[center][h2][b]Vael 'Virisusai and Shih[/b][/h2][/center]

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If nothing else, Vael could see that the members of the team were quick to act, took initiative, and were deadly in a fight. Even just simple accuracy with their weapons set them apart. The sentinels were falling much quicker than they would against an average squad of marines, or lance of Swords warriors. Vael was keeping track as best as he could of their enemy; there had been seventeen Forerunner machines to start, and ten had fallen. 

Unfortunately, more sentinels had arrived within motion sensor range, a fact about which Shih was quick to alert the team, but the number of opponents within range to threaten them had still been temporarily thinned. Taking the opportunity, Vael dashed out from underneath the wing to the wreckage of one of the sentinels. He knew just what he was looking for, so it did not take long for him to holster his weapon and rip from the broken frame the sentinel’s weapon. In his experience, the true best weapons against Forerunner machines were their own. 

It took only a moment for Vael’s suit to identify the weapon and paint a reticle on his HUD. The internal battery of a sentinel beam did not last too long when disconnected from a sentinel’s power source, but it would certainly be enough for this fight. Vael picked the harder-to-hit targets: the ones flying higher or faster. The intense orange beam hardly took more than a second of sustained fire to deplete the shields and cut through the sentinel’s frame, and with no deviation and effectively no travel time, he could fire it with pinpoint precision. Three times Vael fired a burst of the beam, and each of the three times a sentinel came crashing to the ground. Though, as his weapon overheated, two of the remaining sentinels focused their weapons onto Vael. Despite having shield strength appropriate to his rank, the Forerunner weapons were enough to deplete his shields and scorch his chestplate before he could get back into cover under the wing. The nanolaminate plating held, though Vael could feel the heat it had absorbed. [color=orange]“Shields are down!”[/color] Vael called out. 

Vael was not the only one being pressured. Another beam from a different sentinel was cutting across the ground towards Grikgar, while another sentinel that had been damaged accelerated forward towards Ben, likely aiming to kill him with the secondary explosions of its own destruction. With the Spartan’s shields weakened as they were, he was vulnerable. 

At the same time, the Marines radioed back to Aviza’s request quickly. [color=lightblue]“Yes ma’am. Telemetry shows there is a plateau in the way, so we’ll have to go around. ETA…two minutes.”[/color]

[color=lime]”More sentinels on approach, and they’re spreading out. Looks like they’re going to surround the crash site.”[/color] Shih warned the team.