Chapter CXVI: A Shitty Thermopylae
March 2, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later
Port Zaria, Miridem, Zeta Lupus System
"Just like Thermopylae. A smaller, not as epic, shitty kind of Thermopylae."- Lieutenant Gordon Creed
Everything was exactly where it shouldn't be. Well, except for the Covenant ships, those were precisely where I wanted them. Gone. As for the rest of the situation, I felt like I had the right to complain. The Third Fleet of Glorious Consequence had left after some sort of raid on it by Spartans. Technically speaking that was classified, but I heard things, and a Spartan raid on an enemy fleet isn't something that you keep on the down low, pretty much everybody thought them heroes. I started thinking that perhaps they were, but they are just equipment, equipment doing their job properly. You don't thank a gun when it fires straight, do you? Even if it saves your life, it's what you expect it to do.
Well, the Third Fleet of Head Up Your Ass had fallen back after the raid, that much was clear, but the covvies didn't have magical teleporting beams that could just whisk away every single infantry soldier on this planet. And when it came down to it, there were a lot of infantry soldiers here on this planet. Just a little bit under half a million enemy aliens under the latest estimates.
It was not all that bad, Miridem was a large colony, plenty of local Army, not to mention our very own reinforcements from off-system. We outnumbered them and had home-field advantage. We usually had that advantage, but we usually lost anyways. What we didn't count with most of the time was actual space and air superiority.
For all the upsides that we had, they didn't seem to count for shit.
"Fire on the joints!" I ordered. "Pavel, try and suppress the gunners, Caboose, help him out."
I sniped one of the jackals on top of the Scarab, watching its body fall down and be crushed by one of the four legs. The huge complement of infantry troops on board the walker barely noticed. They seemed more busy taking potshots at Pavel and Caboose. Bumblebee was doing a nice job at keeping his firing location hidden, but then again, the pile of rubble he was under was practically a bunker in itself.
The tank crews weren't so lucky.
"How the fuck did they not tell us there was a Scarab?" I complained to no one in particular.
"Intel really fucked up on this one," Angel agreed.
"How's it going?" I asked him.
He sighed. "Not as fast as I'd like. I didn't get the equipment I needed, and…well, breaking into nuclear bunkers is hard enough as it is."
"How long?"
"Two hours," he replied, "and I'm being optimistic."
"Yeah, that's typical Angel attitude. Optimism for the win," Schitzo unhelpfully said. It really bothered me that he appeared to be in full combat armor and sporting an assault rifle. He just aimed at nowhere and shook as if from recoil, like a little kid pretending to shoot an automatic weapon. It annoyed the fuck out of me.
"Two hours is way too long!" I complained.
"Relax Frankie," Pavel huffed. "The airstrike is inbound in five minutes."
"Five minutes might be too long," Bumblebee pointed out. He wasn't entirely wrong.
I fired a burst at a grunt with a fuel rod cannon. The three shots connected with its chest, but the armor was hardy enough to absorb the three rounds. The shot from the fuel rod, however, was more than enough to vaporize the grunt itself when it hit the floor.
"Ha ha!" I said in triumph.
The Scarab started powering up its main gun and positioned itself so that it could fire directly at one of the only two remaining Scorpion tanks. The green plasma beam hit the tank and completely melted through its armor. The heat caused the shells to detonate and the hydrogen fuel cells to explode. The Scorpion erupted in an orange blaze, the gunner and the driver were both vaporized by the Scarab.
We now had only one damaged tank to help us. The Marine platoon was completely gone and the Army company was halfway there. My own squad had only been saved out of sheer luck alone.
"Bee, sitrep on the airstrike?"
"Three minutes!" he informed me.
I groaned. The last airstrike had been shot down by a combination of Covenant artillery and Scarab fire. It had been a wonderful maneuver really; the covvies had somehow calculated when the Shortsword would fly by and caught it in the crossfire. Shooting down a supersonic plane with ground-to-ground heavy weaponry is no easy task, believe me, I've tried. Still, the enemy managed it well enough and brought the bomber crashing down on the city. The pilot was dead, the metal rod through the throat made sure of that; I confirmed it myself.
