Chapter LXII: Package
March 12, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/
Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System
Red, yellow, green.
The pod was launched from the ship even before I had gotten my debriefing. All I had seen was a tense Major Albaf ordering around the crew that prepped the pods before they launched. If they were still here this must've been a last-minute mission. The men scurried as Albaf yelled at them and then she had turned to face us.
"Inside, you'll be debriefed once you land."
We both knew better than to ask any questions and simply secured our weapons to the convenient holding places inside the pods and watched Albaf as the doors closed and sealed themselves. The entire cockpit of the pod lit up with several screens and status lights. The debriefing screen, which was only there to give soldiers something to do while they dropped to earth in a metallic cocoon, had only an ONI logo instead of the usual lines of text. The other screens that usually displayed your commanding officer for last minute debriefings were blank as well.
"I guess you could call this a last second debriefing," Pavel mused.
My pod started rattling as it entered the atmosphere of Aztlan for the second time. It was slightly worse than the previous jump I did, and the previous jump I did was about two inches away from landing completely sideways. Since it was that bad, alarms started flashing and blaring all around the tight cabin of the SOEIV.
"Shit, shit, shit, shitshitshitshitshitshit." I maneuvered my pod as best I could, but it was doing some sort of spiral as it tumbled to the ground. The parachute didn't do much to help, it only succeeded in making the pod turn even further sideways.
"Fuck!"
"Frank!" Pavel shouted.
I ignored my friend and instead focused on the rudder of the pod, its effects were nearly zero, but I did manage to steer my pod slightly into the right position. By that time the entire cabin was flashing with red lights and I was taking turns at looking at the blue sky and then a green jungle with fires burning in he distance. I deployed my thrusters and the ground rushed up to meet me. Everything went black.
"Clear!"
"No wait! I've got a pulse."
"Thank god." That was the only familiar voice.
"Is he ok?"
"Should be, scans report no significant damage. Seems like his heart was only dead for a few seconds, so no risk of brain trauma or anything serious."
"Good," yet another voice said.
"Fuck," I muttered as I opened my eyes. The edges of my vision were black while the center was shiny. The black edges eventually transformed into shapes that I recognized as human silhouettes and the shiny center turned into the rainforest canopy letting some sun come through. The human silhouettes further defined themselves to turn into ODSTs.
"Fuck," I said again.
"You're alright buddy," the ODST closest to me said. "A couple of stims and you should be just like normal."
I grunted in annoyance.
"Yes," he said. "That's what I'd say too."
I finally was able to see everything without blurry edges after a few moments of disorientation. I was naked from waist up and my shirt was torn to show my skin. I would've been pissed, except that a ruined shirt was the only thing that I had given up in exchange for my life. Around me were nine ODSTs, Pavel was one of them, which meant that the other eight were unknown. One of them was kneeling next to me, a small box next to him and two thin paddles on each of his hands.
"Phew," I said. "Now what?"
Pavel laughed, I don't know if it was relief or because my joke had been funny considering the circumstances, but he laughed all the same. I simply jumped up before the ground tilted sideways and I was forced to sit back down. The other ODSTs all went into different directions, presumably to set up a perimeter, and muttered amongst themselves. Pavel, the medic kneeling next to me and another ODST with lieutenant bars on his armor remained behind.
"Now, about those stims," I told the medic.
Behind the depolarized faceplate there was a young kid that looked about five years younger than I was. I was twenty-seven, which by mathematical operation made him twenty-two. Then again, I was also perhaps four years younger physically in account to all the slipspace jumps and cryo experience that I had under my belt, so this "kid" could've been older than me just as well as he could've actually been twenty-two.
"Ouch," I muttered as a two-inch long needle was dug into my chest.
"Yeah, forgot to mention that it might hurt a little."
My heart started beating faster as the drug cocktail started flowing through my veins. It felt like my chest was going to explode for a few seconds until eventually, the pain that had been all over my body went away. Hell, even my stitches stopped hurting.
"Ok, I am ready to kick some ass," I said as I stood up, carefully this time. "Of course, I assume that that is what we're going to do."
"Actually Staff Sergeant, our mission is a simple matter of retrieval." It was the first time the lieutenant had spoken. Her voice (because it he was a shee) had authority, even for an ODST, under all his armor she was still slightly shorter than I was without my helmet, but the battle scars and composure of the soldier warned me not to underestimate her in the least.
