Chapter XCII: Spire
June 26, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/
Constante, Ninive, Zeta Argenteus System
"He got the worst possible outcome. In this sort of situation, that is bad. Very bad." –PFC George Manuel Sutton
"Right," Grass insisted.
"No, left," Angel snapped at her.
"How about you both shut the fuck up?" Bumblebee asked.
For once, I agreed with him.
"We go straight ahead, only take a detour once we find enemy forces," I said, pulling rank.
"Fine," they all replied.
The alleys were like a labyrinth. Even if we had a state of the art map showing us where we were located and the various ways out, there were simply too many choices, all of them were confusing and I felt like a little kid trying to solve a puzzle on the back of a cereal box. But, you know, with aliens and death if I didn't solve it within the recommended time.
"Ok, we turn right and we're out," I said. "Ahead of us is a park and then a couple of blocks to our destination. Anyone got silencers?"
"I got one," Snark raised his hand.
"Same here," Bumblebee said.
"Anyone else?"
"Me," Grass told me while pulling out a silencer from one of her pouches.
"Ok, so that makes four of us with silenced weapons, if we-"
"The term is suppressed," Grass interrupted.
"Ok, so that makes four of us with silenced weapons," I repeated, "if we meet up any hostiles let us take them out. We want to draw the least possible amount of attention."
"Roger."
"Bumblebee, how many rockets you got?"
"Just the one," he replied.
I nodded absent-mindedly. We required a certain amount of stealth for this type of operation, but we also needed some serious firepower in case things went wrong. We were almost out of ammunition and our only heavy weapon would barely be enough to stop even one hunter. If a large enemy group found us we would be forced to turn around and leave or pick up alien weaponry. Both options left a bad taste in my mouth.
"Let's move," I ordered.
The squad turned the corner and walked the last alleyway in a tight single-file formation. I was at the front and the rest of the line consisted of one ODST with an unsilenced weapon and one with a silenced one and so forth. I'm not entirely sure what the tactical advantage of that actually was, but if you don't give it too much thought it sounds like a good idea and people might think you're a real strategist. Yeah, apparently I need some attention.
The alley ended in a narrow two-way street. I looked both sides before crossing, not that I was worried about being run over, but I sure as hell didn't want to get shot. There were several parked cars on the edges of the street, some of them looked brand new, some looked like they were a few years old, and others looked like a they had been through a battle. The last group had actually been through a battle. Literally. You know, cause we were fighting a battle, and the cars were there.
It made for a gloomy atmosphere, and the rain just added to it. So far, the downpour had worked in our favor, hiding us from the prying eyes of snipers and other Covenant infantry. It also muted any noise that we made. If the rain stopped we would have a tough job getting to the warehouse where the rangers wanted to land. If it stopped after they jumped it would probably make our life even harder since we would be on the run from several angry aliens with nothing to hide with.
The park could've been described like a forest. There were trees all around and several large boulders. There was a small trail that lead across the park, but we were cutting through the treed area. I could see bodies, civilians, soldiers, and covvies alike, littered all over the place. The overwhelming majority were human bodies. I tried ignoring the dead women and children as we sneaked in between the trees, but their presence was just too much and I always ended up looking at the small bodies of the innocent victims.
Eventually we emerged into an open area. It was about two hundred meters long, give or take a few. There were some bodies in there as well, but absolutely nothing to use as cover.
"Phantom," Snark whispered.
"Hide!" I urged the team.
We all took several steps back from the treeline and hid below the trees. I heard the sound of a phantom and looked up to see it fly just above the treetops. I cursed inwardly when the dropship stopped and hovered about fifty meters into the treeless field. Two elites were dropped through the gravity lift and the phantom left just as quickly as it arrived.
"Snark, what do you see?" I asked. The sniper was in a better position than me to check the elites out and I didn't want to expose myself.
"They don't know we're here. Two minors."
