Dawn

Phew… I have lived for far longer than however longer I wanted to live. I am without my squad. They left me.

My heart stopped.

I lived.

Am I drifting in a metal coffin, or am I suspended within a prison with no bars?

My distress signal long faded, the only things that accompany me is debris. They too float and retell stories of past battles; their metal scars will not fade. However, who knows if my name is all that remains of me. My armor isn't anything special, but at least it reminds me that I was here; the visor reflects my face sometimes, and I see a glimpse of my own making. That of a grim repertoire.

All hope is lost. I will only hope others do not turn up like me.

The day is the 24th of July, and the time was 04:50.

"Sir where is the backup?! We are getting pinned down here!" Joshua-Marks anxiously shouted, as he fired quick bursts from his battle rifle.

"There is none! We were only supposed to be here for a day! Enjoy this vacation while it lasts; I rarely get opportunities like this!" I sporadically shouted towards Joshua-Marks' location.

I was close and personal to Covenant, I had a shotgun. A shield stood between me and them; the shield was a close quarters energy shield that incapsulated me. The shield did not matter though; since they would be a sloppy joe on the wall before they could zap me with their fancy guns.

Yoshio was positioned in a higher vantage point; he had a sniper. Yoshio rarely fired, this could only be attributed to extreme calculations; since he never missed a single Covenant head.

Falk had little problems on the M343A2; otherwise known as the chain gun, however his only problem was finding Covenant to kill.

Hemming had an assault rifle, as did Andrew-Marks; both exceled in cooperation between handling Covenant.

The Covenant was inside and outside the relay.

Damned bastards probably were the ones to sabotage the relay. In fact, besides the relay; communications to anything off this forsaken planet was kaput. The signal to any UNSC cruiser or ship was null.

What did they want so badly?

The Grunts were small little cretins; they were the cannon fodder Hemming was so proud to use as target practice. The small things were easy to kill, however; sometimes they will pull out plasma grenades to kill themselves and you. So, before they could look at me; I filled their face with lead.

Jackals were the same as grunts; albeit they were just a few extra braincells higher. The Jackals were armed with the same crap Grunts had in their arsenal, but the Jackals had an annoying shield. Those shields could be broken; yet since those were energy shields and would regenerate, you would have to kill them quickly. It seemed like Andrew-Marks and Hemmings got the memo; Andrew-Marks downed their shield by firing hell into the shields and Hemmings would shoot the Jackals without their shields.

Another fun thing about Jackals; is that if they have a sniper, you will die. I'm just kidding. Or something, these are just stories from past Marines and Spartans.

The situation didn't look dire, but it wasn't in our favor.

Elites, that Yoshio painstakingly took time to shoot and those that were unfortunate to meet the kind bullets from Falk's chain gun, were the commanders of these Grunts and Jackals. These Elites were on par with an average grown adult in terms of intelligence; meaning they had enough braincells to command the lower counting braincells within their ranks, and the Elites were as tall as an average adult male. Though, these ugly mugs had four jaws and three fingers, they could also wield energy swords that could slice even me in half. I Gave these guys a special gift, that all four of their jaws

could enjoy; it was an entrée of either my fist or a live grenade.

This small skirmish had already expended most of our ammo. There was no back-up. I decided to call a retreat.

Falk had run out of ammo prior to me making this command; he was using a pistol, and he ran towards Joshua-Marks and covered him while Andrew-Marks and Hemmings made their escape. Yoshio and I were the last ones to leave; our rendezvous point is a nearby mountain range; from there we could scout out the relay.

We did not encounter the engineer that we were supposed to accompany, we assumed the worst.

With the relay down and the Covenant jammers we couldn't contact the UNSC to send backup.

We were on our own, but if we retake the relay.

We could have our chance. For now, we had to scale a mountain.

"Why do we have to scale a mountain?!" Hemmings yelled, "Oh, is this part of your fun little vacation, 'Cap? Retreating and all that! I could have killed ten more!"

Really, it was! This is a fun vacation already!

"No, this is a tactical retreat. We don't have enough ammo to sufficiently take out that many Covenant." I said, almost rhetorically, continuing up the mountain.

The rendezvous point was a clear side on the mountain that faced the relay, that trip would take at least four hours from here to the cliff side. The map I was using was provided to me by ONI. It displayed on my HUD display within my visor. The ODST had a HUD as well that they were looking at. HUD stands for Heads Up Display; it displayed your health, although the health was more of a suggestion of what your health looked like and this aspect was more focused on Spartans as we couldn't feel pain, there was a mini-map that could be expanded as well. The map that was guiding us was downloaded into our helmets.

We periodically stop multiple times, every time was for Yoshio to scout ahead, but other than that we had smooth sailing.

