The Life

by casquis

The Great War was a long one, millions made it, more didn't. Frank is an ODST, a human just like us, that has managed to survive the most grueling battles for years. With so much experience under his belt he has some amazing stories to tell. This are the life stories of an immature, not-all-in-there, and talented Marine just living, fighting, and being plain badass during the war.

211. Punching in the Gut

Chapter CCXI: Punching in the Gut

August 28, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/two days later

Esztergom, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

---

"We were crippled and our backs broken, but we punched the Covenant in the jaw and by God did we knock them down."

---

Painkillers were good. They were very good. They were good enough that you would stop feeling all pain even if your intestines were falling out and you were doing your best to push them back in. I had had so many painkillers over the course of my career that my body had developed partial immunity to them. The last two doctors had told me that a set of new kidneys would do me a world of good in the few days to come. Well, the point I'm getting at is that despite the massive amount of drugs they were streaming into my system, my body could still register pain in my chest, my back, and my head.

I couldn't really walk in a straight line and would sometimes start giggling at nothing in particular. It was just like sophomore year of high school all over again. I tried to clear my mind, focusing on one point in particular while I did my best to get Grass' voice to form coherent sentences. I kept frowning in an attempt to focus, but I hadn't had a single sober thought since the moment I went under in that shitty house. The drugs were beginning to wear off now, my lung had been treated as soon as I arrived into a decent hospital, the infection had been eradicated, and biofoam had begun patching everything up.

I was only thankful that I hadn't been awake for when they yanked that piece of metal from my chest.

How the fuck am I alive?

The light was beginning to look like actual light and not like some wonky rainbow shit. I rubbed my eyes and saw the walls become smooth as the last of the painkillers wore off. My chest had been hurting for a while now, but my brain hadn't cleared up completely until just now. It felt good to be able to think clearly. Alcohol I could manage, pain I could live with, but this painkiller shit was bullshit. I got up from my bed. My bandages had been constantly changed after I got here, but now I was left with some weird elastic fabric that molded itself to the shape of my body. There was only a small drop of blood in the front and presumably a similar mark in the back.

More scars. At one point they would've made interesting stories, now they were just painful memories.

"Castillo."

"I'm up," I said. "Considerably less out if it too."

"Good," Captain Flatt said. "Come with me."

I sighed as I got up from my bed and reached for my shirt. I had been sleeping and living in the same fatigues and underwear for the last two days. Grass had been able to get me a new undersuit and replace the parts of my armor that had been pierced by the rebar. Unfortunately, the undersuit was the version that they gave to Army Airborne or Rangers, olive green. I was going to look like a fucking clown.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Is my team alright?"

"They're fine," she said. "It's not about them."

I rolled my eyes as I followed her out of my room. If she didn't want to tell me then she wouldn't. Captain Flatt was a spook through and through. Secretive and annoying is what she was, but she was better than most spooks. She could hold herself in a fight and had put her neck on the line for AAG-7 and me more than a few times.

Our current headquarters consisted of the largest subway station in Esztergom and a small college campus next to it. The city was still embroiled in battle, but the campus and our station was as close as we had to safety. From what I had gathered in my drug-induced daze, there were still several other UNSC strongholds in the city, but the Covenant had managed to bring in more ships through our fleet, bolstering their numbers and turning the tables on us. The majority of the civilians had been butchered in the first day of battle, yesterday had been brutal, with over a third of a million casualties, today wasn't shaping up to be best of days either, with most of our air assets reduced to wrecks and our armored quickly being ground down to join them in oblivion. Not to say that the Covenant was faring any better, but now they had the ironic advantage of a halfway decent supply chain while we now didn't have any resources to spare anywhere in the planet.

Fucking hell, this was the planet where all of our military might resided and we were running out of troops. They were killing us too fast.

Seven hundred and fifty thousand casualties, most of those KIAs. Fucking hell. It had only been one fucking day for that many people to die and this shit was only halfway over.

Flatt wordlessly led me through the subway station and up the surface, where the sounds of war once again flooded my ears. I felt naked with only a shirt and fatigues, but some of the wounded were lying out in the open, exposed to the elements and unprotected from any shrapnel.

"Where are we going?" I finally asked.

"The war room," she replied after a pause. "Colonel Holland's in there."

"What does SPECWAR want to do with me?" I asked. "Isn't that Nezarian's department?"

"It very much would be," Captain Flatt admitted. She paused. "Captain Nezarian and what remained of AAG-29 were killed in action twenty minutes ago. Their Pelican was shot down en-route to a mission."

"En-route?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Shit."

Getting killed on a way to a mission was as bad as it got in combat. You never got to accomplish your objective, whichever it may be, and you usually realized that you were going to die when the Pelican hit the ground.

"Shit," Flatt echoed.

"What was their mission?"

"Take down an AA emplacement," she said. "It was highly critical, they had to enlist a group of Spartan-IIIs for the job."

"Why didn't they send them in the first place?"

"They were defending around two thousand civilians from a Covenant division."

I looked up and closed my eyes. Those people were all dead now.

"Where do I come into play here?"

"You'll see," she said. "Let's go."

I walked inside the college halls, covered with dust and blood. Flatt led me the rest of the way in silence until we entered a lecture hall. The holographic displays could be made to show military maps and data easily enough, and there was enough space in the middle for an actual holotable and for a few field grade officers to talk about sending men to their deaths.

"Captain," an Army colonel nodded in our direction. He was Holland, I knew him by reputation, but I had never met the man.

"Colonel," she said with a small dip of the head. She also acknowledged to other officers, one of them a Marine colonel that looked like he had seen one too many deaths and an Army brigadier general.

"Sirs," I added, snapping a quick salute as I walked.

"General, this is Lieutenant Castillo," Holland said, pointing at me. "One of our best."

I tilted my head slightly at the compliment, as if trying for modesty.

"I've heard about you," the brigadier said. "All that's left of the infamous Asymmetrical Assault Group, eh?"

"It would appear so," I confirmed, clasping my hands behind my back. I was the tallest man in the room and these officers were starting to go into that age where looking physically imposing was harder.

"Ever heard of Sword Base?" Holland asked, circling the table.

"ONI research base, right?" I asked.

He nodded. "I'm surprised you know about it."

"I keep stumbling into crap I have no business being around, sir."

He chuckled. "Well, lucky you."

"What about Sword Base, sir?"

"I'll get to it," Holland said, motioning towards the Marine officer of the same rank.

"Son, we've got more than enough trouble on our hands," he began, "of particular interest to us is the presence of an Elite field commander. Goes by the name of Shin'jee or some such bullshit. It's not of consequence, but the elite's face popped up in our recognition software, he's been fighting with the Covenant Army since New Constantinople."

I whistled.

"He was one of the top leaders during the Siege of Paris IV. An excellent tactician and talented leader," the man went on. "He leads from the front and tends to leave corpses behind him."

"And you want me to kill it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Or do something involving this Sword Base?" I asked Holland.

"Yes."

"Can I have any specifics as to what you want me to do in Sword?"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid you'll have to accept before I can reveal any details. If your team chooses not to we'll have a unit of ODSTs take your place."
I nodded thoughtfully. "I don't often get to pick."

"Well, today's the day," the brigadier said. "Sword or hingehead commander."

"I don't want to go blind," I said finally. "An assassination is always complicated business, but at least we're familiar with those."

"Very well then," the general said, uncrossing his arms.

The two colonels nodded, not showing any emotion.

"Well, if you'll excuse me," Holland said, moving to the exit.

"Sir, please give Noble my regards," I called out before he left.

"I'll be sure to do so," he assured me. "They like working with you."

"The feeling is mutual."

Holland nodded slowly and walked out of the lecture hall.

"To be honest, son," the marine colonel began, "I'm glad you chose to kill that hingehead fucker. The units under his direct command are wreaking havoc with our men. They're torching everything they go through, so they have nothing to fall back on. To them it's advance or die."

"Very fantasy-esque," I noted.

"Indeed it is," he agreed. "This fellow has the respect as well as the fear of his subordinates. It's painful to admit, but… my men can't handle him. They're steamrolling through."

I nodded understandingly. "Do you have reliable intel as to its position?"

"Yes," he said. "Captain?"

Flatt nodded and moved to the table. "This particular elite is a blood knight. He's headstrong, stubborn, and will always be in the thick of it. Like most of its kind, it is a skilled fighter, unlike most of them, it can appropriately choose as to whether its own life is more important than killing a couple of humans. It moves around, there are around six ultras that follow it, much like bodyguards."

"So we're dealing with a chieftain?" I scoffed. "Only it's an elite."

"More or less," Flatt said.

"Terrible combination," I grunted.

"And now we want you to off him," the general said. "This is how it'll work. That elite is spearheading the Covenant advance. We'll put all that's left of our artillery to put a dent in their line and send in a battalion to make a lot of noise."

"Do these men know what they're getting into?"

The general scoffed.

"No," the colonel said.

I sighed.

"I've lost a hundred thousand men today," the general told me matter-of-factly, "What's a thousand more?"

"Will it be worth it?" I asked.

"It has to be," the colonel said.

"I'll do it."

"Good," Flatt chimed in. "Suffice to say, don't get too involved in the physicality of it, you're still healing."

"I'll stay out of trouble," I assured her. "I promise. Sirs."

"Dismissed, lieutenant."

I walked out, side by side with Captain Flatt.

"Ma'am, I'm not sure I'm ready for combat," I told her once we had exited the room.

"I'm not either," she agreed, "but we need this. Worst-case scenario, you hang back, do a sniper job or let your men do it. They're competent enough."

"That they are," I agreed. "When will they be here?"

"Should be two or three hours," she replied. "Get some rest, I'll get you some accelerated healers, try and prevent your lung from being ripped open again."

I made a grimace. Those things burned like shit and didn't mix well with painkillers. "Right."

"Such is life, huh?"

"And life's a bitch."

---

My chest burned like hell. The pain wouldn't go away, but it was manageable and I could walk a ten-meter stretch before having to stop and press my hands against my chest. An hour and a half ago it had been bad, but it was getting better gradually. I'd have to get myself scanned a day or two from now to confirm that the accelerated healers hadn't caused any tumor-like growths in my lungs. According to the study made it only happened once in every million or so cases, but I didn't want to die a month from now because my lung was more tumor than lung.

"Can you reestablish contact?" I asked Captain Flatt.

"No, Frank."

I growled lowly. "It's been four hours. My pain has almost worn out."

"Are you complaining?"

"I'm complaining about not knowing where my men are," I told her. "How are we on those drones?"

