Chapter 4 - De Profundis
September 13th, 2544 (20:00 Hours – Military Calendar)
Ulterin System, Miridem
Matin Province, Continent of Vitre
Near abandoned North Camden Station
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What was supposed to be 3 days of deliveries turned into nearly 2 weeks of constant back and forth. As it turned out, the Assistant Manager's time projections were off by leaps and bounds. Materials from La Grotte proved to be in greater quantity against the comparatively small storage compartments on the tram. Garrison surprisingly agreed to let the troopers stay on the mission, acknowledging its overall strategic importance in the grand scheme of things. Attempts to solve the problem by increasing the daily workload to 1 new nightly transit every 2 hours left everyone drained on a daily basis. While the trip itself was short, it was filled with tension that intensified every time they stopped at the North Camden Station. Thankfully, they hadn't had any incidents yet. That didn't stop the growing concern that there was always a chance.
The situation across the planet did little to settle their nerves.
Zack had essentially become the gateway of information between 1st platoon and the outside world. They learned through him how the situation in the east had deteriorated drastically. Just 4 days ago, the surviving elements of the 12th and 15th Expeditionary Fleets as well as the Reach QRF were sent in full retreat after a second Covenant fleet arrived in system to reinforce the first. Though it was only 10 ships, the numbers made the difference and managed to tip the scales of the battle back in the Covenant's favor. The Navy and whatever UNSC personnel and civilians were left were now gathering in the West for a final defense. From what Zack was hearing on SATCOM, the general idea was to use New Memphis as a hub for organizing the final evacuation efforts of Miridem's remaining population. Even that wasn't going so well, because to pull it off, they would need control of the city's most important building: The De Gaulle Starport.
The Starport was the largest public installation of its kind in the western hemisphere. It could support the evacuation operation easily enough. The sole problem was the fact that it was still in enemy hands. It was surrounded by the last major pocket of the Covenant scouting forces left in the city. With the help of Bravo Company, the 211th Marines' 1st Battalion were able to grate away at the Covenant in the western sector of the city and bought time for the remainder of the division to deal with the rest of New Memphis. With the help of the 53rd Armored Division garrisoned in the region, they were able to wipe out the majority of the enemy pockets, then swung out into a successful offensive against the western holdouts. All that was left now was the De Gaulle.
Garrison, the rest of Bravo, along with elements of the 211th and 53rd Armored respectfully, had laid siege to the surrounding area for the last 3 days in a constant drive towards the Starport. They were making progress. The rest of 1st platoon had to hope it would be enough since they were too busy making deliveries to focus on anything else.
The trips were relatively quiet. For the longest time the tension wasn't surrounding a threat at North Camden that refused to materialize. Rather, it was between the two groups of passengers on the tram itself.
The ODSTs and AMADDS remained separate for the most part. A mutual air of cooperative trust permeated between them when they were on a given transit, then turned to private distrust at any other time. They tended to avoid each other on the daytime off-hours when deliveries couldn't be made.
That wasn't to say that no one had tried. On the AMADDS' end, Captain Stewards made it a habit of drifting over to the troopers' compartments by himself to stir up small talk. He came across as something of an unusually social officer. Questions on what it was like to fight the Covenant were a few of the topics of his discussions. He found an expected talking-partner in Zack after the two found out they were both interested in the Galactic Cup being held on Tribute later in the year. They argued over sports teams in half-an-hour intervals each time without fail. Those discussions would often end, however, once he started asking members of 1st platoon where they were from. He'd leave with no answers.
Zack, the awkwardly social butterfly that he was, tried returning the gesture by striking up casual conversations with some of the AMADDS. Those only went so far. The most luck anyone had of forming a sort of connection between the two groups was Deaks who was in the business of expanding his own. He'd bragged about marketing and selling around 500 credits worth of his tooth necklaces to the guns-for-hire. He also had the digital currency to prove it. While Duncan wanted to know how he was pulling it off without anyone else noticing, today he was very preoccupied with a far more pressing mystery.
Today everyone was on edge due to a disturbance at the North Camden earlier in the day.
In the middle of the first week, Captain Harper ordered Duncan and Nova to setup a series of small cameras around the station that could be monitored across time. The two were assigned to keep an eye on the station in shifts using a portable computer based in Epsilon's compartment.
On any given trip Duncan or Nova would take turns flicking through the feeds that showed the interior of the station from various angles along with several ground motion sensors.
