Full Summary: The Rookie goes looking for his missing team members and finds something very different in return. An Engineer fights impossible bonds, and its small successes are futile in the long run unless it can find some help. A young woman with a passion for survival does all she can to escape death at the hands of the invading Covenant. New Mombasa may have fallen, but those left behind will fight until they are free… or dead.
Notes: I've not played ODST for a while, and my timeline is pretty okay if not a little hazy. My hours might be a little off, but I looked up some details, and hopefully this story doesn't fall flat on its face. This is semi-serious, you're warned. Not that much humor, but not that much SRSBSNSOMGHUMANITYISDYING! OH AND, I don't really remember what color each species of Covenant's blood is. So I winged it. Any inaccuracies I blame on A.) myself or B.) the Halo Wikia, depending on the information. Reviews and concrit welcome.
EDIT: Fixed up some things; like when I slipped and said "Alexandra HAMILTON" instead of "Alexandra WASHINGTON", which might be an aftereffect of me having a huge hard-on for Alexander Hamilton. Whatever. Also, I got some information from a lovely reviewer - whom I will praise next chapter - and fixed the errors that the good sir/madam pointed out. Side note: I know Engineers are supposed to be lovely, docile and utterly helpful creatures. Average Buoyancy is going to be different, because I said so and because this plot demands it. You'll see more about this later.
Chapter I
The heavy, armored foot landed with a terrific thud inches away from Alexandra's face. Her body was pressed as close as possible to the carpeted and now-bloodstained rug, her breath coming in ragged – if not extremely quiet – gasps, and her heart pumping far faster than normal in her fear. A flimsy, inch-thick wooden closet door was all separating her from life and almost certain death. She licked her lips, sweaty palms grasping a pistol, the weight and feel unfamiliar in her hands. It had belonged to her boyfriend – now deceased – and was the only weapon she had available. Although, when Alex realistically thought about it, a pistol was not going to protect her from the hordes of Covenant now filtering through the city, and was probably not going to be of any use if that Brute opened the door.
The twenty-three year old held perfectly still, her thoughts belayed by sudden grunts of the Brute and the chatter of what sounded like Grunts or Jackals. By no means could Alex speak any Covenant tongues, but as an enterprising survivalist, she had to know how many enemies were threatening her life. The Brute growled lowly, then the high chatter of one or two Jackals reached her ears. Three seemed like a small group, but in truth Alex had no idea how many Covenant traveled together. All she knew was that she had to get out as soon as she could, hopefully alive and with all limbs attached. The details of her escape plan had not been determined yet, but if Alexandra Washington was good at anything, it was thinking on her feet.
The Brute moved on, accompanied by at least one of the Jackals. Then there was a thud as the other Jackal, who had remained behind, put its weapon – the type of said weapon unknown to Alex – on the floor for a moment. Seizing the opportunity, the woman slowly slid up to her knees, and then to her feet. Her elbow hit a hanger, which bumped into another, and another, until a small clanging leaked out of the closet space. The Jackal trilled slightly in alarm, and went to the door. Alex tensed every muscle in her body, the two summers of kickboxing that she had in tenth and eleventh grade giving her at least a gist of how to carry herself in a fight. If she could look at herself from a third-person perspective, she'd realize how inanely stupid it was to go after an alien with nothing but her fists; the pistol was an even worse idea because of her lack of experience. So, she settled for this – the Jackal slid the door to one side and got a faceful of human knuckles.
It staggered back with a yelp and Alex kicked it in its diminutive chest, sending it further back to the metal wall; it sank to the floor. She ran forward, her hand hurting terribly – she'd never punched anything bare-fisted before, and it hurt like hell – and brought her foot down on its head. There was a sickening crunch as blue blood leaked out the sides of its broken skull and onto her already-stained carpet. She was panting, adrenaline finally catching up with the thirty-second encounter, making her blood beat loudly behind her temples and her mouth-bone dry. She licked her lips again, and looked down the hallway, hoping nothing had heard the 'battle'. Nothing stirred. She wiped her flat sneaker on the rug and looked at the pistol still in her right palm. The Brute and other Jackal had left her apartment, and she had to do the same as soon as possible.
