Chapter 27 – Inventionis
May 13th, 2545 (06:30 Hours – Military Calendar)
Aquilla System, Actium
Republic of Pavia
En Route to Covenant Dark Zone
:********:
The roar of the Pelican's engines drowned out most of the silence inside the cargo bay. Its four hybrid fusion drives held a continuous, high-pitched whine like the vacillating tone of a bird of prey diving on some unfortunate animal. Even so, Duncan felt like the only unfortunate ones here were everyone in his squad, himself included.
Epsilon had taken most of the available seats, five on one side and five on the other. In the faint red illumination of the overhead lighting no one moved to talk. They remained quietly fastened in their chairs as the Pelican soared eastward, shaking every so often when any turbulence struck the outside. Wind resistance was less of a worry in this case since they flew low over the canopies of Pavia's interior forests. The intent was to avoid being detected by the sweep of any long-range radar systems possibly planted by the Covenant throughout the area. Whether it worked or not, it made Duncan worried that at any moment they might collide into a random tree. The occasional scratching sound of the dropship's underbelly brushing over and breaking branches didn't help to ease his nerves.
One upside was that the unpredictable noise helped to keep his focus away from the quiet. No one had talked after their departure. Even at the operations center it was just a one-sided rules of engagement conversation with the Staff being the sole speaker. At his word, they traded in their louder weapons at the armory setup on the same floor for lighter, silenced variants. The sole exception of course was the Staff's M90. Its presence on this op went without saying. It was an easier option than having to use their comms at the beginning of a firefight. The moment they heard the first round from his shotgun it would be the Staff's one-note way of saying "don't hold back". Until that happened, it was fingers on lips for their SMGs, silenced ARs and BRs along with Deaks' SRS-99. That rule now seemed to apply to actual lips as well. They'd left High Mediolanum's airspace at 0410 Hours. Two hours, 20 minutes and 480 kilometers later they were still quiet. And with another 10 minutes before they reached their landing zone, their window of opportunity for a chat was growing smaller and smaller.
Duncan considered opening up the dialogue himself but when he tried thinking of something to say the words would always escape from him before he could get them out. Instead, he did what he usually tried in these situations: gambling on who would talk first. His last bet had been on Zack when they were on their way from the Trafalgar to Reach after returning from a mission that he would rather forget. That bet was right on the money. This time, however, he could tell Zack, who was sitting two seats down, was lost somewhere between the clouds and fidgeting with his radio. So he shifted his bet over to Deaks. Epsilon's sniper was busy a minute ago showing off his Silver Buddha to Mito, probably in some way trying to get him to make a trade. After their new CQC expert shook his head at the offer, the corporal now seemed bored with himself and started looking around.
"Two-thousand, four hundred and seventy-five kilometers huh?" Deaks sighed at length.
Bingo.
"Square kilometers." Nova corrected from the seat opposite his.
"Right, thanks for that." He turned his attention to the Staff, expecting to find some answer from him. The Staff was laying his head back against his seat in that way that told anyone he was in the middle of one of his last-minute naps, though it was hard to tell because of his polarized visor. He didn't budge.
"Yeah, it's pretty big." Hector said in his stead.
"It's not just big." Renni added, leaning in to the newly commenced conversation. "We're talking about a land area more than three times the size of New York City. Listen, I've done a few ops that involved wetwork in the field-"
"With ONI?" Rico asked snidely.
"...Yeah, ONI. The point is, what we were doing surrounded handling reconnaissance of Covenant forces, their tactics, strategies, logistical support structures, anything of value that they used to fight us. We knew they could use special EMP-related technologies to mess with our satellites and make dark zones. But those instances were rare. As for what we're heading into now?" She shook her head. "I've never seen one that size before."
"Never?" Zack looked troubled as he blinked at her. "Like, at all?"
"Never."
"Well, that doesn't bode well for us then." Hector exhaled, leaning back only for Deaks to lean closer into the discussion.
"Was that supposed to make us feel better cause if so, you should probably never be anyone's therapist. You'd just tell them everything that's wrong with them before they can even start complaining."
"That's why I'm a Helljumper, Deaks, not a therapist."
"Kind of wishing you were one though. At least you'd make us feel a little bit better about all this."
"Speak for yourself." Nova chuckled. "I don't feel scared, and that's frankly because I don't see a reason to be."
Deaks depolarized his visor to give her an 'oh, and why's that' look.
