Chapter 65 – Vallis Umbrae
June 1st, 2526 - (12:55 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Indi System, Harvest
Edda, Gladsheim
(26 Years Ago)
:********:
The outskirts of Gladsheim were once host to an expansive landscape of trellised vineyards that served as the heart of the town's small-scale wine industry. Wherever the terrain was flat, it was mostly covered with rows upon rows of burned down grape vines and pieces of wood. They might have otherwise given off the impression of an atomized civilization had Don not been briefed on what to expect of the region.
To the south of the town, the Plains of Ida melded with a long cluster of tall hills that acted as a miniature mountain range. They were sporadically covered with patches of burnt trees that looked like they once comprised a thick layer of forestry. Don could see that some of those trees still shared the remains of a canopy, a few clumps of blackened leaves that had somehow found a way to hang onto their branches. It made the whole area seem spotty, like some pyromaniac's arson left unfinished. They dotted much of the scenery which curved towards the westward end of the city in a two-kilometer-long arc before leveling off.
Both 1st and 4th Platoons were heading straight for it, making for a gap near its eastern end. Racing down the remnants of an old dirt road that curved away to the southwest of the outskirts, the convoy passed along a scattered chain of minor enclaves that were once homesteads. Some had enough structural materials left behind that the boxy shapes of individual farmhouses and the cylindrical husks of grain silos could still be made out, as well as the decorative chimneys of decimated households. Their front lawns were almost uniformly divided into square and rectangular plots of burnt crops and clusters of solar panels, both typically separated from one another by the lengthy residuals of traditional wooden fences.
More often than not, Don spotted deep blast craters at the epicenter of the destruction, craters so large that they couldn't be the work of a single energy mortar. He couldn't help thinking that the Covenant had so much contempt for the planet that they might have used their own ships to destroy the homesteads from orbit, taking it one spiteful bombardment at a time.
Could they really hate them that much?
He had memorized much of the area from the information they received during the pre-mission briefing. It wasn't necessary for navigating, but he could tell how close they were getting to their objective by remembering each homestead's name, that being the name of the family who used to live there. There were the Bunches, the Gibsons, the Collins, the Shuemakes and many more.
At the moment, the convoy was shooting single file down a stretch of the road that passed along the edge of a particularly devastated property. Off to their left, past the crumpled bits of a fence, an explosive force had gouged a cavernous hole in the ground, exposing a series of pipes and concrete works that reached out of the soil like the roots of a dead weed. Beside the abscess, plots of crops were withered into almost unrecognizable patches of carbonized matter. The solar panels hadn't fared much better, having been reduced to aisles of shattered glass and metal that glinted in the sunlight. It was the last homestead in the neighborhood, and by that fact alone, Don could confirm that it was owned by the family who lived on the very edge of Gladsheim, the Jenkins Family.
The last homestead fell behind them just as quickly as it had appeared. All that remained ahead was the face of a barren landscape. That and the mild incline of the road which curved slightly leftward towards the gap in the hills.
The decimated homes weren't their only means of telling how close they were to their destination.
One was a triangular NAV point whose range of '500 meters' was rapidly diminishing.
Another set of assisting factors were the bursts of blue and emerald bolts that were chimneying skyward towards the air battle overhead. The bright, intermittent chains of munitions were the same size as those launched by their flyers, albeit in a far more worrisome abundance. They were gushing upward like a series of inverted meteor showers. Don had never seen that type of ordnance being fired from the ground. Whatever their source, by gauging the number of distinct bursts rocketing into the air, he estimated that there had to be at least 12 at a minimum, all of which were relatively close together somewhere beyond the first hills.
"I don't like the look of that." Chris commented.
"You don't like the look of anything." Izzy shot back.
He shrugged. "Can you blame me?"
"Honestly...no."
Don firmly agreed. He couldn't shake the gut feeling that they were walking, or rather driving, into another situation like the one they had encountered at the maglev station. He hated the thought that there could be more of those walker things lurking around the bend. He wasn't sure what troubled him more, the idea that said walkers might be a common part of the Covenant's ground-based arsenal or the very real possibility that they might not even be the largest.
"Heads up, troopers." Captain Reaver comm'd. "We're closing in on the gun. We know it'll have backup. The fleet is still out of range and the Flyboys are mostly staying away from the area, so the main site is a secondary priority. Focus on the smaller AA and any response forces. It goes without saying, kill anything and everything that decides to take a shot at us. After that, we'll be free to mop up everything else."
"Sounds good to me." Gad noted over squad comms. "But what if everything ends up shooting at us?"
"Simple." The Sarge stated. "Shoot back and hope for the best."
"And what's the best?"
"That they're God-awful shots."
"That walker was cooking us from a distance just fine." Chris pointed out.
"I said hope, didn't I?"
Don wasn't too sold on luxuries like hope where the Covenant were concerned. He waited and watched with bated breath as the convoy crested the last of the incline and righted into the wider space of the gap, a pass between the two nearest hills. They snaked down the dirt path and were engulfed one vehicle at a time within the shade of the opposing landforms.
"Yea though I drive through the valley of the shadow of death," Ray mumbled. "I will fear no evil, for the highest bidder is with me. Thy rifle and thy high caliber, they comfort me. Thou preparest a payload before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with blood, my kill count runneth over. Surely ruthlessness and cruelty shall enable me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the legends of the 105th forever."
As Don tracked the upper reaches of the hills, watching the occasional upwelling of Covenant anti-aircraft fire, Ray turned his head to face the rest of them. "Here ends the benediction."
"Thanks for the good word, reverend." Foss said from the sergeant major's Rocket Hog.
"Don't thank me, thank the Lord."
"I'll thank him for a whole lot more if he actually helps us through the rest of this."
"Taste and see, Doc. Taste and see."
"What does that mean?"
