Halo: Feet First

by MikeDice

Halo: Feet First covers the story of a team of UNSC Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the 7th Battalion, 105th Shock Troops Division. The main character, Duncan Iris, faces the full horror of the covenant war effort against humanity as well as the brave retaliation of outnumbered and outgunned UNSC forces. However, he also witnesses the turning of the tides as the war progresses.

76. Kholo - Chapter 5 (Latebras)

Chapter 5 – Latebras

May 29th, 2545 (09:17 Hours – Military Calendar)

Hicetas System, In orbit over Kholo

:********:

Duncan didn't know very much about Hicetas or its five orbiting planets. To start with, what he did know, and it was little, was that the system was once home to at least one colony world. That was it.

But by just looking through the viewing glass of B-deck on the Mayweather's portside, he had to wonder if the world before him was actually a colony at all. He was pretty sure that of all UNSC star charter regulations for colonial terraformation, there was nothing that legalized continent-sized graffiti. Yet he couldn't find any other way to describe what he was looking at.

Being the fourth planet from the star Hicetas, the world of Kholo upon a cursory glance appeared to have been the victim of a 5-year-old's maniacal doodling. On part of its surface was an area where it seemed like someone had tried their hand at drawing a smiley face. However, while they managed to get the circle right, they had put the smile too far up and ultimately caused it to bisect the original circle with a semi-circle. As if to make their point that they didn't care how bad they had drawn, they then placed a dot for an eye at each end of the bisecting smile, the smile whose northward arc put those eyes far out of range of the original circle. To top it off, they put a last dot at the center of the arc for a nose.

While it did look like an uncoordinated smiley face wrought by a bored kid, the truth was that it had to be close to 1,000 square kilometers in area size alone. The Nazca Lines were child's play in comparison. But what he was seeing now wasn't anything a child could do, or human technology for that matter, and it was anything other than uncoordinated.

It was a symbol, a Covenant symbol. What it represented; Duncan had no clue.

What he could figure out from face value was that Kholo was a dead planet. A quick look around would show anyone there was no disputing that fact.

The entire world reminded him of images he'd seen in his high school historical astronomy class where his teacher showed them pictures of Mars centuries prior to its colonization. With Mars there used to be disputes about whether there was ever any ancient civilization on its surface which most scientists outrightly rejected. In this case, Kholo indeed had once had a civilization on it, and it was recent.

Even so, simply seeing the aftermath of the destruction made the entire place feel ancient. What remained was a barren composition of dusty shades. There were caramel-colored expanses where he could discern the amalgams of faded lines that might have once been cities, or perhaps only the point where glassing beams seared through the land. It was hard to tell. There were also lighter, copper-colored areas that were thin and ran winding trails across certain parts of the surface. Those were probably mountain ranges. Finally, there were the dark brown splotches of land that visibly used to be bodies of water: lakes, seas and oceans. The varying colors melded almost perfectly together into what could easily be mistaken for a painting of a massive desert.

Liquid and greenery were virtually non-existent. He didn't see a sky at all, nor any clouds. Whatever that meant for the situation on the ground, it made him a decent degree more uncomfortable than he already was. To think it wasn't disconcerting enough that he was going to be living on what was technically known as a glassland.

The Mayweather had slipped into the system an hour ago. They exited the alternate space near the gravity well of the fifth and final planet. It was also the largest at a solar mass equivalent to twice that of Jupiter, the reddish-orange gas giant known as Hicetas II. It was number 2 in Duncan's opinion because the entire thing could be lit up into an impromptu star if anyone tried here what Admiral Cole did with Viperidae.

They used Hicetas II's gravity well to slingshot towards the neighboring local space of Kholo. The purpose was to let the freighter's slipspace drive recalibrate after what might have been too many quantum field calculations pushing it into the red-line.

They were getting to their destination a good deal slower than Duncan would've liked so he went to one of the upper decks to get a better view of the system.

Doing so, he experienced the first time he'd had to himself in the last several days since they'd left Tribute. During the trip, he learned a lot more about the others in Gypsy, in some cases more than he would have liked to.

Through a few conversations he found out that Thurston was a former corporal in the Army's 87th Infantry Division stationed on Paris IV. He got in trouble a few years ago after going on a drunken binge while on-base. Said binge became a driving accident that ended in him running over and killing a CO. They were going to have him court martialed but he managed to escape and go on the run. Via a number of back-channels, he eventually got in contact with the AMADDS. They offered him sanctuary and good pay in exchange for his service. Needless to say, he took them up on their offer out of his need for both of those things.

