Chapter 62 – Bellum Novum
May 23rd, 2526 - (09:38 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Indi System, Harvest
Edda, planetary capital of Utgard
(26 Years Ago)
:********:
There was something about the current situation that gave Don an unexpected sense of clarity. The Insurrection had, to some extent, been fighting for their freedom, what they deemed as their right to exist as entities both separate and independent of Earth's authority. On Harvest, the UNSC were fighting for the right to simply exist, not as an organization but as a species. The irony there wasn't lost on him. Here he was on the edge of oblivion losing friends to protect even the very same people who had killed their own fair share of his buddies already. But this was a different kind of war. There would be no surrendering here, no prisoner exchanges or parleys for negotiations. They would either win or they would lose, victory or death, do or die, and right now he truly wanted more than anything for the things on the other side of this wall to die.
He was on a balcony of what used to be the penthouse of a luxury apartment complex. It had probably seen a good deal of use by local and intersystem delegations as well as CAA representatives. From the streetside view, it was one of Utgard's more boxy buildings which eventually curved in on itself like a hooked claw. It had been one of the city's taller structures at a height of just over 30 stories. It was that very same height, however, that now leaned slightly towards the west at what they had gauged to be a 10-degree tilt, making the building not entirely hazardous but nowhere near stable. Its polycrete walls were blackened and rusted in most places, but in those where they weren't, it was easy to see the shades of brown paint and lighter caramel accents that suggested a once fashionable living facility. The same could have been said of its interior. The ground floor lobby as well as virtually every level after that told its own story, resembling the same disheveled appearance of severe flood-damage. The floors were littered with pieces of debris and miscellaneous belongings that had been left behind by their former occupants, evidence that hinted at a sudden and unexpected evacuation. There were partially collapsed ceilings in most of the rooms which revealed interior crossbeams, electrical wiring and, in some cases, offered a view of the rooms and hallways in the levels above. The stairs were just as covered in the same bits of human flotsam and jetsam indicative of a hastily executed mass exodus. That was to say nothing of the many cracks and crevices spiderwebbing the steps that stemmed mostly from where a third of the building had collapsed, leaving the rest of the complex with the look of an unfinished sandwich.
At the moment, save for Foss, the whole of Foxtrot had taken the building as their own. As its sole residents, they had invited themselves to the suite with the most to offer. The penthouse resided on the 20th floor, the point where the complex's boxy shape began to curve inwards into the hook-like style common throughout the rest of the city. One of its many higher end amenities included an elevated patio with a sizable pool, or at least the empty basin at its center that used to be a pool. Girding the edges of the patio area were the remnants of an encompassing polycrete parapet that both time and circumstance had turned into a jagged wall. It nevertheless offered some protection from the 60-meters worth of freefall between Foxtrot and the enemy. Several overhanging balconies protruded from the northward edge of the patio, in turn providing them with the best vantage points from which to carry out their side of the ambush.
Given Bravo Company's current numbers, there was no longer any chance of holding the parliament building via their original positions. Their defenses had come painfully close to being almost completely overwhelmed by the arrival of the Wasps. Too many troopers had been left either dead or wounded. More than just that, for the first time that anyone in the outfit had seen anything like it, they were suffering from their own success. The air strike using the Jailbreakers had proven exceptionally effective at killing off the Wasps. Too effective in fact, because it had left thousands of their burning carcasses to occupy the battlefield, clogging up what were previously defensible positions and making maneuvering around their area of operations that much more challenging.
The situation was so bleak that the major had called for reinforcements from Delta Company who had, up until that point, been operating solely on the other side of the Mimir River. But as it turned out, their sister unit had run into their own bout of unexpected resistance in the Utgard Mall. They could only afford to send over a single platoon. One was better than nothing, but it certainly wasn't everything they needed to hold out.
They couldn't, so they wouldn't.
They would improvise instead.
Rather than sitting still and waiting for the enemy to close in on them, they would meet them on their way to the parliament building. Rather than worrying about how outgunned or outmanned they were by hostile armor, they would prioritize using the city itself as a weapon. While Bravo's wounded stayed behind at the parliament under the safeguarding of a small contingent, one comprised mainly of the backup from Delta, most of the company was redeployed to the surrounding cityscape. Each of the six platoons, those among them still able-bodied enough, were sent out to locations ranging from within 100-meters of the target building to as far out as 250-meters. Two platoons each were put in charge of a single city block with 2nd and 5th Platoon in the north, 3rd and 6th Platoon in the south and finally 1st and 4th Platoon in the east.
As the major had said more than once before, 'the best defense is a good offense'.
The company moved with that motto in mind. Using what little time they had left before their newest round of opposition made themselves known, they took to preparing their respective areas for their arrival. Explosives had been placed in key positions to stop their advance cold. All the while, a determined resistance mounted from superior firing positions in the enclosing neighborhoods would hem them in and pin them in place. The company was essentially going to make the scenario that much more equal by bringing a building to a gunfight. If the Covenant used whatever counted as heavy armor against the ruins, there was a good chance they would bring said ruins crumbling down right on their heads, making them that much more reluctant to respond to Bravo's advantage of the high ground. They would be forced to rethink their strategy while under fire, and no one would be willing to lend them the time necessary to do so.
It was for all intents and purposes a bold-faced gamble, and the major was betting on the enemy commander not calling their bluff. Friendly forces both in and around the ruins would also be in danger. In truth, the wager was that the enemy would be less able to stomach losing the majority of their own ranks to stomp out a force a mere fraction of their size. They had three options and those were to stand their ground and die, to destroy the buildings and be buried alive or to retreat.
Remembering the Gator that had taken the time to skewer itself on its own sword, Don couldn't see them taking that last option, but he couldn't see them taking the second one either. Their first impressions made them come across as the kind of enemy to take the first option. They weren't that much unlike the different flavors of Outer Colony Insurrectionist planetarian factions that were often too prideful and uninformed to know when to back down. They were the type that thought they were too good for the likes of the United Rebel Front and tried to strike out on their own, leaving themselves blissfully unaware of the full scope of the UNSC's capabilities until it was far too late. Except it wasn't a one-to-one comparison. Sure, the Covenant came off as being extremely prideful of their abilities. Their declaration that they would destroy all of mankind after only encountering a single world had made that abundantly clear. However, the ruins around him were a testament to the reality that their confidence wasn't at all unwarranted. They might not know that much about humanity, but they apparently knew enough to decide to try their hand at annihilating it, and that while the UNSC barely knew the first thing about them.
The United Nations Space Command understood what they wanted but not why they wanted it. If the Covenant was made up of as many individual client species as the ones he'd encountered today, then they obviously had some sense of diplomacy. Whereas humanity's own religions had spread across different cultures, the Covenant's had been so successful as to spread across different species. As Gad had once told him before, things like that didn't happen without some level of theosophical deviation on the part of the adopting cultures, and that didn't carry on peacefully without some degree of tolerance on the part of others. So the question remained. If the Covenant could be so accepting as to bring other species into their fold, then why did they immediately reach for the kill switch when it came to humanity? What was it? What made them so different from everyone else that they didn't even try?
