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From the Halo Diaries (Chapter 3)
Posted By: aussie_spartan<aussie_spartan@hotmail.com>
Date: 3 March 2007, 12:50 pm


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0321 hours, December 10, 2525 (Military Calendar) (Before the fall of Reach) / Location Classified

Lieutenant Carter piloted the specially made stealth ship with great care; they had to be careful… if they wanted to live. "Tyler, I'm giving you the controls." He keyed into his personal microphone. "Sir, yes sir!" Tyler replied as he took control of the ship piloting them as slyly as he could towards a gigantic Covenant vessel. The ship was one of the ones responsible for the destruction of the first Human planet to fall, Harvest. It was home to a little over a thousand Covenant soldiers, plus advanced technology and information about Covenant tactics, weaknesses and the like. Carter got up and went to the stern of the ship thinking about what they were about to do. They weren't the first to do this though, he had heard tales of super-humans or 'Spartans' had done this about a month earlier. They had gotten into a Covenant ship and destroyed it from the inside out, according to the information they gathered the aliens weren't that strong or even that smart. Still though Carter worried, he had lost men already, too many men. He scratched just under his left eye as he had done countless times before; it was a sort of tension release for him. He entered the prep room where his soldiers were getting ready, pondering his choice of words, his soldiers.

Whatever happened here he was the one in charge, he had their lives in the palm of his hand, one wrong move and they could change to nothing more than red smears on the Covenants floor. He gazed at the ten person incision team; he had chosen them not because he liked them, but because he knew they would survive. Carter wasn't a racist or sexist man, he knew from long hard experience that color or sex had no meaning whatsoever in combat, combat couldn't see color, combat had no knowledge of gender, it only knew who could fight… and who couldn't. His team was almost ready and Carter knew he should say some words of encouragement but every time he tried the words got stuck in his throat. "Sir!" Corporal Bagen said from his lavender camouflage fatigues, "Do the Covenant really color their spacecraft with this gay color?" The entire team burst out in laughter, some leaning on their weapons to stop from falling onto the ground. "Yes soldier, in fact they also have a hairdressers and moisturizer treatment salon in their ship." Carter replied. At this remark the entire squad laughed even harder, becoming more cheerful about facing certain death. Carter grimaced then got suited up choosing to go with a black jumpsuit worn by the ODSTs rather than the lavender ensemble, 'It is a gay color.' Carter thought to himself as he chose a sidearm and main weapon. About an hour later the squad had been prepped about what their plan was and what their objectives were they had reached the Covenant ship. Carter took the controls back from Tyler as he was the only one he trusted to make this crucial landing, the plan was to use specially created suction cups placed along the bottom of the ship to clamp onto the ship the infiltrate the ship and take control of the bridge. This was the usual suicide mission from ONI; they had no idea if they could get in without being detected let alone finding the bridge. All they had to go on was that Covenant ship showed no visible signs of having bridge windows so in could be assumed that they weren't at the fore of the ship. Carter slowly maneuvered the Stealth ship so that it touched down onto the Covenant ship. Carter looked out a specially designed window onto the Covenant ships hull, something seemed wrong to Carter, then BANG! The Stealth craft hit something solid… but it wasn't the ship. "What the hell?" was all Carter managed to say before Covenant spacecraft zoomed towards him, he had seen these before in the vids but he had never actually encountered them before. They were Covenant fighter ships classified under the strange name Seraph class. Whatever they were Carter knew they were the enemy and had to be eliminated in order to accomplish the mission. What had stopped them had to wait, Carter wanted to find out what it was, his training screamed at him to access the threat to the mission but it screamed even louder to destroy the Seraph. Carter moved the stealth ship as the Covenant ships came in for another attack, the ships fired anyway. Carter nearly dropped the controls, they were firing upon themselves! The plasma blasts slashed their way through space towards the Covenant ship then… dissipated into nothing. Then Carter realized it… they have some sort of energy shielding! He had gotten a thorough talking to about this subject but he never thought that it would be any issue; he thought that they would have it turned off. This wasn't a problem though; he had been instructed that to let things go in and out they had to drop their shielding.

1457 hours, July 14, 2557 (Military Calendar) / Aboard the Silence and Deception, Earth

Mayfap's happiness from the human's death was however short lived; several more only took his place. Tired from hours of long battle Mayfap was in no condition to battle these new attackers, so instead for face them he slowly retreated towards heavily Elite held positions. Turning around expecting to face friendly Elites Mayfap instead faced the deadly Demons. Mayfap's heart raced, it looked like the end for him. How could he possibly hope to stand against these odds? Searching for an exit wildly Mayfap saw his opportunity; a decompression vent had been blasted open in the conflict, most likely by his fellow Grunts in a desperate bid to escape. Diving for his very life Mayfap leapt for the vent, he slid across the ground and into the vent. Mayfap slid through the vent then skidded out the other side. He landed on top of an Elite, surprised at first the Elite's mood quickly changed to anger. "Insolent little fool!" It screamed at him. About to reply Mayfap noticed something was wrong, he looked down at his midsection to find a gaping wound instead of a chest. Mayfap collapsed dead at the Elites feet.

