Chapter X

The rockets had hit their mark perfectly. The rockets ripped through the open entrance bay of the Seraph fighter. A short pause and another set of twin 102 millimeter shaped charges obliterated two banshees. Then the last two rockets found their mark on the remaining two banshees.

"Go, go, go!" Someone yelled. Though the night was dark and there Jericho III had no moon, the sniper contrails could be seen. The crack of the S2's was faint at best, the snipers range was extraordinary. It they had only moved a twenty meters before the Covenant started returning fire. Plasma and lead cut the air into pieces. Everyone dropped to the ground, lying prone weapons blazing at the general direction of the Covenant.

Suddenly, the Seraph fighter, which had been burning from the internal rocket hits, exploded. The main plasma reactor had overloaded and turned the ship into a giant fragmentation grenade. Carol's ears rang with the reverberation of the explosion. The crossfire stopped on both sides for just a second while they shook off the shell shock.

An ear piercing whistle cut across the sky just as the world was coming back into focus. Though he'd never heard the sound up close before, he knew what it was: a Banshee in flight. There was probably more than one, but with the fog of war Carol couldn't tell for sure.

He looked back to check his flanks, a choice he'd regret the rest of his life; for there, 20 meters away "Buck" was fighting a with an Elite. They'd both ran out of ammo and were fighting it out hand to hand. Buck brought a strong punch to the alien's lower left mandible, hard enough to stun it but it gave it a second to reach for it plasma sword; Carol nearly vomited as he watched the blade slice through his short term friend.

Quickly the Elite tuned his attention to Carol. Panic began to wash over Carol, He emptied the 60 round mag of his M7 but it did nothing to stop the alien. As he fumbled for his magnum Carol also braced for death.

To his salvation and surprise a 30mm round cut into the Elite. Blue-purple blood splashed across Carol's face; he wondered what had happened. As he glanced around, he noticed that the sky held two Sparrowhawks as well as a dozen or so Banshees. That must have been where the 30 millimeter had come from. Carol hoped that the Sparrowhawks could give him the upper hand.

He sprinted for the museum stairs near the entrance. Several of his fellow guerrilla fighters were there, firing at the Covenant troops who vastly out numbered them. Carol slapped a new magazine into his weapon and let loose a barely aimed ten round burst at the Covenant to his front.

Plasma hissed and gunfire echoed, the air became hot and hard to breathe; the fog of war had truly set in, and it was thick. In the predawn sky above an air battle raged on that seemed massive, but Carol couldn't tell; he was so dazed that it could have been just two ships fighting. A blue glowing ball of plasma was hurdled out from inside the museum, Carol knew what it was: a grenade.

"Run." Somebody yelled. And everyone did. The grenade blew and released a blinding arc and flash as well as deafening noise and a forceful overpressure. Carol had a true case of shell shock: every thing seemed slow motion and what sound he could hear was distorted. He could make out the clatter of gunfire and the whine of plasma, but not in the same places as before, the groups had broken out of their preverbal trenches and started a guerilla war.

Some flaming mass of metal fell from the sky; it was indistinguishable if it human or Covenant but it landed on the museum entrance and killed several Covenant. Carol realized that this distracted the Covenant for a second as they reevaluated their options; and this short, less than a second question in the Covenant mind was just the break they needed.

"Follow me!" He said waving his hands in a motion that meant the same. As he started to sprint the others followed, and in short time so did the Covenant they'd been fighting. Luckily, a Pelican gunship, what Carol would later find out was the last one to leave HAFB, saw the fight. It tossed in a volley of rockets and 50 mil rounds toward the aliens and then landed. Carol ran toward the hovering craft and hopped in. He helped Dakota up into the hold as well. In short order followed Russell who was carrying Steph's unconscious body like a sack of potatoes across his left shoulder. He was armed only with a Covenant plasma pistol and he looked like he had been through hell and back several times, as he well should. A person Carol had not paid much attention to came running up: Will Kaiser. He toted an MA5B in his right hand and in his left hand was the infamous glimmer and jingle of dog tags taken from bodies. Carol had been yet to determine if he was military or not, but he wore dull green pants and shirt. Irene was the last person who ever got on that cramped drop ship not counting the body of the 16 year old boy she was dragging with her; he appeared not to be alive, and he was covered in blood from both sides. It looked as if he had burped up a bubble of blood as people do as they die from a traumatic injury. As Carol helped to pull him up, Mark's watch fell of his wrist, once the body was inside Carol put the watch in the pocket same as the Mossberg plate and June's necklace. He would later take one of the duplicate dog tags off the all the necklaces and keep them as well, all to remember this fateful fight.

The turret set up in the back was blaring one long song of deep thuds of gunfire and the clinks of brass on titanium floor. The pilot yelled for everyone to hold on as the ship flew away from the plasma blasts and the aliens seemed to get smaller and smaller. Once at the edge of the breathable atmosphere, the back door of the Pelican closed airtight. While the chance of something going wrong was still great, it was all now out of Carol's control; for the first time since the invasion began, Carol could almost relax. But he knew that the planet would surly be glassed, and he wondered what ever happened to that crystal the Covies had been after. But that would all have to be pushed to a far corner of his mind, as there was nothing to do about it. While Carol had always wanted a simple existence, far from the war, farming like his grandparents, something told him that by getting on this drop ship he'd volunteered to fight on the front lines. But he was never truly sure.

"What'll happen now?" Dakota asked. Her hair was especially caked with blood, and her clothes were stained with it, and everyone in the drop ship, even the two dozen people that had been on before Carol and his comrades, was covered in blue, red, green and dried black blood.

Carol had never been too religious, but he answered "God only knows." Dakota sighed as she laid her head on Carol's shoulder, held his hand, and began to drift off to sleep. Carol wanted to sleep, but knew he couldn't even if he tried, too much consumed his mind, so he simply lay his head on top of Dakota's and closed his eyes, wide awake, asking himself unanswerable questions, the most recurrent being "Why?"

Authors Notes:

Da, da our story ends here, or does it. With this being one of the best received stories I've written, I am highly considering a sequel, but if the public opinion is that I should leave the ending up to the reader, than I'll do that just as well; a little like Gears of War did. Any way, I'm still not calling this complete just yet, as I may add a little here and there, and with proof reading I'll surely catch some minor errors, kind of like the directors cut of a movie. But I won't do anything to change the story line or anything drastic like that. Give me your feedback and just tell me the good the bad and whatever else you feel the story could use. And If a Jericho III 2 is approved, then I might just post a little preview right here as a epilogue chapter of this story. ; ) Adiós.