The sounds of activity down below brought an end to that line of thought. There was no point in asking someone why they were shooting at them when they were already shooting back. The dialogue was over before it had even begun, and what it left in its wake was a different kind of conversation, a shouting match where the most persuasive arguments took the form of having the greater firepower, and in that case, Bravo Company was ready to shout at the top of its lungs.
"What do you think those are?" Ray asked.
He was on the balcony on Don's right. The Sarge was there as well, sitting with his back against the wall as Foxtrot's marksman stood quietly, using his battle rifle to peer down through a crack in the polycrete that incidentally made for an ideal sniping position.
Don chanced taking a glance for himself. Being crouched, he quietly picked his new M319 grenade launcher off the floor and shuffled towards a small crevice that ran down the width of the parapet. Up close, it offered a much better view of things than anyone could guess from further away.
On the roadway below, one unironically called Parliament Street due to its end point being the road that ran adjacent to the gardens, was a sight that was both exactly like and unlike what he'd been expecting.
The ONI threat catalogue had made mention of Covenant ground vehicles, namely a kind of heavy-wheeled bike-like transport implored by the Maulers, but what he was seeing here was entirely new to him.
To their east, about 300-meters away from the parliament proper was a massive armored column. Within it were vehicular elements that, like many things it seemed, had eluded ONI's attention. He counted somewhere in the realm of 30, no, 35 individual transports. Most of those in the front were manta ray-shaped craft. Two back-swept wings connected to a bulbous engine whose elongated frame bore a strange resemblance to the peculiar head shape of the Gators. In the connection points between the wings and the main body were metallic, clamp-like protrusions that were obviously a new form of Covenant plasma cannons. Mounted to the back of the engine was a seat where the pilot resided, the majority of which were Gassers. The four in the lead were the exceptions, being manned by Gators. They rode in organized lines, the spacious lanes of Parliament Street allowing them to move abreast of one another in groups of four. They weren't driving over the vitrified asphalt so much as floating over it. He could tell that much due to the shadows cast by the blue lights emanating from their undersides which gave off distortions of heat, suggesting a kind of anti-gravity capability akin to that of their observation platforms. Around five rows of four of the craft comprised the column's vanguard, advancing at a wary speed towards the parliament.
Coming behind them were vehicles that were a full magnitude larger, perhaps three or four times the size of the ones in the front. However, they were stylistically similar. A pair of large stabilizer fins sloped down to either side of a bulky yet also elongated body which broadened out the further back it went. Atop a hump on its rear was a, well, Don wasn't sure what it was. It looked like a metal flower with its petals in mid-bloom or perhaps a squid lunging towards its prey, iron tentacles already spread apart to reveal a glowing beak at its center. What he assumed to be its primary weapon protruded from the interior of the vehicle like a scorpion's tail. Below it was the sole pincer, a likewise beak-shaped device. Most of these were manned by individual Gators that stood halfway out of a forward seating compartment. Their hold on the devices suggested yet another new variant of their plasma cannons.
Despite their size, the larger newcomers, these Covenant 'tanks' also hovered off the ground and did so in well-aligned pairs. Two of them at a time floated in the wake of the smaller craft. Together, their internal drives produced a whirring chorus of mechanical humming that resonated throughout the street, echoing off the neighboring buildings like a procession of ghosts. In tandem, a worrisomely large contingent of Covenant troops moved along their flanks, striding up the sides of the road with plasma weapons aiming this way and that. They were mostly comprised of Gassers with pistols. However, there were nearly as many Jackals among them bearing shields or carbines. Sprinkled in were more Gators of both the blue and orange variety as well as a single white-armored one that sat behind the turret of one of the leading tanks.
The rest of the squad had gotten the same idea and were busy looking through whatever cracks in the balcony walls gave them a good view.
"Didn't see these in the catalogue." Chris said, peeking out from the balcony on Don's left. "And look at that, not a coat in sight. Fox-7, it's your show, not mine."
"Am I the only one who thinks not having to deal with Maulers right now is more a blessing than an inconvenience?" Gad prodded, sitting next to Don with his rocket launcher already shouldered.
"Yeah. I'd say so."
"Nobody cares about your coat, 6." Izzy rose up a little from her spot beside Chris, trying to get a better angle with her M319. "Those ones in the back, they must be their tanks. I mean, they look like heavy hitters so what else could they be."
"And the ones in the front look fast." The Sarge noted. "They're too small for the likes of a Warthog but about the right size for a Mongoose. I'm thinking rapid attack vehicles. We'll call'em RAVs for short, at least until we get something better."
'Something better', Don knew, meant when they learned the hard way what they were actually capable of.
"And the tanks?" Ray asked.
The Sarge looked at him then down again at the advancing vehicles. "…Tanks."
"...I like that one."
"Ferret-1 to Fox-1, you copy?" Eversman called over the comms.
"Fox-1 to Ferret, I copy." The Sarge replied. "Go ahead."
"We see them, but we can't tell their numbers yet. Frost is saying the same. You have the closest position, and I need a summary."
"We're looking at about 20 rapid attack vehicles or RAVs with 15 tanks and close to 100-plus enemy infantry providing perimeter security, about half a company's worth. They're not moving too fast for the moment. My guess is they want to take it nice and slow until they figure us out."
"Or maybe they're waiting for a signal." Eversman deduced. "I checked with 4-Actual. They're seeing the same thing on Market Drive."
Don looked over his shoulder to the south. They were too high up for him to see anything other than the shattered glass walls of the penthouse, so he tried to listen instead. After a second, he picked up on the same sounds coming from that direction as well. Whereas Parliament Street went straight to the building that was its namesake, Market Drive skimmed right past it. It journeyed on towards what used to be a bridge that passed over the Mimir River to reach the Utgard Mall. Just like Governor's Avenue well to the north of Parliament Street, Market Drive was a perfect route for Delta Company to use once it finished up with its own objectives in the mall and started coming to Bravo's aid. It also meant that like the other two, they couldn't afford to lose it. Though Market Drive fell to 4th Platoon and Governor's Avenue to 5th Platoon, neither of them really mattered if the Covenant took 1st Platoon's position. If Parliament Street fell, they would be able to shoot straight up the middle to the building itself, cutting Bravo clean in half. From there it would be a simple matter of divide and conquer, something they couldn't allow for the sake of the mission as well as the company.
"At their current speed, I'd say we have about a minute before they reach the det on our side." The Sarge explained. "What do you think?"
"Sounds about right." Eversman agreed. "Be ready."
"If you don't mind me asking, do you know the status of the rest of the battalion? Anyone keeping tabs?"
"Yeah, it's a real mixed bag at the moment. Everyone's got a hold on their objectives, but some are more secure than others. Alpha is already fighting off enemy armor at the starport. Echo is having some trouble taking the east wing of the hospital. Delta says they found some heavy munitions cache in the park that the satellites must've missed, and the Covenant are raising seven different kinds of hell trying to defend it. However, as things stand, our position is the most unstable. The colonel is real concerned about us."
"Just like he said he'd be." The Sarge remarked. "That man never misses, does he?"
"No."
Down below, Don watched the column begin to pass their apartment complex, still unalerted to Foxtrot's presence directly above or of the rest of the platoon. Looking back up at a spot across the street and two buildings down, he saw where Squad Frost was stationed on the rooftop of what was once upon a time the city's police headquarters. The top floor below them bore faint traces of the words 'Utgard Constabulary HQ' above the emblazoned sign of an officer's badge, a feature of most colonial police forces that tended to quarter themselves in close proximity to a planet's seat of power. Like Foxtrot, the squad had arranged itself into pairs with one trooper carrying a rocket launcher and his partner wielding a grenade launcher for support. They were crouched behind the wall of the ledge, waiting.
