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The Death of Earth:Guilt of a Spartan Chapter 3
Posted By: Sim McGaulkin<w2658@msn.com>
Date: 26 September 2003, 12:55 AM
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"Why?..."
Private Carlos Hathcock threw up over the side of the Pelican as it lifted off from the air.
He looke back, into the transport. Five people. Five people that were left, out of a group of hundred. And one Pelican out of fifty.
"Why?..."
They had been at Los Angeles, trying to guard the remaining civilians. The Covenant had been coming in fast, with massive numbers. Elites stepped over the piled bodies of the Grunts, and Jackals. Brutes, some Covenant version of the King-Kong, had decapitated the Lietunant with a single swipe. Hunters, hunters everywhere, with the marines being splattered on their impenetrable shields. Humanity was losing, again, at this city and they had all known it. He, and the marines fought on, as fiercely as the
Covenant, if not fiercer. He saw the Sergeant throw himself at the Elite after he had been
stuck with a plasma grenade; or Lipinsky screaming as a brute tore his limbs apart, fighting even then, popping the frags he carried. They had been losing, with the sky filled thick with covenant cruisers, phantoms ferrying even more troops to the battle,
and insertion-pods popping open everywhere with those Jedi Elites coming out...
Than the things had come.
They had been cornered, he knew, with a hundred others, out of a battalion of five thousand. Inside the now-abandoned theater, they had held off the Covenant, paying fully with their blood. Running out of ammo, getting on by picking up Covenant weaponry, they had fought on, until the night came. He remembered seeing the Pelicans,
hearing Adams shouting, "Reinforcements! We're saved!" and the glad in his heart, and the dread of seeing even more sheep for the slaughter the Covenant was carrying out.
The troops that had jumped out were no ordinary soldiers; they were all, green and shit, as he thought. He had thought at first that they were Spartans, Mark V's, often mocked as puppets of war but never unappreciated. But they were more like zombies, like in those classic games he had played. Blobs, with tentacles, they started assaulting the Covenant,
to the cheers of the weary marines inside. They had driven the covies back, he thought.
The marines had thought that these were some bio-miracle-weapon from ONI, or something. And they had thought they were safe...
The Zombie-things, with little bug-like eyeballs, started attacking them, and the marines were caught unprepared. He had a shotgun, and was the first to start shooting back.
They had forced their way to the Pelicans, where fortunately Sarah knew how to pilot the damn thing...
The last thing he had seen of them, as he fired the back-mounted LAAG on the Pelican,
was them eating the corpses... He threw up over the sides again.
"Why?..." He stood up, careful to grab the side railings. He sat down, next to Rebecca, and a marine he did not know. All of them had wounds, some by the zombies.
He himself had one; a slash across the arm and the chest from a tentacle. Most of it had been dented by his chicken plates, as they called the standard-issued armor, but he still got cut, if minor. Now, some green shit had started growing, some fucking kind of a fungus. Everyone else had some too. McKarsky had some growing over his forehead, like a ghostly halo. He sighed, and looked back at the bright sky, wondering,
"Why?..."
* * *
"Sir, we just received the surviving marines from the battle at Los Angeles. They claimed they had seen some "green zombielike monsters"...." His tone made it clearer that he did not believe in such nonsense. General Levy just shook his head.
"All right, colonel. Make sure that these marines are quarantined, and if any show any signs of disturbance, notify me immediately."
"Yes sir." Colonel Berry left, leaving General Levy to think over the mess. If only, he thought, the Spartan had not made it back alive. Or Spartans. Some had survived Reach, getting off before the planet was glassed; three in all, four if counting the
Master Chief, they had all told fantastic stories about ring-worlds; He had believed they had went rampant and had them dropped onto Covenant territory with suicidal missions.
Of course, after that Master Chief came back with the AI Cortana, and since the AI was screened for rampancy, he now knew that Humanity's list of enemies grew one line longer. If only the Chief died... His Longsword basically had infected the Earth with the Flood, and... He had sent the Chief on a similarly suicidal mission, along with the now-dangerously smart AI. And if they came back alive, good. Like hitting two birds with one stone, he thought, if there were any birds left alive.
"What? Why!?" Private Carlos Hathcock screamed as he was led away, by three soldiers in full chemical gear. Others had already been exterminated; like a fucking bug, he thought, a fucking bag, that's what we are to them. A fucking bug.
"I'm not a fucking Bug!" Carlos Hathcock screamed before being thrown into the
containement chamber.
His remains were later tossed into the incinerator.
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