Chapter LXXXIII: Circuits and Snowstorms
February 25, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/
Nikola Hills, New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System
"Aw shit," Agnarsson said as he stared dumbly at his weapon for a brief second.
The brute didn't waste any time and pulled his bayonet from the floor and did a horizontal slash at my teammate, who ducked just in time for the blade to get itself dug into the column that he was using as cover. I shuffled back and reached for my BR55 even as the brute threw a wild kick in my direction. Its huge foot barely grazed my side, but in my current position it managed to knock me back to the floor again. I used my feet to do a backward jump even as the brute shot's bayonet cut the floor that had been below my crotch just seconds ago. I took advantage of the situation and squeezed off two shots, hitting the brute in the knee. The armor held.
"You've got to be-"
I was interrupted by a plasma pistol round hitting me in the right shoulder. The special armor did an excellent job at protecting me from the heat, but I still winced in pain.
Bumblebee was still trying to unjam his carbine while reaching for his pistol. With his attention divided into the two different tasks he wasn't doing much progress. I jumped and rolled and avoided the brute's curved blade as best I could. The ape was getting angrier by the minute and I was running out of luck. Someone had already shot me from behind and there was no telling when I would be hit again.
"Oh screw this shit," the Scottish rocket man said as he dropped his carbine and reached with both hands towards his back. He pulled out the M41 SSR from his back in a well-practiced movement and aimed.
"No," I yelled even despite the situation, "what the fuck do you-"
I didn't have time to finish as the weapon made a dull noise and a rocket was fired. The brute was hit right in the middle of its back as it raised its weapon for a killing blow. It seemed to me that there was a brief instant between the moment the rocket made impact and the moment the rocket blew the fuck up. From my perspective it all looked rather grisly, to say the least. The brute was outlined by an orange flash for the briefest of moments and then it simply disappeared. I closed my eyes for less than a second even as I raised my arms to protect myself. Suddenly I realized that an explosion at such close proximity would've killed me a lot quicker and I opened them again.
"Huh?"
I wiped a piece of flesh from my helmet and finally managed to stand up. I turned around and hit a grunt wielding a plasma pistol in its arm. The grunt fell to the floor and dropped its weapon. I started jogging towards it.
"You shot me? In the back? You fucking bastard!" I yelled at it. "Who the hell does that?"
Hypocrite, a part of my subconscious told me.
I stepped on the grunts hand and saw an expression of pure panic in its eyes before I closed one of my hands into a fist and brought it down on the alien's face full-force. Its head jerked back and the grunt squealed in obvious pain as the metal studs in my glove made contact with its skull.
"This. Will. Teach. You. A. Lesson!" I said, punctuating every word with a fist to the face. By the time I was done the alien's skull had caved inwards and its face was nothing but a bloody mess.
"Whoa, remind me never to piss you off Sarge," Bumblebee said from behind me.
"Never to piss-" I started incredulously. "Never to piss me off? The first time I met you, what the fuck did I say the first time I met you?"
"Uh, what?" he asked, obviously flustered by my outburst.
"I told you never to fire a rocket inside a building again." I stopped for a full second. "And you just did the same thing again!"
"Well, if I remember correctly that means that I've saved your ass twice now," he snapped angrily.
"If this goes on," I muttered, "next time you save me I'll end up missing half my limbs." I stood up from the twitching body at my feet and glanced around, spotting the head and torso of the brute leaning against a wall, blood flowing freely from it. "Would it have killed you to empty your sidearm on its head?" I asked, my anger subsiding. "Jeez Agnarsson, think a little."
The man just stared at me from behind the safety of his bullet-resistant visor and pulled back the slide of his carbine, ejecting the offending slide from the chamber.
"Let's get a move on."
We did just that and moved through the tower with our guns raised. We didn't meet any more covvies save for a jackal that Bumblebee quickly took out. The rest of the place seemed to be empty, but there were probably a few more enemy soldiers holed up in the second floor, just waiting for us to blast through the doors guns blazing.
I turned around one wall that blocked the way and immediately raised my rifle to movement.
"Hey, it's us," Angel said. He was with Caboose.
