Three beeps sounded then my HEV dropped out the bottom of the UNSC Artemis, one of the ships orbiting Earth. The home fleet. My objective when we hit the ground was to find Dimitri Polanski and to find and neutralise Brute Chieftains leading their pack into battle.

We passed other UNSC ships fighting the covenant vessels outnumbering them ten to one. I watched as a CCS-class battlecruiser cut a UNSC frigate in half with its energy projector just before it was bisected by an orbital space station. The navy seemed to be winning for once.

Most of the pods launched were destined to land on the Covenant Supercarrier above New Mombasa but Dimitri and I were going to land in Sydney on the other side of the globe.

After five minutes of free fall the pods reverse thrusters engaged and slammed me into a rooftop near Sydney's centre.

I instantly popped open the pod, grabbed my SRS-99D rifle, shouldered it, upholstered my M7S SMG and opened coms to Dimitri.

"Zuma Bravo, this is Zuma Alpha, do you read me?"

"Yes, Lachlan I hear you."

"What is your position?"

"I'm on the road level of the bridge, comrade. Already fighting covies."

I looked off into the distance and saw the five century old bridge a couple of kilometres away.

"Wait there, Dimitri, I'll come to you."

I smashed open a door that led to a stair way and started running to the bottom floor. I encountered a squad of grunts about half way down and I filled them with the silenced SMG.

"How you holding Dimitri?"

"Not well. Just find somewhere to give cover from."

"Will do."

I reached one end of the bridge and saw plasma and needles flying somewhere in the middle. I looked to my left and saw one of the support towers.

"Perfect," I said to my self as I jogged towards it.

I opened an access door and started climbing another set of stairs up the tower. Eventually I reached the highest window which had a Jackal sniper sitting in it high above the ground. Rather than waste ammo on it I kicked it out and it plummeted down to the pavement below, screaming.

"Welcome to Earth you fucking bird," I said as I holstered the SMG and set up the sniper rifle, "Dimitri, I'm in a tower behind you. Paint me some targets."

Red outlines of brutes and grunts appeared on my HUD. I picked a shiny, golden brute who was leading the assault on the ODST from Reach. I positioned the blue circle of the sniper's scope on the ape's head and squeezed the trigger and sent a 14.5x114mm round flying through its skull killing it.

"Good shot comrade."

"One," I said kept count of how many brutes I killed, "Two, three, four."

I emptied my first magazine in half a minute all four bullets found their mark in an ape's head. With their leadership gone the accompanying grunts fled and were easily dispatched by Dimitri's BR55 rifle. I ran back down the tower and ran to Dimitri's position.

"Good shooting comrade."

"All in a days work."

"Only if the others were here to join us."

"Only if," I remembered how most of the Zuma squad cadets died during the covenant invasion of Circinius IV twenty six years before as I scratched four more tally marks onto the stock of the sniper.

"They are the reason we kept the name. Why we became the sniper-spotter team we are."

"C'mon, lets go see if we can find a chieftain."