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Prodigal Son Part 12(long over due)
Posted By: Scott D
Date: 14 August 2004, 9:04 AM
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Part 12: The way I lived my life
Scott 079 walked forward through the mess of bodies, ignoring the praise and surprise of the other marines. She was alive, but hurt, scared, dirty. Scott knelt down to her prone form, looking at her taking in every aspect of her features. His hand touched her face, tingling, as if the whole of his body had forgotten about the incredible pain in his left arm. Scott could only think of how much Adrian Yu had loved this girl. She looked at him in terror.
"Kyoko Adrienne Yu," Scott began unsteadily, "I promise you..." His words wouldn't finish in his mouth; he didn't know what to say. Kyoko was weeping before him, kneeling in terror, the black soot from his gauntlet spread over her cheek, his hand shot back. "I'm..... I'm..." his mind raced for an answer. "I'm sorry Kyoko... for all of this."
Scott paced back and forth; the marines had gathered their supplies. They were unhappy at his plan, but there was no way he would be dissuaded. "This is suicide, how are we going to move one hundred and fifty civilians' four clicks in the open. We don't even know if the hanger will be there, how do we know it was torched?" This was the same complaint he'd been hearing since he ordered the Corporal to gather the remaining men.
They had no transports that could move the whole of civilian mass at once; at best the one remaining warthog with its heavy weaponry could stave off aerial assaults, at least for a brief moment. That moment of respite, if properly executed would be the key to getting them to the hanger, to the one transport shuttle large enough to hold them. Then they would leave this world, narrowly avoiding heavy plasma fire, and then a blind jump anywhere away from Reach, from his home.
Scott's mind worked furiously searching for the data necessary to get off this world, using the communications uplink of his suit, and the data processor he had stripped from Tommy's fallen corpse he had grimly assessed the situation. Reach would fall; there was no defensive action on the planet that would ensure the lives of these civilians, and more importantly, Kyoko's life. The pangs of guilt still struck at his conscience every time he looked at her, his choice, his betrayal. She reminded him of his unit, of the others dying and being burned by the rain of plasma coming from the Covenant's assault forces. He was living a lie by denying the nightmare.
Now the marines were armed though, and the petrol was being funneled into the Warthog's spare tank, ten marines, one Spartan, and nearly one hundred and forty civilians. To them it was over, the marines were terrified, and the civilians were even worse. Kyoko seemed almost the worst, but Scott would be carrying her, she was alpha priority now.
"Are you mad?" Simmons was yelling at him, Scott was priming his weapons caches, reloading clips. To Simmons and everyone else, he was a faceless black terror hidden behind titanium armor blackened from plasma burns. His golden amber visage hiding his eyes and his mouth, all they heard were the electronic recordings and transmissions of his voice. Scott didn't care; they didn't need to see who he was, what he'd been or what he'd done. They needed to live beyond this nightfall. "Are you fucking listening to me? I'm not going to send a hundred forty civies to be burned alive by Covenant artillery!"
Simmons was a young inexperienced Corporal, and this was probably the first real heat he'd ever seen. Scott didn't care, Simmons was going to his orders whether he liked it or not. "Corporal, we're getting these people off this planet, and not a one of them, not a single one of them is going to die today." Scott's voice was hard, alien coming from the speakers of the blackened armor. Simmons seemed to back down, "I want you on that Warthog with your best gunner, and whatever ranged weaponry you can rope together Corporal, we're going to make sure no covenant comes even close to them on this world or the next."
Scott was running with the VIP, he had Kyoko behind him, his assault rifle was kicking into his shoulder, picking off the grunts that were rushing the group. The first wave of Covenant had come on them a click outside their bunker, one hundred and fifty human soft targets giving off heat hadn't attracted their sensors amid the flames and smoldering rubble of the Citadel's ruins, but a ghost scout had spotted them in the streets. It must have been radioing in as the depleted uranium slugs from the warthog tore into the flesh of the driver, and the central console of the vehicle. Exploding into a shower of sparks and a blue plume of plasma, the scout was gone, but it was the first sign of the difficulty of their extraction.
The civilians were uninjured for the most part, they could all run right now, but this was the first click, how many of them would last out the second or third, and most importantly, the fourth to get inside the hanger. Kyoko was terrified, but sticking close to him. He was at the vanguard of their civilian rush, their surge of humanity bucking through the broken and blackened streets amid the melted buildings that once towered over them. Scott led them as he would lead his fellow Spartans, without reservation or hesitation save for their mission parameters.
The Banshees screamed over them in an overt display of their foreign destructive might, the Covenant in command of them were clearly overjoyed at the slaughter they had lazily stumbled upon as they leisurely circled. Scott had planned for this eventuality, he anticipated it sooner, about six hundred yards back he had anticipated heavy armored resistance, and the warthog with armor piercing weapons had been scouting specifically for this threat. He planned for the worst, he expected every Marine to die, he expected himself to be bleeding but pushing on, he was the only one who could pilot that ship, and he was the only one who had the hacking software to reignite the engines of that shuttle. Scott would not die here, he would die in hyperspace, he would be shot, his insides bleeding and melting till they fused with biofoam and advanced carbon plating. But he would complete this mission, these civilians, these sinless men and women would be delivered from the fiery death that even now was raining down upon this world.
As Scott watched the first of the three scout banshees circle over his precious cargo moving to his goal, barely four hundred yards away he gritted his teeth and let his adrenalin surge. With his anger, his grim refusal to accept their presence, he raged against them and his mind seemed behind his eyes watching him as he commanded the Marines. "Mark three eighteen, fire pattern Zulu basic! Respond Hicks, Respond Paulson!" He was ordering the back up artillery to move to the middle of the back and open fire with long ranged rifles. Scott had his own equipment, scavenged from the bodies in the rubble of the ONI section 3 building, long ranged armor piercing high rate of fire rifle edged into the slot of his shattered shoulder that burned in pain with every swing of the barrel. But he was conserving his ammunition, until they closed to 100 yards; the VIP was his soul responsibility.
The VIP was Kyoko... and the 149 other civilians behind her. She would never love him if they didn't survive. She would never love him period. Scott had accepted this long ago, because he knew he had no concept of love. He could never know what existed between her father and mother to create something so beautiful, so wonderful that he hated everything he was. He could never be like her and be simple, be sinless. His hands were too steeped in blood. In his mind, watching the Banshees explode in blue flame as their plasma batteries shattered from the concussion charges in the nose cones of the jackhammer rockets that were spearing them now. In his voice he was a hard killer, remorseless and capable, a proud warrior who was the pinnacle of human creation. But he saw something else, the reflection of the amber mask he wore in Kyoko's eyes. She looked at him in terror.
"One click to waypoint! Keep your fire lanes tight!" One hundred fifty civilians remained.
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