Chapter Two

0925 Hours, June 23, 2555 (Military Calendar)

Civilian exploration vessel Tranquillity

Geostationary orbit, Planet Leka, Katami System

'Insurrectionists?' Cobb said, stating the most obvious answer.

They were close to 150 light years beyond the next nearest human held system, which meant 150 light years from the nearest UNSC presence, a perfect hiding spot for the loosely coordinated human rebels.

But, Patrice shook her head and said, 'No. Not them.'

She pulled out a data pad typed in a series of commands. On the wall, the mounted screen came alive to show oblique shots of a grassy plain that contained a rough camp spread across maybe two-hundred metres.

Cobb could make out the various temporary structures and softer shapes between them, people, only to blink in surprise when the image zoomed on a cluster of them.

It showed a group of five men advancing with weapons drawn towards a larger group of civilians, though instead of assault rifles or shotguns they carried swords, spears, maces, even a bow slung over the shoulder of one, and all were dressed in leather tunics with square shields fixed to their left arms.

Chavez was the first to say what they were all thinking.

'What the fuck?' he said lowly, staring at the image with incredulity on his face.

Some clarity had been lost whilst zooming in, blurring edges and warping finer details, but it was still clear enough to show the men were dressed like they had just stepped out of humanity's Middle Ages.

'This was taken by our Pelican as it took off during the attack,' Patrice said. 'As you can see, the attackers are not armed like you would expect Insurrectionists to be.'

'There's an understatement,' Connor said. 'What are they supposed to be, Ancient Romans? Greek hoplites?'

'Some strange mishmash of the two,' Garza said. 'With a little bit of Medieval Europe thrown in for good measure.'

'Any chance the Innies could have, I don't know, devolved after landing here?' Chavez said, looking to Connor. 'Lack of material or technological support forcing them to adopt older methods?'

Connor rubbed his chin in thought, shrugging.

'It's possible, sir,' he said. 'But saying that, they've got all the resources they might want or need to build replacements for whatever breaks. Besides, if they came here to escape us you'd think they would want their troops to be equipped with something that has more reach than five feet. The UNSC was bound to come knocking sooner or later.'

'Do you have any more images?' Cobb asked Patrice, who nodded.

'The Pelican crew ran some flights, to track our people,' she said. 'And Sullivan sent some teams down for more close-in assessments.'

Sullivan flinched at the mention of that but kept looking away from everyone, leading Cobb to think they hadn't faired all that well.

Patrice did some more tapping and pulled up fresh images of the soldiers that had captured their people, some up close and some from afar, all showing around fifty soldiers dressed in their leather tunics and carrying their shields, escorting a group three or four times their size down a dirt path.

The details that had been lost from the Pelican's hasty snap shot were rediscovered here, and Cobb saw various heraldic devices adorning the shields with a script surround it that, for some reason, seemed maddeningly familiar.

'What kind of writing is that?' he asked, pointing at the screen.

'An impossibility,' Garza said. 'Based on my examinations, the lettering comes from four primary sources, one of which we can't identify. Of the three we can, none make any goddamn sense.'

He took control of the data pad and started tapping and swiping, bringing up what Cobb assumed were his research notes into the symbols, and said, 'As far as I can tell, the writing on those shields in a mixture of Ancient Sumerian, Ancient Sangheli, and Ancient Jiralhane, plus a fourth I have yet to identify.'

'Sangheli?' Cobb repeated. 'As in, the Elites?'

'Yes,' Garza said. 'Though these symbols match an ancient dialect used by them several thousand years ago, rather than the one used currently. Same for the Jiralhane script.'

'An impossibility, indeed,' Cobb said.

His mind raced trying to come up with a suitable, rational explanation for everything he had been told but nothing would fit. There was no logical reason for fleeing Innies to abandon their own language and alphabet for a newly minted version using elements from three dead ones, plus whatever local homebrew they came up with, and neither could Cobb fathom a reason why they would choose to discard modern weapons for melee implements like swords.

