Spartan One 011

The modified M312 Elephant thundered through the burning avenues of Troy, rampaging as it went.

Its reinforced treads crushed shattered concrete, abandoned vehicles, and the blackened carcasses of Warrior Bugs beneath forty tons of armored fury. Twin autocannons hammered from the forward turret, each burst ripping fist-sized holes through chitin and spraying steaming yellow ichor across the Elephant’s scarred frontal plating. Above them, the sky burned orange beneath drifting smoke, tracer fire, and the blue-white arcs of plasma hurled from somewhere beyond the ruined city blocks.

Orion stood sat in the commander’s chair constantly monitoring the situation outside.

“Hood, maintain bearing zero-eight-five! Do not stop for any obstacles. Johnson, take out those fliers on the left! We've got a bug wave in the intersection, look alive people.” He snapped.

“Contact left!” Johnson repeated.

Seconds later, the Elephant’s side-mounted rotary cannon spun up with a scream, belching hot lead into the enemy.

A river of Warrior Bugs poured between two collapsed hab-blocks, their scythe-limbs raised, their mandibles clicking as they charged. There were dozens of them flooding over wreckage and climbing across one another in their frenzy to reach the vehicle.

The rotary cannon opened fire, demolishing the first rank.

Heavy rounds punched through Warrior Bugs in rows, tearing off legs, exploding thoraxes, and hurling broken bodies backward into those behind them. The horde stumbled over its own dead, only for the Elephant to plow directly into the survivors.

The entire vehicle lurched and bug shells cracked beneath the treads like ceramic plates. Private Johnson leaned out from one of the firing ports, lifting his visor to puff away at a cigar. He held the trigger down until the barrel glowed, laughing through clenched teeth as his rounds massacred the swarm.

“Come on, you ugly sons of bitches! I got enough ammunition for every damned one of you!” Johnson roared.

A Warrior Bug leapt onto the side armor, its claw desperately searching to pluck the sweet neat from inside the arnored tin can that was the Elephant. Johnson ducked under the offending appendage, and and fired point-blank.

The creature’s head burst apart, showering his face and breastplate with viscous gore.

“Aw, hell!” Johnson shouted, wiping ichor away from his face with a rag. “I can feel it seeping into my underwear.”

“Johnson, status report?” Orion questioned.

“Still combat effective, sir!”

“Then quit polishing yourself and cover our flank, those Dragonflies are starting to melt away our canopy.” Orion growled.

As if to confirm his words, the fliers started to excrete a toxic type of spit acting as a biological bomb. Doing flybys they were quite literally shitting on the men of the UNSC.

“You're shitting me.” The private growled.

“Keep that visor down during ops, rookie.” The Sergeant pressed, slapping the cigar out of Johnson's mouth.

The dark-skinned man swung his weapon around and sent another burst into a group of Bugs scrambling down the face of a parking structure, and taking his anger out at the fliers. It was all their damned fault! If they didn't get their stinking blood on him, he'd still be smoking! “Damnit, damnit, God damnit I'll kill every last one of you clickity clacks!”

“System says the canopy won't last much longer, Winters.” Hood advised.

“Noted, Lieutenant.” Orion nodded, filing the info at the back of his mind as he scanned ahead.

Beyond the haze of gunsmoke rose the Arasaka headquarters on Troy. The tower was a colossal black spire surrounded by fire and crawling bugs. Its lower defensive walls were almost entirely concealed beneath the attacking swarm. Security emplacements spat disciplined streams of fire into the horde, but several bunkers had gone silent, their firing slits packed with torn bodies and chitin.

By this point, the Elephant was less than a mile away. He hated playing politics, but they did steal this experimental Elephant, and they were technically Humans, so he supposed it was only right he support them…besides, it couldn't hurt to have those assholes owe him a favor. That in mind, he pressed a few buttons, and opened a line.

“UNSC Lieutenant Winters to Arasaka command, friendly heavy transport approaching from the western boulevard. Mark our IFF and prepare an entry corridor.”

