Chapter 16 – Obumbratio
May 9th, 2545 (11:50 Hours – Military Calendar)
Aquilla System, Actium
High Mediolanum, Republic of Pavia
Over Gulam Archipelago
:********:
The Western circumference of the Gulam Archipelago was an outward reaching arc of loose islets and islands divided by watery inlets that made the area appear like a semi-submerged extension of Pavia's coastline. Maybe that was what it had once been. The tsunami of 2501 had caused so much damage that purportedly a few of the smaller cays and islands were irreconcilably sunken, and their denizens along with them.
Duncan thought he spotted the faintest traces of human ruins beneath the turquoise waters of the inlet they were flying over. What lay below was too well crafted to be the geological handiwork of natural coastal transportation and mineral disposition. There were dark silhouettes of straight, squarish and rectangular lines that had likely been buildings neatly columned along the darker remains of eroding roadways. Many of the coral reefs dotting the seafloor were actually part of a debris field spanning much of the archipelago that had blended with the aquatic flora overtime. He recognized the outlines of car chassis covered in brain coral, displaced rooftops bathed in seaweed and expressway guardrails acting as the foundation for waving sea fans among other undersea varieties. It was the closest anyone would probably ever come to seeing Earth-bound underwater mysteries like Atlantis or even more realistic examples like Port Royal.
He wondered why the city's municipal administration never had the ruins removed. His best guess was that they either lacked the resources to get it done or that the events of 2501 were so catastrophic that no one wanted to disturb the aftermath, as the beautiful waters had become a mass grave in their own right.
Though he didn't believe in omens, that last idea wouldn't leave him alone.
He considered whether he was really prepared for this mission, and ready for using his new maneuverability unit after so long without practice. He remembered wearing it almost every day for a week back during Final Selection at Camp Ravenport. At the time, Class 207 was conducting Combat Diving Training or CDT a kilometer off the southern coast of Ireland. O'Reilly hadn't been too ecstatic about the whole situation since he had to spend a week on his own home-turf. He used up most of his free-time making sure none of the female ODSTs coming into and out of their dormitories was one of his former girlfriends in disguise. Cosmo and Stanton got a good laugh at his expense every step of the way.
During CDT, they were dropped via Pelicans into the Atlantic to scout out ancient shipwrecks along with more modern civilian craft that had been dumped some years prior. On later missions they began carrying down the same CF89 Attachable Booster Frames between squads. They mimicked NAVSPECWARCOM's HAZOP Teams that used the same equipment to bring materials up from a world's seafloor or to drag it out from the remains of a destroyed ship floating in orbit. Charlie Team did decently well in those exercises. However, at one point Duncan got a breach in his CBRN module and ended up having to share a rebreather with Drill Instructor Mahoney as they swam 300 meters to the surface. There were worse ways not to die.
At the very least he was good at a depth rating of 300 meters. But they were going down to nearly twice that, a fact that merited its own concerns.
He backed off from the Albatross' viewports that he'd been using for the trip. The rest of the drop bay behind him was alive with the chatter of several ODST squads all cooped together. Aside from Epsilon and Hotel sired as the Master Chief's Extraction Teams, there were squads Apex and Goliath who were fulfilling a similar entourage role for Spartan 087.
Before they left from the HMPD HQ's western lawn the Chief had everyone organized according to their priorities. Two of the incoming Albatrosses would ferry just the 8 Extraction Teams and the 4 Spartans that would be leading them. Next were the Carrier Teams who boarded the dropships loaded with CF89 Booster Frames donated from the personal vehicle cache of the UNSC Tower of Babel. Finally, there were the Demolition Teams that took the last two Albatrosses.
They left at approximately 1120 Hours.
Thirty minutes in, everyone was gripping wall-mounted handholds and those hanging from the ceiling to stay balanced despite that it was a relatively smooth ride. The lack of AA Shades was probably the reason for it.
Duncan had to admit the Marines of 8th Battalion had done a good job securing the archipelago. Looking back at the viewport he caught a glimpse of a small, C-shaped formation near the outer heart of the island chain. It was called Milo's Cay and it was currently filled to bursting with Covenant corpses. The inner beach and surrounding forestry were being used as a dump for the aftermath of the fighting on the three major islands. He watched a trio of Falcons pull in over the cay airlifting nets of dead Elites, Jackals, Grunts and others. They were unceremoniously released into a 50-meter fall before either splashing and sinking into the encompassed water or crashing beneath the jungle canopy.
So not only human dead were down in the Koronea, but Covenant as well. That merely worsened his already fraying nerves. He recalled that even the Staff didn't want to go where they were now headed but was committed to getting the mission done all the same.
Duncan hoped that maybe he could mirror that conviction when he felt a hand settle on his shoulder. It was Nova. Her visor depolarized to display the knowingly apprehensive look on her face as she leaned against the free-side of the viewport. "I saw you poking your nose out the window there, Irish. I wouldn't say it's a good idea though."
"Why so?"
"You think you're the only one not psyched about this?" She gestured over her shoulder towards the front of the bay. There the Master Chief and Petty Officer Second Class 'Kelly' stood hanging on to a pair of ceiling handles while talking over a private channel.
