 |
About This Site
Daily Musings
News
News Archive
Site Resources
FAQ
Screenshots
Concept Art
Halo 2 Updates
Interviews
Movies
Music
Miscellaneous
Mailbag
HBO PAL
Game Fun
The Halo Story
Tips and Tricks
Fan Creations
Wallpaper
Misc. Art
Fan Fiction
Comics
Logos
Banners
Press Coverage
Halo Reviews
Halo 2 Previews
Press Scans
Community
HBO Forum
Clan HBO Forum
HBO IRC Channel
Links
Admin
Submissions
FTP Uploads
HTTP Uploads
Contact
|
|
|
HALO: The Cross of St. Otley
Posted By: Marty<duffym@gmail.com>
Date: 30 October 2006, 4:23 pm
Read/Post Comments
|
Now, from Marty Duffy author of the
Niko and Desecrating Providence
fan-fiction sets, comes another great tale!
HALO: The Cross of St. Otley
As the genocidal war between the
United Nations and the Covenant
blooms into full carnage on the planet
Monroe, other forces are planning to
destroy the colonies and EARTH itself!
Exhausted from Admiral Cole's campaign
against the Covenant fleet at Harvest
Colonel Ian Kits and his scarred Marines
are sent to Monroe for basic clean-up,
and become mankind's last, desperate hope!
The Cross of St. Otley
The Holy Bible: Ionian Edition, published May 1st, 2165
During the second expedition against the Frieden martyrs in the year of our lord 2159, Thomas Otley, a Jovian pirate with a heart of gold, stood his six freighters between innocent Ionian refugees and a great serpent from Terra: the destroyer Omaha.
The Jovian pirates were no match against the terrible warship. Otley knew this fact and looked out his bridge and upon beautiful Io for one last time. The Lord graced Otley upon his gaze, and guided him with the Southern Cross, an old constellation, which twinkled over Io's horizon with the disposition of a dagger raring to strike the Terran serpent. Otley's Jovians were enraptured and calmed by that sign of grace from the heavenly father.
With the Lord's example, Otley's ships formed the cross, and they gallantly stabbed.
Five of the Jovian ships were martyred, but Otley's flagship survived and closed within mere inches of the serpent. With the lord as his guide, Otley detonated the ship's reactor, and martyred himself as well.
A hundred thousand refugees witnessed the miracle. The twinkling cross -- the cross of St. Otley -- shone bright in the sky and slew the Terran serpent.
More serpents followed, and Terra's imperialism did ensnare Io once more, but the Lord hath promised his return, and he will guide our future martyrs to grander acts of fiery courage.
April 3rd, 2534. 7:30 PM local time.
Two Longsword space fighters glided on the stratosphere over Saguntum, the ghost-town capital of the outer-colony world of Monroe. After the black, titanium-clad warplanes passed over the sleeping city, several U-shaped Covenant drop-ships ascended from the streets.
"Pike one, this is two, looks like the U-Hauls are runnin' back to the black."
"Roger -- break and tally."
The Longswords banked in opposite directions and dove to intercept the drop-ships. The drop-ships, meanwhile, ceased their retreat.
"Shit. Pike dos, this is lead: dive faster!"
The Covenant opened fire on the city. Shot after shot of white-hot plasma melted the pavement, turning downtown streets into molten rivers. The Longswords dove through the air at break-neck speed, desperate to stop the carnage.
"Lead, I can't get a lock."
"Rough angle for the missiles. Switch to guns."
"Guns? But the range--"
"Close fast, people are dying down there!"
The city's inhabitants were limping out of bombardment shelters, subway stations, and manholes, desperately trying to escape the molten rock that was seeping into their hiding places. The flanks of the Covenant drop-ships opened, and pig-like Grunts strapped inside the vessels opened fire on the civilians. The alien plasma turrets continued melting the city pavement, forcing more and more people to the surface.
The Longswords screamed towards the ground. Pike leader yelled, "Engaging!" over the radio to his wingman, and his warplane's auto-cannons wheezed to life.
May 7th, 2534. 4:00 AM local time.
