Chapter CXCVII: Shock and Awe
August 18, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/
Mendez Joint Base, New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System
"Someone once said that silence is the ultimate weapon of power. That poor idiot obviously never saw the UNSC in a large-scale ground battle."- Sergeant Naveen Avninder
The Covenant didn't immediately storm the gap like I expected them to. Instead they displayed brilliance and tactical consideration. When I apply those terms to the covvies I do it very loosely. What they did was take advantage of our confusion and set up several hundred deployable covers and large barriers as close to our position as possible. From behind those they began eliminating the Wolf Spider turrets one by one. Snark and Preacher kept their heads down, but there were just too many of them out there.
"Pull back the tanks!" I ordered loudly. "Get them out of range!"
Crow and Lady rolled by even as another Scorpion tank joined them. Three Armadillos rumbled into position behind the pile of rubble that had been the wall. From those thirty men emerged and began spreading out and taking positions. My own men started moving dividers and barriers into place with the help of unmanned drones. A little wall appeared where the gate had once stood, but it was nothing compared to the massive polycrete wall that had stood there before. Even a little grunt could hop over it without much effort.
"Shit, shit, shit," Payat cursed as he shoved a barricade into place. "I could've been a doctor."
"You're our doctor," Lady reminded him. "It should be good enough."
A burst of plasma sent them both into the ground.
"You know," Lady said in between deep breaths, "I can see where you're coming from."
"Keep working!" I shouted. "The Covenant waits for no one!"
Two Warthogs rolled by and positioned themselves behind the watchtowers. From that position they could hit all aliens that got closer than fifty meters while remaining relatively safe. Captain Nezarian reported that he had sent some of his men to help, but that his sector of the wall was still under heavy attack. Various team leaders reported decreased enemy presence in their quadrants. It didn't take a genius to figure it out. The covvies had made a giant gap in our defenses and were going to exploit it.
"They're moving Daemons and Locust walkers to the front," Snark warned. I was about to ask him why he didn't sound worried until I remembered the big-ass piece of death that he had in his position. "Time to bring out the Sledgehammer."
"This ought to be fun," Pavel growled.
A third Warthog rumbled through the soon-to-be-battleground. Captain Flatt jumped out almost immediately. She was barely recognizable in her Recon Armor, but it was clear that she had been fighting along with the rest of the defenders. She walked towards me with rifle in hand.
"Ma'am," I greeted with a small nod. "I'd recommend leaving here as soon as possible."
"No shit," she replied. "I see you've managed to give an entryway to the Covenant in just a few hours."
"To be fair, the gate was already here," I replied. "The massive hole on the wall… well, that one I don't think needs explanation."
"How many turrets are there left?" she asked.
"We have two in the watchtowers plus three more in the wall. Those three barely have an angle or range."
"Not good," she noted. "Are the mines still in working order?"
"A couple were destroyed during the initial assaults, but the vast majority of them are still in working order."
"We let them approach as close as possible before activating them."
"The explosion should take out a thousand or so of them," I said. "Seems like something to watch."
"Have one of your men record it," Flatt said dismissively. "I'm giving you control of all the mines in this sector of the base. After those are expended we will have to make use of our artillery and air support."
"I have a feeling that those two won't last for long," I said.
"Agreed, but it's better than nothing."
Flatt climbed back on board her Warthog and took off, headed back towards her spot in the defensive line. I watched as the wheels lifted some dust and then turned back towards the rapidly growing defensive emplacements. The Army company deployed here certainly hadn't wasted any time, leaving my own men hard-pressed to keep up.
"Snark! Let me know when they start their attack!"
I paused for a moment to consider my words. There was already plasma flying all round and the occasional mortar blast that landed close by. Our own turrets made a clattering noise as they fired and the Banshees screamed overhead, strafing us while working to avoid the Scythe AA emplacements. By any reasonable standards, their attack had begun. A few of my men stopped and turned to look at me with a curious look on their faces.
"You know what I mean," I said.
"They're massing near their wall," Snark said. "They're waiting for the Locusts!"
I was torn. Snark could probably take out three or so Locusts before they zeroed in on his position, but they would fire back. If he waited until the last possible moment to fire then the Locust turrets wouldn't have the required firing angle to take him down, buying him precious minutes while Wraiths redeployed to take him out.
"They're moving," Snark said. "They're moving!"
"I need guns on the walls!" I shouted. "Fire at will!"
Three tank shells flew past me, shaking me as they did. I briefly looked back to see our three available tanks in position two hundred meters away before rushing to the pile of rubble separating us from the outside. Pillars of dirt rose up and brutes were sent flying. Heavy tracer rounds tore through flesh and armor alike, catching dozens of Covenant foot soldiers before they had even gone a few meters. Grunts and jackal alike tripped over the bodies of their fallen comrades, making easy prey for the defenders. Pavel, Dotsenko, and Ramirez used their machine guns to cut down the assaulters, hitting their feet. I fired at the brute leaders, hitting them in the gaps between their armor. The brutes tended to be hard to bring down, but three bullets to the nape of the neck or to the knee had them slow down in no time. The berserk ones were harder to stop, tending to ignore all wounds until there was far too much damage for their bodies to keep functioning.
"Focus on the hunters!" I shouted. "Hunters first!"
The fire shifted accordingly, pounding the hunters with round after round of lead and depleted uranium. Most of those bounced off the hard armor and shields, but our sheer volume of firepower overwhelmed the two enemy behemoths. They both fell dead almost simultaneously, but their deaths allowed the smaller aliens to close in relatively unimpeded. Three grunts took a knee and fired fuel rods at our closest Wolf Spiders before anybody could do anything about them. I watched the green explosions with frustration and kept on firing. The closer the enemy got the harder it was for me to pick out the brutes. The aliens moved far too fast and I had to compensate even more due to the close range.
"Bayonets ready!" an Army soldier shouted.
I heard the clicks as various spring-loaded bayonets emerged from their hiding spots inside the rifles. I waited for a few grunts to begin climbing the rubble wall before activating the mines.
Thousands of explosions flooded my ears as the pressure activated mines suddenly detonated. Not only the covvies taking part in the charge, but every single alien standing over a mine in the space between the forest and the wall was killed by a mine. These mines weren't your traditional ones designed to maim in order to lower morale and burden the enemy. This were killing devices designed to defend the base, plain and simple. Most of these mines had been planted recently and had been designed with elites and brutes in mind. The explosions sent shrapnel upwards, shredding flesh without even slowing down.
I watched as brutes were cut to ribbons, leaving them nearly unrecognizable lumps of flesh. The grunts and jackals alike were quickly turned into mists of blood. Rarely did one of those escape with more than a limb or their head intact. A few of the Wraiths and Locusts standing nearby a soldier were shaken and damaged by the shrapnel explosion, but the strong armor of the Wraith tanks and shielding on the Locusts withstood the punishment.
