Chapter 13: Into Hell

As everyone settled to work, there was an eerie humming sound that started to emit. It resonated loudly around everyone on the bridge, so much so the crew started to try and cover their ears wincing in pain as it only grew stronger.

My suit dampened a lot of it but even still I could feel how intense it was. Seeing as I was the only one able, I shifted across the bridge to attempt to activate the ships shielding tech.

I could hear the screams of people all around me as I made my way to the console, Chrystal showing me the exact buttons to press. I did as she had shown me and suddenly the sound stopped and everybody suddenly dropped to the floor, the relief of the pain gone.

They lay bathed in sweat, breathing heavily, with more than a few of them with blood making its way from their ears.

Captain Dare looked across at myself and gave a thankful nod, but before anyone could regain their composure an incredible bright light descended upon us, the ship jerked and rocked violently at the same time throwing myself and everyone else across the bridge. Consoles and computers exploding around us, sirens echoing throughout every deck of the enhanced Prowler.

There was an incredible whooshing sound as all of our vision turned to just pure bright light. Then in an instant the light disappeared and what appeared to be a cloud of incredibly dense fog or dust was all around us.

I couldn't make out where any of the other crew were. Then all kinds of emotions overwhelmed me, as suddenly what seemed like fog disappeared. I wasn't on the bridge of the Prowler anymore. No. I was free falling towards land below!

'Chrystal, what the fucking hell is going on?!' I said in complete shock.

'I, I don't actually know, I'm sorry! There's no readings of where we are and I can't scan anything!' Chrystal hurriedly replied.

Shit. I cursed to myself as I continued to hurtle towards the ground, the green lushness of it looming up before me. I could make out structures I'd never seen before sticking up across the vast land, intertwined with hills and mountains and snow covered areas that looked harsh and arid.

'Brace for impact!' Chrystal exclaimed.

I closed my eyes. And took one final breath through gritted teeth.

From afar it must've of looked completely helpless, a small insignificant being hurtling helplessly through the air. Fully clad in armour only increasing the velocity of the fall.

A huge boom echoed around the lush valley as my body slammed into the ground, dirt rising straight back up into the air around the vicinity of the impact.

Then all was still.

Another boom echoed out about 30 meters from my impact zone. Again dirt rising back up before it too settled back on the ground.

Again, all went silent.

Everything was black, but suddenly I was able to take in a deep breath followed by very rapid breathing, my eyes opened and I could see clouds directly above with patches of what appeared to be blue sky. I lay still just trying to gain my breath. I ached all over. The taste of blood in my mouth where id evidently caught my teeth on the inside of my cheeks but I was alive and that's all that mattered.

I groaned as I eventually tried to shift myself up into a sitting position, Chrystal giving me the all clear apart from some bruising and being winded.

As I sat up I could see I'd plummeted about 2 maybe 3 feet into the ground, such was the impact of my fall, somehow luckily, I'd come down on soft peat like ground.

I heaved myself up onto my knees now able to see clearly out of the hole I was in. The surroundings were beautiful to say the least, a vast open valley with lush long grass blowing in the light breeze. A stream also passed through the middle of the valley weaving its way through the grass and into tiny outcrops of trees.

"Errugh, Chrystal, what is this place?" I asked giving my Visr a wipe.

"I honestly have no idea, I'm picking up nothing... wait, 30 meters over there I'm picking up a signal, human" Chrystal flashed up a marker on my Visr.

I stood for the first time and hauled myself over the lip of the hole and staggered across to the marker. As I approached I saw a hand clawing over the top of the hole about equal to the one from my own impact.

A bolt action sniper rifle suddenly flew out the hole and onto the ground before me before the clawing hand pulled up a figure.

"Hope you aren't going to be pulling that trigger staff sergeant" Major King said before coughing and getting to his feet.

I'd reached for my pistol as he'd emerged but quickly switched to safety mode and holstered it.

I bent down and tossed him the bolt action sniper he had tossed on the ground.

"Well thanks" he said sliding the bolt back and clearing the dirt from the impact, "any ideas where we are chap?"

"Absolutely none, Chrystal can't find any signals either, it's like there's something blocking all the transmissions around here and fuck knows how we even left the ship without knowing." I replied looking around us.

