Chapter 11 – Rebelles
August 12th, 2552 - (04:50 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach
In Orbit over Viery Territory, Aboard Covenant SDV-class heavy corvette
:********:
Zander leaned against the outside wall of one of the cells as he looked across the brig, scanning the ground floor for signs of life. There was none aside from the three ODSTs to which their captain had entrusted the compartment. Two of them had stopped making casual patrols of the floor to pick up some of the bodies. They were dragging them in front of a few of the doors, stacking them on top of each other to block off certain entrances. He figured they were trying to minimize the number of access points from which anything hostile could peek inside. It was a smart move. However, if they were smarter, they would've been looking over their shoulders too.
He was far more interested in the ODST assigned to guard him. The shock trooper stood a few meters away, routinely glancing between him and the others across the brig. Zander was watchful as well, watchful of his custodian. The lone trooper had taken off his helmet a short while ago and it gave him an epiphany:
The world was a small place. Too small sometimes for its own good.
He made no sign of it, but it made him think back to how his life had brought him here. He considered how it had landed him on a planet he hated, on a ship with crew that despised him, next to a man who despite their shared past didn't seem to recognize him. Then again how could he? Out of the two of them, it was Zander who had changed the most.
He had been an agitator against the UNSC presence on Reach since his arrival several years ago. It wasn't as obvious then of course. He had to lay low. He was still a wanted man after all.
At first, he made his way around by hitchhiking and navigating less frequented routes into the northeast of Lower Viery. He chose one of the territory's lesser-known backwaters, a small farming town named Tihany. The locals were unsuspecting of him and namely because they didn't want anyone to be suspicious of them either. He had done his homework on the place. The townsfolk were comprised of the usual reserved and somewhat shady personalities one could expect to find out in Reach's boonies. Conservative types that wanted to be left alone, escaped criminals and convicts on the run, political inconveniences that needed to slip through the cracks of a planetary bureaucracy, they each had one thing that united them here. All found common ground in Tihany both figuratively and literally. The town was an unincorporated area owned by a mining company, one too embroiled in the tumultuous nature of wartime trade to keep an eye on the settlement. It had simply vanished from the concerns of the outside world and its denizens, some 2,000 strong, seemed to prefer it that way.
The general majority hadn't moved in during the town's boom years. They came much later, growing its ranks from 300 former mining workers and their families to thousands of scrupulous individuals. No authority existed outside of an elected mayor, a few administrational workers to handle external affairs and a skeleton crew of a police force. Beyond that point people were left to take care of their own business. Sometimes that included their dealings with each other, whether it was basic exchanges or an innocent dispute that began with one too many shots at the bar and ended with one too many shots fired. In most of the latter cases the police knew the perpetrators. In fact, they knew them so well that they would often stand by and watch them do it, only coming in afterwards to declare who was in the wrong. The guilty party ended up with a stern talking to at best and a small fine at worst, along with a few whispered words of encouragement to aim better next time. As for the victims, well, what about them?
Such was the way of life at Tihany, at least until Zander came along.
He arrived quietly and brought along with him a plan to get back at the UNSC. He spent years ingratiating himself into the community. Some were easier to get along with than others. Many warmed up to him after a few odd jobs in their service. Others took more effort to win over. A few additional favors of a black-market sort granted him their favor. Before long he was courting the attention of the scant few administrators as well and placing himself into their good graces.
The time soon came when he changed from a helpful middleman for Tihany's special interests to something else entirely. He gained access to what he needed most: their ears and their trust. They were forced to rely on him more and more when cold winters set in, as wildlife became sparse and the region's local Gúta became more desperate. Reach's apex predators made themselves known by routinely raiding the barns and even houses of the locals. The police weren't able to keep up. Their motley crew didn't have enough resources to take on the beasts and neither did the townspeople, not on their own.
Zander stepped in. He proposed a homegrown militia. They would compile their weapons and equipment into a defense force that could put up a fight against the wild raiders. The idea passed through the administration with next to no issue. Everyone was in the mood for getting back at the Gúta. Few objected and so Zander, for his part, was placed in charge of the new militia.
The Gúta stood far less of a chance against them then. Predators who usually travelled in packs of several or less were ambushed by groups of 30 militiamen at a time. They scared off those of them who were more anxious and killed those who stood their ground. In a matter of a month the issue was settled. The Gúta stopped coming to Tihany in search of an easy meal. However, Zander's plans were only just beginning.
His key position within the militia and the community itself made him unstoppable. His next move was to play off the loyalties of those under his command against the town's administration. He showed them how much more effective his leadership was at protecting them than that of the admins and police. He was persuasive, having plenty of examples of dead Gúta to prove his point. There was some opposition, especially from Tihany's police, but their efforts were ultimately futile in the face of what he did thereafter.
There were of course other towns in the region, other locations whose populace were also affected by the Gúta scourge. The work of the Tihany militia caused a cascading effect that saw the pastures of neighboring settlements transformed into the hunting grounds of the exiled predators. Tihany's neighbors came to them in need of the services of their militia. The region's isolation from UNSC spheres of influence meant they were the closest thing to a military power that could be relied upon. Zander had taken their needs in stride and used it as justification for his force's continued existence.
Deals were struck and Tihany's militia turned into hired guns. Their defense clients became more plentiful as Reach's most dangerous wildlife became more widespread. Their ranks swelled with inductees from several towns, then a dozen, then dozens. Their numbers grew from hundreds to thousands of people who were intent on getting their newest enemy off their land.
And it almost worked.
They had pushed the Gúta so far that they were ridding the area of them altogether, driving them towards localized extinction in the process. Doing so caught the eye of Zander's next obstacle and his most useful tool.
The Colonial Conservationist Society took notice of their extermination campaign. The inter-system nature conservationist group held many preserves in the region. To protect their interests, they sent envoys to the Tihany militia, to Zander. They attempted to broker an agreement over respecting the boundaries of their preserves into which the militia were driving the Gúta populations. By then the town's administration and scant police force were already wrapped around his finger. They took no part in the negotiations which Zander was quick to throw out the window. He told the envoys that he and his men wouldn't acknowledge any agreement that would stop them from killing their tormentors, the beasts that threatened both their families and their livelihoods. He deemed the creatures too dangerous to be allowed to grow their numbers in the preserves and argued for pushing them even further. The envoys didn't take too kindly to this as he had planned. They threatened to bring in local authorities if he continued his aggression. Never one to take threats lying down, he sent the envoys packing at the point of a gun.