Hey, at least the body of the aircraft made for good cover, it would be a long while before the Scarab's main gun could burn through the thick plating and the metal frame itself. So far I was safe. So was Bumblebee in his improvised rubble bunker, and Angel three hundred feet underground trying to break through one of the most complex firewalls in existence. Pavel and Caboose were hiding behind a pile of debris, having the least cover out of all of us. They were still relatively safe, too close to the Scarab to be hit by its main weapons and far enough away not to be directly below the infantry on board.
"What I don't understand," Pavel said. "Is why the hell they would just block any access to the nukes."
"So that rebels can't grab them afterwards. Happened a couple of times."
"Uh-huh," my friend dismissed. "Stupid rule."
"Captain!" I suddenly shouted into my mic. "How are you managing?"
"Captain's dead," an unfamiliar voice replied. "Line is strong, the Covenant won't break through if the airstrike succeeds, if it doesn't…"
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," I said, calming down the lieutenant. "Keep up the good work, Reaper out."
So four of us were distracting a combat platform, the other healthy squad member was busy playing on his computers, and the fifteen or so living members of the army section were holed up behind more rubble and doing their best to fend off large numbers of homicidal aliens. They were even doing an ok job at it, funneling the enemy aliens down through a canyon of sorts. The Scarab and previous invasion had brought down pretty much every single building in the city. We were basically fighting through a giant pile of rubble and debris. The Army platoon was keeping the covvies at bay only because two mountains of rock and steel created a bottleneck around their position.
"Thirty seconds!"
I cursed and looked at the Scarab again. Pavel and Caboose were too close to it to be within safe radius.
"Pavs! Fall back!"
"Already on it!"
I popped out and fired wildly at the grunt gunners manning the turrets and the jackal sharpshooters. I didn't intend to kill them, merely draw their attention and force them to scurry for cover. The Scarab itself spun slowly, trying to get its gun to bear on the sole remaining Scorpion. Pavel and Caboose did their best to jump through the landscape without stepping on something sharp and falling face-first. They ran about thirty meters before they had to dive behind something. I lost sight of them and suddenly saw the Scarab blow up.
I saw and heard the explosion, then felt the shockwave, and then heard the Shortsword.
"Reaper here, you were just in time."
"Glad to be of help," the pilot said. "Good luck Reaper. To you as well Epsilon."
"Thanks," the Army lieutenant said. "Much appreciated."
The Shortsword pilot cut off the conversation and banked to the side, disappearing behind the rubble hills and returning to base.
"Pavel, you ok?"
"We're good," Caboose's voice came in. "Had a bit of a cave-in, might need some help digging ourselves out."
"Got it, Bee and I'll help you as soon as we clear the Scarab of hostiles."
"We won't be going anywhere," Pavel affirmed.
"Bumblebee, meet up with me over there," I ordered, creating a waypoint thirty meters off the carcass of the Scarab. "We go in and finish off anything still breathing."
"Got it Sarge."
I climbed up the crashed Shortsword and jogged over the uneven floor towards Bumblebee. We met up behind what had once been a bathroom. Hell, the toilet was still attached to the wall. I looked at him and gave a quick order of action. We'd go directly inside and he'd use his smaller assault rifle to clear the inside of the Scarab while I kept watch on our rear and provided support. Simple.
"Ok, let's go," he agreed.
The Scarab was damaged, that much was obvious. The front right leg had been completely blown off and the rear turret was hanging sideways by some wires. The body of the walker itself had embedded itself in the ground, and the explosives had left its armor torn and circuitry exposed and destroyed. For some reason or other there was lots of orange matter covering it, probably a coolant of sorts.
There were still some alien bodies littering the top of the Scarab, all of the corpses were maimed and completely burnt by the explosives. The sight of them didn't cause me any trouble whatsoever. I kicked a couple of elites just to make sure while I climbed up towards the walker's entrance. Bumblebee mostly kept his eyes peeled and looked from side to side while pulling himself up.
"Give me a hand," I asked him. He groaned as he pulled me up.
