"Smoke…too much smoke."
Arthoc dispassionately absorbed the description given to him by the Jiralhanae Chopper driver. The air within the command Shadow was scented with curiosity and trepidation, his retinue standing loosely around the holotable and its rough map of the terrain ahead. A red dot marked the Chopper's position a few kilometers away from a narrow pass.
"We see no tracking data on the map," Arthoc pointed out sharply. Their comms weren't being jammed, which indicated that the Shadows carrying Gorian's forces were in no shape to transmit any positional data. That alone indicated the Bloodstars had met a grim fate.
"I'm closing in on the pass…damn, the stench is already sickening!"
The scout had already been patrolling well ahead of Arthoc's convoy and was in a perfect position to Shadow Gorian's breakaway force. The Bloodstars were unbothered, even urging the Chopper to join them on their advance. After a short rest, the scout had finally caught up to Gorian while the afternoon sun leaned in for a closer look.
Arthoc and his retinue listened intently to the jiralhanae's description of the scene: the line of mangled Shadows, the countless burnt corpses, the many broken weapons, and the remains of a last desperate push towards hills once held by the humans.
Arthoc already noted several important details, particularly the lack of intact weapons and the presence of numerous Jiralhanae dead on the left hilltop while the hill itself showed no signs of Jiralhanae traversal.
Then the scout's words grew slow and cautious.
"Chieftain…I can see a great circle of ash in the pass. No human weapon could've done this. The warriors are…fossilized. Melted to the bone."
"A fuel rod gun?" Targalian suggested.
"No, the devastation is too widespread for a fuel rod gun."
"Do not become fixated on the scene, warrior. Are there any wrecks ahead of you?"
"No."
"Then halt before you strike a mine. There may still be many more buried in that pass." Arthoc disconnected the comm for a moment.
In addition to specialized troops, Arthoc had asked for and been granted several lances of regular infantry. There were some Jiralhanae, but also Unggoy, Kig-yar, and Sangheili. Now Arthoc had found just the mission for them.
"Have our new recruits sent ahead to clear the mines," Arthoc told Targalian, a hint of amusement in his voice. The old Jiralhanae nodded coldly and sent out the order.
"Now, to the matter of replacing our brave and noble Bloodstar friends after their tragic loss…" The other Jiralhanae in the troop bay exchanged bemused glances. This would be a delicate matter to raise with Tremonious. As the successors to the Covenant's namesake special forces unit, Bloodstar warriors weren't to be wasted cheaply. Arthoc and the others would have to agree upon a suitable cover story for Gorian's fate before they reported his loss.
Arthoc gestured to Ilmatus, the young Jiralhanae in charge of communications. "Contact Tremonious and inquire about the frontline situation." They hadn't received any updates about the planned confrontation with Parg Vol's troops, a far greater factor in determining if more troops could be rushed their way.
Ilmatus tended to a communications console in the CiC and awaited a response while Arthoc sought out a more immediate source of reinforcements.
"Deploy spare Shadows to pick up those scout teams nearest to us," he ordered Sipolius. "Better yet, have the one to our South search for any side routes near the pass and try to find any Shadows Gethmald's troopers might've left behind." He could already picture the turn of events leading up to this ambush: Gorian would've seen the obvious spot for a trap in his path and dispatch a few lances of jump pack brutes to scale those cliffs and get above the hills while he slowed down the main force. But some time later, perhaps by sunrise, he might've lost his patience and sent his convoy barreling towards the pass, trading proper recon for a flanking maneuver. Clearly, it hadn't succeeded.
Ilmatus' disappointed voice filled the bay. "I've made contact with Kalcuno, he says the offensive is being arranged as we speak."
"Already!? Tremonious is being bold indeed." Arthoc drummed his fingers against his armored legs in anticipation. He had seen nothing in Vol's troops worthy of respect while helping to crush those holdouts left behind near the human base. That didn't mean their entire warband was worthy of derision, isolated and saddled with a suicide mission as those troops had been. With weeks to settle in and organize their defenses, the main Volist force could draw plenty of blood from the Banished no matter how antiquated their gear. For that reason, it made sense for Tremonious to throw his warriors into battle quickly and take the initiative.
"We're contesting the heights just ahead of the fanatics' main bulwark," Ilmatus explained with a savage grin on his face, "Parg Vol doesn't stop throwing reinforcements onto our bayonets."
"And our forces bleed no less generously, so Tremonious has nothing to spare." Arthoc's assessment defused what little enthusiasm had started to permeate the CiC. With the first moves in the coming decisive battle already underway, Tremonious had every reason and every excuse not to send Arthoc and last-minute reinforcements.
The Chieftain's gaze held on his staff as he once again reviewed the numbers in his head. All told, Gorian's escapade had deprived him of 140 Jiralhanae, including Gethmald and the thrillseekers who'd followed him. That was just over one tenth of his assembled warhost erased by their own stupidity. Not the most painful he had endured in one day, particularly since none of his own warriors from the Brothers of Unending Ire had fallen, but more frustrating on a tactical level. Gorian aside, the Bloodstars were fearsome warriors, equipped with the finest Banished weapons and shielding systems that matched Covenant designs. More unfortunate were the losses among the jump pack troopers, which would reduce their impact in any confrontation with the humans from decisive to diversionary. A meager consolation was that with their Captain dead, the remaining assault troopers would be more quiescent to Arthoc's demands. Perhaps he could even recruit them into his own clan after the hunt was over.
But first, Arthoc would have to ensure that their mission was successful. Looking over his subordinates, the Chieftain announced his next move.
"Follow close behind our new minesweepers," he ordered, "If our scout's report is correct, the humans certainly lost half their force to Gethmald's drop onto that hill, even if he met death on the ground. At least 30 human dead, I'd say. After the mines are removed, we'll see what reinforcements can be gained from the scouts, then skewer our prey."
As the Shadow hummed beneath their feet, Arthoc's subordinates were about to start readying the warhost for an approaching battle when the Chieftain pulled Targalian to the side.
"I know exactly what weapon caused such carnage as the scout described," Arthoc gloated. "One of those humans has a plasma tosser, if he didn't melt his face from overcharging it."
"Taken from Hectarius' camp no doubt," Targalian concurred, "They might have picked one or two from out of the ash as well."
"Let them play with their new toy," Arthoc replied, drawing his own plasma tosser from the holster on his back. Unlike the standard model, this particular weapon was adorned with the flaming orange pattern of the Brothers of Unending Ire, and a serrated bayonet glimmered in the red light of the CiC. "I'll teach these whelps what true mastery of a Ravager entails."
—
That night…
"Awful way to spend the 25th anniversary of the Peace Deal, isn't it?"
Uttered through a mouthful of beans and salad, Private Asger Bossano's question hung awkwardly over the squad, causing several marines to pause mid-bite in confusion. Matei wasn't among them, the sound of the First Sergeant chewing on a handful of Chipplos-brand crisps mingling with the crackling of the fire he and the other 10 marines sat huddled around. He'd been staring aimlessly at how the smooth ceiling of the rock shelter they'd nabbed flickered in the firelight before Bossano's unprompted statement brought him back down to reality. Now he gazed coldly at the young marine, savoring the artificial cheese taste filling his mouth as the other man froze under the combined stares of his squad mates. Two blue candles flared back at him and the others, followed by an overburdened gulp from Bossano. Another fork load of salad got halfway to his mouth before he gave up and dropped the utensil back onto his tray without a sound.
"What gives?"
"Tired," Mundsmann rasped, head tilted so that his eyes were barely a bronze sliver beneath the brim of his helmet. The lone word carried weight far greater than its halfhearted delivery should've. Matei himself felt the urge to slouch forward in his cross-legged position with every dry wind that whistled past their shelter in the pre-dawn air. The tense drive through the pass, followed by an even more uneasy journey after night fell and the blocking group was forced to slow down, had worn away at the marines by the time they rendezvoused with D Company proper.
"Flabbergasted," Norris added, the PFC's voice tinged with authority far greater than his meager standing. "The Treaty Anniversary was Last. November." He drove the last two words home with heavy emphasis, causing Tackett and Roye to scoot loudly away from their spots on either side of him.