The CCS made good on their word. Zander, however, did not. He didn't care about the Gúta whatsoever, only that they gave him an excuse to butt heads with more of Reach's infrastructure. He left the preserves alone. He instead directed the militia's attention to the external security forces of the mining company, the same company supposedly responsible for Tihany. The CCS got the defense contractors to acknowledge the problem growing within their own backyard. They prepared for a long pacification operation against what they thought was minor discontent. If they had any other strategy in mind, they might have had a better chance than they ultimately did.
Zander struck first. He convinced the militia that the security forces were coming to disarm them. He reasoned that they would leave them defenseless against the resurgence of the Gúta within the preserves, that is unless they made the first move. At that point the militia took his word as gospel. The beasts that preyed on their livestock and endangered their loved ones were being protected by the very same contractors who were supposed to be defending them. Such contemptuous bystanders deserved everything they had coming to them.
What ensued was a night assault on the security forces' compound just on the boundary of the region. They were preparing for the pacification mission meant to commence the following day when gunfire flashed from the surrounding tree line, through the perimeter fences to cut down passing patrols. The ambush came from three sides, pulling the attention of responding forces in three different directions. The militia lured their QRFs out of the gates and into the forests where they made quick work of them from beneath bushes, behind fallen logs and above the foliage itself. After mopping them up, they pushed through the gates of the compound. They dealt with the base's remaining defenders with minimal casualties. The security force on the other hand was not so lucky.
Over 130 defense contractors lay dead and 40 more wounded or captured. It was almost too easy. Nevertheless, Zander made no attempt to ransom the survivors. Knowing that the incident would cause the UNSC to finally take notice of what he was doing, he decided to avoid a hostage situation, the kind that would pull eyes his way a lot faster. He had them executed instead and buried in unmarked graves. As for their compound itself, it became Zander's new base of operations. Its weapons and facilities became his. Its munitions he used to provide his men with the most up to date equipment he could find. They were no longer a militia. They were now an insurgency.
Wanting to maintain a sense of their roots, Zander renamed them the 'Tihany Defense Force'. In truth, it now held a territorial domain inclusive of dozens of unincorporated towns spread over an area of 200 square kilometers. Its size prompted a new name. Zander gave it one. It became unofficially known as the 'Tihany Autonomous Zone' or TAZ.
The TDF's size combined with the bloody circumstances surrounding its creation led to it finally gaining some attention.
By late July, Zander had received reports of UNSC forward elements scouting out the borders of the TAZ. That as well as the unseen yet undoubtable presence of observation satellites made Zander a happy man. His plans were coming to fruition.
The goal from the very beginning was to undermine the UNSC's influence on Reach by creating a rogue entity. TAZ was a state within a state. Having come a long way from being a cluster of isolated corporate towns, it had become a secessionist movement in miniature. Their purpose, unbeknownst to the thousands that took up arms under his command, was to destabilize Reach itself. They would accomplish this simply by continuing to exist and asserting their right to do so. No other authority had offered to help them in their time of need so why should they consider themselves as part of some greater whole?
No matter who the victor was, a homegrown rebellion would cost the UNSC valuable resources to address. More of their manpower would be tied up from the ever-approaching frontlines of the war. A long-term strategy short, once they arrived in system as they inevitably would, the Covenant would have an easier time of the ground situation on Reach.
The massive repository of gear he gained access to from the security forces was meant to serve as the backbone of the TAZ's resistance. For however long it would last, it would grant them a fighting chance against expected UNSC reprisals. At least it should have.
Then something happened that Zander hadn't counted on. It was the greatest fault in his almost decade-long plan. Though he could manipulate the locals and the UNSC to work in his favor, he could not manipulate the Covenant. If they wanted to come earlier than expected then they would.
And they did.
Before any proper fighting could break out with the UNSC, the first Covenant ship slipped through the clouds above TAZ's territory. Coincidentally, communications went down just a few days before their appearance. Without any means of coordinating a proper response, the towns and settlements of TAZ were picked off one by one. The TDF simply disintegrated. He watched his rebels divide among their hometowns and rush to defend them, often arriving too late to do anything of use.
Zander himself decided to make his stand at Tihany. His forces were few though they might as well have been nonexistent. They amounted to nothing more than a ragtag group of stragglers that missed their cue to run away. It all came crashing down at the appearance of the Covenant corvette which hovered above the town to destroy the last holdouts. Tihany was searched by Covenant ground forces and scoured by the corvette's cannons. Nearly everyone and everything was laid low in a massacre of plasma bolts and energy beams.
Zander watched everything he worked for be shot to death, slashed to pieces or burned to cinders. His fate, however, was not to be theirs. He surrendered himself to a group of Elites that had surrounded the house he had taken refuge in. Hellbent on seeing his mission through to the very end, he offered them information on other settlements across Viery. The intel was given in exchange for a lengthening of his lifespan and saw him dragged into the bay of a waiting dropship. Even if it only bought him a few days' worth of time, it would give him at least a chance to see Reach burn.
He did live to see Reach burn, at least some parts of it. His one regret was that he wouldn't get to stick around to watch it fall. There was now more important business to attend to.
He had struck a deal with the devil of a shipmaster without getting beheaded at the end of their meetings.
He had survived the Brutes that had marked out his body to see which parts of it they would carve off first.
Now he needed to survive one more time. Just one. That would be all it took for him to do what had to be done. At the end of it he would see his vendetta fulfilled against the man who had taken everything from him.
All he needed was an opening.
:********:
Duncan considered talking to the man. Zander seemed the introverted type. He made no move to chat or even look in his direction and Duncan tried to pay him a similar courtesy. That said, the awkwardness was becoming unbearable.
Rico was wandering off with Lima-6. The two of them had spent the time catching up since last they worked together on Ballast, back when their squads had infiltrated the underground ONI facility. They were having fun chatting it up on the other side of the brig. Meanwhile Duncan was having to hold his peace around an absolute stranger. A stranger that wouldn't stop staring at him. He could sense it and it made him all the more uncomfortable.
At length he decided that if anyone was going to break the ice, it was going to be him. "So...where're you from?"
He didn't turn to Zander right away. He was still facing forward when he got his answer.
"New Harmony."
It was a bit terse but better than nothing. "Where on New Harmony?"
There was a pause. "Why do you want to know?"
This time Duncan turned to him a little, allowing him to see Zander leaning against the outside wall between a pair of cells. "Because I want to know what made the Covenant so interested in you that they decided to go crazy."
Zander wasn't looking directly at him either. "Crazy? What are you talking about?"
"You know, the craziness that make genocide-happy aliens decide to keep a whole person alive. I don't think they were keeping you here as a pet or as target practice. You would've been dead by now if that was the case."
"How would you know?"