"They're up, but they're taking other aerial pictures on their way there," she said, sliding her chair over to a different screen.

"No live-video?"

"We're working on it, but we can only send data in short bursts, the enemy jammers are killing our logistics."

"How are our jammers doing?"

"A little bit better, I'd say," she replied. "We still haven't managed to isolate the frequency where the Covenant jammer is working."

"Do those things work in frequencies?" I asked.

She turned to look at me and raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want me to explain that to you?"

I shook my head.

"How's the new armor treating you?" she asked, changing the topic.

I lifted my arms slightly and looked down. Most of the torso was new except for the abdomen belt. The vest had been replaced by one fresh out of the factory. It was supposed to be slightly more heat resistant than the past versions in account of a different formula. It was certainly lighter. The chest piece was what it usually was, a highly resistant piece of titanium that would stop just about anything under a sniper rifle and dissipate heat well enough that you could take one or two plasma shots to the chest under most circumstances.

"It's alright," I said. "I don't like the green undersuit though."

"You'll live," she assured me, returning to her monitors. "Wait, I'm getting something on radar. Right where Marina set down."

"Did they take out the SAMs?" I asked, leaning close behind to look at the radar screen.

"Not that I could tell, no," she replied.

I peered closer and for some reason I placed my hand on Flatt's shoulder.

She cleared her throat.

"Sorry," I apologized. "I swear I'm not trying to intentionally create some sexual tension."

"I can't blame you for wanting some of this, but it's never going to happen."

I paused and turned to look at her. "Did you just make a joke?"

"There!" she pointed at the screen. "That's certainly a Pelican."

"Can you get through to it?" I asked. "Can you identify it?"

"Not right now."

"Fuck, get them some air support!" I shouted, a little bit louder. "What can we do?"

Captain Flatt sighed and leaned back. "Nothing."

I stood back and crossed my arms, watching the stupid bleep move closer and closer in an incredibly confusing pattern. The Pelican was under fire, but I couldn't tell whether it was Marina piloting the ship, judging a flying style from a vague dot was not an easy task.

"They're getting closer."

I tilted my head above the tarps closing off Flatt's little office. The university's open areas had been cleared for landing pads, with the trees cut down and turned into spikes to surround the perimeter. Sketchy at best, but better than nothing. Marina's Pelican was supposed to land here, at least this is where she had taken off from. She had been recruited into becoming our personal pilot. Not that she minded, she knew we were the best and that way she was part of the more crucial missions.

"Yeah, the Pelican's headed here!" Flatt called out as I left the little office.

I ran through the grass and stood in the middle, looking up. The sound of the Pelican's engines soon reached my ears and the tip of one appeared soon after. I walked backwards as Marina's Pelican deployed its wheels and slowly hovered down. I moved towards the back of the craft and raised an eyebrow when I saw that the rear hatch was closed.

"Open up!" I shouted, banging on the side.

Pavel was the first one to hop out, behind him came another 11 of my men.

"Where's Tank?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," Pavel sighed. "He didn't make it."

"Shit," I grunted. "Alright, we're back in action. Get some stims and power bars, we've got another mission."

"You coming?" my friend asked me as the rest of my men tiredly moved towards the ammunition boxes.

"Yeah," I told him. "I'll hang back."

"Ok. About Tank…"

"We can be sad later," I told him. "Right now we're getting some indirect revenge."

He nodded and joined the rest of AAG-7 in stocking up with ammunition.

I looked inside the Pelican. Tank's body wasn't there. It must've been impossible to recover the body if Pavel hadn't brought him back. I shook my head sadly and climbed on board the Pelican, moving towards the cockpit. Marina turned to look at me and smiled weakly. She had been through hell and back with me more times than I could count and still she would volunteer for missions like this. She was the best there was.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Good," I replied. "I'm no longer seeing double, so there's that…"

She nodded slowly. "Frank, I heard that some of the evacuation ships were hit in high orbit."

"I heard that too," I admitted. "If it's true then it's not likely any of the first ones out were destroyed."

"Are you sure that Katie, Liz, Amber, and Lav were all in the first ones?" Marina asked me.

"Yes," I said, my tone gaining a little bit of an edge.

"Alright," she said. "What is this mission going to be?"

"Assassination," I told her. "We'll pound a section of their advance with artillery, rush through it with armored protection and then wait for the glorious leader of the enemy to show up, hit him where it hurts the most."

"In the balls?" Marina asked.

"Nah, Snark will probably be the one to get the kill, so between the eyes."

"Don't they teach you to go for the base of the neck in sniper school?" she asked me.

"They do," I confirmed. I had gone through sniper school during my AAG training along with the marksmen in my team. "But Snark's good enough that he can't be bothered with silly matters such as that. You know how in the movies they'll say something like if he wanted to kill him he wouldn't have missed?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that applies to Snark," I told her. "You should really see him in action sometime. It's almost a thing of beauty."

"I've seen him shooting more than a few times," Marina said. "Whenever I'm bailing his ass out of the fire."

I shook my head. "That's not true sniper work, but it's not important. Anyways, you'll be dropping us with the 3rd Viery Armored. They'll handle the rest."

"Do you need me on standby?" she asked.

"Yes, but you can return to base, get some food."

"What if something goes wrong?"

"Something always goes wrong," I told her. "And don't we figure it out?"

"There's several scars on you that would say otherwise," she told me. "But I'll trust you on this one."

"When have I let you down?" I asked her.

"In the bedroom," Marina let me know, her voice dead serious.

"To be fair, you tend to use some teeth."

"Out of my cockpit," she requested, a slight humor coloring her tone now.

"Ma'am," I said.

Pavel climbed into the Pelican, looking a bit more haggard than usual, but there was a certain decisiveness to him that I had seen before.

"Tank… How was it?" I asked softly.

"Quick," he replied. "Lady was throw to the ground by an explosion. Spike grenade. She tripped. It wasn't anything too big, we didn't expect anything bad to happen, but the moment Tank went back to help her up he was hit by a beam. Straight through the head."

"Damn."

He nodded. "Snark took out the sniper. A brute stalker. We would've dragged Tank back with us, but he was a large man and the sniper had other jackal marksmen supporting it. Snark couldn't cover them all, even with Longworth and Miri backing him up."

"Quick avenging," I said. "At least he got that."

"At least he did," Pavel agreed. "What is it exactly we're doing?"

I looked behind him to see what was left of AAG-7 begin climbing into the back of the Pelican and seat in their usual chairs.

"Sit down, I'll explain on the way."

---

The sound of rumbling Tortoise IFVs and Scorpion tanks flooded my ears. We were finally beginning to move. After several hours of no activity, I had almost begun to think that the mission would be called off. Our artillery units had to keep pushing back as they had no reliable aerial reconnaissance and any spotter sent forward was practically guaranteed to get a spike through the shoulder blades for their effort. We had been waiting alongside the 3rd for a while now.

"Get ready boys!" Major Bans, the man in charge of the platoon that we would be working with, shouted. "Lieutenant, are your men ready?"

"Ready, ready," I replied, jerking my head for Pavel to give the word.

There were 13 of us left, so we'd have to split our squad. I moved into the Tortoise, letting my men climb inside the cramped infantry fighting vehicle before I climbed in myself. There was webbing on the walls and ceiling, but the most striking aspect of it all was the ungodly amount of blood covering the insides. The driver had told me that the contingent sitting in the back had been pummeled with plasma cannon fire just as they tried to leave. Someone had screwed up and allowed an enemy unit to remain alive and attack from the rear. No survivors out of the ten men.

The driver himself had been the one that took out the cannon. A set of shots from the autocannon installed on top of the Tortoise and the grunts had been finished. Lot of good that did to the men in the back.

"Easy with the rifle," Crow muttered to Snark.

"How about you close your legs so there's enough space, eh?" Snark replied, a bit harshly.

"Move your rifle," I told Snark. "There's plenty of room for all of us."

That was a bit of a stretch. Infantry fighting vehicles like the Tortoise and the Armadillo could fit ten people as well as two wounded in a bunk bed-style hammock that went in the middle, but even with only six people inside it felt crowded and tight. Lady was the smallest of us all, but the rest of the guys were all fairly muscular and had broad shoulders. Sometimes, whenever I caught Snark shirtless, I couldn't help but be surprised at just how strong he looked. With all of us in armor he looked small and even a little bit wiry, but the man could bench 200 pounds no problem.

"How long's the ride?" Longworth asked. Another guy with broad shoulders to reduce space.

"As long as it has to be. Ideally we wouldn't have to get out at any point, our offensive would steamroll through the Covenant and we'd win the battle here and now. Unfortunately, the Outer Ring Road is now something comparable to a wall, so we'll probably have to stop before there," I said. "It should be around an hour before we dismount."

"Who'll be in charge of the machine gun?" Crow asked. He was the only one with his visor polarized, his face was still an ugly mess to look at.

"Serge," I said, pointing to the man. He was the only one that was built like the traditional special forces operator. His chest was big and so were his shoulders, but instead of being something you'd expect from a Greek statue or an underwear model it was simply big enough that he wouldn't encounter too much resistance in strength-related matters. A true pragmatist. Caboose had a similar body type as Serge. They were the two true professionals in this unit. I will admit that I put an additional hour or two in the gym just so that my body would look exactly as I wanted to.

Why be able to bench 300 in reps (I could actually do five reps of somewhere in the vicinity of 900 pounds, but that was something that I couldn't just go and show off in front of everybody, especially with my body, which was most decidedly not the one of a world-class powerlifter), when you could bench 300 in reps and have the body that teenage girls touched themselves to. There's a difference, you know.

"Pavel, you good?"

"Yeah," he said. "A bit crowded."

"It's always crowded in IFVs," I told him. "All right, we're green!" I shouted to the driver.

"Copy that, El-tee!" he called back over the engine's rumbling. "Major, we're good!"

"Forward!" I heard through the radio.

"Grass, do you copy?" I asked her. She had remained back in the university, having done a couple of ops with us.

"Loud and clear, Frank."

"We're beginning."

"I know," she said. "Artillery strike is on the way."

"Let the hell come, eh?"

The Tortoise was equipped with an old holographic projector that allowed us to see an accurate depiction of what was going on outside of us. The projector used real time data as well as satellite imagery to recreate a picture of the IFVs and tanks steamrolling through the debris-covered streets. It looked a little bit like a movie, and it was intentional too. The soldiers inside got pumped when they saw shit like this.

