A/N: jarhead76: Nope, never been in the military myself, tried to join the French Foreign Legion and Canadian Forces, but got in trouble on both accounts. See rules at the bottom of this chapter, you'll understand :P
Yeah, ODSTs are the best of the Marines, though they tend to think they're the second coming...
And I like to think Dahl and Korva are practically the same guy in different branches, they just have conflicting orders they're both determined to accomplish. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Helmets get banged up :)
Anyway, if you spot anything I got wrong, go ahead and let me know!
A shotgun, impressive and useful as it is for crowd control, is a poor choice for firefights , which is why Blackburn switched to the long barrelled M6J Carbine the moment things got heated.
Between themselves, the four SPECWAR squads accompanying him were having no trouble at all dealing with aliens before he could squeeze a shot out, but the old Colonel did not let that get to him, nor did he let his guard down for one moment.
They crossed the shanty town with care and precision, watching their corners as the morning sun rose over the skyline, casting odd shadows all over the place.
The Covies were confused, some chasing Dahl's convoy, others attempting to flank Norrison, heading south and straight for Black's platoon.
He took cover behind a UNSCDFMC marked crate and scoffed at the mess of letters making up the Marine Corps' acronym.
His boys kept a six meter spread and tight fire discipline, calling every shot and every single target.
The squad comms. Were flooded with "Contact, north-east, by that bus!" and "Tangos due north, watch for RPGs!", soon followed by "Scratch one!" or "Tango down!".
A private to his right called out a kamikaze Grunt and Black popped from cover to give the bright yellow bastard on in the head and two in the chest. The little guy went off in a blue cloud of plasma, but had accomplished its task and a pair of Elites, armed with Carbines, sprung from cover, lining up clean shots with the Colonel's skull.
Black dropped, but knew he'd never have time to reach safety; it would take half a second for his head to disappear behind the barrel and the Covies were already bracing for their weapons' recoil.
It was Demetro's AM rifle's recoil they felt instead. One round, angled through the first's skull and into the second's hip. Black hit the floor before seeing anything else and sprung back up like an indecisive prairie dog.
An indecisive prairie dog armed with an M6J Carbine.
The second Elite, the one left with a functioning brain, was gone…
He'd show up sooner or later. Black dropped the issue, the fear trying to crawl up his spine like a feral beast. He did not let it.
About twelve Jackals, under the orders of a red armored Elite, formed a tortoise by overlapping their shields high and wide. They stepped forward and on the dead Covenant's corpse, heading straight for Black's position with plasma grenades flying out over the edge of their defences.
"Delacroix!" The Sarge's team should have been somewhere to his left, "Get me some suppressive fire three meters ahead of my position!"
Delacroix took three seconds to evaluate before answering, time the tortoise used to get halfway to his hidey hole.
The M739 machine gun's fire missed the formation by about two meters, so Blackburn corrected them and, just as the Jackals were close enough to spit on him, their shields turned red and two were killed instantly by the sheer volume of fire, another two gravely injured.
The Jackals backed off, but not their Commander; he flicked his plasma sword on and leapt in the air like a Velociraptor to land three steps behind the Colonel.
"Demetro." Black never turned, even as the vapor trail shook his eardrums, he just kept gunning down retreating Jackals.
"Tango down, Colonel… What would you do without me?"
Now all out of targets, Blackburn kneeled to check his handheld motion tracker. "I'd get another sniper…"
He could only see about half his forces, probably even less of the Covenant's. They wouldn't make it in a sweeping formation like this, not even with two SpecOps and Recon squads…
"Hammer Actual to…" Black had a blank. Too much adrenaline in the last minute… Hell it had just been fifty seconds since he shot the kamikaze Grunt! "Look, let's just call you guys Hammer 0-1 until we un-tangle this. Hammer 0-1, converge on my position."
There were a couple of amused confirmations and he soon found himself in a flashback of his first battle, amidst a cluster of hard ass professionals, trying to bag in a few kills and figure out where his allies were and failing at both. He had to check his motion tracker to know they had reduced the spread to three meters and were now in a circular formation around his location.