"The only ones here okay with this situation would definitely be those two. Sad to say but they've got the balls, and one of them doesn't even have balls. Me personally, I'm still thinking we might run into one of those Scampi-Squid things we saw at the oceanarium. That Bullion guy said they were native to the Koronea's abyssal regions so I'm not sure how I feel about this one just yet."
"Sounds like Calamari-time." Zack said from nearby. "Those bad boys are a bit bigger than ones on Earth. Still, I'm more concerned about those crab things. They must be native too since Hector said the stuff in his soup this morning was delivered from local markets."
"Thanks, that makes me feel so much better." Duncan said with all the sarcasm he could muster.
"Cheer up Leprechaun. If one grabs you, I'll make sure to come running with the butter."
"For the crab?"
"For you. Did you see those things? I'm not about to fight one for you. I'll toss it what it needs to start off with you while I get out of there."
"Tell you what, if one grabs me, I'll make sure you're nearby so I can grab you and keep you as a second helping, you hear?"
"Loud and clear, Captain Leprechaun. Loud and clear."
Nova glanced between them then shook her head in disapproval. "On a separate note, I managed to get some info out of Hotel-3. He explained how they were able to use the holo-pedestal to catch that broadcast."
Duncan began to stare out the viewport at the passing landmass that looked like someone wearing a shoe then scrunching up the bottom to tip-toe around. "How'd they pull it off?"
"They used their CCJ's interception function in reverse, essentially homing in on the broadcasting signal earlier in the day. Then they sent it to the squad's radioman who got a stored measurement of the bandwidth until the operation started. Once all the jammers were down, Hotel-4 sent the measurements to the communication's officer on the Tower of Babel. They were able to use the destroyer's better systems to properly triangulate where the source was located."
"We could've figured that out." Duncan said mockingly.
"No, we couldn't. Remember, we came too late in the day to see anything but a recording of the original broadcast. Turns out they got to their jammer in Kastoria almost an hour before we reached ours in Mezoline. From what I heard on the records of those broadcasts, the Minister's been a busy man, or alien-thing. He's been offering up three prayers every day in different tiers of the city since it fell into Covenant hands. Each prayer is composed of three sorts of sub-sectional requests where he basically asks the Gods to help them kill all of us."
"Think he's inspiring enough to make a human convert to that cause?"
"Maybe Innies, sure. They hate us enough. We're not them so I think we're too busy at the moment trying to save faces that look like ours to start considering that kind of thing."
"Maybe so..."
Nova gave him a wary look. "You're not an Innie, are you Irish?"
Duncan laughed under his breath at the idea. "No, I'm an outie. I was born that way until kindergarten when it decided to become an Innie. I guess I'm both in a way."
He grunted as she elbowed him in the ribs.
"I'm not talking about your gross belly button inversion phase. I'm talking about you having sympathies for our second enemy."
"Me, no. I'm too much of an Earth-boy to be an Innie sympathizer, especially after what I heard they used to do in Epsilon Eridanus back in the day. But in fighting terms, I'd prefer dealing with an enemy that can't glass a planet over one that can."
"...I'm keeping an eye on you, Irish."
"I'd keep an eye on Zack if I were you. Something's telling me he's the more dangerous one out of the two of us, mostly to himself."
"Sure."
As she left to speak with the Staff, Duncan used the remaining time to stare at the passing island that vaguely reminded him of a shoe. It was Icaria island no less, and from a cursory study of his TACMAP he knew it was the third largest in the archipelago after Samos in the South and Andros in the North.
They flew over Icaria's largest town of Agios which lay along three-interlinking bays on the island's western coast. Agios possessed a number of container ports and seaports for maritime craft. The second of those held a dozen of the hybrid ocean-to-air cruises he recognized as Telchines-class recreational craft. The 22nd century designs of the ships were modeled after those of the previous century that sailed on water. However, they now had the addition of under-hull mounted engine drives powerful enough to lift the craft all the way to the upper edges of the troposphere. Their ingenuity, derived from the bright minds of the earliest iterations of Halifax Spacewerx' civilian liners, allowed tourists to High Mediolanum to take cruises over the Koronea Sea and travel in luxury between Pavia and Preveza. Depending on the weather or preference of the crew, the cruises could settle down on the sea for a tranquil ride on the waves or rise into the clouds for a speedier flight across the serpentine paths of the intercontinental Jet streams.
Today, however, Actium's famed Universality Cruises were out of operation. The 8th Battalion were instead utilizing them as operational centers. There were canvas tents placed on the ships' decks and communication's arrays setup over the topside pools. Marines moved equipment up and down transitional umbillicals keeping the vessels locked to the docks. Similar activity could be seen throughout the rest of the town with tents setup here and there while patrols from the 53rd's 3rd Tank Battalion drove along the sprawling tangle of polycrete buildings.
