Welcome to Gaia! ::

"When I thought I was going to die" Michael said. His faceplate was fogging so he tapped a button on his helmet while running, starting up the cooling system. His body immediatly went cold, or at least cooler then it had been. "I presume we have Warthogs outside, waiting" he said in more of a direct statement then a question. What he needed as a person was space and air. Inside the metallic corridors the air was musty, even when it was cycled through the air systems within the armor. Small symbols, almost like hyrogliphics decarated the walls and the feeling of being trapped consumed you like a dark, black abyss. It was almost like being in a dark cave on a planet that is under seige between two warring masses. Well, wasn't that the case? Wasn't that what was going on outside? The hogs would be their only chance of making it back in time before all of the Pelicans left. In order for that to happen, he'd need a guide and to be a leaders. He tapped the metallic sphere in his grenade holster and he said, "I need you to guide me through. Link upto my HUD and show me where to go." Immediatly following there was buzzing and zipping inside his head, like a wheel being cranked by a buzz-saw and in those last moments of feeling like he was going to explode, two arrow apeared on his HUD, one pointing left, and one pointing right. Michael turned on his COM and set it to the entire teams frequency, "Everyone, follow me. Pick up the pace or we won't make it out of here." He bolted forward in front of them and began his lead, following the arrows as they lit bright red on his HUD. First there was a right, and then a left, and then another left not so long after. Michael's chest was burning again, but he was determined to run until he made it to the hogs, or if none were there, the Pelicans. Right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left. That was it. Michael finnaly saw the exit, or entrance if you were the searched party. He spared one final glance back behind him and then flung himself out among the light. They were out and away from the enemy inside, only to be faced with an even bigger enemy.

Time.

Mendez panted as he ran beside Michael. "Yeah, we've got 'hogs waiting outside." As michael sprinted off, Mendez shook his head and pushed his body to the limit, seeing his heartrate and blood pressure go off the chart.

((I have been gone for a while, sorry))

Furon ran with the rest of the group, still sixth in line. He just wanted to get out of this labyrinth. It smelled, and he hated the fact the roof leaked, and he hated the fact that there was little to no light.

Michael turned around and looked back at the structure, and then yelled with Mendez, "Get your asses in the ships!" On the horizon, about 150 clicks from their position was another Sand Storm, daring them another go with the harsh winds. Michael grunted and dropped the empty clip of his MA6B and loaded a fresh clip into the rifle. Michael opened a COM to the rest of the UNSC soldiers on the planet, "This is Master Gunnery Sergeant Michael Hammer, reporting from the HQ. It's time to get our asses on the pelicans and get the hell off this desert piece of s**t." He heard a few grunts and ODSTs and Marines alike ran backwards towards the ships, piling in still placing shots carefully in the aliens. As soon as Mendez was in Michael jumped in after him, hit the hatch switch, and then ran towards the cockpit as the aft hatch shut out the enemy. The pelican was already starting to lift off when Michael threw himself into the co-pilots seat. He took off his ODST standard issue helmet and placed the Pilots helmet on. He strapped himself into the seat and opened up the channel to the speakers, "Everyone, strap in and sit tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride." Marines and ODSTs took their harnesses and locked themselves in, followed immediatly by the lifted of the pelican. "Marsha, glad to see you, now get me off this god forsaken planet" he said with a small grunt at the end. He was gripping onto the edges of the seat. "You got it Mikey" said the Pilot, Marsha in this case. There was some dull thuds outside the pelicans hatch and walls of the aft compartment as a few of the alien bastards tried to dig their claws deep in the ship.

"You guys have something else comming" said Marsha as she engaged the thrusters of her pelican and the Peli' moved forward towards the atmosphere, and then space. There were no more dull thuds on the outside, or screaming marines, just the silence, the big vacuum, and the UNSC ODSTs and Marines. Michael took off the pilots helmet and asked, "you think you can bring her in by yourself?" "Well, you did it didn't you?" she said in a 'you-bet-your-a** tone of voice. Michael smiled and set the pilots helmet on the seat, grabbed his ODST helmet, and opened the door to the aft. Silence. He was beginning to wonder whether or not the Marines and the Hell Jumpers were paying respects when one of them looked at Michael and said, "how many did you kill?" Michael couldn't help but smile at the Marines focus on body count, but he would reward him with some knowledge. "9 dead and one captured" he said as he walked towards the back of the ship where Mendez sat. Next to Mendez was an open seat, and Michael took it. It would be a favorable trip back to the Titan but it wouldn't be a short one, "thanks for comming to find me."

