Disclaimer: I don't own Halo, Just my characters.
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On Call
Chapter 1
Earth Defense Platform, Cairo
10.20.2552 (Military Calendar)
Shit.
PFC Nate Baker swore as the first Boarding craft latched on to the hull, sending all of his instruments clattering to the floor, luckily he'd just finished stitching up his friend, Private Adrian Perez, sitting in front of him, or that could have caused more trouble.
"Damn, did you hear that?"
"'Course I did, I ain't deaf" He replied.
"I guess we better get upstairs before the fighting starts."
"All right, but don't get too far ahead, all they give us medics are lame pistols." He said.
"Sure thing man."
As they headed for the door the klaxons started to wail, like it won't be hard enough to fight without those things screaming at me. After they got upstairs they past the bridge, and were shocked to see the Master Chief come out of it.
"God damn, would ya look at that, I didn't know he was here!"
"Yeah man, didn't you see it on the screens?"
"No"
They followed the Chief down the steps, through the makeshift armory, and into the Foyer, Just as the covenant started burning their way through it, after a moment the door exploded inwards, the grunts all started pouring through, closely flowed by a couple of elites.
Seeing as he was armed only with an SMG and his pistol, he decided to take on some of the grunts and let the Chief take the elites.
After they were all down, they headed for the door.
"Hey! Get back here marines!" Johnson yelled as he started firing on two new elites that had dropped down, almost on top of them.
"Shit, ADRIAN, get back!" He yelled at his friend, who seemed a bit disoriented.
He grabbed his arm and pulled him back behind a metal barricade. They waited a moment, after which Johnson stopped firing. "Baker! Perez! Get down there and police their weapons, I got a feeling we're gonna need it, everyone else, get moving!"
"Yes, sir." they said together. They all headed for the door, Adrian stopping at the piles of Grunt corpses, Nate going for the elites sprawled in the corner, as he looked them over, he began to think, I never really hated them, in fact, I wouldn't mind meeting one, if it weren't for the fact that I'd probably wind up dead. It annoyed him to no end how everyone else always referred to them as it instead of he or she, as if they were nothing more than mere animals to be slaughtered. How did that old saying go? About respecting your enemies, and how being overconfident could get you killed? Oh well.
He had almost finished checking them over, with about as many guns as he could carry, when he noticed one laying on his stomach, and thought there was something different about him, but he just couldn't place it, and then he realized, Holy shit! Is he still breathing? Against all better judgment, and that little voice in his head telling him it was a bad idea, he decided to move closer to him. As he rolled the Elite over, he noticed what must have happened, he'd been shot in the lower leg, causing him to fall forward and hit his head on a nearby pillar, knocking him out.
"Hey Sarge! This one's still alive!"
"What do I care, just finish him!"
"But sir…"
"But what?!" Johnson said, marching right up to him.
"What's the honor in that, haven't you ever heard of Chivalry, sir?"
"Chivalry? What kind of crazy fruit loop are you?"
"Come on, sir"
"Fine, but if he wakes up on you, I ain't saving your ass."
"You got it. Sir"
As he bent back over the Elite, he pulled out his med kit and gave him a dose of anesthesia, just to make sure.
"Hey Perez, give me a hand with him!"
"All right."
He grabbed the Elite's right arm and draped it over his shoulder as Perez did the same with the left, and began to half carry him, half drag him down the hall back toward the sick bay.
"Hey Nate, why do you care so much about this guy?"
"I don't know, I've just always wanted to meet one." He said. "Meet one? Why? If I ever met one, I'd shoot it before I'd bother talking to it."
"Him"
"What?"
"Him, not it."
"Fine, him, whatever."
After several more moments of bickering, they arrived at the med bay doors and shifted the Elite around awkwardly so that Nate could scan his ID badge. In moments they were inside and had set the unconscious alien down on one of the beds.
"Well, I guess that's good enough." Nate said
"It's all the help he's getting from me. I still don't know why you care about him so damn much."
"Because I, unlike you, was raised to judge the individual, not the race. Anyways, I can take it from here, you get back up-stairs."
"Fine by me, I'll see you later, if your little friend here doesn't wake up in the meantime."
As he left, he wondered for the millionth time why his friend bothered.
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Palo 'Rakamee's head swam, dark images swirling in and out of view, his head ached horribly, which was only worsened by the new images, harsh white light, he could see blurred figures, but none he recognized.
How did this happen? How did I get here? He wondered. Then one of the figures in the images drew nearer.
A human? By the Prophets! The battle! He remembered it now, they had been sent on a mission to destroy the vermin's orbital stations, he had been on the first dropship, he remembered. He struggled to remember more, he willed his mind to cooperate, they had melted through the first bulkhead and had been met by heavy fire on the other side. He remembered, he had begun to try flanking the humans, using their inferior computer terminals as cover, when he had felt a sharp pain in his left ankle and had fallen, that was how he had gotten here. Here, the harsh image intensified at the thought, it grew larger, until finally it consumed his entire view, he moaned, and began to feel things, a tightness on his wrists and legs, as he slowly regained consciousness.
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Nate had been working on the Elite's ankle for about half an hour, there really wasn't much to be done; after he had worked the bullet out it was just a matter of filling the hole with biofoam and sealing it with a bandage. As soon as he was done, he was just about to go back to the small office in the corner of the bay when he heard the beeping of the Elite's monitors quickening, normally he wouldn't have even hooked up a monitor for a quick treatment, but he wasn't sure how large a dose of sedatives to give to someone as large as an Elite, so he'd hooked him up just in case.
Guess I didn't give him enough, oh god what do I do?!
He quickly ran back to the bed to make sure the restraints were as tight as could be, and then, he waited.