"The historic city of Scott was founded thirty-four years ago in December of 2152, and it was humanity's first home among the stars that didn't already orbit Sol," a nice tour guide by the name of Kevin explained. He stood atop a tour bus of sorts—a long flat platform built to float above the level of ground cars and ringed by a rail and enough seats to comfortably house fifty bored kids and one bored teacher. "Today Terra Nova stands as humanity's largest colony with four and a half million residents total."
The tour craft drifted along the main avenue of Scott, bordered on both sides by tall buildings, the oldest of which were arcologies built to house the first colonists. The students on the tour would get to visit a fully-functional arcology later on, for now they had to endure the history lesson.
"A fun fact about Terra Nova: Scott is located almost on the North Pole! If you think that on Earth the North Pole is frigid and uninhabitable, that's crazy! But Terra Nova is so hot that the equator is a massive desert, bigger than any on Earth," Kevin continued. He was well-trained: the twenty or so students actively ignoring him didn't faze him in the slightest. A sympathetic glance from the teacher was all he needed to know this was the norm for this particular class. He decided to change tactics and go for more recent history.
"Does anyone know who Commander Shepard was?" he asked, and unsurprisingly almost every hand was raised immediately."Last year Commander Shepard was here, on Terra Nova! Or perhaps more accurately he was in outer space, stopping the batarians from smashing an asteroid into Scott! In the climactic battle Shepard managed to defeat the batarians and save the world!"
The kids finally seemed to be interested, but unfortunately for them the Shepard story was his best. "Does anyone have any questions about Terra Nova?"
A little girl raised her hand and was called on. "What does Terra Nova mean?"
"Good question…" Kevin looked at her name tag. "… Michelle. Terra Nova is ancient Latin for 'New Earth'."
The little girl sat down triumphantly, having been the brave one to ask the first question.
"Did you meet Commander Shepard?" another kid asked, Kevin didn't catch the name.
"No, unfortunately I didn't get to meet Commander Shepard," Kevin lamented, both for real and as an act.
"That sucks," the kid responded. Kevin saw the name tag; the child's name was Matt.
"Next question?" Kevin asked pleasantly. He chose another little girl in the back who kept her hand raised but formed the hand into a pointing finger.
"What's that?" she asked, her eyes cast to the sky.
Kevin cocked an eyebrow and turned to look, seeing some massive ship blotting out Asgard. It was shaped something like an elongated teardrop with a bulbous edge rather than a point, and it was followed by two fellows. The three ships were impossibly large, he knew for a fact nothing that size could enter the atmosphere of a planet and not crash into the surface immediately. His eyes must have been fooling him.
"I don't know what that is," Kevin admitted, using his hand to shade his eyes after the ship passed out of Asgard's way. He noted several smaller craft—shuttles?—descending from the main ones.
Then the sirens went off, as well as the messages sent to each of the adults' omni-tools.
Fighting to keep his cool, Kevin met the teacher's eye and turned the tour platform around, taking it toward the nearest emergency shelter. "The next stop on our tour is a shelter built to keep the colonists safe in the event of an emergency."
"Is this an emergency?" Michelle asked earnestly.
"No, there's nothing to be afraid of," Kevin lied. "It's just a drill we do every week to make sure we're ready."
The first distant gunfire began, and behind Kevin long lines of tracers reached up into the descending shuttles and fighters.
"What is that?" a boy, Vince, asked. His face registered total confusion.
"It's all part of the drill," Kevin responded, trying to steer the ungainly craft down the street amidst the other panicking motorists. At long last they reached the shelter, and he ushered the class into it in an orderly fashion while the other colonists filed in behind them.
Outside the colonial militia mustered in their base in central Scott. Unlike on Earth, where bases and cities were generally kept separate, in the colonies the cities were typically built around military installations for the fastest possible response in the event of a pirate attack or worse.
