"Of all the myriad groups arising from the ashes of the Human-Covenant War, the Displaced Persons Alliance (DPA) proved to be one of the more influential post-war factions within the wider UEG political sphere.
Espousing a centrist rheteoric, the DPA was largely apolitical in its inception - favouring targeted solutions to the widespread problem of mass population displacement, funded through charitable donations. Their focus was logistical, humanitarian. This changed in time, as its hands-on desire to intervene, and fondness for direct action, quickly won it the support of influential politicans, financiers, celebrities - and most importantly - the common citizen. This quickly complicated matters, as what had once been a humanitarian movement quickly became politicised, and with these new politics, the DPA acquired new enemies. Now established on the political stage, and widely popular across the ChatterNet and further afield, the DPA grew in power.
And power, as the saying goes, is not without its price..."
- excerpt, On Governments and Governance - Notable Factions of the Post-War Period (published 2593).
Far removed from the raging fires and broken rubble of New Cadiz, the city of Argjend is a clean and eerily quiet metropolis. The wide avenues and stretching boulevards have long since cleared; martial law having been in effect since the UNSC taskforce arrived in system. The little traffic that is allowed to travel the empty highways is hemmed into carefully control checkpoints, swept by teams of hard-faced MP's. They check the underside of each car with meticulous care; all mirrored sensor brooms and snuffling sniffer dogs. This is a city on edge.
Amanda Jennings sat in the queue for one such checkpoint now, the back of her seat vibrating from the purring engine of the armoured truck. All vehicles entering and exiting the Refugee Zone were subject to full vehicular examination, and the relief convoy of the Displaced Persons Alliance was no exception. As acting Governor, Administrator Amanda Jennings would ordinarily have travelled in far greater comfort, but her appointed escort had particular size requirements to accommodate. They had been most insistent.
Not that she was one to argue. When she had first been introduced to Fireteam Trident, the towering giants had struck her as being grossly surplus to requirements; more suited to a battlefield than a security detail. Trident One, a soft-spoken man by the name Loic Lambert, had quickly proven her wrong, however. While no attempts had yet been made against her person, tensions were running high, and a sense of lingering malice pervaded. The very presence of the Spartans comforted her greatly.
It was at Trident's insistence that they now occupied an armoured truck, one with a troop bay large enough to accommodate two fully combat-prepped Spartans at any given time. One of the them was a monster of a Spartan named Aata. He toted a triple barrelled rotary cannon, the ammo links of which clinked and rattled as he fidgeted in the cramped confines of the cargo hold. It was a weapon far beyond the scale of the average infantryman, but then Aata was a goliath - even by Spartan standards.
Trident One sat completely still by comparison, Loic's focus entirely fixed upon the Tacpad showing the motorcade's route along the elevated expressway that formed one of the most direct routes over Lake Silver.
Loic had prepared for the inspection tour extensively. The convoy was uniformly composed of five identical supply trucks, all of which had been up-armoured internally. To the untrained eye, the truck carrying the Acting Governor was visually identical to those around it, but it had been extensively modified at his request. An added internal layer of blast-ablative plating had been added, as had emergency escape hatches in the event the vehicle was over-turned by an IED. The wheels too were reinforced; the engine block had a dummy electric generator in the event it was pierced by sniper fire. A practiced soldier, Loic never took chances.
Trident Four and Five, Robert and Kazuo respectively, were providing cover fire from a transport Falcon shadowing their position high above. Trident Two, a small and wiry Spartan by the name of Suraj, had scouted ahead, taking a team of UNSC Marines to secure the route. They would rendezvous at the refugee camp; some four klicks due south-west.
Lambert had been against the whole idea of an inspection tour in the first place. It was only a few hours ago that a suspicious package had been mailed to the Governor's office, to be disposed of by an EOD team via controlled detonation. Likely a hoax, some joker looking to capitalise on the on-going tensions across the planet. Still, even with the imminent threat, Governor Jennings would not be deterred. As Acting Governor, she had retained control of the executive branch of the civilian government. Combined with her existing role as the head of the Displaced Persons Alliance, this gave her significant pull.
