romuluzJoin Date: 2010-04-12
Post Count: 18124 |
(Longest part yet. As always my little pilot audience, review and provide advice to the improvement of this piece, and above all, enjoy.)
Part IV:Trapped
Fifteen of us crouched low to the ground, hiding behind overturned cars and piles of crumbling stone as we waited for our comrades. We were split into three different squads, fifteen of us being utilized for the ground operation while the rest of the unit were sent up into the neighboring towers to rain roguetonium shells on the enemy from above. We were told not to move until we heard the familiar booming fire of their weapons.
“Sarge is taking forever, I don’t think I can keep my ass on the ground for much longer.” Griped Vrast.
“Then stick your head up please and get yourself killed. It’ll be a pleasure for all of us.” Another soldier snapped back.
“Cut it, both of you, your loud mouths will get us all killed.” Titus then ordered, the soldiers obeying his command.
Tensions were high between us as we waited, none of us, me included wanted to even fancy the idea of taking on one of the human’s metal behemoths. I knelt by Titus as we waited, Frost, Vrast and a stocky looking soldier each behind us. We were the ones placed with the duty of taking the downed dropship, not a highly sought after position.
“Tanks will be on us if he takes much more time.” Titus then grumbled to himself. He wouldn’t admit it but I could tell that the big man was scared. He gripped his rifle tightly as he pressed his shoulder against the dented truck we sat behind.
“He’ll show up, he didn’t seem too keen on being caught by the armored division either. “ I said reassuringly, hoping to calm his nerves. I didn’t see it fit for our acting commander to be shaken by his own nerves.
I myself was nervous as well, checking and re checking my rifle’s sights and mechanisms several times through our grueling wait. I shuffled my feet uneasily in the cracked concrete, hoping to hear the sound of Nafarian weapons from above. The sun was no longer above us and now began to sink slowly towards the mountains in the distance.
“You scared?” Titus asked, looking down at me.
“Of course not. I’m just running straight through hell to reach salvation that may not even exist.” I retorted sarcastically.
Titus chuckled in response. “Don’t worry. I am to.”
“But you’re a veteran right? I thought you said you could handle anything?” I jested, nudging him in the shoulder.
“I am but, I’ve never been in such a dire situation. However truth be told, you never get past the stress of warfare. No matter how many battles you fight and win the next could always be your last. I’m just fighting each time to ensure that it’s not.” He said, looking down towards his feet as he spoke.
The sudden, loud sound of nafarian rifles began to go off, I saw bright red muzzle flashes erupting from the surrounding towers as rounds slammed into the human’s position. Screams could be heard soon after, likely the engineers who were working on the tank.
“That’s us!” Titus exclaimed, pulling the primer back on his weapon. “First squad, move up to the forward cover! Second squad get ready to pull in behind them, Vrast, Velsus and Frost, you three are with me!” He ordered, waving for the soldiers to move into position, towards the rubble rock hill that signified the crashed ship.
I watched for a moment as our soldiers erupted from their cover, the first five laying fire onto their position while the other six pulled in behind them. They caught the human soldiers off guard as they blindly aimed at the attackers above them. Their tank began slowly turning it’s venomous head towards the nearest building. I saw three soldiers scream in pain as brilliant red spurts of blood spewed from open wounds on their body, the roguetonium rounds finding their mark. The plan was executed excellently, but we were far from safe. The human soldiers quickly regrouped around the tank, and consequently returned fire on the advancing nafarian warriors, striking the lead soldier in the chest, the bullet slipping past his armor and embedding itself in his collar bone. He screamed for a medic, but he was not immediately answered.
I tore myself from him and returned my attention to the task at hand as Titus urgently waved his hand in my direction. “Let’s move while they’re distracted! We don’t have much time before that tank settles itself on one of the towers. Our cover will be compromised if it’s shell finds a mark!” He roared, waving us past the car and towards the sidewalks.
