Chapter One:
Unseal the Hushed Casket…
Night fell over the small colony of JA-3L as a small squad of Galactic Federation troopers swept down the bloody streets of the colony's main city, Jacksonville. Bodies were scattered in the streets of all varieties, consisting of both Space Pirates and humans, but with other creatures scattered in between here and there. They were enormous, maybe three feet taller than a normal human, covered in hair like a large ape and had a huge lower jaw with sharp teeth jutting out of it. Strange, nearly ornamental armor protected their bodies and large staffs with glowing red tips were clutched in their hands.
"Jacobson, Smith, take the left side of the street and clear every building. McMillan, you're with me; we're on the right side. Remember, this is a rescue op; don't pop the first thing that moves and don't engage any hostiles on your own. I don't know what we're dealing with, but whatever they are, they wiped out the garrison stationed here, the Pirates that landed and the entire science staff. From the looks of it, they wiped out the civilian population as well, but we have to be sure of that fact.
The science facility is at the end of this street here. Once we sweep these buildings, we'll head there. Understood?" spoke the leader in a hushed whisper.
None of the other troopers spoke, but supplemented the normal 'Sir, yes Sir!' with a simple nod before they set out to complete their objectives. Lieutenant Owen Samuel Percante grimaced as he and the female trooper named McMillan slowly advanced down the street; no one had been spared in this raid and the way that these people had been killed was just downright…disturbing. Bodies had either been completely bisected or gutted, their innards splayed out about them carelessly and blood running in thick, goopy rivers down the road, mixing with the blood of Space Pirates that had apparently landed to see what all the noise was about. Cars were overturned and some of them were still afire, further accenting the smell of rotting and burnt flesh that hung in the air around and over the city.
Percante and McMillan approached the first building that was somewhat in tact on their side of the street. From what they could gather, it had formerly been a hotel or apartment building, but there wasn't really enough left of the damn thing to be sure. McMillan took up a position on the left side of the door, and the Lieutenant stood on the right. Hefting his foot up, Percante slammed his booted foot into the door just below the knob and it sprang open. Private McMillan leapt in quickly and swept the hall in front of them, then gave the 'all-clear- sign'. Percante stepped inside and immediately wished he hadn't; blood was splattered on and dripping from the wall in thick layers and bodies were mounted on the walls by the very staffs that had been run through them in an utterly cruel manner.
"Hello?" called McMillan, her voice wavering slightly. "Is anyone alive? If anyone can hear me, please give me a sign!"
As the female trooper searched, Lieutenant Percante activated his radio. "Jacobson, Smith, come in. You found any survivors just yet?"
"Negative, El-Tee. Just a bunch of bodies…I've never seen this kind of brutality before. What the Hell are we dealing with here?"
"I'm not sure," Percante spoke back, "but stay on your guard and keep looking."
After Jacobson's reply, Lieutenant Percante cut the transmission and quietly continued down the hall to the stairs that spiraled upward at the end. Just before he began the conversation with Jacobson, he noted that McMillan was headed up the staircase to check the upstairs area…or what was left of it. If this building had been any taller than two stories beforehand, it sure didn't look it; anything above two stories high was either scattered all over the city or completely obliterated either by weapons or low-flying cruisers…none of which could be seen anywhere around. Blood was pooled even on the stairwell and bits of flesh and gore were splattered along the wall, which was also marred by what appeared to be blast marks from small, yet high powered explosive rounds...projectiles to boot.
Once at the top, Percante began his way down yet another bloodstained hallway; at the end was nothing but a dead end, but bodies were stacked like hardwood in front of the last doorway on the left…bodies similar to those that they saw coming in from the street. Inside the room was more peculiar than that, though; it appeared that a group of Space Pirates made a last stand here with some other Federation Troopers. This was unprecedented; if the Space Pirates were desperate enough to ally themselves with a squad of humans, then the foes the Federation was dealing with were tougher than first thought.
"Sarah, check their logs and find out what happened. I'm going to keep looking for any survivors."
"Yes sir." She replied quietly and began to go about the work she had been assigned. Percante sighed and stepped back out in to the hallway and decided now would be a good time to get a close look at their new foe.
The creatures were most definitely ape-like. All of them were covered in a thick coat of fur that varied in color from purple to grey to white. Their weapons were strange; they seemed to be fed by a belt of what appeared to be projectile-fired grenades. A long, gracefully curved blade was at the anterior end of the weapon and was incredibly sharp and drew blood from the slightest pinprick. Turning his attention back to the creatures, Percante noticed something else; each one was peppered with dozens of energy blasts and extremely muscular…that meant their endurance was extreme and their strength was even more so. Things just kept seeming to get bleaker and bleaker for the Federation; their foe was obviously beyond anything they'd seen in recent times. He recorded all of this in his log book along with an audio file noting all of what he had seen, then pushed himself back to his feet peeked back in the room he had left McMillan in; her helmet had been removed and a young man's head was cradled in her lap. He was still alive, but looked just barely so and talking to Sarah in what seemed to be a pained whisper. She was stroking his hair to try and calm him to the best of her abilities. Then, with a heave and final gasp of air, the badly wounded trooper passed into the next realm. Percante knew that she had a younger brother, so this must have weighed heavily on the twenty six year old woman that had served with him six basic.
