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Resist or Die Chapter One-The Bridge Corridor
Posted By: JimmyDaRat<iamapsychopathichermit@hotmail.com>
Date: 17 April 2005, 5:57 PM
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Chapter 1
TIME: 0557 HOURS DATE: 21/05/2552 (UNSC CALENDER)
ABOARD THE UNSC DESTROYER BUCKINGHAM
SITUATION-EXTREMELY HOSTILE
The usually cool, wide metal corridors of the [I/]Buckingham[I/] were now screaming with small-arms fire, filled with smoke, and positively boiling hot with fierce battle, their pristine cleanliness marred by blood of human and Covenant alike, littered with bodies and shell casings, and fraught with plasma scorches and bullet marks. The ship's hull was not much better, scorched and ripped open amidships by the deadly Covenant weaponry. Seraphs crisscrossed its surface like hungry vultures, searching out and destroying the last of the Longsword fighter screen. Flames rippled in space, fed by the ship's engines. It drifted, mortally wounded and bleeding to death, orbited by wreckage and the unlucky bodies of human and Covenant that had been sucked into the vacuum by massive explosive decompression.
In the thick of it all, Sergeant Nathan Ross lay on his face, sprawled, the mind-shearing shriek of the plasma grenade's explosion still ringing in his confused ears. Time was moving slower for him, it seemed, as he lifted his dazed head, unhindered by combat helmet or battle plate, resplendent only in his grey military-issue fatigues. His half-shaven face was blank and he had received a gash across his forehead, which was bleeding profusely, soaking the fringe of his thick counter-regs brown hair and running down into his clear blue eyes. His soft features were broken up by scars from many conflicts. Everything was muffled as though he was viewing from a distance. Private Hammond running across the corridor before him from the cover of one pushed-over computer bank to another. He vaguely realised that he was bleeding, but not all of the blood on his stained fatigues was his-most of it was the remains of Private Farley who had been the unlucky receiver of the Grunt's plasma grenade. He had kept his head admirably-enough to realise that if he had stayed where he was three others would also have perished. He had dived away from the rest of the men, and in doing so, saved these three comrades from all but the shockwave of the grenade.
Admiration, his one clear, easily accessible thought at the time, saved him. Everything sped up once again and he was able to think once more.
Sit-rep, he thought. A dozen Grunts, a quartet of Jackals and an Elite opposed the remnants of his platoon. Nine men, last he'd checked. The battle for this corridor, the corridor to the control room, had been a real bloodbath up to now and was getting no better.
His second thought-he needed a weapon. He lay still, playing dead for now, no point in drawing fire yet he'd be no use to his men dead. He cast his eyes carefully around, half-closing them. An MA5B assault rifle lay off to his left, next to the corpse of Private First Class Lorenzo. He'd been shot through the chest nine times by something low-bore but with excellent penetration, it seemed due to the exit wounds on his back being as narrow as the entry wounds in his front. He hated to even think it, but his corpse, lying on its side as it was, would also provide cover for a couple of seconds, though no longer.
A bolt of plasma passed so close to him that he felt the excess heat wash over him. He had to move, even playing dead was becoming dangerous as the firing intensified another notch on his imaginary scale. In addition, it wasn't going to be long before a stray shot hit Lorenzo's body and left his semblance of a plan in ruins.
He sprung into action surprising the hell out of an advancing Grunt. He lashed out with an arm, making a lucky shot and smashing aside its breathing apparatus. It began the slow, painful task of asphyxiating even as Ross sprinted forwards and threw himself flat behind what had been Lorenzo. He reached out with both arms as he flew through the air. His right arm wildly missed the MA5B but his left snagged the foregrip. He dragged it in to his body and rearranged his arms so he was holding it comfortably.
He was now lying on his back behind Lorenzo's body, overwhelmed by the stench of cauterised flesh. He raised the rifle across his chest, ready. When he was about to sit up, he suddenly heard the urgent low beeping alarm that signalled the airlock closing. He sneaked a peek over the cover provided by the unlucky corpse. The airlock was preparing to shut-its alert light was glowing red and spinning. In a few seconds they would begin to close. He needed to rally his boys. This might be there only chance of coming through.