The relief mission would go ahead as planned.
"Sweeper teams are clear." their driver transmitted from the front cabin, "We're clear to proceed."
"Keep it moving." Loic murmured, offering the Governor a reassuring nod.
"Roger, rolling out."
The truck jolted as it lurched into motion once again.
Not for the first time, Jennings felt bulky and swollen in the swaddling thickness of the Abdicator body armour the Spartans had strapped her in. Where Trident's armour was a sleek body-moulded deep sea green, her armour was a dull tan; a civilian model more akin to what Marine units wore in the sifting dust of the New Cadiz theatre. Perched on her head was a bulky com-set, which chafed her ears raw and tugged at her snagging hair. A necessary discomfort: it allowed her to hear the com-chatter issuing back and forth between the convoy drivers and their appointed guardians.
The journey to the camp ultimately passed without incident. As the convoy came down from the skyway, funnelling into the narrow streets that fed into the industrial district at the southern edge of the city, close to the Starport. Here the buildings were imposing, corrugated monsters; squat and broad and blunt-shaped; stained with plasma-scoring from where the edges of buildings had been riveted together and sealed with industrial-scale torches. It had rained earlier, and the tyres hissed as they scraped along the wet tarmac.
Argjend was a progressive, well-accommodated capital; like so many of the other city-states across the wider UEG protectorate. Its construction had originally lacked the more overtly defensive architecture commonly adopted in the wake of the Human Covenant war; instead favouring the towering super-scrapers and high rise habitation stacks once witnessed on Reach, or some of the more expansive Inner Colonies.
That was not to say that recent times had not had some degree of influence on Granica V's largest settlement. You could see it in the adaptation of certain quirks. The presence of the orbital defence towers, for instance; or in the way the Starports and the rail lines were sufficiently spaced out from one another to minimise the impact of planetary bombardment. Where concrete and limestone walls had been shorn up with reinforced instacrete coating and thick support joists; or the manner in which its highways relied heavily upon supplementary underground tunnels, affording ground traffic shelter from potential air strikes. Conspicuous too were the more than adequate provision of emergency shelters; many of which had been repurposed stores from a more innocent era.
Perhaps even more indicative of the times was the stencilled graffiti which covered the walls the further you went from the cold glass and smooth sophistication of the core financial centre. Snaking neon lines ran across alleyway walls and coating the underside of the arches which supported the Grav-Train lines overhead. Clenched fists made grand gestures defying the status quo.
NEW CADIZ STANDS FREE, one scrawl declared, its freedom fighter a single line silhouette all dribbling yellow paint.
A FREE SHITHOLE, a more abrasive tag responded, its font marked by hard angles and cold UNSC blue.
INNIES OUT, read another, altogether more blunt slogan. Some charming soul had adorned this with a swastika, however insensible.
A panoply of prejudices from both ends of the political spectrum. Being the cultural, economic and military heartland of UEG governance on Granica V, the city was considerably more sympathetic to the UNSC deployment than some of the smaller settlements. That the government had finally - after vehement lobbying from the DPA - managed to effect a coordinated relief effort for those fleeing the war had won them a large amount of moderate support. Indeed, such was the level of local support that many commentators questioned the need for martial law in the capital, with many deeming the on-going lockdown to be unnecessary, even heavy handed. And so the tension persisted, with no clear resolution to the malaise which hung over the city like a brewing cloud.
As the convoy ground to a halt, tyres squelching in soft muck and sloshing puddles, Loic was not so sure things were due to improve any time soon. Scared eyes watched them from all angles; peering down from dark doorways and overhanging balconies.
