Halo: Feet First

by MikeDice

Halo: Feet First covers the story of a team of UNSC Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the 7th Battalion, 105th Shock Troops Division. The main character, Duncan Iris, faces the full horror of the covenant war effort against humanity as well as the brave retaliation of outnumbered and outgunned UNSC forces. However, he also witnesses the turning of the tides as the war progresses.

177. Battle of Reach - Chapter 50 (Ite Nunc)

Chapter 50 – Ite Nunc

August 23rd, 2552 - (17:15 Hours - Military Calendar)

Epsilon Eridani System, Reach

Viery Territory, New Alexandria

:********:

Duncan aimed high, squeezing off a grenade that whistled into the air. He let it sail on for two full seconds before letting it rip on the third, catching a passing Banshee in the EMP wave. Its drives guttered out and the flyer leaned into an uncontrolled roll. He watched it go, already loading another grenade while it rocketed over the atrium and towards the hills. It dove headlong into an unoccupied slope, exploding on impact.

It was one more kill in a maelstrom of death dealing dogfights.

The situation above was almost impossible to keep track of as the most persistent of the attacking Banshees dueled with the newly arrived Falcons. Unequal in numbers and maneuverability, both parties were still equal in firepower and tenacity. Swooping beneath cascades of plasma and the unrelenting attentions of fuel rods, the versatile helicopters were beginning to purposefully yet gradually scatter from the starport, drawing more and more of the enemy aircraft away from the building and into the surrounding airspace. The pursuing flyers were none the wiser as they tried to knock out their competition, weaving above and below the overlapping fire of autocannons and side-mounted machine guns. Soon the fighting spilled into the airways above the bay as well, devolving into an air battle that brought the capabilities of either aircraft onto full, violent display.

Falcons made defensive swerves and turns to escape the growing damage of head on attacks as they fought to get their gunners a line of sight on those flyers dogging them from behind. Ghostly warbles echoed over the waters as the Banshees committed to their aggressive acrobatics, barreling and somersaulting out of streams of gunfire that ripped across their wings and fuselages, adding trailing flames to the double helical contrails left in their wakes.

For all their numbers, the enemy were the ones reaping the most damage. The dogfights in and of themselves were not separate actions. The friendly airpower was keen on exploiting that fact. Individual Falcons flew away from their own engagements to intervene in others'. Their respective crews expertly coordinated their fire, often flying straight ahead at their unsuspecting targets so as to bring all three guns to bear. They immediately pitched into the blind spots of one or two surprised Banshees at a time before overwhelming and obliterating them. The momentary Falcon pair would glide through the tumbling carnage of their kills before breaking away from one another. Vengeful survivors would follow them in hot pursuit, unknowingly setting themselves up to be outmaneuvered in the upcoming seconds.

For the Banshees, death came not only from above but also from below.

Sets of rockets flew up regularly from the roof of the starport's atrium like a vaporous net, occasionally snaring a passing flyer with explosive fury. The tracking fireballs soared and turned after their banking targets in movements that mirrored their own before landing in succinct strikes. The first rocket would blow off a wing and knock the aircraft into an unrecoverable spin. The second would pulverize the canopy into a gust of glittering shards that spiraled onward for a short distance as momentum gave way to gravity. The power systems of a few collectively targeted Banshees simply died after intersecting machine gun fire had reduced their hulls to Swiss cheese. The failing, sparking craft embarked on one-way nosedives into the bay, crashing down through the water's surface with the force of torpedoes.

Debris constantly rained down and clattered across the atrium's rooftop. Although most of it was manageable, Duncan made a mental note to try to avoid the larger pieces whenever he saw them coming. The others had followed a similar line of thought. They had spread out from the western ledge to the rest of the roof in an effort to both widen their area of effect and make themselves less of a target. Their attention had shifted mostly to the fight going on overhead, and in short order that fight began paying attention to them.

Being one of the few non-machine gunners left on the western ledge, Duncan was the first to notice when a pair of flyers swerved out of their pursuit of a nearby Falcon and dove straight towards them.

"Two Banshees coming down, west side!"

The others heard his callout and turned to the west just as the pair rose up from their dive, leaving their fuel rods to continue their descent. One of the two machine gunners below saw them in time to flee from his post. The rods came down and engulfed both weapons in a consuming flash, blasting the last ODST off his feet, his body twirling through the air like a steaming ragdoll.

The Banshees looped through the air and came back down again. Flying almost level with the western ledge, they began strafing the roof with their energy cannons.

Though Duncan was too far to the side to be in their range, he waited a moment to make sure they were well within his own before opening fire. He let the grenade skip into the flight path of the closest. Across from him Hector managed to send off a rocket. As their attackers shot over the roof Duncan released the trigger, setting off the projectile in his quarry's face as the rocket blew off its partner's wing. The first crashed into the roof in a nose over tail tumble, electrical energy crackling over its canopy as its wingman bucked into a violent spiral, casting detritus in all directions like a broken twister. ODSTs scrambled out of their way. The fire from Kilo-9-2 briefly abated as the Falcon made an emergency ascent, clearing a path for the rapidly approaching duo.

Duncan watched his target skid across the roof before colliding with the boxy mass of a ventilation unit, denting the metal case and killing its momentum. Its friend wasn't so fortunate as it continued its sidelong spiral, its drive screaming in its attempts to regain control. Kilo-9-2 rose just high enough to let the aircraft careen below it. The flyer crashed clear through the glass of the atrium's skylight and vanished from sight.

"LOOK OUT!" A voice cried from below.

Seconds later an explosive impact echoed up to the roof as a flash of light flickered through the broken glass.

All eyes turned to the other Banshee which had landed in the middle of a cluster of ventilation units. With it still paralyzed, a few of Barrett's ODSTs advanced on its position. They fired launchers and threw frag grenades, only to watch their efforts explode against the toughened paneling of the encompassing air conditioning. Failing to find a direct line of sight on it, the Banshee's engines suddenly roared back to life. It boosted up off the crumpled unit that had arrested its motion and looped around to face its attackers. Flying low over the roof, it slowed into a hover and began unloading its energy cannons in a wide rotation. Those in its way ducked down or shifted aside as a torrent of plasma bolts surged into their cover, scorching a long arc across the foliage of satellite dishes, meteorological apparatuses, air ducts and backup generators.

Duncan was fumbling around for his next grenade when an ODST across the way stepped out into the open, rocket launcher raised as he tried for a lock-on. The Banshee spotted him and twitched in his direction, only letting him get off a single shot before it gunned him down in a spate of plasma. It likewise saw the incoming rocket and responded accordingly, leaning left and forcing the fireball to soar straight into the width of a satellite dish, exploding the disc in a spray of shrapnel that hissed across the roof.

Reloading his grenade launcher, Duncan saw another of Barrett's men fire a launcher from an adjacent position. The Banshee's last maneuver had pulled it from behind its cover and into the flight path of the latest rocket which zoomed into its face in a fiery uppercut. The flyer bucked back from the blow, a nosebleed of flames spewing from its crumpled fuselage. It fired again, forcing the ODST to withdraw while it made for a quick ascent, only for buffeting machine gun fire to sparkle across its armor.

Kilo-9-2 descended back to its old position above the atrium's skylight while it oriented itself towards the closest threat, its two gunners picking away at the rising Banshee while the pilot fixed it in his sights. A five-round burst from the autocannon pummeled its hull. A second salvo started flames along its wings. A third blinked it out of existence beneath a bright detonation that hurled pieces of wreckage across the roof.

Plasma bolts lashed into the Falcon's side from above, drawing all eyes to the next Banshee diving in from the north. Its attempt on Kilo-9-2 was cut short by a split-second column of crimson light that skewered it from top to bottom, instantly transforming it into a puff of sparking metal and falling embers.

Nearby, Duncan spotted the Staff tossing his spent Spartan Laser to the ground, his attention already elsewhere.

"We got two more circling us to our three and nine o'clock!"

With his M319 ready, Duncan sighted the pair of Banshees that were soaring around either side of the roof. High enough that they were out of range of Kilo-9-2, they circled about in a clockwise rotation. Preemptive suppression fire streamed into both of them, pursuing them along their flight like two hands on a sped-up clock.