Then there was Palakiko. He used to be an Ammunition Specialist with the Marine Corps of Engineers on Algolis. During his time on the job, he was put on some personnel list selected for testing and refining a special weapon's system being developed at a facility. The nature of that system was unknown even to Palakiko because his COs only allowed him to run tests on certain parts of the soon-to-be incorporated equipment. That was before the gear was even assembled into the finished product. Be that as it may, the paygrade wasn't anywhere near enough. Seeking better for himself and his reliant family, he eventually got in contact with Stewards who had been aiding in the transport of highly classified materials to the same facility. The captain convinced him that a life in the AMADDS would give him the financial as well as physical security he was looking for, both for him and his family.

Haskin, the leader of squad Joker, was an interesting case. He'd served in a Marine contingent on a ship as part of NAVSPECWARCOM's deep space recovery operators. It was on one recovery op of a cruiser lost during a routine patrol sweep in the Gliese system that he got himself into hot-water with the authorities. The cause was that he and his squad-leader, a man with whom he was known to share a less than savory dynamic, had gone alone to a sector of the cruiser to investigate the damage there. Only Haskin came back. His compatriot turned up a day later in a nearby debris field without any attempt by Haskin to report his disappearance. The preliminary investigation suggested foul play. Any motivations on Haskin's part were under scrutiny until he escaped during a transit between holding facilities on Reach. One thing led to another, need for employment combined with anonymity and here he was. Still, he refused to say whether he caused the death of his squad leader or not.

Then there was Ambers. The cold-eyed redhead started off as a Marine sergeant running UNSC-sanctioned training missions for local militias on inner colonies. The goal there was to have additional hands to fight in the inevitable scenario that groundside UNSC forces were too depleted. Amidst her team's work training a company's worth of militia in Cygnus, she found herself going to a bar one night in New Jerusalem. It just so happened that a squad of AMADDS were also present. One among them tried their hand at making a few moves on her, meaning him literally moving his hands to places she didn't want them. She was sober enough to return the favor by breaking his wrist. His back-up hustled over not long afterwards. However, what was going to be an eventful night turned to a profitable venture since Stewards was able to give one of his famous chats. Ambers was interested after finding out they thought the same way about the war that she did. Thanks to a guy trying to cop a feel, the AMADDS gained a new member. It also just so happened that the guy who'd tried it was Quinn.

For all his vitriol towards the Earth government, Duncan thought it hilarious how the man actually grew up in the heart of its territory. He was born on Mars and often had negative run-ins with Marine MPs in Mare Erthryaeum. To make matters worse he eventually got himself into the Army-life due to a mandatory conscription back in the 2530s. He begrudgingly tried pulling his way through his first tour of duty. What saved him halfway through was a member of his unit already affiliated with the AMADDS that convinced him to join up with them instead. He ditched his post on Mars for a much different life ever since. The very thing he refused to ditch though was his distaste of the UNSC. It was a unique brand of hatred, not the usual kind common to independence-minded outer colonists, but from an inner colonist that simply hated the way things were run on Earth's doorstep.

Lastly was Aleczander. Al had actually been the one to tell Duncan the others' stories. Much to his surprise, the kid and himself had a lot in common. They were both in the Marine Reserves at one point. "I signed up thinking it was the bravest thing I could do." He'd said somberly at their mess hall table. "People I knew were signing up saying they needed to help however they could out there. Me, honestly, I just went hoping people wouldn't look down on me for not going. I don't even think I wanted to fight. I spent barely a few months in the reserves before I ran off after finding out they'd be deploying my unit. Stewards found me on Sigma Octanus IV two months ago. He gave me a choice to join up or stay on the run. I guess you know which one I picked. Still, I can't help wondering if my folks and pals know about what I did, and what they think, if they look down on me for it. Everyone's got their own reasons for signing up, money and all that stuff. Me? I was just a coward. I came here to try and fix that for myself since I can't go back, but I still feel like I'm only running away even more. Yeah...that's me."

The sadness in the kid's voice at the end of their conversation more than unnerved his sole listener. Running away was as accurate a description of what Duncan knew he was doing as anyone could make. The gnawing feeling at the back of his mind that the two of them were more alike than he first thought haunted him well after the end of their talk. He had to give him credit though that he was more honest about it than anyone else, that he came here to try to do better. Duncan wasn't trying to do anything at all other than the goals he'd set well ahead of their chat.

Confusingly, it wasn't Al's personal story but rather Duncan's own final question about Stewards that brought the conversation to a dead-end. Al replied that it'd be better if the captain told the story himself, saying "Hearing him talk about it is really the only way to understand it. Second-hand telling is no good no matter who you ask." With that, their meeting came to an abrupt stop.

Stewards was still a distinct mystery to him. So was the planet Kholo whose deadened surface was less than a few thousand kilometers away.