"Move, let's move!" the small unit's commander, Captain Tom Marquez, shouted from his position in the middle of the base's big courtyard. Those militiamen who were on the base grounds were filing out of the barracks now, each dressed in faded blue armor—Alliance military hand-me-downs. They carried their M-8 Avengers a little sloppily but they lined up rather precisely.
A sergeant trotted up alongside Captain Marquez and saluted smartly. "Sir, we've recalled everyone who wasn't on-base and sent a message to the regulars on Eden. We don't have an ETA from the Marines yet though."
Marquez returned the salute crisply. He thought quickly. "Alright, assign someone to stay behind and organize the troops who arrive late. We're moving out now."
"Yes, sir," the sergeant acknowledged, and he turned and bounded back toward the barracks to organize the rear guard.
"Boys, we've got something coming down on top of us and the damned Marines are a nebula away playing war. We're the only thing keeping them from rolling over the colony and eating our loved ones," Marquez shouted to the young militiamen. "Right now we need to hold out until we're relieved. These ships don't look batarian, so I don't think they're looking to capture us alive. Don't give 'em an inch."
He looked up and down the line of thirty men and women. They were all standing at attention, looking about as good as any unit Marquez had served in while in the Alliance. Smaller, though—this unit was smaller by far.
"Sound good?" he asked, emphasizing 'good'.
"Yes, sir," the line responded, more or less in unison. That could use work… but this militia was volunteer-built. These people were farmers, miners, managers, or clerks first and soldiers second. They weren't military, strictly speaking.
"Follow me!" Marquez shouted, leading the assembled militia into the streets, moving toward one of the decades-old bunkers built surrounding Scott to defend from pirates or slavers. He wasn't sure if they would measure up against what was shaping up to be an actual invasion.
Scott was relatively small, as most of the buildings were built up rather than additional buildings being built out.
In the sky they could see the alien vessels between the buildings, and they were descending through the atmosphere, apparently in no particular rush. The group ran through the streets, against the flow of citizens retreating into the shelters in the interior of the city.
On the horizon the bunker complex became visible—two low buildings painted flat yellow to match the rolling plains of grass that were perennially a wilted-looking yellow, mostly due to the constant heat.
The doors were still locked with the same code as they had been thirty years ago when they'd been built. Marquez punched the code in on the archaic manual-input panel set beside the door and it hissed open, revealing a pitch-black interior. He watched as dust was blown off of the door by the sudden movement and drifted down to the floor, catching the sunlight as they fell.
Marquez advanced inside, tripping almost immediately over what he figured to be a beer can. "Damn kids!" he growled as he activated the lights. "Fire Team Alpha, stay in this bunker. Bravo, take the second one."
The second bunker was about three hundred meters to the left of the first, and the two had 180 degree views as well as several assorted holes through which one could shoot behind the bunkers as well. Alpha Team took up positions along the front of the bunker, looking through the long slat that stood just above their heads, making it so they could move about the interior with relative safety and step up on metal blocks to fire out of it.
Looking out the northern firing hole, Marquez watched Bravo team enter the other bunker and take their positions.
Then there was silence. They watched helplessly as tracers lofted through the air toward the ships, hitting the ships' shielding ineffectually. After a time the short crackle of the guns that fired the rounds drifted across the open terrain to Marquez, who took a few moments to think about who was firing those big guns in the distance. He had to guess that there was a militia unit out in the grasslands at the worst possible time.
I hope it wasn't the Marines, he thought, grimacing for a moment.
"I've got all the stragglers," Marquez's omni-tool chirped suddenly. He turned away from the window and spoke quietly in response.
"You'll be Charlie team. I want you to stay in reserve, ready to respond if these things flank us," he replied, looking up.
Outside, on the horizon, he saw shapes approaching in two long columns.
"Stand by," he muttered, picking up a set of field glasses and looking out at the shapes. Through the binoculars he saw the two lines were consisted of what appeared to be tanks. They were bulbous and purple, of all colors. It was not very effective camouflage. As he watched the second line diverted, heading south.
