“Ad Arcendam Hostium”
Foehammer’s New Wings
Chapter one:
…And The Horse She Rode In On
With a herculean effort, captain Carol Rawley pushed herself off of her own console. The pelicans' blaring klaxons were mostly drowned out by the roaring tinnitus in her ears; And even though she could no longer see color, the fact that that didn’t even make her top ten list of concerns right now was a pretty damn good indicator of how shit today is.
Rawley could also do without her HUD unhelpfully alerting her that she was, in fact, critically wounded. She was perfectly capable of deducing that on her own, thank you very much. She also didn’t need its help deducing the fate of her co-pilot. She saw the angle of that plasma bolt that slagged the top half of the windshield. She also knew what a direct hit from a Class-two Plasma Cannon would do to a human.
Frye’s grayed out name remained on the bottom right of her visor anyway. It sat there, etched upon her HUD almost accusingly. Just another friend she let down. Just another name added to a long, long list. What's one more ghost to haunt her? It’s not like it matters, not anymore at least. Cortona had sent her the countdown timer till Autumn's drive went critical when she first called for evac. Only two minutes left on it now.
Relaxing back into her seat, Carol tilted her head back to let the sun rest on her helmeted face as it shined through the still molten windshield. When was the last time she had been able to actually sit back and relax? Or hell, even just get more than four consecutive hours of sleep? The captain honestly couldn’t remember. It must have been just after Doradus, because she sure as shit hasn’t had anything even remotely close to rest since Reach.
She was so close, just one more pickup before this nightmare was over. All she had to do was rescue the Chief, and then maybe, just maybe, the deaths of everyone else might have been worth it. Their sacrifice might have meant something…
But no.
Two of the luckiest fucking split-chins in the entire galaxy got the drop on her while she had her pants around her ankles. Those Bandits should have been a non-factor at worst. But with her bird weighed down with supplies scavenged from Alpha base, she was a sitting duck. So now Echo Four-Nineteen is buried up to its wings in sand, and she had single-handedly let everyone down.
Carol had long lost the ability to cry. She’d seen too much- done too much, to afford herself the luxury of tears. But… God damnit, she didn’t just screw the pooch on this one, she fucked the whole damn kennel by not getting those two out of here. The whole crew saw them in action, we all knew that if we had any chance at winning… if Humanity had any chance of winning this war, they needed to make it. Those two needed to get back home with everything we learned here. We all pinned our hopes on the Chief and Cortana.
And the crew trusted Foehammer to pull their asses out of the fire.
…Thirty seconds left…
At least we were going out with a bang.
Against her will, a small smile tugged on her lips. Let it never be said that The Autumn went quietly into that good night. Instead, we went kicking and screaming the whole way. Leaving mountains of Covie’ corpses in our wake.
“We Deliver… Death” Carol rasped out with a laugh before closing her eyes, so she could fully enjoy the sensation of the sun on her face one last time.
Fifteen seconds left.
“FRIENDLY IFF DETECTED”
Carol shot forward, torn out of her reverie by the pelican’s VI. Frantically looking for the fool flying to their death- when she saw it. A lone Longsword fighter burst from a starboard hanger, burning away into the evening sky at full speed.
She watched it disappear in slack jawed disbelief for almost three full seconds before a small chortle escaped her. The giggle grew and grew until she was outright cackling.
“YES!” Carol howled to the heavens while throwing her fists into the air. She continued to scream in joy for a bit before letting her near manic laughter fade, though the vicious grin she sported never left her face. “Give ’em hell, Spartan, Give ’em he-
Zero seconds.
—--------------------—
“Altitude- pull up”
Nearly two thousand hours of flight time under her belt meant that the altitude alert was all Carol needed for muscle memory to kick in and start pulling back on the stick. When she finally blinked the stars from her eyes, all she could see was an endless expanse of dark blue.
