|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:07:56 GMT 1
I have no idea if any of you are interested in Halo Reach. I started posting this on ff.net a little over a month ago and its gotten generally positive feedback XD. So I figured, why deprive all of you lovely people? (I'm being sarcastic; can you tell?)
Anyway, this is about my lovely Number Six and her brief time spent with Noble Team during the Fall of Reach. Enjoy.
One: Omens
She could feel every bump in the road through the truck’s worn seat. Through her armor too but the suit had felt like a second skin for as long as she cared to remember. Remembering or rather the wanting of kept memories was a new thing: something she didn’t bother to prep herself for.
She hadn’t needed to remember before. Survival is something she found to be instinctual, whether she was holding a stick or her favorite DMR, and she was a natural predator. She told herself that she remembered impulses, not emotions, that her Spartan armor could protect her from most things but not the internal elements of heartbreak and loss. People died in her field of work; whether enemies or allies, she didn’t want to memorize their faces and she wouldn’t wish the same on anyone else. Better to go nameless, faceless. Numbers were safer and if people saw her as a shell, then so what?
It was a new day and a new number, as she was constantly reminded by the helmet in her hands with its new paintjob: B312. She had insisted on doing it herself. It was a process for her; so what if the lettering toward the right was slightly bigger than that on the left? She was never one for superficial first impressions; she let her gun do the talking.
It wasn’t as though she didn’t remember anything about her past life. It was more as though her past was a movie that she watched with only slight interest that rolled on behind her like the landscape around her. She could recall names, dates, places, but they were all like they belonged to someone else. They didn’t matter much to her anyway.
“We’re coming up on Noble Team’s base of operations,” the driver called to her over the white noise of the wheels. “It’s just over that ridge there.”
“You call that a ridge?”
He considered. “Nah, more like a bump. But you can’t see it yet. You want to put your helmet on? The dust gets in your eyes, doesn’t it?”
“Not enough to make me want to put it on.” She liked the open spaces.
“Suit yourself.”
“Noble Team’s got a base? I thought they were on the move.” She knew they were on the move; she did her homework before she let herself get signed onto anything.
“Sure they are. They go wherever they’re needed.”
“On Reach?”
“Yep. You born here?”
“No.” She paused. “Harmony. What do you know about Noble Team?”
“Not much to be honest. They’re all very hush-hush. But I guess you’ll find out.” They’d crossed over the “ridge.” “There.”
The base looked like a box with two Falcons perched beside it. She put on her helmet, feeling the familiar coolness well around her face and its weight settle down upon her shoulders. “What do you know about Noble One?”
“Not much.”
“What have you heard about him?”
“Hey, don’t look at me; I’m just the delivery boy.”
“And I’m the package,” she observed with a mixture of bitterness and satisfaction.
“Why do you want to know about him anyway?”
“I like to know something about who’s gonna be sending me out under enemy fire.”
“Reach isn’t that bad. You know: farmers and ONI hush-hush.”
“All the same,” she shrugged. “Did you hear happened to their last Number Six?”
“No but I’m guessing that you did.”
“Threw himself down on a suicide bomber. Locked his armor. Saved the rest of his team.”
“Ah.”
“I like to know what I’m getting into.”
“They got an, ah, history of self-sacrifice?” They came to a halt between the Falcons.
She pushed herself out of the truck and grabbed her DMR and grenades. She raised her eyebrows even though she knew the driver couldn’t see. “You tell me,” she said breezily and she crossed over towards the compound.
Well aware that someone was watching her from the interior of the Falcon –she saw his sniper rifle and already her fingers itched to get their hands on it, just for a test run or longer if she could get away with it –she shrugged her rifle onto her back and continued on, never stepping out of stride. Keep moving.
“…the Office of Naval Intelligence believes the deployment of a Spartan team to be a misallocation of valuable resources. I disagree.”
She could feel the judgment coming on as she entered the tin box of an outpost. Two pairs of eyes –one obscured by his helmet, the other barefaced –rose to her approach and she could feel them studying her every movement, or so she suspected. Call her paranoid but this team sounded something like a family and here she was the cuckoo bird. Her suspicions were confirmed as another Spartan –this one another woman and without her helmet–crossed in front of her, cutting off her path towards the monitors and whom she suspected to be Noble Leader.
“Commander,” said the woman and the Spartan at the monitor turned to look at her.
“So that’s our new Number Six,” observed the man with the large gun at his side and she unconsciously tried to stand a little taller.
“And you’re my new team,” she said in return, glancing at each of them, scrutinizing them boldly: an advantage to the helmet’s presence.
“Kat,” said the Spartan with a splattered skull smeared across his visor, “you read her file?”
Kat –the woman in turquoise armor –shrugged. “Only the parts that weren’t covered in black ink.”
She thought she saw the man that had first spoke cover a smile in the corner of her vision. Looking to the Spartan at the monitor –“Commander,” Kat had called him –she saw that he had turned back to his conversation.
“Anyone claim responsibility, sir?” he asked, laying a hand upon the helmet perched upon the desk.
“ONI thinks it might be the local insurrection,” was his answer. “Five months ago, they pulled a similar job on Harmony…”
“You came from Harmony, didn’t you?” she was asked by the big man. “I’m Jorge by the way. That’s Kat, Emile, and Jun’s out by the Falcon.”
“I saw him when I came in.”
“Don’t miss much, do you?”
“Trained for it, sir.”
“It’s Jorge, actually. Carter’s the ‘sir’ around here.”
“That’s the one that’s too busy to acknowledge your presence is Carter,” said Emile in a low, slightly mocking tone.
She glanced to Carter: Noble Leader didn’t bat an eyelash though he must have heard them. “He’s busy,” she allowed.
“If you saw Jun, that means he saw you too. He’s our snip.”
“I noticed.”
“Any chance he, uh, saw you without the helmet?”
“Doubtful.” Still, she fought down an unwelcome smile.
“And what do we call you?” Jorge leaned forward.
“Six,” she replied with a little quirk of the lips she knew they could not see. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to call each other when we’re on duty?”
Kat and Jorge exchanged a look; she did not miss Kat’s smirk.
“…Sir, consider it done,” they heard Carter say and all fell quiet.
“Then I’ll see you on the other side. Holland out.”
“I take it you’re Jennifer,” Carter turned to her and held out a hand before she could blink, or so it felt like.
She flinched. He hesitated. “Would you rather I call you something else?” She could hear Emile’s snort and Jorge’s chuckle. Her face flamed red. “Do you go by Jen? Jenny?” She saw Kat smirk again.
Turning away from his easy smile, she replied with a lie, “Not since I entered the service. Its Six now and I hope it will be that way for a while.”
He didn’t falter; perhaps he had encountered equally enigmatic soldiers in his past. “Six then. I hope so too. I’m Carter, Noble-One, Jun –that’s Noble 4 –is outside, that’s Kat, Emile, Jorge, Two, Three, and Five respectively. Those last two are the ones that probably damaged my reputation by you beyond repair.”
“We’re setting you up to look good for the newbie,” replied Emile, slightly snarky.
“We need to get moving, commander,” said Kat, shooting Emile a look.
She led the rest of the team filed out of the room in quick procession; Jorge dropped Six a quick wink before Carter shifted his weight, obscuring the exit from her view. “I’ve gotta be honest with you, Six: Thom was an integral part of this team. He was a good soldier and a good man and sometimes those things don’t go hand in hand like you’d think they might. I’m not gonna pretend that things aren’t going to be pretty rough for you these first couple of weeks but an attitude isn’t going to help anybody. You understand?”
“Sir,” she said, pushing down any feelings of resentment that might have come bubbling up to the surface.
“So, you came from Harmony?”
“Yes, sir. I was with a Special Ops group there. We were the ones that took down the rebels there.”
“You don’t need to impress me twice, lieutenant; I already read your file.”
She cursed under her breath. “Any of you haven’t?”
“Emile’s not big on reading and I don’t think Jorge bothered but that’s about it,” he sat himself down in the Falcon. Jorge slid in beside him and shot Carter a look of good natured annoyance before sliding his helmet over his head.
Six rested her palms upon her knees. “Is this a psychological check-up then? Sir.”
“Don’t feel the pressure or anything.”
“I’m feeling it,” said Jorge easily. “You got a past you’d like to tell us about, Spartan, or is it all in numbers?” She said nothing in return. “Don’t like to talk about it?”
“Do you?”
Emile’s voice came over the comm. as the Falcons began to take off, one after the other. “Don’t ask Jorge to start talking now, newbie. Trust me: he won’t stop.”
She chuckled despite herself, unwillingly falling into what seemed an open and easy camaraderie despite Carter’s warnings. She looked to the commander. “You figured out that I’ve got all my marbles yet?”
“I think I hear some rolling in your head coming over the comm.,” he replied. Did anything phase him? “There was one thing about your file.”
“You get through all the censors?”
“Yes, in fact.” She whistled in slow appreciation. “I saw everything, even the parts they didn’t want me to. I’m glad to have someone with your skill set and I’m happy enough to have Noble Team back up to full strength.” There seemed a heavy silence over the comm. “But that lone wolf stuff has got to stay behind. We’re a team. You understand?”
“Got it.” She’d have met his eyes if she could. “Looks like someone’s done his homework.”
“I take it you did too.”
“I’m feeling the tension,” voiced Emile dryly.
“No tension here, Emile,” said Carter. He looked to Six. “You, lieutenant?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Then we’ve got no problems.” Carter settled back into his seat.
Six pursed her lips and kept quiet. No point in making enemies, not now. Noble One seemed as though he would like to make friends; that wasn’t going to happen on her watch. She told herself that she was here to tread the fine line traced around friendship, to get them to care about her enough to keep her alive but nothing further. Caring was an easy trap but she trusted her abilities to toe the line.
Jorge appeared lost in thought, his helmet’s visor turned toward the ever moving landscape. She wondered if he was remembering the previous Six. Had he rode with Carter and Jorge? Had he occupied this very seat? Was she trying to fill a hole that she could only fall into and be lost in? Well, there was no point in remembering someone she had never known. Better make the rare moment of memory count for somebody important.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:09:48 GMT 1
And here comes the next one... Enjoy.
Two: Hit the Ground
Her feet, encased, touched down on the ground, flattening two perfectly identical crops of grass. Across the way, Emile and Kat did the same. She paused for a moment, stopped steady in her tracks, eyes quickly scanning the skies and the ridge of the valley. A fleeting impulse to stop and inhale the crispness of wet grass and the cool after effects of rain hit her hard and she had to take a moment to brush the thought aside.
Carter, clad in blue armor, dropped down beside her. Out of the corner of her visor, she saw the commander send a quick salute to Jun in the already airborne Falcon that had landed across the way and then he moved forward into the underbrush. Kat followed close in his shadow or so Six observed. The Spartan already assumed it would only be natural for a younger team member to take initiative from her commander but this was something different. For what would not be the last time, Six wondered if there was more in the dynamics of Noble Leader’s relationship with his team than she had previously surmised.
“See anything, Jun?” she heard him say over the comm.
“Negative, commander. A few settlements besides the one closest to your current position but I don’t see anyone outside.”
“Could they be out working the fields?” Jorge suggested.
“We’re in the fields now.”
“Not as far as I can see from this position,” responded Jun, ignoring Emile’s interjection. “There may be more farms deeper into the valley, if you would like me to take a look.”
“Negative, Four. Maintain current recon sweep. The rest of you, move forward. Emile, take point. Six, cover his flank.”
Emile quickly moved into a sprint and Six followed suit with equal speed. As he scaled a large boulder in their path, she crouched down and, leaning against the huge rock, peered around its edge. “Settlement looks deserted,” said Emile, presumably gazing through his scope. “Either that or they’ve bunkered down deep. There’s a truck on fire. Might’ve been sabotage.”
“And the distress signal is coming from there?”
“Correct, commander.” Six turned slightly to see that Noble’s other female Spartan had moved closer to the buildings. “But I’m not reading anything on my radar.”
“Alright, team: move into the courtyard.”
Emile leapt off of the boulder and hit the ground running but Six had taken off at a sprint moments before and was a good fifty feet ahead when Carter’s voice rang in her ear: “Fall back, Six. That’s an order, soldier.”
Unwillingly and with a noise of dissent, she complied. “Keeping a tight leash on me, commander?”
“I’d like to be sure of you before you start running out on your own,” was his dry response.
Her gloved hand’s grip on her Magnum tightened. Jorge, coming up behind her, noticed. There was a soft click over her comm. as he opened up a local channel and advised, “Easy there, Spartan. Think of this as your test run.”
And Teacher doesn’t want me running out of his league, she thought before nodding to the older soldier and dropping after Kat into the courtyard.
The truck was smoldering now, sending soft pinnacles of smoke up into the darkening sky, one shade of gray against another. Emile –another gray shape in the foreground –leaned down to swipe something –a small device emitting a red glow in measured bursts of light –from the cracked and pockmarked tiles. “Found it.”
He carelessly tossed the blinking beacon to Kat. She caught it and Carter asked, “Make out any ID?”
Six kept her eyes and gun trained on the open valley as Kat answered, “Negative, commander, but it’s military alright.”
“So where are the troopers?” inquired Jorge.
She cast a glance back at the rest of the team before turning around to voice her opinion. “There’s blood –a lot of it –but I don’t think anyone died here. If they did, somebody was careful to clean up.” She bit her lip but her voice did nothing to betray her unease. “And I think the lack of explosives residue is worth noting.”
“Jun?” Carter reflexively looked to the sky for confirmation and Six felt another twinge of irritation.
“She’s right, commander.”
Emile casually holstered his shotgun. “Well,” he drew the word out, “it could always be… plasma. You know.” “I wouldn’t put any money on that,” said Jorge with disgust –at his comrade or at the mere mention of the Covenant, Six didn’t know. “Not here. Not on Reach.”
“Alright, nothing else to see here,” said Carter decisively. “Let’s move on. And double time it, team. Those troopers can’t be far off.”
If they’re alive, whispered a voice in Six’s mind. She resisted the urge to shudder. Spartans didn’t do that. Besides, they were all thinking it; why should Six be fazed by anything they were not? If anything, she was fazed by less. Soldiers die. Spartans die. She knew enough of death to have figured that out a long time ago.
“Permission to engage?” said Emile as they ran forward and past a bolted gate.
“Permission granted. But be selective.”
“Commander, house is locked up tight.”
“Move around to the side. Onto the terrace, Six, and then into the house. I’m right behind you.”
“Yes, sir.” She obeyed, grateful despite herself for the opportunity. If he was looking for proof of her abilities –if any of them were –by God, she would give them it if it were the last thing she’d do.
It took her a moment to realize that she really meant that.
She and Carter moved through darkened corridors, soundless save for their steps against the wooden floors. “It looks like they all just got up and left,” she observed.
Carter smashed the padlock on one of the doors and Jorge entered, followed by the others. “No signs of force,” the bigger man murmured.
“Unless you count the truck on fire,” said Emile flatly.
“Let’s focus here, team,” interjected Carter, a note of warning in his tone.
Jorge and Emile followed their commander into the next room but Six paused at the window overlooking the wind turbines and scanned the skies. She didn’t expect the rebels to be airborne but if they weren’t rebels at all…
“You alright there, lieutenant?”
Kat’s voice took her by surprise. She turned and said, “Fine.” Reluctantly and somewhat unintentionally, her gaze dropped down to Kat’s robotic arm and the pistol it held. She swallowed. “I was just thinking… if it was Covenant…”
“It’s not Covenant,” Jorge’s voice came over the comm.
Kat jerked her head in the direction of the door. “Leave it be, Six. We’ll find out soon enough.”
She nodded abruptly and made for the courtyard. Kat had followed her out of the house when they heard, “Out of the house, now!”
Emile had his shotgun pointed at an older man dressed in civilian attire shuffling out of a door and into the rain. Jorge made a noise of exasperation and shoved his way past Kat and Six. “Put your gun down. They’re not rebels. They’re farmers. Look at them.”
Carter nodded to Emile and the Spartan pointed his weapon down at the ground. To Jorge, he said, “Ask them what they’re doing here.”
The man –Six didn’t bother getting a good look at him –said something in some language that Six hadn’t bothered learning and then Jorge said, “Hiding, sir. He says that the neighbors were attacked last night…”
Something falling woke her up. She opened her eyes to see the fire licking at her bed sheets.
“That there was screaming, gunfire…”
She got up. The floor was hot against her bare feet. She looked out of the window. Grenades flew through the sky like blue Christmas ornaments.
“Until about sunrise. Something in the fields… killed his son.”
“What does he mean ‘something’?”
A click broke her out of it. Jun’s voice came over the comm.: “Be advised, commander: I’m reading heat sigs in the structure directly ahead of you.”
Carter turned with mechanical efficiency in the direction of the mentioned structure. “Five, get them back in the house.” Jorge was shouting something and the civilians obeyed. “Noble Team, let’s move.”
Six felt her legs start moving until she was in full sprint alongside Emile and Kat. Jorge brought up the rear on account of his gun but their ranks evened out anyway as they approached the open room on the side of the building.
“Damn it.” Jorge was the first to speak.
“Commander? Fill me in.”
He took two steps into the building. Carter’s voice was heavy. “We’ve got military casualties here, Jun. Two.”
“Looks like they were interrogated,” Six found her voice again.
“It’s messy,” Carter continued.
“Bastards,” said Emile under his breath. “Whoever they are.”
Carter got to his feet. “Into the house. Maybe we’ll be able to figure that out if we move fast.”
Six stepped into line behind Jorge, bringing up the rear of the small party as they filed through the rooms. The team was quiet, their earlier banter subdued by what they had seen. Even Emile appeared restrained.
She paused in a hallway and gazed out of the large window for a moment. The rain was falling heavier now and it was difficult to make out the valley beyond the settlement. There was a waterfall cascading down the cliff; that she could make out, its shape just beyond the edge of the semi-circle roof of the structure. And then she saw something.
“Contact!” she yelled just before pulling out her .66 pistol and shooting twice, once to break the glass, another to fire at the enemy perched upon the edge of the roof.
Jorge’s head snapped back to look at her in shock and then Emile came down back into the corridor. “Skirmisher!” he confirmed at a shout and then took off down the stairs at the end of the hallway.
“What?” she heard Carter say and then Jorge spat out, “It’s the damn Covenant,” in response. She heard Carter swear and then Jorge went running down the stairs after Emile. Six kept her eyes trained on the courtyard, reloading her Magnum as a train of Grunts emerged from behind a wall of crates, moving in single file. Six shots and they were down on the ground, blood pooling against the grass and tiles like honey.
She reloaded again and barely had time to duck before a bolt flew over her helmet. There was another shot and then Carter was down beside her, reloading his DMR. “Go, Six,” he jerked his head down the empty corridor.
Nodding once, she swapped her pistol for a rifle and stormed down the stairs. She could almost hear her brain click into autopilot amid the regimented shots of Jorge’s machine gun. She paused by the doorway –it seemed as though the contacts had been neutralized –when an orange armored figure launched forward at her from a side entrance to the building. She struggled for a moment, fists and feet punching and kicking at the typical pressure points for a human enemy when the attacker let loose a strangled cry and blood ran down Six’s visor.
Carter kicked the alien assailant aside, thrust his knife back into its casing, and held out a hand to her. She took it, grateful, and he pulled her up to her feet. “Elite,” he said by way of explanation, and then turned to the rest of his team. “Everyone alright?”
“It’s the fracking Covenant!” snapped Jorge. “On Reach. How the hell did they get here?”
“I know, Five. But there isn’t time to ask questions. Let’s get to that relay outpost.”
“Commander,” Jun’s voice crackled over the comm., “I’m reading Covenant drop ships inbound on your position.”
“So now they rear their ugly heads.”
“Calm down, Five. Are they zeroing in on this structure, Jun?”
“Negative. I don’t think there’s enough room for them to drop in the courtyard. They’re heading for the open space across the river.”
“Right in our path,” Emile observed wryly.
“Thanks for the head’s up, Jun. Team, head for the river.”
The river only came up to her waist but she took the time to splash the water against her helmet, washing away the Elite’s blood where the rain had not. The water churned around her body and around Jorge and his gun as he lugged it through the river. When she was across, Six ducked behind a cluster of rocks and used her scope to zero in on the enemy: grunts, skirmishers, and several of those that Carter had named Elites. She gritted her teeth, pushed off from the rock, and matched her pace with Kat’s as the team dove into battle.
She took out a skirmisher with a well-aimed headshot but cursed with frustration when her next shot only ricocheted off of one of the Elite’s shields. Beside her, Jorge opened fire on a clump of grunts and the smaller assailants scattered like marbles, waving their hands in the air, easy pickings for Carter’s DMR. Kat drew an Elite’s attention left, leaving its flank open for Emile’s favorite knife. Noble Team worked like a well oiled machine and, while Six was unsure of where she fit in among the cogs, she was sure she’d be able to do some damage of her own.
Her hands clawed against stone as she swiftly scaled an outcropping of boulders in the center of the battlefield. Taking initiative as one of the Elites ducked for cover, she leapt onto its back and, knife in hand, and, as she had hoped, was able to rip open its jugular with the blade.
It was messy. Six thrust the corpse forward and away from her, hardly noticing as it crushed a fleeing grunt. The rain made short work of the blood on her gloves as it had before but she wiped her blade on the grass once the battlefield was clear.
“Stand down, team, stand down,” said Carter and they regrouped at the edge of the field. “Contacts neutralized.”
“Contacts, Carter? It’s the damn Covenant!”
Emile snorted. “Cheer up, big man: this whole valley turned into a free-fire zone.”
Carter ignored them and looked to Kat. “We need to warn Holland. I need you at the relay outpost now, Kat.”
“Commander? I’m reading more hostile activity to the northeast.”
“Got it, Jun. Emile, you’re with Kat. Five, Six, we’ll run interference ground-side and meet up at the outpost.”
Kat nodded, turned away, and said into her comm., “Noble Three, requesting airlift.”
“Five, Six, the truck.”
She hadn’t thought that anyone noticed her quiet kill in the chaos of the battle until Jorge clapped her on the back as she passed him on her way to the driver’s seat and said, “Nice one.”
Emile shrugged as he headed toward Kat and the pick-up zone. “Not bad for a newbie.”
“I’m not a newbie,” Six protested but was quieted when she caught Carter’s eye and he rewarded her with a small, approving nod as he hoisted himself into the passenger seat of the vehicle. Jorge clambered onto the back with his gun and then Six put her foot to the gas and they were moving forward.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:11:48 GMT 1
Three: First Contention
July 24th, 2552
Carter seemed to be pumping the Elite full of bullets but the alien assailant was quick to leap and dodge, dancing about the muzzle of the truck until Noble Team’s commander was forced by necessity to reload. Six jammed the vehicle into reverse to no avail; their attacker continued to keep out of range of Jorge’s gun. She ground her teeth together in frustration at the Elite’s refusal to “just fracking die already” –as she put it so eloquently –but it was when the damn thing decided to attempt to commandeer the truck that Six really decided that she’d had enough. She jerked the wheel right; knocking the Elite to the ground before slamming her foot to the gas, crushing the attacker’s legs against the wet grass as they pulled forward.
The creature moaned out in pain and Carter swiveled in his seat to put it out of its misery. As they left the corpse behind, Jorge swore very colorfully and snarled in Carter’s general direction, “How many bloody outposts have they taken over out here?”
“Five, I’m not going to say this again: You need to calm down.”
“But how much have they taken? A few settlements? A relay outpost? What next? How much ground have they got on us?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“That’s not an answer, commander.”
“Well then maybe you’ll get a chance to ask them yourself. Keep going forward, Six. We’re getting closer.”
“Yes, sir.” Privately, she suspected that Jorge wouldn’t let a single Grunt live long enough to tell the tale to anybody and she’d be right there with him pumping out bullets to match the rate of her accelerated heartbeat. She kept her eyes on the road but then something to the left of the beaten path caught her attention, a rustling in a clump of bushes too muted in nature to be normal. “Commander: something at eleven o’clock. In the brush just up ahead.”
“Could be friendlies,” Jorge suggested but moved his gun to zero in on the spot she had indicated. “Caught in the field, couldn’t make it back.”
Perhaps considering that option, Carter raised his DMR into the air and fired a single shot. Six’s foot lingered over the gas pedal, letting the engine stall as the crackling grew louder. Suddenly, there was a crashing noise and three large birds ran out from the foliage, long extended necks swaying like stems in a breeze, in apparent panic. They burst forth and ran freely about the vehicle and away into the rainy valley.
Momentarily disgusted, Jorge loosened his grip on his gun. “Moa,” he snorted. “And here I was hoping for something more interesting.”
Carter could not completely suppress a heavy sigh. “Alright, Six. Let’s double time it now.”
She could not bring herself to tear her gaze from the cluster of bushes. “I swear… I saw something.”
“We need to keep up the interference,” he reminded her.
Tightening both her lips and her grip on the wheel, she shrugged in what she hoped was an amicable manner –stuck-up idiot I’ve got for a commander after all –and complied with the removal of her other foot from the brakes. They pulled forward through the clearing and had gone about a dozen yards when the skirmisher leapt out from behind and latched onto Jorge’s back.
There was no time to waste in revealing or even acknowledging her immediate shock and frustration –frustration with Carter for making them move on, frustration with herself for not insisting on firing into the bush anyway. The skirmisher was clinging onto Jorge’s back like a monkey, attempting to pry the big man away from the mounted gun, and that was the issue at hand.
In a flash of movement, Carter jammed fresh ammo into his gun, simultaneously twisting around in his seat. “Veer left, Six,” he said loud and clear but calm, as calmly as though he were calling to her over the chatter of the rec room. “Left!”
The truck swerved to the left as per command and the weight of the gun jerked in that direction as well. Jorge and his assailant swung toward the right and the older Spartan, predicting his commander’s intention, did his best to maneuver his bulky frame into a crouch. Carter aimed his shots for the enemy’s head and neck.
The skirmisher howled as the bullets penetrated its armor, cutting clear into the flesh, and let go of Jorge’s neck to fall clear to the ground. Six set the gears to reverse and all three team members listened to the sickening crunch with grim satisfaction.
Noble’s commander sucked in air between his teeth and nodded to Six, a motion more akin to begrudging gratitude than pure resentment. “Alright,” he said. “Now we double time it.”
A click came over the comm. Jun’s voice was filled with static. “Is everything alright over there, commander?”
“It is now.” Carter motioned for Six to increase their speed. He didn’t even look at her. “Any update from Emile and Kat?”
“Nothing since their drop-off. Though I’m picking up a signal now…”
“Patch it through.”
“Mayday! Three-Charlie-Six, we’re under attack by Covenant forces. The Covenant is on Reach. I repeat: the Covenant is on reach! Somebody read me out there?”
Six briefly took her eyes off of the road to glance at her commander. “Must be the missing troopers,” said Jorge.
“Let’s move, Six. We need to find the source of that distress call.”
“All due respect, commander, but search-and-rescue –rounding up strays per say –isn’t necessarily our top priority here.”
“We came here in the first place to do just that. And we don’t leave people behind. Let me know if you–”
“I’ve got visual of possible friendly forces under attack just south of your position.” Six could practically see Jun’s smug smile over the comm. “I take it that was what you were asking for.”
“We’re under attack. Mayday! Mayday! I’ve got wounded here, can’t hold out much longer. God, I hope somebody’s hearing this.”
“We go south then,” said Six slightly under her breath and turned the truck left. “Detour. Great.”
Carter didn’t sound like he was smiling. “Keep going, soldier.”
