Chapter One
0837 Hours, June 23, 2555 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Primo Victoria
Slipstream Space, near Planet Leka, Katami System
Spartan Cobb wondered just who he had pissed off.
Less than a month ago he had been part of a ten-Spartan deployment, attached to a Marine regiment as they conducted a counter-insurgency operation among some far-flung Outer Colonies that had barely made it through the Human-Covenant War untouched. Now, he was stood on the command deck of the corvette UNSC Primo Victoria as it sped towards a civilian ship requesting assistance.
Their distress message hadn't been all too clear, a result of signal degradation after travelling over 150 light years, and beyond their basic position all Cobb or anyone else had managed to glean was that some fate had befallen the crew, something serious enough that military intervention was needed.
So, the regiment's commander had weighed his options and sent a measured response of Cobb, plus a platoon of Marines, plus the corvette, to investigate the matter, though why he had selected Cobb of all the Spartans available eluded him. The optimist said it was because of his MOS, that of a paratrooper, which meant he was capable of fighting in unfavourable conditions with minimal support more than the other nine supersoldiers attached to the regiment.
The pessimist in him said it was because he was the only Spartan with an army background. All the others had come from the Marines and ODSTs, marking him as an outlier, so why wouldn't the colonel send him? Checking the platoon's roster seemed to only reinforce Cobb's notion the colonel hadn't considered the mission a dangerous one.
Only seven of the Marines aboard Primo Victoria had extensive combat experience, out of thirty-three. They were the three squad leaders, Sergeants Zimmerman, Ramirez and Sato, platoon XO Staff Sergeant Connor, and Corporals Mercer, Raeder and Ambrose. The rest were less than three months out of bootcamp, their only combat experiences to date being small scale skirmishes against the Insurrectionist's irregular forces.
Their CO, Second Lieutenant Chavez, was just as green as them but with Cobb present his role would be minimal. Cobb was in charge of this rescue mission, meaning he held command authority over the Marines and the crew of the corvette, though he was smart enough to know that when it came to ship to ship combat his best bet was to shut up and let the lieutenant commander who captained her to do his job.
The officer in question was working his crew through the checklist necessary for bringing the corvette back to real space and as Cobb watched, he finished and began a five second countdown.
'Five,' he said. 'Four. Three. Two. One.'
As he finished, the ship's Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine ripped a hole out of slipspace and the bleak, featureless void that was slipspace gave way to real space, countless thousands of distant stars appearing amid a black backdrop fading into view. Closer in was the civilian ship, Tranquillity, a repurposed passenger liner that could hold five- or six-hundred souls aboard. Cobb had seen them be used plenty of times to ferry civilians off world during Covenant attacks, including the Fall of Reach.
He could still remember seeing one plummet into the harbour at New Alexandria after attempting take off, only for a nearby Covenant corvette to shoot it down seconds later.
Cobb blinked the memory away as Primo Victoria adjusted her vector to bring it closer to Tranquillity. Below her was an Earth-like planet, named Leka by the crew of Tranquillity, whose surface was covered in lush greens and deep blues across three major landmasses, plus an untold slew of smaller islands.
'Orbits matched,' the navigation officer called out after a few minutes.
'Acknowledged,' the lieutenant commander said. 'COM, hail them.'
'Yes, sir,' the COM officer said, tapping away at her terminal.
Seconds later a feed appeared on the forward viewscreen as the crew of Tranquillity responded to Primo Victoria's hail, giving all present on the bridge a look into the command deck of the exploratory vessel. It was certainly roomier than the corvette's but no less crowded, and Cobb counted a dozen or so people sat at their stations or walking to and fro in the background. At the forefront though was a woman, somewhere in her early sixties, dressed in a civilian uniform that bore the name Patrice over the left breast.
'Yes, hello?' she said glancing into the screen. 'Primo Victoria?'
'That's us,' the lieutenant commander said. 'What's the situation, Tranquillity? Your SOS became garbled and unreadable beyond your coordinates.'
'Unreadable? What?' She glanced out her own viewscreens to look at the ship parked next to hers, then nodded as though in understanding. 'Yes, that explains why you only sent one ship. Oh, if only you had gotten the full thing! This might be more than a single corvette can handle.'
