Chapter LXIII: On the Run
March 12, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/
Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System
Spread out!" the lieutenant ordered. "Red-Three, you move faster or I'm going to start shooting at you to give you some incentive."
"Yes ma'am!"
Red-Three's dot on my HUD started moving faster relative to our own speed, still, the guy couldn't really move too much farther ahead or else he'd loose us completely and have no cover at all. That was bad. Really bad. Meanwhile, the banshees on our heels had simply strafed us a couple of times, but the thick foliage meant that most of the shots missed and since plasma is pretty unstable, some of them even disintegrated before going through all the leaves. So far, we were doing good, but soon enough a lucky shot would hit someone, and then a couple of ghosts would make their way through all the trees. At least we were lucky that no brutes were here, else it'd be choppers mowing down trees.
"Shit, banshees coming in for another pass," someone called out.
"Everybody down!" the lieutenant ordered.
Ten ODSTs dropped to the floor and tried to hide under roots or behind tree trunks as five banshees torched the rainforest with plasma and fuel rods. The green blobs made whole sections of the trees vaporize and the rest explode in a cloud of splinters while the regular plasma rounds made shallow holes in anything that they hit. Oh, also, they started fires. Right now there was a huge forest fire on our asses. We weren't only outrunning fanatical and murderous aliens, we were also outrunning the mother of all forest fires. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.
"Everyone fine?" the lieutenant asked.
"Red-one is good."
"Two good, and so is Three."
"I can answer for myself," Three said.
"I'm good," Red-Five announced.
"Same here."
"Blue Team is ok," the sergeant announced. More practical that he say it instead of waiting for every single member of the team to announce that they were fine.
"Well what the hell are you waiting for? Move out!"
We were already on our feet and it was a simple matter of starting moving said appendices again, easy enough when you have been doing it all your life, not quite as simple when you have been doing it non-stop for the past hour and a half. Our evac position had been changed more than a couple of times so far, and Eliza hadn't been able to provide any more useful insight. We were at least sixty kilometers away from the nearest UNSC position and the likelihood of receiving evac didn't seem quite so plausible right now. You'd think that ONI would devote a whole lot more resources to something that they considered this important. Oh well, perhaps the brass was overriding their orders. For once, I was pissed at the UNSC going against the ONI.
"Fuck them," I muttered under my breath at the thought.
"Who?" Pavel asked in between pants.
"The brass."
"Why?" he asked, he was evidently startled.
"They are probably going against ONI on this one, denying us any chance for evac because they deem their own matters more important," I explained.
"You do realize that that is just a theory," Pavel said.
"Also, this might seem more important to us, but perhaps someone behind the line needs a pelican to evacuate fifteen little children," an ODST with a heavy Irish accent said.
"Shut up, I wasn't talking to you," I muttered.
"Kid's got a point Frank," Pavel said.
"Fuck off," I said.
"Sorry kid, Frank doesn't like being wrong," Pavel explained to the Irish soldier.
On the account that I very rarely am.
"Ground Team come in, this is command," the soothing voice of whichever tech was in the other eight ODSTs' spaceships said.
"Command, this is Red One," our lieutenant replied.
"I don't like being the bearer of bad news, but there is a definite hold on your evac, looks like you'll have to haul ass all the way to our frontline."
"What?" the lieutenant yelled, "that's seventy six fucking kilometers away!"
"I'm sorry lieu-"
"Don't you dare say you're sorry when you-"
"Well then, I assume that it is personally my fault the covvies are overrunning us," the mission control guy said. "Good luck."
There was the sound of someone taking their earpiece of and some mumbling, after which the words 'crazy bitch' were heard, followed by mission control finally cutting off the connection from us.
"Well, that was… depressing, to say the least," one ODST said.
"Ok, let's see if we can break the record for running little over a marathon and a half," another member of Red Team joked nervously.
"Like we have much of a choice," the young-sounding ODST with an Irish accent pointed out.
Once it was definite that we would have to cross a distance long-enough to knock out even the best ultra-marathon runners in what seemed like record time with a bloodthirsty army at our heels and hostile craft above our heads, we slowed down a little, if we were going to die, then we might as well die less tired than we might've. Instead we simply went down in speed until we were jogging barely above speedwalk speed. We weren't completely giving up yet though.
"Ok," the lieutenant said after a sigh, "what can we do about those banshees?"