……………
Patches of grass were burning to the left of the empty settlement, stepping stones into a war zone of fallen UNSC troopers, downed Covenant soldiers, and grenades, both inactive and live, lying upon the ground and flying through the air. Six parked the truck right in the middle of it, a makeshift barricade, and she, Jorge, and Carter leapt forward to take the heat off of the wounded and weary holdouts.
“Noble Three, we’ve located the trooper squad,” said Carter in between rapid shots taken at a clump of Jackals. “Request immediate evac. Send my coordinates.”
“Solid copy, commander. I’m recalling Falcon Charlie 2 now. Just hold evac position.”
“Easier said than done,” commented Jorge wryly. “Come on, Six. How about you and me take that Covenant scum over there?”
She grinned in response: a feral expression she knew no one could see. “Let’s take ‘em down, Five.” Trading her Magnum for a fallen corporal’s DMR, she took aim and fired. The shot ricocheted off of an Elite’s silvery armor but it was enough to draw him into Jorge’s path. The big man hit the foreign fighter with just the right amount of firepower to take down its shields. The Elite roared in response to the crippling blow, rushing the Spartan in three huge strides, but was stopped dead in its path by Six’s well-aimed headshot.
She looked up for new direction from the older Spartan but Jorge had already moved on to exterminate a crowd of unlucky Grunts. Looking to Carter, she saw that Noble Leader had dispatched a couple of Jackals and was working down another Elite’s shields. Seeing no other assailants in the field, she watched his battle rather engage the alien herself, admiring, despite herself, the way he didn’t seem to relinquish his position and yet managed to dodge all of his foe’s shots. If it had been her, she would have moved into cover by now, inching along the perimeter of some rock to sneak up on her enemy from behind. Noble’s leader fought much more… well, nobly than she did and though she would like to label him a ham-fisted fool with no eye for subterfuge, she couldn’t. That didn’t mean that she had to admit that out loud to anybody else though.
Someone moved into her line of sight, obstructing the view of Carter’s kill: a weary-faced man with hard brown eyes and the left side of his face sliced open. “Spartans?” he said out loud.
“Get some first aid on that,” she advised without preamble.
“Noble Leader, be advised: I have visual on inbound Covenant drop ships.”
Carter pushed forward past Six, saying into his comm., “Evac ships, keep your distance.” Over his shoulder, he said, “Five, Six, keep LZ green when those drop ships come in.”
“Corporal Travis, sir,” said the previously unidentified soldier, grateful for Carter’s entrance, “with 3 Charlie. Sir, it’s the Covenant.”
Jorge appeared on Six’s left and gestured for her to look to the horizon. As the ships swooped down into the clearing, she watched as Carter put a hand on Travis’s shoulder and said, “We know, corporal. Get the wounded and survivors together. It’s time to get you out of here.”
The drop ships were looming closer and it appeared that they meant to linger. Six’s suspicions were confirmed as the first blue-white blasts were fired and the truck they had arrived in was obliterated into a fiery wreck. She stared at the smoldering remains, captivated by the flames and the memories they conjured up, for a few moments, moments she didn’t have, and Carter shoved her down as the second round of flares began.
“Are you crazy, just standing around like that?” he demanded, shoving ammo into her hand. “Get to work, Spartan.”
“You don’t have to look out for me,” she shot back but the argument sounded weak even to her own ears. I’m here; I’m not there; I’m here.
The look he might have shot her through the helmet would have been deadly for all that his tone was scathing. “I’m not gonna be the cause of another lost Number Six –not when we can’t afford it happening again and not when I can do something about it.”
“From what I heard, he brought that on himself,” she could not resist saying even as she took out a quick succession of Grunts with her assault rifle. “I don’t plan to.”
“Oh, don’t you?” said Carter, dispatching a Jackal. “Might I ask what that was then, besides being cannon fodder?”
“No, I–”
“Easy there,” said Jorge, kicking an Elite’s corpse to the wayside. “I think that’s it.”
“Transport, LZ is clear,” said Carter after a quick evaluation of the area. “Move in for evac.”
“Affirmative. Transport inbound.”
“Corporal, get your men together. We’ll move you out of the hot zone for recuperation.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Travis, stepping forward and leading what remained of his troop. Six glanced skyward as twin Falcons landed among the rubble. Directing the wounded survivors to the leftmost vehicle, she heard the corporal say, “We lost a lot of men. I thought we were next, especially given that I didn’t expect to see a team of Spartans out here… you are a team, aren’t you?”
“And what made you think otherwise, corporal?” said Jorge with a chuckle, cheerfulness evident in his tone as he glanced between Carter and Six.
Carter was less amused. “We are. And I’m sorry for the loss of members of your troop but we need to get moving. We’ll do our best to give your fallen a proper service later.”
Jorge and Six moved to their Falcon, sat down, and awaited Carter. As he joined them, Six asked, “Do you really think anyone’s gonna be able to come back and collect corpses?”
“What do you think, Six?” His voice was much heavier than it had been before and she, properly but unwillingly ashamed, glanced at her knees.
“Well, I say we better be able to,” said Jorge stoutly as the Falcon lifted into the air. “I want these bastards off Reach and the sooner, the better.”
“Hear, hear,” replied Carter grimly as he reached back and banged on the wall for the pilot to go faster.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:14:29 GMT 1
Four: Down the Rabbit Hole
July 24th, 2552
Much of the fog that filled the air around the relay outpost was revealed to be smoke as the Falcon descended back into the valley. Some of it managed to get through the ventilators of Six’s helmet and she unwittingly breathed in the bitter vapor as Carter said into his comm.: “Noble Two, sit-rep. How are we doing over there?”
“We’re at the relay outpost, commander.”
“Beautiful scenery,” Emile’s voice came over the speaker in Six’s helmet in tones of sarcasm. “And the wildlife is something else. Wish you were here, commander.” “Door’s locked,” Kat continued. “Mechanism’s been flash-fused.”
“Well, you can beat it, right?”
“I’ve dialed up my torch and cut a way through but it’s going to take some time.”
“Alright, we’re heading to your location. Won’t be too long now.”
“What’s our objective, sir?”
“Clear the field,” Carter said in response to Jorge’s query. “Get inside; get word to Holland as quickly as possible. Round up survivors, get them out of there. You know the drill.” The courtyard of the outpost came into view through the fog. “Drop us off there,” he told the pilot.
The man winced. “LZ’s a little hot, sir.”
“We know. Put her down, pilot.” He glanced up and at Six. “I hope you’ve had your fill of sitting around, Six, because break time’s over.”
She rolled her eyes, waves of contention rolling off of her. “Understood, sir,” she replied through clenched teeth.
“Emile, I want you to fall back and stick on Kat. Make sure nobody gets near her.”
“Sure thing, commander. See you soon.”
“Jorge, cover us. Six and I will clear a path to the door.”
“Will do,” he replied as the Falcon dropped down into the heat of the battle in the courtyard. “Let’s go make a ruckus.”
Six leapt forward past Carter and immediately zeroed in on where Kat was crouched by the panel to the right of the huge door. Emile was down beside her and had cleared the area between the Covenant forces and their position as per Carter’s instruction but there was a large arc of enemies still left to breach.
She moved fluidly through the area, pausing only to snap an unlucky Jackal’s neck between her arm and torso. She let it drop dead to the ground and dispatched its blue shielded counterpart with an equally graceful thrust of her knife. She jerked her wrist back, retrieving the blade and thinking idly that if Halsey called her a “killing machine” those years back, she might as well live up to the title.
Jamming the knife back into her belt, she snatched up a Magnum from a corpse’s hand and quickly smacked a Grunt with the butt of the gun, then used her elbow to shove the hapless victim to the ground and killed it with a single shot.
Beside her, Carter kicked another Grunt to the left and opened fire on the remainder of its companions. None of the enemies within the courtyard’s perimeter seemed particularly deadly to Six and she supposed that it was their sheer number that had made it difficult for Kat to accomplish her task. Now between the four of them, Emile, Carter, Jorge, and Six made short work of the aggressors. But Six was only beginning to think that they were seeing the end of it when the twin Spirits descended on the team.
“How are we doing, Kat?” Carter called over to her as he crouched behind a low lying wall beside Jorge, waiting for the heavy fire to cease. Six was stooped over across the way, listening to the Covenant forces unload; wishing for what must have been the tenth time that day that she had a sniper rifle in her hands instead of the shorter ranged DMR.
There was the sound of Kat gritting her teeth together. The sparks of the torch were reflected on her visor. “It’s taking a little longer than I had hoped, commander. I’m just about half way through the door.”
Beside Six, Emile crept around to the side of the forklift her shoulders were braced against. He fired his shotgun once, then cursed as blast of white-grey energy tore past him, caving into the wall. “Can’t shoot a damn thing with that thing out there!” he grumbled. “You got contact, Jorge?”
“They’ve gotta move eventually,” said Six rationally. “Their troops are moving in and they wouldn’t risk getting them shot down by friendly fire.”
With a nod, Carter agreed. “Wait it out, team. Keep them off our backs until Kat can get through.”
“Jackals coming in round the back!” Jorge bellowed, turning his gun on the new enemies.
“They’ve sent out a couple Elites too,” observed Emile, “Behind the Grunts.” The skull on his EVO helmet seemed to wink at Six as he tore around the corner of the forklift and along the edge of the courtyard. Moments later, he sent an update along: “Took down the shields on the orange one. You prime for a headshot, commander?”
“Draw ‘em out, Four,” Carter replied and lifted the scope of his gun up to eye level.
That was when the suicidal Grunts come rushing in.
Plasma residue glowed blue at their fingertips as one grenade after another was thrown forward into the fray. Most bounced harmlessly off of the wreckage and makeshift barricades but at least one soared over Six’s head, ricocheting off of the building’s exterior and causing her to dive across the doorway to crouch beside Carter. She meant to hit the ground a few feet behind him but miscalculated the distance and the force of the consequential explosion behind her. She dove hands first into a roll behind her commander but accidentally caught his ankle with her elbow and caused his headshot to misfire and hit the Elite’s shoulder.
“Damn it, Six,” Carter growled as Jorge said, “It wasn’t her fault. There was an explosion, commander. She had to get away from it.”
“Guys?” Emile interrupted. “If you haven’t noticed, there’s an Elite over here and more drop ships coming in.”
“Fall back, Emile. Kat?”
“Almost…. There. Got it.”
“Alright, we’re in,” said Carter as the door slid open. “Fall back. Everybody. That’s an order.”
That last directive was given for the benefit of Six, whom, in the interests of redemption, was doing everything in her power to eliminate that last Elite. Only when the enemy fell did she turn back and start running even as the door began to close.
She sprinted past Jorge who was firing a few last shots of his own and tore through the door to join Carter and Kat. Jorge backed up, the shrinking doorway barely wide enough to accommodate his large frame and Emile remained outside for a dangerously long period of time. It was only when the door way nearly shut tight that Carter reached through and pulled his younger comrade into the complex.
The Covenant was shut out but that meant that Six was closed in with her new team whom, with perhaps the exception of Jorge, couldn’t be too happy with her. She wondered which the better option was. Then the darkness of the room seemed to close in on her and she immediately decided that, given her choice, she’d have taken the former.
Six was shaken out of her thoughts by the sound of Emile rapping his armored knuckles against the door they’d just come through. “That’ll hold them for a while,” he observed with satisfaction. “Then the fun starts.”
“It’s dark enough for there to be plenty of ‘fun’ in here already, waiting for us,” replied Jorge, adjusting his grip on his machine gun. “Keep your eyes open.”
“Then I say we find the control room and Kat can make this place a little less dark,” said Carter. “We need that relay back online. Emile, stick to this location. Any ‘fun’ comes along, it’s all yours. Six, take flank. Kat, Jorge, let’s move.”
Resisting the urge to sigh in exasperation –she knew well enough that recent events had caused her a huge setback in her commander’s respect for her –she followed them into the room. It was still dark but seemed peaceful, peaceful in the way that a cemetery was serene. There were enough bodies in the next room to fill a graveyard anyway –and a couple of live ones too.
A dead man was slumped over a dark console. Kat pushed the corpse aside as she moved to work on the controls. “Six,” she said over her shoulder, “take a look at that body. See if there’s some kind of reset code lying around.”
As she turned the body over, running her gloved hand along the inside of the dead man’s jacket, Carter knelt down beside a badly wounded but alive UNSC trooper. She looked up when she heard her commander speak quietly to the injured man but was careful to never focus on the trooper’s face; somehow, she already knew what his fate would be and did not need the picture of him stamped into her memory.
“What happened to the rest of your unit?” said Carter a little more loudly but still in that same quiet, calm, and authoritative manner. “Do you know?” He handed the man a canteen from his belt.
“Never saw nothing,” rasped the trooper between shallow gulps of water and equally shallow breaths. “We got split. I ended up here and they… It sounded bad, you know, over the comm. I don’t think they made it. Covenant bastards took nearly everyone… Jake and Harrison and Kara… ah shit, they got Kara.”
“It’s alright, corporal. No one was expecting this. Now you stay put–”
“Not much else I can do,” the soldier grinned weakly.
“–And we’ll find you a combat surgeon. We’ll have you up and at them again in no time.”
The wounded man closed his eyes again and Carter got back to his feet. Six quickly looked back down at her task. “Kat?” he asked.
The other female Spartan made a little huff of vexation. “Well, it’s plasma damage but what else would we have expected?”
In another corner of the room, Jorge sifted through rubble. “Can we fix it?” asked Carter as Six rolled the body she was inspecting over. Something fell out of the dead man’s sleeve. She snatched it up, running her hand over the grooves and ridges of what she could only determine to be some kind of data module.
“If you mean ‘me’ when you say ‘we,’” Kat was saying but Six interrupted her with her discovery.
“Found something,” she said to Carter, unable to keep subtle notes of triumph from her tone. She was about to get up and join them at the control panel when Kat snatched the module from her hand.
“I’ll be taking that, Six,” she said, pinching the module between her robotic arm’s fingers to inspect it. “Not your domain.”
“Says you,” Six muttered but her comment went unnoticed in the din as Jorge announced, “I’ve got another live one over here.”
All three Spartans turned to look at the staircase as Jorge pulled a struggling girl out from behind the rubble. “Come on,” murmured Jorge. “Come on out. I’m not going to hurt you. None of us are.”
He turned, revealing a slim, dark haired girl in practical gray clothing trying her best to remain behind the rubble. She did not seem to believe him or was perhaps too frightened to even register what Jorge was saying because she continued to shout and pound her free fist down against the plating of his armor. Six averted her eyes. It might have been comical, watching this skinny little thing fight against a Spartan’s strength and sheer mass, might have been funny had Six not been that girl; what felt like not so long ago.
“Jorge…” said Carter, a note of warning creeping into his tone.
Jorge gently placed his weapon upon the floor, propping the gun up against a mound of debris. “It’s alright,” he said, either to his commander or to the girl; Six didn’t know. “I’ve got her. I’ve got you. Keep still and I promise I’ll release you.”
The girl went limp in his arms and he set her lightly down upon the rubble beside the staircase. “Are you alright?”
She shook her head feverishly, blubbering something in that same language of the farmers that Six hadn’t bothered to learn. Frantically, she kept jerking her hand over Jorge’s shoulder and for a moment Six thought that the girl was gesturing at her but the wounded soldier cried out in alarm.
Carter and Six’s heads whipped around to watch as two Elites -that’s what it looked like to Six; in the heat of the moment, she couldn’t be sure of their number -swarmed the control room from three different entrances, snarling and brandishing high tech Covenant weapons. One occupied Kat and Carter’s attention, nearly taking Kat’s remaining arm if not for Carter shoving her out of the way, and the other advanced on the Jorge, its energy sword sweeping in a wide glowing arc over the big man’s head as the he pushed the civilian girl down.
“What’s your status, over?” said Emile’s voice over the comm.
“We’ve been engaged!” spoke Carter in response. “Six, take the heat off Five.”
An impulse –more reckless than brave –struck Six as the lingering closed in on Jorge, its ostensible target the girl. She snatched up her assault rifle from where it lay beside the dead man’s corpse and charged the Elite, shooting all the while and watching its shields flicker to dead, only to have her gun knocked out of her hands and her body pushed down against the floor with the alien on top of her.
She didn’t expect help from anybody as her attacker pulled back its energy sword for a fatal blow; she was accustomed to not relying on anybody but herself in these situations so she pulled back her own weapon –her fist –and socked the Elite in the jaw. Rewarded by the sound of a crack, she drew her free fist back again, winding up for another punch as the alien shoved its face into her visor, an intimidation tactic that Six would never admit out loud worked. Still, she screwed up her fist even tighter but then the alien’s weight was lifted from her and tossed aside.
Carter –her implied liberator –kicked her assault rifle across the floor to her and she snapped it up in her grip. Never again, she told herself and lifted the gun, targeting the door that the Elites were in the process of retreating through, holding the wounded trooper up as a human shield. Carter froze; his gun was pointed at the door as well but the Elites disappeared down the corridor.
Screams –a man’s very human screams –rose up and Six, losing herself again, snapped, “Why didn’t you give the order to fire?”
“There was a civilian in the way, Six,” was Carter’s firm answer. “We don’t fire on civilians.”
Emile came running in. “Did those bastards get by me?”
“The man was dead anyway.” She shook her head and sighed.
The screaming subsided. Kat stepped forward. “Well, he’s dead now,” she said emotionlessly.
“Permission to pursue?” asked Emile, wielding his shotgun.
“Negative. Four, guard the entrance. Two, get the girl. Five, Six, clear the hole.”
Jorge grabbed his gun and followed Six to the door. She went through, casting a last glance back at the rest of her team before Jorge slammed the door shut, plunging them into blackness.
……………
The Elite Specialist had cracked her helmet’s visor and Six found herself holding her head at a funny angle as she attempted to manipulate a current and reset the junction to get it back online. “Fixing this is going to be a pain,” she said over her shoulder to Jorge as her fingers manipulated the wiring.
“You talking about the junction?”
“No,” she slammed the panel shut. “That’s done. I’m talking about my helmet.”
“We got spare visors,” replied Jorge helpfully. “If you need help putting it together, Kat’s good at that sort of thing.”
“Spares sound good. For the record, I make a point on fixing my armor myself. Makes sure that I can put back together again myself, should the need arise.”
“That’s… self-reliant.”
“My middle name.”
Jorge cleared his throat. “Did you say the junction’s up?”
“Up and running,” she confirmed as she got back to her feet. “You can radio Carter and let him know. But I’m sure that Kat’s figured it out by now.”
“You don’t want to do it yourself?”
She winced. “I’m not about to deal with Carter right now.”
“Oh?” Jorge smirked to himself as he pulled off his helmet and motioned for her to follow him back to the control room. “You got a problem with our commander, Spartan?”
Grinding her teeth together as they walked, she answered, “I think he’s got a problem with me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Oh, don’t pretend that you haven’t noticed the constant contention going on here.”
“Can’t pretend to save my life. You want to take that helmet off?”
“Why would I do that?”
“The crack’s doing wonders for your coordination.” Jorge suddenly grinned. “Plus I’m curious.”
She looked at him with suspicion. “Are you trying to flirt with me?”
“Relax, Six. No intentions of that sort here. I bet I’m near twice your age anyway.”
“I’m not that young,” she replied stoutly.
“Oh? How old are you, grandmother?”
“Surely that was in my file.”
“Surely you don’t think I actually read that ONI crap.” They’d reached a bridge and Six knew they were close to halfway back. “I like people to make their own first impressions. But, believe me; I heard plenty about you over the mess table, what with Kat and Carter.”
“Well, what with them?” He shrugged and adjusted his grip on his gun. “They argued over you, as they did over near every candidate, save the ones they immediately rejected.”
“What was there to argue about?”
“Oh, same old, same old. Basically, it came down to the fact that Kat wasn’t nearly as keen on you as Carter was.” He stopped abruptly. “Don’t tell either of them I said that. I’d like to live to a ripe old age.”
“What was that language you used with the farmers and the girl?”
“Hungarian. There are lots of them around here that speak the language.”
“‘Around here’ meaning Reach?”
“Sure. What about you? Harmony?”
“French,” she paused, realizing what she was giving away. “Some Flemish. We’re nearly there. You grew up on Reach?”
“Sure I did.”
“How was it?”
“Worse places to grow up in the galaxy. Here we are.” The door was still latched shut. He set to work on the deadbolt and then paused. Jorge turned back to Six. “Look,” he said, not unkindly, “the thing with you and Carter… well you’re both good soldiers. You just need to act like it.”
Kat was still hard at work at the controls as Six and Jorge entered. Carter glanced up from where he’d been lurking over Kat’s shoulder, nodding in greeting at their approach. To Kat, he asked, “How long?”
Irritably, she answered, “I don’t know how many times you’ve asked me that. I don’t know how many times everybody’s asked me that. Question of my life.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Be more specific, commander. If you’re asking how long until the entire’s station’s online, two weeks. This,” she waved a hand at the entire console, “is plasma damage.”
“Two minutes would be too long,” replied Carter, rubbing his forehead wearily. Jorge shrugged at Six, then crossed the room toward Emile and the civilian girl. Six lingered. “We need to make contact with Holland now.”
Kat shot him a patronizing look. “Which is why I’m slicing through to the main overland bundle to get you a direct uplink to the colonel,” she explained patiently. “You’re in my light, commander.”
Wisely, Carter backed off. He glanced to Six. “Tough first mission,” he said in a tone that belied his efforts at being reasonable. “Glad you pulled through.”
Six opened her mouth to begin a retort but Jorge glanced over his shoulder. His hazel eyes seemed to meet hers through the cracked visor so instead she took a deep breath and replied, “I aim to please. Sorry about… back there.”
“We look out for each other,” he said evenly. “You did good work. Drive better than I do. That crack looks bad.”
“Jorge tells me you’ve got spares.”
“Not necessarily on hand. We’ll get you something when… when we get picked up out of here.”
“And when will that be, commander?” asked Emile with a contentious shrug from where he leaned against the wall opposite Six and Carter.
“We’ll find out when Kat gets that uplink.”
“I’m working on it, alright? This is plasma.”
With a sigh, Carter turned back to Six. With a crooked smile, he said, “Get that all of the time. Something else, Six?”
Suddenly nervous, she shifted her weight. “I’m sorry about… I openly doubted your orders back there. It wasn’t my place, sir.”
“We’re all under stress here, lieutenant. I don’t typically give my soldiers long lectures in the middle of a hot zone.”
She nodded, unsure of where to go from there and turned to lean against the wall and observe Jorge with Emile.
He was talking to the civilian girl in calm, reassuring tones, asking her simple questions and receiving simple answers in return. Six watched for a while, pensive. Emile shrugged at her. “Big man forgets what he is sometimes.”
“She just lost her father,” Jorge growled in an undertone to Emile, getting up and crossed the room toward Carter, and Six’s heartbeat seemed to stop and then rebound at a pace twice as fast as before at this knowledge. To Carter he said, “She needs a full psychiatric workup.”
“She’s not the only one.”
“Lock it down, both of you,” said Carter but he looked to Emile in particular. “You’re soldiers. Act like it. Get her on her feet.” In a quieter voice, he added, “Body stays here.”
Jorge looked doubtful so Six stepped forward. “Let me talk to her, commander,” she said. Carter shrugged; he didn’t seem to care either way. To Jorge, she asked, “What’s her name?”
“Sara.”
“Pretty name.”
“That’s what I said.”
They smiled at each other even though Six knew Jorge couldn’t see her sad grin and then she took Jorge’s place opposite the civilian girl. “Hey,” she said softly. “Jorge tells me your name’s Sara.”
“Yes,” she didn’t look up as she responded.
“You understand English?”
“Enough.”
“Alright. I’m Six.”
“That isn’t a name.” Sara’s gray eyes flashed.
For a moment, she was taken aback. “You’re right. My name’s Jen. But don’t tell the others; they’ll make fun of me.” She cracked a smile; remembered too late that Sara couldn’t see it. “Jorge says that’s your father.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“What do you know of it?” Again, a blaze sparked in those gray eyes.
“More than I’d like to admit.” She was conscious of all eyes in the room save Kat’s on her. Clearing her throat, she continued, “We need to get you out of here, Sara. I know it’s hard but your father would want you to be safe and so do we. Let’s get you on your feet.”
She rose, held out a hand, and Sara took it. The girl got to her feet and Six lightly touched her shoulder before looking at Jorge, Carter, and Emile. “You’re right, Emile,” she said coolly. “She’s not the only one.” And then she pushed past Carter and into the open space behind them.
Kat broke the silence with a pleased sigh of triumph. “Commander, signal’s there. It’s patchy, but it’s there.”
Carter looked away from Six’s back and replied, “I’ll take it.”
As he crossed the room, Kat responded in a gently teasing voice, “Best not touch anything. You wouldn’t want to ground the place like you did before.”
He smiled at her and then Holland’s voice came over the speaker: “I’m barely getting you. What’s your situation, over?”
“Colonel, it’s Noble One.” Six turned to watch as his face seemed to age five years with his next few words. “There are no rebels. The Covenant is on Reach. Acknowledge?”
“Come again, Noble One. Did you say ‘Covenant’?”
“Affirmative. It’s the Winter Contingency.”
There was a long silence and Six wondered if the connection had been grounded after all. She looked to Kat but the Spartan made no movement to repair the uplink. Then: “Then God help us all.”
She leaned back against the wall again. Idly, she wondered if in fifty years the big question of the century she’d be hearing would be, “Where were you when the Covenant was contacted on Reach?”
Or whether they would even live that long.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:15:39 GMT 1
Five: Hearing Damage
July 25th, 2552
When the Falcon came down on the twin boxes of buildings that Noble Team called “home,” she stepped out of the vehicle and crossed the space between the drop-off and the door in four large strides. She walked through a hallway of empty rooms until she came upon her modest duffel bag propped up on the top bunk of the two-person, cell-like compartment she was to share with Kat for the next… however long.
There were drawers to the right of the bunk bed but Six didn’t bother with unpacking. She doubted that anyone in Noble Team would. Not this time anyway, not with this new kind of uncertainty of where they would go next, what would happen next, what would become of them all, of anyone on Reach. But there was no time for any doubts so they all had to deal with the immediate assurance of change and rapid change at that. If faith could be weighed in fiscal units, Six would bet quite a few pennies on the constant of uncertainty.
It was late night or rather perhaps early morning. The crack in her visor had splintered into a five-pronged sunburst, creating a sort of kaleidoscope everywhere she looked. She could feel the throb of a migraine coming on slow and steady like a pulse, a beating heart trapped inside a confining head. Or maybe that was just the effect of the helmet; she hadn’t taken it off since the ride in all those hours ago when she should have told herself to expect nothing and therefore never find disappointment.
There were no windows in the small room though the crack in the visor created the illusion of looking out through a windowpane onto an outer world. She wanted to sleep but the visor had to be fixed; better take care of that tonight… She reached up and pulled the helmet off, felt her braids come down around her shoulders.
“So that’s why you keep it on?” She turned to watch Kat step through the open doorway, a smirk flickering on her slightly pointed features. “Gets you past regulations, doesn’t it?”
She snorted outright and then pulled her bag off of the bed. “Gonna report me?” she asked carelessly.
“You think I care?” Kat unbuckled the various pouches and belts hanging down around her armor and tossed them to the floor. Undoing the strap on her left boot with one hand, she leaned over with her other and slapped the controls. The door slid shut and vaguely fluorescent lights gleamed overhead. She kicked the boot off and added, “As long as you get the job done, I won’t go looking for an excuse to get rid of you.”