How couldn't they? Fifty-plus fighting vehicles were moving forward with tanks supporting them while explosive shells rained from above. Whenever a shell caught an enemy unit the hologram would zoom in on that. You could tell that it wasn't completely from a camera, but it did the job for me. Seeing brutes shredded always got me going.

"Sometimes I think God is on our side," Snark noted.

"God is most definitely not with us," Crow replied. "If there even is a God then He is sitting up there in His heaven, watching our little show."

"He's sitting in Heaven because he's afraid of our superior firepower," I said, offering a high-five to Serge, who took it without hesitation. Must've been a good joke.

"Oorah!" the driver shouted from his seat.

The Tortoise rumbled as the autocannon began firing. The vehicle was armed with a powerful 40mm autocannon that could punch through hunter's shields and even take out Wraiths with enough concentrated fire. The coaxial machine guns were excellent for cutting down infantry and punching through buildings. As if that wasn't enough, there was a separate machine gun that could be manned by one of the passengers, an M247H Heavy Machine Gun chambered in 12.7mm. That caliber was strong enough to deter hunters and Ghosts from trying to attack you and Serge knew how to handle it just fine.

"Let us know if you need the assist," I told the driver.

"So far, so good," he shouted back. "I'll let you know!"

The battle became almost hypnotic. We would plow through the weakened defenses of the Covenant, wipe them all out with coordinated fire from the multiple Tortoises and then wait for the tanks to move forward, using their main guns to open up holes in the following line. Then more hell would rain from above in the form of pinpoint accurate artillery. Rinse and repeat.

An hour in, things started bogging down. We had been continually hit from all sides. You could tell the difference between directed energy weapons like plasma rifles and repeaters or the relatively conventional ones that fired solid ammunitions by the sound that they made when hitting the hull, but soon the noise became close to unbearable. Dull thuds from spikes that embedded themselves in the armor were joined by the magnified hissing of plasma and the shattering of needles were all that we could hear.

"They are beginning to send some offensive strikes," the driver let me know. "Any time now, El-tee."

"We're ready," I said. "Grass?"

"We're sending out a small fleet of drones, Frank," she said. "You can't fail here. We're pouring a lot of assets into this one."

"When have I failed, eh?" I asked.

Silence on the other end of the line.

I went serious. "I won't fail on this one, we'll draw the fucker out and Snark will lop its head clean off."

"I trust you, Frank. Over and out."

Damn.

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, why are they sending your unit for something like this? Couldn't a regular sniper team handle this mission?" the driver asked.

"Maybe," I said. "But this point of the advance is the one that went the deepest. You know why?"

"No, sir."

"Because they grouped the best drivers and tankers all together, then they fired the most shells in front of us and provided us with the most assistance. Again, why? Well, just so that my men and me could get as close to the enemy as possible. Once here we'll make a lot of noise."

"More than a group of fifty Tortoises?" the pilot asked.

"We're good at what we do," Longworth told him. "Our target won't be able to resist us."

"At least, that's what our xeno-psychologists say," Snark jumped in.

"If you say so, sir," the driver replied, sounding a bit strained.

"You good?"

"Things are getting a bit hot," he admitted. "I could do with some air support."

"What you have is what you get," I told him. "You know the plan, right?"

"Your sniper stays here, and I let him do his- holy fuck!"

Our Tortoise was rocked violently and the interior temperature increased dramatically. We started moving a little bit more slowly and the pilot began shouting for help to the other tanks and IFVs.

"Right flank, right flank. I need someone up there!"

Serge was on it in a flash. He popped the hatch open and within an instant empty shell casings were falling at our feet. Serge shook violently from the recoil, but his helmet camera showed him hitting the side of a long building, turning the façade into dust and splattering blood on the walls behind the windows.

"Ready," I told the rest of my guys.

Lady nodded and shuffled towards the door.

"Pavel?"

"We're good," he said. "You?"

"We were hit, but we're still mobile and functional."

"Good," he replied. "Things are about to get heavy. We get one last little nudge."

"Rocket artillery, right?" Pavel asked.

"Yes," I agreed. "Old-fashioned missiles. Guided, small, accurate, but a bit easier to kill than a hunk of depleted uranium."

"Can we expect them to be effective?" he asked.

"Pavel, we'll be deploying everything for this. They'll be hard pressed to stop even half of them."

"Let's do this shit," he growled. "Give me the word."

"A little bit longer."

Four minutes and the Daemon tanks began pouring in. Two of our Scorpions were blown up in the initial barrage, but we still had the advantage in numbers. The other sections of the counter offensive on either side of us were prepared to begin closing in pincer style, cutting off a large section of the Covenant's forces from the main body of their army. They would do that even if it involved sacrificing a third of their troops.

"It's a mess out there, sir," the Tortoise driver said. "I wouldn't go out there even if they paid me to."

"Well son, I do get paid to do just that," I let him know.

"Ready," Lady told me.

I nodded slowly and looked at my men. They all nodded back. Tank had been killed just a few hours ago and we wouldn't let an affront like that go unpunished. Blood would flow.

"Frank?" Pavel's voice came in.

"Go!"

The hatch opened to reveal an incredible amount of noise that only a large-scale battle could replicate. I knew that several companies would be dismounting along with us. Flatt and Grass had coordinated with Army Aviation to deploy a battalion's worth of heavy infantry. It wasn't very often that you got to see them in action, they were a bit outdated and expensive, but the guys in the heavy infantry were fun to watch in a fight. They all carried modified rifles designed to fire faster and their armor was almost as good as an ODSTs. Not only that, but they had the old fashioned wheel-barrel cannons. Those things were basically a small tank tread with an anti-armor autocannon mounted on top.

I was concerned for their wellbeing, seeing as heavy infantry was typically deployed alongside regular infantry battalions and tank battalions. I'm not really sure who had decided to bring back heavy infantry in the medieval sense of the word, but the guy had certainly had a penchant for awesome.

"I've got Shortswords headed your way," Grass said. "Air Force pulled two squadrons of Gryphons and a few SkyHawks to help."

That was the moment that I realized that this wasn't just an assassination anymore. We had committed too many forces for this operation and it had now become the decisive battle for the city. We had overstepped a little bit, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Better to play this out on our terms.

The noise was the first thing my mind registered, but as soon as I turned the corner of the IFV and came out facing the front I saw just what the scale of the battle was. Entire buildings and houses had been flattened down to form gigantic piles of rubble while the artillery corps had struggled to leave most of the main roads open. It was what you'd expect from a science fiction film about the end of the world. Well, the situation wasn't too far from that scenario, just switch the planet and we'd be right there.

"Enemy, dead ahead!" Longworth shouted.

"Move forward!" I screamed, my voice hoarse. I hated not being able to be in the front, but I'd have to trust my men on this one. A small mistake from me could cost us the advance and our momentum.

Longworth took point, Lady, Serge, Crow, and myself followed closely behind, with me hanging a little bit to the back. Pavel and the rest began moving from a different Tortoise. I could see at least twenty of the big vehicles moving forward slowly. All of them were scorched and damaged and all of them were letting troops out. Marines began moving forward with us, firing at the enemy defensive lines in front of us. Tracer rounds flew from the Tortoises and HEAT shells streaked from the Scorpions. I could hear the screaming of airplanes and the droning of gunships in the distance, but I didn't catch sight of any through all the smoke and dust.

Green artillery bolts slammed into the debris, raising mountains of rock and showering us with hot gravel. I ducked and flinched when I heard the sound of those coming at us, but in this visibility we didn't have any choice but to move forward. I could catch glimpses of the line of short buildings that the covvies were using as defensive positions. Those were just a few dozen meters from the Outer Ring Road. Those buildings would be perfect for Snark to set up. In the chaos of battle no one could see him without actively scanning the area where he was. The buildings on the outside edge of the road were all two or three stories tall, mostly residential. We could lure the target into Snark's range and get it done with.

"To the buildings," I said, broadcasting it over the main channel. "Direct fire to the top!"

Some of the Tortoises followed the order, but the rest were busy fighting back the Daemon tanks that were coming at us. I was almost thrown to the ground when a shell exploded a dozen meters from me. Longworth began moving towards our first rally point. A large bomb crater along the side of the street. There we would meet with Pavel and the rest of the team before spreading out, form a line and see if the armored support could give us an opening through to the buildings.

"We've got three Daemon tanks in front of us!" Pavel shouted.

"I'm hitting the first one," Bee called out. "Cover me!"

"Snark, Miri, you're on it," I ordered, frantically craning my neck to see which units were closest to us.

The two Tortoises that had dropped us off were hanging a bit back. In fact, the one with Snark still on it had moved back a hundred meters. The rest of the Tortoises were slowly moving forward, but they were having an incredibly hard time going against the Daemon tanks and the Wraiths. We had been plowing through the Covenant lines with help of our artillery strikes, but now we were meeting the meat grinder.

It was supposed to be the other way around.

"I've got Echo to the right," Pavel said. "They've got heavy weapons."

"Echo, Echo, this is AAG-7," I checked in. "We've got three Daemon tanks in our way."

"Understood, El-tee," the captain in charge of the company answered. "Redeploying."

The little tags marking the location of Echo Company started shuffling slowly towards us until they were less than sixty meters away. I couldn't help but wince every time one of the tags disappeared as they slowed their advance and exposed their flank to the enemy. Still, they managed to reach a small apartment building with three of its walls still standing and took position there.

"I got one down," Bee said. "Useless but not destroyed."

"Tag it," Echo requested. "We'll blow up the other two."

Echo was not strictly an anti-armored company, but they were part of the mechanized infantry, which meant that they could very well take out a small tank unit if they had to clear the way. The five platoons that made up Echo actually consisted of enough people to form three standard-sized platoons. It was hard to see units that had taken hard beatings like this, but my own team had gone through 35% casualties.

"When's our support coming in?" Pavel asked after a quick dash to cover.

"Final stretch," I said, running forward, hitting a trio of grunts trying to climb back over a mountain of debris. "We need them when it counts."

"It would count right about now, sir," Crow said.

He was right, it was a miracle that we hadn't been hit yet.

"We need to get over that pile," I said, pointing at a wall-like mount of debris. "Once we've got a few Tortoises on the other side we'll be able to hit the buildings better."

"Just a kilometer, eh?" Andrea asked.

"A bit more," I corrected.

"But who's counting?" Marv added.

The advanced slowed down, but we were still moving forward far faster than we should've in this situation. We had mechanized infantry on either of our flanks while the 3rd Viery Armored was literally sacrificing itself to get us to push forward. We were now less than 30 meters away from the Daemons, only safe because the artillery before had provided us with cover and concealment.

