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The 7th Column Part 1
Posted By: The 2<singhgentleman@yahoo.com>
Date: 20 August 2003, 9:47 PM


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The 7th Column Part 1

All was quiet near the north wall. The Covenants still had not managed to infiltrate the western gate and about 300 of their fleet were concentrating their firepower on the western wall. Some of them were jumping onto the banshees and were being dropped off inside the base and were going toward the generator. But they had to go through the squad of marines first.

The covenants were now after the convoy vehicle that would be launched off of Earth to the space colony Liberty on the star constellation of Orion. This was the second in command base of the Earth military and the president was visiting there for a few months. They were going to try to assassinate him before he left for the colony Freedom. They had busted the south gate and were now heading inside the facility.

"Caleb, cover the north wall its going to fall any second!" screamed Gautam. Caleb and Gautam were both the highest ranked marines on that base and they were also best friends and were not going to let the base be destroyed. Caleb followed Gautam's instructions and got there right before the last few marines were blown away by the hunter's fuel rod cannon.

He sneaked up behind the hunter and emptied his entire clip in the hunter's neck. The hunter fell like a ton of bricks onto the ground. That got Caleb thinking, what if the could take the fuel rod cannon and mount it onto the highest point on the base and use it to their advantage? "Gautam, I got an idea, get about five strong marines over here and help me pick up this fuel rod." Said Caleb. Gautam listened and got a few of the strongest marines to help with the heavy loading. They got it up to the south tower and un-mounted the mini-gun and in its place, mounted the fuel rod cannon. "Now I want you to fire it all the heavy arsenals they got OK?" said Caleb " Yes sir," responded the marine. He handed over the mini-gun to Gautam and told him to shoot any covenants he sees. "I know that!" replied Gautam. They started to shoot the covenants when Gautam saw that there was a sniper in the bushes. Not just one, but he counted about five of them.

One of them had their cross chair on the marine with the fuel rod cannon and the other had it on Caleb. He had to do something, but what could be done to save them both? Then he had an idea, he took out a plasma grenade and threw it toward the marine with the fuel rod, not right at him but at the fuel rod. The marine saw thin and jumped out of the tower as the grenade blew sky high. Now, as for Caleb, Gautam ran toward him at full speed while shooting at the bush. He could see the snipers laser target on the back of Caleb's head but he sniper could not take the shoot because Caleb was constantly moving.

"Caleb, watch out!" screamed Gautam as he dove towards Caleb while shooting at the sniper. Caleb didn't know that it was Gautam as he turned around and shot point blank at him. BAM! Gautam hit Caleb and knocked him on the ground right as the sniper shoot his riffle. They could see the trail of smoke from the bullet and it went right past Caleb's eye. They both fell on the ground in shock, Caleb because his eye had almost been popped and Gautam because Caleb had shoot him multiple tines in the chest. "G-man, you ok? Aw man, come on answer." Caleb thought that Gautam was dead.

" Two more inches to the left and I would be playing harps right now man, what were you thinking? You need to learn how to control that gun... the machine gun." Replied Gautam. If the bullet had went a little more to the left, then Gautam would be dead by now, but because of the vests they wear, the bullet simply bounced off like a ball. Gautam got back up and fired wildly into the bushes where the sniper had shoot form and to his shock, he killed a few of them. At that moment, every thing got really quiet; something was coming, something big. "Sir, I see about 20 covenants tanks approaching. They got Plasma cannons fully charged up and are ready to fire at the control center, what should we do?" asked one of the marines. "You do nothing, just get the hell out of there with the others and get the pilot to the convoy ready to take off." replied Gautam. Caleb looked puzzled at him. "Come on, we are going to get this convoy out of here," Gautam said to Caleb. They both ran into the building into the transportation room. They got he computes set up and opened the port doors.

Caleb ordered the pilot to fly out of here to the colony and tell them to send back up. The pilot agreed and started up the engines and flew out. "......Sir we suggest you guys getting out cause they just shot their cannons at once....impact time 15 seconds...." Blurted the radio. Without saying anything, they ran out of there as fast as they could towards the exit. The moment they got out, the blasts from the cannon's hit the building to be destroyed. The shockwave sent both the marines flying into the ground. "Well, at least they didn't get the convoy," said Caleb. Another plasma cannon was fired; they both looked back and was the charge heading towards the convoy shuttle, and BOOM! That was the end of the convoy, blown out of the night sky.

