HRP - Theta Company - Act I - Operation: Grasping Maw

"This is why I don't bet kiddies." Jake said to them both as he checked everything was in order. Ammo, systems, body parts all in-case of something going wrong. No fingers were numb or shaking and his legs were pretty much normal. He wondered what they would be like on the battle field or when returning from the battle.

As Chris waited for the inevitable drop, he passed the time by talking. "Hey guys......just so we're clear, we're one hundred percent certain we're gonna pop out into real space exactly where we need to be, right?"

"At last test, failure rate was only 2%." Skippy responded.

She felt the jerk as her pod moved over the hanger bay door. The second jerk came twenty seconds later as the pod detached from the crane holding it.

"Alright. Radio silence from here on out." Skippy flicked switches and brought up the blueprints of the base, transmitting it across her squad. "This is all the intel we have on the base. Cameras went dark a day before the attack. Our mission is to get in, enact the Cole Protocol and get out. Once we hit, we've got three minutes to infiltrate the base before everyone else hits dirt. Covenant will know we're there once that happens."

Skippy flicked another switch and they switched to an aerial photo of the area, a Covenant Cruiser hanging over the base.
"Theta Squad are pairing with Junk to hit the carrier directly, they'll be hopefully punching through its plating with their pods and disabling it from the inside. Everyone else is running distraction and defence on the ground to bring as many of the Covenant out as they can."

Skippy closed down the imagery on the comm link.
"Most of the planet is a death zone due to glassing currently but STARS will be deploying with us, so if you go off course, you need to get back on objective as quickly as possible. I know none of us are happy with Hammer taking the lead on this one but I trust them and I expect you to too."

Jake read though the blue prints while printing it into his mind for later use. He wasn't happy with their odds and felt sorry for theta and junk as their objective seemed like diving into hell. Then when their captain had said Hammer was taking lead. Jake had to make a small remark. "Lets hope they don't nail us to the ground today." Jake knew he had to trust in them to lead the mission but it didn't mean he liked the whole idea much.

"These blueprints suggest multiple ambush and choke points." Nikki said to himself, not violating radio silence. Scanning the blueprints he also found probably locations for servers to wipe, following Cole protocol. "Just like every other objective[]."

I felt a little sick as my pod jerked over into empty space, dangling me helplessly over nothingness. Skippy went over the plan and I listened quietly until she'd finished. I made a note of the command room and armouries of the facility, both of which would be strategically advantageous to us, provided the Covenant hadn't taken up a position in them already.

As they dangled over the abyss, Chris listened to Skippy as she went over the mission. It was as good a distraction as anything, helping him ignore the coming drop. He wanted to ask though if the ONI facility had any AI, and if there was any word on why they hadn't enacted the Cole Protocol themselves, or failing that if they'd be able to get some support from them.

Skippy felt the sudden jerk as they fell into normal space, and began the harrowing fall towards the planet. She sat in her pod, her visor polarised praying to god the stealth fields had worked. If not, they'd have been sitting ducks in the air for the Covenant Fleet currently glassing the planet

In his pod, Chris closed his eyes as the countdown beep began, each beep getting slightly higher pitched before it reached the final one. That jerk as he was dropped, internal organs jumping up and trying to get out of his throat. His world became a roller coaster as he and his squad plummeted down to the surface below. While he could not see anything, he could hear as bits and pieces of the pod rattled around, the pod shaking as it hit the atmosphere. Cameras came online and showed the outside world; it was daylight, the darkness of space yielding too the pale blue of the planet's sky. Clouds drifted by like smoke, the pods of his squad in his view now like black eggs leaving trails. In the distance he could see the curve of the horizon, the land glowing brightly though not from the sun.

Shades of bright orange and red, the surface already scorched to glass in areas from the Covenant bombardments. Large ships hung in open air like observers of a forest fire, stoking the flames still with occasional blasts of plasma. Memories flashed in his mind of how he watched from the fleeing shuttle as the Covenant ships began burning his homeworld, the cities falling into the flames below. We're gonna kill them.....every last one, he thought.

My pod beeped a short warning before I was violently thrown from the ship, plummeting towards the planet. For several seconds, every muscle in my body was tensed and my heart was in my throat. The sun was in my face as I fell, but I stopped noticing as my pod reached unbearable temperatures. From the small window, I could see the massive ship Ricker's squad was going to be attacking, silently floating over the planet. Further in the distance, the ships were bombarding the surface with plasma. I hadn't seen Alluvion get glassed, and I probably wouldn't remember it anyway, but I was amazed by the firepower the Covenant possessed. If we had access to half of that, this war would've already been won.

