HELLDIVERS:The Chance Meeting

Storm Troopers

Engagement ranges in some parts of Malevelon were longer than normal, mostly due to the hills poking over the treeline. It was where Farkas and his men made their next stand, at a FOB deployed on the top of Hill Number 097, a Hill that protected the road leading to an important MSR of both the Helldivers and UNSC Marines, as a battalion of Bots advanced from down below. Mortar sentries tracked targets spotted by the Helldivers and their Marine allies, thumping away HE shells at the enemy's advancing force.

Overhead, UNSC aircraft struck like hammers against other advancing enemy units, the other elements defending the various hills engaging the enemy's advance forces with disregard. UNSC troops on the next Hill over from them fired into the mist with dumbfire missiles and rocket launchers while waiting for Reinforcements. Malevelon was Hell still. SEAF troops lay dead in the trenches around the FOB, their comrades fighting by the Helldivers simply because the 'Special' SEAF troops that dropped into Hell reinforced them.

It was honestly rather strange to see guys that were sometimes twice their age, firing assault weapons at the advancing automaton threat like the enemy was not the most dangerous damn thing this side of the Orion Arm. The Bots had slaughtered at least a Division's worth of men since Malevelon became a hotbed for combat, not to mention however many Helldivers they'd managed to kill.

He calmly watched a Longsword glide in, drop a precision-guided bomb in the distance, then power its fusion engines and fly away like it wasn't even in the AO, all while enemy anti-air fired flak and missiles at it. He sighed deeply, walked over to one of the Trenches and patted a SEAF rifleman on the shoulder, causing the young man to yelp and jump. He was a future Helldiver candidate, probably at eighteen, maybe nineteen years of age.

Sitting down in the trench and watching the tracers going back and forth, the man hummed a tune and loaded rounds from half-empty magazines to other half-empty magazines, leaving the plastics in a dump pouch somewhere on his person while loading the ones with full loads into his chest rig and looking outward. He lifted his AR-23 and shouldered it, peering down the scope at the silhouettes and red eyes below.

The drone of a gunship's engines filled his ears. He looked up to see a UNSC Pelican firing its 40mm cannon into the mist below, explosions causing several enemy eyes to wink out of existence as it touched down. It spewed out a platoon of Marine riflemen meant to reinforce the area and dropped something entirely different to them. A bipedal machine uncurled as its pilot boarded it. Armed with a four-tube guided missile launcher on its left arm and a Gatling cannon on its right, the massive warmachine stood on two articulated legs and walked forward, colored the dark-green of the UNSC Marine Corps.

One Sergeant-Major Avery J. Johnson jumped into the Trench, shotgun at the ready and cigar between his lips, then looked upon the Veteran Helldiver and inquired, "You Chief Farkas?" to which he simply nodded. Johnson extended his hand and said, "Sergeant-Major AJ Johnson. We'll be your new pals here on Hill Ninety-One, 'till evac's called..." only to pause as the six-barrel cannon on their walker revved and began spitting out lead in a long, loud and harsh chainsaw-like burp.

Farkas looked up at the mech and watched the spotlight mounted to the front of its boxy, rotating 'turret' hull light up. He looked to Johnson and asked, "What the hell is that thing?" because it almost, point for point, resembled the EXO-45 Prototypes he'd seen when assigned to Guard Duty on Tien Kwan. Bipedal, armored mechs with heavy weaponry mounted to their arms.

"We call it a Mantis," Johnson grinned as he sat down in front of Farkas, peering over the parapet of the trench and shouldering his shotgun. The Marines moved up with equipment unloaded from the back of the Pelican. Machine guns, mortars, AT weapons and the likes were set up around the FOB as the 'Bots started firing back at them again, the sharp snaps of their weaponry ringing over their heads.