Chapter 5
Location: Unknown Planet, Unknown City
Date: March 27, 2527
Time: 1730 Hours
Captain Carter felt herself drop like a rock as her journey ended underneath the large plateau that had been carved and built into a palace. She had seen a great deal of what she could only describe as a city of antiquity. She'd seen people speaking a strange language that her helmet's translation software spat out as unknown. The architecture was clean and simple amongst the common houses, stores, and a few blacksmiths that she had seen in her trip within the freezing water that had now just fallen into a freefalling waterfall.
Carter fell straight into deep crisp water that she couldn't see a single thing within save for a few orange flickering glows from torches set against the walls where there was a walkway carved from the granite in this massive underground cavern. She felt the change of temperature instantly, knowing that this place was much better than the place she had just come from. But Sam also knew that she was in unknown territory and alone on top of that. She checked for her silenced SMG, finding it still buckled to her armor and proceeded to kick swiftly over to the edge towards the flickering light of the torches against the wall. Once there she took aim with her weapon, sweeping back and forth, finding nothing threatening in there with her. So she quickly pulled herself up out of the water, tensing at how loud her exit echoed from the sound of the water flooding off her sealed armor and dripping from the clothed pouches where she had spare ammunition and other necessities.
It was now that Carter now pulled up her tactical map on her helmet and desperately hoped that Colonel O'Neill was nearby. To her relief she saw his and Sergeant Hastings's IFF signals were barely getting through to her but were together and were coming closer steadily it seemed. She felt a relief at this and now fell back onto her training to make contact and establish a sitrep with both her and them.
"Colonel O'Neill this is Captain Carter how copy?" she called out, and listened three seconds for the proper response but all that came back was static. Trying again she brought a hand onto her helmet out of reflex than anything, "I repeat, Colonel O'Neill this is Captain Carter how copy? Do you read me over? Dammit, I need to get above ground," she said to herself as she now surveyed the area far more thoroughly.
Her trained eyes and complex visual optics picked out a door a good thirty meters away and highlighted a potential route on her HUD that she immediately started to follow right at the arching stone doorway. She winced with every wet footstep that came down, hoping that sound would not carry as loudly as she feared and made it to the doorway finding a steep spiraling staircase totally dark and devoid of any real light. She switched her night vision on and proceeded to carefully maneuver her way up the stairs and felt herself ascend several floors without so much as a mouse squeaking, or whatever version of mice this planet had, interrupting her soft boot steps.
Soon she'd reached another wooden door and pulled her fiber optic camera from its tiny spring tensioned holder on her left wrist and slid it underneath the door. The camera's feed came directly to her visor, and she got a good clean look at what was most likely a balcony inside the building she found herself in. It was practically covered in marble, with well over a dozen columns within her line of sight carved beautifully with large images of scenes that could only have come from Earth's antiquity. The ground was strewn with different colored and patterned rugs and carpets with no real signs of life among all of this aside from the numerous candles and torches on the walls.
She decided to once more to try and contact with Colonel O'Neill now that she was higher and there wasn't a mountain above her head.
"Colonel O'Neill, this is Carter how copy?" she called out quietly and waited.
"Carter, O'Neill, I was just about to call you," the response came immediately.
"I'm sure sir," she said with a relieved smile as she rolled her eyes.
"What's your status captain?"
"Green sir," she responded affirmatively, "But I'm not exactly sure where I am."
"That makes three of us," Sergeant Hastings piped up.
"I think the locals are bringing us straight to your position in that great big palace Carter. Keep a low profile, I might need an ace up my sleeve in case things go sour," O'Neill ordered.
"Sir?"
"These folks are primitive at best, but human. They don't seem hostile at the moment, just cautious."
"Any positive contact sir?" Carter asked out of curiosity.
"Negative, I don't understand a word they're saying."
"And we don't have translator software installed on our helmets. This is Jackson's forte."
