- TheSpiderChief
- |
- Intrepid Legendary Member
PART II
Team River forced their way through all of the rubble that was once concrete that made up buildings. Their opponents fired blindly from the cover they were using half a mile from Team River's location.
"Okay" Grange, the leader of Team River, said as he and his team crouched down behind an abnormally large piece of concrete "Threshall, Winger and Tyler, lay down some covering fire and keep an eye on the enemy position. Let us know if they start to move up".
The three ODSTs Grange was talking too nodded, got up and started to fire short bursts from their MA5K Carbines.
"Right, we're going to split into two sub-teams. One sub-team will keep the enemy focused on them whilst the other sub-team flanks them and takes them out, quickly and with minimal ammo loss. Is that clear?"
The other six ODSTs that were listening all nodded, some even punched the padding on their chest to show that they understood.
"I'll lead the shadow sub-team, Mickey and Irvine you're with me. The rest of you stay here and keep them distracted by any means necessary, hoo-rah?"
"HOO-RAH!" the ODSTs replied in unison.
Grange, Mickey and Irvine moved between and behind the rubble of buildings hoping that the opposition didn't see them. Once or twice they crouched down as the concrete in front of them got chipped as bullets hit it but they were convinced that it was just stray fire and that they didn't know where they actually were.
Grange poked his head round the corner ever-so-slightly and saw that Threshall, Winger, Tyler and the remaining ODSTs of Team River were doing their part and distracting the enemy with whatever they had and whatever they could use. Grange withdrew his head, looked at Mickey, made the hand signal for him to move up and waited for Mickey to do so.
Mickey took the lead and crawled over to the nearest ruin and signaled to Grange and Irvine that it was all clear for them to move up. Once they were all behind cover in the ruin, Grange withdrew a grenade in one hand and a M6G Magnum in the other whilst Irvine drew his MA5D Assault Rifle and Mickey his M7 submachine gun.
"This is shadow sub-team. We're in position, do you copy?" Irvine asked. Grange and Mickey knew that he wasn't talking to them but too the other ODSTs. A while passed and no reply came. Irvine tapped the side of his helmet, "This is shadow sub-team. We're in position, do you copy?" he repeated. He looked at Grange, tapped his helmet once again and then whispered, "Nothing. No reply".
Grange wanted to come out of cover and to look in the direction of the other ODSTs of Team River too see if they were alright but he couldn't blow his, Mickey and Irvine's cover, not if his team wanted to come out of this on top.
He looked at the grenade in his hand, looked at the other two ODSTs crouching next to him, pulled the pin out of the grenade and threw it. None of them heard the grenade bounce off of the concrete slab that the enemy were hiding behind but they did hear the shouts of "Grenade!" and "Run!" from the enemy and the explosion just a few seconds later.
Mickey was the first to come out from behind cover and fire on the opposition; his M7 submachinegun ripped the air and anyone who was unlucky enough to be standing at the time got hit and went down almost instantly. Irvine was the second to come out with his MA5D Assault Rifle, only squeezing the trigger for short fire bursts and then Grange came out of cover his with more accurate M6G Magnum and managed to pick off the others that were either still standing and dazed or had anough concious to start fighting back.
"Move up!" Grange shouted, and he and the other two ODSTs carefully approached the position of where the enemy was but found no combatants. All the people here were stunned.
Irvine looked to his left and noticed the red flag that was planted into the ground. Without wind to make it flap it looked dead.
"Sir?"
Grange looked at the red flag and nodded, "Grab that flag Irvine. Mickey, I want you to go and see what happened to the rest of Team River. Make sure they're alright".
As soon as Irvine grabbed the flag and pulled it out from the ground a womans voice sounded in the air, "Capture the Flag training session complete" she announced "Removing stun effect. Team River leads two points to zero against Team Landslide".
Grange looked around and saw the fallen ODSTs of both teams struggle to get back up. Grange smiled inside his helmet, ODSTs were as tough as nails but even they couldn't shake off the effects of the stun rounds that easily.
He looked down and saw the commander of Team Landslide sitting up, "I'm surprised you didn't see our flanking maneuver" he said, holstering his magnum and extending his right hand to help the fallen commander up.
