Chapter 10: Svenson
"You what?"
"I found her," Svenson slowly got back onto his feet, "she's up."
Svenson looked at Faraday. She was standing there, wide-eyed. She looked like she couldn't believe that she just took something's life, even if it was just a mindless alien. She held her DMR in her hands, trembling.
"Great, we need you guys down here," Arceneaux's voice was cut off by the sound of gunfire, Svenson didn't need to be talking to him over the radio to hear it.
Svenson muted his radio and looked Faraday in the eyes. Faraday seemed to know Svenson was about to ask if she was okay, and she nodded before he could even ask it.
He unmuted his radio and ran back to Kamal, holding out a hand to get him back up.
"Jilani took a hit," Svenson said as Kamal grabbed his arm and pulled himself up, "she's still breathing though."
"Get her inside if she can't fight."
Kamal groaned and stretched out his back as Svenson moved to get Jilani up. He rolled her onto her back, crushing what was left of her backpack. Her face was strained with pain, but that meant she was indeed still alive.
"Jilani, can you fight?" Svenson asked, holding out a hand for her.
"Yeah," she grunted, taking his hand and pulling herself up. She seemed to be struggling a lot more than Kamal did. "It just stings a little."
"Well we gotta move," Svenson said once everyone was up, "Arceneaux wants us with him now."
As the four Marines began moving, they heard what sounded like a distant explosion, followed by the sound of something sailing through the air. They all looked up towards one of the cliffs just as a massive glob of plasma flew over it.
"Wraith!" Kamal shouted at the top of his lungs.
The shot from the Wraith seemed to be coming straight towards them, and they all ran as fast as they could in the opposite direction. Jilani, who was still sore from getting shot, wasn't able to keep up. Svenson already knew what was going to happen before it did happen.
Svenson, Kamal, and Faraday made it to the edge of the tower. When Kamal saw how far behind Jilani was, he had turned around to go and help her. But before he could get close, the plasma round from the Wraith hit, and Jilani was gone.
"Jesus," Svenson swore under his breath, Kamal shouted something more obscene.
There was nothing left. Just the burned floor of the tower's second level. Before they could do anything else, they heard the Wraith fire again.
"To the ramps!" Svenson shouted, taking charge for just a moment.
The three remaining Marines made their way to the tower's ramps and ran down towards the ground. With the second level of the tower above them, they were safe from more plasma mortars. But what they weren't safe from were the Covenant ground troops.
A squad of three Grunts noticed them immediately as they got off the ramp, and turned to fire. Kamal blasted one with his assault rifle, and Faraday shot another in the head seemingly without thinking. One of the Grunts got a shot off with its plasma pistol, and just missed Svenson's leg by a few inches before suffering the same fate as the other two at the hands of Kamal's assault rifle.
"You guys safe?" Arceneaux's loud voice came over their radios.
"Mostly," Kamal responded, "we lost Jilani to that Wraith."
"Shit… I lost Stevens. I'm the only one over here that can fight right now," Arceneaux responded. There was a worried tone to his voice, something that Svenson wasn't used to hearing from him. "They got me pinned down, but they're not rushing me quite yet. Think you three can give me a hand?"
"We'll try," Kamal sighed, "things are gonna be pretty damn tight with that Wraith in play though."
"Just do what you can. I'd rather we take a few more of those fuckers down before they can get all of us."
"Agreed," Kamal nodded towards the other two. Svenson nodded back, but Faraday didn't give any response. She just stood there with a distant expression.
"You good?" Svenson asked her, seeming to snap her back to reality. She nodded in response, slightly raising her DMR to show she was ready to keep fighting.
The three of them moved, navigating around the back of the tower as to not give the Wraith even a chance of hitting them. More gunfire sounded, both from Arceneaux's assault rifle, and from something more distant.
"Hey, you hear that?" Svenson tapped Kamal's shoulder.
"Yeah…" Kamal's eyebrows lowered. The distant gunfire turned into what sounded like an explosion of plasma.
