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Crosshairs: Part 1
Posted By: The Scribe<nero@cinci.rr.com>
Date: 11 April 2005, 5:10 PM
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I had wanted to join the Corps ever since I was young and my father had lost his legs to a plasma grenade. Some of my fondest childhood memories are going to the firing range with my dad and shooting for fun. Then, on the way back, we could talk guns and he would sometimes tell war stories if I was really lucky. However, he never did want to talk about the loss of his legs. It was a subject I never did bring up, mainly because he had loved to run before going to war and he had track trophies and cross country trophies coming out the wazoo back at home.
So, when I got out of high school, I immediately joined up, especially after hearing some current news on the Covenant war against the humans. Apparently, they were moving closer to Earth, but no one really thought this of course. I first went through basic boot camp. That pretty much consisted of PT and basic weapons training. We fired the new M7 sub machine gun and the new BR55 (battle rifle). The rest was basic and I had shot many of these in my childhood with my father. We fired the M6D and M6C, the M90 shotgun, and the M19 SSM rocket launcher. After about thirteen weeks, I graduated from boot camp.
I had decided that I wanted to become a sniper, so I enlisted for sniper training somewhere in Virginia. I was bused down there and went through ten weeks of hell.
"You think you can shoot well?" our instructor shouted. "You'll know all about how well you can shoot if your ass is still here in ten weeks!"
There, we trained with the S2 AM rifle, using 14.5mm rounds and sighting in our rifles at 1500 yards. As I had NOT anticipated, it was not the shooting part of sniper school at Quantico, Virginia that ground my ass to raw meat. We had to play sniper vs. sniper games and lay out in the woods for three days at a time, not allowed to move. If it meant that you had to shit your pants to not move, then you did.
By the time I graduated, there was only 50% of what had been there before. My dad was the proudest and yet most worried man I'd ever seen.
"Don't worry," I told him. "I ain't losin' no legs."
"It's your life I'm worried about," he replied. "Keep in touch."
___________________________________________________________
I was transferred to a planet that was generically named GS11. It was a sort of tropical planet mixed with desert. I was going there because the Covenant were building a compound out in the middle of a large desert area. About a thousand yards from that, situated in a large group of palm trees was a UNSC compound. The marines had been watching, through binoculars, engineers build and construct a large, shiny, and purplish building surrounded by walls. An AI at the marine compound had been picking up conversation on the Covenants' com link. Apparently, the Covenant were going to send out daily patrols to explore the rest of the planet. The last thing the UNSC wanted was for the Covenant to have a patrol stumble across the hidden marine compound. So, I was to sit up on a ridge in a tree line to hide, and watch the huge stretch of desert for little lines of Covenant soldiers moving around. It would be cake.
As soon as I arrived, I noticed that I was in tons of shade, the human compound was practically engulfed in trees. I had brought hundreds of anti-trail loads. These rounds didn't give off the vapor trail that most of the S2's standard ammo did. I wanted to be able to shoot without having to constantly adjust positions because of a damn vapor trail.
I reported in to a big and buff Lieutenant who told me I could go out to this shooting spot.
"Just head out the west gateway, and go straight through the trees, but watch out, because it's a drop when you get to it. If you're not careful you get to enjoy a four hundred foot plummet onto to some hard ground," he had said.
I did just as he told me and moved to the spot. I went prone right were the trees abruptly ended and the drop began. After bringing down the rifle's bipod, I laid there and watched the compound. I had distinct orders not to fire at the compound, just patrols. I probably lay there for about three hours before suddenly seeing it. A quick flash caught my eye. I raised my scope to it and there, I saw an elite standing about three hundred yards from his base. I didn't fire. He turned and started to walk back towards the compound. I figured he was going to go back in and take a patrol. About ten minutes later, the elite, three jackals, and five grunts filed out. I let them walk a good distance out into the desert. They were about five hundred yards from the base and about five hundred yards from me.
I put my hairs right on the elite in front. I had noticed that he would stop every so often to glance through some binoculars. I would wait until he stopped. Sure enough he took out the binoculars and began to look around. I aimed at his neck. Since it was a downward shot, I was to aim low. The shot would nail him right through the head. I took up trigger slack and realized that this would be my first ever kill. I squeezed the trigger. The rifle jerked and a loud, hollow "pa-caaar!" rang over the desert. Through my scope, I had watched the elite. His head had erupted into a geyser of purple liquid. The binoculars hit the ground and so did he. A purple vapor cloud still hung in the air were his head had been before falling. The jackals and grunts froze. I put my sights on a jackal and fired. He went stiff and loosely tossed back and onto the ground, where he twitched uncontrollably. His two comrades activated their shields. I couldn't make a shield shot, so I moved onto one of the grunts.
I aimed onto the one with a red armor. I fired and sent his head, along with his methane mask flying. His body flipped backward and slammed into the small group other grunts. One of the jackals turned around to look at the grunt on the ground. Mistake. I blew his chest out as my bullet tore through his back. He hit the ground and didn't move. His friend and the four other Grunts panicked and began running back. I swept the last jackal off of his feet in a mess of armor fragments and purple blood. When he hit the ground, I noticed his left leg was missing. The other four grunts were next. Two were running in such a way that one shot would take them both out. I fired, and a stream of blue blood erupted into the air from the first as the bullet nailed his methane tank and continued on. The second one had caught the bullet but it had only partially damaged him. It had busted through his methane tank but had only flesh wounded his back. However, he had about 450 yards to go and would suffocate at the rate his tank was leaking. The last two were easy. They were dead before hitting the ground. The one grunt whose tank had been leaking, was now writhing on the ground as he suffocated. He stretched out one little pudgy arm, as if reaching for the Covenant compound. The arm fell limp to the ground and he quit moving. I reported back, pleasing the Lieutenant very much. I hadn't had a bad first day at all, and tomorrow would be a new one.
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