Concurrence Chapter 8-6

2822 words update. Fun fact I tossed the idea round of having the Zealot from the start return at around this point, maybe a whole bunch of Elites as well! But I scrapped it, since it felt a little too  overwhelming to have all these characters suddenly whoosh in.

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“Replacement’s on the way,” Rebar answered. “ETA: not soon enough. Ten minutes.”

The Marines shuffled behind any bit of cover they could find, kneeling behind fallen trees and going prone around the chassis of the Warthog. An alien cry carried on the wind a moment later, the expanse of the park giving it a foreboding echo.

“The fuck was that?” one of the Marines asked.

“The call of a Brute,” Seela answered. “They’re alerting any other packs nearby.”

He could see the Marine’s helmeted heads were swivelling towards each other, the men clearly unnerved about the destruction of their boat, and the strange alien shouts that were responding. He had to say something to keep them in line.

“This is Earth, Marines,” he yelled. “Make these Covenant bastards bleed for every inch of her! Hold the line!”

They gripped their guns with a fresh determination, the specialists joining the defence, their backs lit by the glow of their flaming would-be rescue boat. Together they numbered at thirteen, including Seela, the alien waving at Joker to get his attention.

“You can have your big gun, Jester,” she said. “I shall stay on the ground.”

Joker climbed onto the flatbed, sliding back the loading bolt on the mounted gun as he swerved the barrel towards the slope. The road they’d driven down was the only land path leading out of the beach, which should provide enough of a bottleneck to give them an edge.

The Major took up position beside the Warthog, crouching shoulder to shoulder with Seela and Holiday, the Major lowering his voice so that only the two of them could hear him.

“If anything happens to me,” he began. “Take the drive and get out of here. This data is all that matters.”

“With respect Sir, stow that crap,” Holiday answered. “We’ve survived more botched missions than this.”

“I concur,” Seela added. “Only Jiralhanae lives will be lost in this glorious stand of ours.”

“Been a bit of a circle for you, hasn’t it?” he asked her, loading slugs into his shotgun, as they would add to his weapon’s effective range. “When we met, you were holding out against the Covenant.”

“But this time, I have a little help from my fellow Heretics,” she said, patting him on the back. “And now I follow a much more noble cause, rather than self-immolation. Let us make sure the Brutes never forget what we accomplished this day.”

After a few tense moments of waiting, a wave of Grunts crested the hill, their stumpy legs slipping in the dirt as they waddled down the slope. Jackal snipers peaked their feathered heads over the terrain behind them, levelling needle rifles in their thin arms. Lastly came the Brutes, a collection of Minors and Majors wielding everything from carbines to rifles to spikers, Brute-made weapons that were a blend between ballistic and plasma-powered guns, capped with wicked bayonets. The aliens outnumbered the humans two to one, though that was par for the course for humanity at this point.

The Marines opened up on the charging aliens, hundreds of tracer rounds drawing lines in the air as the Grunts were gunned down, the soil splashing as stray rounds chewed up the earth. Some of the waddling aliens were simply dismembered in the maelstrom of bullets, blue blood spraying, their bodies and pistols tumbling down the incline.

The Jackals and Brutes fired from the top of the slope, the plasma leaving brilliant green contrails as the bolts sailed towards the beach, the Marines ducking as the plasma sailed over their heads. Rebar rested the bipod on his sniper against a fallen tree, peering through the scope as he began to counter-snipe the Jackals, felling the Covenant ranks with frightening precision.

While the cannon fodder fared poorly in the charge, the Brutes were able to gain ground, but Joker was ready on the Warthog, the ends of the barrels glowing red-hot as he filled the charging aliens with lead. The Vulkan gun was designed to counter vehicles, and the Brute’s shields didn’t stand up to the barrage for long, the giant aliens slumping to the ground, pieces of their power armour shattering under the concentrated firepower.

Four Brutes lingered at the top of the hill, deterred by their decimated charge and keeping out of the line of fire. Some of the Marines took advantage of the lull to whoop and holler, but Holiday was quick to put them in their place.

“They’re just testing our defences!” she called out. “Get ready for more!”

The screech of engines drew the eyes of the defenders upward, a pair of Banshees breaking off from the Covenant airforce and diving towards the beach. Joker brought the Vulkan round, and opened up, the aircraft banking away to try and make themselves as hard a target as possible.

Lower in the sky, another Phantom broke off from its patrol route deeper into the park, its mounted guns hammering the beach as it hovered over to the other side of the crest, another squad of aliens jumping out of its loading bay. One of the giant plasma bolts collided with a Marine to the right, the man crumpling without a sound, his comrades shifting him onto his back to check his vitals.

