Spartan One 012

As the Elephant crested down the mound of bug corpses, Orion witnessed the hulking cyborg carve his way through the drones in violent, brutal sweeps. He severed limbs at their joints, opened armored bellies, and hacked heads apart with roaring swipes of the chain blade.

A Warrior struck him across the chest and threw him against a concrete divider wall. Smasher rebounded, and seized the creature by one mandible, dragged its head down, and drove the chain sword through its skull.

Serrena advanced behind him, pistols flashing over his shoulders.

“UNSC.” She called across an open tactical frequency, “Either join the fight or move that oversized coffin out of my firing lane.”

Johnson’s head snapped toward the Lieutenant. “Oh, I like her.”

“Squad, dismount! Establish a perimeter around the Elephant! Heavy weapons forward, these up jumped corpos begged us for reinforcements, I won't see them showing off for FedNet whilst we stand around!” Orion shouted, and was the first to run down the rear ramp.

“Oorah, you heard the Lt. Give'em hell!” The Sergeant added on, running right behind him.

Orion’s team poured out into the battlefield, rifles firing. Johnson was second behind Orion & the Sarge, bellowing as he launched a grenade into a cluster of bugs climbing the tower.

“Arasaka!” Johnson shouted. “Your reinforcements have arrived!”

Serrena shot a bug through both eyes, and scoffed in disdain. “You brought one vehicle, and a ragtag group of sweaty monkeys.”

Johnson fired past her shoulder and dropped another drone. “Yeah, but it’s a really big vehicle, and these monkeys have got big ripe balls. Something a cyber junkie like you would have no appreciation for!”

“Hmph.” The cyber-lady scoffed, blasting a foe that was about to take Johnson's flank.

“Johnson, flirt on your own time, I expect your kill counter to be better than the Sergeants, or you'll be buying everyone three rounds of shots after this.” Orion said in an annoyed tone as he began to liberally apply [Warp] into the dense crowd.

“First team, take point! Second team, cover the gate! Arasaka heavies, interlock with our left flank!”

For a time, everyone focused on their tasks clearing out the bugs. Orion cycled through his weapons, blasting apart a bug with shotgun one moment, then quick swapping to his BTR the next. Every minute, he accumulated fresh kills on his various weapons, working his way up the kill quest.

From within the Elephant, Hood manned the guns until they were empty, shredding well over a hundred Warriors by himself. Harper stood at the ramp, placing one lethal shot after another, calmly observing the Arasaka employees operate, his mechanical eyes recording every detail.

When it appeared that every Warrior was just about taken care of, Orion sensed danger over his nascent ESP, then felt the vibration through his boots.

“That isn’t our bombardment.” Serrena said with a furrowed brow.

“No shit, Sherlock, it's those Tanker Bugs, move!” The Private mocked, and rugby tackled the girl out of the splitting roadway.

Concrete slabs rose into the air as something massive forced its way up from beneath the city. A plume of dust and fire erupted near the western side of the tower as a Tanker Bug emerged from the ground.

Its armored body was enormous, dwarfing even the Elephant. Its head rose above the defensive walls, jaws opening as orange plasma began to gather deep inside its mouth.

Then a second Tanker erupted from beneath the plaza, and yet even more came until ten had emerged. Forming a ring surrounding the Humans, they showed that a superior intelligence was directing their movements.

“Plasma attack!” Orion shouted. “Take cover!”

The first Tanker finally belched its load.

A hot liquidy spray of plasma crossed the courtyard and struck the tower’s lower infrastructure. The impact illuminated the entire building, making support struts grown as steel & concrete melted. A second plasma blast hit the western wall and reduced an automated turret to molten debris.

Johnson stared at the towering creatures, reloading his gun. “Alright ya ugly sons of bitches, now that there's ten of you, the LT can't hog all the glory!”

