Pulling the Trigger

HALO: FALL OF THE SPARTANS

This is a Fan-Fiction mini-series of the final missions of some members to the SPARTAN program. None of this is real; thank FinalHaloKnight for twisting the Halo universe a little bit in the text below.

  Chapter One – Pulling the Trigger

  1100 Hours
  January 01, 2552
  Classified Location

  Nick breathed slowly as he relaxed his leg stretched out ahead of him, not looking at the engrossing direction his armor bent with his lower leg. Another Spartan- Sarah- had found a way to completely tear the ligaments surrounding his knee, and his shin bone was free to bend in anyway the skin and muscle tissue around it would fold.

  But Sarah hadn’t intentionally done it. She didn’t have any control of her body as she tried to pull him off the ledge; it was the entire parasite’s fault. A strange bio-warfare weapon being designed against the Covenant that would- if effective- turn Elites against Elites; destroy their ranks from the inside out.

  It worked well. Too bad it was the Spartans who now felt their own lifetime friends trying to tear them to pieces. It wasn’t just the SPARTAN program feeling the heat, though. Nick or Yellow Leader as he was now entitled with the loss of Sarah at the hands of Yellow Three, had lost contact with the UNSCN and scientist personnel on the five square kilometer facility after the containment of the virus failed.

  All one thousand seventy three.

  Nick checked his MJHNOIR Combat Skin for any breaks that could lead to his own infection. They didn’t know how it was spread, but he was comforted to know that an air contamination wouldn’t take him. Erin was next to him, prepping a morphine dose into a needle for him. Beside her was a Helljumper, gripping the stationary fifty caliber’s turret handles almost too tightly; his movement as he checked their surroundings was fast and jerky. Spartan 101, Ryan, was also still with them. He was the surviving member of the other Spartan team stationed on the facility, and had the hellish memory of having to shoot two of his teammates when they became “infected.”

  Before the new leader of the survivors knew what happened, Erin-154 pushed the needle through his Mark V gel layer, sending a sharp stinging pain through his spine as it pinched one of the torn ligaments. Just as quickly, the pain disappeared and he slowly lost feeling to his leg.

  Just as he was about to issue his evacuation plan to the others he had come up with, the ODST blurted out a combination of profane and obscene words and the triple-barrels of the fifty caliber machine gun turret started to spin their cycles. Nick, Erin, and Ryan’s heads moved instantly to the area the Shock Trooper began spraying with ammunition.

  They had found a defendable position on the ground floor of the courtyard, where an earlier team of soldiers had placed their turret. Their blood was still moist around the center of the courtyard, splattered across the statue of one of the fathers of Chemistry that Nick took no time to know the name of. Three stories of balconies and glass walls stood at their twelve o’ clock, and a long road wrapped around their position and exited to their six, where there was still a light at the end of the ‘tunnel.’ The “Infected” reached the Control Room and tore it up before anyone could initiate the Code Red Lockdown system.

  As the box full of ammunition next to the ODST tugged closer and the rope of cartridges in it emptied, they could see as several figured ducked behind the cement wall only one meter tall. Glass behind it shattered immediately, raining sharp fragments throughout the room behind it.

  “Hold fire!” A voice shouted over the Spartan’s personal COM Channel. Before Nick could order the turret’s firing to be halted, Ryan had already grabbed the panicked soldier’s hands and ripped them off the turret.

  “Friendlies at your twelve!” The same voice shouted out of the COM channels. Slowly, another Spartan and five Navy personnel armed with MA5B Assault Rifles appeared out from behind the concrete cover.

  “163?” Ryan yelled over to their newly discovered allies. A green light in his HUD relieved him; it was his missing brother-in-arm since the beginning of the last three hours of panic and chaos.

  Nick opened a COM Channel directly to Spartan 163 as he jumped off the third-story balcony to the ground below, leaving the UNSCN soldiers to propel down on some rope they had brought. “Report.”

  “We have a pair of ODSTs that are getting two Warthogs from the carpool. Everyone’s good to go, but your leg looks weird from this angle.”

  “It looks weird from this angle, too.” Nick muttered back. “Connect me with the ODSTs COM.”

  “Negative. Their helmets were busted up too bad; they ditched them a while ago. They should be pulling out onto the main road anytime soon.”

  Yellow Leader looked over down the shadowed tunnel. Nothing was moving, and he didn’t want to know what else he’d hear besides the engines if he used his helmet’s audio enhancement system.

  As the last two Navy personnel started propelling down, they both stopped for a split second as they listened to the sound of running in an empty room next to them. One of them was about to relay his worry to his allies when a horrifying screech pierced his ears from inside the second story conference hall. The glass broke, and a mutilated human jumped out, grabbing the soldier and tearing him to the ground one story below. In shock, the other released the rope and couldn’t grab it again; he dropped head first to the ground next to the other UNSCN survivors.

  Spartan 163, Kyle, was the first to pull his Assault Rifle across his shoulder and spray the infected scientist with 7.62mm cartridges at thirty rounds in two seconds; fully automatic. As it staggered off its victim, he had to put another ten rounds into the helpless soldier who already began to scream in pain as the virus made a direct connection to his brain.

  Hundreds of more screams started in every direction throughout the facility, and the three hundred meter motion tracker Nick had alerted him to five hundred plus contacts converging on them.

