Chapter Eleven: Leftovers
1514 Hours, December 25, 2552. On Approach to the City of Nijmegen, Holland. "The Investigation," Planet Earth. Prologue to the Fate of Humanity
Unaware that he now had his second child on the way, Captain William "Willis" Hawk continued to focus on the readouts popping up on his D77H-TCI Pelican cockpit's display. The bottom right-hand corner of the screen---perhaps most important for him in his capacity as commander---showed his squadron's deployment order, consisting only of himself and Heat for today, and kept track of all the birds in green blips for him. The rest of the screen served as a tactical board, showing Hawk where the enemy was in the form of red blips across a dark background, among other things. So far, thankfully, his boards were still blank, but Willis knew that that could change in an instant. He remained alert.
This follow-up mission to Hawk and Heat's earlier patrol had been Major Collins's idea. Once Willis had discovered the downed Covenant ship, his CO had wanted to get an up-close look of the place, and she'd sent the experienced pair out along with a half-dozen Marines each. They were to land the troops as a sort of security team in case things got hairy dirtside, do a little detailed recon, and get back out. "Quick and easy, Captain," Collins had said to Willis.
Captain Hawk, however, had wanted to snort at her laconic conclusion. Nothing was ever quick and easy with the Flood.
Even as Willis and his wingmate approached the area where he'd first spotted the crashed enemy space vessel, he felt the fear beginning to well up inside him. He knew what the parasite was capable of, and he dreaded having to meet them again. More than anything, Hawk hoped that he was wrong and that the growth was something else.
Focus, Hawk, Willis thought to himself then. You're in command now. You've got to learn to keep your cool and lead these men no matter what you find. He took in a deep breath. In, out, done. Remember that.
"Sir? Is something wrong, Captain?"
Willis finally came out of his musings and glanced over at his co-pilot, Second Lieutenant Karen Howard. He hadn't really heard the question, but he gathered from her expression that she was worried. And that's exactly what I don't want to project to my subordinates, Hawk thought.
"Nothing's wrong yet, El-Tee," Hawk said with a small but reassuring grin. "It's just, if that stuff that's on the Covie ship's what I think it is, then we may have a tougher time on this recon run than Major Collins suggested."
Howard continued to have that same dubious look on her face, though now she nodded and seemed a bit placated. When she didn't reply back, Willis took the opportunity to broadcast his voice over the general channel, speaking to both his wingmate and their combined twelve Marines sitting in the two Pelicans' troop bays.
"Marines, this is Talon, designation Gold Leader," Captain Hawk said in a firm tone. "We'll be landing five klicks north of the site in about fourteen minutes. I want the security detail to lock and load and be ready to jump out of the belly the moment we hit dirt. Howard, Jacobson, and Heat, strap on your armor and grab a gun once the others set up a perimeter around the birds. If we do this right, we'll avoid any unpleasant encounters or overnight stays. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir!" his three pilots replied. Willis watched as the other Marines winked green acknowledgment lights across his screen as well.
Eleven more minutes.
Willis was nothing if not relieved when he finally did find a decent place to touch down. He hated the waiting almost as much as Cooper did, those anxious minutes, or sometimes even hours, spent contemplating what would happen when the enemy arrived. It was almost better to engage and get the skirmish over with than to have those quiet moments alone that slowly made you nuts.
The first thing he did once he'd landed his Pelican, after ordering the Marines from both crafts to form up a loose perimeter around the ships, was quickly peel the family photo off the cockpit. Stuffing the picture into the breast pocket of his flight uniform, Hawk then donned torso armor over it and picked up an MA5C assault rifle from the troop bay before finally stepping out.
Trying to ignore the bitter cold wind outside, Willis addressed his pilots and Marine ride-along team as he loaded the first clip of ammo into his weapon. He hoped he wouldn't need it.
"All right, everybody. We all know what to do. We've got five klicks to go in fifteen minutes though a buttload of snow. Luckily it's clear today, so this should go pretty fast. Victor?"
One of the Marines from Lieutenant Heat's group, an older, seasoned sergeant and leader of the team, looked up. "Sir?"
"I want you and your Marines to maintain watch around the birds while we're out. Keep yourselves silent and keep yourselves hidden. You can alert me immediately via datapad about any incoming enemies---Covie or Flood. I'll be sure to get back out here fast and get you guys support."
"Yes, sir."
