BraK3R's A/N: What's up everyone! I'm very excited to finally post chapter 10 of this fanfic. It's been a long time coming but now I will finally continue the story where Delvaro left off and I hope you guys are just as excited as I am. This is Delvaro's last chapter, and from now on every chapter will be my own. This chapter also happens to be one of my favorite ones in the fanfic so far haha. Please enjoy, review, and follow!
DelVarO's A/N: Booyah! I'm back and alive! Yeah, it took me a while but I've been honestly busy. I'm in my last year in my academy so my workload was trippled. So far, in two months I had to write seven essays and other stuff. So yeah, I didnt really have time to write anything. Also, the last three weeks, while I have been mostly free, were occupied with Battlefield 3 (Cant blame me for this! The game's awesome!) and reading the latest Halo novel (Halo: Glasslands, in case you're interested. The sort-of Sequel to Ghosts of Onyx). So yeah, now that I finished the novel I finally made the time to write this brand new chapter. Sorry it took me so long!
Now, this chapter is not as long as I at first assumed (it looked much longer when I was writing it) but I dont really care at the moment. It's 2AM and I barely got any sleep this week and my eyes are killing me at the moment. I double checked for weird typos so I'm sure I fixed all the stuff I could find. But then again, I am sleepy and I might've missed something. If you do spot something, feel free to notify me so I could fix it.
Now, enjoy this new chapter! I worked for many hours on it! :D
Chapter 10 - Into the Howling Dark
1300 Hours, February 8, 2563 (Military Calendar) / Planet Venatio / Research Base Alpha
A day. Twenty four hours, or in this case, twenty six hours. Damian had been in a situation like this before but never expected that just simply sitting on your ass underground for a whole day with nothing to do, while the enemy was doing god knows what outside, would be so torturous. After all, for all he knew, they could be attempting to open the door at this very moment and they were none the wiser. The exterior cameras were offline or most were missing so they were blind to the outside world. Any message they tried sending, came unanswered and no one had tried to contact them so it meant either of two things: either everyone outside decided to maintain radio silence...or they were already dead. That wasn't a cheerful thought.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. You don't want to be depressed now and ruin the mood for everyone.
Not that he actually needed to try. The mood was already utter shit. Kyle was sulking around, preferring everyone to leave him alone, so he volunteered to patrol the corridors most of the time. Leone and Brass constantly argued over what they should do next. Should they stay here and try to contact the other bases or find another way out. None of them were keen on going outside. Mary was pissed that nothing seemed to properly work and that the system was so thoroughly and violently wiped. The only ones who seemed to act the same as usual were himself and Akira. Then again, he was able to see the changes in Akira anyway. She was more agitated and kept slightly jumping at the slightest unexpected noise. It was barely there, invisible to someone who didn't know her.
The only good news they had was that Sean was up and about.
Mostly anyway. He seemed to be a little bit out of it. He tried acting normal but whenever he was sure no one was looking or listening, Damian caught him muttering to himself or looking at his injury with a hideous cringe. The most prominent word he caught was 'demons'. When he was asked about it he gave a quick explanation to him. The small plasma bolt exploded when it hit him and truthfully, without the armor he would've lost his arm. As he passionately said, "It's one thing to burn you and its another thing to blow you up but doing both at the same time is pure evil. It ain't no covvies man, even they don't do this shit."
I guess everyone agrees then that it isn't the Covenant.
Not that there was a Covenant anymore. With the end of the war, the Covenant had disbanded and all the races went on their own merry way. The Brutes went to do more fighting amongst themselves for whatever reason they had, Jackals went back to being traders and pirates, and the Elites went back to their home, Sanghelios. Where the hell the Grunts, Drones, and Hunters went is anyone's guess. The Jackals were probably selling Covenant tech to some Insurrectionist dick-weed that had crawled out of his spider-hole after the war had ended.
Nowadays it was practically impossible to encounter organized rebel groups, other than some backwater planets where the aliens never realized that the Covenant was no more. When the Covenant fell, so did their supply lines, COM systems, everything. For an almighty advanced collection of alien races, they were quite dependent on each other. Remove one race and the whole system crashes. With the Engineers gone, no one repaired their ships and equipment, no one brought them new armaments, and no one brought them supplies other than the Jackals, and those buggers traded with anyone who wanted to trade. Of course, if they didn't kill them first.
