Chapter four~! Just in time for Christmas~! Merry Christmas fellow 343'ians~! 8D and a shoutout to the epic members who have been talking with me and making all this possible~ Sykowolf firstly (Hugs for my epic fellow wolfy~! [puts on coffee proof suit while hugging]) Cheese also who is an epic friend~! (biiiiiig hug for her) Azaxx who just makes things more epic by being himself~ Payne for his slightly dark sense of humor but definate good intentions~ GSD for helping shoot up the nubs who would have otherwise thought themselves superior whilst multiteaming me extremely~ and also a major shoutout for my clan who was cool to the end and several of whom are best buddies of mine for life~ and if i missed anyone I'm sorry punch me later~!
Contact
The pelican slowly dropped through the UNSC-controlled colony’s atmosphere. Inside, five spartans in black armor slowly cleaned and readied their weapons in complete silence. The pelican’s interior lights shut off and were replaced by an eerie red glowing warning light. A soldier at the back of the pelican held up three fingers, and all of the spartans quickly put their weapons back together and grabbed their gear. The soldier began to slowly count down on his fingers and as he reached one the spartans were lined up and prepared to exit the ship. The glow turned from red to green and the ramp began to slowly drop. The soldier at the back of the pelican began quickly motioning the spartans to go and gave them each a push on the back as they jumped out of the pelican. Kaatisu suddenly found himself spinning uncontrollably in a pitch black sky. He slowly brought himself into a spread-eagle position and checked his coordinates on the data-pad connected to his armor’s wrist. They were all exactly on target for the LZ and would hopefully reach the ground undetected. One of the meters on his data-pad began to blink red, and he quickly maneuvered to bring his legs underneath him and locked his armor up. Some sort of structure lunged out of the darkness at him as he fell, and he crashed through its roof before slamming into something much softer than the ground that he assumed he’d be landing on. Unlocking his armor, 081 jumped up and quickly unslung his MA5B. Scanning the room, he found himself to be standing in what appeared to be a barn on top of a pile of hay. A crash nearby him made him spin around, and he saw spartan 009 slowly get up from another nearby pile and pull out a DMR. Nodding at her, Kaatisu turned and began to move quickly towards the barn door where he slowly opened it and looked out. A man, still wearing what appeared to be pajamas, was running towards the barn carrying an old M-90 shotgun. Slowly reclosing the door, Kaatisu turned and silently motioned towards a door at the side of the barn. 009 nodded and began to slowly open the door. Kaatisu quietly barred the front door of the barn and moved to follow 009 out the side door. As they made their way to the woods, Kaatisu heard a shot. Quickly spinning around he expected to see the farmer right behind them shooting randomly but came to the realization that the farmer had been shooting the barn door to gain entrance. Reaching the woods 081 turned around just long enough to see the farmer come crashing out the side door of the barn and begin looking around for the intruder he believed had invaded his barn.
