Chapter 22 – Novi Advenae
August 18th, 2552 - (10:17 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach
Viery Territory, Eposz
New Alexandria, Császári Building
:********:
Captain Eddies sprayed and prayed. There was little else he could do. There were so many of them that he didn't need to aim. The whining detonation of plasma grenades was constant. So was the rush of pressurized air that pounded his armor with a raucous frequency.
The Grunts kept coming.
They had spaced themselves out evenly so that the death of one couldn't cause the destruction of all. With a plasma grenade held high in either hand, they screamed with wild voices, gibbering threats that he was too occupied trying to survive to even guess at.
He riddled his third kill with a burst that sent the creature toppling back. Its grenades went with it, landing, detonating and churning a fiery crater into the asphalt. But it couldn't affect the other Grunts running around it. They moved with rabid speed and abnormal synchronism. That was Eddies' first inkling that something was horribly wrong, that the Grunts were actually organized. They were never organized. Someone had to be coordinating them. Gunning down his fourth kill, he chanced peering up at the surrounding skyscrapers.
"Ep-1, can you confirm those hostiles on the rooftops!? Respond, over!"
The Staff didn't reply right away. When his response came, Eddies was already drilling a fifth Grunt in the gut that had gotten too close. The resulting explosion shook his own guts around.
A thick plasma spray splashed against his position and forced him to take cover. A sizzling rainfall of emerald bolts washed over every position on the sidewalk. The Grunts weren't so stupid as to move without support. Some of them lingered behind to lay down covering fire for the charge. They fired from alleyways and behind cars or whatever debris they could find. A building return fire was gradually eating away at his platoon's ability to keep them at bay.
Yet another piece of evidence that they weren't acting alone.
Eddies gauged the bigger picture from what he could see. Hundreds of Grunts were converging on the Császári Building on all sides. He could glimpse their charge on the right and left flanks of his platoon. He could hear their yells echoing from the other side of the building. They rushed in, screaming with grenades in hand while handfuls of others covered them. His troopers as well as those of the Army personnel were hard pressed to stop them. Pinned behind the armored metal of their vehicles and the thick wood of tree trunks, they skimmed the closest of the oncoming waves. The riotous vanguard of the Grunts was downed by unsteady bursts of rifle-fire which were regularly interrupted by twice as many plasma bolts.
They were barely holding on.
The sound of a large explosion distinguished itself from the rest and yanked his attention to the other side of the building. He immediately opened a comm-channel.
"Swiper-1, I just heard something big on your side! What's going on over there!?"
The comms of Swiper's squad leader answered him with a flutter of static and gunfire, humming flames and pained shouts. Through it Eddies could hardly make out his words.
"Some of them got through, sir! Swiper-3 is down, 6 is wounded and one of our Hogs is out of commission!" He paused to let off a few rounds that were rewarded with Grunt screams and whining detonations. "Get to the support struts! Sorry 4-Actual, our position's getting torn up back here! We're pulling back to the tram stop, over!?"
Eddies didn't like the sound of that. "Do what you have to, sergeant!"
Swiper-1's communications became overwhelmed by the sound of ragged breaths, commands to others and more gunfire. "We could really use some help back here!"
"Everyone's having a hard time right now! As soon as we get the chance, we'll send somebody your way!"
"I'll hold you to that, sir!"
Eddies wasn't sure he could hold himself to it though. If one of his squads was pulling back then it boded ill for the rest of the platoon. It wouldn't be long before the whole perimeter collapsed.
He swiveled out to gun down another pair of Grunts that had gotten close. As they fell, their grenades went off. Four concussive blasts melded into a single explosion that chewed a fresh scar out of the already cratered street. It blew out the windshield and taillights of the Hog that he and two others were hiding behind, rocking both it and them. A baptism of glass twinkled over them. Eddies found not even his visor was spared as he winced at the small cracks in his HUD.
"Get some grenades out there, give us some breathing room!"
His remaining cache of ODSTs and soldiers cashed in on their frag grenades in pairs, one making the toss while the other fired beside them. The next wave of Grunts was met with their newest greeting gifts that rolled to their feet or bounced into their midst. Cracks of thunder went off across their ranks. Bodies and limbs spiraled into the air. Throats were sliced, stomachs gutted, and shrieking faces erased by fragmentation. A new onslaught of destruction followed on the heels of the first. Fallen plasma grenades brightened on the street and within dismembered hands. Those who had survived and those running in from the next wave were caught off guard, swallowed whole by an inferno of sapphire flames and crackling energy.