Seeing nothing but water was slightly alarming because, as far as she could remember, Carol was- as of five seconds ago- crash landed in a desert and about to be atomized in a supernova. Now, she was in free fall over an ocean at less than three thousand meters. Her pelican screaming as it plummeted towards the planet, the wind howling as it tore across the plasma scorched armor and into the cockpit through the melted open canopy.
“Altitude- pull up”
Oh hell no, The Echo four-nineteen has survived hundreds of combat missions. She has run the gauntlet more times than everyone else in the Twenty Ninth combined. And did so while coming out (virtually) without a scratch every time. Captain Carol Rawley refused to crash not once, but twice in less than two minutes.
The water, with total disregard for Rawley’s determination to not further ruin her perfect track record, continued to rapidly rise up to meet her.
Both rear thrusters are shot to hell, so burning through the curve and turning this free fall into a controlled dive was out. She didn’t dare touch the air brakes, all they’d do without forward thrust is stall her out; She’d still end up in a watery grave, just at a slightly slower pace.
All that was left were her retrograde and lift thrusters… Fuck it, they’ll have to do. Gritting her teeth and bracing was all she had time for before throwing open the throttle in reverse. Two forward facing thrusters, one on each wing, roared to life; Causing the pelican’s already weakened airframe to groan horribly as the forces of gravity and human engineering clashed over the fate of the stricken drop ship.
Moment of truth- Rawley grabbed the stick with both hands in a white-knuckled stranglehold and forced it back towards her with everything she had. The groans jumped in pitch to an outright metallic screeching as the nose of her bird rose agonizingly slowly towards the horizon.
“Over-Gee”
The maneuver immediately slammed her even further into the gel layer of her flight seat, her G-suit straining to keep her blood in her head where it was desperately needed. Her cybernetics designed specifically for pilots kicked in, adding their processing power to her oxygen starved brain.
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Even with her wetware and the suit's help in keeping her conscious, Carol's world was still reduced to near pinpricks from the strain of the near fifteen Gee turn.
“Over-Gee”
Rawley ignored it all. The creaking bulkheads, the wind's haunting shriek, certain death approaching at near a thousand kilometers an hour… The impossibility of this situation.
All of it.
All of Foehammer’s attention was focused solely on the altitude indicator on her HUD. Watching as it ticked up at a glacial pace, degree by degree.
The plane fought her for every millimeter, however. The joystick was vibrating so hard she could feel it in her teeth, Carol was almost starting to worry that the bloody thing would shake apart in her hands.
No, this bird did not survive years of fighting on the front line, the glassing of Reach, and the prevention of the fucking apocalypse just to fail her now, not against an enemy as benign as mere gravity.
She’ll hold… She always has.
As soon as the pelican's nose reached negative forty-five degrees, Carol flipped the switch on top of her throttle bar, switching the craft into VTOL mode. The bow thrusters flickered and died, while the main under-wing thrusters flared open. Turning the dive into a gigantic leap forward.
“Over-Gee”
If the initial dive was hard on her and her bird, then adding the new axis of thrust was tortuous. Carol’s extensive cybernetics suite was the only thing that kept her conscious, a normal pilot would have long since passed out.
At less than seven hundred meters off the ocean surface, the plane finally levels out. Kept aloft by momentum and aerodynamics alone; With only a little help from her lift thrusters.
It wasn’t flight- not really; Without forward thrust all this did was add some distance to a sustained fall. Once she bled all the forward momentum she would be right back where she started… spiraling towards the drink. Carol needed a place to put her bird down and she needed it yesterday.
And speak of the Devil…
There was nothing in front of her but open ocean, but a glance at the feeds from the cameras lining the hull showed a large island directly off her port.
Carol dropped the nose of the pelican and spun it into a turn without hesitation; Every second spent is another foot closer to the ground.
The joystick shuddered in time with the quaking of the airframe. Echo Four-Nineteen had seen heavy use for more than four days straight with absolutely no maintenance, and it was starting to show. That little bit of fancy flying was just a little too much for the plane- Not to mention the previous burning and crashing; Foehammer’s faithful steed had long since passed its limit, a feeling Carol could relate to, but…
'Come on old girl… Just a little further.'
