"And your final recommendation, Doctor?"
"Chimera are resilient, Sir. Well trained, well disciplined. They have a bond closer than the average Spartan IV deployment; more in keeping with records closer to that of a Spartan II fireteam. Their combat rating speaks for itself."
"Yet you sound hesitant."
"They are also... fragile. Creatively gifted, prone to broad streaks of individualism. If unit cohesion for any reason should be disrupted, there is every chance that their viability as a combat unit could become comprimised."
"Comprimised? How so?"
"That's just it Sir. Until it happens, we won't know."
- intercepted transmission, Laconia Facility, six months earlier [/Strictly EYES ONLY file_ .Net#file_designate-ARROWHEAD- [ONI Case File, retrieved 2561]/
"Spartan down! I repeat, Spartan down!"
The call went over the com channel. Wide band, all frequencies.
It marked a turning point in the fortunes of the UNSC push into New Cadiz. Until now, their advance into the city had been self-assured; by the numbers. No longer.
Panic reigned.
The reservists ceased firing. Their heads twisted in unison, amazed that one of the armoured gods that stood alongside them, fearless and true, had fallen. Even the Rangers took pause, before their line officers took charge and bellowed at them to resume fire. Even then their response was static, half-hearted; their every action shot through with an undercurrent of panic. They were elite, but they were human.
Gods didn't die. Gods couldn't die.
To Lerner's amazement, Chimera Four was still conscious. Rashid grasped limply for his DMR, which lay a half-metre beyond reach. The Spartan's gauntleted hands raked at the sand, as though willing the ground closer. The occasional stray shot clanged home into the Spartan's armour. One or two bid deep into the metal skin. The air stank of burnt ozone, where the shield system had sparked out with a strangled pop.
Lerner's hearing was returning now. The numbing wash had faded to a constant pinging sound in the back of his ears. He motioned to Binks and Lopez.
"We need to move him! With me!"
They scrambled over to Rashid, hooked their hands under his armour. The armour sizzled and popped with an electro-static hum as the shield system fitfully tried to reassert itself. Lopez hissed as the shock nipped at his fingers. He gritted his teeth and took a firm grip around the Spartan's arm, setting the stinging sensation aside.
Bullets skipped and whipped into the sand around them. The Rangers paid no heed. No man got left behind, and especially no Spartan.
"On three." Lerner hissed.
The Rangers exchanged a nod.
"Three!"
The Rangers heaved. Nothing. They heaved again, neck tendons bulged out likesteel cable; their backs, legs shaking with the effort. Chimera Four didn't budge. They might as well have tried to lift an MBT.
"No good, back to cover!"
They dove back toward the battered Mantis, which was taking the brunt of the small arms fire. The pilot remained trapped inside, effectively pinned by the ever increasing deluge. Even so Kodiak Three could see what was going on through what few external scopes remained functional. Currie got on the wide-band.
"Chimera Four requires assistance; heavy lift gear needed, ASAP!"
High in orbit, Rebecca watched in horror as Chimera disintegrated as an effective fighting force.
Adrenal registers across the fireteam hard-lined. Squad cohesion shattered.
Viktorya roared a challenge, a howl rendered all the more terrifying by the voice filter covering her augmented throat. The Spartan broke cover, bounding forward. The assault rifle juddered and bucked in her hands as she closed the distance between the buildings of the northern square and the crater the rest of Chimera crouched within.
Damien's voice filled the inter-squad channel.
"Two, fall back! That's an order!"
No response. Not even so much as an acknowledgement light. Just a frenzy-red aggression indicator, one Eric knew all too well. Rage-heat. Total loss of control.
Viktorya's bullets whickered into her target; an old ten-foot reinforced loading gate; one that on any normal market day would push heavily inward into the warehouse that lay beyond. Today the gate was chained shut; was reinforced with a single steel bar. Coils of heavy chain had been linked across the door, hammered into the puckered face of the northern wall and secured by small metal rings, machine-fixed with rivets.
Not that it stopped her. Hard rounds chopped into the ancient wood, which had stood there as long as the colony had been in existence. The steel beam sparked and dented as bullets chipped and pulped the wood around it. Viktorya's mag snapped dry. Zero count flashed on rifle-HUD. She didn't break stride. Didn't even blink.
Chimera Two dropped her shoulder and hit the steel beam full speed. It buckled inward, taking the chains, the moorings, the whole damn door with it. There was an eruption of dust, and then, from within, another terrible augmented howl of rage. Viktorya disappeared from sight, lost in an avalanche of falling masonry.
She was among them now, and in their heaped bodies they would pay.
Damien swore violently. Chidinma had broken cover too, this time sprinting baldly toward where Rashid lay prostrate upon the floor. Her spent rifle lay abandoned at the edge of the crater, its last rounds spent.
Gunfire chased her every step of the way. Two hard rounds clipped her left shoulder, spinning her around. Chininma spun with the momentum, every inch an armoured ballerina, turning the spin into a smooth tumbling roll. Again she came up lightly on her feet, bounding like a mountain cat. She ducked beneath one shrieking rocket-trail, then simply blundered through a cloudburst of shrapnel. Shields flickered, on the verge of failing all the while.
