Chapter 6: MIA Much?
It took us 35 minutes but we had finally been able to lose the covenant airships by running in and out of buildings. They eventually got tired of playing hide and seek, so the troop transports decided to land, deploy their troops, and take off to head back to what I can only assume was their nearest base. However, some of the Banshees stayed and were bombing the occasional building in an attempt to draw us out into the waiting clutches of their ground troops. By this time, we had somehow managed to stay generally close to the building where Sawdust and Chatterbox found me.
"I think we lost them…" whispered Chatterbox as we hadn't heard any explosions or alien voices in the past three minutes.
"Why don't you stick your head out and find out?" replied Sawdust.
"And risk becoming a chunk of cooked meat? No thanks, I'll let you do that."
"Well someone's got to do it or else we'll be here all night and we'll never find Stinger."
"She'll be fine."
"How do you know that? She could be unconscious still!" replied Sawdust in an ever increasingly loud tone.
"Why are you so protective of her anyways, huh? Right now there's three of us left, and she'd want us to move on!" Chatterbox also replied in an equally loud voice.
As they continued to argue I just looked out a "window" which was actually just a hole in the wall I had found that allowed me to look outside. The day was starting to become the night and we were running out of time and options.
"Both of you shut up, now." I replied in a slightly louder than whisper voice.
They both looked over at me and as if they had forgotten I was still there, which tends to happen a lot not just with them but with everyone. Matilda and a few other friends always seemed to remember that I was there even if they were in the most heated argument of the century.
"Sorry Joe, forgot you were there." answered a quieter Chatterbox.
"It's alright but I will not let your arguing ruin our chances of survival and finding Matilda." I replied looking at both of them. "Now I got an idea but it's a bit of a risky one."
"I'm all ears Joe." replied Sawdust.
"Same here." answered Chatterbox.
"Alright, here's the plan, it'll be night here in less than an hour. We'll use the night as camouflage and search the area for hostiles and Matilda. Now here's the problem, either Matilda is long gone by now or we are about to walk into a trap."
"Well… it's more exciting than sitting here," replied Chatterbox.
"Best plan we got." answered Sawdust.
"Alright we'll move out when it's night, get ready."
About one hour later
"Alright everyone's got low light mode on right?"
"Right." They both replied in sync.
"Stay low, stay in the shadows, and stay semi close to each other. The last thing we need is a grenade going off and killing us all."
"Roger that." Replied Sawdust.
With that, we emerged from the destroyed building and into the darkness. We looked around and couldn't find any sign of the Covenant or Matilda.
"Anyone find anything?" I asked in the comms after about 10 minutes of searching.
"Negative." replied Sawdust.
"Nothing over here," answered Chatterbox.
"Signs of the Covenant?" I asked, trying to keep them busy while I tired to think up another plan.
"I found a few plasma burns and the occasional dead alien and a few broken weapons." replied Sawdust.
"Same over here, but I think I keep seeing something out of the corner of my visor but there's nothing ever there." Chatterbox responded.
"Probably just a glitch in the helmet, it probably got hit by something and had something get knocked loose." I replied.
"That's probably it. I have been hit by a lot of things today."
"Lets all meet back up in the building we were just at."
"Alright."
"On my way."
I then started making my way back to the building, however, two minutes into my trip back, my visor started picking up something. I stopped and looked around, and saw absolutely nothing but darkness.
"Hey Chatterbox, I got a question for you." I spoke into the comms while looking around.
"..." There was no response.
"Sawdust you there?" I asked in a slightly worried tone as I raised my rifle so that it was level with anything that might run at me.
"..." Again there was nothing.
"Guys this better not be a joke."
"..."
"Well this is just-" I managed to start out before I landed on the ground. "Ouch." Was all that I was able to say due to something heavy lying on my back.
"You will pay for your heretics, worm." Replied a gruff but stern voice. The weight on me disappeared but then I found a massive three fingered hand clutched around my throat lifting me off the ground. The alien which I could now identify as an Elite looked me in the eyes even though my visor's cloud function was on. "There is nothing you can do to stop the Great Journey."
"Again… with this…. Great Journey crap?" I managed to gasp out. "Look… I'll get you… a one way ticket… to your "gods"... just let me go." I choked out with a smile on my face. The alien apparently didn't like my joke as he tightened his grip on my neck, I tried to reach down and grab one of my pistols but I realised they weren't there. "Dang it, they must have fell off when I hit the ground, no repeats of that first encounter."
"Your words of treachery, shall not grant you the "break" you require."
"When did... you squid faces... learn sarcasm?" I was trying to rip his hand off my throat but, as expected, it was useless.
"The gods will smile upon me and grant me passage amongst the prophets you pathetic creature."
I locked my eyes in on his arm, realizing that there was no way I was getting out of this alive. Then I heard a "Boom" and saw the aliens eyes roll up, and his grip loosen until I was able to just fall out of his hand. The body then fell over into a pile of blood and flesh. Standing behind the body was the smoking barrel of a shotgun, and the owner of that shotgun was none other than-.
"Matilda?"
"Joe?"
"Man am I glad to see you."
"I can tell, if it weren't for me you'd be the corpse right now."