A Chiroptera-class stealth-ship silently prowled over the thick hedge fields outside of Saguntum. It landed, and a company of Marines emerged from a thick hedgerow and formed a perimeter around the ship. A ramp extended to the ground, and several Office of Naval Intelligence agents disembarked. Behind the ONI spooks, a couple of technicians appeared along with a gigantic, strangely-armored soldier. Marine Colonel Ian Kits approached the ONI officer who appeared to be in charge. He snuck a glance at the strangely-armored soldier. It was about seven feet tall, in a jade-colored, shining suit of armor, with a thick, gold-tinted visor; its enormous body dwarfed even the tallest Marine in the field.
Kits brought his gaze back to the ONI officer and asked, "Are you Lt. Colonel Torrin?"
The officer was a, a short, bug-eyed man with a black trench-coat and a pale, scarred face. He eyed Kits up and down, grinned wide, and with a strange tone of reverence mixed with belittlement said, "Ah, the hero of the battle of Cosmora Archipelago in the flesh."
ONI officers had a way of getting under a leatherneck's skin that Kits -- along with the entire Marine officer corps -- was never comfortable with, but were nonetheless required to tolerate with a nod and a smile. Kits gave Torrin both in response.
"We prepared as much security we could manage under the circumstances, I hope your--" Kits looked past Torrin at the strangely-armored soldier. "-- your people don't mind."
Torrin pivoted his head back towards the soldier. He grinned and said, "We don't."
Kits glanced at the soldier again, and coughed uncomfortably. He immediately disliked Torrin. He was not accustomed to under officers referring to him as "Kits", especially in front of his men; it made his temper boil a little. ONI ranks were not comparable to Marine ranks, however, and Kits had found himself being pushed around by mere ONI Lieutenants in the past. He had weathered them, and he intended on weathering Torrin as well.
"Let's get you and your people to my base then."
"Very well."
6:00 AM.
Colonel Kits, Lt. Colonel Torrin, and (much to Kits' dismay) the strangely-armored soldier entered a small conference room in a former office building. As soon as the door closed, and aural nullifiers clicked into operation, Kits spoke plainly.
"Okay Torrin, answer me this: I've lost six hundred men in a month holding a ruined city, on a half-glassed planet. The colonists are evacuated, so why is ONI putting our necks on the line?"
The strangely-armored soldier cocked a helmeted head slightly; it seemed surprised that a Marine was questioning Torrin.
Torrin paused a moment to consider, and then spoke.
"Your concerns are absolutely legitimate Colonel. You need to understand, however, that a great deal of expense is being placed on this operation."
"Expense? You mean the lives of six hundred of my men?
"Your men, yes, but I have also had to sacrifice a dozen settlements in close slipspace range in order to maintain our strong presence here."
"What? You mean civilians? Civilian sacrifices? Why are you making those decisions?"
"We are fourteen months out of Reach, Colonel, and ONI has strategic authority of the campaign vested in it by the Security Council on Earth -- more authority than any fleet admiral or space marshal out here has. I am the highest ranking ONI legate in this sector, and we," Torrin motioned towards the armor-clad soldier, "are on a special assignment."
"And that is…?" Kits angrily baited.
"She…" Torrin directed his hand towards the armored soldier once again, "is here for a prisoner."
Kits' jaw dropped and he thought, hundreds of soldiers and perhaps millions of outer colonists sacrificed for a single prisoner?
The strangely-armored soldier stood up. Kits instinctively backed away.
"Colonel, sir" the strangely-armored soldier said with a deep, but distinctly feminine voice, "there's an unknown xenoform responsible for the guerilla attacks that have plagued your garrison; I'm here to capture it."
The news startled Kits.
"Well Sheba, look what you've gone and spoiled now," Torrin stated with playfulness in his voice. "Do you have an AI projector in here, Colonel?"
"Yes, behind you on the wall," Kits replied.
Torrin slid a small crystal into the projector and a flash lit the room briefly. Soon after, a translucent eighth century Frank appeared in equestrian pose. The AI greeted the humans with, "A ve! I am Charles, Augustus divine of the Frankish Kingdom and Western Roman Emp--"
"Charles, begin program ELITE-4a." interrupted Torrin.
The room went dark, and Charles's form vanished. A topographic view of Saguntum displayed in the center of the conference room. The video progressed, and there was a lot of shaking, fire, and explosions on the screen. Kits caught sight of U-shaped Covenant drop-ship being peppered with auto-cannon fire.
