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Dirk hurried and kneeled down to the left of the door, brought his Battle Rifle up to bear, and settled his breathing. He concentrated on the door, watching out of the corner of his eye for the twitch of Michael's finger that would open the door.

The LTC tapped the enter button on the pad and it slid inside the wall where two shutters closed over it. He stepped back and brought his MA6B to bear, training the sight at chest level on an Elite. The locks inside the doors click audibly as they unhinged from each other, and it seemed almost like atmosphere was venting from the room as smoke and steam rolled out. Michael chinned the thermal camera inside the helmet and his vision was blanketed with a cool almost fluorescent blue. He side stepped and looked inside, raising his left hand with two fingers raised. Those two fingers moved forward and then he brought his hand down to clutch the weapon as he slowly progressed in the haze. It was dreadfully silent, and it was almost like walking blindly through a blizzard. He brought his left hand up and raised those two fingers again, twirling them through the air twice; split up and flank. "Captain, on me" he said into his COM before continuing radio silence. Carefully he stepped slowly inside, watching for heat signatures that represented something non human.

Watching the group of marines enter the hazy room in front of him was inspiring and encouraging to the 27-year-old 1st Lieutenant. 1 Lieutenant Mawhathy had just entered the corridor behind the large group from a side entrance, where he had been dropped off by a Pelican. Unaware of what the heck was going on, he slowly followed, Sniper Rifle held at the ready with a full clip of ammo already installed and scanning the haze for any non-human body shapes. He had no clue whether to speak and ask what was going on or take his chances and find out as they went. Choosing the latter with a silent game of "innie-minnie-miney-moe," he slowly progressed following the last marine toward the large, ominous entrance...

Looking ahead in the deep fog Michael saw a quick flash of light, temporarily shorting out his infra-red sensors and making the LTC blind. He couldn't tell what it was exactly that had made the flash but he knew it wasn't Covenant because he was able to briefly make out the silhouette of a large armored figure. But it was gone from view now, having dashed to the LTC's immediate left. Slowly he placed himself along the wall and released his right hand from the rifle, motioning to the Captain to get along the wall. It was then that he switched on his external speakers and said, "Flash." The response "thunder" came a second later as a large black armored SPARTAN stepped out of the fog.

He felt nothing. Feeling nothing was bad, very bad. Despite his best efforts, he could not will his eyes to open. His arms were not there, nor were his legs. His torso did not exist, he was utterly gone. Many ODSTs experienced this phenomenon during a drop, but it was always unnerving. There was no medical explanation as of yet, but many people linked it to the fact that falling through the atmosphere of a planet in a man-sized pod was a highly unnatural and incredibly stupid act. As with all incredibly stupid Military acts however, someone had to do it, and that someone happened to be him. Sensation screamed back through his body with a wave of slight illness. The roar of atmospheric reentry in addition to the sheer amount of heat on his person brought him from the hypnotic slumber he had previously been residing in. He struggled in the harness for approximately one and a half minutes before getting "comfortable" and assuming command. He could not reach his helmet but he could still talk, and the Company command frequency was still open.

"Echo Company, this is Tac-Six, when you touch down assemble at rally point Zulu. Platoon leaders sound off."

<Livingston here. First platoon is ready to go.>

<Lewis reporting in, Second platoon is good.>

<Dietz here. Third platoon is green.>

<Hapland. We lost Parsons on the way in. His HEV had a crack.>

There was a moment of silence. All of the men knew what a rupture in the ceramic alloy making up the heat shell of the HEV could do. Parsons was popular and would be missed. It was a stroke of bad luck for the company, but they had more pressing matters to attend to, such as survival. Their transport had been hit just after they jumped, and he knew that there were rather large chunks of Titanium-A battleplate falling through the atmosphere at a much higher velocity than the small HEVs. If an HEV was struck by even the smallest piece of debris, the price would be a human life. His pod rocked as it hit a pocket of low air pressure. The chute opened and the pod jumped into a slower descent. The main chute fell away and the secondary chute opened, the secondary was more of a solid airfoil than a chute, guiding the pod down like a smart bomb. The retro rockets fired and the pod slowed again.

The impact shook him to the core, but the hatch charge didn't blow. Normally the HEV's hatch would be launched off of the pod by small explosives in the frame, but those explosives only fired when the pod registered solid ground. This meant one of two things, either he was on solid ground and had a malfunction or he was in water. Both were annoying and potentially lethal options. Fortunately the HEVs had manual overrides for situations like this. The pressure seal around the hatch tore, the stress from reentry plus the supercooling from the water had weakened the composite material to breaking point. Water flooded into the pod, increasing its descent beneath the surface. The interior lighting failed as water surged around his neck. He groped in darkness for the switch to blow the hatch as he felt the pressure suddenly begin to increase. He was running out of time. By the time he found the emergency lever, his ears had popped twice. The suit was pressurized and had fifteen minutes of breathable air, so he was in good shape for the time being. He pulled the lever and the door shot out, releasing a large bubble of the super-compressed oxygen. His combat armor automatically switched to the internal air as he struggled to free himself from the harness that held him in place. Once free he unlimbered both of his weapons and attached them to the proper ports. Using the pod as a base, he kicked off toward the surface. The gear he wore was heavy, but he was a strong enough swimmer that it wasn't too much of a problem.

His natural buoyancy combined with the air in his suit helped him reach the surface in about a minute. He had been pretty far down when he had kicked off. He broke the surface and instinctively gasped for air, even though there was no need. Human instincts were a strong factor even in the twenty-sixth century. He began to tread water as he surveyed the area around him. Wreckage from the space battle above either burned up in the atmosphere or fell into the planet, creating relatively large craters or causing disturbances in the water. From what he could see he had landed in a lake or inlet. Judging from the depth of the water he decided on inlet. Hopefully he was right, the UNSC providers liked to build their manufacturing plants near the water, most often an ocean, to use hydrothermal power. Then again, Belfast had been built a while ago, so he could be wrong. The water around him seethed with fire as burning chunks of half-melted debris sank slowly, giving the water an unholy glow. He said nothing as he turned toward the closest shore and started swimming toward land.