"Carter I want you to try and contact Kowalski and give him a sitrep here. I don't want him going down that tunnel trying to follow us and get sent into a bottomless abyss by accident."
"Roger that sir," she responded.
"Very well, O'Neill out."
Carter knew just by instinct they'd been taken beyond effective range of their helmet's radios and knew that she would need her signal boosted if she were to effectively contact Major Kowalski. So she took off her backpack, opened it, and withdrew a lunchbox sized metal box and tapped its controls to check that it was still operational. Satisfied with the results she returned it to its place and prepared to make her way to a higher point so that she could use it and have the best possible range on the booster.
But then, she took notice of a few smudges on her tac map, and saw that it was getting clearer and taking a familiar shape, or shapes. They were IFF tags, seven of them. What Carter was panicked by unfortunately was that one of them was in the red and another in yellow. Sam felt a ping of fear at what may have happened and knew O'Neill had to know. It was acceptable for there to be two or three people to come looking for them, but the entire team?
"Colonel!"
"I know Carter I see it. Looks like they're headed towards you," O'Neill said, "Kowalski come in."
"Colonel! Boy am I glad to hear you. We've got wounded sir, Jess and Jackson," the panicked voice of the XO of the team hoarsely said to them.
"What happened Major?"
"We were attacked through the gate by unknown bogeys. I've got no clue as to who or what. But there were a lot of them and they were packing some firepower sir," Kowalski responded, "We managed to make it out thanks to the drones covering us, but Jackson was hit and Jess broke her leg on the way down. They just smashed Jackson's armor, melting through it. I've never seen anything like it."
"Calm down Major is Jackson responding?"
"I don't know sir, we just jumped into the hole you fell into, we didn't have time."
"Dammit, Carter, meet them. We need to figure this out and get Jackson stabilized."
"Alright sir," Kowalski responded.
Carter worked her way down the stairs to where she'd just come from, running down the stairs and threw open the door and returned to the large underground cavern. She made it to the place that she had gotten out of the water to find that Kowlaski's IFF tag was already showing up on her own visor. She saw it and another tag in yellow right next to it on its way towards her. Soon enough she saw the forms falling through the waterfall and into the man-made lake. The first one showed up as Kowalski, and he was followed shortly by the blinking red of Dr. Daniel Jackson's IFF and he fell limply into the water followed by the yellow tag that was Jess who was holding onto him. These three were followed shortly as the other ODST's fell in. Their helmets poked up out of the water and two of them were grabbing Jackson and dragging him towards them. Kowalski grabbed onto Jess and helped her towards the edge of walkway where they all saw Carter keeping watch as they made their way in.
"Captain," Kowalski greeted as he helped Jess over onto the walkway with her broken leg.
"You okay sir?" she asked as she helped him out of the water.
"Besides getting jumped and separated from our only way out of here and nearly losing the one man that can get us back, just peachy Captain."
Carter ignored that emotionally driven response and helped get a completely unconscious Dr. Jackson out of the water. Carter didn't initially see the wound until they got him up onto the ledge as the other ODST's proceeded to get out of the water as well and secure the area. Although there wasn't much need considering the circumstances.
"We need to get Jackson stabilized, now," Kowalski stated as the ODST's got secured.
The two team medics immediately fell back to where Jackson was laying down on his back and turned him over onto his front to access a circular wound melted into the lower left back that had hit him in a soft part of his armor. It was flooded with light from the two men's helmet mounted flashlights and revealed that the material was burnt away and into the flesh itself, and the wound cauterized, but it was cracked in a few places, and was bleeding. They immediately injecting a medical agent to help stop the bleeding and began cleaning away the charred remains of what armor and clothing had been there. It was a tough task, but according to their diagnostic equipment Jackson was somewhat stabilized, but was teetering on a precarious edge. But this allowed Kowalski to get back to the matter at hand.