"The Dark Zone is three times the size of NYC, right? I'm a Sol girl so you can take it from me when I say I've been there before. It's literally where we get the phrase 'urban jungle' from. If its triple that landmass then that means the likelihood of us running into a patrol is small. There's just too much space for us to maneuver, too much bushy ground for them to try and secure it all."
"Ever put any thought into the idea that maybe they've managed to change the bush that used to be there into another 'urban jungle? It didn't take more than maybe a week for them to setup a fully functional, intra-continental resource redistribution system on a landmass that, since you're so fond of Sol-comparisons, is roughly Asia's twin." He waved his hands out in a circling gesture. "All of that." He held up a finger. "In one week. Who's to say they haven't turned the whole of Sabat into a personal golf course where the ball is everything else that can't shoot plasma?"
"They did have long enough." Yuri said from where he sat next to Renni. "It could be Covie-central over there. Probably is. But question still remains, why, if they have so much capabilities, didn't they come to help their buddies when we took place as important as Mediolanum back from them? I hear they had no air support except whatever was already in city. So why'd they just leave them hanging out to cry like that?"
"Hanging out to dry." Renni corrected.
"Thanks."
Nova offered a shrug of her shoulders. "Who knows."
"They know." Deaks replied sharply. "And since we have that along with High Estonia and New Eretria, they're bound to know that we're going to turn our attention their way. They have to have figured out we're coming, and that's the part that worries me. I'm not scared." He glared back at Epsilon's engineering specialist. "I'm just reasonably worried that they've setup better defenses now that they know we have them in our sights. It's not like those EMP-things or whatever could stop us from noticing the distortion. They just didn't want us to be able to get any specifics on what they were building. And with all those ships Menteith talked about, chances are high they're conserving their naval power for when we reach their doorstep. Honestly, that's way smarter than trying to split up smaller detachments to send to different locations."
"You're suggesting they want us to come at them?" Nova asked.
"They want us to know they're there but not what they've got up their sleeves. They can just draw us all in and finish us off in a single engagement rather than diffusing their efforts to three different regions."
"And you say I'd be a poor therapist." Renni folded her arms in mock disappointment. "If you were any more pessimistic, we'd drop out of the sky just because of the sheer weight of your own pessimism, corporal."
"Hey-hey, let's not talk about dropping out of the sky right now, huh?" Mito said, listening in to the increasingly fast rate that branches in the forest canopy brushed and cracked against the Pelican's underbelly.
Deaks went on. "My point is they'll be on their guard when we get there."
"Or maybe not."
The group's attention resettled on Duncan. "There's a chance we can actually slip in with little problem. Remember that counter-insurgency mission on Epsilon Eridani IV, Operation BAGMAN?"
"Barely." Hector admitted, twisting his head to get a crack out of his neck with a pop. "I mainly remember stealing the mineral scanner they gave us for that op and you using it to save us from being atomized on Miridem. What about it though?"
"That base we hit used special buildings with EMP-tech that did something similar to the STARS satellites, like what the Covies have that's keeping us blind but on a smaller scale. You've got to understand that that lack of observational capacity is a double-edged sword. If they could be using it to keep us blind to any big guns they have, it stands to reason they're also blinding us so that we don't know where their weaknesses are either. They might even think their security is so tough that no one could infiltrate their territory anyway. That would make them lax in their patrols, meaning we might be able to slip in easier than we could if they knew we could see where they were. We used a similar weakness with the Innies guarding that mine. It worked before; it can work again."
The squad quietly considered it.
"Let's hope they don't think of that then."
They looked to the Staff as he slowly raised himself up from the depths of his slumber, or apparent slumber. "Alright Epsilon, we've got 5 minutes before touch-down. Run your final checks."
Epsilon blinked their acknowledgement lights and began their last examinations on their rifles and ammo. At the same time the pilot's voice came over the comms. "This is Hunter-5-5 to ODSTs, we've got 10 more kilometers to go. Our LZ is an open field so you might want to fan out quick after the drop-off. "
"This is Ep-1, no worries. Be sure to pick us up at the preset time. If we can't make it to LZ Alpha then we'll tell you ahead of schedule to meet us at Bravo."
"Copy that, Ep-1. We'll be ready and waiting."
"Ep-8, how's that probe?"
Duncan was in the middle of checking over the silvery, cylindrical device when the question came. He finished his perfunctory examination of the various blinking components with a half-hearted thumbs up. "Ready for deployment."
