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2553 Orbital MAC platform: Cairo
0400 hours
"Sir, brief contact whispers, nothing completely stable, but whatever it is its moving fast." The Ops Officer on the MAC platform reported to his CO.
The Lieutenant leaned over the Ensign's shoulder, typed in several commands and studied the outcomes.
"Dropships, by my guess, Ensign, get the auto cannons heated up and target those 'whispers' and fire." The Lieutenant ordered, stood back and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Guns heated, first salvo in three, two one— sir contacts are gone…nothing there, not even the whispers." The Ensign stated, his face contorted with confusion.
"Alright Ensign, get a squadron of Longswords to pick up the whispers' trajectory, and follow them to wherever they're going." The Lieutenant said and starred into the Ensign's display.
"Yes Sir, Eagle two-four and his boys are en route to the coordinates." The Ensign said and sighed. "They're here aren't they Sir?"
"I think that's a safe bet, warm the MAC, we're going to have company for dinner, don't disappoint our guests, Ensign." The Lieutenant said and turned to Admiral Hood standing at central view screen. "Admiral, we have a problem Sir, Covenant silhouettes of cruisers and frigates at the edge of the system, regrouping for an assault Sir." The Lieutenant reported.
"Acknowledged Lieutenant, we've had the same transmissions from our ships and the other stations, the MAC stations are heating up, and Admiral Hart and Shires are moving into the front line positions, we're ready Lieutenant, man your station, its going to be a long day." Hood said and again turned his attention to the view screens.
* * * * *
The Ship Master silently had removed his golden dress armor and replaced it with the matte black standardized special operations armor. He placed the helm over his head and sealed the armor, activated his shields. The team's objective had changed; they would set down in the blind spot of the human surveillance, enter the cliff wall's Forerunner facilities, emerge at the small city at the centre of the island, and insert their teams into the lift that led to the Control room.
The Phantom slowed hovered and the four Elites exited the craft, three more Phantoms eased into the drop zone, deployed their men and followed each other back to the atmosphere, Ship Master 'Ultazee already knew the near impossibilities of those pilots' survival, and accepted the consequence. The alien warriors divided and raced to the entrance of the cliff face.
"Move! The vermin will not be pleased with this intrusion; we must make haste to the centre of the island!" Ultazee commanded and swept the hallway for human marines and proceeded after own men. A duo of Marines emerged around the corner talking and laughed, when plasma whined down the corridor and melted the wall behind them. One dove and rolled, landing in a half crouch and firing its assault rifle. The other landed on his stomach firing short bursts towards the aliens. Ultazee fired his own rifle, but at this range, the plasma was quite inaccurate. The Elite on point was riddled with a hail of 'shredder' rounds, spat up black blood and fell backward, badly mangled. But the second primed and threw a plasma grenade which fused to one of the human's helmets and detonated, killing it and wounding its partner. Ultazee strode to the wounded human, drew the marine's pistol and shot it in the head. Red blood spattered across the wall the man was leaning against. Ultazee waved his remaining soldiers forward, and peered down the next hallway, it was short and led out onto a docking platform, where a human dropship had just landed, unfortunately more humans were here, and to add insult to injury, an armored human was revealed, assault weapon raised.
"Demon!" one Elite cursed and let loose a hail of plasma.
Fred's shield flared as the oncoming plasma washed over him, he squeezed off two bursts and knelt behind an overturned ammunition crate.
"Marines! Fall back! Alert the base!" Fred barked and fired twice more. His motion tracer read four hostile contacts, and another seven moving in on corridor nine, directly towards the lift to the Control Centre. Fred was pinned down, and multiple targets were braking off around him. Three had escaped and the one who had kept him under fire was bugging out. Fred stood and emptied his clip into the straggler. The Elite's personal shields cried as they disappeared and a trio of armor piercing rounds drilled through the alien's body armor and into his skin. Blood spurted in fountains of black from the wounds as the alien soldier fell forward. Fred jogged forward, pausing to crush the Elites skull with his boot and followed the three contacts.