This said a lot, as he'd tried to push forward to the cluster of barrels, five meters ahead, for three minutes, at least, and had always been forced back to cover. The kids from 1-2 cleared that location in three seconds, as an afterthought, to maintain formation.
"Hammer 5," He then called, about as sheltered now as he would be at Fort Aleksandr, two hundred meters underground, "this is Hammer Actual, do you read? Over."
Twenty seconds passed, two isolated firefights began and ended in Black's vicinity, and got a response just as he was about to try again.
"This is Hammer 5-1, send traffic." Cody's radio operator had all the personality of a brick, even under fire, she sounded asleep.
"Give me a SITREP, what does it look like on your end? Over."
She reported no casualties in fifth platoon, but they were having a hard time maneuvering the streets and taking out blockades. Expect a five minutes delay for EVAC.
"Nothing ever takes five minutes, 5-1! Just hurry, Hammer out!" Black switched the radio off and shouted at Hammer 0-1 to get moving.
"Hammer 2 and Hammer 3 are taking heavy fire and 5 won't get there in time to assist…" He looked at his motion tracker when another brief firefight interrupted his orders, "That means we need to move in on their flank and provide support until then! Lock and load, Rangers, time to drop the hammer!"
"Ou-ah!" Even though not a single of these guys was officially a Ranger, most of them had been before joining Army SPECWAR and the rest identified themselves to Hammer Company more than they did their actual division, making them Rangers as well, as far as they cared.
This time, it was not by stages, as Blackburn had ordered previously; they advanced as one man, moving in an egg shaped formation with riflemen at the edges, a CQC expert at the top and heavy gunners bringing up the rear. The Colonel, Delacroix, Krauser, Endrose and Keller stayed in the center, coordinating everything.
This was ideal for mutual support during fast deployments, especially when faced with a steady stream of hostiles as they were now, but also meant none of his men could seek cover for too long, otherwise they'd open a weak point in the formation. The moment one came under fire, everyone else had to supress or disable the enemy with clockwork precision, or the whole thing would fall apart.
Fortunately, Hammer 0-1's soldiers were professionals honed to near-perfection and they crossed the slums at a brisk pace, climbing over wooden fences or merely kicking them down in places, breaching shacks with one or two men teams.
One shack contained an injured Elite, missing its left arm, and the Rangers breaching in barely had time to drop its shields before one of them had an energy sword driven through his chest.
The Elite died before it could complement the impalement with a swing what would cut its victim in half, but the Ranger still fell, gasping for breath as the sword's security disintegrated the hilt.
Black saw it all, but couldn't do more than order someone to carry that man. He was still somewhat mobile and only a single Ranger was required to help him move.
Many thought Covenant weapons were insta-kill doomsday device, and some of the higher tier ones were, but Needlers, Plasma Rifles and Pistols and Carbines would only kill someone if they hit a vital area, like the torso and the head, the real secret of war is to incapacitate your enemy, but keep him screaming.
Shoot at the center of mass and you've got a bad guy bleeding out who'll need two other bad guys to carry him, that's three guys who won't be shooting at you, plus one who'll be taking up supplies for a week or so without being able to do anything useful. Kill a dude, and they'll just loot his gun and ammo.
Some UNSC strategist argued the Covenants were unaffected by such tactics and kept fighting to the death, but Blackburn had never seen evidences that they held on any longer than his Rangers would.
In fact, this Ranger, with a cauterized lung and spitting out blood to his left, would likely be dead by next morning, yet he kept going, firing his sidearm with deadly accuracy. Adrenaline. Most Covies didn't have that, meaning when they were done, they were done, no untapped reserves, no second breath.
Elites might be the Apex when it came to strength, aggression and speed, humans, his Rangers in particular, were neatly superior in terms of stamina and survivability.
Pursuit predators is what the documentaries had called humanity.
A Grunt, cowering under a cluster of old blankets, tried to run away at the sound of Black's footstep, but the Colonel swiftly shot it in the back of the head.
Not center of mass. No shoot to wound. It was all the compassion this old soldier could muster.
