Well, the season's over but I'm still going! With only six chapters to go. Though, I would like to point out, in my favor, that I'm technically on time with uploading this chapter by my timezone. So. YAY!
Special thanks to theshadowlord, cobaltqueen, Mayhem21, secretlystephaniebrown, and Yin for the comments and feedback!
Red vs Blue and related properties © Rooster Teeth
story © RenaRoo
The Search
Chapter Ten: Artifacts and Intrigue
When Washington came back from his sleep break, he had been somewhat hoping that Kaikaina Grif would have finally returned to the helm of the pelican, but he received no such relief. The young Grif had been aloof and unreceptive to them all since she last tore away in a bit of a fit during the loud arguing everyone was having on their next move. Wash hadn't gotten used to her reactions like that, or at least he thought he had.
As comforting as it was to have their ship navigated by an AI which wasn't running on an unhealthy diet of porn and energy drinks, Wash made a quick mental note to talk to Kai later and see if he needed to make an apology for anything.
He hoped not. There was enough going on without him having to figure out a mystery like that. But they couldn't go storming into any rescue missions with half the team at each other's throats.
Especially at his throat.
But, despite the late hour and how far they were in their travels, Wash was far from alone in the cockpit.
Carolina was sitting in the passenger seat, feet up on the dashboard, arms crossed over her chest as she watched through the window into the vast space before them that FILSS navigated through.
Only a flicker of Carolina's eye let Wash know she was aware of his entrance as she didn't bother giving him an actual greeting of any kind.
"You seem upset," Wash noted, looking around the room one more time to make sure they were alone before walking to the pilot's chair and sitting down beside her. "Anything you need to talk about, Boss?"
"You don't have to call me that," Carolina said thickly.
"I'm not being sarcastic," Washington assured her, leaning against the armrest nearest her and tilting his head. "And you are leading this mission, ergo Boss."
Her eyes rolled back and she shifted her feet to cross the other foot instead. The frustration was all but emanating from her. "Yeah. I'm doing such a fucking great job of that, too. It's amazing we've gotten this far."
Frowning, Washington rubbed his neck, trying to think of how to approach what was obviously an issue. And he knew that it could only be in the hard way — through him. So he glanced back to the large monitors surrounding them. "FILSS?" he called.
"Yes, Agent Washington?" the machine asked back almost sweetly.
"Take everything Carolina and I are about to say off any records you may be keeping," he ordered. "It's strictly confidential."
"Absolutely, Agent Washington. I shall concentrate all my processors on approaching our next destination," FILSS assured them before the all seeing eye icon on the monitor disappeared.
Once FILSS was addressed, Washington turned his full attention back on Carolina. "Are we losing you?" he asked.
Taken aback, Carolina just turned her head and looked at Washington with faint surprise. "Why would you even ask that?" she demanded.
"Because it's something I need to know," he answered sternly. "Are we losing you on this mission?"
"This mission is the only thing that is keeping any of us going," Carolina replied almost venomously. "You can guarantee that more than anyone else on this ship — except maybe yourself — I am dedicated to seeing this search come to a concise ending and I won't be stopping until I'm certain every single person who has hurt our friends — our family — gets exactly what they deserve."
Not letting up, Washington maintained his neutral stare into Carolina's eyes. "And then…" he intimated.
"And then what, Wash?" Carolina snapped.
"You told me earlier that you're worried Epsilon is gone. You said to me that you could feel that he was gone," Wash reminded her.
"You don't have to tell me what I said, Wash," Carolina warned.
"I'm repeating you because I'm worried by it," Washington fought back, furrowing his brow. "Those aren't really words that can be misinterpreted somehow, Carolina. And that and how you've been acting since you said them, and especially since we saw the press conference. They add up to a question I don't want to ask. But I have to. Because I think we — I, deserve to know it."
She glared at him. "And the question is?"
"When the mission is over, when we've gotten the Reds and Blues back and retribution is paid… What are you going to do if Epsilon isn't around? What are your plans if you're right?" he asked, hoping his expression could portray even a tenth of his seriousness toward the question. "Without Epsilon… if it's only us, the Reds and the Blues, are you going to stay?"
