Helldivers: Democracies' Edge

Malevelon Creek

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 was more 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.

Likely, Calvin could 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 troopers' 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 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 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 over and it's firing mechanism must have gone off. As it hit 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.