Disclaimer: I don't own Halo. I wish I did, because then I'd be rich. I do, however, own Spartan-150 also known as Mariana.
Mariana: Are you sure you're breathing? nudges Ria with her boot
Ria: deep, exaggerated breath and then grins ha, I'm not dead
Mariana: And why didn't you do this sooner?
Ria: I had other things.
Mariana: bullshit.
Ria: I have another author account okay? I have been busy with those stories.
Mariana: And?
Ria: I…lost the Halo books? Runs from Mariana I found them though!
6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
Mariana entered the docking bay five minutes later and spotted John. He, Linda, and James were busy running through the pre-flight checks on their suped-up Pelican. Climbing onto the nose, Mariana accepted the can of C-12 that John tossed up and set to work adding more explosives to the nose. Cortana had uploaded a schematic of the station to her HUD, so she knew that what they had wouldn't be enough.
"Mariana, get in here! We'll have to make do," John called up a few minutes later.
Mariana signaled her acknowledgement and swung down settling into the copilot seat as John took off. During the ride she just sat there, eyes closed.
"Mariana, are you all right?" John asked through a private COM link.
"Yes, I'm just thinking about something that happened when we were watching the firefight," she replied with a sigh.
"What was it?"
"I never told anyone this, but father's starship glassed my planet when I was only about two years old. I lost all of my memory except my name and age. I never remembered what I saw or heard when my birthplace got glassed until today when Cortana was reading off the damage to the UNSC fleet," the normally stotic soldier replied in a whisper.
"Well, what did you see?" John pressed.
"Death upon death, destruction and screams."
John winced and looked over at Mariana. Noticing the rigid position, he placed a gloved hand on her shoulder sympathetically. Mariana didn't move except to clasp that hand quickly.
Turning back to the viewport, John noticed that they were getting close. "Get ready Spartans, prepare for braking."
"In other words, strap in, or go flying across the pelican," James joked, gripping his thruster pack tightly.
Mariana rolled her eyes and tightened her harness as she felt herself jerk forward from the momentum. "John, don't you think we're going in too fast?" she asked as the proximity alert started to beep at 1,000 km.
"Acknowledged," John replied, "Take control of the steering while I make adjustments." Mariana grabbed her steering yoke and held it steady while John squelched the alarm. Just as he took his hand away, the alarm sounded again.
"Covenant," Mariana swore at the same time that John let out a low growl of annoyance.
"Linda, James, brace for maneuvering!" John ordered, stopping the momentum with a reverse burn and cut the power. Unfortunately, he initiated the reverse burn too late. Mariana lost control of the steering, and the pelican spun a few times before it crashed into the station tail first, the impact whiplashing the four Spartans.
"Oops," Mariana muttered as she got over her disorientation.
"Any injuries?" Master Chief asked.
Linda and James reported that they were all right, Mariana bracing her left leg and pushing on it before replying that she was fine as well. "Now that we know that everyone is fine, let's collect as much ammo as we can and get to cover ASAP," John said
Getting outside in zero-gravity, the four clipped their tethers to the hull of the pelican and observed where they were. "James," John said motioning to the nose, "Police those explosives." James nodded and floated off. A sudden flash distracted John and Mariana, Linda still scoping the area with her sniper rifle. Apparently the MAC guns had discovered the new covenant threat.
"Sir, incoming objects," Linda reported, tearing the two Chiefs from watching the fight.
Mariana looked up and chinned the control in her helmet to magnify the view. What she saw made her gasp. "John! Covenant dropships accompanied by Elites in space suits! I suggest getting into the station!"
"There's too much of a distance. Linda, Mariana, take cover under the Pelican. Linda, snipe as many as you can from there. James! Take what you have and get back here double time!" John ordered. Mariana and Linda quickly complied, tethering themselves to the belly of the pelican and turned to watch James.
James almost had the explosives free when the Elites spotted him and fired. Multiple needler projectiles showered down on James, mainly bouncing off and not doing him harm until one struck his thruster pack and penetrated before exploding a second later. James was spun around in microgravity by the uncontrolled jets. Losing his hold, James crashed into the space station, bounced off, and rocketed away into space, tumbling end over end out of control.
