Sergeant Lopez awoke to a bright blue sky. Several clouds drifted lazily through the sky, though there were no birds to speak of. Unsurprising, given that it was winter.
Her face was cold, despite the balaclava she'd wrapped around her face before falling asleep, and it hurt a little to take a deep breath.
"Damn...gotta get a tent set up or something. Maybe an actual sleeping bag this time."
Her suit's systems kept her warm, but she'd set out with it readied for a starship environment, not a winter wonderland. She'd forgotten to readjust the systems. Normally they were supposed to be automatic but since the latest software update they were pretty buggy.
As she sat up, she had difficulty getting the joints in her clothes to move again, a layer of snow having frozen on overnight. Noting her HUD was missing, she pulled off her helmet, and whacked it against the side of the escape pod, knocking the frost loose. Putting her bucket back on, the HUD was back, flickering a little before remaining constant.
Her tactical datapad, or TACPAD, was still operational, and Lopez used it to turn up several of her suit's heaters to winter levels.
Checking her weapons, Lopez found them still in working order, both her personal weapons and the extra rifles and sidearm she kept in a bag and slept on.
Then she remembered her...acquaintance. Glancing around, she noted the fire was still active, but very low. And one of the parachutes was wrapped around what looked like a large statue that hadn't been there the night before. Then its head tilted, breaking loose some frost that had developed along the neck. She could barely hear Henry's breathing, his four jaws all falling open, limply. He wasn't shivering too much, and when he moved his fingers, reaching for his cricket bat, they were very clumsy and couldn't grasp it properly. He garbled and mumbled something, sounding even more slurred than usual.
"Oh shit."
Taking a small plastic packet from the pile of equipment beside her, Lopez stepped over and began to break it open. The thermal blanket was packed very tightly, but unfolded to be just big enough to envelop the frozen Elite.
When fully unfurled, she hesitated to throw it on.
Elite. Hingehead. Enemy. Who knew how many humans he'd disemboweled? Maybe Elites were good meat. A little frostbitten, but probably way better than the MREs she had.
No...Can't. No one deserves to freeze to death. And he doesn't have a wounded leg, nor any weapons. We need each other.
She wrapped the thermal blanket around him and looked around the clearing for any dead wood. Along the edge, under the trees, she found plenty, and what looked like a tree stump some creature had dug up. Dumping everything into the fire, she rapidly deployed over it the cooking rig that came with the survival kit. Sticking the pot in the snow, she collected a large amount and mounted it to the rig.
"C'mon, don't die on me, you bastard," she hissed, moving back and rubbing the alien's arms to try and get the blood flowing, "Benti's gonna haunt me if you do, and I'd have no one to talk to!"
Or curse at…
Heaving with the effort, she shifted him closer to the fire, and suddenly smelled fresh tar. She cursed again, realizing the alien's skin was cracking from the cold and dry air. She took a spare set of bandages and wrapped them around his fingers and palms with duct tape. A cold-weather jacket from the escape pod served to cover his head.
Lopez didn't actually know if any of this would work. All she knew about Elite biology was where to shoot or stab them. And they could take slightly more cold than humans could. Why was he so cold? He's out here with only a pair of pants on, of course he froze!
After a few minutes, Henry opened his eyes, blinking rapidly. He garbled slightly, shivering, and looked surprised at his swaddled-up hands, then to Lopez. He worted.
"I don't speak your language, dipshit, get that through to that peanut brain of yours!" Lopez snarled.
Hearing the bubbles from the pot, she grabbed her canteen cup, "Yer damn tea's ready. Don't have any sugar, you'll just have to make due."
Pushing the steaming water into his frozen hands, Henry paused before drinking. He sniffed it, his sinuses sounding clogged, and shook it a little.
"It's just snow, drink it, idiot! If I wanted to kill you I woulda shot you! Who the hell carries poison in their kits anyway!?"
Lifting it to his mandibles, Henry succeeded in getting more on himself than down his gullet because of the way his mouth was shaped. The fact that he didn't make a sound said volumes about his training, or how freaking cold he was.
She took out several hot water bottles, filled them, and placed them at his feet and hands. Then she refilled the cup and he drank it better this time, though still clumsily. He was returning to normal at a very rapid rate. By her clock, it had been less than an hour since he woke up.
This would only hold for a short time she realized, he needed permanent winter protection. The winter clothes in the pod were all designed for humans, however.
Inspiration struck when her eyes fell on the parachutes lying around the area, the emergency orange still showing through the previous night's snowfall. They were made of a mixture of nylon and other strong fibers, that were also used for making clothing. In fact, that was why their design had barely changed since the earliest days of spaceflight. With the addition of a few extra fabrics, the parachutes could be used to create additional clothing if required by shipwreck survivors.
Using her TACPAD's sensor, built into her gauntlet, she got a scan of Henry's height, and grabbed the remaining three parachutes.
Making creative use of the material would be difficult, though. She didn't exactly know where to start.
Eventually, after an unsuccessful attempt that tore up one, she went through the survival manual contained on the tablet stored in the pod.
It was a very strange tablet, actually. Whoever designed and programmed it was very, very, very creatively paranoid. A section on making clothing from parachutes wasn't too surprising, but It didn't just contain basic survival skills; the blueprints of massive amounts of technology were stored inside. There were sections that ranged from the construction of a forge to smelting steel, from creating swords to the basics of firearms, farming(for the seeds stored somewhere in the pod), basic fixed-wing aircraft, formulas on construction of many artificial materials. She'd known modern spacecraft possessed certain segments that could be reused in the event of a crash, but this was ridiculous.
