facemask for the trouble, creating a perfect hold in the glass that was then painted red as the round liquified the soldier's grey matter and blew out the back of his skull. The second didn't fare much better as Salter grabbed his rifle before he could use it and slammed the butt into his mask, disorienting the SDF trooper long enough for Reyes to line up another shot and paint the inside of his mask red too.
This brawl didn't go unnoticed though, and the Warden opened up on the shattered cockpit as Reyes, Salter, Raines, and Ethan pushed out from the crash site and dove into cover as Salter told anyone still breathing to clear the area and get to safety. Rounds kept impacting the blown out store display he had chosen for cover, yet the booming fire of the AATIS network still dominated the battlefield.
"SetDef is using the AATIS guns to hit the fleet!" Nick shouted.
"We have to get to the tower and get those guns back!" Nora replied.
"Damn right we do!" Raines interjected with a burst from the Volk he had picked up off a dead trooper, "We're pushing through and getting to the tower, now!"
"Affirmative, sir!" Ethan answered before the rest of the team could reply, taking the order literally as he rushed forward towards the stairwell where a team of SDF troopers was pouring fire down at Nick and Nora.
Nick had never seen a human move that fast, and it was both awe inspiring and terrifying. As soon as the SetDef soldiers noticed the robot charging them, they attempted to shift fire only for Ethan to open up with his SMG and pepper one of the poor bastards not properly covered.
Before his body hit the floor, Ethan vaulted the stairs in their entirety in three leaping steps, landing on a second trooper with a sickening crack that Reyes knew was that trooper's spine and throwing the third back down the stairs head first right into Salter's line of fire. By the time she put him down with a well-placed shot to the neck, the fourth trooper had already been riddled with bullets and Ethan was reloading.
Nick didn't have time to process the display before Admiral Raines was moving up again and gesturing for the SCARs to follow.
"Scramble your fighters, Reyes." Raines barked as they kept moving forward, the large bay windows of a cafe giving them the perfect view of yet another Warden moving in, guns blazing.
"Affirmative." Nick answered, "All SCARs, this is 1-1, do you read?"
Spotty static was the only reply he got from his earpiece, and Ethan picked up on it too.
"Communications must have been hit, and SDF's breaking for the tower!"
"They're landing troops." Reyes added with a look to Admiral Raines.
"We need the AATIS back under our control, that's all that matters now. Focus and push forward!" he ordered, kicking a nearby gate open for emphasis.
"Ethan, any ordinance on you?" Reyes asked as they rushed through the gate.
"Got frags off the transport!" Nora replied, getting Nick's attention before tossing a bandolier his way. Right as Reyes caught the explosives, Salter tossed one over the stone railing she had taken cover behind. Rather than landing on the ground amongst the SDF troops that had just offloaded, her aim was inside the transport, with the grenade easily making its way through the wide side doors that were still open.
The grenade must have hit something important, possibly a pilot, because right after the grenade exploded, the Warden immediately began losing altitude until it hit the waterfront park that it was hovering over and rolled over into the water, its engines spewing smoke and flame. With their attention firmly on their downed transport, none of the SDF soldiers noticed the grenade that Nick had tossed right at their feet and moments after the gunship had crashed, limbs went flying in all directions. Five red Xs popped up in front of Reyes, to which he gave a mental sigh of relief that his retinal interface hadn't been damaged by the crash.
While not standard for SATO combat troops, SCARs were a different breed both in training and in technology. Rather than relying on a helmet HUD at all times, every SCAR had an ocular implant surgically installed shortly before graduation from the academy. This interface linked them to their base ship, as well as the rest of the SATO network, and had a small enough power draw that it could operate without an external power source. It made SCARs voracious eaters, but that was a calculated flaw that the UNSA found acceptable.
With the freshly offloaded SetDef troops dispatched, the improvised fireteam kept pushing forward, though they didn't get far before another SDF gunship made its presence known, showering their cover with heavy machine gun fire for a moment before the gunner turned his attention to the fleeing civilians. That bloodlust was fatal, and Ethan was quick to punish him with a short burst from his SMG right through the gunner's facemask. His body toppled to the street below and the Warden bugged out before he even touched the pavement.
Once the gunner hit the road, more SDF troops began pouring out of the woodwork, and with wounded civilians streaming past him, and dead civilians in front of him, Reyes recklessly charged forward with his Karma-45 letting off burst after burst.
"Cut'em down!" Nick shouted over the din, and rounds started flying past his head both incoming and outgoing. It wasn't until one slammed into his chest that he finally dove for cover in a nearby garage. It hadn't penetrated his armor but it had knocked the wind out of him, and yet he couldn't help but smile as he noticed something sitting just a few inches away. Without hesitation, he grabbed two of the tiered, cylindrical devices, primed them, and tossed them out the nearby door.
While still in the air, both devices sprang to life, four legs on each catching them on the ground before chittering and sprinting towards the invading martians. Reyes felt a bit of grim satisfaction as his HUD outlined the targets as the seeker grenades latched on, and the tell-tale "X - KILL" popped up after they stopped screaming.
