Post by Martial Virtue on Jun 24, 2012 15:13:44 GMT -6
This is pretty much a sort of Intermission thread following the ill-fated Mission 5. The year is 2540, and we're on Reach awaiting the next mission deployment. Open to all UNSC players. Enjoy!
Major Sierra Lloyd stood in one of the partitions of the firing range on base, concentrating hard on breathing steady as she looked down the sights of her BR55. She tried to force all other thoughts from her mind and attempted to keep her full attention on the task at hand - practicing with her weapon of choice. Having just turned forty recently, she had no plans to start sliding with her skills just because she'd reached one of the first benchmarks of approaching middle age.
Hell, if anything, she'd stepped it up in the last few years. She'd just traded in her job as the 1st Recon Battalion's CO for a shot at becoming a spook, and three years in as an ONI operative, she found she was enjoying her new work as much as, if not more, than her old position as battalion commander. ONI was different than being in the infantry, no doubt about that, but there were similarities in the way life on missions went nonetheless. Sleep and showers and a chance to eat were still scarce, and the burden of command was ever-present. Just because she had less subordinates now didn't mean the job was easier - ONI required a much higher level of physical and mental skill than straight-up, large-scale combat did. The skirmishes were smaller and much more personal, sure, but the toll they took was the same.
Sierra inwardly cursed at her lapse and rattled off two three-round bursts from her gun. The battle rifle's loud reports were muffled by the ear protection she wore, but she could still hear them well enough. It's not like she hadn't heard the sounds a thousand times in the field, anyway. She'd been a Marine now for...hell, close to twenty years. She'd been through a lot of shit.
Nothing as bad as the Covenant attack on her homeworld, though.
Lloyd sighed and pulled the ear muffs from her head and allowed them instead to rest around the back of her neck. With swift movements, she stepped back from the partition and emptied the battle rifle of its remaining rounds. She placed the only partly spent clip on a weapons table behind her, then moved toward one of the metal benches lining the back of the range to sit. She knew as soon as her thoughts had turned to her conquered homeworld, all chances of keeping her concentration on her training alone were gone. So she sat and started taking apart her weapon instead, cleaning it in meticulous motions as she let her mind wander where it wanted and tried not to fume over the memories. Or cry.
Taking apart the battle rifle's stock, she picked up some cleaning fluid and a dirty rag lying nearby and got to work while her thoughts went elsewhere.
She first thought of the days she'd spent searching for her kids and her parents in Kholo City. Those had been the worst hours of her life, thinking her three young children might be dead at the hands of the Covenant. She wasn't sure she would have been able to handle something like that if she'd ended up encountering the worst-case scenario when she'd arrived. Dylan had been with her at the time and that had helped, bolstered her resolve and kept her on track instead of just breaking down then and there, which would have helped no one. But the situation had been bad.
The major let out a sigh. Three years later and she still felt her heart clench at the thought of that damn mission. There'd been nothing to do for their family home, or the residences of all the other inhabitants in the city. They'd had a hard enough time evacing the people themselves out of the place before the Covenant ripped it - and them - apart, let alone their houses, too.
All things considered, the op had gone reasonably well. The Marines had managed to at least get the civilians out alive. But now her home planet, the place she'd grown up in and the place where she'd wanted to raise her kids, was a Covenant-controlled wreckage...and they'd lost people along the way. Both of Dylan's parents had been killed in the first wave protecting their grandkids. That had been hard for her husband to take. Grace and Caleb had been okay and unharmed though, thank goodness. Noah, however, their youngest, had been hurt badly in an explosion. That...had been the toughest thing of all to handle.
Presently, Sierra paused in her busy work of cleaning her rifle and took a moment to swallow hard, forcing down the lump that had formed in her throat at the memory. Her vision started to cloud with tears and she ruthlessly held them back, concentrating on the gun once more as the painful scene from three years ago unfolded again in her mind.
(Flashback)
Sierra and Dylan rushed through the emergency room doors of Angel's Wings Children's Hospital in Kholo City, one of the last buildings not hit by the alien attack and a place that was busy emptying out even as the two senior Marine officers ran in. It was a last-ditch effort to save the life of their youngest son, only four years old at the time. He'd been badly wounded from a blast of some sort, nothing Sierra's civilian parents could have identified. Not that it mattered - what mattered now was saving the little boy's life.
