Chapter 33 – Cautio
August 19th, 2552 - (16:30 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach
Viery Territory, Lochaber Base
:********:
Brigadier General Abajjé had become a mute. It wasn't by decision but rather by circumstance. Sheer, horrifying circumstance.
Lochaber's Administration and Logistics Center, the ALC, was normally a busier place. Support personnel and organizational data buzzed about on the regular, much unlike the sterilized isolationism that he'd contended with at Sword Base. It was almost like trading the spacious solemnity of a small town for the boisterous proximity of a city. He'd gradually become accustomed to it over the last few weeks which was why he found this sudden change so jarring.
Everything was quiet now.
All eyes were on the enlarged tactical planner at the center of the strategic command room. Practically the size of a small tennis court, it still couldn't convey the staggering magnitude of what it was displaying.
Translucent blue holographs captured the terraced coasts, urban circuitry and mountainous vistas of New Alexandria. Incidentally, they also captured the moment that the Paris-class heavy frigate, UNSC Valkyrie came blazing back into the local atmosphere. Riding on a fire trail of its own wreckage, the ship burned a path across the clouds within sight of the city. Pieces of debris broke off to form an artificial meteor shower that flowered out from behind it. Abajjé wasn't there to see it in real time, but he had a sickening feeling it would've been even worse.
What remained of the Valkyrie plummeted to its death deep within the icy corridors of the mountains. The trailing wreckage followed suit, bombarding the area around the rising mushroom cloud faster than the speed of sound. Mere moments later, alarms sounded across the display. The causes quickly made themselves apparent as they descended into visual range.
The four corvettes slipped through the clouds with the ease of doves. Each one settled into a stable hold over the city. Almost immediately, they began their bombardment .
The first and most obvious casualty was a building identified as the 'Hornád Shopping Center'. The brigadier general watched it succumb to a heavy salvo in little time. The destruction signaled the other corvettes to commence their own assault. What ensued was an artificial firestorm. A deluge of plasma crashed into the city at a devastating tempo. The fire wasn't indiscriminate, however. Far from it. Bolts of light the size of dropships struck UNSC positions throughout New Alexandria.
Rooftops.
Balconies.
Streets.
Nothing was too small or insignificant to spare it a bolt of obliteration.
Army forces patrolling the 77th Armored Division's green zone were caught out in the open. Whole platoons were swallowed up by comets of azure flames that fell on them with the ease of raindrops. The explosive splashes of volley after volley created a number of small hells across the cityscape.
The occasional pulse laser swept across streetside positions. Occasionally, a single stroke from the long, deadly beams removed voices from the choir of screams, gunfire and demands for reinforcements that now swarmed the ALC's communication stations. It wasn't so often that the average person could notice it. But Abajjé could. So could the comms personnel that struggled frantically at their consoles, jumping from frequency to frequency even as those they spoke to were silenced by static.
Abajjé heard everything.
He could see everything too and in a way that those living through it never could, and probably would never want to.
Despite the fury of the corvettes, however, he knew for a fact that the situation could have been worse. Much worse.
For one, the city was lucky that its attackers were what they were.
Lucky was not a word he used lightly. However, in cases like these, that was the unfortunate truth. Had their fortunes turned even more for the worse, they could have faced a full-blown flotilla of battlecruisers instead of heavy corvettes. Unlike the latter, the former could bring energy projectors to bear. Compounding tactical failure upon misfortune, there would be nothing in the way of them glassing the region into oblivion. Not with the city's guardians now out of the picture.
Battlegroup Beta-9, the three frigates that had kept watch over Alexandria, were gone. Lying in the middle of their loss was the glaring reality of how wrong their plans had gone.
The intelligence personnel at Lochaber Base had compiled their intel. The constant influx of Covenant starfighters and dropships that the city was experiencing were mostly coming from the planet's exosphere. Viery's airspace was being heavily contested. It had served as the scene of multiple skirmishes between UNSC fleet elements and the hostile flotilla. These were the same Covenant that had arrived shortly after the one-sided, be-all-end-all space brawl that was Operation UPPERCUT.
Satellite reconnaissance couldn't track down the exact source of the enemy's airpower. The reason why was because they seemed to be stemming from every ship in the hemisphere. However, it could identify the crux of their movement. Long distances had to be travelled for them to reach their final destination. The aerial armadas had to regroup and refuel somewhere.
They confirmed the location, two in fact. A pair of corvettes were operating within proximity of the municipal airspace. They hung around in the stratosphere of the region's northern reaches, less than an hour away from Alexandria. They haunted the thready noctilucent clouds like buzzards eying a corpse from afar.
Battlegroup Beta-9 were the first to discover them. After all, the two contacts were too close for their sensors to miss. They had in fact been itching to take care of the threats on their doorstep. However, their standing orders to maintain UNSC air dominance over the city had kept them on a leash. That was soon to change in the aftermath of the Covenant's last assault wave. The sheer scale of the damage wreaked by the afternoon incursion had finally gotten things rolling.
The Navy's local command echelon operating out of Olympic Tower had been the ones to propose the plan. Beta-9 would briefly break from its position to tackle the resupply point, kicking the bucket on the two ships that supported the assault waves. Wolf pack tactics were expected to win the day. Beta-9 would break up, climb into high orbit then descend upon their targets from three different directions. Striking hard and fast, they would give them little time to think and even less time to react.
Three heavy frigates against two heavy corvettes, the odds were almost even.
Almost.
In short order, the hunters were shown to be the hunted. They were within 20-kilometers of their targets when the newest problems reared their heads. Four more corvettes made a sudden slipspace reentry into Reach's local space. The radio chatter between the command personnel at Lochaber and Olympic Tower focused for a long while on whether it was a coincidence. After all, how could they have come to the aid of their comrades so soon? That line of questioning was thrown out the window once new intelligence came in. The new arrivals were confirmed to have come from a larger formation orbiting Reach's northern hemisphere; well within earshot of an emergency communique from their allies to the south.
The deadly quartet made a rapid descent, and right away, alarm bells started ringing among the higher-ups.
It was a trap.
The Covenant had been waiting for the frigates to set out, counting on it even. They were trying to tempt their naval power away from the city, only to crush them once they were beyond the aid of New Alexandria's air defenses. The first part of their plan had worked and the ambush was unleashed.
An immediate call to withdraw was sounded for the battlegroup, one which its commanding officer openly refused.
Rear Admiral Pavel Morozov had always been a stubborn man. More than 20 years of service had ingrained that key detail into the mind of anyone that perused his career file. His refusal to yield to the enemy had garnered him several surprise victories in the past. On nearly twice as many occasions, it had almost cost him his commission. It was that same stubbornness that many believed would make him the perfect stopgap against the Covenant's advance on New Alexandria. The city was both the geopolitical and geographical gateway to Reach's northern regions, and what better to drop in front of an open gate than an unmoving boulder?
