Anton Gecas's Story

Anton Gecas pushed open the hatch of the Leopard, painted in TAF colors the carrier trundled down the road as it turned into a through-lane as a pair of WCPD squad cars raced past just a few seconds behind them. The sirens wailed in the distance and up in the sky an aircraft patrolled, dousing stretches of the city in a searchlight. “We are moving into position, eliminate them.” Anton ordered into his headset, watching through the open turret as the Leopard rolled back onto the street continued through the city at a quick pace until coming over a small overpass in a slum of the city’s farther districts. “There’s the warehouse, there.” Anton remarked from the commander’s cupola, his hand going to the shoulder of the Cavalry driver as the Leopard slowed to a crawl.

“Get ready you sorry fucks!” One of the blacked-out soldiers commanded, his voice making a pang in the metallic confines of the Leopard; the stick of eight men filed out the back door of the vehicle as it opened, and Anton pulled the hatch shut behind him before reaching down to his chest and grabbing the AR-682. Nestling the compact assault rifle into his chest, he pointed at the gunner in his station inside the turret. “We ring them in on three sides and shoot them against the walls okay? Do not let anything past this overpass.”

Anton Gecas stepped out of the Leopard as it began to crawl across the overpass with its guns swivelled off the side, looking down onto the pedestrian walkways and a small two-lane road. Anton adjusted the communicator hanging from his chest and followed the eight other men as they broke open a maintenance access ladder down to the warehouse complex. Anton stood with three other ITDM soldiers as the team began to infiltrate the compound.

The staccato racks of gunfire made Anton look down to the street corner on the side exit of the warehouse. The Coalition commander recognized the duo of Halo spotters before the first assault rifle round panged off a parked sedan and caromed into the brick fence. “Targets spotted -- get in the damn warehouse!” Anton yelled as he raised the assault rifle into his shoulder and fired, eight rounds zooming down range. The other two riflemen fired in two bursts killing one of the spotters as he tried to reload; the second darted in through the gate of the warehouse.

“This is Guardian Actual we’ve spotted forces at the main objective -- moving forward with the assault.”

Anton Gecas dropped down from the ladder and ordered the ITDM soldiers to a door leading to the large storage floor of the complex, on the entirely opposite side of the Halo’s personnel concentrated in the offices of the facility. It wasn’t long before Anton and the Coalition soldiers encountered Halo scouts, and automatic fire began raking the truck loading bay. Emerging from behind the engine block of a large 18-wheeler, Anton unloaded half the magazine from his AR-682 into the lone scout behind a small dual-tread cargo tower. “Go inside and get to the offices through the catwalks -- you two, we’re clearing the floor.” Anton ordered, rushing past the dead sentry as he reached a closed garage.

“Bang charge on the way!” One of the soldier’s replied, covered by Anton and another while he laid a small charge of A6 explosives on the door. “Ready!” Said the Private and followed the two infantrymen as they took cover, less than five seconds later the thin metal door was melted from the severe heat of the A6 igniting a block of combustible magnesium. Inside the garage the din of gunfire followed quickly as the ITDM force ran into the stunned rear guard of the Halo’s as they reeled from the attacks in the heart of the complex.

Anton Gecas pried himself from the side of a opened freighting box and came around the corner to spot the pair of local gang dealers and their Halo entourage in the impromptu negotiating room of the complex. Clutching at the foreguard of the AR-682 Anton sprayed the three men with over a dozen rounds before slamming the door closed and looking onto the next one, which was soon assault by two other ITDM.

“Get up and fucking eat it motherfuckers!” One of the soldier hollered as he poured rounds from the MR-18H into the cargo box, one of the corpses falling out through the back door. Anton exchanged the magazine of the rifle as the ITDM opened fire on the unarmed gangbangers and Halo advisors while they scrambled. “They’re getting ready to clean house and slip out the back!”

“They’re not the ones walking out of here alive, put them down!” Anton said as he covered an ITDM soldier as he crawled into cover. Holding down the trigger and swinging the AR-682 across a group of three, furniture behind and around the trio splintered and broke apart from shrapnel as one of them collapsed onto a table. “Wipe them out and find out where their hardware is!” Anton ordered, reloading once again while advancing with the soldier equipped with the 18H.

