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One Explosion Kills All
Posted By: Sentinel<X13@austin.rr.com>
Date: 8 October 2004, 4:21 AM
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Here's something I wrote a few months ago that few people saw. This isn't my best, but it's actually something I had time to write.
Private Sean Fisher yawned as he stood in the center of the guard tower. He had been stuck with guard duty tonight, as well as every Tuesday. It had so far been a very boring night, nothing going on, and no one to stand guard with him and make stupid jokes about almost everything, especially the way Sergeant Arnold seems to skip when he walks.
Everyone else was sleeping, getting rest (which is basically the same thing, but everyone says it's not), and all sorts of boring things that Fisher would rather do than stand guard on top a tower.
"Why did I even volunteer to do this shit?" he said out loud, softly. "I could be getting some goddamn sleep. I really hate this damn war."
Fisher heard something climbing the ladder to the tower top. He swung around, battle rifle ready. A head poked through, and then the figure of a fully armored Marine appeared the hole. Fisher relaxed his grip and lowered his battle rifle.
Corporal Richards set his sniper rifle on the steel floor. "You see anything?"
"No, nothing yet." Fisher turned around as he thought he heard the cracking of twigs on a forest floor. "What was that?" he whispered, turning and leaning over the railing. He saw nothing, although it was hard to see though all those trees.
"What was what?" Richards asked, his voice sounding more serious.
Fisher turned around. "It probably was nothing."
Richards turned around and lifted the sniper rifle off the floor with both hands. "Only one way to find out." He rested the rifle on the railing, set his finger on the trigger, and peered through the scope. He then switched on the night vision.
A few minutes passed by and no more sounds echoed through the night as soft as wind. Fisher was beginning to fall asleep when Richards fired his rifle. The crack echoed through the darkness.
"What the?!" Fisher whispered. His hands clutched his battle rifle more tightly, then relaxed. This is no time to get afraid, he told himself.
"Sarge, we have Covenant forces heading toward the base. There are a large number of them. About twenty to thirty are Elit-" Richards' speech was cut short as a glowing green ball sailed through the air and enveloped his head. His helmet and his head mixed together as they melted and dripped off the side of the tower after his body fell.
"Holy shit! What the hell?!" Fisher screamed as he gazed in shock at Richards' headless form.
He quickly turned on his radio to hear Sergeant Arnold yelling, "Richards are you there? Over."
"Richards is dead Sarge," Fisher reported into the mike. "He took an overcharged blast in the face, never stood a chance." Fisher looked at the semi-melted sniper rifle. "He saw something through the sniper rifle; I think there are Covenant forces out there."
A crackle of static and a cough and then Arnold said, "You do know that Richards just said that before he died."
"Tell me one thing Sarge," Fisher said, frustrated. "Why am I always the last one to be told something around here?"
"I think it's because you're too stupid to learn when I say it, but that's my opinion."
"If you put it that way, wait, why the hell am I arguing wi- Crap!" A glowing, purple needle passed not even an inch from Fisher's left arm. He quickly changed his tone and yelled, "Sarge, there are Covenant climbing the tower. I suggest you get everyone ready for combat now! Unless of course you want everyone to die."
"Why the hell are you giving me orders? I should be giving YOU orders."
"Who cares? No one right now. Besides, we're all gonna freaking die!"
"You better cool down Marine, or I'm gonna-" Arnold's words were cut off as Fisher switched off his radio.
"You're not going to do anything Sarge. But this is obviously the end. I'll hold them off for as long as I can. I only hope that's long enough."
"Fisher! Are there Fisher? Over." Sergeant Arnold gave up trying to reach Fisher at that moment. He didn't know why Fisher seemed so eager to die. And even to panic. But one thing Arnold didn't understand was why that Marine stood up to him. He must've known something.
No time for that now, Arnold thought as he was putting his armor on. Time for the battle at hand. I'll deal with that Marine afterwards, if any of us survive.
He made sure that his sniper rifle was loaded and in good condition. No one in the Corps wanted a screwed up weapon of any kind. He glanced at the weapon rack and decided to take a sub machine gun with ten clips of ammo, in case he had to do close-in work. With the enemy literally on your doorstep you never want to run out of ammo.
"Corporal Rawlings, report to the armory."
The reply came seconds later. "Yes sir."
As Arnold checked his rifle, Rawlings stepped through the armored, steel door. "Sir."
Arnold dropped the sniper rifle in his left, he held on to it with his right, and turned to face Rawlings. "How are your men doing?"
"They're still in battle blowing the hell out of those bloody Covenant bastards. To keep it short; they're firing the gun turrets."
"One question," Arnold said. "How did the enemy get to the base without us being alerted? The only exception is Richards and Fisher. Only problem is that Richards had his head melted, and Fisher is probably getting set on fire as we speak. I only hope he can, by some odd miracle, survive. Too bad our communications are down, otherwise, we could call for help. Instead, we have only thirty-three soldiers defending this goddamn outpost."
Fisher picked up his battle rifle and fired at the Covenant trying to climb the ladder to the three story tower. Why the hell am I still alive?
