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James' Fate Chapters 1-3 by Bludawg7
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James's Fate Chapters 1-3
Date: 1 November 2004, 6:47 PM
Chapter 1: The Battle of Reach
"GET OUT OF THERE!" Master Chief screamed into the com. James willed his hands to move faster. The explosives on the nose of the Pelican stubbornly moved.
"Almost, there" James breathed to himself. Fire from the incoming Elites impacted all around him, throwing up chunks of debris. Then James felt the dull thud of a needle penetrating his air tank. His thruster pack erupted into a whirlwind of escaping air that threw him violently into the station's hull, then into space. Stars clouded his vision as his head impacted the inside of his helmet. This is it, James thought. The suits moniters blinked amber as his pulse and blood pressure rose. Then years of training and experience kicked in. No, its not over. James reached for the manual release buttons on either side of his thruster harness and detached it. Even without the pack, James was still careening through space. The rapidly dwindling station rotated in and out of view as he tumbled through space.
James unslung his Assault Rifle. He was rapidly rotating head over heels and roughly to the right. He tentatively fired a shot straight up, parallel to his body. His rotation abruptly slowed. Another shot to his left and James was not rotating any longer, only flying through space at an astonishing speed. And the middle of space battle is not the best place to do so, James thought grimly to himself. The immediate problem taken care of, James turned his attention to his situation. Heading unknown, armor intact, weapons operational, 9 clips of AR ammo, minus 3 rounds, and a collection of other equipment. Now all he needed was...
A large contact on his motion detector and a collision/proximity warning jolted him out of his concentration. Craning his head to look, he sighted a nightmare on top of all possibility. He was headed straight towards a Covenant cruiser.
Chapter 2: Insertion.
James hurtled toward the Covenant Cruiser. At first he was worried about the anti-missile point-defense, but the ship was too occupied in battle to pay attention to one stray projectile. A blue-white beam flashed from it's single large turret, continuing beyond his range of view. James hit the magnification. This ship was in fact not a cruiser, but a much larger ship he had never seen before. That fact did nothing to comfort him though.
His motion tracker shut down from the overload of movement all around him, and he felt the utmost sense of vulnerability. James examined the cruiser and his own trajectory. He was traveling too fast to completely clear the ship, but with several bursts from his rifle he could at least hit the ship at an angle, and hopefully bounce harmlessly off the ship's shields. Hopefully.
James fired his weapon. He rocketed to his left, once again rotating slowly. He braced for impact. 1 kilometer. 500 meters. More bursts from his weapon soundlessly vibrated through his arms. 230 meters. 100 meters. Suddenly his proximity warning blared again. Three rapid fire streaks of white shot past him on the right and impacted onto the nose of the cruiser. The shields brazed solid silver, then rippled as they nullified the force from the projectiles. Then a maelstorm of missiles tracing white smoke trails through space surrounded him, detonating on the ship's protective screen. 20 meters. James hit the hard hull plating of the ship and bounced away. Firing his weapon again, he hit the hull again. Hard. The suit's warning blared as his shields drained to one-quarter. But he now had a firm grip on the surface. Wedging himself between various arrays, James assessed his status once more. WHY am I going to get into this ship. Pushing uncertainty aside, he crawled toward a nearby crater formed by an impacting Archer missile. It wasn't deep, but it gave him an insertion point into the ship's interior.
James crawled inside. Gravity settled in the pit of his stomach as he hit the deck. Readying his weapon, James scanned the small, dark compartment filled with cargo containers. No immediate threats. He needed to work fast now, for he felt impending doom approaching.
Chapter 3: The Bridge
James leaned against the bulkhead and peered out of the door way. Although the room he was in had no lighting at all, the hallway beyond was brightly lit. Not a very ideal place to roam around in the midst of an enemy ship. James knew that whatever he was going to do on this ship would involve the bridge, or at least the Covenant equivalent of a bridge. That was his primary objective, for now, he surmised.
The clatter of alien feet down the hall startled him and he sank further into the darkness of the room. Low, off-purple lighting flooded the air, and James edged behind a large hexagonal container. A large, black Elite strode into the room, dragging a squirming Grunt along. The Elite threw the Grunt against the wall and growled something in his language. Translation software whispered in James' ear:
"You clumsy idiot. You are lucky Zuka Hamammee no longer serves aboard this ship."
And with that, the Elite pulled a plasma rifle out and fired into the Grunt's diminutive chest several times. The smell of scorched flesh filtered through the suit's air system into James' helmet. James slowly pulled his rifle out. With exaggerated slowness, he found the Elite in his sights. With luck, the Elite's shields would be down. He started to depress the trigger....
Then he hesitated. Black armor? If his memory serves him, James distinctly remembered colors being of some significance within the Covenant ranks and hierarchy. What quicker way to find the bridge? Silently thanking his own intuition, James waited until Black Suit left the room. Little did the Elite know, he had now picked up another shadow.
To be continued...
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