Another two buildings down from them and back on Foxtrot's side of the street was Squad Ferret's own posting atop the half-bitten remnants of an inward curving, bookshelf-shaped building. The scorched lettering on the side of it showed that it once served as the center for Harvest's 'Ministry of Works and Agriculture'. Just past their position was a cylindrical building smaller than theirs that used to be the ministry's land certification bureau. All 18 of its stories were leaning slightly towards Parliament Street. Past its shadow, there was only one more building left before one reached the abandoned remains of the frontlines and by extension the parliament itself.
Don switched to another crack in the wall to continue observing. The main body of the column had passed the apartment complex. However, some of the stragglers among the infantry were lagging behind. Don noticed quite a few of them were checking the adjacent alleyways for signs of anything out of the ordinary. Virtually none of them thought to look up. The possibility obviously hadn't occurred to them that someone would willfully enter the crumbling ruins all around them in order to stage an ambush.
He smiled.
They were right to think that no one in their right mind would try something that insane, which is why it was a good thing that the admiral hadn't sent anyone in their right mind. He'd sent Helljumpers, and the Covenant were about to find out what that really meant.
"Rockets, start picking targets." Eversman ordered. "Be sure to confirm with your grenadiers beforehand so they can back you up. I want this street clogged."
Don turned to Gad as he peered out over the convoy.
"See the two tanks in the back?" Gad asked.
Don nodded. "Which?"
"Right side. Its turret will have the best view of us from there."
"Then I'll take care of the one on the left."
Don listened to the others conversing over which vehicles they would strike first, only for those very same vehicles to overwhelm them with the rising clamor of alien drives. They all looked out again just as the rapid attack vehicles at the fore of the advance suddenly picked up speed. The leading four shot forward, leaving lines of blue exhaust in their wake like the kind observed from their fighters. The four behind them did the same, and the next row and the next. The 20 RAVs were collectively gunning past the constabulary headquarters towards the end of the street.
"They're moving to attack." The Sarge said, raising his SPNKr. "Get ready."
Instead of the sergeant major's voice, the major himself spoke over the company comms. "Neptune-Actual to Bravo, we're seeing a coordinated push from their light vehicles. Blow your dets at your own discretion but do not miss your windows, over."
Don tensed.
"That's our cue." Eversman said over the platoon freq. "Brace yourselves, troopers. Greenlight in three...two..."
The furthest ahead of the RAVs were crossing into the shadow of the land certification building when its ground floor erupted outward in a blast of light that consumed part of the street. Three of the RAVs disappeared instantly in the explosion that flowered up through two more floors of the bureau, vomiting out a hail of the structure's innards. Debris catapulted in all directions in tumbling arcs of smoke.
Don felt the reverberations rumble through the apartment complex and worried, as many of them had earlier, that the shockwave would bring their own buildings crashing down. He could do nothing but watch as the smog of the detonation billowed out onto Parliament Street like a vaporous flood, forcing the remaining RAVs to slow down in its shadow, a shadow that quickly overtook them.
With a tremendous groan and the crackle of crumbling infrastructure, the bureau building began its descent. The fall was swift and the structure plunged into the ground, but it did so in such a way that it collapsed forward and almost sideways. Its angle caused the resulting wall of ruin to roll up and over those RAVs that hadn't slowed down in time, crushing four then five. Two more of the Gasser-piloted vehicles seemed to miss the reason why the others had stopped and shot right past them into the oncoming destruction. One of them was immediately crushed beneath a house-sized chunk of rubble as its neighbor punched through the smoke and exploded against something in the haze.
Near simultaneously, loud detonations thundered across the area as several other buildings to the north and south came crashing down, including the Harvest banking center in 4th Platoon's zone of operations. As they dipped beneath the skyline, large clouds of detritus rapidly bloomed upward in their place.
Before the last of the avalanche of debris from the bureau had settled in place, the whole of 1st Platoon was on its feet and firing down at the enemy.
Don leveled his rectangular reticle over the rear of the leftmost tank at the very back of the column. A quick trigger pull sent a 40-millimeter grenade arcing down towards it. His was one of multiple pieces of heavy munitions whistling or hissing towards the target rich scenery below.
Parliament Street brightened up as a dozen M19 rockets sailed into the host of tanks, covering many in a bubbling barrage of explosions that burst outward in geysers of fire, metal and asphalt. Scores of enemy infantry were pulverized or hurled off the ground by the pressurized infernos that launched them off their feet, tossing the broken bodies of Buzzards, Gassers and even Gators into the air in a wave of alien screams. Some of the rockets struck the same targets and almost immediately three of the column's tanks turned into azure fireballs that belched their flaming guts across the sidewalks. Five more burst into bright blue flames of varying severity that licked at their armor with a greedy fury.
Less than a second later, a salvo of 40-millimeter grenades began landing in their midst and detonating above or beside them.
Don had kept track of his own in such a way that he was able to blow it above the turret of the left rear tank. The airburst was promptly seconded by a far more powerful explosion as the gunner's gas tank erupted, turning its seat into a miniature missile silo as the Gasser's decapitated body took off on a column of methane, spiraling in different directions for a second before a final blast hurled the corpse to the ground. By then the tank itself had also come crashing onto the street. Its hull was aglow with the electrified tendrils of the grenade's EMP effect which had momentarily knocked out its propulsion system. Its reaction also caused the odd flower-petal shaped device on its back to retract into the larger body. Nearly a dozen other enemy tanks had suffered the same fate, even those that had already been set aflame by rocket impacts. The grenadiers' first strike had been successful, and a heartbeat later the second volley of M19s streaked into the mostly paralyzed column. Whatever armor their prey possessed was torn into or ripped away by the newest salvo that hit both those that were already injured and those that had been spared the first time. Four more of their number were turned into ballooning fireballs whose spiraling components bounced off the scorched wrecks of the first three to fall.
"Reloading!" Gad shouted, crouching to pop open his launcher's firing chamber.
The Sarge and Chris were doing the same, as were the other rocketeers across the platoon, leaving the grenadiers to continue where they left off. Don had already reloaded, as had Izzy. She fired first and he fired right after. He tracked his grenade's descent and incidentally spotted a chaotic display of foot traffic further down.
Several of the closest survivors among the enemy infantry, two Gators as well as a few Buzzards had rushed in to defend the rear of the column. They were still searching for the source of the fire, finally turning their weapons skyward. Though they didn't spot anyone, they did see Izzy's grenade as it bounced off the street and into their ranks. One of the Gators had the sense to leap as far away as it could before she let it rip, blasting the Buzzards clear off their boots and chucking the mutilated corpse of the other Gator down an alleyway. The blow cleared a path for Don's own grenade that he let skip over their bloodied remains and towards a rear exhaust port on his immobilized quarry.
He released the trigger and watched the explosion batter the tank. He winced as his target suddenly bucked forward under the power of a larger secondary blast that tore down its length and flowered out of its front. When the light dissipated, he found the burning wreckage lying in two uneven halves on the street, its innards sparking as the fires spread across the hull.