After nearly thirty years of war and fighting them for so long, it felt kind of strange not to call them the Covenant. Even after a decade, people still called them that, even though now they were individual races.
At the moment, Damian was patrolling the corridors. There wasn't much else to do, other than stare at the empty corridors and dusty floors but if whatever crawled through the ventilation shafts came back, someone needed to know where it was. Also there was the danger that whatever was outside might try to get in, or worse, was already inside. They weren't taking any risks. Damian didn't argue. He was edgy about the whole situation as it was. Fighting known alien enemies was somewhat comforting compared to this. There were atleast patterns. You shot them, and they died. You knew where to shoot, how much to shoot and to tell if it was dead. Whatever was attacking them here was completely and utterly unknown. Unknown was not something he liked.
He would've continued his mental rant about how much he hated the situation, had he not heard the new Leone vs. Brass argument in the control room.
"... well, the armory's on the third floor, including the barracks and other labs," he heard Leone say. Calmly, not in the gruff, growl-like voice he usually used when he was arguing over something. Maybe they weren't arguing after all. "We need to resupply anyway."
"Yeah, but what if it was locked away for a reason? What if whatever is down there is worse than what's outside?" Brass countered, speaking slowly as if Leone wouldn't understand him if he spoke faster. "What if the guys here didn't want to take their chances with what's down there and instead simply left?"
"And left all their food supplies and all their belongings here? No, if they would've left, they would have taken it with them. They had the time to weld that door shut, which means they had time to gather supplies, which they didn't do."
At that moment Damian entered the control room where he saw the two men sitting in front of the empty screens. The only screen that had something on was the screen in front of Mary. He was never all that tech savvy. Other than knowing the basics and how to operate his VISR(Visual Intelligence System Reconnaissance), he never bothered to learn much else. He had more important things to worry about, like overzealous aliens who wanted to wipe him out. They ignored him and continued with their conversation/argument.
"Well, I still don't want to take my chances outside. It doesn't mean that I want to find out why they welded that door shut. I'm all for the armory but what if-"
Brass was interrupted by a loud and ecstatic shout from Mary. "Yes! Finally!" she exclaimed, pumping her fists into the air and proceeded to do something which looked like some deformed and unorganized victory dance from a sitting position. It was at that moment that she realized that all attention was turned to her. She met the questioning gazes with a dazzling grin. "I managed to find what remained on the system. It's a very patchy job, obviously not done by an expert..."
She was about to ramble on but Leone held up a hand. "And why is this making you so happy?"
Mary rolled her eyes. "the distress signal had to come from somewhere, right? It came from this base," she paused, looking at them expectantly, waiting for them to say something. Brass looked at Damian, hoping to see an answer but was met with the same confused expression and a shrug. Mary realized that no answer was coming and rolled her eyes again. "If the system was damaged and wiped, it means that the distress signal is still there. I just had to find it. Whoever set up the distress signal made a patchy job, but they did set up a secondary system, regardless of how frail it is,"
"And...?" Brass asked in length, wondering what she was getting at.
Mary scoffed, obviously annoyed. "Luddites," she muttered, getting an indignant glare from Brass. Damian just rolled his eyes with a smirk. Leone showed no outward reaction to her words. "I'll explain it for you in your manly caveman language. The distress signal came from this very base, it's still up and I know where exactly it comes from."
This seemed to make Leone perk up. Without further prodding Mary continued, her victorious smirk now gone. "Third floor."
Those two words were enough to settle them all into uncomfortable silence. Brass hung his head in defeat while Leone firmed his jaw. Damian sighed in resignation. From one shitty situation to another. This gave Leone another reason to go down there. If he was going to admit it, Damian was freaked out by the lower floors.
Brass has a point, what if they closed it for a good reason?
Either way, they were going down. ODST's never refused missions, it was just like that and once Leone set his sights on something, he would get it. However, that didn't mean they had to like it. Then again, he was getting frustratingly bored.
"We're really going to do this?" Damian asked, speaking for the first time.
