BraK3R's A/N: This was a fairly quick chapter to edit so I managed to get it done and posted asap. Hopefully, I can get Chapter 10 out too, then it'll be showtime...

DelVarO's A/N: Sorry it took me this long! I simply had an annoying writer's block... well, blocking me and an unexpected illness which left me bedridden. Regardless, I am back once again with a new chapter, albeit a much shorter one. Anyway, i dont have anything else to say so enjoy this chapter!

By the way! Thanks for all the reviews you gave me so far, it helps me as an author in the long run, so thanks! ^^


Chapter Nine - One for One

1415 Hours, February 7, 2563 (Military Calendar) / Planet Venatio / Research Base Alpha

The mood was awful, and that was putting it lightly. Jimmy's death had affected everyone, Kyle most of all. Once they'd returned to the safety of the base Kyle stormed off to somewhere and no one had stopped him. Brass was yelling and raging around while the rest helped Mary get Sean into the medical wing to treat his burns.

During that time, Kyle walked around aimlessly, not noticing nor caring where he was going. He wasn't a rookie, no ODST was green; having some experience in battle was a must if you wanted to join the Helljumpers. He couldn't help but feel angry at how... calm they all were but he stopped himself from thinking along those lines. He knew that everyone in the squad besides him and Jimmy, now only him, were effectively veterans. All of them had survived through the last years of the Covenant-Human war except for Leone who had survived through the entire war. He knew that he was being a fool to even consider that they didn't feel a damn thing about Jimmy's death. Everyone had lost friends before in the war and outside of it and Kyle guessed that he'd just popped his cherry today.

Now that he thought about it, of the whole squad only he and Sean had homes to return to and families waiting for them. Akira, Jake, and Damian had lost their families when the planets they'd lived on were glassed. Mary was an orphan who'd joined the UNSC as soon as she was old enough to. Leone had said that his whole family was long dead, never telling much more and everyone respected his wishes and left the issue alone.

The anger suddenly came back when Kyle remembered all the memories he'd had with Jimmy. They had met during boot camp and soon became friends after both had decided to join the ODST corps. The only battle they'd ever participated in had been in a small skirmish against a Brute separatist outpost. They'd won that battle with minimal losses and soon later had applied for the ODST corps and eventually ended up in Echo Squad.

The subject of death was often thought of and he often wondered when it would be his turn to kick the bucket. He recalled his first battle, how he had been scared shitless but eventually prevailed. Somehow, he always expected he'd die in some huge battle, fighting for something important and making a contribution... not like Jimmy; killed in silence without anyone knowing by whatever-the-hell it was that killed him on some god-forsaken planet.

These thoughts lead him to think on why he had even joined the UNSC in the first place. He could say that it was because of revenge, sense of duty, and maybe following the footsteps of his father. His father had been a marine during the war and had come out of it alive, unlike many others. The downside of it was that he hadn't come out in one piece. A plasma grenade that had landed too close to him had left him without an arm and a leg, and the whole right side of his body had been covered in burn scars. Kyle practically grew up on stories about the Covenant, the battlefield, and some friends that his father had met when he'd served in the army. All of this probably fed into his decision to join the army and fight the bastards who'd left his father a cripple... and some stupid ideas of heroic battles.

During all this time he'd never looked at where he was walking to and he flinched when he heard someone call his name. Looking up, he saw that he'd somehow ended up walking into the control room and Damian was looking at him expectantly.

"Uh, what?" he asked dumbly.

"I asked how you are feeling," Damian repeated. Kyle looked around the room, seeing only the sergeant, Brass and Damian there. The others must still be in the infirmary.

"Honestly? I feel like crap," Kyle said with a sigh, collapsing into one of the chairs and removing his helmet, his nostrils detecting the smell of the cigarettes that Brass and Leone were smoking.

Damian nodded, somewhat sagely. "Don't know if it's a good thing or not but...you get used to it," he finished quietly. "... somewhat."

Kyle looked at him for several seconds wondering exactly how many friends Damian had lost, before he felt a nudge on his shoulder. He looked at the source to see the surprisingly docile Jake offering him one of his smoke-sticks. "Here," he said quietly.

Kyle took it and placed it into his mouth, allowing Brass to light it up with an ancient-looking lighter. He took a long puff, feeling the burning sensation move through his lungs before he started coughing. He had never smoked before and hadn't expected it to taste so... vile.

Brass snickered for a second at his misfortune before allowing the room to return into silence. They stayed like that for several minutes until Akira stepped into the room, helmet held in her arm and a worrying frown etched on her face.

"How is he?" Leone asked, looking at her from the corner of his eye.

"He'll live. Shoulder's busted though so he won't be able to properly use his arm for a while," she stated in monotone.

"Like you said, he'll live," Leone said with a huff and after that silence again descended on everyone.

