BIG Z: Alright, I've been looking forward to this. Can't wait.

Simmons: Me too!

Liz: Oh yeah, can't wait for this, seeing Carmen running for her life is going to be priceless.

Lisa: That's Corporal to you.

Liz: Kiss ass.

BIG Z: Shutup already, let's get this thing on the road.

SHOUT-OUT! This is something new I'll start doing. So here's the first one. This shout-out goes out to Stupendous Studios, they've been pretty supportive thus far and have contracted me to write a script for an upcoming production. Check out their channel and subscribe. They're a pretty good group of actors and are an up and coming unit in the world of machinima. I will do other shout-outs if asked for, like if you have a clan, machinima group, or just want to shout out to another friend or author send me a PM.

Chapter 3

Agriculture Satellite Plentiful, in orbit around Pluvia Silva Colony

6/8/2570

2035 Hours

Red Team

"Ah…" Doc said happily plopping down on a single couch, "peace and quiet."

"I hear ya," Courtney said back, placing one of her bags on the ground cuddled next to Doc, "what a gig you've got here."

"Me? You're here too right?"

"I know, but dealing with those nuts has always been your deal. I hardly know them."

"So? Doesn't mean you can't get to know them."

"I have gotten to know, what's the Red Corporal's name?" Courtney asked.

"Carmen? The one that's been coming to you a lot lately?" Doc asked.

"Yeah her," Courtney agreed, remembering the familiar face, "I've gotten to know her pretty well so far. I'm trying to get to know the others as well as I can, it's not like I'm not trying."

"Good, but stay away from Grif, he's not all that popular and you don't want to be associated with him if you want to make any progress."

"Oh haha funny man," Courtney responded shoving him as they stared out the window out at the scenery before them.

"What was she in here for?" Doc asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"She'd been vomiting quite a bit lately, and she was having a lot of nasty mood swings, and loss of energy, if I had guess I'd say she's…"

But as she was about to finish her sentence a door beside them hissed open and in tumbled Sarge and Carmen tripping over each other with Sarge turned around firing his shotgun at something behind them. Carmen slumped against the wall, exhausted from the running she had just done. Her shotgun hung limply from her right hand and her left hand went to tear off her helmet, leaving her hair to fall into her face as she recovered. Sarge bent over, he himself quite winded from the recent run that they had just gone through.

Doc looked at them and then at the door.

"Oh hey Sarge, come on in, no need to knock or anything."

"Corporal Carmen," Courtney said, recognizing the exhausted Red NCO.

"Oh," Carmen said, barely acknowledging her presence, "hello Doctor."

"What's with…" Doc asked, getting up and vaguely motioning to the mud caked and exhausted Reds.

"We were being chased," Sarge said looking out the window to see if they hadn't been followed.

"Don't tell me you guys are fighting already?!" Courtney groaned, placing her head in her hand and rubbed the ridge of her nose in disbelief.

"They weren't Blues, or even human for that matter," Carmen wheezed, "God, why am I so tired?" she groaned in anger.

Doc and Courtney both looked at each other, and Courtney nodded to Doc and walked over to Carmen.

"Umm… you may want to come with me," she said, opening the door to her new examination room.

"What?" Carmen said, her eyebrows furrowing together in confusion.

"Doctor's orders."

"You're not technically our doctor; you're just a surgeon that Doc fell in love with. Don't say anything purple nurple you know it, she knows it, let's move on," Sarge quickly retorted.

Doc shut his mouth as he was about to respond but then dropped his head and blushed in complete realization that Sarge was right. He did love Courtney, that's why she was here and not under the heel of a UNSC occupation force on the planet they had met on.

"Well, I am the most qualified person here to determine what is wrong with your second in command, don't you wanna know that, Sarge right?" she stuttered, trying to get the gruff Red's name right.

Sarge simply nodded and admitted defeat, he knew that there was no possible way for even he to respond. So he simply nodded his head to Carmen, a subtle way of telling her to go with Courtney to let her know what it was that was going on. As Carmen walked off, Shotgun in hand Doc stood right next to him and watched the two women disappear into the new and spacious room.

"Say while she's giving her a checkup maybe I can…" Doc offered.

Sarge pointed his Magnum in Doc's face before he could finish his sentence, "Don't even think about it."

"Okay, maybe later. So…what was chasing you guys? You did seemed as scared as a kid with his hand in the cookie jar."

"Doc, I have no idea, my only consolation at this point is that they're chasing the Blues now."

Doc looked out the window into the vast garden before them and sighed, "not even in a place as perfect as this can we get any peace and quiet."

"Doc, as long as you're with us you'll never get any peace and quiet!"

