Halo: Feet First

by MikeDice

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

172. Battle of Reach - Chapter 45 (Ferox)

Chapter 45 – Ferox

August 23rd, 2552 - (16:10 Hours - Military Calendar)

Epsilon Eridani System, Reach

Viery Territory, New Alexandria

:********:

The road up the west side promenade was mercifully clear. With no major obstacles in their way, no burning vehicles or unusually soft speed bumps, the reinforcement convoy enjoyed a smooth drive for the next leg of its journey.

At over 20 Warthogs and 6 Scorpion tanks strong, the column was a force to be reckoned with. The mobile chain-link of wheels, treads and anti-armor material was arranged in a single file formation. Spearheading the vanguard were 10 Hogs with another 10 acting as rearguard. They moved at the same speed as their slowest elements, the 6 Scorpions of the tank platoon forming the armored core of the lineup. The long barrels of their smooth bore cannons looked straight ahead or shifted from left to right, scanning the passing cityscape. The array of weapons platforms on the neighboring Hogs did the same. M41 LAAGs aimed three eyed stares at the road as M79 rocket systems laid all six eyes on the clouds, all while the cyclopean gaze of Gauss cannons tracked the hostile shapes that flashed and soared through New Alexandria's skyline.

Among the dozen-strong troop carrier Hogs, smaller, more numerous displays of weaponry were at play. DMRs, assault rifles, grenade and rocket launchers aimed out from their sparse cover as Army troopers kept watch from their seats. The reinforcements of the 109th's 1st Battalion, Tango Company were fresh-faced and attentive, flush with the air-conditioned relief of rear echelon duty. Circumstances had pulled them away from their role as part of the starport's security detail. They were needed at the front; one they likely hadn't seen since the first day of the siege.

Epsilon rode with them, what was left of it.

They had taken two Hogs for themselves, one of them being the same NAPD issued tactical vehicle they'd used to get Rico to the starport. The other was a carrier type where most of the squad had piled in.

Duncan was on the former. The Staff having once again saddled him with turret-duty, he took to maneuvering the triple barrels of the M41 from street to street.

Hector was back behind the wheel. Mito was riding passenger, SPNKR in hand.

Ahead of them, the Staff piloted the troop carrier with the rest of Epsilon. After the little debacle with the Lima Company reinforcements, it had ultimately been his idea to keep two sets of transportation reserved for the squad. Duncan couldn't agree more. The last thing they needed was a Wraith on their tail and another greenhorn driver telling them they weren't on his list.

They were positioned near the center of the column just in front of the tank platoon. Around them, the promenade's marble furnishings hemmed in the highway that wound down its winding length from north to south. Almost none of its carved artwork could be seen beneath the small forest of battalion command posts, makeshift storage depots and medical stations. An ungodly number of supply crates dotted the promenade as far as the eye could see, far more than Duncan remembered coming across during Noble Team's operation. The same could be said for the torn MRE wrappers and wads of bloodied medical dressings that fluttered and floated in the afternoon breeze like tumbleweed.

More of the 109th's 1st, 2nd and 5th Battalion elements had come through the area in the past three days. The promenade acted as the backbone of the triple layered defense that their divisional command had established to the west of the hills. Some 3,000 troops concentrated over a kilometer-long formation could do a real number on logistics behind the lines. They were seeing just that as the hundreds of personnel comprising the rear echelon scrambled about, a disturbed ants' nest of soldiers going here and there, lifting wounded men from newly arrived Hogs as more of them steadily filtered in from the adjoining streets.

As lines of the injured trickled past, heads wrapped, legs limping, squads of fresh soldiers jogged in the opposite direction, hopping onto outgoing troop carriers. Others handed them duffels or small crates filled with what Duncan assumed to be munitions before they sat down for the ride, their seats still slick with the blood of their previous occupants. These Hogs screeched off towards the frontlines on their own or in groups of two or three. They left seemingly at the same rate as those that were coming in. It was a city-sized osmosis of vehicles, weapons and manpower, the promenade itself serving as a semipermeable membrane through which the exchange could unfold. As to where the highest concentration lay, Duncan couldn't tell. Still, he hoped everything would be flowing in the right direction at the end of the day and that direction was west. Anything besides would be nothing less than a catastrophe in the making.

A burnt smell snuck past his helmet filters and stung his nostrils. His eyes landed on the source as a smaller convoy of several carriers drove by in the adjacent lane, heading north down the highway. Each was laden with bodies bearing various degrees of burns, a few of which resembled person-sized lumps of twisted charcoal, victims of the earlier bombardment.

They zipped past almost as soon as he saw them though not quite as soon as he would've liked.

The smell lingered a few seconds longer, slowly replaced by engine exhaust and all the eye-watering aromas of a city under siege.

The convoy made a final approach to one of three distinct points along the promenade where the motley assortment of tents and barriers became more organized. A large gathering of manned sandbag walls, defensive barricades and machinegun nests lined either side of the highway like a trench network, forming a kind of shielded driveway to the compound ahead.

The command post of the 109th Division's 1st Battalion was an ordered cluster of tents twice as large and several times as long as those nearby. It was more like a small redoubt compared to how different it was from everything else, especially given the two interwoven sandbag walls that set it apart from the rest of the promenade. The convoy slowed as the lead Hog pulled to a stop near the center of the arrangement. The soldier behind the wheel leaned out, a grizzled, gruff-looking sergeant major by the name of Burgoyne who'd gladly accepted the squad's request for a ride along. He watched the doorway to the nearest tent. The door eventually opened, and a pair of soldiers strode out. Escorted between them was an officer who had more of his face hidden beneath a matt of white peach fuzz than he did by the shadow of his cap. His pauldrons bore the V-shaped gold bar of a lieutenant colonel. Duncan glimpsed a nametag on his chest plate: 'Evans'.

The sergeant major snapped off a salute. "Sir, Tango Company reinforcements coming in. Know where we can find our boys? Things are pretty hard to make out over comms right now."

"Things aren't much better on the ground either." Evans replied. "A lot of units are on the move right now, mines, the 2nd, 5th. Everything west of the second line is a mess. Last I checked, Tango Company CP is still over at Szimpla Station. You should be able to find Captain Thompson and the others there." He pointed further down the southward approach of the highway. "Take the second exit on your right. Pass by the container port then keep heading west. You can't miss it."

"Thanks for the help, sir. We're moving out."

"Burgoyne, keep your head on a swivel. Until the situation stabilizes again, I can't tell you exactly who or what you're going to run into up there."

"Roger. No worries, sir, we've got some idea already."

The lieutenant colonel dismissed him with a nod and watched as the convoy drove past. His attention briefly landed on Epsilon. Duncan saw a glint of relief in his eye a moment before he was out of sight.

The column left the methodical organization of the battalion command post and returned to the sparsely managed chaos of the regular defenses. They cruised past the first exit they came across, slowing down to let a caravan of busy stretcher bearers cross their path before proceeding to the second exit. Burgoyne righted the first Warthog onto the road that would take them into the city with the rest of the convoy snaking along after him.

They were soon enveloped by the afternoon shadows of skyscrapers. Their windows shimmered like ocean waves. Their glass panels reflected both the sunlight and the luminescence of nearby buildings that had been wrapped in jackets of vacillating fire and outpouring smoke.

On either side of the road, the sidewalks were still submersed in architectural debris and the days old corpses of the Covenant's last defeat. Both the civilian and Army casualties had been removed. That hadn't stopped the handfuls of deceased Elites from producing death's natural odors. A particularly fetid stench punched Duncan in the face as they passed a Jackal that had most of its insides scrambled across the pavement. It had attracted an army of flies that crawled over the body, too bloated by the buffet of miscellaneous meat to fly anymore.

Save for the faint buzz of insects, the road was quiet. That seemed to change the further west they progressed. The sounds of gunfire and the rumble of explosions echoed to them from afar. Thanks to years of experience with being shot at by all kinds of weaponry, Duncan had a keen ear for knowing how close it was. The fighting, wherever it might be, was still too distant to be of any serious concern.

After a full minute, however, the sounds of activity began to pick up. At a point further down, their road crossed into a four-way. The growl of other human engines grew louder and louder until a trio of fully manned Warthogs sped into view, coming one after the other. They disappeared almost as quickly, shooting north.

"Think they're headed to the same place we are?" Mito asked.

Hector shrugged. "And where's that?"

"Szimpla Station." The Staff replied. "From there, wherever they need us."

"Yeah, but where's that? Where's Simpla?"

"Szimpla." Yuri said. "There's a 'z' in there."

"There's also a 'the' in the average English sentence and I hardly ever hear you use it. Tell you what, you can start correcting me the second you've got that straightened out, alright Ruskey?"

"Zamolchi."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"Cut the chatter and keep your eyes open." The Staff interrupted. "We're turning."

Burgoyne's Hog reached the intersection first and made a quick right onto the perpendicular street. The convoy followed his example one vehicle at a time, tanks and all, rolling out onto a route that quickly terminated into an opening in the cityscape. The surrounding skyscrapers spread further and further out to create an urban clearing. The tall office buildings of another commercial center formed the outer edges of a massive compound.

A large, labyrinthine sprawl of cargo shipping containers spanned the length and breadth of the clearing. In piles stacked two or three containers high, the burgeoning maze was girded by a perimeter fence that spanned the full area of the facility. Over two dozen towering cranes and an equal number of gantry platforms were scattered among the rows of storage units like giant shepherds standing over a resting flock. At the center of the fold of metal and reflective surfaces were several office buildings that served as the nerve centers of the compound.

West New Alexandria's Container Port was in close proximity to the starport by design. Unlike the cargo port over on the east side near Traxus Tower, the container port handled affairs on this side of the city. Where a constant stream of flatbed trucks would've gone back and forth between its gates and those of the starport tarmac, today they were facilitating the movement of multiple UNSC convoys. It was a major strongpoint of the third defensive line, and it showed.

An imposing palisade of five-meter-tall concrete barriers stood on the surrounding streets, encircling the site like the teeth of a giant bear trap. Within the gaps in the wall of UNSC barriers, squads of Army troopers manned smaller barricades or ferried ammo crates to sandbagged positions. Most of their numbers had been concentrated towards the west side of the port where a small fleet of Warthogs were congregated, each forming part of a secondary vehicular wall that spanned well out of sight.