With its death, the two rearmost tanks were knocked out of commission. Their smoking remains now served as a roadblock that left the rest of the column stuck in place.
Don crouched to reload while Gad rose to aim his newly loaded launcher at another target.
Sliding a new grenade from a bandolier on his waist, Don listened to Eversman's report over the company comms.
"Ferret-1 to Neptune-Actual, Kill Box-One-East has been established! Repeat, Kill Box-One-East has been established! We've got Parliament Street locked down!"
Captain Reaver sounded off next. "This is 4-Actual to Neptune-Actual, Kill Box-Two-East has also been established! Market Drive is no longer in play!"
More of the platoon commanders called out the same thing on their respective positions.
When they were done, the colonel responded in a moderately pleased tone. "Neptune-Actual to Bravo, great work on all sides! Keep it up! We've got five more minutes on the clock! Keep them pinned until the Swords roll in!"
At the end of the major's response, Don whipped the breech of his M319 shut. In a matter of seconds, every major roadway leading to the parliament building had been clogged with dead Covenant armor. The 'Kill Boxes' were really the now blocked off streets that they were going to do everything in their power to contain. If there was anything left that they couldn't kill, they would leave it trapped between the rubble on one side and their own burning comrades on the other, keeping them there until the Longswords attached to the ground operation could make their return from the Everest, fully stocked and ready to finish the job.
Don grinned at how easy the fight was turning out to be. It was almost too easy. Nearly half of the RAVs were gone, and more than half of their tanks were neutralized. At the rate they were going, they might not even need to wait for the Longswords.
He watched the next volley of rockets sail into the remaining tanks, most of which were pinned in place to the front, back and sides by their own casualties. They were bombarded from end to end in a release of explosive wrath that was added onto by the next barrage, transforming another three tanks into voluminous firecrackers that spewed flames and electrified exhaust from every crevice, immolating gunners and drivers alike.
The five tanks that still remained operational had gathered their wits enough to respond. They started turning to their left and right to get a better visual on their attackers. Some of the RAVs came to their rescue as well, having turned themselves around to address the carnage at their backs. A handful of them came to hover down the lanes between their more vulnerable counterparts. They turned in the same directions as them, looking to the buildings where the ODSTs were firing from.
But almost none of them opened fire in return.
Neither tank nor RAV offered a noteworthy reply beyond a few tentative sprays of plasma bolts from some of the latter's cannons. In the case of the smaller attack vehicles, Don guessed that it was because their weapons were too laterally aligned to offer any kind of effective resistance against a sufficiently elevated opposition. They mostly kept looking around to gauge the platoon's disposition and nothing more. In like fashion, they offered little in the way of resistance to the dispersion of grenades that began falling towards the street.
Don smirked.
The enemy were beginning to realize their own plight.
Even prior to the ambush, they had boxed themselves in by merely showing up.
They were trapped.
A voice cut in over the platoon freq. "Heads up! Enemy aircraft inbound from the east, half a klick out!"
Don lost track of his outbound grenade as he and the rest of Foxtrot whirled to the right.
In the eastern skies, Epsilon Indi had risen to what was its normal mid-morning perch. Its natural luminosity made it difficult but not impossible to notice the collection of black objects approaching from the horizon. The closer they came, the more of them there were that could be spotted and the more detailed they became. They possessed the same bulbous and elongated design that seemed to be common across the rest of their groundside transportation. Similarly swept back wings clung to either side of sleek frames that oozed blue contrails from rearward propulsion units. Looking at them head on, it was hard not to think of them as paradoxically oversized yet incredibly compact bees. The mandible-like arrangement of what had to be forward plasma cannons mounted just beneath their fuselages didn't help to allay that impression. Neither did the fact that there was a whole swarm of them.
Though perhaps less than half the size of the fighters the battalion had encountered on its way in, they were far more numerous in comparison. They were flying in small groups of three. Don counted as many as 15 of these groups scattered across Utgard's eastern skyline in an outward sweeping arc. They were dispersing towards the west. At least three of those groups were bound for 1st Platoon's position, and at least one of them was heading straight for Foxtrot.
"Sarge?" Don whispered, struggling to keep the strain from his voice.
"How'd they sneak up on us like that?" The Sarge asked to no one in particular. He shook his head. "Fox-3, 8 and 9, on me! Fox-6 and 7, keep working on those tanks! Let's go!"
The Sarge pulled off from the balcony with Ray right on his heels. Don took one last look at the chaos on Parliament Street and released his trigger, catching sight of his exploding grenade somewhere in an alleyway. He reloaded his weapon and ran after Gad.
The four of them dashed across the poolside to the eastern portion of the penthouse patio. There they slid behind the crumbling remnants of the parapet and kept their heads down.
"Alright, 3, you and me, one rocket each! We're going to test what works on these guys! Now 8, 9, we'll be spent after our second shot, so we'll need you to make the handoff, and we'll need it fast, copy!?"
"Copy!" The three of them replied.
"Alright!" The Sarge nodded to Gad as they both swiveled into a crouch and shouldered their launchers. The Sarge held up a hand, listening to the loudening moan of the crafts' drives. He put up three fingers then lowered them one after the next. At zero, the two of them shot to their feet and took aim at the east.
Don peeked his head over the parapet.
The three inbound groups of enemy flyers had split up from one another with two of them beelining down the street in the direction of the other squads. The third group had straggled behind and veered off to the left, clearly making for the roof of the apartment. They were less than a hundred meters out, flying in a triangular formation when the Sarge and Gad opened fire, each sending off a single rocket.
The pair of M19s soared across the air. Halfway through their flight, they angled upwards in order to counter the slightly higher elevations of their targets.
To Don's surprise, the two lowest flyers barreled to the left and right as the highest one nosed up into an ascending somersault. Amidst the ballet of twirling contrails, the M19s split off as well, one banking right as the other rose up. The former gained on its target even as it tried in vain to pick up speed and blasted into the side of the canopy. The latter soared up and past the highest flyer whose maneuver pulled it back beneath the rocket's path, causing it to lose its lock-on and continue upwards into the sky.
The stricken craft emerged from the resulting smoke with a tail of flames wafting from its starboard wing. It started banking towards the right side of the building while its untargeted partner banked towards the left. Further up, the third flyer dipped down into an angle of descent that Don recognized as a strafing run, turning the hostile pincer maneuver into an aerial trident.
The lower two opened fire in perfect unison.
"Down!" The Sarge barked, ducking with Gad.
Don was already crouched before the shower of bolts washed across the parapet, chewing into the polycrete and baptizing them with bits and pieces. A shadow rushed over him. He looked up and found the highest flyer passing overhead but not aiming at them.
"Fox-6, 7, get out of there!"
Chris and Izzy had seen it coming as well and were running by the time the Sarge gave the order. But the flyer fired anyway, performing another ascending roll as an emerald comet hurtled towards the pair. It wasn't a plasma bolt. It was much too big for that, and too slow, but also so fast that Chris and Izzy barely managed to leap down into the empty pool. The comet landed where they'd stood, erupting into a spring of pressurized energies that spat flecks of polycrete across the patio.
