Halo: Guerrillas In The Mist (No longer being updated)

Chapter 3: A Long Way Down

 Thursday, November 25th

14:02 hours

Dmitri’s heart stopped. His friends, comrades, brothers in arms, none of them had survived. It was a massacre of a scale he had not seen since the evacuation of Arcadia. He was still haunted by the passengers screams as the transports plunged into the ocean, swallowed whole into calm blue current. He often wondered whether anyone had survived that horrific event, but quickly put it out of his mind as hopeless optimism. This time, among the carnage and destruction wrought by the Scarab, he hoped his optimism would be well founded.

Peering down the scope of his rifle, the charred bodies of the unlucky ones, who weren't immediately vapourised by the blast, gave off a faint orange glow against his lens. Though not unused to the horrors of war, he couldnt help but wince at the sight of these corpses. Nothing prepared you for the ungodly sight of the men you once knew, lying lifeless on the floor. He put his mind back on task and surveyed the battlefield. Only twisted, melted hulks remained of the Scorpion tanks and the Warthogs on the frontlines had been melted into boiling pools of green and silver. It looked almost like a nuclear wasteland.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a large cave in on the side of a building and the faint outline  of a Pelicans tail and troop bay. Dazed and blinded by the plasma cannon, they must have spun out and nose dived into the wall. They now had an idea of where to procure some ammo and supplies, but needed transport. Dmitri knew they needed to get going to have any chance of bypassing the next wave of Covenant sweeping the area so he kicked himself back into gear. First objective; secure the Pelican. He would have to think on his feet about the transport.

He counted his men. Usain, Lopez, Ramsey, Petrenko, Smith and the two new guys, green as grass by the looks of them. He motioned towards them. “You two hold fort up here and stay frosty. Covie clean up squads could get here any second. Rest of you follow me, we need to salvage what we can from this mess”. They nodded and followed as he took off cautiously down the stairs. As they reached the fourth floor, a hiss wisped through the air, accompanied by the faint smell of smoke. Dmitri moved deliberately and carefully down a few steps and peered through the windows, smashed by the pressure of the plasma’s heat. What Dmitri saw dropped his stomach.

The entire lower front side of the building was shorn away by the plasma splash. The building was held up only by an elevator shaft and the two remaining central columns. Even worse was the plasma still biting, gnawing away at the last layer of support the building contained.  As he turned to bark at his squad to move, he was silenced by the crumbling of brick and a long groan from the supports. The building swayed, rumbled, and began to tilt.

They ran at full pace, stairs breaking away behind them. As floor collapsed upon floor, the roof came ever closer to crushing them into oblivion. Clouds of dust swirled as they choked helplessly, running almost blind through the maze of broken stairwells and hotel rooms. Burnt and charred from previous battles, the walls put up no resistance and tumbled out onto the battlefield.

As they reached the second floor, the stairwell swayed and smashed clean through the disintegrating wall. With a cry of “Jump!” they hurdled the banister and dove for salvation across the 2 metre gap to the neighbouring building. As they flailed in a futile attempt to defy gravity, Dmitri felt something strike his leg. Falling debris had caught him and dragged him, spiralling out of control, down into the alley below. His last sight before blacking out was the building tumbling,  crashing into the ground with an almighty thud and spilling out its dusty, grey innards while his men pleaded desperately with him to wake up and get on his feet. Sleep sounded like a much better alternative to this hellhole.