Six undid the last buckle on the armor covering her torso and shrugged out of the straps holding the plating together, catching it with one hand and dropping it lightly to the ground. Leaving the mesh underlay where it hung loosely on her frame, she shoved her belt and all of the plating attached to it down to pool around her boots like rubble. Leaning over to wiggle her right foot out of confinement, she replied, “You assume that you can find one.”
“Trust me, Six.” She yanked off her gloves, flexing one hand and then the other, mechanical one in slow succession. “I can always find grounds to back up whatever I want to prove.”
“You sure that’s not a little arrogant?”
Kat shrugged, seemingly artless in her argument. “I think highly of my abilities. Don’t plan on going to bed anytime soon; the commander will want to debrief and then we’ll find out where we’re going next.”
The left boot came off with a satisfying pop. Six lined it up in a row with its partner then rolled up the pliable sleeves of her mesh shirt, folded her arms, leaned against the bedpost, and asked, “Why do you call Carter ‘commander’ all of the time?”
Straightening up after organizing her various pieces of armor in neat succession against the opposite wall, Kat responded, “Why do you assume that I call him that ‘all of the time’?”
“It’s just what I’ve been picking up since I got here,” she replied, surprisingly mild in manner as she propped up her foot against the metal beam she leaned against. “I haven’t heard you call him anything else, even when talking about him with other people.”
She scowled. “What other people?”
Six allowed a smirk of her own to cross her face. “Me.”
Rolling her eyes dramatically, Kat said, “You’re committing a fallacy with that argument, Six. You have hardly been around here long enough to make that kind of assumption.”
“Still,” she unfolded herself with a predator’s grace and stood with a small smile, “you’re awfully defensive. Is something going on?”
Kat closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them, pupils darting skyward then resting on Six. “Carter,” she drew the name out, “will probably be waiting for us by now along with everyone else. Are going to come as you are or will you hide behind your helmet again?”
Setting her mouth into a firm, steady line, she answered, “I’ll come as I am; thanks.” Still, she picked her helmet up in one hand, bracing it between her hip and the crook of her elbow. Either way, it needed to be fixed.
There was a rapping noise coming from the hallway. “We’re waiting on you,” said Emile from the other side of the door. He paused for a moment, then added, “We’re waiting on you again, Kat.”
She lunged for the door’s controls. “That was one time!” said Kat icily as the door slid open to reveal Emile standing outside, the collar of his t-shirt damp and his closely cropped curls wet from what must have been a quick shower. “That was one time and yet you never let me forget it. When will you let it alone?”
“When I’m dead,” he proclaimed with a suddenly evil grin. “And not even then,” he caught Six’s eye over Kat’s shoulder. “Get this, Six: we’re set on by insurrectionists in the middle of the night and we’re all suited up –except for Kat –and commander’s yelling for her to get out there and she comes running out in–”
Kat shoved him and Emile’s back hit the wall. “Don’t ever repeat it,” she said in a voice so low, it was deadly. “I was hardly out of training and we had the new armor. Besides, Jun told me about the time you two were out on night watch and–” Emile threw up his hands in surrender, nearly choking with laughter. “Alright, I surrender! I surrender, alright?” Eyes narrowed, Kat stepped back into the doorway. He glanced past her into the room, getting a better look at the newest member of the time. “Nice braids, newbie,” he snorted and turned to go. As he jogged back down the narrow hallway, he threw over his shoulder, “I wasn’t kidding. We’re waiting on both of you.”
As he turned the corner, Kat let loose a sigh of utter exasperation. “He just insists on…” she began to mutter to herself then turned around, remembering Six’s presence. “Never mind that. We should go.”
“What happened with Emile on night watch?” Six raised her eyebrows.
“As though I knew,” Kat admitted. “Jorge mentioned it once. Nothing in detail but I know it’s enough to get Emile running and that’s enough for me. Come on.”
As they started down the hallway, Six asked, “Why’d they have the base moved?”
“Besides the obvious reasons?”
“Yes, besides those.”
She sighed. “Besides aiming for a more secure location for our HQ, there was something that ONI wanted. Holland had it airlifted out and now here we are. Convenient, isn’t it?”
They turned a corner and Six felt her heart rate pick up. She willed it to slow its pace. “What’d ONI want with us?”
“Carter wouldn’t say. And if he wouldn’t tell me, the others don’t know either.”
“Maybe he just didn’t tell you.”
Her head turned to cast Six a condescending look. “If anyone’s going to get anything out of him, it’s going to be me. Sometimes it’s like prying open a clam but the commander and I have known each other for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Why are you asking me?”
Six shrugged. “No reason.”
“Then don’t ask.”
They were approaching another door. Almost by reflex, Six caught up her braids in one hand, a hair tie in the other, and twisted her hair into a low bun at the nape of her neck as she walked. She paused by the door as Kat went in, gathered herself in two deep breaths, reminded herself that she was alright, and crossed the threshold into the dimly lit room.
Carter barely glanced up from a report or something of that nature as she and Kat entered. Emile, lounging against the back of his chair, grinned at them. “Look who finally decided to show,” he drawled.
“Don’t start that up again, Emile,” Jorge advised, stepping forward. He was still in armor and had a narrow curved sheet of strong, glass-like material in his big hand. He tossed it across the room to Six with a smile, saying, “Better get to work on that helmet, Six; you’ve got second watch.”
“Solo?”
“No, with me,” Carter pushed his report across the table and away from him as he spoke. “You still have that module, Kat?”
“It’s safe and sound. Are you discussing it in your report?”
“Just mentioning it. Holland said that if we found it on one of the scientists at the outpost, it’s something that needs to be dealt with directly with ONI.”
“Do you they need us to do something for them, commander?” asked Jun, leaning his elbows against his knees as he sat down. Six’s eyes traced the tattoo etched upon the left side of his face, wondering what a fist full of arrows could mean to him, what it meant to her for that matter.
“Depends on where Holland’s told to put us. They’ve got some sway but not enough to make our own decisions for us. Jun, Jorge, first watch?”
“My cue to stop asking questions?” said Jun wryly, getting to his feet and shouldering his sniper rifle. “We’ll head out there now, commander.”
Six widened her eyes at Jorge for a moment as the two Spartans passed her on their way to the door, pleading for the big man to find some reason to stay, to keep a friendly face in the room. But he just smiled at her and passed on. She stifled a groan. God, an entire watch with that self-righteous idiot; what was she going to do?
She knew the answer to that question well enough: she’d grit her teeth and get on with it, take everything in stride, leave nothing open, just like a fight. Let impulses, not emotions, take over again; they’d keep her safe just like they did in a hot zone. She summoned up her instinct for self-preservation and sat down.
Emile was slurping noodles in between lines of a conversation with Kat about the uses of knives. Apparently, she didn’t carry on. Catching Six’s eye, he said, “C’mon, Kat, even the newbie’s sent enough bastards off on their way with a knife.”
“Once you get that close to an Elite,” she began, “you’ve already put yourself at enough risk. They have knifes too. And, more times than not, I’ve seen you sneak up on one of them only to get an energy sword shoved in your face. Remember back on–”
“One time, Kat,” he protested, balancing his chair on two legs and twisting his torso to the right to toss the empty carton into the trash.
“Twice.”
The chair fell forward onto all fours as he leaned forward again. “Once,” he insisted. In a lower voice, he added, “That time was only a stupid grunt that’d picked up a sword and didn’t know what to do with it.”
“It knew enough to attempt to sever your spine.”
“And failed. I like to remember that part of the story. Almost done with that report, commander?”
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping, Emile, Kat? You have until third.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Besides, our Number Two needs to be reminded of a couple of choice details about me and my knife and I seem to need some back-up. Commander?”
Carter briefly looked up, a grin etched on his weary face. “I remember that time with the grunt too, Emile.”
“Shit, I’m for bed then.” He got up and stretched, his lean, wiry frame extending like a cat’s. “Wake me in… whenever you guys get back, Carter.”
Six moved to an empty table across the room from Carter’s. Placing the new visor down upon the rickety tabletop, she began unzipping the black mesh from the interior of her helmet. Kat lingered as well, saying, “Any ideas of where we’ll be deployed next?”
Tapping his name and call number into place on the tablet, he replied, “The colonel’s being surprisingly tight lipped. I’d guess that we’ll be going to wherever we’re needed in the morning. No distress calls yet; either the Covenant’s lying low or they’ve cut off whomever they’ve attacked next. Though we’d definitely deploy a team if any areas are cut off entirely, especially after what happened with us. If there are issues, maybe other teams are handling it; I don’t know. You should catch up on a few hours too, Kat.”
“I’m doing alright, commander.” Six listened intently as she ran the edge of a razor blade around the perimeter of the cracked visor, separating what remained of once heavy glue. The heavy glass-like plate lifted free in her hand; it seemed her helmet had been due for an update either way.
“‘Alright’ isn’t enough. We’ve all been through a lot today and we all need to be in top shape for tomorrow. Understood?”
With a snort, she replied, “You know can’t order me around, Carter?”
“I can sure as hell try. C’mon, Kat. You know I’m right.”
“You know you shouldn’t say that.”
He started to grin. “You know I can definitely order you around.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know I always win these. But I’ll put you out of your misery, commander, and go to bed.”
He smiled again, the sort of smile that made Six feel as though her very presence was an intrusion. She understood that feeling; what she didn’t understand is why she suddenly wanted to flee. What did that mean? She decided to address that at a later time and focus now on tracing the edge of the new visor with fresh glue as Kat left the room. Pinching the hard, glassy sheet between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, she reached for her helmet with the other and carefully dropped the visor into place.
“Will that thing be dry in time for your watch?”
Carter’s voice surprised her; she had thought he had forgotten she was there. Glancing up, she answered, “It better be. I don’t like breathing in half-dried glue.” Six pressed down on the visor again and then used the edge of her sleeve to wipe away the fingerprints. “How long have you and Kat known each other?”
“Since the beginning. Or that’s what it feels like at least.” He crossed the room to an uplink site near the control panel. “We’ve been through a lot, both as team members and as… friends.”
“You care about her.”
“That’s not the kind of thing I go about discussing with people I’ve just met.” His tone seemed hard as he turned to look her in the eye. His eyes were blue like a lake iced over with cold and snow; the helmet hadn’t let her see that before.
She looked away from his face, down at her hands. There was a strand of glue still clinging to her thumb, as thin and translucent as spider web, and she somehow felt fragile in much the same way. Six moved her wrist and felt the minute tension of the thread just before it broke. “Fair enough,” Six replied evenly. “It isn’t as though I have to tell you anything about me either.” She scooped up her helmet from the table and moved to the door. “I’ll see you at second watch.”
Carter watched her go and she felt some kind of bitter satisfaction at leaving him alone in that big room. She knew she’d probably regret being so abrupt very soon: late night watches weren’t her forte to begin with and now she was very certain that she was about to experience the most awkward two hours of her time spent with Noble Team so far.
……………
“It’s raining.”
She felt like an idiot for saying something so obvious. Anything with eyes could see it was raining; that didn’t exactly prove her worth to anybody. She winced and hated the rain for simply… being there.
At the other side of the narrow base, Carter didn’t respond in any way that she may have predicted him to. He didn’t consent to making meaningless small talk, or even simply agree, do anything to defuse the silent tension. Over the patter of the rain against the metal roof behind her, he replied, “Your powers of perception are frightening.”
Scowling, she said, “Well, how about you? Do you see anything of interest?”
“Negative. Cloud cover’s too dense to see anything in the sky. Fog’s too thick to see anything down in the valley. You?”
“Same.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Why would you be?”
“What do you mean?”
Irritation rising up, she snapped, “It’s all the same. If there’s fog and cloud cover over there, that means that there’s fog and clouds over here and yet you’re acting like I’m copying your answers down on an exam.”
“Calm down, Six. You’re reading too much into things.” She heard him sigh. “Anything on radar?”
“Negative. How about on your end?”
“If I had something, I wouldn’t be asking.”
She didn’t reply to that. She waited to hear him say something, hear him do something, sigh, anything, but there was nothing save her own breathing and, once in a while, the sound of his. She waited a while, looking out into the mist, up into the marine layer shrouding their location, once in a while at her radar, and then she realized that she was listening for the sound of his breathing, confirmation that she wasn’t by herself out on that ridge in the dark.
She didn’t like consciously knowing that she was doing that so she had to say something to divert her mind: “What’s up with Jorge and the Covenant?”
“Reach is his home. He doesn’t like people –or in this case, Covenant –threatening it.”
“He’s awfully testy about it.”
“Do you blame him?”
She remembered the sound of the door being broken down, of foreign footsteps. “No,” she found herself answering. “No, I don’t. Not at all. I don’t blame him at all.”
“You alright over there?”
She was hearing damage. “I’m fine,” she said. “Count on it.”
“I don’t count on anybody being fine. Not by themselves, sometimes not even then. Not anymore.”
“You’ve got to trust someone to be alright on their own sometime.”
“Do you?”
“I’m always my number one person to get the job done.”
“You’ve never had to be in a position where you’re relying on somebody else to get something done on their own and you have little to no effect on whether they get out there alive, let alone finish the job.”
“That’s true. But I’ve never wanted to be a leader.”
“Except of yourself.”
“I guess that’s where the ‘lone wolf’ stuff comes in.”
“It has to be left behind, Six, especially now with everything that’s going on.” “Are you trying to talk to me about Thom?” He didn’t say anything.
“It weighs on you, doesn’t it?”
Still, he said nothing.
“Doesn’t it?”
The rain came down harder. She pressed her boot down into the ground, felt the mud give way beneath her foot. “You should know by now that you can’t get rid of me that easily.”
His voice, when he spoke, was dry. “You’ve barely been here a day, Six. I could get rid of you if I really wanted to.”
“Why does everyone keep telling me that? First Kat, now you… Is Jorge the only one who actually wants to like me?”
“I warned you that this wasn’t going to be easy.” She heard the sting of his critical tone coming on and hated him for it. “Should’ve left the attitude at the door.”
“I was just playing off of the signals I was getting.” She paused and then dove in. “Do you have a problem with me, commander?”
“I could ask you the same question. I know we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”
“I think it’s something else.”
“You tell me.”
“I’m not sure what it is yet,” she replied, lifting a gloved hand to wipe the rain from her visor.
She heard his smile. “Tell me when you figure it out.”
“Believe me, I will.” She felt her own lips curve and planted her feet into the soft earth. She’d wait him out if she could do nothing else.
……………
Kat was already gone when she stumbled back into their room, armor muddied, mind exhausted. She moved in a daze, pulling her duffel bag off of the top bunk, stripping out of her armor and down into her skivvies, pulling on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. She scaled the bed frame and rolled under the thin covers, pressing her ear against the pillow as though she could muffle sounds that were only in her head. It was then that she heard the voices coming from next door.
Are these walls paper thin? She wondered, sitting up in bed to loosen the knot of hair at the back of her head. Slight red curls came down around her face as the braids came loose. The next room over was… Jorge’s? That meant he must share it with Carter for she recognized Noble Leader’s voice only too well. Unable to resist, she pressed her ear to the wall.
“You don’t like her?”
“It’s not that.” That was Carter talking. “She just reminds me a little too much of Thom for my peace of mind.”
“Funny,” said Jorge thoughtfully.
“What?”
“I was about to say that she reminded me of how you were, not too long ago.”
“Yeah?” Carter sounded skeptical. “And then I got careful.” In a lower voice –she had to strain to hear his next words –he added, “I hope it doesn’t take her that much to teach her caution. I wouldn’t like to see her get burned.”
She fell back down against her pillow and stared at the low ceiling. It seemed to press down on her. She fell asleep with much more to think about than a simple Covenant attack.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:17:35 GMT 1
Six: Loathing
July 26th, 2552
The rain had stopped hours ago. Its constant pattering against the base’s metal roof had ceased by dawn, pushed west by early morning sunlight. Six, fast asleep in her bunk, hadn’t seen the sunrise and was instead awakened by another, less pleasant sign that it was morning and time to get up: Someone was pounding on the door of the compartment, the knocks coming sharp and sudden like the thrusts of a blade.
Six rolled over in her bed, pulling the blankets with her as she turned to face the wall. She feigned sleep, momentarily forgetting that she was the only occupant of the room and therefore the only one who could open the door. The knocking continued. Yanking the pillow out from under her head, pulling it down around her ears, and forgetting who and where she was all in one swoop, she mumbled, “Go away.”
“Not likely,” responded Carter grimly from the other side of the door. “Open the door, Six.”
She half-fell half- climbed down the bed frame, dropping down to the floor. After making sure that her bare feet were planted firmly against the ground, she walked over to the door and punched in the buttons to open it.
The door slid open and Carter was revealed to be completely suited up from the neck down in blue armor. She folded her arms and squinted past the fluorescent glare of the hallway’s overhead lighting, wondering what he was thinking as he looked over rumpled sweats, creased t-shirt, and hair in a red cloud around her face.
His answer came immediately: “You look like the morning after leave,” he said flatly.
She scowled. “Thanks. Are we heading out?”
“Sword Base got hit just before dawn,” Carter replied. “They were holding fine until about twenty minutes ago. They’ve officially requested our assistance.” He glanced behind her into the room. “Where’s Kat?”
“Still on watch with Emile I assume. You told them yet?”
“No need if she’s there. They’re already suited up then.”
“What about Jun then?”
“He barely sleeps as it is. He sounded as though he was already half-way to being ready when I knocked. Unlike others. You gonna be ready for today?”
She remembered what she had heard him say the previous night to Jorge and her face flamed. Emotions that she had been too tired to acknowledge let alone address the night before came flaring up like the makeshift distress beacon she’d had to light all those years back. Why did he care if she was alright, if she was ready? Why did he care if she got burned? It wasn’t as though she could be; she told herself that she had walked through fire before and come forth unscathed. But what did he care?
He took another look at her and frowned. “Your hair’s past regulation length.”
She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted metal and then she couldn’t hold it in anymore. “I figured out our problem,” she said suddenly. “I just hate you.”
“I know,” was his dry response. “I think Emile said that at one point too. Let’s get moving.”
……………
The Corvette cast a heavy shadow over the rugged and rocky terrain upon which Sword Base was perched. Six’s hands idly toyed with the scope of her DMR as the Falcons swooped across the half-frozen ocean. She looked down onto white-tipped waves lapping against the rocky shore and then glanced up at Carter and Kat in the seats across from her. Six wondered idly why she always chose the solitary seat in the Falcon, Pelican, whatever vehicle Noble Team happened to be using at the moment.
She watched as Kat slipped a chip into a data pad before sighing and staring down into the sea once more. Ice lingered where land met water, sometimes white, sometimes grey, and every once in a while the stormy blue-grey of Carter’s eyes. Six immediately checked herself. Why the hell of all things, at this moment in time, was her mind choosing to recall that? There were much more important matters at hand, as Carter would surely have reminded her himself. She said she hated him and he hadn’t sounded surprised. He had even said that Emile said the same thing.
Damn, why did she keep thinking about that?
The twin Falcons descended on the besieged base as Carter called out instructions: “We can’t do anything about that cruiser yet, team. So, let’s just focus on giving those troopers a hand down there. Kat, Six, you’re up first. Jorge, Emile, be ready ‘cause you’re up next.”
“Understood, commander,” said Kat. She then looked to Six as though expecting her teammate to respond in kind to her commander but Six said nothing.
She dropped out of the Falcon, falling feet first through seven feet of empty air, felt her knees buckle and absorb the shock as she hit the courtyard ground. With a quick turn of her head to the right, she surveyed the situation: a flock of jackals coming down the staircase, a fleet of grunts pouring forth from a second courtyard beyond the first. She pulled out her assault rifle and made short work of the enemy infantry, raining down bullets on the grunts.
Kat swept up the stairs, nailing three jackals with close range head shots. “Lieutenant, go around left. We’ll trap the forces on the walkway between us.”
Sprinting up the stairs as advised, Six knocked out another jackal from behind and shoved a grunt over the railing. She tried not to listen as it screamed. Kat was dispatching the remaining two grunts on the walkway when a voice buzzed in over Six’s comm.: “Spartans, this is Sword Control. Be advised that there are hostile forces north of your position.”
“Thanks,” said Six over the din of the Elites and UNSC troopers locked in battle beneath them, “but we’ve got visual now.”
“Keep us posted,” added Kat. She reloaded her magnum, muttering, “Let’s go knock some heads.”
Six squinted through the scope of her DMR until she found what she was hoping for. “How about you go down there and run interference?” she suggested.
“And what will you be up to while I’m risking my ass out there?”
“Sniping and you’ll be thankful for it.”
“I assume you’ve had experience?”
She shrugged. “Just years and years in a Spec Ops team,” Six responded. “I’ll see you down there.”
Taking off before Kat could object, she raced left, hugging the wall to remain unnoticed by the Elites down below. She peeked over the edge and groaned to herself. Specialists; God, how she hated specialists but it wasn’t as though they could not be avoided or ignored. They just needed to be properly dealt with while she maintained the element of surprise.
She found the sniper rifle leaning up against the railing next to a fallen soldier. The torso of his body hung precariously slumped over the edge and she tried to ignore it as she traded her gun for his. There was no time for dignity for the dead. Taking stock of the situation, she saw that the living troopers –the ones that she should be thinking of –had sturdy barricades that unfortunately did not cover much ground. Elites darted around and across the front line –the only line actually –and as they leapt back they took soldiers with them.
Kat had taken her suggestion, dancing forward and back, tempting one Elite after the next to come out from behind the barricades the UNSC troopers had already ceded to the Covenant. Six was careful to line up her shots and one by one in quick, quiet succession, they fell.
Soldiers, some fresh for the fight, some already nursing flesh wounds, rushed forward to reclaim lost territory. Grunts fell, then jackals, and Six felt the quiet victory of someone whom had enabled a triumph but took no part in the celebration.
There was only one shot left in the sniper rifle and Six let it fall forward to the floor with regret. She picked up the DMR she had discarded earlier as she made her way back down the stairs to the ground level, thinking about how exasperating it was that both she and Carter preferred the same weapon.
She stopped in her tracks. That had to end. She was on a mission here; she told herself there were only so many thoughts she could allow herself to think before past events began to overwhelm her. She needed to make those thoughts count for something important.
Kat was at the mouth of a large gate. Its heavy doors remained firmly shut as she spoke into her comm.: “Noble Two to Sword Control: courtyard is clear, over. What’s beyond this gate?”
“Head through the gate to the east, ma’am. We’ll brief you as you go but there are heavy enemy weaponry out there.”
Six opened the gate with a quick movement of her wrist and then sprinted forward to catch a glimpse of exactly what they were up against: twin enemy Wraiths.
She checked the ordinance, roughly clicking open cases, paying no mind as DMRs and magnums clattered to the floor. “Sword Control, this is Noble Six. I’m looking at a Target Locater right now. Can we do anything with it?”
“Our artillery is limited.” Six made a noise of exasperation that she knew they could hear. “But we’ll be sure to prioritize anything you need. Ma’am.”
“Thank you,” said Kat as Six jammed the Locater into her belt.
“We have to wait for the two Wraiths to get far enough apart before we call in the heavy guns,” said Six without preamble, starting down the ramp in a crouch.
“Why not wait for the opposite and destroy them both in a single shot?”
“Because that would be a waste of a good tank and we could use a tank right now.”
Kat considered this. “The Locater will need some time to load up. I’ll deal with the ground forces while you power it up.”
“Just don’t get too close to either Wraith.”
“Do you think I was born yesterday?” Kat sounded like she was smiling. “Relax, Six. Don’t get all worked up or I’ll start to think you’re Carter’s long lost twin. Just call the locks out.”
Crouching behind the cover of a mound of boulders, Six synched up one of the Wraith’s positions, hoping to have the artillery hit the general area around the tank and spring lucky. The Target Locator did one better and locked onto the Wraith itself. She called out the lock to Kat, hoping her fellow Spartan heeded the warning and watched as the ground shook under the pounding of the artillery.
“The artillery eliminated most of the ground troops,” Kat informed her over the comm. “I’m taking care of the rest. You have a plan to commandeer that Wraith; you better put it into action now.”
The big guns had been the end of a small cluster of grunts. Six rolled each of their corpses over in turn with her foot, watching blood blossom over the toe of her boot, until she found what she was looking for: a live plasma pistol that tumbled freely out of a corpse’s loose grip.
A low buzz filled her ears, drowning out all other sound. The Wraith, diverted by the distraction of Kat and three surviving troopers, was circling, moving closer to Six’s position by the second until she could count the fingers of the Elite’s hand on the turret control. She was perfectly poised for a hijack; now it was all in the timing.
Stooping even lower, concealing her form amongst the fallen grunts, she was suddenly grateful for the red paint job on her Spartan armor. The Wraith, mindless and insensible of its fallen, lesser comrades’ bodies, moved in a course as to directly graze over both the grunts and Six. She held her breath as the buzzing grew louder, more obnoxious, like that time she’d walked into a hornet’s nest and had been foolish enough to kick it, and silently counted out, One, two…
She jumped, cutting a graceful arc through the air like a gymnast. She hit the Wraith hands and feet first, her palms down against the metal hull absorbing the shock of contact and then arched, clinging like a spider as she half-crawled half-climbed her way upward.
The big gun was directly overhead as she clambered atop the Wraith and Six had to throw her weight right to keep from becoming kindling when the Wraith fired next. The Elite in the turret station aboard the tank did not look happy to see her but she silenced his cry of outrage with her fist. While he was still knocked back by her uppercut, she braced the soles of her boots against the hull, dug her fingers beneath the alien’s shoulders, lifted him out of his seat, and shoved him into the path of the Wraith.
He howled for a moment, trying to claw away across the rough terrain, before the unavoidability of his demise overwhelmed him and he was silent. Six shifted her attention to the driver, pulling her knife from her belt and slicing a smile just below the alien’s sneer. She tossed his still twitching body aside and took his place in the driver’s seat.
“Sword Control, Kat,” she said into her comm. “The Wraith is ours. Repeat: the Wraith is ours. Cease fire.”
“Understood, Noble Six.”
“What’s up next?” she asked, testing out the big gun on a trio of jackals.
“The old Farragut Station to the east has its own comm. array that can probably be brought back online and link us up with command. However, Airview Base, directly west of your position, has an anti-air battery that will help clear the skies.”
“How good is that gun?” asked Kat, running forward to take her place in the turret station.
“It’s very capable, ma’am.”
“That Corvette and its Banshees are our immediate issue here,” said Six. “I vote we take out the Covenant’s air support a-sap”
“Agreed,” said Kat. “We go west then. Keep us posted, Sword Control.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
Kat tested out her turret’s capabilities. “I should ask,” she spoke up. “You do know how to drive this sort of vehicle, don’t you?
West meant toward the ocean, which meant left. Six had never driven any Covenant vehicle of this size but she had no time for self-doubt or, for that matter, Kat’s doubts. She turned the controls left, the Wraith went left, and that was enough for her. “I’m a fast learner,” she replied as they moved forward.
“Good to know,” muttered Kat. “I’m picking up an area power source. We must be getting close to that gun. Skirmishers on left.”
“No longer a problem,” she replied as she ran them over.
“Very messy, lieutenant,” commented Kat distastefully.
“But expedient.”
“You sound like Emile.”
“Yeah,” she leapt out of the Wraith as they came up on the gun. “I get told that a lot.”
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:20:09 GMT 1
Seven: Killing Dance
July 26th, 2552
The console flickered to life as Six pressed her palm against the gate controls. “What kind of welcome do you think we’ll be getting?” she asked Kat as they crossed the space between the ramp and the courtyard, guns trained forward. She had seen movement just as the gate had begun to open and she wanted a second opinion on whether she could just start shooting immediately.