Don took aim at their closest attacker and saw that it had already arced up and out of sight. Right then, its two wingmen flew in low over the parapet, their passage hitting his back with a gust of artificial wind. They zoomed across the patio before banking again to the left and right, splitting off and descending below their line of sight.
"Fox-6, 7!?" The Sarge called.
"Still here!" Izzy shouted, managing to grab at the side of the pool to pull herself up and out. Chris climbed out as well. Both of them were covered from head to toe in dust as they ran over to the east parapet and slid into cover with the rest of the squad.
"I thought they wouldn't risk explosives!?" Chris crowed.
Ray shrugged. "Guess the guys in the air don't care!"
"So what now!? Stay here or-"
"We can't fight them out in the open like this!" The Sarge looked around for a while before finally settling on the shattered glass walls of the penthouse on the southern side of the patio. "Fox-1 to Ferret-1, our position is too exposed! We're withdrawing for now, over!?"
Sergeant Major Eversman's voice replied with the fierce din of both human and alien gunfire in the background. "Do what you have to, Fox-1! Ferret out!"
"Alright, Foxtrot, we're leaving! Get to the rappels! I'll cov-"
The two flyers shot back into view over either end of the western parapet. Lowering their noses and then raising them up again allowed the craft to glide above the opposite side of the patio as they brought their cannons to bear.
Don twitched his launcher towards the one on the left and squeezed the trigger on reflex. So did Ray. The two flyers used the brief window to get off a short burst that forced everyone to throw themselves to the ground as bolts flashed all around them. But then the two grenades closed the gap, forcing the leftmost flyer to barrel up and away from Don's before he could detonate it. Ray's was too accurate however and detonated above its partner, smashing the front of the canopy and bringing the entire thing crashing onto the patio, the electromagnetic pulse wrapping it in a sizzling embrace. Judging by its burning wing, it just so happened to be the very same one they had managed to hit earlier, a fact the Sarge pounced on by loosing another rocket. There was no need for a lock-on this time. The fireball slammed into it, transforming it into an even larger ball of flames that cast burning debris across the roof. The explosion rapidly resolved, leaving behind only a skeleton of crumpled wreckage that was now a pyre to its own pilot.
"Move!" The Sarge yelled.
Foxtrot was up and running in less than a second. They bolted across the poolside, bounding for the high vault of the penthouse doorway and the welcoming darkness beyond. Don went in first and the others barreled after him into the disorderly remains of the living room. He swiveled around with Gad to provide cover.
The Sarge was less than a few steps from the threshold when a surge of plasma bolts landed around him. He leapt away into the shadow of the eastern parapet and clambered back behind its cover.
Above them, the third flyer was diving down from a higher elevation. It kept deepening its dive to drive the rain of bolts closer and closer to the Sarge, that is until Gad sent up a hastily launched rocket that, without a lock-on, only scared the pilot into another aileron roll. The M19 hissed through the loop left by its contrails, but by then the distraction had worked, and the Sarge was already through the door. He kept running and the rest of Foxtrot followed.
They batted aside hanging pieces of ceiling that got in their way and jumped over abscesses in the floor. Reaching the far side of the living room, they dashed around the circumference of a decorative table that served as the last obstacle between them and the nearest exit. There was no door in their path to stop them from piling onto the emergency staircase and rushing down its leaning course from one flight of stairs to the next.
The Sarge had left the last landing and run through the entrance to the 12th floor when the building shook around them, the unique sound of the green plasma munition echoing down from somewhere higher. The stairs trembled. The view out of the closest of the stairwell's busted windows darkened beneath a flash flood of debris that came showering down from somewhere above.
"They're trying to bring the whole thing down on top of us!" Izzy cried.
"Guess that's on us for thinking they wouldn't!" Gad grunted as the squad shadowed the Sarge into the first corridor of the 12th floor. They found him bracing himself against the passageway which, like everything else around them, was tilting ever so slightly to one side. Even the detritus from the many holes in the ceiling had fallen mostly to one side.
The Sarge planted a Nav point on a large windowsill at the opposite end of the corridor. There, they had secured their personal rappel lines to hardpoints preemptively fastened into a sturdy section of the passageway's wall. The squad started running again.
"Fox-3, once we get to the end, I want you to hunker down and provide cover!" The Sarge said. "Now's the best time for one of those flyers to take a crack at us!"
"Which means they probably won't be looking up!" Gad finished, a smile in his voice. "Roger that, sir! Fox-9!?"
Running in beside him, Don pulled the rectangular storage case from his back harness and handed it over. Gad stuffed it under his arm and pulled ahead, passing the Sarge and reaching the end of the passageway first before grabbing ahold of the wall and turning the corner, speeding off down a perpendicular corridor.
"We'll keep an eye out until you reach the ground!" The Sarge added as the rest of the squad descended upon the ropes.
Don took his time carefully weaving the line through the connective points around his BDU. He finished at the same time as everyone else. They moved to the windowsill, grabbed any handholds they could find and turned to Gad. The corporal had reached the end of the corridor and was bracing his back against a corner of the building's east wing. The ammunition container lay open and empty at his feet. Slamming his launcher's firing chamber shut, Gad took a long look through a line of shattered windows on the eastern wall.
There was a loud explosion somewhere further up the complex, echoing down to them with that same splashing resonance that Don had come to associate with heavy plasma weaponry.
Gad turned to them and signaled them on with a hastening wave.
The squad wasted no time throwing their legs over the windowsill, mindful of the bits of glass poking up from it. Hooking their limbs around, their boots found purchase on an exterior ledge and they pulled themselves completely outside, trading the dark interior of the building for the harsh sunlight.
Don hugged the wall and glanced down.
Save for a variety of half melted sedans, trucks and a handful of skeletonized public transports, the street below was clear.
It was another 11 stories or less than 40-meters to the bottom. It wasn't too much but it was also nothing to scoff at. Falling from here could still mean death.
Holding onto their lines, they waited until the Sarge gave them a nod. Then they pushed off the ledge and began their descent. Leaping down a full floor at a time, they used their brake lines to routinely bring themselves back down onto the walls of the building before bracing themselves for another jump.
Don was halfway to the bottom when a whirring noise reached his ear. Movement on his left caught his eye.
One of the flyers was slowly rounding the corner of the east wing like a shark idling over a reef. Its front angled down towards them and Don knew that they had been spotted. He released more slack than usual. So did the others, engaging in a controlled fall.
Two muffled thumps sounded overhead.
The flyer dove down after them.
The rockets were faster.
The first pounded down into its fuselage, punching the craft off course. As flames gushed from every seam like a ruptured pipe, the second rocket struck it in the flank, turning the flyer into a blazing rocket. Wreathed in flames, it jetted past the squad.
They pulled on their brake lines and arrested their falls. Behind them, the flyer struggled to pull out of its dive. It only barely managed to do so ahead of a violent touchdown as its belly scraped across the street in a spray of sparks, bulldozing car wrecks out of its way and sending a few flying. After a moment it rose up from the ground and made for an ascent that was just as quickly interrupted by a second explosion that erupted out of its side. The blast knocked it into an uncontrolled spin that sent it corkscrewing into an adjacent building. It disintegrated on impact into a burst of flames and fluttering wreckage that scythed a fiery rooster tail across several floors, carving a burning scar into the face of the already decaying structure.