"I've seen it." Duncan replied, sensing that his charge was starting to get cagey. "You've seen it too, haven't you? I know what happened on New Harmony. That was back in '39, right? Were you there when all that went down?"
Zander didn't say anything for a while, staring at a distant spot in the brig. After a deep breath he sighed out an answer. "'37 actually."
"What?"
"It was in '37, not '39. I know because I was there."
"So, you saw-…"
Zander nodded. "I was a teenager when the Covenant showed up. My parents managed to get me on a shuttle. The crew said there wasn't any more room so my folks told me they'd get on the next one."
Duncan hesitated to ask the next logical question. "Was there a next one?"
Zander gave a slow shake of his head. "My story's nothing special. It's more of a classic really. The Covenant shows up, the parents lie to their kids and now there's whole systems' worth of orphans roaming the stars who aren't even grown enough to understand what just happened to them."
"...And you were one of those kids?"
Again, Zander shook his head. "No, I was old enough to figure things out back then. Ended up with my aunt and uncle being the only family I had left. I found out early on that life can be a cruel thing, you know, giving you stuff to enjoy just so it can take it away later. But I didn't figure that last part out until a while afterwards."
Zander stopped as if he'd caught himself and looked Duncan straight on. "And here I am spilling my guts to somebody I hardly even know. Well, I guess it's 'cause I almost got gutted for real." He gestured to the markings on his arms.
"You said the Brutes gave you those, right?" Duncan asked.
Zander nodded. "And these are just the ones my clothes don't cover."
He raised his shirt and Duncan got an eyeful of more than he'd bargained for. The former prisoner had a score of markings that were etched across his torso like a written language. There was an order to the madness, a pattern Duncan could discern. The etchings outlined the positions of his lungs, marked out his liver, traced his intestines and formed a careful framing around his heart. All of it was carved through the skin itself. To make matters worse, the wounds didn't have the glistening red hue indicative of cuts from a knife. They were hard and black, cauterized, meaning whoever made them had most likely done so with the aid of plasma tools.
Duncan was about to ask if the Brutes had used any anesthetics when he heard just how stupid the question sounded in his head.
"They were about to have a feast." Zander said. "I wasn't even going to be the main course, just the side dish. Their chieftain said something about what they call a 'thorn beast', I guess it's one of their delicacies. I'll tell you what, it's real interesting when a creature almost three times your size and smart enough to hold a conversation with you still sees you the way that you see chicken."
"Oh...I'm sorry you had to go through all that."
"Don't be sorry. I'm not."
"What?"
Zander lowered his shirt and crossed his arms over his chest. "You see torture but all I see is a price tag. That's all this is."
"Why would you say that?" Duncan depolarized his visor as he scrutinized him, wanting him to know that he wanted answers.
Zander scratched his head thoughtfully. "I've told you a lot about me, but can I ask you a question?"
"Alright, shoot."
"What about you? Where'd you grow up? How'd you end up being an ODST, a hired hand for the UNSC?"
The last question wrung a weird bell in Duncan's head. It triggered old memories though he couldn't see how they connected.
"I can't say much." He replied. "It started on Earth for me. I made my way to the ODSTs because I decided I wanted to serve. Low and behold, it led me here."
"On a Covenant ship guarding some guy who was almost somebody else's lunch?" Zander asked.
"If that's where the service calls then that's where it calls. There's no getting around it."
Zander stifled a laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"Well, to be honest with you, you kind of remind me of me, or maybe the opposite."
Duncan cocked his head at him. "You're sounding like an old man now, Zander. I'm pretty sure you're a few years my junior."
"Who the hell says 'junior'?" Zander chuckled. "Yeah, you're right. Out of us two, you're definitely the old man here. A father too I'd say."
Duncan allowed himself to laugh a little as well. "Really? How'd you figure?"
"It's not that hard to pick up on. You strike me as somebody who's had to look out for someone smaller. Just look at the way you're having to keep an eye on me. I guess that makes you a family man."
Erica's and Noah's faces flashed through Duncan's head, as did his last conversation with them. His laughter died in his throat. "Yeah...you could say that."
He restrained his thoughts from gravitating in that direction and refocused them on the question he wanted to ask. "What'd you mean when you said I remind you of you?"
Zander shrugged as he leaned back against the wall. "Believe it or not, and you probably won't, once upon a time I used to be UNSC myself."
Duncan zeroed in on him, ignoring the background noise of Rico and Lima-6's distant conversation. "You what?"
"See, told you that you wouldn't believe me."
"No-no, wait a minute. Turn your head around."
"Huh? Why?"
"Just do it."
Zander gave a reluctant turn of his head. Doing so allowed Duncan to see through his matted hair to the small patch of metal on the back of his skull: a neural interface. It was enough to confirm his story in Duncan's eyes.
"Which branch were you with?"
"Marine Reserves." Zander replied.
A spark of familiarity went off. It was one Duncan related to his own experience, even though he sensed a deeper connection lurking at the edges of his awareness.
"A reservist?" He smiled. "I used to be one too."
Zander brightened up. "Really?"
"Yup, I was one back on Earth before I shifted over to shock duty. I was at it for years. I guess you did your service on a different planet then?"
"Sigma Octanus IV, that was my first posting." Zander paused as the brightness behind his countenance dimmed. "First and last, really."
"What happened?"
"You first. You tell me what made you take that big leap from jarhead to suicidal jarhead. Do that and I'll tell you how I got this far."
The memories of a walk through an old church cemetery, passing by row after row of graves before arriving at an open casket played out as viscerally as they had all those years ago.
"Reality." Duncan said, lacking some of the enthusiasm he had before. "A cold slap of reality woke me up. It helped me rediscover a few things, mainly that I wanted to do more than I already was."
"Like you said, you wanted to serve, right?" Zander asked.
"That's right. Always have and always will, at least for as long as I can. You?"
Zander shook his head even more slowly than before. "Can't say I ever saw it the same way, ugh, what'd you say your name was again?"
"Duncan."
Zander's eyes widened by an almost imperceptible degree, something Duncan chalked up to him not being used to speaking so casually with special forces.
"Yeah, I can't say I ever had the same perspective on it, Duncan. Not from the start. I joined the reserves because that's what everyone else was doing. It's what everyone expected me to do too. Most of them didn't see the things I did but they thought that me being a war orphan would mean I could only want one thing. Sure, I thought I did too, but I learned real fast that I wasn't willing to fight for it. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it fast enough to avoid finishing boot camp. I guess it was so bad that I'd tricked myself into thinking that that's what I really wanted."
"But it wasn't, was it?" Duncan queried. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be here right now."