One of the fighters cycled in and lunged over the tarmac towards the east side of the roof. Kilo-9-2's response was a sharp turn to the right and a quick pitch to the left, giving his starboard gunner the opening he needed to lay into the approaching flyer.

As the two traded shots, Duncan's chief concern shifted to the other Banshee which was now making a turn of its own, banking into an obvious strafing run from the west. The last machine gunner at the western ledge reacted faster than he did, ripping his M247H from its tripod and backing up, firing as he went. Duncan was right behind him, aiming his grenade launcher over the man's shoulder while he waited for the right moment. The Banshee powered through the shower of lead without so much as a reply from its energy cannons.

Duncan predicted its next move even while he launched his grenade, holding off on the trigger.

The Banshee belched out a fuel rod, just as he'd expected. He watched his 40-millimeter arc directly into the roiling comet, causing an explosive chain reaction that smashed back into the flyer. Its avionics seized up in an electrical seizure that saw it fail to pull out of its descent. Duncan and the other ODST dashed out of its way before it collided with the ledge, bouncing off into a paralyzed backflip. Still limp, it landed hard on its back in front of the veranda's stunned machine gunners.

Duncan nodded to the other trooper as the two of them closed in and hoisted their weapons over the ledge. He watched the onslaught of bullets from the M247H tear into its frame while he loaded his next shot and lobbed it at their quarry below. He set it off above the Banshee and paralyzed its systems once again, giving his fellow Helljumper the time he needed to rake its canopy from end to end in a backtracking sweep. The third time was the charm, the resulting detonation ejecting the Brute pilot out of its seat, slamming its spine against the median of the highway. It stayed down, although that didn't stop one of the gunners below from paying it a cautious 10-round burst to the stomach for good measure.

The sound of a similar explosion reverberated from the other side of the roof where Kilo-9-2 finished off the other Banshee, the position of its falling fragments above the tarmac marking where the Falcon had cut off its retreat.

Duncan used the tentative reprieve to reload. He was on his last bandolier now. It wouldn't be long before he would have to either beg for ammo from someone who wasn't using theirs or switch to relying on his MA37, not that the latest combat seemed to have any room for a basic assault rifle. Still, he found the wherewithal to smile at his trick with the last Banshee. The odd nostalgia of the moment reminded him that he hadn't pulled off a lucky shot like that since Miridem.

Old dogs, old tricks.

He checked in on the main action still ravaging the western lines.

The Scarabs had reached the first two hills. They had found a foothold on their slopes while small firestorms raged at their peaks. Two respective groups of Scorpions and Warthogs lay burning in the flames. However, the walkers had been fought to an apparent standstill. They weren't pressing their attacks beyond distanced bombardments against those units of opposing armor that fired on them from neighboring hilltops.

If the Scarabs had been stalled, the advance of the Covenant troops swarming past their feet had been brought to a bloody stop. The hostile tide had reached the foot of the hills as well, but they had left a carpet of their own dead behind them. Grunts charged up the slopes as their own kin toppled past them, raked away by attentive machine gunners firing from dugouts further up. Lines of surviving trenches set between the hills were exchanging fire with phalanxes of shield bearing Jackals whose march had been brought to a halt in several Thermopylae-like actions. Fighting from captured entrenchments, Brutes and Hunters unleashed heavier ordnance against the fissile munitions flying down at them from the more elevated fox holes.

Despite the ferocity of their attack, there wasn't a single solid breakthrough that Duncan could spot for either side, that is until he looked to the extreme right and left of the landscape. There was movement on the north and southward ends of the battlefield where the largest of the hills stood tall, their mass having apparently proven sufficient to hide the vehicular reserves that were now revving out into the open. Small fleets of a dozen Warthogs drove down onto the fields as accompanying tank platoons of four Scorpions-strong rumbled down the grassy slopes behind them. The two formations, the last of the division's armored assets on their side of the bay, sallied out towards the enemy in two mobile pincers that raced towards the flanks of the Covenant infantry.

Those in their way barely had enough time to recognize the Warthogs bounding and bouncing over the dips and inclines of the terrain before they came ramming into them. Hoods cannoned through groups of Jackals, bodies spiraling over windshields as blue blood splattered the glass. Turrets started up and whipped around to whittle away at the survivors as they passed by. Reinforcing Grunts fired harassing potshots at the fast-moving vehicles. The growing shower of plasma bolts and crystals that crackled and spattered off the Warthogs went completely ignored by the drivers as they charged on, unlike their gunners who were quick to spool away at the worst offenders. The wheel-bound advance plunged deeper into the space between the hills and the plateau of the promenade, aiming to cut off the closest Covenant forces from their reinforcements.

The Scorpions had a different goal in mind. The arcing advance for the two tank platoons maneuvered them much closer to the hills themselves. They rolled forward side by side in wide firing lines that blasted through the stragglers left behind by the bulldozing Warthogs, folding them up like two distant ends of a living rug. Circumventing the craters they'd made as well as the bodies of troopers lost during the retreat, they forged on into the corpse-filled gaps left by the Hogs before beginning an eastward turn, drawing their cannons towards the unguarded flanks of the Scarabs.

The two walkers were caught up in their combined assault on one of the largest of the middlemost hills which saw all four of their main weapons bombarding the mobile battery there. Their focus and ultra heavy cannons breathed and spat unrelenting plasma barrages that pounded the vehicles. The consequent explosions sent 105-millimeter cannons rising through the air like decapitated heads while flaming tires cartwheeled down the slopes.

The two tank platoons waited until all eight of their number were in position before opening fire. The synchronized volley blasted into the backs of the Scarabs. Immediately the one on the furthest north fell into a series of jostling movements that lowered it onto its haunches, blaring an alarm on the way down. Secondary explosions rippled through joints and seams, culminating in a final roar that escaped its throat before a bright detonation briefly swallowed it from sight. The burning ruins of the carapace rolled down the hill it had stood on in a crumbling landslide of blazing metal, leaving its legs jutting out from the slope like the pegs of a giant tent.

As its partner's remains fell away, the last Scarab commenced a turn to port comprised of careful steps that struggled to maneuver on the incline. It hadn't even turned halfway around when another cannonade slammed into its back, a hyper-concentration of all eight Scorpions focusing on its weak spot. The shelling pounded its armor like flaming bubbles popping in close order, each a devastating blow in its own right but compounded and magnified by virtue of their coordination. A larger explosion bloomed from the alcove of the power junction. A violent reaction tore through the main body and channeled into its glowing mandibles. Green plasma vomited out of the focus cannon and spread over its head in an upchuck of emerald flames. A gargled scream echoed from the walker. It took one last staggering step before it too began to lower onto its heels. It hadn't fully come down when the fires on its hull were put out by a pressurized explosion that flowered through its heart, ripping away the head altogether. The rest of the body let out a metallic groan as it leaned into a sidelong roll down the hill, its legs either breaking away or folding in on the carapace like a dead insect. A band of Hunters who had provided ground support for its advance now found themselves scrambling out of the way of the incoming wreck as it steamrolled several of their own on the way down. The smoldering carcass came to rest at the base of the hill it had climbed, blocking-up the immediate path of those Covenant troops coming behind it.

With the Scarabs out of commission, Duncan was sure the groundside push to the starport would run out of steam. Maybe, just maybe they could still be pushed back, at least for now.

He allowed himself a bit of relief that quickly died off when a Falcon streaked past his line of sight, trailing smoke and flames on it screaming descent towards the ground. He ran up to the ledge in time to watch it careen over the highway and slam into a hard landing on the field beyond. It ploughed a long trench through the grass that ended where its momentum brought it to a lurching stop. The aircraft settled onto the burning stump that was once its starboard wing. Though flames continued to spread over its pockmarked hull, neither pilot nor gunner emerged from the wreckage.

Duncan looked up and locked onto a dogfight happening some 50-meters overhead. Like the last one, a lone Falcon was trailing fumes from small fires on its wings as it made sweeping turns, giving its gunners the widest possible openings on the mob of Banshees that thronged it from every direction. The five flyers came at it from above and from below, forcing it to remain on the move for fear of being overwhelmed by the spray of energy cannons and fuel rods.

They were too high up for him to get involved.

He heard the rising whine of turbojets behind him and glimpsed their guardian angel ascending from the roof.

