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Assault on The Octagon
Posted By: Ryan Tippet<giggzy_returns@hotmail.com>
Date: 21 October 2005, 7:48 am
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Anyone from Dunedin New Zealand will find it real easy to picture the Octagon ;) anyone else will have to do thier best to imagine it, accepting all critiscm, constructive or otherwise, I just like to hear what you have to say so yeah, thanks for reading it.
Corporal Jack McRae of the 21st shifted in his sniper hole. He was positioned in a burnt out building with a promising view from high up of one of the many alleyways leading from Central New Mombassa outwards.
100 metres north east of him, at two o clock, was his good friend and fellow sniper Joe Crawly. Together the two of him had topped the highest sniper rifle kills in their division of over three hundred marines and they never would forget it either.
Positioned around the New Mombassa town centre "The Octagon" were a couple dozen other snipers, all sighted on the entries towards the city. Also there were several heavy arms personal wielding SPNKR Rocket Launchers, searching the sky for possible incoming targets, banshees or Phantoms.
The reason for the amount of artillery here was simple: The Covenant, being the supposedly great tacticians they were would seek out the town centre as the perfect spot to continue their onslaught on earth from, having direct routes to numerous parts of the large city and views of the surrounding desert.
Jack opened up a direct route to his comrade who he could see lying prone in a clock tower with his weapon laid down beside him, "So… how's the family been lately?" Joe sniggered in return, his only family was his polished S2 AM Sniper Rifle but he played along as usual, "Not bad, not bad reckons I'm married to the army if you ask me." Jack laughed hollowly, "Tell her she has nothing to worry about where the armies concerned, you're married to your gun."
"Yeah sure thing, and I'll take it on a honeymoon as soon as the aliens turn up."
"You sick bastard."
And of course the Covenant chose this moment to attack.
The attack appeared to be well thought out and if Jack had taken a moment to hazard a guess he would of assumed the carrier thousand miles directly above their position had given away their positions.
The rocket boys went first, cut down by the air sizzling beam rifles then any particularly obvious snipers. Luckily, being veteran snipers, Joe and Jack were well positioned and would be the last people to draw fire if things stayed this way. But they didn't.
Joe was already firing and Jack followed the trails of twisted air from the barrel of his rifle to the rooftops surrounding the Octagon where hundreds of Jackal Snipers were taking free shots at the marines from above.
Below him a marine behind a wall of sacks screamed in infinite pain, clutching his scorched leg. To his left a fellow sniper dropped over thirty-five floors to his bloody death.
Jack had seen this all before, and, with barely a thought of burning hot particle beams ripping up the air, he settled his eye to the S2AM's sight and began picking off the snipers. One, two, three, four… By eleven he was beginning to draw the attention of the enemy forces and chose this moment to lean back and seek out a possible new sniper hole.
He was about fifteen floors up an office building that reached it's peak at forty floors and he became climbing the stairs to the twenty-fifth to return to his job.
As he scaled the stairs he heard the familiar voice of the Captain over the COM: "We've been taken by surprise Admiral, I'm sure the boys being slaughtered here wouldn't mind a Scorpion or two to back them up? Or is that too much to ask?"
"You're growing cheeky with age Captain," came the less familiar reply of Admiral Jackson, "But I'm in a good mood so I'll send you a couple of tanks."
This was all pointless chatter and the two parties both knew it but it livened up a very glum war so it continued, "Over-and-out your highness."
Jack reached the twenty-fifth floor and bashed out a window with his sidearm.
The fray was still in full blast as he'd expected but there were at least half as many Jackals on the rooftops by now, most likely with huge thanks to his co-elite-sniper. He returned to the task at hand and was soon settled into a groove, moving the crosshair, blowing a Jackals brains out, moving the crosshair again, blowing another Jackals brains out… And so he repeated this task for five minutes, but the numbers were no longer dropping, in fact, they were growing, as reinforcement Jackals bounded over their dead comrades to join the fray only to be cut down by fire seconds later.
Also Jack was rapidly depleting his ammo count, sure, he was stacked with bullets but he couldn't keep this constant fire up all day. But then something changed, alongside the Jackals started coming elites, red elites, blue elites and even black, white and gold elites joined the fray ordering about their subdivisions and peeling the weapons off their fallen to begin human killing. But even they were falling easily, requiring only a ingle shot to the head or neck to fell.
Soon two Scorpion tanks arrived and began blasting away bits of roofing and jackal and it was beginning to look like this had been a failed onslaught from the Covenant.
But this was not to be. Just as the waves of enemies were beginning to slow and weaken, just as it was starting to end, it began all over again.
And it began with dozens of banshees.
Hundreds of marines shouted curses over their headsets and the tanks began to look less formidable against the aliens.
The banshees began swooping slow, spraying the ground and walls with blue plasma then spinning up wards, turning, diving and repeating this process being a sniper, the corporal was useless against the banshees unless he could kill the elites by shooting their feet off which is what he began attempting to do.
The Scorpions began returning fire and were slowly spinning the Banshees away.
But soon the horribly inevitable happened. There was an explosion from within one of the tanks and it's huge turret was blasted into the air, crashing metres away from the flaming black skeleton of the Scorpion.
More sass over the COM and Joe opened up a direct line with Jack, "Shit Jack we're in for it now,"
"I don't know we've still got another tank-" he began to reply but was cut off.
"There are several dozen Phantoms inbound closing in from three-thousand metres Jack, we're in for it."
The reply was loud silence, broken eventually by one word: "Shit!"