“If the commander and the rest of the team are in trouble, it’s unlikely that the survivors held out for very long down here without us,” answered Noble’s other female Spartan. “It’d be a miracle, actually.”
Six grimaced in response just before plasma streaked the air to the left; all of her questions were answered in the instant. Reloading her DMR, she bared her teeth behind the helmet as the three elites closed in.
“Six, left!” Kat yelled out as she leapt back out of reach from an attacker’s grasp, a deadly blur of turquoise streaking a path across the courtyard.
She chose to take heed of her team member’s warning, ducking down as the second elite’s arm swung overhead and, in the same movement, she snatched the opportunity to pull her magnum from its holster at the small of her back as her knees absorbed the shock. As she had predicted, her attacker was unable to recover his momentum and, rather than his original aim of pushing her down to the ground with him, he toppled over the small of her back alone.
In an instant, Six had shoved herself upward from her crouch, turned to look down at her opponent, and did not hesitate to pull the trigger. As the shot rang out, a snarl sounded from behind. She turned in time to watch an amber-armored elite come rushing forward into the fray. In a split second, she took stock of the glimmer of active shielding and looked to the alien she had already felled. Sure enough, there was a plasma rifle, ripe for the taking and Six, holding her ground, pumped shot after shot into the charging assailant.
She squeezed the trigger until she thought her thumb might shatter, watching for the flicker of strained shields, but the rifle soon fizzled in her hand. The elite was about three yards away. Perhaps she had overtaxed its capabilities or maybe it had run out of ammo; she did not have time to consider either scenario. She grabbed her knife and braced for impact but there was none. She only watched as the alien went down before her eyes.
Kat reloaded her own magnum. “Emile doesn’t know everything one can accomplish without the crutch of a knife to fall back on,” she said, sounding immensely satisfied with her own performance. “Come along now, Six. Let’s give the commander a hand.”
She followed her toward the interior of the base but could not help but remark, “I thought everybody was in trouble up there. Jorge and Emile and Jun…”
“And just when I was about thinking that I might be able to like you after all, you go on and say something ridiculous. Hurry up. We have an elevator to catch.”
“It’s hardly a clear path to the atrium,” Six noted, checking her radar. “We’ve got a couple of targets showing up… big ones too.”
“What do you mean ‘big’?” Kat started to say when a blinding green flash answered her. She checked herself then rushed forward to scope out the situation. “Damn. Six, we’ve got hunters.”
Moving forward, she asked, “How many?”
“Two; it’s always two. Plus, there looks like an elite’s manned the elevator.” She looked to Six. “I say we take them both together.”
She bit her upper lip, considering. “Why don’t we take out the elite first?” she suggested. “Give us some cover.”
Kat grabbed three grenades from a nearby rack. Following her lead, Six grabbed a shotgun. “Sounds like a plan, Spartan,” replied Kat. “Move along the perimeter.”
“We’re still stalled in the atrium. Kat, Six?”
“We’re dealing with hunters here, Jun,” Kat informed him, snapping the lock off one of the fresh grenades and lobbing it across the room. It clattered through the doorway opposite them. “Suffice to say we’re a little tied up!” she shouted over the explosion. “But we’ll be there soon.”
The first hunter had been alerted by the elite’s cry of outrage. It looked to its right, where the grenade had originated, and Six sprinted around to her massive opponent’s left. She pressed her shotgun to its back and felt the tension as she pulled the trigger.
The colossal creature cried out, forewarning its companion, but did not fall. It shuffled, trying to shake the Spartan, but Six traveled with her adversary, reloading her shotgun as she moved with it in some macabre killing dance of universal invention. Another shot made it howl and, out of the corner of her scout helmet, Six saw Kat advancing on the other hunter. In a rare moment of whimsy as she reloaded once more, she thought she could see the gears of Kat’s brain churn into action, evaluating and reevaluating. Pity Six could never think out an attack in quite the same way but why require lengthy forethought when one already had instincts?
Instincts told Six to pull the trigger a third time and she obeyed, lingering on the coolness of the metal beneath her fingers and imagining the heat of the resounding blast. She let emotions bleed out of her, be momentarily purged from her existence, as the creature fell forward, leaving her standing in its wake. Her lips quirked into a satisfied smile but for the first time she wondered if she was consciously making them do just that.
“You alright, Six?”
It was Kat, leaping over a corpse of her own making. Six turned toward her as though suddenly woken from a deep sleep. “Of course I am,” she replied. “You said we need to take the elevator to regroup with the rest of the team?”
“So I did. Come on.”
There was no need to ignore the blood splattered against the glassy walls of the small alcove outside the elevator door; her gaze merely passed over the sight as though it were lambs’ blood painted over a doorway and she the Angel of Death himself.
The elevator lit up as they stepped inside. Six looked down as Kat punched in for the elevator to take them up; her boots were splattered with whatever hunters were made of, but again she took no notice. She staggered backward against the wall as the building was rocked by an explosion but, other than that, she didn’t move at all.
“Just what exactly was that?” said Kat into her comm. “Noble Leader?”
“I’m telling you, the Corvette’s hitting this place hard!” The voice was Emile’s. “And I heard that about knives being a crutch by the way.”
“Hardly an appropriate occasion to remark on it! Where’s our orbital support anyway? There must be something that can fire a MAC round around here.”
“Kat?” It was Carter this time. “Is Six with you?”
“Define ‘with,’ commander?”
“I see that she’s already rubbing off on you.”
“I’m here, commander.” The voice was her own but it still took Six by surprise. “Tell me what I’ve gotta do.”
“We need you to get up there and assist Emile,” he instructed her as the doors slid open. Kat moved forward into what appeared to be a security office. “We’ll meet up with you along the way.”
“Welcome to the Office of Naval Intelligence,” a cool female voice greeted their approach into the office interior. “Please wait as an ONI representative will meet you shortly.”
“I doubt that very much,” answered Kat in a disgusted tone of voice as she shoved a body off of the main desk.
The electronic greeter hummed back to life as a troupe of grunts entered the room. “Thank you, lieutenant. You are cleared for access.”
Six’s hands worked like clockwork as she rained down fire on the grunts. They all fell with little issue, leaving her to wonder what had been the point of sending them into combat in the first place. That’s enough. No more or you’ll never going to be able to get yourself out of here.
“Keep moving, Six,” said Kat relentlessly, activating the doors and leading her into a room that seemed to go up forever and was crawling with Covenant troops of all ranks and sizes.
Six’s brain clicked back onto autopilot as Carter pressed fresh ammo into her hand. “Emile needs your help now.”
She nodded. “I take it that he’s up those stairs.”
“Yep, all of those stairs.” He glanced to Jorge who was just finishing up a couple of jackals. “Three, Two, stay here and hold the ground. Jorge, you’ll be with me and Six.”
Jorge clapped her on the back but she could barely feel it through the heavy plating. “Let’s move.”
The next room was a swarm of grunts and jackals; she had to hardly think about anything as she and Carter took them out. Moving fluidly like water pooling around jagged rocks in a gentle stream, she flowed around each opponent, snapping necks or shoving them down so that they hit their heads; she hardly had to use her gun at all except for a couple of headshots to the occasional jackal that refused to die. Most seemed willing enough to fall.
“Keep it up!” Carter called out, tossing a skirmisher over the railing of a bridge. “Keep moving; keep going. Six, what are you doing?”
She was shooting bullets through the doorway of the room they’d just vacated and into what must have appeared to be empty air. “Fracking elite’s got camo,” she snapped through gritted teeth. “And I can barely see where I’m shooting anyway in this light.”
“Six, come on.”
“Remember what happened last time you doubted my eyes?” She ceased her shots, trying to find the telltale glimmer of active camo.
“Well, you can bet that I do,” replied Jorge with a snort. He forded the space between Carter and Six in three, easy strides. “Step back, Spartan,” he commanded and then unleashed bullets that clattered like rain into the room.
There was the sound of something falling to the ground and Jorge stuck out his foot to kick at something like a corpse that shimmered against the ground like quicksilver made solid: the remains of an elite with gray armor and active camo.
Six looked to Carter and opened her mouth to say something childish along the lines of “I told you so” but an explosion suddenly shook the building and all she could do was brace herself against a wall.
“What was that?” said Jorge, crossing back over the bridge as the shaking subsided.
“That Corvette is going to tear this place down.” It was Sword Control nagging again. Six sighed. “What’s going on over there, Noble?”
“Look, commander,” And it was Emile this time, equally irritating. “If you’re expecting me to do this on my own, I can’t. I need another Spartan.”
“Commander,” So Kat also had to choose that particular moment in time to speak up. “The Covenant dropped off more troops ground level. They’re coming up the elevator. Could use some back-up. Acknowledge?”
Carter was slightly crouched between the railings of the bridge, recovering from the upset he’d received when the Corvette had racked the room. His voice sounded stuffy, as though he was either crying under the helmet or was suffering from a nosebleed. She put equal weight to both possibilities. “Jam the controls, Kat. Six, get up top and assist Emile. Jorge, make sure she gets there. I’ve gotta go back down.”
“Depend on it,” replied Jorge confidently. “Come along, Six. Up the stairs.”
They worked well together, quickly progressing up the interior of the building, marking the place as their own with bullet holes lining the walls and enemy blood staining the upholstery. Six watched in interest as Jorge shattered glass everywhere he shot. Peering around the edge of a doorway close to the top, he jerked his head in her direction. “This one’s yours, Six. I can’t shoot the bastards until you get them out in the open.”
Emile’s voice crackled over the comm. again, more panicky this time around. “Is somebody actually going to show up any time soon?”
“Carter told you we’re on our way!” roared Jorge over the comm. in response. “It’s not our fault if there are so many damn Covenant bastards, Emile!” There was silence at the other end. He nodded to Six. “After you,” Jorge said in a rather polite tone of voice.
“Make sure you watch what you shoot,” she said before rushing forward onto the bridge, borrowed shotgun still in hand. “Watch the balcony, Five,” she added as she crossed. “I don’t know what that class that thing is but I’d like to get rid of it before it gets rid of me.”
“I see it. Come on, Six. Draw the bastards out.”
She did with one shot apiece to the two elites she encountered, encouraging them to take notice of her before she ran back out into the open space of the bridge. They followed, as she thought they might.
“Hit the deck, Six,” Jorge called out but she did one better, sprinting forward to crouch behind her team member as he alternately pumped out shots and lobbed grenades.
“Don’t break the bridge,” she said playfully but was indeed careful where she stepped when she crossed again.
Following, Jorge chuckled. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he admitted before they came to an intersection. “Stairs are this way, Six.”
She shook her head, pausing before turning down the alternate corridor. “Not yet. I’ve still got business to take care of.”
“You want some help, Spartan?”
“Nah, go on. Maybe Emile will stop whining if you give him a hand.”
Taking off before he could say anything else, Six made way for the balcony she had seen earlier, its occupant in mind. The blade of her knife had a special affinity for exactly that kind of Covenant bastard. It had a couple of grunts guarding its position; a couple of shots of her magnum dealt with that issue. She took knife in hand and approached the Elite –what did they call them? Oh yeah –Elite General.
General or not, anything went down with a knife thrust between its ribs and she kept her footsteps light as she moved across the balcony. She thought that she almost had it in the bag –one more step and her blade would find a new home –but the General turned, snarling, at the very last minute.
It wrenched the knife from her hand –did it not feel the sting of the blade in its palm? –and tossed it over the railing in one swift motion. She fumbled for her magnum, for her shotgun, for anything and idly remembered what Kat had said about knives being a crutch. Anger boiled up –that was her knife after all that had just clattered down past catwalks toward the atrium –and she smacked the General across the side of the head with the shotgun to little effect.
Why did it always seem so much easier before? She wondered incredulously as the alien shoved her back. She had to crouch into a less defensive position just to avoid being thrown off the edge. Rolling around to the left, she skirted the perimeter of the balcony, trying to get behind the assailant. At the very least, she could try snapping its neck.
She didn’t need to. Jorge appeared overhead, grabbing the General by the neck and shoving it over the railing. It fell a few meters to a catwalk and Six took the opportunity to leap up with magnum in hand and headshot the bastard from above.
When it lay still, Six turned to Jorge and, slightly begrudging, said, “Thanks.”
“You can’t go off on your own anymore and not expect somebody to follow you,” he told her without preamble. “We didn’t have time for this. Come on.”
She went running up the stairs before Jorge even got back to the intersection they had previously parted at. The top level was a wreck; if she’d had to watch where she stepped before, she’d need to float now to keep rubble from dropping down onto the catwalks.
“Commander, this base isn’t going to be able to withstand another salvo from that Corvette. Those Banshees have to go down.”
“Lieutenant, we need those Longswords up in the air.” It was Carter and he sounded angry again. It also sounded as though his nose was still bleeding, if that was what it was. “Why the hell aren’t you up there already?”
“We ran into some interference,” Jorge answered as Six scrambled through rubble to a doorway.
The open air met her approach, wind rushing in through a huge hole. She stepped left and found herself practically nose to nose with the Corvette that had been causing all of the havoc. Emile glanced down from his perch up in the base’s exposed skeleton and snorted. “It’s about time, newbie. Watch the Phantom.”
“I’m gonna need something stronger than a shotgun if I’m going to be anything useful,” replied Six, ducking under a Banshee’s fire.
“You’ll find all the firepower you’ll need lying around here. Somewhere.”
“Here,” Jorge tossed her a rocket launcher which she was careful to catch. “I’ll take care of the elites. You get to work on those Banshees.”
He disappeared into an adjoining corridor, presumably to deal with the new hostiles he mentioned, and Six searched the ground, looking for ammo. “Are you having fun yet?” asked Emile, taking another shot at an enemy ship.
“No,” she answered sardonically, seizing up a couple of rounds.
“Then shoot something. That always makes me smile.”
When she had all that she needed, Six planted her feet firmly against the floor, aimed high, and watched as one Banshee after another exploded in loud succession. “You smiling yet, newbie?”
“No,” she reloaded, “but this one should do it.”
The missile soared in a wide arc through the open air between Six and the Corvette and the last Banshee burst into flame like an imploding sun. She watched it fall slowly through the air like a falling star too close for comfort and envied Emile for the better view.
“Clear,” Emile called out over the comm. The skull on his helmet grinned down at Six as he turned toward her. “That’s how we get things done around here, newbie,” he told her, leaping down the wreckage to land cat-like beside her. “Clear!” he said again and together they listened as Sword Control responded.
“Noble Team, Longswords inbound and ready to push. Orbital defense prepped for the shot.”
“Should be a good show.”
She hardly heard Emile, watching in silence as Longswords swooped down to pursue the fleeing Corvette like daggers. She wondered what had happened to her knife as the twin ships broke off, plunging away from the enemy cruiser as a single MAC round fell down from the sky like some avenging angel’s arrow, penetrating the Corvette in a clean shot. They watched as it fell through the otherwise empty air, engines flickering and then dying before their eyes.
“Beautiful, ain’t it?” Jorge moved forward from behind, pulling off his helmet as he walked. Six glanced over her shoulder at his approach. “Somebody ought to paint a picture.”
“No time for that,” said Emile as the ship broke through the surface of the lake. “But I guess they could make an underwater museum of that thing. Or something. Never mind; this is ONI turf.”
“They’ll probably want to excavate it,” said Six with a shrug.
“Nice work, by the way,” added Jorge, turning to her. “Even with that General.”
She waited for Emile to move away back into the ruined base before she said, “Don’t… mention it to the commander. I don’t want another lecture about lone wolves.”
He chuckled. “Carter likes his metaphors. Nah, it’s alright. I didn’t mean to get short with you either, Spartan. You’ve just gotta understand… we don’t want you to go out there risking your life alone, Carter especially these days. There’s a time for that but when you’re working as a team –or are supposed to be anyway –that’s not the time, alright? You understand?”
“I aim to please,” she repeated the earlier sentiment with a shrug. “If that’s what you all want…”
“That’s not it either,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Five, Six,” It was Carter and he sounded strained this time around. “We need you down at the science wing. Dr. Halsey wants a debrief and Command’s saying we’re all hers.”
A crease crossed Jorge’s brow. “Repeat? Did you say Halsey wants us?”
“I did. Can you both come down?”
“Copy that. We’re on our way.” He shut off the comm. and shook his head. “I don’t need Command to tell me that.”
“What do you mean?” asked Six as they started to walk back from the view.
“Been hers half my life,” replied Jorge with grim satisfaction. She paused in the doorway, evaluating this new development. He glanced back at her with a smile. “Come on now. We wouldn’t want you getting left behind.”
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:21:25 GMT 1
Eight: Glass Houses
July 26th, 2552
The air conditioning in Sword Base had taken a hit. Six watched a bead of sweat roll down Jorge’s forehead as they walked through ruined corridors toward the science wing and decided that that would be her excuse for keeping her temperature-regulated helmet on in front of Dr. Halsey.
“‘Been hers?’” she repeated as they stepped aside to let a medic rush past. “What do you mean by that?”
“It’s funny,” said Jorge slowly, taking the initiative to continue their progress through the base’s shell. “You ask everyone on the team these very personal questions and then you shut us down whenever anybody makes a single remark about you.”
“Sorry,” Six replied, keeping her tone indifferent. “I don’t mean to… shut you down or… jump down your throats or something. I’m just not too keen on anybody studying up my personal history.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’re no worse than, say, Jun was when he first showed up. Don’t even get me started on Emile. And I imagine I must’ve been a bit of a handful for Carter when he first made commander,” he added thoughtfully. “Don’t worry about it. I take it you know the doctor too.”
“We’ve met on occasion,” she answered shortly, very conscious of the fact that she was reaffirming Jorge’s point with her response. “Never under the best of circumstances and I’m sure this is no exception.”
“I’m not sure how things could get worse. Covenant on Reach and not only that: we don’t know where they are or how many are on the planet. We don’t even know how the hell they got here in the first place. And now they’re attacking ONI sites that are supposed to be somewhat of a secret. This is bad, Six. If Halsey’s involved, that means it may be worse than we think.”
“Ah, shit, Jorge, Halsey involves herself whenever the Covenant comes up,” replied Six lightly as they paused again to allow three stretchers pass. “Maybe it’s a good thing that she gets to see up close what we have to deal with every day.”
Jorge shot her an odd look. “Halsey’s seen plenty of action herself,” he told her.
“But–” Six paused, trying to remember something she’d read. “That’s right. You’re a Spartan II, aren’t you? You’re one of the ones that–”
“One of the ‘Lost Kids,’ right?” he finished wryly. She said nothing in return. “Look, Six: I was six years old when they found me on a street in Palhaza and I was already lost. They didn’t even need a flash clone to cover up my disappearance because nobody was about to come looking. And I survived, see? Maybe even turned out better in the end. Come on. We better not keep the doctor waiting.”
“Not to mention the commander.”
“You and Carter just really don’t get along, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “We cramp each other’s style,” she suggested. “And I’ve known people like him and he’s known people like me and it didn’t take much for either of us to figure out that we weren’t about to become each other’s favorite person. Which is okay. What matters is that he’s got my back when it comes to a fight and I’ll have his.”
Jorge considered this and opened his mouth as though about to respond when they were interrupted:
“You’re forgetting, commander, that I was the one who requested your assistance in this matter.” Six rolled her eyes. Dr. Catherine Halsey was in one of her moods and her voice subsequently carried down the hallway. “I am perfectly aware of what has happens on my very own doorstep. What I actually called you here for was a more detailed account of your team’s previous engagement at Visegrad…”
She cut herself off mid-sentence as Six and Jorge entered the vicinity. Her eyes met his through the transparent blue barrier that divided civilians from Spartans. “Jorge,” said Halsey in a much softer, more curious tone. “It’s been too long.”
Six glanced to Jorge and was surprised to see the big man smile almost in… appreciation, maybe, of the doctor’s mere acknowledgment of his presence. “Ma’am.”
Halsey’s eyes broke from the older Spartan’s face and glanced down at the rest of him. “And what have you done here with my old armor?”
“Just some… additions I’ve made.”
Six shook her head, more in amusement than disapproval, murmuring, “What have you done now,” not quite under her breath and then Halsey’s gaze flicked to her. “And I see that Jennifer hasn’t managed to break away from you all to start her own mission of choice. Yet.”
She immediately stiffened at the sound. Halsey didn’t frighten Six nor did she awe the younger woman in any way, shape, or fashion. Perhaps the doctor’s intelligence was something to be envied but Six was sure that Halsey was privy to secrets that she wouldn’t be able to stomach. Every gift came with a price. She wondered exactly when and how Dr. Halsey had paid up.
As for the barb, she paid it little mind besides a reproachful “Ma’am.” She had nothing to prove to this woman as she might to the members of Noble Team. Besides, if you walked into a room and Halsey did nothing to acknowledge your presence, that was when you knew you were doing something wrong.
The corner of Halsey’s mouth quirked upward in amusement. “Good to see you both,” she said and then turned back to Carter. “Now, as to the matter of the Visegrad Relay–”
“You have our report,” was Carter’s immediate response. Emile and Jun exchanged glances in the corner of the room as Kat paced beside her commander. Jorge continued to stand at attention though Six shifted her weight from one foot to the other, uneasy. Tension seemed more tangible when she was not in the thick of it.
Halsey frowned. “I’m afraid there’s a bit more to the story than what you detailed, commander. Visegrad’s data center was home to one of my xeno-archeologists,” Six’s toes curled at the phrase, “Professor Laszlo Sorvad. Perhaps you could… shed some light on his recent demise.”
“If he was a civilian male in his late-sixties, he died with a Covenant energy sword thrust through his abdomen.”
“Elites then.” She seemed to perk up at this development rather than display sorrow for her colleague’s end.
“Lots and lots of Elites,” muttered Emile under his breath as Jorge replied, “They engaged us as well. It was just… uh, well it was just after we found your scientist’s daughter, ma’am. Sarah -that was her name –she was hiding under the–”
“Irrelevant,” Halsey immediately deemed this information. With a slight motion of her hand, she dismissed Sarah and everything to do with her. Six’s fists tightened. “The Elites; tell me more about them.”
Jorge seemed resigned to the doctor’s attitude as he answered, “Three, Zealot class. One got by us, looked like the leader.”
“Zealots?” That had definitely captured her attention. She fixed her gaze on Jorge and Six thought she saw Carter tense in response. “You’re certain?”
“Their armor configuration matched up.”
Halsey looked to Six again as though asking, no, demanding a second opinion. She shrugged before putting in her two cents: “Shield strength too.”
“I gave the order not to pursue.” Carter stepped forward, partially obstructing Six’s view of the doctor. “Our primary objective was to get the relay back online.”
Though she could only see half of Halsey’s face, Six recognized the expression the woman was wearing. She could have warned Carter, probably should have, as Halsey repeated, “Your primary objective? Commander, are you a puppet or a Spartan?”
There was a perceptible albeit silent reaction amongst Noble Team. Kat stopped pacing. Jun looked up with a discernible frown. Even while still seated, Emile’s body language became positively murderous. For her part, as Jorge became rigid beside her, Six smirked to herself. And here’s where he bends, she thought to herself, almost smug. For all of his talk of being a leader, here’s where he’ll bend.
Carter stood still. “Ma’am?” Halsey sighed. “There are those at ONI, myself included, who believe the Covenant dispatch Elite advance teams to hunt down artifacts of value to their religion. Survivor accounts suggest such teams are small, nimble, and almost always Zealot-class. No doubt they came to the station for the abundance of ONI excavation data stored there.” She paused. “And you let them get away.”
“Data retrieval was not a command objective,” replied Carter stubbornly. “You can take it up with the Colonel if you have issue with that. Even had we known, we had other, more urgent matters to attend to.”
“Like warning the planet,” put in Kat, moving to stand beside her commander.
“Professor Sorvad’s final entry in his field notes makes reference to a ‘latchkey’ discovery,” continued Halsey as though neither had spoken. “Latchkey… that isn’t a word he would use lightly. So,” she adopted a brisk tone and looked to Kat, “let’s hope that the data module your Lieutenant Commander stole contains record of it.”
“Kat,” he sighed, more exhausted than exasperated; perhaps this was some sort of typical occurrence with her to which he had already become accustomed.
The lieutenant commander in question shot Carter a look as she retrieved the module from one of her belt’s compartments. He jerked his head in the direction of a transfer container in the shield door as Halsey said, “Before you ask, I was alerted the moment you attempted to access its contents, as I would be with any unauthorized tap.”
Over the audible clatter as Kat dropped the module and the slam of the container against the shield door as Halsey pulled it to her side, she added, “You should know that that data is classified Tier One. I could have you sent to the brig for interfering in my work.”
“Maybe you’d like to join her.”
That caught Six’s attention if nothing else did. Across the room, Emile’s helmeted head jerked up from where it had been lulling against his shoulder. Jun’s face was an impressive blank but Kat glanced to Carter with an expression between a smirk and a smile.
Halsey kept her expression as carefully schooled as Jun did. “I didn’t quite catch that, commander. What exactly are you suggesting?”
“We’re currently under emergency planetary directive,” Carter told her in tones of quiet conviction, “Winter Contingency. I’m sure that you’re familiar with the consequences of civilian interference with a Spartan deployment.”
She stood very still, the module still clasped in her suspended hand. “Are you threatening me, commander?”
With a shrug, Carter replied evenly, “I’m just making a reading suggestion, ma’am.” Turning his back on the doctor, he said to the rest of his team, “Come on. We’re bunking down here for the night. We’ll figure out what Holland wants in the morning. Let’s move.”
The rest of the team filed out of the science wing in quiet succession but Jorge lingered and Six provided silent company. The two of them hung back for a few quiet moments and Six examined the expression on Jorge’s face as he stood beside her, still looking to Halsey: hope, dejection, disappointment, relief, resignation, something else. She wondered at how she was able to discern others’ moods and motives and yet at the same time despised those same emotions when they painted their own picture on her.
Halsey didn’t look up from the data module and Jorge did not appear to have ever expected that she would. He bowed his head slightly, said, “Ma’am,” and then waited one more moment.
“That will be all, Jorge,” she said, still fixed on that tiny data chip and all it could possibly contain and mean, and then the older Spartan bowed his head again, touched Six’s shoulder, and led the way out of the blue lit room.
…………… Emile clapped Carter on the back as soon as Jorge had excused himself from the room Noble Team had appropriated for their use. “Nice one, commander.”
Carter winced. “It’ll come back to bite us in the ass eventually.”
“Well, yeah, sure, eventually she’ll find some way to make us all miserable. But in the meantime, you definitely took her on.”
“You guys don’t like Halsey,” observed Six from where she sat, leaning against the wall as she tried to buff out a scuff mark on her armor’s kneepad. Her red scout helmet was on the ground beside her but she didn’t seem to care. No one was paying attention to her anyway.
“Halsey’s…” Carter sounded as though he was trying to be diplomatic as he pulled out a chair and sat down. “Halsey can sometimes be a bit of a piece of work.”
“Halsey’s a bitch,” said Emile, not quite under his breath.
“Don’t let Jorge hear you say that,” said Jun, half-perched on the edge of a table.
Six glanced up from her current task, amused. “What if he says it first?”
There was a pitcher of water and cups on the table next to Jun. “Don’t wait for that to happen,” said Carter as he reached for a glass. “It might be a while.”
The door slid open and Kat entered. Like the rest of them, she had not yet removed her Spartan armor. “Commander,” she began but Carter beat her to the punch.
“Kat, you’ve gotta stop trying to hack all of the devices we pick up. It makes things complicated in the long run, especially when they’re not really ours to fool around with.”