For a time, only static answered, and Orion repeated himself twice more, beginning to feel tense. ‘What if they were on the verge of collapse? Will I arrive, only to be overrun?’

When Orion was preparing to order Hood to turn back, a strained voice broke through the static.

“Lieutenant, this is Tower Security Actual. We see you. Main vehicle gate is compromised. Repeat, main gate is compromised. It is buried under approximately two hundred hostile corpses”

Orion watched three Warrior Bugs tear an Arasaka defender apart atop the outer barricade, and raised an eyebrow.

“Noted. We’ll clear it ourselves.”

He switched channels, addressing his team. “All stations, brace for penetration. Hood, full combat speed.”

The Elephant’s engines bellowed as the Lieutenant acknowledged Winters's orders. Black smoke erupted from its exhaust ports as it accelerated toward the tower.

Warrior Bugs converged from every side in an effort to stop them. Some charged blindly into the tread, whilst others climbed over wrecked civilian transports and threw themselves against the side armor. Claws screeched across metal, mandibles snapped around viewports, each one of them tore a tiny piece of the Elephant for themselves. Like a horde of ants claiming the life of a bigger bug, these drones of the Arachnid race were relentless.

The Elephant began to shudder due to the weight, and constant attacks. She had already survived the encounter when saving Rico, and was now pushing her limits.

“Winters, the tread response is getting sluggish.” Hood calmly warned.

“Is it a mechanical failure?” Orion frowned.

“Negative. They’re getting gummed up.” Hood replied with the shake of his head.

Orion glanced down through the screen's side camera, and saw the problem. The armored treads were packed with pulverized chitin, severed limbs, and glistening ropes of insect tissue. Every rotation of the wheels attatched to the treads squeezed out gore like dough put into a pizza roller. Every inch it crawled forward, the Elephant left a broad, yellow-black trail behind it.

Johnson looked down from his firing port, and muttered his own ‘analysis.’

“Sir, I think we’ve killed so many of these bastards our baby Elephant is starting to choke on them!”

“Keep firing.” Orion expressionlessly ordered. They were almost there, he refused to believe that they would stall out and become sitting ducks.

The tower’s main gate came into view, and there indeed was a mound of Warrior Bug corpses piled high in front of them.

“Sergeant, load high explosive.”

“HE loaded.” The Spartan said a moment later.

“Target the center of the formation. Fire.”

When it fired, the Elephant’s primary cannon discharged with a concussion that rattled windows for blocks. The shell struck the roadway twenty meters ahead of the gate.

Broken Warrior Bugs cartwheeled through the air, and limbs clattered against the Elephant’s hull, creating a momentary gap in the horde.

“Drive through!” Orion barked.

Hood didn't need to be told twice, and the Elephant surged forward.

Its treads climbed the mound of dead, nearly slipping backwards down the mountain of ichor. Crunching chitin beneath its treads, and engine roaring as it huffed, the vehicle surged upward like a dung beetle climbing the largest sand dune in the world. Suddenly, the entire transport tilted at a sickening angle, nearly falling over on its side. Soldiers inside slammed against restraints while Johnson whooped like a man riding a wild animal.

“That’s it! Climb, you big beautiful bastard! Climb! I swear to God, I'll give you the best wash a girl could ask for, go go go go!!!” Johnson swore, slamming his open palm upon the Elephant’s hull.

The Elephant crested the heap, and then began to plow downward, crushing corpses left and right. Tumbling forward, they witnessed something that defied reason.

Standing at the base of the tower out in the open was a squad of defenders. Orion had expected exhausted corporate troops desperately clinging to a failing perimeter. Instead, he witnessed the beginning of a legend.

A young man just as tall as a Spartan in his armor stood at the vanguard. Possessing a bald, synthetic cranium, and a body fully encased in thick, heavy futuristic looking power armor was a man that Orion knew he would eventually meet. The IFF identified him as none other than the legendary boogeyman of Night City itself:

Adam Smasher.

The cyborg carried a chain gun large enough to require a vehicle mount in both his hands, firing from the hip.

