Chapter 13
Ship Master Bren 'Randgamee had not held his Fleet title for very long. He was a son of privilege, being as his father, Mehn Var 'Randgamee, was an Oracle Master. Even though Bren had proven himself on the space-faring battlefield, most still held his acceleration to Ship Master as a "gift" from the Council. But Bren 'Randgamee didn't really care what others thought. He had his own motivations and he didn't need to prove himself to his clan. Or to his father.
Father. If he could see me now . . .
Bren was alone in his quarters, still trying to make sense of how he had completely lost control over his ship. The initial contact on the asteroid with the humans was completely unexpected and he had lost a very reliable insertion team in the process. He had little choice but to engage the experimental cloaking drive and reorganize his troops. Bren allowed himself a smirk. Those humans had no idea I was watching their every move. So when the window of opportunity presented itself, I snagged the Prize from right underneath their poorly evolved noses.
Bren steadied his hand over the holographic display's control as he switched the security cam feed once more. The wide view of the bridge flickered to life and was just as dull as it had been a moment earlier. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at the soreness in his long neck. He knew he was right to follow the trail that led Unwavering Fortitude to the Oracle, but the smallest seed of doubt took root the moment the complications happened in the forward bay. Bren wasn't expecting the mythic Demons to disrupt the transfer of his prisoner and thus allowing the Oracle to roam freely about his ship.
And now his cruiser was crawling with humans, outnumbering his own troops. 'Randgamee was forced to rely on shiphands who were ill-prepared to defend against such an aggressive enemy. And the so-called Oracle . . . Bren felt his flesh pucker as he recalled in vivid detail how the flying machine had wiped out nearly half his warriors. Venting the atmosphere of the forward compartments . . . where is the honor in that?
Bren shook his head and got out of his chair. What would an Oracle know of honor? Smiling to himself, he retrieved his ceremonial energy dagger and Plasma Repeater from his footlocker and returned to stand over the hologram. If the Council could hear my thoughts I'd be labeled a Heretic! But deep down, Bren felt the previous held notion that any Oracle they stumbled across was worthy of the highest respect was cancelled out the minute Unwavering Fortitude's impromptu expedition took a turn for the worst.
The image on the holoscreen switched to one of the main corridors, and Bren clamped his mandibles closed in contempt at the sight of the marching human soldiers heading towards the bridge. Let them go; the Oracle will deal with them in the same way as my bridge crew.
The only reason 'Randgamee was still alive was by sheer circumstance. He was on his way down to the forward bay to find out what was taking his retrieval team so long, when the sudden whirlwind of venting atmosphere nearly pitched him out an airlock. Bren struggled, but managed to clear the blast door before it slammed shut. After the unresponsive hails to his bridge, he knew a losing battle with an Oracle was happening all over again.
Except this time, it wasn't his father's fault. It was Bren's alone.
For now, all he could do was wait and hope some of his brethren would last till the endpoint.
Their destination being minutes away, Bren double check his armor and weapons . . . and prepared himself for battle- if it came down to that.
When Nathan Parker entered the gravity lift lobby in the bow's middle level, he wasn't sure if the dead silence was the best welcome they could have received. If the enemy made any sound it was easier to detect them, but one that made no sound at all . . . those tended to be the deadliest.
But the oval-shaped room was void of any Covenant threat, much like the rest of the ship, and the four soldiers examined their new surroundings.
"This doesn't make any sense," Douglas said quietly into the comm even though he was within arms reach. "Where are all the split-lips?"
"You would think they would at least have a few guards this close to the bridge," Toril added.
"Yeah," the Spartan agreed.
Nathan sighed to himself in annoyance. Ever since he and Holmen had linked up with the two Spartans, Toril had taken a keen interest in everything Douglas had to say. Sure, Nathan was more of a silent listener, but Toril's almost-fawning towards the male Spartan was getting under his skin. He knew she would never admit to it, but Nathan was pretty sure Toril was falling for the MJOLNIR-clad soldier.
Holmen had even went so far as to slide up next to Douglas whenever they came to a stop, turning her head to match his visual scanning. And she was there now, sweeping her SMG across darkened corners and burned out glowpanels.
