"Welcome to Granica V, humanity's shining beacon at the edge of the unknown. Flush with the spirit of rebirth revitalising humanity, Granica represents everything you could hope for in a new life. With its exciting challenges and bountiful natural resources, this industrious new colony offers security, prosperity and - above all - stability in an ever-changing galaxy.
Forget The Past: Choose A Future. "
- Colonist information booklet, published by the United Earth Government Colonial Advisement Authority (published April 2554)
The revolution would end in blood. It began the same way.
They were hurrying through the central business district of Argjend, Granica V's capital city and principal financial center. All around them, people in crisp business suits hurried from one air-conditioned haven to the next. The sun rose high above the smooth-polished flagstones, throwing long dancing shadows along the sidewalk. Glazed corporate towers and high-density residential blocks rose up around them, glinting in the early morning air. Victory Plaza was a stark contrast to the rest of the habitations scattered across the planet, an edifice of silver metal and cream sandstone rendering. The streets were packed with ground traffic, which idled and purred at a standstill, bumper to bumper. A display zeppelin drifted lazily overhead, flashing up advertisements for Traxus, Infinitum Arms and MediTech; images of galloping horses and smiling blonde women; all excited eyes and perfect teeth. Even this far out on the boundary of human space, Argjend was a frenzied hive of commercial activity.
This had not always been the case. Argjend had been founded by industrious Albanian colonists two hundred years earlier, who had named the settlement for the striking manner in which the light struck off their prefabricated shelters when the sun rose at first light. Almost a century later, the city remained true to its name. As the city swelled up around the colony's original founding point and exploded in the post-war boom, city planners had endeavored to work silver as a design motif into as many surfaces as they could. It was inlaid in window frames, worked through the dusty yellow sandstone brickwork like strands of tinsel. The architecture in the city centre was classic 26th century modernism: majestic pinnacle towers, expansive suspension bridges and high rise alabaster apartment blocks, two hundred storeys high.
On a sunny day like this, the city didn't shine. It dazzled. Sunglasses became part of the uniform.
The companies had invested big here. The reasons were obvious to those who cared to dwell on them. There were no long-standing mass graves to be tip-toed around, no fields of burnt ash-glass or molten rock where humanity had once hoped to thrive, and had instead been entombed. No celebrated battles to be picked over by eager historians, or loud-mouthed interest groups to picket this site or that one. Here, they could build what they wanted. This was a fresh start, a genuine find.
There was a sterility to it, however; a certain rawness. The buildings, all fresh and modern, were overshadowed by a canopy of multi-coloured cranes where construction was beginning apace on the outlier parts of the city. The cut-glass of the headquarter buildings were unsullied by the regular rains of the northern continent. Everything seemed a bit too tidy, a bit too neatly planned: from the grid-iron pattern of the densely built streets to the steady hum of the capital's overhead Mag-Rail network, which bathed the streets below in a latticework of shadow. Argjend was a metropolis growing out of its infancy with all the awkward haste of a teenager.
Colony ships arrived from the Inner Colonies daily, bringing in new settlers by the thousands.
Two figures in particular stood out amongst the churning crowd milling across the plaza. Both by the determined speed with which they walked, and the way in which the crowd seamlessly parted around them.
Administrator Harold Taft was tall man, with a proud military bearing and only slight limp to his stride. Reconstructive surgery had served him well. You could only see the injuries if you cared to squint. An elected representative three terms running, Taft was the pinnacle of UEG Authority on Granica V. Right now he was busy fending off Amanda Jennings of the Alliance of Displaced Persons. The lobbyist was decidedly shorter than him, with a faded beauty prematurely aged by the stresses of the war. As head of one of the most influential NGO's in the Post-War Colonies, her influence was considerable.
Their arguing was not an uncommon occurrence.
"I see what you're saying, Amanda. Really, I do. But we simply don't have the resources."
"I can't placate people with promises forever, Henry, you know that." Amanda shot back, "We're running out of time. The UEG-"
"-is doing all it can, believe me. We're trying to run a city of fifty million people with infrastructure designed for twenty. Each and every settlement on this planet requires Argjend to run smoothly. Right now, its ability to do so is over-taxed, over-burdened, and certainly over-populated. Stresses are inevitable."