In the evening, around 17:30 Hours, several cameras went dark. Duncan was on watch. He immediately checked the ground motion sensors. There was no movement. Then the remaining cameras went out in quick succession. There was one left operational that was now lying face-down on the floor. The camera's auditory sensors were still online, yet all the sound he could make out was a distant kind of chirping.
He wasted no time informing the Staff of what happened. The Staff in turn showed it to the Captain and Sergeant Joels who also shared the information with Stewards and the Assistant Manager. No one was excited for the news to say the least. There was a high possibility, even a likelihood, that the station was finally compromised.
Harper proposed that they abandon North Camden altogether. Yet Roman pressed that that simply wasn't an option. Stewards repeated the sentiment. They reasoned that there was no way to avoid it since they would be losing time if they didn't investigate. Roman insisted that they also bring along the regular shipment of materials to the Vers L'avant. He didn't want to risk delaying La Grotte's already overextended evacuation deadline even more.
They geared up, overstocking on ammo. Everyone except Duncan. He was forced to spend his time already on the tram running through the hours of footage with Nova. They tried to pinpoint any given second where something might've crossed the cameras. They didn't find anything despite hours' worth of footage replays.
Duncan kept checking even as they started for North Camden. He slowed the footage, his attention flicking between five separate feeds on the computer display. Still nothing. He triple-checked the ground sensors for detectable movement, footsteps, anything. But there was little that couldn't be explained by natural vibrations due to subtle tremors from Miridem's tectonic plates. Otherwise the sole anomalies were the cameras themselves whose fall as they toppled over registered on the ground.
The available evidence pointed to a single likelihood: birds were invading North Camden. His conclusions came from what the auditory sensors picked up: the subsonic chirping that he'd detected almost by accident. He'd decided to check the lower frequencies out of desperation and found them that way. After showing it to the Captain, she ruled out birds since there were no known species on Miridem that communicated at those frequencies. Duncan pointed out that crickets might. Then again, crickets couldn't knock over cameras.
"Stay on this tram, Ep-8." Harper ordered. "Keep listening to the audio and try to refine some of those images. Update me if you find anything."
"Yes mam." Duncan kept at it while everyone else waited either for their arrival at the station or for him to find anything new. The former came first.
The tram hissed to a stop along the station's boarding platform. The doors slid open. No one moved right away. Both ODSTs and AMADDS alike were cautious. They scanned the dark exterior with an eye for any detail that looked out of place. Although the debris scattered across the reception room was naturally out of place, they'd gotten used to it and formed a mental map overtime. It allowed them to pick out any new shadows or shapes, especially with the troopers' VISR modes activated.
There was nothing noticeably unusual about the ruinous station so they began stepping out into it. Eagle and Epsilon fanned out across the reception room. Echo went out the other side to check the lower areas, sweeping the fields of detritus along the tracks clear with their rifles. The AMADDS mirrored their actions further along the tram. They moved in coordinated fireteams of five under Stewards' direction.
Duncan meanwhile was left alone on the tram. He switched from the mostly static camera feeds to the auditory sensors on the last remaining camera. "This is Ep-8, anyone close to Camera-5 yet?"
"Yah bro." Rico replied. "One sec."
The camera's view changed a moment later as it was raised up and he found himself looking into Rico's visor. The other ODST sized up the device. "Looks like something pushed it over but I don't see any signs that anything came through here."
"Nothing?" Duncan asked. "No tracks?"
Rico shook his head. "Nada…wait, I think…" He reached for something on the camera. His hand came back holding a piece of a paper-thin substance with a crusty exterior and brown hue. "Found this on the camera-stalk. What do you think it is?"
It seemed to break apart into flakes in the ODSTs' hand. Duncan couldn't so much as guess what it was. He shrugged. "No clue."
Rico shrugged as well and set the camera back on its stand. The Staff walked over. "Found anything?"
"Nah. This camera's still up and running though so there's that."
Captain Harper came in over comms. "1-Actual to 1st and AMADD personnel, the reception room's clear. I'm taking my team to check the upper floor and setup some mines near the entrance. Since there's no civies in the area, we won't be putting anyone at risk that we don't want to."
Stewards interrupted. "You sure about that Captain? It might've just been a strong wind coming through the holes in the ceiling that knocked over your cameras. I doubt anything serious would be wondering down here where there are no humans. Like you say, the civies are all gone."
