Halo Draft

Hey yaaaall, Battle of the Folium Nebula grammar/final edits are coming along smoothly. Between breaks I doodled up an intro for thehalo fanfic i talked about a while back. I considered making the main character the Rookie, but decided to make someone else, and a slightly AU team based off Halo odst, one of my favourite games. Good idea? Don't know. Here's the first 2k words If it's trash just let me know

The Major
UNSC Broken Dreams
 4 Hours After Rupture

“They’re gettin’ hammered down there,” Rebar muttered, the team’s sharpshooter shaking his head as they appraised the hologram. The render of New Mombasa shivered with static, the city tinted orange by the briefing table projectors. There were dozens of colour-coded dots sprinkled throughout the urban landscape, red for Covenant, blue for friendlies, the latter of which had been reduced to a few isolated pockets of resistance.

“That’s why they called for us,” Holiday answered, the soldier’s BDU creaking as she shifted her weight. Like Rebar, she preferred to travel light, her battledress sporting minimal armour plating in favour of pouches for extra ammo and grenades, the holster for her magnum strapped over her sternum. “ODST’s couldn’t do their jobs properly, so they send us in to clean their shit up.”

“Who backs up the backup?” another of their comrades added. The orange highlights on his armour, and the smiley face decal etched onto his opaque visor, gave the man away as Joker. The more experienced members of the Navy ended up customising their armour as Joker did, but unlike ODST’s, these privileges came from a lack of authority than seeing a lot of action, not that they’d been strapped for fights lately. “At least, that’s our cover story, right Major?”

The last of their number was pulled out of his thoughts at that, looking down to appraise the shotgun in his hands. It was an M90 pump action, as personalised as the rest of the team’s gear was, with a flashlight mounted on the barrel, and ornate patterns laser-etched into the stock that could only be seen when the light caught it at just the right angle. A massive suppressor capped the weapon, adding around a foot to the gun’s overall length.

“We are helping, just not the way these marines might think,” the Major replied, stowing the shotgun on his back. “Time to get set, if there are no more questions?”

There weren’t. The Major switched the hologram off, walking with his team down the aisle, the ship’s winding corridors a mess of exposed cables and access panels. They had gone over the plan numerous times during the jump in, so they didn’t need much of a briefing this close to the drop.

Earth had been discovered. Despite humankind’s best efforts to keep the homeworld a secret, a Covenant fleet had jumped into orbit and had taken the port city after breaking through the orbit defences. Not even half a day had gone by and they’d already established a beachhead in the port city, and intel suggested this was because the carrier that had spearheaded the alien fleet had been the flagship of a Prophet, who were the highest-ranking members in the entire Covenant.

Unfortunately, the carrier had jumped to slip-space before anyone could board and take the leader out, leaving a giant rupture right above the city that had wiped out most of the infrastructure, including the orbital tether that housed the city space elevator, which had hung like a loose piece of string above the outskirts before collapsing shortly after.

The Major and his team had boarded the Broken Dreams to join the next wave of ODST reinforcements, their orders coming straight from the top. The Captain of the ship wasn’t exactly pleased with having a bunch of spooks on board, but the Major couldn’t care less what a Navy officer that preferred to fly over a battle thought about his mission.

Shock Troopers turned to watch the Major’s team trundle into the hangar, adjusting their custom gear as they found their designated pods. The ones not wearing helmets didn’t look pleased to see the group of officers, quickly turning away when one of the specialists caught them staring. The ship was quiet, the only sound being the clunk of reloading weapons and troopers loading into their pods. The human/Covenant war had been going on for years, and now the aliens had set their hooves on Earth’s soil – there was no desire for chat at this stage.

Their pods were the last four along the aisle, the Major slotting his shotgun into the holster next to his seat. Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicles, or eggs as they were nicknamed, were single-man transports launched out of the belly of a ship from orbit, dropping a solder feet-first into any battle at incredible speeds. They were equipped with thrusters to slow down the descent before you crashed into the ground, but apart from that the occupant just had to pray they didn’t get shot out of the sky before they landed.

The Major had used a drop pod before, but he still remembered wetting himself on his very first drop, his fellow cadets back then had never let him hear the end of it.

He turned and secured himself into the seat, seeing his team doing likewise, hooking the straps and belts over their thighs and arms. A one minute countdown blared over the intercom, the pod door sliding shut as the vehicle began to twist in place. There was a small window directly in front of him, the Major looking out over the horizon of Earth. At least they had a good view.

He powered on the monitors to either side of the glass, the helmeted faces of his team showing up on one, the navigation controls on the other. The status of their four pods lit up in green, the Major flicking the button that would allow him to remotely control their heading. It took a lot of guts to let someone else glide your pod in for you, and he respected his team’s trust in him.

“The rest of the troopers will be dropping in to assist with the evacuation,” he announced over the shared radio. “We’ll stick with them until we get close, then we break.”

“The Covvies are all over the place,” Holiday said, her helmet turning about as she read her tactical displays. “Why haven’t they nuked the city yet? Save us the trouble?”

“They want data recovered, not destroyed,” Rebar answered. “And don’t talk about wiping Mombasa off the map. I grew up here.”