The paranoia was just the tip of the iceberg. There were programs for first-contact, english primers, adaptive translation software, along with the history of humankind. This amount of optimistic thinking clearly placed the construction of the device as pre-war, where everyone was hoping the aliens around the bend would be friendly and they could romp through the flowers together. Or some other hippy bullshit like that.
Lopez snorted under her breath at that. Few people held those thoughts anymore. Then again, I'm making a snowsuit for a goddamn alligator. Who am I to talk?
The computer managed to do her job for her, generating an outfit that would fit the needs, and all Lopez needed to do was follow the instructions. She managed to make a kind of large jacket from the remains of the torn up parachute, it was the only thing the computer agreed would fit him and provide the warmth needed. She also taped something together to cover his legs, feet and hands. According to the survival manual, the gear was modeled after a style from the 19th century, the British Empire's arctic weather equipment.
The sergeant didn't exactly care, it would keep the fucker alive, wouldn't it?
She stepped back over to the shivering alien, and threw the suit at him. Flashing a black and white picture with some guy named Shackleton wearing a crappier version of the suit, she gestured from him to the clothes, "Either freeze or put 'em on. I don't care."
Surprisingly, he didn't hesitate. Henry was more alert than she'd thought, recognizing their nature and immediately pulling on the snowsuit before diving back under the thermal blanket again.
Lopez set about reading the survival manual. Clearly, it contained more than she'd expected. She'd noted a chapter on "Usage of Survival Capsule".
She'd expected it to be like an ODST Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle(SOEIV), IE crammed full of supplies and equipment, but this was ridiculous.
Built into the titanium skin was a section that could be pulled off to serve as a bolo blade, the handle stored at the feet of the occupant alongside some other equipment. There were ways to use the skin as a plow, axes, shovels, hoes, rakes, to provide supports for a shelter, a water trough, skis, and other basic technologies.
It was like a starter kit for that ancient Minecraft game she used to play as a kid. How did they come up with this stuff?
Lopez began to formulate a plan in her mind. They needed defenses, and shelter.
Retrieving an entrenching tool from the pod, she got up and looked around the edge of the clearing. There was a fairly large hollow that was just out of sight, but had a clear view of the field, and leaned against a small hill, meaning lots of snow. With well-honed instincts, she got to digging it even deeper, leveling out the bottom and the walls. A snow cave shelter would provide better protection against the elements, and she might be able to make a snow hut to provide warmth. The plates on the pod were designed for shoring up that sort of construction. The hollow also made a good firing pit.
After some digging, Lopez began flattening out an area for sleeping bags, making a mental note to get something for Henry to sleep in as well.
The cynical part of her brain kicked in. Why was she bothering to keep him alive, and why was she struggling with what she'd done literally thousands of times?
She needed him of course, painkillers were the only thing keeping her leg from giving out underneath her. That couldn't be the only thing though.
The sergeant knew there was a reason she was fraternizing with the enemy, a nagging feeling left from her dreams the night before. Taunting, just beyond her grasp.
Was she losing her nerve? No, impossible. Especially after her tour on Tribute, her last assignment before the Red Horse. Watching a civilian liner cleared for takeoff, packed full of civilians and wounded soldiers, only to be destroyed by a Covie AA battery. The comm lines demanding if rescue units should be sent, and command telling them there was no point.
Fighting her way into a spaceport, where civilians were reported to have been captured by the brutes...seeing the bodies. Men, women, and children. Gunned down, beaten, tortured, you name it, the act was committed.
However, despite what they had done, what she'd seen Elites do paled in comparison with what she'd seen in the Mona Lisa's laboratory footage. Elites, for all their efforts, for all the casualties they caused, were better by comparison.
A hinge-head, fit and pissed, pushed into a large empty chamber. It stood up straight and dignified, probably expecting a firing squad. Only instead it faced one of the little pod things, "Infection form 45D" the documents said.
The Elite paled when it saw the little organism, and did something completely unexpected. It turned back toward the door and began pounding on it, screaming in rage and fear, crying for help. Those fucking ONI spooks watched-they watched- as the little piece of yellow shit latched onto the alien's back, making him scream while it stuck a penetrator beneath the skin. The Elite scrabbled at the little pod as it burrowed into his body.
Mahmoud's stomach had given out when they were watching, but Lopez couldn't look away, watching as her own people went below a level worse than the Covenant.
When the newly infected zombie finally rose, test results flashed across the screen. Conclusion? "Unsatisfactory".
Turns out there were still levels of cruelty to reach in a genocidal war. And humanity had descended far, far below them before the Covies did.
Shaking her head clear, Lopez recalled their neighbors. Uncontacted aliens. How would they react to two alien assholes falling out of the sky? Boomsticks were frightening enough, but judging by their technological level, they wouldn't know what to think of the pod.
According to the survival manual, which had sections on this sort of thing bizarrely enough, there were several reactions a roughly-Medieval-Age civilization would have. They would believe it to either be a god or a demon. Reaction to a god or angel or whatever would be worship, reaction to a demon would be hiding or trying to kill the suspect. Or they might just live their lives after asking the local clergy or equivalent authority figure for advice.
Worship wouldn't be as much of a problem, but an attack would be. She needed to size them up, and see what types of weapons they had. A more in-depth observation was required than simple energy readings and motion sensors. Her drone was still in the air, the little things designed to soak up whatever energy they could so they were able to stay up for a while. It would take quite a lot to knock the thing out of the sky.
Pulling her tablet out of her armor, she sat down and connected to the drone. After a moment of "connecting…" a holographic image blinked to life.