Nonetheless, some of the heavier vehicles were destroyed when specialized anti-tank magnetic mines were activated. The shaped charges punched holes clean through the Wraiths and completely and utterly destroyed the smaller vehicles. The Locusts once again proved to have strong shields, but most of them withstood the mines. I saw at least one succumb to a series of anti-personnel mines after its shields were lowered, but the rest pressed forward.
It was still an impressive sight. A million tons of dirt were blown up to the sky and a thousand Covenant warriors died in the span of about five seconds. I watched carefully as the dirt was tainted with blood and the entire enemy forces in the strip of land were completely and utterly annihilated. Four Locusts remained out of the five that had been sent forward, but those would meet their end soon enough.
Bee fired his rocket launcher at one of the walkers without shields, easily taking out the cockpit. The rest of us focused our fire on another of the walkers, bringing it down with armor piercing and regular ammunition.
The other two Locusts quickly regained their shields, easily deflecting our attempts to bring them down. One of them stopped and fired a sustained pulse beam at our positions, sending us down for cover and severely burning a soldier that didn't get her head down in time. That Locust was quickly destroyed when our three Scorpions fired at it simultaneously. The shields withstood the explosive shells, but the Locust itself was thrown backwards like a ragdoll, where a trio of grenades hit it, finally destroying it.
"That seemed almost trivially simple," Andy noted, reloading her rifle.
"More will come," Marv told her. "They always do."
"Five species against one hardly seems like a fair game, does it?" Payat asked.
"I think it's six," Preacher told him. "Their false prophets and founders of their alliance."
"The worm-necks barely count," Payat told him. "They don't fight."
"I have a feeling that nobody is suitably impressed by the sheer explosive force we just witnessed," Ramirez said with a sigh.
"I agree," Dotsenko said. "It was beautiful."
"Agreed," Bee seconded. "Angel would've loved this."
"You know, I wish I could've met this Angel guy," Ramirez said. "He sounds like my kind of guy."
"Hey," Dotsenko said, sounding hurt.
I rolled my eyes. It was then that I noticed that a small indicator in my HUD flickered slightly. It was the little sign that told me that I had an uplink to a satellite and therefore could remain in contact with pretty much the entirety of the UNSC forces in the planet. I looked at the sign again and after a few seconds it flickered.
"Did anybody catch that?" Marv asked.
"I did," I said. "We're being jammed."
"Helmet to helmet's still working," Pavel noted. "We have contact with everybody in the base, but everything outside gets scratchy."
"Why the hell are they jamming us now?" I wondered out loud. "Captain Flatt, do you copy? We're being jammed."
"I copy," she replied immediately. "I'm working on getting a signal to our support groups, but they seem to be actively jamming us."
"Do we have an estimate?" I asked. "We're going to be needing that support soon."
"I'm working as fast as I can," Flatt assured me, effectively ending the conversation.
"Why are they jamming us?" Marv asked. "We haven't used our support yet, so they don't know we have any. We haven't requested reinforcements either…"
"As stupid as the covvies tend to be, they're not the kind to waste jamming equipment for nothing," Sergeant Mata muttered. "We jam them when we're working ambushes or when we don't want them calling for support or reinforcements."
"They usually do the same," Caboose jumped in. "This can hardly be considered an ambush, so they suspect that we're about to call reinforcements or support."
"Why would they suspect that?" Bee asked.
I scoffed. "I have a couple of ideas."
"Don't be a Scarab," Miri prayed. "Please don't be a Scarab."
I looked up and waited for the Scarab to drop from low orbit. I was sure that nothing was going to happen and that I'd just look like a complete and utter idiot. Fate was not good to me this time, as soon enough I saw the red burn of an object entering the atmosphere at high speeds. I called out a warning, but there was barely enough time before the Scarab walker landed. The ground shook with the impact, almost throwing me off my feet. I was thankful that the Scarab hadn't been able to land directly above us, but it was still far too close to us.
"Seven hundred meters!" Snark called out. "It's one of the big ones!"
"Fire, fire, fire!" I shouted. "Don't stop!"
The Scarab fired first, destroying another section of the wall and incinerating two unfortunate soldiers that had been too close to the plasma beam. One of the Warthogs moved out of cover in order to fire at the Scarab. Tracer rounds lit up as they flew out of the chaingun and at the giant walker. Our three Scorpions fired almost simultaneously, barely scratching the strong armor on the Scarab. It was one of the big ones.
"Hit the legs!" Someone shouted. "Hit the legs!"
"Watch for snipers on top!" I added.
I zoomed in on the deck of the Scarab and spotted the covvies coming out. A dozen jackals came out and started firing at us, meeting fierce resistance. I dispatched a pair of them before I was forced into cover. Our Scorpions kept firing as fast as possible even as the rear turret on the Scarab turned to aim at them.
"Get out of the way!" Pavel shouted. "Move!"
It was only then, after the twenty most frantic seconds of the entire battle, that Snark finally fired his Sledgehammer. Once again, the effect of the weapon was awesome in the true sense of the word. It was awe-inspiring. Your whole vision would flash white for a fraction of a second as the round flew out. Not a lot of things can do the damage that a 15mm super-dense bullet can do when it's going at a fraction of the speed of light. I was too close to really tell, but I knew that the round had hit the Scarab and done the damage before the sound had reached my ears. The entire battlefield shook from the noise, lifting dust into the air and shaking rocks loose from the damaged wall and watchtower.
The Scarab's front right leg lost a ton of its armor from the impact. A second later the walker fired its rear turret. The Sledgehammer threw off its aim somehow. That, combined with the movement of the Scorpions made the shot go high, missing all three of them. I breathed with relief and then shouted out as one of the Scorpions, Crow's, fired a round at the damaged leg, bringing the whole Scarab down and stopping its advance.
"Hit it while it's down!" I ordered. "Destroy the turrets!"
The other two tanks fired at the head turret, but the armored flaps had closed down already, negating the effect of their shells. The jackals on the deck had already been wiped out by sustained fire and the covvies had only covered the first couple hundred meters from the forest. They would take their time, making sure that they set up emplacements before rushing us again. A few of the undetonated mines would take out a grunt here or there, but for the most part we had used up our reserves.
"Aiming for the head," Snark let us know. "Cover your ears."
I noticed something weird with the Scarab right as he said that, but I would realize what it was exactly until a second later, when I witnessed the aftermath of Snark's shot. One could always count on the effects being devastating when it came down to the M102 SASR Sledgehammer, but nothing quite prepared me for the shock of what came next.
Nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing. The entire Scarab lit up in a way that was all-too familiar and absolutely nothing happened after the light faded.
"Shields…" Pavel muttered.
"It's got shields," Snark said quietly.