"Master Chief?"
"104, what's your situation; we have Covenant Elites entering the complex." John 117 replied.
"Roger that Chief, I am perusing three hostiles heading towards your position." Fred said.
John's acknowledgement light winked blue and the chatter of automatic weapons fire crackled through the com.
Ultazee tried to raise their rear guard on the communications but failed, that Sangheili was gone, and that meant that the armored human had lived. Ultazee cursed the humans' existence and continued with his two remaining warriors, the lift was close now, but the cliff's interior facilities were drawing to a close, and the Elites had to run across an open ground before reaching the lift. The door to the outside was in front of them, Ultazee paused to discard his spent rifle and drew his second, resistance was thick, at least in this sector, he wished to raise the other squadrons on his communicator, but shunned the idea, realizing it would in conclusion compromise the mission. The door slid open with a quiet 'snick'. But just as it did, a 14.2mm shell blew off the head of the first Elite, which left only two warriors left, that is, if either of them survived the run. Ultazee fired his plasma rifle blindly, hoping to pin the human snipers long enough for himself and his subordinate to find cover. Streams of golden lines from rifle fire seared around him, striking him several times. The Sangheili dove over the trench like barricade a fire team of Marines had taken cover behind and drew his sword. The ice blue lance of energy sliced through to human defenders with deadly vengeance, two of them fell without a sound when his subordinate finished the rest of them with a wash of plasma. Ultazee deactivated the lance and discarded it, while slipping a new charge into his plasma rifle. The lift was just ahead, the two alien soldiers stepped inside and around the bodies of two fallen marines. A mere seven Elites awaited him; two squadrons had been completely decimated, while these two had sustained heavy casualties.
"What happened to your men, Commander?" Ultazee asked, anger running feverishly through his voice.
"The armored humans, they caught us off guard and slaughtered the squadrons that had proceeded ahead of us." The Elite said.
"By the gods…you said armored humans, as in more than one of the demon?" Ultazee asked.
"Yes Excellency, we encountered three of them on our way here, while you mention the contact with one of them when your team was on their way?"
"Unfortunately you are all too correct Commander, but unless we get to the Control Room now, the vermin will overwhelm what few soldiers we have left." Ultazee paused, hit the door control, and followed by a series of commands for the lift. The lift was immense, it could easily handle a Phantom and several Wraith tanks…and to add to that, the nine Elites being the only ones on the platform, made it appear even larger.
"Excellency, in truth, even with our brothers here, who are superior to humans in small numbers, we cannot hope to assault a large battalion of them with only nine of our warriors. We need reinforcements, Excellency. With a full force of troops we can overwhelm the vermin's defenses and recapture what was meant to belong to the Covenant." The Commander stated.
"On normal circumstances I would agree with you Commander, but reinforcing our position is ranging into the impossible, that is the reason I chose to assault the island, its lift was the only way to get close enough to the Control Centre…we on our own, yet I have a plan that proves victory can still be achieved."
John helped the last two marines aboard the Pelican and took his seat next to Ryan and Will. Fred was running point on the hunter-killer teams searching the island, and Kelly and Troy were following the Elites down the shaft with two squads of marines. The Pelican fired its belly jets and flew out form the docking platform and then back towards the Control Centre. Their ETA was seventeen minutes…much too long, Marine forces at and around the Control Room had already been preparing for the attack, the number of hostiles were still unknown, but they were ready for anything. Fred's team had found nineteen Covenant casualties, along with twenty-two hostiles still alive and somewhere in or on the island. None of this made sense, because security reported only four Phantoms touching down, dropping their soldiers and bugging out, and to add to that, four Phantoms were taken out by a Longsword squadron just outside the atmosphere, nothing else came in or out. Which raised the question about how many soldiers had gotten into their territory, John pushed the thought aside, knocked a fresh clip against his helmet, then slid it into the receiver in his rifle, the other Marines and Spartans in the Pelican did likewise: checking sniper rifles, grenades, C4 charges, anything that would need to be working properly for their mission.