"Corporal!" Svenson turned on his radio, "our reinforcements are almost here!"
"Great! Get the fuck over here already!"
"On our way."
After more plasma explosions, Svenson realised the sound of the Wraith firing had stopped. Don't have to worry about that thing anymore. The three Marines rounded the corner of the tower to see the Covenant soldiers keeping Arceneaux pinned. Every so often the Corporal would fire his assault rifle and snag a Grunt or two, keeping them down.
To the surprise of both Svenson and Kamal, Faraday fired her gun before either of them could. The shot flat out missed, landing in a patch of grass, but she fired again and this time hit one of the Grunts in its right eye. Kamal ran out to their left and fired his assault rifle while moving for cover, while Svenson and Faraday used the tower's wall for their cover.
Over the sound of gunfire, Svenson could hear the now familiar faint whirring of a Covenant dropship approaching. Shit.
"Kamal!" Svenson shouted, but he was too far and probably couldn't hear over the sound of his rifle firing. Svenson took to his radio. "Kamal!" he shouted again.
Kamal stopped firing and stood with his back behind a smaller grey metal structure that he was using as cover. He looked over at Svenson and Faraday with a worried expression. Svenson pointed to the sky, towards the direction he heard the dropship approaching from.
"Dropship!" Svenson shouted.
Kamal's expression turned to plain fear as he looked where Svenson was pointing. The Covenant dropship floated over the cliffs, it had a clear line of sight on Kamal, while Svenson and Faraday were protected by the overhang of the tower's upper level.
"Come on, we'll give you some cover!" Svenson continued shouting, motioning him over. He knew he wasn't going to make it, but he didn't want to sit there and do nothing while he watched his friend die.
Faraday and Svenson fired their rifles at the Covenant soldiers across from them, making sure they didn't decide to pop out of their covers and try to shoot Kamal on his way over.
Svenson glanced towards the dropship after firing a volley of bullets at the Covenant, he could see the plasma cannon turning. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, just like his previous near-death experiences. Except he wasn't the one who was about to die this time. Kamal was still out in the open, Faraday fired her DMR at the Covenant positions as fast as the gun would let her.
Svenson saw something else moving out of the corner of his eye, it wasn't Covenant. Whatever it was, it slammed into the Covenant dropship at a very high speed, and exploded. A missile then. More of them appeared from the edge of his vision and impacted the dropship, the impact and explosions pushing the purple metal the ship was made out of inward.
Interior explosions began to rock the Covenant dropship alongside the barrage of missiles hitting it, and it came apart before his eyes. Time seemed to speed up back up. Kamal had just made it back to the safety of the tower as the remains of the dropship crashed down onto the grass.
The sounds of machine guns filled the area, followed by the screams of Grunts and wails of Elites. Svenson turned back towards the Covenant keeping Arceneaux pinned. Pelicans hovered in the clearing, Marines manning machine guns in the backs of the Pelicans blasted the remaining Covenant troops, clearing the area.
"You guys still alive back there?" Arceneaux asked over the radio, "that thing didn't come down on top of you did it?"
"No," Kamal answered, though he was slightly out of breath, "we're all alright."
"Good, come on. Let's get the hell out of here before more Covenant show up."
Faraday moved forward first, and then stopped when she seemed to notice Kamal and Svenson weren't behind her.
"You good?" Svenson asked Kamal, resting a hand on his shoulder. A death to one of those plasma cannons was very far from painless, and it was a death Kamal had almost suffered.
"Yeah," Kamal breathed, "I'm good. Let's just get the hell out of here."
Svenson saw Faraday waiting for them and he motioned for her to keep going. They followed her over to the landing area, where two Pelican dropships sat against the ground, and another hovered high up in the air.
"There you slowpokes are," a familiar voice called from a group of gathered Marines, one of the Marines being Arceneaux.
"Sorry," Kamal said, running ahead of Svenson, "kinda almost died."