"On second thought, Charlie, head to the southern bunkers. It looks like there's trouble heading that way. Bring the ML-77's," Marquez ordered, watching the columns diverge. "In fact, send a runner to our position with some of the ML-77's. I don't think we packed any."
"Right away, sir," Charlie team's leader replied. Marquez broke the connection and figured on it taking about ten minutes for the rocket launchers to arrive. In preparation he moved to the back of the bunker and unlocked the ammunition stores, dragging several crates of heat sinks and three or four boxes of heavy power cells, setting them in the center of the room where each of the fifteen men could reach them easily.
Several troops grouped up and squinted out of the bunker at the advancing tanks, now spreading out into a line. In all, Marquez counted twenty tanks.
"Alright, men, don't be afraid. This bunker's built out of five alternating layers of titanium-a and solid concrete. No tank round is going to punch through it. We've got a runner bringing up the ML-77's, so we'll be ready. All we have to do is hold until relieved," he said, trying his best to make it sound like an easy task.
"They're two kilometers out and closing sir," one of the militiamen shouted, nervous despite Marquez's efforts.
At one kilometer, the defenders noticed the tops come apart and reveal some kind of weapon from within the craft. It pointed skyward, and it took Marquez a moment to realize it wasn't an average cannon. It was a mortar.
"Steady, men, hold your fire until we have something that can hit them," Marquez almost whispered. Almost as if on cue the alarm signifying someone at the door buzzed, causing several militiamen to jump.
Marquez went back and let the man at the door in. He carried several collapsed ML-77 missile launchers in his arms, and his face glowed bright red from the effort. Carefully the man set them down and saluted Marquez, who returned the salute in kind.
"You might want to stay with us," he said, nodding to the tanks that were closing to one kilometer in range. He motioned to three men to come and pick up the missile launchers, and they ran over and did so.
"Yes, sir, I'll stay right here… sir," the man said uncertainly, still trying to catch his breath. On his back were an additional ML-77 and his avenger.
"Captain Marquez! They're firing!" a militiaman shouted, drawing Marquez's attention immediately. He turned and ran to the opening, looking out to see twenty fluorescent blue projectiles arcing high through the air toward Alpha and Bravo teams. There wasn't a sound accompanied with the firing of the weapons, but as they drew nearer to their targets an ominous sizzling sound became apparent as they burnt through the air.
"Get down! Brace yourselves!" Marquez shouted as the mortars were mere seconds from impact.
The whole bunker shook as a round landed quite near with a loud slapping sound mixed with an almost electrical buzzing. After a moment the defenders stood, peering out of the gap again. Another salvo was airborne already, but in the few seconds they had they observed several strange purple-blue fires burning in the grass.
Then their heads went down again as the next round hit almost in unison. Dust was shaken from the roof and it drifted down in small clouds among the huddled defenders.
"Enough is enough!" Marquez shouted, grabbing an ML-77 himself and standing atop the metal step, firing a spread of four missiles out toward the horizon. From Bravo's bunker another such spread was fired, and the nine missiles struck through the sky toward their targets. At about one hundred meters the missiles all chose their targets, suddenly adjusting their flight to drive straight toward the individual tanks.
All nine missiles hit home to some effect—four smashed into the sides of the tanks, disabling one and merely damaging the other three; two hit the guns or just below them, disabling them; the last two hit the tanks dead-center and the tanks exploded in huge purple clouds of smoke and fire.
Cheers echoed out of the bunkers, and the other three men with ML-77's stood and fired five missiles each in the same manner as Marquez. The fifteen missiles decimated the tanks, destroying six more and disabling another four. The remaining five operational tanks withdrew beyond the range of either side's weapons and an uneasy standoff ensued.
"What's your situation Charlie?" Marquez asked once the cheering subsided.