"Not much really," the staff sergeant leading Blue Team replied. "We could use the grenade launcher's EMP, capability to take out a couple of banshees, but that would be too much to hope for."
"Agreed," I said. "You have to lead the shot, detonate at the precise moment, and aim correctly all while under hostile fire."
"Don't have much of a choice," she said. "Red Four, how many rounds have you got for your M319?"
"All of them ma'am," Red Four replied.
"Think you can make the shot?"
"Perhaps I can bring a couple of the banshees down," the soldier replied while shifting his foot.
"Well then, next time give it a shot, someone drop a couple dozen meters and warn him when they are above you," she ordered.
"Ma'am," the only other woman in the squad said, she was tagged as Red Two. She immediately stopped completely and soon enough the thick foliage and abundant plant life meant that she was out of our sights. Her IFF tag only started moving once it had dropped twenty-five meters behind us. And now we waited.
"Banshees!"
Not for long apparently.
"Flying above me right now!" Red Two called out.
There was half a second delay between the shout and the detonation. The banshees were flying at their slowest speed in an effort to make their strafing run as long as possible. The first grenade flew above and detonated in the air before the flight of banshees even got close enough. Sure, it startled them, but it wasn't likely to deter them.
"OK, change directions and try again," the lieutenant called in her sexy voice.
Red-Three shifted the direction he was running in by a couple of degrees to throw off the banshees next time they tried to make a pass while the ODST with the grenade launcher reloaded the weapon. I thought it odd that a member of the Marine Corps would sport a weapon that was considered the staple gun of the UNSC Army, having been in use for just about three centuries. I simply shrugged and decided to feel grateful for the opportunity to shoot down the banshees, even if it was a small hope.
It took the banshees another couple of flyovers to finally pin down our position, once they did, Red Two called out again and the guy with the grenade launcher fired up in the sky. The explosive detonated a few meters ahead of the banshee, but it exploded at just the right altitude this time. Perhaps in a couple of extra tries we would finally get it. That is, provided one of the banshees didn't shoot that guy down, his armor was scorched and moisture was evaporating from it, giving the soldier a very scary look.
"Nobody said you could stay on the floor!"
I swear to God, if the lieutenant's voice wasn't so damn sexy I am pretty sure that I would've killed her a couple of hours ago. Why is it that officers have this annoying tendency to shout orders all the time? It is… well, annoying.
The next time the banshees flow overhead, we managed to bring one of them down, it crashed violently against a tall and thin tree, snapping it. Then it crashed into a three that was at least five meters in diameter and exploded in a beautiful blaze, even if that blaze simply made the forest fire we were trying to outrun feel a whole lot closer.
"Good job, let's see if we can bring down one more," the lieutenant called out.
On the fourth try, the EMP blast hit two banshees, sending them into each other and then crashing into the ground. The rest of the purple craft turned and went back to base, leaving us alone. It also cost us the life of our medic, Blue Seven. He was hit with a single plasma bolt in between his shoulder plates. I am not an expert, but I think that the plasma burned right through his armor and then into his chest cavity, killing him instantly.
We scavenged his body for armor and medical supplies and left a single grenade as a booby trap for when the covvies caught up with us. At least he'd manage to blow up one or two curious grunts or a hungry jackal.
"Shit," someone said.
"Ok, move on," our leader said, now her voice didn't give away any emotion at all. "We have to get this damned package back to ONI. Don't let his death be for nothing."
"Aye ma'am," said Blue Six.
Our pace now was more frantic, even if we didn't complain. The covvies were catching up, they were close enough that we could occasionally hear the noise of plasma fire. Sounded like they were using their guns to cut down the thick jungle and make a trail for their bigger vehicles. That was both good and bad. Good because that meant that the UNSC still had some kind of AA systems good enough to prevent the covvies from using phantoms to deploy troops in large numbers and bad because it meant that they were this close to catch up to us. Shit was about to get real.
By the end of the day we were one man down, out of coffee and all of us were just above the limit for combat stims. My feet were bleeding and my legs were hurting. We were just about halfway through to our goal.
"Shit, move out," Pavel said quietly.
We had decided to take a five minute break, which turned into a half an hour nap for all of us, and now we were hearing the humming sound that the anti gravity unit of a covvie vehicle made.
