23rd of July, 2552
Standard Military Calendar
UNSC Forward Ops Base "Charlie"
Visegrad Region, Vieri
Dawn broke on the cloudy morning of the twenty-third of July, nearly four days since Elster and Ariane had arrived in the Epsilon Eridani system. Elster had already received her assignment pertaining to her job in the UNSC Military. Specifically, she would join a Marine Division stationed within the confines of Fort Charlie, somewhere near the Visegrad communications array. Apparently, ONI had that place locked down tight for some reason or other. Doctor Halsey had told her that one of her co-workers, Laszlo Sorvad, was working on something in the area.
So, Elster stood there, feeling a bout of nostalgia hit her as she flew in aboard a UNSC Pelican transport. After getting a crash-course for two days on UNSC weapons handling, the young Replika prepared herself to begin work. She eyed the other soldiers aboard the Pelican, each of them calm. Some listened to music, others exchanged small-talk and others yet slept. The flight from the training point on the East Coast of Vieri back into the center of the place had been relatively uneventful, if long.
The Replika held in her hands two things:Her new service rifle, the MA37, a bullpup design with an ammunition counter and display in her right hand and leaning against her thigh, and a duffel bag in her left. Not a lot of personal effects that had had to be picked up, sans for some items sent back from the Penrose-512. Her and Ariane's toothbrushes, the latter of which was already at CASTLE, last the heard, her toolset, some repair sprays she still had with her, some adhesive tape and Ariane's paintings, the lattermost, again, sent straight to CASTLE Base.
"Hey, Private," A Soldier in front of her spoke. He was a young man in his mid-twenties, head clean shaven. A tattoo depicting an eagle had been drawn on his neck, only the head poking out from beneath his scarf. She hummed and arched a brow at him. He smirked and tilted his head, "Check it out. Our new home for the next few months..." before Elster turned and stopped, mouth agape.
The UNSC Forward Ops Base was a sprawling complex of concrete buildings intermixed with rapidly-assembled vehicle bays, logistics vehicles milling about and armored hangars where UNSC Aircraft, tanks and other vehicles resided. UNSC HEMTTs, or Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks, the backbone of the Army's logistics, carried everything from pallets of boxes, to fuel, to Marines and Army Troops.
The Pelican approached the Landing Pad and disgorged the infantry platoon. The Soldier that'd talked to Elster smirked as he took her side, watching her gaze around at the world. Tall mountains rose around the base, confining it to the wide valley between them. UNSC Falcon-class transport twin-rotor helicopters flew overhead, ferrying infantry to and from specific areas and training ops zones.
He elbowed her in the shoulder, taking her out of the short reverie of seeing the beauty of nature, then extended a hand toward her, "I'm corporal Travis. I think we'll be in the same squad, private... 3-Charlie."
The girl shook his hand with a firm, almost steel vice-like grip, then replied calmly, "Elster Five-twelve. I'm a private and the mechanic and armorer here," before retracting her hand. She hefted her duffel bag onto her shoulder and showed him to lead the way. As they walked through the base, there were various looks given by the soldiers present within the base. Worry, surprise, awe, fear... Whatever the look that one female private and her male buddies gave her was? She could understand it, honestly. Not every day you saw a Replika outside of Eusan.
"Sorry for the stares," Commented Travis. He cleared his throat and stated, "Not everyday people see someone like you."
"My thoughts exactly. It's no problem," Elster replied calmly, choosing to ignore the stares for now. Her mind was focused on other things. Images flashed in her mind, blurred. Black uniforms, rifles, the mud and pain of training. She paused as the flashes intensified, grabbing onto her head, then stopped almost instantly. Sighing, the girl closed her eyes and shook her head to clear her mind.
"You okay?" Travis asked, turning to her. She nodded, then sighed deeply, relieved that that little moment had passed. She then followed the worried Trooper and the rest of the men to their barracks. Inside one of the habitation areas, Elster soon found her bunk. She'd left her rifle in the hands of the armory's crews, instead opting to set up her personal effects in her trunk.