"And we're still here." Harper rebutted. "Which means North Camden has a human presence, even if it's only a temporary one. I don't want to risk the Covenant noticing and trying to get the jump on us."
"With respect mam, you've been arguing we setup mines since day one of you're being here when there's no evidence of the Covenant so much as having an interest in this place."
"It's called preemptive action, Stewards." She noticeably left out the 'Captain' part. "And before now we never had enough time to setup anything down here except the cameras. But now that those are down, I don't plan on taking any more chances with my men's lives. Will you?"
There was a palpable silence. "…Do what you have to, Captain." Stewards' squelched his commlink.
Rico held in a laugh. "Ese es el Capitán para ti."
"Get with it, Ep-6." The Staff said and turned to face the camera. "Ep-8, keep digging into the recordings until we say otherwise."
"Got it."
Duncan went back to work flipping through the feeds. At five minutes with nothing to show for his work save for hours of recorded nothingness, he felt curious about Camera-5 and why it was the last one operational. Setup near the threshold between the reception room and the boarding platform, it was one of several others in that part of the station closest to the tunnel leading back to La Grotte. Yet it also would've been the furthest from the tunnel to the Starport and just so happened to have an angle on that same passageway.
Maybe there was a point of interest to that fact. He checked the audio recordings again. Nothing but chirping. It really could have just been birds that got inside the station. There was nothing conclusive about the noise so he started investigating the feeds instead. He fast-forwarded through hours of the day's earlier recordings from camera-5's perspective.
He was watching the night-vision view slowly rotate across the station at time-stamp '17:30 hours' when something flashed across the screen. He quickly stopped the video and rewound it. Seconds later something flashed by again, confirming he wasn't seeing things. He replayed it and slowed down the speed until he was able to catch a freeze-frame of the image. It was a brown blur of motion that moved too fast to be identified. Even refining it didn't help. It had to have been moving at high speeds because it appeared in one frozen image and was gone in the next, meaning it had disappeared in the split-second gap in time.
Duncan looked closer at where it had appeared. Interestingly, camera-4 was placed in the very same spot where it had showed up. The way it appeared meant that the apparition had to have been above the camera, then just as quickly disappeared without even hitting the ground. When it disappeared, he took note that camera-4 was reeling forward from the motion, as if pushed.
He was forming a hypothesis when his attention flicked to the background of the same image.
He spotted something, a silhouette, a shadow on the distant tunnel wall leading to the Starport. It wouldn't have been too worrying a sight were it not for the fact that it was crouching on the wall, horizontally. He looked closer. It was humanoid but distinctly non-human. It wasn't an Elite, a Brute, a Grunt or Jackal. So what was it? He magnified the image and saw a smudge of two yellow dots. He refined the picture quality and it clarified into a set of compound eyes that glowed in the dark, staring right back at the camera.
Duncan froze. The gravity of the situation dawned on him. He suddenly shot to his feet and ran for the doors. As they slid apart, he stopped in the threshold. The other ODSTs were too occupied looking around the boarding platform and reception room to notice him. He was about to call on the comms when he felt the need to look up. He did, slowly. He didn't see anything except the dark ceiling at first. He hesitated but turned on his VISR. Again, nothing. Then upon closer scrutiny, if he hadn't known better, he would've thought that the entire ceiling was breathing.
He gradually began to make out the more distinct shapes.
There were dozens of them, perhaps a hundred or more on the ceiling. Their arthropodal bodies were reclined in on themselves like sleeping bats hanging upside down. Their carapaces gently expanded out then folded back in. They were asleep. There were so many that his VISR couldn't immediately identify them as enemy contacts, only as a single and unclassifiable mass. That must've been why no one else had spotted them. Everyone was too focused on the ground-level to look up for too long. The creatures were together in bundles as if it were a nest, and as his VISR continued to highlight one crimson entity after another, Duncan realized that that might be exactly where he now stood.
His voice came as a horse whisper over comms. "Staff."
The Staff glanced over his shoulder at him. "What is it Ep-8, did you find something on the feeds?"
Duncan slowly nodded his head. The Staff must've noticed he was acting strange and faced him fully. "What is it?"
As if it could awaken the great hosts above, Duncan pointed his forefinger with all delicateness at the ceiling. The Staff followed where he was pointing. Then he also froze. His voice similarly came out horse. "My God."
He quickly switched to team comms. "This is Ep-1 to everyone on the line, do not open fire. I repeat, do not open fire. We've got multiple Drones on the ceiling in the main reception room above the tram, over."
