Chapter 7 - Seminibus
March 23rd, 2545 (10:30 Hours – Military Calendar)
Zeta Doradus System, Onyx
Curahee C&C
:********:
Curahee Command and Control was abuzz with the activities of the thirty C&C personnel hard at work at their consular stations to oversee the day's current exercise. Their displays showed feeds from local satellites monitoring the space over the western hemisphere of Onyx' moon. Particular focus was paid to an area near the dark side, Mare Griseo, and the small installation there.
The Spartans were expected to begin their assault fairly soon. He'd been waiting for their reentry to normal space when Deep Winter informed him of a call for him, and from none other than the Colonel. There was no way around the man's tendency to drop in unscheduled to get a progress report.
Kurt made his way up to the logistics room on the second floor, a pentagonal chamber with bulletproof glass walls, a rectangular meeting table with several chairs and a single forward display mounted to the front wall. The display was inactive up until the moment he stepped through the sliding doors. Then the screen turned on, showing the Colonel in his office, dressed in his usual army officer's uniform. Not much had changed since their last meeting; he was still balding. However, as Kurt settled on the opposite side of the table, he noticed a few new silvering hairs on his head.
He stood at attention. "Colonel Ackerson, sir, you wished to speak with me?"
"Yes." Ackerson said simply. "The brass at Section III are growing antsy in relation to our problem near the Perseus Arm."
"You mean the 51 Pegasi System, sir?"
"Indeed. It goes without saying that the upcoming Operation TORPEDO is pressing. To keep a long story short, I need an update on the progress of the IIIs with the LRSOIPs. My question is how many months are we looking at exactly?"
Kurt stiffened at the mention of 'TORPEDO' but did his best to hide his reaction. "We're still looking at April for Beta's graduation date. Even with the recent help of Detachment 731, we won't be able to cover all the necessary training prerequisites by the late March deadline you requested earlier."
Ackerson didn't look pleased as he considered the information. "Is there some way to 'circumvent' aspects of the curriculum?"
"Not possible sir. What their training regimes incorporate now will be vital to the success of TORPEDO."
The Colonel gave a slow, reluctant nod. "I see. And have you gotten any new Cat-2 recommendations for the Headhunter Program? Last I checked, Naval Special Warfare Command only has three squads and a total of twelve on rotation, all from Alpha Company."
Kurt felt some relief at the switch in topic. The previous operation was something he would rather not think about. "Yessir, we've decided on more than half-a-dozen recommendations that more than exceed the acceptance criteria. The ones we're certain about include Samson-B041, Roland-B210, Jonah-B283 and Gino-B307. B170, B091, B275 and B340 are also currently in consideration. If you would like, Deep Winter can send you their files for your personal evaluation."
"Send them. I want to see what Beta's made of." He paused, looking briefly lost in thought. "And what of B312?"
"B312 and several others are still reserved to their previous arrangements outside Beta-5, sir."
Ackerson sighed in acceptance of a seemingly undesirable fact. "…I see. What's Beta's present status?"
"They're currently on the outer edges of the system preparing for today's exercise."
"Can I get a look? I'm tired of only ever seeing recordings."
"Of course, Colonel. In fact," Kurt looked out past the glass walls to see a growing commotion on the ground floor. There, C&C personnel were typing furiously on their consoles to reposition the satellite cameras. "You may not have to wait too long."
:********:
To Duncan, Mare Griseo was nothing but a barren moonscape of larger sized craters from interstellar collisions, small divots that looked more like indents left on a crowded beach and endless expanses of flat nothingness. To Zack it was like being back home. He said as much every time they came here, jumping ecstatically around the flatlands in his SPI as he tested the limits of the safety tether keeping him connected to the Arintero listening station.
The station was situated at the base of a small ridge overlooking an inlet between the lighter regions of Mare Griseo and another region of darker sediment, a splotch-shaped bay called Sinus Luventatis. Arintero lay at its northernmost inlet in the moon's less icy Midwestern hemisphere.
Between the ridge and the inlet was a kilometer of open space, of which the Arintero occupied a tenth with its three communication pylons, each ten meters tall. Connective pipelines containing human-sized electrical wiring connected them to the multi-platformed structure located exactly 100 meters to their center.
The Arintero served as the partial objective of today's training. An insertion team was expected to infiltrate the moon and takedown the listening station before the Pioneer dropped off the main contingent of Beta Company onto the surface of Onyx. The goal was to simulate a scenario where the stealth coating of the LRSOIPs wasn't sufficient to keep them hidden from a Covenant sensor station, making it necessary to handle the lunar or asteroidean outpost first to blind the groundside enemy to the follow-up invasion.
It was all part of what the Lieutenant Commander termed the final stage of stealth insertion training. Since early February, the focus of every Exoatmospheric drop session was to transition Beta Company to its final metamorphosis: Company-wide cohesion. From binaries to fireteams to platoons, they had been developing towards this final phase of operating as a single unit of 300 strong, an idea whose realization Duncan found terrifying for anyone that had to actually fight them.
This exercise was a part of the final three-step examination phases; the 'Moon' phase. They had successfully passed the first part three days earlier during the aquatic landing trainings off the coast of Onyx' northern peninsula. The third, elevated terrain training, was expected to take place in another three days at the Hexodé mountain range twenty kilometers south of Curahee. After their 'swim' during the first examination the Spartans had been sent to Mare Griseo to train in zero-gravity conditions. While it certainly wasn't their first time as demonstrated by their use of T-Packs to make ultra-precise maneuvers, it was however the ODSTs' first spacewalk.
Today, their purpose here was to act as lifeguards. They would watch the Spartans carefully, provide extra oxygen if needed and tether polymer-paralyzed individuals to the station.
The job of actually facing the Spartans fell instead to personnel of Detachment 731. They were a supplementary group from the 340th ODST Combat Training Unit known as the 'Adversaries'. Duncan remembered fighting the 340th back at Ravenport during Final Selection. The only difference was that these troopers were consistently requisitioned by ONI for various projects, or so the members he'd spoken with had told him. Even Curahee's resident DIs, some of them being washouts from the previous Alpha Company had told him how the Adversaries helped train them years ago.