"Yeah, we're going down there and let's hope that whatever is down there won't bite off our asses," Leone replied.
"Permission to feel reassured, sir." Damian said, stone-faced, showing no expression.
"Granted, now go and gather everyone and do it fast. The longer we sit here on our asses the more time we give the enemy to bust in here!"
With a nod Damian left the room, walking in a swift pace to the location where Akira had last patrolled and from there he would pick up Kyle and Sean.
He found her in five minutes as she aimlessly walked through a corridor. He quickly explained the situation to her and they moved quickly to the room where Sean was staying. Kyle would probably be there as well. His assumption was proven correct when they entered the room, which had become their unofficial sleeping quarters. Sean was tinkering with his Covenant carbine, doing whatever he was doing with it while Kyle was taking a nap against the wall.
Damian lightly kicked Kyle's boot, startling the man from his slumber. He looked around frantically, a hand resting on his weapon, before he realized that nothing was attacking him. "Come on, Sarge wants to see us," he said and turned around to leave, quickly followed by Akira. Kyle exchanged a glance with Sean and got up with a groan and ran to catch up with the duo, followed by the silent Sean.
"What's Sarge up to?" Kyle asked when he caught up with Damian.
Damian didn't look at him. He knew that Kyle was nervous enough as it was and he really didn't want to make him even more so. He was depressed enough as it was but it couldn't be helped; Kyle was an ODST. He wouldn't be one if he couldn't handle a situation such as this, first mission or not. "We're probably going down to the third floor," he said tonelessly.
Kyle's eyebrows rose to his hairline. "Why?"
"The distress signal came from the third floor. Whoever set it up might still be there. The armory is there too and we're not exactly full on ammo," he explained shortly. "Sarge will explain the rest."
Kyle looked at him for several seconds before he steeled his features and gave Damian a firm nod. The corners of Damian's lip quirked a bit, glad to see that Kyle still had some grit left in him. It was always hard to see a friend die for the first time. In some aspect, the lucky ones witnessed it during a battle. At that time, no one would have any time to grieve, or think about it too much. In a battle it was a distraction that you couldn't afford. Jimmy on the other hand...was all too sudden. They didn't even know when he had died, they had never noticed that he had been missing in the first place.
The rest of the walk continued in silence and the only words that were said were a couple of greetings to Sarge and Brass when they entered the control room. They all took whatever seats they could find, some taking seats on the table when all the chairs were taken. Leone stood in front of them and gave them all a long, hard look before he spoke.
"Alright troopers, we have a choice to make here. Mary here found out where the distress signal came from. Unfortunately, it comes from the third floor. Now, before you interrupt me with whatever you have to say, I've probably already heard it from a certain someone," he gave a pointed look at Brass, who didn't shy away from it. "We still need to go down there. Rescue's not coming anytime soon if at all, and I'll probably go insane if we stay here and lay low forever. We still have a mission to complete..."
"...find out what happened here and where everyone disappeared to," Akira finished.
"Got that in one," Leone said to her with a nod. "I don't know about any of you, but I never leave a mission unfinished. So gear up, and lets go and find us some scientists!" he barked out, urging them to action.
The next minutes were a flurry of movements, squadmates moving about, picking up their equipment, weapons and whatever else they left lying around, which happened to be a cigarette pack in Brass' case. When it was all over, they silently moved towards the third floor door in the stairwell. Once they arrived, Sean took out his welding equipment and handed it over to Brass, since he still couldn't properly use his arm. It wasn't an awfully long process, though it was still trying on Damian's patience. It took about fifteen minutes for Brass to cut open a doorway for them all to fit through. When Brass was done, he folded up the equipment and placed it back into Sean's rucksack. He put on his helmet, polarized his visor, and gave a nod to Leone. They both approached the door and grasped the new edges and pulled it towards themselves. Damian and Kyle quickly helped them place the piece of metal as quietly as they could on the floor while Mary and Akira pointed their weapons into the now-open doorway. There was no reason to make a ruckus when they could easily avoid it.
They quickly stood up, pulled out their weapons and approached the doorway. Much to Damian's dismay, the stairway lead to a very dark hallway. Just what I need. Running around in dark corridors with possibly hostile aliens lurking about. With that thought in mind, he followed Leone and Brass down into the dark, closely followed by the others. The only positive thing that Damian could see in this situation was that their BDU's allowed them to blend in the dark, making it hard to see them properly.
