CONDENSING

by Mcjimmy15

This is my first ever short story about a spartan and his misfourtune of the ship he is aboard

As I lay in my bed just starting to arouse from my slumber, I suddenly started to feel the ice cold air that surrounded me in this large but very cold cryo tube. As I look down to see all the wires attached to my body. The large frosted glass door began to arise from its position. A huge light blinded me until my pupils began to adjust to the light levels of the now dark cryo room that I lay in.

I leant up and looked around to get an idea of where I was.
It was even colder out of my now opened sleeping tube. Something must have gone wrong with the life support systems to be this cold. I rolled my legs out of my tube and stood up; bracing me with the tubes side touch screen control panel because I had suspected it had been years since they had last been used. I then had a second look around my Cryo tube.
Other than the light from the metal bulk head above my tube there was nothing except complete darkness. As a young child I had always been afraid of the dark, but this was different because I was still way to disorientated to see very much from the effects of hyper sleep. Looking into the darkness of this room I was in, I began to look across the side of my tube which said
" PHEONIX TEAM"
Straight away several memory's came back to me
my name age and other basic details. But I had to still make sure because I had the biggest head-ache.
I stumbled over to the control panel, tearing off the now dangling wires from my tube. I wasn't sure on how to exactly use the control panel. But luckily it had some on screen instructions. I laid my hand in the outline of the hand icon being displayed on the screen.

'Access granted Captain.'

The panel Said in a female A.I computer voice in a very cryptic way.
I began to search for the details of who I was still. It was a well-known fact that memory loss was a side effect of long cryo sleep. It has something to do with the nerve suppressants being put into the air of the tubes. But anyways, back to the search. The panel had finished loading the inquiry I had imputed in the search bar.

S E R V I C E _R E C O R D –
1/5/ 3387

Class: Spartan M17
Rank: Highly awarded Captain
Service number: 2249788.1
Awards: 31
Medical Information: Nothing or interest.
Medical officer:Dr Zest.

Other than a little chuckle from the doctor's surname, I noticed something strange. The date was different. If I remember correctly we were supposed to have reached Earth well before now. Our E.T.A was to have arrived 365 years ago. Or so I originally thought.

"What the hell? Perhaps there might be an error or something with the….."

But before I could finish my thoughts there was a noise. A noise which I knew straight away was just the sound of the bulk heads of the ship condensing.

"Wait a second. Why would the hull be condensing? We should be in F.T.L?"
(Faster than light travel)

From that moment forth I had so many questions on what the hell was going on, plus the fact I wanted to get my head ache seen to, but there was no one to be found. As I walked past the cryo tube and onto the large metal walkway just in front of the all tubes which lead all the way down the cryo tube bay. The lights flickered to life. But now this situation just got a hell of a lot worse. The cryo tubes were all sealed with the bodies still lying in them. But….but they were all dead. Blood splatters stained almost every glass window. The walls…. The walls had words written in blood all over them .Or at least I thought they were words. They all said stuff that I couldn't understand.
I stepped back once in shock and felt something wet and soft under my foot.
I quickly span around and saw what I stood on. It was someone's guts smeared on the floor.
The urge to vomit was huge. Seeing this much death in one hit, alone hit me hard. I mean if I was on the battle field in my armour, I wouldn't feel like this. I have fought the coveys all my life and yet I didn't feel a thing when I saw their blood and insides everywhere at my feet. But this was all human. Plus I didn't have an adrenaline rush from the mist of battle at that moment.
I began a sloppy jog towards the now visible metal door and pushed the open button in the small button on the wall beside it. But now when I looked down the corridor which lead into the depths of the ship was that everything…everything was ether damaged or ripped out of place. Control circuits, over head lights, floor panels you name it. Practically everything had been damaged. The lights that were still operational were damaged still. Flickering every a couple of seconds due to exposed wires most likely. At the end of the debris filled corridor was a turbo lift. But the doors were ripped of their hinges. The doors were huge. Not like the ones you see usually when you go stay at a hotel. These were decompression proof doors able to withstand a rocket launcher shot in case of if the ship engaged an enemy ship and the deck decompressed. If the lifts were damaged, the whole ships integrity would be crippled due to the fact that the lift shafts run all throughout the ship its self. But anyways whatever had decided to remove the door defiantly had the strength of 30 men. Even Spartans would struggle with the huge mass.
I had then decided to not use the lift. It probably didn't work anyways. Whatever had damaged the ship would probably have been covenant. I mean we are at war with them but if I thought about it. Why would they miss me and kill everyone else? And usually the covenant wouldn't kill in this fashion? No… something more obstruct was at play here. The cryotubes must have malfunctioned and stopped feeding air into the tubes so the bodies must have exploded in the vacuum?
But I'm not one for the human anatomy. So don't place your trust in my ideas.
This was starting to scare me. Everything wasn't the way it should. I now decided to fall back on my training…and my gut instincts as a veteran solider.
Whatever did this was probably still here, and it obviously didn't like humans to well. So I had better find my armour and some weapons. This was a battle ship after all. So there ought to be some weapons lockers somewhere nearby.
Now that I could feel my legs a lot more, I was able to walk a little better. But the image of all those dead people just made me stumble from time to time. Somehow I had made it to a weapons locker. Not sure how but I did. It was up against the wall near some large containers that had U.N.S.C ORDNANCE written in large white letters on the side. I grabbed the 4.5 Cal military side arm pistol from the locker and a flash light with some basic straps to hold it all with. As I put on the straps, I had just realised that all I was wearing was my marine underpants.

'So that's why I felt the cold so well?' I mumbled in surprise to myself.

As well as realising I had no clothes on, I also kept hearing the noise of bulkheads and metal being crushed. It came from everywhere around me, It was like a wining noise you'd sometimes hear when a chain was giving way, but on a much louder scale. You could feel it all around you; it worried me a bit that the ships structural integrity had been damaged. Hopefully it wouldn't be anything to serious that would mean the whole ship with fall apart.
Once the straps were in place, I put the flash light on my shoulder strap and turned it on so I could see where I was going without having to hold it in my hand. Therefore since I had both hands, I could properly hold the pistol. Usually Most people would hold the flash light underneath the gun, but I'm used to what I remember. Having being trained to hold the hand weapon with two hands and plus also the fact that I usually was in my Mark 6 armour which had a built in flash light which came out a panel on my shoulder. It's something simple I know, but it helps me feel that a bit calmer in this really scary situation.
I was ready to go as far as I thought. But now I had to think, what is my objective or what will I do from now? I have to think, sort and execute my ideas ferly quickly, because I could already tell the oxygen was below the usual output. It was cold, and the air had a, I guess, heavy feeling to it. It took that bit longer to get a full breath of air than usual. My first idea was to try to find what happened to the crew, or to see who's alive for that fact. But it had been 300 years if the computer didn't malfunction. That's another problem with hyper genic cryo sleep. You don't age a day while inside it. They use some sort of biochemical stasis to keep your cells from aging, but anyways, I guess it was worth a shot. I also wanted to get my hands on my suit. I say that of all things because a Spartan grows a bond between man and armour. Almost like the now probably ancient term for the bond between man and car. So if I could get my hands on that id gain an advantage. With it I could use its radar to track friendlies and use its increased ability's to move debris from out of my way. But the only problem was that the suit was 2 decks below me in the armoury, and I had no clue if that section had any power.
Anyways, put my armour aside for the moment. Perhaps finding a working systems computer might help me as well. I could check the status of the ship. Make sure that the low oxygen feeling I'm having was just me now used to breathing in open air after a while, but you can never be too sure.