This time, however, that trait had worked against him. He outrightly refused to fall back. Abajjé was there to witness the storm brewing on General Montague's face when he heard the news. The rear admiral wanted to delay, to take this one chance to chip away at the enemy's hold over northern Viery. He wagered that it would disrupt the Covenant's onslaught against the city, allowing its groundside defenders a reprieve. They could bolster their positions from there and put-up a stiffer opposition.
Beta-9 would destroy the corvettes and mount a fighting withdrawal back to the safety of Alexandria's defenses.
They would buy time.
In the back of his mind, Abajjé sensed a higher butcher's bill on the table than anyone was willing to pay.
He'd been right.
He watched everything unfold from the ALC's holographic displays and from the hull-mounted camera feeds shared by the logistics teams.
The two other frigates, UNSC Gloucester and UNSC Intrepid, had followed the rear admiral's lead. From his flagship Valkyrie, Morozov arranged Beta-9 into an encirclement against their quarry. The enemy had no terrestrial cover. The two corvettes were found hovering over Reach's western ocean, just beyond the coast of Viery.
The battlegroup came across the two ships at the same moment that a flight of several dozen Seraph fighters was arriving from the west. Certain that they were preparing for bombing runs against the city, Morozov felt even more justified. The Valkyrie, Gloucester and Intrepid made the approach from the north, south and east. The corvettes still hadn't moved to address them, as if they couldn't see them as clear as day on the horizon. Or perhaps they were waiting for them to get close, to put as much distance between them and the coast as possible. Just 15-kilometers away from the enemy, close quarters by Navy standards, Beta-9 opened fire.
Three MAC cannons thundered and lightning ensued. Accelerated slugs struck the bow of the northernmost corvette within split-seconds of each other, buffeting the ship this way and that as its shields collapsed. The last round speared it amidships. For a fraction of a second, its hangar bay became a vortex of fiery destruction as the projectile's hypersonic passage left a vacuum in its wake, sucking in air on one side while spewing flames out the other. The corvette let out a metallic, ear-grinding scream as it began to list. Even then, it maintained enough balance for the heavy plasma cannons on its starboard side to find their range. The neighboring ship mirrored its example.
Both fired at the same time.
Of six guns, each let off a triple-burst. In seconds, a luminous flurry of 18 plasma bolts was flashing over the face of the ocean, racing eastward towards the UNSC Intrepid.
The lone frigate had been singled out.
By then the Seraph squadron had arrived.
The group of fighters accelerated past their refueling stops, pursuing the outgoing ordnance at high speeds. Their vanguard quickly overtook the flock of bolts and began intermingling into the storm, placing themselves just ahead of the plasma.
Beta-9's MAC guns were still recycling for their next shot. In the resulting dead time, the Intrepid was forced to rely on its shorter ranged defenses. A counter-response issued from the frigate in the form of a cluster of Archer missiles that rushed out of their silos. Tracing an interdiction course, they flew forward on tentacles of exhaust that weaved towards the threat.
To this, the Seraphs pushed forward until they were ahead of the plasma bolts. Twirling and twisting themselves through the air, a third of them dove headlong into the oncoming missiles, evaporating into blasts of light that twinkled in the skies. As the last missile missed its mark and obliterated another Seraph, the surviving fighters zoomed onward. Behind them, the plasma bolts remained untouched. Their escorts didn't break off until the frigate's point defense guns began throwing up a screen of fire. By then it was too late. Many were helpless to watch as a shower of plasma crashed into its hull. Blue explosions morphed into orange conflagrations that rippled through the frigate from bow to stern. Two of its defense guns were blown out of their frames, sent sky-high on geysers of smoke. Back at the ALC, several of the hull-mounted camera feeds died. Some showed the ship trembling. Others struggled to display anything at all as flames and static overtook them.
It was around then that Abajjé realized what was happening, that even the arrival of the Seraphs had been planned.
The fighters were the next to bare their teeth.
They flew in on the heels of over a dozen explosions. Their bomb bay doors opened and unleashed several times as many. They strafed the hull from end to end. Feeds of the ship from the onlooking Valkyrie and Gloucester made it appear as if the Intrepid herself was sparkling. In truth, plasma charges were carving trenches of flaming annihilation across her bow. One of the Seraphs dropped its payload a few seconds later than the others. The reason why made itself apparent as the wall of fire scythed straight into the bridge, setting it off like a match.
The Seraphs flew off from their prey after their first run. In their wake was left the burning hellscape that was the Intrepid.
Abajjé was close enough to one of the ALC's comms personnel to hear as he made call after call to the ship's communications officer, practically begging for a status report. From the rising strain in the young man's voice, he could tell there was no one left to reply.
Then the Intrepid began to tilt. It was slow at first, a gradual dipping of the bow. It started gaining speed as its anti-gravitic systems failed, flames billowing out from every side like hair in the wind.
And yet, even as it began plummeting towards the ocean, the last dregs of its strength made themselves known. Abajjé was entirely uncertain what caused it. Whether it was the maverick defiance of the bloodied bridge crew or the last will and testament of the onboard AI, the effect was still the same. The Intrepid's list halted though its descent quickened. Just a kilometer above the waves, it found enough propulsion for a leftward turn. The movement cost it a new and uncontrolled tilt that, perhaps not incidentally, aligned its frame with a new target.
Its MAC cannon fired.
The lance of light struck the waves beneath the undamaged corvette. In a fraction of a second, part of the ocean's surface was transformed into a boiling maelstrom. Immediately, a mushroom cloud of water and steam sprung up from its depths, shooting up several kilometers before engulfing the ship itself. The superheated air was so hot and so pressurized that it caused its energy shields to flare.
The Intrepid wasn't finished. All of its remaining pods rolled open like pores on skin. The ship shook as a combined launch of 20 Archer missiles streaked out of it. The last one slipped away just as the vessel fully embraced its freefall.
The Intrepid crashed down into the water with the gentleness of a dead whale, casting walls of water high into the air. A small tsunami rippled out from it to disturb the face of the ocean.
Simultaneously, its ballistic progeny had already crossed the 15-kilometer distance to their goal. The wounded corvette had no shields left to protect it as all 20 missiles bombarded its bow, painting its hull from port to starboard in a hellish palette. Its underbelly fared no better as devastating secondaries flickered down its length. Suddenly the ship vanished in a white-hot flash. A resulting shockwave pelted the ocean with bits of debris both large and small.