They proceeded this way over two kilometers before being greeted by a stray M68 Gauss Cannon. The round ripped through a cage containing a dead chicken, shattered a shack as though it were a card castle and whistled thirty centimeters over Delacroix's head, ripping her helmet off and knocking her down.
Krauser got on the horn in a heartbeat "Hammer 5, Hammer 5! Be advised, we're catching stray fire from your 'Hogs, over!"
They requested an exact fix on Hammer 0-1's location and, though Cody's radio operator never broke the monotony of her speech pattern, she sounded close to surprised, "You're right behind them, Hammer 1, advise you relocate, over."
Blackburn ordered his platoon to the east and raised Demetro on the comm.
"Soldier, might I ask you why we're directly in fifth platoon's line of fire?" He had time to crawl under a flatbed truck, pick out three Jackals looking in the wrong direction and eject the M6's magazine before getting an answer.
"Sorry, sir, hostile snipers in the area, I won't be available for… Five mikes." Demetro, despite being a sniper, sounded far tenser than even Cody's radio operator and that struck Black as odd, but these were not stereotypes in a war movies, these were actual people, sweating, eating and thinking, they each had personalities, worries and history of their own and he really shouldn't expect anything from his men before truly knowing them.
"Nothing ever takes five minutes, Ranger, just get it done, over!"
Demetro was no longer a Ranger, truth be told, he'd been retired for half a decade and live in New Cheops as a security contractor when the Covenant had shown up, putting him outside the chain of command and that made Blackburn uneasy.
The man was skilled, that was cold hard fact, but anything beyond that would be mere speculation. He slept a lot, rarely ever bothered to report and used a World War Two era Anti-Tank rifle's replica.
Odd shit.
Black took cover in an abandoned meat locker, the building it had once been attached to now completely disintegrated or long since scavenged by the locals. The locker was empty, so he kneeled, whipped out Daffy and held it toward the door.
Leading from the front is all good and brave, but you also have to lead.
"Dahl!" He called, his command issue radio piercing the thick plating of his hideout with ease, "Talk to me, do we still have the package? Over."
A Jackal with a Beam Rifle entered the locker backward, its overloaded rifle smoking and bullets pinging after it. Before the Colonel could do or say anything, however, a frag rolled in the dust and at the Covenant's feet.
He didn't push that bird-lizard bastard away to save its life, only to get it out of his way as he kicked the explosive out in one motion and shut the thick door in another.
The locker rocked, plunged in darkness, and Black swung the door back open, "Friendly fire!" He roared out to whoever would listen, before spinning on the spot to take aim at the Covie.
It had dropped its gun in the commotion and made no attempt to recover it, only looking in awe at the human before him.
"Y-You… Saved…" It articulated with difficulty, its mouth unused to human speech, though the little guy clearly knew Spanish from somewhere. Black didn't, but his translation software quickly identified and, well, translated the words.
The Jackal was shocked beyond words, apparently, and that puzzled Black enough for him to put Dahl on standby. He never lowered his shotgun, however.
"That I did, and if you don't want me to return on that decision, you'll keep your hands where I can see them." It raised both talons in the air and Black relieved it of its weapons. "Now go sit in the corner."
The thing carried a Plasma pistol and a purple crystalline dagger, in addition to the discarded rifle, all of which Black strapped to his combat webbing before contacting Dahl once more.
"Major, send traffic."
"Copy, Hammer Actual," Dahl spoke softly, contrasting with Blackburn's booming voice, "I confirm; package is secure, we're entering Fort Aleksandr now. Got some bad news, sir."
Black peeked out the meat locker; to the East Hammer 5 was doing its best to reach Hammer 2 and 3, about two blocks further North-West, while Hammer 0-1 moved in from the South. The Covies were set up in the middle of it all, getting more troops from the North and just about anywhere they could squeeze past the Rangers.
"Are there any other kind?" He asked, retreating back to cover.
"Medusa is offline, Colonel, chip wiped clean, over."
Medusa. The Company's AI, in charge of all the minute planning details and turning a dozen random reports into a clear picture of the battlefield. Caleb's boys would have some extra work on their hands.