The lay out of the ship wasn't the most potent memory I had at that moment in time. I was a squad leader; yes I did lead men into battle, but I had a navigator to tell me where I needed to lead. all I can remember is from this locker the only way other than the main elevator is the service shafts, and they are very small. But I guess it was the only option if I wanted to get of this deck without going out for a Sunday stroll on the hull of the ship, or what is left of it for that matter. I kept thinking about the other sleeping victims.
Why did I survive?
What made me different than the others?
Oh well, no time to be thinking about that stuff, I need to start moving before id suffocate to death.
As I started to walk away from the locker I made a left turn at an intersection away from the lift since the cryo room was ahead of me. After a few minutes of climbing over debris and going through corridors that all looked the same, I found the entrance to the shafts. But the door had no power. Since like the lifts, the shafts go all throughout the ship. The doors were pretty thick. Obviously I didn't have enough strength to force the door open. I couldn't even get my fingers in-between the middle lining of the door. So the only other option was to find some way of supplying power to the door. Since the lights in this section was still online. Just. There must be power being supplied somewhere near where I am. Just I'm not the most techno savvy soldier there is and I can't do all that cross wiring stuff like you see of movies when someone tries to hotwire a car. I had a look at the side control panel. The screen had no power. Perhaps there might be something I can blow open the door with? But it would have to be quite a blast for it to work. Like I said, these types of doors are able to resist the power or a rocket launcher blast.

'Now where would I find something powerful enough to blow open something like this? Oh wait…. I know!' I thought in remembrance.

The only place I saw anything that was even remotely good was the weapons locker. I suddenly realised the boxes near the locker. Perhaps they might have something in them. It did say U.S.N.C ordnance on the side of one of the large military crates. So that means some sort of heavy weapons is inside it most likely.

After back tracking myself past the intersection where the cryo room meets with the lift, I found the weapons locker, and the crates beside it. The crates them self's were pad locked, but not to worry, I did have a pistol ready on me.
I stepped back and aimed my weapon at one of the padlocks using the iron sight on the top of the magnum. But as I went to fire, a large Noise came from around the service lift.
BANG!
It sounded just like metal hit another metal surface, but harder then something just collapsing.
I started a brisk jog towards the service lift, cutting my feet on some debris and pieces of glass because I wasn't really looking at the floor. I had my pistol constantly pointed ahead of me ready to fire at anything that was hostile.
As I made it to the entrance of the shaft, I gripped my pistol tightly and tilted my shoulder with the flash light on it to where the small door was. The door its self was at my feet. And the shaft was open. I squatted to have a look at the door.

No plasma burns or burns for that matter of any type? I said to myself curiously.

What I did notice was the door was bent from an impact on the side facing inside the shaft. Whatever made this door come off its hinges had a hell of a lot of strength behind it.
But then, I heard something. It was nothing loud… nothing to do with the ship. Something was breathing and watching me from behind me. I could feel it. I could feel a source of warmth in the cold corridor. I slowly began to turn around to see who or what it was while holding my pistol in the firing position at every angle of my turn. As I turned, time slowed for a second. I felt at least a couple of beats from my hard pumping heart.
As the flash lights beam of light shone into the darkness something large Ran straight towards me. It hit me, knocking me over onto the bent door with force. The pain from the impact hurt like hell. I just slammed into a metal door the size of me practically.
But I quickly responded by rolling onto my stomach and firing several rounds at the shafts forced entrance.

After the discharges I heard from my pistol, a loud raw came from the shaft as it fled to the lower decks below.
I stood up, using the bulkhead of the corridor as a rail to assist me up. I quickly reloaded my magnum in case if I needed to fire again and I peeked into the shaft. There was blood all over the shafts right wall. Most likely was I hit that thing? I was a little hesitant from then on using the pitch black shafts. It was at least a 25 meter climb down to reach the deck below me, or so I thought. Since I didn't know how far the drop was, I tool out my flash light from my strap and dropped it down the shaft. An echoed Cling could be herd all the way up the shaft. The flash light shone at the bottom where the deck below was. It wasn't too far down and it didn't look like there was any blood down there ether. So the thing I hit wasn't down there. Or at least I think so at least. I began to climb down the steel ladder and make my decent and eventually after a very dark climb down my feet felt solid deck. I looked up into the darkness to get some idea of how far I travelled, but I really didn't get anything. I couldn't see anything from down here. I picked up my flash light and slotted it back on my shoulder. I pushed the open button for the door and whadda ya know. It opened. The power in this section was fully operational.

Perhaps there might be someone down here is the first thing to come to mind.

Another good thing was that there was no blood or debris anywhere. The corridor looked perfect, undamaged compared to the deck above. I stepped out onto the corridor from the shaft and quickly locked the door behind me so if that thing was still in the shaft, it would come up behind me and make me its next victim.
There was a computer panel on the wall across from the door I was next to. I quickly made my way to it with my pistol still ready for action. I quickly made sure I was alone and began to try to figure out what happened.

As I started to read the status reports for the last a couple of months there was nothing, it just said the same thing.

SENSORS - ARE - OFFLINE

but I decided to flick back 300 years according to the computer that was when we should have arrived at earth. But exactly 300 years ago was the day sensors went offline. Everything before then was normal. Engines, life support you name it. It was only when something happened completely stuffed the sensors so that there was nothing else. Since there was no other relevant information, I decide to see if I could perform any system commands with this console. But nothing, this was just an information terminal for marine medical information and Id recognition. So I decided to leave the console and keep looking for the armoury. I followed the signs on the walls that said armoury and eventually I found it. Funnily enough, it was the only locked door on this deck. The only other door I had seen that was locked was the door I locked from the shaft. When I thought about it, it made me feel uneasy. Why would this be locked if all the others were open?
I walked over to the doors opening control panel, but it just had a picture of a pad lock saying it was locked shut. I hit the door in frustration with the handle of my pistol. After I hit it a deep voice from the other side of the door yelled out

"YOUR NOT GONNA GET ME YOU UGLY SON OF A BITCH!"

I stood there in surprise for a moment but then replied in total joy

"this is Spartan M17, Identify yourself?"

There was a 5 second silence from the armoury. The guy was probably thinking of a reply, but just a few seconds later he calmly says this time.

"You're a Spartan hey? My ass, your armour is in here."

I just thought to myself, oh thank god. That's the one thing I want on this ship at the moment.

"Open this door, before I order you." I said in a firm, commanding voice to try and force him to open the door.

"Either you're who you say you are, or I'm going crazy." He said quietly as the door sprang to life and opened.

When the doors opened I raised my pistol just to make sure. But when I saw him, he was doing the same thing just his weapon was an assault rifle pointed at me. He was an ODST judging by his armour. His visor was cracked a little and he had scratches all over his armours chest and legs.

I slowly lowered my magnum as he lowered his rifle. He just nodded and sat held out his hand.

"I'm Cameron sir; sorry I didn't open the door before. I'm not used to visitors."

I didn't really listen to him because I had a large smile on my face to finally see someone alive.

"It's ok solider you can make it up to me by answering some questions."

"Ok sir? Yeah sure I guess but hang on, your still in you under garments. Did you just get out of a cryo tube?"

