Iconium Plateau, Ascella IV, Ascella System
March 19, 2558
Spartan Fireteam Volt carefully advanced forward in the twin scorpion tanks heading for the large metallic angular structure that jutted out of the shifting sands. The terrain was quite desert-like, resembling the Sahara on Earth with dunes that rose and fell at the gust of the winds.
Just ahead lay a trio of wraiths with their mortar cannons blooming like flowers. They crackled with bluish sparks as their drivers calculated the movements of the opposition before firing blobs of white destruction into the air.
"Volt Lead! Take the first one!"
One of the scorpions backed up, treads kicking up sand as the shot landed right where it had once been. He maneuvered behind a particularly large dune, positioning the vehicle just enough so that he was able to expose just the cannon above.
The practice was called hull down and was used ever since tanks were sent into warfare. Concept was simple, position the vehicle just behind the crest of an elevated landmark such as a hill, leaving nothing open to enemy fire except for the main gun. This way, it greatly reduced the risk of direct fire from enemy positions while allowing near-same accuracy.
Wraiths were awful in countering this tactic since the mortars were designed to fire out rather than up. They would be forced to move in close to allow a shot at hitting their opposition, which also meant that the scorpions would have to either relocate or crest the hill. Cresting exposed its more vulnerable underside, which the Covenant commander must've figured out because he ordered his lance of tanks to advance.
"They're advancing position!"
"Let's fall back. Once they clear that hill, we'll blast them."
The two tanks quickly retreated as Volt Lead pulled up the drone footage. He centered the feed on their position and saw that the wraiths had returned to their original position.
"Hmm," Volt Three mused over the comms, "They didn't buy it."
"I have an idea, switch to sabots."
"Copy."
Unlike the standard HE rounds the M820 usually carried, the sabot rounds were designed for pure armor penetration, using caps to keep the round centered in the chamber. When fired, it looked as if massive fins would explode out of the barrel.
"Relink the feed of the tank profiles onto our HUDs."
It took just a moment, but on his and Volt Three's, there were three red outlines on the wraith profiles. Now it was only if the sand was light enough. Otherwise, the round would simply bury itself in the hill.
"I'll take the one on the left."
"It's locked."
"On three."
"One."
"Two."
"Three," Volt One squeezed the trigger, dimly aware of the firing sound of the cannon being like sitting just underneath a huge explosion.
The sabots made short work of the sand barrier, dissolving their brief cover in a big puff, but their plan had worked. Their shots hit game and two of the wraiths were still intact, albeit in bad shape. One of them must've had their anti-grav repulsors busted as it struggled to rise above the ground before the generators gave out again.
Volt Three loaded his tank again, this time with HE rounds and blasted the final wraith to hell.
"Pick the drone feed back up. I want more targets,"
"Copy." Two brought the screen back up and they all recoiled in surprise when the first five seconds composed of a pair of glowing missiles that closed in on the unmanned vehicle before the connection was lost.
Two glanced up at where it had once been to see a small puffy explosion in the sky. Similarly, other fireteams were all radioing in that their overwatch had been neutralized.
"It wasn't Covenant! We have the whole place in our sights and have seen no triple-A!"
"What the hell was that?"
"Vociferous," Lusana's voice came in on the main channel, "Any covie aircraft?"
"Negative, we're watching the airspace and haven't detected another aircraft entering the atmosphere since you went down."
"Spartans keep your eyes peeled. We have an unidentified hostile that shot down our drone. Let's mark the rendezvous point to Hotel Zulu One Six, less of a chance our mystery missiles can come out."
"Copy that."
"All teams. Outer defenses have been neutralized. Eon is inbound."
Captain Barrett swiftly entered the Spartan operations center and quickly made her way over to the main tablet, where a trio of Spartans was busy over the main hologram. Their eyes ran across the hundreds of information scrolling down the screens as they continued to make adjustments to the handers overseeing each squad.
Barrett didn't know why having a bunch of people guiding Spartan teams had to be augmented as one, but she wasn't in control of that part and thus put it aside.
"What's the situation planetside?"
One of the operators in his mid-twenties looked up and promptly gave a casual salute, "Eon's in the nest now, trying to nab their target. We had an overwatching drone scanning the skies, but an unknown hostile has taken it out. They don't want to risk another one due to the fear it would meet the same fate."
"Covenant?"
"We've scanned the place twice hours before kicking off the op. No triple A was detected going in or out."
"It had to be something. Banshees?"
"Fireteam Volt had destroyed their air depot during the assault and all known aircraft were blown to pieces."
"It had to be something," The captain said, "Did you manage to save the drone's feed before it got swatted?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Pull it up."
He grabbed a separate tablet and quickly brought the appropriate camera up onscreen. There was a big red indicator on the top left, showing that it had been interrupted and the optics were incapable of further function.
"Fast forward to fifteen seconds prior to shootdown."
The two of them watched as the drone continued its lazy high altitude circle of the general compound. From the looks of it, the Spartans had rapidly advanced, cutting through the Vahkai's first line of defenses and rumbled onward to the main Forerunner building that sat by itself in the desert.
Barrett's eyes flashed over to what looked like an angular shape in the top right corner of the camera. A moment later, there was a streak of light that homed right on them before the feed had cut out.
"Go back and pause it."
"Copy."
They studied the images that blurred out. The surface of the craft seemed metallic and the silver rendered it virtually invisible when looking upwards at the sun, so that explained on why there was no visual.
What bothered her was the fact that it didn't show up on the sensors either.
"I'm gonna take a wild guess, but that looks like hardlight pulse or forerunner energy."