He simply nodded at that, grabbing a mug of hot tea he had been drinking and started sipping at it as Sarge walked to the door to look in on Carmen. He could see that Courtney had made Carmen take off her armor for the examination she was planning and Sarge felt an uncomfortable yet fuzzy feeling in his gut as he thought of that. But as he took a seat at the entrance and leaned his head against the wall he about panicked at what he saw just outside the window. Doc was still sipping at his tea and had failed to notice the floating robot within a foot of him, separated by the glass of the window keeping it outside. It's claws rotated and the mechanical green eye scanned Doc curiously as it was joined by a quartet of its buddies.

"Doc…" Sarge said quietly to get his attention.

Doc brought the cup down from the blocking view it had on his vision and immediately got an eyeful of large scary robot. The slit of an eye was right at Doc's face scanning away, the green glow spreading over Doc's face and upper body as it observed him in his near panicked state.

"Sarge, what is that?" Doc whispered, fear drenching every word.

"The thing that chased us."

"Oh son of a…"

"WHAT!" the entire room seemed to shake as both men, and the robots, heard the angered screech of Carmen. All parties looked to the door as a nearly nude Carmen stormed out, and then locked her icy glare at the robots, "I am so not in the mood for you guys right now!"

The poor robots all looked from her then to Doc and then back to her, rotating their whole elongated bodies to pan from left to right. Then they finally zoomed off, away from the very temperamental red woman which they deemed as reason enough to run for the hills.

"Corporal it's okay. This is all perfectly natural," the calm voice of Courtney said as she walked out, a single scanner in her hand, blinking green.

"No, not for me. This can't happen to me, not here, not now. I could see this happening to Liz or dammit even Kate but why me?!" she hollered frustrated as she stomped around back and forth.

"Corporal, so what if you're pregnant?"

"WHAT?!"

Blue Team

"Run!"

"Oh shit, what is that thing?"

"I'm too sexy to die!"

"Tucker!"

The Blues ran off splitting up in the absolute chaos caused by the reappearance of the creature in their midst. The snarling and barking of it was hot on their heels and if they weren't wearing armor they were sure they would have felt its breath on their necks. They ran as fast as possible towards wherever they could find a place to hide, hoping that they would be safe. Tucker and Lea were in the lead of the pack, being the fastest, and dove into the first open door they came across. Lea felt around for the button to close the door frantically and then finally slammed it down to have the door hiss shut, plunging them into darkness.

The two of them immediately regretted it, "Oh great, now I can't see anything.," Tucker groaned as he felt around for a light switch or something of the type.

"Would you rather be running away from a demon spawn?" Lea snapped back as she felt along the wall opposite from Tucker.

Tucker ignored that, as she was right but he'd never acknowledge it. His hands glided along the wall feeling nothing but smooth plaster or metal, he couldn't tell. But when his hand hit a handle of some sort he remembered his flashlights on the sides of his helmet.

"Hey check this out," Tucker said, seeing a large breaker box.

"That's just what we needed to get the lights back on," Lea replied, standing next to him as Tucker opened it to see that the box was very much tampered with.

"Well, let's get this thing going so we don't have to trip over everything we walk into."

Tucker immediately started fiddling with it, eliciting no reaction from the overhead lights. They needed to get this thing fixed, or it would be a very long night indeed.

"Quick, this way!" Jenny yelled as she ran ahead of Wash and Church as they hauled Tex into a dark room she had found for them as they ran as fast as possible from the menace chasing them. The group found themselves inside the chow hall, or cafeteria for as the room was officially labeled.

The two men stormed inside knocking jenny to the ground in their haste to get into somewhere it might have been safe. Tex went face first into the deck, just as limp as ever. She must have really taken a bad hit for her to be out cold for this long. The only time Tex was out cold was when she was in an arctic blizzard. But whatever this thing was it had to be dangerous, because whatever could do that to Tex could kill them all. So they didn't take any chances and immediately started to barricade the entrance to the cafeteria after the glass door shut. Every Blue shoved a table against the wall and started to stack chairs against the door so that whatever was out there couldn't see them. Let's just say that the group got it done quickly thanks to their own adrenaline rushes that filled them with the strength of several men.

Once they had everything barricaded and they all felt like it was safe the group ttok a collective breath of relief.

"We're safe in here," Wash said, getting his composure back, "Church, help me with Tex. We need to check her injuries. She's been out a while."

"Yeah, got it," Church said, walking over to Wash.

The two men lifted the unconscious Freelancer up and onto an unused table and gently set her down. Wash flicked his helmet lights on and then scanned her armor up and down the length of her body, his expert eyes keen to any damaged component that might be responsible for her injuries. But after several minutes he found nothing.

"Well?" Jenny asked.

"I don't get it," her armor looks fine, true she took a nasty hit to the head but that shouldn't have done anything to keep her out this long. It makes no sense."

