Chapter XV: Home
February 10, 2535 (UNSC Calendar)/
Olimpia, Jericho VII, Jericho System
We had been dropped into the planet that had served as my home just a few hours ago. This time we had been dropped into a zone that was relatively free of enemies, our force had been divided into four fifty-men platoons. Since we had just barely gotten replacements, there were no permanent squads, although I was careful to remain close to Dom and to a monster of a man carrying a light machine gun. He was appropriately called Bear.
I was dismayed to find out that the city had been bombarded by the Covenant and had been one of the places where thay had landed significant ground forces. They had 36 ships in orbit while we had around fifty. We were dramatically outgunned in space.
My unit had been sent to the outskirts of the city to cover the evacuation of any civilians and to do the same in case any unit from downtown needed to retreat in our direction. We had picked up a nice position by a couple of damaged buildings. I was placed on top of a Wal-Mart with a couple of snipers and two other marksmen, from my position I could see the Wal-Mart sign proclaiming that the store had been humanity's supplier of cheap goods for over half a millennium.
That's a long time. I thought to myself.
"Long time for what?" asked one of the snipers.
"For anything," I answered as I pointed to the sign, this time I wasn't even surprised at my lack of ability to keep my mouth shut.
The sniper shrugged and went back to to scanning the area for enemies. We all stayed quiet for some time before our radio crackled.
"Oversight, do you copy? This is Command."
Since no one moved to grab the radio I had to stand up myself. Lazy bastards.
"Command, this is Oversight, we copy," I answered.
"Oversight, there's a convoy of civilian trucks and some hogs coming our way through our eleven o'clock. Just don't shoot them."
"Roger," I said as I out down the radio. I had no idea why we couldn't use our comms for that, but I wasn't really complaining.
Soon enough I could hear the roaring of large trucks and the familiar sound of a couple of warthogs. The convoy was massive, it was made of at least fifty trucks filled to the brim with men, women, and children. Some of them were wounded. I wondered if my uncle was amongst them.
Probably not, he's a soldier, so it's likely that he was put to fight. This time I was careful with my thoughts, I didn't want anyone to hear.
"That's good news right? So many civvies alive," said a man with a DMR.
"Sure, if you say so," answered another marine.
For hours after that, nothing interesting happened. We could hear plasma and gunfire in the distance, we could also see the sky turning red from all the smoke and fire in the city. Good thing my uncle's house was in the base, which was to my back, outside the city.
While I was immersed in those thoughts, I failed to notice the small groups of marines coming through our ranks, eventually our small group of fifty had swollen up to about a hundred. That was bad news, that meant our boys in the front were being pushed back.
"Uh-oh," said one of the snipers. I aimed my rifle in the same direction as his and cursed. There were two wraiths and a couple of dozen covvies headed our way. I picked up the radio and dialed command.
"Command, this is Overwatch, there is a large group of enemy armored and infantry about two clicks out, directly ahead oh us. Doesn't look like they have spotted us."
"Roger that, do not engage, I repeat do not engage until I give the order," came the answer.
"Yessir," I replied before cutting of the conversation.
I looked at my fellow long-distance fighters and they nodded at me, making it known that they had heard. We aimed at the enemy force to do some recon. There were exactly 27 enemy infantry, mostly grunts and jackals, but there was also a hunter pair in addition to five elites, three minors, a major, and an ultra. They were unsuspecting of our location.
"We have positioned rocket launchers in the path of the enemy force, feel free to engage, we will fire after you," that was the radio, instructing us as to what we were supposed to do.
"To far away for clean headshots," murmured one sniper. "We'll shoot at the ultra and the major, then you will pound away at them with your guns, ok?"
"Yessir," I said, jokingly of course, since the sniper was a PFC while I was two ranks higher than he was.
"On my mark," he said to the other sniper, "I'll take the ultra," he said.
"Dibs on the major," I called out, after all, I had the only weapon with the capability to fire in burst or automatic, the other two marksmen would use their DMRs on the ultra.
"Roger," said the marksmen as they went belly down on the floor, taking carefull aim. I simply placed my rifle on top of a metal ventilation box for support.
"Three, two, one, mark," said the sniper.
The silence of the position we were in was interrupted by two simultaneous sharp cracks. I had fired less than a second after the two men, I let out two quick bursts aimed at the space above the head of the red helmet of the major. I looked through my scope as the sniper rounds traveled the 700 meters to their target in about a second, they hit both targets in the torso area.
