"Get down." The command spurs me to action. I crouch in place, and feel the passage of a sticky grenade whiz over my head. The blue static glow of the alien explosive makes the fine hairs on my arms stand up under my armor. There is a growing sound, that isn't a sound so much as a sensation of sound. The bang makes my ears ring a little bit, despite the sound dampener on my helmet. I finger my B.R.'s trigger and swing up and over my cover.
The sticky grenade had taken out the Brute's armor. The creature was roaring though, and he seemed like he was going to charge any minute. Battle rage in Brutes is the scariest thing. Elites are worse, they're smart. Brutes well, they're big and fast. They work well with each other, and with the Grunts, but they aren't the smartest creature in the galaxy.
I squeeze on my battle rifle's trigger. Its running low on ammunition. That's not surprising since I'd pulled it off a dead ODST a few minutes ago. I hear the pre-measured amount of automatic fire. I can never count the shots. It doesn't matter, I aim at the head. The creature goes down in a sputtering rage.
The Spartan who'd chucked the grenade had taken care of the Grunts that had been scattering at impact of the bomb. He gave a half assed salute towards me, and gestured that we keep going.
"Keep moving kid. We don't have a lot of time to slow down." He said, his flat voice echoing into my helmet. I nod my agreement. We'd been a full unit before, now, it was just the two of us. This assault wasn't going well, at least not on our side.
The Covenant had attacked the colony a few hours ago. The Capital city was mostly gone. We weren't trying to retake the colony, you don't retake colonies when the Covenant lands. What you do is hold ground long enough for the civilians to escape the bombardment. It's a lesson we learned from the early years of the war.
"Careful." I say quietly to the Spartan. "I've got movement on my HUD." The sensor is flashing red, no UNSC movement, they're yellow.
"Snipe who you can. I'll distract them." How he knows that I prefer sniping, I don't know. What's more, why he's letting me is even stranger. Spartans are better at what soldiers do. He should be sniping, but then, if I was running interference, I'd end up dead. And I still had a job to do.
They're setting up some kind of entrenched position. A lift is in place. Obviously something important is going to happen here, soon. If the Intel is right, a Prophet is coming to oversee the purification of the planet. They weren't going to blow it up like others; they were going to resettle it. That was new. Before now, it had always been about purification by fire. Holy wars are tough, bloody things that never end.
There were a lot of guards, Brutes, a few Elites, and a crap ton of Grunts. The Spartan threw himself into the fray without regard for his life. They did that, that's why they were more than soldier, they were Spartans.
I worked through those that I could with my limited rounds left. I made a few kills, before the battle rifle was empty. I slung it on my back, hoping to find more rounds for it. I pulled out my hand gun; a fairly useless thing meant more for preventing capture than anything. Dipping down I began on the edges, cleaning up the Grunts. Worthless creatures more for cannon fodder than for fighting prowess, the bastards did damage when you weren't paying attention to them.
"Where are you?" My helmet's intercom chirped. The Spartan sounded fine. That he was more concerned about me than anything.
"Outer edge leading in."The answer came as I ripped the breathing apparatus off a little guy. Sometimes I wondered what they were like when not fighting. They seemed, mostly harmless.
"Need a hand." Was all he said. And it seemed that he needed me. I scooted around, and slid over a bunch of rock. A Brute had my Spartan pinned, and was working on him with the butt of a fuel rod gun. I leapt at him, and wrapped short legs around him long enough to get my small gun in his neck and fire. Blue spurts out, covering me, and we topple over, as he twitches into death.
"Well done." A hand is offered to me, and I take it. I'm hauled off my feet and set down upright again. "You still have the charges?" And my purpose in this whole thing was to mule the charges needed to blow the platform. The hefty pack was filled with charges, and a detonator.
"Yes sir."I set to my real job. I'm demolitions. It's what I know, and it's what I'm good at. I set the charges with practiced ease, setting them to my control device. The Spartan is standing guard, imposing as he stands behind me while I work. The hum of the lift is already going the whole thing though is dependent on us timing the explosion with the Prophet's arrival. The planet might be lost, but damned if we aren't going to get some pay back for it. Ironic that the Prophet of Peace is the target, at least it's ironic to me.
"I'm done." I say, strapping the detonator to my armor's glove.
"Apollonia says there is a powering up in progress." The ship's AI had hitched a ride with him for this mission. The Insula Inter Spines was hiding in the planet's rings right now, separate from the evacuation fleets' actions.
"The lifts on?" I ask.
"Yeah, how far do we need to be to clear the explosion?" He asks.
"Cover mostly, unless I hit the button when the Prophet's in transit, but there is no way to know if we got him or not." I tell him. He nods. "Otherwise, over there." I point where we'd come from, indicating the large tunnel system we'd cleaned out of Buggers and Brutes.
"Let's hoof it." He says. The green armored man is already heading back there, and I snatch up a Spiker. The heavy weapon is unwieldy by me, I can't use it to strike with, and the kick back from it is jarring, but it's better than my small caliber weapon.
You can hear the lifts. They have a lot of power. Not like the smaller ones that they use for entrenching, hover pads really that lift up a small platform for shooters. These are more like orbital elevators, which ferry people and stuff up and down. The hum is recognizable and definite and even as the sound of it working to bring down an honor guard for the Prophet. Then the Prophet himself would follow. The small grey being on the hover throne, one of a few that controlled the forces of the Covenant on their holy crusade.
"He's here." The Spartan says. I nod, and toggle the firing switch on my arm. A solid sound that grew into a force that sends me groping for the wall's support. I get an arm instead. I steady myself, and nod my thanks.
"Some juice left in that thing." I say. The increased force wasn't that of the lift being on. There would be a tear in the local universe if that happened. This was a ripple in the universe instead. "These caves must have some kind of mineral deposits in them." I comment, knowing that it's what saved us from vaporization. Outside there were only boulders that sizzled, nothing of the lush forest that had been there only moments before.
"Pick up, at the LZ." He says without preamble. He's already working through the tunnels again, double time. I follow behind him, moving as fast as my shorter legs could go. I'm a soldier, but sometimes short legs make it hard to keep up regardless of training.
The other side of the tunnels, old lava tubes heading out to the ocean, was as lush as the other side had been. The animals hooted wildly, the sounds of fighting were louder now, humans were almost gone, and the Covenant would already know about the Prophet of Peace.
The LZ was the beach. The dead bodies of the rest of our unit still littered around. I stole a few last looks towards my comrades. I saw the Spines hit the atmosphere, the fire of reentry making a line blazing in the sky. It slowed down, and sent down a Pelican for pick up.
"Its strange, right?" I ask waiting for the Pelican to get close enough to board.
"What?"His voice was flat, still. Like we hadn't just blown up a leader of the enemy, striking a blow against the command structure.
"There are no human settlements here, so why was the Prophet landing here, on this island?"
"Is what intelligence said would happen…" He says. I feel my face crinkle up behind my visor. He knows more than he's saying. Of course he knows more, he's got the ship's AI in his helmet feeding him information.
"That's not the point. Why would he? What's here that he would risk coming down personally for?" I ask, curiousity being my chief flaw, and the most likely reason for me getting shifted out of ODST.
"Its not something you want to know about, kid." He points out as the Pelican hovers nearby for us to board. "Just know we did well." He gives me a hand up, not that I need it really. Its kind of a sign I think, that he was proud that I didn't die. That a Spartan could be proud of an ODST, simply because she didn't die, who knew?
