Halo: Excursion
halo gameing
IC: Alice - The Madrigal -
"Affirmative captain!" The AI said in response as she assumed direct control over the plasma turrets. The turrets systematically fired at the lead enemy ship, making sure it's shields stayed down. As Alice fully took over all of the Madrigal's plasma cannons she hummed a little tune to herself.
A very happy unbirthday, to me!
Naturally she was also doing work in the background, trying to worm her way into the enemy ship's systems, looking for cracks in their firewalls and networks. If she could start systematically shutting down their systems it would make it rather easy for the Spartans and friends to capture.
IC: Taylor [SPEHSS]
Staff Sergeant Taylor Gull, forty-seven years of age, closed his eyes and inhaled, and a biting tang of smoke and embers filled his lungs. The breeze felt painfully warm and thick enough to choke him, and it left his scars tingling and face sweaty as it passed. He wondered if he ought to put on his helmet, still swinging loosely from his right hand in the bitter draft, but his arm felt as stiff as iron and twice as heavy.
The ground shuddered beneath him, and even after it stopped, he felt like he was about to fall from the mountaintop, tumbling down to the city burning below.
From behind him came the soft footsteps of one of the Bullfrogs accompanying his platoon, and a gloved hand on his shoulder-
<<You doing okay back there, Gunny?>>
Good question.
Gunnery Sergeant Taylor Gull, fifty-three and probably mostly sane, maybe, perhaps, clutched at the grips of his turret and thought hard about exactly what had just happened. Reach had been bad, yes, but hardly the first time he’d seen a city glassed- and more pertinently, while he’d had flashbacks before, they had never been so… distracting. Just a flash, nothing more. What in the world was this? Pre-op jitters? Zero-g nausea? Both? Probably both. He eyed his vitals dancing in his HUD and tried not to think about what deep space was doing to his circulatory system.
Wait. Question. Whoops. Taylor scowled and forced his breathing under control again. <<Well,>> he grunted, <<turret's still a bit sluggish, but other than that…>> He shrugged, then remembered his pilot couldn't exactly see him. <<Little worried my head’s not quite in the game. I’m hoping the shooting lets me take my mind off it all, but until then->>
Plasma flare. The Madrigal’s hull flashed as its main guns activated, and a shining bloom of pale fire began to chew its way through the asteroid field towards the pirate corvettes. Taylor winced as a burst of bright blue seared afterimages into his eyes in the fraction of a second it took for his visor to polarize (down in the mountain basin, the city of Manassas vanished in a swirling cloud of black smoke and blinding light), and then the bloom streaked past above and he twisted in his gunner’s perch to watch it land.
One of the trails of light flying beside him flashed as well, and a bolt of twisting energy emerged from its ventral cannon and lanced a dark shape in the distance. The Seraph’s shields popped and a blue gash blazed into existence along its hull, and it spun out of formation to trail fire into the endless night. First blood to Nikolai.
Taylor straightened, and suddenly the booster frame seemed so much sturdier beneath his boots, the turret so much lighter in his hands. He smiled thinly as his VISR began to feed him IFF markers; his smile widened two more frames pulled up beside Vasquez’s, and some of the markers vanished as quickly as they appeared, each disappearance perfectly synchronized with the death of a Banshee.
<<Never mind. I’m fine.>>
An acknowledgement marker flashed inside his helmet, coupled with a full-squad broadcast: <<I’ve got the leader.>> The booster frame shuddered beneath him, and another Banshee marker winked out of existence. Another broadcast followed: <<Splash one. I’m going in for guns.>>
Taylor sent his pilot a green marker of his own, already eyeing the wing of Banshees that had just lost their flight lead. Two broke off early on a direct intercept course, only to vanish in a quick salvo from a passing Broadsword; two more threw themselves into a wider turn, presumably trying to keep their distance until they could find a safer approach vector.
Taylor tapped the trigger of his M41 experimentally; the turret shuddered in its grip as a brief torrent of bullets sprayed out, but the barrel did a remarkable job of staying pointed exactly where he wanted it pointed at- everything he could have hoped for. He heaved the gun around and fired again, and one of the Banshees’ engines sputtered out as its flank disintegrated amidst a storm of depleted uranium shells. The other Banshee, cold and alone, wisely reversed directions and retreated.
