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And Raise Your Head With Pride! 5
Posted By: Arthur Wellesly<arthur_wellesly@hotmail.com>
Date: 18 March 2003, 6:38 PM
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Part 5
All the transport Pelicans in the battlegroup have been destroyed. We have no other mode of planetside transportation and the 13,000 men down there are stranded with no way out. We need immediate assistance from any UNSC ships in the area. Do not worry; the nuclear facility is under our control and all orbital mines have been defused. The way is clear.
Admiral John Stevenson.
Stevenson studied his message once and then sent it on a universal transmission. Unfortunately, a message sent at this range to even the closest UNSC ship in the vicinity would take at least half an hour, and another half hour or a response to be sent back. And the time it would take for the ships to actually get here would take much more time than that.
"Sir, communication systems with the planet are operational, sir," Kean reported.
Stevenson did or said nothing for a moment. What use was a COM link now that all the men were stranded on the surface with no way off. All he could really do is assure and comfort them with false hopes, and the admiral was not the type of man to do so. Nevertheless, he had to give them confirmation that the battlegroup was at least still here. "Kean," he began, sitting down in his chair as he spoke, "open a link to all ground teams.
The assault on the Nuclear Facility had been much more successful than the disastrous attack on Halu's House - initially, anyway. When the men entered the complex and secured the silos and launching areas, they had suffered less than fifty casualties. Ever since then, however, small groups of constantly moving snipers around the perimeter had taken incessant potshots at the unfortunate UNSC soldiers holding the facility, not knowing where these bullets were coming from. These raids had gotten even worse since the sky rained blackened Pelicans, and thus the formidable force of 5,000 had diminished to 3,850.
The men were without hope. The Pelicans were all destroyed and the battlegroup had no others. They were trapped here on the surface, stranded and left to die among a force with numerical superiority and aerial capabilities. Most knew that the only reason they were still here was because they had such great numbers and because the mobile AA vehicles had kept the aircraft at bay to prevent a nuclear explosion in the city due to a reckless Abakum bomber.
Colonel Davis, unlike the unfortunate Captain Jefferson, had survived the initial attack on the complex and was now safely inside one of the silos underneath the earth, issuing orders from there. Colonel Davis was intelligent, probably one of the most educated men on the planet's surface, but unfortunately he was a hopelessly incompetent officer. Twice he had ordered a pathetically small force of men to go outside the facility's perimeter and try and hunt down the troublesome snipers - neither group had ever come back. Captain Douglas had almost begged the Colonel the send out a larger force of about a thousand to rout out the elusive skirmishing groups, but Davis refused, saying "I will not risk that many men."
To which Douglas replied, "We're running out of men anyway!"
But Davis was not to be moved from his rigid position, even as his army slowly dwindled away, one by one. It was twenty-five minutes after the Pelicans had all been destroyed that a message was at last audible through the fuzz of the channel to the Cruisers and Carriers above. "This is Admiral Stevenson," the admiral said. "We regret to inform you that only two Pelicans made it safely to the safety of the battlegroup. The LOFs are all but destroyed and we cannot expect help from another UNSC ship for quite some time."
"How long, sir?" came Lieutenant Parsons' voice over the COM channel.
There was a long pause until Stevenson at last replied, "Probably a couple of weeks."
Davis closed outgoing audio from the channel and then held his head in his hands and let out a soft sob. Captain Douglas, who was standing unseen a couple meters away, looked away in disgust.
"Good luck, gentlemen. Stevenson out."
Davis continued sobbing, tears escaping through his clasped hands and landing gently on the floor beneath. Douglas did not try and be tactful by pretending he was not there. "Your orders, sir?" he asked in a tone that did not hide his contempt.
Davis looked away and rubbed his face with his hand. "Maintain position," was all he could say through his heaving intakes of air.
Douglas ran his fingers over his holstered pistol. "Sir, that is madness! We're being murdered out there!"
"That is my order, Captain," he said angrily.
Douglas stood there for a moment, saliva frothing on his lips. He gripped his pistol tightly, but finally said, "Yes, sir."
"By God, it's cold in here," Jacobs said.
"Aye," Harrison agreed readily.