The familiarity of this place hit her way too hard for it to be normal. She focused on her work, choosing to ignore the gnawing feeling in the back of her mind that she had been somewhere similar before. She hummed, lifted up a picture of Ariane from her duffel and smiled. Her beautiful lover, young as could be, with that bright white hair and those scarlet eyes filled with love. Elster had caught her at the flight console during a burn to adjust their apoapsis and she had the cutest face when she focused.
Sighing, the girl stuffed the photo into her newly-given helmet. The UNSC was issuing its troops helmets with goggles that displayed HUDs, which included Motion Trackers, bio-readings on the troopers themselves and other various utilities such as knowing how much ammo one had in their weapon, the weapon they were wielding and the amount or extra rounds in their pouches.
She had also been given a standard-issue OD-green military BDU, which included the extra chest and shoulder armor plates, the knee and elbow pads and the undergarment of the uniform itself. The only thing she didn't get was boots, because of her legs. One Trooper commented, "I'm not seein' boots there, private... Ya good with not havin'em?" before pausing as he saw the legs, "Oh, shit... You good? Those some new prosthetics NAVSPECWAR 3's testing out...?"
"They're my legs..." Elster replied calmly, sitting herself down on her bunk. At least the uniform pants reached almost all the way down without impeding movement. The soldier winced and was about to apologize, before Elster raised a hand and said, "I'm a humanoid machine. This unit's new mechanic and armorer. Apologies for the confusion are unnecessary."
"Alright..." The soldier said, "Elster, right?"
"Yeah," She nodded, standing up and donning the shirt, which held the attachment points for the armor plates. She clipped the armor pieces on, both to the chest and to the shoulders, put on her kneepads and helmet, then moved around a bit to test flexibility. The shoulders didn't impede movement up to 90 degrees due to the flexibility of the plates. She nodded approvingly.
"Where ya goin'?" Another female Trooper asked, poking her head out from behind her bunk.
"The motor pool. I have work I need to do," Elster replied, "Then, the Armory..."
"And the rest of us have a patrol to run, so... Yeah, fair enough," Stated Travis as he hefted his kit to the side. He saluted Elster and said, "Be seeing ya around, chief engineer," with a smirk. A few of the soldiers let out short laughs as Elster stepped off, donning the full kit, sans her rifle and pistol. She just needed some alone time to process a multitude of things, such as the flashes in her mind. That was not a normal occurrence for any Replika. None that she knew of, anyway.
She walked across the base, stopping every once in a while to ask the local soldiers about directions. Finding her way to the motor-pool, the woman walked inside, to the sight of the UNSC's main battle tanks. The M808B MBT, called the 'Scorpion' due to its unusual shape, was a relatively large battle tank armed with a 90mm smoothbore high-velocity cannon that fired tungsten-tipped penetrators and HE rounds.
She hummed. ahead of the line of tanks was a smaller group of M12 Force Application Vehicles, nicknamed by the Marines and Army that used them as 'The Warthog'. She noticed one of the vehicles had a disassembled forward portion where the hydrogen-based engine lay, chunks of it missing. Probably the local mechanics giving it a once-over or something.
She hummed, approached the FAV, then started looking into what was wrong, checking the multitude of parts spread out around it on the floor. She realized they were all arrayed in order of the requirement for the re-building. From left to right, from the smallest bolt to the biggest chunk of the engine. She crouched and looked the pieces over, noting one of them was broken. A small valve that probably controlled the outflow of hydrogen, or stopped it from burning too harshly. She knew it was broken because the engine's manual looped back into her mind as she looked it over.
She hummed, pulled her tool set off from her back and set it aside, before pulling out a repair spray. The broken piece relied on a specialized polyurethane mix that sealed its surroundings tightly. That seal was broken, but easily replaceable with the items she had on hand. Calmly, she undid the cover on the part, scraped off the polyurethane mix, then added in the fresh one with the spray. Setting the piece aside, the girl then looked over any other chunk of the 'Hog that was broken as her mind flashed her images of something or other again.
Armored fighting vehicles, gunfire, rounds pinging off armor plate...
She staggered again, inches short of dropping a sensitive piece of the Warthog as her mind scrambled. She set the engine part aside, sat herself down and took her helmet off, blinking away a sudden blur that veiled her eyes. She sighed, cocked her jaw as she felt a faint stab of pain through her artificial nerves, then straightened back up to get to work. It wasn't a good moment for her to lose her shit.
