Chapter 11 – Amplectere
(7th Cycle, 20 Units - Covenant Battle Calendar), 9th Age of Reclamation
Daedalus system, Ballast
:********:
Tartarus growled under his breath as he strode down the long corridor. Each step forward meant a step back for the crowds of Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Sangheili and even Jiralhanae in his way. There was already a natural partition between the latter two. The Sangheili stayed on the right side of the corridor. The Jiralhanae on the left. They remained mindful of the other side even as they were waiting to find out what had happened. Regardless of species, once they saw him coming, they stepped back. Despite any differences they may have had, any grievances they held, they knew one thing of great value: who to fear.
The passageway itself was dimly lit. It was a welcomed change from the handful of upper levels he and everyone around him needed to pass through first. The lights of the mysterious facility remained mostly active during the initial incursion. Their deactivation now was far from incidental. Shortly after the incident in question, reports of gunfire quickly spread throughout the communication network. Tartarus remembered where he was when he heard the news. Standing atop his own vantage point, he was the first to see the Mgalekgolo pair stationed outside the main structure, posted there mainly to stop the Jiralhanae from approaching, turnabout and move inside. There was a commotion in the interior as those within descended deeper into the building.
He immediately moved to take advantage of the confusion. There was an opportunity to be seized. As his uncle had once taught him, "Chaos for one who is confused is really opportunity for another who is discerning". He could discern early on what glory was to be gained here if he acted on his uncle's wisdom. So he moved with the chaos like a boat on the storm-tossed northern seas of his homeworld. On his way to the main observatory, he ordered squads of his Bearers to follow him inside. They moved with haste once they caught on to his intentions.
He suspected something had befallen the Devoted Sentries. The communications chatter from the Sangheili arriving at the control room below was good indication that human forces were involved. They must have somehow infiltrated through a point no one thought to guard. Not that it was surprising.
He checked in with Archoneus' squads and was assured that nothing ever got past them. He suspected the humans made use of a secret underground passage. 'Underground' being the key term since that was the purview of the Sangheili alone. They banned the Bearers from entering the building after all. Thus was the consequence of Sangheili incompetence that he should be given this chance. Their failure would be his blessing.
With the way in cleared of the Mgalekgolo, the lesser species also drifted inside. The Unggoy and Kig-Yar were seeking after their own opportunities. However, they were quickly willing to step aside once they saw the Jiralhanae storm into the building. They kept a wary distance as Tartarus and his escorts arrived on the scene. Those that were less wary were swatted out of his way by the two captain majors. They were admittedly more merciful than he was. The Fist of Rukt weighed heavily on his back as he walked. It wouldn't have been such an unfortunate thing for its weight to be relieved of his shoulders and brought down on someone else's.
The interior became a mishmash of converging shapes within the darkness. He navigated his way forward through smell. The odor of the corpses left by the Sangheili guided him down the hallways. He could tell where the doors to the staircases were thanks to the sharp smell of nitroglycerin, a prevalent scent left by the bullets of the human security forces that died defending them. Moreover, he used the alarmed pheromones of the Sangheili and Jiralhanae that went ahead of them to locate the right routes.
Soon, he was travelling down an obscenely long corridor filled less with the dead than with the living. A wave of curious, shocked and angry odors struck him as he passed between the two aisles of Jiralhanae and Sangheili. There was a scent of mutual suspicion between the two groups. One was trying to figure out why the other was here while said other was daring them to venture the question. His presence was sufficient to briefly stem the tension. Every eye turned his way as he reached an equally crowded intersection. There he stopped at the smell of death. He looked down.
There at his feet lay the broken body of a Sangheili Major. His hand tightly gripped a plasma rifle that didn't look to have been of much use. The chest armor was practically blown open along with much of the flesh beneath. The numerous holes drilled through both armor and body along with the wafting smell of nitroglycerin was evidence as to who had killed him. The smell not only came from the Major, but in following it down the intersection, Tartarus saw another lying down in the adjacent corridor. Those gathering around the body were just as confused as those behind him.
Tartarus moved off down the intermediary hallway between the two passages. He sighted the door in the middle and suspected it was the center of the commotion. The two Mgalekgolo standing guard on either side of it was confirmation enough. Their spines bristled when they saw him approaching, but otherwise they didn't react. Watching the response of the two armored behemoths, the Sangheili and Jiralhanae in the corridors felt more comfortable doing the same.
As Tartarus got close, suddenly one of the Mgalekgolo stomped into his way. Its shield was held at the ready and its plasma cannon leveled. It stood as a barrier to his path, its spines rattling. The colony of Lekgolo worms housed within it gave a multi-vocular groan, a warning to halt.
He stopped in front of it, unamused. His glare bore into the writhing, faceless mass of its head. The two emerald dots of light in its helmet stared back. He refused to move. After a few seconds, the worms comprising its bond brother gave a lighter-toned moan. The one in his way looked back to face it, as if asking if it were certain. The other gave an almost imperceptible nod of its head. The one in front of Tartarus turned back to him, gave a light groan of its own and stepped aside, returning to its original position.
Tartarus stared at it a moment longer before resuming his stride. The others hesitantly followed him beneath the vigilant gaze of the two Mgalekgolo.
The room inside was a rectangular chamber of sorts with a rounded forward area on which was arrayed a number of consular stations. They were all offline. What interested him more so were the eight bodies inside. Four were dead. Two of them were the deflated remains of Huragok. The floating beings had been decapitated. He presumed the infiltrators weren't their killers thanks to the dim fragments of needle crystals lodged in what was left of their neck stalks. They were probably killed to avoid losing them to the enemy, suggesting whoever did the act faced a desperate situation. He suspected the culprit was one of the next two corpses: the Zealots. Their bodies were virtually ripped open. The one on the right side of the room looked to have taken far more damage than his counterpart on the left. The concussion and needle rifles lying at their sides had proven of little help, though not entirely. He saw the oddly red mixture of human blood on the wall near the door. It was painted down to the floor like the work of a brush.