As soon as he entered the dark corridor everything brightened as his HUD entered VISR mode, which brightened his mood a bit as everything in the corridor became illuminated and highlighted by the smartfeed. A few seconds later however, any remnants of his positive mood vanished.
If the floor above them could be described as abandoned, as in, the inhabitants leaving the place quietly without leaving any trails, then this floor was an utter mess. To make matters worse, there were signs of intense battle visible in every direction he looked. The squad paused in place, inspecting the scene, searching for any clue to tell them as to what had happened. Bullet holes were in practically every wall in sight. Empty casings littered the floor, along with empty clips that were discarded once they became useless. From this position Damian could see three more melted holes on the floor, smaller that the one upstairs but still nothing to tell them about the source. At this point, it seemed that there hadn't been returned fire towards the shooters. Leone silently signaled them to follow as he took the lead and moved further into the dark corridor. The same scene appeared again and again throughout the hallway, bullet holes in the walls, empty casings, sometimes they could see dark stains on the floors and walls of various sizes. It didn't take a genius to understand what it was. Dried blood. It looked like a large battle had taken place here but one detail kept on unnerving Damian continually, a feeling that was shared by the rest of the squad.
There were no bodies in sight.
It left them to assume that two things had happened. A battle had taken place and the personnel had retreated without casualties, although there was a slim chance to that with all the dried blood so far. What happened to the bodies however... was a mystery. The marines would've taken the injured with them, or whoever had attacked had also taken the bodies. They passed by a particularly large bloodstain, which Damian had concluded that whoever had bled that much was probably dead by now.
Leone finally lead them out of the entrance corridor into the main floor, where all the rooms were held. Leone paused at an intersection of corridors before he presumably picked a direction at random and turned left.
Most of the doors were unlocked and left open, allowing the squad to see the messes that awaited inside. Tables were overthrown. Datapads, papers, and other various items were scattered across the floors. One room, which they decided to avoid, had a particularly large and gruesome-looking bloodstain on the wall.
A sudden noise caused every single one of them to turn to the direction they had heard it from, weapons raised and fingers on the triggers. When they saw nothing they cautiously looked around. Guns pointed up, to the sides and even at the floor in Leone's case.
"What was that?" Brass whispered quietly, even though everyone knew that there was no need to whisper since their helmets were sound-proof. No one on the outside would be able to hear what was said, unless the wearer wanted them to. This allowed them to speak on any volume they wished, though at the moment not one of them wanted to speak loudly.
"I dont know. Sounded like a...shuffle. Something moved," Leone told them quietly. "I think it came from there," he said as he slowly, carefully, and as quietly as possible, moved towards the door closest to them.
When Leone was just two steps away from the door the noise repeated and they could hear it clearly this time. Something indeed moved in the room. Leone signaled them to prepare themselves and Damian and Brass took positions on both sides of the door. In one fluid movement Leone kicked open the door and Damian and Brass rushed in, weapons leading. Inside they found... nothing, which slightly disappointed Damian.
How cliché. All this build-up for an empty room, he lamented. He hated these types of situations. Give him something to shoot and he would be happy. That way he could kill it and get rid of it. Right now he was just stumbling in the dark.
However, upon closer inspection, the room wasn't as empty as they had first thought. In the middle of the room was a bloodstain and exactly in the middle of that was a datapad, still turned on.
Mary stepped into the room, picked up the datapad, wiped away the crusted blood from the screen, and took a look. No one stopped her from doing that. She was their tech expert after all. "Sarge, this looks like a journal, though this log looks like it was never finished..." she trailed off, glancing at the dried blood. Everyone understood what she meant.
"What does it say?" Sean asked as he looked around the room nervously.
Mary scrolled down the datapad, her eyes swiftly scanning the screen and filing away information. "Not much. Several logs, beginning last year and ending about...two months ago," she glanced at the crusted blood again. "which probably was when the guy lost this."
