1700 Hours, January 7th, 2539 / Zone 67 Perimeter, Camp Curahee, Planet Onyx XF-063, Zeta Doradus IV System
Leonidas-151 POV
The call came in through a direct Spartan Command channel—encrypted, urgent, and already flagged for command review.
"Team Wolf Pack reporting. Team X-Ray is missing. Last ping—Zone 67."
My fingers froze mid-keystroke on the after-action report I was reviewing. I stared at the transmission line for a heartbeat. Then two.
Missing.
That word meant something very different in the Spartan program. It didn't mean lost. It meant unaccounted for. Possibly compromised. Possibly dead.
Possibly worse.
I stood immediately, the chair behind my desk scraping back across the floor of my Spartan HQ office. The lights dimmed as my AI, Phoenix, pulled up the coordinates. Zone 67.
"ONI agents on-site have recommended containment of the area," Phoenix added. "They've issued a Level Three lockdown and advised Spartan personnel refrain from investigation."
I clenched my jaw.
That wasn't a recommendation.
That was a bureaucratic brush-off. The kind that usually came after they'd lost control of something they thought they understood.
I keyed the comm.
"Phoenix. Notify Captain Ambrose. Tell him to meet me at Bay Twelve. Full combat loadout."
"Acknowledged. Shall I inform ONI you are countermanding their lockdown?"
"No," I replied. "I'll let them figure it out when they see the door open."
Ten minutes later, the hangar echoed with heavy footsteps as Kurt-051 stepped out the armory, already suited in Mark IV MJOLNIR, matte-black with jungle-patterned adaptive coating. His DMR was magnetized across his back, helmet clipped under one arm.
"You really want to poke that ONI hornet's nest, Leo?" he asked.
"They can sit on their hands all they want. I'm not losing another Spartan to red tape."
We suited up in silence, the familiar hiss and click of pressure seals and neural linkup systems snapping into place. My HUD came online. Systems green across the board.
Leonidas-151 — ONLINE
MJOLNIR STATUS: 100%
TITAN AI — BT-7274: STANDBY
"Spartan Command Override: Access granted to Zone 67. Violation of ONI lockdown protocol registered."
Good.
Let it be registered.
Let it be my name on the report.
We stepped out of the hangar and into the verdant jaws of Onyx's jungle, the sun dipping below the mountainous ridge to the west as we approached the treeline.
"Let's go find our Spartans," I said.
"And if we find more than that?" Kurt asked quietly.
I didn't answer.
I just activated my thrusters and moved into the trees.
The further we moved into Zone 67, the quieter the world became.
Not silent—too quiet. Like the jungle itself was holding its breath.
My boots thudded softly against the moss-choked ground, Mark IV armor humming with micro-adjustments. My HUD's compass ticked along steadily as Phoenix kept us oriented, but the trees were dense enough that even satellite overhead wouldn't see much. Kurt flanked me, his movements crisp, scanning the underbrush with his DMR tight against his shoulder.
But as we advanced deeper, my thoughts weren't on our surroundings—they were on what we knew about this place.
Which wasn't much.
Zone 67 had been one of the first areas ONI ever scouted when they began setting up on Onyx. Long before Camp Curahee was carved into the rock, back when the planet was nothing more than a footnote on a surveyor's tablet—just another jungle encrusted, rocky world, with a breathable atmosphere and a "missing lower hemisphere."
That alone had been enough to raise eyebrows.
The bottom third of the planet? Gone.
Not cored out. Not collapsed. Just… absent.
A hollow. A shell. With a still-functioning magnetic core and tectonic behavior consistent with full planetary mass.
No one could explain it. No one really tried.
ONI had bigger concerns at the time—namely, the Covenant steamrolling their way through human colonies like fire through dry brush.
They shoved Onyx's weirdness into the back of a classified databank and focused on its one undeniable asset: space, secrecy, and survivability.
A perfect training ground.
