Part two --- Garret
The plans called for the Pelicans on this particular mission to touch-and-go, meaning that the VTOL engines would never turn off, and hardly any contact would be made between the ship and the sandy beach, and the ten marines in the back would jump off. The Pelicans would then fire the engines to full-burn, takeoff, then rendezvous with the Over Soul, a UNSC frigate just out of the Joshua system. Six Pelicans would take supplies, including M12 "Warthog" Reconnaissance Vehicles, M19 SSM Rocket Propelled Grenade Launchers, and M90 Shotguns, and the other nine would take a total of ninety additional Marines.
First Lieutenant Elaine Garret wrestled with the yoke of her Pelican, Emu Farm as another blast rocked the drop-ship. One Pelican had already gone down, taking the pilot and all of its passengers with it, and two others had taken critical damage, enough to severely hinder their ability to make it back to the Over Soul. The orders were far from black and white. The Pelicans were on their own, and were to fend for themselves; a highly unorthodox directive, but it was understandable what with the way the war was going. Red lights blinked and a klaxon blared in the Emu's cockpit. Garret looked down to the console where the red status indicator lights were.
"Damn." She mumbled to herself. Both engines were overheating badly, and the only way she could fix that would be to cut the power to them entirely. She maneuvered the ship as close to the beach as she could, then cut the engines. It fell only about a meter, but it was a long meter for a fifteen-ton space ship to fall. The ship hit hard, jostling something in the hold area loose. Elaine reached across her chest to unbuckle her safety harness, but before she could release the latch, the entire console of the Pelican lit up red, and the Heads-Up Display had "ENGINE FIRE – CRITICAL" blinking in large, red, block letters. Elaine froze in position. This kind of thing doesn't happen everyday. The Pelican's VTOL engines were fragile. They weren't very big, but they put out vast amounts of energy, and at top speeds or when they were in a prolonged hover state like in a touch-and-go, they tended to glow a light blue. When the Emu's engines were cut they were over-heating, and now that they sustained critical damage, one was bound to burst into flames. Action had to be taken quickly, otherwise, the engine would explode, and a Pelican with only one engine is certainly not going to leave the atmosphere of a planet. Garret thought for a moment, and then flipped a toggle switch on the console. The cockpit stopped blinking red, rather turned solid red. "Emergency mode activated." An artificially calm computer voice said. "Empty emergency coolant tanks on wing one into engine one." Said the Lieutenant. The right side of the ship rumbled as a bright liquid flowed through it, and into the flaming engine. Steam shot into the air, emitting a loud hiss. The fire stopped, and the cockpit returned to its normal state; the Pelican was ready to fly again.
Moments later, the Pelican was airborne again, and hovered fifteen meters in the air. Lt. Garret was about to go to critical power in order to leave the system and rendezvous with the Over Soul as soon as she possibly could, when a group of grenade explosions from the ground caught her attention. A platoon of marines was pinned down behind a Covenant Anti-Landing Craft spike. Garrett flipped a switch next to the yoke and a red crosshair appeared on the view screen, and the HUD showed: ".50 cal ARMED". She moved the yoke around until the crosshair was over a group of Covenant grunts firing at the pinned marines and squeezed the trigger. The guns shot lead bolts into the grunts, and bright blue blood began spraying about. The sand under them was entirely blue. Brass shell casings soundlessly fell to the sandy earth below. Garret trained her sights onto another Covenant platoon and fired into them, with the same results. When the beach was clear, she swung the ship around, pushed the rudders all the way forward, and the ship's engines roared to life, propelling the craft out of the atmosphere of the planet Joshua VII and into the comforting embrace of friendly air-space.