"Admiral! Slip space rupture just above the Ring, silhouettes match a Covenant Frigate." An Ensign cried.
"Lieutenant, I want two MAC rounds through that ship, yesterday." Hood stated coldly.
The Covenant Frigate's intentions were suicidal, and its crew knew that, but their objective was achieved, they were close enough to deploy their soldiers, and the humans had to have known that. Several hundred drop pods ejected from the ship's belly while four or five Phantom dropships accompanied them. The Frigate didn't last long, several MAC rounds sliced through the alien metal, hitting everything in their way to the other side of the ship. The reactor was compromised, and the frigate imploded, but its shields held the blast inside, and gutted the ship. The hulk floated there, dead in space. The craft was scanned for survivors, when finding none; it was cleared off the field and thrown into orbit of a neighboring moon.
The Pelican approached the Control Centre on a glide and set down on a docking platform a few kilometers away. A trio of marines waited for them, John's HUD tagged them as Master Sergeant AJ Blackwell, Sergeant Major Avery Johnson and Staff Sergeant Derek Rivers. The comprised squad of Spartans and Marines stepped off their dropship and towards the Sergeants.
"Master Chief, its good your men could make it here, we have a situation," Blackwell began, "Covenant drop pods just landed on the other side of this canyon."
"How many, Marine?" The Chief asked.
"Their closes to two hundred Sir and with AA out of the picture for another two days, the five Phantom dropships en route to this location are going to be able to fly right in." Johnson said
"How many Marines do we have Sergeant?" John asked.
"Three platoons Chief, each of us lead one." Blackwell replied.
This wasn't enough men to take on a Covenant assault wave, but John, Ryan and Will stood a chance, if they used the right tactics, but the Marines could defend the structures and the Control Room. John hastily opened a private com channel to Ryan and Will.
"Meet me down stairs in five." John said and stepped aboard the Pelican.
"Roger Chief, we'll be there." Ryan answered and followed Will into the structure.
the Pelican fired its jets and pushed away from the platform, but then eased onto the surface below. John hopped off the ramp and jogged past a few Marine Sentries on full alert and took the driver seat of a Warthog. Will and Ryan emerged shortly after; each of them taking a position. The LRV sped across the sand and rounded a canyon wall then saw what lay beyond. The beach beyond was blanketed with drop pods, and Elites were emerging from each of them. John scowled beneath his mirrored visor and gunned the jeep's engine. The LRV flew over a sudden drop off and landed with a crunch as a Covenant scout was sucked under the massive tires. The 50mm chain gun roared an angry challenge and mowed down an advance team of Elites. Luckily John and his team were approaching the rear guard teams of the alien force, while the brunt of the wave was assaulting the Marines held up in the structure. The Elites must not have known what kind of mess they had gotten themselves into. Doorways, docking platforms and suspension bridges high above the surface, courtesy of the Forerunner provided perfect locations for the UNSC snipers to whittle away at the Elites from a place of refuge.
John killed the Hog's engine and stepped out, firing a quarter of a clip into an approaching Elite, while another half went into the next. Ryan hopped off as well, his assault weapon shouldered and ready. Will slid out of the Hog, pausing to slip the charges of C4 over his shoulder and retrieved his MA2B, cut down rifle, from the anchoring points on his back. The trio of super soldiers jogged up behind a large collection of boulders and assessed the situation. John came to the same conclusion each time; they did not have enough men to take on a brunt of so many Elites in the same place. John signaled to Ryan and Will and sprinted forward, rifle raised, ready to fire, when four Skyhawk fighters soared overhead, and a barrage of carpet bombs hit the Covenant position. John stopped with a slight slide and brought his left forearm over his eyes to shield the brilliance of the ensuing inferno. The smoke and fire cleared and only several alien warriors remained alive, and they were mortally wounded.
"Sergeant Johnson? Who ordered that air strike? I thought our support was cut off." John asked into his com.