After one last jump, Don felt his feet hit the ground. He breathed easier but not so easy as to relax. The others landed around him while he untethered himself. He detached his line and ran over to the wreckage of a car that had been left half parked on the sidewalk. With his M319 back in his hands, he scanned the skies for signs of more flyers. He also searched for any signs of Pelicans. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Force was due to arrive any minute. Though they were probably already inbound to the surface, he saw no trace of either friend or foe, only the columns of smoke that chimneyed up from different parts of Utgard.
Where were they?
Ray and the Sarge slipped in beside him. The former took the storage case off his harness and opened it on the ground. The Sarge took the pair of M19 rockets housed within, slammed them into his launcher's firing chamber and shut it. He spun around to scan the skies for himself through the weapon's scope.
"Fox-3, you're clear! Get moving!"
"Copy!"
A few moments later, Don spotted Gad swinging his boots out onto the ledge of the same window. From the very second that he started rappelling down the heights, the squad had their guns up in a watchful vigil of the surrounding skyline. Gad tried to cover as much ground as possible by leaping down further than usual and taking longer to use his brake line, hopping over two or three floors at a time before he came to a final stop on the sidewalk.
He finished untethering himself and made his way over, now minus his spent launcher. "Present!"
A loud CRACK resounded from the apartment complex behind them. A single but frighteningly large rift had snaked its way across its southern wall like a bolt of lightning and soon bled dust from the smaller cracks that began branching out from it.
"Come on!" The Sarge took the lead down the sidewalk. Ever watchful of the skies, the squad followed him to the end of the curb, the sounds of gunfire and additional explosions emanating from Parliament Street to their right as well as from Market Drive much further away to their left. They crossed over a patch of road that the recently slain flyer had cleared for them. There was another semi-sunken building waiting for them on the opposite side. It possessed a shady veranda as well as a hollowed-out interior beyond that might have once been a cafe. They didn't stop until they reached the bent and warped remnants of a railing which they vaulted over and hid behind.
"Fox-3." The Sarge tossed him his launcher.
Gad caught it and nodded.
"Hold here for a sec."
That was fine with Don. He could at least catch his breath for however long they got to stay in place.
He hadn't even finished that thought before two large silhouettes came rounding the apartment complex followed closely by two more. The quartet of hostile flyers banked around the east wing of the building and slowed above the road less than a hundred meters away.
"They brought back-up." Izzy hissed.
"She's only got two more left in her, sir." Gad said, gesturing to the launcher.
The Sarge looked at it, then at the slowly approaching flyers, then down at the building. "It might be enough."
"For what?"
"A distraction." The Sarge turned to him again. "Those cracks in the wall, think you can hit'em from here?"
Gad peered out to take a look for himself. "I don't see why not, but...would that do the trick?"
The Sarge shrugged. "If you can kill two birds with one stone..."
Gad nodded, raised his launcher and took careful aim. "Two stones it is."
Two quick trigger pulls sent the newest pair of fireballs racing out from the veranda and down the street, crossing it at a growing diagonal and finally hammering into the apartment's southern wall in twin blossoms of fire and percussion.
At first, nothing happened, nothing except the subtle change in direction that the flyers made after tracing the rockets back to their source. But then a tendril of smoke lunged from the point of impact, racing up across the floors of the west wing in a blink. Another lightninged up the south wing, spewing bits of aerosolized debris. Then with a rumble, the squad looked on as the structure began its downward plunge.
The partial tilt of its ruin caused its heights to cave in on itself, casting out tank-sized chunks of rubble from the hooked upper floors. One of them found its mark and crashed through one of the flyers with the force of a missile, exploding it into pieces. The three remaining craft quickly swerved away from the rest of the rubble that came cascading through the air. As the upper floors dipped into a rising tidal wave of smoke, the surviving trio flew off over a neighboring building and disappeared.
"Well," Gad threw his empty launcher away. "Two for one is better than none I guess."
With the wave of airborne rubble creeping ever closer, the Sarge got up. "Let's move. We'll link up with Ferret and resume from there."
They took off after him down the length of the veranda and out onto the road which carried on westward for a while then terminated at a T-junction against the wall of another residential building, splitting into two roads going north and south.
The Sarge planted a new Nav point on the north road. The route would take them back out beside the Harvest Ministry of Works and Agriculture Building and to the relative safety of Ferret's position. Behind them, the meters high debris cloud continued to surge forward. They were faster than it but just barely.
"Think they've finished up by now?" Chris asked, fighting to keep his breathing steady.
"Maybe." The Sarge replied. "I haven't heard much from Parliament Street. Everyone's too busy looking up right now."
"What about the 31st?" Gad asked. "How much longer?"
"One minute."
The news gave a much-needed boost to Don's flagging stamina. He could survive one more minute. More encouraging was the sight of the road's northbound exit getting closer and closer. He pushed past the exhaustion clawing at his legs and picked up the pace with everyone else.
Reaching the exit, the squad had nearly rounded the corner when their steps died away.
Two things happened at once.
Don's ears picked up on a strange warbling noise as his eyes found its origin, landing on the bulbous girth of an enemy tank hovering straight towards them. It was no more than a few meters away, so close that he found himself staring down the barrel of the strange weapon on its back. The tank saw them as well. It came to a jarring stop, already so close that it almost ran over Chris.
It didn't open fire.
Frantic, Don made eye contact with the Gasser behind the turret. The alien perked up and a split-second race ensued, Don bringing his M319 to bear as the creature started pulling its plasma cannon towards them. He fired first but his aim was too low and the grenade bounced off the road into the tank, detonating against its hull and bringing it crunching into the ground in an electric paralysis. The Gasser, however, was unaffected and continued to swing its weapon at the squad.
Ray reacted in time to fire off a grenade of his own which flew high enough over the road to detonate above the turret, ripping into the gunner in a spray of blood. The Gasser collapsed onto its weapon with half of its face shorn away.
"Back!" The Sarge yelled. "Go back, southside exit! Go!"
The squad pivoted away and ran for the other side of the T-junction. As he turned, Don glimpsed a storm of rockets racing out from the roof of the Ministry of Works and Agriculture as an incoming flyer lobbed a green comet in exchange. Then he was running, pounding his feet into the ground faster than he had before.
In their wake, the momentarily paralyzed tank sat as a sleeping giant while to their left, the onrushing debris cloud was less than a few meters away and closing fast.
Ahead of them, the road forged a path through a ruinous aisle of clustered governmental department buildings, at the very end of which stood the bones of a stately-looking courthouse with an accompanying plaza set in front of it.
The squad cleared the junction a heartbeat before the tide of debris flowed over it and swept upwards against the wall of the residential building.
Izzy looked back. "Is it still on us!?"
Don glanced back as well. The encroaching devastation was beginning to settle into a vaporous smokescreen, reaching more and more skyward as it seeped onto their street, thankfully at a much slower pace.
"I don't see any-"
He heard it then, an odd noise that sounded like a giant inhalation, a deep mechanical gasp.
A blue illumination appeared within the haze, brightened and broke through the vapor as an imposing comet of roiling blue energy. It arced high into the air, its passage giving off a moan that heightened with its rise and lowered with its descent.
"Break off!" The Sarge barked.
The squad split off, running to the left and right, dashing for cover behind the husks of cars and chunks of rubble. Don hurdled over an upside-down truck, slinked behind the safety of its trunk and watched.
