CH11
CH11
XXXXX
Bleeding Dawn
XXXXX
8:30PM
Appleloosa
Midas Squad and Echo Helldiver squads were scattered in a rough diamond formation, a total of 10 helldivers and a few scattered marine survivors from the ship with them made a total force of 30 against roughly 126 enemy units, not bad considering the helldivers, but having to face enemy armour plus air support? Well then those odds don't stack too well with the situation, but the good side was that the locals seemed to be fighting as well, even if their rifles couldn't punch a hole in grunt harnesses they'd scare the covenant troops back for a few moments.
Midas squad commander was Lt Matthis, a seasoned shock trooper and a good squad commander, he had his men covering all points of attack from the covenant, but they were still technically stretched thin. 2 men holding position in a nearby saloon had the enemy snipers and marksman covered, but the number of grunts and fodder that was being directed at them was the problem, his other 3 men couldn't drop the damned grunts fast enough.
Echo squad under the command of Sargent Major Daniel screamed out from his position.
"Burn the fuckers!"
Daniel had a Scorcher in his unit thankfully one of his less experienced marines had decided to go and loot a few extra pieces of equipment before they left the ship, thanks to his bum rush for more gear it might have just saved them having to hold the entire covenant assault at bay for a while longer.
A squad of grunts that were caught in the blast of thermite and liquid flammables screamed as their flesh began to melt, and pop, the sight would make a civilian throw up but for the UCAF this was just another day at work. The flames consumed ravenously until there was a mass of explosions, the gas breathing grunts had methane canisters to survive and with the temperatures at nearly 7500 kelvin, it was a good bet that those tanks were going to go up like fireworks.
This sight of their fellows being roasted alive sent the grunts reeling back to their lines, their commanders having to beat them over the head to make them reform their lines. However for the elites in the packs there was little they could do as well, snipers from Echo and Midas picked off the Majors before they could utter out more than a sentence. Of course the others now took cover in the nearby rocks, but they still had to go and command their troops.
Daniel could see that things were levelling out, but in another hour or so, they'd be running low on ammo, they needed a mass fabricator to get them through this fight, especially if the covenant pulled out another platoon of troops down here. Daniel watched as a squad of grunts loading a plasma launcher, unfortunately for them, the snipers picked all of them off.
"Sir!" A young blood marine yelled.
He was drawn to the marine who had an AA-M180 Missile Launcher, he pointed to a covenant drop ship, and he paused to see distinct shapes of what looked like.
"Rangers!" He yelled.
The elite ranger squad disembarked from above using their gravity packs to rapidly deploy along their left flank, the missile launcher wasn't going to be able to cut the number of hostile rangers down though. The squad dispersed engaging Midas squad. He didn't like this one bit he called over the coms.
"Red team move to support Midas, Blue team remain in defensive formation."
Red team was the other Young Blood Marine unit they were supposed to be on the other side of the town but hearing the orders they immediately rushed down to meet the covenant surprise attack where Midas was. As for Midas, Matthis had his hands full, literally. The Lt had seen the approach but never expected the attack; he would have thought they'd avoid a direct engagement.
Still the Lt had a brief fight on his hands; the first elite down went after him. He managed to raise his left gauntlet to catch the energy dagger that the elite attempted to stab him with. The blade rebounded off the energised plating briefly sparking the area around them; Mat rolled back and drew out his M6 handgun, the .50cal rounds pounded into the shields of the elite. The ranger didn't last long under the rapid fire and was struck in the face by the 3rd round which blew a chunk from its lower jaw and dropped it with a heavy thud.
Mat didn't have time to recover however, he was soon beset by another elite, this one really had a pissed off aura about it as well. The elite tackled him through the nearby building where his sniper team was busy fending off their attackers as well. Mat felt his world spin as he flew through the wooden walls of the building, he twisted and arced a landing onto a table sitting not far away.
The table splintered under his weight and also by the sheer force he was thrown at, his visor was strangely covered in apple juice and cider as it identified. He recovered fast enough to do a backflip before the elite could land another blow into his already dented armour. He landed on his feet coming face to face with the elite.
"Nice punch, now my turn!" He ran forwards and brought his gauntlets to bear on the elite.
His first strike was deftly blocked, and he then brought his knee upwards as his jetpack activated, it wasn't much of a jetpack but it was enough to double the impact of his knee. The strike broke the stance the elite had taken and stunned it long enough for Mat to grab its shoulders and then flip over it and grab it from behind. He grasped the waist of the elite and pulled hard lifting the alien through the air and landing it right on its head.