When he was finally out of the water he removed his helmet and let the air tanks refill themselves. He ran a wet gloved hand through his hair and sighed. He had no idea where he was, or where anyone else was for that matter. He sat down and reached into his field kit; after fumbling around for a moment he pulled out a small PDA-sized TAC-MAP. The small device showed a map of the continent and zoomed in on his location, highlighting objectives and known hostile unit locations as the view changed. The small display placed him about twenty klicks to the south of Belfast. While it was good that he was outside of the Covenant kill-zone, it was bad in that he had no idea where the rest of Echo company was located. Disappointed, he sat back and disregarded the TAC-MAP, turning his attention skyward. Chunks of debris, blobs of melted Titanium-A battleplate, spent MAC rounds, Engine cores, Covenant armor, bodies, all burned up in the atmosphere. In addition to the debris, a number of HEVs and Bumblebee class life pods could be seen plunging through the atmosphere in sheaths of flames. With a small grunt he removed the golden oak leaves from his collar and placed them in a pocket. If he was spotted by the Covenant, best not to have them identify him as an officer. He placed the helmet back on his head and stood up, scanning the Company COM for any traffic.

Nothing but static, which was great except for the fact that it left him twenty kilometers away from his objective with an unknown number of Covenant troops in the way. Not only that, but he was virtually alone unless he could link up with the rest of the company. The chances of him being able to link up with the company after a misdrop like his own were slim, but ODSTs, Helljumpers in particular, thrived on slim chances. He would find his men, and he would get to Belfast. Maybe there he could do something useful rather than sit on his a** and watch the stars.

Lipton reached for his MA5C-ICWS and inspected it to ensure that it was still usable. Misrah made 'em tough. The rifle was wet but still functional. The damn things would fire anywhere and didn't jam often. He only had a few extra clips, so he would have to conserve ammunition. The M6G strapped to his chest plate was in superb condition as well. He slung both weapons and started his way north toward rally point Zulu. There was a lot of ground to cover if he were to get to Belfast, and ground pounding was what infantry did best.

He arrived at the grouping of Marines in a shorter amount of time than he had thought possible, and sat on his haunches to regain his breath.
"Sir, what the hell happened out there?" A medic rushed over to him, and pulled out the shrapnel from McAnders' leg. a half-foot long blade of molten steel from an unfortunate tank had lodged itself nicely between his fibia and tibia, but the sharp-eyed medic was keen to take care when removing it. A little biofoam and some bandages and he was good to go. Thanking the annonymus marine, he called up a link to his squad on the battleNet: absolutely nothing; House had listed all of his men as KIA as of 2 seconds after McAnders had woken. Gee, thanks House. Way to be optimistic and hold onto the hope of survivors. Sighing a heavy sigh, the Sergeant recalled his men to mind; Private Roland was a good kid, too spunky for his own good, but it kept the squad light-heartened. Corperal Yuang was the smartest damn b*****d the Sarge had ever met, always wondered why the hell he hadn't been an Intel Officer. Private O'Neal, the guy was a bit of an a**, but always gave the rest of them a reality-check which more often than not had saved their lives. He pushed them, and others, form his mind now; tears wouldn't make them proud, killing the ******** who killed them would.
The radio officer looked at him (had been for a few seconds, but McAnders hadn't been paying him any attention).
"Sir, we've got a few men stranded about 19 clicks south of here. They're ODST's, sir. Came down from the Orbital hell up there. They could use a little help, they're in some deep s**t, and it's name is Covenant. Get my drift, sir?"
"Copy that, am I supposed to do something about that?" snapped the Sarge; he was in just a little more than a sour mood after losing his men, all of them, in one goddam shot.
"Uh, yes, sir. Command wants you to take some men down there and extract them."
Sighing, Sergeant McAnders got to his feet and found his rifle. "Who am I going with? There doesn't seem to be any men around who want to hike for twenty clicks to get some men who could probably do it themselves."
"That's not for us to decide, sir. I'm sorry. As for men, you can link up with--"
The last words from the officer's mouth never came, as a beam sniper bolt shot through his cranium, dead center. Reeling back, the Sergeant hit the ground and lay flat, covered on all sides by ST's and ammo crates. Crawling form the corpse, he found a sniper nearby. Picking it up, he aimed down the sights. Not so thankfully, the Sarge noted that the Jackal was firing more shots into his position, but at least that let him track to the damn beast's position, and... FKEEEW! One shot through the head, the monster fell. Blood shot up around the Jackal's cover, and the body, sans head, slumped to the ground. aiming at its companion, McAnders pulled the trigger again. Click! Damn, only one shot in the magazine. The Sarge dumped the weapon and sprinted for the jungle like a bat out of hell. Super-heated plasma chased him as the remaining Jackal missed by inches, searing Seth's neck with second- and third- degree burns. Diving into a depression into the ground, he hid for as long as he could bear before he raised himself slowly to his feet, at every moment expecting things to go black and hot as he ate a plasma round... but he didn't. Picking himself up to his feet, he found, much to his pleasure, that he had managed to hold onto his MA5B. Bloody incfredible; he'd probably drop it in a few minutes anyway, so he didn't get too excited. Checking the Satelite feed (only a few satelites remained in orbit, as the battle was knocking them out of the sky like flies), he found his position... 18 clicks from where ever those ODST's had crashed. he figured he might as well go try to find them, since the local radio was out and TacCom was as good as dead to him, and he to them.