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Meanwhile....
Posted By: Wraith<demented_lemon@yahoo.com>
Date: 5 April 2004, 1:32 PM
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The Spartan was hidden at the top of a nearby hill concealed completely by the surrounding vegetation. Looking down below through his sniper rifle's 2x zoom, he could make out the seven or so Covenant sentries guarding the building that they needed to storm. The Spartan, Ben, checked his rifle's ammunition via his HUD. Next he checked his shotgun. Even though he had checked countless times before in the last ten minutes, he couldn't be too certain. He looked down and to the East of the building. He could barely make out the silhouette of Spartan-150. Ben noticed that he was also checking his ammunition. The Spartan quietly slung the rocket launcher across his back and pulled a slim knife out of its sheath. "This is Aaron. I'm ready." There was a brief moment of static as the he cut the team frequency. The Spartans rarely referred to each other by their code names. Ben thought bitterly of his "code name", Spartan-027. Their superiors always called them by code name.
Ben sent a blue light signal through his HUD to acknowledge Aaron. Now all we have to do is wait for Jim to get back.... Ben thought. He had sent Jim ahead to make sure there were no extra Covenant hiding in the area before they moved in. he wasn't worried about Jim; he could sneak into a room full of covenant and tied their shoelaces together if he felt like it. He saw movement 50 meters off to Aaron's left and shouldered his sniper rifle. He zoomed in with the sniper's 10x zoom only to find his crosshairs resting on Jim's visor. He breathed out and set down his rifle. "There are two Hunters guarding the back entrance. If we can pull this off quick enough we may not need to worry about them."
"Acknowledged," Ben said. "Operation Green Dolphin in progress. Move in." He shouldered his rifle and once again hit the 10x zoom and looked down unto the group of covenant. Two Elites, three Jackals and two Grunts. Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! One of the Grunts turned around to see that four of his squad had found a new way to breathe through their heads. That was the last he saw before a slim, black knife was slit across his throat. The remaining Covenant, a Jackal and an Elite were left. The Elite shouted an order and the remaining Jackal raised his shield and stepped in front of his commanding officer. What the two hadn't thought of was that there may have been more than just two of the Spartans. The Elite felt the cold metal of a pistol barrel on the back of his neck. The third Spartan pulled the trigger and the explosive round from the pistol hit the Elite's spinal cord and literally blew the head off from the Elite. The Jackal whipped around only to be clobbered from behind with the hilt of Aaron's small knife. Ben was already down the hill approaching his two fellow Spartans. "Good job. Now let's get inside before those two Hunters realize they're seven short of their original squad."
They moved to the closed door. Ben pressed a series of buttons, but the door wouldn't budge. "Figures as much..." Jim said as he continued to wipe Elite blood off from his visor.
"Aaron? Would you please offer your services to the needy?" Ben said with a grim smile which lay hidden behind his visor.
"I'd be happy to oblige." Aaron replied as he began to un-strap his rocket launcher. At that moment a blob of green whizzed by Ben's head. He looked to the left and then to the right to see that the Hunters had decided to investigate from both side of the structure. He threw his sniper into its harness and drew his sidearm, the same kind Jim had used to take out the Elite. He started to charge the Hunter that had come from the right of the building, but at that moment a rocket appeared out of no where and all that was left of the Hunter was a big smouldering mess.
"Nice..." Ben muttered to himself. He turned around ready for the next Hunter, but he only had time to see it fall to the ground. The panel next to the door began to glow a light blue and the door opened to reveal a single, very confused looking grunt. The next moment there was a knife quivering in his forehead. Aaron walked forward and pulled the knife out of the collapsed grunt. He wiped it clean on the grass.
"Well at least the door's opened." He said as he sheathed his knife. They each walked in single file with Ben leading at point with shotgun drawn, followed by Jim with Battle Rifle shouldered. Aaron brought up the rear with Rocket Launcher at the ready.
Their mission was to take back the building the Covenant had stolen from the humans. The building was an important research facility on the actions of the Covenant. If they lost this to the Covenant they would lose everything they knew about the Covenant, which wasn't much but enough to give them an edge to the war. Further more, there was a human AI they needed to retrieve. So in other words, they had to move into the building, kill lots of Covenant, retrieve AI, and call in back to base.
They moved through the dimly lit hallway. From the outside the building had seemed small. It looked like a fast food restaurant but with satellites. The main part of the building was underground. The top floor was just one big hallway with an elevator at the far end and a handful of doors leading into storage rooms. Each door was kicked open and the room searched. They avoided the elevator to keep away from potential traps, and took the stairs instead. The stairs were winding, so you never knew what would lie beyond the next corner. At about the sixteenth bend, they could hear a loud steps ascending toward them along with barking noises heard from several Grunts. The three Spartans stopped in their tracks and backtracked to the top of the previous bend. Aaron primed a grenade and deftly rolled it down the stairs and around the corner. BOOM! The walls around them shook and the scream of an Elite was heard. They continued to wait for a few more seconds. Nothing. They moved onward, aware that the Covenant probably new they were there from the mini explosion set off by the grenade. They reached the first landing and met a welcoming committee of three Elites. One of them yelled a war cry before it disintegrated thanks to one of Aaron's rockets. Aaron hid behind a nearby pillar to reload his rocket launcher. Ben shouldered his shotgun and set to work on an Elite clad in red armour. The Elite was still looking at where his buddy had been standing seconds ago when Ben brought the butt of the gun down on his head. The Elite's shield flared a whitish colour and it also sprung into action. It turned around and clubbed his assailant across the head making the Spartan see stars. Ben brought himself to together and put the barrel of the shotgun to the Elites stomach and pulled the trigger leaving a gaping hole in the wide-eyed Elite. It snarled one last curse at the Spartan before quietly slipping to the floor dead. Jim had the other Elite in a deadly headlock, both of their weapons lying on the ground nearby. There was a loud crack as Jim snapped the Elites neck. The alien scum fell limply out of Jim's death grip. Jim got up, picked up his weapon and looked at the small crater where the first Elite had been taken down compliments of Aaron. "They want us to destroy the Covenant, Aaron, not the building."
