Jane sat in the Pelican's jump seat, straining against the restraint harness. Almost everyone in the dropships was; Suki and Leroy both were nervously tapping their heels against the deck, while Javier hummed tunelessly. The fireteam across from them was no less fidgety. In fact, the only Spartan not visibly tense was Kaiden, though his nervousness was shown by the occasional static electric spark.
Jane didn't know what to think of the Enhanced Spartan. He was very soft spoken, almost timid and yet in the few sparring matches his enhancement made him almost unassailable. Once they were in the field and she had a chance to actually see him in a combat environment, then she'd refine how she utilized his abilities. For the time being, Jane intended to use him as another support weapon troop.
The pilot's compartment sealed off and Jane's HUD indicated the pressure in the toop bay was dropping. Once it read zero, the light in the troop bay turned green and the loading ramp lowered. The Spartan's all stood and filed out onto the surface of K7-49. She could see the other Pelican assigned to the UNSC Sarmoti, along with their mother ship hovering over them like a mother hen.
She didn't see anything else on the surface of the asteroid except two of the Plasma Furnaces and Gravity Lifters in the distance, though that meant nothing; she knew at least four other Sahara Class Prowlers were performing the same action as the Sarmoti, all under full stealth. The other two squadrons and their attendant Spartan companies would be doing the same somewhere beyond the horizon of the asteroid. Once they assembled the Base Camp from the palettes carried under the tails of the Pelicans, the Prowlers would move off to perform their own missions.
The Fire Teams all began unloading the Base Camp pieces and moving them into position. It was surreal, walking through the active camouflage and suddenly see eighty other Spartans all dragging cargo Connexes into position. Everyone worked under radio blackout; it was unlikely that any of their suit radios had the power to be heard by any of the nearby covenant ships, but the mission planners wanted to leave nothing to chance.
It took several hours to get the base shell assembled, with Fire Teams taking turns heading back to their Pelicans to recharge their O2 tanks. It turned out that the process had changed from Jane's training days, as the only four permanent components were the portable Fusion Reactor, the Active Camouflage and Defense Barrier Generator, the 'Bomb', and the industrial fabricator. All the rest of the containers carried supplies. She spared the occasional glance at the fabricator as it used laser-ablation and precise magnetic fields to turn sections of the asteroid into plasma, which it then digitally printed into sintered Titanium blocks to make the Base components. It was the job of the Spartans to build the shallow Igloo that would cover the base.
Once the dome was finished, the Prowlers all moved off while the Spartans began assembling the interior components of the base as the fabricator made them. It took the better part of a day to finish the process. By then, the Fabricator had excavated a ten meter deep, one hundred meter wide crater. They were right on schedule, and after 'Fire Watch' rotations were assigned every team settled in for twelve hours of rest before Operation Prometheus began in earnest.
X
At Mission Time +25 hours, Jane took Green Team out on their first reconnaissance patrol. They only had the images from the single orbit the Prowlers before landing the Spartans, so everyone needed to find their objectives. For the sabotage teams, that seemed simple at first; they needed to disable as many Plasma Furnaces and Gravity Lifters as possible, and those were easy to spot. They weren't easy to approach due to the immense radiation and unstable gravity around those locations.
Jane's team and the Sapper teams however, needed to find a way inside the asteroid. That meant foot patrols to try and find something. Jane was very relieved that, despite his excitability, Leroy was laser focused on his duties in the field; he was just an insufferable chatterbox during their down time. Kaiden by contrast was nearly as mute as the Spartan IIs who had overseen their training, though he was no less disciplined.
Since accessing the asteroid's interior through the Furnaces was not an option, that meant foot patrols of the nearly three hundred thousand square kilometers of the three hundred kilometer wide asteroid; all without alerting the Covenant over head. Thankfully, the low gravity and distribution of the three base camps meant they made relatively good time. There were also supply drops by the Pelican forces whenever a Prowler was overhead, so no patrols were ever more than an hour's walk from a temporary shelter, air or water. They also had laser communication transceivers, so the Base Camps could keep in contact and update one another.
