"What?!" Chief blanked. The single, sharp rise in his voice caused the entire rest of the mixed Spartan and Commando unit to freeze, chills shooting up their spines as they looked back at him. He clicked his tongue, then said, "We're nearly done. Try and get rid of him. If you can't find a route off this ship, hold him in place…"

Linda turned to face the man as their Motion Trackers began picking up a multitude of Flood forms approaching them. She raised a brow, to which the Chief stated, "Corrupter just hit a new level… Infected SIERRA," as he racked the bolt of his rifle and supported it against one of the barricades. Cortana scoffed, while Linda and Fred paused.

Boss spoke, "You mean an infected Spartan?" with the faintest hint of concern in his voice. Chief hesitated for a second, but gave a nod of approval, to which Sev and Fixer both balked. Fixer switched to the anti-tank attachment on his rifle, mumbling something, while Boss stated, "This is gonna get worse before it gets better, then. Deltas, pack it in. Tight formation. Cortana, how much longer on that bomb?"

"Two minutes," The AI replied as she started pulling more data off the ship's computer. She whispered to herself, "This is a mess… Connections to the reactor are a tad shot, but I'm working on sending the overload request. Gotta bypass a lot of safeties," before mounting up an additional setting that would allow her to detonate all shipboard concussion missiles.

"We ever gonna get off this ship?" Sev asked as he checked his weapon, hearing the thumping of the door that Cortana had sealed behind them. He set up his rifle and aimed down the holographic lenses, focusing toward it, before seeing Linda shrug. Fred himself prepared a pair of plasma grenades, just in case the enemy broke through the defenses.

The thumping grew louder, while Sev scoffed and mumbled, "If we aren't, I'm killing as many of these fierfeks as I can," before steadying his breath. The team agreed quietly, forming up beside them and aiming right for the door. The rest of the bridge was pretty much surrounded by the void, with any attempt to breach it probably leading to being spaced if the Flood tried.

So, the team waited patiently, watching the door bend inward with every strike from the undead freaks waiting for them outside. They waited and waited, watching as pus and blood began to pour through the hole, followed by the tentacles and claw-arms of combat forms punching through, trying to rip it open.

When the first monster shoved its ugly, deformed maw through, revealing the cracked plastoid armor of a Clone, Sev didn't hesitate. He put a bolt clean through the Infector form in the chest region, boiling it away and cauterizing the wound. The monster dropped, blaster falling to the floor. As the door cracked open under the weight of a larger form, the team opened fire.

A volley of high-caliber tracers and blaster bolts filled the dead air between them and the ground-floor door, bolts searing through the white metal plates on the walls and cutting through the forms of the beasts ahead, both the clone crew and the Trandoshan combat forms. The corrupted Trandos, green-skinned and covered by Flood tendrils as they were, ran on all fours toward the team.

Their faces had been morphed, split into four distinct jaws lined by sharp teeth that oozed with blood and pus. Their legs and hands had also been modified, giving them a more hound-like or quadrupedal lizard appearance. They died just the same, though, with Sev seeing that as he put a slug clean through the open maw of one of them. It tumbled forward, dead, and caused one of its siblings to scramble.

"Cortana," Chief requested as he spent his bursts carefully, aiming for the exposed parts of the clone Combat Forms' bodies and right for the open mouths of the Lizards, trying to avoid their thicker skin. He saw Linda drop to her knees and reload, while Fred, now bereft of the plasma grenades he'd spent to stop an advance on the left, fired his M392 DMR on the fully automatic setting, the kick of the weapon somehow slamming his shoulder hard enough to cause muzzle rise.

Cortana replied with a huff, flashing a timer on their displays. Apparently, getting a Republic ship to self-destruct was pretty tough, Chief thought. He watched the Combat Forms starting to stream up the ramps toward them. He, Boss and Sev took the right side, while Fred, Linda and Fixer took the left, with Fixer himself dumping two Anti-Armor rounds from his DC-17.

Linda sniped the larger beasts as they moved, stating, "Only exfil we have is jumping down and braving the horde," as she switched to her SMGs, the enemy now close enough for her range advantage to be negated. Chief nodded, watching the timer tick down below thirty seconds. The teams continued firing into the formation, finally taking fire from the horde.

