Halo: Operation Slender Thread
by
Cryptic Mystic
Chapter 1: What Do I Do With My Head?
"Peak heat flux obtained," said the onboard computer. "HEV intact. Squad intact. Platoon intact."
Human entry vehicles must have been created by standard marines that hated special ops. That is what 1st Lieutenant Fred May of the 2nd ODST battalion concluded as he sat helplessly in his while it plummeted towards the African Gold Coast. It was like riding in a coffin sliding down a rocky mountain twenty three times the size of Mount Everest with no snow... and much steeper. May had almost eighty drops under his belt but he still could not figure out what to do with his head. If he tried to brace it against the head rest, his skull would bounce around no matter how hard he pushed. If he tried to hold his head away from the seat, his neck would get horribly sore. He was too embarrassed at this point in his career to ask for advice from anybody else so for now he would alternate between the two positions until he hit dirt. As for the other things that tended to bounce around he had a method for that. He would simply hike his skivvies up nice and tight right before strapping in.
The drag chute deployed suddenly, as it always does, and his body decelerated to the strength of three G's over a fifty second period. The entry vehicle was really rumbling now. His guts tried to climb up his torso to his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed that no blood vessels in them break because he was also lead sniper in his squad as well as platoon commander. There would be two other squads depending on him planet side.
"Thirty seconds to touchdown."
It really is a good time to drop, he told himself. The Covenant had just started to make land fall. They won't be expecting ODST so soon.
"Twenty seconds to touchdown."
May tugged on his harness to make sure it was tight. There was not a thing he could do if it was not secure but the thought of his floating ribs colliding with and breaking against his pelvis made him check anyway.
"Ten seconds to touchdown."
Eyes shut, mouth open, scream loud, empty lungs, and don't bite your tongue off, he thought. It would be nice to have a mouth guard but his helmet gave him no place to spit one out.
"Five."
We're...
"Four."
... all...
"Three"
... in...
"Two"
... sane!
"One"
"Raaaagh!" May screamed as the retro rockets roared. The vibration was so intense he could hear the flesh of his face flapping inside his helmet. It stopped and he assumed he was alive and on Earth for the first time in five years. CO2 cartridges blew his harness off. He quickly grabbed his M7S suppressed submachine gun out of its holder and braced for the explosive bolts on the door. They blew in proper sequence and the door shot across the ground until it bounced off the smoldering HEV in front of his. Day light poured in instantly. "Report!"
As his squad counted off he used his helmet's heads up display to check his own vitals, the unit's systems, and the battle network's connectivity. All was good so far. He leapt out of his HEV onto one knee in the hard dusty ground with his weapon shouldered. "First Squad, touchdown! Good to go!" He craned his neck around to check their position, "We made the LZ." Command had chosen to drop them in a construction site near their objective. Several building in the complex were in varying degrees of completion. No pavement had been laid which makes for a nice LZ.
"El-tee we've got contact!" shouted the squad's heavy gunner, Dyke. "Four ghosts approaching nine o'clock, seven hundred meters."
May grabbed his armor piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding sabot chambered sniper rifle from his HEV and ran forward to where his squad had taken cover in a trench dug for piping. He allowed his M7S to fall against his chest on its sling and he drew up his rifle. The elites on the ghosts wore blue armor which denoted the lowest rank. He dialed his scope for a higher magnification and scanned the ground behind the ghosts. Then he saw their leader. Near a street corner a red clad elite was directing a group of grunts around him. "We have a major about eleven hundred meters out. Open fire after me. Save our rockets."
A collective oorah came as a response. He flipped the bipod legs down and tightened his grip on the fore stock. May inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly holding the breath before it was gone. He gently applied pressure to the trigger until the sear broke free. His shoulders rocked back with the recoil but his aim stayed true enough for him to watch the alien's head explode like a purple watermelon in a mailbox. He quickly zoomed out in time to see the ghosts respond to the volley of fire unleashed by his squad. One of the ghosts juked wildly to the right exposing its reactor core. May trained his rifle on it and loosed another sabot round. This round found its target as well. The core exploded and the pilot was ejected twenty feet into the air. His shield flashed off in a yellow pulse as he flailed his arms and long neck in a desperate attempt to defy gravity. His body landed on the hard dirt with a sickening crunch. Dyke single handedly shredded two of the ghosts while the last one was simply picked off by some well placed shots from a suppressed BR55. There was no muzzle flash and no barking explosion from the barrel but because the rifle still utilized hypersonic ammunition there was a distinct crack with each round fired. It sounded like three tacks being hammered into hard wood in rapid succession.
The platoon sergeant was Gunnery Sergeant Scott. Gunny Scott tapped May on the shoulder and pointed to the other glowing HEV's barreling through the atmosphere, "Here they come."
"Second and Third Squad this is First Squad, LZ is warm but not hot," said May. "Get down here before they send phantoms or wraiths."
"First Squad, Second Squad, down in twenty," said the Second Squad leader. How's the weather?"
"Lovely," replied May.
"Cover! Sniper!" someone in May's squad shouted.
May flattened into the prone position but turned his head sideways to see above him. A bright purple line hissed across his back. "How high is he?"
"Fifteen meters. He's on some scaffolding near the yellow dump truck."
May popped out of cover with his rifle at the correct elevation. He could see a jackal taking aim at him with a particle beam rifle. May shot once and missed. He corrected his aim and shot again. Despite the jackal dropping down after the first shot its body was ripped in half by the second. May ejected the spent magazine and slapped in a new one, "Sniper down."
The thunder of Second and Third Squad's arrival shook the ground. They landed fifty meters behind First Squad. May continued to scan ahead until Gunny Scott said, "Holy shit! Somebody's HEV in Third Squad just bounced off the ground!"
May snapped his head around but only saw dust and smoke from both landing sites, "Platoon report!"
A moment later, "Second Squad, touchdown. Good to go!" Then silence.
May trained his scope on the other squad's landing site, "Third Squad, status?" As the dust cleared he could see most of the squad standing around an HEV that laid down. "Third Squad, come in."
"First Squad, Third, we have a casualty. Wait one."
May watched through the scope. Apparently the HEV was lying on the door. The squad had to roll it over then manually unlatch it. A few seconds later the squad leader responded, "Its PFC Sheng, sir. He's unconscious... and all fubar'd. Give us a minute to assess his condition."
"Granted; but what the hell happened?"
"I think... I think one or more of his retro's fired after impact. It's really crumpled up in there. His rocket launcher is damaged beyond repair."
May forgot that Sheng had a rocket launcher. That entire squad is lucky the rockets did not explode, he thought.
"Sir, everything between Sheng's knees and his upper back seems to be shattered. His vitals barely read. We can't move him very much like this without killing him."
May considered the options for a few moments, "Get you're man into some cover and get him stabilized. Once you do that take his rockets and leave your corpsman with him. Meet us at the rally point where the heavy weapons team will be. Maybe they'll be able to get him evacuated. From there we proceed to the station."
May switched to a separate channel, "Command this is Third Platoon. We have one non lethal casualty. LZ is secure and we're heading towards checkpoint alpha to rendezvous with the gunner crew."
"Roger that Third Platoon," came the reply.
"What's the status of the Kenyan armor division?"
There was a long pause, "They're trying their best."