"Kilo-9-2 to ODSTs, I've got to lend a hand to my guys upstairs." The pilot comm'd. "Keep the pressure on down here. If they start becoming a problem again, let me know. I'll come running."

"Roger, Kilo!" Barrett replied. "Keep us posted on that Spartan!"

"Copy. I'll be in touch."

The Falcon rose up and away, heading towards the same one-sided aerial battle that Duncan had seen earlier.

"What's taking that Spartan so long anyway!?" Zack shouted from somewhere on the roof. "If they've already got Traxus then shouldn't he be here by now!?"

"Kilo said they still needed to secure the landing pad over there!" Nova replied. "Just give him a minute!"

"We don't have a minute." Mito said, his distant, distracted tone immediately drawing Duncan's eye. He found him standing further down along the same ledge, staring into the western skyline. He followed his polarized visor to the spot where he was looking and felt his heart drop into his boot.

For the first time in days, the corvettes were not where he'd last seen them.

They were on the move, fanning out across the municipal airspace of New Alexandria's west side in a general push to the south. The battlegroup didn't make a single sound that could be heard from below, making the eerily silent nature of their journey all the more foreboding. At first the way they had spread out made it seem as if they were heading towards the 77th Armored Division's Green Zone. That suddenly changed when one of them diverted from its course and curved eastward, turning towards the starport. Its approach caused the rumble of its impulse drives and plasma conduits to finally reach the area. The battle below refused to relent despite the newfound commotion from above. The few who weren't fighting for their lives right then and there got to watch while the corvette pulled to a stop in the airways less than half a kilometer to the south of the starport. It eased into a stationary hold above the nearest skyscrapers, hovering in place like a titanic buzzard waiting patiently for dying prey.

Almost immediately that 'patience' turned to assistance as all six of its heavy plasma cannons opened fire.

The barrage came like a cluster of falling stars that hurtled towards the world below on tails of blue exhaust. The flanking force that had since shifted to attacking the unguarded backs of the Covenant infantry had finally cut them off from the promenade. They were encircling them, blowing away Hunter pairs and gunning down Grunts in droves when the barrage landed. Two Scorpions promptly went up in smoke and geysers of debris, a third raising off its treads as the rearward blast catapulted it forward, smashing it top-first into the ground. A trio of assaulting Warthogs had their coordinated broadside interrupted as two of them flashed into car-sized grenades, hurling shrapnel as they tumbled through the last of their momentum.

The stunned survivors among them could barely register the losses. Speeding away or rolling aside, they tried to scramble their forces, thinning themselves out across the fields as the corvette fired another salvo. No matter where they went, however, they continued to run into the same problem as everyone else in the immediate vicinity of the starport: they were completely exposed, fish in a barrel.

The next barrage bombarded the fields as much as the hills. Some of the entrenched positions that had been holding out against all odds for minutes on end were instantly erased by the thunderous storm, reduced to fountains of flame and dirt, glowing craters and glimmering furrows. Despite the deadly downpour falling on them from above, however, the troopers of 4th Battalion continued laying into those hostile elements that they could actually kill, the very same ones who were now beginning to rally. With no cohesive flanking maneuver to cut them off, their reinforcements once again flowed freely from the stairs of the promenade's plateau and onto the battlefield.

"No." Nova whispered, staring at the sight of the next incoming salvo.

Duncan became aware of his own surroundings again and saw that most of everyone else had gathered at the western ledge to watch.

"What do we do about that?" Hector asked hoarsely.

Not so much as breaking eye contact with the corvette, Zack gave a weak shake of his head. "What can we do?"

Duncan couldn't help thinking the same.

For the little they could do against the Banshees, there was virtually nothing they could do against that ship.

Nothing except wait and hope, wait on the Spartan and hope he could get the job done.

Duncan cast a worried glance across the bay.

The fighting was still going on in the airways above the water as well as on the ground at Caracalla Park. In the latter case, it hadn't budged much in either direction. Sergeant Major Duvall and his men were still cornered at the beach, still stuck in place.

That same nagging doubt he'd felt earlier, the same one that had been alleviated by the arrival of the Falcons, resurged.

He was about to turn away but stopped halfway upon spotting something new and altogether unwanted. Above where the mouth of the Hornád River fed into the bay, four dropships flew over the water, none of them human. The band of two Phantoms and two Spirits rushed out onto the bay, flying along the same route the platoon had used to escape from the Csillagos to the starport. Their course was almost as obvious as their intent.

"Dropships, south side!" He yelled.

For a moment, the despair was forgotten. The others rushed to the south side of the roof to see for themselves. The Phantoms and Spirits jetted beneath the dogfights that populated the bay, flying low and then rising high, rushing clear over the perimeter fence. They swiftly broke into pairs, a Phantom and a Spirit, the first duo slowing above the south side of the tarmac while the other carried on past the atrium towards the north. They each rotated into an uncontested descent, hovering down to those parts of the starport's apron that had been left open either behind or beside the waiting starships.

They were not left uncontested for long as a hurricane of weapons fire doused them in lead and explosive munitions. The response came both from the individual security details that had barricaded themselves around the ships and from the ODSTs on the roof of the atrium.

Their hulls glittered and sparked with the focus of multiple machine guns as rockets pummeled their armor, cracking the metal, spouting fumes and bursts of flames. Still, the baptism of firepower was diluted enough by their numbers for them to survive the incursion.

Duncan was among those on the roof who were now laying down a wall of suppression from the south side. He didn't use his launcher, however. He had already cast it aside. Not wanting to risk any EMP damage to the starships, he settled for something more precise, crouching over to a spare SRS-99 sniper rifle that had been braced against the southern ledge.

He grabbed the gun, laid out the bipod and got to work scoping out targets that were only just jumping out of their troop bays.

Several rockets flew into the starboard bay of the closest Spirit, blowing out pieces of Grunt and Jackal like a fiery woodchipper. Another fusillade followed in hot pursuit and struck the fuselage at the same time as a round from the Stanchion punched through the cockpit. A violent conflagration coughed out of the rearward compartment. The Spirit dove forward, now so close to the ground that its unguided acceleration sent it crashing into the starport, stabbing deep into the walls of Terminal A in a gust of billowing debris. The few troops that had managed to leap out of the other bay in time were able to hit the ground, a motley assortment of Jackals that quickly turned their shields towards the incoming fire. It did them little good against a rainfall of 40-millimeter grenades that bounced both between and behind them. The successive detonations broke shields and tore away legs, tossing the survivors skyward like a batch of bloody bowling pins.

Duncan was already looking through the smoking wound in the starport that trailed out from the wreck of the Spirit, focusing on the Phantom beyond. The dropship had floated to a stretch of open tarmac on the apron, hovering down as the closest to the rear of the three starships.

Erica, Noah, Christa and Arthur.

He knew from being on the queue line with them that they had to be aboard one of these three. They were maybe even among the crowded faces that he saw struggling to peer through the portholes of each ship.

Straight away he was alarmed that the dropships hadn't fired on any of them. Neither had the corvette or the distant Wraiths bombarding the hills.

In an instant he reached a conclusion that made his blood freeze.

They weren't here to kill the civilians. They were here to capture them.

Prey for the hunt.

Deaks' quiet, bloodied face as the flames consumed him flashed through his thoughts, as did Rico's relief as he reached over to hand him back his own arm.

Every muscle in his body tensed and tightened, a fresh hatred burning in his chest.

He wasn't about to let his family fall into the hands of Brutes.

Not again.

A Revenant dropped from its anchor points on the Phantom's underbelly, hitting the tarmac alongside several squads of Brutes and Jackals. Four of the former quickly became his most pressing concern. A quartet of chieftains led the charge from the drop off point with weapons that set Duncan on edge, one carrying a grenade launcher, one a plasma cannon, another a fuel rod cannon and the last wielding a gravity hammer. They dispersed and fanned out towards the liners with their teams in tow.

Soldiers posted behind the sandbag walls that fenced in the starships let loose with emplaced turrets and rifle fire, ripping into the less armored of their attackers. Half of the Jackals that couldn't get their shields up in time were cut down seconds after they had landed.

The Revenant responded in kind, lobbing a bloodred mortar at the positions around the southernmost starship. Its landing blew through a section of wall and splattered two unlucky troopers over the hull of the ship.