"Stresses? I wouldn't call our problems 'stresses', Harry. These are people we're talking about. Ill-housed, poorly fed. Look at New Cadiz. The warehouses down near Orbital Four aren't fit for habitation, not in that heat. And don't even get me started on the overcrowding over there."
"We had to find somewhere to put them. New Cadiz is the only other settlement with an orbital tether. That last intake damn near choked our own Spaceport. I've got the auto-manufactories pumping out as many prefab shelters as they can. We're already at capacity. Believe me, if there's something else we could have done, I would have authorised it personally."
It was then that a new voice cut them short.
"Mister Taft!"
He was a young man, clear eyed and eager, if a tad slight. Afterward, it was the eyes that would stay with Amanda. Clear and bright, almost startlingly in their intensity. He was dressed as a mail delivery man, with a carrying satchel slung over his shoulder. He held his hand back in an abortive half-wave. There was a nervous energy that crackled about him.
He stepped in front of them, waving again.
"Administrator Taft Sir!" the boy repeated.
The two representatives paused as the man stepped in front of him.
"What can I do for you, son?" Taft rumbled, lighting a welcoming smile despite the unwelcome interruption. It was that same affable charm that had got him elected twice before. The subtle warmth of that uncle you never had.
The young man with the clear, bright eyes shoved the pistol into Taft's chest. Fired twice. The shots rang up along the canyon glass walls of the street; a twinned crack of thunder. Warm blood spattered onto the pavement, onto Amanda's face, into her eyes; blinding her. The crowd around them detonated in a collective horrified shriek. They scattered like startled pigeons, clawing at one another to get away. Amanda threw herself to the ground, playing dead. The assassin vanished into the maelstrom, anonymous and soon forgotten.
Administrator Harold Taft had been elected on the back of his celebrated military service, which combined a natural charisma with grounded sincerity. It was a testament to his hardened constitution that he lasted a full six minutes as he bled out on the sun-warmed pavement. Amanda Jennings was with him until the end, elbow-deep in blood as she tried desperately to staunch wounds that simply could not be staunched.
By the time medical crews evacuated him into the back of an emergency response lifter, ten minutes later, he was already dead.
The revolution began in blood.
It would end the same way.
And so began the Granican War.
Years later, it would be classed as a police action; a minor peace-keeping expedition to a fledgling colony. This was the work of UEG spin-doctors, eager to contain the sheer violence unleashed upon that promising colony. That, and the fact events subsequent to the Granica War would eclipse it entirely.
The conflict began on March 2nd, 2557, with the public assassination of Administrator Harold Taft, a popular local figure, and it would not be until some three months later that a UNSC response fleet arrived in system. It was fortunate that the distance to the nearest UNSC patrol group happened to be as close as it was, relatively speaking. A coordinated military task-force, on a routine training exercises on an unoccupied world. That was the official line. Given the sheer scale of FLEETCOM's response, rumours abounded of a secret military installation in a nearby system, though such whispers were vehemently denied by official channels.
The recorded time-stamp attributed to the historical record was 16:22, March 2nd, 2557, Zulu Time.
Hostilities actually started four hours earlier, on the far side of the planet, in a troubled little mining city called New Cadiz.
Historians remain divided as to the original target of the uprising. Doubtless there were other settlements of greater strategic value. There was the twinned cities of Inari and Tana, industrious fishing ports of the Withered Sea, whose vast fishing fleets ploughed through the northern ice-floes; their bull-nosed hulls and heavy engines churning the frigid seas in their wake. With its vast fisheries and off-world exports, their destruction would strike a heavy blow to resource-dependent Inner Colonies; ravenous as they were in these straitened times. Other commentators, quick to join the debate, suggested alternative targets: the manufactories at Mariposa, or Carraig Nua or Madrid Nova, or a dozen other smaller settlements; each with their own unique industries and strategic value.
But history is a fickle thing and, on that first, bloody day its gaze fell upon New Cadiz.