The Refugee Zone formed a large bubble on the southern edge of the industrial zone surrounding the principal Star Port. Originally a sprawling tent city at the base of the southern foothills, rapid deployment of government-mandated construction teams had thrown up a hastily formed prefab settlement that was quickly merging seamlessly with the hillside beyond. The result was a speedy solution to the housing crisis, but at a cost to the clean delineating order of Argjend's grid-iron planning; civilisation without civility. Entire habitation blocks had been pumped out by the auto-refineries two at a time: whole sections of the housing being pre-assembled and slid into place before being welded together by construction crews provided by Traxus Heavy Industries, Jotun, and a half dozen smaller sub-contractors.
Even with the UNSC's direct aid, the UEG response had underestimated the number of refugees flooding in from New Cadiz. Part of the problem was that Argjend had a pre-existing refugee problem that long pre-dated the insurrection. Indeed, many of the original refugees had left their existing habitation elsewhere, flocking to the designated Zone, chasing rumours - however false - that things were better here. The consequence was that tenements were being filled faster than they could be built. Production facilities were pushed beyond capacity.
The people didn't wait. They scavenged what they could. Plywood, sloppily poured polycrete; it didn't matter: anything to get a roof over their heads.
With each passing day a new influx of refugees was deposited within the security quarantine, and submitted for processing. Here idents were cross referenced with existing immigration archives; each refugee subjected to a rigorous screening process. It was a harsh necessity. All too often had insurrectionists managed to secrete themselves amongst the milling crowds; waiting to announce themselves with a hidden rifle or a primed suicide vest. Even now the entry zone to the Refugee Zone resembled a prison; with its spooled razor wire and overlooking guard towers staffed with wary Marines.
Hemmed in on all sides by a large perimeter wall, the convoy rolled through the entrance gate. Mounted machine guns tracked them as they passed.
Beyond the clearance gate, the Refugee Zone had become a new micro-city in its own right; a slum nestled beneath the chrome shadow of Argjend's towering mega structures. Officially it was coded as Settlement Zone Designate A-31E (Temporary), but to the one million registered asylum seekers crammed within it, it was anything but.
It became Little Sanctuary.
Nobody knows where the name originated. The people of New Cadiz that had fled the war spoke a myriad of languages beside English-Standard; Portuguese, Arabic, Urdu, French, Siamese; Mandarin and Cantonese both. New Cadiz had been a melting pot, and those fortunate enough to escape the worst of the fighting soon found themselves cramped within the confines of a walled slum capable of accommodating roughly half their number.
Where Argjend was ordered and cosmopolitan, Little Sanctuary was dog-rough and bohemian. Its buildings bulged against the outer limits of the Zone, straining against the perimeter wall that constricted it. Faced with no room to expand outward, the city grew up instead. More floors were simply bolted on top of the existing prefabs; either by official design or by crude girder work jury-rigged by some of the more enterprising residents. Within the months that were to followed, the micro-city would outgrow its borders, becoming an eclectic jumble of corrugated mish-mash; a blight that hugged the slopes of the foothills beyond - a favela in all but name. Years later, it would become a tourist attraction in its own right; famous for its rough and ready sense of adventure.
But this was now. The ground around the Refugee Zone had no paving; no discernible hardpan of any kind. Desperate to relieve the urgent need for new housing, the initial prefabs had simply been sunk into the open grassland by their foundations, and the city slapped on top. The result of this was singular; a carpet of churned muck wherever your boots stepped.
With the renewed urgency arising from the New Cadiz rebellion, the newer stacks had been thrown up even faster than before, exacerbating the jumbled mess. Duckboard laid out in sections was the best you could hope for; with the occasional railway sleeper forming walkways that sank into the mire with a gurgling squelch.
The Spartans disembarked, fanning out between the convoy and the on looking crowd beyond. They flanked Amanda as she stepped away and moved deeper into Sanctuary; drinking in the sights, smells and dazzling colours of the foundling slum-city. The rest of the civilian relief teams waited within their trucks, too nervous to exit and face the potential wrath of the waiting mob. Undaunted, Amanda continued alone, flanked by her two towering sentinels, her average height rendered tiny by comparison.
