The Angel Descends

by Dux Butio

When the UNSC Archangel crash lands on an unknown planet, it is up to First Sergent Lewis Hammer to lead his marines to safety and figuring out what knocked his ship out of the sky. All the while meeting new species and forging new alliances. This story only uses halo as a setting, but no halo characters are used as main characters. may be mentioned though.

2. Colliding of two worlds

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19:00 UNSC Standard Military Time

Location: Unknown

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Sergeant Hammer's squad moved quickly to reach the other pods. The Marines knew that this planet wasn't standard just by the plants they ran by. Glowing mushrooms, pure black trees and many more types of flora. They also felt like they were being watched. Sergeant Hammer saw in the corners of his vision what he thought was a big wolf but wrote it off as a part of the effects of being knocked out on impact.

After 20 minutes of running, they reached the closest escape pod to theirs, and Hammer's squad saw the marines at the second escape pod entrenched and fighting something off. They ran up to them and joined in on the defense of the pod. "Corporal What the hell is going on here?!" Hammer yelled over the gun fire. "Don't know sir we were waiting for an evac pelican after we called for it and saw these things running at us!" The corporal yelled. "Private Morales opened fire with his rifle, and it's been a shit show since." "How long till that pelican is supposed to arrive?" Hammer questioned. "10 minutes sir, though it's been a few minutes since we last got ETA. They said they were picking up the other pod in our sector first then coming back for us."

"Well f*ck, how much ammo does your squad have left?" Hammer asked before propping his BR-55 up and sending a burst into the wolf-like creature. After the burst was sent into its hide. Hammer saw with hidden horror that his rounds just stuck in the hide of the beast and only stunning it. "We are low on rifle ammo that was in our pod and our M6s are the only thing putting down these creatures. The only problem is we have to get close to kill them, so we have a firing line up here stunning them and then two guys running up and killing the creatures!" The corporal said before putting a burst from his own BR-55.

A howl was heard even over the constant gun fire making the creatures run away. With this reprieve the marines breathed a sigh of relief. Hammer wanted to get a close up look and one of these creatures walked up with his squad's resident know it all. "So, Adam what do you think this thing is?" Questioned hammer. "By the looks and size, I would only guess it's some type of wolf maybe even a dire wolf of legend." "It does seem like it, but we don't know anything about this world. This could be the normal size of the wolves here. I pity them if it is because only high caliber munitions can kill this thing." Hammer said with obvious empathy in his eyes. He had fought the covenant enough to know how hard to kill some of the brutes and elites can be. Over the radio the second squad heard "This is Bald Eagle, to bravo 2-2, come in Bravo 2-2, over." The corporal pressed a button on the radio built into the escape pod "This is bravo 2-2, What you need Bald Eagle?", "ETA is 2 minutes, but this forest is very thick please mark your location with smoke, over." "Roger that Bald Eagle, we will mark the location with red smoke, and we have bravo 1-2 with us." "Got it, Bald Eagle Over and out."

With a look of great relief, the corporal walked over to hammer and said, "Sir our evac is incoming eta 2 minutes." "Well, that's good but I don't like the chances that those things, wolves, dire wolves. Dire wolves, come back. We can't take any chances until we are packed into that pelican and flying off to the meet up point." Sergeant Hammer said while eying the forest line. After two very long minutes the pelican had shown up and dropped down its back ramp to get all of the marines in it. Bravo 2-2 were the first in while Bravo 1-2 Guarded the ramp when the entirety of 2-2 were on 1-2 slowly started to board the ship while never less than one gun trained on the tree line. Finally, sergeant hammer started to board the pelican when he saw movement in tree line but chalked it up to the dire wolfs wondering what was going on.

While in the tree line Vinesia couldn't believe her eyes. First there were maybe 16 people using some weird staffs to cause thunder to sound and spit fire that killed Dire Wolves and they held out for a while then after they had defended a hill with something on top of it, a giant iron bird flew down and they got inside it and flew off. She was wondering just who these mysterious people were and where they had come from. The harpy who she learned his name was Severus had said that he didn't sense any magic coming from the metal bird, but how could it not be, it was a metal bird and obviously not a dragon! Not even the dwarves could create flying machines, but the great sorcerers have been rumored they could fly. For now, though they needed to keep on going to where the fireball was located.

