Chapter Six: Nice of You to Stop By
"So? What's the skinny, Corporal?" I asked, crouching over to the platoon's observation post. I held my rifle tightly in both hands, and strained to hear any unusual sounds in the black night. Why Captain Kingston had needed a ten-man patrol at one in the morning, just when I'd fallen into a deep sleep in my foxhole, I didn't know. But here I was, following his strange orders anyway; the rest of my patrol team was hiding amongst the jagged rocks that provided cover in this part of the desert.
"Nothing to report, Lieutenant," Corporal Simmons replied. "We've been watching 'em for eight hours. In that time, they've sent out two small patrols, trying to find and probe our lines." The Marine shrugged. "They never got close enough for us to believe an attack was imminent."
I thought about what Simmons said. To my knowledge, the Covenant had always been rather perceptive as to where our lines were. This was not their usual behavior, and anything out of the ordinary with these aliens meant trouble.
"Thanks, Simmons," I said to the corporal.
"Ma'am, I think they're up to something. Maybe something big," another Marine at the OP commented.
"My thoughts exactly, Private."
Corporal Simmons looked out at the desert from her perch atop a tall but concealed position among the rocks. She was staring down at the alien encampment, several yards away, with night-vision binoculars.
"Still no movement," she announced. "I'd say it's safe to give them a little wake up call, but it's your choice, ma'am."
I wasn't quite convinced it was worth risking the lives of my new platoon members yet. "Let me have a look, Corporal."
"Yes, ma'am," Simmons said, handing me her field binoculars.
I did a sweep of the Covenant's position with the binoculars, and found it was nearly empty. Few guards patrolled the perimeter,and I assumed the rest were asleep beneath the fortified bunkers. We could have struck the camp with a rocket attack, and the Covies inside would have gone on snoring.
"If we can do this quick and without getting seen, we may have a shot at getting an estimate of their numbers," I said, thinking aloud as I handed back the binoculars.
"You really gonna risk it, El-Tee?" the private in the OP asked.
"Captain's orders, kid. As long as there's not a visible threat…"
I really wondered about that sometimes. Most threats, in my experience, were hidden.
"Ok, Marines. This is the last radio transmission before the raid. We go in silent, stay silent, and go out silent. Take note of how many Covies there are inside, and keep the body count to a minimum. Let's move it out and be back in ten," I ordered over the COM channel. For this night op, I'd decided on putting my armor, gloves, and helmet back on since it wasn't so hot out anymore. Plus with close-quarters combat, you were pretty much dead with no protective gear.
I watched silently through my night-vision contact lenses as nine Marines from my platoon scampered down the jagged desert rocks to the sand below. The tenth was Private Beesner, and he moved out with me once the patrol team was set up at the bottom. Once there, I took point and began leading my Marines to the Covenant camp ahead.
Originally, I'd planned on leaving Beesner behind on this op, as I felt he obviously was not emotionally equipped at the moment for combat patrols. But he'd insisted, arguing that being left alone with his thoughts was just about the worst thing that could happen to him. Any distraction, Private Beesner said, would be welcome. Besides, he didn't want to let his platoon-mates, his only family left, down.
And I had to admit that so far, he hadn't gotten into any trouble.
The alien camp loomed ahead; it had taken less time to get here than I thought it would. I crouched and looked behind me at the ten hidden Marines. I made a hand signal that indicated for them to halt while I went ahead and scouted the area. I took Beesner with me.
I held my silenced battle rifle to bear, looking down the sights as I swept it across the landscape. There: two Covenant guards watching out for trouble in the darkness. They were about to get an early-morning surprise.
Using my scope, I aimed carefully at the senior Elite's head; the alien had on the midnight-black armor of a Spec-Ops commander. I motioned to Private Beesner, explaining using only my hands that he was to kill the other guard at the same time I shot mine. I steadied my breathing until I had the commander in red in my crosshairs, then held my breath as I counted down for Beesner.
Three, two, one…my last finger dropped the same instant the Elite commander's body fell to the ground. A split-second later, Private Beesner's target slumped in the sand as well.
I gave Beesner a thumbs-up, then turned to the rest of the patrol team, waiting behind us in the shadows. I gestured for them to move up, quietly and one at a time. Without any guards to bother with, we'd be in and out in no time.