Over the coming months, social strata became easily distinguished: the higher you were in the stacks, the more status and influence you wielded. Crime would become rife in the months ahead, and it wasn't long before those in the wider city reported refugees slipping the boundaries of the Zone and stealing into the city beyond. While weapon access was tightly controlled by the initial screen-and-clears, knife crime and punishment beatings became commonplace among the various gangs that quickly asserted dominance in the unfolding chaos.
Commerce was confined to barter, the majority of asylum seekers having lost everything in their flight from the wars, both local and extra-planetary.
As Amanda stepped out into the warmth of the midday sun, she marvelled at the colours each of the stacks had been daubed in. There was a glamour to it; a certain noisy richness. Not content with the default slate-grey of a Traxus standard field-pattern habitation block, the residents had hastily sprayed, stamped and otherwise stencilled their buildings in a riot of clashing colours. Neon greens flanked lurid reds and pale nimbus blues. Crude power cables and celebratory bunting - much of it woven by hand - had been strung from building to building; lending the entire sub-city an almost carnival atmosphere. It would only become richer in time, a throwback to a less sophisticated but ultimately happier century.
The convoy was carrying a shipment of humanitarian rations packs (dubbed "hum-rats" for short) and large plastic drums of water. The crowds hung back from the supply convoys at first, intimidated by the two Spartans shadowing Amanda. Eventually Amanda gave Loic a nod.
The Spartan lowered his Battle Rifle to the ground, waving the crowds forward.
Nobody budged. They scarcely blinked. Loic turned and looked at Amanda, shoulder pauldrons clinking with the faintest of shrugs.
Amanda keyed the com-link her head-set was tuned to.
"Do these trucks have a PA system?"
"Negative, Administrator, but one moment," Loic sent back, tapping into his TACPAD, "Patching you through to my suit's audio suite now, Ma'am."
The Spartan gave her a thumbs up.
"Citizens of the UEG, Friends…" Amanda smiled, her voice booming out from Loic's helmet speakers, carrying high against the looming favela walls.
"I know you have endured much to be here. The war, the constant fighting. Even here, times are tough. They call this place Little Sanctuary. And it is true - there is scant comfort here."
Amanda took a breath.
"But we there is more we can do. We can try harder. We can do better. But it's going to take all of us. You me, these brave Spartans here. Humanity survived its first expansion to the stars. When the Covenant invaded, we survived. We can survive this. We will survive this. All that we ask is that you trust us."
Amanda waited for a moment. Eventually a child stepped forward. A girl, even younger than her daughter Sarah, who was now in her early teens. The girl was of Indian extraction; her face was clean and pretty, but her arm was severely bandaged - a patchwork job from where bio-foam supplies had proven too hard to find in the resource starved slum. A single daisy had been looped through her hair, its white petals at stark odds with the filth caking her. She hesitated, having half parted from the thronging crowd behind her; unsure of herself.
Amanda switched bands to the inter-Spartan com channel.
"Aata, get an aid package and go to her. Remove your helmet."
The towering Spartan twisted his head to look at Loic.
"Sir?"
"Do as she says, Three."
"Copy." The towering Maori let the assault cannon dangle on its sling, and peeled off his helmet with a hiss-snap as the neck seal released.
There was a collective gasp as the crowd saw the Spartan's face. None of them had ever seen a Spartan before, never realised that towering iron giant was flesh and bone beneath the hardened shell of Titanium-A. Aata's face was dressed in a series of ritualistic tattoos, a throwback to his time as a tanker back in the Human Covenant War, and indeed his Maori warrior heritage.
Aata stepped forward, a hum-rat in his hands. He crouched down on one knee, beckoning the child over; a warm smile plastered across his broad, tattooed face.