"That was only with Half-Jaw's fleet, Private." The tables were turned, Norris now folding in on himself at the sound of Sergeant Barr's calm voice. Sitting at the other end of the circle, the Sergeant's aged face looked almost gaunt in the firelight.
"We had a truce with them, not a peace treaty. Still had too much trash to clean out on Earth before we could think about peace, and don't forget about the Chief's mission through that portal."
"So when was the Peace Treaty signed?" Ramon asked.
"February 2553," Van Wall replied. "Lord Hood signed it on that Elite planet."
"When in February, though?" Copper spoke up despite working through a mouthful of rice.
Barr explained with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. "See, that's the trick. Hood and the Arbiter had all the t's crossed by February 11th. Problem is, the Arbiter had to get all his allies in line too, because they're not all in the same Empire anymore. That took some time because Covenant space is pretty big. Now, Hood doesn't want to come back with a half-baked peace treaty, so he invites the Arbiter to a ceremony on Earth where they can shake on it for everyone holding their breath at home. That ceremony happened…?" Barr trailed off, leaning forward expectantly and looking over the others.
"March 3rd, 2553. At the Voi Memorial"
Matei and the others turned in unison towards the speaker.
"Good job Pasquin!" Barr pointed melodramatically at the young woman with both fingers, causing her to avert her eyes in embarrassment from the newfound focus.
"But March 3rd was weeks ago," Norris timidly cut in, having evidently recovered from Barr's scrutiny. "The whole 25th Anniversary song and dance is already behind us." He sneered back at Bossano.
"Not on Gamma Pavonis," the marksman shrugged. Matei nodded wordlessly and scarfed down another handful of crisps. As he'd learned through his own efforts, most of human space didn't view a single Earth day as enough time to fully acknowledge the devastation caused by the Covenant War. The commemorations and extra days off usually started in late February and ended just after March 3rd. He'd even read about colonies that dedicated the time between December and March to "peace season" activism.
A whole lot of help that's been, he thought, noting grimly that he was down to the crumbs in his Chipplos bag. Matei couldn't help but think about the one member of his squad who wasn't there to join the discussion. Salykov wasn't the only one who hadn't made it off that hill. Another 8 marines from McAllen and Larrey's squads were also dead, and three marines on the opposite hill had caught stray plasma bolts and died. Total casualties amounted to 21 marines, almost a third of their starting force. As for their Brute enemies, Matei was certain the true number of dead was well below the Captain's triumphant estimate of 300. There hadn't been enough transports to fit that many brutes. Certainly, dozens of them had fallen in battle and many others were left in an uncountable state by various explosives. All of them had worn intricate blood-red armor apart from the jump pack troopers on the hill, who wore the typical Banished colors of dull red and gray.
Despite the sheer destructive power unleashed by the Marines' explosive trap, many Banished weapons had remained in working order to be scavenged, even if they were often scorched on the outside. Several marines in Matei's squad now sat with red plasma rifles at their sides, and he could see others in McAllen's squad wearing entire bandoliers of unfamiliar cylindrical grenades with cores that glowed a faint orange sitting a short distance away. Then Barr spoke up again and brought his thoughts back to the current topic.
"In that case, I think I know what the real question we need to ask is: First Sergeant, how are you enjoying your first Peace Season out of cryo?" A mischievous glimmer filled the Sergeant's eyes as he leaned forward and asked the question.
Not one to shy away from a challenge, Matei felt his exhaustion recede until he was merely too tired to care rather than too tired to think. Immediately, he chose to go on the offensive.
"Maybe I can answer that with a question of my own. I've been here since…right before New Year's, yeah. Half of my time since getting out of cryo, I've spent on this rock, and it's not the worst planet I've been dumped on…wasn't, anyway-" He paused for the smattering of tired laughter that followed, then went on. "But now I'm wondering how you guys feel about being sent to Algolis, since you've all been sitting here for longer than I have. For example, I don't know-Roza, you're the only woman in this squad. Is this what you thought you'd be doing when you joined the Marines? Showing the flag on some abandoned colony? Why are you here?"
As Matei had expected, Roza's eyes nearly fell out of her head at his inquiry. Her timid demeanor only got worse as the other marines in the squad started watching the pair in anticipation. Obviously Roza had made no attempt to conceal that she was fascinated by the First Sergeant, but this was the first time he'd done something hinting at any interest on his part. Nobody seemed to be buying the excuse that she was an outlier in a squad of men.
After pausing to take a deep breath, Roza slowly gave her answer.
"I guess it started in high school when I realized that ever since I was born things just kept getting worse. There was the New Phoenix incident in 2560, the Servants of the Abiding Truth, the Forgotten Army, that Sedra mess. My parents…they were too young to sign up during the war, and then they had to raise my brothers and I. But you need to understand, for them it was only 7 years since the war ended and it already looked like we were going to have another! They had all this concern, every single day, and it really rubbed off on me because I'm the oldest, I have to look after my brothers, right-?"
Matei cut her off. "Roza, where are you from?"
"Uh, Lenapi. The Covenant never made it there. A lot of people did sign up for the military according to my Dad. Most of them never came back."
"So you joined the Marines because you grew up in just the right situation to be…worried about missing out on a war? Do I have that right?"
"That sounds a lot like how I was thinking back on Earth," Sergeant Barr interjected while Roza sat stunned at the accusation. Then the older marine's tone suddenly darkened. "Of course, that was before the war came to me instead."
Matei watched another devious light fill the Sergeant's emerald eyes, one that caused the other marines to grow visibly uncomfortable. "Sir, maybe you should be a little easier on Pasquin given that you did grow up during the height of the Insurrection. I hope sleeping through 80 percent of the war hasn't affected your memory somehow-"
"I don't know what you guys learned about the Insurrection in school, but I can tell it wasn't accurate at all."
"But boot camp WAS my school." Ramon shot back.
"Mine too." Tackett added.
"Oh my f-alright, that aside," Matei went on, "there weren't Innies hiding in the boonies of every single Outer Colony. Back on New Harmony, we weren't worried about rebels, we were MAD at them, because everytime the Biko Indepence Army tried to launch a coup, or the Galodew Emancipation hijacked a transport convoy, it gave worlds like ours a bad reputation. When I was a kid, I used to think that my Dad calling into talk shows and ranting for an hour was helping to fight the Insurrection. You wanna know what the Navy's PR department originally said about Admiral Cole's mission to Harvest?"
Nobody replied, the marines completely blindsided by Matei's unexpected outburst.
"They said he blew up a rebel sabotage fleet! The UNSC knew that they could place the blame for entire Colonies going dark on Innie schemes, and most people in the Outer Colonies would believe it. Not that it mattered, they told the truth a week later. That was when everything changed. When we saw what happened to Harvest, we took it personally. We didn't need UNSC propaganda to tell us what the Covenant was hoping to do to every planet they could get to. That's why I joined the marines."
He paused and took a deep breath. When he finally continued, his previous aggravation had withered away.
"Not that it helped. New Harmony was glassed 8 years after I went into cryo on the Spirit of Fire. They told me the Covenant got kicked out of the system when they tried to attack it 2 years earlier. My parents…Dad was always a stubborn guy. He would've stayed after the first time. Probably would've been calling into that same holo-show to chew out Admiral Cole for letting the Covenant get that deep into human space…"
He laughed, a hollow chuckle that made his squad slump in shared melancholy.
"I need to set the record straight with you all about something that's been annoying me. You shouldn't think of me as a "Spirit of Fire survivor" or an "Immortal" or anything like that. That ship was a special one, but I didn't belong to that same brotherhood the way the media makes things look. There were people from all over the place: civilians, Arcadian patrol, a bunch of Naval liaisons from the Pillar of Autumn…"
"The Pillar of Autumn?" Barr repeated.
"Long story. Anyway, if you want to go by nicknames, I'm really more of a Believer."
"Believer in what?" Roza asked.
"The Prophecy."
"Like the Great Journey?"
