It was hard not to imagine what the colony of Paris IV must have looked like back in its day. It was hard not to see where the rolling green hills would have gone, where the blue foamy waves crashed against the rocky shores. Where millions once called home- until the invaders came, and scorched the earth. For no better reason than because they could.
Staff Sergeant Scott Edwards wasn't quite sure what he was expecting to find on a long dead world. Perhaps more than just the charred remains of Kepler Base, its walls scarred by plasma fire and the raging storm of sand and glass. The partially buried M12 Warthog carcasses and melted concrete barriers, all evidence of a battle long since fought- and lost.
"This doesn't look too good, Sarge." He heard Calson say over the roaring winds as the rest of Wolf Team stepped out of their own Warthog. Wolf-Three had always made it a point to refer to his leader as just about anything but his name or proper rank, but after so long, Scott had since given up any effort to correct him. The layer of jagged glass that was Paris IV's surface crunched underneath their boots with every step, but at least with the storm raging, there was no need to worry about making any excess noise.
"It did take us a while to get here." The largest of them all and Wolf's second, Jerome Brandt, shifted uncomfortably in place, cradling his rifle in his oversized arms. Scott had no doubt that the man could have bulldozed through just about anything due to his sheer size, yet he carried himself with a sort of meekness ill fitting for someone of his stature. Like an elephant, terrified of the little mouse at his feet."But how do we know that the enemy isn't still here?"
"We don't." Scott understood his concern well enough. The storm had reduced their visibility to practically nothing. Truthfully, if it wasn't for his helmet display working to compensate for the environment, he couldn't see anything more than two feet in front of himself. Still, it was hardly perfect. Scott and his team saw the world as an assortment of fuzzy silhouettes, only able to discern detail when they neared the object in question.
Effectively blind, out in the open, and hanging around a battle site that wasn't even cold yet? Yeah, he couldn't blame Brandt for being anxious one bit. How many of those fuzzy lumps out far off in the waste were actually snipers waiting for the perfect opportunity to pick them all off? Perhaps it was best to not stick around long enough to find out.
"If it wasn't for this storm…" Brandt said, his head on a swivel.
"I don't think twelve hours would have made a difference." Wolf's fourth and Hospital Corpsman, Allison Lloyd, was the last to disembark from the team's Warthog. Since the weather proved too hectic to land a dropship on site, Wolf Team had instead been dropped off a few hundred kilometers south, in an armored M12 designed to traverse the glasslands without it or its occupants being torn to shreds on the way there. That, of course, was more than twelve hours ago. "Chances are, anyone who made that distress call is long gone. It was a week old by the time we heard it." She said, as bluntly as ever.
"You're not much for bedside manner, are you, Doc?" Calson said.
"I didn't mean they're dead. Just not here."
"Then where?"
For once, Scott found himself echoing Calson's sentiment, but all Lloyd could offer was a shrug. If Kepler's security force had truly made their last stand here, then where were the bodies? He supposed it was possible that the sand had buried most of them, but every single one? Without a trace? That seemed a bit much.
"We still have to check inside." Scott said after a moment. After a quick grumble from Calson, the rest of Wolf fell in with their leader.
Kepler itself was simply a single rounded structure, sat atop a lonely hill in an expansive, featureless waste. Prefabricated and modular in its design, like so many other UNSC facilities. Meant to accommodate additional blocks if the personnel count here became too large for the original building. Which, of course, would never happen now.
There was something poetic about a lone puzzle piece, Scott mused as he ran a hand over the dull-gray walls, its clinical, neutral tone not too unlike that of the armored ODSTs themselves. He could not see before but now that he was so close, Scott was able to fully perceive the sorry state of Kepler Base. Where the structure bore the plasma burns, the polycrete had melted and solidified, leaving it blackened and warped. Pits and gashes dotted the structure as well, but whether it was from the fight itself somehow, or the years of being eroded away by the perpetual storms of Paris IV, he could not say. The front gate had been crumpled inward, as if the thick titanium slabs had been nothing more than cardboard. There was no evidence of plasma fire nor explosive residue, which meant that whatever had split the gate open had done so with brute force alone.
"What the hell could've done that?" It was Calson who spoke, but three pairs of eyes fell on Scott, expectedly.
"That's what we're going to find out." Scott took a moment to steel himself, before crossing into the unknown, his rifle at the ready. The rest of Wolf followed suit.
For better or worse, the first floor of Kepler was only more of the same. Evidence of a struggle came not only in the form of the familiar scorch marks, but also spent round casings and toppled workstations. Now that they were sheltered from the storm, visibility returned. But when they flicked their flashlights on, Scott found himself wishing he was still blinded.
