Chapter 5: Unwanted Guests

Abandoned UNSC Base: Commandeered by insurgents

The utility tunnel was a dark and dank environment. Steam and condensation dripped from countless pipes and the gentle hum of live electrical wires filled the air. The squad slowly moved down the tunnel, careful to avoid any deep puddles that would give away their presence. So far, the tunnel was empty.

"Doesn't look like they bothered to post any guards down here." Jonesin remarked.

"Shut up." Wolfman hissed. "I'm picking something up on the motion sensor."

He pointed straight down the dark hallway. They could hear the familiar sounds of talking and friendly banter, which was loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise of the utility tunnel.

"May, up front and check out who's coming." Wolfman whispered.

Maya nodded and crept forward, carbine at the ready. She pulled down her thermal goggles over her eyes and activated them. The world in front of her suddenly turned into a cacophony of reds, blues, and greens. Right in front of her, she could see two red human shaped blobs slowly walking up the tunnel. It didn't appear that they had any sort of lighting or vision enhancer, which meant that they were going just by their natural night vision.

Perfect

With feline grace, Maya leapt onto a pipe hanging off the ceiling. Wrapping her legs around the pipe, she hung upside down and waited for the two guards to walk right under her.

"I swear, this place gives me the fucking creeps. It's all dark and noisy, and totally disorienting down here. You just know that there's probably something down here waiting to get us." One of the guards complained.

"You watch way too many movies." The other guard coolly replied. "Try to look on the bright side of things. While I'm down here, I'd like to think of myself as the 'Lord of the Sewers'."

"Yeah, you've got no problem with that because you freaking live in one."

"Ah shutup and keep an eye out. The Commander thinks there might be intruders down here."

It was at that moment the guards were directly under Maya. She quickly reached down, grabbed the rear guard's head with both arms and snapped his neck with lightning speed. She then uncurled her legs from the pipe and leapt down the ground just as the lifeless guard slumped over.

"What the?"

The second guard turned around to investigate the sound. Before he knew it, he could see Maya's combat knife sticking out of his throat. He gurgled and fell over like a sack of flour.

Two silent kills in about just as many seconds. Few people could match that.

"All clear." Maya whispered back to her squad.

"Okay, lets dump the bodies and get moving." Wolfman picked up one of the dead guards. "Those drainage grates look like a good place to stash these guys."

With that said, Wonderboy quickly popped off a drainage gate. Wolfman and Jonesin both shoved the bodies down the hole, and after hear a satisfying splash, closed the grate.

"You know, that's gotta be the shittiest job in the world, guarding sewers." Cutter remarked. "I mean seriously, what did these guys have to do to be qualified as the 'Lord of the Sewer'?"

"Did you forget about the concept of stealth?" Wolfman growled. "Be quiet and keep moving."

Following his cue, the rest of the squad silently followed his lead until they reached a sealed door. Jonesin and Audie both took up positions beside the door. Audie slowly grabbed the door's lever and pulled it down with his other hand on his carbine just in case. When the door was unsealed, Jonesin slowly pushed the door open, carbine poking through the crack.

"All clear." He said.

The team quickly filed through the door, covering each side of the hallway as they entered. The hallway was the standard, bland military hallway with uniform lighting, dull gray paint, and colored lines leading to different areas of the base. Wolfman pointed to two of the lines, which indicated the direction to the base's storage bunkers and power generator.

"Alright, me, Audie, and Maverick will go and secure the nukes. The rest of you will make your way to the generator and rig it to blow. If we lose contact, assume that we have been compromised and detonate the generator by any means possible. Oh, and remember, this is a stealth mission. That means no shooting unless you really, really have to."

The rest of the commandos nodded as they split off. It wasn't long before Maya, Cutter, Wonderboy, and Jonesin were alone in the desolate halls.

Well, not completely alone.

"I'm picking up movement." Wonderboy said as he glanced at his motion sensor. "Three contacts closing fast."

"Over here." Jonesin opened a side door. The team quickly dashed inside.

It wasn't long after they shut the door when they heard sounds of movement and talking. Wonderboy slid a microcamera through the door slit so that the team could have a visual of the enemies. From the looks of it, two of the targets were standard armed soldiers, while the third looked to be some kind of technician or officer. While watching the feed, Maya noticed that true to their name, the Scarlet Soldiers did indeed wear bright red clothing and body armor. It probably did a great job as a symbol and recruiting tool, but it such a bad idea for practical combat Maya had to keep from snorting in disgust.

"They may be terrorists, but they sure know how to dress." Cutter joked.

"Shut up." Jonesin hissed.

""You mean they still haven't reported back in yet?" One of the guards exclaimed.

"No, they haven't checked in, and they won't respond to any of our hails."

"Can it be an attack?"

"No way." The second guard laughed. "You know how the UNSC works. They'd sooner pound this place to rubble with an entire battlefleet than waste the time sending a boatload of Marines in. Besides, if they're coming, we'll be ready."

"But what about-"

"Don't worry. The stupid bastards probably just got lost. They are wandering around the utility tunnels. Plus it doesn't take a Slipspace physicist to figure out that all the crap down there can interfere with radio signals."

"Still, I've got a bad feeling about this. And what about that… that thing we found? Just what the fuck is it?"

