Chapter 57 – Interceptio
August 30th, 2552 - (04:57 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach
Viery Territory, New Alexandria
Enroute to Falchion Base
:********:
The Pelican was as quiet as it was during the flight from New Alexandria. The mechanical ambiance of the drives combined with the muffled howl of the regional winds filled the cargo bay. The infrequent creaking of the hull due to the tropospheric turbulence made up for the otherwise wordless conversation of stares and glances being shared across the platoon.
No one wanted to say it.
Duncan didn't either.
The issue at hand hung as strongly in the air as it did when Warrant Officer O'Neal broke the news to them.
The mission itself wasn't the problem.
It was the location.
Falchion was theirs, and the idea of fighting there held all the intimate intensity of a home invasion. The thought had crossed his mind before, and it hadn't stopped since. The whole thing was violating in a way that he had never experienced before. He was gradually coming to terms with the reality of it all. The Covenant attacking Reach had hit him hard, but not quite on the level that it did now. A house fire in his own neighborhood wasn't the same as a fire in his own backyard.
What worried him more, however, was knowing how much time had passed and how much of a difference it was about to make. Over a week ago, the UNSC was able to designate an entire task force to try to defend the place that Erica and Noah called home. Now, so many days into the planetary assault, it seemed that no one was coming to their aid at Falchion.
Aside from the colonel and however many ODSTs he had managed to rustle up during his time on the move, they were practically on their own.
Keeping his MA37 across his lap, Duncan rubbed a hand along the stock of the weapon with the absent-mindedness of a pensive pet owner. He was tempted to make another headcount of his magazines and frag grenades. He was even ready to count the bullets he'd brought by hand despite the '256' from the auto-counter in the corner of his HUD. It was all part of his usual 'I'm bored but I really don't want to do anything else' playbook.
"Think the Dante is okay?" Zack asked, setting off the newest exchange that was bound to be as short lived as the last.
"You're asking the wrong people, Mr. Radioman." Mito snarked from the other side of the bay.
"Well, it's not like I haven't been trying to get in touch with the colonel. Whatever he's up to, I can't reach him."
"It's like that dark zone on Actium." Nova noted distantly. "Except its targeting communications rather than satellite imaging. Speaking of which, couldn't we have just had one take a look at Falchion for us?"
"That last Covie fleet has been busy shooting them down, remember?" Renni replied. "There's probably not that many of them left orbiting this side of Reach. They're turning Viery into a blind spot."
"Why?" Hector asked.
Renni shrugged. "If I had to make an educated guess..."
"Shaping operations." The Staff cut in from his seat closest to the cockpit. "They know the UNSC forces they've faced up to this point are far from the full scope of our operations here. They're prepping Viery for a probable counterattack from the rest of Reach."
Reznik leaned forward. "Is that something we should be counting on too, sir?"
The Staff went quiet. Arms crossed, head angled towards the sunlight coming from the cockpit, he was silent for a few seconds longer than Duncan was comfortable with.
"We'll have to." He said finally. "Winter Contingency or not, losing a continent the size of Eposz is going to bring a lot of attention. There's no point in trying to stop a panic when the smoke has already reached the exit. They'll have no choice but to send a response fleet. If anything, they've probably spent this whole time putting one together."
Daz leaned in as well. "Think we'll be a part of that one?"
The Staff turned to her, nodding as he did. "You better believe it. Once we're done here, we'll stick with the colonel while he links up with the rest of the battalion. Then we'll be free to take the fight right on back to them."
His words seemed to light a fire in her and Reznik's eyes.
Mackley's remained cold and inattentive. "I just hope they don't end up dropping us back into NA. I feel like that's the kind of crap Command would try, tell us to go back there to retake the place."
Duncan slowly and automatically shook his head. "They won't."
Mackley looked in his direction. "How're you so sure?"
"To retake a city, first of all, you need, well, a city." He sighed. "And NA hardly counts anymore. We'll be lucky if anyone is able to live there again in the next century."
The coldness in Mackley's demeanor warmed away with a measure of contentment at the answer, but not entirely. Duncan understood where he was coming from. The two of them had lost people they cared about there. They were both of the same mind in never wanting to return to the place.
"How do we know for sure they'll send any help our way?" Nova questioned. "Maybe it's just me, but I can't help feeling like the whole contingency thing is just a ruse. It's almost as if the rest of Reach really doesn't care about us."
"Or maybe have their eyes on something else?" Mito pointed out.
"Remember, this is Reach we're talking about." The Staff explained. "The UNSC wouldn't just hand it over without a fight."
"Looks like they've got enough of a fight on their hands already." Yuri interrupted from the cockpit.
Immediately Duncan picked up on the uncharacteristic worry oozing from his voice, something he knew everyone else would have also noticed.
The Staff stood up and strode towards the door. "What're you hearing, Ep-5?"
"It's on the E-BAND, sir, general announcement from FLEETCOM. They're saying a third Covenant fleet just showed up on the edge of the system."
Even before he had finished his sentence, Yuri had already shattered the calm of the cargo bay. The chatter was gone as everyone froze in their seats.
The latest news stole Duncan's next breath. It killed every other thought so that all his mind had left to cling to for the next several seconds was the most oppressive silence he had ever heard in his life.
Mackley's helmeted head fell into his open palms and stayed there.
Hector spoke shakily, barely above a whisper. "No way..."
In the quiet, more and more eyes turned to the Staff who had stopped in the doorway, hand to emergency handle.
Nova shook her head as if by doing so she could shake off what her ears couldn't. She finally turned to their platoon leader. "Sir...w-, what do we-..."
The man in turn set his sights on Yuri. "...How strong?"
Still working the controls, Yuri peered back over his shoulder at him. "Over 300 ships."
To Duncan, the information struck him like a physical blow, constricting his chest and squeezing out whatever breath he had left. The unexpected suddenness of it gave him the same feeling that he'd had when he watched the doctor walk out of his mother's hospital room with a look that said it all.
Though he was on the other end of the bay, he could see it from here, the way the Staff's grip on the handle on the wall tightened more and more until his knuckles began to crack.
"Three hundr-" The number came as a low gasp from Daz while she leaned back into her seat, her posture crumbling with her tone. "But the last one wasn't even half that..."
"That's not a fleet." Lang said, gazing down intently at his boots as if they had all the answers to the universe. "That's an armada. Which means..."
"They mean business this time." Dalton nodded, finishing the thought that Whiskey's sniper wouldn't dare to. "Pretty sure the last time we saw numbers like that, Cole blew up a star."
The mention jarred loose a memory that Duncan hadn't thought about in years. He saw it as clear as day, driving away from his mother's funeral in his uncle's Warthog while the two of them discussed the death of another person he admired. That drive, that conversation was the reason why he was here in this Pelican and not in a Marine Reserves unit on Earth.
It was the first time in a long while that he wondered how much different his life might have been had he simply said no.
'No'.
The power of that one word amazed him.
Just one word and he would never have seen so much, done so much and lost so much.
He had a sneaking suspicion that he was about to lose even more, far more than he had ever bargained for.
"So, what's the Navy supposed to do, blow up Eridani?" Hector asked, half-seriously, half-jokingly, though the latter bordered just on the safe side of insane.