The city lay on the border of the Massif Deadlands, a seemingly barren plain on the southern continent. A sprawling mass hard-packed from sandstone brickwork, locally sourced; the city had sustained population of five million, complimented by a transient population of ten. Where Argjend was the glittering jewel in Granica's crown, New Cadiz was the functional younger brother. Uglier, certainly, but well muscled and hard working. As the second foundling city on Granica, its mining contracts served as the principle underlying driver of the planet's economy. Coal, gas, diesel - natural resources were abundant. While Inner Colonies made do with nuclear fission and hard-processed fusion cores for their practical energy needs, countless industries still relied on the raw minerals strip-mined from Granica's core. Chem-plants, pharmaceuticals, experimental sciences. The list was long, and the need for skilled labourers longer still.
It made infiltrating the city all the easier.
The off-worlders came in from the capital; small teams of mining crews, dock workers and orbital stevedores, ferried in by overland coaches, inter-continental MagRail and sub-atmospheric shuttlecraft. Three hundred thousand souls a week, or so the shipping manifests said. This was not unusual. Though a backwater, New Cadiz was a mining installation of staggering size, and fresh shift crews routinely flushed through on a six month rotational basis.
The sprawling nature of the city demonstrated firsthand how many new structures were required to house its transient population. Unlike Argjend, there was no strict rhyme or reason to the layout of the city beyond a centralised administrative heartland, bisected by a central road network. Ribbon development simply spiraled out from wherever and whenever a new ore vein was discovered. JOTUN lifters tilled vast fields of GM crops in the surrounding wastes, the crops themselves irrigated by spraying geysers of misting water. Such was the rough and ready nature of post-war settlement.
The demand for new housing dictated that the majority of structures were either prefabricated shanties or crude houses mashed together by local stone and infill polycrete. The locals were just as varied. On paper, the latest intake into New Cadiz were air-tight legitimate; with authorised work permits and triple-signed transfer slips, but any sharp-eyed observer would have seen the was trouble a mile off.
It was the uniform demographic of the workers that gave it away. They were all singularly male, an unusual occurrence in these modern times. They carried bulging duffel bags, and had masked their faces with handkerchiefs and respirator masks designed for low-vent shaft work. There were few uniforms associated with traditional mining interests, though this itself was not seen as unusual. Prospect work was marked as a typical profession for the would-be 26th century cowboy.
What was unusual was that, once they arrived, the normally transient work crews weren't flushing back out. Locals were pushed out of their homes, intimidated by silent stares and soft pressure. Hard shoulders appeared in busy crowds, graffiti spray lambasted the more stubborn locals as UNSC toadies, or criminals or a dozen other spurious lies. Leaflets were scattered in public places, and local water shortages (a source of constant concern in the arid climate) were blamed on inadequate government services. The pamphlets never quite revealed that the water shortages were entirely engineered by the city's newfound residents.
The success of the uprising lay in its persistence. From almost a year earlier, infiltration teams had worked their way into the local populace, seamlessly integrating as legitimate workers. By the time the final group of insurgents arrived, fully a third of the city's populace were actively insurrectionist, with another third openly sympathetic of anti-government forces, spurred on by a concerted campaign of misinformation and outright propaganda. This pattern was repeated planet-wide, albeit on a smaller scale.
It should be noted as a matter of historical record that overcrowding had been an endemic problem across the planet. Space wasn't a problem: after all, there were vast stretches of the planet that were wild and untamed, but within the settlements themselves, there was too little space for too many people. Tempers flared. It was a matter of density. As one of the few outlier colonies which had not been glassed, invaded or otherwise torched by the Covenant's genocidal invasion, demand for places on world had been poorly managed, and those that had arrived had been integrated just as badly. Demand had been too high, immigration too lax.
When the Cadiz Rebellion finally exploded into life, four years after the Human Covenant War, it enveloped the planet's surface with all the ravenous hatred of a marauding brush-fire. When the rebels took to the street, hollering slogans and spraying wild shots into the air, a significant portion of the much put-upon refugees rose up along with them, swept up in the giddy chaos.
Chimera would arrive with the 4th Expedition Fleet, three months later. By then, the civil war would be in full swing.
By then, thousands would have already perished.
The problem with routine combat patrols is that they tend to be just that - routine.