The military couple's other two children had already been safely evacuated from the planet's surface, so Sierra tried her best not to worry about them as well. Right now it was her smallest son who was fighting for his life, and it was all she could focus on.
Though the few remaining doctors and nurses in the place were civvies, Sierra shouted at them with more force in her voice than she used on the newest, greenest Marines in her battalion as she entered. "We need a doctor here now!" Her voice was a little more shrill than she wanted it to be, but the circumstances justified her tone. Her baby was dying.
The corpsman Dylan and Sierra had brought with them on their search for their kids in the city had already done the best he could to patch Noah up, he'd said. He'd pumped the boy's wound full of biofoam and bandaged the area up to stop the bleeding, but the fix would hold only temporarily. The only thing now was getting Noah to a proper facility to undergo the life-saving treatment the boy really needed if he were to survive. A piece of shrapnel was stuck in his abdomen and he'd lost a lot of blood - a skilled surgeon would need to remove the foreign object from Noah's stomach and then follow that up with a blood transfusion. Both Dylan and Sierra were ready to provide blood for their son's life. All they needed was a doctor that could do it.
The hospital was busy as hell given the situation, but somehow, one of the nurses spotted the two bloodied, dirty, exhausted, and distraught Marine parents in full combat gear at the entrance and ran up to them. The male nurse saw the unconscious little boy in Dylan's arms, and his expression changed. He turned to Sierra, who looked at her wits end with worry, and said, "Hang tight, ma'am. We'll get a doc here stat for your son."
Then the nurse disappeared. Sierra ran a nervous hand through her put-up hair and, clutching her helmet in one hand, used the other to brush her fingers gently over Noah's face. Tears welled up in her eyes and she leaned over next to Dylan and kissed their son's forehead. "Please, baby," she whispered. "Please fight. Stay with us."
When she looked up, her eyes met Dylan's. They were just as anguished as hers.
Before either had a chance to say anything to one another, the nurse reappeared just as quickly as he'd left, surprising both of the Lloyds.
"Ma'am, sir, come with me, please. We're prepping the OR for your son now. We need to get him hooked up to an IV. The doctor will be in shortly."
Though he seemed extremely reluctant to do so, Dylan handed his son over to the nurse when prompted. After that they moved down the hall fast to the room. Once Noah was placed in one of the last remaining patient beds and hooked up to fluids, the nurse again turned to his parents.
"I'll need a quick run-down of what happened so I can brief the doctor when he arrives."
Sierra and Dylan explained the situation as best they could. By the time they were finished a few minutes later, the surgeon had already come in. Judging by the bloody gloves he pulled off his hands and tossed into the wastebasket beside the door, he was fresh from another operation. Too many wounded and too little time, Lloyd thought to herself. She heard the doctor let out a sigh and then he spent another couple of minutes looking over little Noah. Then he faced Sierra and Dylan.
"Your son's vitals are weak, but there. This is going to be tough; I can't guarantee you anything. But seeing as you're the ones who've fought so hard to get all of us out of here safely, I'll take your little boy to surgery ahead of the others that are waiting. Like the corpsman may have already told you, he'll need a blood transfusion and he'll need that shrapnel out of his gut. I'll take blood from whichever of the two of you have the same type and get the operation underway."
Dylan ended up being the same, so he supplied the blood their son would need to survive while Sierra watched, anxiety bringing her closer and closer to the breaking point. When Noah was finally wheeled out of the room and the doctor and nurse gone with him, Sierra let go and began to sob in Dylan's arms. Still weak from the blood withdrawal, Dylan rested his head against hers as he held her. There was nothing they could do now but wait.
It was five hours before they'd receive any news on their little boy. Sierra would later remember feeling that though it was agonizing, the results were well worth the wait. Hers and Dylan's youngest had been saved. It was an experience neither would ever forget.
(Present)
In the end, that was why Sierra had joined ONI. She'd wanted to do more to help the UNSC cause and make sure she'd be the very first one on-scene to a planetary invasion - or, better yet, be a part of the intelligence team that worked hard to prevent one.
Lloyd sat on the bench a minute longer, even though her weapon was already totally cleaned and ready for the next service member who wanted to use it on the range. One day, soon she hoped, she wouldn't have to worry so much about these things anymore. One day, she and Dylan could be home together with their kids - now twelve, ten, and seven - without fear of the Covenant.