"Well be glad you kinda almost didn't, we need every man we can get right now."
As Svenson got closer he could actually see who was speaking. Sergeant O'Hale stood in the middle of the group, and Svenson now saw that all the other Marines were the other members of Fireteam Delta that had split up on the Autumn. Svenson silently cursed to himself for not recognising his Sergeant's voice, but he blamed that on him being exhausted.
"Nice of you to join us, Private," O'Hale said with a smirk.
"We could say the same to you," Svenson said.
"Of course," O'Hale said, her expression not changing.
"We're moving our supplies out of the tower right now," Arceneaux said, looking down at a datapad.
"Good, once that's done we can leave," O'Hale turned back towards the Pelicans, moving with the other members of the fireteam silently behind her. Svenson followed. From the corner of his eye he could see Marines exiting the tower carrying the crates of supplies they were keeping in there.
"This all of you?" O'Hale asked once she stepped up onto the Pelican.
Svenson realised that none of the members of the group O'Hale left with were missing. Clarke, Kormanyos, Seguin, Lopes, Dunn, Roscoe, Rizo, and Skenandore were all taking seats in the back of the Pelican, quietly chatting amongst themselves.
"Yeah," Arceneaux said with a reluctance in his voice, "Wade, Stevens, and Jilani are dead. Damn Covies got 'em. Hanoi is wounded, but we're getting her out of there."
"I see," O'Hale said, sharing the same tone of voice, "that's too bad. Where are their bodies?"
As O'Hale and Arceneaux spoke, Svenson's mind began to wander. As a Marine he hadn't seen very much action since he left boot camp. Some of the Marines alongside him were the same ones he had trained with. Wade and Jilani both came from Draco III as well, he'd known them for a while. And now both of them were gone. Wade's body was melted, and there was literally nothing left of Jilani.
The past few weeks had been some of the worst weeks of Svenson's life. He was on Reach. He fought in New Alexandria when the army's forces were being diminished so much that they needed Marine reinforcements. He saw the city being turned to glass as he was forced to evacuate and leave civilians behind. He watched from a mess hall on the Pillar of Autumn as a Covenant cruiser nearly destroyed the ship just before it left Reach.
He thought that after getting away from Reach, he was leaving the worst of things behind. Or at least he thought he was going to get longer than a few weeks of rest. Once they figured out whatever the hell this ring was and got off it, he figured he would be needing at least a year just to himself. But he knew that wasn't going to happen, not as long as the Covenant were out there.
"Private!" O'Hale shouted, snapping Svenson back to reality. He realised it wasn't the first time she shouted it, and that she was shouting at him. Svenson was standing outside the Pelican, he had been staring at the ground.
"Uh, yes?" Svenson asked, trying to play off his daydreaming.
"What happened to Jilani?" O'Hale asked. Her expression was more of concern than anger at him for not listening. Arceneaux was staring at him as well.
"Wraith got her," Svenson said quietly, not wanting to remember leaving her behind to die, "there's nothing left of her."
"I see," O'Hale sighed, looking down at the ground.
Svenson saw Marines returning from the tower, two of them carrying body bags. Wade and Stevens.
"Alright, everyone aboard," O'Hale ordered, "we're getting the hell out of here."
Svenson breathed a sigh of relief, a breath he hadn't even realised he was holding. But before he could climb aboard the Pelican, O'Hale stopped him with a firm grip on his shoulder.
"Private, I know whatever you and the others here went through was bad," she said with a reassuring look on her face, "but you need to keep a clear head moving forward. It's the only way we're getting off this ring. I'm sure as shit that things are only gonna get worse from here on out."
That's not very reassuring, Svenson thought, but he nodded to O'Hale anyways as if it was. He took an empty seat between Kamal and Faraday, a seat he was sure that was left specifically for him.
"So, Sergeant. Where are we headed?" Lopes asked, her voice quiet from the back of the Pelican.
"Alpha base."