Halo: Firefight

by Ian Otter

Twenty-eight years. Billions upon billions dead. And a galaxy forever changed. These were the cost of the Human-Covenant War. But for many of the soldiers who participated in this war, they would never see this end, traveling from one battle to the next as they fought and died to defend their people from total annihilation. These are their stories. These are their firefights.

3. Draco III 2545: POG Power

New Albany Metropolitan Area
Lombard Region, Draco III
14 January 2545

MSG Mateo Joshi, HHC, 3rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Airborne Division

Four Days after Start of Covenant Invasion

Master Sergeant Mateo Joshi abruptly woke up.

Slowly raising his head, he quickly took stock of the situation. He was sitting upright in his blast-attenuating seat, crash harness pressed tight against his reserve chute strapped to his chest. The Albatross cargo bay was bathed in the red-green glow of the emergency lights. All around him were the men and women that made up part of HHC of 3/3 ABN in various states of consciousness. Three seats to his left towards the center of the cargo bay, there was a gaping hole. The melted edges of the hole suggested an explosion of a sort, while the fact they were curled inwards suggested the source had been external. All together, these facts could only lead to one obvious conclusion:

They had been shot down.

Unsealing his helmet, Joshi eased his bucket off his head and took a deep breath of unfiltered air, only to immediately start coughing as his nostrils were filled with the acrid scent of molten metal. Something electrical crackled, sending a few sparks flying through the air, which only added to the redolence.

As Joshi worked on bringing his breathing under control, he struggled to remember the sequence of events that led him to this exact moment.

It had started with a bang.

A loud bang echoed through the bay and Joshi reflexively threw out his arms to brace himself as the Albatross's flight abruptly became unstable.

"WE'RE HIT!" he heard the pilot cry out. "Stabilizers are down and my controls are shot! I got no right turn - !"

"INCOMING! Single fuel rod tracking, slice left, now - !"

" – I have no right, I have no right - !"

" – no, I said slice LEFT - !"

There had been no time to react.

Staff Sergeant Malinowski was instantly vaporized before she even had a chance to scream as the explosion ripped through the hull behind her. Immediately a cacophony of alarms and bells and alerts began a war to be heard over the hurricane of wind rushing through the hull breach.

"WE'VE BEEN HIT! Engine one is gone, engine three is fucked, we're going down - !"

" - Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Echo Six-Three: we've been hit and we're going down, I say again, WE ARE GOING DOWN - "

The Albatross groaned and strained as the pilots fought their controls in order to regain some semblance of control, but it was a losing battle.

" – How far away from the DZ are we!? We close enough for our guys to jump? –"

" – Fifteen klicks -!"

" – Negative, too far, they're going down with us, need a good opening to – "

" – watch that flak, WATCH THAT FLAK – "

There was a loud shriek of metal as the Albatross torqued and without warning, the bolts holding down Major Pivcevic's seat abruptly gave way. Joshi reflexively reached out to grab him but it was too late as Pivcevic barely had any time to shout before he was ejected through the hull breach, still bound to his seat…

Joshi closed his eyes as he considered Pivcevic's chances of survival. All things considered, it was actually pretty high; everyone aboard this Albatross was prepared for a parachute drop. Admittedly, a static line jump was very different from a military free fall one, but Pivcevic had been equipped with both his main and reserve chute. Assuming he hadn't hit anything on his way out… or been hit by Covenant AA… he feasibly could have made it to the ground. But once he hit the deck, his survival would have been measured in minutes unless Joshi and the others could reach him…

Joshi shook his head. No, he couldn't think about the Major at the moment, he had to think about himself. He had to-

"Alright, listen up everybody!" the pilot screamed as a new whooping alarm sound filled the plane. "We are crashing. I'm gonna try and settle this bird down as gently as I can, but my options are limited. That's not the bad news. The bad news is, we're right above bad guy country, so the moment we hit the ground, we've got maybe five, ten minutes before Covies are on top of us. Hope you guys are packing some extra heat, because whoever's still up when this is all over is gonna have to be ready to defend themselves. Good luck!"