She began working on the reassembly, taking each piece, meticulously re-cleaning it and polishing it, then setting it into place. Slowly, from the inside out, the woman rebuilt the engine in the maw of the Warthog within the span of a little over four hours. She hummed and thumbed the last piece of the 'Hog's engine into place just as a figure ran inside and demanded, "What the hell are you doing, Trooper?!"
Elster took a hot second to register the newcomer. A man in his early twenties, clad in a UNSC uniform with a jumpsuit and his armor set somehow put on backwards, stained by oil, grease and the likes. The girl looked to the man, noting that he had the same rank as her, then said nonchalantly, "I put it back together..." as she walked toward the left side of the vehicle and climbed aboard.
"I took it apart and found it'd blown a seal! The Marine company from New Alexandria brought the damn thing in for checkups when she started sputtering! It ain't safe to turn on right now!" The man protested in any conceivable way he could think of. The ginger-haired, green-eyed man then froze as he saw the girl tap the button. The vehicle's engine sputtered for a second, then roared and revved.
The girl hummed and turned it off, then jumped off and walked back to the front. She looked it over and said, "It may still need some adjustments... Could you pass me that socket wrench?" to which the dumbfound man simply stared at her for a second. She looked to him, not a hint of malice behind her gaze, just steely resolve to finish the repairs. At that, he nodded, walked over to her toolset and plucked up the item she asked for, before handing it over. She started her adjustments, then stated, "Please turn it on when I say so..."
The man nodded as he climbed into the driver's side. Elster hummed as she tightened the loose piece to the point she couldn't realistically anymore without breaking it. She then gave a thumbs up and the man pressed the button... The Engine purred to life like it would have in any other normal circumstance and the man stared, wide-eyed at Elster as she stood up and packed her kit.
"How'd you... Do that...?" He asked, "You're that new engineer, the... What'd they call you, 'unit'?"
"Yeah. LSTR-512. Engineering and surveyor unit, now a mechanic and Trooper," She replied calmly, before pausing as she heard boots crunching against the dirt outside the Motorpool. She looked up to see the Lieutenant of her squad and, snapping a crisp salute almost out of instinct, she also noticed that the outside had considerably darkened. How, god only knew. The man saluted back and nodded her at ease. She also noted the presence of Travis.
"Sorry to interrupt tea-time, private. We're moving out. Colonel Urban Holland, our CO, gave us and a few other squads a mission," The Lieutenant stated. He looked to the other mechanic behind Elster and asked, "These 'Hogs good?" to which he nodded. The Lieutenant hummed and said, "Everyone mount up. Grab extra fuel and ammo. Private Elster, corporal Travis brought your gun for you. You're coming with us."
"Sir," She nodded. Travis stepped up and handed her her MA37 and her pistol, as well as some extra ammo.
"Didn't think your first outing will be this quick, eh?" He quipped, shouldering his DMR. Elster felt a pit in her gut, but nodded nonetheless, mounting up with the Marines as the mechanic set the armor plate over the engine back in place. Travis took the gun of a Hog, while Elster rode shotgun. She checked her weapons almost compulsively, going from bolt, to ammo counter, to magazine for both at least three times before the lead Warthog lurched forward.
By the time Elster had realized they were out of the FOB, the girl only had the sky above and the light of the Warthog's touch screen console displays and headlights as illumination. She gazed up at the sky of Reach, the beauty of the stars floating out in the dark filling her gaze. It was somehow even more beautiful than flying through the void. Somehow. She just wished Ariane was here to see it.
"Hey, El-Tee?" A trooper radioed in on short-range. Elster could hear him thanks to her helmet's own built-in communication system.
"Go ahead, corporal," The man sounded sharp, focused, when he replied. Elster tensed up. She had a nagging feeling that something was abound to go down. The hairs on her neck stood on-end. The vehicles rolled on forward into the mountains as she waited to hear what the Corporal was about to ask, finding a road that climbed up to the upper areas of the range...
"What's the job...?" The trooper warily asked, "Cuz it ain't like the colonel to send our asses out on a milk run..."