"Sorry, my bad..." Aaron said. Ben could have sworn he heard a faint chuckle. The three Spartans looked at their new surroundings. The room was huge. Easily larger than three football fields. The ceiling was only about ten feet tall which would make seeing another Hunter less likely. They spread out and searched the room for more covenant. It was unnaturally empty. Just a few marble supports coming out of the ground and a desk in the middle of the room. Ben walked up to the desk and turned on the computer that was there. Through the computer he tried to make contact with the AI, but there was no luck. He did, however, find a program that unlocked all of the doors in the construct.
"Aaron, you're out of luck. You don't need to blow open any doors; I've unlocked them all through this program I found." He searched through the desk. He found several extra clips for his pistol. Aaron and Jim joined him at the desk.
"It's all clear." Aaron reported. Jim accepted some of the ammo Ben gave him. "So what do we do now?" Ben pointed toward the stairs.
They continued toward the stairs. These stairs weren't as long as the first flight, but after a few quiet minutes they made it to the second landing. They took a glance at the room before taking cover behind yet more pillars. There was more Covenant in this area but none of them even seemed to notice that there were three killing machines in the same room. The layout of the room was more filled than the last room. There were cubicles all over the place, much like an office building. It was swarming with Covenant, there were, however, no Elites. Or none they could see in that first glance. Ben nodded at Jim. Jim unlatched a thin dagger from his boot. The dagger wasn't as good as Aaron's, but it could get the job done. Jim silently crept in amongst the Covenant. All Ben and Aaron could do was to wait and give Jim cover fire if he was spotted. The minutes dragged by until a scream from a Jackal filled the air. Jim cursed heavily over the intercom. Ben and Aaron rushed in with shotguns shouldered. Ben's eyebrows rose as he saw the amount of Jackals and Grunts slumped over at desks and the sentries that were drowning in their own blood in the hallways. The two Spartans met up with Jim and found that he was pinned down by five Jackals at the end of the hall. "They've got my shield down and I forgot to grab grenades before we started this mission." Ben pointed at Aaron and then down a hallway and then rose to fingers. Aaron nodded and disappeared down the hallway. Ben jumped out from his cover and charged the Jackals and dodged two overcharged plasma shots. He fired off a shot at an exposed part of a Jackal, mortally wounding it, and then rolled behind a pillar. He waited a second and charged the Jackals again. He was only about six meters away and fired off another shot. At the second shot Aaron came out of nowhere and blew one Jackal to bloody ribbons and brought the butt of the shotgun down on another Jackals head in succession. The remaining Jackals turned away from Ben for a second to face their new threat. That one second gave enough time to Ben to deliver a solid kick to a Jackal's head. The other two were taken care of by a few more shots from the Spartans' shotguns.
"Thank God I saved you." Jim said as he jogged up to Ben and Aaron.
"Right..." Ben muttered, "Spread out. Search the rest of this place." This looked to be the last floor. Ben walked up to the computer in the middle of the room. He knew it was the one with the AI because several Grunts and Jackals had been seated around that one computer. He accessed the computer and typed in a series of numbers and letters.
"About time you guys showed up," The AI said. "If you're interested; there are two more those Elites and another Grunt hiding in the supply closet to your right." The Spartan looked to his right and sure enough there was a door leading to a closet with moving shadows underneath the threshold of the door.
"Organize yourself to be pulled...uh..." Ben trailed off.
"William." The AI ended Ben's sentence.
"Right. Anyway, get yourself ready to be loaded into my neural lace." The Spartan walked silently over to the closet and primed a grenade and rolled it under the door. He backpedaled to a safe distance and heard the scream of the Grunt. BOOM! Ben didn't bother to see the results. Ben went back to the computer and pulled a small chip out of a tray and inserted it into the back of his helmet. There was a cold chill that ran up and down his spine for a small moment.
"Hmmm...pretty roomy up here isn't it?" The AI asked.
"Keep it up and I'm leaving you for the Covenant, and I'll tell them to do anything painful you can to an AI." Ben replied. He liked this AI. It had a sense of humour unlike the last AI he had to work with. "Alright guys I've got the AI. Let's move outside and call for a drop-ship.
"I'm bringing your radars online. Surprised they weren't on to begin with." A small, translucent circle appeared in the bottom left hand side of Ben's HUD. He watched two yellow blips move around as Aaron and Jim searched the remainder of the area.
"Oh, cool," Aaron said of the team com. "New toy." Ben guessed that they too had their radars turned online.
"William, can you scan the rest of the building before we move out? We were assigned pest control too." Ben asked the AI.
"You would think there would have been more Covenant, but I'm not picking anything up. So I guess we're home free." The three Spartans moved up the stairs and then up some more to until they got to the top floor. Ben sent the elevator down just to see if he was right, and sure enough, a minute going down there was a sounding of the whole thing breaking apart and crashing to wherever the bottom was. They moved outside cautiously and called for a drop-ship to come pick them up. The Pelican arrived with a handful of Marines who, Ben guessed, were assigned for clean-up duty.
"Don't worry guys," Aaron said to the Marines. "We left a nice sized mess for ya." There were a few Marines who threw evil looks at them but followed it up with a grin. They knew that the Covenant that were there, still didn't know what hit them.
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