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Changes Five: Darkness Descending
Posted By: Mark Boone<markboonejesusfreak@yahoo.com>
Date: 9 November 2004, 10:22 PM
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Sundry thoughts rolled around in the Lieutenant's head while just two thoughts stayed in the background. Battle damage: defenses secure, but for the gate. Survivors: Thirty-nine walking. Twenty wounded. Time to dustoff: nineteen hours, at eight AM the next day. Time to the next dawn, when a certain premonition told the Lieutenant the Covenant would again crest the hill in a wave of destruction: seventeen hours. A smaller thought in the background of his head was the continuous dull pain: every muscle in his body ached. The final thought was a nagging question that his entire motivation for everything that he had done had been wrong.
No, not wrong: incomplete.
There she was; there was the girl; no, the woman. No matter.
An overwhelming urge suddenly consumed him. It obliterated any other thoughts in his mind and its potency threatened to tear him apart; that, at least, was how it felt. This creature was a thing of beauty, and he wanted to protect it. It was strong in its own way, able to take care of itself. But its glory was not its strength; its glory was in its beauty. And strength it had; but strength to defend itself against the Covenant hordes, it had not. Perhaps no one had, but at least the Lieutenant had a little bit more than she, and at least he would use it toward that end, that the thing of beauty would be preserved at the cost of his own blood, and that should any foul thing mar its loveliness, the Lieutenant would be dead before that end came to be.
But that was all a given, old news. What else could he do to protect her? The Lieutenant's fingers wandered across the smooth surface of the metal object attached to his belt. That was one thing he could do. "Excuse me, miss."
Her eyes leapt up and he clearly saw them with his own in all their mysterious wonder. A weaker mind would have faltered, but the Lieutenant did not waver, though he felt instinctively that he was speaking to a being whose worth was greater than his own for being innocent and for being the end and purpose of his own struggles. "What is your name?"
She replied, "Maria."
"Do you know how to use this?" The pistol lay flat in his palm, fully loaded.
"Show me" she said.
He demonstrated the cocking mechanism and the safety; then he removed the clip and put it back in again. "Now you do it." She did, a little slowly and clumsily but without any mistakes.
The embattled sergeant was nearby. The Lieutenant ordered, "Sergeant, bring me a dead Grunt."
"Yes, Sir " barked the sergeant. The Lieutenant and the girl watched as the embattled sergeant with the help of a private dragged up the corpse of one of the slaughtered Covenant Grunts. The Lieutenant addressed the girl: "Fill it with lead, Maria."
She acquiesced without a word. She seemed a little bit frightened of the power in her own hands, but it was as if she knew it was necessary. At the first shot she let out a tiny cry, but then her eyes hardened with determination, and she gave it three more shots. She looked up at the Lieutenant, who almost smiled but stopped himself. "Keep going" he said without emotion.
The girl emptied the pistol and stopped only after twice hearing the click of an empty chamber. "That was very good" said the Lieutenant.
"Why do they have blue blood?" she asked.
"Hemoglobin," said the Lieutenant. "It carries oxygen in our own human blood, and it's what makes our blood red. These things breathe methane, so they don't have any hemoglobin."
"So they have some blue thing in their blood that carries the other stuff?"
"Beats me. I'm sure somebody knows that little detail. I just know why their blood isn't red." There was a pause in the conversation, and then the Lieutenant handed Maria three more clips and told her to keep the gun. Women were scary things, and the Lieutenant had other things to contemplate.
And time passed. Time to dustoff: sixteen hours.
"Resources...we have some resources left . . . I was thinking that after the third laser, we can still make some mirrors just to blind them . . . if they attack during the morning that is. I suppose we could rig up some elaborate system to redirect the light for another time of day. And we have . . . horses . . . twenty-four. I was going to check with you and the leading civilians left in the town, since they're their horses and all, and then eat them if that's ok with everyone. You know, the condemned man always gets a good last meal. None of us have had any fresh meat since we got here, and some of us in weeks and months."
"Don't kill them yet, Sarge" said the Lieutenant. Creativity had probably won many a battle in history, and certainly it had served well this morning. But a cavalry charge . . . bordered on lunacy. But what the heck; when you're already doomed, you might as well make your death a crazy one. "Can anyone ride them, Sergeant? Some of the men from around here, maybe?"
"Far's I know."
"I want to speak to the men of the town. See who can ride . . . and who might be interested in certain death for the sake of their wives and children. Ok, the wives and children are mostly gone already. For the ones that are left . . . or just to give the rest of us a bigger chance. And if any of our own men might be able to learn to ride in a few hours." The Lieutenant was pacing back and forth, partially to consider how such a crazy idea might be accomplished and partially to wonder at his own stupidity at considering it.