"The greatest find of the century, that's what it is." The technician replied with glee. "I can't believe something this… momentous could just be lying down here of all places. It was a good thing we raided this base. God knows what the UNSC would have done with it."

Maya made a curious look, wondering what thing they were talking about. Wonderboy quietly shrugged and neither Jonesin nor Cutter could give any answers.

At that point, the Scarlet trio had already moved down the hall but stopped.

"Hold up." The first guard put a finger to his radio earpiece. "It seems like the Commander is pretty jittery about all this. He's ordering us to wait until he can send a full security team with us to check out the tunnels."

Which meant that Maya and her team would be stuck for a while. At least until these guys got moving again. She took the time to start examining the room she was hiding out in. With all of the cleaning equipment and supplies scattered around, Maya assumed that they were in the janitor's storage room. She recognized the sharp smell of disinfectant and cleaner fluid, but there was another, vaguely familiar odor that Maya couldn't quite place her finger on. She tried to recall what it was, but could only conjure up images of old battlefields and missions when she suddenly realized what it was.

It was the smell of death.

Maya quietly shoved a cleaning cart aside, and saw a pile of corpses on the ground. Years of professional killing and assassination kept her from falling backwards and screaming at the top of her lungs, but Maya was still nonetheless shocked at what she saw.

"What the hell?" Jonesin said as he turned to see the bodies.

"They're base personnel" Cutter pointed. "They've got UNSC uniforms on!"

"Zero, this is Jonesin, come in."

Zero was Major Finn's codename for whenever the squad needed to talk to him.

"This is Zero, go ahead Jonesin."

"Sir, we've got dead UNSC personnel here. I thought you said that this base was abandoned."

"It was." Finn said confidently. "What do the bodies look like?"

"They look like technicians and maintenance staff." Maya said, carefully examining the clothing on the bodies.

"They're probably some of the 'inside help' that helped the rebels here rebuild the base."

"Doesn't explain why they're dead." Jonesin growled.

"You know how these organizations work. The less people who know, the less people who can talk. The Scarlet Soldiers probably double-crossed them or killed them once they weren't useful anymore. Complete your mission."

"Anybody else have a bad feeling about this?" Jonesin asked as he shut off his radio.

"Are they contemplating giving us early retirement?"

It was a long held rumor that no black ops team in the UNSC ever got to enjoy quiet retirement. In most cases, if the command felt that a team has stopped being useful, they used a rival blacks ops team to kill off the other in some elaborate cover mission. The old team would definitely get an early retirement, complete with a severance package involving a bullet to the back. However, it was all rumor of course, though with the secretive nature of ONI, who knew?

"Okay, they're gone." Wonderboy said. "We can start moving again."

"I've got a bad feeling about this." Maya shivered.

"I do too. Let's just get this done." Jonesin said as he opened the door.

Base Control Center

Scarlet Commander Caleb Mogran scowled as he read over the security reports. Though he had a sizeable force, the vast majority were not properly trained or very experienced. The result was shoddy performance in the lower echelons of his command. So far, two of his soldiers had disappeared without a trace and nobody could seem to figure out why. Mogran had put all of his forces on full alert, but most of them were concentrated on the lowest levels of the base, trying to find anything else of value.

He knew that the UNSC would come back to retake their precious base. How or with what Mogran didn't know, but he sure as hell wouldn't let them take it without a fight. He was also expecting reinforcements from several cells in the morning, increasing his troop count to over a thousand armed men. All Mogran had to do was last the night.

Easier said than done.

Storage Bunker B

Wolfman slowly crept into the base's underground storage bunker. According to the mission briefing, this was the area the nukes were being held. He made a quick scan of the building and was relieved to see that there wasn't anybody inside. He moved deeper into the bunker, with Audie and Maverick covering his flanks.

"I don't like this." Maverick muttered. "There's something wrong here."

"Stop worrying." Wolfman bent down to check a cargo crate. "You're always saying- oh fuck."

"What?" Audie turned around.

"Get the hell out of here! It's a fucking trap!" Wolfman yelled as gunfire suddenly filled the room.

Fusion Reactor: Outer Core

All things considered, Maya thought that things were going fairly well right now. She and her team had managed to elude most of the Scarlet patrols. They had gotten this far and only had to leave about six or so dead bodies hidden throughout the base.

"How are things going on that security door?"

"These things aren't meant to be opened." Wonderboy growled. "It's going to take a while to circumvent the door's safeguards."

"Can't we just blow it up?" Cutter asked eagerly. "We haven't blown up anything yet."

"Hell no!" Wonderboy continued to work on the door. "The last thing we need to do is accidentally breach the core and cause a premature overload."

"Why aren't we just doing this from the convenience of the reactor control room?" Jonesin asked.

"Because unlike the actual reactor, the control room will be heavily guarded. With the radiation levels, high voltages, and delicate machinery, not many people will hang around here for long."

"Wait… radiation?" Jonesin said nervously.

"Don't worry, it's only faint background stuff. Nothing permanent."

"Wait, I think I'm getting something. I think it might be Wolfman" Maya said as she tried to increase the volume of her radio.

There was a burst of static, with bits and pieces of frantic talking in between, but Maya could not make out what was being said. However, she did hear the last word quite clearly.

"Ambush!"