(3rd Pov)
"Security Center just ahead!" the lead ODST of Jenkin's team said quickly as the four of them sprinted as fast as their legs could carry them.
They had finished fighting their way up a floor through whatever Covenant force, and based on the limps a few of them had, the combat was beginning to take its toll. They managed to avoid any serious injuries, however.
Better training and thorough tactics were just two of the many things that separated ODSTs from the rest of the UNSC infantry, and it clearly benefited them against an enemy where any hit could be fatal.
They slowed down as they crept into the vicinity of the doorway to the security offices. Jenkins glanced at the corner of the hall, seeing the camera with a neat hole through its lens courtesy of himself.
"Stack up," one of the ODSTs said as he pulled a device from his combat pack. It looked like a bunch of plastic sticks with a square seat cushion neatly tied together with a small wire.
The ODST pulled off the adhesive on the bottom of the cylindrical sticks and attached them in a rectangular pattern, before placing the seat cushion in the center. They glued them onto the metal blast door; he took a glance around at the breaching charge before nodding to himself and yanking a pin out of the stick on the upper portion of the door.
The moment the pin came out all of the cylinders ignited as they began to burn through the metal. They carried a special mixture of metal oxides and powder, typically meant for cutting apart battleship armor for repairs, a super thermite if you would.
"Take point, Rookie," The Lead ODST stepped back for Jenkins to move in front of him as the smell of ozone began to fill the hall.
"Roger," Jenkins said, stepping up to the door SMG in hand.
"Prep a flash," the ODST instructed, seeing the rookie having forgotten.
"Ah…right, I knew that," Jenkins pulled out a flash, pulling out its pin but holding the release lever.
Finally, after cutting clean gashes straight through the door, the seat cushion filled with plastic explosives detonated, blowing the door into smithereens. Jenkins spiked a flash into the room as dust and smoke filled the doorway and hall.
BANG
Upon hearing the grenade go off, he broke through the door aggressively, trying to get out of the kill zone that was the doorway.
His eyes locked onto a few targets, a couple of grunts trying to hide behind the table in the center of the room, enemies he expected, but he almost hesitated when he saw the next target. It looked like a purple flying nutsack in Jenkins' own words; it was by far the strangest thing he had seen in his entire life, and that was saying something. Nevertheless, in a split second he decided to ice it as well, along with the grunts.
click-SPSSPSPSPSPSP
Like a hive of angry wasps protecting their hive, Jenkins' SMG erupted, dousing the grunts with subsonic suppressed caseless ammunition. The bullets tore through chitin, bone, armor, and methane masks like miniature buzz saws. Orange fragments spewed off the grunts along with their fluorescent blood. Jenkins made sure to keep every bullet he fired on them, watching carefully not to hit the console behind them.
The grunts tumbled over squeaking as they died nearly instantly.
Jenkins planted his foot and pivoted while glancing at the upper right of his HUD. 7 the ammo counter read, 'Enough,' Jenkins half thought as he aimed at the floating alien in the room.
He didn't notice, but the alien began to raise its tentacles, more than likely to surrender. But Jenkins, focused on eradicating the Covenant aliens, didn't hesitate and clicked his trigger back.
The first suppressed round went straight through the Huragok's head, cutting off its nervous system and giving it an instant, painless death. The rest of the rounds in his magazine were delivered to the main body, tearing through the blue flesh. They ricocheted, rupturing its gas sacks and causing it to begin sinking toward the ground before resting softly.
Wallace slapped the side of his SMG as he dropped the magazine before putting a fresh one in on the side. He turned once, then twice as the rest of the ODSTs filtered into the room.
"Clear!
"Clear!"
"Clear!
"Clear, solid work, Rookie. Now get on that console, let's start opening back up these doors," the lead ODST patted him on the back.
"You two guard the door and hall, discourage anyone poking their nose where it doesn't belong," he turned, and the other two ODSTs nodded, moving back into the hall.
Jenkins moved to the console and stopped.
FACILITY LOCKDOWN ENGAGE 23 BULKHEADS ACTIVE
"Are we fucking serious?" Jenkins muttered to himself as he looked at what he saw was a mess of buttons with little to no descriptions below them.
He sighed, "I trained to blow up stuff, not to be damn tech support," he said as he shrugged, doing the only thing he knew to do in the situation.
He began pressing every button, starting with the most important-looking ones.
LIFE SUPPORT OFFLINE
"Oop, not that one."
Click
EMERGENCY LIGHTS: ON -> OFF
"I'll take that,"
Click
BULKHEAD 13: ENGAGED
"That is literally the opposite of what I wanted,"
He paused at the next one as it read:
FIRE
In big bold letters, "Not even going to touch that one," he said as he lifted his finger away from the button.
The lead ODST came over, seeing Jenkins struggling, "You know what you are doing?"
Jenkins turned, becoming increasingly more frustrated, "Absolutely," he said emphatically.
There was a pause.
"You do?"
"Of course not, I quite literally have no fucking clue what any of this does, but I am a quick learner!" Jenkins said before going back to pressing buttons.
….
…
..
.
"Damn it, these things won't stay still," Daisy muttered as she gritted her teeth, peppering the hallway with her assault rifle. Meanwhile, the Yanme'e in front of her bounced around as if it was moving in zero gravity, constantly changing vectors of attack and all the while firing off a few plasma bolts. Daisy was getting increasingly frustrated as she bobbed out of the doorway like a bird picking up feed.
