Chapter Seven

Spartan-B124, interior of Newport bunker complex. 1602 Hours, February 12, 2553 (Military Calendar)

The rounds flew straight and true from the Spartan's rifle, impacting the Elite square in the chest and disrupting the active camouflage systems to reveal the alien warrior in all its glory, and another burst downed its shields which was puzzling for Scott as, based on the armour the Elite wore, it should have been able to handle more rounds that what he had fired, but then he recalled the suit was twenty years old by this point and likely in need of a major overhaul if not outright scrapping. Even the MJOLNIR armour needed maintenance on a regular basis despite the inbuilt ruggedness.

He fired again and the Elite howled in pain as a trio of rounds punched through the protective garb surrounding its shoulder and fell backwards off the tram car, Scott running and jumping after it without a second's hesitation. The Elite had opened fire on him first and that made it hostile towards him, and he needed to silence it before it could raise an alarm towards whatever else might call this section of the bunker home.

His feet made dull thumps as they came down onto the top of the tram car and he swept his rifle across the ground below him, looking for the Elite, but either the AvCam systems were back in action or it had rolled away in the few seconds it had taken him to leap into position. Then, another stream of plasma came flying out of the darkness and Scott rolled away on reflex, rifle blasting away in the rough direction of the source and he was rewarded with more pained howling from the Elite. Whilst the AvCam was back in action, apparently this didn't extend to the shielding system as it should have recharged by now to provide some protection against his rifle fire.

Pressing his supposed advantage, Scott raced towards the source of the noise with his rifle up and ready to fire when the Elite blindsided him, slamming them both into the side of a tram with enough force to buckle metal and shatter glass, and Scott's shields flared in response to the impact. Mildly annoyed that the Elite had gotten the drop on him, he returned the favour by delivering a powerful headbutt that whipped the Elite's head backwards and stunned it, but it still managed to take hold of his assault rifle and the pair began struggling over it.

Up close, Scott saw the Elite was older than most he had encountered before with numerous scars and nicks covering what little exposed flesh there was, and the armour it wore had even more dents and scratches indicative of a hard life lived. Fresh purple blood was flowing freely from the wound Scott had inflicted but the alien warrior paid it little to no mind, the screaming nerve endings apparently subsumed by whatever the Elite equivalent to adrenaline was or the thrill of excitement that came from battling a deadly foe.

But then it stopped.

The Elite, focused mainly on the assault rifle, quickly glanced upwards to see how its opponent was doing before returning to the weapon, only to perform what Scott could only describe as the Elite equivalent of a double take and slack jawed expression as it looked him straight in the eye with bewilderment and three of its four mandibles hanging loose. One, it seemed, had gotten removed at some point long ago to leave a nub of scarred flesh. The Elite blinked several times and said, 'Spartan?'

Scott's response was to deliver another headbutt that knocked the Elite free from his rifle and sprawling onto the ground where it made no attempt to get back up and resume the fight. Instead it threw both hands up in the human mode of surrender and said, 'I yield, Spartan. I yield!'

Confusion was the only thing keeping Scott from opening fire right there and then with the Elite dead to rights before his weapon, head cocked to the side. No Elite would ever admit defeat or surrender to an opponent, regardless of who or what they were, especially when that opponent was a Spartan supersoldier. Something was off here.

'Say again,' Scott said, rifle aimed at the Elite's head.

'I yield to you, Spartan,' the Elite said. 'I have no quarrel with you.'

'Then why open fire on me?'

'I mistook you for an enemy,' the Elite said. 'One of the Elites who still believes in the Great Journey, come to examine our defences ahead of an assault.'

'I look like an Elite to you?' Scott said.

'Apologies, Spartan. My sight is not what it used to be, and the low light optics I carry are unreliable and intermittent. All I saw was a hulking figure in armour entering the station, armed with a weapon, looking for threats. Had my equipment been working fully, I would not have fired.'

'Okay,' Scott said.

