1852 Hours UTC, 21 September 2552 (Military Calendar)/
Sol System, Earth, UNSC Science Outpost 01A-77

World No More

In less than five minutes, Chief Fontaine rode the elevator to the ground floor, sprinted across the open walkway and took the other lift below-ground, now sprinting past the cafeteria not too far from the main entrance.

The only sounds he heard were his own, booming footsteps and his labored breathing. There were no people in sight.

He high-tailed it toward the looming T-junction, glancing every direction as he sped past the many smaller passages to either side, making sure not to miss all those other passageways. Both lengths of the interconnected sub-complexes were totally devoid of human activity. Going off memory, Rion slowed to a light jog down this familiar hallway and noted the Call Center to the right a few more strides ahead.

He peered into the windows of every office. No one.

After checking all of them, he began to open doors. No one.

Each office had a desk, two chairs, a computer terminal and a monitor. Nothing else.

Rion was unsure what to do, where to go. There were no clues as to the regulars' whereabouts.

He bounded to the far end of this hall and stopped at the terminating double doors. He tried to pull them both open, but they were locked. He pivoted one-eighty and recognized an exact same set of double doors in the opposite corridor far past the T-junction. He started walking that way, now cognizant of the fact that this entire level of the outpost was barren, regaining normal respiration as he walked.

He stopped. To his left was the Call Center. He glanced at the phone booths inside, down each length of the hall, and back again. He did this three times while rubbing his chin. One minute was all he needed. He stepped inside.

Again, he waited for his wife's answer, and to his content she luckily did.

"Hello?"

"Honey, it's me."

"Hey. Is everything alright? You sound winded."

"Yeah, just got back from the gym. Hey, listen, I was thinking we'd take a little vacation soon."

"Oh, really? Okay. I thought you were staying there for a while, though."

"Yeah, I Just meant that we could take a real nice getaway to my father's old cabin in Montana. Like…right when I get back from this deployment. I could meet you there."

"Yeah, okay. Sounds good. You just a little burned out?"

"Yeah, sort of. Why don't you and Audrey start heading there. Take my mother with you."

"Um, Rion, you're not talking about right now, are you?"

"Yeah, why not? It'll be real fun. Three lovely ladies taking a nice road trip out to the sticks. Cool, mountain air and fireside board games. Wait for me. I'll be there before you know it."

"It's not a good idea. You know your mother is easily unsettled."

"I know she's a little stubborn at times, but just force her to go with you. She's been sitting in that house all alone for too long. She'll thank you for it later. Oh, and when you get there, head down to the bunker and give all the generators a good test-fire. You know how shaky the power grid is up there. Fifteen minute run-time should do."

"I don't know, Rion, I just don't know. It's a big trip to be taking spur of the moment. Audrey's about to go on that field trip with all her friends and—"

"—Don't let her go on that trip!" Rion sighed and forced his composure again. "I'll meet you all at the cabin."

"What is going on, Rion?"

"You've gotta do this for me, okay? I can tell you more about it later when we're all together again. Just do it. Do it now."

"Is it bad?"

"…Yes."

"Like real bad?"

"…Yes."

1910 Hours UTC
Delta corridor, Sub-complex A

"Hello!"

It was useless to carry on waiting for an answer that would never come.

Fontaine shook and pulled at the twin handles of the doors, again shouting, "Hello?! If you can hear me…you need to let me in! Reach is gone! The Covenant has glassed Reach!"

Rion shook the handles powerfully one last time and punched a fist into the hard steel.

He then relented, sighed and turned away.

Walking again, this time more slowly, he arrived at the T-junction in the middle. Once there, he stopped. A familiar chime sounded very close to him. Glancing down, he noticed the small LED pulsing on and off near his wrist. Rion pulled back the fabric cover of the transceiver sewn into his uniform and acknowledged the incoming message with a swipe of the hand.

"Hello." Rion answered tiredly.

"Chief, I understand you've been trying to gain access to the—"

"—Doctor, did you hear the news?"

"Yes, we know about Reach. I'm sorry we can't be there with you now, but everything here is alright. Feel free to stay underground as long as you wish, but we can't allow you any access further into the rest of the facility."

"What's the latest intel? Does anyone know anything?"

"You might be able to answer that question for yourself. I encourage you to retake your post. Perhaps something you can access via your own terminals will provide you the answers you need. We are somewhat engaged down here. I'll check up on you later. And our best hopes go to all those at Reach. Sorry, I must go."