The beeping came and went and what followed was her innards metaphorically shooting into her throat as the pod launched to the planet's surface. She watched out of the window to see the many harbingers of the planet's demise sitting overhead like puppet masters while the plasma the ships were shooting out being the strings connected to the planet. She is awestruck by the lights, the changing colors from space to the internal atmosphere of the planet. The mixing of the plasma from the ships. It is all so beautiful. Soon enough the beauty fades to desolation as the pod strikes the ground. Her innards return to where they had started, but perhaps a slightly bit lower. She takes a few moments to collect herself before removing her restraints.

The pod began to shake violently as it entered atmosphere. guns rattling in their places. Anything loose in the confined space shook. The internal temperature of the pod increased dramatically. Nikki was sweating in his armor. He was able to see out his pod window the glassed portions of the planet. It was like someone took a blow-torch to a ball of dirt: some of it was glass-like and some was just blackened. The light from the plasma hitting the ground though, where the covenant was glassing, was an awesome sight.

Nikki was silently glad that these pods had operating stealth mechanics preventing the covenant from detecting them on radar. Against the kind of plasma coming out of the covenant ship, they would be vaporized. Not even toast.

The chute deployed, dragging behind the pod as it slowed the vessel down. At the moment it landed, punching a small crater into the rock, Chris felt a jolt go through his entire being as the force of the impact went up from his toes to the crown of his head. "Ground floor," he sluggishly drawled, "alien bastards, secret bases, and certain doom."

My pod jerked again as the chute successfully deployed, sparing me a gruesome death. I breathed a sigh of relief, until I smashed into the ground, the door of my pod shooting off.

Parachute deployed from the pod at just below optimal height for landing safely. This meant that there would be a few seconds before the pod landed on the earth. The shock absorbers would nullify some of the impact felt by Nikki in the pod. Some of the impact. There was some additional turbulence, the parachute fell off and the pod crashed into the earth. When the pod hit earth, sensors primed the door to be ejected, and ejected the door. The door flew off the pod and Nikki jumped out, gun in hand, checking his landing zone. When he determined the area was clear he went back to his pod and equipped the rest of his weapons. Then he waited for the all-clear to break radio silence.

When Jake's pod shot into space, all he could think was how much it would suck if his pod went off course but even so he stayed silent in wait for the pod to hit the ground. After some time Jake felt a jerk as the pod's chute deployed and he knew he was close but it was when he felt the shock of the pod crashing into the ground and the sound of the door popping open he smiled. Grabbing his weapons and any other equipment, Jake jumped out and scanned the area. Once thoughts that he was clear came by, he waited by the pod for further instructions.

With a loud bang, the door went flying off the pod and Chris was momentarily blinded by the sunlight. It had been so dark in his pod that his eyes naturally adjusted to the darkness, only for them to now get blasted by that damned sun. He hadn't had much training with drop pods, but what training he had made him bolt out of it with his gear, taking cover behind a rock. The order for radio silence was still up, so he didn't dare try hailing anyone yet as he peeked out and scanned the area, looking for his squad.

As she finished removing her restraints, she heard the sounds of the other pods striking the ground. She would then be greeted with her door bursting open, sunlight pouring into the pod. She pokes her head out of the pod and looks around and once she feels as though she's in the clear, she pops back in, grabs her weapons and jumps out of the pod. She takes cover behind a nearby tree, not daring to break the silence.

Moving to the next piece of cover, Chris spotted Evangeline over behind a tree. Darting towards her location, he kept quiet even as he got withing speaking distance, his only move to press two of his fingers to his faceplate, the age old Spartan 'smile.'

She hears a rustling coming to her direction and, in instinct, grabs her MA5K and points it in the direction of the noise. When she realizes the person who had given her the jump was Chris, she lowers her weapon and gives the same signal he is giving her. She looks around their location and looks up for any smoke from the other pods. The first one she sees is due north. She points in the direction of the smoke and nods to Chris.

"Roger that," he whispered, his first words since the pod. "I'll take point. Watch my six?" he asked her, still scanning the surroundings.

She nods and readies her weapon. If something decided to rear its ugly head out, she'd be ready for them. For now, the main objective is to regroup with the rest of her squad. That is what she tells herself.

Getting bored, Jake moved away from his pod but mainly towards the objective. He wouldn't stray to far until the rest of his squad appeared so he kept eyes up for anyone to appear. His hands held his battle rifle and his eye scanned the area continuously, catching smoke from the north and guessing it to be a pod. He wondered whether to move to it or to keep moving.