The wall and opposite side of the doorway were partially molten slag after getting doused with plasma, but Daisy's olive green armor remained pristine if a bit dirty. Corpses of the buggers littered the hall like a scatter plot mirrored on both ends.
"Force them toward the wall; that limits their range of motion," Cal spoke calmly as she ducked before firing a DMR round through a bug's skull, causing it to explode into green gore.
Daisy began to feather her rounds from that point, putting out another suppressive fire as the simple-minded alien continued to fly toward the far wall. Just as it hit the wall and began to change direction, Daisy fired a diagonal line of rounds, tearing through one of its wings.
The bug paused, trying to re-steady itself, only to be gunned down the second it began to hover in place.
Daisy's side was clear, but before she could say a word, she caught a glimpse of a pink needle out of the corner of her eye and dodged into the doorway. The pink needle embedded itself into the doorway as Cal sniped the perpetrator.
Cal analyzed the surroundings, "Clear-"
"Don't you dare say that," Daisy said, groaning as she reloaded. "You have said that three times now, and each time more of those fuckers came out of the vents."
Cal cocked her head to the side, "This time it is highly unlikely. There are at least 40 bodies-"
At that moment, a bulkhead slid open, revealing more Covenant infantry sitting on the ground as if they were waiting to join the battle. The bulkhead suddenly opening surprised them as they saw the Spartans and began to scramble to their feet.
Daisy threw her head to the side, looking at Cal, giving a look that Cal knew without having to see her face underneath the helmet. Cal simply brought a hand up and mimicked closing a zipper on her mouth.
Daisy sighed, "To hell with this." She reached around her back.
Cal glanced over, taking a small step back.
Daisy removed the M41 SPNKR from her magnetic mounts.
With a quick movement, she shouldered the rocket launcher and, with a glance, squeezed the trigger.
FWOOOOOSH
The rocket ripped through the air, traveling its minimum arming distance before finding a spot neatly in the center of the Covenant foot soldier's formation and detonating on the ground.
BOOOM
The explosion rocked the walls around the Spartans as the rocket blew the grunts, jackals, and brutes to smithereens, a crater now in their place.
TSSSS
Beside the Spartans, a door leading to the stairwell opened. Both Daisy and Cal brought their rifles up, waiting for whatever came through the doorway.
A moment later, ODSTs sprinted through the doorway, weapons raised, ready for a fight. They hesitated and looked around, seeing all of the enemies dead.
The corporal walked forward as the men began to fill the hall, "You-uh-needed help?" he asked, looking down at all the bodies.
"You're late," Daisy said, unimpressed
The corporal took another glance at the bodies, "Right…."
…..
….
…
..
.
The doors finally opened in front of the four Spartans on the floor above Daisy, and they proceeded down the hallway.
A moment passed as the lights came back on and the security lockdown began to recede.
"About time," Johnson muttered as he moved past the door's threshold.
"Private Jenkins, check the cameras for this level's server room and disengage the room's lock. Make sure we aren't heading into an ambush, and that nothing is peeking at our data," David spoke through his helmet's comm.
"Roger!" Wallace's voice came through clearly, "Now where are the auxiliary door locks…" the comm picked up before going quiet.
"That gives me so much confidence," Sheila commented.
"Cut the chatter," David said. Now was the time to be serious.
The halls were unsettlingly empty; unlike the levels above that looked as though they had been home to murder mysteries, the path ahead of them looked almost untouched by the carnage happening in the rest of the facility.
Finally arriving at the server room door, the four flooded the room. Jenkins had informed them that the room appeared clear. Yet each one of them swept the room.
Active camo shimmers were nearly undetectable on cameras.
"We're clear, Dave," Jorge said, finishing clearing the final row of servers.
"Good, Sergeant and Sheila start setting the explosives, Jorge watch the hall," David said, looking up at the ceiling and tracing the fiber optic cables.
He walked over, passing cooling vents, and moved toward a terminal in the room. He paused, noticing that the screen had not fallen asleep.
He looked over his shoulder, making sure Johnson wasn't watching what he was doing, and began to input into the terminal.
INPUT ACCEPTED
PRIMARY ARCHIVES ACCESS: GRANTED
WELCOME S-003
David began typing, navigating the software.
ARCHIVE (PRIMARY) ACCESS LOG
LAST ACCESS: 8/23/28 11:17 A.M
David nodded to himself; the information in this server room had not been accessed yet. 'Good,' he thought. Then he proceeded to check for the most important part of their mission, the data that Daisy and Cal were supposed to secure.
"Daisy status?" he asked as he pulled up the secondary archives.
"About a corridor away, the ODSTs linked up with us, but I had them move down to the floor below us to begin planting charges to take out the rest of the facility," she spoke as gunfire came through her com.
"Solid Copy," David acknowledged.
SECONDARY ARCHIVES ACCESS: GRANTED
ARCHIVES (SECONDARY) ACCESS LOG
LAST ACCESS: 8/28/28 (15 minutes ago)
David's heart sank into his chest as he opened the log and looked to see what the last access had entailed.
LAST ACCESS: DATA COPIED AND BACKED UP TO EXTERNAL DRIVE
ACCESS GRANTED TO [REDACTED]