"Push 'em back! Push 'em back into the airlock! Come on Marines lets show these fuckers how to fight!" he screamed over the wail of plasma fire and the answering chatter of 7.62mm rounds.
"Yeah! Lets hit 'em boys!" came the always-jocular voice of Corporal Rick Vasquez from somewhere behind Ross. Suddenly six MA5B's opened up in unison, quickly joined by Ross's as he sat upright suddenly and opened fire. Ross saw a trio of Grunts and a Jackal who was caught with his shield to one side somersault backwards as they took multiple head and upper-torso shots, drop heavily on their face as they caught rounds in the gut, or sail off along the metal floor as their methane tank took a hit, propelling them on a column of decompressing methane, or, in the Jackal's case, fly apart. As the barrage went on, another pair of Grunts were cut down by the sheet of white-hot lead, and an M9 HE-DP fragmentation grenade, less its pin, soared over Ross's head and landed within spitting distance of a surviving Jackal. It detonated, spraying flesh over the Elite who was now less half of his unit.
Inexperienced as he probably was judging by his blue armour, he recognised when a situation was hopeless, and he began to retreat as the stream of fire found him. Bullets bouncing from his energy shield, he leapt back, turned, and bellowed for a retreat. The two surviving Jackals interlocked their shields to cover the Elite and the Grunts scattered, wildly zigzagging back to what they thought was the safety of the previous ship section, losing two more of their numbers to the hail of bullets as they went. The airlock began to slide shut barely a second later, and the sporadic return fire of the Covenant slowly grew more and more pointless as the gap between the horizontal doors narrowed until the Covenant were completely cut off. The blast door shut somewhat quicker and Grunt yells and Elite commands suddenly ceased as the section they had thought safe was decompressed, leaving the Jackals to immediately begin to asphyxiate and the Grunts and Elite to float helplessly through space until their breathing apparatus gave out.
"Woo! Yeah! They didn't know what had fucking hit them!" whooped Private Hammond from somewhere just behind Ross. Ross heard the unmistakeable sound of somebody slapping a fresh mag into an MA5B.
"You better believe it Hammond! But have you pissed your pants yet?" came the voice of Private Farrell in response.
"That only happened one time Johnboy, shut your mouth!"
"Love you too bro!" Ross could hear the smirk in his voice.
"Can the chatter boys, sound-off, who we got left?"
There was an awkward, heavy pause. Everybody knew it had been bloody, but everybody was apprehensive to find out exactly who had bought the farm.
"Vasquez, sounding off. Kicking back." Vasquez started, trying to lighten the mood, but the hoarse voice in which the last part of his sentence was said negated the joke's effect.
"Hammond, waiting for the serious shit to start." This made people laugh bitterly, as was no doubt intended. Ross accepted this-they had seen stuff that would haunt a veteran platoon forever, let alone a bunch of greenhorns like them, in the past few hours. They would learn to ignore it in the end, push it aside, but even in the most glib of soldiers it remained, festering, for the rest of their lives. These images would scar them. In a way it was good that they had learned this now-it meant they would be more physically and psychologically prepared for later, but Ross somehow wished, as he looked at his Marines' youthful faces, with the oldest of them, Corporal Vasquez, being only twenty-one, that they would never have had to see these horrors...the horrors of war. These kids should be going to university, parties, drinking too much and waking up with a new girl each morning. But instead they were thrown into a meat-grinder of a war that humanity was already losing, dying young for 'the greater good' and having only the barest mockery of a life.
[I/]I hate this fucking war.[I/] He thought, then got shakily to his feet and rested his rifle over his shoulder, holding it by the moulded plastic grip.
Privates Farrell, Jackson, and Smith, along with Corporal Yardley sounded off in turn, then the Sergeant spoke again.
"Okay Marines. They've just decompressed the only intact defensive section of the ship, which means we're abandoning, in all likelihood. So grab as much gear as you can and haul ass to the rally point outside the bridge. Come on, lets hustle!"
He didn't acknowledge the fallen, as he usually would have, because his Marines looked like they'd reach their limits-they each looked a hundred years older than they actually were. He would attend to it later, planetside.
[I/]If there is a later.[I/]
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