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Another ONI Black File: Halo – We Got There First: Part 9
Posted By: Arthur Wellesly<arthur_wellesly@hotmail.com>
Date: 4 September 2003, 6:28 PM
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0440 Hours, September 24, 2525 (Military Calendar)/
Forest's Edge - 3,500 kilometers from Alpha Base
The C299-TC Lion hovered a foot above the surface. The two HRVs were dragged out and the one hundred fifty followed soon after. After all the men were safely out, the Lion took off, flying circles above the forest with its large array of weapons ready to defend the men on the ground. The pilots tried to see what was going on in the forest, but the canopy was too thick. Even their heat vision was of no use.
"Those bloody trees are giving off huge amounts of heat, Captain," one of the pilots reported. "It's just one big red blotch."
"Roger that," Griffin murmured in awe. He was not unduly surprised. He had never seen trees like these, even on this alien ring. They were short - only about as tall as a pine tree on earth, but they were thick and with an abundance of leaves on their top. What was most unusual about them, however, was that at their center was a large bulbous growth that glowed eerily in barely lit grove.
Griffin flipped down his mike from his helmet and called for Delta team to check in. There had been times when long range communications were ineffective on this ring, but unfortunately, such was not the case here. The frequency remained silent.
Griffin heard a roar of engines above that drowned out even the Lion, and though he could not see it, he knew that the single surviving Longsword fighter from the Silent Night had joined the transport craft in its protective overhead circle.
"Stay close to me," Griffin whispered into his mike, as if someone was listening. He, Captain Baxter, and Sergeant Warren were leading the way into the dark canopy. Their guns were at the ready; Warren and Griffin with their assault rifles, Baxter with his preferred shotgun. "Everyone bring down their night-vision," he said, bringing down his own visor from the front of his helmet. There were soft clicks all around him as his Marines did the same. "Be ready for anything, men. Delta team still isn't checking out."
No one responded. There was something eerie and oddly awe-inspiring about this glowing forest. Shadows flicked among the foliage, but every time someone looked to see what it was, it was gone. There was also a noise; soft, barely audible, but always present and impossible to ignore. It was a slithery, liquid sound, almost as if someone was slurping some water. At last an uneasy private voiced everyone's concerns. "What the hell is that noise? I've got a really bad feeling about this."
With this, the COM network was suddenly alive with concessions, everyone saying this forest was cursed and was no doubt teeming with aliens. The battle-hardened sergeants, of which there were more than would normally accompany a squad of this size, went around the line and cuffed all the soldiers who so much made a peep, cursing at them and telling them that if they didn't quit whining there'd be no alcohol rations tonight. Eventually the talking subsided, but Griffin felt obligated to say something. "I don't want anyone to make a sound," he whispered quietly, his normally gruff but friendly voice tainted with an unusual level of asperity, "because if there are hostiles in the forest I want to surprise them, not the other way around." After this there was silence, though whether it was his speech which silenced them or the thought of no rum on this Godforsaken ring, Griffin had no idea. He assumed it was the latter, for the racket caused by the Lion and the Longsword had no doubt given them away already.
Until now the trees had been pretty thin and scattered on the ground, but the Marines were now in the thick of the forest. The starlight and the moon were no longer visible above the unusually thick canopy. Even the glow of the trees oddly seemed to illuminate nothing of their surroundings. The few Marines who had not yet donned their night vision visors now did so.
Griffin was getting increasingly nervous. He was constantly whispering into his mike for Delta team to check in, even though all hope of that happening had long faded. He had never put too much weight into people sensing they were being watched or followed without being able to produce evidence proving such, but he had that distinct feeling right now, and it frightened him. It took all his restraint not to scream out and force whoever it was to reveal themselves.
Suddenly, of to Griffin's left, he heard a loud scuffle and he imagined he heard a muffled scream. Such noises seemed to be rampant in this forest, but this one made him more nervous than the others. "Is anything going on our left flank?" No one answered, and he was prepared to ignore the odd sounds until a loud scream sounded again to the left, followed soon by the soft clatter of an assault rifle firing. Only a few rounds got off before it suddenly stopped. Griffin called a halt. "What's going on? Who fired?"
"It was Private Murray, sir," a sergeant in the left flank answered, "but I can't see him now." He was silent for a moment or two until he suddenly began to swear. "Jesus, but what the fuck is that?" He began to fire and the nervous men that surrounded him followed in kind. Everyone was firing now, the dull, methodical thumping of the military grade shotguns joining the cacophony of the crackling automatic weapons, and in the midst of it all screaming reports of some sort of zombie-like alien creatures.