“Ten seconds,” the Major announced. “Time to drop into hell, everyone. Duty Calls.”

The pods launched from the underside of the ship, shooting out like bullets as they angled towards the surface. The Major felt his pod’s main engines firing, his stomach flying up into his chest as he was fired. He gripped the joystick controls, watching his height indicator tick down.

Through the window, he could make out the dozens of other pods joining the formation, the egg-shaped vessels framed by damaged ships listing in Earth’s low orbit. What looked like a frigate had been shredded to hundreds of pieces, turning the world up here into a floating graveyard of scrap.

Beyond that, the orbital tether rose from the clouds below. It should have been connected to a shipyard in orbit, but the rupture had sent it crumbling to the ground hours ago, with only the first couple dozen support rings still standing near the base of the structure. To see such a huge project reduced to rubble sank the Major’s heart.

They dropped by the burning pieces of scrap, the world turning into milky whiteness as they passed into the clouds, turbulence making the Major’s stomach lurch. They streaked through the clouds, where the city could be seen below. Night had descended, but the raging fires that caked the city illuminated the urban expanses, casting it all in a blood-red glow, the winding mazes of the streets framed by the black, sparkling waters of the ocean.

“Everything’s burning…” Rebar muttered, clearly troubled even though his expressionless helmet was all he could see. Nobody consoled him, there would be time for that later.

“Ten clicks,” Joker reported. “Are we going or… wait. Incoming!”

The Major winced as a bright ball of energy speared up from somewhere in the city sprawls below, travelling like a comet towards the falling drop pods. The concentrated orb of gas impacted one of the pods in front of Major’s own, the vessel turning into liquid metal as the plasma slagged it.

More plasma fire joined the first, dozens of thick energy bolts sailing into the air from the ground, another drop pod off to the left engulfed in the superheated gas, its occupant no doubt cooking alive inside his metal coffin.

“AA!” Holiday warned. “They were waiting for us!”

“Adjusting,” the Major muttered, pivoting the joystick to the side. His pod narrowly dodged out of the way of a plasma bolt, three other pods following his movements as they engaged evasive maneuvers.

The ground was rapidly closing in, the height indicator slipping from kilometers to meters. His feeds shook with static as more anti-air fire flew past their pods. They streaked past the very tops of the highest skyscrapers, well off their original heading as ground fire forced them off course.

“Pop your chutes,” the Major ordered, his pod beginning to shake as it engaged the brakes. As the stabiliser panels began to extend, he watched in horror as a plasma bolt tracked his slowing pod, missing him by mere inches, but crashing into the building directly behind him. The splash damage was enough to rock him in his seat, the belts digging into his limbs as he was thrashed around, his pod spinning wildly out of control. He reached over and disengaged the autopilot guidance he had over his team, giving them manual control, gripping the handholds on the door as the g-forces began to stack.

His BDU was flashing red with the internal warning lights, alarms blaring at him as his pod bounced off another building like a billiard ball. He could feel the pod slowing, his engines were still working, but the city was rising up to meet him all the same, his body freezing up as he prepared to hit the ground.

Seela
Above the Streets of New Mombasa
1 Hour Before Rupture

Seela hated dropships. She hated them ever since she’d joined the Covenant, they were too small to have so many aliens crammed into the compartment bay, and the combined stench of the various species sent her sensitive snout into a twitching mess that further irritated her foul mood. This wasn’t to mention her body’s poor tolerance for inertia, a thing her male counterparts chuckled about behind her back, as if she had more reason to be perceived as weak by her superiors.

There weren’t many females serving in the Sangheili ranks of the Covenant, but Seela had slogged her way through a training program that had been rife with intolerant fanatics, and she liked to tell herself that being so resilient made her one of the strongest warriors to serve.

She’d been assigned her own squad to lead, giving her the same command as an Ultra, though she’d never been given authority over a fellow Sangheili or Jiralhanae, though she doubted they’d actually listen to her if that actually happened.

She fiddled idly with her white power armour, grumbling at how it pinched the creases in her leathery hide, particularly around the elbows and armpits. There was no female-specific armour, fitting her just like her brother’s oversized hand-me-downs she’d been given as a child back on the homeworld.

She glanced over at her squad. She had a mix of Unggoy and Kig-yar at her disposal, numbering at about ten in all. The Ungoy was squat, fat little creatures with methane tanks strapped to their backsides, with rebreathers connecting their mouths to the breathable gas. She’d seen many of those tanks explode under sustained gunfire, only cementing their role in the Covenant as cannon fodder and lowest standing among the races. She’d never seen one wield anything larger than a pistol.

The Kig-yar were a little more capable than the Unggoy, though that was like comparing two piles of differently coloured excrement. The avian creatures stood on a pair of backwards legs, their quills flittering in agitation as they chewed on their wrists and arms with their needle-shaped teeth. Their eyes were too big for Seela’s taste, always flicking about like they were two seconds away from lashing out at the nearest thing. Some of them had shield gauntlets strapped to their arms, others had long needle rifles strapped over their shoulders. Their armour covered their thin bodies in pitiful amounts of plating, the creatures so visibly lacking in muscle Seela wondered how they didn’t crumble under the planet’s gravity alone.