“There’s a security door from the storage floor to the office, it’s locked down!”

Anton Gecas crouched behind a stack of packaged field guns on a pallet in the boot of the warehouses L-shaped layout, nearing the corner as the ITDM troopers ascending in the catwalks above came down on top of the small guard center. In bursts of personal weapons and assault rifle fire the ITDM cut the Halo’s off into the long warehouse floor. “We’re at the trafficking center, you have Terrans in with the Halo’s … give them a round too! What of the human merchandise?!” Gecas responded, the entire operation only considered with the intelligence that there were human beings held in the facility as opposed to merely guns and drugs.

“They’re holding out -- watch for fire!” An ITDM yelled, peering over the hood of a four-wheeled truck and firing the MR-32 from his shoulder; as the Halo’s were pinned back into long rows and stacks of crates and packages the ITDM formed a line across the warehouse as they Belkan forces finally reached them. A pair of infantrymen hemmed through a line of Halo’s as they attempted a flank, crawling over a line of spilt crates before they were bathed in automatic fire.

“Find the cell leader if he isn’t among the bodies already. No ID necessary for these ones.” Anton replied to a Sergeant nearby, leaving cover as the ITDM laid down fire for Anton to near a stack of impromptu cubicles draped with camouflaged netting. “Priority for electronics and hardware.”

Anton Gecas came out from behind cover after the last three Halo’s had died in a group trying to rush for an emergency exit out the back. As they moved in Anton was joined by another Sergeant, the Belkans not too far off. “They’re smuggling hardware planetside, using the human goods in place of hard currency -- they’re bringing the Aschen Scatterran slaves from the Sphere.” Gecas replied, harshly consuming the response about the prisoners. “ … We’ll mop up whatevers left here and be out before the Terrans get any ideas. There will be contacts to the other networks on Terra, we find those we will find our rats.”

Anton unloaded the AR-682 a final time, taking a second to last magazine from his chest rig. “Sixty million of us go into Aschen bondage through this hellhole after the war -- what’s your plan to stab the Aschen after they’re done getting fat off our spoils?”

Anton Gecas watched from a few meters away as a pair of ITDM soldiers identified a Halo cell leader, his attire identified by the spray-paint emblem on his back. “When Achilles begins, we will not be killing indiscriminately like this -- it will be Scatterrans on one side and the rest of the humans on the other, against the wall.” Anton remarked, dropping the AR-682 from his grasp and clenching his hand into a fist in his gloves. “There will be two trillion of us in servitude by the time your Emperor’s plans to bring about the fall of the Aschen will be working.” The Coalition commander said with a cold demeanor.

“There’s a whole mass of rot underneath this crust of this miserable planet though -- Kampf knows this just as painfully as we do, any strike to the heart of the Aschen must come through here.”

Anton Gecas stood next to the Belkans as the corpse was hurriedly taken away in a dark green bodybag. Around it other corpses were strewn, shell casings covered in pools of blood and as the ITDM soldiers placed the corpses into three separate piles in the facility based on their proximity. Hauling the last two Terrans and Red Halo advisor onto the nearest pile Anton turned away as a garage door to the warehouse came sliding open, a pair of Leopard APCs shining headlights into the facility.

“No one is ending the Aschen but us -- the war wasn’t yours to lose this time. When we are making a cheers to the campaign after taking Langara, we’ll be drinking from our glasses.” Anton said to the Belkan as the Scatterrans made their last check of the dead and whatever information they could find. “Now the Halo’s will move things out of centralized depots like this and into smaller cells. Soon we’ll have to cut open the Terrans and Aschen they have in the underworld too.”

Anton Gecas took his hand away from the computer mouse, scratching at a point on his palm as he parsed over the screen in front of him. Adjusting the fit of the Caprican City PD uniform he wore, the Director peered over his shoulder as one of the other Scatterrans, in a similar uniform, reclined in his chair with a stretch.

“Y’know just for the record, before all this shit’s buried by Directive C and everything, pretty sure this is illegal.” The technician remarked dryly, his headphones in his hands while chewing a piece of gum. “I mean, not that I’m concerned really -- only illegal if the Aschen admit we’re here.”