The last Scorpion began picking off more Banshees but they still outnumbered it by at least seven to one.
And, just as the first five Phantoms came into view, the tank exploded.
The air within three miles soon became a heck of a lot hotter than it should have been, with the explosion of two tanks and several dozen banshees alongside the biggest possible pool of burning plasma short of that which could be seen being fired from the hull of a Covenant flagship, that could be expected.
The Phantoms dived down, dropped off their cargo and then returned to the high skies with no more than a scratch from the trip and the Covenant's plan was beginning to look more and more thought out.
But at least now Jack and Joe had targets: Elites, Jackals, Grunts, four Hunters (which were about as effective as the Grunts being totally surrounded by snipers,) and large horde of Drones which flew directly over Jacks head. And soon the floor of the Octagon was multicoloured with the bodies of brightly armoured aliens.
Yet after the destroying of two banshees, ( piloted by dead elites,) and killing of the many landed covenant troops, came more bad news, and it came in the shape of a queer formation of Phantoms.
There was one Phantom surrounded by an escort of six other phantoms.
The formation of aircrafts dropped as one and dropped off their cargo which consisted of two Spectres, almost one hundred Covenant troops and a strange, spiky, rotund object which was lowered carefully by the centre Phantom.
"Oh shit…" was the single voice over the COM, single because very other marine within COM range was deadly silent, the object so closely guarded by the Covenant, was a bomb.
The Covenant hadn't wanted to use the Octagon to attack from New Mombassa, they wanted to use it to blow the place up.
The realisation hit Jack hard in the chest and he paled instantly.
Suddenly his ears buzzed in pain as the afore mentioned silence over the COM was broken my rapidly whispered prayers in several different languages which evolved into screams of anger, disgust, terror.
Jack threw off the headset, readied his trigger finger and began picking off the enemy with a new found lust for murder. But he was psycho and he couldn't shoot for shit when he was in that mood and he knew it. He began attempting to control himself but absolutely lost it when he seen his fellow sniper, his comrade, his friend Joe Crawly lowering himself down walls of the clock tower, grappling the edges of the rocks with his fingertips. If Jack was angry about the bomb, it had absolutely pissed the shit out of Joe.
Joe had soon amazingly reached the bottom of the tower and was beginning his assault on the Covenant troops to a roar of approval from the marines scattered about the buildings.
Joe was armed with a Pistol sidearm and the covenant troops turned to him raising their deadly guns and pointing at them. Surely Joe would be decimated, would melt away to nothing with the rest of New Mombassa , yet Jack couldn't take his eyes off the scene.
As plasma pistols heated up and hands quivered Joe raised his arm aiming at the head of a blue elite. His arm quivered and his face quivered also, sweat rolling down his face, red and pressed into a look of sheer hate and determination.
In seconds he would be nothing but still Jack could not look away.
And then he was saved, for at least a few more seconds, by a big proud, cocky, and deeply idiotic gold Elite.
The elite stepped forward, hands held up to halt his troops and said, only to be heard by Joe, "If you want a fight human, fight me, I'll be… honoured to be the one that kills you." and he sniggered, whipping his right hand outwards, activating a glowing, blue energy sword.
The elite crouched, poised like a cat ready to pounce. Joe didn't move, didn't acknowledge the Elite, save to shift his eyes, not his gun.
"Oh no you don't, you bastard, not my friend, not mine" cursed Jack through clenched teeth.
He lowered his eye to his sight and brought the crosshair over the elites head. "Not mine!!"
He fired.
As did over thirty other snipers surrounding the elite, each shot fired with precision, each shot fired with pure hatred and each shot finding its mark.
The result was spectacular. Shots rang out very quickly so as to sound almost like a very loud machine gun. The air was filled with lines of disturbed air leading from over thirty places, all to one and the same target.
The elites head disintegrated and by the time the corpse hit the ground, the upper chest and arms of the elite were riddle with bullet-holes.
As the Elites body fell back the Energy Sword spun into the air, landing handle upwards in the ground, quivering next to Joe who's face had transformed into a wide-eyed look of frozen fear.
The marines, riflers and others, Corporal Jack McRae, chose this moment to pour from the buildings around the octagon and begin their full on assault on the remaining Covenant forces.
Jack picked another pistol off a dead marine and entered the fray , killing three grunts, two jackals and a red elite as he charged forward screaming.
In doing this he reached the centre of the defending Covenants formation and the bomb.
He reached over the spikes and seen the buttons and controls of the explosive were strangely familiar. Like a familiarity he knew he'd seen before but also knew he'd never be able to link to anything in his memory.
And he began defusing the bomb. He had no idea what it was he was doing but he acted like it was a habit. Like he was playing a song on a guitar that he knew very, very well, and had played hundreds of times before. So that he wasn't thinking about it at all, but if he looked down he'd see his fingers doing things he had no idea he was telling them to do.
In the middle of this a very angry looking elite leapt in front of him, snarling as it raised it's dual plasma rifles ready to blast me to Great Journey come.
And just as the message was sent from it's brain to it's fingertips to shoot the guts out of me, the elites head veered violently sideways. Elite and human turned in unison to see the assailant, a very pissed-off looking Joe Crawly, "Not my friend you bastard," he said, shooting the elite in the head again as it growled, "Not mine." And he filled the aliens head with lead, killing it once then again and again to make sure there wasn't too much left to fight back.
The two comrades smiled to each other weakly as the victorious marines turned to watch the bomb explode, and Corporal Jack McRae returned to defusing the bomb.
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