At least they were good for something before they died. Not that he cared for them. In fact, he had to resist the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Not only were some of the Zealots dead who were tasked with retrieving the oracle, to steal all the glory for themselves, but they had also failed to stop the humans. He could discern that much because, despite the blood trail on the wall and another distant puddle off to the left, there were no human corpses. That meant there were more infiltrators who managed to recover their casualties and retreat. His guess was that they must have somehow journeyed in the same direction as the rest of the Zealots; down. Wherever or whatever down really meant.
He looked to the four living bodies in the room that stood around the Zealots. Three Elite Minors and one Major. The latter was crouched down at the head of one of the dead. With a hand the Major closed the black eyes of its fallen brother for good.
"Imps or Demons?" Tartarus asked.
The four Sangheili flinched. They seemed to not have heard him come in. They were just as bewildered at the sight of his escorts and the other Bearers stepping inside. He watched their hands reflexively descend to the plasma rifles on their belts. Tartarus' own left hand reached behind him and grabbed the staff of the Fist of Rukt. He held up his right in a non-threatening 'wait' gesture. "We are here to aid you."
The Major looked past him to the Fist of Rukt. "We need no aid." He snarled as he stood up. "We asked for none."
"You are right." Tartarus assured. "Only in that you did not ask for it. But you do need it." He nodded down at the Zealots. "Now, more than ever."
The Major refused to look where he was hinting. "Oh? And what makes you think that?"
Tartarus gestured back past his Bearers to the door, to the Mgalekgolo pair still standing outside. "They do."
"The Lekgolo?" A Minor asked.
The Major held up a hand, silencing him. "What about them? They are a mindless lot, though not so as you who have come in armed when none called for you."
"Mindless?" Tartarus asked. "Perhaps. And yet they show more wisdom than you, and these my Bearers understand it just as well. You are the only ones here who haven't seemed to have realized why they let me in."
The Major cocked his head, eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Why is that then?"
Tartarus took a step forward, his hand easing off the Fist of Rukt even as the Sangheili drew their weapons and held them at their sides, ready to bring them up if he tried anything. He stopped short of the Zealot that once held the concussion rifle. "They recognize that I am the one in charge here now."
The Minors looked amongst each other, uncertain. The Major remained unconvinced. He huffed in a fit of amusement and began to slowly circle Tartarus. "And what, pray tell, made your bestial mind jump to such lofty conclusions as this?" He stopped right in front of him. "I am not so bestial as to grasp such...primitive logic. Neither are my kind, which is perhaps why everyone understands this except us. We, the ones the prophets sent on this holy mission."
"As did they us also." Tartarus replied.
"We, the ones they dispatched explicitly to recover the oracle. We, Sangheili." The Major shot closer so that they were eye to eye and nearly nose to nose. "Not you. You are nothing but servants. Sideshows. You already had no place in this fleet and yet here you are vaingloriously declaring yourself our leader." He jabbed a clawed finger at him. "You push too far. I pray you do not push any further or you may very well fall off the edge you seem so desperate to throw yourself o-"
"Where is Ludumee?"
The Major blinked, stunned at the question. "What?"
Despite their proximity, despite his own rising ire, Tartarus edged closer and asked with sharpened calm. "Where is the leader you think you still have?"
The Minors looked amongst one another. He could smell their growing uncertainty. He knew something was wrong and nowhere was that odor stronger than with the Major; "Why is that any of your business? That doesn't concern you."
Tartarus bared his teeth in irritation. "You incompetent, you do not know where he is, do you?"
The Major's jaws split more to expose rows of sharpened teeth. "We know he is below ground. He is searching for the oracle. Unlike you, we have faith in him."
"Unlike me, you are blind."
The Major shifted his mandibles in a deep scowl but said nothing more. Tartarus merely grinned at him. He could sense the Sangheili's resistance faltering. In mockery, he repeated the question. "You do not know where he is...do you?"
The Major didn't answer.
Tartarus laughed. "You really don't. And what of the humans? Where did they go?"
No reply came. He laughed more heartily. "Blind indeed."
"We will succeed, and you-"
"You have already failed, you fool." Tartarus gave a light kick to the leg of the dead Zealot at his feet. "Their fortunes were probably just as favorable as these. Weak."
"What?"
"They were weak and now they are dead. And now we must settle this ourselves."
"How dare you! I'll-"
Tartarus' hand lunged out before the Major could react and grabbed him by the chest of his armor. He heard both the Minors and his Bearers take aim as he pulled the Sangheili in so close that they were once more eye to eye. "You'll what?"
The Major, shocked, tried to speak. He mustered only fractured beginnings of words and disjointed thoughts.
"You cannot tell me whether it was Imps or Demons that infiltrated this place. One is a headache, the other is our doom, and you cannot even tell me which." He pulled out the Fist of Rukt with his freehand and pointed it at the Zealots. "If these two were not enough then the rest of Ludumee's band will not suffice either. If we do not act now, the oracle will fall into the hands of our enemy. And as for us, our heads will fall into the hands of our executioners while the rest is thrown to the furnace. If we fail to act now, our fates our sealed."
Tartarus watched the Major wrestle with his words. The fervor in his eyes switched from shock, to fury, to doubt and finally fell to the floor. Tartarus smelt his submission and threw him back. "Do you understand that?"
The Minors were still aiming their plasma rifles at him. His Bearers were still aiming their spike rifles and grenade launchers at them. The line-up was primed for a shootout.
Tartarus waited to see what the verdict would be as the Major stumbled then steadied himself. His head hung low. He slowly looked to his subordinates before turning away.
Tartarus growled impatiently. "Do...you...understand?"
The Major's hands balled into fists, then relaxed. "I...wish I could kill you..." The Sangheili looked up at him with venom in his gaze. Yet there was reason in it. "But yes...I do understand."