Blasters singed shields, causing them to dip just as the 10 second mark was reached, then passed. Chief took two steps back toward the Console, Boss calling out loudly, "GET READY TO JUMP!" and using his comlink to state, "Kelly, Scorch, we're nearly done! If you haven't found a ship yet, RV with us ASAP!"

"A BIT BUSY!" Scorch called out, the roar of the Infected Spartan echoing over the com, slightly muffled. Both Boss and Sev audibly swore in Mando'a before the team folded in around the Chief, firing their weapons into the swarm of alien zombies. Boss switched to his pistol and opened up into the horde, too, even as it drew closer.

Spatters of pus and blood started staining the armor of the team just as the clock hit zero. Cortana didn't even get to call out to Chief when the Spartan retrieved her from the console, with Boss calling out, "DELTA, BLUE! ON YOUR FEET! WE! ARE! LEAVING!" before dropping a trio of thermal detonators right onto the catwalk. The Spartans and Commandos jumped, the blast shattering the Transparisteel windows just as the soldiers landed and locked their mag-boots to the ground.

A gust of wind dragged them back, causing their feet to skid across the ground, sparks flying as the monsters around them began to fly out into the void of space. The Spartans and Deltas threw a few more grenades their way just to make sure no corpse is ever picked up and prayed that would be enough. When the window shutters sealed and the alarms for the self-destruct began to ring, the team began to sprint.

"Tracking Kelly and Scorch a few levels below us," Cortana told everyone, "Looks like they heard our request for an RV. We have about fifteen minutes before the entire ship goes up like a Fireworks show during the Survival Day celebrations," and she paused, "Aaand I can track the Spartan that's after them. DUCK!"

Before the team could bloody well react, the ground below them shattered and Kelly and Scorch flew through, followed by the Spartan. While they landed in front of Chief and Boss, the monster stumbled forward and growled, glaring at the Chief from behind its cracked helmet as it slowly staggered forward. Its HUD, broken as it was, registered their IFFs…

"Chief…" Boss asked as he aimed his blaster. The Spartan nodded and was the first to squeeze the trigger as the countdown timer on their helmets continued to tick down. Boss and Fred helped Kelly and Scorch to their feet, noticing mild battle damage on both of them. The teams loaded up and began peppering the monster ahead.

Its armor's shields flared a burning red as it roared, then surged forward, toward the Chief, raising its armored claws and slashing at the Spartan. Chief barely dodged back as he kept pumping rounds into the alien, with Cortana stating, "Hang tight! I'm working to lock his armor, but the System's screwed beyond recognition, even worse than the Ship!"

The other members of Blue dragged the monster back and threw it, but it stopped on its feet, charged and swung again, hitting Fred and slamming him against the wall. Kelly herself began pumping shells to the point she might've even managed to redline the monster's shield. She yelped the moment it rammed into her and pinned her to the floor, starting to deliver hammerblows against her chest.

All of Delta formed up, opening fire on the monster with their blaster rifles and focusing it down. Its shields shattered and its armor began to heat as bolts of energy struck the Titanium and the underlayer of crystalline alloy, some rounds penetrating and drilling holes into the half-Spartan's body. Sev barked, "Where the KRIFF IS HIS INFECTION FORM!?"

Chief appeared, grabbing the monster just as it lounged at Delta and slammed it against the floor, putting his Magnum up to its head and firing. Its helmet's visor shattered, revealing the sole visible eye, yellowed and bulging, staring back at him. He put another slug into it, causing the monster to scream out in pain, before pulling both its legs back and kicking Chief into the ceiling, denting the metal. It almost broke the man's shields.

It grabbed Kelly by the throat and pinned her against the wall just as the Infection Form's feelers sprouted from the armor's cracks like flowers. It tried choking the Spartan to death even as she blasted it in the chest once, then threw her weapon away and struck her again. Linda pounced on its back, grabbing it by its broken neck and pelting it with rounds from her SMGs.

