Chapter 16: Svenson
Svenson's boots still squelched as he moved, they hadn't completely dried out after the forage through the swamp. That was the same for the rest of the fireteam. Their trek through the grey halls of the weapons facility was uncomfortably noisy, he was sure they could be heard from multiple rooms away.
Similarly to their journey through the swamp, O'Hale took point, and Arceneaux took the rear. No one said a word, not that it would give any of them away more than their footsteps would. O'Hale eventually brought them to a stop. They were in the middle of a chamber with a bridge that seemed to be made completely out of light. You see something new every day.
O'Hale attempted to contact the Captain, but there was no response. They couldn't broadcast, or the Covenant might hear them. And even though the facility was huge, they weren't that far away from where the Captain was supposed to be, so if there was any fighting happening, they should have been able to hear it.
"We'll keep moving to him," O'Hale said, "if we find him and he's dead, we're getting him out of here."
With each new second that passed, the possibility of Captain Keyes being dead became more and more likely. Everyone stopped joking about it the way they had been before.
More and more time passed. Fireteam Delta got closer and closer to Keyes's last known position. Svenson could have sworn he was going insane. Every room they went through looked nearly identical to the last one, and whenever they found a new room there would be another identical room to it further on.
When the Marines started passing Covenant comm relays, things got more concerning. Usually they would leave someone behind to guard them in case some enemy came by and tried to destroy it. But instead of destroying it, they opted to try and use it.
Lopes accessed the controls of the comm relay, trying to find out if she could use it to contact anyone at the surface, and how many Covenant soldiers would come to kill them if she did.
"No idea how many ears will hear this," she said, "wanna risk it?"
O'Hale nodded, and she grabbed her radio. "Rizo, Dunn, come in."
"Rizo here," a voice responded. There was a hint of surprise in it, probably at O'Hale's ability to talk to her from down in the facility.
"How are things looking?"
"Clear so far. Don't think it will be for long."
"You're welcome to join us down here when things start heating up. For now just keep your eyes open."
"Yes sir."
O'Hale dropped the connection, and attempted to contact Keyes again. Still no response. They continued to move forward.
They entered another chamber that was identical to one of the chambers they'd passed through earlier, but this one showed signs of battle. A pretty big fight had happened there. The glass tank in the middle of the room was shattered, chunks of the catwalks and walls had been torn out. Something was on fire in one corner of the room, some piece of Covenant technology.
"God damn," Kamal said, "the Captain sure did a number on this place."
Svenson stared at the tank. The ones in some of the previous chambers had been filled with a dense green liquid that was almost impossible to see through, but Svenson swore he could see something moving in one of them. If something had been in this one, it was loose now. He had no idea what the beings that built the ring could have been keeping in these, but he hoped they weren't dangerous.
"Hey, on the floor," Clarke said. He was pointing behind the group, there was a dead body on the floor underneath the catwalk by the entrance.
O'Hale squinted as she looked at it. From what Svenson could see, it looked like an Elite with a massive hole in its chest, and its armour was scorched with plasma burns. O'Hale looked like she was about to order an investigation into it, but she turned away.
"We're here to find the Captain," she said, "not look at dead Covies."
Everyone said yes sir before they followed her to the other side of the chamber. The next one over was even worse for wear. It was one of the light bridge chambers, but the bridge sputtered on and off. The strobe effect it gave on the room made the place hard to look at. Scorch marks covered the floor, and so did blood stains. Svenson could see purple, blue, and green. There was no indication of human blood.
Wait… What Covenant has green blood?
"Well, looks like we'll need to find another way across," Svenson said.
"Let's head down," O'Hale said. She jumped off the catwalk and landed perfectly on the floor of the chamber. The rest of the fireteam followed one by one. Once they were all on the ground, they got a call from Rizo. Now was possibly the shittiest time for the Covenant to be attacking them.
"What's up, Riz?" O'Hale asked.
"The elevator just moved, it's heading down," Rizo replied, there was more static in her voice than before. "Just wanted to know if you're on your way back."
"Uh… No. We are not."
Svenson heard yelling in the background, followed by the sound of gunfire.
"We've got contacts! We're heading out into the swamp to get away from them."
"How many Covenant? We haven't seen any down here."
Rizo shouted how many? And was answered by a panicked scream from Dunn. More gunfire sounded, it was the rattling of human weapons. Assault rifles. He couldn't hear any plasma fire.
"They're not Covenant! I repeat, they're not Covenant!" Rizo's voice was suddenly a lot more panicked than it was before.
"What do you mean they're not Covenant?" O'Hale asked, concern filling her voice.
"I don't fucking know!" Rizo was cut off by a blood curtling shrill. It sure as hell didn't sound like any Covenant he knew. And a human couldn't have made that noise if they tried.
"Holy shit, Dunn!" Rizo's words turned into a cry of pain. She was dead.