The ball of energy touched down less than ten meters away with explosive force, a shockwave of air punching him in the face as a cerulean emission spewed a shower of debris across the area. It instantly dimmed into a breath of blue condensation that fizzled out. Left in its place was an ember-filled crater in the middle of the road that was easily the size of a Warthog.
It was more like a mortar than a tank shell.
"Keep moving!" The Sarge yelled.
The squad got up and resumed running but remained preemptively spread out. Don kept looking back, checking for signs of movement. The EMP effect had obviously worn off and there was no telling what other weapon platforms the tank might possess. Now at least he had some idea as to why it hadn't fired on them first. With a main weapon like that, it would have probably crippled itself as much as it would have killed them.
After a second glance, he spotted a massive silhouette growing larger and larger in the smoke. It soon broke through, the debris cloud parting like a curtain before the hovering advance of the tank. Behind it was another shadow of roughly the same size.
The floral weapon on its rear tilted back. It made that same mechanical gasp as it spat out a giant wad of plasma that hurtled down the street.
Sticking to the ruins of a sidewalk, Don heard two more gasps.
Two more balls of plasma pierced through the smoke in arching vectors that mirrored the first.
Three tanks.
He didn't have any time to process that.
The wailing fireballs of volatile ordnance were already beginning to descend like falling stars. The first one touched down on a car wreck not far behind Gad, devouring its rear half and kicking its flaming remnants into a forward spiral. Gad jumped out of the way just as it cartwheeled past and slammed into the back of a burnt-out truck.
The second mortar struck well behind the squad.
The third, however, soared high above, shifting the shadows of everything below as it overtook them and crashed into a truck further ahead, turning it into a vehicular grenade. Pieces of it smashed and stabbed into everything nearby. A leg-sized fragment of fender knifed into a car wreck beside the Sarge with a rattling impact, having missed the chance to impale him by less than a second.
The squad kept running, heedless of anything save for the sounds of a new barrage echoing from their pursers.
Don was so focused on running that he almost missed the crackle of a voice coming over the battalion's comms. It was Colonel Heath.
"Alpha, Bravo, Delta and Echo personnel, be advised, our reinforcements have arrived! I repeat, our reinforcements have arrived! Just hold out a-"
Something like a giant fist punched Don in the back, launching him off his feet and onto his stomach, winding him. He slid over the ground. As he did, he felt small objects pinging off his armor. He hit something hard headfirst that immediately killed his momentum.
His ears rang.
He could hear voices, some of them calling to him, but they were too faint to understand.
Run.
He needed to run.
The thought alone seemed to make him aware of the fact that his legs were numb.
Numbness was good. It meant they were still there.
He blinked the stars out of his vision, sucked in a few ragged breaths and mustered enough strength to push himself onto his back. There was a small crack in his visor, a new one that had now added itself to his collection. Dirt and pieces of debris rained down around him. Despite that, he saw past the hail of dust to the spectacle playing out overhead.
The skies above Utgard were full of both Pelican and Albatross dropships. They were descending across the city in the dozens, whole migratory flocks of UNSC airpower that were flying on towards different sectors of the municipality. Far above them but getting closer, arrowhead shaped squadrons of returning Longswords tore long contrails across the higher altitudes, spearing through the brown folds of the clouds on their way to their latest fire missions.
A wave of relief washed over him.
Two things happened simultaneously.
One of the blue comets obscured his view as the Sarge skidded to a stop beside him to grab him by the arm. Don snapped out of it and grabbed onto him as well, making it easier for his squad leader to maneuver him into a fireman's carry. Now draped over his shoulders, he held on as the Sarge pushed off and started running again.
Barely several meters behind them, the plasma mortar landed just short of the blast crater near the spot where he'd fallen. The pressure wave still caught them. The Sarge stumbled forward but regained his balance at the last second. He kept going, though not as fast as the others who it seemed had stopped to cover him. Seeing this, the rest of the squad slowed down to match their pace with his.
A turn of his head brought everything into perspective for Don. Three enemy tanks were now clear of the smoke and were floating in a leisurely manner down the road. They were still a long way off. However, they took turns discharging their main batteries so that there was never a moment where something wasn't flying in Foxtrot's direction.
He tried to reach for his grenade launcher and discovered with a newfound sense of panic that it was no longer on him.
Knowing he was useless without it; he turned the other way to look ahead.
They still had another 50-meters to go before they reached the plaza.
It was at that very moment that the three flyers from before chose to swing around a building at the mouth of the plaza. They flew down towards the end of the road, cutting off their escape. Two of them engaged their plasma cannons while the more elevated third lobbed one of the green fireballs that seemed small in comparison to the mortars.
"Scatter!" The Sarge shouted.
Luckily, they had reached a set of government buildings with columned verandas that gave them somewhere to hide. Slanted waterfalls of plasma bolts pocked the ground around them as they scrambled off the road and into the shadows of the verandas. The Sarge made his way through a gap in a fence of crumpled railings and braced himself against a column. Don saw Ray dash through the same gap and toss himself behind a nearby support.
An emerald blast in the center of the road signaled where the airborne explosive found its mark or lack thereof. Two plasma mortars struck down on either side of it, the resulting detonations dwarfing it in size and shaking the ground.
On the other side of the street, Gad, Chris and Izzy had settled behind the columned refuge of the neighboring veranda.
"What do we do now, Sarge!?" Ray asked, struggling to track the aircraft that had finally closed the distance.
Don couldn't see the flyers themselves, only their shadows which roved over the road as well as the surrounding buildings like glutted flies buzzing unhurriedly over a corpse. They could afford to. With the loudening whine of the tanks drawing nearer and nearer, there was no going forward or backward.
They were trapped.
Don knew it and he could tell the Sarge knew it too, which was why he was delaying to answer Ray's question. The three of them looked out past the columns for any answer that might present itself. The one thing that did was a single flyer that had spotted them and began swooping down towards them.
Don reached for a pistol that he knew he didn't have, but that didn't stop a sudden squall of lead from blitzing into the roadway. Without warning, the high-powered bullet storm transformed the flyer into a puff of flames and burning metal. Across the way, a second flyer flew apart and erupted in the ballistic blizzard. The last surviving flyer twirled up into the air and soared off speedily into the east.
A new noise replaced the whirring of the alien craft and the warbling of the tanks. It was a familiar sound, the throaty roar of fusion drives. They quickly turned into a stabilizing whine that came seemingly from nowhere and everywhere.
A man's voice, one Don didn't recognize, spoke into their comms, calm yet direct. "ODSTs, this is the Marines. I've got a bird's eye view of your position. Start making your way south to the courthouse plaza. We'll cover you."
Ray looked over at the Sarge who in turn looked to the courthouse.
"Guess that's our backup." Ray noted.
The Sarge nodded. "Let's not keep them waiting. Foxtrot, move out. Stick to cover."
They got moving once again. Sticking to the shade, they rushed down the lengths of the opposing verandas before coming back out into the open.