"Almost…" Cortana spoke as Chief dropped down from the ceiling, bending the ground while Delta squad pushed past him, laying into the monster. The countdown had dropped by half at this point, leaving the team a measly seven minutes to escape the ship. Chief drew his pistol and he and Fred decided to close range.

Fred delivered the first punch, cracking the armor plate of the monster to make its chest visible. It turned around and roared in anger at the Spartans as Chief started firing rounds right at its chest. When it swung for the Spartan, trying to bring the hammer down on the man's head, it froze, Cortana calling out, "KILL THE BASTARD!"

… And indeed, they did, Chief barking, "FOCUS FIRE!" while drawing both his weapons. The Spartans all grabbed theirs and Delta began putting shot and shell into it, emptying entire magazines as the armor overheated, cracked and broke, revealing the internal structure of the monster and the infection form in its chest. When the Chief's weapons ran low and everyone stopped to reload, SIERRA-117 did the smartest thing he could think of.

He cocked his fist back and, in a flash of memory from almost a decade ago, he punched clean through the monster's chest, feeling the infector explode after the hit, his hand punching out the nuclear microfusion reactor in the back. The creature collapsed, dead, thumping against the ground. Chief breathed a heavy sigh, while Scorch stated, "Force, Kriff that bastard…"

He agreed, wading over toward the microfusion reactor and kneeling in front of it, before stating, "I'm setting this thing for six minutes and thirty seconds, same as the current countdown… It'll wipe everything left out," before opening the rear of the system and typing out the detonation codes. He then stood up and said, "Delta. Escape Pods…"

"Follow u-" Boss spoke, staggering only as the ground began to shake. What was left of Captain Martz screamed a blood-curdling scream as his Proto-Gravemind form began chasing them down the halls like some sickening horror movie villain. Boss barked, "MOVE! NOW!" before firing his blaster. Chief fired his own gun after reloading and the teams began to move.

The static began to clear as the alarms continued to blare, the timer ticking ever lower. Cortana spoke, "I got the Coms working! Adviser, this is Cortana, Blue Team support AI! Requesting evacuation immediately! Will transmit coordinates! Additional:Get a cleanup crew over here, preferably one of our Phoenix-class support vessels! Priority CRIMSON!"

"Copy your last, Cortana. Ship is on its way," The Adviser replied incredibly calmly. Delta kicked a door down and threw a fragmentation grenade and thermal det back, staggering the beast when they exploded. The wall of flesh stumbled forward, its appendages and tentacles trying to grab at the Spartans.

Kelly got her leg caught, but Scorch was quick on the draw, calling out, "LET HER GO, YOU SON OF A BANTHA HERDING KRIFFHEAD!" before firing his anti-armor attachment. The explosion sheared the appendage off via shrapnel and blasted Martz's body apart, leaving only the all-encompassing mass of flesh as it charged toward them.

The team found the escape pods, ovoid-shaped escape vehicles with a reinforced transparisteel forward window and control panels. Boss made sure the entire Joint Task Force boarded their pods and, when the room proved empty, he hit the button. The monster behind them roared as the doors closed in its face, the ship beginning to violently shake as the core.

As the pods launched, their directional thrusters engaging, the Republic evac ship and its UNSC counterpart jumped into the area. And at the same time, the Adviser was able to watch the Prosecutor flash-boil, its hull breaking apart outward. It detonated into a short-lived second sun before a rippling shockwave spread out in a sphere.

As it hit the ship, the crew stumbled, the Adviser grabbing the com and barking, "All gunships, begin Search and Rescue!" then switching frequencies. He called out, "This is CC-01/425 on Emergency Channel! Delta Squad, Blue Team, respond!" only to hear static. He scoffed, then yelled again, "CC-01/425 to Delta and Blue, does anyone copy!? Don't leave us hanging here…!"

Another moment of static passed, the Adviser feeling his heart beating in his throat as he called out again, "Boss, Chief, answer!"

… And the static cleared, Boss replying, "... No need to yell, Adviser. We've all made it off that sinking ship," in a surprisingly blase tone for someone who just nearly died, though a faint trace of sadness for the Prosecutor was felt. The Adviser took his helmet off and breathed a very, very audible sigh of relief while hearing Delta let out hearty laughs that sounded more like released adrenaline and stress. Three-Eight added, "Transmitting pickup coordinates now."