He said it to me in surprise as if he knew what I had gone through, which at that point didn't seem possible but I answered him anyway.

"Yeah, I just woke up about 2 hours ago? How long have you been here?"

He sat on a food crate with a pillow on it and offered me to sit on the other one next to his. He shook his head slowly and said to me

"I can't remember when I woke up exactly; I think it was around a week ago perhaps. My squad was all dead when I woke up. I thought I was the only one alive."

All I did was compare what he said to what happened to me, we had practically the same experiences just he wasn't as tired and as scared as I was now. I leant in, looked at him very closely and said to him

'Now tell me Cameron, what you know about this…. Thing we have killing everyone.'

As I said that, I could tell he got angrier due to the grip he had on his rifle was hard and he stared at my eyes through his helmet.

'I originally thought it was covenant but it isn't. It is one of the crew, but mutilated or something hell like. He said in an aggravated voice.'

I looked at him puzzled look on my face when I said

'so you think it's human?'

He put down his rifle and took off his helmet. He looked different then I originally thought. He had greenish eyes, black hair but he had hundreds of scares and cuts all over his face.

'I don't think its human, I know it's human' he said in the deepest voice.
He placed his helmet and rifle on the floor and said as he leant back onto the ammo crate.

'I know because when I awoke to this night mare, I checked every other cryo tube on this deck. Only mine and one other were empty. Now either that was you or you somehow managed to end up on the deck above, or it was him.'

I looked at his rifle that he just placed on the floor. The ammo counter read zero when I replied.

'Then how do you know if it was him? He might be still alive somewhere on the ship and this thing isn't him either.'

As I just finished saying that Cameron got up and locked the door and walked over near the darker side of the room. He flicked on the lights and said.

'Well if he is still alive, he might need some help wouldn't he?'

As he was saying that, I just looked past him and saw my Spartan Suit. I immediately stood up and walked over near it.

'I assume this is yours yes?' He said with a smirk on his face.

'I tried putting it on but it wouldn't activate for me. I don't have the requirements to operate one of these magnificent suits.'

Although Cameron was probably feeling quiet chuffed with him at that moment I think. I didn't hear a word he said because I was putting it on. I was struggling a bit because usually a robot with servo arms would lift the body plating into place and turn it on. But I guess Cameron will do for now. He grabbed my chest plate and stuck it on and then grabbed the arm armour that I slid into and in now time at all. I was combat ready.

'How is it?' Cameron asked curiously

I just held up my hand holding my index finger with my thumb to show that it felt perfect.

He just nodded and stepped back to see what I would do. When he stepped back I looked at my wrist control pad and turned on my shields.
The buzz of the suits shields came to life and on my HUD my shield bar went from flashing to a full blue bar. Also along with it came my motion tracker. It didn't say too much at the moment. But I would concentrate on looking at that later on.

'So how much did that cost hey?' Cameron said thinking he would get an overvalued answer

I just said confidently back to him.

'About as much as this ship costs and all of its beauty costs added up.'
'Holy crap, that's at least 40 maybe 50 billion?' Cameron said with a stunned look on his face.

Most likely because the black mesh in-between the armour is made from Nano fibre mesh. They need to make every single cell of the mesh so it can form a shield over the body. I said as I pulled of my helmet.

'Nice man. So what's the plan?' Cameron said eagerly.

As I was whipping of the dust from my suit I said to him

'we have three main objectives. Since we know only three people on board are alive, it wouldn't hurt to do a search for this missing crew man. Another one is to get to the bridge and find out what the fuck happened to this ship.'

'What about the third sir?' Said Cameron confused.

As I looked at Cameron again, I squinted my eyes and sad deeply.
'The third objective my brave friend, is to kill this son of a bitch who thinks he can get away with killing bad ass marines.'

'Ooohra' yelled Cameron with a sense of valour to his voice.

I walked back over to the crates and lay down onto of one.

'Have you got any food Cameron?' Or have you been eating your own sense of socialism?

He walked to his crate, opened it and pulled out a dinner tray with a variety's worth of food.

'Enjoy sir' grinned Cameron as I dag into the first bit of food I had in three hundred years.

You know that feeling when you haven't had a certain food in ages. But when you had it, it never tasted very good but now since you haven't tasted it in years it tastes like heavens child? Well that's what I got when I dug into my steak. Oh my God I thought as I slurped the gravy into my mouth. That was amazing. I had the biggest smile on my face, but I could see Cameron thinking why the heck is he smiling? This was a week old foot crate, it should taste rank. Not that I cared one single bit. I was hungry, three hundred years and no food? What is this? The marine core chefs had a strike or something? As I had those thoughts I chuckled and Cameron did to.
Eventually we decided to call it a day or night or whatever times it was. We both needed some rest. I left my motion tracker on maximum all night. The good thing about these suits is that they can lasts for months at maximum use without needing a recharge. It's a certain power source they implement into the suit which lasts for ages.
Cameron fell asleep quite quickly, but I couldn't. The fact that this thing that had killed everyone in the cryo rooms still was on my mind. Considering that the doors to the armoury were not as strong as the shaft doors. So if that thing found us and decided he was hungry like a pig, he could easily pay us a visit. I didn't see any blood on the floor on this deck from the creature. So if he were down here, he would probably bleed everywhere and leave a trail. After a while I fell asleep. It was uncomfortable due to the fact that I'm in the state of the art weapon and it was uncomfortable to lie in because of the back part of the armour sticking out more than the waist. So really, the most I could do was sit on an angle or lay on my side which wasn't comfy either.

My HUDS clock said it had been 8 hours sleeping before I managed to wake up. Nothing woke me except the nightmare I had. The dream I had was almost like an exact re-run of what happened the day before hand. When I awoke from the terror of my mind, I gasped for air just like someone would gasp for air when they stay under water for a long time.

"Bad dream?" Cameron said in a tired, deep voice as he was engraving another line onto the wall to mark his days awake with his commando knife.

I sat up and lifted my legs onto the floor and whipped the sweat of my face with my hand and looked at him with his huge knife.

"Yeah, you could say that. When did you wake up?" I asked him with a short of breath voice.

Yes, just about a minute ago, I had decided to continue a small project to waste time.

I completely understood him. There was nothing to do in this room except clean your weapon, carve something onto walls or to play catch with a grenade. When I was fully awake, I stood up and tried to stretch my hands to my toes, but the suit halted my progress. My chest plate was touching my waist armour and I couldn't bend fully, but not to worry. It was enough.

"Sir, are we ready to head out?" Cameron asked.

"Not yet". I replied. "Let me get a decent weapon."

Cameron just nodded and opened the door while I eyed out all the weapons on the wall of the armoury we were in. Typically I would choose something like the DMR because I wanted an accurate weapon that had some range. But the ships corridors meant close quarters, so that was out of the question. So thinking logically I grabbed one frag grenade, ammo for my magnum and a shot gun. Cameron went to pick up his helmet and some ammo for his rifle as well, but when he saw me walk past him with my shot gun, he took a quick step back in amazement. I suspect the sight of humanity's mighty Spartan soldiers would introduce some surprise into some fellow marines.
Once Cameron grabbed what he needed to we both walked down the corridor that led away from the armoury and to a corridor intersection. Remembering back to the dream I had just had a little while back. Remembering the dark damaged corridors was very different to these ones. The only thing that I can match between the two decks was the bulk heads, ever 4 meters there was one. The bulk heads were like columns that stuck a bit out from the walls. In other words they looked like titanium braces for the walls and roof of the corridors. The railing that goes across the roof of the bulkheads had the lights on them.
So once I and Cameron came to the intersection of the corridors, we had a bit of a think. The corridor to the left of us had the sign that said elevator and the one to our right was to the shaft and maintenance. Plus the one ahead was to the hangar loading bay.