"Damn Sarge, you don't look nearly big enough to weight that much."
"Yeah, dense muscles and bones cause that," Schitzo told him to no avail.
"Full armor," I reminded him.
"Sure."
I dusted myself off and steadied myself in the tilted surface before jumping down the entrance. Bee jumped down and took point. He turned around the cabin and walked around the corner. These V1 models were fucking indestructible. The smaller and less-powerful V2s were far more common and could be destroyed with relative ease. This one, this one was a bitch.
"Dead or unconscious covvies," Bee said. "Do you want the honour?" he asked me.
"Nah, you do it."
I walked inside and examined the various holographic displays while Bumblebee walked around the cabin calmly executing any elite that showed signs of life and doing the same for the dead ones just in case. Some sort of green liquid was leaking from several places all around us, forming little pools on the floor, mixing itself with alien blood. I closed in on the main command terminal. I had never been inside one of these Scarabs before. Usually they were left too damaged to have anything resembling inside. That or we had to retreat.
I moved my hand up and the whole thing shook violently.
"I didn't touch anything!" I said immediately.
"Fuck!" Bumblebee complained as the Scarab shuffled sideways, sending all of us off-balance and prompting a couple of corpses to slide across the floor.
"Reaper! Are you ok?" the sole remaining tank crewmember asked.
"I'm fine!" I replied immediately.
"You sure? The cannon's powering up again."
"Just shoot the goddamn cannon," I told him, "I'm leaving these guys a little present."
"You have explosives on you?" Bee asked.
I nodded. "Always keep some."
"That's my boy," Angel complimented.
I heard a sigh over all the voices. "Frank, if it's not too much to ask."
"Fine, fine."
The Scarab shook again, but this time from the impact of a 90mm shell from the Scorpion. Now that I thought about it again, telling a man in a tank to shoot directly at my position wasn't a smart idea, but I think that I could be excused giving the circumstances. I shrugged and produced a small charge of C-12 from my butt-pouch. I grabbed the thing and molded it into a circle in my hands before simply slamming it on the wall behind the main consoles. I inserted a detonator into it and turned the thing on.
"You good?" I asked Bee.
"Let's get out of here."
I wholeheartedly agreed with him and half-walked, half-climbed out of the wreck that was the Scarab. Apparently it wasn't much of a wreck, since it could still move around and make intimidating noises. We slid down the top of the Scarab and walked behind the pile of rubble that Pavel and Caboose were trapped in. We crouched behind it and I detonated the C-12 charge.
It was a pretty small charge, smaller than the standard 4x4x4 charge that was used for civilian demolitions. It had been hastily shaped and hadn't been placed in a particularly important point that it could destroy the whole thing. The explosion still managed to blast through the roof of the Scarab.
"Gotta love me some C-12," the tank driver said.
"Agreed. Why don't you provide some support for the Army?" I suggested.
"Agreed," the Army lieutenant joined in.
"Already headed that way."
I smiled to myself at the sudden change in fortune and started pulling off pieces of rubble from on top of Pavel and Caboose. Bee set himself to help me and we started hauling rock and metal like crazy. It only took about fifteen minutes at our breakneck pace, but it left me breathing heavy and sweaty all over. Bumblebee didn't fare much better, propping himself up on his knees as Caboose and Pavel climbed out of their little cave through the hole that we had made.
"Jeez, and some people are stuck in those from nine to five," Pavel complained.
"Office building?" Bee asked.
"Yup," Caboose confirmed.
The four of us started making our way towards the Army platoon. The pile of rubble and debris in our way made for slow progress, we had to climb and slide down and go around walls, and floors, and ceilings. Eventually we arrived to the platoon's position. They were on the second floor of what had once been a fifty-story building, but was now one of the walls that funneled covvies into their position. The other wall was more like a pile of jagged and pointy polycrete bits and pieces.
"Lieutenant," I radioed in. "We're coming up behind you."
"Roger," he replied. "Let 'em pass," he ordered some sentry.
We climbed up the stairs of the small building and emerged on the second floor. Fourteen men were up here. Fourteen living men at least. Two dozen human bodies were strewn about, three-quarters of those were dead, the rest were well on their way to reaching that point.