"Echo?" I asked.

Marines liked explosions almost as much as Army Engineers, but unlike the Engineering Corps, they tended to give little to no warning when blowing shit up. For example, if an engineer was going to blow up a bridge, he'd give a warning and countdown. If a Marine was going to blow up a bridge he would wait for his CO to ask what was taking so long and then answer by clicking the detonator. It wasn't nearly as dramatic when you saw the missiles streak through the air for a half a second before the actual explosion came, but it was pretty close.

"You might want to bail," I told the captain. "Made yourselves a pretty big target."

"We know the drill," he replied.

The little target indicators in my HUD started moving just as the plasma fire directed at the building they had been occupying intensified. Echo got some limited support from the unit adjacent to their right and Snark did his best, but the Tortoises were busy engaging a small fleet of Ghosts that was coming hard at them. They'd have to stop or stall them before they reached our position or we'd find ourselves in the middle of a vehicular melee.

"Shit, Banshees coming up!" Miri warned.

"They're headed towards Echo," I noted. "Bee, give them a hand."

"Reloading," he said. "I need a moment."

"Serge, Marv, Dotsenko, pepper them!"

The three guys opened up on the Banshees, but without tracer ammunition they had a hard time hitting them. Two of the Banshees broke off from the main formation and instead moved in our direction. They started strafing early, eager to get the kill, but Bee surprised them with two head-on missiles. The wrecked hunks of metal slammed into the ground and we were moving again. We had to get past the spot where the three Daemons had been left useless, but those things still had the plasma cannons on top as well as well as the infantry contingent supporting them. The unit on our left flank was beginning to engage in order to distract them and give us a window to hit fast and hard.

"Pavel, Dotsenko, set up top," I ordered. "Miri, with them. Split up, split up!"

We separated into three groups. Two fireteams of four and five men each and the three people on overwatch. The Daemon tanks were in an intersection. The side streets had been blocked with debris and a large portion of the avenue that led to them was covered, forming a funnel. Had we tried to blast our way through with Scorpions and Tortoises we would've met a very swift death.

"We're set," Pavel called out.

"Fire, fire!" I shouted. "Move!"

Longworth led the first fireteam and Marv the second one while I trudged behind. I snapped a couple of shots at jackal sharpshooters while my men drew the attention of the gunners on top of the Daemons. The elites manning the turrets were quickly hit with automatic fire from Pavel and Sasha. They started redirecting their fire only for Miranda to cap off one of them. The other two targeted them, but Longworth's squad had moved close and to their side, hitting the elite's unprotected shoulder and head. The third elite got smart and began firing quick bursts to keep us down, trying to buy an opportunity for the dwindling infantry with it to knock us out of the fight. It was a brave effort, but it only lasted for forty five seconds before Miranda drilled it through the neck.

"Snark, you got eyes on us?"

"Barely," he said. "It's an artillery shower out here, we can't move forward just yet," he said. "You move past that debris wall and I won't be able to see you."

I nodded understandingly. "Alright, wish us luck."

From here on out to the row of buildings that we wanted to reach was just five hundred meters of open ground away. It had once been several houses and small businesses, but they had been brought down to form a nearly uniform field of rocks and rubble. There were a few ups and downs here and there, but there would be no cover for the tanks or IFVs after that wall. Some of the vehicles of the 3rd had made it to the edge of the wall and were waiting for more units to reach that position before moving forward. We had closed in most of the distance to our target at the cost of 20% casualties.

"Frank," Grass checked in. "The Pelicans are on the way, you've got some serious firepower headed there for help. This better be worth it."

"Have you spotted the target yet?" I asked.

"Negative, Frank," she replied. "We'll give you the word."

"Ok then," I acknowledged. I turned to my men. "We've got reinforcements on the way, the Pelicans will use their Anvils on the enemy positions, they'll be our go signal."

My men nodded and I broadcast the new modified instructions to the rest of the units belonging to our spearhead. We had about three thousand men and women within a square kilometer of us, most of them to our direct left or right. Echo Company had withered down to almost nothing after the Banshee strafing runs and we now had 5th and 12th platoons covering our right flank. The surviving Tortoises were slowing for some last minute repairs, getting rid of any scrapped armor that might hurt the treads and switching the damaged pieces for replacement ones. The IFVs that didn't have spares simply let their engines run on idle and waited for the word to come.

"Five hundred meters!" I called out. "It's what you guys would call point blank, isn't it?" I asked Major Bans.

"Indeed," he replied, standing up on top of his Tortoise. "Target-rich environment too."

"Then you won't have too much trouble finding something to kill, will you?"

He shook his head. "I don't think the Covenant will have that particular problem either."

I looked around me and saw the hundreds of soldiers and dozens of vehicles that were preparing to head to their deaths just to give me and my twelve men the opportunity to take out a single elite that had been giving us some trouble. I would not let them down.

"Sir, courtesy of Captain Flatt," I turned around to see a young private dismount form a Warthog. Immediately behind him another identical vehicle.

"Pavel, Bee, you get passenger seats," I gave the word. "Serge, Caboose, you two drive."

I looked at the rest of my men and wondered who should take the guns in the back. "Marv, Lady."

That left Longworth, Crow, Dotsenko, Andrea, and Miranda with me. Three and three. The Warthogs wouldn't be able to go any faster than twenty miles per hour in this terrain, but they'd provide us more power projection as well as mobility. With Tortoises on our flanks, Pelicans above, and heavy infantry all around, we had a fairly decent opportunity.

I heard the explosions that marked the Shortswords' opening bombing run. Seconds later I heard the screaming of Gryphon atmospheric fighters and SkyHawks. A pair of Gryphons exploded right above our heads as they were hit by AA plasma torpedoes, but we barely had time to see the wrecks zoom forward before the Pelicans dashed above our heads.

"Let's go!" I screamed.

The two Warthogs roared, their wheels digging into the loose ground and shooting dust out the back. The Scorpions had less trouble during the climb, their quad treads digging in and pulling them up. I ran uphill with my men on foot, joined by the Marines and soldiers to our sides and back. The first tank to go up the wall was hit in the bottom before they could clear the gap. The next two suffered the same fate, exposing their vulnerable underbelly as they climbed. After that the Covenant had too many targets to take them out all at once. I narrowly avoided losing my head to a beam rifle and then almost lost my hearing as the Tortoise behind me began firing its autocannon, slowly rumbling past us. Above us the SkyHawks hovered and spun, pounding the ground with their heavy machine guns and occasionally shooting a Scorpion anti-tank missile. Most of those were destroyed before they could hit their target. The Covenant had some serious anti-missile defenses going on. Sometimes I could even see the lasers as they lit up the smoke they burned through.

"Artillery right, artillery right!"

I ducked instinctively as a blast lifted a ton of dirt and brought it back down on top of the Scorpion closest to us. The tank struggled for a few seconds, but two blasts killed it in a huge fireball before the tanker could get his vehicle out. Banshees decided to join the fray and began pestering the SkyHawks. Our strike fighters were nearly overwhelmed, but support from ground units saved the majority of them and allowed the pilots to turn the tables. Our Gryphons would've helped, but they were busy engaging the Seraphs and Phantoms that had risen up to take them out.

It was a bout between heavyweight boxers. Heavyweight boxers with tanks, planes, and artillery support.

"Targets, targets!"

A platoon of covvies had risen up from the ground directly in front of us. Longworth was the first to fire, hitting the lead elite in the head and knocking it to the ground, wounding it. Dotsenko did his job right and nearly emptied his magazine on the grunts and jackals, giving us all an opening to move forward and into good cover before joining them. We slowed down enough to take them out, but we couldn't afford a luxury such as safety, not now. Pavel and the two Warthogs were now thirty meters in front of us, their guns lit up and the tracer rounds made their way towards the row of buildings we wanted to get to. This was going to be the longest five hundred meters of my life.

"Ghosts!"

"Get down!"

I ducked just in time, as a barrage of plasma hit our position. My men had gone down at the same time I did, but a few of the Marines amongst us hadn't been quick enough. I saw a young girl get hit in the face, and fall down to the ground, headless. Two other soldiers were killed and several more were wounded before the plasma barrage could be countered with 40mm explosive ammunition and HEAT rounds.

"Forward!" I shouted. "Push!"

The Pelicans carrying the heavy infantry were now turning around and leaving. About half of them hadn't made the drop, but even as they fell back they were being shot down. I did some quick calculations in my head, most of the heavy infantry should've survived. The Pelicans were flying slow and close to the ground. The flat ground would've made them skid a bit before slowing down.

Judging from my HUD, around 90% of the Army's toughest were still alive, but that number would dwindle fast if we didn't reach them. They were still in front of us and trying to handle the wall of death that the row of buildings were.

A Pelican erupted in flames a hundred and fifty meters in front of us. It began sputtering and crashed down before skidding over the rubble spinning and finally flipping on its side and barrel rolling down to our position. Serge narrowly avoided being splattered, losing his life and that of the two men in the back of his 'Hog. The Tortoise behind him wasn't so lucky, but the driver might've survived the hit. Even then, the Pelican pilot was most certainly dead.

"Go, go!" I shouted. "We can use it for cover!"

Dotsenko was firing like a madman now. His SAW was designed to be able to fire almost continuously for hours at a time, the alloy making up the barrel and hand guard would feel little more than warm if I touched it right now, but even then I was afraid that he might strain his gun. Jams and malfunctions were rare, but the more you fought the more likely you had to go through one of those.

"Frank, we need those rockets!" Pavel shouted.

"I agree, Lieutenant!" Major Bans jumped in. "My men are getting slaughtered."

"A hundred meters!" I replied. "We need to make it there!"

Bans wasn't happy about it, not even remotely amused by my insistence to keep our ace up the sleeve hidden a bit longer. Half his vehicles were up in flames now and the rest were struggling just to move forward. It's not like the Covenant had much to show for it, but we were getting slaughtered.

Two aircraft collided in front and to my right, a Banshee and a SkyHawk from the looks of it. The airspace was getting crowded. Crowded in the traditional sense of the word, not the Air Force usage. We had a few dozen aircraft in a space of 500 square meters, with most of them clustered a lot closer than that. Missiles and torpedoes flew and lit the dust raising up before hitting the ground or their targets. Two Banshees nearly slammed into my group and one hammered a boy into the floor, producing a splash of blood that seemed a little bit too cartoonish.

"Grass, give me those missiles!" I shouted as I got past a hunk of metal that had once been a Wraith. "Now!"

"On their way!"

I don't know why she was screaming, maybe because she was watching the battle in real time and had access to a thousand different points of view.