He didn't take his assault rifle off the Elite though, unsure of whether he should actually believe what the Elite was telling him. It sounded plausible enough, both the equipment failure and poor sight, but he had still opened fire on him without provocation beyond suspecting him of being an enemy infiltrator. This could all be part of some elaborate ruse to get him to lower his guard, and to then have as yet unseen compatriots open fire on him and claim victory.

The Elite stared pointedly at the muzzle of the rifle as though questioning the Spartan on whether it was really necessary, but Scott returned it with a look of his own that signalled he still wasn't entirely sold on the story. To which, the Elite nodded in understanding.

'Were our places reversed, I would feel the same,' it said. 'But really, Spartan, I am no longer your enemy. I and several of my brothers have aligned myself with a sizeable faction of humans. We seek peace between our two worlds.'

'Okay,' Scott said again. 'So who's the leader of the other group of humans? The ones who live in the western section.'

'Dale, if I remember correctly,' the Elite said. 'Forgive me if I cannot tell you more than that but our interactions were brief. His Marine officer was adamant to keep him separated from myself and the others as much as possible. A trust issue, I assumed.'

'What was their name?'

The Elite clacked his mandibles together in thought then said, 'Swanson, I believe.'

'It is,' Scott said.

He paused then relented, swinging the muzzle of his rifle away from the Elite and relaxed his posture, which the Elite took as a sign he was going to live just a little bit longer and pushed himself into a sitting position, one hand going to gingerly hold the wound Scott had inflicted.

'I didn't realise my equipment was as run down as this,' it said. 'Before it would have shrugged off such an attack with ease.'

'You have been down here for twenty years,' Scott said. 'Nothing lasts.'

'Agreed,' the Elite said. 'Now, might I be permitted to contact the others in this bunker? My silence will only add to their worries.'

'Of course,' Scott said but, inwardly, his wariness returned and he gripped his assault rifle tighter.

The Elite brought out an old Marine radio and spoke into it with a clipped rundown of the events that had taken place, and just what had shown up, and the person on the other end simply acknowledged the report after a short pause. Then, there was a click and a hum as the station lights flicked on to bathe the room in soft white glow and Scott looked around on reflex for anything that might be coming for him but there was nothing, so he forced himself to relax slightly.

He and the Elite both turned their heads towards a nearby stairwell when they heard the doors there opening, revealing a dozen people dressed in Marine armour and carrying assault rifles who poured out and approached the duo cautiously though not because of the alien, but Scott. Half of them kept raising their rifles as if getting ready to fire before lowering them again, and the other half could only look on with shocked wonder.

Only two were broadcasting IFF tags which meant the others were part of what passed for a local militia. One stepped forward and made for the Elite, plucking a bandage from a pocket and went to tend to the wound, Scott stepping back to give the medic room to work without taking his eyes off the rest of the squad. He couldn't work out if they were angry at him for wounding the Elite, or something else. Certainly there were no joyous expressions like the ones the soldiers under Swanson had given upon seeing him emerge from the tunnels.

Tense minutes passed by until the sound of more footsteps could be heard and a woman, flanked by two more guards that lacked Marine IFF tags, arrived in the station. She took one look at Scott and said, 'You'd better follow me, Spartan. There's plenty of things to talk about.'

Spartan-B124, interior of Newport bunker complex. 1639 Hours, February 12, 2553 (Military Calendar)

The woman's name was Melissa and she was the de facto leader of this section, being the only one with both the will and desire to try and oversee the two factions that called this piece of drab concrete walls home. She led Scott to her personal quarters, like Dale had, but unlike the ORION Project veteran's home this was even less decorated than before with maybe one or two pictures sitting atop a desk, and both were generic views of a sunset over an ocean.

Also present was another man who looked to be in his late forties, early fifties, and looked similar enough to Melissa that he was either her father or uncle, and he gave Scott a wary look upon seeing the Spartan but that was as far as it went.

Once the door was shut, Melissa began.