Amidst the fire, one of the chieftains pushed towards the breach with its team. It shouldered its fuel rod cannon to prepare to unload on the upcoming soldiers but tripped forward from a sniper round to the back. Energy shield flaring, it caught itself and whirled around in search of the culprit.

"You know what you're doing with that thing, Ep-8!?" Lang asked as Duncan heard him set up his sniper rifle beside him.

He ignored him and recentered his optics on the irritated chieftain. He squeezed the trigger again, delivering a gut shot that punched through its shielding and turned irritation to rage. It whirled back around with a wrathful howl that was muzzled by another gut shot, and then another, the last one bowling it over.

"Woah!" Lang winced. "Guess so!"

Duncan knew he was more a Jack of all trades than a master of marksmanship like Lang or Mackley and ruled out headshots altogether. Focusing on the center of mass would be his best bet, and now he needed to reload a weapon he had no ammo for.

"Whiskey-4, I need a mag!"

To his surprise, Lang held out two with his freehand like a deck of cards. "The more the merrier!"

Duncan agreed. He took one and set it on the ground before yanking out his spent magazine and slapping in the next one. He had barely reshouldered his weapon when a spate of plasma washed over the roof, forcing him to duck. The Phantom's starboard gunner laid out a long-winded burst of plasma bolts that slashed across the roof. In tandem, the dropship used the slackening resistance from the atrium to launch a trio of bolts from its heavy plasma cannon which thundered into another sandbag position. The opportunity didn't last long as the Grunt's attention shifted skyward to meet the heavy return fire hosing the Phantom from above. The dropship initiated an ascent that wheeled it towards Kilo-9-2. The Falcon's gun run allowed it to swoop over the top of its target and swing around into a moving broadside, dotting the dropship's hull from tail to nose. The two Grunt gunners tried to answer Kilo-9-2 and were answered in turn by more rockets, flocks of them hissing out from the roof as well as from positions on the tarmac. The fireballs met at the Phantom, engulfing both its underbelly and open troop bays in several explosions per second even as the Falcon kept circling from above, firing on it with machine gun and autocannon.

There was a rising whine like the charging of a device before the dropship shattered like a vase from a blooming inferno.

Seconds later, a similar burst of light came from behind, causing Duncan to take a peek. The sizzling remains of the Phantom that had attacked the north side of the tarmac trickled down over that part of the apron.

The comms crackled again. "Kilo-9-2 to ODSTs, be advised, our Spartan's inbound. I repeat, the Spartan is enroute to our location. Just hold out a little longer."

Duncan barely registered the statement. Turning back from the fighting on the north side and returning to the fighting on the south, he searched speedily for new targets.

:********:

Erica listened to the sounds of the fighting outside with the intensity of a feral cat. The calm of the last few hours had been utterly shattered in the last few seconds. At first the gunshots and explosions were nothing more than a distant rumble. Now she could physically see the tracers flashing across the tarmac. She could see the crystals and spikes shattering off the hull of the ship, spitting up pink and yellow shards over the portholes. Every few seconds the starship itself would quake from some new commotion going on outside.

"Mom?"

Erica glanced back at Noah. He was sitting in one of the middle seats right where she'd left him, having taken the window seat from him the second she started seeing Falcons and Banshees duking it out over the starport.

She saw where the worry lines creased his face from forehead to chin, somehow making him look 10-years older. She'd seen that face too many times over the last week. The fear in his eyes hurt more than anything else, but what made it so much worse was that it was completely out of her control. The same went for the hundreds of other passengers on their deck who were gathering at the portholes on either side of the ship. The flight attendants moved about the aisles, carefully coaxing, pleading and sometimes even yelling at the crowds to return to their seats.

Few listened.

Erica couldn't blame them either. How could they be expected to sit in place when the Covenant were right there? It was like asking someone to put on their seatbelt after their car had already crashed.

Was the evacuation already over before it had even started?

Erica didn't have a concrete answer for that, but she was sizing one up. She watched the aisle just outside of her section of seats. More people were standing up, some comforting worried children, some ignoring them while they reached for their bags in the overhead compartments, getting ready to make a run for it. The nervous chatter among the adults was evenly matched by the distressed screams of babies, infants who had caught on to the fears of mothers that tried in vain to rock or even pat them back to sleep. Older children broke down crying or asked incessant questions to fathers who had no answers, mostly because the answers made themselves woefully obvious as they cracked and sizzled against the hull of the transport.

Erica, for her part, was looking for a way out.

There didn't seem to be any. The way back to the front was too occupied with people who had the same idea as her, who were standing up with packs on their backs while they waited for whatever would happen next.

CRACK.

She glimpsed a spike shattering off her porthole. The glass was bulletproof by design, but it startled Noah enough for him to break into tears. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in close, shielding his eyes with her hand.

She craned her neck to peer back over the top of her chair. Looking for the nearest emergency exit, her eyes landed on Christa and Arthur a few seats behind. Unlike the rest of the older passengers around them, the two teenagers watched the scene outside their porthole without giving away too much. One looked mildly afraid whereas the other wore a blended mask of hatred and annoyance, an expression she'd seen on him once before, only this time it was more visceral.

It seemed that a certain ODST wasn't the only one he hated, if not more so.

She peered further back to the railed off enclosure of the main lounge. There, she spotted the glowing red 'EXIT' signs above a matching pair of doors on either side of the enclosure. That would have to be their way of escape if things went south. However, the thought of jumping out into the middle of a full-blown firefight seemed reckless if not downright suicidal, not to mention they would have nowhere to go even if they did make it back to the building. If the Covenant were this close, the question was no longer a matter of where they would be safe but for how long.

Something caught her eye then, movement in a corner of the lounge. She saw where several of the Army medics came running to the side of one of the hospital beds. The nearby heart monitor was beginning to chime an alarm. The medics started doing something, carrying out some procedure, but Erica wasn't focused on that. She was far too fixated on who they were doing it to.

Despite looking as if he was perfectly at peace in his unconscious state, Rico's heart rate was dropping.

From her seat, she thought she could almost see the condensation in his ventilator mask growing lighter by the second as his breathing became shallow.

Regardless of everything else happening out on the tarmac, a newfound fear coiled around her with a vice-like grip, stealing away her own breath. Noah tried to turn his head to see what was going on. She held him tighter, stopping him halfway. She didn't want him to look.

Even as the medics were trying to stabilize their patient, a loud BANG suddenly rang through the deck, causing backs to straighten and frightful conversations to cease. It wasn't a crystal or a spike hitting the hull. It sounded too-

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Erica felt her breath hitch in her throat at the sound of a giant fist clanging against metal.

It was coming from the cargo bay below, from outside.

Someone or something was knocking on the bay door.

BANG-BANG.

A loud roar, like an awful combination of a lion and a man, echoed up into the ship.

The worried mutters returned and quickly heightened into a cacophony of frightened shouts and screams. A certain shout overpowered the others. Erica heard it coming from the aisles. Those standing up either moved aside or were shoved out of the way by a squad of soldiers rushing towards the lounge, their expressions grim beneath their helmets. They ran down the four rampways into the enclosure and passed through a door just next to the bar. One of them who looked like a red-eyed sergeant said something to another of the troopers standing guard over the lounge. His words were drowned out by the general clamor of the deck, but whatever he said, it appeared to drain all the blood from the young soldier's face as he nodded back. Once the sergeant shut the door behind him, the soldier, probably a corporal, started issuing orders to his comrades as well as to the medics and civilian doctors.

With grim determination, they moved to several of the beds and began picking up what she guessed were the less critical among the patients, not an easy thing to tell among a group of amputees and blood-drenched servicemen. They laid them carefully on the floor beside the bar. Then they took their beds to the door that the others had left through and started hoisting them against it in a move that Erica only recognized after the fact.

The soldiers fixed the beds in place, ensuring that the barricade was as stable as possible. They drifted back the second they were done and established a small perimeter around the entrance, rifles propped for stability's sake atop occupied hospital beds and beeping medical equipment.

BANG. BANG. BANG-BANG.

The sounds from below refused to relent.

More than ever, Erica wished she still had her pistol.

"Mom," Noah said worriedly. "How come they get to go and we don't?"

Erica was so taken aback by what was happening in the lounge that she almost missed what he was saying.

"They're trying to protect us, sweety." She whispered.

