Chapter Six

We were in the armor bay. Linda, Fred, Kelly, John and I. We'd finally arrived on Reach, and we were getting ready to ship out to the surface.

The SPARTANs had stepped into their machines, and were getting some new, GEN2 armor sealed to their bodies.

The GEN2 armor looked different; it had wider arm plating on the upper arms, and the armor on the lower torso didn't look like a belt at all. It sealed directly to their techsuits.

My biosuit, as much of an upgrade as it was, couldn't do that.

Plus, Ellen hadn't made any armor that looked like GEN2. She didn't have access to the information to make a scaled-down GEN2 suit anyway, so there was no point in giving my suit an expensive and purely cosmetic upgrade.

I was too short for the machines - by a lot - so I was standing in front of the machine while several manually controlled arms sealed my old armor around my body.

"Alright, Blue Team, here's the sitch." Commander Palmer walked up, her hands on her hips. "You're dropping up in the mountains. The Szurdok Ridge, to be specific. A small recon team moved out before you; be aware of unstable ground along the mountainside."

"Understood, sir." John stepped out of his machine, fully armored up.

"Your mission is to locate any Forerunner artifacts of interest. Given the company you're keeping," Palmer looked down at me, "you're allowed to use discretion on what you deem to be 'of interest'. If you find anything too big to move, mark the coordinates for a team of eggheads to investigate later."

Her eyes scanned over the SPARTANs.

"Dismissed."

The armor bay was crowded. SPARTANs were being sent out all over the planet; some of them were non-combat missions like ours and others were to quell Insurrectionists in key locations.

There was no question that the majority of the SPARTANs here were the new, 300-strong group of IVs. There weren't even fifty SPARTAN IIs aboard Infinity. And I had yet to see a single SPARTAN III other than the children on NOBLE Team.

Children.

But moping about their life wouldn't help them, so I didn't.

As I pulled my helmet on I bumped Kelly's arm with a shoulder. "You guys were on the Szurdok Ridge during the fall of Reach, right?"

"We were." She nodded.

"What's it like?"

We stepped onto a platform, which would take us down to Spartan Town's hangar bay. There was probably a Pelican already waiting for us.

Kelly shrugged. "Cold and steep. I can't imagine it's the same as it used to be; the glassing affected quite a bit of the environment."

"Yeah." I rolled from my toes to my heels and back. "I'm glad they didn't get the whole planet."

"You can thank Red Team for that," Fred said from the other end of the platform.

I nodded, reaching up to grab John's hand. "Red Team did a lot on Reach."

I couldn't help but wish I'd done more on Reach. But no, I'd just had surgery to remove a tracking chip implanted in my ribs.

I'd been uselessly holed up in a bunker with a bunch of scientists, instead of helping defend and evacuate the planet.

John squeezed my hand. "Focus," he murmured in my mind.

I let out a breath and nodded. I was good. Just...wishing I could have been of more use.

Well, I was certainly of use now.

The platform stopped in a bustling hangar bay. Several SPARTAN fireteams were moving to deploy. It was cacophonous, and the immense space of the hangar seemed to both echo and dampen the noise.

John let go of my hand as we moved towards the Pelican.

"You should take a weapon."

I looked up at Linda with palpable confusion as the Pelican ramp closed.

"Just in case," she explained.

I stretched for a rifle on the rack above my seat. "I don't...I-I've been fine without one before."

She just shrugged again; it was no skin off her back.

I passed the rifle up to John.

"Welcome aboard, Blue Team. Buckle up, these magnetic fields are hell," the pilot announced over the intercom.

Linda and John, the only two standing, grabbed handles. Fred was on my left, and Kelly was sitting down across from me.

Fred sat back and put a hand on his knee. "What did recon say about potential contacts?"

"The area looks clear, but visibility is low." John loaded a fresh magazine into his rifle.

Despite Reach's low population - the only true city with any population was New Alexandria - we knew we weren't completely alone on the Ridge. Kivas and tiny little rural towns dotted the area.

And they weren't all peaceful.

It was no secret that the Insurrectionists were trying to take over Reach before the UNSC could resettle. Hopefully, we wouldn't see them on this deployment.

I'd never killed a human before. I didn't know if I could. I hated to admit that killing aliens was easier, since they were every bit as self-aware as us, but it was.

I couldn't worry about that now. We had an objective, a mission, to accomplish. One that was important to me on a personal scale.

To both John and me. If we rebuilt a terminal we could fulfill our duty as the Revivers. We could restore the Domain.