There was blood- far too much blood. Reddish-brown streaks coated the gray walls like paint on a canvas, in horrible, violent strokes. From the floor to the ceiling. Scott felt his stomach churn. He heard one of his team mates behind him mutter "Holy shit…". Who exactly it was, he could not say, for the words sounded a thousand miles away. Accompanying each dried pool and streak of blood was a crumbling hole or crater. It was as if a wrecking ball had been set loose inside the station. It was nothing short of a miracle that the building itself was still standing. If you could call any of this a miracle.
Just like before, there were no bodies, human or otherwise. A part of Scott had been hopeful that this meant there were no fatalities at all among the men and women of Kepler, but that naive delusion had been cruelly shattered the moment he set foot inside of the facility. He wondered if he were to inspect the blood streaks, would he find his missing personnel, pulverized into a red meaty paste?
It should have been obvious, after all. There was no way someone could hold out for a week here. Not after such a brutal attack. The very idea that they could was only ever wishful thinking. Thinking that experience taught him time and time again was always wrong.
But what about the bodies? The question was a thorn in his mind, gnawing away at his thoughts with every passing second. However, he did his best to stuff it away, and focus on the task at hand.
"I think I'm gonna hurl…" Calson said- and judging from the groan that followed, Scott believed it.
"Remember our objective." Scott said, as much to his team as to himself. That's right. There was no time to lament or reflect on the horrors here. Not when there was a job to do. "Search for survivors, if there are any. Keep an eye out for anything that could tell us more about what happened. But, ultimately, we're here to extract what data we can, and-"
"And failing that, blow this place to Kingdom Come." Lloyd finished for him. Not exactly what he was going to say, but close enough.
"Is it ever any different when it comes to ONI?" Calson added, having stuffed the urge to vomit back down. Brandt said nothing, but judging from the rustling of armored plates Scott heard from behind himself, the mountain of a man was even more anxious than before. If that was somehow possible. At this point, he could only hope his team would keep it together. If the ones who tore the staff of Kepler to ribbons were to return now, the last thing he needed was for Wolf to crumble.
"The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can leave." A hand gesture from Scott coaxed Wolf onward to the next floor.
Thankfully, the second floor was not nearly as horrifying as the first. The signs of conflict were still there, but it was relatively intact. Scott wondered if this was because whatever monstrosity had been responsible for the carnage below couldn't have fit in the stairwell or the elevator, or perhaps its rampage was intentionally constrained to the lower level.
From all the plasma burns, anyone would have assumed this to be the work of an ex-Covenant splinter group, but that didn't do much to narrow down the list of suspects. Hell, if it wasn't for the inhuman amount of carnage below, he might not have even ruled out incredibly well-equipped insurgents or pirates. It wouldn't be the first time alien weaponry found its way into unsavory hands.
From there, Kepler branched off into a series of hallways on either side. Calson and Brandt took the right wing, while Scott and Lloyd searched the left. If he wasn't so desperate to be done with the mission as quickly as possible, perhaps he would not have split Wolf the way he did.
Kepler Base itself had told him everything it could, Scott decided after scouring half a dozen rooms left him with little to go off on. When it came to answering "Who or what did this?", his best bet would be the security footage from the day of the attack, but watching the carnage unfold wasn't something Wolf's lead was looking forward to. Of course, that was assuming the footage still existed at all.
"Found something!" Lloyd called out. An armored hand shot out from behind a door frame, attempting to grab Scott's attention. He found Lloyd hunched over in the middle of what seemed to be someone's personal quarters. The plaque on the wall read "CONNIE JENSEN".
The bedding from the bunk had been violently torn apart, leaving the mattress leaning against the far wall, and the covers shredded like bits of confetti. On the other wall, he saw a desk, complete with personal effects. Knick-knacks and souvenirs from off-world were piled into the far corners. But what caught the Trooper's eye was a single holo-still, in which a mother and father held their little girl between the two of them. The girl's curly black hair was tied up in twintails, and her beaming smile showed off the gap between her two front teeth. She must not have been older than six or seven when this was taken. Whether Connie Jensen was the mother, or the daughter in the holo-still, Scott could not possibly know the answer. Regardless, he imagined that there would be no shortage of grieving family members after today.
"Down here!"
The snapping of Lloyd's fingers forced Scott to turn his attention to whatever it was she was trying to show him. She was crouched over a laptop- or at least, what remained of one. Shards of glass and loose keyboard keys littered the floor around the two Troopers, with the computer itself boasting exposed components within its sufficiently bashed in casing. With that sort of damage, the thing was little more than scrap.