With another two seekers thrown into the fray and with Ethan showcasing just how lethal he really was, the firefight finally ended with the last SDF trooper trying to crawl towards them, a pistol in his mangled hand and blood pouring from the stumps that used to be his legs. Raines kicked it away and put a bullet in his head, muttering something under his breath as Ethan took point through a nearby shop.
"Why are they targeting our civilians?" the robot asked.
"SetDef doesn't have civilians." Nick told him, "To them, everyone is a combatant."
"Only way to save them is to get inside the AATIS tower." Raines added, his statement being punctuated by a two-shot burst from one of the massive railguns.
"Endurance is hit!" Ethan cried, "Watch it! Go right! Go right!"
Reyes and the others were quick to respond, sprinting past yet another storefront to get onto a nearby road, following Ethan's directions right as the UNSA Endurance impacted the water, cracking her in half from the impact and sending a surge of water onto the streets, nearly knocking Reyes over. He considered himself lucky that the luxury yacht that had been berthed close by hadn't hit any of them when the surge from the lake sent it right into a nearby building and cut off the road. They shook off the impromptu bath and started up a side street, working their way up a stairwell only to be greeted by the sight of seekers running at more civilians.
Salter, already infuriated, managed to nail one before it could latch on, and tackled the woman before SetDef troops could gun her down. Ethan, Reyes, and Raines were quick to find cover as well, with Reyes quick to pop up and lay down suppressing fire. Nora gestured to the stairs that they had just come up and once the woman she saved nodded, Nick's wingman started laying down fire as well. It wasn't until she was gone that both of them went back into cover and Ethan took up suppression duty.
"Good work, Fever."
"Not good enough." Salter murmured.
"Cover!" Ethan barked, snapping them both back into the now. They complied, popping up again and giving Ethan covering fire as he charged forward once more. With ruthless efficiency he waded through the fire until he was close enough to kick a display cart into a martian, sending him flying through a nearby window and into one of his fellow troopers. Another SetDef soldier tried to get a bead on the bot, but Ethan was faster and emptied what was left of his magazine into him. Two more tried their luck, but Salter and Reyes put them down in quick succession.
Once more, the area was strangely quiet as Raines grabbed a few Volk mags from the dead and ordered the team forward, and before long, Reyes was missing the quiet.
As Ethan scaled a wall, another AATIS platform shook the city with its cannon, and as Ethan helped Reyes up the wall he had just vaulted, the tell-tale scream of failing RCS thrusters. Nick's HUD identified the ship that was falling towards the city, spewing debris and flames from its failing propulsion systems, as the UNSA Nova and by the time he and Ethan had helped Raines and Salter up the wall, the ground shuddered beneath them.
"Take cover!" was all the admiral could get out before a massive cloud of dust and smoke appeared down the street. Reyes threw himself to the ground behind a parked car, covering his head with his arms as the artificial gale blew past them. It felt like an eternity for the cloud to finally pass over Reyes, and he was coughing and sputtering even as he stood up and tried to get his bearings.
"Group up!" he sputtered out between coughs, waving the dust from in front of him, "Stay close!"
"Keep moving." Raines ordered, though from the sound of it he wasn't faring much better, "Ethan, take point and lead us out."
As they slowly moved forward, taking care to help what civilians they could on their way, Reyes was left speechless at what he was seeing. This sort of insanity hadn't been seen on Earth since that madman Makarov plunged the planet into World War III nearly two centuries ago. Ash coated people's faces, making them shine like ghosts whenever Ethan looked directly at anyone with his headlamp on, and those that could walk seemed to stagger around like zombies until they were pointed towards safety and away from the crash site.
"Just like Titan." Nick thought, memories of his mother's war stories coming to mind as they waded through the refuse picked up by the shockwave.
However, fate once again felt the need to test Lieutenant Reyes' ability to stay in the here and now, and he was thrown to the ground shortly after entering an alleyway. He instantly recognized what knocked him on his ass, the impact from a SetDef Drop Pod. A C6 combat robot similar in stature but significantly less bulky than Ethan shot out from the pod, grabbing Reyes by the neck and hoisting him up off the ground, but Nick was quick to react.
Both arms came down on the elbow joint, forcing it down and knocking the bot off balance just long enough for Reyes to grab hold of it's shoulder-mounted battery pack and stab through the connecting wires. While this bot was shorting out, a second one emerged from the pod and kicked a nearby dumpster into Ethan.
Taken by surprise, Ethan tanked the hit, throwing his shoulder into the oncoming dumpster while Raines and Salter put down the offending C6 with prejudice.
"You alright, slick?" Salter asked once the bots were down.
"Yeah, yeah I'm alright. You good Ethan?"
"I was built for this sort of thing, lieutenant." Ethan told them as he removed himself from the ruined dumpster, "Though I'd appreciate it if you kept this little incident between us."