… Force, they were gonna give him a heart attack…

Nathema

The climb up the mountain to the smoldering crater was somewhat grueling, but not horrific for the soldiers belonging to Meetra's little expeditionary force. Six was telling her about his team as she'd asked. And he was speaking quite calmly, "And Jun, the shady bastard, is still alive. Hell, I'd be surprised if he isn't on the Infinity, though I haven't run into him…" but he was smiling. Meetra could feel it.

"At least one member lives, sir," Richard quipped as he cradled his assault carbine. The man nodded, to which Richard hummed and listened to the com. They'd heard the blast as they were climbing the mountain and waited for a report. A report that Commander Ordo was now giving him. He looked at Meetra and said, "Casualties in the bombing, ma'am. Presumed to be Civilian Militia wanting to start a Guerrilla war."

"Great," Meetra breathed a deep sigh, "We'll be out of here as soon as we seize what needs to be seized from that temple," before she checked her equipment. She then said, "Tell the Commander he's free to perform sweeps, but not to bother the locals too much. If we ever do a complete sweep to liberate Nathema, I'd rather they not be too pissed at us."

"Understood. Relaying," Richard stated as he began leading the way forward.

Paul said, "Least this is more open air than the tight quarters of that old OP on Rishi," as he hefted his rifle. Katja laughed beside him, holding close her own MA40 as they advanced up-hill. She scoffed and said, "Christ, we should've brought Vic and Vesna. Those two are mountain goats…" before adding, "I hope they're alright back in the town."

"You and me both," Paul quipped, then paused as he saw Richard disappear, his reflective panels activating as he climbed faster than them. He asked, "Kid alright, El-Tee?" while looking at Six. The Spartan nodded, then gave a chop of the hand and made a binocular sign with his hands. Paul smiled and nodded, glad it was just early scouting.

As they reached the burning wreck of the enemy's Triple-A emplacement, they found the blown-out wreck of one of their quadrupedal anti-air guns, its barrel bent in a grotesque shape. Corpses of Battle Droids lay strewn about in the rubble, alongside bloodied local Militia corpses, those of soldiers clad in scarlet uniforms.

Meetra wrinkled her nose and narrowed her lips, then checked and re-activated her comlink, not remembering why she shut it off, before calling, "Commander, be advised:If hostile units are uniformed, they'll be wearing bright red uniforms and…" she saw a modified blaster laying next to the corpse and completed, "... Possibly heavily modified blasters… Looks like those fancy 'Nimbus' Commandoes."

"Roger that, General. We'll keep our eyes open down here," Ordo replied. She heard a slight shake in his voice, though it mixed in with the determination of a CO not to see more of his soldiers die next to him. She smiled a little sadly, then gave a single hum of approval. He said, "Thanks, General… Garrison, out…"

Six told her, "The Commander's first combat engagement."

She chuckled lightly, then replied, "He did say it's nothing like the simulations," before scratching her cheek. The two looked out toward the town, which was lit only by the lights of the road and those in the windows and from the Patrol Vehicles. Above, the stars shined brightly, the flickering dots of the joint UNSC-Republic fleet hovering overhead amidst the dome's many pinpricks of light.

Six put a foot up on the parapet dug out of stone and activated his visor's polarization function, allowing his helmet systems to zoom in down below, rangefinder putting them at almost a klick out from the town, uphill every way. He also saw a platoon of Clones marching toward them, their reinforcements. The bulky clone with the Z6 was among them.

He snapped a salute and said, "Commander's orders are that we reinforce and relieve your position, General," before setting his gun down and stating, "Alright, boys. Let's triage and clean out the clankers and the Commandos and bury them," while the Spartans, Marines and Meetra helped them. Within moments, the place was 'spotless', in the sense that it lacked corpses and much of the debris.