"What am I looking at?"
"Well, this and pretty much every other computer here is shot to hell."
Scott frowned. "Then we'll have to-"
"But-!" Lloyd raised a finger for dramatic effect, before producing a data chip, no thicker than a playing card, and as large as her thumb. "This survived. My helmet can't read what's on it, but it works."
"Encrypted?"
"Yup." She held the chip out for him to take. "So I assume it's something important."
Scott, on the other hand, was dubious. "Could just be a personal photo album."
"Or- exactly what we're looking for." He couldn't see her face beyond the featureless silver visor, but he heard the condescension in her tone.
But before they could prove whether Lloyd was right or wrong, Scott was hurled into the far wall by… by what, exactly? Despite his helmet, he had been struck hard enough to crack the visor, and blur his vision. His ears rang, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not take a breath, or move the right hand that clutched the data chip. Even tearing at his throat with all his might did nothing, instead his fingers merely clawed at whatever it was that held him in such a vice grip. If he still had the ability to breathe, he might have cried out when his trapped wrist made a sickening pop.
Out of the corner of his eye, a smudge of black leapt into action- Lloyd, Scott quickly realized. She had sprung to her feet, her rifle firing at the open air in front of the suspended Scott. But instead of passing through, the lead found its mark, slamming into an invisible object. A gold shimmering outline betrayed the identity of their attacker: a vicious Brute. It snarled at the tiny human with its rows of razor sharp teeth as its camouflage failed, winking in and out of existence. The beast was nearly twice Scott's height and easily three times as broad. Tufts of fur stained red peaked from the gaps of its jagged armor where Lloyd's rounds had found their mark. She had wounded it- but nowhere near enough to stop it.
It howled again in rage, releasing its iron grip on Scott's throat and wrist, allowing him to drop to the floor with a hard thud. But before he could suck any air back into his empty lungs, the Brute leapt at Lloyd with its claws outstretched, intent on ripping her to shreds. Lloyd ducked beneath the swipe, which left a horrifyingly long and deep gash into the wall. If something like that had even grazed her, she would have been minced meat. But it wasn't as if Lloyd was the only trooper in the room.
Still slumped against the wall, Scott fumbled for his sidearm. The moment his finger popped the thumb strap off the holster, a lance of pain drove itself into his arm. C'mon, damn it! There was no way he'd be able to fire the pistol with his right hand, and there was no time to try and rip it out of the holster with his left. So instead he had to raise his thigh, and jostle the pistol free. After a couple of shakes, it fell and clattered upon the floor.
By then, the Brute had shifted to chase after Lloyd, roaring with rage and its arm cocked back for another huge swing. Scott grasped the pistol with his left, and thumbed the safety off. Lloyd went to duck under the Brute's arm like she had done before- but fell backwards when her foot slipped on a piece of the shattered laptop.
BAM!
A clap of thunder accompanied Scott's pull of the trigger, but instead of having its head blown clean off, the Brute's body was enveloped in a shimmering gold. Its shields had come back, and absorbed all the force from the bullet. The Brute didn't feel a thing, nor did it stop its swing.
"Lloyd!" Was what Scott tried to call out, but the name died in his throat when the Brute suddenly crumpled to the side. Another smudge of black, this one far larger than Lloyd or Scott, had just rammed into the Brute like a freight train.
The Brute's claws missed Lloyd's head by a hair as it was tackled and pinned onto the far wall by the human trooper. Although, at that moment, who would ever believe that Jerome Brandt with his monstrous strength was human? Certainly not the Brute, who's terrible rage was quickly replaced by pure confusion.
Yeah, I know exactly how you feel.
"Now!" Brandt bellowed. The servos of his armor strained themselves to try and boost his natural strength enough to keep the Brute in place. But once the Brute got over the initial shock of being pushed by a mere human, his rage returned even greater than before. It threw its head back and roared- before its head burst and painted the wall behind it a dark red.
"Jesus, man." Scott looked over towards the open doorway to find Calson standing there, the barrel of his rifle smoking. "Let a guy know what you're gonna do before you go rushing into things."
It was only when the Brute's corpse hit the floor did Scott realize what Calson had done. There would have been no way to break the shield and pierce the skull in a single shot. But the shields didn't cover the inside of the Brute's mouth, did it? That meant that Calson had blasted the beast right through the roof of its mouth while it was roaring, which gave the bullet a clear path to the brain. Scott would praise him for such a shot.
"This is hardly the time for napping, don'tcha think, Sarge?"
Scott would, if the shot had been made by anyone else.