The missiles screamed, their sound was even more ominous than that of Banshees, but unlike the enemy strike craft, the missiles were guaranteed to get kills. The first ones were disappointing, detonating in the air above or behind us as the Covenant anti-missile technology took them down, but then more and more of the missiles started flying in and the system became overwhelmed. Banshees exploded in orange fireballs first, then little explosions began dotting the space in front of us, hitting anything from Wraiths, to Daemons, to grunts with fuel rod cannons. Our assault regained traction and we moved forward, now we only had to close the distance and clear the buildings.

"Lovely."

A few of the missiles screamed just mere inches from our heads, their pinpoint-accurate guidance systems weaving through the tanks and other vehicles. The sheer amount of explosions started out into what one could describe as multiple snapping noises and turned into just one massive ongoing explosion. My ears started hurting from all the vibrations even if my helmet blocked most of the noise off. The last leg of the dash was almost easy, with my men and me stepping over the dismembered corpses of dead Covenant soldiers. It was easy to tell where the missiles had hit. The high-heat explosions burned near-perfect spheres in the ground, oftentimes the edges of the little craters were splattered with alien blood.

"Fifty meters!" Longworth called out.

The two Warthogs had been hit several times, but miraculously none of my men had been hit. Pavel's Warthog was bogged down, its two front tired had been melted and the rims were struggling and failing to gain some traction. Caboose's own vehicle had suffered a near miss before slamming head on into a piece of wall. Lady had hit her chest against the body of the machine gun, but she was alive and conscious. Her aim was a bit off, but not enough that we'd suffer.

"Frank, there's heavy movement on the other side of the buildings," Grass checked in on my radio.

"What is it?" I asked, slowing down and crouching behind a Ghost. "Grass!"

"Rangers, jackals and elites. It's a shitload of them, Frank."

"Rangers are coming up!" I shouted. "Eyes on the sky, eyes on the sky!"

The majority of the unit commanders acknowledged my warning within instants of me shouting it, but the elites and jackals with jetpacks showed up above the short buildings. We already suffered from being on the low ground, but now we had the rangers raining down on us.

The term vertical ambush really doesn't do justice to the panic and tension that goes on while seven foot aliens with state of the art ballistic armor and energy shields land all around you.

Lady began firing upwards, two elites died before they could land, but a third one landed on her chest, knocking her down behind the edge of the 'Hog. I turned to fire at the elite, but a pair of jackals landed on either side of me and I had to address them first. One of them grabbed my rifle, the other began bringing its carbine up to bear, but I kicked it back down. It was a move that I had made use of too many times. Andy shot the jackal in the back as it brought the carbine back up, allowing me to throw the other bird into the ground and fire a burst into its face.

Meanwhile, Lady had been knocked out and the elite prepared to finish her with a thrust from his energy dagger. Bee hopped off the Warthog and tossed his SPANKr, one-handed, at the back of the alien's head. The elite stumbled forward and turned around just to receive a sustained burst from Bee's MA5.

Suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of enemies. Elites and jackals were both quick and deadly, but they didn't have Tortoises on their side. Despite their significant disadvantage we were still not fully prepared for them.

"Shit, help!"

Crow was struggling to throw a jackal off his back while trying to hit the elite rushing at him. He turned just as the elite fired and used the jackal as a shield. Miri knocked the elite down to the ground with three shots from her DMR, allowing Andy to finish it off.

"Get to the buildings!" I shouted. "Move, move!"

Bee dragged Lady up and put her across his shoulders, stumbling on the ground before Pavel stopped him and helped him drag her. Serge and Caboose had hopped off the Warthogs and were opening up a corridor through the rangers with their shotguns while Marv kept firing the 'Hog's LAAG. I hung back a bit, letting my own men slowly move forward. Miri fired at the jackal rangers, who were continually hopping around and shooting needles at us.

"Fuck!" Andy fell as a needle punched through her thigh. "I'm alright, I'm alright!"

She moved back to her feet, this time it was Dotsenko who picked her up and offered support.

"Marv, let's go!"

He jumped down from the Warthog and the LAAG went silent. Just as that happened a gold-clad elite jumped down from the second floor of the buildings. It drew a sword and slashed at Bee, Lady, and Pavel. Both of the conscious guys stopped and purposely fell backwards, narrowly avoiding the slash. Marv and Longworth fired at the field marshal, but they found themselves under fire as soon as they did. Instead they were forced to take cover and the rest of my men had to fire at the aliens in the second floor.

I ran forward, narrowly avoiding a burst from a plasma repeater. I hit the field marshal twice with bursts, but before I could get a third one off a plasma bolt slammed into my chest and knocked me into my ass.

I groaned and rolled on the floor, clutching my chest.

"Move, Bee!"

Pavel yanked Lady from the ground as the elite stabbed into the ground. I might've heard her shoulder popping or it might've been rock hitting rock. Either way, I struggled to move while Bee emptied what was left of his magazine into the elite marshal. Pavel dropped his M247L and grabbed Lady, tossing her to the side. The marshal brought its sword around as Bee's rifle clicked empty and ran him through.

"No!"

Pavel was the first one there; he was only a few feet away. He threw an unprimed grenade at the elite's head, knocking it to the ground where he then proceeded to fire an entire magazine from his pistol into its chest, draining the shields. With that done, Pavel drew his knife and slammed it on the elite's neck.

"Inside!" I groaned. "Inside!"

Two Marines picked me up and helped me the rest of the way into the building. Pavel moved back to get Lady and got her through the door while Dotsenko got Andy inside. The rest of my men dragged Bee, leaving behind a trail of blood.

"The building isn't clear!" I shouted as soon as I regained my bearings. "Caboose, take point."

A Marine sergeant started barking orders as more and more men came into the building, the wounded were left on the floor, writhing in agony. I felt like the Tortoises shouldn't be firing at the top floors of the small buildings, but we needed a bit of help if we wanted to clear this place quickly.

"Pavel, go!" I shouted.

"Are you ok?" he asked me.

"I'm fine," I growled. "Bee?"

He looked at him and shook his head.

I nodded. "Andy, can you walk?"

"It went clean through, give me biofoam and half an hour."

"Get to it."

Andy started self-medicating while I slowly dragged myself to my feet. The two Marines that had helped me up had left to begin clearing the ground floor and gunfire soon boomed through the walls. I moved towards Bee, he was still holding onto his assault rifle loosely, but it didn't take much time to confirm what I already knew. The field marshal hadn't only stabbed him, it had twisted the energy sword about fifteen degrees, leaving two massive gaping holes on his torso, one of which had all but obliterated his heart.

Bee was dead.

"Damn," I said, crouching next to him. "Ten years and it ends like this…"

"Sir?" Andrea asked. "Are you alright?"

I took a deep breath and nodded slowly. I would've said something, but I was afraid that my voice would break.

Bee made the eighth number that I'd have to ink into my arm. It wasn't going to be enough to honor him. It wasn't enough to honor anyone.

I reached into his neck and yanked free the dogtags, adding it to the eight other ones that were wrapped around my left forearm. After that was done I removed his yellow chest piece and examined it for damage. The sword had gone through and left nearly half of it useless, so I was better off keeping my own chest piece, even if it had just barely survived a direct hit.

"Snark, move forward," I ordered. "We're clearing the buildings."

"I'll be there in a minute," he replied. "Sir?"

"Bee's dead."

Silence. "Copy that."

"Andy, I want you to stay here, ok? You'll stick with Snark while he does his thing. Plenty of wounded are going to be coming in, alright?"

"Yes, sir."

"Sir, we can clear some of the rooms to make space for the wounded," a Marine reported to me.

"Get to it," I said. "Corporal Livingston will be helping out, do anything and everything she tells you to."

"Yes, sir."

"For starters," Andy began, "I'll need you to help me up."

"Yes, ma'am."

Andy stumbled through the hallway and into a room where the rest of the wounded were being funneled to, leaving my in the hall with a bunch of tired Marines and soldiers that didn't seem to know where the rest of their unit was.

"Pavel, Caboose?"

"We're working on the third floor," Pavel shouted back. "They've dug in!"

"Call for help from Bans," I told him. "I'm on my way up."

Major Bans ordered two Scorpions to blast the surviving covvies from the building just as I made my way to the second floor. Perhaps doing that while he had friendly troops in the building wasn't strictly smart, but we were past the point where we cared what was smart and what was not. Besides, they had just killed one of my best men, that wasn't going to be left alone.

"Grass, are there any air raid sirens still working in the area?" I asked.

"Ummm, yes, those things are designed to last."

"Can you access them?"

"Yes indeed," she replied. "What do you want?"

"Play us some inspiring shit," I requested. "These men want to kick some ass, get them in the mood."

"On it. Frank, Rob just flatlined…"

"Yeah, I can confirm he's KIA."

"Shit," Grass sighed. I could see her leaning back on her chair and pushing her hair back. "Ok. Acknowledged."

A few seconds later I could hear the opening notes of They Hit Without Warning coming through. It was one of Bee's favorites.

"We're clear," Pavel announced.

"We're clear," I broadcast. "What are we missing?"

"All buildings are clear," a captain checked with me. "We can move to phase two."

"Bans, did you catch that?"

"Affirmative," Major Bans replied. "I'm patching in Colonel Ochoa."

"Colonel, pleasure to meet you," I greeted the man. "Your men really helped out there."

"And they took a beating for it too," the leader of the heavy artillery troops said. "I've got my troops setting up defensive positions, flipping this little wall around. We're repurposing plasma cannons and some intact AA Wraiths."

"Hmm," I muttered. "I don't like it."

"Nobody does," Ochoa agreed, "but we need a shitload of firepower and I'm not about to turn my back on that right now."

"Understood Colonel," I said. "Major Bans, what's the status of the 3rd?"

"We're down to 40% operational capacity," he said. "Most of our casualties were Tortoises, but our Scorpions took a beating."

"Is that enough to move into phase two?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

It was insane. He knew that if he chose to go ahead with this his unit would be almost completely destroyed, but his men were prepared to make the sacrifice. I was going to do everything that I could to make any deaths today worth it.

"Colonel Ochoa, do we have any mortars available?"

"We have some short range launchers," he said. "Maximum range of 300 meters."

"That should be enough," I said. "I need the Outer Ring Road bombarded before we move through."

"I'm moving my surviving Tortoises into column formation behind the blue building," Bans said. "My men are already setting it to collapse towards the ring road."

"Let's go over this quickly," I said. "I'm going to need a serious distraction over to the left flank."

