Calvin ran double time through the fog and the underbrush of Malevelon Creek. It was always foggy here, and the mists extended all the way to the cloud cover. The weather patterns meant an almost perpetual twilight - unless the moon was not showing - then it felt like pure darkness.
Calvin was sweating, the moisture thick enough in the air to choke a man. But still, he ran.
At one point in his 300 meter dash he had to change direction temporarily from his target as an enemy patrol was also moving through the fog. The telltale sound of rhythmic electrical whining mixed with grinding gears and pneumatic cylinders gave them away. Luckily they had not noticed him.
Calvin could handle himself and was more than capable to take a smaller patrol out by himself, but it was always risky. It just took one trooper unit to fire off a signal flare and a single helldiver or even a group could be easily overrun. It was better not to risk it when on one's own.
The trees opened up when Calvin approached the edge of the high ground he was occupying. He could see the carnage occurring down below.
"Dropships!" Yelled Juliet Two over the comms channel. Calvin also spotted the dropships. In fact, there were three of them bearing down on the squad's location. Coming in hot from the west.
"On it!" Came the reply from Higgins. his call-sign was Hotel Three. Not long after saying so, a rocket flared up from their location and bit into the side of the first dropship in the line, the detonation cracked it in half like a freedom bar. The occupants of the craft were thrown haphazardly into the forest below. None of these clankers would be doing battle today. The other two dropships however, got through and were able to release their contents onto the pinned down divers' position.
Calvin slid down the hill and ran the last 50 meters triple time to get up to a workable vantage point. He hit the deck on a rocky outcrop just above the small valley his companions were trapped in. He began to lay down covering fire - ending the lives, if you could call them that, of these hellish robotic nightmares.
"About time you show up Charlie Four, have fun on your vacation?" Jacob said.
"Just seeing some sights. I promise I only observed the scenery for 2.4 seconds, just like it says in the handbook." All three of them laughed but it was cut off when rockets began to rain down on Higgins' and Jacob's position.
"Rocket Devastators! Charlie Four, can you see them?" Calvin could barely hear Juliet Two on the comms over the booming of the explosions in the clearing below. He thanked lady liberty herself his teammates were in good hard cover. There wasn't much of that to go around on Malevelon Creek. Most of the cover was just trees and underbrush and that stuff normally didn't hold up very long in a firefight.
Calvin searched for the Devastators, more heavily armed and armored variants of Automatons. Their thick armor plating made them trickier to deal with. He found two of them at the top of the trail leading down to the squad's position. He saw 4 pin pricks of red light, adjusted his scope for 150 meters, saw two heads in his crosshairs and sent two bullets each their way. He hit both devastators between their red eye sockets. Both of them fell over, decommissioned. The one on the left however, hit the ground hard when it tipped and it's firing mechanism must have gone off. As it hit the ground one of the rockets fired and detonated at the base of a tree behind Calvin. The tree, now missing a good portion of it's lower trunk, began to tip towards him. He rolled out of the way of the branches now attempting to crush him to paste. He lost his purchase and fell off his outcropping - landing at the base of the hill several meters below his perch.
Calvin attempted to move his arms, his chest hurt. He must have bruised a rib. He got up, dusted himself off and began to make his way to the center of the conflict zone over by his teammates and their coveted hard cover.
Higgins was reloading his recoilless rifle and Jacob was laying down some fire with his Heavy machine gun. They were pinned down but not combat ineffective yet.
"Where's Caps?" Calvin asked and whinced at the pain in his side. He held one hand over his left rib as he limped towards the two other men.
"Yo Higgs, toss me one of those stims you found."
Higgins dug around in a pack at his side and tossed the small syringe. Jacob caught the stim pack from the air and turned to Calvin. "Haven't seen him or heard from him. Figured he was out and about with you." He ducked down as a laser tried to melt his helmet and all the bodily bits underneath. He gave Calvin the needle.
"No, I haven't seen him, you sure about this stim?" Calvin asked.
"Yeah our boy Higgs found a whole stash of em' near our landing site." Jacob said. Higgins gave a thumbs up at this comment before going back to laying down fire on an advancing group of automatons. Their limbs ripped off by the wall of lead coming out of his liberator, penetrator variant.