"We had a different tactic in mind" he grunted as he accepted the hand and stood up, "We were hoping to at least take out some of your guys before moving up. But it seems that we need to pay a lot more attention to our surroundings".
"We did think that you had spotted us at one point" Grange explained, "Bullets chipped away at the concrete which we were hiding behind".
"Must've been stray fire" Team Landslide's commander said as he went to help up one of his fellow soldiers.
"Yeah, that's what we thought ..." Grange started but at that moment a womans voice came from the tannoy.
"Team River report to the briefing room immediatly".
The womans voice didn't sound automated like the previous voice they had heard and Grange had certainly never heard that voice before.
"You heard the woman" Grange said to his team over the comm-channel in his headset, "Lets go".
Thirty minutes later Team River were all sitting down on concrete-wooden benches with their helmets off and waiting for the woman who had called them to enter the briefing room. The briefing room was chalk white, had no windows and only one door. The big table that was just a little way in front of the first row of benches was a projection table which projected various images and important information for those soldiers about to go on missions groundside.
The white door opened with a hum and there stood a woman, early thirties, with brown hair and cold blue eyes as though they were made of ice. She walked into the room in a stiff manner, stood in front of the projection table with her hands behind her back and waited. Grange narrowed his black eyes. He had never seen this woman before; who was she and what was she doing here? She was obviously high up in the chain, a captain maybe?
"Gentlemen" the woman began.
"There are two women in this team as well" muttered a blonde female ODST. Grange smirked, Helena didn't like it when only the majority of the gender was addressed.
"My name is Captain Elizah DeFan. When addressing me you will address me as either 'Captain', 'Captain DeFan' or 'ma'am', do I make myself clear?"
"Yes ma'am" the ODSTs replied.
"Good" Elizah said matter-of-factly, "Now to the matter at hand", she tapped the projector table once, waited for a few seconds and then tapped it again twice. This time a few images appeared. One showed a small UNSC Warthog with ten black dots and what looked like a Pelican just taking off, another showed what looked like a Covenant Corvette in orbit and the third showed what looked like the Corvette exploding, "This image is from a drone we have orbiting Kaliah. As you can clearly see there is some very unusual activity ..." her sentence faded away as Grange held up his hand in a lazy fashion, "And you are?" she asked rather coldly.
"Warran Grange ma'am, commander of Team River" Grange said.
"Very well Grange, you have a question?"
"Yes ma'am. Those black dots on the image there, are they marines or innies?"
"They're ODSTs" Elizah said.
"And did they or anyone else destroy that Corvette?" asked Tyler on Grange's right.
"No" Elizah said, "From what we can tell it just self destructed".
"How is this in relation to our guys on the ground?" asked Grange.
"Take a look" Elizah replied and she tapped the projector table twice again and brought up another image. This image showed that the Warthog had been destroyed and that there were only seven black dots instead of ten. The seven black dots were what looked like to be in a firefight against some other black dots.
"This image was taken about ten minutes ago. When the drone caught the Corvette we were called into the system, we are now orbiting above the planet. Your mission is to get down there and extract those other ODSTs in case those Covenant soldiers decide to strike again" she said pointing at the black dots, "The Pelican Kilo One-One is waiting for you. Get those soldiers out of there".
A while later the ODSTs of Team River were heading down to the planet Karliah in Kilo One-One. The pilot explained that there was originally a UNSC space station here which hovered just above the planet as well as a UNSC ship which went by the name of Outback.
"The Outback was assigned to protect the space station" the pilot said "But when it entered the atmosphere of that planet the ships electronics and systems began to go haywire. The captain ordered everyone to evacuate when it became clear that the ships would not recover and then, without warning, it exploded. Those who managed to get out went to the space station and stayed there for a while but then that damned Corvette showed up and, well, as you can probably imagine that without the Outback there to defend it the station was a sitting duck and so we had to evacuate that. We've been staying on that planet ever since, say, where'd that Corvette go?"
"It exploded" Grange said.
"Just like the Outback? Well I'll be damned. Something in the air doesn't like the bigger ships it seems".
"But the smaller ships can pass through? Like Pelicans?"
"Oh sure, Pelicans, Long and Shortswords, hell, I've seen Phantoms flying around".
[Edited on 10.26.2012 11:57 AM PDT]