The unlucky incident on Friday the 13th
January 13, 2549
Unidentified planet
"Fuckin' Covenant," someone groaned. Janty Hill looked and saw that it was one of the two nurses, a young male with dark skin and hair probably longer than regulation length. He had an accent that probably pegged him as a guy from South Africa or the Mulder colony planet. One or the other, she guessed.
The only UNSC marine in the group, Lieutenant Commander Olivier, slapped his hand at the man's knee. "Fuckin' navy," he corrected. "We had those split-chins outnumbered four to one and they still couldn't pull it off."
The pilot of their lifeboat, Lieutenant Edie, called back over her shoulder with a hint of panic. "Brace yourselves! Ridge and I can't pul-," her words were cut off as a jolt ran through the escape pod and the small craft lurched to one side and tumbled through the air. The pilot triumphantly screamed, and a moment later Jan opened her eyes to see that the craft had mostly righted itself and sailed forward.
At a steeper angle toward the ground. Edie swore, and a moment later they crashed into the dirt.
Janty did not know how long she was out, but the next thing she knew, Olivier's hands were under her armpits and she was being pulled out of the boat. She looked down past her feet and saw the front half of the craft smoking with a small fire underneath its control consoles. Edie's body lay awkwardly still on the ground.
She looked up into the Lieutenant Commander's eyes, and he smiled back. "You're awake," he grinned. "Didn't know if you would or not, I'll be honest." His accent reminded her of her great-grandfathers, who had hailed from somewhere in Texas on Earth.
She looked over her shoulder and saw the rest of the survivors packing gear into bags. Olivier stopped his trip and gingerly lowered her to the ground. He caught her eye and quickly explained, "Got a message from Captain Archibald, he made it off the King Kong and is setting up camp," he pointed to her right and at a large forest that went as far as the eye could see in front and behind her. "On the other side of those woods right there. Conveniently." He laughed to himself.
"When are we heading out?" the deep voice of Vaughn, one of the members on her crew, asked. They both were a part of the UNSC Mechanical Maintenance Corps, and had been working together alongside a few others in their group for over three years now. There were only two others from their crew that made it off the ship. Hazel, the group's leader, and Chuck, a wiry guy who had managed to grab an emergency fire-axe before they got off the ship.
"As soon as sleepy here can get on her feet," Olivier said with a sly grin. "Planet's uninhabited, so we obviously don't have satellite support anywhere. But by my completely uneducated and unfounded guess, we've got maybe a five hour hike? Give or take a few hours."
"A few hours can be a lifetime, El-See," Hazel grunted. Middle aged with salt-and-pepper hair, the woman had wrinkles that framed her face in a way that made her look ten years older than what she really was. Unfortunate, but it sometimes came with their line of work. "Especially if any of the Covie ships got off any boats of their own."
Olivier shrugged. "Doubt it. I mean, they only had three ships. And we obliterated two of 'em and the third one went down pretty quick too. Don't think any of em had enough time to get out."
Vaughn cut in with a grunt and wave of his hands. "Hell, if we ain't got Covenant, then we've got wildlife I bet. Trees as big as this you gotta wonder about the predators they got here."
The female nurse, Abigail, swore and her face paled.
"Weapons?" Mubahn, the male nurse, asked. He was slender, tall, and looked like the frailest one of the group. Chuck grunted and hefted his axe in his hands triumphantly. "Besides Mr. Woodchipper over there."
"I've got my assault rifle," Olivier said. "And my sidearm." As he said it, he unclipped it and tossed it to Hazel, who caught it with a frown. Olivier walked to the crashed craft and looked inside. "Boat has one pistol. Really skimped out on us there." He threw it to Jan, who fumbled with it for a moment before finally getting it under control. "Extra comm unit," he threw that to the female nurse, who placed it onto her belt.
Hazel sighted through her handgun and then looked up at the distant sun. "About an hour, maybe two before we lose sunlight. If we want to make it there before peak dark, then we've got to move now."
Olivier began to walk toward the trees. "Then let's get a move on, ladies and gents. Got a lot of ground to cover."
They walked for hours. Eventually, Jan lost track of how long or how far they travelled. It was uneventful. Trees, bushes, logs, a river or two, and what seemed like a hundred game-trails where local wildlife would traverse, but to Jan, it was all standard fare.