In spite of her hold on him, he managed to shake his head. "No, not them. Them."

Erica looked down at him, but he was already looking elsewhere, gesturing with his eyes for her to look out the porthole right behind theirs.

She peered outside and winced.

It was the ship on the southernmost side of the tarmac, the one just behind their own that had been the first to load civilians from Terminal A.

It was lifting off.

:********:

Duncan wasn't sure who gave them the permission to do it, but he knew for a fact that it was the worst mistake they could've made. He watched the ship furthest away from them flare its drives and commence its ascent. Making matters even more dire, it was immediately clear there was nothing anyone on the ground could do to stop them.

"Hey...hey-hey, where's that one going!?" Zack yelled, almost screaming.

Hector came running over from the northside ledge with rocket launcher in hand. "Who gave'em the greenlight!?"

"Not us!" The Staff replied.

"Duvall!?" Barret asked.

"No, he wouldn't risk it! Not while they're still trying to take the park!"

Duncan understood right then that whoever was in the cockpit, whoever was behind the controls, they had taken the situation into their own hands. He continued to watch with no small amount of alarm while it rose above the starport and banked into a portside turn, departing their local airspace and emerging over the waters of the bay. The nearest Falcons and Banshees that had been fighting and outmaneuvering one another just moments prior now broke from their engagements in order to get out of its way.

It wheeled to port once again, lining itself up to fly out on a northbound course towards the ocean.

Then he looked up.

The corvette was still laying out a steady downpour of heavy plasma bolts across the western hills, but not all of its guns were firing. He saw the moment that one of its starboard cannons shifted away from the hills...and towards the bay.

He could do nothing but watch as it fired.

The comet of blue light streaked down through the air and lanced into the back of the fleeing transport, the resulting explosion flowering out of its portside, bucking its bow into a downward tilt.

The subsequent thunder of the impact overpowered every other noise and briefly silenced the fighting at the starport. No one moved or returned fire at the enemies on the tarmac below. None of that seemed to matter compared to the fiery spectacle that now soared past.

The starship's drives let out a shrill scream as the newfound strain took its toll on the engines, causing the twin cones of its propulsion systems to flicker out like a pair of candles in the wind. The ship flew on but quickly began dropping, driven on by nothing more than momentum and aeronautical physics.

But gravity ultimately won out.

For Duncan, and quietly for everyone else, disbelief quickly turned to horror. The inferno engulfing its stern clung to it like a hell-spawned parasite, bleeding a long trail of smoke behind it as the entire ship rocketed into the mouth of the bay. Its nose plunged through the surface of the water, the death scream of its engines ending in another loud impact of crashing metal.

Upon touching down, the front of the liner bobbed back up onto the surface, leveling out the ship. For the briefest moment, Duncan thought it might actually float. Then just as quickly as it came up, the bow slipped back beneath the waves. The rest of the ship tilted after it. Like the seabound vessels of old Earth, the entire thing, its stern steaming with the hiss of drowning flames, rose up. Its rear lifted into the air as everything else went down. The momentary seesawing came to a swift end as the stern slid into the water. The tail's vertical stabilizer was the last thing to slip away, dipping out of sight beneath the frothing surface.

A two-meter-tall wave rippled out from the crash site and rolled towards the coastlines on either side, surging over gravel beaches and crashing against perimeter walls. Its arrival on the west sent a small flood rushing through the fences and across the embattled tarmac of the starport's north side, washing over the feet of Covenant troops, against the sandbagged positions of soldiers and around the landing gear of the waiting ships.

Even as the silhouette of the sunken starship began to diminish beneath the unsettled face of the bay, the sounds of groaning metal and the rumble of secondary explosions continued to echo up from the depths. But these too grew faint and eventually ceased altogether.

"Jesus." The Staff hissed under his breath.

"W- was that-," Nova stammered. "How-, how many-...why couldn't they wait?"

Duncan's mind was blank.

Then everything hit him all at once.

Several faces blurred through his thoughts in rapid succession.

His heart skipped a beat.

Erica, Noah, Christa, Arthur...were they...

He shook himself out of it. Like the receding ocean waves below him, a tidal wave of fear and dread unlike anything he'd ever felt in his life was suddenly kept at bay by the gravity of cold logic.

They weren't on that ship. None of them were.

He remembered how he'd left them. He remembered where he'd left them. The four of them were still waiting on one of the queue lines when that ship was declared full and the onboarding process was commenced for the others.

They weren't on that ship.

They were still here, still with him.

And yet a bitter indignation simmered on the inside of him at how easily it could have been them, at the reality that it still could be.

Hundreds, if not thousands of people who had survived so much, who'd been minutes away from safety, were just condemned to the bottom of the bay because some bastard in the cockpit couldn't wait. The hit from the corvette had been devastating, but unfortunately not so much as to provide the mercy of a quick death for the majority of the passengers who had probably survived. It was one of those times where it didn't pay to be first in line.

"Hold on," Mito muttered. "Is that-, hey, hey I think that's our guy!"

Still dazed, Duncan warily looked down the length of the southern ledge to where Mito was standing. He was pointing, gesturing back at the bay. Though it was the last place he wanted to put his eyes on at the moment, he followed his finger anyway.

He followed and paused.

The Falcons and Banshees had returned to their dogfights, twisting, twirling and shooting at one another in one running battle after the next.

But not all of them.

He spotted two outliers, a pair of Falcons that he hadn't seen before. Whether they had always been there or had just flown onto the scene, he had no clue. He'd been so glued to the death of the starship that he figured he might've missed their arrival. But now they had his full attention, and deservedly so.

He watched them fly over the bay one behind and slightly below the other as they rounded the dark sands of Caracalla's beach. Some of the surviving Banshees harried them along the way. However, heavy fire from the lead Falcon's portside gunner seemed to shew most of them away. A stubborn flyer kept up the chase, however, heedless of the tails of fire wafting from its fuselage with each maneuver. It flew along in a strafing run that saw it trading shots with the gunner. As it barreled to the right, the outgoing fire shifted unerringly after it, as if the gunner knew exactly where it would be. The flyer rolled out of the maneuver and promptly exploded into a deluge of glimmering debris.

Duncan brought up his sniper rifle and zoomed in.

The two Falcons slowed upon crossing over the small lagoon between the park and the minor beachhead girding the cliffs to the south. They began descending on their approach to the firefight unfolding on the latter, the lead aircraft lining up its machine gunner for a shot at the Covenant troops assailing Duvall's men. The gunner delivered a moving broadside that scythed along the enemy's ranks, stitching a bloody path across ground, armor and flesh.

Grunts collapsed. Jackals reeled back as their arm-mounted shields burst from the strain, opening them up to a deadly barrage that quickly knocked them over. The gunner swept from left to right, picking off their numbers with an almost premeditated lethality. Even the lone Brute Captain Major that appeared to be overseeing the attack was knocked off its feet and turned into a blood spurting bullet sponge. Once it fell over, the remaining stragglers quickly melted like ice to heat beneath the resurging gunfire from Duvall's troopers.

With the immediate area clear, Duncan watched the sergeant major turn to speak to the gunner on the lead Falcon. Whatever was said, the conversation was kept short and swiftly set everything else into motion.

The two Falcons continued their descent until they both bellied down onto the grass of the strip of coast. The machine gun of the lead bird was pulled aside and a giant figure jumped out from behind it, hitting the ground running.

He was moving fast, so fast that Duncan had to reduce his magnification just to catch a glimpse of him:

Steel gray and black armor, a gold visor, a height that set him above everyone else around him as he sprinted by.

A reinforcing trooper squad emerged after him from the other Falcon. Some of Duvall's troopers went ahead, filtering through the concrete barriers that had served as their choke point for an ungodly amount of time. They were quickly overtaken by the new arrival, however, who led the charge towards a Warthog that had been abandoned further up the path, presumably to use it in the resumed attack on Caracalla.

"Yup, that's our Spartan alright!" Lang said, having also scoped in with his rifle.

"Think he can pull it off!?" Mackley asked, watching through the Stanchion. "We're down to the wire out here as it is!"

"He's a Spartan, Whiskey-3!" The Staff replied. "It's what he's built for!"

"We'd know." Duncan heard Hector say, not over the comms but through his helmet, just low enough that no one else could hear.

