"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy,"
-Helmuth Von Moltke
Location: UNSC Murphy's law, stand off distance from forerunner installation X50, Draetheus system, 07:00 standard military time, January 4th, 2558
Brandon was alerted to how long he had been lying awake when BB's voice came over the loud speaker, "all hands, we are exiting slipspace, please report to the bridge."
Brandon felt awful. He had had an entire night to think about how terribly he had treated Alison, and it didn't sit well with him.
Looking back at what he had said he couldn't believe his own words, and how callus he had been.
He took off for the bridge, purposefully positioning himself in a corridor he knew Alison would have to go through. As if on cue she came striding down the corridor at full speed. He stopped her, and even though her expression was blank, he could tell she wasn't happy to see him.
"Sir?" She asked in an indifferent tone.
He half wished she would punch his lights out right then and there, she more than deserved to. She kept her cool in a way he hadn't been able to. It made him feel just that much more awful.
He took a deep breath before he began, "Alison, I am so sorry for last night. I should have never chewed you out like that. Putting my men's deaths on your shoulders was wrong."
Her face didn't change, "it's no problem sir."
"Yes it is," He said insistently, "I let my grieving get the better of me, and I took it out on you. It's unacceptable. I don't deserve to ever have you ever talk to me again, much less grant me any requests, but please don't call me sir any longer. I promise I'll make this up to you."
she paused for long moment and appeared to be studying him. After a second her expression softened, if only slightly.
"Acknowledged lieutenant. Thank you for the apology," she said. He gave her an apologetic smile she didn't return, and they both took off for the bridge.
As they entered the ships almost entirely glass bridge they saw Mal, Vaz and Osman standing by the bridges main viewport with BB's avatar in between them. Dev came in shortly behind them, all were kited out in their full armor and ready to go. Outside the view port was Draetheus V and its moon.
"Well, I'm not going to sugar coat this one bit. The mission directive has changed and I don't think any of you are gonna like it," said the Admiral, before dragging her hands across the bridges view screen to magnify Draetheus V's moon.
As she zoomed in on the moon several UNSC ships came into view around the moon.
Mal was clearly unimpressed, "ok then, we have half the Navy here to support us. Where did it go wrong?"
"That's just it," said BB, "none of these ships are ours. All of these ships were all reported lost in slip space by the UNSC. We made contact with the REAP-X prowler that was supposed to meet us here, they were able to identify two of these craft as the UNSC Masada and the UNSC Alabama, both of these craft left in a slip space jump along with their respective battle groups, neither of them came out on the other side. They simply vanished, and now it appears we've found them."
"Who's in control of them" Brandon asked, perplexed by the whole situation.
"It appears to be some rather high profile innies. All of the ships bear URF markings that might as well have been done in spray paint. BB is scanning now to see if we can find out anything else."
"Scan complete Admiral," piped up BB "and I have found something rather interesting. It appears as thought a group of three condor class transports just jumped into the system; scans show that they contain supplies for the fleet and a small URF settlement on the moon. Based on their approach vector they came from the Taurus system, only about a light year away from here."
"Well I suppose that gives us a good place to start," Osman said, "if we insert Brandon and Alison there undercover maybe we could get them on one of those condors and into the URF fleet."
Undercover? Brandon thought to himself, Who the hell decided I was going undercover? He almost protested against the decision, but Brandon was smart enough to know not to raise an objection against ONI.
"Hold on a minute Admiral," Vaz said with concern, "who decided it was a good idea that those two go undercover, we have the most experience here," he said gesturing to himself and Mal.
"Unfortunately after the exploits of your last mission every separatist who hasn't been living under a rock for the last five years knows who you guys are" stated Osman, "of all of us on this ship the only two of us who have had no previous contact with the URF are Alison and Brandon. Try not to get captured next time Vaz, then you'll get the fun assignments. don't worry though, I still have an assignment for you and Mal."
"Oh boy," responded Vaz.
"While we deploy Brandon and Alison to the were ever in the Taurus system the URF is operating you two are to descend to the surface of that forerunner installation and do a little bit of force recon on the URF's ground positions. Pack rations and lots of water, you may be there for quite a while," Said Osman.
Grins formed on the two marines faces. "Finally, some real good o'l fashion field work," cheered Mal, "I can't think of the last time I had some actual ground pounding work to do since I joined this outfit."
"It's settled then," said Osman, "Devereaux will deploy Mal and Vaz to X50 immediately, then return to pick up Alison and Brandon for immediate transport to the Taurus system."
"Yes sir," replied Devereaux.
"Everyone else, move out!" Osman exclaimed to her crew, and like a well oiled machine they all took off to prepare for their mission.