"Everything good?" I asked.
"Yes we're good," Caboose informed me.
"Sarge, you're shot," Angel noted dully.
"No shit," I said. "I'm fine, armor did its job. For a change."
The two men in front of me simply shrugged and walked in my direction with their guns raised. To my right was a ramp that lead up to the second floor. A door that seemed like it could take anything blocked it off. I heard more gunshots and some return spiker fire, but after five seconds it all went quiet.
"Pavel, clear?"
"We're good," he said. "Snark and Scarecrow are fine, Grass was nicked by a spiker."
"She all right?" I asked, only mildly concerned.
"She'll be fine."
"What? The thing was lodged into my arm, it didn't graze me!"
"Oh, you're fine," Pavel insisted. "She's fine," he said to me.
"Great. You have a way to the second floor?" I asked him.
"Aye, gravity lift, but I'm not really up for it."
Perfect.
"Good, on my signal toss a few frags followed by a couple of flashbangs," I explained. "Then my team will go in."
"Nice," he said with a little admiration. "Just say the word cap'n."
The three guys that were with me were already placed one behind the other in breaching formation. The door was closed but Caboose had already placed a device in the covenant holo-projector that would open it instantly. I looked at them and they nodded at me professionally. They all checked their weapons and Caboose and Angel pulled back the slides of their rifles.
"Pavel, go."
There were three muted explosions that could be heard through the door followed by a much louder sound that was effectively rendered useless through the thick alien metal doors. I clicked on the device and the door slid open. Scarecrow, Caboose, and Bumblebee walked in with their guns raised and I joined them as soon as the last of them entered the room. We spread out in a square and kept checking every inch for movement. It seemed that three grenades in a confined space cause an extreme amount of damage. There were several dead brutes with blood pouring from hundreds of orifices in their bodies and a lone jackal skirmisher. Most of the brutes seemed to be bodyguards.
"Look for a chieftain amongst the bodies," I ordered frantically.
"Yup, he's here," Caboose said calmly. There was a loud gunshot followed by a grunt. "Still alive apparently. Sarge, what do we want to do with it?"
"Dispose of it however you want," I told him.
"Music to my ears," the Russian man replied with a hearty chuckle.
I smiled to myself as I heard the sound of a knife being unsheathed. I realized just how fucked up that was and went dead serious again.
"Pavel, send Grass in here, Bumblebee, Scarecrow, and Snark, go with Pavel and guard the outer doors. Snark, you can set up shop in one if the lookout towers. Angel, is it gonna take long?"
"A couple minutes," he said, already pulling out fancy-looking equipment from one of his several pouches. "Ten, tops."
"You heard him, ten minutes. Caboose, get it done with, the moaning and screaming is getting on my nerves."
"And I was having so much fun," he said.
"Patch up Grass as soon as she walks in and then guard the ramp," I ordered him.
"Yessir."
I made a private connection to Pavel. "Man, ordering this much people around feels good."
"Oh, shut up," Pavel replied. He was obviously very annoyed, he couldn't go around being insubordinate as he usually was with this many people in here.
"Sarge?"
"Grass, you all right?" I asked her distractedly while eyeing the control room of the generator tower.
"It hurts."
"Caboose, patch her up," I said. "You've got first-aid training, right?"
"I went through a course," he replied.
"Great," the blonde said weakly.
"Relax, pouring biofoam isn't that difficult, you know?" he said. "Look, just watch. Open can, press can against wound, press button, close can. See? All done."
"Better?" I asked.
"Stings."
"Awesome. Go guard the ramp."
"Yessir."
I stood there impassively watching as the Italian hacker, cracker, or whatever the term was connected his device to a covenant terminal. I looked worried for a few seconds before he pulled out his knife and cut out a panel right next to the terminal, there he pulled out some tubes that could only be wiring and cut the outer covers before pulling out smaller wires. I found it quite surprising that the Covenant still somehow used cables just like us simple humans.
The Italian then started attaching wires to wires and pulling out stuff and pulling out some more stuff and then clicking on his keyboard and then looking like he was a philosopher and then back to clicking on his keyboard.