The Major raised his hand at his subordinates. "Stand down."
The Minors' defiant stances faltered but their weapons remained aimed. One of them shook his head in confusion. "But leader, we-"
"I said stand down." The Major said more forcefully. It was enough to make them lower their weapons, save for one who refused.
"Leader, we can't."
"You dare call me leader and yet defy my orders?"
The rebellious Minor shrunk away under the reproach and lowered his rifle in shame.
The Major turned to Tartarus, though he refused to meet his eyes.
Tartarus grinned victoriously as his Bearers lowered their own weapons. "Well, Major, perhaps there is wisdom in you yet."
The Major finally looked him straight on, reluctantly so. "What...do you have planned?"
Tartarus felt no need to explain everything now. He had already thought it through on his way to the room. He returned the Fist of Rukt to his back and headed for the door. "Follow me," he said. "And watch. We will reach the oracle and seize it before the infidels do."
"But, this facility-..."
"What of it?" Tartarus asked, not lingering for an answer.
:********:
Deaks wasn't sure which to pay more attention to, the woman being guarded by the Brutes, the squads of them still patrolling the perimeter or the hordes of Covenant flooding out of the main observatory. One was an unsung priority. One was a personal concern. The last was a security risk beyond all imagining.
The ruckus started twenty minutes earlier when he saw the Hunters at the observatory's front doors suddenly head inside. That was the beginning of a general influx into the building. There was a palpable air of alarm. Something was wrong and they were moving to address it. Even the white-furred Brute and his entourage left their posts to head inside. They were all trying to get a glimpse of what was going on.
Deaks already knew what they didn't. At the outset of the commotion, Baelson received an urgent communique from the Staff. From what the lieutenant explained to everyone else, the recovery team was forced to go loud after encountering some new special operations Elites in the facility's control room. There was no way around it for them but there was a way out. They had made a solid gamble that paid off when they found an elevator down to their objective. A secret elevator of course. Baelson didn't give any more details other than that the Staff asked that the extraction team hold off on intervening for now.
The ODSTs topside were responsible for buying the recovery team extra time to escape by keeping the enemy's attention on the surface. If the Staff had decided to set things off this early then he probably had a plan for how they would escape, one that would spare the extraction team the extra hassle. Probably. If Baelson had nothing more to convey on that front then it suggested the Staff was still working out those details himself.
The uncertainty of it all poured fuel on the worry burning in his gut. With all the Covenant now alerted to their presence; this mission had switched from plausible to hanging by a thread. Just one bullet was all it took to get everything thrown up into the air. But if the Staff's hunch was right, and it was a pretty big if, maybe it would take less than that for the recovery team to get out in one piece.
While the Staff had a tentative plan, it appeared the enemy wasn't too far behind either. Hence his confusion at seeing them leaving the building. Worryingly, they didn't only leave the observatory. The outflow of Grunts, Jackals, Elites, Brutes and Hunters looked in a hurry to abandon the entire preserve. They were fanning out to the very edges of the grounds.
"Ep-1's woken up the whole neighborhood." Zack said. "Hope he knows what he's doing."
"I hope so too." Deaks said.
"They seem in a hurry. So, are they running from the recovery team then? Maybe calling it a day?"
"Since when do the Covenant run from anyone like this?"
"They did it today, didn't they?"
"Yeah, when we almost killed all of them. This is different."
"Well, then what are they running from?"
Deaks didn't answer because he didn't have a good one to give. Then a sneaking suspicion took hold, a hunch of his own. They weren't running away. They were making room. A shock of fear tightened around his throat like a leash. He jerked his scope skyward.
The true threat wasn't below. It was above.
The sight on the other side of his optics filled him with dread. The corvette was now on the move, its repulsor drives flaring as it turned slightly to port, towards the south. At the same time, it began to descend.
"Ep-3 to 4-Actual, the corvette-"
"I see it." Baelson said, sounding alarmed. "Everyone, keep your heads down. They might have spotted us. Prepare to withdraw to secondary positions."
Deaks swallowed. He glanced at Zack who looked just as nervous. Deaks reached for his bipod and prepared to pull it back, ready to make a run for it.
The corvette hummed closer and closer, coming so low that its shadow completely enveloped the preserve. Eventually it completed its 90-degree rotation so that it faced south. The three plasma cannons on its starboard side now stared west, right back at Deaks. Silvery blue energy streamed anew through the plasma lines that ran along their beak-like frames.
There the ship stopped, less than 100 meters above the ground.
Deaks held his breath for what felt like half an eternity. He was certain it was going to fire on them. But then the corvette moved again. It gently flew 200 meters eastward so that its shadow ceased to envelope part of the preserve, including the main observatory. The plasma cannons whined as all three took aim at the building.
They fired.
The first shot of silvery blue plasma leaped into the main observatory and swallowed it whole in light and smoke. As debris flew out from the impact, the second struck, shooting more chunks of burning earth and concrete into the air. The third left a mushroom cloud behind that was quickly blown away. The wind exposed what was left. The skeletal remains of some of the steel girders still stood, leaning out from the steaming center like a blooming flower, their surfaces red-hot.
The ship fired again. Three more plasma torpedoes lanced into the very foundations of the building. When the smoke cleared again, the girders were gone. The hole gouged in the ground was several dozen meters deeper. Deaks saw the exposed and inflamed interiors of rooms and hallways, what was likely the beginnings of the facility's subterranean levels.
The ship fired again.
Zack's voice came out shaky as he looked on. "They're-...they're trying to burn their way through..."
Deaks' voice was just as troubled. "Trying?"
He peered over his shoulder at Baelson. "They're getting desperate, sir."
The lieutenant didn't respond. His visor lit up as the ship fired a new volley. He looked to already be speaking with the Staff.
Deaks wanted an order to engage. To try something. Anything.
Then a sinking feeling took over. Helplessness. They had brought guns to a ship fight. He realized there was ultimately nothing they could do, nothing but sit and hope that the Staff's hunch was right. Nothing but watch as the ship fired again.