If they really were on the run from the UNSC, increasing their access to firearms should have been the priority.

The only logical explanation Cobb could come up with was that these people weren't Insurrectionists, but something else entirely, and that only led to even more questions.

'Let's put this on hold for the moment,' Cobb said after a moment. 'It's not the priority. Your people are. Tell us about the attack.'

Sebastian and Amelia took it in turns to speak, halting occasionally as emotions threatened to overwhelm them, painting a picture for Cobb and his two Marines as to what had happened six weeks ago.

The enemy, whoever they were, came just before dawn and poured into the unprepared civilian encampment with practiced ease, cutting down anyone that dared get in their way. A select handful, the Parkers included, were awake and close enough to the Pelican to scramble inside before the invaders could reach them, rocketing up into the sky where they could only look on helplessly as their friends and colleagues were rounded up. Their dropship had no weapons, being a civilian variant of the D77 airframe, but even if they did there was no chance of firing them and not hurting someone they knew.

After taking over the camp, the prisoners were bound with rough looking rope to one another and led off to the southeast, encouraged along by the cracking of whips and drawing of swords. One person tried their best to resist, displaying either bravery or foolishness, and was rewarded for their troubles with a spear to the gut. They had died quickly, according to Amelia, but none of the captors made any effort to remove them from the procession, leaving them to be dragged along with the rest of the group.

'How many were captured?' Chavez asked once the couple had finished.

'One-seven-three,' Sullivan said, finally speaking after so long of saying nothing. 'Between members of the camp and the security teams I sent after them, at least. They killed another twenty-two on top of that at the camp, plus who knows how many more since then.'

'Do you know where they went?' Cobb asked. 'Or have any way of tracking them?'

'No to both, I'm afraid,' Patrice said as she shook her head. 'The best we can tell is to the southeast of camp, but any tracks would have been washed away by recent rainfall.'

'Have you got any scans of the planet?' Connor asked. 'You've had six weeks to compile them, maybe even catch sight of where they live down there.'

Again, Patrice shook her head. 'We were afraid to leave our position, in case the people down there had any kind of missiles. What do you call it in the military, EMCON?'

EMCON stood for emission control, or reducing the amount of signals broadcast to near zero in the hopes of denying the enemy a chance to triangulate friendly positions. For ships operating in space, this also included dialling their onboard systems down as much as possible, too, to reduce their thermal signature, but at a cost of being subject to the whims of gravity once their thrusters turned off.

Even so, Tranquillity was not a stealth ship, so any decent radar system could have picked her out easily enough. If the people below were looking for her, they weren't doing a very good job of it. Assuming, of course, they were looking in the first place, or actually cared enough to do something about the ship holding a geostationary orbit above them.

'What about optical searches?' Cobb said. 'You can at least see the area directly below and those systems don't rely on emissions.'

'Cloud cover,' Patrice said. 'There's been a major storm system in place for the past few weeks, blocking the surface from our cameras outside of a few patches. It only broke up yesterday.'

That meant they had no maps of the area beyond the low-resolution scans Tranquillity had taken of the areas to the west, which was away from where the prisoners had been led. Hardly a favourable situation to be in, but Cobb would make it work one way or the other.

'Okay,' he said. 'Beam everything you have on these people to Primo Victoria, and start mapping the terrain below. We'll handle the rest.'

'Will you need anything else?' Patrice asked.

'Your Pelican, probably,' Cobb said.

1000 Hours, June 23, 2555 (Military Calendar)

UNSC Primo Victoria

Geostationary orbit, Planet Luka, Katami System

'Any questions?'

Cobb and the Marines were assembled in Primo Victoria's modest hangar bay, the only space big enough to hold thirty-three Marines and a Spartan, but it was still cramped. The corvette was the lead ship of her class, an experimental design intended to support a platoon's worth of troops in low-to-medium engagements for upwards of a month, a role that might have otherwise fallen to the much larger, less concealable Charon- and Stalwart-class of frigates.