"Ah, shit," Mata said.
"Well don't fucking stop!" I ordered. "Fire!"
I was left wondering why the pilot only activated its shields until after we had pounded it with tank and rail gun fire. The thought was quickly replaced with one of panic and frustration. There were many reasons why a Scarab walker would have shields, all of them perfectly valid. It still didn't mean that I felt any better about having to face a fucking juggernaut of death with the tools I had at my disposal. Usually three tanks and a Sledgehammer would guarantee an instant win under most circumstances.
"Scarab trumps most things," Schitzo said. "I recommend we run."
"Hold positions!" I shouted. "Don't stop firing!"
The Scarab was impervious to our efforts. Explosions washed off its shields and our smaller bullets bounced off harmlessly. The Scarab activated a pair of anti-tank mines, further draining its shields, but not completely. To me it was just frustrating, seeing no effect at all on the massive walker.
"Captain! We need immediate artillery and air support!" I shouted into my helmet. "Flatt, do you hear me?"
"How urgent is it?" she asked, sounding tense.
"Five minutes ago," I shouted back.
"Shit. I need one more minute."
"That's too long," Caboose said.
"That's too long!" I told her. "We need it now!"
A tank shot hit the Scarab's belly, detonating against the armor instead of shields. For a moment I thought that we had succeeded in draining its shields, but I realized that the Scarab had purposely lowered its shields because it wanted to fire. Everybody with a sensible head on their shoulders moved out of the way as the Scarab's main gun fired. The beam burned through the rubble in between the wall and the watchtower, leaving a cylindrical furrow in the ground. I was amazed that nobody got hurt, but that big a hole in our already damaged defenses would spell certain death.
Lady fired, hitting the Scarab right next to where its head was. The tail turret turned slowly to face her.
"Get out of there!" Preacher cried out. "Bail, bail!"
Lady immediately complied, opening the hatch and jumping out of the tank just as the green plasma beam hit it. The tank's armor bought her a solid one second to sprint away before the heat detonated the hydrogen fuel cells and the shells. I caught a glimpse of Lady been thrown by the explosion, but her vitals proved that she was alive, even if her heart rate was through the roof.
"Hit it!" I ordered loudly. "Fire!"
The next couple of tank shots promptly bounced off harmlessly as the Scarab put its shields back up.
"It lowers its shields before it fires," Sergeant Mata said drily. "Goody."
Snark grunted. "I know what to do."
"Move out of there," I ordered. "Vacate the watchtower ASAP."
Miri and Preacher were in the watchtower along with Snark. They must've helped him carry down the spare ammunition, because just before the Scarab completely destroyed the watchtower they were running out the main door. Snark looked particularly burdened by the massive Sledgehammer in addition to the already oversized SRS he kept on him at all times. The watchtower collapsed behind them, showering them with small pieces of polycrete as they tried to get away from it.
"Set up and get ready," I shouted over the noise. "Crow, fire on Snark's word."
"Yessir."
I had to shift my fire from the Scarab to the lead elements of the Covenant infantry. As usual I tried to take down the brutes first, but they were being more careful now, taking advantage of the craters and the corpses of other aliens and using them for cover. The grunts jumped and squeaked at every dead body they saw, but their brute masters kept them in check with loud and threatening growls. The jackals just seemed pissed. No doubt that these ones hadn't expected to fight seeing as their brethren had made it almost all the way to the wall before suddenly being caught in a massive explosion.
"Stop shooting. And fucking run," Schitzo urged. "You've got one shot and there's no guarantee."
Shut up…
Things happen very fast during combat, even with my senses as sharp as they had just become and everything moving slightly slower I was still hard-pressed to keep track of everything. A brute dropped with Miri and my sustained fire. Preacher kept firing single rounds at the head of the Scarab, testing for its shields. Snark shot his Sledgehammer at the walker when the round pinged off the armor. The head of the Scarab was already loading up, with green specks of superheated plasma appearing in the air as the Scarab prepared. Crow and the soldier in command of the other tank both fired nearly simultaneously when Snark gave the word.
All three heavy shots fired hit the unshielded Scarab before it could get off a shot. The Sledgehammer was all it took. The main cannon was destroyed before it could fire and the two Scorpion shots to the damaged leg finished up the job, severing the lower joint from the top and collapsing the Scarab on its belly. Everybody shouted in jot when they saw the Scarab go down, but the fight wasn't done yet. The Scarab might've been immobile, but the rear turret was in fine working order and the Covenant infantry wouldn't just stop.
Schitzo sighed with relief just as I did the same thing.
"Taking down a Scarab with nearly no casualties," Longworth said. "I don't think that's ever been done before."
I smiled.
"Maybe just a couple of times," Caboose said, not able to resist the temptation.
Crow and the other soldier both fired their tanks a second time, hitting the rear turret and damaging it. Snark fired his Sledgehammer again with them, finishing off the threat once and for all.
Despite the thousand covvie soldiers coming at us, despite the pain, despite the danger, and despite the overwhelming odds we faced at the moment I smiled. I smiled because we had once again managed to do the impossible. I smiled because I had a feeling that it was most likely the very last time that my team would achieve such a feat without much trouble. Me and my men had gone through a lot the last couple of years and had always come out on top. We had only suffered one casualty during those years, Polly. He had been the first of my men to die in this battle and I knew that he wouldn't be the last to go.
We were used to being the ones attacking the Covenant. Even when we were defending our own planets Team-7 rarely partook in defensive ops, instead taking the fight to them. All of that was going to end with this battle right here.
"Ghosts down the middle! Shifting fire!"
I fired at the Ghosts along with everybody else, succeeding in taking some out and forcing the rest to stop their charge. There was no respite, as the regular enemy infantry jumped inside the craters and abandoned barriers that they had set up and started firing at us. Even then we also had to worry about the Banshees left up there. Our Scythe cannons had taken out a bunch of them, but they were still clearly a threat to us.
"Phantom dropships!" Caboose called out. "Watch the rear, watch the rear!"
Sure enough, the three Phantoms sped past the no-man's-land and burst through the hole in the wall. One of them was hit by tank fire which sent it careening into the remains of the watchtower, where it was promptly destroyed by sustained fire from the other tank. The two other Phantoms were flying low, but the Scythe AA turrets had a good angle on them. The only problem was that the Phantoms were in between the turrets and us. A single bullet could punch completely through the Covenant dropship and hurt any of our guys.
Brute shock troops jumped out of the cargo bay, opening fire on our exposed backs. Preacher and Miranda turned to fire at them, hitting the first ones to land right between the eyes. I wounded a brute, hitting its left arm before it could bring its spiker to bear. It used its right arm to throw a deployable cover and soon there was a neat little circle of deployable covers surrounding the ten brutes that had jumped off the Phantom.
"Chieftain!" Preacher called out. "Take him down!"