The previous night she'd only glanced at the landscape to see if there were any signs of advanced technology, but this time Lopez could take it in. The valley nearby was shaped a bit like a bowl with a tall brim, and a sure sign that the locals were a bunch of primitive screwheads was the fact that the village wasn't built on the slopes, but smack-dab in the center of it and clustered tightly together. Any good-sized avalanche would wipe out the whole thing.
The village was surrounded by a wooden barrier, though there were some structures outside of it. Most of the structures were made of wood, except the central one made of stone. Perhaps a church, or just a town hall building.
There also seemed to be a structure built several kilometers away higher up on one of the taller mountains. The drone's radar noted there was an old mining complex built into the same mountain.
Taking the drone in lower, it's cameras showed lots of little figures moving, so snatches of data would be easy to compile a template. Lopez typed in the command to engage that program, and awaited the results.
On its own, the drone began to move about, darting this way and that as it snatched up air samples, heart rates, body temperature, height, estimated mass, their speed, what they carried, and their general shape.
After several minutes, an alert flashed on screen. "SPECIES PREVIOUSLY DOCUMENTED-HOMO SAPIENS SAPIEN. AVAILABLE DATA INDICATES 95% MATCH. REQUIRES FURTHER INVESTIGATION."
Lopez rubbed her eyes, and looked at the screen. The alert was still there.
As if of its own accord, her hand slipped to her side, and pulled out her sidearm. It was certainly possible that they could be humans. Thinking back, Lopez recalled stories of several groups of Amish settlers. People who didn't want to fight, so they decided to hide. Some planet out of the way, with no technological signatures to attract Covenant attention.
That would explain the lack of rescue, they must've just thought the pod was a falling star or something.
But that still didn't explain the complete lack of electronic signatures. UNSC regulations insisted that they at least keep communications relays, to keep contact in case of unforeseen circumstances such as natural disasters, or stranded soldiers such as herself. Scuttlebutt said the relays were also so that they could keep them as a reserve in case the UNSCDF ran short on warm bodies.
This left one other possibility, and explained the stupidity. "Oh, shit. Oh, jesus christ on a cracker."
The neo-Luddites.
Some weren't happy enough to be away from everyone else and live and let live. The neo-Luddites thought all technology was the root of all evil, and UNSC investigators found that they were intent on destroying all historical records when they made planetfall.
If there were no electronic signals, that meant they were the Luddites. And if they were the Luddites, any memory they would have if any of the UNSC would be their parents' distorted lies. Which meant she couldn't just shoot Henry and walk into town, because they might tear her apart. Even her underwear had the globe and eagle.
Lopez smacked the side of her helmet, get it together, marine! You don't know anything at this point!
They could be the Amish, just one of their outlying settlements. The comms might be at a more central one. The Luddite concept would explain the stupidity though, the Amish knew enough to not build a village where it might be splattered by an avalanche. And the Amish didn't go back to the Medieval Ages, they went back to the 19th, she thought.
The bizarre little energy spikes went against that theory as well. She thought the Luddites wouldn't tolerate any tech. Were they using some to keep their ignorant peasant people in line? Nothing was adding up.
Standing up, she began digging at a more rapid pace.
XXXXX
The days went by slowly, turning to weeks. Henry recovered to a reasonable point that he could take over digging, allowing Lopez to go and find food that wasn't easily mistaken for gross sand wrapped in cellophane.
She was nearly killed by some big ol spikey dipshit the TACPAD couldn't identify while hunting. Looked like a giant velociraptor. Took half a mag from her MA5B and one shot from her M6D to finally penetrate its skull. It provided plenty of meat for the both of them, completely compatible with their immune systems.
Henry seemed to know a bit about wilderness survival, more than her. All she knew was to cut off pieces to stick on the fire, but he managed to do everything necessary to save the rest of the meat like a professional.
Communication was coming into existence, albeit a broken mixture of English, Spanish, and wort-ese, or whatever the hinge-head spoke.
Concepts continued to be a problem in communicating. Well, except for the incident where Lopez tried to change her undershirt out of sight of Henry.
He seemed to understand the concept of "get the fuck out of here you pervert" fairly well, though.
Khutan was surprised to learn Zhao was female. Humans were primitives, obviously socially-unenlightened, and it was strange to see that sort of intelligence. It was theorized by Covenant intelligence that the humans trained both genders equally, but kept their females behind to act as some sort of home guard. This revelation would help to explain many things, though the special operations officer considered it strange military intelligence could be so wrong. Was it propaganda?
Lopez continued her observation of the local folk, finding no signs of any sort of Amish traditions or equipment. Everything pointed to neo-luddites. One piece of evidence in particular, a strange group of people in robes. They'd perform some sort of parlor trick, shooting fire or ice from their hands, like wizards.
They were engaged in conflict with some armor-plated fuckwits who looked like they'd stepped right out of a bad Excalibur remake. Big unnecessary shoulder pads on their armor, buckethead-type helmets, giant compensation-blades, and skirts that reached down to their ankles.
The bucketheads seemed to all be part of the same order, judging by the symbols across their chests; a sword with lines like flame sprouting from the blade. Occasionally, they would produce their own parlor tricks, going to one knee and mumbling in prayer. Lopez had no clue what exactly it did, but whenever they did that, the wizards found themselves unable to throw fire or ice, and were overwhelmed.
At first glance, the wizards were the most likely candidates for the leaders of the colonists. It was a classic case seen on several neo-luddite colony worlds before they finally left human space; banning all technology but keeping some samples to maintain a hold on the populace. Though normally the colonists would know what the tech was, these people had been on this planet for a while. Her guess was the bosses concealed their equipment, and made sure the children didn't know what it was, to make it much scarier. A flamethrower was pretty easy to hide under robes, as was a liquid-nitrogen thrower.