"Got something," Chuck called out in his slow, collected Emerald Cove accent. The group followed his gaze and walked down a trail leading to the small clearing. They bushwhacked through a set of low-hanging branches, and were suddenly at the crash site. Whatever type of ship it was, Jan immediately knew it was not human.
"Covenant?" Abigail asked.
Olivier slashed his hand at his throat to silence her and crouch-walked to the entrance of the thing. Its door was wide open and the boat was empty. The Lieutenant Commander cleared his throat and snapped his fingers. "Looks like at least one split-chin made it off."
"How do you know it's one of those things?" Mubahn asked.
Olivier pointed to the control console. "For one, I've never seen anything but Elites pilot these. And two, no bodies. I can't see some Grunt or Jackal bitch making it out of this crash and walking away. But hey, there's blood. So whatever is out there is wounded, if not dead already. Keep your eyes peeled, ladies and gents, and we'll be okay."
"Another trail," Abigail called out. Olivier jogged over to the front of the group and got into position to lead them yet again. Jan took a steady breath and then turned to face the Lieutenant Commander.
He only got two words off before it happened.
"Oh fuck," Olivier whispered. Jan barely heard it, but she clearly saw what happened next. The man was lifted into the air, with twin white-blue spikes that sprouted from his chest. The air in Olivier's chest rushed out, giving him one final, desperate groan, before he was unceremoniously dropped to the ground.
Mubahn, the closest person to the Lieutenant Commander, screamed in surprise and in reply the triangle of light slashed through the air and cleanly decapitated him. The headless corpse of the young nurse collapsed to the ground to rest next to the fallen Lieutenant Commander, and finally Janty sprang into motion.
Her brain flashed a hundred images into her retinae at once. The Covenant. Battlefield news feeds. A Sangheili Elite warrior. The Active Camouflage invisibility systems that some of the special operations warriors of the Covenant used. Energy swords.
Jan raised her handgun and fired at where she suspected the tall, brooding warrior stood. Nothing connected and the rounds whizzed by and into the forest beyond. Her shooting broke the silence and the group exploded into motion. Everybody ran in different directions. Vaughn and Chuck sprinted into the darkness to her right, while Abigail went left. Jan's eyes flashed to her right, where Hazel stood in a shooter's position with her handgun pointed.
"Run, Jan!" she screamed. The elder mechanic fired her weapon, and Jan saw something shimmer in the night air. The bullet impacted against an invisible force, and suddenly the blue-black armor of a Sangheili warrior burst into sight. The thing was tall, even for the Elite that it was. Three or four feet taller than Jan, and built as thick as a rhinoceros. In its right hand was the long, twin-bladed sword made of white hot energy that could cut through battle armor like butter, and in its left was the compact C-shaped plasma pistol that many of the Covenant favored.
The monster charged forward and cut through the air with its sword. Hazel's hands, and the handgun in them, detached themselves from her arms. She reeled back in anger, frustration, fear, and pain. The sword sailed through the air again, and Hazel's leg fell out from underneath her. Sounds that reminded Jan of alien laughter sounded through the air, and Hazel screamed one last word. "Run!"
Jan turned her back and sprinted as fast as she could away from the scene of carnage.
Chuck, a few dozen yards away, caught his foot on a low hanging branch and tumbled to the ground. He rolled to a stop and felt the side of his mouth, where a tooth was now missing. He grunted and slowly pulled himself to his feet.
Something sounded from behind him. A low, guttural growl that sent shivers up and down his spine. Chuck turned and powered his fire-axe through the air with all the momentum and strength he could muster. The light in the air bended around something in front of him, and he knew that was where he needed to aim. He miscalculated, but the momentum in his swing carried him forward and he stumbled to one knee. Something hard pressed up against his neck, and he was slowly lifted into the air between two long and think claws.
Chuck struggled to turn and face his assailant, and after a moment of returning force from the other, the mechanic was brought to face it. The active camouflage system snapped off with a small burst of light, and the creature snapped its many jaws back and forth.
"Do it like a man," Chuck whispered. "Look in my eyes when you kill me, you bastard."
The creature returned his words with stumbling syllables from deep down in its throat, twisted and bloodied as it was. "Gladly." It grunted.
Chucks neck snapped like a thin twig beneath the Sangheili's fingers.
Far away, Jan stumbled over sticks and rocks and under low-hanging branches. "Vaughn! Chuck?" Janty screamed out into the forest. "Abigail!"
