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The Hephaestus Equation by Dirty Commie
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The Hephaestus Equation I
Date: 28 October 2002, 6:15 pm
The revolting, luminescent blood sprayed the immaculate wall, punctuated by darker, opaque flecks of brain matter. He withdrew his pistol, dripping alien body fluids, and spun in a crouch to face the next pair of grunts charging down the passageway. Tal emptied the last round into the head of the closer enemy, only to have it ping off the gleaming shoulder plate as he dived to the left. Dropping the now-useless weapon, Tal stroked the trigger on the grimy plasma pistol he had recovered from the grunt now laying slumped against a wall stained with blood.
As the pair of approaching grunts begins to open fire with their own pistols, Tal looses his first charged shot, and using the precious moment when the grunts dive out of the way, charges into the two midget-sized aliens. The first one opens his eyes, closed to shield the blinding glare from a plasma charge, and finds an armored fist smashing into his face, destroying his precious methane breather. Tal quickly spins, lashing out with his right leg. His armor-boosted kick shatters the frail kneecap supporting the grunt, dropping him to the floor. Pivoting again to the first stunned one; he pumps three shots into the chest, effectively melting its vital organs to the thing's spine and ribs.
After dispatching the second grunt and taking their weapons, Tal sprints back down the way he was going. Towards the surface, and dust off. Unfortunately, three of the elites he had met earlier didn't care for that plan, and intended on stopping Tal, preferably with hot plasma, as they were doing now, bolts sizzling past his exposed head. As he rounded a corner, Tal dropped into a crouch and began to disassemble one of the stolen plasma pistols. He removed the circuitry controlling the heating and radiating mechanisms of the exotic weapon, discarding them as he stuffed identical twin plasma grenades into the trigger assembly and outer shell of the gun. As he had planned, the pistol began rapid firing into the wall, heating rapidly, but with no cooling safety shut off. He had ten seconds, maybe.
Risking another quick glance around the corner (and nearly losing an ear in the process) Tal once again began sprinting for the surface, mentally counting in his head. Ten, nine, eight... At four, the pistol finally heated up enough to ignite the pair of grenades he had left behind, exploding in a deafening rumble. As Tal reached the complex's open blast door, he heard no pounding feet or plasma discharges behind him. Smiling grimly, he punched open the huge door. Revealing the waiting detachment of Pelicans, marines hitting the soft dirt, running through the seemingly abandoned Covenant structures.
Tal cursed The Major softly, resumed his run to the Pelicans, waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs. Unable to use his radio, he screamed and screamed at the pilot.
"Pull back, pull back!" he commanded, but nobody was paying him any attention. Giving up on yelling, he ran straight for the Pelicans. His feet barely seemed to touch the ground as he hopped into the transport and ripped open the cockpit door. Tal tried to bellow imperiously, but only managed a panting explanation. "The bunker.....it's...
....not a......supply dump. You have to recall the marines, get us out of here!"
The pilot was unimpressed.
"What's the problem? If it's not a dump, what is it?" She asked, unconcerned.
"Who the fuck cares?! Just get us out of here!" Tal screamed in her face. Maybe it was the oozing ichors of Covenant blood on his hands, or the plasma burns on his arms and legs, but she got the point fast.
"Bravo, Charlie, and Delta companies return to the LZ for dust off immediately, that's an order!" The pilot's voice went out over the channels.
"No need, Lieutenant, the base is secure." Came an unidentified Sergeant's voice back. The pilot looked at Tal and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. He wasn't paying her any attention; the bunker doors he had just sealed were emitting a rhythmic pounding. They were coming through.
Tal ripped open the equipment locker on the Pelican, but no heavy weapons, just rifles and ammo. A few marines near the bunker when the pounding started were now uneasily aiming their weapons and speculating amongst themselves as to what could cause such a noise.
Tal knew. It could only be the terrifying soldiers he had seen underground. Just then, the doors broke, and the hunters charged into the few squads guarding the door. Twelve feet tall, matte black armor all around their bodies, with various cybernetic enhancements giving their eyes a faint reddish glow, the six hunters seemed like demons from hell, come to Earth to rain destruction on the pathetic humans. And Tal had never seen such destruction by so few, even if they were hunters.
