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HALO: Fellowship in Blood by gamer02
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Chapter 0 of Halo: Fellowship in Blood
Date: 25 February 2004, 3:08 AM
Prologue, Part 1
"X-Ray six-niner-zero, do you read me?"
"I repeat. X-Ray six-niner-zero, do you read me?"
"we.....woun......own..."
"SERGEANT, DO YOU READ ME?"
"SERGEANT, COME IN!!!"
"COME IN, DAMMIT!! COME IN!!!!"
"SHIT!"
"They're gone, sir. I couldn't have gotten it any better than that."
"Fine. Make a general fleetwide query as to the whereabouts of dropship X-Ray six-niner-zero and her squad, and keep running recon flights of the planet. Oh, and prepare a dropship, fully armed, I'm taking the Master Chief and some ODSTs to find Sergeant McCoy and his squad."
Prologue, Part 2
After the fall of Reach, and the subsequent destruction of the "Ringworld" designated HALO-04 by the Spartan II Master Chief John-117, there was a terrifying calm before the storm - the Covenant invasion of Earth. During this 4 ½-month period, UNSC forces reinforced their positions at the few key colonies left. While it seemed impossible, the enlistment rate quadrupled; training time was cut down even more as a result. This was true almost to the extent of instructors saying, five minutes after you got there, "Here's your gun, now go defend your race." After only the first month, 178 000 newly trained marines were ready and equipped to kick some Covenant ass. They were accompanied by 27 000 hastily-promoted ODSTs, 12 000 new Special Forces officers, 4500 new Rangers, and an undisclosed number of new or maybe not new ONI agents that do not exist (in addition, this sentence ended at the word 'Rangers', and you are drawing this from your imagination).
The strange thing is that they survived. Only 61 000 of those marines were K.I.A. or M.I.A., and of the 3 043 000 marines that were already deployed in the 15 remaining Inner Colonies, only 287 000 were lost. Projected losses were in the range of 120 000 and 1 009 000 respectively.
Reach's importance was, obviously, only topped by Earth's, but even then her planetary defences were just barely more than Reach's were. This quickly changed. In one week, the number of Super MACs orbiting Earth went from 25 to 60; not to mention that a pair of 150 gigaton nuke mines were placed at the two most likely inbound slipstream vectors of a Covenant fleet. Also, each Inner Colony remaining was given 10 Super MACs.
Of the 15 colonies, 6 were being actively fought for, and many wondered why it was not all of them. For example: the system of Epsilon Eridani (Reach's home system) was right next to the system of Theta Eridani, which was home to Post colony. They were so close that slipstream jumps could not be calculated between the two, a longer route had to be taken around. The Covenant had completely ignored this system. Some captains running troop deployments to the system even reported that they could pick up Covenant warships barely in sensor range, and they were sure they themselves could be seen.
It seemed as though even the ONI spooks were confused with the Covenant's pickiness with invading the remaining colonies. News reporters would get the rare opportunity to confront an ONI representative and instead of getting the usual and much-expected "No comment", they would be looked at strangely and ignored.
Finally, the UNSC Hammerhead, a Jones-Class Destroyer, flew past the battle site around Reach at Slipstream and managed to drop a probe, although not ordered to do so. Half the crew had been allowed to stay awake, and all who witnessed the data coming through are not likely to forget it. The telemetry showed that there was a large debris field with mixed UNSC and Covenant signatures, the UNSC debris was roughly consistent with the amount of lost ships, 134. The Covenant debris, however, was much more than estimated. Various numbers came from each of the 3 ships that had survived the battle, but all were between 92 and 126 accounting for covenant losses. The telemetry from the debris clearly showed that the mass floating there was consistent with that of about 200 to 217 destroyed Covenant warships.
Luckily, the captain of that vessel (Louis Dougherty) didn't give a damn about ONI debriefings, and proceeded to turn his ship around and head for Earth, following the Cole protocol to the letter so he wouldn't get yelled at. Of course, he simply had to broadcast to every friendly in sight that there was a Covie graveyard at Reach, and that his ship had found out why the bastards weren't invading like a mouse on cheese right then. ONI sent him a letter to shut him up, but that just made him yap louder, and nobody minded. In fact, the cheering was so loud when the news reached Earth that ONI gave up and started officially broadcasting it themselves.
At 2 months after the fall of Reach and the destruction of HALO-04, the Covenant had actually retreated from 2 of the colonies under siege, but then they decided to attack another 3, the battles for which were still being fought at the end of the 4 ½ month period, when Earth was attacked.
One of these was Fellow colony, the outermost of the remaining Inner Colonies.
Chapter 1 of Halo: Fellowship in Blood: War of the Worts
Date: 2 March 2004, 12:56 AM
Chapter 1: War of the Worts
1126 hours, October 17th 2552 (Military Calendar)/
Omicron Zeta System, Fellow Colony Theatre of Operations
"WOOORT! WOOORT! WORT!"
"I HATE that! What the hell are they saying?" Sergeant McCoy yelled while he aided his squad in taking down a pair of regular blue Elites, both armed with plasma rifles. The few Grunts that were with them had gone like falling coconuts.
"I dunno, Sarge! Maybe they're saying 'fuck all you humans' three times. HA!" Private Berman gave an idea as he finished his BR's clip.