Slowly, tentatively, the child stepped forward. She approached gingerly, toes squelching in the muck from where she had stepped clear of the railway sleepers. The girl occasionally stole uncertain glances back over her shoulder at the crowd behind her, where doubtless her family watched. For their part, the crowd watted with baited breath.
After a moment, Amanda realised she was holding her breath too.
Aata hunched forward, proffering the hum-rat.
The girl plucked it from his gauntleted hands; fumbling with the plastic-sealed wrapping. Eventually, with no small amount of determined frustration, she tore at it with her teeth, ripping into the MRE hidden within the foil beneath. Aata chuckled as she inhaled the crumbs of the freeze-dried bread. The crowd erupted in a cheer, surging forward with a burst of energy, the tense spell now broken
Aata had to rise to his feet to avoid being swamped by the crowd entirely. He plucked the girl up in his hands, hefting her as a normal sized man would bounce an infant. The crowd churned about him, a thousand hands out-stretched and begging for more.
Amanda waved the go ahead to the relief teams. The back of the trucks banged open, and package after package was tossed out into the sea of churning, cheering people.
Across the planet, a far less heartening scene unfolded.
The expansive roadway baked in the afternoon sun; both from the relentless heat and the curling flames which licked up to the blue sky above. The outrider Warthogs had been caught square in the open, pulverised by a combination of RPG and disciplined mortar fire. Broken bodies littered the pavement; butchered colonial civil defence for the most part. The killing had taken place some three hours earlier. Since then, the bodies had been left to rot in the sun.
Less forgotten was the bulk of the convoy, which sat isolated; quaking from mortar fire. The Marine fire teams of RCT Charlie had moved in from the south-east to reinforce them, but even now they crouched at the edge of the empty water duct, unable to advance to assist the beleaguered convoy or else risk falling prey to the pounding barrage which shrieked down from on high. A pall of black smoke twisted in the air above the battered assault convoy. The water duct itself was smattered with smoking craters from where indirect fire had fallen short.
Perched in their overlook point on the second floor of a fire-gutted office building, surveying the devastation through the scope of his rifle, Damien opened the inter-squad com channel.
"Well, Chimera, I'm open to suggestions."
"Mortar fire, well directed from the looks of it." Rashid observed.
"Which means spotters, Sir." Chidinma added, craning her head to look up, "And the sun is behind us."
"A moment," that was Rashid again, "Scanning."
One gauntlet held against the side of his bulky helmet, Rashid adjusted the target detection settings of his GUNGIR VISR system; prioritising reflection resolutions; pixels of a certain intensity; lens flare, filtered for distance and dust distortion. The shine grew into several noticeable pinpricks of dazzling light, so sharp that even his augmented eyes had to squint to look at them.
"Kaizen, a favour, if you will."
"Certainly, Spartan 492."
"Prioritise and catalogue all targets of noted high intensity spectrum - screen for residual heat signatures and mark likely silhouettes as potential red flags."
"Marking now."
A bevy of red target boxes flashed up; sorting themselves for tagging as confirmed enemy combatants. Kaizen cross-referenced Rashid's visual check with the orbital data relayed from the drones and even the targeting scopes of the Carpathia itself. With each passing second, a picture was being formed.
Chidinma was already sighting her anti-material rifle.
"Isolate confirmed red-flag profiles and upload all viewfinder data to Chidinma's targeting scope."
"Already done." Kaizen reported smoothly.
Chidinma settled into a shooting position and cracked off a single round. Far in the distance, one of the red flags faded to a dull amber, then vanished altogether. The intensity of the mortar deluge began to wane slightly.
Rashid turned to look at Damien, his single ocular lens micro-adjusting as it re-adjusted.
"They're using line of sight to pin-point the convoy's location. Laser tags, likely keyed into an automated mortar platform of some kind. We have you covered, Sir."
Damien nodded, signalling to the others.
"Vee, Luke, you're with me."