Burgoyne took a left onto the street, bringing the convoy along the port's southern edge. Rows of eyes turned in their direction from one end of the facility all the way to the next. Duncan spotted the occasional black armor amidst the gallery of light brown BDUs. Squads of ODSTs were sprinkled throughout the mix of Army troopers, more shock troops from the displaced diaspora of Helljumpers that had wound up stranded in the west. Which battalions they were from, Duncan couldn't say, but their presence reminded him of the lack thereof of five of their own. Last he checked, Whiskey was kicking around somewhere in the southern end of the lines, an Army major having personally requested their presence after finding out about the Stanchion. All the same, they would soon have to rope them into the task at hand. Having the whole platoon together in one place was a better bet at a sturdy defense than splitting them up.

As their next right came into view, so too did the formidable defenses established on the western face of the port. The five-meter concrete barriers were garnished with a complement of Scorpion tanks whose treads and cannons jutted out from the gaps like an armored cavalry charge in waiting. There were twice as many tanks here as what the column was bringing to bear. Three times as many Warthogs took up enclosing positions at the three streets that led further west, away from the port.

The convoy passed before the array of heavy guns, continuing beyond the first street before slowing at the second.

The armed checkpoint awaiting them there quickly moved aside, several of the Hogs rolling out of the way to let them through.

The column took another arcing turn to the left that saw them emerging onto the last stretch of their journey.

From then on, they were travelling straight forward. The way ahead broadened slightly into a wide avenue. Only when a shadow fell over them did Duncan notice the maglev rail hanging above. It stood high on a colonnade of tall supports that passed all the way back over the container port. It divided the avenue fully along its length before arriving at what appeared to be their destination.

Szimpla Station was a monolith of magnetic levitation rails and boarding platforms of varying elevations. The transportational hub sat at the center of another urban clearing into which the avenue they were on would soon lead. It reminded Duncan of NA Central with the elaborate assortment of railways that beelined towards it from the surrounding streets or curved over the rooftops of nearby buildings to reach it. It lacked the same mushroom shape, however, resembling something closer to a hollow arch. Its two wings stood like columns that went up at a gentle, inward arc for 15 floors before forming into a distinct bell curve, finally coming together at a point some 20 stories above ground level. Its white-walled frame was more akin to an enormous piece of modern art than a building, but it neatly served the purposes of both. Cobalt blue panels of latticed windows descended its full height and sparkled like the facets of a sapphire gem in the sunlight. Boarding platforms were collared around several of its floors, extending out into the air or across the ground so that each railway, no matter how high or how low, found a place to attach to the main building.

The Army had found a way to make use of it.

Each boarding platform had been transformed into a miniature artillery battery. Multiple M79 rocket systems and M68 Gauss cannons had been removed from their original Warthog mounts. The emplacements were set in key firing positions atop the platforms alongside M247H machine guns. Service crews of two or three men manned each weapon. Others stood guard beside them carrying SRS-99 sniper rifles aimed at the city or SPNKR rocket launchers angled at the sky.

A sizable plaza surrounded the station at its base. It's step like arrangement called to Duncan's mind the pictures he'd seen of the Mesoamerican pyramids of old Earth. However, if it really was a pyramid he was seeing, it was one that had been knocked down to its last few levels so that it served as Szimpla Station's foundation. A tasteful display of amoebic plant plots, curving artificial ponds, seating areas and lampposts decorated whatever space hadn't been used to clear a path for the maglev rails. Amidst the concrete and flora, he spotted the rest of what he assumed to be 1st Battalion Tango Company.

They had taken up residence across the plaza and were enjoying a similar setup to those posted high overhead. A diverse menagerie of big guns meant for vehicles were instead secured to tripods, within the gunports of defense barriers or atop the mounds of sandbag walls. Like their friends back at the port, the vast majority of the company was concentrated on the west side of the plaza. So too were their vehicles. A small host of several Warthogs and a solitary tank had settled themselves on the streetside rimming the plaza. They, along with every rifle, cannon and weapon system in the immediate area were pointed towards the large boulevard at the western end of the enclosure.

Duncan couldn't see much else beyond that. By then the convoy had reached the end of the avenue and was turning onto the street at the plaza's eastern edge. As they came around, they gained yet another audience of tired faces that were slowly brightening up at their arrival. They continued on towards the front of the defenses, making another right so that they slid into the lanes between Tango's Hogs and the outer steps of the plaza.

Burgoyne slowed to a halt and the rest of the convoy came to a rumbling stop behind him. As their sergeant major hopped out from his Hog, the platoon of reinforcements grabbed their weapons and dismounted their troop carriers. Epsilon stayed put for the time being. The hope was still there that they could move on to their old position with Lima Company, that is if it still existed.

Duncan wondered if the Scorpion crews had the same idea as he watched over his shoulder while the six tanks broke from the convoy. The mechanical clamoring of their treads rose as each made a leftward turn until they had reoriented themselves towards the boulevard. Two of them closed in until they slotted themselves neatly into the gaps in the formation of the Tango Company vehicles. The other four broke into pairs, heading towards the sparsely covered streets at the plaza's northwestern and southwestern corners.

Duncan angled his own turret down the boulevard. He couldn't see much of anything within the stretch of abandoned vehicles, some burnt, some intact. What he was able to hear more than made up for that. The distinct crack and whine of human and Covenant ordnance echoed down the length of the boulevard, stochastic sentences punctuated every so often by explosions of differing intensities.

What he could see without issue was the row of minor mushroom clouds that rose up where the Seraphs had carried out their bombing run. The broadening columns of black smoke were tilting in the wind but refused to yield or dissipate. The sounds of fighting, from what he gathered, appeared to be coming from those areas.

It seemed that Lima was still holding its own somewhere in the distance, them as well as the other companies of the first line. He only wished he could gauge how far, or how close.

"Ep-7, get in touch with Whiskey-1." The Staff said. "It's about that time."

"Roger."

As Zack got to work on his radio, a trooper descended one of the steps leading down from the plaza. The haggard brim of his officer's cap and the solitary silver star on his pauldron marked him out as Captain Thompson. He had an oval-shaped face and a five o'clock shadow that was more dust and grime than actual hair. Burgoyne went over to meet him halfway. Identical DMRs in one hand, the two shook with the other.

Thompson nodded. "Burgoyne."

"Cap."

The captain peeked over at the new tanks and whistled. "Shoots, no one told me it was my birthday today."

"Wanted it to be a surprise, sir. We managed to rustle them up from some of the 77th's elements over at the waterfront. They say they're happy to lend a hand if it keeps things from swinging back into their neighborhood."

"Appreciate that." Thompson peered down the line of Hogs, pausing upon laying eyes on Epsilon. "And the Helljumpers?"

Burgoyne glanced back at them. "Said they wanted to tag along. Their platoon lead told me he's planning to push on to Lima."

Thompson sized them up. "Platoon?"

"They're regrouping."

"...Uhuh." The captain set his sights on the Staff. He walked past Burgoyne, rounding the front of the hood before stopping beside the driver's seat. "These your Helljumpers, trooper?"

"That they are, sir." The Staff replied. "Staff Sergeant Atell, Bravo Company, 7th Shock."

"Nice to meet you, Staff. Listen, my right-hand man here tells me you guys are planning to push on to Lima. Now, I've still got enough sense in me to know not to order around NCOs from an entirely different outfit, especially ODSTs, but we could definitely use your help back here. Lima Company's AO is destabilizing as we speak. That bombing run hit them real hard. The only reason we're not riding out there ourselves is because we're pretty sure that first line's going to fold soon enough. We don't want to get caught with our pants down and have the Covenant rush straight on through to the third. With you guys, we can better solidify this position and stop the Covies from gaining any more ground in this sector. How about it?"

It was more of a proposal than an order and the Staff appeared to be considering it. Duncan, for his part, was trying to take in the realities at play. The first line was about to break? It wasn't a good sign. Anything to do with holding the Covenant on the ground always came down to a zero-sum game. To lose to them in even a single point meant risking a cascade of crumbling defenses and overrun positions. That went double for the force they were facing, one not let by the calculating malice of Elites but by the in-your-face ferocity of Brutes.

"We can help you out, sir." The Staff replied. "But if it's still in the cards for us, I want my guys to be able to lend a hand to Lima if they need it."

"You can pull some forward recon if you'd like. I'm in contact with their CO. Their closest position-"

The captain suddenly put a finger to his earpiece. His eye darted between the Staff and some point atop the plaza. Duncan traced his line of sight to a radioman perched atop one of Szimpla's lowest platforms. The man was saying something into his comms.

Whatever it was, it caused Thompson to whirl around towards the boulevard. "Alright, keep me posted." He turned back to the Staff. "Change of plans, Atell. Looks like Lima's coming to us."

"Sir?"

Thompson had already turned away and was jogging back towards the staircase to the plaza, ushering the sergeant major to follow. "Heads up, Tango! Lima's falling back! I repeat, Lima's withdrawing to the second line and they're bringing hell with them! Guns up, let's go!"

The response was instantaneous. Those Tango Company personnel that didn't have their weapons up quickly drew them towards the boulevard in a sinuous motion of reflective metal.

Duncan swiveled back around in that direction. He still didn't see anything. However, the back-and-forth chatter of ballistic and plasma weaponry had grown closer and more plentiful.

"Ep-1?" He called.

The Staff shot an expectant look at Zack who shook his head in response. "They're still out of range, sir."

"Perfect." The Staff twisted the wheel and stepped on the accelerator. The front tires screeched as he drove the squad's troop carrier out of the convoy. "Ep-4, on me. We're going to help Lima withdraw."

"Aye-aye." Hector hit the accelerator next. Duncan braced against the sudden tug of momentum as their Hog pulled out of the convoy and wheeled across the road, falling in behind the troop carrier.

The Staff took the lead, passing through the Tango Company blockade and charging down the first empty stretch of lanes on the boulevard. A few seconds in and he turned right around an upturned van, sliding through the narrow gap between several burnt out cars before swerving around the length of a fallen streetlight. Hector tailed him all the while, matching him move for move.

Duncan, for his part, managed a precarious balancing act between keeping the M41 held in the right direction and keeping himself from being flung aside with each jostling turn.

