Feet First Into Hell
Ramirez was standing on a bluff with his sniper rifle. Robert was lying beside him, binoculars to face. They were overlooking a large Covenant fuel depot on the planet of Sevestus Meridias, located on the outer edges of UNSC controlled space. They were sent to destroy this fuel depot; it would slow the impending Covenant invasion to let humanity catch its breath.
"This should be interesting," Robert said under his breath "We need to get in there, somehow get past an entire Covenant army, and blow this place to hell."
He put his binoculars down and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Robert put on his helmet and got up into a crouch. Ramirez did the same and hefted his sniper rifle behind his back. They started their slow decent down the mountain. They had to make the two-kilo trek to the fuel depot and avoid Covenant patrols. Being an ODST they had dropped in from a Prowler-class cruiser at 0400 hours. They were supposed to avoid detection at all cost. They had three days to recon the depot, infiltrate it, and then get to the rendezvous point to leave before the Covenant knew what hit them.
In theory this sounded fine, but putting it into practice was another thing. That's why they had to send in their best infiltration team to do it. The hope was that this would go smoothly. So long as they didn't accidently get stumbled upon by patrols or caught in the infiltration, they should live to fight another day.
Ramirez and Robert started to crawl, run, and climb through the dense jungle to reach their destination. After dodging patrols of Elites leading squads of Grunts, Jackal-snipers waiting in the dense foliage, and hiding under trees to stay hidden from overhead Banshees, they were a little over half a kilo from the base. They slowed and read over the mission plan.
Robert pulled out his M7S submachine gun and checked everything. Ramirez pulled up his sniper rifle and sighted in.
"Two Elites on the north end, four grunts on the south end." Ramirez said looking through his scope. He knew that if he messed up, somehow give away their position, they would die. But he knew they would live, they were ODST. This was their job.
Ramirez squeezed the trigger.