I sighed with a little bit of relief and peeked at the aliens. One of them moved towards a corpse. I held my breath as the elite tried picking up the dead child. Bumblebee raised his rifle next to me, but I lowered it with my hand. "Wait," I told him. He was obviously not too happy about that order, and neither was I.
The elite's shields made it hard for him to grab the kid's neck, and twice the little body slid out of its grasp. Eventually the elite decided that its shield was the cause of the trouble and deactivated them. Seriously, who the hell deactivates their only tactical advantage in a battlefield? For reals.
The elite grabbed the tiny body and lifted it up so that it could see it eye to eye. It tilted its head sideways in a curious gesture and then gently placed the body back on the ground. It turned and said something to its companion in its tongue. The other elite turned and worted something unintelligible. The first alien gestured at the body of the kid and replied. They had a short conversation that ended when Snark took out their shields and I put a round through their heads.
"Snark, fire in evens, I fire in odds."
"Roger," the marksman replied, raising his weapon and taking aim at the closest elite. "Ready when you are, Sarge."
"Fire," I whispered. Snark shot a silenced round. The bullet made contact with the elite's chest, disabling its shields and knocking it backwards a couple of feet. It was the one that hadn't decided to take off its shield. The little yellow lines of lightning flickered as his shield failed. "Fire," I said again, this time firing my BR55. The silencer muffled the gunshot considerably. Loud, too loud. The 9.5mm round flew straight to the elite's head. It wasn't a regular KURZ round, instead it was a hollow-point round. The bullet penetrated the armor with no trouble and started blossoming as soon as it went through the elite's skull. It went from a diameter of 9.5mm to one of roughly 20mm before bouncing off the back of the elite's skull.
"Fire," I said for a third time.
The other elite barely had time to react, bringing it gun to bear on the wrong direction as Snark shot it right through the eyes. His bullets were the regular kind, armor-piercing anti-personnel that his rifle used. The result of his gunshot was the same as mine, albeit slightly more spectacular. The round went completely through the elite's head, dragging a trail of blood behind it as it left its skull. The alien seemed confused for a second, its jaws were wide open in a gesture that I could only interpret as surprise. It promptly joined its dead friend on the floor.
"I hate it when they call these things silencers," Snark cursed.
"That was way too much noise," Scarecrow agreed. "Sarge?"
"Let's get moving."
We sprinted through the field with little to no regard for our safety. I purposely lagged a little bit behind and made a point to look around in case I spotted anything hostile. I hopped over one of the elites and kept on running, my rifle half raised. I turned to look to my left for some reason. Call it whatever you want, but if I was religious I would say that it was a miracle.
I dropped to the floor just in time for a needle round to fly right where my head had been. I rolled sideways on the floor as three rounds landed on the ground. They exploded, sending microscopic shards of the pink crystal inside my body. I brought my rifle to bear and spotted a jackal. It hid behind a window on the edge of the park before I could fire once. I cursed at it and started running back to the treeline as fast as I could, augmentations and all.
"Jackal sharp, fifth floor, third window from the right," I said as soon as I had a nice thick tree trunk in between the alien and me.
"Sarge?" Snark questioned.
"Feel free," I invited him.
Snark turned towards Scarecrow and slung his rifle over his back. The large man sighed and nodded as he placed his back to one of the tallest trees in the area. Snark sprinted towards Scarecrow and planted one foot in the big man's entwined hands. Scarecrow used his legs and hands to throw Snark into the air. The difference in size and weight allowed Scarecrow to propel the little sniper at least ten feet in the air. Snark grabbed onto a thick branch just as the force of Scarecrow's throw stopped. As soon as he had a firm grip he pushed himself up and started climbing higher.
"Ready," he said a few seconds later. "I see the window, no movement though."
I sighed. "Volunteers?"
No one moved. I thought about choosing someone before deciding against it.
"Didn't think so."