"It's green over here Captain. They folded pretty easily against our missile launchers. It was almost one rocket-one kill as far as I can tell," Charlie team leader responded. "They're withdrawing back to where they came from."
"Excellent work, situation's the same here with Alpha and Bravo," Marquez reported, breaking the connection.
They settled in, rearming the ML-77's. Marquez sent the runner to Bravo team with two of the ML-77's, meaning both teams had three. If Alpha had been hit directly by one of those mortars, those tanks would be in Scott by now.
"Alright everyone, get some water in you and settle down, we've still got for big goddamn cruisers out there parked in the plains," Marquez growled, squinting out at the horizon. He turned and sat on the metal stair, grabbing for his own canteen and taking a long drink out of it.
Twenty-five minutes later one of the men—a woman, actually—was standing watch with the binoculars. "I've got something, Captain!"
Marquez stood quickly and took the offered binoculars quickly, peering through them. Aircraft were approaching, a few dozen of them. Some were smaller, and front-on they looked like a round center and two disproportionately small wings with thrusters on the tips. The rest, maybe a dozen, were huge craft easily four or five times the size of their smaller companions… escorts?
"Bravo, Charlie, we've got aerial marks inbound. I don't have eyes on any inbound for the Southern defenses," Marquez reported as the aircraft drew near. The smaller ones appeared to hit some kind of boost and they flew in fast and low, letting loose with rapid-firing guns that spewed the same glowing blue rounds but far smaller and far faster.
"Down!" someone shouted as the rounds sprayed the bunker, hitting the walls and sizzling as they burnt the metal.
"Up!" Marquez shouted, brandishing his ML-77 and firing a shot into the formation of ground attack craft, hitting one by pure chance. Its wing was blown clear of the body and it went into an uncontrollable corkscrew and smashed into the ground a few meters ahead of the bunker, bursting into blue flame.
The rest of the militiamen got to their feet and began firing out at the smaller craft, heedless of the larger ones approaching directly behind them.
Assault rifle fire rattled out of the bunkers, rounds plinking off of the smaller, lightly armored craft while the large ones maneuvered in behind them and dropped low to the terrain, opening their sides. An unggoy on a plasma turret let loose in the direction of the bunkers, as did his brothers on the other five drop ships.
The militiamen couldn't help but be suppressed as the drop ships drifted in silently, like phantoms, and dropped an average of two dozen aliens onto the ground. They came in three flavors—big aliens, fully twice as tall as the smallest, the ones called sangheili; the small grunts, unggoy; and the agile birdlike kig-yar.
The kig-yar hit the ground and brought up full-body sized energy shields that deflected the incoming rounds. Sangheili organized their grunts, getting them in line and directing their fire. Green rounds slapped into the bunkers in loose clusters, but in overwhelming numbers.
A man started screaming after a round hit the rim of the slat and splashed superheated plasma onto his face. He dropped off the step and clutched at his burning face as a terrible acrid odor filled the chamber. One of the other men, a physician when he wasn't a militiaman, jumped down to offer first aid.
The fire was ceaseless, but the militia managed to fire off a few bursts now and again. Several grunts fell, but the alien advance was not slowed in the slightest.
"Frag grenades! Lob 'em down there!" Marquez ordered over the din, grabbing his own and firing it over the ledge into the advancing Covenant troops. Information was flowing to Marquez en masse now, forwarded from an unknown source. Apparently this was a Covenant splinter-sect, but that was really immaterial right now.
A series of explosions ripped through the Covenant lines, killing many of the grunts and injuring several sangheili. He realized then that the kig-yar were missing. The large craft, the 'phantoms', had withdrawn as silently and as quickly as they had arrived, and the loud little craft went screeching off into the city to wreak havoc.
Luckily, though, the infantry had been stymied by the militia. The surviving infantry found cover after the grenades decimated their numbers, crouching behind some of the destroyed aircraft and a low ridge just beyond them.
