A Kiwi, an Aussie, and a Wyvern

Hilarity ensues! ---  July 27, 2555 0945 hours Operation: LUNATIC FRINGE 30 minutes after insertion The drop into Gao's capital city of Ansikte had not exactly gone to plan. First Sergeant Finley Kiel and Corporal Charles Dubbo had been wandering around aimlessly in the streets of the city before bumping into each other, only seeing the occasional crowd of confused civilians and panicked Gao militiamen prior to this. This was made even worse by the fact that their unit's mission was the securing of Gao's leadership.

Needless to say, they were in quite a spot of bother.

Now, having had come under heavy fire from battle-jumpers that had been deployed into the city, Kiel and Dubbo had decided to take shelter in what seemed to be some sort of militia or police outpost in the city. After having fought their way through several militiamen, they stumbled across a helipad - but more importantly, a helipad occupied by a Wyvern.

It seemed that the heavily armed transport had been warned of the ODSTs making their way up the building, and the unprepared pilots had scrambled to take off, but not fast enough. Their sloth would be their downfall.

The Wyvern was only a couple feet off the ground when Kiel jumped aboard, followed shortly by Dubbo. The gunship's crew chief panicked, and dove out of the bird, landing back onto the helipad.

Ignoring the convenient event, Kiel and Dubbo burst into the cockpit. Dubbo slammed the butt of his MA5C into the head of the pilot, knocking him out. Simultaneously, Kiel grabbed the controls of the Wyvern, making sure it didn't end up crashing. Dubbo grabbed the co-pilot by the neck, and forced him out of his seat while the other unconscious pilot simply rolled out of his. Kiel sat down and attempted to get a grasp on the ship while Dubbo threw the struggling co-pilot out of the craft's troop canopy.

By the time Dubbo had finished this and had ziptied the pilot to a handle in the canopy, Kiel had managed to get a grip on the ship.

"Not too different from a Pelican, actually." Kiel said.

"And when was the last time you even ran a simulation on one of those?" Dubbo inquired as he sat down in the co-pilot's chair.

"Er, why don't you man one the door guns until I figure out how to use the chin gun on this?" Dubbo complied, and got out the chair and headed back into the troop canopy.

"Alright, but you didn't answer my question."

 1010 hours It wasn't all that difficult to locate the capitol building, considering it had been marked on Kiel's HUD. The difficult part was getting there. Between Kiel's own sub-par flying skills and the amount of Gao-occupied Wyverns and Falcons, they were only making it by the skin of their teeth.

Dubbo, having been barely holding onto the door-mounted machine gun, was having the worst of it. He figured that he had already almost had about four heart attacks by now the way Kiel kept barely swinging past buildings. But, finally, Chips could see the capitol building.

"Objective in sight, sarge!" he bellowed over the comms.

"I see it, I see it. Slow and steady, now." Kiel shakily replied.

But slow and steady clearly wasn't going to cut it. They could both see that there was a transport on the air pad connected to the capitol, barely making out little figures hurrying to it.

"Ah, Christ. Hold on, Chips!" Kiel shouted. Dubbo's eyes went wide as the Wyvern began speeding up exponentially, and he was fairly certain he had pissed himself a little.

What both of them had failed to notice was the hostile Wyvern peeking out from behind the capitol, which began moving to intercept the ODSTs.

"Oh, shit, sarge! Heads up!"

Kiel hastily began firing as many weapons on the thing as he knew how, and they all went flying towards the enemy Wyvern. Most of them hit home, the others hitting the capitol and startling the VIPs, causing them to hit the deck in fear, buying the ODSTs more time.

But alas, it was not to last, as the Gao Wyvern managed to get of a few shots before going out in a magnificent explosion, hitting one of the thrusters on the ODSTs' gunship.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit." Both troopers said in unison.

Kiel barely managed to keep the bird afloat as it went careening towards VIP air pad, pulling up a little at the last second. The Wyvern slammed onto the transport, rolling over the top of it and landing on its back.

Arlo Casille and the other VIPs slowly began to stand up, stunned. The two battle-jumpers serving as their bodyguards that had survived the collision slowly approached the crashed Wyvern, weapons drawn. Kiel flung himself out of the troops canopy, firing his BR55H into the face of one of the battle-jumpers.

The other battle-jumper fired his M34 towards Kiel, who barely managed to avoid it by sliding down the top of the Wyvern. He touched the ground and fired four more times with his battle rifle, hitting the battle-jumper in the abdomen and sending him flailing to the ground.

By now, Dubbo had just barely managed to climb out of the wreck, with what he assumed to be a broken arm. Nonetheless, he managed to gather enough strength to level his M6G towards the VIPs as Kiel did the same with his battle rifle.

"Please, for the love of all that is holy, surrender." Chips managed to groan as UNSC Pelicans finally began to swarm the city.