“But in the short run, commander,” said Kat in return, “it gives us insight into what exactly we’re dealing with. I think it’s useful.”
“Then you step up and tell Halsey just that next time.”
“I thought you were handling it just fine.”
“See, commander?”
They both ignored Emile’s interjection; Six had the feeling they did that a lot. Carter grinned. “What was in that module anyway?”
She shrugged artlessly. “I didn’t get through all of the necessary decryption by the time we had to hand it over to the doctor so I don’t have any idea, to be honest. But you could tell that Halsey was worried that I had broken through which means it has to be something important. It’s interesting that she used the word ‘latchkey.’”
“Important, interesting, but we really have no idea,” Jun condensed in a thoughtful tone of voice. “That’s–”
“Useless,” said Emile.
Six chose not to input her opinion into the conversation and simultaneously determined that the scuff marks weren’t going to come out any time soon so she should give up on polishing them out altogether. Pretty soon, Kat said something about a shower and Jun said something about wondering where Jorge had gone and the two of them disappeared down different corridors.
Emile pulled off his helmet and crumpled into the seat beside Carter. “You written your report yet, commander?”
“If you’ve got something specific you want me to include, you’re in luck. I haven’t even started.”
“Ah, nothing in particular; just the customary mention of my general badass-ery. You and Jorge sure took your time getting up top, newbie.”
“We ran into an elite general with a fuel rod gun,” replied Six evenly, crossing the room to get her own glass of water. “Had to stop and take care of him.”
“Hope you gave him hell.”
“I think he’s down there right now,” was her cool response. She looked to Carter. “We left a Wraith outside the gate. I don’t know if that requires mentioning.”
“If you left it there, they probably found it,” said Carter wearily. “The Covenant’s been driven off from Sword Base or what’s left of it anyway.”
“Where are we going in the morning, Carter?”
“Why does everyone ask me that? I have no clue; it all depends on where we’re needed and where Holland wants us.” Suddenly, he looked up at Six and smiled. “Did you happen to lose anything while you were up there with Jorge, Six?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, wondering what he was getting at. “My knife fell down the catwalks while we were fighting the elite general. I tried to look for it but I didn’t…” Six’s voice tapered off when she saw that Carter was withdrawing something from his belt.
“That’s because it had already been found,” he replied a little smugly as he placed the blade in question on the table between them.
She reached for it and when she felt its familiar weight in her hand, she said, “Thank you.”
“Jun’s the one that actually found it down at the Atrium,” Carter clarified, seeming to be suddenly self-conscious.
“But you’re the one that’s returning it,” she countered. “So, thank you.”
He smiled again. “You’re giving credit where credit’s not necessarily due.”
“So you should be ever the more gracious,” she said in return, now also smiling.
“You still hate me, Six?”
Remembering exactly what she had told him earlier that day and realizing that Emile was watching all of this with a crooked smile all with a start, Six looked away first. “Um, right,” she said quickly. “Your report…”
“Needs doing,” he agreed. “And I’m going to go and… get changed.”
Emile watched and Six stared down at her knife as Carter hastily rose from his seat and vanished down a hallway without looking back once. “I thought you said just this morning that you hated the commander,” he drawled.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“It gets around.” When she said nothing immediately in response to that, he sighed. “Look, newbie, I know it’s your third day on the job here but take a little advice. There’s a difference between hating your superior because he’s your superior and makes mistakes and hating your superior because he’s a person and makes mistakes. What Jorge has been too nice to tell you is that Carter hasn’t really done anything to deserve being hated on either account.”
“Funny of you to say that,” she replied curtly. “He mentioned that you might’ve said the same thing about him at one point in time.”
“Might’ve,” Emile acknowledged with a shrug. “But I say I hate all my superiors because they can order me around. There’s another difference. Look, Carter’s a good guy when you shove aside all his stupid ideas about leadership and its responsibilities.”
“He took on Halsey,” Six conceded begrudgingly. “Have to admire him for that.”
“He doesn’t take crap from people for very long before he decides he’s had enough.” Emile got up and stretched. “Maybe you should think about that. Night, newbie.”
Six watched him go. It took a few moments for her to realize that this time it was she that was sitting alone in an empty room and very much in the dark.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:23:08 GMT 1
Nine: Bird in Hand
July 30th, 2552
“It’s quiet.”
“Too quiet,” said Emile in response to her observation and Six thought he was joking. “Don’t get too comfortable, newbie.”
“I don’t think I’m ever ‘comfortable,’” she replied, scanning the northern horizon as she spoke.
“You and me both, newbie. Radar checks out clean this side.”
“Same here. When are you going to stop calling me that?”
“When you stop acting like one.” He paused, maybe considering this, maybe falling asleep, Six couldn’t say. “Or whenever the next one shows up.” She heard him sigh over the comm. “I’m bored.”
She traced the mountains to the east with her gaze, imagining the dawn rolling in like thunder no one could hear. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Entertain me. Surely you have a story.”
“Why would you think I have any stories worth telling?”
“Everybody has a story.” He paused. “Jorge always has stories.”
“I’m not Jorge; haven’t you noticed?”
“Maybe if you bothered to take that helmet off more often, I would bother noticing.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Sure I am.”
“Don’t be a hypocrite.”
“Make me.”
Something caught her eye down along the rocky beach. It was really too far away to be anything worth looking at but Six squinted through her scope anyway. “Is this your idea of entertainment?” she asked as she adjusted the magnification with a flick of her thumb. “Bullying stories out of people?”
“Are you calling me a bully?”
“Yes, I think I am.” She lined up the reticle with what looked like a smooth rock half-drowned by the tide and watched as it was repeatedly swallowed by each incoming wave.
“You better watch it, newbie, or I might have to come over there and show you how much of a bully I can be.”
“That’s alright. I don’t want to trouble you,” she replied contentedly and then sat down at the edge of the sandy cliff and watched the waves break on the shore. If she were a child or some naiad of another nature, she might run out into them. More likely, she would be another Hecuba, running out to drown herself among the waves rather than suffer another, more personal defeat. But Reach wasn’t Troy, the Covenant wasn’t about to come up to the gates in a wooden horse, and there were no beautiful women to fight over.
“You picking up anything over there?”
She sighed. “I almost wish. Now I’m bored. How about you tell me a story?”
“You wouldn’t like my stories.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re a girl. My stories are all about dead… cats and other… cute things.”
“Oh, so now you notice?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know why you cared so much about my noticing. Seems to me the big man noticed a long time ago.”
“You think cats are cute?” she asked, determinedly ignoring the latter part of his sentence, sure that he was teasing her and resolute that she would not rise to the bait.
“Uh, I guess. Maybe. Don’t you?”
Shaking her head even though he couldn’t see the gesture, she disagreed: “Cats are evil. And I know that I’m not the only girl who thinks that, so why would you assume I wouldn’t appreciate your story?”
“Well, Kat never does.”
“The name, Emile.”
“Right,” she could hear his grin. “Gotcha.”
She sighed and lifted her scope to her gaze again, idly wondering if she was still sharp enough to take the measure of the tide. She looked to her previous mark, that tall, smooth stone and then let her gun fall back down toward her lap, blinking twice before lifting her magnum up again. How could she have missed for a moment…?
Heart racing but never taking her eyes off of the “rock,” she called out over her shoulder, “Emile.”
“What is it now, newbie?”
“There’s something… ah shit.” Capsules were descending onto the beach from above, a Phantom flickered to life in the air above the shoreline. She quickly got to her feet. “We’re in trouble.”
“Ah, shit,” he echoed her previous sentiment as he bounded forward at a sprint into the vicinity. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” she heard him count out a beat as he took off into the temporary compound Noble Team was operating out of.
Six took stock of the enemy: Elites, skirmishers, jackals here and there. It was a large unit built for speed; they’d make short work of coming up the cliffs. Emile was rousing the rest of the team; it was only a few moments before all of the lights in the complex went dark. She had only just turned on her night vision when Jun emerged into the open, fully suited though still tightening a strap on one of his shoulders.
“Are they coming up the cliff yet?” he asked intently, studying the enemy party as they congregated on the shore.
“They didn’t come for us; they’re only a scouting party, I think,” she replied. “I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.”
“They will,” Jun responded with grim certainty. “And, when they do, they’ll come. Let’s get back inside. We need to take care of a few things before we set out.”
“Are we taking the Falcon?” she asked as they stepped back inside the complex and made their way into the main room. “It would be faster by a lot.”
“And get shot down by that Phantom?” said Kat from where she stood at the control panel, pulling up a set of coordinates.
“We might be able to slip out unnoticed.”
“I prefer the bird in hand,” said Carter, following Kat’s thinking. “There’s no time to airlift anything out of here, not the base and not us either. Kat, get me through to Holland and then fry the database. Noble Team’s not about to be a security leak any time soon. Jun, go back outside and keep us posted. Six, start packing up the essentials. Jorge, Emile, you guys take care of the Falcon and then help Six load up the Hogs. We’ll head into the mountains and request airlift once our position’s secure.”
Noble Team seemed to move like a hurricane around Six as they moved like clockwork in their various tasks. She had no idea what “the essentials” meant; she supposed that in the heat of the moment, Carter had forgotten she was a relative newcomer to Noble’s style. That was alright, she guessed; better that than think Six to be incompetent altogether.
Suddenly grateful that Noble was to head out to a new location in the morning anyway and so consequently everyone had already packed up their duffels, Six swooped down on each cell-like room and swiped a bag from each bunk before backtracking through the compound to the modest garage. The comm. chatter buzzed in her ear as she ran:
“Commander, they’ve started up the cliffs.”
“Is it because they’ve spotted us or because that’s what they were going to do anyway?”
Jun took a moment to evaluate this. “I’m not sure, commander. They aren’t pointing any fingers in our direction. Do you need more time? Do you want me to see if I can divert them?”
“Four, Five, how much damage have you done to that Falcon?”
“Not enough,” was Emile’s response. “We took care of the controls but it isn’t anything that Kat couldn’t fix in a hurry. But there’s still that Phantom.”
“I didn’t forget it. Six, where are you?”
“In the garage, commander,” she answered as she dumped her load into the Warthogs, shoving the bags underneath seats, “like you told me to be.”
“I remember what I did five minutes ago, thanks.” She rolled her eyes at his response. “Are we loaded up?”
“Negative, commander; I’ve still got to go back for weapons.”
“Don’t mind the weapons, Six. Kat and I will grab them on our way up.” He paused and Six heard Kat tell him something in a muted voice. “Listen up, team: Holland’s gonna set us up a rendezvous point a few miles up into the mountains but we’ve gotta get there first. Kat, Jun, Emile, you guys take the fist Hog. Six, Jorge, and I got the second.”
“Commander…”
“Kat’s driving, Four.” She heard Emile sigh. “Everyone in the garage. Now.”
“They’re coming up the hill now.”
“Leave them be, Jun. Alright, team, let’s load up.”
The first to enter the garage were Jorge and Emile, both fully suited and both emanating anticipation. Six couldn’t blame them; there was no better high than the thrill of chase, of time running out. Jorge announced his arrival by unbolted the gun from the leftmost Warthog and replacing it with his own. Dusting off his gloved hands, he nodded to Six. “The commander and the rest are on their way?”
She shrugged and moved to slap the controls to open the garage door. “They’d better be. I’m exhausted and I’m not really in any shape to drive.”
“I thought Spartans were supposed to be ready for anything,” Emile snorted.
“Oh, I’ll drive,” Six replied dismissively. “It’s only that your chances of surviving the night would plummet.”
“Carter…”
“What is it now, Jun?” Carter’s voice took her by surprise as he hurried into the garage, helmet in one hand and two fresh DMRs in the other. He tossed one to Six who immediately holstered her magnum.
“Enemy’s coming up the hill now. Acknowledge?”
“I thought I told you to get inside but thanks for the head’s up. Get over here now, Three. Kat?” He looked around the room as though expecting her to enter at any moment.
She did, arms full of grenades and an assault rifle. Jun was quick to follow, running past her, breathless. “We need to go now,” he said, gaze intent on his commander.
“Right,” Carter took a deep breath. The impending attack seemed to have the opposite effect on him rather than the constant rush in Six’s heart. He looked pale rather than excited but alert all the same. “Kat, get behind the wheel now. Emile, Jun, you’re with her. The coordinates are in your suit. Go now. We’re right behind you.”
Emile leapt up, bracing the soles of his boots against the built in turret. Jun and Kat jumped in and then the latter powered up the engine. Carter came around the hood of the Hog, moving close to where Kat sat behind the wheel. She looked up at him and Six imagined with an unexpected pang that she was smiling. “Stay close, commander,” was what she told him before she pressed her foot to the gas and half of Noble Team disappeared into the darkness.
Carter watched as the outline of the Warthog disappeared and then still stood there some, still watching. She watched him watching the mist, the mysterious pang still growing until it seemed to nearly swallow her like the curve of a wave closing in. But, as soon as the swell threatened to crash overhead, Six caught herself. “What are you doing?” she asked him, calling out into the minute hum of the silence. “They’re still coming up that hill and they’re not about to wait for us to get away.”
Jorge clambered onto the back of the vehicle and Six leapt into the passenger seat as Carter slammed shut the driver’s door. His eyes had still not quite lost that look like glass frosted over as he pulled his helmet over his head. “Let’s get out of here,” said Jorge and then Carter turned on the engine, pressed his foot down, and Six felt darkness tangible envelop them all.
……………
When she felt her eyelids grow heavy, she leaned forward and studied the decal on the DMR in her lap. When she deemed that there was too much blood swishing around her skull, she tipped her head back and gazed at the sky. She went through this process several times before Carter commented on it.
“Are you alright over there, Six?” he asked, glancing up from the path that Kat’s Warthog had cut through the underbrush.
Her vision was getting kind of blurry as she turned to look at him. “Falling asleep over here, commander, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I think Jorge gave up though,” she added, jerking her head in the direction of where Jorge sat in the back of the Hog, leaning up against the front seats with his back to his commander and Six.
“Who can blame him?” grumbled Emile over the comm. “The two of us get on the guns and suddenly there’s nothing to shoot at.”
“Already itching for some action, Emile, Six?” inquired Jun, sounding amused. “I would have thought that yesterday’s raid would have tided you over for the time being.”
“They only tide me over until the next one,” was Emile’s sardonic reply.
Six slid forward in her seat until her neck lulled against the headrest. “I’m not itching for a fight,” she said irritably. “I just want to do something that’ll keep me awake.”
The brush that surrounded them was low lying, shrub-like, bristly, the ground sandy. The terrain wouldn’t provide much cover in a fight but the sight of it made her wonder if the air around them was warm. Experimenting, she tipped her head forward and let her helmet slid into her hands.
Emile said something and then something else but his voice was muffled by the sound of the wind; there was nothing else but the rush in her ears. She relished the oblivion until Carter looked to her, said, “She’s taken off her helmet; that’s the reason,” and then said to her, “What do you think you’re doing.”
“Breathing,” she answered.
“Can’t you breathe through the helmet? So I don’t have to worry about you getting shot by something?”
“So you do care.”
“Yes, I–” he shot her a look through his helmet’s visor. “I thought I made that clear.”
“We’re hearing, like, half a conversation over here, commander,” said Emile in a loud but equally dry voice.
“We’re miles away from where we left the Covenant on the beach,” said Six, ignoring Emile’s interjection. “We’ve been driving for what, two hours? By the way, are we going to run out of fuel any time soon?”
“Unlikely,” answered Carter, momentarily diverted. “Holland was very clear that fuel would not be an issue in getting to the rendezvous point. Besides, judging on the distance we’ve already gone, we should be coming up on it soon. Now, is there an actual problem with your helmet or are you doing this just to annoy me?”
“Oh, I should think a little bit of both,” she replied carelessly. “But why are you asking? You might not like the answer.”
“I like to be sure of things.”
“So I’ve seen.”
“Have you been watching?”
She didn’t respond at first but then Six said, “I watch you as much as you watch me.”
He didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, seemed to have been put on the spot as much by her response as she had by his question. Finally, he looked straight ahead, not sidelong at her as he had before, and asked, “Kat, how close are we anyway?”
“I’m pulling up to the coordinates the colonel sent us right now but there’s no one here. We might be early; we made better time than I’d expected. Or they might be late.”
“Can’t discount that,” input Jun.
Carter pulled up at the edge of a copse of trees, pulling up alongside their doppelganger as Kat leapt out of the vehicle, careful to keep her back to the arriving party. Idly as she exited the passenger seat, Six realized that Noble Two had not spoken at all during the entire ride until Carter specifically asked her a question; given the experience of the past few days, she was able to identify this as atypical Kat behavior. But there was little time to muse over that as Jorge dropped down beside her and Carter started for the trees. “Looks like it might rain,” Noble’s leader noted as he scanned the area with both his gaze and radar. “Trees should provide some shelter.”
“How long will we be out here?” asked Jun, passing by Kat to stand beside Carter and squint through his sniper rifle through the trees.
Kat moved with a silent step through the grove, patrolling the perimeter. Responding to Jun’s question, she said, “Hopefully not too long. I hate sleeping out in the open.”
Privately, Six disagreed. There was a security in sleeping in a place where one’s back could not easily be pressed back against a wall, where there was always somewhere to run to, where, if one was alone, one could be sure of just whose step it was that crinkled the undergrowth.
Laying his gun to rest beside an elder tree, Jorge said, “Do you want me to activate the beacon or do you think we’re still too close?”
“We covered a lot of ground,” was Carter’s answer. “If those hostiles are going to find us tonight, the beacon won’t have been the deciding factor. They’d have had to have followed us out here and I don’t think they did.”
“Highly unlikely,” Kat was quick to agree. “Who has first watch?”
“Let’s be realistic,” said Emile in condescending tones. “Is anyone actually going to try and sleep out here?”
“Do all of you have issues with sleeping outside?” asked Six.
“It’s not an issue,” said Emile, offended. “It’s an aversion. I grew up in a city, okay?”
“No one is going to sleep,” Carter laid down the rule. “We have to be ready to go as soon as they arrive. No questions; we’re all staying awake.”
Six set her helmet down beside her on a felled tree trunk and perched her left foot upon her right knee, stretching out her hamstring. Around her, the other members of Noble Team settled into similar positions, leaning against trees and the like. She told herself that she was pleased to see that they maintained a distance from her; she liked the solitude and the silence. And then Noble Leader had show up and ruin everything:
“You need to put your helmet back on,” he said as he crossed the copse to stand before her. “This isn’t the rec room. We’re still in the field.”
“Field looks pretty clear to me.”
“Why do you do this?” he suddenly wanted to know. “If everyone else is taking off their helmets, you insist on wearing yours. When everyone is all suited up –as they should be at a time like this, –you persist on doing the opposite.”
“If you’re going to give me a lecture,” she told him, planting both feet on the ground again and leaning forward, doing her best to look him in the eye, “you might want to take off your own helmet; give the more obedient members of your team a break.”
“I can’t do that. I’m the commander; unlike you, I am aware of my responsibilities.”
“And how’s that doing for you?” He did not answer at first; she smiled and gave it time to sink in. “Why not take a break, give something else a chance to work?”
“There are times and places for breaks and this is neither, Six.”
“Are you going to order me to put my helmet on now, Carter? Why can’t we just… see eye to eye and… agree to disagree?”
“That isn’t seeing ‘eye to eye,’ Jennifer.”
That stopped her dead in her tracks as she felt something between her throat and lungs tighten. “That’s going too far.”
He folded his arms. “Your commander calling you by your name is not ‘going too far’… Jennifer.”
Rubbing her palms against the plating on her knees, she looked away through the trees and then back to him. “If we’re going to have this discussion, can you at least take off the damn helmet with the damn comm. so we at least have the illusion of privacy?”
For a moment, she thought he was going to let it go, walk away, pretend nothing had happened, pretend that he didn’t have to level with her, that he was above that, above all of it. But then she felt like their eyes finally met through his visor and then he sat down beside her on the fallen log and pulled off the helmet.
They sat in silence for a few moments; she felt the weight of him beside her, and then she said, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Looks like I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, I did anyway so stop arguing.”
She let her gaze drift along the ground, lingering on how his boots fell beside hers on the forest floor, and then she looked up, “The… moon sure is pretty.”
“Yeah,” he hesitated. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
Letting her feet sway slightly to hit the trunk in quiet rhythm, she couldn’t resist mentioning, “I bet you couldn’t see that with the helmet on.”
“Drop it.”
“Alright,” she said because there suddenly seemed to be no other word in her vocabulary. She didn’t know where to go from this; this eventuality hadn’t played into Six’s plans. So she waited rather than instigate anything else.
Finally, Carter said, “I guess what I’ve been trying to get at is that… I feel sometimes like I –that we all have been bending over backwards trying to understand you since Day One but you won’t give me –us –the time of day.”
“If you’d been trying to understand me, you’d have taken off that helmet a while back.”
“But that’s me coming all of the way to you. I can’t do that; no one can do that. I’m asking you to meet me in the middle.”
“You can’t wear a helmet half on half off, Carter.”
“Yeah, well maybe you can if you’re smart enough about it,” he said.
Again, Six didn’t seem to have anything to say to that until: “Look, I didn’t–”
“Didn’t what? Didn’t realize that you had that effect on people?”
It nearly killed Six to say this but: “I didn’t realize that I had any effect on you.”
“Yeah, well,” he said again and then hesitated. “Well, maybe you do.”
He was smiling at her, tentatively, but she was already getting up and saying that she had to go. Her helmet was already in her hand when her feet touched the ground and she immediately started walking as soon as she’d found her legs again but every step seemed to make the distance behind her seem shorter. So she walked faster. She had already figured out that lightning can only strike you twice when you’re stupid enough to stick around for the encore.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:24:19 GMT 1
Ten: Trump
August 10th, 2552
Jorge was shuffling a pack of cards when Six entered the rec room while Jun and Kat conferred quietly in the background. Six’s gaze darted between the three present members of Noble Team. “Are we,” she yawned, “waiting up for Carter and Emile?”
Kat shrugged at the question. “They’ve just finished their recon trek. I’m just waiting for their debrief. Jun,” she looked to her fellow Spartans, “was up anyway and Jorge…?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” the big man clarified, dealing out the deck to empty chairs. Casually flicking a card across the table –the Ace of Diamonds, it was revealed to be –, he added, “Did they make contact with the enemy at all, Kat?”
“Recon only,” she answered firmly and Jun lifted his eyebrows in response. “I follow my orders… sometimes.”
Always, thought Six wryly to herself as she took a seat opposite Jorge. That is, always when it’s Carter who’s giving the directive. Aloud, she replied, “Did they find anything… interesting?”
“Nothing that we didn’t find the night before,” answered Jorge, a crease between his eyebrows as he contemplated setting down the Queen of Hearts. Six thought it rather sad that he had set a game up only to play himself but did not voice her opinion. She didn’t want to get roped into a match any more than Jun or Kat seemed to. “Looks like you and Jun will have to go in even deeper.”
“Since we don’t know yet what the other teams found tonight, then yes,” confirmed Kat, commencing her typical pacing about the room’s perimeter.
Jun looked doubtful. “None of the other teams are Spartan deployments,” he said, putting new information into the picture. “It’s doubtful that they discovered anything we didn’t already know.”
“I think you underestimate them,” said Jorge.
“It’s not a question of that,” replied Jun reasonably. “It’s only that no one goes deeper than Spartans.”
With an amicable shrug, Jorge conceded the argument. As Jun turned back to polishing his sniper rifle and Kat sat down at a separate table to mull over a couple of data tables and maps, Six said to the other male Spartan, “I never figured you for a card player.”
“I’m not too shabby,” he replied wryly. “What about you? I’d guess that you’d have the best poker face of all, given that you and your helmet are joined at the, uh, neck.”
“I’d think that Emile would have the upper hand, what with what he’s got on his EVA.” She felt a sardonic smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “You know how they say you play the hand across from you? Imagine staring across the table at Emile’s artwork for an entire game. How long has he had that, by the way?”
“It’s a… relatively recent acquisition,” answered Jorge thoughtfully. “He and that skull weren’t a package deal when he was transferred to Noble, if that’s what you’re asking. He wore a regular old EVA helmet when I first met him. A couple of weeks into the term, he comes downstairs and there it is.”
“You mean he did all that in a night?”
“In a shift, actually,” Jun spoke up. “He and I had the middle watch that night. He didn’t even mention it to me once and we all know how much Emile likes to talk.”
“So he comes downstairs,” Jorge picked up the story again. “Still doesn’t say anything; it’s like he doesn’t expect us to notice or comment on it. But of course Thom has to speak up.”
“He wanted to know if it was Halloween already and, if so, could he go trick-or-treating with Emile?” Jun chuckled at the memory and then stopped. “That actually wasn’t too long before…”
“What was Thom like?”
Across the room, Six saw Kat stiffen before slamming her charts against the tabletop. “I can’t do this!” she suddenly exclaimed, running a hand through her cropped brown hair. “I’m supposed to be planning a counter-offensive and yet I can’t plan anything because I have no idea of what to plan for because recon’s turned up nada and yet Holland and Carter expect me to come up with something by tomorrow and…”
She stopped immediately when she saw that the other present team members were staring. “I’m sorry, Jorge, Jun, Six,” she said in a quieter tone. “I just need to go somewhere where I can think. Someone come get me when they get back.”
“Will do,” responded Jorge as Six and Jun nodded agreement. Together, their eyes followed Kat’s movements as the female Spartan gathered her papers, diagrams, and data pads and disappeared down the corridor. They waited until the sound of her footsteps dissipated into the low hum of the ventilation and then Jun sighed, saying, “It’s that time again.”
“Excuse me?” Six demanded clarification, indignant in her manner.
Jun conveniently commenced coughing as Jorge heaved a sigh of his own and said, “Relax, Six; it just looks like… well, when you’ve been hanging around Kat and Carter since, well, it happened–”
“You mean… Thom.”
“He means more than that,” said Jun, having made a speedy recovery. “But, if you want to get down to brass tacks, yeah. He means since… April. If you stick around with us for any extended period of time, it becomes rather clear that Carter and Kat routinely switch off who’s taking the blame for Thom.”
The corners of her mouth curled upward even though she knew there was nothing funny about what Jun had said. “Do they coordinate or something? Set up a schedule of guilt trips?”
“Something a little less obvious or synched than that but something like it all the same.” Jorge glanced back in the direction Kat had exited. “Well, we know whose turn it is this week.”
“If you’ll excuse me asking,” began Six, surprisingly more polite than her typical attitude but well aware of the broken glass lying around the conversation, “I read the reports from the colony. Why do they feel like it’s their responsibility? Couldn’t it be Holland’s fault as much as anyone else?”
“Well,” Jun took a deep breath, weighing this, “Kat did put the operation together more than anyone else did. As for Carter…”
“Is he beating himself up again for being the leader?”
Jorge exchanged a glance with Jun before answering. “Well, I suppose you could argue that,” he said hesitantly. “But, if you ask me, it was as much about her feeling guilty as it was about his being the commander.”
Six opened her mouth to ask more but a look from Jorge told her it was time to stop asking questions. So she shut it and tried a different tack: “I heard that Carter thinks I’m a lot like Thom.”
“And where’d you hear that?” said Jorge, suddenly sharper than before.
With a nonchalant shrug, she replied, “How am I supposed to remember? I hear a lot of things. Is that true though?”
Another look was exchanged and once again she felt left out of some secret. Jun answered, “Jorge knew Thom the best. They bunked together.”
“A lot of long watches,” Jorge added, flipping over a couple of cards to reveal their faces.
