11 – RETURN TO RED BASE

Inez Lopez was greeted with a gust of warm air and a ray of bright afternoon sun as she stepped out of the teleporter from Yellow Command and into the main canyon of the Halothrii Wilderness. This morning, she had been called to Yellow Command to give a debriefing in person to Bradley about everything that had happened during the fight on the other side of the portal during the Red's attempted siege of Yellow Command. Now that she had completed that task, she was headed back to the base in the Wilderness.

She robotically strode through the canyon in a steady southerly direction. The sun made the shattered wreckage that used to be Blue Base Kappa shine with brilliance. Some people would call this a nice day. Inez had never really understood this connotation. It was a blue-skied, relatively warm day. But that didn't mean it was nice. Plenty of horribly bloody battles, especially on such a wartorn planet as this, had happened on "nice" days. Rather, she preferred to classify days based on immediate danger. How many factions were attempting to kill her at this very moment? None.

Inez paused and considered the fact that, she not being in any mortal danger at the moment, perhaps it really was a nice day. Then she decided that the very idea of calling days "nice" was ridiculous because days didn't have personalities. She continued walking.

A few minutes later she came upon the entrance structure for Yellow Base. She was glad to see that the supersteel door had been replaced. Just a day ago, when the canyon had been assaulted by the Red Army, the door had been melted off of its hinges by some kind of laser the Reds had used. Upon seeing the now repaired door, Inez was reminded of Yellow Command's efficiency in dealing with these kinds of things. She stepped through the door, which kindly slid up to admit her entrance as soon as she presented herself to the outdoor camera.

She paced through the halls until she neared the kitchen, where she overheard Hearts, Tom, and Deryn having a conversation. Approaching the kitchen door, she could see that the three of them were gathered around a holographic monitor and watching something on YellowNet, the news broadcasting service for the Yellow Army.

Hearts turned to Inez. "Inez, you're back," he said.

"Just finished giving my debriefing," she explained.

"Did you happen to overhear any of the news while you were there?" Deryn asked. "Or maybe look up the current state of Blue territory?"

Inez shook her head.

Tom pointed at the screen. "You should watch this then."

Inez turned her visor to face the holographic screen and YellowNet News. On the screen, a Yellow soldier was standing in front of a map of the Blue territory near the Halothrii Widlerness. She was holding a laser pointer which put a yellow dot of light on the map as she waved it around. On the map itself, Inez could see a large swath of land which was now covered in a layer of red Xs. She distinctively remembered that many of those Xs, if not all of them, used to be Blue strongholds.

The newswoman said: "As you can see, the Hand has taken out a significant area of Blue territory, much of which contained important bases of operations for the Blue presence on this planet. While the misfortunes of an enemy army are never bad news for us, there is still the terrible concern of what the Hand will do when it has finished destroying Blue territory."

The screen then switched to a picture of a giant metal hand, which floated over the landscape ominously. Hundreds of Blue soldiers, looking like little more than ants from the altitude of the camera, were continuously firing at the Hand in a clearly vain attempt to repel it. The Hand responded by emitting red streams of light that turned the ground below it to ash, along with everyone caught in the blast.

"That is The Hand," Inez observed.

"The very same one we saw during the Battle of Yellow Command," said Deryn. "It's in our universe. It's mobile. And worst of all, it is devastating everything in its path."

"I don't want to make it sound like we're all screwed," said Hearts. "But that thing has lasers! Like the one the Reds used to blow up to door to our base, only about a thousand times more powerful. Maybe more."

"Well, at least the universe is still here," said Tom. "That's good news."

"You're a glass-one-percent-full kind of guy, Tom," Hearts replied.

Inez was still watching the footage of The Hand's devastation of Blue territory. "Does Brian know about this yet?" she asked.

Hearts shook his head. "We don't have the slightest idea where he is right now. Not in the base, that's for sure. The door camera showed him going out for a stroll at about nine or so this morning. But he hasn't come back yet."

"He's a former Blue," Inez stated.

"We know," said Deryn.