<<Banshee down.>> Taylor spared Vasquez the quickest nod he could; she still couldn’t see it, of course, but it made him feel good. <<And still fine.>>
Things were going very well for Nova. They were making good time, and keeping the enemy on the back foot. But all battles have an ebb and flow, and the tide came quickly and fiercely to bear upon the team. For Artur and Julia, a banshee slipped “under’ their Booster frame, and a wash of plasma drained their shields before a fuel rod vaporised the entire nose of the small craft. Radiation and electrical feedback danced across Julia’s armor, her armor locking up. Her visor polarised completely and her comm unit fried. Artur was left more or less alone, with a booster frame that no longer functioned, a pilot that could not respond, and several hundred kilograms of explosive ordinance that may as well be a sitting duck for the banshee that was already swinging around for a second pass.
It was Spartan Herrera who ultimately made the ultimate sacrifice, however. The wash of plasma fire that caught his Frame’s ‘wing’ boiled away the maneuvering pod and cooked off several of the warheads on the strut, sending the former Bullfrog spinning. Miguel did not quit. His entire right side was scorched from the explosion, and his HUD let him know in no uncertain terms that his suit had been breached. Pain told him that his body had similarly been breached, bits of shrapnel digging into him, and breathing gave a hitch as the soft tissue of his lungs caught on the edges of a broken rib.
Automatic seals kept oxygen in his lungs, but parts of his body were still exposed to vacuum, and he felt the decrease in temperature, as heat slowly began to be leeched from his body by the bitter temperature of space. The burning sting of biofoam filled his veins and cavities, a familiar but unpleasant companion. Far worse was the feeling of ebullism in the exposed sections of his body. His armor had bought him time, but not enough of it. There was a grim certainty he’d be dead soon. Shock came for him, and after that, stuck in the vacuum of space, he’d die. But Miguel did not quit. The certainty of death did not sway him from his task, nor did it quell the fire within his soul. He would die. And they would die with him.
After a breath and a cough that was more blood than saliva, he opened TEAMCOMM, “Nova 2-1, 2-3, I’ve been hit bad, but I’m clearing the lane for you. Make it count, buddy.”
Managing to turn the frame toward the corvette’s hangar, he threw the throttle wide open, loosed the remaining warheads on the left spar, then let go. The doomed booster frame screamed into the hangar, taking a few of the defending Kig-Yar with it, and then enveloped the entire hangar in flame as it impacted. The explosion set off fuel tanks stored in the hangar. But Miguel did not quit.
Having jumped from the craft before impact, the proud son of New Toledo drew his side arm and began making work out of exterminating every living thing remaining in the hangar. 12 rounds. 14 dead jackals. He was peppered with plasma burns now. But he did not quit.
The blunt forces of the Magnum’s frame netted him two more kills, and it’s mangled remains were thrown at a third, and then his knife came into play. In the end, Miguel Herrera was personally responsible for the deaths of over 100 enemy combatants before plasma fire overwhelmed his broken body, and he fell. To the very end, he did not quit.
IC: [ Vasquez]
Nova Lead was in the middle of a high-g turn, causing both of the frame’s occupants to strain against the force of the continuously firing maneuvering thrusters as they tried to keep an escort Banshee from lining up a shot on them, when the team status alert popped up in Myra’s HUD: Nova 2 was hit. The small window displaying their vitals and armor flashed all sorts of warnings and colors she never wanted to see - especially Herrera.
<<Nova 2-1, 2-3, I’ve been hit bad, but I’m clearing the lane for you.>>
Even with the slight distortion over the comms she could hear the rattle in his breath. Her eyes darted towards the other corvette, instinctively trying to pick out the stricken Spartan’s frame. It was just human nature, but useless at these velocities and distances. She could only see the larger ship, everything else was a twinkle of starlight and plasma fire.
<<Make it count, buddy.>>
Her own heart rate spiked as the realization hit. Don’t you do it, tonto! Vasquez immediately opened a channel.
<<2-3, break off enga -
Her comms erupted in static from the burst of plasma rounds suddenly whizzing by, way too close for comfort and causing sparks to erupt in her vision as her visor instantly upped the polarization to maximum to keep her from being blinded. She didn’t see the alien ship’s shields flare up as Herrera’s booster frame punched a hole through to the hangar.
Vasquez!
She wasn’t sure if that had been her internal voice, Taylor or Madrigal, but it didn’t matter, she knew she had to focus on her own situation. There was nothing she could do for Spartan Herrera from here. If she let herself get distracted the only thing that was guaranteed was her and the Gunny getting fried too.
She instantly pulled the frame into a roll and dove, causing the Banshee to overshoot slightly and miss with the next volley too, but other than that the alien craft stayed glued to them, right on their tail.
She could feel the vibration as Taylor did what he could with the turret but so far the bandit was undeterred. Tough customer.