Carter did a quick check of their weapons and equipment, seeing if they had their complete weapon sets. Thankfully, they did, each ODST still had their pistols and silenced SMG's in hand with one man carrying an SR90 Sniper Rifle on his back, Jess had her own SAW on the ground next to her as she was laying down against the wall. One of the medics had a Jackhammer on the ground next to him within easy reach, the man next to Kowalski also had his own Jackhammer looped over his back, ready for use. One of the other men had a pump action shotgun in hand as well as he was standing at the door, ready to defend their stake to their little makeshift basecamp.
"We need to get with the Colonel and Hastings, have you worked your way out of here yet to get a look around?"
"Yes sir, there's a staircase right there that leads into the main building. I wasn't able to get past the door but I was able to see that it opened up into a large open indoor landing with a large highly decorated landing and marble columns. I didn't get a look at any native however."
"Alright, let's get topside and get in touch with the Colonel and see if we can be useful. Jess and Harper, you two stay here," Kowalski ordered, "the rest of you follow me, we're heading topside."
Blue winks acknowledged his orders and he, Carter, and the other two ODST's, one carrying a SAW and another carrying a shotgun, followed Kowalski up the spiral staircase until they reached the end of the stairs to the heavy wooden door on the other side.
"Colonel, it's Kowalski, we're ready to proceed with an infiltration of the…palace," he stated, not quite sure what to say.
"Copy, we're being taken into the building as well. We've got quite an escort, twelve armed guards. They've got spears, shields, and swords with iron armor, and they don't understand a word we're saying."
"We see you on our HUD sir," Kowalski stated.
"Sir, my equipment has a air mapping system that can give us an idea of what the layout of this building is like," Carter piped up, "I would recommend that we use it."
"How exactly does that work?" one of the ODST's asked.
"Classified," Carter responded without missing a beat.
"Whatever, just use it," Kowalski said, shaking his head.
"Yes sir," Carter responded, reaching to her wrist control for the complex device that took up the entire bottom portion of her pack and had a large scanner mounted on top behind her head. As soon as her AMS activated her HUD lit up with the somewhat grainy returns that gave her a three dimensional image of the area on the left side of her HUD. It was quite an expanse, with a lot of different halls and columns and rooms meant for who knew what. O'Neill's and Hastings's IFF transponders were at a level three below them at a vast entryway, and Carter's complex software immediately plotted a path for them to work their over there.
"Alright let's try to stay out of sight. The last thing we need Is to have run-in with a-," Kowalski ordered as he opened the door.
But unfortunately he opened it up and hit something, and the sound of crashing porcelain and frightful yelp sounded out. Kowalski couldn't help it, and he opened the door completely and saw a young woman wearing a white dress and olive branch crown in her hair. She had shattered plates of food and several goblets of wine spilled all over the white marble floor. She looked up at them and her eyes went wide in absolute terror as the ODST's all piled out as if it were a normal breach like in training or combat. It wasn't hard to understand why she was terrified. She'd just been bulldozed onto the floor out of nowhere by a quartet of large people armored in all black with a helmet that completely obscured their faces.
"Oh shit," Kowalski couldn't help but mutter.
The woman let out an ear piercing scream that ended all hope of being able to move about in a silent uncompromised manner. Kowalski felt the urge to jump forward and shut her up, but ignored it when he heard yelling off to his left and right and saw at a few men in black armor carrying elaborately decorated black shields and a spear with a three-pronged point on it. Their helmets were like that of a welder's helmet as their face plates was able to be lifted upwards and they were quickly swung down. They also had a blood red cape over their backs with a gray trident similar to the one on their spears emblazoned on it. There were quite a few of them closing in, and the woman immediately ran towards them, and was shielded immediately and a solid wall of metal was soon facing the ODST's with spears and swords facing off against guns.
The faces of these guards were hidden behind their masks, but their eyes were quite visible, and the ODST's could tell that they were confused, even frightened. But they held their ground, keeping in a fairly low stance with their feet keeping a wide spacing which provided a low and very solid center of gravity. But they still kept their space, and the ODST's and Carter kept theirs.
