Spartan 058 - The Tale of a Sniper
Chapter 2 - En Route to the planet Earth
Linda ran through the corn field on her family farm, laughing all the way as birds of every sort flew through the air. She was home, she could smell the pie her mother was making inside the home, she could hear her yelling. "Linda wake up," the voice said, she pondered the thought of why her mother would ask her to wake up. She woke with a start to find John staring down on her, "Linda we are near Earth, get preped and ready, we'll be in the system within moments." Washing away the pleasantries of the dream, she assembled her MJOLNIR armor with the care and expertise of a trained technician. She could hear the groan of the strained Gettysburg as it exited slipspace, the Chief's voice came through the mounted speaker in the corner, "All crew, report to Docking Bay 7, departure to Athens Station in five." The COM snapped off, Linda grabbed her S2 as she rushed out of her quarters to take the elevator to Bay 7.
For all it was worth Linda, Will, Fred, and John tried to look their best, but their suits dissagreed, after a week of constant fighting it was a miracle the suits were still in one piece, much less operational. They took the small dropship to the stations docking bays, and quickly landed, and after a quick security check they were on their way to the ships command center. A group of officers mingled around checking computers and the like, a black haired female officer strode towards the group of Spartans and the Sergeant. "Keyes, Miranda Keyes," the dark haired women said, Linda could have swore she heard the Chief's heart drop at the sound of the name. "It's good to see you back, after I heard the report about Reach I had feared the worst," said Miranda, she seemed to be looking around for another. "Where's my father?" she pressed.
Linda sat outside the conference chamber after departing with Sergeant Johnson, who was in search of a cafeteria of some sort, she could hear the Miranda's sobbs through the door as the Chief reminesced about the events following Reach until now. After several minutes, a teary eyed Keyes came out followed by a grim faced John. "Please follow me into the Briefing Room," said the demoralized Keyes. After a short walkthrough of the building through corridors with giant windows that had monsterous views of Earth, Miranda led them into a large room with a holographic screen and plenty of high ranking officers, one of them was a scowling Ackerson who was sitting by the highest ranked Lord Hood. "Good to see your back Chief, I'm sorry to hear about your fellow Spartans," commented Hood, "I'm sure they gave one helluva fight before they went down." The Chief's face was as hard as rock, "I'm positive they did," said John, his voice not giving any emotions. Linda could only smile about that behind her polarized visor, she knew that her brothers and sisters would never go down without a good fight, just look at her, she had gone down fighting and was rewarded with a renewed life. "Yes I'm sure of it, but returning to more recent news, the Covenant. As I have heard you've knocked out a substantial part of the invasion fleet which should buy us more time, our main priority is to get the MAC grid online and ready for whenever they do decide to barge in. As for your team, they will be split up on different MAC platforms, if one of them gets hit I don't want to lose the whole group understood?" The Spartan's all nodded. "Chief, you will stay aboard the Cairo, Linda you and Fred will board the Athens, Will is to be stationed on the Malta," continued Hood, "shuttles will take you to your designated stations, and by the way your new suits have just arrived."