Malevelon Creek
17th of February
In the deep darkness of a jungle world, covered in layers of fog and thick, sprawling vegetation that would make the Last Rainforests of Super Earth seem like mere fields in comparison, amidst the photosynthesis-devoid, almost jet-black plants and the pods of glowing flora and dancing Fauna, the continuous chatter of Gunfire filled the air. Scarlet tracers danced in the night, alongside the thundering roar of massive anti-air batteries firing into the heavens. Destroyers of the SEAF hanged above, an armada of hundreds, raining their own hell down on the planet from their under-belly cannons.
Overhead, an EAGLE Flight pilot dropped the payload on their fighter-bomber amidst the thick brush. Several dozen bombs landed in a straight line, meeting the oncoming threat hidden in the fog with high-explosive, Democratic might. Still, it wasn't enough to slow the enemy down from their advance. Two Helldiver squads, ten men and women that defended the Liberty of humanity, fired their weapons in greeting into the Fog.
They fired at bright-scarlet eyes, eyes that burned with hatred. Robotic, modified voices groaned, but continued advancing like an unstoppable tide toward the two squads, their weapons barking and spitting out malevolent scarlet bolts at the group. First in line were almost two platoons'-worth of the Automatons' cannon fodder units:The Troopers. They advanced, the skeletal frames appearing through the fog as if they were menacing, undead gun-wielding silhouettes of Ghosts.
The leading Helldiver of the squad, 22-year-old Sergeant Alessia Veratti, poked out and fired with her AR-23 at the advancing enemy force, peering down the scope. She aimed for headshots on the Troopers, engaging them with fury in her eyes and her love for Democracy keeping her iron will going. Beside her, four Space Cadets and five other Cadets engaged with automatic fire.
She ducked and swore to herself as a round skimmed the top of her helmet, then yelled out, "CHANGING MAG!" as she dropped the spent magazine from her weapon and into the underbrush. The plastic mag's clink barely registered amidst the flurry of gunfire. She knelt as she reloaded, then looked at the tacpad on her arm and spoke, "Keep your heads down! I'm calling in another bombing run!"
"Roger!" One of the troopers replied, firing his Stalwart Machine Gun at the enemy. White tracers spat out of the maw of the weapon, the woman in charge of the platoon hit the commands and radioed, "This is BLACK 2-ACTUAL, requesting Airstrike on my Beacon! Make it snappy, Eagle-1!" only to hear an affirmative reply from the female pilot. Overhead, the air asset engaged in its bombing run, the payload scrambling across the wide area of the jungle ahead, tearing through trees and the surface, digging deep craters and killing a chunk of the enemy's troops.
Alessia ducked again, another shit snapping just over her head. Then another struck her arm, burrowing a hole through the armor and hurting her. She swore, "FUCK!" before sliding down the thick trunk of the tree and pulling out her last stim. Sticking it in the right side of her neck, she watched the wound partially heal as the medicine acted quickly, then drew her rifle again and poked out.
She saw tracers lighting the night sky, one of the allied fighter-bombers overhead exploding and showering the ground with debris in the distance. She checked their objectives and the time frame they had left, before radioing her Destroyer and speaking, "This is Black to Destroyer, DO NOT DISENGAGE UNTIL I SAY SO! We've got the objective completed, but are being pinned down by enemy fire! We should make it to extract in the next five mikes!"
"We'll hold station as long as we can, Sergeant, but you know we can't promise a damn thing..." The Captain replied, voice wary. Damned may she be if she didn't understand. She balled her fist toward her Divers and showed them to move out to the next pieces of cover:The craters left by the bombing runs. Still though, as the first man stood up, he lost his head to a hostile Bot's shot. A Devastator mech stomped its way forward, the giant, heavily armored, black and red-clad machine with twin cannons on its right arm moved forward, chittering deeply in the alien language these machines spoke.