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Two Hours Later

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They Had been walking for 2 hours when Vinesia's party came upon another clearing. As it was getting dark, they believed they could use it as a camp spot and then move on in the morning. Vinesia having the most sensitive ears of the group heard a great rumble before she exited the trees. "What was that?" She asked the rest of the group. "Don't know but sounded big maybe what caused the fireball." The dwarf said. The Dwarf was named Durin Ironforged and looked like what people stereotyped as a dwarf, short, heavy set built and always having a long beard finely braided. He was a mountain dwarf so had Black hair and dark skin, but despite the common seen nature of being grouchy and annoyed all the time when not in their mountain holds, he was quite cheery and happy to be in the non-mountainous regions of the kingdom.

When peering out of the tree line Vinesia saw the same strange men or at least men in the same clothing. Green tents scattered around and the big metal birds she saw earlier and other things moving around what she assumed was a camp and not a settlement. She decided to take a closer look at that camp and maybe investigate the weapons they were using. First, she had to get close because she knew these people didn't follow the king's laws so her role as a Royal guard Captain would do nothing for.

Inside the base camp that had been set up, First Sergeant Hammer had taken over command from Gunnery Sergeant Ramirez who was in charge of the armory on the Archangel. Hammer had learned that Captain Smith and the other officers were still MIA even after all the pods had been recovered meaning that they were still on the ship with whatever crew didn't get to a pod. He had also learned that the ODST's that had used their drop pods to evac were also MIA. He was so angry that right when transmitters were needed the most, they malfunctioned so the ODSTs would have to find their way to either the ship or to this new base. As Hammer walked around, he could see marines on guard duty after the news of the dire wolf attacks a few hours ago the vehicle teams that kept their Warthogs drove them to the perimeter and are now using their guns as turrets. His two new Gauss Hogs were being inspected by Gunny Ramirez and Staff Sergeant Hide, who is in charge of making sure all the vehicles were working.

Adam Jones, on the way to the base had estimated that the supplies they had managed to gather on too all of the pods and pelicans would last them maybe a week or two and recommend that most of the company venture to the Archangel's wreck and secure any and all resources they could find and rescue any survivors. Hammer had vetoed this at first saying that until we really know what survived the crash, so they couldn't do any operations and he didn't know what the current chain of command looked like. Now he knew that most of the marines were alive and some navy personnel. His next step is to get his guns from what was left then go to sleep. From the brief tour of the camp, he got one of the three large tents brought along is the new armory. When he walked in, he saw Gunny Ramirez working on a Spartan Laser. "Hey Gunny, how's our new toys'?" Hammer said while walking up to the standup table not even realizing they had gotten some tables down from the ship. "Our new hogs are working like they should, the two M99s are scuffed up and will need light maintenance before they can be given back for uses, and these M6 Lasers are for some reason not working at all. I've checked every part and cross checked the manuals, and everything is correct!" Ramirez exclaimed. "Have you changed to fresh cells?" Hammer said with a chuckle knowing that the gunny would never forget something like that. "NO, I CHANGED THE CELLS THREE TIMES ALREADY!" The Gunny yelled, becoming more angry than annoyed. "Calm down Gunny calm down. These worked when we got them right?" Hammer said trying to calm down Ramirez now instead of joke. "Yes, they worked whenever we first checked them, however, now it seems like they stopped working as soon as we hit Atmosphere which pissies me off. Now I know you're not here for chit chat. What do you want?" Ramirez said back to an annoyed tone. Hammer, knowing the gunny was not a man you wanted to piss off, decided to get his guns and go then plan the operation to the Archangel tomorrow. "I'm just here to get my SMG and shotgun, I assume you brought them along?" Hammer said ready to be out of the presence of the increasingly annoyed sergeant. "Yes, I brought them, they are one of my masterpieces," pointing to a crate that was still closed "They are over there, ammo is in the box behind them." "Thanks Ramirez, hey maybe we can find a solution at the archangel," Hammer said while walking over to the crates.

