SORRY FOR DISAPPEARING FOR SO ABOUT 5 MONTHS, I'VE BEEN DEALING WITH AN AWFUL LOT IRL AND WRITER'S BLOCK IS A BITCH. HOPE YOU ENJOY. MIGHT NOT BE VERY GOOD.
6TH SEPTEMBER 2557 (MILITARY CALENDAR) - PLANETARY DETAILS: INFORMATION PENDING - TIME: APPROXIMATELY MIDDAY
"So... those were humans?" Johannesburg questioned, just as we headed up onto higher ground towards the hypothesised abode.
"I don't really know, at this point," I said. They were far too primitive. And I doubted anybody could reach this far to fall to such a state. "We're lucky they only had spears."
"But eventually, we'll run out of ammo. I've got enough bullets here to tear only one Grunt a new one."
"We call them Unggoy now," I corrected. But he didn't seem to care too much. "Plus, it depends on the situation. If we suddenly have a bad aim day then none of this will end well for us."
"You're such a pessimist, aren't you?"
"You expect me to be sunshine and rainbows about this?" To be honest, this situation could have been worse.
"Fair enough."
"If you want optimism, we might be able to enter a truce with them, they may have even seen other UNSC forces."
"What? You saw how they reacted to my face. And to be fair, there's a chance they'd do the same with you."
I glared at him. "What do you mean?"
"To be fair, you're um... you know..."
"What?"
"...You're black."
I facepalmed.
"I'm serious! You're probably the first black guy they've seen. All those guys back there looked like King Mo- Ma- Mid-" He stammered his speech.
"Midas?" I sighed.
"Yeah, Midas. All those guys back there looked like King Midas touched them but gave up halfway through." Strange comparison, but all right. "Now, look at us! We'd probably be demons in their eyes!"
He did have a point. If these people had the mentality of our race, then anything considered alien to them could be met with violence. Or some form of worship, if we were lucky. Like that old movie I saw as a kid, 'The Road to El Dorado', I believed it was called.
We found ourselves on a small cliff edge, which provided us a sniper's eye of the entire forest. Must've stretched on for kilometres. Johannesburg clearly took in the sights, like it had been a while since he had last witnessed such a beauty. It was all the same to me, though. Except for the sky. Though, all that reminded me of were the final days of Reach.
"Look over there," Johannesburg said, pointing to a lower level of this peak. I took off my helmet, since the visor had apparently glitched beyond the point of no return, and eyed through my scope, it was seemingly a large, seemingly prosperous town, containing at least a couple hundred civilians, with technology levels at just about the bronze age. Huts were common - though many buildings seemed to have held a slightly more advanced concrete architecture - agriculture had stretched widely across multiple levels, piles of rodent meat were burning over fires, a strange kind of mounted animal had also been kept in the stables too, looked to have been some religious shrines and decorations also. But no god could protect either of us from their rotting stench. Expected their people to have an average lifespan of under forty, if they were lucky. Thankfully, UNSC personnel had been vaccinated against many diseases and other pathogen-caused issues.
Their belief system seemed to have been built around worshipping the soil. Agriculture being their primary religion. Some small shrines had been structured too, like a structure Hindus practiced their religion with, were built in the middle of their farmlands. One of the villagers said a prayer, kneeling in front of the shrine. Awaiting his blessing of new seeds to relish within their fields.
The half-naked ones we encountered earlier had just arrived, the civilians cheering as the corpse of the animal we saw earlier was paraded through the streets. Yet afar, I could tell that their faces were littered with confusion from earlier. A couple of them clearly thinking how they were to explain the encounter with the two entities. Though other things seemed to have been on their mind at that moment, possibly something to do with the war horn or whatever it was we heard earlier. A couple of them hauled the animal corpse to a certain building, so it was possibly a ceremonial feast.
"What's the plan?" Johannesburg asked.
"Reconnaissance for now. Best to study them for a short while, get an understanding of their culture and the region, they could be our only lead with other survivors of the Albany." I said. "If all this results to nothing, we can probably steal one of their... whatever the hell they call those things they ride on."
"Shouldn't you be wearing your helmet for this? I'm pretty sure ODSTs have a zoom feature on their visor, right?"
"It's too cracked, I can't really see shit in- hold on, new party, one o'clock." At the arched entrance, a second party had already entered into the village, riding on carts pulled by the same mounted creatures in the stables.
"Tribals?"