She barked, "GRAB HIS LAUNCHER AND HIT THAT SON OF A BITCH!" before lifting her rifle again and firing. The Diver to their AT carrier's side did as ordered, scrambling to grab the disposable launcher off of their buddy's corpse and shouldering it. Aiming the shot, he snapped it off toward the mech, the HEAT warhead punching clean through the belly of the mech and shattering its chest and central processor. It sprawled across one of the craters, providing cover for the 'Divers as they hid behind it.
Alessia pushed up to the smaller crater next to them while firing into the thick fog, watching more red eyes appear. A flare shot into the sky and she swore to herself again as she watched it arc high, past the darkening fog. The enemy had just called another platoon's worth of reinforcements. She pulled up another Stratagem on her pad, this one a strafing run, then threw it far, right where the Dropship, a long, spindly thing with magnetic attachment points along its ribcage-like interior, was coming in to land.
The strafing run struck the machines aboard and tore into the engines of the Dropship, causing it to start spinning out of control. The pilot, whether interred within or in an actual cockpit, started dropping the 'dead weight' of its fellow Bots to try and stabilize, but failed, the aircraft crashing into the thick brush farther ahead, causing a massive flashing white light thanks to the explosion.
"... THIS IS GREEN PLATOON, WE'RE COMBAT INEFFECTIVE AND OUR OBJECTIVE IS NOT ACCOMPLISHED! CALLING ORBITAL STRIKE ON CURRENT POSITION, GRID ALPHA FIVE, SECTOR TWELVE! FOR SUPER EARTH-" The panicked cries of a fellow Sergeant filled her ears. She looked up and watched as the orbital strike, several shots from the main battery of that Sergeant's Destroyer, rained down on their position, several detonations thumping in the distance. The Destroyer itself came next as enemy anti-orbital batteries, massive guns, focused on it, shooting it out of the sky in a volley of scarlet bolts.
"That's our Left Flank gone! They were gonna power a Nuke!" Spoke one of the Space Cadets as they fired toward the sounds of a bot patrol's advance. The Fog was getting even thicker, to the point it was almost impossible to see what was where. Their sole sight for sore eyes was that the blue flash of their evacuation beacon still pulsated in the distance. She checked her map on her pad, then sighed. They were still too far and the timer was ticking down.
The woman nodded and aimed her rifle, firing bursts from her autorifle at another advancing unit whose sole tell were the scarlet eyes. She checked her pouches while firing, then swore, "LAST MAG!" only to gasp as the man with the Stalwart threw her his mags, almost as if saying he wasn't gonna be using them with the Stalwart available. He went back to firing, keeping the gun stabilized on the corpse of their enemy as the muck and dirt of Malevelon clung to his armor and cape.
The other six survivors continued engaging the enemy, one of them moving up to a tree and ducking behind it as bullets hit the trunk, sending bark flying into the man's helmet. He was about to poke out and fire when a Devastator's cannons rang out and his upper torso vanished, causing the woman to swear to herself. Around them, artillery rained now, mortars and heavy cannons, almost as if the Bots had all started focusing on them.
To her left, she could hear more approaching enemy units. Checking the timer, she swore to herself and then radioed, "Destroyer, retreat to upper atmo! We'll find some way off this rock!" before looking up. The Destroyer Squadron pulled out, but not before firing a volley down to the planet, both in salute and to glass whatever was ahead and around them.
She dived back into cover, using the makeshift parapet of the crater she was in as support, feeling the muddy ground below the underbrush cling to her clothes, too, making them wet and sticky. She swore to herself, if she somehow managed to get out of this mess alive, she was gonna take a nice, long soak on some Resort Planet, or even back on Super Earth.
She zeroed in on a Bot's eyes as the smoke and fog grew even thicker, then domed it, watching oil spill and pool into her crater. She looked back, watching the Stalwart gunner jump into the same hole as her. He told her, "Sorry, Sarge. Place was getting a lil' crowded and I saw bots with 'nades on their belts!" before poking out and firing. She saw the brown and black muck on the armor, staining his Helldiver emblem and soaking his cape.