"Go on," I said. I was removing the remains of my shirt and putting on my armor. The space between plates protecting my arms would remain uncovered, it wasn't the first time I had done that, but since I didn't even have a short-sleeved shirt or an undershirt underneath my armor I would probably get some serious chafing. It's a little bit sad that that was what annoyed me the most.
"During the evacuation of the planet, ONI, in all their greatness, left behind an item that is apparently of importance to them. They happened to leave it in a lab. Inside an occupied city. It's up to us to get it back and return it safe and sound."
Lab, so I assume that it is some sort of schematics for either a weapon or technology that could help us win this war. They otherwise wouldn't have sent ten ODSTs to recover it.
"Who the hell doesn't make copies of their schematics?" I asked grumpily as I strapped on my forearm armor.
"Hey, that's what I asked," Pavel said.
"Regardless," the lieutenant said. "Our team is down two men, so you two will obviously be complementing us. We will divide ourselves into two teams. You two will be in the same team with Blue-Six, Blue-Seven, and Blue-Eight." As she said that my helmet received the IFF codes to identify the rest of the ODSTs properly. Since they were also Black Ops and in another unit, their names weren't present. Not that it would be important, I could very well refer to them by their numbers for a couple of hours. "Blue Team, your team, will provide cover for my team, Red Team, while we breach the ONI building and recover the package. From that point on we will fall back into here, and then make our way to our evac zone here." When the lieutenant explained the course of action a map popped into mu HUD and outlined the directions and schedules that we would keep to. There were some covvies present in the area, but nothing serious and nothing that we couldn't handle.
Seems easy enough.
Famous last words, the more cynical part of my mind shot back.
I was fully clothed now, armor all ready and knives all sharp. My guns were ready to shoot and the stimulators running through my veins had me as giddy as a teenager after going all the way for the first time. Not that that's a bad feeling, but in battle giddiness isn't quite the best sensation for your long-term survival.
We were moving through the jungle, as per the norm in this stupid moon, to get to our destination. It was not as dense here as in other places, but it was still full enough of leaves all over the place that I started feeling slightly claustrophobic. Especially since we weren't following any sort of path whatsoever. Right now I was lead scout in Blue Team. I was Blue-Nine, Pavel was Blue-Ten. The other three blues were walking fifty yards behind me and the Red Team was doing the exact same about a hundred yards to my right.
"Halt," I said. I usually said 'hold on for a sec', but this guys gave of the 'seriously professional' vibe, and I didn't quite want to feel out of place. You know, peer pressure and all that tends to matter more than most people would want themselves to believe. "Tree line ends," I said. "A la verga…"
"Blue-Nine, what's wrong?" Blue-Six asked. He was the leader in my squad despite being the same rank as I was and in all likelihood, having less experience.
I was just starting to process the sight that I was taking in when I tried to answer. My brain couldn't find the appropriate words to describe the landscape, so instead it simply told my mouth to spew out a bunch of horseshit and I stammered like an idiot. Finally, I simply sent a live feed to the rest of my squad's helmets.
"Fuck," was the unanimous response.
In front of me, where the once beautiful city of Toyuq Sorbasi, once called the crown jewel of this planet, even if its name was something of a joke and even a meme in the internet. Still, I had only just heard of the city very recently, there were pictures in the dossier that we were forced to read to get 'acquainted' with Aztlan, it looked like one of those commercials for the newest housing development. It was shiny, pretty, elegant, and modern. It was pretty much the perfect city, aesthetically. Now it was a pile of blackened rubble.
"This place was supposed to be relatively intact," one of my squadmates said. He had a young-sounding voice with a strong Irish accent.
"Well, intel dropped the ball," Pavel said. "Did not see that one coming." That was sarcasm, obviously.
"Ok, move out people, Blue-Nine, wait for us."
I winked my acknowledgement lights instead of answering. Since my superior was the same rank as I was, I was unsure as to how to refer to the guy. Didn't want to sound like I was being sarcastic or anything, so I took the lesser of two evils. Instants later the rest of my team arrived behind me. They all took a moment to take in the destruction before finding cover behind the last of the trees.
"Ok, move out," Blue-Six said after a brief conversation with the lieutenant. Red Team was set up and ready to move. The ONI building was less than a kilometer away from our position. Normally, it would've taken us as little as five minutes to reach the place, but with all the rubble it would probably be about fifteen minutes before we finally arrived. At least it was close to the jungle, which was good for us.