A platoon of 40 ODSTs were present on Mare Griseo. Eight were stationed at hidden positions on each pylon, using their large docking components and observation platforms to give them the best chance against the Spartans. The last 16 were back at the main station. They were all equipped with SPI armor courtesy of the newly installed Curahee Special Assembly Plant, a recently constructed armor production site that eliminated any future need for interstellar deliveries.
Duncan sat in his own SPI against the side of the pipeline running between the southeastern pylon and the command center. The moonscape's soft sediment comfortably molded to his form. He regularly checked on the pylon less than ten meters away to see if anything had started. So far, nothing had. The same could be said for the southwestern and northern pylons.
His attention drifted over his shoulder at the nightmarish sight coming from the east.
On any given planet, nighttime came gently due to the presence of an atmosphere. However, there was no such atmosphere on this moon. As a result, night appeared as a monolithic wall of creeping darkness that slowly swallowed up the surface. It was almost 11:00 Hours back at Curahee but the estrangement in terms of time was due to Arintero's position within a separate time-zone relative theirs. Since a part of the natural satellite was constantly dark, the night was always present and always advancing.
Duncan felt that the Spartans should have arrived by now. Maybe they were waiting for night to descend on the station in the next half an hour. His personal oxygen-meter on his HUD showed another 10-minutes before he would have to use his 3-minute reserves while he changed out his main air-tanks. He hoped they showed up before then.
Movement on his periphery caught his attention. He looked up to see Zack in front of him. He was moving backwards, sliding one foot behind the other until he stopped right next to Duncan to give him the thumbs up.
"Should I even ask?"
"It's an old dance move that used to be popular back on Earth." Zack said. "I saw it in a documentary once, thought this was the perfect place to try it out."
Duncan stared at him incredulously, eventually earning a shrug from Zack. "It's not like there's anything else to do around her-"
The shot had no sound. That didn't stop them both from seeing the tracer flash across space.
They quickly refocused on the nearby pylon. There a lone SPI-armored ODST floated free from where he'd been hiding on a platform with a TTR round coating the side of his helmet.
Both troopers instinctively kneeled down to avoid being mistaken for targets, even though the two oxygen tanks on their backs would've made their non-combatant status obvious.
Duncan used his HUD to switch to establish a link with Spartan's feeds. Scrolling through each of them showed that 12 Spartans were in the neighborhood. Some were bounding cautiously across the moonscape. Others used their T-packs to fly across the expanse. Their attention was uniformly set on the pylons.
He counted around 10 of the insertion team actively on the move. Two of them, Roland and Gino, were lying prone while sighting down their sniper scopes at more targets. He could tell from their elevation that they were on the ridge half a kilometer away, a landform currently submerged beneath the blanket of night. It was good cover and had probably hid their initial landing past the ridge.
Both snipers provided covering fire for the rest of Teams Foxtrot, India and Zeta currently approaching the Northern, Southwestern and Southeastern Pylons respectively.
Nearby, another ODST was sent spiraling past the guardrails of his platform after taking a round to the shoulder. A quick look at another trooper's feed showed two shimmers firing at them with the help of systemized thruster bursts from their T-packs to counterbalance the momentum generated by the shooting. The ODSTs emerged from their hiding places to fire back at the assault.
Duncan was surprised that the Spartans had gotten this close without being spotted. Even with active camo, the weaker lunar gravity would have caused more sediment to pour up from the ground with their footsteps or at least show their boot imprints. Yet by the way dust flew freely off Jonah and Six' arm and leg bracers he could piece together that they had actually crawled their way here, over half a kilometer of open ground.
He switched between their feeds.
Six and Jonah both activated their packs in sync to fly 15 meters off the ground, firing at the six remaining instructors as they began arcing down towards different platforms. Both had each caught another trooper with three-round bursts by the time they landed.
Six hadn't even hit the guardrails when two troopers emerged from behind a cylindrical component. The brawniest one put on a burst from his pack to slam into Six before he could react and immobilized him in a bear-hug. The ensuing, backwards freefall caused them both to hurdle towards the ground while the second lined up his BR for a shot.
For all his strength, the trooper struggled to keep the Spartan still, often losing his grip as he tried to turn him around. It became obvious he was trying to turn the Spartan's vulnerable back towards his friend on the platform for him to take the shot. Halfway to the ground Six grabbed the trooper tightly with one arm and used a controlled thruster burst to rotate him into the line of fire. The ODST caught a three-round burst to the back for his trouble. Six held onto the limp body like a shield while he fired his carbine with the other hand, catching the last one in the chest with half a magazine. With both attackers down he launched off the burly one back towards the pylon.
Jonah meanwhile was having his own fun on a lower platform where two troopers had pressed him into close quarters. One charged at him and earned several debilitating punches to the side topped off with two three-round bursts for his trouble. Jonah rounded on the last trooper. The man fired on him but he ducked beneath the shots, cast aside his SMG and shot forward with his pack. In one fluid motion, he unsheathed his combat knife and slashed it across the man's neck in a wide arc.
Duncan winced at the explosion of, not blood, but air that poured out. The Spartan had struck his target so precisely that he only breached the neck seal, not even touching the skin beneath.
Pressurized air gushed out, causing the trooper to shift around like a ragdoll in the hands of a child. He was panicking over comms.
"Relax." Jonah said as he raised his boot over the man's chest and slammed him back down to the floor. The trooper kept panicking, clasping at the air spewing out from the breached neck-seal. Jonah leaned forward to inspect his handiwork. "I told you to stop panicking. It's an easy fix alright? See?" He whipped out his silenced M6 and squeezed off three shots.
While the impacts undoubtedly stung like hell, the red polymer adhered to the breaches in the seal and closed them. Thanks to his doing the trooper would survive, albeit in a state of unconscious paralysis. "See, that's better right?"
