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The Traitors Hand by Mark Price
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Home Turf Advantage
Date: 30 May 2005, 7:27 PM
The landing had not been a comfortable one, but the crew onboard Escape Pod 042 were feeling fortunate enough to be alive, Price took a deep breath and stepped from the vessel, surveying his surroundings; "Home"
"Not quite Price!" the sergeant dusted off his beret as the crew began to disembark; "Its an overgrown hamster wheel is what it is!!" he turned to Aziz; "You call that a landing", the question was rhetorical, sergeant Johnson was not a happy bunny,"Davies get away from that edge", Davies meanwhile was standing at the edge of the 'world' peering into the unknown, he made a whistling sound while holding his hands out in a mock measuring of how close the Escape Pod had come to falling off the side (and into the unknown), Aziz felt the need to defend himself, he turned to the sergeant; "Sir we were hit by gelfire, the navcom went down and the screen smoked up, it was all I could do to put us down, either that or six feet under" "Ok, ok calm yourself", Johnson said as he looked around "What we got here; Price?" "Looks like earth sir" Price replied, "Your smart mouth ain't doing you any favours at the minute, boy," Johnson deplored flippancy in anyone else, "Well Sir, it seems to be a self sustained system, the wind must be generated from somewhere, he picked up a large rock, walked to the edge and dropped it over the side, after what appeared to be about 40 seconds the rock flew beneath the structure, "there's some kind of gravitational field that levitates towards the structure some ten to fifteen miles below us, if we had a spare NPS (Price thought of Jones who had not made the landing) and an a.i.construct we coul.....", "forget it this ain't no science class, what can we expect terrain wise?" Johnson stepped towards the EP, Price spoke quickly realising he no longer had much of the sarges' attention, "Er...much the same really sir, could be some cities, er...I...I just don't know", Johnson moved into the pod, Aziz was furrowing his brow at the main console, "Aziz, whats happening up there?" Aziz didn't know how to explain it, "Sir, the covenant aren't landing, not yet anyway, but they're hitting the Pillar Of Autumn pretty hard, she's currently on a trajectory for this planet." Johnson was eager to find out what kind of fight they could be expected to put up; "How many EP's made it off?", "137 made it, 65 are missing, 32 never took off and 6 appear to have overshot the planet, must have been a guidance problem," there was a pause, Johnson thought of the men and women aboard those six Escape Pods, the screams, the eventual silence.... "Sir?" Aziz shunted his sergeant back into reality "137 huh, if they were all full that would give us about a thousand strong crew right, anything else to help our situation?", Johnson needed more than just people this time, "Well sir we have 3 Constructs online, a platinum and two gold, get this the platinum came down with the spartan; Master chief, just 14 kilometres from here. The one gold is covering tactical airforces, the other is still on the Pillar Of Autumn, as far as I can tell most of the vehicle drops hit their spot, we have 2 tanks, 1 warthog and 1 mongoose all within a 5 kilometre radius, so firepower shouldn't be much of a problem, over 80 aircraft and ships are still active, roughly 36 of which are covering the Pillar Of Autumn, the rest appear to be making or moving vehicle drops by large cluster numbers of NPS." Johnson was impressed with the numbers " Admiral keyes obviously has a plan for us to dig our heels in on this overgrown Goddamn ferris wheel, make it our own, like home turf advantage, I like that, keep on the intel til I say otherwise", "affirmative Sir", Johnson moved back out into the sunlight, squinting as he did so, "Davies get in there and do a detail check, Price you get in there too...." Price was a little confused, after all it didn't need two men for the task, "to help out sir?" "No stupid, find me some cigars, that landing shot my nerves to shit and if theres a medkit for calming people down in there, then surely to God there should be some cigars oh and Price you leave Jones where he is and don't take his NPS, we get through all this I'd like to think we can come back and bury him, you understanding me boy!"