Dalton grasped his weapon in his hands and looked it over like some long-lost heirloom of his family. "I don't know, but we're running out of options." He paused. "Command is running out of options."
"Why is it always like this?" Zack seethed, hunching forward into a bowed stoop. "Why are they always throwing curveballs at us? One second, they let us think we're winning, the next, they kick our legs out from under us and finish us off...like everything else before that was just a joke."
His hands showed a noticeable tremble as they reached up and grabbed at his helmet seal. With a hiss, he pulled it off his head only to hold it there, as if unsure whether to put it back on or throw it away.
"I'm so tired of being somebody else's joke."
"Ep-7, put your helmet back on." The Staff said without so much as having turned around to see who it was.
"What's the point, sir? Reach is done."
"I said put your helmet back on, we're almost there."
"What's the point!?" Zack shouted, suddenly sitting up to shoot a fiery glare at the back of his head. "Reach is done! We're done! What's the point of putting this thing on if nothing we do from here even matters anymore!?"
Silence.
The bay was still.
No one moved to say anything. They were all either too surprised or too perturbed to get the right words out.
Then the Staff turned around.
When he did, Duncan didn't see the rage he expected. There was no hint of it anywhere. With the light of Epsilon Eridani having turned him into a silhouette, his visor was depolarized enough for everyone to see that he wasn't angry. He wasn't upset either.
What unsettled Duncan in the end wasn't the lack of anger, but the lack of any emotion at all.
A handful of slow, deliberate steps drew him towards Zack, each hollow echo of boot on metal seeming to eat away at the radioman's resolve. By the time he had stopped in front of him, a palpable dread had replaced the last traces of stubbornness.
The Staff reached up to grab an overhead handle to stabilize himself. When he spoke, the calmness in his voice gave Duncan a cool chill.
"That was an order, Helljumper, and you're going to follow it."
Zack stared at him wide eyed for a moment longer before finally relenting, gritting his teeth as he slowly, warily slipped his helmet back on.
But the Staff was still looking at him.
"Are you a Helljumper?"
Duncan could tell that the Staff wasn't trying to tease or insult him. It was something worse. It was a genuine question.
Zack didn't know how to answer, and his eyes clouded with confusion.
"I think you've forgotten the meaning of the word, so let me give you a refresher. It means that even when everything else goes to hell, we jump in. Even when they set the sky on fire, we jump in. That's what it means."
Zack's gaze widened again as it barely held the Staff's before eventually falling away, dropping almost shamefully to the floor. But then the Staff did something Duncan didn't expect. He released his only support to crouch down in front of the radioman, somehow managing to keep his balance while he looked him in the eye, man to man.
"So don't go writing all of us off when we play by a different set of rules than everybody else. We survived NA. We survived them trying to kill our part of the planet while we were still on it. If cats have nine lives, we have ten." He edged closer. "Zack, how many more times do we have to cheat death before you'll decide to get with the program?"
He gave no reply.
"...Ep-1's got a point." Hector said from the seat beside him. "We've been through a lot. More than most. If we were going to bite the dust, we would've done it by now."
"...Still could." Zack said, lacking any of the resistance he'd shown a minute earlier.
"Yeah." The Staff replied. "But when has that ever stopped us?"
Zack didn't answer. This time, however, it seemed that he truly didn't have one to give.
Seeing that, the Staff stood back up. He grabbed ahold of the ceiling handle and turned to face everyone else.
"I need you guys to tunnel vision for this one, alright? Don't think about anything else. We'll link up with the colonel, we'll clear out Falchion, then we'll follow his lead from there. Everything else outside of that is secondary."
"Is our escape secondary?" Mackley asked.
The Staff fixed his eye on him. "Need me to talk to you too?"
He hurriedly shook his head. "N-, no-, no sir, I'm good. It's just...I don't know, it pays to be prepared."
"...It does...so we'll prepare for both. Win or lose, we need to be ready for the outcome."
"Think the Navy can pull it off?" Duncan asked.
Before he could get a response, Yuri cut in again. "Ep-1, I'm picking up on multiple airborne contacts occupying Falchion's airspace."
"Friendly?"
"Negative, hostile. Multiple. Looks like a handful of dropships and a few Banshees running support."
Duncan struggled to see past the line of heads between him and the cockpit. He caught a few glimpses of the view beyond the window.
The sky was a pinkish red shade that grew bluer and more orange the further one looked to the east. Epsilon Eridani was hardly crowning above the horizon and had cast the world in the hues of early dawn.
Down below, there was only white and green at first. Soon, however, he made the colors out for what they were, a sprawling mosaic of deciduous forests that spanned out for tens of kilometers. They eventually dipped into valleys and rose into hills, submerging the lower landscape in yellow maples, wide-armed oaks, pale birches and tall pines. They looked like ocean waves lapping against the rocky shores of greater landmasses that rose high into the air, their faces growing increasingly bare until the last of the vegetation gave way to snow-capped summits.
The Csaba Mountain Range hadn't changed. The spiderwebbing network of kilometers-tall mountains, interconnecting ridges, sheer cliffs and long running plateaus that dominated this part of Viery were exactly the way Duncan remembered them.
The last time he'd seen them for himself, the platoon was busy finishing up a training exercise at the RTETC when the alert came in of their latest deployment.
If everything had panned out the way it was supposed to, they would have been in the Cygnus System by now, fighting the Covenant on New Jerusalem. Not that it sounded like that whole affair would have gone any differently.
They were heading south.
He singled out a distinctly large mountain further ahead. It jutted into the sky like a shattered spear whose long shoulders leveled off into the surrounding mountains. Appearing as a turret among the parapets of a long-forgotten wall, the white coated peaks of Mount Csaba served as the perfect marker for how far they had left to go.
As it turned out, it wasn't very far at all, perhaps 30 or 40 kilometers at most.
Falchion Base lay just on the other side of it, sitting on the bottommost of its southern slopes. They were less than two minutes away, which incidentally left them close enough for him to see what was going on.
In the local airspace just above Mount Csaba, set against the cottony clouds drifting overhead, were shapes that were altogether less welcoming.
A dust-sized scattering of Covenant craft descended to and from the southern slopes of Mount Csaba. He spotted several Phantoms cruising downward while Banshees prowled the airways around them, the latter moving in patrolling circles as the former dipped out of sight beyond the mountain. Duncan knew exactly where they were going. The evidence itself was already more than visible.
That tightness in his chest returned as he observed several dozen individual columns of smoke rising in spindling elongations, each one leaning in the westerly course of the regional winds.
A few of the others got up from their seats, grabbing ahold of the ceiling handles to see for themselves.
That horrible silence came back again. It never truly seemed to go away. What made it so much worse than it already was, however, was the sight itself.
There were no debates to be had anymore, no doubts or best guesses.
Falchion was there, and it was burning.
"Getting a lot more interference on my radio." Zack noted.
Duncan watched him set his equipment on his lap to get a better look at the main interface.
"Could be a jammer." Nova proposed, though the bulk of her attention was still given to the spectacle beyond the cockpit. "It would explain why we couldn't get in contact earlier."