"It could very well be that this ship wasn't really designed for troop deployment," Alice murmured off to Nathan's left.
He turned to face Alice and found her posture rigid. Had she noticed the return attention Douglas had been giving Toril? He mentally shrugged. "Or maybe the shipmaster has everyone on the bridge with him."
"That'd be a dumb tactic," Toril muttered.
"I'm thinking the shipmaster didn't expect such heavy resistance, and he probably doesn't have that many troops on board," Alice quickly added.
Douglas nodded. "With almost a third of this cruiser dedicated to the cloaking device it's no wonder they might be ill prepared for major in-ship fighting." He sighed and straightened up to his full height. "Well, there's no point in waiting any longer."
"Right," Alice acknowledged.
She walked over to a glowing platform that had a single alien glyph etched into its base. Douglas took a position next to her and they both turned back around to face the two ODSTs.
Douglas held up a hand to forestall Toril entering the lift. "We'll go first, clear out the bridge's foyer, and signal you two when the coast is clear."
Nathan wasn't surprised to see Toril's shoulders slump. "Okay, but be careful," she said in a motherly tone.
Alice turned her head barely a centimeter towards the two conversing, and Nathan could tell the female Spartan was becoming suspicious of this odd bond. "We will," she answered for both of them and took a step backward into the grav-lift.
Douglas was right behind her and the two vanished up into the shimmering purple hue of the lift.
Rotating to his left, he found Toril staring up where the two Spartans had left. Part of him wanted to have it out right then and there and get to the bottom of her seemingly school girl infatuation with Douglas. But the soldier inside firmly reminded him of his need to stay focused on the mission at hand. Ah, what the hell. "Toril, are you okay?" he asked, choosing to take his line of questioning down a different path.
He was rewarded by Holmen's head reeling back. "What? What kind of question is that?"
"You just seem very . . . distracted. Do you need to talk about something?" he said, immediately questioning his choice of words.
"Drittsækk, what are you talking about?" She shook her head at her own sudden outburst, and started pacing back and forth in front of the grav-lift. "If you ask me, you're the one who's distracted, asking me stupid questions. You do understand what's going on?"
"Yes," Nathan said, trying to maintain his last finger hold on calmness. "Which is why we both need to be focused on the mission and not blindly following someone decked out in the latest MJOLNIR armor."
It was indeed, the wrong thing to say as Toril stopped her pacing and brought her head up. Nathan had finally been able to speak his mind and he totally burned the bridge he had previously constructed to Toril Holmen's confidence.
Even hidden behind her helmet's visor, Nathan knew Toril was staring lasers straight into his own eyes to explode out the back of his head. But for once, she was slow to respond. For as long as he knew her, Holmen was quick to retort, even with superiors. But her rigid posture slowly slackened and she turned away without saying a word.
Crap. Nathan wanted to slam his palm off his forehead for his sudden loss of control over the conversation. All he wanted was to gentle confront her about the obviousness of her recent attachment to Douglas, but it had blew up in his face like a frag grenade. And now he was watching the woman he truly wanted to know better sink below the plane of connectability.
"Do you know how I came to be on the Spirit of Fire?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. She still had her back turned to him, but her voice was once again under control. "I was there at Arcadia when the Covenant showed up and started slaughtering civilians. I was with the Belfast, and my battalion was sent to engage the ground forces on the surface." She shook her head. "As soon as our transport left the main hangar, Belfast was hit with a crippling barrage of plasma and we watched our ship break apart before our eyes."
Nathan sighed quietly and shook his own head in remorse. Sometimes it was easy to forget the hardships others have been through. A bitter taste formed in his mouth when he realized he was going about this whole thing all wrong. He was about to speak a word of apology when Toril continued.
"When we landed on Arcadia, we immediately engaged the Covenant troops on the capital city outskirts. We tried to press through to Spartan Red Team and the civilians trapped inside the city walls, but it was of no use." She finally turned back around to face him. "I was knocked semi-unconscious from a plasma grenade as the rest of my unit was wiped out. I should have been next, but then something else happened." She straightened up to her full height and raise her chin. "I felt a firm grasp on my collar and I was hauled to my feet.
