“Care to tell me why his signal dropped?”
"I'm sorry, captain, but I don't know. SAT-A reported nothing unusual in the few minutes before they lost signal," the officer replied, his voice tight with worry.
Leslie's brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of the situation. She knew Apollo was a loose cannon, but she had never imagined he would up and disappear. "This child of a Spartan," she whispered to herself, her mind racing. “You really love to cause me trouble, don’t you, Apollo?” With a sharp sigh, she stood up, the metallic clang of her boot echoing through the bridge. "McCallister." She called on her trusted communications officer.
The officer snapped to attention. "Yes, captain!"
Leslie took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. “Retrieve the seismic data from the colonies. All of them. Look for any singular disturbances.”
“Yes ma’am.” He began furiously typing away, sending an urgent message to the colonies on the planet below. “I would expect a response within an hour, ma’am.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Communication was slow, especially between star systems. To see something travel so fast was a miracle. " And the trackers for the rest of FT Raven?”
He snapped back to his console, furiously typing away. “The markers you set are on LT-2235-B.”
Leslie dropped her voice down. "They’re both on the same planet?” She raised her voice back to McCallister. “Do you have any record of their assignment?”
“No, captain, but I do know that Covenant invaded the colony a few weeks prior.”
“Cleanup work.” She suppressed a vengeful smirk. She knew it was bad to wish ill will. “Thalia, keep an eye on them. Don’t let them get assigned to anything else until I say so.” She said, pulling herself out of her seat.
She responded blankly. “Yes, captain.”
The UNSC weren't going to regret giving her free reign over a starship.
Even with his advanced vision, he could see next to nothing. Just the vague definitions of the walls and ceiling were all he was allowed. He caught the occasional glimpse of computer consoles on top of the rows of desks. It seemed to be just a standard office building. But what was an office doing in such a high-end facility?
His internal question was answered the moment he asked it. A computer light flicked on, washing the side of the room in an obnoxious blue. Just a single window was open on the desktop, a file directory. The window displayed “Research Lab,” and each of its subdirectories covered a different computer’s files, apparently linked to a central server.
He figured it was time to accompany his borrowed ammo with borrowed knowledge. He pulled the chair aside and bent into a kneel as he took the tiny computer mouse in hand. Fingers tapped against desk-steel absentmindedly as he searched through folder after folder.
Empty. Every single one was empty. All fifty or so folders had absolutely nothing in them. “Waste of time.”
Click.
What an idiot I am. Of course this was a trap. He threw his pistol up at the noise. Two bangs escaped from opposite sides of the room. The other side won out. His gun threw itself out of his hand from the force of the opposing bullet. He ducked, two more powerful shots missing his head. His plan to stay low to the ground was brashly interrupted by two forceful blows at his helmet and chest.
The shots sent him down to his side. He resorted to climbing underneath the desk. They must be inert sentries. They would have fired again by now. His hands curled into fists. He jack-hammered his knuckles against the back of the desk. The metal broke its hold, deforming into a sizable hole that he could just barely clamber through. Apollo saw the tripod legs of the sentry. Peering out from the desk, he could see the crappy workmanship of the 12-gauge duct-taped to the side. Its laser hung from the other side, dangling nonfunctional. After a more thorough look, he finally figured the thing to be an M-208 sentry, scrappily yet skillfully rigged with an automatic shotgun.
He crawled behind and ripped the shotgun off the sentry, firing two estimated shots at where the other shots came from. Two electric crackles and flashes of frantic gunshots confirmed his mark.
“Not as smart as you think.” He holstered the shotgun and hopped over the desk to grab his pistol. A large spherical dent was embedded in the side. “Whoever you are…” It was broken for sure.
The desert planet, minute by minute, grew larger in the glass of the bridge. Bridge officers exchanged glances as Leslie huffed an annoyed sigh.
“Say it to me one more time, McCallister. I want to make sure I heard you right.”
“The seismic data - ma’am - doesn’t have any reports on the Spartan.”
Leslie rescinded the thoughts of slamming her fist into the screen. She would reserve that for his face. “Tell the hangar team to prepare a pelican for launch in thirty minutes.” She got up out of her seat, now unusually calm. “Collins, I’m putting you in temp command.” The door quickly opened to make way for her brisk exit. She mazed through the hallways and elevators of the ship. As she passed her subordinates, she only acknowledged them with a curt nod.
“Thalia. Load yourself onto the ship, and put a subroutine in charge of the bridge. Standard absency protocol.” She ordered robotically.
“Yes, captain. Subroutine loaded; I will be relocating shortly.”
“Acknowledged.”
She stopped at the side of the hallway. With a biometric scan of her eye, a cabinet embedded in the wall popped open. Mounted in front of her was her very own armor, tinted a desaturated gray-purple. She picked her helmet off the storage mount. The helmet perfectly accentuated her as a Spartan; Simple and to the point. No nonsense.
As she said, “Once a spartan, always a spartan.”
The light winked on, the sentries no longer sapping so much of the building’s power. The room was much smaller than he first estimated. Just four rows of desks filled the room from end to end. Only a few dozen could have been working here, at most. All the computers were dead, and the droids wasted all their ammo on their panic-fire, which meant the room was worthless to him.
Something did feel different when he went out to the dome room. He stretched his arm out, rotating in place a few times, emulat ing a radar dish-like fashion. Sure enough, there was a draft.
It came from where he walked in, so it had to exit somewhere else. He took the long walk to the opposite side from where he entered. As he got closer, he could see a panel extending out of the wall with pneumatic pistons. An already open door was inside the panel; a secret entrance in a secret facility.