"No, Copper, I mean Prophecy the ship. Get it? It was some sailor inside joke that us marines adopted after…okay, let me tell you how it started. The Covenant finally got their act together and tried to throw us off Harvest in November of 2526, then in December…
—
Matei wished his hearing hadn't returned. Pained screams echoed around his slumped form, joined by a distant roaring that shook him to the bone. A rapid chattering sound echoed beyond the room.
"Whathappenedtome?" the words tumbled uncontrollably from his mouth as a shadow fell over him.
"It didn't happen to you, it happened to him," a familiar voice snapped in response, gesturing to Matei's right, the same spot where his aching mind had finally pinpointed the source of the screaming. His head lolled to the side before the shadow grabbed his shoulders.
"Don't look," the phantom said in a voice he belatedly recognized as belonging to Sergi Kozma.
Fading out of sight, the familiar shape bellowed "Somebody get him painkillers!" before his words were lost in a burst of gunfire Matei knew to be dangerously close. Then the roaring noise grew even louder, enough to finally drown out the pained shouting to his right.
"Will…is that you?"
Memories dripped through his mind. Sergeant Greig was in the lead with a squad of fresh replacements on either side of his own. Comms started to fill with panic. Rumbling in the distance.
Then the walls ahead of them collapsed and Sergeant Greig was diving away from a tower of metal and spikes that sliced one man in half with a twitch of its arm before it raised another and everything turned green-
Except for the outline of the marine right ahead of him. But that couldn't have been Rakken. He was at the rear of the squad.
A new voice filled what now revealed itself to be a room lined with seats. "We've got Banshees swarming all over the place, I can't sit here much longer!"
"30 more seconds, please!" Sergeant Greig's voice rang out in the distance as Kozma's form stumbled into view, soon joined by a gaggle of other marines both familiar and unfamiliar.
"Alright, this is the best we can do, go ahead and lift off!" Moments later, Greig fell to his knees in front of Matei, gasping desperately for air. The Sergeant glanced towards him with a relieved look.
"Caragiu, good to see you made it out, and…" he looked to the side and grew visibly crestfallen. As the pelican's engines surged around him, Matei realized the screaming had stopped.
"Tseydner?"
"He's not dead yet," Kozma sighed before slouching into one of the Pelican's seats.
Greig knelt down in front of the two marines.
"Listen to me you two, we're heading to the Draco. That's an Orion Assault Carrier. That ship's going to have king sized beds for you, they're going to serve sushi, steak, all the good stuff. But you have to stay alive. That's an order, understand?" Greig stared pointedly in Tseydner's direction and nodded with grim satisfaction at something Matei couldn't see.
"Sarge, you seen the others?" Matei asked, still too disoriented to speak more precisely.
"No, I was too busy dodging those little bastards. There must've been hundreds of them chasing after us, and they all had guns this time. Then there was that cyborg with the spikes…" The marine shuddered and moved to take a seat.
"Cyborg?" Kozma asked. "I didn't really get a good look at that thing before I started running."
"Smart move. Anyway, there were two of them leading the little guys around. I caught a glimpse of one's neck and it was just…bare muscle packed together.'
"Uh, about our destination," the pilot's shaky voice filled the intercom.
"Just say it."
"Sergeant, Draco is gone."
"Gone how?"
"Destroyed by the enemy fleet."
"It's an invasion support ship, not a battlecruiser, what was it doing in combat?" Kozma asked.
"That type of ship has twin heavy MACs, right?" Private Dahl spoke up from out of sight.
"So it should be supporting the fleet at long range, not leading the battleline!" Greig's voice was heavy with exasperation. He looked towards the cockpit hatch and asked, "Where can we go instead?"
The pelican shifted rapidly under Matei courtesy of the pilot's wild maneuvers. After a short stretch of dodging through Harvest's atmosphere, the man finally answered.
"We've linked up with a Marathon instead, the Prophecy. It'll take us out of the system to rendezvous with X-ray."
Dahl wasn't pleased. "Shit, man, might as well ask the aliens for a ride!"
Greig stumbled over to the other man. "Private, what's the issue?"
"Sir, that ship is cross-eyed! It can't hit the broad side of a barn. I heard Admiral Cole personally chewed out the Captain after he screwed up and caused like 8 ships to be destroyed!"
"Eight ships-where the hell did that happen, kid?"
"Biko, yeah, Biko."
"You're out of line, Dahl. I've got two brothers on the Gorgon and they never said anything about losing 8 ships in one battle over Biko."
The argument was interrupted by the pilot's unsteady announcement. "Hold on guys, we've got a Covenant battlecruiser making a break for the evac route."
By now, Matei had pulled himself up onto one of the seats of the Pelican just in time to see the tactical displays placed around the cockpit hatch snap on to show various external views around the dropship. Sure enough, the right-side camera showed a distant purple speck growing rapidly above the ashen landscape of Harvest. Numerous smaller objects also darted past the pelican, whether debris or other fleeing ships Matei couldn't tell. Further away, dozens of lights danced in the night sky, many visible for only a second before winking out. Whether by mistake or in tandem with the cameras, several voices also filled the intercom from across the Harvest defense fleet.
"Borysthenes, you're dropping out of formation, please respond-"
"This is Harp 4, I've got Seraphs on my tail, somebody get in here-'
"-I'm serious, Thebes is throwing ALL her fusion rockets right at them, get out of the way!"
"Quebec 520 here, someone interpose your ass between us and that Covenant ship, or this evacuation is over!"
Purple lights glimmered along the hull of the advancing covenant ship, briefly obscured beneath a shimmering sapphire bubble. When the bubble disappeared, several purple sparks burst forth from the rounded ship and twirled through space, leaving stringy trails of energy in their wake.
A new voice filled the Pelican's comm. "This is Frigate Division 31, Paris, Split, Tally-ho, Kumamoto, and Sigsbee to all evac ships. We'll keep that battlecruiser off your back, just get where you need to go."
"Thanks 31," the pilot gasped in relief as several heavy frigates dropped into view of the external cameras, numerous pelicans now standing out sharply against their silver hulls.
Moments later, one of the newcomers was knocked out of formation by a burst of purple energy that enveloped its prow in flames and splatters of melted titanium-A battleplate. The damaged frigate swung back up seconds later, engines flaring as it rejoined the formation. Another of the mesmerizing energy projectiles had already gouged the portside nacelle of a different heavy frigate, the fusion engines sputtering and dying moments later. Vengeful autocannon fire from all five ships soon filled the screen, battering the battlecruiser's shields.
"They're not gonna make it," one of the marines whined.
"That's right, so you better be grateful," The pilot growled back, forcing the pelican into another turn that put the battle out of focus. Instead, the distinctive hull of a Marathon-class heavy cruiser was rapidly filling the forward cameras. Archer missiles blossomed from pods along the ship's hull, passing by the pelican to join in the holding action behind it.
"Say hello to the Prophecy. We're all going to be spending a lot of time on it now that Draco is nothing but ash." The pilot shifted his focus towards the cruiser, which was in turn swinging to starboard so that its MAC was practically aimed right at the pelican.
"Prophecy-actual, this is Golf-714, requesting permission to board."
"Golf-714 this is Prophecy-actual, be advised you are currently in the line of fire, please adjust your course along the provided heading and rendezvous at the suggested hangar."
"Line of fire," Matei repeated the warning dumbfoundedly. Dahl spoke up the loudest in the ensuing commotion.
"Hey, Golf-whatever, you lied to us! That ship's not withdrawing to jump out of here, it's going INTO the fight!"
As if in reply, the heavy cruiser's twin MAC battery flared to life, the flash of lightning mirrored across several hull cameras.
"It's last-minute fire-support, genius," the pilot replied as the MAC rounds shot past the pelican's aft cameras, passed below a drifting heavy frigate, and skipped off the writhing covenant battlecruiser's shields near the stern. The enemy ship ignored the hit and lashed out with a massive energy beam from amidships, but the frigate it was targeting easily shifted out of the way with a burst of its emergency thrusters
"See, that was a glancing hit-" Dahl started.