The four of us went unnoticed as the battle raged between the primary forces. I could here Frost mutter something incoherently under his breath as he watched the chaos unfold. Nafarian shot at human and human at Nafarian as the soldiers ducked and re emerged, taking shots at each other. More importantly, I kept my eyes on the tank as it continued rearing it’s bulky head towards the building towards us.
“That tanks looking straight at us! It’ll see us for sure!” I yelled.
“Then you best keep running!” Frost yelled from behind me. “As long as we make it over the damned hill before it fires then it can’t do anything about us!”
I did as he ordered, abandoning the bloody scene and keeping my head straight, watching Titus’ back as we jogged through a street. Cars were lumped haphazardly to our sides and ahead of us, creating a type of maze for us to navigate through. This began to work to our benefit as a flurry of bullets began to rain upon us, striking the cars and one stray round slamming into my shoulder plate, causing me to grimace slightly from shock as it jolted me to the side.
“Get down!” Titus yelled, motioning towards the cars as he spun towards the source of the enemy fire, the tank’s secondary weapon, now manned by a man with a crazed look in his eye. He raised his rifle and let off a few spurts, ducking behind a tipped over white van.
We all did as Titus ordered without question, tucking ourselves about the car maze. I pressed my back against a red sports car, briefly wondering who the affluent fellow who once owned this car was before snapping back to the battle.
“We need that damned turret off our asses!” Vrast screamed, poking her gun over the edge of her cover and blindly spraying the turf. She missed each shot.
“It’d help if you aimed!” Frost yelled back, taking note of her her method of fire.
“I’ll be killed!” She roared back, drawing her legs in close as a few large shells dug into the pavement around her. She was effectively pinned.
I peaked around my car as well before I too was sprayed at by the turret,the shells leaving massive holes in the immaculate red metal. The man roared something in his own tongue, taunting us as his brethren fought the more direct threat.
“Damnit, we’re not going to make it through as long as he’s on us!” I yelled, looking towards Titus for guidance as he knet in the dirt, peaking through around his cover before he too was forced to duck back to safety.
“Calm down!” He yelled back. “He uses the weapon like a madman, spraying wildly, his drum will run dry soon, and when it does…”
“We’ll gut the bastard!” Frost chimed in gleefully, poking his head over his own black crushed vehicle to let off a burst at the humans.
The heavy mg continued to rain a hail of fire upon us for a few minutes, it’s rounds peppering the ground around us and leaving holes in our cover. A few human soldiers thought it wise to abandon their positions in an attempt to charge us in the meantime. We were lucky however as our support from above was able to pick them off. We couldn’t hold out forever, and I was desperately waiting for the man to run dry. My hopes were answered as soon enough the firing on our position stopped.
I poked up my head first, followed by Vrast as we each shouldered our rifles firing on the man’s position. Both of our bursts missed, only peppering the tank’s still turning head with fire and causing the man to duck behind the tank.
“Damnit!” Vrast cried. “Bastard’s hiding!”
“There’s no time Vrast, it’ll take him a moment to reload anyways!” Titus ordered, waving his arms frantically towards the rock wall that obscured our view of salvation.
I wasted no time emerging from my cover, bending down low as I sprinted across the street closely tailed by Frost and Vrast. I could see the human madman from the corner of my vision as we began to scale the wall of rubble. He finished his reloading process quickly, and attempted to swing the MG to our position. I winced in response, and prepared to shout a warning to our comrades as we climbed but was quickly calmed as the man was picked off by one of our soldier fighting on the ground.
I let out a brief sigh before continuing my climb, glad that none of the other humans had noticed our presence as I dropped over the other side of the rubble wall, sliding down it’s rocky surface and allowing my boots to slam into the concrete with a dull thud, right after Titus. Frost and Vrast came shortly thereafter, and we took a moment to behold the smoldering black ship, it’s cockpit decorated with a spiderweb of cracks that crawled across it’s glass surface, and it’s engines that normally kept it balanced lay broken and skewed.