Remote. Isolated. Easy to lock down and easier to erase from records.
Even then, Zone 67 stood out. The jungle sector had been flagged early for the presence of unnatural terrain formations—monolithic walls, angular ridges, and metallic deposits so dense they scrambled early drone mapping attempts.
Worse, the materials weren't Covenant.
Didn't match their alloys, their glyphs, their construction methods. The eggheads didn't say much about it in their reports… but they said just enough.
And then? The war worsened.
ONI repurposed the site for Spartan training and slapped an access restriction on Zone 67 until further notice. "Further notice" turned into over a decade.
No one asked questions. No one went in.
And now Team X-Ray had vanished in the middle of it.
Kurt broke the silence.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"If what you're thinking is 'this place has been too quiet for too long,' then yeah," I muttered. "Exactly that."
A faint breeze brushed across my visor. The trees groaned in response. But still no animals. No birds. No insects.
"We're getting close," Phoenix confirmed. "Final ping from Team X-Ray was just past the stone gulch ahead."
"Weapons free?" Kurt asked, voice low.
"Only if something's dumb enough to try us."
Because if someone or something took my Spartans?
They were about to learn the hard way…
Spartans don't go missing.
We found the first clue beneath the warped trunk of a jungle tree that had been sheared in half—clean through, like someone had taken a blade of plasma and drawn it across the bark with surgical precision.
But there was no plasma.
Just bullet casings. Dozens of them. 7.62mm, UNSC standard. Scattered in a pattern that told me what I already feared.
"They fired in panic," Kurt muttered, crouching beside a spent mag. "This wasn't a clean engagement. No cover. No formation."
I knelt by one of the trees, running my armored fingers across the scorched grooves burned through its center. The hole passed through three trunks, back to back, like a lance of energy had carved a straight line through the jungle.
"That's not Covenant," I said.
Covenant didn't carve, they obliterated. Fuel rods. Plasma grenades. They made their presence known like a bar fight in a glass factory.
Whatever this was?
It didn't leave a single body behind.
Not one.
We followed the trail—casings, torn branches, bootprints—until the treeline abruptly gave way to a cliff edge. I stepped to the lip and looked down into a yawning canyon that split the jungle like a wound.
And that's when I saw it.
Floating sixty meters below, was a machine. Not any design I recognized.
Three spherical booms, rotating in precise rhythm, connected to a central body of sleek, metallic plating. In its center: a single glowing orange eye, cyclopean and watching everything. Not a sensor panel. Not a light.
An eye.
Held suspended beneath the machine was a sealed pod, reinforced, alien in design… but with a very human occupant visible through the translucent window.
James-B486.
Strapped in. Unmoving. Hopefully alive.
My heart rate spiked.
"James…"
"I see it," Kurt whispered over comms, rifle already raised. "You want me to—?"
"Negative," I cut in. "We don't know what that thing is. We fire, we lose our chance to track it."
The machine rose, silent as fog, and vanished into the clouds above.
Presumably, the others were already gone. Taken in similar pods. Extracted without a trace. No alarms. No footprints. No ONI alerts.
I opened a private channel to Phoenix.
"Flag Spartan HQ. Emergency priority. Zone 67 is compromised. We've got a hostile—unknown classification—taking Spartans."
"Orders?" Phoenix replied instantly.
"Full lockdown and defenses put up, then have the defense fleet on standby for emergency evacuation."
Because whoever—or whatever—had taken Team X-Ray just made a mistake.
They left witnesses.
We dropped over the cliff's edge without hesitation.
Gravity caught us for half a heartbeat—
Then the jump kits kicked in, venting bouts of thruster flame as we dropped fast and low, gliding down the canyon walls in bursts of controlled descent. Branches whipped past our visors. The last remnants of jungle gave way to stone and sand as we cleared the gorge, hitting the canyon floor running.
"Tracking it—" Kurt called out.