"I've got my tanks and half my infantry moving that way," Bans said. "They'll attempt to pass through the wreckage of Bridge O1."

"I'm sending four platoons as well," Colonel Ochoa added.

"They should have a decent amount of sniper and heavy weapons support from the buildings," I said. "The 7th should do a good job at providing backup."

"They make some noise," Major Bans went on, "if they do go through, all the better."

"Then you blow up the blue building," I said. "Are you sure you'll be able to traverse the debris?"

"My demolition teams are the best in the universe," Bans said confidently.

"Excellent," I said. "Which means that you'll put… what, twenty Tortoises?"

"Twenty-three," he corrected. "They'll pour through. Lead ten will try and cross the road, set a little wall on the other side. The other ones will spread out to either side, protect your team and any infantrymen that go through."

"How many men are we feeding into the grinder?" I asked.

"Two companies on my side," Bans said.

"Three here," Ochoa added.

"That's five hundred men, give or take," I said. "Very well. Do they all know the buildings they are supposed to capture?"

"We're still working on that," Major Bans said. "But they all know that once we move through the ring we'll have to move to the left flank and try to link up with the distraction team or wait for them to come to us."

"Good, good," I said, tapping Pavel's shoulder. "It sounds like a plan."

"We're green," Colonel Ochoa let me know. "Good to go on your word, El-tee."

"My men need a few minutes," Bans said. "I'll give you the word."

"Roger that, over and out," I said. "Pavel, all good?"

"Yeah, Lady's still unconscious?"

I nodded. "They took her into our improvised hospital. Andy's taking care of her."

"Bee?"

"Didn't make it," I said, a comment that drew sighs from my men. "Snark's on his way, we've got to move towards the column."

"Frank, this part of the mission wasn't supposed to be done with just nine men," Pavel said.

"Shit happens," I replied. "We have done more with less."

Pavel looked out of the roofless building and towards the ground that we had just gained. Dozens of smoking tanks and IFVs littered the already apocalyptic landscape. I could see human corpses adding to the Covenant ones, smoke came from UNSC and alien vehicles alike, darkening the sky. A crashed SkyHawk strike fighter shook in the ground as one of its engines refused to turn off. A squad of soldiers fired into the engine from a safe distance, finally neutralizing the useless fighter before moving to check if the pilot might've survived. It was not a pretty sight.

"I'm not so sure this time," Pavel said.

"We have to go on," I told him. "It's become more than it was intended to be, we can take advantage of that."

"Never took you for a disciple of Rommel," Caboose noted.

"I'm more of a Galeana kind of person," I told him. "We green?"

My men nodded. "Ok, let's move. There'll be ammunition at the Tortoises."

The New Earth, another one of Bee's favorites began playing it's deceptively slow opening as we climbed down. It was by Audiomachine, Bee's epic music band of choice. He kept telling me how versatile they were and tried to explain how they just seamlessly merged epic with drama and some such bullshit. I just liked the sound.

On the way to the blue building I could hear a couple of men commenting on the song and saw a tired squad nodding their heads in beat to the music. Halfway through the song I heard the distraction team begin their attack. It became almost loud enough to block the raid sirens, but some of the Scorpions had begun playing the music in their own speakers, pumping up the infantry with them.

My men and I had gone into battle countless times, and more often than not Bee would play some music of his to get our blood flowing. It had become so normal that nobody ever made note of it anymore, it was part of the background noise until it felt like your own heart was beating to the pace of the song, fast and hard. This time it was different: even if I had tried, I could not ignore the music, it was too loud and it was coming from all over. The slight difference in time as the sound reached me just gave it an even more impressive effect.

"Lieutenant, the explosives are set," Major Bans called out from the top of his Tortoise. "My men are getting ready."

"We're good to go," I said. "Just need some ammunition."

"Come," he waved us over. "My Tortoise has enough of that."

The nine of us moved towards the Tortoise and began filling our pouches with additional ammunition. Pavel and Dotsenko pressed the large magazines into their chests and bellies, sticking it with Velcro while also shoving magazine after magazine into their rucksacks. They and Marv were the only ones with their rucksacks still. Most of us had gotten rid of the extra weight long before, but Marv oftentimes kept ammunition of all kinds in his little backpack, ready to dispense us with it.

"Are you ready?" I asked Major Bans.

He nodded and climbed out the top hatch and looked behind at his men. "Ready?!"

"Oorah!"

Major Bans nodded to himself just as the song ended and another one with heavy electric guitar and a bass drum in the background. "Anything you want to say?"
I was already patched through to the whole division so I just spoke into my helmet.

"The name of this song is To Glory," I noted as trumpets joined the guitar, "a fitting title for a day like this. I intend to get myself a little glory today, are you up for it?"

This time the Oorah was louder and more enthusiastic. It might've been the song or it might've been my words, but the men were ready.

"Blow it up!" Bans ordered.

What I saw next was one of the most beautifully choreographed explosions that I had seen outside of Angel's handiwork. The blue building was nearly shattered into tiny little pieces by dozens of small explosions. A larger shaped explosive had been attached to the roof and secured to the floor with retractable cables, as soon as the primary explosions happened the cables were released in a precise order. The bottom cable hit harder, sending the explosive upwards and countering the effect of gravity ever so slightly. By that point the rest of the building was beginning to fall down, but the final and largest explosive detonated here. It had been shaped to direct most of the blast towards one direction.

I could almost catch the half-sphere of a shockwave push dust and smoke back before it made contact with the shattered building, sending it flying away from us and over the Outer Ring Road.

"Forward!" Major Bans boomed.

I hopped inside his Tortoise just before it sped forward and Colonel Ochoa gave the order for his men to start firing their mortars, carpeting the ground in front of us with anti-personnel mortar rounds. The explosions almost overwhelmed the music, but Bee's spirit was with us, and awesomeness would not be denied.

The Tortoise next to me exploded as it was hit by two Wraith mortars simultaneously, but the rest charged forward, moving over the debris littered road with what one could say ease. When we hit the concrete dividers separating one direction from the other we slowed down a bit, but the heavy IFVs plowed through them without too much effort and then began spreading out.

"Infantry forward!" I shouted. "On me!"

Fuck that shit about hanging back. Bee had died and heads would roll.

"Move!"

Explosions shook the ground, heavy explosive ammunition whistled as it flew above my head, and men cried out in anger and defiance as they fired their rifles. The Covenant had barely had any time to move their troops in accordance to our latest movements. Our feint to the left had fooled them and now they didn't have the numbers to stop our crazy attack. I put my foot on a ramp of debris that led out of the road and into the other side of the Esztergom.

An elite came out to fire, but I killed it. I killed the next one that tried to do the same and then did the same with two grunts before I reached the top of the debris ramp. On the other side were dozens of dead aliens and several more that were struggling to get a hold of the situation. To my side Pavel roared crazily, spraying the clearing-like area with his machine gun. Us two were the first ones to cross the road and the first ones to make it up the ramp. Like madmen we moved forward and like madmen we were followed.

Despite the inherent craziness of this attack, nobody here was actually crazy, except perhaps yours truly. We hit with deadly accuracy and used the surviving Tortoises for cover and support. One of the vehicles was hit by two fuel rods from Banshees, Banshees that were quickly brought down with SPANKr fire. A Daemon shell nearly took my head off and sent me to the ground before it hit the back of the debris ramp, sending a squad of men flying, limbs missing.

"Daemon forward!" Caboose shouted. "Take it out!"

Two men with launchers took a knee and fired the two missiles in their weapons. One of them was hit by carbine fire in the chest and neck. He pressed his hand to his neck to try and keep the blood in before two medics arrived to help. One of the medics was killed by another carbine shot, but Miri fired wildly at a window in the distance, sending a jackal down. Bans' Tortoise moved to the front and placed itself perpendicular to the Daemon, presenting it its side. Its autocannon fired at the gaps in the armor that the four rockets had made. The explosive 40mm ammunition tore through the weakened metal and killed the pilots and gunners inside the Daemon.

"Enemy to the left!"

"Fire, fire, fire."

"Frag out!"

I moved up, waving crazily while struggling to give orders to everybody. The men were all looking at me to tell them what to do and after leading them in this crazy charge I wasn't about to let them down. We needed to get at least a block forward before we started moving to the left and linked up with the Scorpions. Once there we could slow down just a little bit and let the third and fourth waves of troops bolster our lines.

"Tortoises forward," I said. "Bans, have them hug the right side of the street! Heavy infantry, I want you working building by building to our left. I need two platoons to set a perimeter to our right, secure the ramp. Get me two other Tortoises from the road and get the ones on the left to begin moving up and down the road, pummel enemy positions."

It was a lot and it was not exactly detailed, but everyone got the gist of it and they began moving.

"AAG-7, we move forward and lead the way. That intersection there is our goal."

My men acknowledged my orders and began moving, keeping close to Bans' Tortoise. We fired at the windows and doors, but the majority of the houses here had been completely destroyed by our preemptive artillery strikes. Most of them were useless for fortifying and only provided decent cover for a squad or even less. It was prime attack terrain for us, especially with an armored column moving to our side.

"Block off the street," I ordered the Tortoise pilots. "Wall it off, wall it off!"

"Form the wall," Bans shouted. "Three Tortoises. Everyone else, we link up with the distraction team!"

"Rally Point Alpha," I said. "From there we move forward!"

"Frank, what about our target?" Pavel asked me.

"Fuck the target, if he shows up we'll deal with it. We're fucking winning this battle!"

"Sir, I've got eyes on you," Snark let me know. "I can cover you all the way to Rally Point Alpha, but I'll need to relocate once you get there."

"Roger that," I said. "Move however you deem it appropriate."

The road to Alpha was short, but it was a grueling task. The covvies suddenly found themselves between a rock and a hard place, and we were shooting at them too. Miranda and Longworth targeted elites exclusively while I stuck to jackals and some grunts. Pavel and Dotsenko, however, carried the weight of our assault. They, alongside the heavy infantry, poured enough lead into the street that ricochets became a very real danger to the covvies. They only slowed down when the street turned and we faced the danger of friendly fire. Most of our troops had to move to either side of the street in order to fire diagonally. The tanks and Tortoises coordinated their shots carefully, but we reached Alpha without too many casualties.

"I'm getting seismic activities," some nerdy-sounding Marine broadcast. "They're four hundred meters away."

"Snark, what do you see?"

"A whole lot of dust and some houses crumbling," he replied. "If I had to take a guess…"

"Scarab," I said with a quick nod. "Grass, did you catch that?"