"Are we dealing with prometheans?"
"No idea. But I wouldn't be surprised. This is a forerunner base after all."
Their conversation was cut off by Lusana's voice over the radio. There was still gunfire heard in the background and the growl of a sangheili.
"We did it! We got 'Xiva!"
Everyone in the ops center breathed a sigh of relief upon the update from Eon.
"Pulling back all Spartan teams!"
"Negative!" Lusana's radio crackled. There was the staccato of gunfire and whizzing of plasma in the background, "Unidentified hostile has shot down our surveillance drone and could be watching the skies for additional aircraft. Have all the Spartan teams secure an LZ at Hotel Zulu One Six. We're going to fly north to try and lure it away?"
"That's into enemy territory. Are you sure you want to do that with the objective?"
"We have no other choice. There's no telling what this hostile anti-air is capable of and it's possible we're likely to encounter it again."
"Keep your comms up," The Spartan operator said, "If anything goes wrong, say the word and an additional three fireteams are ready to be hot dropped in on your location."
"Copy."
Twenty minutes later, Eon's pelican accelerated north above Ascella's hot sands as its pilot kept his eyes glued to the radar screen. Just another few miles and a squadron of broadswords would be arriving to meet them and give an escort back to Vociferous.
Turz 'Xiva sat on one side of the aircraft, his weapons stripped and armor battered since it took Pine, Fowler and Austal to have to submit him so that Lusana could apply a sedative. He had since come to his senses after being dragged back onto the aircraft and remained silent, but gave off a piercing stare to each of the five Spartans in the cabin.
He tugged at his bonds for the tenth time in the last five minutes. They had done a thorough job in making sure he didn't escape.
Expectant of a warrior's death, 'Xiva was disappointed and angered once again that the Spartans had failed to live up to his expectations. Here he was trussed up like a colo roast and going to await likely some stupid trial that he didn't care for. Although he did admit that it was rather embarrassing to find himself rotting in a cell by humans.
'Xiva participated in the war against humanity during its entire nearly thirty year span. In its beginning; he and other sangheili had believed that humans had armored exoskeletons as part of their body. Much of it was no match for Covenant plasma, but research teams had continued to study human corpses to learn more about their new enemy, which turned out to be quite larger than they imagined. When the jiralhanae attacked a planet called Harvest, many of the Covenant were under the belief that it was humanity's actual homeworld.
Further examination revealed that humans were actually quite fragile creatures. It warranted the appropriate insult nishum, relative to the rather annoying intestinal parasites that had armored shells to protect their vulnerable worm-like insides.
The insult stuck and continued to endure even after the war had ended.
Most humans didn't even understand what it meant and thus weren't angered by it. The same went for the sangheili. 'Xiva didn't really know what a split-lip or gator was.
He was brought out of his stupor by the Spartans as two of them shared a round of laughter followed by a ritual of punching each other's' fists before slamming the crooks of their elbows against one another, pulling fists back and yelling in triumph. The others seemed to be looking on amusingly, although it was impossible to tell due to their helmets.
To him…Spartans were the biggest nishum of all. True, they fought much better than their normal human counterparts, but they were still people.
It was told during the Covenant's reign that Spartans...or demons were reincarnated human soldiers that were slain in battle and sought vengeance. The superstition was common among the sangheili.
'Xiva didn't think of them that way and knew right away it was not true. He also thought it was pitiful on how the Covenant reacted to their presence. Kig-yar and unggoy usually fled in panic although that was typical of them. The bigger races; his own and the jiralhanae often hurled themselves at the Spartans with reckless abandon in the intent of brawling over the glory of killing one. The death of a demon was rare, but it did happen and the soldier who was responsible for such a feat was typically rendered invincible.
"I see that our guest hasn't been much of a talker," Pine said from his seat, "You busy meditating over there big guy?"
"Maybe he's crying,"
"He better be crying," Fowler said, "'Cause he got his little bitch-ass handed to him."
"You tell him bro," Austal encouraged, "For a guy that big, he wasn't that hard to take out."
"Me and Pine were holding that fucker down! What do you mean not that hard?"
"Either way. I'm two and oh against him."
"I am but one drop of water in an everlasting river of change," 'Xiva sneered, breaking his silence to surprise the Spartans.
For a moment, he enjoyed the disbelieving looks on their faces.
Lusana chuckled, "All I see outside is sand,"
This incited laughter from the rest of the group, which only served to anger the Vahkai even further.
The explosion came without warning, jolting the pelican sharply enough that sent Bailey the only one not strapped in at the time, tumbling to the floor.
"Blake!" Austal cried.
"We've been hit!"
"Mayday!" The pilot's voice cracked over the comms, "Pelican Two Sixer going down!"
The engines let out a loud whine as the craft pitched downwards and they felt the drop in their stomachs from the rapid uncontrollable descent.
"Shit!" They heard the pilot scream.
No windows were in the cabin, so the impact also came at a sudden. Each being, Spartan and sangheili felt as if an entire warthog had plowed into their bodies at full force, exploding into sharp pain. They tried to scream out, but their consciousness was dipping and spiking. Their bodies protested, despite the determination.
The pelican slid on the sand, creating a plume of gray dust from behind as it finally slowed to settle in the narrow confines of two steep valleys. The friction from the sand, caused its upside to flip over and everything tumbled about inside like a drying machine.
Austal saw one impact literally tear the rear hatch open before the cabin's bottom rushed to meet his helmet.
The impact sent him into a world of blackness. His last thoughts immediately were of his wife and unborn baby.
Now here is where things are about to take a turn for the worse.
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