At that point, the Intrepid was encircled by a ring of foam and steam where the ocean was beginning to creep up its hull. The waves splashed against red-hot Titanium A, surging into open breaches to illicit more steam from the fires within. Over a million tons of human ingenuity was being swallowed up a few meters at a time. The emergency hatches and ejection ports on the hull remained silent. Of the over 530 souls aboard, not one emerged, and soon even the last escapeway slipped beneath the waves.
But the battle was far from over.
The final enemy vessel was trapped in a miasma of steam. Its heat-sensitive weaponry struggled to focus as the haze overwhelmed its sensors.
Mere moments after the last missiles of their sister ship had found their mark, the Valkyrie and Gloucester reengaged. The blast of the latter's MAC cannon pounded away the last of its shields. The former followed it up with a calculated salvo that speared clear through the very front of the bow, gutting the corvette's bridge like a bullet through the brain. It had roughly the same effect as the body, without the head, began to react. Like a decapitated roach, it gradually took on a list of its own before some sudden malfunction caused its repulsor engines to fire.
It rocketed down towards the ocean. With the power of a small asteroid, it pummeled into the surface headfirst, driving in deep. Its momentum stalled halfway down. By then the ocean already had a vice grip on the sparking, electrified remains. Just as earlier, it began slowly slipping away into the water.
There was no time to celebrate or to mourn as the two survivors were immediately reminded of why they had been ordered to withdraw.
The four reminders descended from higher in the atmosphere.
The quartet of corvettes were operating in pairs now. One was headed towards the Valkyrie, the other towards the Gloucester.
Rear admiral Morozov finally sounded the retreat. The frigates disengaged and turned from the fight, accelerating back east towards the continent.
It was around that time that Abajjé saw the Covenant's strategy. The Intrepid hadn't been singled out just because. The first two corvettes had struck out the middlemost frigate, ensuring that a large distance would exist between the latter two once they withdrew. It was too large in fact for either of them to come to the other's aid.
The corvettes took up the pursuit.
So too did the Seraphs.
The fighters gave chase to the Gloucester. Even though the ship was approaching top speed, they were able to match it. A general push gave them the edge and allowed them to get slightly ahead. Their bomb bay doors wheeled open once again. Pinpoints of light dropped from the leading fighters to claw trails of luminous ruination into the air. The plasma charges arced down into the frigate's stern to tear and melt through the armor. The others echoed their example, creating a cascading rainfall that doused the aft section in flames.
The rapidly accumulating damage took its toll. The frigate's speed faltered. Soon the Seraphs no longer had to fight to keep pace. That meant that the pursuing corvettes had an even easier time closing the distance from above. They drew closer, sinking through the clouds until they were less than a kilometer overhead.
The desperation of the Gloucester's crew became palpable. It manifested itself in an all-out barrage of missiles and a furious assault from the point defense guns. But without her MAC gun as an option, the ship could do little more than aggravate their energy shields. The persistent pestering of their defenses was met with wrath from the corvettes who let loose in a calamitous display. The bombardment mortars on their underbellies launched a volley of plasma. The downpour hit the frigate from both sides, striking it amidships. All the while, pulse lasers took advantage of the diminishing range by cutting up and down through the hull. Beams of purple death tore into point defense guns and missile pods with the dexterity of an artisan's brush.
Soon the guns on the portside were reduced entirely to slag, leaving their starboard neighbors to pick up the ever-increasing slack. In a few short moments the pulse lasers carved them up as well. Then they worked their way down towards the ship's rear. Like a high-powered tool, they began sawing through the connecting structure between the frigate and its starboard wing. They kept going, kept cutting until the connection yielded. The wing peeled away from the ship's infrastructure like a band aid and spiraled off in its turbulent wake, casting a long trail of mechanical and human debris behind it.
The Gloucester herself was no better off.
Without the wing to stabilize it, the ship listed to starboard and took on a spiral of its own, one that deepened as it entered an unrecoverable tumble.
Just 30- kilometers away, the Valkyrie was making a last-ditch attempt for New Alexandria. It was nearing the coasts of Viery when its pursuers upped the ante on their attack. A barrage of plasma mortars raked the ship's aft section. The lasers followed suit and targeted the glowing wounds with unerring precision.
And yet for all this, the Valkyrie held up. It pushed on, laying a heavy screen of missiles and anti-aircraft fire to throw them off the chase.
It happened as the ship was righting itself towards the southeast, making for the home stretch to New Alexandria.
The predatory corvettes started moving away from their prey. Their aim became clear in quick succession. With the added separation, their heavy plasma cannons were brought to bear on the lone frigate. An all-out volley ensued. They dished out their full arsenal all at once in a coordinated attack on the aft section. Pulse lasers melted through decking as mortar fire and plasma bolts poured in to consume them.
On satellite feeds the ship's stern had become the epicenter of a hail of falling stars.
Suddenly, radiological sensor stations within the ALC blared a new warning. Faster than a blink, faster than anyone could notice the alarms, the rear of the Valkyrie transcended physical form, transfiguring into a miniature star. Its reactor failed, a catastrophic meltdown that triggered an unguided nuclear fusion event. Armor, decks and people were vaporized in less than a picosecond, mercifully faster than the time they would have needed to perceive their own demise. But even as the light-dampening functions of the observation feeds automatically engaged, something shot out from the new star. Like a coronal mass ejection, the flaming visage of the Valkyrie burst back into view.
It was more rocket now than ship.
The flaming spearhead of the bow tore through the sky with all the force of an atmospheric reentry. Amidships was an inferno of heat where a whiplashing turbulence ripped away the glowing titanium armor plating like peeled skin, making the whole thing appear as if it were shedding. The bridge was little better than a torch on a bonfire, a flag whose canvas was an ever-unfurling spectrum of structural ignition. And still the forward compartments had fared better than the aft section...simply because there was no aft section.
The missile that was the Valkyrie careened over the western coast of Viery.
No attempt was made to contact Morozov thereafter. Abajjé knew, or at least suspected, that even if there was anything left to hear on the ship, it wouldn't be anything that anyone would want to listen to for long.
The brigadier general and several dozen logistics personnel watched its final moments. They watched the ship pass within spitting distance of New Alexandria. It arced over the city and into the mountains. There, what few remained of the Valkyrie's hull-mounted cameras captured the rapidly approaching face of an ice-capped mountain. Then darkness. The satellites picked up on the moment of impact, detecting the wash of thermal energy that radiated out from the explosion to the rest of the region.
Then the corvettes arrived.
They pulled in over Alexandria's skyline and made themselves at home.
At present, they were wrapping up their argument with the resistance on the ground, launching a rain of plasma mortars at those air defenses that still hurled missiles at them. The last of the active installations fell within minutes. Others went quiet, their operating crews recognizing the hopelessness of fighting against such massive energy shields. They would need to wait for an opportunity, one Abajjé was uncertain would come.