"A force from the Spirit of Fire had landed inside the city and had helped evac the last civilians. They were falling back to a rally point when Spartan 042 reached out and saved me. Douglas saved me." Toril sighed as if weary from talking. "Maybe you've never really been in a helpless situation on the battlefield, but pardon me for wanting some face-time with a true hero."
Nathan slumped his shoulders in defeat. Now I really feel like crap. Here he was, trying to be all high and mighty by pointing out distractions of infatuation, when all along it was him who was lost in emotions. I'm jealous for nothing. He lowered his head to rest his chin on his chestplate.
And here Toril was, connecting the few dots that made her demeanor justified, and proving that Nathan had a lot to learn about reading a woman's state of mind. he just figured he'd give up. Apologize, you idiot. "Toril, I-"
A static squeal over the comm interrupted his apology. Both of them reached up to adjust the volume of the annoyance, but the sound died out before they could manage.
"What was that?" Parker asked Holmen, kicking his mind back into military-mode.
Toril brought her free hand up to check her comm unit. "Short burst. Could it be a jamming signal?"
Nathan frowned and slowly brought up his comm's volume to find it void of the static. "I don't know." He listened intently to the noise floor to find a low level hum now prevalent on his channel. "Switch to squad frequency." He matched actions with words and wasn't surprised when the hum was still there.
"You think the Covies are up to something?" Toril asked, hefting her SMG in hand.
"Who else?" he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
But Holmen's head turned toward the grav-lift the Spartans had taken.
Nathan's expression deepened as he flipped through the private channels to find the one Alice had previously set up. "Spartans, do you copy?" he hastily asked, pulling out his SRS from the magnetic lock on his back.
There was no reply.
Nathan didn't have to have Toril's visor depolarized to picture her worried face underneath. Nor did he have to think twice about following in the two Spartans' footsteps. That apology is going to have to wait. "Let's move."
The two ODSTs entered the grav-lift together with weapons ready.
Still posed in a crouch, Alice waited until the grav-lift shut off underneath and a solid piece of material slid into place to offer her a firm foundation to survey the bridge foyer. Oddly enough, there wasn't much of a foyer, as the small anteroom was structurally enveloped by a pair of the six arches that converged with a dome ceiling to form the bridge. Large viewports framed the three forward spaces between the arches, while rows of consoles and holoscreens lined the two rear spaces. The aft-most space in the arches was where Douglas and Alice found themselves, staring at an empty bridge.
"Swing left, I'll go right," Alice said, moving into the short deserted foyer.
Quietly, the two Spartans fanned out to clear the wide, rectangular foyer of any hidden hostiles, but regrouped at the entrance to the bridge when none were found.
"Same as the rest of the ship: quiet and empty," Douglas murmured, bracing himself against the left arch.
Alice absently nodded. "This has to be a trap. What shipmaster in his right mind would leave the bridge unoccupied?"
"Our mechanical friend might have taken care of anyone unlucky enough to be caught up here."
"But where are the bodies?" Alice asked with a frown.
A staccato of tones coming from the locator device slung over Douglas' shoulder cut off any reply. Keeping his SMG ready in his left hand, he checked the holographic readout and abruptly lifted his head up. "We've got company. Target dead ahead." Douglas raised the device and cursed when the negative tone responded to his ammo check. "Must be a 'one use' item."
"Maybe we can reason with the Monitor," Alice suggested, the words sounding hollow in her own head.
"Be my guest." He motioned with his head back toward the lifts. "You want to call in the reinforcements?"
"Sure," Alice said with a faint smile.
But before she could activate her comm, a wash of static boomed in her ears, only to immediately cut off from the auto-compression built into her helmet. A low buzzing replace the normal quiet of UNSC channels, but Alice tried anyway. "Holmen, Parker; you copy?"
She exchanged a look with Douglas who in turn shook his head. "No use."
"Ah, Reclaimers!" a mechanical voice exclaimed pointedly.
Alice swung her MA5B up into firing position as the previously unseen Contrite Variant detached himself from the bridge's forward-most console.
The Monitor came to a stop a half dozen meters away when he finally noticed the weapons being aimed in his direction. "Oh, my. There is no need for further hostilities. All threats in this section have been eliminated."