Parsons' looked at the two thoughtfully and began pacing uselessly once more along the tunnel. There was not a lot else he could do. He couldn't leave the bunker. That didn't even register as an option in his mind. By now the Abakum army had no doubt secured the devastated courtyard above, effectively trapping them in here. They also probably had access to the security doors, and could most likely open the intact second gate. Luckily the battlegroup in orbit could see the courtyard and could inform them when there were any troop movements. So far, Stevenson had informed them of nothing, and so all of the severely depressed men were at ease.
Suddenly Parsons heard a gunshot go off behind him. All the men turned around as one, alarmed by the unexpected noise. They all looked at an equally surprising scene. Private Jones, a new recruit, was standing on a crate on one foot, holding a smoking pistol in his left hand. Everyone looked at each other with confused expressions on their faces, but they reluctantly put their weapons down. Parsons walked over to the man, a furious expression on his face.
"Told you I could do it," he said to another man sitting down next to him. They both had smoldering cigarettes in their mouths. Parsons came up to the private and grabbed him by the collar. "Steady on their, lieutenant," he said, laughing.
The fact that Jones had addressed him by his rank and not by sir made Parsons only angrier. "What the fuck are you doing private?" he asked.
"I made a bet with Mr. Pellow there that I could hit a rock at the end of the tunnel standing on one foot on..."
"What would possess you?" Parsons asked furiously. Then he squinted his eyes under his night vision visor. "What the fuck..." he grabbed the cigarette out of his mouth. "Smoking?" he spat. He smelled the smoke for a moment. "Marijuana?" he asked even more angrily. He threw it to the ground and stepped on it, extinguishing it.
"Hey, steady on there!" Jones said, enraged. He lifted the pistol in his hand and fired at Parsons.
The bullet entered the lieutenant's neck, punching a hole in his trachea and skimming his jugular. Because of the earlier gunshot not everybody turned around immediately. Harrison was the first to notice the horrible incident. "Jesus Christ, he shot Parsons!" he exclaimed. Harrison lifted his own gun and pointed it at Jones. "Drop your weapon, private!"
Everyone now had lifted their weapon now and were screaming at Jones. The private, however, wasn't paying attention to anyone. Instead he looked down at the man he had just shot. The awful sight of the bloody lieutenant writhing around on the ground was enough to sober him up from his delusional state. "What have I done?" he asked himself. With that, he brought his pistol up against his head and blew his brains across the tunnel.
Harrison ignored the nearly headless corpse of Jones and ran over to Parsons' side, followed by two medics. Parsons was barely moving now. His trachea was completely severed and his larynx destroyed. There was anything the medics could do now to save his life. Harrison grasped the lieutenant's hand and said the first thing that came to his mind. "Don't worry, sir," he said soothingly, "you won't be lonely for long." Parsons looked up at Harrison for a moment, confused, but suddenly a look of understanding fluttered across his pain-stricken face and his eyes closed slowly and deliberately, as if he was suddenly at peace. Parsons died.
Harrison sighed and put his face in his hands. "Parsons is dead," he announced to everyone in the tunnel.
Harrison didn't have long to mourn the death of the lieutenant. A wave of fuzz crackled over the COM channel of the dead lieutenant's helmet. "Lieutenant Parsons?" came Stevenson's voice. His alarming tone caught Harrison's attention. "Parsons, respond!"
"This is Private Harrison, sir," he said respectfully. "Parsons is dead, admiral."
Stevenson was obviously in a rush to say whatever he was going to say, and he didn't bother to ask how he died when there was no enemy in the tunnel. "Well, private, there are hostile forces converging on your position."
"Roger that, sir," he said. He ran up the tunnel towards the gate. "Lieutenant Jacobs, sir! Parsons is dead, you're in command. And the enemy is coming here right now!"
Jacobs immediately understood. "McCarthy, bring me the detonator!" The demolitions man scrambled to his feet and brought the small device to Jacobs. Jacobs gripped the detonator tightly in his clammy hands. "Fire in the hole!"
The Marine had not been totally idle in the tunnel. About a minute after the OFB had been dropped, Parsons had ordered the demolitions team to set up mines and explosives in the tunnel to destroy any incoming forces. 1 ton of C-12 and 750 kilos of other assorted explosives and mines decimated the first tunnel and everyone in it. Nearly two and a half thousand enemy soldiers were blown apart in the tunnel, and the survivors and those who had not yet entered the tunnel ran away in a mass panic.