"So what the fuck do we do?" Church demanded.

"We can try to get her armor off, try administering first aid ourselves, but I don't know what we'd be able to do. I mean she's in a fucking coma!"

"Something like that happened to Lea once, she fell off of the Warthog while in the gunner's seat and then hit her head on a tree and was out like a light for several days," Jenny put in, "turns out that her armor had locked up and that she was waiting for us to fix the armor's recovery mode."

"You think she's in recovery mode?" Wash asked, "I don't think so, I'm not getting a beacon from her, she is an A.I. so I should be getting one."

"What if your armor's been completely stripped of the equipment necessary to hear those beacons?" Church asked, "it wouldn't be that hard to believe. None of the other Reds or Blues could hear it whenever I got killed."

"That's right, I had to retrieve my armor from ONI before I could head out on my mission to get the Director. A mission that went South of the South Pole thanks to you guys."

"Hey we did it didn't we?" Church snapped back.

"Damn, I'm hungry, you guys hungry?" Jenny blurted, trying to change the subject.

"Some food wouldn't be a bad idea. The kitchen's back there, see what you can find, I'll get Tex's armor off," Wash calmly ordered.

"Not so fast Wash, I'll take care of Tex, you see if you can do something about the lights so I can see," Church snapped at Wash.

"Fine, be my guest."

Jenny barged through the door and immediately scanned the large chromed out kitchen, looking for anything that would help her get her hands on something to eat. Truth be told she was starving, and she could very much use something to eat. It would definitely get her mind off of the recent happenings in their new base which had thrown everything straight to hell. So when she had found what looked like a cupboard she opened it up. Inside were numerous cans of assorted foods, everything from soup to chili to peaches. It was nicely organized, with all the individual food groups together in close proximity. And every can seemed to be fresh and up to date. She smiled as she looked over everything and then, seeing nothing she really felt like she moved on, closing the cupboard and moved on, finding a fridge farther across the room. She shined her helmet's lights onto it and yanked open the large fridge to find all manner of healthy and unhealthy foods present in the large refrigerator so she immediately yanked out a package of yogurt and tore one from its partners. Satisfied she turned around to try and find a spoon to eat the yogurt with. She found a set of spoons hanging off of one of the metal counters in the middle of the room so she went over to grab one. Setting her helmet on the counter so she was able to eat she reached over to grab one.

But a scratching sound from her left distracted her and the spoon dropped to the ground, clanging and bouncing on the clean tiled surface. She bent down to grab the spoon but as she was stooping over to snatch it she saw something that made her heart stop in her chest and yanked her stomach into her throat. There before her was a door, an open door. It led out into the hallway and into the kitchen where the creature was able to get into where she was. A clicking sound emanated from around the corner and she instantly dropped behind the metal counter. She looked down to see the silhouettes of four large clawed paws, slowly, methodically walking directly adjacent to her. The scratching of the claws and the growling, of the creature sent fear screaming into her very soul. Snapping her head back up she leaned against the metal, taking great care not to giver herself away. She felt her hands start to shake, and her lip began quivering as she tried to fight the urge go screaming from the kitchen. Because if she did, she was as good as dead, and being killed by a vicious creature in space satellite in the pitch black was something she did not want to try out.

"Hey Jenny you coming with that food or what?!" she heard Wash yell from the main cafeteria.

Instantly she heard a terrifying, but familiar growling noise come from the creature not three feet away from her. The clicking sounds stopped, and Jenny then felt the spine chilling feeling of hot breath blowing past her left cheek. The growling turned into snarling, and she slowly turned her head to look over to her left as the breaths poured over her face. Not six inches from her face it was there, her breath became ragged and frantic, and she instantly tried crab walking away from the large four legged beast. But the thing matched her step for step, and when she slipped her hand on a puddle her head fell back and she hit her back on the tile. This sudden movement triggered the beast, and instantly a paw was planted onto her breast plate and she found herself pinned, and she could see the white sharp teeth right in front of her nose as the thing snarled into her face. The weight of the creature kept her there, and when she tried to turn her head she shut her eyes for fear of looking into, literally, the jaws of death. Hot drool dropped to her cheek and she prayed for help, from anyone, anyone but Caboose, and her prayers were met by a blinding light from above.

BIG Z: If that's not a cliff hanger I don't know what is, now I'm too tired to write a long cameo so I'll just give you guys the Next Chapter Preview.

Grif: That sounds like a good idea to me.

Lisa: What in the Hell are you talking about? You weren't even in this chapter!

Liz: Neither were you sis'

Lisa: Oh shutup!

BIG Z: Seriously? I'm trying to sleep here, keep it down!

Next Chapter Preview: Is it God? Is it fate? Is it a boy or girl, find out next time.