Chapter 4: Crucible
For a second it felt just like dreaming: surreal and vivid, yet distant… intangible. He felt like a microbe in a pool of white light, yet his consciousness seemed to envelope and understand everything around him, if only for an infinitely brief moment. Time itself shifted around him; he watched the universe like an omnipotent God--witnessed nebulae condense into stars, accretion disks into planets, before age and decay rendered them sterile rocks in mere seconds. He saw galaxies birthed as time flowed around him. All the moments in all of time, every corner of the universe, from the oldest darkest regions where no stars ever formed, to the core heart of the universe, where super-condensed galaxies danced and spiralled like deities…
In the blink of an eye it was gone. He lay enveloped in darkness and the stars were now distant specks of light high above. The Spartan Warrior's armour was still set to terrestrial use from his time aboard the Diadem, and the air that the scrubbers pumped to him smelled like wood smoke and damp soil. Wherever the Fold had shot him to, it seemed to be a planet… and have a tolerable atmosphere. It occurred to him after a moment that he could still be aboard the Forerunner construct, such was their expertise at replicating terrestrial conditions aboard their vast installations.
The darkness around him was almost silent, except for the crackle of burning wood. Master Chief lay in silence, contemplating where and, more importantly, when he was. Somehow--although he had nothing to gauge it against, he reasoned--it didn't feel like the end of all time to him, as Pensive Storm had stated the Fold was programmed to fire to. But everything had happened so fast aboard the Diadem, and the machinery of the Fold was so damaged when he activated it, that it was impossible to tell where in time and space he had ended up.
He rolled onto his side and got to his feet, feeling vibrant, alive, refreshed, like after a good night's sleep. It was as if travelling through the Fold had recharged his body and spirit. And after the weariness he had endured after his awakening aboard the aft of the Dawn, it was a welcome sensation. With his eyes still adjusting to the dark, the Chief took a few uneasy steps forwards, unsure of his footing, and felt the ground rise steeply immediately. After following the steep banks for what must have been three or four circuits, he came to the conclusion that he was trapped in a small but deep impact crater. The ground trembled for dully for a moment, and in the east, the unmistakable glow off an explosion turned the sky amber for a moment, before fading into darkness again. By the faint light of the explosion, he had his suspicions confirmed: He was indeed standing in a crater of some sort. But as the light waned, he saw something a little more urgent: the impact had apparently punched into a buried sinkhole, or cave, and the ground around him was slowly slipping into the mysterious and, judging by the volume of earth it was swallowing with ease, very deep hole. With the soil underfoot loosened a little by the impact tremor coming from far to the east, the ground beneath him began to give and slip. The Warrior began clambering up the walls of the crater, finding himself trying to out pace the falling dirt, or risk being swallowed by the deep dark, like a grain of sand through an hourglass. On his sixth attempt he reached the rim, and grasped at the ferns and vines that covered the ground, hauling himself over the edge to a sure, secure footing.
Almost straight away, with the immediate risk avoided, his thoughts turned to the flood. A Gravemind and it's Flood army--that's how 542 Pensive Storm described what was imprisoned aboard the Diadem. And they had been hurled through space and time just like the Warrior himself. The most pertinent question was if they had been zapped to the same space and time. They could be light years apart, in every sense of the term. For all he knew it could be the birth of the universe, or the end of it. For all he knew he could very well be on Earth in the time of the Dinosaurs, or on some distant planet in some distant galaxy on the other side of the universe. Or not. But he had a suspicion that wherever the Flood were fired to, he was riding right along behind them in their wake. He pulled his side arm and checked the clip: Only seven rounds left--hardly enough to take down a Flood army. He reholstered the weapon and set off towards the earlier explosion--eastwards, by his helmet's heads-up-display--out of curiosity. The impact was probably nothing but a stray meteorite. But maybe--just maybe--something of practical use had come through the Fold with him.
It was a trek he was in no mood for. Although brought up in the ways of a warrior, there had always been the promise of an end to his battles--a goal to strive for. With the defeat of the Covenant and the containment of the Flood threat, he had thought he had reached that goal, and had earned the right to live in peace for a while. It was beginning to feel like it would never end…
He had made a few miles by sunrise, and was pleased to find he had strayed little from his eastward course. With a little luck he might find the impact site by nightfall. During the trek his thoughts turned to Cortana more than once. He wondered if she was still trapped aboard the Diadem, or if she had been destroyed by either the activation of the Fold, or the meteorites that bombarded the installation. He was growing aware that he missed her acutely, as he had before when he was forced to leave her behind aboard the Covenant Sanctum, High Charity, when she attempted (and failed) to blow the engines of the crippled and Flood overrun UNSC frigate In Amber Clad. He had rescued the AI construct from the clutches of a Gravemind a short time later, realising just how much he depended on her; she was his friend, his guide and his conscience--as alive to him as any human in the galaxy. Somehow, bizarrely, his mind felt like an emptier place.
--
A theory was starting to formulate in his mind, a theory that--if he was correct--could paradoxically make survival on this unknown world a lot easier, or a lot harder. Since his arrival, he had heard no birdsong, no mating calls. No growls. No sounds of any kind that indicated this world supported any kind of animal life. But he had been on enough worlds in his time to know that where there was flora, there was usually fauna there to feed upon it and, usually, predators that fed on those. In what surely had to be considered a survival situation, he knew the importance of protein in his diet, and the idea of killing and butchering an animal for food didn't trouble him in the least. What was slightly more pressing was deducing what vegetation would be safe to eat, and what could be potentially poisonous--but on an unknown world, even though the flora seemed strangely familiar, how was he to tell with complete confidence what was safe for consumption and what was not? And, of course, he would have to ensure that he didn't end up on the menu himself. There would be a few times when he was exposed to such dangers from carnivores, since his Armour was tough enough to most kinds of mauling, but eating times, with his protective helmet removed, would be one such example. His life now would be a constant fight for survival. He held no illusions of rescue.
The sun reached its zenith in the sky, and the misty haze that had hovered just above ground level began to burn off. Still making good pace, the Chief grew confidant that he would make it to the mountains in the east by nightfall, and as he closed the distance, he could see a high natural pass a few miles north of a huge beautiful waterfall that cascaded over a cliff edge majestically. He hoped that the pass would lead to a way to the other side of the mountains.
His helmet's Heads-Up-Display suddenly locked onto something ahead, the waypoint indicating that it was nearly two hundred meters away. The waypoint marker remained a steady green color, indicating that it shouldn't be considered hostile. Curious, the Spartan picked up his pace to a jog. The waypoint marker steadily counted down the meters as he made up the distance quickly, and he came to a complete halt as the counter dropped to a solitary meter. On the jungle floor he could see no more than shrubs, vines and soft rotting mulch, even though the waypoint marker indicated that he was directly facing the mysterious object. He knelt and cleared away the leaves and mosses. When he saw the corner of the object his heart began hammering in his chest. He hurriedly cleared away the rest and beheld the object; as if it might disappear at the next moment, he grabbed it up and observed it closely, hoping vainly that she was in there somehow. But she wasn't; Cortana's module lay in his palm empty and lifeless. After looking at it numbly for a few moments, the warrior slid the module home into the neural interface on his helmet. Resigned to the fact that Cortana was gone, he set off eastwards again.
Though he was by no means an survivalist, self-sufficiency on the battlefield was a must for Spartans, and the techniques had been a part of the intense training program. The UNSC were famous for the close air-support they offered their troops, but the Spartans were designed to take the fight to the enemy on battlefields where air support might not be possible for weeks, even months at a time. To counter this each Spartan II had instilled in them tracking and hunting techniques from a young age. But since they were so resilient, their will to fight so strong, and their armour so well insulated, Spartans rarely sought shelter—each of the mentality that they should never need to stop long enough to need it; thus, it was not part of the program taught to the fledgling warriors.