'You're here because of the transmission,' she said, answering the question of just who had sent it. 'Aren't you?'

'Yes,' Scott said.

'What happened to the man who sent it?'

'He died,' Scott said. 'Single gunshot to the abdomen. I found him lying over the terminal he used to send the signal with.'

'He was shot?' the man said.

'Yes,' Scott said. 'I can show you my mission logs if you want to check for yourself.'

'No,' Melissa said, waving him away. 'No, I think we'll take your word for it. But he got the message out, though, right?'

'On both human and Covenant frequencies,' Scott said. 'And with an encryption scheme unfamiliar to the UNSC. That was what piqued the UNSC's interest the most, more than the fact a colony long thought to be dead was broadcasting again.'

He looked between the two people stood before him, emphatically, and they could only look between themselves with uneasy expressions on their faces. Eventually, Melissa broke the silence with, 'Okay. Yeah, that might need some explaining.'

'Please,' Scott said.

'Okay,' Melissa said again. 'We're not Insurrectionists. I want to make that very clear. Yes, there's probably some anti-Earth sentiments amongst us but what do you expect? We're an Outer Colony. But there's no deep seated hatred for Earth or the UNSC. I mean, how can we feel anything like that after it was the UNSC that came and tried to save us? There weren't any Innie ships helping evacuate colonists or engaging the Covenant, just yours.

'So there's no plan to align ourselves with the Insurrection or anything.'

'But?' Scott said.

'But, we didn't feel like we could trust the UNSC to not do anything bad to the Elites,' Melissa said. 'You have to understand that after living with them for as long as we had, learning more about each other, we don't see them as just aliens anymore. They're our friends at this point, our family. We couldn't stomach the thought of the UNSC subjecting them to experimentation or worse if or when they came back.

'So when we started discussing about sending an SOS with the tether's communication array, there was a lot of questioning about who we should be trying to reach. We couldn't contact the UNSC because we were afraid of what would happen to the Elites, but neither could we call out to the Covenant because they'd kill us all for being heretics and traitors.

'So we settled on a compromise.'

'We did send a message to the Innies,' the man accompanying Melissa said, shifting on his feet with unease. 'Kind of.'

Scott shifted his gaze to bore into the man, making him squirm even more, and said, 'Kind of how?'

'W-Well,' the man said. 'Before the Covenant attacked, my brother used to run with one of these pro-independence groups that were a step or two away from being full blown Innies, you know? They were always talking about how righteous their cause was, fighting for freedom and all that, and floating the idea around of forming their own group to try and get that, here, on Kohl.

'They never got any further than talking about it, mind, and I-I never subscribed to it, Spartan. I got no quarrel with the UNSC, no sir, but if I know my brother half as well as I do, and if he survived the attack and got away, I reckon he'd see the loss of Newport as solely the UNSC's fault and throw his lot in with the Innies to get his revenge.

'So I figured if I could get a message to him, he might be able to bring a ship to rescue us all and take us somewhere warm, and underneath a wide open sky filled with stars.'

'And the presence of Covenant members?' Scott said. 'Former or otherwise, who were also responsible for actually destroying Newport?'

'He was actually more open minded about them than most others,' the man said. 'He felt that out of the millions of aliens in the Covenant, there had to be someone, or a group of them, who didn't have the same faith as the rest and could be negotiated with, maybe even convinced to defect and help us in some way. Either to fight off the rest of the Covies or just help defend Kohl, I never really knew.

'Contacting him was something of a long shot, I know, but hope springs eternal.'

'And what of the Covenant frequencies?' Scott said.

'That was from some of our Elite members,' Melissa said. 'They've got family members with slipspace capable transports that could be, hopefully, swung around to abandoning the Covenant. An even longer shot, but we're desperate to get off this ice ball.'

Scott nodded. 'A very long shot.' He turned to the man. 'Your brother, what was his name?'

'Carlson Anders,' the man said. 'Why?'