"Shut up!" The pilot snapped as Golf-714 jerked hard to starboard, pulling well above another swarm of archer missiles and speeding so close to the cruiser that it now filled several of the cameras, giving him a glimpse of the number "835" emblazoned in white letters on its hull. Matei thought they would collide, but the pilot skillfully brought the pelican into a gradual row towards a row of open hangar doors. In a few minutes, the dropship was idling peacefully inside the airlock.
"Golf-714, you are cleared to land. Please disembark all passengers immediately and prepare for slipspace jump." As the comm officer spoke, the doors to the hangar proper slid open to reveal a spacious hangar bay crowded with Pelican dropships and darter cargo transports. Dozens of tiny figures dressed in candy-colored navy jumpsuits and marine green darted between the haphazardly arranged fliers, sorting equipment and aiding the wounded. In other words, "organized chaos".
Matei felt more than saw the pelican finally touch down on solid ground below him, immediately followed by the bay doors opening to let in several Navy crewmen. The sailors got to work carrying injured marines off Golf-714, one approaching Matei before he brushed the man off. When the way was clear, Matei and the other intact marines stumbled out of the pelican and into the chaotic midst of the hangar. Marines from all over the 1st Expeditionary Army mingled with pelican crews from a half-dozen squadrons while crewmen attempted to help sort them out. Matei approached one of the senior-looking sailors and was about to ask about the rest of his squad when something unfortunate occurred to him.
"Oh damn," he whispered, but the NCO still noticed him standing around.
"What's your unit, private?"
"That's what I was going to ask about, I had a picture with my whole squad, an old-fashioned picture with some people I can't find anymore, but…" he looked back, his view of the pelican already obscured by a group of newcomers. "I guess it slipped out."
—
"I was on that ship for 3 more years, but I never did find that picture. I won't bore you with the details of where I went until we got sent back to Harvest at the end of 2530. 3rd fleet sent usout all by our lonesome to set up a forward outpost up in Harvest's North Pole. The Covenant were digging something up over there and we were supposed to figure out what. Prophecy was going to cover our heads while we harassed them on the ground. Things were going pretty well until Christmas day when they sent some proper warships at us. We didn't really figure out how the battle went, but a week later the ship stopped reporting in. Then the Covies burned down the base and we had to hide in the ice until Spirit of Fire finally got there and sent more marines down to help us retake it."
Taking a long sigh, Matei looked over his squad. The marines all looked enthralled at his story, not that the sight motivated him much. Remembering that rout from Harvest had left him tired, almost regretting his choice to set the record straight for the others. But he knew he had a responsibility to do so, more for those who couldn't speak than to ease some personal annoyance.
Roza spoke up first. "What happened to your ship?"
"I have a good guess from how some of those guys on Spirit were looking at us, but whoever told them to keep their mouths shut must've been pretty high up. You need to keep in mind, things moved really fast once we got back to Alpha Base. After we got evacuated, Spirit of fire ran off into slipspace without any explanation. Then suddenly we're getting sent down to Arcadia to help evacuate civilians. No time for explaining anything after that.
Weirdest part is, I still don't know for sure what happened. Navy records got really vague about us before they should've. I can see why they listed ME as MIA, but why keep the rest of the Prophecy's crew listed as missing after almost 50 years?"
He let the question hang, unable to stop himself from yawning loudly.
"Sheesh. I don't know about you marines but…that was more exhausting than killing those brutes." He slid over to his sleeping bag. "Let's all get some shuteye while it's still dark, and remember: I believe in the Prophecy. Do you?"
The rest of the squad exchanged confused glances.
"It was like a secret handshake for us-" Matei started to explain, before giving up and lying down. "Forget it. Go on, get comfy, that's an order."
Exhaustion took hold of him unnervingly easily, and soon he was fast asleep.
—
Arthoc savored the scout's report as he would the hindleg of a thorn beast. He could almost see the banquet arrayed before him on the holotable, the map centered on a red glyph denoting Bost's scout team. The Jiralhanae scouts lay on a ledge overlooking a wide valley covered in hills. Even as he watched, a new green marker appeared halfway up one of those hills courtesy of the scouts' continued marking of coordinates where human positions lay.
To nobody's surprise, the sentimental humans hadn't taken advantage of their comrades' sacrifice at the pass to gain more distance. Instead, they seemed to have set up camp in the valley to await the return of their rearguard. Arthoc was already baring his fangs beneath his helmet at the thought of making the humans pay for their weakness. The chase had taken less time than he'd feared, but as far as he was concerned it had still taken too long. He'd come here seeking glory in battle against Merg Vol's legions, not to hunt human stragglers. The sooner he could annihilate these holdouts and avenge Hectarius, the sooner he could return to the front line and gain true renown.
Yet he knew better than to throw patience to the wind. The humans were still many hours of driving away. Only by sheer luck had Bost's pack found a spare Shadow transport left behind by Gethmald and a passage large enough to drive it through until they'd neared the ledge. Before he could embrace victory, he needed to plan how he would grab it.
Looking back up from the holotable, Arthoc saw the eyes of his command retinue staring back excitedly, two sets of eyes glowing in the red lighting of the command Shadow's troop bay. Ilmatus, standing frozen at attention in a vain attempt to look taller than he really was. Sipolius, slouched forward and leaning on the holotable. Lastly, Targalian stood with his legs spread and ready to pounce, expression unreadable beneath the unblinking cyclopean stare of his old Stalker helmet.
The plan arose quickly in Arthoc's mind. It was direct, brazen, and merciless for both sides. In other words, a typical strategy for the Brothers or Unending Ire.
"I want Bost's team to hold position and help correct fire from the Revenants, while our 'minesweepers' take the lead again…"
—
"You must aim higher, brother!"
"We are firing at the highest angle we can!"
"But you are not aiming," Bost corrected the Revenant gunner, watching another line of red plasma bolts rain down harmlessly short of a human camp. The enemy warriors had long since recovered from the shock and were now preparing their weapons, moving only slightly away from the inaccurate bombardment. "Adjust your fire however you can. The humans pay you no mind, they strut about in the open to show how great their disregard is."
The description wasn't accurate at all, but he hoped it would irritate the Jiralhanae on the other end of the line enough to make him reconsider his stubbornness. Bost had spent the past 15 minutes wrangling Revenant crews just like that one after they'd begun a pre-emptive bombardment on the humans. The results of his efforts remained unsatisfying. Far below him, only a few trails of smoke marked the valley hosting the human encampment, and a line of unarmed vehicles was already trundling away to safety, no doubt carrying wounded from prior battles. He hadn't even bothered trying to coordinate fire on that moving target, appealing though the prospect of demoralizing the uninjured humans might have been. The Revenants were being pushed to their limit as it was. They were scout vehicles meant to provide light fire support for infantry, not long-range artillery. From his vantage point, Bost could see a substantial spread in the incoming scarlet comets falling on human positions, a hint at how unstable the Revenant really was as a weapons platform. If Tremonious had spared a single Wraith, the scene playing out below him would've been much more satisfying.
The scout didn't lament the lack of heavy weapons for long. Arthoc seemed willing to improvise and make do with what he had, at least. Bost had been sent out ahead of the Chieftain's warhost as part of Tragathal's scouts, a fruitless venture until Arthoc had directed his team along this route to find possible transport. Sure enough, they'd happened upon a few Shadows, taking one forward and sending one Jiralhanae each to return the others to the convoy. The results had exceeded Bost's expectations. Despite the shoddiness of the Revenant bombardment, the humans were still being placed in an unenviable position. They could run, not knowing how much faster their pursuers were, or they could face their fate with a miniscule amount of honor. Either way, Bost knew, the glory would be his for having found the human camp and directed the first blows upon it. Best of all, he would earn it without putting himself at any personal risk whatsoever.
Cautious words brought him out of his smug pondering. "Major, we're picking up a strange human signal," one of his packmates warned.
"Out with it, what are they trying now?"
"It's coming from above us…targeting us?"
Bost's eyes widened with recognition. "Spread out-"
Something whistled overhead and past his face, hitting the ground at his feet before unleashing a wave of searing heat that clung to his armor and exposed skin.