While the two troopers closest to him returned fire from the safety of the wheels, the captain crouched beneath his Hog to scope out the area. The street in front of them was connected at a three-way to Highway 13 which led back east to the way they'd come. It had become smokey from their latest maneuver, carpeted in the silhouettes of broken gas tanks, dead Grunts and blasted asphalt. Despite everything going on in the other sectors at least theirs looked clear.
The silence didn't last long.
In seconds the haze was set aglow with blue luminescence, hurried shadows and cries for blood.
"Here's the next batch!" He warned. "Be ready!"
He reached over and tapped the boots of the trooper on his right.
The ODST, one of 4th Platoon's radiomen, halted his fire. "Sir!?"
"Get me a line to Colonel Saraquez!"
"Copy!"
The colonel's voice shortly came through his helmet. "What is it, 4-Actual? I'm operating on a tight schedule at the moment."
Eddies saw the Grunts emerge from the haze to continue their assault. He arranged his optics and joined the others in letting them have it. "It's about to get even tighter, sir! Listen, can you hold up the tram heading to Sector 23!?"
"What's going on, trooper?"
"We've got an army of Grunts closing in on us at the Császári Building! We've also got a potential threat from the rooftops! I can't guarantee we'll have everything settled down before those civilians arrive!"
"...Alright, I can buy you some time, captain, but minutes only. Forward elements from the 83rd are starting to reach the city. I'll see if I can reroute a few to your sector to lend a hand. We need those landing pads secured, trooper."
"Working on it, sir!"
After getting at an annoying Grunt that was shooting at him from behind a van, Eddies switched on his connection to 1st Platoon.
"Ep-1, air support's on its way! I say again, air support is inbound! Are those rooftops clear, over!?"
This time the Staff replied briskly. "It's clear, sir, at least as far as we can tell. We're seeing a flatline of activity on the cameras. I'd still recommend keeping an eye out. I don't think these guys are working alone."
"You're preaching to the choir, Ep-1! Keep me posted!"
Eddies pushed himself back up and took aim through the driver's seat. "4-Actual to 4th Platoon, stop firing on the runners and start focusing on the ones behind! Strip them of their covering fire! That'll make it easier for us to use the turrets!"
Following the parroting of his order from his squad leaders on down, the course of the firefight switched gears. His troopers shot over the charging hordes at the ones supporting them. It was a steep gamble, but it paid off. The shooters among the Grunts were surprised by the growing attention as bullets cut through tires and arms or zipped through windshields and skulls. The plasma fire lessened quickly. Not quick enough however to stop the suicide Grunts from closing the gap.
Two of them hurled themselves headlong into a Hog on Eddies' right. He saw the vehicle vanish in a plume of flaming debris, taking two soldiers and one of his own out with it. As one of his medics rushed over to help, a fresh rage pulled the captain to his feet and got him clambering up the back of his Hog.
"I've got the gun, cover me!" He yelled as he hopped to the turret. He wheeled it about to face the encroaching wave. Dozens of Grunts shouted at him and his M41 shouted back. The guns of everyone who was left added their stuttering voices to the mix. Before long, the east side of Császári was set alight by yellow tracers and blue explosions. The turret helped Eddies make short work of anything he set his sights on. Rounds meant for penetrating light armor turned the tin-soldier bombers into Swiss-cheese, raking them from left to right. Bodies fell over, grenades made contact and energy blasts sent both the living and dead hurtling into the street. Those that managed to make it past his wrath were summarily cut down by the troopers at his side.
In under a minute the action subsided. Intermittent bursts of fire splashed across ponds of blood and gore like pebbles skipping over water. None of the slew of aliens in front of them moved, or perhaps dared to move. Past them, the last of their shooters had suffered a similar fate. There were many of them, close to 60 by Eddies' count. He wagered there were even more as he listened to what was going on at the other flanks. They had also quieted down as the last impassioned shrieks for blood were silenced by the dispassionate clamor of human firepower.
