"Before we begin this meeting I would once again want to thank Blue team for taking care of those Scarabs." Captain Lasky said to Blue team as the stood on the deck of the Infinity.
Fireteam Osiris was also on the deck but remained a distance away from the blue team. Especially Locke as he kept eyeing Master Chief. The Doomslayer sat off to the side as he stared at his helmets visor as he kept taking apart and putting back together a small puzzle that resembled a gun. Of course it wasn't real, who would be crazy enough to mess with a live magnum with a direct line of fire towards the captain? Each member of the Spartan teams kept glancing over at the Doomslayer. But all he seemed to care about was his reflection in his visor as he stared at the small scab on his cheek. Lasky had a cold sweat on his forehead.
"Roland. Pull up the map." He called out and tapped on the center console on the bridge. The small yellow pilot hologram appeared with a flat hologram map appearing above the center of the console as well. Red and blue triangles and circles appeared on it.
"Alright. Thanks to our push the other day the covenant has seemed to pull back. But that is a good new bad news sort of deal." Roland said as he gestured at the spot of the map with the majority of the red markings. "They all pulled back into that stone valley of theirs. These scans have been of thermal and sonic radar. But the numbers could be twice this or half of this."
"Let's hope for one and be prepared for the other." Bucky stated.
The Doomslayer looked up at him and raised his eyebrows for a moment before going back to his puzzle.
"You know which ones he means." Linda directed at him. He simply shrugged. A small blue hologram appeared next to him.
"My understanding of these Covenant aliens are that they seem to have a sore of gale to them compared to what would be labeled their main fleet." Vega stated. Roland raised an eyebrow at him. A second Vega body appeared behind Roland at the map and highlighted the area that was between the center and outer defenses of the covenant. "As such this area will be less guarded. Either from over confidence in their front lines or desire for a greater battle." The second Vega body vanished and the highlighted area went back to normal.
"But what or your demons they haven't been acting up since the first day we got here." Locke questioned.
"They acted up the first day because it was the first time they saw humans for a really long time." Kelly observed. She looked over at the Doomslayer who nodded.
"Question still stands." Locke said as he crossed his arms.
"Maybe they are preparing for something." Bucky said with a shrug.
"Then we have to act now." Captain Lasky stated. "If they go ahead with whatever plan they might be scheming with these demons then we might not be able to stop them, and having a force that gains a soldier for each one they kill isn't ideal." The Doomslayer held up two fingers as he held his puzzle in the other hand.
"Peace?" Tanaka asked confused. He glared.
"They gain two." John clarified as he understood the point. "The one they kill, and the one on the other side that can't pull the trigger on their friend. It's the same situation as the flood. But with that they made their bodies weaker but able to reproduce much faster. With these they become stronger."
"All the more reason." Captain Lasky said to get the room to refocus on him. The map began to change. "Now I want your two teams to hit the valley from two different points. Distract them as the main force blows through the point in the middle as their force is diverted. After that all Spartan teams will converge onto the central area of their base and close whatever is allowing this hell energy to seep into this planet. Understood?"
"Yes sir." All Spartans confirmed at once. The DoomSlayer grunted and put the puzzle on a table before sliding on his helmet.
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Blue team and the Doomslayer flew low in a peligan towards their drop off point just outside of the stone valley 's perimeter. The landscape being a mixture of stone and woods. Linda flew the peligan of course with the rest of the group sitting in the back. The Doomslayer twirled a pistol in his hands, one that he had gotten plenty of use out of. He kept looking over its iron sights off to the side, charging and discharging the blast that it held. He never fired of course. Nevertheless, blue team felt with each charge he was going to let go. Kill a bird or pig or something; The DoomSlayer just wanted to kill. His shoulder rose and fell in an unnatural pattern. Long, long, pause, short, short, short, pause, long, long, pause, short, short, short. Like he was practicing how fast he could recover from being out of breath.
"You better not pull any of the same stuff with that elite." Fredrick told him. The DoomSlayer looked over at him for a moment and shrugged a single shoulder.
"Do you have any long range weapons?" Linda called from the cockpit. The Doomslayer nodded.
"He does." Kelly answered.
"A scope on an assault rifle does not count." She called back once more. He shook his head and Kelly translated. "Well what is it?"
He dropped his pistol into his warp pack and slowly pulled out an ever longer weapon and held it in both hands as the majority of its length was outside of the peligan. He shook it a bit at blue team who just stared at it. Linda looked in a rear view mirror for a moment and saw it.
"You use a railgun as a long range weapon?" She questioned. He simply nodded before she looked back to the front. "His long range weapons are a rocket launcher and rail gun. Medium range is a pulse riffle, assault rifle, and a pistol. Short range is a double barrel shotgun and a pump action shotgun. Super close range is his fists and a chainsaw. Next thing you are going to tell me that he has a Gatling gun."