Duncan spotted two active mass driver stations near the docks. They were rotational Onager-class drivers that swiveled from east to west, scanning the skies for targets. Before this, local dockworkers would have used these same drivers to shoot radioactive materials into Aquilla's stellar path for special disposal or for sending packages to one of the planet's orbital elevators, the closest of which was all the way in High Estonia. However, he was curious about why the Marines would be using them now. Then he remembered a few theories that the groundside drivers were actually quite versatile, even as anti-ship artillery pieces given the right conditions. It wasn't so much a theory since it had purportedly been proven possible by the desperate bid of Harvest' population who had used a driver to shootdown an attacking Covenant ship, allowing many civilians to escape the planet.
That might have been Command's goal on the archipelago, to reactivate the drivers as additional counters to Covenant Naval reinforcements from the elusive eastern fleet or the more concerning one in the west. It made sense since the UNSC Arrow of Paris, still 15 kilometers above Pavia's coastline, could do little more than serve as a lookout for any hostile battlegroups. According to the brochure he'd read on the way from Treviso, there was already a network of 20 Onager Mass drivers stationed throughout the archipelago that would be the perfect defense against another invasion. He had to admit that was smart on Menteith's part to be thinking so many steps ahead of the game still being played in High Mediolanum's streets. The fact the 53rd's Colonel could juggle the operational needs of three different combat theaters was an impressive feat in itself, not to mention the direction he was probably giving the other task force commanders conducting their own invasions across Actium. The kind of tacticity that took was unthinkable for Duncan, and even mildly reassuring.
He just hoped Mentieth knew what he was doing now in sending them to the fourth and newest theater of High Mediolanum's invasion: The bottom of the Koronea.
Once they passed over Icaria the water changed from turquoise to dark blue and the last terrestrial crumbs of cays fell away, indicating they had left the archipelago. Shortly thereafter the first of High Mediolanum's oil rigs came within sight. The platforms rested on the verge of the republic's maritime boundary and international waters. While a few still had spills that darkened the sea in their vicinity, the firestorms that raged along some of the structures had for the most part been put out.
He wondered which of them were the Theseus and Odyssey rigs and if they were just as prepared as the ODSTs for this mission.
:********:
The Master Chief checked the nearest viewport to see how far along they were. He could tell by his near photographic memory of yesterday's flyover that the Albatrosses were less than a kilometer away from their endpoint. He switched on his commlink that would connect him to both Blue Team and the entirety of Bravo. "This is Blue-1 to all Bravo personnel; we are 400 meters out from our drop-off point. Start making your final checks. We'll be offloading in the next three minutes."
The ODSTs clueing in behind him began checking their weapons as well as their partner's gear for any signs of defects. Earlier, they had established a buddy system where the troopers would swim alongside a dive partner. They would keep an eye on each other to make sure there were no problems oxygen-wise. Afterall, any unforeseen complications half-a-kilometer underwater could prove deadly if handled alone.
With the passage of another minute the last two rigs came into view. He turned to the one to the south and activated a direct comm-link to the Marine CO there. "This is Blue-1 to Theseus control station, we're almost to our objective. Are your magnetic harpoons in place?"
"This is Captain Jean of Theseus control but you can call me Ishmael." A female voice answered smartly. "Harpoon Teams are in place, over."
"Copy that." He turned on the northern rig and switched on another link. "Blue-1 to Odyssey control station, how are those harpoons on your end?"
"This is Sergeant Major Rubello of Odyssey control." The man said drily. "We've got your harpoons ready sir. Just bring us the white whale and we'll get the job done."
"Copy."
The pilot's voice came over the intercom. "Grim-1-5 to drop bay, we're beginning our descent to the target area, two minutes out."
The Chief switched back to his private link with the rest of Blue Team as he felt the Albatross begin to descend. "Blue Team, keep an eye out for your Extraction Teams. Make sure not to leave any behind. We give that command center as small a window as possible to squawk for reinforcements and work our way to the eastern hub."
"Why do I feel as if that 'make sure not to leave any behind' part was aimed at me?" Kelly asked.
"Because you're the most likely out of any of us to leave them struggling to catch up." Fred said matter-of-factly.
"Well, it's not my fault the rest of humanity is slower. And what about Linda? She might go off on her own and they won't be able to find her."
"I'm not going Lone wolf on this one." Linda said calmly. "I already had Fred give me the talk yesterday on our way back from the HMPD."
"I'm just saying, it's not only me."
"Which is why I said it to everyone." John said. "So, don't leave them behind, is that understood?"
"What am I, a babysitter?" Kelly huffed, folding her arms across her breastplate. "Fine, Chief, I'll keep them in sight."
"If you watch their backs they'll watch yours. We'll need their help on this one."
"Like we needed their help on that raid to get Doctor Halsey back? I don't recall us needing more than a team of five Spartans for that one."
"And if I recall correctly, we came within a hair's breadth of getting wiped out on that raid." Fred shot back.
"I still think that's because I wasn't there." Linda added.
The Chief started a check-up on Kelly's gear. "It's not only impact we need. It's the numbers required to mount a full sweep of the command center in the shortest time possible. Alone, we might be fast but not thorough, and it goes without saying why I don't want a repeat of that raid."
