Author's Note: Sorry for not updating sooner, but school caught up with me. Anyway, here's Chapter 4, I know its short, but I hope you enjoy.

Chapter 4: The Swamps

The shadows lifted from his mind, and he could feel something touching his neck. Nathan groaned, but managed to open his eyes. Amy stood above him, checking his pulse.

"Welcome back sarge," she said without a smile.

"What happened," Nathan asked, putting a hand to his pounding head, and sitting up.

"Something shot the pelican down. The pilot and co-pilot are dead. So is Gary," Amy reported.

Nathan pulled his hand away from his forehead and looked at it. There was a fair amount of blood on it, he must have cut his head pretty good. He groaned again, and got up from the metal floor. He looked over his shoulder into the cockpit.

He could see the pilot, his helmet had been shaken loose when the rockets hit, and it had rolled out of the cockpit. When they crashed, the pilot's head had been smashed open on his own controls. The co-pilot had been thrown through the cockpit window because his harness had malfunctioned. His crumpled body lay smashed against a tree, his face cut open by the shattered window.

Nathan didn't even blink. He turned back around, and walked out of the destroyed dropship. He saw Gary's corpse, a piece of metal had cut his jugular vein when they crashed. Blood stained the gray metal walls of the pelican.

Nathan shook his head. More people have died under his command. He should be used to it by now, but he wasn't. He knew more people would die because of him, but he would never get used to it. The war hadn't taken his soul just yet.

When he stepped out of the pelican, his foot sank a little in the mud that covered the ground. He looked down. Everything was wet, there were clumps of moss like grass all around the marines, and the tree were old, gnarled, and massive. A mist filled the air around them, and insects floated lazily about.

It was a swamp, and there could be battalions of Covenant hidden within its misty depths. Nathan bit his lower lip in frustration.

"How are the communications?" he asked the survivors.

"Smashed to hell," Sara said.

"Danny is pretty bad, he was knocked out in the crash, and as far as I can tell he's got internal bleeding," Amy said kneeling beside the wounded marine, who had been propped against a tree. The contents of a Medical Kit lay scattered around her as she worked.

"How about weapons? What do we have left?" Nathan asked.

"Enough battle rifles to go around, Amy still has her shotgun, we all have pistols, and Mike has his SMG. We have grenades still, and Hank's sniper rifle is still intact. Basically, we have all the weapons we can carry. The ammunition storage in the pelican has been untouched, and we should all be able to carry enough ammo to last us through the swamp," Sara answered.

"Sir, we may have weapons, but we have almost no food, and no water. We can't last very long out here on our own. We need to get out of here," Mike said.

"Okay, which way to the Library?" Nathan queried.

Mike pointed. The marines followed the direction of his finger, but it only led into the misty shadows of the swamp. Wesley gulped audibly, Sara cracked her neck again, and the others just stared.

"Okay pack up, Jim, help Amy with Danny, Mike take point, lets move out," Nathan commanded.

The marines immediately burst into action. Amy hurriedly repacked the medical kit, as Jim lifted Danny from the ground. Sara spit on the ground, and reloaded her weapon. Hank applied camouflage paint to his face, and handed some to Mike. Wesley though, was buried in his own thoughts. He knew something about the swamp that the others didn't, and he wasn't going to tell them. Better that they all died.


There was an unsettling silence about the swamps as the marines trudged through the thick trees, waist deep water, and muck. In front Mike walked in a crouch, his battle rifle probing the air before him. His face was covered in green and brown camouflage, so none of his skin showed. His eyes were always darting back and forth, scanning the trees, and the areas beyond them.

A bad feeling lingered in the back of Nathan's mind, but he couldn't pin point what it meant. The rest of the marines felt it as well, and Wesley was chewing on his lower lip, his hand twitching in agitation. Nathan also noticed it never went far from his pistol.

The sneaky little rat bastard knew something, something that could very well mean life or death for his marines.

Sara held a small motion sensor at her side. Nathan wised that the marine helmets had motion sensors built in, like the Spartans, but that was why ONI had spent millions worth of funding on them, and pretty much ignored the marines. Sara never took her eyes from the motion sensor. So when she suddenly looked up and gestured to Nathan, the sergeant quickly ran up to her.

"What is it?" he asked.

She pointed to the motion sensor, and Nathan saw several red dots closing in around them. He frowned, and called for a halt. The marines stopped in their tracks, and stayed completely still, scanning the swamp, their eyes and weapons never resting in one place for very long. Amy and Jim set the unconscious Danny down carefully in a moss bed, Mike backed towards the group, Hank laid himself down on the ground, and used his sniper scope to gaze into the darkness of the forest. Wesley couldn't stand still though, he constantly shifted his weight from one foot to the next.

Nathan looked through the woods with a frown. He lightly bit his lower lip before looking back at the motion sensor. There wasn't supposed to be any covenant out here, so what the hell was making the movement out there.

An inhuman growl echoed through the trees, and Nathan saw a misshapen form leap between the tress further back in the forest. Then another. Then another.

"What the fuck was that?" Jim yelled out.

"Run, get out of here," Nathan said, and as a squad, the marines broke into a run, trying to get away from whatever was in the forest. Jim and Denise struggled to keep up with the squad, as they carried Danny between them, so everyone had to slow down a bit, but with a look of pure terror Wesley broke into a run.

"Fuck, Mike go get him," Nathan ordered. The marine nodded, and started running faster to catch up with the chicken shit ONI agent.

Another growl reached the marines' ears. They looked up and saw something jump from one tree to the next. Sara raised her battle rifle and fired a burst at the creature. Globs of dark yellow blood fell to the ground where it splattered on the ground.

"What the fuck?" Sara said when she saw it, she looked around, but didn't see a corpse.

"How did it survive?" Amy called out.

More figures jumped across the path before the frightened marines, and when Nathan looked behind them, he saw more.

"Marines, hold your ground. Lets show these things how the UNSC marine corps treats its uninvited guests," Nathan said.

Jim and Amy dropped Danny and pulled their weapons off their shoulders. The group was in a circle, around the unconscious and wounded marine. Hank put his rifle away and had a battle rifle in hand, Amy checked to make sure her shotgun was loaded, Sara glanced at her motion sensor.

"Lots of movement, all around" she said.

Then something jumped into the middle of the group.