"Two klicks ahead, dropping altitude, heading for that basin."
I saw it then. The landscape opened into a wide, unnatural plains bowl, surrounded on all sides by cliff faces. In the center sat a massive structure, smooth and angular, metal that glinted like polished obsidian beneath the dying light.
It didn't look built.
It looked grown—and not by human hands.
The machine we'd been following glided toward the entrance, which opened for it with a soft wave of blue energy. We followed without hesitation, weapons drawn but not raised. Every Spartan instinct screamed trap.
Inside, the air was… sterile.
The walls glowed faintly. Geometric patterns pulsed like veins beneath the floor. And lining the chamber—hundreds of the floating tripedal machines.
Silent. Watching.
Then we saw them.
The pods.
Five of them. Set in a perfect arc near the center of the room, spaced evenly like they were part of some ritual. James. Christine. Caleb. Johannas. Drake.
Each secured.
Each breathing.
"They're alive," Kurt said, stepping forward, DMR tight to his shoulder. "Signs are good—no trauma. Might even be sedated."
"This whole thing was a collection op," I muttered, moving up beside him. "But why them? Why now?"
We didn't get to ask.
Because from the ceiling descended a new construct—sleeker, sharper, twice the size of the others. Its central eye glowed gold at first as it hovered in front of us.
Then it spoke.
A voice metallic, synthetic, and yet undeniably intelligent.
"Reclaimers."
That word hung in the air like a gunshot.
"Must Preserve."
And then—
The light in its eye snapped to red.
Everything moved at once.
"Move!" I barked.
Kurt dove right. I went left.
The eye began to glow—charging.
The machines around us stirred.
This wasn't a vault.
It was a reactive defense system.
And we just tripped the failsafe.
The drone moved like it weighed nothing.
One second it was hovering ten meters away, the next it was on us, orange-red energy pulsing from its core like a furnace ramping toward critical.
"Target's charging!" I shouted, diving behind one of the pod support pylons.
A second later, the air screamed—
A beam of searing energy cut across the room, vaporizing the floor plating and slicing through two empty containment cradles.
The pressure wave that followed nearly knocked me off my feet.
Kurt circled wide, keeping low and fast. I raised my Tenderizer, lined up a clean shot to the main spherical node, and—
Tink! Tink!
Nothing. No damage. Not even a scratch. The large rounds flattened on impact like they were made of plastic.
"Weapons are doing jack!" I barked. "Armor's too advanced!"
"Then we improvise," Kurt growled.
Before I could warn him off the idea, he engaged his thrusters and launched himself onto the drone's back. The machine twisted, stabilizers flaring red, trying to shake him, but he was already crawling up its chassis.
I saw him raise a fist encased in MJOLNIR armor, brace his legs, and drive the full force of a Spartan-II's strength straight down into the eye—
CRACK!
The impact echoed through the chamber like a hammer striking stone.
The drone staggered mid-air—its stabilizers faltered, wobbling in place like a wounded bird.
The glowing eye flickered.
Then it roared, spinning violently in an attempt to throw Kurt off.
But the damage was done.
The drone shrieked—
A metallic wail, high-pitched and unnatural, like an alarm made of rage and static.
Its damaged stabilizers bucked wildly, sparks bleeding from the cracked casing around its eye.
Kurt grunted, reached to his belt, pulled a frag grenade, and jammed it into the split seam he'd made. The indicator light on the grenade turned red. Kurt kicked off the drone's body mid-spin, using his jump jets to clear the blast radius.
BOOM.
The explosion ruptured the eye, blowing molten metal and shattered components in every direction. The drone dropped like a stone, trailing smoke and fractured light before hitting the floor with a heavy, shuddering thud.
Dead.
But we weren't out of the fire.
I heard it before Phoenix even flagged the contact—
multiple whirring sounds, the rhythmic thump of stabilizers in motion.
More drones.
"They're coming," I said.