Spec Ops Private Richard Wason watched as a Grunt threw himself into a decompression vent, spotting his chance he opened fire blasting through the little gas-suckers chest. Under its own momentum it still slid through the vent but Wason knew it was as good as dead. "Ok maggots! Fall in!" Yelled Wason's CO, he was a tough but fair man with brown hair and a small band of silver running around the base of his hair. Whatever he looked like though he commanded total respect on the battlefield and received total respect on the battlefield, Wason had seen his fellow soldiers get up after severe wounds because of his 'pep talks'. Even the Spartans they were working with respected him; they had introduced themselves as Corporal Spartan 234 and Private Spartan 301. In an effort to raise moral their superiors had pointed out that instead of the 'old' Spartan II's these were in fact new Spartan III's, whether this was true or not was up for discussion. No matter what they were it was clear that they function much better than the Spec Ops, and in their green-black armor they looked like robot rather than humans. "Alright maggots!" Yelled the CO "Listen up! The Covenant are gonna regret the day they laid eyes on Harvest, not only will we blow this ship to hell but we will drag the Covenant to hell and back so many times they will get frequent flyer miles!" A great cheer rose up from the Spec Ops team at the end; they were ready to follow him into the jaws of death. "JONES! Get this door open!" The CO bellowed. Jones moved up to the CO and got out his door hacking hardware, after attaching it to the door then pushing a few buttons on it the door slid soundlessly open. The Spec Ops team covered the corridor with their weapons and red team moved up to take position at the next doorway. "From now on I want radio silence, hand signals only… and for God's sake keep quiet, I don't want the Covenant to know where we are until we're ten meters up their ass." Red, blue, yellow and green teams acknowledged the order and the CO gave blue team the signal to move up to red team, they complied silently. Wason felt something was wrong; he looked behind him and saw that the Spartan's were nowhere to be seen. Wason's heart skipped a beat, he motioned to the CO but he dismissed his gestures giving him the one finger salute telling him to shut up and don't worry. The CO gave the signal for all teams to move up and Wason moved with his team, green team, to halfway through the corridor. They held position and waited for further orders for the CO. They didn't have to wait long as the next door was open in a matter of seconds and they were moving again further into the Covenant ship. Now entering what seemed to be a sort of reception area the Spec Ops were amazed at what they saw, fountains of water came down… and up from luscious green forest like displays, Banshees swooped overhead, strange looking rainbow colored birds made aerial maneuvers never possible in conventional aircraft. The silent awe only last a few milliseconds before a heavy rain of plasma fire splashed down upon them. In the first ten seconds at least twelve men died, this brought the platoons numbers down to twenty; they had lost half their soldiers since starting this mission. "Were bugging out!" the CO yelled "All units back to the doors! Red team, close and lock them after us!" Once everyone was back through the door the only surviving member of red team locked the door and sprinted up the corridor back to where they had been previously. After several long minutes of checking and re-checking the platoon was reassigned as now only two squads, red team and blue team.

1456 hours, July 14, 2557 (Military Calendar) / Aboard a Covenant troopship in Athens wreckage, in orbit around Earth

"EAT LEAD YOU ELITE SON OF A BITCH!" Screamed Sergeant Swinb as he opened fire upon the Elite in the troopship. It gave an almighty bellow and kicked off from the control panel using the zero-gee gravity to propel itself across the room and into sergeant Swinb. The Elite caught him in the chest pushing him out of the troopship and into free space. Sampson glided after them hoping that Swinb was ok, she was relieved to find him fine and fighting with the Elite. It was clear though that Swinb was losing, the Elite simply was too strong for him and was slowly overpowering him. Swinb twisted and wriggled in the Elites grasp, at first Sampson thought that Swinb was trying to get away from the Elite when Swinb pressed something on the Elites jet pack. The Elite's jet pack kicked into action and sent the Elite flying through the wreckage of the Athens, Swinb, left behind by the Elite sudden jerk turned around and indicated towards the sheet of metal where they had left Longatano. Sampson retrieved Longatano as quickly as possible then turned around and came face to face with the Elite. It configured its weird mandibles into what might be called a smile, Sampson would have normally laughed at how stupid it made the Elite look but she was too scared to notice. The Elite leveled its plasma rifle and said something completely unintelligible to her.

'Sareesa Juiben smiled at the pathetic human, they had greatly insulted it when the other one had outsmarted him, but he would claim his revenge on this one, yes that would do nicely to ease the shame. "Prepare to die filthy human!" He spat. Blood splattered everywhere and free globs of the stuff formed floating through space. A small explosion occurred as the ruptured spacesuit vented oxygen. Juiben looked at the blood or at least his lifeless corpse looked like he was.

Sampson looked around to find Longatano holding his pistol; he had used it to shoot the Elite breaching its spacesuit and effectively killing it. Longatano said over the intercom, "You didn't expect me to just let it kill the only one who knows how to get out of here… did you?" Sampson smiled through her faceplate, she gave Longatano a rifle and together they glided their way back to the troopship. When they had gotten back in shutting the air lock and restored pressure with air to the cockpit, Swinb removed his helmet and said "What took you so long? Having a nice little wander were you? NOT ON MY TIME!" Longatano looked indignant and retorted "We were just finishing the mess you made! If you had of killed that Elite and be done with it we would have been here a long time ago!" Longatano and Swinb stared daggers at each other there was a long minute of silence then finally Swinb said "It's good to have ya back soldier." Longatano smiled and saluted, Swinb returned the gesture. Swinb grabbed the controls then turned around and said "Ok, do any of you know how to fly this ship?" Sampson groaned.





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