"Visegrad Relay went dark. We're going in to investigate. Holland things it might be local Innies, but that's yet to be confirmed," The Lieutenant replied calmly. Audible was the rack of a few weapons' bolts as the Army troopers prepared for the worst. Meanwhile, Elster paused. 'Innies'? Insurrectionists? The UNSC had issues with splinter groups in the middle of a war for survival? She heard several of the Army troopers voice their disgruntlement over the communication system.
She'd have to ask more back at base. Shifting in her seat, the girl racked her weapons' bolts, feeding rounds into both their chambers and readying herself as they moved up the roadway. Travis spoke from behind her, "Sir, this is Travis, lead hog. We just entered a dark zone. Can't get coms with command on any freq, even backups... Might be we're being jammed."
"Shit," Swore the driver from beside Elster, "Sounds like we're in deep..."
"Stay frosty. Looks like we'll need to get the Relay back online before we got Coms. Cut the lights and turn on your VISRs. Let's get rough, Troopers..." The man ordered. The headlights of the vehicles. The VISR. Elster remembered the briefing and, for a moment, images flashed before her eyes. She shook them away quickly, feeling that pit in her stomach deepen. Tapping her helmet as the Warthog's lights went dark, the girl's eyes were soon enveloped by a fluorescent green, the HUD compensating by lowering its own brightness. She saw the outlines of allied troops, of their vehicles and of the surrounding area, more clearly defined now that they had them on as compared to the prior darkness.
She tensed, the grip on her weapon tighter as the vehicles rolled past a multitude of local abodes, circular in design and strangely constructed from what looked to be cheap, but resistant materials. Some locals were staring at them from the windows from which light still protruded, but didn't dare come down to talk or stop them. The vehicles rolled on past with impunity, through open gates and a few miles further, toward one of the mountain peaks.
The vehicles slowed as they reached an open 'field' of sorts in the mountainous area. Travis reported over com, "I'm seeing movement, sir. Hill at our twelve..." and he squinted, "Silhouette looks human. May need to dismount to check on him." before an affirmative response came from the Lieutenant. The squadron of three 'Hogs slowed to a halt, with Elster, Travis and their driver dismounted, marching up to the man. Travis lifted a hand and showed the man to stop.
He began speaking a foreign language at the group of infantrymen as the dog beside him barked at them. Travis rolled his eyes and murmured, "Fucking hell, it's a local. Hungarian... Someone get Tomas up. We need his ass translating this shit..." before watching the Lieutenant approach with their resident Hungarian infantryman. Elster fidgeted, jumping from one peg foot to the other as she looked around, eyes scanning the horizon and the tops of the jagged rock faces around them like it was an instinct she didn't know she had.
Multiple images flashed in front of her as she listened to the men speak, this time accompanied by the roar of sporadic gunfire, of screaming in one of the many languages of Eusan. The images were a blur, like they were muddled by the girl having submerged herself in water, or her vision losing focus. She saw the muzzle flashes, heard the roar of artillery cannons... And only snapped out of it when Travis tapped her on the shoulder. She looked toward him, her eyes wider, her behavior more alert as she felt the impossibility of her heart beating in her throat.
Travis blinked, then murmured, "You okay, Elster?"
She nodded awkwardly. The man hummed and said, "Right... El-Tee ordered us to form a perimeter. We need you covering an angle..." and he pointed to the left of the Lieutenant, about twenty meters, angling toward a narrow split, a pathway between the rocks that opened into a wider valley up on the top of the mountain range. She looked to Travis, wordlessly nodded and took up position, taking a knee and shouldering her rifle. The crosshair moved with where she pointed the weapon, so it was easy enough to aim.
In the meantime, she listened to the ranting young farmer, the Lieutenant and their translator. The Translator spoke warily, "... And that something landed nearby that spooked his herd of Moa... God only knows what it was. Kid says he heard sounds from near by the crevice about four klicks due east of here, which is about a klick out from the Array, sir." and the Lieutenant nodded approvingly.