"Agreed and I don't like it one bit, your call on which way to head." Major King replied.

As he finished speaking a huge blue beam shot up into the sky, quite some distance away from us over a tree and rock lined ridge.

"Well, I guess we will head to where that thing is coming from" I said whilst pulling my battle rifle off the back of my suit slamming a magazine into it.

We set off through the long grass towards the ridge line that marked the edge of the valley, pure blue sky above with the sun beating down upon us.

Weird winged creatures flew in the sky in the distance to our right, something I'd never seen before, were they native to where ever this was? Who knows at this point.

We splashed through the shallow rocky stream, the water only calf deep. Little fish like creatures scattered from our boots as we waded through disturbing them.

Climbing the incline to the top of the ridge line was hard work, the land was substantially steeper than what we Initially thought and once we hit the rocky outcrops we had to jump back and forth from ledge to ledge, and there was more than one hairy moment when one of us would slip almost plummeting back to the bottom.

Finally however we made it to the top of the rocky cliff face, we moved on over the slight grassy rise and were created with a tremendous view.

The valley behind where we had come from stretched out for what had to be miles upon miles, the stream we had eased through glinted in the sunlight, and off in the distance we could make out where we had impacted though very distant now.

On the other side was a drop down, but before us lay grass and hillside plus weird trees that had distorted and twisted branches. Structures jutted out made of some kind of metallic alloy, where the blue beam originated. There wasn't just one however, we could see these structures all off in the distance as far as the eye could see!

Further past the initial trees and structures, there was what appeared to be a mountainous region, with yet more faint structures emitting blue beams from the very peaks.

"Where in gods name are we?" Major King gasped.

"It's strangely beautiful though you've got to admit" I replied taking in the view.

"I guess that's one way of describing it, let's head for that nearest structure maybe there is a computer system or something to help us figure out where the hell we are" Major King suggested.

"Long way down first, though looks like a slope just over to the right there that we can maybe get down" I said pointing across to it.

He nodded and we headed along the sheer drop to the sloping loose rock area I'd seen.

There was no other way about it but we were just gonna have to surf these loose shingle type rocks down and hope for the best. I lept down and instantly the ground gave way and I was tumbling down in amongst loose shingle, the Major following suit.

I started to slow towards the bottom as the ground levelled out and thrust myself to my feet and broke into a run before coming to a stop, the Major however caught a bigger rock as he tried the same and was sent tumbling before he rolled out of it and regained his composure.

We dusted down and head on, the nearest structure was roughly 500 meters ahead with a few trees and some boulders around its perimeter.

We both drew our weapons, myself taking the lead as I had more close range weapons than the Major had. The closer we got we could make out what look liked highly engraved alloy with a ramp leading up from the ground to a platform around where the blue beam emitted from between two tall alloy towers.

Our boots clattered on the alloy as we jogged up the ramp onto the platform. As we reached the top the blue boom whooshed and pulsed. There was a slight ridged wall hemming in the platform and there at the end on one of the pillars was a glowing holographic screen next to what appeared to be a door with bright red lights in the center of it.

We made our way down and apart from the gym and pulsing sound of the blue beam just the sound of the breeze in the trees could be heard.

We stopped at the console, it was certainly nothing I'd seen before but Chrystal might know.

"Chrystal, can you make out any of this?" I asked her looking at the console.

"Definitely forerunner tech, I can make out some of it but not all, our knowledge isn't as vast as it is with the covenants, in fact it is actually very limited. Dr Glassman still has a lot of work to be published but... I'll do my best, plug in my remote adaptor into that socket below the console" Chrystal asked.

I did as she asked. I could see the console coming to life as she did her thing but not much success was had.

"I can't access anything substantial without the proper access, and I have no idea where that is, this console is pretty locked down but I think I can at the least open this structures doors, would you like me to try?" She informed me.

"Do it." I replied grabbing my gun and signalling for Major King to take up position on the opposite side of the door to me.

The door clicked, and the lights went green. I ya led Chrystals remote adaptor and took a step towards the door where it suddenly opened with my motion. It was dark, but there were tiny spotlights along the alloy corridor.

I turned to the Major, giving him a nod and with that we both headed in.

TO BE CONTINUED...