The tracker skills instilled in him began now to notice the small things around him: A broken twig, hanging from a branch at head height; indentations in the mulch and soft, wet soil of the jungle floor, small, deep. Like a stake or a similarly pointed object had been driven a short way into the dirt. The latter spoor seemed to make no sense to him; the depressions seemed orderly to a point, concentrated together--almost as if...
His next thought gave him pause for thought: the spoor was telling him that a large multi-limbed creature had trodden this ground. With a small but rising sense of urgency the Warrior knelt and examined closely what he believed to be the footprints of a creature unlike anything he had seen before. Judging by the depth of the depressions in the soil, he estimated that the creature had to weigh close to three-hundred pounds, and by correlating that estimate with the broken twigs hanging from nearby trees, guessed that it had to be at least the height of a grown man. Whether or not it was dangerous would only be conjecture at this point; on this world he couldn't be sure of anything, but the idea of a three-hundred pound multi-limbed beast was not a comforting one. In order to know what he was dealing with, he began tracking it mainly because the tracks led in the direction he intended to go: East. Now, more than ever, he became aware of just how little ammunition he carried in his only weapon—his pistol—as he followed the tracks.
Within a few minutes he noticed that the trees had began to thin out, and more light managed to penetrate the dense jungle canopy. Here and there the trees seemed to be smeared in some green luminescent liquid. His first thought was that it might be some kind of natural secretion from the alien trees that surrounded him, but as air was drawn into the scrubbers, he could smell the unmistakable taint of blood under the fresh oxygen-rich air; all blood smelled the same no matter what species they were. He knew that all too well. He approached the trunk of a wide, tall tree. The blood was splattered in big arcs, indicating that whatever was bleeding was injured badly enough for its blood to jet and spurt from an artery. The Chief pulled his sidearm, now convinced that he shared this world with at least one serious threat. He scanned the ground, looking to follow the blood trails when he saw what was unmistakably a footprint in the soft soil beside the tree. The foot was broad and long—humanoid, definitely: this other creature walked on two legs. He followed both sets of prints until the trees gave way to a large natural clearing. The flattened blood-soaked grasses told the story of a struggle that led him deeper into the clearing until he stumbled on his first grim find: An Arm. Obviously from the humanoid creature he had tracked. Its tough mottled skin was shredded just where the arm should have been attached to a shoulder. The Warrior inspected the gruesome appendage with piqued curiosity: the clawed hand was protected by fingerless animal hide gloves, and there was a device of sorts mounted upon a gauntlet on its wrist. He rubbed a clot of dirt from the device, and was surprised when it flipped open like the cover of a book. It was obvious that it was some kind of console, with buttons and a display. What its purpose was he couldn't tell from this cursory inspection. He placed the severed limb back on the ground and continued following the blood trail, until he found the rest of the creature. The first thing that struck him was its height, for it must have been at least a foot taller than he, which meant that it was not much short of eight feet tall, maybe more; it was hard to tell from the atrophied, mangled corpse. Its face was masked, and as he tried to pull it away, he became aware that it must have been held in place by a seal. He followed the cables and tubing from the creature's mask, down past its shoulder, on which it sported a weapon of some kind, to a pack, mounted on the back of its left shoulder, which seemed to house some basic life-support functions, plus motorized controls for the weapon attached. He tugged at the tubes, which came away with a gaseous hiss. This time the mask came away easily. Beneath it was a fearsome face that was at once alien, yet somehow familiar. The beast had a wide, flat crest , covered in what looked like ritual scars, its eyes looked into nothingness, mere pupils in an all white orb. But its mouth...its mouth was a fearsome maw of talon-like mandibles that looked like they could rip the living flesh from a Crocodile. Strangely, this was the trait the Warrior found familiar, since it reminded him of the Sangheili of Sanghelios—the race of the Covenant's dreaded Elites. Add to that the average height of the Sangheili and you could have a race that could be distant cousins, perhaps sharing a common ancestor back in the depths of history. Then again, perhaps not; such was mere speculation based only on slight physical similarities. Whatever this thing was, it was damn ugly. That was for sure.
On the beast's remaining arm there was another gauntlet, similar to the one he had found just minutes earlier. Similar, but different. As he inspected it he realized that it was rigged to the beast's forearm for reasons he couldn't yet place. Turning it over, the beast's dead hand fell limply, and two wicked barbed blades pumped out of the gauntlet side by side, each over a foot long.
His next thought came immediately, and in the same moment, he was searching for a way to remove the gauntlet from the beast's arm and find a way to lash it to his own; Any weapon had to be better than none, and he wasn't above getting up-close and personal when the bullets were spent. Neither was he above filching for weapons from the dead—no matter what the species. The gauntlet slid off the beast's wrist after he hauled it so hard he was convinced momentarily that he had ripped the arm out of its socket. Left lashed on its wrist now were a series of hide straps, from which protruded small metallic posts, each with a small hole bored in the center. On closer inspection he found that this was how the gauntlet--which had to weigh ten-pounds at least—stayed secure. He loosened the straps and lashed them to his own wrist, though he soon found that his own armour was too bulky to fit the gauntlet. It would need work.
The weapon and pack mounted on the beast's shoulder was a sore temptation for him, for if he could somehow find out how it worked, it would give him a projectile weapon to rely on, instead of just the blades. He hefted the pack—which was attached by similar hide straps—into a netting bag the beast carried on its belt, hoping that he would not run into one soon. Or, indeed, the creature capable of tearing this well-armed beast to pieces.
He began heading east again, by himself, but not alone.
Not by a long shot.
--
The message came through as Rico debriefed his troopers, safely back aboard the Sentry of Eons. It made his heart sink, for it was not the first time he had received such a message. Nor, he suspected, would it be the last. The text blinked on the data pad:
Strong human bio-signature found on the surface. The Captain wants to know if you have possibly left anyone behind.
Regards, Thomson. A. 6741124
He looked at the message numbly. Someone had been left behind alive. During the debrief Jansen, the shaken trooper who had taken over first squad when Keever was disabled, had told Rico that he had sent six runners through bug territory to reach fourth squad when their communications were cut off. They had never come back, and everyone, including Rico—who cursed himself and told himself he should have known better—had considered them dead. Now it looked like there was a survivor. Just one.
With each and every mission against the bug there was always personnel M.I.A, and after the first disastrous incursion to bug territory on Planet P it had become a compulsory measure to scan for survivors after extraction. Survivors were rare.
After the strange events on the surface, Rico was in no mood for a return trip anytime soon. They were unprepared for a battle against bugs and two other alien species they knew next to jack-shit about. The troopers were busy chatting and joking and sharing their stories of what happened on the surface for the moment, as was their wont when they had ticked off another mission and come back alive, but if any of them had looked at Rico for a moment, he knew the mood of the room would change in a heartbeat. Instead, he told them the debrief could wait (which was received with whoops, whistles and heart-felt cheer) and made his way to the planetary tech station, located on the lower fore deck, just below the bridge. The commtech—a rookie—started out of his seat as if to salute, faltered halfway out and sat again, before, Rico saw, the flustered fleet rookie readied to repeat the whole process again. Rico saved him anymore confusion (though not embarrassment, since the noob had already turned almost purple with all the blood flooding his cheeks and forehead) by waving him back into his seat. "At ease, Crewman."
"Y..Yes, Sir."
"The surviving trooper," Rico said. "What does his transponder say?"