The gradual quieting of the skyline prompted the corvettes to a new action. Their bombardment abated. In coordination, dropships and fighter craft spewed out of their hangars in a steady spray of violet metal.
It was dawning on the brigadier general how far ahead the Covenant had planned. While enemy aircraft made their way down, their friends who had come in from earlier waves now surged forward. Those same forces that had been put on the back foot of the fight were using the opportunity to push back.
A general counteroffensive was taking hold across the city. In the east, Army positions of the 145th Infantry Division, having only just recovered some of their old positions, now found themselves hard-pressed by another encirclement. Tanks and Warthogs that had previously turned the beaches before Traxus into a meat grinder were now forced to reorient themselves. Their cannons and machineguns whirled skyward to face the approaching dropships. Soldiers behind sandbag walls, at streetside checkpoints and atop elevated walkways now hunkered down as Covenant troops landed in neighboring courtyards.
In the west, a growing number of skirmishes unfolded on the periphery of the 109th Infantry's territory. Covenant troops were absorbing or were being absorbed into the ranks of their newfound reinforcements. They used the momentum to ramp up their attacks on the buffer zone that the 109th had established around the starport. Abajjé analyzed their movements and discerned their strategy. They were trying to overrun certain positions so that they could turn others into salients. They would try to pinch off whole companies into pockets so that they could then finish them off at their leisure.
Further south, the Covenant disregarded the divisional quarters of the 77th Armored Division altogether. NA Central was left untouched. Instead, a new hail of dropships flew down to the convex boundaries of the safe zone that spanned out to the west of it.
It was truly a force commanded by Brutes, Abajjé noted. Rather than the heavily defended maglev station, the enemy had gone after the softer targets of the evacuation sites. There, much to his quiet horror, they were sure to find thousands of civilians waiting anxiously for their chance to escape.
The evacuations became the topic of discussion as he returned to General Montague beside the tactical planner.
The general had his hands full. He was constantly speaking into the comm-piece threaded into the collar of his uniform. He was simultaneously cluing into his dedicated communications channel via his earpiece. The most senior ALC personnel took turns pouring vital information into his ear, and still he would find the time to ask his aide a question or two. That was all Abajjé was at this point. He wasn't in command of the battle. However, he was at least something akin to Montague's personal soundboard. He inquired of him, tossed ideas at him and tried to see what would stick.
At length, the latest conversation earned a tired sigh from his commanding officer. Montague pressed his hands to the edges of the tactical planner and leaned on it like an old man on a cane. His jaw, clenched shut, creaked open.
"They're not coming."
Abajjé knew exactly what that meant. Nevertheless, a part of him wished he didn't.
Neither of them looked at each other though they both stood side by side. They maintained a careful watch on the holograph of the siege. The two of them were wrapped in a bubble of silence as an air of worried discourse and rushing footsteps drummed about them.
"What's their rationale?" Abajjé asked.
Montague put a hand to his brow and pulled it down over his face, as if he could wipe away the shadows under his eyes. His fingers pinched the bridge of his nose, his attention set on the image of the corvettes.
"The Covenant already has too much of our airpower tied up in orbit. Adding any more to the mix might risk compromising winter contingency protocols."
Abajjé shot him a look of disgust that wasn't meant for him. "Are they seriously still going on with that? If you ask me, sir, our last chance of preserving any kind of secrecy went up in smoke along with that carrier. And even before that was a stretch."
Montague shrugged.
"Sir," Abajjé insisted. "You're seriously telling me we can't get some extra firepower down there?"
"I'm not telling you anything. The security council is. Those ships are staying in place because they told them to. They can't help us." Montague seemingly looked through the ships to some not-so-distant past. "Our reserves were already thin enough as it was. To think the Navy would pull a fast one on us..."
"It wasn't the Navy, sir." Abajjé corrected. "It was just Morozov acting on his own."
"Well, it might as well have been the whole Navy. The results wouldn't be all that different. We asked them for a house. They gave us one without a roof, and better yet, it starts raining." The general let out a long exhale. "Right now, we have thousands of personnel sitting at the mercy of a Brute fleet and they're waiting for a solution that I don't have."
"Brutes." Abajjé tasted the name in his mouth. He came away with a worrisome flavor.
Examining the display, he noticed one thing that both relieved and troubled him above all else. The Covenant weren't taking advantage of their air superiority. For vessels that could add a serious backbone to their attacks, the corvettes remained silent and unmoving.
Were they waiting for something?
What?
What could possibly stop them from heaping on the pressure?
Brutes.
The aftertaste gave him a sour understanding of what was happening. It was a Brute-led fleet after all. The demographics of the attackers compared to those of the previous fleet had confirmed that much.
He stopped looking at the battle as a battle and saw it instead for what it was.
He asked a different question.
What would a sadistic child do to an ant's nest?
They would kick it of course, or in this case, bombard the most troublesome defenses. Then they would take advantage of the resulting chaos. As the ants come running out, the child wouldn't just stomp them to smithereens. Where was the fun in that? No. They would take their time. They would crouch down to jab their fingers into the aggravated masses. They would crush a few here, bury a few there only to laugh as they crawled back out of the dirt to merely be crushed for good.
Abajjé replaced the sadistic child in his head with an even more sadistic titan of flesh, fur and muscle. They were dealing with a species that reveled in the drawn-out torture of the weak just as much as Elites loved their quick and decisive victories against the strong. To have an entire fleet managed by that kind of mindset presented a disturbing prospect. Daunting, yes, and yet something that could be exploited.
All they needed was the right strategy.
But how could there be a strategy without resources?
"And you're sure about that?" Abajjé asked. "Quezon and Manassas are the closest. You're sure Delta-4 or Lima-1 can't lend a hand, maybe spare a couple of destroyers? Hell, sir, I'd even settle for one if it was on the table."
"I would too." Montague said. "That's what I'm worried about. I spoke to the battlegroup commanders directly."
"They told you that themselves?"
Montague dipped his head in a displeased nod. "Shame we don't have an orbital defense platform in the area. This city's one of the worst places for them to have a blind spot."
"Even if we did, those corvettes are too close for a shot. We're trying to save the city, not level it, remember?"
"I'll be honest with you, Abajjé. I'm having a hard time seeing the difference." The general shut his eyes. "At this point, our best bet is to wait for the rest of those fleet reinforcements to show up."
Abajjé arched a brow. "And when might that be?"
Montague cracked his eyes back open to meet him. "Four days at the earliest."
The brigadier general felt his chest tighten. "So then, the question is..."
His superior nodded again as his attention drifted back to the display. "Do we have that long?" He stared at it for a while before standing up straighter, crossing his arms over his chest. "This is the only siege in the region. The other cities they came after aren't seeing anywhere near the same level of resistance, which means the Covenant understand its worth..."