“Yeah, foreign nation admitting to Coalition aid after a war it practically fought alone. The Internationals are reeaaally gonna’ own up to that.” A Sergeant jutted in, tossing a wadded paper ball around in the back of the monitoring van. The technician felt the wad bounce off the back of his head and spun around.

“Only thing I’ll admit to is we look fucking stupid in these uniforms -- I’m pretty sure any natives that see us will be pretty easy to call it out.” He remarked, and pressed his face back towards the monitor.

“Yeah, which is why we’re in the van dumbass.” Sergeant Waynr said concisely, and the two Scatterrans exchanged a brief string of insults until Anton reached a hand out and tapped at the screen in front of him.

“Just shut the fuck up and get ready for the pluck. They gnab their target and we’ll sweep the area clean of any electronic evidence.” The Director said, turning a few dials upon the high-powered jamming and interference equipment. “Let’s not get Dauch fucked with this one, alright?”

“Hah. Dauch. Fucked. Right.”

Ean Falcor yawns and stretches as he walks along the streets, looking for a decent place to eat

High above Langara, and Caprica City, thousands of small satellites began to come online, somewhere between low orbit, and the thermosphere, a Hard Light Shield began to form electro-quantum mechanics similar to a Watchtower's Aegis field. A Top secret Aschen project dubbed 'Lunatea's Veil' Which was incorporated into Langara's defenses sometime following the Galactic War.

Shimmering like sunlight on water across Langara's sky, the barrier began to stretch as far as the eye could see.

Feidlimid made a request across the beleaguered engineering through damage control comms, "Damage control, Critical, please assess transit support field systems in sector tau-psi-6. Possible tampering. It is not aligned correctly with neighboring sectors and it would be good not to explode right now."

The temperature was rapidly rising in the primary coolant crucibles for the engine and he had to keep enough head-end for the shockpoint jump to initiate cleanly. The ship was already starting to hum with the load on inertial dampening systems attempting to keep rei from turning the crew into red paste.

As the Cobalt Glaive gained altitude from the spaceport, several ground based emplacements that dotted Caprica City's towering skyscrapers, and the surrounding mountains swiveled to life, they almost immediately began to garner firing solutions, as dozens of heavy anti-orbital gun batteries fired, causing deafening booms to reverberate all throughout the city, as school bus sized ferric-tungsten slugs were hurled up at the ship, calculated for trajectory at near relativistic velocities, igniting the atmosphere into a white hot plasma as they screamed through Langara's atmosphere.

Raid sirens began to blare through Caprica City's streets, as Langara's defense fleet began to move in for a star-side intercept.

Leading the charge was the Reverence II 'Esteem' But there was little they could do on the other side of the Aegis field, so the fleet moved with coordination, and haste only Aschen ships seemed to be able to pull off, they moved into position.

Ean called this out just as one of the Tungsten slugs from the orbital defense arrays clipped across the ships shields, shearing off the starboard side. No damage was done to the ship itself, but the shields would not be able to hold that bombardment for long.

Feidlimid busies himself with trying to keep the ship from melting as he replies, "I have an option if there is a breach. Thin then shift the shield and throw hot plasma at it. Hot metal at least will puncture less armor. It will cost us core health and fuel but needs must."

Rei grit her teeth and poured as much power as she dared into the ship to evade the defense arrays, and push them further away from the planet. "Crazy bitch... I did not want Aschen Rim 2.0.." She muttered as she continued their ascent towards the rapidly closing shield. Rei just hoped they could make it far enough before having to resort to other matters.

Dozens of Type 100 'Pilum' Orbital defense guns fired their second salvo in unison, sending each magnetically accelerated projectile upwards and into the sky.

The first time these weapons installations had been fired since the Great War and the subsequent Strategic bombing suffered at the hands of the Coalition, the well maintained defense installations were intended to destroy capital ships in low orbit. While incredibly accurate, they weren't supposed to be deployed against a ship the size of the Cobalt Glaive. With Targeting data piped in from EVE, they kept on, with their only limitations being the hydraulic servos that gave them movement.

They cracked their terrible report once more, and it reverberated through the skyscrapers, and the mountain valleys below.

The shimmering barrier continued to expand across the horizon, their escape avenue directly to orbit had been cut off, they would need to adjust trajectory for one of the other closing holes further on the horizon, or risk being trapped.