"Good to hear." The Staff jabbed a finger at him. "Keep that thing safe or it'll be you and me. No matter what happens, that device has to get to where's it going. Understood?"
Duncan took in a breath, hoping for some relief from the weight of his newest job as the telemetry probe's carrier and nodded back. "Yessir." He resecured the probe on his back and brought out his SMG, feeling satisfied with the '192' rounds that registered in the bottom-right corner of his HUD.
With their weapons in good condition and their gear set in place, the ODSTs waited out the last few minutes of the flight in silence. All the while, Duncan mentally rehearsed what Mentieth had told them back at the Luna Alta. "Go in, plant the probes, get out." It was that simple.
Yet something told him it would be anything but simple. Hardly anything ever was when it came down to dealing with the Covenant.
The last few minutes passed by in a blink.
He knew they had arrived when the constant whacking of branches against the Pelican's belly suddenly stopped. The whine of the engines became muffled as their momentum slowed. The dropship began a starboard turn followed by a gradual lowering.
"Hunter-5-5 to Epsilon, we're making our final descent."
A hydraulic droning emanated from the landing gear.
"Hitting dirtside in 4...3...2..."
The troopers, getting out of their restraints to grab hold of the overhead handles, were somewhat jostled as the dropship came to a stop.
"And we're golden. Standby, opening the door now."
The bay's rear door opened with a thump of mechanics that grew into a minute rumble as it descended into a ramp. Pinkish morning light flooded the interior accompanied by a fresh breeze.
The Staff held up two fingers and pointed forward.
Rico and Yuri were the first ones down the ramp. Weapons raised, the pair quickly split in different directions, Rico going left and Yuri right as Zack and Renni came out right on their heels. Hector and Mito went out next followed by Duncan and Deaks. Nova and the Staff came out last.
The world outside was awash with pinkish purple light that stemmed from the similarly hued sky. They'd landed in a large field with knee-high grass that fluttered back like sea waves before the outflow of the Pelican's subdued fusion drives. A tree-line of beeches, poplars and birches lay some 40 meters ahead. They encircled the field but were sparse in some places to expose the pockets of smaller and larger fields around them.
The squad quietly dispersed and crouched into a 10-meter arrowhead formation from the drop bay. Deaks was on point, scanning the far-off areas with his sniper. Duncan took a good look around for himself and saw that beyond the expanse of deciduous forests they were also surrounded by distant mountains that became more plentiful in the north, some of them being tall enough to have snowcaps. He thought he'd caught sight of their objective when a greater gust than that of the morning breeze washed over him.
The Pelican's engines flared back to life. He watched out the corner of his periphery as the dropship rose up from the field.
"Enjoy the camping trip Epsilon, Hunter out."
Turning back eastward, the Pelican accelerated away, quickly disappearing over the waving forest canopy. In the wake of its departure the rest of nature seemed to relax into the natural rhythm of the dawn wind.
"Ep-1 to Ep-3, how are we looking out there?"
Deaks finished his preliminary scan of the woods and relaxed a little. "Looks clear for the next 400 meters, boss."
"Good enough." A moment later a Nav point winked onto the squad's HUDs, centering on the ridge of a distant, snowcapped mountain. It was straddling the horizon as the farthest and largest landmass within view. Beside the diamond-shaped. blue marker was the distance: '10km'.
"Mount Sabato's a 2-hour trek. We'll need to half that if we want to get back here in time. Move it out, Epsilon."
The Staff jogged out first with the rest of the squad following after him. Together they moved across the field, headed for the northern tree-line.
:********:
Having landed 7 kilometers out from the Dark Zone's outer boundary, Epsilon was free of any signs of long-range Covenant patrols or lookouts. That made it easier to head through the forests and fields that lay between them and Mount Sabato. The same general conditions applied for the nearly 300 other ODSTs currently advancing forward over the vast insertion area. It was so vast that there was virtually no chance of any squad seeing or coming into contact with any other due to the sheer kilometers worth of distance separating them. That distance would work to their advantage as well. If one squad got caught and security in one sector became alerted, even the closest squads would be too far off for any Covenant response teams to come across them. Further possibilities of being discovered were also so astronomical because radio contact was restricted to only between squad-mates, while radio-silence was the case between other squads. That way they lowered the risk of long-range radio detection by listening posts. In addition, the sheer amount of maneuvering space would give them more than sufficient room to evade even the luckiest patrol. The main downside that Duncan could think of was that they would never know if another squad had run into trouble, was captured or ambushed until it was already too late. The same applied to them. Out here, despite working towards the same objectives, it was essentially every squad for themselves.
