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A Marines Journal by Jack Rawling



A Marine's Journal , chapter one: Invasion
Date: 7 October 2006, 1:26 am

Please Note:Any similarity(s) to other works of fiction of any way, shape, or form, are completely coincidental; all characters are products of my imagination, and carry no hidden meaning whatsoever.

17 April, 2224, 0915
This is so lame. Lets start by giving my name. Im Jack Locklear, im a private in the Marine Corps, ODST division, and I, out of the 30 soldiers in our platoon, have been chosen to keep a "Historical Record" of everything we do. Thats a laugh. You know why? Because all we do is drill for an invasion that'll probably never happen! Im an ODST %@!*& it! WE are supposed to be the ones invading! Not that we have anything to invade, sence we know absolutely nothing about the Covanent! Were the $#&*@ did they get a name like "The Covanenant" anyway? The Covanent is a group of phsycopathic aliens who think "The gods" call for the extermination of the human race. Real cute. Besides, I doubt the Covanent even knows where or what Jericho 7 is. Jericho 7 is the boring planet that our regiment is stationed on. Anyway, he gave me this little journal to write on. Why is it always me?

18 April, 2224, 1200

Im writing this on lunch break, the only time from 0430 to 0600 that we stop drilling. After taps, and a breakfast of oatmeal (stale, of course) we spend two hours on the grinder, fighting a fake battle with training robots. The new training bots are pretty neat,shaped just like humans,only with stun rifles. I made it ok, along with most of the platoon, but second squad got pummeled. The drill field is two hundred square yards of grass, with trees and boulders for cover, and ocassional stun land mines that send a shock through your body, just enough to knock you off your feet. A team of six robots flanked second squad, while another team of three suppressed them from the front. Well, second squad is made of 10 ODSTs; the team behind them suddenly stood up and peppered them with stun bullets, (little rubber balls that hurt like the dickens) the first fve men were out in no time, the second group could've made it, but Sargent O'Hare decided to be stupid, and ran up for a meelee. To make a long story short, he has about 23 circle shaped bruises on his body, and the other four men ran like thier *&$%#es were on fire. ON that cheery note, i've got to go to the pod drop simulator.

18 April, 2224, 1900

I cant believe it. I really cant. Naval intelligence has spotted some rader blip somewhere out in space, and there are rumors going around that it was a covanent cruiser, but we'll never know, cause the blip dissapeared. We are now up to level ten alert, preparations are being made for civilian evacuation! If you ask me, its about time. Im so sick of hearing about what the covanent can do. I wanna see it. I wanna fight it. I wanna kick some butt so that Silva and his flunkies can stop drilling us with all the simulations and false alarms. We've been ordered to keep our weapons with us at all times, and sleep in our battle armor. Fine with me. As long as I have my MA2B assault rifle with me, I wont complain a bit.

19 April, 2224, 0127

The invasion has begun. Right now im sitting in the north watch-tower, looking out for covanent dropships. We havent gotten any action yet, the whole fight is going on up in orbit around the planet. From what I hear, things arent going so well for us, but then again thats just Lance Corporal Hennings big mouth.

21 April, 2224, 1233

Whatever the covanent are, they sure have some nice fire power! It all went down a few hours ago, the covanent have been strafing us non-stop. Ive never seen anything like a covanent bombing run. They skim over the planet, roughly fifty feet above the ground, let loose with all they've got, and then pull up and fly off. Whats even more amazing is their weapons. They fly in tear-drop shaped fighters, nick-named seraphs, and these strange ships shaped like horse shoes. The seraphs have two fixed guns at the front, that fire some kind of purple liquid flame. The techies call it plasma. The flying horse shoes have one main gun that fires similar strands of plasma. I hear they will be landing soon, and I think we're in for a fight.

24 April, 2224, 1836

I havent been able to write for a while, as we've been fighting non-stop. There is only one word to describe this war: madness. It all went down 2 days ago, my platoon was assigned to an outpost not to far from main base. These new outposts have been peppered around the area, so if the covanent land, they will have a *$&%)# of a time getting to the main base. It is nothing like I thought, not at all. When they-when it first landed, we didnt see it. I didnt see it, to be exact. Pvt. Wilkins saw it. Fire-team Beta saw it. They were patrolling the area in a warthog, when one of the horse shoe things came to a hover above the ground. I was taking a *%^&#@ when I heard Wilkinsons machine gun rattling away at something. I took cover, thinking it was another strafing run, waiting for an enemy ship to fly over-head and pepper the area with fire. The ship never came. Suddenly I heard someone scream, and there was an explosion. I heard the crunching of boots in the thick grass coming my way, and then I saw it. It was roughly 8 feet tall, with dark gray skin, and black, glassy eyes. Its neck was elongated, giving it a hunched over effect. On each hand was two fingers and two thumbs.Its feet took the form of cloven hoofs, twice the size of a fully grown human beings foot. Its jaw was devided into four mandibles, each bearing a row of sharp teeth. The thing was wearing some kind of armor I had never seen before, it was red, and had a sleek, metallic look. On its head was a smooth, long, helmet to match the shape of its head, on its shoulders: a large vest. I ducked into the tall grass and watched it as it ambled over to were I had been standing before, and noticed my freshly deposited dung. It shouted something in another language, and another thing came waddling over from the landing sight. This one was different, it was about five feet tall. Its face was that of a deformed dog, with purpleish leathery skin, and was partially covered by some kind of mask, connected to a large lump on its back. Its feet were like elephants, and its hands had only three fingers. Its armor was different, as if to protect him from the conditions on Jericho 7. The two spoke to each other for a minute or two,then dog-face yelled in a series of barks and high pitched yaps. Four more little dog-faces and another alien, similar to the first one, only with blue armor apeared. The group took some kind of formation, and headed towards the outpost, turning thier backs on me. It was time to act. I stood up and clicked off the safety on my MA2B, drawing a bead on the big one in the blue armor. I turned on the auto targeting system, and a small eyepiece slid out of my helmet, giving me a cross-hairs were ever I pointed my rifle. I keyed the COM interface in my helmet and screamed a warning: CONTACT!!! I held down the trigger and let it rip. My assault rifle sent 25 mm explosive roundswhistling through the air at the aliens back. Suddenly a blue shell of glassy, gel-like energy surrounded the thing, and the bullets pinged off in wild directions. I kept firing. The claw-shaped thing in the aliens hand glowed blue, and sizzled with plazma as he turned around to face me. I kept firing. As his comrades turned to help him out, he pointed the plazma weapon at me. I kept firing. Finally his energy shield flickered and died, the high powered cartridges ripped through his face, as globules of blue blood fell to the ground, and bolts of plazma wizzed past me. I kept firing-and ran out of ammo. The other things turned to me and readied thier weapons...right before the rest of my squad appeared behind them! Sargent O'hare in the warthog ran over the one in the red armor, while Pfc. Bradford sprayed the little ones with the machine gun. Heckuva way to start the day. Since then we've lost three of our men to the covanent. I have to stop writing now, its getting dark, and I cant use my head-lamp for stealth reasons.







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