No sooner did that thought cross his mind that the door on the right end of the passageway slid open. Stewards walked in. Having ditched his Marine BDU long ago, he was currently wearing the tactical gear and ballistic vest that Duncan first saw him wear at La Grotte. He was already wearing the same thing himself in preparation for the landing.

The captain slung his personal DMR across his back as he casually strolled to the passage's sole inhabitant. Stewards received an eyeful of the view with a mix of critical examination alongside an emotion Duncan didn't expect. The man looked mildly homesick.

"Once the Covenant finish the job on a system, they rarely if ever come back to it, too busy looking for more." Stewards said, nodding at the planet. "They found this place back in '39. As you might imagine, they didn't treat the residents very well. But we're the new residents now. For the last four years we've called it our own. So far no one's come out here to tell us otherwise."

Duncan's quiet considerations made him think of the place in a whole new light. "Four years and no problems?"

Stewards shook his head. "None except the ones we cause ourselves in our push to adapt. We've gotten pretty good at it too. We're right..." He pointed at the central, black dot of the symbol which was really a circular abscess. "Around there."

"What's down there?"

The captain smirked. "You'll see. Now come on, we're about to enter the atmosphere and I'm soon to order everyone to the bay for disembarkation. They'll be expecting us down there."

"Ay, sir."

Duncan shadowed him to the door thinking how the man only ever answered his questions when the answers were available elsewhere. It was obvious that any form of resettlement on a glassed world like Kholo would require extensive adaptations. What wasn't obvious was the scale required for such a feat which was reasonably impossible. Despite his disbelief, the captain seemed to have confidence that someone else down there knew otherwise.

A sneaking sense drew Duncan's suspicions to those three devices they recovered from the conservationist society.

He was stopped from going too far down that line of thought thanks to his eyes. He spotted a deep red stain that had set into the nearly flawless sheen of the metal floor. It was old and splattered in several spots where whatever was spilt there had dried. Indicators of what the stain was could be seen in the handful of bullet holes drilled into the flooring as well as the walls and ceiling.

It was a regular sight onboard. All over the ship he'd seen spots of faded red usually paired with a mishmash of bullet holes. That feature of the Mayweather was especially prominent in the mess hall which had stains on the tables, barely visible but sufficiently so to prompt questions. Deep down he was aware of the reason for them which was why he didn't dare pop the question to begin with. Thurston's little Freudian slip back on Casbah helped him connect the dots early on. Clearly the AMADDS had decided to repaint some parts of the Mayweather's interior with the help of its original crew, though without the use of any paint.

What exactly were the ethical standards of their operations? What might the realities of that entail for what he'd be expected to do? Either way, the time spent observing areas where it was clear someone had gotten their brains blown out was more than mildly upsetting. Some disorganized spots indicated people had tried to run or were caught off guard or even attempted to fight back. But it was the organized ones that terrified him. There were line-ups of spots in hallways here and there on B and C decks. They could have been nothing other than simultaneous killings. To lend credence to that theory, the stains in those cases tended to spew outward like a forward funneling spray. There were corresponding bullet holes in the walls towards which the stains were oriented. Logic dictated that every time he walked through those areas, he was passing places where the AMADDS had both assembled and subsequently executed crew members. Those manning the ship now appeared to be entirely personnel from the wider network of the organization. On one hand it helped him realize that the AMADDS offered far more extensive operational modalities than he initially anticipated. On the other hand, he was made aware of the lengths to which they would go to acquire the means of those modalities.

Like always, he kept his thoughts to himself. He ignored the occasional bloodstains and bullet holes as he followed Stewards down several decks. Meanwhile the unmistakable rumble of their atmospheric descent vibrated through their boots.

In two minutes, they passed through a set of doors into the cargo bay.

Most of the AMADDS were already present. They were scattered about in conversating groups or hanging alone amidst the many crates occupying the outermost sides of the bay.

Duncan saw Al, O'Reilly and Thurston together. They'd gathered around one of the mobile containers named 'Pele-5' near the center of the bay. Palakiko was crouching down at the side of its wheeled platform to check it out.

Stewards spoke into his comm-unit. "This is Actual to Gypsy, everybody find your way to the packages. Let's talk."

Personnel around the room looked up from what they were doing to see him and Duncan headed for the three containers. They quickly drained into the space following after them.

Seeing that roughly everyone was assembled, the captain turned to face them all. "Alright everyone, hear this. Once we land, we'll be heading in for debriefing. You new-guys will be getting a different treatment. You'll be heading to your orientation at the auditorium. After that, you'll undergo our assessment tests for the next couple of days to get a gauge of your skill-sets. Ambers will be overseeing you, understood?"

The 'new guys' nodded off or responded with a tentative "Yessir". Duncan stayed quiet. He maintained a watchful distance.

