A9 to C9
(Alpha Nine to Copper Nine)
Chapter 2
Private First Class Michael "Mickey" Crespo
Unknown City, Unknown Planet
30 Minutes After Drop
"Hello? Anyone on this frequency? Is anyone receiving this signal? Over?" Mickey asked for what felt like the hundredth time into his comms. Having managed to climb onto a nearby building after landing and was attempting to contact anyone within the city above the soup of the EMP the Prophet of Regret's ship left behind. Though, upon reaching the top of the building...he realized very quickly that he wasnt on Earth anymore. "This is PFC Michael Crespo, Alpha-Nine, UNSC 105th Battalion, is anyone reading this frequency, over?" Just then, a ear splitting, screeching noise came over the mic, causing Mickey to recoil in pain and frantically shut his radio off. "Agh! Christ...Okay...Ow..." Mickey would have removed his helmet, but he wasnt really willing to freeze to death...atleast with the temperature reading his suit was giving him seemed to indicate that being the case.
"Stranded on a distant frontier world. Little to no ammo. Might freeze to death. Happy Birthday to me...No really...this is great..." Mickey stood up and looked up into the sky, gears turning in his head. He then spotted something off in the distance, across the city, a radio tower of some kind just past an odd looking mountain almost hidden by the snowfall. "I suppose if something will cut through the muck, it'll have to be you." pushing a button on the side of his helmet, Mickey began to measure the distance between him and the radio tower. 4.8 kilometers. Better than being dead, at least. Setting a waypoint, Mickey descended from his perch and returned back into the building, descending back down the same way he came, avoiding the corpses of armed robots he had to fight on the way up. Though, upon entering an atrium containing what was once an indoor, grassy area with a pond now frozen over more than Hell itself, with a large window overlooking the city, now covered in ice, he could hear movement and more voices.
"Man...I killed twelve dumbass humans today and not ONE OF THEM fought back. This sucks. Y'know I joined the Order only to kill humans and...they're not making it fun at all!"
Looking over a balcony carefully, he could see a squadron of several robots, all wearing an orange armband, standing in various positions across the atrium, some standing on different walkways hanging over the frozen pond. One of the robots, standing on a nearby balcony and holding a sniper rifle in hand, noticed Mickey watching from across the way.
"Hey man, you see anything weird over there?" The robot asked, Mickey froze. Did it really just ask him a question? Why was he not...Taking no risks despite the odd combat scenario he found himself in. Mickey responded by firing a shot from his M90 shotgun, though the distance, and quick draw from Mickey only managed to strike the sniper drone in the arm, sending it flying off to the side.
"Aghhh! Why?! Why'd you do that?! Friendly fire!" Really? He still thought Mickey was a friendly. This was getting ridiculous. The sniper drone frantically aimed towards Mickey, though was looking through the complete opposite end of his scope, and was pointing the barrel directly at his face...and quickly enough, the sniper drone's head exploded into bits. Mickey leaned over the edge of the balcony and began to fire down on the now scattering robots, whom were clumsily trying to return fire against him. Though none came any close to actually striking him.
"Friendly fire! Wait! No! Who's shooting?! Just shoot him back! Forget it! He's not friendly anymore!" One of the 'leaders' of the squad shouted, a leader presumably, though their collective intellect seemed to suggest that ALL of these bots were just infantry...if you'd even call them that. "Grenade!" One of them shouted, sure enough, a grenade landed right at Mickey's feet, causing him to retreat backwards to avoid the explosion...only for there to be no explosion. Mickey peered out after a few moments, despite the gunfire and realized that...the grenade still had its pin and safety lever in. Rolling his eyes, Mickey rushed over to the grenade and pulled the pin, waiting for a moment, before quickly lurching over and dropping the grenade onto one of the catwalks below. Ironically, it landed at the feet of the drone who'd tossed it up.
"Oh. He gave it back. That's nice." With a genuine, beaming smile, the rest of his squadmates meanwhile threw themselves clumsily off the catwalk while their squadmate...and the catwalk itself was shredded by the explosion and ensuing fragmentation. Mickey peeked over the balcony to see that most of the drones were fleeing the building, leaving any of their injured behind.
Mickey scaled down from the balcony, landing carefully onto one of the catwalks...only to miss his jump the second time and sent himself tumbling down the destroyed catwalk like a slide, landing roughly, though unharmed on the floor below. "Agh...nuts..." Mickey groaned, standing up, dusting his arms off. He felt something tugging at his leg. He glanced down to see...the drone that had thrown the grenade at him, holding onto his leg...having only been reduced to a half destroyed head, and only an arm remaining. "Hey...do you need that grenade back...?" His head lurched forward limply, and his 'face' produced what looked to be a computer error...before he fell silent, his body sparking and still leaking...oil.