Within seconds, the incredibly powerful arms of the charging beasts had crushed the standing guards. Before the screams of the dying had registered on the rest of the marines, a concentrated barrage of fuel rod fire had vaporized another entire company. After the marines finally began to return fire, everyone beat a hasty (although to say hasty would be like saying having an arm burned off is an inconvenience) retreat back to the Pellies. The pilots weren't hanging around long, three Pelicans had left by the time Tal's was full. As the final pair lifted off agonizingly slowly from the burning compound, one was hit by another salvo of fuel rod bolts and exploded brilliantly, raining shrapnel and bodies to the ground.
Tal just sat in a kind of dazed shock. They're all dead, everyone. He would never forget what he had seen in the depths of that building. Those red, burning eyes, chasing the remnants of his squad down the dark passages, would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. The screams as each of his friends caught a plasma blast in the face, or had his necked snapped by the arms of an elite. No, Corporal Tal Gordon would not forget this day.
The Hephaestus Equation II
Date: 3 December 2002, 6:32 pm
Tal hated these damn lights. They gave everything a distant, whitewashed look. Tal always feels like he's contracted some explosively contagious disease, and been sequestered to a clean room for all eternity.
Blink. Inhale. Exhale.
That's about all he can do, laying in the infirmary of the Threshold of Heaven. Itchy, ahh, ahh, itchy! Ahhhhh, much better. The morphine IV's always itch. Speaking of which... Mmmmmm. Tal starts humming a little ditty. The sheer joy of industrial strength painkillers gives Tal a kind of euphoric feeling. He finishes his made-up hum, starts another one. Maybe this really was the threshold of Heaven; maybe he was going to die. Tal hoped they had blackjack in heaven. He took a deep breath, waited for his heart to stop.
"Ready to continue, Corporal?"
Damn.
"Ready to continue, Corporal?" Moan. Roll over. "Nurse, please remove this man's IV." That wakes him up.
"Fine I'm up, I'm up, let's get this done for crissakes." Tal doesn't like this guy. Apparently he walks around ships like this one, interviewing (harassing) combat soldiers, and writes up nice neat psychological profiles his superiors probably never read. The guy has no sense of military-ness to him. He walks around a warship in a suit, for crying out loud. Civvies never give you no respect either, no respect at all. Always talking down to you, What the hell were you thinking? I wouldn't have done that. Tal always wanted to shove a plasma rifle in their mouths, and melt their brains into steaming piles of goo.
But with his precious morphine supply threatened, Tal cooperated. "Read me back what we have so far." The guy sighs for perhaps the six millionth time in five minutes. Or maybe it was five hours; they don't put clocks in infirmaries.
"Well, we just got up to the part where you attacked Captain Jorlins."
"Attack? The MP's had me before I even worked up a sweat!"
"Duly noted, Corporal. Let's continue to your next combat action." He called up the next report on his PDA. "Insertion under fire on the Virth peninsula. That one got a little messy, correct?"
A LITTLE MESSY?! "Intel failed again, we were dead before we got off the LZ." Tal says darkly. "Four tanks were on us in minutes! Minutes! Not hours, like the brilliant intel boys in were so convinced."
The suit continued, unimpressed. "After returning to base, you quote unquote went 'berserk' around Jorlins again."
He scrolled through the report on the murder of Captain Robert Jorlins, USNC Intelligence Division.
Jorlins had been confronted in his quarters by one Corporal Gordon concerning an 'intelligence failure' in a recent battle. The corporal became enraged, attacking Captain Jorlins with a standard issue 47-R Jungle Combat Knife. Gordon was apprehended at 1606 hrs. (stealing medical supplies from the med tent) and placed under heavy sedatives on Medical Frigate Threshold of Heaven.
Tal lay there for a while, and finally let out a derisive snort. "Look, you've obviously got all the info you need, would you mind actually telling me what the fuck you're doing here?" To hell with the morphine, this guy can mind his own goddamned business.
The man shuffled his papers and folders together with an air of finality that suggested to Tal that he was finally about to take the soldier's advice.
"The truth is, Corporal, that I was sent here to determine your suitability." He stopped, waited for Tal to chime in with 'suitability for what?' Tal just stared. "Your suitability for reassignment to a special unit forming on board the Winged Faith."
