RECOMMENDED SONG: Away by Breaking Benjamin
Alex felt more like himself now that he had his armor on.
All around him, the Pillar shook and shuddered with the contractions not of birth, but of death. And it was fast encroaching on his reality, preparing to take him down with it. Those pods were his number one priority now. He and Fleming were making their way down corpse-stricken passageways. They moved among metal bulkheads painted liberally with a kaleidoscope of blood and tattooed with plasma scoring and bullet holes. Alex listened closely, trying to re-calibrate his carefully honed senses. The suit and the stim helped, but being in a coma for three weeks and then being jump-started out of it so abruptly was seriously screwing with him.
He was in a lot of pain, his head kept wanting to go swimmy, his vision was irritatingly blurry, and his thoughts were a bit muddled. It was a pretty bad state to be in, given the present circumstances. At least Fleming was keeping quiet, except for the occasional gasp or sharply drawn breath whenever the superstructure rattled around them. Alex paused just long enough to scoop up enough ammo to top off his pistol and rifle.
He'd seen thousands of corpses at this point, but he'd never lost that pang of hurt that hit him in the chest whenever he saw another dead human. And there were a lot of men and women in green ballistics armor or orange jumpsuits scattered across their path, broken in death by the Covenant. He was following Fleming's instructions, trusting the man to know what he was doing, though he was beginning to question the man's definition of 'not far'.
"How much farther?" Alex asked as they jogged down another lone passageway.
"Maybe another minute," Fleming replied. "We're really close."
Alex slowed as they approached the end of the corridor, which terminated in a T-junction. There were a pair of barricades positioned in the junction itself, one pointed towards them, the other angled to the right. Probably nothing much down the left passageway then. He put his back to the right wall and waited, listening.
He didn't hear anything nearby.
He poked his head around the corner and saw another desolate stretch of corridor that ended abruptly about five meters away.
"We're supposed to go here?" he asked, motioning for Fleming to join him.
They walked around into the next passageway. "Yeah-crap," the technician whispered. "That shouldn't be closed. I need to check it out."
"Wait here," Alex replied, and made his way down the metal tunnel. There were a few hiding places among the niches in the walls. He cleared each of them with a quick check and found them all to be empty, then he waved Fleming over. "See what you can do."
The tech nodded tightly and stood before a control panel embedded in the wall to the right of the sealed bulkhead. That was the one big problem with space-borne locations: they were so overprotective about hull breaches that the locking systems they had in place were a little trigger-happy. Well, that wasn't necessarily a problem given how bad hull breaches could be…
Something metal hit the floor back the way they'd come.
"What was that?" Fleming whispered.
"Focus," Alex replied. "I'll be right back."
He looked pale, but got back to work. Alex made his way quickly and quietly back down the passageway, listening intently. He thought he heard a snuffling breath. A Grunt. He switched to his pistol, letting his assault rifle hang from the shoulder strap and carefully drawing it. It remained quiet as he closed the gap to the corner, and for a few seconds he thought that perhaps he was hearing things in his diminished state.
Then he leaned around the corner, exposing as little of himself as possible, and felt his pulse quicken. There were three Elites leading a pack of Grunts down the passageway. They were slow, and still about twenty meters back, but they were coming his way. He quickly pulled back around and moved back over to Fleming.
"How's it going?"
"I don't think I can get it open."
"Then we need an alternate route."
Fleming looked around uncertainly. "I'm not sure...maybe we can go back the way we came."
"That's not an option," Alex replied flatly.
"What? Why?"
He'd been hoping to avoid panicking the man, as he'd noticed that Fleming didn't quite seem the type to work better under pressure, but their window was closing. "We have incoming. There's a maintenance tunnel entrance three meters back, can you get it open?"
"I can try," Fleming replied.
"Make it happen, fast as you can."
They moved back and found the hatch in one of the side niches Alex had checked earlier. It hadn't opened when he had initially approached it, and he'd at first taken that as a good sign, meaning it would be harder for something to sneak into the hallway with him. Now it might get him killed. He left Fleming working on getting it open and returned to his previous position. Peering carefully around the corner again, he saw that the Covenant squad had crossed half the distance now. He waited, watching them cautiously.