Popping open the locks on the first weapon crate hammer saw two weapons. The bigger of the two was a Modified M45E shotgun, modified to be both semi-auto and pump for any type of ammo he wanted to use. He also got an ammo counter that could tell the type of ammo loaded in it. His second weapon was a modified M7S SMG modified to fire at an even higher rate of fire than normal plus getting etchings of a dragon on the side of it. Picking up the shotgun he put it on his back with the gun locking onto the mag strip. After he made sure his shotgun was secure Hammer grabbed his SMG and locked it to his thigh mag strip. After making sure his guns were secure, Hammer opened up the crate behind the weapons. With the lid opened to the Ammo crate Hammer saw that his ammo was separated into two different sections, Shotgun ammo and SMG ammo. Picking up several packets of the shotgun ammo he saw he had buckshot and Dragon's Breath ammo. For his SMG he saw he had the standard packets that ammo was stored in and a lot of preloaded magazines.

Grabbing as many SMG magazines as he could fit onto his kit without removing any room for shotgun shells, he counted he had 13 SMG magazines in total including the one on his gun. After He started loading his shot gun and putting shells on his kit. Loading up with 24 Dragon's Breath Shells and 24 Buckshot shells he was ready for a long night. Walking out of the tent Hammer noticed that many marines were setting up campfires or readying weapons. It seemed like no one was waiting to get sleep tonight. Walking out to the perimeter next to one of the Warthogs, Hammer waited around just looking for movement hoping for survivors to come walking or driving in, but around his third hour on watch he started to lose hope that night when the gunner on the Warthog next to him said "I see movement." The gunner slowly sweeping his M41 Chaingun across the tree line trying to see if there was something to engage. Then Suddenly four people suddenly ran out of the trees right for them. "STOP MOVING NOW! OR BE FIRED UPON!" Hammer yelled not knowing if these people were UNSC or maybe even locals and why they were running.

Vinesia thought she had come up with a great plan. Her and her party would wait until nighttime would come then they could easily sneak into the weird camp even if they could see in the dark, they would have slowed reactions. That's what she thought of course. In reality When they started moving to the edge of the forest, when they saw some weird carriage and some type of tubes on the top of it. She still thought she could make it across without being seen so ran across the way then after her the rest of her party ran into the open area. Dam it you all will reveal me! She thought. When a moment later one of the Men in the strange uniform started to yell at her in a strange language sounding a bit like low elvish but she couldn't understand any words.

She decided to ignore him until the Carriage started to boom and the dirt was kicked up. "It's another Magic staff!" She yelled. Before what sounded like many rapid taps of rain hitting a glass window and more earth was kicked up around her. Vinesia heard several people running and it wasn't her team. She looked to her left and saw more of these strange men running at her entire party with some type of black stick. The men ran at her party and when they got close lighting emitted from the tips of the sticks. With one strike to each of them they were knocked out. She had to stay uncaptured until one final boom went off near her and her vision went black.

Hammer was in disbelief even after he warned the group, and he had the warthog's gunner fire warning shots and he fired warning shots they still ran across the field towards the camp. They were only stopped, non-lethally, by some ODST's that had ran at the group with stun batons. Even after the rest of her friends were taken down the last girl kept on running. The only roadblock in her way was Chief Petty Officer Jager, the head of the medical teams on the Archangel, who had a shotgun in his hands and by the very not dead nature of the last person it was loaded with bean bag shells. When Hammer had walked up to the people running through the field towards them, what he saw was a human with long ears, a human with a cat tail, and cat ears, a weird hybrid of human and bird and finally a dwarf that he just assumed was a human that had dwarfism and had gained lots of muscle. He started to remember some of the details of the old fantasy stories he read when he was a teenager. But decided to let the medical team handle them for the night he would interrogate them tomorrow.

"Doc, can you handle these four until the morning?" Hammer asked. "Sure, Boss but you also should come with me. You should keep an eye on them while my team works on others." Jager said with an annoyed tone. He was primarily thinking what the hell will I be able to do with these four. With that the corpsman strapped on hand cuffs and carried Vinesia's party off to the medical tent and Chief Petty Officer Jager took First Sergeant Hammer to watch them and to give hammer a report on the medical status of the camp and his equipment.

At this moment no one knew but the fate of this world had been changed forever. The world of Alhar had forever been anchored in the Universe. The Marines would be the ones to either save or destroy the world.