"Following your lead, 451," Luke replied. Viktorya simply flashed a green status indicator and rose to her feet.
The three Spartans leapt down to street level; a full two storey drop which they weathered with cat-like grace; the barest dip in their knees belying the strain put upon the buckling pavement beneath them.
In the midst of the kill zone, First Lieutenant Hailey Jackson was bellowing into her com line, straining to be heard over the shrapnel that was clanging off the hull of the transport with a resounding series of pings, clangs and dongs. The sound was maddening, as though they had taken cover within a giant bell, and their enemies had taken to hitting that bell with a sledgehammer. The Armadillo troop carrier was a stocky, hardy vehicle, but if this kept up they were going to be shredded as badly as the colonials the Marines had been sent to reinforce.
"I said I want that mortar fire silenced-"
Another booming crack sounded across the open water duct. A different sound to the shrieking slam of artillery and spalling clumps of rebounding polycrete.
"And who the hell is shooting?"
There came a deep resounding clang from outside the hull. The Marines exchanged glances.
"What the hell is that?" one of the Marines hissed.
"Quiet!" Jackson snapped.
The new sound came again. After a moment, Jackson realised what it was.
Somebody was knocking on the hull.
There was a flurry of charge handles being pulled as the Marines prepped to debark in a counter assault pattern. Jackson muscled her way through to the rear hatch, her own assault rifle braced in an firing stance. She nodded at Perkins, the man closest to the hatch. Perkins gripped the emergency release, returned the nod. On a three count, he pulled. The storm hatch slammed down. Sunlight slapped them in the eyes.
It took a moment for her helmet's glare-lenses to auto-adjust.
Standing before them, spread out in a wide line, were three armoured giants; each as individual as they were terrible to behold. Weapons held in a passive sweeping pattern, the Spartans looked far too nonplussed for people standing in the heart of an enemy kill zone. Behind them, the rest of RCT Charlie marine compliment moved up, free to advance.
"Lieutenant Jackson?" the lead giant enquired politely. A male, going by the filtered voice and the musculature.
"Uh, yes sir."
"No Sir, Ma'am." the Spartan shook his head, "Sierra Four Five One, on site and here to assist. Fireteam Chimera are your designated relief."
"Shouldn't you be in cover?" Perkins asked.
The Spartan cocked his head to one side, puzzled. Another sniper round rang out across the water duct. The Marines reflexively ducked. The Spartans didn't flinch.
This time the grey armoured Spartan spoke up, holding out a hand as though testing the weather for rain.
"Notice the pleasant lack of artillery fire now encroaching your position." the second Spartan spoke up, "Observe the restored civility."
Another thunderclap of Chidinma's sniper rifle interrupted him.
"And believe me when I say we have you covered." the grey Spartan finished.
Luke was right. Robbed of their spotters, the artillery had stopped lost line of sight. Their target locks broken, the automated mortar systems had fallen silent. So too had the rocket fire from the buildings beside them. Eventually the accompanying small arms fire died out altogether, with the insurrectionists realising that to show ones face meant death. Soon, only the distant sounds of the war filled the sky.
The blue Spartan raised a hand to the side of his helmet, listened for a moment then nodded.
"New orders just came through, Marines." Damien said, "General Stape needs you back in the fight. We're to rendezvous with RCT Bravo and push for the next target marker."
"Confirmed rally point?"
"The Dakhar Market, on the outskirts of the central municipal district."
"And the plan when we get there?"
"You heard Spartan 502, Lieutenant." Damien tilted his head to indicate Luke, "Restore civility."
To the north, two commandos lay prone on a rooftop, hidden by the dusty parapet which ran the length of the rooftop's perimeter. The men made for an odd duo, armoured as they were in a hodgepodge of military kit; kit that may have once been ODST gear, hat it not been so thoroughly weathered, patched and modified as to be unrecognisable. Both men had stowed their signature ODST and Air Assault helmets with the rest of their kit, lumping them in the shadows of the recessed stairwell behind them.