"Ask," Ray slowly swiveled the triple barrels of his M41 towards the approaching end of the pass, yanking back the charging handle to clear a spent casing with a sharp clack. "...And expect."
Seeing no movement within the ruined tree lines that sat atop the hills, Don turned his turret in the same direction.
The mouth of the pass grew larger until he could see what was waiting for them on the other side.
Further on, the miniature mountain range that they had entered dipped down steeply in some places and gently in others but declined altogether into a wide valley some 200-meters below. It was a half kilometer's distance between their side of it and the other, the adjacent slopes of both draped with the blackened skeletons of a forest. At the bottom of the valley, closer towards its eastward end, the neighborhood of parallel hills tapered off and shrunk away into the flatness of the Ida. There, a collection of dead trees ringed an old clearing that looked expansive enough to support a small village. Instead of a village, however, there was a cluster of structures and objects that definitely hadn't been there when Harvest was still a colony.
The largest structure sat, or perhaps squatted, at the center of the cluster. It looked like a giant purple squid perched atop a round dais, a platform that served as some kind of support base. Three architectural struts clamped around the base like a claw, allowing the larger construction to sit on top. At a different angle, the construct looked closer to a creature with a long, parted beak pointing skyward. At close to 50 meters tall, it was obviously the primary anti-aircraft installation that they had come to destroy, but it wasn't alone.
Its support base was surrounded by three well-spaced layers of the Covenant's leaf-shaped defense barriers that encircled it in an interlocking perimeter. Set within various gaps across the lines of barriers were four emplacements that appeared to be a new variant of those they had encountered on the charge into Gladsheim. The most obvious difference was that their gunners' seats were encased in a bubble of blue energy, perhaps a form of protective shielding.
On the outer periphery of the clearing were four more of the small emplacements manning commanding positions at the end of several forest paths, keeping watch over the wider area.
Whether near the main installation or further away, most of them were firing girthy bolts of azure plasma that flew high into the air before detonating, sometimes coming dangerously close to catching UNSC aircraft that happened to be passing by.
The expanse of ashen ground between the outermost turrets and the first ring of barriers was so spacious that the quartet of enemy tanks dispersed throughout it seemed small by proxy. These weren't like the others they had seen so far. Instead of a purplish-blue color scheme, they shared a red-crimson hue that bordered on a shiny bronze. The biggest difference, however, was the weapon platforms on their backs. Rather than the flower petal-shaped energy mortars from before, they hefted a two-headed prong, both sides of which supported a clustered trio of tubes that were placed two above and one below. They reminded Don of some of the pictures he'd seen of humanity's earliest self-propelled anti-aircraft weapons, and it was clear that what he was seeing here was the Covenant's take on the same principle. Each tank was facing in its own direction around the main AA battery, firing off the same bursts of heavy green bolts that he'd seen from afar.
By the time he had taken everything in, the convoy was already halfway down the natural rampway that curved leftward down the slope, ending at the western edge of the clearing.
The increasing amount of room on the path allowed their vehicles to move in pairs. The steepening decline caused them to pick up speed with every second of the descent, their wheels whirring into a blur of motion as they kicked up dust trails that those coming behind were quick to pierce. Before long, they were a serpent of churning soot that was slithering down the hillside at full speed.
Being close to the middle of the convoy, Don felt the moment that his Warthog bounded onto level ground. He saw the instant that the closest of the emplacements, the one sitting at the end of their route, began rotating its watchful barrels from the sky towards the ground. Several shots from the leading Gauss Hogs pounded its protection, the fourth spearing through shielding and gunner in a spray of flaming guts and glittering debris.
The convoy zipped past the wreckage and charged into the clearing, its matching pairs splitting off from one another to form two arcing lines that tore their way forward in a widening, onrushing pincer. As they did, every gun opened fire.
An eddying barrage of tracers surged into the outer emplacements, rockets flitting into the sides of the closest tanks as both groups struggled to round on the new threats now maneuvering between them.
Ahead, Don saw Ray pouring hot lead across the turning bulk of the northside tank until it sparked off the shields of the surprised Gator behind the cannon. He wheeled his own turret to the left to keep his reticle trained on the nearest emplacement as he drilled into it with everything he had. The energy bubble around it brightened to a white shine before popping, but by that point it was already shooting back, draining a long burst of oversized blue plasma bolts that whizzed behind his Warthog in a trailing sweep. He felt them both, the heat of bolts meant for shooting down aircraft wisping less than a meter behind him and the heat of the steaming casings jetting out of his M41 in reply. His target's metal hide glittered from his outgoing fire even while it kept trying to track him, entirely unaware of his role as a decoy until it was too late. The muffled hisses of an M79 went off nearby and less than a second later a salvo of rockets soared across his line of sight. They crashed against the emplacement in a series of flickering shockwaves that blew the ball mount clear of its baseplate, sending the gunner's upper half spinning into the desolate tree line.
He whipped his turret around to catch the closest tank as it came up on his right. The Gator behind the plasma cannon was already sprawled over it, having been reduced to a bullet sponge by Ray. With the vehicle's main armaments still trying to angle down, Don used the free drive-by to tear into its hull. Just as the Sarge was about to gun past it, the tank completed its turn and suddenly lunged forward. The Sarge stomped on the accelerator and sped far enough ahead for it to graze their rear in a splatter of sparks.
Don kept tracking it while he recovered from the impact, his reticle panning across its frame in a line of glimmering hits that soon began dancing around the rim of the exhaust port. The tank pressed on, the thrusters of its rear fins carrying it like an enraged bull towards Ferret's Rocket Hogs, forcing one to hit the brakes as the other swerved aside, clearing the way for the larger vehicle to dart back into the open. The last of its momentum allowed it to swing into a rotation that pulled the exhaust port out of Don's sights.