Akira remained standing at the door looking around them. Several minutes passed before she lifted her helmet and threw it to the floor with an uncharacteristic growl. Everyone was startled from their musing and looked at her with curious stares.

"What the fuck was it back there?" she shouted-half-growled at Leone, her finger pointed in the general direction of the main gate.

Leone watched her with stoic eyes. Akira was usually cool and collected and it was unlike her to lose her temper like this.

"You're asking me?" he replied gruffly.

"Yes, I am!" she growled. "What the fuck was that? That's not covenant, we all know that for sure now!" she said angrily.

"How can you be so sure?" Kyle joined the one-sided argument, since Leone wasn't phased at all by Akira's shouting.

"Trust me kid, I know... I've been doing this from way before you even started elementary," she replied, turning her glowering stare to the youngest member of the squad.

"Akira, don't vent on him," Damian broke into the conversation, his voice calm. The woman turned her glare on him but he wasn't phased by it either.

"They don't operate like this, we established that already. Trust me, I've seen enough Elite Spec Op squads to know that they would never operate like this, no matter what. It's like... we were...we were being fucking hunted!" she said after tearing her gaze away from Damian, much calmer this time. She then turned her gaze at Leone. "You know something we don't, am I right?"

Leone looked at each of them, all of whom were looking at him, some with a slight measure of anger in their faces. "No, I don't know anything about this," he said with a sigh. "Wish I knew, believe me. The only need-to-know info I received was about an interesting life form, extremely dangerous, which was suspected to cause the disappearance of everyone here...now though, now I'm not so sure," he finished with a huff.

"Life form? What life form?" Akira asked.

"Just some kind of animal they found here years ago. They've been studying it for years now. The only thing I know about it is that it's extremely dangerous and that the higher-ups suspected an outbreak had caused the base to send the distress signal. There was nothing about sentient aliens here..."

"I see," Akira muttered and relented, leaving the room without another word. Damian released a tired sigh before he followed after her.

They all sat in silence, thinking about their situation. "Fuck!" Brass suddenly spat, causing Kyle to look at him, questions dancing in his eyes.

"We're stuck here. The ship was blown up, we have those fuckers outside and I have no idea how long it will take for reinforcements to get us out of this shit, if they even manage to do that..." Brass muttered the last part.

"They did take out our ship fairly quickly... makes me wonder how powerful whatever killed them was," Leone added, rubbing his chin.

"So what are we going to do?" Kyle asked the most important question. Jake and Leone shared a look before the sergeant replied.

"There's not much we can do. In all honesty, we're pretty much screwed here. We have to dig in, wait for reinforcements. I'm not going to risk the outside for a while. We have no idea how many of them there are and what we are facing," he said grimly.

"So... we're stuck here?" Kyle asked weakly.

"That's right. Good boy, I knew you had a brain in there somewhere," Jake answered with a small smirk. At least Brass was returning to normal...


Akira angrily stormed through the hallways, Damian silently following behind. Where she was going and why she was going there was completely unknown to him. Probably because she didn't know, herself. Much like Kyle earlier, she was wandering aimlessly, possibly to relieve some stress.

To say that she was pissed would be an understatement but at least she was calming down now. Damian gradually caught up with her and walked to her side.

"Anything you want to say?" he asked her.

"What do you want?" she replied angrily.

"Look, I know that everyone is a bit shaken, but don't vent your anger on us," he replied, his tone showing his annoyance.

"They were hunting us down out there, you heard that guy we spoke to. He told us they hunted his whole squad down as soon as they landed; Covenant aren't that subtle. And, Jimmy is dead and we never even noticed it!" she said, stopping to a halt and fully facing him now. "That wasn't the covenant."

Damian sighed at her words. He couldn't deny them after all. Not enough proof to figure out whether she was wrong or right but she had some truth in her reasoning. The Covenant, especially the brutes, were more... blunt than this.

"Understand, that we might have a first-contact situation here and it's gone completely fubar, AGAIN... just like Harvest was" she said, more subdued this time. "Humanity can't handle another war like the last one..." she finished, saying the last part under her breath.

To her surprise Damian chuckled darkly, making her glance at him with confusion. "Nothing funny really, just makes me wonder if we'll ever meet a friendly alien race," he said, his face wearing a strange expression between a frown and a smirk.

"True, makes you think though doesn't it?" she asked him, leaning against the wall. Damian quickly joined her.

"About what?"

"About our unfortunate situation," she said bitterly. "I wonder if this will escalate to a war."

"Hey, don't start on that, we don't really know anything about what attacked us. It might be the covvies attempting something new for all we know," he assured her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"I hope so..." she trailed off from there. "I just don't want another war."

"Me too," he said, pushing himself off the wall and starting to walk back to the control room, leaving Akira alone with her thoughts. "me too..."