No one and no thing responded back to her, and she knew that the chance they were alive was slim. That Sangheili, the elite Covenant warrior back there from the escape pod…it wore the black armor of a Special Operations soldier. It was the best the Covenant had to offer, and that fact that it was there with them…armed as it was…and they only had a few weapons themselves…
The assault rifle.
It suddenly flashed into her mind, the only true weapon any of them had. She had the pistol still in her left hand, and she knew that it theoretically could take down a Sangheili, but with her complete lack of experience, she knew it was impossible for her to take it down herself.
But with Olivier's assault rifle…she could have a chance. Vaughn was old, maybe he had some military training. Her footsteps faltered beneath her, and she turned back to face the escape pod. It was far away now, a minute or two jog, probably…but the blue and purple lights that danced along its outer hull could be seen from a distance. She could find her way back relatively easily…
"Jan?" a voice called out. She turned and saw Vaughn standing a few yards away. "Jan, come on, we have to-," a moment later the large man's voice was cut off as the hulking form of the Sangheili crashed into him. Vaughn was lifted into the air with the Sangheili's arms wrapped around his chest. They squeezed, tightening on Vaughn's torso with enough force to break bones.
Vaughn swung something at the Elite's head, and the monster stumbled backwards a few feet. Jan took her chance and looked through the small scope on her handgun's rails. She flicked a switch, and the eerie green-white image popped into frame as a night vision filter took over. Vaughn held what looked like a large branch and swung it with the ferocity of a dying lion.
Jan fired her handgun but missed on the first shot. The second and third, however, slammed heavy slugs into the Sangheili's shields. For a moment they flared orange and yellow, but then collapsed in a shower of sparks. The creature roared and lunged forward with its right hand. Jan panicked, pulling the trigger as fast as she could muster. Two shots missed, but the third found home right in the hilt of the Elite's energy sword. The blade faltered and disappeared, but the hard bar in the hand of the gargantuan still proved a valuable weapon as it slammed hard into Vaughn's face.
The mechanic flew backwards, with blood pouring profusely from a large cut above his left eye. He rolled to a stop, but managed to get his feet out underneath him and face the Covenant survivor. The Elite looked down at its broken energy sword and cast it away with a toss over its shoulder. It raised its left hand and pointed the plasma pistol it held at the sulking mass that was Vaughn the mechanic. Vaughn grunted in acknowledgement a moment before the pistol discharged and dissolved both his shirt and the skin on his chest.
Jan took the opportunity and fired at the Sangheili's head. She cried in gleeful surprise as blood sprayed out from both the entrance and exit wounds on each side of the creature's skull. It crumpled to the ground with a soft final gasp, and Jan looked up to see a distant light through the trees. Salvation?
She jumped over the body and ran as fast as she could toward the pinprick of whatever created the light. It was not as close as she originally though. She stumbled and fell a handful of times, and did not see some branches in the darkness of night. More than once she ran head-first into a branch and was nearly knocked unconscious. All the while she cried. Cried for fear. Cried for anger. Cried for pain. Cried for happiness of survival.
As she got closer, sounds began to drift through her ears. What sounded like men and women yelling and talking, laughing and…crying? Screaming? No, that could not be it. They were jolly, working to get themselves off of the stranded and desolate planet. The light began to dissolve into a scene of constant motion.
She burst from the trees with a triumphant scream.
Abigail lay on the ground not far from her. She had a large cavity in the center of her chest, and orange-silver smoke sizzled from the wound. Ahead of her, the remains of a recently and haphazardly constructed human camp lay in smolders. Tents and quickly made permacrete structures burned, What looked like what had once been a human camp was in smolders ahead of her. Jan's eyes moved to the sky, and she saw a large Covenant Carrier drifting above the clouds. Dozens of Phantom and Spirit drop ships descended toward the ground and rained fire upon the survivors of the camp.
Jan let the tears flow freely from her eyes as she dropped to her knees next to the deceased form of Abigail. Jan was the only survivor of the lifeboat, the only one to make it through the forest alive. And it did not matter. As she reflected on the last few hours of her life, a spotlight searching the ground found her. She could hear the roar of the Covenant engines above her, and felt the heat collecting in the sky as the plasma turrets warmed up their energy pools. There was simply nothing she could do.