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Ch 3: Landfall

0536 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)
Reach Northern Hemisphere, Merion River Valley

Recon Sniper Hannah Davis looked down on the advancing alien horde with unbridled fear. The alien dropships fell like rain; each disgorging dozens of aliens onto the valley floor, there were easily thousands of the enemy already moving down towards the generator complex.
Hannah switched her headset frequency to her dispatch. "This is recon 2-A; have a visual of Covenant ground forces at approximately one hundred degrees longitude, forty seven degrees latitude.
For a couple of seconds there was only static and then a voice broke through; "Roger that recon 2-A, can you give us an approximate number of hostiles?"
What the hell is wrong with them? Why are they asking me? They can get a satellite image of the valley.... unless the satellites are down! But that means... "There's thousands of em' with more on the way. It looks like they're moving down the valley towards the Omega Armory. The way they're moving I'd say the first elements will reach it in ten to fifteen minutes."
There was a couple more seconds of static before the officer replied again; "Roger that recon, HighCom has ordered you to pull back to the armory.
Hannah looked down at the sea of Covenant making they're way down the valley with incredulity at what she'd just heard the man at the other end just say. "Sir, did I just hear you say to make my way to Omega Armory?"
This time there was no delay of static; the officer answered her question immediately, annoyance easily detectable in his voice. "Affirmative recon 2-A you are to make your way to Omega Armory ASAP. They'll need all the help they can get holding it if there's as many hostiles as you say there are."
Glancing at the enemy dropships that kept falling like hail to the planet below Hannah picked her sniper rifle up off the boulder it had been resting on, shaking her head in utter disbelief. "Sir, with all due respect, there is no way we'll be able to hold the armory even with the entire garrison fully entrenched."
Once again her dispatch officer replied instantly, this time he sounded agitated and Hannah could hear someone shouting something indiscernible in the background. "Omega Armory is the largest weapons cache we have in the immediate area. It's the only thing standing between the generators and the Covenant. It has to hold. You have your orders."
As much as Hannah wanted to argue with him she knew he was right; if the Covenant got the generators then Reach would be lost. "Roger that, moving out." Hannah slung her rifle over her shoulder and began to make her way through the dense evergreen forests towards the armory, hoping she got there before the Covenant did.


0544 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)
Reach Northern Hemisphere, HighCom Armory Omega

Private Campbell's Sergeant was shouting orders to almost anyone who twitched. The ride to Omega Armory had been hectic; less than two hours to transport the entire ninth division and then get defensive emplacements set to optimum efficiency in addition to distributing ammo. "Mellani, Carter, Wilson! Get into position now! I want everyone into defensive positions ASAP!" Then he motioned towards the edge of the valley where the first wave of Covenant had already appeared some six hundred yards away and were presently being pummeled by the armory's long-range artillery. "They're going to throw they're Grunts at us first and'll probably keep trying until we're wore down enough. Now we can't afford to lose this position. If we break here and the Covenant make it to the Orbital Generators the Orbital MACs are useless and we're all as good as dead." He let this all sink in and finally shouted "But that's not gonna happen, is it Marines?" He was awarded with a chorus of hoo-hah's and then got down behind the barricade, settling into the trench.
A second barrage of artillery fire pounded the advancing Covenant killing hundreds. Still they came, huge groups of Grunts bounding to reach the marine's positions virtually uncaring about the losses they suffered. The surviving aliens were pummeled again by a third barrage but kept right on running towards their objective. The first wave of Grunts was nearly two hundred yards away from the marine line now and was exchanging fire with the deeply entrenched marines.
Campbell fired his battle rifle without the aid of the weapon's scope; he didn't even need to aim; this is what his instructors would have referred to as a "target rich environment" which basically meant that you could shoot pretty much anywhere and hit something you wanted to. The dull thump of the artillery was nearly deafening by now, the guns were firing almost incessantly due to the size of the enemy force. Behind the first wave of Grunts was a second, third, fourth, and fifth wave just waiting for their brethren in front of them to die thus giving them a chance to kill the humans. Campbell's shot hit a Grunt in the forehead; the armor piercing round tearing into his skull before detonating inside the alien's grey matter, exploding his head in a shower of gore. Beside him Private Mellani, armed with a "Jackhammer" Rocket Launcher fired into the advancing tide of enemies, both rockets blasting huge holes in the already weakened Grunt line. However, even as the first wave began to falter beneath the weight of the marines' fire they revealed a fresh wave of enemy targets.