She had enough space inside to carry a pair of UH-144 Falcons and four M247 Mongoose ATVs, but just barely. Thirty metres to a side, less than a hundred long, Cobb often wondered if the navy hadn't mistakenly labelled her as a corvette rather than a dropship, especially considering she was only twice as long as a D81 Condor and just as wide.

Nevertheless, her radar cross-section was minimal that ablative stealth plating added to, and the cramped quarters gave her an oddly cosy feeling to the crew who worked and lived aboard her.

Chavez had just finished briefing his Marines on their situation, not that there was much to tell. Unknown human attackers had captured close to two-hundred civilians and killed over twenty, and were hiding out somewhere on the planet below. Their mission was to rescue the civilians, with a secondary objective of figuring out just what the hell was going on.

One of the Marines, a fresh-faced PFC, raised her hand and said, 'Sir, did you say swords?'

'I did,' Chavez said. 'Based on the limited data set, our enemy relies on blunt and bladed melee weapons. They do not, repeat, do not appear to carry firearms. The only observed ballistic weapon was that of a bow.'

The Marine's hand went down slowly.

Another crept up.

'Is this a joke?' the next Marine asked. 'Sir.'

'No joke,' Chavez said. 'I'm just as baffled by this. We all are.'

He motioned to Cobb and Connor standing next to him who nodded in agreement.

The next question came from Sergeant Zimmerman, leader of First Squad, who said, 'What's the plan, sir?'

Chavez looked to Cobb who stepped forward.

'Tranquillity and Primo Victoria are currently conducting surface scans of the target area,' he began. 'And will be for the next two days. Once they're finished, Tranquillity will donate her Pelican to our cause and slip back to the battlegroup for reinforcements. This platoon will then deploy to Leka and establish a foothold in a suitable location. However, we will not be conducting large scale offensive operations to free the prisoners.'

He didn't need to explain why. Primo Victoria only carried enough consumables to sustain her combined complement of fifty for three months, a drawback of her minimal design, and they had already burned through a month's worth on the journey to Leka. It would take close to two months for Marine reinforcements to reach them, meaning the stores would be close to empty by the time a naval supply chain brought with it fresh food. Adding almost two-hundred extra mouths into the mix would cut their endurance down to just two weeks.

Tranquillity had offered to offload some of her supplies but their stocks were running low, too. Most of what they had brought with them had gone down to Leka with the second wave of explorers, back when they assumed the base camp would be around for longer than it was. There might still be some supplies left but six weeks of rain could have done anything to them.

Each of the Marines sported dark looks at that, because it also meant the civilians would have to endure an extra two months of whatever harsh fate they were currently suffering.

'It's not ideal, I know,' Cobb said, looking each of them in the eye. 'But unless our supply situation changes we can't risk stretching it more than we already are.'

That did little to lighten their moods. What he said next did.

'Once we have a feel for the enemy's capabilities, we won't be sitting on our asses,' Cobb said. 'We'll be going out and kicking his, and make him regret the day he ever thought to put hands on our people. I want those bastards so demoralised by the time the rest of the battlegroup gets here they won't have any fight in them.

'Think you can do that, Devil Dogs?'

All thirty-three Marines jumped to their feet and shouted in unison, 'Sir! Yes, sir!'

'That's what I like to hear,' Cobb said. 'We step off in forty-four hours. Dismissed.'

The Marines saluted and dispersed into their squads, filing out of the hangar to their personal quarters. The next two days would be filled with checking and rechecking their equipment, readying it for the guerrilla style warfare they would soon be visiting upon the people below.

'This mission have a name?' Chavez asked from beside Cobb.

It didn't, the colonel who had dispatched them thinking it to be nothing more than a minor ship malfunction, and thus had no official name. Cobb checked his HUD as his suit's onboard computers produced a randomised name and displayed it.

'RED BARON.'