Damian placed his hand out to Mary and she handed him the datapad, no longer interested in it. He fiddled with it a bit, looking at whatever was there. As Mary had said, it had been used solely as a journal for the owner and other than several logs, there was nothing in it. He scrolled to the first log and opened it.
August 20, 2562.
Damn marines. I swear they are just fucking with us on purpose. Some of the guys are nervous now and now a few are even refusing to go outside. I'll admit that I'm nervous too. Doc suggested that I should write something in this piece of useless crap to 'relieve my stress and let out all my pent up emotion.'
I'm fine dammit. I don't have pent up emotions!
Why am I even writing this? I might as well finish it since I already started and I hate leaving things unfinished. Back to the marines. Major Warren recently ordered the marines to go outside to hunt for our food in order to keep our proper supplies from running out. I'll admit that the 'Rhino' meat is delicious though I fear we won't be getting it anymore. The marines are telling us that there's something out there in the jungle. They haven't seen anything or anyone but they feel that they're being watched.
The spook told them to calm down and that there was no danger to anyone and that we should go back to our jobs. I hope things calm down soon. If the marines are getting jumpy, maybe that's a cause of concern for us too.
Nothing too impressive yet as far as journals went, in Damian's opinion. Nothing interesting like who slept with who, who cheated on who, who was caught in the supply closet with their pants down, literally. Or more importantly, what they were doing in this place. It was a journal of a guy who wrote down his thoughts: the most boring kind of journals. However the whole 'being watched' thing that the marines had experienced was all too familiar now to Damian. It made him even more curious. He scrolled to the next entry and opened it.
September 2, 2562.
Things calmed down after about a week after my first entry but last night the shit hit the fan in full force. The marines went out to get us some fresh food instead of the crap that's in our base and they brought us a damn Raptor, well it's not really a raptor... but it looked like it could be one so that's what everyone calls it. It isn't the best name but it sure as hell is better than the long Latin name those lab geeks here named it. Anyway, the marines blew up the Raptor's head or at least we thought so. Apparently, this was how they found it. When we inspected it closer we saw that the head had been cut off with a very sharp tool. It was a really clean cut through all the muscle and spinal chord, and when I mean 'clean cut', I mean that it was as if there hadn't been any bone structure in the damn beast at all and the blade had just severed through jelly. There was another clean stab wound on the chest, impaling straight to the heart.
The freaky part came next though. Sgt. Dyrdahl said that they'd heard a noise very close to them and when they had checked it out, they had spotted a freshly killed reptile waiting for them. By fresh, I mean 'just-a-few-seconds-ago' fresh. How the hell do you not notice someone killing something just a few feet away from you? Goddamn.
We're not alone out here.
Damian reread the last part again. It would've sounded farfetched had they not lost Jimmy the same way. This journal was getting more and more interesting. Maybe who wrote this might shed some light into this mess. The next entry was incredibly short.
September 13, 2562.
At lunch I heard the spook talk about some place in Venator III, wherever that is. Sounds like the name of a solar system. I left the place before he noticed I was eavesdropping his conversation. Also, the marines started finding headless animal carcasses.
Venator III. Damian searched through his memory but couldn't reference the name with anything he remembered. He filed it for later, deciding to ask Leone or Brass about it later. They were more versed about system and planet names than he was. He picked the next entry, ignoring the small conversation that had broken out between the squadmates while Kyle peeked over his shoulder to look at the datapad.
October 6, 2562.
Goddamnit! I'm going to murder O' Reilly! And Jeffery too if he wasn't dead by now. I knew that I shouldn't have agreed to that dare. Fucking Sean, daring me to go out with the marines today. Sure, I'm supposed to be one of the wildlife experts here but I didn't want to go out when those things were out there! We were just talking about them when Sean dared me to go out to find out what was really out there. For some stupid reason that I don't remember, I agreed and now I wish I hadn't.
I was following the marines around as they searched for some game to hunt when Makravitz saw something. I looked at where he'd pointed and saw it too. I've never seen it firsthand, but I know how an active camouflage looks like. The... thing, whatever it was, was pretty damn big too. Jeffery, that moronic ape, decided for some reason to open fire on it. The thing just vanished the moment the idiot started firing and to make it worse, Jeffery ran after it. We followed Jeffery but several seconds later he vanished also. He was nowhere in sight. We've seen nothing and heard nothing from him since. It was as if Jeffery had simply ceased to exist.