"Never heard of it."
The suit looked at Tal with (what Tal perceived as) a slight increase in respect.
"Apparently, you and me are the only people on this ship who have." With that fairly ominous remark, he promptly signed, with great flourish, a long paper stamped with the damning red of Top Secret. As the tired suit stood up to leave, he handed Tal the packet of papers, a small smile forming on his lips.
"Better hurry up, your shuttle leaves in six minutes."
Tal looked at the paper blearily. They were his orders, and his shuttle left in four minutes.
Three and a half minutes later, he noticed it didn't matter, Tal was the only passenger in the ship. As the ship hyperaccelerated, melting the stars together into the Slipstream, he wondered where this mysterious set of papers was taking him. Somewhere unpleasant, no doubt.
The Hephaestus Equation III
Date: 3 December 2002, 6:32 pm
"-up. Sergeant Gordon, wake up. Damn jarhead...wake up you sorry sack-"
"I'm up, I'm up! Who the hell are you and where am I?" Tal snapped back angrily. He didn't feel very authoritative, though, curled up on the bench in the tiny shuttle that had brought him to...wherever he was.
"Welcome to the Winged Faith, Sergeant." The man said with a smirk forming on his face.
"I'm not a Sergeant."
"Pardon?"
"I'm a Corporal."
The man frowned for just a second, and suddenly understanding came to his face.
"Oh, they didn't formally promote you on board the Threshold of Heaven. Well, we'll scrounge some chevrons and whatever later. Right now, we need to get down to the briefing room, your shuttle arrived late. Follow me." With that, he turned sharply and marched into the brightly lit hallway through the airlock. Tal was still working his mind around the fact that he was a Sergeant. That wasn't nearly as hard as they make it seem in Basic, it was always honor and responsibility and blah blah...Hey, where'd that dude go?
As the door slid shut quietly behind him in the darkened briefing room, Tal quickly picked out the man who had wakened him in the shuttle. As Tal sidled up next to him, he noticed that the man's name was Sgt. Major Richards. Tal saluted with a wry grin. Richards returned the salute with an equal amount of humor and resumed watching the rather young Major in the center of the room.
It looked like any other starship briefing room, except for two things. First, all the seats were filled, and people were standing along the back wall, there had to be over 150 people in here, Tal estimated. Secondly, every person in the room was above the rank of corporal, but seemed below the age of 35. It was true the UNSC handed out promotions like band-aids, but all this rank gave Tal an uneasy feeling as he turned to watch the Major.
"At T-0, the Winged Faith and her escorts will approach from behind the shield moon, while the Infiltration team will swing out at a wide angle, and will hit the station approximately twelve minutes after the Winged Faith engages any defenses, T+13." The center holo-projector showed three dots shoot out from behind a red moon to engage a large disk suspended directly in between the red moon and a bluish gas giant. Six more dots rocketed out in a wide arc and intercept the disk at a frightening speed. Tal had a nagging sense he had missed something important.
"You will have three minutes to get inside before the radiation and other contaminants from the moon render your raiders inoperable, T+16. We expect light resistance from the interior, but, as usual, we're basing that on human procedures, and Covvies aren't exactly human." Yeah, Tal had missed something. The Major continued. "Now for the I-team, you, there are three objectives." He displayed them on the holo-projector in the middle of the room.
Primary-Gain entry to Covenant labs and mainframes.
Secondary-Download any and all data stored in labs. Photograph and sample interior.
Tertiary-Commandeer Covenant starship (if possible) for extraction. If unfeasible, dump data to Winged Faith and wait for assault shuttles to hit the docking bay at T+30.
The Major finished reading off the objectives, and turned to survey the room. "As is usual on information raids, be prepared for anything, and commanders, be flexible in your orders. Any questions?" Tal had some, but wasn't too inclined to ask right now. "Good, see your individual commanders for team assignments. Dismissed."
The room rose amid groans, mumbling, and very little laughter. Tal didn't blame them, information raids are suicidal. On top of that, they only had 14 minutes to get in and get out, without blueprints or even a general sketch. Tal was still musing over his certain death in this operation when a big hand slapped him across the back. He looked up to see Richards smiling at him.