I jumped to my feet and grabbed my rifle while the ODST that woke me up shook another armor-clad marine from sleep. Within five seconds we were all on our feet and running away as far and fast as possible. It frustrated me to have to keep myself down in order to stay with them, but it was what I had to do. We were moving a lot more quietly, watching out step so that we didn't step on a branch or hit something that would alert the enemy to our presence. The way things were going, they would catch up to us far before we were able to make it home. At least their thermals wouldn't work well in here, neither would ours, but it was still some comfort.
"Pavs," I said.
"Don't call me that," he replied. "Only Chloe can call me that." There was something in his voice that sounded out of place.
"Umm, about that," I started.
"Don't start this bullshit," he huffed in between breaths.
"Fine then," I said while mentally shrugging. Just you try to shrug while running as fast as you can after having been running for a few hours.
I wanted to give Pavel some sort of psychological talk to understand why he had been cheating on his girlfriend, not that I minded if he did that, but I thought that he really liked Delacroix and it just bothered me. It was that kind of constant nagging when you don't understand or can't remember something. Don't get me wrong, Pavel can do whatever he wants with his own personal and love life for all I care, I was just curious.
I heard someone stop and turned to see one of the ODSTs leaning against a tree and taking of his helmet to throw up on the jungle floor. He spat a couple of times to get rid of any residue and then drank some water, which he promptly spat out again. The guy put on his helmet back on and resumed his run. I was proud to be an ODST. These guys are the best of the very best. It had taken some forty-five kilometers through difficult jungle terrain to make this man empty his stomach. If that's not being a hardass, then I don't know what is.
It was only about fifteen minutes after that that a beam shot hit my team leader in the back of the head. I instantly turned and looked for the offending covvie through my sights, when I found nothing I fired a couple of shots in the general direction of the attacker. Not that it would worsen things, we were already made and within small arms range. As bad as things can get.
"Fuck, is he dead?"
"No, his brain is just fine after that!" Pavel quipped.
"Fuck off," the lieutenant said angrily. "Two, make sure he's dead and take his ammunition. The rest of you, double time!"
This time we were sprinting, no one wanted to get shot in the back of the head. It was good that the dead man had been wearing a full-face helmet, otherwise we would've seen the huge exit wound ruining half his face instead of a tiny hole and a cracked visor with a little blood trickling down. No matter how professional and experienced you are, seeing your comrade's face gone is never good for morale.
We were down to eight men, two of them lost in what someone would compare to accidents in civilian life instead of during full-blown combat with overwhelming odds, the kind of dead that every ODST wished he (or she) could get.
When we had been killing our legs for an hour, still twenty kilometers away from our goal, they finally caught up to us. The elites were the first to arrive, they were taller, stronger, faster, and in all aspects superior to the rest of the Covenant races present on this moon. They were sprinting faster than any human could, faster even than I could've. Blue blobs of plasma smacked against the trees all around us, and within seconds, we were all behind cover and returning fire. The elites weren't expecting such a speedy reaction, because the three of them that we could see went down with the first barrage.
"Ok, we leapfrog the rest of the way, Two, Three, Five, you're with me, Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten, you're under Nine."
"That's me," I said mostly to myself.
"Very smart, now cover us!"
My small four-man team stayed behind cover and popped our heads and rifles out so that the lieutenant's team could run a couple hundred meters back safely. No fire came. As soon as I got word that they were ok I sent my men back one by one in three second intervals while I remained to cover them. I sprinted all the way back to the lieutenant's position and then some. Once my squad was together and behind cover, the lieutenant's squad started running backwards while we covered them. This technique would take some time and would probably allow more covvies to catch us, but out position was already known, and this gave us the chance for small breaks and for relative safety compared to running away without any covering fire.
"Okay," the Irish ODST said after a couple of leapfroggings. "Squad names?"
"One and two," the lieutenant answered.
"Ooo, ooo, I got one," Pavel said at the same time.
"Oh really?" she asked him.
"Yeah, dibs on Titan squad," Pavel said.
"Seriously?" both the lieutenant and me said at the same time, even if we had completely different reasons for it. She probably just thought Pavel wanted a cool-sounding name, I just hadn't heard that name in a while.
"Yeah, why not?" Pavel said. I could almost feel the giddiness in his voice.
"I'm cool with it," Eight said. It was the first time he's spoken so far.
"Fine," our lieutenant conceded.
"And you are?" Pavel asked.
"Sledgehammer?" one of them proposed.
