Harvest Files: Arizona

Chapter 4: Dam Insurrection

CHAPTER 4: Dam Insurrection

A few days ago...

The elevator opened up to the hangar and the four armored agents stepped out, walking over to a Pelican dropship. The Mother of Invention was flying in an orbital pattern above the planet Algolis, waiting to deploy the agents to their mission. Arizona and North approached it first, stepping in. North sat down in the pilot's seat while Arizona took the co-pilot's seat. Washington strapped down next to Tenn in the troop carrier section.

Arizona ran through all of the preflight checks: warming the engines, arming missiles, spooling the minigun, stuff like that. After he finished he gave North the thumbs up, who in turn, checked with the bridge for their departure.

"Command, this is Sierra Five-Niner ready for dustoff. Can you confirm takeoff clearance?" The familiar southern drawl of the Director sounded over the comm.

"You have a green light, Sierra Five-Niner. Good for takeoff." And with that, the Pelican blasted out of the hangar and spun in a barrel roll once before immediately turning and flying down towards the planet's surface towards their designated landing zone.

The small dropship rattled and shook as it entered the atmosphere, the outer hull of the landing craft heating up upon entry. Once they broke the outer atmosphere, the shaking lessened and the heat died down as the ship sped towards the LZ, now 5 kilometers away.

Once reaching their destination, North slowed the engines down to a hover and gently set the craft down on a ridge overlooking the dam. He dropped the ramp and unstrapped himself, slipping out and moving back to the troop section. Arizona followed. North spoke up.

"We can't get any closer in a vehicle or else we'd appear on their scanners in more ways than one. We have a 2 mile fast march to get to the dam, so that'll take us 10 minutes if we hustle it up. Once we get within 1000 meters of the dam, everyone switch to a secure comm line with only your squadmates until we get the generators back online and their scanners down. Let's get moving gentlemen."

After his little speech, North grabbed his sniper rifle off the wall with an MA5B as a support weapon if things get dicey. His two Arkblades in the form of broadswords were clipped magnetically to his thighs. Wash grabbed his MA5B and two knives that he kept in sheathes on his chest. His A.I, Sigma, appeared on his shoulder while they talked about ways not to get themselves killed. Tenn had his usual loadout of two M6D pistols, plenty of ammo for them, and several throwing knives. Zona just picked my MA37 of the floor and slung it over his shoulder.

North was the first to step out, sweeping the area with his sniper rifle. Tenn warped next to him using his equipment, Wash jogged out, and Arizona calmly stepped out with his AR aimed at the surrounding ridges. Once North signaled it was clear, he started jogging down the hill with Tenn right behind him as Wash and Zona handled their six. It was a long run to the insertion point, and they had to make sure we weren't going to be ambushed.

After about 7 minutes of jogging, we all stopped marching for a hydration rest. Zona slipped his helmet off and grabbed the canteen attached to his belt, chugging down at least half of it after his first go. Coffee tended to dehydrate a little bit. Tenn slipped of his fish-bowl EVA helmet and started drinking as well. His bright white armor was a little distracting when the sun was about to go down. North's purple armor was dark enough to blend in, but the bright green stripes kind of gave him away, and Wash was suited with his black and yellow armor. Arizona had the darkest colors out of all of them, being black and dark green, so he blended in pretty well.

North put away his canteen and they all slipped their helmets back on. He held up an index finger and made a circular motion with his forearm, signaling break time was over. The agents picked up their weapons and began another jog, though this one was a short 4 minutes. They stopped at a ridge overlooking the dam, and that holotable did not reflect its defenses very well.

Along the top of the stone dam were several manned machine gun turrets on tripods swiveling in every direction behind sandbag cover along with two full platoons of Insurrectionist marines. Two large towers on either end held four armed snipers in each tower, each aiming out a different window.

On the near side off of the dam, there was a gate there between two towers armed with sentry turrets poking out, two aimed at the gate, two aimed behind the gate. This station was manned by another platoon of soldiers.

On the far side was the bunker where the generators were held, the vehicle bays, and the barracks. This place was only guarded by a few squads, but they wore red and black and modified ODST armor with black visors. Those must be the elite teams, and they would be trouble.

The squad stepped back from the ridge and huddled up. Tenn was the first to speak.

"How the hell are we going to get past all of those soldiers? With those many guards, we could very well end up dead before you two even get in to that bunker!" Wash tried to think of something.

"We could call in an orbital MAC strike and soften them up," he offered,

"Too risky. We could hit the dam by mistake. If we hit the dam, getting the generators back online won't mean a damn thing," North stated. "We have to try and accomplish this ourselves. Wait, Tenn and Wash, could you two bring your A.I. out for a sec?" Tenn and Wash looked at each other, but both nodded. Omicron appeared on Tenn's shoulder, the dark grey humanoid figure. Sigma appeared on Wash's shoulder, his orange flaming body casting a little bit of light.

"Hello, Agent North. What were you thinking of doing?" Sigma asked. Omicron spoke up with his Megatron-like voice.

"Yeah North. What are we going to do?" North thought for a second while Arizona continued observing the dam. There was a lot of infantry.

"Well, I was thinking that you two could shut the lights off and de-activate their sentry turrets. I have an idea..." Both of the A.I's forms flickered for a second, then went back to normal. The exterior lights in the facility went out, scaring a few of their soldiers. Sigma spoke up.

"Agent North. we could only get their lights out. It seems their security algorithms are more complex than initially anticipated. They weren't programmed by the UNSC." Arizona crouched down, now curious.

"What do you mean, Sig? Are you saying their security systems aren't UNSC issued?" Sigma nodded his holographic flaming head. Arizona shuffled uncomfortably.

"This isn"t right North. This is a UNSC facility and most of these soldiers would be ex-UNSC. Why aren't the security systems UNSC?" North shook his head.

"I don't know, Zona. But this mission just escalated in importance."