"Blue-Two! James, come in!" John called.
"Can…control…" Mariana heard James saying over the COM channel, his voice filled with static, making it very hard to understand, "They've…everywhere…" The three remaining Spartans fell silent as the COM link went dead and James vanished into the darkness.
"Incoming dropships," Mariana reported finally, watching a dropship land twenty meters away.
"Blue-One, Blue-Three, let's pave a path out of here," John said after a moment.
"Yes sir," Linda and Mariana replied enthusiastically, sniping the emerging jackals where their shields didn't cover their bodies. John helped them with his assault rifle, bracing himself against the pelican. Once his clip was spent, he pulled out a grenade, primed it, and bounced it into the far side of the dropship. When it detonated, a freeze-dried spray of blue blood flew up.
"Girls, secure that landing pod. It will give us better cover," John then ordered. Mariana and Linda slung their rifles and pulled themselves hand over hand to the pod while John climbed up to explosives and wedged two grenades into the C-12. Joining them at the covenant dropship, John looked back and saw at least a hundred Jackals and several Elites swarming about the Pelican.
"Linda, two new targets on the Pelican's nose. Spot them annd wait for my mark."
Linda aimed and patiently waited. Firing when John gave the order, she shot the grenades and set off a huge chain reaction. When the shockwave died off, John looked at the space dock surface that was clear except for a huge crater where the Pelican had been.
"Let's go," he said, drifting to the crater. Once the three were inside and on the B level, John and Linda started down the hall after setting a Lotus mine. "Mariana, aren't you coming?" he asked, noticing that her FOF tag hadn't moved from its spot except to drift down the hall a little to where it stopped when she securely wedged her body into a tight-fitting crevice off to the side.
"No, I'll cover your six. I have plenty of ammo left, so I'll be fine," she replied, disabling her FOF tag.
"Fine, but when I call, you fall back to our position immediately," John said, not liking leaving his companion there.
"Acknowledged." John moved back to Linda and the two Spartans continued down. Reaching the docking bay, John and Linda started firing on the Jackals that were pinning down some Marines. The Marines threw grenades at the Jackals, but none fell when the grenades exploded. A few seconds later, another explosion rippled through the deck, but from behind them.
"Linda, I'm going to go check on Mariana's status," John said, "you keep firing. I have a bad feeling about something. Do you think that you can take the Jackals out?"
Linda nodded and waved him on. John drifted back down the hall and spotted a flicker of a contact on his radar but then vanished. Stopping himself, John looked warily around him, but saw only the dim emergency lighting and shadows…but then one of the shadows moved.
Bringing his assault rifle to bear, John's eyes widened when he saw the Elite emerge from the shadows. This was the first time that he had seen one of these. The Elite was a meter taller than him and wore blue armor. The helmet was elongated to protect the mouth, which John saw consisted of four mandibles. The creature looked like it was smiling at him as it raised a plasma rifle.
Before it could fire, John pushed himself off of the wall and slammed into the Elite. Fighting blow for blow, John managed to kill the Elite's shields. Suddenly, the Elite writhed and howled soundlessly in the vacuum. John spotted flashes of blue behind the Elite and drifted backward cautiously towards his dropped assault rifle.
"Don't worry, he's dead. That's what I hate about rookie Elites. They are too damn overconfident," a familiar and welcome voice filtered through John's speakers.
Mariana emerged from the shadows, her two guns slung and holding two plasma rifles, one in each hand.
"Where did you get those?" John asked.
Mariana shrugged and John knew she was smirking. "One was the one this moron dropped, and the other was floating by my face when I woke up," she replied drifting to John, who wrapped his arms around her to hold her steady.
"Woke up?"
"I thought I was far enough away from the mine explosion, but the shockwave knocked me cold. The only one that got through was that floating carcass right there. The hallway is all blocked now."