There was silence on the comms for five full seconds. Then Kelly gave a deep sigh of surrender. "Lessons learned...right Chief?"
He nodded back and turned so she could return the favor. When she was certain his gear was properly set, she patted him on the back. "Looks like we're good."
"Looks like it."
They watched the distant waves grow closer until they stopped to hover 5-meters above the undulating surface. The flare of the engines on multiple Albatrosses caused the water directly beneath them to roil into a foamy disturbance.
Their pilot came back on the intercom. "Grim-1-5 to Extraction Teams, be advised, I'm about to drop the ramps, over."
The ODSTs closest to the walls backed away as they began to fold in on themselves in a whine of hydraulics, permitting sunlight to stream into the bay. The walls then slid outward to become ramps which the troopers began stepping onto.
Outside, the other dropships extended their ramps to let ODSTs onto them. On two of the albatrosses, the Carrier Teams began pushing their CF89 Booster Frames into the water. The craft then buoyed up to the surface for the drivers jumping in after them to mount.
The Chief turned on his company-wide comm. "Carrier Teams are in position. Everyone else move in to escort."
He was the first down the ramp with Kelly second followed by their Extraction Teams. The others on the remaining Albatrosses did the same. One by one they leaped off the edge to splash down into the water below.
Duncan was silently thankful that the temperature was still warm. The last thing they needed was for it to be freezing.
The troopers swam into their formations around the booster frames. The Extraction and Demolition Teams waded in place to give the Carriers the time needed to activate their vehicles. Once the main engines were online, the thrusters caused the craft to angle downwards into the water. A good number of the other teams grabbed onto the frames' exterior handles. Whoever couldn't would swim beside them as they began the journey into the depths.
:********:
Having found his own place on the handles of one of the booster frames, Duncan could feel the heat of the engine acceleration just behind him. A dozen other frames moved further into the deep blue, leaving bubbling columns behind the wake of their lighted engines like underwater candles. Those without a ride trailed after them, using their harnesses to jet downward and leaving similar bubbling wakes.
The two pilots of Duncan's frame were busying themselves keeping the thruster calculations stable for their descent.
He checked his HUD to see that his oxygen-meter was already active. He had 60 minutes of air left, much more than the normal reserves of his BDU.
The estimated time for reaching the bottom was 10 minutes. Even that began to feel like an eternity. The deeper they went, the more the water blackened. The lights of the booster frames and individual troopers became more distant and scattered, resembling a swarm of fireflies falling through the night.
Eventually Duncan lost track of which way was up and which was down. A flash of vertigo made him feel queasy. He tightened his grip on the handle so that he didn't accidentally let go. He slowed down his breathing to a more manageable rate and the vertigo slowly subsided.
"Hey Jefe, think they'll see us coming?" Rico asked over the comm.
"Even if they do, their chances of doing anything about it will get slimmer the closer we get." The Staff answered. "Now stop talking. We don't need to use up any more air."
"Si."
The darkness continued to close in around them and so did the silence that was permeated solely by their own breathing.
After a while, Duncan glanced at his mission timer. It read '1207 Hours'. He turned to the depth gauge on his arm bracer. The reading '437m' was increasing by one every second. For all his apprehension at what they might find at the bottom he wished that they would get there faster. The building pressure he felt on his suit made him want to skip ahead to a point where the descension was over.
At 450 meters he saw the lights of the distant teams wink in and out as something passed by. He flinched when he felt an object brush against his leg. He looked back and flashed his headlights.
He glimpsed an arrowhead-shaped fish the size of his hand near his thigh. Several of them were passing around the booster frame and one had accidentally bumped into him. At being flashed it swam away with renewed vigor.
He quickly found another thing to be thankful for, that at least it wasn't one of those Mako-Catfish creatures he'd seen yesterday.
At 465 meters the darkness directly below the cascade of human lights began changing from a featureless void into a flatter landscape with dark contours that became less organic and more artificial. Three circles of purple light appeared like blurry images slowly coming into focus. Little by little, the origins of the illumination manifested, one artificial detail at a time.
To the uninitiated, the structures below would have the appearance of three metal jellyfish gingerly resting together with their tentacles entangled in a triangular formation. Their colorful luminescence lit up the seafloor. It caused the natural darkness of the bottom to merge with the purple light, forming an eerily gray ambiance at the outer edges of the command center.
The Master Chief came in over the company's comms. "Covenant C&C is in sight. Demolition and Extraction Teams, prepare to head for your objectives. On my mark."
Duncan's grip tightened as he braced his legs against the side of his frame. At 475 meters the Chief gave the signal. "Mark!"
With a deep flexion of his knees, Duncan leaped away from the vehicle. He switched on his headlights and was momentarily blinded by the trail of bubbles that were left behind.
Nova patted him on the shoulder to let him know she was there. He repeated the action to confirm to her that it was him. Like the scores of operational pairs around them, the two diving buddies activated their harnesses and angled towards the bottom.
Their thrusters' outputs fluctuated in consistency with the movements of their retractable flippers and arms as they swam downwards. The equipment overall helped the ODSTs to cover the next 15 meters in under a few seconds.
