Mayday!

[Phantasm 08]

Here goes the first community story for the future Reach Fan Fiction!

     Warning lights flashed, and the hull began to radiate the heat of an uncontrolled reentry burn.  Gripping the door to the cockpit as tight as he could, the Spartan codenamed Phantasm looked to see what remained.  True to his recent string of bad luck, anything that had not been destroyed by the Fuel Rod blast was now no more than a slag heap from the burn.  And the pilot?  It wouldn't even be worth scraping what was left of him off the controls.  

     Another blast rocked the Pelican as Phan returned to the troop bay, and knocked him off his feet.  As he tried to regain his balance, another shot sent the dropship spiraling out of control.  How long can the suit counteract the G's, he wondered?  As if in answer to his thoughts, his vision began to gray and he could feel the blood draining from his head.  Looking around, he could see the rest of the Spartans bracing themselves for the impact.  He, however, HAD to have traded off on the stronger pressurization system and impact plating for his photo-receptive layer and control unit.  Oh well, no sense fighting for consciousness anymore... if the fall won't knock him out, the impact will....

[nightcrafter27]

     Night knew things weren't going well when he saw Phan pass out at the cockpit. He slowly clambered his way to Phan's limp body. Not struggling a bit to lift his heavy comrade, Night strapped Phan into one of the Pelican's seats, like the rest of the Spartans on board. Now to do something about not dieing on impact.

     Night worked his way into what was left of the pilot's seat of the burning Pelican. Things needed to be wired. Damn. Night pulled a solder tool out of his pack, and started working. 10,000 feet later, he had some sort of control worked out. He was no pilot, but engineers are trained to be good with vehicles, and if training taught him anything, it was to go slow. Firing what was left of the engines allowed the wild spin to slowly come to a stop. Night eased snubs of what used to be the wings into a position that should lessen their angle of descent. Now to hope those snubs don't get ripped off in the atmosphere...

[Phantasm 08]

Phan sat up, questioning the cool breeze that tickled his face.  By all accounts, he should be dead.  The intensity of the fall, the fire they had been taking from Covenant defenses, and most certainly the HEAT would have killed him long before landing, and then there was the impact to take into consideration.  Since he wasn't lying, crushed, beneath a sizzling pile of Pelican, he must have been thrown from the wreckage.  But how?  Unless...

Ah, there was the answer, pulling out another limp, armored body.  Night must have been able to work some kind of technological miracle with the Pelican controls, as always.  Oh well, enough dawdling.  Now that he was conscious, he should help Night get the rest of the team out of the crash site.  Slipping back on his helmet and peering through the thin slit that was so distinctive of the Recon variant, Phantasm went to grab one of his metal-clad brethren, and reconciled with the fact that he would have to sate his curiosity regarding the events of the crash later, when the team had gotten away from the crash site and was safely hidden from Covenant search parties.  Without a word, Phantasm and Nightcrafter worked side by side to scavenge anything they could from the grounded bird. 

(OOC:  Some other people need to get in on this, or we'll just have to kill off the rest of the team somehow.  And that won't make a good story!  )

[nightcrafter27]

     Night finished hauling the other Spartans out of the molten remains of the Pelican, and sat on a nearby rock, inspecting the gouge in the ground caused by the improvised "landing." The first of the survivors were beginning to wake up, but they were still disoriented [hint hint!]. Phan was aiding a Spartan in bright purple armor. Why would anyone choose that color? It was entirely useless camouflage, unless you were going to live inside a Covenant ship! Glad that his ODST visor hid his disapproving expressions, Night turned his attention to the remains of their Pelican. They would need a shelter if they were going to survive the deadly jungles of Reach. He eagerly gazed at the giant pile of scrap metal. Glorious scrap metal.

This would be fun.

[Scatcycle]

Scatcycle arose from the scorched ground after being unconscious for what seemed to be a very, very hard fall. He saw his comrades, and realized the pelican had crashed. But something was not right. Scat's HUD was not being displayed on his visor; it must have broken in the fall. If his HUD were to stay like this, he would have to fight from within himself, without helping markers.

Scatcycle took a step towards Nightcrafter and a stabbing pain shot up throughout his left leg, causing him to collapse to the ground. While kneeling, Scatcycle observed his scathed armor, and noticed something odd. Although biofoam was applied to most of his armor fractures, his left leg was untouched by the bio foam.

Scat balanced his left toe almost vertically along the ground, and managed to push himself up onto both feet. "Does anyone have any biofoam? Is there any left in the pelican?" With these words Scat turned toward the pelican, only to realize it was cooling from a very high temperature, and all of its contents were probably burned to ash. "Oh no..."

But Scat wasn't worried about the biofoam. He screamed in agony as he fell to the warm ground, leaving a dent where his knee guards touched the ground. "It's my... my... my head." As Scat struggled to get these words out, he had a sudden realization. He had a concussion. He took his helmet off and proceeded to lay on the ground. The pain was almost unbearable.