She slid the last two metres toward Rashid, sliding her hands under his armpits.
"Cover!" was all she barked to the huddled Rangers.
The tone in her voice brooked no debate. The Rangers slammed fresh magazines home and took up firing positions, flinching as tracer fire sparked back at them.
Damien watched as Chidinma hauled Rashid over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. She stooped low, such was the weight of him. Damien's heart ran cold as he watched the blood pumping from Rashid's stump. Biofoam injectors were still struggling to stem the flow.
"Five, with me."
"Copy." Luke's voice was all business now, rasp-tinged with malice. Any trace of joviality was long extinguished.
The two Spartans rose up in a firing stance, hammering rounds into the tower from where the Grindell fire had emanated from. Whether they hit what they were aiming at was impossible to tell, even with enhanced VISR imagery. The belfry itself began to visibly disintegrate.
Chimera One and Five pushed for the Mantis in a half-crouch. Damien's BR spat over and over, as the purr of Luke's SAW licked out burst after controlled burst.
They moved in front of Chidinma, weathering the oncoming storm. Damien's armour jolted and rattled. Shield indicators warbled orange. He reached smoothly for another magazine, focusing on sighting for another target.
"We have you, Three," Damien reported over the com, "Get him out of here."
Slowly the three Spartans made for the relative sanctuary of the broken crater, Damien and Luke forming a rear-guard huddle as they back-pedalled, laying down suppressive fire. It was painfully slow going. In this case quite literally: Damien's shields were all but bleating in protest now.
The trio of isolated Rangers dug in next to Kodiak Three, stubbornly resisting. The Kodiak's lower legs were all but stripped to chrome of the metal chassis; any paint long since having been scraped away. On they fought, courage undiminished.
Chimera reached the crater. Chidinma set Rashid down with a heavy clank, and began smoothly unpacking a bio-foam canister to assist his suit's crippled systems. Though none would notice it in the frenzy of the moment, her hands were starting to quake again, ever so slightly. For a moment she could smell the bloodied air. It smelled for all the world like the ruin of New Cairo.
Still, she steeled herself. Applied herself to the task at hand, remembered her training. Her hands steadied. She was a Spartan. She would not fail the mission. She would not fail Rashid.
Rashid's head lolled about limply. His status read orange, but was hovered dangerously above the red-zone. Anything less than an augmented physique and his body would have gone into total shutdown long ago. He began to grey out.
"You've got him?" Damien asked.
Chidinma nodded tersley.
"Keep him safe. Transport MEDEVAC, I want him home safe. Understood?"
Chidinma quickly double-rapped her breastplate, scooping Rashid over her shoulder once more. She hurried clear of the combat zone, her shields snapping back to full power. At the very least, they would provide Rashid with additional cover.
Damien clapped Luke on the shoulder.
"You and me, Five. Let's give our Rangers support."
Chimera One flipped over to the wide band. All the while he was sighting the battered trade house in his VISR reticule.
"This is Sierra Four-Five-One to all friendly units in the sector. Request fire support on designated target marker. Any on-site support units please acknowledge, over."
Across the square, the message was received loud and clear.
"This is Echo Six Three; we have eyes on target. Standby for cover fire."
Walcott sighted his high powered rifle, switching the auto-sense lens to maximum magnification. The scope filled with heat-wash target identifiers. An insurgent, manning a heavy machine gun post. The innie's shoulders shook as it struggled to contain the chattering support piece.
"Target tagged." Pemberley whispered. "See him?"
"See him." Walcott breathed, "Firing."
The anti-material rifle had been drilled into the stonework to control its immense recoil. Only a Spartan could truly hope to wield the weapon freehand. The recoil alone would shatter a normal man's collarbone.
Pemberley and Walcott were no Spartans. But they were good at what they did.
The rifle thundered. The insurgent simply split down the middle; as he was lifted into the air, turned inside out, and deposited in a stain across the back wall of the trade house. The insurgent fire slackened.
"Hit." There was scant emotion in Walcott's voice. He might as well have been commenting on the weather.
There was a pause. Pemberley panned to the right with his binoculars. An RPG team this time; three youths, barely out of their teens.
"Target marked."
"Re-sighting," came the measured response, "Firing."
Another thundering boom. A secondary explosion marked where the AP round had struck one of the insurgent's rockets square on.
"Hit."
Damien slid to cover alongside Kodiak Three. The sniper fire hammering the trade house was tearing entire chunks out of the face of the building. Adding to the destruction was the return of Kodiaks One and Two, who had returned to the fight once the laser fire had died out. They made their presence felt, planting their feet deep in the sand, munitions stacks bristling like the quills of some angry lizard as they settled into a firing crouch.
In a single ear-splitting roar, the walkers dumped their munitions payload into the trade house, which appeared to be at risk of collapsing inward at any moment. Any insurrectionists foolish enough to be standing near a window was mulched by the bombardment. Incoming fire died out entirely for a precious few moments, as though the entire insurrectionist army had been slapped in the face by a single snapping glove.
Damien took the opportunity. He clambered atop Kodiak Three, inspecting the emergency release handle Rashid had struggled with.