Of course that wouldn't exactly drop an elite, not even a minor would be dropped by that so easily. The ranger recovered and got to its feet and grunted in annoyance, Mat waited for it to try that one again, the elite obliged him, the ranger boosted forwards using its gravity pack to slam into Mat. Mat anticipated his move and rolled away from the incoming half a ton of flesh and metal, the elite smashed into the wooden counter of the bar.
Splinters and glass flew in all directions, Mat got behind the recovering elite and smelt the alcoholic fumes, it was enough for him and drew his M6 and aimed as it turned around to face him, and one quick shot set alight the alcohol around the alien. The blast consumed the elite in a ball of fire; it took another shot from Mat to silence the elite.
Mat was going to head back out until one section of the ceiling above collapsed, an almighty crash resounded as the pile hit the floor. It took moments before the figure of one of Mat's team members crawled from the mess.
"Damn… 'cough' elite."
Mat rushed to the side of his comrade.
"Stan, you've taken serious damage, I count 3 broken ribs, you're left lung's been punctured and you have internal bleeding."
"No shit sir… I-I thought I had that bastard… son o-of a bitch!" He grunted as he stabbed himself with a bio-gel injector.
"You need medical evac; you won't last long on bio-gel alone." He advised.
"I know, but don't preach to the choir, Veck is upstairs, he's got the sights on another enemy column, and they're on approach another 10 minutes out…" He finally lulled into unconsciousness from the bio-gel.
The warning was punctuated by the roar of a mortar smashing the nearby wall with plasma, the enemy column was closing in and fast. He picked up a fallen rifle from a spilled weapons canister near the exit that was left from his rather abrupt entrance into the bar. He got the scope of the rifle active and began to search for the enemy column; it was exactly as Stan had said. Another covenant column was right on their asses.
"Echo, we've got hostiles closing distance on the left flank of the town, they'll be in range in another 5 minutes, do you have spare sledgehammer mortars?" He called over to Echo.
"No, we're down to our last scorcher; we've drained most of the heavy weapons." He reported.
He felt the reality of the situation closing in and around him, it wasn't until he heard something that he spun around whipping his pistol up, and he froze seeing it was an unfortunate local who had gotten stuck in the midst of this war. This local was strange, she had yellow skin and red hair, and she wore some rather light clothes, leather hat and settler like clothes. She was armed with a rifle of sort's rather heavy barrelled lever action rifle he had seen commonly amongst the locals. The local was asking him something but he couldn't understand what it was, it was then that the local called over to someone.
The next thing he knew half a dozen locals had appeared, one who seemed to lead them was a yellow skinned fellow in a long coat and Stetson hat, he had a brown tail and brown hair, he had an apple stitched on his shoulder, and the most interesting feature was that he had piercing emerald eyes. He led a band of locals with him a mix of green and blue with some tints of yellow and brown, the colours of these beings were becoming a rather serious annoyance to him.
The leader of this band seemed to motion to him and the other members of Midas team, they then began to scatter around them, it seemed the locals wanted to join the front line fight. The leader greeted him with a jovial smile and said a lot of crap that he honestly could not understand; his translator wasn't included in his armour because he was sent on precision strike missions, not long expeditions into enemy territory.
The yellow man motioned to the enemy on approach and motioned for Mat to follow. He didn't know what else to do and called over his channel.
"Boys hold tight, I think our friends have something in store."
"Goodie, a surprise from primitives, I wonder what'll be?" Mal sarcastically asked over the line.
Mat ignored the remark from his remaining assault specialist and followed the yellow male to what seemed like a large barn. The alien male strode to the large doors and opened on side up. Mat could see what was inside and he was rather shocked, it looked as if someone had stuck a launching rail onto a truck.
The yellow male said something he couldn't understand but from the way he pointed at the launcher and the back of the machine it was clear what he wanted to do, it was a makeshift catapult, and there was another surprise. The alien walked over to a large storage shelf filled with what looked like barrels and crates filled with explosives, that was if the yellow warning markers meant the same thing as they did in the UCAF.
He took this as a support tool the tech-marine they had with Echo could rig this baby up as a mortar and fire off some barrels in a rolling barrage, it might be cumbersome, but it was better than nothing. He also needed to make sure that they loaded anything that was flammable and explosive onto the damned thing as well, make a wall of fire to slow the advance of the covenant.
"Echo I've got what looks to me like a makeshift catapult; I'd like to have you bring over your tech to come and rig this baby up for a fight." He called over the coms.
"Roger, I've got Mack, he's rearing for a quick challenge, tell him where to go." Daniel replied.
"Follow my marker to the large barn in town, it's got a gear on top of it with white markings, shouldn't be hard to see." He described.
The yellow alien tapped him on the shoulder looking for a hopeful response, and he patted him back and thumbed him up, he honestly thought that would be some sort of indication that things were okay at least for now. The yellow alien smiled and went off to check on those explosives, he only hoped that the alien understood what was going on.