"It seems there's one more left," Douglas muttered under his breath. "Look," he began with a raised voice, "you've had your fun. But now we need to secure this ship and pull it out of slipspace."
Contrite Variant made an approximation of a head shaking. "I assure you, recreation was not my intent. We are returning to Installation B-23, just as protocol dictates."
"Protocol?" Douglas blurted out. "People could be dying and you're worried about rules and regs?"
Alice leaned over to Doug ever so slightly. "Careful," she cautioned. "I don't think this thing is playing with a full deck. He may not consider things like human life of much value."
"On the contrary, Reclaimer," the Monitor interjected. "Your species above all should be valued with utmost importance." He half turned away. "But you will see."
As the Monitor sputtered away towards the forward viewport Alice could see Douglas stir out of the corner of her visor. "Doug?"
He grumbled. "I don't know. It has something up it's sleeve."
Alice felt a wave of conflicting thoughts wash over her mind's eye. On one hand, the Monitor proved himself to be a nuisance and highly dangerous, as made evident by the lack of Covenant. But on the other hand, Contrite Variant had not been directly hostile towards either of them, aside from the first time Alice actually touched his frame. She sighed. "He wants us for something, that's clear, but so far he hasn't done anything harmful to us."
"Yeah," Douglas breathed. "And I'm not sure we could kill him even if we wanted to." He quickly turned his head to the right to lock a glare at Alice. "But don't think I won't try if I need to."
Deep down, Alice had to admit that she was curious of the Monitor's intentions, but the other half of her was screaming not to go along. "Maybe once it shows us this B-23, it will let us go on our way." Even saying the thought out loud didn't build her confidence.
Still keeping her assault rife ready, she followed after the Monitor with Douglas in tow. As she walked, her eyes swept over the crew pit and couldn't find a loose object any where. Then the horrible realization hit her. "He must have vented the bridge."
Douglas snorted. "That's one way of doing it. Less mess." He stopped short and his body went stiff. "Be ready to lock your magnetic soles."
"Copy."
While the bridge was truly Covenant in design, Alice couldn't help but notice subtle similarities to that of some UNSC ships. A floating central command chair was perched above a lowered crew pit, while numerous monitors were arrayed above the ring of consoles to give a panoramic visual. Either the Fleet Master in charge had finally acknowledged some merit in human design, or else this particular ship was unique in and of itself. She figured the latter was correct.
The two Spartans came to a stop three meters behind the Monitor as he stared out into the black void of slipspace. "You will be witness to the summation of my work. After centuries of labor there is fruit to bare." Contrite Variant turned around to face them. "We are here."
In a brilliant flash, the galaxy exploded before Alice as the cruiser reverted back to normal space. And she almost had to lock her soles as she was rocked back on her heels at the palette of color that was a small, three planet system, back-lit by the most vivid nebulae she'd ever seen. One planet in particular was larger than the others, and by the subtle shifting of their view, Alice figured it was their destination. Rich greens and blues swirled to shape continents on the surface, as patches of white designated random cloud cover. It was, Alice admitted, very similar to Earth in most respects, just smaller in size.
An elbow to her left arm was followed by Douglas' whisper. "How could our mapping ships miss this?"
Alice winced. "If this was on Tradewind's route and it was never able to transmit their findings, it makes sense that such a system was never stumbled upon." A brief flicker of light caught her eye and she looked over to the right viewport. A distant ring-like shape was beginning to make its way around the system's yellow star . . .
"Installation B-23 is located in high orbit over T437t in the Northern Hemisphere," Contrite Variant commented casually. "At this vessel's current speed we'll reach our final destination shortly."
"And what happens when we get there?" Douglas asked, duplicating the Monitor's flippant tone but keeping his SMG tucked into his shoulder.
As the planet T437t grew in size, Contrite Variant let out a short chuckle. "Once we are inside the Grid," he started, "I will show you the greatest success any Monitor has ever achieved."
Nathan flexed his fingers over the handle of his SRS and hefted the weapon once more. The weightless journey up the grav-lift felt completely alien to him, and he didn't know that if he dropped something it wouldn't follow him onto the bridge foyer.
