-Part Four; You Thought I Was WHAT?
Elliott found the sharp drop first, but he didn't even have enough time to yelp in surprise before all five of them had piled right off the edge after him. It was a blessedly short drop to the bottom, though, and suitably padded with soft, silty sand that was blowing just as hard as all the rest of it. This close, though, no one could miss the towering door set into the rock face.
Pushing off the pile, Alex-2 got stood up first, but while he backed into the rock face and leaned there, and the others disentangled themselves and stood up, too, he looked around and saw something starting to emerge out of the sand from somewhere flatside of their cliff-door.
"Guys! Company!" He raised his shotgun, wary, but lowered it again when he recognized the outline of the first one. "Sarge!"
James trotted out of the sandy curtain with Amanda and Adam in tow, but as soon as they got near the door, it automatically slid back, opening. Sans greetings or questions, all present spun around to aim their weapons into the doorway.
"What's in there?" Max eventually asked.
"Well... we're about to find out." James decided, on the fly. He started forward. "Visibility has got to be better in there anyway." In twos, the rest of the team followed him.
"Everyone here?" Amanda asked, looking over the dark visors and trying to count the moving men.
"I think we're missing Andrew." Alex-1 answered. "He wasn't with us and I don't see him with you."
"I never saw him... the sand was really bad where my pod hit and so was the Covenant. I don't know how they knew what they were shooting at wasn't theirs." Connor put in.
"Yeah, same here." Alex-2 added. "One of the pods was hit on the way in, though..."
"That was mine." Amanda told him. "All it did was scare me half to death and jam the firing pins in the door."
"Should we really be leaving him by himself out there?" Max asked, skeptical. "There were a whole bunch of enemy I couldn't see through all the dirt in the air out there."
"If he is he'll be fine. He's smart and he knows what he's doing." James answered, sounding grim. All of them knew he was concerned too, not knowing the fate of one of his men, but no one questioned. His comment had not been wrong, after all.
"He better be alright." Amanda muttered, running her eyes over the interior of the corridor connecting the door to the inside of the cliff. As they walked along the cut crystal floor and past the ribbed metal walls, the corridor itself shaped like an upright arrowhead, the ODST squadron could only try to step lightly and wonder where they were.
Ahead of the very first open chamber they came to, though, the echoing sounds of gunfire - Human gunfire - changed it from weird, mysterious and a little out of place to just one more battleground for all of them. As one, the squadron sprinted across the chamber, dodging stationary pilings and blunt obtrusions to make the far exit and through. The sound of the battle grew louder before it clarified into individual shots of plasma and metal bullets, and the squadron had to navigate another crooked, glass corridor before they found the action.
Elites were making a stand over several dozen fallen Grunts, four dead Jackals and two fallen of their own creed. All four were hiding behind the freestanding cover, but plasma hits on the far side of the room only made the material glow. It didn't vaporize, melt away, slag down, or even shatter. It just got warm, then cooled again in the same shape and form it had been before. It didn't even take bullet scarring from the Human weaponry peppering it around the Elites.
The telling buzz of a fully automatic MA5B would send the Elites all ducking for cover, but with a side-entrance, that cover was as good as useless as the squadron-minus-one flew into the room and blew down the last four Elites.
Stepping around the corner of his cover, Andrew stuck the barrel of his assault rifle into the air and heaved a visible breath. "Oh, good. I was almost out."
"Of ammo, or targets?" James laughed.