Black thought about asking how that had happened, but then remembered his instructions; Don't let them wipe that chip.
Dahl had followed orders to the letter, how he'd exchanged the chips, however, went beyond the Colonel's imagination.
"Copy that, Major, Blackburn out." He switched to a wider frequency next, contacting all Chalk leaders currently engaged, "I've got a secure location for our wounded, home in on my signal and bring them to me, Over!"
That would put them directly opposite the EVAC site, with a cluster of hostile shooters in between them and their ticket home, but the building that used to rise around this locker had been picked apart, leaving only the concrete foundations and cellar, with windows at eye level every three meters and a single staircase leading in.
They would bring their casualties down into that cellar, not the meat locker; even Blackburn didn't have that much irony in him. The locker could be sealed from the outside, but not the inside, it would make for a decent holding cell until they could evacuate that Jackal.
And then came the matter of evacuation. Hammer 5 could never punch through and Norrison reported five casualties, in addition to Krauser's wounded guy and Laurent's steadily dwindling fuel reserves.
The Victors weren't going to his Shooters and his Shooters would not go to the Victors. "Hammer 5 Actual, this is Hammer Actual; change in plan, Cody, we'll get out another way, you boys head North-West and take some of the pressure off of us, think you can do that? Over."
Delacroix appeared in Black's field of vision, carrying Krauser's injured man with three healthy Rangers in toe. He waved them over and directed the lot to the cellar, ten paces to the left.
"Hammer Actual, this is Hammer 5-1, please confirm that last, you want us to advance on enemy position?" Even Cody's radio sounded doubtful.
"Negative, I want you to head just North of that, over."
"Ah… Negative on that, Colonel, area is too hot, multiple hostile armors spotted…" The girl sounded bored as ever and that only furthered Black's annoyance.
"Hammer 5-1, I didn't ask the weather! I had you guys bring AT ordnance for exactly that purpose; you're Rangers now, if you can't keep up don't step up, Hammer out."
Four squads, twenty four men, half of them too injured to walk on their own and five of those on stretchers arrived from the North-West. Most of the uninjured ones were Hellbringers, out of fuel for their main weapons.
Black was about to order they scavenge Covenant hardware when the Rangers too injured to fight convinced them to take their guns.
A Ranger's rifle is his best friend, an extension of his being, it's the device with which they do their job and save their buddy's life, to part with it on a combat zone is like going at an office meeting wearing lingerie.
And Hellbringers weren't even Rangers, making this akin to lending your Rolex and Italian tailor suit to some vagrant in the street with the promise that he'll bring everything back in perfect condition.
Black turned to the Jackal, who looked up in fright as the man stepped out of the locker. "Stay here." Was all he said before closing and sealing the door.
This can be see written on a chalk board in Hammer Company's staging area.
As per Lieutenant Edward West's request, the following rules have been instated to supplement the UNSC Army Rangers' lack of guidance in these particular gray areas.
-A UNSC Ranger may not threaten anyone with black magic.
-A UNSC Ranger may not threaten officers with black magic. Ever.
-A UNSC Ranger may not reffer to First Sergeant Caleb as 'Mum'.
-A UNSC Ranger may not reffer to Major Dahl as 'Dad'.
-A UNSC Ranger may not reffer to Colonel Blackburn as 'Grand-pa'. Ever.
-A UNSC Ranger may not get sillicone breast implants.
-A male UNSC Ranger may not get sillicone breast implants.
-A UNSC Ranger may not purchase anyone's soul while on duty.
-A UNSC Ranger may not requisition anyone's soul as part of the war effort.
-A UNSC Ranger may not say "The prophecy has fortold..." when answering an officer.
-A UNSC Ranger may not adopt stray Grunts.
-A UNSC Ranger may not adopt stray Marines.
-A UNSC Ranger may not adopt anything or anyone but a dog.
-A UNSC Ranger may not adopt a Crocodog.
-A UNSC Ranger may not be adopted by a Crocodog.
-A UNSC Ranger may not enlist a Crocodog in the UNSC Army Rangers.
-A UNSC Ranger may not call ODSTs pigeon droppings.