Though holding the same ethnicity, the group appeared to have been further advanced. Bearing brass-coated armour, well-crafted spears, bladed weaponry on their sides, and also the trained, upright stances of a standard military. Perhaps there were other areas of this world that had just reached the steam age, maybe even to the advancements of the twenty or twenty-first century.
"Negative, most likely from a different faction, their equipment is more advanced."
He gave me a concerned look. "What do you mean? Like firearms or...?"
"Just armour and- it's still primitive, don't worry. Not like we're trying to drink the whole sea. Our weapons can still handle them.."
Their leader appeared to have been equipped in heavy armour, almost stretching his mass to that of a spartan. Though the non-essential decoratives across it seemed to have weighed him down rather than provide support in battle. Except perhaps the sharp horns on his helmet.
"The horn must've been signalling their arrival," Johannesburg remarked, just as a large table had been set out in the centre of the village.
A couple frail tribals greeted the large soldier, bowing before they gestured him to another of the huts. Seemed like they have strong diplomatic relations, probably an alliance or vassalhood. If it were the latter, then we would probably be dealing with a full-on kingdom, probably an empire. I assumed this was as far as their nation spread judging how sparse the surroundings appeared to be.
"All right, new plan. We-"
"Ow! Jesus Christ!" I jerked my head back to my ally, hoping it was just poked sharp branch.
It wasn't.
There was a tiny dart, entrenched into his neck. He pulled it out, stared at it for at least two seconds, then collapsed onto the soil.
I instantaneously raised my rifle, glaring all around. Our position had already compromised. I grabbed my helmet, hoping the motion detector was still working, yet before I was even able to equip it, a sharp sting had dashed straight into my neck.
It didn't take long for me to gain the same fate as Johannesburg, my mind slurred, my visioned became but a blur, and soon enough, pure black.
There was a sharp poke on my cheek. Again. And again. And again. I couldn't identify the source of this, my eyelids remained too numb to bother doing anything. The rest of my body? I might as well have been a paraplegic, I could barely move a single muscle. I had the ability to listen, thankfully. But all I could make out was a bundle of chatter, a couple metres from my position.
Again came the poking. Over and over again, it dabbed into my cheek. It wasn't exactly painful, just irritating. I mean who wouldn't? I assumed this was a hallucination in the nerves, possibly something you would have gotten on the twilight of slumber. But this was too sharp for it to be a hallucination of any kind with my mental condition.
A bit of energy had managed to ignite in my fingers, allowing them to move a couple of inches. Slowly, it moved around the rest of my body, as if something, one by one, was flipping the switches. By the time it reached my eyelids, I didn't hesitate to tear them open, before shutting them again as the new morning had scorched into my sight.
Once more, I opened them again, slowly this time, allowing the sun to properly settle into my eyes. I was no longer up on that ledge with Johannesburg, instead in a cell with metal corroded bars, built into the sides of a cliff. It didn't seem like the locals had created them, the alloy seemed at least over a century old.
The poking came again, I turned to my left, finding a boy with a long stick on the other side of the bars, consistently jabbing me in the cheek. He stopped, then called to his right, "Eta! Eta!"
A few more children ran over to my cell, urged to take a peek at my awakened self. I pulled myself up by the corroded bars, only to get a stone thrown at me by one of the children, with similar objects tossed afterwards, laughing commenced alongside their actions. It wasn't exactly an issue, I just hoped they would tire themselves out, and move on to some other activities.
"You went down pretty easily, sarge," The voice of Johannesburg said.
"Private?" I responded. I turned my head, Johannesburg was standing there in the cell, next to a young native tucked into the corner.
"Oh, by the way, this guy's Dregn," he pointed to him. He didn't seem to be local, his markings were all different patterns. He was most likely a prisoner of war, a scout or such. "Sorry, he's not really much of a talker."
"How long have you been awake?"
"Uhhh, woke up about an hour or two before you. How you feeling? I tried waking you up earlier, but you were pretty much out cold. Dregn here thought you were dead."
"Guess I'm a bit-" One of the children threw a stone at my head, I turned to them. "Oh just fuck off!"
"They did that with me earlier, just wait 'em out," he said, as the children bothered to take my advice. This was embarrassing. Imagine serving an ODST for almost ten years, fighting on possibly the worst battlegrounds in human history, and you just end up captured by a bunch of shit-stained bastards with sticks and stones.
"Any updates I should know about?"
"With the town?"
"Mhm."