"No...thanks..." Mickey hesitantly responded, albeit a little too late and shook the drone off of him. "I've seen Grunts more threatening than these guys...yeesh...how'd they survive this long...?" Mickey pondered to himself as he continued towards the front entrance of the building. Keeping a close eye out for Grenade Drone's friends...though walking outside, he found no one...just the same, empty plaza he landed in. With that being said, he needed to return to his pod and retrieve its main transmitter...though it may have been fried by the EMP above New Mombasa, maybe it could provide some kind of help at the radio tower for getting a decent broadcast out. As he entered the same parking lot he had landed in, he slid down the edge of the crater and approached his drop pod. Climbing back into the seat and closing the pods hatch in order to shield himself a bit from the stinging cold air, he began to work.
Drawing close to prying the transmitter loose, Mickey began to detect a signal on his tracker. Another pod? Close too...really close...and approaching fast. That couldn't be right. Before he could investigate further, he felt something BANG against his pod, looking up from his wrist, he found a yellow, glowing 'X' staring at him through the canopy of the drop pod...making some kind of...ungodly screeching sound.
"What the hell?!" Before Mickey could grab his M90, a loud, terrible screeching sound rung forth, before his pod's hatch was ripped from its hinges and thrown across the crater. Then, Mickey found himself being thrown across the crater too, landing harshly onto his side. Looking up, he saw his attacker in the light. It was...one of those machines. But it was far different than the few he had seen since he landed it was pure white, wearing black clothing, military clothing? It resembled a jacket in a way. It also possessed a set of very feminine looking, curled hair, It had metallic wings, and long, metal claws. It stared at him with a look of bloodlust, a wide, fanged grin on its artificial face.
Mickey quickly reached for his shotgun and fired a shot off, thought the machine had quickly moved to the left to avoid the oncoming fire. And before Mickey knew it, a searing pain came over his shoulder, because his arm had been amputated. Mickey screamed out in pain, dropping to his knees as blood gushed from the stump all over the snow. The cold and racing adrenaline doing some work to numb the pain ever so slightly. The robot though, now with his blood all over her claws. Began to laugh. In a female tone. It began to approach Mickey, slowly, enjoying every single second of his fear. Despite the agonizing pain, Mickey threw himself onto his side, and with his remaining arm, fumbled for his M6/SOCOM and began to unload shot after shot at the robot. She carelessly deflected every single bullet with her claws. Just what kind of machine was this?! Why was she so different from the others?! Mickey tossed the M6 aside and began to frantically crawl for his M90...reaching barely to it, before he was lifted into the air by the robot. Staring at the soulless machine's 'X' covered screen, it still bearing its fangs at him. Mickey frantically kicked at the machine's chassis, it gave a almost animalistic noise...almost like laughter. A silver, glossy tongue ran itself over Mickey's helmet, covering the visor in saliva, and the robot raised her claws, preparing one last strike to end the ODST's life.
That was, until her head exploded...a gunshot rang out from the rim of the crater. There stood an ODST clad in standard armor, holding a smoking M392 DMR, though his chest plate, and helmet were pure white, bearing a red caduceus across the chest plate, his name tag read 'HOLMES'
The robot shook, before dropping to the ground, alongside Mickey. Holmes rushed over and immediately began to work on Mickey's arm, unclasping the broken shoulder piece from the bloodied cloth and tossing it into the snowbank nearby. Mickey couldn't really speak, and was just able to continue screaming out in pain. "Its gonna be okay, soldier. Calm down, calm down..." Holmes said as he brought out a first aid kit, and began by placing a sterile-field-generator on the ground, the device powered on and began to produce a orange, energized field around Holmes and Mickey, completely destroying any bacteria or microorganisms that may or may not have been alive, sterilizing the area. Carefully, Holmes prepared a shot of polypseudomorphine and injected it into a port on Mickey's suit, which automatically injected the shot into his body. Quickly, his pain faded, and Mickey himself began to pass out, as intended. Monitoring his vitals, Holmes began to prepare to reattach Mickey's arm. Unknown to him, however, was the drone rising back up...its head reassembling itself in a grey, mercury looking goo...A telltale sound of a gun cocking caused Holmes to look up from his work and quickly turn around and open fire against the drone once more. This time, however, it extended its wings once more and leapt off to the side, dodging every shot Holmes fired its way until his magazine was emptied. Holmes glanced to the edge of the canyon and ran for Mickey's M90 lying in the snow, only for a round to catch his arm, causing him to fall into the snow, quickly, frantically, he crawled over and grabbed the shotgun, right as the drone was right on top of him and destroyed her head once again with another headshot, the drone collapsed into the snowbank behind Holmes, but he figured if she'd gotten up once. She'd probably get up again. Wasting no time, Holmes rushed over and disassembled his hasty, operating center, hauled Mickey onto his back and rushed out of the crater as fast as he could...