Ok now, Toyuq Sorbasi was a city built out of metal-and-glass skyscrapers, it was very much like a smaller version of New Alexandria, albeit cleaner and more pleasing to the eye.
The buildings in the city were still standing, at least the majority of them, there were enough of them on the floor to provide rubble. The ones that were standing were all damaged, some were missing large portions of one side, or the top had been blown off, some looked like everything save for the basic structure was gone. The most impressive building was one a couple hundred meters to the right of our target. It was one of those mile-high skyscrapers that ended in a point. It had several landing pads that spiraled down from the top all the way to one-third of the way down. It used to be the headquarters of Interstellar Airlines on Aztlan. Now half the landing pads were missing and the upper half of the building was on fire.
"Yo Frank, you ok?"
"Hmm, yeah, why?"
"Well, for starters, you just fucking survived a faulty jump," Pavel pointed out.
Truth be told, I had purposely avoided the issue. I hadn't been that afraid in my entire life. When I hit the ground, I was sure that that was it, that I was a goner for sure. A million things flashed in my head, some of them nice, most of them not. I suspected that if I hadn't been high on stims, I would've probably collapsed and assumed the fetal position for a couple of hours.
"Don't worry about it."
"Umm, radio silence?" Blue-Six said.
We both winkled acknowledgement and moved ahead. Our team was moving through an avenue filled with abandoned cars and the occasional corpse, both alien and human, mostly human though. Red Team was doing the same on a parallel street to our right. They would get to the building, use the elevator (or stairs) to get into the super secret basement and then we would haul ass to the evac point.
"One hundred meters," the lieutenant said. Boy, did her voice sound sexy.
"Staff Sergeant, you do realize that this is an open channel?"
"Huh?" I asked.
"As in we can all hear what you say," she explained.
Shit. Said it out loud.
"Forgive my friend lieutenant, he probably hit his head a little bit to hard when he crashed down, there's no filter between his mouth and his brain," Pavel interceded for me.
The rest of the ODSTs laughed a little, filling the channel with chatter for a few seconds.
"Don't worry about it," the lieutenant said. "In fact, I am glad to hear that."
The ODSTs all laughed and a couple of the higher-ranked ones teased the lieutenant about being too girly. She laughed a little as well before she made everyone shut up and focus on the mission.
"Nice going there buddy," Pavel said. "Boy, does her voice sound sexy. Seriously?"
"Shut up."
"Ok, we're in, Blue, set a perimeter, should be easy enough, plenty of cover."
I am pretty sure that the lieutenant added a little bit of sultriness to her voice just to piss me off. Apparently, I was right, since half the team started chuckling to themselves.
"Ok, find cover Blue," our leader ordered. "And move it along Red."
"On it," another unknown voice said. From the sound of it they were already burning through the doors. I could hear the sound that the plasma torches made all the way from over here. That was bad.
"Ok, we're in."
"Ten minutes, in and out Red, Blue wait outside," the lieutenant said.
"They always say that but they never come back," my squad leaders said.
"Yeah boss, I don't think that you used that correctly," Blue-Seven commented.
"Shut up, find some cover."
I gestured at Pavel to a high point that he could climb to using all the rubble and moved to a position behind a bunch of cement barricades half buried by rubble from the building across the street. I had a wide field of fire and was a couple of meters above the ground in front of me where the covvies would most likely come from. Pavel mounted his machinegun's bipod on a rock and went prone. The rest of the ODSTs were carrying MA5s, so they formed a semi-circle around Pavel and me. All in all, we had a pretty nice defendable position.
Now that there was no chatter on the radio, the place was uncomfortably quiet. There were no covvies anywhere nearby, but the place was still unnaturally quiet. There was no wind hitting the buildings, no birds chirping, no sound at all.
"It's quiet," one of the ODSTs started.
Don't…
"Too quiet."
And he just fucking jinxed us.
Just as he finished saying that there was a huge rumbling sound that made it feel like the whole planet was collapsing. The ground started shaking and the little debris rocks rocked back and forth.
"Relax, it's just a building collapsing," Pavel said.
There was a general sigh of relief from the squad before the shaking stopped as suddenly as it started. Immediately afterwards a huge dust cloud reached us. It was actually scary to see a fucking wall of brown and grey dust block out the sky and everything less than three meters away from your eyes. Yeah, not disturbing at all.
