<br/>"I'll give it back to you momentarily. We'll need close-range weapons in a second." Valkyrie crept closer to the covenant patrol, waving Gladiator over to a concrete barrier just a few hundred yards away. She took the rifle and laid it across a large fissure in the barrier, getting as low to the ground as she could. The spartan sighed. She hated sniping.<br/><br/>It was fairly similar to the work she did with rockets, but at the same time it totally wasn't. There were so many little considerations, like windage, ammunition type and thousands of little optic adjustments. She still had to be good at it, though. She brought the sight to the single Wraith tank and checked the range readout. "Six-oh-three." The soldier dialed in the adjustments, then put the crosshair of the sight directly over the grunt gunner sitting on the Wraith.<br/><br/>"Here goes..." She whispered. Her finger took up slack on the trigger and held right at the breaking point, the spartan taking a moment to calm her breathing before moving the last incremental distance. The sniper rifle thundered, bucking heavily into Valkyrie's shoulder. She only waited for the splash of blue gore in her scope before turning to the next target, a confused-looking elite barking orders at nearby troops. The round came in just below its eyes, jerking the sangelli warrior's skull back before exiting in a brilliant spray of brain matter and blood. She handed the rifle back to Gladiator and took off at a run.<br/><br/>The wraith, without a gunner had to try to hit a fast-moving foot soldier with a painfully slow plasma mortar. Soon, the two spartans had closed enough to hose down the covenant with impunity. Valkyrie darted from cover to cover, throwing grenades and squeezing off controlled bursts from her rifle. Gladiator took down the odd sangelli warrior with deadly accuracy, making every shot from his DMR count.<br/><br/>It was only after a majority of the covenant had been picked off that Valkyrie finally unslung her rocket launcher. One timely rocket slammed into the exposed power unit and the vehicle skewed to a stop. She wasted no time, ditching the weapon and leaping onto the crippled assault gun. A vicious stab of her knife through the rim of the hatch allowed the Spartan to pry it up long enough to pop a grenade into the cockpit.<br/><br/>"Heh." Valkyrie, her face hidden by the armored visor smiled as the machine stopped, totally gutted by the attack. She turned and gave Gladiator a thumbs-up.<br/><br/>Moments later, the blinding bolt of a covenant beam rifle crashed across the spartan's shield, overloading it and knocking her off of the tank.<br/><br/><br/><br/>