Casualty reports are in, and they're lies. Siberia Prime puts the civilian casualties in the first week at two million. ONI's got dead proof of twice that number. Satellite imagery shows fuel dumps and what look like food reserves on fire. They're bargaining factory equipment for food supply. The minute the Governor and his staff set foot off of the planet, there's a mob ready to lynch them for war crimes and human rights abuses.
It's sad. Not them, us. The UNSC is worn down from this war, worn down to the point where we can only dismiss the people who haven't given up.
Excerpt from the diary of Captain Mark Ramirez, FLEETCOM.
1230 Hours, 20th September 2552 (Military Calendar)
North Balcony, Transit Column Spinward of Containment Elevator.
Halo
"Comrades in arms," Private Dirkins began, addressing the three women and four men gathered around the body of Sergeant Morris. "We are gathered here today to pay our final respects to our commanding officer, who has departed to a well-earned R&R in the hereafter. He was a man who lead from the front, who had been getting the short end of the stick ever since we crashed on Halo. Some of his trials were of his own making, many were what Fate put in his way, but his response to each obstacle was to buckle down, try harder, and promise to bring us back home."
Dirkins saluted, followed by each of the other Marines. "You deserved more than that, Morris, and in death you deserve more than we can give you now. With great sorrow, we commit your body to the... depths."
Montag and Da Vega stepped forward and grabbed Morris's corpse by the shoulders and boots. Dirkins helped pick him up, doubtful about the shear strength of a spineless midsection. As he and the others carried the body to the edge of the structure they had paused on, he was glad that the unshredded back muscles were strong enough to keep the internal organs in place.
"We, uh... commit him on three, ready?" Da Vega asked. "One... Two... Three!"
Morris, his assault rifle cradled in his arms and standing at attention for the last time, fell out of sight, bound for the deepest parts of Halo.
"Wish we could've found a better way," Da Vega remarked.
"Whole point is to keep him away from the Grunts and Jackals," Montag replied. "Back on Siberia Prime, we'd rig up incinerators out of KO'd Wraiths."
The Marines walked away morosely, silently stepping over alternating puddles and trails of blood. The balcony they had held a funeral upon was the furthermost end of a hallway, which joined with another hallway in a T-junction. That hallway, tall and broad with columns on each wall for support, terminated in a security door with a hole cut through it.
"Mobutu claimed there were elevators, somewhere around here. We really ought to try and rejoin with the other Marines." June said, nodding in the direction generally opposite of where they'd come from.
"Yeah, but I'd feel a lot safer if we cut the Covenant up some, slow them down. It'd be easy in a bottleneck like this," Kanoff said, drawing mutters of assent from Liz, Da Vega, and Dirkins.
"Forgive me if I'm dead wrong," Montag replied. "But sticking around with itchy trigger fingers was what caused this debacle in the first place."
"Yeah, and in case you don't remember, the floorplan was stacked against us in the first place. We never had decent cover going in," Liz retorted. "Now the boot's on the other foot; anything walking down that hallway is going to have zilch for cover, and we can take cover easy."
June stepped forward when Montag failed to follow up, staring off into the distance. "Yeah, like back at the light bridge? Face it, when that blast door opens, they're going to just volley-fire and etch our shadows into the wall behind us!"
"Genug!" Montag shouted. "Liz, Dirkins, you're on recon duty. Find the elevators, tell us how to get to them, and look for controls. Everyone else, set up for ambush."
There was an awkward moment, before everyone reluctantly nodded in assent. As they left for their respective jobs, Montag mulled over Kanoff's observation, one that had eluded him before.
The barriers around the elevator, impervious to bullets or plasma. The teleportation booths that allowed entrance and egress into the inner ring of the elevator room, but with the controls on the outside. The blast doors that had been unaffected by focused C-12 charges. The lack of cover granted to anything that exited the elevator room.
All centered on the elevator. What was down there?
Elevator Room, 1233 Hours
Upon the arrival of the Keepers, the Elites under Krish 'Janulee had bowed in penitence, kneeling down on the hard floor with their heads down, their necks exposed, and their palms upward. It was a position of complete trust or complete submission, to bare your most vulnerable points like that. Krish joined them for a moment, but was the first to rise. The creations of the Forerunner were to be held in reverence, yes, but also to be feared.
The Keepers, for their part, granted the assembled Covenant only scant attention before continuing on, erasing scorch marks on the walls and undoing the damage wrought by the battle.
As the Sangheili stood at attention once again, Krish took stock of his remaining resources. With the Malekgolo pair dead, the result of bad luck and the beasts' single-minded dedication, he had lost what armor he had to begin with. The Kig-Yar accounting for more than half his forces had last a third of their number. The Sangheili, better off than the others, had taken few casualties.
Now, with the Unggoy bringing fresh guns, Krish contacted the Sangheili back in the control station.
"The Humans trapped in the pit have not gone far, and have no other egress," came the reply. "The other group has stopped as well. Expect them to bite back."
"Very well," Krish ordered. "Open the door on my command."
While they waited for the Unngoy to finish waddling around the energy barriers to their position, a Sangheili sidled up with a Malekgolo cannon draped across one shoulder.
"A most uncomfortable position, to be sure."
"They have the cover, we have but a narrow pass. And they possess a weapon to exploit it," Krish admitted.
The warrior shrugged and lowered the salvaged weapon. "True, perhaps, but it is too much for their frail bodies. It took two humans to merely carry it. Aiming it against recoil would be beyond them."
Krish considered finding a wiser, warier Sangheili to take the fuel rod cannon, but there was no time.
"They're resourceful," He admonished. "If you don't have a clear shot, fire for effect and drive them into cover."
He stepped away, sorting the Covenant into ranks with short orders. As the Unggoy detail arrived with the weapons, he gazed at the Keepers swarming over the door, piously going about their humble work.
Spinward Hallway, 1233 Hours
"What the Hell are those?"
Montag, lying down beside Kanoff, beamed a live image from his scope to everyone's HMD. The reticule of the Rifle hovered over the flying widgets, which looked like anemic plasma pistols. They were swarming the plug Jonesy had cut from the blast door. The slab of inert metal, two since the blast door had been double-layered, sparkled with flashes of bright orange light. Montag shifted the gaze of the Rifle to the door, where more widgets were hovering and more orange flashes lined the hole.
"I think they're repairing the blast door," Montag said.
Kanoff looked up from his binoculars. "Should we take them out? One plasma grenade might do the trick."
"Yeah, and piss off the security system?" June said. "I can guarantee you, if the self-repair is working, the security bots are."
"Those might even be the aliens that built this place." Montag said.
"What, machines?"
"Yeah. Maybe they went HAL and killed off their creators before building this place. Or maybe the aliens shed their biological bodies for machines that wouldn't age."
"Or maybe," Da Vega deadpanned. "They're the equivalent of little vacuum bots."
The widgets continued their work as the door opened, and ceased only when the Jackals charged through. A volley of four overcharged bolts from Kanoff and Da Vega greeted them. The first ranks dropped behind the ranks with intact shields, except for the ones shot by Montag. They merely dropped.
A return salvo of bolts depleted the shields that Kanoff and Da Vega were using, and they retreated out of the hallway.
Da Vega activated a second Jackal shield and, with June, covered Jonesy as he swung the Hunter arm-cannon out into the open. Whereas it took four people to hold and fire it, Jonesy had run a cable from the winch on his multi-tool up over a rafter-like structure over the T-junction and secured it to the gun. Instead of lifting it, all he had to do was aim, press the slab that acted as a trigger, and think happy thoughts.
"Hey, xenos," Da Vega shouted as she grabbed the line to steady the cannon. "HADOKEN!"
The blast drowned out her arcane war cry. A long stream of green light shone forth, and shields collapsed and bodies dematerialized in it's wake. Jonesy swept the beam to the left, and then down along the floor to catch the Covenant that had dropped to the ground. Before he could finish the circuit, the beam died and the cannon powered down, advertising the fact that it was empty.
"Alright," Montag called out as he brought out the Handgun. "Mop up and fall back!"
BOOM! BOOM!
An Elite rising to its knees stopped.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A Jackal spun around, spouting blood from its shoulder and chest.
As Montag set his sights upon another Elite, a black blur raced past the doorway, vaulted and rolled over the bodies to avoid the Marine's gunfire. As the Elite rolled to it's feet, Montag recognized the fire-blacked armor and the seeping chest wound. His second realization was that the Elite had deftly plucked a Hunter's arm-cannon out of the bodies, and now had it leveled at the Marines.
