Chapter 9

"Why's it so dark in here?" Axel questioned, turning on the nightvision on her HUD to reveal a dark hallway with walls of sparkling blue ice.

"Well, considering the fact that there are approximately 5.4762 feet of soil and 9.21764 feet of snow surrounding our current area located directly vertical of this position, light rays from the outer suns encircling this planet, which are hundreds of lightyears away, are completely diminished because of thickness of our surrounding environment," Zeta explained robotically. Axel frowned, turning to the A.I.

"SPEAK. ENGLISH. PLEASE," she instructed. Zeta gave a sigh.

"Ugh...we are underground so the pretty suns can't bring pretty lights to us!" she explained slowly, as if speaking to a small child. Axel rolled her eyes and continued walking through the corridor again.

Suddenly, Axel was bathed in an exceedingly bright light that lit up the entire tunnel-like structure.

"Or maybe I'm wrong…" Zeta mused, squinting her holographic eyes. But instead of sunlight, a headlight appeared, and as expected, was attached to a person. Whoever it was had Spartan armor, and they held an Assault Rifle. They raised the weapon, pointing at Axel's head.

"Drop your weapons and put your hands where I can see them!" the Spartan instructed with a gruff male voice. Axel quickly obeyed, removing her grenades, Magnum, and Suppressor. However, she didn't take off her invisibility. Maybe he didn't notice that she had it yet. She raised her hands in the air, remaining silent.

"Who are you and how did you know where this place was?" he questioned. Axel opened her mouth to speak, but Zeta quickly appeared and interrupted.

"Look, she was sent here because she moved up a rank and I'm here to accompany her. We have full clearance here and if you think we jumped out of an exploding spaceship into a freaking GIANT SNOWBALL just to be stuck with a useless mongoose and a horde of grunts, then get shot in the face by whoever the heck you are, FOR NOTHING, you are HIGHLY mistaken!" she yelled, folding her arms angrily. The Spartan seemed shocked to see the A.I. suddenly appear, along with being highly surprised at her outburst, and lowered his weapon.

"Z...Zeta! L...look, I'm REALLY sorry, I had NO idea you were here! I...I was just following protocol!" the Spartan squeaked, clasping his hands together as if he were begging for his life. He then turned to Axel.

"I apologize sir," he said, apparently unaware of Axel's gender. Axel turned to Zeta.

"You know this guy?" she asked, a hint of surprise in her voice as she reached down to recover her weapons. The other spartan gasped as he heard her speak.

"I...I'm SO sorry ma'am...I'm being such a fool today...I'm so embarrassed…" the spartan apologized once more. Axel chuckled to herself. Next, Zeta returned her attention to the spartan. Now that he wasn't aiming for her head, Axel took the time to observe his armor. He had full EVA armor, with black as the primary color and blue as a secondary color. His emblem was a blue and green wasp.

"S...so I was, well, sent up here to be your escort...guess I kinda screwed it up, though…" the spartan explained nervously. He seemed anxious and jittery when he spoke. He probably knew about as much as Axel did about what was actually going on.

"What's your name?" Axel suddenly asked. Zeta glanced at her with a bit of surprise at the sudden and random question.

"M...me? I'm Cadet Peters," he introduced quietly. So he was the same rank as Axel. That explained a lot. "So...what do I call you?" he quickly asked.

"Cadet Taylors" Axel responded. "We should get going," she quickly added. The two spartans, closely followed by Zeta, began walking down the unusual hallway.

"So...how big is this place?" Axel asked as they carried on through twisting cave systems.

"Oh, this place is HUGE! It covers most of the planet, but none of the covenant even know about it because it's all underground. Besides, it's too cold on this planet. They'd probably freeze to death before they ever found anything," Peters explained.

"Must've taken forever to build then," Axel assumed.

"Yup! The UNSC started building this place before I was even born, and they're constantly digging new tunnels. I'm surprised they haven't discovered the planet's core yet!" Peters continued. He stretched his arms out to show emphasis, but they ran into the thick and hard walls of ice that surrounded them. The nervous tone in his voice had been diminished, and it seemed as though he really enjoyed talking about the unusual base.

"Where are we going, exactly?" Axel questioned. She had just realized that she had followed a complete stranger that didn't seem to know much into an underground snow base with no escape, and she didn't even know why she was there in the first place.

This reminded her of how she had gotten there. She had completed a simple test and defeated a few holographic ODST's. Big deal. It didn't make any sense to her why she had moved up an entire rank. Or why Zeta was with her. It seemed odd that they would just drop off a valuable A.I. with a Cadet for her own personal use. She had so many questions, and none seemed to have answers.

"We're going to see my boss. He heard about what you did back at your academy. He said he wanted to speak with you, so he sent you here as soon as he could," Peters said, breaking Axel's train of thought. Well, one question had been answered. But now Axel had two more. Who was this spartan's boss? And what did he want with her?