Beside him, Toril Holmen was back in her natural soldier-mode, poised for battle. She had even shifted her pair of grenades around her waist to make them readily available at her left hip. Though she betrayed no nervousness, Nathan could detect her worry redlining into near panic.
Trying to work moisture back into his mouth, Nathan Parker took the initiative. "Okay, once we're topside let's check out the foyer. I'll go left and you go right. Sound good?"
Toril wordlessly nodded.
The linear mist brightened and a flower petal-shaped door opened above. The grav-lift belched them onto the deck softly and the two ODSTs broken port and starboard. The darkened foyer was nearly five times wider than it was long, connecting the two main corridors by ending in a pair of security doors at either end.
Nathan found nothing but a few busted security consoles and dim lighting. When he returned to the lift, Toril was running back from the darkened starboard side.
"Nothing. Let's head into the bridge," she said, already turning.
Parker reached out to slow her down and grabbed her arm. "Hold on a second." He gently pulled her back. "We go in quiet and alert." He motioned with his head towards the left arch.
The ODSTs kept their boots softly trotting on the bridge floor as they made their way along the curved left wall. Through the large viewports they could see the cruiser was indeed out of slipspace and heading towards a nearby planet.
Nathan tried to catalog everything he saw while still focusing his attention all around him. They had made it a dozen meters in when a flash of yellow light bounced off the floor and vaulted ceiling. "Lets go!" he hissed, turning his trot into a flat out sprint.
They made it around the end of a row of consoles to see something that took Nathan's breath away. The Monitor and the two Spartans were together at the forward viewport with yellow rings glowing around their collective frames. The golden light flickered all around them as their forms were bathed in tiny particles.
"Spartans!" Toril called out.
Douglas managed to turn part way around only to disappear with the other two in a delicate fade of shimmering light.
"No!" Toril yelled. She ran to the spot the Spartans just vacated and searched the ground then ceiling. "Where did they go?" she demanded, casting a glare at Nathan.
But he just shook his head. What the hell was that?
All around them, the various consoles began to flash and emit a cacophony of sounds. The bridge was bathed in a purple pulse as the cruiser sprang to life. Outside the viewports, the world began to spin as the Covenant cruiser descended into the upper atmosphere.
The floor began to shake from the turbulence and Nathan knew they were in big trouble.
Gregory Williams braced himself against a bulkhead when the rumbling of the deck threatened to cast him down. Beside him, Steven Miller wasn't so steady, and Williams watched him stumble to the ground.
"Is the cruiser firing?" asked an ODST over the rattling of the deck.
"No, even Covenant ships this size have suspensions built in to shrug off the recoil," the medtech behind the ODST answered. "This feels like we're in atmospheric free fall."
"What?" Miller blurted out, struggling to his feet with the help of Williams.
"Bridge. Now," Greg ordered.
He shoved himself off the portside corridor wall and ducked through the security station connected to the bridge foyer. Surprised to find no automatic restraint field kicking in, Williams pulled out his MA5B and sprinted to the bridge entrance.
But right when he got there, the vibrations ceased and the natural tug of gravity was again as it should be. Miller nearly ran into the back of him, and the rest of the forward squad took position on the right side of the dual arch entry. Greg peered out into the now calmly-lit bridge. "Call 'em out," he ordered, doing his best to spot any Covenant to target.
"Clear over here, Sir."
Kneeling down at Williams' side, Miller nodded. "Clear."
"Spread pattern Bravo, go." Greg took point and marched forward, but felt his jaw drop when he saw a pair of individuals looking out the main viewport that were definitely not Covenant bridge personnel. "Holmen? Parker?"
Reflexively, the two ODSTs spun around and brought their weapons up only to lower them at the sight of their commander.
"Sergeant? How did you get up here?" Parker asked, sounding confused.
Williams met his long lost ODSTs at the crew pit. Thankful that his two rouge squadmates were alive, Greg smiled. "I could ask you the same thing." Behind him, Miller's team was sweeping over the bridge and attempting to access the various consoles and stations. "You two okay?"