"Lost, aren't ya? I'm your commander for the raid, I'll fill you in." Tal was only slightly relieved. "C'mon, let's go get some food, I haven't eaten in over two hours."
Tal sat apprehensively across from Richards in the mess hall, an untouched plate in front of him and questions bouncing around inside his head like a grenade in a centrifuge. Richards insisted, however, on holding his questions until he finished his spaghetti. Luckily, that took all of fifteen seconds. He sighed, took a long pull from his beer, sat back in his chair and laid it all out for Tal.
An ultra-secret Covenant research station had had a message pod intercepted by a destroyer of the Fourth Fleet three weeks ago. By tracing the trajectory, the origin of the pod was determined to be an unnamed system deep in Covenant territory. Preliminary scouts had a lot of trouble finding the station because it was situated, rather ingeniously, in between a massive gas giant and an extremely volcanic moon. The debris spewed from the moon was drawn into the gas giant in a stream of radiation, dust, and other contaminants. Tal could see why they only had three minutes outside the station. Raiders are not known for their durability. He still didn't know what Tal Gordon was supposed to do, though.
"You come in when the raiders finish burning through the hull. Our team will be escorting the techs into the labs, stealing a ship, and getting everyone out safely." Richards stood up to leave. "Muster in the bay at 0940. See you then."
"No sweat." Tal said under his breath.
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
The Hephaestus Equation IV
Date: 13 December 2002, 10:02 pm
He was enthralled by the unbridled violence of the scene. The volcanoes and lava flows that covered the surface of the moon seemed to be fighting against the dark, empty cold of space for its survival. The metaphorical nobility of such a thought was lost on Tal, however; to him, it was nothing less than a cosmic incarnation of hell itself. The magma and fire clashing against each other seemed to be killing each other over and over, only to reborn again in the hearts of the hundreds of thousands of endlessly erupting volcanoes. The moon was fascinating, yes, but Tal still wanted to be away from there as soon as possible.
His wish was granted minutes later as the six raiders engaged their thrusters, rudely pushing the volcanic moon out of sight of the small viewports. The other five ovoid craft accelerated simultaneously.
Tal glanced at the green digits of the mission clock: +13:04. He leaned back against the vibrating wall and checked his equipment for the final time. Besides the standard body armor, communication headgear, Assault Rifle, pistol, and pair of frag grenades, he had been issued a wicked combat knife, four extra grenades, and enough ammo to take any ten planets in the galaxy. The bad omens were piling up. Too little ammo meant a poorly planned operation; too much ammo meant an operation that goes to hell three seconds after beginning.
Raiders were designed for high-speed boarding of enemy ships during combat. In that aspect, they had large circular hatches on the underside that could adhere to almost any surface. Raiders were also disposable, one mission and done. That meant no reinforced armor for the boarding party. After making contact with the enemy vessel, the ship automatically cut through any armor plating with no less than six fusion cutters, opening the way for the thirty soldiers waiting inside, armed to the teeth. Tal had twenty stony-faced marines in his raider, with eight extremely nervous techs in the back. Richards had been assigned to Green team to replace a sick commander there, Tal was in Blue. The others were Yellow, Black, and the double-sized Red.
Contact! A voice said in his ear as a loud metallic thump sounded from the underside of the ship. Everyone covered their ears in unison. Tal looked around, feeling out of place, and followed suit.
Hands were feeble shields, however, against the deafening roar of the ship's automated fusion cutters boring through the reinforced hull of the space station.
When the din finally ceased and the green light on the hatch lit, Tal was dimly aware of everyone in the ship shouting. Or at least it looked like they were shouting; he couldn't hear anything except a painful ringing. All the other soldiers in the raider were apparently accustomed to this, and assembled into two lines opposite the smoking hatch. Then to Tal's surprise, they began dropping through, one at a time. Tal hurried to the back of his line while the techs struggled to strap on all the myriad equipment they had been issued.
As soon as the entire team had lined up (including the pilots, they weren't flying anywhere now), the radio double-clicked the all-clear signal. Nobody could hear the clicks; of course, they were alerted by the radio LED light on everyone's eye-HUD blinking twice. The insertion proceeded smoothly from there.