“That’s our ticket, Velsus, Frost, you two are up, crack it-” Titus began to order before he was interrupted by a loud explosion. Each of us turned back around, attempting to peak desperately over the rubble wall to see it’s source, only to find a gaping hole in the wall where half of our support once stood.
“Damnit!” Titus roared, lifting his rifle and pointing it over the ridge, waiting for human soldiers. “Go! Now! Get those heavy weapons so we can take the behemoth out!”
I grunted in response, sprinting towards the dead ship and reaching it’s mangled doors. In futility I pulled on the door’s release hatch, wasting my strength as the doors refused to budge. Frost noticed my struggle and quickly holstered his rifle and ran to my aid, yanking on the doors.
“It’s no use!” I cried, releasing the hatch.
“Try harder!” Frost yelled, urging me to once more tug on the hatch as another explosion echoed behind us, this time accompanied by the screams of dying soldiers.
I did not comply, and instead, took a step back, my arms hanging at my sides, useless to Frost as I searched desperately for another entrance. I was about to return to assisting Frost before my eyes fell upon the damaged cockpit.
“Frost!” I yelled, tugging on the back collar of his armor. “Quit pulling on the door, it’s not going to budge!” I roared over the sounds of battle. He threw up his hands and sighed, turning to look at me through his visor. I could only imagine the panicked look that was likely etched upon his face.
“What do you suggest then!” He roared in sarcasm. Another explosion rocked us, luckily a miss this time, striking slightly below our men’s position. “We can’t simply throw in the towel because a door won’t open!”
“I’m not suggesting that!” I yelled, motioning towards the cockpit. “The cockpit’s already damaged, we’ll have a much easier time breaking in through that!” I explained.
Frost took a moment to examine my findings, before letting out a small, impressed grunt. “Looks like I underestimated you Legate.” He murmured before taking off for the cockpit.
I closely followed him, sprinting for the hexagonal piece of glass, allowing Frost to climb it first before I too clambered after him. The glass was thick, and normally I never would have suggested an attempt to break through it’s surface. In it’s current state, however, it wouldn’t take more than a few decisive blows to break through. I could vaguely witness the pilots who sat dead under our gaze, each slumped over one another, their dying expressions hidden beneath their helms. We began to slam our armored boots on the surface of the cockpit, making little headway at first, but progress began to show itself. The spiderweb pattern began to spread across the surface, reaching for the metal support bars we stood on until the whole panel dropped, shattering into millions of thick, glittering shards.
“There!” I shouted, hopping in through the hole we had created.
I grimaced as my boots clattered against the armored chest of my dead comrade, and I was quick to clamber over the man’s seat, giving Frost the ‘all clear’ sign, prompting him to slide in right after me. The insides of the dropship were dark and serene, giving us a limited field of vision save for the glowing red light from our armor. I savored this gift our armor had often given to us, although I had often thought in my few hours on the ground how terrible it would be for us if we were prey hiding from a tougher adversary.
Frost and I began to press into the thinner neck of the dropship, a portion also known as the command bay where platoon leaders would sit, making last minute adjustments to their strategies before the grunts hit the dirt. Thick steel walls lay at either side, and I could barely make out the slumped over forums of a Nafarian Sergeant and two of his corporals, each of whom lay strapped to their seats.
“Morbid.” I remarked, as I pressed into the main cabin, only to be presented with yet another dark scene with supply crates and tools of warfare strewn across the floor alongside the heaped over bodies of armor clad nafarians.
“Everything about war is morbid.” Frost corrected. “From the battles to the horrors the victor commits, there is no escape. Not for a soldier at least. May peace come to these brave nafarians.”
I nodded in agreement as we began to spread out among the main cabin, checking supply crates and under soldier’s bodies for the saving grace of any form of anti tank weaponry. I took a moment to enjoy the silence of the cabin, only the occasional muffled explosion interrupting our peaceful search. I noticed Frost grow more frantic in the corner of my eye as he failed to find any of the promised weapons, and I too began to grow nervous, knowing full well that we were as good as dead without them.