"Looks like they got through our air defenses too." Mito pointed out. "I don't see anything shooting back, no missiles, no AA, nothing. How?"
"There's no telling how long they've been under assault." The Staff explained. "They probably whittled away at the anti-air systems bit by bit."
"Even with whoever the colonel brought along, sir...I don't think we'll be enough for this." Nova said. "Against a force half that size, sure, maybe, but we haven't even seen the situation on the ground yet. If they're hitting the base like this then they must've brought along some serious manpower."
"...No," The Staff replied, not as a rebuttal but as a suggestion. "No, something's off. If this was a normal operation then they wouldn't have blocked off our communications. They wouldn't have cared who heard what was going on if they thought they had the numbers to handle a response. Either that or-...or they've found something."
"Think it's the database at the Center?" Hector queried. "I thought Leon would've taken care of that by now, no?"
"Typically. I've heard this a lot more from the Navy, but apparently you usually want at least one human officiator on hand to ensure the navigation data really is scrubbed, regardless of who or what does the scrubbing. In all likelihood, Leon probably took care of things before the situation got out of hand. If I had to bet, the Covies won't find any nav data there."
Mackley pulled his sniper rifle from his lap and held it at the ready. "So, why keep up the interference? Why jam us?"
The Staff glanced back at him, ultimately focusing on the Stanchion's metal casing stashed away on his harness. "Because they might still find him there."
"Who?"
"Leon." Renni said, perking up with alarm. "The Cole Protocol doesn't only call for purging nav data."
"Article 2," Dalton noted. "AI are no exception, shipboard or on-base."
"Even if he erased his own memories, who knows what the Covenant could dredge up if they got their hands on his core." The Staff said. "We can't risk it."
"Think Colonel Garrison was counting on that too, sir?" Nova asked. "Is that why he wanted us here, to help with his extraction?"
The Staff's reply never came. Instead, he turned his attention back to Yuri. "Ep-5, start taking her down. Fly us in low. Keep them blind to our approach."
"You want me to land in wilderness, sir?"
"We don't have a choice. That hostile airpower is out of our league for the time being. Land us a couple klicks short of Mount Csaba. There're a few clearings near the Crasna River that we can use to stay out of sight. Once we land, Ep-5, 9 and Whiskey-5 will stay behind to guard the bird while the rest of us head up to Csaba's western ridge for observation. Whiskey-3 and 4, I want you to post up there with the Stanchion to provide overwatch. Once we have an idea of what we're running into, we'll head down through the pass and use the tree cover to reach Falchion's north side. That should put us just a few minutes away from the Center. The colonel is most likely to be there. From that point forward, the mission is about the same, link up, extract and withdraw. This is going to be a hot exfil, so prepare yourselves. We clear?"
Withdraw.
Duncan tasted the word in his mind and squeezed his eyes shut at the sourness that followed.
If the Staff had said 'abandon', it would have had roughly the same effect.
Still, the platoon gave the same "Yessir" responses that could have been expected of them on any other mission. If only it was some routine operation and not the kind of scenario that it was.
He felt the bottom beginning to fall out from under him. Yuri was making the descent, and their view through the cockpit window tilted accordingly.
:********:
Leaves flew up over the front of the Pelican in a constant spray of green as the dropship bolted over the tops of the trees. Whipping mere meters above the canopy, the turbulence of their wake stripped branches bare, leaving oaks and elms to dance erratically in the violent gale. Duncan watched the latter through the rear viewport and the former through the cockpit window, unsure which was the more worrisome.
They were coming in fast.
His free hand was firmly wrapped around the security brace holding him in his seat. Once again, he would have to put his trust in Yuri's piloting skills.
"Landing in 15 seconds." Yuri said.
"Yeah, landing, not crashing." Hector groaned. "It's a dropship, 5, not a drop pod."
"We can agree to disagree, yes?"
"No, we-" Hector let out a yelp and Duncan felt his stomach lurch as the Pelican performed a rapid turn to port, swinging itself into a banking maneuver. Their momentum eased off much too quickly for anyone's liking. As they shrugged off the whiplash from the sudden deceleration, the dropship commenced a steady descent whose gentleness was almost laughably ironic.
Duncan lifted off his brace and leveled his assault rifle at the bay door, listening to the moan of the landing gear as it extended outward.
On the opposing seat, Hector did the same, huffing impatiently. "Hurry up and open the back."
"Hang on." Yuri replied. "Touchdown in five...four...three...two..."
The descent ended in a slight jostle and a pressurized sigh of releasing mechanisms. The bay door began to open. The morning replaced the shadows of the interior with a blood red light that slowly crawled up the length of the bay.
The ramp thumped down onto the soft grass of what was revealed to be an open clearing. The wide expanse of grass was covered in a meadow of dandelions. The yellow flowers rippled outward from the Pelican along the waves of air still screaming from its fusion drives.
Duncan and Hector were the first to hop out of their seats and the first ones down the ramp. The two of them pushed into the meadow, falling into an observant crouch less than 10 meters from the dropship.
On their right the west side of the clearing was partially encircled by a thick tree line of golden maples and emerald cottonwoods. On their left, the east side of the clearing sloped off into the gravel-lined bank of a river. The waters of the Crasna surged by in a foamy flow, crashing against large boulders and washing over semi-submerged rocks.
The sound of the rushing waves and the beauty of the lush scenery were always a comfort for Duncan whenever the Staff led the platoon out on early morning runs. A jog along the trails here was usually enough to clear his mind. Each breath of the crisp forest air was refreshing, regardless of how many haggard breaths it took to finish the kilometers worth of ground pounding they were told to do.
It wasn't nearly as comforting now.
The Crasna was still flowing, and the wind was still whistling through the trees, but that was the end of it.
There was nothing else, no chirping, no bird calls, no rustling movements beyond the tree cover.
The forest wasn't peaceful. It was dead, as if mother nature herself knew that her days on Reach were numbered.
She wasn't the only one.
The baleful quiet was unsettled by the far-off echo of an explosion. Duncan looked up past the tree line to the south.
Mount Csaba loomed ahead of them. Its imposing stature as well as its accompanying range served as a massive wall between them and their destination. Despite the heights, the columns of smoke rose even higher so that there could be no mistake about what lay on the other side.
"We're looking at a three-klick jog." The Staff said as he strode past, watching the smoke. "Nothing we haven't done before."
"Not in full armor." Hector argued.
"Not yet."
A Nav point appeared on the rightward shoulder of Mount Csaba. The ridge curved away from the larger mass at increasingly crooked angles, steepening and broadening intermittently before crossing paths with a ridge from a neighboring mountain. There, somewhere between them, was the pass that they would use to get into Falchion.
Duncan looked back.
The Pelican had landed at the northernmost end of the clearing. Doing so had set it below the arching shade of a grove of oaks that stood guard over the mouth of a northbound trail.
The rest of the platoon had already left the bay and were crouched across the immediate expanse of the meadow, scanning every direction. Mito and Reznik stood guard on either side of the ramp. Yuri was still in the pilot's seat, keeping the engines warm in preparation for a quick extraction.
"Platoon, fall in." The Staff said. "We're moving."