Carolina's mouth hung open for a moment as she stared back at him. Slowly, as if she was reanimating herself, her arms slipped from being crossed against her chest and she rose up in her seat, teeth grinding. "Am I going to stay?" she repeated icily.
"You're acting like it's a ridiculous question," Wash half choked out.
"It is a ridiculous question!" she snapped.
"It really isn't," Wash continued, eyes hardening. "Or should I remind you that you've already left us once more. And that was with Epsilon still with us."
"With me," Carolina hissed. "I left because he was with me. And because we… we had to go. We had to make things better before we could come back. We—" She tilted her chin down, eyes seemingly searching for the right words to say before she looked back at Washington almost tiredly. "I couldn't earn my spot with all of you until I had taken some of the red off my ledger. Until I had made up for what I did before I got to that point. And Epsilon… he was a part of that, too."
"And I wasn't?" Wash asked critically. He could almost laugh at the notion. "We were both in Freelancer. I was making up for shit I did after Freelancer even."
"You would have never left the Blues," Carolina said plainly. "And you wouldn't have let us go either. And you know it."
Wash could so clearly see on her face that she meant her every word. But it didn't keep his chest from tightening in knots. It didn't take the edge off the wound he had been dealt by her leaving before. And it wasn't doing anything to quell the concerns he had about her leaving again.
"If they're hurt, if they're… damaged at all like how we think they're going to be," Wash said slowly, taking a deep breath before shaking his head. "Carolina, I'm not going to be able to go at this alone. You have to understand that. You have to. Not everyone can go out by themselves and patch themselves up alone. And…"
He trailed off, knowing he was a step too far, but Carolina's glare made it clear she was intently listening to every syllable.
"And what, Washington?" she demanded.
"And… I'm not so sure that you're going to be able to do it yourself this time," Wash replied almost whispering.
"Because Epsilon's gone," Carolina inferred.
"Because a lot of things are gone now, it's just not the same," Washington tried his best to clarify. He held his gaze with Carolina, knowing that only the strength of his convictions could get her to see eye to eye with him at that point.
Carolina stared at him for what seemed like hours in his head before finally sitting back down and crossing her arms again, taking her feet down from the dashboard. "I won't leave," she said simply. "I have nowhere to go."
"But you were thinking about it," Wash pressed despite himself.
"I was," she admitted, resting back against her seat. "It's… difficult to stay sometimes."
"It is," Wash agreed softly. "It really, really is."
They lapsed into silence, the light years speeding by them as FILSS handled the ship.
Once the silence carried on a touch too long, however, it was interrupted by a polite cough on the speakers.
"What is it, FILSS?" Carolina asked first.
"Will what I say be on our official records?" FILSS inquired.
"Yeah, you can listen in again," Wash replied.
"We will be entering the atmosphere of your next destination in exactly thirty-eight minutes. I would suggest that the entire crew be prepped for turbulence and full armor protocols considering that my records indicate this planet was not entirely terraformed and thus has inhabitable climates and a difficult stratosphere for entry thanks to unpredictability of the weather."
"Great, Earth all over again," Carolina muttered. "Thanks, FILSS, I'll tell everyone to get ready and have L'il Grif back at the controls to help you with manual adjustments."
"Oh, that won't be necessary," the AI attempted to argue only for Wash to clear his throat to interrupt.
"Let's let Kai feel like she has more to do here than just worry about her brother is what our leader is trying to say," Wash said, giving a thoughtful glance to Carolina.
"I see! I shall make my piloting skills seem less useful then since your patronizing is officially on the record!" FILSS decided out loud.
"That's not…" Wash sighed and rubbed his face. "Fine."
"This fucking sucks," was the first thing Dylan Andrews heard since they landed on the icy planetoid of Terran-89 that she could wholeheartedly agree with. It was just surprising to the reporter that it had come from Kaikaina Grif, of all people.
"Well, when you're right…" Dylan hummed mostly to herself.
"No, like seriously, what's the deal with this shitty fucking shit-shit planet?" Kaikaina demanded, rubbing her shoulders against the winds as she followed everyone in their group's movement forward. "Why the fuck would anyone want to come here?"
