Katya Volkovskaya
August 30th, 2552
15:00
Dry Dock C
The SinoViet Shipbreaking Yards
Aszod
The Fall of Reach
[}-{]
The world lurched again. Great clouds rolled in from the sea as it burned, leaving cauldrons of steam and plasmatic ash wafting over the landscape. Two figures moved towards her from the Boneyard and Jack could do little but hold her hand tightly as they wondered which of their friends wouldn't be joining them. They moved with the lines of refugees, huddled in their masses, snaking around the lot of the docking yard like a funeral procession.
There were small and abandoned children, there were parents using them as surrogates. Here, brothers, mothers, friends and children became an amalgamated mess. Social order was gone and all that remained was to care for those next to you as though they were your own.
In the skies, two charon-class frigates circled the docks. Even now, Katya could see the long arm of the Aegis Fate in the sky, firing occasionally into the probing ranks of the covenant army across the desert.
The two figures grew closer and closer, the solemnity of their steps could be seen in the snail like trails left behind in the sand. Katya swallowed as Mikaela and Preston came into view.
"Jesus. The kid…" Jack said, swallowing.
Katya could see the lump in his throat, a swollen mass that she was sure was as prominent as her own.
The pair watched in silence as Preston and Mikaela slipped among the crowd and weaved their way towards them. As they got closer, Katya could see the look of sorrow on their faces. When they came to a halt, Katya embraced them both in a rare display of affection.
Jack smiled, noting to himself the change in his girlfriend and the way that she was beginning to let people in.
"Jack… I'm sorry. She just… I don't know why she did it." Preston said, despondent. "I need to go back. On Skopje, she came back for me."
Mikaela touched his shoulder with a tenderness that betrayed the flutters of her heart. "She wanted you to live, Preston. She did it to save us all."
"What did she do?" Katya asked, cocking her brow like a primed cannon.
"She allied with the Brute that had been following Drake… in exchange for our lives, she gave them herself and Drake."
"That sounds like her." Jack smiled.
"Damn." Was all Katya said, "Did they want her alive?"
Preston nodded, holding back tears.
"It's nothing she hasn't faced before. We will escape and save her."
"And if she dies?" Jack asked, giving his voice to the words the others couldn't say.
"Then on my life, I will see us find the World Forge and continue ARC DREAM in her memory."
In a sea of disparate people, they sank below the waves. In immutable silence they grieved for their friend. Preston wanted to know why. Jack wanted to know details. Mikaela thought of Declan and began to believe she would never see him again; Katya saw it all on their faces but it was her eyes that watered.
For years at school, for years at Luna, all she had wanted was the friendship of the woman she respected most in the world. Now she realised that she would never tell her how she truly had forgiven her. She wondered if Maddie had done it because of what Katya had said to her.
She shook her head.
Maddie wasn't like that , she had never been like that.
As the sun began to wane on the sky. Katya and the others stepped aboard the William Wallace and found their spot in the cargo bay.
The Viper
August 30th, 2552
15:45
SinoViet Smelting Plant
Aszod
The Fall of Reach
[}-{]
The camp guards roared and the Viper spat back. Tartarus kept her close as the birds and the dogs howled at her. Elites watched each other and then at the one-armed feral animal that stalked through the camp.
It wasn't really a camp, it was an ammo dump for the last part of the operation to wipe out the last of the humans. Drake had retreated to the smelting plant, which would be attacked soon enough. For now, Tartarus was deciding whether maddie should be taken back or let loose on her human compatriots. He and his pack were huddled around a projector, where another prophet hovered menacingly to deliver a sermon.
The half destroyed helmet she wore did its best to translate as she attempted to follow the conversation. As far as Maddie was concerned however, revenge was not on the cards. It would be unlikely that she would kill Drake but besieging his unit with the hounds of hell she was surrounded by seemed poetic enough that she hoped to pursue him.
"It wanders in lines, it builds in pieces, but the arms it has, only wheels, greases."
The Viper turned to see a T'voan, ageing and grey, talking right at her.
"What do you want?"
"To test you."
"I've been tested enough already. Now back off before I call you poultry and pluck you like my dinner"
A gaggle of the geese-like creatures began to surround them, cooing and clucking in unison as they watched the old T'voan speak. The Kig-Yar were remarkable in their ability to master languages. They weren't her favourite species in the covenant, that would go to the grunts, whom she often found to be woefully oppressed but the Kig-Yar and their various subspecies were a relatively close second.
She was jealous of them, having been given the offer that humanity never had. They has joined the covenant peacefully, as mercenaries, and been spared genocide as a result.
"You want to play a game with me?"
"Far better than fighting, without a blade: Knighting. Upon the honour of literacy goes the spoil."
Maddie saw that the rhyme was an invitation, a kind of socratic dance, achieving understanding through rhyme and play.
"And yet your warriors toil, like an unrelenting gargoyle. Why now speak, when your words are blades?"
The old T'voan smiled its species own version of a grin. It bowed its head to the challenge.
"Your slaughter forbade, your mind is the raid. An elegant repost for an enemy of renown."
The Viper noted the silence in the crowd, and turned to them as the little cluckers watched with beady eyes and bated breath.
"Those words a false crown, like lies in a gown. Prodding and poking, like a jeer on a barb."
He bowed, conceding the point. She had been u fair to give him a word he would struggle to rhyme but the bird was gracious enough that he would likely allow her the first point.
"In a game we speak truth, without a punishment to rue, in this way I speak directly to thee."
"your oppression is glee, unlike ours in treaty, the vitriol of the masters to keep us blind."