"What the hell…" Arceneaux said.
Rizo's radio was still on. They heard more. There was a gurgling noise, followed by what sounded like the impact of wet flesh against something. And then the snapping of bones. They heard Rizo's voice again in groans of pain. They got deeper and deeper until the voice was unrecognisable, and then it sounded like something had gotten caught in her throat. The gurgling noise returned, and it didn't stop.
"Sarge…" Kamal said, there was panic in his voice. "What the hell is up there?"
"Damned if I fucking know," O'Hale replied, there was as much panic in her voice as his. When the Sergeant was afraid, that's when things were truly bad. "We gotta get back up there."
"You want us to go up there to those… Those things?" said Clarke.
"Those things came from down here. You heard her, they went up the elevator. We gotta get back up there and away from this place."
"What about the Captain?" Arceneaux asked.
"If he's still alive he isn't here anymore. I'm not even picking up his transponder anymore."
All of the Marines quickly raised their weapons when they heard banging on a door across from them. They all spread into a line with their rifles trained on the door. The banging became more frantic.
"Nobody move," O'Hale said, her voice barely more than a whisper through gritted teeth.
The door eventually opened, and a Grunt rushed out towards them. Its black armour signified it as a Spec-Ops Grunt, but it wasn't carrying any weapons. It stopped in its tracks when it saw the Marines.
"Ah! Humans!" the Grunt said in perfect English. It always creeped Svenson out that Grunts knew how to speak human languages. "Please! Please please please, you gotta help me!"
The Grunts voice had the same panic in it that Rizo's had just before she died and became whatever-the-hell she became. It sounded like it was on the verge of crying.
"What the hell is going on?" O'Hale asked it, to everyone's surprise. Usually she was the one to shoot the aliens first and talk to them later. But whatever was happening had her freaked out enough to talk to the thing.
"Big, scary, monsters," the Grunt said, trembling.
Growls and shrieks sounded from the passage the Grunt had come from. Horrors that Svenson never would have seen in his worst nightmares began to pour through. Huge fleshy monsters with tendrils poking out of their chests, and claws shooting out of their arms stepped through. They looked like creepy twisted versions of the Covenant. Though they had been chasing the Grunt, they seemed to want to kill every one of them.
"Open fire!" O'Hale shouted.
The line of Marines blasted the hellish creatures with their assault rifles. They fell apart easily, leaving trails of viscous green blood behind them as they fell forward. The green blood Svenson had seen earlier had belonged to one of these things.
Kamal had to pause to reload, and one of the things jumped straight towards him at an impossible speed. Svenson and Kormanyos cut it down with their rifles before it could land its attack on Kamal, but he had gotten sprayed by its blood. The room became quiet. Kamal spat on the ground and wiped his face off. The rest of the Marines reloaded.
"Is that all of them?" Clarke asked.
Svenson looked around the room. It was littered with the bodies of these things. The Grunt that had been so kind as to warn them had gotten caught in the crossfire, its body was little more than piles of flesh in a pool of blue blood.
"Looks clear," O'Hale said. She took a few steps forward, the rest of Delta stayed close behind her.
Svenson's eyes scanned the piles of ripped apart bodies. The things were all shapes and sizes. Some of them vaguely resembled Covenant, and some of them had the shape of humans as well. He didn't like the thought of these things having been other living beings before. When he saw the armour of an Elite stuck to one, he knew that thought was right.
He started to gag, and he bent over with his hands on his knees. He vomited straight onto the floor. When he wiped off his mouth, he saw Clarke staring at one of the human-looking monsters. All of the blood had seemed to drain from his face. He seemed to be having the same thoughts as Svenson.
"Guys," Clarke said, "I think I know what happened to the Captain."
The older Marine kicked the body of the human-looking monster. Its rotting flesh squelched with the impact.
"And the rest of the guys down here," Kamal said.
"Like I said, we need to get back up top," O'Hale said.
All of the Marines looked towards the passage the Grunt and the monsters had come from. There were two other doors in the room, and they were locked. The place the monsters had come from was the only way for them to go.
O'Hale moved first. Even in the face of all this shit, she was still taking point.
"Alright ladies and gents," she said, turning around to them, "whatever clusterfuck hellhole these things came from, we're goin' straight to it. And if more of those things start coming after us, we will not shit our pants. We will shoot them, the same way we shoot anything that comes after us. They may look scary and sound nasty, but they're no different from the Covenant."
That is completely wrong in so many ways, Svenson thought. But he wouldn't dare put that thought into words.
"We stick together, we all go home," O'Hale continued. "So let's move!"
A chorus of sir yes sir sounded around the room, but it had been the least enthusiastic one Svenson had heard so far. We all go home. Svenson looked at Faraday. Everyone else had been able to keep some level of calm, but she was trembling. Svenson sighed.
If these things truly were what he thought they were, then he wasn't so sure if he wanted to go home.