Mat didn't have time to stick around he knew that Red team with their 10 man unit wasn't going to last with support on the left. He jogged back to the front as Mack headed into the barn, it was now up to the young engineer to get to work that piece of crap and get it to work. But there was still one question that didn't stop plaguing his mind.
'Where in the fuck was the support that he called in?'
XXXXX
Miguel and Jace had been in the Falcons for about an hour, they weren't far away now, the distance they covered in the falcons was quite far, they managed to reach the edge of the vegetated lands in under an hour so at the rate they were travelling at it was a matter of getting there in the next 20 minutes or so Miguel hoped.
Jace was busy checking his AR-45 and getting his M5 Magnum loaded, he had a bubble shield projector and an evasion module, of course evade wasn't exactly an augmentation it was a trick, but still using them on walls and rubble prove to be handing in bypassing any obstacles that might get in their way.
Miguel himself had brought out a particle field emitter; the field would disperse enemy fire and strengthen his shields by 20% for a limited time and then had a recharge of over 3 minutes of no shields which seemed rather dangerous, that was also why he brought along a medical field projector, it would heal any injured in range of the projector until it ran out. They were here to support and relieve until the covenant exhausted themselves or were defeated or they managed to get additional help.
Jackson was moving his entire column command to Ponyville which had a rail line directly to Appleloosa; hopefully they'd manage to get a few other units down to Appleloosa before the covenant brought up further troops, of course they might pull back, but the town would no doubt need to be evacuated faster.
Miguel watched as they closed the distance to the town, they weren't that far away, smoke was rising in the distance, it didn't billow like a firestorm but the number of explosions kind of made it obvious that the fight was still intense. Jace checked his scope of his AR and scanned for the areas needing to be relieved.
"Sir, I've got a lot of covvies trying to flank left of the town, it might be a desperate push or a determined one, but should we bring the falcons down on the area? We'd repel the covvies long enough to evac the wounded." He suggested.
"See anything like heavy armour?" Miguel asked.
"Yeah, a few bits of armour from what I can tell, no fast movers, just platform wraiths." He replied as he scanned for energy signatures.
"Well then I guess we have a target." He got onto his coms.
"Mueller we've got hostiles on the ground, left flank of the town, can you spot those energy signatures?"
"Yeah, we've been picking them up for the past hour; do you want us to clear the deck with them?" The squadron commander replied.
"Roll the bastards first and then we'll land, I'm sure our boys will love the relief from the covvies." He grinned.
"Right on, all flacons form pattern V we're going in for a strafing run, gunners mount up." He called over the coms.
They all obeyed and mounted their various weapons, HMG-75cal and other heavy weapons primed and ready, it was like staring at a wall of death, there was nothing that would last long against a wall of fire that the falcons were going to be bringing down on the covenant forces below. The roar of the falcon's engines erupted as they began a rapid descent to the town below.
The covenant busy trying to break through hadn't noticed the 4 falcons on approach, at least not immediately, the falcons got close enough to the battle that the covenant began to scatter at the sight of the light gunships. Then there was hell to pay, the falcons dropped their payload of short ranged missiles, the attached missiles were rigged at the bottom of the falcons on 7 packed racks on both sides of each falcon.
The hail of 105mm explosive HEAT missiles sent the armour packing as the wraiths amidst the slow procession to the UCAF lines began to explode in a vibrant clash of yellow, gold, red and blue and navy. The explosions at the rear of the infantry sent the grunts scattering in fear, they had just lost their armour.
But the strafe didn't end there; the gunners began to lay down a hail of tungsten and titanium, the earth exploded in a straight pattern, stitches in parallel to each other send flesh and armour flying in all directions. To see what a 75cal HEAP round could do to a grunt was messy to say the least, the sheer scale of carnage would make anyone nauseas, at least not the UCAF, the smell was bitter but the sheer sight of it all was pleasing.
The members of Echo and Midas still on the ground rejoiced for the arrival of the falcons; of course they immediately resumed as soon as they passed over the covenant troops for the second strafe. Miguel could make contact with the squads over his com.
"Echo, Midas, we're here to relieve you, report status."
"We've got wounded and are running low on ammo, locals would need some help, but other than that, we're right fucking dandy." The commander of Echo reported.
Miguel could see that the strafing had relieved some of the pressure, but there were still quite a few covenant troops out in the mix, he had a feeling the last wave was still coming. He scanned the surrounding areas for anymore covenant signatures and it soon confirmed his suspicion.
"Echo, Midas we're going to ground cover out flight on the right side of town."
Miguel turned to Jace.
"Hey sergeant we've got incoming hostiles just west of our location, looks like a small strike force, probably loaded with hunters."