[nightcrafter27]

Night had already been jogging over to Scat, but when he saw his off-kilter comrade's face hit the scorched ground, Nightcrafter broke into a sprint. The longer Scat laid there like that, the more he burned his face. Pulling the fallen Spartan up, he carefully carried his injured friend to cooler ground. "UUUUGGGGHHH," Scat groaned as his left leg touched the ground. It was his only limb without bio foam, because it was afflicted with something the spray couldn't fix; a large shard of metal was piecing the back of Scat's leg. The Spartan team will need their medic to wake up soon...

[Phantasm 08]

Phan could hear Scat's screams, even with the distance he had put between himself and the crash site. In he heat of the moment, there was no time for concern. At this time, all that mattered was staying hidden, and those screams had the potential to kill them all. Nothing could be done for that now, though. Phan's entire training was focused on AVOIDING situations such as these, and Night, as good as he was with machines, could hardly be qualified to do more than apply biofoam.

So, with no more to do at the crash site, Phantasm went off to do what he did best: scout. He would be the team's first, and in present circumstances, last line of defense. Every Spartan still had the standard issue M9 sidearm, but all of their other weapons had been in their racks; thus, they had all been bent, broken, and deformed almost beyond recognition. At this point, only two Spartans were in combat condition, and two magnums would not be able to hold off any kind of search party. Which was what he could see, far off in the distance.

"Standard search party, three Grunts and a Minor Elite, looks like one klick Southeast of your position. Night, do you read me? It's time to get moving. I repeat, you have a search party heading your way."

[Imppa]

They...The Team was being transported to an unknown location. They were on a mission, of course, but what for? Imppa could not recall. All he remembered apart from that was that the Covies appeared from nowhere and opened fire against their unarmed Pelican. They were sent down, spinning and on fire, like some crazy malfunctioning firework, and crashed.

And now, somehow, he was conscious, leaning against a tree, and heard Phantasm's alarm trough his COMM. It wouldn't be easy to take down three grunts and an Elite with this kind of firepower and this little people, but it would surely be possible.

"Phan," Imppa replied trough the COMM (probably creating a happy surprise with his amount awareness): "We need to lead them away from the crash site, or at least not let them get here. There are still too many Spartans here that haven't recovered, and we can't risk losing them at any cost, not in this situation.
I'm getting over there. We need to figure out how to deal with this as smooth as possible." After that, he turned the mike off and said out loud to his Teammates: "And if anyone thinks he or she can hold a gun, aim and shoot, follow us!"

From his dazed and exhausted state, he snapped to action and rushed east, towards Phantasm. He could not help with the injured ones any better than Night, which wasn't much. But there really wasn't time for band-aiding now.

All there was time for was survival.

[Phantasm 08]

If Imppa was hoping for a hint of excitement in Phantasm's voice, he would be sorely disappointed.  By now, he should know that Phan would show his true emotions when the time was right, and more pressing needs were not at hand.

"The elite's all we really need to worry about.  Once he's gone, the grunts will panic, and they'll be easy to dispatch.  That should buy us some time, but a larger group will come to investigate the disappearance.  Either way we go, we don't have much time before we have to move.  Try to get those Spartans moving.  And for the love of God, give Scat some painkillers!"

They might be able to take out this squad, but anything larger would be stretching their abilities, under current conditions.  Not even Spartans could hold off an entire army, and that was what they would have to face.  They had to do something to shake off the search.  But the Covenant wouldn't stop until it had found what it sought, or was certain that it would not find it.  Of course....

A plan began to come together, even as Imppa made his way to Phantasm.  After Phan signaled Imp to stay where he was, he broke comm silence only twice. 

First, "Get their attention.  I'll do the rest."  And that he did, with an eight-inch blade to the Elite's neck and three headshots for the grunts, each one directly between the eyes.  They never even saw him, which reasserted the belief that his active camouflage was worth the thinner armor plates.  The second was directed toward Night, the only remaining Spartan at the crash with the situational awareness to answer.

"Can you do anything with the IGL rounds that some of the Spartans have on their armor?  I think I have an idea."

[nightcrafter27]

     Night was busy experimenting with the rotation motors from the Pelican's landing gear to make a moving bed to transport Scat. When Phan's call for IGL rounds came in, at first he thought it was Scat making the request. After several seconds of confusion, he radioed back that he could. Several launching mechanism designs flashed through the Engineer's head, but Night decided against building anything yet. But he could fire the scrapped bits of Pelican with a gauss cannon. He began ripping wire out of the now cooled corpse of the ship while awaiting Phan's next instructions.

[Scatcycle]

(deathbed = boring)

Scatcycle was sitting up against the fuselage of the pelican when he regained consciousness. It was no longer too hot to bear, something about the atmosphere of the planet they were on made it cool it faster. He stood up, only to have a train penetrate his head. It also didn't help that his leg felt like it was amputated. After the barrage of pain in his head was over, he examined his leg. There appeared to be a piece of shrapnel from the Pelican lodged into his calf.