"Your appraisal is fine, we share a kindred mind, but motivation seems to me all but divine."
"I seek only what is mine, like a grape and a vine. Alliances are cheap and I am…"
The Viper conceded, not because she couldn't find a rhyme but because she couldn't articulate her feelings. Why was she here, did she have a plan?
"You are damned, as am I: a lamb. Sent to vicious slaughter, a parent to no daughter long since reconciled my fate with all-father."
"Your gods they might rather, their children betray. You fight per your nature, leave my worlds a crater, until all you have wrought be your quiet, godless fate."
"Such was my mate, destroyed on this rock. The prophets game: I am wise, their lies we despise, and yet we march on towards the tomb we create."
"And what a spate! of confessions so true. Morality damns you, my faith anew. That a self aware species shan't defend us therein." The Viper spat, disgusted.
"And what of my kin? Be slaughtered like you? I shall not be judged by jealousy, my people are free. Even if they die in their millions for our Holy See."
The Viper grinned. He'd broken the rhyme. He realised it, too and conceded the game bowing low as a sign of respect.
Rafe dismissed the crowd with some squawks of his mother tongue and soon they stood in the drizzling rain, waiting for the Viper to be sentenced. For her part, the Viper was at peace. Her decision had saved her family and the friend she had grown so fond of, there was no regret. Only the strange certainty of a good decision remained.
"You riled me, human." Rafe said as the last gawker departed.
"You made it easy."
"Hmph. I am Rafe T'cho and this," he patted the drone sitting beside him, "this is Clover."
"Lucky." The Viper said, "He only has four wings."
Rafe laughed. "You're perceptive."
"It was a professional necessity. The four leaf Clover is a strange reference, considering its rarity."
"Indigenous to your homeworld, I have heard."
The Viper nodded. "the only place it has grown in numbers was on the moon of Hestia V. Meridian."
"On the plains around… Mount Sundial."
"You were there?"
"I was. I remember it all very clearly."
"was Clover?"
"Clover is the only friend I have. We fight together for Tartarus, now. As penance for our last warmaster's betrayal." He replied, "Ketarus wasn't like the other brutes. He lived up to the brutes reputation but… we would have followed him into the grave had he asked it of us. He was curious."
"He was a heretic."
Rafe nodded, the spindles on his neck bristled. The Viper wondered if that was an act of frustration but she hadn't had the pleasure of talking with a Kig-Yar like this.
"He's still alive." The Viper said, craning her neck to the acrid skies above them.
"There was rumour… that he fought for you."
"He fights with me. You make it sound like I'm famous."
"The prophets kill any who speak it but rumours of the Shadow Meridian are spoken in hushed tones around the hearths of the covenant. The ascetics disappeared and the hiss of discontent is heard on the winds of every species in the empire."
The Viper remembered the lyrics from a song on Mikaela's audio player: You can't start a fire without a spark. It was a jarring moment for her, who had resigned to death. Mikaela had asked her to live in spite of hardship and yet, here she was: committing to more of it for her friends. Her decision has been absurd, that much was true and It was surprising that Tartarus had even entertained the idea.
"Do you long for revolution, Rafe?"
"I did, once. Now I am resigned to my fate. I have fought a long war, Viper. I am tired and a world without this war would have no use for me."
"Perhaps that is best, then. An old soldier and a wasted youth, dying together."
"Or maybe, opportunity arises. You wish to leave?"
"I plan to."
"An escape, then. For us both."
Tartarus left the projector, then approached them as they stood in the scarred remains of the human camp.
"The Prophets want you returned to them but…" he growled, "fortune favours us. The Brute ascension will require… justification."
"A final sacrifice. I will see your designs come to light, Brute."
"Then prepare yourself, human. We will move out soon."
The Viper assembled with Rafe and Clover at the head of the new advance. Rumours of demons falling through the sky were abound throughout the ranks but when she looked up, the Viper could only see the spindly legs of Scarabs falling from the sky like spiders and the sun blocked by clouds of silver and grey.
Captain Alex Harper
August 30th, 2552
16:00
Dry Dock C
The SinoViet Shipbreaking Yards
Aszod
The Fall of Reach
[}-{]
'Noble team is en route from a deployment at the Babd Catha Ice Shelf. It is expected of you that the skies are clear for their arrival in the AO.'
"Dot. We are two frigates and a prowler. We're all that's left on this planet and all that stands between the last of the refugee's and-"
'Acknowledged, Aegis. However, we cannot risk this final asset falling into covenant hands. It is of vital importance that-'
'It'll be done, Dot.' Said the commander of the UNSC Exponential.
"Without your radar we will be blind," Alex said, grimacing at Auntie Dot's image. "we can't afford to let you go."
'We'll stay in the air as long as possible, Captain. Don't you worry."
He was still glued like Lincoln's statue to the seat of the command chair. As he looked out over the bridge, Alex felt his heart palpitations in his throat. His hands felt clammy and his head swam with thoughts of failure. It was one thing to face the covenant with no hope of survival. It was another thing entirely to be left alone and at their mercy.
"Captain?" The commander of the UNSC Last Summer said, "all non essentials are with you. This is it. You might as well let Exponential go because in just over an hour, this planet will be a wasteland and there won't be anyone to guard."
"Aye," Alex said, sadly. "Godspeed, Exponential. It was a pleasure."
'Likewise Aegis. Make sure they all know what we did, okay? It'd be nice to get into a history book someday.'
Alex waited. The crew of the UNSC Aegis Fate waited. At 16:47 hours, the UNSC Exponential exploded as they covered the approach of a pelican holding the remains of Noble team.