Halo: A Soldier's Story

Hell level 3 Loaded: Offense

"Get ready, Departure squads, 250 yards until we reach the split point" Geyser squad's leader shouted out.

I nodded in response while readying my gun. I had gotten a BR Battle Rifle.

It fires 9.5MM rounds from a 60 round clip. Semi-Automatic, Three-Round Burst. Deadly and accurate in close to mid range situation.

I remember my exact words when they were assigning weapons for the squad

"200 yards."

Raze squad was behind the other two departure squads. So when split up we would defend the rear.

And I was in the rear of the rear which meant if we got attacked from the back when we split off I would get the pleasure of meeting the Covenant first.

"150 yards to split" Geyser Squads leader yelled

"Careful," Luke said while grabbing my shoulder and pulling me back.

I had almost stepped into one of the many craters that dotted the landscapes. This one was small, probably just left by Fuel Rod blast (but big enough for my get tripped up and land flat on my face), but some the craters were much bigger; some being about foot deep and wide and scorched black. Alien Tank I thought to myself.

Then I looked over at one of the widest craters. It looked over 45 feet in diameter but wasn't as deep looking a mere 10 feet deep. It was very different from all the other craters around it.

"Mac Blast" a soldier who was marching alongside me commented. "From the looks of it set to wide shot, hope any Covenant punks that were there got what coming to them" he continued.

Mac blast. The UNSC's massive cannon attached to warships. I remember learning about It I training camp because how much it interesting it seemed to me.

From my extensive look (even more than we were required to learn) Its a large coilgun (same basic principle as guass weapons;The cannon fires a massive metal projectile using a linear system of magnetic fields coils down a long shaft, increasing the projectile's velocity until it carries an incredible amount of kinetic energy.)

MAC guns are the only non-nuclear weapons in the UNSC arsenal capable of effectively reducing or destroying Covenant capital ships' energy shields.

They are two big difference version of the massive weapons.

A Smaller shipborne versions can take as many as three hits to overload a covenant ships shield.

While a much larger orbital platform version can put a hole through a most Covenant cruisers ships in one shot.

And this the part that blew my mind when I first read it. The total energy released by the impact of a MAC round fired from a UNSC Orbital Defense Platform releases a colossal 194.7 exajoules of energy (46.5 gigatons). To put this in perspective, this is about 3,090,195 times the energy released from the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima in World War II hundreds years ago

Though looking at the much smaller craters I saw I realized that it must have been a mini mac from one of ships.

Same tech but much smaller scale. It's used to directly help UNSC troops on the ground (anything bigger and the Ally troops would be destroyed as well).

"Umm yeah, me too" I replied. He looked straight at me right into my eye. I couldn't take the intensity of his stare and quickly looked down."

"Hmm," he grunted, "Won't last three months in the,s" he said while speeding up his pace.

I looked up at him and stared at him speechless as he continued forward until I lost sight of him in the mass of soldiers.

"Dang" Luke spoke up from beside me "Well isn't he just a ray of sunshine."