"Fall back!" he shouted, drowning out the monosyllabic invectives from the other Marines. He ducked to the side, and a shot that would have grazed the top of his abdomen passed by harmlessly, cut through the line suspending the cannon, and detonated against the back wall.
A second round hit the floor behind the cannon. June was the closest, and the blast wave threw her against the far wall, collapsing the shield she was using.
Kanoff and Jonesy picked themselves off the floor and ran to her side. Upon seeing her comatose, they picked her up and carried her down the hall leading to the elevators.
Montag waved Da Vega off. "Geh mit sie! Bring up the rear!"
"What about you?"
"I'm going the other way, split them up."
With that vaguely defined goal, Montag dashed across the hallway, waving the captured sword in one hand. He ducked under a salvo of plasma and ran in the opposite direction that the rest of the Marines went.
If the Ringworld Engineers were so obsessed with symmetry, then both ways led to the elevators.
Spinward Hallway, 1235 Hours
Krish 'Janulee stood at a crossroads. To his left, the bulk of the Humans had fled. To the right, only the Murderer had gone that way.
Breathing in deeply and lowering the cannon so as to grant his heart rest, he signaled to the rest of the Covenant to halt.
"To the left. Follow the Humans, cut them down, and cut off the Murderer's escape."
"You will take on the Murderer by yourself?" one of the Sangheili asked aloud. "Perhaps Fate will smile upon you this time."
Krish lashed out and seized the offending warrior by the left mandible pair. He bent them back beyond their stretching point and forcing the head back. The Sangheili toppled over backward, and Krish stomped his hoof down on the fallen warrior's chest. He dropped the cannon and picked up the offender's plasma rifle in one smooth movement.
"I was locked in a burning Spectre," Krish snarled. "Before being forced to fight unarmed. You were bested by a cripple with a weapon in your hand! The legion Mortumas 'Kandonomee forged has no need of you."
The Sangheili bristled at the charge and lifted his chin, defiantly exposing his neck. Five shots to the head cracked the shield and killed him.
Krish dismissively kicked the body aside and clipped the plasma rifle to his side. Painfully, he leaned down and picked up the cannon.
"Go," he ordered the others. "Before more time is wasted."
The Sangheili nodded respectfully and charged down the hall to the left, with the Jackals keeping pace. Krish hefted the cannon, primed it, and loped down the hall to the left.
The hall ended in a balcony, without a wall or a rail, open to the vast expanse of Halo. It continued around the corner and out of sight, an obvious point for an ambush.
Krish took the corner sliding, crouched in a defensive position that let him turn freely to his left. The Murderer was leaning against a wall where the balcony turned inward, aiming its rifle. The first round merely caught Krish off-balance, but wasn't enough to break his overshields. A second round caught him over the chest as he charged forward, aiming the awkward arm-cannon at the human.
A peculiar feeling danced across his right hoof. Childhood training let him immediately identify it as a trip-line. Krish kicked that hoof back and let himself fall forward, a response ground into him at the earliest age. The cannon flew out of his hands, governed by the laws of inertia.
Beneath him, two of the Human's ugly fruit-shaped flares rolled to a stop, joined at the stem by a length of fine cord. Krish grabbed both of them and kept the handles on the stem depressed. He lurched to his feet and snapped the cord in two.
The Human's jaw was taught, his facial muscle contracted, and his mouth was slightly agape; a common expression of surprise amongst the lower animals. The danger it was in must have occurred to it, and the Murderer bolted through a doorway.
Krish grabbed one of the dangling halves of cord and pulled, unleashing the handle. He realized, moments later, that the flares might have been set to detonate immediately, but they didn't. He threw the flare through the doorway, bouncing it off the jam and deep into the room.
As he cleared the doorway, he saw that the Murderer had avoided the blast with a stolen Kig-Yar gauntlet. The room was split by a narrow chasm, with two small energy bridges crossing it. The human was fleeing to the nearest bridge, firing wildly with a sidearm.
Krish 'Janulee pulled the cord free of the second flare and threw it at the Human's feet. It bounced off the right boot and detonated a few strides away from the target, knocking the Murderer on its back.
The bodyguard of the late Mortumas 'Kandonomee nonchalantly drew his plasma rifle and fired a few shots as he drew near, weakening the enemy's shield. When he was not ten paces away, the Human screamed, a sound that made him pause.
It sounded like an animal.
Transit Column, 1236 Hours
Perhaps not the most disconcerting sound he'd heard that day, but close, was the rough noise of duct tape tearing loose of the ground as the Elite tripped over the snare. It was a crude trap he'd set up in twenty seconds to tear the shields off any Covenant that would follow him. Such a simple, obvious trap required him to stay behind and run distraction to draw attention away from it, but the total failure was unthinkable.
Now, as the Elite was rolling to its feet and the fact that it had overshields was established, it was a perfect time to turn the other cheek and run.
As he dashed through the doorway and slung the Rifle across his back, he cursed himself. Thirty seconds more, which he'd certainly had, would've made the trap foolproof. Hindsight was a mean-spirited teacher, he decided as he activated the Jackal shield on his left arm.
He heard a clattering off to his right and spun around, bringing the shield between him and the grenade. It went off, and starbursts of static played across the energy barrier where shrapnel impacted. Now that he was facing the doorway he'd come through, Montag ripped out the Handgun with his free arm and began shooting in the general direction of the Elite.
The alien threw the second grenade straight at Montag, and he kicked the offending ordinance away.
He didn't get the shield around in time.
A distant thunderclap sounded, hand in hand with a bolt from heaven striking his face. All the heat and power went through a point just above and behind the outer corner of his right eye. The thunder, more felt than heard, passed through his whole body, knocking him on his back.
The pain faded out, too much to register at first. Montag instinctively reached up and felt the wound, and the floodgates burst open. All the pain he'd ever felt was bottled up, distilled, and poured upon that wound. It was accompanied by a deeper, subtler sensation, beneath the skin and around the eye. A feeling like grinding two massive blocks of concrete rubble against each other.
Montag's jaw opened up so much, it hurt. Just barely wide enough to let out his scream, a bloodcurdling shriek that reverberated off the shield he was covered with.
As air fled his body, rational thought fled his mind.
He tried to roll to his feet, but the half-melted snow was soaking into his clothes, slowing him down. He couldn't hear the Hunter; if it was going to finish him off, he'd feel the footsteps first. Where were those Reavers?
Plasma splashed across the shield, drawing his attention to the Elite slowly advancing upon him. He remembered the past thirty seconds both way: getting a face full of shrapnel from a grenade thrown by the Elite, and getting swatted down when scrabbling across a Hunter's frosty back with a chemical flare clenched in his teeth, determined to die not yet not yet not yet not-
"No' yet, noyet, nyet..." Montag hissed. He twisted around and pushed himself to his knees. It was still hard to think, like sifting sand through a sieve, but the duality of existence faded away, and he was coming back to reality. He could clearly see the Elite, standing amidst the wreckage of a SAM battery and its crew.
"Nyet nyet nyet nyet!" Montag screamed. He hobbled forward, stumbling as his right knee gave out but persevering by using the Jackal shield as a sort of cane.
Step two and three were somewhat easier, due to inertia, and he was at a jogging rate by step four. Step five and six brought a resurgence of pain that he fought against as he picked up speed, but by step seven, he'd closed into melee range of the Elite.
The Elite reached out with its left arm and swung the plasma rifle with the other, perhaps intending to grab the shield, twist Montag's arm out of the socket, and follow up with shots to his back.
That wasn't the game Montag was playing.
Already, he had the plasma sword in his hand. He ignited it at the last moment, and the tines pierced the shield and cut through the Elite's elbow.
Before the severed arm and the rifle it had a death grip upon could hit the floor, Montag swung at the other arm. When the fight began, there had been a shield acting as a barrier between Montag and the Elite, but not anymore. Montag was completely unfettered and the Elite had nothing to protect himself with.
Montag lurched out of the spray of blood jetting from the Elite's severed stumps, fighting for balance. He swung his left fist at the Elite's throat. It wasn't a strong punch, mostly because the Elite's neck was above Montag's head, but it didn't have to be. It was enough to cut the Elite's scream short and make it bow its head.
As it choked, Montag regained his balance and switched off the energy sword. Swinging the hilt over his head, he brought it down on the Elite's helmet like a sledgehammer.
The hilt rang like a bell as it flew out of his hand.
The jump was involuntary.
The sound of the friction-stir welder on line five starting up sounded like a Wraith firing. A four-year tour had drilled the reflex into Montag: Look for the blob, jump for cover. It wasn't something he could turn off.