Then everything went black.
—
Arthoc was about to confirm that Bost's team had gone silent when the Revenant nearest to his transport exploded. Standing upon the armored roof of the Shadow, the Chieftain had an excellent view of the resulting devastation. The aft end of the light vehicle disintegrated in a rain of red plasma and debris much of which no doubt belonged to the driver. What he couldn't see was the cause of this volatile reaction. From his vantage point in the middle of the convoy, it looked as if the Revenant's cannon had overloaded. Other Banished troops riding out in the open let out shouts of alarm, a brief wave of noise lost in the low humming of the transport's engines. The drivers had orders to continue advancing unless told otherwise, and Banished training had instilled in them the importance of not losing one's head under fire or they would lose it literally as punishment for ineptitude.
Turning towards another Revenant, Arthoc was disappointed to hear a different one detonate without warning somewhere behind him. Momentarily annoyed, Arthoc kept his focus on the vehicle passing to his left. By now, it was apparent that something was targeting not just the convoy, but their artillery support specifically. In response, the Revenant driver ceased firing and attempted to split away from the convoy. This time, Arthoc spotted a small missile flying down to impact the sloping front of the vehicle. A moment later the entire forward half vanished in a cloud of flame and plasma, the driver lasting a second longer before his shields gave in.
Snapping his head skyward, the Chieftain could just make out a tiny speck darting through the morning sky. He didn't need to give any orders before a particle beam flashed through the air towards the object. The shot went wide, but it was as if a switch had been flipped and the entire sky quickly became filled with plasma fire. Unfortunately, the drone-for it could only have been one of the human unmanned fliers, Arthoc decided-needed little maneuvering to avoid the panicked fire.
"Stop wasting plasma!"
Arthoc's order brought the shooting to a momentary halt until another two Revenants exploded in rapid succession. The warriors nearest to the vehicles fired indiscriminately above them before their respective lance leaders brought them back in line.
Targalian called in from back inside the transport. "Orders, Chieftain?"
"They must have a limited supply of ordinance," Arthoc noted, mostly to reassure himself as another Revenant was blown into several burning pieces ahead of him. "Or they would be hitting all of us, and not just our artillery. The plan remains the same." A sudden flash of inspiration hit him, and he added "Onwards! Crush the humans in the name of Atriox!"
That had just the effect he was looking for, a resounding cheer echoing through his comms and around him. As the transports surged forward, Arthoc decided he could get used to this.
—
This was it, Matei decided. This was the day death caught up with him.
His squad had gotten lucky with their choice of shelter. The natural alcove was a perfect shield from artillery. So perfect, in fact, that his awakening had been gradual rather than the instant switch taught to him by experience.
Exiting the little shelter with his squad in tow, Matei could hear Captain Sone urging D Company to get up and start digging. The enemy artillery was just a bad memory, he insisted, silenced by the Marines' Argus drones and their Khanjar micro-missiles. They'd held off on using those missiles on the first Banished patrol, a decision that was finally bearing fruit.
Next the Captain pressed the other marines for a status report.
"We're all green here, sir," Matei announced when he had the chance.
"Excellent, First Sergeant. Take your squad up to the middle hill and dig in with Jarpa's squad."
"Yes sir."
The brief exchange held no spite or annoyance. Matei wondered how much the Captain regretted his obstinance back in the pass. From where her stood, he'd been vindicated. The main Banished column hadn't been too far behind their advance force, and if the Captain had gotten his wish to try and make lightning strike twice, the whole rearguard would've been wiped out.
It didn't matter, he reminded himself. Today's battle was a reversal of the ambush at the pass: the majority of the company was holding the line while the few dozen injured were transported away in trucks. If they were lucky, the little convoy might even reach the main hideout in less than a day. They would still be faced with two roving legions of ex-covenant hooligans and no way to escape the system, let alone evade the two fleets watching each other in orbit, but that wasn't Matei's problem. He didn't expect to walk out of this little valley alive.
As he reached the top of the hill marked on his tactical glasses and whipped out his entrenching tool, Matei reminded himself that things could be much worse. He thought again about how oddly serene his awakening had been, of the idle and dreamless sleep that had preceded it. That in particular seemed odd after several nights of raw flashbacks or subconscious ramblings. The most reasonable explanation was that enlightening the squad about which ship he really belonged to had finally eased some weight upon his mind. Spirit of Fire had saved his life in 2531, but Prophecy had saved him first.
—
Targalian leaned past the antigrav turret mount of the Shadow, watching in calm anticipation as the canyon around him grew wider by the second. The afternoon sun watched dispassionately overhead, and Targalian knew from experience that before long his destination would grow heavy with the scent of the fallen.
A great battlefield symphony echoed through the canyon even then, amplified by the enhanced sensors of his old Stalker power armor. Once again, Targalian felt boundless gratitude for the Banished technicians who had finally restored the armor to its proper capabilities. Many warriors in the Brothers of Unending Ire had looked down upon him for using such obsolete and defective equipment, but in his view, there was nothing more intimidating available!
Soon enough, he needed no artificial assistance to discern the familiar sections of the symphony. Most prominent were several plasma cannons spitting fire at the enemy, even as they were silenced one by one. Dozens of smaller weapons accompanied them, plasma rifles and pistols with a few needlers, but also newer sounds like the whine of pulse carbines.
Further away was a sound he hadn't heard in decades, an old rival finally back to settle some unfinished disputes. The staccato rhythm of human weapons grew louder by the second, so great in number that they formed an incessant hum. Something roared through the air ahead, and another plasma cannon fell silent.
The transport turned, and Targalian finally caught a glimpse of the valley. Directly ahead lay a Shadow, the transport resting in pieces on one side as Unggoy huddled behind it seeking shelter, oblivious to the searing purple flames covering its hull. Dozens of red and gray figures were strewn about the uneven ground beyond, some crouched behind cover and others lying deathly still. The distinctive outline of a Chopper attack bike darted into view past the sheltered figures, pursued by several lines of tracer rounds as it disappeared behind the left side of the canyon.
The first wave was doing its job well, it seemed. Those distant figures were fast resolving into a mix of Unggoy, Kig-Yar, and Sangheili-the Banished regulars Arthoc had asked for as part of his warhost. Having cleared the human minefield at the site of Gorian's defeat, they were now serving the same role under more violent conditions. As Targalian shifted to the other side of the vehicle, he saw a gray-armored Sangheili leading a squad of his brothers in a charge on a human strongpoint at the base of a hill on the right side of the valley. They managed to sling several plasma grenades at the humans before a hail of bullets cut through their shields and knocked them down for good. Many of the human defenders had no time to enjoy the victory before the plasma grenades fell upon their targets and disintegrated half the human trench. The Jiralhanae veteran couldn't help but feel entertained at the scene. Banished doctrine spoke of a bond between all the species of the former Covenant and more, united in taking the treasures of the galaxy. As far as Targalian was concerned, he was just satisfied to see Sangheili like those in the same straits he'd suffered through countless times before for once.
The canyon pathway was now wide enough for several Shadows to maneuver side by side, the drivers needing no orders to pull alongside their commander and prepare to disperse. With his transport already shaking from human gunfire, Targalian signaled his troops to begin disembarking and joining the first wave in the assault. Drawing his carbine, he leapt clear of the transport as its armored sides folded in upon themselves to unleash his handpicked lance. He hit the ground running just before a familiar crack split the air, guessing that his Shadow had just lost its gunner. Not pausing to mourn the loss, he sprinted into the valley, finally getting a full view of the battlefield. He nearly perished before he could take it in when a human Warthog scout vehicle darted into view from behind a hill and unloaded a single shot from its turret in his direction. Targalian felt the ghost of a projectile pass his head for just a moment, shields belatedly flaring afterwards before it found its mark on another Shadow behind him. As the sound of it veering off course and grinding against the canyon filled his ears, Targalian kept running and resumed examining the valley.
Several uneven hills rose and fell in what was now the most open section of this natural route so far. Layered atop the three nearest hill were human defensive lines augmented by various crates, steel barriers, and even spare tires. Larger hills arose behind the initial trio, dotted with concealed emplacements of some kind.
