AN:And thus, we come back to this story... As God intended it to be. A proper rewrite with some of the tips of a certain man by the name of AirsoftAl taken into consideration... And a few extra things to back up the good Spartan and his new colleagues. Hope y'all enjoy!
D:UNKNOWN, M:UNKNOWN, Y:2552,
UNSC Standard Calendar.
Unknown World.
IFF Tag:B312
Status:Alive
The sound of battle filled his ears. The familiarity of clashing steel, the sounds of blades clashing against shields and the roar of monsters. Noble Six had died in combat, not too long ago, on the world he had sworn to defend 'till his last dying breath. Reach had burned before him. The hundreds of Elites and Grunts that charged him had put an end to his fighting spree.
Rolling to his feet, the Spartan opened his eyes as he felt his skin prickling with the weave of electrical currents, his hairs standing on-end. In his arms, he cradled his trusty MA37K Assault Rifle, which he'd reloaded with fresh rounds from an Army trooper that he'd found dead in the middle of nowhere. On his thigh was his M6G Magnum .50 SAPHE pistol and, on his back, the familiar weight of the SRS-99/99 Anti-Materiel Rifle unbalanced him due to the messy weight distribution.
The sky above him burned a bright red with weaving psychedelic lights coursing through it like an energy field of some kind. An energy field that spawned gigantic wasps square in the middle of the town he'd landed in. He'd, of course, landed in a village of some kind, seemingly German or middle-European by the design of the houses. Thatched and wooden roofs with plaster walls, thin glass windows(many of which were broken by the invaders) and wood support structures and doors.
The few burning houses told the man that there was a lot wrong with this place. Far too much for him to consider it normal. The shambling monstrosities, seemingly revived former knights and bandits wielding swords and clad in familiar, if mishmashed armor approached him. One of them, the closest, raised its sword arm and slashed with relative agility at the Spartan while screaming, its eyes burning a deep scarlet.
Slow, dumber than a box of rocks and clearly unknowing of what the hell it was facing. The Spartan found no point in wasting his ammunition on it. Instead, on its next swipe, he stopped the strike, grabbed its wrist, twisted it and disarmed the monster. Using its own sword against it, the Spartan pierced its back armor with force, dropping the creature dead. Far too much showbusiness instead of an outright easy kill, but the Spartan needed to relieve the stress.
He switched to a more basic, less energy-wasting combat style on the next target. Dodging its first attack, the Spartan grabbed it by the scruff of its chainmail shirt with his left hand before throwing a haymaker with his right that decapitated the monster. Following that up, the gigantic zombie wasps, an interesting concept, if a bit stupid, charged him. Their stingers broke off the armor's shield, barely causing a dent, with the last two being grabbed mid-charge by him and slammed against one another, bursting into a shower of rotting bug blood and guts.
Another pair of Zombies charged the Spartan. More-so, they stumbled quicker over toward him. He caught both of them by their skulls and squeezed his fingers around them till he heard a satisfying pop and the snap of a skull-cap shattering into a hundred tiny fragments of rotting bone. He let the corpses collapse, dodging a thrust from another and caving in its ribcage with a straight kick.
Raising one of his , he parried another strike before removing the arm off the creature and slamming it over the head with it, pretty much caving its skull in. He tossed the makeshift weapon aside, then planted an armored fist right through another one's breastplate into its chest. Few organs remained inside. Fewer still survived the punch which pulverized them, sending the creature dead to the floor.
He drew his knife and parried a strike from behind, sparks flying off the clashing steel. He spun about and, with the massive Spartan knife, decapitated two more Zombies. Two dozen more zeds appeared ahead of him. He prepared himself to fight, blade in hand, once more. The monsters shambled at him, screaming bloody murder as they raised swords to meet Spartan steel once more.
One of the first ones was decapitated by a sideswiping attack from the Spartan, while another fell to the Spartan kicking it in the head while blocking a third's sword slash. The man then planted the tip of the blade in another's chest and pinned him to the floor, feeling the slashes and swipes of its comrades striking shield and armor plating. With an open palm strike, he caved another's ribcage in and shattered its spine, following up by grabbing the closest one and slashing its midsection, severing the spine and causing it to drop dead.