The island was just under a click away now. She was coming up on what appeared to be two parallel peninsulas creating a decently sized bay between them. Sandy beaches lined the shores, with the interior being untamed temperate forest. A small mountain chain hid most of the island from her at this altitude, but as far as she could see, the island was uninhabited.
Rawley decided to emulate Bravo Twenty-Two and set herself down along the beach.
Though hopefully she’ll find more success with it than they did…
Carol pushed the pelican's nose down once more, swooping low over the water while pitching ten degrees to the left, aiming for the western peninsula. The water beneath her was quickly replaced with sand and a small bundle of anxiety in her gut dissipated. Now all she had to do was safely bleed off the speed she built up.
Rawley pulled back on the stick, raising the nose while simultaneously flaring the lift thrusters. After maintaining that position for a few hundred feet, she stomped on the air brake pedal. Across the hull of the pelican, four panels of armor rose up on hydraulic lifts, further slowing down the drop ship.
At the same time, she dropped the rear landing gear, the two landing arms unfolding down from the sides of the cargo bay. She left the bow gear up, the lone wheel would just snap off in the sand at this angle.
Carol had done everything she humanly could to ensure a gentle landing, but in the end it was up to luck whether or not her pelican would disintegrate when it hit the ground. All she could do now was lean back into her seat and brace, watching her altitude and speed plummet.
One hundred kilometers an hour, sixty feet.
Eighty kilometers, fifty feet.
Fifty kilometers, thirty feet.
Twenty kilometers, ten feet.
Carol only had time to step off the air brake before she was thrown forward as the pelican hit Terra firma at fifteen kilometers an hour. Her crash webbing was the only thing that kept her from being sent through the transparent aluminum windshield.
Even going as slow as only nine miles per hour, all one-hundred and thirty-eight tons of D Seventy-Seven hit the beach with the force of an angry God. Sand and gravel was sent flying in a wave several feet high. The drop ship plows through the sand for several feet, digging a small trench in its wake; Before eventually running out of steam, settling back into the path of its own rough landing.
When that cold hearted son of a bitch Newton released his grip on Rawley, she was finally able to sink back into her seat.
As Rawley stared out the windshield at the sand and lazily lapping waves, she idly noted how eerily similar the view was to her previous crash from… less than three minutes ago now. All that was missing was a soon-to-be born sun and fucking zombies trying to eat her.
Carol so desperately wanted to just close her eyes, to take just five minutes for herself. but she knew if she did, if she stopped moving for a second, she’d never get up. Too many people have sacrificed too much to get her this far. And if she stumbled now, if she failed because of her selfishness, she’d never be able to look those people in the eyes again.
There's no rest for the wicked in the UNSC.
Checking the pelicans motion sensor told her there was nothing moving in five hundred meters, but that could change any second. She needed to leave, that crash would have been visible for miles.
She fumbled with the latches to her harness for a second before her gloved fingers snagged the release. Rawley staggered to her feet only for her legs to give out on her as soon as she put weight on them. She caught herself on a brace handle bolted to the wall, breathing heavily.
Fucker… She'll crawl if she has too, but she can't stay here. A Covie QRF could come screaming in any second now, and she did not want to be here when they did. Her hand unconsciously went to the M-Six on her hip.
At the very least, she won't be taken alive.
Carol hobbled towards the door, determinedly keeping her eyes on the emergency lights lining the path. Deliberately not looking at the copilot seat.
She would come back for him soon, but right now she needed to move.
Passing the empty coms station, she allowed herself a moment of self satisfaction for convincing Cullen to go with Echo One-Thirty-Six to help coordinate the capture of that Covie cruiser. At least one of them made it, lucky bastard was probably halfway to the nearest friendly system by now.