Alex glanced around, the adrenaline slowly fading, leaving her with an empty feeling in her chest cavity. The pistol needed to come with her, but by no means was she putting it in her pocket – it would end up with her shooting herself in the leg or foot, something she couldn't afford to do. The young woman finally took an old and extremely long scarf, some relic of a forgotten great-auntie, and tied it twice around her waist and then around the pistol, making an immensely silly-looking holster. She sighed and looked out the window, and then at the clock. It was broken, but the sky outside was dark, and unless the Covenant also made big black clouds when they invaded a planet, it was nighttime. Alex had no time to lose – she'd already been hiding when the huge shockwave shook the city, rending some of the taller buildings in half while the frightened citizens boarded any vehicle out of the city that they could find.
Michael had convinced her to stay – he said they'd be safer if they waited a little before trying to leave the city. It made sense at the time, for their apartment was far off from the Covenant ships, and the trains were packed to exploding. Leaving would mean robbery and even death from other panicked humans, and waiting to slip away from the advancing Covenant sounded much more intelligent. Michael had gone out and promised to return, leaving her with his pistol and a rolled-up wad of cash – whatever that was worth now – and hadn't returned since. Alex was positive he was either dead or ran off without her, the latter sounding very unlike her boyfriend. But some part of her wasn't quite sure he was dead, or rather, completely unbelieving of the possibility and absolutely incapable of handling the idea of his death. Whatever the case, she hoped he was okay, but her own survival became her biggest concern. In retrospect, Michael was a dumbass.
She walked across the apartment and touched the terminal on her wall. It lit up, displaying the familiar symbol of the Superintendent. The perky voice of the AI came online.
"Hello, Ms. Washington, what may I do for you?" The terminals were not uncommon, but weren't so frequent either. They had only been installed in some of the newer apartment buildings in the city, providing something like an interactive map of the city which displayed weather, traffic times, an the best route to work. It was fully programmable as far as owner occupation and preferences, even the owner's favorite cafés and restaurants. In short, the Superintendent made it possible to help the thousands of people living in New Mombasa through these terminals, and Alex was finally glad she had one.
"Please give me the quickest route out of the city from this location." The fear had not faded, but was merely held at bay. Her voice was barely above a whisper and she automatically lowered the volume on the terminal with one or two motions of her finger on the terminal screen. The Superintendent obeyed, laying out a fully detailed map of the city, with current reports of damaged roads and highways, along with Covenant positions, which Alex was not expecting.
"What the hell? Superintendent, how do you know about Covenant positions? Shouldn't that be classified information?"
The question wasn't based on fact, only Alex's assumptions, and the Superintendent seemed to be confused at it.
"I am sorry; I do not understand your inquiry." Alex sighed and rubbed her forehead, trying to think of a better way to phrase it.
"You displayed Covenant positions on this map; however, would it not make sense for the Covenant to keep their positions to themselves? I can understand the positions marked that have already happened, but you have - " She pointed gently to a few locations on the map, leaving tiny red dots where she did so. " – marked Covenant positions that have yet to move into place." The tiny red dots were marked with dates in the future by a few hours; as she studied the clock on the bright screen and did the math in her head, Alex figured that it had been about six hours since the blast that had shaken the whole city. Whatever had caused said blast, Alex didn't know, and wasn't quite sure if she wanted to know either.
The Superintendent flickered; its face changed on the screen to something akin to a grin. Or as close as it could get to a grin without a mouth.
"Nothing is unknown to the Superintendent." It sounded so close to bragging that Alex felt like laughing – an AI, bragging! She did not, however, and merely glanced to the smiling symbol and back to map.
"Could you please download this map and directions to this exit point to my earlink?" She slipped the small piece of technology out of her ear and set it on the terminal's data-transfer pad. The Superintendent followed her order and made a small, happy noise when it was finished. Alex clipped it back to her ear, hearing the voice of the Superintendent automatically giving her instructions away from her building. She smiled briefly, aware of her small success and even more aware of the hell she was about to face.
The Superintendent graced her with a final warning, "Have a good journey, Ms. Washington. Also: It would be logical to reconsider who you consider enemy and who you consider friend." Alex was already glancing out the door, searching for aliens, and was caught off-guard at this comment.