"What?" I asked irritably.
"I need to find a way to bypass their firewalls," he explained. "Sure, I could simply burst right through them, but that would raise some alarms."
"We just killed an entire outpost," I noted. "If that doesn't raise an alarm then I don't know what will."
"You make a good point," he said, chuckling, "but no."
He resumed what he was doing and I couldn't do anything that just sigh in annoyance. Since there was nothing for me to do I made sure that every enemy combatant was dead. How did I do this? I put a bayonet on my rifle and poked a couple of extra holes in the back of their necks just to make sure. The chieftain I left alone, Caboose had done a mighty fine job in making sure that one was dead. The brute had been lucky that it was half-delirious by the time the Helljumper's blade started cutting through his skin. I shook my head and moved on.
Angel sure as hell was taking his time, imputing commands into his terminal and whatnot, but what put me on edge was that we were forced to be here so long. Any time now a patrol that the satellite hadn't detected could return, a couple of banshees sent out could arrive, or even worse, they could've managed to send out a distress signal before we got them all.
"Pavel?" I asked, putting my hand to my ear. That was a motion that I had seen in Agnarsson's movies, it annoyed me that I did it subconsciously.
"We're clear, nothing but white snow as far as the eye can see."
"Yeah, but the eye can't see very far, that's what worries me."
"I'll tell you if anything happens," he said.
I sighed with resignation and went back to watching Angel struggle to break through the Covenant firewalls without raising some kind of alarm that would render that cyber-attack useless. Few people had the knowledge to navigate through alien networks without the help of an AI, not because they were particularly tough, but because they work so differently from human programs. You had to learn everything you knew all over again. Granted, the Covenant was basically computer illiterate, but they were still clever enough to put up some tricky firewalls.
"Why did you learn to program?" I asked suddenly.
"I was bored," he replied nonchalantly.
"I was bored when I was a kid too," I said, "but I read or snuck out to bars to get the shit kicked out of me. I find programming and all that hacking thing interesting, but to learn it because I'm bored? That's way too much."
The Italian shrugged.
"Come on, there's got to be a reason," I pushed.
He sighed and tapped some more commands into his computer. "It's a funny story actually," he said with some resignation. "Papa wasn't always home and mama wasn't always sober, you catch my meaning?"
I nodded at him to go on.
"I was a little kid back then, well, little enough. I thought it was simply a part of life, my life at least. It wasn't until I found out why my mom drank and why my father wasn't around."
"Why?"
"I'm not telling," he said resolutely.
"Then what happened?"
"I already knew a little programming, so I bought a couple of pirated teach-yourself-to programs and studied day and night to get revenge."
"Revenge, seriously? Why?"
"I dunno, I guess I thought my situation was unfair," he said.
"How'd that end?" I asked.
"Let's just say it cost one man his entire life savings as well as a couple of decades in prison. Also broke up my parent's marriage."
"Whoa," I said. "That's depressing," I put out bluntly.
"Ha, you can call it that if you want," Angel said with a humorless chuckle. "After that I started doing the more illegal stuff, and then…"
"And then you got caught," I finished.
"And then I got caught," he agreed.
There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence between us.
"That's one hell of a story," I said. "Could make it into a movie. You know, those dramatic ones with a semi-happy ending . Could probably win an Academy Award," I told him.
This time Angel laughed for real. "Yeah, probably, then again, your story could probably make a good movie too."
"An action movie," I said. "I grew up in a moderately stable household."
"Moderately stable?"
"Yeah, parents died when I was ten and my uncle took care of me ever since then."
"He a good guy?"
"Yeah, one of the best. He was an officer in the Corps."
"You're a military brat?" Angel asked with evident surprise in his voice.
"You got me."
"Where's your uncle deployed?" he asked me.
"He was an instructor back in Jericho VII."
"Was?" he asked cautiously.
"Was," I confirmed. "Died during the invasion. Took out one brute with him though."
"So you found him?" he asked.
"Yes, I also found Pavel a couple hundred meters from my wrecked home. You lose some, you get some. Is that how the saying goes?"