The lading elites recoiled and my target's chest armor suddenly sported six holes in the middle. The major collapsed an instant before the ultra. Just as the ultra's body hit the floor, there were another sharp cracks coming from the snipers, they both hit a single elite, the first one taking out its shields and the second one tearing a decent-sized chunk from its waist. It fell to the ground and twitched. A DMR round to the chest quickly put it out of its misery.
I fired two bursts at a couple of surprised jackal snipers, hitting one in the leg and torso and missing the other one altogether. That was six enemies down in three seconds.
The two wraiths blew up in a fiery blaze, courtesy of four rocket-toting soldiers. The rest of the enemy soldiers were promptly brought down by our sniper fire and the wall of lead that came from the first line of defense down in the street level, all in all, the engagement had taken about a minute and a half. No casualties on our side.
A small squad was sent to confirm that the enemies were all dead, they dragged back a struggling jackal, that would certainly give our unit a bonus. ONI was always up for interrogating and vivisecting enemy combatants. The jackal was calmed down by a blow to the head and placed in shackles on our lone pelican. It would be taken to the ship, put on the brig, and then transported to Reach.
"Nice work Oversight," crackled the radio.
"Thank you, sir," this time another soldier had answered the call.
We stayed there for a while, nothing interesting really happening, sometimes a couple of shortswords would level a couple of city blocks, or knock down a banshee in the distance. We were starting to get bored. We had only been here for about twelve hours, but we were still at full alert, which meant that we had to scope the area in front of us and to our sides at all times, lest a couple of eager grunts cross our lines and sabotage the whole unit. I rolled my eyes and wondered what would happen if I shot a certain bird of the corpse of a hunter. Or what was left of the corpse, a rocket to the midsection usually doesn't do you much good.
Our boredom was interrupted by a couple of scorpions rumbling into our position, they were supposed to be reinforcements, there was also a pair of rhinos in a small hill five miles to our rear. We had also been given the channel to the shortsword bombers. All in the duration of a couple of minutes.
"Well that can't be good," I muttered.
"What's so bad about armored and air support?" a marksman asked me, with irony strong in his voice.
I chuckled without any humor in my voice. "Buddy, it means that we're going to need it."
"Oh crap," he said with realization.
Oh crap indeed my friend.
We only had to wait for a few minutes before the position we were in fell under attack. Our commanding officer, a new Captain, had chosen a nice position, we were located in an area which contained the Wal-Mart and three four-story buildings, there was some debris from the buildings in and around the parking lot, serving as nice cover, there were also barricades and wrecked cars there, they had been arranged to function as a barrier. We had a semi-circle protecting us, it was strengthened with regular infantry in addition to mounted machine guns and a single gauss cannon, which was placed in the second floor of one of the buildings. There were some mortars behind the Wal-Mart as well. We also had the tanks.
The first enemy onslaught came in the form of a large force of grunts, as usual. We dispatched them all quickly, I didn't waste my ammo on those, neither did the snipers. I had moved away from the bulk of the five men in the roof and to a corner, which provided me an ample field of fire. I looked for high-value targets, finding none. As the last of the grunts were riddled with holes or managed to return to cover, the boys down there reloaded their guns and waited for the next wave. I was surprised to see it come in less than five minutes. Usually they waited a couple of hours before throwing the elites at us.
Maybe they are being pressed from behind? I wondered. They probably were, since instead of sending just infantry, we were met by the onslaught of what seemed to be hundreds of covies and dozens of vehicles, incuding banshees. It was like a shooting gallery for me, targets everywhere, mind that the targets in question were supported by armor and were exceedingly good at shooting back.
We called in a couple of strafing runs on the advancing force, but our shortswords were running out of bombs, they were limited to machine gun fire and small missiles now.
Our tanks were making short work of all the ghosts and specters that ventured into their fields of fire, and the rhinos had caused devastation among the enemy ranks. I simply dedicated myself to shooting down as many unshielded elites as I could find. I usually listened for the mortars flying overhead and waited for their impact, the explosions killed grunts and jackals, but sometimes only weakened the elites, those were my targets.
The two snipers dedicated themselves to shooting down the hunters, the rocket jockeys were to busy trying to take out the banshees to be able to handle the walking tanks. They succeeded in knocking down one of the behemoths, only one.
"Shit," was all I could say as the other hunter started a sprint towards our line. Bullets seemed to bounce of its armor, and whichever round managed to hit its unprotected skin (or worms) didn't seem to affect it.
It slammed a marine hard with its shield, he hit a lighpost in the parking lot with a crunch. The hunter then disintegrated three retreating soldiers with its cannon before it was hit from the side by the gauss cannon. It was shot one more time, just to be sure.