In front of them, the plaza was no longer empty. It was filled with the shadows cast by six Pelicans that now loomed above it. Two of them hovered over the mouth of the street's southward end. Their M370 autocannons unloaded fully automatic fire on the enemy tanks, laying down more than enough of a suppressive screen for the squad to move unmolested. The other four Pelicans were slowly descending towards the corners of the plaza, each of them carrying a Scorpion tank secured to the underside of their tails by the hardpoints on their cannon's rearward housing. As the Pelicans halted in a low hover, they released the Scorpions one after the other. Their treads bobbed as they hit the ground and started rolling shortly after. While the friendly armor moved to orient themselves towards the street, the Pelicans settled fully onto their outstretched landing struts and lowered their ramps to the ground. Fresh Marines poured out of their open cargo bays with rifles in hand. They were whole platoons that jogged out from the dropships and onto the plaza. There, they split into their squads and dispersed across the area, some heading towards the buildings, some towards the courthouse, some ferrying machine guns, some carrying crates and other equipment.
Beyond them, Don could see several more similarly sized groups of Pelicans lowering themselves across Utgard, and that was just in the south, and even then, that was just as far as he could see.
The 31st MEF had finally arrived.
Don felt another wave of relief coming on that experience had taught him to resist until he was absolutely certain it was warranted. For a moment, his mind drifted to what he knew of his ancestor, Lloyd Garrison, an American paratrooper who had jumped into Normandy, France during what history would forever remember as the second world war. He wondered if this is what it was like for him, if this is what he felt when the backup from the beaches finally reached his position. That was a different kind of war, however. Those events also happened a little more than a year shy of the end of said war, and the one Don was fighting now was only just getting started.
A loud BOOM murdered whatever sense of peace had begun to settle in. More of them soon followed.
Don could both see and feel the 90-millimeter tungsten shells flashing a mere meter or so above them. The squad had gathered back together and were keeping their heads low to put a safer distance between them and the outgoing barrage.
The Scorpions had rounded the plaza and rendezvoused at the mouth of the road where they were using the nearby buildings for cover. Their smooth-bore high-velocity cannons fired in a coughing choir so that not even half a second would go by without the thunderclap of an outbound shell.
As the squad passed into the shadows of the overhanging Pelicans, Don took the opportunity to watch the enemy tanks react to their change of fate. Except they weren't reacting. They were dying.
The lead tank was already a sparking bonfire that had collapsed onto the middle of the road. Behind it, the second tank was also burning. Still with some life left in it, it managed to launch one last mortar before a shell blew its main weapon to pieces. Another pounded on its hull, igniting whatever was inside in an explosion that briefly stole it from sight. The flames billowed up into a hellish fountain that quickly became engulfed in smoke. The last tank was being bullied by shell after shell, getting pummeled all around as it desperately tried to turn away for a last-minute escape. One of the tanks rewarded it for turning its back on them with a shell straight to the exhaust port. The ensuing blast flowered out of its belly, bursting away everything from armor plating to stabilizer wings. The dismembered and disemboweled remains crunched into the ground, its lights flickering and dying.
The last plasma mortar landed well short of Foxtrot and far shorter of the victorious Scorpions who began advancing in pairs onto the street.
One of the gunners behind their turrets waved at them.
Another one, a woman flashed them a playful smile. "Thanks for baiting them in for us, Helljumpers! Go get some rest!"
"Who're you tellin'." Izzy murmured, stopping to put her hands to her knees in a deep exhale.
The rest of the squad stopped as well to catch their breath.
"Think you've got your sea legs back by now, Fox-9?" The Sarge asked.
"Yeah," Don said. "I'd say so."
With a grunt, the Sarge lowered him down. Don got his footing and almost immediately lost it.
The Sarge had to grab him and wrap one of his arms back around his shoulder. "You good?"
Don shook his head. "Still a little numb."
"We'll have a corpsman check you out."
Above them, one of the two Pelicans guarding the road made a starboard turn. It swung around and flew on, hovering down towards the edge of the plaza. They watched it land a short walk away and open its cargo bay.
"On me." At the Sarge's ushering, Don willed his feet to move despite the worst case of pins and needles he'd ever experienced beginning to prickle his soles with each step.
Foxtrot walked, and in Don's case, limped towards the landed dropship.
As they neared it, the platoon of Marines within had mostly rushed outside and were spreading out to secure the perimeter. More than a few of them paused to eye the Helljumpers as they approached. Don didn't blame them. Virtually the whole squad was covered in dust and soot as well as splashes of blood, some of it human, most of it alien, none of it theirs. However, the wide-eyed stares from some of the more seasoned looking jarheads reinforced the growing suspicion for Don that they had just survived something they hadn't been expected to, something far out of the norm. And they had. Even he was surprised to notice how surprised he himself was at the fact that he was still alive, a reality that hadn't quite sunken in until the squad had come to a stop near the Pelican's rear ramp.
The last Marines were walking out, or so he thought before he spotted the man coming behind them, the barrel of his MA5B resting against his shoulder as casually as an umbrella.
Don sized him up, figuring that he was a sergeant long before he saw the rank insignia on his shoulder pauldrons to confirm it.
He had a square face with brown hair that had been thoroughly buzzed down. A mane of well-kept stubble fringed the edge of his jaw and bled down into a goatee. A long scar ran over the right side of his face, stopping at his lips which had already curved into a smile. It was clear by his bearing that he was a hardened Marine, and yet unlike most of the Corps' veteran sergeants, the smile actually reached his eyes. As deep-set as they were, their gaze gave off the impression that he was genuinely pleased to see them as well as the sense that he wasn't that old, perhaps even the same age as the Sarge.
For a moment, Don almost forgot who was welcoming who.
The sergeant strode down the ramp to meet them. "I saw you guys as we were coming in. Figured we should lend a hand since you already did most of the legwork for us."
Sure enough, it was the same voice Don remembered hearing over the comms.
The Sarge gave a huffing laugh. "If by lending a hand you mean killing everything trying to kill us, I'll take it."
The man nodded. "You scratch our back, we scratch yours." He gestured past them to the road. "Looks like the job's already half done though, at least the hard half. If you Helljumpers want, you can take it easy here for a bit. We'll move out to secure this sector while you rest and reload."
"You got a corpsman on you by any chance?" Don asked, smirking pleadingly through his visor.
"Always." The sergeant tilted his head over to a spot where several Marines were taking out medical equipment from a few crates set beside the ruins of a pavilion, forming the beginnings of an aid station.
"Grazie."
"Perfect." The Sarge held out a hand. "Thanks for the help-, ugh..."
"Forge." The man said, grasping his hand in his own with a firm shake. "Sergeant Forge."
The Sarge nodded. "Sergeant Iris."
"Nice to meet you guys." Forge looked at something behind them. "I'll let you take a load off. I've gotta go handle a few of my boys."
"Be seeing you, sergeant." Ray said, tipping his helmet to him as Forge walked off, a gesture the sergeant returned before shouting off orders to a group of Marines near the edge of the plaza.
Chris looked around. "So..."
"You heard him." The Sarge said, helping Don to turn so that he could support him in limping towards the corpsmen. "Rest and reload. I'll check in with everyone else. If all goes well, we'll link up in another hour or so. Until then,"
With some more help, Don rested himself on a tri-fold mat which the nearest corpsman, stunned at their sudden arrival, had only just laid out. The medical specialist turned to the Sarge who in turn looked at the others with a shrug.
"Let's just take it easy. We've more than earned it."
Bellum Novum - The New War