There was a moment of hesitant silence as everyone glanced at each other, at the Staff and Duncan, and then up at the ceiling. Everyone in the room saw them then. Their tense postures slackened as the realization dawned on them all that the enemy was already here. No one moved.
Gunfire in the distance suddenly erupted, causing everyone to flinch, even the AMADDS who'd been tuned in with their own comms. It was coming from deeper within the station.
Duncan saw movement on the ceiling as some of the Drones began reacting to the noise. Several pairs of glowing amber eyes began to open.
"Not good." Nova said.
"Ep-1 to 1-Actual, is that you shooting, over?"
The Captain answered, sounding flustered. "This is 1-Actual. I copy your last. We got ambushed by more Drones on the upper level. One was awake enough to spot us and start shooting, now it's waking up the rest of the nest. We're pulling back to the tram. Get ready for a hot exfil, over!"
That wasn't good either. Everyone knew that if the Captain came back firing while retreating, it could wake up every Drone in the station. The last thing they needed was a firefight down here against an enemy with air-mobility within a confined space. That wasn't even considering the risk of the fight causing an accidental detonation of the ordinance packed inside the tram.
The Staff quickly dished out orders. "Ep-2, 7 and 8, on me. The rest of you stay here and stay quiet. If the Buggers start moving, fall back." The ODSTs winked their acknowledgement lights. The selected troopers quietly jogged behind him towards one of the stairs on the far side of the reception room.
"Ep-1 to Echo-1, we'll be back. We're gonna help out Eagle."
"Roger." Joels said. "We'll hold here. Just make sure to help the Captain before she brings any unwanted guests with her."
The Staff, Duncan, Nova and Zack sprinted up the first stairs. As they did they could hear the gunfire getting closer and closer with each step. They reached a point where the stairs diverged into two separate cases and rose up in the opposite direction. Without a word they broke into binaries with Duncan and Zack taking the left staircase. They reached the top, hopped over the guard gates and stopped in their tracks.
The scene looked like a disturbed hornet's nest. The upper level was a rectangular waiting room with a high ceiling and about several dozen Drones that crawled and flew from wall to wall. The insectoid aliens chirped and screeched as many of them fired plasma pistols at the surviving members of Squad Eagle pinned down on the opposite end of the room.
Duncan spotted two ODSTs lying in a pool of their own blood alongside seven dead Drones.
He heard Harper.
"Guys, cover me and Eagle-3, we're going for the door." The Captain and one of her troopers emerged a second later and ran for a nearby door, stopping to crouch behind a chair and fire full auto into the thorax of a Drone about to kamikaze them. The creature screeched as the 7.62-millimeter rounds tore its golden thorax in half. Three more flew in at the Captain. Duncan and Zack quickly joined Squad Eagle in gunning them down to let the others pass.
That got the attention of five more Drones hovering several meters away. They refocused on the two new arrivals and fired blots of plasma. The troopers slid behind a row of chairs that took the bulk of the discharges. Gunfire from the sidelines caused two of the Drones to erupt into explosions of yellow gore. The other three flew about wildly to address the Staff and Nova firing from the other staircase.
Duncan caught one in the back with two three-round-bursts. It screeched then toppled down to the floor. Buckshot from the Staff blew the last two to pieces.
An explosion got the troopers' attention. A Drone had stumbled over an Antilon anti-personnel mine on the opposite side of the room, taking two more of its kin out with it in the resulting detonation. They saw the Captain and Eagle-3 arrive at the entrance to what looked like another staircase. Eagle-3 grabbed the handle and was pulling it open when a blur of motion blew through the door, tossing Harper back. The Drone that flew out grabbed Eagle-3 before he could react and fluttered away.
The comm was alive with troopers trying to find a line of fire that wouldn't hit their comrade. Even the half of Epsilon couldn't find one and were forced to duck as more Drones strafed their positions.
Eagle-3 tried to jab a knife into the creature's thorax. It grabbed his arm with its foot mid-jab and snapped the limb at an odd angle. He screamed at the pain and struggled to get free a moment before it plunged two clawed fingers into the bottom of his head, piercing his jaw. His screams were muffled. The Drone ignored the retaliation fire that flashed past as it flew at the Staff and Nova. It grabbed Eagle-3's helmet with both hands and quickly twisted it with the ease of a jar lid. The ODST's struggles died away. The Drone dropped his body, sending it torpedoing into the Staff who fell back under the weight.