"In the mean-time we'll deliver the goods to Doctor Schonberg then head off to the Hill for some more R&R. Get it while you can because it won't be long before we're on another run. You fresh faces should know our average rotation has two to three days down-time comparative to other platoons. You won't be getting any of that this week though. Sorry."

Many of the more seasoned AMADDS got a laugh at the expense of their new additions. Duncan remained quiet. So, there were other platoons then. He kept that fact in mind, ticking it off a list of things he wanted to know.

He tuned in to the captain giving the last rundowns of what they could expect on the ground. It was nothing much save for that they would have a 10-to-15-minute drive to their home base.

Eventually Stewards was finished and everyone fanned out across the room to wait out the rest of the descent. Duncan decided to join O'Reilly and the others checking out the containers. They were there more for the entertainment of watching Palakiko faun over the hydraulic components of the wheel platforms than for any interest in the devices themselves. Any idea of what the name 'Pele-5' could represent was left up to interpretation. The sole idea Duncan could cling to with certainty was that it was a word in a human language, one that wasn't English. A verb or adjective perhaps, or was it a name?

His conjecture was halted by the upwards turn of the ship that made the bay level out by a minute degree. He felt it. O'Reilly did too and stood straighter from beside one of the containers. It was the kind of thing only two ODSTs used to maintaining a balance on reentry burns could notice. "Guess we're here."

"I'd guess so." Duncan said. "Anything more you want me to know before I get my boots dirty?"

"Yeah." O'Reilly tugged at his shirt collar. "Might want to cover your face a lil'. Where we are, we basically live a short walk south of the equator. Don't let appearances be fool'n you though, there's still an atmosphere on this rock and a pretty decent smidge of atmospheric circulation. It's just...temperamental because of the glassing and all that. You'll see what I mean."

It was the second time someone had told him 'You'll see' for the day. He was beginning to wonder what people here had against details until a male voice made an announcement over the loudspeakers.

"Bridge to cargo bay, quick update, we're landing in 30 seconds. Flight control says weather's clear with no signs of any dust or thunder storms on the horizon. You should be good for the road-trip. Bridge out."

"You guys get dust storms here?" Duncan asked.

"Oh yeah, big ones." Al intruded from where he sat on a nearby crate. He raised his hands over his head to emphasize his point. "Like, seriously, they can get really-really big, huge. Trust me, you don't want to be getting in the way of that kind of thing out in the open."

"Which is why it's a good thing they're seasonal." Palakiko said as he carried on examining the undercarriage of the container's mobile platform.

"And when's that season?" Duncan asked.

Thurston, fully sobered, turned to face him in a way that made him think otherwise. "It's just about year-round save for January. It's only thunderstorms by then."

Duncan didn't very much appreciate the idea at all, yet alone the reality of living on a world remotely similar to what they were describing. "That sounds more like the climate than seasons."

"No-no, it counts." Palakiko said. "See, seasons change. So do the storms."

"That doesn't sound like seasons changing at all. It seems as if you're just getting a different storm every day."

"Every few days." Al corrected. "Maybe a few weeks if we're lucky. Not every day. It's not that bad."

Things might not have been 'that bad' as Al said. But what they had described was nothing short of an environmental catastrophe. The single bright-side was arguably the most disturbing thing about the planet. Duncan was aware of a few studies published by ONI onto the wider network for the consumption of regulars such as himself. They showed how a high percentage of glassed planets suffered such damage that their atmosphere would completely disintegrate, reducing the lost colonies to uninhabitable rocks that would take centuries to re-terraform. In that regard Kholo was lucky to even still have one. Then again, how lucky that was depended on the severity of the conditions left behind. Those conditions were soon to become apparent as he felt the ship's movements cease and the landing gear touch down onto the surface.

:********:

The ramp of the Mayweather's cargo bay hissed down to the ground. A loud whisper of wailing wind washed inside as the bay's light was overpowered by pure sunlight. It was so bright that Duncan instinctively moved to increase the polarization on his helmet, only to remember he didn't have it anymore. Another reminder he was more vulnerable now than he used to be.

Beneath him, the engines of the front flatbed gurgled and groaned. The truck carrying Jinx and Jester was the first of the convoy to drive down the ramp with their mobile container in tow. They slipped off the incline onto a level area that gave the best view of the landscape.

What Duncan felt first was an immediate fear that they were going to sink. He thought they'd landed on the surface of an enormous body of water. The fear faded away once he heard the traction of the tires zipping along just fine.

It took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing was actually one giant optical illusion.

He'd never seen what vitrified soil looked like before, not in person. But the pictures he'd actually looked at of glasslands didn't do any justice to the real experience.

In reality what surrounded him was an expanse of a brown, dusty desert that gave the initial impression of a sea or an ocean. The trick was partially in the lighting and partially in something else.