He shrugged once more. "Jeez, at least I got a family Sarge," he put out bluntly. Oh the irony. "Hey, we're just about done."
"Everyone, pack up, Grass, Caboose, meet up with Pavel."
"Yessir!"
Why do they call me sir? It makes me feel old.
"Angel?"
"Gimme a moment here, if I push this button we're through."
I stared at him through my depolarized faceplate.
"I could either succeed completely or set off some alarms."
"But the virus is through?" I asked. "Mission accomplished and all that shit."
"Yes, but-"
"You sound like an overachieving kid in middle school, just press the fucking button."
Angel clicked on his computer and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then he sighed with relief. "We're green."
"Eliza?" I called out into her designated channel.
"Yes?"
"We're good," I informed her.
"I see, nice job Staff Sergeant," she said professionally. She must've been using one of her 'dumb' subroutines for that. "Get out of there. Weather is going to make extraction a little bit difficult, move out to Extraction Point D and await for further instructions."
"Yes ma'am," I said, then to my team, "You heard the woman! Start moving!"
The Italian hacker/explosives enthusiast was already wrapping up his things together but left behind a couple of items that I assumed would give Eliza a way to take control of enemy assets. She had said that. Hadn't she?
We started going down the ramp and I was pleasantly surprised to see that neither Grass nor Caboose were still there, having fulfilled my orders immediately. A refreshing change of pace if you ask me. Angel and me walked out of the structure while hopping over alien bodies. I sighed as we walked outside. There was still a snowstorm going on outside. It seemed to me like the mother of all snowstorms, I had yet to decide whether it was convenient for us or for the covvies. Perhaps it was just inconvenient for both sides.
"Sarge!" I heard. The design of my helmet allowed me to hear the voice over the sound of the wind, it also made it sound like it came from one particular direction. I glanced in that direction to see Snark hopping down from a lookout tower. He made a funny noise as he hit the snow and rolled. The snow now reached all the way to our waists.
"The rest?" I asked.
"They're already ahead," the pint-sized sniper replied. "Covvies will be here any minute."
"On that we can agree," Angel agreed. Angel agreed… well no shit he agreed. Perhaps 'Angel nodded' would've looked better in print. Oh well, whatever.
I was starting to get pissed off at having to push my way through snow, even if it was Powder. I was about to say something witty with a couple of curse words in it when I saw something that startled me. Blood.
"Pavel," I said on instinct. "Sorry, disregard that. Grass, I see some blood in the snow, you sure you're fine?"
"Your friend seems to think so," she replied bitterly.
"She's all right, it's just a messy wound."
"Make sure she's fine," I said. "And keep moving, banshees will be probably swooping down any second now."
"You were never that concerned for my safety," Pavel baited me.
"I was hoping you'd die," I deadpanned.
"Ouch, if he said that to me I would be pissed," Caboose said. "Punch him, punch him."
"Shut up," Pavel ordered. "And fuck you Frank."
I thought about saying something stupid, yet insulting but decided against it. It would only prolong the discussion.
"Well, someone's getting more mature Francisco," Schitzo said.
I am proud to say that I wasn't even surprised to hear that asshole. I still looked around to see where he was and couldn't help but roll my eyes when I found him right behind me, wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt while sipping on some drink served in a coconut. Seriously, who the fuck does that in the middle of a snowstorm? That's right, me.
Just looking at the hallucination, so smug and dressed in summer clothes while drinking tropical cocktail made me want to punch the hell out of it. Of course, if I did that I would only succeed in punching thin air and looking like a paranoid schizophrenic in front of my squad, probably managing to lose whatever respect I had earned from them. That is not a good thing.
"She's good," Pavel's voice came in. "Her bandage was done wrong…"
"Hey, don't look at me!" Caboose complained. "I only took a course in field medicine!"
"They should've failed you," my friend muttered.
"Relax Pavel," Grass said. "No harm no foul, right?"
"Why don't you use my call sign?" he asked suddenly.
"Well…"
"Well what?"
"Well it sounds extremely weird," Bumblebee helped out.
"Shut up. Bumblebee."
"Hey, I'm just calling them like I see them."