"What the fuck happened down there?" Stevenson asked, shocked at the massive blast.
"We set up mines in the tunnel, admiral," Jacobs informed him, talking through the COM channel on Parsons' helmet that Harrison had handed him.
" Excellent work, Marines!" Stevenson said emphatically. "We'll keep you informed of any further movement down there. Stevenson out."
"Clever," O'Keefe said to Stevenson, still watching the black smoke billow from the tunnel's entrance and the thousands of soldiers milling about not quite knowing what to do.
Stevenson grunted. Despite this victory, the army in Iskorosten had plenty more reinforcements and the Marines had now probably run out of mines and other such explosives. No one would survive down there now. "It's been an hour," the admiral said abruptly.
"Sir?" O'Keefe asked, confused.
"It's been an hour," Stevenson repeated. "We should have a response any moment now."
"Ah, yes, sir," O'Keefe agreed.
Indeed, only four minutes later a response came on Stevenson's personal computer. It read:
A rescue operation on the scale you're talking of takes time, admiral. I estimate it will be at least a week and a half to get permission and mobilize a battlegroup. To get there it will take even more time. It will probably be about six weeks before we can get to the Abakum colony.
Stevenson cursed foully. "Jesus Christ! Six Goddamn weeks, O'Keefe!"
The Major paled. "What are you going to do, admiral?" he asked.
Stevenson knew what O'Keefe meant. "I don't see why they should know, major. It will serve only too dishearten them."
"Maybe they'll hold out, that long," O'Keefe suggested. Then realizing just how impossible that seemed, he said, "Perhaps the Nuclear force at least."
Stevenson scoffed. "No, O'Keefe. They can't survive down there that long, and those bastards at FLEETCOM know that. A mobilization on this scale, especially on such short notice, would cost trillions. They aren't coming, major. They've been left to die down there."
"A nearby battlegroup returning from Ionius is nearby," Stevenson lied over the COM channel. "We can expect a relief force in just under a week."
Colonel Davis raised his head hopefully from the desk and looked at Captain Douglas. "Did you hear that, captain? We have only to hold out for less than a week!"
Douglas shook his head and rubbed his right temple gingerly. "It's a Goddamned lie, sir! Don't you remember the SUN broadcast? They're dealing with Abakum first and then Ionius - one at a time. There is no battlegroup returning from Ionius. A relief force won't be here for months... if it comes at all."
Davis listened to Douglas morosely, and then looked hopelessly up at the ceiling drenched in red light from the emergency lighting systems. That made sense to the colonel. "Well, we'll have to stay where we are, I guess."
"Sir!" Douglas cried with exasperation. "It is a hopeless situation just sitting here. We have to take care of those snipers with more than just a handful of men. Give command of Fire Teams Bradley through Lincoln. I'll kill all those snipers and at least end the threat to the perimeter for the time being."
Davis shook his head. He was adamant. "I will not risk the safety of half of my men, captain. Do you understand me?"
"No, sir," Douglas said simply, then, with a quickness that took Davis completely by surprise, the captain took his M4D pistol from its holster and emptied its entire 15 round clip into the unsuspecting body of the hapless colonel. "Murderer!" he screamed at the dead colonel. "Murderer!" He turned around on his heel and stalked furiously out the door. It wasn't until Douglas left the silo and stepped into the warm summer night that he wondered who he had been addressing in his outburst.
"Equip your NOD men," Douglas said to his thousand Marines who had gathered outside the perimeter of the Nuclear Facility. The Marines had arrived on the surface of Abakum at 3:13pm Iskorosten time (Abakum had 32-hour days). It was now 12:56. The 5,000 Marines had now dwindled down to 2,435. In his counterattack force Douglas had 953 men. It was a lot, but Douglas was confident his Marines could hold the perimeter while they were gone. Besides, no one had seen any major troop gathering within a five-mile radius. That would probably give them enough time to for the offensive Marines to get back to the facility.