"I'm trying to get Air Force to send in some strike bombers, but they're down to their last dozen aircraft. Looks like you'll have to take it on your own."

"No artillery?" I asked her.

"Flatt is coordinating the strikes, but there are three different armies working side by side with you now, Frank. At this point it makes tactical sense to support them and let them catch up, use that to form up a line."

"Understood," I said, no trace of sarcasm or anger in my voice. "Bans, Ochoa, we've got a Scarab headed our way."

"Scorpions ready!" Bans roared. "Knee shots exclusively, I want my Tortoises ready to rush it, draw its fire away from the tanks!"

"Snark, out of curiosity, that golden marshal wasn't the target, was it?" Pavel asked as he reloaded his weapon.

"Negative, Gunny. I double checked, facial recognition doesn't match."

"Alright, just curious."

The Scarab groaned and creaked as it finally got to its feet. Everyone cursed when they saw that it was one of the big ones.

"Front right knee!" Bans ordered. "Fire!"

We hit first and we hit hard, four Scorpions had the shot and all four took it. The massive walker buckled as its knee joint was all but shattered and its belly touched the ground. Next we targeted the cannon, but the Scarab covered it with the armor flaps.

"Move forward!" Bans ordered.

"Watch out, Locusts!"

A Tortoise was thrown off course as a pulse laser nearly burned through the thick front armor, probably scaring the driver half to death. A second locust hit the stalled Tortoise and finished the job, roasting the man and his gunner inside.

"Don't forget enemy infantry!" someone shouted.

"I've got the Locusts," Bans boasted. "Move forward!"

Rockets and explosive ammunition took down the first Locust walker and lowered the shields of the second one, but eight more rushed forward to take on the six Tortoises and buy time for the Scarab to get up. Two Scorpions joined the Tortoises in the battle of heavyweights. One of the tanks was hit in the front treads and stopped as its wheels were melted together by the pulse laser. It still got a shot off before it the Scarab's tail cannon destroyed it with driver and all.

"El-tee, I caught a flash of marshal armor on the Scarab," Snark called me. "I don't have the best vantage right now and can't afford to move fast enough. Can you confirm?"

"We're a ways off," I said. "Grass?"

"Drones are circling overhead," she said. "Draw him out."

"Bans! I need you to speed it up!" I shouted.

It felt like shit asking more of the man, three of his Tortoises were useless now, two of them had been taken out with no survivors and the other one wouldn't be moving without extensive repairs. The Scorpion tank on his side did help, it dispatched the last surviving Locust and then began rolling backwards as the tail cannon from the Scarab zeroed in on it. The driver got a shot, damaging the tail cannon, but not destroying it. The Scorpion itself exploded as a stream of green plasma made contact with it.

"Move, draw the infantry contingent out," I ordered. "Marv, Longworth, on me."

"I've got your back," Miri shouted. "Grigori?"

"Backing you up," he replied.

Serge said nothing, but he aimed his rifle at the Scarab.

"Loud, loud!" I shouted, firing my BR55 wildly at the Scarab, hoping to get someone's attention.

"I'm getting some infantry movement," Grass said. "That's definitely some marshal armor. Snark, ready?"

"I can't see it," he muttered. "No line of sight. Draw him out."

"Hey, you pussy fucker!" I shouted loudly. "Fight like a man!"

Marv and Longworth soon joined me in calling out the most infantile insults that they could think of, all the while hoping that no infantry would hit us and that the Scarab itself wouldn't target us.

"Are you a coward that you don't face me?" I boasted. "I've killed thousands of your kind, what's one more?"

I never did see the elite, but I heard the distant boom of Snark's SRS.

"Kill," he said. "Can't confirm identity, Grass?"

"Hold up…" she said. "Drones are getting a usable image. Yeah, that's a 99% match. Target terminated."

"Good job," I complimented my sniper. "We still have that Scarab to take care of."

"I'd give you a hand, but I left the Sledgehammer at home."

"Bans, this is all you," I said.

"Hit the right knee!" Major Bans ordered. His men were already doing just that, but it never hurt to be sure.

The Scarab was now doomed. It certainly had shock power, but we had dealt with them before and the 3rd Viery Armored had made it this far into the battle, so they had gotten their own share of scuffles against the walkers. The speed with which they handled the Locusts was a testament to their experience. As the right knee began buckling some of the tanks redirected their fire to the rear turret, damaging it so that it couldn't destroy them. It wasn't enough to prevent two squads of heavy infantry from being vaporized as they set up their wheel barrel cannons, but the Scarab began to crumple under the blows.

"Cease fire!" I ordered. "Cease fire!"

"Cease fire!" Bans confirmed.

"We're going up!" I shouted. "Caboose, Serge, cut us a path!"

The two men switched to their shotguns and jumped into the Scarab after climbing through a pile of debris conveniently placed to its side. They were the first ones to go in, firing their shotguns at the grunts that tried to stop them. A few jackals appeared on the top walkway, but I shot them down with Miranda's help. Marv and Longworth tossed grenades down the ramp that led into the Scarab's interior before Caboose and Serge went down. The sound of their shotguns was magnified in the enclosed space, but the operators of the machine were all taken out in the span of a few seconds.

"Clear!" Caboose called.

"We're good," I broadcast. "Move up!"

I bet that some of the men were surprised to hear that order. When you go head to head against a Scarab and win you usually wait for evac, reinforcements, and go over how you'll tell this story in a way that people will believe it. It was only on very rare occasions that the destruction of a Scarab didn't symbolize the end of the battle. Here it was just another bump in the road, a bump that had barely slowed us down.

"El-tee, there's nothing else planned out," Bans replied through a private channel. "What now?"

"We kick some ass, Major," I said. "We are close by to some of the maglev transit stations, they are useful as defensive positions. There are also two private academies in this sector, walled off I believe."

"Roger that, Colonel, did you catch that?"

"Affirmative," Ochoa said. "We're moving up."

An assassination had turned into an offensive that was changing the course of the battle.

"Frank," Grass said. "Captain Flatt is talking with the 1st Army Group, they're sending some forces our way."

"Now they commit?" I asked.

"The city is no longer a lost cause," she said. "We can expect SpecOps teams within two hours and the bulk of their forces will arrive in waves after that."

"That's great news, Cam," I said, calling her by her given name. "Tell Flatt I owe her one."

"Will do," she acknowledged. "Good luck."

"What of us?" Pavel asked me, watching absent-mindedly as Dotsenko and Longworth sawed through the head of the elite marshal and Serge looked for a piece of rebar through the debris.

"We'll wait on Snark," I said. "Move with the first wave."

Pavel nodded and told Longworth to hurry it up, but nonetheless he didn't stop my men as they stabbed the bottom of the dead elite's head and propped it up on top of the Scarab, using the headless body of the elite as a base. It was a powerful image, one that Pavel and I had used several times before and had passed onto our men. We certainly hadn't invented the insult, but I am sure we partook in it a bit more than was necessary.

"Y'all done," I asked, regressing to that so-called southern accent that some of the more recent Anglo population of Mexico City spoke.

I shook my head to myself as Pavel raised an eyebrow at me and Miri held back a snigger.

"I'm two minutes out," Snark said. "Moving up."

This was still a warzone though, and it wasn't nearly as safe as we could've made it, but we were on a roll and the Covenant was too busy falling back instead of firing on us. We truly had them in disarray. The alien forces here had all been well-trained and presumably had fought in other engagements, but we had broken their will in a matter of hours. It had cost us tens of thousands of men and more would die before the day was over, but the Covenant had lost more and were slowly losing all the ground that they had fought so hard to gain for the past week.

"You're getting ODSTs," Grass let me know. "God is being nice to us today."

"It's been a while since that last happened," I noted drily.

Snark got here and we raided the ammo that Bans' Tortoise still had left in it. We climbed inside the infantry fighting vehicle and waited while the third wave, consisting almost entirely of Army forces, barreled past. They had Tortoises and an older troop transport craft that was basically a small IFV without a roof, rear hatch, or heavy weaponry to speak off. They had been used as police vehicles in insurrection-prone planets and were incredibly good at pacifying civilian uprisings. After all, they looked like a fucking tank to your average civilian. In here they would serve as little more than decoys, with no significant armor to speak of they would simply move troops before being targeted and destroyed.

Not that the Army guys would mind, they were going to be deployed and the actual Armadillos would come in after the covvies had spent a good amount of their explosives on the flimsy transport craft.

They whooped and hollered as they drove past the Scarab. They were pumped, epic music was still playing in the raid sirens and Grass had been talking to unit commanders in order to link up all transports with sirens and have them play the exact same song. I looked up to see the little orange dots that marked the entrance of Helljumpers into the atmosphere and wondered if they were listening to our song too or maybe they were just playing their own thing.

The song was called Protectors of the Earth.

---

"Wind speed is negligible," I noted. "Distance is still a thousand meters."

"Alright," Snark muttered back. "I got it."

I wondered, and not for the first time, just how that plasma bolt had managed to damage all the systems in Snark's Oracle scope except for the zoom itself. He could usually function by himself, and even without his instruments he did a fine job as a sniper, but things had died down a little bit since we had started the unplanned phase three of the assault. The counteroffensive had lost its momentum, but not thanks to the Covenant. We had slowed down due to a lack of vehicles to transport troops. We had suffered casualties approaching 60%, but the Covenant had started sacrificing themselves by the dozens if it meant taking out an Armadillo or a Tank. We were now using Warthogs to transport entire companies.

"Are those ODSTs still resting up?" I asked Snark. "Can't see them."

"I can't see them either, but nothing has come out of their hole."

"Still no communication?" I asked in the squad channel.

"Negative," Pavel replied. "Marv and Longworth can do a Mongoose run, check if they're alive."

"Give it a moment," I said. "Snark?"

He fired.

"That's a hit."

"Alright," I muttered. "Pavel, give them the green light."

I traced the ATV move across the ruined street. A few plasma bolts streaked towards them, but a quick burst from my rifle sent the grunts scurrying back down behind cover. I might've been able to hit them if I had tried, but the distances were pretty extreme for the BR55. Marv drove rather expertly, weaving through the debris and drifting around as to maintain maximum speed. To be honest, it really wasn't that impressive or even worth describing, but I was bored. My adrenaline high was dying down and a firefight every couple of minutes seemed almost quiet compared to what had transpired over the last few hours.

"We're there," Longworth needlessly pointed out when they stopped. "Going in."

The ODSTs had taken cover in what appeared to be a basement or some such thing. We had barely managed to help fight off a Covenant platoon that was trying to finish them off and now we were waiting for some armored to roll through.