The Private then ran at one, yelling his challenge. Ducking under one spray, he lunged forward, narrowly missing a droplet from seeping into his armor. Shooting at the Tanker as he ran, he forced its eyes closed for a fraction of a second. During that very brief time, he hitched a thin hook & wire out of his utility belt, and shot it out of the grenade launcher attachment hooked to his rifle. Wrapping around the Bug's legs, the hook became tight. Hauling himself up, Johnson copied what he had seen another trooper do on Klendauthu. He blasted a hole in the top of the Tanker…and dropped a grenade inside!

By the time the Spartan had finished his heroics, the beetle-like creature had already exploded into Nickelodeon slime colored orange goo!

“How's that for a burning sensation?!” He laughed.

Johnson then flexed, looking towards the Arasaka woman, only to see that she had dealt with one of the Tankers in much the same way.

By this point, Hood had already rammed one Tanker, pumping it full of the very last few shots, and Orion had taken another one out with [Warp].

Smasher, meanwhile, looked up at the nearest Tanker. His chain sword dripped with gore.

“Primitive waste. That all you’ve got?” He growled in challenge.

The Tanker opened its jaws, to which Smasher picked up a nearby wrecked piece of metal, and chucked it like an Olympic discus thrower. It hurled through the air, and caught in the Tanker's throat. Coughing and stalling for a moment with a clogged ‘esophagus’ or whatever bug anatomy it had, the ‘pipes’ were clogged, and the Tanker suffered from throat burn! Gasping out smoking fumes, the Tanker stumbled forward, then keeled over dead.

Smasher had already laid eyes on his next target, leapt onto a wrecked transport, then onto the Tanker’s forward leg. His cybernetic fingers dug into seams between the armor plates, making it rear in pain, like a startled bronco.

Smasher scaled the beast like a God of War scaling Olympus on the quest to murder Zeus. Upon reaching the Tanker’s head, he drove the chain sword between two armor plates.

The motor shrieked upon meeting resistance, yet he would not be denied! As the Tanker thrashed, swinging Smasher off to the side, his weapon finally found purchase, and he dug it in deep, preventing his fall. Hanging from a precarious position, the cyborg roared in defiance, and both pulled himself up, and decapitated the Tanker at the same time by leveraging his immense weight.

Smasher dropped from the dying second giant, hit the ground hard, and rolled to his feet. A third Tanker was going to fill him full of super hot slime, when Orion intervened. A jet of white-hot [Warp] tore through the immaterium, penetrating the alien's pores at a subatomic level. As it screeched, Orion and Smasher briefly made eye contact. Soulless machine eyes met the faceless visor of a Spartan's helm. For a second, it almost felt like they would come to blows, yet the remaining Arachnids gave them no such chance.

“Cover the Lieutenant!” The Sergeant ordered, bringing down another Tanker with the help of the rest of the Spartans.

The remaining Arasaka mercs, and UNSC regulars unloaded all they had as they too joined in the fight. Every available weapon turned toward the Tankers. Rifle rounds and heavy shells hammered their faces, but the plasma continued to spray, claiming the lives of several cyborgs and UNSC alike.

“Ahh, die, die!” Rico exclaimed.

The young man from Buenos Aires successfully got the attention of another Tanker. Using some clever thinking, the Corporal shot at some ropes where new construction had been underway on Arasaka tower. As a result, a large amount of heavy materials dropped from several floors above directly on top of the Tanker.

“Johnny!” Izzy cheered.

“Rico! Go” Several more UNSC grunts cheered him on for his quick thinking and reflexes.

Four of the ugly beetles were left, having recently emerged as reinforcements. One was spraying the Arasaka building, whilst another had turned the Elephant’s flank into a hot soup. A third bug was being pushed back by the Sergeant & combined UNSC fire. Whilst the last one…

Smasher reached the creature and plunged the chain sword into the damaged side of its jaw where Orion had sniped. He used the weapon as an anchor, hauling himself upward until he stood directly beneath its mouth.

The Tanker began to fire, to which Smasher tore the chain sword free and drove it through the roof of the creature’s mouth. The liquid plasma veered to the side, just missing the metal man by inches.