"I suggest we have a try of the hangar bay Sir" Cameron said pointing in that direction.

I wondered why he would say that since we wanted to find out what happened to the crew, not get of the ship. So I asked him…

"Why do you suggest we head to the ships main hangar bay Cameron?"

He stopped pointing and replied to me

"Wouldn't the hangar still have escape pods? And if I was that other person from the missing cryo tube, I'd be scared shitless and try to get of the ship."

Cameron did have a point. If it wasn't a marine, he might have been a bridge officer and was scared from the death on-board. So I nodded and both began to walk down the corridor to our front. As we reached the end of the corridor, we reached the door to hangar control. The doors seemed fine, but when Cameron pushed 'open' on the control panel. The door didn't open. It had power, and it wasn't locked? So why would it not open we both thought.

"Don't worry sir, there is another way to the hangar, but it means us going back up to the cryo tube deck" Cameron said trying to keep a calm voice and to not to show that he had a fear of going back up there.

Obviously this idea didn't go down well with me or him, but it was the only alternative. I didn't like that place one bit. All the death and destruction up there made me feel uneasy. But I guess not that I had my armour and my shot guns made me seem eager to get up there and get to the other entrance to the hangar.
Both Cameron and I started making our way to the dark shaft. We now didn't have a, what you would call, spring in our step anymore heading back to the place that we both merely survived from. But as we both started on our way to the shaft, all of a sudden the power started to go out. Just like if a storm came and your houses power went off. The lights didn't flicker at all. They were just black. Everything was as dark as night. Both I and Cameron backed up against the wall completely scared to death, rushing to find our flash lights to turn them on. I managed to turn my suits shoulder light on and point it at Cameron to help him find his. But he quickly nodded no his head.

Point that elsewhere please. My visor has night vision. He whispered.

When he told me that, I forgot everything and thought, now why does an ODST helmet have night vision and mine doesn't? I quickly realised that it was the wrong time to ask a question like that. I just had to live with it for the time being.

"What The fuck, why did the power go out all of a sudden?" Whispered Cameron while he was holding his rifle aimed down the corridor. That Fucking thing cut the power on us, well he aren't goanna get me man. No freaking way is he going to get …

"Calm down soldier and keep moving". I told Cameron
"Remain alert and remember your training. Short controlled bursts. I've got our rear."

"Copy that sir." Cameron said as he swallowed and tried to calm himself.

Cameron had a brisk pace about him when we both heard that growl coming from somewhere in the darkness. I couldn't see jack shit of where we were going due to my suits light being burnt out for some strange reason? I placed my trust that Cameron's night vision. He knew this ship better than I did, and I must admit, he was holding together much more then I would have expected. He was a true hell jumper. If we ever make it out of this, I'm putting in a formal letter of valour for his bravery.
We were at a running pace now, the growling was close. I still couldn't see too much. But it didn't sound like it was behind us, almost as if it was beside us? But how I wonder?
My heart was beating really fast, either from the running of the fact that I'm scared to death from this thing drawing closer to us. But then Cameron said in a sigh of relief.

"He we are sir, the shafts entrance, I'll get it open now." Cameron whispered due to the fact

"Good work, and do it fast please" I whispered back to him with my shot gun aimed at the corridor behind us.
"I got it sir, doors open." Said Cameron a little relieved.

But as the doors opened up fully, I saw some sort of hand grab Cameron's boot and drag him up the shaft.

"AAAAARRRGGGHH, let go of me you Bastard!" Cameron yelled angered from the shaft to try and get free.

I rushed into the shaft and looked up to see where they had gone. But unfortunately, they were gone. I heard a couple of discharges from Cameron's rifle and a large growl coming from the top of the shaft. I quickly rushed into the shaft and began to climb. I could still hear an echo from Cameron yelling at this thing to let him go.

"Hold on Cameron, I'm coming!" I yelled upwards while my hands and feet were climbing the shafts ladder quickly as I could.

I holstered my shot gun on my backs magnet pad so that the gun could stay on my back. I kept looking at my motion tracker as I climbed. Whatever was dragging him was big, very big and very fast. Eventually when I made it to the deck above, they had stopped moving. They were around 500 meters away from the shafts still broken entrance. Nothing much had changed, everything was still a mess and it was still very dark. Only one in about 7 lights even flickered or was even turned on now. I pulled my shot gun from my backs magnet, pumped it to make sure ad preceded down the dark corridor. When I made it to the dreaded intersection, I stopped and peeked around each of the different directions with my gun ready. What I had also noticed is that the shouting stopped. It yet again was dead silence. But since I still read life signs I had to keep moving. He may be hurt. I had decided to make my way to the cryo room. That was the direction the life signs were. I began to run, jumping over debris and fallen bulk heads that were in my way. Running around a corner I jump at the corners wall and then jump down the corridor to my left like out of something in a matrix movie. I had always wanted to use my suit to do all that kind of park-or stuff. As I came around the corner and saw the cryo room entry way, a cryo tube was lodged into the door itself, with a body still inside, the blood stained the window of the tube. The body was a man. No more than twenty years old I suspect. He was in his normal clothing, so he was a civilian. Seeing dead civilians makes me angry, really angry. Ask any of my fellow Spartans. They shouldn't deserve to die. That's what marines are for. Since seeing this poor soul now made me very angry, I didn't stop running. Instead, I sprinted towards the cryotubes screaming out in anger. When I hit the cryo tube, the glass shattered and the tube went flying backwards towards the wall that was about 10 meters behind it. Hitting something at this speed collapsed my shields half way and the suits alarm started to ring in my helmet. Looking at my HUD shields display flashing, I waited a few seconds before the recharged and then shone my light around the room. I could see my cryo tube just a few feet down the walkway that was in front of the all up against the wall. But when I walked on the walkway, the lights didn't turn on this time. The power in this section most of been completely offline. My flash light didn't help very much either, it was starting to get burnt out from over use a lot. But it was still functional so I kept it on. Seeing these body's again made me feel that bit more uneasy, but since I had seen them before it didn't mind me as much as did before.

"Cameron! Are you in here?" I yelled out into the darkness with the sound being a little muzzled from talking inside my helmet.

But there was only silence; all you could hear is the slight hum from the cryotubes that were on independent power. The life signs where only thirty four meters from my present location. Keeping my shotgun aimed ahead of me with a stable stance, I was nearing the end of the blood stained cryo room. Even though visibility was minimal, there was nothing here. I should have been standing right next to them. But then it hit me, motion trackers doesn't show there exact location. They could either be above me, or below me. The hangar was the only thing below me and was the original location me and Cameron were going to go. But I still read two life forms and this thing wasn't going to go see if our other ship mate was down there. So they would have to be on the deck above me. I mean it would make sense. When I was in the shaft, I only know they went up. Plus, there is nothing for that thing in this section any more. No more food or living things here anymore accept me. The deck above was the engineering and power control room. But seeing that Cameron thought this thing was the other human from the only other cryo tube, I decided to look for it and see that it had belonged to. It wasn't hard to find really, I knew where mine was and where about Cameron told me his was before, so the only other one must have been our friend. But when I saw the other tube that was open, it also said

" PHEONIX TEAM" on the side of it as well as mine did.