There were several gurgled screams of his men as the Marines fanned out in search of the sniper skirmishers. Douglas heard rapid gunfire from some of his own Marines followed by the death cries of men, which he determined must be the enemy. Douglas himself came across a group of two snipers, stalking about stealthily below the tall grass. He raised his weapon and sprayed them with a withering fire from his M97 sub-machinegun. Douglas searched the grass with his thermal vision, but he could see only the dark corpses of his own and enemy men. "Does anybody see anymore hostile forces?"
"Negative, sir," came numerous messages, all flooding through his COM device on his helmet. "All the snipers have either retreated or are dead."
Douglas was impressed. In just eighteen minutes all the enemy forces in the vicinity had been eliminated. "Okay, men, let's get back to..."
"Captain Douglas, sir!" a man yelled to Douglas over the COM channel. "Sir, we're being overrun! The enemy has penetrated to perimeter and..." from there the transmission was cut off in a burst of fuzz.
Douglas's heart turned to ice and his hands became cold and clammy. If the perimeter was penetrated the mobile AA vehicles would be compromised and they would all be killed by aerial strikes. "Get back to the Facility!" he screamed through his COM device.
The now diminished Marine force of 929 ran pell-mell back to the complex. They arrived at a scene of chaos. Grenade explosions and gunfire was erupting all over the large facility. Screams of the dying seemed incessant. However, because of their fortified position, the UNSC defenders were largely successful in repulsing the surprise attack. The seven AA turrets mounted on large trucks situated in an open area near the center of the complex were all intact and operational. Douglas sighed in relief. They were not too late. And because the UNSC and Abakum force were of equal strength in this fight, the arrival of 929 more UNSC Marines turned the tide of the struggle and forced the hostile soldiers to retreat. The enemy ran into the grass fields and dove into surface caves beneath the sedge, escaping through the man-made tunnels that formed a complex network all over the area.
"So that's where they came from," Douglas murmured to himself.
"Thank God you got here on time, sir," Lieutenant Benice said earnestly.
"Wait a minute," Sergeant Young said, sitting a couple meters away, looking at his mobile sensor station. "Captain Douglas, I think you'd better take a look at this, sir."
Douglas walked over to Young and knelt down next to him scanning the screen but not understanding what he was seeing. "Well, what the hell am I supposed to be seeing here?" he asked impatiently, still shaken by the murder of Colonel Davis.
"Sir, look," the veteran soldier said with equal impatience. "These signatures here," he pointed to two red dots at one far end on the screen, "are some sort of enemy aircraft, and as you can see from the projected line," he traced a yellow line on the screen, "the aircraft are headed directly to our position."
Confirmation of this came a moment later from Stevenson. "Colonel Davis, you have five enemy aircraft converging on your position!" the admiral yelled with panic clear in his voice.
Douglas did not even bother thinking up a lie for Davis' death. He, too, was panicking and he couldn't figure out why they had chosen now to make an aerial strike...
Almost the exact moment the captain understood the Abakums' reasons, the seven AA turrets behind him exploded in seven tremendous balls of flame and black smoke. The quick strike enemy force that had been so easily repelled had just attached remote controlled charges to the troublesome AA vehicles. The facility was now ripe for aerial bombing.
"Get out!" Douglas screamed uselessly. For the situation was hopeless. The five bombers, which had been fifteen miles away just moments before, had already loosed their payload, one for each of the four corners of the perimeter and one for the center. The bombs were FAEs, or fuel air explosives. They were an ingenious bomb; they carried an enormous amount of air in a very small volume of space. When the casing was blown apart, the sheer force of pressure of this highly condensed air being released was easily able to crush the human brain inside the skull. Thus every one of the 2,221 Marines were brutally killed but none of the nuclear warheads detonated. Once the enormous pressure in the area stabilized, the enemy force in the tunnels underneath and around the complex emerged and ran towards the facility with the intent to bring it back online.
And destroy the ships in orbit.
"Admiral!" Lieutenant Dawson cried from the communications station. "Sir, we've lost contact with the strike force from the Nuclear Facility."
"Confirmed, sir," Kean reported, examining a telescopic picture of the surface. "The bombers we saw dropped something on the complex... all the men down there suddenly dropped dead. I would deduce a FAE."