Though Abajjé hadn't thought it possible, a far grimmer expression settled over the man's face.
"What're you thinking, sir?"
After a while, he answered. "Sizing up the cost."
"Cost?"
Montague side-eyed him. "What would you do, Abajjé?"
Abajjé stiffened under his glare. "Sir?"
"What would you do if it was up to you? Corvettes or not, forces on the ground need to be resupplied. Civilians need to be moved. Say you're the one in my shoes. What would your next move be?"
Abajjé hesitated. "I-…"
Montague stared at him intently, awaiting his reply as if words themselves would be the reinforcements that they so badly needed.
"I-...I would send in the next wave of evacuation craft. They'd be under heavy escort, maybe multiple squadrons of Longswords able to act as a diversion. They handle the corvettes while everyone else makes their runs."
Montague stared at him for a moment. When he spoke, he did so with a frigidity that Abajjé had never heard from him before.
"You know those fighters are all going to be piloted by dead men, don't you? It's not just an expected possibility that people might die like it is with any normal operation. No, you know as a matter of fact that those men you're sending are never coming back, don't you?"
The brigadier general felt his throat constrict beneath the grasp of the only logical answer.
"...Yessir."
"And you'd still send them?"
Abajjé licked his lips against the dryness in his mouth. "...Yessir. If I may speak a bit freely here, as valuable as they are, the lives of a few squadrons don't stack up well against the bulk weight of a whole city. That's what I'd do at least."
Once more, there was a bubble of silence between them as Montague stared harder, as if doing so would pry more answers from the mind of his junior. Then his gaze softened, and he gave a smile that wasn't a smile at all.
"You'd make a great general someday, Abajjé, but a terrible humanitarian."
"Speaking freely again here, sir, we're trading a few hundred lives for a few hundred thousand to a few million. As bad as it might sound, that's about as humanitarian as anything in this God-awful war is going to get."
Montague looked on agreeingly. "Well said."
Without further ado, the general pinched his collar where his comm-unit was and resumed his earlier conversation. Abajjé paid closer attention to it.
"It's a go. Have the 83rd assemble at airfields 4 through 11 this time. I have the resupply stations there on standby. Be quick about it, Lochaber Control. We need those assets airborne as soon as possible."
Abajjé watched him more closely. He gave no outward sign of his inward surprise. Montague already knew what he was going to do, had already planned it even. He just wanted a second opinion. Once again, he had made his aide serve his purpose as a soundboard.
Montague caught him staring. "Air superiority or not, we need to keep things moving with NA."
"I thought you said you didn't have a solution?"
"A wise man once said that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. I tend to think he was right."
"More lives for more time." Abajjé noted to himself. "Delta-4 and Lima-1, they didn't really turn down your request, did they?"
Montague shook his head. "Oh, they did, just not entirely. They have orders to keep their ships in place."
"Orders that don't extend to those Longswords coming our way?"
Abajjé saw his superior don a thin smile, not saying anything.
"Is your conscience clear now, sir?" He dared.
Montague didn't even look at him. "I'm a general, Abajjé. I've been placed in command of an entire hemisphere of the UNSC's most important piece of real estate outside of Sol." He paused. "I don't have the luxury of a conscience."
Abajjé said nothing more after that, though he watched him for a moment longer. Knowing him well enough, he saw that last part for the lie that it was.
He went quiet as the general turned to a new conversation, reaching out to different parts of Lochaber and beyond, coordinating the next wave of the 83rd Auxiliary Wing.
They were going to New Alexandria.
They were going there regardless of the corvettes.
He wasn't sure if the Longswords would be enough. He was sure however, watching Montague giving the go-ahead to his plan, that he was glad to be just a brigadier general. Certain decisions were not his to make. Certain burdens would not be his to bear.
Then he heard a ding in his own ear as a contact request reached his earpiece. He stepped back from the tactical planner and walked off, briefly leaving the general to his own devices. He strode up the steps that led to the second level of the ALC, a walkway lined on each side by a sprawl of control stations, each of differing purposes, all of them occupied.
The connection between his earpiece and his neural interface allowed him to accept the call with little more than a willful thought.
The voice of a man came through, strong in essence but quiet in tone, restrained. By that alone, Abajjé knew who he was talking to before he even finished his first sentence.
"Sir, I have some urgent news regarding the chores. I hope you're in a secure enough location to hear it."
The chores.
Even without the situational context, Abajjé was surprised at how much he'd grown to understand the lingo of the Office of Naval Intelligence. He chalked it up to a byproduct of being stuck working out of one of their facilities for so long.
He looked left and right to make sure everyone around was too busy to listen in. He checked in on Montague and saw him still handling his affairs at the tactical planner. He couldn't allow himself to get too far from him in case he needed anything. The ALC was as secure a spot as he was going to get.
"Go ahead, Fox." He said and began a casual stride down the walkway.
"The last of the bees are out of the nest, sir, and they took their honey with them. The final swarm left at around 0840 Hours from Atlantic."
"Did they leave the comb intact?"
"Negative, they ate it. As far as Honey Badger can confirm, Queen Bee's done here."
Abajjé paused. "They ate it?"
"Affirmative."
He grimaced. "That's going a bit too far, isn't it?"
"It's Queen Bee, sir." Fox intoned. "She likes to be thorough. Her thinking is that we can't have these grizzlies snatching it up or worse."
Coming to a stop, Abajjé wiped away the sweat building on his brow. The news was a reassurance to be sure, but it came with its own troubles.
As the Army's highest-ranking liaison with ONI, at least within Viery, he was given jurisdictional oversight of their joint operations. Simply put, he was the one their field operatives informed to keep him abreast of their activities. So long as it pertained to anything surrounding the Army, such as their assets, installations or personnel, he was to be kept in the know. It was a position that Montague had slated him for shortly after the events at Sword Base. While it was more of an advisory role, it gave him an ever-increasing level of authority. And that was worrying in and of itself. More and more, he found himself dealing with things outside of the Army. From private contractors to branches of the Navy, more entities in the territory needed him to manage their affairs as they focused their own efforts on either surviving or engaging the Covenant. Corporate and military representatives were never far from his communications with requests for oversight assistance.
In a sense, he had become Viery's middle manager.
He didn't see it that way though. For him, it was more like he had become the head bellboy at a hotel that was quickly going out of business. Everyone was asking for help getting their luggage to their cars. It created a frantic atmosphere. The feeling paid testament to something that only those at the very top of Reach's upper echelons could perceive.
The continent's hierarchies of command and management were breaking down.
It was so slow that it went unnoticed by most. But Abajjé knew for a fact that it was there.