"We don't know, Sir. " Replied Thomson, flushing red again.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Barked Rico. He was short with the tech, but now didn't seem to be the time for niceties. The flustered crewman began punching buttons on his console frantically.
"The transponder signal is off the charts, Sir; it's like it's super compressed into a stacked packet burst, and we can't decrypt it."
"The signal's fried?"
"No, Sir. It's like nothing I've ever seen."
"But it could be a fried signal?" Rico pressed.
"I don't..."
"We got hit pretty hard by that freak electrical storm from hell down there. If that's one of my troopers with a fried transponder, I want to know." Said Rico, jabbing a finger at the screen that showed the location of the signal.
"I don't know what to tell you, Sir."
"Answer me some questions then: Is it human?"
"Yes, Sir. Without a doubt."
"Is it alive?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Good." Said Rico. "Then we're going to get it."
He had turned and was halfway out the door when the tech spoke. "There's one more thing, Sir."
Rico halted and turned. His mood since landing back aboard the Sentry of Eons had been amiable, if a little spooked by what he had witnessed on the planet below. Now, with the prospect of having to lead a search and rescue on the surface, his mood was turning blacker by the second. "What is it?" He asked, again aware that he was being short with the crewman, who was doing an adequate job.
"The signal, Sir. It's moving... headed east. Maybe to where first squad were positioned when that thing came down on top of them."
Rico nodded and exited, his suspicions all but confirmed. It had to be a survivor from First squad. And whoever it was deserved a goddamn medal as far a Rico was concerned; hell, whoever survived alone for seventeen hours on a bug infested planet deserved a goddamn holiday named after them. Only one person had ever survived for longer than that (officially on record) and had lived to tell the tale. But that had been a long time ago...
For the moment, he had a rescue operation to mount—one that could potentially cost more lives than it was worth, but he would never knowingly leave a trooper to the horror of being stranded on a bug world alone. Not even if he had to pay the Reaper with his own life.
--
Despite the med-bay crew's protestations, a crowd had began to gather at the window to the operating theatre. The troopers jostled and nudged each other for the best position, all vying to watch med-bay removing the strange new bug that got Sergeant Keever. It had been given many nicknames by the troopers, but only one had seemed to stick so far, although when Rain first uttered it in his usual facetious fashion, he meant it as an ironic observation. By now it had spread far enough for everyone to refer to it by the name Rain had given it, though some who tried to invent their own names for it (such as "Spider-bug"; "the Visitor"; "The Crab"; and perhaps most bizarrely, "Hank") stubbornly tried to cling to their self-appointed monikers. The rest just called it "The Hugger" as Rain had dubbed it.
The Med-bay team had been examining it for almost an hour now, and all they had ascertained was that it was not—as everyone believed—killing the Sergeant. As a matter of fact, it was keeping his blood and brain well oxygenated, though there was a mysterious substance that the Hugger was slowly releasing into his blood stream that they couldn't identify, but it seemed to have rendered him unconscious, or to have paralysed him, since he was completely unresponsive to any stimuli.
Knowing the tale of the effect a hugger had on the barrel of a trooper's blazer hours earlier made the task no easier; they couldn't cut it off, and when they tried prying its slender digits from its vice grip in Sergeant Keever's face, its tail coiled tighter and tighter around his neck like the mythical devil's snare. As if sensing events were conspiring against it, the hugger moved of its own accord.
"Whoa! Look out, man!" cried one of the observing troopers, moments later joined by more in a chorus of warnings, shouting and pointing frantically, leaving greasy fingerprints smeared over the glass of the observation window.
When Doctor Morse glimpsed its minute movements, he stumbled backwards a few steps in horror, grasping his two assistants and hauling them back with him, all now heading straight for the door as quickly as their legs could carry them, even though the hugger had barely moved more than an inch. They halted at the door, aware now that it wasn't giving chase, and the troopers at the window fell into a still silence as the thing slowly, sluggishly, eased it's grasp on Keever. The tail uncoiled its snare around his throat; it's legs relaxed, and if it wasn't so transfixing to behold, some of the troopers would surely have laughed as it lethargically slid off the Sergeant's face and landed with a thud that seemed both hollow and wet at the same time on the floor, its legs curled into its body like the atrophied legs of a dead spider.
Everyone was so still for a moment, as if waiting for the thing to suddenly lunge at anyone who moved, or spoke, or breathed.... scared that it was playing possum to snare a new victim. Predictably, it was a trooper, safely behind the glass of the observation window who spoke first: "Doc.... Is it dead?"
Morse, still trembling, glanced at the collage of curious faces looking at him through the glass, bug eyed and sweating. "Hell if I know!" was his answer.
One of his assistants moved away from his side and slowly, cautiously, approached the hugger as it lay on the floor, being careful to stay at arm's length from it. The medic picked up the closest tool to hand—a sonic scalpel—and prodded it, once, twice...
"Careful!" urged Doc Morse, his voice no more than a whisper. After a few more reassuring prods from the tool in the trainee's hand everyone seemed to believe it was indeed dead.
The stillness and evaporating tension was shattered completely as a tannoy announced: "All combat personnel report to loading bay four. Repeat: All combat personnel to loading bay four."|
The troopers departed, discontentedly, knowing that the order could only spell trouble. The med-bay staff were left with their enigmatic alien stiff.
Soon the other med-bays would be reporting similar phenomenon among the fourteen other personnel who had been attacked by the loathsome creatures.....
–
They began dribbling into the bay, sullen in their fatigues. That was fine by Rico; this was an appeal for volunteers first and foremost, and if he could find none, he would just have to pick 'em. As it was, once he had explained the situation most of Keever's first squad volunteered straight away, still haunted by the memory of the six MIA troopers who had gone for reinforcements when that ship came down on them, until now presumed dead. A good percentage of the other squads heeded the call also; too much to risk for the sake of one life. Perhaps, Rico thought, he should have said he was taking no more than two recon and rescue squads. Sixteen men in total, including himself and Dalray, whom he hand picked to be his second on the ground. Dalray was a given. He was one of the best officers he had ever met, let alone served with or commanded: Firm, capable, inspiring, fearless (to the point that Rico had thought him a liability when they had first met, though his mind was quickly changed within their first few engagements) and with balls enough to pipe up when he thought his superior was making a bad call. Rico saw a lot of his younger self in Dalray, and wondered whatever had happened that young Johnny Rico that lingered in his memory and in the old weary bones and the multitudes of scars upon the skin of his body. "Lieutenant, pick your squad." Rico ordered.
"Sir." Said Dalray, and began calling out names immediately. Rico, not knowing his troopers as well as his officers did, nor as much as he would have liked to, looked at the faces before him. He saw the set jaws, the determined gleam in the eyes of those who volunteered and meant it, and the evasive glances of those who only stepped up to save face. The latter were dismissed instantly from potential selection. Without naming names, or even asking for them, he walked past the ranks, picking seven troopers as he went. Poledouris and Azumi were among his group. As was Van Buren, Dalray noted with concern; he was an odd one... constantly glancing around all the time with his big wide eyes, his listless posture. Something about him made Dalray uneasy, something he could never quite pin down. Rico on the other hand saw the keen glint in Van Buren's eyes, ever watchful and alert. He had learned never to dismiss the odd ones a long time ago, since most were so deeply instilled with a vast inferiority complex that could push them to extraordinary efforts given the right circumstances.
"Get ready." Ordered Rico. "We're bringing that trooper back alive."