"And we only have seven grenades between us," Kurt added.
We couldn't fight our way through all of them. Not here. Not with just the two of us. Not while trying to protect the trainees. And definitely not when we had no idea how to crack open the damn pods.
"Phoenix," I said sharply. "Scan those containers. I need anything—locks, hinges, release panels, wiring—something we can use."
"Negative, Commander," Phoenix replied. "Pod material is non-standard. No discernible access ports or known energy patterns. They're completely sealed."
"Translation?" Kurt asked.
"We can't open them. Not yet."
The chamber lights dimmed.
Another drone screeched in the distance. The sound echoed off the angular walls like it was everywhere at once.
I looked at the pods. The Spartans inside.
Still alive.
Still vulnerable.
"We need to move them," I said.
Kurt turned to me.
"Move five alien pods, each the size of a cryo chamber and heavier than a troop transport, while being hunted by flying death machines?"
"Yep."
He rolled his shoulders.
"Dumb plan. Let's do it."
This wasn't a fight anymore.
It was a heist under fire.
Five alien pods. Each likely weighed over half a ton. No obvious propulsion system, no wheels, no handles. Just smooth, matte surface and faint pulses of orange light blinking across their exteriors like slumbering hearts.
I scanned the ceiling. The drone I'd been tracking earlier had used a gravitic tether to carry James. That meant these pods could be moved... if you had the right hardware. I didn't.
But I had something better.
"Kurt. Grapples and repulsor lines. We're dragging them."
"You want to tow alien sarcophagi across a mile of hostile territory?"
"Unless you've got a teleporter in your back pocket."
Kurt didn't argue. Just nodded and knelt beside the nearest pod. We both pulled the high-tension line from our field kits—designed for rappelling or emergency hauling. We looped it around the base of the pods in a cross-rig, then magnetized the lines to our armor's lower back plates. Three for me, two for Kurt.
The pull was immediate.
Each step was like wading through quicksand. The pods didn't glide—they resisted. My leg servos whined in protest. My HUD warned of gradual heat creep in the knee and ankle actuators.
Didn't matter.
"We need verticality," I muttered. "The drones will bottleneck us in the corridors."
"We're in a goddamn alien tomb, Leo," Kurt snapped. "No schematic. No exits."
"Then we make one."
Phoenix pinged a scan ahead—low ceiling arch, but a thin crawlspace above it. Could be a ventilation system. Or a coffin chute. Or a bomb trap.
Didn't matter.
I checked the corner ahead.
Red pings. Three drones inbound. Fast.
We braced.
Kurt flicked his wrist and launched a flare grenade into the dark—a dull hiss of magnesium lighting up the hallway in a violent strobe.
The drones paused.
Just a second.
But that was all we needed.
Kurt hauled his pod into motion, charging into the left path while I took the right. We'd split the drones' attention, buy time to double back, and hit the vertical shaft we found earlier. I could feel every vibration in the tether line, every subtle shift in the alien pod dragging behind me like an anchor.
I skidded into the narrow archway, shoulder-checking a wall as sparks flew across my visor. A beam from one of the drones scorched the air above me, flash-melting a patch of wall that glowed white-hot before collapsing.
"Leo! Move– Move!" Kurt barked.
I activated my thrusters, redirected all non-essential power to the suit's lower limbs, and launched.
Pod still attached.
The line yanked taut, threatened to rip my spine apart—
But the MJOLNIR's reinforced harness took it. I shot forward with much greater force, pulled the pod through the debris, and just barely avoid a drones beam attack as it peels off into another hallway to avoid colliding with me directly.
The chase had begun.
The air changed the second we entered the upper tunnels.
Colder. Thinner.
It smelled like static and old metal. The walls here were less refined—bare alloy with jagged ribs and modular seams, as if this part of the facility had some weathering.
It was tight.
Barely enough room for a Spartan in full armor, let alone a Spartan dragging a half-ton alien pod through a collapsing hallway while three hunter-killer drones tried to blast them into atoms.