"Sergeant, over here," a young lieutenant ordered. He was sitting behind a sturdy column, resting from the look of it. "Glad you made it," he nodded at me.
"I'm glad myself," I replied. "How's it going here?"
"Not good," he replied. "They can't go around us and flank us, but if they keep throwing themselves at us they'll eventually succeed."
"How long until the other pincer can meet us?"
"Four hours by the earliest estimate," he replied.
"And we're surrounding this bastards," I chuckled. "Can we hold it?"
"Only just, and we might need some ammo."
"That can be arranged," I said.
The lieutenant nodded. "Understood, the third floor can still work as a decent perch, our own sharpshooter was using it."
"And then he got shot," Pavel added.
"She, actually, but yes."
"Understood, going up," I agreed. "Pavel, you and Caboose help out however you can, Bee, I want you acting as regular infantry, only use your Spanker on targets of opportunity."
"Shouldn't be too hard, I only have two rounds left."
"Hey, at least we've got air superiority, right?" Pavel smiled.
"It's more like the Covenant don't have theirs," Caboose grimly muttered.
"Regardless, let's go," I ordered.
I headed back to the stairs while my team moved to the windows. Plasma fire was hitting their position from below and I intended to remedy that situation. I climbed to the third floor and made my way to the best position that I could find. Only a few sections of this floor still had ceiling on top of it. There was one in particular where the roof had collapsed and formed a triangle with the floor and wall, allowing for a small space to climb inside. I looked underneath and was unsurprised to see a pool of still wet blood in there. This was the best spot and the Army marksman (or markswoman) had known it. Looks like she had been hit by a lucky shot judging from all the cover she had.
I wasn't about to belly flop on a pool of blood so I moved towards another similar position. It didn't exactly cover me from above, but they didn't have Banshees, so I assumed it wouldn't be much of a problem. What? It's a calculated risk.
The space below seemed like a deathtrap. I would never attack through the small canyon without some heavy armor support. The covvies had a pair of Ghosts acting as turrets, sliding from side to side to keep behind cover. In addition to the two vehicles the covvies had a big pile of nothing. Well, if you want to count a couple hundred infantry with weaponry for nothing, that is.
My first target was, of course, the highest-ranking elite that I could find. I hit a major three times in the chest and one in the head in a standard four-shot strategy. It was kind of like a Mozambique drill with a battle rifle, only cooler.
"They're getting close on the left," I warned, "pound the lead soldiers and I'll keep the ones behind back."
The only reply I got was a burst from Pavel's machine gun, sending three grunts diving behind cover. One was hit in the neck and arm and the other two made it safely. The ones immediately behind them stopped and turned around. Pavel got a few of them, but a pair of jackals, took a knee behind their shields and slowly worked their way back behind solid cover. I hit the polycrete wall that the elite in charge of the squad was using as cover, sending it down for cover. I actually had a perfect vantage point on the elite's back, but I wanted it to expose its head before going in for the kill.
…and there it is.
Three bursts took care of the shield and another three rounds left its skull a mess. The brain actually stuck to the wall, sliding down to the ground slowly as gravity took its toll. The grunts went ape-shit, they were dying by the dozens against a seemingly impregnable fortress and their leader's head had just been used to repaint a wall. The little stumpy aliens turned tail and ran. Their large oxygen packs made for decent obstructions when aiming at their heads, but with enough practice and a little bit of patience you can pull off decent headshots.
I wasn't patient even if I had the practice. I fired bursts into their backpacks, damaging the mechanism that fed methane into their gas masks and leaving them to choke on air they couldn't breathe. The three little aliens fell to the ground, clutching their necks and trying to breath in something. The other grunts and jackals had no means to help them and weren't risking it, they stayed behind cover where they at least had a chance.
