Whump. The noise and vibration came again. From her seat, Ellis could see the heavy-caliber guns placed on struts up along the rim of the crater all firing at once. The deadly chatter of weapons fire didn’t stop, filling the air with a constant braaap.
	Ellis moved out from the bank, into the street. The sound of the guns were drowned by several Pelicans that appeared overhead, firing missiles down into the crater. The street shivered again. A piece of building facade cracked and fell off rebar, slumping down to the ground in a cloud of gray dust.
	...
	“They’re pouring out of the crater.” Travis grabbed her arm. “We need to get to safety. Now!”
	...
	“I have to see what’s going on.” The machine gun blasted away, the rest of the firing team ignoring the shouting as they continued shooting downslope. “What are the Jiralhanae doing?”
	“Those ain’t Jiralhanae!” the gunner spat, pausing as they fed yet another belt into the gun.
	Ellis crawled up to the edge of the rock and peered over.
	Hundreds of gray monsters were swarming out from the excavated structure’s entrance at the center of the crater. They looked like cyclopean nightmares, enormous bipeds with muscles bunched and corded—something from ancient mythology that had suddenly become very real. Their elephant-thick legs thudded as they moved, giants above the humans, destroying everything within arm’s range, but they operated in an eerie synchrony. Like bees escaping a hive, clusters of them flew toward threats and crashed into them. Militia Warthogs roared around the crater, trying to engage the sudden menace, their machine guns kicking as they fired away.

Halo: Envoy Ch 18