Jace looked over exactly where he had marked on the squad map, he could ID about 5 gunships and what looked like a few remaining pieces of armour, the covvies were throwing in their last cards.
"Well, all we have to do now is hold out." He replied over the roar of the engines.
They made a quick pass over the remains of the town and landed it a large pen, it had seen better days that was for sure. Jace and Miguel stepped out and ducked low, their squads followed up behind them, Jace would be coordinating the marines, and Miguel had the duty of aiding the remains of Echo and Midas squads.
They passed through the town until Miguel got a call over his com.
"Major, meet me at the large warehouse with the crossed tools, it's on the main road. We've prepared a few things in time to counter any further attacks, but I need to speak with you about another matter." The commander of Midas explained.
Miguel waved off Jace and he passed into the main street where people were busy running away towards the station, he could hear the cries of the children and the woes of the equines, they did technically lose their town, but he suspected light civilian casualties, the covenant caught them all by surprise of course.
He found the warehouse which Midas's commander had described, it didn't look like much but a lot of people were milling around it, they spotted Miguel and called him over. The moment he arrived they greeted him with hopeful faces and thanks for their timid arrival. The crowd ushered him to the warehouse and soon he found what looked like a jury rigged lorry which had a type of high pressure loader which had been turned into a makeshift catapult.
If this was what Midas had planned, they'd have to be complete idiots or desperate, but he suspected that there was more to this than met the eye, he spotted a helldiver engineer, well not an engineer per se, but he was a technical weapons expert which meant heavy weapons. The marine was busy working on the machinery when his commander appeared.
"You must be Major Miguel, Lt Matthis; I've been in command of Midas since we landed here." Mat saluted to him.
He saluted in response and then asked.
"I don't recall we ever met on the Iron Clad, or for that matter on any of our previous missions, I've heard of you but never met you."
"I've heard and seen you, but true we never properly met, I was loaded on the other side of the ship. Not to mention, Colonel Jackson was in command remember?" Mat asked.
He did remember Jackson but not so much on the other helldiver team.
"Jackson's been around with everyone for a while. Good that he's up and about; he's running most of the command right now."
"Well then I owe him debt of gratitude when we get the hell out of this alive." Mat replied arguably more or less optimistic of the whole situation.
"I've got some extra firepower from our drop, where do you need it?" Miguel inquired aptly.
"Anywhere we've got covenant trying to punch through, which would be the whole front." Mat replied satirically.
"Fine smart ass, what have you planned?" Miguel pointed to the makeshift catapult.
"We were hoping to slow the covvies down with this thing of course it wouldn't last long, its only got 48 barrels and a limited amount of gas to move, so not much. I was going to draw the covenant into a constrictor tactic, you know get them and their vehicles into a position to which we could forcefully bog them down and crush them." Mat explained.
"That sounds like it could work, but there's one problem, I've got sights on roughly a final push by the covenant, they're hitting us with gunships in the next 5 minutes, unless you've got AA batteries packed in some hole." He said in a rather calm fashion.
"Well then we've got a problem." Mat exasperated tiredly.
They had no AA weapons, at least nothing to drop a fully armed covenant phantom drop ship with shields. They might have to try something more desperate.
"What about the falcons?"
"They're armed, but they're not made for fights in the air with phantoms, we'd need a Helios Gunship or a Wasp with heavy armaments to go and pick those things out of the sky." He replied crushingly.
"Damn, then we'll have to draw the bastards into the town, let them get in close and hopefully stick some of our M-140 Bayonet Mines onto the hulls." He said to himself.
"The old fashion, stick and run? Isn't that a little too simple?" Miguel asked.
"Yes, but we've got no choice in this matter, unless you intend to sacrifice our falcons." Mat replied.
"Damn, well then, no I don't have any other idea, at least nothing that would be practical at this point in time." He finished just in time to have his statement punctuated by the coms.
"Sir, covvies hitting us hard, they've landed across from us and have deployed 3 wraiths and 2 revenants and a fuck ton of troops, I've got light shielded and armoured enemy ghosts spreading their troops across the range. I think we might lose first line in 20 minutes." Luke reported.
"Acknowledged corporal, hold there." Miguel replied.
"Looks like we should hurry up." Mat added.
It was just then that a yellow stallion appeared, he motioned to the catapult. Mat still hadn't a clue as to what the being was trying to wave about; Miguel however knew the Equestrian language and asked.
"What the hell are you trying to wave about?"
The stallion stared at Miguel in surprise and sighed in relief.
"Thank Celestia; I was hoping to get to speak to someone. I was trying to ask was. Where do you need our lorry?"
"You'll know soon enough, my fellow officer here has an engineer planning to use it as a catapult, but you'll have to wait a bit longer for the engineer to fix up the last details." He replied.