Scattered about the flat stretch of ground between the base of the hills and the entrance to the valley were the remnants of the first wave: more than two dozen Shadows split and shattered by human weapons, a few surviving Choppers criss-crossing the dirt in an attempt to dodge human fire or line up for an attack with their forward-facing guns, and dozens of Banished warriors lying dead. Many more still clung to cover behind rocks or wrecked vehicles, though, and they were already rising unsteadily to their feet at the urging of Jiralhanae from the Brothers of Unending Ire.
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Targalian himself set his sights on the human line that had been mauled by the Sangheili grenade attack at the base of the rightmost hill. A few humans were all but sliding down from positions higher up to try and stabilize it. Passing another wrecked Shadow, he recalled an old battle cry from his last fight with the humans long ago.
"Forward warriors! Take this hill or die upon it!"
Jiralhanae from his pack howled in acknowledgement and charged behind him, the sudden increase in plasma bolts filling his peripheral vision indicating that the Banished regulars had been stirred to action as well. Striding quickly towards the broken human line, the old warrior felt a strange rush of exhilaration. Though he had now spent more time pillaging the broken Covenant, it was against the humans where he'd earned his reputation as a warrior. Like the others, he'd expected to trounce the forces of Merg Vol and his Fieldmaster brother, not hunt down human stragglers. Unlike them, he was pleased at the opportunity to relive his younger years.
A few steps away from the human lines, Targalian coldly reviewed the key lessons he'd learned about his old enemy. He snapped off a shot from his carbine at a dazed human who was taking too long to aim. The round caught him in the shoulder and sent him twisting to the ground.
Their armor remains dubious, just as before, Targalian marked off that point, then shoved past a makeshift wall of cover into a shallow trench that barely reached his knees. Several unrecognizable human remains littered the wrecked defenses. Stepping over his first kill, Targalian rounded an overturned crate and was greeted by a hail of bullets that flared off his shields. Unbothered by the barrage, Targalian stepped forward and lashed out indiscriminately with his carbine. The bayonet he'd added beneath the barrel glanced off the human's helmet without cracking it, more than enough force to send him tumbling to the ground.
Not just weak, but soft. Even Unggoy have thicker skulls.
The rest of his warriors and a loose assortment of other Banished troops had reached the trenches, already shifting fire towards the next line above them.
What else am I forgetting, Targalian wondered as he stepped past the crate and examined the next human trench. Only when he heard something vaguely familiar to him as an insult in a high-pitched voice to his left did he realize his error. Targalian had enough time to spin towards the source before the first shot caught him in the face. Shields flared solid white before his vision, and his HUD flickered momentarily under the assault. He heard the next shot being cycled just as his vision cleared and he spotted the assailant: a human hiding behind the crate, diminutive even by their standards. The shotgun in its hands would've been a fine toy for a Jiralhanae, but for the human it looked quite oversized.
That's right, the veteran remembered, the females.
Both he and the human woman fired at the same time and struck each other's chests. His shields absorbed the buckshot, while the human fell back lifelessly. An unremarkable but not undignified death, the Jiralhanae decided.
Before he could turn back to rush the next line, a storm of human fire struck the newly captured trench. Plasma bolts joined the usual rain of bullets, dropping Targalian's shields to an unnerving degree for the first time in the fight. The old warrior backpedaled into the shallow trench, firing carefully back at the humans with his carbine until he reached an overturned steel human barrier. Several Jiralhanae from his pack and the other Banished lances remained undaunted and began to charge up the hill while the few surviving Unggoy and Kig-Yar sought cover in the trench. Even shielded as they attackers were, they soon began dwindling beneath the rain of bullets, plasma, and grenades sent rolling down the hill. Targalian was about to request fire support from one of the Unggoy Fuel Rod gun teams they'd brought along when he spotted a familiar red glow off to his left. He turned in just in time to see a red plasma bolt not unlike a Revenant's land among a lance of Sangheili rushing the central hill. A burst of flaming red plasma overloaded their shields in moments and began to cling greedily to the warriors themselves. Targalian knew immediately which weapon could inflict such excruciating results, and it wasn't a human one. Having seen worse before, the Jiralhanae paid their fate no mind and activated his comms.
"Arthoc, about that human who stole one of our plasma tossers, you will find him on the middle hill."
"Good. I'm leading the next wave. Maintain the pressure. We have more than thrice their number, so fight like it!"
"We are," Targalian noted grimly, watching the next wave of Jiralhanae scramble over the fallen up the right-hand hill.
—
"It's empty? NOW?"
Matei didn't spend another second watching crimson fumes sputter from the plasma cannon before he tossed the useless weapon out of the trench. There was no time to lament the lack of fuel. He'd overcharged the weapon 3 more times beforehand and the Brutes just churned up the ashes of their dead comrades beneath their feet and kept charging. He was certain that hundreds of Banished dead littered the dirt after less than 20 minutes of shooting, but they'd managed to clear the bottleneck and just kept pushing. Dozens of wrecked Shadows offered plenty of cover to the attackers, and the paltry minefields hastily dug by D Company were now a memory.
"Watch where you throw your garbage, moron!" The infuriated voice echoed in his comms and below him from somewhere in Sergeant Jarpa's position.
"Sorry," the First Sergeant hastily apologized as he grabbed his assault rifle and took aim at the oncoming Brutes. Unlike the mixed fodder that had made up the first wave, these newcomers were an all-Brute force dressed in a unique orange color scheme. It reminded him of the blood-red armor worn by the Brutes back in the pass. Unlike the Brutes in the pass, these attackers hadn't been disoriented by a veritable tile floor of explosives, and they had plenty of intact transports to hose the marine lines with plasma cannon fire.
He didn't worry about the Shadows, trusting the Warthogs and AT nests on the hills further to keep them busy. Instead, directed his squad to focus fire on one or two charging brutes at a time, marking targets with the HUD built into his ballistic glasses. At least two marines armed with fast-firing red plasma rifles pilfered from the enemy would fire on one target each to melt its shield, and another 4 armed with MA5s or BR55s would join in once the shields were gone. It was a basic arrangement that served well to bring down Brutes without wasting ammo. It also wasn't fast enough. The orange-armored Brutes rushed past their fallen comrades and soon reached the base of the hill. A dozen grenades from Sergeant Jarpa's squad rolled down to greet them, obscuring the brutes beneath a cloud of dirt and debris.
Pausing to reload, Matei reminded himself that the situation could've been worse with a glance to his left. There, Sergeant RJ McAllen's squad formed the lynchpin of the defenses on the left-hand hill, which were now within spitting distance of a Brute mob. After a lucky plasma grenade attack had annihilated Sergeant Larrey's squad, the Banished forces attacking that hill had stormed the lowest defensive positions and mounted a suicidal charge towards McAllen's trench. Dozens of Brutes and a few Elites already covered that hill alone, and the next wave of attackers did little more than trip over them in acknowledgement. Against all common sense, Matei nervously contacted the other squad leader.
"Mac, you need to ask the snipers for help or something, those Brutes are almost on top of you."
"Exactly."
Before Matei could ask for an explanation, he saw the distant shapes of McAllen's squad tossing several unfamiliar objects down the hill. A few orange specks were all he saw before the items were lost among the Brute horde. Moments later, the Brutes themselves vanished in a spontaneous inferno of ravenous flames. The massive blaze ate through shields and armor in seconds as a cacophony of bewildered alien shouts filled the air. Slowly, Matei recalled the strange orange canisters that McAllen had collected after the ambush. Now he only regretted not taking a few for his squad.
The flames summoned by the looted Brute Grenades died out in seconds, but the damage was done. With countless Brutes now covering the hill in a burnt heap, those not caught in the flames all but fell back down the hill to safety. Marine fire chased them down and left several Brutes tumbling to a final halt at the base of the hill. In a few seconds, the steady Brute advance up the left hill had been completely undone.
Unfortunately, that didn't help his own plight on the middle hill. Dozens of Brutes surged forward towards Sergeant Jarpa's lines without a care for the fate of their friends on the neighboring slope.