Captain Hawk gave a slight nod in acknowledgment, then turned his attention to his six Marines. "For the rest of you, you're coming with me. Let's form up in a loose patrol column for now, and then we'll tighten it back up once we get to the ship. I'll take point for the trip there, Howard can take it on the trip back."
With his commands issued, Willis set off with his co-pilot and small group of Marines. First Lieutenant Brandon Heat had remained with the Pelicans as a standby craft, along with his co-pilot, Second Lieutenant David Jacobson. If they needed a rapid exit---which, with either the Flood or the Covenant, was often a nice backup plan---at least Hawk and his team would be ready.
Though a fair amount of it was accomplished by trudging through mounds of fresh snow, the march to the downed Covenant ship wasn't the hard part. For Willis, the hard part was overcoming the natural inclination to immediately get as far away from anything that might be Flood-infested as possible, and instead continue to lead his men right to it.
Much of the wind had died down by the time the huge Covenant ship was in sight, but the air outside was frigid just the same. Hawk had left his flight helmet in the cockpit of his Pelican, as it was meant only for piloting, though he suddenly wished he'd kept it for warmth if nothing else.
Bringing his MA5C to bear as he lifted his boots out of the snow, Captain Hawk went down on one knee and called for a halt once he was about a hundred meters out. The partially iced-over alien vessel loomed large above him, keeping Hawk, his co-pilot, and the other Marines in dark shadow. This definitely looked like a good place for the Flood to come out and attack any curious passerby.
"I wonder if they engineered this," Willis muttered, turning to face Lieutenant Howard while she slowly walked up to him. She was gripping her own MA5C tight, though Willis could tell by her not-quite-scared expression that she'd never seen the parasite firsthand before.
"I'm sorry, sir, what?" the second lieutenant inquired.
It took Hawk an extra second to remember what he'd said; he was simply mesmerized by the shear size of an enemy spaceship this close. They always seemed so much smaller when he was piloting a Longsword Interceptor out in orbit, but here on the ground…
Willis frowned. "Just thinking aloud, El-Tee. When I was fighting in Austria with my wife's unit, we…spent several hours in a Covenant camp that had been taken over entirely by these things. It was the first time any of us had ever seen them." He swallowed, trying not to think about how those had been the worst hours of his life. Even seeing what had become of that son of a bitch Ethan, who'd once landed Natalie in the hospital because he'd beaten her so badly, had shaken Willis to his core. It wasn't that the bastard hadn't deserved a death like that---he deserved that and more for what he'd put Willis's future wife through, at least in Hawk's perspective---but what the Flood had been able to do to Ethan's body. The corpse hadn't just been bloodied, but torn, twisted…
"Captain?"
Hawk quickly shook himself out of the memory. He'd had enough nightmares about being trapped in the Flood-infested encampment since then, and he certainly didn't want to relive it in his waking hours. "Yeah, the camp. We discovered about halfway in that the Flood had kept some of the humans prisoner for a while, and I was surprised that they'd been able to…well, conceive of something like that. So I was thinking that maybe they did the same here, with this ship."
"You mean they decided on their own to take it over for a reason, Captain?" Second Lieutenant Howard got a disgusted look on her face as she stared up at the parasitic growth along the exposed parts of the ship's hull, then shrugged. "I wouldn't know, sir. I've never even---"
"Contacts!" Willis heard Corporal Sam Reyes, his Marine team's leader, suddenly shout. "Sir, I've got at least a…holy shit. I've got at least a dozen red dots across my HUD, Captain. The Covies are coming for us!"
But even as Willis brought his rifle around to target the enemy, he could see that what was approaching him and his small team weren't the Covenant at all. It was the Flood.
"Those aren't Covies, Corporal!" Captain Hawk hollered back. "Marines, let's stay tight and wait for my order to open fire. And whatever you do, don't let any of the poppers get anywhere on you!"
This is one hell of a Christmas present, the captain thought to himself then, as ice-cold drops of sweat began making their way down his back. I swear, if any of my men today get taken over by the parasite, I'll never be able to live with myself.
The rapidly bounding Flood had made it about half the distance across before Willis gave the command. All at once, eight Marines, including Hawk and his co-pilot, opened fire with either assault rifles or submachine guns.
Captain Hawk concentrated his fire on the Flood Infection forms first, hoping to thin out the crowd of jumping poppers before they got close enough to take a stab at his Marines. If he'd learned anything at all during his time in the Covie camp, it was how quickly those things could mince your body---and then, eventually, turn it into an organic vessel for destruction and propagation.
