Halo: Feet First Into Hell

Prologue: Battle of Viery

Aboard the UNSC Grafton everyone was preparing their gear. This drop was crucial to the war that began not even ten minutes ago. Cole had been told to gather his top twenty and take them down to clean up the battlefield after Noble Team left Spire-One vulnerable. He never really enjoyed the after party. It wasn't his choice though. Orders are orders. Especially when those orders are given by a ship captain. Mallarde was in control of the Grafton. He would lead a counter strike against recently discovered Covenant forces in Viery before they had a chance to mass an attack on us. Once notified that Cole had finished assembling his best men and women, Captain Mallarde contacted the soldier on a secure COM channel.
"Warrant Officer Allen Cole," the Captain said over the COM Network.
"Sir, yes sir?" Responded the ODST.
"Drop in ten. You're to eliminate surviving Covenant forces. If anything survives after what we've been cleared to do."
"Understood sir. I'll prep my squad for drop."
"Cole," the Captain hesitated. He knew what he was about to say would cause issues with the op once things hit the ground.
"I'm sending two Spartans down there with you."
Cole wasn't happy to hear that. Especially after his cousin was beaten to death by one of those monsters.
"Acknowledged sir." Cole replied.
The COM signal dropped.
Cole turned towards his crew.
"Anouncement," Nineteen battle hardened Orbital Drop Shock Troopers looked at him and straightened their stances.
"I've got good news and bad news. Good news is, we drop in ten minutes. Make sure you get your shit together and you're in your pod by then. I don't mind leaving your ass here."
Cole glared back at his mini army, which happened to be just as effective as an actual full scale army; he was proud of them and what they were capable of accomplishing.
"Bad news; we have to escort two Spartans. Don't piss'em off. We've all heard the stories."
Cole turned towards his locker and reassembled his M6G model Magnum.

He couldn't help but wonder what his actual mission was. He pondered about it vigorously. Why would they need Spartans attending for a clean up operation?

Captain Mallarde paced back and forth in the control room of the Grafton. Scrolling up and down on his data pad. He was regularly keeping updates on Noble Team and their operation to take down Spire-one's shield. The ODST's were supposed to drop five minutes ago and only one of the Covenant's AA-Guns were down. Before Noble Team made their way into a mining facility, he had initiated a bombing run. Within seconds napalm and archer missle pods detonated across alien infested terrain. Everything from grunts to scarabs burned to a crisp.

His data pad pinged and blinked a few times. An alert stating that the second AA-Gun had been neutralized. Carter's voice came in on the COM.
"It's done Captain. Free to proceed." His voice cut out. The two massive frigates could ease that much closer to the Spire's location.

"Drop was fifteen minutes ago. Why the hell am I still on this ship?" Dick exerted.

Dick had been brought from the 105th Division to the Alpha-Eleven squad. The entirety of the team consisted of only fifty ODST's. Give or take a few. They would swap in and out between ops depending on who was best qualified for the approaching operation. Dick was a heavy weapons specialist. There were a lot of Covenant vehicles that needed to be rendered useless, and quickly.

"Settle, the Spire's shield needs to be disabled before we can drop. We're waiting on Noble Team."
"Those Spartans are taking their sweet ass time. Don't they know we have a planet to protect?" Dick retorted back to Cole.
"Would you like to take their place?" Cole snapped.
"Isn't that why we're here?" Dick argued.
"Pod." Cole simultaneously directed Dick with his index finger in the direction of an open hatch. He turned and grabbed his helmet then walked down the room to his own pod. He sat in it. It felt comfortable, for now. Once a pod dropped from a ship, no matter how soft the lining of the seat was, you were always bracing yourself for the landing.

The door to the corridor opened. Two massive figures stepped through the opening. Both carrying bulky Mjolnir armor. The taller bulkier figure wore Warrior variant while the slender more feminine figure wore the Military Police variant with a HESA-E sensor device attachment configured to the helmets contour. The taller character had B241 painted upon his chest. His comrade wore B049 on hers. The Spartans walked straight to their pods. Their gaze, not even visible due to their matte black visors, never tore from directly ahead of them. They took a seat in their own pods, closed the hatches, and waited.

Several screens in the room and pods activated which stole the ODST's attention away from the Spartan's for a moment.

"They finally got those drones up and running." Aztec explained.

Aztec was a natural sniper. Extremely gifted, and deadly. She once put a shredder round through four Insurrectionist skulls, with an assault rifle, from twenty meters.

The screens that came on showed an aerial view of the battlefield from a camera attached to a mechanical drone soaring from the frigate. The drone was programmed to track members of Noble Team. Setting it up to do so took a great deal of time. The ODST's watched eagerly as Noble Six ascended up the Spire through a gravity lift. It was hard to make everything out if you didn't have trained eyes. The drone couldn't go through the shield without crashing fatally to the ground. So it zoomed in as much as possible and the audience would just have to deal with the blue filter over everything that was going on. Every few seconds the bluish tint would intensify as the shield pulsed to life with EMP radiation.

The ODST's watched as Six disappeared into the tower. Several grunts retreated inside. Fuel rods burst out of openings and fleed wildly before everything stopped and fell silent. All the grunts had fallen. No one could see what was happening until Six backed out of the door way; he was followed by an elite a full two heads taller than himself. The elite had unsheathed an energy sword and skillfully slashed at the Spartan. Six lunged to the left, grabbed the elite's wrist, and forced its direction to change. The glowing white edges of the blade burned through the elites shield and then his armor. He grasped for dear life. Six stuck his leg out and pulled the elite closer to him. The massive alien stumbled over Six's leg and toppled off the side of the spire. Six sprinted into the door. Seconds later the shield dropped; so did the ODST's.

Cole watched through the SOEIV's window as Six dived off the Spire's ledge and barely catch the Falcon waiting for him. Amused, Cole pushed aside the fact that he admired what he had just seen.

The Grafton put a MAC round through the spire as the ODST's plummeted to Reach's surface. The firing of the MAC gun shook and rattled the pods of ODST's that were suspended in midair. For a brief moment all coms and visual feedback burst with static. The spire was torn from its rooted placement. As they were falling, a blue line spawned in the center of them. It resembled that of a plasma laser fired from a Covenant ship. Cole's eyes traced it up. Above him was the Grafton. The massive frigate was seared in half and falling just as fast as they were.

"Troopers, prepare for a rough landing! That frigate is coming down right on top of us!" Cole shouted through the COM channel within his twenty member group. The beam caught some of the pods and they instantly evaporated.

A Covenant CSO-Class Super Carrier was in cloak just above the spire's shield. Following the collapse of Spire-One, the carrier revealed itself. Doing so with immense force.

"Here we go! Troopers, brace for impact!"

Everyone cringed their jaws and held the handles of the pods as tight as they could. Everyone was afraid. Their massater muscles aching and their hearts racing. Could the pods withstand the force of an entire frigate? Cole doubted it. He knew what to expect, but he hoped to survive regardless.

The pods crashed into the soil and gravel. Dust and dirt shot from the geometry and made an immense cloud around each pod. Seconds later, the Grafton caught up with them. If they did survive, they were buried under several layers of Titanium-A armor. Their odds of survival dissipated with each passing second.