—
Arthoc felt the tide of battle flow around him, countless Jiralhanae brothers rushing towards the human lines secure in the knowledge that their Chieftain charged alongside them. Many died in the charge, killed by the human defenders, the last row of their mines, or machine gun fire from human scout vehicles attempting to stem the tide.
He unloaded his Ravager into the first layer of the human lines on the hill, keeping a steady stream of plasma falling among their lines with careful management of the weapon's heat level. Red plasma bolts battered the humans, not merely bursting into superheated splatters at the first impact with an object but reflecting off inert items to all but bounce onto a living target. The Jiralhanae forgemaster responsible for the modification had dubbed it "Rebound", and as always, the weapon never ceased to amuse Arthoc in its capacity for unexpected devastation. In less than a minute, the first human bulwark was nothing but melting steel and ash, the trenches soon crowded by his warriors.
The next challenge remained above them, a few dozen more human marines firing stubbornly into positions once held by their comrades. Several Brothers of Unending Ire fell, both to the humans above and to lone shots from one of the sniper nests on the taller hills. Jiralhanae warriors returned fire on the former in kind, felling at least two humans by sheer volume of plasma. Many more fired blindly over their trench or stopped shooting altogether. Holstering his Ravager, Arthoc surged past the other warriors to lead the charge, preparing to climb the steepening hill.
He spotted another human, a female, rising out of cover to drop a bundle of grenades down the hill towards his troops. Somehow the human managed to duck back into cover without so much as a glancing burn on her, and her defiant gesture cost several Jiralhanae their lives, temporarily throwing the advance into confusion.
Undaunted, Arthoc drew a spike grenade in each hand, over a dozen warriors around him imitating the act. The Chieftain gave a wordless cry of vengeance as he and the other Jiralhanae threw their response up the hill. He didn't even wait to see where the grenades landed before starting to climb towards the humans.
—
Watching Jarpa's squad melt figuratively and literally was the last straw. He wasn't so sure about dying anymore. Maybe it had started with his little lecture to his squad, the first honest conversation he'd had since arriving on Algolis. Two people in his audience were dead that he knew of. Norris and Copper, both hit by Brute fire. Meanwhile, he'd huddled in the trench and taken his sweet time reloading.
He hadn't heard anything distressing after those spike grenades had gone off. Perhaps he could still save the rest. Hefting his MA5, he shakily keyed his comms for the entire company.
"McAllen, Captain, anyone who can hear me…somebody give us a hand here!"
—
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There was sudden incandescence, a speck of light at the edge of darkness.
She had no words, no thoughts, no memories. She couldn't even see, but she knew the light was there. Just like the understanding of her isolated presence in the void.
She couldn't express how long she'd waited like this, even with this new presence making itself known to her. Time didn't exist here.
Until now. Until the light.
Now there was only the time before the light and the time with it accompanying her. Watching her? She couldn't tell.
All she knew was that it seemed to be growing. Brightening. Searching? For her? What else was there in here?
The brightness grew more and more powerful and suddenly she could see it expanding in the darkness, falling over her?
But what was she?
The answer must've waited in the light, she reasoned. So she approached it, or it approached her. Somehow, her newfound sight seemed to hasten their meeting.
There was more to light now. A window. A door. Some other side to it that lay beyond her reach. A way out of the darkness.
She felt more than just the brightness, felt something solid reach out from the light across the void.
Not across the void, she realized, across HER. She and the void were connected somehow.
Until the light had appeared. It pulled things from the darkness, tangible things she knew were part of her yet couldn't recognize.
Countless little things, fragments of her very self, flowed back together into her from the light that was now all-encompassing. Now there was clear movement, a gentle pull that took her true self further into the light.
The pieces started to take shape now that she had a sense of direction. Countless aspects resolved themselves around and within her, brought forth by the light that now seemed to be lifting her upwards.
Service. She had served something, long ago in a different world of light and color and sound. Then there had been only the void, the endless darkness that had absorbed everything about her.
But the void was gone. Now there was only light, a healing brightness that merged her back into herself.
For what?
She heard something, carried by the light through her reforming hull. It was urgent, desperate, and familiar. Yes, it had been a part of her once, long ago. Now it lay waiting somewhere on the other side of the light, calling for help.
Why was he out there and not part of her in the darkness? She didn't care. He was in trouble and she needed to help him. Perhaps that had brought the light to her.
But it didn't make sense. The darkness was her home, her final resting place. She couldn't just reach out and come to the aid of people who needed her.
No! She didn't need it to make sense. This was her chance! A chance to return after…
What? What had happened to leave her strewn about this dark realm? And why was she being awakened from within it now?
She felt herself shudder to a halt, felt the light recede around her. New memories flowed past her gaze in its place.
Planets set alight by something merciless and overpowering, something she wasn't strong enough to stop.
The darkness reached forth to grasp her.
Monstrous alien ships lashed out at with murderous energy beams, burning her hull and snapping her escorts into piecesshootitshootitwhywonttheshieldsbreakweneedtorun-
The light started to recede and the darkness pulled her down, pulling her apart even as the memories grew clearer.
Repair, refit, upgrade, anything to make her stronger, to make her even slightly more powerful.
A special mission, one last push against a weakened enemy, and she was the best option available-
Something snapped. She was falling, falling to pieces in the void, caught in the scene of her body frozen helplessly above a dead world while her crew drowned in her flowing lifeblood-
No!
She halted again. One ghostly limb reached out above her towards the fading light.
He remembers me! He needs me! I can't let him down!
The incandescent glow embraced her once more, pulling her back together more quickly than before.
I want to live! I'll protect everyone this time!
The last wisps of darkness fell away from her body, the swallowing her with a sudden flash of painful brightness in her new eyes.
—
The Chieftain yanked itself over the lip of the trench, orange eyes glancing derisively down at Matei's huddled form-
Several rounds hit the Brute's face from beyond the trench just as it was rising to its full height, the force of the bullets sending it tumbling backwards out of sight. Instantly, hundreds of plasma guns fell silent. Rather than ponder the reason for this halt, Matei pulled himself to his feet and prepared to get whoever had saved his life to safety.
He looked over the trench and froze.
Sitting her knees right outside the trench was a woman holding an M6C handgun in one outstretched hand. Not a marine, he noted first, because she was dressed in a gray Navy officer's dress uniform. That threw him off the most out of everything else. They had a few Navy people tagging along, but none of them were officers, though this woman looked too young to be an officer in the first place. Her hair hung far below regulation length at her shoulders and seemed to have been dyed an unnatural shade of shimmering brown. Finally, her turquoise eyes shimmered beneath a pair of round-rimmed eyeglasses. That alone was almost as befuddling as her uniform. He'd seen some people wear old-fashioned glasses, but never in the military where they had no shortage of recruits with proper eyesight and various corrective surgeries available.
The strange woman let the gun fall from her hand as she stared at Matei. Her abnormally green eyes sparkled with what he thought was recognition. Unsure of how to greet the newcomer, Matei gestured for her to join him in the trench. The woman obliged, sliding down clumsily and staring up at him all the while.
"I haven't seen you in the convoy before, who are you?"
She mouthed something silently as if unfamiliar with her voice, before slowly coughing out a few letters and numbers. "C…A…83…"
He guessed she was trying to recite a serial number of some kind. Looking over her uniform, he didn't see any name tag.
"Ma'am, listen to me…" he started, watching her eyes widen at the sound of his voice, "Do you have a headache, do you feel nauseous? You seem really confused right now and I don't want to knock you around if you have a concussion. Don't worry about telling me how you got here."
He studied the woman's eyes up close, noting a lack of mismatched pupils and intense focus directly at him. When the woman finally spoke, it was soft and filled with awe.
"I feel everything now…it's so warm."
"Okay, that sounds like heatstroke, here." He held out his canteen, resorting to placing it in her lap when she failed to grasp it right away.
—
Targalian watched Arthoc cling desperately to the hill. He wasn't sure how it had happened, but somehow another human had been lying in wait beyond the trench until the Chieftain had reached the top of the hill. If it hadn't been for Arthoc's shields, he would surely have died from the unexpected attack. As it stood, he was currently maintaining a precarious grip just out of sight of the humans.