Duncan knew where he was coming from. The Spartan was big, not big enough to be a Spartan II but just enough to be a familiar face. He remembered part of the conversation Epsilon had with the lieutenant commander during their little reunion. He remembered the roster she'd given them, and the other member of Beta Company that she happened to mention was on her team.

He watched the Spartan drive off towards Caracalla in the Warthog, feeling a rising sense of long-lost nostalgia with each passing second.

He heard the Staff and Captain Barrett slide in between him and Lang with their newly acquired rocket launchers.

"Alright troopers, our backup's in play!" Barrett said. "Maintain this position until we get the all-clear!"

"Someone want to pass that message on to the pilots!?" One of his ODSTs shouted back.

"We radioed them to stay in place until they get the greenlight! Trust me, none of them are keen on making another move until that corvette is out of the equation!"

Duncan panned away from the beginning of the fighting popping off at the edges of the park and snapped back to the situation in front of him. There was still a small battle occurring on both sides of the tarmac. His side, the south side, was in the process of being dominated by Kilo-9-2.

The Revenant that had been hurling mortars at the defenses of the two remaining starships was itself becoming the locus of a hailstorm from the circling Falcon. Its hull was covered in ragged holes and flickering fires. It was locked in a never-ending maneuver of controlled thrusts from one part of the tarmac to the next in a bid to get itself clear of the pilot's attention. It wasn't working and more fires were flaring out over its main weapon.

Without warning, a Banshee nosedived towards the Falcon, pocking its fuselage with streams of plasma from above. It might have launched a fuel rod had it not burst apart a second later, a shaft of displaced air tunneling through the wreckage with the hypersonic passage of the Stanchion's shot. The Falcon used its resumed freedom to continue pouring into the Revenant until it gave up the ghost in a breath of blue flames.

Duncan set his sights on another Brute-led squad charging its way through a hail of gunfire towards one of the ships. He slipped a lucky shot through the throat of a Jackal. As its corpse crumpled to the ground, he switched over to where the gravity hammer wielding chieftain was descending upon a gap in the perimeter of the closest ship. Swinging left, it blew out a piece of the sandbag wall and sent a turret spiraling away. Swinging right, it hammered a soldier into the air with explosive force. Its third stroke stopped midway, the hammer flying off into the air as the limb that carried it twirled away from its exploded owner, caking the underside of the ship in simmering gore.

"Stanchion's out!" Mackley declared.

Another unwanted fact, Duncan thought while he scoped along the leg supports of the furthest starship. He stopped upon coming across a gathering of non-human legs standing on the other side of the vessel. He couldn't see what they were doing but he could tell that they were standing at one of the entrances to the cargo bay.

He didn't have a shot.

His next decision wasn't a hard one to make. He'd barely made it at all before he noticed that he was on the move, pocketing his last magazine.

He sprinted to a ladder on the west side of the roof. No one moved to stop him. No one needed to. Everyone was busy putting their all into neutralizing those threats that remained. Reaching the ladder, he gripped his rifle with one hand and slid down the rungs with the other. His boots crunched down onto the gravel of Terminal A's rooftop. He ran alongside its long, bulbous skylight, moving above the terminal's east wing to a spot that would give him the best view of his quarry.

He jogged nearly to the end of the wing before coming up to the edge and planting his bipod out over the ledge. Setting his shoulder into a sturdy spot, he peered into his scope.

Just as he'd suspected, there were two chieftains standing outside one of the cargo bay doors. They had cleared out the sandbagged position that had been erected around it. Their accompaniment of several Grunts and Jackals stood waiting among the bodies of the slaughtered trooper squad. The lesser aliens watched restlessly while one of their leaders pounded its fists at the door, leaving dented dimples in the metal frame with each strike.

Duncan ignored that one. His reticle came to rest over the fellow chieftain standing perpendicular to it, its bladed grenade launcher held at the ready. With one of them distracted, it was clear which one would be the most immediate problem once they realized he was there.

He set the blue reticle over its head, watching it flash red over an increasingly impatient face. He pulled the trigger and saw the Brute's head snap violently aside, the ballistic slap popping its shields and knocking it off balance. Its neighbor stopped banging on the door and whipped around. Before Duncan could line up his next shot, a torrent of plasma slashed down at his cover from a diving Banshee. He ran back from the ledge as bolts kicked up dust at his feet. He threw himself behind the refuge of another ventilation unit and gave a short prayer that it wouldn't fire a fuel rod.

Two explosions rang out above him. A second later, burning pieces of Banshee rained down around him.

"We got your back, Ep-8!" The Staff comm'd. "Whiskey-4, lend him a hand! Flush out those Brutes!"

"Working on it!" Lang replied.

Duncan reemerged from behind his cover, catching sight of where Lang had also set himself up further back down the roof of the terminal. He squeezed off a shot and a shout went up from below.

"When'd you get here!?" Duncan asked as he ran to his old spot.

"Right after you did!" He fired again. "Just getting with the times before we run out of time, am I right!?"

Duncan felt a smirk tugging at his lips while he reshouldered his sniper. His initial target was down, a pool of purplish-red blood seeping from the hole in the chieftain's helmet. The other had picked up its plasma cannon and began hosing away at Lang's position alongside its team, forcing him to crouch behind the ledge. Duncan saw its shields beginning to regenerate and targeted it with a round to the stomach, shattering the energy barrier. He unloaded the other half of his magazine into its gut, dropping it on the last round.

He ducked beneath the ensuing return fire and rummaged through his pocket. He pulled out his next magazine just as Lang resumed firing, earning more alien screams from the group. With their attention divided, Duncan rose back up and shot a Grunt through the chest, instantly igniting its gas tank. The blast threw three more to the ground. He scoped in on them in turn, punching a golf ball-sized hole into the stomach or back of each one.

He reached around for his next magazine and realized he'd already spent it. Luckily, Lang was there to finish off the last Jackal pair, shooting off fingers to knock aside their shields before following it up with a round to the head.

"I'm dry on the SRS!" Duncan shouted over.

Slapping a fresh magazine into his rifle, Lang reached into an ammo pouch and pried out another. "Last mag!"

He tossed it along the roof. Duncan caught it out of the air, pulling out its spent predecessor and smacking the replacement into place.

"Use it wisely!" Lang advised.

Duncan nodded and went on the prowl once again, but found that the starport tarmac was quiet, or whatever passed for quiet with a corvette bombarding the hills nearby. There was no sign of life among the massacred group that had tried their hand at breaching the ship. He scanned along the length of the vessel, inadvertently getting an eyeful of the plentiful faces peeking through the portholes. There were dozens looking outside with the commotion behind them hinting at scores more trying to see what was happening. Many eyes landed on him and Lang or lingered over the bodies.

At a porthole on the lower deck, he recognized a pair of green eyes that locked onto his own at the same time, leveling a suspecting glare back at him.

He felt a massive burden fall free of his shoulders, allowing him to breathe an unimaginably relieving sigh.

He was right. They were alive.

He depolarized his visor and flashed her a grin. Erica's expression softened into a look of long sought consolation that perfectly matched his own. The sounds of the fighting became more distant and the stress of the last several hours eased off him.

The moment, like everything else, didn't last long.

His focus was stolen by a blue detonation blossoming on the other side of the bay. He zoomed in with his rifle and sighted a Wraith lying in the middle of Caracalla Park. Its carcass was ablaze beneath the arch of the bridge that connected the park's two elevated terraces. A Warthog drove past it, bounding up the miniature ravine between one terrace and another, its machine gun firing on targets whilst flocks of crystals raced after it.

"How do you think they're doing over there!?" Lang asked.

Duncan shrugged. "Couldn't say, but it looks like they're getting a handle on things-"

A tremulous impact rumbled behind him. He whirled about, glancing through the glass of Terminal A's skylight to the mushroom cloud rising up on the other side, one of many that formed a forest of smoke over the hills.

The corvette.

In the heat of the moment, he'd almost forgotten about it. He sorely wished he could've kept it out of his mind if even for a second longer.

An explosion went off somewhere above the north side of the tarmac, marking the end of the last of the attacking dropships.

"Tarmac's clear!" Barrett announced. "Refocus on the western approach!"

"Ep-8, Whiskey-4, either get back up here or find yourselves a spot on that skylight!" The Staff said. "It's looking bad, our guys out front need sniper support now!"