The mission was failed, but only half way. The covenants still hadn't gotten onboard the convoy to Liberty. That was good news, but what was that they were surrounded by the covenants and their heavy artillery. Gautam got up to his feet, looked around, pulled Caleb up and ran like hell past the confused and startled covenants. He got about three fourths of the was when a hunter saw them trying to escape and charged at 'em. Gautam and Caleb didn't see him because he was behind them, the hunter, charged up his fuel rod cannon, aimed, and fired it straight at Caleb first because he was the closest. Hearing the charge, he turned around, threw his gun, and screamed, "Gautam, help!" then every thing was in slow motion.

The charge came up to about 10 feet of Caleb when he bent over like the prehistoric movie "The Matrix" with his arms swaying side to side, while Caleb was doing that, Gautam pulled up the mini-gun, aimed it at the hunters mid area, and fired half the clip into it. The bullets went slowly as they penetrated the hunter's flesh, about 30 of them made it in and the other 70 bounced off the armor. The hunter fell to the ground dead. "That was close, how did you do that?" asked Gautam when he got up.

"No time to explain now, we got to get out of here!" he was right; the other covenants had become alert of their surroundings now and were getting ready to attack. Caleb cocked up his gun and got ready to fire when Gautam stopped him. "Look, you see that? There is an empty tank there, a marine tank. If we could get to it, then maybe we have a chance." "Yea, I think it could work, lets do it." (Matrix music starts to play- just pretend it does.) they start to run towards the tank while shooting at the covies, one clip gone, then two, and in a little while, they are all out. They pick some Needlers and start to shoot, and finally they get to the tank. Gautam gets inside the driver seat while Caleb gets on the side. "Hang on, we are going back for the rest of the marines." Said Gautam. He fired a shell clearing out a path for a little while, but the rest of them filled it back up. He started to drive back for the marines while running over some covenants that didn't get out of the way and blowing up the rest. Caleb, on the other hand, was having trouble staying on the side.

They got to the marines, only three of them were left, the got on the remaining sides and started to shoot the covenants from the safety of the tank. But even that wasn't enough, a fuel rod blast got past the tanks armor and straight into a marine. But, believe it or not, it missed and hit the tires in front of him and knocked him off. "Hey! Wait for me!" he screamed as he ran after the tank, at that moment, a grunt threw a plasma grenade onto his back.

"Ahhhhh! It burns! Get this damn thing off of me!" That would be the last thing he would ever say. As he told them to wait, Caleb looked back at him. He saw the grenade flying at the marine and tried to shoot in in mid air, but failed. He had to see the marine suffer and die because of him. He was sad but was also use to this now. Over the years, he had caused the deaths of 5 people, unintentionally. He faced reality and turned around. Gautam was almost out of ground, there was a steep cliff up ahead that was 250 feet straight down with jagged mountain faces. "Guy's I have a crazy idea, hold on as tight as you can to something 'cause we are going straight down." Gautam said. Every one did what they were told. Thy knew Gautam well, he was always doing crazy things. "Ok in 5,4,3,2...." At that moment, all the covie tanks fired their charges at them. The charges were too quick to be out run by the bulky tank, so right before he said one, the charges hit all around them causind a land slide down the cliff. One of the marines was thrown off the tank and down the cliff. He went down in flames, literally, he was engulfed in flames by the charges. He was like a meteor that could scream.

As he went down, so did the rest of them, but with the safety of the tank, they again passed the burning marine because their mass was greater of that of the marine. 100 feet down, it was hard to hold on to the hand bars, especially for Gautam, the cockpit was thrown open and he was about to fly out if it wasn't for the turret that smacked him back down. 200 feet down and they were still falling. Gautam had driven the tank off the cliff at an angle so that they would go down vertically, he aimed the barrel directly down and fired. The blast was so great that they started to slow down. He fired again and this time, the slowed down half as much as last time. But they were still going fast and had less that 30 feet of ground left. "Oh my god! We are going to die!" screamed Gautam.

WILL Caleb, Gautam, AND THE MARINE SURVIVE THE FALL? OR WLL THEY BE PANCAKED TO THE GROUND? FIND OUT ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF THE 7TH COLUMN.





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