Six floated down to his platform. He spotted the trooper beneath his teammate's boot. "I hope you can explain that to the LC."
"It's called quick thinking."
"More like no thinking." Roland chimed in. "Get that charge planted, J. Everyone else has already secured theirs."
"Yeah-yeah, one sec." Jonah pulled out an M168 Demolition Charge from his rucksack and planted its adhesive underside to the pylon. He twisted the priming handle 90 degrees clockwise, causing the indicative lights to shift from an active green to a pulsating red. "Alright, we're all set."
"Good. You two get moving. Tom wants everyone in place in two minutes."
The duo winked their acknowledgement lights.
Duncan refocused on his own HUD and the movement in the corner of his vision. It was Zack. He was floating past him towards the southeastern pylon. He grabbed him by the shoulder and held up a finger to wait.
They both looked back up to see Six taking aim at them from an upper platform. Duncan held up his hand in a sign of peace. The Spartan recognized them and nodded back as Jonah came up from behind.
The binary leaped out from the pylon and slowly descended onto the pipeline. They began pulling themselves along the ladder system, using regular thruster bursts to crawl forward speedily.
"You've got two minutes before we blow the pylons, Irish." Jonah said as he clambered past. "Better get to it or I might just do something crazy."
"Crazier than nearly slicing someone's neck in hard vacuum?" Duncan asked back.
"Hey, if you want, I can get creative."
"Just do what you have to." Duncan looked on at the pylon. "And we'll do what we have to."
Once the Spartans had moved on, Duncan and Zack headed off to start securing the ODSTs to the pipeline using the clips on their suits and handholds on the pipe. They took them one at a time, using their packs to fly back and forth until all the downed trainers had been secured roughly twenty meters away from the pylon.
Duncan kept an eye on the cams of the rest of Epsilon. Nova, the Staff and Hector were busy gathering the 731s from the southwestern pylon left floating around in the wake of Team India. Deaks, Yuri and Rico were doing the same around the northern pylon after Foxtrot's assault.
The Spartans' feeds showed everyone heading for the command center, everyone except B170. It was no mystery to Duncan why Harris hadn't made an appearance during the initial assault. Chances were high that he never saw him slip past.
Harris' feed had him hiding in the shadow of a doorway on the central structure's southern face. He was splitting his attention between his own teammates, those from India and the security camera above his head. It slowly swiveled from left to right yet couldn't see far enough in either direction to notice the incoming enemy. That too was likely on purpose by none other than Kat.
The teams flew into place, taking positions at three of the four entryways.
"Breaching charges set." Harris reported. "Ready when you are, Tom."
Tom-B292, the acting commander, came in over comms. "Good. Get ready to breach. Wait for the pylons."
On each feed appeared the final countdown on the M168 charges: 30 seconds. The seconds ticked away: 15…10…5…
At zero, the reflected sunlight of Zeta Doradus was briefly replaced by three bursts of fire as the charges detonated, creating larger secondary explosions once the infrastructure succumbed. The blasts ballooned outward then were subsequently extinguished by the vacuum, leaving behind three smoldering stumps of sparking machinery and ashened frameworks. Thankfully, no explosions travelled further up the communication pipelines since they were inactive. In fact, the entire station was. Having not seen genuine use for well over several decades it was little more than a derelict outpost that had only recently come in handy.
"Secondary objective neutralized." Tom said. "Harris, do it."
Harris thumbed his detonator.
All four charges responded by giving off several syncopating beeps before blasting through the doors. Air screamed out of the interior. The Spartans pushed inside despite the suction and began slipping through the hallways of the building.
Alarms blared and security lights flashed around them as they traded fire with camouflaged elements of the 16 ODSTs garrisoned inside.
Zeta was the first to reach the lower-level lobby room. The stairs on the opposite side of the rectangular room would take them up to the command center. To reach it they fought from behind the assortment of overturned chairs and tables acting as cover for a squad of troopers intent on holding them back.
Their cover did them little good, particularly against one member of Zeta.
Six tossed a flashbang into the center of the room. Not waiting for it to go off, he bounded into the center of the fire, drawing the squad's attention. He slid beneath the descending flashbang, polarizing his visor right before the detonation. The flash caught all four troopers. He put three in the chest of each as they staggered from their cover then bounded up the steps without looking back. Jonah and Harris ran after him.
"Six, wait up." Harris called.
"I don't think he's interested in holding up for anyone." Jonah remarked as they turned onto the second half of the flight. "Not even us."
There was a loud bang upstairs.
They reached the top floor in time to see gunshots going off in the smoke-filled depths of the space beyond. There was the sound of MA37s and 5Bs on full auto. After several seconds, the room was quiet.
"Clear." Six said.
Jonah nodded at Harris and the two of them slipped inside with weapons raised. They scanned the length of the crescent shaped command center.
Six stood alone in the middle of the haze, staring out the forward viewing window at the lunar surface. The smoke slowly faded until the prone forms of seven troopers became visible. They had all been shot in the visor. Six was untouched. He turned to his teammates.
"You're a real piece of work, you know that?" Jonah said as he walked over, kicking a downed trooper in the helmet.
"Where's everyone else?" Six asked.
"Still catching up." Harris replied, brushing off a piece of polymer on his shoulder from an earlier grenade blast.
"Jonah to Tom, we have control of the command center."
"Copy. We're on our way up. Are the main consoles secured?"
Jonah glanced at the three rings of consular stations near the walls. "Yup."
"Alright, we'll be there in thirty seconds. Just tackling the last holdouts."
"Understood." Jonah signed off the team comm and turned on Six. "You know we are a team. I know we don't always act like it but you don't have to go taking out entire platoons on your own."
Six responded with a dismissive nod.
Harris stepped up. "He's got a point, Six. This is part of our final examinations with the Stealth Pods, which means we shouldn't be taking too many risks. What if they had this room booby trapped?"
"They did." Six said drily.