Scraping between a pair of buses, they emerged from the vehicular squeeze in a spray of sparks.

"Playing it real close here, boss!" Hector said trepidatiously.

"We need the fastest route if we're going to reach them in time!" The Staff replied.

"Never said I was complaining!"

"I am!" Duncan chimed, swinging his gun back into place for the fifth time.

The exits leading off the boulevard flashed by on either side of them. The Staff eased off the speed at an upcoming exit on the right. He quickly turned into it and Hector shadowed the move. Duncan became immediately aware of what they were running into after a burst of needle rounds crashed and shattered off the face of the M41.

The new street was almost as wide as the last but that didn't seem to do any good for the soldiers of Lima. The company, or perhaps what was left of it, was fleeing straight towards them.

Two platoons were running on the sidewalks lining either side of the road as well as in the street lanes closest to them. Some bobbed and weaved through cars as searing spikes and glowing bolts shattered their windows, others pivoting mid-step to fire back over the heads of retreating comrades. They all had that same sense of desperate haste that made up what seemed to be a semi-tactical withdrawal. 'Semi' because it didn't look planned out in the least. Whatever covering fire they were laying down was sporadic at best, and it paled in comparison to what was flying back at them.

Further down the road but gaining ground at an alarming rate was a host of Covenant infantry. The by now accustomed pattern of more Grunts, more Jackals and more Brutes were hot on their heels. Some were covered in the bright shimmer of purple energies, others were not, but all were charging headlong after the troopers, shields bared, plasma pistols hissing, spike rifles barking. A soldier threw his hands in the air as an overloaded bolt slammed into his back, another crashing against a car as the needles in his side detonated, another faceplanting to the sidewalk as a spike pierced his head, skewering it like a speared fish.

A short distance behind the enemy's advance, Duncan saw the intersection where they were coming from. Lima's old strongpoint within the first defensive line was gone. More Covenant infantry were flowing through it like a burst pipe, charging this way and that in an eastward push through the sector.

Lima appeared to have been broken and split up in several different directions. Those running towards the squad that had the wherewithal to do so gave them excited, welcoming looks, however strained. Those dashing in the streets parted for them as they rolled on.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, Helljumpers!"

"Thanks for the save, troopers! We owe you one!"

The only favor Duncan thought they owed him was to get out of his way. He waited for the last soldiers on the road to move past in order to get a clear shot. Their pursuers had no such problems.

Lumbering up the center of the road was a fully armored Chieftain, not armed with a gravity hammer but with a plasma cannon that had more than enough kick to compensate. Still spraying plasma, it swung the weapon in a wide arc, roaring as it hosed a nearby truck, forcing the pair of soldiers firing from behind it to duck for cover. It panned the weapon aside to catch another man in the back with a sizzling splash. He didn't even get a chance to scream before he crumpled into a steaming heap.

A series of rabid, child-like shouts preceded a concentrated push from the Grunts. A platoon sized element two dozen strong was diffusing from the comparatively slower advance with rapid steps. Plasma pistols raised, muzzled mouths screaming, they barreled after the retreating Lima Company soldiers by road and by sidewalk.

By then there was no one left in Duncan's way.

He let the turret speak for him, getting off a five-round stutter that served as a warmup to a sentence that lasted several long seconds, quickly transforming into a paragraph of machinegun fire and alien shrieks.

The first five seconds brought the first five deaths as the leading Grunts bucked and jerked in bloody spirals. He shifted the reticle left to a pair running for cover behind a taxi, shooting their legs out from under them. A rightward shift and he was drilling through the open door of a car where a Grunt had tried its luck at finding shelter. The result was a rattling spray of blood and sparks as a solid burst poked holes through metal and methane. Its gas tank ignited before it hit the ground, hurling the broken corpse skyward. Shrapnel hissed into the faces of two others who had gotten too close. Another sweeping turn from the M41 turned them into wheezing easels, painting the street with a fresh coat of blue viscera.

Around him, the others were already firing, picking out the other half of the Grunts that still had the gall to keep charging. They were his leftovers, and with a redirecting yank on the turret, he let them know he had no intention of sharing.

As a quartet of gas breathers fell to precise rifle fire around the chieftain, it snarled and raised its plasma cannon, only to falter as a withering barrage from the M41 slammed into its stomach, sparking off its armor. Duncan wasn't about to give it a chance to compete. He squeezed the triggers so hard that he could feel the blood leaving his fingers. The volley of suppression fire quickly broke through its first shields in a burst of purple energy, forcing its primary shields to flare.

"Ep-6, drop a 40-mil on that chieftain!"

The order had slipped out perhaps before the Staff had really thought about it. Duncan's eye flitted his way for a moment and he saw Nova in the seat beside him.

She was giving him a look as she drew up her MA37, yanking back the charging handle on a fresh magazine. "Sir!?"

"Ep-9, get some rockets on that chief!" The Staff said, barely missing a beat.

"On it!" Mito replied.

Duncan pretended not to notice as he kept up the constant stream of suppression fire. He couldn't say anything either. It was only when the Staff said something about it that he remembered Rico wasn't with them.

He was gone.

Not dead, but gone, and the truth of that hadn't sunk in as yet. It was still too fresh, too raw.

He watched Mito lean out from the Hog to fire his launcher one-handed, an impressive feat given the kick back. The rocket raced over the tops of the loose arrangement of vehicles, catching everything it passed in a wind tunnel of smoke. The chieftain was almost too blinded by bullets to see what was coming but it managed to sidestep in time, letting it whip past and straight into the bus just behind it. The explosive impact knocked one side of the transport off the ground, a secondary detonation rippling down its length before it could land. The blast enveloped the chieftain, tossing it like a toy along with several Jackals that had been hiding on the other side. They hit the ground before rolling to a stop as burning, twitching corpses.

"Fuel tank!" Mito laughed. "They never see it coming!"

"Were you actually aiming for that!?" Nova asked, sounding impressed.

"It's not where you're aiming that matters, it's what you hit!"

Duncan smirked, turning left towards a squad of Jackals that were moving down the sidewalk. A wash of raking fire caught one in the side and forced the others to a standstill, bringing up energy shields that were swiftly turning red under the strain. The similarly sized squad of troopers that they had been chasing now saw an opening. They wheeled around and fell into a scattered defense behind public package receptacles and streetlights. Their return fire struck the undefended side of the shield formation, studding two about the chest and gouging a new eye socket into a third. Duncan exploited the breach and focused on a Jackal until it reeled and collapsed, more half living sponge than alien. The last one pivoted around, raising shield and weapon to its head while it made a desperate run for friendly lines. A shot from a DMR blew a hole through the back of its head and toppled it forward.

"Ep-8, 12 o'clock, get on those Engineers!"

Duncan was swift to react, both for the sake of the Staff's order and the importance of the targets. He spotted movement above the bus. His gaze flitted between four floating figures. The tulip-shaped Engineers were flying off in different directions, their panic evident by their speed. One of them flailed its tentacles as a fire on its sac harness began spreading over the rest of its body. Down below, a handful of Brutes were yelling at them, waving for them to come back.

Duncan squatted down to reorient the turret. He singled out the fastest and started hammering into it before it could reach an alleyway. After a second or two it popped like a fleshy balloon, organic and metallic materials splattering the walls of a nearby building. He was already tracking the second as it tried for yet another alleyway. A pull of the handles and a twist of his hips turned tracking fire into kill shots. The Engineer burst apart in a spray of guts and electrical discharges. The third could read the writing on the walls and whirled around to return to the Brutes, only to be cut off by a combined wall of machinegun and rifle fire that immediately swept across it. Its remains crashed to the street like a downed Pelican, writhing and wiggling. The last Engineer was still flailing about in the air. A short, 10-round assist from Duncan bullied its harness into exploding and put the creature out of its misery. The wrecked shape dropped onto the hood of a car, burning tentacles draping over the sides like flaming spaghetti.

Even before the last one had fallen, the luminescent film surrounding most of the Covenant infantry flickered out like dying light bulbs. The trailing elements of Lima saw as much. They turned around one after another, filtering back into a loose formation around the Staff's Hog. Without their shields, the Covenant suddenly found themselves facing a renewed defense.

Duncan joined in on what was turning into an even fight. The other ways leading from the Lima Company command post were still unsecured. More Covenant were using them to travel towards the second line. But here at least they were being held at bay, their advance grinding down into a rush for cover by fearful Grunts and frustrated Brutes.

Amidst the firefight, the lieutenant they'd met before moved towards the Staff, firing his DMR all the while. "Can't thank you enough for this, Helljumper!"

"Just returning the favor!" The Staff replied through shots from his own marksman's rifle. "Doubt we can hold them here though! The plan was to buy some time, soften them up before they move on!"

"I'd say you've just about done that! What about Captain Thompson!? Tango Company!?"

"They're in place!" The Staff flinched at a spike that stabbed into his windshield, the tip of the searing tungsten jarring to a stop near his visor. He leaned out from the driver's seat to return fire, forcing the offending Brute to pull back into an alley. "We're going to have to fall back!"

The lieutenant yanked out his empty magazine and fumbled around his gear for a fresh one. "Alright, we'll hang back with you until you're ready! We'll go together!"

"Looks like it's going to be a short wait!" Nova said, a warning already in her voice. "Enemy armor on approach, 40-meters!"

Duncan looked past the burning bus towards the intersection where the bluish-purple bulk of a Wraith tank was slowly hovering into view. It emerged into the four way like a whale slowly breaching the waves before beginning to turn right, angling towards them. Even from that distance, Duncan could see the shadow of another coming behind it and heard the flaring drives of even more.

"Ep-1!?" Hector yelled.

Not yet fully turned around, the lead tank raised the petals of its energy mortar in their direction.

"Pull back!" The Staff said as the lieutenant scrambled aside. "Ep-4, get a move on!"

The mortar fired.

"Roger!" Hector reversed hard, curving around. Duncan held on as the back of the Hog crashed into a car, denting a door and shattering the glass. Hector hooked left and shot down the road. The staff didn't bother to turn around and reversed at speed. The energy mortar soared in, splashing down in front of the troop carrier, the overpressure blowing out its windshield and briefly lifting it off its front wheels. They crunched back down and kept reversing. The soldiers of Lima were running on either side of them, firing over their shoulders or stopping for a second to cover their comrades.