And now his frayed nerves had been set on edge by the sound of welder number four's bobbin hitting the concrete floor. A work of engineering beauty, an investment of ten man-hours, and he'd dropped it. Thrice-inspected by Quality Assurance and Compliance, to ensure that it conformed to Specification, and he'd dropped it because he was a nerveless wreck who shouldn't be working in a factory where banging, grinding, and riveting drove him closer to an apoplexy each-
"Chort Poberi!" Montag cursed, cutting the train of thought short. He scooped up the bobbin, a segmented cylinder of hardened alloy and turned it over to look for damage, praying for none.
Montag shook his hand, an unintelligible string of invectives hissing through his teeth. The Elite fell over backwards, its helmet askew. Montag viciously kicked the Elite's head, lost his balance, and fell on the animal. He slipped off on the pool of blood coating both of them, pulled the Knife out, and stabbed the Elite in the thick muscle of the shoulder. He used the embedded Knife as a handhold to pull himself onto the struggling Elite, twisting the handle as he fought for a grip.
A shadow fell across Montag. A man, shorter than the ex-Marine he was standing over, looked at the bobbin in Montag's hand with the patented disinterest of the model Consolidated Industries foreman.
"Is there a problem?" he shouted, emphasizing his words with sign language. A finger pointed at the bobbin in Montag's hands, a thumbs down, and a shrug to indicate a question.
"No," Montag shouted back, barely loud enough to be heard through fabrikmusik and earplugs. "The ultrasound scan checks out alright, wear is within tolerance." He pointed at the portable ultrasound imager, at the bobbin, rubbed one hand over the other, stuck both forefingers out and brought them together, and then gave a thumbs up. For the first time that day, he was proud of himself, proud that he was picking up on the language so fast.
Foreman Ivan Zabrysk Leynn looked down, nudging the divot left in the concrete by the bobbin with a steel-toed boot. Montag braced himself for a thorough ball-breaking, but Leynn merely reached back behind the driveshaft coverlet and retrieved a can of beer from its hiding spot.
"Drinking on the job is fine," Lynn shouted. "But damn to Hell if you're drunk."
"I'm fine, sir."
The foreman took that statement with a grain of salt. He set the can down and held up four fingers to indicate the time until the welder went back online. As he left, he stopped to glare at the control box to the welding machine, at the safety locks Montag had threaded through the breakers but hadn't fastened. He shook his head, wondered why his daughter was letting a basket-case ex-Marine shack up with her, and continued on his way to line three.
Montag swung one leg over the Elite so he could straddle it, and pulled the Knife out of the wound. He slashed at the head and left deep cuts in the mandibles and lip.
The Elite screamed and tried to roll over, but couldn't, not with only its legs. Montag retaliated, steadying himself with the left hand anchored on the Elite's shoulder wound, the right hand working as swiftly as a jackhammer. Stab the Knife into the throat, twist, pull it loose, repeat. It was hardly a full five seconds before something analogous to the windpipe caved in, though it wasn't the end of the violence.
Montag pulled the Knife free, flipped it around in his hand, and rammed it through the roof of the Elite's mouth, twisting it back and forth.
A little bit of counter-twisting, some jiggling with the Allen driver, and the set screw finally went in straight.
Montag watched the cleaning oil ooze out of the screw hole, trickling to a stop as the gauge on the screwdriver approached 10 newton-meters.
He'd taken this job because he could see the war as one machine, and manufacturing fuel tanks for the Navy was a part of that machine, no less important than fighting on the front lines. Every time he saw a bottle of Zavod Kantoreka, every time he had nightmares about marines dying, it became harder to think that way.
It was, Montag reflected as he slid the cover back on and screwed it down, time he admitted that he wasn't ready for civilian life yet. He could drive in a convoy, but the smallest traffic on the Interchange was enough to drive him insane. He'd been able to fall asleep to the sound of gunfire and artillery, but the sound of Vera breathing across the room kept him up all hours of the night.
He could pack up what sanity he had left and re-enlist, go back to what he was good at. Defective product: Outside of Specification, unfit for Civilian Use. Return to manufacturer.
Like breaking the surface of the ocean after days of drowning, Montag returned to sanity, or at least awareness.
He pulled the Knife out of the Elite's mouth, a hole that now extended all the way down to the base of its throat. He could feel his heart beat, could hear the fabrikmusic, the sounds of a healthy factory washing over him. The smell of HE, Elite blood, and Human blood mixed in with the air, drowning out the smell of hot metal, ozone, and cleaning oil. Which was imaginary?
Before Montag could puzzle it out, separate the imaginary from the real with logic, he felt a break in the fabrikmusik. Pain lanced across the right side of his face, from the shrapnel wound that had clearly fractured something. That had to be taken care of first.
Sand and a sieve. Thought was fleeting, focusing on the here and now took effort. The floor beneath him was metal of alien origin, not burnished concrete in a factory back home. The sound and the smell and the taste of home was imaginary, the pain wasn't, he reminded himself again and again as his life slowly drained out of a hole behind his right eye.
Moving like a marionette with an inexperienced, twitchy puppetmaster, he unclipped his backpack and rolled off of it, onto his left side. Blood poured over his cheek and nose, letting him know that his was bleeding more profusely than head wounds usually do. He grabbed his canteen and poured the water on the cut. He could barely feel the water, which wasn't a good sign.
Moving one arm at a time, as if they were lead weights he was unfamiliar with, he dug out his medical kit. A foil packet the size of a teabag was torn open, and a flexible woven-nylon cloth was pulled out, unfolded, and pressed over the wound. Coagulant powder went to work cutting off the blood flow, while adhesives stuck to the skin. Enough to hold things together until he could get to Dirkins.
Montag's vision got blurrier as he applied polypseudomorphine patches to his forehead, due more to blood lose, trauma, and the adrenaline rush than to the pseudormorphine. On the other hand, this was his third dose in... thirty minutes? An hour?
Like a check list, he ran through what he'd just done. Survived the Elite, halted the blood flow, killed the pain. He thought for a moment, and added more to the list.
Get to Sierra Squad, meet up with Dirkins.
Get back in fighting condition.
Get to the Pillar of Autumn.
Everything was blurry now, not just his vision. Thinking was like an analogy he was too tired to think of. Slow, it took all of his strength to concentrate. His right hand rummaged through the medical kit until something caught his eye.
With clumsy fingers, he picked up a hypodermic needle labeled for hospital use. The artery in his neck was hard to find, but he slowly triangulated it from his jaw and his year, on the side that wasn't covered in clot-cloth.
He saw something at the edge of his vision, a dark mass hovering over the Elite. The shadow looked up from its inspection and gave Montag the thumbs-up.
Montag grinned spitefully as he jabbed the needle into his neck and tapped the tip. The pressure wave from the tap broke a seal in the needle, and compressed argon pushed a measured dose of Coretin into his body.
The stuff took a minute to work, but it was a miracle when it did. The confusion lifted like a morning fog, and the fuzziness from the pseudomorphine and the injuries vanished. Thoughts began to flow more evenly, one clearly following the other. Montag did a quick math problem, sought the prime factor of 140, and got five, seven, two, and two. No pauses, no lost train of thought.
He stood, and a shower of silver needles gushed up his right leg and exploded in his knee, but he was still alert enough to keep his balance. The numbness in his forehead and shoulder hadn't left, and the rest of his body ached, but he could feel everything. The uneven, half-melted soles of his boots, the weight of his armor, the blood trickling down his arms.
Montag raised one hand and stared at the rivulets of purple blood running off the waterproof material of his gloves. He recalled a hospital nurse explaining what the Ceretin did, how it cleared up the drug users who were brought in. Did it improve coordination, or did it only seem like so?
Wordlessly, he flipped the medical kit closed, stuck it in his backpack, and shouldered it. He stood up and walked unsteadily to the Rifle. A quick glance at the scope confirmed that it was undamaged by the blast or the subsequent fall. Not far away was the hilt to the energy sword, undamaged by its use as a hammer-head.
As he left, Montag surveyed the room. The Shadow was gone, and there were no phantom bodies or blast marks, no smell of oil or napalm or cooked flesh. All was as it should be.
Montag didn't even bother suppressing the 'isn't life grand?' smile, enjoying sanity while he still had it.
First Gondola on the right, 1345 Hours
"Liz, we have no options," Dirkens shouted over her pleading. "Your sister was thrown against her shield, and the gauntlet snapped her ulna at the halfway point. Her elbow," he continued, pointing at the crushed mass halfway up June's arm. "Was forced right through the shield before it could collapse. You wouldn't get a finer mess if her arm was crushed in a vise!"
