Katya Volkovskaya
August 30th, 2552
16:52
Dry Dock C
The Evacuation Ship William Wallace
Aszod
The Fall of Reach
[}-{]
The ship rumbled as the take off sequence began. Crammed like fish into a tin, the survivors of Reach sat like hollow trees with their limbs tangled like roots, groaning as gravity began to change under their feet.
A great forest of people, who had seen their world fall apart, listened to the pounding on the hull as the Captain sealed the ship, leaving those who remained to their fate. The clanging sounded right up to lift-off and Katya winced as the engines ignited and the clanging was silenced by the eruption of the sublight thrusters.
"That… was grim." Preston said, leaning his head back against the bulkhead.
"You can say that again." Jack replied, squeezing Katya's hand. "Can't believe we actually made it."
"We didn't," Mikaela said, frowning. "Not all of us got away."
Silence.
"How are you holding up?" Jack asked, watching her with his quiet and unassuming eyes.
"Not good." She shook her head, "I mean, won't these guys just turn us in?"
Katya shook her head, "around 2532, an unspoken law among the survivors of glassed colony worlds began to emerge. Those who escape, through official methods or not, are granted voyage off of the worlds they came from. The guys at the door don't ask and we don't tell."
"Unless ONI comes to pick us up." Jack added, shrugging.
"Which is why I'm going to go up to the bridge and get them to send our beacon to Tuk. He can pick us up before ONI do."
The ship climbed into the atmosphere, rattling as it dodged shots from passing covenant patrols that hadn't expected it to launch.
'This is your Captain speaking. Make peace with God and behave down there. I'm not gonna have us all survive just so that you can start killing each other out of blind panic. Now, we got UNSC support to ward off anyone who wants to get close while we make our way towards them. The Navy is going to cover us while we prepare for the jump but the scale of orbital debris means that we gotta clear the site of the battle unless we plan to shred ourselves to pieces in slipspace."
The ship lurched violently as the sound of a MAC round flew by.
"Could any UNSC personnel, especially naval and commissioned officers please assemble on the bridge. Your expertise would be greatly appreciated."
"Well, you're up, Kat." Jack said, kissing her on the cheek.
Katya nodded: it was going to be a tense few hours.
The Viper
August 30th, 2552
16:55
The Smelting Plant
Aszod
The Fall of Reach
[}-{]
Crouched behind a rock, the Viper watched as the William Wallace escaped and her friends left the planet. It was a final victory, an absolution of her sins, and a prescient moment of peace in the maelstrom of carnage around her.
Rafe was beside her, firing his needle rifle at a pair of head hunters who were holding back the right flank of the covenant advance.
"Press the attack!" Tartarus yelled, gripping a headhunter by the neck and throwing him to the floor. "Rafe, Viper. Aid the right flank!"
Rafe turned to face her as Tartarus slammed his foot down into the soldier's skull.
"Do you have a plan?" Rafe asked.
The viper nodded, "Cover me and Clover. Suppress them if they get any ideas and send in the cavalry when I engage them."
Rafe nodded, "go." He swung his needle rifle to bear down on the troopers, who took cover from the volley of fire.
The Viper ignited her shield and advanced, feeling the beating wings of the bug behind her. It ticked and cricked unsettlingly but as a dead woman walking, The Viper, in her state of dissociation and medication-induced delusion, seemed all too eager to turn her back to danger; to invite the death she knew was coming.
The girl, the woman, and the being that had been Maddie did not raise the shield and flinch as rounds bounced off the front. Instead, the predatory husk of that person, the Viper, in all its glory, charged forth like a lance, spearing through fire like a jet of water. She carved a path, covered by Clover as he chirruped and set upon the closest man.
The Viper vaulted the rock and leaned with all her weight, pushing it into the edge of the shield into the wrist of the second man. He grunted as the shield battered his wrist and knocked his weapon from his hand. As he stumbled, the Viper struck at his stomach with the shield, pushing him out of the cover of the rock and into the open, where three rounds from Rafe speared his heart and lungs.
As he exploded into pink and red mist, the Viper turned and drew her axe, Clover released the struggling man as she got close and brought the axe down upon his clavicle with a curdling crunch.
"Let's go, up those steps!" Rafe shouted, commanding a group of wary grunts up the stairway to the upper floors of the smelting plant.
Tartarus grunted as he watched the headhunter bleed to death. She yanked the axe free, a spurt of blood seemed suspended in air "A demon follows us. We need to hurry."
The Viper frowned. A demon meant a SPARTAN and she felt a little uneasy as she heard of their approach. No doubt they had some other strange task ahead of them but the Viper didnt waver, she bound up the steps of the plant, two behind Tartarus, and emerged onto the upper balcony.
"There!" The brute said, pointing to two figures across the smelting room. "Follow them!"
Nico and Drake must have heard the roar because they turned and pointed before scurrying away, deeper into the complex.
The Viper and Rafe followed, with Clover in tow. As they ran across open ground, she could see Scarabs in the distance, one of which was harassed by a lone Pelican. She skidded to a halt as she saw its portside engine catch fire. It spun around the side of it and rose high into the air. The Viper, being a creature of emotionless ire, watched as it plunged itself into the chassis of the large mechanical spider and exploded into a ball of light. She tore off into a run, following her enemy deep into the facility and along its iron halls, leaving the sight to its peace.