The vitrification process brought on by a Covenant conquest would cover sections of a planet's surface with such an intense heat that it transformed the state of matter of anything within range. The result, at least in Kholo's case, was a landscape uniformly reduced to a non-crystalline amorphous solid. That solid included the distant stumps of land that used to be mountains, the ruins of buildings whose metal infrastructure had melted so much that they looked to have sunken into the ground itself, and of course a wide stretch of dirt that had more reflectivity than a mirror.

When the Covenant decided to 'glass' a planet, they really did just that.

Duncan noted how the surviving structures were all burnt to the same dark gray char he would expect of cremation. Many of those buildings were tall, maybe former skyscrapers reduced to a handful of floors that leaned out of the ground. The edifices and fields of debris around them appeared submerged within a wash of stormy waters that had frozen in place. The same went for the lakes they passed that weren't actually lakes at all, but lower elevations where the vitrification process had been most thorough. It resulted in swaths of glassed terrain that was bright enough to leave dots in his vision after just several seconds of looking.

Out of the corners of his periphery he could see that there were other ships next to the Mayweather. Three were spaced out to the left of it and five more to the right. They were recognizably freighters of different shapes, sizes and rating classifications. Each craft was parked 100 meters away from the other for what he assumed was to keep a safe take-off distance between them.

A short trek behind them was a coney, 30-meter-tall control tower. Unlike everything else in their surroundings, the tower was a more recent construction. The shadows moving behind the semi-translucent windows in its uppermost levels were probably the flight controllers that the Mayweather's bridge mentioned earlier.

The convoy drove along a narrow highway which sloped down at its edges into shiny plains where carbonized tufts of grass and jagged ruins jutted out.

Something lay up ahead: a tall column of black smoke that traversed into the skies at a lean. Its precise direction relative to everything on the surface was difficult to tell given Duncan didn't have his HUD. He had to rely on basic skills such as using Hicetas' position in the sky for telling east from west. Yet another reason why he missed his old armor.

"The place we're leaving now is called Starship Row." Stewards comm'd in to the new recruits. "We leave our ships here because of...let's say daily procedures that happen at the main encampment. It's about a 10-minute drive to the east of starship row. Now keep in mind, the atmosphere is a lot thinner than it used to be thanks to the Covies. That means a lot more sunlight gets through to us." He pointed to the surrounding glasslands. "It makes areas like these hard to look at depending on when you come outside. The main problem is around noon. You don't want to be out here, trust me. Hicetas will be right overhead and it'll cook you good if you can't find a place to stay for the next hour. That isn't to mention the reflectivity is at its strongest then. If you want to avoid temporary blindness and permanent skin cancer, take it from me, stay in-doors at noon. For now, that's about it. Enjoy the breeze while you can. The second these trucks stop, you'll be on the move."

The recruits of the convoy received the info with hesitant acceptance. Not being much different, Duncan picked up on the hint of trepidation related to the skies. There was barely any cloud cover. He hoped that would change soon. The morning heat was making him sweat. How bad would it be in the afternoon then?

The best he could do was try to enjoy what remained of the drive. He'd asked for all this. He couldn't complain now that he'd gotten it.

The rest of the trip was spent silently watching the passing scenery. Much of it consisted of half-melted architecture tilting in any given direction as an old man on a cane. There were a high number of structures that were collapsed into hills of concrete rubble. Their ruins were barbed by the protruding bones of steel frames that had the uncanny resemblance of dead forests. The molten destruction was organized along the refractive, dust-covered traces of streets hailing back to the former layout of a civilization turned ghost town. Windows were blown open. Skeletons of vehicles stuck out from their partial submersion in streetways whose tarmac had likely liquefied beneath them. Everything was sprinkled in a fine hail of miscellaneous debris.

Every so often he sighted the wreck of a Warthog burrowed into a dilapidated storefront. There were the front chassis of destroyed Mongooses and the broken stabilizing fins of Ghosts. There were side-treads of Scorpion tanks lying on the side of the road with no actual tank in sight as well as the corpses of Wraiths dissected by flames. He spotted several Pelican and Phantom wrecks as well that led lengthy trails of debris across the places where they'd crashed. T

he more unnerving spectacles were the occasional pieces of human and Covenant weapons scattered amidst the landscape, the fragments of BDUs and methane tanks. Most disturbing of all were the rare sightings of what he could identify as bones that sometimes got crushed under the wheels of the convoy. Human or Covenant, their charcoal consistency made it impossible to discern who they might have belonged to.

They drove up the obscured lanes of highways, down the hauntingly cracked loops of elevated expressways and journeyed past what he presumed to be toll booths setup every several hundred meters. They stopped twice at manmade reservoirs whose interior was burned to a cinder and gouged out far beyond where the bottom would be. In fact, the ashy furrows continued from the end of the manmade chasm along a snaking path to the northern horizon: an indication that a glassing beam had passed through there. With each of the bridges over the reservoirs having been destroyed, they were forced to take longer routes around them.