Still, the rock was a largely featureless lump of metal. It wasn't until near the end of the second day of patrols before Jane's team found a service entrance. They had settled in the lee of a crater to avoid being seen by a patrolling Light Cruiser. As the ship passed overhead, Kaiden began to glow faintly.
Jane moved over and set her helmet against his. "Spartan, report!"
"I can feel it ma'am!"
"That's just stress, Kaiden. Everyone feels it the first time-"
"No ma'am," he shook his head and held out a hand. "I can feel their gravity drive interacting with the asteroid. There's a cavity underneath us!" He slowly walked around the crater, making sure not to over-stress his suit's photo reactive stealth system while waving his glowing hands back and forth. Jane was reminded of her early childhood, and seeing a spiritualist waving their hands over the colonists.
He stopped nearly in the middle of the crater and knelt down. He concentrated for a moment, and his active camouflage gave out as he pulsed with blue power. A wave of dust and grit blasted outward, exposing a sealed hatch. It was the same pearlescent metal as all Covenant equipment was made of.
Jane, Kaiden and Leroy swiftly covered the hatch back up, while Suki and Javier rushed back to the nearest Supply drop to notify the rest of the Strike Force. They came back half an hour later with orders to stay put. An hour later, Green Team found themselves back under the shadow of a Prowler. A new Base Camp was set up on the hatch, and Jane's team was ordered to stand down for four hours rest before descending into the bowels of the asteroid.
The hatch was still sealed when Green Team was ready to go. Jane looked to the Sergeant commanding the Security Detail, who just shrugged. "We don't really want to blow or cut the hatch. We did find controls," he pointed to an open panel filled with alien crystal circuits, "but decided this was a job for your Cyber-Asset."
"A wise, but unnecessary precaution," Ogier came in on the local Battle Net. "I'm reading that the hatch is simply unpowered. This was likely a service or maintenance hatch from the facility's initial construction; it was either never meant to be reopened, or only opened from the inside. If you heat the Blueish-Green crystal, it should energize the lock solenoids."
One MRE Heating pack later had Green Team and several Sapper Teams inside the asteroid. The interior of the asteroid also lacked artificial gravity, which proved to be more of a hindrance in the confined, unlit tunnels. The only feature they could detect were oddly spaced circular holes in the walls. There was a breathable atmosphere, and it was quite warm and humid inside.
"Maybe the Covies use this place as a Spa too," Leroy whispered, "you know, for the thousands and thousands of psycho killer aliens overhead."
Javier gave a soft laugh. "We'll let you know if we find a Turkish Bath."
Everyone was quiet after that as they wove their way through the network of tunnels. The force became smaller and smaller as teams broke off to locate the bases of the Plasma Furnaces. Finally it was just Green Team and the Fire Team carrying the Gravity Bomb. They came to an excavated cavern with bridges crisscrossing down into the depths. The walls were glass smooth, but not lined with the Covenant metal.
"Fused silica," Ogier piped up. "This must be an earlier exploratory survey shaft."
Kaiden concentrated and glowed for a second. "It goes all the way to the center of the asteroid."
Jane spared him a glance. "You can feel that?"
He nodded. "Now that I know what to feel for. All the ships overhead are creating a lot of gravity waves, and I'm trained to pick up that sort of thing. Mostly it's for feeling stealthed Covenant tech; but if I concentrate, I can feel when anything is moving close by."
Both teams stepped off into the abyss and drifted down.
"Corporal," Leroy spoke after ten minutes of gently falling, "can I just say that this is creepier than actual orbital vacuum ops?"
Jane was about to suggest he concentrate on the mission rather than reminding everyone of how eerie this was when Ogier cut in again.
"Stop here!" Green Team jetted to the nearest bridge while the Bomb team kept falling. "There's a strong EM signal coming from the Magnetic North West two bridges up."
The gravity at this depth was almost nonexistent, so they simply jumped up to the indicated bridge and went into the tunnel again. It was several kilometers of walking through hole-riddled tunnels before they finally arrived at their destination.
This chamber was lit, though that was only from the various terminals surrounding a faintly glowing silver plinth in the middle of the room. This was also the first encounter with a nonhuman so far. There were a half dozen bulbous floating forms that reminded Jane of the briefings on the Citadel race, the Hanar. The chief difference was the worm-like 'head' possessed by these creatures. She decided they'd take a sample for analysis once they'd cleared the room.
