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Tau Chi II: Ch. 3 - Extraction
Posted By: Myth
Date: 8 January 2009, 3:57 am
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Tau Chi II, Centauri System
Aboard UNSCDF Cerberus
Hale had finally devised a way to staunch the flow of information concerning attached units and friendly ships within the group. With such trivial data confined Silas's databases, he could focus on his own tasks.
Jeremy Hale had not yet left his station since the Covenant had blasted away half the CIC, leaving half of 'A' crew dead or bleeding. The lieutenant had been close with his team, and avoided leaving his station for fear of the realization of their deaths to hit him when he was needed most.
His bloodied palm left a crimson smudge on the glass pane display, now his new station due to the destruction of his previous console. He quickly forwarded the management of the 21st Marines on the deck to Commander Sadie, choosing to direct the 82nd himself.
Instantly the faces of every man deployed on the surface from Alpha, Foxtrot and Juliet platoons of the 82nd ODST Marines appeared in tiny boxes, punctuated by the visages of their squad leaders in larger portraits. Each face was tagged with the characters SOP and minuscule biometrics displays. SOP stood for Special Operations Pool, or the Marines with combat experience in ONI operations or Special Forces backgrounds.
The uplink to the squads on the surface had been severed during the blast, and would take time to update. The TACCOM system had lost its connection with the soldiers' personal HUDs and would have to relay through the communications outposts or the Pelicans on station to reestablish. There was no limit to how much time that could take.
Hale slammed a fist against the bulkhead, bruising his hand. He had been the one to select the squads and platoons assigned to go to the surface, and now he had abandoned them. The display was unaffected, and continued to flash the alert CANNOT CONNECT.
The rest of the Bridge seemed to rush back towards him like a freight train, due to the absence of the distraction of his work. People were crying out alerts and asking for orders, others were madly reporting the sudden loss of ships in other Battle Groups, asking desperately why the Covenant had sudden grown so much more adept than they had been only moments before.
Another blast rocked the ship, something big, by the feel of it. Arden was the first to speak. "Holy shit. Captain, Clarity's gone! No escape pods detected."
"Damn it!" Brauer swore. "Bring Wing 4-9 and 6-0 in to cover our starboard, and bring Jester up above us." The Captain barked as the NAV crew hurried to follow orders.
A cool voice broke through the carnage around him. "You asked for me, Lieutenant Hale?" It was Silas, the armored Praetorian artificial intelligence.
"Finally. Yes, Silas, I need to reestablish contact with my teams on the ground, the…uh…Eighty-Second Marines: Juliet, Alpha and Foxtrot." Hale replied.
Silas touched a hand to his forehead and seemed to be concentrating on something. "Magnetic interference of the pole is masking their transponders…if they can establish a relay station at their position I can have it up in no time, but until then there's nothing we can do."
Hale swore. "Alright, Silas. Thank you." Silas clasped a fist to his chest and disappeared. Hale stared at the vacant holograph pedestal for a moment before returning to his task.
He stroked a fingertip over the pane, toggling the display from the Marine Unit to their pilots of the 336th Air Wing. Four D77H-TCI Pelican diagrams rotated into view, three of them marked as troop carriers, and the fourth labeled as CSAR, the Combat Search and Rescue bird. Each of the three shuttles was sub-labeled with their respective Marine detachments. Hale tapped the dropship labeled as ALPHA, encouraging the faces of Alpha Platoon to reappear, bracketed under their squad leader. Above that were the faces of a pair of pilots. Hale pressed the screen over the pilot's portrait, opening a channel to Hammer 5-0's Pelican.
The pilot's visage enlarged, as the connection went through. The picture became animated as it transformed into the live feed of the pilot circling the surface below. "Hammer 5-0, this is Command. Relay your current position and situation, over."
"Hammer Five here, Command. We're moving up into Southern Ostri now…will be within the Pesanga borders soon to refuel in Chinhae-Taejon."
"Alright, who's still on station over the eighty-second's drop zone?" Hale asked.
"Uh…hold on. Alright, I show Davies's bird still on station with Wolcott in the CSAR."
"Okay, Hammer Five, can you patch me into Wolcott on the CSAR? Our COMs are still fried up here."
"Sure thing, Command. Wolcott comin' up."
Another face jumped out of the collection towards him, and came to life as the connection went through. "What can I do for you, Command?" Lieutenant Gregory Wolcott asked, circling high above the frozen pole below.
"I need you to instruct the Marines to take a small COM station on the ridge above the alien structures in the Kai Sao Valley." Hale ordered.
"Wait one." Wolcott said, swapping to his SQUADCOM channel. "Alpha One, Alpha One, this is CSAR Hammer Six, please reply, over."
Static washed over Hale's end of the channel as the magnetic forces surrounding the pole interfered with his long-range COM devices.
The sound of shifting snow and the crunch of boots on the ice edged into the speakers as Alpha One established contact. "We got you, Hammer Six. This is Stormare from Alpha." At the mention of his name, the glass pane display fished out Ethan Stormare's portrait and matched it alongside Wolcott's.
"Alright, Gunny, I need you to move two klicks north and secure COM station I-04 and establish a relay to Command." Wolcott's garbled voice answered.
A pause. "…Wilco, Command. Second squad is heading to secure objective, we'll have the uplink up and running in ten minutes, tops." Gunnery Sergeant Stormare replied.
