The Runner
Prologue
A beacon of white light appeared in the darkness. It shut out the light of the far away galaxy, but soon died and a ship replaced it. There was a near identical aft portion floating several thousand kilometers away to the ship's own. The new arrival's engines sputtered and came to life in a brilliant flash of golden light. As the ship drew nearer to the dead husk, the husk's own engines attempted to become operational, but they sputtered and died.
The few thrusters that were still operational blew jets of gas and pointed the aft section toward the ship. The distance between the ship and husk shrank and the ship began to slow. It came to a near dead stop only a few kilometers away from the husk.
A hangar bay door opened and several small fighters and dropships spewed forth into the blackness, angling toward the husk. The fighters came into formation and flew a defensive pattern around the dropships as they closed the distance completely, and flew into the open hangar bay.
The fighters broke off and began to circle around the husk, sweeping the outer hull for dangers and surveying the damage. Inside the hangar bay, the dropships settled down on the deck and disgorged several squads of men in vacsuits, each carrying extra equipment and a full combat load of weapons. One man stepped away from the others and waved around, signaling them to pay attention to him.
They formed a loose circle around the Lieutenant and their radios crackled as his voice came through, "Listen up! Everyone split up into teams of three and conduct a search of what's left of this ship. Everyone report in to your squad leaders every fifteen minutes, or sooner if you actually find something worth looking at or shooting."
The soldiers got into the preset teams of three and made their way across the bay toward the doors and began to cut through the solid titanium. The men that were waiting for the doors to be opened shifted from foot to foot, wishing that they could be doing something instead of waiting.
They finally got there wish when the first door was kicked in. The molten edges still glowed as several of the teams moved through and into the rest of the husk.
Mostly, the search turned up nothing of import to any of the soldiers. None of the computer terminals they had found were in any working condition, whether they had just been shut down remotely or manually, they couldn't tell.
The soldiers continued searching deck by deck, looking for anything that could tell them what happened.
When one found something, he radioed to the Lieutenant, "Sir! We've found something down around the cryo bay. You may want to look at it."
Typical of an Englishman, the soldier understated the importance of what he was seeing. Every single soldier on the husk would want to look at it.
Private Nick Calandras wiped what little frost there was on the glass covering the man inside. The reflective face-plate made it look like his face was an orangeish gold. The marred green of the rest of the armor and it's shape told him everything he wanted to know.
A Spartan was behind that glass.