Giving him a pat on the shoulder, she said, "Don't matter much right now, 2-2, we're surrounded anyhow," Before poking the barrel out over the edge and firing again. When the gun clicked empty, she slid onto her back, dropped the spent one into the dirt and pulled one of the last two, slamming it home and pulling on the bolt handle. She watched a round go into the chamber and noticed dirt was now staining the weapon as well, but it was still functional, at least.
If nothing else, their guns were made rugged enough. She gasped as she saw a melee bot charging them. It was made on a Trooper frame, its twin blade arms glimmering scarlet in the night. She aimed, fired and her weapon kicked up. She let the recoil lead her shots from the crotch to the head of the machine, letting it collapse onto the edge of their cover. She pulled and primed a frag, throwing it over her cover and watching as more white tracers flew from the rear among the Helldivers still alive with her. The Gunner beside her dipped into cover and whispered, "Last mag..." before slamming the box in, pulling the belt into place and putting the cover down.
"This is Eagle-1, Sergeant! I'm back planetside and I've got three strikes in me! Gimme a target!" The pilot spoke rapidly over the com, though she could hear the aircraft rattle, even see the Flak clouds going up in the sky. She nodded, then activated her Stratagem and held the beacon in one hand, wondering where to throw it as another Automaton battalion closed in on them.
She looked to the Gunner, a Space Cadet whom she knew. Matthew Lynch, a fella from training that never got up to Sarge rank due to some misdemeanors. She showed him the bomb marker beacon as if asking him where to even bother throwing it, though it was rhetorical. He nodded to her as he prepared his sidearm, then radioed, "Eagle-1... We're doing it Danger Close... See you on the Flipside. Drop every single ounce of your payload onto the Beacon."
"... Roger, Sarge... You're a beacon of Democracy's Light..." The pilot spoke, her voice low. The Sergeant grinned and looked over to her troopers, all of whom gave thumbs up, one of them even tending to another's wounds. At that, she primed the Beacon and long-armed it toward a tree, sticking it in-between the Branches and poking out to fire on the enemy.
She heard the drone of the jet engines even through the din of battle. Hell, she could almost see the shadow, was it not for the continuous night on the planet. She'd prayed and braced for the bomb drops, felt the ground reverberate around her, the shockwave knock her out, then wake her up again. Groaning, she looked around, her vision blurry. Her ears rang, but she could faintly make out the chatter of automatic gunfire and yelling in the comlink.
As her blurry vision slowly began to clear, she saw armor and rifles. Dark-green armor and rifles... Blinking the confusion and possible concussion away, she felt two hands grab onto her, the weight of a human body falling into the crater and onto her. She looked right to see the MG Gunner, despite injuries to his hip and his leg being torn off, kept firing his MG as he was being tended to. "Lynch..." She called out to him, her voice hoarse, throat hurting.
The gunner looked to her, then to the other soldier on top of her. Said soldier soon straightened up and started checking on her, to which Lynch gave a thumbs up, one eye visible through his cracked visor. Alessia felt something cold get stuck between her stomach's armor plates, then felt that chill expand ever into her stomach, tightening and hardening, sealing a stomach wound that she never realized she had.
As the ringing subsided, the medical person called out, "WOUND'S SEALED! SHE'S STABLE!" before pulling the helmet off of her face and starting to check her over. She spoke, "Sergeant Veratti, can you hear me? I'm Corporal Stark, UNSC Marine Corpsman..." then she looked over her neck and other areas. Smiling, Stark told her, "You look good. Helmet kept you safe..."
"Ugh... Not from the concussion..." The woman spoke hoarsely, "Who or... Wait... Are you...?"
"The people Super Earth made contact with about a week ago," She told her with a nod, "The UNSC..." before offering her a hand. The Helldiver took it, gently being lifted to her feet despite the pain shooting up her side. The Corpsman handed her her rifle back and said, "Your destroyers returned to Low Orbit to provide support! Call Resupplies as you see fit while we get Pelicans down for evac!"
