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"Two O'clock, high! Down thirty degrees, pan left!" Angel called out, into his mind, the most efficient routes the streams of bullets should follow, borrowing minimal processing power from the collective Mjolnir armor to make the necessary calculations. Ashton held down each trigger with a bone-tight grip, and his gritted teeth put so much strain on his gums that thy began to bleed slightly. Miniscule trickles of blood pooled in his lips, and he sucked back the liquid, and swallowed it along with spit and bile.

"I can't pin them all down forever, Angel!!" He shouted over the din, and watched as his ammo-counter on the turret plummeted at a rate of 750 rpm, and the heat wafting from the red-hot barrel was becoming unbearable. Soon, the gun would sieze up, and most likely melt together, becoming inoperable. He had to slow his gusto, and began restraining himself to small bursts of 10 or 20 rounds, picking off individual sentinels that threatened Karr, Warren, and Lee. They were some of the few remaining soldiers left: the Sentinels were terribly efficient killing machines.

"Ashton, lose the turret, now!!"
Before Ashton could get his momentum going, another marine, whom he could not recognize from behind, muscled Ashton out of the turret and took his place and began unloading as well.
Staggering back from the firefight, Ashton snapped out of his bravado, and brought his BR55 to bear as he retreated. He picked off several sentinels with tight groups of burst-fire, and finally hid behind his original set of crates, only to find the Captain there as well.

Karr's anger fumed to a point. "YOU SAID 5 MINUTES 20 MINUTES AGO! Now god damnit I want your asses here yesterday! My men are dying and we need to get out of here NOW!" He yelled into the COM.

"Lieutenant! We've got 5 minutes untill they touch shore. We're all spread out on what I think is a make-shift line. I'm gambling on regrouping. Orders?"

[last post of teh night]

"Sir, leave it to me." Karr said.

He opened his channel. "Marines! We have 5 minutes to close shop. And we need to re-group fast. So here is what I have planned.
SPARTAN's: I want you to man the turrets and take this fight back.
Marines: On my order, Grenades loose; The heat from the explosions alone will confuse them enough to let us fall back to here." He dropped a NAV marker on the corpse of the Pelican. "If we are all in one position, then we can bunker down for 5 minutes."
He switched to the LT's COM.
"Sir, do I have a go for this?" He asked.

Seth paused a moment to hear Karr's plan, it was solid, he had forgotten about the SPARTANs.

He wanted to ask Are you sure this will work? But he knew the man wouldn't say it unless he did. "You got a Green-light Karr, Henry and I will fall back when those SPARTANs get up here-"

There was a loud explosion and Seth instinctively shielded his face, Seth glanced and saw Henry's turret destroyed, and Henry himself now at Seth's location. "One of our Turrets are down. Get that SPARTAN something bit and send them up here."

Seth kept firing, now conservatively, "Make sure Halsey's with the first group who moves back." He paused and added, "She's priority Karr."

Lipton stood and watched the strange spectacle. He Looked down and shook his head. He walked back to the weapons rack and replaced his BR55HB-SR with a W/AV Mark 6 Grindel/Galileian Nonlinear Rifle. Almost all combat-active drop ships had them. It was standard procedure to carry a large amount of ordinance, and the Mark 6 G/GNR was good for more than just killing things. Often times it was used as a tool for helping with the creation of road-blocks or making shafts in mountains. OK so it was only good for killing things. But these things were killing the Marines down there, and they didn't seem to be damaged at all by the small-arms fire. He checked the weapon's charge, and satisfied with the results, walked to the front of the craft, where Commander Hammer stood.

"What's your plan sir?"

They were running out of time, and in five minutes there might not be a shore party to rescue.

"Because you're the one dumb enough to be the closest!" Ashton hollared back, and fired a semi-sustained burst into the nearest Sentinel. It dropped to the ground, but not before it landed a fatal shot on yet another Marine. Ashton was in no position to try and resussitate a surely-dead blackened corpse, and he shunted the remorse into a small part of his mind. For later, he told himself.
"There might not be a 'later', Lance Corporal! Keep firing, our ranks are starting to form around the Pelican, see?"

Ashton motioned for the Captain that he would make a bolt for the skeletonized drop ship, and as soon as he had confirmation, he ran as fast as he could carry himself to the small troop bay, which offered minimal, but vital, cover.
Just then, he noticed the marine who had just collapsed, and bolted from his cover for all of three seconds as he retrieved the man. Mitchell? he mused, long time no see, neh? Dansmith began rummaging around inside his diminished pack until he found some equiptment that was not either burned or used up, and layed down covering fire as more Sentinels found purchase upon the few and scattered men. In the background, the always silent and professional SPARTAN's were kicking a** and taking names, but the same could not be said about the marine grunts, whose casualties had by now topped 90% or higher.