The Gettysburg Incident: Chapter 2
Posted By: Bootsman<liukumaki@hotmail.com>
Date: 11 October 2005, 6:18 pm
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Gettysburg incident: Chapter2
Gettysburg bridge.
10.5.2552. 1600 hours.
Harper walked nervously around the bridge. He had asked the same question about a dozen times now but tried once again just to be certain.
''Any signs of John? or shall I assume him MIA?'' he asked from a liutenant that was operating at the sensors section.
The liutenant turned around and looked Harper right in his eyes and said:
''No,sir. I picked up somekind of signal from the covie ship but i doubt it's him. Given what they know about his... ehm.. Reputation. I hardly think they want him alive.''
Harper laughed for a second and then sighed heavily.
''Well, yell for me as soon as you learn something new.'' Harper said and then walked back to the main viewscreen.
He had been thinking about what he would do if the covenant cruiser would spot them. would he run, fight or abandon the gettysburg and take the battle on the surface? Deep inside he knew that a halcyon class cruiser has nothing to do with a mothership or a dreadnaught, but some certain little prototype nukes onboard could make a nice boom. Still it would be way too risky to try take that thing down with a prototype nuke. Only god knows what could happen.
Gettysburg hangar.
10.5.2552. 1620hours.
Rashon had just docked his longsword on his regular docking at the 3rd level of the docking bay. The docking bay was similiar to the POA's one, for one small exemption. It had 5 levels instead of the 4 that Autumn had. Every docking port, seven per level, had 2 walking ports on each side and the ships would dock between them. Longswords would dock bow first, but pelicans would dock with their rear's towards the docks main walkway, for easy entry for marines and equipment, that coverred most of the levels. As for the albatrosses. Gettysburg had only 2 and those were stocked on the hangar bottom floor. next to staging areas for warthogs and scorpions.
Rashon opend the front hatch of his longsword by pressing a small blue button on the roof terminal the longsword had ontop of the seats.
He then proceeded to walk towards the back of the longsword and down to the hatch and ramp that would lead him out of the longsword.
As soon as he had cleared the longsword an angry mecanic dressed in a orange uniform came yelling to him:
''Goddamit Rashon! Your longsword is busted again! You have any idea how much these things cost?!''
Rashon stood in amazement since he tought the longsword was fine, atleast he didn't find any difficulties flying it back.
But as he turned around and saw the damage the longsword had taken he started laughing of joy that he actually made it back to Gettysburg.
The longsword had been pierced by the meteors from numerious locations among its hull, but one took especially took Rashons eye.
A large chump of the starboard wing was missing from right next to the engine.. If only it would have hitten abit on the left. Rashon would be toasted by now.
''Whoa.. Didn't notice that before.. Don't worry mate.. You'll get it fixed in notime'' Rashon said and tapped the angry looking mecanic on his shoulder.
Rashon was lucky not to get punched by the mecanic, once again, his higher rank had saved him from certain fight.
Titan mk-3 orbit. 5000km's from Gettysburg
10.5.2552. 1720 hours.
Bootsman and Demonhuter were now both sitting in the cockpit of the albatross. Boots had the controls and Demon was just watching the space trought the windows. Albatrosses were otherwise the same looking as pelicans, but they were much bigger and had a tight cockpit that had a very narrow window that would show only what was need to be shown. The cockpit was full of buttons and HUD's from bottom to the top and everyone of them had a specific function.
They were approaching the Gettysburg from it's rear, Bootsman clearly knew this since he could see the Gettysburg's engines generating a light that could be mistaken for a star but the sensors said diffrent. Demon was keeping a firm grip on the pilotsticks on the co-pilots seat, alltough he knew that Rickson was a good pilot.. He couldn't let go, just to be sure.
While Rickson and Mendez were taking things cool and relaxing in the cockpit. The rest of the 7th ODST squad was still nervously sitting on their seats.
Everyone of them had nervous looks on their faces. All of them were pale of fear, since this was their first contact with the covenant ever, they were hella scared.