Eddies called in to all his squads to get a reading on the situation. They reported their casualties, their wounded and dead, names belonging to troopers he knew well. He was disheartened as an ODST to learn of their fates. Nevertheless, he was relieved as an officer to be able to count his platoon's casualties on one hand and still have a finger or two to spare. The Grunts in comparison were worse off. Numbering in the hundreds, their bodies littered the streets around the building. How many of them were dead in the truest sense of the word remained to be seen.
"Check the bodies," Eddies ordered, not wanting to be fooled twice. "We're getting a resupply once the civvies are picked up so if anything moves out there, feel free."
A few of his ODSTs drifted cautiously from their vehicles to the hellscape beyond the sidewalk. Some of the Army troopers went with them. Meanwhile, those that stayed behind looked out for them. Eddies scanned the highway ahead for the smallest signs of movement. He likewise panned up towards the surrounding rooftops in search of the same. He got a handful of red contacts in the former case and fired each time, earning shouts of agony from the survivors hiding among the fallen. He watched his men fan out to rake up those he hadn't suspected. A trooper would stroll by, give a corpse a confirmatory boot to the ribs and pass on if there was no reaction. They would of course stop to turn them into a true corpse if there was.
A minute or two passed before he received an all clear from his squad leaders.
He looked back to the target building and comm'd 1st Platoon again. "Ep-1, we've got things calmed down outside. How is it in there?"
"We had a few run-ins here too but everything's just about as close to fine as we're going to get. I've got part of Epsilon and Whiskey running secondary checks throughout the floors, want to be sure before that tram arrives."
"Copy. I'll contact the station and tell them we're-"
"Hold on." Nova interrupted. "Me and Ep-8 are getting movement on our cameras again. Same places."
Eddies whirled about to the rooftops, shifting the turret from one to the next. "Eyes up, people. This isn't over. Ep-2, give me some specifics. Which buildings?"
"They're all over, sir." She said with rising worry. "Multiple shimmers. I suspect we're dealing with an Elite Spec Ops team. They must've been observing-"
Whatever else Nova had to say was put on hold when a thunderclap echoed down the highway. By the time Eddies recognized it as an energy weapon he saw one of the troopers ahead of him reel forward, his visor exploding out of his helmet. It was clear he was dead even before what remained of his head hit the ground.
"SNIPERS, GET DOWN!"
By the end of his sentence, he saw a soldier twist to the side as a bolt of light lanced through his skull. Another thunderclap echoed in the distance. Eddies was turning to hop off the turret when a third bolt spun him off the gun. He crashed back onto the sidewalk, the impact kicking the air out of his lungs. He struggled to get in a breath while his radioman dragged him behind the refuge of the Hog.
"Captain's hit!" He called out.
"Where's it at!?" One of the medics shouted from further down the line.
Eddies felt the trooper sifting around his armor. He collected himself enough to sit up against one of the wheels. The two of them looked together. His torso was clear. So were his legs, but his left shoulder was sore. He grabbed his arm to check it out. A glowing hole about the size of his eye stared back at him from his shoulder pauldron. Steam hissed from the wound in his BDU. No blood though. Since he could only faintly feel the heat, he worked out that it was a near miss, a miss that was a few inches shy of something more vital like his head or chest. Had he taken a split-second longer to drop the turret, he would've been a dead man.
"No worries, it missed!" The radioman declared. "The captain's alright!"
Eddies reached back for his rifle. Finding his hands grasping at nothing, he looked around frantically.
"You good, sir!?"
"Where's-" He spotted his assault rifle lying where he'd landed on the sidewalk. He chanced crawling out for it. It was nearly within reach when a bolt of energy cleaved the weapon in half. He rolled back behind the Hog before a follow-up left a steaming hole in his shadow.
Eddies drew his sidearm as he braced himself against a tire. More thunderclaps began to echo across the platoon's perimeter.
"Heads up, they're using beam rifles!" Eddies warned. "Find whatever cover you can, keep your head down and get your arms and legs as close as possible! Don't give'em anything to shoot at!"
A scream from beyond the sidewalk made them look out. There, where Highway 13 met the closest street, an Army trooper lay out in the open. He cradled his bloody leg as he cried out for help.
"Hey, that's-, that's Narvik." One of the soldiers said.
"Hold on, Narv!" Another shouted.
He was about to make a run for it but Eddies stopped him. "Don't! They left him alive to draw us out! If you go out there, you're done!"
The soldier called Narvik let out a bloodcurdling scream as a beam tore through his other leg. Several more struck the ground around him one after the other.