And again.
And again.
:********:
Duncan felt each succinct tremor that reverberated through the ground, through the elevator and through himself by extension. It was no earthquake. He saw it in everyone else's faceless expressions that they knew it too.
"That's going to be a problem." Nova whispered.
Since he stood right next to her, Duncan got an eyeful of the depth gauge on the control panel. They had just passed the '2-Kilometer' mark. The current reading was racing by fast but he managed to catch it at '2.21 Km'. Their descent speed was decent at best. He wagered they were probably moving faster than the average secret elevator in a highly-classified ONI installation, posing as something it wasn't, in the middle of nowhere. Then again, he wagered that he didn't have enough experience with those circumstances to know for sure. At the very least, he hoped it was moving fast enough to avoid the plasma bombardment that everyone knew was creeping in after them.
"There's definitely no turning back now, boss." Rico said. "At this rate, this is starting to look like a one-way trip."
The Staff, standing at the very forefront of the exit, kept his M90 aimed at the door. "Then let's hope that one-way is our way out."
Duncan wasn't sure what to say about that. The 'emergency lockdown' he saw on the facility's farthest subterranean corridor might have been hinting at security lockdowns. The passageway may have been sealed like the bulkheads of a breached ship. They had as good a chance of running into one shut door after the next as they did at finding whoever, or whatever, they came to rescue.
Then there was the 'Sarcophagus'. He didn't know what it stood for but it didn't sound promising as an escape route. The last thing they wanted in their race for survival would be to run into a chamber with death written all over it. Or maybe that was the ruse. ONI's naming schemes, from his experience, could be notoriously vague. They even went so far as to be antithetical to whatever they were really meant to describe. That way, they dissuaded the curious. 'Sarcophagus' might very well be a substitute for 'panic room' or 'safe house'. Either one was preferable to the dead-end cave he remembered seeing on the last schematics.
"Heads-up, we just passed 2.25." Nova said.
Duncan checked the gauge: '2.27Km'.
"Good," The Staff added. "We're almost there. Everyone, get yourselves ready. Check your ammo and report any shortages, see if anyone's got extra mags they can spare. Once we're out, it won't be long before we come across the beacon. We'll secure our objectives and recon the chamber at the far end for a way out."
"And if there isn't one?" Kilo-4 asked.
Duncan turned around to see where the trooper was. While most of Epsilon, Kilo and Lima were standing near the door, a few were sitting back against the opposite wall. They included those who could no longer stand and those who would have to carry them. Kilo-4 was lined up next to a deceased Kilo-6 and Lima-1 with the latter two having their helmets back on to cover their faces. Their deaths weren't what anyone in the elevator needed to focus on so most of everyone kept their eyes forward. Kilo-4, however, sat right next to them and Duncan felt from the wavering in his voice that he was just as concerned about joining them.
"What if there's no exit, sir? What do we do then?"
This time some of the ODSTs gave him their attention, splitting it between him and Epsilon's leader, waiting for an answer. The Staff also looked back. His stare wandered over to Kilo-6 and Lima-1's bodies. After a moment he tore himself away to refocus on the door. "If there isn't one then we'll hold up there until reinforcements arrive."
"Hold up? Respectfully sir, it only took one of those things to kill two of our guys and break one of my legs." He pointed down to the tear in the armor on his left leg. The skin was exposed as well as the purpling spot where a line of biofoam was still being injected. "God only knows how many more of them we'll run into down here. Not to mention that back topside they're shooting their way in with a corvette. A whole corvette. You really think the LT's backup is going to be enough?"
Kilo-1 rounded on his subordinate. "You're getting way out of line, trooper. Ep-1's-"
"No." The Staff said, letting out a long sigh. "He's right." He turned fully about to face Kilo-4 as well as everyone in the elevator. Again, his gaze lingered on their two dead. "Baelson's force isn't going to be enough. I figured that much from the time we landed. Which is why I told them it's better if they stand down. Because if we don't have a way out, at this rate, the most we'll do if we ask them for help is to ask them to die right along with us. But that's only if we can't hold out on our own. The passage we're going into will serve as a natural bottleneck for those coming in after us. That way we take away their numbers advantage. And if the corvette decides to dig further than that, there's at least a chance the Navy will get here beforehand."
"And if they don't?" Kilo-4 pressed.
The Staff's visor depolarized so that he pinned the man in place with a look of pure honesty. "Then, trooper, you're just about as screwed as everyone else on this elevator, myself included." With that, the Staff calmly turned and resumed waiting for the door to open.
Kilo-4's jaw slackened but he said nothing more.
"Dang. Ep-,1 why do you gotta be such a straight-shooter?" Rico chortled. "You should be the one in Ep-3's place right now, huh?"
"Knowing him, I bet he's just chomping at the bit to take a shot at those Brutes." Nova said. "He's in a better position than we are to get out of this though, him and Ep-7."
"Meh, I think odds are still good." Yuri said as he tapped a magazine against his helmet, loosening the spring mechanism enough to pop the top bullet back into place. "I say we get out of this no problem."
"You sure are optimistic, Rusky." Hector chided.
"What can I say? I'm feeling lucky today."
"Guess that kiss worked it's magic."
"Da, that and Vallejo liftoff. Maybe I'm too high off own supply but I don't see us dying here. I just don't. I personally prefer riding my pod to my death." He slipped the magazine into his MA5C and racked the first round into the chamber. "Not bad way to go, no?"
"No, Matchstick, falling through the atmosphere while burning alive is not a bad way to go at all." Hector shook his head at him. "God, you're insane."
"That's why they name me Matchstick, no?"
Hector and Rico shared a knowing look and laughed.
"He's right." Rico agreed. "I think we'll be okay."
Nova nodded. "Probably. What do you think, Ep-8?"
Duncan shrugged. "I don't see why not."