They'd also managed to move the destroyed anti-air gun somewhat, revealing the passage into the interior area:A small reinforced bunker where the Soldiers slept and the droids operating the gun could recharge. There was also an ammo canister stowage in the floor, covered by a thick blast door, so that was… Something.

"Don't occupy this spot," Meetra said in a murmur, "The tibanna cans that wreck used to fire packed enough punch to make me think they're Turbolaser-standard ones, meaning ship killers. If one of'em goes off, the whole top of the mountain and whatever's on it goes with…" and she looked at the bulky clone. The Z6 gunner nodded, rallied his team, then snapped a salute that Meetra quickly returned.

Six said, "We should get moving, ma'am. Cover of darkness keeps us hidden the best against possible enemy attacks. Plus, Richard's gone on ahead," and that last bit seemed to show the man's worries. Meetra nodded and rallied her teams, beginning the march toward the temple and keeping them divided. She could feel Richard up ahead, scouting out a route for them, so she led them that way.

Paul looked back at the Z6 guy and asked, "How much does one of those rotaries cost? Might buy one as a gift for Vesna and Vic's wedding anniversary," to which the Clones, Katja and Meetra let out laughs of various intensities. The man hefted the gun and pat it, about to answer the question when they heard a twig snap, causing everyone to suddenly turn tense.

Richard spoke quietly, "Contact… Marking four Commandos at the edge of our Motion Trackers," his voice muffled by the com. He pinged the spot with a NAV Point that showed up on Six, the Marines' and the Clones Heads-Up Displays. Each member gently shifted their aim toward the spot as they moved to cover.

"Take them out quietly if you can, Dick," Meetra requested, watching the Commandos. She could feel them nearby and she could also see the distortion left behind by Dick as he advanced. The first Commando popped his head out gently, aiming his blaster rifle from the darkness toward the Clones and the Marines… Only to disappear in the shrubs, grabbed by the nothingness.

A second Commando stood up and opened fire where his old friend had been, with his buddies joining soon after. Bolts of energy singed the bark of a tree, though Richard wasn't there anymore, having already moved out of the area to strike out at the next guy. Six lifted his DMR, scoped in one of the men and sniped the leading man, which gave the green light for the others to open up.

Bolts of blue plasma and bullets zipped through the air, searing through the sky and cutting down the two remaining men in a bloody volley. Dick appeared in front of them and gave a thumbs up, before walking back to the team. Meetra sighed deeply, then stated, "Alright, gents. Clones, set up on top of this hill to our left, provide overwatch. Everyone else, let's move… Eyes open for movement and let's hurry along."

The enemy deployed their own commandos to Nathema, to really nobody's surprise. The moment the Allied Fleet and militaries made landfall, the enemy must've known, considering Nathema was one of their most important farming and presumably mining worlds, Meetra thought. They'd deploy their best, meaning other units might've been around.

She told Kat and Paul, "You guys must've been having a rough one if the Elites and Covvies could actually cloak like Dick can."

"It was way worse at times," Paul murmured, partially angry at the subject being brought up. He slung his weapon over his shoulder and said, "Be glad we ain't facing even a Covvie splinter, ma'am. They aren't as merciful as Droids are," while scanning their surroundings. If one was to assume that was true, that meant these Nimbus Commandos weren't gonna be much better, being what Meetra thought would be the answer to the Republic's own ARCs and other Commando units like Delta Squad.

As they advanced, Meetra could finally sense it. The Darkness of this place soon reached out to her, quiet whispers calling from her right, forcing her to alter course, with her team immediately behind her. None of them seemed to ask what bothered the Jedi. They only followed her instincts toward their ancient target.

And indeed, deep in the forests guarding the mountains, they saw it. Though it was faint and hidden by the canopy, black basalt pillars rose from among the leaves, carved by the weather rather than by the hands of sentient beings. Nathema had once been both a lush jungle world and a tomb world, only to return to its current status relatively recently in Galactic history. However, the secrets hidden by the Sith and, presumably, by what Meetra knew as the Eternal Alliance. The same group who helped defeat Vitiate in battle millennia ago. She recalled fighting by their side like it was yesterday. Brave warriors, the lot of them…

If they were still around, finding them to combat the coming Darkness was important…