Eddies watched his reasoning lose its hold on the soldier wanting to run.
The man shook his head. "Hang in there! I'm coming!"
"No!"
The soldier broke cover. A comrade followed him out. The two dashed across the street to their squadmate. As they grabbed Narvik and pulled him up between them, the back of his head erupted in a bloody spray. The beam passed straight through the foot of one of his rescuers who quickly collapsed, grasping and screaming at his steaming boot. The last man struggled with Narvik. He shouted something to his downed friend that was immediately cut short by another beam. Narvik's dead weight finally pulled him down. He clutched at his throat, letting out a gargled cry as blood pooled around him.
Narvik's other squadmates yelled for their comrades who could no longer answer. The only one who could was busy grabbing at his foot. His friends' shouts for him to crawl to them managed to reach him. He put one hand over the other in an effort to drag himself away. Another beam punished him for it by spearing him in his good leg. Somehow, he caged a shriek of pain behind gritted teeth and strained forward. He got close enough to roll under a truck just as a bolt gouged the ground behind him.
Eddies shut his eyes at the scene and pulled back behind the tire. His thoughts gravitated to those in his platoon that had brought along SRS-99s. "Shadow-3, Swiper-5, you're up! Squatch-4, Springer-6, same to you! Stay low and see what you can see!"
"Yessir!" They replied.
He watched the closest of them, Shadow-3, crouch along a neighboring Hog. He traded spots with the squad's medic and eased the barrel of his '99 over the front wheel.
With what was left of his platoon and their Army entourage stuck behind their vehicles, Eddies set his hopes on 1st Platoon. "Ep-1, we're pinned out here. I need Ep-2 and 8 to give me as much information as they can on where that fire's coming from."
"Roger." The Staff replied. "Already working on it."
With one wrong move Eddies suspected his whole platoon could lose their heads. Keeping that in mind, he lowered his, thankful at least that the enemy snipers hadn't been smart enough to attack them earlier. If they had started singling people out while the Grunts were on the loose, that could've upended everything. Whoever was watching them must have sent in the suicide waves to test their defenses, to weaken them or to destroy them outright. Sacrificing hundreds of lives against a few dozen seemed impractical. Then again, Grunts practically grew on trees for the Covenant. Not his men though.
Eddies risked peeking out over the hood of his Hog, searching for signs of the threat.
Except for the ubiquitous dogfights, the surrounding skyline was clear. He saw nothing on the high rooftops of the buildings across the street. Not even scoping in with his visor made a difference. It was like their attackers were ghosts, stealing away to appear somewhere else only to slip away again. That probably wasn't too far off the mark either.
With active camo, they really could be anywhere. They didn't have to do anything but wait for the next target to present itself. They had all the time in the world. His ODSTs didn't.
:********:
Duncan's problem wasn't that there was nowhere to look. Rather, there were too many. There was almost no end to the possible hiding spots scattered amidst the urban tree line of rooftops, balconies, windows and overhanging vistas.
There was no immediate way for him to find the snipers. So far as he could tell, they had the building surrounded. Nothing could get in or out without passing through their scopes. Whatever did seemed to drop right away from an accelerated ion to the head or chest. Several of their personnel had already suffered that fate in the span of the last few minutes. How their casualties hadn't risen higher than that was probably thanks to the captain keeping everyone on lockdown.
Dealing with active camo in person was a pain. Dealing with it from the mid-resolution of municipal screens was torture.
"They really could've done better with these cams." Nova groaned from her side of the station. "I can't see a thing. Ep-8, how about you?"
"Barely."
"These guys don't stick around for long. I can only tell where they are the moment they fire; they move right after."
"If that's something to go on, there should be around 10 to 12 hostiles on the rooftops. Should we break those numbers to the captain, sir?"
The Staff peered attentively at Duncan's feeds. "Can you confirm them?"
Duncan shook his head. "It's a rough guess."
"Positions?"
Nova pulled up the relevant feeds. "From east to north, there've been shots fired on the Foucault, Dienes and Csonka Buildings." Nova said. "And from south to west, the Frenesi and Gulyas Buildings. All are within the 50 to 200-meter range of Császári. For guys with beam rifles, they're playing this awfully close."
"Guess they don't want to miss." Duncan added.