“And you’ve always bunked with Emile?” Jun shrugged and nodded in response. “And Kat? There wasn’t another female Spartan on Noble before.”
A third glance told Six that there was definitely something up. Not unlike a fox hearing the rustle of a rabbit’s tail, she resisted the urge to lean forward as Jun finally said in a much lower voice, “Kat and Carter bunked together.”
Oh. She leaned back in her seat again, biting her lower lip but refusing to allow any other emotion to cross her bare face. Never had she more longed for her armor, where everything down to the air she breathed was cool and controlled, nothing like this heat rushing to her face as she evaluated this new… was it new? It wasn’t new; it was merely simple information she had not been able to gather. Information like attempting to anticipate an enemy general’s tendencies in combat and then being surprised. Nothing more than a battle map that someone had spilled coffee over. Relationships between conscripted individuals were messy; the metaphor was not lost on her. But why had she not seen it coming to begin with?
Six realized that Jorge’s hazel eyes had been intent on her face the entire time since Jun’s revelation. She met them and shrugged. “I’m not surprised,” were the words that spilled from her mouth in cool, calculated, jaded tones. “It wouldn’t be the first time anything like that’s happened. But what now? What happened?”
He didn’t seem fooled though; another eventuality she had not predicted. This is happening with greater frequency, Six registered in a corner of her mind. Better watch that. “Thom’s death was a trump on anything that might’ve or could’ve been between them,” said the elder Spartan. “Neither of them was the same.”
“Which is why we’re told again and again in training that frat rules are in place for a reason,” rejoined Jun with a chuckle. “Besides, Carter… Well, speak of the devil. So you’re back, commander.”
Even while chuckling and wearing a grin, Carter’s eyes were tired. Six wondered if he ever was anything but drained these days. Ever since they’d moved back to a military hub and settled in for the week, Noble’s commander had done everything save completely drop off the map. As the highest ranking Spartan on premises and the commander of a capable team, he’d been pulled into meeting after meeting, sometimes accompanied by Kat, more often going into a conference room solo. He’d been rolling in late, Jorge had told Six, since those meetings often lasted hours and yet Noble Leader had insisted on taking on this recon mission himself, arguing that anything that the rest of his team went through, he should be a part of. But still, even Six saw that Carter was pushing his boundaries.
“Did you think that I wasn’t coming home, Jun?” he asked, sinking into the seat beside Jorge at the table. Emile skulked in his commander’s shadow, leaning against a counter a few feet away from the rest of his team.
“The thought never crossed my mind,” replied Noble Three with a smile, the corners of his eyes stretching to wrinkle the tattoo stamped across his shaved head. That was a lie and they all knew it. How could Spartans –any Spartans –forget the inevitability of death when they practically left an empty seat for it at every table? “Find anything out there?”
Carter shook his head. “I wish. We found traces: abandoned buildings that looked like they’d been hit pretty hard, their occupants disappeared. But there was nothing recent. You and Six will have to go in even deeper.”
“That’s just what Kat was telling us,” replied Jun. “Does someone want to get her?”
“I’ll do it,” said Six, getting to her feet. She had been itching to get out of the room ever since Carter and Emile had entered though she had taken more pains than usual to conceal it. “Where’d she be?”
It was Jorge and not Carter that spoke though they both turned to her and opened their mouths. “There is a conference room down the hall,” he advised. “That’d be where I’d look.”
She nodded her thanks and then started down the corridor. The halls of the headquarters were empty; she wasn’t surprised. She imagined that everyone else was asleep in their beds at this hour or otherwise engaged on various missions. She heaved a quiet sigh. All of these forces drawn here for a counter-offensive and it’d be a counter-offensive against what? They’d be asking if recon didn’t come up with something soon. She supposed that she ought to be thankful that Six had no ambition save to get the job done and that it’d be Carter and Holland consequently that’d make the excuses if there were any questions.
She knocked on the door to the room Jorge had referenced before entering; standard protocol, though she didn’t think Kat had anyone in there. “What is it?” asked a muffled voice from the other side.
“They’re back,” Six answered, stepping back from the door. “You said to have someone get you so… here I am.”
“Here you are,” she agreed dryly and then the door swung open to reveal a scowling Kat with her arms full of maps. “I suppose that those two told you everything the moment I left.”
Six didn’t flinch. “If you didn’t want them to, you should’ve stayed.”
“Do you think I care?” Kat took a step into the hallway, forcing the other woman to back up. “I have nothing to prove to you. I have nothing to prove to the commander or to Emile or to anybody. So if you think for a moment that you can use any of what they told you against me–”
“I never thought to,” she cut her off unexpectedly, shocked into stumbling into honesty. Six blinked very rapidly. Had the thought truly never occurred to her? It was a powerful bit of information if it reduced the typically cool Kat to this; an extreme tactical advantage. Had she truly never thought of turning it to her benefit?
No, she hadn’t. Part of Six was confused by this realization, another part irked, but the majority of her told her to move forward. Kat was still staring at her, blue eyes narrowed in suspicion and Six found herself hastening to reassure her. “I wouldn’t anyway. Honestly. And I won’t got talking about it with anybody.”
“You’ve never seemed to like me enough to keep confidence for me,” said Kat, still wary to a fault. “Why?”
“Secrets are secrets, no matter who they’re about,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders, “and everyone’s got a right to their privacy.”
“Nobody, especially not Spartans, are supposed to have secrets that could potentially disrupt their morale during a war. And I should’ve gotten over him a long time ago.”
“And yet we do. Who’d know that better than me? Come on.” She jerked her head in the direction of the rec room. “They’re waiting on us.”
“Good God,” said Kat, shaking her head. “What will Emile say this time?”
Kat started down the hallway. Six followed. Subconsciously, she felt herself add Carter’s name to the list of men whom she would never allow herself to consider.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:25:18 GMT 1
Eleven: Blind Leading
August 11th, 2552
In truth, though she might not admit it aloud within anyone’s earshot, heights weren’t really her thing. Or maybe it was windows and all of potential they had that plagued her mind. A childhood memory of traveling to a place with tall buildings, sometime early in her training, hit her hard. She remembered a gaping window, her head buried in a pillow, being afraid not of the fall but of the jump.
No, she told herself. I changed. There is no jump. The jump does not exist. I’ve changed.
Traveling in a Falcon by night was just the sort of thing that would bring that up. That there was nothing she could do about present circumstances was a fact that Six took little issue with. She’d long since made peace with the fact that she’d given up her day-to-day decisions at a young age and she was aware that she would not get that power back so long as there was the Covenant to fight. Sometimes she wondered if she’d even know what to do with her life if she ever got it back.
The pilot was saying something. Jun nudged Six’s foot with the tip of his boot. “Wake up, Spartan,” he said not unkindly. “We’ve just passed behind the enemy’s first line of outposts. I take it this is probably where they picked up Carter and Emile last night. It shouldn’t be much farther now.”
“We’ll take you in as deep as we can,” replied the pilot from his station. “You’ll have to proceed into the dark zone on foot. You should start hitting the Covies before too long.”
“And the other teams only found outposts? They didn’t go farther?”
“So it would seem,” said Jun in response to Six’s question. “We’re looking for something a bit bigger, a little more threatening than a couple of grunts and jackals with an elite or two thrown into the mix.”
“And do you think there is something bigger out there?”
“You saw their numbers at Sword Base and that’s got to be only one of many. My guess is that they can’t be pulling all of those numbers just from orbit.” He sounded thoughtful. “They’ve got to have landed ground side somewhere.”
“And it’s your job to find out just where ‘somewhere’ is.” The voice coming over the comm. was Kat’s. “You reading me, Three, Six?”
“Loud and clear,” replied Jun. “We’ll check in again once we hit the ground and move in a little closer.”
“I’m looking forward to it. Noble Two out.”
The Falcon began its descent between the cliffs. “This is as far in as I can take you, sir, ma’am,” the pilot told them as he pulled up to hover beside a narrow trail that wrapped around the cliff’s side. “Watch for the Phantoms. And give the Covies hell.”
Jun was smirking behind his visor; she could tell by the angle at which he held his helmeted head. Once they had both leapt out onto the ledge in turn, she turned to her team member and said, “You don’t hold much for non-Spartan personnel.”
“I just think that Spartans are more likely to get the job done faster and better than any regular UNSC trooper,” he said carelessly in response to her statement.
“Do you think then that everyone in the military should undergo Spartan training and augmentation?”
“Well then we wouldn’t be special, now would we?” He led the way down the path and past the curve of the mountainside. “Look, Six: I’m a Spartan, not some politician. I have no clue. If anyone asked me to make the big decisions, we’d all be screwed. If people needed to look to me to make a big decision in the first place, we’re already screwed.”
“The blind leading the blind,” she recalled.
“Something like that. Wait here.”
“What?”
She watched as he snapped his sniper rifle onto his back and began to hoist himself up the cliff side. “Relax, Six; I’m just gonna go take a peek.”
That was the kind of thing that she told herself that she was supposed to do: go off on her own and look ahead. She wondered at the reasoning on Command’s part at putting her and Jun together for this mission. It might have seemed like a brilliant idea at first; put the two scouts together since they’d be able to keep up with each other. But when two soldiers were accustomed to each being the one who runs up ahead, who was going to stay and hold down the fort? It seemed to Six that Carter or Holland or Kat or maybe a combination of the three –whoever it was that had partitioned Noble Team into pairs had chosen to have the “blind lead the blind” when it came to putting Jun and Six together. Well, it didn’t matter much anyway so long as they got the job done.
“Do you see anything?” she asked him.
“The dark zone sure is dark,” he answered. “They’ve got Phantoms running up and down the area with searchlights like the man said. Could it be that they’re looking for us?”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. Can we head forward?”
“Your move, Six. Wait; here comes one now. Get down low.”
There wasn’t anything to “get down low” behind in the immediate vicinity. She saw the Phantom; it was on a marked course not to run directly overhead, thank God, but to curve slightly to Six’s left. Still, it would see her if she didn’t move and fast.
So she moved fast; easy solution. Six darted forward along the path until she spotted a boulder to the right of the trail that created a narrow space between it and the mountainside. She shimmied between the rock and the hard place, her back against the boulder, her back to the Phantom overhead. It was a moment of tension that she felt right through to the tips of her fingernails. She held her breath but refused to close her eyes. The glare of the Phantom’s searchlight against the mountain’s face was reflected in her visor but she didn’t blink. She lay in wait, watching for the danger to pass.
And the Phantom moved on as she knew it would and, after a moment’s passing, there was a sound like a muted rock slide from above and then Jun landed lightly beside her. Dusting off his armored shoulders, he said, “Great. We’re alive. And we’re nearly there. Let’s keep moving, shall we?”
She shrugged. “Your move.”
“Isn’t it always?” He took the lead and Six kept close, a not so silent shadow, sniper rifle in hand, the twin of Jun’s. Carter and Kat had armed them up before they left
Her commander had handed her the rifle’s components from a series of cases in the limited armory. He had mistaken the expression on her face when the completed weapon rest in her hands. “Do you want something else?” he had asked with a quizzical line across his brow.
“Are you going to make a habit of handing me my favorite weapons?” she’d said in return.
“So long as you don’t use them against me,” Carter had replied. “Then I’m happy to keep you armed.”
The exchange would mean nothing to anyone else's ears but it caused a confusion in Six that manifested itself as a tightness in her chest. Did he think that she would ever turn her weapon on him? Did she really care about his opinion of her? If so, why? She didn’t care about anyone’s opinion.
She shook her head and both the remembrance and the interior tension dissipated like smoke. Jun was talking. She should probably pay attention. “Recon Team Bravo reporting in: Noble Three and Six are in position. It’s starting to get crowded up here, Kat; did you notice?”
“Then we’re closing in,” Kat sounded pleased but she wasn’t the one with the enemy swooping through overhead. The sound of her voice was also a good reminder of why Six wasn’t going to think about her commander anymore. “Report any Covenant structures or devices, you know the drill, Jun. Direct action might be necessary.”
“Copy that.” Jun chuckled and glanced back to his scouting counterpart. “With Kat in charge of an op, you can bet that ‘direct action’ will be necessary.”
Six shrugged. “I have similar principles.”
“I bet you do. Well,” Jun considered this, “it’s not exactly a ‘principle’ with Kat; it’s more of a ‘I’m bored up in Command; would something interesting please happen?’ thing.”
“I heard that. Cut the chatter, Jun. We have work to do.”
“Copy that too. Here, Six.” He tossed something over to her which she was careful to catch. As she inspected the magazine, he added, “They’re high velocity, armor piercing, you name it. They’ll come in handy; take the hat off an Elite at two thousand yards.”
“I’d rather take the head.”
“Alright, we get it.” Jun sighed. “Look, there’s no need to try and out-badass Emile or something. We’re all very amazed with what you’ve accomplished. Even the commander was impressed with what you did at Sword Base. Anyway, these rounds ain’t cheap so don’t go wasting them.” He looked up and around for a moment before finding a decent handhold on the cliff face. “I’ll be in touch.”
Jun’s comment had not made Six happy at all, especially when she considered that it may have been privy to Kat and whomever else happened to be listening. She had heard that he was known for being talkative before she was sent to Noble. She had also heard that his superiors tolerated this quality in Jun since his chatter was usually full of useful information. Well, that particular bit of information he had just shared with her was not useful at all.
There was a shadow against the horizon up ahead. She held her fire as she approached, wanting to verify that the silhouette was indeed an enemy.
“Elite,” Jun’s voice buzzed confirmation in her ear. “All yours but keep it quiet.”
“I’m not a fool,” she muttered.
“I never took you for one. Take care of it. Watch the grunts.” She heard his smile. “Don’t step on anybody.”
A jerk of her knife fulfilled the first part of Jun’s request; her armored forearm across the Elite’s mouth took care of the second. He fell softly; she laid him to rest against the grass as blood pooled around his head like a pillow.
“Grunts,” he reminded her and three shots of her magnum dealt with that. They were dead before they’d even sat up. She wasn’t even sure that any of them had really woken up before she had planted a bullet in its head. “Not bad,” said Jun approvingly.
She didn’t linger; there was too much that had to be done. What looked like an entire Covenant operation was sprawled out before her, crawling with elites, jackals, grunts, but this couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the real threat.
Jun seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Recon Bravo to Noble Two,” she heard him say, “Stand by for contact report.”
There was a moment’s pause and then: “Standing by to copy, over.”
“We have eyes on multiple hostiles patrolling a settlement,” he was saying as Six lifted her sniper rifle to her gaze. A few clicks of the scope took her in to the hijacked settlement. “Is this what we’re looking for, Kat?”
“Negative,” Kat replied. “It’s too small and you’re not in the dark zone yet anyway.” Six adjusted the scope again, half-listening. Her gaze passed over grunts and jackals before resting on a single, taller enemy. Well, Jun had told her to put the ammo to good use. “Engage at your own discretion but keep moving.”
A shot rang out through the settlement. The elite crumpled and fell from the building’s roof under Six’s satisfied gaze. She glanced up and caught sight of Jun looked down on her from a higher ridge along the cliff. “Whoops,” she heard amusement in his tone, “already engaged, Kat.”
“Not necessarily a bad thing,” she thought she could hear Kat smile as well. “But keep it quick and quiet.”
“Six?”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” muttered Six not quite under her breath as she employed the sniper rifle to dispatch a couple of elites that had just emerged from the settlement’s interior. The pair fell face-down upon the cracked pavement and the effect was immediate: the grunts in the courtyard immediately scattered like balls on a pool table, running in all directions, occasionally colliding with one another. Six paid them little mind; they’d be dealt with later.
The jackals held their ground, lifting their alternating red and blue shields to cover their heads like glossy, opaque umbrellas, shielding themselves from Jun’s rapid fire. One of their number was unlucky; a flailing grunt ran headlong into its shield and they both tumbled to the ground like dominoes, easy pickings for Jun.
Six slid down the slope; however, the momentum did not result in an easy landing. She hit the ground with a roll and leapt back up to her feet in time for a skirmisher to make a brave attempt to tackle her. That wasn’t about to happen. A backhanded swipe of her knife made the assailant leap back; a shot from her magnum finished the job.
There was something like a screech across the sky and a roar in Six’s ears followed as a Phantom descended upon the Covenant-claimed settlement like some massive bird of prey. “Looks like we pissed them off,” commented Jun wryly as Six dove for cover.
Her back pressed against the leeward side of a building, she added, “And we’re just getting started. Watch out!”
The Phantom unleashed a series of blasts. Six shut her eyes against the glare and opened them to find a scorch mark against the pavement two yards left into the open. She looked away again and then the elite was on her from behind.
She shoved all of her weight backward and felt the alien’s knees buckle behind her. She pinned it to the floor under her weight and twisted in her assailant’s loosened grip, reaching with both hands to grasp the elite’s neck.
Its grip on her waist was as strong as her grip on its neck but it did not have the freedom of movement that she had achieved with her earlier maneuver. Spotting a jagged block of rubble three yards or so before her, she braced the soles of her feet against the cracked pavement and pushed forward, dragging the elite across the space along with her. She saw equal parts fear and confusion in its face… no, don’t look at the eyes. Never look at the eyes. And then she shifted her grip from its neck to its head and lifted the elite’s skull up and slammed it down against the block.
She heard the crack before she saw the blood and dropped the head immediately; using her legs thrust her entire body away from the corpse, she scrambled backward into the cover of the building, pressing her back against the wall again.
“Six!” It was Jun, running through the courtyard, sniper rifle still in hand. “Six, are you alright?”
She blinked up at him, murmuring. “It’s messy, isn’t it?”
“It snuck up on you, right?” She nodded in response. He offered her his hand. “Are you okay?”
“They keep doing that to me.” She clasped her hands to quell their shaking rather than take his and let him pull her to her feet. “Why do they keep doing that?”
Jun made a noise like sucking his breath in through gritted teeth. The sound was vaguely reminiscent of Carter. “Don’t get like this on me now,” he told her.
“I am not getting like anything on anyone,” she retorted, planting her palms against the bloodstained floor to push herself to her feet. “We have a job to do, don’t we?”
“And now you’re telling me?” He sighed, a heavy sound that drowned out any response Six could make. “Alright; trail leads behind this place. It’s crawling with hostiles. Should be a welcome distraction.”
“If distractions are ever welcome,” she agreed reluctantly. “I’m alright; why would I not be? Let’s go.”
They looped around the buildings together and started down the trail’s continuation on the other side of the settlement. The mountains seemed to close in on all sides; she looked up and saw nothing but a sliver of the night sky winding a path that ran parallel to theirs. It was similar to gazing at the stars through one’s fingers.
She tore her eyes away from the river of sky to glance at her radar. “I’m picking up something… big.”
“‘Big’ as in what we’re looking for?”
“Big as in I don’t know what the hell this thing is but I’d start running in the opposite direction if I had the choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Ha.”
The ground seemed to tremble ever so slightly as they approached a bend in the trail. Jun was coming up with various theories, none of which Six found to be particularly entertaining. “Trail’s too narrow to get a Scarab up through here… maybe they found enough open ground to land a Phantom? Could be a couple of hunters I suppose but they’d have to be big…”
Six walked past him and stopped abruptly at the mouth of a clearing. “What the hell are those things?” she asked no one in particular in a flat voice.
Jun moved to stand beside her. He whistled under his breath. “Well would you look at that.”
Huge creatures –Six didn’t know what to call them; she’d slept through most of her animal biology classes –were on the rampage against the Covenant. It was… something like a cross between an elephant or a boar with an ogre out of a fairytale with two talons for fingers or paws that it used to rake up a handful of grunts and scatter them across the clearing. It was like something out of a fantasy movie, something that belonged with giant apes and genetically spliced dinosaurs. In short, it was something that needed to be avoided
Jun seemed to have a different opinion. “Looks like it’s on our side,” he observed wryly as it flung a pair of jackals into the cliff side.
“Are you kidding? When it’s done with them, it’ll come for us.” But she made no motion to flee, still studying the creatures and their movements. “Do you think they disturbed its… nest or something?”
“I’m not a xenobiologist either. Why do you think I have the answers to these questions? Wait… ah shit, incoming!”
After finishing off what remained of the Covenant forces, the creatures caught sight of the two Spartans and crossed the clearing in two bounds. Six sprinted left, reloading her sniper rifle with the special ammo. “Eyes, Jun!” she shouted over one creature’s roar. “Aim for the eyes!”
“You think I don’t know that?” he yelled back at her from across the clearing. She heard him shoot once, twice. One creature fell. “Two shots to the skull will do it too!”
She took aim and fired. It was a dead shot to the eye but she’d had more leisure to line up the reticle than Jun apparently had. She stood for a moment, feeling very pleased with her performance as the creature moaned and swayed above her. And then it began to fall. Six dove left, rolling out of the way of the creature’s collapse by a disturbingly small margin. As the dust settled around both corpse and Spartan, she heard Jun ask, “Kat, pick any of that up?”
“Affirmative, Recon Bravo: It’s an indigenous creature, called a,” she paused, consulting with someone. “It’s called a ‘Gùta.’”
“Never heard of it. What about you, Six?”
“I’d have no idea about creatures, indigenous or otherwise,” she shrugged. “Were you worried that it was an endangered species, Jun?”
Jun shook his head, more in exasperation than honest disagreement. “You don’t have to do that, you know?” he told her very quietly over a private channel. “And I suspect that we’d like you all better if you didn’t.”
Six had nothing to say to that so she said nothing at all, merely shouldered her sniper rifle and led the way into the darkness of the path again.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 18, 2011 17:26:44 GMT 1
Alright, this is the last one I've written and had beta-read so far.
Twelve: Vital
August 11th, 2552
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger or so the cliché went. Thinking along similar lines, Six reasoned that it was a pretty good policy to not leave anything alive in her wake to bite her in the ass later. Those guidelines were easy enough to abide by when the only things stumbling into her scope’s eye were Covenant bastards but when civilians –and not just that but careless and frantic civilians who obviously didn’t know how to use a magnum though their behavior insisted that they thought otherwise –were involved, her relative morality on the battlefield got a lot more complicated.
She hadn’t needed Kat to tell her that these were civilians worth saving. It wasn’t even a matter of how much their potential intel was worth; it was a matter of heading home to HQ and looking Jorge or Carter in the eye after they’d heard that she’d let the survivors go by the wayside. Wait, the thought gave her pause as she crouched against the raised edge of a walkway above a small fleet of jackals. Am I really thinking about that now?
Six nailed four jackals in the head in quick succession with a DMR she’d picked up along the way from the first Covenant outpost while distinctly intrigued at the separation of thinking and reflex she was experiencing. Down went the enemy but her thoughts were up with someone else. That’s interesting, she thought meditatively while detached complacency hovered somewhere close to her chest as the field before her gradually cleared and ammo disappeared from her pockets. That’s strange.
“Six? How are you doing up there?”
“Oh, the usual, Jun,” she replied carelessly as she mechanically dispatched the final jackal. “Killing stuff. Blowing up shit.”
“There haven’t been any explosions. Alright, look: we’ve got a bit of a situation.”
“Hit me.” Satisfied that she’d done her momentary duty by the Covenant, she shouldered the DMR and eased into a jog that took her through the Covenant commandeered and re-purposed pump station. Nothing on radar; a good if not somewhat boring sign.
“Well, this actually might be to our advantage. You’ll see when you come around here.”
Jun was still finishing up the last bit of that sentence when Six came running along the pathway. Her fellow Spartan was surrounded by several slightly sheepish members of the local militia they’d rescued, none of which looked particularly appreciative. He nodded at her approach and called her attention to a couple of metal cases lying against the ground as one of the militia troopers noted, “So, there’re two of you after all.”
“Did you think he was doing this all by himself?” asked Six, jerking her helmeted head in Jun’s direction.
The militia trooper who had spoken –a stocky, medium-sized man whose age Six estimated to be around thirty or so –shrugged. “You Spartans are good in a fight. Even one makes a big difference. Us? Well, this is a little more action than we’re used to.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Jun in response. “You’re hardly equipped let alone have anything close to the training to handle the Covenant.”
“We’re aware of that,” replied a second trooper, this one shorter with dark hair and a wounded arm clutched against his side, bristling at Jun’s comment. “We’ve all heard it one way or another from every Spartan any of us have met.”
Six frowned. “You could be a little more grateful.”
“Oh, they’ll be grateful,” Jun assured her without taking his eyes off of the troopers. “They’ll be very grateful; especially considering what exactly I think is in those cases. So,” he directly addressed the first trooper, “does someone want to tell me exactly what you all are doing back here? The area is supposed to be evacuated and we were very thorough, isn’t that right, Six?”
She had no idea how thorough or otherwise they’d been in the evacuation process but she nodded all the same. “We were pretty sure we’d picked up everyone.”
“So does someone want to enlighten us as to how a couple of civilians slipped the net?”
The militia troopers were silent for a long moment before the tall man who had spoken first decided to cooperate on behalf of his group. “Look, we weren’t trying to do anything wrong,” he began. “We just didn’t like leaving it to somebody else to defend our home. You get that?”
“Yeah,” said Six before she could stop herself.
“So we left when we were told to, alright? Nobody told us outright that we couldn’t go back so, hell, first chance we got we broke off and we came back for this,” he nodded toward the metal cases and then to another trooper who promptly began to unbuckle the first case. “We have them stashed away all through the territory and they weren’t going to do anyone any good just lying around where no one else could find them.”
Jun knelt to inspect the contents of the first case and Six let out a low whistle of appreciation upon quick examination of the second and third. Grenades like those could blow a couple elites sky high before she even had time to think about what she was doing as she popped the trigger. All that and enough shotguns to make Emile go green with envy. Maybe those militia troopers were onto something with all of this purloined firepower.
At face value, her fellow Spartan appeared to be of a different mind. Jun first glanced to her and then to the troopers, saying, “You know this stuff is stolen.”
The trooper whom had spoken second scoffed and Six didn’t blame him for it. There was no chance of anyone being taken to task for petty theft behind enemy lines. “And what are you going to do about it? You gonna arrest us all?”
“No,” Jun sounded smug. “We’re just going to steal it back.”
Six emphasized this decision by filching a set of substitute rounds for her sniper rifle and dropping her DMR in exchange for a shotgun. To Jun, she asked, “What do you propose we do about the civilians?”
“I’d just as well leave it to Command,” he replied as he sifted through various pieces of contraband weaponry and ammo before settling upon a fresh magazine for his own gun. “They might have ideas as to how they can be of use to us.”
“They could lead us into the dark zone. They’d be more or less familiar with the terrain.”
“There’s an idea.”
“They don’t seem to like us much.”
Jun shrugged as he got back up to his feet. “You heard them: we’re Spartans. They resent us on principle.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Can you blame them much? People like Halsey treat them like second-class soldiers.”
It shouldn’t matter, she thought to herself as grenades rolled between her gloved fingers. We’re all human.
She was still thinking about that as well as contemplating the same handful of extra plasma grenades when she heard the screech across the sky that marked the arrival of a Phantom. Around her, the militia troopers scattered into defensive positions, leading her to wonder if Jun had underestimated their combat experience after all. They certainly knew when to duck and cover, which was more to say than her sometimes, remembering what had happened on her first mission with Noble Team when Carter had shoved her down and out of the way…
No. Elites and skirmishers poured like locusts from the Phantom’s mouth, like some overdue plague that God suddenly wished on humanity. Six had never been a believer but she had to trust that someone up there had it in for her as the suicidal grunts came rushing in. She heard a trooper scream as she traded off dodging and firing bullets and it seemed that the sound drowned out all else. He had been alive a moment ago and now he wasn’t.
