Alto Valeur, Fleurdelis, New Corsica
March 4, 2558
It was nearly impossible for Austal to see through the thick air. Night had fallen in the sky and the Pelican's headlights cut through the dense fog as it continued its descent. Behind him were several others and every few moments was lit up by strafing antiaircraft fire.
Aside from him as a Spartan, the group of Marines huddled around, all sitting at the edge of their seats. Those that were standing had a hand on the overhanging bulkheads to steady themselves whenever the aircraft shifted.
"Whole lotta surface fire," The pilot drawled, "And this thick fog isn't making things better,"
"These Covies ain't got nothing we can't deal with!" One of the Marines chimed in, with the rest of her squad murmuring in agreement.
No sooner had she said that when a purple flash blinded them from the open bay behind. The dropship coming right on their six had virtually zero time to dodge as the plasma shell had seemingly appeared right out of the blue. The impact was dead center in the cockpit.
None of the occupants onboard the doomed craft had any opportunity to scream or even register what had happened. A brilliant purple and white fireball lit up the night before winking out. There was no debris or ash that fell down. It was completely vaporized.
Immediately, the other pelicans widened their berth to one another to try and avoid similar fates.
"Shit," Austal heard one of them mutter. The entire cabin was silent as they briefly mourned the fates of their comrades behind them. He personally didn't know any of the people he was flying with, but like him, many had families who still had no idea they just lost a loved one.
"I've got a visual on the LZ!" The pilot said, "It's crawling with Covies and Ghosts! We'll have no time to deploy!"
"Where are the Mantises?"
"About thirty secs out!"
"Okay," Austal headed right over to a weapon case, with Marines automatically moving aside to make room for the Spartan. He popped open a weapon case from an overhead bin.
With twin accelerators, the Asymmetric Recoilless Carbine-920 fired devastating super ferric tungsten slugs at an incredible speed. Obliterating flesh, armor and shredding shields, it required a brief charging time and an expert aim. A direct hit on a Covenant ghost was enough to tear it apart and the quick velocity meant that no leading the shot was required, unlike a rocket launcher. There was a disposable power cell that greatly increased its weight and although it was considered man-portable, many outside the Spartans considered it to still be quite heavy and unwieldly.
Austal loaded it from the top after slapping his M57 on his back and stared outside. By now the ground was visible with several dark figures running around. Grunts all began shooting up with green blobs of plasma from their pistols and there was only a couple elites taking potshots at the approaching aircraft with their own rifles.
"Slow your descent!" Marcus shouted to the pilot, "I'm going in!"
Before the pilot or the Marines could acknowledge his words, the Spartan casually jumped off the edge. The difference in weight rocked the bird.
Ever the daredevil, Austal summersaulted in mid-air before finally getting a good look at the ground beneath him. Sure enough the defenses were light enough to take on in a conventional standpoint, but they were also giving anything coming in from the sky a hard time.
His thrusters kicked in to slow his fifty foot drop. Unslinging the railgun, he immediately spotted a ghost and took aim.
Holding down the trigger, the weapon sparked and the smart-scope on his HUD began to fill from a charging meter. He centered it right on the vehicle, which had spotted him and began strafing immediately.
Releasing the trigger, there was no kick from the railgun, but the super ferric shell did its work, shooting out at an incredible speed. The ghost was hit on the left side, eliminating the generator and it settled to the ground in flames and fragments.
A storm of plasma fire came his way and he knelt down close to the singed ground. Taking a moment to peer outside, he opened up with the M57.
With a smaller pistol caliber, the APDWS had similar projectiles to the railgun, albeit more towards armor piercing carbide alloys. The few grunts that were unlucky to be within his sights let out pained squeals before limply falling over.
A charging elite with a sword came at him from his nine and he swung the weapon around, letting the last of his magazine loose to cut it down. When he did, a handful more surrounded him.
They halted at the top, since he was in the bottom of a blackened crater and activated their energy swords.
Rather than appear startled by the sudden change of overwhelming odds, Austal shifted his grip and pulled out the railgun, holding both weapons with one hand each.
"We gonna get started or what?"
As the lead elite, one in the orange-gold warrior armor reared and let out a feral roar, brilliant flashes of light filled the space in front. A flurry of rockets accelerated towards them, exploding close enough for his armor to barely adjust the temperature in time to prevent blistering heat from penetrating.
When the dust cleared, the elites were gone and what remained of armor, flesh and weapons were now charred piles of debris.
A clanking noise brought him out of his stupor and he looked to his side to see multiple giant twenty foot HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL exoskeletons lumber past. The mantises' machine guns flashed as they unloaded hot brass downrange, pulverizing all the Covenant targets.
Looking up, he saw the pelicans cut their searchlights through the sky as they made their final descent. Their hatches quickly opened and the Marines piled out in a quick and efficient manner. As soon as their loads were off board, the aircraft took back to the sky, much more maneuverable and mindful of the green flashes of antiaircraft artillery.
Austal was oblivious to the shouting of the sergeants as the men moved on, securing the front as the heavy mantises cleared the path. Instead, he was focused on the distortion that shimmered; not from the heat. From active camouflage.
Turz 'Xiva made no attempt to hide himself any longer, as he had been spotted and waiting.
It was Austal who had smashed his jaw and gave him a rather nasty shameful wound to lick.
He was here to return the favor.
Marcus tried to move as 'Xiva casually approached, but his limbs refused to obey his brain. Even his finger couldn't tighten on the trigger of his guns. When he looked closer, 'Xiva had someone on either side of him. A man and a woman.
A light was shined in their faces.
"Mom? Dad?"
Just behind 'Xiva, a human approached. The distinct face of Zachary Gustafson wielded a wicked looking curved blade before quickly stabbing the back of both Steve and Selena Austal's heads. Neither of them had a chance to scream before the blade terminated their spinal cords.