There was never a point when the pillar of smoke wasn't visible. It stood towering in the sky whilst they rounded burnt hills, passed within the confines of scorched valleys and rode onto the latter half of the trip. The closer they came to their final stop the more Duncan began to wonder just how high up the thing could go. It didn't seem to get any closer no matter how close they came to it. Logic made it clear that it was caused by a Covenant ship. His best guess was a low orbital bombardment. But if this place was glassed in 2539, five years ago, then could it have been burning for that long? He struggled to imagine how that was even possible.

The smoke could care less for his inner doubts. It stood there whether it made sense to him or not.

Almost as precisely as Stewards had said, at the end of ten minutes they came to an area where the ruins thinned out. Signs of urbanization drew down to a handful of far-flung buildings spread out from the highway. Because of the sudden clearness they were able to see the horizon better as well as the heat mirages wavering afar off. The vitrified ground reflected the light in such a way that it increased the number of structures within the mirages, creating multiple refractions; duplicates of what was already there. It was like a house of mirrors effect on a much grander scale.

They crested an elevated part of the highway spanning over a wide plain. Awaiting them at the end of it was a wall of 10-meters in height. The barrier had a silvery metal shine to it that was newer than its burnt environment. Yet that feature was combined with a desert-bronze burnish that caused it to blend into its surroundings from a distance. It stretched from north to south at a full length of two kilometers before rounding out of sight in either direction.

Past the barrier were the tops of several dozen buildings that broke the established norm of desolation. They hosted multiple levels comprised of a matching brown polycrete material sandwiched beneath the slant of glass rooftops.

Within 50 meters of the wall Duncan saw that they were bound for a gateway: a rectangular cut-out in the wall using two 7-meter-tall steel doors as the entry point.

Within 30 meters of that gateway the guards present on the walls finally came into view. Close to 50 armed personnel patrolled the inner ramparts on different sectors of the western perimeter, rifles in hand. Several manning a post on the nearest gateway had stopped to watch the incoming convoy. Beneath their feet the doors of the gate rumbled open.

Stewards spoke on the comms while pointing with an open hand. "Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the township of Hayth."

The convoy drove straight on, slowing as it crossed the threshold of the gates into the interior.

As if Kholo's surface wasn't already strange enough, Hayth was in no uncertain terms a town unto itself.

Stretching out in every direction there was a tight gridwork of prefabricated buildings; from wood and glass-walled houses to stores and other supportive facilities. The taller ones tended to be made of half-a-dozen levels of polycrete. Many had pipes running along their framework down into the ground, hinting at a functioning water supply system.

The trucks progressed down a wide avenue. It was part of the overall road-system that was comprised wholly of tire-marked dirt paths.

Duncan was able to catch a glimpse of the inhabitants moving through the place. There were hundreds of them. The elderly occupied swing chairs on wooden porches while the younger adults strolled down sidewalks bound for the day's tasks. There were a few kids about as well, playing in alleyways or on small courts behind the neighborhoods. Some of them turned to watch the passing convoy. There were cordial hails shared between the veteran AMADDS and onlookers standing on street corners, welcoming the former back home. Nevertheless, there were people that eyed the newer faces in the passenger sections. Duncan received more than his fair share of curious glances from kids in overalls that tried running next to the trucks to wave at him. But it was balanced by the suspicious glances of the older folks.

In the first few seconds Hayth was giving him the impression of a small, close-knit community. Besides the houses there were multiple storefronts which tended to be bigger and more concrete than the glassy cabins of the normal homesteads. Their brick-laid constitution reminded him of the centuries old apartments he used to see in the older parts of Chicago. These here were comparatively much smaller but far more homely. The inhabitants might've seen it the same way as they came in shopping for groceries and left with bags in hand. He noted small furniture stores, venders and frontside grocers. There were large hardware stores with isles of material stocked in their warehouses and auto-shops whose open doors showed engineers hard at work on vehicles in various states of repair or dismantlement. The presence of the last two explained why there were so many neighborhoods of wood and glass houses. It also made understandable the different brands of cars and trucks populating the dirt roads of Hayth.

The whole location brought Duncan's own battalion HQ to mind. Falchion had many of the same amenities, civilian and military, while still maintaining that strange feel of a town. Hayth did have that atmosphere but its semi-rustic themes caused it to feel more like a place he'd find in the wild west. The idea fit the setting: a small piece of civilization encompassed by a massive swathe of desert.