"Nah, too long," Two said. She also had a nice voice, which was sadly eclipsed by the lieutenant's voice. Well, perhaps not so sadly, I swear her voice could melt you into a puddle.
"Hammer?" Three huffed.
"Not cool enough," Four noted.
"Anvil," One finally said in her lust-inducing voice.
"Sounds good," her squad agreed.
It had taken us two leapfroggings to decide on a name for their squad, lucky that the covvies were still to far away to fire on us, especially in this dense jungle, otherwise we would've been left with One and Two for squad names. Still, we could now hear elites barking orders at grunts and jackals screeching in bloodlust. The closest of them were probably just two hundred meters away, soon enough we would have wraith mortar fire falling down on our heads.
"Mortar fire!" Pavel called out.
Why is it that when I think of something it always comes true? I asked myself.
Not always, remember that particular thing you though about with Marina and that cute specialist? That certainly didn't happen, else I'd remember. I wittily answered.
Great, I am arguing with myself and managed to make me feel depressed.
The mortar slammed down on the ground, melting through anything that it touched and setting any nearby plants on fire on account of heat alone. Suddenly, I felt very nervous, and not for the reasons that you'd expect in a situation like this.
"Did I say that out loud?" I asked.
"What?"
"No…"
"Huh?"
"Yes," Pavel said, followed by "Dammit." That man knew me better than anyone.
"-rounded by idiots," the lieutenant said. "Everyone ok?"
"Anvil Two fine, ma'am."
"Same goes for Three."
"Shaken, but Anvil Four is intact."
"Titan squad is ready to go lieutenant."
"Ok, the squad names are pretty cool," she admitted.
As good, competent, and well-trained ODSTs, we were already on our feet and scrambling to good positions when the swarm of drones reached us. Yes, in addition to being chased by a battalion and being caught in between enemy armies we were being shot form all directions at close quarters. And you thought that your work sucked.
"Bugs!"
"I fucking noticed," Four called out in between bursts.
"It's right on my aaaaaaaaass!"
"Got it!" I said after a burst to the back of a drone.
"Yo Frank!" Pavel called out once he was behind cover. "Isn't it annoying how drones show up only in the toughest parts of our lives?"
"Yeah, like once every couple of years," I said. "On the most difficult missions."
"And they smell like shite," Seven said in his now familiar Irish accent. He even took the time to shoot an extra burst at a drone that he had just shot of a branch.
"I like this rookie," Pavel said.
"Not a rookie."
"How many campaigns have you been on?"
"This would be my-"
"Rookie," Pavel and I said unanimously.
"Once you reach ten planets, you tell me kid."
"You've fought in ten different planets?" this time it was the lieutenant asking. The surprised tone made her voice sound cute in addition to sexy. I could marry this woman based on her voice alone. Gawd. Blind people must've fallen in love with her as soon as they heard her.
"Well," Pavel said, taking out a pair of drones holding on to a tree. "More than that, actually, but who's counting?"
"I am," I murmured.
"Wow," the Irish guy said again.
"Why you sound so sur-" a line of needles hitting the wood above his head interrupted Pavel. "Whoa!"
"Die fucker!" I yelled in true action hero fashion as I gave the bug three bullets in its small neck for its trouble.
"As I was saying, why do you thi-"
A plasma grenade landed right next to my unfortunate friend, who lunged behind a medium-sized rock next to him. The white explosion covered the rock and left it smoldering red, but Pavel emerged from the smoking rock and fired a long burst in the direction of the bulk of the drone swarm, probably taking out a dozen of those bugs before he was forced back to cover.
"Why is it so surprising that we are veterans?" Pavel said the words so quickly that I barely got them.
"Well," Two started. "You certainly don't behave like it."
"And you look pretty young," Three added, pointing at me.
"And handsome," I said imitating Three's voice as best as I could. "Why, I'm flattered for your kind words. But yes, I joined as I was eighteen, straight to the ODST Helljumpers."
"You can do that?" Eight asked, shock evident in his voice.
"As long as you go through bootcamp…" I said.
"No, you've got to have some previous combat experience before you can qualify," Pavel managed in between bursts.
"Yeah, you can't just go and join the ODST," the lieutenant said.
"I did that…" I mentioned.
"You must've been hit pretty hard in the head. You can't join unless you have combat experience."
"I'm pretty sure that I'd remember getting shot at before joining the Helljumpers but I don't," I said.