"Well, that would be why the UNSC was so quick to concede this territory back to the Covenant once the truces for the War had been drawn up," Dylan offered, hoping the static interfering with their radios wasn't too much so she wouldn't have to repeat herself. "According to what I could read, there was a major effort in attempting to terraform this planet beforehand, but because of its extreme conditions it was made almost impossible. Instead when the Sangheilli began listing off territories that the UNSC had been inhabiting that they wanted preserved for religious or historical relics, this was one of the easier ones to fork over."
"And if our assumption is right about Hargrove wanting to use Tucker and the sword to unlock the monuments' potential powers, then it would be one of the harder temples to get access to and thus one of the lower ones on the agenda," Washington added from the front with Carolina.
"Meaning we can be the early ones for the first time on this little trip of ours and set up a trap for them," Carolina concluded.
Andrews had to admit that even with the large leaps of logic that had gotten them to Terran-89 to begin with, if they were right, then it was certainly one of the better plans they had going for them that entire time. Still, her reporter's intuition made her apprehensive at the very least toward the idea that they were going to just progress without fully understanding what the alien relics on the planet were for.
And, most shocking of all, Doctor Grey was gravely silent in the back of the line, seemingly preoccupied with something she wasn't saying. That was a mystery to unravel for another time, of course. Just like the way Kaikaina had come off the ship hot and bothered in a way that Andrews hadn't noticed from her before.
Something was up. But it had to wait.
Moderating the speed of her trek through the snow and ice, Dylan lined her stride up with Lavernius Tucker Junior's and kept in line with him as the little alien seemed to be gazing back and forth, a blanket from the bunks wrapped around him for extra warmth that the others hadn't been granted. He was chattering his teeth to himself still, which Dylan assumed was muttering as the others had translated it as something from time to time.
"Junior, when you… said before that you and your father were working with the Peace Corps and visiting many of these sites, were there ever any reasons as to why you were doing it given to you?" Dylan asked quietly.
There was an exasperated honk from Junior in reply.
Already, Dylan could feel herself growing frustrated with the truly ridiculous setup that was their situation. She exhaled sharply through her nose and glanced toward the others, as if to see if anyone felt like translating.
Everyone else seemed very concentrated on making it to the temple, however, and not freezing on the way.
Although it was against her investigative instincts, Dylan was ready to resign herself to the same before she felt a tug on her arm. She looked down to Junior curiously just before the alien shook his head fairly definitely.
"So you understand everything we say in English but don't speak it yourself," Dylan inferred. "So a Chewbacca kind of thing then."
In response, a wide grin came across Junior's multiple mandibles and then he opened them wide to provide a perfect impersonation of the Wookie.
"Great. You can do that and not form o's," Dylan sighed. "What useful evolution. Regardless. I'd like to ask you some yeas-and-no questions then, if that's alright with you. It would really help me understand motivations and, well, to tell your father's story and clear his name if I can paint a picture for my audience."
The alien child hummed in response, thinking it over before releasing a large BLARGH that was followed up by a hasty nodding.
"That's great! Just like that," Dylan said in a voice she realized only a touch too late was a bit too pandering for what was probably a child approaching his teens. "So, was your father approached for a position in the peace corps rather than enlisted on his own volition?" she asked first.
Junior rolled his eyes back, as if searching inside his skull for an answer before looking back to Dylan and nodding.
"And that was by an official UNSC officer, not by a Project Freelancer personnel, correct?" she asked.
He looked a little befuddled before nodding.
"That would make the most sense," she agreed. "It would explain his climb in rank to Private First Class, why your envoy had official status, and how your father got you into boarding school at the UNSC's main headquarters back on Earth." She stopped muttering to herself and looked back at Junior. "When you traveled with your… other parent's people, you were declared a prodigy, correct?"
Again, a nod.
"And it's because of your father's sword?" she asked.
"Bow chicka honk honk," the alien all but sang.
"I'm going to need a real answer for that," Andrews tried to push. However, her attention was diverted when she realized they were coming to a stop, the two former Freelancers in the front marveling at the scale of the alien temple in front of them.