Hector swung back out onto the boulevard. He pulled forward, making room for the Staff to swerve out behind him. It was a mistake, Duncan realized since they were now facing the wrong way, their backs turned towards Szimpla Station.

The lead Wraith pushed onward as two more hovered at its rear. It let off another mortar. Just then, the Staff finished a short turn that reoriented his Hog towards Szimpla. He drove forward until the troop carrier was safely behind a building.

"Ep-4, get a bead on that corner! We need to keep their infantry pinned as long as possible!"

Duncan could see why as the energy mortar landed amid several fleeing soldiers. Two vanished from view as two more were sent flying, the third crashing through the window of an empty store.

For what it was worth, Duncan gave them covering fire. His new focus was the trigger-happy Brute sitting behind the Wraith's plasma cannon. Its little joyride on the gun was short lived as bullets showered it from head to chest, ricocheting off the hull and cutting into exposed skin. He could see it scowling at him through his sights while it turned its weapon away from the steaming remains of a straggler-turned-corpse.

Mito fired his launcher. With a rotation of the tubes, the second rocket roared away after the first. The star-bright pairing hissed towards the lead Wraith at a speed it couldn't possibly hope to dodge. It tried anyway, steering hard towards the left a moment before the first struck at its center of mass. The second arrived before the flames had even cleared, slamming into the energy mortar. Bits of Brute and metal fragments spewed back over the Wraith to bathe it in blood and shards.

Mito planted the spent SPNKR between his legs to pull out his assault rifle. "Launcher's dry, switching to main!"

There was a whine of propulsion drives. With a whoosh, the Wraith pushed through the smoke to reveal a mauled hull that was in many places more furnace than vehicle. The gunner was slumped over the broken remains of its tool of the trade. It would've snarled if it were still alive, not that it had a mouth to snarl with anymore. Above it, save for one of its flowery protrusions, the mortar was little more than a smoldering nub.

A nub that still fired back.

"Incoming!" Mito said.

"Hold on, it's gonna miss!" Hector said. "Ep-8, keep the 41' running!"

"You sure about that!?"

"Positive!"

Duncan wasn't convinced. He kept firing anyway, his eyes flitting between raking the lead ranks of Grunts and Jackals and the blue comet streaking towards him. He tracked its flight through the air. He waited, every muscle in his body tensing in expectation. The eerie, nigh sentient wail of the mortar grew louder with its approach. But Hector was right. Its descent was too shallow. He watched it begin to dip as it passed from street to boulevard. It flew only several meters overhead, its passage casting long shadows that turned in synch like the hands of a clock. It crashed into a building not too far behind them, pulverizing a chunk of wall and spitting pieces of smoking debris at his back. He let them bounce off his armor while he expressed his relief with a renewed assault on the enemy advance, breathing easier as he stole the last breath of an overeager Brute. The alien collapsed onto the threshold of the street with enough holes in its body to frighten a trypophobe.

More and more soldiers were escaping onto the boulevard, turning east towards the station. For the sake of the last handful who were running towards the end of the street, Duncan increased his fire, forcing several Grunts that were taking potshots at them to find shelter behind a van. He stabbed through the thin metal of the walls and doors to keep them pinned before sweeping between the tires, hoping to shoot their legs out from under them.

The Wraith fired again.

"Ep-4!?" He yelled.

"Short round!" Hector replied, now drawing his sidearm to fire over Mito's shoulder. "This guy's a bad shot, trust me!"

Not that he had much of a choice, Duncan thought, witnessing as another mortar sailed towards them. The tongue of fire had a slightly deeper descent than the last. But again, Hector was right. It soared across the flight path of the first before slanting down sharply, exploding onto the roof of a car with sufficient power to raise the burning wreck off its wheels. It crashed back down, breaking every axle on impact.

Duncan kept firing, utilizing the seconds-long window between mortars to whittle away at the last remnants of the Grunts that came charging out from the van.

Three things happened at once.

The last Grunt in his sights flipped over onto its back.

The last soldier of Lima Company limped around the corner of the boulevard.

The next energy mortar launched towards them.

Duncan winced upon gauging its course. "Ep-"

"I see it!" Hector was already reversing. He crushed the accelerator to speed things up. They crossed in front of the street a mere moment before the ball of energy landed in front of them. A wall of percussion slapped across the Hog and left Duncan's ears ringing. A rainfall of vaporized cement quickly covered them. Hector stayed on the accelerator. Breaking through the haze, he eased on the brakes until they came to a stop beside the Staff's troop carrier.

Duncan swung the turret and picked up again at the spot where the road joined the boulevard. A consistent spray of 15 to 20-round bursts worked to suppress the corner from a safe distance. Every few seconds an adventurous Grunt would make a break for it only to be hosed down. Duncan was hoping to get the point across by the time the third alien dropped to the ground, adding its blood to the growing pool of blue. A Jackal attempted to peek around the corner with its arm shield. Duncan peppered it until the energy barrier snapped out of solidity. Its owner retreated with a fearful squawk. His fingers remained faithful to the triggers, gripping them hard while his shots pinged off or bored into the curb.

"That's the last of them!" Zack said.

Duncan peered to the side. Zack was helping a limping straggler into the back of the troop carrier, pulling him in with a groan of effort. Most of the other seats were also filled with wounded soldiers. Renni and Yuri were sitting on the rails of the troop section to make room for the spent fireteam they'd picked up. Zack slipped onto the other side, straddling it with the ease of a mongoose seat.

"Ep-4, watch our six and start moving back to Szimpla!" The Staff said and took off at a swift yet careful pace, twisting the wheel this way and that as he navigated the path they'd found through the vehicular maze.

The able-bodied of Lima Company ran alongside via whatever empty lanes and paper-strewn sidewalks were available.

Hector waited for the last of them to get a certain distance away before he got a move on. They were still reversing.

Duncan didn't question it.

He didn't have time to.

He stayed homed in on the corner, the triple barrels of the turret cycling endlessly as they stitched a relentless polka dot pattern into the asphalt. Nothing seemed ready to dare the lateral rain from the M41. Duncan wanted it to stay that way for a few more seconds. He pulled the gun here and there to maintain his aim while Hector continued to backtrack. The madman was somehow turning with ease, slipping seamlessly through gaps in the traffic without much more than the occasional glance over his shoulder. Again, Duncan was impressed, but admiration froze into fear at the sight of a stabilizer fin emerging into his line of fire.

Still burning, the lead Wraith began hovering sideways out from the street. It was peeking a little more than halfway onto the boulevard when its damaged mortar arched and fired.

Another ball of energy was on its way, another short round. Duncan watched it fall on top of a minivan, producing a geyser of flaming car parts and shattered glass. Hector wheeled right, dodging an upcoming convertible before making another hard right, curving past the towering girth of a flatbed truck. They were close enough that metal sparked against metal. Duncan maintained his side of the exchange by continuing to dot the burning bulk of the Wraith with increasingly wide groupings.

The Wraith began to emerge more onto the boulevard until its starboard stabilizer fin drove into an empty jeep, crushing in the driver's side door and pushing the whole thing aside. It fired again. Duncan knew at a glance that its trajectory was solid. At that moment, Hector reversed hard, swiping left past the front of a sanitation truck. He swung right again to even them out within what suddenly became an empty lane. The dead traffic was thick around them. Hector stomped on the pedal as they zoomed down the hedgerow of broken windows and steel exteriors.

The mortar landed uncomfortably close, striking atop the roof of the sanitation truck. The shards of its windshield spewed out like a surprised gasp ahead of a rush of flames that belched from every window, the sheer force lifting the dumpster clear off the ground. Finishing its bow, the truck landed with a crack of thunder that it couldn't possibly have made.

The Wraith reeled back a full meter at the tungsten shell that lobotomized it from cockpit to cannon. The mortar's light flickered and died alongside its propulsion. The Wraith slammed onto the ground and detonated, its reactive heart jetting through the ribs of its hull in one final explosion.

Duncan whipped his head around.

Behind them, though growing relievedly closer was the Tango Company barricade. The cannon of one of the three tanks oozed steam like a lit cigar.

He saw the strategy then. He hadn't even picked up on it before. Hector was so good at what he did that he had chosen to drive backwards, keeping one eye on the Wraith and another on the Scorpions. All that dodging and weaving had served to lure the former into range of the latter. Hector confirmed as much by finally backing up into another lane to make a quick three-point turn. They forged on, now facing in the right direction.

"Hey, Ep-4!?" Duncan called.

"Yeah!?"

"You know you're insane, right!?"

"My psychiatrist would disagree!"

"...You don't have a psychiatrist!"

"Your point!?"

Duncan heard the grin in his voice and quietly shared it. Nevertheless, he didn't take long to get the M41 pointed back down the way they'd come while they raced towards the end of the boulevard.

:********:

The wait was a battle in and of itself.

How so many soldiers and so many guns managed to remain so still was beyond Duncan, as was the lack of any forward advance from the Covenant. The boulevard stretched ahead of him like a long urban corridor that was routinely clogged by patches of dead automobiles. He couldn't see the two roads running adjacent to either side. They were too far off. However, his hearing told him there was no movement coming along those routes either.

The boulevard was quiet. So were the neighboring streets.

Further to the west, the smoke clouds from the earlier bombing had fully cleared. Left in their wake was the distant visage of the two closest corvettes. They were hovering just above the city's skyline, hanging in place at the northward end of the Covenant blockade. Something about that didn't sit right with him. Despite their mission several days ago, despite the risks they'd taken to serve them an eviction notice, the corvettes hadn't gone anywhere. Whether their shields were still inoperable or not was a separate matter altogether. Either way, he hated the state of things as they were.

There were few scenarios worse than looking at a disarmed enemy that he couldn't finish off.

Five minutes had passed since Epsilon had returned with the rest of Lima. Both of them had mingled back in with Tango Company, the latter settling into whatever defensive positions were yet to be filled along the lineup of the plaza. Epsilon meanwhile had taken to a spot of their own. They'd parked themselves between the three tanks that had formed a semicircle of cannons to the rear of the Tango Company Hogs. Beyond that was the boulevard itself. The 100-meter stretch from where Lima had retreated to where they were now would make the perfect killzone. If the Covenant made another frontal assault like they had before, and Duncan was betting on it, they would find themselves at the business end of a street wide shooting gallery.