Carol dropped her hand on the scanner to open the cockpit door, and for one heart stopping moment, the door got stuck- before opening fully with only a lot of metallic grinding.
The inside of the cargo bay was a mess, anything that wasn't carefully secured was strewn across the room from the two consecutive crashes. Several Olive Drab UNSC stamped boxes lay in a haphazard pile, one of which had even broken open- spilling its contents of MREs all over the bloody place. Guns and loose ammunition were scattered around, there were a few MA-Five Bs together on the floor, one of which was clearly bent with a cracked SmartLink. Two M-Nineties were slotted into the weapon racks attached to the sights so they were probably fine. She could have sworn there was a SPNKr in here somewhere, but she couldn't see it in this chaos. Rawley ignored the cockpit door automatically closing behind her as she worked one of the medpacks off the wall.
Medicine in hand, she made her way over to the pile of crates where she had spotted an empty chest rig sticking out from underneath one of the medical crates. It took a few tugs to get it out from under it, and a bit longer to shrug the thing on. She then clipped the medpack to a magnetic holder on the back of the chest rig to free up her hands.
Turning her attention to a nearby box with ‘ammunition’ proudly stamped on it, Rawley deftly inputted the code to open a class two secure crate. After a second, the box unsealed itself with the pneumatic hiss of pressurized air.
Cracking open the lid, Carol was rewarded with the sight of thousands of rounds of ammunition all pre packed into magazines and stacked into neat columns.
Red colored plastic packets of Seven Point Sixty-Two FMJ were piled to the very top of the crate; There were just as many blue colored packets of Twelve Point Seven by Forty millimeter SAP-HE for the pistol, but she already had a few mags for her’s stuffed in her BDUs so she ignored them for now.
Boxes of eight gauge shells came in every flavor under the sun, Bird shot, Buck shot, Star shells, Slugs, Bean bags… it looks like some joker even snuck a few Dragon Breath shells into the mix.
And most importantly… Hundreds of Fourteen Point Five By One hundred and Fourteen millimeter Sniper Rifle rounds lay stacked up together, the vast majority of them being the standard APFSDS, but there were a few HE and incendiaries in there as well.
The sniper ammunition was all left over from that OP to spring the Captain from the Covies. Everything else had been loaded up specifically for the Chief. All of it was placed here by hopeful marines. So that even if the soldiers themselves couldn't keep up with the Chief, at least their gear could go on to help him and Cortona save humanity.
Foehammer ruthlessly shut down that line of thought. She couldn't afford distractions right now. She started shoving sniper rifle mags into the holsters on her chest rig, loading it up with as many rounds as she could carry before carefully resealing the crate back up; No need to make it easy for the Covies to take her shit.
Spinning around, Carol climbed up onto the seats to reach the only functional SRS Ninety-Nine on board. It was tucked securely up in the storage racks that lined the roof of the storage bay. Right next to another SRS, but that one had been hit directly in the receiver by a Needler round. It was little more than scrap metal with an expensive scope bolted on it, but apparently the marine who was using the rifle was planning on keeping it as a souvenir.
Rawley was pretty sure that poor SOB never made it off the colloquially named ‘Death Island’ during the op for the Cartographer.
Physically shaking her head, Carol grabbed the working rifle by its carrying handle and yanked it down out of the cargo webbing, then settled it across her back. locking it to the magnets on her chest armor.
Doing one last sweep of the cabin for anything else she might need, she decided that she had wasted enough time. It was time to go. She took a single step towards the bay doors when her foot kicked one of the loose MREs on the floor.
What the hell, might as well take one of them as well. She scooped one up off the ground at random and stuck it in her drop bag.
After carefully picking her way over the scattered weapons and gear, she slammed her fist into the release button by the bay door. To her honest but pleasant surprise, the fold-out armored door opened without a fuss.
Drawing her pistol, captain Carol Rawley racked the slide of her magnum and stepped out onto the beach and into the mid morning sun.