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A Spartan Named James
Posted By: ZePHyR WRaiTh<zephyrwraith331@aol.com>
Date: 11 October 2003, 4:15 AM
Read/Post Comments
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(Since this is my first submission, I would appreciate any and all feedback, thank you.)
0630 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Epsilon Eridani System, Outside of Reach Naval
Station Gamma
The impenetrable stygian blackness forced itself in on the visor of James' MJOLNIR combat suit like a wall of onyx closing in on an emerald figurine. He had almost gotten the C-12 free from the Pelican's nose and was about to confirm his progress with his squad leader, Master Chief Spartan-117, when the Chief's very own voice came on over his speakers,
"Take cover." The grating voice hissed through the static.
James looked over at the Chief just in time to watch him disappear behind the side of the Pelican. Not much could make the Chief conceal himself from an enemy, James knew. Just a little further, he thought to himself panic beginning to edge into his mind, just a little furth-"
"Blue-Two," The Chief cried over the COM-Channel, "I said fall back."
James turned away from the nose of the Pelican just in time to see the hundreds of magenta needles flying at him through the vacuum. His highly trained mind sought for an alternative to being impaled by the glowing spikes and, in less than a second, found one. In the blink of an eye James had pushed off from the Pelican and had angled his thruster pack to soak up the majority of the needles and plasma fire. He looked back and saw that his thruster pack was glowing red, he started to slip out of it when the needles exploded and sent him spiraling through space in a constantly changing trajectory.
"Blue-Two! Come in," Came the strangely softened voice of the Chief.
"John! I can't control the pack, I'm going to try and slip out of it. Hold on, sir. I request radio silence, the Covenant, they're everywhere!" James announced over the Com-Channel. Little did he know that the Chief had only heard enough of his transmission to write him off for dead, lost to the emptiness of space.
James was well on his way to making the Chief's suspicions true. Getting out of the Co2 charged thruster was harder than he had anticipated. The pack swung around on the rubber harness so erratically that it pulled the straps away from him each time his hands got anywhere near the industrial strength clips holding it on to him. Making his endeavor harder was the fact that plasma fire was streaking through space around him in graceful jets of blue, green, and white. James stopped struggling and calmed himself, Chief Mendez had always warned them that a panicked man was a dead man, and with that in mind he calmly reached back down and stripped the pack off by hitting the release button on the belt. The vacant boost pack spun off across the vast expanse of space toward Reach and hit an Elite Warrior in the face on its way.
Now James was forced to face the real problem at hand; if he couldn't alter the course of his unplanned flight he would keep soaring through the darkness until his reserve tanks of oxygen were depleted, sentencing him to a slow death by suffocation.
That won't happen, he thought forcefully, I won't let it. However, it was a little bit harder than he had initially predicted to stall his rapid ascension. Nothing he did helped, but he wasn't about to give up, not yet.
That was when the Covenant flagship exited Slipspace fourteen hundred meters in front of him.
James hurled at the target, unable to stop himself from feeling a twinge of fear. But at the same time he felt a sense of hope; if he was lucky, very lucky, he might be able to fly in through an open docking bay on the side of the ship. The chances were slim, no betting man would put a penny on them. However, he figured, he was about due for a good break.
The majestic purple ship sped closer and closer at him, every few seconds he would soar past a Seraph fighter and hope against hope that he wouldn't be detected. So far, so good, he thought, but wait, the docking bay was too far to the left of him for a safe entry, and he really didn't want to be reduced to the consistency of toothpaste thrown against a wall. After carefully considering his options James settled on one, risky was an understatement, but if executed properly it just might have a chance of working.
James chinned a control in his helmet and the armor plating on the outside of his bad arm, the one the hunter had reduced to cinders a few months earlier, burst off with enough force to hurl him to the left, straight in line with the open magnetic shield. Less than three seconds later he flew into the opening and felt a fluttering sensation in the pit of his stomach as he adjusted to the artificial gravity in the ship. He didn't have much time to worry about the butterflies in his stomach because he immediately fell to the floor behind a damaged Banshee. James pushed himself up into a sitting position and marveled at what he had just accomplished, and at the fact that no Covenant inside the ship had detected his presence yet. He scooted across the strangely corrugated floor and peered around the side of the Banshee, then quickly pulled his head back behind it. The docking bay was full of the tall blue suited creatures he had seen earlier, along with a pair of hunters, and a single apelike being that towered over them all. Jackals and Grunts swarmed around the legs of the larger creatures, eager to be closest to them and be offered the most protection.
James did a quick inventory of the weapons he still had with him and reeled in shock, all of his weapons had flown off of him in his ungainly flight through space. All that he had left was a single frag grenade and a clip for his lost M6D pistol.
"Great," James muttered sarcastically under his breath as he eyed a Jackal with it's back turned eight meters away, "Lost in enemy territory with no guns and an unarmored right arm, if I get this prosthesis melted off the buys at ONI are going to feed me to the dogs." And with that he crept up behind the unsuspecting jackal and crushes it's head with his unarmored mechanical arm. "So much for stealth," he whispered as energy beams seared over his head. He scooped up the plasma pistol and tore the energy shield off the alien's arm before disappearing behind a gigantic crate, plasma tracing his path by burning pockmarks in the wall the size of his fist.
It was going to be a long day.
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