His recoil compensators locked his legs against the ground as he swept the weapon across the approaching horde in short, controlled arcs. He did not waste ammunition as an ordinary soldier might, no, he was just as lethal as Orion. Every burst struck heads, joints, or exposed sections of thorax. Warrior Bugs dropped rows after row, their momentum carrying their dead bodies forward before they collapsed.

His expression barely changed due to the vast slaughter. There was no fear in him at that moment, but perhaps there was an iota of satisfaction. He was in control.

Beside him moved a white-haired woman in a long, armored coat stained with insect blood.

The IFF identified this mixed Asian/Caucasian woman as Serrena Arasaka. Her cyberpunk-styled white hair whipped around her half-masked face as she crossed the slaughtering grounds with agile grace. Twin pistols shot with a flash of burning orange. Incendiary rounds punched into Warrior Bugs and burst inside their shells, setting their internal tissue alight.

A bug charged from her blind side, to which a dagger flashed from her mechanical fingers, flying at incredible speeds. The blade buried itself through the creature’s eye socket and drove into its brain. The Warrior Bug collapsed at her heels without touching her.

She ducked beneath another scything limb, pressed one pistol against the attacker’s underside, and fired three times. Flame erupted from between its armored plates, dropping it dead.

Behind Smasher and Serrena, a squad of Arasaka cyborgs held the line with machine-like discipline. Heavy machine guns, anti-materiel rifles, grenade launchers, and oversized shotguns fired in a measured tempo reminding Orion of how the old British red-coats used to do battle. Their targeting systems linked across the squad, ensuring that no two soldiers wasted rounds on the same creature.

One cyborg shattered a Warrior Bug’s forward joints. A second placed a burst through its exposed mouth, whilst a third shifted fire before the corpse had struck the ground.

Johnson lowered his weapon for half a second in surprise. “Who the hell is that?”

Orion didn't offer any commentary as he watched Smasher release the chain gun to the ground in mild irritation. A Warrior Bug took this chance to close the distance.

In response, Smasher tore a chain sword from the magnetic clamp across his back. The blade screamed to life with a roar. Smasher stepped into the creature’s attack and drove the weapon upward beneath its head. Motorized teeth chewed through chitin, flesh, and bone, splitting the bug from throat to thorax. Hot ichor poured across Smasher’s cybernetic arms, and he kicked the corpse away ready to shred his next opponent to bits. A manic sort of light coated the cyborg, and his modified voice began to boom with laughter as he found himself within his element.

Smasher was already more machine than most cyborgs would ever dare become. Reinforced cybernetic arms bulged beneath torn combat webbing. Metal bracing ran along his spine and shoulders, his chin was reinforced by some black polymer, and his brain had half a dozen external implants. He was not yet the towering full-borg nightmare that would one day haunt Night City, but the shape of that future monster was already there. No doubt he was already a high functioning cyberpsycho, a bastard merc with an acidic personality, Orion was tempted to drop a [Warp] on his ass now, and save himself the future trouble.

In lore, Smasher wouldn't take a job unless he had the option to say ‘fuck the consequences’ innocent casualties be damned. He was a monster loyal to one of the most cutthroat, amoral organizations known to man. A warcriminal rapist, one of the filthiest Humanity ever produced. In every sense of the word, he was a monster.

…but so what?!

Morals, beliefs, they mattered, but this Bug War, the upcoming Covenant War. These were extinction level events! Was there even time to soapbox, and act like a moral paragon when the species was on the line? Orion prided himself as a warrior for Humanity, a man who would go the extra mile for his battle brothers…but he was essentially ONI's top goon at this very moment. If he really, truly wanted to be moral at every step, he would return those kidnapped kids who are becoming Spartan II's this very minute. And yet, Spartan II's are the ‘demons.’ The kind of unit that put fear into the Elites! Could he really afford to act like the arbiter of justice when Master Chief is needed?! No! In this age, this ugly era of extinction, what Humanity needed most to survive were not men, but monsters!

And Orion would never fear Smasher…

Because he would become the biggest monster of them all.