"Copy!" Lang picked up his rifle and planted a boot on the glass, starting up towards the top of the skylight.

Duncan cast one last wistful look at where Erica was. She seemed to understand his predicament, sending him off with an encouraging nod. He paid her back with a smile that was a promise in and of itself before setting off up the slope of the skylight as well.

He hoped to God the corvette didn't start bombarding the starport next. The second it did, if it hit Terminal A, it would undoubtedly shatter the glass at his feet. Then he'd be looking at a seven to eight-story fall into the empty waiting areas below. He scrambled up one of the house-sized panes until he crested the summit. He stayed low, crouching to a spot near the middle of the skylight, eventually settling down onto his stomach and elbows in an effort to minimize his profile.

The hills were far more horrific than he remembered them being mere minutes earlier.

If the scenery was a hellscape before, it was pure annihilation now. Most of the hillsides were either burning with patches of forest fires, submerged in smoke or steaming with the molten runoffs that oozed down their slopes where melted blends of liquified grass and vitrified dirt had turned into basaltic flows. There were people in the midst of the destruction. Soldiers were streaming in from the clefts and gaps in the terrain, running for their lives from the glowing surroundings at their backs. They came in random spurts as individual squads and platoons made mad dashes from the last of their trenches and dugouts. The hilltops were also aglow behind them where the former batteries of Scorpions and Rocket Hogs had been reduced to mounds of kindling.

The bombardment had left sufficient room, however, for the Covenant infantry to advance through the hills. They came hot on the heels of the retreating elements of 4th Battalion, outnumbering them by more than three to one. That disparate disposition appeared to only increase with time as more Covenant cleared the smoke and advanced towards the fields. The withdrawing troopers hurdled the guiderails of the highway, using them as well as the dead traffic behind them as positions from which to return fire on their pursuers. Machine gun fire from the turrets beneath the veranda joined them in sweeping across the enemy advance, killing many, wounding many more. However, they could do no more than delay the impending tide.

Duncan was at a loss.

The Staff had said they needed sniper support, but he failed to see what difference it would make, especially with just one magazine left. He remembered his grenade launcher that he'd left on the atrium and couldn't quite tell if it would make a difference either.

Lang opened fire on the throngs closing in on the edge of the starport, as did everyone else on the atrium's roof, sending a volley of 40-millimeter grenades and rockets sailing into the hostile masses.

Duncan struggled not to think of a fortress under siege.

The corvette wasn't firing on them yet. It continued to bomb those scant positions in the hills that refused to die. The soldiers there were holding up the greater flow of Covenant reinforcements heading to the starport. In the face of everything else going on, he couldn't help but admire them for it. They continued to hold stubbornly in place despite everything around them having been or in the process of being turned into a literal hell. At the same time, he didn't envy them, firing down from half-baked dugouts at lines of Covenant channeling along the minor ravines below. All of that while death pounded their environment in multiple attempts to zero in on them. A squad even fought a defensive action around a lone Scorpion that had been tucked into a cave-like dugout in one of the northern hills, buying it every second it could get to fire its cannon into the unguarded backs of the enemy's advance.

He broke away from the desperate scene and turned again to Caracalla.

The terraces were abnormally quiet. He couldn't say the same for the main pavilion building at the back of the park which had become the new focal point of the fighting. In sharp contrast to the situation in front of him, he could actually track the speed at which the Covenant were being pushed back up the front steps of the pavilion. At one point he caught a brief flash of motion as the Spartan moved up the steps, shooting his way closer and closer to the main control hub at the top of the installation.

He was almost there.

Duncan shut his eyes for a moment to gather himself. After steadying his breathing, he turned back to the west, brought his scope in close and searched for targets.

He didn't have to look far. Some of the hilltops were occupied by Jackal snipers taking shots at the starport. He saw a round from Lang punch through the brains of one of their number. It encouraged him to try, squeezing his first shot into the chest of the Jackal next to it. It had barely dropped to its knees before he struck another one less than 20 meters to its right, then another 30 meters to its left. He squeezed again, catching a Jackal in the shoulder but not killing it outright. He squeezed again and heard an empty click.

"I'm out!"

Lang fired off one more shot and fell into a crouch, setting down his rifle and pulling out his sidearm. "I'm out too!"

Duncan followed his example and set his sniper aside in order to draw his MA37 from his harness. The number '128' appeared on his HUD's ammo-count. He wondered how long that would last.

If it was like everything else around him then not long enough.

A beam zipped past his head. He'd been spotted. He quickly backed down onto the sloped pane of the skylight to give himself more cover. Through the glass, he observed the Covenant advance drawing ever closer to the highway. All the while he wiped off the old blood smeared on the stock of his rifle and pressed it into his shoulder, holding it at the ready for the moment that-...that what?

What could he even do anymore?

Maybe he could head back to the atrium to collect his M319, but he figured that the Covenant would already be pouring into the terminals by the time he got there.

He turned his head to the skies south of the building. There, he saw the corvette beginning to slowly creep towards the airways above the starport. He didn't know if it was done with the hills yet. There were still a few isolated pockets of resistance holding their ground there. Whether it was finished or had simply lost interest, either way the defiance of the 4th Battalion holdouts no longer mattered. They were just mild annoyances for it to mop up at its leisure after it took care of the main event.

Duncan did the one thing he still could.

He sat on the skylight, saddled his rifle across his lap and waited.

He looked again to Caracalla.

To his surprise, there wasn't much of anything going on there. There were a few flickers of tracer fire here and there but nothing of note. An ember of hope reignited in the middle of the typhoon of his mind.

Had the Spartan won?

He upped his visor's magnification on the main control hub and thought he saw small explosions just beyond the entrance.

No, he hadn't won yet.

Duncan kept waiting for the moment that he did, if he did.

However, another part of him wanted to look at the ship he'd seen Erica on. He thought about how much he wished he could be there.

Perhaps in another time, in another life, he would've gotten onboard with them. But he hadn't chosen that life. Not by a longshot.

Then, without warning, the voice he'd been waiting for, Sergeant Major Duvall's, blared forcefully through his helmet on an open frequency that anyone and everyone could hear.

"Missile defense online! All evac transports: you are cleared for takeoff! Repeat, you are cleared for takeoff! Go! Now!"

Suddenly, the starport's ambiance of humming drives sharpened into a dull roar that resonated across the entire area. He looked and saw cones of sapphire blue flames beginning to bellow from the rearward thrusters of the ships like a synchronized firing of cannons. Hot air whipped across the tarmac in turbulent windstorms, blowing back the bodies of the Covenant dead that had gathered there.

Across the starport apron, all four of the remaining ships commenced a fast, emergency ascent, lifting off of the tarmac in hasteful unity.

A shock of relief and anxiety coursed through Duncan's veins as the hot air rippled over him.

They were leaving.

But the skies, the corvette-

He caught movement on the park's southernmost terrace. The M95 Lance that had sat silent there for days now rotated towards the approaching threat in the southwest. A cluster of missiles hissed out from it and streaked a path towards the corvette.

An instant of trepidation took hold of him and he wondered if the FIELD systems they'd planted on the whole battlegroup were still there.

The missiles closed the distance in seconds, smashing their explosive payloads into the corvette's bow in several reassuring plumes of destruction. The thunderclaps of the individual impacts boomed over the cityscape with the resonance of ringing bells and screaming metal.

It was a clean hit.

There was no energy shielding in sight.

Noble Team's operation had finally paid off.

The corvette's passage through the sky caused most of the fires on its hull to peter out, all except for two roiling infernos of reddish-purple flames that bled from the gaping holes that had been blasted into its superstructure.

Duncan watched as the corvette veered off its original course and wheeled back towards the west at a subtly increasing tilt. He remembered the transports, however, and turned back for one last glimpse of Erica.

But the ships were already completing their northward turns. They fired their drives at full burn and soared away at high speed. One of them rose into a sharp, near vertical ascent directly towards the clouds. Whoever was at the helm seemed more eager to get away from the planet than anyone else, leaving behind the other three ships as they took a more level flight path across the bay and out over the open ocean. From there they eased into a gentle rise that would eventually pull them higher and higher into the atmosphere.

Duncan eyed the one Erica and Noah were on while the blue glow of its thrusters grew smaller and further away.