Calvin plunged the needle into his leg, and pressed the injector. The mixture of endorphins, oxytocin, epinephrine, adrenaline, and other chemicals began to do their work, both numbing the pain and starting the healing process on his bruised rib. For that much damage Calvin may not even need a doctor back on board the super destroyer. The stims were a good find, he reminded himself to congratulate Higgins on it. The ship had run critically low on these vital emergency medical supplies, and finding some in the field was the only reliable way of acquiring more until they pulled out for a resupply, which was hopefully soon. Without them a helldiver would succumb to relatively minor injuries in the field.
Calvin felt the heat of a laser fly past his shoulder, snapping him back into the moment as the battle raged around him.
"Reloading!" Jacob shouted. He took low cover and began the lengthy process of reloading the belt fed heavy machine gun.
"I got your covered Juliet 2." Higgins responded calmly.
Calvin scrapped three more "normal" devastators, non rocket bearing variants of the armored Automatons, and also had to reload. He noted to himself: two magazines remaining.
"We need to get out of here before something big comes along." Calvin said. almost on cue, the trees ahead of their position erupted into fire as a battle tank entered the fray. It quickly locked onto their position as it brought its cannon to bear on them. All three of the team members ducked to the ground as it fired. It was too close for comfort as the explosive charge bit deeply into the ground and showered them all with shrapnel, small rocks, and dirt.
"Plan?" Higgins asked to the group.
"MOVE!" Calvin shouted and began to run into the trees behind their position while he pulled the pins on two smoke grenades and threw them. He was attempting to make enough concealment to allow the team to move out of the boxed valley and away from their hard cover without incident.
The other two soldiers needed no motivation to pull out. They kept pace with Calvin as they retreated into the forest. Bullets and Lasers cut holes in the thick fog laced smoke. A cannon shell whistled past and detonated far enough away as not to injure anyone in the team but too close for anyone to relax into their current situation.
Bullets swarmed them like angry bees, each trying to find a home in one of the soldiers. One of these found its mark in Higgins' left Calf. He cried out in pain as the metal tore through the muscles there. Calvin and Jacob both turned back to grab Higgins and help him up. No hell-diver left behind after all.
Calvin pulled his own stim out of his armor's pockets and injected it into Higgins' leg near the bullet hole. The coagulant inside began it's work helping to seal up his bullet wound. It would still most likely need a real doctor to poke around inside the injury later. The meds did the trick though as Higgins was up and running again in almost no time.
The team reached the edge of the thick smoke. Calvin stopped in his tracks, his heart jumping into his throat. Not 15 meters in front of him was another tank, turret pointed at them and prepared to fire. He tried to do a 180 and get the other men to get back into the smoke cover as well but he was not quick enough this time. Calvin thought for sure he was dead, especially as he felt the heat on his back. He closed his eyes, ready for what was inevitable to come.
Calvin heard the tank fire, or was it the tank firing? No, it did not sound right. Calvin opened his eyes again and turned. He saw the tank and it's turret ablaze. The whole vehicle was a twist of molten mangled metal.
"Yahoo! Got it, you boys alright?" Drex stepped out of the fog, his Anti-Material Rifle's barrel was still smoking. Calvin noted Drex was talking on his external speakers instead of the comm.
"Status green Delta 6, what happened to your communicator?" Calvin asked.
"Burned out when my pod was hit by that ion storm, I couldn't reach you immediately, had to take the trash out, but I made my way here."
"Couldn't have gotten here any sooner? Had to make a dramatic entrance?" Jacob asked.
Calvin held back a laugh, Drex did not. The man did tend to do that when he was saving their skins, Calvin did not mind, just as long as he kept pulling them out of the fire.
"We gotta move before this smoke clears out." Jacob said.
"I got you one better," Owens said as he pulled one of his beacons out of a pouch on his armor. "These tinnies have to come through the narrow valley you were stuck in to get to this position, correct?"