Suddenly the room was bursting at the seams with more Drones as dozens of others spewed out of ceiling vents and maintenance shafts to fill the air with green plasma. One burst through a vent right above Zack. It swooped down, grabbed his shoulders with its legs and pulled him up. Zack growled and fought against it but couldn't get his rifle up. With an aggravated screech it thrust a leg at him. The sharpened limb could've easily impaled him but stabbed into his radio instead. Sparks flew out which blew into an electric flame that quickly enveloped the radio and spread to the insect. It shrieked at the fires that enveloped it and dropped its charge.
The moment Zack hit the floor Duncan unloaded half-a-magazine into the writhing alien. It squealed and fell to the floor next to him. Zack's radio was still burning. He thrashed around, trying to reach it. "Get it off! Get it off!"
Duncan rushed to his side to help pull off the straps while being mindful of the fire. Once he was free Zack kicked away the busted equipment. More plasma fire swooping overhead made them promptly return fire.
Duncan peeked over his cover and spotted the rest of Eagle. There were less of them now, only four including the Captain who'd huddled behind an overturned table to return fire.
"1-Actual!" The Staff called, unshaken as Nova pulled Eagle-3 off of him. "Your exfil's compromised! Can you make your way back over to us!?"
Harper replied through gunfire. "I hear you Ep-1! Got any ideas how we can do that given our current situation!?"
"Frags Cap, that's all we've got!"
There was a shooting-filled silence while Harper weighed their options. "1-Actual to 1st and AMADD personnel. Be advised, it's about to get lively down there, over!"
There was more gunfire on Joels' end followed by the distant sizzling detonation of a grenade launcher as he spoke. "They're plenty lively already, 1-Actual! Just find a way back so we can pull out of here, over!"
There was no response from Stewards.
"Greenlight, Ep-1!" Harper said.
The Staff nodded to his squad who nodded in turn. They pulled the pins on their frag grenades and tossed them throughout the room. They bounced off the floor and detonated. The resounding blasts and searing shrapnel tore scores of drones apart. While their eviscerated corpses hit the ground, at least half of their number survived.
It would have to be enough.
"Move out!" Under Harper's orders her team followed her lead. They raced towards Epsilon as the other squad covered them. Squad Eagle took up a diamond formation with two covering the sides, one covering the rear and Harper heading the charge. Drones fell around them by the handful. Yet more kept pouring in. They ignored the dying screeches of their own to focus on the humans.
A Drone swept past Eagle-2 at the rear, slashing his throat. He flew back onto Harper who stumbled forward but didn't stop. She threw him over her shoulder without looking back and carried on, firing her SMG one-handed.
Three more Drones came at Eagle-5. She fired into them, cutting down the first two. The last one made it close enough to force down her rifle with its legs and discharged an overloaded plasma pistol into her face. She slumped to the floor in a heap, her body sizzling.
Eagle-8 cried out as a plasma bolt hit his thigh and he dropped to his knees. Before he could get back up, a mob of Drones quickly fired a hail of plasma into him. He keeled over and fell.
Only the Captain was left. She shot into the swarm, pushing on. Duncan, the Staff, Nova and Zack pulled the trigger on the large hosts, hoping to at least save the Captain.
Then a Drone landed beside her, yanked away the gasping trooper on her shoulder and flew off. The motion threw Harper onto her stomach. She barrel-rolled and rose to a knee to fire into the horde, trying to shoot down the duo of insects now kidnapping her subordinate. The man could do little for himself than clutch at his throat and cry out in gargled gasps.
Another Drone caught her SMG before she could react and pulled the gun away. She whipped out her combat knife and rammed it into the creature's right eyes. It squealed and reeled back but took the knife with it. Four more immediately rushed her. They grabbed her legs, an arm and her helmet and flew into the air with her.
Duncan fired at the two that disengaged from the rest of the swarm with Eagle-2 in hand. Yet more of their kind got in the way to take the bullets for them, allowing their brethren to escape into an overhead vent, dragging the struggling trooper with them into the dark.
He saw everyone else firing at the main swarm and spotted the Captain being raised into the air. Reloading, he shot in three-round burst to keep the bullet spray from hitting her.
The swarm proved too great. The insectoids returned plasma for lead, bathing their cover with suppression fire and forcing Epsilon to duck back.
The Staff called out. "1-Actual!"