However, Lopez realized that the wizards seemed to be the underdogs in whatever conflict was going on. The bucketheads' symbol was painted on most of the settlements she located, though the ones who had all the armor seemed to be few in number. When they did appear in local settlements, they were frequently visible openly abusing peasants.
In addition to the local politics, the sergeant observed the flora and fauna as well. Only a handful of plants and animals were terran, but that wasn't surprising. Introducing new organisms to a colony's ecosystem had proven disastrous in the past, dating back all the way to ancient Earth.
The alien life forms and plants she catalogued with no small amount of boredom. There were some strange animals, those not from Earth, but the most interesting ones were the carnivorous beasts. Monsters that looked as though they were made of hellfire, ogres, slime creatures, and other mysterious creatures.
Creatures like them were fairly common on some of the rougher Goldilocks planets. Reach itself, one of the biggest colonies and military bases in all of human space, was once home to massive beasts that could flip warthogs. What really attracted her attention though were the sapient life forms that weren't human.
From what her sensors gathered, the neo-luddites deviated from previous behavior, and decided to dabble in genetic engineering of some kind.
There were creatures she could only describe as dwarves and elves living alongside the humans, and something she couldn't put a name on that were taller than Spartans. Sometimes they looked like really tall people, but a handful of specimens looked like minotaurs. What kind of Luddites were these?
XXXXX
The targeting reticule slowly moved onto the deer-like creature's head, range shifting slightly every time it moved.
"C'mon…" Lopez whispered, "Just tilt your head a bit…"
Her gear was designed to spoof electronic sensors and sniffers, tricking a deer-thing was child's play. It was looking right toward her, disturbed by something, but it didn't know what.
She fired, killing the deer instantly. It pitched over to the side, making what few critters that hadn't been scared by the gunshot flee.
Placing her MA5B on her back and pulling out her combat knife, Lopez moved quickly and sliced open the thing's midsection. Quickly, and efficiently, she yanked out its guts, and several bones.
As she washed off her gloves in the stream it had been drinking from, she looked at the fresh meal again. It didn't just look like a deer, it looked exactly like a deer.
To be sure, she scanned it with her TACPAD.
After a moment, "SPECIES KNOWN: STATUS- ALREADY CATALOGUED" scrolled across her display, "SPECIES IS ALCES ALCES: COMMONLY KNOWN AS 'TERRAN MOOSE'. NATIVE TO NORTH AMERICA, NORTHERN EUROPE, NORTHERN ASIA."
"Well, at least I won't go hungry…" she muttered.
Abruptly, there were several pings from her motion tracker, relaying information from the drone high above her.
Zooming out, she expected to find one big blue icon like last time.
To her relief and anxiety, she found several dozen meters away a handful of yellow uniform(unknown) contacts. Green would be marines, blue for animals, red for Covenant life signs. Yellow meant unknown heartbeats. Either human or unknown aliens.
They were moving at full sprint toward her position. They must've heard the gunshot.
Not willing to be caught out in the open, Lopez grabbed the deer's legs and tried to lift it. She gritted her teeth, and fell to one knee in pain. She abandoned it, and ran as quickly as she could to a small hollow a distance away, with a clear view of the clearing.
Wincing as she landed on her bad leg again, Lopez crawled to the top of the hollow, and rubbed the side of her ballistics glasses to activate the zoom and highlight functions.
Five unknown contacts emerged from the edge of the clearing, spotting the dead deer. They paused, looking around suspiciously, and raised their meager weapons. Bows and swords.
Concluding for the moment that they weren't walking into a trap, the unknown contacts cautiously moved toward the deer.
Judging by their attire, poorly-made 12th-century clothing, and weapons, they were the presumed amish or Luddite.
Three female, two male. For UNSC personnel, that was far, far from odd. But for Luddites, it was...unusual.
One stooped, looking at the dead deer, murmuring to the others.
The same figure reached into the carcass, there was a gasp of surprise in a language Lopez didn't recognize. Her headset picked up the sound, and her computer swiftly began to look for anything in its database.
The investigator stood up, holding something to the light. Her helmet highlighted the object, obviously her M118 7.62mm bullet.
Pausing to scan the unknown contacts with her TACPAD, Lopez slowly began to move away through the undergrowth.
They had to relocate the camp. If the hunters came running like that, that meant their normal hunting grounds were just over the ridge, and far too close to the pod.
The sergeant made it back to their small camp quickly, using a small dose of ibuprofen so she could run properly and ignore the pain. The pod was still in the center of the clearing, but it was now face-down, all the equipment was gone, and the parachutes were removed. Lopez didn't even slow down, running to the snow cave, its entrance facing the clearing. The edge of the firing pit was covered in recently placed mounds of dirt, and an entrenching tool was visible stuck in the earth.
Lopez's footsteps crunching in the snow brought out from the small opening in the dugout, making wort sounds and brandishing his cricket bat.
"Whoa, hinge-head!" She said, holding up her hands, "Just me!"
After a moment's hesitation, he lowered his bat. He tilted his head at her, a little confused.
"Donde carne?" he inquired in rough Spanish.
"No carne," she grimaced, "we need to get out of here. Some unknowns heading our way. Danger." She pointed in the direction she came.
"Danger?"
"Si, danger. We need to _!" The last word was a modulated wort, that roughly translated to "move" or "relocate". Easier for her to say than Henry to say anything like it. She ducked down into the dugout, and rolled up her sleeping bag. Anything artificial and UNSC issue was swept into her pack or her armor.