It blasted into the ground beside the Elephant, throwing the massive transport sideways on its suspension, then the Tanker’s head ruptured, and Smasher vanished beneath a rain of burning gore and armored fragments.

“Smasher!” Serrena screamed.

The dead Tanker collapsed, and the battlefield grew quiet as the other fights began to wrap up. For one long second, nothing moved beneath it. Then a cybernetic hand punched through the torn side of its throat. Smasher crawled out, coated head to foot in steaming orange goo.

His chain sword was still revving in one hand, begging for murder.

Serrena reached him, grabbed his harness, and pulled him clear as the carcass settled.

“You reckless idiot.”

Smasher wiped gore from his ocular implants, and glanced at her, his fingers twitching, barely able to hold back his impulses.

“It died like all the rest.” Smasher pitilessly said. As if to say ‘you'll all die the same one day.’

Orion raised his rifle, pointing at one of the few remaining Tankers that had yet to be dealt with, and opened the command channel.

At this time, everyone's magazines were beginning to click empty, and even Orion’s ‘bottomless’ armory was running dry.

Smasher stood beside the Elephant, his chain sword suddenly dead. Serrena had expended both pistols and held her last dagger between blood-slick fingers. Johnson’s machine gun clicked dry.

Orion looked toward the Elephant’s damaged front winch where a thick magnetic tow cable lay coiled beneath the armor.

“Smasher,how strong are those arms?” Orion asked.

Smasher looked at the cable, then at the nearest Tanker, and grinned.

“Strong enough.”

Pressing some buttons, he accessed the Elephant’s command system, and shot out the magnetic clamp like a harpoon. The magnetic clamp struck the Tanker’s lower jaw and locked into place.

“Smasher, pull it down! Hood, full reverse power, give'er all she's got!”

The Elephant’s treads spun uselessly inside the gore-packed drive system, but the engine poured torque through the winch. Meanwhile, the cable snapped taut, and Smasher seized it with both hands.

Cybernetic muscles and reinforced joints screamed beneath the load. The Tanker’s head jerked downward, its plasma blast fired early, striking the ground harmlessly. Or so he thought. A stray stream of liquid came right at him, and for a split second, Orion was caught off guard.

Johnson tackled Orion from the side as the plasma bolt skimmed across the Elephant’s side, and dripped down right where he had stood.

From the ground, he saw the final Tanker advancing. It had broken free from the clamp with that blast, and was rampaging wildly.

Its mouth began to glow again, and Smasher rose from behind the Elephant. He carried the vehicle’s detached autocannon, wielding it like a spear.

Smasher ran toward the Tanker, and Orion understood immediately what the cyborg planned to do.

“Everyone, shoot the legs! Unload every last bullet, fire everything!”

The courtyard erupted in loud bangs, and the smell of gunsmoke. Every surviving rifle, pistol, and heavy weapon fired at the Tanker’s forward limbs. Armor cracked, joints burst, and the giant stumbled and lowered its head.

Smasher reached it, and rammed the weapon deep up its ass! Unloading the very last five rounds, the beast screeched, and then collapsed dead.

Orion pushed himself upright to witness this event, then began to act as a proper CO, and started to check in with his NCOm

All around him, the courtyard was buried beneath dead Warrior Bugs. The Elephant sat crooked beside the barricade, its armor melted, its weapons smoking, and its treads completely clogged by the sheer scale of the slaughter.

Johnson lay on his back nearby, laughing breathlessly.

“Sir, I think we’re gonna need one hell of a hose.”

Orion looked across the ruined plaza.

Smasher stood atop the final Tanker’s corpse, smoke curling from his cybernetics. Serrena climbed beside him, white hair stained with ash, both pistols empty. Behind them, the surviving Arasaka cyborgs raised their weapons in grim acknowledgment.

A legend had been born at the foot of Arasaka Tower this day. However…looking down at his fingertips glowing with [Warp], they would see who Humanity would come to rely upon in the following years.

Would they place their faith in the soulless cyborg, or perhaps the psychic super soldier?

Only time would tell.