I started sprinting back towards the treeless stretch. Waiting for that fatal moment when a needle round pierced my neck. I kept on running, not as fast as I could've, but that was the point, I was trying to draw out the jackal. Eventually, after I had gone halfway through the field and not a single shot had been fired I stopped completely. I turned to face the building and saw that the jackal wasn't trying to shoot me.
"Damn," I sighed as I raised my rifle. I aimed at the window and fired three shots at the surrounding area. Once again, I felt like they were way too loud even though they were supposedly silenced.
The three shots pushed the jackal into action. It popped from cover, no doubt expecting to effectuate a quick counter-attack while I was still out in the open. It took aim at me even as I opened my arms in an inviting gesture. Only one shot rang out. The jackal's head blew up in a manner similar to the elite's and it slumped forwards. The top half of its body was left hanging of the edge of the window for a few seconds before gravity did the rest and pulled down the body to the ground. I couldn't hear the noise it made when it hit the ground.
"Nice shot," I complimented Snark, not because it had been a superb shot, but because it had saved my life.
"I aim to please," Snark replied.
I trotted back to the trees and my team. I arrived just in time to see Snark jump down from the tree he had climbed. The man nodded at me even as I ordered my team to keep on moving. This time we formed a line with about ten meters distance between every one of us. It made it more likely that one of us would encounter somebody but it also made it more likely the rest of us would make it out unscathed if we did. The rest of the trip through the forest was mostly uneventful. Grass encountered a pair of grunts and quickly dispatched them both with her machete.
"Shit," she cursed.
"What, you ok?" Angel asked, worried.
I actually stopped and looked sideways at Angel. "Don't make it so obvious bro."
"Fuck you," he replied. "Staff Sergeant."
"Oh really?" I dared him.
"No, sorry," he apologized quickly.
"Well, I don't forgive you. Next time we need a decoy you're gonna be it. And take point."
Angel sighed. "Yessir."
"And Grass, what happened?" I asked.
"My machete broke."
"What?"
"My machete broke."
"Well, where did you buy it?"
"A military surplus store."
"Wow," Bumblebee said. "Even I know how stupid that is."
"What? Why?"
"Just, if you want a nice blade don't get it in military surplus stores. Either you make it or you ask a friend in ONI to get you one."
"Fine, why?"
"Because knives are designed to be used against humans, not aliens."
"That doesn't make sense," she complained. "Flesh is flesh."
"And yet your machete is broken."
"Fine, fine." Grass tossed her twisted machete to the side. "And thanks for asking Angel. I'm just fine."
The team laughed a little before we reached the edge of the park. From this point I could see the spire. It was just that, a spire. What was different about this spire was that it was actually a natural feature of the planet. Don't ask me how this happened, I'm not good with geology by any means, but the stone monolith reached about two thousand feet in height. It was roughly cylindrical in shape, perhaps about two hundred feet in diameter. As soon as it was discovered some trillionaire had decided to turn it into a tourist and a building attraction. The Colonial Administration had used it as a postcard to invite colonists. I had to admit though, the spire made for a pretty imposing sight, it almost looked like something that was dragged straight out of a fantasy novel.
"Whoa," Caboose mentioned.
"Indeed," Bumblebee agreed.
"Take a picture boys," I said. "The warehouse is that way."
We took a left and started going back inside the streets. If the buildings had been packed closer I would've made my team run over the roofs instead of on the ground. It was perhaps a measure that you'd call practical yet awesome. You had higher ground and also looked like a badass while doing some parkour/free-running crazy shit at the same time.
Since the buildings were of uneven heights and too tall we had to move at a quick pace through the street. This was the downtown area of Constante. Most of the civilians had been at work when the Covenant attacked. The extraordinary high amount of bodies strewn all over the place were testament to the unpreparedness and lack of alarm that Ninive had experienced when they were first attacked. What pissed me off was the lack of alien bodies. I couldn't see a single alien body from where I was standing. It made me feel like we were being massacred (which we were) and had no chance to fight back.