Snark was the first one to react. He brought his heavy Sledgehammer around, heaving as he lifted it over his body to get a good angle. The chieftain jumped over the small wall with its hammer raised over its head. A soldier blasted part of its chest armor off with a shotgun, but the chieftain ignored the buckshot and broke the man with his hammer. I winced at the sight of the blood and fired a couple of shots at the other brutes, following its leader into battle.
The last Phantom hadn't deployed troops already, instead it was circling around our back, firing from its turrets to give the other brutes some cover. It only began dropping off brute shock troops when Bee hit the rear thruster with a rocket, damaging the craft, but not enough to bring it down. We had a thousand covvies in front of us and twenty behind us. It wasn't going to end well.
Fortunately for my men, the Army company took the brunt of the assault. Four of their guys were killed before they could react, buying some time for my men to dig into cover and fire back.
"Heads up!" Snark warned.
Once again the sound of the Sledgehammer drowned everything else in the battlefield. I barely caught a glimpse of the brute chieftain being nearly atomized as the round hit him. The round didn't detonate when it hit him, the chieftain was too soft a target for that. Instead, the round went completely through and hit the wall of deployable covers, killing the two brutes still behind it. Yet the round went on without detonating, finally disappearing from sight, leaving a trail of superheated air behind it. I wondered for a brief moment whether it would be able to leave the gravity of Reach at such a shallow angle. It was certainly a possibility.
"Where's Lady?" I asked. "Is she conscious?"
"Her vitals are fine," Payat said. "I can go check her out."
"Do that," I told him. "And see if there's anything similar to a Wolverine in the motor pool."
"Yes, sir," he replied immediately. "Cover me."
"Will do," I assured him. "Ramirez?"
"I'm on it."
Payat took off, flying through the open ground as the remaining brutes turned to fire at him. Ramirez used suppressing fire to keep them down, but the few that refused to duck under cover were quickly dispatched by a headshot. I smiled grimly at my kills and watched as Payat slid into cover behind Lady's wrecked Scorpion.
"What's her status?" I asked almost immediately.
"She's unconscious," he responded. "Looks like shrapnel hit her in the back of the head. Knocked her out cold. I don't see any puncture wounds or blood. Probably a concussion, the bad kind."
I sighed. "Can you move her?"
One of our Armadillos exploded when two Banshees hit it with fuel rod bombs. The detonation sent a pair of soldiers flying around, where they were promptly dragged to cover by their comrades.
"Not very fast," he replied. "Some hospitals have automatic stretchers that follow instructions. I could've been working there."
"Get her to safety," I instructed, ignoring his bitching. "And do it quick."
The brutes behind us had all been neutralized, but their attack had distracted us from the main threat in front of us. The Covenant assaulters tried going around the crashed Phantom that now walled them off and met our remaining Warthog head on. The gunner dispatched a couple of squads before a brute threw a spike grenade at the 'Hog. The device embedded itself on the windshield, prompting the driver and passenger to jump out and dive underneath the car. The gunner didn't notice until it was too late, and the spikes on the grenade hit him in the legs, drawing screams of pain.
"Medic!" one of his friends shouted even as he climbed into the turret to plug the hole in our defenses.
"I'm on it!" Andy shouted. "Cover me!"
Longworth and Pavel both fired wildly in without leaving cover. Andy had to duck a couple of times, barely avoiding having her head burnt off. She got into cover behind the Warthog and tapped the former driver of the now ruined vehicle in the shoulder. They exchanged a few words before the man moved to the ruined front of the Warthog and started firing in short bursts. Andy crouched up and examined the screaming soldier in the back of the truck while the third man fired at the grunts trying to bypass them.
It must've been distracting for all of them. Andy had to treat a man while bullet casings fell all around. The wounded soldier had to swallow his pain while bullet casings fell all around. The gunner had to fire at all the visible targets without stepping on his wounded friend.
I could watch as Andy pulled out biofoam and jabbed it into the man's upper leg. I could hear the screams of pain all the way over here. Suddenly, the man stopped screaming and instead began shaking. The length of the shakes diminished until they stopped completely. Andy pulled the man from the back of the Warthog and rolled his limp corpse underneath, where it would be relatively protected from stray fire.
"Must've hit the femoral," I said to myself. Tank could've ended up just like that.
Captain Flatt checked in. "You've got your support."
The appropriate channel appeared on my helmet and within a second I had contacted the officer in charge of the artillery battery. The man must've barely understood my incoherent screaming over the sound of the battle, but he got the coordinates I sent him. The battery was several kilometers back, the shells that they would fire were partially-guided supersonic rounds, but it would take a few seconds for them to travel the distance.
"We've got an artillery strike inbound!" I shouted. "Heads down on my word!"
The small HUD map on my helmet was automatically transformed into a map of the surrounding area with me on one edge and the battery on the other. A little red dot symbolized the dozens of high explosive shells flying towards us. More would be coming behind those, but we just cared about the first ones. I watched as the red dot approached out the corner of my eye while gunning down grunts and skirmishers.
"Down!"
All our gunfire stopped almost simultaneously. The Covenant surged forward before the first shells landed. The powerful rounds detonated, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. I didn't see the effects directly, but I had participated in enough battles and even called in several strikes to know the effect of an anti-personnel artillery shell. They were designed to take out brutes and elites as well as hunters and small vehicles much like the ground mines. The only difference here was that the guidance systems on the shells were designed to detonate a few meters before hitting the ground, effectively carpeting an entire area with deadly shrapnel. But that was not all, in addition to your conventional shrapnel all this shells had another section that would break into five parts. Those five parts would land on the ground and detonate after five to ten seconds.
Entire armies had been wiped out with well-timed artillery strikes.
The Covenant soldiers here had no warning and no cover. A large swath was cut through them, perhaps about three hundred enemy soldiers were killed in the space of one minute. It was not nearly as impressive as the sudden eruption of the minefield that we had witnessed a few moments ago, but it was every bit as deadly and gory. A few brutes tried to brave the artillery, meeting their ends at the hands of the fast-flying shrapnel that embedded itself in their armor and cut through their bodies.
People always say that battles before the invention of gunpowder were incredibly bloody. I don't doubt that, but I have seen the things that conventional modern weaponry can do to a body first hand and I am entirely certain that no sword could produce as much blood as an M90 shotgun or a grenade.
"Tanks, move up," I ordered. "Crow, empty your reserves on them and vent the fuel cells."
"Where do you want me?" he asked.
"Right side of the Phantom," I told him. "Make it quick."