Akira had once told him about her upbringing. She had been raised in a happy family with two sisters, being the middle one. Life was good, everyone was happy. She called it paradise, well it was paradise at least, until the Covenant came. She told him that she had been one of the several hundred refugees that the UNSC had managed to evacuate. She'd seen how her planet had been glassed and destroyed, along with her home and everything she knew and loved. She spent months searching for her sisters and parents but there was no trace of them anywhere, which left her to only a single conclusion. Her family had never left the planet.

Damian always found it a bit strange and ironic that Akira was a pacifist at heart. She hated war, she hated the battles, yet she was an elite special forces soldier. She once told him that the reason she'd joined the UNSC was because she wanted to stop the war that had claimed so many lives and homes. He could relate to that in some way.

Regardless of everything though, they were still stuck in here, so that left them with little to do besides devise a plan to get out of the planet, or explore the other floors of Alpha Base.


Ave'gaar gazed at the large gate that the Oomans had went through to escape them. The hunt was good so far and the prey was even better. They exceeded his expectations greatly. The hunters had managed to kill only one of them, luring him away from the others before silently killing him. What he didn't expect was for the others to escape them mostly unscathed. One of them even injured one of his warriors with their small burners, nothing too serious as the warrior had simply shrugged it off.

Their ship was gone and all who escaped in their Tyioe-ti were hunted down with success. It was a good day, mostly. The black Ooman's managed to escape into their facility and that presented a problem. They could follow them inside but that would be even more problematic. He knew how dangerous a cornered animal could be and in the narrow tunnels beneath the ground they weren't as effective as outside within the trees.

A sudden tremor and a thud going through the ground alerted him that someone had landed beside him. He turned to look at the uncloaked hunter, cocking his head to the side.

"Some Oomans escaped. They will not last long though, they are still in the jungle. We will find them soon," the hunter, Cha'kun'da he now recognized, stated.

Ave'gaar huffed at his words. If not brave warriors, the Oomans were certainly resourceful. Any being that managed to escape a Yautja hunter deserved some measure of respect. When the Cha'kun'da remained there, Ave'gaar regarded him again, his mandibles clicking in annoyance. "Anything else?"

Cha'kun'da seemed to hesitate, something that Ave'gaar noticed if the low growl coming from him was any indication. "They have killed one of our hunters."

At those words Ave'gaar rounded on the younger Yautja, glowering over him. To his credit, Cha'kun'da didnt back down and remained rooted to his spot, knowing well that if he backed down he would be in immediate pain.

"One of the burners managed to pierce his throat. A mortal wound." Cha'kun'da said simply, controlling the tone of his voice to show calmness.

For a second Cha'kun'da suspected that Ave'gaar would hit him in anger, betraying his anxiety by tensing and preparing to defend himself, when the older warrior turned away from him with a short hiss filled with anger.

Cha'kun'da lamented his situation. It was just his amazing luck that he was chosen to bring the message to Ave'gaar. Unfortunately, this wasn't the worst message he carried. This time he fully braced himself for an attack. Ave'gaar was always more...violent than the others.

"What else?" Ave'gaar asked, the clicking of his mandibles filling the air seconds later.

"They stripped him. Took his burner and other equipment," Cha'kun'da said, quickly and to the point. To his surprise, instead of an attack a rumble arose from the the elder Yautja.

"So they collect trophies now? How interesting..." he said, mostly to himself. "If you find them, retrieve whatever they took," he barked the last part.

At this, Cha'kun'da left the older Yautja to himself. He had the remaining Oomans to find. 'Good hunt,' he mused to himself as he fingered the small net-sack where two bloody Ooman skulls hanged.

Ave'gaar ignored the hunter's departure, instead preferring to look at the gate. It didn't matter if they hid there or not. They would not, could not, stay there forever. When they did come out, the hunters would be there to meet them. Besides, it wasn't as if these Oomans were the only prey on the planet.


DelVarO's A/N: Hehehe, yeah, this chapter is finished. Shorter than usual but meh... the bloody block annoyed the hell out of me so at least i'm finally out of it. As you've seen in this chapter, i gave some background! And be sure that I will do so again. I'm not planning to have the other characters to just 'be there'. I plan them to be real, lovable characters that you could actually care about. Anyway, the plot escalates and so far, the situation has calmed. The Yautja began their hunt and so far, things arent looking good for our lovable Echo Squad.

Thanks for reading my story! I really appreciate it and I'm always glad to see when someone adds it to their fav list or alert. If you notice any flaws, or anything that you believe is a mistake, feel free to point it out. I gladly accept constructive criticism, ideas, suggestions of just regular, run-of-the-mill comments. Leave them in a review or a PM, ill be glad to have them. Thanks again and until next time, Delvaro out.

BraK3R's A/N: Don't forget to leave a review guys! Thanks!