Zander nodded agreeingly. "If it was, I would've been in the middle of that scrap they just had at Sigma Octanus. God only knows if I would've survived it. For some reason I imagine the almighty saying 'You're better off where you're at, kid'."
"And where are you at?"
"What're you, my therapist?"
The two laughed a bit, so much so that Rico and Lima-6 briefly broke from their conversation to give them an odd look.
"You making friends over there, Ep-8?" Rico called.
"I hope so." Duncan replied.
Rico gave him the thumbs up and returned to his chat.
"Where'd I end up?" Zander pondered as the mirth vanished from his face. He looked around the brig with heavy eyes. "In hell."
Duncan stopped smiling. "Well, it is a Covenant ship but it's not that ba-"
Zander pointed back to the markings on his skin.
"Right...sorry. I forgot about those."
"I didn't. I don't think I ever will. It's one thing to end up in hell, Duncan. It's a whole other can of worms when you know you deserve to be there."
Duncan said nothing. He couldn't think of anything appropriate. Instead, he made a face that said he was still listening.
"Where'd I end up?" Zander repeated. "I ended up making deals, some good, some not so good." He looked to Duncan. "You've made deals before, right?"
"What kind?"
"The kind you don't regret."
"Got any specifics for me?"
"Specifics? Yeah, I have a few." He stopped to think for a moment, glancing between Duncan and the others as he recollected. "I think I told this story before. I made a deal with this guy once after I went AWOL from the reserves. He told me he could help me out of getting arrested if I joined him. He was a guy that did odd jobs here and there with this clean-up crew that he ran. I was young, maybe a little stupid, but there was nothing stupid about that decision. It was the best I could've made at the time."
"What kind of odd jobs did they do?" Duncan pressed, interested in the tale.
"Like I said, he ran a clean-up crew. We'd look after people's goods, their houses, even whole buildings when the situation called for it. We carried things wherever they needed to be carried and made sure everything was shipshape. We made a good reputation out of it too." Zander looked to the ceiling with a wistful glint in his eye. "It was a nice escape for me. It gave me people to work with who didn't try to stress me out about avenging my childhood. It's more of a relief than I can explain. I hung out with them so much that when all's said and done, they were probably more like family to me than the ones I left behind on Sigma. We were running strong as a business too." His longing gaze fell to his feet. "At least for a while."
Zander didn't move to say anything else. Duncan was left confused and trying to put the pieces together. How could a man who claimed to be a part of some clean-up crew end up alive and mostly intact aboard a Covenant ship? Already too deep to not want to find out more, he popped another question.
"What do you mean 'a while'? Did something happen to them?"
Zander glanced at Duncan. "You could say that."
He straightened himself up against the wall. "The business wasn't...'legal'. We were an 'off the books' sort, you know? Eventually we got so big that we were bringing in people to work alongside us from left and right. But then the boss had this new guy join. He knew the basics of how to clean, that was for sure. I just wished we knew a tad more about him before we decided to let him in. Turns out he was a mole, ratted us out to the authorities. He got most of my buddies arrested during a bust. He even got a few of them killed. I managed to get away though. I survived without doing any prison time, eventually got separated from my boss and wound up here."
The connections were made unconsciously at first. There were certain similarities Duncan found uncanny; blanks he could fill within Zander's story that for some reason matched another. It was his own.
"And then I liaised for the Covenant." Zander added. "That was my next deal. When they came to the town I was living in, I decided I would help them if it meant staying alive longer. I gave them useful info, the kind that you get shot for handing over. And that's why I'm here."
Duncan felt his stomach tense and his mouth dry up like a desert. "You...were working...with the-"
"To stay alive." Zander assured as he cupped his chin thoughtfully. "And something else. You know, I really wanted to see them bring down the same authorities that kicked the bucket on my friends. I even went after that guy, remember, the one who I said sold us out? Well, actually, I went after his family, followed them around, even to their home. Thought I could ransom them off to get back at him but, as it turns out, they were a good deal harder to get my hands on than I expected."
Zander's hands slipped into his pockets. "Not that it would've mattered much since the guy wouldn't know who sold off his wife and kid. What kind of revenge is that, right? I mean, I don't think he even remembers what he did that would make him deserve it. Hell, he doesn't even recognize me now."
Duncan by then was too lost in his ruminations to truly hear what he was saying. His mind had gone back several years to his time with the Insurrectionist front operation, the AMADDS.
Names and faces he hadn't thought of in years now dusted themselves off: the cold-eyed Ambers, the strong-armed Quinn, the drunk Haskin, the family man Palakiko.
O'Reilly.
He remembered how he met a red-headed kid among them, one of the first to have opened up to him out of the crew of seasoned mercs. The name came hazily to him. It was 'Al' but that was only the nickname he went by. His real name popped into vivid clarity in his head as he felt his skin crawl.
Aleczander.
Alec...zander.
The shock of the revelation held Duncan so enthralled that he barely noticed when his red-headed friend cocked his head at him.
"Speaking of which, by that look on your face I guess you've finally figured it out."
Duncan flinched and took a step back as his memories matched face with face. "Al?"
"Took you long enough." Al said as a combat knife whipped out of his pocket and plunged into Duncan's shoulder.
The latter proved slower, his armor weighing him down so that he could only lean away from the blow, causing it to miss his throat. It still dove through his neck seal, sending a sharp pain shooting through his whole body. He screamed.
Al's momentum knocked him over and his rifle flew out of his hands. He landed hard on his back with his assailant already on top of him. Holding him down with one hand, Al used the other to grab the handle of the knife, yanking it out in a spray of blood.
Duncan wailed at the pain surging through his shoulder. He was still sober enough to see the second attempt on his throat and grab his attacker's hands mid-stab, stopping the blade just short of his neck. The metal tip wiggled and wavered, pushed and was pushed back as the two strained against each other.
Past the strands of wild hair, Duncan saw the face of the kid he used to know. He was a man now. In the place of the old awkwardness was a fire behind his eyes that glowed with a desperate rage.
Al wrestled with him for the knife, fighting to press the blade further. Duncan struggled as well, both to stop him and to keep the throbbing pain in his arm from costing him his grip. Despite his strength he felt the knife edging closer and closer to his neck. He shot a knee into Al' s groin but the mercenary only winced, never letting up.
"D!" Rico shouted.
The two of them turned to see Rico and Lima-6 dashing towards them from the other side of the brig. Al pushed harder. So did Duncan. Both gritted their teeth, growling from the pressure of each other's refusal to quit.
But then Al started to gain the upper hand, pressing his whole upper body onto his grip. Duncan bowed his head to defend his jugular just as an old memory crossed his mind. Instead of Al he saw the face of O'Reilly struggling to get a butcher's knife into his chest. His grasp faltered and failed. The blade slipped out of his fingers, dove and glanced harmlessly off the side of his visor. It dinged off the floor, cracking from the impact.