As she came to a corner, two shots rang out in quick succession. She slid to the opposite corner and peeked around it, seeing a lone trooper standing there with its gun drawn.
"Drake." She said, coolly. "You didn't finish the job."
He fired again. Her shield whipped up in front of her, deflecting the round into a nearby pipe, bursting it and releasing a cloud of steam into the coffin-like halls.
"It appears I did. You aren't the lass I pulled from Skopje."
"She was naive"
"Aye, she was. She wasnae fuckin' traitor, though."
"She was a child."
The mist hung close to the floor. The sounds of battle rattled along the unhallowed halls of the smelting plant.
"Everything I have ever done. It was for the greater good. Never revenge, never did I help them."
The Viper laughed as steps could be heard from her left. With all the stims and adrenaline running through her veins, the Viper could hear like a bat. She coiled, baiting the assailant in.
"Agent Drake. I traded your lives for the future of ARC DREAM. Thanks to me, Mikaela and Preston and Jack and Katya are gone. You traded fifty thousand lives for a SPARTAN."
"I traded fifty thousand lives for ARC DREAM."
"No, you didn't know about ARC DREAM. You didn't know a damn thing about it and you and Parangosky hated that because it was the one thing you needed to control. You routinely endangered my family, leveraged me against my grandfather, and you put my sister in harm's way. At some point, this was bound to happen!"
"I didn't have-"
"-anything to do with Parangosky moving Eliza to Ballast. If, for some reason, I chose to believe that, do you really think it matters? You bleed black, Drake. There's nothing that ONI does that you think is beyond the pale; you are as close to the embodiment of that organisation as Parangosky herself."
Drake paused. The Viper ducked. A blade slashed where her neck had been, and she swung her shield upwards. The tip of the plasma cracked through the faceplate of her assailant, revealing Nico's face beneath it. She was upon him immediately, dancing around him as Drake yelled something about a clear shot. She landed kick after kick to his shins and thighs, bruising Nico as Drake closed the distance.
He clattered into her as Nico rolled away. The shield extinguished and Maddie reached for the axe. Clover appeared then, dodging and grappling with Drake as the Viper rose to her feet and struck at Nico. He staggered back. She kicked him hard against the wall and swung hard. The axe crunched and scraped and, with a loud pop, exploded through Nico's eye and smashed against the wall.
Nico howled and staggered back. Drake wrenched him behind him and drew his pistol. The Viped was already gone, slinking back into the mist and laughing down the halls to the tune of clover and his buzzing.
"Come back Nico so I can cleave off the rest of your face."
The pair of them bolted, bursting out into the rest of the complex. Maddie, Clover, Rafe, and Tartarus followed them. Maddie stood, pursuing them until she came to a room with a window. She stopped as the sky opened up and a frigate exploded over the boneyard.
Alex Harper
August 30th, 2552
16:58
Above Dry Dock D
Aszod
The Fall of Reach
[}-{]
"Sir, Last Summer! She's gone!"
"Is that MAC still firing?!" Alex asked, "Patch us into Dot and Noble team. That cruiser will go for us if she greases the Autumn."
The voice of Captain Keyes echoed over the bridge: "Cruiser moving into position! I need it dead!"
The PDCs opened up on waves of phantoms and banshees as Alex ordered Mei to swing the bough of the ship northwards. In his gut, his bowels wrenched like a jammed sprocket, exploding from its mountings.
"Sir, we need to leave." someone said, Alex raised his hand to silence them, his face set like concrete as the cruiser moved in for the kill.
'Mass driver won't crack those shields! Steady, SPARTAN.'
The cruiser's ventral energy beam began to glow, its shields dropping to allow it to carve reach into glass.
'Fire now Lieutenant! Hit her in the gut!"
"Now!" Alex yelled, watching a bolt streak through the sky and colliding, like a wave, into the centre of the ship's excavator. It exploded in a sheet of white light as the Aegis Fate accelerated and the Autumn deployed its R7 thrust couplings, scorching the planet's surface as it followed them out of the atmosphere.
Ships broke away from the covenant fleet, pursuing the Autumn as it danced through the sky. It dodged and weaved, its engines had been upgraded and rifled the ship beyond Aegis, causing chaos among the covenant navy who rallied to meet it. Whatever was aboard the Autumn helped the Aegis Fate slip through the clouds on a heading that would mask them in the magnetic storms raging around the planet.
The glassing continued below them as the crew looked out of the window at the destruction below before turning their attention to the tactical map to watch the Autumn soar through the void and into a portal. It was followed by a dozen covenant ships and then, they vanished.
Alex sighed with relief as the Aegis Fate sped towards the exit of the atmosphere. They would make for the moon where the William Wallace was waiting with a handful of surviving UNSC vessels. Alex could only hope that Maddie and the others had boarded it in time but in his heart Alex had begun to mourn.
The crew was silent as they contemplated the fate of Reach; it was a dour and oppressive silence that would continue for hours.