"Give me a count; I see five," Jane whispered. Everyone agreed, and they waited a minute to make sure no others appeared. "On my mark; two, one, fire." Five shots rang out as one, and all of the floating creatures popped and drifted to the floor. "Go!"
They dashed into the room, and Jane went to the largest terminal. With practiced ease, she found the interface she was looking for and hooked Ogier in. "How long?"
"Unknown, but no more than five minutes."
Jane spun and faced the way they had come, and to gather a sample of one of the floating creatures. Everyone was already facing outward with weapons up. Two minutes into the download, Leroy twitched slightly. "Possible contact right."
"Kaiden?"
The E Company specialist glowed faintly for a moment. "It's hard to tell. It feels like the local gravity is squirming."
Suki tracked her weapon across her beating zone. "Maybe it's space-rats?"
"No," Javier pointed with his rifle at the base of the wall, "space-slugs."
The holes that perforated the walls were now extruding meter-long worms. "Spartans, column to the entrance. Ogier, time?" Jane was now sweeping her weapon back and forth as the rest of the fire team formed a path back to the entrance.
"Forty five seconds."
The wriggling wall made it to the first of the dead Floaters and the swarm engulfed the corpse, pulling it back. The wriggling mass formed what looked like vines, and the remaining Floaters were collected.
"Fifteen seconds."
The worms quickly started coalescing into concentrated masses, and one lunged for Leroy. His BR-55 caused some damage to the silent ambulatory form, but not enough to slow it down before it engulfed him. Kaiden tossed a flash-bang into the closest one causing it to burst apart, then glowed blue and blasted the mass surrounding Leroy. Everyone opened fire as the mass surged towards them.
"Time!"
Jane yanked Ogier out of the terminal and socketed him into her helmet. "Everyone, move!"
The team fell back while providing covering fire. Jane looked back to see one squirming mass settle on a control console. The light in the room changed to an angry red as an alarm blared throughout the base. The worms then slid off and began pursuing Green Team.
"Definitely not pests!" Javier tossed another flashbang into an approaching mass.
Kaiden led the way back to the bridge, pushing the path clear while Suki and Javier kept the swarm off of their rear. They were ten yards from the shaft when Kaiden slowed to a stop.
"They're just," he grunted, "too densely packed! I need a moment to concentrate!"
"We don't have a moment!" Suki, Javier and Leroy continued to fire into the now wall-to-wall mass of worms closing in from behind. Leroy threw another flashbang, but the wall threw it back at them. Their suits and protective systems shrugged the effects off, but it didn't bode well for using any of their more offensive grenades.
Jane wracked her brain for a moment until she saw Leroy bat a worm aside with his shield.
"Kaiden, standby to blast; Leroy, on me!" Once he was next to her, she tapped Kaiden on the shoulder. "Shields up!"
All of their Bulwark shields lit up at once. The worms started to squirm around them when Kaiden wound both arms back, then threw them forward in a double fisted punch. "Hya!" A deep purple orb launched forward, carrying the mass of worms into the open shaft.
"Go, go go!" Everyone bolted out of the worm tunnels and immediately rocketed straight up.
There were worms pouring out of every tunnel now, but the Spartans didn't pause long enough to examine their actions. They were nearly to the top when Leroy yelled and lurched into Jane. She careened into the underside of one of the bridges. She heard a boom and saw Leroy struck in the upper chest by a bright flash of green. His ascent was halted and he spun while lazily drifting towards the bottom of the shaft. A second boom launched a second green bolt, and Leroy was cut in half.
Ogier spoke in her ear. "I have our sniper's position." Jane's HUD showed a wireframe of the shaft. She popped out from cover and fired directly into the sniper, but she saw it was almost harmlessly absorbed by the now armored mass of worms. There were now also various more recognizable Covenant forces coming out of the upper tunnels, though Suki and Javier were keeping them from the edges.
"Corporal!" she glanced at Kaiden. "When I say, shoot the black ball!" She had no idea what he meant, but assumed it would be clear and readied herself. Kaiden wound up and threw something. "Now!"