"Maybe. I doubt they have jetpacks so at least that means they're not going anywhere. Call them in, sir?"
The Staff sized up the plethoric views on both their stations. "Okay, I'll-"
"Wait a sec." Duncan zoomed in on a feed that had stuck out to him. It showed the top of a building a few stories taller than Császári that was filmed by a camera on an even taller structure. The one he was seeing almost reminded him of an overstocked bookshelf.
"Where's that?" The Staff asked.
"Says here it's the 'Kalmar Building', central DMV offices about 170-meters to our west. I think I saw movement. Hold on, there's a camera on the building. Let me..."
He accessed the next and newest feed which opened to a rooftop view. He panned the camera discreetly from right to left.
"Elites mostly kill you and move on." He noted. "This is different. These snipers were willing to wound some of our guys in order to lure out more of us. Elites usually don't have time for that."
"Their Special Ops might." Nova countered.
"I don't think that's what we're dealing with here." Almost on cue, a shimmer passed by the camera. The living mirage trotted forward to the edge of the roof that faced Császári. It then moved back and was quickly replaced by another. Despite the camouflage, Duncan could recognize them by their walk. They weren't the loping gates of Elites but the calculated strides of another kind of enemy.
"Jackals." He said woefully. "Jackals...with active camo."
Behind him, he sensed the Staff grow tense.
"You're kidding." Nova hissed.
"Explains their precision." The Staff sighed. "Not even Elites are this good. We'll have a time of it trying to root them out."
Nova swiveled to them in her chair. "4-Actual's snipers won't be able to see those things until it's too late."
"Let's hope not. The most we can say for sure now is that this won't be easy."
"Is it ever?" She murmured while the Staff opened another comm channel.
"Ep-1 to 4-Actual, you've got somewhere between 12 to 14 hostiles eying your position. You're not going to like the sound of this, but they're Jackals with active camouflage, not Elites. It's probably some special operations group we haven't encountered before."
"Repeat your last, Ep-1." Eddies replied. "Did you just say 'Jackals with camo'?"
As the Staff looked his way, Duncan was searching through another close-up view of camouflaged Covenant. He nodded affirmatively. "Their movement profiles and overall behavior are a match."
"That's right, sir." The Staff said. "Your boys might not be enough for this one."
After muttering something angrily to himself, Eddies returned to his comms. "We don't have time for this, the 83rd will be here in a few minutes. I'll reach out to air support in the area. Saraquez said he'd be sending some in our direction. What's the position of those Jackals?"
As the Staff relayed the spots of interest, Duncan went about gaining a fuller picture. A few more rooftop cameras like the first gave him rearward and overhead views of some of the Jackals. They were working in pairs. Every so often one of them would slip away from the edge. The other would rotate in and take up the watch at a different position. They never went to the same spot twice.
Duncan didn't like the look of it. From what he could see, the enemy was far better organized and equipped than the average Jackal or Skirmisher. Not to mention that he could barely see them to begin with.
Then he considered a more worrying possibility. The weapons they were using were effective at even greater ranges than this. What if, like the Grunts, they weren't acting alone either? What if-
He had just panned a camera further down Highway 13, towards the massacre at the roundabout, when a bolt of purple flashed from the east.
A cry of pain rang from his comms. It came from Captain Eddies, or rather through his helmet from someone else.
"3's hit!" Eddies yelled. "Shadow-5, get on it! Get him stable! Ep-1, we just took fire from an unknown position to the far east! Can you get a bead on the shooter!?"
Duncan was already on it, working furiously to access the cameras in the area. The shot had come from a spot near the roundabout. The memory instantly came to his attention of seeing a blur of motion there while the convoy was passing through.
"Looking now, sir." The Staff assured and bore down on Duncan. "Ep-8, I need a visual."
Upon flickering through a score of feeds he came across one with promise. Atop a building half a kilometer to the east, the sunlight of Epsilon Eridani passed unevenly through two humanoid mirages.
"There's more of them." Duncan murmured.
"And further out too." The Staff turned to Nova. Before he could say a word, she raised a wavering finger at one of her screens. Two more camouflaged Jackals moved about a balcony on a building to the far west.
"Some of my guys are saying they're taking shots from further away." Eddies said. "North, south, west, they're lighting up the whole perimeter. These aren't coming from the same Jackals."
The security room fell silent.