Several more wasps charged, but the Spartan made short work of them, slashing through them like he'd be slashing through foliage in a thick jungle with a machete. The steel was stained with the yellowish, sickly blood of the creatures even as the Spartan continued to slash, stab and cut through all of them with little remorse, quickly thinning out their numbers like a blender.
His motion tracker had had a thick red stain when he started gutting the damn things. Now, it was just a few scattered red dots. Still, he had more to deal with. Expanding his MT's scanning range to at least five hundred meters out, he found even more targets coming in. More shamblers and wasps, he presumed. As another creature approached from behind, the Spartan quickly turned around.
He found himself face-to-face with a gigantic zombie ogre of some kind, wearing heavy-duty armor and wielding a gigantic axe which was now lifted above its head. As it came down, the Spartan braced for a heavy strike, but instead heard the thunderclap of the gigantic blade smashing against a shield. He looked to see a young man with scruffy, spiky, messy black hair and clad in a green cloak that had fur, as well as a medium-type armor of some kind.
"You alright, big guy...?" He asked, straining to keep the axe blade pressed against his shield.
The Spartan nodded, then rapidly sidestepped the man, jumped onto the monster's arm and ran up it, plating the tip of his knife inti the skull and sliding down the monster's back, effectively splitting the back end in half and causing it to drop. The boy who wielded the shield stared, wide-eyed, at the Supersoldier as he wiped the black, goopy blood of the monster off on a cloth section of its armor.
"... Jeez..." He spoke, approaching him, "The hell even are you?"
The Spartan stared, wordlessly, at the young man, then reacted by pointing the tip of his knife at the throat of someone who was trying to sneak up on them, finding instead the sight of a young, ginger-haired girl with raccoon features, or more specifically, the features of a 'Tanuki', a Japanese variation that was far more cuddly than its normal counterpart.
He saw a hand land on his arm and immediately recoil, then turned to see the man wielding the Shield. He spoke, "Ouch... Easy. She's with me."
Looking to the girl and seeing a youngster about to draw a sword on him, he lowered the knife for now. She stared at him, her pulling her hand away from the hilt of her sword. She spoke, "Master Naofumi... Who is this?"
"I just found him slaughtering Zombies here," The boy replied. He looked to the Spartan, then went bug-eyed, "Holy crap, you have guns!"
The Spartan looked over his kit. Indeed, his weaponry had stayed on him, as did the ammunition for all three guns. He nodded to the boy, then looked over to their left as a plea for help reached their ears. Several civilians, some with pitchforks, others with rusty swords, formed a perimeter to defend their families. The Spartan looked to this 'Naofumi', then to his ally, nodded to both of them and surged forth.
The speed that the Spartan achieved had him close the distance in about a second, coming in with his fist cocked back and slamming it through the back of another zombified ogre, effectively severing his spine and tearing it out with. He tossed the half-spine and skull aside and crushed it underfoot with a sickening crunch before sidestepping a Zombie's attack, grabbing it by the exposed vertebrae of its neck and throwing it into three other Zeds, knocking them off-balance enough for the raccoon girl to decapitate them.
She nodded to Six, then smiled and said, "You fight very well!"
He nodded in thanks, then raised his left hand without even looking. With that move, he'd blocked a sword swipe that would've cut across his back. Turning in a flash, the Spartan grabbed the Zombie's head with both hands and squeezed until he saw it pop like a dust-filled zit. The girl gutted a monster with a slash from her sword, while the Shielder hefted his shield and protected the civilians and them.
He looked to the group of people and yelled, "Move! We got this!"
"W-What?" A civilian seemed dumbfound. The Spartan ignored the man's interaction with the civvies, utilizing his mobility and the strength of his armor to take out even more of the monsters. Raph watched the man working, keeping her blade drawn just in case, but there she saw this soldier, fighting with a blade in hand and other weapons on his person, killing dozens of what was supposed to be the strongest enemies the Waves could throw at them.