The repercussions manifested themselves in repeated requests for him and what had eventually, and rather incidentally, become his personal team of ONI field agents. They hadn't started off that way. Those from the UNSC's most secretive branch tended to guard their independence fiercely. Nowadays, a number of the organization's components simply couldn't afford to do so anymore. Such was the scope of the events unfolding across the continent that even ONI was hard-pressed to keep up. It was a fact that frightened him to no end, namely because he had never thought it possible. But the Covenant had done the impossible. It was a growing struggle for ONI to manage every single one of their Viery operations, at least as closely as they might've liked. Though he didn't know precisely what all they were up to, he gauged that the state of affairs on the planet was pushing them to their limits. More and more, they were trying to expand their own objectives in order to meet the constantly expanding threat on Reach. In so doing, their smaller though somewhat consequential objectives began falling to the wayside. It fell to people who they could at least afford some manner of trust in to pick up the pieces for them, those who they had some experience with, that understood their priorities.
The consequence was a gradual change Abajjé had noticed in the dynamics between himself and his Office contact. The latter began hailing him less for the sake of informing him of finished tasks and more to differ to his judgement beforehand. His advice became more like orders, his advisory role molding into a de facto commission with the Office of Naval Intelligence.
A rigorous taxonomy of secretive classifications governed his more recent conversations.
Fox, his main contact, was the overall commander of the ONI field teams, at least those who were initially assigned to Army affairs.
His latest news was concerning. Queen Bee had fled her last nest with her honey. In translation, the Watershed Division had just evacuated the experimental assets from its last storage facility. It had been located in 'Atlantic', the administrative subdivision of Alfold in the Ütközet Province. They then 'ate the honeycomb', performing demolition ops to destroy any remnants of the facility's existence. In so doing, they left nothing for 'grizzlies' or the Covenant to recover and potentially reengineer. 'Honey Badger', one of Fox's teams, was there to offer visual confirmation of Watershed's evacuation. They had even been there to help facilitate it.
How large the teams were or how they conducted their operations was entirely unknown to him. Needless to say, he wouldn't have been surprised if one of the logistics personnel working nearby had suddenly gotten up, walked over and casually passed on another of Fox's updates.
Watershed was also ONI. Strange as it was for an Army officer to be involved with an organ of the Office, he had to be the one to sign off on it. Otherwise, there would be little keeping the priorities of the many field teams from dissolving along 'section' lines. He voiced his muted approval to another 'chore' finished.
"Good to know. What about the pine forest?"
"Fall's coming quick, sir. The loggers are trying to pull in a few trees before all the leaves are gone. I'm sure you'd know about that better than I would. At the moment, it's looking like we're about three days out from autumn."
"Any parks still open?"
"One sec." Fox stopped as if to look at something. "Right, Crow says Mohawk Reserve and Fairy Lane are going to be staying open for as long as possible. The park rangers agreed they're too busy to close. However, the loggers are cutting down the poincianas. The last of them are set to be taken out around 0720 Hours tomorrow from both Fairy and Mohawk. After that, the forest will be in the clear."
Abajjé took the update in stride. He had to considering the stakes involved.
The pine forest that was Misriah Armory was closing its doors in Viery. The private contractor's governing committee of 'park rangers' had assessed the risks of staying through the battle and had ultimately decided against it. This year's autumn was shaping up to be a rough one. As such, no one wanted to be around for the fall.
He was already aware of their decision. They'd been the ones to tell him themselves and to request his assistance with the process. He had dispatched Fox to take care of their special weapons programs, the beautiful 'poincianas' expected to serve the future of UNSC operations. What he hadn't known however was the extent of their evacuation. The armor, weapons and vehicle manufacturing giant was closing over 95% of its facilities in the territory. It was only leaving two locations open at Fairy Lane and Mohawk Reserve. The two were respective production sites near Farkas Lake and the city of Mohács in Eposz's Arany Basin. They would serve as strategic storage reserves. Meanwhile the other sites had much of their surplus transported to those in the territory who needed it most. For this, they had used the help of the department of UNSC Procurement, the 'loggers'.
Having also been put in charge of the weapons distribution chain at Lochaber, and by extension the whole of Viery, Abajjé wasn't pleased to say the least. The steady fall of leaves, the weapons and equipment required of the forces in the region, was thinning out. They would soon receive an upsurge of supplies from Misriah which, once that eventually plateaued, would fall off precipitously.
They were forcing his hand.
Soon enough he would have to reach out to other UNSC entities outside of Viery, to those outside of the Winter Contingency. There was no other choice. There would of course be more than a few raised eyebrows when he handed them his grocery list. Why would someone be ordering more food when they were already in the middle of a buffet? Unless of course they were trying to feed other guests that they hadn't told anyone else about.
It wasn't as if he could order Misriah to stay put either, not when he couldn't offer them any security guarantees. Available manpower was stretched too thin. The Covenant had already shown Misriah that much when they attacked an ONI installation not far from their Farkas Lake site. It had taken an entire Spartan team just to recapture it. Even then, those same Spartans were now abroad somewhere on orders that ran far higher than his authority. Worse yet, at least two of them were either dead or missing in the wake of Operation UPPERCUT.
He stopped mid-stride, a hand squeezing at his temples. A slight headache pulsed in the back of each thought. Going days without sleep was taking its toll. He was beginning to wonder if this was how Montague felt on the regular, only with several times the stress.
Out of morbid curiosity he thought about a private security company that he'd heard of, one that used to operate in the inner colonies. They had completely disappeared almost a decade ago. He wasn't sure why, whether it was by the ever-encroaching destruction of the Covenant or the seedy interventions of certain organizations, but he knew one thing for certain:
They would've sure come in handy if they were still around.
He breathed in and carefully let out a breath, hoping to exhale some of his tension. "Alright. I'll handle that on my side. Is that the last of your report?"
"No...sir. There's one more."
Abajjé heard a hesitation in his voice that hadn't been there a second ago. "Fox?"
"I could tell you I saved the best for last, but frankly, I'd be lying."
The hesitation was clearer now and it tied a knot in the brigadier general's throat. "...Go ahead."
"It's about the lighters, sir."
Abajjé froze where he stood.
A feeling of ice frosted over his veins.
"What happened?" He hissed, suddenly unable to restrain himself.
Fox sucked in a breath. "Lighter-2's already been truncated and loaded onto a shelf, as ordered. It'll be shipping out for Trident tomorrow at around 0400."
"...And Lighter-1?"
"...It's staying put, sir, as ordered."
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as that icy feeling crept up his spine. "Fox, what're you talking about? I didn't order that."
"You didn't, sir." Fox corrected.
"What, was it the clerks? I thought they were the ones that wanted them moved in the first place."
"Not them either." Again, another long hesitation. "These orders came from higher up."
"How high? Come on Fox, be straight with me."
"It was the owner, sir. SC-6 himself. He wants Lighter-1 to stay in inventory."