–
Phay'd sped through the treetops as quickly as his muscles could take him, desperately seeking the wreckage of the main seeder that had fallen, tumbling from the sky, beneath the blazing hulk of the mothership, which had seared through the sky to its destruction to the east. Somehow, through circumstances completely unknown to him, things had gone from bad to worse...
Gryshh had been left behind to watch over the Dek'd'tor, while Phay'd had chosen to search for survivors—if there were any—in the wreck of the main seeder. From there, he knew he must set out to ascertain the fate of the mothership, although it seemed plainly obvious that it was most certainly destroyed. But what had happened? What had caused that powerful explosion at the mothership's engines? If it cost him every drop of blood he had ever spilled in his time, and all of it coursing through his veins, he knew he had to find the meaning of that bizarre lightning storm that had followed moments later. Were they perhaps connected?
The sound of the breeze blowing through the trees and the rustling of the branches were the only sounds he heard as he raced westwards, but more were coming to him now, carried on a wind that smelled like smelted steel. It was both heartening and grave; the sounds were of an enraged Yautja, it's roar and the blast of its cannon shattering the air--more so: he could hear a screeching, hissing cacophony he knew so well that only came from the Hard Meat. His visor began picking up the heat signature of the wreckage...
He came to the end of a long strong limb that overlooked the crash site, pausing for just a moment to see a lone Yautja fending off several Hard Meat drones. The Queen, the matriarch of the hive, their hard won prize, was gone. He leapt to the ground roaring with rage and blood lust, landing with a litheness that belied his age. His Kicti'pa—his wicked, cleaving wrist blades—sprang from their sheaths to a single metallic tone that was a song of the hunt to his ears. He sprang forwards, ramming the blades through the head of the nearest drone he could reach, simultaneously targeting another that was sneaking up behind the survivor. The blast from his burner sent the creature flying backwards head (although it didn't actually have one any more) over heels in a macabre somersault.
The survivor didn't notice, and continued to fend off three drones that had boxed him in. Phay'd moved to intercept when talons reached from behind and hooked into the flesh over his left ribs, sinking so deep he could feel them grinding against the bone. Phay'd howled with agony and rage and reached behind him. Upon finding something he could grasp, he hauled the drone over his shoulder and threw it to the ground. It lay there squirming for a moment before he finished it permanently by stomping its head into the soil repeatedly.
By now the survivor had noticed his presence, and had turned his body so that Phay'd could join him and together they could assume the classic defensive position to fall back together, while fending off the hard meat as one. As Phay'd fought off the remaining aliens (by now sure there were less than ten left, considering how many drone bodies littered the jungle floor—if all had survived the crash) the survivor pointed the south-east, towards a distant volcanic promontory that began a chain of cliffs and mountains that ran northwards. He could see broken twigs and branches high in the trees and large, deep alien footprints in the soft mulch of the jungle floor—a path of destruction that was the classic tell-tale signature of a berserking Hard Meat Queen. Hearteningly, two trails of bright Yautja blood followed the path of carnage. The Queen was alive, and two injured Yautja had followed, but, he remembered, they were only likely to encounter that deadly new hard meat species, which could rip a Yautja limb from limb...
A drone leapt at him, hissing and spitting, talons at full reach, and the hunter at his side drove his spear through its body so hard that it continued through and impaled its arm, leaving it stuck in a final grim tableaux, fixed in the position of its final attack . The last attacking alien died, it's mouth a permanent sneer...
The respite gave Phay'd a moment to pull his medical pack and tend his wounds; his ribs would only really start hurting when his adrenaline levels started dropping, and it would be best to have his injuries treated before then. He was not the first sentient creature on the world to realise that no glory could come of this, and that it was now a fight for survival.
As was usual for the Yautja after combat, both hunters communicated in a way that was barely verbal, speaking volumes in short trills and grunts, displaying their intentions with body language, ancient and instilled in them from birth, both understood the other naturally.
The other hunter—who hadn't identified himself yet, nor could Phay'd recognise him-- seemed to wish to follow the others who were tracking the Queen. Phay'd ignored his overt gestures, ducking into a tear in the side of the smoking wreckage of the main seeder. The remains of four other Yautja lay strewn around the ship, including the burned and mangled remains of the Captain, Noc, his flayed hands still grasping the controls, brow and crest knit heavily over his eyes with determination. He headed deeper into the craft, squeezing through the the bulkhead to the pens. Only a handful of drones lay dead within, some killed by the crash, others seemingly crushed by the great weight of the alien queen. Her tethers had sheared cleanly off at the wall. Whether due to the crash or the tremendous force of will of the Hard Meat Queen could only be guessed. Tough leathery eggs lay strewn all over. Some, like the drones, crushed. Others scorched until their contents had cooked alive. Some, however, were very much still alive. His visor caught movement in the high waveband that penetrated the outer layer of the eggs, showing him twitching crawlers within, ready to hatch into this world and make it their own.
Like his hunt brothers before him, who had set out after the Queen, he was left with a choice of what to do next; the seeding was supposed to be a controlled process, where Hard Meat locations and movements could be—to a degree—manipulated. Circumstances had changed now. This was no longer just a fine new world ripe for seeding; this was now home until the time when the Elders would arrive, and nobody could predict when that would happen. He realised that to try to control the Hard Meat would be folly; The other seeding squads would surely have deposited their cargo by now, and were likely converging somewhere near the wreck of the mothership, investigating its fate, searching for survivors. It was then that a plan began to formulate in his mind. Though the seeding craft didn't have the range to allow effective escape from this world, they could easily be used to hop its continents. If he could gather all the survivors together, they could depart for safer climes, and leave this place to the Hard Meat—both new and old. It satisfied both criteria of solving the situation he and his fellow hunters faced, namely survival. To die in the glory of a hunt was one thing. But to be the hunted, running scared forever, that was abhorrent to his every sense.
The most glaring question remaining was: would the Hard meat survive these new creatures—these new hard meat that had been described to him, that had ripped Yautja apart with apparent ease? Could they survive each other? As a Yautja he was instilled with a deeply ingrained will to find and overcome all unknown factors, but this world had proven particularly deadly.
His mind still spinning with a thousand separate thoughts, Phay'd gestured for the other hunter to follow. He would leave the eggs intact. The world was meant for the Hard Meat, and it was all theirs. All they had to do was survive it...
The pair of hunters ascended into the jungle canopy at Phay'd's lead and began heading eastward again, towards the sun, which rose burning red in his visor's wavelength against the cool blues of the distant mountains. If he could find the others he had left behind to come here, he would take them towards that sun, towards where the mothership surely now lay as a tomb to so many dead Yautja. He was beginning to hurt now, however. The wound in his side, although treated, was burning... burning like his ribs were white hot embers searing his flesh, and he knew it was slowing him already. To the best of his knowledge, only the Yautja at his side—whom he had dubbed Claw--was fit and healthy enough to be in any kind of ready state for a fight. Phay'd himself, Gryshh, and the Dek'd'tor would all be an impediment to him. He halted, browsing the treetops, searching for any kind of useful landmark he could use to guide himself back to the others, before realising that he had been in such a haste to ascertain the fate of Noc and the main seeder that he had paid no mind to his surroundings. The dash through the trees was a blur, as was the memory of it now.
Finding them would be a difficult task.
–
"Sir!" Cried someone behind Rico. "Sir! SIR!!"
When he turned, feeling that stern look on his face and meaning every bit of it, he saw he was being followed into the drop-bay by a team of whitecoats, all looking harried and sweaty, hauling crates of assorted equipment he couldn't even begin to guess the nature of. It did nothing to improve his mood.
