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Waking is Over-rated
Posted By: AI Construct<Death_Of_A_God@hotmail.com>
Date: 18 October 2005, 4:13 am


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0700 Hours:

      Everyone was tired, the Covenant had stopped sometime in the middle of the night, only to pick up again a few hours before, and they were near, so near, you could see them now, the Ghosts were up front, then the Specters, and finally, two Wraiths. Everyone was wide awake now.
"Ok Sergeant, get ready to signal" I told him, he put his hand up, every loader looked toward him,
"Hold it....Hold it...." he said, his hand still in the air.

Its as if the ring was holding it's breath, waiting for the order to fire, the only noise that could be heard
was the low humming sound of the covenant vehicles, rapidly approaching.

"Almost in range..." he whispered to no one but himself, a trickle of sweat ran down the side of his cheek, he stared at the on-coming vehicles, like a mad man staring into the abyss.

He smiled, and said aloud, "Ok you sons of bitchs, time to die! FIRE!" his hand dropped.

The low humming sound, now a roar of Covenant machinery, was droned out by the sound of a couple dozen 102mm high-explosive
rockets that symbolized that we were not going down without a fight. The loud whistles of the flying projectiles were replaced
with large explosions, Ghosts, Specters, and earth all exploded in super-heated blue white flame. Even mroe to our suprise, because it had not been taken into account, many other vehicles exploded due to the fact that plasma gernades were very unstable.

We fired a second volley, more Ghosts and Specters exploded, creating a smoke-screen in front of us.
Then,as we smiled at each other, a large plasma ball come from the smoke, we heard the ball hit somehwhere behind us, and we knew, that we had not hit the Wraiths, we had only given them cover.
Elites and Brutes came charging from out of the smoke, firing like mad-men at us, some were hit, their cries cut short by the super-heated plasma.
Suddenly, a loud roar made up by smaller roars rolled down the valley from the ridge above, I was worried for a moment, thinking the Covenant had blind-sided us, but to my and a few other marines relief, it was only our snipers.

The roars scared the smaller grunts, but not the Wraiths, who, with the loud noises of our snipers, fired at their position, and soon, the rest of the marines and I, were the last line of defense, a grim thought, but true non the less.

The Sergeant raised his voice yelling orders to get the rocket launchers reloaded, and take out the wraiths and ghosts, but a few of us grabbed up our ARs and BRs, and ran forward, most of us running like like all hell was behind us, but, if anyone knew anything, we wern't running from hell, we were running forward to embrace it.


Rockets, plasma, and lead wizzed by as I raced forward to meet the enemy. I stopped a few yards in front of a few elites
and a brutes, pulled out a frag, and yelled, "Grenade!", to warn anyone near by.
I threw it, but my hand was shakey, and it was a bit off, but today was my lucky day, I wasn't off by much.

Two of the Elites went down, some shrapnel hit the Brute in the back of the head, effectivally punching its way through the brutes face, the last Elite was only saved by his sheild, I saw my chance, dropped to one knee, and fired a controled burst into the belly of the beast, the dying scream turned into a gurgle, as it fell and choked on its own blood.
All of a sudden, it fell earily silent, and the death-like smoke cleared, and before me, the wraith appeared, as silent as a ghost, it glided towards me, stopping only a few meters away, and the two small plasma turrets both set their sights on me, I could almost hear the pilot chuckle to himself.

All of a sudden, a projectile passed near me, and went straight into the Wraith, another followed, the shockwaves throwing me back. I watched from the air as the near god-like tank was reduced to nothing but a smoking and flaming shell, little left of it's former glory.

I hit the ground, all air left me. It took me a few moments to gather my thoughts, and I realized that while flying through the air, I had lost my AR, I got up, catching my breath, and took out my side-arm, only then, did I realize that, although one of the Wraiths was gone, the other was not, and it had just fired.

The sky lit up as the ball passed over Covenant and Marine alike, and came crashing down on the last of the launchers, I only looked a moment, but it was all I needed, ever Marine between the Wraith and the now dead launchers, started fighting with renewed vigor.

"Lets get them!" I shouted to no one but myself, and grabbed a dead Elite's plasma rifle, and started firing at anything that moved, I found myself ducking behind an overturned ghost, waiting for the last Wraith to pass by, as it did, I overturned the ghost, and hopped in.

The slow moving Wraith was no match for the Ghost, I came up beside the massive beast, taking two of the plasma gernades strapped to the side of the Ghost, activated them, and threw them at the Wraith, nad moved away as fast as the thing could go.

I didn't get far enough I suppose, because as soon as I heard the explosions of the plasma gernades, the Ghost went nose first into the ground, the final explosion of the Wraith sent the small vehicle head over heels, and it threw me out.

I landed on my back, and through the dust, I saw men cheering, the sun shown through the smoke, and Switoski walked up to me, smiling from ear to ear, "Sleepin on the job I see, you lazy b*stard" he said, I chuckled, "Just help me up" I said, he put out his hand, and I grabbed it, and he helped me to my feet.

For the rest of the day, and well into the night, laughter, and just plain happiness emminated from the camp. Morale was high, because during this small and meaningless battle, we, and the Covenant realized somthing,

We could win.





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