The grander scope of what was happening slowly resolved in Duncan's head, a realization he'd come to suspect but hoped he was wrong about. He wasn't.
Császári had been a trap from the start.
The Jackals had them surrounded twice over.
The closest ring of snipers stopped them from maneuvering around too much. The second must have been an added precaution against a breakout or even a way to counter reinforcements from outside. Maybe both. Or maybe it was worse, that what they'd done to some of the soldiers outside was what they were planning to do on a much larger scale.
Császári was bait.
Everyone in it and around it was bait.
Help would come, it would have to and so would the hundreds if not thousands of civilians on the way. And when help did come as a new voice on the comms pulled him back to reality, he sorely wished that it hadn't, only to think again as he recognized its foolhardy tone.
"This is Whiskey-3 to 1st Platoon; you guys missed me?"
:********:
Mackley clung to an overhead handle while the Falcon ducked and weaved a path through the city. He maintained a firm grasp on the the weapon case at his feet, one of two that occupied the troop bay. The other was cradled by Langhorst who sat across from him on one of the forward seats. An Army radioman sat right beside him, securing Mackley's transmission as he tried opening a line to their platoon.
The trip to New Alexandria had been a lucky one.
It was set in motion the moment their caretakers turned a blind eye to them in the medical tent. Lang swiped a bottle of pain meds from under their noses. Then, once the relief had set in and his legs were strong enough, Mackley snuck out with him.
Slipping past the overworked medical staff wasn't difficult. Finding their armor lockers and equipment was a good deal easier. The least challenging task of all, however, was procuring the items in the two cases that they had brought along.
Alongside hundreds of other UNSC personnel that were soon to reinforce Alexandria, they had headed to the Beta-1 armory for weapons. Unlike most, they were greeted with a friendly shock. News of the worsening conditions in the city had caused the supply officers in charge to pull out all the stops. Previously restricted equipment lanes were opened. Several dozen Army specialists were granted access to gear that only a niche minority like themselves had experience with. So were those among the ODSTs who had been left in reserve. Mackley and Lang feigned being the latter.
Posing as leftovers from the 22nd's Delta Company, their specialization as snipers landed them with an equally special piece of equipment. It wasn't new. In fact, it was older than both of them. That didn't mean it was rusty. Quite the opposite. The result of at least three decades of quality maintenance had nearly blinded Mackley when he popped the pair of cases. The tech was old but impressive. He had learned about it at Ravenport's sniper school and had been shown how to use it too. A handful of hand-me-downs that resided in the care of the camp's DIs represented his first experience with it. Back then, they had taught him how to use any ranged weapon he came across. No matter how old or unlikely to be encountered, so long as it was UNSC-issue, it was on the table of one or more theoretical sessions and in his hands during the more practical lessons. The school's philosophy of 'if the circumstance calls for it, use it' was about to pay off. So too was the gear.
To find it on the eve of his next dance with the reaper was like a sign from God. Seeing it in its case was like having Christmas come early. He could think of no better place for such an awesome relic than the urban combat zone that was New Alexandria.
Finding a ride willing to take them from Lochaber was straightforward. The nearest airfield had a fleet of aircraft from the 83rd Auxiliary Wing preparing for the big takeoff. The bulk of them were ready and waiting to receive the expected flood of civilians.
Lang got them into the good graces of one of his buddies he'd made outside of the 7th. He was a Falcon pilot tasked with flying around a forward air controller. He agreed to leave off his course to help them find their platoon. The snag: they would have to do it within the first five minutes of their arrival. Any longer than that and he would risk being out of place for the main operation.
They headed off with the 83rd's smaller vanguard elements just half an hour after the 7th Battalion had set out.
After hours spent shooting over hills and mountains, they pulled in above the city. With all the smoke and dogfights raging about, it was more hellish than he'd expected. He immediately worked on trying to find everyone through the communications network, a task that at least staved off his nerves and helped him distract himself from the chaos.
He went so far as to enlist the help of the onboard air controller and had him comb through the web of comm channels and frequencies. Three minutes of asking around had led to him getting his sturdiest answer from a radio operator in the 77th Armored. He pointed them to the Császári Building in Sector 23. He also added a warning that the area was hot and that forces there had an urgent need for air support. What specifically was going on even the operator couldn't say for sure, nor could anyone else since the state of things there was still developing.
