(Greetings. I'd first like to explain myself here for those of you who know about my previous stories. I've been gone for a while and there's really no way to explain it better than just college and work being in the way alongside my own personal reasons getting in the way of writing and keeping these stories updated. Now that things have smoothed out a bit, I think I'll be able to be more consistent about writing and updates and whatnot. With that out of the way. I'd also like to say that both of my previous stories are not gone for good. I saved everything, including the comments you all made. The main reason why I deleted them was due to the fact that the stories had no outline for them and I was just writing whatever came to mind, which made me feel that the stories had no greater point and that things were just moving too fast or nothing was actually happening at all. So I deleted them and have been tweaking their outlines to form a cohesive narrative and I will be reposting them at some point. There will be changes, but I'd rather outline them there than here. I was just clearing the air so that there isn't confusion from those who know versus those who just don't know of my previous work. Anywho. Here's a new project based on my favorite video game series, and a web series that I've been keeping up with for the past year. So, enjoy.)
A9 to C9
(Alpha Nine to Copper Nine)
Chapter 1: Prepare for Drop
UNSC Lance Corporal Jonathan 'Rookie' Doeherty, Unknown City, Unknown Planet
6 Hours After Drop
The Rookie awoke, his eyes attempting to adjust to the darkness within his Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle. The display screens, which would normally display altitude, atmospheric conditions, or the portrait of any nearby trooper linked to the battle net within their own pod...was dark. Emergency lights flashed, illuminating the pod briefly with a dim, red light. Thankfully though, it seemed as if the impact was successfully mitigated by the pod's advanced alloys...despite the harsh landing. Even with this, the Rookie felt dazed, he could see fuzz, clouds of what should have been clear vision. Through the canopy of the drop pod, he could see...what faintly resembled that of a pair of yellow lights, just lingering outside of the drop pod's door. Though it was difficult to make out what the lights were attached to thanks to the Rookie's head trauma, and the noticeable amount of frost and ice collecting on the windows. Before the Rookie could actually attempt to ascertain his situation, he was gripped by head pain and fell back into unconsciousness.
Awakening at an unknown time later. The Rookie shook off his headache and glanced towards the canopy once more...the lights were gone. Something else Rookie realized upon regaining consciousness was the fact that his pod had landed onto its back, his canopy pointed towards the sky, which featured a bright, ringed planet and several other, equally bright moons seemingly affixed to the heavens. Already though, it was clear he wasn't on Earth anymore. Somehow, the slipspace rupture from the Prophet of Regret's carrier had managed to transport him to some other world entirely. The question now was just...where? And was he the only member of Alpha Nine to have arrived here? Much less survived the drop? Engaging the explosive bolts on the canopy, the door was blown away violently, loudly dropping back down several feet away with a harsh noise. The Rookie clambered out of his pod and stepped forth onto the freezing cold ground, unlatching his silenced M7 that Dutch had given him just before the drop. Looking around, he found that he had landed, oddly enough, in the middle of a city. An abandoned, completely frozen city, but a city nonetheless. The standard ODST armor was designed to withstand extreme temperature differences, whether it be from the vacuum of space, or plasma fire from Covenant weapons.
The thermal insulation within managed to stave off the cold, though the Rookie could still feel the bitter sting of the air. He had landed in the middle of what looked to be an old plaza, square in shape, with wide streets and what was unmistakably buildings and shops lining the square. Most of the buildings were covered in a thick layer of ice and snowfall, the light of the planets in the sky casted down and reflected off the ground, lighting the square up in a dull gray color. Engaging his helmet's VISR systems, the Rookie took a rudimentary sweep of the area, finding though that everything around him was dead. He wondered if perhaps he had set foot on a previously glassed human colony. Glancing down at his wrist, the Rookie engaged a tracking device on his wrist, an interface appeared designed to track down any nearby drop pod's distress beacon. It was a faint signal...scrambled...damn blizzard. Though thankfully, at least there was someone else here and he hadn't been dumped onto some completely dead world on his own. Retrieving a set of extra magazines from his pod. Rookie set forth into the blizzard, following the signal down a long...empty street riddled with abandoned vehicles, massive blocks of ice and...alarmingly enough, frozen corpses. Creeping along the abandoned streets, checking corners and occasionally kneeling down onto the frozen ground at every suspicious noise or sight before him. From around a corner, he could hear...voices. Taking up a position at the corner, the Rookie took a cursory peek to see...through his VISR, the presence of three unknown individuals crowded around a figure that registered as green...a friendly? So he wasn't the only one...