"Frank, why do you insist on that?"
"Cause it's the truth…"
"So," the lieutenant started, "you're trying to tell me that you joined the ODST without any previous military experience?"
"Yes."
"Wow, you must've pulled some strings there," she sounded surprised.
"I didn't."
After that I had to explain repeatedly how I got into the ODST. Eventually we came to the conclusion that since I was in living in Camp Afghan at the time, the recruiters assumed that I was a marine quartered there, or at least a recruit. Then, my uncle must've pulled in some very big favors to get me into Camp Mars IX. It made me feel good that my uncle used all his favors to help me succeed in my dreams.
"Man, your uncle really must've wanted you gone."
…and now I hated my uncle. Stupid asshole, trying to get rid of me and all that shit.
By the time we had reached a decision on the reason why I got to become a Helljumper without being in the Marines before all the drones were dead and Three had a mild burn on his left arm. What? It was a pretty long discussion. Now that I think back to it, how detached from reality do you have to be to have a conversation about something stupid in the middle of a frantic battle? I don't know if it's a curse or a gift.
"Fifteen kilometers people!" a sexy voice snapped me back to reality. "This isn't over by a longshit."
"Longshot," I corrected her.
"Fuck. You."
"You sound so sexy when you talk dirty."
The lieutenant was actually baffled for a couple of seconds and babbled a bit when she tried to come back with a witty response. That promptly sent both squads laughing. A little humor before dying is never bad for you. Well, a little humor is never bad at all, so it's not weird we're cracking up while we're about to die. Not weird at all.
Yeah, I was being sarcastic in case you didn't get it.
Fifteen(ish) kilometers to go, eight professional special-operations soldiers, an army of homicidal aliens. Sounds like the tagline for a really crappy action movie. Or perhaps an awesome one, depends on who directs it. I personally think that Wilhelm Striker could portray me. That guy is the king of action movies, I'm sure you've seen him a couple of times. Well, enough with breaking the fourth wall and back to the story.
Te minutes later our leapfrogging technique consisted on everyone running as fast as they possibly could and one or two guys walking backwards while strafing absolutely everything that moved. We sprayed fire all over the place, but made a lot of noise and a mess of the trees and wildlife behind us, a good job enough job to keep any eager elites and jackals with their heads down. Still, I had to tackle on elite and Pavel stomped its face in when it got too close. Four looked shock at our technique.
"Hey, it worked didn't it."
"You just tackled an elite."
"How very observant of you kid."
"Please, don't call my Helljumpers kid," One said.
"Yes ma'am," I saluted as I ran, don't think she saw me, but I did it nevertheless.
As soon as I was moving again several carbine shots whistled by. The covvies were starting to get really close on us. Had the jungle not been so thick and dense, their ghosts would've run us down hours ago. Truly we had had more luck than we had been entitled to. More than anyone should've had at all. Seriously, how many people can say that they have stayed alive in front of an advancing covenant battalion for hours and through difficult jungle terrain that they were unfamiliar with. Only eight, that's right. But they don't say "All good things must come to an end" for nothing.
And suddenly the only noise that I could hear was the metallic boots of eight marines running for their lives. No gunfire, no plasma weaponry, no anti-grav units. Hell, I couldn't even hear any wildlife at all, not even birds shrieking. This was really, really wrong. I've watched enough movies to know that. Oh, and I've also been in more similar situations to know how it goes.
"Oh shit," Pavel murmured, mostly to himself.
"Here we go again," I said.
And suddenly there was a wall of plasma and needles blocking out every single thing in front of me. We were still some five kilometers away from our destination, and just before dawn, they had finally caught up to us. Our luck had run out, and now only the best of us would survive. And then perhaps not even then I might get out alive.
Hey guys, hope you enjoyed this chapter.
I'm about to do something that I don't usually do, but I feel like I must. Now, I am not the kind of person that asks for reviews, I am of the mentality that if you wanted to review me, you would, but reviews are good for two things:
-Constructive criticism
-My ego
I'd like to ask you to leave the occasional review every couple of chapters or whenever something in the story makes an "impact" whether good or bad. I know that I probably sound like an attention whore, but I am actually writing this fic on the go, with little planning on what's ahead in the story, and if I know what my (very, very few) readers like and don't like, then I can write a better story for them.
Regardless, I love you guys, thanks for reading.
-casquis