With them facing some 300 guns ranging across various calibers, and in a confined space at that, it was a daunting prospect, and he wasn't even the one that would have to face it. It almost made him feel sorry for them in a way.

Almost.

"Ep-7 to 1, just got contact from Whiskey-1. He says they're close to the West Side Container Port."

The Staff was standing by the driver's side of the troop carrier, rifle out. He lowered his scope from the killzone.

"Wheels or feet?"

Crouched beside Yuri and Renni at the back of the troop carrier, MA37 draped over the Hog's roll cage, Zack held a hand to his helmet while he listened to a conversation Duncan couldn't hear. "They say they're on foot, about 5 minutes from our position."

"Good to know. Tell me when they're close."

"Roger."

Down below his turret, Duncan heard Mito caressing the tubes of his newly restocked launcher as if he were expecting it to purr. "That Stanchion would come in real handy right about now."

"That's if they haven't spent the whole thing already." Hector huffed before lifting his helmet to get a half-wrapped chocolate bar to his mouth. He took a bite, rewrapped the rest and moved to stuff it in an empty ammo pouch.

Duncan looked his way. "Hey, feel like sharing?"

Slipping his helmet back on, Hector peered up at him, still chewing as he tucked the bar away. "No."

"Anybody ever tell you you're selfish sometimes?"

"Yeah, my ex."

Mito tuned in. "You got an ex?"

"Once upon a time if you want to hear the story."

Mito checked the boulevard again. "Alright, shoot."

"Well, being a limo driver for the high-end types in Casbah doesn't always pay, at least not when your girl sees the kind of pockets your clients are toting around, especially when all you're bringing to the table is pocket change. She winds up meeting this movie star at a club. They have a good time and who does the guy decide to contract to drive them back to his place other than me?"

Mito looked at him sideways. "You didn't actually do it, did you?"

Hector shrugged. "I needed the money. But I told her if she went with him, she'd be staying with him."

"What'd she do?" Duncan asked, leaning into the conversation.

Epsilon's driver shot him a glance. "What do you think?"

"Yeesh."

"You at least threw her stuff out after that, right?" Mito asked.

Hector gave a slow, reminiscent shake of his head as he watched the boulevard. "Burned it."

"Hell yeah."

"You're lucky you landed Erica when you did, Ep-8. Can't find anything like that these days. All I ever come across are thrill junkies that want to say they dated an ODST and pension suckers waiting for me to drop dead."

Duncan shrugged back in reply. "What can I say? I got hitched early."

"And sometimes the early bird gets the worm."

Without any other prompting, Hector reached into the same ammo pouch and rummaged around. "You know, I'm pretty sure the Covenant are burning everything else she has right about now." He pulled out the chocolate bar. "It's a little funny to think she might be getting her stuff torched twice."

He tossed up the chocolate. Duncan caught it out of the air. He checked to make sure the area was clear before ducking his head down behind the gun, lifting his helmet a tad to sneak a bite. He savored the sweet nuttiness that poured over his tongue. He let out a sigh, finally getting to enjoy the taste of something that hadn't been sitting dehydrated in a UNSC procurement center for three years.

"You know, maybe you're not so selfish after all." He said, mouth full as he tossed back the rest.

Hector caught it without looking and stashed it away. "How bad can I be?"

"You just said you hoped your ex is getting glassed." Mito reminded. "I mean, it's a whole planet, your home."

"Yeah, I don't like that part. Everything else is a tragedy, believe me. Her? Not so much. That's all I'm saying."

Mito chuffed. "Tell you what-"

"Mortar fire incoming!" Someone shouted down from one of Szimpla's platforms.

Duncan's eye zipped skyward.

There was nothing in the west.

That nothing quickly turned into something as the bright blue sky was filled by a much brighter light. The teardrop outline of a single energy mortar catapulted through the air at a deceptively slow speed, cresting the top of the buildings. Another followed it, fired from somewhere further to the south. Then two more from the north. Despite their separate origins they all seemed to share the same speed and the same destination. The first climbed a good 200-meters into the air before it dipped down. The others did the same, descending along sloping vectors that Duncan traced to the same place.

It wasn't Szimpla Station.

The first mortar landed at the heart of the boulevard in an enveloping blast, casting burning car parts in every direction.

"More shorts?" Hector thought aloud, hands grasping the wheel tight while the remaining mortars bombarded the boulevard. Vehicles twice the size of their own were jettisoned like shrapnel from a trio of small suns that died as quickly as they were born, leaving a smoking afterbirth of mangled cars and smoldering asphalt.

"What're they doing?" Nova asked, shifting uneasily in her seat.

"Ranging us maybe?" Zack wondered.

The Staff shook his head warily. "No."

Almost on cue, another mortar climbed into view. One by one, three more joined it to finish the loosely arrayed quartet. Again, they ascended high before reaching their peak and beginning their fall, their flights ending in fiery terminations that rang across the length and breadth of the boulevard. The damage from the second barrage had hardly settled in when a third rose over the buildings. The world became filled with the ionic wailing of their descent which battered even more of the killzone. A fourth salvo howled down to paste the closest patch of cars to the plaza, throwing their eviscerated carcasses here and there and sending a flaming tire bounding and rolling past the Hogs.

Then there was silence.

The quiet was an impure one, dominated chiefly by the crackling groan of several dozen burning wrecks, sedans, jeeps and more. The boulevard appeared less like the junkyard it was before and more like a valley of funeral pyres. No one said a word. The only ones who might have mourned the loss of so many vehicles were themselves either long gone or long dead. But Duncan noticed how much had changed by how little he could see. Smoke billowed up in multiple places from bombed out craters and flame-wreathed wreckage. It formed a kind of low hanging cloud of black smog which was gradually spreading, submerging most of the boulevard from sight beyond a certain point some 30 meters ahead. Even then, it was steadily creeping forward, diffusing towards them.

The far-off rumble of Wraiths firing their main weapons echoed from the west. It was clearer this time and easier to hear, as if the tanks had shifted to new positions that betrayed the acoustic dampening effect of their last.

The next salvo of mortars climbed in unison but then broke off to descend in pairs. The first crashed onto the road running parallel to the left of the smoked-out boulevard. The second struck down on the road to the right. The azure fireballs splashed across them with the same percussive ferocity. More mortars were immediately on their way, always flying down towards the roads without divergence. Explosions periodically erupted down their length from one end to the next like a creeping barrage, each blazing stride getting closer to Tango Company and kicking up swirling storms of smoke in their wake.

They stopped at nearly the exact same time.

Both roads were now aflame and covered in an artificial fog. Duncan couldn't see a thing no matter where he turned. He had caught on to what the Covenant were trying, and what they were about to try. By the way the others tensed, so did they. The Wraiths knew exactly what they were aiming for and the abrupt stop had everyone on their toes, weapons shifting pensively between the three routes.

In place of chocolate, Hector had his SMG back in his hands. He set his sidearm on the dashboard with the carefulness of a bomb disposal, ready to draw it the second he ran out of ammo. "You guys hear that?"

Nova peered over at him. "What?"

"That."

There was no need to clarify. Within seconds, Duncan and everyone else who couldn't before could now hear the same thing.

Something like the patter of a breaking dam echoed up from the boulevard. The sound was disjointed at first but soon became louder and more repetitive, like the opening drops of rain from a heavy downpour.

Footsteps, multiple.

It was impossible to tell how many there were since one echo melded seamlessly into a myriad of others. Nevertheless, it was clear that whatever was coming was doing so with a will and with troubling numbers besides.

Nothing else.

No growls or squawks or garbled cries of alien languages.

Nothing aside from a rapid stampede that everyone could hear and no one could see.

After years on the job, Duncan liked to think it took a lot to unnerve him.

This was a lot.

He pulled the M41 fully towards the mouth of the boulevard, his fingers tightening, constricting around the triggers so that they were on the verge of setting off. He scanned whatever he could beyond the cannons of the three tanks and the fellow turret gunners of the other Hogs. By the sounds of rushing feet and clattering metal, his ears told him the stampede was getting closer. He only wished his eyes could keep up. He tried switching on his VISR mode in an attempt to make things out. What he saw only caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.

Past the green highlights of friendlies was a countless horde of red contacts that flickered in and out of sight. The smoke was so dense that it distorted his field of view, the contacts being so close to one another that they blended together into a single mass of humanoid shapes and inhuman proportions. He couldn't tell how near they were or how far, merely that they were absolutely hauling it towards them.

"Sir!?" He yelled.

But a different sir answered, the adamant voice of Captain Thompson echoing down to them from the plaza as much as through their comms.

"Tango Company, engage! Open fire!"

Everything after that was bright and loud.

Most of it was coming from behind him, a light show of tracer fire whipping over his head and piercing into the smog. The yellow-hot paroxysm of lead stabbed holes through the smoke to bathe the darkness within in a flickering illumination, exposing silhouettes both short and tall, stocky and lanky. It was much like watching the first ever films, a blurry frame to frame experience that was somehow also fluid, capturing bits of every movement and smashing them together into a kind of living motion. The quality only went up when flocks of rockets flew down and high velocity cannons barked. The lightning strike of Gauss cannons mirrored the discharges from the Scorpions, lashing apart the haze to strike whatever vague shape was on its feet. Rocket barrages soared into the dark in long shafts of trailing light that briefly exposed more running shadows, their passage always ending in luminal blasts that bellowed through the quagmire of sight and sound.

He counted several seconds that felt more like minutes before he finally registered the screams, allowing it to settle in that they weren't hitting ghosts.

The enemy took that moment to let out a war cry.

Across the boulevard, the high-pitched shouts of Grunts were seconded by the sharp squawks of Jackals. Brutes howled in their advance with the kind of ferocity Duncan always hated. They'd waited until the very last, until they were right on top of them to make themselves known. The rush of UNSC ordnance had ripped through the haze to create a rippling tempest that revealed more and more of its depths. The enemy was coming into full clarity at a point 20-meters distant, much too close for his or anyone's liking. And they were gaining ground.

Duncan was letting loose with the M41 the entire time. He'd forgotten that. He couldn't tell where his own bullets were going even with his reticle. The high quantity of outgoing was so fierce that it was impossible to see who was hitting what. The results were still the same, however.