"Tell him we're only here to see what the disturbance is about, then, if he can't get we're here to restore coms... And that we're not here to harm his herd of weird ostriches," The Lieutenant ordered calmly, then looked at the defensive perimeter formed around them. Elster hummed, meanwhile, eyeing the strange crevice and the hilltop every once in a while. She blinked, then squinted, her visor polarizing and zooming in as she gazed at the hill. A blur appeared in her eyesight again, this time looking like distortion in the air from a flame.
The dog barked incessantly now, turning back at the hill as his owner berated him, then turned back to the Army troopers...
Her eyes shot wide open as something appeared instead of the distortion. Like a layer of blindness peeling back, a figure, taller than the average human, bow-legged and clad in scarlet armor, appeared. The alien with four jaws took aim with a strange, almost fish-like weapon in shape, pink crystals glimmering like jagged diamonds at the top. Elster only had time to open her mouth when she heard and saw the shot.
A trail of crystalline fragments followed the sharpened projectile. It whistled like an arrow piercing the wind at the speed of sound, before slamming into the back of the unarmed young man and exploding. The boy collapsed as his back was blown wide open by the shot and a flurry of swearing and commands suddenly filtered into Elster's ears. She perked up and aimed toward the target, firing a burst of automatic fire toward the target. The third round was a bright tracer, bright enough for the squadron to follow where it went.
"FUCK!"
"CONTACT!"
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!"
"Fall back!" The Lieutenant bellowed, taking control of the situation, "Get behind the fucking hogs! Move it!" And he stopped as a second shot rang out from the left. Trooper Tomas collapsed, his lungs exploding outward as what Elster soon recognized as an azure ball of ionized gas-plasma-struck him. He died on the spot, rifle clattering on the floor. Elster saw where the shot had come from and fired on the move, training she didn't even know she had kicking in.
Leapfrogging from rock to rock to get back to the Warthogs, the girl now stood side-by-side with Travis. The boy swore a flurry of swears to himself as he peered over and fired his DMR, before ducking back into cover and calling out, "WHERE THE FUCK IS EVERYBODY!?" more directed at the enemy that engaged them. A plasma shot, this one green, hissed by their ears, right between them. It struck the ground, boiling away a topsoil layer and, with it, a patch of grass.
Elster poked out from behind cover, low and fast. She fired a burst at the advancing enemies and saw her rounds connect. They flashed off something blue that surrounded one of the enemies, which was clad in decorated orange armor, then ducked back and said, "They have shields..." immediately. She poked up again and fired a full magazine at said enemy. The bloom and slight recoil kicked hard, but Elster managed to lay down enough hate to kill it. It collapsed with a loud, guttural growl and died. Elster grabbed Travis by the Collar and said, "Move!"
She and him ran all the way back to the Warthogs as more plasma rained down on them. Another of their teammates caught a bolt in the back and tumbled over, a corpse before he even hit the ground. Elster ducked in cover behind the Warthog and reloaded her rifle as Travis called out, "Lieutenant, we gotta get the fuck outta here! Get back into range and call command!"
"You're goddamn right we gotta move!" The Lieutenant growled. He poked over the hood of the Warthog and fired, then ducked back as the reply of plasma and Needle fire struck the vehicle's front, superheating the titanium plate shielding the engine. One of the Troopers mounted up on the Warthog's rear machine gun and revved it up, firing. It spat point-fifty cal rounds downrange at around nine hundred rounds per minute. Red tracers filled their vision.
Elster felt her mind go into overdrive, her comrades' deaths suddenly hitting her like a brick as she went on to ask the Lieutenant, "Sir! Can't we hold them back?!"
"No!" Travis barked, "We gotta call for backup, sir!"
"Fucking hell, people, we've been engaged! Yammer on later, get in the Warthogs now!" The Lieutenant barked as the Trooper manning the Warthog's gun got sniped, his head popped like a zit. His corpse tumbled over the side of the vehicle, dead. Elster blinked, looked to Travis and felt her bionic heart start to race. Travis looked over and fired another burst at the enemy, then nodded.
"Drive, I'll shoot!" He told Elster and jumped on the 'Hog's gun, then opened up as a flurry of plasma and needles struck around them. She nodded and jumped into the vehicle, before looking back at the Lieutenant and the others do the same. The transport turned on and lurched forward as Elster pressed the acceleration pedal just in time. A boulder of green energy that made her in-built geiger counter flare slammed into the ground where they'd been, bubbling glass and a crater being the marks of the emerald weapon's strike.