Working their way through the woods towards a small marker on their HUD’s, 081 and 009 met up with the rest of the squad somewhere deeper in the woods. 022 made a quick handsign to Kaatisu to indicate she was glad that he was ok. 003 was sitting on a rock nearby and was quick to comment, “Took you long enough to get here.” Ignoring the attack, Kaat signed back at Kyla and proceeded over to Trey. “How far out from the target?” he growled. “We dropped down 5 clicks south of it,” Trey replied, looking up from the datapad on his wrist. “Alright,” Kaat said as he faced the squad, “spread out, stay low, and only engage if absolutely necessary.” The group disappeared into the brush in different directions without a sound and was swallowed up by the night. Several minutes later, as he was making his way through the thick shrubbery, a light on Kaat’s wrist pad lit up indicating that Kyla had found something. Cutting through the woods to her marker, Kaatisu found Kyla crouched behind a small embankment observing a well-lit outpost. Crawling up next to her quietly, Kaat zoomed in on the walls of the fortification with his faceplate. As the rest of the squad began to arrive Kaatisu highlighted two guard towers for the squad to see. A third marker appeared on a badly lit piece of wall near them as Trey’s voice broke through the silence on the com, “That spot looks like our best bet.” Kaat nodded to him, “Nice catch,” turning to the rest of the squad for a second he looked them over as they readied their weapons. This whole situation felt wrong to him. The chances of several marines losing their lives for whatever intel Kaat’s squad was here to collect were impossibly high to the point of being almost an assured fact. Pausing for a few seconds to ponder this thought, Kaat motioned to the squad. “Alright, let’s do this,” he murmured as they moved down the slope toward the unlit piece of wall. Reaching it, Kaat dropped down to his knee to boost each team member over the wall. Kyla reached the wall second and, without pausing, jumped off Kaat’s hands, grabbed the wall, and pulled herself up in a single motion. Turning around, she reached down to assist each member of the squad off of Kaat’s hands and up over the wall. Once he had helped each of them over, Kaatisu turned and, lunging upwards, grabbed Kyla’s outstretched hand and the top edge of the wall and hoisted himself up with Kyla’s assistance. They jumped down on the other side and ducked down in the shadows against the wall. Quickly looking around, Kaat motioned toward a building with a large telescope protruding from the roof, “We should find the intel somewhere inside that building if the source was correct.”
Trey glanced over at the building, “How heavily guarded will it be?” Kaat stared intently at the door of the building which was on a side facing away from the main courtyard of the complex slightly concealed in shadows. “Hopefully, it’s only lightly guarded, for their sake and ours.” He moved down the wall in a crouched stance towards the front of the building. Once they had all reached the building Kaat motioned to Chris and tapped the wall lightly with his index finger. Chris quickly reached into a bag on his leg and pulled out a small, gun-like object with a box-shaped casing on the top of it. Placing the object to the wall he pulled the trigger and rolled the box in a wide 180 degree turn from left to right. Staring at the wall, Chris whispered into the com, “Five targets, spread around the room, all at the main room though, the rest of the place is empty,” he finished as he shoved the item back in its bag. Kaat moved towards the door, and the rest of the squad slowly followed one at a time. As he neared the door he could feel his adrenaline coursing and his training quickly taking over control of his body. Standing up in front of the door, he backed up and glanced at Trey and Kyla on either side of the door. They both nodded, and Kaat drew back and lunged forward kicking the door with full force. The door flew into the room and crashed into the opposing wall; Kaat walked in directly behind it and without hesitating shot a man who was standing up from the table in the middle of the room. Trey walked in behind him and shot a man on the left who was drawing a gun. Kyla walked in and shot a third man who was standing in shock with his hand rested on a gun at his side, and Chris walked in directly behind her, throwing a knife over her shoulder and into the head of a man who was just turning around from a coffee machine on the other side of the room. Standing in the suddenly silent, yet chaotically destroyed room, Kaat slowly regained control of himself. Jeanine had moved across the room, inserted a small chip into the terminal there, and began typing rapidly on the keyboard. The rest of the team began to scan the room. The door slowly moved with a scraping noise and a low moan came from beneath it. Turning Kaat drew his sidearm and pointed it into the face of a wounded man who was slowly climbing out from under the door, another marine, another threat, another enemy. Kaat knew this man had to be killed, but he hesitated. The man was wounded, his arm pinned beneath the door. “What are you waiting for?” a sneering voice said behind him. Glancing over his shoulder he saw Chris, Kyla, and Trey had all drawn their weapons and aimed them at the man. Looking back at the man, who had freed one of his hands at this point and held it up in front of his face defensively, Kaat noticed a ring on the man’s hand. He had this strange feeling he remembered it from somewhere a long time ago, from before he had been kidnapped as a child. A voice, a hand, and that ring were slowly coming back to him from some past memory he couldn’t quite fully recall. Trey kept glancing between the man and Kaat, “Sir?” Kyla had slightly lowered her weapon, “Kaat….” she murmured hesitantly.