If at all possible, he would avoid this confrontation. Even if he was in top form, three Elites and nearly a dozen Grunts were very poor odds. It was possible that they might head into one of the side hallways they'd passed on the way here, or get distracted by something, or go back the way they'd come. He had three grenades on him. The pair of plasmas, and only a single frag he'd managed to gather so far. Judging by all the soot marks and explosives damage, it was obvious that the Marines had been using their grenades freely.
He didn't blame them.
Seconds ticked by, feeling swollen and lethargic. Waiting was always the worst. Alex licked his lips, again reminded of how dry his mouth was. There hadn't been time for even a simple drink, although he was wishing he had made time. He was no doubt dehydrated. He waited. The Covenant continued drifting gradually closer. Fleming continued working. His heart pounded in his chest. When they drew within ten meters, Alex pulled out one of his plasma grenades. This situation was rapidly going to become untenable.
Pulling back around briefly, he whispered to Fleming for an update.
"Almost," Fleming murmured back.
Great. What did that mean?
Alex pulled back around, and one of the Grunts happened to look directly at him as he did. It let out a loud shriek, then began yapping madly, raising its plasma pistol. Well, there went the element of surprise. A general cry of alarm went up and the Covenant began scrambling for cover. Not one to waste an opportunity, Alex primed the grenade and snapped it forward, hurling it as hard and as accurately as he could manage.
It connected with the very Grunt that had spotted him.
Good, served it right.
The thing began screaming and running about. He pulled back around and waited until the resulting explosion hit. He was very satisfied to hear another explosion, and then a third one touch off as other plasma grenades were detonating. Alas, he saw as he peered back around, pistol out and aiming, searching for targets, it had been too much to hope for a repeat performance of the last time he'd done something involving plasma grenades.
The Covenant had scattered across the passageway, the Grunts largely remaining in the open, the Elites taking cover. One behind one of the support pillars in the center of the hallway, the other two on either side of it in small alcoves. Alex got to work. He aimed and fired, dropping to one knee as he did so, and started putting down the Grunts. One went, two, three...he capped four of them before the survivors managed to scatter, bringing their total down by a fair number. The Elite in the middle had blue armor, marking it as more inexperienced. And that wasn't the only thing doing so. Although he saw the telltale sparking of an overwhelmed personal shield unit across its bulky form, the thing leaned out, impatient, and fired at him with its plasma rifle.
Alex didn't pull back. Instead, he aimed and popped off two careful shots. The first round collapsed whatever shielding the unit had built back up since the explosion, the second took it right in its big forehead and splattered its alien brains all over the bulkheads. It clattered to the deckplates. He took two shots to the chestplate that felt like quick but powerful punches, sending him stumbling back into cover, but the Elite was dead.
Several streams of plasma fire stabbed out at him, illuminating the junction in bright blue-white flashes of energy.
"How long!?" Alex snapped.
"Almost done!" Fleming called back.
They were going to have to have a serious conversation about the definition of the word 'almost' just as soon as they were out of combat. Alex tried to give the guy a break. Situations rapidly deteriorated more often than not, especially under fire. He leaned back out and picked off another Grunt, then pulled back around as they returned fire. He emptied his current magazine and half of the next one taking out the rest of the Grunts and whittling down the shields of one of the other Elites. Then he took another two shots to the chest.
"Fleming, where are we at with that door?!" he called, wincing as he felt the burning pain eating into him.
"Done!" Fleming replied after a few seconds.
Alex pulled out his second and final plasma grenade, primed and tossed it, then turned and began hurrying towards the maintenance hatch. "Go! Go!"
Fleming disappeared into the opening. Alex was right behind him. As he heard the explosion, he hit the close button. He had serious doubts that either Elite would be killed by the explosion, but hopefully it would buy them enough time to get the hell out of here. The pair of them hurried down the narrow tunnel, away from the murderous aliens.