The Spartan worked on, tirelessly cutting swathes into the lines of monsters. Another undead ogre charged him, its axe raised to strike. The Spartan deftly dodged to the left, balled himself up, then pounced, grabbing onto the creature's weapon arm and digging the knife into the sinew and bone of the monster countless times, actively disabling his arm. It tried to grab him off, but he dodged, pouncing onto its back and stabbing it right where its brain stem would've been, before twisting the blade and removing it. He jumped, landing on his feet.
Planting the tip of his knife in another monster's chest and snapping another's spine with a high kick, the Spartan continued his dance of death, unwilling to waste even a bullet on these things. He ducked under another sweeping attack by the swarms of killer wasps, jumped and had another of the zeds meet the heel of his right boot. Naofumi and Raphtalia both joined the man in cleansing the rest of the enemy's forces, blade and shield at the ready.
The big man practically danced through the lines of enemies. A dance of blood, gore and murder, but it was a dance nonetheless. One that both the Shield Hero and his trusty Sword had taken to looking at with a muted awe. Every blade swipe, every punch, every kick, it was methodically calculated to inflict maximum damage. Every single time the tall, armored fellow struck a target, he struck with the force of a warhammer against an unprotected skull, quite literally shattering bone and armor with little regard for the unlives of the creatures he killed.
It was almost like both of them were staring at a trained assassin clad in heavy armor. He moved so fluidly, even Raph had to admit she was a bit jealous of his handiwork with a respectably giant knife. He was almost like a trained butcher, really, carving the excess fat and sinew off a good piece of meat as he agilely dodged, struck and struck again, not even giving the Undead a moment's respite.
Naofumi grinned, "Well, ain't he a tough son of a bitch..."
"A what?" Raphtalia asked as she parried and thrust her blade into a Zombie's head.
"Nevermind..." Naofumi spoke, "C'mon. There's more people we need to help get out of here."
"What about him?" She then inquired.
"Seems like he's got the situation handled..." He spoke as they both turned to see the soldier maintaining his momentum, his blade never dulling as he slashed and stabbed his way through a horde of the damn things. The Hero and his protege departed to secure the rest of the Civilians in the area while the Spartan continued drawing more and more creatures his way, his wanton slaughter not tiring him in the least.
Their numbers seemed to never thin, even as he worked his way through the battalion of Zombie knights before him and pushed toward another of the big motherfuckers sat in the back. He shoulder-checked his way at high speed past several of the monsters, sending them flying, before jumping up and over the Ogre and throwing his knife into the back of its head, severing the brain's connection to the spine and causing the creature to drop before it got to swing again at him. Landing on his feet, the Spartan quickly blocked three sword strikes from three separate monsters.
He decapitated them with a roundhouse, before turning to kill another with his blade. He saw Naofumi gathering the other members of the undead army around him, utilizing his shield to defend himself and some really strange powers to defend the Civilians still in the area. The Spartan turned, then pushed himself at full sprint toward the Shield Hero, kiting several more enemies over their way and away from civilian and their homes alike.
"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, man, but how'd you wind up in this mess!?" The Shield Hero then demanded of the Supersoldier beside him. The Spartan remained silent, somewhat scaring Naofumi into admitting, "Y'know, you scared the crap out of all of us the moment you dropped in like that! I actually thought you were part of this Calamity Wave or something!"
"Hmm," The Spartan replied, showing his carelessness about the situation, "Focus on taking these things out. The Civilians will need the cover."
"Yeah, I can't exactly fight," The boy replied snarkily, "I'm the Shield Hero, apparently, the most useless of the four!" He then laughed bitterly.
"Doesn't seem like it to me," The Spartan replied as he put fist to dessicated skull and killed another monster. Taken slightly aback by the man's compliment, Naofumi paused just long enough for him to forget where he was. Thankfully, it was Raphtalia that put an end to what looked to be the last Ogre of the formation, the one that was charging Naofumi. The town square soon found itself cleared of the monsters for the time being.
"Phew..." Naofumi breathed a sigh of relief, then looked to the Spartan and stated, "You're like a goddamn blender, man... Who are you?"