The Dahkar Market formed the central trade access for the southern half of the city before Central, the inner central business district of New Cadiz, and its economic heartland. There, the buildings grew taller: multi-storey office buildings, industrial storage units for Orbital Two. While unchecked fires had ravaged many of the buildings during the initial stages of the uprising, many more stood whole; towering edifices fortified from top to bottom with lurking resistance fighters.
The market was a basic square, almost a full kilometre wide from end to end. Its northern end was dominated by a single large meat-processing factory, long since repurposed into a general trade house for passing traders en route to Orbital Two, and now serving as a local headquarters for the United Liberation Front militia.
The trade house rose up five storeys; all chipped stonework and crudely whitewashed walls. A colourful mural depicting a series of children playing had been defaced, splashed with revolutionary red paint and stitched with bullet holes that were all - alarmingly - at waist-height. On closer inspection, the sniper-spotter team realised that not all of the offending red splashing the walls was paint.
The spotter, Master Sergeant Steven Pemberley and his shooter-partner, First Sergeant Steven Walcott, had long served together, distinguishing themselves as UNSC Army Rangers and subsequently becoming members of the 808th Pathfinders in the closing stages of the Human Covenant War. As a twinned sniper-spotter team they went by the common designation Echo Six Three, though their shared first names and uniformly ragged appearance invariably led to them being referred to off-coms as "The Two Steve's". Pemberley wore a floppy boonie hat, whereas Walcott - the shooter - had tied on his trademark bandana, not wishing to obscure his vision as he peered down the rifle scope. The Two Steves had nestled into their perch, and were busy cataloguing troop movements on the northern end of the market.
They were not kept idle: insurgents were everywhere.
"I count eighteen contacts total; five storey building due north." Pemberley whispered, playing the binoculars left to right. "Strictly amateur hour stuff."
Walcott was below him, his rifle peering through a narrow hole in the lower corner of the parapet. To any passer by, their position was just another squat stucco building in a sea of innocuous, similarly weather-beaten buildings.
"Roger, tagging 'em up." Walcott replied, marking their position for the drones overhead to orientate upon.
The aerial drones, all but unseen in the sky miles above, would catalogue the positions of the insurgents; beaming their position up to the Carpathia's Orbital Surveillance suite ands storing their sighted positions for dissemination to all friendly UNSC forces within the AO. Across the city, some twenty other Pathfinder teams were conducting the same high risk reconnaissance. It was tense work, and each passing moment carried the risk of discovery and, with that, certain death.
"Hold up." Pemberley murmured calmly, "More contact."
Three troop trucks had just hauled up on the far side of the square, brake pedals groaning as they began disgorging troops. More rag-tag gun-men; clad in the typical breather masks, glare goggles and dust covers.
At least at first glance.
"Check out our new arrivals," Walcott whispered, "Notice anything?"
While the original garrison had been typical ULF fare - ill-disciplined, amped up on rhetoric, combat stims and little else - these new arrivals were a decidedly different breed.
The first warning bell was the quality of their equipment. BR85's, long range sniper rifles and SPNKR rocket tubes - modern tech, and dependable too. Those were surprising. Even more surprising was what came out of the trucks next. High end material: Spartan Laser cannons, magrail launchers, deployable Ballista anti-air missile launchers.
The uneasy feeling in Pemberley's stomach grew worse the more he watched. It was the manner of how the insurgents deploy the equipment that alarmed him. It was partly the way they carried themselves: no nonsense; a sense of urgency, certainly, but without the shrill bickering and heated arguments many of the less disciplined fighters often showed in the initial moments before a fire-fight. These men were different.
They had a playbook.
Under their supervision, the square transformed from a dusty opening in the middle of the city to a veritable fortress. Buildings were reinforced with heaped sandbags, looped with coiling spools of razor wire. The trucks themselves, crudely up-armoured with metal plates riveted to the side, were strategically parked and used as additional cover around the mouth of the square's northern entrance; forming an impromptu blockade.