"Rog..." She nodded, knelt and pulled up the Stratagem tab, activating the resupply. She yelled, "This is Actual to any survivors! I'm dropping us a resupply!" before looking over to Lynch. She threw the resupply pod down and marched over to the man, checking and tending to his leg. She gasped as she saw one of the UNSC's soldiers get hit by a blast and fall backward. The bullet had struck his armor and nearly pierced it, but she still saw blood foaming at his mouth. It probably didn't stop the energy transfer.
She turned toward the supply pod and grabbed a box for herself, putting new mags into her pouches and grabbing a fistful of frags and Stims. She also drew her heavy weapon, an automatic grenade launcher, off her back and slammed a new belt in. Damn thing had been out of ammo for hours at this point, what with the damn firefights they'd gotten into.
She hefted the 40mm launcher and started raining indiscriminate hell into the treeline, while one of the survivors ran up and grabbed some ammo for his AT Launcher as well. He patted her on the shoulder and handed her her helmet, to which the woman nodded in thanks, still firing the 40mm into the trees, continuous explosions raining on the advancing Automaton threat.
She saw several more of the UNSC's soldiers moving forward, one of them taking a headshot from a Devastator's cannon. Still, they pressed forward, their rifles spitting out what looked to be armor-piercing rounds that tore through the advancing Automaton formation in the fog. She stepped up next to one of the Marines, kneeling in cover beside them and opening up, then looked to see it was a mad with a shotgun loaded with slugs. He racked the pump of his gun and told her, "Keep your eyes on the fight, trooper!" before poking out again and slugging one of the Devastators right in the head, causing flames to erupt across its frame and sending it staggering to a burning demise.
She was terrifyingly glad that they had allies now, but she knew that if they didn't move, this position would get overwhelmed incredibly quickly. She looked for the squad's officer, watching as a man walk up to her amidst the fire, completely calm. Dark-skinned, with a cigar between his lips and a green cap on his head, the man inquired, "You Sergeant Veratti!?"
"I am!" She replied, "You are?!"
"Sergeant-Major Avery J. Johnson, UNSC Marine Corps!" The man spoke with a grin, "Lookin' like you Divers need a lil' rescuing!"
"I'd appreciate the backup, that's for sure!" She spoke, then poked her rifle over the man's shoulder and fired a burst at an Automaton Commissar that wanted to charge them. He nodded in thanks, drew his pistol and carelessly domed a Trooper that was about to shoot her. She spoke, "We're even... Already..." before pausing. She saw four other surviving Helldivers stand to their feet, two of them now armed with an Autocannon that started spitting out shells, one of the two loading the gun as rounds tore through the trees.
The other two carried a Railgun and another Grenade Launcher that started thumping. The man fired his full belt to thin the Automaton force. Overhead, the drone of engines filled their ears, with Alessia watching them all with muted awe. She looked to Johnson as the man drew his shotgun off his back and loaded up slugs. He told her, "We just gotta hold on one more mike, 'till our birds can come get us outta here! Ya good with that, Sarge!?"
"You know damn well I am! Get my men and me alive outta here, Marine!" She replied, then knelt beside the man and aimed her launcher. Johnson grinned, then waved forward two men with rocket launchers strapped to their backs and rifles in their hands. They lowered their rifles and drew the two-tube missile launchers from their backs, thumbing the safeties off and aiming at advancing Devastator units that were trying to track them.
Each tube coughed a missile out, then spun to let the other take its place. Two more missiles flew toward what looked to be a tank that was tearing through the brush, nailing its tracks. The Fog began to dissipate simply through the sheer volume of fire being exchanged between the Marines and Helldivers and their 'Bot enemies. Even as she fired her gun, she watched the men and women of the UNSC around her, firing their weapons into the brush and following her Divers' tracers like they were the Gospel of Democracy.