"Left fork, fifty meters," Phoenix advised. "Minor elevation gain, possible drop beyond. Tunnel seems to widen."
"Any cover?"
"Define cover."
"Forget I asked."
I gritted my teeth and leaned into the harness, servos at full torque. My calves burned. Ankles barked warnings. The tether tugged hard with every step, the pod scraping and groaning behind me like it resented being rescued.
Kurt barreled around a corner and nearly collided with me.
"This place is a damn rat maze," he growled. "You see those wall glyphs?"
I glanced at the panels. Strange geometric symbols, pulsing with a soft light—shapes within shapes, always shifting, never repeating.
"I see them," I muttered. "And I don't trust them."
Then the drones arrived.
Three of them—sleek, angular, their glowing red eyes scanning everything, their stabilizers humming like angry hornets. One of them clipped the ceiling, and the corridor lit up with a blast of energy.
The wall to my right turned to molten slag.
We dove into the left fork, one after the other, dragging the pods behind us. The corridor tightened. Lights blinked along the walls—some red, some blue, some cycling through hues I didn't recognize.
Then the floor gave out.
"DROP!" I shouted.
We fell—
Tether lines whipping violently as the pods tumbled after us. The shaft was steep, a metal chute spiraling downward at a sickening angle. My jump kit flared to reduce momentum, but the pod's weight yanked me faster than expected as they passed me. I hit the curve hard and bounced once, twice—
Then the shaft ejected us into a massive chamber.
I rolled, hit the ground, and immediately dragged the pod into cover behind a hexagonal column. Seconds later, Kurt slammed down beside me, his armor scorched, but intact.
The drones didn't follow.
Yet.
"Status?" I asked, breath ragged.
"All five pods accounted for," Kurt grunted, tapping his HUD. "And your pods didn't crack, so I guess you're still pretty."
"We're in an atrium," Phoenix cut in. "Unknown purpose. Structure analysis suggests a potential exit path two levels up. But you won't like it."
"Try me."
"It's vertical."
Perfect.
"Time to climb."
We both looked up.
Sixty meters of sheer alien architecture. Ledges. Ridges. A straight shot to whatever qualified as freedom in this place.
The chase wasn't over.
It was just evolving.
The atrium was cathedral-sized.
Silent. Wide. Chillingly pristine.
The walls stretched sixty meters straight up, lined with spine-like ridges, segmented platforms, and irregular protrusions. The ceiling opened into a hexagonal aperture radiating faint golden light, like the inside of a machine pretending to be a sky.
"Looks climbable," Kurt muttered, his voice tight.
"By a spider," I replied, eyeing the path Phoenix was highlighting on my HUD. "Or a Spartan with a death wish."
"Lucky we're both."
We clipped the towlines to our suits again—shortened this time. The pods would drag up behind us as we ascended. The idea was simple:
Climb. Don't fall. Don't die.
Execution?
Less simple.
"Drones just reentered local space," Phoenix warned. "Multiple. Fast movers. They'll reach the atrium in under sixty seconds."
"Noted," I growled. "Going vertical. Now."
We cram our fingers in any available space and pull.
My hands hit the first ledge– wide enough for one Spartan. I gripped the edge of a support fin, hooked my elbow around it, and yanked myself upward. Behind me, the towline groaned as the pods below were pulled into motion, scraping metal-on-metal as it scraped up the atrium wall.
Every step was a power move.
Every inch gained was a small victory against physics.
MJOLNIR servos hissed under strain. My heart pounded in sync with the synthetic muscles firing along my legs and arms. Kurt was one level above to my left, moving with mechanical grace, hauling his pods with sheer stubborn will. The bastard had less weight than me.
We were halfway up when I heard it.
That whine.
The distinct pitch of those alien drones charging for another attack run. A moment later, the ceiling above us pulsed red, and two drones dropped into the atrium in a controlled spiral—slowing just enough to track us without hitting the walls.