"Garbage man not a career path you've thought about?"
"Not that sir; letting these idiots get the drop on me." Ethan replied, gesturing to the scrap metal now scattered about the alleyway. Nick could swear he saw Ethan frown, despite not being physically possible, as he kicked one of the C6's heads further down the pathway before once again pushing towards the AATIS control tower.
Firefights were punctuated by AATIS fire as the team kept pressing through whatever SetDef resistance was in their way. What seemed like a lifetime of running gunfights through the city streets kept putting more and more strain on the human members of this impromptu fireteam as bot and martian alike kept throwing themselves into the fray with almost fanatical zeal. All the while, Nick was witnessing atrocity after atrocity as every house they moved through, and every floor they cleared of SDF personnel, had more and more civilian casualties lying where they were executed.
It wasn't until they pushed past another batch of C6s dropped from an overhead SDF destroyer that Reyes finally felt that they were making some actual progress. Comms came back online and he heard a Marine unit entrenched just outside the AATIS Tower perimeter call for support.
"About damn time we managed to get comms up. Patch in, everyone." Raines said before putting his hand to his ear, "Eclipse, this is Top Cat, how copy?"
"5's Admiral, send traffic." Captain Winburn replied.
"I need your airship drawing fire at the tower for ground force cover."
"Clear sir, inbound hot, but we could use some air support ourselves."
"Copy. Reyes, get your Jackals in the air for fire support." Raines ordered, before gesturing to a fallen beam, "Ethan, get that open."
"Understood, sir." came a simultaneous reply from Ethan and Nick as the robot grabbed the aforementioned beam while Salter and Reyes stacked up. With one fluid motion, Ethan raised the beam and pushed the bricks aside while Salter called out to the people inside the basement.
"SATO forces - Blue! Blue!" Salter announced, and the marines inside quickly lowered their weapons and helped the team inside. Once back on his feet and patched into the right channel, Reyes got to work as they were led through the improvised triage center.
"Retribution, this is 1-1."
"Go for Ret, 1-1." the familiar voice of Lieutenant Victor "Gator" Diallo told him.
"Gator I need SCARs 3 and 4 airborne for interdiction, call for fire to follow."
"Copy Lieutenant." Gator said, "Time to target is one mike. Ret out."
"Air support inbound, admiral." Nick stated.
"Good. Top Cat to Gold - air support is inbound for suppression. Once they engage, we're taking this hill."
"Roger Top Cat." the Marine Captain on the other end of the wire replied, "Golds are in place!"
The next 60 seconds passed by in slow motion for Reyes as he commandeered an NV4 rifle from a bed-ridden marine. Tracers crisscrossing the darkened sky, SDF ships bombarding the city with impunity, and the ever-present rumbling of the AATIS guns painted a deadly picture of what he could expect if they didn't take back that tower soon. Time seemed to return to normal as the familiar hum of RCS thrusters overhead caught his attention, and the order was finally given. Eclipse opened up on anything not on the ground, and like an animal possessed, an entire company of Marines charged forward across the tower grounds with SCARs and Ethan right at the front.
Bullets cracked by him as he sprinted forward, not daring to look back at any of those falling around him during the charge as a Skelter strafed their line. Before it could do too much damage, a rain of steel slammed into the fragile fuselage and sent it careening into a SetDef mortar position, and Ethan let out a cheerful holler as Jackals screamed by.
"1-1 this is SCAR 4, we'll watch the skies while 3 hits your targets." Nick's earpiece crackled as he took cover behind a ruined garden decoration.
"Copy 4-1, happy hunting." Reyes replied, steadying his breathing for a moment before putting himself right back into the insanity in front of him.
Inch by inch, SATO forces pushed up the hill, trading casualties by the second as they pushed the finest that the Settlement Defense Front had to offer back. Hammer blow after hammer blow of Marine counter-charges supported by SCAR 3s ever-present fire support smashed through the SDF delaying action, and every foot of ground gotten was paid for dearly by both sides.
By the time Lieutenant Reyes finally got up to the main entrance of AATIS Control, half the hillside was covered in bodies, both human and robotic with how many C6s the SDF had thrown at them.
"SCAR-3 is bugging out sir, shaking bandits, good luck down there 1-1."
"Roger that. Marines, set up a perimeter, SCARS are moving interior."
"Ethan, patch into AATIS security, I want eyes in that room." Raines ordered, and like clockwork, the robot managed to stream the feed directly to their implants. The control room was filled with SDF troops, all seemingly taking orders from a man in a UNSA uniform gloating about the state of the fleet.
His last sentence on the other hand spurred Reyes, Salter, and Ethan to book it towards the control room door.
"Moving to AATIS system destruct now. Mars Aeternum!"
"Get us in there, Lieutenant!" Raines shouted.
"Copy. Ethan, GO!"
With the speed and strength only he could muster, Ethan rammed through the doorway to the AATIS control room. The doors went flying, Nick and Nora both sighted into the room, and as soon as his breath left his body, he opened fire.