"What the hell is that?" asked a sniper.
I searched the battlefield frantically before I found what he was referring to. It was an elite, or at least it looked like one. It was taller than most elites, at least eight and a half feet tall. What was weirder about it was that it didn't have the usual armor that elites wore. It was instead wearing a silver-gray armor that was full of carvings and runes. It looked more ornamental than anything else. It was barking orders at the yellow-armored zealots around it, energy sword sizzling in its hand.
"Well, take it out!" I called out to the snipers.
One of the soldiers fired a round at the elite, it hit him square in the chest. The monster barely moved an inch as it shields flickered. What it did do, was reach out to a jackal next to it, it tore a beam rifle from its hands and fired a single shot. I was in shock and awe as the single beam of plasma flew straight at the soldier's head. It passed right next to the scope and hit my sniper friend right in between the eyes. All that within two seconds after being shot at.
The sniper fell to the floor, his face bloody and missing half the back of his skull.
"Fuuuuck!" was the general response to the event in our roof.
Three DMRs and my BR55 shot straight at the monstruous elite. I managed to hit it a couple of times while shooting without really aiming, through my scope I could see the elite recoiling while shots bounced of its armor. There was also dust flying up around its feet, a couple of the zealots around him were hit and the weaponless jackal was shot at least five times. The surviving sniper fired his rifle four times in quick succession, with one round managing to tear a zealots head from its body while the others hit nothing but air.
We were forced to take cover when plasma started burning the ledge of the roof we were on.
"That shit was freaking crazy!" complained one soldier.
"Tell me about it," answered another one.
"Anyone managed to get the coordinates?" asked the surviving sniper. He was well-trained.
"Yes, the elite is about a click and a half to our ten!" I yelled, my ears ringing from the barrage of our rifles. "That is grid Foxtrot-Mike Niner." I was also well trained.
The sniper nodded as he called in air support, plasma still flying over our heads. Before he could give the coordinates the floor seemed to groan. I felt the noise of a fuel rod flying through the air before the section of the roof we were in collapsed.
"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!" was all I could hear before the clamor of concrete and metal tumbling ten meters down blocked everything else out. Since we were on top of the roof, we escaped undamaged since it fell at a forty-five degree angle, working as a slide to ease our ride to the ground. Of course, most of us landed on our necks and backs to the pointy rocks waiting for us at the bottom.
I groaned before a plasma beam hit the concrete a foot from my head, leaving a black ring with smoke coming from the center. I got up and started running for cover, I wasn't the only one, the surviving sniper ran towards one of the closest buildings for a better sniping spot, of course, it was blown up by three simultaneous wraith mortar shots before he could get near. Lucky him. The rest of us marksmen ran towards the line of cars and barricades, closer to the enemy, but at least we had something in between us and them other than good ol' O2.
I managed to find myself a place in between Dom and Bear. They weren't taking cover, simply firing at the enemy, who didn't seem to be taking any cover either.
"How's it going down here?" I asked through the noise.
"It's going well," roared Bear through the sound of his machine gun. I took down a couple of grunts before we had to take cover from a sniper jackal.
"It's going relatively well," commented Bear. He seemed to have a funny sense of humor.
When it was going relatively well for Alpha 2nd, it meant that we were in what any other platoon would've called a clusterfuck. We were running out of ammo, had no air support, and our troops were giving the parking lot floor a new dye job.
Yes, with their blood. Crappy analogy, or simile, or whatever it's called, but it doesn't take away the fact that it was true.
I lifted my head only to pop back down as a beam rifle tore through the metal of the car an inch from my head.
Dom looked at me with a surprised look on his face.
"That was a close one," he noted.
"No shit."
We switched cover to a larger SUV. I was able to localize the jackal harassing us through the window, but wasn't abe to leave cover, a group of elites had seen where we were and were now melting the other side of our metallic cover. I signaled a marine wielding a BR55 like mine the position of the jackal, he nodded and popped out, taking it down with three bursts. He returned to cover with a smile on his face, at least that's what I assumed was behind the faceplate, since he seemed to have been an ODST before joining our unit.
Bear and Dom fired blindly over and below the car respectively. Bear was making good use of the M247L he was carrying, while Dom's MA5B turned more than one pair of elite feet into mush. As they fell into the ground we jumped over the SUV simuteneously, we ran while hunching down and I put a round into each of the wounded elite's skulls before we slid to a pile of rubble. The SUV we were in was completely atomized by a blast from a wraith. I had to close my eyes from the bright flash. I could feel the heat even from ten meters away. As I was on my back I noticed something on the sky that I hadn't before. It just so happened to be that a CCS-Battlecruiser had decided to hover over our heads.