0544 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)
Halo Flight Squadron over Reach's Northern Hemisphere

Rowan jerked his fighter out of the way of a burning dropship as the planet's gravitational forces proved too much for it's failing engines and tore it out of the sky. As his Longsword shot back to the battlezone he cursed inwardly at himself; there's too many of these friggin dropships, we'll never be able to take enough out before they get groundside. Nevertheless he targeted the nearest horseshoe-shaped dropship and let fly an ASGM-10 missile. Before he even saw the explosion engulf the dropship in a sphere of red-orange flame he had already targeted another dropship and loosed his second missile at its target, which, like the first, exploded in a shower of rapidly dissipating blossom of flame and debris.
Rowan heard a panicked voice buzzing in his eardrum; it wasn't anyone he could recognize but with the state of disarray the Longsword squadrons were in he wasn't really surprised at the fact. "We've got Seraph's coming in hot! I repeat; enemy fighters inbou…" The voice was abruptly cut short by a hiss of static as the pilot's cockpit was most likely engulfed in plasma.
Once again Rowan cursed; there were too many dropships already but now with Covenant fighters joining the fray his job would be all the more difficult. Rowan switched his comm. over to the squadron frequency. "Two, three stay on my wing, we're going to blast our way through the dropships. We need to try to get to the fighters before they can mix with the dropships." Both Halo two and three voiced that they understood and seconds later the three fighters were juking and jinking through tumbling wreckage, slashing plasma, and cruising dropships as they sped towards downed Longsword's last location.
Rowan switched to weapons control over his two rotary cannons and set them to tracer fire once every ten rounds before firing straight ahead of him into the hurtling morass of ships and debris. Rowan saw two other lines of cannon fire stitching through the air beside his; he could hardly believe that two and three had managed to stay on his wing this entire time in all the chaos. Halo one, two, and three sped through the engagement zone destroying anything that got in their way as they went, taking out about a dozen more dropships before they reached the Covenant's Seraph fighters.
Covenant fighters, nicknamed Seraphs by UNSC fighter jockeys for an unknown reason, were the Covenant's main offensive option against the UNSC's Longsword fighters. Though unshielded like the Covenant dropships they are very deadly due to their armament of high-velocity plasma torpedoes that hunt down enemy fighters with brutal efficiency. A Seraph is fast too; a skilled pilot could easily fly circles around a Longsword fighter. Roughly teardrop shaped a Seraph looks needle-like crimson blur when going at full speed.
At this moment Rowan could see two squadrons of Seraphs bearing down on the engagement zone. They sped towards battlezone without so much as an indication that they were aware a flight of Longswords was sneaking up behind their formation. The three Longswords swung around behind the rearmost Seraph formation and held a distance of sixty meters behind them. Rowan switched over to his missiles and targeted the outermost fighter and then opened his flight's frequency; "Two, three target the fighters on the outside of the formation. We might be able to get off two missiles off without them even knowing we're there." In truth, Rowan was amazed that the fighters hadn't broken formation and sent him to a fiery grave, I guess with all the crap going on up here they aren't really concerned with three enemy contacts, well lets show them the error of their ways.
All three Longswords fired off their first missiles in unison and seconds later they were rewarded with three painfully bright explosions as their missiles found their mark. Seconds after the first missiles hit their targets a second volley was launched reducing three more Seraphs to their component atoms. By now the Seraph squadron knew something was up and broke formation falling back towards the origin of the attack. Rowan knew that the Longswords were no match against the Seraphs if they stayed in formation so he ordered them to break off and engage the enemy.
Rowan jerked his fighter to the left alongside Halo three as a plasma round tore into the area where his Longsword had occupied mere seconds before. Rowan switched from missiles over to the Longsword's dual rotary cannons with a shake of his head, he'd hoped they could have evened the odds before breaking formation and inviting a dogfight. Missiles, while helpful, operated much more effectively against moving targets when properly locked, which, unfortunately for him, required a few seconds more than he could spare when he had an enemy trailing him and besides that he was running low on missiles anyway.
An edgy voice issued through Rowan's earpiece; "This is Halo two in need of assistance. I have two; make that three bogeys on my tail. Requesting assistance from any nearby freindlies." Rowan brought his fighter around in a tight arc in an effort to shake off any of his pursuers before blasting towards two's position. It didn't look good; two wasn't exaggerating when he said that he needed help. It was as if the four fighters were performing some incredibly complex dance; two's fighter twirled around in nearly impossible helix dodging plasma sometimes by mere centimeters, the liquid energy painting the Longsword an almost beautiful shade of purple by its proximity to the fighter. The beautiful dance ended abruptly seconds later when a plasma round burnt right into two's aft wing shearing it off completely causing his fighter to thrash into an uncontrolled dive which, at the speeds his Longsword was currently experiencing, tore his smashed fighter into shreds.
Cursing at the Seraphs, Rowan targeted the lead fighter, armed his last missile, and fired it as soon as he heard the telltale buzz that indicated a successful target lock. He switched over to his cannons and sprayed a hail of bullets into the two remaining Seraphs who were still too confused at the sudden destruction of their leader to be in any coherent state.
It was only after the three Seraphs had been destroyed that Rowan noticed an altogether different buzz than the one that belonged to his targeting system; he was low on fuel, ammunition, oxygen, and to top it off his Longsword was damaged in half-a-dozen places, Rowan shook his head; if the readings his screen gave him were accurate it was a miracle that his bird hadn't fallen apart already. Bringing his fighter into a steep decline, Rowan aimed his fighter towards the surface of Reach towards the nearest UNSC facility for repairs.
As his much-abused fighter neared the huge military facility he overshot a seething mass of bodies below him. For a moment he thought that he had merely passed over a meadow but once he got a little lower in altitude he could clearly identify the insect-like shapes of Wraith mortar tanks. Christ! I know we'd missed a lot of dropships but not that many! There were streams of plasma arcing in lazy parabolas over the battlefield and the gentle plumes of smoke that issued from the installation's artillery.
He heard an extremely strained voice crackle over his earpiece; "Unidentified flyer this is HighCom Armory Omega, please transfer your naval identification codes. Failure to comply will result in the destruction of your aircraft, you have thirty seconds."
Wow! These guys aren't playing around, they're pretty freaked out, but I can't really blame them with that huge army practically on their doorstep, man the navy really screwed up royally today. Rowan hastily punched in his ID codes and transferred them to the command center's computer. He held his breath as he neared the base; seeing as they're so jumpy they might just decide to play it safe and blast me outta the sky.
The voice returned, now sounding more relieved, through Rowan's earpiece again just as he crossed over the armory's defensive perimeter; "Welcome Flight Commander Rowan, how can we be of service today?"
A wide grin spread over Rowan's face as he felt a wave of relief wash over him. "Well, you can start by giving me a place to land."