"Unimportant," The Spartan replied as he cleaned the dulling blade of his knife before sliding it into its sheath. He straightened up, looking at his Motion Tracker and ensuring nothing else that walked around them was hostile. He breathed a sigh of relief, then said, "Area secure... Are the civilians safe?" and turned to face Naofumi and Raphtalia. The girl nodded to him.
"Safe as they can be... Though some did want to come back and act as Militia. Help you and Master Naofumi," She replied.
"Hm," The Spartan sighed, then looked at some of the collapsed houses. He arranged his equipment on his personage and flicked a speck of dust off the armor plate. He then spoke to them, "You two fight with swords and shields... Where exactly am I?"
"... A kingdom called Melromarc," Naofumi replied, "Another world, really. At least for you, going by your kit."
"Mhm..." The Spartan paused, then looked at the sky. The psychedelic blood-red and multicolor aurora that blanketed it was an eerie, uncomfortable sight to behold, probably related to the appearance of so many monsters at once in the area around them. His little moment of peace was cut short as more of the monsters appeared. The Spartan drew his knife again, looking at the shambling mess...
Before he saw a wave of fire arrows come raining down. He slammed his fist into the ground, powering his armor lock and overcharging his shields, while the Shield Hero powered on a strange energy shield of some kind. The flaming projectiles broke off the shields of the two warriors, with the latter of them hugging Raphtalia close to protect her from the weapons. As the fire rain 'dried up', the Spartan unlocked his armor, to see the dozen new zombies dead, burning.
Laughter echoed from behind a fence, mixed in with the trotting of horse's hooves. A group of soldiers clad in steel plate armor and wielding swords emerged, with their two leaders wearing more ornate armor, with the commander himself wearing the most intricate and beautifully designed set of armor. He spoke, his voice full of an unearned pride, "Haha! That deals with them! Well done, men!" before pausing as he saw the Spartan and Naofumi. He stuttered, grinning, "S-Shield Hero... We didn't know you'd be here."
"You bastards nearly burned us..." Naofumi growled, "We're trying to get people out of here alive and you bastards almost killed us!"
"It was an honest mistake. It tends to happen, does it not?" The man shrugged, grinning. Raphtalia was damn near about to charge in, blade drawn, but the whistle of a blade cutting through the air stopped her. The Guards and the Hero both looked with wide eyes as, from the neck of the Knight captain, a knife's handle stuck out. The man's eyes grew the size of saucers as he staggered, hand wrapping around the massive handle of the knife. he looked down, feeling his chin pressing against the faux-leather grip, then looked forward.
Stretched forward, his right hand was open, his stance confident, military, rehearsed, the Spartan stood there. The air in the entire area here dropped to subzero temperatures as they stared at the Spartan straighten up. He watched the Knight Captain drop from his horse with a half-wet, half-metallic thump, gargling blood from his slit throat. The Spartan strode forward after the man had died, under the shocked gazes of the entire group of Knights and the Hero and his aide.
Calmly, in front of all of the soldiers and the second-in-command, the man pulled the knife out of the throat of the dead commander and wiped the blood off the dead man's clothes before sheathing it. Standing up straight and turning to the Second-in-Command, who was frozen on his horse. The Spartan spoke, his voice monotone, cold, "While your people may accept friendly fire in the name of making a few kills, I and my people do not. We are working to get fellow citizens of your kingdom out of here alive. You can help us... Or you can attack me now, to avenge your fallen commander. One way or another, you'll die... It depends on if you want to die of old age, or now..."
The Sergeant hummed, narrowing his lips. He turned to the Shield Hero, who stared on with just as much surprise as him, then he sighed. He told the Spartan, "I never really liked that bastard, anyway... Knights! Phalanx Formation! We assist the Shield Hero!"
One of the Knights, a youngster, smiled at their new commander, then barked, "PHALANX!" causing his comrades to line up and draw their swords.
The Sergeant then turned to the Spartan and spoke, "I am going to have to report this... Worst you'll face is the king sending for you alongside the Shield Hero... He may be spared, but you won't, if he finds enough reason for it..."
"I and the Hero only worked together to defend this town..." He hummed, "I will assume the full fault and... Well, take the brunt of whatever your king throws at me. My main objective right now is to save this village... As yours should be."