"Adonde?" Henry inquired, letting his bat fall to his side to hang by parachute cord and began packing up the cooking equipment.
"No idea. That way? Just away. Shut up and keep packing, douchebag."
A certain amount of equipment couldn't fit in her pack, but Lopez didn't even slow down. Parachute cord made the escape pod's hatch into a perfect sled, as it was designed.
She'd cannibalized the pod for everything she could find. The emergency transmitter, salvaged computer parts, communications systems, power cells, wiring, controls, steel plating, metal tubes, a cupholder, anything she was able to rip out, as well as a handful of the tools she'd been able to make out of the thing's titanium skin.
Dragging anything left out of the cave into the firing pit, Lopez proceeded to smash the cave with the butt of her rifle and boots. Then she took the remaining M6, MA5, and Gersten's MA5B, removed their firing pins when Henry wasn't looking, and put them on the sled.
Stringing them together, Lopez walked over to the life pod. It was a civilian pod, not rigged for self destruct, but she was a marine. Trained in making anything go boom.
Taking a roll of cord that looked like barbed wire from her armor, she snapped off a spool and rigged it in and around the pod, in particular over the "DANGER: CONTAINS HYDROGEN PEROXIDE FUEL" labels.
Seeing Henry was finished packing up, she waved him away and pulled out a detonator.
Once they were beyond the treeline, heading further up a ridge into the oncoming night, she pushed the button.
The M311 Detonation Cord went off with a whump, destroying the pod's structural integrity once and for all; the hydrogen peroxide began to burn as well, torching the marvel of technology's remaining parts. Within hours, the titanium hull would be all that remained, nothing of its circuits, wiring, controls, thrusters would survive. It would simply be a scorched metal curiosity, leaving nothing for the neo-luddites to identify.
XXXXX
Lopez puffed a breath as she activated another stimulant. There was a tingling sensation along her spine, and a rush of energy and awareness. There would be no sleep for her for at least another few hours.
They were climbing along a mountain path, using Lopez's drone to keep away from settlements and occasionally hiding in the underbrush to avoid a few lone hikers.
Traditional wisdom would say to avoid roads and footpaths at all costs, but crossing overland with the sled would leave an obvious trail. Roads were much easier to hide on, with all the traffic ruining footprints.
Glancing back at Henry, she realized he had fallen a little behind. His jaws were all slack, and she could hear his heavy breathing.
"C'mon, split-lip! Keep up! Uphold the pack mule ancestry! I thought you were supposed to be tough!" Their jigsaw language was still growing, about half of her words were English.
He glared at her, "Fuck...you…" and added the sound for "vermin" in the Sangheili language. At least, that was what he called the first camp's little furry mice-critters. And occasionally herself.
He added something angrily. Judging by the few words she could understand, he was probably insulting her stamina and saying he was better, he just had more of a load to hold.
Lopez flipped him off, "Oh, it's not so bad. I had to do this during basic training!"
Henry rolled his eyes, and flipped her the bird as well. Poorly, but still effective.
"Christ, how did you even survive that ship? You're tuckered out after a little walk!"
He shook his bat at her, emitting a honk that said something to the effect of "can it".
Lopez turned back and looked at the winding path on her map. It was a horizontal path from here on, going halfway around the mountain before sloping up again. There was an isolated cave to the east of the path where hopefully they wouldn't be bothered.
For now, the path gave them a good look over the nearby settlement. Avalanche-ville, she called it. Recently, there'd been an unusual amount of heat signatures headed to the temple up the mountain. Something big was going on, and in fact, that was where her drone was currently hovering. It identified several different types of insignia and uniforms, belonging to both the wizards, Bucketheads, and several others she didn't recognize.
What she wouldn't give for a SNARC(Self-Navigating Autonomous Reconnaissance Platform). Unlike a satellite system that could only take pictures, SNARCs were designed for in-depth recon. Bigger than the old counter-insurgency ARGUS drones they replaced, SNARCs were dedicated for conventional warfare. They were about the size of a human being; fast, durable, could stay up for a long time, and could hover at low altitudes. They were able to deploy smaller "digit" spying bugs hardly bigger than a housefly, and use them to listen in on conversations, or tap into hardened landline communications. They could even launch Lancet micro-missiles to destroy soft targets.
Needless to say, a civilian drone made for surveying land and not much else left much to be desired.
The Bucketheads still had a significant presence in the valley, and in fact had only increased as time went on. Gee, it was almost as if they didn't trust the wizards.
To Lopez's surprise, Henry hadn't gone for the firearms he was dragging at all. She assumed it wasn't out of the goodness of his heart, he probably just noticed the missing firing pins.
Though he hadn't even gone for the bolo, hatchet, saw, or pick she'd somehow pulled out of the pod's skin.
How does this stuff stay intact if it's gone through re-entry? Shouldn't it be burned?
She wasn't paid to think, though. She was just glad the items were there.
About an hour later, they reached the cave. It was broad daylight, but the cave was pitch black.
Confusingly, Henry stopped moving, and sniffed the air. He dropped the parachute cord tow line and readied his cricket bat. He pointed rapidly to Lopez's rifle, then into the cave.
"What's the matter with you? Afraid of the dark? The big bad alien bastard needs a night light?"
Laughing, Lopez pulled a flare from her vest, and popped off the tip. The red light began to burn, and she hurled it into the depths of the cave, simultaneously flicking on her flashlight.
The red flare bounced across the cave floor, coming to a stop after bumping into something. A creature's leg in fact. Dimly, large shapes could be seen scuttling away, and there was a chittering noise like critters moving more than two legs. A lot of critters, and many more legs.
