Chapter One

Spartan Hudson, somewhere in the State of Maryland . 1208 Hours, May 05, 2553 (Military Calendar)

A sharp whining and a dull throbbing greeted Spartan Hudson when he came to, the interior of Alpha 86 blurry and out of focus to his eyes. He blinked a few times to sharpen the image up and bring everything back into view, noting the troop bay was listing at an odd angle and slowly filling with smoke from an electrical fire that had broken out.

Opposite him was the inert form of Hospital Corpsman Second Class Fitzgerald, the odd angle of his neck telling Hudson the team's only combat medic was dead without him needing to check the myriad of warnings flashing up on his HUD as the suit detected he was conscious. They were telling him both pilots were dead as well, along with five of the eight engineers and scientists he and a team of four, now three Marines, were escorting on an expedition to retrieve helpful medical samples.

The survivors were alive but knocked out, their neural laces relaying to the Spartan the only injuries they had were some broken bones. His team were slightly luckier with only one, Staff Sergeant Jex, sporting a serious injury in the form of cracked ribs. Staff Sergeants Archer and Williams both appeared unharmed outside of being knocked out.

Hudson groaned and flexed his muscles, checking he himself was fine and releasing the restraints keeping him in place when everything checked out. Aside from a headache that was slowly going away, he was in perfect health and ready for combat. He stood and reached for his weapon, an MA5K carbine, hefting the reassuring weight and shape of it as he moved aft to the rear hatch.

It was open and led out onto a churned patch of dirt and rocks that had cradled the Pelican as it crashed, the overhanging tail of the dropship almost touching the ground beneath it to create an artificial cave with an opening barely big enough for Hudson to crawl through on his stomach.

When he emerged out the other end and stood up, he saw the landscape of what had once been the State of Maryland, now a desolate desert filled with the ruins of the old world scattered around like forlorn islands in a sea of despair with a harsh sun shining down on everything. He turned around and looked at Alpha 86, noting the starboard engine was little more than a mangled mess after its bout with a missile and the port aft nacelle was similarly missing with just scorched metal and a tangle of pipes and wires being all that remained.

The rest of the Pelican was more or less intact, just sitting at the end of a trail it dug for itself, nose high and listing to one side and making no other noise than the ticking of cooling metal. Hudson scrunched his mouth to the side in deep thought as he took this in, idly ruminating on the fact it would make getting home a whole lot more difficult without considering any damage to the dropship's precious Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, a piece of machinery far beyond the understanding of anybody still alive on the crew.

A clattering of scattered items being kicked inside the Pelican preceded the appearance of Archer by just a few seconds, the sharpshooter hefting her sniper rifle as she scurried out through the same hole Hudson had crawled through, her smaller and less bulky frame allowing her a grace not afforded to the Spartan.

'How bad?' she asked.

'Not good,' Hudson said. 'Not good at all.'

He jutted his chin at the damage, Archer uttering a faint curse when she saw it.

'Yep,' Hudson said. 'My thoughts exactly.'

'What brought us down?' Archer asked as she took a few steps closer to the broken engine.

'No idea,' Hudson said. 'Could be an old air defence launcher that flagged us as hostile, could be some old robot doing the same, or it could be some jackass with a missile launcher feeling brave or lucky or dumb. Result's the same. Us stuck.'

Archer swore again.

The Spartan nodded as Jex emerged from the wreckage, gingerly holding his broken ribs with one hand as the other cradled his head, greeting the news of a destroyed engine with much the same profanity as Archer.

'Fitz is dead,' he said once the swearing stopped.

'I know,' Hudson said. 'Pilots too, plus more than half the civvies.'

'Well this mission's gone to shit pretty damn quick,' Jex said, idly booting a stone with his boot. 'What, half an hour in and already stuck?'

'Quicker than the previous crew,' Archer said.

'That's supposed to be comforting how...?'

Archer shrugged as Williams appeared, the last member of the security team responding much like the others before her to the news of their situation, with Hudson going 'Yeah,' a moment before issuing his orders to the team as they milled about.

'Jex, Williams, check on the rest of the team and take stock of our supplies,' he began. 'Food, meds, ammo, whatever. Make sure we haven't lost anything important and if we have, I want to know what it is. Archer, find somewhere up high and give us some cover. We still don't know what brought us down. If it's mobile, I want some warning before it gets here.

'I'll establish a basic perimeter at one hundred metres, get a feel for the likely approaches, and try and spot any gear that we lost. All good?'

'Sure thing, skipper,' Jex said. 'Guess we'll save the 'getting home' plan for later, eh?'

'Yeah,' Hudson said.

The three Marines nodded and dispersed, Archer climbing the nearest rock that offered good, clean sightlines for the surrounding area while Jex and Williams ducked back into the Pelican, all three of them strange looking in their armour. Hudson was used to seeing them in their typical Marine BDUs, not the ODST bodysuits warranted by the mission particulars, and the Spartan was taking a little while to adjust though, privately, he was pleased given the superior defensive capabilities the fully enclosed suits had over the standard combat armour of the Marine Corps.

They still weren't anywhere close to what Hudson could survive in his GEN2 MJOLNIR armour but that came at a cost of weighing close to half a metric ton, limiting where he could go. If they had to fight in or explore any decrepit buildings, he would be staying outside lest he fall through a rotten floor and wind up in the basement, buried beneath a few tonnes of rubble his team couldn't shift.

Hudson pushed the thought from his mind as his feet trod a path of the baked dirt and scorched earth that was once Maryland, eyes tracking from side to side in search of threats or objects of interest to him or the crew. Crash or no, they still had orders to carry out but he doubted he'd find anything in this barren wasteland, though hope sprang eternal.

'Skip, got eyes on maybe six figures coming in from the west, range approx one mike,' Archer warned over the radio. 'Rate of advance appears to be three miles an hour. They're taking it slow and cautious.'

'Acknowledged,' Hudson said as he orientated himself in the rough direction of the approaching party, noting with some mild worry it was the same direction the missile had come from. Could they be the ones who brought them down? Or were they simply in the vicinity and coming to investigate and lend aid? 'Can you make out any ID?'

'Negative. Still too far away for that, but they're walking slow and larger than your regular human so either they have power armour on or they're mutants.'

'Weapons?'

'Can't tell. Maybe heavily loaded judging by how slow they're going but that could be caution as well.'

'Very well,' Hudson said. 'Keep an eye out. Jex, Williams, what's the word on the inside?'

'Nothing bad, skipper,' Jex radioed. 'We lost less than I thought we had. No major arms or munitions are missing, just flung about the blood tray.'

'Good. Load up and come out. We've got six unknowns coming in, intent and armament unknown. Jex, assume an overwatch position on the Pelican, and Williams, punch out one-fifty metres west and fifty metres south of the crash site in a flanking position. I'll make contact once they close to a hundred metres.

'If they're hostiles, everyone open fire and smother them. If not, regroup on me and we'll go from there. Good?'

'Good,' the rest of the team said.

Hudson turned and watched as his team went about their tasks, Williams grabbing a dust coloured blanket to use as cover wherever she might wind up and Jex taking a DMR with him as he climbed the same rock as Archer, stopping halfway up the craggy surface to provide additional sniper support as the lone Spartan began jogging to his own location, wondering just who might be coming their way to greet the recently crashed Pelican.

Friend, or foe?