'ONI predicted that the single most important question people would have after whether or not the war is over or not is what happened to their family members,' Scott said. 'So they gave me a list with the last known status of everyone that they could discover.'

'Oh,' Melissa said. 'That's thoughtful.'

A pause, then, 'Have we won the war?'

'Yes,' Scott said. 'Back in December, though remnants of the Covenant still exist, and the Insurrection is ramping up again.'

He pointed to the room's main terminal and asked, 'Can I use this to display the information? It would be quicker than me relaying it.'

'Sure,' Melissa said.

'Thank you,' Scott said as he moved towards the terminal, plucking Tara's chip from his helmet to place it into the appropriate data port. Seconds later her avatar appeared on the screen, making a show of stretching one way and then the next before looking around the room and the occupants.

'Ah, much better,' Tara said. 'Some room to stretch my legs.'

'I thought you said you had plenty of room inside my head,' Scott said aloud.

'I said I was the only thing of note in there,' Tara shot back. 'It's still a cramped space, you know.'

A faint smile swept across the Spartan's features as he turned to Melissa and the man, questions on their faces, and he said, 'This is Tara, an AI I'm partnered with. She's the one with the files and can draw up the relevant ones quicker than I can.'

'Hello,' Tara said, waving at the two who waved back. 'Now, you said your brother's name was Carlos Anders, correct?'

'Y-Yeah,' the man said. 'I'm Chavez Anders if that helps.'

'It does,' Tara said, taking a moment to sift through her files. 'Ah, yes, here we go. Let me just display the record.'

She drifted to the side as Carlos Anders' file was brought up, showing all the relevant facts pertaining to his life as a member of the Outer Colony planet of Kohl, and during his time as a refugee following the colony's glassing. By and large he had an unremarkable childhood, performing above average at school without being considered exceptional or gifted, which continued throughout his teens where he achieved a passing grade upon graduation and sought employment in the logistics trade, driving a truck for a myriad of companies through an agency.

But whilst his formative years had passed by without any issues, none that warranted being mentioned here, the adult years of Carlos Anders was marred by several police infractions for, primarily, drunk and disorderly conduct starting only a year after joining the adult workforce. The first occurred where Carlos started off as just a bystander during a brawl between Marines on liberty and several Insurrectionist sympathisers, but later joined the fight against the Marines when it started to swing in their favour.

The police had let him off with just a warning given his highly intoxicated state at the time and previously clean record, but the second infraction resulted into a three day stint in jail and the beginning of closer scrutiny by authorities given, like before, the incident involved Carlos siding with a group that had pro-Insurrectionist leanings. From here he was observed as falling in deeper with a group that, had the Covenant not attacked, might have formed itself into a localised cell of Innies. He was never identified as a leader, lacking the apparent charisma and drive to be one, but neither was he set up to be the fall guy in the few instances the group ran afoul of the law.

During the Covenant's attack he was found, unconscious, next to the site of a plasma explosion by Marines and placed aboard a MEDEVAC flight that deposited him onto a waiting frigate, jumping shortly before he regained consciousness. His behaviour and politics gradually worsened at what was seen as a betrayal by the UNSC for leaving his brother and colony behind to die, as Chavez predicted, joining the Insurrection shortly after leaving Kohl where he found himself romantically involved with another rebel, one Susan Denning, who gave birth to a son less than a year after they met.

Unfortunately, Carlos Anders never got to see his son grow up as a raid by UNSC forces on the camp he now called home saw him killed in action, though Susan and their child escaped and continued to be thorns in the UNSC's side. Tara beamed their respective files to Scott's HUD and the Spartan flicked through them, seeing Susan made a name for herself as a ferocious ground forces commander who released several statements calling for the destruction of the UNSC as recompense for killing her husband and his brother, whom her child was named in honour of, and her son who, approaching twenty years of age, had proved himself to be just as adequate a fighter as his mother, and had taken up her quest for revenge with as much gusto, if not more so.