-A UNSC Ranger may call ODSTs just about anything else, so long as it's actually funny.
-A UNSC Ranger may not dance YMCA in a live fire area.
-A UNSC Ranger may not line Standard Issue helmet with tin foil to prevent mind control. They already are.
-A UNSC Ranger may not fire a superior officer.
-A UNSC Ranger may not fire his/her fellow Rangers. Even incompetent ones.
-A UNSC Ranger may not chew gum during drill unless they brought enough for the whole Company.
-A UNSC Ranger may not requisition half a ton of chewing gum on Company funding.
-A UNSC Ranger may not requisition half a ton of chewing gum using personal funds.
-Corporals do not outrank Colonels.
-A UNSC Ranger may not start a SITREP by the words "Once upon a time..."
-A UNSC Ranger may not start a SITREP by the words "The voices in my head said..."
-A UNSC Ranger may not challenge fellow Rangers to "Pistols at Dawn".
-A UNSC Ranger may not challenge anyone to "Pistols at Dawn"!
-A UNSC Ranger may not do anything that causes them to giggle for more than ten seconds just thinking about it.
-A UNSC Ranger may not replace a Trainee's smoke grenades with tear gas. That's just mean.
-A UNSC Ranger may not mark a minefield with a smiley face.
-A UNSC Ranger may not declare war on mosquitos in the name of the UNSC.
-A UNSC Ranger may not declare war on anything in the name of anyone.
-A UNSC Ranger may not trade their CO to the Marine Corps.
-A UNSC Ranger may not trade their CO to the Covenant. Seriously?
-A UNSC Ranger may not dance around burning communal graves. At least not when people are watching.
-A UNSC Ranger may not teach ODSTs offensive things in foreign languages under the guise of teaching them useful sentences.
-A UNSC Ranger may not drink alcoholic beverages on duty.
-A UNSC Ranger may not have an IV of Jack Daniel while on duty. Or at any moment, really.
-A UNSC Ranger may not reply "I'm Drunk/Stuffed/High/Stoned" to any question asked by an officer.
-A UNSC Ranger may not ask an officer if they are Drunk/Stuffed/High/Stoned or other synonyms.
-A UNSC Ranger may not ask an officer if they were born that way or made so by the usage of illicit substances.
-A UNSC Ranger may not ask an officer if they are retarded.
-A UNSC Ranger may not use the base's PA system to broadcast the soundrack of a porno movie.
-A UNSC Ranger may not sing "Burn baby burn!" around Hellbringers.
-A UNSC Ranger may not sing "Burn baby burn!" around Helljumpers.
-A UNSC Ranger may not teach POWs how to pick a lock.
-A UNSC Ranger may not shoot said POWs when they succeed.
-A UNSC Ranger may not use a plasma sword to disprove "The pen is mightier than the sword."
-A UNSC Ranger may not stab fellow Rangers with a pen.
-A UNSC Ranger may not drink three quarters of food coloring before urine tests.
-A UNSC Ranger may not attempt suicide with Mint tablets and Cola. It just makes a mess.
-A UNSC Ranger may not teach local children to insult ODSTs.
-A UNSC Ranger may not be caught teaching the above.
-A UNSC Ranger may not start a revolution.
-A UNSC Ranger may not join the Insurection.
-A UNSC Ranger may not demand a cavity search to passing MPs.
-A UNSC Ranger may demand a cavity search to passing MPs, who will be glad to oblige.
-A UNSC Ranger may not bring electronic pets into Regiment HQ. (That's actually UNSCDF policy, look it up)
-A UNSC Ranger may not declare their bunk independent territory.
-A UNSC Ranger may not use MREs as personnal lubricant. You sick, sick bastards...
-A UNSC Ranger may not convince NCOs they are growing bald. Even though most of them are...
-A male UNSC Ranger does not get "That time of the month..."
-A female UNSC Ranger may not recieve a purple heart for getting "That time of the month" on duty.
-A UNSC Ranger may especially not touch the Colonel's coffee. Ever.
A/N: Do look up Skippy's list of things he can't do for more fun :)