A covenant strike ship skitted across the landscape, Naspinar peered through the slit at the lush spectrum of colours that populated Halo;
"Home"
A barely audible com came into his ear "The Commander said no, sir", Nas was furious, again he felt that his brother had used his rank to stop him dead in his tracks, "patch me through to him now!", the kiggyar did as he was told. "Commander" Nas said, tinged with sarcasm "Yes sergeant" came the reply,"With all due respect I believe that we should not let the humans get a foothold on Halo, we cannot just keep picking them off from the air, I request a full scale ground assault before they get a stranglehold....." his brother cut him off; "Your request is denied", the audio went dead.
Zachinar stood at the helm of the bridge watching the human mothership gradually hit the atmosphere of Halo, he had deliberated for 20 minutes too long. the High Council had made it crystal clear that no-one was to set foot on Halo before they had a chance to study it, after all they had never come across such a forerunner facility before, although there had been reference to them. He did not want to risk using vetnar missiles for fear of any striking Halo, so an attack force seemed to be the only option left, that option hadn't kept the humans off Halo, Zachinar now had to send in ground forces to clean up, surely the High Council would understand, wouldn't they?
"Sarge, we have 12 assault rifles and pistols, 1 sniper rifle, 16 magazines, 30 clips, 22 grenades, 2 medkits and 2 pairs of binoculars," Davies drew breath and looked at Jones' corpse; "And enough rations to last about 24 days." "Any cigars?" "No Sir, 'fraid not", Johnson looked almost dejected, "Ok Davies you know the drill; wrap and bury the spares portside, dispense the rations, give Aziz the sniper, you take a medkit and give Price the other, equal shares on the grenades and magazines as best as possible, pass me a pair of hawkeyes, give the other pair to Reed or Clarke."
Johnson had been dreading this moment for some time yet he knew it had to be done, slowly, he lifted Jones' dogtags from around his neck, "God bless you kid, your sacrifice shall not be in vain, you can rest assured of that" he continued with his small prayer.
Reed was kneeling down upon the ridge he had been assigned to, so far they had been lucky, no covenant dropships or strike ships had ventured their way but luck had a habit of running out, "Hey Clarke d'ya think any other ships made it off Reach? With the Pillar Of Autumn wrote off there are no jumpships about and we're a bit far from home" Clarke never taking his eyes off the near horizon of mountains spoke calmly "Sure its possible, but at the minute let's just keep things in perspective, Reed check out those mountains over there dude, something appears to be moving, Reed looked through the binoculars and began to shift their focus, his jaw dropped, staring back at him, were 4 'elites', 3 'jackals' and 6 'grunts', Clarke taking note of Reeds reaction asked the question "What do you see Reed?", the reply was downright unpleasant, "Trouble............".
"Sarge! We have company!" Clarke screamed down the ridge, the covenant had just over a kilometre to cover before they were upon them, with attack vessels, that would take them roughly 40 seconds, 'elites' would not want to share the spoils with any others.
Johnson shouted back "What we got?!" "4 elites Sir!" Reed felt he had assessed the threat correctly, "Ok take cover! Aziz, get up there with them, take out what you can, get Reed and Clarke to give you cover fire. Johnson felt the adrenaline, he knew that it also coursed its way through the veins and arteries of his men, "lets show those bastards what it takes to be a marine, Price, Davies, run the left flank behind that ridge, take out any stragglers, Costa, your with me, buckle up people and I'll see you all on the other side!" This 'setpiece', Johnson believed, would play out no different from any other.
The Rapier class human strike vessel; Fidelity came out of subspace and into a warzone; the Carrier class jumpship Pillar Of Autumn had crashed on the strange and unknown ring that the covenant were calling Hallar (the closest human language could come up with appeared to be Halo), Ensign Dorn turned to his Commander "Sir, I'm afraid we can't do anything for the Pillar of Autumn now, she's no longer spaceworthy," at that the platinum class A.I. construct; Louise intervened; "Commander Arden we must not allow this firefight to get in our way, the delivery to earth of our discovery is paramount, to get involved with such a conflict and possibly be destroyed along with the rest of the Pillar Of Autumn's crew would set our endeavours back 2 years, we must not get involved!". The Commander enquired to his Ensign "Can we jump to any outposts?" "Not enough resources Sir, most of which we used just getting here", Arden, pointing at the Blip that represented the Pillar Of Autumn, uttered the treacherous words; "What about her resources?".
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