ONI reports had the duo operating out of Venezia for the most part, selling and trading arms when they weren't putting them to good use against UNSC targets, both military and civilian in nature, with a stolen passenger liner serving as both their home and launch pad for their various attacks across the Inner and Outer Colonies.

Scott grimaced at that, imagining that learning her brother-in-law was still alive would galvanise Susan Denning into action to come rescue him, and that she might bring more than a few Innies with her as reinforcements as a precaution, if not for any Covenant on the planet still but against any pro-UNSC groups that might oppose their landing and stance. Or, assuming they were smart enough to know the UNSC would hear the beacon as well, set up pre-prepared ambushes and traps for the subsequent search and rescue operations.

The ship Susan helmed was a passenger carrier Scott had seen often enough during planetary evacuations, each one capable of holding six-hundred souls and all their belongings, which made him wince upon realising that could make for a fairly large Insurrectionist presence on the ground if Susan actually came to Kohl. At least, for just a sole Spartan it was a moderately large group.

In a straight up fight it would be, Scott mentally corrected. He could pick at them with guerrilla attacks and hit and run tactics until friendly forces arrived on site, drive them down from six-hundred plus to a handful, and maybe convince some of the surviving Marines to take the fight to them. They were still technically UNSC DF personnel and, as a lieutenant commander, he outranked Captain Swanson. If he gave them an order, they'd have to carry it out or risk court-martial by the judge advocate general later on.

He made a mental note to speak with Dale and Swanson before hailing Falcon about the possibility of engaging Insurrectionists, so as to factor in what he might be telling the corvette to expect, and turned back to Melissa and Chavez as they remained transfixed by the data file on Carlos.

'So that's Uncle Carlos?' Melissa said.

'Yeah,' Chavez said. 'You know, I'd almost forgotten what he looked like. All my photos of him were destroyed during the attack. Was he really killed fighting the UNSC?'

'I'm afraid so,' Tara said. 'He was present at an Insurrectionist camp on the planet New Harmony during a raid by ODST forces, and counted amongst the deceased during cleanup operations. According to the reports, he was found within a fixed fighting position holding an MA5 assault rifle that was short by twelve rounds.'

'I see,' Chavez said in a low tone, looking away from the screen. 'It, um, it said he had a wife and kid in that report. What-what happened to them?'

'They're alive,' Scott said when Tara turned his way. 'As far as ONI is aware, anyway. According to reports they're both members of the Insurrection and operate from Venezia as arms dealers and 'freedom' fighters, using the death of Carlos and your alleged death as rallying cries to their cause. If they pick up your signal and decode it, it's likely they'll come here at best speed.'

'And what are you going to do if that happens?' Chavez asked. 'That's technically my family, after all. She's my sister-in-law, and he's my nephew.'

'That changes nothing,' Scott said. 'I'm here to look for and evaluate any threats that are present, and take steps to reduce or eliminate them by the time reinforcements arrive. Given Susan and Chavez Denning's history of violence against UNSC personnel and civilians, they would constitute a very real threat to recovery operations should they make landfall.'

'But they're my family,' Chavez said.

'And you're free to take up arms against me to protect them,' Scott said. 'But that would mark you as an ally of a hostile faction and imply you fully understand and accept the risks of doing so. I would no longer see you as a survivor to be rescued and protected, but a threat that needs to be dealt with. The best case scenario in this instance would be you being incarcerated in a cell smaller than this room. I think you can guess the worst case scenario.'

Chavez paled at that but he repeated his statement Susan and her son were still family, suggesting he was fiercely devoted to anyone related to him, even people who up until ten minutes ago had been completely unknown to him and were responsible for the deaths of ten to fifteen thousand civilians between them.

'If you try to fight him, this whole place will come after you,' Melissa said. 'We're one big family here. An attack on one is an attack on us all.'