It was someone from my squad? I took a step to the right of the opened tube to its control panel. I took of my suits air tight glove off and placed my hand on the hand icon being displayed on the screen. The screen loaded up and I searched for the service record for this person. It was Nina, or otherwise known as Spartan 359 on her service record. She was the newest person to the team; she just was transferred from ONI's secret division of covenant analysis. AKA she was one of those quiet smart chicks who only talked if she had an answer for you. To be honest, she always kept her helmet on, and her service record doesn't have a picture of her face. So I have never really seen her face at all to be honest. But I shouldn't be thinking about what she looks like. Well at least I now know it wasn't her who was this thing killing everything. Judging but the loud/deep growl this thing has. It's most likely an angry male with daddy issues.
Walking out of the cryo room, I suddenly had a sense of lifted fear. This thing isn't our other friend. It still could be human though which was my biggest concern because If you ever have the chance to face covenant in combat. They follow their training and procedures very well due to the covenant being a collective of alien races. But us humans however, sure we follow our training, but in the heat of battle the human spirit can take over and it has been noted in some training videos that the bravery or spirit of man is something that shouldn't be reckoned with. Many will do something unexpected. For example, if a spike grenade has been thrown near a wounded solider and he is unable to move of escape the blast in time. Another soldier (preferably a fellow friend) would grab the grenade and throw it back. Or even perhaps the friend would jump onto the grenade to use his body to smother the blast. It wouldn't do much though, but that's not the point. War isn't always about the fight. It's about scaring your opponents. Victory is measured in blood, yours or your enemies. So if it was human, I would be hesitant to shot it, but if it was covenant, say no more. It's going to die.

By the time I had been finished thinking of human valour and bravery, I had reached the shaft entrance. Walking past that door I was knocked onto. It made my back hurt again just thinking of it. Holstering my shot gun once again slowly and hesitant as I began to climb the shaft to the deck above. When I made it to the deck above, the door opened automatically like it usually should when it detected motion. When the doors opened, it was hell. Worse than the deck below even. The roof tiles have all collapsed on the floor exposing the oxygen vents and fibre optic cables running through there. The walls weren't even bolt grey metal anymore. They were just dried maroon red from blood. The lights left light spots on the floor due to little dots of blood being on the lights lenses. At least there was power on this deck, so that must mean the engines are still online to produces power. I shone my flash light at every corner and at every sign on the walls to make sure I was going in the right direction. I still had a fix on the life signs as I walked down a side corridor. But as I walked past a blood stained bulk head which was just passed a door, a third life sign popped up on my tracker. Along with it my suit picked up a looped message being transmitted, it had heaps of static to it, but it was still easily understandable.

"This is Spartan 359 to any surviving personal. If you are receiving this, I am alone in the engineering control room and need assistance. Please respond"

I quickly responded by pushing my suits T.A.C pad on my left wrist.

This is Spartan M17 responding, I'm on deck 4 proceeding to your location.

There was about a 10 second delay before she replied. I was just about to repeat my message in case the message didn't get through due to the static.

"Captain, is that you? Thank god you're alive. There is something really wrong here. Nina said fearfully quiet over the radio.

I was a bit relieved I wasn't alone anymore, and to hear another Spartans voice made me even more relaxed. I was still a bit concerned about Cameron, so I asked her

359, have you seen an ODST around you? My motion tracker doesn't show the exact location of where he is. But I know it's near you location. Please confirm?

She replied straight after I finished my message probably because she knows that I'm not some sort of imagination or that she's gone crazy.

I haven't seen anyone, and I haven't been able to find my Spartan equipment either so I don't have a motion tracker to help you. Sorry.

I then felt fearful for Cameron again. I know she was near him. But without her armour, I don't want her going out trying to look for him so I told her.

"Copy that, stay put, I'm coming to get you over and out."

Trying to walk quietly in these corridors was practically impossible. There were the roof tiles in some places, puddles of blood and also every time I would go to take a step, my metal boots would make a small sounding clang with the deck plating. Although it didn't really matter for now, I couldn't detect anything presently near me other then 359, Cameron and whatever that other thing is. After several minutes trying to follow the signs and having to find ways passed different debris in my way. I finally managed to find the entrances to engineering control.
The doors had yellow and black stripes to signify caution. The control pad had a flashing red padlock on it. Instead of making any more noise on the radio channel, I knocked on the metal door to tell Nina I was here. The doors hissed open, realising some smoke from the hydraulics as the massive metal door opened with Nina standing on the other side of the door pointing a magnum at me with her right hand and holding a combat knife in her left. Other than that I noticed 3 things about her. Firstly she was the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life. She had long, lushes black hair with brown streaks through it. She was that bit shorter than me and had the most amazing brown eyes I have ever seen. I like her already I thought to myself, partly because all she had on was a sports bra and long marine's trousers on as well.

"Relax, it's me "I reassured her as she lowered the pistol and put the knife back in her pocket.

"Oh, sorry sir, just making sure. "She replied as if she was a little embarrassed to point a gun at a higher ranked officer and also that she had no top on, although I didn't mind.

As I took of my helmet I said calmly.
"It's okay 359 I completely understand since of the situation were currently in."

She seemed a bit surprised that I didn't tell her off or something along those lines because if it were on the ground, pointing a loaded weapon or any weapon for that matter would be a major cause for concern and you can be given a discharge. But all she said with an eye brow raised was.

"Sir please, calls me Nina. I have been alone for 2 weeks and I wouldn't mind if we didn't be all uptight with the formal crap."

She was hot, bad ass, had no top and wanted to get social with me. I'm starting to think I have a shot with this girl ha-ha. But anyways back to the mission. When she said she didn't want the formal crap I just holstered my shot gun, nodded and walked into the control room.

"How long have you been conscious captain?" Nina said to me as she closed the door behind me.

I placed my helmet on a desk with some report papers on it and said back to her being relived to be out of the dark corridor.

"I'm not sure to be honest, I suspect around a day give or take an hour or so"

As I spun around she had a surprised look on her face. She probably thought I was up for longer than that.

"Only that long sir? Okay then. So I suspect you're not too sure what are going on?"

When she said that all I thought was finally someone with some answers for my questions. Perhaps she knows why the hell the computer says were 300 years overdue for earth's orbit.
"Nina, do you know why the date by the computers knowledge is 300 years overdue and also do you know what the fuck this thing is that is killing the crew?"

Nina went to go sit down at one of the seats at the desk I placed my helmet on and put here pistol on the table and said.

According to the flight data of the ship, it says something smashed into the ship when we were all asleep and pushed us off course. But the computer should have reset our course and should have wakened the crew due to an emergency.

She leant for a bit and looked into my eyes and said.

"Sir, we have been flying in the middle of now where for three hundred and whatever years. By my calculations, the fusion generators powering the engines will shut down within the next nine hours. We need to get off the ship before life support and artificial gravity fails. Not to mention before this thing kills us of course."

Listening to her say all this in a firm voice reminded me of officer training. Everything always had problems, and you always had a time limit to correct them as well.

"Well first we need to find Cameron, that ODST I was asking you about. Then once we have him we will make our way back to the hangar and see if there is anything flyable in there and if not well proceed to the escape pods." I said to her with calm, commanding voice as I picked up my helmet and put it on.