With Evangeline at his six, Chris moved ahead, casually jogging under the weight of his SPI armor, legs pumping under him as he advanced towards the pod. Drawing closer, he realized he was behind the pod, the door already burst open. He wasn't sure where the occupant was.

I was at the edge of the base, cloaked and ready to move in by the two-thirty mark. I was out of breath, but I'd made it. I saw some of the others arrive, and almost everyone had arrived with ten seconds to spare, with Evangeline, Chris and Jake missing. With no time to raise them on comms, we moved in as the other two teams smashed into the base.

For several long, silent minutes we crept towards our target, ignoring the nearby gun and plasma fire. A platoon-sized group of Covenant came into view, apparently preparing to defend an area from the other squads. One of us must've moved some rubble at the wrong time, but the Elite leading the platoon noticed us, and had his men open fire.

With the pod deserted, they moved forward towards the base. They were late and they both knew it, the only solution was to double time it towards the base. Eventually, they run into Jake and with the three missing S-IIIs all joined up they continue on. With the base coming into view, she goes over the initial plan, hoping that everything would still be going smoothly. They approach and begin to creep in, trying to avoid getting in the crossfire between the forces.

We're all going to get a punishment after this. It'd be better if we died. She thinks to herself

I saw Lily go down, a blue bolt of super-heated plasma tearing into her leg. She screamed, writhing in pain on the floor. I couldn't see Skippy either, and the fact that she was still silent made me assume the worst.
"I'm taking temporary command," I announced, dragging Lily into cover behind a damaged wall and finally breaking radio silence, "Charge forward, drive them out of cover and kill them." I raised my rifle and ran out of cover, opening fire on any alien I could see.

Reaching the other side, Chris found it was indeed empty. But then the sound of gunfire drew his attention away from the pod, turning back to where their objective was meant to be. Dammit......he thought, realizing he was behind schedule. Breaking into a run, he sprinted for the ONI base, and the fight.

Jogging down towards the smoke, Jake heard the sweet sound of a battle raging on. An alarm saying that he was pretty much late. Taking a different course, Jake started to sprint towards where he heard the gunshots. Passing by a number of pods he began to think he must have landed the farthest and sticking by it to make sure nothing would jump out only took his time.

"Maybe next time instead of just a timer, say make sure you hurry the bloody hell up." Jake said aloud as he made it over a hill and saw the battle below, his eyes reached his scope of the battle rifle as he scanned the area for his squad and luckily he he did. Only now they were charging into battle. "So glad I didn't take that bet."

Nikki tossed a grenade overhead. Towards the Covenant cover. If the grenade flushed them out, they would be out in the open and his fellow teammates would be able to hammer at their shields until they broke.

When Skippy had felt the rumble of the atmosphere in her pod, she had closed her eyes. A few seconds later and she was bouncing around the tiny space she had as her pod tumbled around. Now she lay upside down, coughing some dust away. She hit the explosive release charges on the door and tumbled out, lying flat on her back. Skippy got to her feet, dusting herself off and removed the weapons from their straps. She took a look around and sighed to herself, she'd hit a thin layer of ground and it'd fell right in on the cave below it. She estimated a good 30 metres to the surface from where she was now and to make matters worse, her HUD wasn't working. She gave the cave another glance around, strapped the launcher to her back and pulled out a manual flashlight from the pod's survival kit, attaching it to the end of her MA5K. Checking the compass in the survival kit, she made her way over to one of the side tunnels and began what could be a long journey. She just hoped everyone else was okay

The forest soon ended, Chris emerging from the treeline into a.....well, clearing didn't do it justice. The forest all around the ONI base had been cleared to form a neat circle, without even a stump in sight. Looking to the entrance of the base, he spotted what looked to be maybe some other Spartans, so he made a mad dash for them.

I sprinted forward as Nikki's grenade caused a temporary lull in the barrage of plasma fire and jumped over the wall they had been using for cover, crushing a grunt's head beneath my boot as I did. I saw Jared charging through the gap, and the two of unloaded on the pair of elites leading the group. The grunts, seeing their leaders fall, panicked and most of them rank away, save for one who activated his grenades and charged at Jared. I tried to take it out, but my magazine was dry, and the grunt detonated. When the smoke cleared, Jared was lying on the ground several feet away, lifeless.
With Nikki, Jeremy and the others managing to mop up the grunts, all that was left was to regroup and find the others.
"Karma squad," I said over comms, "Status?"

Skippy's comm fizzled in her ear as she continued her walk down the rather narrow cave, her MA5K at the ready. She tapped at it.

"Karma, come in."