The pilot turned to their copilot to say something else, but Joshi was no longer listening. Instead, he was staring apprehensively out of the gaping hole in the wall. Plasma was still streaking through the air, but the Covenant gunners clearly didn't care about a crippled Albatross falling from the sky, not with an entire armada of them flying overhead.

The engines screamed in protest as the heavy dropship rocketed towards the ground before –

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

There was a loud crashing noise and Joshi's ear were quickly filled with a loud ringing as he violently jostled and recoiled in his seat before…

How long had it been since the crash? It couldn't have been more than a few moments as Joshi was the only one moving. The fact he was sitting upright was a good sign as it meant the pilots had been able to land the Albatross straight down, but that also meant the Covenant would know there were survivors so they would immediately send a squad to investigate. Joshi had to get up, get out, check for enough survivors so they could establish a perimeter-

"Muuri q'ii?"

Joshi froze as the guttural sound of an alien tongue reached his ears. Automatically, he began reaching for his sidearm.

"Yabda, mejaya qkhep'os ch'anghutkho."

From outside the Albatross, there was a slight scuffle, then a Grunt Major poked its head into the cargo bay.

Two holes instantly appeared in the floor as Joshi opened fire before his pistol had even fully cleared its holster. The Grunt let out a loud shriek of alarm and disappeared from sight, but not before Joshi clipped it in its shoulder with his third round, spraying the inside of the hull with blood.

"CONTACT!" he yelled, but his shout came out muffled because he was trying to shove his helmet back on at the same time.

"CONTACT!" he yelled again, this time through his helmet's external speakers. "Enemy outside the bird!"

Ripping his harness off, Joshi awkwardly hurtled himself out of his seat, shedding his excess gear as quickly as he could. Both his parachutes ended up on the ground while he tossed his rucksack back onto his seat. Somehow in the midst of the crash landing, he had lost track of his rifle, but at least he had his sidearm and plenty of ammo.

Scrambling out of the hull breach, he reflexively threw himself forward into a roll as a plasma bolt slammed into the side of the dropship right above his head, throwing sparks in all directions. Emerging upright and leveling his magnum at the offender, he fired three times in rapid succession, and a Grunt was down for the count with two rounds in the chest and one in the head.

Without breaking stride, Joshi pivoted right to target the main body of the Covenant and-

"Stars above!" Joshi angrily swore. That was a lot more than he was expecting.

A quick count reveled he was facing two Elites, four Jackals, and at least nine Grunts. There were also four "Ghosts" which explained where some of the Covenant had come from, but the rest must have been a foot patrol the Albatross had practically landed on top of, in order for them to have gotten here so fast. For a brief moment, Joshi lamented the fact he hadn't thought to pack any hand grenades; but then again, he was First Sergeant for brigade headquarters company. He wasn't supposed to get close enough to the enemy to be able to use grenades.

"QKHAN!"

The Elite's scream jolted the Covenant, sending the assembled group scrambling and causing Joshi to immediately open up. His first round caught a Jackal in the thigh before the alien had a chance to activate its energy shield, while his next three perforated a Grunt who accidentally walked into his line of fire. Another round ricocheted off a different Grunt's pauldron and into one of the Elites, causing the large creature's personal shields to flare, catching Joshi's attention. He fired at the Elite but missed and then the slide on his pistol locked back.

"Loading!" Joshi automatically yelled – though to whom he had no idea - as he thumbed the ejection button while at the same time, yanked a fresh mag off his belt.

Unfortunately, that break in fire – no matter how brief – was more than enough time for the Covenant to get themselves reorganized. Even as Joshi thumbed the slide release, a burst of plasma slammed into the ground right in front of him, showering him in burning soil and causing him to flinch. Throwing himself into the prone, he crawled forward to take cover behind the small mound of dirt that the Albatross had created with its heavy landing as a mixture of plasma and Needler fire began saturating his position, and Joshi found himself breathing rather heavily, like he had just run a marathon.