The term whitecoats itself was a somewhat dated anarchism, since modern federation scientists assigned to particular ships usually wore the same combat fatigues as everyone else—they were, after all, soldiers first, and would be expected to bear arms should it be required of them. The real big difference was how soft they often got. The five whitecoats approaching him now all looked like they'd fold in the heat. Semantics aside, a whitecoat was a whitecoat, something he had no time to entertain. "I don't have time for this."
"We won't take any of your time, Sir; we just want to hitch a ride to the surface. " Said the lead whitecoat. A weathered redhead whose scarred face and neck spoke volumes about her time before joining the science crew of the Sentry of Eons. Maybe, he thought, this one was moulded out of something a little harder than the rest. The others: two slightly overweight Caucasians men, a far-east Asian guy and a waspish brunette who looked so young he was convinced she must have joined up straight out of college, all looked like soft putty compared to the one who led them. He glanced at the lead whitecoat's left breast pocket on her fatigues. There, stitched in black thread below her number was her name: Silberman. She looked like fired clay next to her play-doh entourage.
"Okay." He nodded. "You've got two minutes to get your shit stowed. We drop in three, with or without you."
"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir." Said the redhead, before turning to her team and issuing orders in a flurry of gestures.
Both the rescue teams had their weapons safely stowed when Rico stepped aboard the dropship, and Dalray was already going over the mission brief with them, making sure everyone knew their place. Sturdy equipment cases begin to tumble in the hatch behind Rico, and soon the science team were peering through the opening apprehensively. Their gazes were met by those of sixteen determined mobile infantrymen, whose glares could probably have withered freshly cut flowers. "Stow your shit and grab a seat. Hurry" Rico ordered, taking his own beside the hatch to the cockpit. One of his troopers uttered a witty joke about the whitecoats that drew some giggles as they secured their equipment before sheepishly taking a row of seats that left them all sitting together, safely away from the grunts. Except for the redhead. Silberman took the seat next to Rico, winking to him confidently, her scarred skin a thin wrinkled film that slid over the muscles beneath as she did so. Rico returned a polite nod and checked his watch. The mysterious trooper that had left behind had been down there for almost eighteen hours now by his estimate, and their chances for survival were diminishing by the second. At least they were still alive so far; Thomson, the commtech who discovered the signal, had been ordered to notify Rico of any and all changes to that signal. If the trooper on the surface stopped to piss, he wanted to know.
The last seconds of that minute ticked away, and on the mark of 2345 hundred hours, he signalled the pilot to commence the drop.
They were bringing that trooper back alive, he determined. They had to bring him back alive.
His damn sanity needed this to be a win.
–
Master Chief was beginning to get a sense that distances on this world were deceptive. It was almost as if the air itself magnified everything around, and made it seem closer than it really was. The fact that night had fallen before he had made it anywhere near the mountains that earlier had seemed so within reach were testament to that; by the full light of day they had looked no more than twenty miles away—a distance he knew he could make at a leisurely pace in a few hours. The short night had passed, and now, backlit by the twilight of the coming dawn, the mountains still looked to be in the double figures of miles away. And though his fatigue threshold was far above that of a normal human, he had begun tire.
When he came upon the cave, he intended to bypass it and continue onwards, but his muscles, eyelids and mind were heavy with weariness. Switching on the lamps located below his helmet's visor the Chief carefully inspected the ground at the yawning cave mouth, looking for spoor, tracks--anything that might indicate it was still in use by something he might not want to stumble into--but finding nothing. Out of an instinct that told him to hide, and hide well, rather than a need for shelter (since his Mjolnir armour was all the shelter he would ever need, such was its superior engineering) the Spartan proceeded inside. The rocky floor was slick with a moist gelatinous film, and as he looked around, he saw beaded strings of the same gelatinous liquid suspended from strange calcified cones that hung from the roof like stalactites, too uniform in size and spacing to be natural. Where the rocks weren't slick with the congealed liquid, mould seemed to flourish, covering everything in a furry blue coat. As he headed deeper into the cave the hollow sound of the breeze blowing by the mouth of the cave died away. For some reason the dark and silence reminded him of being back aboard the Diadem...
The beams of the lamps fell on a mound of rocks, no more than forty meters ahead. The way had been sealed off by a cave-in, his way barred by an impenetrable barrier of rocks. Here and there he could see gaps—like spyholes into the darkness beyond that the lamps couldn't pierce. His armour's scrubbers pulled in air that smelled dampness and, strangely, an aroma that smelled slightly like spoiled meat, unpleasant and oily at the same time, but vague, indistinct.
Comfortable that he was hidden well enough from any immediate danger, the Spartan rested, propping his back against a large boulder from the cave-in, so that he faced back the way he had come. He pulled the netting bag onto his lap and inspected the weapons he had requisitioned from the alien corpse. No living creature that carried so many weapons could be good news, of that he was sure (though mankind, which never explored any new territory without a portable arsenal never figured into his equations, since he had been so singularly indoctrinated in mankind's right to bear arms against the enemy—whether said enemy was aware of their status or not).
The bladed gauntlet was first. As he examined it closely by the light of his helmet's lamps, he saw what he had not seen by the broad light of day, when he had hauled it from the arm of the dead crab-faced creature: a small latch that secured the blade unit to the gauntlet. When he pushed it aside, the blade unit slid backwards a few inches, exposing adjustable clasps that had been hidden away. Curious, he flicked the clasps open, and the gauntlet split in two on a hinge like a feeding clam, wide enough for him to fit it over his armour on his right arm. But as he tried to close it, it became a more difficult task, the girth of his armour preventing the two sides from meeting and locking together again. Awkwardly, and more out of a pressing need for weapons than any sense of experimentation, the warrior knelt on the gauntlet. After a few moments of forcing his weight down on it, he managed to force the clasps over, each hitting the catch at the extremities of their reach. He tugged at the gauntlet now fastened over his right arm testing its hold, assured that it wouldn't budge. He slid the blade unit back into place, being careful to place the ball-shaped activation switch at the flex point on the wrist of his armour, so that an inwards flick of the wrist would activate it. Once it was all back together, he gave it a quick cursory inspection and, first assuring the blades weren't pointed at himself, he curled his right hand into a fist and flexed his wrist. The blades pistoned out from the gauntlet in the blink of an eye, and the warrior felt a smile curl the edges of his lips. With a certain sense of satisfaction he relaxed his wrist and uncurled the fist he had made. The blades dutifully retracted into the unit with a metallic shuck!
Fishing around in the netting bag again, he pulled out the bulkier shoulder mounted weapon and saw immediately there was no way to mount it effectively upon his armour without extensive modifications being made to both weapon and suit. His weariness, coupled with his need to remain vigilant meant that he had neither the time, nor the inclination to carry out the modifications. Though with the spare leather straps that the beast had used to affix the gauntlet to its wrist now left over and unnecessary, he imagined a way he could perhaps lash it on physically. Of course, after that came the real difficult part: figuring out how the thing worked, and how to interface it with his suit.
He tucked it away in the netting bag again; It could wait.
Unknown sleepless time passed in the cave, despite how tired he was. The warrior, upon realising that his lamps were acting as a beacon signalling his presence to anything that was curious enough to investigate the cave, killed the lights.
The dark was timeless. Impossible to judge except by his steady breathing and the beat of his heart. His weariness was weighing down on him, heavier and heavier. Soon sleep took him into its own blackness.
–
It could have been minutes, or even hours later when he awoke with a jolt. Such was the shock of it, he was on his feet before he had fully come to his senses, and was left standing bewildered momentarily in the darkness, but convinced he was not alone. He turned on the lamps and observed the cave around him closely, but saw nothing. But before he had any chance to feel relief, something rammed hard into the other side of the rock fall behind him, trying to force its way through. Loose chips and bigger rocks fell away with the force of each impact, and he realised what had caused him to start awake so suddenly. When he faced the rock fall he saw nothing. Yet whatever lay beyond reacted to the lights. An insectile screech, sounding alarmingly close echoed through the cave, followed by a few more, then dozens all together.