He could see why. The handle itself had been slagged by the heat of the Spartan Laser. The entire hull had warped and buckled; the very plating bubbling. It was a miracle Kodiak Three's pilot had survived the hit at all.
There was no time for cutting gear. More and more insurgents would flock through the ruins any moment, taking up positions against the perilously extended UNSC advance. No time for subtley, then.
"Standby, Kodiak Three. This may not be delicate."
Damien's gauntleted fist smashed into the armour plating. The keen peal of hammer against anvil. Once, twice, a third time. It was on the fifth where the plating buckled enough for Damien to hook his fingers beneath the gap. He set his feet apart, as though settling into a dead lift.
Lerner blinked as, arms shaking, the Spartan peeled the entire top half of the hatch upward with a trembling shriek of tortured metal. The grey Spartan climbed up alongside him and fished a hand into the depths of the canopy. A second later the Mantis pilot emerged, shaken and slightly deafened from Chimera's brutish rescue technique. The Rangers helped the man to the ground, double-timing it back to the shelter of the yawning crater. They glanced around.
The Spartans had remained behind with the broken Kodiak, watching them. They were not retreating.
McBride moved quickly. He had abandoned his position the moment his last rocket had clipped the Spartan. The other Spartans would have seen the vent-trail from the launcher; would be able to track his position. Other resistance fighters eagerly pushed past him up the stairs, hungry to take up the elevated position. Their funeral. The downing of the Spartan had sent a resounding cheer up across the insurgent line. McBride did his best not to curl his lip in disgust.
McBride's pace quickened. Thirty seconds to pickup. He exited the northern end of the trade house, just as he faintly heard the front gate burst inward. The inhuman howl caused even the hairs on his neck to stand up.
McBridge went to look at his watch. Five seconds-
A black-coloured Warthog lurched around the corner, careening to a halt before him. It was Pershing, Hedeker's go-to man for logistics. Three seconds ahead of schedule. The demolitionist, Petrovic, slouched in the rear troop compartment.
McBride slid into the passenger seat, grabbing the handrail as Pershing gunned the engine, leaving the chaos of the Dakhar Market behind them.
"You're early."
"I'm never later."
"I noticed. We're on schedule?" McBride asked, taking a swig from his canteen and wincing. He was still riding the combat high.
"Exactly as planned." Pershing replied, eyes never leaving the road. The man never blinked. Almost as reptilian as the boss himself.
The Warthog sped down the narrow streets, bound for the base of Orbital Two.
Pershing opened his com channel.
"Retrieval complete. Phase Two is a go."
In the rear seat, Petrovic leaned back in his chair, taking in the full height of the tower above. The long support struts, the arcing beams and thick-set cables that draped half the city in its shadow. It seemed to hold up the very sky itself.
A lazy smile split his face.
It was then that General Stape's gravely voice filled the air.
"All units, withdraw. I repeat, withdraw to marked rally points and await further orders. All units are to disengage immediately. I repeat, disengage immediately and await further instructions."
Frustrated snarls and more than a few relieved sighs passed through the tattered UNSC vanguard. The foolhardy advance had cost them.
The Spartans didn't react at all, not at first.
Damien glanced down at his HUD. The new markers were fully two klicks south, clear of the widest support struts of the orbital tether. The Spartan surveyed the devastation; considered the dozens of UNSC bodies that littered the clearing. The burnt out Warthogs and the mauled Mantis he himself stood upon. All this butchery had been for naught.
The two surviving Kodiaks dipped their gun-pods in salute to the Spartans, before reluctantly slinking back toward the southern edge of the ravaged clearing, where UNSC forces were steadily retreating. Their weapon pods were spent, and they would need to rearm and regroup. The heavy Scorpion tanks had already left, their turrets silently panning across the ruined horizon as they trundled from view.
The Rangers were the last to leave. Lopez, Binks and Lerner hovered on the edge of the clearing before finally being pulled away by their retreating comrades.
Damien and Luke watched them go, not saying a word for a moment. Damien's gaze lingered on the smouldering crater of where Rashid had taken the rocket strike. The sand had been burnt an oily black; a gristly silhouette of his long-standing friend: hand-outstretched, warding off the danger to the men around him.
What followed was a private conversation, isolated only to Chimera's inter-squad channel. The silence was broken by Chimera Five, Luke Grey.
"We have our orders." Luke reminded Damien. "Total force recall. Disengagement on all fronts."
"We do."
"This won't be sanctioned."
"It won't."
Luke nodded at that.
"Good. We've behaved for far too long as it stands. The plan, Chief?"
"We're taking one from the Viking's playbook, Five. Attack Pattern Hydra."
A single green winking acknowledgement light lit up. To Damien's surprise, it was Viktorya's. Damien craned his neck to face north. Chimera Two's waypoint marker was so deep in enemy territory, it barely even registered in the churn of operational data sifting back and forth across the battlefront.
"Cut off the head, Sir?"
The Spartans bumped knuckles. The shadow of the Orbital Tether rose high in the distance above them, backlit by drifting palls of oily smoke.
"Cut off the head, Five."