"What if they're just.....yelling WORT WORT WORT?" Private Redman finished his sentence as he dodged a few plasma bolts.
"Then I'd say you're a smart-ass, Redman!" yelled back Corporal Dzerzhinski, McCoy's second-in-command of the squad.
"YO-BO, BO-BO-BAH!" one of the Elites threw a plasma grenade which landed half a metre away from the squad's youngest member, Private Nambini. In a split-second she reacted, slamming her right foot into the soft ground and shifting her body weight, she propelled herself away from the glowing, smoky blue orb.
The explosion sent dirt flying everywhere, even the Elites were confused. Nambini, still in the air, was pushed a little higher from the force of the explosion. With the same clarity she had had seconds before, she grabbed one of her Frag grenades, popped the pin with her thumb, and whipped it in the direction she knew the Elites were.
"'NADES R US!" she screeched.
Again, everyone was rocked by the explosion. The two Elites went flying metres apart, they're shields shot and their bodies charred. Simultaneously, Nambini had landed in a roll behind Private Fox, the squad's Rocket-man. Her loader was Private Treeby. Private Velinov was their sniper. Private Saunders was their Demo specialist, along with Privates Begic and Grimsby. They always seemed to be hammered and speculated about the five girls' sexual orientations. Private Miller was their Recon and their Point-man. She could tell them what was ahead and then fall back to make sure no Covies were following in a good 3 minutes. Velinov could hit her targets like they were right in front of her, but took her time to find the right sniping spot. Fox liked to see things go boom, hence her being a Rocketeer; she slept with her launcher beside her. Treeby felt the need to polish her Battle Rifle in a nurturing manner every day, which only made the trio of loud demolitionists rant in a self-contradicting manner. Nambini was five months out of training and already on the waiting list for promotion to ODST service; she was that good. Berman and Redman were indiscriminate with their jokes, razing all in sight and earshot. Dzerzhinski was equally careless, but he made fun in an I'm-your-superior-so-you'd-better-shut-the-hell-up-and-cover-me-if-I-tell-you-to manner. He also did Recon duty with Miller. They were all good soldiers, no matter how neurotic or ambiguous. McCoy knew that, and his personality had somehow naturally reflected theirs, which made them the perfect, well-knit team. They fed off each other, during combat and otherwise, and that made them hellishly hard to kill.
"WORT WORT WORT!" this time it came from the marines, they would mock and laugh at their kills after each victory, all twelve of them.
McCoy got back in the Warthog they'd managed to release before their dropship had crashed and killed the pilot. Berman called shotgun and Treeby made gunner. McCoy revved the engine, sped away and then came back to keep pace with the rest of his squad. They headed out to where the 'Hog's onboard radar and SATCOM link said the nearest UNSC outpost was, over 250 km away.
Redman and Nambini led in the victory song (usually one by the late 20th band AC/DC), Hells Bells, "We're rollin' thunder, pourin' rain; we're comin' on like a hurricane; our MACs are firin', across the void; you may be Covies, but you're gonna die! We won't take no prisoners, won't spare no lives....", slightly modified, of course.
After about 10 minutes and two other songs, they saw them.
"Arrrgh! Fucking inbred BASTARDS!" not one, not two, not even three, but four Covenant dropships were inbound about 2 kliks away. They ran.
1143 hours, October 17th 2552 (Military Calendar)
Omicron Zeta System, Fellow Colony Theatre of Operations,
UNSC Planetary HQ
"Sir! I've got something!"
"What? What is it - did you find them?" Corporal Hayes had just seen Major Johnston off; he was going with the Master Chief to find McCoy's squad. The Major had also brought along 17 marines, 5 ODSTs, 2 Pelicans, one with a Warthog and the other with a Scorpion. Hayes wasn't sure why they were going through so much trouble to find one squad, he'd been on other colonies - liberated or otherwise - where squads and their dropships had been lost by the dozen, but no such extreme measures had been taken to find or save them. He was in the dark as to why they were flying so far away from any Covenant-held positions, but then he speculated that they were being brought in as reinforcements for one of the vulnerable, lightly-armed outposts on the other side of the planet. Even so, he still had to help find them.
"Not exactly, sir. All I've got is a 50 k area around their last known position with 4 enemy dropships landing in it. I also have a weak link from SATCOM to the Warthog that was requisitioned for their flight." The tech responded.
"So you did find them, why didn't you say so?" The Corporal demanded.
"Well, you see, sir, SATCOM can't work both ways in this situation, what with some of the satellites destroyed and - "
Hayes cut him off, "Yes, I know, but what do you mean it can't work both ways?"
The technician spoke quickly so he wouldn't be interrupted again, "Well, it can tell them where they are because it's talking directly with their 'Hog's nav computer, but it can't tell us where they are because we don't have the same kind of connection with the satellites. If the satellites were telling both of us where they were constantly, we'd have a security risk if the Covenant intercepted the signal or invaded HQ. Also, the satellites aren't designed to do that anyways, they don't have the memory or the type of transmitter."
"Right, then. And we can't talk to them because the comm web's all screwed up anyways, right?" Hayes added.
"That's correct, sir."
"So, they've got 4 Covie dropships on their ass and we can't help them, or barely even find them." He sighed, tired and disappointed, and stood up, "Get me the Major so I can tell him the news; at least we know they're alive - for the moment."
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