The Infection forms, however, were a lot faster than the others of their kind.
As Willis kept his trigger finger pulled down and emptied a second clip into the incoming wave of horror vid creatures, he noted that some of the little tentacle balloon things had already made it uncomfortably close to his men. He quickly shredded a quintet of the things in less than a second, not even pausing to watch them burst into confetti-like ribbons of diseased flesh, hoping to keep them at bay long enough to get a closer look at the ship. But more were on their way.
"Keep firing, Marines!" Willis yelled above the din just before the second wave came in. "Just fill 'em with lead so they don't get near!"
Much of the renewed attack consisted of ex-Covenant now, not the abundant but easy to kill poppers. Hawk slapped in a fourth clip of ammo as seven huge Brute Flood forms leapt into their midst. Willis noticed one in particular going for the Marine closest to him, Second Lieutenant Howard, and she'd just finished her clip as well.
"Howard, get down!" Captain Hawk yelled.
Realizing his co-pilot wouldn't be fast enough, Willis sprinted hard before tackling her to the ground, right as the Flood form swung its beefy arm hard and fast to try to slap her away. Having seen one of his wife's Marines eat it during the campaign in Lienz---and having been a recipient of a lovely good-bye slap from Ethan himself---Hawk knew that a Flood form's brute strength was often more dangerous than the weapon it wielded.
The captain and his co-pilot landed hard in the snow, but not as hard as they would have had they been hit. Willis quickly rolled off Howard and jumped back to his feet, noticing while he completed the motion that the Flood beast was already cocking its arm for another go. He took only a half-second to point his assault rifle at the abdomen of the creature, and then fired.
Hawk didn't let go of the trigger until he'd emptied almost his entire clip, watching as chunks of old skin and tissue blew off the ex-Brute in chunks, slivers, and bursts of sickly yellow fluid. The creature let out several of the characteristic Flood wails while it bucked back from multiple bullet impacts, but it was the final loud groan the thing expelled as it died that rang in Willis's ears.
By the time he realized the Flood beast had finally been killed, Willis had spent the remainder of his clip shooting into the creature's head as well. He'd seen the things rise up from the dead before, and he didn't want to risk anything.
About the same time, Hawk noted that the constant rattle of his Marines' weapons had also stopped. He turned from staring down at the Brute Flood form he'd just taken out and looked at his team instead. "Status?"
"All…all present and accounted for, sir," Corporal Reyes replied, his voice hoarse and sounding out of breath from the brief skirmish. "One minor injury for PFC Selmus, dislocated shoulder. But he'll be fine, Captain."
Willis nodded, stepping over to where his co-pilot was standing while he took in the report. "How're you holding up, El-Tee? Are you hurt?"
Lieutenant Howard shook her head and answered firmly, though judging by the look on her face, she was visibly shaken from the encounter. "No, sir, I'm ok. Thanks for saving my ass."
"No problem."
As Captain Hawk assembled the Marines once more, he stayed close to Howard but kept his focus on the strange growth all along the side of the Covenant ship. He wasn't going to order his Marines inside, not today---they didn't have the manpower for that kind of an operation at present, and anyway, they'd found out what they needed to know. There was no doubt that the Flood were indeed in control of the ship now. But the main question was, had the parasite happened to come along and find and take over the Covenant vessel once it was crashed?
Or while it was still operating somewhere in space?
In cases like these, Hawk was naturally inclined to come up with a viable theory on what had happened himself. But with so little known about the Flood still---at least to the common soldier or civilian---Willis wasn't even sure where to start on this one. Not yet, anyway. He had to do some thinking.
"So…that's the Flood, huh?" Lieutenant Howard asked quietly as they marched along.
"Yeah," Willis replied. He glanced over at his co-pilot, who seemed to have taken point as well now that they were walking side-by-side, and saw a few drops of blood spilling from a cut above her left eye. He suddenly felt bad for bowling her over like that, but he knew she would've been in much worse shape if he hadn't. "That's the Flood, Howard."
She snorted as she wiped the blood rolling slowly into her eye. "This has been a helluva Christmas Day so far, sir."
Hawk wasn't sure what to say, so he simply nodded. But in his mind, he thought, Any day you come across the Flood and survive is a good day.