She found a decent vantage point up on a walkway above the general mayhem and reloaded her sniper rifle, figuring that somewhere Jun was doing the same. Taking aim, her gaze passed over three struggling militia troopers and pulled the trigger, dispatching the pair of skirmishers that had been harassing them. She took satisfaction in the kills; she hated things that leapt just within reach and then immediately darted back out of sight.
Elites fell into that category as well; a well-placed headshot dealt with the one dancing outside of Jun’s range, a knife to the second Elite that tried to sneak up on her that night. She felt a savage satisfaction at having wised up to the underhanded attack, at watching blood stain the handle of her knife. But just when she’d shaken her head and shaken herself out of the momentary wave of bloodlust, the second Phantom descended.
“Well, we really just pissed them off,” drawled Jun in her ear.
“You can say that again,” she muttered.
“If I was Emile, I would.” Having deposited its cargo, the enemy ship took off into the night sky. “Watch your flank, Six.”
She took his advice and was grateful for it, shifting position to tackle an inbound clump of jackals to her left. She heard a trooper whoop as the enemy dispersed, a cry of victory quickly smothered when yet another Phantom swooped in. Six clenched her teeth in frustration. “Jun, we can’t do this if they keep rolling in like this. We’ll catch hell from Kat if we don’t move forward.”
“You do realize that if we leave these men–”
“Yes, I realize it!” She sniped an Elite, taking down its shields with the round, and then tossed a grenade into the mix. “And why not take them with us? It isn’t as though we can send them back. And there’s nothing here but the lake.”
There was a pause as Jun considered this during which Six kept herself busy managing a skirmisher’s fire until she could take it down with her shotgun. Finally, despite what Six had said, the Phantom took back off into the sky and she skirted back down around the perimeter to regroup with Jun and the remaining troopers.
The dark haired militia trooper that had first brought up the issue of Spartans’ disdain for regular soldiers was still nursing his injured arm when Six came back around. His comrades-at-arms were grouped around him and Jun; the tall leader had not survived that last wave.
“…Road leads to a hydro plant,” the wounded trooper was saying. “The gate’s broke so you won’t get far going that way.”
“I take it you know of an alternate route?”
“Down along the riverbed,” confirmed another trooper, standing at attention by his comrade. He shrugged somewhat uneasily. “It’s pretty reliable. We, um, used it a lot for…”
“Smuggling,” Jun finished. “And where does it go?”
“Straight to the plant,” he answered.
“Is there any water we have to worry about?” Six wanted to know.
“The river’s been damned these past forty-five years,” was the response and it came from the dark haired trooper. “My great-granddad worked on the plant’s original ground plan. It powered up every settlement in the territory. It’d be a grand shame if it all goes to waste.”
“We’re doing what we can,” replied Jun through gritted teeth.
“Really? They send us two Spartans and that’s it? Should we be groveling at your feet and thanking you? You saved maybe half a dozen men. The Covenant’s on Reach.”
Something in Six broke. “You wait until dawn,” she snapped. “And then we’ll see who’s out in the field and who’s back in the med or getting shipped off world to safety, for all of your talk! Now which way is the riverbed? I’d love to get out of your hair; you can find your own damned way back!”
She stared at them all, waiting for a response, and Jun was quiet. Finally, one trooper cleared his throat and said, “I’ll… I’ll show you the way, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “Let’s go, Jun.”
……………
The hydroelectric plant was back-lit by some kind of pylon, obviously of Covenant origin. Six walked forward, her eyes intent upon the structure as Jun consulted with Kat over the comm. “Do we have confirmation on pick up of the militia troops?” he was asking.
“Affirmative,” Kat was answering. “As for the pylon you’re looking at, I suspect that’s the source of our little problem.”
“Consider it gone.”
“Not so fast, Three. The dark zone can stay dark awhile longer; we’ll deal with it come dawn.”
“What’s going on tomorrow?”
“Something big. We’ll find out when Command gets their act together a bit more. Until then, stick a remote det charge on the thing. It’ll go boom tomorrow morning.”
“You hear that, Six?”
“As well as you did.” She scoped out the situation, taking care in analyzing the Covenant forces lurking around the plant’s exterior. “There’s no saying what’s inside the compound or what the Covenant might drop on our heads but what’s outside so far should be no problem.”
“That sounds promising,” replied Jun as the two Spartans started for the bridge that led across to the plant’s complex.
“Now here’s the big question,” she paused, lingering before crossing the bridge. “Are we going to be sneaky or are we going to face the bastards up front?”
“The remote det will take some time to get set up. I’d rather we clear the field before I get started if it’s all the same with you.”
She shrugged. “Either way the Covenant’s gonna die. I’ll follow your lead.”
“Still,” he paused, “we can be sneaky even when we’re taking them out up front.” He loaded fresh ammo into his rifle and took up a position halfway across the bridge. “Cover me when they start for us, won’t you?”
Across the way, an elite’s head was bent in mute conference with its fellow specialist. Six had no idea what they might be discussing, anything from the weather to an attack to that the other outpost seemed to have dropped off of the map. She couldn’t tell if the expression on one elite’s face betrayed sadness while the look that the other elite wore might just have well indicated elation. But why think about that? Why think about that now?
A shot brought Six back to earth and blood ran like a waterfall from the sliver of skin between the taller elite’s silver shoulder plate and helmet. The alien crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been snipped and there was a moment of strange silence between the imagined thump of the body against the ground and the audible roar that sprung from its companion’s throat. The howl was silenced by a shot that erupted from Six’s rifle; the point of impact between the eyes.
Fire rang out over the bridge; both Spartans dropped into an even lower crouch to keep from being hit. “Well,” said Jun reasonably, “that’s two that we don’t have to worry about. Do we go in now or do we pick them off as they come over the bridge?”
Six opted for holding position and letting the enemy come to them and so that’s what they did. When the bridge had become an unburied graveyard by their efforts, she and Jun made for the pylon.
He dropped to his knees beside what she could only presume to be the structure’s power supply and his hands dove into the various pockets of his armor. Out poured various tools that she could tell were constructed for one use only followed by a small, boxy device a little bigger than the length of her hand. She picked up from where he had laid it to rest beside his kneecap, wondering at how something so small could have such an impact.
Jun popped open the paneling on the side of the pylon’s generator closest to the gorge. Yanking some wiring out into the crook where the generator met one of the structure’s legs, he pinched two wires between a pair of pliers and set a small copper filament between them. “This is going to take a minute,” he said, throwing the warning over his shoulder at her. “There’s no telling what they’ll throw at us in that time and I’m not going to be much help. Keep your eyes peeled. There’s no way they’re sending nothing.”
“Because that would be just too easy,” she muttered, setting the charge back down against the ground.
“They’re fighting for something too. You can’t blame them for not making our job easier.”
“Watch me.”
“Maybe what they’re fighting for is just as important to them as what we’re fighting for is to us.”
“We’re fighting for survival, Jun. Nothing is more important.” She paused, scanning the complex for new enemies. “And besides: if there was something else going on, they could open their mouths and tell us instead of shooting first and asking questions later.”
“You sound like the commander,” he replied with a chuckle. Six didn’t find that funny. “Well, communication is vital I suppose.” He glanced upward suddenly. “Look up, Six. Maybe you can try talking this time.”
Twin thuds marked the arrival of a pair of hunters just abreast of the pylon, too close for neither Jun’s nor Six’s comfort. She let her sniper rifle clatter to the floor before darting outside, running parallel the edge of the gorge at a sprint. She looped back around toward the pylon, rushing toward the hunters from behind. She remembered Sword Base and what she and Kat had accomplished there but that had been two on two. The odds were certainly less in her favor this time around but she did not allow herself to be daunted. As long as she kept moving…
She remembered the parable of the turtle and the hare… or was it a tortoise? Never mind; the hunter in her path looked as much like a turtle as it did a tortoise and why did it get to crawl under a shell and hide and she never get that luxury? Where did that come from? Never mind.
Anyway, as long as she kept running forward and then drawing back, always stepping to the left and not to the right, never letting it catch her in the green light of its gaze –or was it his gun? His gun? Where did that come from? –she might pull it off.
She loaded up the shotgun and stepped out of the shadow of the plant’s main building. Someone had told her that hunters didn’t see very well and she was ready to exploit every advantage she had over any enemy she would come to face.
She pressed her shotgun to the creature’s back, wondering if it had ever felt the coolness of metal there before. She knew what it felt like to do it, to push the barrel against skin, to pull the trigger, and for the first time she was aware of all the times she had done it before. And with that came the realization of how many times she would do it again.
Firing three shots in as quick succession as a shotgun’s cool down period would allow her, she made the creature howl. Its companion shrieked with it, as the one back at Sword Base had done before. Was there a correlation? She doubted it and correlation never implied causation anyway.
The hunter staggered on its massive feet, its shoulders slumped and heaving its weight dragging itself face forward and down. She let it fall and stood for a moment but then a green flash akin to that at the moment of sunset flared in the corner of her vision and she dropped down too, playing at death while the first hunter lay motionless beside her. They lay still like stone effigies upon a carved tomb as the blast of the other hunter’s weapon flared overhead and then she slammed her palms against the ground, pushed herself to her feet in bound, and threw herself at the second hunter with her next step.
She launched herself at the creature, gripped its right shoulder with her left hand, and leapt over its weapon to land in a somewhat messy roll. Recovering quickly, she turned, latched onto its shoulders with both arms, locked her armor, took a breath, waiting, and then flew backward as the enemy collapsed.
She lay flat on her back for a moment, reveling in the sound of her own shallow yet steady breathing. The hunters were dead and Six was alive; it was a cause for celebration if there ever was one. Every time she killed, an enemy that might have been the end of her otherwise was sent to the grave in her place and maybe even in the place of others, of more innocent people. She banished all other thoughts; it was dead and she was alive that was what counted.
Jun bounded forward. He was holding not only his own rifle but hers as well. “Six,” he was saying. “Six, are you alright? I saw the hunter throw you.”
“Am I alright?” she repeated and felt her lips part in contemplation of the so simple yet so compelling question. She willed the muscles close to her abdomen to move and felt herself draw forward into a sitting position. “Yes, I think so.”
His shoulders slumped in relief. “Great; I was not looking forward to telling Carter you’d died on me.”
She ignored that. “I take it you dealt with the charges?”
“All set and ready to blow whenever Command wants an blast.”
“You tell Kat?”
“Better take care of that.” He took a few paces into the darkness and away from her. “Recon Bravo to Noble Two: charge placed.”
“Acknowledged. I hope you put them somewhere inconspicuous.”
“Nobody’s going to find them unless they want to go digging through the power supply.”
“Alright then.” Kat sounded pleased. “Continue into the dark zone. You’ll be in the thick of it as soon as you make it past that southeast gate.”
“Copy that. We should find something soon.”
“So we all hope.”
Six rose to her feet with atypical grace as Jun circled back around toward her. “You hear all that?” he asked but did not wait for an answer. “Let’s go. It’s getting close to dawn and we’d better be out of here before people start waking up.”
She nodded and added, “I suspect we’ll have a busy day tomorrow anyway.”
“You got that right,” he chuckled and started for the gate. Six looked to the east. She didn’t want any light sneaking up on her, whether it was the dawn or otherwise.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 20, 2011 22:37:02 GMT 1
Thirteen: Cracks Begin to Show
August 12th, 2552
The sky to the east was luminous but not with the coming dawn. Beside her in the underbrush, Jun’s breathing was slow and remarkably steady; a cool contrast to Six’s racing heartbeat. She tried to quell her restlessness as the two Spartans crawled forward on knees and elbows to meet the drop at a perpendicular angle. Finally, Six reached out with her left hand, gripped the cliff’s jagged edge, pulled herself forward, and felt her jaw drop in surprise before her lips pulled back in a silent snarl.
It was an army that was sprawled out across the valley floor like some toxic algae or moss upon a smooth stone. The sky was alit for all the wrong reasons, a backdrop for Corvettes, Banshees, and Phantoms galore. Speechless, her gaze mutely traced the enemy camp’s perimeter, thinking of hundreds of elites, thousands of skirmishers, her estimations growing wilder in sequence to her heartbeat. Fear she had felt before when looking upon an enemy; this creeping and irrepressible despair, not so much.
She could push feelings aside to the corner of her mind even if she couldn’t get rid of them altogether, build up a wall brick by brick between fear and grief and sorrow and where she did her thinking, so that’s what Six did as Jun flicked on his comm. and said, “Jackpot.”
“Noble Two to Recon Bravo: have you found something that’s worth our looking at?”
“I think the visual speaks for itself, Kat. Six?”
“Sending it over,” she replied tonelessly, mechanically like she was some wind-up toy and she went through the motions to send the view of the valley to Command with the same precision.
There was silence at the other end and she tried to imagine what they were feeling as they looked through Six’s eyes on what had all of the potential to be an apocalypse. Had any of them, even Kat who claimed she prepared herself for every eventuality, thought for a moment that it could be this much? What was someone who had grown up on Reach, someone like Jorge, thinking when they looked in on this invasion? But Six didn’t want to think so she sealed that all up behind the wall too.
“Are you seeing this, Kat?”
“Confirmed,” her voice was cool and clipped, coming over the comm. like a winter breeze. “We are receiving live visual from Noble Three and Noble Six of a Covenant strike force.”
“That isn’t a strike force, Kat.” It was Carter coming in over the comm. now. Again, Six became very aware that he saw only what she was seeing. “That’s an invading army.”
“It’s an invading army that we have to do something about,” Jun cut back into the conversation. “And, if we’re going to get anything done, we have to go in hard and fast.”
“We’re working on it,” Kat spoke for both herself and her commander, Six assumed. “All recon teams fall back. Sun’s going to be up in a few hours and we’re going to have a very busy day.”
“Acknowledged,” replied Jun and Six heard the click as the channel was cut but he made no motion to get up or move back away from the edge. Heaving a sigh, he turned his helmeted head toward her and said conversationally, “And what do you think about all of this, Six?”
She couldn't remove her eyes from the glowing Covenant hub. “I think,” she began slowly and then stopped. “I think Jorge will be very pissed.”
“I didn’t ask what Jorge will be thinking.”
“I think.” She paused again, considering what she was actually thinking at the moment and whether she had the nerve to be honest. Deciding that she did, Six answered, “I think we’re screwed.”
Jun shook his head with a small snort of exasperation. “You can’t go out into battle thinking that.”
“Watch me.”
“You don’t have to do that. I already told you.”
“Do what?” She felt the color rise to her face, knowing exactly what he was talking about.
“Look, I don’t know what you think you’ve got to hide from the rest of us,” he said in a very quiet voice. “But I’m telling you that it can’t be any worse than what the rest of us have been through. I don’t know what you did or what Carter said but I’m not seeing a reason for the way you two are acting. And, in my opinion, there should be a reason for everything, especially for deciding that you dislike someone. Now come on,” he shoved himself away from the ledge, sliding backward a yard. “We have a long walk back.” ……………
HQ was quiet. Six pushed open the door to the rec room that Noble Team shared on and off with another Spartan deployment and found an empty room save one Spartan-II gazing out of the window. She smiled at Jorge’s back. “I thought you’d all be asleep.”
He shook his head without turning around. “Emile can sleep through a nesting Gùta on the rampage; Jun hardly ever. I usually fall in somewhere in between but do you think I could sleep tonight?”
“No.” There was no use dressing up a skeleton. She stepped up to stand beside him, looking out onto a courtyard that was barren in its practicality. “What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Having Halsey looking after you when you were little; what was it like?”
He did not seem surprised at her question. “Sometimes like living in a petri dish,” he answered, blunt to the point of being harsh. “Sometimes like looking up and seeing a microscope instead of the sun, if that makes any sense. And sometimes it was… different.” The corners of his mouth twitched upward in a smile as bitter as it was brief. “I think she sometimes felt sorry for us, all of us in the program, so she’d find strange little ways to compensate that I don’t think that anyone except she really understood.”
“Like what?”
He looked at her strangely but did not reproach her for being too nosy. “Well, Spartan-IIs have secrets since we’re so special. A lot of those secrets are ones that she taught us personally, things like… songs and rhymes when we were younger. I mean, a lot of them turned out to be secret codes or signals that we could use among ourselves when we went out into the field but she taught us them like they meant something else. Stuff like that.”
“She was kind of like your mother,” she realized slowly.
“Yeah, well we were the first.” Jorge smiled again, wistfully this time. “I don’t think there was ever a Spartan class quite like us. Uh,” he paused, looking down at her. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. “Well, I can’t say that anyone took any special interest in me. Someone like Halsey won’t touch me with a ten foot pole after…” Six stopped herself just in time.
Wisely, he did not press her on the subject and turned his gaze back to look out onto the courtyard. “What do you think of right before you go into battle, Six?” he asked her after a moment’s silence.
Shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, she replied, “I tell myself that if everything is… ruined… I’ll find some way to start over again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like…” She sighed quickly but not in any manner to indicate exasperation or anything like it. “Like… There will always be a reset button or… something like that. You know, um… ‘I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I lift my lids and all is born again.’ Something like… that.”
“It sounded like you were quoting something.”
Pressing the tip of her index finger into the corner of her left eye, she admitted, “Well, yeah. Yeah, I am. My mother was a Plath fan.”
“A what?” He sounded curious rather than contentious but she took offense all the same.
“Why do you do this?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “How do you do this? You’ve gotten two bits of information out of me that I haven’t tell anyone in… how long have I been talking to you?”
“Relax, Spartan,” he said gently, resting a hand upon her shoulder. “Take it easy. Everyone lets bits of their past slip out. Even the things that they might not want other people to know come tumbling out now and again.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment and Jorge, displaying considerable insight once again, did not speak either. And then suddenly, she said, “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For reminding me that I’m a Spartan and I shouldn’t be acting like this.”
She felt his gaze on her for a long moment before he replied, “Yeah, you’re a Spartan. So am I. But we’re also human and humans act like this and neither of us should forget it.”
Six didn’t find that she had anything to say in response so she ran her fingers through her hair, unraveling the braids, and stared at her shoes. As she contemplated the minute auburn strands at the end of a lock of her hair, Jorge began to whistle, taking her by surprise. She listened to him go through the tune a few times and then found herself joining in.
“I don’t know that one,” she said as they came to the conclusion of their third round.
“I wouldn’t think that you would,” he replied. “It’s a closely guarded secret… and I’m not entirely kidding here. ‘Oxen Free’ is one of those Spartan-II codes that I told you about, one of the ones Halsey taught us. Like I said, it’s a secret.”
“Then why let me in?”
“I’m not sure. Are you going to go and tell anybody, Six?” Jorge started whistling again and wrapped up the melody this time with, “All out in the free. We’re all free.”
“We’re all free,” she repeated and smiled. “I like it. Does anyone else know it, excepting Halsey and the other Spartan-IIs?”
Jorge suddenly cleared his throat. “Well, only a few important outsiders know about it. It’s a security risk, to be clear, since we use it so often and it means so much but we tell people, sometimes, when we feel those people are….also important.”
She blinked a couple of times, tricked into smiling at her shoes again, and then: “Sylvia Plath,” she burst out. “It’s Sylvia Plath, the –the poem I was quoting earlier. My… my mother used to read Plath's poetry to me when I was little, the nice pieces anyway. My mother loved Plath. Especially this one about a mad girl… I don’t remember,” she lied. “Something like: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I lift my lids and all is born again. I think I made you up inside my head. Something like that.” She scratched the back of her neck. “Yeah, something like that.”
“I know Plath,” he said suddenly and then chuckled. “Didn’t she stick her head in an oven a couple centuries ago?”
She laughed too. “Something like that,” she repeated and then was silent.
Jorge was still looking down on her, watching her gaze skirt away to the right and away from him. Kindly, he reached over and took her shoulder. “Hey,” he said in a voice similar to that he had employed when addressing Sara back at Visegrad. “Look, it’s alright. See here,” gently he lifted her chin, “you’ve got pretty eyes, Six.”
She shrugged but did not pull away. “When I first came to Reach, Halsey said I had my mother’s eyes.”
There was the sound of a door opening down the corridor. She thought she had imagined for a moment until familiar sets of footsteps came down the corridor and Six jerked away from Jorge just before Emile and Carter entered the rec room.
“You two do know that the shit’s gonna hit the fan tomorrow?” asked Emile by way of a conversation starter. Neither said anything in response. He squinted at them suspiciously. “Big man? Newbie?”
“So it’s going to go down tomorrow,” said Six in an effort to bridge the yawning gap in the room. “Commander?”
Carter’s blue gaze flicked back and forth between Six and Jorge but he did nothing to indicate suspicion or surprise. He shrugged at her question. “Yeah, you can say that.”
“And apparently that’s all he can say,” Emile interjected as he tossed his wiry frame into a chair. “Everything else is ‘top secret.’”
“Which means you shouldn’t be asking about it,” Carter rounded on the warrant officer.
“Denied. Hypothetical. Leading the witness,” Emile ticked them off on his fingers and then stretched back against the chair’s back. “God, I’m hungry again already. Make me something to eat, newbie.”
Six shook her head in exasperation as Carter said, “Go to bed already, Emile.”
“Is that an order, commander?”
“Damn right it is.”
Emile mock saluted his commander before smirking at the trio of Spartans as he leapt up to his feet and started for the door. As he passed Six, he muttered to her, “I told you he noticed,” and then he was gone down the corridor. She only blinked at his comment.
Carter looked around at the present members of his team. “You’d better see if you can scrape up a couple hours too, Jorge,” he said to the Spartan. Six made as to follow Jorge out of the room but Carter stopped her before she took two steps. “Not you, Six. I want to talk to you for a second.”
She waited until Jorge was far enough down the hallway to the dormitories and then stood at attention. “Do you need me for something, sir?”
“Are you worried about tomorrow?” he asked.
“Do you mean if I’m wondering if I’m going to die tomorrow?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Well,” he paused, considering. “Well, are you?”
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Right after I was pulled from Beta Company, I went into a pretty deep anti-insurrectionist operation. It lasted a while; I had some pretty decent downtime. A psychic by the side of the road told me that, since I cheated death at such a young age, I’d have a short life; that I would be able to sense my death before it happened; and that if I did everything right I’d have no regrets.”
“And it’s not happening tomorrow?” Carter looked skeptical.
“No,” she replied, slightly cheerful. “It’s not.” Six paused and then said, “Sir, I… I didn’t mean to waste your time.”
“Enough with the sir,” he said, waving a hand and motioning for her to sit down. She did. “I’ve never been big on formalities and I want to make it clear that I’m not talking to you as your commander or your leader or whatever,” he told her as he took a seat across the table. “I’m talking to you as your fellow Spartan and I want to be sure that you know that.”
“Alright,” she replied cautiously, unsure of what was coming. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve heard that you’ve been having a couple of issues out in the field.” His tone may have been meant to be reasonable but Six felt her hands clench.
She quickly placed her palms down against her knees. “Issues, sir?” she asked.
“It’s Carter actually. I haven’t seen anything myself, save that one time back at Visegrad. Your performance, in general, has been excellent; there’s just been a few times when you’ve seemed to have… what I’m trying to say is…”
“Spit it out,” she muttered under her breath.
“Come again?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
He sighed. “Look, Six, I have to ask: do you have a history with post traumatic stress?”
She kept her expression blank. “Commander?”
“Carter.”
“I’ve never had a history with PTSD and I would have thought that kind of information would have been in my file anyway.”
He looked relieved. “Good. That’s settled…”
“Why are you even asking?” He stared back at her. She met his gaze without apprehension. “Who told you anything about me?”
“Nobody told me, Six–”
“You said that you ‘heard.’ That implies that you had a discussion. Who’s talking about me?”
Carter leaned forward onto his elbows. “Six, it doesn’t matter if anyone was talking about you. This isn’t the time to be angry about things like that; there are more important issues at hand.”
“You think I don’t know that.” She addressed the space between the bottom of his right eye and his cheekbone. “You think that I don’t realize what’s at stake here?”
“I’ll admit that sometimes I have my doubts as to whether or not you take all of this seriously.” She didn’t say anything in return and he leaned forward even more. “Six, the Covenant is on Reach. This is the biggest… I don’t even know what you call it; ‘attack’ doesn’t even begin to describe what’s at stake here. And you act like…”
“I act like what?” she demanded.
“You treat this like it’s a game,” Carter answered frankly. “You act like you’re not responsible for the outcomes of your actions because you’re not the leader. You don’t seem to grasp that there are consequences, dire consequences, to what we do and don’t do here, that there are millions of people depending on us. You don’t seem to realize that Reach is the last stop before Earth and I don’t understand why you don’t get it.”
“You’re insulting me now,” Six said flatly.
“I’m not insulting you, Six; I’m telling you the way that people are interpreting your actions. Now if you feel differently–”
“Sir–”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Maybe I don’t want to call you anything else.” She raised her chin. “Now listen up, commander: you can make me do a lot of things because you’re my commander and I’ve got to obey you. But one of the things that you can’t make me do, whether you’re Carter or Noble Leader, is make me feel anything that I don’t want to feel. If I don’t feel like you’re my friend, then I don’t want to be told that you are.”
“It isn’t a question of ‘feeling’ anything,” he countered evenly. “Personally, I couldn’t care less about what you think about me save for the fact that what I’m doing here, what I’m trying to do, is important and you’re a part of it whether you like me or not. It’s a job that we have to do here, Six, and it’s a job that you need to start taking seriously.”
She shoved her chair back away from the table with a screech of metal on metal. Folding her arms and wearing an expression akin to any scowl of Emile’s, she said, “You think I don’t take this seriously. When I was six years old, the Covenant killed my parents in front of me.” She felt moisture invade the irises of her eyes and she clenched her jaw, repeating through gritted teeth, “In front of me.”
She leapt up to her feet and crossed the room to the right, back toward the window. “It wasn’t a clean kill,” Six continued, suddenly matter-of-fact. “It wasn’t neat and simple, like a blade through the middle or plasma to the skull. They wanted information first from my mother and, since they didn’t get it out of my father dying in front of us, they killed her too, took the whole fucking computer, and torched the place. With me inside.”
She stared out into the courtyard again, wanting to smash every single ridiculous potted plant as far as the eye could see, and it was only when she heard Carter get up from the table did she move, reaching a hand up to wipe an invisible piece of ash from her forehead. “If only my mother had given them that stupid PIN,” she whispered. “We might have made it out. But, no, trying to save humanity, always trying to save humanity, comes first as it always does and always will.”
“She probably thought that they would kill all of you anyway.”
“And that’s supposed to be comforting?” He didn’t say anything to that; she grimaced and looked down to see that she had twisted her all of fingers together like what she imagined the inside of a combination lock looked like. Over her shoulder, she said, “Look, I’m sorry about that.”
“You apologize a lot, did you know?”
“And I never seem to mean it, do I?” She rubbed her forehead again. “Um, look; I’m for bed. Obviously the ‘PTSD’ is kicking in again so…”
She moved to flee but Carter was suddenly much closer than he had been before. In a quieter, more sympathetic tone than before, he said, “Did you really think that none of us would understand? You know Jorge’s story, I’m sure; what about Emile’s? He’s an orphan too; all of the members of Alpha Company were. His parents were slaughtered by insurrectionists trying to make a point about liberty. I doubt very much that Jun’s told you anything; I don’t even pretend to know the full story but it’s not pretty.”
“And what about you?” she whispered.
He winced. “I suppose you’re already aware that I was conscripted at age eleven; that’s old for a Spartan-III candidate, even for Alpha. Do you how I managed that? I went to them and I told them that they had to take me in, that I had nowhere else to go. And that was the truth.” Carter paused. “Where did you think all of us came from, Six? Did you really think we’re so different from you?”