"Alright," he said to himself, wincing as a carbine shot punched through his cover, luckily missing his head by a centimeter. "This is fine. I can handle this. Walk in the park."

Taking one last breath, he abruptly rolled to the side, lifted his head ever so slightly so he could peer down the sights, and returned fire.

Embarrassingly, his first round embedded itself into the ground in front of him, but a slight adjustment of his wrist corrected that mistake. With his remaining eleven rounds, Joshi started shooting at the high priority targets, first shooting at an Elite and failing to penetrate its personal shield - but nevertheless forcing the creature to dive behind one of the Ghosts for more solid cover – before transitioning to one of the Jackals. At this point in the firefight, all the remaining Jackals had activated their point defense gauntlets - which was something the Grunts were quick to take cover behind – but because of that, one of the Jackals was forced to lift its shield off the ground, leaving the alien's feet exposed.

A single round per shin sent the Jackal crashing to the ground screaming in pain while at the same time, caused the Grunts behind it to go scrambling for cover, causing a temporary lull in the incoming fire and allowing Joshi to scramble upright into a kneel position. Without hesitation, he emptied his mag into the crowd, managing to drop one Grunt and wounding another before his slide locked back again.

This time however, Joshi had been keeping an eye on the ammo counter on his HUD and as soon as he saw he had one round left in the chamber, he had grabbed another mag off his belt so by the time he pulled the trigger, Joshi was already halfway through the motions of reloading. Out of the corner of his eye, Joshi noticed one of the Elites rising up to try and take advantage of Joshi's seemingly inattentiveness, but instead drawing Joshi's immediate attention.

The Elite's head snapped back as Joshi's rounds found their way into the alien's face. The Elite's personal shields block the rounds at first, but like all things, they didn't last forever. With a loud pop that was audible even to Joshi on the other side of the battlefield, the Elite's shields shattered and Joshi quickly moved to draw a bead on the Elite's head and-

click

"Shit!" Joshi exclaimed as the words 'Jam – Dbl Feed' flash across his HUD. "Malfunction!"

Stripping the mag from his pistol, Joshi frantically attempted to bring his firearm back into battery before the Elite recovered from the barrage, but in his heart he knew he was going to be too late. Even as he racked the slide and cleared the jammed cartridges, he could see the Elite bringing its own weapon to bear and-

BAM.

The Elite's head snapped back, a round hole between its eyes.

"First Sergeant! Friendlies, approaching from your six!"

Automatically, Joshi looking behind him in time to see half a dozen or more of his soldiers come pouring out from the Albatross, weapons at the ready. Joshi didn't hesitate.

"CONTACT! ENEMY, DIRECT FRONT, TWENTY METERS!" he screamed. "PARATROOPERS: ENGAGE!"

His troops needed no further promoting – had no need for any prompting, in fact, as many of them had already thrown themselves onto the ground and were unloading on the Covenant like there was no tomorrow.

"Hey! Slow down your rate of fire! Conserve your ammo!" Joshi found himself reminding them.

Someone abruptly threw themselves onto the ground right next to him, and Joshi looked up to see CW2 Snavely, his visor depolarized, allowing him to see the shit-eating grin Snavely had on his face.

"Hiya, First Sergeant!" Snavely said, his cheerful greeting standing in stark contrast to the firefight that was raging around them. "It sounded like you could use some help!"

Joshi grinned back, even though he knew Snavely couldn't see his face.

"Hey, Chief!" Joshi replied with just as much cheer. "I just want you to know, if it weren't for our helmets, I would kiss you right now!"