"This, Colonel Kits, is footage of the liberation of Monroe. We took heavy losses in space, but overwhelmed the Covenant. Eventually. After that, we sent fighters in to take out Covenant drop-ships that had landed on Monroe -- all of them in or around Saguntum. We're not sure what strategic advantage they hoped to gain by landing here, but obviously it failed, as we crushed their ground forces in a matter of weeks."
Only half-listening, Kits asked, "What are they doing?" as he observed the Covenant drop-ships blasting Ebro Square.
"The gun cameras seem to indicate that they were trying to root out and kill the civilian population of the city."
"Where is this footage from?"
"A Longsword interceptor. Their flight recorders suggest they tried to eliminate all of the drop-ships in one pass in order to save as many civilians as possible, and they did not survive the pass. Now watch."
The camera zoomed in at one corner of the recorded footage at maximum resolution. A strange shape moved ferociously around a group of huddling civilians. A slight jerk in the camera lost focus briefly, and when the image returned the figure was gone and all of the civilians were cut to pieces.
"What the hell…" muttered Kits.
The image reversed frame-by-frame and froze on a figure moving through the civilians like a ghost. AI Charles winked back into view, casting a blue glow in the conference room.
"A curious demon, wouldn't you say?" asked Charles. "It reminds me of my campaign against the Lombards when a mysterious--"
Torrin pulled the crystal from the projector and returned the room to normal lighting. The holographic display vanished.
"Forgive me, Charles is class-C."
Kits looked very troubled.
"So that's the xenoform?"
"Yes."
"And you don't think its Covenant?"
"Oh," Torrin began, "no, no, quite the contrary actually. It's definitely Covenant, and we believe it was responsible for the rather-- unusual tactics that the Covenant drop-ship squadron conducted."
"Why didn't they just withdraw?"
"ONI has observed that in space combat, Covenant forces have never withdrawn or fled, even when perilously outnumbered. You see, the "Grunts" and "Jackals" as the troops call them are the only aliens we've encountered in ground campaigns, and they are absolutely incapable of the fanatical sort of tactics we've observed in space, and so our conclusion is--"
"Leadership based on species." Kits speculated.
"Yes. That shrouded figure in the holographic feed, I believe, may be a higher member of the Covenant." Torrin suddenly spoke with a degree of urgency. "Colonel I will make further details available to you in due course, but you must excuse me now I have other matters to attend to."
Sheba, the armored soldier, tilted her helmeted head towards Torrin; Kits suspected she was surprised by Torrin's sudden change of temperament.
Torrin quickly gathered himself and left the room. Sheba did not follow.
Kits looked into Sheba's visor looking for a set of eyes. The visor was too heavily sun-shielded to see anything, and after a minute or so Kits realized he was being incredibly rude.
"My apologies, Petty Officer."
"No need, Colonel, sir."
She was very respectful, and that encouraged Kits to try and converse with her.
"You're some sort of commando I take it?"
"I'm a Spartan, Colonel. My role in combat is to win. We're Commandos, pilots, rangers, search and rescue, tank commanders, snipers, starship navigators, everything."
"What do you think about this invisible alien?"
Sheba didn't seem to have an answer. After a pause she said, "I'll complete my mission, sir."
Another long silence, and then she said, "There's something that you should know about, Colonel."
"What?"
"Lt. Colonel Torrin is hiding something. I don't know what, but I thought you should know about it. There's more going on here than this alien-hunt, but I don't know what."
Kits felt a familiar nausea building in his stomach. He tried not to let it show and calmly asked, "Why would he be hiding something?"
Sheba disengaged her helmet from her Spartan armor. The heavy looking device uncoupled and lifted to reveal an ordinary looking young woman with cherry-colored hair. She was around twenty or so, no older than any of the Marines under Kits command, but she wore a hardened, serious look. She was visibly worried about her situation.
"He's been behaving unusually. Section 3 ordered him to utilize Spartans for this operation, because he had proposed just using an inexperienced orbital drop-shock trooper team with a starship AI for support. As if that weren't crazy enough, there are about seventy Spartans in my team, and I am the least distinguished of them. He asked only for me to serve on this mission. Just me. Spartans always operate in teams, sir. He claims if I operate solo I'll be able to operate discretely, but I think-- I think he wants me to fail. I think he wants me dead."