Harper grunted against the vice-like grips holding her in place. She fought, kicked and punched to no avail. Duncan peeked through the chairs and caught sight of her looking back at them. His eyes widened as he realized she wasn't fighting back.
"Get out of here, Epsilon!" Harper yelled. "That's an order!"
The Staff growled and rose up to shoot down more Drones in an attempt to save her. It took Nova pulling him down to avoid an onslaught of responding fire. The Staff reloaded. "We're NOT leaving you here! Ep-2, get ready to-"
"Atty."
The Captain's calm voice reached the Staff. He peeked through the chairs at the Captain as the Drones began stretching her limbs to the limit as well as her neck. She depolarized her visor to show her face, one of incredible strain yet resolve and resignation. She spoke through gritted teeth "Go! NOW!"
The Staff remained still, staring back at her for the longest second. Then with a slow nod of his head, he pulled out a flashbang grenade and turned to the rest of Epsilon. "You heard the Captain, Move!"
The troopers willed themselves to stand as the Staff pulled the pin and hurled it over the chairs. The blast of blinding light a second later brought an abrupt end to the firefight. The ODSTs took their chance. They ran for the stairs.
As they did, they could hear the Captain's rising screams. No one dared to look back. No one except Zack. Duncan saw him look over his shoulder and stop in his tracks just as a sickening ripping sound came to ear.
The Captain's screams stopped.
Duncan grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to turn around. The two quickly bounded down the stairs behind the Staff and Nova. They could hear the Drones coming after them. Duncan chucked a grenade behind them to buy time. Seconds later, the blast hurled him and Zack down the flight of stairs. They hit the bottom along with flecks of insect flesh.
The Staff and Nova helped them to their feet. Then they were running again. They came down the second flight of stairs and out into the reception room.
The entire station was alive with a cascade of vibrant green plasma raining down on the tram, pockmarking its surface and melting it in places. Scores of Drones flew past in growing numbers, firing at the tram from the ceiling, the reception room and every conceivable space. An army of them poured through the tunnel leading to the Starport, flooding the entire station. There was no sign of the ODSTs or AMADDS.
"This is Ep-1, we're coming in! Can you cover us!?"
The doors on the closest compartment opened and a mix of ODSTs and AMADDS stood ready. Hector and Joels were at the threshold, waving them over. "Echo-1 to Ep-1, now would be a good time to leave, over!"
The Staff, Duncan, Nova and Zack ran for their lives. The AMADDS and ODSTs opened fire at the Drones that got in their way. They threw themselves inside the tram and the doors slid shut behind them once they hit the floor.
Joels looked them over. "Where's 1-Actual? Where's Eagle?"
The Staff stared up at the Sergeant, then looked away. Joels took a step back. He glanced out the doors, shaking his head. He snapped himself out of it and comm'd Stewards. "Everyone's onboard! Go!"
"Copy." Stewards replied.
They felt the tram move beneath them then start to leave the station, headed down the tunnel back to La Grotte. It accelerated to full speed in under ten seconds. The throngs of Drones tried to pursue but couldn't keep pace and fell behind.
The tram zoomed back towards La Grotte, back to safety.
In the darkness of the subterranean tunnel, Duncan found himself lying against the compartment wall. He didn't have the strength to pull himself up into a seat. He popped his helmet seal and pulled it off to lay his bare head against the cool metal. Around him was utter silence.
The AMADDS looked mournful yet reserved in their expressions. He figured they had probably lost people just now as well.
The ODSTs remained hidden behind their visors as they stared out the window, back in the direction of North Camden Station.
Duncan spotted Zack sitting on the opposite side with his helmet already off, allowing him to see his bloodred face. He pulled his legs in close to his chest. He raked his hands through his hair for a moment, then pressed them against his head and started to cry.
Nova took off her own helmet as she sat down beside him. She pulled him in close and held him, letting him sob on her breastplate. She looked up at the ceiling lights with watering eyes and a quivering lip yet didn't let her pain be heard.
The Staff was already sitting on a seat nearby without his helmet, watching it all with heavy eyes. He saw Deaks and Rico enter the compartment running. They stopped once they saw Zack and Nova.
Joels strode in front of him and pulled off his helmet. He stared at his comrade for several long seconds, as if trying to gauge him for the truth. The Staff swallowed, nodded, and said nothing else. At length Joels shook his head again. He sat down on the opposite seat and held his head in his hands.
Duncan didn't want to see any more. He closed his eyes. A moment later he was unconscious.
De Profundis – From the Depths