"Why are you guys so relaxed about this?" Kilo-4 asked, denying the light-heartedness of the occasion. "We don't even know if there's a way out and you guys are chatting it up like our backs aren't against the wall right now."
Epsilon collectively eyed him, as did Renni as she finished up her biofoam injections on his leg. She looked to the others. "You want me to tell him, or...?"
"Feel free." Nova said.
Renni turned to the trooper and lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "This is your first deployment, right?"
"...Yeah, but what does that have to do with any-"
"Listen, with respect to your own actions, we've been in this line of work a hell of a lot longer. We've seen some stuff. Stuff like this." She stopped as the elevator shook again from the reverberations on the surface. "And stuff worse than this, believe it or not. This isn't our first rodeo or our first one-way trip. If there's a way out, we'll find it. If there isn't one, we'll make one."
Kilo-4 looked incredulous. "And how can you be so sure of that?"
"Were you not even listening to woman?" Yuri growled.
"Because-..." Renni trailed off in thought. She shrugged. "Because that's just what we do. I don't know how, but I can say this much." She smiled back at the others. "I've learned that when it comes to these guys, you don't need to sweat the details about 'how' so much as 'who'." She ended by giving him a reassuring pat on the arm. "So hang tight and we'll get you three out of here."
"You three?" He asked, nonplussed.
She respectfully nodded to the two beside him. When he caught on, he looked to his dead teammate and Lima-1, then at the ODSTs exchanging clips in front of the door with undimmed determination. Seeing his own squad doing the same with Epsilon and Lima, his troubled expression quietly diminished. "I hope you're right."
"I know I am."
Duncan finished the hand-off of a fresh magazine for his MA5C from the extras that Lima-5 brought along. He pushed it into an available pouch then took one last look at the depth gauge: '2.48Km'.
"Almost there." He said.
"Ready up." The Staff ordered. Everyone followed suit in spacing themselves out. They collectively took aim at the door as the elevator began slowing down.
Nine seconds passed in silence. At the tenth, the elevator stopped. The gauge chimed like a doorbell. Indicator lights on the door flashed from a transitory yellow to a halting red, then green.
The door buzzed then parted.
The first thing Duncan noticed was the fact he couldn't see a thing. The world beyond the threshold was so black that it felt like they were on the edge of existence. The elevator's light seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness.
"Can't see a thing." The Staff said. "Troopers, switch to VISR mode."
Duncan turned his on. A burst of faint green peeled away the dark and etched out the environmental details as a drawing on a canvas. Ahead of them was a long passageway stemming from left to right. The walls were tall but featureless. The ground was earthy, dirt and stone. There were a number of portable flood lights standing about. All were offline yet their general direction showed there was something off to the left.
The Staff noticed it too and pointed two fingers leftwards.
The ODSTs filed out into the strange passage, looking down both ends to make sure they were secure. As they did, Duncan found that the dirt felt uneven. Patterned. He looked down. Beneath his boots was a large trail of tire tracks. He followed it from the elevator. It turned and headed left in the same direction as the lights.
"I've got tire tracks here." Nova pointed into the darkness. "They lead that way."
"And so does our beacon." The Staff said. He stopped to watch the troopers carry out the wounded and the dead. Renni was saddled with the job of serving as an extra pair of legs for Kilo-4, keeping his arm wrapped around her neck. Lima and Kilo's medics carried out their own casualties. "Okay, let's move. Medics, try to keep up."
The three winked their acknowledgement lights and took positions near the rear.
"Wait." Nova gestured towards the elevator. "Shouldn't we take that thing offline to make sure no one comes in behind us?"
"Or leave a gift behind for them?" Rico asked predatorily, elbowing his rucksack. "Since we got sent to pick-up the manager, I still got a few Antilons left on me. Up to you, sir."
The Staff considered it. "No, save it. They won't be using the elevator to come down for us, remember?"
Another violent tremor shook the passageway. Surprisingly, no dirt rained down from the ceiling.
"Oh yeah." Nova said.
"Right." Rico agreed.
The Staff started them off. The troopers split into their squads. They moved as columns, Lima on the left, Kilo on the right with Epsilon moving up the center. The medics did their best to keep stride near the back while troopers stationed behind them guarded the rear.
They scanned both the walls and the way ahead. The Nav point for their beacon was much closer, showing: '150m'. It was promising, unlike the tremors that shook the corridor every few seconds.
The deeper they went, the more Duncan paid closer attention to the walls themselves. Their black faces were indeed featureless as he first thought. However, there was something about them that felt off. Abnormal even. Maybe it was the fact they were made of solid granite while everything else they'd found in the facility was made of more basic materials. Even so, he couldn't shake the feeling that these walls were older than anything else above them. The idea made little if any sense at all. How could structures exist down here if they weren't made by ONI? His logic countered itself with a different question: What was ONI looking for all the way down here in the first place?
More than anything else, he couldn't shake the feeling that was slowly making his skin crawl.
The feeling of being watched.
Not by each other of course. It was a sense that he was being tracked. He would follow it to its origin, those same featureless walls. There was nothing there and yet when he looked at them, he could feel something staring back. His sixth sense was going crazy, telling him the room was filled with eyes watching him from every direction. But everyone was focused on the way ahead, not him. It couldn't be them. The feeling remained.
He grew increasingly uneasy. Then Rico whispered a question that pulled him out of his mental spiral. "You guys...you-...you feel that?"
"Yeah, stop staring at me already." Nova replied.
"Yeah, but, that's not me."
"Well, whoever it is, they need to st-…"
She stopped. So did everyone else when they saw it; a flash of light far in the distance. It was silvery-white, a hard contrast against the dark. It disappeared just as quickly as it came.
"Anyone got eyes on that?" The Staff asked.
"No, sir." Lima-2 replied. "Maybe it's one of those flood lights?"
"Those were all offline when we came in." Nova added with growing worry. "They were probably linked to the overall electrical system. None should be on right now."