Kits felt absolute terror in her voice. She was being asked to engage a never-before-seen enemy all by herself when she was accustomed to operating with a team of comrades against the pathetic and cowardly Covenant regulars. Though he agreed it was odd to send her solo on the mission, Kits didn't think Torrin had villainous thoughts. He assumed that Torrin simply saw Sheba as a piece of emotionless military hardware. Property. He had thought it himself when he first saw Sheba.
"Sheba, I understand your situation, and I'll keep an eye on Torrin. In the meantime though," Torrin gestured to the barracks outside the window, "I'm going to let you hand-pick a fire team from my Marines to assist you. They're probably not as bright as your Spartans, but they're veterans of the Harvest campaign -- tough as steel."
"Thank you, sir," Sheba said with a brisk salute.
"Alright then, you're dismissed."
Kits watched the Spartan turn and leave. Kits knew he had failed to put her worries to rest, but he fully intended on keeping an eye on Torrin as he had promised her. As she exited the room, Kits noticed an emblem on her mission patch of tantalizing familiarity. It was six stars formed in the shape of a Christian cross. Kits looked through papers on his desk, and found the symbol again, this time on a classified ONI document. It was the emblem of Torrin's stealth ship.
11:30 PM
"This is the Nova Scotia, we're hit! Taking heavy fire!"
"Commander Germaine? Bill? Bill, can you hear me?!"
"Kits! Oh God, we're burning up! The decks below us are melting -- the smoke, oh God its hell! Tell God to send the western winds!"
"Bill!"
"--"
"Bill! No!"
"Major! Major Kits!"
"What?! WHAT?"
"Major, sir, this deck is clear! We have to keep going!"
"Sergeant, get back to the pelicans! Nova Scotia is burning!"
"Sir, we can't make it in time! We have to move!"
Colonel Kits woke up. He woke up from the same dream he'd had for nearly three years -- three years removed from the battle of Cosmora Archipelago, where he listened to his best friend die.
Kits sat up in his bad, pale as a ghost. The nightmare always gave him the same stomach twisting that the battle itself gave him.
He stood up and walked to his liquor cabinet. Inside, there was a vast selection of alcohol. Most of the brands were terrestrial, but Kits decided on Grecian Urn, the famous rum from Troy. He didn't bother to close the cabinet.
He walked into his study and opened a drawer full of photographs and various scraps of paper that had once been worth keeping. He found a picture of Commander Germaine, Bill Germaine; he took a swig from the Grecian Urn. Before the war, on long slipspace voyages from Reach to trouble spots in the outer-colonies, Bill and Kits would skip cryo-sleep and keep the skeleton crew on Nova Scotia some company. They'd play cards, study old battles, or just chat through "the long night."
Bill had been a religious man, one of the few remaining in the 26th century. Most colonials considered God dead, and only a few bastions of religion remained in the UN, and even most of those bastions were in Earth's solar system. Bill was an Ionian. Io was a small moon of Jupiter, and was notorious for being the most troublesome and backward of the inner-colonies. Their culture bred religious fundamentalism (despite their communist roots) and despised the UNSC for a war 400 years removed. Bill only made it into the naval academy on Mars because his father was a staff worker in the General Assembly on Earth, where he put Bill's application on top of some very big piles. Bill practiced his faith in secret all throughout his academy years, and even practiced in secret as a Commander. Kits found out about this because of an argument that erupted while the two were watching a documentary on Thomas Otley's suicide attack in 2159. Despite being a UNSC Commander, Bill had insisted that Otley's attack was justified -- even noble. Kits pressed for further elaboration on the subject and, eventually, Bill had revealed his Ionian Bible: a very discrete, black book with six little stars in the shape of a cross on the front cover.
Still staring at the picture, Kits whispered, "the cross of St. Otley…"
May 8th, 2534. 1:00 AM local time.
Sheba, on point, snaked through a hedgerow outside of Saguntum. Her head tilted to the left, trying to listen for the cloaked monster. Three Marine Sergeants crept behind her, nervously peeking to the flanks.
A UAV hovering about a kilometer above the fire-team detected nothing, but the Spartan could feel eyes on her. The Spartan sent a coded series of blinks to one Marine Sergeant's HUD, and a blue acknowledgement light blinked by his name on the Spartan's own HUD. The Sergeant activated his infrared detector, and took the Sheba's place at point. Sheba deactivated her own night combat suite and opened her visor to the night air.
Something doesn't feel right, she thought to herself.