Until then, she'd do everything in her power to keep her family safe.
Feel free to approach Lloyd in the range or do your own thing. Happy posting!
Major Sierra Lloyd
Major Sierra Lloyd stood in one of the partitions of the firing range on base, concentrating hard on breathing steady as she looked down the sights of her BR55. She tried to force all other thoughts from her mind and attempted to keep her full attention on the task at hand - practicing with her weapon of choice. Having just turned forty recently, she had no plans to start sliding with her skills just because she'd reached one of the first benchmarks of approaching middle age.
Hell, if anything, she'd stepped it up in the last few years. She'd just traded in her job as the 1st Recon Battalion's CO for a shot at becoming a spook, and three years in as an ONI operative, she found she was enjoying her new work as much as, if not more, than her old position as battalion commander. ONI was different than being in the infantry, no doubt about that, but there were similarities in the way life on missions went nonetheless. Sleep and showers and a chance to eat were still scarce, and the burden of command was ever-present. Just because she had less subordinates now didn't mean the job was easier - ONI required a much higher level of physical and mental skill than straight-up, large-scale combat did. The skirmishes were smaller and much more personal, sure, but the toll they took was the same.
Sierra inwardly cursed at her lapse and rattled off two three-round bursts from her gun. The battle rifle's loud reports were muffled by the ear protection she wore, but she could still hear them well enough. It's not like she hadn't heard the sounds a thousand times in the field, anyway. She'd been a Marine now for...hell, close to twenty years. She'd been through a lot of shit.
Nothing as bad as the Covenant attack on her homeworld, though.
Lloyd sighed and pulled the ear muffs from her head and allowed them instead to rest around the back of her neck. With swift movements, she stepped back from the partition and emptied the battle rifle of its remaining rounds. She placed the only partly spent clip on a weapons table behind her, then moved toward one of the metal benches lining the back of the range to sit. She knew as soon as her thoughts had turned to her conquered homeworld, all chances of keeping her concentration on her training alone were gone. So she sat and started taking apart her weapon instead, cleaning it in meticulous motions as she let her mind wander where it wanted and tried not to fume over the memories. Or cry.
Taking apart the battle rifle's stock, she picked up some cleaning fluid and a dirty rag lying nearby and got to work while her thoughts went elsewhere.
She first thought of the days she'd spent searching for her kids and her parents in Kholo City. Those had been the worst hours of her life, thinking her three young children might be dead at the hands of the Covenant. She wasn't sure she would have been able to handle something like that if she'd ended up encountering the worst-case scenario when she'd arrived. Dylan had been with her at the time and that had helped, bolstered her resolve and kept her on track instead of just breaking down then and there, which would have helped no one. But the situation had been bad.
The major let out a sigh. Three years later and she still felt her heart clench at the thought of that damn mission. There'd been nothing to do for their family home, or the residences of all the other inhabitants in the city. They'd had a hard enough time evacing the people themselves out of the place before the Covenant ripped it - and them - apart, let alone their houses, too.
All things considered, the op had gone reasonably well. The Marines had managed to at least get the civilians out alive. But now her home planet, the place she'd grown up in and the place where she'd wanted to raise her kids, was a Covenant-controlled wreckage...and they'd lost people along the way. Both of Dylan's parents had been killed in the first wave protecting their grandkids. That had been hard for her husband to take. Grace and Caleb had been okay and unharmed though, thank goodness. Noah, however, their youngest, had been hurt badly in an explosion. That...had been the toughest thing of all to handle.
Presently, Sierra paused in her busy work of cleaning her rifle and took a moment to swallow hard, forcing down the lump that had formed in her throat at the memory. Her vision started to cloud with tears and she ruthlessly held them back, concentrating on the gun once more as the painful scene from three years ago unfolded again in her mind.
(Flashback)
Sierra and Dylan rushed through the emergency room doors of Angel's Wings Children's Hospital in Kholo City, one of the last buildings not hit by the alien attack and a place that was busy emptying out even as the two senior Marine officers ran in. It was a last-ditch effort to save the life of their youngest son, only four years old at the time. He'd been badly wounded from a blast of some sort, nothing Sierra's civilian parents could have identified. Not that it mattered - what mattered now was saving the little boy's life.
The military couple's other two children had already been safely evacuated from the planet's surface, so Sierra tried her best not to worry about them as well. Right now it was her smallest son who was fighting for his life, and it was all she could focus on.