Nav points appeared on different sections of the structures for different teams, causing the whole of Bravo to disperse.
The Carrier Teams were the first to reach the command center. They stopped just a short distance above the tops of the domed buildings, maneuvered their craft to point back towards the surface and slowly descended onto the nanolaminate exterior. After the copilot typed in a command on their display, the anchoring system built into booster frame's rear would shoot a tungsten harpoon straight through the metal, piercing the hull with a low thump. The last to dismount the frames were the crews and carrier teams themselves that fanned out along the brightened surface to setup defensive positions. They would be the first line of defense in case Covenant aquatic forces made an appearance topside.
Meanwhile, the Demolition and Strike Teams swam down to the under-areas of the bulbous edifices.
Duncan took note of the multiple glass windows and stalagmite-like communication's arrays that adorned their mostly smooth circumference. There were luminal sources the size of floodlights that established a visible perimeter on the seafloor 30 meters out from the jungle of support struts. It allowed them to see that the entire structure was built on something tantamount to an underwater volcanic field.
Masses of hydrothermal vents occupied a visible area roughly the size of two football fields that expanded well out of sight. The coney pillars oozed bubbling trails of hot, mineral rich water and hydrogen sulfide that ascended from the depths of Actium's mantle. Their formation was obviously recent, perhaps less than a million years judging by the shallow nature of the mid-ocean ridge they formed beneath the command center.
Long-legged shadows moved beneath the clouds of sulfide. Occasionally, a chitin-armored limb or abdomen of the seafloor crabs would emerge from the mists as they clambered up and over each other in organic piles, all attempting to reach the sustenance of the magma outflows.
To the gratitude of everyone seeing them, they were far enough below for the risk of coming into contact to be nearly zero. They were more interested in feeding than they were in the newcomers anyway.
The Extraction and Demolition Teams broke apart to filter through the spaces between the mangroves of struts. The demolitionists broke away even more to reach the main struts as well as a few of the lesser supports. They immediately began applying C-12 charges to them, typed in standby timer sequences then swam over to new targets.
All the while the 8 Extraction Teams weaved through the tangle of supports to reach the four entrances, two on the eastern wing and one on each of the northern and southern wings.
As Epsilon and Hotel reached theirs, Duncan examined the entry door. It possessed a circular curvature of three interfolded dimensions which came together at seams of blue indicator lights. The lights themselves had a dim glow but brightened whenever someone floated close.
The Master Chief angled himself up perpendicularly to the door until he was right against it, then took out a demolition charge. He applied it to the center and held the priming handle as he opened up a shared inter-team comm. "How are we looking, Blue Team?"
"Breaching charge planted on southern wing." 104 reported.
"Same over here." 087 replied.
"Northern wing is ready." 058 said, giving them the last answer that they needed.
The Master Chief winked his green acknowledgement light. "All Extraction Teams, be advised, you'll have exactly 7 seconds to get inside before the emergency bulkheads come online. Prepare to breach on my mark..."
Everyone in Hotel and Epsilon tensed, preparing to move once the way was clear.
"Three...two...go!"
The Master Chief twisted the priming handle and kicked off from the hatch. Three seconds later there was a blitz of light and an eruption of smoke and bubbles followed by the sound of an implosion. More air blew out from the explosive decompression inside, spewing the remains of the doors clear out of the way.
The ODSTs immediately used their thrusters to rocket into the well-lit passage on the other side of the haze of bubbles. The interior was dominated by flashing purple lights Duncan knew to be indicative of an emergency. Having counted in his head, he gauged that six seconds had passed and looked back. Everyone had cleared the entrance save for the Chief. The Spartan had made sure he was the last one through. For all his size he slipped in like an agile barracuda right before an emergency bulkhead slammed into place.
On the other end of the vertical passage was a final hatch. Its indicator lights winked red as the water began flowing out through the nearby vents. The ODSTs were slowly lowered back onto the bulkhead until they were standing in ankle-deep water.
"Blue-1 to Blue Team, is everyone in?"
The other teams relayed their statuses. Across the board, everyone had made it inside.
"Copy, start moving in. We have 15 minutes to clear this C&C. We'll stay in touch."
The Chief pointed them to several gravity lifts lining the walls. The teams leaped onto them and were sent flying towards a series of secondary hatches. Unlike the first entrance, the smaller hatches above had green indication lights. They detected their incoming presence and elicited a tone when they got within a few meters before cycling open.
Duncan shot out into a five-story tall, bell-like chamber. After his speed leveled out, he fell three meters to the honeycomb-patterned floor and used a roll to break his fall. He came up into a crouch between one of four structural braces. He stepped aside for Nova as she flew in and landed beside him.
The chamber's strobing lights washed over the bomb-shaped exteriors of four escape pods. The vehicles were parked inside of docking restraints built into the supports that stood over the main entrance. He figured that had to be how the Covenant were getting in and out of here.
The rest of the squad landed inside and split up, Epsilon taking the rightmost braces while Hotel took the left.
So far, the circular space around them was empty. But as Zack shot through the hatch, the strobing lights switched to a neutral silver, illuminating the entire space as one of the doors on the room's right side slid open.
