Halo: The Dropship

The Flight Captain, Jacob Magarby ran through a condensed version of his usual preflight checklist. Glancing to the seat next to him, his copilot gave him the thumbs up, "let's light this bitch!"

With the green light from the air pad and comms tower, he fired up his bird's engines. The tarmac below heated quickly from the ship's engines as the dropship's pilot made final checks.

Both hands on the controls, Magarby got the Pelican dropship into the air and flying in the general direction of the LZ. His boys in the back, Thomson and Garcia were strapped in and ready to go. Stratten was standing in the doorframe leading from the crew bay into the cockpit, watching as the two pilots got the Pelican in the air.

"Stratten! What've we got?" Thomson called out in his clipped accent. With family on Earth, he enlisted a few years ago to try and escape the monotony of civilian life.

Returning to her seat in the crew bay, Stratten pulled the safety bar down over her chest.

"Covenant attack on FOB in the city. At least three CAT Alphas. We're going to be busy."

The Falcon, which would be doing most of the heavy lifting, was close behind.

Magarby's radio crackled to life, and he listened as he got a status update from troops on the ground. "They've got air support, watch your heads folks!"

The pilot interjected, cutting him off to ask, "What's the patient count? We've only got one trail bird with us."

The man on the other end paused for a moment, and yelling could be heard in the background. "Hard to say. It's a positive on at least four in critical condition."

Magarby radioed to the pilot of the Falcon.

"Bravo-5, you catch all that?"

The radio was silent for a moment before a muffled "shut your damn mouth!" was heard. "Sorry, boys won't settle down. But that's an affirmative. All that and a-- heads up! Banshees, inbound!"