User:Ahalosniper/A Simple Objective

1: Scouts

 * Sand blew up into the face of the crab as it skittered up onto the land. It’s red shell kept it perfectly camouflaged underwater, half buried beneath the silt at the bottom of the ocean. But here, it was a calling card for the gulls. It was in a race for it’s life to get to the rocky tide pools, where it was first born. As fast as it was, the brilliant crimson of it’s back caught the attention of a gull flying overhead.
 * It swooped down, and the crab began to feel a humming noise through the ground. The gull landed in front of it, blotting out his vision with white feathers. The crab raised it’s pincers and snapped. The humming grew louder. The gull’s beak came down, once, twice, and it had one of the crab’s legs in it’s grasp. The humming turned deafening, the gull cried out in pain and surprise, and the crab dropped into the sand.

The armored figure kicked out at the gull from atop his four-wheeled cycle, and the bird flew off.
 * “I knew I’d hit ‘im, he wasn’t paying attention!” the man said into his helmet speaker, looking at the other quad rider.
 * “Well why didn’t you swerve? With all this beach, you could’ve missed him by a mile!” replied the sand-colored form, stopping his own vehicle.
 * “Because then I would’ve hit you or the rocks.” he groaned. He dismounted the small vehicle and examined the underbelly of the vehicle. “At least the mongoose looks okay,” he murmured, plucking feathers from the engine.
 * “Hey, Kodiak, looks like someone owes you a debt.” The other man pointed at the crab, which scuttled away and into the tide pool, hiding under a rock.
 * “Funny, Dyne. Well, that’s why the gull didn’t move, I guess.” Dyne’s Mark VI/S bodyplate was a beaten sand color, with flat, red pauldrons. Kodiak’s own armor was built the same, with a two-tone gray coloration and different body and helmet. While different colors, their helmets were otherwise identical, mostly rounded, with a golden faceplate in the front and a small visor over it. Kodiak got back on his ATV when a burst of static and a woman’s voice came in on the radio in his helmet.
 * “Calling all scouting teams in the vicinity of Solace Mountain, northern slope, we have a non-responsive exploration team at Grid 40-by-Six-Eight. Faulty com line suspected. Need someone for tech support, over.”
 * Kodiak reached up to his helmet and switched to long-range frequency. “Erin, this is Spartan Commander Kodiak, Beta Spartan Team Ion. We’ll check it out, over.”
 * “Confirmed Ion. Checkpoint out.”
 * Kodiak switched back to his team frequency. Dyne groaned. “Come on, I was looking forward to getting back to the barracks. Yeah, it’s just a cot, but I can still sleep on it.”
 * “You can sleep later, besides, in my book, a bit more on the paycheck is worth fixin’ a bad radio any day.”
 * "We don't even get paid . . ." Dyne muttered.
 * The pair wheeled the mongooses around, leaving the crab to sulk under a rock.


 * The two vehicles made short work of the miles between them and their goal. After cutting off the beach, they entered a rough trail that had been cut only the day before. This wasn’t Earth. Nearly twenty years after the Human-Covenant War, exploration had begun again. There were still parts of the galaxy yet unexplored. TGL-49 was very Earth-like. In this new age, new Spartans sought to keep this peace, a far cry from their program’s original purpose of subjugation and war.
 * Kodiak’s mongoose ATV bumped along the broken vegetation and rough ground of the trail. It had been carved by a giant forest-eating machine called a Golem crawler. It left behind a path that even an Elephant Troop Transport could use. Kodiak wished he had a Warthog jeep, or something that rode smoother over the debris it left behind.
 * The Spartans ran into a steep uphill climb, and though the vehicles slipped and fell back in the mud, they stayed on the fallen branches and managed to pull themselves to the crest of the ridge. They could see for miles over the jungle landscape, down into the forested mountain valleys and to the nearby coastline. Down the slope in front of them, the cut area snaked into one of the valleys and out of sight.
 * Dyne turned, “The team wasn’t supposed to go down that valley.”
 * “You know marines. They probably saw a funny looking rock and went to get a picture. They always try to get into the first colonization brochures.”
 * Dyne held down a button on the side of his helmet to employ his binoculars. “I see the crawler. It’s half a kilo down the stone valley, in the middle of a clearing. There’s a cave there, too.”
 * “That could explain the com trouble. See anyone with the Golem?”
 * “No. Must all be in the cave.”
 * Kodiak sighed. “Genius. Come on, let’s go get ‘em.”


 * Shortly, the two armored figures emerged from the cut path and into the clearing. The black-and-yellow crawler sat silently, each of the units of the snake-like thing riding on two thick rubber tires. Dyne dismounted and looked around.
 * “Hello?” he shouted. No answer was given to his call.
 * Kodiak came up beside him. “Odd they didn’t leave someone with the rig. You search around, I’ll take a look at this thing.”
 * Dyne moved towards the cave mouth, which was covered by moss and vines. Kodiak clambered up and into the Golem’s cab. It looked like any old truck cabin, a layer of dust coating the dashboard. He could see out in front to the crawler’s giant mandibles, which ripped apart trees and moved boulders with ease. A couple pictures were stuck to the flip-down sun visor. He took them down and saw one of a man and woman kissing; the second was the same man in standard marine outfitting. He replaced the pictures and pulled the short-range radio off it’s holder.
 * “Checkpoint, this is Team Ion. Found the rig, but no servicemen, over.”
 * There was nothing but static that came through the receiver. Kodiak guessed the rock valley walls were interfering with the connection. He fumbled with his helmet and switched to the satellite link, and repeated his message. Still nothing. He climbed out of the cab as Dyne walked up with an object.
 * “Something’s wrong,” Dyne said simply. “A marine team might miss a check-in.” He raised the blood smeared item. Though it was different colors, the helm was identical to their own. “A Spartan team wouldn’t.”