Dragon From Afar

The Jackal had less than an instant to react before a armored, gloved hand clamped down hard on its beak, keeping it silent as a deviously sharp blade tore into its throat, purple blood shooting out of the open wound. The alien soon stopped moving, its body lowered to the ground by the black armored figure that had killed it. The figure, a Spartan, crept through the waist tall grass, nearly silent despite the heavy power armor he wore. He approached the edge of the tree line and looked out into the clearing beyond, taking in the sight before him.
Jin Cheung silently swore to himself as he beheld the Banished camp, though it was more like a base. There were at least a dozen or more of the various styles of prefabricated buildings the Banished were fond of, dropped from one of their orbiting cruisers and rapidly manned by dozens of the alien warriors. Around the perimeter were various turret emplacements, consisting of traditional plasma cannons as well as the ones the Brutes called a “meat shredder”, which while descriptive enough, the UNSC preferred the far simpler Scrap Cannon. The inside of the base wasn’t any less well defended, with Jackal and Brute snipers seemingly placed on every rooftop, along with at least six different squads patrolling the area, and a dozen Ghosts and Choppers by the vehicle depot.
None of that concerned the lone Spartan though, as he had spent years fighting the Covenant’s disparate remnants across the stars as part of both the Delta-6 Division and the Special Activities Division. What worried him was the massive, half-assembled tripodal gun mount that was being constructed just a few hundred meters away from the base, the beginnings of one of the Banished’s Gorespike anti-aerospace cannons. The UNSC’s scattered naval presence in the system was already under considerable threat due to Banished warships and hunter-killer craft; the establishment of a cannon network like this would effectively lockdown airspace in and around Banished territory on the planet, making any attempt to remove their occupation exponentially more difficult.
He frowned as he continued to observe; this was meant to be a recon mission to collect actionable intelligence for UNSC and militia forces, but that cannon changed priorities. Depending on when construction started, it might be only another couple hours before the final components were brought down and installed. During the war, it was a known fact that the Covenant could completely assemble one of their various AA guns in just a matter of hours through the use of dropships. The UNSC and locals couldn’t afford that sort of operational hurdle, and Jin didn’t have time to call for back-up; whatever he was going to do, it had to be done quickly, or he’d lose that chance.
He spent only another few minutes surveying the base before breaking contact, quietly making his way back to the dead Jackal and liberating its beam rifle from its corpse before heading back to his position. Once back, he linked the beam rifle to his Heads-Up Display, a reticle resembling a tiny pair of parentheticals appeared in front of his face. He brought the alien sniper to bear, spying a single Brute in ornate red armor, a Captain by the looks of it. The hulking alien was barking orders at various groups of Grunt laborers and their Brute overseers, completely unaware of the crosshairs dancing across his skull.
Jin held his breath and squeezed the trigger. A single lance of ionized particles lashed out, zipping across the field and into the Captain’s head, causing him to stumble. The first shot had caused the Captain’s shields to flare and collapse from the sheer kinetic force of the impact, and before any of them had time to react, a second particle beam raced forward. This time it punched clean through the Brute’s helmet, head, and back out the other side, leaving the Captain to collapse to the ground, brain matter leaking out from its new orifice. The two shots in rapid succession had caused the beam rifle to overheat, forcing it to automatically vent heat and noxious gasses, and though his armor likely would’ve filtered them all out, Jin found himself instinctively holding the rifle away from himself until it had sufficiently cooled.
It wasn’t long until the entire base was on alert, with troops running to their predetermined defense positions and the rooftop snipers scanning the area where the offending shots had come from. These prying eyes were quickly met with more fire, with Jin prioritizing the sharper-eyed Jackals first before moving to target the Brutes, their frail avian bodies crumpling to the ground as their skulls received new ventilation. The Brutes, however, finally began returning fire, mostly just in the general direction of his shots rather than at him specifically, though it was still close enough that he made the decision to relocate. He dropped the rifle and, still mostly hidden in the grass, began to move further down the treeline.
Time was of the essence now, the Banished were sure to call for reinforcements in order to ensure the security of this site and its assets. While he might have been able to deal with the garrison troops already present, if they brought in another hundred troops to reinforce the base, he would rapidly be pushed beyond what he was capable of. Jin knew he needed to destroy that gun, and quickly, and he’d have to do it alone. As he moved through the forest, he cracked the briefest of smiles inside his helmet. Many would have considered this a suicide mission, even for a Spartan, but this is what he was trained for. This was his job, and despite all outward appearances, he loved doing it.
Category:Demons of Hope
Category:The Weekly