"Air filters on people, Blue-Ten, thermals on."
"Sir," all of us said. The air immediately became breathable, if a little bit stale tasting, if you know what I mean. Hard to describe the way it feels to breathe recycled air to someone that hasn't done the same thing. The space all around me was all dark and it wouldn't clear up for a while, Pavel would use his thermals to warn us if anyone was coming nearby.
"Contact!" Pavel called out. I could clearly hear the sound of him cocking his gun. Everyone of us winked their thermals on while Blue-Six tried to contact the lieutenant down in the building. "There are at least fifty of them!" Pavel warned.
"Ok, remember training, stick to your fields of fire and don't panic boys!" Blue-Six said.
"Shit, remember your training?" I said to Pavel through a private channel.
"Shhh, focus man."
Pavel had already made contact, so there was a small screen on the corner of our HUDs displaying everything that he was saying and displaying the squad's positions for some context. As soon as the first enemy soldier was close enough to our motion trackers the screen disappeared and was replaced with ammunition counters. There was a bunch of them and they were closing in fast. If we didn't act soon they would literally be upon us.
"Ten, fire as soon as they reach that small crack in the pavement."
"Roger that," Pavel acknowledged. I could picture him adjusting the sights on his M247L and shifting his shoulder to find the most comfortable position to fire. He probably already had a large elite on his crosshairs.
When he fired it wasn't like when the opening shot in a skirmish was made by a sniper, a single snap with a strong echo followed by a moment of stunned silence, no, Pavel's opening salvo didn't stop for five straight seconds, and it was joined by reports from four different firearms within half a second. The first to fall down was an elite major, I managed to bring down a blue-armored elite and a startled grunt before the covvies managed to return fire to my position.
"Lance of jackals moving in on your left," Pavel called out. "Blue shields, easy to spot."
As soon as he was done there was a few bursts of assault rifle fire followed by an explosion from a grenade. I couldn't tell, but it sounded like the jackals were done for, since no one mentioned them again. I popped out occasionally to sneak in a shot or two at the occasional grunt. Those were easy to kill quickly, whenever I hit an elite I was forced down before I could take out its shields.
"Sniper climbing a pile of rubble, Frank, he's at your two!"
"Covering fire!" I called out.
The noise of MA5 fire and the continuous explosions that Pavel's machinegun made whenever it fired a bullet intensified for a brief couple of seconds. I could see covvies struggling to find cover after being faced with all the lead and depleted uranium raining down on them. Most of them were slow as a snail, but covering fire isn't accurate, so none were actually hit. I zoomed in on the jackal sniper, it had a startled look on its face as it jumped backwards to safety. My super reflexes made time slow down just as I pressed the trigger. Three rounds flew out of my barrel and went completely through the jackal's left eye, leaving a hole the size of a cantaloupe in the back of its head.
"Boom headshot," I said.
"Blue, what's going on?" the lieutenant asked through the radio.
"Suddenly aliens, thousands of them, we're good for now, but it won't be long before they realize they have us outnumbered ten to one."
"Ok, we're hurrying it up," she said. "And don't make lame jokes."
The firefight resumed, Pavel would keep their heads down and shred whichever covvie managed to be stupid enough to leave cover while the rest of us focused on important targets whenever Pavel pointed out one. We could've done with a grenade launcher, but we were doing all right enough.
"Ok, we're about to be overrun, fall back!" Blue-Six called out.
"Seriously, I thought you guys were doing fine," Pavel said.
"Fall back," our leader repeated.
I shrugged to myself and hopped back to a small debris pile that provided enough cover if I crouched. I pressed my back against it and tried to relax a little. We had at least three dozen meters between the covvies and us, compared to the usual situations that I found myself in, there was quite a lot of open ground in between them and us. And open ground meant killing ground. I turned around on my belly and shot two grunts and a jackal that had made the mistake of realizing that we had just fallen back.
The three other ODSTs managed to do quite well by themselves, each taking out two aliens apiece. I was momentarily surprised at their skill before I realized that they actually were ODST Helljumpers and remembered that they were as good as I was. Or at least damn close.
"Ok Blue, we're here."