The bloody spook was trying to calm everyone down but utterly failed. Marines don't just vanish.
Damian narrowed his eyes. This was now entirely too familiar to him. "Sarge," he called the older man over. "This journal is getting interesting. They encountered the things that killed Jimmy," he told him concisely and to the point. He opened the next entry.
October 8, 2562.
Found Jeffery. The head is still MIA. Looks like it was torn out with half of his spine. Gruesome sight, wish I hadn't looked. A frightening thought occurred to me. All the headless animals and now Jeffery. They collect heads.
The spook knows something, I just know it. He hadn't even looked surprised at the news, just a bit perplexed. I get the feeling that he knows more-
Damian tore his eyes away from the datapad. He would've read further had it not been the odd noise that echoed through the empty corridors into the room. It sounded like a loud hissing noise, not like a snake's mind you, because this hiss sounded like it was inhaling not exhaling. And it was definitely louder. Snakes, of any size, didn't hiss at a volume as loud as this hiss. However, this could simply mean that it was very close to them. He swiftly placed the datapad into the storage compartment of his armor and readied his weapon.
Without any need to order or prompt them, everyone raised their weapons and aimed them at the door, expecting some monstrosity to burst in through the door to cut off their heads. However, nothing came at them. Not a sound was made and nothing moved. Brass took point and slowly moved out of the room, quickly pointing his battle rifle at both sides of the corridor. "Clear," he said quietly after a few seconds.
The rest of them followed him out, slowly and quietly moving through the corridor. Several steps later a vent cover fell to the floor right in front of Kyle with a loud clatter. He jumped back with a loud yelp, quickly aiming his gun at the now open ventilation shaft, quickly followed by the others. They stood there quietly for a few moments, not daring to move their rifles from the opening in the ceiling. A loud clatter was heard several feet away from them, apparently from the ventilation shaft. As if something large moved inside. Their weapons were immediately aimed at that spot, expecting an attack. They waited but nothing came. Everything was silent. Even their motion trackers were showing blanks.
"Sir?" Brass muttered.
"Yeah?"
"I don't like this. Not one bit," Brass said in a hissed whisper, visibly agitated. Damian was inclined to agree. This crap was starting to get to him.
Leone glanced into the visor of his squadmates before he nodded, mostly to himself. "I don't like the look of this too. Let's get what we came for and get the hell out of here. Mary?" Leone quietly told them and looked at Mary, who took out her personal datapad.
"Oh, this is good. The signal originates from the place we're heading to: the armory," she said, a hint of positiveness entering her voice. This seemed to cheer up the squad slightly. The sooner they got to their objective, the sooner they could leave this place behind them.
They set off at the same pace, the careful and silent crawling speed. Not that anyone minded. It was better to be careful than dead. Of course, so far they hadn't encountered anything that had tried to kill them, which was rather rare for ODST's, but one could never be too careful. Like a marine that Damian once knew said, 'You gotta watch where you go, or you just might step into some shit.'
Damian took that saying to heart, it made a lot of sense after all.
It took them a few minutes to reach the armory but thankfully they made it without any further distractions, suspicious sounds, or spontaneously dropping ventilation covers. Nothing that might make them even more nervous. They were thankful for that. Hopefully whatever was in the ventilation shaft didn't run off to bring reinforcements. Enemy reinforcements was always a bad thing. They finally stopped in front of the armory door, which was, unsurprisingly, locked. Mary immediately went to work on the electronic lock, requesting them to give her a minute. In the meanwhile they all stood guard around her, just in case something attacked. Just as Mary promised, she was done in a minute. She placed back her equipment and readied her weapon, giving a nod to Leone, who walked over to the lock. Everyone moved away from the path of the doorway and prepared themselves as Leone looked at them, wordlessly asking them if they were ready.
He received six nods in return and opened the door.
The door opened with a hiss and immediately the hallway was deafened by the booms of gunfire and the wall in front of the door was showered with bullets. The squad took a step back from the door, raising their weapons.