"Hell, say no more First Sergeant! That's all the incentive I need to kill all these guys; as soon as it's safe to, I'm expecting a good, sloppy, make out session from you, you hear? And there better be tongue, god dammit!"

Joshi couldn't help but let out a wild cackle.

"I'll start popping some breath mints, make sure I get all prettied up for you!" Joshi retorted, before growing serious. "What's the situation in the bird?"

"Most everybody is up, minus one or two guys who are still out. I got Sergeant First Class Dagwood organizing things inside! Figured I should pop out here with everyone else, see how I could help out," Snavely replied before adding, "You got a plan, Mateo?"

"We need to take these guys out before more Split-Lips show up," Joshi said, thinking out loud. "So, Chief, why don't you take four guys, work your way up to the cockpit area. I'll take everyone else, lay down suppressing fire, and on my signal, you get out there and outflank these SOBs. Sound good?"

"Sounds like a plan!" Snavely agreed. "Smithy, D, Mettre, Supdawg! On me! Let's go, Troopers!"

Moving out of the way, Joshi watched as the five Soldiers darted away.

"First Sergeant! Hey, First Sergeant! Catch!"

Joshi automatically turned and reflexively caught the MA37 rifle someone tossed at him. A quick glance downward as the ammo counter auto-synced with his HUD revealed the rifle wasn't load, but he had ammo.

Looking up as the thrower plopped themselves in the spot Snavely just vacated, Joshi was surprised to realize he didn't recognize them. "Who the hell are you?"

"Warrant Officer Erick Ryobi, No. 113 Heavy Airlift Squadron, UNSC Air Force. I'm the copilot!" the man said, panting heavily. "Reporting for duty!"

"Where's the actual pilot?" Joshi demanded as he loaded the rifle.

"Still out! Your man inside has got it covered though, didn't know what else to do, figured I'd come out here and see if I could help!"

"Well, I appreciate it, sir! Why don't you take two guys, go around to the other side of your bird, and make sure we're not about to take it up the rear!"

"Got it!"

The Airman darted off, and Joshi quickly raised his head to check if Snavely and his men were in position yet. A quick ping on his HUD revealed Snavely was ready.

"Alright, Troopers!" Joshi yelled over his external speakers. "On three, we're gonna lay down some suppressing fire so Chief Snavely and his team can outflank the Covies. Ready? Three, two, one: SUPPRESSING FIRE!"

As one, all of his remaining troops rose up and began unloading on the Covenant patrol. Bullet casings quickly piled on the ground and downrange, one of the Ghost abruptly exploded as the concentrated rifle fire chewed through its light armor. Above it all, Joshi could hear Snavely yelling, "3rd Airborne: ATTACK!"

Leveling his newly acquired rifle, Joshi fired off two shots at an exposed Grunt, nailing the alien in the head and sending the creature sprawling to the ground. He quickly pivoted around for a new target, only to find none of the Covenant were standing anymore. "Section: cease fire, CEASE FIRE! Covies have been neutralized, save your ammo! CEASE FIRE!"

The gunfire slowly petered out. Once he was satisfied no one was going to accidentally cause a friendly fire incident, Joshi tapped his radio. "Chief? Move up, secure the area."

"Rog. Moving."

Joshi watched as Snavely and his team swept the field, kicking at the Covenant bodies to make sure they were really dead. One of the Elite groaned; Snavely pulled out his sidearm and casually shot the alien in the back of the head. "Clear."

"Clear here," Joshi agreed before tapping his radio. "Area secured. All units, stand down. Sergeant Mettre, set up a perimeter! Warrant Officer Ryobi, can you get your bird open?"

"Uh, one moment First Sergeant… okay, got it! Everyone, stand clear of the ramps."

There was a hum of electrical generators and all three ramps began simultaneously lowering, exposing the Albatross's cargo bay to the world while also revealing the pallets of electronic equipment needed to make a function brigade headquarters, as well as the two extended Warthogs and trailer they had been planning on using to haul it all.

