Halo: The Dropship

Chapter One

The purple hued Covenant aircraft seemingly appeared out of nowhere, the dense cloud cover hiding them until they were almost on top of the rescue team. "Gamma-52, Banshee at your five!" The pilots were frantically calling out positions and maneuvering the aircraft to try and get out of the sudden swarm.

Magarby delegated the Spartan Laser equipped on his bird to the capable hands of Dean, his copilot.

"Stratten! Need you to close cockpit doors and get that machine gun ready!" Dean yelled into the crew bay and Stratten jumped to do as he asked. The cockpit sliding door slammed shut and they switched to radio.

The Pelican leaned far to the left, narrowly missing a kamikaze Banshee and Stratten nearly lost her balance.

"Hey, there're passengers on this liner! No fancy tricks!"

Dean make a smart-ass remark before getting back to business. His gruff voice crackled through everyone's headset again as he hit a button on the control panel.

"Lowering crew bay ramp. Stratten, that turret set up yet?"

Positioned behind the turret, she pulled back, the belt in place and waited for the ramp to lower. "Ready when you are!"

Bravo-5's pilot, Captain Mark Lisner pulled his bird up as quick as he could.

"Numbnuts! Get those guns firing!" He was yelling 'til his throat was hoarse as his passengers frantically tried to target and take down the Covenant aircraft.

Plasma fire splashed against the side of the Falcon, dangerously close to the cockpit.

"I don't have any nuts to bitch about them being numb, sir!" Corporal and medic Stark hollered in reply as she fired a burst of machine gun fire at the Banshee closest go the Falcon. "Lisner! Altitude! C'mon, this hunk of metal can move faster than this!"

The pilot fought with the bird's controls, circling higher, momentarily out of the dogfight. "Bravo-5 Banshee at your six!" The new kid, Reed, had a clear view of the swarm around their sister aircraft and started marking targets.

An unfamiliar voice crackled over the radio, getting both pilots' attention. "Gamma-52, Beta-5, somebody! Where the hell are y'all! Bad time for a tea party!" Magarby swung his bird around, letting Stratten get a better angle on one of the Covenant aircraft before replying. "I'm not sure this is what you'd call a tea party, man." The loud staccato of the turret on the nose of his bird drowned out all other noises for a moment as he hosed down one of the Covies with automatic fire out of frustration. Lisner interjected before he could say another word, "What's the patient count?"

The man on the other end paused for a moment before answering. "At least six criticals in my zone now. Pick up the pace, we're running out of time."

A moment later, there was a flash of red and a loud 'thud' and one of the Banshees fell from the sky in a ball of blue and purple fire.

"Lisner! Up and to the left!" The Rookie seemed cool under pressure, save for the fact his hands were shaking, but he dismissed that as adrenaline and not fear. The poor fellow on the radio was soon forgotten about as the crew of both birds were once again focused solely on the dogfight.

The Falcon circled around one last time before sweeping back into the heart of the dogfight, the engines' afterburners going mad. The pelican had taken a beating, the stylized dragon on the left was wounded, paint scorched from plasma blasts. Time seemed to slow as one of the Banshees looped around faster than Stark could follow and scraped across the side of the Pelican.

A large amount of swearing was caught intermittently over the radio as Magarby fought to pull his bird out of the downward spiral, the Banshees following like a pack of hungry wolves.

Stratten held onto the turret for dear life, heart thundering in her chest. She had nearly been thrown from the safe and cozy confines of the crew bay. Moments later, Dean's voice was once again heard over the radio, "Everyone okay?"

Garcia snapped back, numerous expletives thrown in the direction of his buddy in the cockpit.

Thomson threw a worried glance towards Stratten's general direction, then back to the sealed cockpit door. Relatively new to the team, he still hadn't figured out why an ODST would be assigned to combat rescue. Sure, he had a good amount of air time clocked, but what good was he for that if he wasn't behind the controls?

The Pelican had lost a large and ever increasing amount of altitude, spinning down and out of the cloud cover.

The city below was aptly nicknamed the Tower, built on and around one of the highest points on the planet. Which meant the bird did not have a lot of breathing room before it made contact with the swiftly approaching ground.

Not knowing what else to do, Thomson merely did his best to avoid puking in his helmet from their dizzying descent.

"Magarby! You still in the air?" Lisner barked over the radio, fighting the sudden crosswind. The Falcon stayed above, circling and unable to see whatever happened to their sister counterpart. It was tense for a moment before there was any reply over the radio. "They're right on our tail. Get ready to take care of 'em." Lisner yanked the controls to the side, giving Reed a clear line of sight as the Pelican tore through the clouds, Banshee's right behind. Caught off guard, the last three enemies were falling from the sky, each a purple ball of flame, in minutes.

For what it had just gone through, the Pelican was in pretty good shape, a testament to the skill of it's pilot.

Stark though, was the first to ask, "where's Stratten?"