“Find anything?” Frost croaked from the other side of the cabin.
“No.” I responded simply, lifting up a man’s broken arm as I flipped him over, finding nothing more than an insignificant sidearm.
A louder explosion rocked us, penetrating the dense, sound proofed walls of the ship. I knew it could only be another shell expelled from the tank, and I didn’t want to think about the further havoc it caused on the men and women stranded in the towers.
“They won’t hold out much longer.” Frost warned, tossing a broken rocket launcher to the side.
“Then search harder.” I urged, standing on top of the seats of the cabin, attempting to release the hatch on a supply crate that dangled dangerously above me.
I fumbled with it’s thick lock while Frost grumbled something to himself, checking under the dropship’s seats for anything that could be of use to us. “I found some mines!” He declared.
“Not much use to us, as long as that tank remains immobile we won’t be able to do anything with them.” I grunted.
I tugged a few more times on the hatch until finally the weakened lock gave way, causing the door to slam loudly against the back wall of the ship, a collection of three launchers came spewing out, clattering loudly against the floor.
“There we are!” Frost exclaimed as he saw the elongated cylinders of death come piling out of the crate as if they themselves were water to a parched man. “Damn Legate, you’re proving your worth to us swiftly.” He remarked.
“I try my hardest.” I joked in response, hefting up two of the launchers in my arms. “Now lets go! Titus is probably about ready to send in Vrast after us, and Ven’Ziel knows that she’ll give us a good reprimanding for not being on point!” I exclaimed.
“A good point you make Legate.” Frost agreed, hefting up the last launcher as we dashed back for the cockpit, stepping over the dead bodies of our fallen comrades.
It didn’t take long for us to re emerge from the cockpit, and I graciously greeted the sunlight that had earlier abandoned me. I was instantly met with Vrast as I climbed out of the hole, tossing the launchers out first and then heaving my own body over the side of the ship, landing on the concrete with a heavy thud. Titus and Vrast each turned towards me, tearing their protective gazes away from the ridge and what was visible of the battle beyond.
“It’s about damned time! Our men have been forced out of the left tower, and that tanks already aiming for our last source of cover.” She informed us as she stormed to our location. “Did you at least find the-”
“What do you think!” Frost shouted joyfully, tossing out his launcher as well as he came out from behind me. “Of course we found the weapons! It’s us! Would you expect any different?” He asked.
Vrast ignored Frost’s comments as she ran towards the ship, latching on to one of the launchers to see for herself followed by Titus, who heaved another one over his shoulder. “Liquid burst.” He announced as he tapped a few buttons on the side, red lights beginning to glow about it’s surface as it powered on.
“Is that a problem?” I asked, brushing dust off of my armor as Frost hefted up the third launcher, powering it on as well.
“No, it’ll take their tank down but we may have to make a few shots. Liquid burst works great on our bigger artillery but it’s better suited for lighter vehicles when compressed into a launcher. I’d rather have ballistic weaponry.” He responded. “Now lets go! get your asses on the hill and get ready to rain down hell on the humans. Velsus you provide us with covering fire! The humans are sure to notice us after the first few shots!”
“Yes sir!” We all shouted in unison.
I quickly began to clamber up the hill with my squad mates, an easier task from this angle which allowed me to bring forth my rifle prior to reaching the top. It was short work, and we soon found ourselves overlooking the grisly scene. Dead nafarians lay among dead humans as the battle still raged. The tower which was earlier being shelled now lay with a gaping hole through it’s entire structure, threatening it’s entire collapse. A few surviving humans remained compared to our soldiers, who were now bolstered with the ranks of those who evacuated the tower, but the human warriors were never our concern. It was the tank who’s head now turned lackadaisically towards the second tower, nearly passing over our position. Titus quickly laid himself flat over the edge of the rubble wall, the other two and myself doing the same as he pointed his launcher towards the tank, pressing his fingers firmly on the trigger. A glob of red roguetonium came spurting out from it’s muzzle, exploding against the side of the tank and beginning to singe through it’s armor. The crazed shouts of the humans below us came shortly after, along with the patter of pulse weaponry slamming into the rocks we lay against. I raised my own weapon in response, letting off a series of bursts that slammed into their lead soldier, causing him to drop to the ground, and his allies to rush for cover, temporarily ending the spray of bolts on our position.