Jane popped out from under the bridge and saw an inky black swirling mass just in front of the flailing worm creature. Jane fired and the walking worm, as well as a sizable portion of the bridge were blasted apart.
Jane grabbed what was left of Leroy, secured his Dog-tags and jetted up to the landing. They were on the bridge at the entrance to their tunnels when all of their HUDs all lit up with a warning: EGD Armed, please move to minimum safe distance. A counter showed a five minute timer. There was no way to make it to the Base Camp in time. Suki set up her machinegun facing the far tunnel and kept the covenant at bay, while Kaiden rigged his and Leroy's Bulwarks into a makeshift barrier, and Jane tried to think of a way out.
"All teams, this is Prometheus Actual," Miranda came over the Battlenet, "ID location for immediate extraction!"
Jane had never been so glad to hear the Queen-B's voice. "Prometheus Actual, Bravo-183: we're trapped at the head of the EGD shaft!"
"Bravo-183, maintain position; extraction inbound."
"Copy Actual, standing by!"
"Do you think they're really coming?" Kaiden sounded exhausted and almost fatalistic as he alternately threw and shot the enemy pressing in on them.
"Of course they are," Jane put as much confidence as she could in her voice. "We were sent to collect critical intel, so they have to retrieve us!"
"I feel so loved!" Suki barked as she drilled a Walking Worm in the gun, causing the weapon to explode and clear the opposite landing for a moment. "Uh, Corporal?"
Jane looked to where Suki and Javier were looking with alarm, and saw the worms crawling up the walls in thick tendrils. The warning timer reached three minutes when the cap of the shaft exploded downward, and a Pelican swooped into the shaft. The sudden updraft launched detritus up with gale force as the dropship swung its open tail to face them, while its chin-gun began sweeping fire into the far tunnel and the climbing tendril.
Suki and Javier swung around to face the makeshift barrier. "You two first Corporal."
Jane grabbed Kaiden and tossed him unresisting into the troop bay, and she jumped in after. Javier was next; but as Suki was making the jump, the Pelican jolted and a worm tendril snatched her out of the void. Jane could see they were being dragged deeper into the shaft.
"Suki!" Javier was about to leap out of the bay when Jane threw him into a jump seat. She was getting ready to jump out herself when Suki came over the radio.
"Watashi wa matteimasu, Ai. Frag out!"
The vacuum of the shaft deadened the sound of the explosion, but not Javier's heartbreaking scream. The Pelican jolted again, and then began swiftly ascending. Jane slammed the door control and lurched into the nearest jump seat. "Troop bay secure, punch it!"
The Pelican's limited gravity control barely made the Pelican's mad dash survivable. Jane patched into the orbital battlenet and watched as they wove through the mixed wreckage of the Covenant fleet. There were clear signs of the use of Nuclear mines, but also several gutted Prowlers and Pelicans.
She saw a flight of Covenant fighters home in on them, only to be swept from space by a barrage of covering fire from a de-cloaking Prowler. She continued to watch the feed as they accelerated clear of the zone, until the asteroid collapsed in on itself before shattering. The blast obliterated any trace of the Covenant fleet, as well as the UNSC forces that had brought it down.
"Ogier," Jane said in a hollow voice, "please tell me it was worth it."
X
Aisha Hameed looked at Admiral Hood and Director Udina sitting across from her. Udina was as unreadable as ever, but Terrence looked more dour than usual. "You said this was about Operation: Prometheus. By your look I'm guessing I won't like what I hear, so just tell me; how bad is it?"
The Admiral heaved a sigh. "Fifty three Spartans, six Pelicans and four Prowlers."
Aisha pursed her lips. "A heavy cost, to be sure, but not one in vain I'm-"
"No ma'am," Terrence cut her off. "That's what survived the operation."
The Secretary General remained motionless for a moment. "And what did we buy with this monstrous butcher's bill?"
Donnel Udina brought up a hologram of the asteroid and the flotilla surrounding it. "The K7-49 asteroid has been eliminated, as were the 318 ships in orbit including this." He focused in on one of the Covenant Carriers.