"Okay, thanks partner, but where did you need us?" The yellow stallion asked.
Before he could reply Matthis asked.
"What the hell is this thing asking about?"
"That's a 'he' Mat, and he's rather interested in deploying locals around here." Miguel replied duly.
Matthis looked at the male and looked at what he was carrying.
"Miguel, I think that it's probably a good idea that they withdraw, I mean they can oversee the evacuation, but the front is too hot even for them."
He relayed the argument to the yellow stallion.
"My fellow officer here doesn't think you'll be of much use at this point in time, he suggests that you take care of your own while we fight it out."
"Are ya kidding me? This is our home, this is APPLEOOOSA! T'aint fair, we have our livelihoods to defend here, and by golly we'll defend our home, or my name ain't Braeburn!" Brae replied definitively.
Miguel went and relayed.
"Well it's not helping Mat; Braeburn here wants to stay here, and with his people." Miguel shrugged.
"Ain't that fucking nice… we've got half a battalion's worth of covvies out there determined to rip us to shreds…" Mat said satirically.
"Well I don't think we can turn them down, we don't know if they could do better." Miguel offered.
Mat looked at Miguel with disbelief, was this a UCAF officer of a helldiver unit a fellow helldiver unit vouching for an alien presence amongst the men? Well this was a sure as hell difference, Mat couldn't understand why he'd even go there. But then again this was a war zone. He had to make up his mind and fast, he could practically hear the covvies bashing at the front lines right about now.
Mat sighed, he reluctantly replied. "Very well, bring out what they've got and stay in the buildings, I'll have red team split their troops up to guide each of these locals." Mat decided.
Miguel relayed the orders and he brightened up.
"Thanks partner, this means a lot."
"Not my place to judge anyway, you want to fight then you're free to do so." Miguel stated his opinion of it all.
Brae hurried off whistling to his local militia of stallions and mares with rifles and they jogged into the besieged streets to join the front line. Mat went over to Miguel and said.
"You've got a lot of balls to be dragging others into a fight."
"Well it is their war as well, no need to exclude them." Miguel thoughtfully added.
"Right, well looks like our front just got bigger, Miguel get with your men and defend the right flank I'll call you back should we need back up." Mat informed him.
Miguel acknowledged and headed off. He hoped that support arrived soon.
XXXXX
8:59PM
Ponyville
The convoy arrived in the town of Ponyville not long after the deployment of the Falcon flight, Jackson had hoped that the boys in Appleloosa were holding out well. He had members of the next unit prepare, James was ready to get going, but without falcons back in the next hour they planned to use the rail line, at least until they had another issue.
"The line's been packed between here and Dodge Junction?" Jackson said in disbelief at the rail admin who was manning his post.
"Sorry but that's the news from the line to Appleloosa, we've completely packed the lines there and there's only one line. So trying to send other trains in between here and there is meaningless." The conductor explained.
"Okay, first of all if I can't move my men up to Appleloosa how the hell am I going to back those troops up?" He asked rhetorically.
"Umm… I would suspect probably by car." The conductor shrugged.
"Never mind." He walked off shaking his head.
From the station he got back to the command post which was set up inside of the bulldog LAT, the marines were milling about for orders and stood at attention at the arrival of Jackson.
"It's a no go; they're packed on the line there."
"Well shit." A marine tagged as J Miller said bluntly.
"That's right, we're right back in the shitter, bulldogs won't make best time over this terrain and we've only got so many bulldogs to spare. As for armour, forget it, we've got no tanks here. The HVT won't damn make it in time, Toby would have to trek the distance on a 4.5 ton killing machine and walk it back." Jackson sighed at this predicament.
"Well we do have James." One of the other marines offered.
James was sitting on a bulldog strapping some more ammo mags and a couple of grenades, his change to Spectre class armour made it rather obvious that he intended to travel light, that was if Jackson gave him the go ahead. But of course there had to be a better way, and Jackson didn't just one marine to be all the support that his men were going to get.
There was a brief gust of wind as something shot past at a blinding speed. Jackson looked to see a Spartan chasing after a blur of colours; he identified it as a local from the introduction at the outskirts of the Evergreen region. The Spartan was having trouble keeping up, he identified the soldier as Jerome.
"Ha I can do this in my sleep!" The rainbow Pegasus teased.
Jerome was tagging behind purely because of the number of objects in his way, but his reaction time was keeping him in tune with any additional obstacles. He wasn't as fast as Kelly now that he thought of it, but he was still fast. But damn this mare was keeping him on his toes, he was barely tailing her.
They reached the local school house before they turned around at the flag and began a mad dash back to the other side of town, as they made their return run, a figure stepped into the road. They both braked meters before reaching the person in the road. Jerome identified the Colonel and greeted him.