Gas tanks exploded.

Energy shield units collapsed.

Brawny muscles were pierced.

It only got worse as the forward elements of the advance emerged from the cover of the smoke and into full view of Tango Company. Most of them were already wounded, gas masks leaking vapor, point defense gauntlets sparking from overheating conduits. They returned fire once they were out in the open. A drizzle of plasma bolts and spikes whizzed and hissed past Duncan, sporadically splashing or shattering off the turret's palisades. He gave back better than he got, not that he was able to see what he was hitting. He took solace in the idea of putting more fire down in the other direction than what was coming vice versa.

Quickly, one by one or in handfuls, the forward elements simply evaporated. Rockets swallowed groups of Grunts whole. Accelerated slugs punched ragged holes through energy shields and torsos alike with enough force to send Jackals somersaulting back. Brutes trembled and quaked as ballistic flurries whittled away at armor and skin in equal, bloody fashion.

Several of the last Brutes still standing made a desperate beeline for the line of Warthogs. As an entourage of shielded Jackals melted in front of them like the cannon fodder they were, the larger aliens unleashed their grenade launchers or reeled back to hurl spike grenades. Duncan saw one of them aiming a grenade at him and stopped it cold with a 15-round burst to the chest, not enough to kill it but just enough to make it stumble. It dropped the grenade. The detonation blew off one of its legs and took the arm of a nearby Jackal, transforming both into unwitting pin cushions. He swept his turret across where either one had landed to stop them from becoming a problem again before channeling a long salvo at a new problem.

A trio of Brutes were weathering through an onslaught of machinegun fire and unloading their grenade launchers. Multiple projectiles snaked past the forward Hogs to smash against the side of the tank on his left. They were aiming for the cannon.

It was so close that Duncan felt the pressure waves battering his side like giant hammer blows. But whoever was behind the Scorpion's controls wasn't going to give them an easy kill. It turned the cannon away from its long-range bombardment of the boulevard towards the three upstarts that had made it to the very end. Before it had them in range, the many rocket propelled grenades peppering its frame caused flames to burst through the armor around its main weapon even as the gunner behind its turret turned into human confetti. At less than 10-meters distance, point blank range, the tanker returned the favor.

Duncan didn't see the shot but he felt it just fine.

The Scorpion fired and two of its assailants simply stopped existing. A third was sent flying from the blast. It collided headlong into the side of a truck, denting the hood with its skull. It collapsed in a crumpled pile of oddly angled limbs, covered from head to toe in the purple guts of its packmates. It still tried to prop itself up. A few shots from Duncan's fellow machinegunners sliced into its back and its head dropped down for good.

He heard a wailing sound.

A bright flash stung his retinas. A wash of heat punched him like a giant's fist as something like buckshot struck him in his side. He lost his grip with one hand, nearly falling from the back of the Hog, only rebalancing when the Hog itself plopped back down onto its wheels. Pain from what he thought were bee stings of all things pulsed through his right side. He turned towards the commotion and immediately had to cover his visor with his hand. The flames were so blindingly bright because they were so close. The tank off to their right was a blazing match box. Flames danced along every inch of the half-melted hull and were spreading to its treads. By the damage, it was clear that the epicenter had been the cockpit since the spot had been utterly gouged out, driver and gunner included.

He didn't get to think about the pain. An earth-shattering reverberation rattled his teeth. He whirled behind him to see a newly made crater in the asphalt not too far away. The familiar wailing drew his attention to everything going on above him. An energy mortar was passing over the mouth of the boulevard on a descending vector. The elevation gave it what it needed to race towards the edge of the plaza. Below it, an emplaced machinegun crew ditched their weapon and ran for their lives. It touched down in a splattering blow that turned the gun and its accompanying defense barrier into spiraling wreckage. Another mortar appeared in quick succession and was well on its way by the time those who needed to see it the most took notice. Their escape was short lived, its arrival devouring three soldiers and punting the rest of their squad into the air in a cascade of burst sandbags and twirling limbs.

A new salvo was howling in over the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. The rainfall of mock stars arced into range, forcing soldiers from both Tango and Lima Company to abandon their positions and scramble across the plaza in an effort to predict their paths. Duncan didn't see them land, but he felt their impacts resonate through the ground. He had busied himself with pulling out the coin-sized pieces of tank embedded in his undersuit. His helmet, shoulder pad and thigh bracer had taken most of it. He was sure he looked like a half-skinned chicken from all the debris lodged in his armor. He winced each time he pulled one out of himself. The metal fragments were red hot, steaming from the parts that had been dipped in blood.

His blood.

"Ep-8, you hit!?" Renni shouted through bursts from her rifle.

He flinched as he yanked out the last fragment and tossed it aside. "I'll be alright!"

No sooner did he say so than something fast smacked the side of his helmet. Pieces of hot tungsten spattered over his visor, a glancing shot.

He growled as he regripped the M41 and started up again. The forward elements were gone but the rest of the incoming wave was running into view from the smoke. He made sure to greet them in turn.

Easier kills were always his go-to. Crowd control like this required a focus on softer targets. Harder ones were trouble, but cannon fodder could still shoot back. He worked to strip away that force multiplier by raking the ranks of the approaching force from one side to the next. He prioritized groups of Grunts that had made the mistake of sticking close together. Strength in numbers became death by proximity, his focus on vulnerable gas tanks setting off the methane within in satisfying flare-ups. The gunners on the other Hogs and the fire from Szimpla swiftly cut down any survivors either by precision or by pure destructive volume. He'd dispatched his third group of unlucky gas suckers in a similar fashion when a pair of large shadows broke from the smoke at a full sprint.

The two chieftains dashed forward, the first bounding onward with gravity hammer at the ready. The second charged after it, its fuel rod cannon already bucking from the recoil.

Twin fireballs of emerald radiance raced into one of the Warthogs. The first impact blew out the windshield and kicked the entire thing off its front wheels, allowing the second to deliver a gut shot to the undercarriage. The consequent flash disemboweled the vehicle so that all three troopers were hurled free like dolls thrown by a disinterested child.

The reply was put on hold. The chieftain with the hammer had closed the gap on another Hog, pulling back its hammer for a lateral swing. At the last second, the driver floored the accelerator, a quick takeoff turning him into a battering ram that struck the Brute at full force. Its shields broke and it tumbled back from the blow. The driver immediately reversed to clear a line of sight for the others. Duncan joined his fire with that of the other gunners which itself was already complimented by the hurricane of tracers coming from Szimpla. So many angles and so many guns worked together to turn the downed Brute into a sputtering fountain of purplish-red gore.

It wasn't quite dead before Mito fired his rocket launcher at its partner. This time his target didn't have a chance at evasion. The rocket closed with it in a heartbeat, obliterating its shields and knocking it back a step. Lightning struck and the chieftain was sent reeling again, stumbling, reaching for a limb that a Gauss cannon had vaporized. The fissile flock of an M79 rocket system reached the Brute ahead of anything else. The world around it was engulfed in several succinct detonations that stole it from view. Duncan didn't see it again, but he did see the half-destroyed remains of its fuel rod cannon clatter to the ground. That was enough for him.

Suddenly the two remaining Scorpions opened up in tandem.

Two synchronous explosions ripped through the front of the onrushing horde. The bloodied bodies of half a dozen Jackals had barely been reclaimed by gravity when the second round arrived, pummeling the flanks of the assault. Duncan figured it out by the third salvo which had moved a short distance from the second and first. The tanks were using the Covenant's own strategy against them. Their creeping barrage did just that, creeping down the boulevard with the speed of a lawn mower and the cement-cracking subtlety of a jackhammer. Squads of Grunts and Jackals were mowed down or sent airborne in a rhythmic consistency that swiftly outpaced the sounds of the newest mortar salvo landing across the plaza. The tanks continued working their way along the route, pummeling every five meters of it every three seconds. More screams were ringing out, but they were becoming more and more distant. Similarly relieving was the fact that the premeditated blasts of wind and flame were actually causing the smoke to dissipate, peeling back the cover that the Wraiths had afforded their troops one synchronized cannonade at a time.

Duncan contributed where he could by pouring it on into the smoke. He squeezed the triggers iron tight whenever his reticle went red. Once it turned blue and stayed blue, he steered the M41 away for the next hint of prey.

Below him, Hector slid his fifth magazine into his M7. A yank on the charging handle got him going and he leaned out to play his part. Mito did the same, sending out another rocket to cast its illumination down the passage. It hit something afar off that cried in agony though what exactly, like most things going on around him, Duncan had no idea. The rest of the squad maintained their fire on the other side of the burning Scorpion. That was all he could keep track of.

Meter by meter, cannonade by cannonade, rocket by rocket and bullet by bullet, the Covenant advance ground to a halt. Slowly but surely, it was being pushed back. Their cover was dissolving and with every systematized explosion, so did their ranks. Whatever they could throw at the plaza was nowhere near sufficient to overtake what was coming back at them. Grunts shot skyward on jets of methane. Jackals vaulted off the ground as tungsten shells slammed into their formations, shattering shield walls as easily as concrete. Brutes collapsed to the ground, steam still wafting from wounds where enough rounds to kill a small herd of Moa cooled in their chests.

It started at a gradual pace, a Grunt fleeing back the way they'd come with hands flailing, a Jackal breaking from its comrades to cover itself as it withdrew. A few retreating troops soon turned into a full route. The few who weren't already wounded took heed to their battered brethren running in the opposite direction and did likewise. UNSC issued ordnance chased after them regardless. No one wanted to give them a chance to catch a second wind. More and more of the retreating forces felt bullets burst into their backs. Not so for those few Brutes that continued to stand. They stopped coming towards the line. Nevertheless, they made themselves into a nuisance by hunkering behind whatever cars hadn't been reduced to bonfires on wheels. They learned the hard way how bad an idea that was.

The snipers operating from Szimpla Station helped to teach them.

Duncan saw it for himself. He was keeping a Brute pinned behind a particularly tough coupe when it was suddenly scalped by a 14.5-millimeter round. It was the first to drop dead that way, at least so far as he'd seen. More sniper fire cut through the stragglers that refused to drain back to safety. Their pinpoint accuracy sprayed blood and brain matter over car doors and public trash cans, firing off one after the next with a methodical lethality that Duncan couldn't help but admire.