Abajjé felt a shiver run through his whole body.
"Why would he-" He stopped himself.
Just like that, any qualms or questions he had left were shut down. Not addressed but shut down.
The situation was elevated too high above both rank and paygrade for him to argue. Still, it was simultaneously the most revealing and the most disturbing thing that Fox had ever told him, equipment shortages and missing Spartans be damned.
The intended destination of the lighters wasn't unknown to him. 'Trident' wasn't a euphuism or substitute for anything else. Its name was self-explanatory for those few who ONI had entrusted with the knowledge of it. When it came to the Office of course, such information could only be treated as surface level at best, disinformation at worst. In this case, Abajjé leaned more towards the former.
The lighters...
He would've preferred not to have to think about them at all, to be told that they were packed up and on their way to Sol, just as planned. But someone even higher up the UNSC's chain of command had countermanded that plan altogether. Without them having to say a word to him, the decision itself spoke volumes, much more perhaps than that person might have liked.
He slowly turned towards the third floor of the ALC. Windows lined the uppermost level of busy control stations which ringed the room like a horseshoe. The skies outside were even busier.
The local airspace of Lochaber Base was awash with aircraft. Pelicans, Albatrosses, Longswords and Falcons were moving about at different altitudes, in different numbers and in different directions. The various elements of the 83rd Auxiliary Wing's impending wave were gathering. Half a kilometer to the north, the vertebral skyscraper that was the Markoláb space elevator loomed high into the clouds. The air traffic around its stalk was particularly dense.
Abajjé looked past them to the wider skies of Reach. The clouds had mellowed out into a yellowish orange hue as Epsilon Eridani began its descent for the day. He shook his head at the sight.
Had there ever been hope for any of it?
Fox's voice pulled him away. "Would you like me to send up an interrogative? I can maybe find the back channels to-"
"Negative." Abajjé said. "That won't be necessary."
A lot of things wouldn't be necessary, he realized.
He tried breathing easier again to calm his nerves. It didn't help.
"If that's the last of it, you can sign off for now. Stay in touch."
"Understood, sir. Let's hope next time I'll have some better news. Fox out."
As Fox signed off, Abajjé stared again at the scenery. He spoke to no one besides himself. "I wouldn't bet on it."
"Must be one hell of a lighter."
It wasn't Fox.
It was a woman's voice, accented yet clear.
Abajjé whirled about as if to find the person standing behind him. There was no one there.
"Don't worry." The voice assured. "There's no one else listening in on this except you and me. Unlike your friend, I actually checked."
With alarm, his attention shot to his comm-piece.
"Identify yourself." He demanded. "Who is this?"
There was quiet for a moment.
Then the voice answered, its tone just as prodding as it was respectful.
"Someone who knows how to keep a secret."
:********:
General Montague wasn't sure how to react. Hundreds of thousands of lives could possibly be in the realm of saving if he said yes. The guilty question at hand, however, was if those hundreds of thousands were worth the price of four. The math stuck out to him as particularly insane but the details less so.
He stood in the ALC's briefing room, a walled off space just outside the strategic center. An oval conference table of burnished mahogany and over a dozen chairs occupied its middle. Nevertheless, there was virtually no need to take a seat, not when two of the conversation's four participants weren't even in the building.
Set against one wall of the room was the frame of a holo-projector. It was active, indication lights humming a stable blue with the recognition of a call-in-progress.
A projection emitted from the device to show two different screens. Each conveyed a live feed of the face of a Spartan.
Montague hadn't forgotten that day at ONI Sword Base.
He hadn't forgotten the faces of those who he owed his survival to.
One was the war-grizzled countenance of the colonel of the 7th Shock Troops.
The other was that of the leader of Noble Team.
Dark hair buzzed to military standard, eyes pools of deep blue beneath ridges of sharp brows, he had a strong jaw with a scar running above his left cheek. A smaller scar ran over it like an 'x', and yet another over a corner of his mouth and one last one at the rightward center of his forehead. He had a slight five o'clock shadow, though like everything else about him, it too seemed to have been kept to military standard.
It was like looking at an old Roman statue, his expression a near perfect blend of stoicism and thoughtfulness.
Montague couldn't tell if the man had gotten his scars from years of battle or from the years it must have taken him to become what he was. The same went for his fellow Spartan on the other screen, the one who had spooked his aide when she helped herself to his personal frequency. A heavily encrypted frequency.
She had scars as well, one running straight down her forehead to cross her left brow. Two more had etched the graffiti of war onto the right side of her face. Though both Spartans were just as tan, her tone made her eyes stand out like turquoise marbles. Her hair, dark and somewhat longer than his, was nonetheless cropped short. Their armor was likewise similar yet different, his a dark blue, hers light. In any other context, if they weren't what they were, Montague wondered if he would've mistaken them for siblings.
She diverged from her team leader entirely however when it came to expression. Whereas his was more stoic and unreadable, hers was softer yet somehow more analytical, more observant. If the general didn't know any better, he might've thought she was sizing him up as the conversation progressed.
Carter-A259, Noble's commander.
Catherine-B320, better known as Kat, Noble's second in command.
Both were sitting in the bay of a Pelican dropship somewhere, awaiting his reply.
They were two of the most stubborn souls he'd ever seen, the most determined too in the face of his reservations. They truly were Spartans in every sense of the name, and that worried him.
At length he let out a deep sigh that caused his posture to falter. "You do realize what it is you're asking, don't you?"
"We do, sir." Carter replied, his voice firm and commanding in its own right. "We wouldn't have brought it forward if we hadn't weighed the risks beforehand."
Montague shared a glance with Abajjé before turning back. He swallowed the lump in his throat that he knew to be his own guilt.
"Noble-1, you do realize that you are currently understrength, correct?"
Carter nodded with a shallow dip of his chin, though the gesture seemed to have more weight than most. "I'm aware, sir. It won't affect our operational capacities given the mission at hand."
"A mission that hasn't been approved yet." Montague replied.
At this, Carter's jaw shifted a little. "With respect, general, it's in the best interest of those reinforcements going in with the 83rd Auxiliary Wing that we tag along. You have nothing to lose by sending us in there."
"Yes, I do." Montague said. "Four Spartans."
"You stand to lose a whole lot more than that if you sideline us." Kat cut in.
Montague turned to her.
Without a moment's hesitation, she forged on. "I double-checked and triple-checked the reports coming out of that city. The corvettes, the bombardment, the casualties, the defenses are falling apart there, sir, and you know it."
Montague was a bit taken aback.
Kat seemed to sense this and an apologetic look flitted across her face. "General, who knows how long it might be before you get the Navy in on this. You need boots on the ground now."