Save for those left to watch over the Pelican, the others got up and made their way over. The Staff broke into a jog. Duncan and Hector shot to their feet and ran after him while the rest of the team came on their heels.
The Staff quickly picked up speed and the group's jog turned into a full sprint.
They headed for the mouth of a dirt trail that parted the tree line, carving through the forest on a southward course. They crossed the clearing in under half a minute and slipped onto the trail. It was a well-worn path that all of them knew well, one that wound on and on amid the wavering shadows of the canopy above. Duncan even took note of the accumulation of old boot prints and animal tracks that could still be seen beneath the detritus of dead leaves.
He looked left. He looked right. He checked everywhere, from the underbrush of ferns and shrubs covering the lowest parts of the forest to the uppermost branches of the trees.
Still nothing.
No bugs, no birds, no squirrels, no deer.
Every minute of silence left him more disturbed than the last. Soon it reached the point that he experienced a slight relief whenever he heard the distant boom of the explosions echoing down from beyond Mount Csaba. The sound of the flowing Crasna remained, however, and was much more relaxing in comparison.
The trek continued in a similar manner for the next 10 minutes. The closer they came, the more the commotion on the other side of the mountain became clearer. It didn't sound like a fight. There were only explosions and the stochastic whining of plasma weaponry.
There was virtually no gunfire that Duncan could attribute to human-made ordnance.
Eventually, the sounds of the river drew further away and became little more than a faraway noise. By the time it was utterly gone, they had reached a Y-shaped fork in the trail. A three-headed sign stood at the very center; its leftmost panel marked with the abbreviation 'Lk. Szelid'.
Without slowing, the Staff took the leftward path and the rest of the platoon bounded after him.
The trail went on for another hundred meters before the trees petered out, giving way to a rocky shore. Surrounded on every side by an army of tall pines was Lake Szelid, an amoebic body of water that took up 10 square kilometers of Csaban real estate. Though it was a hot spot for off-duty ODSTs looking for a place to barbecue or have a nice swim, the platoon rarely ever visited it. Most of their off-base excursions took them to the unit's longstanding hideout atop the plateaus further off to the west.
Emerging onto the shores, the Staff picked a path for them that was hardly a path at all. It was an unpredictable route that snaked through a gauntlet of boulders and small pools. Duncan struggled not to bump into one while fighting to keep from slipping into the other.
With the forest now at their side, he was able to get a good look at the location. The lake sat just at the base of Mount Csaba. The slopes of the mountain itself began to rise barely 50 meters past the trees on the lake's south side.
During the stumbling dash that ensued, Duncan laid eyes on the next dirt trail that slipped through the tree line. The Staff went straight for it, leading them around the bend of the southern shore and down into the shadows of the canopies once again. The shade was short-lived. The trees became sparser and more spread out the closer they came to the base of Mount Csaba.
Up ahead, the trail began to ascend the gentle incline of the slopes like an earthen carpet. The platoon moved faster against the increasing pull of gravity. All the while, the path itself turned to one of small rocks and pebbles that crunched beneath their boots.
Mount Csaba's face stretched upward in front of them, dressed in a beard of greenery that became patchier and rockier the closer it grew to the summit. Their path was one of many that sliced through the scattered forests in straight lines before zigzagging across the grassy folds that wrinkled the mug of the mountain's upper reaches. The smoke was even closer now. Past the branches Duncan examined the black columns and realized with no small amount of trepidation how large they actually were. They were too sizable to be coming from destroyed vehicles or anything so minor. Somewhere below them, there were whole buildings on fire.
After five minutes, they cleared the swath of forestry girding the mountain and ditched their trail, crossing instead into the large open tracts of shrubs and ferns that swaddled Csaba's midsection. They hopped over small gullies and jumped between boulders. More than once one of them nearly slipped backwards from the naturally smooth textures of the grass, only to catch themselves at the last second. They were lucky it wasn't raining. Performing so much movement on muddy ground would have been a hell that none of them could afford to endure.
Between them and an upcoming patch of trees was another trail that curved to the right. It snaked away from the shrubs and off towards the western ridge. They crested the intermediating incline and started running along the new path.
By then, Duncan's breathing was a few notes shy of asthmatic. He had fallen behind, finding himself at the rear of the group with Hector and Renni, both of whom were fighting to keep pace.
"Should've...landed closer." Hector wheezed. "He's probably...laughing at us...back there."
Renni took one look at the smoke and shook her head. "Doubt anyone's laughing right about now."
Ever in the lead, the Staff guided them along the wiggling bends in the path that took them higher and higher into Mount Csaba.
Duncan was relieved when they reached the final approach to the ridge, allowing him to see it for himself. It was thankfully covered in a sleeve of umbrella-like pine and fir trees. Their outstretched branches would provide the perfect camouflage against any hostile aircraft operating in the area.
The final 100-meter curve felt closer to half a kilometer. By the time the Staff sprinted up onto the top of the ridge, Duncan was fighting for air. His knees ached. His calves were burning. His lungs were on fire, punishing him for putting them through so much at such short notice.
The platoon's mad dash slowed again to a jog and then to an exhausted trot as they reached their first stop. They emerged at a point on the ridge that was broad enough for them to take more than a few steps without much risk of slipping and falling. The log of a fallen ash tree lay against the forward end of the ridge. Beside it ran a tiny stream that trickled down from Mount Csaba itself, cutting through a delve in the rocks and undergrowth before dividing into watery veins that spilled down the incline.
The log was large enough to give them the cover they needed. The Staff stepped into the stream, prompting the others to follow. The water came up to their ankles as they braced themselves against the dead tree.
Duncan set his back on the hard wood for support while he and the rest of the platoon sucked in one deep breath after the next. He tried to blink away the sweat stinging his eyes that had pooled on his forehead. It was another one of those rare moments where he wondered how much easier his life would have been if he were a Spartan. Then as if in reply, a mental photo gallery of the young faces of Beta Company shot through his mind, and he immediately regretted the thought.
A hand patted him on the shoulder. He blinked away more sweat and saw Nova crouching next to him, already scoping out the landscape with her DMR. She gave him a concerned look.
He dismissed it with a nod.
When he had caught himself, he took his rifle off his lap and raised himself up. Turning around, he settled himself on his knees and sat on his haunches. He set the MA37 on the log, peered down the ridge and tried to prepare himself for what he would find.
He failed.
Far below, perhaps over a kilometer away at the southern base of the mountain, the maple leaf shaped arrangement of roads and structures that was Falchion Base spanned before them.
For every four buildings there was one wreathed in flames. For every street, whether they were made of gravel, dirt or asphalt, there were a dozen craters of varying sizes along their length which burned or smoldered. For every two vehicles, whether civilian or military, there was one that had been reduced to little more than a wreck of charred metal.
The smoke columns they saw from three kilometers away billowed up from several dozen buildings, all of which Duncan knew well, many of which he had spent time either in or around. Commissaries, mess halls, hospitals, on-base restaurants and checkpoints had been hit. Many of them were reduced to blazing furnaces that spouted ravenous flames and smoke from every window. Others sat as torched skeletons of architecture that slowly crumbled around bombed out craters, gouts of black smog vomiting skyward to show where Covenant plasma charges had found their mark.