The entrance to the bunker was dark, but with night vision it was easy to see. Before entering the structure, I slung my rifle on my shoulder and brought out my silenced pistol instead. Having been trained in stealth earlier in my military career, I preferred silenced pistols when on a clandestine mission.
I was the first one in; looking around in night vision, I saw nothing suggesting alien life in the hallway I'd gone into. Switching to infrared proved the results of the visual scan. I took another few cautious steps, waited for my team to ease inside the structure behind me---
And all hell broke loose.
My motion tracker had suddenly gone haywire. Red blips popped up everywhere but behind us, which meant the entrance. I hesitated for just a heartbeat, half-expecting lights and sirens to go off.
I quickly returned to reality when boiling plasma and exploding needles began assaulting my position behind a wall. I brought my pistol level with the first alien I spotted, a warbling little Grunt, and shot it nearly point-blank. The alien's corpse splattered blood on both the wall and my uniform as it spun once before hitting the deck.
As I was crouching, Beesner came up behind me and stood tall, shooting off rounds from his silenced rifle above my head; the narrow corridor was too tight to allow the others to pitch in.
Within seconds, the couple of Grunts turned into seven, plus two squaking Jackals. As Beesner reloaded his rifle, I shot three of the Grunts in quick succession with my pistol. Not wanting to stick around and wake up the whole Covenant force, I tried to disengage from the fight.
I wasn't successful.
The private and I had already killed about a half-dozen Covenant, so that there were now multi-colored splotches on the walls and plenty of bodies at our feet. However, instead of decreasing, the number of red blips was growing larger. This was no good.
I was still firing off my pistol when I heard a click after squeezing the trigger. I cursed and grabbed a fresh clip from one of my pockets, all the while feeling the waves of heat as plasma rounds whizzed past me. When I was finally done reloading, I looked up in time to see a running Grunt coming towards us.
A bright blue point of light glowed on its chest.
"Grenade!" I yelled.
I quickly reacted without thinking. I shoved Beesner back behind the wall and shot off a few pistol rounds to take out the Grunt. The first bullet missed, but the second found its target. The round ripped open the alien's methane mask, leaking toxic gas and blood at the same time. Bullet number three tore through the alien's neck, and brought the suicidal combatant to the ground. With no time left to get to safer cover, I went prone as the plasma grenade went off.
The explosion pushed me back against the bulkhead, and I screamed inside my helmet as my injured ribs took the brunt of the force.
When the blast was over, all I could hear was the ringing of my ears.
Holding onto my right side, I slowly got up off the ground, trying to clear the disorientation from my head. Holding up my pistol, I fired shots at the remaining aliens, keeping them pinned as I got the hell out of Dodge.
Seeing Private Beesner standing behind me, I gestured frantically for the private to start heading out the way we came in. He tapped the shoulder of the Marine ahead of him and motioned for the soldier to keep our exit clear. The Marine nodded and quickly got behind me as I, too, filed out of the corridor and out of the bunker. It would have been bad for the patrol team if I had been shot in the back…and I admit I didn't much like the thought, either.
Once out into the night again, I breathed a silent sigh of relief and waved my arms for the team to high tail it out. I saw the Marine behind me fire shots at invisible targets, my view obscured by the bunker walls of the entrance. Then the soldier turned to face me and started sprinting.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I did the same.
"Get anything, El-Tee?" Corporal Simmons asked once we'd all made it back safely to the observation post. So far, the fears that the Covenant would follow us with a large force and attack had proved to be unfounded. But, as it was early morning, the day was still young.
I paused for a while, easing my breathing so that my ribs wouldn't give me unbearable pain. Between the sprint, the adrenaline, and the tiny amount of fear coursing through my body, that was hard to do.
"Yeah," I finally answered. "They've got a lot more troops deep inside that place, though you wouldn't guess it from the outside." I turned to face the soldier who'd watched my six as we were exiting. "Thanks for seeing me out the door, Marine."
The Marine's visor lifted, and a grin emerged from the face that had been hidden. "My pleasure, ma'am. I'd say this makes up for my being a jerk earlier?"
I laughed, though that hurt, too. "We'll call it even, Corporal Dandh."
"Did good, Lieutenant. No casualties, and we got what we needed," one of the other Marines said.
"Just got lucky, I suppose," I replied, slightly disappointed. I knew the patrol hadn't gone as planned, and that I'd have to be much more careful the next time we went out.
Just goes to show how unpredictable the Covenant can be, I thought.