Towards escape. Hopefully.
They navigated the confusing network of maintenance tunnels for two minutes. They only paused once, to investigate a dead Grunt. Obviously someone had been through, and they'd left a sole plasma grenade, which Alex pocketed.
Fleming said he still knew where to go, but they would have to take a detour through a power distribution center. The closer they came to said destination, the more conflict Alex heard. By the time they were almost there, Alex could pick out individual voices. It sounded like an all-out assault was in progress. Because of course there was.
Finally, they came to the last tunnel. Alex could actually see the pulsing flashes of plasma fire through the mesh metal door five meters away.
"I want you to hang back and let me handle this," he said.
"Got it," Fleming replied, sounding relieved.
He hung back as Alex moved up to the door. Peering through, Alex tried to get a sense for what was happening. It was difficult, as a lot was happening. There was a power distribution center, built into a big square of old deckplates and battered bulkheads. Nodes of technology, almost like teeth, grew from the flooring, providing cover for both sides of the conflict. Naturally, the opening let out on the Covenant's side of the room.
Then again, that wasn't actually a bad thing.
There were nearly twice as many of the alien bastards as his fellow humans, and almost a quarter of them were Elites. Not a particularly great situation. But if someone were to mount an assault from the rear, throw everything into chaos, maybe take out one or two of the key players in this battle...Alex prepared himself.
His element of surprise would be gone quickly, so he would have to act fast. Selecting his pistol, he watched the battle carefully. A scattering of Grunts were nearby, snapping off shots with their plasma pistols and missing more often than not. The diminutive little things weren't that much of a threat, but they shouldn't be outright ignored either. Grunts could kill. Especially given the fact that they were prone to throwing plasma grenade, probably their most lethal attribute. There were two Elites nearby, each hunkered safely behind one of the solid, rectangular nodes. They would have to go, and quickly.
His moment to strike came, and he took it.
One of the Elites took enough hits to overload its personal force shield. Alex snagged and primed his only plasma grenade. Bumping the open button, he took one step out as the maintenance door opened silently. Aiming carefully, he snapped his arm forward and threw the plasma grenade at the other Elite that still had most if not all of its shielding. The grenade burst into a brilliant blue-white glare, sailed through the air, and attached to the Elite's back. Before it had time to blow, he turned and raised the pistol in one smooth motion, zeroing his sights on the alien face of the second Elite that now had no shields to its name.
It locked eyes with him for a fraction of a second, or rather, stared directly into his blackened visor...and then he squeezed the trigger. It was a good shot, taking the alien monster just below its right eye and splattering dark purple gore across the tech node behind it. The Elite stood for just a second, twitching violently as its dying nerves misfired, and it popped off a few shots from its plasma rifle. All but one of them fired harmlessly into the deckplates. The one that didn't caught a Grunt in the leg right as it was in the process of activating a plasma grenade.
What luck.
It shrieked and dropped the lit grenade in the midst of four other Grunts.
Alex pulled back. Right as he did, the grenade that he had thrown burst. On the heels of that one, the Grunt's dropped grenade erupted, and it immediately triggered a chain reaction of other grenades, touching off in rapid succession. Charred pieces of Grunt flew past the mesh-door as blue-white light flared madly.
Grunts screamed.
Metal groaned.
Random items pinged off of bulkheads.
When the last of the explosions had burned off, Alex hit the open button again and swept the area with his gaze and barrel of his pistol. There were just a handful of Grunts still alive, and one Elite that was wounded. Even as he was aiming for it, one of the Marines on the other side of the room finished it off. In fact, he only managed to fire off a single shot, snapping one Grunt's head to the side in a spray of bright, phosphorescent blue blood, before the others were wiped out by the survivors.
"Friendlies, coming out!" Alex yelled before emerging from the maintenance tunnel. "Let's go, Fleming."
"Coming," Fleming replied, his voice shaking slightly.
Well, at least he had more backup now.
Half a dozen Marines and a pair of technicians emerged from entrenched positions as the two of them came out.
"Thanks for the help," one of the Marines said, approaching.