Another hit a rear Warthog in the front axle, disabling the vehicle. The crew aboard had to jump out of fear it'd explode. Elster saw it all in her rearview mirror. Her heart racing, breathing erratic and with new memories that were not her own flashing back into her mind, the girl demanded "What the Hell just engaged us...!? Do your insurrectionists carry plasma weapons?! Do they have Shields?!"
"Wasn't Innies!" Travis replied angrily, turning the gun, "It was the goddamn Covenant! They're here! FUCK! Lieutenant, what in Hell's name do we fucking do!?"
"Get to the Station! We'll split up and try and drag these shitheels away from you, Corporal! You and private Elster repair the station, warn Holland! Tell him to send goddamn reinforcements if you get any sort of signal!" The man ordered, sharp. Their vehicle veered to the right, the Covenant troops seemingly in hot pursuit. Elster soon realized what this meant.
Humanity's mortal enemy was here, on the very Fortress of Mankind. Her heart sank as she felt a hint of despair pick at it. The roar of gunfire, the bursts of plasma, the whistle of the needle weapons, all awoke nasty memories from LSTR-512's memories, memories she should, by all accounts, not even bear. She shook her head, punched herself in the forehead to settle the issue, then gasped as another of those green projectiles struck in front of her. The hit melted the floor ahead and caused the vic to bounce up and down.
She growled, drew the M6G Magnum from its holster and cocked it with one hand, then aimed up at the bastards that fired at them. Squeezing the trigger, she felt the surprisingly light kick of the fifty-caliber Semi-Armor-Piercing High-Explosive round. The shot whizzed past the alien bipedal that had fired at them with the handheld cannon and Elster damn near crashed.
She veered a left through a narrower passage, trundling down and damn near hitting the edge. A scream took her attention to the rear. Blood seeped onto the rear tray of the vehicle as the man behind her collapsed on the gun. She called out, "Travis!" with more anger than fear in her voice. The man groaned and held onto his hip, where a purple crystal had embedded itself. He grit his teeth and, with a loud groan, pulled it out before it shattered into a thousand micro-fragments that'd cause the wound to be infected.
"I'm good, I'm good... Shit..." He grunted, then gasped as Elster veered to the left. He saw them on the Motion Tracker. Golden dots... Switching the freq, he called out, "Watch your twelve, watch your twelve! Friendlies coming in on a 'Hog! Enemy units in hot pursuit!" just as a needle round punctured and detonated inside one of the rear tires, stopping the vehicle in its tracks.
Another Trooper appeared in front of them out of a total of Six survivors, urging them out of the vehicle, "C'mon! C'mon! It's safe here!" just as Elster dismounted and grabbed Travis off the back of the 'Hog. She carried the wounded man over toward a house that had been built into the rock and dirt and into a garage. The Warthog behind them took another bolt of energy and detonated in a blinding flash.
"C'mon!" A Trooper Medic helped Elster drag Travis in, before another hit a door control button. The door shut behind them, allowing them respite and space to breathe, with Elster dry-heaving. She fell to her knees, taking her helmet off and rubbing her face, before looking to Travis. The injured Marine was being treated with Bio-foam by the medic, who said, "You got fucking lucky... Covvies hit us first... Shit..."
"How many?" Elster asked the Medic, worried.
"Thirty. There's six of us left. Do the math..." She replied. Elster leaned back against the door, then was shown to be quiet by the surviving team leader, a Corporal Barklay as per the HUD's display. Covenant Troops around them moved on top of the roof, their hooved feet slamming against the corrugated metal panels and disappearing in the distance, away from the house...
When the last noise vanished, the Troopers sighed in relief and Elster thanked God those creatures were stupid enough not to check this place... Maybe they must've thought they'd gotten us all, Elster thought to herself as she slowly crawled up to Travis and checked him. The man grunted, face pale, but he seemed okay otherwise. "That was a freaking shitshow and a half." He spoke with a grunt. A few of the Troopers let out distasted laughs of approval, while Elster sighed, relieved.
... Then the existential dread hit...
The Covenant were here...
... Ariane...