Epsilon moved with that very same fact at the forefront of their minds. They slipped under forest canopies, avoiding the more open fields that became less and less common as the trees grew more densely packed. Meanwhile they sprinted forward in their individual fireteams in case they really did run into an ambush. That way a part of the squad could still carry on the mission if the other half got held up or wiped out. Duncan knew that would only work of course if it wasn't Nova's fireteam that got caught, which he was a part of along with Mito, Zack, and Rico. If it was them and the worst came to pass then someone, probably the Staff, would have to be around to take the telemetry probe off his cadaver and move on. He still thought it would have been better if each squad got assigned a back-up probe for the scenario of something happening to the first. But maybe there simply weren't enough of them to go around twice. Either way, they would just have to make do for now.
The air was constantly teetering between chilly and frosty. The difference was most pronounced whenever they crested one of the many smaller, forested hills in their path. Recognizably colder air awaited them there. It was somewhat difficult to breathe since the low temperatures naturally narrowed their airways, a grim reminder that they weren't in the coastal tropics anymore. To stay on the move, they had to increase the internal temperatures of their suits to warm any oxygen flowing into their helmet filters.
Duncan's best guess was that the region was experiencing the after-effects of winter's end which was said to last from late February to early May in these parts of Pavia.
After covering the first 3 kilometers they came across the first ponds where orange and silvery fish swam while small frogs jumped over islands of lily pads clustered on the surface. As they travelled further north, the ponds turned into small streams. Beyond a few hundred meters they evolved into waterways that networked together to form larger stony creeks. These frequently appearing creeks separated parts of the deciduous undergrowth into continuous strips of land that became narrower or wider the further they went. Slowly, they became wider and deeper until their bottoms lay close to 5-meters below the surface on average. These geological changes incidentally turned the once transparent and relatively calm shallows into fast-flowing rapids, making the water froth like icing beneath the dancing shadows of the canopy.
The remaining darkness of the predawn was quickly diminishing. Pinkish-purple light was barely glimmering through the cover of the leaves to catch some of the spots below.
The world around them was waking up with the delighted singing of birds flocking in the overhead branches along with the consistent, all-encompassing waterfall sound of wind rushing through the trees. To Duncan, if this weren't a mission and he wasn't an ODST, he figured this would be the kind of place where he would have loved to bring Erica and Noah on a family vacation, maybe a nature tour. He subconsciously filed it into a dream list of tourist spots that included New Alexandria, Luna, Casbah, Havana and even New Memphis once upon a time.
Passing 4 kilometers, the stony creeks dipped down a progressively steep decline. A few even became step-like waterfalls that rushed down the descent to join a river far below. The river itself wound through the bottom of a deep valley before it ran out of sight along the length of the green canyon.
The Staff had them reassemble at a spot where the ground plateaued just before diving down. They crouched at the edge within grass that rose up to their waists. As Deaks was eyeing the area with his sniper, the Staff took the opportunity to check his TACMAP.
Duncan also used the momentary reprieve to get a better idea of their overall surroundings. He could tell from where he was that the valley was several hundred meters deep and ran for about 4 kilometers from the south to the north before curving out of sight. The walls had good tree-cover but were a little steep with more flatter plateaus that ran along the eastward and westward edges. Those would be good vantage points for any enemy that spotted them to fire down on their position. However, it was clear that it could take them where they needed it to. It was an implied risk just by looking at it. Whether they would take it or not boiled down to the Staff's decision which came less than a few seconds later.
"We're going in. Stick to the shadows and watch those outer-edges."
The squad was in the middle of sounding off their agreement when Deaks, staring down his scope, stiffened. "Banshee patrol, 1 klick south."
Everyone instinctually ducked down beneath the grass, their guns aimed skyward as they heard the familiar 'HEP' of gravity propulsion drives. The sound's owners soon drifted into sight. Two Banshees were flying along the valley from the south, headed north. They swerved through the air far above the river, most likely on patrol.
Duncan was quietly grateful that the pair were too low and far off to spot them crouched in the greenery of an outer plateau and watched as they flew past. They kept boosting along in their search before they both rose out from the valley to continue their patrol westward.