Well, to be fair, unless we found a way to kill the entire Covenant in our own genocide soon we were only delaying the inevitable.
"Patrol," Angel whispered.
Reaper Squad stopped and took cover behind cars or columns in the buildings. I heard the humming of an anti-grav engine and cursed as I saw a wraith hover through an intersection. Behind the wraith walking were an elite minor and ten grunts in two lines of five. The absence of jackals would've allowed us to take them all out in a matter of seconds, but one rocket was hardly enough to take on a wraith.
"Let them pass," I ordered.
The tension was high as can be while the enemy patrol walked less than twenty meters away from us. The grunts barely bothered to raise their heads, let alone look to the sides. Some of the little aliens had the equivalent of bandages on their arms and legs. One of them even had blue blood leaking from the right side of its face. Instead of feeling sorry for them I felt a little bit of excitement at seeing them suffering just as much as we did. On the ground, they were our equals, no matter our physical disadvantages when compared to elites, brutes, and hunters. In a good old fashioned battle, we could stand our own.
One of the grunts stopped for a little bit and sniffed the air. I raised my rifle and aimed at it as it took in the scents of the area. It sniffed the air another couple of times before deciding that it was nothing. The patrol kept on walking until they disappeared from sight. I sighed with relief. Less aliens to worry about. At least for now.
We arrived to the warehouse with no inconvenience. The large building was completely devoid of Covenant soldiers and that allowed us to take nice positions. The warehouse was located in a spot where no other buildings were in between the spire and it. Yevgeny had said that the building was a hundred meters away from the warehouse, but the distance was more like two hundred. Still, it was a relatively short distance if they were going to use jetpacks.
I climbed all the way to the roof of the warehouse and took in the spire. It looked to be mostly undamaged save for a few scorch marks marking its surface. The carved windows were all missing glass and the a few of the top floors were on fire. The top two were the only one that still had light on. I didn't really blame Nezarian for doing that even though it broadcast their location to anyone that bothered looking up. The rangers were virtually immune to air strikes while they did face danger from an attack from the bottom floors.
"Nezarian," I said, communicating with him. "We're here."
"Roger that, we're good to go, we'll probably take the jump in a few minutes," he replied after a couple of seconds. "Any idea where we should go after this?" he asked me.
"Probably barrel straight towards our line. It's about one kilometer away in a straight line, isn't it?"
"Last I heard," Yevgeny acknowledged.
"We'll be waiting."
"Fine, try not to-"
"What?"
"Zhang, Palomer, check that out. Frank, we might be running into some-"
I heard an explosion through the radio and then Yevgeny cursed. He yelled at his men to hold the doors and I managed to make out the noise of plasma rifles impacting different surfaces.
"Hold the doors!" Yevgeny ordered. "Shit, shit. Right, right. Two on the right."
Nezarian and his rangers returned fire, the snaps that their rifles made sounded weak in comparison to the characteristic noise that the plasma weapons made.
I looked up at the spire and aimed at the top floors with my scope. I could see yellow flashes from ballistic weapons and the bright blue ones that plasma rifles made. There was a disproportionate amount of blue flashes compared to yellow one.
"Shit," Nezarian repeated. "We're not gonna be able to jump Frank."
"How many?"
"Too many, we're not gonna make it," he told me.
"Shit," I said, echoing the lieutenant.
I looked at my squad, all of whom were with me on the roof except for Caboose, who was guarding the stairs to the roof. I quickly considered all possible outcomes and decided that it was my time to be a big damn hero.
"Everyone, stay here and hold the fort. Caboose, you come with me."
"Sarge, are you really thinking about-" Grass started.
"I am, deal with it."
I ran outside of the warehouse with Caboose right behind me. We were actually running in the middle of the street for a while before we were forced to take cover behind an overturned car as two ghosts flew by. We let them pass and resumed our way. The spire was two hundred meters away in a straight line, but we had to move through different streets and took a few detours to avoid Covenant patrols. Just as we were about to arrive at the spire Caboose grabbed my arm.