"...Big bad alien did need a nightlight!" Lopez whispered, a shiver crawling up her spine.
Switching from "safe" to "burst", Lopez boldly stepped into the cave, and scanned for tangos. Thermal helped to distinguish…
"Holy shit!" she swept a burst across the cave, stumbling backward in surprise and fumbling for a grenade.
She fell back into Henry's massive bulk, and he grabbed her wrist when she withdrew a frag.
She snarled, and began to struggle, thinking he'd finally taken his chance. Instead, he only pushed her grenade down, and held out the bolo knife.
"No grenade. No rifle. Bad meat. Bolo, crooked bat. Good meat."
Lopez screwed up her face, but puffed a breath of air. "Fine, split-lip, if only to save ammo for you later."
He flipped her off again, and grabbed the hatchet from their pile of equipment.
She took the bolo and slung her rifle across her back. "Fucking spiders…" least they're not those little infection pods…
Turning on her helmet lamps, Lopez stepped back into the cave.
Splat! Henry smashed one of the things with his bat, and Lopez cut some more bold ones apart.
They squealed like no spider should, spewing blood and guts, and some primitive instinct inside the sergeant kept telling her to run. Run from the giant bugs.
As they moved further inward, occasionally throwing the flare further in, they encountered a sticky silver material, hung everywhere and containing the spiders' other victims. It was no match for the carbon steel of her blades, though. Neither were most of the spiders.
The bugs attempted to tackle both of them numerous times, or throw webbing at their heads, but the beasts apparently weren't used to fighting prey that took cover and ducked a lot.
The cave system wasn't that big, but they would need to clear it out if they intended to use it as a refuge. At last, they came across what was likely the central breeding chamber. Spider resistance was higher than ever.
The two combatants took either side of the doorway, and Lopez stuck her rifle inside. A window appeared in the corner of her HUD, the view from the camera mounted to her rifle. It offered a view of the interior. A very disturbing view in fact.
"Henry, you got a rocket launcher on you?"
He just looked at her.
"Then give me a hand with this. Let's just collapse the tunnel. They won't get out anytime soon."
Henry made as if to go inside, but Lopez pushed him back, "sharkie, don't. I'm ordering you."
He cocked his head in confusion, but reluctantly followed, helping to tape another spool of detonation cord to a load-bearing section of tunnel.
Jogging back to an intersection, Lopez had Henry plug his ears, and set off the cord. The ceiling collapsed perfectly, burying any access to further in.
"Okay. Spiders gone. That's lunch then!"
Henry spared one last look at the collapsed tunnel, wondering what could have scared Lopez that badly. There was a skittering sound on the other side. Rocks, just rocks. It's still settling.
At least, that was what he told himself. It sounded just like the infection forms on the human ship when they'd been scraping at the bulkheads.
He turned and quickly ran back up the tunnel.
Back at the entrance of the cave, Lopez put some finishing touches on the wood pile, and scraped at a block of magnesium.
Instantly, a small flame appeared, eating greedily at the fuel.
Once she ensured it would burn, Lopez sat down by the sled, and began unpacking a few items. MRE, tablet, and the repair kit for an MA5B.
Placing the tablet beside her and folding it into laptop configuration, she moved to a music tab. Given the previous danger of the cave, she figured no one would try to come near for a long time. No one would hear it.
As the soothing classical music began to play, the sergeant grabbed her MRE, stuck her canteen into it, and squeezed a little bit of water out.
Setting that aside for a while, Lopez began to field-strip the other weapons, in particular, Gersten's MA5B. Finally, she could clear the gunk out of it, mostly blood belonging to at least four different species.
Henry walked in from a final inspection of the cave, and took a clear plastic container from the sled. Some meat he'd prepared from the big velociraptor thing was inside, and he clearly preferred that to the MREs.
For a long time, they simply sat opposite one another as they'd been doing most nights, avoiding eye contact.
Tonight was a bit different. When Lopez picked up her heated MRE, she noticed he was staring at the tablet.
His hoof was tapping slowly on the stone floor, in time to the music.
"You...you like this stuff?" Lopez inquired.
He glanced at her for a moment, and shrugged.
"You." she pointed to him, then gestured at the tablet, "you like?"
He seemed to get it eventually, and nodded.
That only served to worsen Lopez's mood, "Are you feeling alright? Clearly there's something wrong with you, cuz you're not scraping my tablet off your hoof!"
He seemed surprised at the hostility in her voice, leaning back a bit.
"Harvest was nice too, but I wouldn't know! You destroyed it while I was in grade school! What the fuck is wrong with you sons of bitches?! You hate everything about us except our music!? What did we ever do to you?!"
He continued to stare blankly at her.
"Goddamn you! Why do I even try talking to you, you stupid fucking...fuckwhistle! How the hell did Benti even stand you!?"
The most random thought popped into her head. Reaching into a breast pocket, she withdrew five sets of dog tags, not even bothering to hide them from him. five, out of seventeen men and women. Rabbit, Ayad, Mahmoud, Singh, and Percy.
Something finally broke in that cement mental barrier, and Lopez squeezed her eyes shut, tears leeching out as she slumped forward, and clutched the tags tightly.
"Shit...aw, shit...I didn't even get Benti's tags...I owed that much to her. I couldn't get a couple shitty pieces of metal out of that deathtrap!"
Unbeknownst to her, Khutan was studying the curious metal plates attached to metal cords. Something in a human language was printed on them, and he recalled seeing similar ones on several human soldiers over the years. Were they…? Judging by Zhao's reaction, they were. Identification tags.