He had alerted some kind of nest to his presence, and knew flight was his only choice. He pulled his sidearm and began backing away, keeping his eyes on the rockfall, which was now being battered repeatedly in more than one point, whatever lay on the other side vehemently trying to force its way through. As he back peddled, his feet slid away from beneath him on the slick rocks, landing hard enough on his back to knock the wind out of him a little. Laying there, vulnerable for the merest moments, he watched as the calcified cones on the cave roof eased out long, thin, pink tendrils that grasped at him, wrapping themselves around his limbs and head and neck. The warrior struggled against the binds helplessly, as they started to pull him towards the cave ceiling. Not first the first time of his short time on this planet, he felt like he was about to become supper for the indigenous creatures of this world. He hauled against the tendrils that had his right arm, bringing his sidearm to bear on one of the cones, and fired. The cone was blown into powder, and a fat, writhing grub nearly the length of his arm landed wetly on the rocks below. The obscene pink tendril whipping at the air from its grotesque maw. At that moment, the others released their grip on him, instead grasping at the writhing maggot thing on the rocks. The grub was pulled towards the cones above, to where many eager pincered mouths awaited.
The rocks behind had started to loosen due to the pounding from the far side, and as he got to his feet (unaware that the innards of the captured maggot thing were now dribbling on him from above), he could catch glimpses of the creatures through the gaps. There was now no choice: He had to run for his life
As he sped up the slope of slippery rocks, still dodging the tendrils that snaked out from the cones above, he heard the rocks of the cave-in finally give and tumble away. The vicious insectile screeches intensified, and the cave echoed with the sounds of hundreds of the creatures scuttling across the hard rocks. The last bend in the cave lay ahead, beyond it the outside world. Something screeched close by...
Too close.
The Warrior turned, and upon glimpsing what was following him, squeezed the trigger of the gun in his hand, firing off a single round. The beast recoiled slightly, falling into the beams of his helmet's lamps: A huge insect, with four scuttling legs and massive shearing jaws that protruded absurdly from its tiny thorax, mottled in pus hues of off-yellows and festering greens, which passed for camouflage on a world as carboniferous as this--A beast built for the kill, with dozens, maybe hundreds more following it eagerly.
He squeezed off another round, catching sight of its large orbit of an eye that rolled in its socket, seemingly the only soft spot in the beast's tough exoskeleton. Its eyeball splattered. The insectoid's reaction was of sheer outrage, its limbs and deadly jaws thrashing everywhere in a fury. But now he saw the others catching up behind it. He took to his feet again, sprinting up the slipper rocks and around the last corner, preparing to flee into the jungle.
Instead he found himself staring directly down the barrel of a large machine gun, and a moment later, staring at the face behind it, which looked as bewildered as the Chief himself felt. That look on the man's face changed in a moment from bewilderment, to the grim business-like set of a veteran soldier—the Spartan knew it well.
"Down!" ordered the man on the other side of the gun barrel.
The Spartan dropped and spun around, levelling his weapon at the approaching creatures, but before he could fire another round, the world around him suddenly erupted in gunfire. As he glanced around, he realised that the man was leading some kind of armed force.
The first wave of insect creatures were stopped in their tracks by the withering gunfire, leaving only bullet riddled carcasses that oozed out thick, green blood. When the soldiers paused to reload, the creatures launched another wave against them. The Chief did what he could with the last of his bullets, aiming for the soft eyeballs of the insectoids, hitting home with just two of the shots.
Above the tremendous noise of the gunfire, he heard someone shouting. "I can see conicals, Sir!"
"A nursery!" cried the leader. "Nuke it!"
A soldier ran to the front, crouching down on one knee and levelling a rocket launcher of sorts into the depths of the cave. The insectoids reacted with vitriolic rage and surged harder and faster, despite the hail of gunfire tearing them to pieces in the bottleneck of the cave mouth.
"Fall back!" ordered the leader as the insects pushed forwards inexorably, clambering over the carcasses of the fallen. The soldier beside the Chief readied his rocket launcher and held his finger on the trigger, and as Master Chief watched the soldier prepare to fire, a hand grasped at his shoulder. "Fall back! That's an order!" the leader shouted above the gunfire, tugging at him as if he were a stubborn mule.
The insectoids were less than ten meters away when the rocket was fired into the cave. As soon as the round was fired, the soldier dropped the launcher and ran for his life as fast as he could to rejoin the others. As the Chief himself caught up with the group, it seemed as though the leader was about to say something to him, when his focus changed in an instant. "Trooper, look out!" He cried to the rocket soldier. When the Chief turned, he saw the blastwave spewing flames out of the cave mouth, incinerating all the insectoids in an instant—all, except one. Without thinking, the Chief took to his feet, charging at the beast, despite the protestations of nearly everyone behind him.
The rocket soldier's face was a wide-eyed mask of panic as he desperately tried to outpace the beast. But with only a few strides to go, the Spartan could see he would never make it in time. He leapt forwards, hauling the soldier to the ground with him and praying that the leader had sense enough to take the split-second opportunity the Chief had created.
He did.
As soon as the Spartan had cleared the way, the group of soldiers opened fire, peppering the insectoid with hot explosive-tipped lead. The creature spasmed and jerked, its legs stomped the ground around the Chief and the soldier, driving the hard, sharp points of its legs (for they had no feet to speak of, just the toughened carapace that tapered to points which they used effectively as weapons with their praying-mantis like arms beside those disproportionately large and deadly jaws) deep into the soil. Suddenly it was over them—directly over them, stomping the ground as its body jerked this way and that way with the force of the bullets. The Chief tried crawling from beneath it, nearly getting run-through by one of its legs in the process. But the bullets had done their work. The insectoid screeched shrilly one last time and collapsed into a heap beside him.
The Spartan took a moment to catch his breath again before standing up. The leader approached briskly, looking angry. He stopped only inches from Master Chief and glared at him. "What the god-damn hell was that?" he demanded.
"I did what I could." Answered the Spartan.
"Not enough." growled the leader, gesturing with a nod for the Chief to look behind him. The rocket soldier's dead eyes stared into nothingness; the broken stump of one of the creatures legs protruded from between his shoulder blades.
–
The strange armour-clad warrior observed Davis' impaled corpse for a moment that Rico thought might have been out of regret or contemplation. But when the warrior knelt beside the body and took the blazer strapped across his back, Rico could see instantly that the stranger was as practical and as accustomed to death as he was. Before standing, the warrior fished through Davis' ammo packs, taking what he could to many discontented murmurs from the team behind him. When the warrior did stand he was too busy inspecting the weapon to listen to Rico.
"Are you quite god damn finished?" Rico asked accusingly. The warrior, apparently more concerned with the weapon than with Rico, hefted the gun in his hands, feeling its weight, before peering down the sights and aiming at make believe targets. "Does it meet your standards, Stranger?" Rico said, being wilfully sardonic.
The warrior was looking at the weapon in his hands again, taking it in from stock to tip. "This is an antique." he said.
Rico felt a scowl forming; it hung heavy above his eyes. "That's the latest state-of-the-art general purpose god-damn armament. Cutting edge."
The Stranger slung the weapon over his back like a natural. "It'll do."
Rico took another step forwards, looking into his own reflection in the stranger's visor. Although Rico was at least five inches shorter, it didn't stop him trying to impose himself over the Warrior. "Who are you?"