After about two to three hours hiking the mountain, we had to side step around the mountain for the next hour to get to the vantage point.

After silently pacing up and around the mountain, Andrew-Marks said in a rigidly "I don't think that was there when we dropped."

I mean he was right, there wasn't a Covenant cruiser when we got here, and from this distance I saw the remains of the orbital ship that launched us out.

Seems Lady luck favored us.

However, Lady luck didn't favor Reach.

Still the relay had to come back online, but I was not going to take any risks or cut any corners.

Coming up to the opening was a sight to behold; we saw the relay and there was several drop ships and an armada of Covenant swarming and teaming around the relay. From this point, Yoshio pointed out that the Covenant was on out pursuit; there was a trail of Covenant trailing into the mountain.

We had to get out of here. Now.

Retaking the relay was impossible, our best possibly circumstances is if we can get to the crashed Orbital drop ship. If anything had a long communication device; that would be it.

The journey to the Orbital drop ship should only take about three or five hours however with the terrain being sloped and Covenant on our trail; it would be in our best interest to get out of here as quickly as possible, two hours.

However, the marines were tired; we had just crawled up a mountain to see an impending disaster. The sun hasn't risen yet; but this gave us a moment to plan.

"We could use the mountain as an attrition point before sunrise and use the darkness to attack the Covenant and take their weapons. This would eliminate potential pursuers and we would have more weapons for the journey to the Orbital drop ship." Said I suggestively.

Falk nodded.

Yoshio tipped his head in agreement.

The Marks brothers accepted the idea

Hemmings contemplated something and after a while said, "If we do this we need to strike in unison, if we leave even a single Grunt or Jackal alive, they will fire; if they do. We will die. Kill them all and do it quietly."

I was astonished about how Hemmings was able to think ahead for a second, but what he said made sense, if we didn't kill them all; then we were dead.

Everyone unanimously nodded, I included.

Everyone had knives we all found a nice tree or a patch of ground to hide in, and while we waited Yoshio scouted ahead and perched himself on a tree.

"Two…Four…Eight…Ten. There are ten." Yoshio said.

Unlike the Covenant; who relied on their eyesight alone, some of their ranks had good eyesight as well, but they didn't have night vision like we did. Night raids were often and frequent for ODST and Spartans alike.

Everyone was tense and expectant.

A Grunt walked past me.

After that an Elite.

And following that were two Hunters.

Hunters were the beasts of the Covenant's ranks. They were as akin to a tank as I was; but in return for their monstrous strength and weaponry they were dumb as bricks. The Hunters also had a very weak point; their back. However; we were luckier since Hunters couldn't speak; so, if we made a mistake killing one of them, the other wouldn't know.

The Grunt broke rank and inspected one of the trees; just out of sight from the rest, and it was grabbed by Falk who plunged the knife into the Grunt's eye. No noise, nothing noticed. So far.

I watched as a Jackal was decapitated by Hemmings and another Grunt was handled by Hemming.

Yoshio got the drop onto an Elite.

Four down, Six left.

The crackle of the leaves didn't in the least spook the Covenant, neither did the snap of the twigs. Supposedly they were the only ones that should be on the mountains.

Yoshio held three fingers up towards me.

And soon enough an Elite and two Grunts pass me; however, from the corner of the last Grunt's beady eye it saw my giant armor posted on the tree. But before it could speak or screech, I crushed its head, not stopping there I rammed my knife into somewhere within the other Grunt killing it immediately, and finally for the Elite; I tackled it and snapped what ever type of neck it had. All this happened within three seconds.

Seven down, three left.

The last Covenant alive on this mountain was an Elite and two Hunters. The Elite was smart and found something off, but before it had time to search for its comrades a knife came hurling towards its face with pristine accuracy and finding its way into the Elite's neck. It didn't die, but before it could question the source of the knife; Andrew-Marks put another knife in its neck. This time killing it.

Two Covenant were left. The Hunters hunted in packs, and it was hard to separate them from each other. Thus, a plan was formed, I would take one of the hunters alone and for the other one; all the rest of the squad would pile onto it stabbing into its back.

This had to be in unison, so when it came time for the execution; I counted down with my fingers from three.

Two.

One.

I stabbed the Hunter's back and wiggled my knife in it before ripping the mass of worms that made the hunter up out this didn't kill it, so I did it again, and again. Eventually it slumped over.

The other Hunter was having a harder time, with five guys all stabbing it.

They killed it, but it took longer than it took for me.

The sun still hadn't risen

We still had time on this mountain, we needed to gather weapons; we had scavenged what we could hold: plasmas grenades, multiple plasma rifles, and a carbine.

For what we had until this point; this was worth it.

Now we had to venture towards the Orbital drop ship, for this we had to give the Covenant the relay.

For now we journeyed towards the ship, since it had a communication device.