By the time the tenth sniper round cracked through the air and the last Brute slumped to the ground with one less eye, most of the shooting had already subsided. Save for the occasional execution shot, things were quiet. The same soon went for the adjacent streets. The smooth bore cannons of the Scorpion pairs stationed on those routes had been firing off for the entirety of the engagement. Now they too had fallen silent.

Duncan stayed on guard regardless.

He wasn't about to be surprised by another energy mortar or fuel rod. His side still stung. He was lucky to get away with as little as he did.

However, with no obvious targets left, he eventually eased off the M41. The rotation of its triple barrels slowed to a stop. The world directly in front of the gun wavered like a mirage and he saw then that his barrels were red hot. Even behind the triggers he could feel the heat wafting from them. They'd been running for so long that he'd overworked their cooling systems.

"Squad, sound off." The Staff ordered.

"Ep-5, still here."

"Ep-7, still here."

Hearing everyone else checking in, Duncan took his canteen from his belt and unscrewed the cap. He leaned through the frilled neck of the gun palisade to tip his container. The barrels hissed steam as lukewarm water cooled the glowing metal.

"Ep-9, still kicking. Thanks for the shower, 8."

Duncan looked down to see Mito staring back, the simmering water streaming along the barrels and dripping down onto his helmet.

Beside him, Hector was just as wet. He shrugged. "Ep-4, still kicking. Honestly, I don't mind. Last time any of us caught a shower it was raining cats and dogs."

Duncan gave him a thumbs up as he screwed the cap back onto his canteen and stashed it away. "Anytime."

"Ep-8, where're you hit?" Renni asked from the other Hog.

"My side. Don't think I'm bleeding too much though."

"I'll be the judge of that." Renni hopped off the troop carrier and jogged around the wreck of the burning tank. She reached the side of his Hog and leapt up onto the back, gesturing for him to let her have a look.

With a long sigh, he raised his right arm while his left kept a precautionary grip on the turret.

Renni patted and probed around, cocking her head at what she saw.

"Well?"

"Looks like a couple of really bad hickeys. I wouldn't let Erica see this if I were you, might give her the wrong idea." Renni pressed her finger on a particularly sore spot and Duncan winced at a slight shiver of pain. "I see a few of these breached the skin. Looks like a real bruiser. Doesn't seem like anything went in deep though. Lucky you."

"I was thinking the same thing." He eyed the dead Scorpion and its cratered cockpit. "Those guys though..."

"We can't do anything for them, but I'd still keep an eye on this if I were you."

Duncan winced again when she touched a spot near his ribs. "Any biofoam?"

She shook her head. "Whatever hit you was kind enough to cauterize the skin."

"Kind enough or hot enough?"

She patted him on the back as he lowered his arm. "You'll be fine."

"I feel like I just got gut checked by a Brute."

"That my friend," Renni said, hopping down from the Hog. "Is what we call life."

Duncan grimaced. She jogged back to the carrier while he returned to watching the boulevard.

"Hey, Ep-1," Zack said. "Whiskey's saying they've reached the container port. They'll be here any minute."

"Copy." The Staff stared hard at the ruined remains of the Warthog that had taken one too many fuel rods and the scattered bodies of its crew. "Let's-"

"Wait." Zack cut in, suddenly turning his head this way and that.

"What's up?" Nova asked.

Zack didn't respond. He began looking around though seemingly at no one in particular.

"Come on, don't leave us hanging." Mito insisted. "Give it up, what's the scoop?"

Zack turned to him. He glanced back towards the plaza and looked hard at Szimpla Station, as if the building itself wasn't supposed to be there. Then, slowly, his head craned up towards the sky. "Hey Ep-1?"

His voice was distant, distracted even.

"What is it?"

"I...don't think we should be here anymore. We should go...now."

Out of morbid curiosity, Duncan followed his line of sight.

The sky directly overhead was mostly clear. There was a loose spread of cirrocumulus clouds drifting in from the west high in what he guessed to be the troposphere, covering up some of the blue dome like patches of aerosolized leather. But that was it.

He glanced in the direction of the plaza. The mix of Tango and Lima Company troopers continued to hold their positions for the most part, save for those smoldering craters where he remembered machinegun nests and rocket teams being present. Despite their iron-clad vigil over the immediate area, he spotted some exceptions. Several troopers were running about. Every single one of them was a radioman. They spoke into headsets or rushed hurriedly from place to place among men he assumed were officers.

He turned again to Zack who answered in haste before anyone could pose another question. "Command picked up on a Covenant battlegroup hanging over NA from orbit. Satellites in range are saying they dropped something on our AO."

"Dropped?" Duncan looked up again.

The change was so subtle that he almost missed it.

There were now multiple small holes in the tropospheric cloud cover. They were so minor that it felt like walking through grass and suddenly realizing that the ground was covered in ant nests.

The 'ants' were so small that they might as well have been exactly that. But ants didn't fall from the sky. A seeming meteor shower was on its way, balls of fire trailing tails of atmospheric reentry. At first, he thought they were falling altogether, but he quickly became aware of two distinct groups. At the center of each was a fireball far larger than the others clustering around it, descending alongside it.

One of the clusters was heading straight for Szimpla Station.

Judging by the descent vector, there was nowhere else they could be headed, and they were growing larger by the second, faster as Reach's gravity pulled them into a momentum that resembled a missile strike.

And they were going to strike hard at that.

The thoughts racing through Duncan's mind were echoed back to him by the alarmed voice of Captain Thompson, his words ringing through the comms like the panicked order it was.

"Orbital insertion inbound! All forces withdraw! I repeat, withdraw! Pull back now!"

Duncan tightened his hold on the M41 and steadied himself for a getaway that began in earnest. Hector reversed out from between the tanks who themselves were already rolling back.

Beside them, the Staff was reversing as well. "Ep-4, get moving!"

Both of them pulled out faster than the tanks and maneuvered behind them, finding enough room to twist and zip back onto the main road. It was no longer a team effort. With what was on its way, it was every man, Warthog and Scorpion for himself and the world around them was quickly reflecting that.

The plaza was an angry beehive of activity. Dozens upon dozens of troops scrambled from their holdouts atop grassy plots. Many ran towards comrades that hadn't quite pieced everything together yet, shouting to some, grabbing others and forcing them to move. The remaining tanks were likewise breaking away from their posts at the ends of the neighboring streets and were rolling backwards at high speed.

Hector was leading the squad in skirting around the south side of the plaza when Duncan got his next eyeful. The incoming cluster was disquietingly close, the smaller objects like hellish tadpoles streaking long contrails alongside the larger mass. It really did look like a meteor shower, and it was abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that it was going to hit Szimpla Station head on. Passing beneath the shadow of the maglev rails, he sighted the same activity on the platforms above as he did on the ground below. Emplacements were abandoned. Heavy gear was ditched. The owners thereof were casting everything aside in order to have a chance at escaping to the ground floor.

But they had no chance.

Duncan didn't say it, but he was feeling both anxious and glad, anxious that the soldiers gambling on a run to the emergency stairwells had no chance of making it, glad that at the very least he wasn't one of them, because everyone still in that building was a dead man walking. How many? A platoon? Three? Four? Maybe half of Tango Company? Half, at least a hundred?

His stomach cramped with a sudden and overwhelming helplessness at a disaster in the making.

What he knew were the last few seconds before the impact ticked by like hours, each moment a freeze frame of Warthogs peeling down roads, of Scorpions ripping up asphalt in their attempt to egg more speed out of their treads, of waves of soldiers sprinting down the stairs of the plaza in a desperate run for the surrounding city, running for cover, for anything that would spare them this death. Even while Epsilon's small convoy finally swerved around the east side of the plaza and gunned it towards the same way they'd come, Duncan's eyes were elsewhere. He flicked between the last stragglers running through the doors of the upper platforms leading into the station and the main exits on the ground floor. Through the glass doors of the latter, to his silent horror, he saw nothing, no activity in the main lobby whatsoever.

No one had made it there yet.

The Covenant-made meteor shower was clearing the last 200-meters to the top of the station and in mere glimpses he gained a true, terrifying sense of its size. The largest of the fireballs cast Szimpla's arching shadow far and wide so that it whipped over the plaza and across the escapees at a speed beyond that of any tread or wheel.

Then the small sun landed.

It cannoned through the upper arch of the building so that it snapped with the ease of a twig, tornadic plumes of structural devastation shooting down both wings of the station as the blazing object smashed a path between them. For an instant, Duncan thought he saw jets of blue fire flaring out from the arriving mass, slowing it down. The impact came with the force of a fist too massive to be survivable for anything beneath, fire and smoke and debris fountaining skyward behind a bubble of displaced air that burst across the surrounding buildings, windows shattering to pollinate the area in a blizzard of twinkling shards.

The miniature earthquake it unleashed lifted Epsilon's Warthogs a few inches from the ground before howling wheels crashed back down. Duncan barely caught himself from the jostling movement when another slapped him in the back. It was similar to what he'd felt from the tank explosion but more wind than heat. The air blew out of his lungs as it pinned him to the M41's shoulder braces, almost twisting the gimbal and sending him headfirst to the blurring streets below. His knees saved him, though his joints screamed from the strain.

Then the shockwave passed. The quaking died down to a low rumble of great masses breaking and smashing.

Hector pulled off towards the side and wheeled hard to the right, bringing them to a jutting stop near the avenue's railway supports. Behind them, the Staff did the same.

Duncan sucked in a deep breath to soothe the ache in his lungs. Once he'd gotten a few more, he pushed himself off the gun. Then, like everyone else, he turned around and was silent.

In the place of both the plaza and Szimpla Station was what he imagined Pompeii looked like right after Vesuvius or Hiroshima after Little Boy. A mirage of gray smoke hung heavy over everything so that nothing was visible, not clearly at least. Shadows stood within the depths of the haze, nothing discernible as anything that had been there before.

The largest of these shadows was that of a pincer shape that stood taller than everything else at the center of the devastation. The faint light of a firestorm raged within the shape almost as a Bunsen burner left to waver and burn.

Further down from them but closer to the site, a pair of Tango Company Hogs had also made it to the relative safety of the avenue. The closest of them to the smoke made a slow, tentative turn towards it. Its neighbor mirrored it almost apprehensively. Together the two slipped into the dusty miasma one after the next, their turret gunners keeping their weapons on a wary rotation. In little time at all the sight of them was also swallowed up into shadow.