The tank finished whirling around, its weapon platforms fully leveling on them and opening fire. The launchers bucked in rhythm with each of the large green bolts that they sent in their direction. The nearby Rocket Hogs scrambled away before the trail of explosives hurtled between them one after the next, streaking into the ground in sonorous touchdowns that slapped them with concussive force.
The Sarge and Gad raced both of Foxtrot's Hogs along the edge of the approaching firestorm, only to come face to face with the eastern tank as it completed its own turn. Its launchers lobbed a flurry of bolts at them.
The two of them swerved to the left and right, letting the bolts race by in a cascade of near misses that failed to catch either vehicle. Don and Ray meanwhile were of the same mind in realigning their M41s to keep their barrels spooling at the latest newcomer, specifically at the Gator behind its cannon. The alien returned the favor despite its flaring shields, loosing a line of rapid-fire plasma that glanced off Gad's rear wheels.
Don's long tirade fell to a stutter as the Sarge fishtailed away from the other tank's approaching salvo, each impact creating a green geyser that sprung up behind them, growing closer one after the other. The last one landed so close that it briefly lifted their back wheels and spat dirt in Don's visor. He shook it clear just as the wheels touched down again, almost jarring him off the gun. He regained his grip and returned fire on the Gator whose steady stream of outgoing was now stitching a path of billowing dust after him, giving chase. Right then, Ray's attentions locked onto it as well. Together, they put on enough pressure to pop its shields and leave its torso vibrating to the tempo of their guns, shredding it into a sprinkler of blue gore.
Don held fast against another fishtailing turn from the Sarge, whirling them back around on a rooster tail of ash that ended with them charging again at the eastern tank. Their quarry was already turning to greet them, but Chris lobbed a 40-millimeter grenade that sailed across the open ground to detonate against its hull. Webs of electromagnetic energy surged over its bulk like a net and brought the entire thing crashing down to the soil in a puff of embers.
Simultaneously, a wave of rockets washed over the back of the northern tank in an explosive tempest that briefly swallowed it beneath a veil of light and smoke. The vehicle made a turn to the right to try to address its assailants. Ferret's Rocket Hogs were bearing down on it in a side-by-side frontal assault.
"Fox-3!" The Sarge comm'd. "Figure eight, six o'clock! Let's go!"
"Copy!"
The Sarge peeled to the right while Gad wheeled about and hit the accelerator, eliciting a screech of engines as the two Hogs closed in on their paralyzed target from both sides. Within meters of it, the Sarge coaxed more speed out of the accelerator while Gad hit the brakes, allowing the first Hog to fly into the tank's unguarded flank. Don was clued in enough to pour a strong broadside into its exhaust port, causing spurts of flames to issue out from the rim. He eased off the triggers once he'd made the pass in order to let Gad zoom by. Ray tore into its exhaust port even more so that a flare of electricity vented from the opening. As they rushed away to safety, Izzy fired off another grenade at the vehicle that flew over its weapon platforms to detonate just above the tank, lengthening the EMP effect.
The squad split off again, driving a short distance away before swinging around for the second pass. Don resumed firing with Ray. Together they riddled either side of it with a continuous stream of incoming that sparked off its flanks and punctured its hide. More flames burst out across its hull. Another second of sustained fire birthed a pressurized inferno that blasted through its upper compartment, chucking its weapon systems into the air in smoking spirals. A secondary blast scythed through its hull in an ejection of green energies and semi-vaporized metals. The tank stayed down, dead and silent save for the hissing steam wafting from the inferno of its chassis.
The two Hogs slowed down on their approach to the wreck, giving Don a chance to peer off to their left at the exact moment that the northern tank went up in flames. A chunk of the gunner's post twirled aside on tendrils of fumes as the last dregs of a rocket barrage slammed against its burning hull. Squad Ferret drove around the debris field, the barrels of their M79s still smoking.
"Ferret-1 to Fox-1!" Eversman called. "On me! Let's check on 4-Actual's side!"
"Roger!" The Sarge replied, prompting Gad to pivot around with him. They abandoned their latest kill and slipped behind Squad Ferret in a wide circling maneuver. Squad Frost's two Hogs were already ahead of them. The Gauss cannon on the lead vehicle was pummeling another of the outer emplacements that hadn't gotten its bearings in time. Beside it, its partner in crime used its M41 to whittle away at another emplacement nestled among the passing defense barriers.
Acting on the same impulse, Don and Ray joined in on the latter target, heaping so much amalgamating fire that its shielding collapsed. The gust of 7.62 ripped the Gasser apart before it even got to lower its gun to the ground. It vanished in the follow-up blast that kicked the empty ball mount into a flaming cartwheel.
A final accelerated round splintered its counterpart into a ball of light and a hail of fragments.
The platoon pushed on to the south side of the perimeter to find the nearest of the two enemy tanks there sitting as no more than a blaze of metal. Further away, the last tank was being harassed on every side by a crisscross of Warthogs that zipped around it before it could respond to any single one of them. It was bleeding electrified vapors from multiple holes that had been punched through its armor. It began rotating while trying its hand at a long-winded salvo that hosed the ground around it in a fanning motion. Its attackers steered clear, dispersing to get some distance until the last of the explosives had churned up the soil, enabling them to return to their passing strikes like flies on a corpse. Perhaps seeing no other option, the tank boosted forward in a bid to break through the mobile blockade, almost knocking into a Rocket Hog that then launched a barrage into the vehicle's side. The consecutive side jabs ended in a bright termination that blew out of its flank, channeling back to belch through its exhaust port before blooming into a green flash that gutted it from stem to stern. The last of the thrusters winked out and the combusting mass crashed down to the ground.
Across the southern perimeter, the Warthogs slowed down around their latest kill like a pride of lions around fallen prey.
Don looked around just to make sure of his surroundings. So far as he could tell, every emplacement within the vicinity had been reduced to smoking base plates and decapitated ball mounts. Their gunners, what remained of them, lay both near and far, wherever fate and UNSC-issued ordnance had cast them during the assault.