For the briefest second, he imagined what it would be like to live in a place like this, to raise a family here. The thought was dispelled against his will as the car suddenly turned off a street onto a short boulevard. At the end of it lay an opening in the congregation of houses and stores. Lying at the center was a cobblestone pavilion that encompassed a single building; an establishment made of the purest mahogany wood he had ever seen.

It was roughly 50 meters long by 10 meters wide with four stories framed beneath an acutely tilted roof. All four of its sides were hemmed in by a connected veranda with timber columns supporting its similarly slanted tops. The entire getup impressed upon him the summer home of an archetypal billionaire.

The convoy circumvented a roundabout then exited onto a parking lot just before the auditorium's front doors. There the vehicles halted under the shadow of a long flag pole. On it was hoisted a flag bearing the symbol of two arrowheads, one inverted and phased over the other to form a letter 'A'.

"And we've arrived." Stewards declared. "New guys, dismount. Ambers will give you the rundown. Just know that we're a little behind schedule so you can expect to find more green folks like yourselves in there. Enjoy the orientation. We'll link up later."

The ten fresh faces on the second truck hopped off onto the lot below with their bags. Duncan was the only one on his truck to have to leave. O'Reilly tapped on his shoulder as he threw his legs over the railing. "You watch out for yourself, alright? Once you're in, you're sealing the deal."

"Thought I already did that."

"...You should take this seriously, boyo, really. Mind yourself in there, okay?"

"Will do, Rile, will do."

Duncan hopped off onto the lot. O'Reilly just kept glancing between him and the building. He took notice and was going to ask what was wrong when the trucks pulled off. Thurston and Al waved a smirky goodbye as the first flatbed wheeled back to the roundabout. The other two quickly trailed after them. All three left down the boulevard, ferrying the mysterious containers behind them.

"Hey, Iris."

The cold, female voice shivered him on the inside. Duncan rounded on the owner. It was Ambers. She locked her icy gaze with his and nodded at the 10 recruits assembled in front of her. He took the hint pretty quick to slot himself in on one end of the line. She observed him with her personal version of the evil eye for another second then refocused on the whole group.

"Ground rules. First, take up the row as closest to the front as you can get. Second, don't talk while the Major's talking. Third, when he asks you a direct question, respond with a basic 'Yessir' if it's obvious that that is what he wants to hear, or 'No sir' if it's the opposite. Fourth, once he's done you will leave in single-file through the second door on the right. I'll be waiting for you there. This will take five minutes. Don't disappoint me."

Duncan struggled to keep track of all the rules which was why he didn't answer when the others replied "Yes mam." He barely got a chance to correct his mistake as her cold attention resettled on him. "Yes mam."

"You better be faster than that, Iris." She kept him chilled underneath her scrutiny for a moment longer then nodded the group leader onward.

Duncan joined them at the end of their column. He swallowed down the lump in his throat. Ambers had given him a decent dose of personal intimidation. The most recent since he'd crawled through mud while having Drill Instructor Mahoney fill his ears with SMG-fire and multilingual death threats leveled at his parents. He reminded himself to keep an eye out for her.

For now, he took his mind off of it. That wasn't difficult given the space that they walked into. It was a marble-tiled lobby with all matter of comfortable furnishings inside to match. That wasn't to mention the several mahogany staircases that curved their way up from the ground floor to the other levels of the building. The place seemed more suited to a hotel than an auditorium, which made him wonder even more about what they had behind the next set of doors.

They strolled quietly past a couple of front desks into a second space.

Having been impressed before, he was left speechless by what came next.

The main meeting hall of the auditorium was a massive semicircular room with the possible inspiration of an opera theater. Close to 15 rows of cushioned chairs were assembled in lengths of 20 each, all organized in a radial pattern from the main stage. It looked much like waves rippling out from a dropped rock. To the left and right were towering columns of mahogany that guarded the exposed upper floors as a ribcage would the innards of the body. Illuminating everything below were arrays of lights mounted to the crossbeams that set their attention on the front stage. There at the epicenter of their luminal focus was nothing but an empty floor.

As the group headed down the closest pair of stairs, they set their sights on the first several rows. Those were occupied. Duncan counted at least 50 other persons sitting in the chairs nearest the stage. They sported the same tactical vests and gear. Of course, he didn't see any weapons among them. Even before the drive here Stewards had ordered them to leave their guns and munitions behind. A precaution? The most plausible cause was that they didn't have full trust in their recruits yet.

His group ambled down into the last row behind the gathering. They got a few stares, curious looks and glances but no one moved to talk to them. In fact, well after they settled down into their seats there was barely the minutest degree of chatter. Barely anyone conversed amongst themselves save for random whispers. That was fine for him because he wasn't in a talkative mood. He was only interested in focusing on the stage and why it was that O'Reilly seemed worried about him coming here. He still found the relative silence to be an odd thing to endure for the next five minutes.