As Tal dropped ungracefully to the floor of the interior, two things immediately surprised him.
One, the entire hallway the team had cut into was illuminated by incredibly bright lights very similar to human fluorescent lights. Except that they were a solid block of white, extended from halfway up one wall, around the ceiling, and halfway down the other wall, which made them about three thousand times more annoying than their human counterparts. Tal hated those lights.
Two, the mission didn't go straight to hell three seconds after it started. That took at least a minute.
You'd think having such a bright hallway would alert you to the presence of enemies. You'd think a pair of cloaked elites would move just a little bit, just enough to give themselves away. You'd think they wouldn't wait until you were right in between two white-hot plasma swords to attack. You'd think even with these advantages, you could avoid losing half your force before someone thought enough to pull a trigger.
You'd think.
Tal had been lucky. His earlier confusion in the raider had forced him to the end of the marching line inside the station, so he saw the lead pair of marines get cut to blackened shreds from relative safety. But the safety margin diminished rapidly. Three more pairs of marines were cut down before they could raise their rifles, but the fourth pair finally got the idea to shoot at the invisible Covenant.
"Back up! Back up! Go backwards!!" Came the cry over Tal's radio (which he could hear quite well by now). The remnant of the team began to backpedal down the way they had come, shooting and cursing. But they were too slow; the fourth pair was killed before everyone had begun moving. They were now down to twelve marines.
By now, Tal's legs were straining from backpedaling so fast, so far. He could tell the rest of the team was getting similarly tired, but the damned elites just wouldn't go down! Just as Tal was contemplating trying to use one of his plentiful frag grenades, a small, sparking cylinder flew over his head. It bounced once on the smooth ground and immediately discharged a long stream of yellow and red sparks. Tal finally recognized the thing, it was a phosphorous flare. He instantly recognized the genius of the idea.
P-Flares were fairly primitive (and Tal wondered who would pack flares on a mission into a space station) and inefficient, but it worked like a charm. When the elites stepped through the curtain of sparks, their shields were shorted out. It seemed like an act of God. Another thing about P-Flares; they're hot. So hot in fact, that several of the sensitive microchips on the plasma swords melted and fused together, ruining them. Both swords flickered once, and died.
The charging elites never even noticed that they had been stripped of all concealment and protection. Being torn apart by 180 shells in under a second tends to make you forget things.
When the blue bodies (or what was left of them) finally fell to the floor, all the soldiers just stopped running and fell down to catch their breath. Eventually some got around to congratulating the diminutive tech that had thrown the fatal flare. Tal got up to inspect the mutilated corpses of the two sword-wielders. He had sensed something strange about them.
Sure enough, there was something strange about them, other than their bodies being little more than confetti below the shoulders. The faces of the pair were covered in golden symbols and lines, similar to tattoos, except they veritably glowed of their own accord. Also, even though it was hard to make out on the alien face, they were unmistakably scarred all over. At first it seemed as if they were extremely lucky veterans, but an underlying pattern soon became evident. The lines and shapes were radiating out from the eyes, it was quite unsettling when it became clear, and Tal called over some of the techs to look at the unusual designs.
Everyone clustered around to get a good look at the alien visages. Most shook their heads in confusion, some just stared, one man piped up in the back with something that perked up the ears of everyone in the squad. Then he repeated it.
"Paladins."
The Hephaestus Equation V
Date: 15 December 2002, 9:10 pm
"Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah! Are you telling me we're in a temple!?" One other marine said to the (naturally) tech who had suggested the downed elites were paladins.
He shrugged. "Could be. It's just a thought, really. Maybe that's just how they show rank, or brag about how many kills they have. I don't know." No one seemed relieved. "Of course," he continued "I do recognize this set of symbols right here," he motioned to the set surrounding the right eye "they symbolize the earth, the sun, and...I think Karuq."
"Karuq?"
"A Covenant god, a big one too."
Tal didn't like where this was going. "What is he the god of, exactly?"
"Well, things like metallurgy, mining, forging, very analogous to the Greek god Hephaestus, as a matter of fact."
Tal spoke up again. "Metal weapons too, I assume?"
"Yes, but the analogy between Karuq and Hephaestus isn't perfect. Karuq has dominion over more archaic weapons than the plasma the Covenant use now." A lieutenant nodded.