Nina knew that by me putting my helmet on, it meant we were heading out, so she grabbed her pistol and followed me as I opened the door and walked out into the dark, cold corridor to look for our lost comrade. I could see Nina shivering and shaking due to the fact it was about 2 degrees throughout the ship. It got colder and colder the more time you spent walking around probably due to the engines shutting down.

"Excuse me sir, I don't mean to be rude, but what's your name?" she asked while we were jogging and her teeth were hitting each other from the temperature.

I just said to her
"I'm not sure, I think I'm suffering from cryo sleep memory dementia."

I could tell she was a little disappointed to hear that, but she was relived because I think she had the same thing. Following my motion tracker we finally made it to the main engine room. It was huge. Almost the size as an old A.F.L stadium I once went to in the western part of Australia back on earth. When I was young, There was one ginormous fusion F.T.L generator in the middle of the room with pipes and wires coming out of it ever where. The first thing I noticed was it was a lot warmer in here and also the power was on. I turned to Nina to see she was pointing up at the roof with a shocked look on her face. I looked where she was pointing and there was a huge infested spore looking thing smacked right into the roof. A lot of water was dripping down from it as well which was very weird. It looked like one of those things you'd see when you use a microscope. Just one million times bigger and it looked disgusting. Both I and Nina probably wanted to throw up. Or it was just me I'm not sure. It had what looked to be a type of tunnel system in it. When we both noticed the tunnels I also noticed that my motion tracker was reading about 50 life signs coming from that infested looking sack.

"That is absolutely disgusting!" Nina yelled out in total disgust.

She just said what I was thinking, but looking at my motion tracker I told her.

"Yeah, and it also contains heaps of life signs."

But I didn't think Cameron is in there because the life sign I had been following was ninety meters to our front, right next to the Fusion generator.

"Come on Nina, we got to keep moving." I said while tapping Nina on the shoulder.

"It's magnificent don't you think?" she replied in amazement as we began to run across the massive room towards the generator entrance gates.

Magnificent did you say? It's fucking disgusting. It looks like something that would come out my nose if I blew it." I said in an elevated voice while puffing.

We made it to the entrance of the generator room. Cameron's life sign was just on the other side of this door, I was sure of it. As I began to try to open the door the side control panel told me I didn't have clearance to be inside there.

"Clearance my ass" I thought as I punched the control panel as I possibly could and then pulled out some wires to try and 'hot wire' the door.

What did you know; I could hotwire something like of the movies. But as the doors opened I saw Cameron. He was bleeding out up against the side wall of the room because he had a massive puncture wound on his rib.

He just looked at me and Nina and held his hands up as if to say help me but in a way he wouldn't be hurting himself. I grabbed his hand, pulled him up and braced him with my arm.

He just whispered "thank you" in my ear with a large exhale from his lungs since he was in a lot of pain from where he was bleeding. Nina got under his left arm as I was under his right one. We both walked him out of the generator room. There was no way we both could carry him to the hangar before those things realise he was gone. I saw Nina pick up Cameron's rifle as we got him to stand up. Trying to walk silently to not arouse whatever was in that sack thing, we eventually made it to the Engineering control room when we all heard the largest raw sound imaginable. There was huge vibration that shocked the ship. Nina and I just looked at each other and in that brief moment decided to go a hell of a lot faster with Cameron. But couldn't take it, he was too badly hurt to continue like this. So we all stopped so I could carry Cameron in the fireman's chair lift position. (One arm bracing his back while the other arm braced underneath his knees.)
At least now it wasn't as pain full for him, and we could go faster. But I couldn't carry him the whole way though. We rushed quickly down several corridors I once came through not too long ago, passing any debris that was in the floor. My motion tracker went completely crazy. Hundreds if not thousands of whatever they are, were jumping out of that huge disgusting spore and chasing us. They were really fast to; they had already made it to the control room by the time we made it to the shafts open entrance. Looking back quickly to see if they were behind us, all I saw was darkness.

"Nina, you go first" I yelled at her to get in the shaft.

She didn't hesitate to either. She got in there quick and began to climb down. I had to stop for a second and take off my shot gun and give it to Cameron so he could hold onto my back as I climbed down. My heart was beating so fast when I climbed down. I was just staring at my motion tracker in the darkness of the shaft. They were really pissed off with us getting Cameron outta there. As we made it about half way up, we could hear a huge noise coming from the whole ship itself.

"What the fuck was that" Nina screamed.

But I think I knew what it was.

"I have heard it before; the ship must be condensing or something." I replied quickly to not waist my breath.

I couldn't see her, but I knew Nina was about nine bars lower than me, and I started to feel Cameron's grip faltering.

"Come on Cameron, not far now, don't let go of me" I said calmly to Cameron and he tightened his grip quickly.

Nina made it out first and then she helped me and Cameron out of the shaft. I was worn out, I really was. What can I say, a Cameron got heavy after a while of carrying, as does any object after a while.
This deck was still extremely cold and dark still. Whenever you would take a step, you could feel the crunching of Ice beneath your feet or even if you took a breath, you'd realise steam from you mouth. As we were running down the corridor away from the shaft, my flash light finally gave out. What a wonderful time for it to cut out. We have about one hundred monsters chasing us and we can't see where we need to go, lovely. Now neither I nor Nina could see where we were going. I had to rely on Cameron's call outs of directions to make sure we were going in there right direction because his night vision still worked, But his call outs where whispers more then call outs. His lung may be punctured.

"Left….left here" he whispered in pain to me and so we ran down the next left corridor.

We made it to the cryo rooms and in which on the exits lead straight down to the hangar bay. But when we entered the cryo room, something was different. It didn't have that death feel in the air. Something was wrong. But we didn't take much notice to it.

All of sudden in the darkness or the cryo room, bodies that were in the cryo tubes started to claw the blood stained windows of the tubes and began scream. They had all grown extra infected skin on their faces and had more limbs then a usual human would. It scared the living crap out of us all. One of the bodies managed to open his tube and stand up. But as we were running towards him, Nina aimed Cameron's assault rifle at the un-dead being, spraying the crap out it with about half her magazine, just to make sure it was dead of course. The body dismembered with all the incoming assault rifle fire and fell on the floor but still started to move towards us with its left arm remaining on it. It was covered in blood. Crawling ever closer to us as we ran at full pace towards it. When I was close enough, I slammed my foot onto its head to stop it from moving. By doing so, the head burst open splurging brains and blood all over my legs, but it was worth doing it to kill the sucker. We were still only half way across the cryo room when the Swarm of the monsters Came rushing into the cryo room. Several of them tried coming into the cryo room entrance at once and got stuck, they started to eat each other if that started to happen. Tearing each other's heads and limbs off was what they did when they were angry. Some of the smarter ones started to help open the tubes to release the ones the bodies that were still screaming inside. Having a glimpse at what was happening behind us, I could see that some of the ones opening the tubes began to feast on those which were inside, ripping into each other with their bear teeth and hands... These things were utter carnivores and animals; they looked human, just with subtle differences. They certainly didn't act in the correct manner.
When we made it to the entrance to the hangar, I put Cameron down on his feet, grabbed my shot gun.

"Go you two, I'll buy us sometime, just go and see if anything is still flyable in the bay."