"I would have been yeah, but hey at least you can say that an elite FELL for you." I replied with a giant smile behind my visor.
"You know, it's not too late for you to join him."
"Haha, yeah it's never too late." I replied as I put my hand on her undamaged shoulder. "I'm glad you're alright though."
"Same here. How are the guys holding up?"
"Hudson is… well… Hudson, and Smith, he was worried more than he'll admit."
"Sounds about right, but what happened? After I got shot I mean?"
"Well… I applied some burn cream to your shoulder and went back into the fight. We were starting to get overrun, and then, out of nowhere, we heard the whistling of missiles heading our way. I grabbed you by the handle and tried to drag you behind cover but the missiles went off and I lost you and got knocked unconscious. When I came to, I was under a pile of rubble with disabled comms. So I decided to try and shoot my way out. Smith and Hudson heard my gunshots, ran over, and found me." I then looked at the alien body. "Then we got chased by our friends here and went looking for you."
"Sounds like I missed out."
"You sure did, what about you?"
"Woke up not that long ago maybe 5-10 minutes ago and started looking for you guys, nothing exciting, except for the fact that they are setting up jammers and using their active camo."
"Ahh so that's why comms just dropped and that guy came out of nowhere."
"Pretty much."
"Just great… well we better get going, we need to see if the others made it to our little hideout."
"Alright, let's get going."
"Hold on I need to find my guns first." I said while looking around, waiting for my hud to outline my lost weapons in yellow.
"What is up with you and losing stuff?"
"Hey it's not my fault I kept getting knocked out." I replied as my hud found my weapons and I walked over to reclaim them. "At this rate I'll probably have brain trauma."
"Got everything now?"
"Yeah."
"Then let's go."
"Fine, let's go and see if the guys are alright."
5 minutes later
"Well crap…" I replied as I walked in the building that was providing a shelter to me and my friends.
"Did we maybe just get here before them?"
"Nah, I doubt it. They were patrolling the area closest to here. Now that I think about it, Hudson said something about his hud glitching out. My hud was acting up the same way before that Elite tackled me so it sounds like he was being followed by a cloaked elite too. So the odds are Smith was probably being tailed too."
"What are the odds that they're dead?"
"You know I hate answering those types of questions." I replied bluntly.
"I also know you don't have to do-" She started to answer before I cut her off.
"Don't worry about me, worry about yourself."
"Then who's going to worry about you and the others?"
"Me."
"Joe we both know-"
"I said dont worry."
"Joe… you can't keep doing this."
"I can and I will. You are the only one that knows so don't make me regret telling you it."
"This war will only make it worse."
"When did you become a shrink?"
"When you started shutting us out."
"Well right now we have more important issues. We have two friends who are MIA and until we find their ice cold corpses we are going to say they are alive."
"Well in that case we've already been MIA twice."
"Yay, maybe we should call ourselves The Missing Squad that way we'll already be missing."
"You are really bad at jokes." she laughed out, causing me to smile.
"It made you laugh didn't it?"
"Fine, but can we please find the guys. This place is really boring and there's no action here."
"You were knocked out during all the previous action."
"Hey! Not my fault I got shot."
"Yes it is."
"No it's not."
"Yes it is."
"No it's not."
"Yes it is." I replied as we started walking out of the building to search for more MIA squad members.
10 minutes later
We had been searching for Smith and Hudson for the past 10 minutes and we still hadn't found them nor had we stopped arguing about whose fault it was that Matilda got shot. She had just finished listing off a list of reasons that "proved" it wasn't her fault and I was about to responded when I tripped and fell.
"You are just accident prone today Joe." Replied Stinger with a light laugh while offering a hand to help pull me back up.
"Yeah, what'd I trip on though?" I replied surveying the ground around me. Since it was night and since the rain stopped hours ago my hud was set to its low light mode which highlighted a piece of equipment that caused my fall. I reached down and picked it up.
"Is that?"
"Ya…" It was Smith's helmet.
"Is his…?" Started to ask Stinger as I turned the helmet upside down to look inside.
"No it's empty." I said with a breath of relief. Relieved that I didn't have to witness a head roll out of a helmet. "Well if the helmet's here, and there's no body the odds are he's alive."
"But didn't you mention that Hudson was patrolling this area, not Smith's?"
"Yeah."
"Then what's Smith's helmet doing here?"
"Good question… maybe they decided to group up or maybe Smith heard a gunshot and came running."
"Maybe…"
"Look, we will find them."
"How many times have you said that today?"
"More times than I'd like to admit…"
Authors Note: Hello everyone! Hows everyone been? I hope you guys have been doing well, life has gotten very busy lately so I've been busy running around so I apologize for any errors I missed. I will try my best to make the proper fixes to the next chapter in order to help slow down the story more and develop the plot more. Also again (sorry I probably sound like a broken record but) you guys are the best! Thank you so much for enjoying the story and letting me know that such as, VampiricShadow who said "Jesus Kivdon. This is the second time I've written a comment directed to you today. Anyways, this is a great story so far and I'm enjoying it.", funny how you keep running into Kivdon lol. Hmm I think that's everything for today, enjoy the rest of the day everyone!
~BattleFrontline signing off