"Lieutenant . . . are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"
"Yes Sergeant I am: at dawn. With mirrors. It will be useless, of course, against Elites and Hunters."
"But Grunts. And . . . Jackals . . . squashed "
"Bingo."
At ten hours to dustoff, it was night. The Lieutenant looked at the stars—brilliantly bright. Lamba Seven's sky was a new arrangement of stars to him as he had never been in this sector, but some of the constellations looked a little bit familiar.
He was likely to die in the morning. They all were. But as long as they were still alive, they might as well live. So the Lieutenant looked at the stars.
But his eyes were drawn down when a slender shadow slipped from a nearby building, merged with the night, and then turned to look towards him. A cool wind blew across her face, making her hair to dance in its breeze. He looked at her and her bright eyes within the pitch black of her hair as it merged with the night seemed to him as were the bright stars overhead.
Then she turned and vanished into the shadows.
Suddenly two lines of though in his head came together and completely linked for the first time. Before they had only very nearly come together. He had sworn silently to himself to, above all, protect Maria. His body was almost broken, and it was weak, hurting all over. Well, that was because Maria's body was unhurt. When he had first written his battle poem, months ago, it had taken him hours to find the right words. This time the words came quickly and easily.
"And battle and war . . ." was his only reality. "The children breathe a cool wind," was the state of reality behind the lines of battle, where those who were children to the ways of pain breathed clean air without the taste of blood in it. "Just a warrior and his sword" spoke of the battle once more. "Behind him peace wins" spoke of the objective of any just war.
He thought of what he had been through, from the first storm of plasma lightning over his shoulder as he had fled into the hills . . . to the monsters he had cut down in their tracks that morning. "I alone understand. I'll give them a chance. I'll show them the light. By my blood they will last." And again he thought of Maria. "For them I stand, For them I here dance, For them I fight, And this test I will pass..." for her, for them, for the children, said the Lieutenant beneath the stars.
And he gathered his strength for the final stand.
Goldfired morning. Two hours to dustoff. The mirrors were in place. The certain premonition was more certain than ever. It was time.
The Covenant crested the ridge for the third and final time. They had been reinforced in the night; some of the men on guard duty had counted: one hundred and thirty-one enemy dropships.
The defenses were arrayed thus: the first line was of course, the wall, bristling with assault rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, and rocket launchers. Thirty-four Marines were there. The second line was the wall of boxes, bricks, and sandbags within the walls. Just five Marines had been placed there, at the center facing the gate, which was the definitive weak spot, having only the weakest
makeshift wooden doors. For half a mile behind that wall along the town's main road were various boxes, buildings with windows, three smaller sandbag fortifications, and several bunkers.
They were all currently empty; things to be used in a retreat. The last bit of ground to hold was the clearing in the center of the town where the dropships would arrive at 800 hours. It was surrounded by a four foot wall. The eighteen Marines who were wounded and able to sit up were
already arrayed there, ready to pull assault rifle triggers. Their most significant task would be to cover the retreat of whoever came back from the outer lines of defense. The handful of women helped the two most badly wounded Marines, and did whatever they could for the scientists and other Marines: all in the buildings on the back side of the clearing, where it seemed a little bit safer. The women, too, were carrying assault rifles. A few of the men of the town were stationed on the outer and inner walls.
The Lieutenant had a few special cards to play, but the effectiveness of any of them was debatable. The first special card was two out of the three new reflective lasers. As the light first peeked over the horizon and intensified to its full fury in virtually no time at all, the humans observed it and—at the right moment—swung the mechanisms into position. The light further intensified within the beam, and the oncoming Covenant began to feel its wrath: the wrath of humans defending their homes and families, and everything that was human to them.
But the first special card was a disaster, for the enemy's lesson had been well learnt. In only a matter of seconds the lasers and their operators were brutally melted and incinerated in the vast wave of plasma that caught them almost before they could react. The only weapon now capable of slowing the onslaught was the sniper rifle. There were seven rifles left, and the bullets had been evenly distributed: no one had more than four. In seconds the snipers had cast the useless weapons aside and begun aiming the assault rifles. They had destroyed three Elites, ten Grunts, and two Jackals: fifteen drops in an immeasurable sea.