"Colonel Jackson, is there something you need?" He asked passively.
"Not you Spartan, just her." He pointed at Rainbow.
RD noticed the colonel and looked in surprise.
"Wait you need me?" She brightened up.
"Well not just you, but out of necessity I need you to get your fellow pegasi, what were they called again, the 'Wonderbolts'? He asked.
RD almost exploded in delight and saluted avidly.
"Right sir, I'll get the wonderbolts here ASAP!"
"WAIT…" He couldn't finish asking for the other pegasi before she bolted off.
Jerome walked over to Jackson and stated duly.
"She's rather excited."
"No kidding." Jackson rolled his eyes.
Jerome departed for his squad and Jackson got back to the bulldogs where his command staff was wondering what the colonel had planned.
"So I guess you've come up with some brilliant plan to aid the guys at Appleloosa?"
"Well better that than having to wait any longer, if these Equestrians want to go try their hand in war, we'll give them the chance." Jackson replied.
The command staff didn't need to wait long; RD practically dragged the 6 members of the wonderbolts from their bird's eye view of the area to the staging ground in moments. The cluster of pegasi weren't too happy that she'd gone and rushed an explanation and zipped them all to the ground in a flurry of flaps.
"Okay, here… they are." RD said with an exhausted salute.
"Rainbow was it? I was trying to ask you to send out a message to all willing volunteers who'd like to help out at Appleloosa." Jackson informed the tired Pegasus.
RD looked sheepishly and smiled.
"Whoops."
"Well at least you've gotten the people we needed to speak to first, so thanks, but you could have done it without dragging them here." Jackson told her.
"Right, so should I gather the others?" RD asked.
"Sure, tell them to meet us here, we just need to go over a plan. Dismissed." He saluted the Pegasus to humour her.
RD jumped up and zipped over Ponyville looking for the various members of pegasi to get over to the command post. Jackson meanwhile got back to his briefing.
"I'm surprised to say hello, I've been hoping to speak with all of you about a plan that I have conceived about supplying my men at Appleloosa with support, now I know you all want to go out and play your hands in the battle…"
"Damn straight." A dark navy haired Pegasus with blue skin interrupted.
"Okay… we need some of you and other pegasi to go and make a support run." Jackson stated directly.
"What?" There was a whole chorus of objections to the idea of a simple milk run.
He raised his hand and silenced them.
"Look here, I didn't tell you the entire plan; we need some pegasi to go with you to make a quick supply drop, hopefully enough to take down any armour or aircraft for you to provide continued support. As for you in general, we'd like you to engage in the battle."
A mumble of agreement came from the various wonderbolts.
"So wait how are we supposed to fight them? I thought you said our weapons weren't capable to deal with covenant tech?"
"I did say that, but seeing as we don't have much choice, we're willing to arm you with some of our weapons. Probably not the most agreeable plan, but with the situation spiralling out of control for our men, I'd like you to get a few of our lower recoil rifles and provide air support against enemy fliers for a while." Jackson explained.
"Now that sounds like a battle." A yellow and orange Pegasus female stated.
"Well it might sound fun, but banshees are not nice things to fight, and for good reasons we need you to be able to fight. So how many of you are actually skilled in weapons?" He asked.
Only 3 members of the wonderbolts shot their hands up.
"Okay that's not too good…"
"Hey Soarin didn't you have prior military training back at boot?" The yellow Pegasus mare asked.
"Not that formal, more like my buddy and I got access to a few rifles and started shootings stuff for fun." Soarin sheepishly smiled.
The yellow mare face-palmed.
"Well isn't this great."
"So if we don't have enough numbers, what about the royal guards? I'm sure that they could spare some guards to help, or the Equestrian Enforcers, sure they're not a really large army, but they do have training." Soarin suggested.
"Well any of them that can fight will do well to help, we don't have much time to be sitting around much longer, the falcon flight will be back in 15 minutes and they'll take another 10 to rearm and then redeployment would take another 1 hour, so we need get this don't in under that time." Jackson stated clearly.
They agreed and dispersed the non-combatants of their team to go retrieve local Pegasus guards, it didn't take too long, and they returned in short order with RD who had brought out a half a dozen or so pegasi. RD reported in first and said.
"These are all the ponies that I said they'd like to volunteer, including myself of course."
"Thanks Rainbow… Dash?" He tried to recall.
"Yeah that's me." RD said proudly.
Next was the cluster of pegasi personnel, Soarin introduced the officer.
"I got the guards who wanted to join up and some of others. This here's…"
"I can introduce myself blue boy." The female officer in command interjected.
Soarin mumbled a few curses and walked off in annoyance. The female officer introduced herself.