At Falchion's eastern end, the base's starport had also been bombed. The runway was pocked and marred with blast craters. Though the space was overwhelmingly empty, most of the aircraft having possibly escaped in time, a row of Pelicans, at least a squadron's worth, were little more than winged pyres that leaned on their damaged sides while conflagrations ate away at their hulls. On one end of the runway itself, the dispersed debris trail of what might have once been an Albatross was sprinkled across the asphalt. On the other, the severed frame of a starship not too dissimilar from the type that had saved Erica and Noah from New Alexandria was left lying flat on its belly. Its two jagged halves were considerably far apart from one another, both of which were covered in a raging inferno. The four hangars in the corner of the port were blown open like tin cans, bleeding flames from gaping wounds torn into their walls. The main terminal that neighbored them had fared no better.
To Duncan, it was a nightmare that he could never hope to awaken from. He could blink as many times as he liked, but the scene never changed.
The airways were fully under the control of seven distinct groups of Banshees. They patrolled high and low, sticking loosely together while they scanned the ground for signs of life. He counted over ten Phantom dropships hanging over the area. Some of them were performing the same role as the Banshees, flying between buildings while their plasma cannons panned from left to right, searching for targets amid the debris strewn streets. Most, however, took to landing within small clearings in the base or even at the landing pads at the ends of Falchion's five major extensions.
Everywhere, there were signs of a battle.
Across the base, the anti-aircraft installations had been destroyed. The melted barrels of M71 Scythes drooped atop blackened mounts. Exploded M95 Lances stood like tree stumps that leaned into the glowing mouths of artificial calderas. They had been put out of commission, and apparently not without cost. For as many elements as the Covenant had in the air, three times as many had been shot down. Multiple Banshees and Seraph fighters had crashed into and around Falchion. Their wrecks carved long trenches across the green outskirts that only ended where the momentum of their eviscerated husks had left them. More of them sat against buildings whose walls were partially shorn away by the force of their impact. Duncan even spotted a Seraph buried up to its tail in a civilian residential building, still on fire. They were sadly not alone, however. Half as many Falcons and Pelicans had also crashed and burned around the base. The collection of so many wrecks had turned Falchion into a boneyard of human and alien aircraft.
Many of the streets played host to firefights long finished. The aftermath was comprised of bodies of all kinds, both human and Covenant. Military Police, Army troopers, Grunts, Jackals and Elites dotted the lanes, curbs and parking lots, lying against road signs and portable shields, draped over windowsills and underneath cars. Warthogs with dead crews sat at the other end of roadside standoffs against the steaming remains of Ghosts. Pairs of decapitated Scorpion tanks were still alight. They remained unmoving around the corners of the same intersections they had used to bottleneck minor columns of Revenants and Wraiths, having turned them into silent queue lines of metal corpses.
Altogether, Duncan estimated the combined casualties to be at least in the high hundreds and at most in the low thousands.
He turned his eye to those buildings that were intact. In spite of the damage, most of Falchion was surprisingly in decent shape.
In the north, he noticed that Alpha Company's barracks building was still standing. With some hope he glanced to the southwest and quickly found what he was looking for.
The Dante Building was still standing as well.
Bravo Company's barracks hadn't gone anywhere. He lingered on it for a moment longer before turning in a different direction. Scanning back east, he caught sight of the RTETC Building. The semi-occupied parking lot surrounding it was also covered in the scorched and bullet riddled fallout of a fight between invaders and defenders. As for the building itself, the stadium sized training center had suffered from a number of shattered windows. Several of the by now ubiquitous columns of smoke trailed from holes in its roof. Otherwise, it was in relatively good condition.
The second the summation had crossed his mind, a large explosion thundered out of its west wing, belching a slew of flaming debris into the air. As the building's blasted innards began to arc back down on fiery contrails, part of the roof began to collapse. The cave-in fanned outward in an envelope of destruction, causing a blizzard of dust to spew out of the growing abscess as flowering clouds of disintegrating material. When the collapse ceased a few seconds later, a quarter of the roof was gone along with an equal amount of the building.
Duncan winced.
The red fireball of the detonation had none of the blue hues typically associated with enemy ordnance.
It wasn't plasma weaponry.
It was human, and that confused him more than anything else.
In the 10 seconds that it took him to take everything in, Mackley and Lang had already removed the Stanchion from its casings and were setting it up on his left. Settling it on its bipod, Mackley shouldered the anti-matériel rifle and sighted through the scope.
Duncan followed his aim to the east, to the heart of Falchion.
There, in a manmade clearing within a gathering of buildings was The Center. The vaguely mushroom shaped administrative structure with its sloped roof was also intact. That fact alone was obviously not for lack of trying on the part of the enemy.
The lot surrounding it was the sight of a finished firefight that looked far more recent than the others. Beneath the shadow cast by the overhang of the roof were a score of Covenant dead. They were sprawled out at varying proximity to the ground floor, making it clear that it had been the sight of an attack. What made it that much more obvious was that they had died in positions of cover behind the personal cars and military issued transportation of the Center's logistics personnel.
There were several human dead among them. The optical zoom on Duncan's visor was nowhere near the level of the Stanchion. However, it was just enough for him to make out the black BDUs on the bodies.
They were ODSTs.
Colonel Garrison had to be inside.
If that were true, the realization would be both welcomed and terrifying, welcomed in that they would now know for sure where he was, terrifying because of the Covenant barricades currently cordoning off the building.
No less than 50 meters from the Center was a staggered ring of three-faced defensive barriers and portable shields that had been erected around the edge of the parking lot. A sizable detachment of Covenant infantry was assembled in numbers that could have caused trouble for a company of ODSTs. Grunts and Jackals remained behind the safety of their positions with plasma pistols and needlers bared. Headlining the gathering of force were multiple Elites, some crouching behind cover, some sitting at the controls of observant Revenants, and a few going so far as to stand in the open with weapons ready.
Duncan paid closer attention to a certain object next to the Center. The ruin of a Pelican dropship burned bright right beside it. The general area where the aircraft was within the cordon was hedged in by an encirclement of blue splatter marks and pieces of limbs.
Covenant casualties.
He put the pieces together to form a picture that was far more horrific than he was ready to accept.
"Whiskey-3, get eyes on the Center." The Staff ordered.
"Already there, sir." Mackley replied.
"And?"
Mackley took a second longer to answer, the tenor of his voice deceptively steady. "About...300 plus hostile infantry, 6 Revenants and three Banshees in close." He paused before speaking in a slower, shallower tone that betrayed his earlier confidence. "I-...I don't know about this one, sir."
"Never mind that, trooper. Get thermals on the building. What do you see on the inside?"
Duncan watched him inch the Stanchion to the left.
Mackley was almost always perfectly still whenever he was using a long-ranged weapon. It was a sign that he was locked on, focused.
What Duncan saw was something else. He wasn't only still. He was statuesque, practically frozen in place.
"Whiskey-3?" The Staff called.
"...One signature inside, sir." He turned from his scope, looking down the lineup to meet his eye. "Just one."