Al tried bringing back the knife for another swing but Duncan seized his arms and held him back.
The butt of a grenade launcher struck the side of Al's head, sending him sprawling. Lima-6 leapt on top of him. He wrestled him back down to the floor before he could get back up. Pinning him beneath his knee he pressed the barrel of his rifle into the back of his head.
"DON'T MOVE!"
Rico kneeled beside Duncan to check him out. "Hey, you good!?"
Duncan shook his head and tried to grip his shoulder. He immediately regretted it as bursts of pain coursed through him like electricity. He pulled his hand away to find it covered in blood. More of it was slowly seeping out of the breach in his neck seal. He held out his other hand to let Rico help him up.
He sat upright to let his squadmate get a better look at the wound.
"What the hell happened?"
"Exactly what it looks like." Al said, earning a death glare from Rico and another threat to stay silent from Lima-6.
Duncan fought to get a word out through pained breaths. "He's-...I-...I know him."
"You what?" Rico rounded on both of them. "How?"
"I'll...explain later. Right now, I need...something to patch me up. Got anything...on you?"
"No, Nada. Ep-10's the one with the biofoam. Guess we'll have to wait until the rest of-"
The three ODSTs whirled about to see one of the doors on the bottom floor cycling open. Rico raised his launcher in its direction then quickly lowered it as over a dozen ODSTs stared back from the other side. The newcomers quickly rushed inside, fanning out across the courtyard to check every crack and crevice, stepping over bodies on their sweep towards the other three.
The sight of them eased Duncan's nerves. He watched a squad's worth of them finish their sweep and rush over. He recognized Epsilon before they even started talking.
"Hey, good to see you guys made it." Zack said.
"I wouldn't be so sure." Nova pointed to Duncan and his busted shoulder.
"What happened here?" The Staff asked.
"We came in a little while ago." Rico explained. "The brig was like this before we got here. The Covies were killing each other, jefe. We offed the last couple of Brutes that were still standing. Somebody ended up finding this tonto over here in one of the cells." He gestured to the man in question.
The Staff as well as the rest of the squad paused at seeing Al. The sight of a 'civilian' on a Covenant ship took them a moment to process.
"4-Actual left him to us while the rest of his guys moved on to the bridge. Things were going fine until, well, want to do the honors, Ep-8?"
Duncan shrugged, a move he quickly regretted as it struck another chord of pain in his body. "The AMADDS. I know him...from there. He was one of...Stewards' guys. Didn't recognize him in time."
"AMADDS?" Nova thought aloud. "How'd he end up here?"
"Of all places." Yuri added.
Duncan shook his head. "No clue. The fact is that...he's here now and...he almost-...I can't talk anymore."
No doubt with a smidge of confusion, the Staff signaled for Renni. Epsilon's medic wasted no time slipping down beside her squadmate to spy out his condition.
"You guys took the plasma battery?" Rico asked.
"Just now, yeah." Mito said. "Neptune-Actual's taking the rest of us to the bridge to link up with 4-Actual's crew. We came here to secure this part of the ship. Good thing we did or we might've missed you."
"Yeah," Rico echoed, eyeing Duncan with deep concern. "Good thing."
Duncan sat quiet while Renni cleaned up the wound enough to perform a biofoam injection. Soon the handheld canister came out and she carefully slid the injector tube into the gash.
"Hold still." Renni said. "You're going to feel a slight sting."
"I think I...feel it already."
"No, that's just the handiwork from the knife."
With a click the foam hissed through the tube and into the wound. It delivered a new kind of smarting pain that felt closer to a bunch of bees stinging an already salted cut. Duncan endured it in silence. He bit his tongue against the suffering as he watched the yellow foam oxidize and bubble, expanding to fill the wound completely. Eventually the pain settled to a sizzling numbness that he wished could spread to his head. He was tired but his thoughts were a writhing mess, pulled here and there by a pandora's box of old memories and neglected emotions. He peered over at Al who he found staring right back at him, restrained but no less ready to finish the job he'd started.
:********:
Colonel Garrison strode onto the bridge with several of his squads in an air of triumph. Despite the occasion, the place wreaked of death. It was a reminder of what price had been paid for him to be where he was.
Captain Eddies' ODSTs had gathered the bodies of the bridge crew and dumped them in a corner. In their wake they left behind splotches and trails of blood that indicated where each enemy had met their end. There were stains of red as well. They were fewer yet it also made them stand out compared to the purple floor of the bridge and the blueish blood of the crew.
Garrison spotted Captain Eddies. He was waiting for him in front of a projection of Reach that rotated within a central perimeter platform. On the way over to him, he noticed ODSTs off to the side that were standing around two of their comrades. The pair's helmets were off. The face of one was pale, his upper body partly covered in a body bag while a pair of severed legs lay beside him. The other didn't have a face, at least not one Garrison could recognize as a face. It was burned away, reduced to a mess of molten visor glass and slagged flesh that melded into one, emitting a faint glow. Regardless of the distance the colonel could still hear the crackling sounds the two gave off as he passed.
His hands tightened into fists at his sides. He made a mental note to help with the burial details of those two troopers once the battle was over. They had played a major part in the operation, if not the most pivotal, and had paid the price for it. The least he could do for them, for any of his lost Helljumpers, was to give them a proper grave, though only for those intact enough to be put in graves.
He came to a stop beside the captain and received his salute.
"Glad to have you with us, sir." Eddies said. "It's been a rough one."
Garrison resisted the temptation to glance at the two bodies. "I can imagine."
He peered up at the projection and stared at its precise geographic measurements in awe. The whole of Reach was on display. Numerous locations were marked with the unreadable chicken-scratch of Covenant glyphs. To his dismay, he even found a marking around the area where Falchion was located. It seemed nothing on the planet was hidden from the prying eyes of the Covenant.
"Great work, 4-Actual." Garrison said. "I'd slap a medal on you and your guys right here if I could. I'm afraid that will have to wait. We need to contact command, figure out how to stop this ship. That and tell them we've got the corvette almost under our control."
"Almost, sir?"
"I've kept in contact with yours as well as every other group from Alpha and Bravo that made it aboard. Most of their objectives have been neutralized. At this stage, the engine room is the only holdout. I tasked it to both 5th Platoons. They're still working on getting inside."
"Sounds like the hinge-heads are giving them a real run for their money back there."
Garrison nodded. "Sounds like it. They'll get the job done though."