From what he could see. It was another ODST like himself...though he seemed much worse for wear, pinned against a frozen wall via several large, metallic darts. Characteristic of the Type-25 Carbine or 'Spiker' carried by the Jiralhanae...damn...the Covenant were on this planet too. But the figures standing around the impaled ODST didn't resemble any sort of Covenant race the Rookie had ever seen before. They were bipedal, and their skin shimmered in the light, almost like metal. They wore what looked to be average military fatigues, though upon closer inspection looked tattered, they all wore a matching, orange armband across their left arms. Their heads though were odd. Egg shaped, very rounded. With what looked like LED screens plastered at the 'face' of the egg. Which bore oval shaped eyes and mouths that moved. Robots? Were the Covenant making robots? They all seemed to be laughing. One of them, whom according to their voice was female, began to speak.
"Haven't seen a lot of humans around these parts lately...what with you guys destroying the planet and all...but lookee here, fellas! Looks like we caught one!" The female robot said in a coy tone, resting the odd looking weapon she was holding onto her shoulder, with her other hand on her 'hip'. The captured ODST wheezed, trying his best to catch his breath despite the searing pain filling his very being. "G...Go to hell...Covie bastards..." was all that he was able to wheeze out.
The Rookie's VISR updated the battlefield with three, fresh new enemy contacts. Covenant or not. Quietly, he leaned out from the corner, took aim, and dropped one of the bots with a silenced headshot, its head exploding into a hail of sparks, metal and broken glass.
"Shit! Get in cover!" One of the robots yelled out, not even bothering to check on their fallen comrade. Both of them sprinted for cover, the Rookie noted how oddly inexperienced the two remaining robots were acting. Not covering one another as they moved and seemed panicked. Yet this same group of droids managed to ambush an ODST. Still, he was outnumbered and needed to focus if he were to make it out of this alive. Both droids retreated and decided to remain in cover. The Rookie quietly watched for any sign of movement, but continued to remain posted at the corner.
"We're being shot at...why are we being shot at?!" One of the droids, a male, called out to his squadmate in cover.
"You don't know that! Maybe...Damian's head just...does that?" The female robot called out from another position, though seemingly close to her squaddie. The Rookie glanced over towards Damian's body and...it didn't seem to be any different than just lying in a puddle of black fluid.
"No it doesn't! Who's head just randomly explodes like that, Kate! Someone's trying to kill us for no reason!"
"Will you shut up then, Andy! If whoever's attacking us is still out here, then he can probably still hear us!"
While this argument was transpiring, the Rookie quietly moved from the corner and approached a better position closer to the ODST pinned against the wall.
"I have an idea! Okay, just bear with me on this one."
Rookie approached a pillar where Andy's voice was coming from and decided to wait for their move.
"We surrender! We surrender! I've got my weapon on the ground, and I'm walking out into the open with my hands in the air." Andy said, not even trying to sound sincere. Walking right next to Rookie, quickly, Andy raised his weapon, a very old looking submachine gun and began firing it blindly down the street where the Rookie had come from until clicks could be heard from the gun.
"Yaaaaaaaaah! Just kidding! Just...kidding..." Andy's smugness turned to confusion when he realized no one had fallen for that cheap trick. Up close to the robots, the Rookie also realized that they were shorter than the average human. The Rookie quickly lurched forward and grabbed Andy by his shoulder, quickly turning into a judo throw and tossing the robot onto the concrete with a loud bang. Andy finally managed to get a close look at just what was attacking him...and all he really had left to say was a quick.
"Wait, no...NO!-"
Before the Rookie finished him off with a silenced headshot.
"Hey? Andy? Did it work? I heard shots..." Kate cautiously asked from her hiding spot. The Rookie rounded the corner of the pillar to see Kate peering around the side of another pillar not too far from where Andy had been hiding. Not even really looking at the Rookie. He carefully approached her, gun at the ready. Before he could get close to her, Kate quickly turned around and began to open fire with that Spiker weapon she was holding. The Rookie quickly lurched back behind cover, barely avoiding being hit by the long, metallic rods whizzing past him.