Once they were gone the squad got back on their feet.
"Those probably won't be the last ones. Keep your eyes up." The Staff nodded them forward.
They headed down the incline into the upper edges of the valley then towards the very bottom, staying short of where the tree-cover faded out as it approached the riverbank.
Expansive cover from the dominant oak trees was more than enough to shield them from most things coming overhead. However, a number of fallen and dead logs in some places removed that tree-cover and left them out in the open if only for the briefest moments. They moved around the open spots that they could circumvent then dashed across areas where it simply wasn't possible to do otherwise. For the most part nothing ever seemed to spot them from above or come down to take them out. Not being strafed by Banshees for even the shortest second gave them some hope that the dense ceiling of leaves would hide them the full way.
That idea was put to the test as they finally covered 6 kilometers with 4 left to go when the first Phantom came within sight.
The manta ray-like aircraft flew in from the north in a southward sweep. At one point it came so close that the squad was forced to hunker down within the exposed roots of a towering oak. They watched silently while the dropship hovered over their position, the eerie droning of its engines coming so close that it made the foliage above vibrate.
Again, like the Banshees, it too carried on its patrol without signs of having spotted them. The moment its passing shadow had moved off the ODSTs resumed their stealthy sprint.
Over the next 7 minutes they would continue on in a pattern of running, stopping at hearing a Banshee squadron or Phantom flying by then starting again. Their close encounters became more frequent thanks to the valley itself which curved deeply before the 7 kilometer-mark, resembling the slithering wake of some giant serpent. The additional curves served to prolong what was already a hazardous journey. Large patrols began showing up composed of several Banshee squadrons or pairs of Phantoms and sometimes a fair mix of both aircrafts. While it was a sign that things would only get tougher from here, it was also a good indication that they were almost to their destination.
Soon they reached a section of the valley where the walls became less acute and partially leveled out. Here it split into two off branching valleys that headed off northeast and northwest due to the presence of a forested plateau sitting in the way. Another 3 kilometers beyond it lay the base of the massive bulk of landmass that was Mount Sabato.
The river at the bottom of the valley opened up at its mouth into a dark lake that sat at the base of the northern plateau. From there it branched off into two separate tributaries that ran along the diverging valleys.
Epsilon stopped on the face of a southern plateau, hidden behind the safety of thick foliage provided by the beech trees that carpeted its slopes. They slipped into a natural trench formed between the roots of several beeches and looked out through the breaks in the trees to the landscape below.
Duncan's eye was immediately drawn to a flash of bright, blue light that was quickly followed by another. Upping his visor to 2x magnification, he saw what the cause of the disturbance lay on the lake.
In the very middle of the lake there was a small, artificial island of rocks about a fifth of an acre in size, enough space to fit a small house. Rather than a house there stood a 10-meter-tall tower. It possessed a purple, opalescent sheen that suggested a nanolaminate composition. Fan-structures of metal jutted out from the tower in a floral pattern at every individual meter of height. Multiple strip-lights ran down from the pinnacle to the base which pulsated a dull blue. However, they weren't the cause of the flashes.
He spotted four Jackals standing around the base. Next to their feet were what looked like components that had been removed. Two of them were reaching into a cavity in the tower, possibly trying to affect some kind of repair.
Suddenly, there was another flash of blue light that became much more obvious as to what it was since it momentarily burned itself onto his retinas. It was an energy barrier. A second flash stung like hell but it allowed him to see that the barrier went in two directions, running over the surface of the tributary up the northeast and northwest valleys before touching two more towers like the first. With one posted in either valley, the strip-lights on those ones were more active, meaning they were stable. It was confirmed by the fact that on the other side of these towers the energy barrier remained active and spanned well out of sight.
Yet another flash from below reminded him that he could deepen his visor's polarization and quickly did so before the follow-up. He came back down into the trench with the others.
"Think that thing could get rid of my unequal sunburn?" Rico asked on his right. "Man, I thought I was cooked before, but this is too much, right?"
"I wouldn't chance it." Duncan turned to the Staff who was two persons down from him. "This must be some barrier running all the way around the zone sir, or at least a part of it."
"Looks like this section is down for maintenance." Nova noted from his left. "Perfect timing. Any thoughts on how we should get past this, boss?"
The Staff was quiet for a moment longer, thinking it over as the rhythmic flash of light washed over him. At length he crouched down into the trench. "First things first. Ep-3, what do you see?"