Location: hangar bay, UNSC Murphy's law, in orbit above forerunner installation X50, 07:15 standard military time, January 4, 2558
As Devereux entered the hangar she broke into a run, she ran to the weapons locker opposite her pelican, Bogof, and picked up her customary handgun and shotgun, ramming a magazine into her M6 and filling the shotgun with shells as fast as she could. She then ran over to consult adj about any potential problems Bogof might have, without even turning away from the warthog he was modifying adj insisted no problems would occur because he had worked on it himself.
She wanted to object but realized that trying to argue with a huragok was about as productive as shooting yourself in the foot, and decided to run a preflight checklist the old fashion way.
As she climbed into the cockpit of the pelican she Jammed her shotgun into its rack next to her seat. Looking down at the diagnostic switches on the console below her she began to sound them off in her head as she toggled them.
flaps, check, ailerons, check, drag fins, check, cloaking, check, slip space drive, check, Mal and Vaz, not check, where the hell are they?
She looked behind her to see Mal and Vaz approaching at a run, struggling under the weight of all the gear and armor they were carrying.
Both had on large rucksacks and recon ODST armor. Mal cradled a sniper rifle while Vas carried a DMR one handed with the barrel pointed up.
They looked rather comical as they approached, stumbling over themselves as they ran at full speed with entirely to much weight.
"Are you sure you need all that?" Devereux inquired.
"Trust me, if I didn't I'd have given it to Army guy for his mission, I hear his people are great at carrying heavy loads," replied Mal as he entered the Pelican's troop bay.
Both he and Vaz strapped themselves in and shot a thumbs up to Dev. Dev closed the troop bay and fired up the thrusters to propel them into space. As soon as she was clear of the hangar she activated the Pelican's stealth system and gunned it towards the planet.
As she approached the fleet orbiting the planet she decided as long as she had a stealth system, she might as well use it to show off.
She then flipped the pelican 180 degrees and, much to the dismay of Mal and Vaz, flew upside down inches over the hull of one of the rebel ships. She was so close to the ship that, even under all the graffiti the URF had painted all over the hull, she could still read the ships hull markings: FFG-250, UNSC Masada.
"Dev you're the ballsiest woman I have ever met, and I don't know if I mean that as a compliment or insult," yelled Mal over the engine noise.
To that she just laughed.
Once the pelican leveled out she shot forward towards the planet, pulling up the nose to slow their descent into X50's atmosphere. As the pelican broke cloud cover Devereaux threw it into VTOL mode and descended slowly into X50's lush jungles.
As soon as she hit 100 feet off the ground she popped open the Pelican's troop bay door and Val and Vaz stood, ready to rush into the jungle. "The URF base is about a two hour fast March from here, nothing you guys can't handle, so long as you don't get lost," teased Dev over the radio.
"Don't worry mom, we'll find our way home," responded Mal in kind.
As the pelican hit the ground he and Vaz dashed into the jungle before dropping into a prone position, aiming their rifles at the edge of the clearing.
"Happy hunting," called Dev over the com before taking off to pick up her next passengers.
Location: hangar bay, UNSC Murphy's law, in orbit above forerunner installation X50, 09:00 standard military time, January 4, 2558
For as long as Lieutenant Brandon had been working for the UEG government he had always figured it was the most inefficient organization he had ever been apart of, but it only took him a couple minutes of being aboard the Murphy's law to realize that ONI was not like the rest of the UEG.
Before today he had never worked undercover or even thought about it, but the roughly two hours of training he was given while Devereaux was dropping off Mal and Vaz made him almost feel like an old pro.
As soon as Mal, Dev, and Vaz stormed out of the room Osman had began to fill him in on the basics of his cover story. Both he and Alison were going undercover on the planet Taurus VI. The planet was of strategic importance to the rebels because it was the site of a captured UNSC orbital refit facility that's served as the main repair facility for all URF ships. Their job was to pose as UNSC Army deserters that used to work shipping and receiving and infiltrate a URF sympathetic town on the surface of the planet with the intention of being recruited by the URF to manage the supply condors going to and from the fleet above X50 and from there, infiltrate the fleet.
Alison tried to ask multiple times if Osman truly believed either of them were ready for the mission, and was stonewalled both times.
BB 3d printed fake id's for the both of them, both under their real names with Alison now bearing the last name of Lawson. They were supposed to pretend these were their fake names and never mention their "real" ones.
The whole prospect confused the hell out of Brandon.
When he asked why so much of the cover information Osman had given them was real she responded, "it's easier to tell a lie based on the truth, than to tell a lie flat out." Brandon figured that if anyone there was an expert on lying, it was her, and he took her word for it.