"Not a problem. What's the sitrep?" Alex replied, glancing at the man's nameplate. It read LCpl. CARSON, D.
As he listened, he began pilfering a few nearby Covenant corpses.
"There's a hangar right next door that's serving as an evac point. We're trying to get as many people, pods, and Pelicans out as we can. This power center is what's powering the hangar, couldn't let it fall into enemy hands. But we're-" He froze, frowning, listening. His eyes widened. "Shit! Covies are making a push on the hangar! We need to get there now!"
They took off, abandoning their efforts to search the recently deceased.
Alex was right behind Carson, who was already hitting the exit and passing through it. He nearly got his head blown off as a string of plasma fire sliced through the air. He wasn't exaggerating: the door literally led into the hangar, nothing else dividing them. Carson kept running until he got behind a pile of crates. Alex held up a fist, freezing the others behind him.
"Going to lay down some suppressing fire. When I say, get to cover, one at a time," he said to the others.
They all quickly snapped off affirmative replies.
Alex peered cautiously around the corner, and nearly got his head blown off. He snapped out a curse as he primed and tossed his only remaining fragmentation grenade around the corner of the door frame. A pair of Elites and a clutch of Grunts were practically right there. He heard several shouts of surprise and the scrabbling of several feet as the Covenant tried to get away from the grenade. As soon as it exploded, he shouted for one of them to go.
The next Marine raced over to join Carson, who was now putting suppressing fire on the scattered Covenant. Alex leaned around the corner and switched to his assault rifle.
"Next! Go!" he shouted, opening fire.
Slews of bullets chopped into Covenant flesh as he let out bursts of gunfire. The MA5B rattled in his hands as he cut down one of the surviving Grunts, then a second one, and then began throwing fire at another Elite that was coming up. When he ran out of ammo, he pulled back and checked his surroundings again. Carson and two of the Marines were behind the stack of crates about five meters away, putting down the Elite he'd dropped the shield of before emptying his rifle. The expansive hangar stretched away from him to either side. They were basically at the halfway point. The left was still largely under human control, but the right, the way he kept leaning around to pop shots at, was heavily contested.
And directly across from them, maybe a good forty meters away, was a row of escape pods. About half of them were still available.
"Carson! We need to start making for the pods!" Alex yelled as he slapped a fresh magazine into his assault rifle.
"Affirmative!" Carson called back. "Keep sending them over!"
He then turned and said something to one of the other Marines, pointing to the next piece of cover in between them and the pods: a Warthog.
Alex looked at the next in line. A grim-looking woman with Covenant blood across her ballistics armor and a very determined expression.
Her nameplate read LCpl. SMITH, S.
"Get ready," he said.
She nodded tightly and got as close to the edge as she could without exposing herself. Alex peered around the corner. More Elites were incoming! This was going to be a bitch. What's worse, he could see several dozen Covenant even farther into the room. They were going to lose this position. They had to get out of here.
"Go!" Alex snapped, stepping out, shouldering the rifle, and opening fire once more.
Muzzle flare flashed and he heard a second rattling of bullets as Carson joined him from across the way. The pair poured gunfire into the advancing enemies. Two Grunts went down under the hail of lead, and one of the Elite's shields was overwhelmed. It popped out of existence, sparking as it tried to come back.
Alex didn't give it a chance. He put the rest of his ammo into its head and killed it, dropping the body like a stone.
The next several minutes played out with a feverish intensity as he and Carson kept the Covenant at bay as best they could, and kept sending others over. Two more Marines and another technician showed up behind Alex, making the whole thing take longer, not that he was really in a position to complain.
But finally, the last person went over.
Alex checked his rifle and found that he'd drained it. Cursing, he let it hang and pulled out his pistol. He glanced at Carson, who was still there. He looked ahead, beyond him. Some of the initial techs and Marines had already gone off in a pod, but he could just make out Lance Corporal Smith urging Fleming into another one of the pods that was filling up. And it was among the last of them. A ton had gone in the past few minutes.
And the Covenant numbers were swelling.