"That's phase one, troopers!" Captain Reaver said, eyeing the carnage of the final tank. "1st, split yourselves up along the north, west and eastern approach! Hotel, you stay here on the south! Hurricane, Hacksaw, dismount! We're clearing that AA! Let's go!"
Captain Reaver jumped out from behind the wheel of his Hog, drew his rifle and jogged towards the line of defense barriers. The troopers of Squads Hurricane and Hacksaw also jumped out of their seats or down from their guns to the dirt. They pulled out their weapons and fell in behind him, moving through a gap leading to the ramped, hexagonal opening in the installation's support base.
Don didn't get to see what lay beyond as 1st Platoon pulled off past the mostly abandoned Warthogs of 4th Platoon.
"Ferret, we'll watch the west road!" Eversman ordered. "Foxtrot, you've got north! Frost, east! Eyes on the skies everyone! The Covenant aren't going to miss one of their heavy hitters going offline! Stay sharp!"
They circumnavigated the edge of the defense barriers back towards the west side. There Ferret's two Rocket Hogs drew themselves away to slow down at the mouth of the same road they had used to reach the objective. Foxtrot continued to the north and pulled aside, slowing down just enough to give Frost the space to pass them by on their way to the eastern perimeter.
The Sarge and Gad came to a complete stop with their hoods facing the wood line. They had placed about 30 meters of space between themselves. The more the merrier, Don knew. With the fiasco that was playing out high above them, they were better off not presenting an even juicier target to any passerby that might happen to take notice of the situation on the ground.
Overhead, he caught the end of a vicious dogfight in the north that saw a Longsword with flames on its starboard wing launch a single missile at a fleeing enemy fighter, one that was struggling to fly off with the sheer abundance of conflagrations wafting from its frame. The ASGM climbed along its flight path at top speed before meeting the fighter's rear in a crimson flash that morphed into a forward thrust of cerulean flames and tumbling scrap. The victorious Longsword flew over the diminishing debris cloud and soared above them unmolested, dragging the echo of its drives across the hills.
With the smaller sources of anti-aircraft fire eliminated, there was no longer any need for friendly aircraft to fear getting shot down in the area. He peered further off, past the hills in the direction of Gladsheim's northern outskirts. There were no more of those green and blue bolts flitting into the airspace there either. It appeared, at least for the most part, that Major Bowman as well as 2nd and 5th Platoons had taken care of the lesser AA on their side of the operation.
The only source of ground-to-air fire originated from deeper into the town's western limits. The last 'ship killer' would be there, Don knew, but that wasn't his job. It wasn't Bravo Company's job either. That one would fall to the Marines of the 31st MEF's 3rd Battalion, Charlie Company who were due to make a flyby in a few minutes. With the cessation of anti-air activity around the town, they would be that much more able to get closer to the final gun before inserting via dropship and footing the rest of the way to their objective.
Then, save for having to clear out Gladsheim block by block and building by building, they would be done here.
The momentary inactivity soon gave him the opportunity to realize something that, to his surprise, had escaped his attention for nigh on a full minute.
Looking back, he didn't see a hint of movement amongst the three interlayered lines of defense barriers that surrounded the gun. During the drive in, he hadn't seen any Covenant infantry manning even one of the plentiful defensive positions. In truth, there were so many of them that he couldn't wrap his head around the idea that there hadn't been anything there. They could've proved to be more than a headache had they chosen to hold out in front of the installation...unless...
Don returned to the encircling wood line. He pulled his M41 to the left and panned it ever so slowly to the right, scanning the assortment of charred trees and shattered stumps that gradually rose up the face of the hills. There was some sparse foliage left throughout the canopy, loose clusters of dark leaves still clinging to their branches. Beneath their sparse shade were a few boulders standing across the hills as well as some exposed tree roots sticking up out of the ground. Nothing more.
His reticle stayed a neutral blue.
He kept panning, shifting up and down in a zigzagging search pattern, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
He found nothing. His reticle remained blue.
He kept trying, pulling the machine gun all the way to the northeast, sparing a glance at the fighting in the sky before beginning to turn left again.
A flicker of red stopped him in his tracks.
A shadow, a flit of movement drew his eye and his gun to the ruin of an oak tree near the crest of one of the hills. The motion or what he'd thought was motion was gone as soon as he'd centered on it. He was about to wonder if he was losing his edge when he saw more motion, a small trickle of rocks and pebbles tumbling down from the base of the tree.
Surviving wildlife maybe?
He dismissed the idea out of hand.
Harvest's original climate and geology were too mild to breed anything that could have survived in these conditions for so long.
He pivoted just enough to recenter his sights on the oak. "Think I've got something."
"Call it." The Sarge said, one hand on the wheel and the other bracing his DMR over the windshield.
"About 50-meters up, 15 to the right, big oak. Saw some movement behind it. At least I think so..."
"Not seeing any-" Ray stopped, turning his turret away from the spot to somewhere off to the northwest.
"What you got, 8?" Izzy asked, now planting a foot on her passenger seat to prop her elbow on Gad's windshield, leveling her grenade launcher at the hills.
Whatever it was, Ray stared at it for a long while, unresponsive. "Somethin'...we should probably call this in."
The Sarge switched to the platoon freq. "Fox-1 to Ferret-1, we're noticing some movement on the north hills, over?"
"You guys too, huh?" Eversman said, a sense of foreboding in his voice. "I'm patching through to Hotel."
There was a squelch of static.
"Ferret-1 to Hotel-1, seeing anything on your side?"
"...Roger that, Ferret-1."
"Thought so." Eversman paused to take a long breath. "...Troopers, spare a few rounds at anything that looks suspicious to you. Just a few."