Nina looked hesitant at me but helped Cameron walk into the bay to start searching for a useable space ship to fly us outta here, while I turned around and did a slow walk back into the dark corridors from where we came from. I had my shot gun readily aimed at the entrance for when they came through it, and came they did. I opened fire very quickly as soon as I saw the first few of them. The shot gun had a scatter shot which mean the bullets cluster into 7 fragments and did widespread damage. Every shot I took another two and a bit of them down, causing their bodies to break apart like glass being hit with a brick. I fired my first 7 rounds before I needed to reload. But I didn't have time for a reload though; they were running to fast at me. I switched to my magnum and maintained my controlled bursts or fire at them, trying to remove there legs. But never the less I was out numbered but the hundreds, so for a final dash of hop I quickly grabbed the fragmentation grenade I grabbed from the armoury, pulled the pin and rolled it down the cold corridor and Absolutely ran for my life down to the hangar. As I ran the sound of the grenade exploding made me a bit deafened from the blast. But watching my motion tracker show heaps of red dots to now only showing half the amount, I know being deaf in an ear was a small price to pay. When I found the others they were standing next to escape pods. Nina shook her head and said.

"Sir, the pelicans are trashed and the short swords haven't been fuelled, there are the only thing we found."

I only just heard what she said, but I wasn't interested at the time. The escape pods would have to do. Cameron had passed out from blood loss but Nina had managed to find a bio foam canister and she sealed the hole in his chest.
"Come on let's get the hell outta here". I yelled to Nina as we boarded one of the escape pods.

Now I or Nina have never had to use escape pods in the past, and we sure as hell wouldn't image we would have to use them at all in the future. We both neither had a clue of what to do with the controls. All there were was several red switches, buttons and a joy stick. But Nina being smart as I'm sure she is, flicked all the switches and pushed a green button once all the switches were in place. The pods doors closed just as a few of the so called 'zombies' started to smash up against the pods door just as it locked. Suddenly the pod was shot out from the ship with tremendous speed. It's strange because we were all feeling G- forces when were meant to be in space, or so we thought. Several minutes later my ears popped like I had just changed altitude. But we would have to be in atmosphere to do that? What the hell?
We were lying on one side of the pod because there was gravity, even though escape pods don't have artificial gravity plating.
Nina was just as confused as I was and pushed one of the buttons on the control panel of the pod. A window opened up on the door and we saw a red orange light shine in from the window. We weren't in space at all. We were on a planet.
Now knowing that we were on a planet, I kicked open the door. Once it was forced open, Nina and me stood up to see we were on earth, in the middle of the ocean, just off the coast of what appeared to be New York? We could see the statue of liberty, but she was all damages, her head was missing and behind her was the city. The sky was orange clouds and the city was all in flames and was all crippled. I looked down to see where we came from below. You just see the very black outline of the frigate we were in.

Being relieved that we had made it out of that hell hole, I started to put the pieces together of what had happened. When I had first thought those noises were the ship condensing, I was right. The pressure down under the ocean sea floor must be crushing the ship slowly. Also with that large sack looking thing those monsters came out of. It had water dripping out the sides of it.

"It all makes sense now Nina" I said out loud so that she can hear.

She was still amazed at the colour of the sky to notice what I was saying, but eventually she came around and listened to what I was going to say.

"Nina, don't you realise what has happened? We were on our way to earth when the ship was hit by that sack thing and so the computer tried to recorrect its self but we crashed here, in the ocean just of this city. That's why we could hear the ship condensing because the further you go under the water, the more crushing pressure there is."

Nina nodded and looked back at the burning city. But all of a sudden, Cameron started to scream while lying down in the escape pod. He started to grow limbs out of his shoulders and his helmet cracked from his head growing fast.

"Holy shit, he's turning into one of them" Nina screamed out while aiming her pistol at his body.

"Do It Nina; kill him before he gets up. End his suffering now." I said thinking to my`self that I would lose a valuable friend who stood by me in those cold and dark corridors"

Nina was hesitant for a second and Cameron's newest grown limb from now where out of his shoulder pushed Nina of the edge of the pod, falling in the water. I then looked at Cameron's now fucked up helmet and punched him straight. He just got back up and launched himself onto me, trying to bite me even though his teeth were on the other side of his helmet. While I was trying to get the now infected Cameron of me, Nina climbed back onto the pod and kicked Cameron of the pod while saying.

"No one ever kicks me off the side lines asshole! "

One Nina kicked him off of me; she leant over and gave me her pistol so that I could shot him. It was all wet from the water. But Cameron was nowhere to be seen. He just disappeared under the dark blue water. I checked my motion tracker, but it couldn't track through the water because the water moved itself. It would be impossible to decipher life sign or wave. I and Nina sat there for a while, letting the current bring us ever closer to the shore. She grabbed my hand and held it tightly. She was a soft soul. She was a Spartan, but a kinder one at best.
Several hours passed and eventually the waters waves pushed us ashore. The city was still burning, and it was getting dark. The sky was still bright as day due to the buildings burning. What the hell happened here? Why was everything burning?
As me and Nina stepped onto the sand, the sand was hot for the type of day It was. There was no sun today as far as I could tell. There was a heavy cloud cover looming over the entire coast and over the city, although the one over the city was more probably smoke than anything else. Walking up the sandy path and onto the coastal highway above, climbing over a tall glass wall. I looked down each end of the high way to see all the cars were burn and all rusty. Walking over next to one of the cars, I Lent down to see the cars badge, it was a Toyota. Three hundred years and there still going, I could remember hating Toyota's. I hated them because they were always futuristic looking and half the time they were hideous looking cars, although sometimes they did hit a good looking design. Also they were gutless ever since they were the first company to completely go green with their cars. Most other brands still used recycled water. I could remember my grandfather who had an ancient Austin martin DBS fully restored. It was a beautiful looking car, had the engine that would put any of the cars to shame now but people have to have licenses to keep fossil fuelled cars due to the atmosphere being highly polluted and their very expensive, It was only when people started to get lung diseases from breathing bad air that it was being looked at.
Walking down the high way, we saw trucks, bikes and all sorts of new and strange looking machines. When we came to an off ramp we took it because the off ramps on this high way were at least 1 KM apart from each other. The road its self wasn't made from the old cement I remember, it was made from some sort of metal alloy. It had rails in it, probably for trains or trams. When looking at the statue of liberty as we went past it, we barely recognized it because she was damaged. Her top half was all destroyed practically. Walking past the Frenchs gift, we saw that the once skyscrapers that were as high as heaven, were now mostly rubble yards on the ground. Some of the more spectacular buildings were still standing due to some excellent designing. The tallest building that we could see went past the clouds above us. It was amazing, and it was leaning to the left a lot, but it still stood up high like a titan amongst an army of other buildings built in her glory. Something was not right with this city, why was it like this?
Walking near some sort of shopping mall, Nina stopped and stared at the fashion section.

"Still a girl at heart Nina?" I said to her with a very small hint of a grin on my face in this burning city.

She just looked away from the door and at me. She pointed to herself, tilted her head in a pissed way and said

"Look at me, look at the clothes I am in. I'm cold, and you have your armour so you wouldn't care what it's like. You are just happy you can see my boobs aren't you? "

To be honest I really did care, she didn't look to happy in the state she was in. That said, seeing a topless girl with a bra on did make me chuckle from time to time and she knew it as well. Feeling some sorrow for her, we entered the shopping mall and went to the cloths section. We spent about an hour just wandering around the store, looking for something for her to wear. She grabbed a Blue coloured shirt and held it up onto herself while looking at me.