Inez pointed at the news screen. "And he doesn't know about this?"

"Sad but true," said Hearts while slurping lemonade. "Let him gas himself out on helium before watching this. He should probably be high when he gets news like this anyways. "

Deryn added: "Wherever the fuck he is right now."


Red Base loomed before Brian and Master Chief like a shadow on the horizon. Its perimeter wall was the main reason for this; it cut off a large part of the end of the plateau and was also blackened from explosions of days past. This gave the curved wall a dark sheen which contrasted with the bright colors of nature surrounding it.

They came to a tunnel, which Brian remembered quite well. Next to the entrance was a sign that read: "Just STEP on in!" as well as a welcome mat with a smiley face on it. Brian had learned to fear the smiley face more than he had feared anything else in his life. It was at this spot that several dozen Blue soldiers had bravely ventured into the tunnel…and been blown up by the mines within. Fortunately, the Green and Yellow soldiers had figured out how to prematurely detonate the rest of the mines, which consequently blew up the tunnel. At this point, the tunnel was little more than a funnel shaped hole in the wall. Confident that no danger lurked within, Brian strode inside.

Twenty meters later, the two of them came upon the courtyard of Red Base. It was immediately evident the kind of past that this location held. Bodies were strewn everywhere along the wide field. All of them were Blue soldiers. Though the assault on Red Base had been a joint operation between the Blues, Yellows, and the Greens, the Blues had been left in this courtyard to distract the Reds while the other two Armies went inside to take out the personnel of the base. It was in the heat of this epic battle that Brian had bravely helped his fellow soldiers to build a really awesome ramp in the middle of the courtyard.

Looking to the center of the field, Brian could see the ramp. It was still there in its entirety. The slanted main board still had an imprint of the tires of a Red vehicle that had used the ramp to shoot into the air. The Blues hadn't intended to help the Reds by building the ramp. But considering that the Reds in that vehicle had exploded while at the apex of their jump (which only added to the awesomeness of the ramp), the project had worked out well in the end.

In stride, Brian had now reached the ramp. He was thinking of circling around it to admire it for awhile, but Master Chief floated in front of him and then looked at the entrance to Red Base. Remembering that they had come to Red Base to actually do something (though Brian no longer knew what), Brian turned and followed the orb over to the entrance. He remembered the look of Red Base's actual entrance well. Too well, perhaps. A durasteel ramp extended into the rock face, but its architectural design made it seem as though it was a great mouth waiting to swallow them. The inside of the ramp structure was glowing with red colored lights, which further enhanced the sense of danger that the entrance imposed.

During the assault on Red Base, Brian had entered through this ramp before. He had left very soon after, however, because there was a confusing maze just beyond the entrance, and he had mistakenly led himself back out into the courtyard. That was when he had stumbled upon the ramp project started by the other Blues, and helped them to complete it. Brian knew that, this time, he would have to enter the maze again. And he would have to successfully find his way through it. Somehow. To Master Chief, he said: "Beyond this entrance is a maze. I got lost in it once before, and ended up back out here by accident. I don't know the way through. Are you really sure we can do this?"

The orb nodded.

"How?" Brian asked.

The orb responded by finding several straight long pieces of debris on the ground and laying them out in a particular way. When Brian looked on the ground before him, he saw

FOLW

"Flow?" Brian asked. "I don't see any water around here. What could you-" He noticed that the orb was shaking itself madly. "Hmmm, not flow," Brian mumbled to himself in thought. He tried hard to think of what other words "folw" might mean. He came up with only one other possible word that Master Chief's message might be referring to. "Do you mean 'follow'?" he asked.

Master Chief nodded.

"You know the way through the maze, don't you?" Brian asked.

Again, the orb nodded.

"Have you been through the maze before?"

The orb shook itself.

"Then how do you know the way through the maze?"