“Good kill!” Titus cried.
Vrast was the next to fire, letting off her own globule of superheated roguetonium that slammed slightly above Titus’ mark, a chunk now missing from the tank as it’s engine began to catch fire. It’s muzzle now lay directly in line with us now however, and to our my horror instead of passing past us and continuing on towards the remaining tower, it stopped, and I could faintly hear a shell clanging into place.
“Move!” I warned, hopping from my position, tumbling down to the pavement below.
It took a moment for my comrades to register what I warned them of, and soon after both Vrast and Titus came down after me, only leaving Frost as he still lay, preparing to fire his own launcher. I made to yell for him, as did Vrast as he pulled the trigger, letting loose one last glob of roguetonium before he moved to abandon his own launcher. “Frost!” I could hear Vrast yell. It was too late however, and as he made to leap from the ridge, a fiery infeno soon enveloped his position, a final, dying shot from the tank that sent him flying into the air, landing with a sickening crack on the pavement, his limbs skewed at impossible angles.
Vrast immediately ran for his crumpled form, I moved to stop her, only stopped by Titus as he caught my arm. “Let her be.” He said sternly before motioning back for the hill.
I nodded, dashing for the rubble hill, now with a gaping hole through it’s center. It was more of a small lump now, smoking and warm as we lay our bodies against it, seeing first the burning tank and then the joyous shouts of Nafarian soldiers as they swarmed the human positions, finishing them in a brutal show of force now that the dreaded tank lay in ruins. I popped over from my cover, unleashing a full magazine upon the cowering humans.
The ensuing firefight lasted no more than a scant thirty seconds, the crumpled bodies of humans being kicked by spiteful nafarian victors. Some of Frost’s final words echoed in my head as I saw the sick brutality.
“From the battles to the horrors the victor commits, there is no escape. Not for a soldier at least.” I muttered under my breath.
“What?” Titus inquired as he began to stand from the rubble, lowering a hand to help me up.
“It’s nothing, only something Frost told me inside the dropship.” I said, accepting his helping hand, heaving it up as he clasped it. I could only imagine the victorious grin etched upon his face that lay hidden beneath his helmet when it suddenly dawned on me that I had no clue what Titus looked like, only knowing him from what his helmet provided me.
“Don’t dwell on it, resting on the memories of the dead will bring you nothing but trouble. Frost is gone. But he took down a tank with him.” He informed me.
“And her?” I asked, giving Vrast a nod as she desperately removed Frost’s helmet, searching for a pulse.
“Let her mourn. She’s not as heartless as she likes express. None of us are, it’s just something a lot of first timers like yourself use to appear tough so soon after basic. She was bound to break eventually.” He said.
I nodded, following Titus as he joined the gathering of soldiers as they spoke excitedly with each other. It was a smaller gathering, and even though I knew we still had yet to see the return of the second support group I could tell that this battle had taken it’s toll on us. A battle worn looking soldier approached Titus as soon as he saw him, his helmet tucked beneath his arm, revealing a set of calm red eyes and wavy black hair, a mournful look was etched upon his chiseled face, contrasting with the more joyful nature of the soldiers about him. The name ‘Gran’Ziel’ lay etched upon his chestpiece.
“Sarge is dead.” He announced bluntly as he came face to face with Titus. I stood taken back, shocked with the news.
“Wha- how?” Titus demanded.
“Fell with the final shell that hit our tower. Stubborn fool refused to call the retreat beforehand.” He said with.
“That’s reassuring news…” Titus growled. “Who’s in charge now?”
“Well, by the chain of command that leaves you in charge… sir.” He said with a smirk. |