A couple of rounds pinged off the wall next to me, someone had made me. I immediately slinked back and tracked the higher points of the battlefield for sharpshooters, since I didn't spot any I climbed back towards the edge and looked for the telltale green trails that could lead me to the shooter. Within seconds two green carbine rounds flew in my direction but down at the second floor. I spotted the elite with the carbine and waited for it to emerge again. As soon as it pivoted from behind cover, gun raised and aimed in our direction, I fired off two bursts. Both collided with the alien's shields, draining them. The third and fourth hit it in the chest, finishing off the shields and killing the alien respectively. It wasn't a headshot, but it got the job done.
"They're still coming at us," some soldier complained.
"Can't we call in another airstrike?"
"We already used our two airstrikes," the lieutenant replied.
"Can't we use the Marines'?"
"Negative, doesn't work like that."
Gears started spinning in my head. While my unit was small enough that it didn't warrant its own airstrikes, I had some friends that could help me out a bit.
"Eliza, come in."
"Yes Reaper Actual?"
"Hey Liz, can you redirect a UAV towards my position? I need some recon on enemy forces, if it had AG missiles I would just love it."
"So you just want your very own personal ground attack aircraft?"
"I would just love that."
"Understood, redirecting craft to your location, ETA three minutes."
The three minutes passed by quickly enough and I suddenly found myself viewing the ground from several hundred feet up. The F99 UCAV usually worked with someone in a carrier controlling it, but this one had had its controls redirected to me. Well, only mostly since I didn't have the joystick or controller, it would fly in a holding pattern until I gave it a target. It was simpler than simple.
"Whoa," I muttered as I saw just how many covvies were behind our line of sight. Easily a thousand infantry troops were either sitting calmly behind solid pieces of cover or running towards our direction, seeking to help their fellow aliens in killing us brutally.
"Identify officers," I ordered.
Several dozen markers appeared in many points. Some were red, some white, and one was gold, representing the ranks of the elites. The Covenant had no buildings in which to hide, so the zealot in command was inside a collapsed room with its high-ranking officers. It was a prime target.
"UCAV, target position zero-six with bunker buster missile. Target points zero-nine and one-zero with incendiaries. Acknowledge."
"Acknowledged," a distinctly robotic voice confirmed.
"Fire when ready."
I only saw the orange flashes and the contrails that the missiles left because I knew where to look. The bunker buster disappeared behind the piles of debris before punching through some polycrete and detonating inside the room, killing the elite zealot and its lieutenants. The other two points were targeted by two regular high-explosive missiles each. The detonations were big enough that I saw the smoke from my position. The F99's camera marked the spots with red circles and confirmed that intended targets were all dead. In addition to that it gave me a kill count on each target and how many injured covvies there were.
It felt good to have air superiority.
"You do realize that those don't add up to your kill count," Pavel suddenly informed me.
"What? A couple hundred covvies barely makes a difference by this point," I boasted. "But have it your way, the UNSC will still mark those under my name."
At least it made our job easier, with the covvies panicking and without leadership, they would most likely fall back or do something incredibly stupid.
"Wait, something feels wrong," I murmured.
"Agreed," Caboose voiced. "Almost like…"
He never got to finish his sentence, three Phantom's decloaked suddenly, not twenty meters above me. I cursed myself for not noticing the humming from their engines before and for not having the UCAV do a check of our area with thermal vision. Now we suddenly had three platoons, quite literally, on top of us.
"UCAV," I yelled, "target one Phantom, take it down, crash into the other one."
"Acknowledged. Programming prevents this aircraft from self destroying unless-"
"Override! Override!"
"Acknowledged."
One of the Phantoms suddenly exploded as a missile collided against it. The craft was torn apart by the explosion and crashed down a couple of meters from the building. That in itself was a good thing, the flaming wreck could serve as additional cover to ground troops. I saw the F99 UCAV slashing by through the sky, its nose aimed directly at the Phantom on top of me. I looked up and then realized that I could very well be squashed if the F99 succeeded.
I got up and started running towards the stairs while the Phantom fired with its automated and manned turrets at the fast-flying vehicle. Unfortunately, the gunners were good enough to nick the F99. The unmanned vehicle tipped slightly up and grazed the Phantom. The impact itself was enough to tip the craft sideways, but the alien dropship managed to stay on its feet. It dropped three elites and a bunch of grunts. I killed one of the elites and tossed my last grenade before running down the stairwell.