The Stranger didn't answer for a moment, glancing around at the collection of curious soldiers around him, before facing Rico again. "Spartan two: John one-one-seven. Master Chief, Petty officer U.N.S.C."
Rico never wavered, but kept his imposing stance. "Never heard of it. " He said matter-of-factly. "Are you fleet?"
"I want to know who you are before I answer any more questions." Said the Stranger.
"Rico, John, M. Field Marshal, mobile infantry." He said, noting the way the Warrior's posture stiffened a little. "...And I outrank you; so I'll ask the god damn questions. But first, we're gonna get out of here." He added, keying the mike on his helmet. "Dropship four, this is Alpha leader. We have found our mark and need transport, over."
A few moments passed. Rico watched Dalray look the stranger up and down, inspecting the configuration of that strange armour that completely encased his body. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. Certainly not M.I. standard issue, that was for sure. And the way the stranger had identified himself played on Rico's mind; as a Field Marshal he was privy to some seriously privileged information and intel, but he had never heard of a battalion that called itself Spartan throughout the entire Federation armed forces. "Delta four, this is Alpha leader, do you copy?" he asked again. The comm stayed silent. Finding himself becoming more agitated, Rico keyed the mike harder and glared into the dawn sky. "Delta four, come in!"
–
The Captain sat at his desk finishing his log entry for the day. He included a few eye witness reports of what had transpired on the planet below and carefully logged the list of casualties for forwarding to Earth so that the next of kin could be informed.
More than the events on the planet surface, his mind turned again and again to the anomaly that the Sentry's sensors had picked up, which had transpired to be a massive alien spacecraft. It was proof of real intelligence out there. The quacks back home still marvelled at the intelligence of the so-called "Brain-bug" which only had—at best--a basic understanding of its species' strengths and weaknesses, and the instinct to use those to its advantage. But this space faring race—these Hunters, as they had been referred to in some reports—they had a technological intelligence: an ability to create and invent; a will to use technology to overcome obstacles, and shape their environment at will. A sapient, creative species, much like humanity.
The discovery would turn a lot of heads and open a lot of eyes back on Earth, he was sure; it proved humanity was no fluke, and proved that humanity was not alone in the universe. What other sapient life lived out there? Would they be great scholars, capable of seeing further than their senses? Or beings of logic, wonderments of arts, sage and charitable?
Or would they be cruel, destructive and warlike? Beings which excelled in creating new ways to destroy their enemies and each other? Perhaps the best he could hope for was that, like mankind, they would be all of the above.
As his thoughts continued to meander on the philosophical ramifications of intelligent life out there in the cosmos, the door to his cabin opened, and a tall slender man with sharp angular features entered. His slightly stiff gait made him look ill-at-ease continually. The Captain doubted that the man before him felt much of anything, Since Eben—as he had named himself—was not a true human: he was an artificial man. A synthetic. His eyes flitted around the room, drinking in all the data his mind could process and, as the Captain expected (and suspected Eben was programmed to do) he began speaking in what the Captain guessed was Eben's best approximation of the mundanities of human conversation: "You have dropped the lighting level three points below your normal working level, Captain. May I ask if you have a headache?"
The Captain took a moment to respond, ever wary of Eben, who he considered to be a pale imitation of life—those listless, shifting eyes; that inflection in his voice that always sounded a little superior or insincere.
The contract between Weyland-Yutani and the federation decreed that all federation cruisers were required to carry at least one synthetic in the event that the crew were incapacitated. The synthetics themselves had come a long way since their inception at the labs of Weyland industries. From the decades and centuries since the first AI to when the first Bishop model took its first unsure steps and uttered its first questions through its lifeless rubber lips; through the time of the merger between Weyland industries and the Yutani corporation, the birthing of a corporate colossus, which swallowed up Cyberdine industries and the Tyrell corporation in its gluttonous drive to dominate its sector; through a hundred different conflicts that pushed the technology forwards as it had since the beginning of time, the Synthetics had evolved from crude skeletons of steel and wires into almost biological creatures, whose man-made bodies operated in nearly identical ways to their creators. The hundreds of brilliant minds that had come together under as Weyland-Yutani snowballed had given rise to a race of their own creation, created in their own image.
Yet in doing so, by making their progeny smarter and faster and stronger, had they also given them the means to destroy their creators? It was no wonder the Captain found himself suspicious of all synthetics when they had a god damn built in superiority complex.
"It helps me think." He said, guardedly as always. He set aside the log and regarded the synthetic man with a deliberate look of impatience. "What do you want, Eben?"
"I have been in consultation with Guardian, Captain. With the unique life-forms that were brought aboard, we are in agreement that the circumstances meet the requirements of special order six-four-six-three. Eschewing normal communication protocols, Guardian and I agreed the information was of crucial importance and transmitted the medical reports of the fifteen afflicted crewmen."
"Without my authorisation?" remarked the Captain, angered by Eben's words and that damn superior inflection he used, though keeping his temper in check.
"Protocols supercede your command authorisation in this respect, Captain. For your edification I have a list of the directives. Would you like to hear them?"
The Captain remained silent, letting his anger simmer down. "No, that's not necessary, Eben." he said after a lingering pause.
"Have I angered you in some way, Captain?" asked Eben, an eyebrow peaking with curiosity. "If I have, I apologise; aggravation was not my intention."
Distrust, and now simmering resentment nearly made the Captain laugh out loud from sheer spite upon hearing the synthetic speak of anger. "I am concerned at your presumption." He said, sounding calm, but authoritative. "and I am concerned you would come to me after the fact, instead of consulting with me like the you did with Guardian. I am the Captain of this vessel, Eben. And I want to know what my crew are doing and for what purpose. Even in the event that my command is superceded by one of your obscure executive commands. That you bypassed me altogether to consult with the ship's computer systems I find suspicious and discourteous, Do you understand?"
"I think I do, Captain." Said Eben, attempting a contrite smile that somehow still looked like a smirk.
"Good." The Captain picked up his log again, with every intention of recording the events of which Eben had partook and divulged. Something suspicious was happening. Something he couldn't quite fathom yet, and might not until it was too late. Without looking up at Eben, whom he distrusted now more than ever, he finished: "You can leave."
–
It had begun as a curiosity; a kind of phenomenon that would have xenobiologists champing at the bit to observe it. It had begun with Keever, then Stihlman. Berger was next. Weitz after her, and so on, until within something just over seventy minutes since the first instance, all of the huggers had died and fallen away from their victims. The affected troopers were placed into observation, with various blood tests being carried out on them under the federation's strict disease control protocols. All were given a clean bill of health, the only symptom was a loss of salt and a sudden iron deficiency—symptoms no worse than a third trimester pregnancy, Doctor Morse noted in his report.
As the Doc prepared to bunk down after a long, damn weird day his personal comm buzzed, requesting he return to med-bay.
"Jonze can handle it, Katie." He responded. "I've been awake for nearly forty hours—I need sleep."
"I understand that, Sir. But Doctor Jonze has said you should see this." countered the late shift med-nurse.
"Goddammit..." grumbled Morse, climbing out of his bunk only mere moments after getting comfortable. He rifled through his locker for a clean set of Whites (the only doctor to still wear them), pulled them on and set off for medical, grumbling about how green and wet behind the ears his latest staff were on the way. As he approached he saw a handful of M.I. grunts peering in the observation window again as if it were a spectator sport. Strangely the troopers looked relieved and concerned at the same time. When they noticed Morse, some uttered a polite but guarded greeting: "Doc."
"What's going on?" asked Morse as he passed.