Duncan hadn't even noticed that Deaks was gone and winced when he jumped down from the upper branches of the nearest tree. "We're looking at around a platoon's worth of Jackals here." He said as he slipped in beside Hector. "There's about a dozen of them with shields standing on the river bank directly opposite to us. There's also a pair of lookout towers with snipers packing needler rifles, one that's 20 meters up the northeast valley and another that's 10 meters up the northwest. They're almost spaced out enough to cover whatever ground is left exposed by that barrier. However, the second one won't have sufficient range to notice us if we cross over close enough to that active tower further down. There's a lot of rocks from one side to the next. It's an option."
"Sounds like our best one." The Staff declared. He gave the matter only another second of thought then turned to everyone else. "Alright, we'll move northwest. We'll go in pairs so we don't attract too much attention and use the rocks to get across. Ep-3, you're big brother for this one. Keep your eyes on those lookouts. If they show even a hint of suspicion in our direction, you handle them."
"Understood sir."
The Staff nodded them onward. They pulled themselves out from the trench and started down towards the lake. They stayed crouched wherever possible, moving slowly across to the entrance of the northwestern valley. To their benefit, they were already on that side of the river so as not to have to cross it twice over.
Reaching the bottom of the landscape where the terrain leveled out more, they stopped ahead of where the tree-line was balding away. In the place of trees there were scores of boulders that occupied the 10-meter stretch of stony river bank. Those were more than human sized and big enough to hide one behind them all the way to the tributary. As a plus, they were packed closely together, their collective mass acting as a palisade against the onrushing water. However, it wasn't where they needed to cross. That spot was still further down.
On their way there Duncan caught sight of the nearest lookout tower guarding the way into this part of the valley. It was set on the opposite bank. The Jackals posted there were actively searching the trees for anything worthy of setting their crosshairs on, though they had completely missed the squad passing them by in the shadows. He looked away just before another flash of the energy barrier could catch him. But just before he turned, he heard a sizzling noise that was now loud and crisp. He glanced over his shoulder at a sight that was immediately unnerving.
There was a long line of steam tracing across the surface of the water. It was being repeatedly evaporated. What was worse was that the boulders along that line were marked with vertical scorch marks and were even sliced open at the point that they were burned.
He saw that everyone else was checking it out as well as they moved forward. "Think that thing will cut us in half?"
"Not if we're fast enough." Mito said. "Honestly, I didn't finish slicing up an Elite on purpose just to get accidentally sushi'ed by a couple of Jackals."
"Then let's hope you make it, Master Samurai." Zack chided.
"And if you don't, make sure to toss that sword of yours before you fall apart." Deaks added. "I'll catch it, I promise."
Mito shook his head as Epsilon arrived at the part of the river bank closest to the second energy tower. The structure lay on its own artificial island and the area around it was visibly unguarded. They stayed hidden in the underbrush for Deaks to clamber his way up the tall bark of a poplar tree. After he'd settled himself on a branch high above, he leaned his back against the main trunk and slowly set his sets on one of the alien snipers. He flashed his acknowledgement light.
"Ep-4, Ep-5, you're up first." The Staff ordered.
Hector and Yuri nodded back and crouch-walked together out of the tree-line. They slipped behind the boulders occupying the bank, always mindful to stick to the largest ones, a feat that was easier for the squad's pilot than for its bulkier vehicular specialist. All the while Deaks kept an eye on the lookouts.
The duo reached the very edge. Planting their weapons on their back harnesses, they proceeded to slip into the waters. From there it was a race against the tides. The longer they stayed in the water the higher their chances were of being seen and Deaks having to cover for them. They managed to grab ahold of each boulder tight enough that the current frothing around them didn't carry them away. From where they were, they were actively facing the direction of the onrushing water which made every jump to another rock into a leap of faith. Despite the force pushing against them they were always able to find new cracks and crevices in the rocks that they could cling to.
As they reached the spot where the energy barrier flashed through, they timed their jumps. They both leaped at the same time after the second flash, pushing through the heated water to safety.
Nearly to the other side, Hector leaped from one boulder to the next when his grip slipped. He was dragged off into the current almost immediately. Just before anyone could call out for him his hand reemerged and grabbed onto an uprooted tree trunk lying in the water. He pulled himself back up to the surface. Then he dragged himself along to the bank where Yuri promptly crouched over to check on him.