He slowly shrugged and all other members of blue team looked at him. Linda sighed.
"He basically said he did have one didn't he?"
"Yes." John replied.
"And each and every one of those guns has enough ammunition to level a small building." Linda said as she brought down the peligan. "Were landing. Get ready for a fight."
The DoomSlayer jumped out and looked down his rail gun as Blue team gathered behind him with their guns pointed in all directions. Marching farther into the enemies' defenses. From the stones and the trees around them they began to noticed more and more covenant aliens. Three chieftains stood with their gravity hammers primed as a dozen other brutes, jackals, grunts, and elites began to appear for each and every one of them. There had to be at least 50 of them. Several of the elites activated plasma swords and growled at the team as they all had their guns trained on the other. Half the grunts had rocket launchers and half the jackals were back on top of a ridge with stone cover, another quarter in the trees, and the rest having shields.
"How many are you counting?" John asked the group.
"50 at minimum." Linda called out. "probably 85."
"17 each then." Fredrick said.
"I'm willing to put money on the idea that this is probably a third of all the fighters in the area. At minimum."
"I'm counting 92." Kelly said with a shrug. The Doomslayer charged up his cannon and fired it and had it pierce through one of the jackal's shields, killing it, and the grunt behind it. The enter covenant force and blue team stared at him.
"90."
"Kill them all!" One of the chieftains cried out.
The Doomslayer put away his railgun and pulled out his double barrel shotgun and ran into the fire of the entire force. Linda fired three shots and took out three jackals from the trees as John and Fredrick laid down cover fire for Kelly as she ran in the other direction of the Doomslayer. The Doomslayer noticed two jackals and a grunt standing close together and pulled out a strange looking grenade. It landed behind them and exploded, sending out a sort of red dome that began to siphon power off them before the dome vanished and the three of them collapsed dead. He ran at a brute and jumped up into the air with a double jump and fired one blast into it to destroy its shields before landing on top of it and stomping in its skull.
He reloaded as a jackal rushed him from the side and blew off its hand, grabbed its head, and decapitated it with its shield before reloading once more as brute jumped at him from above. He moved to the side as he blasted it, while the brute was stunned he broke its kneecap with a kick, grabbed its arm, and broke its skull with a punch. An elite with a plasma sword rushed him while it was invisible the Doomslayer pulled out his assault rifle and shot four rockets into the elite while dashing out of the way. The elite looked at the Doomslayer while he was invisible and just stared at him before the minirockets exploded.
A jackal sniper shot at him but the Doomslayer doesn't stay stationary so the sniper missed and was taken out by a blast from the slayer's cannon before he charged it up and blasted a hole through the chest of a brute. As it collapsed he ran towards the corpse while pulling out his pump action shotgun and blasting left and right to take out two grunts. A rocket was launched at his torso and he slide on his knees to dodge the blast before pulling out his pistol and charging it and blasting the head off the grunt.
"Die!" a brute yelled as it jumped down at him.
The Doomslayer side stepped him and pulled the brute to the side of him and Linda took down the brutes shields as the Slayer charged his pistol and blew off its head while pulling out his rocket launcher and sending it into a perch of jackals, killing two of them as the third fell down. As it recovered he an up to it, grabbed it by the head, and slammed it into a rock. A chieftain ran at him and swung it gravity hammer at him and the Doomslayer jumped up to dodge and the gravity hammer slammed into the tree, breaking the trunk. The Doomslayer pulled out his pump action shotgun and launched a grenade from it into the chieftain who was barely affected by it.
"You are gonna need more than that to kill me." The chieftain said as he lifted his hammer above his head and jumped at the Doomslayer as pulled out his chainsaw and cut the head off the hammer as he dashed off to the side. The chieftain stared at his now headless hammer. "Oh…"
The Doomslayer stuck the chainsaw through his stomach and pulled it up through its torso before pulling out and having the chieftain collapse on the ground. The Doomslayer pulled out his plasma rifle and fired it at an elite as the blocked the shots with their plasma sword. He launched a pulse from it and it deactivated the sword and the elites armor and he blew off its head with a few shots. He looked over and stared at a grunt.
The grunt began to scream and began to run away. The DoomSlayer chased it as it ran around a large boulder. Try as he might, for some strange reason, the Doomslayer couldn't catch up. Like somehow the grunt had summoned the speed of a god to stay away from him. So the Doomslayer stood still and stepped away from the boulder and watched as the grunt continued to run around and around the boulder before blowing off its head.
"So… you do have a sense of humor." Kelly said as blue team came up to him. "Rest are dead."
He nodded.
"Come on. We got more to do."