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One Marine by Bob Straitt
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One Marine p1
Date: 9 December 2006, 5:50 am
It was raining again. Maybe he shouldn't have eaten the Charms after all. After what must have been a week on the ring, Lance Corporal Stevenson hadn't seen any sunshine, as a matter of fact, he'd seen nothing but rain. It had been a week of wading through knee deep mud and muck at night and barely sleeping during the day. He wiped the rain out of his eyes with the sleeve of his muddied and torn blouse for about the hundredth time in the last hour. One week (or was it two? three?) of avoiding the screams of low flying Banshees and Covenant drop ships. One week (or maybe it hadn't even been that long?) of this cursed rain, sometimes pounding down so hard it hurt, sometimes just a fine mist. It wasn't, however, the rain that bothered him. It was the not knowing. It was the constant fear of running into a group of the Covenant. Wondering when their patrols would find him. Wondering when it would be his turn to die.
If Stevenson had been paying attention he would have heard the far off sounds of exploding grenades. He would have heard the ever so gentle "whoosh" of SPNKR rockets firing and the useless explosions as the rockets impacted harmlessly into cliff walls. He might have even heard the angry screams of men and grunts as they engaged and killed one another with no remorse or lay dying on the torn battlefield. But, he wasn't paying any attention whatsoever. His MA-5, unloaded and slung across his back, hadn't been cleaned since he'd been on the Autumn, a week, a day, or a lifetime ago, it no longer mattered.
He rounded a tree only to narrowly dodge a stray bolt of blue plasma. NOW he was certainly paying attention, and his blood started to boil. Pure animalistic rage consumed him. Rage towards the Covenant for attacking the Autumn, rage towards the brutal way his squad was slaughtered, and rage towards himself for surviving. Pure, unadulterated rage. He pulled a frag grenade from his vest and hurled it into the ever growing fray; the ensuing explosion sent now dead grunts and jackals flying in a spectacularly satisfying fashion. NOW, finally no longer wondering, Stevenson un-slung his MA-5, locked, loaded and began showing the Covenant that even a lone, tired Marine had teeth and could bite.
The other Marines were on the opposite side of this small valley, and as the Covenant forces turned to face this strange, new threat, this crazed human, the Marines attacked with full and lethal force. Within a handful of seconds-which count for hours in a firefight-four of the six commanding Elites had been neutralized by well placed shots and slow, steady trigger squeeze from Marine snipers, countless Grunts and Jackals died in heavenly explosions from both grenades and rockets, and the three banshees that had been ever present, circling overhead had either been shot down or had simply bugged out; leaving the airspace free of the deadly green glow of their fuel rod cannons.
The battle had turned, the Covenant, who had entered this fight with confidence were beginning to scatter. The two remaining elites, trying desperately to hold their forces together, watched helplessly as cowardly Grunts and Jackals ran in every which direction but towards the humans, the "Infidels".
The battle had turned because of one tired, dazed Marine wandering hopelessly over a ridge; one Marine who, through his blood-stained vision, never noticed the strange ripple in the air beside him, the very same Marine who never heard the snap-hiss of an activating plasma sword behind him. One Marine, who, because of the cursed rain and adrenaline flowing through his veins never felt the plasma sword entering his body, slicing him cleanly in two, from his right hip to his left shoulder ending his life in a spray of vaporizing blood and gore.
2 weeks earlier
Reach
Lance Corporal Stevenson, lounging on his rack opened his MRE, hoping that maybe this one contained some Charms. Most Marines believed that Charms were bad luck, and caused it to rain, and summarily threw them away. Stevenson didn't buy into that, and always carried Charms with him. He had a particularly nasty sweet tooth, and when you're in the middle of nowhere, who knows where your next hard candy is going to come from?
Damn! He thought peevishly, I always end up with Skittles or M&M's, can't I get lucky for once?
He threw the MRE to the floor and began looking for a Marine to trade his newly acquired bag of M&M's off to. Maybe he'd ask for their jalapeño cheese. That stuff was...
A klaxon alarm sounded suddenly and The Pillar of Autumn sprang to life. Suddenly, the barracks was a swarming mass of Marines grabbing gear and double timing it to their battle stations.
What the hell is going on? He wondered, Reach is the second safest spot in the galaxy, next to Earth herself…
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