"We're fine, Sir," Toril Holmen answered quickly, taking a step forward. "But Alice and Douglas are gone. They left with that . . . floating machine."
"Who?"
"Two Spartans," Nathan Parker clarified. "The unknown AI object identifying himself as the Monitor, vanished with them right before our eyes."
"We need to find them," Toril pleaded.
Spartans. And they were lost. Greg sighed. This day keeps getting better and better. "Alright, but first thing's first: we need to secure this ship and find a safe place to land. Then we'll use the cruiser's comm to hail the missing Spartans and find out exactly where they are."
"Uh, that might not be as easy as you think." Williams turned to see Miller standing over a console. "That jamming signal we heard earlier is blocking any transmission, sending or receiving," Steven said, pointing toward the forward viewport.
"Can you locate the source?" Williams asked, coming around to Miller's side. The console looked completely foreign to him and he was glad Miller had some training with the Covenant symbols and their interpretation.
Miller ran his fingers over the floating keypad, eliciting negative beeps more than positive ones, but after a solid minute a waypoint appeared on the holoscreen.
Williams looked up at the main forward viewport and saw an overlay appear, outlining a space station they were quickly approaching and spilling various bit of windowed text around random portions of its hull. The shear size of the station was enough to rival the largest UNSC shipyard, but the elegance and use of geometry was unmatched. The facility had a tall, triangular midsection with towers that extended both above and below it's plane- some looked as if they had pierced through the station only to extend out the other end.
A red dot pulsed into existence, marking the jamming's source to be on the tip of one of the lower towers. "Great," Miller breathed. "It's inside that colossus. So much for that idea."
"Sir? You might want to look at this," another ODST called from a different station.
Williams quickly cataloged the location, uploading it to his helmet's memory, and crossed the distance to what he believed to be the Sensor Station. "What is it?"
The ODST, which Greg identified as Corporal Winters, motioned to the screen. "That jamming signal isn't just clogging our transmissions. We've entered into some sort of giant electromagnetic field. And the reason this ship isn't going haywire is because of it's shielding or it's countering the jamming with it's own inverse signal."
Williams frowned and then felt his stomach twist in knots. "The Spirit of Fire," he breathed. "If they head here and that jamming is still up . . ."
From the other console, Miller swore under his breath. "It's going to drop into atmosphere like a tin can."
"Well then," Williams started, looking up at the installation the cruiser was baring down on. "It seems we have a new assignment."
When the Oracle left with the two Demons, he had relinquished control over the cruiser, and now, with Bren's priority protocols, he was back in command of Unwavering Fortitude.
And was just in time. If Bren hadn't know the codes by hearts, his ship would have tumbled through reentry and crashed somewhere along the arctic mountains. Right when the Oracle vacated the ship, the shields flared up and lost nearly half their integrity within a few seconds. Luckily the Ship Master had properly identified the looping signal the Oracle was previously using as a safeguard against whatever jamming that was hitting the cruiser. He quickly resumed the loop and found the shields returning to normal. That explains why he initiated the signal right before we exited slipspace. A useful insight, indeed.
Bren 'Rangdamee watched the newest group of humans file onto his bridge via the security cam feed to his console's projector. A sardonic smile spread across his face as he saw his prey before him. As much as he wanted to enter the code into his console that would seal off and vent the bridge, he didn't.
For whatever reason, the Oracle didn't attack the humans, and this gave 'Rangdamee a buffer he could use, a shield, so to speak. Along with just a handful of other Sangheili warriors that he had only recently contacted in the aft of the ship and ordered to stand down, he had to salvage something from this otherwise failure of a mission.
Trying to keep Unwavering Fortitude's vector adjustment as inconspicuous as possible, Bren programmed the cruiser's path on an intercept course with the massive space station off in the distance. It has to be the place the Oracle mentioned to the Demons. The angular design was completely Forerunner, and the huge scale of the installation was akin to everything Bren had been fortunate enough to recall during his mission debriefing with the Council.
Only he wasn't going after some old, unpowered ruins on a backwater planet like he had been instructed. He was after an Oracle.
And to 'Rangdamee's pleasant surprise, he had found something else.
New story out! Halo: Below the Brine
(it's the best story you're not reading!)