Private McMillan then seemed to notice Owen standing there and slowly looked up, her bright green eyes shimmering with tears.
"They never stood a chance, Sam. Whatever attacked these people killed everyone and everything. They were heading for the lab."
Owen nodded and offered Sarah his hand, which she took slowly after picking up her helmet and attaching it to the rest of her armor. Once that was done, McMillan seemed to regain her fortitude and nodded to Owen, who called for the rest of the squad to meet up with them near the entrance to the lab. There was no time to bury the dead right now; that would have to be done later. Right now, they had to stop these whatever they were from destroying whatever the eggheads had found under the ruddy surface of the planet. Owen and Sarah made their way down into the street and double timed it toward the lab/dig site, eager to put some rounds into whatever had killed all these people. Owen's radio kicked on.
"Sam…I'm going to kill them. I'm going to kill them all."
Owen stopped dead in his tracks and turned to the woman behind him, shocked beyond all reason. In all the years he had known this woman, both before and after they joined the service, she had never spoken like that about anyone or anything. As a matter of fact, violence was normally her last resort option, but he guessed that seeing all of those people killed the way they had been triggered something in her. Owen couldn't agree with her more.
"We will, Sarah. Let's go."
She nodded and they set off again. Before long, the silhouette of the lab they were headed toward became visible under the strange yellow-orange glows of dozens of fires that had been lit inside it. Owen kept an eye on his radar, noting the position of two yellow dots to their ten o'clock and about twenty meters away, heading in the same direction he and Sarah were. That had to be Jacobson and Smith…but who was the third dot that had just appeared behind them? Whoever it was, he or she was giving off a friendly IFF signature, they weren't stopping just yet.
Now that they were close, Owen could see what kind of damage had been done to the lab compound. Many of the defensive walls had been reduced to nothing but piles of twisted steel and rubble. He could make out the shapes of corpses clearly now as the flames danced in the background, shading the dead in eerie glows of red, yellow and orange. The surrounding land was pockmarked with craters from what could have been either small artillery rounds or powerful handheld projectile weapons, but Owen couldn't tell and didn't care at the moment. Behind what was left of the inner walls was a mountain with several buildings at its base and a large titanium door in front. Owen checked his radar again; the third dot was gone, but the first two were still moving to his and Sarah's front left.
Everyone gathered at the door to the mountain complex and Owen peeked inside; even though the power was out, he could see the blood coating the walls and horribly mutilated bodies inside. He looked back to his squad and tapped his visor with two fingers, then activated his VE, or Vision Enhancers, that were built in and crossed the threshold into the mountain. Thermal was picking up absolutely nothing, so Owen switched over to the standard Night Vision that painted everything a pale green, but lit the corridors and rooms up like it was noon. He was cautious the first ten or fifteen minutes his team was inside, then decided to double time it down as far as they could go. Whatever the eggheads had found, it was obvious to Owen that whoever had attacked JA-3L wanted it destroyed, so Owen's objective was to prevent the destruction of whatever the science teams had discovered.
After what seemed to have been forever, Owen finally reached the bottom level of the facility and stopped dead in his tracks. Dozens of the ape-like creatures lay dead in pools of their own viscous blood, some still twitching as the synapses in the brain had yet to cease firing. As the rest of the squad made their way down the final flight (he had gone ahead by himself while the others looked for survivors), he carefully stepped around and over the bodies up to a door that had been blown of its hinges. Inside, he found even more dead, this time mixed with the remains of humans and…shell casings? Confused, Owen knelt down and picked up one of the spent casings that read '5mm UNSC' and rolled it inbetween his armored fingers. Weapons like this hadn't been used by any culture for hundreds of years, since after the Great War in the twenty sixth century. What were they doing here and who was using them?
He dropped the small casing and pressed forward toward a blast-scarred door on the other end of the small passageway, ignoring the bodies littering the floor and the overturned computers, tables and other random objects. Owen brought his pulse rifle to bare and cautiously nudged the door open and jumped back as bullets pinged off the wall all around him. "Hold your fire!" a distinctly human voice commanded. Owen risked peeking his head through again and nearly had a heart attack. Standing in front of him was the largest armored man Owen had ever seen in his life. He could tell the armor was old and worn from the various dents, dings, scratches and scorch marks that covered what the off-green paint didn't. Owen tried to see through the bright yellow visor, but found that he could see only his reflection.
"Who are you?" the large man asked.
Owen had a hard time replying; he was scared out of his wits by this behemoth man. "L-Lieutenant Owen Percante, Second Squad Galactic Federation. We were sent here t-to investigate a distress signal the F-federation had picked up. Who are you?"
"SPARTAN-One-One-Seven, AKA John. United Nations Space Command Naval Division, Section Three of ONI."