Stevenson chewed on his tongue nervously. He, too, was now watching the Nuclear Complex on the main viewer, and he wiped sweat from his brow as thousands of the enemy converged on the abandoned silos. Their intent was obvious to everyone on the bridge. "Mr. Hawk, get us out of here. Mr. Dawson send a message to the rest of the battlegroup to get out of orbit and head out of the system and open a COM channel with the Marines in Halu's House and transmit it to my station."
"Aye, sir," they both said.
Admiral Stevenson sat down in his captain's chair and strapped himself in and braced himself for the inevitable lurching they would experience when the Constellation turned around and sped up. "Lieutenant Par... Lieutenant Jacobs, I regret to inform you that the Nuclear Facility has fallen and is now back in the hands of the enemy. This action has forced the retreat of the battlegroup in orbit. These nukes have a system-wide range... we're going to have to leave all together. All messages sent and received will be done via text."
"Roger that, sir," Jacobs said, his severely depressed voice now even more disheartened.
With that all five ships in the battlegroup turned around and spec outside of the planet's nuclear range, completely abandoning the unfortunate Marines on the surface.
"I trust everyone heard that?" Jacobs asked the congregated Marines. Almost everyone nodded, and there was a few whispered conversations as some men told those who hadn't heard what had happened. "The Nuclear Facility has been taken," Jacobs said anyway. "Presumably everyone there is dead. The ships are all leaving."
This discouraging news brought about more sadness to an already depressing occasion. A small charge was used to blow a hole in the tunnel and Lieutenant Parsons' body was now inside. All the Marines is the tunnel were all standing around with their heads bowed, paying their respects silently to their brave and likeable commander. Without the ships to tell them when the enemy was coming, the Marines now had to pay more attention to the living than the dead.
"You two, bury Parsons," Jacobs said to two nearby men. "Everyone else, I want you to find cover in all these potholes," he gestured to the giant hole in the ground made by the mine, "and be on constant alert. We have no idea when the enemy will come."
Everyone scrambled to find cover in every available space and they all waited patiently for their hated enemy to break through. Most knew that they would never see daylight again, but for the majority of those who knew that, it didn't serve to dishearten them too much. In fact, it made them even angrier, even more determined to slaughter their killers.
"By God, if only we had that howitzer cannon," Jacobs said to Harrison with disappointment. "We'd slaughter those bastards."
"Yes, sir," Harrison said blankly. The young man did not want to die. He was not ready to die like some of the men.
Jacobs discerned this from Harrison's sorrowful look. "Marine, you don't have to worry about death. We're all going to die someday, and if that time should come sooner than we'd like, then there is nothing we can do about it. All we can do in our life is live it out the best we can, and if you've lived a good life, there is little you need to fear. And raise your head with pride, for you are a Marine, and dead or alive we'll still be the best damned fighting force this galaxy has ever seen and ever will see."
Harrison looked at Jacobs with a newfound respect. The lieutenant had sounded eerily like Parsons just there, and had he lost his pride altogether, he would have broken down and cried on the spot. "Yes, sir," he said instead. "We'll give em' hell."
Jacobs smiled. "That's the spirit, Marine."
About an hour has passed when suddenly a noise filled the tunnel. The sound was recognizable to all. It was the sound of the magnetic locks disengaging on the gate. "Here they come!" Jacobs announced. The two doors parted, and the gap between the two doors widened, revealing a seemingly empty tunnel. Jacobs peered just above the ridge of the pothole he was hiding in to survey the area. "Don't be fooled, men. The tunnel is probably teeming with..." suddenly a shot rang from down the tunnel and Jacobs's head was blown wide open. The horrific corpse slid down the bank of the hole and came to rest next to Harrison's foot. He shuddered at the sight.
Sergeant-Major Clarence was now in command. "All right Marines," he called gruffly. "On the count of three, I want everyone to stand and put some fire on anything you see move. Okay... one, two, three!"
Everyone stood and began firing blindly. Reports came from down the tunnel as well aimed shots punctured bodies, wounding and killing many of the UNSC Marines. However most of the enemy fire was completely random, for most of the bullets were flying crazily around the men, hitting nothing. It was almost as if they were covering for something...
