Road To Voi (work in progress)

Arc 1: Chapter 1

The year is 2552.

Humanity is at war with the alien alliance known as "The Covenant".

We are losing.

The Covenant have burned our worlds, killing billions in their genocidal campaign.

Earth is our last bastion - a carefully guarded secret.

But not anymore.

A Covenant carrier has breached Earth's defenses and attacked the African mega-city, "New Mombasa".

Initial reports confirm major damage and heavy civilian casualties.

Now military leaders of the "United Nations Space Command" have prepared their response...

Teams of highly-trained "Orbital Drop Shock Troopers" are ready to assault the carrier from Navy ships in low orbit.

This is a near-suicidal mission.

But these troopers are the best of the best.

And saving New Mombasa could be the most important mission of the war...

It was a long day aboard the UNSC Say My Name, I remember that very clearly. I'm Sergeant Thomson, second in command of an elite ODST squad (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) with Brigadier General White in charge. We're both snipers in our team, mainly me being the spotter. Then theres the EOD guys, being Private Daniels, Corporal Springer and the Spartan, 'dusty'. No one knows it's name, gender, hell we didnt even know why it was there besides EOD. We were sure at the time that ONI had sent it in to either kill or replace us, but it always paid attention to our plans, conducting them to way above our standards. Made it seem... Robotic almost... Never seemed to relent when attacking, seemed to lift extreme weights, hell, it flipped a scorpion by itself on one mission! The only assurence we had that it was human, well, organic, was that it got shot up bad one mission, and walked back with blood over itself. Wasn't Covie blood, it was human...

Whatever it was, on that mission, everything changed. 'it' became 'he'. ODSTs were lost, only to be found mangled by Brutes, heck, the entire war changed for us on that mission. The mission... What was it again? Ah yes, thats it, we were to drop from the carrier, onto, ironically, another carrier, this one covenant. We were to capture the Prophet of Regret and force a treaty out of him to end the war, much like the operation a couple of months ago, but this time we were mostly ODSTs, except Dusty, who was the only spartan there. He always wore this odd desert pattern MK VI armour which he said he got the idea from an old British camoflauge from the 20th century. Made him... unique you could say. He always operated well under pressure, and this mission was perfect for him. When the alarms started going, we were already in our pods ready to go, my pod in the centre of the group, ready to drop to the target. Everyone knew the risks. No one saw the enemy as weak, except grunts. My pet cat could win in a fight against them. We over heard the spartan talking to someone. Caught a name I think. Egbert... How odd... I knew an ODST called Egbert... Last time I saw her was back in new jerusalem, back before JD was the last man standing there. When all the teams were finally ready, the pods were lowered into the opening of the drop bay. See, the Say My Name was a marathon class cruiser, a huge ship, and it held hundreds of pods easily. But the bay opening was huge! All the pods were in one area, so i guess that was a bad idea, as a single well placed shot could wipe out all of us. When we werw finally dropped, my pod rocketed out of the ship's belly, plumetting down in front of everyone else. As i looked around outside the pod's window, i could see frigates broken down completely from the covenant attack, but the space elevator still stood tall. As we hit the cloud layer, visibility was cut dramatically. When we left the base of that steamy covering over new mombasa, we could all see it. The cruiser just sat there. Idle. Waiting. As if it was a cat that was about to dart of somewhere random to wreak havoc someone. And boy did that cat jump. As the shock wave approached us, pods went flying everywhere. I even saw one guy get hit by another pod. When we hit the ground, a lot of our pods slid doen streets and into buildings, sending up tonnes of dust, dirt and rubble. As I exited my pod, I could see the large ditch it had carved into the city streets, tearing through cars, destroying buses, even splitting a tanker truck down the middle! I knew what to do. Scavange all supplies I could from my pod. I'd need them in the next 48 hours...