Calvin nodded. It would be difficult to get around the almost canyon like valley. Honestly his team had been lucky they didn't get pinned on both sides in the bottom of it, though now he knew Owens would have likely shown up and single handedly opened one side for a dramatic escape.
"How many of the scrapheaps in there?"
Calvin shrugged. "Twenty or thirty by this point, including a tank."
Drex coded in a sequence to program request type and heading on his tactical armband or tac-band. His beacon took on a reddish light. He chucked it through the smoke back into the valley and fired a couple shots from his Sickle into the fog. "Hit the deck."
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The four of them dove to the ground in unison. As the sickle gave away their position there was once again a myriad of rockets, lasers, and bullets flying overhead. Drex had done this before, calvin noted. It was almost like a bait and lure. The dumb bots would make their way toward where the weapon was fired from and into the beacon, which would end up being a nasty surprise for them.
The beacon shone brightly, proudly, high into the sky. It was bright red. They heard someone new over the comm.
"Target acknowledged, watch your head boys." Call-sign Eagle-1 flew the starfighter razer close overhead dropping some small packages and popping some flares. "Package delivered, you boys take care now."
The bomblets exploded about 10 meters off the ground. This was done to spray shrapnel and even smaller bombs over the target area. The result was always spectacular, as the entire valley lit up in explosives. It always reminded Calvin of the freedom day celebrations back home, but with the fireworks on - or just above - the ground instead of high in the sky, and much... MUCH bigger.
The pressure wave from the air support cleared the smoke away. Calvin got to one knee and could see some survivors of the bombing picking their way through the carnage. There were not many left. A shield devastator limped on a bad actuator. The tank that had threatened them was reduced to a burning heap of junk metal.
He saw a trooper without any legs lift it's arm as if to point to the sky. Calvin's eyes widened as he shouldered his rifle and took aim at the bot. He pulled the trigger. His bullet slammed into the robots head, shattering it, but not before the infernal contraption was able to fire off another flare.
"Ok, time to GO." Jacob said, and all four of them began to move west towards their objective, away from this boxed valley of oil, metal, and fire.
They needed to get some distance in before another wave of reinforcements was able to tie them down. They heard the dropships before they saw them, Higgins dropped to one knee.
"Hotel 5, what do you think you are doing?"
"My, Job sir."
Higgins was quite prickly, maybe a side effect of the stim beginning to wear off. It affected everybody differently. Nonetheless, he was doing what he was designated for. Higgins pulled his recoilless off his shoulder and sighted in where the sound was coming from. He couldn't see them yet, but he was ready, a one-man SAM site.
Four dropships appeared over the foliage and screamed overhead in a hurry to reinforce the flare that beckoned them like flies to honey. Higgins was prepared though, he led his target and put fire to the sky. The rocket slammed into a jet pod on the lead dropship, which began to lose speed and altitude. It veered rapidly off course, unbalanced by the unequal thrust in the four corners of it's frame.
The lead craft veered towards the right end of the formation. The dropship on this side attempted to adjust course but was not quick enough, the lead ship smashed into it, causing both to crash down and be consumed in a ball of fire and hate.
"Nice shot Higgs." Jacob said.
"Agreed, but we need to keep moving." Owens ordered.
Calvin knelt down to help Higgins reload the recoilless, it was much easier with two people and they were off and running again in no time.
"Alright gents, here is the reason we are here. There is an airbase and munitions/fuel stockpile up ahead that we need to take out to free up this region form the tinnies' control, we will all proceed up to it together in a staggered fashion before I and Calvin will split off right and Higgins and Jacob will split off left to go in the main entrance. Once inside we call in the package, arm it, and get out, got it?
The other three men nodded, checking their weaponry by instinct.
"Let's move, let's move, let's move." Drex gestured up the ridge.
They moved together storming up the ridge. Higgins took point. Jacob and Calvin were next, and Drex was holding up the rear.
"Last one up buys the rest drinks back on the Fist." Jacob jested.
They piled on the heat and rapidly ascended towards their destination. Higgins reached the top first.
"Looks like someone is getting me a drink back on the ship." Higgins laughed in triumph.
Jacob was only shortly behind him, his pride only slightly wounded.