Though the few remaining doctors and nurses in the place were civvies, Sierra shouted at them with more force in her voice than she used on the newest, greenest Marines in her battalion as she entered. "We need a doctor here now!" Her voice was a little more shrill than she wanted it to be, but the circumstances justified her tone. Her baby was dying.
The corpsman Dylan and Sierra had brought with them on their search for their kids in the city had already done the best he could to patch Noah up, he'd said. He'd pumped the boy's wound full of biofoam and bandaged the area up to stop the bleeding, but the fix would hold only temporarily. The only thing now was getting Noah to a proper facility to undergo the life-saving treatment the boy really needed if he were to survive. A piece of shrapnel was stuck in his abdomen and he'd lost a lot of blood - a skilled surgeon would need to remove the foreign object from Noah's stomach and then follow that up with a blood transfusion. Both Dylan and Sierra were ready to provide blood for their son's life. All they needed was a doctor that could do it.
The hospital was busy as hell given the situation, but somehow, one of the nurses spotted the two bloodied, dirty, exhausted, and distraught Marine parents in full combat gear at the entrance and ran up to them. The male nurse saw the unconscious little boy in Dylan's arms, and his expression changed. He turned to Sierra, who looked at her wits end with worry, and said, "Hang tight, ma'am. We'll get a doc here stat for your son."
Then the nurse disappeared. Sierra ran a nervous hand through her put-up hair and, clutching her helmet in one hand, used the other to brush her fingers gently over Noah's face. Tears welled up in her eyes and she leaned over next to Dylan and kissed their son's forehead. "Please, baby," she whispered. "Please fight. Stay with us."
When she looked up, her eyes met Dylan's. They were just as anguished as hers.
Before either had a chance to say anything to one another, the nurse reappeared just as quickly as he'd left, surprising both of the Lloyds.
"Ma'am, sir, come with me, please. We're prepping the OR for your son now. We need to get him hooked up to an IV. The doctor will be in shortly."
Though he seemed extremely reluctant to do so, Dylan handed his son over to the nurse when prompted. After that they moved down the hall fast to the room. Once Noah was placed in one of the last remaining patient beds and hooked up to fluids, the nurse again turned to his parents.
"I'll need a quick run-down of what happened so I can brief the doctor when he arrives."
Sierra and Dylan explained the situation as best they could. By the time they were finished a few minutes later, the surgeon had already come in. Judging by the bloody gloves he pulled off his hands and tossed into the wastebasket beside the door, he was fresh from another operation. Too many wounded and too little time, Lloyd thought to herself. She heard the doctor let out a sigh and then he spent another couple of minutes looking over little Noah. Then he faced Sierra and Dylan.
"Your son's vitals are weak, but there. This is going to be tough; I can't guarantee you anything. But seeing as you're the ones who've fought so hard to get all of us out of here safely, I'll take your little boy to surgery ahead of the others that are waiting. Like the corpsman may have already told you, he'll need a blood transfusion and he'll need that shrapnel out of his gut. I'll take blood from whichever of the two of you have the same type and get the operation underway."
Dylan ended up being the same, so he supplied the blood their son would need to survive while Sierra watched, anxiety bringing her closer and closer to the breaking point. When Noah was finally wheeled out of the room and the doctor and nurse gone with him, Sierra let go and began to sob in Dylan's arms. Still weak from the blood withdrawal, Dylan rested his head against hers as he held her. There was nothing they could do now but wait.
It was five hours before they'd receive any news on their little boy. Sierra would later remember feeling that though it was agonizing, the results were well worth the wait. Hers and Dylan's youngest had been saved. It was an experience neither would ever forget.
(Present)
In the end, that was why Sierra had joined ONI. She'd wanted to do more to help the UNSC cause and make sure she'd be the very first one on-scene to a planetary invasion - or, better yet, be a part of the intelligence team that worked hard to prevent one.
Lloyd sat on the bench a minute longer, even though her weapon was already totally cleaned and ready for the next service member who wanted to use it on the range. One day, soon she hoped, she wouldn't have to worry so much about these things anymore. One day, she and Dylan could be home together with their kids - now twelve, ten, and seven - without fear of the Covenant.
Until then, she'd do everything in her power to keep her family safe.
Feel free to approach Lloyd in the range or do your own thing. Happy posting!