"Ah, let's get back and give Linda a hand," John replied. The two Chiefs drifted back quickly.
"The Jackals are learning, they're overlapping their shields," Linda reported.
"We could always try that Pelican," Mariana suggested, pointing to the craft not far from their position.
"Good idea, I'll go," John said before propelling himself to the Pelican.
"You know, he did that without waiting for our acknowledgement because he had yet to show off," Mariana pointed out on a private COM link to Linda, who barked a laugh and continued sniping.
John got the Pelican free and swung it around, opening the back hatch. "Get in, I'm picking up thousands of contacts on the Pelican's radars."
Linda climbed into the copilot seat as Mariana and the Marines piled into the back. "What happened to your foot?" One of the Marines, his tag reading Sgt. Johnson, asked Mariana as John opened up the Circumference like a tin can and went for the NAV database, Linda taking the controls.
Mariana looked down at her foot. It was lip and pointing in the wrong direction. "Broke it," she replied with a shrug.
John entered a few seconds later. He shared a quick conversation with Linda, who passed Mariana a few seconds later. "Where're you going?" Mariana asked.
"I'm manually opening the bay doors. The station AI isn't responding," she replied. Mariana lifted herself up and watched from the safety of the back hatch. Linda got the door open and time seemed to stand still as the Covenant shot her in the back and proceeded to hammer her with plasma.
John swung the Pelican around to shield her and the Marines loaded Linda into the back. As soon as they were all in, John sealed the Pelican and rocketed into space. Handing the controls to Sgt. Johnson, John went and knelt next to Linda.
"We got the data, right?" Linda asked weakly.
"Yes," John replied.
"Good, we won then." With that, Linda went limp and her vital signs went super low.
John set Linda down carefully and went to Mariana. "Does it hurt?" he asked, gesturing to her foot.
"No, the nerve endings must be pinched enough to not feel it," she replied, gasping as John shifted it carefully to determine the extent of the break.
"I'll set it once we get to the Autumn. I want to cryo Linda first so we have a chance to save her," he said before putting a folded up medical blanket under her foot to cushion it before strapping her leg don so it wouldn't move as much.
Several minutes later, the pelican landed in the dock of the Pillar of Autumn and John hurried Linda to a cryotube. Returning to Mariana, John and a pair of technicians helped her out of her armor and carried her to the med bay.
"Damn gravity is making my foot hurt," she grumbled, siting on the examining table as John had a machine take an x-ray and studied it on his HUD.
"I can imagine," he replied dryly, Mariana picking up on the sarcasm. "This is going to hurt," he warned, taking his armored gloves off and kneeling, took hold of the swollen appendage.
If anyone had been listening, like the medical examiners were for instance, the next thing they would have heard was a loud crack followed closely by a loud scream of pain.
"There," John said, standing and retrieving his gloves, "now it will heal nicely."
"You bastard," Mariana growled in reply, letting the doctors put her foot in a cast, "you didn't have to do it so fast."
"I had to get the nerves unpinched somehow. Now that your cast is on, let's get you back in your armor and you get to take a nice long…nap," John said smoothly, trying to avoid an argument.
"A nap sounds good, now that my foot hurts worse…" Mariana stated, getting back into her armor quickly and trailed off in horror as she sealed her helmet shut, "Not a cryo sleep! John, you know I don't like being so defenseless," she protested, hopping on her good foot away from him.
"Enough, I don't want you getting hurt more, that's all. I'll probably be going cryo myself soon. I have a feeling that Captain Keyes and Cortana want to leave Reach ASAP," John replied, scooping Mariana up and taking her to a cryotube.
"Promise me you'll be here when I wake up," she said as she lay down in the tube and the clear cover slid on.
"I promise," John whispered, watching her vital stats grow sluggish as she fell asleep from the gasses, "I'll be right here when you awake."
6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
Ria: well, that's all for this chapter. Yes, I know that Linda "died" in the book, but I like my version of near death and a coma better. As for James, well, he'll be back, I promise. This ends the first book, I'll start on the next one soon. Review and I'll update ASAP