The Staff stared at him, then glared long and hard at the building and its accompanying blockade.
"Ep-7."
"Sir?"
"...Try to get a line to Neptune-Actual."
"Yessir."
"Ep-1," Lang called out, watching something through his SRS-99. "Skies to the southwest, 20 klicks out."
Duncan recognized alarm when he heard it.
Like everyone else, he looked up into the southwest and immediately understood why he was so nervous.
:********:
The last few days for Colonel Garrison were like something out of a fever dream.
His battalion was scattered to the four corners of Reach.
He had travelled across the Viery Territory and beyond, linking up with his company commanders, helping them to organize rendezvous points for their units to gather and regroup. He ate little and rested less. He hardly cared for either one. Over a thousand of the men and women under his command were lost and he had to do everything in his power to find them.
He had succeeded to an extent.
Alpha Company.
Charlie Company.
Echo Company.
Delta Company
He could say for certain that they were able to be found, to be recovered, reassembled and redeployed.
But then there was his own company, Bravo Company.
He had entrusted Captain Eddies with the command of Bravo during the Siege of New Alexandria. He had also entrusted the captain with the company's evacuation.
Eddies was one of the most reliable captains he had ever known. The man carried over 12 years of experience under his belt and had even personally saved his life during a particularly vicious drop over Alluvion.
He'd saved him back then, but could he have saved himself now?
It was a question Garrison failed to answer again and again.
He was at NA Central that night, organizing Alpha Company's impending evacuation from the city's main maglev station when he saw the first cruiser descend over the city. He watched with his own eyes as it came to hover over the very same area that he knew the Bárány Finance Center to be.
It was Bravo Company's evacuation point, the one he had sent them to himself.
Those weren't Eddies' orders.
They were his, and they burned in his mouth when he saw the cruiser unleash the full power of its energy projector.
Somehow-...somehow, he'd not only managed to send his troopers to the worst possible place imaginable, but he had also managed to do it at the worst possible time.
It was as if he had killed them himself.
No...he didn't know if they were dead or not, not definitively.
But how could anyone have survived that?
The guilt was immense, stronger than any other worry or concern. Perhaps that was why he hadn't felt the need to sleep for the last few days. There were no unspeakable nightmares to plague him because there was no rest to be found.
They were gone, so many troopers, so many faces that he knew, gone...or so he thought.
It wasn't until he came to an Army base in the far-flung city of Casimir that he found Gunnery Sergeant Singh and his 3rd Platoon. Singh, like Eddies, was a long hauler, a veteran of Bravo Company and the kind that it took a lot more than a few plasma bolts to get rid of. It seemed to Garrison that an orbital bombardment couldn't quite do the trick either.
An explosive run-in with a few Hunters at a bridge stopped Singh and his platoon from reaching the evacuation point in time. Garrison saw the irony in that. In trying to take his life, the enemy had inadvertently saved it. The story raised his spirits, strengthening his resolve to keep looking. If Singh was unable to reach the finance center in time, then what were the chances that others hadn't either?
The Gunnery Sergeant's survival made him consider the possibility of more survivors.
He was happy to see him, excited even, but then something else stole his attention.
It was shortly afterwards that one of the few radiomen that he was able to keep at his side told him what he never wanted to hear.
Falchion was quiet.
Radio contact with their battalion headquarters was suddenly impossible. Many were calling but no one was answering. Communication had been entirely lost.
The short-lived reunion was put on the side while Garrison brought Singh and his men with him back to the mainland. They made a stop at an air force station in the city of Esztergom in southern Viery. By pure chance, they ran into Sergeant Bougarré. The NCO and what remained of Alpha Company 2nd Platoon had survived the collapse of the Hornád shopping center when the corvettes took control of New Alexandria. Hearing about Falchion, all of them were eager to tag along with him for another shot at the Covenant, especially since it was now their home turf on the line. In their eyes, Alpha's pending rendezvous in a nearby city could wait.
Two Pelicans.
Two Platoons.
There was no time for anything else.
That was all the strength they could afford before they began the flight to Falchion.
Then more good news.
When he was in range of Lochaber, he contacted Brigadier General Abajjé to do his usual round of questioning, asking if more of his ODSTs had made it to the battalion's original rendezvous. He wasn't expecting a real answer like the one he received. Nevertheless, it rejuvenated another piece of his soul just as it had with Gunnery Sergeant Singh.
1st Platoon was still alive.
By some stroke of luck, the Staff and his troopers had made it out of New Alexandria after the glassing.
That likely meant that Duncan was also alive.
The last one was a special reassurance for him that he would never openly admit to. For the sake of old promises, however, it gave him a lot more peace than he would have had otherwise.
With 1st Platoon trailing after them, Garrison made full wake for Falchion the day after it had gone dark.
He found it in flames.
A Covenant assault had already swept through the base hours before his arrival. A combined force of on-base military police and companies of Army personnel transiting through the region had put up a serious fight. So had those elements of the Air Force that trafficked through Falchion on the regular. Though they were cut down to the last man and aircraft, they had made the Covenant bleed in excess.
Garrison's only regret was that his battalion, his Helljumpers weren't here to defend their own base. Had they been present in their totality, there was a good chance that they would have won.
Instead, they were made to suffice with trying to defend someone else's home while theirs was being put to the torch behind their backs, and it enraged him to no end.
Punching through what was sparse enemy air cover at the time, he made directly for the Center. Sergeant Bougarré and his troopers stayed in the air as their Pelican used its autocannon to tear into the handful of Jackals and Elites guarding the outside of the building. At the same time, Garrison landed nearby with Singh's 3rd Platoon. Together, they pushed directly for the hostiles at the front doors.
It was no simple shootout.
Their opposition was led by a team of Special Operations Elites that put everything they had into keeping them out. They split themselves up, half of them fighting head on while another half used active camouflage to outmaneuver them. Once they revealed themselves, however, whatever gains they made, whoever they shot in the back was avenged sevenfold by the combined return fire of the ODSTs and the barking autocannon of their guardian angel.
Garrison considered their presence while he walked over the shredded corpses.
Having Spec Ops Elites on one's own doorstep was never a sign of anything good. He had his troopers double time it through the doors. They worked their way in, clearing out floor after floor. Each one was covered in a layer of the dead. They were overwhelmingly human, bodies belonging to the Center's attendant personnel. The administrational staff were slaughtered both in their offices and in the hallways. The troopers followed long trails of gore that ended in sights of merciless executions, miscellaneous viscera coating the walls and ceilings. Few if any of the staff had weapons on them and the consequences of that made themselves bloodily apparent.
When the doors to the Coronary slid open, Garrison found more of the same. Console screens were covered with the blood of their users. Logistics personnel sat in their seats with the back of their heads blown out or lay on the ground covered in cooling scorch marks. They had tried to run.
What they were running from was right in front of him.
Even on the top floor, the enemy was present in the form of a pair of Spec Ops Elites. The two stood at the center of the elevated walkway that divided the Coronary into its four quarters. They remained watchful as an Engineer maneuvered its tentacles across the surface of the primary tactical planner.
His tactical planner.
The two sides opened fire the moment they saw one another.
