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Halo 3: Elysium Part One
Posted By: Travis Knight<darke127@yahoo.com>
Date: 22 January 2007, 8:34 pm
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The plain was a lot of open area, and John stood solemnly watching the horizon. There were two marines, a hog, a launcher, and three bandoleers of grenades. He had felt the butterfly of fear before in his life, but never had it stayed so tight. He closed his eyes, chinned off the external noise receptors, and all was silent. His Mjolnir armor clasped him like an impenetrable coffin. He felt the dread of the new mission slowly flow away.
When he turned the receptors back on, he heard some of the chatter over the COM.
"So, has he told us the plan?"
"No. I don't think he will. I heard they don't like talking to us."
"Should we ask him?"
"I'm not doing it. They're monsters."
"Shut up, Roy. That suit can hear a pin fall in a tornado." Then they went quiet. They were sitting in the jeep, waiting for John. He moved forward, silent despite the great weight of the armor. He raised his hand, setting it on the jeep, and flexed his shoulder. White foam stuck out from where his suit had taken a needler shard from the last wave of Covenant. The base had been all but wiped out, and the survivors had set a meeting point six miles north, just out of the shadow of one of the great covenant carriers hovering over them like a menacing purple cloud.
John cleared his throat, and pulled himself into the seat. He opened his external mike, and addressed the marines. They needed no silencing. When he had moved to the hog they had quieted. "Secure the ammo," he said. He revved the engine, and waited. When they gave him the all clear signal, he floored it. He hardly felt it in the armor, but in the mirror, he saw them jerk back. In seconds, he was moving along over the flat ground at over sixty miles an hour. The hog engine whined as he shifted gears, shooting across the flat ground like a big green bullet.
They had gotten to the other side of the plain when they saw the pillar of smoke. A huge, towering black column of billowing smoke rose from where they had set the meeting point. Upon closer inspection, John noted the licking flames and scattered corpses. He immediately informed the two troopers that they were now likely on their own.
One of them reached for the radio, to send out a distress signal. John barked a quick order and the man's hand stopped short. "They scan our frequencies, too, soldier. Do you want to give our location away? They'll glass this entire area. Radio silence."
"Yes sir."
John nodded and brought up the map on his faceplate. He scanned around for any kind of cover that they could hide in and plan some kind of attack. Nothing for over two miles, all flat, they were sitting ducks. He closed the map and floored it, ignoring curses that streamed from the marine's mouths.
"What are we going to do, sir?"
"Get to cover, and then we'll plan something." It was growing worse by the minute. The Ark had opened, and the Forerunner signal had been sent out, alerting every covenant vessel of their location, and they were surely en route now. Cortana was still with the grave-mind thing, and Johnson was still with the Arbiter. Even with the help of the elites, the Sangheli, the tattered UNSC resistance was still out gunned a hundred to one. How had this happened? How had earth fallen? John ground his teeth, and tried to will the hog to move faster. In the distance, he saw the wreckage of something baking in the afternoon sun. He pointed the nose of the hog towards it. It would have to do as their temporary base.
When they arrived, John was disgruntled to see that it was the wrecked pod of a Bumblebee. Six charred forms lay inside. Before the marines could see, John took it upon himself to drag what he could of them out and into the shade of the wreckage. Then he smashed the windshield out. It would never fly again anyway. They would be in the ship with him while they planned, and they would need to be able to breath. John silently gave thanks for the fresh, recycled air in his MJOLNIR suit.
They backed the hog up to the exit of the bumblebee, and piled into the wrecked escape pod. The wind coming through the windshield off of the plains kicked up dust and ash, and the marines coughed frequently enough to annoy John.
"Here's where we are," John pointed to a location on a paper map one of the marines had kept. "Here's where the regrouping was supposed to take place," he slid his shelled finger across the map, and stopped over the image of a craggy area scattered with outcroppings. "And here's where we retreated from." Again, John slid his finger across the map.
"So what are we going to do? HQ is gone, and as far as we know, the rest of the platoon is KIA. We're short on supplies, and the jeep only has so much fuel. We might as well keel over and die, chief."
"No, let's make a run for the next platoon's location. We know they're near Kiliminjaro."
"We're not going back to that Ark thing. You saw how the covenant ran from that thing, and how it flashed. If they run, we run."
"Quiet." John was trying to think and their constant bickering was keeping him from full concentration. Supplies low, fuel low, morale lower than dirt- there was only one thing to do. "We're going to take the fight to them."
They looked at him stunned. A long pause before, "Are you mad? Have you lost your mind? We're not following you onto one of their ships, regardless of rank. Hell no, sir!"
"Not onto their ship…into the Ark. We'll follow truth, and the other brute chieftains, and kill them."
"Us and what army?"
John was silent. He couldn't expect these marines to have the kind of courage he had. They didn't have the armor, the training, and the knowledge. But they had no choice. Kelly was gone with Dr. Halsey long ago, and gray team was scattered. Michelle was MIA, Anthony was off with the ODST platoon near Kiliminjaro, and the batch of exoskeletons John had seen in combat had been all but wiped out. There were one or two reports of a scattered bunch of them, but John didn't know where, and didn't want to know. They were kids, and he couldn't trust them in battle.
They had calmed down, John noted, but they still had looks of disbelief. "Disobeying orders is a death penalty," he noted, and flexed his hand. With grim, gaunt looks, they nodded, and stood. "Search the pod for ammo, grenades, any thing, I don't know what to expect down there. We need to be prepared for anything. We probably wont have any kind of supplies for the duration of our…visit."
"Yes, sir," they replied, and went to work.
Fifteen minutes later, they had torn apart the inside of the escape pod, and used the field torch to patch the hog and further armor the sides. The warthog looked heavy and over-armored. It looked ready to survive hell. John nodded his approval, and the marines got in. Behind the metal shields, the turret stuck out just slightly, with just enough room to swivel. The sides had been built up a bit so they would have protection from any kind of fire directed at them, though a direct plasma hit would boil it away instantly. The tires were further armored, and John no longer worried about them so much. What he was concerned about now was the speed of the vehicle. With the extra weight, it would be slower.
He got in and started it. It accelerated slower, but at top speed wasn't much slower than it had been before. It turned a little heavier, but he adjusted quickly. The Ark was a two-hour drive. Hopefully they could retain enough gas to get them there.
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