Hey, sorry for the short chapter guys, didn't even break the 2000 word mark. :sadface:
Chapter XX: Curious Help
June 4, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/
New Istanbul, New Constantinople, Draco Prima System
"Take cover!" I yelled at the surviving members of my team, right before the Fury exploded.
15 kilotons might not have been a lot by regular standards, but it was still a very disturbing event if you were in close proximity to it.
As soon as the SPARTAN-III's disappeared into the darkness of the sewer, we climbed back to the surface, still a little bit confused as to what had happened. We still had our Fury nuclear grenade with us, so our mission would proceed as normal. The sun had set over two hours ago, so we still had a while before it went back up, the night would hide us from the Covvies' line of sight. We moved through the streets in a tight-packed formation, each one of us aiming at a different point, our progress was only interrupted by a patrol, which we avoided by jumping into two large garbage containers.
There were less and less enemy patrols as we neared the Covenant spire, but we found that there were more enemy soldiers milling around and doing what aliens do whenever not carrying out genocide. The grunts were mostly sleeping or eating from some weird machines. The brutes mumbled and grunted amongst themselves while the jackals looked here and there for interesting trinkets. Hunters were nowhere to be seen.
I was startled by my helmet speaking to me. "This is Carter, our bomb is in place, you ready?" he asked me.
"Just about," I told him, we had just placed our nuke on the turret of a Wraith twenty meters away from the spire and retreated to an undamaged and empty store nearby. The timer had just started. "You have a minute and fifty seconds before it blows up," I warned the young Spartan.
"Nah, more like 10 seconds," came the reply.
Before I could even reply as to what he meant, Pavel dropped to the floor. "Incoming!" he called out as loud as he could. We all dropped to the floor with him as fast as our body weight allowed us to. Four was not fast enough, and the green projectiles that were fired from Covenant carbines pierced his helmet through and through. His head jerked back as blood, heated fluids, and bits of brain tissue flew out of the back of his head, hitting the wall behind him.
"Spartan team, we've been made, we've been made, we need backup, do you copy? We need backup!" I yelled into my helmet mic. I wasn't really relying on this guys, after all, they were just kids, they seemed to be well trained though, and it was all I had.
An instant later the world went white, for the second time in months, I was uncomfortably close to a nuclear explosion. The only difference was that this time I heard the boom. Had it not been for my helmet and its convenient noise blockers, my eardrums would've been gone. The comm on my helmet failed as the EMP from the blast reached our position, sending a tingling sensation through my body and making all my electronics flicker for a few seconds before recovering.
"Spartan leader, you there? Carter?" I only got static in response. "Damn it," I cursed as I ordered my team to bail out.
The first explosion would have been a great distraction had those two jackal snipers not found us instants before the nuke went off. We were now running without any cover and any support, three ODSTs down the middle of a street make good targets. For the first five seconds of our run we were free of any enemy attention, they were still probably rubbing their eyes or holding their hands over their ears, but it wasn't soon before the Brutes that hadn't been dazed by the explosion started firing at us. Spiker rounds were hitting the ground and air all around me, some coming to close for comfort. One round even lodged itself in my rucksack, God bless that metal box. We were shooting at the stunned Grunts, Jackals, and Brutes that were in our way whene my comm crackled to life.
"ODST squad, this is Carter, you ok?" came a voice through bursts of static.
"You know what?" I told it. "Fuck you, you could've at least warnedus about that? You aren't even providing us the support you promised!" I cried in outrage. While I said that I was thinking that we really should've exchanged our codenames, to ease up communications. It was weird talking in casual tones in the midst of a heated battle, or whatever you'd like to call a Covenant advance force finding a few saboteurs.
As if on que, a sniper jackal's head disappeared in a red mist and a brute's neck was twisted over 180 degrees by some invible hands.
"Here's your support," came Carter's cocky voice from my helmet.
Those freaks are good, I'll grant them that.
"Thank you?" said one of the kids, who had suddenly materialized two feet to my left.
"No problem," I said quickly, to make my sound like a compliment. Which technically speaking, it was.
"Banshees!"