Gunmen took over-watch positions, rigging up bipod mounted machine posts and establishing ammunition stores within direct hand reach of the defending gun crews, Their tactical assessment and force disposition seemed pre-planned, ripped from the pages of a UNSC Advanced Infantry Primer. So too were their hand signals: clear, crisp, efficient.
Pemberley adjusted the focus ring on his spotter scope, zooming closer.
The final giveaway was the insurgents' armour, still visible despite the widespread adoption of ragged keffiyehs and face-obscuring shemaghs. Though the men tried to hide it with local affectations, there was no mistake: these new men wore UNSC ballistic armour, albeit bereft of insignia. Military advisors, ONI liked to call them. Pemberley knew the look well: he'd worn it himself enough over the years, teaching terrified colonials how to shoot Covenant. Were it not for the lack of IFF tags and their direct association with the local gunmen, these new hostiles could have stepped from the ranks of the 808th.
"Double check they're not friendlies." Pemberley frowned, doubting himself for the first time in a long while.
"No ident-tags, no nothing." Walcott hissed, as he looked up from the scope. "Something's not right."
"If they're ex-military, they've gotta have some kind of ident-chipping."
Walcott checked again, shaking his head.
"Scope isn't reading anything."
"Oh shit." Pemberley breathed, realising something.
"What?"
"If they've got access to military grade equipment…" Pemberley looked at Walcott.
Then they can see us, Walcott finished Pemberley's thought. All they need to do is pick up a scope and look.
Walcott immediately powered down his scope. He then reached for his com-line, snapped it off, and then pulled a heat-displacing camo blanket over him, masking his body suit's IR signature. Pemberley did the same. The airless heat was punishing beneath the sandpaper chafe of the photo-reactive camo cloak, but they had little choice. Soon both men were drenched with sweat.
Echo Six Three went dark, stranded behind enemy lines, unable to radio for assistance. They took notes on enemy force dispositions, marking them on a paper chart with a wax pencil.
Unless somebody showed up to spring this hornets nest, they were trapped.
Across the city, the UNSC forces went from three separate, isolated strands and began forming a single clenched fist; a sharpened sword hoping to stab clean into the heart of New Cadiz.
General Stape's intentions were clear. While the local commanders had originally opted for tactical flexibility, hoping to snake into the city from three access points, Stape was going to forego subtlety entirely, and smash the insurrectionists with a single concentrated hammer blow. Mantis Assault Walkers, more manoeuvrable in urban scenarios than the heavier Scorpion battle tanks, were ordered to form up and make for the rally point. The streets became accustomed to seeing the marauding bipedal walker stalking through the city, weapons ripping out infestations of rebels with chattering machine cannons and whistling rocket pods. The Ranger and Marine teams, already bloodied in the initial phases of the battle, were given new orders and told to advance.
Fireteams Platinum and Trident reiterated their request to be redeployed to the ravaged city. Once again, their request was denied. Eric himself appealed the order, and was bluntly informed that the other Spartans were needed elsewhere.
And so, at the centre of this push would be single augmented Fireteam: Chimera. The Spartans' appearance had changed dramatically over the course of the day. Gone was the spotless gleam and smooth finish of their armour; replaced by scorch marks and scrapings from where stray rounds had chipped against the metal skin, the killing force ablated by their fizzling shields. Ever known for their improvisation, the Spartans had bedecked themselves with all manner of extra combat webbing: ammunition belts, grenade bandoliers, even a medical bag in the case of Chidinma. Ammunition was begged, borrowed or stolen from the corpses of those they killed. There was a rawness to Chimera now, a hard-earned edge which showed them for what they were: dog soldiers, bred for exactly this kind of hard-contact scenario.
This was just as well. For what followed would dictate not only the fate of New Cadiz, but also the very nature of combat operations on Granica V.
Few would survive.