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"Wait!" Cortana shouted. "The Chief's signal is still active. Apparently, he's playing dead. We'll just have to wait."
"Jesus! I can't make an unsure guess just because of one soldier, Cortana. The destruction of this particular Covenant army would cause dramatic changes in the tides of this war. I am still going to hold the command of glassing the planet."
"Captain, my sensors do not fail!" the AI shouted. "He is the last Spartan of his kind. Please allow him a chance, sir. He is alive. There is no doubt about it."
"Damn it! Ensign Barker, you know what to do."
"Yes, Captain Berkeley," Barker replied, clicking the communications buttons to the Ethiopia and the Wake of Freedom. "This is the Ion to the Ethiopia and the Wake of Freedom. Cancel all nuclear launching system actions and protocol."
The Master Chief lay still, not daring to move. Hundreds of Covenant soldiers were upon him and one twitch would give him away. It was like running through a field of land mines. You had to be delicate. VERY delicate.
A cobalt Elite came briskly walking on top of the fallen bodies. His suctioned boot landed on the Chief's facial visor. The armor held its promised strength and nothing happened. The alien continued on its way.
Not far off, a marine began screaming wildly. Two Elites lifted the survivor in the air by each of his arms and dragged him over to another of their kind. This one armored in crimson. This particular Elite rose his gun to the soldier's face and then jammed it into his mouth. The marine began shouting muffled hollers and kicking. It wasn't long before brain and skull fragments came bursting from the back of his head followed by a plasma bolt.
The creatures let out what sounded like awkward laughs and the three of them, side by side, began walking off. The Master Chief now knew that he couldn't let the Covenant find him. He'd seen what would happen to survivors and he didn't like it. Slowly but surely, he withdrew his M6D from his holster and then put his arm back into a limp position like a corpse's.
The bridge crew, seeing the movement on the satellite picture, let a small series of sighs and "woo-hoo"s.
"Now we wait," Captain Berkley said.
"According to the intercepted radio conversations I'm monitoring, the Covenant are now withdrawing from the Master Chief's particular position," Cortana informed.
"Brainy little bitch," Berkley muttered under his breath.
The Spartan felt a wave of relief sweep through his stomach as he saw the Covenant began to all move away. All he could do was keep perfectly still and wait. A Wraith hovered right over him and he thought the pressure underneath the metallic beast was going to crush him flat.
After about an hour of lying still, the Chief slowly turned his head to the right and then to the left to make sure all hostiles were gone. Seeing that they were, he hopped to his feet and immediately began jogging up the left side of the valley, forming a right angle with the direction the Covenant army was going. Climbing up the cliffs was harder than he thought, but he soon reached the top and was disappointed to see more sand dunes and barren plains. He immediately connected to Cortana's frequency.
"This is the Chief to the Ion," he said. "I am requesting Pelican extraction as soon as possible."
"Roger, Master Chief, I read you," came Cortana's proper-like voice. "Due to fair weather conditions and the low risk of hostile encounters, a drop ship should arrive shortly.
After only minutes of waiting, the whining engines of the Pelican could be heard. It placed itself only a few ten feet from him and came to a three foot hover, throwing sand and dust into the air in all directions.
The Chief hopped aboard and was greeted by the pilot's raspy male voice over the ship's intercom.
"Welcome aboard Pelican 13," he said. "Glad to have you, sir."
The Pelican's serial number didn't make the Chief feel lucky, but transportation was transportation and it was better than wondering through the hot desert and starving to death.
The intercom on the ship crackled.
"I'll be taking you to an evacuation pad, Chief. There, you'll board a transportation ship that will take you to the Ion. The ship's AI requested it. Of course, there's a lot of chaos at the evacuation pads. So, there may be some crowd control. They're going to glass this planet as soon as the two hour time limit is up. If no body gets off the planet by then, they're toast," the pilot said.
"Pelican 13 reports the Master Chief is on his way to the nearest evacuation pad," Ensign Barker reported.
"Good," the Captain said, impressed with Cortana's overall instinct. If he hadn't listened to her, the last Spartan surviving would have been vaporized.
Tuka Hanamee cursed as the green human sped off in his ship. He then turned to his comrades.
"Our spies have intercepted information stating that the humans will use their largest bombs to wipe out our armies here," he said. "However, they are to far ahead for us to catch up with them and give warning. They will have to perish."
"What shall we do?" a veteran asked.
"I have called for a drop ship to pick us up at the current position and take us to the only Covenant ship orbiting Marakesh: The Shimmering Flame."
The squad relaxed and sighed in relief as they received the confirmation of their survival.
"What if the three human ships find the Shimmering Flame, Hanamee?" one pessimistic Elite asked, clicking his silver gauntlet against the top of his plasma rifle.
"Impossible," Hanamee responded confidently. "They are directly parallel to our ship. They are on the other side of the planet completely. They will not be able to catch us in light space with their primitive technology."
The pilot of Pelican 13's eyes widened as he took the bird in right above the landing pad. A couple of marines were standing around the evacuation ship firing phosphorous gas grenades into the rioting crowd. Once the Pelican was close enough the pilot radioed over the intercom.
"Okay, Chief, I'm in close enough," he said. "Hop on out and be careful. The crowd's rioting."
The Spartan made a five foot jump from the ship and began running up a ramp leading up to the evacuation pad. One rioter grasped the front of the Chief's armor and got up in his face.
"You bastard!" he shouted. "We're all going to die because of you, you selfish asshole!"
The Master Chief just simply shoved the man down onto his ass. But the rioter was not so easily extinguished. He leapt to his feet and withdrew a pistol. He was dressed as a Longsword pilot, so the Chief knew that all of the rioters were UNSC personnel.
The crazed pilot squeezed the trigger and an M6D round smacked the suit's shield, right in front of the facial visor. The shield bar went down about a forth on the helmet's HUD.
With no effort, the Spartan snatched the pistol from the hand of his attacker, and once again pushed him down.
"I don't want to have to hurt you," the Chief calmly warned.
"It doesn't matter anyway! We're all going to die because of you!" the pilot shouted; as the Spartan continued up the ramp, not even paying attention.
However, the pilot wasn't done. He wasn't about to just let the Chief walk out of here. He sprinted at the Chief full speed and let a small cry when a bullet lodged itself in his kneecap.
The Chief walked over to the pilot, and with his foot, shoved him off of the ramp. The wounded screamed the whole fifteen feet down.
"Come on, sir!" one of the ship guards shouted as he fired another round into the huge wave of shouting people. It exploded and a few of the rioters collapsed, choking on the deadly powder which exploded from the grenade.
"Right."
The Master Chief walked into the small troop compartment of the evac ship and the doors closed, cutting off the sound of the chaos outside. The small area was dimly lit by red lights and it was very small, only room for a few people.
The ship's doors reopened and three of the riot guards stepped in and sat down. The doors closed once again, just in time to cut off the large swarm of people running for the entrance.
"It's hell out there," one of them said, out of breath.
"Why are you boarding?" the Chief asked.
"Because we'd get ripped apart after the ship took off if we didn't."
The ship's engines roared to life, and in no time, it was in the air, on its way to the Ion.
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