Don tensed at the order. His shoulders tightened up at the short-lived sounds of gunfire going off around the perimeter. He resighted the oak tree and spat a five-round burst into it that dappled the bark in a breath of shards.
He waited.
They all waited.
As the last of the gun report echoed off into the distance, two seconds passed then three.
By the fourth, the area was full of motion, cries and shouts, and by the fifth, the hills were firing back.
It was like stepping on an ants' nest, except the ants were the size of whole persons or larger. Scores of Gassers, Buzzards and Gators came leaping or sidestepping out from behind the cover of trees and boulders. They immediately unleashed a shower of plasma that slashed across the clearing in a shimmering ring of green and blue bolts.
"CONTACT SOUTH!" Someone shouted.
"CONTACT EAST, THEY'VE GOT US PINNED!" Someone else yelled.
Don was too busy wincing at the deadly spray splashing against his gun palisades to listen to the call outs, switching to a full-auto assault on the wood line at the base of the clearing. There, a sizable concentration of Covenant troops rose into view, using a small dell like a trench, peering over the lip of it to fire plasma rifles and pistols. He guided his reticle across the line in a long sweep, kicking up dust, bursting bark into splinters, flaring energy shields and puncturing armor. By the end of his first pass, a pair of Gassers were left bleeding out and a blue-armored Gator had shrunk behind a tree, its shields glowing from the strain as bullets ripped into the bark at its back. He arrested his momentum to take on a second pass, focusing on a band of three nearby Buzzards that swiveled out from cover, each bringing a handheld shield and overloaded pistol to bear. He singled out the one on the far right and caught it in the ribs before it could raise its shield. Its pistol flew out of its grasp, shooting an unguided comet into the air. The creature squawked, tripped and crumpled beneath a 10-round burst that just as quickly became 20 by the time he switched to the one in the middle, tearing into its defense. Though a steady stream of bullets picked away at its shield, it crouched down to keep its legs protected. Don all the while fought to ignore the growing number of close calls whizzing past him.
The surviving Buzzards released their overloaded bolts in perfect coordination. The first struck a meter short of Gad's Hog. The second splashed into the Sarge's with a static sizzle that cast tendrils of electrified energies across the whole vehicle. The engine kicked out. Don even felt a slight sting in his fingers, not that it stopped him from redoubling his efforts to kill the two avians.
Chris was about to pitch in but then suddenly jerked to the northeast. He aimed high and fired off a grenade. "Possible enemy ATM in sight, 60-meters up!"
Don left Ray to finish off the pair, swiveling right and bending his knees to tilt the gun towards the northeastern hills. He couldn't see anything but multi-colored muzzle flashes at first, but then Chris' 40-millimeter came into view. He watched it arc down towards an elevated forest trail before detonating between a cluster of birches, skinning the trees of much of their wood and blowing out the shields of an orange-armored Gator. Don spotted the yellow object in its hands; a kind of shoulder mounted weapon whose unique curvature made it look like the detached upper half of a ballpoint pen. He could see it trying to shake itself out of its daze, but he opened up before it could refocus, catching it in the stomach. It quickly dipped into a combat roll that landed it behind a nearby birch. He didn't hesitate to bore into it directly, drilling away at the last of the bark until he broke through in a spray of shards and sapphire blood. He kept laying into it until he saw the creature writhing beneath the onslaught. He cut the flesh puppet free of its leaden strings and let it collapse to the ground, his aim now sowing a path of destruction down and across the face of the hills. He stabbed through a group of Gassers advancing down the decline, leaving the corpses of two to continue tumbling down the descent as the others jumped for whatever cover they could find. He battered a third until its gas tank erupted in a green flash before moving on, forcing a Gator to stop taking potshots at him by whittling away at its wooden position until it had no choice but to slide behind a boulder.
His priorities shifted to the Buzzards, specifically the squad's worth of snipers that were also taking shots at him. He found them scattered atop the stony outcrop of a hill as four silver dots, possibly optical devices. They were too far away to neutralize so he decided to suppress them instead, starting up from the furthest to the right and getting in a few hits before it wised up enough to dip its bloodied head behind a rock. He worked his way left, actually managing to cut another of them down and bring it toppling off its perch. The sight of their careening comrade and the encroaching fire was enough to make the other two duck down behind their own roosts. He spared a few more bursts between their positions to keep them in place before a new spectacle drew his attention downward.
At the midriff of the closest hill, a large, armored mass came stomping out from behind an equally sizable boulder. It stopped just as one of Izzy's 40-millimeter grenades whistled by to detonate above it, eliciting a groan that took Don back to that hallway in the parliament.
The Giant heard the whistle of Chris' incoming grenade and raised its shield, letting it catch the blast as a few fragments ripped through its sides in an orange spray.
It whirled around to face them, and the mouth of its arm-mounted cannon glowed a violent green.
Don zeroed in on its center of mass and hammered away at it, prompting the Giant to pull its shield in front of itself. The slab of metal remained steady at the sustained stream of bullets pinging and ricocheting off its surface while its cannon brightened further and bucked with the discharge.
"Incoming!"
Don heard the Sarge shout it at the same time and found his squad leader firing at the dell, putting a final round into a Gator that saw it fall to its knees, grasping at its throat. It dropped a steaming plasma pistol, but he only connected the dots when the basketball-sized orb of energy slammed into the hood of the Hog. Again, a rush of electricity surged through the vehicle and another stinging sensation bit at his fingertips. He pushed through the pain and held onto the gun. He looked up and instantly understood that he needed to let go.
The large bolt from the Giant was already well on its way down.
"Engine's dead!" The Sarge yelled as he pushed himself up and prepared to jump. "Get out!"
Chris planted a boot on the passenger seat and sprung away. Don turned from the M41 and leapt as far as he could.
