Halo: Alien Senses

Chapter one

2552, October 21st
0400 hours

1st Lieutenant Derek Faust gazed out the rear hatch of the pelican class drop ship at the destroyed city of New Mombasa. He found it hard to enjoy the aesthetic scenery of his home while he knew tragedy was in his near future. He only hoped that this would be the last fight humanity would have to endure against the brutally strategic and advanced race known as the Covenant. He was tired, along with the rest of the humanity.
They had been fighting this enemy for nearly three decades and they were already treading on a very strained line of chances for humanities survival.
This time, the Covenant had crossed the line, attacking humanities home world. Earth.

Private Reynolds, the ODST sitting across from Derek, leaned closer to him so that he could hear him over the roar of the engines. "You've got that look about you."

"What look?" He shouted in reply.

"That 'what was I thinking when I enlisted' look."

"Why wouldn't I like this job?" He said sarcastically. "And I get to travel a lot at least."

"No lie, man."

"Just when I was getting short, I had to pull this assignment."

Reynolds shook his head and leaned back. None of the Marines of the UNSC were able to take search and rescue operations seriously anymore.
They were becoming so frequent that most of the time fleets would have to shorten the ideal search window just because the operations were spreading the response teams thin.

"Confirmed," the pilot said, "we have visuals on the target location." The announcement was followed up by the clicking of weapons as the pelican formation closed in on their objective. Derek leaned back and watched his ammo counter read full as he slapped a fresh clip of antiwar anti-armor rounds into his S2 sniper rifle.
.
"Shall we?" Reynolds said as he brought his rifle stock up to shoulder level. Derek could tell that the black armoured shock trooper was smiling underneath his mirrored, blue tint visored helmet. He always has that sort of gung-ho mentality on combat drops or simple deployments. The whole squad seemed to be in a state of confidence. Just then, the drop ship violently shook to the side, evading a volley of blue, luminescent weapons fire from the Covenants anti air fighters.

"Holy shit!" One pilot shouted over the radio. "Someone man the turret on the back and take 'em down!" Plasma splashed against the side of the pelican.

"This is drop ship Gamma zero three five. We've been engaged by seraph fighters. This mission's a wash. Returning to-." A plasma torpedo from one of the fighters steered off the pelican's starboard thruster, causing it to plunge into a heavy descent.

Confidence soon turned to panic as each of the ODSTs fought to keep themselves inside as they rapidly lost altitude. The pilots were all over the radio chatter. "Mayday. Mayday. Zero three five is going down. I Repeat we are going down!" He briefly turned in his seat to face the squad.

"Brace yourselves!"

A/N
Thanks to the readers who read my submissions and for those who support me. This fanfiction is dedicated to all of the halo fans and my follower elsewhere.
Peace out and enjoy. Mores on the way I promise.