"Qui sunt isti daemones?" one of them asked in a fairly deep voice.
"Ego numquam visa sunt," one of the others replied.
"An sint percussores ab angue caput?" a third man mumbled quietly.
"Nam si nunc agendum!" the first to speak growled.
But then Carter saw a young man wearing a set of golden plated armor shaped to look like a chiseled chest and abs walked around the corner wearing a long white and red cape. In his hand was a sword that bore remarkable resemblance to a Roman gladius, but longer with a heavier diamond shaped tip. He didn't look very old at all, probably sixteen or seventeen years old. He was followed by a pair of similarly armored guards who seemed to not like the fact that he was charging straight towards danger.
"Colonel, we're compromised," Kowalski growled into the radio.
A heavy sigh came from the radio as O'Neill heard the report, "Acknowledged. Can you pull out and stay out of sight?"
"Negative, we're surrounded."
"Alright, just don't open fire, they don't seem to think that we're carrying weapons."
"Very well," Kowalski responded.
"Sta quietam! Non sunt percussores," he yelled, immediately gaining the attention of the guards.
"Sed genitor…" one of the guards stumbled to get out.
"Operor ego postulo to me ipsum repetere, arma summittere," the young man snapped, then looked at Kowalski right in the eyes, "If you were our enemy you would have attacked us already."
The ODST's were shocked by the sudden words in English that had just been spoken. Even Carter didn't see it coming.
"You-you speak English?" Carter asked hesitantly.
"I speak many languages by necessity. My father has gotten older and older and I've had to take over his duties travelling through the chapa'ai or command of the empire's legions," the young man stated, sliding his sword back into its scabbard.
"I'm sorry, I'm not following, a chapa-chap-whatever, and seriously, how did you learn to speak English?" Kowalski asked, "And who are you?"
"My name is Marcus Evandus, Crown Prince of Troy," he stated, shocking the group of ODST's once more.
"Excuse me? Troy?"
"Yes, it's been the name of our kingdom since our ancestors first drove away the Gou'ald Poseidon several hundred years ago."
"This kid must be high on somethin' if you get my meaning," one of the others whispered into the comms.
"Yeah we'll have to get Jackson up on his feet before we decide to continue this particular conversation," Kowalski agreed with a grumble as the young Marcus continued.
"My teacher Lucius Barnicuus, he's traveled through the chapa'ai for many years, and my father had him teach myself and my siblings what he knew so that we could forge relations with other worlds through the chapa'ai."
"There's that word again, chapa'ai. What is that?" Carter asked.
Before the young prince could answer that question an older man wearing a white toga decorated with blue trim walked in and whispered into the Marcus's ear. He nodded in understanding and looked back to the team.
"Come with us, my father wants to see you. And I'm certain you'd want to unite with your two comrades, and explain why an army is marching on our city."
Location: Delta Arcturus System, Planet Outland, High Orbit
Date: March 27, 2527
Time: 2300 Hours
The bridge of the cruiser Everest was alive with activity as the UNSC response fleet maintained its loose and disciplined formation. It was a powerful force, sent to respond to an attack upon the Outskirts Colony Outland by an unknown enemy. The corvette Raise the Flag had arrived at Harvest bearing grim news and word was spread quickly. A sizeable fleet had amassed at Harvest, centered around the Marathon class cruiser UNSC Everest with two other Halcyon class cruisers, the twin sisters UNSC Wind of Justice and the UNSC Wind of Vengeance, in close attendance was the carrier Aquila with its own battle group of four destroyers and seven frigates. Making up the rest of this fleet were twelve destroyers and twenty-six frigates of the Paris, Stalwart, and Charon classes. All told the fleet was made up of one carrier, three cruisers, sixteen destroyers, and twenty-three frigates. A secondary fleet with a handful of transport ships not unlike Phoenix class colony ships also came with the fleet, but was not in any way a fighting force in space, their fangs were drawn once they deposited their cargoes planet-side.