"…Superintendent? What do you mean?" The terminal had already shut down, the friendly face of the AI disappearing from view. A leaden stone of fear dropped once more into Alex's stomach, and she swallowed dryly. Something about those words, coming from an entity such as the Superintendent, seemed… lethal. A dumb AI had only pregenerated material, and she was fairly sure that no one had programmed these words into it. She licked her lips one more time before wading into the darkness that had consumed the rest of New Mombasa.
She hoped no aliens were waiting to eat her at the foot of the stairs. It was what the media said, anyways.
"Hunf!"
The noise was unintentional; it became the body's natural reaction when the heavy-armor clad ODST hit the concrete below his drop pod. His vision blacked a little at the edges, but after a few minutes of deep gasping he could stand straight without vertigo or ripping pain in his lungs. The Rookie glanced around, unfamiliar with the city of New Mombasa, or even the planet Earth. He had seen pictures of it, naturally, and had heard of humanity's home planet frequently, but had never had the occasion or, indeed, honor to visit. Seeing New Mombasa in ruins was discouraging, to say the least. He shook his head, refocusing, taking strands of information and throwing them together into a web of something resembling a plan. He had to find his team members – that was first and foremost, and afterwards he could concern himself with whatever that woman Dare had planned. Although, if he found Dare first, he would probably have to go along with her classified ONI orders and to hell with his team members. It felt a little wrong, sure, but he couldn't exactly refuse her either.
Rookie's eyes locked on an odd-looking Terminal across the street, its flickering lights and bright promise of better health taking his interest. He sprinted across and studied the small packages on their racks, and finally selected one and administered it to himself. There was a slightly heady feeling as the synthetic compounds mended his small injuries from the fall, and probably gave him a miniscule injection of some sort of anti-depressant that aided in his overall feeling of wellbeing. The symbol – a circle with two smaller circles in the middle-top, spoke to him, telling him how glad it was that he was better, and to come back if he ever needed anything else.
The ODST realized with a jolt that the symbol was supposed to be a face, and the thing speaking to him was New Mombasa's AI. He blinked and looked around again, scanning for hostiles or any sign of other drop pods. The only thing he saw was flickering green-white lights and crushed automobiles, some flipped and others merely mangled beyond recognition. Dark outlines of tropical and completely foreign trees broke up the skyline, meshing with the flat shapes of buildings and turning them into interesting silhouettes against the purple-gray sky.
Rookie proceeded to walk down the street to the right, looking around as much as he could, trying to absorb it all. He supposed this looked like any other city, but something about its desolate and lonely state fascinated him – he was completely alone in what should have been a familiar world, and it was the fact that he was so isolated in this city that turned it into a strange place, full of shapes that became menacing and others that became merely melancholy. The trace of humanity, humanity that had fled so hastily, was more eerie than the loss of the humanity itself.
A grunt broke his contemplation of New Mombasa, and the ODST's head snapped up as he flicked on his Specs. A red outline showed up on his HUD fifty feet away, and Rookie automatically recognized it as a Brute, followed by smaller outlines that could only be Grunts. He sprinted to one side, behind the concrete side-wall of some stairs. When he peered out, he realized they had not seen him, for he had been expecting Needler needles and plasma shots to follow him into his cover. Glancing at the weapon in his hand – he hadn't really noticed it before this moment – he blinked and switched out the silenced SMG with the Magnum strapped to his side. Taking aim through it's sights, he aimed for the Grunts first.
As a relatively experienced soldier – it took several years of experience with another special forces unit to even think about joining ODST – Rookie knew that he probably shouldn't go for the Grunts first. However, he found Grunts unbearably annoying, and preferred to kill them first. After a few battles of doing this, he found that this method worked the best for him – the Brute would become slightly discouraged at losing his smaller comrades and would not do as well in the battle that Rookie would take to him afterwards, which the Brute was unlikely to win in the first place. So, Rookie aimed for the Grunts, and fired.
The first two shots were headshots; the Grunts did not even have time to wail their little wails before they keeled over into oblivion and the hard asphalt. The third one screamed and began running around in scared circles near the Brute; the fourth cried in anguish that one of the two dead was his brother, and he would kill whoever was responsible for his emotional plight. Rookie shrugged and shot the one complaining, and then aimed carefully for the one running around. They died shortly; Rookie moved onto the Brute.