"You're no swimmer, are you?"
"Shut it, Ivan."
With a quieted laugh Yuri helped him onto his feet. The two nodded back at everyone else, navigated through a short maze of boulders and disappeared successfully into the tree-line.
"Ep-6, Ep-7, you're up next."
At the Staff's behest, Rico and Zack snuck their way across the bank and into the water. This time around it was Zack who had trouble. His radio's added weight added to the surface area that the tides used to pull at him. He clutched his way around with Rico until they reached the halfway point. They stopped to time their jump and kicked off in the five-second interval between the second flash and the repetition. Zack was dragged a bit further along but still managed to find a handhold. Free from that point they reached the banks and moved inland.
The squad's newest additions went next. Mito and Renni had little problem getting to the other side and joining the others.
"Ep-2, Ep-8, get going."
Duncan and Nova stepped out into the bank then into the tributary. The way they hopped from rock to rock reminded him of a training he'd done back at Camp Ravenport. Back then both O'Reilly and himself had had to cross the River Esk in a similar fashion to capture the other team's flag. The main difference nowadays was that this was no training mission and there hadn't been a chance of being cut in half by an unstable energy barrier the last time around. The swim across the tributary was relatively easy up to the halfway mark of scorched boulders. They stopped there, crept to within a few stretches of where the barrier would be and waited.
The barrier flashed past in a renewed burst of condensation. At seeing just the first, Duncan made the mistake of forgetting about the follow-up. He launched off but was immediately grabbed by Nova. She pulled him back by the shoulder just before the second flash evaporated the surface right in front of them.
Then she tossed him forward and they leaped off from the same boulder to glide across the water. Their momentum shot them a meter clear of the barrier's path before the 5 second interval passed, prompting another flash of light and heat at their backs.
"Thanks." Duncan sighed as they moved the rest of the way.
"Try not to get yourself killed like that until we get that probe where it needs to be, okay?"
"Yes mam."
They reached the bank and slipped into the tree-line.
With the rest of the squad in place, Deaks hopped down to join the Staff. The two crossed over without incident and headed into the forestry.
Melting into the shadows of the underbrush came easily to the ODSTs. They continued on in their original binaries, keeping a distance between each other to cover more ground. With no immediate sign of any hostile contacts, they began lowering their guard.
The moment they relaxed; movement up ahead caught their attention.
A lone Jackal with a red shield walked out from behind a bush, stepping directly between Hector and Yuri. The three stopped, momentarily stunned at seeing the other, then raced to get their weapons up.
The Jackal was about to draw its plasma pistol before Yuri could get his AR up when the gun-butt of a battle-rifle struck it in the throat. The blow crushed its windpipe with an audible snap and its squawk was silenced. It toppled back for Hector to finish it off with a suppressed, three-round-burst to the forehead.
"Holy mother of Stalin, where'd this guy come from?" Yuri hissed, delivering a sound kick to the side of the downed alien's head.
"No clue." Hector kicked it as well. "But he sure didn't like you more than he didn't like me."
The rest of the squad carefully gathered around, checking the surroundings for any more signs of Covenant patrols. The Staff stepped up between the two and sized up the corpse. "Probably a straggler."
"I think he went to take piss behind bush and we caught him still holding zipper." Yuri said. "What a way to go."
"Whatever the reason, its inconvenient. His friends will be wondering where he disappeared to." The Staff looked around and pointed to a ditch next to a thick bush.
Hector and Yuri quickly grabbed the alien's corpse and carried him over to the ditch. They quietly tossed it inside and pulled the bush down over the body. Yuri kicked back a little dirt at the make-shift grave. Satisfied at his reverence for the dead, he left after the others.
:********:
The base of Mount Sabato began as a gradual incline where the tree-cover began to thin out that grew in sharper verticality every few hundred meters. The very peak of the mountain itself was a full kilometer march up the rearmost slopes. However, the peak itself wasn't what they were after. The Nav point lay on the ridgeline that stemmed east to west and hemmed in the mount like shoulders to a neck and head.
On their way up the first few hundred meters, the Staff used his TACMAP to navigate them onto a gravel road. It was part of a wider network that spanned along the nearby mountain pass on Sabato's southern face.