He felt inside his snowsuit, searching for something he'd forgotten about until now.
While he'd been pointing the primitive ballistic weapon at the traitor, "Clarence" back on the ship, the healer had her attention elsewhere. Looking down the hallway, and back to the traitor, she began fiddling at something around her neck.
He hadn't noticed it when she'd pushed off him, only finding out about it when he had to pull bits of material embedded in his leg, after getting thrown around the escape pod and landing on them.
Khutan stepped over to the close-to-but-still-definitely-not-near-the-verge-of-crying Zhao, and held out two pairs of battered and chipped metal plates by the cords attached to them. A little bit of purple blood was on each of the nicks made into them.
She looked up, a curse on her lips until she saw the tags. Snatching them out of his hand, her eyes widened.
Gersten and Benti's tags. Stained with alligator blood, but their tags nonetheless. Her kids.
Lopez looked between them, Henry, and back again. The only sound was the crackling fire and the jingling of the chains.
She shook her head, and balled them up, forcing them back into her pocket.
"I'll take the first watch, Henry. Go and get some sleep or whatever it is you do."
XXXXX
The ground fluttered. Lopez jumped out of her sleeping bag sidearm raised and half asleep.
"Plasma mortars! We're under fire!" she garbled out, before she realized where she was.
The ground was still trembling slightly, a continuous rumble that didn't feel like it was fading.
The sergeant grabbed her helmet, "Earthquake!" she yelled in her best parade ground voice, "Wake the hell up, hinge-head! Let's get outside!"
Checking her HUD, she tried to bring up the drone's seismograph. Surprisingly, there was only a bright red "NO SIGNAL" alert.
"Dammit…" she growled, but ignored it and moved outside.
Henry was outside as well, staring at something in the distance and struggling with a set of binoculars recovered from the pod.
Wordlessly, Lopez snatched them out of his hands and peered through.
"Christ on a cracker." the valley below was in chaos. A mushroom cloud was rising over where the temple had once been. The temple base was obscured in the bottom of the cloud, and figures could be seen scattered across the mountainside, some moving, others not. The Bucketheads were on the move, in the village, bells ringing loud enough to be heard from this high up, and spreading out their forces. Hundreds of people running about, going to various tasks as they tried to respond to...whatever it was.
Then, there was what was in the sky. Henry and Lopez let their jaws go slack. A massive tear in the sky, a large ring with a bright white inner center and a vague cloudy perimeter.
Lopez's first instinct. She activated her TACPAD, broadcasting on all channels, "This is Sergeant Lopez of the UNSC Marine Corps to unidentified starship! Pull up! You're right above a planet's surface! Pull up!"
The tear expanded further, shimmering and releasing massive amounts of energy. "Unidentified ship! Respond! Hello? Do you copy?!"
Only static answered her hails. As if it wasn't weird enough to see a slipspace rupture in atmosphere, this one was...green.
"What the hell is going on around here?"
Minutes passed, and still no sign of a starship. And no sign of it closing either. While that meant no immediate danger(the danger of opening a portal in atmosphere was in the closing, not the opening), who knew what kind of radiation was emitting.
She rebooted the connection to the drone, but still got nothing. The sergeant tried rewinding the footage to just before she lost signal.
The drone had been orbiting the temple, and witnessed the explosion. It rippled outwards from deep within the structure. A shimmer in the air sprang away from the center in a sphere, and a streak of light shot straight up from the origin point. Then the shimmering bubble passed through the drone, and the signal was lost.
"Well. That's it for that drone."
Henry and Lopez, with no small amount of charades, guessed at what had happened. Whatever it was, it wasn't anything they knew of.
It might have been a strike from within slipspace. There were many pieces of equipment designed to be released into and drop out of slipspace to avoid putting the starship in danger. The lack of anything emerging could also have been some sort of malfunction.
Yet none of the possibilities explained why the portal was open for so long. Slipspace portals weren't supposed to stay open this long.
One possibility did explain it, though. Back when slipspace had first been discovered, there'd been talk of creating portals for people, not just starships. A whole interplanetary network of slipspace gates was envisioned. Planetary generators had a much greater power output after all, and could be much bigger.
The plans never came to fruition, but evidently whoever created this portal had been able to figure out a way around the problems.
So in all likelihood, there was a technologically-advanced race about to attack this virtually-defenseless planet. Luddite tricks wouldn't stand up to bullets or plasma fire.
There wasn't much they could see from where they were. Lopez didn't want to risk her second drone flying too close, and nothing she had was designed for in-depth slipspace analysis.
To get answers, they had to head further down the mountain to try and get a better idea of what happened to the temple.
Unfortunately, the bucketheads were fanning out across the countryside, putting them at great risk of detection.
Henry volunteered to keep them distracted, however. He even allowed her to place an IFF tag on him so she wouldn't shoot him, and give her plenty of time to gather the required data.
Within hours of the anomaly's appearance, Lopez was kilometers down the hill, prone on a small overlook that gave a much clearer view of the temple. Again, she cursed her lack of proper equipment.
She was now able to see a distinct beam connecting the portal to the ground. It looked as though her assessment of troop deployment was correct. It must have been some sort of space elevator, albeit not a conventional one. She'd seen the grav-lifts Covenant ships used to deploy their troops; the beam was likely something similar.
What I wouldn't give for some STARS right about now. Stealth Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance Satellites would have everything she would need. She had equipment for monitoring orbital conditions, but nothing too specific.
Who the hell's up there?
Eying her motion tracker, a handful of red dots kept coming on and off the grid.