These forty-three ships were massed in a period of less than a week and deployed all the way out to Outland, where they found themselves facing a force of twelve identical ships to the ones that had initially attacked Outland. These vessels had arrived just minutes after the UNSC ships had obliterated the hostile ship hovering over the city of Outback. But once they'd arrived the fleet hadn't made a move, not even establishing communications. This had allowed the fleet to deposit the 12th Marine Expeditionary Force, the 21st Marine Expeditionary Force, and several independent ODST battalions to the planet's surface totaling well over forty thousand Marines and five thousand ODST's with several thousand vehicles and several hundred aircraft ranging from Pelicans and Albatross dropships to Hornets to Falcons. These forces had been dispersed on the planet below to prevent any orbital bombardment from being very effective in the event the UNSC fleet was unsuccessful in holding its position.
But so far, nothing had happened, and the fleet's commander, Admiral Preston Cole, was getting anxious as he thought of all sorts of reasons for the fleet to hold their position and not attack, especially since they must have witnessed the destruction of one of their own ships. They'd been holding their position well outside of the range of their magnetic accelerator cannons which was alright for them, because according to the reports received from groundside survivors of the frigate Until Death these hostiles didn't open fire until they were in close. So Admiral Cole was fine if these aliens wanted to make it a sniping contest, he had the weapons to win if they wanted to try it.
However that was sort of the case, for the Jaffa aboard the numerous ships they'd just lost their overlord, Ra. When the Everest had obliterated that ship a shock wave had gone out across the galaxy as the most powerful Gou'ald System Lord was killed by the UNSC. These Jaffa had been awaiting orders from their god, and now, it seemed that he was just gone. No amount of hails to the planet's surface had been successful in restoring communications with him. Aboard these ships it was near complete pandemonium. None of these Jaffa had the authority to coordinate the fleet of twelve Ha'taks, and none was really looking forward to trying to press their luck seeing as a massive fleet stood between them and the planet.
So now seemed to be the opportune time for a third party to arrive on the scene and try to stop the clash that was going to take place. A small gray being, less than five feet tall, had arrived on the scene shortly before the human fleet had arrived and destroyed the Gou'ald warship in the atmosphere of the planet. He'd been surprised at this extremely ruthless and machine-like method of dealing with the threat they'd been faced with, moreover, he'd been surprised it had worked. But this little alien knew that the Jaffa reinforcements weren't about to back down, and from what he had just witnessed neither were the humans. So a battle was imminent, and if this battle ended the way he calculated it would the Asgard's long plan to isolate a powerful human entity would be in jeopardy.
So this Asgard piloted his ship, the Beliskner, towards the gap in between the two fleets, and lowered the cloaking field he had around it. The results were predictable once he opened a channel to the motherships and opened a one-way channel to the UNSC fleet as well.
"This is Supreme Commander Thor of the Asgard Fleet, your presence here is in direct violation of the Forbidden Space Accords. Any refusal will be treated as an act of war against the Asgard, and our vessels are far more formidable than the ones you face now. Leave now and you will not be harmed," Thor stated very clearly.
There was a moment of hesitation as the motherships held their positions and Thor narrowed his eyes as he considered the possibility that they would choose to call his bluff. He powered his weapons in anticipation of this, but before that happened he saw them all turn one by one and jump away into their individual hyperspace windows, bound for home. Thor couldn't help but sigh in relief at this, and returned his attention to the fleet of vessels he may have just saved from disaster.
It was time that he revealed himself to the Taur'i.
There we are, it took a while, but not too bad for a very long hiatus. As promised I will refocus my efforts to this story since A Brutal Truth is officially complete. So I will try to get another chapter out as soon as I can and get right back into the action(metaphorically speaking).
Next Chapter Preview: The UNSC learns a few secrets, and gets to meet its first human civilization, and its second system lord all at once!