He grabbed a frag grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it down the hole. A loud explosion threw several Grunts and a Jackal high enough to be seen from the tower's open windows. "Damn," Fisher said in slight shock. He quickly pulled out another grenade and prepared to pull the pin.
"One...two...three..." As the UNSC soldier was about to throw his last frag, he saw what looked like a blue flare fly through the air at his face. Before he realized what it was, it stuck itself to his face. Fisher tore at it desperately as the grenade blinded him. He lifted his foot to regain his footing, but it struck only air. Fisher tried to scream as he fell, through the tower access hole, but the grenade sealed his mouth shut.
Before he hit the ground he knocked a Grunt off the ladder with his flailing legs. Then the grenade exploded, sending the remains of Fisher's body, a few Grunts, and an Elite sailing through the air in a brilliant blue explosion...
The gun turret shook in PFC Baxter's hands as he pulled both triggers and unleashed barrage after barrage of rounds onto Covenant soldiers. "Eat this you freaks!"
As he spun the turret on its axis back and forth, chunks of heavy, steel wall rained on him. "Is that all you got?!" Baxter yelled, trash-talking in the normal way most Marines do while they're in combat.
Baxter held the triggers down as hard as he could, fearing for his life. He immediately put the thought of dying into the back of his mind, and pushed it as far it would go. It was so far back; it went out the other side.
Plasma fire from the Covenant eventually started melting the steel protecting his head. In minutes, the steel will burn through and drip onto Baxter and the turret. It would be worse than getting burned by plasma. "No way am I gonna get burned by molten metal," Baxter said. "Or Covenant plasma."
He lifted his battle rifle off the steel floor and bolted from the melting gun turret and advancing Covenant troops.
Private Decker stopped firing the gun turret next to Baxter's and looked over his shoulder and muttered "Coward." At that moment the wall that protected Decker and the turret collapsed and melted in midair. Decker screamed as the molten metal missed him, but small pieces flew directly at his face. "Oh God, my eyes! My fucking eyes!"
As Decker was writhing in agony a hoard of Covenant poured through the hole and into the base. It was too late for the Marines at the turrets to get their weapons ready in time before the Covenant mowed them down. Only a few lucky Marines managed to fire a few shots from the weapons before the aliens started throwing their glowing, sticky grenades...
"Oh shit!" Baxter peered around the corner a second time and felt his battle rifle shake as the rounds were fired out. A Grunt tripped as bullets sliced through his legs and was trampled by the few Covenant willing to go down a hallway that had explosives lining the walls.
Baxter primed a grenade not five meters away at the trampled Grunt and leaped away from the corner and farther down the hall. The grenade blew, setting off the explosives and blowing the walls to the rooms on either side, and sending the Covenant to hell (or whatever they call it).
The explosion lifted Baxter higher than he could jump and then smashed him into a thick steel wall. He fell about four feet before he landed hard on his left shoulder. A sickening crack brought him back to his senses.
Pain exploded through Baxter as he tried to stand. As he planted one foot to the steel he glanced at his arm. It hung limply, blood pouring out of a wound in which bone ripped through his dark skin. He reached for the door that opened to the armory.
It swung open and a battle rifle was pointed at Baxter's bleeding face. Sergeant Arnold relaxed his rifle and pulled the wounded soldier in and locked the door.
Arnold set Baxter by a weapon rack and looked him squarely in the face. "Where is the rest of your squad soldier?"
Baxter looked up at the Sergeant and managed to gasp, "They're...they're all... dead. We never...had a chance. They...overtook us...when the wall melted." Baxter coughed once and threw up a goblet of blood. He looked straight up and didn't move.
"Crap," Arnold muttered, feeling Baxter's neck for a pulse. "He's dead."
"How many lives are gonna be spent or wasted?" Rawlings asked, rage creeping through his voice. "We're all gonna die at one point, but why like this?" He shook his head as he shoved his rifle to the side and began to pile bags of C12 in the middle of the room.
"What are you doing?" Arnold asked while walking over to the pile.
Rawlings stopped and looked over to the Sergeant. "I'm giving our lives to take our enemy's. They took to much, so I'm returning the favor."
Arnold nodded, tossed away his battle rifle, and began to help Rawlings. "I see. We better just blow the hell out of them than waste out lives in combat."
"And we have enough C12 to blow through a starship's armor. Should be more than enough...But are we really wasting our lives?"
A loud, slamming sound distracted both of them. Arnold quickly yelled "Hurry!" as he reached for a detonator. The door exploded, sending metal flying, and a squad of Covenant opened fire. Arnold stood up, detonator in head, and said, "Good-night," as he pushed the button. The C12 chain-reacted, and adding all the ammo, sent a wave of fire through every area of the base, eventually lifting it into the air...
"Damn." Staff Sergeant Lee Miller whistled at the site as he watched the explosion via his sniper rifle. Miller stood on the top of a hill with a squad of twenty soldiers facing the "former" outpost. "Looks like they wont need reinforcements after all. Too bad they're all gone." He turned to his squad. "Our only hope is that they didn't waste their lives...Or at least didn't die trying."
"Too bad we didn't get here in time," one of the Marines said, looking with his bare eyes at the destruction.
"Yeah soldier, too bad."
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