"Looks like they're alive," Marv called out. "Injured and barely alive, but still not dead."

"How many?" I asked.

"Two. The rest are KIA."

I nodded slowly. "Keep them company, we should have our reinforcements in ten minutes."

And true enough, it was only ten minutes before a pair of Army Armadillos lazily rolled up. They were damaged pretty bad. Almost too bad, I would say, but out of the couple of million troops that we had started this battle with less than 500,000 men remained alive. About a third of those were wounded and a large portion of that third would die since we had run out of all available medical supplies.

It wasn't pretty, but we had Esztergom. Even despite the loss of Manassas, from here we could launch a larger offensive to retake Viery and maybe even push the Covenant back all the way to New Alexandria.

"Give it a minute," I said. "Let them handle it."

The two Armadillos, crippled as they were, took out the Covenant squad entrenched a kilometer away. It was almost painful to watch. The IFVs slowly moved forward, their treads rattled and the engines sputtered but the guns made that sweet roaring sound when they fired. The troop contingent didn't even have to dismount.

"These men need some serious medical help," Marv said. "And fast."

I sighed. We had used up all of our biofoam on ourselves and Andy was still limping through the improvised hospital, probably covered in blood up to her shoulders. Those men wouldn't be getting any medical attention anytime soon. They would stay there and would either make it or not. No one was about to pull them back to safety.

"What are they injuries?" I asked, standing up and moving back towards the ladder.

"Adrian?" Marv asked.

"One of them is lucky to be alive. I count three different needle injuries, two of them punched completely through, the other one… well, he's going to lose the arm. Legs are in pretty bad shape, plasma burns. I think I can see the bone."

I shook my head. "The other one?"

"She might just survive this one. Plasma burns to the abdomen mostly, she's holding in her intestines with one hand, but that seems to be the extent of it."

"Shit," Crow muttered. "What the hell happened to them?"

"I'm guessing sword?" Snark suggested. "Anyone?"

I ignored the insensitive comment and shook my head. "Do what you can for them."

"Will do," Marv said.

The rest of my men were waiting down on the street. They had all been injured to some degree or other, with all of us still in an action capacity. We hadn't heard from Lady or Andrea, but there had been no reports of anything that could've endangered them. Our injuries were mostly minor burns or small shrapnel cuts, so we didn't really need to be pulled out for medical treatment just yet, but I'd have to see about getting some antibiotics to prevent infections.

"How are you doing, Sasha?" I asked Dotsenko.

"Good," he said gruffly. "Good."

I nodded slowly. It pained me to see him like this. Dotsenko had been talkative most of the time. Usually it involved him laughing or joking around with Ramirez, but ever since the death of his best friend he had been more quiet and subdued. It didn't help the way that he'd often look to his damaged prosthetic arm and experimentally move the fingers of the mechanical arm.

"Crow?"

"Same," he replied.

Unlike Dotsenko, his injuries were only external, but they had left him completely disfigured. He hadn't taken off his bandages in public one time. It was a miracle that he was alive and could see straight, but the skin had melted off his face. I have said this before, but the one time I got to see his face as it was I had to suppress myself from swallowing and closing my eyes. He knew he looked like shit and it pained him. The UNSC provided free reconstructive surgery if the injury was deemed disfiguring, which was a fancy way of saying that anything you got over the neck you could get removed. Mostly because it was hard to survive anything above the neck nowadays, but there had been no news stories about a random veteran that had been denied the procedure.

Crow would be fine when we got out of here, but in the meanwhile he would be an ugly motherfucker, with half his face melted off.

"Are those Hornets?" Miri asked.

"Sounds like," I muttered. "Sounds like they are headed north."

"What's north?" Crow asked.

"North End," Snark replied.

"Nothing," Pavel explained. "The Covenant abandoned the area when the Army started moving in. The place is literally nothing but dust now."

"You do realize that they don't have to be heading directly to North End, right?" Miri reminded him. "They could just be flying through it."

Pavel looked at her and shrugged. "Shut up."

We settled into silence and watched as the two Armadillos quietly disappeared behind piles of debris, occasionally firing short bursts from their autocannons. The sounds of battle were still loud and frequent, but they had receded significantly. Looking back I couldn't help but think that some divine intervention had been needed for nobody in my team to die. Two million men and women had died in the span of a week.

And now Esztergom was almost ours again. We only had to wait for our reinforcements and we could call this pile of dirt a stronghold once again. Two million was a large number, but the ease with which I shrugged that number off bothered me.

"Frank, I've got a little request," Grass came in. "Are you well rested?"

I looked at Pavel, who just smiled back at me.

"Yeah," I said. "Sure."

"Great. We've got the first wave of the 1st Army Group showing up. They are going to need safe places to land, but they also want to help in the final push, so they're requesting landing zones."

"You want us to clear something up?" I asked.

"Correct, I'm marking the spot on your HUD. It's nearby, not a lot of enemies present."

"Roger that, ma'am," I said in an all-too-respectful voice. "AAG-7, you catch that?"

"Yes, sir."

I rolled my neck. "Eight minutes' walk, let's go."

Longworth and Marv caught up with us after a squad of Army soldiers replaced them as caretakers for the two ODSTs. We moved at a steady jog, being careful of our noise level and keeping our eyes peeled for sharpshooters. Our assault had been so fast that the possibility of Covenant units that had been completely bypassed was very real. Snark in particular seemed irked at the gigantic number of sniper perches that could be used to ambush us at any given moment and Crow was a little bit more jumpy than an elite fighter should've been in this situation.

"What's that? Pavel asked. "A park?"

"Looks like," Caboose said. "I can see a lookout tower."

"I'll move up," Snark said.

"Crow, Longworth, Dotsenko, take the left flank," I said. "Pavel, Caboose, see that Warthog? We're moving there."

"Playing bait?" Pavel asked.

"Yes," I said. "Miri, you and Serge can hang a bit back and to the left. I want you drawing fire if things get a little hot for us."

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Well, let's go."

The firefight erupted quickly. A jackal lookout spotted us and began firing with a needle rifle. Caboose fired back while Pavel and I rushed to cover and then I shot the jackal, letting Caboose move up. Snark immediately began tagging enemies and their red outlines appeared on our HUDs. He was saving his ammunition for targets that would be worth it. Crow's group slowly climbed a pile of debris that had once been a house and prepared for a flanking maneuver.

"Warthog is only twenty meters away," Pavel said.

"I've got the machine gun," Caboose said.

"Move, move," I shouted.

Pavel and I both fired wildly at the nearest Covenant trench. We sent grunts back for cover as Caboose slid behind the Warthog. He examined the LAAG in the back briefly before hopping on and spooling it. The Warthog might've been completely useless as a vehicle, but the machine gun in the back was perfectly functional.

It was almost pathetic to fight against the broken Covenant soldiers that were defending this park. Odds were that they weren't even defending it; they were likely just trying to stay alive. It wasn't surprising to see their half-assed attempt at a defense, especially after Snark drilled the lone elite in the unit with a headshot. The large alien fell and the defense immediately slackened.

"I'm getting some movement," Longworth said. "Damn. Looks like they're surrendering."

I raised an eyebrow. "Nobody fire, let them all come out."

"You might want to tell them that," Pavel said.

"Cease fire!" I shouted after a heavy eye roll. "Let them come out!"

I waited patiently while three jackals and eight grunts slowly moved out of cover with their hands raised over their heads and carefully made their way towards us.

"Grass?"

"We don't need them."

"Open up!"

The eleven aliens were killed in the span of one second.

"Alright, we're clear."

"Army troops are headed your way," Grass said. There was an awkward pause on her end of the line. "I'm sending Marina to pick you up, we've got a little situation."

I groaned. "What is it?"

"Looks like we're going to need some defensive units protecting the generators for the Orbital Defense Platforms."

That statement sent chills down my spine. The only reason why those generators would need defenses is if they were at direct risk by enemy ground troops. That would only happen if even more Covenant troops were showing up. That train of thought stopped at its logical conclusion: there were additional Covenant vessels entering the system.

Esztergom was ours, but Reach would still fall.

"Alright, good work," I told my men. "We're being picked up soon. Spread out, secure the area, and wait for the troopers to show up. We'll get some rest on the Pelican."

"What is it?" I heard Crow quietly ask Dotsenko.

"Bad news," Caboose muttered as he passed behind them.

---

Thanks to Colonel-Commissar2468 and General TheDyingTitan for proofreading this chapter.

Well, that just happened. Bee showed up for the first time in Chapter 24: The Tide Turns Twice. His first line was "Hasta la vista, baby!" And now, like so many characters before him, he's gone. It hurt a little bit to give him an ending like this, it hurt even more to make it so quick and just not glorious in any way at all. Stabbed through the chest and there was nothing he could do about it. Well, war is hell, as they say.

Other than the death of Bee, we also have Tank, who'll forever be forgotten for dying offscreen in the same chapter as Robert "Bumblebee" Agnarsson.

I would like to know if I managed to give the feeling of a large battle with combined arms and military branches all fighting at the same time at an incredibly brutal pace. I strived to make this whole chapter be epic in scale. I think this chapter in by itself qualifies for the genre of epic, speaking in a literary way of course, but that might just be my head swelling a little bit too much for my own good. Any and all feedback is welcome, and I'll read your angry reviews as well as your positive ones with equal attention.

Small detail, Frank could've been one of the ODSTs that help Noble attack Sword Base, but he turned that down. Was that for better or for worse? We never did find out what happened to those ODSTs. Oh well, what happened happened and as soon as I click the post button it will be forever cemented in bits and bytes. You know what they say about the internet, it stays there forever.

To all of those who reviewed last chapter, thank you for your words and your time. I say this a lot, but I can never properly express how much each review means to me and how they help me write better and better. To GuntherRiechwald in particular, I would've PMd you because I am a rather friendly guy, but you have PM disabled (I checked this yesterday, so that might have changed). Other than that, there weren't any questions that I can answer, so there's that.

Oh, quick note Karen Traviss (the one that wrote the Kilo-Five Trilogy) is a skilled writer, but she butchered previous characterization. Although I have to admit, the way she wrote things did set an interesting foundation for the second Halo trilogy, even if it did go against pretty much everything that had been established before that. Sorry for that little rant, but even though being a writer is about expressing your ideas through written word, it's not about changing everything about a universe just so that you can express those particular ideas more easily.

Looks like that was all... Yeah, I don't think I'm missing anything, other than bragging about how I wrote a chapter of 18,000+ words.

Stay strong.

-casquis