A brief silence passed between them. Harris laughed at length, rubbing the back of his neck. "Did they? Well alright then…I guess you can handle yourself."
"Just yourself." Jonah added.
Six, seemingly sensing the tension, spoke up. "I saved us time."
"You're saying we can't keep up?"
"Nah, J." Harris laughed. "I think he's saying that he has to slow down for us."
Roland came in over comms. "We're not here to argue, just to get the job done. If Six did it before anyone else then there's not much left to say."
"Hope you can say that when you get rustled up by some Elites while Six is too busy squaring off with a Hunter pair." Jonah huffed.
"Yeah? I hope so too. Fight together, die alone. Isn't that the way it goes?"
"But we're not really all fighting together though, are we?"
Roland didn't say anything else. Neither did the rest of Zeta. Teams Foxtrot and India arrived seconds later.
Lucy, Min and Adam held up outside the door to watch their backs while Owen and Samson kept watch over their escape route on the ground floor.
Kat got to work on the main console near the front. She removed the paneling and snaked her hands through the bundles of viny cords to find the one she was looking for. Splicing came as easy to her as mincing for a cook. She docked the newly severed wires to a port on her TACPAD. With her new access she bypassed the first few security terminals using randomly generated passcodes to access the station's geographical database.
The main screen changed to a view of the surface of Onyx' northern peninsula. After zooming through the clouds, it stopped several kilometers above a canyon.
Tom stepped up. "That's…Gregor Canyon." He turned to the cryptanalyst. "You sure?"
Kat zoomed in to less than several hundred meters above the surface. What immediately stood out were the four X-shaped structures, two on either side of the canyon.
"It's the Onyx mines." Kat said. "Data suggests these buildings are the targets. The preliminary reconnaissance we're doing right now would suggest as much, and so would these guys." She zoomed in on each of the buildings, revealing the presence of scores of 731 personnel manning machine gun nests on, within and around the buildings. A number of squads patrolled the length of the ovular fence that hemmed in both sides of the mines. The two-dozen watch towers along the perimeter were also occupied.
"Looks like a company's worth of 731s. They'll be waiting for us. We'll have to figure out how we're doing this."
Tom didn't answer.
"What's the problem team-leader?"
"…That canyon."
"What about?"
"Its offly close to the Zone. I don't know…what's the LC thinking sending us this close…"
"Listen." Jonah said, jabbing a finger at the screen. "If that place is near the Zone then I don't think we should have anything to do with it. Chances are that's just a fake attack sight that the SCPO setup. Isn't that his MO? If it's all the same with you guys, I'd rather not get myself killed before I actually got the chance to do what I signed up for."
"No one said anything about dying, J." Roland said. "It's just a location."
"Tell that to Team Charlie. Oh wait, you can't, because we still don't have a clue what happened to those guys, do we? And that was all the way back in 39."
"Wuss." Kat said under her breath.
Jonah turned on her. "What'd you say?"
She glanced over her shoulder at him. "My grandmother would've had a thing or two to say about wusses like yourself."
Jonah took a threatening step forward but Harris put a hand on his shoulder.
"Jonah's got a point." Owens said. "Since when does the LC ever send us near the Zone? I mean, seriously."
"Same, I don't like it." Samson added.
Kat sighed explosively. "Don't tell me you two actually believe those ghost stories, do you? We all know it was the A-Company dropouts just covering up whatever they did to poor Charlie."
The two of them went silent. Lucy peeked in from the doorway. "I don't know about those stories but even the DIs who dropped out from Alpha Company said they sometimes saw things in the north way back when they were training here, strange lights every now and again. They say there are no buildings up there but who knows what's actually going on."
"ONI does own the planet after all." Roland said. "I wouldn't be too surprised if something were going on that we just didn't know about. I don't believe the ghost stories though, that just sounds like hearsay."
"And I'm here to say that I don't want to go." Jonah declared adamantly.
"That's not your call." Tom said and reexamined the screen. "The LC and SCPO wouldn't just send all the 731 personnel to a fake site. Gregor Canyon has to be it." His voice fell to a contemplative whisper. "But I wonder why."
After a moment's thought he turned to face the others. "Alright, suck it up Spartans. It looks like we're headed to the canyon. We do this quick and clean."
Kat disconnected her TACPAD and slipped the wires back behind the paneling. "Coordinates acquired."
Tom nodded. "Our exfil should already be in place. Let's move out."
Duncan watched their feeds as the Spartans left the building and jetted back towards the ridge. Once they were gone, Epsilon descended on the command center, depositing additional oxygen into the tanks of the unconscious troopers from the canisters on their backs. They also revived them with TTR batons whose circuits, once passed over, helped relax the armor's fibers left hardened by the polymer.
All the while Duncan thought about the exchange between the insertion team. To him, some of them sounded scared, mainly Jonah. Fear wasn't an emotion he thought they were capable of. There were rumors of that place up North, stories the candidates told each other in their downtime about a legend: the ghosts of Onyx. Whatever it meant he doubted he would ever find out. Keeping his head down for now would do him and the rest of the squad the most good in serving out the last month of their sentence.
Still something else was bothering him. It was Six. His actions in taking the command center were highly efficient but also detrimental. He couldn't simply go off on his own in the middle of a given mission. Yet he hadn't shown any signs of overcoming his lone wolf tendencies in all this time, and that was cause enough for concern.
Beta Company was expected to graduate next month. Someone would have to get through to B312 before he went to active duty. Yet if his own teammates that had known him for far longer couldn't get through to him then what chance did he really have of making him listen?
:********:
Kurt watched the four Pelicans take off from behind the ridge overlooking Arintero station. The Spartans, Detachment 731 personnel and Epsilon onboard left Mare Griseo's surface for open space.
Not long after, the UNSC Pioneer emerged from slipspace to pick them up, using the moon's girth and gravitational proximity to hide their exit vector. They returned to the slipstream the moment the Pelicans were onboard.