After a lengthy stillness, the Staff started forward again. The rest of the recovery team stayed right on his heel, now markedly more alert. There was a tension in the air that beckoned them forward.
Ten seconds of walking passed before they stopped again, this time because of an obstacle. A solid titanium door stood in their way. Five meters tall by the same measure in width, the hexagonal barrier looked to have slid in place long before their arrival.
"A compartmentalization door?" Nova thought aloud. "That must be part of the emergency lockdown you guys talked about. There's probably more of these in our way. So then-"
A burst of static drew everyone's guns to the right. There, on the side of the door, was a control panel. Its wiry guts were spilled out from the opening of a long, molten gash cut through its frame. It sparked again and fizzled.
"Ep-1?" Nova asked hesitantly. "Want me to check that out?"
"That won't be necessary." The Staff gestured ahead of them. "Looks like someone already made a way in for us."
The troopers looked closer. In turn, they spotted his point: a large hole cut into the lower middle of the door that led straight through to the other side.
Nova sucked in a deep breath. "Sir, that door's made of solid Titanium-A."
"Hold up, you mean the same stuff they use for ships?" Hector asked.
She gave a concerning nod as they came closer. "It would take a hell of a lot of explosive force to get through something like this, but there's no residue anywhere."
Duncan heard the sound of a light rain coming from the breach. It was still sizzling. "Plasma maybe."
The Staff stepped in front of it. Up close, it was so large that two people could fit through it with ease.
"It isn't big enough to fit a Hunter." Nova noted.
"No." The Staff looked it over. "But it is big enough for an Elite." He glanced back at the troopers. "Or Elites."
The recovery team stared back in the same, silent understanding.
"Let's move. Double-time."
:********:
Dr. Strawson was never so happy to be wrong in his life.
The methodical work of the Lieutenant Commander to cut one wire and tie it to the next eventually yielded a satisfying ping from the control panel. There was a rumble of unseen mechanisms. A second later, there was a crack of light, a vertical seam in the door. The seam slowly grew from a crack to a gaping point of access as the compartmentalization door finally slid open.
The corridor they were in was drawn out of the darkness by the illumination of the chamber beyond, revealing the awed and hopeful glares of those trapped inside. For Strawson it was closer to awe, not only that they had somewhere to escape to, but that despite the destructive happenings of the day's events, the location remained completely untouched.
The chamber itself was a massive cave half the size of a football field. The ceiling held a natural vaulted shape like a half-dome. It was lined with stalactites and the rocky floor below with stalagmites the closer one came to the opposite side. Some connected together to forge massive pillars while others pointed down or up, creating a near nightmarish allusion of a giant maw. Two tank-sized Jotun heavy excavators lay in the chamber's center. From where they'd parked, the metallic claws of their backhoe attachments pointed towards the rear of the cave. The lights on their frames were the sole source of illumination. They were almost bright enough to illuminate the entire chamber.
Almost but not entirely.
As the preserve's survivors wondered inside, down the path between the two Jotuns, Dr. Strawson got an eyeful of the area of the far wall. It was there that the light seemingly couldn't penetrate. Well, it wasn't an area on the far wall per say. Rather, it was the far wall itself. The back section of the chamber was where the surface changed from the oxidized reddish browns of calcareous mineral deposits to the silvery sheen of an as yet unidentified metal. Unidentified by the conventions of the periodic table as well as many of the research staff's own chemic deductions. Strawson only knew the color because he'd seen it up close. He'd dreamed of it on many sleepless nights trying to gauge its purpose, a difficulty considering it was just as featureless and unexplained as the corridor leading up to it. If one stared at it from a distance, it looked like an abscess in the cave. Only after getting past the stalagmites could a person push through the mysterious optical illusion to see them for what they were: two giant doors. Either one stood at an imposing height of 20 meters tall by 5 meters in width.
Together with the stalagmites and stalactites, the optical illusion reinforced the earlier feel of a titanic mouth waiting to devour anything that came too close. Shortly after their discovery months earlier, the excavators were brought down to enlarge the cave and reveal the extent of the doors, knocking down the rock formations and digging out the dirt to get a better look. They reached their limit less than a week ago when the natural stubbornness of the room's calcium carbonate composition stopped them from enlarging it any further. That and concerns about structural integrity ultimately put a halt to their expansion. The focus from then on, until the Covenant's arrival, was to remove the last formations in their way and find out what lay on the other side.
Those plans were now on freeze indefinitely. Thus, much of the formations were left in place, guarding the ageless darkness hidden beyond them.
In his mind's eye, they were the columns to the door of a mighty citadel.
The last guardians of a world that, according to the planet's historical and geological records, should not have existed.
The Sarcophagus.
Who made the doors? What was on the other side of it? All those other questions raced through Strawson's mind automatically. It couldn't be helped. How could a xenoarchaeologist not start to mouth-water at what was hands-down the pinnacle of his career? But those other questions could wait. Looking to his coworkers' amazed yet frantic countenances, especially Elicia's, he understood the only question important to them now was 'how' they would open it. Less for the scientific discovery and consequential academic acclaim within ONI's highly restricted scientific circles, more for the goal of staying alive. By today's standards, survival was reward enough.
The ONI agent walked up between them to eye the doors herself. Unlike them, her attention quickly shifted to the rock formations as well as the two Jotuns. She pointed to the vehicles. "Everyone, pick an excavator, get behind it and stay quiet. We'll hold out here for the time being."
Out the corner of his eye he saw Elicia and the others grant the agent an exhausted but agreeing nod. No such agreement came from him. He rounded on her. "Wait, but-, but can't we just see if-"
"Now's not the time." The Lieutenant Commander replied. "Get moving."
"Hey, hold on a second." He pointed towards the doors. "Wouldn't it be better to stay near it? If they break in here, the optical illusion will stop them from seeing us. Wouldn't that work in our favor?"