"All officers and team leads, assemble on me," Joshi ordered. He nodded as Snavely joined him and the two of them walked back into the bird and straight up to Dagwood, who was kneeling beside a figure lying on the ground. "Sergeant Dagwood, what's our status? Who'd we lose?"

Dagwood let out a small sigh and gestured at the figure on the floor. "Sergeant Pimmit must have taken some shrapnel to the side when the bird got hit, nicked an artery or something. He, uh, bleed out before we could get to him. Also, I don't know if you saw, but Sergeant Malinowski…"

"Yeah, I saw," Joshi grimly interrupted. "Anybody else?"

Dagwood shook her head. "Aside from them two, Major Bostjan Pivcevic is missing. I don't know what happened to him."

"He got ejected from the bird on the way down," Joshi said. Knowing that the two of them were close friends – both of them coincidentally having hailed from the same hometown – Joshi tried to be as delicate as he could. Given Dagwood's stiffening shoulders, he wasn't sure how successful he was.

"There's a chance he made it. He had his chutes on, after all," he tried to optimistically tell her, only to trail off at head shake.

"No," she said sadly, "he wasn't hooked up to the static line and at the speeds in which he was ejected, chances are he wouldn't have even been conscious to pull his chute."

"That… might not true…"

The three of them looked up as Ryobi joined them.

"Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt," he said. "But I thought the First Sergeant should know that just before we hit the ground, I saw an open chute in the air."

Dagwood's head snapped up at that but before she could say anything, Joshi interjected, "You sure it wasn't a jumper from another chalk?"

"It was the only chute in the air, and no other aircraft were passing by at the time," Ryobi confirmed.

"What color was the chute?" Dagwood impatiently interrupted.

"Uh, white. Why?"

Joshi and Dagwood exchanged a glance.

"Our primary chutes are camo'ed, so we can use them as camouflaged netting in a pinch if need be," Joshi explained for Ryobi's benefit. "Our reserve chutes are white, for better visibility in search and rescue ops. Thing is, you have to manually open your reserve- "

"Which means you have to be conscious for that," Dagwood added. "Which means Bostjan is alive."

"Did you happen to get a vector on that chute, sir?"

Ryobi gestured vaguely north. "Roughly north northeast, maybe five, six klicks out? I think? I was a little distracted at the time. But the other thing you should know: that's the same direction where those ack ack turrets were."

That caused Joshi to hesitate. On the other hand, Dagwood was hardly fazed.

"That's fine, we're paratroopers after all," she said, dismissively, "It just means we're going to need to move fast, before the Covies get their grubby claws on him."

"Sorry, but if you guys are talking about what I think you're talking about…" Joshi glanced over at Snavely as he held up his hands placatingly. "Look, I hate to be the skeptic here. And, don't get me wrong, I would love to be able to rescue Bostjan as much as a next guy, if only to rub it in his face, but… we're a headquarters and headquarters company. Aside from maybe the First Sergeant here, none of us have a combat arms MOS – everyone else here is part of the Signal Corps which, last I checked, is still classified by the Army as combat support."

"And yeah, I know we just finished kicking some Covenant ass," he nodded outside where the Soldiers were busy disarming the Covenant bodies. "But there's a huge difference between defending ourselves, and making an armed incursion into enemy held territory to try and rescue a single man – we're not exactly ODSTs, you know."

"Coward," Dagwood immediately spat.

"You're out of line, Sergeant!" Joshi instantly roared, as Snavely reared up in anger. He glared at her, and waited until she had mumbled a halfhearted apology, before saying in an icy voice, "Your opinion on this matter has been noted."

As an E-7, Dagwood had been in the Army to know a dismissal when she heard one. She muttered something about going outside to supervise the cleanup, before immediately darting out of the Albatross. Joshi waited until she was out of earshot, before letting out a small sigh as he turned to Snavely.