"Right. As for said job on our end..." Eddies pointed across the way to a dead Elite on the other side of the platform. Garrison was surprised he hadn't noticed it before. Its golden armor made it stand out from the rest. It sat facing them with its back resting against a pillar-like console, its head sagging off to the side. There was a bullet hole square in the center of its helmet.
"Who was he?" Garrison asked.
"Shipmaster Ee-rim Rizanamee." Eddies answered. "Or so he said. He was the top dog on this ship, killed those two you saw back there, probably knew how to stop this thing. We found him working at that station when we shot his legs out from under him, asked him what he was up to. Judging by what he said, we think he tried for a self-destruct. My guess is that we barely stopped him from turning us into confetti. It was a little scary to think he came that close."
Garrison stared into the dark and vacant eyes of the shipmaster. Several emotions warred within him. There was a strong hatred for his enemy, the very same that had butchered and maimed his troopers and likely encouraged his crew to do the same. However, he also felt a modicum of respect for the individual that was his equal in the battle. Last was a strong curiosity that ultimately won out over everything else.
"How'd he die?"
"He was giving us too much lip, sir, so I gave him a piece of my mind by blowing off some of his." Eddies tapped a proud finger against his holstered pistol.
"...A shipmaster, huh? He might've made a good prisoner."
"He might've made a poor house guest too, sir, especially since he was already dying. He would've probably flatlined before teatime."
Garrison nodded and turned to look beyond the bridge's viewing glass. The mountain range a few hundred meters below seemed to unfold before them for an endless eternity. Thanks to their speed he could follow their length all the way to a small dot that appeared over the horizon. On the right side of the sprawl, to the east of the mountains he spotted the upcoming town of Szeged. Smoke was rising from it in tall pillars. Every now and again he could see small prickles of light that he recognized as explosions.
Charlie, Delta and Echo Companies had to be cleaning house by now along with the 124th Infantry Brigade's heavy armor. The town looked no farther away than 15-kilometers. He calculated they would pass it in the next five minutes and would be within range of radio communications in half of that.
The operation was winding to a close. Though the scope of the wider battle was yet to be made known, he was content to help wrap up his own part in the offensive. He opened a direct comm-link to the leaders of both 5th Platoons, ready to ask them how much progress they'd made against their last objective.
:********:
Zin didn't care anymore.
He didn't care that Tevumee refused to see the problem. If the major wanted to be an idiot then that was on him.
Zin didn't care that he could hear explosions and shouts beyond the doors to the engine room or feel them reverberate from the outside corridor. The humans could kill as many of the crew as they wanted. It wouldn't matter.
He didn't care that what he was about to do would be the death of him. That didn't matter either.
What mattered was that he would do what the shipmaster had asked of them. Funny how that worked. For someone who derived so much pride from his rebellious forefathers, his life's final act would be in obedience to those they hated. That hate was not entirely unwarranted either. The existence of someone like Tevumee was proof of that. However, that wasn't to say that none of the Unggoy's rulers or their rulings ever came from a place of wisdom. In his case it was simply a matter of common sense. Sense that Tevumee didn't seem to have. If the greatest sin of the Unggoy was cowardice then the greatest sin of the Sangheili was their unchecked pride, the kind that blinded them to the obvious. Because of such pride, Zin was forced to choose between two masters, between a most likely dead but rational leader and a living fool. The latter didn't sound so bad to that part of him that wanted to live. Then the sound of gunfire in the outside corridor reminded him that putting his trust in a fool would be a fool's hope.
There was nothing for him beyond this point. The misty engine room of a corvette, above an unfriendly planet and beneath an unfamiliar sun, many light years away from the warmth of his own: this was where his road ended. And he found that he could accept that. He hadn't expected too much out of his life anyway, not with the underlying motto of his kind which was to grow up fast and die young. But he had expected to buck the system even just a little. Strangely, he realized he had an opportunity to do so now. He couldn't miss the irony that he was about to rebel against a stated order by obeying one that was never said outright. The beautiful contradiction lit a fire of satisfaction in his gut that got him on his feet.
He took another look over his shoulder at the line of defenses that Tevumee had erected in front of the entrance. To his relief, none of the defenders were looking in his direction. Tevumee was nowhere to be seen. Zin wagered he was at the very front, placing him closer to the action when it inevitably broke through the doors.
He looked to the ceiling and to the many sterile lights that washed the room in a pale-blue illumination. For the briefest moment he imagined what lay beyond it: the light of the unfamiliar sun. He imagined that it was Tala instead, his homeworld's paternal star. Despite the cold of the interior, he could practically feel Tala's heat warming his skin from across the vastness of the galaxy.
He knew he wouldn't need to imagine it for long. He would have plenty of warmth soon enough.
It started as a small footstep. The step was followed by a growing stride as he began his journey deeper into the engine room.
He checked his plasma pistol. The weapon was at a sufficient charge to get the job done. So were the pair of plasma grenades he carried.
He came to the platform at the center of the bridge. The pulsing heart of the Dispersion's pinch reactor loomed ahead of him like an ethereal tower. He stopped short of its encircling platform to turn to his actual destination.
On his right were the corvette's portside repulsor drives. The way the Callipoas-pattern engines were constructed left the lower drive closer to the bridge than the one above. He was almost eye-level with its exposed core.
Some of the ship's surviving Yanme'e were gathered around the core as well as those of the other drives. They fluttered around them like moths drawn to a light. They had fled into the room through the ship's ventilation system like Zin had. Unlike him, their interest in the drives was of a harmless nature. They were trying to see what could be done to reseal the cores as per the orders of Major Tevumee. Since the Huragok couldn't shut them due to some emergency override, Tevumee left the job to the next best option. As the Yanme'e doubled as not only soldiers but also as engineers, they were the ones to call upon when the more valuable Huragok weren't available. Their second-class status created a kind of jealous rivalry between the two races, however. It was a one-sided affair of course since the air headed Huragok were too busy floating from task to task to care that they were stepping on someone's antennae in the process. Even so, the Yanme'e were showing their spite for them out in the open. They shewed the room's original residents away with sharp chitters and mock attack dives aimed at those that got too close. Others meanwhile pried at complex conduits surrounding the housing of the cores.
The four Yanme'e in front of Zin didn't seem to notice his arrival. Then again, their compound eyes made it difficult for them to not notice anything. He wasn't a Huragok so it was probably that they didn't care. Three were hovering around a fourth who was messing around with the wiring of an access panel on the core's housing.
They each had their backs to him, which was why they were caught off guard when several rapid plasma bolts blew through the spine of the fourth. As the creature fell away from the housing, the other three spun about to find themselves staring down the smoking mouth of a plasma pistol.