Bullets and plasma whizzed in either direction, but the Engineer didn't seem to care. It kept its back to them, continuing to work on the main console. Garrison watched it closely while he, Singh and a squad of ODSTs hammered away at its protectors.
The fight was over in seconds.
Both Elites collapsed off the walkway full of lead.
The Engineer paid no heed to their deaths either.
Garrison took it upon himself to approach the lone survivor directly, walking up to it with a calm and collected stride.
He stopped right beside it, watching the way the fine cilia of its tentacles interacted with the device like small roots planting, uprooting and replanting themselves into the soil. The interfaces glimmered as reams of data scrolled over the screen.
When he'd seen enough, he tapped on one of the thing's bulbous air sacs with the same politeness that he would reserve for patting someone on the shoulder. It worked and the Engineer's snake-like head turned curiously, coming face to face with the barrel of his M6.
A squeeze of the trigger blew out the organic computer it called a mind along with whatever data it had collected. Its air sacs pulsated and gave out. Garrison let the body crash to the floor before putting his boot to its deflating form and rolling it off the walkway. Not wanting to take any more risks, he ordered Singh and one of his men to put extra rounds into the corpse.
His first order of business was to check in on the base's AI.
Once upon a time, he would have expected an 11th century Scottish warrior to greet him as he typed his personal security code into the keypad.
William had been his faithful companion at the Coronary and something akin to a guardian spirit to the rest of Falchion for nearly a decade.
But faithfulness, like all things, came with a cost.
The cost for William was time.
Seven years.
For all his versatility and processing power, for all his intelligence and wit, that was all he was given. Such was the fate of Smart AI, to be born with no illusions as to the date or manner of their death. They were unlike humans in that regard. The price of God-like omnipotence and knowledge was a life span far shorter than the average person.
William chose to be put down a few months into 2550 and a few more months shy of when he was expected to enter the latent stages of rampancy.
"I'd rather have you remember me as I was." He remembered him saying as he leaned expectantly on his claymore. "Dignity means more to me than a long shelf life. I'm sure you'd understand."
He did.
He was there to watch as the technicians administered the final dispensation protocols and pulled the plug on his Reimann Matrix in the Center's basement. Garrison gave his avatar one last sendoff before it disappeared forever.
Closer to the present, he recalled a meeting he'd had at ONI Sword Base when Brigadier General Abajjé gave him the news of a possible deployment to Fumirole, one that ultimately never materialized. Back then, Abajjé had considered first passing the information on to him through William, not knowing that Falchion's AI was long dead and that a successor had already taken his place.
Garrison was there in that same basement when those same technicians brought in a new matrix, and with it, a new AI.
His avatar's ancient Grecian breastplate was matched by a contemporary skirt, spear and shield. Atop his head was a helmet with an arcing plumage that gave off the regal bearing of a warrior king. All the while, the perpetual red glow of his frame offered up the impression of a blood-soaked butcher of men.
Leon was different from William.
Though he proved to be nearly as sociable, he was more rigid in his mannerisms and less likely to crack a joke. Even so, as Garrison switched on the holo-projection unit, his features, a strong brow, sharp nose and prominent jaw were just as unwavering now as they were then.
He always used to kid with him that he was the oldest looking intelligence he had ever met, aside perhaps from one other. Leon had almost as many grays as he did. If the Spartan King that was his namesake truly was that old when he fought in his last battle then Garrison would have been impressed. By proxy, he felt another kind of kinship with the AI than he did with William. Instead of subtle jibes and quips, it was one of two aging men whom fortune had smiled upon enough to keep them in their prime.
Surrounded by danger on all sides, Leon was as cool as he ever was.
Spear in one hand and shield in the other, he gave Garrison a summation of all that unfolded in the battalion's absence.
The evening prior to his arrival, a Covenant insertion team, the same one whose blood was now splattered across the walkway, successfully infiltrated the base. Somehow, they already knew that the Center was the place where they would find the information they were obviously tasked with retrieving. They got as far as the ground floor before anyone noticed anything out of the ordinary. From there, they slaughtered everyone in sight. Leon responded by sealing the doors with an emergency lockdown that kept them from accessing the top floor.
There was no real need on their part to defend the building from a counterattack.
Minutes after their assault, a wave of Covenant aircraft descended on Falchion from the south, causing every available reaction force to turn to face them. Within the resulting chaos, a Phantom made its way to the Center and delivered the same Engineer that Garrison had killed. The floating technician used its abilities to forcibly undo the lockdown and opened the way to the Coronary. The few personnel who remained were killed shortly thereafter. For hours the Engineer tried its hardest to get through the walls upon walls of data encryptions and server lockouts Leon had established to keep it at bay. Even while it did so, he busied himself erasing any and all navigation data in his possession as well as wiping every databank across Falchion.
His carrying out of the Cole Protocol was a success.
His adversary's efforts were nearly so.
Had Garrison arrived so much as a minute after he did, the creature would have gained access to Leon's core, his innermost being, and every scrap of vital data that he held in reserve.
Knowing that the base's navigation data was purged took some of the weight off Garrison's shoulders. The Covenant would not find what they were looking for here.
Not entirely.
There was still of course the matter of Leon himself.
They couldn't be allowed to capture him under any circumstance.
That left them with two options: carrying him out of here or terminating his source code.
Garrison favored the first and had purposefully brought along a data crystal chip for the extraction. He could have removed him from the system then and there. He could have, but he didn't.
He needed Leon.
That much was clear.
They would need the extra help if they were to survive.
The next priority on his list came down to what he assumed to be a jammer somewhere in Falchion. He would need it gone in order to coordinate the backup that he had on the way.
Leon confirmed his suspicions by showing him camera footage of the jammer in question. The tripodal device sat in the lounge of one of the upper floors in the RTETC Building. Much to his chagrin, it was guarded by another handful of Special Operations Elites.
Garrison sent Sergeant Bougarré to take care of it. He watched from the windows ringing the Coronary's walls as their Pelican soared off towards the largest building in Falchion.
He then watched from those same windows as minutes later a wave of Covenant reinforcements descended over the area.
With each Phantom that lowered itself down to open its cargo bay, more and more enemy infantry stormed across the base. A growing force soon closed in on the Center.
Their first target was none other than the Pelican they had used to land.
Garrison and Singh went out with 3rd Platoon in a bid to buy the pilot time to escape. They reached as far as the ground floor when a barrage of fuel rods slammed into the rising craft. The explosive reaction punched through its fuselage and blasted out of the cockpit. The wreck came crashing back down with a final, earth-shaking detonation.
As simply as that, they were left stranded.
They were also left surrounded.
The Covenant quickly made them aware of both by advancing on the building from all directions. Garrison, Singh and his platoon refused to go quietly. They promptly turned the ground floor of the Center into a holdout, transforming every window into a gunport and every doorway into a line of fire. They tore into the onrush of hostiles from the relative safety of thick, concrete walls that absorbed plasma bolts as easily as they shattered crystals.
The enemy fell by the dozens.
Dozens more were able to reach the building.
The fighting devolved into a bloody brawl, room to room and hallway to hallway. ODSTs fired over office cubicles and leapt out of the way of landing plasma grenades. Elites charged down contested corridors, pouring plasma even as blasts of fragmentation shattered their shields.