In the three seconds it took Zack to land, a Hunter pair had stomped into the chamber, the spines on their backs rattling in irritation. They stopped past the threshold to level their cannons at the trooper once he landed in the open.
Zack froze in place as their weapons whined to life.
Suddenly, the Chief zoomed up from the last hatch. He instantly spotted the Hunters and peppered them both with assault rifle fire, causing them to momentarily lose their focus.
He shifted his weight to cause the lift's propulsion to send him flying towards the pair. Emptying his clip, he slapped a fresh magazine into the receiver before hitting the ground with a roll and seamlessly transitioning into a sprint. He kept firing, forcing the Hunters to hide behind their pavise shields. He pursued after them to the point that they began to charge. In response he cut sideways to avoid them while maintaining his rate of fire. "Epsilon, Hotel, take these two out! I'll keep their attention!"
Duncan's mind registered the orders as did everyone else's only after the Hunters loosed streams of green plasma at the Spartan, forcing him to duck and leap out of the way.
Epsilon began firing on the increasingly exposed backs and wormy ligaments of the two alien juggernauts. The Spartan continued to evade them, using floor-mounted control stations for cover then bounding out of the way when the concentrated plasma melted through them.
Hotel came in from the other side to join in the fight. Their combined efforts began chipping away pieces of the Hunters' back-armor and extracting bursts of orange gore from the worm gestalt within.
Then one of them shifted its focus back on the ODSTs and hurled a plasma torpedo at them. They ducked back in the face of the explosion that washed over one of the support braces.
The Chief regained its attention after emptying half a clip into its exposed side. Its partner gave a throaty roar in preparation for a charge. The Spartan side-stepped from his cover to toss a frag between the two behemoths. With a bounce it detonated, sending out a blast of shrapnel that raked through their vulnerable flesh. Yet it wasn't enough to take them down. It was however, enough to weaken them.
Squads Epsilon and Hotel reemerged to baptize the two creatures once more. Though bullets pinged off their armor or were deflected off their shields, the aliens were too sharply oriented towards the Chief to stop the rounds that tore into their midsections. Orange blood flared out from their torsos that proved too much a loss.
The first Hunter simply toppled to the side against the force of the ordinance. The second gave a warbling groan then keeled over, denting the floor as it landed.
"Room clear!" Hotel-1 yelled as the two squads reloaded.
The Master Chief strode out to each of the Hunters to confirm they were down. Then he nodded them on towards the doors that the pair had come through.
The troopers followed him into a concave passageway that curved in either direction along the circumference of the eastern wing. He pointed them down the left path and got them underway.
:********:
The eastern wing quickly revealed itself to be a perplexity of winding tunnels and observation decks. Half the doors they approached blinked an accepting green or remained a defiant red, denying them entry. That half and half tendency increased their reliance on utility tunnels that angled acutely around doors they couldn't access.
They searched for one of two things: the prophet and the control hub. The first objective was the most important. If the Minister of Iconography really was here then they would need to apprehend him before he found a means of escape. Next, capturing the control hub would cut off the enemy's contact with Covenant forces on the surface.
On several occasions they ran into squads of alert Grunts guarding doors. While Epsilon and Hotel would drop half their numbers without incident, the remainder would be swiftly annihilated by the Chief before the ODSTs could blink. Then they would be on the move again before running into another patrol.
They weren't the only ones having trouble either. Comm-chatter indicated intensifying firefights as the other teams pressed deeper into their structures.
Back outside at least, the Demolition Teams had already setup 55% of the necessary C-12 shaped charges. Meanwhile, the Carrier Teams were merely sitting in place atop the command center, waiting and watching for signs of a counterattack.
As for Epsilon and Hotel's situation, Duncan surmised that something was off. Three whole minutes had passed without a single ambush. He kept his SMG centered on the intersection ahead. Taking point with the Spartan, they both stopped at the corners then swiveled around to scan the perpendicular corridors.
"Clear." The Chief said.
"Clear." Duncan echoed.
The rest of the group continued on to the door at the end where they stacked up on either side as it cycled open.
Beyond was a shorter but wider corridor occupied with leaf-shaped Covenant barriers to the left and right of the primary path.
The Chief was the first to peek inside, then ducked back as a burst of plasma fire lashed out at him.
"What are we looking at, Chief?" The Staff asked from behind him.
"Plasma Cannon crew, one Elite on the gun, two with plasma rifles behind the second row of barriers. Hotel-1 and Hotel-7, move up the left. Ep-1, you're with me, we'll push right. Everyone else hold here to keep their attention." The Spartan pulled out a flashbang. "Move after the flash." He slipped out the pin and tossed it inside. A successive bang and a wash of light signaled the two binaries to dash in. Cannon fire sprayed around them but went too wide to hit even the Spartan.
The pairs reached safely behind the two closest barriers, prompting a quartet of the remaining ODSTs to swivel around the corner and target the gunner at the corridor's end. Duncan crouched just beneath Deaks who was firing his DMR as he set his sights on the Elite's flaring shields. By then the alien had restarted its cannon. Still, Duncan was able to get an accurate 10-round burst into its upper torso that finished off its energy shields. The shield's collapse punched the Elite off its gun, dazing it long enough for Deaks to put a golf-ball sized hole through its helmeted forehead.