Sliding his Magnum neatly away and pulling the silenced SMG off his back, he moved out into the open, firing directly at the Brute's chestplate. Said Brute roared in anger and fired his Spiker with gusto while his shields took the bullets. Rookie felt most of the needles from the Spiker glancing off of his armor; a few got through, but the ODST ignored them for the moment. The Brute's shields failed – Rookie slid in and delivered a forceful elbow to his enemy's skull. The fuzzy alien roared his final anger as the human he was battling with repeated the earlier melee, and then abruptly cut off as his bulky, furry body hit the road.
Rookie pulled one or two needles out of his arms and one particularly annoying one out of his thigh, and then moved on, without any idea of where he was going or how he would find his team members.
It was going to be a long night.
An Engineer, whose name was Average Buoyancy, was very, very vexed. So vexed, in fact, that it locked itself inside a courtyard so that maybe – just maybe – nothing would try to blow it up. It had floated away from it's Brute earlier while the Brute was distracted with disciplining whiny Grunts, and was now aimlessly staring at the ugly maroon sky.
And this was it: the mid-life crisis. All Engineers feared this – the point where the burden of imprisonment was just too much, and all will to not explode was blown away in the face of overwhelming despair. The Huragok trilled sadly. It was alone on a foreign planet, kept here by large packs of explosives attached to its body, ordered around by annoying and smelly Brutes, and it never had anything to fix – the other Covenant didn't trust it with weapons or vehicles. The only thing that the Engineer could offer was the overshields, something to boost effectiveness in combat. Usually, other Engineers manually blew themselves up whenever their unit died, not because it was all torn up about the unit being dead, but because it was so fed up with this bullshit. The amount of paperwork that one had to go through if one's unit was 'eliminated' was outrageous.
However, some Engineers – a very rare group indeed – wanted true freedom, not the tainted peace of death. This Engineer being spoken about was one of these few, and had taken the first step by escaping from its rank-smelling Brute. Now it needed someone – or something, such as another Engineer – to get these explosives off of it. The natural gases produced to fill it's air sacs was very flammable, and while a little fire here or there wasn't that deadly, having huge explosives that went off at the smallest lick of flame was. Of course, asking other Engineers to give up their lives so that one could survive was almost preposterous, especially because none of them could see the point in living anyway. They were computers, created by the Forerunners and existing to serve the Forerunner's needs – but the Forerunners were dead, and their children, the Covenant, were abusing the Engineers with these ridiculous explosive harnesses. The Engineer sighed again.
A plan began to form; an abnormal plan for a peace-loving Huragok because it had a violent intent. Average Buoyancy, however, was beyond caring. Its normally docile nature was converted into a nature that begged for action and change, anything different from this endless servitude without real joy. The Engineer would have been happy to serve either side of the conflict, as long as it could repair and fix whatever was needed. However, due to its... rebellious nature, the Brute overseeing the Huragok had denied it all access to anything potentially dangerous. Now that there was an oppurtunity for Average Buoyancy to get what it wanted so badly... it would take it.
Its mind, a computer in all senses of the word, was calculating; large formulae and all possibilities were unrolling behind the Engineer's multiple eyes. It chose all the right and logical options, and prepared itself for the journey through the city, knowing what things it would have to avoid. The Huragok was also fully aware that the possibility of exploding was very high, percentage-wise, but its mind was swelling with an emotion it had not felt before – excitement, and maybe a little bit of something else it couldn't quite identify. Was it hope?
Average Buoyancy trilled happily, and floated over to the door leading into its hideout courtyard. It slid open sharply; the Engineer was not prepared for what it saw outside the courtyard.
This could complicate things.
End Notes: I'm a little disheartened to figure out that no one likes ODST. I found the plot engaging, and its brevity was made up for by AWESOMEMUSIC and awesome Engineers. Hnnngh, common public opinion sucks! Raaaahhh! I'm going all rebel and indie! Just kidding, but seriously bros, wtf.
Anywho, review. You know you love yourself some badass Rookie {I found him pretty hot, anyway}