She took a step backward. “I didn’t think,” she began.
“When do any of us?” was his response and then Carter said, “Get some sleep, Six. It’s a big day ahead.”
Six nodded almost imperceptibly and then she blurted out, “I am sorry. And… and I mean it this time.”
The smile she received in return was warm but not without weight. She walked out into the corridor, waited until she was out of sight, and then broke into a sprint, careful to keep her step light and silent. If she ran, she didn’t have to think and she made an entire loop of the second floor before entering the room she shared with Kat.
The other Spartan rolled over in her bunk as Six entered. “Where have you been?”
She yanked back the covers of her own bed. “Talking to the commander.”
“Well, what did he want?”
“Wanted to know if I was ready for the mission tomorrow.” She fished around in the duffel bag that lay beside her bunk until she found the data pad buried beneath the spare visor she was now careful to keep close. “Do you mind if I have a light on down here?”
“Won’t bother me. But don’t stay up too late.”
“It’s morning now,” she replied. “I can’t stay up any later than I already have.”
There was no response. She turned on the data pad and looked for the files listed under “P.”
I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye's darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body : I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard's study. ……………
All quoted poetry belongs to Sylvia Plath (or did anyway; I’m not sure who owns it now). I claim Fair Use.
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 23, 2011 5:40:02 GMT 1
Fourteen: To War
August 12th, 2552
The wind was kicking up against the plains of the Viery territory but the convoy of Warthogs, Mongooses, and Scorpions moved forward. Sand swirled through the air around the leading Warthog, leaving a sheer layer of dust over the dull red plating of Six’s armor. She picked at the decal of her DMR with her thumb, her mind blank. She let the sound of the engines around her overwhelm all other senses.
Beside her, Kat kept two steady hands on the steering wheel and did not look at anything save the open ground in their path. Satisfied that she was paying enough attention to that for the both of them, Six slightly turned her head to the left and employed her peripheral vision to glance up at the Falcon that hovered overhead, keeping up with them as they crossed the plain. She knew Carter was up there and Emile, Jun, and Jorge must be further back in the procession. For once, it was good to know that she wasn’t going into this alone; strange comfort, since suddenly it was not only her survival she now feared for.
Carter was calling the shots today, or at least was the one saying what the shots were, so she was being very careful to set aside everything that had happened earlier that morning and how she felt about it. It was something that she could handle later, so long as she came out of today alive and well and in a position to deal with it. Still, she could not help but glance upward and have the sense that he was looking down at her seated in the Warthog below. Or perhaps he was gazing at Kat, riding beside her, instead. She couldn’t tell and part of her didn’t even want an answer to the question.
Jorge, on the other hand, she had not seen since he had tilted her chin up to look at her, told her that she had pretty eyes, and then left at Carter’s request. She suspected that he had been spirited away to another rallying location shortly before Six and Kat had found themselves leading the convoy onward to war. And that was what they all were going; they were going to war.
They were going to war against the Covenant. In a matter of hours, Colonel Holland and Admiral Freemont along with Carter had taken Six and Jun’s discovery and designed a counter-assault. Granted, this was an eventuality already predicted, so most of the men and equipment was already at their disposal. But the mere act of putting this all together was something Six could not fathom. She wondered if Carter had gotten any sleep at all last night and regretted having been so confrontational.
Now wasn’t the time to dwell on such matters, especially when they were so trivial in the long run. Six was a Spartan. Did Kat think about Carter all of the time?
What has that got anything to do with me? She wondered, fuming at the thought. Goddamnit, Jennifer.
She stopped. Where had that all come from? Did something happen to her last night? No, nothing happened. Not really anyway. She shook her head as though driving off a fly. Next to her in the Warthog, Kat was focused. Up above them, Carter was focused. Goddamnit, she needed to be focused. So Six shoved it all aside and built up the wall again.
Above her, Carter was calling out orders. “Scorpions, fall back, provide artillery support for the time being. Warthogs, Mongooses, pick up the pace. Command’s tagged that landing zone as a Priority One target. Noble Three, have we got the link?”
Jun’s voice crackled in her ear as Kat pushed down on the gas and Six steeled her nerves. The muscles in her shoulders seemed to lock as she took a deep breath. “The det-charge link is coming in loud and clear.”
“Copy that,” said Kat, taking her left hand off of the wheel. “Acquiring signal lock. Pylon detonating in three… two…”
Six didn’t see what Kat did next but out of the corner of her eye she saw something flare up on the mountainside. That was where we were last night, she realized with a jolt but there was no time to reminisce.
The pylon flared like a beacon, alerting every Banshee, Phantom, Wraith, and Revenant that Six and Jun had seen the night before, right down to the last Grunt. The Banshees swooped down on the convoy like grasping birds of prey; Wraiths rained down mortar from a distance. Out of the corner of her visor, Six saw Carter’s Falcon rapidly gain altitude in order to avoid collision.
Kat locked both hands onto the wheel again and swerved left to evade the flaming projectiles. All of the Warthogs kept on course but sped up considerably in an effort to elude the Banshees. It had been Kat’s idea: let the Banshees swoop down, Warthogs kick into high gear and the Banshees will pass overhead and directly into the Scorpions’ fire range. It might have worked but the timing was off.
Lobs of mortar hit the ground all around the vehicle and Six could do little more than simply keep her head down and shout instructions that Kat did not always choose to follow. “Right!” she yelled as a Banshee dove in an attempt to drop a bomb on top of them. “Left!” she shouted as plasma gleamed like quicksilver overhead. “Left!” she cried out again. “Left, Kat!”
“We’re not going left!” she growled in response, her accent never heavier. “That would put us directly in the Wraiths’ path, now wouldn’t it?”
They veered right and Six, remembering the view from before, spoke up, “Kat, there’s a gorge that way.”
“There’s also a bridge,” she replied. “Do we have any Banshees on our tail?”
The gunner answered. “Negative, ma’am, but the bridge looks like a close call.”
“It’ll hold.” She sounded testy. “We’re not exactly going with the main force if you haven’t noticed.”
Six heaved a sigh as they approached the gorge. Kat made for the bridge but a shadow passed overhead as they made their approach. Mortar arced through the perfect blue sky like a silver comet too close for comfort before it came crashing down to earth directly in their path. Kat made a series of sharp turns that took the Warthog and its passengers out of harm’s way but then silver streaked the sky once again and Six blinked and the bridge was crumbling down into the gorge before their eyes.
“Kat,” she heard herself say. “Kat, the bridge isn’t there anymore!”
“I realize that, Six.”
“Kat,” she said in increasingly panicked tones. “We can’t make that jump.”
“It’s the only way to the AA guns, Six. They’re depending on us.” Kat reached for the accelerator. “You might want to hold onto something.”
Her hands found the edge of the windshield as her feet pressed against the curve where the Warthog’s floor met the engine. Kat jammed the accelerator forward and they shot onward toward the destroyed bridge. Her fingers curled around the metal frame of the windshield as she felt the urge to close her eyes and let the world fall away for this moment. But she didn’t.
She felt a sickening sense of dread as the Warthog approached the chasm, saw something flicker upon the smooth window of her visor, some scene from the eyes of a girl hiding under a bed, and then another image, this one she remembered well: the smooth ceiling of the room where her augmentation had taken place. Then she was looking down on a familiar Spartan in grey armor splayed spread-eagle against the hot earth and she was wondering whether Marie had died with eyes wide open and if she would die the same and, if so, would anyone come back to close them for her or would her corpse be interred deep beneath the glass when Reach was taken?
They ran out of ground and she felt her heart lift in her chest at the sense of weightlessness. No, she told herself in the split second in which the Warthog was airborne. It’s not happening today. I told him it wasn’t happening today.
The landing was hard. It was a credit to Kat’s skill that the Warthog didn’t flip, that the vehicle landed right side up. No one was initially crushed as a result of their gambit but then the shock of the landing was not entirely absorbed and they bounced.
Six felt her fingers slip from the windshield as she was lifted out of her seat by some unknown force –God, no, physics… maybe. Part of her felt the sudden urge to struggle –to reach out and claw at the windshield, fight back the inevitable, –but another part of Six was content, almost grateful to have her death marked by something out of her hands, something she could have done nothing about. If she was doomed to fail, who could blame her for not trying?
Jorge would. Carter and Kat would probably start swapping the blame for a second dead Number Six but he’d probably think that she just hadn’t cared enough to survive. Emile would cuss her out for being an idiot. She already knew what Jun would say – “There’s always a choice.” Noble Team –her team –would blame her.
Her body slammed face first into the ground and felt the oxygen in her lungs whoosh out of her system. She lay there for a moment, silently choking on nothing, all of the fight gone out of her in the instant to be replaced with frightening blankness. There was nothing and then she opened her eyes and the world flickered back into focus.
She blinked the blackness away and registered that she was lying face down in the sandy soil on the other side of the gorge that Kat had decided to jump. Neither Kat, the gunner, nor the Warthog were in sight –the vehicle must have landed somewhere behind her and its other occupants with it. Or perhaps Kat, like she, had been thrown –Six had missed the chasm by yards; perhaps her fellow Spartan had not been so lucky. Six contemplated moving, getting up to her feet maybe, but, even encased in armor, every nerve in her body rebelled. She settled for raising her head and soon wished she hadn’t.
Across the chasm, another Warthog was headed fast for the gap. Don’t do it, she wanted to scream at them. You’ll never make it. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t–
They flew… and then they fell. Screaming. Six closed her eyes again. She hadn’t needed that… and yet she had. She had needed something to remind her that some people felt that this war was worth dying for, that she needed to feel that it was worth dying for. Still, had they had to scream like that? She didn’t think that she would ever forget the sound.
“Six!” Someone was shouting at her. Did they have to shout in her ear? “Six, are you alright? Can you hear me?”
It was Kat. Kat was alive and on her feet; now Six really had to get up. She shoved herself to her knees; every muscle screamed. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she groaned, her eyes scanning the area and focusing in on a grenade launcher. That could be useful. Seizing it in her grip, she staggered to her feet. “Fit for action, that’s what I am.”
Kat was firing at something; why did she have to get the enemy’s attention now? “I could use some help here, Six!”
“Well, I’m ready.” She shoved her magnum back into its holster and heaved a sigh. “Let’s go give them hell."
|
|
|
Post by MarianneClaus on Aug 27, 2011 16:20:03 GMT 1
Fifteen: Split Fire
August 12th, 2552
Adrenaline pumped through her veins like drug as Six sprinted out of the doomed structure, stolen plasma pistol loose in her grip. She had fried the AA gun’s core only moments before and the last thing she wanted was to get caught in the inevitable explosion.
Kat did not sound happy as she called over the comm., “Six, you need to get a safe distance away before that thing blows.”
“I’m running,” she answered between breaths. Around her, the dust kicked up by the battle was beginning to settle but Six knew better than to relax.
“Then run faster.”
Kat’s advice was not helpful but Six did not say anything to that effect as she lunged forward and leapt off of the miniature mesa upon which the AA gun stood. She hit the ground running, her heavy boots pounding out a steady rhythm as she sprinted toward the Rocket Warthog that she and Kat had commandeered from its previous owners: a trio of UNSC troopers. They had surrendered their vehicle with little fuss, albeit some disgruntled grumbling amongst themselves. Six didn’t blame them but the two Spartans had needed a means of transportation and there one had been, conveniently placed for the taking.
She leapt into the driver’s seat and pressed her foot to the gas. Behind them, the AA gun was racked by one interior exposition after another as the core began to overload. Once they had driven what Six gauged to be a “safe distance,” she allowed the engine to stall, lingering to observe the results of her handiwork. With a contented smirk, she watched as the structure imploded.
Six wasn’t the only one who was satisfied by this development. “Control, 2 Lima 4: permission to commence bombing runs, heading 224.6, over.”
Shadows passed overhead: the frigates Saratoga and Grafton had arrived, escorted by a trio of Longswords. Six smiled at their approach toward the besieged valley below and Carter’s voice filled her ears: “Good work, Noble Six. UNSC air support: skies are clear. You are clear for bombing run.”
She smiled at his praise of her too, though she would never admit such a thing within anyone’s earshot, least of all his. And yet, would it be such a terrible thing if he knew what she liked in him and the little things he could do to make her like him even more?
Yes, she decided almost immediately. A very bad thing. A very, very bad thing. Why are you thinking of that and with Kat here sitting next to you?
"Copy. 2 Lima 4, bombing run, heading 224.6, Permission has been granted - out."
Six decided to distract herself by watching the bombing down in the valley. Nothing worked as well to that purpose than watching big explosions and the enemy dying. The enemy dying at a distance was even better. She didn’t have to see the blood or hear the screams…
The Scarabs crumpled in the valley beneath the Grafton and Saratoga’s bombardment. Longswords hovered above, discouraging any Covenant air support from aiding the ground forces. Six’s lips curved in a smile. This was the product of her efforts; bringing death and destruction to the Covenant would be her legacy. She couldn’t think of any better way to serve and honor humanity. And yet…
I did this, Six told herself again. I did this and, Goddamnit, I’ll be proud of it. I just need something else to do.
“How are you doing over there, Six?”
She blinked at Kat’s inquiry. “I’m fine,” she answered automatically. “And you?”
“I’m… excited,” replied Kat after a moment’s thought. “I know it makes me sound green, but this is the first time I’ve been a major player in something so big. It’s rather exhilarating. I doubt the feeling will last, however.”
It doesn’t, she realized with a start. Or, rather, it didn’t for me. But Six merely pursed her lips and said nothing in return.
“Noble Two, Noble Six, there's a mining facility near your location,” Six had never been more relieved to hear her commander’s voice.
She jumped to answer. “What’s so special about it?” She thought she saw Kat shoot her a look.
“Only that the Covenant are using it as a Command outpost. Troopers on site have already engaged but I’m sure they can use some help. It’s on the way to Six’s rendezvous point for the spires, Kat.”
“Copy that,” Kat replied. “Coordinates received. Go that way, Six.”
Six followed instructions. Letting the wheel spin beneath her grip as they turned, she asked, “We’re taking down the spires today?”
“We’ve got to see where we’re fighting, don’t we? You and Jorge will handle it, or so I’ve been told.” They continued to roll forward, encountering little resistance. As Six took the time to roll the Warthog’s wheels over a pair of skirmishers, Kat added, “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. One thing at a time and we’ll start with that mining facility.”
The UNSC troopers at the near side of the bridge were in trouble. They were too closely locked in combat with the Covenant soldiers for Kat to fire the turret at the enemy; once shot, a weapon could not distinguish friend from foe. Recognizing this issue, Six leapt from the driver’s seat and sprinted along the canyon’s edge, assault rifle in hand, as Kat turned her gun toward the enemy on the far side of the gorge.
Six took aim at a cluster of blue and red shields. The rifle’s trigger was hot beneath her gloved fingertips as she pulled back on it, unleashing a flurry of regimented shots at the enemy. The jackals’ shields withstood the Spartan’s onslaught but Six and Kat’s appearance had given the tired UNSC troopers new drive to push back the enemy. The soldiers rushed forward across the bridge like some vengeful swell of the ocean and Six was in the thick of it. It was like she was everywhere at once, one moment driving her knife through the skin beside a grunt’s collarbone, the next shoving a jackal off of the bridge and down into the gorge below. Thrusting her knife back into her belt, she smacked another grunt upside the head with the butt of her rifle, leaving it dazed in her wake, an easy kill for a lesser soldier.
It was like her sole goal in life had become to bring the entire Covenant to their knees as Six rushed forward across the bridge and slashed the blade of her knife against a lone skirmisher’s torso. She finished up with a clean stab and then pushed the corpse aside in disgust. The body fell forward onto the ground as one of the troopers cried out, “There!”
She looked up, squinting against the sun. Further up in the mining facility’s skeletal structure… was that? No, it couldn’t be. And yet they said this was a command outpost…
The alien darted back into the shadows of the facility as Six raised her weapon’s scope to her eye. With a sigh, she lowered her rifle. There was no use in immediate pursuit; the elite… whatever it was would already be well into the facility by now and behind a series of fortifications and defenses, Six was sure. She turned toward the soldier that had alerted her to the elite’s presence.
“Corporal Sommers with 4 Omega,” he said by way of an introduction. “We’re ready to follow you into the facility, ma’am, whenever you’re ready.”
“Are you the leader here?”
A rueful smile twisted his features. “Well, I am now. Didn’t have much of a choice in the matter but I’ll do whatever has to be done.”
Corporal Sommers was nursing an injury –moderately severe, Six’s brain classified the plasma burns running up and down the left side of the corporal’s torso. She handed him one of her emergency medical packs and only stopped to wonder why she did such a thing when the parcel was already in the wounded man’s hand.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
“What was that up there?” she wanted to know.
“That’s why we’re here,” Sommers answered. Out of the corner of her eye, Six saw Kat running across the bridge. “We were just about to alert Command that we’d spotted it when you two showed up. It’s an Elite Zealot that we’re dealing with here.”
Six blinked and then lifted a hand up toward her comm. “Commander, did you get all that? The mining facility’s harboring an Elite Zealot.”
“A Zealot?” It was Kat, coming up behind the UNSC troopers. “Are you certain, Corporal?”
“Positive, ma’am.”
“Then this is something big.”
“There are still bigger fish to fry here, Kat, Six,” Carter was finally responding. “Take out the Zealot if you can but keep moving. Both of you. We need to deal with those spires pronto.”
“Understood, commander,” answered Kat, jamming a fresh magazine into her magnum. “Corporal, are you planning on following us in?”
He stood a little taller at her attention. “Whatever works best for you, ma’am. A few of my men are in condition to fight.”
“And the others?”
“I suppose they can wait here until we can secure a landing zone,” replied Sommers. “We’re ready when you are.”
Six glanced at Kat. “We’re ready as we’ll ever be,” Six drawled out her words. “Anyone got a DMR they want to lend me?”
Moments later, she found herself armed with a dead man’s weapon and her pockets loaded with borrowed magazines. Sommers rallied the troopers of 4 Omega; Six noticed with amusement that the corporal kept glancing over his shoulder for Kat’s nod of approval. She shot Kat a faint smile, remembered too late that no one could see it, and then started up the walkway with confidence that Kat, Sommers, and the rest would follow in the attack.
A quartet of armed skirmishers awaited them. Sommers lobbed a grenade in their general direction but it didn’t stick and all four enemies were able to evade the blast. Kat started forward, magnum in hand, and attempted a series of headshots. Only one skirmisher fell but Kat never faltered, reloading her gun with mechanical efficiency. By that time, the rest of 4 Omega that was still on their feet–an abysmally small group of three troopers –had caught up to their leader and the Spartans.
One of the Omega troopers had better aim than his acting leader; his plasma grenade latched on to one Skirmisher’s shoulder. He shouted in triumph but his luck ran out fast. The skirmisher swatted at the grenade but the explosive was firmly lodged between its shoulder and chest plates. Six was about to smile –the Covenant’s weapons turned against them –but then the alien ran at the trooper, grabbing the man about the waist as it rushed forward, and both toppled over the platform’s railing and into the canyon below.
Is that what happens? Thought Six dimly. Humanity and the Covenant both trying to fight each other off and then both are destroyed? Is that what’s going to happen with me and Carter if we don’t try and find some common ground to stand on?
“I’m not seeing the target,” said Kat, breathless from the fight, standing beside a still alive Corporal Sommers and the last of his men.
“Eyes on the prize, Kat; we have other issues to deal with,” Carter reminded her, hearing her comment.
“Why is it so important to get this Zealot anyway?” asked Six, wiping the blade of her knife off on her thigh. “It’s just one alien.”
“How many Elite Zealots do you think they deploy to one planet, Six? I don’t want another lecture from the doctor next I see her,” she answered derisively. “Come on, corporal. I say we go further in.”
Six raised an eyebrow. They both knew that it wouldn’t be either of them that’d be blamed for letting the Zealot get away a second time. Halsey already had a bone to pick with Noble Leader. So it was Carter’s pride that Kat was trying to protect by taking out the Zealot. That made more sense to Six than it didn’t and, as she followed Kat and the surviving members of 4 Omega deeper into the mining complex, she decided that she would contest the issue no further.
She dropped her assault rifle in favor of a dead skirmisher’s weapon and Six loaded her pockets with needles as they continued further into the facility, all eyes looking for one Zealot. Trying to find a needle in a haystack… there wasn’t anything soft in the world of a Spartan, only pointy, prickly emotions that stabbed and jabbed and made you feel alive in the end if you lived through it, emotions like anger and grief... and longing for something else.
Grunts were easy to find; they always came running at you, one way or another. They ran forward toward Kat, Six, and the troopers now; Six wondered idly as she planted a bullet in one assailant’s head if they got some kind of high out of running toward their death. They must know that they’re doing just that as they start sprinting toward a Spartan; Spartans and death are one and the same.
She twisted her knife between the ribs of a jackal, felt the tension between metal and bone, and then flowed around the soon-to-be corpse like a stream around a stone, moving onto another enemy. The second jackal’s jaw slammed down onto the metal floor when her knife was finished with it; Six stepped delicately like a dancer over its corpse as blood dripped through the perforated flooring. She wondered if there was a river down deep in the canyon and, if so, would it run red when she was done with this place?
Six turned a corner, looked down the corridor, and saw only white. She jerked back into cover just in time, heart pounding, very conscious of the fact that she had nearly lost her head to an elite on a plasma turret, and hissed, “What the hell are we going to do about that?”
Corporal Sommers’s mouth was set in a determined line. “Me and my men can go out and divert the turret while the two of you go in and kill the bastard.”
“That’s suicide and we’re not about to let you do that,” replied Kat firmly. “Noble Six and I will handle this one. You and your men keep back.”
There was a moment when Six thought that Sommers was going to object, refuse, throw his life away for the sake of refusing to admit that the Spartans could do the job better. It was something that Six could even see herself doing. But then Sommers nodded his agreement, gestured his man back from the doorway, and she thought him the better man for it.
“Alright, Kat,” she said. “You’re the great tactician. What’s our plan?”
“Our armor and shields can take more hits than theirs can from that thing,” Noble’s other female Spartan replied. “We go in heavy and we take it out.”
“We’re still not invincible.”
“I never suggested such a thing,” Six could hear Kat smile. “But what more is there to it than to go in shooting? You go left, I’ll take right. That’s all of the strategy you’ll get out of me today.”
They turned the corner. Six hugged the wall; Kat traced the open platform’s edge with careful steps. The elite on the turret had no choice but to split its fire between the two of them, creating a gap between each shot that both Six and Kat employed to run forward and dodge the shots. There was one moment when plasma caught Six’s foot but it did little damage in truth and she only ran faster.
Before she knew it and certainly before the elite knew it, she was behind the turret and behind the assailant perched upon it. Knife in hand, she jammed the weapon into the gap between ribs, grazing the alien’s curved spine with the edge of the blade, and savored the slow twist of the wrist that ended a life.
Corporal Sommers and his men rushed through the entrance when the fire ceased. They watched as Six wiped her palm free of blood against the wall. “Was that the Zealot?” Sommers asked, a hopeful note in his voice.
“Unfortunately, no,” answered Kat, yanking the turret free of its base. She pushed it into the corporal’s hands. “You’ll need this.”
He gazed at her in obvious admiration; Six tried not to laugh. “Yes, ma’am.” He braced the heavy weapon against his knee; what was a simple thing to carry for someone like Jorge or even Kat was a burden for a normal soldier but Sommers bore the weight well.
“Zealot,” Six reminded Kat and the other Spartan nodded. They moved forward, taking the lead deeper into the complex and then Six saw it loitering in another doorway across an open area that smoked with plasma burns, caught in the act of running away.
The Zealot bared its teeth in a snarl that Six returned, lips curving in a feral grin no one could see. Her frame bent into a predator’s slight crouch, ready to spring, as the alien dropped down into the open space between Six, Kat, and 4 Omega and the exit out of the facility. Its eyes were fixed on Six; she wondered if it remembered her. She remembered it.
Her back slammed down into the metal floor, helmeted head snapped back and yet the ground. She screwed up her fist for a second punch and then its weight was lifted from her. She looked up at blue armor; she had never begrudged a rescuer so much…
Look at you, Six thought to herself sardonically. Actually remembering something semi-useful. But Carter’s not here to save you this time. Stay sharp.
It ran forward, a rush of orange crossing the plasma scarred ground, and Six stepped left as Kat shoved the troopers back into the doorway. The alien growled, turning its gaze upon Six again. She took needle rifle in hand and shifted her weight to her left foot, ready to sprint if the Zealot decided to try and rush her again.
“You fight us with our own weapons,” it growled, taking her by surprise. “Foolish human.”
Her heart jolted at the sound of an alien voice speaking a human tongue but steeled her nerves. “I use whatever weapons suit me,” she said but the Spartan calm she employed now sounded false even to her own ears. “And I’m a weapon too.”
It sneered at this response. “Foolish again,” it said and then drew an energy sword. “I’ve seen you fight. You like your knives, human?” He activated the hilt and the shining blade burst forth from his hand. “So do I.” And then it charged.
The blade curved over her, glimmering in the sunlight, cutting an arc where her neck had been moments before. She ducked beneath the swoop of silver and shot one, two needles into the Zealot’s stomach. The shots bounced off its shields and it laughed. “You truly know nothing of our weapons.”
“I can drive a Wraith,” she muttered under her breath. She took the opportunity to dart under its outstretched arm, sprinting to the center of the space.
“Six!” It was Kat, running back through the doorway. Magnum in hand, she pumped bullet after bullet into the Zealot. Its shields flickered. Six inched along the perimeter, her attacker’s attention diverted by Kat’s arrival.
Sommers appeared, plasma turret braced against his thigh. The corporal unleashed the white fire upon the Zealot to little avail; the alien lunged forward and tossed the soldier into the wall where the man crumpled under the weight of the turret like a ragdoll against the rubble. Still, its shields flickered.
The Zealot advanced on Kat; it seemed to have forgotten Six in the process of dealing with Sommers. Kat’s fingers never left the trigger of her favorite magnum, the alien was laughing, and then Six launched herself forward across the open space.
She latched onto the enemy’s back and vaguely remembered the skirmisher leaping onto Jorge’s shoulders back at Visegrad. She locked her arms around the Zealot’s neck, pushing its throat into the crook of her elbow, whispered, “I don’t need knives,” and then she snapped the bone.
Six let herself fall back to the ground with the Zealot. When she was certain it was dead beneath her fingertips, she allowed Kat to pull her up to her feet. The other Spartan stared at her for a moment and then said, “Commander, high value target has been neutralized.”
“Good job, both of you.” He paused. “Are you alright?”
“He means you, Six.” There was something in Kat’s voice as she said this, some edge that Six couldn’t quite name.
“I’m fine,” she said, wiping a gloved hand across her visor. Her fingers left a trail of blood in their wake so she rubbed at that too. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just…” he hesitated. “ONI wants close up recon of those Spires. Jorge is coming for you with a Falcon at these coordinates. You need to get there fast.”
“Understood,” answered Kat. “We’ll be the ones in… I’m not sure what we’ll be in. Come on, Six.”
She glanced back at where Corporal Sommers was crumpled against the wall. Kat followed her gaze. “He’s dead, lieutenant.”
“Well, that was the end of him,” she said, careful to keep her tone emotionless. She remembered the admiration with which he had gazed up at Kat.
“Yes, it was,” Kat replied shortly. “Moving on.”
She leapt down through a hole into a lower room. Six waited a moment before following, told herself to stop looking back, and then dropped down too.
|
|