"What do you think, wrong colour? "She said as she put on the shirt.

"I think its fine, I'm not one for fashion and stuff" I said as a shacked my head.

Thinking about it, she didn't really have to look nice after all. There was probably no one else around, just me and her. She was a Girl I guess, so they were unpredictable, as a man once told me, 'Girls can be explained by science' I never thought about it much to today, and I have to admit. On some aspects I have to agree. Sometimes girls did were completely un-thinkable, but they did it anyways either to impress someone, or they were blond, to put it bluntly of course.

As well as the shirt, she grabbed some other pants and a jacket. She also grabbed me some stuff but I didn't really care, I think she was thinking to loosen up since we were free from that hell hole under the water. But something told me otherwise. The fact that one of most secure super cities is now in ruin, I didn't say anything to her or she might think from what I might say that were still in danger.

We walked out the main entrance of the mall to find the largest car park imaginable. But in this car park wasn't just cars parked, this had seemed to be a battle field. There were impact craters from blasts and there were weapons on the floor with a scorpion tank smashed into the side of the Shopping centre. No doubt about it, the city had been attacked. Had the covenant attacked and had done this? I thought to myself as Nina grabbed my hand and snuggled into the side of me. We walked down the road a bit, seeing more and more evidence of fighting. Burnt corpses, destroyed tanks, even the U.N.S.C requitement centre was blown up. Every window on every building either was shattered or had bullet holes in them. Walking past one of the corpses Nina pulled me closer to it. I didn't know what she wanted until she pointed. The Skeletons was not a Part of the U.S.N.C. He had the Russian flag on his uniform and the corps nearest to him was U.S.N.C. Both Nina and I checked most of the skeleton bodies on this main road. Either Russian or American, This wasn't looking good. It didn't get any better when we made it to the area around central park. There was a huge impact crater. My suit began to give me radiation warnings the closer we stood near it.

New York has been nuked, but by who? Nina said gasping in shock.

"Judging by the evidence at hand Nina, it would have had to been the Russians, there the only one else who is here." I said as I was puzzled to think of an alternate idea but I was struggling to think of anything else.

In absolute shock we walked to an old take away joint and sat down. The time was 3 am in the morning and the place we were sitting at would be nothing but a McDonald's food joint. We were both hungry and tired. Nina stood up and had a look at what was behind the counter while I took off my helmet. She came back with some old chips that were still in a working heater. We both sat at a corner seat nearest the window and began to eat while looking at the city. Nina didn't say much, If I didn't look at her service record, I would of never had guessed she was a Spartan. As I went to get another chip I looked at her, she was crying with a chip in her mouth. Feeling sad for her, I stood up, walked around the corner table and sat next to her. Putting my arm around her and comforting her so that she would stop crying. She leant into me and gave me a small kiss on the cheek. So returning the favour I hugged her, although not for long because it would have been getting annoying hugging a titanium suit of armour.

Once we had finished a whole bucket of chips, we decided to try and find some place to stay. Looking at some large sign posts on the side of the road, there should have been a 5 star hotel nearby. Nina and I agreed that we should find this place. Eventually after walking down long roads that had stores, shops and buildings on either side of them, we made it to that huge sky scraper which turned out to be our hotel we started to look for. We were walking for at least 4 hours before we found it. Nina was falling asleep while she was walking. As we came into the main lobby, it looked bigger than you would realise from the outside. The floor was pure black marble and the walls had pine panelled wall patterns on them. We both walked down the hall and took a working elevator. Not knowing what was the highest floor to this mammoth building. I looked at the control selection screen. 740 floors high, holy crap that's high. Being curious of what it would look like up there, I pushed 740 and the elevator moved extremely quickly to the top floor. It took us about a minute to reach the top. When the doors opened we walked down the seamless corridor and I slammed the closest door down and proceeded inside with Nina still holding my hand from our Nice McDonald's breakfast. When I walked inside the room, all I could see was the large window overlooking the top of some clouds and some of the city. It seemed so calm up here though. But looking up in the sky there was something that was really strange. It was a star ship just holding positions several Kilometres out. It had other smaller ships flying around it as if it were fly's flying around a bone you would give to your dog sometimes.

One of the smaller ships came really close to our window and stopped to hover. It looked like a pelican drop ship, but it had wings and large hover jets all along the bottom of it. I held Nina's pistol at it. But it didn't seem hostile, it just span around and opened a back loading ramp on the underside of the vessel. There was mist as the door opened but as it cleared from the engines blasting it away, there was 3 men standing at the entrance, two of the men were marines holding weapons at us and the third seemed to be there leader.

"Why hello there, isn't this amazing." The leader said.

I was totally confused at those moments, who were these people. Judging by how tightly Nina was holding my hand that wasn't holding the pistol; she was feeling just like I was then.

Hi? I'm Spartan M17 and this is 359. We made it out of the crashed ship underneath the Ocean. Who are you people, what happened here?

He just held out his hand.

Come, I'm sure you have loads of questions, please. Join me and watch your step on board please.

I turned to Nina and looked at her through my helmet as if to say if she would want to. She just looked back at me and nodded to say yes.

I began to walk towards the ship, letting Nina go first and grab a hold of this man's hand leaping over the 1 foot drop between the building and the ship. The marines began to lower their weapons and I walked on board with the door closing behind me.

We all sat around a table looking at one another, asking questions about what happened on the planet below. I was looking at the interior of this ship and the leader guy as well. He looked in his 50's early 60's because of his hair starting to go dull. I recognized him from somewhere, not sure where but I knew him. Thinking hard as Nina was asking him questions about what happened to the city (it was exactly as I thought, Russia did go to war against America, just the whole world had a thermonuclear war.) I recognized him. He was my staff sergeant from training. But that shouldn't be possible?

All of a sudden, in the brief few moments that I recognized him with, my head ache took a turn for the worst. It was getting to the point where I blacked out and collapsed. The next thing I knew, I was laying down in the cryo room of the ship and the cryotubes door opened with the same light shining in my eyes until my eyes could properly see where I was. Nina was standing there at the control panel and all my fellow team mates were awake and well, chatting amongst themselves.

"Rise and Shine sir, we have reached stationary orbit above earth." She said in a cheerful voice.
I sat there looking at her and everyone else. Oh my God your alive is all I thought when I saw their faces. I was shocked, really shocked. All that happened was just a dream?
Nina was still looking at me in a puzzled way.
Sir, your heart rates through the roof, are you ok?

I looked into her eyes and just politely said.

Yes I'm fine. Just a bit shocked that's all, just tell me one thing please.

She leant in closer and said "yes?"

I just whispered to her.

"What's my name?"

T H E – E N D

Epilogue:
So as I sat on my bed, in my room at fire base Phoenix. I began to write the events of the most horrific Nightmare that may happen on a star ship after cryo sleep. But After I realised this story to the public, ONI officials came to my apartment complex when I was off duty and called me in for duty, questioning me about the infected Sack looking form and bodies in my story, apparently they weren't just my imagination or something. They called it the flood or something?

I wonder what they meant.

Authors comments/ special thanks
Thank you to: Cameron (kamiskane) for helping me for inspiration.
Nina, a awesome girlfriend 3
And thank you to most of all to Bungie for making the most epic sci fi game ever.