A blast of heat and wind struck him in the back before he landed, and when he turned, he found the Warthog no longer on the ground but in the air, arcing backwards in a fiery somersault. He spun on his heels and jumped again, landing and rolling aside before the hood came crashing down beside him, showering him in metal spittle. The Hog fell onto its back and came belly up, most of its undercarriage engulfed in a spectrum of green and orange flames.
A not-so-stray bolt hissed into the ground nearby, giving him the motivation he needed to throw himself back onto his feet. He scrambled after the Sarge and Chris towards the closest layer of defense barriers. Off to his right, he noticed Gad doing the same, backing up at the exact moment that another powerful bolt streaked into the ground in front of him, blowing out the Hog's windshields. Ray kept firing into the hills while the corporal reversed until he had slotted them all the way into a gap between two of the barriers.
Ducking and weaving through the rainfall of plasma, Don and the others reached another barrier section not too far away and ran behind it. They threw themselves against their new cover and crouched down to avoid the multicolored curtain zipping over their helmets.
Don pulled his MA5B off his harness. Like the Sarge and Chris, he crept over to a divide in the upper part of the barrier and used it as a makeshift gunport. It was difficult to see through the mist of embers from the bolts hissing into his protection, but it wasn't hard to pick new targets, namely from the wall of 20 Gassers shouting, screaming and charging out from the wood line. Raised high in their hands were a mirroring pair of luminous orbs bleeding blue vapors into the air.
Grenades.
Lovely.
He put a five-round burst into the furthest ahead which knocked it off its feet. It twirled to the ground, its grenades falling to its side, brightening and exploding in a rupture of competing energies that turned their wielder into a splash of fluids and fragments. The others around it weren't affected, having spaced themselves out well enough in advance to avoid a chain reaction.
Ray raked away at two more while the Sarge blew out another's eye even while a 40-millimeter bounced into the face of a fifth. Several more explosions blossomed across the onrushing formation.
The survivors kept screaming and kept coming until they suddenly began being picked off in rapid succession.
Gunfire rang out from behind.
Don peered around at the AA gun and caught sight of several ODSTs positioned behind additional barriers atop the support base. They fired down into the suicide charge and whittled away at it further, hitting stomachs, kicking out legs and throwing faces to the dust. With Hurricane pitching in, the Gassers fell like dominos, hitting the ground a mere second ahead of whining detonations that began beating across the clearing, tossing up bloody limbs and bleeding torsos like a chaotic woodchipper.
The last Gasser had disappeared in a deafening flash when a new threat made itself known.
The incoming plasma had mostly moved down the hills towards the end of the tree line. It seemed to be the same on every side of the clearing. The enemy was drawing closer.
Two squads of Gators reached the tree line and used their plasma rifles to hose down the line with long bursts. Three of them went so far as to push out into the clearing, two unloading their rifles while a third lagged behind. Dressed in the white armor of a higher-ranking officer, the third carried that same shoulder-mounted launcher Don had seen earlier.
It immediately started firing, pushing through the kickback as it sent five viridescent fireballs swimming through the air like hellish tadpoles.
"Down!" The Sarge ordered.
Don dipped down with everyone else as a trio of emerald blasts rocked the northern defense barriers, slapping him with an overpressure that threw him onto his backside. Two more fireballs soared over them. Picking himself up, he glimpsed the moment that Squad Hurricane ducked down behind their own defenses right before the incoming ordnance detonated across the lip of the support base, drowning their positions beneath roiling clouds of verdant smoke.
He grabbed ahold of his own cover and found that an intimidatingly large piece of it had been bitten away, as if by a shark. It was still able to protect him, however, and that was the most he could hope for. He settled his rifle through the sparking remnants of the makeshift gunport and began making returns on the advancing trio.
Despite the constant backwash of plasma impacts, he refocused on the apparent leader alongside a few of the others. Together, they quickly pushed its shields to the breaking point. It replied by sliding to a crouch and tossing something in front of itself that activated once it hit the ground. A leaf-shaped energy barrier sprung up in front of its wielder, allowing it to squat behind its cover to reload its weapon. All the while, its forward entourage stepped in, splitting off to lay down suppression fire at anyone focusing on their leader while ignoring the flare of their own shields in response. Izzy lobbed another grenade at the White Gator only for one of its defenders to squeeze off a trio of bolts that caught it in the air, exploding it well short of its target. Ray's machine gun rose from a stutter to a lengthy onrush of lead that began turning the energy barrier from a vibrant blue to a dull red.
It didn't stop the leader from slamming a multi-tubular magazine into the top of its weapon and sidestepping from its cover. Leveling its charge at Gad's Hog, it fired off three new fireballs.
"Bail!" The corporal shouted as he leapt from the driver's seat. Izzy threw herself from the passenger's and rolled to safety. Ray had just jumped from the turret when the first shot zipped past the hood to strike the soil beneath, bucking the whole vehicle off the ground. The second struck the front axle and hurled the Warthog into a sidelong spin that would've crashed it into Ray had the third shot not struck its undercarriage, launching it over him in a twisting barrel roll that carried it several meters further. The flaming wreckage came down onto its left wheels, rolling further before crashing against another barrier, detonating on impact.
Gad ran through the resulting shower of metal to grab Ray by the arm, pulling him back onto his feet. Pink tracers kicked up dust at their boots as they ran back to the safety of a neighboring barrier and threw themselves next to Izzy.
Don flinched at another pair of green blasts that struck against his position and rattled his bones.
Beside him, the Sarge and Chris stood back up to respond from their ever-diminishing cover.
"Come on, 9!" The Sarge said between shots. "Get back to it!"
Don shook himself out of the last of his mental fog and yanked the spent magazine out of his rifle. Slamming in a new one, he racked his first round and stood back up, ducking beneath a close call that hissed past before letting loose on the portable shield. More sustained fire came in from Hurricane, and the energy barrier flickered out, exposing the White Gator just behind.