BOOM.
Calvin's ears were ringing as he picked himself up off the ground. Someone was shouting something at him? No, it wasn't at him. There was a boot next to him, it was smoking. It smelled awful. Was someone screaming about the boot? Whose boot was that anyways, it seemed odd to leave a boot all the way out here in the woods.
He started to put it together. Jacob was the one shouting. He was shouting at Hotel five.
"HIGGINS! Sweet Liberty, NO!" He yelled over and over.
Calvin looked at the ridge-top, There was a crater there that wasn't there before. Was it there before? No this was definitely new. The grass was smoldering at the edge of the crater.
Calvins mind made it out of the haze. Higgins and all his recoilless rounds, and all the team's remaining stim-packs were gone. Vaporized in an instant, except for a boot.
Now the team couldn't afford a mistake, with no rockets on hand they could not shoot down dropships and any injury sustained was going to be felt fully until after evacuation.
Drex Owens crawled to the top of the ridge and observed the base through his scope.
"Cannon turret, stay low." He ordered.
Jacob was obviously in shock as he was still looking around for his friend. "Higgins!" He cried out. He wandered around looking for his friend as if he was looking for misplaced keys.
Calvin got up to his feet and ran to the man.
"Charlie Three, I said get down!"
Calvin grabbed Jacob and yanked him down to the ground. A whistling screamed over his head and an explosion in the tree-line shook the ground. Drex nodded in approval after fully realizing Calvin was just looking after a teammate and had just saved Jacob from receiving the same fate as Higgins.
"Get back to it, soldier!" Calvin grabbed his teammate's helmet and yelled into his faceplate. "We need you in this fight Bynez!"
Jacob looked at Calvin, who looked like a madman with his tattered cape billowing in the wind. The Twilight of the planet bathing him in shadows.
It took a minute for the command to sink in. Like Jacob had a reset button that had been pushed. After a few moments Jacob took two deep breaths and nodded, he had just needed a call back to reality.
"Change in plan gentlemen, you two go left and draw this cannon's attention, I'll go right and try to get behind it. Don't get too close to give that cannon an easy target on both of you."
"Acknowledged Delta six." Calvin said and turned towards Jacob. "You ready for a run?"
Jacob only nodded, still a little shaky from the loss of his friend but his hands were rock solid. He would be able to fight.
They both set off, dodging laser fire and bullets and the occasional shot from the cannon-turret. The enemies had known they were coming and were prepared for them. But it would take more than a few clankers to stop a team of hell-divers.
The two quickly made it around the base to the front entrance. They could not run around the base anymore as there was a large lake to the left of the fortifications. Water was never a Helldiver's friend, that could stop an army of them.
The two also realised quickly that if they stayed where they were they would be roasted by that cannon-tower. Only safe place was to get in under it.
"Hurry up and take that tower out Delta six." Calvin didn't know if Drex could hear them. His communicator was broken in sending messages for sure, but Calvin didn't know about receiving them. The cannon tower managed to lock in on Calvins' position.
Calvin noticed the tower turret pointed directly at him, but before he could react he witnessed the sudden unplanned deconstruction of the tower via rapid activation of explosive munitions. The work of an expert marksman armed with an Anti-Material Rifle.
"Good shot Owens," Calvin whispered quietly as he watched the base tear pieces of dark grey concrete and blackened steel plating out of itself. The explosion set off nearby munitions in the base as well. Red work lamps dimmed or went out entirely as they were damaged or destroyed. Debris showered the inhabitants of the fort in concrete, steel, and slag.
Calvin and Jacob entered via the equivalent of the front gate. They placed round after round into the tin cans that obstructed them from their goal. The puddles on the ground from that evening's rainfall ran rainbow with the telltale colors of oily film on water.
Jacob took down some lighter targets with his machine gun and placed a bullet here and there into the large contact-anti-personnel mines that littered the front entry to detonate them before they approached. Nasty things if touched in accident.
Calvin reloaded, then mentally checked himself. He had one full magazine left, then he would be on his secondary only. His machine pistol was capable of causing some damage, but by no means did he want to rely solely on it.