Fire slackened noticeably, although the five surviving tanks drew up among their destroyed peers and restarted their bombardment of the bunkers ineffectually. An ML-77 round shot out of Bravo's bunker and smashed one of the tanks, causing the other four to withdraw again and a few isolated cheers to issue forth from the two bunkers.
"Captain Marquez, do you read me?" his omni-tool suddenly asked.
"This is a militia channel, get the hell off unless you're our relief!" Marquez shouted, getting to his feet and firing his ML-77 into the destroyed ground attack craft, causing it to roll onto those behind it.
"Captain, this is Operations Chief Ashley Williams of the 212," the voice responded, even despite his angry response.
"Chief! I'm glad to hear your voice. We're holding the line outside of Scott, but if they land reinforcements we'll be outmaneuvered for sure. They've got us pinned," Marquez reported. Another mortar round hammered the bunker and one of the ceiling panels was dislodged, killing one of the lights and showering him with sparks.
"What can you tell me about their air forces? I forwarded everything I could to you but we have next to nothing on their ground forces," Chief Williams asked.
"I've seen two principal vehicles, one seems to be a shuttle of sorts we've taken to calling a phantom, and the other is a fast little bastard that can put a lot of fire down on you real quick. They go down easy though," he said. "Also, they've got four dreadnought-sized ships set down in a field a few klicks to the southeast. I'd avoid coming in from that direction if you can help it."
"Roger that, Captain. Sit tight, we're about an hour out unless the Covvies want to tango in orbit," Chief Williams replied immediately before another round hit the bunker directly.
"Understood Chief, we'd appreciate it if you hit the afterburners though," Marquez said, forcing a laugh out.
"Will do, Captain. Just hold on," Williams repeated, and the connection broke.
Marquez turned to his militiamen and said, "You hear that? The cavalry is on the way! We just need to buy the lazy bastards an hour to toddle on down here!"
A few of them laughed, which was an encouraging sign. Morale was still high, or at least not that low.
Then one of them stood to fire down on the suppressed Covvies and a round slammed into his face, dropping him instantly and without a sound uttered. They'd found the kig-yar—they were perched in some rocks halfway between the tanks and the front lines, apparently equipped with sniper rifles.
"Sniper! Down!" Marquez yelled, dropping to the floor. His men followed suit, and consequentially the plasma fire from below intensified threefold. They could hear the grunts and squeals of the unggoy as they pressed on, urged by the guttural growls of the sangheili.
Pointing to the team marksman, armed with a mantis rifle, Marquez motioned to the window. "500 meters out, between us and the tanks is a sniper nest. Take them out!"
Alpha team's marksman nodded compliance and slowly stepped up to one of the southward-facing windows and angled sharply to his left—the east—and drew up a shot on one of the jackals. Evidently they didn't see him, because he fired and dropped down immediately.
"One down, Captain," he said with a grin. "It didn't even see it coming."
"Be careful," Marquez warned, nodding to their fallen comrade. "They're crack shots too. Don't do anything that will get you tagged."
"What the hell is that?!" the marksman screamed, pointing at a glowing blue ball attached to the upper side of the firing slat above two militiamen.
Before Marquez could even contemplate the thing it exploded, emitting a wave of heat throughout the room and knocking the wind out of everyone inside.
It blew a hole into the ceiling three feet around. Immediately afterwards the face of one of the grunts appeared in the hole, snarling as it tried to fit. Luckily the bulky apparatus on its back prevented it from doing so long enough that a flurry of gunshots tore it to pieces and left the body lodged in the hole.
"Damn, they're ugly!" one of the other militiamen laughed before a second, third, and fourth blue grenade attached to the ceiling and wall toward the front of the bunker.
"Move!" Marquez screamed at the men in the front of the bunker, who dived toward the back door.
A trio of explosions ripped apart the front of the bunker, opening one huge hole three feet high and six feet long and another three by three hole all the way to the south.