"Come on!" Carson snapped.
Alex glanced back and his eyes widened in frustrated anxiety. The previously well-guarded side of the hangar was beginning to collapse. He looked in the other direction. There were more Covenant over there, not less, despite his and Carson's efforts. They must've put down fifty between the two of them. It was now or never.
"Coming!" Alex responded.
Carson laid down some more cover fire and threw a grenade as Alex broke from cover and sprinted the distance between the two of them. Plasma fire stabbed out at him, shooting through the air and coming very close to hitting him more than once. But then he was there, behind the crates with Carson, on his knees.
"Okay, your turn," Alex said as he readied himself.
Carson nodded tightly and moved to the edge of the crates. Alex leaned around and began opening fire. "Go!" he snapped.
Carson ran and Alex fired off four shots into an advancing Elite's shields. They collapsed and he put another two into its misshapen skull, killing it instantly. He ducked back down as plasma fire washed over his position.
"Steele! Move it!" Carson called.
Alex saw that he was behind the Warthog now. As Carson opened fire, he sprinted again, towards his position. He almost made it without a problem. Then his foot hit something, he had no idea what, and he went stumbling, then sprawling. Even with the head-to-toe suit of obsidian ODST armor, it still hurt as he smashed to the deckplates. He rolled a few times, letting his momentum take him, and ended up behind the Warthog.
"That was embarrassing," Alex muttered as he got up, checking to see that he'd held onto his weapons. His rifle was absent, but it had been depleted of ammo anyway.
Carson chuckled. "I thought ODSTs weren't allowed to trip."
"Bite me. Get ready to go, it's your turn," Alex said.
"Yeah, yeah, let's get this over with," Carson replied.
Alex grabbed his pistol and took another sample survey of the situation. This whole hangar was being overrun, but not everyone was out yet. He looked down at his pistol. Suddenly, it didn't feel like enough.
Then he looked up.
At the Light Anti Aircraft Gun that was mounted onto the back of the Warthog they were hiding behind. Alex holstered his pistol.
"What are you doing?" Carson asked.
"Laying down cover fire," Alex replied.
"You'll be a target for fifty of them!"
"Just go," Alex replied. "I'm right behind you."
Carson growled, swore, and then got ready. Alex hopped up lightly onto the back of the Hog and grabbed the LAAG. He brought it around and began spinning the barrel up. There were a lot of them. Alex took aim at the nearest Elite, a crimson-armored veteran leading a charge right for his position now that the suppressing fire had died down.
The Elite had approximately one second to consider its error.
And then a stream of 12.7x99mm armor penetrating rounds slammed into it like a goddamned battering ram. The Elite was physically picked up and thrown backwards into a little crowd of Grunts, sending them flying like ninepins. Its shields didn't even last a chance, becoming overwhelmed in half a second. Before it hit the floor, Alex saw that he'd put a fist-sized hole through its broad chest. He laughed and then began sweeping the chaingun back and forth across the immediate area, taking down as many of the alien creatures as he could.
A dozen Grunts went down.
Two dozen went down, being churned into so much pulpy gore.
He brutally eviscerated a pair of Elites, then another that was making a run for him from the side. Someone was shouting, he realized after a moment.
"STEELE!" It was Smith. "ON! YOUR! SIX!"
Alex tossed a glance behind him. A crimson armored Elite was hunkered down behind another stack of crates, looking dead at him. She didn't have a line of sight on it, none of them did.
It was priming a plasma grenade.
Well, it was time to go.
He abandoned his position, hopping off the Warthog as the Elite threw the grenade. Alex began to run, to sprint as fast as he could for the escape pod. It was the last one still available, as far as he could tell. Smith was standing by it, firing to his right with a pistol. He pushed himself, booking it. He needed to be on that pod.
Behind him, the grenade exploded, and from the sound of the explosion, it took the Warthog with it. Alex pushed harder, almost there.
He heard Smith shout his name again.
Then something slammed into the back of his helmeted head. He felt an explosion of bright, white pain, and then he was falling.
And then he was returned to the darkness.