"Alright, here's where you get off." The pilot lowered the ramp above a small, snowy clearing. "Thank you for flying Pelican Air."

John was the first one out. He moved down the ramp, checking the surrounding area with his rifle. I could feel him brush against my mind; were we truly alone?

I opened my mind to him. I couldn't feel anyone in the thick pine forest around us. Even so, the incline made the trees tower above us like imposing sentinels.

The Pelican boosted its engines and took off; I jumped at the sudden scream of jetwash behind us.

"Blue Team, here's your coordinates." Commander Palmer lit up something on our HUD.

"Coordinates received," Kelly acknowledged.

"Let's move." John took point through the forest.

I was in the back, beside Fred. My mind was constantly alert and searching for anything nearby. So far, only small native animals.

Well, they weren't all small.

I grabbed Fred's wrist and pointed into the trees.

"Look," I whispered.

He turned, and nearly pulled the trigger on his rifle. There, a scarce hundred feet away, was a massive creature.

It looked kind of like a mammal. There were tusks, each about as big as me, on either side of its mouth. Three-fingered hands, though claws would be a better description.

It was mostly hairless; I couldn't help but wonder how it kept warm in the snowy environment.

"What is it?" Kelly asked.

"I'm not sure." I took a step towards the intimidated creature. "It's not going to hurt us, though."

John latched onto my shoulder. "Tawny."

"I-I know." I blushed.

We needed to keep moving. We couldn't just stop because I wanted to pet the twenty-foot-beast.

Still, I sent the scared animal some comforting emotions as we walked away. It huffed, returning to whatever it had been focusing on before our disruption.

The ground around us was sloped severely upwards. Occasionally, the dirt had fallen away in clumps bigger than any of us, and it revealed the thick tree roots that dug so deep.

Despite the clearly unstable ground, it was beautiful. Perhaps it was because of the instability.

The entire scene was picturesque, really. Fat snowflakes floated lazily to the earth from branches hundreds of feet above our heads. The only sound was our armored boots crunching in the fluffy snow.

The thick expanse of trees looked like a watercolor painting, like the ones in museums, on all sides.

Reach was a gorgeous planet. And now I actually got to see it.

It was a nice birthday present. I didn't make a big deal out of my birthday yesterday, I didn't really want to, but I was enjoying this moment.

"The coordinates are just ahead," Kelly informed us in a soft voice.

There was an ambience in the air. Speaking too loud would shatter it like ice.

As we moved into the clearing, something wrapped around my neck. A thick arm.

There was a blade at my throat.

And it was sharp; it could definitely cut through my biosuit and into my flesh. It would cut through my suit and into my skin.

My heartbeat sped up. I could feel the weight of the blade against the artery in my neck, sending a fresh wave of panic through me with each pulse.

John was aware of it before the others, thanks to our bond. But in my perception they turned on my captor at about the same time. Their guns were up, but they didn't shoot.

There was a whole group of Insurrectionists behind me.

I whimpered, clutching the arm on my neck. "I'm sorry."

The arm wasn't tight; I still could breath. It was solely there to keep me in place.

"Drop your weapons," a voice growled from above me.

A familiar voice.

I froze for a moment, feeling nostalgia and dread solidify in my heart.

"I said drop 'em!" The man pressed the blade even tighter to my throat.

I scrambled for the release on my helmet, pushing it up off of my face. "U-Uncle Ry?"

I felt the steady determination behind me falter. The arm around my neck loosened. "What? Who are- Tawny?"

My breath created a fog around me as I scrambled away from the man I'd come to know as an uncle. He wasn't actually related to me, of course, but my parents were close to him. He'd always been there.

And he'd just held a knife to my throat.

I wrapped my arms around my helmet and stepped away from him. There was a hurt expression on my face. It served to multiply the guilt I felt in Zacharias' heart.

John shoved himself between us, pointing his rifle at my uncle Ry. But he didn't shoot.

We were outnumbered.

And the other Innies didn't know me, or care about me.

"You were dead," Ry choked out. I could see the regret on his face, even through the thick brown beard and snow goggles.

"What-what are you doing here?" I moved up between John and Linda, with a hand on John's armored shoulder.

"What do you mean, what am I doing here? What are you doing here?"

With tears in my eyes - they stung in frigid air - I walked even closer. John was not happy about that, but he could feel through me just how much this man didn't want to hurt me.

Ry pulled his snow goggles off. "Tawny, I was there."