The hedge ruffled loudly and Sheba pivoted to her right, her assault rifle held at the ready. She was too late. A blinding light jolted to life right in front of the fire-team, and sent an electric shockwave through the air that blinded them. The Sergeant on point squealed as he struggled to tear his helmet off. The light moved across the hedge with a swoop, setting branches on fire, and cutting the screaming Sergeant in half, instantly silencing him. Sheba snapped her visor shut, and she could see the light forming the shape of a sword. She fired. The two living Marines fired as well, and the result was a shimmering bubble of energy deflecting the bullets and outlining the shape of an eight foot biped twice the size of normal man. A volley of bullets deflected, peppering and killing another of the Marines.
"Not good! This is not good!" the last Marine said.
The creature stood tall, absorbing nearly a dozen more rifle rounds, and howled in anger. The last Marine fled from the hedgerow in the direction of a burned-out house. The creature followed him. When bullet impacts halted, the creature's outline vanished, and only a moving energy sword remained visible.
Still concealed in the hedgerow, Sheba keyed her cross-com.
"Bravo 4, its right behind you. Cook a grenade and take down that shield -- I'll finish it off."
No acknowledgement light winked, but Bravo 4 dropped a grenade. Sheba saw the explosion, but as it occurred, the sword tumbled nearly four meters to the left, completely avoiding the blast. The creature dodged the grenade. Sheba loaded armor-piercing round and opened fire on the creature from behind. The bullets harmlessly dinged the translucent shield and did nothing to slow the creature down. The sword lifted into the air as the creature caught up with the fleeing Marine, and then it fell killing him. Sheba emerged from the hedge and sprinted towards the creature while its back was turned. At break-neck speed she jumped, shot both legs forward, and used her incredible momentum to deliver a powerful kick to the creature's back.
The creature's shield and invisibility cloak popped and vanished like a soap bubble, and the creature collapsed to the ground. The kick would have crushed a human's bones into splinters. Sheba fell on her back, but quickly stood and ran to tackle the creature. She pounced, combat knife drawn. As the knife barreled in, though, the creature spun onto its back, with a plasma pistol fixed on Sheba. It appeared to grin with its four carnivorous mandibles, and fired.
May 8th, 2534. 10:00 AM
Lt. Colonel Torrin stood tall like a statue in the ruins of Ebro square. He had a wide grin on his face as he stared at the ruined city-center. A warthog approached him slowly on the broken, benign street. Colonel Kits, from the passenger seat, waved to Torrin.
"Torrin! What are you doing here? I've been looking for you all morning."
"Oh, just taking a stroll Kits, just taking a stroll. I thought I might wander into that building across the way, would you care to join me?"
"The natural history museum is off limits, Torrin. Heavy radiation. A whole lot of plasma grenades went off in there. You go in there, you'll come out glowing."
"I suppose you know best," Torrin replied sarcastically.
Torrin walked towards the museum with hands folded behind his back, snubbing Kits.
Confused and irritated by Torrin's disrespect, Kits barked "Torrin!"
"What?"
"Turn around!"
Torrin turned to face Kits. His mouth was perched up in a heavy scowl.
Kits felt nausea in his stomach again; he was pressing his rights against the virtual commander of the UNSC campaign. "I've been looking for the Spartan all morning. Where is she?"
Torrin's scowl disappeared and melted into one of his coy grins.
"Her mission was completed last night. She is no longer present with us."
"She killed it?"
"Her mission was completed."
Angered by Torrin's ambiguity, Kits stuck his finger out and gave a commanding stare. The staff Sergeant in the driver's seat next to Kits hunched his head down, not wanting to have any part in the Colonel's scolding.
"Then you'll answer my questions, Torrin." The finger began to wag harshly. "Let's start with the cross of St. Otley. What is it doing on the side of your ship?"
Torrin was stunned.
"I, uh--"
"You 'uh' better speak very carefully now, mister. I know my share of fleet admirals, and I assure you they wouldn't be too happy with an Ionian fanatic in ONI."
"Me? A fanatic? Nonsense, Colonel. It's just a symbol, Colonel. A personal emblem. Nothing more. I'm hardly a religious man."
"If you don't mind, I'd like to confirm that myself. Where is the Spartan?"
"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say."
The Colonel growled. "Then I'm afraid I'll have to take you into custody, Lt. Colonel." Kits looked to the driver and said, "Sergeant, throw him in the back."