Crow moved up even as he fired. The Scorpion was already low on ammunition, so the increased firing quickly drained the few shells it had left. Crow then proceeded to vent the hydrogen fuel cells, producing a white vapor from the rear of the Tank. The wind quickly dissipated the flammable smoke before it could be lit up. Some of the fuel dripped down to the ground in liquid form just as Crow jumped out of the cockpit. The Scorpion might've been useless as an offensive weapon when it had no shells to fire, but it was still a big-ass piece of plating to put between the Covenant and us. With no explosive material inside it the covvies would be hard pressed to remove it from the equation.
"Go get yourself another tank," I ordered, briefly considering the words I was saying. "And get on with it."
"Yes, sir!" Crow replied, sprinting towards the motor pool.
Just then Payat checked in on the radio. "Sir, all the Wolverines are on automatic, watching for Banshees. Not that three Wolverines was very much to begin with, but… Anyways, I've got rocket 'Hogs, Scorpions, and some Falcons. Nothing else seems to be of much use."
"Any Grizzlies?" I asked, knowing it was a long shot. It had been years since I had last seen the flamboyant variant of the Scorpion tank.
"Negative, sir," Payat said. "I'm thinking that an AA Warthog is our best option."
"Agreed," I said. "Move your ass."
The artillery strike bought us perhaps a minute of relative peace, but the covvies would not stopped. They knew they had us outnumbered and they also know that out superiority wouldn't last for long. Artillery shells tended to run out. Air support tended to bug out when it became too hot. If they kept on the pressure they would completely overrun us.
"Captain Flatt, I need immediate support," I cried into my helmet.
"There are additional breaches in the perimeter," she said. "Nobody can be spared."
"Ma'am, if the base is lost why don't we just leave?"
"We're buying time," she told me. "That's all we're doing here Lieutenant, buying time for the civilian population to evacuate."
"Understood," I replied, grunting.
Plasma mortars landed right in front of our little rubble pile. The shattered polycrete was still polycrete and it absorbed the heat, but the smaller pieces were thrown violently around, hitting some of my men. Snark cursed as a large piece of wall hit him in the leg, pinning him to the ground. He twisted around, but failed to yank himself free.
I was far too busy to help him.
A jackal skirmisher had somehow managed to make its way through the no-man's-land and climbed the rubble. I didn't notice it until it was almost upon me. I moved my rifle to shoot it, but it kicked my rifle away, deflecting a burst. It fired at me at close range. The first shot landed in between my shoulder blades and the second missed when I finished my roll. I ignored the pain as I rolled on my back and grabbed the jackal's left leg. I pulled, throwing it off slightly off-balance and then I twisted, snapping its ankle completely. The skirmisher cried out in pain and collapsed on top of me. I pulled the plasma pistol away from its hand and threw it aside, reaching for my backup knife in the same move. I pulled the relatively small blade from its sheathe on my chest and pinned the jackal to the ground by the chest. The skirmisher must've been overloaded with pain from its nearly severed ankle, because its attempts at defense were pathetic as I brought my knife down on its chest half a dozen times. The skirmisher promptly stopped struggling, allowing me to slice its neck open and throw it to the side.
"Chingada," I cursed.
The battle still raged on. It was often easy to forget that despite individual struggles you were only a small part of a whole. Soldiers cried out warnings and instructions even as others shouted in pain. My men were considerably quieter, but they did call out whenever they shifted fire from their designated fields of fire. Pavel, Ramirez, and Dotsenko were the most vocal, seeing as they had the machine guns.
Snark cried out for help, still pinned underneath a rock. Two skirmishers approached him without much regard for their own safety and were promptly dispatched when Snark drew his sidearm and put a bullet in their brains. The two skirmishers fell down and Longworth rushed towards Snark, helping him lift the stone.
I was rocked when two objects thundered overhead at several times the speed of sound. I was shaken by the shockwave that came seconds later, my teeth clattered violently and my bones shook inside my body. I turned around and made out the shape of Seraph fighters. A second later four Longsword atmospheric fighter thundered past at the same speed, firing their forward-facing cannons at the alien spacecraft.
I checked in with the artillery battery and warned them. The two Seraphs wouldn't have faced certain death unless it was for an important cause. The only likely target I could think about was the artillery battery.
"Understood," the officer in charge said. "Firing the rest of our payload, keep your heads down."
"Thank you," I told him. "Good luck."
The man could've simply thanked me for the warning and told his men to take cover. Instead he decided to keep un firing, risking his artillerymen to support my team. The shells started landing a few seconds later, neutralizing the enemy infantry. This time the strike wasn't nearly as devastating, but the battery compensated for that by extending the range of their barrage. The shells shredded the edge of the forest and the Covenant soldiers within. Much like last time it cleared the field, but there were barely two platoons' worth of enemy soldiers in the open this time.
The barrage stopped almost abruptly and I knew that the Seraphs had managed to hit their target before they were chased down. My suspicions proved correct when thirty seconds later a lone Seraph flew past us in the opposite direction. The spacecraft was trailing smoke and its shields were lighting up as rounds from the chasing Longswords. I saw as our flyboys scored the kill and then saw surface-to-air missiles fly off from the forest, knocking down two of the four slow-flying Longswords in blue fireballs.
"Ah, shit," Sergeant Mata said. "I take it we don't have any more artillery?"
"Correct," I confirmed. "We still have close-air support."
Mata scoffed. "Let's see how long that lasts."
"Probably more than us, Sarge," Longworth said.
"Probably," Mata agreed.
An electronic beep distracted me and I turned to look at our drone. It was once again full of ammunition and had come to supply me with more magazines. I realized that I had burned through nearly all of my battle rifle ammunition and grabbed enough magazines to fill up my pouches. In addition to those I grabbed two more magazines that wouldn't fit and placed them next to me.
"They're moving slow," Snark said. "More careful. They've got Wraiths leading up the way."
"You can handle those," I told him. "Bee, how's your laser?"
"I've got four more batteries," he told me. "Enough to take out a third of those Wraiths."
Just as he said that three Banshees screamed past our position, strafing us with plasma and making us duck down underneath cover.
"I might want to handle those first," Bee muttered.
"Yup," Pavel said, dusting his shoulders off molten polycrete.
Snark began firing his Sledgehammer again, going for the Wraiths. One after another the Covenant mortar tanks stopped moving forward. The remaining ones pinpointed Snark's position and began firing at his position, lobbing mortar shells into the air. Snark grunted as he lifted his heavy railgun and ran as fast as he could. Two mortars detonated right where he had been standing a moment ago, sending molten gravel flying. A third one went wide, missing him completely. It was the fourth one that landed far too close. Snark was violently thrown off his feet and back to the ground by the shockwave. His heart was already thundering, but it promptly slowed down when he was knocked out. Once again I was far too occupied with a team of jackal sharpshooters to help him. Once again Longworth jumped to help, he dragged Snark from his position and tossed his thin frame behind cover. Just as Longworth himself was about to take cover a trio of spikes appeared on his upper back.
"Medic!" Mata called out. "Magnet, where are you?"
