Chapter 1
Cold Hell
November 21st, 2560
Location: Zeta Halo
ID: Private Jacob Kubrick
Occupation: ODST
Jacob woke up with a start and immediately felt a sharp pain in his head and back. He put a hand on his head where the pain was and felt his hand get wet.
He removed his hand and looked at it to see his entire hand covered in dark red blood. During the Crash, something must have hit him in the head when he crashed.
He looked around to see his ODST pod was faced down into a thick layer of snow. He looked and saw his silenced SMG was broken in tow and a standard combat knife that was given to all UNSC personnel, even Jacob even though he had his own custom one, embedded his visor. His visor was completely shattered, one plasma shot would completely destroy the visor.
Jacob unfastened his restraints and grabbed a silenced pistol. He wished he had gotten an M6D magnum but at least the pistol was better than nothing.
There was a slight opening that Jacob used to get out of his pod.
He took a moment to observe his surroundings. First off, everything around him was snow. He was in the middle of a dense forest with snow and a dense fog all around him.
he sat next to his pod, his hands covering his head as he thought over the events that had just occurred. Cassie. As much as Jacob and Cassie had gotten into arguments over the most mediocre and unimportant things, he still thought of her as a sister. And he watched her die.
He started to silently cry into his hands, tears welling up in his icy blue eyes. He didn't know where he was but he assumed he was hundreds of miles away from Marcus. He checked how much ammo his pistol had. 1 magazine.
he had only 1 magazine of ammo for his pistol, a knife, and a helmet that is practically useless.
"I'm going to fucking die out here..." He thought.
As he sat there, he suddenly heard the sounds of what he assumed was a Banished combat squad engaging an unknown enemy as a loud and thundering roar echoed through the trees as one by one, the sounds of gun fire decreased until there was just silence.
Jacob felt a creeping sense of morbid curiosity, wondering what that roar was. He slowly began to walk into the direction of the roar.
As he crept forward, he felt uneasy. He wondered what could have let out that roar and take out an entire Banished combat squad in such little time.
Even though he didn't know what infantry the squad consisted of, from what he heard, it had to consisted of at least 2 Sangheili and 3 brutes.
It was a while of not seeing anything before he finally came upon the Banished combat squad. Or, at least what remained of them.
As opposed to his guess there were 6 Sangheili, 7 brutes, 5 jackals, and about 9 grunts.
Their corpses mangled and bruised, torn and twisted. Blue and purple blood spread everywhere.
But that's not what terrified Jacob. Standing in the middle was a gargantuan Hunter.
It looked like a Goliath hunter but it wore Blue armor. It was bipedal as well unlike the Goliath hunters. It stood to what Jacob guessed over 20 feet tall. When it was Hunched.
Jacob stood there horrified when the Gargantuan Hunter, what Jacob had referred to it as, turned and looked straight towards Jacob.
Its helmet was blue with 6 glowing optics on the helmet, 3 on each side.
The Gargantuan hunter roared at Jacob, multiple of the worms that made up the creature detached from the front and formed what Jacob could describe as a circular gaping mouth.
Jacob, out of fear, fired off his pistol towards the beast. Each bullet either bouncing of the armor or just barely breaking the skin of some of the worms that make up the Hunter.
Unfortunately, the magazine ran out of rounds. As Jacob realized this, he looked towards the charging Gargantuan Hunter. He dropped his pistol and broke into a mad dash back to his drop pod.
He sprinted as fast as he could, never looking back as he heard the booming sounds of the Hunter crunching the snow as it charged towards him.
Jacob finds his drop pod and crawls into the opening that he used to exit the pod. He had quite a distance between him and the hunter when he got to the pod so he held his breath as he heard the Hunter look around the area for him.
It got close to the pod but Jacob hear the sound of it walking away. As Jacob silently sighed in relief, he then heard the suddenly loud sound of something grabbing the pod and threw it into a couple of trees.
Jacob looked up behind him to see the Gargantuan hunter stare down at him, Jacob's body overflowing with an insurmountable amount of fear.
Jacob silently whispered to himself as he stared at the towering beast. "Oh fuck"
Without any hesitation, Jacob immediately sprinted off as he heard the Hunter roar at him when he did so.
He ran. Ran until he couldn't. When that happened, he walked quickly. He walked quickly until he collapsed. When he collapsed, he crawled.
He heard the hunter gain up on him. He tried his best to crawl fast but his body gave way. Pain flowed through his body as he stopped moving. He breathed heavily as he looked behind him and saw the hunter just feet away.
In a last ditch effort, Jacob pulled out his knife; pointing it at the hunter. He yelled at the Towering mass.
"Stay back... you... son of a b-"
Jacob started to cough, the cold of the biome was getting to him. He looked up to the head of the hunter and saw it just... tilt its head. Like it was confused as to why Jacob was hostile towards it.
The Gargantuan hunter then crouched down and simply observed Jacob, observing his armor, his knife, and oddly his face.
It then reached out one of its arms, the worms branching out into a hand with armored fingers. Jacob sat there in silence. "Why would it be helping him?" He thought. But, since this was seeming like the only thing that would help him in this situation.
He took its hand, the slime excreted from the worms that made up the hand covering his hand as grabbed it.
He stumbled forward, his body aching from soreness. The gargantuan hunter saw this and gently grabbed and picked Jacob up. It started to walk in a random direction. Jacob was wondering where it was taking him.
Soon they reach a cliffside. One of the walls of the cliff on the ground, however, was metallic.
A door.
The Hunter banged on the fake cliff wall. After a couple of seconds, a voice boomed from what Jacob assumed was a makeshift communications device.
The voice boomed out
"State Identifications!"
The hunter garble out unintelligible sounds but the person on the other side seemed to have understood him.
The voice boomed out again with a little less of a commanding voice.
"Identification verified: Rikomi Sesa Xiti"
Before the door opened though, the hunter began to garble out more unintelligible sounds. The voice on the other side became a bit more stern.
"Hmm... You've brought an ODST with you. I will not stop you but, if he causes any problems, I cannot guarantee his safety"
The door opened, and revealed a cave that had been used as a living quarters.
The hunter gently dropped Jacob onto the hard rocky ground.
As he looked up, he saw the group that he will spend the rest of his time with on this ring.