"Look," Snavely started to say. "All I'm trying to do- "

Joshi held up his hand and Snavely immediately fell silent.

"Look, Chief," Joshi began, "I get what you're saying. And you're not exactly wrong: we aren'tODSTs. But, here's the thing – and maybe you're not getting it because you transferred from another airborne division – but we are 3rd Airborne Division. We are the Army's premier airborne division. There's a reason why we're known as 'The Shock Division,' and that's because everybody - from the lowest private, all the way up to Major General Anttila – is expected to be able to pick up a rifle and not just fight, but win, at a moment's notice. Our training is better and our standards are higher and you won't find a division with a better esprit de corps anywhere else in the entire UNSC Army. Being surrounded by all these elite Soldiers means that when shit hits the fan, we can trust that we will have each other's backs, whether that be at the bar, or on the battlefield."

"So, what that means to me is, if I've got a chance to save Major Pivcevic, I'm going to take it because I know, he would do the same thing in my position. But, jingoisms aside, there is actually a practical reason why we need to rescue him."

"And what's that, First Sergeant?" Snavely asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"He's brigade S-6."

Snavely gave him an odd look. "Yes, First Sergeant, I'm aware of that."

"Then you also know, as communications officer, Pivcevic is in charge of all of the 3rd ABCT's comms. And that, if the Covenant get their hands on him and are somehow able to break him, then all of our brigade's communications could be compromised. And if that happens, then this entire operation could be in jeopardy."

Snavely hesitated. "I… that is a fair point, I'll admit I didn't quite think about it in that manner..." He fell silent for a moment before sighing. "Well, I still think this isn't the best idea, but as you've rightfully pointed out, the success of this operation may very well depend on this. So, what's the plan?"

Joshi nodded. "We gather all the weapons and ammo we've got, including the Covie ones. Pick through our equipment, gather the most essential, destroy everything else. Then, we pile into our two Warthogs and the – what, three? – Ghost that remain… and then we move, hard and fast, to keep the Covies off balance. And then? We don't stop shooting until we accomplish our mission."

Snavely stared at him before sighing. "You realize, First Sergeant, that we're only armed with small arms? Rifles and pistols? No MGs, no grenades, not even a DMR?"

"Yes, this is true," Joshi allowed, "but don't forget: the reason why division chose this area for a paradrop is because the bulk of the Covenant forces are eight-five klicks south of us, holding an MLR nearly a thousand kilometers long. What Covenant forces we do face, will also be armed with nothing more than small arms. Plus, they're be distracted by the rest of the brigade, who, at this very moment, are fighting to capture their h plus one objectives. Allowing us to attack with minimal fuss."

"So, basically, you're talking about a mini airborne-type excursion, within an airborne operation?"

"Basically."

"Hmm," Snavely hummed. "Well, you've convinced me of the necessity of this operation, however I'm not quite sure about this plan. But, then again, it's not like I've got a better idea so… Airborne motherfuckers. Let's do this."

"Airborne," Joshi affirmed. "Let's go!"

---

Very rough Sangheili language translations (no grammar):

"Muuri q'ii?" = They dead?

"Yabda, mejaya qkhep'os ch'anghutkho" = Yabda (personal name of an Unggoy), prepare needler combat

"QKHAN" = Enemy!

Translations taken from the "Sangheili (language)/Silver" article on Halopedia, because it offered more translated words

General Notes:

Draco III is a canon colony that was invaded by the Covenant in January of 2545 (Invasion of Draco III.) Not much is known about the invasion itself, only that in the wake of the UNSC defeat, the Covenant gathered the remaining civilian population and allowed them to be massacred by starving Grunts and Jackals.

For the purpose of my stories, while the general strokes of the battle remain the same, in my stories, this battle lasted a lot longer, lasting a couple of months as opposed to (as implied in canon) a couple of days. Part of this battle would run concurrent with the neighboring Battle of Newsaka, necessitating a division of UNSC forces.