Liz nodded weakly, tears running down her face. She'd gone hysterical when she saw her sister, and she looked like she would've gouged out Dirkins' eyes when he told her what he needed to do. Fortunately, she was listening to reason, for now. No telling how she would be when the cutting started.
"If I were in a critical ward with an autodoc and a neurosurgeon, we could save her arm. I'm not, so we're going to have to amputate."
June, lying between them and out cold, would have it the easiest. The sedative patches on her neck would keep her out cold until Dirkins was through. She didn't have to deal with the doubts and second-guessing her sister or her doctor did, she would just wake up with most of her left arm missing. And learn to deal with it.
"I'm going to move the tourniquet, and when I start cutting, I need you to hold her other hand. You don't have to look.
After she nodded and closed her eyes, he picked up a scalpel and touched it to the crook of June's arm. He ran the steps through his head, how he would have to cut the skin, close off the arteries and veins, and snip the nerves with a special tool that would allow for prosthetics to be grafted on later. Before closing back up, he would clean the wound, remove broken shards of bone, and seal the end of the humerus.
He alternated between the plastic scalpel and the electrocauterizer built into the back of the blade, exposing blood vessels and wrinkling his nose at the smell of cooked flesh.
He was half a minute into the job when Kanoff called out from the upper part of the elevator. Only then did Dirkins notice the absence of plasma fire. Presumably, their Covenant pursuers had been killed or driven off.
"Here comes Montag!" he shouted.
Dirkins cursed, remembering how it had gone the past three or four times Montag had shown up after combat. "Am I going to have to glue his head back together again?"
"Holy crap," came the reply, with the sort of tone reserved for when someone walks into a hospital with a railroad spike driven through his jaw, and Dirkins saw why.
Montag was covered from head to toe in Elite blood. The coverage ran from splatters and smears into a full coat of purple on the hands and chest. Evidently, he'd taken quite a beating in return, because blood was trickling down his neck from beneath a clot-cloth over his right temple.
"What the hell," Da Vega was the first to ask. "happened to you?"
"I had a fight with an Elite," Montag replied as he stepped onto the elevator and made a beeline for Dirkins. "I won."
"Sure you did."
Dirkins was far too professional to shout Montag down, even though he'd warned Montag thrice about his head and he was already partway through one surgical procedure he couldn't abort. Instead he focused on capping the ends of June's arteries and asking questions.
"So, what happened?"
Montag evidently saw the dire straits Dirkins was in and answered the questions before the medic could ask them.
"The Elite fragged me with one of my own grenades. I think I've got shrapnel embedded right here," he said, pointing at a spot beneath the clot-cloth, behind his right eye. "I am otherwise uninjured. I took two painkiller patches and I've had two doses of PPM in the past hour. I've also had some of this. Try not to overdose me."
He dropped a hospital-grade hypodermic needle by his side and picked the stun gun out of Dirkins' medical bag. He'd pressed the gun against his carotid artery and pulled the trigger before anyone could stop him.
Montag dropped the gun and leaned back against the wall. He pretended to drift off, ignoring the rest of the questions the squad were raising. Best to answer no questions than answer some and leave the rest hanging. The sooner he went under the knife, the better.
Except the drug from the stun gun didn't seem to be working. His eyes were closed, he needed to pass out, but he was still thinking a mile a minute. Maybe the... stuff was combat... the... someth-
Kanoff turned the needle over in his hands, trying to make sense of it.
"Coretin," he asked. "What's that?"
Dirkins glanced up from his job and looked at the needle. "Not military, I know that. That's a hypo you'd find in a civilian hospital."
"Maybe he raided the pharmacy after he broke out of the psycho ward," Da Vega remarked dryly.
"Cut the chatter," Dirkins ordered. He tossed his medical kit at Kanoff. "Da Vega, I want you to clean the blood off his face and look for puncture wounds on the rest of his body. Kanoff, you use the Porta-CAT. I want a decent image of his skull, and anything else Da Vega finds."
"Wait, how do I-"
Dirkins cursed in frustration again. "Here, pinch this," he ordered Liz. "Alright, just press the 'on' button there, push that switch for recording, and aim the two handsets at his head. I want a 360 degree scan, keep them separated by ninety."
The whole elevator jerked. The ramp leading to the platform the Marines had come through retracted, and the elevator began to move.
Horizontally.
Da Vega looked up from removing Montag's pauldron and shouted into her radio. "Jonesy, what's happening?"
"I just started it up, there's no level selection or anything!"
Da Vega jumped to her feet and raced for the ramp that lead to the upper level of the 'elevator', where Jonesy was.
"Rose, wait!" Kanoff cried. "I need help here!"
Da Vega paused halfway up the ramp, her face taut with fear. "We need to regroup with Mobutu's squad, Jerry. We can't survive out here."
Dirkins barely batted an eye as he started bonding June's exposed tendons to her humerus. "Liz, help Kanoff, I'm almost done here."
Kanoff cursed the controls of the Porta-CAT and tried a third scan of Montag's head. On the bad side, his patient wasn't resisting. "So, this is going to be the fourth time you patch him up, right? Last night, after the first wave today, and then when his nose started bleeding?"
"Fifth time," Dirkins said. "He dislocated his arm back aboard the Pillar, remember?"
"Ah, right," Kanoff said. "Do you think he's a masochist?"
"Whatever he is, I wish he'd stop." Dirkins said. "Liz, if you're through, scrounge up some canteens."
The Urb Hog raced down the seven-lane thoroughfare, leaving wisps of ash curling and dancing in its wake. Ash from a nuclear fire, carried over the Lublanska district and the rest of Metrograd by high winds.
After the Cruiser had been nuked from the sky and crashed into the southern edge of the district like, for lack of a better description, a giant sperm whale, a secondary campaign was kicked into action. Tungsten carbide rods dropped from orbit had crunched through previously undamaged armor and compromised the reactor. A good portion of the citizenry had been indignant about that, but the Brass explained that unless the ship's reactor was taken offline, there was every chance that the surviving crew would turn it into an impromptu multi-megaton nuclear warhead. Given the choice between a new Chernobyl and a new Tunguska Event, people inevitably accepted the decision.
In the meantime, the ash would be breathed by humans and aliens alike, another factor in the battle to outlast the other.
Petrol, sitting at the wheel, was glancing around the cabin of the Urb Hog more than was absolutely necessary. Doubtless the same things were running through his head.
"Petrol, relax. Positive pressure means you're not breathing ash yet."
"Yet," the driver replied sullenly. He glanced at the 12.7mm that had replaced the lower half of Montag's side of the windshield. "That gasket won't last longer than first two minutes of combat."
The uparmor Urb Hog package replaced the window with two smaller windshields, joined by a flat plate of armor down the center. For this recon mission, Montag had opted for a 'street sweeper', a pintle-mounted HMG. Normally, it was proof only against bullets, shrapnel, and Molotov cocktails that didn't break open, but the armorer had found a block of rubber and brought the weapon up to specification with the rest of the NBC system.
"I've breathed fallout before, Petrol. It's nothing. Worse that can happen is you have to go to pretty female doctor, turn your head and cough. What budding soldier like you wants, right?"
Petrol had too much sense to ask if that was what had gotten Montag kicked out of his girlfriend's apartment. The scuttlebutt back at the base was consistent enough to be true, and it wasn't something you asked a friend, especially not a friend who was a superior officer.
"We're coming up on roundabout. ORACLE is on."
Montag ordered the gunman to warm up the M68, but the gunner beat him to it. Cunningly concealed behind a bus were two Shade turrets. Shield generators flipped on, rolling over the bus and giving turrets a clean field of fire.
The gunner in back buried a round in the energy broadcaster behind them, halving their firepower. Another group further down the road made their presence known, splashing the windshield and coming perilously close to Montag's gun as he returned fire.
"Right!" Montag hissed. The Oracle was identifying turrets left and right. In the roundabout ahead, turrets, generators, Wraiths, and even some sort of needle AAA were highlighted.
Petrol obeyed the order, twisting the wheel to the right and barreling down the entrance to a parking garage. They passed parked Shadows on both sides, the turrets to which were mostly unmanned, thankfully. Private Rozi Spasskaya, manning the gun in back, kept firing as fast as the gun could cycle, prioritizing guns but taking the opportunity to blast the cockpits as well.
After a quarter of a minute of desperate maneuvers, the lone Urb Hog came to a pair of two-lane ramps, one leading up, the other leading down. Coming up was a Ghost, plasma cannons blazing.