The LED stopped blinking.

Rion refastened the nylon flap and carried on.

2030 Hours UTC
Rooftop

Rion queued the LASER transmit function and once again a predictably brief surge drained its power source for a fraction of a second, the supplementary fusion coil nearby brightening and dimming just as quickly. Rion took another glance at the surrounding site, making sure everything was within spec in accordance with his diagrams.

He walked to the operator's console and once again logged into the secure grid. He glanced about the home portal page, scanning for anything that might look like an action item. There was only the message at the top time stamped to that fateful hour of the day he first received it. It no longer blinked, Fontaine having already acknowledged it and read it. He was still having trouble comprehending it.

No more urgent message identifiers since then, it seemed. He placed the device atop a crate.

Rion backpedaled and sat down in the cot under the cover of his tent, began kneading his hands together. He couldn't shake the jitters now that the adrenaline had fully subsided. He checked his right fist and felt the swelling over the knuckles now that he saw how reddened they were. His leg involuntarily started to bounce up and down rapidly as he looked around the interior, looking for something to eat and drink. He shot up and sauntered to the refrigerator the other Marines set up in the corner before they departed. Inside were only soda cans and junk food.

He deftly reached for a handful of anything, throwing them to the cot. Standing over them, he selected the dark-colored soft drink and a bag of barbeque potato chips. He tore the packaging open and started to consume its contents ravenously, washing a mouthful of the food down with the sweetened, syrupy beverage. A few more instances of this and he started to regain his calm. He looked around again, returning to the console.

Typing into the display, he navigated to the Significant Acts menu. Holding in a column were chronological events. If the Chief wanted, he could expand way out and have the system recall archives as far back as 2525, when the Covenant first made their violent introduction to the human race. Instead, he dialed into a one-month swath from today's date backward. Upon fully regaining his senses, Rion realized that news of Reach's destruction would require some time to make it to Earth. Hopefully, this secure portal was recently updated since he accessed the ENM earlier.

He opened another tab-view and reloaded that fateful message out of curiosity, checked the initiator's timestamp. After another brief round of key-exchange and decryption, Fontaine had the full contents of the communiqué converted from cipher text to plain text. Over a traditional SATCOM link, the procedure would've consumed a valuable five minutes. Via LASER, it was near-instantaneous. Refocusing, Rion scrutinized the details. The message was actually just one part in a forwarded string, Admiral Hood being the most recent forwarder. The original sender was identified as a Lieutenant Wagner, first name redacted. The recipient(s) from Hood's instance was UNSC/ALL PERSONNEL. The original was dated 4 SEP 2552. That meant Reach was glassed nearly a month before all this by Rion's own estimation. Switching tabs, the Chief Warrant scanned into that one-month span and also confirmed Tribute was lost.

"They got the whole Epsilon Eridani system."

A squawk sounded from an audio emitter housed inside the console and Rion peered into the eyecups.

BORDER GATEWAY ROUTING TO CWO5 RION FONTAINE
REQUESTER: COL JEFFREY KROMER
BLINK TWICE TO ACCEPT INCOMING VTC…

Fontaine accepted with two blinks. He backed away from the eyecups so as to observe the viewscreen directly beneath, and the remote server's two-way feed instantly fetched the display of his commanding officer at the ONI Alpha Site just a few dozen klicks distant.

"Chief," the field-grade officer greeted, "there you are. I've been awaiting your transmission for some time. You finally made it to the secure grid. And I see you received the Emergency Notification Message. What took so long between now and then?"

"Apologies, sir, there's some wicked interference going on. This LASER feed was the only one I could get to work."

"It's a good thing you have it up and running, because the mission cut-sheet is now null and void. As of this moment, you are to utilize only this asset unless extenuating circumstances dictate otherwise…and I'm talking extreme circumstances. Sole use of this communications channel should eliminate any possibility of our sessions being intercepted. Even though our encryption would take years to brute-force-hack, we're not taking any chances now. We'll need it for the bandwidth, too."

"What's going to happen next, sir?"

"First, I need to you connect a feed from this uplink to the facilities underground. Make it a high-throughput mux. There's a lot of high-value intel down there and they're going to need a secure and fast means of getting it to me. Link up with your contacts below the surface and back-brief them on these instructions if they have any questions or concerns. And speaking of which…consider yourself indoctrinated into COMINT Level Alpha. You are to fully lock down your systems, restrict them exclusively to your command biometrics, and ensure their fidelity and survivability at all costs."

