SECTION 1
REACH
CHAPTER
ONE
"…THE WIND DOESN'T BLOW…"
0600 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR)\ EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, PLANET REACH \ MID-ORBIT OVER PLANET, UNSC HALCYON CLASS CRUISER, THE COLUMN OF SUMMER
All hell was breaking loose; that morning I woke up with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, the pain in my shoulder's wound flaring. Now Reach was being attacked by the Covenant; we just took a hit to our port side.
The impact bashed me against a bulk-head. As I regained consciousness, I could feel something pulling me slowly to one side, it felt like wind, my hearing came back first, once the ringing in my ears stopped, I could hear the ship's klaxon and I remembered where I was; the computers voice came over the intercom:
"Decompression on deck 4, sections 5-9; emergency bulk-heads activated, sealing compromised sections."
My vision cleared and I could see the flashing red lights. I realized it was the vacuum of space from the gaping hole in the ship pulling me over towards the section 5 entrance. I looked up and saw Kristen, Morgan, Brandon, Olivia, Will, Kevin, and Adam, about a third of my platoon, being sealed behind the heavy emergency door to the crew quarters, suffocating.
The artificial gravity was still active, so I pulled my self up, and walked up to Pvt. Newt, and helped him up, he got knocked-out when he hit the wall.
"Sir," he said, as I was waking him from unconsciousness, "Sir, am I dead?"
"No private, you're not dead, not yet."
"We have to go back to help…"
"No, we don't."
"But I don't see Will and…"
"They're dead; we have to continue without them." I hefted the private on to his feet, then he passed out in my arms and I set him down. Then turned to Sergeant Anders who walked up to help me, "Anders, where's Sgt. Gibbs?"
"Dead sir," Anders replied, "along with about third of your squad, and half of mine."
"Hey Patty, I think I should have stayed home in bed today" said Hudson, sarcastically.
"Now's not the appropriate time, Corporal, and stop calling me 'Patty'," I said turning to Anders, "and what about Lieutenant Larson?"
"He is alive, sir, but unresponsive," shouted Corporal Stevens, the platoon's medic, from the other side of the passage, "I think he's comatose."
"Shit, that puts me as commanding officer then… I'm taking command, Stevens, count the dead; Anders you are now first squad's temporary squad leader, Hudson, you get the privilege of becoming second squad's leader."
"Gee wiz Patty," Hudson said, even more sarcastically. "Are you sure you want to give this to me, isn't this something you can do, since you're so responsible and such?"
"Not now Hudson, I'm now acting platoon sergeant, and I have rank, so stop calling me 'Patty'! Stevens, what's the body count?"
"About a third of the platoon is behind that sealed door, and 3 people here need to be taken to the infirmary, everybody else just has minor injuries."
"Were moving out to the infirmary then, walking carry the wounded, lets move it people."
Then Capitan's voice came over the intercom: "All personnel prepare for boarding action!"
"Fuck!" yelled a frustrated, wounded Hollister, "it never ends."
"We're moving out in defensive fire patterns, minor wounded not carrying someone in the front and back for safety, seriously wounded in the middle, we're securing this part of the ship to the infirmary, and then we'll do our assigned patrol route. Hudson, your ass is with me as point. Newt, watch our ass."
"Hey Hollister, at least you don't have to do point with McCarty," grunted Hudson as he walked by the wounded marine, semi-sarcastically.
We began moving down the passageway, checking every adjacent door, hall, and room, explosions would rock the ship ever so slightly. Two minutes passed of tedious wandering. No covenant. I turned a corner and a pair of jackals fired at my head. I rolled, and fired down low, hitting their legs. Then I swept high as the wounded jackals stumbled from the pain in their feet, hitting them in their heads and torsos.
Hudson just stared at me as I got up and tried to wipe off the drying alien blood soaking into my B.D.U.s.
"Wow, Sarge, that was, that was cool."
"What happened Hudson? I thought I told you to watch my back, not just to stare." I asked Hudson, pissed off.
"Hey, I was watching, just from afar," Hudson replied, wounded egotistically. "I just saw that you had everything under control. Where'd you learn to do that anyways?"
"Learn what? The roll & shoot thing? I saw a Spartan do it once, but there was a lot more jackals. Their shields don't cover their legs."
"Yeah but… never mind. Next you'll be shooting grenades out of the air."
"Now that would be cool," commented Anders as he walked up to the scene, semi-sarcastically, as several wows went threw the platoon as they tried to conceive what just happened.
"We need to get moving, Hudson, check the bodies for something useful, Anders, collect those shields, we might need them."
Anders walked up to me with a jackal shield in one hand, and old Sergeant Gibbs's shotgun in the other. "Since you're the new Sarge, you get this," he said and handed me Gibbs's shotgun, Lucky.
"Thanks," I said, as I inspected the Celtic inscriptions covering the stock of the weapon. They were engraved in with a knife, and then painted over in olive-green giving it an artistic flavor.
Anders, Hudson, and I strapped the alien shields on our arms, then we passed out the plasma grenades and those weird alien pistols, then proceeded on threw the ship. We occasionally got pulled to one side by our inertia, as the ship turned in space combat, otherwise we forgot what was happening in the outside world.