If any of the grunts did answer, Morse didn't hear it. When he saw the gathering of medics and more grunts clustered around the non-comm who had been hugged ( a term Morse found just a little base and vulgar) his pace quickened. He was half jogging by the time he made it into the room, feeling the dread of some unknown circumstance creeping up on him—a circumstance that he, in all likelihood, would be held accountable for. But as he pushed by the others gathered around the bed, he felt a great wave of relief wash over him.
"Hi, Doc. " Said Keever, mussing his own damp and greasy hair, smiling wearily like he had just awoken from a long restful sleep.
"How do you feel, Sergeant?" Asked Morse, checking Keever's pupillary reflex.
"Tired, hungry.... A little embarrassed."
"Look up." Said Morse, still peering into his eyes. "Why embarrassed, Sergeant?"
"They tell me that I've just spent the last twenty-something hours giving a Bee-Jay to some new bug critter. Top of that I wake up here in just my jockey shorts."
"Look right. I think given the circumstances, your companions—down now, please—have just been trying to make light of the situation. As far as we know the parasite has had no serious adverse effects on your health, but when we return to Earth I'd like to give you a full scan and keep you monitored for a while... maybe a year or so."
"Sounds like you're pulling me off the front lines."
Morse nodded. "With any luck it'll be a temporary measure. A year's R and R would do you the world of good, yes?" Keever smiled and blew out a happy sigh, not believing his luck. "I'll see to it the bureaucrats don't rescind your pay rights or try to back-troop you."
Keever winced and rubbed his chest. "Sounds great, Doc. It cool to get something to eat now? This heartburn is killing me."
"I can give you something for that."
"No thanks, Doc." Said Keever, still wincing, rubbing his chest harder, trying to take deep breaths. "it's nothing that a little mash 'n' meat can't fix."
"In your dreams, Sarge." said a smiling trooper who, Morse presumed, was a friend of Keever's. "We only got the soya stew or the tofu."
Keever rolled his eyes, but was still in good spirit. "Great. Any recommendations, Doc?" he asked.
"The Stew; you need the salt."
"I was just... never mind. " Keever stammered, gently lowering himself to his feet form the bed. "Food first. Then I want to see the little bastard that got me." He finished, taking a few unsteady steps with assistance from Morse.
"It's in the bio-labs, Son. You can see it later."
Keever suddenly went limp, as if his legs could bear his weight no longer. He sagged to his knees, despite the medics around trying to support him, and Morse saw drool running from Keever's mouth and dripping onto the floor. "Something's wrong..." Keever uttered, more to himself than anyone around. "Something's WRONG!"
Keever suddenly looked Morse dead in the eye. It was a look of such dread and fear and pain that Morse's blood ran cold. The man he held laboured so hard for his next breath that a vile sucking sound seemed to come from his very lungs. The clear drool running from the corners of Keever's mouth suddenly flowed crimson, and when Keever finally did suck in enough air to fill his lungs, all he could do was scream.
Everyone around him watched in horror as he spasmed hard, twisting so forcefully that Morse feared he might break his own spine. His legs thrashed uncontrollably over the white plastic tiles on the floor, and his eyes rolled around in his head, almost back to the whites. Morse and the three other medics on shift tried to pin Keever's limbs to the floor as the one and only nurse on shift tried to grab a hypo of sedative. The horrific scene unfurling before her (and the noises—she would never forget the noises: the guttural utterances and thick gurgling sounds that he made, coupled with what was to inevitably happen next) had shaken her up so badly that she fumbled the hypo and dropped it. The hypo smashed on the floor into a puddle of viscous blue liquid and small shards of brittle glass.
"C'mon!" Cried Morse, fighting to hold Keever down. The nurse ran to the nearest Med-dispenser, but was still shaking so badly that it took her three attempts to punch in the key code. When she did manage it, she hauled open the small door, took the nearest pre-measured dose and slotted it into another fresh sterilised hypo.
Morse could only watch, feeling the most helpless he had ever felt in his life as Keever thrashed and convulsed on the floor; he could only watch as Keever began to turn purple, and his tongue jutted from his mouth as if he were being strangled; he could only watch as the tiny capillaries in the whites of Keever's eyes all ruptured, flooding them with crimson; he could only watch as Keever spasmed, his spine arching backwards as if some invisible force were trying to rip out his lungs and still beating heart. He could only watch as Keever screamed hard and hopeless, before his sternum exploded, splattering everyone around with blood.
After that, nobody watched Keever any more.
"Jesus Christ." murmured Morse, thick globules of gore dripping off his brow, nose and chin. The sound of something smashing made everyone start, and when they turned, they saw that the nurse had fainted, smashing her second hypo in as many minutes.
"Oh, my God." Said Jonze, the on-shift medic. "There's something moving in his chest."
Blood had pooled in the fist-sized hole in Keever's chest, and all watched as something obscene and serpentine eased itself out of the cavity. Its eyeless head, filled with needle sharp teeth, snarled, and its long tail coiled around its slender—almost phallic—body like a rattlesnake. In all it was no more than eighteen inches long, but the impression it made left everyone stunned and terrified.
"Nobody move." Whispered Morse. The creature seemed to hear this, and turned to face him, though, Morse noted, he saw neither eyes nor ears. "You. Slowly.. get the sheet. We've got to bag it; Xenobiology have got to see this." He said to the young, pretty trooper at the back of the room. As Stone surreptitiously tried to pull the sheet from the gurney beside her, the thing rounded to face her. Its top lip folding back from its rows of needle teeth that lines its mouth. It hissed. Her nerves shattered. Her hand fell from the gurney, leaving the sheet untouched.
The tiny monster slipped out of the wound in Keever's chest completely. Morse, desperate to catch the thing, lunged at it, but he was too slow. The tiny serpent made a dash for the medical waste chute, with Morse and Jonze in hot pursuit. It scurried up the lid and ducked its head in, prompting Morse to make a desperate lunge from ten feet away like he was trying for a touchdown. Astonishingly, he managed to grasp its tail with the tips of his forefinger and thumb. It turned on him and struck like a viper, sinking its teeth into the flesh of his hand, causing Morse to jump back in fright and pain as it disappeared down the chute to freedom. Breathless, and feeling the first cold wave of panic set in, Morse inspected the wound on his hand. Just past the knuckle of his index finger of his right hand, the wound bled profusely, and when he tried to wiggle his fingers, that digit refused. He grabbed some cotton wadding and dabbed the blood away revealing a tiny halo of teeth marks driven deep into his skin, and in the centre, a deep hole, as if something had lanced through his flesh. He could see the pearlescent off-white ribbon of his severed tendon peeking raggedly out of the wound--The little bastard had somehow pulled it from the bone and left that finger useless. Blood quickly welled up in the wound again, and as Morse continually dabbed it away, Jonze approached with a dressing. "What was that?" He asked, helping to apply it to Morse's hand.
"Something new. Something I haven't seen before."
"Like a bot-fly or something.. Laying its eggs inside a living host." Murmured Heder, the other on-duty Medic, who was helping the collapsed nurse.
"Tell maintenance to jettison the medical waste; we can't have that little bastard running around loose." ordered Morse, wincing as Jonze applied some pressure to the dressing on his hand. Stone, the pretty blonde grunt, set off at a dash out of the room, past the white masks of horror and disbelief of the other troopers at the observation window. Morse suddenly tensed up as a sickening notion curdled his stomach. "Christ..." he said, as if in fright. Suddenly clutching at Jonze's shoulder with his good hand. "There was others." his eyes locked on to Jonze's as they both came to the same horrifying conclusion. "There are fourteen others..."