"Like swords." Said Tal. The tech nodded again.
"It appears his dominion has extended into melee weapons." He shrugged. "Could be good or bad. We don't know enough about their pantheon to tell for sure. We should record this." The gang of techs busied themselves with photographing the elites and taking bodily samples.
Blue Team! Are you guys alright? Came the screeching into Tal's ear. The eye-HUD indicated it was coming from Red's frequency.
"Blue here, we were ambushed, we killed them, but lost eight guys, including Jackson. Is there a problem with you?" A chisel-faced lieutenant standing next to Tal said authoritatively. Tal surmised that he was now the highest ranking in the reduced Blue squad. Richards had been assigned to Green to replace a sick commander there.
Sure as hell seems like it. The voice seemed a little less tense. We can't raise Green or Black teams on the comm. The Faith says they're transponders all disappeared within ten seconds of each other. We encountered no resistance. Zero casualties for Red. Tal breathed a little easier. At least the bulk of the force was intact. Our orders are to continue on schedule.
"Roger that." Said the lieutenant, a little less jubilant at the victory over the 'paladins.' "Have you reached the objective yet?"
I guess. This whole station is built in concentric circles of these identical white hallways. We're in the center of it. Get down here double-time, you have to see it. Just find a door, and there will be a door behind that, keep going through doors until you get here.
"Copy, Blue team out." He turned to the techs clustered around the elite corpses. "Hey, useless!" The techs looked up. "We're moving out, pack it up and stretch your legs, we may have to do some running."
Tal's HUD flashed. +21:00.
The lieutenant was wrong; they didn't have to do any running. The three-minute journey to the center of the enigmatic station was quite uneventful.
The center was much more puzzling than the elites, though. Blue team could smell it before they reached it. The soldiers recognized it immediately. It was the putrid stench of rotting flesh. Human flesh.
As they opened the last door to the center room, the whole team involuntarily took a step back. For just a second, it seemed as if they had opened a door into the cold vacuum of space. The walls, floors, and ceiling of the massive chamber were all made of some dead black material, twinkling with their own thousands of stars.
Upon closer inspection, the walls appeared to be made of some black liquid. It reflected very little light, but Tal swore it was flowing down the walls, like a waterfall. No, not just down. Up, around, swirling around all the stars. Swirling around itself, everything. The 'stars' were tiny crystals, perhaps diamonds, embedded in the wall or whatever was behind the black liquid. He actually tried to pry one of the stars loose to examine it, but the whole wall was encased in a resilient type of glass. But no matter which way he turned his head; he couldn't see the glass casing. The overall effect of the display was extremely hypnotic. It was soothing and stimulating. Tal felt a flash of pity for the magnificent work of art that they would soon have to destroy. Then he remembered the mangled bodies of his fellow soldiers in the immaculate white hallway, the dark red blood staining the floor. He wasn't feeling very piteous anymore.
The main focus of all the soldiers in the room wasn't on the mesmerizing wall, however, it was the center, the source of the overpowering stench.
The altar, as Tal came to call it, was a circle about thirty feet in diameter. The first fifteen or so feet was a simple steel floor (which appeared to be floating in space) with hundreds or thousands of the mystical sigils and runes nearly identical to the ones the marines had seen on the faces of the paladins. Inside those marks is where things got interesting. There were only three things composing the rest of the altar. A suspended steel ring about ten feet overhead, a rather out-of-place-looking bowl (it was not unlike birdbaths back on Earth) and the slowly decaying bodies of four UNSC marines. Apparently human sacrifices were not just a rumor.
The bodies had been hung upside down from the ring, spaced equally around. As a matter of fact, it looked unsettlingly like an inverted crucifixion. Feet together, their arms splayed out, so each fingertip touched the tip of the adjacent corpse. But when Tal examined the exact spot where each green-black finger met, there was actually a tiny space, and he could see no visible means of keeping them in that position. The same situation occurred with the spot where the heels of the marines met the overhead ring.
In the center of the altar was the dark purple 'birdbath.' The base and column was ringed with thousands of semi-transparent disks, jutting out like blades. It was these the techs were so interested in. They were frantically copying the flimsy looking disks, transmitting them to the Faith, and then storing them in the lightweight cases designed for just such an occasion. Nobody was complaining about having to store and carry the extra load, it always helped to have a hard copy.