I realized what he meant. He was there when I "died". Really it was my flash clone, but he had no way of knowing that.

I wrapped my arms even more tightly around my helmet. "What are you doing here? You're...you're a terrorist."

He flinched. "Not terrorist."

"Extremist."

"Tawny-"

A gunshot cut him off. Linda had fired, hitting one of the Insurrectionists behind him. A nonfatal wound to the arm.

Gunfire erupted from the Innies. I quickly threw my arms out, dropping my helmet, and made a rounded barrier between Blue Team and the Insurrectionists. The bullets hurt like punches against the wall.

Fred moved around the wall with the grace of a honed predator and stabbed one of his daggers into a man's shoulder. He threw the man to the ground by that wound, letting gravity pull the blade out of his shoulder.

Kelly was out there, too. She shot a man in the knees with Oathsworn, her custom shotgun, effectively crippling him.

I shoved the pulse out, bowling over the three men closest to me. Ry was one of them.

John was there in an instant, pinning Ry to the ground and securing his arms behind his back. Fred kicked a man towards them; they were rounding the Innies up.

In moments, the six men were all on their knees - minus the man whose knees had been destroyed - with their hands behind their heads.

"Call for backup," John said.

"Right." I pulled my helmet on. Only then did I release my hold on my tears.

My uncle was an Insurrectionist, I knew. He had been since before I was born.

But I hadn't known what that meant. When I discovered what it meant - to be an Innie was to be a terrorist - I hadn't been thinking about Ry.

But he'd just held a knife to my throat. That was pretty damn hard to ignore.

I cleared my throat, forced my tears down, and searched the comm channels.

I opened a comm between Blue Team and the ship. "Charlie four-one-twenty-three to Infinity."

It was Palmer who answered. "We read you, Charlie."

"We, um, we need backup down here. A-a group of Insurrectionists attacked us. We're all okay, but we've got- we've got six prisoners."

"Understood. Hold position, Blue Team."

I looked down at my feet, dragging the tip of my armored boot through the snow.

John brushed against me. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." I was glad he couldn't see the tears in my eyes. Of course, he could have felt them if he looked.

But he was good about privacy, little though it may be with a literal bond between our minds.

I sat down a few feet away from the Insurrectionists with my legs crossed. I was between John and Linda.

Both of them - all of the SPARTANs, actually - had their guns trained on the Innies.

Ry tried to call out to me. "Tawny."

"Shut it," Linda growled and moved her pistol even closer to him.

I pulled my helmet back off and wiped at my eyes. "I...I didn't know the Insurrectionists were terrorists. All my life, you guys kept that from me."

"Your parents didn't want you to see things that could mess you up." Ry shot a wary look at Linda's gun.

"Clearly," I muttered.

Before ONI, I'd lived a very sheltered life. I was still learning how sheltered.

John's mind was running fast. Finding the Innies wasn't explicitly a mission of ours, but it was something Infinity definitely wouldn't mind us doing.

He kept his gaze and his rifle pointed at the captured men. "Tawny, can you find their base of operations?"

My eyes widened. I bit my lip, looking down at my helmet to avoid eye contact.

I could do that, but did I want to betray my uncle's trust like that?

"Tawny." Linda looked down at me with a hard voice.

I didn't want to invade any of the Insurrectionists' minds. I knew it would help us, but it felt wrong. I knew one of them.

I chewed on my lip. "I-I can find their base. But-"

"If we get rid of them now, we'll be able to spend more time on the mission objective," Fred pointed out.

I looked up at him; he was right. And the objective, finding artifacts, could help Ellen and I with the terminal.

"Okay." I closed my eyes and reached out towards one of the Innie's minds. "Give me- give me a second."

It wasn't Ry. I couldn't bear to invade his privacy like that. And what if I saw something I'd rather not see?

Instead, it was the mind of the man who Fred had stabbed through the shoulder. He had that injury, plus several deep bruises. He was stalwart, stubborn, through the pain.

He knew exactly where their base was.

"They're in an abandoned power plant on-on the other side of the ridge." I kept my gaze on the ground.

Now it was my turn to be unable to meet Ry's eyes.

oOOOOo

Author's Note: Hi again! I've been waiting to post this chapter for forever! Someone reviewed on Chained saying how cool it would be to add an Innie character and I really had to bite my tongue bc I've been wanting to introduce Ry for so long lmao. He's not Tawny's uncle by blood, but he was raised super close with her dad so they're basically related.

Also the giant animal they saw in the forest was a Guta

Love y'all!