Along the way, Duncan got a good idea of who they had to thank for the roads when he spotted a small sign at a junction that read: 'CCS - Colonial Conservationist Society'. He knew about the intersystem conservationist group. They were a non-profit that helped to explore and conserve for others the natural flora and fauna on colony worlds. They were more prominent during the reign of the CA and UEG. Those were more civil times, even given the Insurrection. Today, the society mattered very little and their attempts to protect nature on colony worlds had fallen mostly to the UNSC for obvious reasons. Almost emblematic of that decline was the way the sign was slagged by plasma to the degree that its support pole leaned at an acute angle.
"Some Grunts probably took potshots at it." Nova said as the squad jogged past in single-file.
"That's bad news." Duncan explained. "They know about this roadway. If things break down then they can always cut off our escape route from here."
"Then we'll have to find another way down." The Staff replied from the front. "That's already what we'll have to do considering they might get that barrier fixed before we can head back. If we have to a blow a hole through it then there's no way around it. Either way, we're not getting left behind here. As for right now, our concern is planting that probe. Everything else is secondary, you copy Ep-8?"
Duncan took in a deep breath of the frigid mountain air. "Yessir." He knew the Staff was right. On missions like these there was simply no room to worry about anything other than the task at hand.
The squad pushed on up the path as it wound left and right around wide corners of forestry. Soon the trees they passed by were more white than green. Snow became more common, so much so that they eventually were crunching through several inches of the frozen substance. By that they knew that they were approaching the ridgeline. A second way they could tell was that the terrain became much steeper.
At a certain point the road came to an end at an upwards slanting area virtually submerged in snow. It was gentle enough for them to climb while being sufficiently steep to be a challenge. There were parts where there would be visible indents for persons to walk as well as areas that were accidents waiting to happen. The Nav point was less than 200 hundred meters above them.
"Alright, we'll rappel back down to save time." The Staff grabbed ahold of a few strong stones. "For now, we climb."
They followed his example and made use of whatever handholds they could find. It was a difficult venture with a few near slips from Renni and Zack that weren't so serious. Yet the further up they climbed the more dangerous any accidents would be. At 50 meters, an accidental slip would turn into a slide, and from a slide to a tumble, one from which no one here would ever recover from.
At 100 meters mother nature seemed to grant them some much-needed mercy as the snowy incline leveled out more. It continued to do so well up to the 140-meter mark.
With all the effort he was expending just to pull himself along, Duncan found himself more easily out of breath. He decided to glimpse up at the Nav point again to see how far up he had left to go. As he did, he noticed something strange about the sky.
It was morning, so it would have been a naturally yellowish orange color by now. But it wasn't. Rather, it was a bright blue hue in such a way that he knew the lighting wasn't coming from the atmosphere since even the clouds were illuminated by it. Detectably, the light wasn't coming from Aquilla or some abnormally timed solar evening brought on by Euryale-1.
It was coming from below.
He tried ignoring it to focus on climbing. That didn't stop the keen feeling that something was wrong, and drastically so.
To everyone's surprise, Zack was the first to reach the top, more than a feat given his gear. After clambering over the edge, he brushed himself off and got onto his feet. He was going to say something when he turned around to the north and froze in place.
Nova was less than 2 meters down from the top. She reached out a hand. "Ep-7, you mind?"
Zack said nothing. He remained in place, his posture relaxing into a slight slouch.
Nova gave an irritable grunt and climbed the rest of the way up. At reaching the top she too brushed herself off, rounded on the radioman and looked like she was ready to tell him off, only to also turn to the north and visibly straighten.
"Hey." Hector called. "Hey guys, what's up there?"
Neither Zack nor Nova said a word.
The rest of the squad was forced to find out for themselves what had so caught their squad-mates' attention. One after the other they reached the top. One after another, they froze in place.
Duncan was the last to pull himself up. He put his hands on his knees and caught his breath for a moment. Once he had a decent amount of air in his lungs again, he brushed the snow off his armor and glanced at the others.
A shot of fear ran down his back, chilling him more than the mountain wind ever could.
He'd never seen them so eerily still. They stood like quiet statues all looking in the same direction, their faces hidden behind their visors but their bodies facing fully towards the north. He started turning to what they were looking at.
"Hey, what's so-..."
In that moment a powerful revelation struck him square in his soul like a knife being driven into his stomach. He realized then and there that all their efforts, everything they had accomplished from defending Treviso to retaking High Mediolanum, all of it, in the grander scheme of things, had been meaningless.
Inventionis – Discovery