"Howitzer cannons!" Clarence cried, just before he, too, was killed by a sniper. No one else stood up to take command - it did not matter now. These next few moments were to be their last. Most of the sporadic hostile firing had stopped, and the screaming Marines waited in horrible anticipation for the large artillery weapons to fire that one shell that would end all their lives.
The deafening blast from three howitzer cannons did eventually come, but Harrison was the only UNSC man to really appreciate it, for he was the only one to survive the exploding shells. "Hello?" he called out around him, desperate for someone to answer him. It didn't even matter if they did, however - Harrison was so deafened by the explosion that he couldn't even hear his own voice. Besides, he was bleeding so badly from the numerous wounds on his body from the shrapnel and ball bearings that he had only moments of life left in him anyway. He did not want his miraculous survival to be in vain, so with his ebbing strength, he reached over and picked up a rocket launcher than had been blown next to him from the force of the blast. He picked it up, lifted his bleeding body from the tunnel floor, and aimed at one of the howitzer cannons. He pulled the trigger.
Harrison sank back down into the pothole and waited for the explosion. Although he could not hear it, the combined blast of three cannons exploding sent a vibration through the very earth and rocked Harrison contentedly into the afterlife.
"Sir, they still aren't responding," Dawson said one hour after Harrison died.
The UNSC battlegroup had been in slipspace for about half an hour and they were now floating in the emptiness of space nearly three billion kilometers from Abakum. At this range the message would only take mere seconds, so time delay could not explain this away. Stevenson bowed his head. "They are dead, then. All of them."
No one answered. Everyone just stopped what they were doing for a moment and took in the fact that out of the 13,000 men who went to the surface, not one came back. A mission that would have been called largely unsuccessful with over 1,000 casualties had become a total disaster that would go down in history as a calamitous failure. "Heavenly Father, give them everlasting life and bring them to salvation. Glory be to God in the highest, amen."
Although Stevenson was the only devout Christian on the bridge, everyone dutifully repeated, "Amen."
It was small consolation to the 13,000 bloody corpses fifteen billion kilometers away.
Aftermath
The "Abakum Disaster", as the press later dubbed it, went down as the UNSC's largest military blunder in history. An army 13,000 strong had never even been assembled for orbit to surface transportation in all of history, let alone 13,000 dead. Angry mobs demanded Admiral John Stevenson's immediate resignation, and four months after the disaster, the people got their wish: the admiral resigned in disgrace and died five years later on Reach, a broken man. It never came out that Stevenson was forced into that position.
Ironically the negotiations for Latsek Slavonosh and Vysheslav Volokov were unsuccessful and their executions did little than to stir the already enraged people of Abakum into a complete frenzy and create friction with the UNSC's own people. It was the final humiliation in an already catastrophic defeat.
However the loss of 13,000 men also spurred the UNSC into action. Combined with their previous determination to dislodge the troublesome governments of the planets from power, a new and devastating campaign on Abakum commenced in July of 2403. 16 ships entered the Abakum system carrying nearly 90,000 men and women were to be used to finally defeat the planet. Bombing runs similar to those conducted in Stevenson's Abakum mission disabled the planet's defenses and a Marine army of 50,000 touched down on the surface of the planet and laid siege to Iskorosten.
When negotiations failed, two other cities, New Moscow (239,000 people) and Kekholm (159,000 people) were leveled in a series of nuclear strikes. When the government still refused to give in, the Marine army bombarded Iskorosten with incessant precision artillery barrages for three days until the colony finally surrendered unconditionally. The planet was devastated. Along with 63,000 people killed in the artillery bombardment of Iskorosten, the total amount of casualties was 461,000 people. Iskorosten lay in ruins and the two central cities of New Moscow and Kekholm were obliterated. The Marines on the surfaced suffered 647 dead and 2,027 wounded.
A campaign on Ionius was never undertaken. After they saw what the UNSC was able and willing to do, they capitulated after several peace-talks in January of 2404. Ionius was renamed Sorento III and Abakum was renamed Sigma Octanus IV. Many years later, both colonies had a planet-wide revolt (it was squashed in 2449 after a year) and both planets continued to have trouble for years after that. The two planets had the largest garrisons in the entire empire (190,000 for Abakum and 125,000 for Ionius).
But it all started in 2399 when an ill-fated raid turned into a catastrophe that senselessly claimed 13,000 lives.
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