The bowl of the altar was the strangest part, however. It was filled with the same liquid as the walls, but instead of a cold, dead black, it was a brilliant, vibrant riot of yellow, white, and red. Tal tried to touch the mysterious liquid, but as soon as he moved his hand close, his fingerless gloves burst into flame from the intense heat. He ripped off the glove and threw it to the ground, scowling. Some of the techs chuckled. Tal was mystified by the uneven heat distribution. It was quite cool six inches above the liquid, but hot enough to melt metal two inches above it. Tal cautiously ran his hand along the bottom of the bowl. Cold. The mystery was puzzling, but it would have to wait. He walked away from the mysterious altar and revolting corpses to find the commanding officer of Red team.
The commander of Red team (and ex oficio of the whole mission) was a stocky, quiet Colonel by the name of Wilkins. Tal saluted and asked for further orders. Wilkins grunted.
"The Faith has extended our mission by six minutes, no Cov ships in-system, readings normal. Just take a seat and get your gear together, we may have to get out of here in a hurry." Tal saluted again and took a seat in an empty corner of the room. Or at least the closest thing to a corner in the circular chamber.
His HUD flashed, +28:00.
After Tal had checked all of his equipment and weapons, he just relaxed and watched the techs do their thing. It was almost comical, all of them scurrying about, copying disks and gesturing to each other wildly. It looked to Tal like a pack of hamsters pumped full of dangerous stimulants.
Tal still had his characteristic edginess, though; the mission hadn't exactly done a lot to diminish it. He even jumped to his feet once when one of the two heavy blast doors opened silently. His finger was around the trigger before he realized that the Colonel had passed close to the door, Tal just hadn't noticed him. He sighed and sank to the floor. Tal was looking forward to several months of sleep back on the Faith.
Tal sat up, pulse racing.
The doors didn't have motion sensors. They had manual controls.
Tal knew what was coming next.
The purple sword flickered to life.
The Hephaestus Equation VI
Date: 17 December 2002, 10:18 pm
The Colonel never even saw the hot sword sever his spine, melt his heart, and tear out through his ribcage. The half-dozen or so men standing around him gaped openmouthed at the purple blade that had just grown out of their CO's chest. They were all dead before anyone had even contemplated reaching for a weapon. Two more neon green swords flashed into life. An identical trio of floating blades appeared at the opposite door.
They were trapped.
Chaos erupted in the black chamber, so quiet and hushed seconds before became a riot of gunshots, screams, rounds sizzling off of shields, and foremost, the panicked yells and ineffectual commands over the comm. channels. Dodge-and-shoot tactics, employed by marines to great effect on open terrain, wouldn't work in here. The cloaked paladins intermittently deactivated their swords, frequently reappearing more than ten feet away. Frequently with their swords protruding from the chest of a new victim.
Tal was on his belly, ransacking the nearest of the techie packs. He knew they only had one chance to beat the Cov reinforcements. He finished searching the pack, cursed loudly, and grabbed another one, stopping only to glance around at the carnage. One greensword was down, leaning against the black wall in an unhealthy amount of his own blood.
Tal cried out in ecstasy, he felt four of the narrow cylinders in one of the infinite pockets of the dead tech's pack. Adrenaline screaming through his veins, he tore the flares out of the pocket and twisted the EZ-Twist caps off with a satisfying pop.
While the blinding P-Flares ignited, Tal assessed the situation again. He figured it was somewhere between Deep Shit and Snowball in Hell. The few remaining marines had bunched up in the rounded, doorless ends of the room, laying down a barrage of fire at anything that could possibly be somewhat related to a Covenant.
Tal tossed one flare (uncannily similar to the potato-masher grenades of WWII) to each bastion of soldiers, and one to the door the Covvies had first entered through. Any reinforcements charging through there would be rudely surprised. He kept one for himself.
Tal moved into a crouch, deciding which group of marines to make a dash for. Crouching doesn't do much good, however, when you're holding an object approximately as bright as Earth's yellow sun. Tal looked up just in time to see the air blur inches in front of his face, and the inevitable purple, arrowing down toward Tal's neck execution-style.