The waves kept coming.
One by one, Singh's men began to die.
They fell to plasma bolts to the face, exploded from crystalline needles to the chest and were cut to pieces by energy swords. None of them died, however, without dishing out twice as much pain on their attackers. They went down fighting. That was all Garrison could have asked of them.
He gave the order to abandon the ground floor.
They were pulling back, withdrawing to the emergency stairwell when an Elite with a needle rifle got a shot off on Singh. Garrison watched him fall. He caught him just in time and hefted him over his shoulder. His last few troopers told them to get going as they covered their escape, all while another onslaught of Covenant came barreling in.
With no small amount of gratitude, and regret, he nodded off to them and ran up the stairs, knowing full well that he would never see them alive again.
The moment he reached the safety of the Coronary, Leon reengaged the lockdown on those few remaining doors that he could control between them and the horde below.
Garrison laid Singh against the tactical planner, letting him use it to support himself. The gunnery sergeant assured him that he was fine. He didn't believe him, but there was nothing he could do. Any biofoam they had on hand was still with the last medic in 3rd Platoon. Said medic had gone down early on when one of the first Elites to breach the building took a sword to his neck.
Soon the gunfire echoing up from the ground floor ceased.
When it did, he knew for a fact that they were on their own.
Now, at the tail end of the latest tragedy, he found himself standing on the Coronary's south-side walkway. There he watched as a massive explosion tore through the roof of the RTETC a mere several hundred meters south of the Center. He felt the tremor of the blast shortly after.
"The jammer has been successfully neutralized, colonel." Leon reported from somewhere behind him, speaking with both a hint of confidence and solemnity. "We should be able to utilize long range communications now."
Garrison continued to observe the smoke that now billowed up from the flames eating away at the exposed bowels of the building. "And Sergeant Bougarré?"
There was a noticeable pause.
It was only a second for Garrison but something akin to a full day for an AI like Leon.
"I'm sorry, sir, 2nd Platoon was overwhelmed at the training center. I believe that...was their last Hail Mary. It worked, but...well..."
Garrison didn't reply right away.
A thankful smile etched itself across his lips, drawn there from the bitterest place in his heart. "Yeah...it worked..."
He took in a breath that came a bit more shakily than he would have liked. "What's the status of Hectic-2-2?"
"She went down a few minutes ago, sir, providing fire support for Bougarré. Banshees."
Garrison nodded.
So, they were stranded here after all.
He took a few steps down the walkway. At the end of it, he was able to look down and see the enemy. The Covenant had retreated after their mauling on the ground floor. They had also regrouped. Unless he was mistaken, and he doubted that he was, there were twice as many of them now assembling behind a newly made perimeter of defensive barriers and shields. Among the throngs of antsy Grunts and vengeful Jackals, he saw more Elites and even a few Hunter pairs standing at the fore.
They were soon to begin their next push; one he had no hope whatsoever of staving off. They had him backed into a corner, one man and an AI against an army of hundreds. He would have taken those odds if he were a Spartan. Sadly, that only applied to one of them and it just so happened to be the one that couldn't raise a weapon in their defense.
"What do you think the end of Thermopylae was like?" Garrison asked.
Leon's projection appeared next to him. The subtle red glow of his avatar was turned down. He was making sure not to draw any unwanted attention while he hovered over to the window to see for himself. He didn't need to physically do it, but Garrison appreciated the gesture. He was trying to make him feel like he still had someone by his side.
"Too many Persians," Leon said, spear and shield in hand. "Not enough Greeks, but at the end of the day, they got their point across."
"And what point was that?"
"Our land," Leon's grip tightened on his spear. "Your blood."
Garrison gave a weak but no less genuine smile. "I like that. It's simple, straightforward."
"A worthy message for a worthy adversary."
"I like to think that was an easier time. It was only us causing trouble for ourselves back then. Submit or perish, right?" He cast a sidelong glance at the wreck of Hectic-2-1 which still burned bright outside the Center. "Now both of them are one in the same."
"I wouldn't say it was easier. You lived young, you died young."
Garrison huffed as his smile widened, then softened and slowly shrank. "What's the status of that thing I asked you about?"
Leon stared out at the gathered hordes for a moment longer. "Progress currently stands at 56%. But are you sure they will reach us in time? Our foe is already at the gates. It won't be long."
"They'll be here. What I need to know from you is if we'll be ready when they show up."
"You want an estimate?"
"Give it to me straight."
Leon turned to him fully and hovered over to his side, the strings of code that ran back and forth through his avatar rising to a brighter shade of crimson. "All variables accounted for, there's a 20/80 chance of us pulling this off."
"Who's the 80?" Garrison dared.
Leon shook his head. "Not us."
"Hmph. Alright...how about we-"
Leon's figure suddenly flickered, the codes speeding up and slowing down across his frame. "Hold on, I think..."
"What is it?"
"One of our satellites just got back within range. I've detected a-...an aircraft a few kilometers north of Falchion, a Pelican. It's...on low power but it's there."
Garrison sensed a twinge of something like hope stirring in his chest. "Has to be 1st Platoon. Are they on their way?"
"I can't say for sure. The dropship landed in a clearing on the other side of Mount Csaba. It is operational, I can say that for certain."
"Then they're on foot. They must've seen the situation in the air and decided against a direct approach. I wish we'd thought the same." He peered over his shoulder and took in an eyeful of Mount Csaba. "Get me a secure line to them."
"Working on that now, colonel."
That spark of hope grew brighter, hesitantly so. Garrison thought of Singh and raised his voice.
"Hear that, Gunny? Looks like there's a chance we might be getting out of here, so hold on for a little longer, alright?"
There was no answer.
"Gunny?"
He waited for a response, but when none came, he shut his eyes tight.
Slowly turning around, he opened them again.
Gunnery Sergeant Singh was exactly where he'd left him, sitting against the primary tactical planner in the heart of the Coronary. His hands, however, were in his lap, no longer clutching at his wound as his head lay on his shoulder.
Garrison strode back down the walkway.
Reaching the planner, he crouched down next to Singh, eyeing the cooling hole in his chest plate that had come fatally close to his heart.
"I'm sorry, sir." Leon said, reappearing beside him.
Garrison sucked in another deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.
He laid a firm hand on his shoulder for a moment. Then he reached for the back of the man's helmet and pressed the release. Pulling it off, he saw a face that he had seen many times before, but never like this.
Compared to Garrison himself, Singh was on the tanner side of things. Though he was from Tribute, his roots probably went back to Earth's Indian subcontinent. The thick beard that covered half of his face was coated in the blood that he had coughed up in his final moments. His eyes were vacant and the dark circles around them were quickly growing pale.
Guilt.
It quietly guided Garrison's hand as he reached into the collar of Singh's BDU and got ahold of his dog tags. The feel of the cool metal between his thumb and forefinger struck a chord in him. An old, withered chord. He'd done this too many times by now to count. But something was different about this one. Looking into the gunnery sergeant's empty gaze, as he prepared to pull, it all felt awfully, painfully familiar.
Interceptio - Interception