Aisha squinted while looking. "Well it's all well and good to..." She trailed off as another carrier, as well as a squadron of cruisers and destroyers passed in front of the beast of a ship.
Terrence picked up the brief. "The prowlers clocked that monster at just shy of twenty nine kilometers in length. There was a lot of traffic in and out of the system, so we believe she was being stocked and crewed in preparation to launch."
"We also secured a complete technical readout of every class of Covenant warship seen to date, for what it's worth." Udina gave a shrug.
Aishot shot him a look. "I'd think it was worth quite a bit."
Terrence leaned back and frowned. "From a tactical standpoint, yes. We can now pinpoint important targets or weak spots on their ships; but as for strategically?"
Donnel brought up the image of a Covenant Destroyer's engines. "Think of it this way; if we traveled back in time and showed Wernher von Braun a Deuterium-Fusion-Rocket, he'd know he was looking at a rocket engine and that's about it. We know what all the pieces of these Covenant ships do, because we've seen them at work, but we don't have the underlying engineering or theoretical physics principles to let us do anything with them."
Terrence cut in again. "Before you ask, we've forwarded this data to the relevant agencies so they can bang on the ideas with a hammer. Given enough time, we'll start learning what the hell all this means. In the meantime, we've bought ourselves that time. We should start looking to fortify ourselves for whenever the Covenant gets done licking their wounds."
X
The Covenant Hierarchs hovered around a glowing pedestal in the heart of High Charity.
"Inconceivable," The High Prophet of Regret slammed a fist on the armrest of his throne. "How could those miserable, mongrel heretics destroy the entire Fleet of Radiant Might and the K7-49 shipyard?"
The High Prophet of Mercy leaned forward and waved a shaking hand over the pedestal. "Through a dark and terrible pact." The hologram showed an armored human in a datacenter sending a Mgalekgolo flying, and then another scene of another armored human gesturing to a Jiralhanae, causing the Brute to float in the air before being crushed into a pinprick.
The High Prophet of Truth scoffed, though he still looked warrily at the images. "Don't be absurd! This is merely a new technology, nothing more; and certainly nothing to be concerned about."
Mercy rounded on his fellow councilor. "You would do well to reflect on the lesson of the High Prophet of Contempt, brother: none are above the charge of Blasphemy and Heresy!"
While Truth recoiled from the eldest Councilor, Regret leaned in. "You say this is a 'Dark Pact'. Tell us then, brother: what leads you to say this?"
Mercy stopped glaring at Truth and laid his hand on the Pedestal again. "Before my call to serve on this Council, I studied our most ancient texts: the Archives of the Ecumenae. They spoke of an ancient time, before the great Progenitors had even created the Forerunners. In that time, a war of incomprehensible destruction laid waste to the Galaxy. It was this war that led them to create the Forerunners, and bestow upon them the Mantle of Responsibility: to care for and nurture all intelligent life along the Great Journey.
"For the enemy they faced was a devourer of all intelligent life; they were soulless machines that fed on living minds to breed more of their misbegotten kind. Their name was Leviathan," the projector showed a sinister arrow-headed glyph, "and they wielded a terrible power drawn from the darkest energies of the galaxy to twist and unmake creation as they saw fit! They were finally defeated and driven back to their Forbidden Stars, never to return; or so it was thought."
Truth drifted back towards the others. "And you believe these Humans have joined forces with these... Leviathan?"
Regret rubbed his chin in thought. "It would certainly explain how the Humans have suddenly grown strong enough to resist us in the field of battle, and even mustered the power to shatter a planetesimal. We must confirm this first." He looked at the other two Hierarchs. "Whom can we send on this mission? And what would they be looking for?"
Mercy touched the control and brought up another image: this one of an element and associated information. "The fuel for their dark power is a poisonous dust they harvest from dying stars. If the humans have aligned with the Leviathan, as I fear they have, then they will be using this vile element in this technology. As for seekers..."
Truth chuckled darkly. "I might know of a likely candidate: a scion of the House of Vadamee named Thel. He has earned no small acclaim as a warrior and Shipmaster, and I foresee great things in his future."
X
The Citadel Councilors sat in chambers, mulling over the latest reports on UTSG activity.