Its subordinates ran in to defend it but a shot from the Sarge popped one of their shields. Chris lobbed a grenade that skipped twice and bounced into its path. He set it off, blowing the alien in one direction and its legs in another. The other Gator also had its shields collapse. It dodged the cadaver of its comrade and fired off with its rifle while it reached for a grenade on its belt, one it never grasped as rounds sliced through its fingers. It unloaded on their positions once more and had its last stand silenced by a bullet to the skull. It collapsed onto its side, again exposing its leader who had just finished reloading its weapon.
A loud THUMP sounded from behind, followed by another.
The Gator raised up for a renewed salvo but stopped short, looking up at two new fireballs flying down on pillars of smoke. Before it could move, the rockets touched down around it, swallowing it from view beneath a powerful bloom of flames. The alien reappeared in a sideways spin, unveiling a shorn torso that bled as much smoke as it did entrails. The corpse smashed into the ash and its weapon skidded away from it.
That was one problem down, one amidst what for all the world seemed to be an entire company's worth that were still busy pressing in on all sides.
They kept trading fire with the exchange of plasma and crystals zapping against their perimeter from every direction.
"With this many guys, why didn't they just decide to defend their AA from here!?" Izzy asked, flicking open her empty launcher to slide in another grenade.
"Ambush maybe!?" Gad pointed out.
"Maybe!" Ray agreed, firing off his battle rifle at contacts in the hilly outcrop. "But they could've given us more trouble from here!"
The Sarge traded shots with a charging Buzzard, striking it in the foot before putting a round through its exposed head. "But they would've made themselves a nice target! With the way things are going upstairs, they probably didn't want to end up like their friends back in town! Speaking of which!"
Don shrunk into his shoulders to let an overcharged bolt whiz past while he tore away at a pesky Gasser that thought it could make a run at him. He changed targets as he listened in on the Sarge's conversation.
"Fox-1 to 4-Actual and Ferret-1, we're a couple mags short of being overrun on the west! We need close air support, over!?"
"Just called in a few Swords, Fox-1!" Captain Reaver replied. "Troopers, hold your positions! We've got friendly ordnance coming down in 30!"
Thirty seconds.
Don did his best to make that time worth something.
He hosed away at the closest squad of Gators in an effort to keep them hunkered down behind their trees. He'd long since learned that the more distance he kept between himself and that particular species, the better.
At 15 seconds, he heard the comforting roar of fusion drives growing closer. Out the corner of his eye he could see a pair of Longswords flying in from the east. He could hear even more of them that were just out of sight, flying in from different directions.
The Covenant troops appeared to pick up on what was about to happen and the amount of incoming fire ratcheted up by a whole order of magnitude. The constant whine and splash of plasma weaponry made him acutely aware of the hiss of M79s and the thunderclap of Gauss cannons echoing over from the other ends of the perimeter. The fight had been so intense that a sudden rise in its intensity reminded him that they were facing the same threat all around.
Soon the squad had no choice but to stay low behind their barriers which sparked with an upsurging waterfall of embers that rained down on them from the other side. The metal obstacles warmed and vibrated with the epileptic amount of plasma bolts and crystalline projectiles splashing and shattering against them. Above and behind the squad, their comrades in Hurricane did the same, not daring to stick their necks out for a fight that was almost over.
"Get some frags in there to keep'em back!" The Sarge ordered.
They started taking out their frag grenades and chucking them across the clearing in a bid to buy more time. After priming his own, Don made sure to toss it as far into the tree line as he could. Each percussive burst and resulting roar or scream of pain acted as a means of persuading their attackers to avoid one last all out charge, something he knew they wouldn't have any chance in hell of surviving.
At the last five seconds, the Longsword pair soaring in from the east drew down into a shallow dive. Both in turn released a pair of missiles that activated their propulsion systems in close succession. Their 50-millimeter coil guns activated in harmonious synchronicity with the sound of tearing leather. A waterfall of bright projectiles flooded over the edge of the clearing as well as the northern hills, eliciting a wave of alien shouts and shrieks. The rainfall of munitions scarred the air with a vicious cascade that cut down trees, carved through boulders and plunged deep into the ground, cutting, dismembering, eviscerating and decapitating Covenant troops in a mist of blue and purple gore. Gassers ignited, Buzzards flew apart and Gators drowned in their own blood en masse. Only a pair of Giants near the wood line were able to hold their shields against the barrage. They in turn were the epicenter of the first missile strike which devoured them in a dome of light that enveloped the tree line, evolving into a flowering mass of smoke and descending shards of steaming matter.
The other three missiles streaked into the northern hills, rapturing more swaths of aliens in a ravenous flash flood of light and sound that morphed into massive clouds of smoke and flame.
More missiles landed to the east, west and south, briefly illuminating the entire area to such a degree that Don's visor automatically upped its polarization. More alien screams rang out and died off just as quickly. Additional Longsword pairs flew by, rising out of their strike runs to reascend into the skies.
After a while, Don and the others stood up to peer around, weapons raised.
In their wake, the fighters had left behind a newly planted garden of smoke clouds that now surrounded the clearing, sprouting up slowly from the blasted faces of pockmarked hills and from newly made clearings within the forest. Manmade wildfires began spreading, feeding off the last bits of combustible materials within the trees. They spread more greedily throughout the desolation of the undergrowth, using the abundant corpses scattered across the ground as kindling.
There were still a few pink and blue muzzle flashes flickering throughout the landscape and a few bolts landing across the clearing, doing so in a haphazard fashion. However, it was clear that the air strike had been more than effective. A response of human ordnance replied in kind across the other portions of the perimeter.
The peaceful near silence was interrupted by the loudening tenor of fusion drives. The natural engine hum was lighter than that of the fighters, allowing Don to figure out what they were before he saw them.