After she had filled in the details of their cover stories she began to give them things that deserters on the run would have. She handed each of them ancient MOLLE 2 backpacks filled with food, cash, fake passports, older model M6G handguns, ammo, and anything else they might have pilfered from the UNSC as they left. She then handed them two OD green jackets to replace their standard camo ones and sprayed their pants down with some kind of solvent to fade them.
After the transformation both he and Alison looked like the raggedy ass deserters their cover stories made them out to be.
They ran into the hangar carrying their backpacks and fake id's as Devereaux arrived and guided the pelican into the hangar.
She lowered bogof's troop bay door and they both dashed into the pelican and secured themselves for flight.
"Take us out of here Devereaux," he said.
"Yes sir army guy sir!" Responded Devereaux sarcastically as she gunned the Pelicans engines and lifted out of the hangar.
Brandon looked across the pelican at Alison and smiled apologetically. She did not smile back.
Her face bore an expression, which he counted as a step in the right direction, even if that expression clearly read you better do something big if you want me to forget that.
He promised himself once again that he would.
As he looked at her he began to realize a possible whole in the plan, there was no way anyone wouldn't take notice of her. Alison was nearly seven feet tall with jet black hair and radiant white skin that looked like it hadn't seen the sun in years, which it probably hadn't considering the amount of time it spent under her armor.
Osman had told them multiple times that maintaining a low profile was their primary objective and infiltrating the URF was secondary, they wouldn't be any closer to completing the mission if they got caught for being to bold.
Brandon really didn't expect Alison's appearance to factor into that plan positively, but as Dev announced that she was spinning up the slipspace drive to jump Brandon realized concerns like these would only rattle him, and that he should focus on completing the mission anyway.
It only felt like they had been in slip space for a brief moment before they dropped out. As their small craft came back into normal space an intense light of reappearing stars shown through the Pelican's front window and it's entire frame shook violently. They were incredibly close to Taurus VI, maybe 600 miles at the most. Brandon got up to look out the cockpit viewport and saw the refit station Osman had been talking about. They were way to close to it for any normal ship to avoid detection.
Had Bogof not had the caliber of cloaking technology that it did they would have been spotted within seconds of coming out of slip space, no sensors needed.
As if on cue as soon as Brandon stood up Devereaux initiated a roll maneuver to bring the pelican off a collision course with the station.
The roll ended up throwing Brandon onto the ceiling of the pelican and back to the floor. Dev burst out laughing as soon as she heard him hit the ground and Alison, and extended a hand to help him to his feet.
"very funny Devereaux," he called out to the cockpit, before quickly strapping himself back into his seat to avoid a similar incident.
As the pelican approached the planet's upper atmosphere Devereaux activated the Pelican's autopilot and programmed it to guide it to a clearing in some woods a mile west of the town they were intending to infiltrate.
The pelican hit the ground in the middle of the clearing and Alison and Brandon dashed out of the troop bay, drawing their pistols as they did and aiming them at the edge of the clearing. Once they were sure no one was around Devereaux came rushing out of the pelican, shotgun in hand.
"The town you're infiltrating is about a mile west of here," she yelled over the wine of bogof's engines, "proceed about that far as the crow flies and you should end up on a hill overlooking the town. Good luck."
The door closed automatically behind her as she ran back into the pelican and took off, leaving Brandon and Alison standing in the clearing.
Without a word both of them holstered their pistols and began walking towards the west marker on an old fashion compass Osman had given to them.
"If we walk at a standard pace we should reach the town in about a half hour," spoke up Alison when they exited the clearing into the trees.
Brandon began to see how difficult to navigate the pine forest in front of them was going to be and began to wonder how Vaz and Mal were dealing with their own set of challenges.
Location: forerunner installation X50, Dratheus system, 09:45 standard military time, January 4, 2558
"I think I might have over glorified the old days," said Mal as he tried to pull his boot clad foot out of a huge mud hole.
X50's surface consisted of dense tropical jungle and, unfortunately, everything that that entailed. The alien flora and fauna of the planet were quite unlike anything he had ever seen before, bright florescent trees dotted the landscape and dusty ground gave way to nearly invisible patches of mud created by underground aquifers that backed up to the surface.
Vaz didn't appear to be faring any better, his entire rifle was tangled in thick, florescent, and thorny vines that seemed to hang from every tree on the planet.
"We're only about a minute out from the URF base, maybe they'll have been courteous enough to have cleared out the vines around the place," he said as he pulled his DMR free and subsequently kicked the tree in frustration.