"Last Mag," he called out. The words sticking in his throat as he knew what that likely meant for the fight back to the pelican. He put two more bullets into his foes. It was going to be a rough extract for sure.
The door of a fabricator opened up on his left and he took down the three bots exiting the factory building with one shot, following up with his last high explosive grenade through the open doorway. The small buildings sensitive insides were quickly rendered completely useless without extensive renovations to the squat dark grey structure. Heat and hate erupted from the vents on the top of the building.
Jacob tackled Calvin as a chainsaw nearly ripped him in half, Jacob grabbed Calvin's machine pistol off his belt and unloaded the entire magazine into the glowing red torso of the berzerker. Some of the bullets managed to punch through the armor plating protecting the hydraulic lines to the robot's limbs. The terrifying device of destruction fell over, as hydraulic oil spilled everywhere. Jacob and Calvin were now slick with the black fluid.
"Thanks for the save." Calvin said, trying to catch his breath.
"Don't mention it." Jacob handed Calvin back his pistol, who reloaded it promptly.
Jacob gave Calvin a hand up and they turned towards the center of the base again. They could see row upon row of currently inactive dropships, fuel silos, and ordnance racks as they hurried to their rally point.
Drex had beaten the other two to the center courtyard. He was tied up in a shootout with two shield devestators. Big bruisers that carried a minigun in one hand and a ballistic shield that covered their whole frame in the other. To his credit, Drex was able to drop them each in one shot. He just needed to take careful aim with good timing to avoid the worst the devestators could put out. The mini-guns they carried could shred a diver if they weren't careful. Calvin himself had lost many friends this way.
Despite the threat, Drex made short work of just about anything he could get his Anti Material Rifle pointed at. The large rounds it fired had anti-matter tips, which exploded when impacting a foe.
Owens had also already placed the beacon for the package. It glowed in bright blue defiance, the color of freedom and managed democracy. Surely this would attract every freedom hating Automoton in a kilometer to come see what the helldivers were bringing into their base.
It did not take long for the Fist of Family Values to express ship the package. The ship fired ordnance requested this way the same way helldivers were deployed to the field. The only sensible way, In a hell pod. When nothing went wrong with the equipment the pods were able to hit a space coin on command in under 30 seconds.
Drex was holding the line on his side of the base The explosive rounds in his AMR deleting the joints on strider legs and manufacturing new holes in devastator faceplates. Jacob followed up on the smaller troopers with his machine gun, which he used if not completely accurately, at least judiciously enough to keep the rabble down. He also put down another two berzerkers, four more chainsaws that would never see use again.
The package arrived, shaking the ground from the impact. Calvin's companions were occupied, so he took the job of arming the bomb himself. He approached the console and logged in. He passed in his credentials and the arming password for the bomb. It began it's arming sequence. Calvin watched the console closely as it did so. When it finished arming it would be time to get the heck out of dodge.
A hell bomb was essentially a tactical nuke. They were particularly useful for large bases such as the one they were in now. Each came with enough firepower to level a few city blocks. You would not want to be anywhere near one when it detonated.
Calvin watched the screen as the progress bar filled up. 95%. Calvin nodded in satisfaction. They would be able to get out of here soon and back to the safety of the Fist.
Pain shot through Calvins' back as his skin blistered and his body armor melted. Pieces of his cape burned away. Armor slag singed his skin as his cape stuck to him. He turned and instinctively pulled the trigger twice. Two rounds tore through the Trooper holding the laser rifle standing on top of the catwalk behind him. He had lost focus and allowed the bot to sneak up behind him. He reached for his stimpack, which he remembered he had used on Higgins' leg back in the fog. Having no stimpack for the pain, Calvin cursed their luck that Higgins had taken that cannon shot, and again that he had been carrying the spare stims.
"Hellbomb arming successful, area evacuation recommended, 30 seconds to detonation." The console spoke in a pleasant female voice. And repeated again. The screen read 00:29.
Calvin tried to move without his back hurting to no avail, the rapidly scarring tissue ached and complained with every micro movement. This sprint was going to hurt.