Kurt turned back to the Colonel's display. Ackerson had watched the entire occasion from a link sent by Deep Winter. He looked deep in thought yet satisfied.
"What do you think, sir?" Kurt asked.
"They certainly are effective." Ackerson replied. "B312 is in a category all his own. I'll be looking forward to your next report. I'll also send you the dossier on the Spartans' upcoming deployment orders."
Kurt saluted. "Looking forward to it sir."
"As am I, Ackerson out."
The display winked off.
Kurt released the breath he'd been unconsciously holding. In actuality he wasn't certain how he felt about the performance. The teams had done well as a whole. However, one Spartan had done exceptionally well on his own, and he couldn't help wondering what the price would be for that exceptionality.
Deep Winter materialized over the table in a flurry of snow. "You're somewhat worried as well, I'd imagine."
"About?"
"Zeta." Winter cradled his cane. "B312 in particular. He still has difficulty working with a team. We presumed joining him with Zeta would help increase cohesion. That presumption has not held up overtime."
"It is concerning." Kurt admitted. "All the same, his future assignment was specifically picked out to account for that."
Deep Winter raised a curious eyebrow at him. "So, you did plan for his inabilities?"
Kurt shook his head. "No, not his inabilities. His proficiencies."
"You're arguing perspectives, Ambrose. Objectively, B312 lacks any strong cooperative capacities. I'm sure you would know better than I do that not every objective can be accomplished through running and gunning alone. Other tact is required, comrades also." He placed his cane down and used it to lean towards him. "Even you did not operate alone during your active days."
"Blue Team was another story."
"Your story." Winter pressed, smiling knowingly at him.
Kurt sighed, returning a tired smile at the AI. "That's a finished tale, or at least my part in it. I'm here now, and I've gotten along just fine."
"You had us, me and Mendez, as well as the AI that came before me. Can you really say you didn't rely on anyone?"
Kurt thought it over. "Well now that you mention it, no." He turned his attention to the display, folding his arms over his chest. "Who knows. Maybe he'll surprise us as always."
"Maybe." Deep Winter echoed before disappearing in another snow flurry, leaving Kurt to himself. He kept watching the display as the Arintero was slowly swallowed up in the encroaching night.
He went over the events of the training session in his head. Despite some early difficulties the Spartans were on track to continue their success streak into the upcoming mass-drop. Unbeknownst to them it would all be in preparation for TORPEDO, a mission the likes of which he did not like to ponder. The large scale of the operation tended to remind him too much of PROMETHEUS, and of the many Spartans he'd trained that never returned from it. He'd sworn something like that wouldn't happen again. The time was coming where that would be put to the test.
In the meantime, he had one last month with Beta. He would make sure to hammer in what last touches they needed and accept that whatever he couldn't instill into them now they would have to learn in the field. Adapt or die. There had been no way around it for Spartans of his generation when they first fought the Covenant, not for Alpha Company, and most certainly not for Beta.
He was thankful though that he had gotten to conduct zero-gravity training with them while he could. His mind couldn't help wondering back to his incident years ago with a T-pack of his own. He laughed at the memory and where it had brought him. Even so, if he wore another T-pack in the next twenty years it would be too soon.
:********:
Duncan's pod rotated towards the Pioneer's opening drop bay. In the thirty minutes he'd had between leaving the Arintero and now he had been too caught up in what happened in between to consider his earlier concerns.
Upon returning, Tom briefed Beta Company on their objective. All 300 Spartans would deploy to Gregor Canyon under his leadership. Although Epsilon and some of the ONI APs would be accompanying them to ensure drop integrity, the operation would be done entirely under the Spartans' control, including the slipspace transition and subsequent insertion.
Tom assigned the different teams to one of the four mining structures. With nearly 75 Spartans assigned to each target building, Beta Company immediately headed to the drop bay with their guardian personnel to begin the drop.
They were still being timed after all. In the next twenty minutes the enemy installation on the ground would become 'aware' of the Arintero going offline and go on full alert. The point of the operation was a surprise attack to secure the UNSC mines and neutralize all hostile contacts.
Tom-B292 came in over comms. "Deploy on my mark. Three…two…mark!"
Beta Company launched their pods. They rocketed out into the vastness of slipstream space like a heil of autumn rain. Epsilon and the ONI APs followed suit.
Duncan watched the fleets of stealth pods that fell through the darkness all around him.
Then began the bumpy stage of this part of the trip. Duncan clung to his controls while steering down towards their exit vector. He kept a close eye on his monitor and the nearby pods of Zeta and Oscar. Roland occupied his right display, Six his left.
"Exit transition in 30 seconds." Tom said. Across the roster Beta Company winked their green acknowledgement lights.
Duncan started counting. Twenty-five…twenty…fifteen…
A loud burst of static broke him from his mantra. He quickly checked his pod for signs of damage. There was none, not in his.
On one of his displays, Six' visor reflected a cascade of sparks from the flashing equipment around him.
"Six?" Roland called.
He didn't respond, too busy checking on the sparking components within his pod. Their lights flickered.
"Six?" Jonah called. "What's going on?"
"I'm fine." He answered back. "Keep moving."
By now, Duncan could tell a catastrophic system failure in a drop pod when he saw one.
The Staff pulled in next to Six. "B312, don't take any chances. Transition into normal space immediately."
Before Six could reply, static filled his comms. Then his display winked out. His pod went offline right after, its interior left darkened. As his thrusters ceased to fire, his LRSOIP fell behind the passing masses.
Duncan didn't give himself a second to reconsider. He remembered what happened to Dikes and Strawson back during the training on Reach, how they had never found them. He wasn't about to let another person suffer that fate, not if he could do something about it. He activated his drag chute. His pod was immediately pulled back just as hundreds of others began transitioning into normal space.
He used his thrusters to maneuver next to the dead pod then equalized his rate of descent. He saw the helmet lights of the Spartan inside.
"Six, can you transition!?"
No answer came.
"Six!?"