"Sarge."
"What?"
He pointed at a warthog. The vehicle in question was as destroyed as can be without being a pile of molten steel. The turret on the back was completely wrecked and in no conditions to be of any use. There were two corpses in the front and another one a few feet from the back. The warthog had probably been hit by a wraith or revenant mortar judging by the look of it.
Caboose covered my ass while I moved towards the destroyed hog. I pulled down the driver's corpse and not so gently placed him on the ground. He was a regular marine. His rifle was in the holster to the right of the driver's seat. It was an MA5 series rifle. I grabbed it and ejected the magazine. I also grabbed a few of the spare magazines that he had in his pockets. I tossed the small boxes to Caboose and searched the passenger. I turned around the car and pulled him down as well. He had been carrying a shotgun in addition to his MA5 rifle, so I grabbed a belt full of shells and threw it to Caboose as well.
The task was taking an awfully long amount of time and I was painfully aware of the firefight on top of the spire. I moved towards the last marine and turned her around. She was horribly disfigured from the heat of the plasma mortar, with her skin having melted off and parts of her skull were visible through her face. I ignored the grisly sight and searched her pockets. I almost hollered in victory when I was able to salvage a grenade and two magazines that of 9.5mm ammunition for my rifle. I smiled to myself and reached into the dead marine's collar to get her dogtags. I grabbed them and placed them in the pouch in my left thigh. I then ran and did the same things with the other two marines before we started back to the spire.
"We'd better hurry up Sarge," Caboose urged. "Doesn't sound too good."
It didn't. I could hear the screams all the way down here.
"Agreed."
I entered the lobby of the spire with Caboose right behind me. The attacking covvies had left a grunt for a guard and Caboose was the one who took it out. Let me describe to you how he did it, it is quite amusing really. Simple, yet amusing.
Caboose drew his knife and tapped the grunt on the shoulder. The little alien squealed and turned in fright. Just as it did so Caboose stabbed it through the hand and dug his knife into a wooden table, pinning the grunt there. The same movement also dislocated the alien's shoulder and made it cry out in pain. Then he bashed the grunts head against the table, denting it considerably and stunning the grunt. After that Caboose grabbed the methane gas-mask and pulled it free of the little alien. We waited a few moments for the grunt to be unable to breathe and actually stayed there to watch the first instants of its death by suffocation.
Caboose pulled his knife from the table and kicked the dying grunt once more before tossing the gas mask on top of an unreachable piece of furniture.
"You're a psycopath," I said, letting him know what I thought of him.
"I am not, ONI had me checked," he shrugged, cleaning his knife and pressing the button on the elevator.
"The fact that they actually tested you for it speaks volumes."
"They check everyone Sarge, don't think that I get special treatment."
The elevator doors opened to reveal a bloody elevator with a ranger's corpse. The wounds on the man were obviously made with an energy sword, his left arm was detached from the shoulder and the walls were quite literally covered in his blood. In his other hand there was an assault rifle. There were a few drops of purple elite blood.
"Good for him," Caboose said, noticing what I was looking at.
"Not really," I replied while grabbing his dogtags. I tossed the body out of the elevator unceremoniously and then threw the severed arm after it. The doors closed right after that.
Unsurprisingly, the elevator worked and had a boring muzak arrangement playing. It was probably because of the emergency generators that all elevators are supposed to have, but it is especially jarring that half the city was in the dark and without power.
"So, why did ONI send your psychopathic ass to spy on me?"
"Guess," Caboose replied while checking his rifle.
"Hmmm, hard to pin one reason."
"And I'm not here to spy on you."
"Lies."
"Fine, I'm not here only to spy on you."
"That I believe. You may be a spook, but you still pull some weigh in the battlefield."
"Aww, thanks Sarge."