Examining the darkness at the back of the chamber, she shook her head. "That's not a good idea. They'll eventually come looking over there. Once they get past that illusion, there'll be nothing left for you to hide behind." She nodded to the excavators. "With these, at least you have cover and I have some range to work with between us and the entrance."
Strawson gritted his teeth. "But-, but its-"
"Doctor, stop refusing my orders and go. Same to the rest of you."
The others didn't need her to say it again and split up, heading behind the two excavators. The Lieutenant Commander moved for the control panel next to the corridor's entrance. She swung it open and got to work stitching her way through the wires inside.
Elicia grabbed Strawson by the arm. "Come on, let's go."
He shrugged her off.
"Marcus." She pressed. "Let's go."
"We have to find out what's on the other side of that thing. We have to open those doors. We're getting in there."
"That doesn't matter right now."
A flash of anger seized Strawson at his core and he grabbed her by the shoulders. "Doesn't matter? Are those words really coming out of your mouth right now. You've worked on this longer than I have and I've been here for years already. Don't you want to find out what we spent all that time for? All that time you could have been back with Lasz, with Sára. Don't you want to know what it was worth?"
Her eyes shot to his at the mention of the names, at first with anger, then simmering into reason. She glanced at the giant doors. He saw the spark of curiosity in her eyes struggling to bubble up to the surface. In the end, it failed to arise. Biting her lip, she shook her head. "It's not worth getting killed over."
Strawson was speechless. Then his thoughts returned to him with a promising rebuke. His mouth opened to speak.
A sizzling noise, like the hiss of a snake, rose into his hearing with increasing clarity.
The words shrunk away, replaced by a fear lit anew in his stomach. He saw the same fear in her eyes as they both turned in the direction of the sound.
There was a new source of light in their section of the corridor. It came from the door on the opposite side, an azure illumination that was brighter than any flood light. Sparks flew out from it.
Strawson's fear gave way to hope. He sighed with relief. "Thank God. Blowtorches. That must be our rescue." He turned to the Lieutenant Commander. "Right-…"
There was a look of horror frozen on the agent's quickly paling face as she looked on.
By then, the light-source pushed through so that its shape was distinguishable. A two-pronged fork of blue energy carved a molten arc through the center of the door, doing so with astonishing speed. It arced upwards and completed a fiery oval.
Strawson flinched as something impacted the spot with a loud BANG!
The carved-out piece of door flew forwards, tumbling across the corridor before skidding to a halt less than a meter away. Strawson looked back to the breach and saw the flat-side of a crimson, two-toed boot. It lowered. Beyond the hole, the new light-source, the shimmering blue surface of an energy sword cast a pale luminescence against the silhouette of an Elite.
Adrenaline shot through Strawson's veins.
The red armor.
The blue accents
The horns on the helmet.
The deadly blade he saw cut down many of his coworkers during the dash to the main observatory. He watched the same sword come forward as its wielder, the leader of the special Elites, stepped into the next section of the corridor. A pair of similarly armored Elites came in after it, their dark pupils fixed firmly on the cave ahead and the two standing in the middle of it.
They dashed forward.
The Lieutenant Commander, her teeth gritted in fear, redoubled her efforts on the control panel. "Go! Get moving!"
Strawson and Elicia both broke into a dead run for the excavator on the right. One of the other survivors beckoned them over. The two scampered behind one of the large fore-wheels right as there was another loud BANG!
Strawson grasped the rubber surface of his cover with a death grip. He risked peeking around the vehicle's front.
The Lieutenant Commander was running from the newly shut door towards the other excavator. Behind her, the fork of energy once again pierced through the metal. She reached one of the wheels, span around and whipped out her M7. She took aim just as the energy weapon finished its first downward arc. Treating solid Titanium A no better than butter, it proceeded to finish with an upward cut, completing the oval.
Wham!
The carved piece sailed through the air on a trail of smoke, smacking against the carriage of the right-side excavator. Yet the sound had an echo to it that made it seem less like the kinetic force of a kick and more like the-
WHAM!
Strawson flinched as the new sound went off several times in quick succession. He felt the vibrations and simultaneously saw the bursts of light and smoke on the other side of the breach.
"What was that!?" Strawson called over to the agent.
The Lieutenant Commander lowered her M7. "Frags."
"What-"
He shuddered as another new sound of a hail of rifle-fire echoed from the passage, unmistakably human.
Elicia peeked out as well. "I-, is that-"
The Lieutenant Commander nodded with palpable relief. "Our backup."
:********:
Despite using his VISR mode, Duncan had a hard time seeing their targets. He knew they were three Elites but the current lightshow of bullet tracers pouring into them made it near impossible to make out anything more than silhouettes, flashes of split-jawed faces and the whine of returning plasma fire.
They caught up to the enemy just in time to stop them at what appeared to be the last compartmentalization door. They followed their trail of destruction through one carved up door after another until finally they arrived in the section behind them. From there, they could see their objective. The beacon was less than 10 meters away.
The Covenant team ahead of them was initially comprised of five. Three of the special Elites and two Engineers floating in behind them. The recovery team took up their own flanking positions behind the gaping hole in the second to last door. From there, most of them proceeded to select their targets as the leading Elite started cutting its way through the last obstacle. The rest followed the Staff's example, taking out fragmentation grenades.
On his order, they pulled the pins and tossed them.
Several grenades arced through the hole, bounced into the next section and up into the aliens' midst. They were enveloped wholesale in a quick flurry of fire and force. The Elites were tossed about while the two Engineers were reduced to bloody ribbons. There was less focus on taking prisoners this time around than saving their objective.
Light shone through the hole in the next door, blown open by the force of the detonations. The smoke immediately cleared to show the three Elites still standing but with their energy shields flared.
"Fire!" The Staff ordered, beginning the current tracer shower into the next section.