"Yea! You better run ya filthy human!" Kate shouted out, again, her tone completely changed now that she had the upper hand. "Andy, I think I got him...Andy...? Andy are you...are you okay?" Kate looked around the corner of her pillar to see Andy's lifeless corpse, she gasped and quickly lurched back around her corner. Beginning to feel sick. "Oh...why did we volunteer for patrols...? Why?"
The Rookie listened in on Kate's breakdown with both confusion...and a tinge of sympathy to these...honestly really pathetic machines. These couldn't be Covenant machines, not even prototypes. The Rookie rounded the corner of his pillar and slowly began to approach Kate's pillar again, this time, his M7 at the ready. Kate peered around the corner and gasped.
"Wait wait! I've actually got my hands up this time!" Kate rounded the corner with her hands in the air. The Rookie kept his sights trained on her watching for anymore bullshit she'd try to pull like the rest of her squadmates.
Then a faint signal was received just above the both of them, very small, and very fast moving. Kate gasped and started looking around frantically. "Oh no...Oh no nononono!" The Rookie kept his gun trained on her, assuming she was just trying some other new trick. However, when he noticed a shadow of something passing over once more...something with wings, almost like a bird. Kate took her chance and ran, blubbering to herself in fear. The Rookie took aim at her, but she had already rounded another corner and fled out of sight for the Rookie to have a decent shot. Damn. Sloppy work.
The Rookie, having ensured that the area was secured, approached the ODST pinned against the wall. His chestplate nametag read 'Hartwell'. His breaths were shallow and whistling. "Came down hard...Got separated from my squad...Been wandering around all damned night around this God forsaken city...One of those machines ambushed me..." The Rookie glanced back at one of the robot corpses. "No...It looked different...lot more firepower..." The Rookie grabbed at one of the metal rods that had pierced into Hartwell's chest and began to give a few experimental pulls. "Not gonna work..." Hartwell said, before falling into a fit of coughs and wheezes. "...Im done here...Just take my shit..." The Rookie, realizing that it'd take an industrial saw to cut Hartwell out of the wall, heeded his order and took a few magazines for the M7 and his M6/C SOCOM, alongside a single grenade. Upon reloading, The Rookie stood and glanced to Hartwell, to realize he had bled out, his head slumped over and staring at the ground. Shaking his head, the Rookie approached Hartwell's body and carefully pulled his dogtags off, before stowing them in his backpack, giving Hartwell one last pat on the shoulder. The Rookie set off further down the frozen boulevard to locate that drop pod signal. And perhaps find some more clarity in this already confusing situation.
After an uneventful bit of walking from Hartwell's body, the Rookie found himself standing at the entrance of what looked to be a large parking lot, cars abandoned everywhere, some corpses flash frozen in place, now reduced to nothing more than skeletons...somehow. The signal lead Rookie to the edge of a crater, not very deep, right in the center of the lot. There, he saw a drop pod right at the opposite edge of the crater, buried in the snow, though it was impossible for the drop pod to be the culprit of the crater. The Rookie cautiously slid down the base of the crater and approached the pod. Instantly, it became apparent that something had gone awfully wrong here. The hatch of the pod, which was designed to either open, or be blown open by explosive bolts in emergency situations...was neither of those. It was ripped open. Gnarled metal, like a poorly opened can. A pair of three, distinctive claw marks ripped right across the center of the pod. All across the snowy ground was...blood, a black, oily substance, and casings of different kinds, the Rookie bent down and picked one up, recognizing it as...oddly enough NOT a round the UNSC used in any of their firearms, flicking the casing away. The Rookie approached the puddle of blood to find something jutting out of the snow...armored. The Rookie carefully picked the item up to find it was the shoulder plating of a set of ODST/UA armor...though now covered in blood, and broken in some places with distinct burn marks. A demolitions backpack lying nearby all but confirmed the Rookie's suspicions...this pod belonged to one of his squadmates, Mickey. Though the question remained...just what the hell happened to him...?
