Battle for Foothold:Requiem for John-117 by Terminus
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Battle for Foothold: Requiem for John-117(coded)
Date: 5 May 2004, 12:29 AM
An explosion ripped the air, throwing aside giant chunks of masonry. The air rang with gunfire and hoarse screams, and the surviving marines huddled behind the fallen Pelican.
A elite paused, looking around; it though it heard something.
A moment later, something equivalent to a fully loaded semi truck hit it right in the jaws; the blow penetrated the shielding, and ripped the Elite's soft cartilage out into the air, a trail of blue blood following.
Master Chief, no longer a translucent shade of doom,
paused briefly to loot the fallen Elite of it's weapon. His rifle had ran out of ammo; he slung it behind his back, gripped the plasma rifle's awkward grip unfavorably, and sighted out the main focus of the fighting: the fallen Pelican.
"Goddamn it! Where's the reinforcements?" Private Lupez yelled out as a bolt of plasma hit the rock right in front of him, the chips flying out and ripping small cuts on his cheeks. The sergeant yelled back.
"Lupez! Shut the fuck up, soldier, and fight! Don't stand there crying your yellow face off, soldier! Reinforcements or not, we're kicking these blue freaks' asses so hard our boots are goin' to be all the way up to their fuckin' brains! Got that, private!"
"How many, Cortana?"
"Well, Chief, around 200 Covenant, according to the sat. comm. All we can do is to help these marines out til' the frigate Merrycut gets here."
'It's funny,' thought Private Kahnz as he knelt patching up a wound. 'War was supposed to be heroic.'
A grunt, breathing in the airs of it's homeworld through a face-filter, sat behind a large boulder as it fiddled with it's pistol. A bandolier of grenades was sprawled right next to it. 'Too easy,' thought Master Chief. He aimed carefully his looted rifle, and shot off a single burst at the grenades.
A blue-hued explosion ripped through the battleground, flinging aside corpses of Grunts and some Jackals. A arm, ripped off by the explosion, hit Lupez in the head; blue blood drenched him as he yelled, "Reinforcement, Yeah!"
Master Chief moved fast, rolling to the side as some plasma grenades landed right where he had stood, fizzing blue energy. He ran, Spartan-Speed: He rolled again as the grenades exploded with energy. he could hear Cortana chattering with the pinned-down marines, telling them that help was on the way. She didn't tell them that the help consisted of a single Spartan.
Kahnz took up again his rifle, ditching the spent medkits. He took the position againt the comm. relay. "Was that reinforcement, Chambers?" The soldier on the relay nodded.
"A AI. Must mean that at least a frigate must be here."
Chief jumped at the surprised Elite, who grunted with shock as the half-ton mass of the Spartan crashed into it's frame. The blue shielding rippled crazily as Master Chief bashed it back again, and started firing bursts of plasma.
Lupez took a shot with his battle-rifle, managing to hit a blue Elite. The shot bounced off the shielding; annoyed, Lupez threw then a grenade to the side. The fragmentary grenade exploded seconds later.
"Chief, help is on the way. The Merrycut has a full complement of Helljumpers; they should be here in a day, at most."
"A day?"
"The best they can do, Chief."
"So what do you think they are, ODST's?" Lupez yelled at the other soldier, who squatted on the ground loading a rocket launcher. The soldier, whom Lupez did not know, said merely, "I hope so."
"Well, if they are coming, they better come fast."
The Covenant forces regrouped, Cortana saw, around a temporary set-up of Shades and stationary shieldings. They started streaming out through the side, the guns pinning down the marines as Elites started flanking the Pelican.
"Chief, we have to some how get rid of those turrets up on the ledge, if the marines are to have a chance." The Chief said: "Understood."
So the Master Chief, getting up beside a fallen chunk of debris, surveyed the situation. Three gun turrets firing away mindlessly at the Fallen Pelican. No, at the ground around it. He wondered for a while why they just simply did not fire at the Pelican until it blew; then when he saw (and Cortana said into his ear) the Elites running silently into the surrounding areas, he understood: the Covenant were trying to capture these men.
He took out a plasma grenade, activated it, the blue flame writhing in his hand, and he threw it; it arched over the fallen masonry, through the air like some brillant shooting star, and landed right on the head of one of the Grunts manning the guns.
"Git it off! Git it off! Help!" It screamed, jumping off the gun and running to the nearest other Grunt, screaming again "Git it-" The plasma grenade then exploded.
"Thank the Lord, you lucky sonofabitches, the guns are down!" Cried the Sergeant. A few near cheered.
"Chief, I'm pretty damn amazed. A beautiful throw, at that. Why-"
"Cortana, switch the view to energy-detection."
"Aye aye, captain."
The world suddenly turned blue; and the Master Chief could see the hulking shapes of Elites running silently through the marsh fens. A few more minutes and regardless of the turrets they would be able to flank the marines.
(mindless violence for now, on the next chapter everything will be explained, like how the Pelican crashed, how the nearest ship is a day away, etc etc.)
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