She dropped an empty magazine from her rifle, reloaded and pulled the launcher from her back again, loading another belt of grenades and standing up. She called out, "Tomas, on me! Walking fire, sweep and clear!" before the man nodded. He stood to his feet, wobbled a bit and then walked over to the woman. The two nodded and began to advance, firing their launchers staggered so there was half-a-second between each shot. Johnson beside them pushed forward, too, firing his shotgun rapidly at the fog.
The enemy's red eyes began to die out in the distance as the gunfire began to slow. When it all finally fell silent and all that was left for Alessia to deal with was the ringing in her ears, she made a headcount. They'd lost four Divers, both from the Danger-Close Bombing Runs and the 'Bots' own fire. She lowered the grenade launcher, which's barrel still smoked, before slinging the weapon onto her back and drawing her rifle.
"How many we lost, Corpsman?" Johnson asked.
The woman that'd tended to Alessia spoke, "Three dead, Sarge. Two headshots, one got hit by the big fuckers' cannon and was just a torso when we found him. Found his tags, though, sprayed across a tree with the rest of him..." before she handed Johnson the tags. The man lifted them and used the flashlight on his shotgun to read the name, then sighed and shook his head.
She walked up to Johnson and offered him a hand, stating, "... Thanks for the Rescue. From the way the Broadcasts spoke of you people, you were still an unknown to us, so seeing fellow humans drop in to back us the fuck up sure put a smile on everyone's face."
"Command decided to play nice, since you're all fellow humans," Johnson nodded, shaking her hand, "Your 8th of February marked First Contact Day, though I don't doubt they ain't told you all much about it..." Then he paused as he noted some kill tally marks on her rifle. He asked her quickly, "You been in this hellhole for long, Sarge?" as he reloaded his own shotgun. Just in case the enemy
"... Since before the 8th, actually," She sighed deeply, "First, it was just standard patrols."
Johnson nodded, then noted the girl hunch over and quickly motioned to the landed Dropship, a four-engine, armored craft with missile pods, a 40mm nose-mounted gatling cannon and a cockpit with a decent view. The two crew aboard, a pilot and co-pilot, waved everyone on. Alessia watched the Corpsmen carry Lynch on a stretcher while one kept tending to his leg, but the man seemed to be just fine with the stim helping heal that. She looked at her own gut and murmured, "What the hell did you stick in me...?"
"Biofoam. Medical self-hardening bandage," He grinned, "It's good stuff. Dulls the pain, too."
"Shit... Wish we had some of that, too, but the Stims work just fine..." She sighed deeply as she entered the dropship. She sat down next to Johnson, watching as the other Helldivers that could walk were guided on board. Each of them, herself included, was tense as hell. Six survivors, herself included. Hell of a fucked mission, but by Democracy, they'd done their job.
Johnson spoke, "So... Malevelon Creek's the place's name?" as the aircraft began to lift off, flying low. Alessia furrowed her brows, taking her helmet off as she watched them flying at height with the Jungle Canopy, the back hatch closing. He told her, "Relax. We're gonna head on up as soon as we're out of the enemy AAA's range. Then, you and I can have a nice chat..."
"Alright..." Was all she could really say. Down below, though, she could still see fierce gunfights going on in the jungle and could immediately tell who was who, firing down there. White and gold tracers for them and the UNSC respectively, meeting the scarlet of the Automatons in the jungle and fog. As they arced up into the heavens, Alessia could finally see the sun of the system, easing her as she held onto the harness of her chair.
She saw their Destroyers and radioed, "Black to destroyer... Survivors accounted-for, on friendly dropship heading up Grid 2-2-3..." before sighing deeply and rubbing her eyes. She heard a confirming hum from the Captain, then paused as she saw the UNSC's own vessels appear in the rear view, noting the massive frame of what seemed to be a Cruiser-class warship and the smaller support warships around it. The cruiser looked like an armored brick, black as the void and with a massive maw-mounted cannon, as well as missile pods and point-defense guns. The other ships looked like they had wings on the front, were also black-colored and bore the UNSC's insignia:An eagle with sprawled wings guarding Earth.
... Just who were the UNSC? How did they get here?