"Greetings Colonel, I am Lieutenant Sure Steel, I've heard a bit about you from the first escort that accompanied Miguel's flight to Evergreen. I must say, you've gotten quite a reputation, both your military and technology is something that's impressive."
"Thank you for the compliment. But you already know what you're here for right?" He asked.
"Yes, Soarin explained the necessity of going out to Appaloosa rather breathlessly, but we got the jist of what he was trying to tell us." She replied.
"Well then this should be more enlightening. The UCAF troops we have at Appleloosa are probably running low on ammo in the next 30 minutes if they're sustaining heavy fire, but more to the point, we couldn't arm them with heavy weapons. To put it simply, you need to escort these volunteers to Appleloosa and drop off these heavy weapons crates. This isn't a milk run, you'll get your chance to fight, provide the ground troops with some sort of air support until all hostiles are eliminated or the town is overrun." Jackson explained.
"Well that's simple enough and what about our weapons?" Steel asked.
"Well we intended to give you our weapons, at least our less than powerful weapons, you can't handle heavy recoil rifles so we decided to give you our Dragoon AR-30s, those carry a 7.85mm AP mags and have low light scopes with holo-sight indicators, you'll have to adjust for wind. And we'll throw in some grenades and 40mm grenade attachments, for the enemy fliers." He offered.
"Wow that seems a lot more than what we're packing." Steel perplexed.
"Well it's there for you now, but you might want to get some quick testing on the rifles before you try using them out in the field, the Dragoons have been known to have freezing issues in high altitudes compared to the older Drake AR-25s." He advised.
The group followed the colonel to a small weapons cache set up under his orders; it held a number of rifle racks, he pulled out the nearest crate and showed them the rifle.
"Okay this is going to be short, but the rifle is damn easy to use, a child could use it… well actually children do use these rifles. But to the point, the rifle has 3 settings, burst, controlled fire, and single, and then we have the safety on the left side of the rifle near to the trigger guard. The rifle itself weighs in at 8 pounds, relatively light when unloaded. It's about 6 feet long, made mostly out of poly carbon fibre parts. There's rails on the top to attach and de-attach equipment, but all of them have the same thing on them so don't pull off anything, unless it gets broken. There's a flashlight and laser guider, there's also a bayonet, but you'll need to pull this piece at the front of the barrel downwards and slide the bayonet out and then push it back up to lock the bayonet into place, aside from that, I can't really tell you anything else."
He showed them all the sections of the rifle and gave it to Steel, she held the rifle and memorised the pieces of the weapon.
"This is pretty light, mind if I buy one later?"
"I'm sure we'll think of something, at this point, just take it and get over to the practice range my boys are using nearby, you'll need to get a quick test in and then get going, that's about all I can do at this point in time, hopefully you won't encounter many fliers above Appleloosa." Jackson finished.
A black male Pegasus civilian with a bluish white head of hair asked.
"Do we get new duds?"
Jackson thought about it and then replied.
"No."
"AWWW…" They moaned.
Jackson felt like hitting his head into a wall.
"Fine." He sighed.
They all cheered. Jackson led them over to the requisitions officer at the next bulldog transport when they arrived at a rather humorous scene.
"Why is there no coffee in this damned truck? And what sort of bed do you call this? I was offered a proper accommodation why has none of you given me anything comfortable bedding? I demand that you give the great and powerful Trixie what she needs to sleep!"
"Will you quit fucking whining?" The annoyed officer shouted in annoyance.
"This is whining? I'm complaining, so do you want whining? Here you go… Oh all of this dirt on the benches is ruining my cloak and the horrible stench of musk in these transports and dreadful, why is there no damn channel for 'Phoenix Down'? And what is that stain on the truck floor? Is there no room for a cooler?" The blue magician seemed to edge the officer further into insanity.
Jackson decided to step in.
"Okay what the hell is going on here corporal?" He addressed the officer.
"This woman decided to charge for accommodations with the UCAF over her damaged home, so one of the jackasses in our unit convoy decided to assign her to us." The corporal replied.
"Well if it wasn't for the fact that you have such terrible accommodation, I wouldn't be complaining now would I?" She huffed and stuck her nose up.
"Oh for the loving fuck of Ava will you shut up?" The corporal shouted.
"HOW DARE YOU! Don't you tell the Great and Powerful Trixie to shut up…" Trixie bristled.
"Well then how about this… WILL YOU PLEASE GO FUCK YOURSELF!" He yelled with an amplifier.
The whole area went deaf for about a minute with dogs yelping as far as Canterlot. Jackson recovered and reprimanded the soldier.
"Corporal, don't fucking violate the terms of using equipment in urban environments outside combat zones, you'll be receiving a full clean up detail in the next outburst!"