The Lieutenant's rocket launcher was the first to fire. The rocket streaked towards a certain clot of monsters, leaving its characteristic smoke-line behind it, and the next objects to be launched through the air were screaming aliens. A few more launchers fired, taking out Jackals and Hunters by the ones, Grunts by the fives. Elites and Jackals were slowly succumbing to the pistols. The Lieutenant fired his second rocket, eliminating a Hunter, and then realized that the things were already within fifty yards of the walls. Assault rifles were now in action. With the bullets distributed among so many enemies, most of the Grunts were only wounded, and the Elites' shields were probably not even broken. The Lieutenant decided he would give the signal for the other mirrors in sixty seconds.
Forty-five seconds and two more rockets launched. The Lieutenant was now crouching below the fortifications. To stand up would mean almost certain scalding burns from the plasma that filled the air. It wouldn't take very many of those to kill a man. The Lieutenant raised his assault rifle above his head and blindly emptied the sixty bits of lead into the hellfire. Then he caught the eye of the embattled sergeant down on the ground, and gave him the hand signal to prepare the second special card's ground-side component. The embattled sergeant, always reliable, obeyed orders quickly and flawlessly. The Lieutenant dropped to ground-level, picked up the special package that was the third card, and screamed into his walkie-talkie the signal for the second card's wall-side component.
Now began the most beautifully heroic moment on Lambda Seven's final saga. First the mirrors swung up: more than twenty of them, directing the sun's light into the eyes of the enemy's massed forces before the gate.
Then the gate was removed, blown outward from the inside with plastic explosives, its remains driving into the enemy and breaking the flesh, surely, of at least a dozen.
The horses charged forward into the light. Well-trained animals, they were driven by their heroic riders to their doom. A renewed blast of assault rifle fire broke out from above, and the twenty-four horses darted into the flaming whiteness. The only cavalry charge of this horrendous war saw them die, trampling their enemies, some. Cutting down a few with their assault rifles, some. Dying, all: all the men of this little town on Lambda Seven, kamikazes, into the burning whiteness rode, and in the whiteness died, and in the brightness and light bought a few more minutes of precious life for their still-breathing comrades behind the walls. Maybe it would be enough.
And some of the enemy fled. Victory
Yet there were too few left inside the blasted, blackened walls. Twenty-four fewer with the heroes gone to their death on the horses. No, twenty-five.
The Lieutenant would have delegated this mission to no one else. He would also have seen to it that no one but himself volunteered. It was better that the others be given a chance to survive; let his own blood be the price of that.
He was in the dust, in the lingering wake of that heroic charge. Jogging now, slowing to a walk. His finger was poised on the button, lightly brushing the button that would set off the special package he was delivering to the Covenant.
One thousand ton's worth of TNT. Reduced to the size of an apple and the weight of one hundredth of its explosive power. The apple carried in the left hand, the detonator in the right. There was only one of these weapons on Lambda Seven; the factories back on Reach had manufactured as many as they could, but they were fairly expensive and hard to make. The Lieutenant had been lucky to be given just one before he came to Lambda Seven.
The objective was to get as far away from the town as possible and set it off. The charge had carried the horses several hundred yards. They may have almost even reached the ridge. The Lieutenant was surely near the ridge now, and the dust was still there. He began to see flitting shadows of living enemies in the drifting brownness. Some fired their plasma rifles at objects on the ground.
He was among the ghosts. The blessed ghosts of the heroes whose bodies lay strewn on this cursed field. And the ghosts of the evil enemy. The lieutenant felt that he too was a ghost in this light, and prepared to go on to the other side and join the heroes. He knelt down, crouching behind a dead horse, and placed the bomb beneath its body. It seemed good to hide it, but he was not sure just why. He was ready to die, and the slightest mistaken move in his right hand would bring about his instantaneous incineration. Or, the slightest intentional movement: if they neared him in the drifting dust (there was no wind) and saw him, he would set it off. He was ready to die.
But what if living were possible? Well, he was resigned to his fate, but if there were the slightest millionth of a chance it was duty's decree to try it. He was laying down with the dead horse, watching and looking. Well, it was time to go back to the town. Maybe it would be possible to make it back inside the gates. He had done it last time he had left the city. He began to jog backwards, his back parallel to the ground as he crouched as low as he could. Then he stopped at the edge of the dust: there were no enemies in this drifting dust firing weapons or charging the town, but there were sounds of battle: Human and Covenant weapons shouting, and Humans screaming out hatred and pain.
He stood frozen amongst the drifting dust, and thought. Ah, of course: the cavalry charge had gone straight out from the gate, and the Covenant had been massed all along the walls. The ones to the sides of the gate would not have been swept away in the charge. They would be attacking the town. In other words, there was no going back.
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