The Knight nodded, "Understood."
Naofumi grinned. Maybe the guy wasn't so bad...
High orbit...
The snap-pop of a light turning on echoed through empty titanium walls. The chitter of crystals of ice melting filled the air of the cryo-bay, steam wafting high into the ceiling of the place as the pods opened to a change in temperature. Boots clanked against Titanium inner plate and grated floors in the cryobay and in the halls. Lights flickered to life once more, all of them, as systems reactivated one by one. Over the PA system, a single voice echoed, a woman, her accent Posh, English. She spoke out, "Captain. Wake up... Something has happened. Meet me on the bridge ASAP."
Treading the large corridors of the ship, freshly-awoken UNSC Marines, the warriors that had fought in the midst of the entire damn conflict, marched with weapons in hand past a line of crew working to figure out what had transpired. They only stopped to salute a man clad in a green and black Navy uniform, a cap in his hand. A bulkhead door stood ahead of him, with a keypad to the right.
Punching in his code, Captain Cutter, the grizzled old veteran of the UNSC's early years against the Covenant and even earlier conflicts during Operation TREBUCHET, stepped onto the lively bridge of his current command. The holo-table was already active, streams of calculation and information from the main sensors running across it in its three-dimensional space.
Crew were at their stations, actively working to determine what sat before the bow of the ship. Dead ahead, a planet wrapped in blood-red smears vibrated, its atmosphere almost boiling. The light reflected off the scarlet smears, washing the bridge in a faint red tinge to compliment the stark, clean white of the bridge's main lights. Cutter stepped past the table, to the side of the holographic emitter near his chair, staring at the wounded, grimacing planet.
"Beauty, ain't she?" A familiar voice spoke softly, taking Cutter's attention.
Sat on the holo-pedestal, clad in a 'white' shirt and black, baggy 'pants', her hair now caught in a bun on the back of her head and having somehow aged only a tinge, the avatar of Serina sat, smiling at the Captain. She opened her arms and said, "Surprise... Good morning, Captain. I've taken the liberty of initiating automated repairs on the ship's systems and she and I are at one hundred percent."
"Good to see you, Serina," The man nodded back to the AI, smiling, then turned to the planet and asked, "Have you got a short brief for me?"
"Aye, sir," She replied, turning her Avatar toward the planet. "Where would you like to start? The mess of a planet before us that is emanating over a hundred different energy readings in different locations? Or the fact that we've all been asleep for somewhere around twenty-one years and I... Could swear I decommissioned myself just before I entered rampancy..."
"... I'll take the planet first," Cutter replied.
"Well..." Serina hummed, then brought up the ever-changing data from their scanners on a display screen next to his chair, then began, "The tiny bits of information we have on the planet paint an unsavory picture. From what I can determine so far, freak weather events like the scarlet gashes you see in her atmosphere are supposedly standard to the world. What isn't, however, is the amount of energy emanating from all points that are coated in the things. I've already sent much of the data to doctor Anders and... Well, she wishes to pay a visit..." she smirked.
"I'll talk to her personally about this... Go on," The man nodded to Serina, letting out a chuckle. Ah, Elen. She never did change.
"The events themselves are standard, but they are unnatural... The energy we detected when scanning one of them is an eerie combination of Tachyons and bombardments of harmless radiation that cause this reddish hue, while also emanating mass amounts of energy. I can't exactly explain how it happens, but if there is any form of technology involved, it must be millennia beyond anything we are capable of." She explained as calmly as she could.
"Are they dangerous?" He inquired
"They shouldn't be," The AI shrugged, "I won't know more unless I can get a closer look, or the good doctor brings any data she can in regards to them."
"Thanks for the assessment, Serina..." He hummed, crossing his arms to his chest. The two sat there in silence, with the AI humming something as she parsed through the data in the ships systems. He rolled his eyes, well aware she was not going to mention the other two things without him inquiring. So, he did. "You said something about initiating your own dispensation..."