"Sorry sir, but I really needed to get that out of my system with this damned flipping chick, she's been yelling about everything on the trip here for the past few hours. Seriously it's like fucking hell listening to her." The soldier replied angrily.
"Then cool it, I'll deal with her, you need to suit these Equestrians up with the appropriate gear, they have my permission and also, sort out what heavy weapons need to be deployed at Appleloosa and crate and ship them out with the civilians I've marked out here." He handed over a pad with all content details.
"Right sir, I'll get on it." The marine saluted and hurried off to help the ponies.
Jackson decided to address the female magician.
"I can see why they call you Great…"
Trixie recovered enough and replied haughtily.
"Because I'm great with magic, no one can compete with me!"
"How about me?" Another voice asked.
Trixie froze in place and turned to see the approaching Twilight with a few of her friends.
"Umm, I should get going."
Trixie hurried off inside the bulldog and stayed silent afterwards.
"So I take it you two have met in the past?"
"More or less in that sense." Twilight replied with a shrug.
"Okay, so who want to party?" Pinkie appeared with a tray of what looked like caps.
"Wait what do you mean party? We're in the middle of a crisis here." He said in absolute disbelief.
"Yeah isn't it exciting? We're going off to war! And princess Celestia and Luna are coming over here with all of Equestria's local troops to help defend, but before that, we need a good luck and hope you survive party for all of those troops!" She replied cheerfully.
"Okay now why do I have the feeling this isn't going to end well?" Jackson asked himself.
"Oh by the way, do you mind that Rarity's taken a couple of your troops?" Twilight asked.
"What?" He said in shock.
XXXXX
"I'm going to kill, whoever came up with this idea…" Sargent Cooper growled as the female unicorn took measurements of his body.
Rarity had commandeered a whole unit of UCAF marines, just by tell them that this was a very important mission, and of course she had permission from her princess and Jackson to do so, even though she only had permission from Celestia to help. She defined the art of military fashion as helping so this was what she intended to do.
"How in the hell do we get roped into this?" Private First class Coue asked.
"I don't flipping know, but I'm taking a nap." Griffin replied lying on a nearby chair.
"Well good for you, I think I find this rather better than going into the field." The ass kisser Corporal Evans stated.
"Like you could do anything but radio in airstrikes and call for support FNG, you're lucky that Jackson hasn't pulled the carpet from under your ass." Corporal Lee pitched.
Rarity busily checked for good colours for the marine's uniforms, of course all they ever wore was green, khaki or black and grey, so there wasn't much to use for them. She was determined though and they admired that, at least until she went on her ballistic rant about how their armour makes them look so old. Or how their suits looked like they needed a polish, or how much Coue needed to go to a salon and get a haircut, or how Lee should go to the spa and get a full massage from the Spa Twins.
"Man, why am I even in this Chicken shit outfit?" Reggie asked himself.
"I take offence to that!" An orange girl with purple hair said angrily in one of the changing rooms.
XXXXX
(Okay sorry guys been very busy, I didn't know what to write about first, but this is going into the conflict so, I've decided to go wing it as best as I could for now. I need to go and write up a lot of catch up chapters for other fics, so I'll see you around.)
Also:
Lunarassassin- I have decided to add you and a few others into the fic,
Thunderlane has joined
Flitter and Cloudchaser have been added
Shining Armour I hope will arrive for the next chapter
The conclusion of the battle of Appleloosa will be coming and the next few chapters are going to be based on both civilian and military so I'll mix it up a little.
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I'll be catching up with Zaro and the others next chapter and i do hope that you like one of these upcoming items.
fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/064/5/9/carrier_by_sttheo-d4rt0g2.jpg
Or should i bring this out?
fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/010/3/1/hardsuit_by_sttheo-d4lwo51.jpg
These are the two things i really thought about bringing into focus, because of the upcoming battles and also the scale of which this fic will be based.
And also do you think i should add tanks? Or Gunships?
1028719 son, I know it isn't from halo, but please for te love of celestia add the hardsuit to the UNSC's arsenal! I beg you!
[img]img2.mmo.mmo4arab.com/feature/blacklight_retribution/hardsuit.jpg[/img]
This is what I mean.
good chapter really good cant wait for the next
1029162
Okay dude, the UCAF have that in their own arsenal that's not necessary, they're sharing with the Equestrians for the next couple of chapters and such.
1032528
Thanks man, i'll be sure to make more as soon as i can get my other fics squared away ASAP
1028719
Where are those pictures from because, I know that's not halo but still pretty flipping awesome. You should put them in.
1112030
Yeah i know... should i make a log?
1112058
It was part of the AU, also territorial issues and for the UCAF they required the necessary means to defend themselves against the covenant.
1140258 LOL
chickin shit outfit?
Someone has been playing starcraft...