Petrol spun the wheel, and the Hog raced into the up ramp. The gunner in back barely got off a crippling shot before permacrete walls cut them off.
The upper level was rather less cluttered. Many of the cars had been shoved into piles and crushed to make room for a line of Shades along the edge of the garage. Guarding those were a pair of Hunters, who were considerably faster on the uptake than the Shade gunners. Their first volley hit the Urb Hog broadside, spinning it around. The stray shot of the two slagged an otherwise salvageable pile of Mercedes.
The return shot from the Gauss cannon went wide and even Montag's stream of hot lead was diverted into a less-salvageable Henschel.
Petrol gunned the engines, and the Hog lurched for a skybridge that lead from the garage to the mall across the street. Rozi got off a straight shot, cracking the breastplate of one of the Hunters and turning the worms inside into salsa.
The answering shot nearly pushed the Urb Hog off the skybridge and blew out the windowpanes a quarter of the way down the bridge. Under Petrol's guidance, the jeep soldiered on, but there was a worrisome rumble coming from the rear of the vehicle.
Montag glanced in the mirror and saw smoke pouring out the rear passenger tire. There was a clunk, and the rumbling ceased. Petrol stopped his hoarse stream of one-word invectives and glanced at the dashboard display.
"Rear right engine seized from last hit. Clutch disengaged automatically, still steers."
He drove fairly well for someone who spent his post-primary school years scraping car windows for cash.
"Good," Montag replied. "Find window in here that looks out onto roundabout, and we're done."
The department store they'd entered was a street-clothing store, looted yesterday by Government Requisition Teams. Looking across the empty displays, it was easy to find the walls with the floor to ceiling triple-paned paned acrylic windows. Slightly harder to see were the trio of Shade turrets, already a sight that was getting old.
Montag fired at the middle one, assuming that the gunner in back would automatically go for one of the more obvious shades on the side. The gunner, probably working on a similar assumption, took the central Shade out milliseconds after Montag began his volley. Montag cursed, switched to the far Shade, and opened fire.
By this time, the Urb Hog had picked up considerably speed, and was careening toward the rightmost shade. At the last moment, mindful of the two-story drop at the other side of the window, Petrol hit the brakes.
When the Urb Hog collided with the Shade, Montag got a good look at the Grunt's face, how its beady eyes were squinting through it's scrunched-up, meaty cheeks. Ass far as he could tell, that was an expression of extreme shock.
The Shade came to an abrupt stop when two of the tripod legs contacted the window. The Urb Hog was hoisted by the third leg and smashed into the ball turret. The Grunt's eyes were almost closed when the ball turret flew off the tripod, splattered the Grunt against the window, rebounded onto the Hog's hood, cracked the driver's windshield, and rolled onto the floor.
Montag was the first to speak. "Well, that didn't go as planned."
"You know, I heard that these windows could stop a moving car. Never gave it much thought, though," Petrol said. He tried to put the Hog into reverse and back off the tripod, to no avail. With only one working tire contacting the ground, they were going to have trouble.
"I don't expect ORACLE can sight through that big bloodstain, can it?"
Montag pulled a reel of obstacle-clearance thermite cord out from under the dash. "Keep the engine prepped, I'm going to clear out the tripod."
"Hold it, sir," Rozi radioed a split second before she fired the gauss cannon at the window. It was shatterproof plastic, so it only cracked as the bullet gouged a crater 25 millimeter wide at the base, and the blast wave squeegeed off most of the Grunt blood. The vibrating window took care of the rest, showering the Urb Hog with a fine rain of blue.
ORACLE blinked, and begun highlighting all of the Covenant emplacements, equipment, and vehicles outside, correlating their positions with Transit maps.
Slowly, most of the turrets in the roundabout turned to face the window where the gauss shot had come from.
Montag pursed his lips, about to give the order to abandon the Hog. ORACLE had begun uploading the data into Demidov's network only three seconds ago, not nearly long enough for the artillery gals to respond with high-explosive airmail. It came as a surprise, then, when a series of explosions blew the needler turret of its a-grav cushion and destroyed a cluster of charging crates.
A wolfpack of Reavers flitted into the Roundabout, missiles hissing out from hooded launchers and 50mm autocannons mopping up the survivors. In seconds, the Superintendent, Demidov, had taken the raw data from ORACLE and fed it to the Reavers. Each missile and rocket was placed with unerring accuracy, and even after the explosions and smoke obscured the Covenant positions, the machines didn't stop. Secondary positions, where the Covenant infantry may have survived or fled, were calculated and targeted.
When the second salvo was finished, the gunships rose and parted, vanishing in three different directions.
Montag thumbed the radio. "This is Scout-Sniper Gui Montag. Kelva roundabout is clear. Cancel artillery and get Infantry down here."
Montag set the handset down and picked up the coil of thermite-carbon cord. "I don't really mind getting my final furlough postponed," he said. "But I wish Air Cav would tell me before they do it."
He stepped out of the Warthog, and Petrol was already there, MA5B at the ready.
"First combat, you did well," Montag remarked as he wound a loop of cord around a leg of the tripod. "It's rarely this slapstick, so I hope you enjoyed it."
"Yeah," Petrol muttered, staring out the window at the ruined roundabout. "Hey, Montag. If we even survive this war, is there going to be anything left?"
Montag turned on his haunches, taking in the same scene Petrol was looking at. The proud skyscrapers were withered, broken, like old trees decades after they die. Mummified remains drying and crumbling under the weight of time and ice, littering the streets, walks, and rails below with dessicated skin of permacrete. It was a Necropolis spawned by malice and rugged determination, the antithesis to a Volk that clung to order and feared entropy.
It was a perfect reflection of what happened to the Siberians. Stake everything on winning, follow leaders who promise the world in exchange for your soul, and lose everything.
It was culturecide, and Montag's bloody handprints were all over it.
Montag was about to reply, speak about soulless survivors in hopeless refugee camps back on Earth and Reach, when he realized that something was wrong. Some blows to the head had got his mind stuck on replay, but it wasn't perfect. When he'd done this recon run with Petrol and Rozi, the main invasion was only 54 hours old. The city should still be intact.
As he put the connections together, Montag remembered something he'd heard about lucid dreams: when you realize its a dream, it only get's weirder.
And it did.
The right side of his face, previously aching with a dull throb, burst into flames. He opened his mouth to scream, but didn't. Demidov's Rats, the smart little mines with the razor claws that scurried and cut up dead bodies, dug into his burning flesh as his mouth opened wider and wider.
Gondola, 1414 Hours
Dirkins dug the largest fragment out of Montag's head, turning it over with a pair of tweezers.
"Oh, man. See the blue stuff beneath the ceramic bone?" he asked Liz. "That's medical-grade UHMW plastic lining. If that weren't there, this bit of metal would've skewered his eyeball.
Liz, partway through cleaning shrapnel punctures on Montag's arm, glanced over at the area Dirkins was working on. The skin was cut back, cleaned, and sprayed with coagulant, exposing a patch of ceramic as big as the circle made by touching thumb to forefinger.
"How much of his head is ceramic?"
Dirkins traced out the skin from the right cheekbone to the ear, up to the crown, and then back down to the nose. "Couple of molars, too. It's a miracle they kept him alive after that. A Hunter beat him down, left him for dead, and his whole face was frostbitten when they found him. And after that, nothing. No medical operations until he got hit by friendly fire back in February."
Liz touched a rough patch of scar tissue on Montag's bare arm, over the bicep. It looked like it had been caused by something hot, and hadn't been treated too carefully. Through the scar tissue, black lines of a tattoo were barely visible.
"Was he in the ODST program back then?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"It wasn't friendly fire."
Across the Gondola, the other three healthy Marines of Sierra Squad stood watch over June, who was drifting in and out of consciousness. Jonesy was counting notches on the Rifle while chatting with Kanoff and Da Vega.
"So, then she threw herself out the door of the train. She was so hyped up on Neuroin, she probably didn't realize the door was closed. And when the cops had to clean up, they just walked down the tunnel and hosed down a 20-meter section of wall."
June stirred, mumbled something, and then went back to sleeping. Da Vega went back to her story.
"So, out of eight people in that car, I was the lone survivor. And I figured while I was in the police station, I should probably be using a bigger handgun if someone was shooting at me, so here I am. Hauling an AR around for a job."
"Nice story," Kanoff said, happy to have the full version. "But I've got an even scarier one."
Da Vega raised an eyebrow, unsure if she should be offended.
Kanoff pointed at Da Vega and June. "Private First Class."