Still no answer. The Spartan inside appeared hard at work with the fried components within his pod, to no avail. Duncan finally caught Six' attention through their viewports. He held up a questioning thumb. Six shook his head.
Duncan caught an idea. He took a deep breath, accepting that what he was about to try had a good chance of getting them both killed.
He reduced his speed so that he came above Six. He positioned himself so that their pods lined up, then shot downward, impacting the top of the dead vehicle.
Duncan typed the transition sequence into the keypad, briefly hesitated, then pressed the 'enter' button.
A flash of light overtook his viewport.
A heartbeat later the atmosphere of Onyx appeared before him.
The rest of Beta Company were already several kilometers further down, headed towards the northern peninsula.
But there was no sign of Six' pod beneath his own. He looked frantically to his left and right. There was no one there. "No…no, no, no, Six-"
A shadow descended over him. He looked up. There was another pod right above his own. It slowly gained enough speed to come down beside him.
The Spartan inside stared back, then gave him the thumbs up. Duncan had no words. He forced his trembling hand to return the gesture as he laughed to himself.
Now all that was left to do was land.
He could tell that his little maneuver had changed their trajectory. They were still bound for the peninsula but their chances of hitting the same landing zone was slim. It became slimmer the closer they came, and the problem of Six' pod being offline remained. Moreover, the growing flames around their LRSOIPs made Duncan worried about his chute. At these speeds he couldn't risk retracting it without breaking it. It was already groaning from the stress of having been deployed ahead of time. He would have to chance a full drop with it open.
The Staff's voice came in over comms. "Iris, what's the status of you and B312?"
"Sir, 312's pod is out of commission. It looks like we'll miss the drop zone by a kilometer north. I'll ride down with him to see if anything changes."
"…Understood…help where you can…I'll see you on the ground."
"Yessir." Duncan signed off. The Staff sounded like he knew exactly what he was really asking for in regard to staying with Six. But the ODST didn't have the heart to tell his squad leader that there was a chance he was also about to fall to his death.
At two minutes to the ground Duncan felt the sweat on his skin evaporate through his SPI's Techsuit. He bit back the pain to maintain control of his descent.
Beyond his viewport the clouds parted to reveal the extent of the canyon below. It was a series of earthy scars running from the eastern horizon straight down to the west. The mining facility located over a section of the natural fissures was already under attack. Hundreds of tracer rounds were being exchanged between positions both within and outside the facility. Spartan IIIs were pushing through the tree-line to make moves on the perimeter as snipers provided covering fire, taking out 731 personnel within the guard towers.
A recheck of their trajectory told him they would miss the canyon by a kilometer. Their new landing zone would be somewhere in the northern area known as Zone 67. What little he could do was pray under his breath that the other pod came back online and that his chute wouldn't break loose from the stress.
Both prayers were answered.
At less than a kilometer to the ground he saw Six' pod suddenly flash back to life. The electrical power flickered into place and his display reactivated. It was a more than welcomed surprise.
"Looks like you're back on." Duncan said. "Try your chute."
Six' chute was out a second later.
Their velocities slowly leveled out.
At 50 meters their breaking rockets activated. Duncan saw the other pod disappear behind a flash of green foliage before his world was swallowed up by thick jungle flora. He braced as his pod piston into the thick hide of a banyan tree. The bark took the brunt of the impact while his pod remained diagonally lodged in its base.
Duncan popped his hatch and hoisted himself out, falling a meter to the floor. Vines snaked across the ground and coiled around the exposed roots of scores of banyans that dominated the jungle around him. Flocks of startled birds flew from their perches within the trees.
He checked his TACMAP. Strangely, there were no topography readings here. No landforms. Nothing. The entirety of Zone 67 wasn't even registered on the satellite geographic layout. The topography only started 700 meters to the south, where the facilities of Gregor Canyon showed up. Otherwise it only displayed his position and Six' less than a short jog away.
Duncan found a zigzagging path over a small jungle plateau and sprinted along its length.
As he moved under the shadows of the trees and past the swampier areas of the jungle, he felt something. He stopped at one point to look around. There was nothing there. But he couldn't help the feeling that made him reach for his M6. There was something about this place that felt off. It wasn't the multi-colored birds moving from branch to branch or the lizards that frantically slithered away from his footsteps.
He forced his attention back on reaching the pod. After a few minutes spent navigating through the underbrush he found what he was looking for.
Six' pod lay at the base of a massive kapok tree whose girth warranted a respectful distance given it by the other trees, save for a large sapling that had fallen on top of the LRSOIP.
The pod itself was facedown with the weight of the sapling keeping it in place. He could hear the strained whine of the hatch's hydraulics failing to open.
He keyed open a private comm-link. "Six, you alive in there?"
The Spartan's acknowledgement light winked green.
Duncan breathed a sigh of relief. Lifting the tree wasn't an option given its size. That said, he could leverage it using the pod as a fulcrum.
"Give me a sec, I'm getting you out of this." He got a hold on one side of the tree and pulled his legs up to his chest. His weight ripped the damaged sapling's last roots out from its base. He let go once it rolled off the pod.
Taking a lesson from how Yuri had helped him back on Miridem, he started rocking the pod left and right. With the additional strength of the suit he soon gained enough momentum to cause it to flip over to the side. Six blew the bolts the moment the door was off the ground.
He fell out and expertly rolled away before the vehicle could fall back into place.
Duncan came over to him. "You alright?"
Six merely nodded as he rose to his feet. "We're not in a good spot, sir. My pod's fried."
Duncan inspected it himself. "Looks like a system failure. I don't know how that got past the AP's maintenance checks but you're honestly lucky that you got out of there."
There was chatter over the comms. Duncan could tell by the numerous voices that it was the teams of Beta Company coordinating to take on their objectives. Things were getting heated over at Gregor Canyon. From what he could discern, they had already secured one of the buildings on the canyon's southern side.
After quick consideration, Duncan and Six decided to head back to the former's pod. Since his was the most functional its SOS signal would definitely work.