"Gotta agree, weird choice for a call sign," Scarecrow said. "You even chose it yourself," he added.
"Wait, does that mean no one likes it?" Pavel exclaimed.
"Sorry…" I said. "But yeah, pretty much."
"Come on!" he complained. "I will get a new one!"
"Everyone will keep calling you Pavel," Grass said.
"What, why?"
Time for damage control.
"Let's face it," I said. "Your name is practically call sign material, anything else would simply feel… off."
"Smooth," Schitzo complimented.
I aim to please, I thought to him.
After that everyone went quiet and kept on walking through the snow. By the time my three-man fireteam caught up with the rest of the group the snow reached all the way to our chest in some places. In others it wasn't that high, but it was getting increasingly annoying. I was about to start kicking the white fluffy stuff for being so annoying when I made out a noise through the blowing wind.
"Shh," I said needlessly, everyone was dead quiet. "You hear that?"
There was a couple of seconds of everyone tensing up and listening intently.
I can't hear anything Frank," Pavel said. "Must be the wind."
"You know better than that," I insisted.
"All right, all right," he conceded. "Let's wait some more."
Everyone immediately spread out in a circle and planted their knees on the ground, sinking all the way to the neck in the snow while moving around some of the frozen water to allow themselves to fire more comfortably.
"There," I said. "There it is again," I said.
"I think I hear it," Caboose agreed.
"Snark, toss me your rifle," I said. I grabbed the EMR and aimed at the sound. "It's coming from… my four o'clock?" I half-asked.
"Four thirty," the Russian Helljumper said.
I aimed at the direction and switched to thermal imaging on the scope. It took some seconds but I finally spotted what I was looking for.
"Flight of banshees," I said. "Three of them, circling around us."
"Do they know we're here?" Scarecrow asked.
"Don't think so," I said.
Wrong.
"Shit, get out of the way!" I yelled as the three heat signatures turned around and brought their cannons to bear on us. I hopped through the snow just as plasma started raining on our position. Water and steam rained all around us as the three banshees did a strafing run.
"Everyone fine?" I asked from below a good amount of snow. "Yes? Good, Bumblebee, knock them out of the sky."
There were two thuds as the rockets from his SPANKr flew from their tubes. IT was about two seconds before I heard two separate explosions in a completely different direction. The banshees had been turning around for a second run when the rockets caught up with them. Well, two of them at least.
I turned around and searched frantically for the last remaining banshee through the snow. Snark's rifle scope and its thermal mode weren't getting anything. I saw the banshee after I heard its characteristic screaming. I put the white figure in my crosshairs and emptied the magazine on the banshee's frontal armor. The damage that I did wasn't lethal by any means, but it served its purpose and forced the aircraft to bank hard and turn away. My actions gave Bumblebee enough time to reload his rocket launcher and blast the banshee out of the sky.
"Sheeeeeit, that was close," Scarecrow said.
"Move along," I said, dusting snow from my shoulder plates and chest. "Snark, thanks."
"If you allowed me to keep the rifle we wouldn't have wasted another rocket," he said as he caught his EMR. "Just saying."
Angel slapped him on the back of the helmet as he caught up with him. Soon after we formed a line with a few meters of space in between us so that a single fuel rod would not kill us all. The brutes piloting the banshees (for the pilots most likely belonged to that race) had been too eager for a fight and didn't use the fuel rod cannon that their craft possessed. Not that I'm complaining, but still, how stupid can you be?
Finally we arrived at the evacuation point. A small hilltop with no cover from the deadly weather whatsoever that overlooked the surrounding plains and smaller hills. It was completely covered with snow, not even boulders had escaped from the white fluffiness. Reaper Squad regrouped once again and sat down on the snow. Pavel and Caboose even started digging an igloo of sorts. Must be a Nordic thing I guess.
"Eliza," I called for the eighth time. "Come in?"
"She's not answering Sarge," Caboose said.
"Well no shit." I looked around and wasn't really surprised when I saw that the landscape hadn't changed at all. "I'll see if I can get through to a nearby unit."