...And maybe a squad to help deal with those jackasses. Then again, so long as I'm dreaming, I'll wish for a pony.
The sergeant glanced at her motion tracker again, and cursed. The contacts were now surrounding Henry. Their luck was running out.
Now a dozen icons were headed her way.
Two red dots winked out near the purple dot, so he was putting up a fight, but she had to focus on herself.
Lopez got up on her haunches, and unlimbered her MA5B. It was like meeting an old friend once again, the smell of brass as she pulled a magazine out and slammed it home, the sound of the bolt locking into place and the feel of the trigger against her glove.
Crouching low, she headed to cover behind a nearby boulder. Bracing her rifle against the boulder, she waited.
Roughly twelve locals emerged from the tree line. They looked like something from a renaissance fair, with their massive plate armor, bucket-head helmets, those stupid wide swords, and their tunic-dress-things they wore to protect their armor from sun.
They glanced around, taking a little too long to notice her behind cover. They seemed a little surprised for a moment.
Someone that looked like the leader stepped forward.
"Mage!" he cried, brandishing his sword and suffering from the ancient affliction known as testosterone poisoning, "In the name of the Templar Order, surrender, and face your crimes! You have no chance, your magic will not work. Give up peacefully."
His voice sounded odd. Unsurprisingly, it gave off those tell-tale tics indicative of language translated by her neural link rather than speaking in a language she knew. No matter what the techs did, the translated speech was always off in one way or another. Lopez noticed with some satisfaction that despite their gear, all the locals were smaller than her in height. Strange, but satisfying.
Several of the enemies fell to one knee, putting both hands out on their swords and bowing their heads muttering some sort of prayer. To her mild surprise, around each one snow was buffeted, debris thrown in the air by some unseen force, and there was a mild lightshow.
Some parlor trick.
Lopez smirked, and flicked the safety off her rifle. Immediately, she swept the weapon in a nice neat arc across the line of enemies, the familiar pounding of 7.62mm rounds and the concussion as they accelerated to mach 2.5 was a sweet song in her ears. It helped her to ignore the screams.
The adrenaline pumping, she sprinted over the corpses, toward her comrade. The battlefield took over. Nothing mattered anymore. Not UNSC, not Covenant, not human, not hinge-head, all that mattered was a comrade was in danger. And they didn't call her "Mama Lopez" for nothing.
Switching to burst fire, Lopez fired at any of the bucketheads she saw as she sprinted through the woods, burning through one magazine and swapping to her sidearm. The purple dot on her HUD was crawling closer and closer, as the red dots winked out around her. He wasn't moving anymore, the reds were clustered around him.
Along the path she took, a bucket-head stepped out from behind a tree. Smarter than the others, he realized he shouldn't try running at her over a distance. Lopez didn't even slow down, lifting a knee to smash a VZG7 Combat Boot right into his groin, the iron crotch plate crumpling under the impact as she bowled the man over.
He collapsed backwards, moaning and clutching the family jewels, while she jumped over him and found her friend, in a clearing.
Beaten, bruised, Henry was held down by no less than ten of the locals. Several were scattered around on the ground in various states of injury. His cricket bat was embedded in the eye-slit of a bucket-head on the ground, the man's friend fruitlessly trying to pull it back out. Another group emerged from the treeline, wielding crossbows and regular bows, all aimed at her.
One of the bucket-heads holding Henry down had a knife at his throat, and their helmet was partly smashed. They yanked it off, revealing to Lopez's surprise, a woman underneath.
"Surrender mage, or we kill your friend!" she cried.
Lopez snarled, but for a brief moment lifted her weapons to throw them to the ground. Her rational sense kicked in again.
Why was she going to so much trouble to save this bastard?
Smacking the side of her helmet, Get it together, marine! Lopez took her sidearm in both hands, and activated the zoom function in her ballistic glasses.
It was an old system designed in answer to a simple question that had been struggled with for years. How did one deal with a gun to the hostage's head?
The answer was provided by the targeting systems used in the marines' HUDs, that was able to calculate where exactly to shoot the hostage-taker in order to disable their hand. Either hitting the limb itself, or the weapon.
The lead bucket-head's fist jumped to a massive size in her vision, the targeting reticule unable to find a point on the weapon itself. Her fist was angled toward the sergeant, her entire forearm behind it.
Lopez fired. The M225 round tearing into the "templar's" middle knuckle, and its high-explosive payload detonated in the center of her ulna and radial bone. Her gauntlet shifted slightly, blood and meat spewing from either end, pieces of metal and bone shot out through her elbow. The templar shrieked in pain, cradling the hunk of meat once known as her arm, and was headbutted by Henry.
The sergeant was abruptly tackled from behind, her M6D falling out of her grasp. Nothing had registered on her motion tracker, leaving only the wounded man behind her as the culprit. His strength wasn't the problem, the weight of his armor was.
With a roar, she shook him off, but it was too late. The others were upon her.
They didn't use their swords, they seemed intent on capturing her judging by their pummeling. Despite the strength of her armor, there were an awful lot of their fists, and it hurt.
She wasn't going to let it be fair, at least. Her combat knife lopped off several fingers, chunks of hands, stabbed several, and in one particular case cut through one Templar's nose.
It was all for naught, unfortunately. They soon had her pinned, and took her weapons.
As one sat on her back and tied her hands behind her back, Lopez heard them say something about "Haven", "Most Holy", and "pay for what they've done".
They hauled her to her feet, swearing all the way, and began dragging her away. Six were required to hold her still. To her immense relief, Henry was being brought along as well, though with far more restraints and guards.
Now however, they faced the obvious question. What next?