Sparatus set his tablet down. "That's another squadron of destroyers replaced with two squadrons of light frigates. All this and they've expanded into a seventh system. Our estimates based on the number of Colony ships passing through Attican Beta are roughly seventy million colonists, and one hundred fifty three of their Light Frigates."
Tevos pursed her lips. "In their defense, there has been an upward trend in pirate activity along their borders. They say they are modernizing their fleets, and deployment numbers will return to normal once they begin phasing out the older designs; although the clear militarization is concerning."
Bel huffed as he made his way to a nearby humidifier. "Yes, troubling. If only we had eyes and ears inside their space who could tell us what was going on there; perhaps a military officer embedded on one of their modernized warships, or perhaps one of their officers onboard ours that we could consult about these things."
Sparatus buzzed and clicked angrily. "I grow very tired of you worrying about that decision like a varen on a bone! We made the decision to-"
Bel rounded on the Turian. "No, you made the decision after that debacle of a debrief! I would have asked what you were thinking at the time, but sadly I am well aware of your thought processes." His glare turned to Tevos, still sitting primmly in her seat. "And now, because you two were scared of the public opinion that ill-conceived spectacle generated, we are deaf and blind about the single most powerful military on our borders." His gaze shifted back to Sparatus. "So I'm going to keep worrying that bone so that you two don't make another mistake like that again."
Tevos waited just long enough to see if Sparatus would retort; but thankfully it seemed as if he had accepted, albeit silently, that he was partially to blame for their current predicament. "While a regrettable decision, it is one we have made. At the very least, they have not cut off the Orion Corridor, so there is still the chance to place observers in their space." She looked Bel in the eye until he stepped back towards his seat. "How are the current efforts to control their access to Eezo-based science and technology?"
Bel huffed. "Largely moot at this point I think." He pulled out a report and transferred the data to their omnitools. "Aside from watching our engineers like curious pyjakc during the station construction phase, and what we believe was a smuggling ring bringing in components of an industrial omni fabricator, their only real Interest has been in the mining and refinement of Eezo. They brought in a half dozen Volus and Elcor firms to set their mines and refineries up on that hellish dustball they call 'King', but I wouldn't be surprised if that was just a ruse to put one of their AI close enough to monitor the entire process."
Sparatus scoffed. "They still have a near pathological fear of Eezo and it's health risks, so it makes sense they'd put the burden of refining it on their disposable population."
Tevos declined to remind Sparatus that the UTSG didn't consider AI to be disposable. "It looks as if seventy five percent of their production on King is exported into the Citadel markets, while fifteen percent is sold through brokerages on Illium. That leaves ten percent being directed internally." She looked back and forth between the other two. "That isn't enough for anything meaningful outside of academic research."
"Or weapons development," Sparatus groused. "Their monthly export could theoretically arm an entire Frigate Varen-Pack with Disruptor Torpedoes, and they've been digging on that rock for eight years now." His mandibles clicked nervously. "They're building something, I can feel it."
Tevos expected Bel to start lecturing his collegue, but the Salarian remained silent as he thumbed through reports. "While the Humans are a concern, they are not our immediate concern. I would like to address the increased militarism of the Enlightened Primacy, and the reports that the Migrant Fleet has suddenly been making its way back towards the Perseus Veil. The Hanar I understand; they view the Humans as an affront to their belief in the Primacy; but I had thought the Quarians were being dissuaded from approaching their homeworld. We do not need them unleashing the Geth on the wider galaxy."
Bel wriggled his horns. "Are we not concerned about the latest round of saber rattling by the Batarians against the UTSG?"
Sparatus waved him off. "I have our best SPECTER, Saren, keeping an eye on the Batarians. He assures me this is simply their normal political rhetoric: playing up the victim so they can justify their military budget, and parading their ships around to convince the populace that the Hegemony is still an unassailable power. Nothing will come of it that hasn't come before.
"As for the Quarians; they've already crossed into the Terminus. There's only so much we can do through our proxies, especially when the Flotilla moves in formation without stirring up the locals." He leaned back in his chair. "If, and/or when their folly catches up with them, we will have ample warning and time to respond, what with the line of Human colonies between them and us."