From the south, he watched a squadron of four Falcons flying in a close formation. Almost wing to wing, they came in low, less than 20-meters above the hilltops, their passage causing the fumes of the infernos directly below to widen or disperse. Each of them was carrying a Warthog secured to the underside of their tail which swayed lightly in the passing breeze, and if Don had to guess, they were also ferrying a full platoon of Marines in each of their cargo bays.
They weren't coming for the clearing.
Instead, their flight path pulled them away towards the west. They kept going until they disappeared behind the western hills off to their left.
"Must be 3rd Battalion's strike team." Eversman noted over comms.
"Took their sweet time getting here." Captain Reaver commented. "Troopers, secure the perimeter as best you can. We're not going to be here long."
"We're not securing the gun, sir?"
"Secure it? Hell, Ferret-1, I don't even know how to turn this thing off. Hacksaw-5 doesn't have a clue either, and if he doesn't have a clue then none of us do. We're better off lighting the match on everything here. I'd rather hand the spooks some scrap metal than lose a ship over it."
"Better safe than sorry." The Sarge said.
It wasn't the first idea Don had heard today that he wholeheartedly agreed with. They needed to know more about the Covenant, but losing a few thousand more sailors than they already had to the initial tussle in orbit was less than ideal, especially to a piece of enemy artillery that they simply hadn't figured out how to deactivate.
A loud BOOM stifled his thoughts.
All eyes turned back to the west.
A harsh scream of dying engines cut through the air, growing further away before terminating in an avalanche of loud impacts that echoed over the hills.
Then there was silence for a long while.
"...D-, do you think..." Izzy trailed off, turning to the Sarge who was staring hard at the western hills.
"That didn't sound promising." Gad said. "Could've been-"
A voice crackled over their communications, not over the squad comms or even the company frequency, but over the UNSC E-Band.
"Repeat, we've got a bird down! This is Sergeant Forge, 3rd Battalion, Charlie Company! We've been shot down by hostile AA one klick east of the last gun! We're being surrounded, taking fire from the hills! We need assistance, over!?"
There was a pause before the Marine, Sergeant Forge repeated the message with even more insistence, stating the coordinates of his position and calling for backup.
"...Isn't that our guy?" Chris asked.
The Sarge slowly nodded. "Yeah-...yeah, that's him."
They didn't say anything more for a moment, but a number of glances were shared that found themselves being mirrored back in an unspoken agreement.
Don understood. He agreed even. He just hoped they were making the right choice.
Then the Sarge looked to the top of the support base. "Fox-1 to Hurricane-2, think you could manage the northern approach on your own?"
One of the troopers turned to him. He considered the question and shrugged. "Probably. At this rate, there's not enough of them to cause any real trouble."
"What're you thinking, Fox-1?" Eversman cut in.
"Doesn't sound like they crashed that far off. I know you need security for the demo, but Hurricane says they can handle things from here. With your and 4-Actual's permission, I'd like to take Foxtrot over to secure the crash site, give those Marines some backup."
The sergeant major didn't respond.
Captain Reaver chimed in. "Sergeant, that bird crashed deep in the hills. We're still setting charges and there's probably more Covenant infantry regrouping to take another crack at us. That's not to mention that there are now more sources of enemy anti-air in the area that we haven't accounted for. You do understand that we won't be able to back you up right away, over?"
The Sarge turned to the rest of the squad, but on the other side of their visors, their expressions hadn't changed even a little.
"...We do, sir."
"...Greenlight, Fox-1. Do what you can."
"Copy."
The Sarge nodded to the western hills. "Let's go."
He took off at a brisk jog and the squad followed right behind. They moved along the circumference of the outermost layer of defense barriers, kicking aside pieces of metal rubble that had been blown free by the assault.
As they came onto the edge of the western perimeter, they found Squad Ferret close to the barriers. One of their Rocket Hogs had been reduced to a flaming wreck near the mouth to the western road. The other had been rammed through an opening in the barriers to protect it, though that hadn't saved it from being pocked from end to end with plasma scoring. Their sister squad was standing for the most part behind the defenses, watching them go by.
The Sarge stopped at the last functioning Rocket Hog as Foss hopped down from behind the M79, allowing Ferret-5 to hop on after him.
"You weren't planning on leaving without me, were you?" The Doc asked, hefting his SMG over his shoulder.
"Nah, I just came over to pick you up." The Sarge assured.
Sitting in the driver's seat, Eversman turned from his long vigil of the hills to face them. "You sure about this, Fox-1?"
The Sarge gradually shook his head. "No...but I know that Marine. He saved us before back at the capital. Figured it's about that time we returned the favor."
Eversman thought about it and nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "We've got to guard this position until we're done here. It's like the cap said, Fox, you're on your own and I can't say for how long, so you better know what you're getting yourselves into."
"We don't." The Sarge replied. "That's why I've gotta go find out for the both of us."
"You're going to be doing a whole lot more than just recon." Eversman stopped himself, as if there was something more that he wanted to say but had ultimately decided against it. He pointed a thumb over at the western hills. "Good luck."
"Roger. We'll swing'em back this way once we're done."
One of the troopers, Ferret-4, walked out from a defense barrier with an SRS-99 sniper rifle in hand. "Hey, Fox-8?"
Ray turned in time to grab the barrel, catching the rifle out of the air. He scanned it from end to end before looking up to his fellow sniper, the two of them sharing a grin as Ray tossed him his battle rifle.
"Still have some ammo for that?" Ferret-4 asked.
Ray rapped his knuckles on his rucksack. "Never leave home without it. You?"
Ferret-4 did the same. "You're not the only one who had an eye on this beaut." He gestured to the '99. "...You'll need her more than I will, especially in those hills."
"Merci."
"Foxtrot, move out." The Sarge ordered as he trotted off.
The squad once again followed his lead, resuming the jog across the corpse-strewn clearing, through the splintered tree line and into the hills.
Vallis Umbrae – Valley of Shadows