Chris shook his head in annoyance and shoved past Kyla, “I’LL do it!” he said in disgust. Kaat shoved an arm in front of him, “No! Get outside and watch for any guards, we’ll take care of-” An un-silenced gunshot rang through the room.
Major Payne sat quietly in the room waiting for the lieutenant to return with the record of the image the telescope on the base had captured. He had been wondering what such a remote base had caught a glimpse of that ONI had seen fit to send him out with such short notice to acquire. Once he reached the base however he quickly realized the importance of the item when he heard several marines whispering about some sort of alien ship shaped like a planet. He had quickly reprimanded the marines’ CO about this breach in the security of the intel before the man had hurriedly rushed off to gather the data for him. The marines in the room around him sat in complete silence, staring with terrified looks at what they had now come to realize was an ONI spook. Payne had used to be an ODST before ONI had gotten a hold of him and he carried a great many scars as reminders of past conflicts. The marines stared mainly at these scars as Payne sat stiffly in his uniform waiting for the lieutenant to return, while purposefully ignoring the gawking marines. Suddenly a gunshot was heard distantly and Payne instantly made his way across the room while the marines continued to stare in shock.
Spinning around, Kaat leveled his gun on another wounded man on the floor who had a pistol aimed at Jeanine. He had already fired once and the bullet and slammed uselessly into the imitation-Mjolnir which Jeanine was wearing. The marine cursed and empty the rest of the clip into Kaat who was thudding his way across the room towards the man. Reaching the marine, Kaat wrenched the pistol from his hand and, hitting him with the butt of the gun, effectively knocked the man unconscious. Turning to the team who were all staring, he motioned to Jeanine, “You ok?” She nodded and continued typing onto the keyboard of the console. Chris's voice suddenly came over the coms before Kaat even realized he had left to check outside, “Might wanna hurry, those last few gunshots got some attention...” Kaat heard a rocket fire outside as Chris began to yell into the mic, “They mean business!!!” An explosion rocked the building, and Chris flew in through the front door with several pounds of gravel and some pieces of doorway. Slamming onto the ground with some smoke pouring off of his armor, Chris jumped up and starting yelling incoherently. Kyla grabbed a table from across the room and pushed it on its side in front of the door before she and Kaat shoved what appeared to be some type of refrigerator against it. Turning from this hastily assembled fortification, Kaat nearly ran into Chris who was still recovering from being nearly directly hit by a rocket. Chris stabilized himself on Kaat's shoulder before yelling, “There's about twelve of them! Three rockets! The rest with MA5B's! Except one was lugging some type of huge friggin supressive weapon!” Kaat nodded and started to rush over to Jeanine when Trey yelled, “Sir! There’s something on the security cameras I think you should see!” Rushing over, Kaat quickly looked at each of the screens. The first screen he noticed was a camera which showed a building directly across the way. There were five marines on the roof, two of which had SPNKr missiles aimed at the front of the building he currently occupied with his team. “Where’s the rest of them…?” he mumbled to no one in particular. “What the hell…” an awestruck voice stated over his shoulder. Looking behind himself, Kaat saw Chris gaping at one of the monitors. Turning back around he saw Trey and the others were also fixated on the same screen before he noticed why. On the screen, a large bulbous ship was landing outside the facility and the marines were all preparing their weapons while hiding behind a fortification directly next to where the ship was hovering. “That is definitely not human…” Trey murmured as the squad stared at the screen. “Covenant…” Kaat nearly whispered as he backed away from the monitors, “this severely ****s up our game plan…” Kyla tilted her head, “We’ve never seen Covies before. How can you be sure that’s what this is..?” As the pop of distant assault rifles firing began Kaat replied, “Because that’s all this could be.”
