Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi
The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 7
Specialist Adrien Kaelos
"The colonel didn't bother asking for volunteers. He selected everyone with hastatim experience and assigned us to an ad hoc group with the unenviable task of cracking the deadlock under Hill 120.
"Emphasis on 'dead.'
"A lot of species consider hastatim to be little more than execution squads, but there's far more to them than that. The hastatim are the absolute best when it comes to urban combat or taking a fortified position. Sure, the hastatim request a surrender and kill anyone who refuses to, but do you honestly think the ones who don't surrender would be that easy to kill?
"Of course not. They fight harder than anyone else because they suddenly have nothing left to lose. The hastatim is dirty work, but it's far from easy.
"In any case, it helped us take the facility. They had collapsed the vehicle bay and main entrance, and the complex was well-ventilated, with air scrubbers and multiple separate rooms, preventing us from simply smoking them out with a thermobaric weapon, but there had to be some holes in their defenses, and with ground penetrating radar, we found one."
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"In our defense, the comm relay wasn't meant to be a fortified facility. Yes, it had security measures, but few of them were built to survive sustained artillery fire or the collapse of several sections of the complex.
"So, yeah, big ol' air vents meant to make cleaning and maintenance easy, though actually getting into the facility through them would be tricky, since there were very few actual access points. The alarms that secured them were wrecked beyond recognition, so we had no idea they were coming.
"We did get the fold-comm up, though. Now, it was just a matter of whether we would fight to death, surrender, or be saved by something ridiculously improbable that no one could ever predict.
"Hey, given some of the weird shit that happened in the Robotech Wars, that was a perfectly valid possibility."
Specialist Adrien Kaelos
"We rappelled down the ventilation shaft - not as easy as the vids suggest - and managed to insert ourselves deeper into the complex. We had to cut our way through, and it wasn't precisely the win button we were hoping for, but it let us flank their position and divide their forces."
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"When the bonies showed up on our flank, Captain Miller personally lead a section over to help repel the attack, but she took a round in the fighting. We managed to stop the bleeding, but...
"We put it to a vote. The captain wasn't in any position to decide, and we'd done our duty.
"After slagging the Cyclones and destroying any sensitive data we had... we surrendered."
Corporal Actaeus Endurani
"And after everything - dozens, hundreds dead - the humans surrendered. Just like that, Hill 120 was ours, inside and out. It was the lone piece of good news by then, and in the end, we had to abandon the hill anyway. I was still recuperating, so I heard the worst as the casualties from the rest of the expeditionary force came in.
"It was bad. The humans had that big destroid - what was it called? That's right, the Behemoth - pounding every turian force larger than a platoon. It was only a matter of time before the 96th fell into its sights. General Thierix was reported dead, and there was some confusion as to which ranking officers were still alive to take command or where they even were.
"Colonel Atticus, however, had a plan. He may not have the most stellar reputation, but for all of that, he was decisive. We had prisoners, and the human capital wasn't far from our position. Taking the prisoners and the wounded, we headed for the city."
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"Gotta hand it to the bonies. They never flinch. Even with the Behemoth flattening every major contingent of theirs on the continent, they didn't panic. Instead, they gathered their troops up - along with us, as their prisoners - and marched for Taiyuan.
"We were treated well - a damn sight better than we expected, really - but that didn't change the fact that we were essentially human shields."
Specialist Adrien Kaelos
"I did mention how nasty urban fighting was, right? But compared to being caught out in the open by that... thing? It was a gamble, and at first, we didn't even try to secure any significant portion of the city, but it gave us breathing room and, more importantly, a place to triage and treat the wounded without having to worry about a half-meter explosive shell caving the roof in."