“They charge once more!” Seela announced, her carbine jumping in her hands as she fired up the slope.

Another wave of Grunts came into view, the Marines meeting them with a hail of bullets, the weapons only ceasing when the men needed to reload. As the Grunts were mopped up, small, cylindrical devices arched over their falling bodies from the opposite side of the hill, the pieces of metal rolling to a stop in the gravel. They landed too far away to cause any real alarm, until they activated.

Parts of the small devices lit up in bright blue, a wall of plasma the shape of a scale projecting out of the points of light. The Major had seen portable barriers in Covenant staging areas, but never used to cover an advance like this before. They were being tossed by Brutes, he noticed, the aliens sprinkling the shields down the slope randomly, only stopping when there were ten or so barriers littering the area.

Only now did the Brutes and Jackals make their descent, skidding to a halt behind the deployed sheilds, the former knocking some of the surviving Grunts aside so that they could fit their larger bulks into cover. Bullets bounced uselessly off the wavering walls of energy, the Brutes holding their weapons out and sending bolts down at the beach, exposing as little of their bodies as they could.

“Seela, focus on those shields!” the Major ordered, Seela switching her fire onto the barriers. He noted that Holiday was holding a plasma pistol in one hand, joining her as they overwhelmed the improvised defences with energy, as they were more effective in bringing down shields than conventional bullets were.

The Covenant made some progress down the slope, but the barriers were only big enough to fit one Brute behind them, the aliens scrambling for any free piece of cover, the Marines mowing down those unlucky enough to be caught in the open. The barriers were a hindrance, but not invincible, the Major seeing one such shield collapse, the Brute hiding behind it quickly riddled with bullets soon after, but they used up a lot of ammunition, something they didn’t have an abundance of.

As the Covenant pushed through the bottleneck, Joker was fighting his own battle for the skies, steam rising from the barrels of the mounted gun as he continued to ward off the swooping Banshees. The Major glanced up to see him clip one of the aircraft along the wing, the nose plummeting down to the beach as the flight systems failed, the craft leaving a giant groove in the sand as it crashed into the ground, tossing up a huge cloud of sand. As the powder cleared, he saw the Banshee was remarkably intact despite the crash, the craft landing in the middle of the battle ground.

The fuselage opened up like a peg, and a Brute tumbled out, the Major noting the inside of the Banshee was lined with hundreds of little lights, the dash and control systems angled so that the pilot had to basically lie prone to fly the craft.

The Brute pilot lifted himself to a knee, reaching for a sidearm on his thigh, but the Marines quickly put him down, the Brute slumping against the crashed Banshee without a sound.

The Major pumped his shotgun, the spent casing flying out to join the growing pile of empty shells at his feet. When he was reloaded, he riddled a sprinting Jackal with a slug, sending it toppling over with a chunk of its torso missing. The next wave was hammered into the ground, the surviving Covenant pushing one another aside like they were playing some perverted version of musical chairs as they fought for the limited amount of barriers protecting the slope. He almsto felt bad for the poor Grunts. Almost.

The Phantom with the decal hovered behind and above the advancing Brutes, the troops framed by its glowing engine that shimmered the air, the plasma turrets taking the occasional potshot at the defenders, the bolts sailing right over the heads of the alien troops.

“Joker focus on that Phantom!” the Major yelled. “If we don’t take it out they’re just gonna tag our boat as soon as it gets here!”

“I can’t!” Joker answered. “Clever asshole’s staying out my line of fire!”

He saw what he meant. The moment Joker banked the gun on the dropship, the pilot would dip away, the craft hiding behind the walls of rock like it was taking cover. Joker couldn’t exactly afford to switch his focus off the remaining Banshee anyway, the fighter occasionally diving low to strafe the beach, a Marine caught in the path of its cannons crying out as his green chest plate was slagged.

The Marines and specialists reloaded during the lull in the fighting, before another wave of Covenant moved into view. The park must have been crawling with Covenant if there were no other Phantoms around to drop them off. The Major’s shoulder began to sting with all the shooting he was doing, the Covenant making more ground as the Brutes chucked more portable barriers like they were softballs, the slope becoming more and more obscured behind the walls of energy. He set his sights on a Brute darting between the shields, its giant hand rising over his shoulder, a spiker grenade clutched in its furred fingers. A slug tore its shields apart, startling the Brute long enough that a follow-up shot from Rebar brought the alien down. The spiker grenade stabbed into the dirt, but didn’t go off.

Tens of Grunts and Jackals began their advance, the Major directing the Marines fire on the Brutes in charge of deploying the barriers, as they were the bigger threat. The alien bodies were starting to pile up now, the newly arrived aliens having to step over their fallen brethren in order to continue their descent.