"I'm moving!" Andy replied. "Ramirez, cover me!"
Andy once again rushed from cover to cover in order to get to the wounded men. Payat arrived with his Warthog a few seconds later and immediately rushed to help his injured friends. Mata flew towards the Warthog and jumped on the rocket turret in the rear. He immediately began firing on the Banshees harassing us, taking out two of them before the third one flew out of range. He quickly shifted his fire from the aircraft to the advancing Wraiths and the infantry behind them. I was surprised when the Wraiths didn't fire back at him. Instead, they lobbed their shots far overhead and behind us.
"They're hitting the Scythes!" Flatt reported. "Take them out now!"
"You heard her," I shouted. "Fire on the Wraiths!"
We still had one usable tank, which promptly started firing upon the enemy. Crow was taking his sweet time with his own Scorpion. We needed him to get back here as soon as possible if we wanted to last another couple of hours.
A few of the Wraiths were knocked out by the tank, some others were stopped when enough rockets and ammunition from the Armadillos had hit them while a few others fell to Snark's Sledgehammer. The Wraiths were obviously being piloted by grunts, otherwise they wouldn't have been sacrificed like that. Despite the loss of all those tanks the Covenant continued without slowing down. The Wraiths now formed a wall of sorts where they had been destroyed and they had gotten the infantry behind them close enough that we were now the ones under fire.
"Prepare to fall back to Rally Point Golf," I said. "Tanks and vehicles cover infantry."
I got a wave of 'yessirs' from the soldiers and from my own men. None of the replies were enthusiastic, our rally points were not nearly as defensible as our position here. The walls, destroyed as they were, provided cover and concealment as well as an obstacle for the enemy. We still had one watchtower from which Caboose was firing. The security booth underneath that tower was occupied by Ramirez and Dotsenko, giving them an incredible vantage point as well as great cover. Any other positions we moved to would consist of an instacrete bunker and perhaps sandbags. The moment we left this position we would be on the run, scrapping for every little bit of time that we could get.
Slowly but surely we were being pushed back. Even when Crow showed up with another tank we couldn't handle the sheer numbers they were throwing at us. Snark was alive but shaken up, he could barely sit up without falling over the side. Longworth was unconscious and his life signs were fluctuating wildly. Andy and Payat were furiously working on him, trying to save him before he bled out. One of our drones was directed to move towards them and Payat didn't waste any time in throwing out all the boxes of ammunition and placing Longworth inside. Andy fired back at a pair of approaching brutes, sending them running for cover.
"We can't keep this up much longer, lieutenant!" the leader of the Army men shouted. "We're burning through ammunition faster than we can get it."
"Just a little bit longer!" I shouted back. "Prepare your 'Dillos to fall back, but hold your positions!"
More and more Banshees appeared overhead. We still had a Scythe working, but one turret could only do so much. Our positions were constantly being strafed and the watchtower that Caboose was in continually got hit. He had to evacuate the tower before long, running across the gate and sliding into safety behind a Phantom. The man was carrying way too many weapons for his own good. In addition to his ever-present MA5K assault carbine and his trusty shotgun he was carrying an M400 EMR. He nearly fell to the ground under all the weight, but instead of keeping all the weapons to himself he tossed the EMR to one of the soldiers in the Warthog and began firing his carbine at the oncoming aliens.
"Shield walls to the right!"
"Hit them, hit them!"
Our fire shifted to take down the slow-moving wall of jackals with overlapped shields. Behind the jackals were at least four brutes, all with their crude grenade launchers. Miranda began firing on the shields with her newly acquired grenade launcher. Hers was infinitely more advanced than the crap the brutes used. She fired a single semi-guided Armor-Piercing grenade at the wall, killing one jackal and making two others stumble. The neighboring jackals closed the gap before anybody had the opportunity to capitalize on it. Miranda, however, had already reloaded her grenade launcher and fired another shot. This time she took fool advantage of the guidance system that the little devices had. She fired directly above the wall and the grenade curved downwards by itself, hitting one of the brutes in the neck and decapitating it in the subsequent explosion. Granted, it wasn't nearly as impressive as the Sledgehammer, but it certainly had its own appeal.
"Sir, get over here!" Payat called out loudly, waving me over.
"Cover me!" I shouted.
Running out of cover had rarely felt so dangerous. I knew that leaving cover was often a dumb idea, but rarely did it feel so risky as it did then. A pair of needles flew in front of me along with half a dozen plasma bolts. I couldn't begin to imagine what was going on behind me. I slid into cover as I usually did, feet-first.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's Snark," he replied.
Snark had been hit in the head and was now back in the realm of the living, but he wasn't doing exactly well. His legs were awkwardly kicking and his hands twitched even as he tried to reach for the Sledgehammer. I depolarized his visor remotely and sighed at his animalistic expression. He might've been conscious, but he had been hit so hard that he wouldn't be in control of his own actions for a while.
"He might need some drilling," Payat noted. "I didn't think it was this bad. He even sat up on his own."
"Put him under and see to it," I told him. "Andy, how do you feel about a sniper?"
"Not very good," she replied, scanning for enemies. "We're too close right now."
"Magnet's got a point," Payat agreed. "A sniper won't do us much use."
Snark's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he promptly fell asleep. I looked at him carefully and then gave the order for Payat to pull him back to safety. We were four men down now. None of them were going to die except maybe Longworth, but I was certain that he would find a way to survive that one.
"And Payat…"
"Yes?"
"Stay down there, prepare Rally Point Golf for our arrival, make sure the wounded can be moved."
"Yessir."
I watched him run back with Snark slung over his shoulders and then directed my eyes to the little piece of hell commonly known as Sledgehammer. I had never gotten to use one in my life. I had only seen one twice during my service and both those times Snark had gotten the privilege of unleashing its destructive power.
There were still rounds in the magazine as well as a couple of almost full boxes. If every round hit the ground then the explosion would be big enough that a grenade would seem like a child's device put next to it.
"Dibs," Andy said quickly.
"Andrea, did you for a moment think that that was going to work?"
"Not even remotely, sir," she said, letting out a small sigh of disappointment.
I put my rifle behind my back, letting it attach itself to the magnetic clamps on the back of my vest. The Sledgehammer was soon in my hands and I immediately propped it up on the rubble. I recalled an impromptu lecture that I received nine years ago in Lambari. It had happened an hour before Scarecrow had been killed, but it was not as fresh in my mind. The Sledgehammer would fire a relatively light round at over two kilometers per second, but from what I had seen off this rifle, it fired faster than that.
I knew that it probably had a knob that lowered the muzzle velocity, but I didn't really care about that right now. The more kinetic energy the projectile carried the bigger the explosion that ensued.
"What do you want to hit first?" Schitzo asked me.