"Orders came directly form the Admiral, Sir." Johnson replied.
The FLEETCOM channel crackled through his helmet's speakers and belched static. "Yes, Admiral?" John replied.
"Master Chief, the Covenant have jumped in system, we can hold the cruisers off, but their dropships are deploying boarding parties in zero gee just above the station, Master Chief, gather what men you can and get up here." Hood ordered.
A Pelican dropship soared in form the atmosphere, seared with plasma. "Master Chief! Admiral Hood said you needed a ride, get in, son!" the pilot roared over his boom mike. John, Ryan and Will stepped aboard. The troopship gathered itself, shut its atmospheric doors and sped up into the black.
* * * * *
"Admiral, the Master Chief and his men are entering the platform's C-Hanger, they should be coordinating with out Marines in a few minutes." The Ops Officer reported.
John felt the sickening lurch in stomach as the clamp seized the Pelican. Ryan hit the quick release button on his harness and floated towards the atmosphere doors. John hit his own release and floated outside. Two squads of ODSTs were already outside the station, fighting brief zero gee skirmishes with the enemy. John raised his own rifle and clenched the trigger. The normally loud rattle of the MA5B's muzzle coughed silently, as if heard from underwater. A nearby Elite caught the high velocity rounds in the back, while blobs of purple blood gushed into vacuum and floated near the alien warrior. Two more sets of silent flashes appeared to his right, his teammates focused their fire on the interlopers as well. The battle made them all feel disoriented, it was too quiet, the usual blasts of assault fire, the whine of plasma, the screams of panicking combatants….none of this was present, when a men fell, it was silent, when a grenade went off…nothing but a flash…it brought John out of sorts. The Spartan pushed the thought aside and riddled an alien with fist-sized bullet holes.
John's SQUADCOM roared with static and slowly came to. "Marines, move back into the station and defend the launch bays from the Covenant inside, that's an order, move!" John barked and blew an Elite off the platform with the grenade launcher attached to the rifle's underbelly. John turned to see Ryan's shield flicker and die, then the eight foot tall alien leveled his rifle at the Spartan's head. Will leapt forward in slow motion, as it seemed due to the zero gee, and hit the Elite with full force. The sudden jolt caught the Elite off guard and its weapon was lost. Will landed in a half crouch firing his weapon. The Elite tried to stand but the shredder rounds tore through him like a hot knife through butter. The ODSTs were moving to slowly, pausing to take cover and fire at the enemy and checking their teammates' bodies. John considered chewing them out but that would only take more time, they needed those marines inside the station now, or every one of them was going to die. It was not a matter of the Marines being horrible combatants, only that the Elites in large numbers were overwhelming their positions. But Spartan or Marine, no difference a Phantom had just made another zero gee drop, which meant that even the Spartans' place of defense was crumbling under the weight of the attack.
"Spartans! Fall back inside! There's too many!" John ordered and several bursts of ammunition erupted from his rifle. Two blue acknowledgement lights reluctantly blinked blue and Will and Ryan slid down into the airlocks. John fired off the last of his clip and turned the make a leap for the airlock.
Second Lieutenant McCaughey knew she never had a chance to shake the two Seraph fighters behind her, and to add to her imminent demise, her Longsword was already spiraling out of control. The Cairo seemed to race towards her as if in a fury, and it was approaching quickly. Another plasma blast struck the single ship, finishing its engines. McCaughey screamed and brought her arm in front of her face when the surface of the station connected with the belly of the Longsword and engulfed it in flame…
John gathered himself for the leap, but caught in his peripheral vision a Longsword fighter sliding across the deck in a ball of flame. John considered the consequences, accepted the risk, and leapt. The Spartan cleared the nose of the fighter, but it clipped him from the wing's base. Pain washed over his side and threw him into a harsh tumble, hurling him against the wall above the airlock. An Elite stepped over him with its weapon leveled with John's face. John slowly closed his eyes and everything turned to darkness…
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