I used my helmet to see if there were any drones flying overhead. There were a couple just within range and I sent a message to both of them. "This is Reaper Actual, Delta-Charlie-Victor. Any friendly units nearby? Over."
Silence.
"This is Reaper Actual. Del-"
"I hear ye Reaper Actual, this is Kilo-117, what do you need?"
"Evacuation and a medic," I said. "We've got one wounded, nothing serious."
"I'll see about that," Kilo-117 said. A few seconds later he came back in. "I'm afraid we can't spare any medics right now, but we can send a pelican to pick you up."
"Good enough," I informed him. "What's your unit?" I asked.
"2nd Batallion, New Moskva Ground Forces, Army," the radio operator replied proudly and professionally.
"Local Army?" I asked. "I thought you guys were gonners or securing civvies."
"Civvies are secure enough," he replied. "Two companies spearheaded an assault on the invasion force in Highbay. Damn heroes."
"Aye," I agreed. "Local forces are already mounting a counter-attack?"
"Affirmative Reaper Actual, seems like we can turn this thing," he said naively.
I wish. We have initiative right now, but by the end of tomorrow we'll still be outnumbered both here and in space.
"We just might," I told him, not wanting to bring down his hopes.
"Reaper Actual, do you mind me asking what the hell you are doing there?"
"Oh, I don't mind," I said, "but I won't answer."
"Shame, there'll be a pelican evacuating you in a few minutes. Kilo-117 over and out."
I sighed as I took off my helmet, letting the freezing winds hit my face for a few seconds before putting it back on. Everyone had heard the conversation with Kilo-117 so I didn't bother telling them that we would be getting evacuation. Instead, I dug myself a little bit deeper into the hole in the snow that I was one, looking for heat. No matter how advanced my suit was, my body still felt cold just by looking at all the snow.
"Eliza," I said, switching channels. "We got evacuation, certainly not from you."
As soon as I had informed the AI, and by extension the UNSC Inconvenience and anyone there that cared to ask about my whereabouts. I relaxed and allowed myself as much comfort as possible in the snow.
It only took a few minutes (as promised) for a pelican to arrive. It was painted with a slightly different green than pelicans in the UNSCMC were painted. The word ARMY was printed all over the place, reminding me who owned and operated this ship. The craft circled over our position one time before hovering twenty meters above our heads. From there it started going down at a snail-like pace, following protocol for this kind of things.
"Reaper Actual, I hear you were getting cold," the pilot said in typical airman cockiness.
"No," I replied, "I was getting bored."
"Of course," he said.
Pavel stood up and shook his head while looking at me. I saw Grass put her hand to her wounded upper arm and wince slightly as she touched her bandage. She would be getting her first Purple Heart soon enough, it'd probably be issued to her along with Bumblebee's. Stupid newbies, getting shot and all that.
"Helljumpers?" the copilot exclaimed as soon as he saw us. "I thought the Navy was on the other side of the planet, playing hide and seek."
"They are," Scarecow said.
"We're with the Inconvenience," Grass added.
Caboose, Pavel, and I shook our heads at her.
"The ship that just arrived from Reach?" he asked. "Damn lifesavers you are. If your cruiser hadn't-"
"Frigate," Grass said. "Frigate, not cruiser."
"Yeah, whatever, it still saved our asses," he said thankfully.
We simply nodded at the man and he went back to the cockpit as soon as the hatch doors closed. As soon as that happened I took off my helmet and ran my fingers through my hair. As soon as that was done I took my time to glare at Grass and give her a 'What the fuck?' expression. She looked uncomfortable even behind all her armor and even refrained from taking off her helmet even when everyone else already had.
"We're flying over Highbay," the pilot said after a quarter hour. "Welcome to New Moskva."
Hey guys! Surely you didn't think that I had forgotten you! Still, I am sorry it took me this long to update my story. Wait, I upload at least one chapter every week... maybe you should be thankful for my superhuman update speed. Nah, just kidding, hope you enjoyed this.
That last night was incredibly cheesy, but I just couldn't help it, it's a staple for action movies (in this case fan fiction). Can't you just picture a smirking pilot saying that?
As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.
-casquis