"Enemy infantry on the floor above!" I cried in warning.
"And all around us!" Pavel replied.
"We've got two pairs of hunters," the lieutenant said. "Take out the closest ones," he ordered. "Suppress the rest of 'em and keep their heads down, we kill the heavies first. You three, cover the stairs, I don't want anything biting our ass."
I turned around the stairs and emerged from the door just as three soldiers raised their weapons at me. They nodded and let me pass before taking cover behind columns and tables. I looked up and fired the three rounds that were left from my magazine into the ceiling, creating three little holes and probably startling the shit out of some alien above.
"Hunters, hunters," I told myself as I ran towards their direction. The Phantom had crashed on our left side, the other dropship had dropped troops on our right side, the first pair of hunters had already made their way to our center and were pounding the second floor with their fuel rod cannons while keeping their heads behind their massive shields.
I fired at one of the hunter's shoulders, the rounds bouncing harmlessly off of its armor. I fired another burst before diving underneath the torn-down walls. The two ogres were slowly making their way towards our position. Half of our available rifles were firing at the hunters, pelting them with bullets to no visible effect.
"Shit, get back!"
I barely processed the cry when I felt the floor shake and a large section of it fell from the rest of it down to the ground. I was on that section. Two other soldiers fell down to the ground with me. The dust that the collapse raised was enough to provide visual cover from the hunters. I stood up and helped the two coughing soldiers to get on their feet. The slab of polycrete that had fallen was still connected to the second floor by some metal rods, we could climb up and then jump back to safety from this point.
That is, we could've, had a burst from a plasma rifle not interrupted us. I jumped back and dove behind cover, dragging the soldier closest to me with me. The other one tried running but changed directions abruptly when a fuel rod almost took his face off.
"Get over here!" I yelled at him.
"No fucking way!" he replied, making a run for the floor-turned-ramp. He made it halfway up before the hunters shot him. A whole the size of a dinner plate appeared on his chest after the green stream was done flying. He looked down in horror and shock at the wound before his brain realized that he was dead. The poor soldier fell back and slid down the ramp and into the floor, hitting the rocks with a sickly noise.
"Pound that fucker!" the lieutenant ordered. He was understandably angry after having half his platoon killed, the brutal death of that soldier was probably the last straw for him.
I kept my head down as a bunch of rifles fired at the nearest hunter. After ten seconds of sustained gunfire I heard its partner scream in rage. My ears reverberated from the noise and I felt my jaws shaking. I cursed as the stomps of the hunter grew close. It bypassed me and the other soldier and started climbing up the ramp.
"Caboose! Shotgun!" I cried.
The weapon in question landed right on my head a second later. I ignored the embarrassment and grabbed the shotgun by the stock, pulling it towards me. "Cover me," I ordered the soldier.
I jumped out and followed the hunter, it was swinging its shield wildly in an attempt to reach the soldiers on the second floor, the polycrete underneath it was cracking, but it was holding well enough to allow it to climb. I finally positioned myself behind it, trying to ignore the dozen aliens that could just shoot me if they spotted me. With that thought in mind I aimed at the exposed orange goo on the hunter's back and fired off three consecutive rounds. The huge alien jerked forward before falling down on the floor. I jumped on its back, kicking away the sharp spikes and emptying the rest of the shotgun on the hunter.
"Francisco, you really need to start recording these," Schitzo said.
"It was a fine job," Scarecrow added. No, not Scarecrow, just some fucked up vision that my fucked up brain produced.
I jumped over the hunter and then dove towards the second floor with many plasma rounds slamming all around me. I was dragged behind safety by Caboose and a soldier I didn't recognize. I handed Caboose his shotgun and drew my rifle again, taking deep breaths. "Thanks for the help," I told both of them. "And the shotgun."
The both returned my thanks quickly before moving back towards the edge of the ramp and pulling the other soldier up. He seemed to have been nicked by a plasma pistol on the arm, but he only had a mild burn there.
"Bee, time to spend those two rockets."
"Music to my ears," he said. I could see the smile forming on his lips already.