He knew that if he were to remove it, he would have to put something on it to stop the bleeding. He looked up. A vast jungle full of trees loomed before him. Leaves, he thought. He stumbled over to the nearest tree he saw, and basically fell into the tree. He pushed himself off, and took a large leaf from the tree. He separated the two halves to get the stem like structure isolated. He then took a large leaf, and staggered over to his previous laying spot. He asked Night if he could help him perform the extraction. Night was busy salvaging the Pelican.

He would have to do it on his own. He firmly attained hold of the shrapnel, and pulled hard. He let out a deafening scream. Night rushed over, but Scat had already tied the leaf to his wound using the stem. Scat stood up. "I'm going to see if I can get us some extra weaponry. We may be here a while." And with that he walked off into the jungle. He did not know exactly where Phan was, but he saw the general direction he went when he went off into the jungle. "If I can't find him, he'll find me."

[Phantasm 08]

"Scat, I don't know if you've got enough guts for ten men or the stupidity. You could have at least put some biofoam on that leg of yours!"

Phan and Imppa had found Scat leaning against a tree, delirious from pain and on the verge of passing out. The armor on his calf had had to be removed to tend to the shrapnel wound. MJOLNIR armor had to be put on from the feet up, in order for the Spartan to have he strength to stand in the enormously heavy suit, and since the lower leg was removed, Scat now stood before them as soft and open to the elements as a molting crab. Well, this crab ought to at least have a claw, thought Phantasm as he handed a plasma pistol to Scat. Imppa sported a needler and a plasma repeater, while Phan had another plasma pistol attached to his magnetic holster, all trophies from the earlier encounter.

"We need to get back to the rest of the team, so we can finalize a plan of action. Night, see if you can override the primer in those grenade charges, and find some way to remote-detonate them without the Launcher. We don't want to be near them when they go off, and a simple fuse isn't going to work with what I have in mind."

[Scatcycle]

*too much control*

Scat stood up and tossed Phan his bio foam container. "It's empty because Enigma thought it would be cool to punch an elites mandibles." He checked the dial on his Plasma Pistol. It read 78. Enough for a while.
He then had an idea. He hobbled on back to the pelican along with Phan and Imppa. Luckily they met no covenant on the way. While they got to work on the grenade launchers, Scat carved a piece of the pelicans outer shell with the extremely heated plasma from his plasma pistol.

He asked Imppa for a needle from his needler. Imppa gently handed him one. Scat carved a cavity the same shape as the needle into the piece of medal. He did not have to actually fire the gun, the electromagnetism between the two plasma cores caused a lightning like sort of frame, made out of plasma, and much like the gas that comes out of a flamethrower that isn't being used. He carefully inserted the needle into the cavity and placed the metal a couple meters away from the pelican. He got the attention of Night, Phan, and Imppa, picked up a rock, and threw it at the device he had created. It exploded in a bounty of pink mist.

"You said you need explosives?"

[nightcrafter27]

     Night had to admit that he was impressed. For a guy who ripped a chunk of metal out of his own leg, and used a leaf as a bandage, this idea was genius. Scat amazed everyone yet again.
     But the science fair isn't over. For the IGL round bomb, Night fashioned a device to remotely prime a plasma grenade out of one of the pelican's windshield wipers. Upon further inspection of the grenade that Imppa brought back, Night recognized the type from one of Enigma's less than glorifying stunts. This type of plasma grenade could only be activated by direct biological contact. To work around this, a small lizard Phan had caught was to be used. This device, along with the IGL rounds, stuffed into a weapons crate should be what Phan is looking for.
      Noticing that Scat's helmet had a scrape on the back, Night asked if it wasn't functioning properly. Indeed it was not. He got to work, re-wiring and patching up the hole in the helmet.

[Phantasm 08]

Things were going even better than Phan could have hoped.  Scat's condition was not as bad as they had thought, and only seemed as perilous as it had because his first attempt at binding had come undone during his foray.  After Phan helped tighten the makeshift bandage, Scat was hobbling around more like a guy with a stiff leg than an old man that forgot his cane.  With more people to help him don his armor again, he was almost as good as new.

In addition, both Scat's and Night's ingenuity had produced viable weapons from almost nonexistent resources.  Scat's improvised "needle bombs" would be very useful when-- for there was no question that they would-- run into another patrol.  Night's cluster bomb was going to save the team a great deal of trouble, in a way the others had yet to only guess at.  Phan had to hope, however, that the lizard was as scared of Covies as it was of him.  Because that lizard would be the trigger that set off enough IGL rounds to blow a curious Elite to kingdom come. 

"Alright, we need to be ready to leave at a moment's notice.  We can stay here as long as another search party doesn't come, but when it does we should have left five minutes beforehand, and left a nasty little surprise as well.  The explosion should imitate the Pelican's exploding fuel tank well enough to throw off our trail.  Night, salvage what you can, because once we leave here, there won't be anything to come back to.  If you can't make any progress on Scat's helmet, we can trade ours with him in shifts.  I'll go out and keep watch.  Imppa, keep working on those needle bombs.  Scat, get some rest first.  You need it more than we do.  After that, we'll all take those roles in shifts."

And with that, Phantasm headed back into the woods, his pitch black armor becoming one more shadow in the darkening forest.