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A Soul of Steel: Part 3
Posted By: The Scribe<nero@cinci.rr.com>
Date: 28 September 2003, 3:20 PM
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Note: Sorry about the absence from the Fan Fiction link! Just remember, if you're just now reading the series, don't forget to read part one and two, it will be much easier to understand.
The sound that I had fallen asleep listening for soon pierced my ears. The emergency alarm blared and everyone hopped up, slipping on their F-Jackets. I ran out the door, my MAB5 in hand and immediately met at the area that the Sergeant had said we should meet at.
Next to me, David Wrangler stood, his face that of a terrified man. He stared straight ahead through the exit of the outpost and out into the large, black outside.
"I don't want to die, God," I heard him whisper. "Don't let me die here. Let me get home."
Since it was midnight, it was dark. The bright flood lights of a few guard towers provided just enough light. But the outside was so dark, that the large ice mountains that were visible in the day, couldn't be seen. Past the outpost's exit was nothing but black and that scared me. I knew that whatever we were going to fight would not be visible until it was in the outpost or at least a few feet from it.
A gentle snow began to fall as the large guns that Sergeant Chang had shown us, began to appear as their large steel shields opened up.
Just as this happened, the Sergeant himself stepped up in front of all of us.
"Hello," he said, as if in a small meeting. "Just ten minutes ago, a scout reported that a mass of about forty Covenant troops and three Wraith tanks were moving in this direction. This particular scout was placed five miles away. By guessing on their reported speed, they should be at a maximum of three miles from here."
After the Sergeant had finished I looked up. One of the large guns was positioning itself at a certain angle. It whirred as the gears turned and it rotated. Then, suddenly, with a small bang, it stopped dead. It then fired a large round that lit up my surroundings for only a split second. The thunderous boom echoed out and into silence.
Then, as if in an answer, a small whooshing noise reached our ears. I looked off into the distant sky and saw a large blue ball moving upward with a tail of blue fire spiraling from its back. It came at an arch and then did what I had feared most. It began moving for us. After a few seconds of watching, we figured that the Wraith tank that had fired the round and miscalculated its coordinates. The huge blue comet-like rocket passed right over us and landed behind the back defense wall of the outpost. It illuminated the area in blue for just a short time and then everything went back to dark.
This time, both guns went off with a double WHUMP and a small indigo explosion erupted on the horizon. One of the lookouts from one of the guard towers looked over at us from his telescope.
"It's a hit. Two Wraiths remaining!" he shouted.
A relieved feeling swept over us and then the Sergeant shouted.
"I want troops spread along the tops of these walls. Two snipers in guard tower A and two snipers in B! Now! Let's go!"
We sprang into action by quickly climbing the large ladders up to the tops of the walls. The snipers took their positions and in only a few minutes we were ready for combat. I looked through my gun sight into the pitch black outside. The Covenant continued to fire more and more tank rounds at us. My heart stopped when I noticed that one of large blue missiles was heading for the center of the outpost. The missile moved just a bit before impact and hit a small building shattering it into fragments of metal and wood.
The marine next to me, who went by Palmer, grinned.
"There goes the showers," he chuckled and then, like a robot, went back to glaring through his gun sight.
Suddenly, one of the snipers began to open up. He fired two rounds, one right after the other. The bullet left a small trail of ruffled air behind it that faded away as went further and further into the dark outside.
Then suddenly, an out-of-control yell pierced the air and an Elite, from what I could tell, came running into the floodlights gleam.
"Smear him!" someone shouted and the whole wall of marines opened fire on the Covenant warrior. He dropped to the ground into an already formed puddle of his own blood. His body looked like a huge, raw piece of meat.
Palmer spoke up again, this time, not chuckling.
"He was just a tool," Palmer muttered grimly. "Just a way for the other Covenant to find out if we really mean business.
"Yeah, but at least now they do know that we mean business," I responded.
The huge outpost cannons rattled my bones again as two more rounds went flying somewhere. Another indigo explosion brightened the ground about a quarter-mile off and the quick glow was able to reveal a few Covenant around it. There were a few Grunts, but mostly Elites. I figured that there were Jackals, but they hadn't turned on their shields yet, because that would reveal their location.
The Wraith's explosion had been enough for one of the snipers. He fired and whooped, designating that a kill went to him. The other sniper crouched next to him said something like, "Lucky shot..." or something like that.
A small boom and then a whooshing sound echoed out into the Polaris air and a blue Wraith projectile slammed into the wall right under me. It exploded against the wall and the structure buckled. Palmer shouted and another projectile hit the wall. One of the outpost cannons thundered its call, and the Wraith erupted into a cloud of blue flame. However, it was too late. The wall collapsed down the middle and I fell with it. Luckily, it didn't totally crumble, because that would have killed us all. Instead, it just kind of fell in half, and provided a V-shaped slide for all of us to go down. But, some did die. Palmer had been one of them. When the wall had fell in half, he had been standing on the breaking point and instead of sliding down the slide that the wreckage provided, fell forward and over the railing of the wall. I had heard him let out a terrified scream before a loud crack sliced through the air and he was dead, his backbone in two pieces.
Other marines that had died, had either fallen as well, or been smashed.
After the wall collapsed, there was no time for messing around. I remember actually being able to see the Covenant, now only a few hundred feet away.
It was when Sergeant Chang shouted, "Put them to hell!" that all hell did break loose.
I put my sights on a distant Elite's form and began firing three round bursts. But, we had underestimated the Covenant's numbers. A wall of plasma bolts came sizzling in our direction. They flew through the outpost, hitting walls, people, buildings and lights. I fell to the ground and took cover. By now the Covenant were making their way into the outpost, and to my absolute horror, a plasma grenade planted itself right in front of my face.
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