An Elite's Tale

No sooner than Sarge had suggested it, I looked up and saw four purple Covenant recon fliers racing through the sky to the docking platform. The thrumming ghostly whir and luminescent vapor trails that the sleek aircrafts left in their wake, for which they received their namesake, was enough to make me wince.

Banshees.

There hasn't been a single time I've seen one in combat that hasn't claimed at least one other life. Good thing they were on our side.

Suddenly, a giant blue blob arced up and smacked the rearmost vessel out of the sky. The Scarab rocked and shook as it repositioned to face the source of the shot. A pair of Wraiths, Covenant tanks armed with plasma mortars and boost capacity, were at the furthest edge of the valley.

When Sarge opened up with that crazy Scarab cannon, I almost pissed myself. Thing was like the wrath of God given to man. Or alien, I should say. A wide green laser screamed straight across the valley and blanketed one of the Wraiths. The curvy blue tank vanished completely beneath the death beam.

Sarge shouted over the intercom in triumph, "Ha! How do you like it?"

The surviving Banshees zoomed forward and docked on the platform and the red Elite Majors piloting them all disembarked. Three of the Elites on the docking platform occupied these vehicles and took the skies. Moments later, a Phantom troop carrier appeared above the complex and deployed its gravity lift, which brought the rest of the Elites and Hunters who stepped into it up to the inside the ship.

The Phantom then flew towards us and hovered overhead. It redeployed its gravity lift onto the top deck.

A regal voice with the air of authority said, "Humans hold fire. Dropping extra forces to aid in defending the Walker."

"You heard him," Johnson said to me and Wildcat over the PA system. "We're all friends now, whether you like it or not, so cool your jets."

The three red armored Elites floated down the purple beam. One of them came down to the main deck and started messing with the control panel.

I knew they were going to be an invaluable asset against the Brutes for sure, but I had to admit, even with the threat of impending doom looming in the near future, they made me a bit uneasy. It had only taken one of these guys and a handful of cannon fodder to make four specially selected ODSTs seem hilariously out of their league. I pushed my uneasiness aside and reasoned that if they really wanted to take the Scarab for themselves, we wouldn't have even made it off the platform. At least I wouldn't have anyways.

Sarge's voice boomed from the Scarab's external speakers, "I don't have a line of sight on that Wraith. Get on over there and take him out!"

The Phantom led its Banshee escorts across the valley to where a Wraith was launching mortars from behind a huge boulder. The Phantom stopped directly above it and spat oblong bubbles of crimson plasma onto it from a triple set of mounted turrets. Wildcat and I whooped and cheered at the sight of our new air support in action and the Scarab rocked to life as Johnson diverted power from the cannon to its legs, got us on the move.