  He looked back down the facility’s road. To his relief, two Warthogs swerved out and the running lights pointed their direction. The ODSTs were only thirty seconds away if they pushed the all-terrain combat vehicles to their highest rpms.

  Which they obviously were; passers-by kilometers away from the facility could hear the screaming. The ODST at the turret began to tremble, and every second he was whispering every prayer and curse he could come up with. There was even a few in Spanish.

  Yellow Leader never had to tell the others to regroup in the center. The UNSCN soldiers were in a race, one of them barely able to keep focused because of the chills running across his body.

  “Form a perimeter!” Nick ordered to everyone, pulling himself onto a small cement barrier holding short plants still within the first weeks of life. “When they’re in range, aim for the head.”

  The ODST already had the barrels of the machine gun turret beginning to turn, prepping it for fire. Everyone did as they were ordered, quickly finding a position around the statue at the center and feeding their rifles fresh clips of ammunition. Each Spartan took a corner, giving them the best angles of fire.

  Five seconds past, and dozens of hostiles became visible on Nick’s side alone. They poured out from the roof, the second story, and broke through the double doors on the ground floor. He pulled his good leg onto the large cement plant holder, giving him a more stable position and a place to rest his elbow while he aimed. While he gave the out-of-control soldiers a second to get closer, he had to rethink his plan of escape. They had eleven soldiers all together that had to fit into two Warthogs with room for three each. The lighter-weight UNSCN personnel could hold onto the sides of the Warthog and stand on the small foot-ledge around it, but that could slow them down too much with a Spartan also in one of the vehicles. Ryan, Erin and Kyle could outrun the infected humans, but there would be the problem of the Spartan that had been infected. There was one still MIA, and could easily catch up to the other Spartans.

  As he figured out the plan, he pulled the trigger on his firearm and held it down, moving the barrel back and forth quickly. The ODST slammed down on the trigger, and he began the quick depletion of nine hundred rounds of fifty caliber rounds, which completely annihilated every “zombie” in its path. The rest of the MA5Bs fired into the wave of hostiles, piling corpses up across the courtyard.

  Nick pulled out his spent clip after seven seconds, slamming a new set of rounds into the chamber. Before the gas-powered assault rifle could vent out the heat inside the barrel, fifteen more rounds exploded out every second.

  “’Hogs in ten!” Ryan yelled out at the top of his lungs, above the screams and discharge of the firearms.

  “Everyone!” Nick shouted out loud another second later. “Into the Warthogs; wherever you’ll fit. Spartans, you get to make a sprint out. When you’re at the main gates, secure the guard post’s Warthogs until we’ve regrouped.”

  “Yes, sir!” All of the UNSCN troops yelled in unison, followed by a quickly accepting yell from the ODST as he rained hot lead onto everything ahead.

  Five seconds later the Warthog engines roared into the courtyard. They pile-drived through a flood of living and dead bodies; made a quick U-turn and landed the back bumper against the cement plant pots-turned barricades. Two soldiers immediately jumped over their cover and onto the LAAV’s rotating turrets, spraying fifty caliber rounds through the cold barrels.

  Nick pulled the second empty clip from his Assault Rifle when he felt Erin grab him, picking him off his spot. “Captain’s orders, Nick,” She quickly said, and carried him over to the right ‘Hog, placing him in the passenger seat of the ODST driving, who had the double-bar rank pinned proudly to the top of his right shoulder’s black sleeve. How he didn’t hear that order, Nick couldn’t figure out.

  The UNSCN soldiers piled onto the sides of the Warthog, holding onto the top rim tightly and spraying the enemies with the last of their ammunition.

  The Helljumper finally let go of the turret, only to make a leap around the left Warthog and grabbed the only open spot; sitting on the hood of the Warthog in front of the passenger.

  “Go!” Ryan yelled to the drivers. As the all-terrain’s tires spun in place and the heavy vehicles peeled out, Kyle grabbed the machine gun turret firmly and pulled up, breaking it from its extra ammunition ropes and its tripod. He jumped out from the center death trap and walked backwards, spraying one hundred eighty degrees around him as he closed the distance to the kilometer long tunnel that separated them from escape. Sarah and Ryan guarded his six, taking half of the other area and piling the corpses of the infected soldiers and scientists higher and higher, quickly making their enemies have to leap over their own corpses to reach their targets.

  Kyle ran out of turret ammunition, dropped the useless weapon and turned; tapped on the two other’s shoulders; it was time to run. They dropped their weapons and turned as well, but stopped in place. There was still one enemy in their path…

  A Spartan. Her helmet was missing, and five-inch dirty red hair covered her scalp. Her eyes had a glazy haze over them; her skin was beyond pale. The virus inside her knew how to kill the three Spartans, and was prepared to infect them as well.

  The rest of the infected stopped progressing, and created a semi-circle around all four Spartans. Only a few seconds later, a dozen crackles erupted through the tunnel; Locus anti-tank mines. The entire structure above the tunnel road shook, then collapsed down.

  The Spartans were trapped. As the roar of the debris began to settle, Sarah’s puppet body rushed forward at the three Spartans. Kyle was first to pull his M6D Pistol from its holster, but hesitated. He could see her face clearly, and years of memories began to flash through his head. It was his only hesitation, and his only decision not to fight.

  He couldn’t pull the trigger. Not as Sarah’s face jumped onto him; not as she sliced through his shield, broke his gel-layer around his neck and gave the virus an opening to his blood stream.

  Not even as the world faded in a pulse red.