Mackley decided to charge in regardless.
His platoon needed help. That was enough for him.
With one minute left on their pilot's good graces and still a full kilometer from their destination, Mackley finally came within comm-range.
"This is Whiskey-3 to 1st Platoon; you guys missed me?"
The first reply came from a befuddled Daz. "MACK!?"
"He's not alone." Lang said. "Whiskey-4 here. We're inbound on a Falcon and less than a klick east of your position. What's the stitch on your side?"
"Wait-wait, hold on. How did you-"
The voice of Captain Eddies broke in. "Whiskey-3 and 4, keep your distance. As of now, we're dealing with a new Covenant Special Forces group that's got us pinned. They've established a 500-meter perimeter around our position. I don't want them shooting you out of the sky."
Lang quickly opened a channel to the pilot to pass on the warning. The Falcon's rotor blades slowed and so did their momentum until they came to hover over the streets.
"Roger that." Mackley replied disconcertedly. "We're still 800-meters out, sir. How can we help?"
"Think you can set yourselves up from there?"
Mackley caught a nod from Lang. "Yessir. It'll be a little tough, but we can do some damage from here. Do you have specifics on the threat?"
"Ep-1?" Eddies called.
The Staff stepped in. "Whiskey-3, 4, I've got a whole lot of questions for you that I'm saving for later. Right now, let's stick to business. We're facing a force of 20 or more Jackal snipers with active camouflage. Ep-2 and 8 will direct you to their positions once you're in place."
Across the troop bay, Lang's visor depolarized and exposed a disturbed look. Mackley felt the same way. Jackal snipers with camouflage? It was a combination that, though he had never expected to ever run into it, made a deadly amount of sense.
"Let's hope thermal still works." Mackley muttered.
"We don't have long, troopers." The Staff insisted. "The 83rd's almost here. Do what you can so we can get this evac site back in the green."
"On it, sir."
Lang pointed them to a nearby apartment building and got the pilot underway.
On their approach to the rooftop, he shook his head. "Camo Jackals, how the hell..."
Mackley secured his weapon case on his magnetic harness. Swapping it out for his rifle, he held it at the ready and prepared to jump out. "Don't worry, man. Lady Luck's on our side. We wouldn't have gotten this beauty like a handout if she weren't." He pointed to their cases.
"I didn't think we'd have to use it this soon." Lang paused as the sunlight reflecting off the apartment's many windows danced through the troop bay. "Anyway, same as we agreed?"
"Yeah. You spot, I shoot."
"And you better shoot straight."
"And you better spot what's actually there. I can't see everything all at once. If you miss something, I'll probably miss it too, and those Jackals won't be too forgiving about it. Remember, there's a ton of them and two of us so it's not like we'll have too many chances to screw up."
Lang waved off his worries dismissively. "I know what I'm doing. You?"
"Yeah." Mackley smirked as the Falcon finally hovered over the roof. "I'm going duck hunting."
He gave a grateful thumbs up to the air controller then turned and hopped out with Lang. They fell a short meter to the roof. Their boots crunched over the layer of gravel that blanketed the floor. The powerful rotors overhead caused it to fly up in small whirlwinds around them. The Falcon banked off and away, ending the storm of stones. The pilot wished them luck before heading back east.
Mackley and Lang sprinted across the gravel towards the west end of the rooftop. They ducked beneath a minor labyrinth of metal ducts along the way. Mackley could sense the heat radiating from them and was sure they would help obscure their thermal signatures from a distance.
The two of them hunkered down at the outer ledge. There was no cover there except a small wall. It was only big enough for them to hide behind if they pancaked themselves to the floor, so they did.
They laid their rifles aside and pulled out their weapon cases.
Resting his out in front of him, Mackley stopped short of breaking the security seal. A certain memory caught up to him, of one of his first times training at Falchion. He felt the need then to open a direct line of communication to Epsilon.
"Hey Ep-2, you there?"
"I'm here, Whiskey-3." Nova replied. "You're all set?"
"I remember you telling me a while back about how good your last sniper was."
Nova went quiet.
"Tell you what, let's make a deal." He broke the seal, thumbed the latches and pulled open his case, eyeing what lay inside with honored anticipation. "In the next couple of minutes either I'll make you proud that I was his replacement, or you'll be sure to find mine."
Novi Advenae - New Arrivals
