Chapter 16: The Bigger They Are…
Karla wasn't quite sure where she was when she finally managed to open her eyes. She found herself standing in… well… nothing. Everything was just a blank white, as if she were in some kind of purgatory.
"I hope to god I'm still unconscious." Karla said to herself.
"You are." Said a strange, disembodied, and hauntingly familiar voice.
Karla caught sight of what looked like a small girl in the edges of her vision, but when she turned to confirm, there was nobody there.
"Who are you?" Karla yelled into the empty void.
"You will know in time." The voice quietly replied. "But the question is, will you be ready then?"
Old Mombasa
"Captain!"
Karla groaned opened her eyes, squinting in the brightness of the sun. She tried to focus her vision and saw Williams' face hovering over hers.
"You're okay!" Williams sighed in relief.
Karla slowly got up to see Tarin and Wrall standing over her as well. Arms was sort of wandering about, while Wrall's crew were busy trying to repair their ailing tank.
"What happened?" Karla slowly got up. "The last thing I remember was neutralizing those Wraiths…"
"More like blew one up in your face." Tarin sniffed. "You have some minor shrapnel wounds, but you were pretty damn lucky you weren't hit with anything bigger."
"What?" Karla suddenly realized that parts of her armor were torn and shredded and several areas on her body were patched with bandages. She also noticed that her face stung, and was surprised to find a shallow gash that stretched from her right temple down to her cheek.
"If that were just a few inches off, you would've been short a few brain fuctions." Tarin added.
"I'm sure." Karla glanced over at Shiela and asked, "How's the tank?"
"Pretty much in the same condition we got it… broken."
Karla frowned. If they were going to link up with the rest of their forces, it would certainly help to have a fully functioning tank.
"Are you fixing it?"
"More or less." Wrall said simply.
Meanwhile, Scottie, Kazi, and Shion were busy digging out Shiela's decrepit parts and trying to repair or replace them with whatever they had on hand. They were even going so far as to loot the remains of the wrecked Warthogs, and even the demolished Wraiths.
"You can't be serious." Scottie gaped when he saw Kazi yanking wires out of a burnt out Wraith hulk.
"Well, we need some kind of wiring to replace the mess that's supposed to be the targeting system." Kazi continued to yank the wires out until they snapped or were pulled out of the components they were attached to.
"Shion, what's our ammo count?"
Shion poked her head out of the hatch and said, "All we've got left are six standard rounds and the three special ones Captain Wrall keeps around."
"Well shit, that's not good." Kazi frowned.
"I still think this is a bad idea." Scottie grumbled.
"Did you even see what was under the hood?" Kazi pointed to the open access panels. "Pretty much everything in there is a mish mash of old and new tech from the last half century or so. A few alien components probably aren't going to change anything."
"Oh yeah, and remember that time when you thought welding a flamethrower onto the tank barrel was a good idea?"
"Hey, at least I helped with the fires." Kazi grumbled.
"You made the fires worse!" Scottie cried.
"Correction, I made the fires better."
"You're going to kill us all someday Kazi, I swear." Scottie sighed.
New Mombasa
"Ummmm, that Scarab is a whole lot bigger than what the training vids made them out to be…" Leo said nervously.
"Pity you're not coming with us to kill it!" Paccone said cheerfully through the radio. "It'll be a blast."
"I'll just stay up here with Sam, thanks." Leo replied.
"Oh man, I can't wait to fire this thing!" Sam couldn't keep the anticipation out of her voice. "Oh what fun we'll have together!"
Leo narrowed his eyes. "Are you talking to me or the gun?"
Sam and Leo were set up on some manager's desk overlooking the street the Scarab was trundling down. Across the street in a similar position was a sniper team from the 405th setting up a crossfire. Meanwhile, the rest of the Marines were hiding out on a bridge, waiting to fast rope down onto the Scarab as it passed by.
"Ready when you are, Sarge." Sam said, nudging her crosshair over a Grunt trudging along the oncoming Scarab.
"Go for it."
Sam slowly pulled the trigger, savoring the moment as the round left the barrel with the force and sound of a small cannon, yet thanks to the weapon's suppressor systems, she felt almost no recoil at all. Truly a marvel of engineering. The ensuing CRACK of the rifle was richer and deeper than what the S2AM normally sounded like, resembling a cannon more than a gun.
"Holy fuck." Leo gasped as he gazed through his sights.
"What?" Sam looked through her sight to try and get a bead on her target, but she couldn't find anything. "What the hell happened?"
"The Grunt got turned into paint. That's what happened."
At that moment, Hanchen, the other sniper, started firing at the guards on the Scarab. By the time the Covenant troops realized what was happening, three Grunts and an Elite were already down. One Elite dove for cover but was caught square in the midsection by Sam's high powered rifle. Half of the Elite managed to reach the safety for the Scarab's interior, while the other half flopped onto the floor with a messy splat.