He found his pod right where he'd left it and clambered inside to switch on the SOS. The repeat signal went out in five second intervals with enough power to be detected on every radio within several hundred kilometers.
"Our pick-up should arrive in a few minutes." Duncan said, leaping back down to the ground. "While it means we'll probably miss the action back at Gregor, it also means we have some time to talk."
Six seemed lost to whatever he was hinting at. Duncan seated himself on one of the banyan's thick roots. He figured now, after a near death experience for the both of them, was as good a time as ever to bring up what no one else was able to touch on. He took a look at the trees around him for whatever wisdom they had to offer then turned his attention fully on the standing Spartan.
"You're not really one to ask for help, are you? I watch you with your teammates. You never seem to rely on them, at least not much…why is that?"
The Spartan didn't answer, merely stared back at him with carbine in hand.
Duncan laughed at the awkwardness of the situation. Here he was asking a supersoldier why he didn't ask for help. Still, it was a question that needed to be asked for his sake. "I'm just curious why you do so much on your own."
Again, no answer.
The ODST sighed. "Geeze, you're stubborn. The rest of Zeta is the same way though so I have no real criticism there. However, I think you'll need a lot more than that if you hope to survive as a team."
No answer.
Seeing that he was getting nowhere he decided to try a change of topic. "Alright, let me ask something else. So, what's this thing the others were talking about back at the Arintero, these ghosts that live in the zone? Is that something we should be worried about?"
"It's just a myth sir." Six answered, much to his surprise. The Spartan looked around, likely making sure the area was secured. "It started five years ago back before there was a Zone 67. We used to use this area to train. Then one day we lost a team up here."
Duncan winced. "A whole team?"
Six nodded. "Team Charlie. After they disappeared, officials from ONI came and cordoned off the area. They planted a perimeter fence with mines to make sure no one else went in."
"…And Charlie?"
Six shook his head.
Duncan felt a strong compulsion to look over his shoulder but denied it the action. "So where do these 'Ghosts of Onyx' fit into all this?"
"A few in Beta say ghosts had something to do with why ONI cordoned off this place. Personally, I don't know why. I'm not superstitious. That doesn't mean I like this place."
"Uhuh." Duncan shrugged. "That last part sounds like a kid's story."
He instantly regretted his word choice. Then he thought better of it. Perhaps that was where he needed to go. "Speaking of which, I don't think I ever told you guys but I'm actually a dad, I've got a wife and son waiting for me back home. They're why I came out here in the first place. They're the reason why I fight…what's yours?"
The Spartan subtly perked up at the mention of family, then slowly deflated back into his normal defensive posture, both hands tightening on his rifle as though it were a source of comfort.
Duncan took notice. He knew after his conversation with the Lieutenant Commander several months ago that he would have to watch what questions he asked these Spartans about their pasts. Now he felt that if he didn't press in then he would never reach the root of the problem here, so he did.
"Do you have a family, Six? A homeworld perhaps?"
Six gave no outward reaction. His posture remained rigid, as though ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.
Duncan gave another long exhale. Still he spoke with careful deliberateness. "I'm an Earth-boy myself, born and raised. My mom was an accountant, my dad an ODST. I guess it's not that hard to tell which one I took after. I ended up losing them both; one to cancer, the other to the Covenant on Harvest." He reached into a compartment on his suit and pulled out the rock from the far-off colony world, drawing both their attention to it as he continued. "Grew up with a beautiful girl. Ended up marrying her. Had a beautiful kid, went to war. And all I really have to remind myself of what I've left behind is this rock my dad gave for my birthday from the same planet he'd died on. It's just a little memento I take out every now and again to remind myself what I fight for." He turned on Six, holding the rock towards him. "Now I'm asking you the same question. Can you answer it?"
The Spartan stood there, quiet for several long seconds.
Duncan sighed again at his failed efforts. "Can you at least tell me what you're real name is? I'm sure your parents didn't name you after a number."
"…That's classified sir."
"And why's that?"
"That's also classified sir."
"…Uhuh…" Seeing he was getting nowhere, Duncan tried laughing to himself to stave off the awkwardness. "Okay, let's just wait here until-"
"Jericho VII."
Duncan froze. Slowly he looked back up at him. "What?"
"Damask, Jericho VII." He paused as if to ponder the names. "That was my homeworld, I grew up there."
Duncan didn't interrupt. He let him continue at his own pace.
Six seemed to gather his thoughts from some distant part of his mind. "I-…I had a mother…and a father. I…think I had a sister." He looked like he was struggling with a deeper memory. "We drove to the Starport one evening. The whole city was doing the same thing. My parents, they…got me on a transport. Just me. Everyone did everything they could to save me, so much that they didn't do anything else to save themselves. Just me."
He turned to face Duncan with a directness he hadn't had before and the ODST straightened. "You ask me why I fight, sir? You ask me why I don't work with the others and go off on my own? The simple answer is if I think I can do the job myself then I do it, because I know I can take whatever comes as a result. I don't put others' lives on the line if I know I have a better chance than they do of coming out alive."
Duncan gawked behind his visor. He felt himself looking at the answer to the question that he hadn't known was right in front of him from the very beginning. "You fight hard so others don't have to fight at all, Is that accurate?"
Six hesitated, but slowly nodded.
The ODST breathed in the answer with a heavy heart. These Spartans had been through a lot. He'd figured as much. Still he couldn't imagine himself in that same position with his own family, separating just to survive. He was beginning to discern a theme to that story though. Slowly he picked out B312's real motivations.
"You care for them, your teammates I mean." He said. "Like family."
He could tell he was getting somewhere by the way the Spartan stiffened. Perhaps he wasn't used to his emotions being put on full display. Regardless, Duncan kept on. "You fight so hard so that no one else has to, that way you keep from losing people, and from becoming anyone else' burden. That's what you're thinking, right?"
Six gave no answer. But the tense silence was confirmation enough.