The two binaries emerged from their barriers to advance down the next rows. The Chief met his opponent first as an Elite minor rolled out from cover to shoot at them. The Spartan had already cut out its shields with a full magazine as it brought its own plasma rifle to bare. A blast from the Staff's shotgun knocked its legs out from under it. It growled and shouted in its alien tongue. It tried to get up when the Chief delivered an executionary rifle-butt to its skull.
Hotel-1 and Reece ran into the last Elite that attempted to toss a plasma grenade over its barrier at them. A lucky shot from Hotel-1's DMR struck and detonated it in midflight. The explosion of blue energy tore a chunk out of the nearby barrier, shattering the alien's shields.
Enraged, the Elite roared a challenge from its four-way jaws. It rushed out to charge them, firing its rifle one-handed. Plasma lanced past Hotel-1 in a sheer quantity that put him on the defensive. He threw himself into the cover of a decorative alcove, leaving Reece to run as the Elite focused on him next. But the faint left the alien blind to Hotel-1 as he leaped out to strike it in the neck, breaking bones. The two-meter-tall foe reeled back and lashed out at the trooper's head only for its target to duck beneath it and riffle-butt its pivoting leg. The Elite fell to a knee. Screaming caught its attention as Private Reece countercharged, running several steps before delivering a rough dropkick into its armored midsection, sending the creature sprawling onto its back. The duo seized the opportunity to pump semi-automatic and full-auto fire into its chest, breaking away its armor to destroy the body beneath.
"Room clear!" Hotel-1 declared, giving Reece an approving pat on the back.
"If they're sending Elites then we must be close." The Spartan noted. "Be on your guard."
The ODSTs shadowed the Chief to the next door. It slid open, revealing an expansive room with three concentric, ovular levels that elevated up from a central holo-dais. Below the dais was a glass flooring that separated the room from the sea. Several sets of Covenant barriers were present on the floors along with four Ultras that rounded on the door the moment it opened. The intense eye-visors of the white-armored aliens centered on the Spartan and ODSTs that rushed into the room before they could set their plasma rifles loose.
Both Extraction Teams were lucky enough to slip behind a few of the closest barriers.
The Ultras similarly maneuvered to cover.
Two Shades were on opposing upper platforms connected to the ground floor by a pair of divergent stairways. Their Grunt gunners swiftly began a vicious salvo on the trooper's positions.
"Any ideas, Chief!?" The Staff called over, firing his AR at the nearest Ultra to keep it pinned.
The Master Chief scanned the room and spotted another pair of nearby platforms with a stairway design mirroring the first. "Ep-1, I'll need half your squad. We'll use the second floor to flank around those shades then hit the rest from behind."
"Copy, Ep-2, 4, 6, 7 and 8, you're with the Chief! Everyone else lay down cover fire!"
The troopers flashed their acknowledgements. At the Spartan's order, they broke for the nearby stairs while the others arose to batter the shields of the Ultras, forcing them back behind their barriers.
The secondary group used the ramparts on the stairs as shields from the Shades. They reached the first platform and accessed its rear door to get inside the second-floor corridor.
The Chief pointed to the left end. "Take the one on the left. I'll take right."
With a nod, Duncan, Hector, Rico and Zack followed Nova's example in dashing down that end of the corridor while the Chief disappeared down the other side. After rounding the first corner they nearly ran headlong into five Grunts trying to flank. The troopers beat them to the draw, each picking off a Grunt before they could get off a single shot.
They rounded the second corner in time to see the Chief pass into the furthest doorway. They stacked up on the closest door, causing it to cycle open.
Unlike its counterpart that had gone silent, the shade on the platform here was too busy pouring plasma on their squadmates to notice its newest visitors. A three-round burst to the back of the head from Nova's BR knocked the Grunt clean out of the seat.
As the ODSTs came out onto the platform a sudden resurgence of fire came from the second shade, drawing their attention. To their surprise, it wasn't a Grunt but the Master Chief himself at the controls. He swiveled the emplacement from left to right, striking the Ultras below in the back. The original gunner lay beside him with its head twisted at an odd angle.
Nova quickly took to his idea and threw herself into the other shade. She set the ovular targeting reticle onto the closest Ultra that had been about to hurl a grenade at the first turret, only to tumble back under her plasma spray. Her entourage moved around to start picking targets.
On the far side of the room, the other ODSTs diffused from their cover to flank the remaining Elites.
The fury of the advancing Helljumpers mixed with their Shades to easily cut down the last Ultras, leaving their scorched and riddled bodies lying across the room.
"Blue-1 to Epsilon and Hotel, we're clear here. Let's move on."
The Chief spared a proud nod at Nova as they both dismounted the Shades.
The troopers assembled at the next door. The Chief stopped near the threshold to turn on his company-wide commlink. "This is Blue-1 to Extraction Teams; my group should be nearing the control hub. Have you found anything on your ends?"