"Sir, I'm not sure I can defend all this by myself."

"Don't worry, Chief, just hold fast. Reinforcements are in-bound. Keep this channel twenty-four-seven hot and await further instruction. Alpha Site, out."

2230 Hours UTC
Surface

The Chief worked tirelessly for the last two hours, unwinding a massive spool of fiber optic cable as he descended the ramp level by level. He let gravity assist the rolling reel, as heavy as it was. It contained more than three-hundred meters of tri-armored, Kevlar reinforced plastic-clad silica.

Rion did the best he could to emplace the slithering line off to the side of the driveway in the event more vehicles were to access this place. The hasty cable run was not exactly a measure of Fontaine's work ethic, but this had to be done and time was of the essence. The Colonel had mentioned reinforcements were coming as well, though he didn't say who and how many they numbered.

Once to the bottom, Rion wiped a generous amount of sweat from his brow and began rolling the entire Aluminum-framed reel across the walkway. After another minute of this laborious activity, he knelt down next to a raised junction box and popped its door open with the aid of a pair of pliers. Inside was a patch panel. Rion tipped the reel over on its side so that I could no longer roll, pulled the pigtail from its end and began feeding all of its terminations through a bottom-side conduit. Once the entirety of the fan-out end was slid past the grommet, he had all the individual connectors locked in under two minutes.

He sealed the outer dust cover and said, "Ship-shape."

The Chief hailed the Doctor over his forearm radio.

"Yes, Fontaine. Go."

"Doctor, I've emplaced a high-speed fiber cable topside so you can have a direct link to ONI. I was told to do this by the—"

"—Understood, Chief. We'll take it from here. We appreciate it greatly."

"What do I do now?"

"Are you hungry?"

"Starving, but I can't leave my post."

"Understood. We'll have someone deliver."

2315 Hours UTC
Rooftop

He was just about to stand up to move about when he caught Max Schweinfurt stepping into view just as the light behind his back choked off, the elevator doors closing. The man look tired and on the verge of crashing should he be able to sit down and relax. Rion walked towards the engineer and met him halfway.

"Max. What's been going on? What are you all doing down there anyway?"

"Busy down there. Got a lot of data to process. Came to get you some food."

He handed Rion a Styrofoam container and a clear plastic cup full of water.

"I told the Doctor that a new fiber link is in place at the surface. I guess I'm your primary path out to ONI."

Max was delayed in replying to the Marine, his mind preoccupied on something. It was then in that hesitation that Rion heard the engineer start to sob. Had Max been even a meter more distant, Rion would never have picked up on it. The civilian was holding back something, some sadness, and was doing an incredibly good job at it. He must've sensed the Marine's recognition of it despite the dim rooftop ambiance.

"My father was to leave Reach. I don't know if he made it out before the Covenant attacked or if he's still there."

Rion squeezed the man's shoulder and said, "You just have to believe, Max. Keep trying to contact him and always hope for the best."

Max nodded and wiped at his nose with one sleeve of his labcoat. "I need to go eat something. Excuse me."

0015 Hours UTC
Rooftop

Max had picked up a lot of food for Rion and left without so much as a thank you from the Chief. Rion felt bad about it now that he was full, but then again Max had left in a hurry before he could offer his gratitude. He thought about venturing downward to check up on the man, but the Colonel was explicit about the site's modified security posturing. Rion would adhere to it steadfastly. He then thought about retiring to his twelfth-level sleeping tent, which was more spacious and comfortable than this rooftop ops tent. It was certainly quieter down there, away from the humming of fusion coils and cooling fans. In order to get to that point, though, Rion would have to run his orderwire cables down that way in order to keep tabs on the priceless gear and be alerted if something happened to the state of the link. That wasn't happening.

He was far too tired to make more work for himself. He was ready to crash. Though it was just a cot, he finally felt at ease as he sank into its canvass bottom. His lids began to sink just as his body did. Before dozing off, he thought about this new development. He still couldn't fathom Reach—the most well-defended territory in all of human history—being snuffed out. Even by the Covenant. Reach was always the galaxy's ballast against the merciless onslaught of the Covenant, the one true constant that all combatants held onto. The one place they could always run to in victory or defeat.

Re-arm there. Re-deploy from there.

The anchor. The fallback point. The bastion.

He couldn't picture it falling.

He couldn't believe they now had a straight shot to Earth. How much time remained?