'Ma'am, how about you let us know what the situation is, first,' Cobb said, stepping forward.
Instantly Patrice's eyes widened, as did everyone watching the screen, when they spotted the distinctive bulk of a Spartan in full armour. It was the GEN2 iteration of the Air Assault MJOLNIR armour, designed specifically for airborne operations and a perfect fit for Cobb, coloured a mottled olive drab at home in the woodland regions he and the Marines had just left. And, looking down, might well be fighting in again soon.
'A Spartan?' Patrice whispered. 'Thank god, there might be hope yet. Please, come and speak with us in person. There's so much to show you.'
'If you insist,' Cobb said.
0915 Hours, June 23, 2555 (Military Calendar)
Civilian exploration vessel Tranquillity
Geostationary orbit, Planet Leka, Katami System
Cobb stepped through the airlock onto Tranquillity's deck ahead of Chavez and Connor, appearing to take up half the space by himself, and found himself before two people he took to be security guards judging by their holstered pistols, and some kind of shield emblem on their lapels. Both were a full head and a half shorter than him and both were staring at him with something akin to either awe or fear, their eyes wide.
'Permission to come aboard,' Cobb said, snapping them out of their reverie.
They blinked and nodded, then span smartly on their heels and led the trio of UNSC personnel deeper into the vessel, into a conference room where Patrice and four more of her crew were seated around a darkened oak table, urns of tea, coffee and water located in the centre of it all.
She gestured for them all to take a seat, which Chavez and Connor did. Cobb eyed the seats then shook his head, knowing the weight of his armour would be too much for them to handle.
Patrice just shrugged then gestured to her four companions, introducing them in turn.
'This is Garza Oso,' she began, pointing to the man to her immediate right. 'Our resident xenolinguist.'
'Hey,' he said, raising a hand in greeting which the UNSC troops returned.
'Tammy Sullivan,' Patrice said next, pointing to the women beyond Garza. 'Our head of security.'
She nodded once but said and did nothing else, staring off into the middle distance with an expression that suggested she was occupied thinking about something else.
'And these are Amelia and Sebastian Parker,' Patrice said as she gestured to the couple on her left. 'They were on the ground when it happened.'
'It?' Chavez repeated.
The three of them just nodded, the Parkers in particular sporting haunted looks at the mention of 'it', whatever it was. Chavez blinked once, puzzled, then introduced himself to everyone.
'Second Lieutenant Chavez,' he said. 'Second Battalion, 621st Regiment, 19th Marine Division.'
'Staff Sergeant Connor,' his XO said. 'Same outfit.'
The civilians nodded like they knew what that meant, even though none of them had likely served in a uniform before. It wouldn't have meant anything spectacular if they had. The 621st Marine Regiment wasn't a special operations outfit, nor one with a particularly storied history that spoke of its members' tenacity or bravery, but a run of the mill Marine unit.
All eyes drifted to Cobb as he stood behind the two Marines, so he reached up and grasped his helmet to take it off, holding it in the crook of his arm as he said, 'Spartan Cobb, attached to the 621st.'
They nodded again, unsure of if they should be doing anything else.
'Tell us what happened,' Cobb said. 'As best you can.'
Patrice nodded and leaned forward, hands clasped before her, and said, 'We discovered Leka six weeks ago and from the start, it seemed an ideal candidate for colonisation. Right atmospheric mix, right gravitational pull, right temperature ranges. You couldn't ask for a better location.
'As is standard, we sent an initial team down to begin more in-depth studies of the flora and, with luck, any fauna they found in case there was anything our first round of scans missed. There wasn't, so we expanded the foothold more and brought down the bulk of our people to begin their examinations.
'We established a temporary base and I ordered Tranquillity to begin mapping operations of Leka's landmasses, but three days in we were forced to abandon that mission and return to position above the base.'
'Why was that?' Cobb asked, though he knew it couldn't be for anything good. Not if they had sent an urgent distress beacon requesting aid from the UNSC's military arm. Some of his initial speculations had revolved around a medical issue, but you didn't thank the deities for the presence of a Spartan if that were the case.
'Something attacked our base camp and kidnapped all but a few of the people there,' Patrice said. 'And as far as we can tell, the attackers were human.'