One of the men stood out especially, this was pvt. Uber nicknamed Pinkballer for some odd reason he did not like to say. Unlike the others, he wasn't pale at all. He was just sitting on his seat and humming some lyric that no-one knew. He had done numerious missions to covenant controlled planets and knew about what was coming, maby this was why he wasn't so scared. The ODSTs had been quiet for a while, but now Pinkballer made a start:
''You know.. If they knew we were here. they would have blown us to pieces by now.. You guys should try to relax.'' After these words all of the ODSTs, exept Rickson and Mendez, started to stare Pinkballer in amazement. After a few painful minutes one of them started laughing and the others followed until they all were laughing their heads off. You could clearly hear Pinkballer's german accent'ish laugh from the crowd of others that had a really high voice compared to his.
Right after they had started laughing really hard. something bumped the ship really hard. The laugh stopped immidiately. Right after that one of the ODSTs yelled: ''What the hell was that!?''. Some of the ODSTs were confused and frightend that it was a seraph shot that blowed near. These toughts were quickly replaced when Sgt. Rickson yelled from the cockpit:
''Slipspacerupture! something just came out of slipstream really close to us!''
Gettysburg bridge.
10.5.2552. 1725 hours.
''Sir! Slipspace rupture, 4800Km's to our rear! Single vessel. Not covenant!'' The liutenant operating the sensors yelled to admiral Harper.
As these words were finished, the UNSCDF logo that had been on the mainscreen went down and a display showing the ship came up.
It was clearly bigger than gettysburg but just abit smaller than the covenant ''Harpercraft''.
''Give me contact. Lets see if these are intelligent type of aliens!'' Harper yelled towards the communications officer that was in the next booth to the left of where sensors was. The officer pressed a few buttons higher than his head and then gave a nod to Harper.
''This is UNSC-Gettysburg to unidentified vessel. Identify yourself or we will be forced to open fire without hesitation'' Harper spoke while lookin down to the floor with his eyes allmost shut. The bridge was silent for a moment, but suddenly a voice from the speakers surpriced everyone in the bridge because it was familiar and definetly a human.
''This is Fleet Admiral Kane. Stand down Harper. We are to assist you as you evacuate the planet and jump to UNSC controlled space.''
After hearing this, Harper raised his other eyebrow and looked at the other bridge personell being amazed like he was.
''Liutenant, scan the ship and tell me if that is really UNSC hardware. I haven't even heard about anything that big.'' Harper said with a low voice.
The liutenant pressed some combinations on his keyboard and then looked at Harper and said.
''Sir. They have a fusion reactor similiar to ours and I'm receiving UNSC-vertification-codes. It's one of ours allright.''
Harper started to smile abit and then continued to speak directly to Admiral Kane.
''I never knew we had such a big ship in the fleet. Neither did i knew that our ships could have shields. Sofar I've only seen ones in the mjolnir armors.''
After a few moments Kane respond
''Well this baby just came out of the shipyards 2days ago. Hood had it built in secret from everyone exept the high command, since this is the most advanced military warfare we have. We didn't want to risk alerting the covenant in case of possible violations of the Cole protocol.''
Aurora bridge.
10.5.2552. 1755hours.
Kane was sitting in his chair on the UNSC-Aurora's bridge. looking troung the main viewscreen and pointing some of the personell some basic thing to do.
Aurora's bridge was similiar to the frigate bridges. It had 1 seat for the commander of the ship and 2 pilot seats infront. Unlike the Achilles and Halcyon class cruisers. Everyone on the bridge had a place to sit. The tecnology on Aurora was topnotch. The Super MAC-Cannons were similiar to the ones on the orbit of Reach, but ofcourse more powerful because of the small upgrades. There were 4 mac cannons, 2 on each side of the ship. 2 on the bottom and 2 on the top. All of them had hatches covering them from incoming fire and those hatches would slide open and the cannons would push abit forward for fiering.
Other major difference to other cruisers, other than the size, was the fact that Aurora was smooth and didn't have a visuable deck like Halcyon and Achilles cruisers. Aurora had 4 huge engines on the back of it and there was a bright blue glow shining from them and making the whole surface of the ship shine in the otherwise dark space. But because of the shields it had. It didn't shine outside the shields.. Making the ship allmost invicible for the covenant sensors or bare eyes.
End of chapter 2
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