"Hold your fire! Hold your fire, dammit!" Leone shouted over the unrelenting gunfire. Damian listened closely and was able to hear the shooter screaming his lungs out as he fired his weapon, which he deduced was an assault rifle from the amount of bullets that was being fired. Three seconds later the bullets stopped coming and Damian could hear the heavy breathing coming from the room. "We're UNSC soldiers, hold your fire!" Leone repeated, now assured that he could be heard. He waved his hand in front of the open door while clutching an ODST patch for identification. No further shots were fired.
As one unit, they quickly poured into the room. Their weapons were immediately trained on a lone marine who was standing behind an overturned table which he had been using as cover. Damian studied the marine as they came closer. He stood at nearly two feet and had a large body build which made him a somewhat intimidating sight. He was of Hispanic descent, light-brown eyes, short black hair and a prominent scar running down from his left cheekbone to his jaw, creating a thin gap on his unshaven face. His eyes traveled to the name tag on the man's BDU(battle dress uniform), which read 'Ramirez' in large, bold letters. Damian was slightly taken aback from the overjoyed expression that came to the marine's face. His eyes were literally shining with the pure joy that he radiated.
"Drop the weapon!" Brass barked and the marine complied happily, as his mouth slowly grew into a large, genuine smile. Brass kicked the weapon further away from the marine and ushered him away from the table, where he saw a shotgun and enough clips for both weapons to supply a platoon.
"Thank, fucking, god!" Ramirez exclaimed, as he looked at the Helljumpers happily. "I was starting to think I was alone on this goddamned planet!"
"You might be right about that," Akira supplied as she looked over the armory. The armory was practically empty. Only a handful of weapons, beside the ones the marine was using, remained in the room. However, there was more than enough ammo for them to all use and share plentifully. She was thankful for that. Several crates of food supplies were stacked in the corner of the room, most of which were already empty. She turned her gaze back to the marine before she continued, "We arrived yesterday."
Ramirez nodded enthusiastically, visibly not caring about the details. "Man, I'm glad to see you guys," he said, shaking his head, moving a hand through his dirty hair, which was starting to reach his shoulders.
"Do you know what happened here?" Damian asked.
Ramirez turned his gaze to the PFC and for a moment Damian saw the haunted look his eyes contracted. "Hell yeah I know what happened here," he said tonelessly, with an empty voice. His eyes quickly regained their lively shine. "But first, more importantly, when do we get extracted?"
Damian exchanged glances with the rest of the squad, wondering how he should break the news to him. They had no way off of the planet. He felt quite bad about crushing the guy's hopes like that. The guy was ecstatic just to see them and had probably been waiting for rescue this whole time. Damian eventually decided to tell the man the truth. "Not anytime soon marine," he told him, "sorry," he added as an afterthought.
The marine looked at Damian blankly for several seconds before his features shifted into a murderous look. He stepped closer until he was standing almost nose to nose with the PFC. Ramirez was a head taller than him and he had to crane his head back a bit to look into the marine's eyes.
Damian suddenly found him to be much more intimidating than before.
"What do you mean 'not anytime soon'?" Ramirez asked him in a quiet but murderous tone.
Many miles from Alpha base, at the bottom of a cliff overlooking the jungle, beneath broken branches and jungle foliage a body stirred.
DelVarO's A/N: Hehehe, man, I have to admit that I love this chapter. It was quite fun to read it. Not much of Yautja in this chapter, other than this last bit, which is not much at all. It's a damn good chapter in my opinion. I also finally introduced Ramirez, who you can probably recall from the first chapter!
Things are bound to get interesting, I can promise you that. The next chapter will pick up from this point and you will finally get some answers...maybe.
Feel free to leave a lovely review! It makes me feel great to know that you read and enjoyed my story. Thank you for reading the story and special thanks to all those who reviewed my story and told me their opinions! I really appreciate it. I gladly and happily accept constructive criticism, suggestions, ideas and plain opinions, so dont be shy and feel free to speak your mind. Hell, you can even tell me my story sucks, as long as you explain why. Thanks again for reading and until next time, Delvaro out.
BraK3R's A/N: Stay tuned. I will try to get Chapter 11 out ASAP but no promises :). Also, goodbye to Delvaro's author notes. From now on, it'll all be just me.