- fireskull66325
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- Exalted Legendary Member
Arik climbed up the rocky outcropping. He looked around, seeing the rocky savannah and sparse trees of the area outside New Mombassa. He realized just how far off his pod had hit, and how far away he was from any chance of evac. He started thinking back to before the jump, when he was still with his squad members.
"What's wrong sleepy? Don't tell me you're going to sleep through the jump!" said John, codenamed "Truck" because he liked to kill without the victim knowing what hit him. It was standard practice before jumps, Arik would try to get some last minute sleep in and John would keep badgering him about missing it.
"Ah lay off him John, this jump's going to be harder than the rest." This said by James, codenamed "Ninja" because of his ability to blend in with any surroundings. What he said was too true; they were dropping right onto a covenant carrier, and that was definitely worse than any insurrectionalist base or covenant installation. They had one more member in their squad, but he only talked when absolutely necessary during combat. When he did it sounded like two hard stones mashing together. That, and the fact he looked like a huge boulder with a face, was why they called him "Boulder". He was so dang tall and wide that they had had to make a special set of armor just for him. They standard mark just wouldn't fit no matter what they tried, and they tried everything, even good old fashioned butter on the inside of the suit.
"Dear God." Arik thought, "Even his personality is like a boulder." One time when he first joined their squad, John had tried to crack a joke to him, Boulder's response had been to stare at him, and then when John continued he pulled out his knife and started sharpening it on John's armor. They hadn't tried to talk to him since. The jump alarm klaxon jarred him out of his thinking and reminded him of what he had to do. He grabbed his weapons, double-checked the ammo and his armor integrity, and then strapped himself into his pod.
Across from him James gave him a salute saying "See you on the other side ODST." Oh yeah, Arik didn't have a nickname. He was a by-the-book pod dropping covenant killing ODST Helljumper, but he didn't have any "special" skill to be nicknamed off of. John had tried to make it "Sleepy" but he was the only one that would say it and eventually gave up on it. So now they simply called him "odst" in the field, which had actually helped in a few confrontations when they thought he was just rambling about himself.
Suddenly he realized the klaxon had stopped. They had started the countdown. He strained to hear it, then realized he hadn't put his helmet on yet. He slid it on, polarized it, and listened. 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10. Oh dang! He hadn't sealed his pod yet! He skipped the emergency procedures, ran the status checks as fast as he could, and pulled the seal just as it was saying 2, 1, DROP, then they were shot out into space. As he was looking around at the other pods he noticed that six seemed to be veering off-course, but he wasn't worried, they either had a different mission or were landing on a different part of the carrier, it wasn't possible to miss jumps anymore. Ever since the debacle at Capricorus IIX, jump statistics were checked over multiple times by both AI and human controllers. About half way down when they were nearing the carrier, it suddenly ripped open a hole in slipspace and jumped! That wasn't supposed to be possible, but he had more important things to worry about, the shockwave would hit him in a few BOOM. His pod was knocked of course; he could see others were too, including some that looked like they would hit the space tether.
He gritted his teeth as he neared the ground, he could tell it was outside New Mombassa but he didn't think it was too far. Then he hit something solid.
He'd hit something solid all right. A huge mass of granite and quartz, jutting out of the ground. He'd been lucky to land upright on it, it could have been much worse for him if he hadn't. He was startled out of his reverie when he heard the sound of anti grav engines, he crouched down behind a rock, and sure enough in the valley below a Phantom was dropping off troops.
Two Choppers and a brute squad. Some zebras were scared out of the nearby brush and ran by, only to be mowed down by the Brutes in Choppers. He wanted to do something, but while the choppers couldn't get to him they could pin him down while the rest did, and he didn't have anything that could take out two Choppers at once. In a lucky reprieve the Choppers drove away down another valley, leaving the brute squad to what looked like set up barricades. That he could handle, he thought as he went and pulled out a sniper from his pod. That he could handle quite well.
[Edited on 10.17.2009 5:55 PM PDT]