Kewe ‘Azwetee watched as the grunts checked each other’s breathing apparatus. The creatures were highly uncoordinated and would most likely prove only a burden in his coming battle. He wished that the prophets had seen fit to at least send a company of jackals or perhaps a hunter pair with him to increase his chances of victory, but quickly corrected himself. Hunter pairs were meant only for missions of extreme danger, the humans he was about to face were weak and would most likely run at the site of this small squad of grunts armed with fuelrod cannons. He quietly chuckled to himself, the creatures may not be great warriors, but, give a weak creature a heavy weapon and send it in great numbers, and you might as well have sent in several hunter pairs. The dropship slowed and he watched the first wave of grunts slowly drop on the lifts making insane, high pitched squeals that suicide units normally emitted as they descended.
Gunshots, explosions, some type of chirping blasts that Kaat assumed were Covenant weapons continued to be heard through the walls. The whole team stood around the room silently listening for several seconds while watching the marines on the security cameras. The marines on the roof across the way nervously kept looking over in the direction of the gunfire. One of them motioned to the others and after they had gathered into a small huddle the marine who had gathered them hefted his launcher around while motioning towards the building that Kaat and his team were hiding in. “I imagine we’re about to get a little shaken up…” Kaat mumbled as he watched. Trey leaned over, “Brace or evac?” Counting the spare rocket rounds on the roof with the marines, Kaat replied, “Evac…definitely evac…” Turning to Jeanine, Kaat asked, “Do we have it?” She nodded, and, tightening his rifle onto his shoulder, Kaat turned to the rest of the squad, “Stay tight on my six.” Sprinting across the room and into the hallway behind it, Kaat lowered his shoulder and plowed straight through the wall with the rest of the team behind him as the front of the building was hit by three sets of rockets. Flames and shrapnel ripped into the hallway behind them and partially out of the newly created doorway as wild whoops and screeches were heard from the roof as more rockets were fired. Listening to the racket while safely out of the building, Chris slowly nodded, “Trigger happy farmer hicks, that’s what we’re being shot at by right now. Lovely!” This last yell was punctuated by a whole section of the building’s wall collapsing away from the barrage. The wall came down with a thunderous crash and a small spotlight pierced through the smoke. Stopping on Trey, who was now partially out of cover, the light heralded the wild screeches of the men on the roof and, as Trey dived the rest of the way into cover, several dozen bullets roared from a light machine gun on the roof across the way and tore up the dirt where he had been standing only seconds before. As the light machine gun continued to rain fire down on them one of the outer walls of the compound exploded in green flames and a small group of hunched figures waddled through the opening as the masks on their face glowed unnatural colors into the pitch black night. Yelling several strange sounds, one of them launched a green round from a shoulder fired weapon at the roof occupied by the marines. The compound was temporarily lit green and orange by the resulting explosion and the marine gripping what Kaat assumed was the light machine gun flew through the air, landing in pieces a few feet from the team. The squad was all frozen staring at the smoldering corpse and, looking up, noticed that the group of small creatures had also frozen staring at the spartans. One of the creatures lifted its alien bazooka and took aim at the squad, and all of the spartans immediately drew their weapons and fired. The squad of hunched creatures twitched and stumbled under the firing squad of pistols, DMR’s, and assault rifles. After the last alien had been dispatched, Kyla walked over and hefted the LMG. It looked like an assault rifle with an elongated barrel and a strangely shaped green box on the bottom containing the ammunition. “This should come in handy,” she stated in a pleased voice as she examined the weapon. Looking past her, Kaat noticed a strange shimmering in the air at the gap in the wall. It looked like a cloud of steam, and Kaat at first wrote it off as a broken pipe. The shimmering motion had taken a humanoid shape however and Kaat slowly moved past Kyla in the most unintentional way possible as he quietly readied the grenade launcher on his assault rifle. He quickly leveled it on the gap and fired. The round landed just short of the opening, but the resulting shrapnel revealed a shimmering white figure that he could see right through. The creature was massive, and it bellowed in rage as it thundered away from the opening. The white silhouette around it shined brightly with electrical current running across the surface of the light. “What the hell was that…” Trey whispered as the creature lumbered towards the alien ship and disappeared part way there as the lights surrounding it faded.