In through the central hole a pair of grunts leapt, squinting to adjust to the darker light as they landed. The disheveled militia opened fire, peppering the beasts who uttered squeals of terror before dropping to the ground.
Another sniper round claimed one of his militiamen, and Marquez turned to his marksman and shouted, "Kill those goddamn snipers yesterday!"
His omni-tool burned bright orange on his forearm as he received another call. "What is it?"
"Captain, this is Private Bromley, Ch-Charlie team, we've been pushed out of the bunker and are retreating toward the base complex. Sergeant Giles is down, there are only three of us left!"
"Get back to the base, Private, the Marines are inbound," Marquez responded.
"Alright, sir, we'll be—" the connection broke suddenly.
A new sound was evident over the constant sounds of the grunt's plasma guns—a low pitched hum.
"It's the tanks!" Bravo team relayed through the Captain's omni-tool. Their situation was less dire, as most of the ML-77 rounds came from Alpha's bunker when the tanks came forward and the attack was focused on the Alpha bunker.
"Bravo, focus your fire on the sniper's nest five hundred meters out. They're keeping our heads down and letting these grunts get right on top of us," Marquez ordered.
"Yes, sir," Bravo replied, and a sudden picking-up of fire occurred to the south, allowing for Alpha's marksman to pick the kig-yar off one at a time.
In response, the four surviving tanks focused all their fire on Bravo's bunker as no infantry was closing on them and near-misses would not result in friendly fire kills.
The yellow catlike eye of a sangheili peered carefully through one of the holes caused by a grenade. It locked eyes with Marquez before leaping into the room itself, standing two and a half meters tall and brandishing a huge bulbous rifle that was leveled on Marquez.
Before it could shoot, the team marksman turned and fired point-blank into the sangheili's chest, causing its barriers to shut down.
Without warning a round slammed through the gap and directly into the marksman's head, throwing him against the wall in a bloody heap.
The surviving militiamen opened fire en masse, hammering the sangheili while its barriers were down. It fell to one knee and was blasted over by another series of rounds. The sangheili collapsed into a pile of purple blood and red armor.
"Damn it," Marquez sighed, crawling next to his marksman and picking up the rifle. He turned and took a head count of what was left of the sixteen members of Alpha team—there were nine left, none able to fight due to the snipers.
A familiar sound began to echo through the buildings of Scott, and became audible in the destroyed bunker. The survivors' ears perked up, and they listened to the approaching engines.
A missile shot through the air and shattered one of the tanks, and a series of shots pummeled the rocks the kig-yar were hidden amongst. Marquez waited until the firing on the rocks died out and more engines became apparent.
Finally the militia was able to stand, and the nine survivors peered out carefully and saw the grunts running back toward the burning line of tanks, their arms raised above their heads as they stumbled away from the bunkers.
"Look up there! It's a kodiak! The Marines are here!" one of his men shouted, pointing excitedly to the sky.
There they were—a pair of frigates tore through the skies over the plains, disgorging Alliance-blue kodiak shuttles laden with Marines, most of which were making their way toward Scott.
They were relieved.
A/N:
I think that might be the longest single combat sequence I've written! It was pretty fun to write, which is probably why it only took two days. It did end up running a little longer than average but I owed you a few hundred words after the last one was so short. Fighting the Covenant on the ground isn't quite so hopeless as I had originally feared, though, which is awesome.
Next chapter: Ashley Williams and the reconstituted 212th are on Terra Nova to relieve the beleaguered colonial militia, but they're going to be fighting an uphill battle against four CCS-class battlecruisers worth of troops and vehicles. Can they drive the heretics from Terra Nova?
As always, thanks for reading and reviewing! I hope it's as fun to read as it is to write.
PS: I think I might just abandon the -ion theme for chapter naming. I've run out of ideas. Forgive me xD
JLake4