Zin fired again. An overloaded bolt exploded the head of another as the last two fluttered towards him. He shifted in time to shoot the third in the stomach, blowing off part of its wings so that it spiraled into the mist below. The fourth beat him to the draw, letting off a bolt that struck him in the side of the face. He felt everything, how the plasma boiled through skin, muscle and bone. He felt everything and yet refused to relent, firing with pinpoint accuracy even as his right eye went dark. A burst of bolt-fire ripped off half of his assailant's face in return. The creature flew past and crashed into the bridge.
Zin set his sights on the plasma core. The vision in his good eye blurred in and out. He forced himself to focus on the target, aimed and held down the trigger. His pistol began a violent vibration as an overloaded bolt came to bloom.
A roar of anger reached his ear. He turned and saw three figures rushing down the bridge from the direction of the doors. It was Tevumee. He had seen what he was doing and was sprinting towards him with two Sangheili minors close behind.
Zin released the bolt, sending it crashing into the thin energy shielding that surrounded the core. The barrier fell under the force of crackling plasma. He pulled out his grenade, primed it, reeled back and made the toss.
The grenade arced through the air as a ball of intensifying light before being enveloped in the roiling energies of the core. The detonation went off and all hell broke loose.
The core erupted in a burst of light as its containment field suffered explosive demagnetization, unraveling itself into an electric firestorm of radiative fallout that washed across the drive. The engine's many lights and components faded and died.
The corvette shook.
An emergency siren blared throughout the room as Zin fought to steady himself. He was aiming for the upper drive when something hard slammed into his face. He reeled from the blow only to catch a second in the jaw, breaking some of his teeth.
He stumbled back. Something rushed forward, refusing to let him be. Another roar preceded a powerful punch to the gut that knocked all the air out of his lungs. It blew out in a pained gasp as blood exploded from behind his mask. It threw him off his feet. He crashed onto his back, tumbling for a while before landing on his stomach.
He felt himself being lifted before he could recover. A hand grasped his throat with a vice grip, squeezing so hard that he briefly blacked out. He came to a second later to see hazy shapes moving around him. He made out multiple figures as his vision cleared.
A flurry of aggravated Yanme'e were buzzing around in the air. They chirped and chittered to each other in an irate conversation he could tell was about him. The two Sangheili minors were in front of him, standing on either side of Major Tevumee who held him by the neck. The major's other hand brought up his plasma rifle.
Zin grabbed at his captor's arm, his feet kicking in the air in an attempt to feel the floor again.
"What do you think you're doing!?" Tevumee bellowed.
Barely able to breathe, Zin choked out a reply. "What's it...look like?"
The major's grip tightened around his throat, eliciting a pained wheeze. "Fool! If you wished for death, I would have gladly sent you past those doors to face the humans! Instead, you go behind our backs to do what!? To damn us all!?"
"Shipmaster's...wi-...wishes..."
Tevumee eased his grip to let Zin gulp in a breath of fresh methane. Despite the situation within which he found himself, the Unggoy was stunned to realize how calm he was. The different spectrums of pain he felt throughout his body did little to dampen his spirits. Then there was anger. A rage left unchecked for years now reared its head alongside a near divine clarity.
He was going to die now. It was clear to see. But if he was going to die, he reasoned, then he would at least take this chance, this one chance to give those he'd always wanted to a piece of his mind.
Despite the darkness tugging at his consciousness, he pulled himself together enough to speak. His mouth cracked open behind his mask and words issued out like a low hiss.
"It's obvious. The bridge has fallen. The shipmaster is either dead or captured. He opened the cores because even he could see we were about to lose the ship."
"You, Unggoy, presume too much!" Tevumee barked. "You were never given such an order nor was anyone else here!"
"Of course we weren't!" Zin shouted back. "How can the dead give orders, you stupid fool!?"
Tevumee stood stunned as did the two minors. Even the Yanme'e hovering above and the defenders at the doors looked taken aback. A seething fury emerged on the major's countenance. He opened his mandibles to speak but Zin silenced his ire as his own took hold of him.
"You stupid-, you waste of flesh and brains, isn't it obvious!? We're done! We don't have anyone left, not enough to take back the ship!"
"There is still strength left in us Sangheili who remain!" Tevumee answered. "Do not doubt, Unggoy, because we are more than a match for any infidel that crosses our path which is more than I can say for you!"
"What, you think these guys can cut it!? Try telling that to all the other dead Sangheili I saw on the way over here! Oh wait, you can't! Want to know why, 'cause they're dead! We're no better off than they were! Who knows what will happen if the humans get their hands on the ship! At least this way we can-"
Tevumee's grip retightened around his throat. "You have reached the limits of my patience, vermin! There is still strength enough in this arm to break your neck!"
"Then break it!"
Again, the major was taken aback.
"I'm tired of idiots like you who get so high and mighty off of putting their boots on the little guy! You Sangheili always go on and on about your honor and how much better you are, but if it wasn't for guys like me then you wouldn't stand a chance in this war! So what if I see what the shipmaster was going for!? If you used your brain as much as you used your rifle then maybe you would've figured it out before I did! If you can't understand the situation we're in then it doesn't matter how many humans you can kill! You're still utterly useless!"
Zin used his last good eye to look the Sangheili straight in his. "You can't lead right, you can't fight right, you can't even think right! Useless!"
Tevumee growled. He tossed Zin to the floor, doing so with such force that methane hissed out from cracks in his gas tank.
Zin was too dazed to move, to avoid the shadow that fell over him or the pain that rained across his body.
:********:
Tevumee raged like a brother bereft of kin. Using his plasma rifle he hammered the impudent little Unggoy with blow after blow. He struck him in the jaw, knocking his gas mask as well as teeth out of his mouth, sending both clattering across the floor. He struck him across the face, over the head, in the gut. He smashed through whole sections of his armor, bruised his toughened skin and caused the cracking of bones to echo throughout the engine room.
To the Unggoy's credit, he didn't scream or beg for mercy. Not even once.
Tevumee carried out his discipline regardless. The welp had made a mockery of his honor and now he was determined to make him suffer for it. He wasn't content to shoot him but to make him feel every wave of agony that he intended. Eventually he was imploring his fists to pummel the creature into submission. He bludgeoned the Unggoy with the aim of making him an unrecognizable wreck. The job was made easier for him by the Yanme'e who had scored the lucky shot that burned off half his face. Tevumee worked on the other half.
After a minute or so he grew tired. He finished him off by slamming the stock of his rifle onto the Unggoy's head with such power that it sent a lance of pain up his wrist. There was a loud CRACK.