Bumblebee was really a master at what he did, sometimes it might not seem like it because rockets aren't precision weapons, but he truly made art with those things. In addition to having incredible aim with the Spanker, he had this uncanny ability to sense where the target would be before he fired. Considering that the rockets moved considerably slower than a bullet, that was one helluva skill.
The only downside was that his uncanny skill worked only with the M41. Granted, he was excellent with any weapon, but nothing spectacular. The M41, however, it was truly impressive to see some of his best kills with that one.
This combo was one of the best that I have ever seen. He fired the two rockets in quick succession at two different moving targets and managed to hit the hunters' midsections, tearing them apart. How he hit the unarmored point from so far away and with so little time to aim is still beyond me, how he avoided the shields is another question that I would love the answer to as well.
"They're breaching from behind!"
Well that sounded awfully dirty.
I turned around and headed towards the stairs. I saw the door bend inwards and fired a burst through the thin metal. Whoever was behind didn't bother with taking precautions, because the elite kicked down the door regardless. Three assault rifles quickly cut it down as well as the three grunts behind it. A flashbang and a regular frag followed, taking out whoever was behind. A badly planned assault usually ends up in death for the bad planners.
We had gone from bad to good to worse to good again. Things like that happened all the time, but we still managed to end on the bad end of the stick most of the time. This was a pretty refreshing change for one.
"How much longer do we have to hold this position?" someone complained after a while.
"Until the other prong decides to arrive."
And after we trapped them and killed them all we nuked the rest of them.
It was a long battle, but the covvies had no leadership and their reinforcements had been almost completely destroyed. They weren't stupid though, and they stuck to cover while taking occasional potshots at us. The battle was pretty much won on our side. We didn't even have to rush them or actively try and kill them, we just had to keep them busy. It was surprisingly easy work.
"…nit, come in, this is Commander Sorka, do you copy?"
"We copy," the lieutenant replied immediately. "Where have you been?"
"We had our own problems, Scarabs."
"Same here, wasn't pretty."
There was a noticeable pause. "Roger that, we're already arriving at your position, still any armor active in your vicinity?"
"Affirmative, but it cannot climb through the debris, we have a Scorpion just sitting there."
"Copy, just hold tight, we'll finish the job."
"Fine by me."
They ended the conversation and I could actually hear a sigh of relief from the soldiers. Hell, I joined them myself.
"Sarge, Angel here, I made a breakthrough."
I sighed again, this time because I'm a lazy bastard. "I'm headed that way," I replied. "Caboose, you're with me, Pavel and Bee, stay here."
I stood up and dusted myself, grabbing my BR55 from the floor and slinging it over my shoulder. Caboose was already waiting for me at the stairs. "We good to go?" he asked me.
"Yup," I replied.
The stairs were literally filled with alien bodies. I walked over the shredded remains of an elite and several grunts before jumping over a dead jackal. After making it to the first floor I rushed to the back of the building to avoid getting hit by a lucky shot. Both of us helped each other climb outside the building and suddenly found ourselves back in the field of debris where we had distracted the Scarab. The Scarab was still there and it was still letting out smoke. It was a sweet sight.
"Over here," I told Caboose as I climbed in between two partially collapsed walls. I squeezed through them sideways and walked into a small lobby-like room. "And we're in."
Caboose said nothing and headed straight for a blast door, turning its knob around and puling it back to reveal a small room with a hole in the floor that led down below. The hole had a small elevator that would only fit two people, but it was only two of us here and that wasn't going to be any problem. On the way down it came to mind that it was a pretty good strategy, if you needed to launch the nuke you could get the two required people pretty quick and if someone staged a break-in they'd have to go down one at a time.
"Hey Sarge," Angel greeted from a kneeling position. He had a computer in front of him and thin wires connected it to the panel on the door. "I know what you're thinking," he said, "I'm actually using wires because the signal travels slightly faster than wireless."
"Really?"
"Only just," he confirmed. "But it helps."
I shrugged. "Sure."
"Well, I finally managed to write myself around the firewalls, no, I couldn't go through, that's kind of the point in firewalls."