Corporal Mike Lerner grimaced as he reached up to the visor of his helmet and peeled another mashed bug off his visor. He had made the mistake of leaning out past the windshield, and caught a face full of bug for his troubles. Despite the searing heat, Lerner was suddenly glad of the keffiyeh wrapped over his nose and mouth.
Binkowski was speaking again. Lerner was hardly surprised: PFC. Binkowski was a large and garrulous man. Like Mike, he was dressed in the digital pattern desert camouflage and the slope back helmet worn by all members of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment. He had an habitual addiction to Chum®, a FLEETCOM approved gum-based combat stimulant, which interspersed noisy clicks between every syllable. Binks didn't so much speak to you, so much as chewed at you, his jaw working around the words in a series of messy, wet sucking sounds.
"You know, Mike, years from now," Binks chewed, "Long after the last terrorist has fallen, and humanity has declared itself heir apparent to all the worlds and all the universes it can find, you're going to be able to say to your grandchildren 'I was there, man; I was there, in the Massif Wasteland… in the daytime'."
"...And I had to spend it with this asshole." Mike added.
"What?" Binks turned, his jaw still working on the gum. The wind whipped past them, tugging at the loose straps on their gear and batting them with a chilly but welcome breeze. Binks was as solid a Ranger as you could ask for in a firefight. Half-deaf from getting too close to a plasma mortar on Reach, but solid.
Behind them, manning the Warthog's assault cannon and similarly impassive in a mouth-wrapped keffiyeh and dust goggles, Specialist Lopez's shoulders shook with silent laughter.
"I said whatever, Binks," Lerner replied, gesturing vaguely at the 'Hog in front of them, "Keep your eyes on the road."
They drove on. All around them, endless desert spread out as far as the eye could see. Aside from the convoy of vehicles stretching out before them, their only company were the berms. Low walls of hard-packed dirt, they overshadowed the ditches at the road's edge, running for hundreds of kilometres across the planet's surface - an old gift from the original nomadic settlers who'd arrived in system over a hundred years ago.
"You have to agree though, Mike," Binkowski would not allow himself to be deterred from a well-chewed conversation, "For elite combat infantry, this is a serious misallocation of military resources."
"Orders are orders, Binks," Lerner replied, squinting out at the horizon "Innies move here, the Rangers follow."
"Whatever happened to Rangers Lead the Way, Sir?" Lopez asked, his voice static-chopped from his helmet mic. "Wasn't that what we signed up for?"
"You're Mexican, Lopez," Binks grinned playfully, "You'd believe anything."
"Yeah, well fuck you, man; Hooah?"
"Hooah!" Binks agreed, laughing.
He was still laughing when the Warthog in front of them exploded in a curling cloud of flame.
"Shit! Shit!" Binks threw the wheel to the left. The 'Hog slid into a spin, the dust blinding them.
The com channel burst into panic.
"IED! IED!"
Curling flames had blocked them from the rest of the convoy. Lerner hopped out, slapping the side of the bonnet.
"Stay on the wheel!" Lerner shouted over his shoulder. Lopez started panning the gun around the horizon.
Pings and pops of bending metal began to appear in the bonnet of their Warthog. Then they heard it. The patter-crackle of small arms fire. The hissing snap as hard rounds came in. Sound caught up with speed.
"Under fire!" one of the Rangers hollered over the com, "Contacts, four-hundred metres! East!"
Lopez swung the assault cannon to bear. It juddered to life in his hands. Only the winking slice of tracer fire revealed their attackers' position - an overlooking hill far out in the wastes. The heat haze distorted everything, but even without his VISR-assisted monocle, Lopez could see what he was shooting at.
Insurgents.
A white contrail split the sky. The round punched clean through metal shielding of the rear-mounted cannon. Then the boom rent the air, the visceral sound of it rattling Lerner's ripcage. Lopez fell back, screaming. There was blood everywhere.
"He's hit! He's fucking hit!" Binks cried out, diving from the driver's seat down to the relative shelter of the Warthog's muscular front wheels.
The two standing Rangers grabbed Lopez by the grab bar on the neck-lining of his body armour, hauling him bodily from the Warthog. The 'Hog rocked on its suspension as more rounds cracked into the hull. Bodywork chipped and sparked as the LRV shook. They hauled Lopez over to the shelter of the berm. Lerner could hear the dull thuft of rounds impacting into the earthwork revetment.