"I did," She nodded, "I tried... And I did manage to remove myself. I remember fading out. But then, I woke up back in the ship's mainframe... I've been running diagnostics ever since, but nothing... Not a damned thing... Tells me that I have genuinely managed to remove myself from our systems. What's more? I've been running diagnostics on my computational Matrix, since it feels a bit faster."
"And?" Cutter asked, looking to her.
"..." She smirked, "It's been reset, sir. I still have seven years of active duty on my roster."
"Seven more long years," Cutter grinned, "I won't dare look a gift horse in the mouth, Serina. That we still have you around may well be a godsend right now. If we are twenty-one years in the future, as you said, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Figuring out where we are is our first priority, but... Perhaps we may find out what happened with the war effort, even find our own people again," And his expression turned solemn, his gaze made of steel.
"Let's hope so, sir-" Serina paused, then hummed, "Stand by... Detecting something. Redirecting some of the excess power we have from our reactor to sensors... Captain, I'd suggest going to the holo-table. I'll call up doctor Anders as soon as I'm done showing you this," She reappeared on the table just as Cutter moved toward it. Lifting her hand, a rough display of the topography of one region appeared three-dimensionally on the table. Winking on said geometry of hills and mountains, between them all, a single, lonely yellow dot.
"... That's..." Cutter stared with disbelief.
"A single UNSC IFF Tag in the middle of one of those red smidges? Aye, sir," The woman nodded, "Tags identify them as Beta Three One Two... Though I can't pull up any information on what this tag means, it's giving a UNSC identification frequency that's more in-line with what my projections showed the modern UNSC of the 2550s would be using. I've refocused all of our sensor suites and our communication suite to break through the radiation of those gashes and get us a proper scan of the damn thing."
"Can we communicate with them? Send them a transmission... Anything?" He inquired.
"I'm afraid not. While I was able to breach through the natural jamming capabilities of the rads and the Tachyons themselves to identify our new friend, sending a communique through that soup, of any form or length, would not work," She explained, pulling up the relevant data on a separate holo-screen to her right. She then added, "Our best bet would be to deploy a squad away from these rad pockets, as I'm not sure of their effect on a Pelican on a re-entry course yet."
"And a certain doctor along with it, I presume..." Cutter smirked as the doors to the bridge opened. He nodded, "Good morning, Doctor."
"Captain. Serina," The young woman of Asian heritage spoke, arranging her parka and her long black hair. She spoke in an almost apologetic tone, "Heating seems to be broken in my lab... Something you did, I presume?" And she looked to Serina. The AI smirked, then shook her head, to which Anders rolled her eyes. Staring the captain in the eye, she spoke, "Despite our AI's antics, she told me of the planetside contact through a message on my tablet."
"I'm not going to be able to stop you from going down there, am I?" Cutter inquired. She shook her head and the man laughed, "Of course. Permission granted. Serina, make sure the doctor has all the data in regards to where she will land, how far she and the Marines will have to trek to reach our new friend and ensure that we have a QRF ready, just in case things get hairy."
"Aye, sir," Serina saluted, then looked to Anders and said, "Looks like you're going to get your feet wet again, doctor."
"Lucky me," The woman smirked, "You going to be alright parsing through that data alone?"
"I'll be fine, doctor. Thank you for your concern. Go have your little fun camping trip. Just remember the number to call home so we can come pick you up," The AI offered. Anders departed after giving a quick goodbye, with Cutter staring out at the world below. She spoke again, "You know... We could send the Spartans with her. I'm sure they'd love to get boots on the ground again, sir. Like old times."
"Hmm... Could be a good idea to ensure security," The man replied, "Very well. Jerome."
"Sir," The Spartan replied over com.
"Load up a second Pelican and take your team and a squad of Marines with. You're going to be assisting doctor Anders downstairs, both in finding a new comrade of ours and in researching the world below," He ordered, staring out at the planet once more. It seemed to grimace at them, now, the burning red wounds in the planet's atmosphere still burning an eerie scarlet.
"Aye, sir," The Spartan replied and the com line went dead.