"Does this mean radio silence is over?" Chris asked after Rosie's message ended. "Because if it does, then my status is 'I'm on my way'; Evangeline and Jake should be behind me." Finally at the battle, Chris went into a crouch behind some rubble, taking aim with his MA5K. "We late?"

With the treeline behind her she comes up behind some rubble not too far from Chris. She takes her weapon and aims up over the rubble. She opens comms.

"Apologies for being late. Reinforcements are approaching your position."

"Where do you need us?" Chris asked over the radio. "More than happy to take out some Covies." Peeking out from the rubble, the tableau painted before him could have been beautiful, if it wasn't so terrifying; smoke trails rose high into the sky, illuminated by the sunlight and looking to the solitary soldier like support columns for the sky. Enemy positions let loose bursts of green and blue plasma, tracing paths in the air to hit on rock and cover. Fellow Spartans returned fire, looking to make a hole it seemed so they might get in.

"This is Jake. Over a hill watching the fight and as Chris said. Orders?" Jake said after watching from a distance the death of one of their comrades. He couldn't stand around away from the battle for long and began a slow descent towards the battle. Slow and waiting.

"Right here." Nikki reloaded his gun.

(I'll be out for a few days. Be back Sunday)

"Cut the chatter!" I snapped over the comms, "I asked for your status, not a conversation." I moved over to Jared's body, dragging it into cover. "Hurry up. We have casualties." I checked for a pulse on Jared, and thankfully, it was there. He hadn't been killed, at least.
"Nikki, get over here and try to get him up." I moved back over to Lily, her leg was in a bad state, but she wasn't in any danger at the minute. "Can you walk?" I asked her.

"Yeesh." Jake said after Rosie's snap and continued to make his way downhill until finally reaching up to his squad-mates. He moved to cover as soon as he was close and began to scope the area for covenant, ready to fire when one reached the sight of his scope. "Hate to say. Wheres the late leader?"

Nikki moved over to Jared. "Jared," He pulled Jared's arm over his shoulder and lifted him up. "I don't think Jared will be able to continue this op. We need to get a med-evac for him."

Moving down to the fight, Chris was thankful no one could see his sour expression. Geez, I ask for orders I get snapped at. Do the wrong thing you get snapped at. There's no winning here.... Despite his mental grumbles, he did his job as he joined the team, taking potshots at Covies with his MA5K.

She moved down to where the rest of Karma were, returning fire against the Covenant. Once she gets to the squad, she kneels down behind some cover and reloads. She wasn't going to let Rosie's tone get to her. She had a job to do and all she needed to do was to get it done. Yelling at this point is just like speaking normally in these conditions.

She takes a peek over her cover after reloading.

Lily nodded and I helped her to her feet. We'd survived, barely, and the quiet was going to last long. Supporting Lily as best I could, I continued to move forward.
"Nikki, get Jared on his feet. We don't have time for an EVAC."

"Alright," Nikki slapped Jared a few times. "Naptime's over, snap out of it." After a few slaps Jared stirred. He moaned and looked around sluggishly. "Jared, can you stand on your own?"

"I..." He pushed himself from Nikki's shoulders. "Yeah."

Nikki nodded. "Good. Rosie, any word from Skippy?"

"None yet," I replied to Nikki, "Probably just a communications malfunction, she'll catch up." That was probably a lie, I had my doubts that we'd be lucky enough not to suffer any casualties on landing. One thing going wrong during an orbital drop would be fatal.
"Karma squad, move up to the main building. Stealth systems engaged." I activated my own camo as I finished, Lily's was damaged on her leg, meaning that parts of her were still visible. We'd have to be careful.

Nikki engaged his camouflage and faded from view leaving behind a blurry silhouette. Jared followed suit. They hustled their way to the main building. Moving from cover to cover, checking their corners and keeping an eye out for Covenant forces. Like an advanced game of hide and seek - where those who were hiding moved about and stood not static in place.

Skippy breathed slowly as she continued along the narrow cave. An explosion rocked distantly through the rock, disturbing layers of dirt from the ceiling which floated down and disturbed her stealth system. She waited until it settled before continuing onwards, checking her compass at every turn.

If she was right, she was only a couple of hundred metres away from the base. How she was going to get through the rock was a different matter however.

Advancing towards the base with the rest of Karma, Chris activated his suit's stealth function. Well....calling it stealth was a bit generous. In reality, the suit's photo-reactive panels would change colors to mimic his surroundings, both in color, patterns and to an extent, textures. So it looked pretty damn odd as he ran, the suit now mimicking the rocky ground and pattern of it around him, and that pattern was in motion.