'I'll only fight him if he chooses to align himself with Insurrectionists, and actively takes up arms against me,' Scott said, turning to her. 'Otherwise I have no quarrel with Chavez Anders, or you or anyone else in this section of the bunker. I'm only going to perceive you as threats if you actually are one.'

'They're family,' Chavez repeated and the Spartan idly wondered if finding out his brother died fighting the UNSC but left behind a wife and child had somehow locked his brain into a loop of some kind.

'So you keep reminding me,' Scott said. 'It still doesn't change anything. I'm going to oppose them if they make landfall, plus anyone who comes to their aid. It's as simple as that.'

'They're my family,' Chavez repeated once more.

'Our family,' Melissa added.

Scott looked between the two as though sizing them up, seeing on the one hand a near catatonic man in his late forties or early fifties and on the other, a twenty something woman who had a borderline resolute look in her eye as she stared the Spartan down. Neither was armed, or even armoured, but the same could not be said for the rest of the people in the bunker.

'Are you saying you're choosing to ally with the Insurrection?' Scott said. 'To protect people you've never met and who are responsible for, at a conservative estimate, the deaths of ten thousand civilians across seven different UNSC colonies? Because if you are, my course of action from this point onwards will not be kind to you, or anyone who follows you down this path.'

The two looked at each other, Chavez with his near catatonic pallor and Melissa with her fiery determination, and she said, 'I guess we are.'

The Spartan nodded then turned to Tara as she remained on the terminal, watching them all.

'Tara, open a channel to all screens you have access to,' he said. 'Ready for live broadcast.'

'Already on it, Commander,' she said, closing the file on Carlos Anders and bringing up a live feed of Scott, Melissa and Chavez as they stood in the leader's room. 'Ready.'

'This is Lieutenant Commander SPARTAN-B124, UNSC Navy,' Scott began, moving to fill the video feed fully. 'As of 1700 hours local time, Melissa and Chavez Anders had made plain their intention to ally with the Insurrection due to a tangential family connection to two members who may or may not be coming here, both of whom are complicit in terrorist acts across seven UNSC colonies that have resulted in the deaths of ten to fifteen thousand civilians, and as such are now considered enemies of the UNSC and the UEG.

'Anyone who wishes to stand with them is free to do so, but in doing so are acknowledging the forfeiting of any rights they had as a UNSC citizen and accept that criminal charges will be brought against any who are captured by UNSC personnel, with punishments ranging from life imprisonment in high security prisons to execution by firing squad for military personnel who defect.

'If you do not wish to be counted as an enemy of the UNSC or the UEG, and this is extended to any and all Elites currently residing here too, I recommend you return to the other cadre of human survivors on the south-west leg as soon as possible. A UNSC fleet can be here in approximately two months to aid in evacuation efforts and facilitate reunions between long lost family members and friends, though this will only be open to those who do not align with the Insurrection.

'Combat operations can and will be put into place should openly hostile actions be observed against UNSC-aligned forces, including the forceful detention of those not wishing to stand with Melissa and Chavez. This is your only warning.'

He made a subtle gesture for Tara to cut the feed and turned to face the other two humans in the room once the screen was blank, awaiting their response. Both seemed shocked at his declaration but neither seemed ready to issue a retraction of their intended actions, though there was certainly apprehension on their faces at being in the same room as what was now a hostile entity but, thankfully for their sake, neither was armed with any kind of weapon so, as per the rules of engagement, Scott was not permitted to harm them unless they made some kind of overtly aggressive action towards him.

They did flinch and shy away when the muted sound of gunfire erupted, coming from somewhere far below, suggesting that altercations were already breaking out between the people in the bunker though whether the people doing the firing were pro-UNSC or pro-Insurrection was unclear at this point. Even so, Scott drew his rifle and held it at the ready as he began moving towards the door once he had retrieved Tara's chip from the terminal.

Melissa and Chavez parted before him, knowing there was nothing they could do to the Spartan, but the same could not be said for the four guards standing outside with their weapons drawn and pointed at Scott. It would be the last thing they ever did.