Before I could even turn around or jump behind a car, a blast lifted my up and slammed me against a wall, next to me landed a spartan with a damaged helmet, I could make out Carter's bloodied face. I could just make out one of the armored kids shooting down a banshee with a well placed rocket as I stood up, my ears ringing, sounds around me muted by the sound of the explosion. I also caught a glimpse of Pavel doing a "cocky throw", which basically consisted of throwing a fragmentation grenade upwards with impeccable timing, so that it would start falling back down and detonate over an enemy flier. We had named it after some new kid had been throwing a grenade up and down in his hand, we were surprised by this lone banshee, and the kid, finding inspiration from nowhere, created the strategy. Had I learned his name I would've named it after him.
Pavel's throw was impeccable, hitting the banshee and bouncing a bit before detonating inches from the craft, sending it to the street covered by blue fire.
What surprised me the most of all of this, was how the Spartan sniper took out the last strafing banshee with a single shot through the upper and lower parts of the banshee, hitting the pilot in the chest, and knocking down the craft. As this was happening I dragged Carter to a small alleyway, coincidentally, this one happened to be the same one that contained the entrance to the sewer we had hidden in.
"Over here!" I called out to my allies. They came rushing at top speed, the Spartans moved faster than any normal human should have, they also managed to shoot while firing and making every single round hit their targets. They could've held off against the Covenant for a while before sheer numbers beat them, the fact that they were surrounded didn't help either. They were here mere instants after I called at them.
Pavel arrived a few seconds later, blood oozing from a gap in his armor, I pointedly looked at it as he arrived.
"Oh shut up," he told me.
"Where's five?" I asked.
We all looked back and saw our squad sniper firing his weapon, hitting two brutes in the chest and blowing out large portions of meat from their bodies, he leaned back against a pile of debris and shot an enraged brute charging at him before he was forced to reload.
"Shit," I said, both me and Pavel were already running to the edge of the alley, to provide covering fire to the stupid soldier. "Get over here!" I ordered.
Five got up after firing all four rounds from his rifle. He dropped the weapon and started sprinting towards us. Suddenly, a white flash outlined his silhouette before he was propelled forward, much like I had been a few instants before, the only difference between the two events was that he flew at a much higher speed before he slammed into a wall. There was a sickening crunch of bones that was audibly heard over all the noise in the battlefield. The wall he had crashed on was also damaged. I checked his vitals on my HUD to confirm he was beyond saving before returning to the sewers. I tossed Carter's unconscious body before letting Pavel go first. I was firing at a group of adventurous grunts when I saw a plasma grenade fly at me. I ducked and it fell right behind me. I let myself go, hitting Pavel on the way down and landing on the arms of a waiting Spartan, unfortunately, he (or she) wasn't strong enough and I still slammed to the floor pretty damn hard, Pavel didn't fare so well either.
"Awww fuck," three different voices said almost simultaneously. I rubbed my back and waited a moment before trying to stand up. My bones felt jarred and my head was spinning, but it didn't seem like I was seriously hurt. I was still deliberating as to wether Pavel's heavy armor had protected him or just accelerated his fall when Carter started coughing up blood. He didn't look good, but he would be fine. His face was all bloody and torn, and I could see at least one place where he would get a nasty scar.
The young soldier stood up with help of his comrades before nodding at me in thanks. He seemed to respect me more than when we first met. He stumbled a little before he and his team started heading out, motioning at us to join them.
"C'mon you bloody idiot," I told Pavel as I kicked him in the ribs. He moaned a little and stood up, he managed to stabilize himself before the second Fury nuke went off. This explosion was much more imposing than the last one. It was twice as close, but we were underground. The fireball produced by a Fury tac-nuke is around 75 meters in radius, we were about 300 meters away from ground zero. By all means we shouldn't have survived such a close blast, but the sewers held after a few pieces of rock collapsed from the ceiling.
I picked Pavel back up and Liz-A089 helped me carry him. We made our way faster, trying to outrun any radiation that might've made its way into the sewers, Furys were supposed to be almost completely clean, but I wasn't willing to risk a lifetime of not being able to spread my lovely genes around.
"You know something, you Spartans are not so bad," I said.
Four helmeted heads turning to look at me and an uncovered face doing the same thing greeted this comment. You could almost see the the shock in their faces, in Carter's case, you actually could.
"You're not half bad either," said Carter with a smile that likely brought pain to him, "for a Helljumper," he added.
I let that one pass.