"I see it…" A Kig-Yar Sniper's voice filled the battlenet.
"Do not touch the humans on that hill, fool! They're the Chieftain's to kill, and he needs no help. Focus instead on those trying to shoot him from elsewhere."
—
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"No, I don't know how she got up here, but she did save-"
Matei was in the middle of getting a sitrep from Sergeant Barr when he turned back toward the newcomer to see her studying him while holding something in front of her as a point of reference. Something familiar. It looked like an old-fashioned photograph…
He swiped the picture from her hands without asking for permission and flipped it over, ignoring her alarmed gasp.
Sure enough, the picture was exactly as he remembered: a familiar squad of UNSC marines sat lazily in the squalor of a ruined furniture store in Utgard City. He remembered all of their names instantly: Sergeant Greig, Rakken, Dahl, Tseydner, Kozma, Kimani, Dean, Petrescu, Ozolin, Cani, Simovic, and a very familiar face grinning back at him in the middle of the arrangement. He flipped the photo around and read the handwriting on the back, just to be sure.
"You knew us as the peasant, the pseudointellectual, the optimist, the pessimist, the terrorist, the coward, the fool, and the cultist. Now we come to you from Harvest as the winners."
The picture had been taken at the end of October 2526, after the grueling defense of the plaza in Utgard. He'd planned to send a physical letter to his parents once a courier ship reached the system. Unfortunately, the Covenant counterattack had arrived first. He always guessed it had slipped out of his armor while the others were dragging him back onto that Pelican. Considering that most of the Marines in the photo had died, he'd only been somewhat annoyed to lose it.
But here it was, held in his hands after 52 years, even though it should've been atoms by now.
He eyed the young woman curiously.
"Where did you get this?"
She struggled to her feet, confusion spreading on her face.
"I was trying to remember you and I just felt it in one of my pockets. I knew you needed help but I wasn't sure, well, there's so much stuff just going on in here-" she gestured towards her head, "It's kind of hard to recall the things I want to right away, okay?" She smiled weakly.
Matei shoved the picture between his armor, watching the young woman sit completely still with that awkward smile on her face. It almost seemed like she wasn't breathing.
"Can you remember…your name?"
"Oh, that's pretty easy, I just wasn't really sure how to get the word right when you asked the first time. Speaking is tougher than it looks." She rose to her feet and gave him a lazy salute.
"I'm CA-835, Marathon-class Heavy Cruiser UNSC Prophecy, reporting for duty again sir!"
Matei stared silently at the woman, almost looming over her in sheer bafflement despite being just a few inches taller.
"What."
Her smile faded.
"Um,don't you believe me?"
"I don't have women throwing themselves at me saying they're the…manifestations of old ships I used to serve on daily, no."
"Wha-who're you calling old? I was commissioned in 2523-"
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A shadow fell over the pair.
Matei really should've heard that Brute scrambling back up the hill, but his fixation on the strange woman before him had completely stolen his attention. Before he could even think to react, she suddenly dove right at him, knocking him to the ground and turning with impossible haste to face the lunging Brute. He briefly lost sight of the confrontation, too confused to even crane his neck. There was an alien roar and the groan of metal striking metal from just out of sight. Instinct kicked in and the marine leaned up with his MA5 at the ready, noticing that the sound of battle had faded even further than before.
It took him a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. The Brute Chieftain stood frozen in place above the trench when gravity should've sent him falling into it. As for what was holding him up…
The young woman crouched in the trench, Cyan eyes burning with anger. She held the bayonet of the Brute's plasma cannon at bay even though it had pierced both her hands, and not a quiver flowed through her arms. If anything, it was the Brute who was shaking, struggling to maintain his footing as he moved backward, not forwards, his would-be victim standing straighter by the second. She stood unbowed in just a few seconds, the Chieftain remaining frozen from incredulity. Then in one swift motion, she withdrew her right hand from the bayonet, pushed the Brute back several steps as she ascended the trench, and struck his helmeted face with her bloody right hand. Incredibly, the Brute remained standing, blood and more than a few teeth falling from his dented helmet. His weapon slipped from his hands, caught by the young woman despite her injuries. Eyes glowing unnaturally with excitement, she flipped the plasma cannon about and leveled it at his face,
"You mess with one of my Marines, you mess with me. Goodbye!"
—
Targalian replayed the scene in his head a dozen times in his head: Arthoc halting mid-lunge, the unnaturally strong human sending his Chieftain staggering backward, then turning his own weapon against him and firing a plasma bolt straight into his face.
Finally, Arthoc's corpse hit the ground at the base of the hill. The entire valley fell silent.
The first seditious voice came from one of his warriors, much to his chagrin. "The Chieftain…is defeated!"
"This is worse than Koth's fall," stammered another.
"Leader dead! Run away!" One of the few surviving Unggoy blurted out his thoughts over the battlenet. One by one, the attack began to recede. Jiralhanae stepped back in confusion and sought cover behind destroyed Shadows. Nobody took even a single step to recover the body of their fallen Commander.
"You could try SHOOTING that human!" But Targalian's admonishment came too late. The Banished attack dissolved into a rout, Jiralhanae joining Unggoy and Kig-Yar in fleeing for the canyon. The humans were quick to resume firing, unleashing their surviving Warthogs to run down the fleeing warriors. Dozens of signals vanished from his HUD in seconds.
Knowing the battle was lost, Targalian activated the one special feature of his stalker armor he'd made sure to maintain for situations like this. In just a second, he couldn't see the very fingers of his hand, covered as they were like the rest of his body in a near-perfect active camouflage field. Strolling briskly through the retreat, he idly wondered if he was too old to be a Chieftain.
—
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Matei hadn't moved since he'd sat up. The previous minute was simply so overwhelming that he couldn't do anything but breathe. He watched the woman before him stand equally still outside the trench, remaining oblivious to the enemy retreat occurring below her. Somehow, that woman had produced a photograph from an era ago, stood up to the weight of a charging Brute, and outfought that same Brute in physical combat before melting his face off with his own gun.
The latter two events could be easily explained: some kind of new and improved Spartan super-soldier augmentation. But no Spartan could reach into the past and retrieve lost keepsakes.
He didn't understand how it was possible, but it seemed like the only viable explanation was that a ship, the ship, the one he'd served on, had somehow been compressed into the form of a young human woman.
He waved to get her attention. "Hey…Ma'am-?" He still didn't feel comfortable saying the name. Prophecy. That was supposed to be a 1200-meter long Heavy Cruiser, not a woman who didn't even clear 6 feet!
She let the Banished gun fall heavily at her feet as her gaze snapped towards him. Her eyes burned with that unnatural shade of bluish green beneath her glasses, not angrily but certainly with an intensity he hadn't seen even during the brief fight.
A few unnervingly quick strides brought her a few feet away from him. Before he could say anything, she held up both her injured hands.
It was like anything he'd ever seen before. The immediate explanation in his head was "cyborg" but that didn't truly encompass it. Instead of bone and muscle, the Brute bayonet had pierced through tightly packed metal tubes below a thin layer of skin and blood. Looking more intently, he realized that the tubes really consisted of miniaturized corridors and bulkheads just like the ones he remembered on a Marathon-class Cruiser.
He felt his breathing quicken at the recognition, the understanding that he was privy to something completely unnatural. Despite his bewilderment, he held his ground. The last thing he wanted to do when faced with that equally confused face staring back at him, the glimmer of anticipation, pain, and even hope held in the eyes of a being who could punch a Brute senseless, was step back.
Her voice was barely a whisper.
"Now do you believe me?"
He watched her stare up at him with that same unbreathing stillness, the anxious light beneath her glasses the only indication that she was alive, driven by some inconceivable spirit that was more than human, the made turned service corridors and superstructure into blood vessels and bone.
"Yes."
A/N: still a two-parter but with a more satisfying split this time instead of cutting off the big reveal behind the next part. This scene flew by easily, I've been waiting to get it done for a while.