Tevumee stepped back to observe his handiwork. The Unggoy lay on his stomach. His face was a mess, burned on one side and battered and bloodied on the other. His mouth lay open and without a mask. He wasn't breathing and more gas was simply whistling out of his damaged tank. Not that he would be needing any of it. The sizable depression left in his skull suggested as much.
One of the Sangheili minors walked up beside him to inspect the body. "Is he..."
"Yes." Tevumee answered as he turned and walked away, striding back towards the defenses at the entrance. The minors quickly followed him.
"Respectfully, major, wouldn't it have been easier to shoot him or cut him down with your sword?" The other asked.
Tevumee shook his head. "I refuse to waste something so precious at this hour on something so worthless. That and I wanted him to learn his place before the end. You are still young; you will learn these things when it comes to dealing with their kind."
Another minor called back to him from among those guarding the defenses. "Major, word has come in from the other side. The last of our forces have been destroyed. It is just us, sir. We stand alone."
Tevumee could sense the uncertain gazes that leveled themselves upon him. He challenged them with the confidence of his stride.
"Then we will stand alone. We will fight alone, and we will win alone. Such is our path, brothers. Do not waver. By the grace of the Gods, we will yet see our enemies fall."
"But we are few in number." Another pointed out.
"Few and strong." He replied. "Our foes are weak. We will hold them here, break them then push them back through the corridors, off our ship and then after that, off their own damnable planet."
Many among the Sangheili raised their voices in agreement of the triumph to come. Many though not all.
Tevumee took note of that. "Prepare yourselves. Make sure those shades are pre-sighted on either side of the entrance. Give the Kig-Yar marksmen clear lines of fire. The humans will break down those doors soon. When they do, we'll shower them with a proper greeting worthy of our Covenant. We will make them repent of the day they ever thought to come aboar-…"
Tevumee finally registered the sound that stole his voice out of his throat, the whining pitch of a plasma pistol slowly overloading.
He whirled about just as he heard the whooshing release, seeing with his own eyes the overcharged bolt that flew towards the last portside repulsor drive. It crashed into the containment field, destroying it and exposing the luminous core.
A hand, an Unggoy hand, reeled back a live plasma grenade and tossed it. The bright sphere arced over the mist, somehow passing straight through the swarm of confused Yanme'e before sailing straight into the core.
A fierce flash of light overtook the whole room. Tevumee winced at the stinging in his eyes, blinking to try to see again.
What he saw both astounded and enraged him. The last repulsor drive on the portside of the room was on fire. So were a number of the Yanme'e that plummeted out of the air which itself seemed to be electrified.
In front of the rapidly flickering light of the reactor stood a squat figure. It was the Unggoy. A wild abandon burned bright in his eyes. Even as far away as he was, Tevumee could hear his defiant voice loud and clear.
"HOW USELESS ARE YOU!? YOU COULDN'T EVEN KILL ME RIGHT!"
Tevumee and his warriors were shocked. Shock boiled over into bloody murder within the major as wrath drove him forward. He dashed down the length of the bridge, sprinting headlong towards the object of his contempt.
The Unggoy's name, his filthy name crossed Tevumee's mind: 'Zin'. He cursed it and cursed the fact that he had even learned it.
Zin leveled his pistol and fired at him. Tevumee didn't care. He continued to run straight, ignoring the bursts of plasma that struck his shields, ignoring the arcing tendrils of electricity that clawed at the bridge from the disrupted cores, ignoring even the need to return fire.
Zin never wavered either, going so far as to let off an overcharged bolt. The major leapt to the floor and rolled beneath it to let the ball of destructive energy pass over him. He came up running with an eye on the Unggoy's demise.
Zin kept firing up to the point that the major was within striking distance. Tevumee refused him the honor of his sword and once again pulled out his rifle. As he closed in, he reeled back and lashed out with all his strength.
The blow whipped Zin's head back with such force that his neck snapped. The Unggoy flew clear off the bridge. His body spiraled towards the lower repulsor drive before diving into the mist, disappearing into the clouds of exhaust.
Tevumee huffed from the effort. A glimmer of satisfaction made itself known within the depths of his soul.
He was never given a chance to revel in it, however, as a deep droning noise immediately stole his attention. The crackling energies of the destabilized drives began to glow brighter and brighter. It overwhelmed his senses until he found himself swallowed whole by a world of light, sound and heat, light that seared his retinas, sound that made his ears bleed and heat that boiled his skin into vapor.
:********:
Duncan felt the explosion before he heard it.
The floor of the brig shook beneath him. A loud rumble reverberated through the walls from somewhere deeper in the ship.
He turned to the others who were also looking around. He wanted to ask them where they thought it had come from. The words got stuck in his throat after noticing that the brig was no longer even. It was shifting to one side. What was a gradual change earned the surprised shouts of everyone inside as the brig suddenly tilted with great speed.
Its occupants were sent flying or sliding across the courtyard.
Duncan reached out for anything that could keep him upright. His grasping hands found no purchase and he fell even faster thanks to the corpse of an Elite that landed on top of him. He rolled with everyone else, both living and dead, crashing downward together as the lights shut off, casting them into a dark, twisting hell.
:********:
Colonel Garrison grabbed onto a small divide in the floor in an attempt to hold on. All around him consoles and service stations flashed red glyphs and strobed warning lights. They were drowned out by screaming ODSTs and dead Elites who tumbled by as the bridge tilted with the rest of the corvette.
He spotted Captain Eddies hanging nearby. He was digging his fingers into the lip of the projection area that girded the inside of the perimeter platform.
Beyond him he saw the world outside the viewing glass go awry. The mountain range came into much greater clarity than he would have liked. The ship leaned hard to port so that everything inside was almost vertical. Whatever the cause, it left the vessel plummeting at a deep slant towards the surface of Reach.
Too many emotions were passing through his mind for him to gather any coherent thoughts. The one thing keeping him focused was the need to survive. On that note he grew a deep sense of worry at the rapidly approaching ground.
Hundreds of meters zipped by in seconds as the mountains flew past, the corvette's speed and momentum carrying it towards the valley that ran in between them. The forested slopes grew quickly in size and scope as well as in proximity.
The ship's first impact was against one of the wintery peaks. Snow erupted across the viewing glass of the bridge. The vessel continued to rocket down, passing over the greening climbs of another mountain before making contact again. This time the impact was more jarring. It cut off most of the lighting on the bridge, casting it into shadows. Outside it unleashed a torrent of ripped earth and torn trees as the corvette ploughed across the face of the slopes. Garrison saw Captain Eddies lose his grip and fall away into the void. The ship lifted off again as it passed over a natural trench before slamming down once more, finally dislodging the colonel and sending him tumbling, rolling and crashing through the dark.
Rebelles - Rebels