In response, the head of the Scarab turned to one direction and literally blasted a random building with a huge wave of plasma energy. The plasma beam gouged out a huge chunk of the office building Sam and Leo were in. Glass and concrete melted like ice under the extreme temperature and began flowing down the side of the building like water. Lying prone on the ground, Sam and Leo could feel the heat rising up through the floor like a freight train moving straight up.
"I think it's time we moved." Leo said nervously as the floor began to sag.
"One more shot." Sam said petulantly.
"Hurry up then!" Leo could literally feel the building crumble as its structural integrity was compromised. "I didn't survive a childhood friendship with you and a zombie attack just to have a goddamn building fall on me!"
Sam snapped off a final shot, but it was sloppy and rushed. Instead of the clean kill she was hoping for, Sam merely inflicted a mortal wound on an Elite. The heavy shell punched through its shields and armor as if they were cardboard and struck it in the gut. The last thing Sam saw as the Elite squirming on the deck trying to collect the innards and gore that had been splattered all over the Scarab.
"Lets go!" Leo yelled as a ceiling light tumbled from the roof and bounced off his helmet.
"There's a bridge three levels down. Let's go!" Sam packed up her rifle and made a beeline for the stairwell.
As she ran, Sam could see Hanchen's position across the street. He was still in his position firing down at the guards on the Scarab. Her heart stopped when she saw the Scarab raise its head in preparation to fire.
"Hanchen!" Sam yelled in her radio. "The Scarab knows where you are! Get the hell out of there before it-"
There was another roar and bright flash of light as the massive plasma beam struck Hanchen's position. Sam winced as she saw not just the room, but the entire floor Hanchen was on disintegrate into ash.
"Shit, now we really have to move!" Leo groaned.
Kicking the door open, Sam and Leo both barreled down the stairwell when they felt another huge rumble in the structure. Looking up, both Marines saw a plasma beam shear straight through the stairwell shaft several levels above them, sending molten concrete and steel raining down on them.
"That's it, I get to choose the next hiding spot." Leo grumbled. "I'm tired of repeatedly getting shot at."
Meanwhile, outside, the confused Scarab hesitated in the middle of the street, firing random plasma beams into the surrounding buildings to try and flush out any additional snipers. Unfortunately for the Scarab, this was the moment Paccone and Alvarado were waiting for. With all of the topside guards dead or in cover, nobody noticed two squads of Marines fast roping down onto the Scarab. It didn't take long for them to breach the hatch leading into the innards of the massive war machine.
"Okay, the most vulnerable spot in the Scarab is the control center." Paccone said as he blasted through a knot of Grunts. "A few blocks of C7 and the Covvies won't be using this thing in the foreseeable future."
"Easier said than done." Scohar ducked as needler rounds flew over his head. "There seem to be a lot of guards in there."
"Thanks for pointing out the obvious!" Kumi leaned out of the corner and fired several quick shots from her shotgun.
"Grenade!" Alvarado yelled as he pulled the pin from the frag grenade he was holding. He tossed the explosive into the control room and ducked as the blast rocked the entire interior.
Outside, Sam and Leo were trying to make their way across the bridge. Unfortunately, the Scarab caught sight of them and started firing. A blizzard of plasma bolts from the Scarab's top-mounted turret swept across the bridge. Leo slid to a stop and grabbed the back of Sam's collar, pulling her down as the plasma bolts struck the side of the bridge.
"Thanks." Sam gasped, trying to regain her breath.
At that moment, the Scarab fired its main weapon. The plasma beam cut straight through the bridge, slicing it half. One end of the bridge smashed into the ground, turning it into a giant slide. Unable to find any purchase, Sam and Leo slip helplessly down the sloped bridge.
With feline grace, Sam hit the ground, rolled, and came back up to her feet. Leo, however, hit the ground, stumbled, and ran into Sam, knocking her over. Both Marines suddenly found themselves lying in a very awkward heap on the ground.
"You are so hopeless, Leo." Sam groaned.
Suddenly, there was a dull boom that came from within the Scarab. Sam and Leo looked up to see the Scarab stop moving and sag forward. The entire vehicle crackled with electricity as its systems short-circuited. Then, inexplicably, the entire thing came crashing down, lifeless as a rag doll.
"And that, kids," Paccone said cheerfully through the radio, "is how you kill a Scarab."
Old Mombasa
Karla sighed as she sat back in the seat of her Warthog. It had taken over an hour of wrong turns, Covvie ambushes, and technical difficulties for her to finally link up with the rest of the convoy. The convoy itself was still fairly intact. There weren't any losses besides the ones Karla suffered during the Covenant ambush at the plaza. So far, just keep the convoy moving, Karla had tasked her three remaining Scorpion tanks into spearheading the convoy.