Further away from New Alexandria, and soon, further away from Reach.

There weren't enough words in the dictionary for him to express just how happy he was. There also weren't enough words for the sorrow.

He'd already said his goodbyes. It didn't make it any easier to watch them go.

"ODSTs, be advised, your backup is inbound." Kilo-9-2 comm'd, breaking him out of his silent vigil.

Shadows zipped overhead, their sources speeding through the airways above the starport and lashing him with gusts of wind.

He looked up and witnessed the welcome return of the seven surviving Falcons.

Together with Kilo-9-2, they swept in from the bay in a long defensive line that came to a hovering halt above the front of the starport. Now brought to bear was the barking fury of eight autocannons and 16 machine guns which added their fire to that already streaming out from the veranda and highway.

The difference became obvious the second they opened fire. The impending wave of Covenant abruptly stalled into a stagnant swamp of scrambling Grunts, Jackals that hunkered down beneath their own shields and Brutes bellowing orders that gurgled in their throats as bullets tore through them. The Falcons pushed forward, turning the previous wall of fire into a counterflood that raked across the enemy's ranks in force. Swaths of the oncoming forces were ripped off their feet, blown to pieces by bursts from the autocannons or cut down by the crisscrossing patterns the gunners carved through the fields.

Across the board, the advance degenerated into a confused paralysis which itself gave way to an undisciplined rout. Covenant troops fled in every direction. Many were cut off from their escapes by the chatter of the guns above or by the vengeful rifle fire coming from the 4th Battalion survivors on the highway. Scores of the disorganized rabble collapsed from shots to the back or hit the ground with less pieces of skull than they'd started out with. A few were even blown away by the enduring fury of the lone Scorpion tucked into the northern hills. Its surviving custodians alongside it had cast away their spent assault rifles, instead firing down into the nearest of the escaping Covenant with their pistols or tossing grenades into their fleeing mass.

Some of the Falcons arced back towards the sides of the starport where a few Covenant, perhaps having thought themselves on the verge of victory, hopped the perimeter fence and landed on the tarmac. Most of them lasted less than a few seconds as the autocannons scythed back and forth along the eastern fence, cutting down those that had managed to find their way around the extreme ends of the hills and onto the coast.

The corvette was moving further off into the west and Duncan wondered if it might crash. Without it, and with the rest of the Banshees in the vicinity having presumably fled at the reactivation of Caracalla's defenses, those left on the ground had no choice but to run.

They'd lost here.

Several of the Falcons broke off from their defensive maneuvers and flew onward, most likely to hunt down the Wraiths occupying the promenade.

Duncan felt safe enough to go back up for his sniper rifle. He grabbed it and slid back down to his old spot. Taking another steadying breath, he checked the northern skies through the scope. He could only faintly see the lights from the distant ships which were slowly disappearing into the pinkish blue haze of the evening.

He lowered the weapon and felt a tug of war on the inside of him that played out over his face, the muscles indecisive as to whether they wanted to smile or frown.

Then he spotted something out the corner of his eye. Looking through his scope again, he lowered his visual down towards the end of Caracalla's beach.

The Spartan was standing on the shores.

It was his first time getting a good look at him. His black armor set him apart from the green landscape of the rest of the park. He was alone, watching the departing ships. Duncan noted the MA37 on his back. It was the exact same as the one on his own, but unlike his, the one in the super soldier's charge had probably just saved thousands of lives.

He couldn't help a slight chuckle at the thought of it. Same gun, different hands, better results.

He looked on while the Spartan took out a smoke grenade and pulled the pin. Tossing it aside to hiss a cloud of red smoke into the air, he turned and ambled back towards the park.

Duncan watched him go for a second longer. Then he lowered his rifle again and felt his struggling smile finally win out.

:********:

The inside of the ship was quiet again, perhaps quieter than it was in the time leading up to the departure. Whatever the case, it brought with it a tranquility that Erica hoped would last for the rest of the trip. Exhaustion pulled at her eyes, but she was still too stiff to doze off. The tension from the madness of the last several minutes lingered on.

The crying babies, the prying children, the chatting adults, all of it was gone. The entire deck and possibly the entire ship was silent save for a handful of murmuring conversations scattered across the space. A tense atmosphere still hung thick in the air.

She looked out her porthole.

The world outside held the orange-purple hue of evening. The clouds glowed dimly from the fading light of Epsilon Eridani. Through the cloud cover, she caught occasional glimpses of the forested terrains and snowcapped mountain ranges far below that were slowly but surely falling away. She took in as much of it as she could.

In the back of her mind, she wondered if it would be her last time seeing it, seeing Reach.

She became cognizant of the weight on her shoulder. It was Noah. He was leaning on her in his sleep. She didn't notice when he'd dozed off, but she figured he must have passed out the second they were safely away. The relief of their escape had probably been too much for him, not that she was that much better off.

She was envious. It was good for him to get some sleep, but she wanted to do the same. Desire and ability were two very different things, however.

She laid a gentle hand on the top of his head and rubbed it comfortingly, running careful fingers through his hair.

It had been extremely touch and go for a while back there. Every few minutes her belief that they would make it was tested by some new problem or trouble that no one saw coming.

And yet here they were, flying off into the atmosphere, and from there, God only knew where else. She vividly recalled the moment that one of the ships had gotten itself blown out of the sky and accepted her and Noah's survival as something that had been by no means guaranteed. It made her that much more grateful to be on a transport, to have her son still breathing and by her side.

She recalled something else, seeing Duncan on the roof of the starport fighting off those creatures that had tried to break in. She remembered the moment he saw her and gave her a grin that said a thousand words. She savored that image as much as she did the last of the landscape passing slowly by the porthole.

She hoped she would get to see both of those things again, but one perhaps sooner than the other.

Then, without meaning to, she remembered a sound: the alarm of a heart monitor.

It hadn't stopped blaring.

She'd simply been too distracted by everything else to pay attention to it. But the distractions were long gone now.

The noise was coming from the lounge along with the sounds of frantic conversation.

She tried to crane her neck to see. She couldn't, not with Noah on her shoulder. She reached down and unclasped her seatbelt and took care to lean Noah's head against the cushion of his seat. Once he was secure, she straightened up in her chair. Ignoring the other passengers murmuring or dozing off behind her, she looked straight down into the lounge.

The handful of Army medics she'd seen earlier had reconvened around a particular bed.

Rico's bed.

She could see him lying down as peacefully as he had before they had taken off.

Then her eyes landed on the heart monitor beside hm.

The regular beeping had stopped, and to her horror, so had the readings. In the place of the healthy rhythms of a heartbeat, the line was completely flat.

One of the medics was up close and personal, performing chest compressions, pressing both hands into his chest with measured haste.

She could sense the concern in the lounge.

She could sense the anxiety in herself.

After a while, the man doing the compressions stopped and popped open Rico's mouth to deliver CPR. Nothing happened. He went back to compressions and pumped his chest as much as he could.

She didn't know how long they'd been at it while she wasn't paying attention, but she suddenly felt guilty for not having given them her full focus.

After another attempt at CPR failed to make a difference, one of the other medics came and rested a defibrillator kit on the end of the bed. He opened it up and removed the wired paddles from within. The others helped, quickly opening the monitor, starting up the device and correcting the settings.

More and more eyes were beginning to turn their way. Others could feel the newfound tension.

The medic that had gripped the paddles moved to Rico's side and placed them both against his bare chest. "Three...two...one...clear."

He pressed down and Rico went up, his back arching at the burst of electricity before settling back onto the bed...unresponsive.

The one administering the shock stepped back while another began delivering more chest compressions. When a new round of CPR still didn't work, the medic with the defibrillator returned and placed the paddles back on his chest.

Onlookers sitting in the surrounding seats were quickly drawn in. They watched closely as the charge went through, as Rico's body popped up and settled back down without a response.

The rest of the medical staff around the bed looked among themselves, sharing uncertain glances. They ultimately settled on the one with the paddles. Erica saw him shake his head and a cold shiver stabbed through her entire being. But then she realized she'd mistaken the gesture for something else when she spotted the determined glare in his eye. He wasn't giving up. He waited for a while then returned the paddles to Rico's chest and leaned into it.

A trembling hand went to her open mouth as he applied the last shock.

Ite Nunc - Go Now