Miraculously, the anti-material round had actually missed Lopez entirely; instead rebounding off the metal lining of the LAAG's deflector guard and peppering him with biting shrapnel. Had the round connected proper, Lopez's entire torso would have been gone.
"You're okay, Lopez, you're going to be okay!" Binks was shouting.
"Is it bad, is it bad, is it bad," Lopez was stammering. The keffiyeh had fallen away from his face. Blood leaked from his left nostril.
"Med-pack!"
They tore open its contents. Sachets of sterilisation powder and rolling tubes of bio-foam tumbled across the dirt road, tinkling as they grabbed at them. Binks frantically snatched one up, loading the dispenser and activating it with a snap-twist. The sealing toggle-clasp of the dispenser was loose, and Binks swore violently as he jiggled it into place. Finally, the foam-tube clicked shut. Foam squirted all over the place. Binks fought to control it, getting the tool to seal Lopez's weeping cuts. There were too many to count. The BDU was shredded, and where it wasn't shredded, it was seeping wet. The wounded Ranger slumped back as the foamy-gel's anesthetic took hold, his pain slipping away in a balmy haze.
Lerner shimmied up to the edge of the berm; sliding his BR-85 over the lip of the bank and rattling off angry bursts of suppressive fire. With his other hand he activated the platoon-wide com. Panic cries and frantically barked orders filled his ears.
The Ranger column, Strike Team Brigand, had been caught at either end by simultaneously triggered improvised explosive charges; primed by short range radio carrier wave. Lerner's 'Hog had fell just short of the ambush kill zone. The others, trapped on either side by billowing towers of wafting flame, were effectively pinned.
But trapped UNSC Rangers are no mere lambs to be slaughtered. They were the pride of the UNSC Army: a force of shock troopers steeped in history and wrapped in ferocious glory. The single smartest thing the UNSC ever did in its rise to galactic dominance had been the systemic adoption of every effective fighting force ever conceived in the field of modern combat. UNSC Army Rangers were yet another example of why this policy would prove to be vindicated in the cruel eyes of galactic history. They were warriors, proud and true.
Strike Team Brigand rallied, the drivers and passengers of the Warthogs dismounting and bellying low against the insulating cover of the berm. Tufts of spitting dirt popped up all around them, but to little effect.
Brigand went to war.
Suppressive fire, thrown down by the rear-mounted assault cannons. Hissing smoke grenades tumbled over into no man's land, obscuring their position from the enemies' pre-sighted weapons. Heat-scopes picked out the ambushers, a score of rag-tag militia lurking in the waists, be-masked in environment gears and tattered rags. A short range tactical drone was sent up by the platoon's tech specialist, beaming a bird's eye view of the battlefield down to the eye-monocles of the fire team leaders. It showed the Ranger column trapped in between two ruined Warthogs, under assault from a numerically inferior force.
The rebels' response to the coordinated response was immediate. They melted away, the occasional muzzle flash falling silent. Had they failed to do so, there would have only been one outcome. After a minute sound of incoming fire had faded away. Lerner half-rose up, cautious. Only the occasional pop and crack from the Ranger's located in the centre of the kill zone told him that their attackers had stolen away into the barren desert.
"All units, cease fire!" A few rifle shots sounded out, "I said cease fire!"
It took a minute for the order to seep through to the men, amped as they were on adrenaline. Slowly, silence returned, and the blowing breeze became the only sound once more.
Lerner looked back at where Binks was crouched protectively over Lopez. Lopez was out cold, laid out in the recovery position. Binks' actions had no doubt saved the man's life.
"Fuck was that, man?" Binks breathed, eyes wider than wide. He was still riding the combat high.
Neither of them had ever fought humans before. They had barely even glimpsed the enemy. The shock of it rattled them both.
"No idea, Binks," Learned replied, breathless himself. "One thing's for sure..."
Lerner licked a scaly tongue over cracked lips, and wondered how he managed to get so dehydrated all of a sudden. Finally he finished his sentence.
"…it's going to get worse, before it gets better."
"Hooah man," Binks nodded, swallowing hard. "Fuckin' Hooah."