As they neared the bridge leading to New Mombasa, it seemed as if the Covenant resistance had dissipated. Karla looked around and it was clearly evident why. Wrecked vehicles and dead Covenant were littered everywhere. Each body had looked as if it had been killed in a brutally precise and efficient manner.
"What the hell happened here?" A disbelieving Marine asked through the radio. "Everything's dead."
"The Master Chief happened, that's what." Another Marine responded somewhat irritably, as if it were a fact everybody would know.
Karla sighed, "Quit the chatter and keep the channels clear for emergencies."
"Um, Cap?" Williams looked around. "Do you feel something?"
Curious, Karla asked, "Feel what?"
"I don't know." Williams shrugged. "Some kind of weird thumping. You know, like when something really big is coming."
Meanwhile, Shiela and the two other companion tanks, the Crusader and Vixen, plowed their way forward, shoving wrecked vehicles and debris to the side of the road.
"The road ahead is blocked." The commander of the lead tank, Captain Furm of the Crusader radioed. "We're going to have to detour."
Wrall watched on as he saw the Crusader and Vixen round the street corner in an attempt to bypass the blocked street. Wrall himself was about to round the corner when a sudden storm or frantic radio messages filled the radio. Suddenly, the Crusader and Vixen were rocketing past the intersection in full reverse firing as fast as they could.
The crew looked on in utter disbelief. There weren't many things that could spook a Scorpion tank like that. It was then they saw the Vixen become consumed by a massive plasma beam. Seconds later, what remained of the Vixen was unceremoniously crushed under the massive foot of the Scarab that destroyed it.
Kazi instinctively fired, but the standard tank shell was nowhere near effective enough in piercing the Scarab's thick armor. The Crusader fired some shells of its own, but they were just as ineffectual.
"Sir, I think it's time to use one of those special shells you've been keeping." Kazi said.
"Go ahead."
"Shion, load up a trinium round."
The young loader's eyes widened in surprise. "Are you serious?"
"Just do it, and be sure to queue up a high explosive shell right after."
Trinium rounds were the most powerful and advanced tank shells ever developed by the UNSC. As its name implied, trinium rounds were three times as dense as depleted uranium, and were incredibly effective in piercing almost any kind of armor imaginable. However, trinium is incredibly hard to produce, so shells are somewhat rare and difficult to acquire, in contrast to the more common and fairly effective depleted uranium. The only reason Wrall was able to obtain one of these rounds, much less three, was because the other tank commanders in his unit didn't bother to carry any. None of them believed that they would ever face anything genuinely tougher than themselves.
This wasn't the first time Wrall had fought a Scarab. He knew that the trick to taking one down was to create a chink it its armor using a trinium round and then follow up with a more destructive shell and hit it in the same exact spot as the first round.
"Fire!" Wrall yelled.
Shiela's cannon roared as it launched the special shell. The trinium rod flew straight and true, piercing and flying straight through the Scarab's left front leg and imbedding itself deep into its chest. The damaged leg buckled and the Scarab stumbled and stopped, as if surprised that something actually damaged it. Kazi took the chance to fire the fresh shell Shion had loaded. The explosive shell struck the exposed hole with pinpoint accuracy, blowing off armor plating and exposing even more of the Scarab's vulnerable interior. The Crusader also took the chance and fired several rounds in support, blasting the Scarab's weak point and opening the hole even wider. The Scarab attempted to fire at the Crusader, but it was desperate and sloppy attempt. The plasma beam fired too high and struck an abandoned apartment block.
Finally, the Scarab collapsed in a flaming heap as it sustained too much damage. At that moment, the rest of the convoy had caught up with the tanks. There weren't many instances where Karla was surprised, or even showed any at all, but this was one of those times.
"Wrall, explain to me why there's a dead Scarab lying in the middle of the street.
New/Old Mombasa Connecting Bridge
Mako looked around in frustration as he and the remnants of his task force moved through the city's subterranean tunnels. What frustrated him was not his unit's slow pace, but the absence of any friendly units in the vicinity. Mako was told that there was a substantial Covenant forcing holding this end of the bridge, but there was no sign of them anywhere and attempted hails over the radio yielded no response.
"Commander, we have found something." One of the Grunts waddled up to him carrying a communication set. "We've made contact. It's the defending unit."
"Find their Commander and tell him that if he doesn't want to be shot for incompetence, he will explain why he's refused radio contact with us." Mako growled.
"That's the problem." The Grunt stuttered. "The defending unit… they're all dead."
Mako tightened his fist and remembered he was still carrying the human pistol. Were the humans really capable of such destruction on this scale?
"Show me."