When they finally reached the edge of the woods Vaz held up his hand in a fist signaling Mal to stop. Directly in front of them was the URF base.
The area around the base was devoid of trees for 300 meters in all directions, the base was surrounded by a chain link fence and had a prefabricated watch tower at each corner. From their current position they couldn't see the base from the top down but Mal could still spot an aircraft control tower, an ammo dump and a motor pool positioned near the outside edge of the base.
"Looks like quite the operation," said Mal over the radio. "Yeah," said Vaz "see any place we could get a birds eye view of the place from?"
Mal pointed to a cliff on the other side of the base. Vaz nodded silently and slowly retreated into the woods.
When they Finally reached the cliff they both dropped onto their stomaches and crawled up to the edge of the hill. Mal removed his sniper rifle from it's sling and set it down in front of him while Vaz shouldered his DMR to act as a spotter.
With a top down view of the base it became apparent exactly how complex of an operation the URF was running. From what Mal could see there was at least ten buildings inside the compound. As he zoomed in to try to identify the buildings he spotted an armory, two barracks, a motor pool, and a recreational area in addition to several landing pads big enough to accommodate Pelicans and a full size runway opposite a hangar containing a longsword strike fighter.
"Impressive collection of Hardware," commented Mal, "what do you suppose we do about it."
"Nothing," responded Vaz, bringing his hand to the barrel of Mal's rifle to keep him from firing, "our primary directive is to observe and find out what the hells going on here. shooting up the place won't help that along."
Mal reluctantly removed his finger from the trigger of his rifle, switched on his armor's cooling system and settled in for a long waiting game.
They waited for about 4 hours before Vaz finally spoke up, "I'm gonna check in with Osman." As he reached to his helmet to activate his radio all hell broke loose in the base bellow them.
Both of them jumped nearly a foot as the bases alarm went off and all of a sudden the base was alive with activity. At least fifty URF personnel made a run from the barracks to the bases front gate and began to occupy sandbag barricades positioned just inside the fence, a team of pilots and aircrews ran out to the base's Tarmac to start up a pelican drop-ship and taxi the strike fighter out of the hangar. About a minute went by before a convoy of three warthogs came rushing out of a path cut through the jungle.
In the middle of the convoy was a modified troop transport warthog carrying a large, silver, cylindrical device shaped like a cannon barrel with strips of blue lights running down either side of it. It didn't look Covenant and it sure as hell wasn't UNSC.
"Second approaching warthog," came the call out from Mal, "what's it's carrying?"
"Must be that forerunner technology Osman was talking about," said Vaz.
The three warthogs entered the compound and didn't slow down a bit. they went full speed straight for a waiting pelican on the Tarmac and practically threw the device into it's cargo bay.
As soon as it was strapped in the pelican lifted straight off into the air followed by the longsword fighter escort.
Once the pelican was off the ground and out of sight the warthog convoy raced immediately back out the gate and back into the woods, and just like that, the alarm deactivated the entire base returned to relative normal.
"I don't know what the hell just happened down there, but Osman has to know about it" stated Vaz before reaching to his helmet to open communications with the Murphy's law.
"Ground team to actual," said Vaz over the radio.
"This is actual, we read you five by five, what's the situation?" came Osman's immediate reply.
"A URF convoy just pulled into the base with some kind of forerunner device, we tried to get a better look at it but they loaded it into a pelican and legged it, please advise BB to get eyes on it before it gets away, over," said Vaz.
"I've found your pelican, I'm scanning it now," called BB over the radio, "scan complete, oh dear, I recognize this particular device."
"What is it BB? Is it a weapon?" Inquired Mal.
"See for yourself," said BB before he sent an image to their HUD's.
The image showed a similar device, welded to the hull of a frigate marked UNSC Preston J Cole in place of the ship's Mac cannon. The UNSC symbol on the ship was painted over with a URF logo.
"I noticed this modification earlier when I scanned the URF's fleet, I took note of it but didn't think anything of it, but after cross referencing it with Doctor Phillips's observations of forerunner technology on sangheilios, I don't see why I didn't see the similarities before. It looks like what ever it is the URF appears to have deemed it important enough to forgo the frigate's main armament to accommodate it."
"Copy that BB, please advise as to how we should proceed," asked Vaz.
"Dig in," came Osman's response, "and report any more forerunner technology you see, Osman out." The radio cut out and the two marines were left right back where they had started.
"So what's the plan?" Asked Mal as Vaz got off the radio. "We sit here and hope that Army guy and Alison find out what that thing was. "I'll take first watch," said Vaz before settling in for a long waiting game.
Innies - insurrectionists
URF - United rebel front