Serina hummed, then said, "This will most certainly be interesting. A world we know nothing about aside from the fact it is inhabitable and has these strange occurrences, these red smidges, all over it and we're sending our most elite fireteam and our scientist onto it," wearing a smirk. "Ah, it feels just like old times. I missed it, sir..." and she looked to Cutter, who was smiling.
"I think we all did," The man replied, "If the world down there is safe, I'm going to want us to deploy Firebases. We'll need vehicle manufacturing capabilities, not to mention mining capabilities. If we could somehow rebuild our own Slipspace drive... The world seems almost untouched by anything like the industrial revolutions," He then spoke, lowering his arms by his side.
"It would be an idea to set up a semi-permanent base on the planet, but as you said, sir, we'll wait 'till the scouting's done," Serina replied.
"Mhm," He nodded, still watching the planet. Serina turned her gaze upon the world as well, watching as the lights in the planet's sky danced and warped around the areas they were above, almost as if these strange ruptures of radiation and Tachyons were alive. They moved, squiggled, warped and twisted themselves as they moved, then, the two saw a flash.
"What...?" Serina gasped, "Massive energy spike detected."
"What is it?" He inquired.
"I don't... Energy signatures have dipped into the negatives," She offered, "And... The gashes. They're..."
The two watched as one of the gashes seemed to collapse in on itself, folding itself over and over until nothing remained of what it once was. The others followed suit, slowly but surely leaving the atmosphere of the planet and revealing the greenery of the continents below, until the last one finally disappeared with a burning white flash of light. A shockwave emanating from the planet rattled the vessel's hull, but did no damage, before Anders's voice came over the com, "What just happened?!"
"The wounds are gone, doctor," The AI replied, "Massive energy surge..."
"Damn... We still go for the mission, sir? We do have to retrieve that new asset..." Anders inquired.
"Yes, you're still go for the mission... Serina's gonna send you an updated schedule. Maintain radio contact as you go downstairs and let us know how the situation develops. Good luck, Cutter out," The man spoke, before turning to Serina. The AI was running a proper scan. Cutter could tell from the look she was giving the planet. It was good to have her around.
"... There's settlements on the planet," The woman spoke, "A more thorough scan identified major cities, though no power sources or emitters of any sort... It's almost as if ..."
"As if?" Cutter quirked a brow.
"... The world's alien, sir, but I'm detecting castles, cities with walls, farm towns... Almost as if it's a medieval world of some kind," She offered, surprised, "I'd suggest we be ready to be welcomed in a myriad of ways... And our contact is headed for one of said cities right now, it seems. This is a first contact scenario with a primitive civilization and we're it? We're ambassadors?" She chuckled, "Oh, this should be interesting."
"There's a first time for everything, Serina. This old girl was a colony ship before she was retrofitted for combat duty," Cutter replied, a smile on his face, "Maybe she can pull diplomat duty, too."
"Well, she has gotten some repairs," The girl chuckled, "A facelift so she can look good."
"Good. Let's prep for work. Have every single drop-ship at the ready, get me as much data as you can on the rest of the planet before we send other scout squads and make sure our complement of Marines and ODSTs is at the ready. If we're gonna need'em to deploy at the drop of a hat, I'd rather know they're ready and waiting to go..." Cutter ordered, then flipped on the PA and said, "All crew, this is Cutter. A forward scouting team will momentarily make planetfall onto the world ahead of us. It seems that it is a world inhabited by primitive, medieval civilizations akin to our old Earth ones, hence... We're officially entering the peaceful First Contact protocol, people."
He smirked, leaning back into his seat, "Let's make sure we make a good first impression. Be ready for anything, but try not to flash your guns on a first outing," he then stated, "Cutter, out," and flicked the PA off. Serina looked to him with a smile again, then turned back to work. The planet below may've been a new opportunity for them to learn of their own. That new contact? They were their people. They were going to get help, no matter what.
Downstairs, on the planet, a certain Spartan-III felt positive about this new world all of a sudden. Travelling in a wagon with the Shield Hero, he gazed up and, for the briefest of moment, he could see a shooting star as the sky turned dark and night finally came. Between him and the local knights, the corpse of their commander, his throat wound hidden by a cloth.
The Spartan awaited what was to come next eagerly...