The hallway beyond stretched three times as wide as the cavernous room before, forking into five more hallways on one side. Large doors lined each side the whole way down, labeled sequentially. He slid the first door aside.
The living quarters he saw were both impeccably clean and impeccably small. The bed took up ninety percent of the space and could fit a man twice his size, yet the room’s square footage was less than that of a typical New Manorran leaseapartment.
The sink area to the side was accompanied by dental tools that have seen quite some use. The bed was neatly made and the pillows on top were perfectly aligned. The cabinets were stacked with cans of preserved food and drink, the same cans from the storage area near the surface. He opened a few more doors and saw that they were all the same - hundreds upon hundreds of Spartan living quarters.
A door closed at the far end of the hallway. He started towards it immediately. He searched room after room, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Finally, he opened a door to see a computer screen taped to the wall, with wires snaking up to a computer mounted on the ceiling. He turned toward the monitor, its home screen completely filled with folders.
Another slug bounced off the back of his helmet. With no time to lookHe swung his fist in a backward haymaker, pinning his yet-to-be-seen target between his arm and the wall. He heard a stifled grunt and the distinct cracks of several ribs.
He turned to look at his attacker.
By the looks of his face and his hands, he looked to be etiherabout twenty years old, or a fifteen-year-old spartan. He was wearing UNSC-approved casual wear; just a blank, loose blank T-shirt and camouflage-patternd pants. He looked exceptionally homeless, considering his scragglylong, unkempt hair and sand-coatunwashed clothes.
“I really thought that would get you,” the man tried to muster a smile despite the pain in his chest.
“Not everyone gets their ribs snapped and starts smart-talking right after.”
“Trust me, this hurts way more than you think it does. It’s a coping mechanism..., or whatever they called it.”
“Where’s the rest of your troupe?” He eased the pressure on his chest.
"Why would I tell you?"
He eased the pressure back onto his chest. Apollo could tell he was not stifling the pain well. "They disappeared," he finally allowed.“I don’t know, they just disappeared.”
“So you decided to start rigging traps?”
“For raiders.” He dropped his now-useless shotgun. “They kept breaking in-”
“You think I’m a raider?” He almost considered it a personal offense, being compared to some low-life of a human.
“Well…” He was sure to watch his words around a talking wall of armor. “You were stealing my stuff," he noted, matter-of-factly, in a half groan.
Apollo leaned in closer, making sure. He needed to watch his own breathing. “And what makes it yours anyway?”
A slight laugh escaped him. “It’s mine ‘cuz I said so. I found it, so it’s mine.”
The topic was going nowhere. He pivoted. “Then why aren’t the UNSC here to claim it?”
He shrugged, “Well, they’re all dead so—" He stopped in an instant. His gaze shot off to the side. Apollo wondered if that was his tell. “That's my guess, though. “I-I don’t really know what happened to them.”
“You’re terrible at lying.”
The man's face molded into a sneer. “I don’t care. I don't know what happened to them,” he repeated.“I don’t care. I’m not gonna tell you anyway.”
“And I won’t hesitate to break more of your bones.”
“Well…” his eyes flicked down to the arm holding him down, then to the clenched fist at Apollo’s side. “I’ll… I’ll have you know that I’m a Spartan of the UNSC. It most definitely would reflect poorly on your record to damage a high-value asset such as I.” He spoke with the slyest grin he’d seen out of a man his age.
“As far as I’m concerned, Spartan, all I’m seeing is a man that pulled a shotgun on me and is willing to kill. That’s grounds enough for lethal violence, wouldn’t you think?” He enjoyed seeing his grin falter. “Need I remind you that we’re a mile underground? Doesn’t get more alone than that.”
“Okay, okay. You win.” He dropped the gun, and raised his hands over his head. “I’d rather be jailed than dead anyway.”
He moved his arm off the boy. “Good. Now tell me where the rest of your Spartans went.”
His gaze shot to the door. “Some desert animal got in. I didn’t see it, but I heard it. Sounded… huge. Like a dragon, or somethin’.” A southern twang started to show in his voice.
“Dragon?” Suspicion escaped his tone.
“That’s what it sounded like. Either that or a dinosaur.” He pushed at a spot on his chest. He winced slightly. “Jeez, that hurts. They called for an evacuation. Red flashy lights, the whole deal. I just… stayed.”
“There was no count made? No one sweeping the halls?”
“That thing was causing so much panic, they couldn’t have. They probably assumed I was dead anyway.”
“And it didn’t come back?”
“No. First and only time.”
Apollo took a preemptive step towards the door. “You’re not making it very easy for me to trust you.”
“You broke three of my ribs!” He burst out, tossing himself off the wall he was leaning on. “And I’m sure death threats are just friendly chatter between us Spartans!"
”We are not the same.” Apollo shot a finger at him, leaning far over him. ”No Spartan is a coward, and you are no Spartan.”
The boy’s face twisted into a sneer. “I ain’t no coward. Hiding was the smart option. That thing killed at least a hundred of us! I wasn’t going to go out there and try to fight some desert wormbeast!”
“You could have at least helped with the evacuation.”
“And still get killed myself. No thank you.”
He clenched his fist. “Putting your life on the line is an honor. Get that through—“
“…your head,” he finished in a half breath.
Apollo ground his teeth - he was starting to sound just like her.
“Name.” he demanded, a half tone lower.
“I’m not telling you—“
Apollo jabbed a finger into his chest. “Name. I’m not asking again.”
He winced.
“Deegan.”