Another explosion rocked the Cerberus as another plasma blast glanced off her hull. Another collection of frenzied commands and replies as the ship banked away from an imploding Jester above them.
Arden and Silas were simultaneously feeding information to Brauer as the Captain directed replacements for his two slagged frigates. Maximilian was moving back into position, forming up with the Cerberus as a CCS moved into engage the pair.
Hale was forced to look back at his display, as the alert came through that the Alpha team had established their uplink. A loading screen flashed across the pane, frustrating Hale.
The loading finished, updating the information on each of the Marines on the ground. To his horror, Foxtrot Platoon's biometrics immediately flat-lined, tinting their faces with red light, indicating an entire platoon had been wiped out. In another minute, half of Juliet blinked to red. And a few seconds after that, three members from Alpha fell as well.
Amid the small explosions and general confusion inside the Bridge Hale furiously opened the COM channel and spoke into the mic. "Alpha One! Alpha One, this is Command, what the hell is going on down there?"
The blast of weapons' fire blared through the speaker. "…Command!....pha One…situa….ad…half the…." More of the staccato of automatic weapons drowned Stormare's voice. "Move back…all arou…gonna….need extract…SHIT!"
"Alpha One!" Hale toggled to Juliet's squad leader. "Juliet One, do you copy? Juliet One!" Hale swore angrily and switched back to Wolcott. "CSAR Hammer Six, this is Command, please respond, over."
"Roger that, Command, Hammer Four is on the deck, over! Repeat Hammer Four is down, we're moving in to recover survivors." came Wolcott's hasty reply.
"Covenant strength in the area?" Hale asked worriedly.
"…Negative, negative. There's no sign of Covenant Forces, just two downed Phantoms. Davies moved in to pickup the survivors of Juliet, when he got close, Juliet fired on Davies! The rockets knocked her on the deck without a chance for flying again."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Hale asked. "Why would they fire on their own evac?"
"It wasn't them sir. I don't know what the fuck they were…but they were wearing Juliet's armor and fired Juliet's weapons, and now Davies and Johnston are most likely dead."
"Negative, on Hammer Four's casevac, Wolcott. Move to COM I-04 and extract Alpha's second team."
"But sir!" Wolcott protested, his HUD illustrating the burning wreckage of Davies's Pelican on Hale's display.
"You said it yourself, Lieutenant, they're dead! Now move to I-04 and extract Alpha." Hale watched as dark forms scurried over the wreckage in the shapes of humans but moved like animals. What the hell was going on down there?
Hale was completely immersed in Wolcott's HUD. It felt as if he was piloting the dropship through the blizzard below. The Pelican sped away from the crash site and over the white clad landscape. Movement was everywhere on the pilot's motion tracers, painting the displays with dozens of red dots.
A squat concrete structure presented itself seconds later, illuminated by flashes of gunfire and explosions. Wolcott spun to face away from the structure and toggled his systems to the 20mm cannon slung under the Pelican's nose. The pilot guided the weapon with his helmet, simply sweeping his vision across the Marines' perimeter, strafing the line of macabre figures encroaching on the ODSTs fighting for their lives.
There were seven figures bearing FOF tags denoting friendly units that climbed to the roof of the building and ignited a pair of blue flares. Hale's display assigned them faces and serial numbers.
Wolcott guided the Pelican down while his copilot took command of the cannon, beating back waves of hostiles moving towards the LZ. The crew chief in the cabin shouted that everyone was aboard ten seconds later. Wolcott punched a key that slammed the atmospheric doors shut and fired the belly thrusters of the bird, clawing for altitude.
Alerts starting blinking on the control panels of the Pelican. "Rockets in the air!" The crew chief cried.
"Hold on!" Wolcott answered, yanking back the controls, swinging the Pelican around to present a smaller profile for the rockets. One of them sped by in open space, exploding harmlessly in midair. The second however erupted only a few feet from the starboard wing tip, throwing the Pelican violently to port, nearly bringing it down. Wolcott swung the other way to compensate, bringing the dropship back even.
Hale exhaled as Wolcott's bird soared away from the scene towards the mainland and Chinhae-Taejon. Then a greater worry reached his consciousness. What the hell had happened to the dozens of Covenant and Human combatants that been wiped out in a matter of minutes?
Hale toggled to the crew chief, Chief Petty Officer Warren's HUD to inspect the survivors. The display grew dim, and illustrated a half dozen or so white-clad Marines, sitting exhaustedly in the troopbay. Their helmets were removed, sitting in their laps or on the deck of the cabin. Their faces were bathed in sweat, disguising the tears that accompanied it. Hale had seen it a dozen times, and it made him feel as if someone had extracted the only hope left in him, and forced him to watch as they tore it into pieces. The ODSTs were the best of the best, the toughest of the tough, and here they were, their entire company wiped out before their eyes, stricken with grief.
Hale switched back to Wolcott's personal COM channel. "Lieutenant, I want you to redirect back to the Cerberus, we need to debrief the Marines on what happened on the surface." Hale ordered. Sadie heard his directive and turned around to looked at him.
"What the hell are you doing, Lieutenant?" The commander asked.
"Sir. Watch." With a string of tapped commands, the HUD recording of the extraction streamed to Sadie's screen, which kept him quiet.
When the clip finished, Sadie regarded him with a worried look that permitted his earlier order.
"Wilco, Command. Bringing the boys home." Wolcott replied.
"Alright, we'll drop a pair of Longswords to you."
"Acknowledged, Command. See you soon."
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