“I’m outta ammo!” a Marine to the left yelled, his assault rifle firing off one last burst. Another man tossed him a spare, but his rigging was nearly empty too, their stand couldn’t last much longer at this rate if they had to resort to sidearms.

The Brutes at the forefront of the charge tossed more barriers towards the beach, the lines of fire slowly cutting off as the shields reached the level ground. One of the Marines stood out of cover, pulling the pin on a fragmentation grenade and tossing it over the shields, the explosive detonating and sending a pair of Jackals flying, clouds of soil raining down on the heads of the nearby Brutes.

Some of the other Marines joined in, the explosives leaving craters in the sand as the front ranks of the charge were cascaded in shrapnel. It was like the beach was being pounded by mortar fire, the Brutes wary of advancing much further as the bolder members of their packs were dismembered in the blasts.

The Covenant charge started to falter, but just as the Major began to think their reinforcements were spent, another pack of Brutes appeared at the top of the hill, one of them standing out more than the others. His armour was the colour of a setting sun, his ornate helmet adding two feet to his overall height. A large gravity hammer was glued to his back, but that wasn’t what had the Major concerned. Hauled over the alien’s shoulder was a fuel rod gun, the Covenant’s more portable version of their heaviest weapon.

“The coward reveals himself at last,” Seela growled. “It’s the Captain Major.”

“Just how big of a boner does this guy have for you?” Joker asked, turning the Vulkan on the Brute leader, having finally dealt with the last Banshee, the craft plummeting into the water.

“The biggest,” Seela answered.

Joker opened up on the Captain Major, but he barely sent the beginnings of a burst downrange before the Brute fired his heavy weapon, the handheld launcher rocking in his arms as a bolt the size of an engine block arched through the air.

“Get clear!” the Major shouted, hauling a Marine away. “Outta the Warthog Joker! Now!”

Joker leapt clear, shouting a string of curses as he barrelled into Holiday, the two tumbling into the sand. The fuel rod impacted the vehicle a moment later, the chassis plitting apart like an eggshell, a green-tinted mushroom cloud erupting from the Warthog’s compromised fuel tanks, wheels and parts of the armour thrown away by the blast. The Major felt his feet leave the sand as the shockwave rolled through the landscape, his helmet meeting the ground a moment later as he landed hard on his front.

As the ringing in his ears settled, he lifted himself onto his elbows, his senses slowly returning as he looked round. It was chaos. The Brutes had used the blast to close in, deploying more of those barriers, some of the aliens going berserk and rushing into melee range. The Marines cut one of them down as it hobbled on all fours like a giant ape, but another broke through, swiping at the man unfortunate enough to be the closest, his helmet twisting with a sickening crack as he was sent back, tumbling into the surf.

He turned and saw Rebar moving in, firing his sniper rifle from the hip at the attacking Brute, the round packing so much kinetic energy it simply blew a chunk through the alien’s torso, leaving a gap the Major could see straight through.

He looked round for his shotgun, seeing nothing but boot prints in the sand. His search was cut short as someone grabbed at his rigging, Seela thrusting her carbine into his hands as she sat him up. “Help your squad,” she said, reaching down and turning on her energy sword with a flex of her hand.

“Where are you going?” he asked, Seela turning her back on him.

“To avenge my kin.”

He couldn’t get another word out before she fell into a run, delving into the fray, swiping a Jackal across the neck with her sword, the little alien dying before he could even turn his beak on the charging Elite.

He peered down the blocky housing of the carbine, firing the weapon just like he would a battle rifle, bringing down a pair of Grunts circling to the left. It was hard to tell who’d been lost alongside the Warthog’s destruction, but he saw that Joker was still up, hauling a wounded Marine towards the surf, as far away from the fight as was possible.

As the carbine ran dry, he paused to watch as Seela plunged her blade into a Brute that stood in her way, pushing her way through the Covenant lines until she was in the back ranks. It didn’t take a genius to see where she was going, the ten foot tall Captain Major bellowing orders from the rear.

The Brute leader noticed her approach, Seela cutting down a Minor that made to intercept her, slicing through its power armour almost in annoyance. The Covenant were starting to thin out, a temporary lull in the gunfire allowing the Major to hear her exchange with the Brute in the golden armour.

“Hello again, little sister,” the Captain Major said, his footfalls leaving small craters in the dirt as he approached. “You’ve eluded me for so long, yet now you come directly to me? Looking for a good death?”

“Yeah, yours,” Seela snarled, holding her sword out to the side.

“Yourbrothers sought the same thing,” the Brute replied. “I sucked the marrow from every one of their bones, you will be no different.”