"I didn't even ask," I said.
"But you were thinking about it."
"Fine, fine, go on."
"That's about it, we should be able to walk inside with relatively little trouble."
"Go ahead," I ordered him, waving my arm at the door.
"If poison gas emerges from all around us and we die I don't take responsibility."
"We have air-filters on our helmets," Caboose noted.
"Fire jets?"
"That sounds less likely than…well, everything."
"Here goes nothing," Angel said. I could tell that he was faking his nervousness, he was perfectly aware that he had beaten these stupid firewalls and could open the door with no trouble.
The panel blinked green.
"And that's the way the cookie crumbles."
"Mmmm, I love cookies," Schitzo voices.
"Let him work," Not-Scarecrow chided him.
I did my best to ignore the conflicting personalities inside my head and walked through the door. The silo room was pretty standard, I think that the design had been pretty much the same ever since ICBMs were invented. The room was about twenty feet by twenty feet, perhaps a bit larger. The walls were covered with terminals and the one to my left had a holographic display that showed a map of Miridem on one half and another of the entire system on the other. Despite the lack of power and supply lines, the silo was still in fine working order.
"Angel, want to do the honors?"
"Shouldn't we contact command to confirm launch?"
"Right," I agreed, slapping my palm against my visor before taking my helmet off. I placed the piece of armor on top of one of the holotable consoles and sat in a chair. "Eliza, this is Reaper Actual, do you copy?"
"I copy Reaper Actual, I take it you're inside the facility."
"Affirmative, the top of the launch site is cleared of debris and obstructions and we're ready to fire."
"Got it, hold on a second." Eliza put me on hold for about two minutes before her voice came back. "You have clearance to fire the missile, target area is already locked. I believe you have the launch codes?"
"Affirmative, I'll take it from here."
"Eliza out."
I turned around to see Angel staring at all the fancy computer equipment and Caboose staring at a wall. "Angel?"
"Right away Sarge, I've never fired a nuke before." He was awfully giddy about it.
"Relax, you do it once and then you get over the act."
"You've done this before?"
"Hell, I've almost been incinerated by port-a-nukes a few times," I admitted. "Not nearly as fun as you'd think."
"You're a killjoy Sarge," he chuckled. "We turn on three?"
"Yeah, just hold on a moment." I typed, yes, actually typed the launch codes inside the terminal and headed towards the key-turning thingy place. I introduced the key in the slot and turned it at the same time that Angel did. Nothing happened for a second and then the room started rumbling. The window in front of us revealed that the missile was raising up and we quickly saw the fire trail behind it. The smoke suddenly blocked the thick glass window, blackening everything from sight.
"Nuke out," I said with a smile.
"What's the yield?" Caboose asked disinterestedly.
"Ten megatons," I replied. "It's a clean nuke, little to no radioactive fallout, we should be just fine."
"Won't the heat wave hurt our guys?" Angel queried.
"Nah, we're too far away from the target, might make the mushroom cloud if you hurry though."
Angel looked torn between professionalism and his almost childlike fascination with explosives. Eventually, the unprofessional side of him won, Angel took off towards the elevator, Caboose groaning and walking behind him. I simply sat in my chair and propped up my feet on one of the tables. The little red dot in the screen flew towards the large red circle. The screen changed to a holographic display of the event, showing the warhead coming straight down on the covvies. A couple of seconds later the red dot hit the red circle and there was some yellow flashing on the hologram. It wasn't until after that that I felt the rumbling from the shockwave.
"It is beautiful," Angel said quietly, he was certainly in awe at the explosion.
Killing thousands of Covenant soldiers in the blink of an eye with nuclear fire? Yes, that's among one of the things that I would call beautiful.
Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.
I feel like I could've written a gorgeous action-packed chapter with the events preceding to this one. Oh well. Not much to say here, I hope that it was enjoyable for you to read and that I didn't insult writers worldwide by publishing this here. Since this wasn't exactly my best action-heavy chapter I'll just leave you with the promise that the next one is going to be fun. If you have as much fun reading Chapter 117 as I had writing it then you'll be good for the day.
Stay strong.
-casquis