Griffin had no need to hear the reports. He, too, was in the thick of things. Swarms of small, head-size, tentacled parasites came pouring from the darkness, so numerous and packed so tightly together that in looked quite literally like a flood of pale green and yellow blobs. Griffin had initially set his assault rifle to fire controlled, three burst volleys, picking off small groups of them, though he soon realized that subtlety was not in order. He fired in full automatic spray, fifteen bullets a second, into the grotesque flood of alien parasites.
Unfortunately the parasites had the ability to cling to vertical objects, for they came raining down from the tress, dropping onto their human victims, thrusting their needle-like penetrator into their new hosts' back or neck, paralyzing them and forcing them to serve them for the remainder of their lives. One such alien came within inches of Griffin's face, before bursting in a cascade of green blood, gas, and flesh. It didn't take long for Griffin to realize their situation was helpless unless they escaped the confines of the forest, where the enemy could come from any direction without being visible until they're on top of them. "Get out of the forest!" he screamed frantically, backing up quickly.
Most Marines understood they were surrounded, and retreated in a manner which reflected this knowledge. They edged hurriedly towards the open plain and salvation back to back with fellow soldiers, both firing to cover each other. Griffin walked back to back with Captain Baxter. This was a fairly efficient tactic, but the chaos was soon increased by the introduction of another fearsome creature. It was a humanoid - indeed, it appeared to be human, though horribly transformed. It was the same pale green coloration of the small parasites and its limbs were gruesomely twisted and bent, with its right arm mutated to provide a wicked looking claw at one end. Its torso was split open along the stomach and chest, with ribs sticking out in grotesque directions, and what looked like one of the parasites in this tear, though it seemed much smaller. Griffin guessed, with a sudden sickness coming over him, that these zombies were the remnants of the missing Delta team.
One of these monsters leapt high into the air, aiming its body at a group of two Marines. A terrified soldier, his eyes seemingly crazed by the horrors of what he saw, fired about thirty rounds into the ghoul's chest and expected it to fall to the ground in a jumbled of twisted limbs and spilt blood. Instead it just kept on flying, apparently unaffected and unimpressed by the man's attempts to kill it. When it landed, the sharpness of its claws and the weight of its body decapitated the Marine and shredded his body. Griffin's eyes widened in the face of such invincibility.
The trees began to thin, but more of the zombie creatures joined the fray, picking off the previously efficient two-man teams in brutal long ranged jumps. The occasional shotgun round blew the torso out of one of the flood warriors, but the success ratio of the zombies to the humans was unsettling. Griffin and Baxter had so far proven and effective team, Griffin liberally spraying his MA5B assault rifle at the parasites while Baxter dealt with any of the flood warriors. They always joined their men and had more experience in fighting than most of the Marines, save for a few of the oldest Sergeants, and thus they faired better than most.
More men fell even as they left the forest, victims of the surprisingly fast tentacled parasites or the near invincible, high jumping zombies. The Lion was hovering about a foot above the ground just twenty meters from Griffin. He and Baxter abandoned their ponderous two-man retreat and sprinted as fast as they could to their salvation. Two snipers were on the back of the craft, sniping at the small parasites, but their limited fire had little effect on this mob.
All the survivors were now sprinting unheeded from the edge of the forest, now outrunning their tentacled foe. When they reached the Lion, most of the exhausted and frightened men literally dove onto the transport deck. Griffin and Baxter waited just outside the entrance, laying down covering fire for the few soldiers who has still not made it, and when nothing was visible but the flood of the grotesque aliens, they too jumped aboard and screamed for the pilot to get going, his assault rifle still blazing. He then contacted the Longsword pilot and directed him to bomb to the forest.
"Friendlies?" the pilot ventured after he had received these instructions.
Griffin gazed out at the forest, which seemed to be teeming with the aliens. No more gunshots sounded. "All friendlies are aboard the Lion, Gary. Blow them the hell away."
The Longsword came out of the night sky, strafing the forest's edge with a salvo of four missiles. They were tipped with incendiary plasma; all of the parasites and zombie aliens were instantly vaporized. The Longsword circled around for another attack, this time bombing the forest's center. The glowing trees erupted into flame, guaranteeing that any alien still there was now dead.
But, as Griffin lifted his NOD visor to let his eyes return to normal after witnessing the bright explosions, he couldn't help but wonder if by doing that he only killed his own men.
But that question would have to wait. For now, there was a lot to discuss.
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