Through the bursts, Duncan made out the shields popping on the Elite far to the left. It toppled over a heartbeat later in dark purple sprays. He moved to drain the next half of his magazine into the one on the right. It got off a trio of needler rounds that shattered harmlessly on the door before it too crumpled under the fire.
The one in the middle, the leader, roared as it ran for them, leaping left and right with each subsequent stride to scatter their fire.
"Back up!" The Staff ordered.
The troopers attempted a speedy withdrawal. Three of them, Lima-2, Kilo-3 and the Staff himself proved too close. The Elite leapt through the door. By the time they turned to face it, it was already on top of them.
Lima-2's fire was cut short as the Elite's swing severed him at the waist. Kilo-3 got off a burst before an armored boot slammed into his chest, launching him several meters. The Staff rolled out of his trajectory and the trooper crashed into the wall. He turned, saw the Elite coming, anticipated its swing, and rolled underneath the arc of plasma. He came up behind it, pivoted to line up his M90 and fired point-blank into its back. The buckshot blast blew its shields and knocked it into the nearby wall. It whipped about to try to catch him in a wide swing that was too far away. But the Elite, on the other hand, didn't notice the trooper rising in its blind-spot until it saw the flash of unsheathed metal.
Mito struck first. With a swift lunge, he rammed his katana through a gap in its armor, plunging the blade through the tough under-armor to slide freely into its torso. Thanks to his lower stance and the alien's combative stoop, the tip reemerged out its neck seal, baptized in the purple blood it craved.
The Elite roared in enraged agony and twisted to strike at him. Mito predicted it and leapt aside, leaving the energy sword to cut a glowing gash across the wall. With the blade still buried in the alien, Mito rolled between its legs, came up behind it, caught the handle and swiftly yanked it out. Another roar. Again, it turned to lash out, decapitating the air above Mito's head as he barreled through its legs once more. He rolled into a run, launched himself up onto the wall, landed, twisted and kicked off.
His boots landed on its back as the katana lanced through its throat and passed through its jaws. It gave a gargling groan. He quickly twisted the blade, and with a loud CRACK, severed its vertebrae. It visibly limpened.
Mito kicked off the creature's back, letting it fall to its knees then down onto its face.
Everyone watched as Epsilon's CQC expert flung the blood off his blade and sheathed it. They carefully closed in on the body. Hector kicked it in its horned helmet. "That's a Field Marshal right there."
"Another one, Ep-9? Really?" Rico joked. "What does that make now, two?"
Mito held up two fingers in confirmation.
"Dang, I know we say this a lot already but, you're loco man, seriously."
"Thanks."
A human groan turned everyone's attention to their casualties. Kilo-3 lay against the opposite wall, inhaling shallow breaths. A few steps away from him lay the partitioned body of Lima-2. There wasn't so much as a twitch from the upper half of the trooper. He had died the moment the sword severed his spine.
The Staff crouched in the pool of blood quickly gathering at Lima-2's side. He sucked in a sharp breath, reached down and pulled off his helmet. Yet another young face, buzzed at the top and a beard shaved to regulation length at the bottom. All that strict adherence to regulation had done little to save him from being the unluckiest of what remained of the team. The Staff pulled his dog tags loose and stuffed them into an available ammo pouch. He turned to the others. "We'll need a bag. Someone, get Kilo-3 on his feet."
There was an air of sullen agreement.
As one of the team hefted Kilo-3 up by the shoulder, he coughed and wheezed but was otherwise able to carry on. Lima-3 stooped down to his squadmate with a body bag in hand. Knowing he wouldn't be able to carry all of him in the bag, he began the gruesome work of deciding which half would make the trip back home. He chose the top.
When they were done, they joined the rest of the team in approaching the last door.
The Staff stopped just short of it and spoke into his comms.
Duncan heard his voice on the UNSC emergency E-band. "Anyone alive in there?"
No response came. The Staff stepped closer. "This is Staff Sergeant Atell of the UNSC, Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. Is the forward area clear? Anyone, respon-"
"Looking for us, Staff Sergeant?" A woman's voice replied. "Yes, the area's clear. Come on in."
It wasn't just a woman's voice. It was commanding, assertive but carrying a hint of trepidation. More than anything, it sounded awfully familiar.
Disturbingly familiar.
Duncan was trying to remember where he'd heard it before when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Renni visibly straighten.
"R-... Riat?" Renni called.
There was silence for a few seconds. The others turned to her, confused. Then the voice from before spoke again, now lacking the previous air of authority in exchange for abject disbelief.
"Renni?"
Renni's breath hitched in her throat. She suddenly turned to Duncan and handed Kilo-4 over to him without saying a word. He struggled to get the trooper upright while she rushed through the hole to the chamber on the other side.
The Staff looked back to see the others were just as confused.
He pointed two fingers inside. They hustled in to see what was happening. Duncan had a harder time of it with Kilo-4's added weight. Thankfully, Nova came up on the trooper's other side and helped lift him from there.
Duncan was momentarily mesmerized by the scenery. They walked into a huge cave, easily the largest he'd ever seen, with stalagmites and stalactites. There was a dark abscess on the other side that he figured led deeper into what was probably an extensive cave system. That was good. Plenty of places to search for a way out or to hide out if need be.
What held his attention though was Renni. She was standing there with her helmet off, her face filling with awe. Not at the scenery but at the other armored woman standing in the middle of two giant Jotun excavators.
When he saw her, his jaw dropped. Aside from the other squads and Mito, the whole of Epsilon froze at the sight of her.
The woman's helmet was clipped to her belt. It left her very familiar face exposed. They recognized Lieutenant Commander Riat Cordova right away. How could they not after their long, checkered history together.
However, one of the two members of Epsilon who shouldn't have recognized her looked on the LC with loving reminiscence. He saw tears well up in her eyes...and in Cordova's, as Renni dropped her helmet, bolted forward and grabbed the woman in a hardy bear hug, an embrace that the historically detached and distant ONI agent readily returned.
Amplectere - Embrace