It wasn't really a hard question. The biggest targets would be the first ones to go. All of the Wraiths had been rendered useless and now the only vehicles left were either Ghosts or Banshees. And the four Shadow troop transports moving fast towards us. I looked through the scope and as soon as I got one in my crosshairs I squeezed the trigger.
One of the first things that they teach you when shooting a gun is how to keep your eyes open while you're doing it. My uncle taught me to do it when I was twelve and I had been able to fire an entire magazine without blinking before I even left for bootcamp in Mars. I had fired all kinds of weapons under all kinds of situations without blinking. Anything from M6 pistols to SRS-99 rifles were easy to handle. Sure, sometimes the noise was hard on your ears and the recoil rattled your arms, but blinking because of the noise and recoil itself was something that no veteran soldier ever did.
I blinked when I fired the Sledgehammer.
The recoil was horrible. I could only imagine how a small and slim man like Snark could've handled that much recoil once, let alone over a dozen times. I was too shocked by the weapon to analyze the damage done to the Shadow. I quickly regained my senses, though, and looked for the Shadow. It took me another second to realize that there wasn't a Shadow. It had been destroyed and torn apart by the blast. A few of the occupants had left limbs behind, but the round had done exactly what it advertised.
"Fuck yeah!" I exclaimed without even wanting to.
The second shot was dedicated to another Shadow. This one met a very similar end to the first one, only that the rear section was tossed in the air several meters before it came crashing back down. The two remaining transports turned around in an attempt to avoid certain death. I instead switched to considerably softer targets. A large enemy force like the one we faced was bound to have several chieftains leading it, and most of those were carrying gravity hammers.
Those things were almost as effective as free sex when it came to drawing the attention of Marines. I went for the nearest chieftain, managing not to blink when I fired. My eardrums were hurting even despite the high-tech noise blockers in my helmet. I think that the shockwave alone managed to travel through my helmet and into my ears. Well, back to the chieftain. As soon as the round hit it in the leg there was a massive spray of red blood and not a single piece of its body was to be seen after that. The railgun round went on to fly for a couple dozen meters before it hit the ground and detonated its explosive charge, sending jackals flying everywhere.
I felt incredibly overpowered with the Sledgehammer in hand. There was a slight problem with that. The railgun was best used on Locusts, Daemons, and Wraiths. Every now and then you could use it to take out a Scarab or even Banshees. Every round I fired resulted in one or more kills, but it was like using landmines to kill the squirrels infesting your backyard. Only the squirrels were gigantic and trying to kill you and there were thousands of them.
Well, it's a bad metaphor, I know. The point is that the rounds were being wasted on soft targets.
I looked through the scope for a few seconds and only spotted a few Ghosts flying at us. If we were going to fall back this was probably the best time.
"Tanks up front!" I ordered. "Warthogs too!"
Our two Scorpions rolled forward and were almost immediately peppered with small arms fire. Our two Warthogs took more care, maneuvering into defensive positions before the driver jumped into the gunner's position. Payat handled the rocket 'Hog while a soldier got behind the machine gun on the other Warthog. Those four vehicles could plug the two main gaps in the wall well enough by themselves, but not for long.
"Start falling back," I ordered. "Keep your heads down!"
Both my men and the Army men were well trained. The wounded were sent back first, quickly followed by those without any specialized weaponry. I sent those with long range weapons after them, leaving only the machine gunners and a couple of other guys. I had a handheld weapon with more destructive capabilities than both of the Scorpions put together and so remained behind with Pavel, Ramirez, and Dotsenko. The three of them moved out of the security booth and took cover in the pile of rubble with me.
"We've got center sector," Pavel said. "Don't stop firing."
Traditionally the squad gunner was supposed to expend a greater amount of bullets than the rest of the squad. That didn't mean that they didn't have to conserve ammunition. It was frustrating when you were told to stop firing when your only job was to keep firing. The gunners were always ecstatic when they got a free rein. Both Ramirez and Dotsenko enjoyed the order and even Pavel got a small smile on his face.
I put the Sledgehammer to the side and began firing with my battle rifle instead. The brutes no longer exploded when I hit them, but I made sure that every shot went to the face or neck, where their power armor didn't protect them. Sometimes I came across one with shielding and tagged it for the machine gunners. I felt powerful, I was still moving and thinking faster than I had ever been able to. This time it didn't seem like my advantage go away after the danger passed.
"Start moving back," I ordered my men. "Get in Payat's 'Hog."
Ramirez and Dotsenko slowly crawled backwards before they began running towards the Warthog. That left only Pavel and myself as infantry soldiers. It felt familiar.
"Remember when every mission was like this?" I asked him.
He scoffed. "How could I forget? I had to pull your ass out of the fire more than a few times."
"I think that it goes both ways," I told him.
"You were always doing crazy shit," he insisted. "Jumping through the rooftops, sneaking up on elites…"
"You're one to talk," I shot back. "Clearing houses by yourself with a shotgun in one hand and a machine gun in the other."
"It's almost as if we didn't care back then."
I nodded in agreement, shooting a grunt through the gas mask. "Maybe we didn't."
One of our two Scorpions blew up, its turret flying dozens of feet up in the air. A second later the Scorpion that Crow was in was also hit by plasma bombs. The massive tank rocked backwards before it came back down. I saw four Seraphs responsible scream past overhead and prepare for another pass.
"Flatt, where the hell's our air support?" I asked. "Pavel, get Crow out of there!"
Pavel picked up his M247L and began sprinting towards Crow's smoking tank. I secured my BR55 and grabbed the Sledgehammer, heaving it over one shoulder. Flatt replied, but there was too much static to make any sense of her words.
"I didn't catch that," I said drily, sprinting towards the last remaining Warthog, where the gunner was doing his best to spend every single round of ammunition.
"Our air support got pulled," Captain Flatt shouted. "They're coming through the walls. Captain Nezarian is leading what we have left to the landing pads. Our second line was overrun!"
If their second line had been overrun it meant that we couldn't stay on Rally Point Golf or we'd be surrounded. Flatt was basically telling me that we had lost the battle for the base.
"We've got Daemons!" the gunner shouted.
Almost immediately one plasma shell flew through the front section of the Warthog, going in one side and coming out the other without actually hitting anything. I was almost atomized by the shell in question, only missing it by a couple of inches. I shook my head in an attempt to get over the incredibly amount of luck that I had just experienced and climbed in the driver's seat after throwing the Sledgehammer in.
"Frank!" Pavel shouted.
I floored the accelerator while spinning the wheel, nearly tipping the Warthog sideways. I drove towards Pavel and Crow, whipping the Warthog sideways to stop in time. Pavel threw himself to the back alongside with Crow. They landed face first next to the gunner's feet.
"Go!"