The rest of the elevator ride was, of course, quiet and awkward. By the time we were about to reach the top of the stone monolith we could hear gunfire through the elevator walls. I quickly clicked the button of the closest floor and the elevator stopped. We exited into an undamaged hallway with flickering lights. I looked around for the stairs until I found the marked door. I motioned for Caboose to follow me as I kicked open the door.
The fact that I kicked it open instead of simply pushing it open saved my life.
The door banged against an alien. An elite. The force of my kick threw it forward over the rail that guarded the stairs. The alien managed to hold on and keep its feet on the ground briefly before I saw what was happening and delivered a second kick at its pelvis. The second kick pushed the elite over the edge and it fell for about thirty meters before it finally collided with another rail. And another, and another, and another until it finally stopped as it fell on some stairs.
"And I'm supposed to be the psychopath," Caboose mused.
"Shut up."
We sprinted up the stairs, we started finding Covenant bodies about three floors from the penultimate floor. On the next floor we saw the second ranger body, an energy sword had decapitated this one, the head was nowhere to be seen. As we kept climbing the stairs we saw just what sort of battle the rangers had fought. A quick and desperate one that they could not win.
I finally kicked open the last door and fired into an elite's back. Caboose joined me and shot at one of the turning aliens. We killed both elites within a few seconds. that allowed their mates to turn and take aim at us. I had foreseen that and already had my salvaged grenade in one hand. I tossed it right in between the four aliens.
Even though they had us in their crosshairs they were simply stunned by what had just happened. One of them prepared to kick the grenade back but it detonated an instant before he could do that. That alien was instantly killed as his body all but disintegrated and the other three had their shields drained, after which they were quickly dispatched with accurate bursts to the head. Caboose put an extra round in one elite that seemed to be struggling to get back up and we moved towards the landing pad on the roof of the building.
All the rangers in this room were dead, I could still hear gunfire, so I assumed that Nezarian and a few of the most skilled of his men were still holding out against the elites. As I jumped over one of the aliens I noticed that all of them had full-face helmets. The kind that special operations elites wore. I cursed as I started moving even faster. It wasn't hard to find my way, I just had to follow the trail of blood. Literally.
When I finally emerged onto the wide open landing pad. I saw three elites and five Rangers engaged in a firefight. I took aim at one and brought it down with Caboose's help. One of the other elites tossed a grenade at the rangers. Only three of them were able to jump out in time, the other too disappeared in the blue flash of heat. Of the two remaining elites one took aim towards us and pinned us behind a corner. I couldn't afford to fire blindly unless I wanted to hit my own allies.
"Shit," I cursed.
"I'll cover you," Caboose said. "Jump out and I'll help."
I nodded at him and for the second time in the day left my cover as bait. The elite shifted its aim to hit me, but Caboose made good on his promise and pummeled the alien with assault rifle fire, disrupting its aim and saving my life. I turned and fired the rest of my magazine at the elite, hitting it in the shoulders and chest bringing it down to the floor where Caboose finished it off.
I looked at Nezarian and saw that he was about to be impaled with an energy sword. I took a quick decision and sprinted at the elite. I barely managed to see Nezarian fire a few rounds from his pistol. Another ranger somehow managed to get its arm sliced off and suddenly my hands were wrapped around the elite's waist in a tackle. I miscalculated.
I miscalculated horribly.
It wasn't long before I realized that I wasn't going to hit the floor of the helipad. It would take longer for me to hit the floor. A lot longer.
I was falling over the edge of the spire.
Sorry, it took me a little bit longer than I would've liked to update, but I was doing a two-week laptop-less stint. I got out early thanks to some incredibly awesome persuasion skills and my ability to pull off puppy eyes.
Now that I am done making excuses I can do the usual boring thing that I do. Hope you enjoyed, blah, blah, blah. Something about my experiences while writing this chapter. More blahs. Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. Blah, blah, blah. I love you guys. Blah.
casquis