-Part Three; Regroup And Hit Rendezvous
Impact jarred everyone to the absolute core of their bones. As the doors on the pods fired off like flattened cannon rounds and the ODSTs piled out into the hot summer sunlight, chaos ensued promptly. Though scattered at first for their landing, the Covenant in the area were still quite close by, and all the cover there was anywhere near anyone were the pods themselves.
It was theorized that an HEV pod could take a Wraith mortar round and still be HEV-pod shaped. This did nothing for the mention of the atmospheric disturbance surrounding said pod, nor the unfortunate circumstances of anyone trying to use it as cover. Alex-1 got hung in his pod's lower lip and splashed onto his face in the blindingly white dust, but while the mishap was entirely unintentional, it did save his armor from a dozen peppering shots of plasma from the Grunts rushing inward on him. Instead, they set his seat inside the pod on fire.
Annoyed, he retrieved both guns from inside as quickly as he could, then ducked around behind the thing to get himself situated and loaded up. Unfortunately, on the other side were a pair of Elites, one with a sword, the other with a Carbine. Thankfully, the one with the Carbine was behind the one with the sword, and the swing gave Alex-1 the time he needed to put finger to trigger. Dodging an elongated arm (that would halve you) was one thing... dodging self-depreciating, self-propelled rifle rounds was wholly another! He tucked his head, rolled over it, came back onto a knee and fired his battle rifle point-blank at the attacking Elite.
In that moment, Alex-1 learned two things. The first was that point-blank meant he was somehow within the amorphous barrier of the Elite's energy shields, and when they flared, it jerked his gun out of his hands and smacked him in the visor with it. The second was that point-blank was still not good enough to kill an Elite with just three rounds.
Knocked onto his rear by the kinetic rejection, Alex-1 caught his rifle and scrambled to grip it correctly again before the equally as punished Elite could recover. The alien was not on the ground, but staggered was good enough for Alex-1. He'd just gotten his BR55 up and aimed, his finger on the trigger again, one boot slipped under his rump and that leg propelling him upwards off the ground, when he saw a fellow troopmate appear through the blowing white dust.
Max's shotgun belched four consecutive rounds at once, one into the Carbine-wielder, the other three into the rattled sword-wielder. The sword-wielder went down with more holes than he'd been born with, but the other Elite just got back up and swung the butt-end of his Carbine at Max's head.
While Max ducked, Alex-1 let go of his BR55 with one hand, yanked up his magnum and emptied the clip into the Elite's side. With broken shields and a couple of holes in his hide, the Elite spun about to roar indignantly at Alex-1. Barely was the sound out than the fifth shotgun round split his head open.
"That one just didn't want to die!" Max exhaled, racking the pump. "Come on, we got to move, there's buttloads more."
"That is why you're the FNG, Max." Alex-1 answered, grumpily. He reloaded both weapons on the fly, chasing after Max as they ascended a hill that neither had been able to tell was a hill until they set boot to it. The blowing dust made both men grateful for their sealed visors, but it still royally screwed with visibility. All either really knew was that the rest of the firefight was happening in that direction... which just so happened was also upwards.
Max found the rock first, running bodily into it and giving it an involuntary hug. "Ugh!"
"What are you - " Alex-1 began, right before he tripped over a second only to drop and straddle a third. "Oahu!"
Shaking his head to get the stars out of it, Max didn't have time to laugh at Alex-1's choice of words... their introduction was made, and down through the rocks came a pair of plasma grenades. Sucking in a fast breath, Max called out, "Grenade!"
Alex-1 wasn't sure what else to do - he tucked his elbows into the rock he was sprawled across and yanked himself up and over it, tucking down into a ball on the far side. Not a moment later, the two plasmas went off, scorching the air and everything in it. But on his new side of the rock, fire was coming in from what seemed to be three directions. Most of it was going by, but not all.
As he jumped free of the rock onto what he hoped was flat or at least level ground, he brought his BR55 up and aimed at the source of several large plasma shots. Firing there earned him some plasma rounds of his own, but while he never saw what it was he was shooting at, he found ducking the plasma was not that hard to do. Off to his right was his teammate, shooting a shotgun into the dust. "Max!"
"You found Max?" It wasn't Max, but Alex-2.
"Once." Alex-1 answered, turning out of the way of some bright plasma, only to get stitched across the front by three long red metal spikes. At the impact of each, he staggered, until the third knocked him over.
"Alex!" Alex-2 yelled, ducking himself at the waist and even crouching just a bit to avoid another fleet of the things. "Since when did Brutes and Elites fight in the same damn spot!"
"I'm good!" Alex-1 gasped, out of breath. He started to roll upwards when a hand grabbed him from behind and hefted him up for him.
"What's our head-count?" It was Elliott. Spinning away from Alex-1 as he found his balance again, he unloaded his BR55's entire clip into several emerging Grunts. The dust swirling through the bright, hot air was only getting thicker, and so was the live fire going everywhere. "We got to move out! Nobody can see in this crap!"
"We got four just now!" Alex-2 answered. "Where are the others?"
"I got a nav marker but radios are useless in this dirt!" Elliott yelled back, trying to be heard over a sudden howl of wind. The sound revved up before it died back, but it never completely went away. If the world was trying to scrape them off, it was doing a dandy job.
"Where's Max?" Alex-1 asked, tucking his shoulders forward to try to get his rifle up past the spikes. He didn't have time to yank them yet, but in the meantime they were in the way in a major fashion.
"Here!" The voice came up out of the rocks where he and Alex-1 had come up from a moment before, and with HUD nav points on each of them, they grouped up and began to run through the gritty storm after the only one that wasn't close enough to touch. Just to be sure the party they were leaving wasn't going to follow in the correct direction, Elliott yanked the pin out of a frag and threw it behind them.
"Take that, you invisible suckers!" Elliott added, just for emphasis.
Trying to navigate rocks to find the end of the nav-rainbow was hard, but every time they thought they found a flat spot, they'd get tangled up in more rocks. At one point it proved a bad situation when somehow, their calamity earned the accurate attention of a pair of Grunts with good throwing arms.
With grenades going off in seeming all directions, the foursome got out the other end by the skins on their teeth alone. When the Grunts went suddenly silent, the four looked up to see Connor skidding down a stone slope to meet them. He stuck his two M7's out at them for a second, before dropping his aim. "Hey, guys! Seen the Sarge?"
"Not yet." Elliott answered, slapping his gun to try to dislodge any dust that might have crawled up the barrel. "Hate this storm." Another howl roared past, seeming to go from right to left, but the nature of it earned it all five sets of guns tracing its path... was there something making that sound, and not just funneling winds?
"We better move out." Connor advised. "Got a direction, Elliott?"
"One nav point... it's weak and keeps fading out, but we were getting closer when you showed up." He stuck an arm out in the mentioned direction, and as if on cue, all five started moving again. "And someone yank those damn spikes out of Alex."
"Huh?" Alex-1 blurted, alarmed. "Wait a minute!" But Connor had fallen in beside him already, and with one arm levered against Alex-1's shoulder, he jerked the first spike out of the man's chest armor with a single pull. It still sent Alex-1 staggering forward right in the middle of his trotting step, though, and almost made him fall. "Agh!"