"Ep-...Ep-1?" Hector stammered. "Should we-, ugh..."

The Staff didn't speak but his orders came through his actions. He made a similar turn and took off at a steady roll towards the site.

"Guess so." Hector pulled hard to the right so that his shoulders leaned into the turn. They made a graceful 180 and accelerated after the troop carrier. Mito planted one boot in his seat and another against the dashboard, using it to balance himself as he settled the tubes of his launcher atop the windshield. Above his head moved the barrels of the M41. Duncan angled the weapon at anything and everything that might shoot back. Even Hector spared a hand from the wheel to keep his SMG ready.

The carrier passed into the smoke with their Hog on its heels, and with them went the last bit of visibility Duncan had left. He switched on his VISR, not that it made much of a difference.

They were approaching the road that surrounded the plaza. On either side of them rose more shadows, many of which shared the familiar shapes of the vehicles that had been there from the start. But there were others too tall and jagged to be anything but pieces of building. In short order he became aware that they were on the outer edge of a massive debris field. Many of those same pieces of debris rose taller than the Hog itself, some of the chunks of cement and steel given extra height by the crumpled remains of the cars that they had landed on top of. The Staff led them on a path that was anything but straight. They weaved around tank-sized pieces of building, their chassis regularly rising up and down as the crunch of smaller debris beneath their wheels changed to the crumble of larger objects.

At a certain point they hurdled over something that Duncan was sure was the barrel of an M247H. There was blood on it.

There was gunfire.

He wasn't sure when he became aware of it, but he suspected that it had always been there. It was coming from more directions than he could turn. The echo of running footsteps were in equal abundance. Both near and far, the shouts of coherent orders and calls for help competed with cries of pain and the calling of names Duncan didn't know by soldiers he couldn't see.

"Sarge!? SARGE!"

"Alvarez, come on let's move!"

"Help me with this, will you!?"

"Where's the LT!? Anybody seen him!?"

"Havoc, sound off! Regroup on me!"

"AAAAAGGGHHHHHH!"

"Someone get his leg! Get his leg, go!"

"Miller's down!"

"Grab her other shoulder, pull when I say so!"

There were survivors.

How many of them were going to survive into the next few minutes was a question he couldn't answer. He was already too caught up in trying to make out the strange blue lights that he saw. He couldn't see them clearly, but they stood as azure ghosts rising from a disturbed graveyard or sapphire lanterns set amidst a sea of fog. He looked from left to right, counting at least 10. Similar to the shouts and screams they were both near and far, all of them possessing the same, distinct egg shape. Hulking silhouettes stood within their light. Their visages wavered as if underwater, only for them to breach the surface in a stomping blood rage.

Duncan knew what he was looking at. He just couldn't believe it.

Drop pods.

Covenant drop pods.

He'd never had that happen to him before. He'd never been dropped on before.

As a Helljumper, the experience in and of itself gave him a whole new, terrifying appreciation for his own occupation.

The things that the pods had come to deliver made the situation that much worse. The closest of the atmospheric insertion vehicles sparkled with the rifle fire that dappled their hulls and ricocheted off the reinforced shields of their exiting occupants. The Hunter pairs hopped out one after the other, passing through the energy barriers and into the line of fire. Another pair would immediately rush out from the other side, shields bared, cannons out. Nearby, a trooper squad hunkering behind a fence of rubble quickly shrunk back at a fuel rod discharge that punched clear through a piece of wall, catching the poor soul behind it in an incinerating torrent. The other Hunter backed up its partner by loosing a green bolt that bucked into a truck, knocking back two soldiers that had been firing from its cover. Their comrades on the other side of the pod fared little better, the pair on that side doling out a similar treatment.

At another pod not too far away, a Hunter rushed through the energy barrier and broke into a charge. Shield raised; it made a final leap before swatting aside a van with the ease of a toy, sending two broken soldiers twirling into the smoke. Stuttering fire from an approaching Warthog forced its partner to hide behind its own shield. Spines rattling, it groaned to the other while it held its ground. The Hog kept driving in an effort to circle the enemy and pin them in place. The driver swerved around, dodging the replies of oncoming fuel rods. All the while a squad of troopers took the chance to pull back from a precarious position, ditching a slab of white architecture that could have only come from one place.

Still 20-meters out from the closest engagement, Duncan took in the sight of similar firefights playing out at each of the pods. Some of them were at ground level. Others unfolded atop an elevated area ahead that he assumed was the plaza. The darkness of their surroundings was rapidly illuminating with flares of exploding plasma and flickering tracers. It was the same thing on every front: two Hunter pairs leaping out to deliver the enemy's version of shock and awe.

A xenocidal rage burned in Duncan's chest. The idea of the Covenant using their own tactics on them made him grip his turret with a white-knuckle grasp.

A Nav point from the Staff appeared on the closest fight, but he was already locked on. He was the first to fire. His target was busy using its shield like a sword, crushing the wreck of a car in half. The trooper that had been hiding behind it scrambled away beneath a wave of bullets that tore into the juggernaut's exposed midriff. Mito let off a fissile duo that raced into it before it could raise its shield, a scorching gut punch catching it once then twice. The last sent it reeling onto its back. Its partner whirled about from its bombardment of a persistent fireteam to release a muffled roar. It turned and bounded towards them with furious rattles of its spines. Epsilon's convoy countercharged, speeding straight for it.

At the last second the Hunter raised its shield and swept at nothing but air, the Staff breaking left to avoid the blow. Hector went right. They zoomed past the Hunter so that guns both great and small could pull off a full broadside, tearing into its back. It barely had time to correct its mistake. Though it tried to turn, Yuri tossed a frag that bounced between its legs to detonate up close, fragmentation from the blast shredding orange innards from its body. The Hogs looped back around between it and the pod, passing one another on their way to another rotation. Nova tossed another frag before it could track them. Seeing what was coming, it crouched behind its shield to let the metal barrier catch the explosion. The move saved it from the blast but not from an onslaught from the M41 that jabbed into its flesh from side to back, blowing out chunks of worm from the larger colony. The Hunter rose to respond but it was already too late, the barrage causing it to keel over mid-turn.

The Hogs skidded to a halt beside the safety of the two armored corpses.

"HAH!" Yuri cackled. "Try that again, I dare you!"

"Drop and get dropped!" Hector shouted.

Duncan spotted the next Hunter pair a short drive away, barreling and battering through a lane of dead traffic in their pursuit of a fleeing trooper squad. He knew they would be going after them soon but took the time in between to calm his excited breathing.

The momentary victory, however welcomed, was shattered by a thundering impact that caused the ground beneath them to shake.

And another.

And another.

And two more in tandem.

Duncan wondered if more pods were landing.

Immediately, two more loud commotions went off in quick succession. They weren't impacts, he realized, since he felt the vibration more in the air than on the ground. There was another of these with a longer delay between them. That time he was certain it was the thunderclap of a Scorpion's cannon. It went off again, somewhere to their right, and with it came the earth-pounding quakes that were beginning to sound more and more like footsteps.

Suddenly a growing silhouette appeared on their right and the sound of rolling treads grew to a mechanical rumble. A large mass emerged from the haze; its thankfully familiar bulk larger even than the Warthogs. The rest of the Scorpion tank rapidly pulled into view. It was driving backwards, its cannon raised high as it backpedaled at top speed in a direction that would take it towards the avenue. Hector and the Staff reversed as well, getting out of its way just as it was about to back into them. The driver wasn't paying attention. Duncan could see the gunner behind the turret firing nonstop at roughly the same vector as the cannon. They were laying into something in the same area as the plaza, but at such a high angle that he almost thought they were targeting Szimpla.

Then, all at once, he noticed that he could actually see Szimpla.

Though faint, it was clear that the shattered ruins of the station were the same 'pincer' shape he'd seen from afar. The building's distinct arch was entirely gone. There was barely any building left at all. Somehow the multitude of elevated maglev rails remained relatively intact, albeit shattered at the point where they had connected to the boarding platforms. They hung like the frozen strands of a spider web that hadn't realized they'd been cut. A few floors worth of Szimpla's north and south wings still stood, albeit crushed in on themselves and wreathed in fire and smoke, their last few windows gleaming from the inferno that burned within the interior of their compacted, tilting remains. They were like the stumps of two giant trees that had been hacked down by an equally giant axe, and that 'axe' was now turning towards them.

Within the fires that dominated the debris between the two wings was a silhouette that wasn't as large as the building it had just killed. The visage of four segmented legs connected to a massive, beetle-like carapace that hissed with tendrils of shrieking steam, the legs rising and falling one after the other with the fluidity of rusted pistons. The movement held an eerily mechanical disposition that copied its organic inspiration, its claw-like heels plunging into the ground with the same bone-jarring force that Duncan had mistaken for an earthquake.

One last stomp of a forward leg stabbed into the plaza, drawing blood in a gush of pulverized cement that spurted up around the limb.

It was done turning.

The tank's turret gunner wasn't done firing.

Neither was the driver.

The cannon thundered again, slamming a tungsten shell into its center of mass, the explosion piercing the veil to briefly illuminate an insectoid face that disappeared just as quickly, only to reappear a second later in a ghostly green glow.

Its 'mandibles' were open and an emerald radiance roiled in its mouth. The light rose to a blinding intensity before it released a scream like many voices melded into one, throaty and monstrous. The sound terminated in a geyser of plasma that columned out in an ear-piercing drone.

The plasmatic torrent lanced into the tank, a concentrated waterfall of overcharged ions bathing its frame in blazing energies. It lasted no longer than a second, the ensuing explosion funneling from front to back in a rippling blast that quickly decapitated cannon from vehicle. But the plasma kept coming, a relentless flow that scorched the burning wreck so that it burned even brighter.

After three searing seconds the torrent ended and the mouth went quiet.

A leg went up and crashed back down, and the face of the mechanical titan turned towards Epsilon.

Duncan felt a cold, paralyzing shiver at the sight of its still open mouth preparing another blast. As a demonic scream rose in its throat, he shouted the one thing he could think of, the one word on his mind.

"DRIVE!"

The Scarab fired.

Ferox - Fierce