0558 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Destroyer Argive in geosynchronous orbit over Reach

The remains of the UNSC fleet mopped up the few Covenant dropships that hadn't been quick enough to reach the inner atmosphere of the planet. They numbered around twenty in all; less than a tenth of the original UNSC vessels remained in a battle ready state. Several other surviving UNSC vessels were spread throughout the system albeit not considered battle-ready in the slightest.
At this moment however, Marshall couldn't worry about their helpless allies or their dying crew. He had to regroup with the remaining force in a last ditch effort to stage some form of defense for the surviving orbital MACs. The stranded crews would have to wait, however much it killed him to admit it, if they were to have any chance of saving Reach from the horrific fate that so many other human worlds had had to suffer.
"Sir, our sensors have picked up many gravitational distortions at the edge of the system. They match up almost perfectly with the known effects of Covenant slipspace drives."
Marshall swore; the crew, used to his casual curses by now didn't even stir. "Inform the groundside installations that we probably won't be able to hold for much longer. Tell them that we'll hold for as long as we can but we can't make any promises."
Marshall walked over to the viewport and once again glanced at the lush-green planet below with an expression of deep sorrow. Such a pretty place. It's practically a sin that a world as beautiful as this is going to be destroyed for no reason. I wonder if anything we could have done differently would have changed its fate. Marshall turned and solemnly made his way back to the center of the bridge.
The Comm. officer turned to Marshall; "Sir, most of the Longswords are running low on fuel and ammunition. The Belisarious is gone and the only Carrier left is The Bismuth but she's out of range. The fleet is redirecting them to the groundside installations for refit and repair, that way they'll be able to get back in the air as soon as possible. Unfortunately we can't count on getting any more support from them."
"Marshall looked at the officer in surprise. Didn't he know that we need as much help as we can get up here? Nevertheless, if they could keep the orbital generators up and running then they might have a chance of holding off the Covenant fleet, but it would be an insanely close call. "Very good, lieutenant. Tell them to keep the Covenant's ground forces off at all costs." He turned to his Nav officer; "What's the situation with those gravitic anomalies? If they were Covenant slipspace signatures they would have been here by now."
The flustered Nav officer frowned at his console, with a look of bewilderment plastered on his features. "I…don't know captain. I'm sure that they were spatial distortions but I don't understand why we haven't seen any transfers yet. The Covenant's slipspace drives are a great deal more sophisticated, they would have transferred the vessels almost instantaneously over such a short span of space." The officer faced Marshall with a look of resignation; "It could either be they're retreating or they could be bringing friends."

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