"Yeah, those armoured guys you saw yesterday are still around, had a bit of a feast last night. Also all the adults are... somewhere, I don't know, they just left their kids running about." I stared out the cell again, he was right, it was practically deserted. My best assumption, they were
"What about our gear?"
"Don't know where they took it. They're probably burning it 'cos they were in the hands of a demon."
Heavy footsteps suddenly crunched from down the pathway, the two of us switched our gaze, eyeing the large leader of the armoured ones and his underlings moving towards our cell, with a small crowd of the missing adults wishing to see what will unfold.
He went into my cell first, ordering his forces to leave him be. I stepped back cautiously, staring at the towering being stood before me, like something ripped out of a fantasy story. "Wah, mahgeechee," he said. That was not his native language.
"Is that... covie language?" Johannesburg asked with surprise.
"That- that's Sangheli," I said, as a barrage of questions bombarded my mind.
"Can you speak it?"
"It's quite rough, but I can try."
"San'garri?" The leader questioned again, his accent was getting in the way.
"(No, we are human)," I attempted to say. "(You speak Sangheli?)"
He was definitely smiling behind his mask. Just to be clear, this is what I assumed he was saying, "(I am glad we are able to... communicate. How is my San'garri? I have not encountered another speaker before.)"
"(I am not native, so I do not know.)" I cleared my throat. "(Where you learn this language?)"
"(I assume the same way as you. I apologise for my [unintelligible]'s actions)," he gestured his head to a couple of his unarmoured guards, possibly a stealth unit. "(But the roads in this present lack safety. A diplomat makes such a large target out here. If I were not here, one of the savages out here would have [unintelligible] you two for dinner.)"
"(Do you mind giving us...) merde, how do you say... (context?)"
"Ohr, (Many apologies. My name is Tef-Eejok, I am a diplomat for the Entarum Toroki. You are standing in one of our outer territories - the Eejo clan.)"
"(I am Sergeant Martin Lumont, that is Private Anthony Johannesburg, UNSC. Our people crashed from... from the sky.)"
He mumbled something in his native tongue.
"Please tell me it's going well," Johannesburg said.
"We are not dead yet, I'll assume that's a good sign."
There was a bit of talk between Tef-Eejok and his guards, and after a minute, he turned back to me. "(Come.)"
He led me out of the cell, as a couple of his guards stepped to the side. I eyed the crowd, a conglomerate of astonishment and fear was clear upon their faces. Some of the children had already run back to their parents too.
"Hey, what's going on?!" The marine questioned. I turned my head, seeing the guards not allowing him out of the cell.
"(What is this about?)" I asked the diplomat. Yet he didn't respond, only leading me inside one of the concrete buildings. Two of his guards positioned themselves outside, with one other following us in.
It was a richly decorated place, revelled in endless exotic decorations of nature, a grand contrast to all that typical tribal scenery outside; from trophied animal heads to shining weaponry, thick carpets to art pieces.
"(Again, I apologise. But of course, we would need... leverage for this sort of thing.)" He said.
I sighed. "Okay, (I understand what this is. What are you offering?)"
He opened a box in front of me, our weapons and equipment appeared to have been inside. "(I spoke to some of the clan's hunters, reported on the weapons you and... what was your friend's name?)"
"Johannesburg."
He lacked any bother to memorise those four syllables. "(The functionality of your weapons are not alien to us, though it is uncommon to possess such throughout this continent. I have an offer for you. You are free to refuse but that does mean spending the rest of your days rotting inside that cell.)"
"(Get to the point.)"
"(Our access to this area of the region have been infested with attacks over the past moons. The tribes have been titling them 'demons', I believe they are just clever barbarians. Usually, our forces would ensure we lacked these problems, yet their weapons are far beyond the ability of ours. Entire trade caravans, hunting parties, Toroki soldiers, ransacked, their bodies burned into the air.)" A bit of fear had taken up in his voice. "(Our scouts have sighted their main camp, but we have not yet dared to move in. My offer is simple, wipe this camp out, you and your friend are free to go, and perhaps we may have some information on the rest of your people.)"
"(What makes you think I will not kill you and the rest of your soldiers?)" I asked, it was clearly a tempting offer, and I didn't seem to find any other leads on our main objective, but I had always preferred gaining as much information on the situation as possible.
"(Then you would make a great enemy in the wider field. If not those barbarians, then the bounties on your heads will shorten your days. So, will you take it up?)"
I paused for a few seconds. "(I accept.)"