A second Daemon shot exploded a few meters behind us. The shockwave lifted the rear end of our Warthog slightly, but it didn't do any damage. I started driving away as fast as the 'Hog would allow me to, following closely behind Payat and his own vehicle. I moved out of the way and let Dotsenko fire the rest of the rockets on the turret while also giving Ramirez an angle to use his SAW. Pavel spun to his back and began firing alongside our gunner, hitting those brutes and jackals coming over the pile of rubble.
"Caboose, we're falling back to the landing pads!" I ordered. "Golf is a no-go. Golf is a no-go, do you copy?"
"Loud and clear, sir. We're falling back."
"Frank, you can drop me off near the motor pool," Pavel shouted. "We could use a tank."
I began turning, but a Phantom dropship began strafing us. I braked and let it pass in front of us before turning towards the motor pool, forcing the Phantom to turn with us, exposing its rear thrusters to Dotsenko. Several rockets hit the Phantom as it got a bearing on us, throwing its aim off and damaging one of the engines enough that the dropship wobbled as it flew. I sped up as much as possible while weaving side to side in an attempt to avoid being hit. The plasma bolts landed all around, sometimes even nicking the armored plating on the Warthog.
"Left!" Pavel shouted.
"Hold on!"
I hit the emergency brake and turned left as fast as possible, sending the Warthog into a drift. I could hear the gunner cursing as he struggled to both hold on and get a bead on the Phantom. The enemy drop ship couldn't stop as fast as we could and had to circle around while I floored it again and entered the motor pool. There were several Warthogs without any weaponry as well as Mongooses that nobody really wanted to use. I could see about two dozen Scorpion tanks some two hundred meters away, neatly parked side to side.
Unfortunately, I could also see the four Seraphs that had wrecked our Scorpions. I cursed as I saw them begin a strafing run. They couldn't have asked for more perfect targets. The Scorpions were immobile, close to one another, and completely useless. They fired their regular plasma cannons, they dropped bombs, and they even used their torpedoes. The ground in front of me lit up in blue and red as plasma and fuel exploded. Scorpion after Scorpion was destroyed before we even got to their position. I was forced to take another sharp turn in order to avoid being hit in the strafing run.
"God damn!" Pavel cursed.
"Caboose, what's your status?"
"We're loading up on Armadillos," he replied. "Attach them to the Pelicans."
"How far are you from the pads?"
"About one minute," he said. "We've got about a million Banshees up here!"
"Don't try to save rockets for later," I said. "We're catching up."
Six or so rockets flew right in front of me and proceeded to detonate against the Phantom's hull. The chasing drop ship came down hard, digging a furrow into the ground. I looked to my left to see Dotsenko cheering from the other Warthog. I felt like cheering myself. We drove through building after building. Some of them were only barracks, some others were classrooms, some were nurse stations, some were bathrooms, and some were chow halls. Mendez was truly a massive base. Its size bought us time when it came to the enemy infantry chasing us, but the Ghosts appeared eager to catch up.
Dotsenko and my gunner discouraged them with rockets and bursts of armor piercing ammunition, but the brutes driving them were bloodthirsty and pissed. They had just lost a couple thousand of their own soldiers against a small unit consisting of about a hundred and fifty men. Sure, we had tanks, landmines, artillery, and limited air support, but it must've still hurt them.
"There's the landing pads," I warned. "Looks like some Pelicans are already leaving."
"I'm going to need a hand here," Pavel told the gunner. "My man's unconscious."
"Yes, sir," the gunner said.
Before we got to the landing pads five more Pelicans took off, all of them laden with troops and Armadillos in the rear. The Pelicans couldn't fly very fast with so much cargo, but the enemy Seraphs would be discouraged by our only remaining Scythe AA cannon.
I see you, sir," Caboose said. "We're taking off."
"Don't let me stop you," I replied, heading towards one of the last remaining Pelicans. "Payat, follow me!"
"Yes, sir."
I drove through the open ground, fearing that a stray needle or something similar would end my life or one of my men's. The second-to-last Pelican took off with the last of my men.
"Hurry up!" Marina's voice flooded my helmet. "I'm sick of waiting!"
Of course it was Marina.
"Get the clamps ready!" I told her. "I've got seven men and a Warthog."
"Ready!"
I stopped the Warthog just close enough and climbed down. Pavel and the gunner were already dragging the unconscious and badly burnt Crow into the Pelicans' blood tray even as Payat stopped his own Warthog and jumped off. I turned around to see half a dozen Ghosts appear on the edge of the landing area and urged my men to hurry. A few stray bolts of plasma hit the back of the Pelican, but I was already inside and taking off.
From the air I could see the enemy infantry firing up at us, trying to get revenge for all the losses they had suffered.
"We're razing Mendez Joint Base," Captain Flatt transmitted. "Are you clear?"
"Just about," I replied.
Only a minute later two ground-to-ground missiles landed in Mendez, detonating their highly-explosive thermobaric payload and burning to the ground what had once been humanity's largest military base. Secondary explosions rocked Mendez as the shockwave caught up to us. The size of the explosions was large enough to cause mushroom clouds even if the explosives weren't nuclear.
I turned around and wondered what we would do now that the fighting was moving to New Alexandria. If we were forced to fight in our own cities already then things weren't going well.
This chapter was proofread by GeneralTheDying Titan. That's right. For the first time since chapter 180 I got myself some proofreading. Let's hope that the quality of the chapter increases. It should've at least gotten rid of some spelling mistakes.
As you may or may not have noticed I did my best to make this chapter seem like a glorious gorefest of conventional and not-so-conventional weaponry. Our heroes had a ridiculous amount of firepower at their disposal, so don't let their victory fool you. Sometimes you may have ten tanks working with you against an enemy platoon and other times you have one gun to work with against an enemy battalion. Frank and company got relatively lucky this time and they had nearly half their unit wounded and put out of commission for a while. Just imagine what's going to happen next.
Let's recapitulate: our favorite nutjob had to abandon a strategically important military base full of materiel because of non-specified reasons. His air support got pulled back and the UNSC decided that it was easier to torch the place than keep it in working order. Why? Well, because somebody else fucked up on another end and ruined Frank's valiant efforts to defend the city of New Alexandria from the covvies. Or maybe the invasion force was simply too much even when everybody was giving it their best.
You remember those Spartans I introduced a while back? Yeah? Well, Team Falcata will have some screen time in the chapters to come. For that matter so will Noble Team. You didn't think I'd go through Reach without coming across those guys, did you? Reach is where it all began. Literally, everybody was in Reach when shit went down. All the Spartans still alive except for a few of the guys in Gamma Company were there. Johnson, Silva, Stacker, Jenkins, Mendoza, Locklear, McKay, and of course, Master Chief.
I can't promise you that everybody will show up, but I can promise you that a lot of guys will. Let me know what you thought about this wondrous chapter.
Stay strong.
-casquis