He pointed at himself, Jonesy, Liz, and Dirkins. "Private."
Finally, he pointed at Montag. "Lance Corporal Gui Montag."
He waited for that to sink in, and said "Chain of Command."
"Oh, shit."
Montag lay facedown, afraid to turn over.
The pain, after a brief psychedelic interlude, had faded away. He felt a dull probing at the corner of his eye, like how a dentist pick feels after a mouthful of painkiller.
The ground beneath him was not polished linoleum, as it had been in the mall. It was, as near as he could tell, firmly packed, but not rocky. It wasn't moist or dusty, or even sandy. Closest Montag could think of was the sort of earth you found after a wildfire, with a hint of ash.
The mind was a powerful tool, and Montag was more imaginative than most. Still, lucid dreams weren't common for him, and he found it disturbing that the realization he was in a dream did not put his imaginations in order, like it could when he was awake. Perhaps.
The only thing he could do was get up and see if this was going to be a pleasant dream or a nightmare. As he got to his feet, he realized he wasn't wearing armor or ammo, just his fatigues.
A nightmare, then.
Montag fought off the feelings of vulnerability and nakedness, and strode over to the wall a few meters away. It stretched as far as he could see through the fog in either direction, and ended just above his reach, a featureless expanse of sterile white brick.
He cursed. This place.
Montag couldn't always remember his dreams, but the locations were usually the same. His grandfather's apartment, the public school, the highway a few blocks from where he'd grown up, the live fire obstacle course at boot camp... all had been visited often in his dreams.
So, this wasn't the first time he'd been by here.
He rested a hand on the white bricks and walked along the wall.
For the first time in years, he was back to officially ordering soldiers around. That hadn't worked out so well the last time because... he could motivate and lead, but he'd expected a certain ferocity, an ability to set aside morality and passion and do a job. Compassion, empathy, and mercy were alright, but best left behind the front lines.
Because that's what they were fighting to protect.
"To do only what's necessary," he said aloud.
He and Barnes had made that promise over a bottle of beer not long after the San Lorenze incident, which others had later presented as a massacre. Do what has to be done, no more. And don't enjoy it, don't treat it as anything other than a necessary evil.
Live by that principle, make it the guiding point in your life for years, and you come to appreciate the dual meaning. Doing anything more than what was necessary, and it was a crime. Doing anything less was dereliction of duty.
And after the end, you finally realize how shallow of an ideal it is. Strung out behind you, like banners and flags, were a trail of retrospective justifications, Nuremburg defenses, and nightmares. And you keep going, out of inertia and a fear to face your possible pasts.
Montag stopped and turned around. He had trouble focusing on the distance, but he could almost imagine that the wall was circular. And he was inside.
The problem with the mantra of necessity, he decided, was the lack of a standard. Without an outside code of morals, one is left to rationalize and judge one's actions from moment to moment, and Montag had gotten pretty good at rationalizing.
He couldn't even decide if he was following that ideal or not, anymore. Perhaps he did, but only when necessary.
Montag laughed, hard. He couldn't not laugh at how ridiculous his crystal-clear image of his predicament was, and how murky his knowledge of himself was. If you do not know your enemy, and you do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every battle. At his current pace, Montag was fighting to lose.
When he stopped laughing, he could hear voices outside the wall. Kanoff, Da Vega, and Liz, mostly. In his dream, was he hearing them from the real world, or were they part of the dream? In the real world, were they of the living, or were they projections of his own fractured view of reality?
The sound of Montag punching the wall rang hollow through the fog. He couldn't think like that, it was fuel for his paranoia. He had to accept that he had to take some things on faith, he couldn't get hung up on the desire to prove the existence of all he encountered. He wouldn't get past "I think. Ergo, I am."
Kanoff. Da Vega. Jonesy. Liz. June. Dirkins. They were real. They had to be real. The phantom bodies, the Shadow... that was in his head. They went away when he closed his eyes and stopped believing in them.
For the longest time, Montag lay where he'd fallen down laughing, staring at the cracks in the wall, caused by a weak foundation.
Gondola, 1510 Hours
Jonesy had a pen out, slowly moving the tip from notch to notch carved in the stock of Montag's Rifle.
"I count 300, and I'm not even halfway through the first row," he said to whoever was listening. Nobody in particular, as they were all listening to the argument.
"I know Morris trusted Montag, maybe," Da Vega asserted. "But he trusted Montag with a long leash, not to lead us after his death."
"You're giving him too much credit," Dirkins countered. "He's a shady asshole, but you've got no reason to think he's a complete monster."
"He was hit by friendly fire in the ODSTs, and they burned his tattoo off," Liz pointed out. "That and the San Lorenze involvement kinda hints that he's not a good guy."
"Come on. For all you know, he was trying to stop the ODSTs from slaughtering a busload of civvies. I see where you're coming from, I don't like him a whole lot either, but what are you going to do?" Dirkins asked. "Drop him over the edge?"
"It works," Da Vega said. "He's almost dead now, and he won't wake up before he hits bottom."
"Hey, that's taking it a little far," Jonesy said. "Look at him. Does he really look like he deserves that?"
"He's probably capable of doing it to us if he thinks he has to. And Hell, Hitler probably looked like an angel when he slept."
"He's probably not Hitler," Dirkins noted wryly.
"He's definitely not an angel."
"Hey, guys?" Kanoff spoke up for once. "Montag makes me uneasy too, but I'm going to veto dropping him off the side. Last think I want is to have to explain the giant bloodsplatter to my future clients."
Everyone smiled, thankful to Kanoff for injecting a little humor into the situation.
Da Vega, sitting up on the low walls of the Gondola, lightened up. "Sorry if I'm being a hardliner here, 'kay? We know that Gui has a metric crapload of experience, but he's definitely missing some other qualities."
"It just seems impossible that he's got the highest rank of all of us. Didn't we have any Corporals or anything?" Liz asked.
"Yeah. Remember Heywood? Bought the farm back when we were looting the Autumn? We lost Krystler in the same attack."
"Yeah..." Liz mused, somewhat mollified for having forgotten so easily. "It seems like years ago."
Dirkins laughed and shook his head. "Oh, man, that's the sort of thing they say on television when they're referring to the past seasons. Corny, but you're right. I remember returning to the Autumn like I remember graduating from school, or boot camp."
"So, what would you do if you were a full Corporal?" Jonesy asked.
"Depends on where the Gondola stops," Da Vega said. "If we're in radio range of Alpha Base, we call in for a Pelican. If not, we trek until we are. The odds of running into survivors are pretty much nil, so we can't count on it."
"Alright, board's ready," Kanoff called from below her. She slid off the wall and landed right beside him, deftly avoiding the large grid he'd drawn with a grease pencil. He'd torn up several MRE packages and sorted them into two piles of different colors.
"How do you play?"
Kanoff smiled. "Rules are simple, mastery is hard. We take turns placing pieces, and the goal is to capture territory and surround each other, okay? Since you're new at this, I'll give you a 16-count handicap."
Dirkins rolled over from his reclined position to check on June. She was still out of it, but color had returned to her skin, courtesy of half a liter of synthetic blood he'd pumped into her. Beside June, her sister was massaging her good arm, staring at nothing.
"Hey, don't worry. Once we get her home, we can get her fitted with a prosthetic arm that'll do everything her old arm could. And 16-squared tactile skin is dirt cheap about now."
Liz didn't answer.
"If you don't lighten up fast, I'm going to give you a good strong dose of fluoxetine."
Liz uttered a short sentence that ended with 'yourself'.
"Fine. I'm going to go check on Montag."
Dirkins got to his feet and walked across the Gondola. The sounds of Kanoff guiding Da Vega through her first moves faded slightly as he rounded the pillar Montag was leaning against. He cracked open the left eyelid and pulled out a penlight.
Montag's eye turned and focused on him.
"Oh," Dirkins muttered, dropping the light. "You're awake, huh. Can you speak?"
Montag lifted his head a little, and his cheeks twitched. Nothing intelligible could be heard.
"Ok, see if you can follow my fingers with your eye..." Dirkins leaned around the pillar to look at the rest of Sierra squad. "Hey, guys, he's awake!"
"Washt shitchashin?" Montag mumbled.
"What?"
"Whashteh sitchuashin? Where'r we?"
Elevator Room, 1430 Hours
The final reports from the Banshee pilots had come in. The last of the Human dropships fleeing this base had been shot down, most by Vlar's own forces. It gave him hope that this fiasco, as out of control as a fire through dryland crops, may burn itself out and be contained.