He didn't think; he did the only thing he could do, swinging the flare straight up towards his fast-approaching death. Fuck! He thought. The flare had lodged up on something! He almost got around to actually yelling the obscenity when he realized that it had been caught on the elite's crotch. The monster was actually more surprised than hurt as it crumpled to the ground, writhing as the pain finally caught up to its brain. Tal snatched the initiative and stretched out to jam the smoking end of the flare into its face. The elite went limp.
Retching from the stench, Tal stood up shakily, though with a bit more confidence. Amazingly, it appeared that all the other paladins had been dispatched while Tal had taken down his would-be killer. But he only counted four bodies. He was just thinking that that should alarm him when a green and a purple blade materialized, already slashing down onto the unaware marines. The group was promptly obliterated.
Every remaining soldier in the room knew immediately that the other end was lost. Six fragmentation grenades sailed among the still-dying marines. The last paladins, even with extra shielding, never had a chance. They vanished in and startlingly quiet explosion. Apparently the glass and liquids absorbed sound better than light. Not that it still wasn't deafeningly loud; six grenades in any enclosed space will probably render anyone unlucky enough to be in said enclosed space deaf for life.
Unfortunately, Tal had been in said enclosed space, and didn't exactly have time to stuff cotton in his ears. He was stone deaf. It was quite disconcerting when his HUD started flashing with radio transmissions, but could hear nothing. Apparently all the marines had been similarly afflicted. Tal joined the disturbingly small group of living marines. His HUD flashed, +35:00. One minute, then we're a lost cause. He knew what the Faith would do when the clock hit +36:00.
Tal knew they had to get to the shuttle bay now. He jogged up to the small group of surviving marines and pushed one of them rudely to the ground. Everyone looked at him oddly, one man even started to raise his rifle. But Tal just pointed to his wrist, where a watch would be if it wasn't already mounted in everyone's HUD. He watched with some amusement as every soldier's eyebrows went up at the same time. Not wasting any more time in the blood-soaked altar room, one man who had lost his helmet sprinted for the door. Everyone (all fifteen, Tal noted dismally) exchanged glances and followed at a run.
When he passed into the first outer hallway, Tal was nearly blinded by the incredibly irritating white lights. He hit the deck instinctively, expecting hot plasma to blast into him any second. When his pupils finally shrunk to what Tal judged to be microscopic size, and no plasma had melted him into a puddle, he looked up too see the last man disappearing around the corner of the next outer hall. A little embarrassed, Tal scrambled to his feet and followed.
He was greeted by the group of men standing around an alcove in the wall, all holding grenades. Turns out that that was the ladder to the shuttle bay, there was no lift. The man with no helmet had been on Red Team and had passed it on the way to the center. He stopped and pulled out his last remaining grenade. All the others tossed theirs down the narrow shaft. Tal followed suit, if with a little less enthusiasm, and backed away, the shaft wasn't too deep. Five seconds later, a strong tremor shook the deck, followed by a quaint shockwave.
Tal was feeling like a slacker since he hit the deck in the first hallway, so he rushed to the head of the group to be the first down the ladder. He had a little trouble gripping the rungs, so slick were his hands with sweat and his boots with blood. But he looked down and noticed, to further his embarrassment, that the blackened floor was less than six feet down. Shrugging, he dropped into the shuttle bay.
Two things grabbed his attention immediately. One, there were two shredded elites laying about ten feet from the ladder alcove. Both had ruined plasma swords smoking in their hands. A couple of the marines patted the helmet-less man on the back, apparently the frags were his idea.
Two, there were two gray assault shuttles sitting calmly in the bay in front of them. Tal waved and sprinted to the back of the sleek craft. The other fourteen followed with similar elation. Once aboard the refreshingly human shuttle, the pilot tried to ask Tal something, but Tal just mouthed "I don't know." And pointed to his ears. Another marine, having apparently regained his hearing, said something to the pilot. The man's face fell. He nodded and settled into his seat.
The ramp retracted, and the twin shuttles pulled out of the bay, heading for the Winged Faith at top speed.
Tal slumped into a heap on a bench.
Tal's HUD lit up and stayed lit. +36:00.
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