The orb was on no mood to ask any more questions. Instead, it simply floated through the entrance. That was when Brain realized that he had actually been following Master Chief for nearly the entire journey during their quest. Somehow, Master Chief was able to navigate through places that it had never been in before. It did seem to be an artificial intelligence. Perhaps that meant that it possessed some digital map that only it could see, much like the GPS function that had come with Brian's new Yellow set of armor. The orb was floating in the entrance tunnel, clearly waiting for Brian, so the former Blue decided it was time to stop thinking and start moving.

As he expected, the first thing Brian came to was a bare, sparingly-lit room that was cubic in shape and had three doorways, not including the entrance, that lead off in different paths. The former Blue was ready to say that they should find some bread crumbs so that they could make a trail they could retrace if necessary. But Master Chief confidently began floating down the path straight ahead as though it knew exactly where it was going (which, Brian reminded himself, it probably did).

Brian followed Master Chief for several minutes. He was very thankful that the orb was there to lead the way, because otherwise Brain would almost certainly have gotten lost and probably ended up out in the courtyard, as had happened the first time he was here. They went along a path that took many seemingly erratic twists and turns. Brian at first had trouble imagining that there could be any rhyme or reason to the route that the orb was taking. But then he noticed that the orb made a left turn at every several rooms they came across, and then a right turn, alternating between the two directions with each interval. Perhaps there was an orderly way to get through the maze after all, Brian thought to himself.

After the two of them had traveled for what seemed like about a hundred rooms total, they finally came to something that did not look like the rest of the maze. "Oooooh, is that an exit!" Brian shouted as he pointed to a door that Master Chief was already floating towards. Through the door, Brian could see a circular computer room with a row of control panels and monitors lining its circumference. Moving through the door and into the room, he was then able to discover a shaft that began at the center of the room's ceiling and went upwards to a height that was too far above for him to make out. At the opposite end of the room from where he entered, there was also a door leading someplace else.

Master Chief floated over to one of the monitors and stared at it for some moments. Brian noticed that although the orb itself seemed unmoving, the screen was changing. From what he could tell from standing behind the orb as it worked, it was wirelessly imputing some kind of command into the computer. Master Chief always seemed to have a way with computers, Brian thought to himself. After Master Chief had been staring at the monitor for about thirty seconds, an automated voice said: "Portal established. Please enter the next room and drop into the black pit. Have a nice day."

Brian paused as he overheard the last part of the recording's sentence. 'Drop into the black pit' did not seem like a very good way to have a nice day. But Master Chief was undeterred. As soon as the recording ended, it diligently floated through the door to what was presumably the portal room. Brian was very reluctant. But not knowing what else to do since Master Chief had led him in here and he had no idea how to find his way back out, Brian decided that his only option was to follow anyways.

What the two of them found on the other side of the door was, for lack of a better term, a black pit. There was really no other way to describe it. A massive room, perhaps a few times as large as the gymnasium of a high school, stretched out before them. The lighting in the room was very poor, almost nonexistent. A few dim lights illuminated the ceiling, but as far down as Brain and Master Chief were standing, this did not help to spruce up the surroundings very much. As if to make things even more ominous, giant electrified spikes jutted out of the room's walls. Also, the room had no floor. Beyond the point where the door ended, there was simply nothing. The ground dropped off into a dark expanse of blackness. It was a black pit, if ever Brian had seen one.

The former Blue gave one look at the black expanse, turned to Master Chief, and shook his head. "Nope, I'm not doing that. I'm not dropping down there."

Master Chief turned to Brian and then looked down at the expanse.

Brian just shook his head again. He was resolute in the fact that Master Chief, for whatever reason, could not pick him up, and therefore had no way of forcing him to follow it into the pit.

The orb floated over to Brian and then flew straight at his chest. Brian was knocked onto the orb as it collided into him. "Hey, what the heck are you doing?" he shouted. The orb lifted higher off of the ground, with Brian now on top of it, chest facing down. The former Blue struggled madly to free himself, but then realized that…he was over the black pit. And Master Chief was slowly descending into it. Brian stopped struggling, afraid that if he moved too much he would slide off of Master Chief. There was nothing he could do except lie on top of the orb as it took him deeper and deeper into darkness…