Grunt Guns: Part 1 and 2, The Beginning
Posted By: Ace of Spades9<bradleycass@sympatico.ca>
Date: 3 June 2005, 1:32 AM
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Grunt Guns: Part 1, What to Shoot With?
Aboard attack vessel 2215 of the Covenant Carrier "Holy Grace of Light"
3 months before the destruction of Halo 2
Kezz was nervous. His small attack ship was nearing one of the human outposts they called "Trenador IV". This human outpost was connected to a small asteroid orbiting the planet "Trenador".
He was becoming more and more nervous as he looked out the small porthole of his ship. He had seen the human AA guns decimate his comrades' ships. He moved to the forward section or his ship and ordered the green armored grunt pilot to increase speed. The pilot responded by telling him if we stayed to the rear of the attack force the AA guns would reach them last, or hopefully not at all.
While this made sense Kezz did not approve of this Grunt disobeying his orders. Kezz repeated his order. The pilot grumbled in response but Kezz could feel the ship's engines groan as they accelerated forward. Little by little they moved to the front of the formation.
Kezz' attack force had been dwindled down to 34 ships from the original 50. That worked out to, Kezz did the math. There were 15 Grunts per ship and 5 Jackals that was about 510 Grunts and 170 Jackals. He hoped the other Attack squadrons had faired better.
He went back to his troops to ready them for combat. He handed out the weapons, mostly plasma pistols and a few needlers and to all of the high ranking grunts, they got a needler a plasma pistol AND a plasma grenade.
Kezz moved to the three green armored grunts. The pilot would remain behind to defend the ship, he was issued only a pistol. Kezz' heavy weapons team would get the most powerful guns. The ship's only turret was dismantled and brought with them.
Kezz was not going to concern himself with the Jackal sniper team, he simply didn't care for Jackals.
Kezz checked his weapons. He did not want to burden himself with much. He was a seasoned fighter. He took 2 grenades and a plasma pistol. A reliable combo for these circumstances. Kezz worried about the performance of his men, not of his guns.
As they neared Trenador an uneasy silence fell over his men. Kezz fixed his eyes on each of the younger grunts. He could see that they all understood that anything less than pure victory meant absolute death. Kezz didn't feel it was necessary to give his usual pre-battle speech, his troops were well aware of the stacks. He turned to the porthole again. It wouldn't be long now.
Then the green armored pilot turned back to Kezz and said "Sir, we will be landing on the alien military emplacement in a few moments".
"ETA?" Kezz inquired
The pilot paused and consulted the Nav, "two minutes" he paused, then remembered to add "sir".
"Good" Kezz turned back to his troops and yelled "90 seconds to dirt". Kezz didn't trust the Nav equipment, he wanted to make sure his troops were ready.
At the 40 second mark the AA guns got a lock on Kezz' ship and began to pelt the 3 inch thick purple amour with .33mm anti amour bullets. Screams came from the rearward compartment as the thick bullets penetrated the outer amour and began a lethal ricochet about the crew compartment.
Kezz dare not enter the compartment well it was under fire so he counted to ten, hopping the AA guns had moved on to a different target. Then he charged into the hold.
Most grunts would have thrown up, but Kezz was a veteran and had seen worse, three grunts were spewed around the room and their blue blood had splattered all in the compartment. And one of the Jackal snipers had literally blew up.
Kezz tried to reassure his troops but he was just about to yell at them to calm down when the lights of the ship flicked as they entered the artificial gravity of the human base. The doors on each side of the ship burst open as the ship touched down. The unluckily 2 grunts on each side of the ship were ripped apart by a hail of small arms fire. Kezz had to control his men.
He yelled "Get a hold of yourselves and start shooting! Heavy teams take out their gun emplacements, everybody else get off this ship and find some cover. Rendezvous and my position once the hanger is secured. GO GO GO!"
Everybody raced out into the Human ship hanger. Kezz made sure he was last out then got his first look at the area he was in. The whole area was painted a gray/green typical of most human military strong holds. The hanger was unusually large. It had a network of catwalks above him and he was at the lowest level. Attached to the catwalks were several suspended Pelican transports the Humans used. On his level were several fuel cans and crates were littered around the floor. What concerned him most was the 20 or 30 humans running about the catwalks and the worst was there were two turrets sending bullets flying around the room.
He looked up to see one of the Covenant Gunships enter the hanger and spray plasma shots at the humans. "Why did he not come sooner?" Kezz wondered.
The battle was finally won by the covenant, but with great losses. Kezz had 6 surviving troops and most other squads didn't do much better. How could 30 humans kill over 200 grunts?
-The end is nowhere near-
Authors note: Please tell me your thoughts about this story, I'm just beginning to write with HBO and would appreciate your input.
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