"Spartan boots." Carter added in that modest yet reassuringly self-assured way that he had. "In terms of tactical reconsolidation, we can help forces on the ground get themselves reorganized, connect lost units, shore up positions. We're no ODST battalion, sir, but we can give you the one thing you need right now."
"I need a number of things, commander." The general said. "If you've got one thing up your sleeve that can account for all that, I'm all ears."
"Assurance." Kat replied.
She left it at that for a second, letting the word settle in like a self-contained argument.
"It took two of our guys to take down a carrier that could've cost us a whole fleet. What we're asking for now is small pickings in comparison."
There was that guilt again. Montague felt it rising, clamping down on his neck, threatening to choke him. He hadn't thought of the idea for that operation, but he had approved it. Still, he grimaced. He knew she was right. Partly at least.
"That's also because you had a donated slipspace drive, an experimental combat team and the advantage of total surprise. This is different. Who's to say one of those corvettes doesn't single you out for a quick salvo? What then?"
"They won't, sir." Carter said.
"Why not?"
"Because Brutes don't like operating that way. They like to play with their food. That's why they're hardly firing on Alexandria right now."
"And when they realize that a bunch of 'demons' are giving them a hard time downtown?"
"Don't know if you know this, sir, but we're something of a delicacy when it comes to these things." Kat said, the shadow of a grin tugging at the corner of her lips. "You don't burn delicacies in the oven if you can help it, because then there's nothing left to savor."
Montague stared at her for a moment before taking the opportunity to observe them both. `
Lieutenant Commander Catherine had a knack for rebuttals. Moreover, she had a knack for giving them when it came to people who the average serviceman would never so much as think of rebutting. It was explicitly mentioned on her psych-profile. Her commander had insisted that she be a part of the conversation, but he couldn't help thinking that Carter was using that aspect of her to their advantage. They were bouncing off each other's logic, essentially sound boarding each other and building their points as they went. The two were playing a ball game of rational deduction where they slowly worked him towards their own conclusions. Montague couldn't feel himself playing the same game so much as serving as the ball, being tossed between them again and again. He chose to try a different game instead.
"Has Noble-Actual already approved of this?"
"He has, sir." Carter said. "Since you're in overall command of the situation, he said it'd be best to approach you for a final greenlight."
"Your personal communications were a tad overloaded when we were trying to contact you." Kat said. "So, I had to make a workaround."
Out the corner of his eye, the general saw his aide's grimace deepen.
Montague allowed a few seconds of silence to pass, giving him the quiet he needed to contemplate. They were making a good case. He had a hard time arguing that there was a place that needed them more than New Alexandria. All the same, he still had one last reservation.
"Noble-1, 2, I need you to understand that if you go into that city, there's no guarantee of either you or the rest of your team making it back out. There's no obvious exfil plan available. I can't even promise you that you'll make it there. The chances that you'll get shot down before you can do anyone any good are present. They're not high but they're certainly not low."
For a heartbeat, neither of the two said a word. To Montague, it didn't look like he'd told them something they hadn't figured out. Rather, he felt like he'd just reminded them of something they had already agreed on.
Then Carter spoke up. "I can't say much sir, but we've trained for one-way scenarios like these. We know what we can do, and we know what we're asking."
Montague glimpsed a brief flicker in Kat's eyes, a quick glance that almost went unnoticed, like her commander had said something she wasn't expecting.
He knew better than to pry on that front. "Are you already here in Lochaber?"
"Affirmative." Carter said. "We're refueled, restocked and on standby."
A deep exhale gave him the strength he needed for a final decision, a gamble really. "If you came looking for my blessing, Noble-1, you have it. Do what you can. The most I can ask is that you don't go MIA anytime soon. I get the feeling that city's going to need you more and more as time goes on."
"Thank you, sir." Carter said. "We won't disappoint."
Then a thought crossed Montague's mind, a question that made him hesitate until he found the will to ask it.
"Any word on Noble-5, 6?"
Carter paused for a long while, long enough to add an air of finality to his answer.
"Negative."
Montague pondered on that as he nodded off. "Alright then. You'll head out with the next wave of the 83rd Auxiliary. Hopefully, I'll see you on the other side of this."
"Noble's not going anywhere, general." Kat reassured. "Count on it."
He was counting on it.
"Affirmative. Good luck, Spartans, and godspeed."
The two nodded in tandem before their feeds switched off. The holo-projection deactivated, leaving him staring into the mirror smooth walls of the room. He saw his reflection there. He didn't like what he found. There was conflict in it, concern matched against high expectations. He wondered if it was the last thing the Spartans had seen before they signed off. He hoped not.
"General?" Abajjé called.
Montague shook his mind out of the mire. He ignored his aide and walked past him, hands at his back, making for the paneled windows at the other side of the space.
The afternoon rays slowly drew him from the low light of the room until he was fully clothed in an orange hue. Having lived in the ALC's artificial lighting and controlled temperatures for days on end, the feel of the sun on his face was refreshing.
The vast tracks of urbanized land that was Lochaber Base stretched out before him. Barracks, military hospitals, armories, administrational subdivisions, everything stood out to him in an ironwork of roads, highways, bridges and walkways. The streets were busy with a larger traffic flow than usual. The last consignments of Warthogs, tanks and troops were making their way towards the airfields in long convoys. Some of the transports were carrying the last crates of supplies and truckloads of reinforcements. Other transports themselves were the supplies, Scorpions and Hogs that would be attached to waiting dropships for delivery onto the battlefield.
Invariably, he was drawn to the airfields scattered about the periphery of the base. The large mosaics of grass and tarmac, individual starports in their own right, were bee hives of activity. Aircraft of all classifications, both military and civilian, lined the areas like car parks. Between them were long lanes where airmen and other personnel moved to and frow, loading up their last deliveries or running final diagnostics. Many of the aircraft were already lifting off. Slender Pelicans and bulky Albatrosses rose beside civilian liners even as Falcons and other VTOLs moved in as escorts.
Overhead, the shrill scream of twin fusion drives grew to a fever pitch.
Montague looked up.
At a high altitude, a squadron of five Longswords soared past. The quintet of black arrows carved a path through the clouds that inevitably passed by the dark stalk of the Markoláb. Two more squadrons appeared further to their left and right. Then four more.
Montague smiled.
The battlegroups of Delta-4 and Lima-1 had truly drained the bucket for him. He wasn't sure how he would repay them. He wasn't sure if he would ever get to. Even so, he was grateful.
He just hoped it was enough.
Abajjé came up beside him. "What's on your mind, sir?"
Montague said nothing for a while, simply watching things unfold as they were.
When he did speak, it was in a low voice, thoughtful and measured.
"The world's starting to move without us, Abajjé, whether we like it or not." He took in deep breath and let it out slowly. "Maybe we should be ready to do the same."
Cautio - Caution