The staff Sergeant got out of the Warthog and approached Torrin, his right hand gripping his M6C pistol handle. Torrin laughed heartily, and with lightning precision produced a Covenant plasma pistol and pointed it at Kits. The staff Sergeant drew his M6C, and pointed it at Torrin.
"Drop the gun, now, sir," the staff Sergeant said.
Kits stared Torrin straight in the eye without flinching.
"Decide now, Torrin. Even in the middle of a fucking war are you going to play the two-bit Ionian martyr?"
"The Covenant is your enemy, Colonel, not mine. Not Io's. The Terran serpent is in its final hour and I welcome the Covenant!"
"Shut up and drop the gun, Torrin!"
"My pleasure, Colonel."
Torrin threw his pistol aside, grinning, and the staff Sergeant, relieved, moved in to arrest him. But as soon as the staff Sergeant approached, a shimmer -- like heat off of hot pavement -- rose in front of him. A sudden invisible crack to the face instantly snapped the staff Sergeants neck and sent him to the ground.
Torrin laughed.
"You see Colonel; I have made a Covenant of my own."
The shimmering figure materialized into a ferocious, gold armored, Covenant Field Commander.
"Torrin, have you lost your mind!?" Kits was terrified by the implications of an ONI double agent.
"The Covenant will be victorious, and I will expedite that victory." Torrin's grin curled high, his eyes bulged, and his voice rose to the level of a pastor delivering a fiery sermon. "The Fleet of Particular Justice will soon be in orbit of Monroe, and the Covenant will finish what they started on this pathetic world, we will rescue the holy icons, crush your fleet, and then we will burn this planet and move on. Move on to New Detroit. Move on to Reach. Ypress VII. Qartaj. Earth."
"What are you talking about?! What icons?"
"It is irrelevant. Know only that Earth and all of the inner-colonies will be annihilated within a week."
"What?"
Kits looked at the Field Commander's hand, which was soaked and crusted with an amber red. In its fist, it held a similarly soaked and crusted UNSC neural lace.
"I handed them the key to Earth, Kits. Sheba was the Spartan navigator, she knew the coordinates of every human military outpost in the galaxy. With her mind as our guide, Earth and Reach will burn as Babylon and Carthage burned!
"And I, as legate of the damned, will lead the masses of Io into triumph against the serpent, against the UN, and against those who oppose the Friedens! Your worlds will suffer as the Ionians join the Covenant! We will fulfill the Great Journey as the shades of the Forerunners, reclaim and activate the sacred--"
Great orbs of plasma screamed, glowed, and set fire through the thick stratus clouds hanging low over the city.
"Ah, they've arrived. So sorry to cut this short, Colonel, but I'm afraid its time for you to die."
The Covenant Field Commander activated its energy sword and stomped towards Kits' warthog. Kits slid over to the driver's seat and quickly revved the vehicle into reverse. The Field Commander bounded and gripped onto the hood of the vehicle. The alien's power-armored gauntlets crumbled the warthog's hood like tin foil, and it pulled itself on top of the hood, gripped onto the warthog's roll cage, and punched through the windshield. As its arm approached Kits' head, the warthog slammed into a deep pothole and sent the Field Commander end-over-end out of the vehicle's cab. Kits was jarred roughly, but stood, turned, and lunged to attack the Field Commander. The alien growled, returned to its feet with supernatural speed, and slammed Kits out of the air.
Kits could feel bones break in his chest, but he knew that his adrenaline would afford him one more chance to somehow best the Field Commander. Killing it and Torrin was Earth's only chance. He could see Sheba's neural lace lying on the bed of the warthog right by the Field Commander's foot, but he couldn't reach it. He stood, grasping onto the warthog's turret to support himself, and then spun the turret, bashing the Field Commander in the face with the three barreled anti-aircraft gun. The alien's power sword slipped and fell out of the vehicle. It slammed onto the pavement and sparked, broken. The Field Commander grabbed at Kits, but Kits used the turret as a shield and pivoted it as the alien tried to grab him. The Field Commander tripped over its own feet and fell out of the warthog, crashing into a pile of rubble.
