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Vengeance From The Sky
Posted By: Conrad Lauf<coffeecare@ozemail.com.au>
Date: 12 April 2004, 12:16 AM
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Earth VII- Colony world- Level 3 Technology
2574
THE wind whipped through Jonas' hair as he sprinted. He had a burning stitch, but he kept on moving. The ten-year-old boy could not believe what he had just seen in the clearing. A group of monsters, varying in shape and size, had dropped from a machine in the sky. He had been picking mushrooms with his thirteen-year-old sister in the forest when he saw them. He had dropped his basket, which had been heard by a lean monster with a glowing shield. They had fired burning light at him, which hit his sister in the stomach, killing her instantly. Then he ran.
And now he could see his village in the distance, a tall plume of smoke rising from the campfire in its centre. Now he would be safe. The men in the village would easily be able to slay the sky-beasts. They would-
At that moment the largest machine Jonas had ever seen descended from the sky directly above the village. And then it attacked. A twin-linked fuel rod cannon attached to the underside of the machine opened fire, sending green bolts of plasma rocketing into the village huts, either setting them alight, or destroying them completely. As Jonas looked on, screams of pain and fear cut through the air, and he could see figures running in front of the flames, outlined by its flickering light. By now the Covenant dropship started firing its secondary weapons, the ones fired by the Elites, Jackals and Grunts sitting the cargo bay of the dropship. They did this as they leapt out of their seats, about to go into close combat. A golden yellow Elite with a flickering blade cleaved a woman in half as it hit the ground, laughing at the amount of violence around itself. Then the tide of battle turned. Suddenly the squad of Covenant heard the roar of jet engines and looked up from the slaughter around them. Then they froze.
An Attack Pelican, flanked by four more, two on each side, hovered above the ruined village. At an unspoken command, they opened fire with their side-mounted Vulcan miniguns, tearing through Covenant flesh like paper. Their alien bodies jolted, staggering back under the hail of tracer fire. After the last bullet-riddled body fell to the earth, the Pelicans turned their sights on the Dropship. Forming an unpenetratable circle around it, their M80 SS8 wasp-pod hatches opened, and let rip. The Dropship reeled under the impact, and started spiraling downwards, the Elite pilot dead, slumping over the controls. It hit the ground with a crunch, and then exploded, sending steel, flames and plasma ammunition everywhere.
All this was watched by Jonas, twenty metres away in a wheat field.
A marine wearing flak armour and carry an MA5B assault rifle ran out from the troop bay of a Pelican to Jonas, after descending from a nylon rope, took him by the hand and said, "Don't worry son. We got 'em good."
The marine attached a harness to Jonas' waist, and signalled to the marines in the Pelican to lift him up. After Jonas was in the troop bay the grounded marine was strapped in too. As he was being lifted up, however, a surviving Elite sprinted out from the shelter of a thatched hut, firing its plasma rifle defiantly in one hand, and clutching a plasma sword in the other. Letting out a bellow of vengeance for the death of its comrades, it leapt towards the exposed marine hanging from the nylon rope, swinging its sword up over its head for the killing blow. The marine screamed, and-
The Elite was suddenly slammed down to earth by a swathe of heavy machine-gun fire. The marine looked up, and saw the last casings quietly falling from the ejection port of a Pelican across on the other side of the tiny village. The pilot gave the marine a thumbs-up sign, a grin stretching across his youthful face.
"Sorry to leave you hanging,Sarge," he said into his microphone.
"Don't you ever let me get that that close to death again, you arsehole!" the sergeant replied, evidently not in the mood for the pilot's bad jokes. "Hoist me up!" he shouted to his squad, high above him.
Soon the Pelicans were just five specks on the horizon, with Jonas in the leading ship, ready to be taken to the cruiseship Dragoon for interrogation, training, and a better life on the neighbouring planet Beliathan IV.
It had been an easy, if not too easy mission.
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