And here, in the circular elevator room, the energy barriers that had been used so skillfully to divide the Humans were gone now. Only a drop of great depth separated Vlar 'Koalomee from the Humans below. Further security programs had been activated, and that group could be dealt with at leisure.
The Murderer wasn't among them.
Vlar continued on to the elevator that lead back to the base, followed by his newly appointed adjutant. The Murderer, for all its luck, was easy to follow. Krish had described a soldier clad in armor that shifted in the light, and distinctive armor was rare enough amongst the vermin. But the tree that had crushed the Spirit dropship on top of the base had been felled by an energy blade. A blade that had cut through the shield of the Hunter that charged the escaping Humans, and the security door that had halted them as well.
It was benevolent of the Gods to provide him with such a clear trail, but why must they mock him so?
Vlar's fate, it seemed, was mixed with luck and disgrace. As the battle had raged and lost down here, hope beat stronger above. The attention on the abortive follow-up to the first assault on the Human base had been drawn away when the Demon had marched through the most pious of the Covenant and entered the Control Room to Halo. Even now, legions were being mobilized to retake the very place where the Forerunner's hands had guided the inner workings of Halo.
Creiva 'Dontaree, a Major Domo who'd been the one who first reported Mortumas 'Kandonomee's death, and thus found himself acting adjutant, bowed behind Vlad.
"Reorganization is complete, sir," he reported. "Salvage has not yet begun, but the work crews have begun cleaning up the Human residue. Do you require the casualty numbers?"
"I know the casualties," Vlad replied, hating what he would have to do next. Good warriors had died taking this part of the Holy Relic, and Mortumas's Legion would be forced to abandon it soon, to seek out the Murderer. Not being able to stay and rest seemed disrespectful to the valiant dead, as if the place they had fallen would not be sanctified until the Legion had paid its last respects.
"Bring two Banshees down here," Vlad 'Koalomee ordered. "No more. They are to scout and trail the Gondola take by the Humans, and to break off if engaged. Task two pilots to it, who can follow orders and put pragmatism above glory. Select a team of fifteen slave Unggoy to cleaning up the _, and leave an officer here to supervise them. All others who still have fight left, they are to regroup with the Spirits and prepare to leave at a moment's notice."
Creiva glanced at the elevator, a deep well that lead to the chthonic depths of Halo. "What of the Humans we have entrapped?"
"They have no way out," Vlad explained. "That elevator is the only exit from the lowest annex, and that can be deactivated from the control room."
By this time, they had reached the energy bridge, and Vlad stopped halfway across.
"Creiva, what has been done with the body of Krish 'Janulee?"
"We have done nothing with it," Creiva replied, implying that the thought of referring to Krish as anything other than an "it" hadn't occurred to him.
"Take him up to the apex of this temple and burn his body with full honors, then," Vlad commanded. "Ever afterward, his name is to be spoken with respect befitting such a dedicated warrior."
Creiva stiffened and hesitated for a moment. Vlad remembered his mentor telling him that respect could not be commanded by those who had earned it, and could not be commanded unto those who did not deserve it. And until recognized by a Minister or the Fleet Master of the Fleet of Particular Justice, respect was the only capital he had to trade in.
"His body was broken," Vlad said. "His resolve was not. He deserves nothing less."
Creiva clicked his mandibles and stalked off to carry out Vlar's orders.
Vlad stayed behind for as long as he would let himself, gazing at the foundations of Halo, the aeons-old columns and towers that surrounded him. Amidst all his struggles, he wondered if he would ever find time to appreciate the glory of Halo.
Gondola, 1518 Hours
"In short, that bandage comes off when I tell you to take it off, and not a moment before. I told you not to tumble and hit your head, and what did you do? You go and take a grenade to the face. Throw me a bone, here, okay? Show me that you're listening."
Montag gazed sedately at Dirkins, his right eye and much of his head covered in gauze. He'd been surprised that he'd survived at all, when he learned the full extent of his injuries.
"You'd be surprised at what people can survive," Dirkins explained. "People get nails and bullets lodged in their heads and go for years without realizing it."
He trailed off, realizing that he was probably encouraging Montag's behavior. "The important thing is, you can still remember who you are, where you grew up, and how much money you owe me. And you get to be Cyclops for the next few days."
Montag shrugged and put his helmet back on. "Don't worry, I won't let Nobody stab my eye out."
Dirkins paused in the middle of packing his medical gear. "Wait, don't you mean that nobody's going to stab your eye out?"
"Not if I can help it," Montag shifted and felt the bandages on his arm. "Before we stop somewhere, I want everyone to check their ammo and distribute it evenly. Same goes for medical equipment. If you buy the farm, Dirkins, I don't want to have to resort to mercy killings."
"We already did that," Kanoff said. "We don't have enough."
"How much?"
"One-seventy MA5 rounds, fourteen shotgun shells. The way we burn through it, that's not enough for one minute of combat. We've got plenty of plasma tech, but no way to know how many shots from those. Two needlers, with 94 shots apiece. That's just about the only good news."
"OK, then we ghost the Covies we run into and take their weapons. Any engagement we get into, the objective is to capture vehicles so we can return to the Pillar of Autumn."
"Hey, wait," Da Vega interjected. "You were out, but we decided to radio Alpha Base and request a Pelican!"
"Yeah, I thought of that too," Montag said. "But there's three problems I see with that. Namely, it requires us to sit around on our hand after beaming our location to the Covenant. Even if they can't decrypt a signal, they can trace it back to its origin."
"Yeah, that's why we're going to tell them to send the Pelican somewhere else, and meed up with them."
"If they send the Pelican, and that's point number three. Anyway, that works a little better, but we run the risk of running into an ambush."
"And the Pillar of Autumn is any better?"
"Yeah," Montag countered. "Because then we'd be fighting on familiar ground, won't be announcing our presence, and won't be relying on someone else to rescue us. We could warm up a Pelican, load all the medical, ammo, and petrol it can carry, and fly out."
"What about the whole Covenant garrison there? They'd outnumber us fifty-to-one, and we wouldn't have a whole company at our backs this time."
"If we do things right, Da Vega, they won't even know we're there. And there's point number two; we need serious medical attention. All respect to your handiwork, Dirkins, but I can't see myself lasting three days here in this condition. And look at June! They might have prosthetics on the Autumn, but I can guarantee you they won't have them at Alpha. So the case's closed."
Everyone wanted to say something. Nobody did.
"OK, Jonesy, how far 'til we stop?"
Jonesy, sitting in the back of the group, shrugged. "Something on the control panel looks like a status bar, and it's about two-thirds of the way through. We've been traveling for three hours at, my guess, forty klicks, so we'll see where we're going I ninety minutes, maybe."
"Right. Everyone get some shuteye, if you need it. Where's my backpack?"
As Montag sorted through his ammunition and MREs, everyone drifted off to the other side of the Gondola. He could hear Jonesy talking with the twins, but not about prosthetics.
The conversation had gone about as well as it could. Something seemed to be bothering Da Vega, but everyone else seemed to be warming up to him. They were going to increase his chances of survival, having accepted his plan to retreat to the Autumn.
Going over a mental to-do list, Montag frowned. He had everything planned out, even sketchy ideas of how to get onto the downed cruiser without being detected. But there was a blank spot just after 'Arrive'. Was he supposed to explain his plan to the rest of the squad, ask for volunteers? They might object; there was a difference between fighting to the death and suicide. If they didn't want to die, what Major Sherman had told Montag about commandeering a Covenant Cruiser would probably only reinforce that sentiment. Should he withhold that information?
So, assuming he told them what he planned to do, and they didn't put him down, what could they do? A Pelican would take forever to reach Minimum Safe Distance, and then it had nowhere to go. It would just coast on forever, the Squad locked inside cyro tubes until their interception by debris, a gravity well, or the heat death of the universe. Whichever came first.
"Montag, we need to talk."
Montag blinked and looked up. "Da Vega, you're sitting on my blindside. If you're after conversation, that's not a polite thing to do."
A medical syringe tumbled into his field of vision and landed between his boots.
"First, what's that?"
Montag picked up the syringe and read the label, even though he didn't need to.
"Coretin. It's a pharmaceutical drug, they use it on opium junkies who are brought into a hospital. Counters the mental effects of opiates, and I hear it does wonders as an anti-hallucinogen."
Da Vega's eyes narrowed. "And you take it because?"
"Opiates. Morphine. Take some Coretin after a shot of PPM, and I can think straight. Brings some of the pain back, but it's worth it."
"If that's what it does, why hasn't the UNMC adopted it?"