The SPARTAN fired into the little beast as it attempted to slice open the Marine next to him. He heard the reports of their forces finally returning and boarding the Pelicans. That just left him and his team left on this hell-hole. He clicked on his team COM and spoke calmly as he crushed one of the things in mid-air with the butt of his rifle. "Okay Marines, rescue team is away. Time to fall back. Immediate retreat to the Pelican." With that, he fired the last rounds in the clip at the seemingly endless horde of aliens and quickly ran to the colony's main control panels. He hurridly tapped in a few commands as his team mates fell back to their way off this rock. He barely had time to tap on the ENTER key, before he felt a solid thud against his back. His right hand immediately grasped his combat knife within its sheath and removed it, before swiftly swining it behind him at his unseen enemy. He felt the knife suddenly stop as it burried itself down to the hilt within the alien, causing its assault on him to end without much struggle. He looked at his shield's energy as he sheathed his knife, noting how it was drained by seventy-percent with only a few sharp blows from the things as he ran down the only unblocked passage out into the open. His Marines were already on the last remaining Pelican.

The gunner on the AP turret connected to the ship's frame fired over his head. He risked a glance back and saw the things swarming out of the passage he'd left and into the open. He'd thought they didn't like the bright light that consumed the planet, but when provoked it seemed they didn't care. Dozens fell over as the heavy rounds pounded into the unending wave of alien flesh. The Pelican lifted off of the surface as his feet left the ground, propelling him with a jump into the aft compartment and leaving the things below as he and his team rose against the planet's gravity. The rear hatch sealed and pressurized as he stood and looked at the survivors around him. Some grinned and saluted him, while the ODSTs, prefering to remain in their helmets for some reason, simply gave him the 'thumbs-up' gesture. He simply nodded in response to their silent words as he grabbed onto a ring above him in the dense netting on the Pelican's ceiling. There was a sudden dull thump-like noise behind and below them, almost silenced by the engines at this point as they gladly left with their lives, heading back to their warships in orbit for a well-deserved break

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The mass of aliens moved over one another like ants within the halls that had been defended by the invaders and abandoned. They recycled any corpses left behind, collecting every usable piece of flesh on the body as they moved throughout their recaptured home. Their continuous movement, along with the massive number of the creatures, would simply sound like loud clicking noises, which collected and formed a defening defense as they worked to undo any damage that was done. A sudden flash of light would be the last thing the beasts would see, if they even had eyes to begin with, as the colony's experimental reactors overloaded as expected and detonated, setting off a chain reaction. The colony itself was simply a test site for the UNSC's older models of nuclear weapons. The planet itself was inhabitable, but the space was unneeded at the time. There were some unexplained occurences, though, involving the mysterious deaths of several technicians. The project, however, was scrapped and left to rot before any action was taken when the Covenant assault on humanity began. They didn't bother cleaning up, thinking any environmental protection laws wouldn't matter during a war to save their race, and left most of their low-powered and practically archaic nuclear-warheads behind, safely stored deep below the colony, sealed beneath layers of concrete and security locks just above the chamber with the reactors that powered the complex. The creatures could have been a possible mutation of some common species that lived within the caves on the planet's surface, but that would never be proven. The reactors erupted and blew a powerful wave of pressure and heat upward, breaking through into the unknown armory of the facility, ending their use of UNSC equipment on this planet for good. The levels of walls were shredded under the combined power of the dozens of old nukes and reactor destruction, ripping through to the surface of the planet and shattering the structure in the process. A massive eruption of fire and shrapnel burst through the colony and created a giant cloud of super-heated energy and sand, creating an interesting show for those above as the creatures lost their beloved home for good, along with their lives.

[You can be in my pelican]