Duncan thought on his next words. It was hard. He forced them out. "Back during my training days, I had teammates too. We were called 'Charlie Team' as well, isn't that something." He stopped when Cosmo, Stanton and O'Reilly's faces crossed his mind. He felt a tightness in his throat. He closed his eyes to block out the feeling. "After graduation we went our separate ways. Two of them died in places I'll never see. One of them burned to death in his pod before his first mission. Another tried saving a teammate and a Jackal shot him for his trouble."
He opened his eyes, slowly leaning towards the Spartan. "They died and I couldn't do a thing about it. I didn't even get to see them go out. I'm sorry to tell you this Six, but no matter what you do you can't always stop what happens out there, not on your own. Work with your teammates while you have them with you. Let them fight alongside you, just as hard as you do, because they deserve that chance."
"…And what if I don't, sir?" Six asked back.
Duncan looked him straight on. "Then you might one day find yourself fighting with no one else left to fight for."
The meaning of his own words was lost on Duncan. Although he felt they had some meaning, whatever they were, he couldn't say for sure. That didn't stop the strong silence that fell between them right after. Neither of them spoke, only stared at the other with emotionless visors hiding away whatever lay beneath.
Then the atmosphere around them changed. There was no alteration in light or wind, only the harshly discomforting sensation of being watched.
Six looked like he was about to say something when he suddenly tensed and aimed his carbine at Duncan. In his surprise it took him a moment to realize that the barrel wasn't aimed at him but at something behind him.
He felt a cold chill crawl up his back. He leaped off the root and swiveled around with his M6 already up.
There was nothing.
"What is it, Six? What'd you see?"
"…Thirty meters to our west, sir." Six' voice surprised him. He sounded almost horse, like he was hyper-focused on whatever he was looking at.
Duncan followed his direction towards a distant part of the jungle. He scanned the low-lying shrubs and the shadows cast by the thick foliage. There was nothing. "I don't see any-"
Then he saw it.
Phased against the shadows between two banyan trees like a sun in the night was a single, fiery eye. The golden orb of luminescence three-times the size of his head floated over the jungle floor with no sign of anything holding it up. Though there was no obvious indication from the sphere's featureless surface, he couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow watching them.
The orb began to grow larger. No, not larger, closer. It moved without noise through the shadows of the jungle as it sluggishly came towards them.
Duncan was less curious and more terrified. The Spartan next to him seemed rock-solid, observing the strange phenomena through his carbine.
"Do you know what that thing is?"
There was a brief hesitation from the Spartan before his acknowledgement light winked red.
"Six…we're backing up." The order reached him and they both quietly stepped back behind the banyan tree where his pod had crashed. Six covered the left, Duncan the right.
They waited for it to reach them. Still, whether it was coming or not, they couldn't tell as its approach was utterly silent.
Then another noise broke that silence. It became clearer and more comforting the closer it came until it was right on top of them. Overhead, the roaring engines of a Pelican flew past then swung back to hover over them.
A voice came on the comm. "This is Mendez to Private Iris. You alive down there, son?"
Duncan felt relief wash over him. "I'm here, sir. So is B312. We've…got a situation."
"Explain."
Duncan dared skirt along the side of one of the trees roots and looked out over the top.
The orb was gone.
There was no sign of whatever had just been there, only the darkness of the jungle that shifted as the dropship's engines brought about an artificial whirlwind.
Duncan blinked away his disbelief. He turned to Six who was also looking past the tree on the other side. The two glanced at each other in confusion.
"Never mind, sir. Whatever it is, it's gone."
"And what was down there to begin with?"
"A…well, I don't actually know, sir."
"Alright, don't worry about it. Just get ready for exfil."
The Pelican slowly descended through a nearby opening in the forestry. It came low enough that the ramp was able to settle down on the swampy jungle floor. Mendez stood in the opening with both hands behind his back. "Come aboard, gentlemen. Move."
Duncan and Six jogged over with well-deserved haste. They came aboard and settled into opposite seats near the exit. The ramp came back up as the Pelican ascended.
Mendez held on to an overhead handle. He didn't look like he needed it by the way he stood strong against the bumpy ride. He scrutinized both Helljumper and Spartan with his customary hard glare.
"Good to see you two made it." He finally said. "The exercise back at Gregor Canyon is almost over so we're heading to Curahee instead. Ambrose will debrief you two regarding your drop."
"Understood sir." Six replied.
"What about our pods?" Duncan asked. "Aren't you going back for them?"
"Later."
Duncan didn't know why but he felt that by later, he actually meant never. It was just a feeling. Still, his mind was still racing at the thought of whatever it was they had just seen back there.
"Saw any ghosts?" Mendez asked sarcastically, seemingly clairvoyant.
"I don't really know what I saw, sir. It just looked like an orb. Six saw it too."
Mendez turned on him. "Did you now?"
"It looked like some oversized lightbulb, sir." Six said. "I couldn't say what it was for sure."
The SCPO nodded. "I've heard stranger stories. Take it easy while you still can, both of you. We'll be back in 20." He walked back into the cockpit and shut the door behind him.
The comm-chatter increased as they passed over Gregor Canyon. Jonah's voice came in over team freq. "Hey Six, had a nice vacation?"
"…I wouldn't call it that, no."
"Shame. You really missed the whole show down here. We won by the way, without your help."
"If you're trying to make him feel bad, just stop while you're ahead." Harris butted in. "I'm sure he already has enough on his plate with almost dying and all."
"You did miss a lot, Six." Roland said. "You better make up for it when we do our last drop on Arena-1. You copy?"
"Copy."
"And hey, if you're ever in a broken pod about to crash and die, how about calling for a little help next time?" Jonah chided with a voice that oozed sarcasm.
Yet Six had none in return. He spoke with a genuineness that caught Duncan's attention and made even his tenacious teammate go quiet. "Yeah, next time."
He signed off the comm and looked at Duncan, then reached out a hand. "Thanks for the save back there, sir."
Duncan smiled and nodded. He reached over, took his hand with his own and shook it. "Thanks for the chat."
Seminibus – Seeds