Lying on its back on the mound of rubble, the stunned Field Commander looked back at the warthog and saw Colonel Kits, behind the anti-aircraft gun, staring him in the face. Kits fired the turret. The barrels spun, whistled and blasted a hundred rounds, instantly overwhelming the Elite's shields and killing it.
Kits heaved painfully, and collapsed onto the bed of the Warthog. He reached for the Spartan's neural lace, and snapped it to pieces. He looked around trying to spot Torrin, but the traitor was no where in sight. All he could see was plasma raining down into the atmosphere. Monroe was doomed, and with Torrin gone, Earth was doomed as well. Kits closed his eyes, and prepared to die.
May 15th, 2534. On-board UN frigate Kawai
Colonel Kits woke up to a groggy, drug-induced daze. He looked about the room and spotted a UNSC officer floating towards him in the zero-g.
"Where am I?" he muttered.
"Easy, Colonel, don't move your head too much, you're aboard the Kawai." the officer replied.
Kits looked down and saw that he was strapped into a UNSC medical pod.
"I'm on a Ship?"
"I'm Commander Stanforth, Michael Stanforth." the Commander motioned his left arm towards the wall behind him. "You're aboard my frigate, the Kawai; my pelicans pulled your brigade from Monroe."
Kits suddenly remembered the brutal fight with the Covenant field commander, the orbital bombardment, and Torrin.
"Commander, it's very important that I speak with the Admiral."
Stanforth quirked an eyebrow.
"That sounds fine Colonel, but I'm afraid we've already jumped. If we hit an eddie I'll let you know, but right now it'll be a month."
"A month? Where are we going?"
"We've lost contact with Jericho VII."
Jericho VII, Kits thought. Not Earth. Not yet.
"When we get there, make sure my Marines are the first on the ground, Commander."
Stanforth laughed. "I'll see what I can do, Colonel."
"Thanks. Thanks for what you did on New Monroe. I hope you make Captain for that."
"Don't mention it, Kits. They'll probably make you General before they make me Captain, though."
Kits lay his head back. General? he thought to himself, knowing Torrin would lead the Covenant to Earth within a week. General of the glassworks… How did Torrin make contact with the Covenant? What were the icons? How many other Ionians were involved in the plot, and how did the Covenant even know about the Jovian dissent? Could ONI even be trusted?
"So I've been told that you were the guy from Cosmora Archipelago."
Stanforth's comment ripped Kits away from his funnel of questions.
"What?"
"Well, not told you were the guy, but," Stanforth looked at Kits with admiration, "I read in your profile about how you saved those people."
Kits shook his head regretfully from side to side.
"What is it?"
Kits took in a deep breath, and said, "I would have traded all those refugees if there had been a chance to get my Marines back to the Nova Scotia."
Stanforth nodded understandingly and said, "I would have done the same."
Kits despaired and said, "We just saved some outer-colony bums that probably just ended up in the glassworks anyway."
"Nonsense," Stanforth insisted, "you saved over a hundred thousand people, and half the men volunteered for the corps after seeing your men tear those aliens apart."
Kits remembered.
"The net said that you stonewalled those bastards, and that they were so terrified that they were jumping out of the Typhoon Lagoon's airlock!"
Remembering the battle in its entirety, and its further implications -- the weeks of celebration with the civilians, the look of satisfaction on the faces of the men and women of Admiral Cole's heavily bruised armada -- Kits thought that perhaps it was worth losing many of his closest friends, losing the Nova Scotia.
Without much left to say about Cosmora Archipelago, Stanforth changed the subject and said, "You were going on about an ONI Lt. Colonel during the evacuation."
Kits was pulled back into the present and his drugged face grew dead set and serious.
"A couple Marines from the pelican went looking for him, they were too late though, and he was dead."
"He died?" Kits asked, surprised.
"From what we can guess, he tried to hide from the bombardment in an irradiated building; my men couldn't retrieve the body because the levels were too high and time was too short."
Kits sighed in relief, which Stanforth mistook for a sigh of regret.
"I'm sorry, Colonel."
Kits was overjoyed.
Believing Kits lost a friend and needed to be alone, Stanforth pushed himself towards the bulkhead.
"I have to get back to the ship now, Colonel, but I'll stop by again later. Cryo-sleep is at 1900, but since it's only a month--" Just before Stanforth floated out of the medical bay, he turned around and said, "You're welcome to stay awake and keep me and the engineers some company."
Kits smiled, and thought he might like that.
|