Of course, their awe was nothing compared to Doctor Grey as she stepped forward, her breath loud enough to come across the the radios. She reached up to her chest and whispered, "By Einstein's ghost." She then pushed to the front past all the other members of the group, though no one seemed to mind. "On Chorus every Temple had so much human interference and damage from the terraforming process and Earth-like conditions made unnaturally on the planet that the full size of them was never really able to be recorded by the time I was studying for my twenty-third doctoral thesis. Let alone were the carvings so crisp and intricate. I can actually see the transition in script from Early Sanghelli to post-Covenant Deco even from here! This is monumental! Quick! Let's find an entrance! I want to dig inside and find the glorious treasures within. It'll be like roleplaying night and I will be a British nobleman taking other people's cultural heritage!"
"I'm usually all about role-play but that sounds way too close to home. Red card," Kaikaina replied. "Yuk."
"Hopefully they were kind enough to write instructions for an entrance to this thing," Carolina said, looking to Doctor Grey. "If you don't mind, could you start reading and see what you find?"
"Absolutely! It will take a few moments for me to find a starting place!" Doctor Grey replied cheerfully before heading to the right side of the nearest wall.
For a moment, Dylan waited to see if Junior would join her, but as he stood next to her, she grew curious and looked at Junior with her head tilted to the side. "Wouldn't it be faster if you translated this from the other side along with Doctor Grey?" she asked curiously.
The alien looked at her for a moment before offering a large shrug.
That only caused Dylan to scowl some beneath her helmet. "Do you not read Sanghelli or speak it? The dialect you have… I don't know. But I do know that my records show you spent some time on Sangheiios at an embassy. Did you not pick up any of the common Sangheilli while you were there?"
Junior coiled away from her, blarghing about something.
"Hey! Reporter bitch!" Kai snapped, walking up to Dylan. "¿Cuántos idiomas sabes de la tierra?" she demanded.
"I do know some Spanish," Dylan assured her.
"Oh, do you?" Kai scoffed. "That because it's a language on Earth so you just should know it? Pono'oe e'ike i ka'ōlelo Hawai'i. Ua ala'oe."
"I'm… sorry?" Dylan attempted, confused.
"Yeah, you better be. Thinking a kid knows one language because he vacationed on a planet one time. Like we all aren't guilty of sticking dicks all over lands we don't belong in and didn't bother to learn the language of. Like fuck off," Kai continued, defensively getting between Dylan and Junior.
Seeing she was getting backed into a corner of sorts, Dylan raised her hands. "You're completely right, and I apologize for making assumptions," Dylan offered. "I should have realized there is more than one language for another species just as there is for ours. I didn't mean to insult anyone here."
"Yeah, you kinda suck at not insulting people in the group," Kai responded. "So I figured it was my turn to get indignant. Plus it's just boring standing around in the snow freezing my clit off."
"Unfortunately offending people is the risk of being an investigative journalist," Dylan sighed before the last comment truly caught up with her. "Wait what."
"I found it!" Doctor Grey called. "Hilariously enough we only had to turn this corner!"
Everyone looked toward the doctor and a collective relief could not have been understated.
"Alright, everyone get moving before our armors get frozen at the joints!" Carolina ordered, pushing them all forward.
Kaikaina, however, interrupted it with a large, dramatic gasp. "Oh my effing gawd, Officer Washington! The guy with the binoculars isn't using binoculars this time!"
Washington threw up his hands in frustration. "Kai! I'm not a cop—"
Agent Carolina looked up the temple, leading Dylan to follow her gaze, and to see the sniper only three levels above them.
"SNIPER!" Carolina screamed out to the group. "Take cover—"
Before there was even a chance of everyone doing so, the heavily armored sniper dropped down from the ledge, landing so hard in the snow between them and Doctor Grey that there was an audible crunch of the ice and permafrost beneath. He wasn't aiming his rifle just yet, merely shouldering it as he stood in full view of them all.
His Mijolnir armor and Hunter helmet were black with a dark purple trip, his visor a menacing yellow.
"This," a male voice said darkly over the helmet's speaker, "has been a long time coming."