Halo: Grim

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR –

McGrath was the first to wake up and found the office to be in complete disarray. He began to remove some of the debris that had covered him and his father, who was still unconscious at the moment. He stood up and went over to the girl to see if she had somehow survived the ceiling collapsing on her. He pulled just some of the debris off of where he saw her fall, and wanted to stop after seeing an ungodly amount of blood, but keep going until he actually stopped after picking up what was left of her arm, and found brain matter beginning to ooze from the bottom of the pile of the chunks of debris.

"There's no point son...she was dead the moment she hit the floor." Pops was conscious again and was starting to stand up when the entire building began to shake. When they looked outside, they saw Covenant cruisers and drop ships beginning to fly overhead and were starting to drop off Covenant troops to the ground.

With no hesitation, McGrath turned and ran out the door, leaving his father behind as he blindly searched for the armory when he stumbled across a group of marines gearing up, getting ready for the fight that was going on outside.

One of the Marines saw him and saluted, "Showed up at one hell of a time, sir? Would you happen to be Lieutenant Commander McGrath?"

"That I am. Are you the unit I'm attached to?"

"That we are, sir. One hell of a way to welcome you to the unit, huh. We just orders from Command since we didn't know where you were. For the time being, until we are told otherwise, or until we get the proper back up, we need to secure this building and evacuate as many civilians as we can."

"That's fine. Give me two minutes, and I'll be downstairs with you."

"Very well, sir. We'll see you then." The Marines hauled ass out the doors to the ground floor to secure the area and make the Olympic Tower a makeshift FOB and shelter for the civilians until they were able to get birds into the air.

McGrath found the locker that would be his and found his issued gear already inside the locker and was ready to go. HE strapped his armor on and grabbed his assault rifle and joined his troops as fast as he could. Once when he got outside, he was stunned by the devastation of the ensuing battle as bodies of all sides laid thrown about the battlefield: Civilian, UNSC and Covenant alike. HE joined his troops that were taking cover behind some heavy crates and blockades. He quickly surveyed the area and when he had an idea of where everything was, he quickly took command and began issuing orders as he saw movements and made adjustments, "Snipers, focus your shots on the Elites and the Brutes, they are the ones who are commanding the troops. Rockets and Lasers, focus on the vehicles and Hunters if they decide to show up. Everyone else, we have the rest."

With their orders given, the respective units did as they were ordered and slowly began to hold the line and began to slowly push the Covenant forces back from the tower, but as they were beginning to gain ground, everything took a turn for the worst.

McGrath was beginning to feel like that they were gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, when a shot from a fuel rod cannon was shot and destroyed the snipers that were further up inside the Tower. As glass and small droplets of spent of plasma rained down on the soldiers defending the Tower, they were struck again by a Wraith that came in from a blind spot for McGrath and the Heavy Weapons, nearly killing all of the "Heavy Hitters". With buzzing ears from the explosion from the Wraith Plasma cannon landing to close to him, he quickly reassessed the situation and realized that they were fighting a battle that they weren't going to win with the equipment that they had at their disposal. He was about to order the remainder of his troops to fall back into the building, when suddenly the Wraith blew up without any of his troops engaging it. From the fire and smoke, he saw something jump from the wreckage and was in a dead sprint and vaulted over some debris from one of the other buildings, and then slid under a destroyed car and stabbed an Elite in its throat, grabbed it's plasma rifle and unloaded what was left of its energy cell into the other Covenant forces, then picked up the fallen fuel rod cannon that was held by one of the grunts, and fired it at the two Hunters that had just showed up and then threw a couple of plasma grenades at them after the cannon was spent.