Marcus could only sit and glare as 'Xiva let out a deep chuckle and Gustafson wiped the blade off of Selena's dress with satisfaction.
"Your pretty wife is next," The words echoed off everywhere before the dream terminated itself.
Austal's eyes snapped open to the darkness of his bedroom. Unlike the cliché nightmare scene where one would burst up from the bed gasping and covered in sweat, Marcus had to take a second to realize that nothing had transpired and he was still lying down next to Gabrielle. His hand was halfway to the drawer in his nightstand, which contained an M11 Combat Knife as a habit for a last-resort self defense if he were to have to immediately fight an intruder while sleeping. That handy weapon had saved his life once.
No sweat glistened in the moonlight off his defined body, but he still felt hot.
A minute later, he stood inside the master bathroom's shower stall, silent and head bowed as the cool water cascaded off his back. Looking over in the mirror that showed his back, he grimaced at the graffiti of scars that ran up, down and aside. Some were back in his days as a Para-Rescueman and begun to fade. Others were trophies from his Spartan career, War Games injuries and close calls with different Covenant species and promethean light blades. All along his back, the dark red lines almost mingled with the cursive "Servitas Vitae" tattooed on his back.
Rapidly feeling his core temperature coming back down to a normal level, his thoughts processed to the strangely vivid dream he experienced.
So he knew the sangheili he had personally beat up on the Steadfast was named 'Xiva and the difference in his armor compared to the other Covenant forces signified that he was not part of Jul 'Mdama's Covenant. Was he a mercenary?
Yet, Gustafson's appearance, stabbing both of his parents was startling to say the least. The infamous terrorist was locked up in the Closet, a maximum security prison on a desolated moon with nearly zero avenues of escape. All visitors were extremely closely monitored and vetted and communications to and from the facility were triple reviewed by the staff, even with a prison guard calling their family on Christmas Day.
Shutting off the water, Marcus quickly dried himself, threw on a pair of briefs and headed out into the bedroom. A quick check assured him that Gabrielle was still sleeping thanks to the near-quiet shower system. The blanket covered the lower part of her body as she laid down facing to the right. He knew that when she awoke again; she would likely want another session of intense lovemaking, so he made a mental note to just stay up for a few more minutes.
So while the COD of his parent's demise was evident and he had eventually thrust the man responsible behind bars, Marcus still had no idea what the motive was. Yes, Gustafson was a cold blooded killer who took a rather unhealthy amount of pleasure in his sadism, but at the same time there was a method to his madness. Something that large of a scale, engineered with such precision to hit just one portion of a building meant that he had been contracted. Forensics and crime scene investigators were still looking into the attack and none of the victims stood out to have such powerful enemies.
Except Steve and Selena Austal.
Up inside the hotel's penthouse, a young eleven year old Marcus had a pouting face on while he folded his arms once again to kick the barstool.
Normally well behaved, but it seemed that today, his parents were having none of his antics. He wanted to go play in the swimming pool with the other kids or even try to arrange a diving lesson with the gorgeous college babe that was the instructor. He was given two choices, to come with them to the dinner they were having with some of Earth's foreign relation representatives or wait until they came back with something to eat for him.
The argument started between his parents when Selena confided to Steve about her sadness of not being able to bear another child. She had been declared sterile for more than eight years and the thought had never escaped her. Steve was annoyed as well that she still hadn't gotten over the fact and Marcus just wished that they would stop pining for what couldn't happen and take care of the one they had now.
He was born an only child and nothing was going to change that.
Little did he know that at the exact moment when he kicked the chair, he became an orphan.
The response was swift. LAPD arrived on the scene with chemical warfare units heading in to rescue the victims. When it was believed that armed men were holding hostages, the Navy's Para-Rescue Expeditionary Forces were deployed onto the roof.
Marcus was one of the first people found. He was sitting on the deck, looking out over the Pacific Ocean when the first Falcons bearing the Navy colors flew overhead.
He never forgot that day. Him crying into one of the men's shoulders as they carried him onto the aircraft. By the time he reached the ground, there was literally nobody to go to.
Richard Austal was notified and he quickly filed for Marcus' custody within four hours of the incident.
He had given him hard copies from old news articles covering the attack, which had made world headlines right next to the article depicting a glassing of New Llanelli. Ever since then, he had been trying to piece together why his parents were killed. In addition, there were several other articles as well that didn't concern the gas attack in Los Angeles, but many were terror attacks believed to be Gustafson's work.
The papers were older, covered in dust and he spread them out on the table as if he was a theorist. A bomb attack on New Legaspi, an attempted heist of fifty billion credits on Luna and the Office of Naval Intelligence had attempted to set up a trap in the aftermath of the LA gas attack, intercepting a transport headed for Reach that he was confirmed to be aboard. He never showed up and it was unclear how he disappeared.
Either way, Gustafson was behind bars in one of the most secure and secretive prisons in the entire UNSC. He would never hurt anyone ever again.
So Austal hoped. Glancing back to his bedroom, he felt his body telling him that it was still in sleep debt. The augmented benefit meant that he could run on just an hour, but for some reason, sleeping on a king sized bed next to his wife changed his demands for more shut-eye. It was a big change from the bunks found on the warships or bases, in which stones would usually be more comfortable.
Shutting off the light, Marcus stumbled back towards his bed and fell into a deep slumber.
He was still out when Gabrielle woke up at dawn.
Sorry it took so damn long for me to get this out. Busy and out of town. Hope nobody went anywhere while I was gone. A bit of a filler chapter, but things will be getting more interesting shortly.
Thanks for reading and reviewing, you give my writing purpose.