At The Breach

The thunder of a single Scorpion’s turret blasted through the bunker. Cassandra-G006 felt the tremor from its impact somewhere out in the hills beyond even through the concrete walls and the plates of her own armor. She ducked her head and held her rifle close, bracing for the answer she knew was coming. It came, just as it had all the times before: the bone-chilling whine of incoming plasma mortars from the Wraiths lurking out in the Israeli hills. The bunker shuddered amidst the maelstrom, rattled to its very foundations by the fiery storm. Cassandra’s stomach lurched. She braced herself against the nearest wall and steadied her breathing. She’d make it through this one, just like she’d made it through all the ones that came before. But somebody else wouldn’t. Just like all the other times. She could hear the screams echoing through the bunker even before the Wraith barrage subsided. They were thinner and smaller than the mighty plasma mortars, but also closer and all the worse for it. The source of the plasma mortars waited in the hills; Cassandra and Team Jian and the troopers trapped inside the bunker could wait for the Covenant to come to them. But the screaming, dying wounded were trapped inside with them. And they needed Cassandra to come out to them. Cassandra didn’t wait for Jake’s order. She was already moving, darting through the narrow bunker corridor towards the yells. She leaped over the troopers huddled in her path, armor and rifle smacking against chunks of concrete and the armored heads of troopers too slow to get out of her way. She reached the screams at their source: a gun port blasted apart by a direct hit, leaving smoldering rubble and broken bodies in its wake. Jake was already there alongside a machine gun crew. They fired out into the smoke-filled hills, ignoring the three wounded troopers writhing in agony behind them. But that wasn’t their job. Cassandra slung her rifle and grabbed the nearest trooper, dragging him away from the breach. She left him a few meters back from the fighting and dashed back to grab the second. The third was dead by the time she reached him. Cassandra left him among the corpses and hurried back to the two still alive. Gunfire reverberated through the corridor, disorienting even through her helmet. Plasma bolts seared through the breach. Armored boots pounded against the concrete. The woman beneath her wouldn’t stop screaming. It was all too much to take in. So Cassandra stopped thinking. She did what she’d done a hundred times before, unstrapping the wounded trooper’s armor and running her gauntlets through her scorched uniform. Burns across the chest. Shrapnel through the abdomen. Life threatening, but treatable. Her hands plunged into her medical bag, finding the biofoam and syringes at the left where she always packed them. She brought her arm down, pinning the trooper in place and doing what needed to be done. She shut out the screams, the agonized face, the whimpering, debased person beneath her. There was only the wound and the body it afflicted. A problem to be solved. Spartans solved problems. More troopers pushed past her and the injured, taking up firing positions with Jake and the gunners. One stopped, rifle at his side, and stared ashen-faced at Cassandra and her patients. “Ma’am,” whispered a man ten years her senior. Cassandra kept working. She slid over to the second trooper, a man burned so badly she could barely see his face beneath the charred and bloody mess. Nothing to do here. She pressed a sedative into his neck. Maybe that would keep him alive long enough to reach the triage center. Maybe. “Incoming! Left side, left—“ A sergeant slumped back, a smoking hole through his chest. The snarling face of a Brute pushed its way through the breach, the first of a Covenant tide rushing forward to replace them. To replace them all. Above the din Cassandra heard more Wraith mortars. Jake toppled back from the breach, firing up at the Brute until his rifle fell silent. The machine gun crew lay dead in the rubble. Chattering Jackals pushed in after their hulking leader, shields at the ready. Another problem. Spartans solved problems. Cassandra unslung her rifle and took aim. Maybe these were the only Covenant to reach the breach. Maybe there were a thousand behind them. It didn’t matter. She and Jian would throw them back, again and again. No matter how many times it took. Just like they always did.