The whine of plasma fire followed by the thudding auditory signature of an M90 shotgun crackled in response. "This is Blue-2, we've run into a lot of Grunts and Elites over here. We've discovered some special kind of resting chamber. Me and Apex-1 figured it's probably the private quarters for some kind of dignitary, over?"
"Copy. Blue-3?"
The exertion sounds of sprinting came over Blue-3's end. "Got nothing over here, Chief."
A trio of shots from a DMR indicated Linda's interjection. "Same goes for us. However, I'm picking up on a few faint but regular EM pulses that don't seem to be connected to the main infrastructure. We don't know where its coming from."
"Understood." The Chief replied. "Find out what you can. The broadcasting signal appears to be strongest in the eastern wing. We'll follow it straight to the source."
A shared "Copy that" sounded off from the rest of Blue Team.
The Master Chief led them into another series of interlocking hallways, although this time their progress was left unimpeded as the passages became quieter than before.
Within the span of a minute, they reached yet another door. But this one was noticeably different due its four-sided diamond shape. In addition, the access lock was three interlocking circles rather than a single lock. The indicator lights rather unexpectedly reacted to their presence and split apart to unveil the room behind it.
It too, much like the door, was visibly different from the others they had encountered on their way here. First there was the comfortably warm temperature instead of a chilling coolness. Then there were the hundreds of crystals hanging from the ceiling that twinkled under the mild lighting.
Regardless, they remained guarded as they fanned out.
Duncan kept track of the room's various appliances. There was a tall pillar of shining metal in one of the corners with a translucent inner core displaying liquids with gradually shifting colors. That had to be a lamp. Then there were the several low-lying sets of cushioned platforms he guessed to be couches. Next was a circular table with a glowing center that emitted lines of distorted air. As he passed by, he dared to put his hand into the aerial distillation. His arm began to levitate without him having to hold it up, confirming his suspicions that it was a stasis field device. Finally, there was the low-lying furniture similar to the couches that was wider and more pentagonal with pillows along its frame. That had to be a bed.
"This looks like just another..." Hotel-1 stopped to plant a Nav point on a device near the bed.
Duncan recognized it as the same device the prophet had used on the broadcast, a levitational throne. Now the device was lying dormant against the side of the window that gave them a view of the seafloor.
"Private quarters." The Chief said, finishing the original thought. "Eyes up, the prophet has to be here."
"Hey, hold on a sec." Zack pointed at the throne. "Wouldn't that prophet-guy be sitting in that thing? Why would he just leave it behind?"
"It might be for show." Nova pointed out.
"Well, yeah, but...then that means this is another private quarter like the one 087 found. That doesn't make much sense. There's only one prophet, right?"
"Maybe this is just his smokeroom."
The Chief shook his head. "No, it's a good question. Let's find our answer." He nodded towards the exit.
The group passed into hallways that became more and more straightforward until they stopped at a large doorway which yielded for them. They entered into an unusually open space with the appearance of a transitional waiting area.
They came out right as the second door on the other side slid open. The ODSTs took aim, only to find a line of troopers aiming right back at them with Spartan-087 at the head of their formation. Both parties quickly lowered their weapons once they saw each other.
Not wasting a moment, the Chief pointed two fingers to the last concave door lying between the first two. "The broadcasting signal is strongest in there. You know what to do."
Flashing their acknowledgement lights, the four teams converged on the sides of the door. The Master Chief nodded to Kelly, then as one they stepped into the range of the sensors. The lights blinked green as the locking mechanism disengaged and the door cycled open with a high-pitched hiss.
The Spartans were the first ones through with their teams moving in after them. Every rifle and SMG sight scanned the darkness inside but inevitably settled on the single, shining being that illuminated the center of the shadows.
It was the Minister of Iconography. He was praying with his hands extended towards the heavens. Only it wasn't the minister, not in the flesh.
The prophet's shimmering image was being projected over a sole holo-pedestal.
Lights suddenly flashed on across the room, etching out its full details. It was a semicircular chamber of four descending rows with two lines of opposite-facing control consoles on each row. Their displays were uniformly offline and unoccupied. However, the primary display on the far wall broke the norm as it warmed to life.
A moment later it was active.
There was a single figure on the screen, an Elite in black armor that would have made it blend seamlessly with the darkness around it were it not for its bloodred, V-shaped visor. Its appearance made everyone stop in their tracks.
Its deep voice came out with a resonant fluency that sent a shiver down Duncan's spine.
"Demons, Imps, heretics all. You whose every breath defies the will of our Gods; I welcome you to your end."
The Minister's image deactivated.
The frantic note in Spartan-058's voice as she came on the general comms caught everyone's ear. "Blue-4 to Blue Team and Bravo, multiple high EM sources detected! Pulse immin-"
The comm became awash with static then died as waves of visceral electrical energy shot through the ceiling, shutting off the lights amidst arcs of uncontrolled power that flashed between the consoles, shorting them out in stochastic explosions of sparks.
The last thing Duncan saw was the red visor of the Elite before everything went black.
Obumbratio - Shadows