Those five minutes passed far slower that he would have liked. That said, the end of the waiting was an event he didn't see coming.

The lights centered on the stage subtly increased their brightness. Then a set of doors at the back were opened by two armed men on the other side.

A figure stepped through and walked up to the front of the stage with hands folded behind their back. Entering into the light, their hazy silhouette resolved into the image of a man. He wore an identifiable UNSC Army officer's uniform possessing a brown-camouflaged coloring with matching boots.

However, no other detail both shocked and terrified Duncan more than his face.

The man was balding with graying brown hair. His cheeks and forehead featured the gradual wrinkles of someone transitioning from their fifties to their sixties. He had a strong jaw lined with a goatee and thick eyebrows pressed firmly together in concentration.

Duncan recognized him right away thanks to the many mugshots he, Epsilon and the rest of Bravo Company examined during their training aboard the Juno, all in preparation for operation BAGMAN. He was the force believed to be behind the Molnar Bombing and the illegal operations at the Meleonich mining facility on Epsilon Eridani IV. He was one of the three highest ranking leaders of the United Rebel Front in the outer-colonies and the only one yet to be neutralized. He was the man that the UNSC could never seem to catch.

His name was Major Benjamin Kirkley; ex-UNSC Army Major and last known commander of the colonial insurrection.

The unease burning through Duncan's gut threatened to give him ulcers as his mind flooded with questions.

Kirkley looked over the faces of the gathering before him and smiled. "Recruits, it's good to see you." He said in a strong voice that rang through the room's loudspeakers. "First things first, introductions. My name is Major Benjamin Kirkley and I am the head of operations here at this lovely town. You can think of me as something like a mayor or commander and chief. Both are accurate to what I do around here. Now let's get down to what you'll be doing."

The major set about strolling to different points of the stage, facing parts of the audience. "The 60 of you have been approved to join our special branch headquartered here at Hayth. Aegis Material Acquisition and Defensive Delivery Services is our most elite branch of special forces. You will be expected to pull off the very same missions you may have witnessed or played a part of in the last few weeks. However, it will fall to you to conduct similar operations of asset acquisition, extraction and defense under the full pressure of a combat scenario. We will test you and we will try to break you. The question is, will you break?"

The audience, Duncan included, gave a unified reply. "No sir!"

"Really? Tell me, do you think you can serve out here behind enemy lines?!"

"Yessir!"

"Can you work with the best of the best!?"

"Yessir!"

"Oh really? We need you to be our deliverymen out in what remains of human space. I ask you this, can you deliver!?"

"Yessir!"

Kirkley nodded contentedly. "Good. Good. Alright people, listen up. You've got a few days in this week to prove what you just said to me is more than hot air coming out of your mouths. I want you tested thoroughly. Out here, there's no room for people who can't carry more than their own weight. If one of us goes down in the fight there needs to be someone able to carry them. Understand this everyone, humanity abandoned this part of space years ago. Out here we're all we've got."

He stopped to stand proudly in the middle of the stage. "We're not just a hideout. We're not just a refuge. We're a community. In the next few years this town may very well be all that's left between mankind and extinction. Consider everything you do here to be an investment in the future of our species. You will be the shield between the folks you saw on the way in here and their demise. They need us to deliver, to protect and to supply them. Soon enough there may be your own families among them. Your sons and your daughters, your husbands and your wives may soon call this place home, if they don't already. So put everything you have into what we have here at Hayth. Give us you're all and we'll give you all we've got. It's a home now, your home. Fight for it." He looked out at them expectantly. "I ask you; will you fight for it!?"

The question was met with a resounding, "Yessir!"

Kirkley's smile brightened. "That's good to hear. Now let's get some action behind that statement, shall we? On your feet recruits, you're dismissed."

The gathering in the assembly rose to attention, saluted then slowly drained off towards the doors on the right side of the hall. Kirkley watched them leave. Duncan, in turn, watched Kirkley.

Knowing not only that the major was here but that he was by his own self-admission the head of operations for the AMADDS, and maybe even more than that, served to confirm his suspicions. The truth of it made it clear to him why O'Reilly was so worried. His friend was reasonably concerned for how he'd handle the truth of what was really going on here. That didn't make it any less shocking knowing what forces were at work on Kholo. He did his best to contain his own expression to an unreadable poker face.

However, as he shuffled along his lane of chairs towards the doors, he accidentally locked eyes with the major. Kirkley's observant stare made him instinctually look away. He kept his attention straight ahead while his group flowed through the second door to meet up with Ambers. But the major's face remained burned into his mind's eye. It marked the end to a question years in the making that was resolved in a minute's worth of an orientation.

Under his breath, he remarked: "So this is where you've been hiding."

Latebras – Hiding