Red team arrived guns blazing, they popped out from the covvies' flank, they took out a couple dozen of them before they even had to slow down. By that time my team was shooting at the surprised covvies. Within ten seconds they were all either dead or dying. Surprising what you can actually do with an ODST squad and not a puny fireteam. I can't help but envy the Spartans when it comes to that. Stupid supersoldiers. Yes, I am a hypocrite, deal with it.
"Ok, let's move out, Blue, we move as a single unit, Red-Three has the package, cover him, he can't be killed."
Pavel dismounted his machinegun and jogged towards us even as we started walking away. As soon as he reached us we all broke into a slow run. A large firefight such as this was bound to attract some attention, especially troubling when the only attention it would call was unwanted one. Before long we were leaving the city and entering the jungle.
"Mother, this is ground team leader, do you copy?"
"Mother here, we copy."
"Package is secure, requesting evacuation."
"Roger, please proceed to evacuation point one. A pelican will be waiting for you-"
"Mother?"
"Shit, there are several phantom's and ground vehicles moving from the city and towards your direction. Looks like you managed to piss them off ground team."
"What? How many?" the lieutenant's sexy voice sounded shocked.
"Battalion sized, we're sending in shortswords, won't take them all out, but they'll buy you some time."
"Thank you, ground team leader out."
For a few instants the only noise was that of heavy metal boots hitting the mud and the occasional tree root.
"Shortswords, this package must be a big deal," someone said.
"Mhm."
We kept on moving as fast as possible without burning ourselves out. Soon enough we would have to lay down some fire so that we'd be able to keep running without seven-foot-tall monsters caught up. Ignore that, the first ones to reach us would probably be ghosts or specters, not infantry. Anyhow, we were three kilometers away from the evacuation point if I knew anything about luck, we would have to move to another point before we could finally get out of here.
"Staff Sergeant," a familiar voice said through my radio.
"Eliza?" I asked, startled. For a moment I actually stopped. "What's wrong?"
"The captain had me contact you, that girlfriend of yours is pretty feisty, huh?"
"Get to the point." You stupid construct.
"Fine, our scans are picking up large number of enemies on your tail."
"Yeah, battalion-sized, so what?"
"Wrong, there are several other regiment-sized units moving towards your position."
"What, just to get to us? We're ten soldiers!" I exclaimed.
"Don't flatter yourself Staff Sergeant, you are moving towards the last landhold that the UNSC has on the planet, and the covvies are desperate to kill us all before we can leave this moon," Eliza said, "it just so happens that you're in between them and their goal."
"Fuck," I muttered.
"A rather appropriate statement considering your predicament Staff Sergeant," she said.
"Ok, what do we do about it?" I asked.
"Well, there are several fliers inbound to your position, I calculate a 97.756% chance of your evacuation point being moved, I suggest you start heading to this location," a waypoint popped up in my HUD. "It is in between the secondary evacuation points, by the time another evacuation point has been chosen, you'll be halfway there."
"You sure about this Eliza?"
"Ninety seven point seven hundred and fifty six percent sure."
"Ok then, you'd better not have faulty circuits then," I said.
"Technically speaking, I do not possess any circuitry or cable's at all, I am housed in a-" I killed the channel.
"Lieutenant, there's something you should hear…" I explained the situation to the lieutenant and let her think it over for a couple of seconds.
"You sure?" she asked.
"Ninety seven point seven hundred and fifty six percent sure."
"Ok, you don't have to be a pretentious asshole," she said in between breaths. "Ok team, move out, follow Blue-Nine."
I shifted a couple of degrees to my right and started heading towards the waypoint, it was a lot farther away than the original one, but if a smart AI told us to move to a different position, we would most certainly obey the thing. Eliza had probably ran a couple million simulations in her mind before even speaking to me. I trusted her, not because I was friends with her or anything, but because her math really was irrefutable, and everyone knows that math is either right or wrong. If 97,756 times out of 100,000 the simulation said that the evac point was changed, those odds were good enough.
"Frank?"
"Eliza, whenever I cut the conversation with you, it is usually because you start ranting," I said.
"I'm supposed to provide mission support," she said. Had I not known better, I could picture the AIs avatar blushing and looking awkward.
""We already have that," I reminded her.
"Yes, but I'm better, point in case, has your mission control told you that there are banshees closing in on your six?"
"Wha-"
"Yes, you'd better move," she recommended.
"Banshees!" I called out.
Well this is about to get fun.
That's right guys, two chapters. Happy early Thanksgiving.
-casquis