Montag was starting to get irritated, but it didn't show. Possibly because his face was still numb. "Hell if I know. I've been taking it on and off for four years, and I'm doing just fine."
"Maybe," Da Vega ventured. "Probably not. From what we saw, that stuff let you go toe-to-toe with an Elite after taking a grenade to the head. Sounds like a rumbledrug."
Montag had fought Innies hyped up on rumbledrugs, usually PCP with unsavory additions. He wasn't impressed. "I think the fact that I am still in one piece and I'm not still wigged out speaks volumes in my favor."
"Shows what you know. Some cocktails are so subtle, you wouldn't know it until you see them break a table."
"You know, maybe it is a rumbledrug. Maybe it can be used as a rumbledrug. You only have my word for it," Montag said. "But this isn't just about the Coretin, is it? If it was, you wouldn't be hounding me like this, would you?"
"I've seen your command style, Gui. It seems to consist solely of ordering people to do stuff, and holding a gun to their head. You did it to Kanoff and me, you did it to Jonesy when you wanted those EFPs fabricated, and you did it to Lincoln twice. Maybe three times. You came back with his ammunition bag after all."
It was a good thing Montag's face was numb, or he would've struggled with the poker face.
"He was dead when I got there."
Da Vega was barely fazed. It was an expected excuse, even if it was true. "I'm playing along for now, Montag. You've got some genuinely good ideas, but if you try to pull a gun on us again, you won't."
Montag watched her get up. "I assume this conversation will be continued in the future?"
"Probably."
Alone on his side of the Gondola, Montag sat for a while, thinking. Some time later, he pulled out the Handgun, pulled back the slide, and examined the firing action.
Gondola, 1530 Hours
"So, I leave two holes in my group, and even if you have me completely surrounded, you can't take that territory. They're called eyes."
'What?" Da Vega demanded, staring at the clump of red and blue scraps of mylar. "Says what?"
"It's a logical extension of capturing. If I have one of your pieces surrounded on four sides, the adjacent sides, it's gone. And to capture territory, it has to be completely filled in with our pieces. So, if you have two or more empty spots surrounded on all sides, I can't capture both of those spots in the same move, and I can't capture that territory."
"Oh," Da Vega said. It made sense, and despite her confusion, she was interested in the game. "I guess I can start doing that next time."
"Start it right now," Kanoff suggested, pointing at a cluster of blue scraps. "You're most of the way there already."
Montag sat down nearby, backpack in his lap. "Playing Go?"
"Yeah," Kanoff said. "You know how to play?"
"Not at all. I just heard you two talking," Montag turned to Da Vega. "Need help?"
"You just said you didn't know how to play!" she replied testily.
"True," Montag said. He slowly disassembled the Handgun, putting the pieces in neat little rows on a lint-free cloth. Mostly, he watched Kanoff and Da Vega play go.
"Hey, Kanoff, that game kinda reminds me of something."
"What?" Kanoff asked as he cut off an encircling maneuver from Da Vega.
"This old story I read in Primary, about a farmer in Tsarist Russia. He keeps moving further east because he wants more land, and he can never get along with his neighbors. Eventually, he meets a tribe of natives who'll give him all the land he wants for a thousand rubles."
With a sinking feeling, Kanoff realized that he wasn't going to have enough time to leave two eyes. Immediately, he tried to connect the cluster to another with a line of red scraps.
"The catch is, he has to walk all the way around the land he claims and be back to the starting point at nightfall. So eh starts out at the crack of dawn, and keeps seeing land that would be good for rye, or pasture ideal for raising sheep."
Da Vega grinned. She'd used her turns to put a small wall extending from one of her clusters. Kanoff was left with a cluster that was almost completely walled in, with no room for a blank spot.
"When he's traveled quite far, he realizes that the sun is going down. With all his might, he races to the point where he started, only to collapse and die from exhaustion when he finishes. So for all the sweat he spent in search of more, all the land he ever needed was a plot three meters long, two wide, and two deep."
Kanoff stared at the makeshift board, planning his next move. "You very well might have thrown the game, you know?"
Montag shrugged as he cleaned the firing assembly. "I've played poker, and I've noticed that the best help you could give the new guy is to distract the pro at the table."
"Whatever. Neat story," Kanoff said. "But I like my stories to be more subtle."
"It's a parable. It's supposed to be that way."
Da Vega laughed. "Yeah, but what kind of natives would just hand over so much land for... however much money that was?"
"Natives with a deep understanding of the human condition, Rose," Kanoff replied. "But how about my restaurant? How much land do you think we'd need for that?"
"Mostly ritzy places opt for something the size of the room we were using for HQ," Montag said. "You'd need another room nearby for a kitchen, which it didn't have, and I can't say much in favor of the view you had in there."
"You don't have to hide the kitchen," Da Vega said. "Best place I was ever in had the kitchen out in the middle of everything."
"Like a Deli?"
"No, Gui, like an island in the middle of all the tables. You could smell the food cooking, but it wouldn't block your view of the theater."
"Sounds weird," Montag said. "Although most of the fancy places I've been in, we were raiding for food."
"She's got the right idea, but I've got a better one," Kanoff said. "Imagine loading ten or twelve tables in here, setting a kitchen up in the middle of the bottom floor, and setting a theater up in the upper floor?"
"That's something I'd come all the way out here to see," Montag said. "And if you've got all ten of the trams going from HQ, you-"
"I'm sorry, a tram? We named it a Gondola."
"Yeah. A tram, those city buses that run on light rails and electricity. Kinda like what we got here?"
Da Vega looked at the massive beams of energy running through a pylon to each side of the Gondola, and fading out not far away. "Yeah, looks more like we're floating on beams of energy, not running on them."
"I don't know about that," Montag said. "For all we know, the center of gravity is above the beams, meaning it's riding on them, not floating on them."
Kanoff smiled at the weak argument. "Sorry, Montag. Gondola just sounds better from an advertising stance. Anyway, the restaurant is only a little bit of what we can have here. That area around the base we raided, that would've made a nice golf course. And the structure below our base would be ideal for BASE jumping."
"Starting to sound like a resort, not a restaurant," Da Vega said. "But first, we'd have to win Halo back from the Covenant, win the war, and claim this place before the government does. That's a tall order, and it's assuming we're going to win."
The Handgun reassembled, Montag lay back and watched the superstructure of Halo pass on by.
"That's alright," he said. "That's alright. I used to think that we'd figure out how to fire missiles at right angles to reality and win the war, but you still need something to fight for that can't get glassed. When we get out of here, you could go into OCS or get into Supply and Logistics, something to get real estate here. And when you do, I've got twelve years of pay invested in Earth-based munitions companies."
"Nice. Twelve years and you're still a Lance Corporal?"
"Twelve years and I'm currently a Lance Corporal. I've been everything up to an E-5. Anyhow, I vote we call this place "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
"That works better as a description, Montag. Like, if we call this place 'Foundation', then the ads would refer to it as "Foundation, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Pretty clever though, unless we're only a dozen lightyears from Earth."
"I vote we call it "The Sierra," Da Vega said. "Name it after the squad."
"Or 'The Morris', after the guy who lead us here," Kanoff proposed.
Montag rolled over and let them talk it out, falling into a fitful, uncertain sleep.
A/N: Whoo! It's finally up!
Personally, I'd pay whatever price Kanoff is asking just to get a flatbed Warthog, several extra fuel cells, food for a week, and a tent. Just wander aimlessly across the surface of Halo. Anybody else just get that feeling, first time they played the second level of the first game?
When writing this, I found and took the opportunity to insert a little joke from the Odyssey. If you found it, congratulations.
In other news, Wikipedia has an alarmingly scant page when it comes to info on how to perform amputations. I had to resort to digging out the old health manual, and I had an alarming vision of people bleeding out and dying because the teenager in the house insisted on using the internet to find out how to operate on them. So, like most of the injuries in this fic, I tried to get June's amputation semi-realistic.
Even so, I imagine there's some Medical Science majors out there, waiting to skin me alive.
Final note here is Go. A fascinating little game that a computer can't play worth crap (And neither can I) that a friend introduced me to years ago. We agreed that it was probably the game most likely to be played in space (Besides a variant of chess, with bullets and casings standing in for the pieces) so that's the main reason it got dropped in, in favor of a more familiar game. Unlike the complexities of chess, the rules can be narrowed down into "Take turns placing black and white stones on the intersections of a 19x19 grid. Enemy capture takes precedence over self-capture." I hope it didn't take away from the narrative any.
Well, here's to the next chapter of Isolation, the next chapter of Nightmare, and the eventual publication of "Holiday Spirit".