Then inspiration struck, born out of a childhood memory: History class, early space flight. To initiate their return to earth, the earliest spacecraft had to perform deorbit burns - turning the whole ship around and pointing the engines the direction you were going to slow down while maintaining trajectory.
Grossly oversimplified, sure, but she doubted the Banshee pilot would see that one coming. Covenant tech was so advanced and passed down from their prophets, so that they hadn’t had to do this kind of maneuvering in centuries - if ever. Meanwhile, humanity in its quest for space had happily taken the odds of either landing, bouncing off into space, or burning up - because as a species, humanity was kind of insane that way.
She throttled up the main boosters to maximum for a second, generating that little bit of extra distance needed, before instantly cutting them back to idle and engaging the maneuvering thrusters once again, spinning the entire frame along the rotational axis of Taylor’s turret.
Suddenly the Banshee found itself not just facing one turret, but three. A moment later, the alien craft disintegrated in a triple hail of chain gun rounds.
“That’s how NASA did it.” Myra commented, spinning the craft back around to its previous orientation and throttling up the main-engines once more.
Scanning her instruments she noted they were clear for the moment. Her focus immediately returned to Nova 2. 2-1's situation hadn’t changed, but 2-3’s signals were throwing up nothing but alerts and - was he aboard the corvette!?
<<2-3, Nova Lead, what’s your status?>>
Nothing. She waited a beat.
<<2-3, status!?>>
…
<<Miguel!>>
…
Then his vitals flatlined. Myra felt like her armor was filled with ice water. She cursed under her breath. A hundred thoughts of how she could have saved her fellow Spartan started to form in the back of her mind, but that’s where they were forced to stay until the debrief. Training took over and she channeled her feeling into a cold, focused anger. A different notification sounded in her helmet and she glanced at the weapons display.
M92 - 100%
She let out a deep breath and keyed the comms once more.
<<Nova Lead, proceeding to targets.>>
She continued evasive maneuvers for a few more seconds, until she was happy with their range and relative position to their designated corvette, then she spun the booster frame once more and began the attack run. First, she locked the MITV pods onto the corvette’s point defense turrets and let them fly. A few of the pods were picked off before they could deploy their missiles, but most of them managed to deploy their volleys, at which point the turrets became too busy to focus on their frame. She lined up the MAC target indicator with the blue square of the hangar and pulled the trigger. She could feel the shudder of the Gauss firing in her bones. The missiles hit home and the entire broadside of the corvette erupted with a series of smaller explosions - just before the MAC round it. Completely overwhelmed, the ship’s shields flared up and collapsed.
<<Nova 1 - finish what you’re doing then follow me.>>
<<Nova 2 - you heard the man. Let’s get in there.>>
Vasquez piloted the booster frame straight towards the corvette, only decelerating just before they passed the threshold of the hangar, flaring the frame and bringing the 80mm guns to bear once more, ripping into the jackals and anyone else with armor piercing depleted uranium rounds.
IC: Taylor [Hangar, DAV-class light corvette]
Taylor locked his turret and braced as best he could as the booster frame swung into the fighter bay. There was a sudden, disorienting yank from beneath his feet as he entered the artificial gravity field and the concept of “down” became slightly less arbitrary, and then they were in, surrounded by steel and fire and screaming, dying Jackals.
It was Taylor’s first time inside a Covenant ship, and though he’d been briefed on the corvette’s architecture before the op, he still found it difficult not to gawk. The light was cold and blue; the metal was rich, polished violet. There was an awful lot of clutter for an empty hangar; the floor was uneven, the walls lined with large platforms and balconies. There were certainly alien design sensibilities at work, but even so, the room felt less like a warship bay and more like a luxury observation deck- albeit one where most of the guests were dead and everything was on fire. You go, Miguel.
Taylor’s VISR traced IFF outlines across the hangar as it adjusted to the saturated glare of incandescent plasma. There, a squad of Jackal sharpshooters, scrambling for cover on a balcony; there, a pile of discarded carbines and grenades, spilled just out of reach of Miguel’s funeral pyre; there, Miguel’s body, buried beneath a mountain of the dead. Taylor was surprised to find the fallen Spartan’s armor still registered a power signature- perhaps, when the mission was over, they’d be able to retrieve his body. Get him a proper burial.
It would be a kinder fate than most soldiers ended up getting, he imagined.
Until then, however… he had a job to do.
Taylor’s turret was still spinning. He raked the sniper balcony with bullets, then started hunting for strays on the ground floor. Miguel, he promised himself, would be the last casualty of the day.