"What the hell is that?" I asked.
"Well Frankie, that just so happens to be a cute stripper," said Dom. Bear laughed and I flushed. I was mad that no one decided to radio our sniper team about a fucking enemy battleship hovering right above us.
"Why hasn't it glassed us yet?" I asked.
"Apparently there's a high-ranking elite that the covvies don't want to waste, at least that's what Albaf says. The ship is supposed to be the evac for this legion, they are being pounded on the other side by some sort of spec ops team. We are lucky the ship is empty of infantry, otherwise they would've sent reinforcements long ago."
"And no one decided to tell me," I complained.
"Nah, they wanted you to die here," said Dom.
Just as I was about to say some pretty unsavory comments regarding his mother and any sister he might've had, three seraphs flew overhead, dangerously close to the ground. They were headed for the rhino hill.
"Aaaaand there goes our artillery," I said as the hilltop turned white and blue, with small flashes of orange in the middle of the grand explosion. One Seraph was knocked down by a jackhammer while the other two returned to the ship hovering some miles above us.
"Don't worry, our line will hold as long as they don't get reinforcements and that ship doesn't decide to glass us," said Bear with his gruff voice.
Just as he finished saying that, I heard a mechanical noise, it was coming from the CCS-Battlecruiser, so it must've been quite loud for me to hear ir. I looked at it and saw its cargo bay opening. A large object fell down.
"Why thank you very much Bear, of course our line will hold," I yelled angrily at him.
By the time the scarab had hit the floor, most of the infantry here had fallen back, only the soldiers manning the machine guns remained, making good use of the last ammo boxes the guns would ever fire. A squad of banshees chased them as they retreated, some were shot down by the plasma fire. The banshees themselves were either destroyed or damaged by the concentration of small weapons fire. I was already running for my life when our captain stopped us.
"One of you needs to stay and paint the target," he said bluntly, plasma raining all around us.
"Come again?" said Dom.
"We managed to get a couple of longswords to give us a strafing run, I need one of you to remain here and mark the scarab," he explained.
"Shotty not."
"Shotty not," Bear and Dom spoke a fraction of a second before me.
"Shotty fuck!"
"Good luck soldier," said the captain as he hopped on on a warthog and left at full speed.
"Better luck next time buddy," said Dom, not a trace of shame on his voice.
"Fuck you very much," I said to him. Bear laughed. "You too!"
I was pissed.
I ran towards the collapsed wall of the Wal-Mart while Dom and Bear joined the full retreat. The two remaining scorpions blasted any infantry coming close enough while rolling backwards at full steam. I was alone. Again. At least this time I had a mission. I aimed my rifle at the scarab while activating my laser sight's designator mode. I kept it on the scarab without to much trouble, nobody had seen me yet. I was under a section of the wall that covered me from above, in addition to that a bunch of smashed concrete covered the rest of my body.
"Thirty seconds," a voice crackled in my comm it was probably the pilot of a longsword, since it was unfamiliar. How come they can use comms and we can only use our radios? was all I could wonder before the scarab shot one of the tanks, its turret flying thirty feet in the air before crashing down next to the main part of the tank.
The other scorpion shot at the scarab's body. It shook the insect-like combat platform before the scarab turned its rear turret and melted the scorpion to a pile of titanium and ceramic.
The scarab's triumph was short lived, as suddenly two black flashes flew over it, an instant later it was covered by orange explosions, a good portion of the ground around it was hit as well, taking out a large number of covvies. I just hoped that the creepy elite had been taken out as well.
I left my hideout and started running in the same direction as the rest of the unit. Dom and Bear had left five minutes ago, so I probably had a lot of catching up to do. My train of though was interrupted by the loudest noise I had heard in my life. It was like the noise a gauss cannon made up to eleven. I glanced up at the enemy ship to see its hull littered with explosions.
"Fucking great, all of a sudden we start winning," I complained.
I stood there looking at the ship for a couple of seconds to determine which direction it was falling in and then ran in the opposite direction as fast as I could. Away from the ship, and away from my friends.
The ship's failing anti-grav generators slowed down its fall, and I managed to escape the ship's crash-site. Only by two hundred meters, but it was sufficient. I just hoped that enough covvies had been squished by the ship for me to not have to worry about the enemy chasing me. I started a fast jog down the street until I realized it looked barely familiar. Yes, there were a couple of bars that I had been to before. I was close to the camp. I knew I was probably making a mistake, but for the first time in years, I headed home.