Their eyes flared like furnace coals.
"Kurt, we've got company!"
"Then climb faster, damn it!"
A beam cut through the air just above my head. I ducked, shifted weight, and kicked off the wall, catching a higher ledge with one hand. The pod yanked beneath me, nearly dragging me back down. Sparks flew from the tow clamp as it scraped the edge of a razor-sharp fin.
"They're adjusting for angles," Phoenix said. "They're learning your movements."
"Then I'll stop being predictable."
I double-boosted to the right, flaring the thrusters mid-arc and grabbing a ceiling-mounted strut instead of the next wall bracket. It felt like ripping my shoulder out of its socket—but the move yanked me just far enough off the drones' predicted path.
A beam lanced through the space I'd been a second earlier.
Kurt landed beside me on a wide mid-tier platform, dragging his pods up like a man trying to pull a tank through mud.
"Twenty meters left," he said, panting. "You good?"
"I'm not dead."
"Close enough."
The drones adjusted again. One of them angled toward Kurt, its stabilizers flaring wide, charging a direct shot.
Without thinking, I let go of the wall and dropped—
Landed on the drone's chassis with both feet and drove it into the platform, using its own momentum against it with increased weight from the pods. Metal buckled under me. It shrieked in a rising digital pitch as its shell compressed from the impact.
Gravity worked its magic shattering the eye.
"Kurt, go!" I barked.
I had one drone dead—
But the second one was arcing back around.
We needed to move. Now.
The drone beneath me convulsed like a dying animal, its stabilizers flaring erratically as I wrenched my knife into where the eye used to be.
Crack. Grind. Snap.
The construct shrieked—metallic feedback squealing through its broken frame—then jerked once and went limp.
I pushed off, kicking its ruined chassis toward the second drone just as it rounded for another firing angle.
CLANG.
The collision threw the active drone off course—just enough for Kurt to reach the next ledge without getting perforated. He didn't say thanks. He didn't have to.
Spartans move. Spartans finish.
I hit the next ledge and resumed the climb, muscles burning, pod towline groaning behind me with every tug. The last twenty meters were the steepest, the ledges fewer and farther between—like this section was never meant to be climbed.
Figures.
"Phoenix," I barked. "ETA on the drones reinforcements?"
"Detecting dozens. No route left but up."
"Then we're ending this on the roof."
We reached the final platform—barely wide enough for both of us and the two pods hanging behind.
We unlatched the tethers, braced our legs, and pulled.
Together.
Like two soldiers dragging wounded friends from a collapsing trench. Every inch we hauled was a declaration of war against whatever built this place.
Thud. Scrape. Thud.
We got them onto the platform.
The moment the last pod clicked into position, a warning flashed across my HUD:
PROXIMITY ALERT.
"Above us—!"
Two drones descended through the open ceiling, pincers flaring, energy weapons hot and glowing. I grabbed my Tenderizer and fired—point-blank, rounds pinging off armor, chipping it.
Useless.
Then I saw it. A hinge plate—a support anchor for the roof's retractable aperture. A maintenance node, or something like it.
"Kurt—get the pods up! I'm making an exit!"
"With what?!"
"Improvising."
I surged forward, leapt across the gap between beams, and slammed a grenade against the hinge point. It was meant for demolition work—cutting through doors, not alien architecture.
So I added two more and magnetized them.
"Phoenix—tell me when the second drone's close enough."
"Mark—now."
Detonate.
The explosion tore a chunk of the ceiling apart—ripping one hinge free and buckling the aperture just enough to collapse inward. The second drone spiraled in confusion as chunks of metal rained down, slamming into its stabilizers and dragging it to the floor like a bug in a net.
A shaft of natural light broke through.
Our exit.
"Clear!" I shouted.
Kurt activated his jump kit, tethered five pods to his back, he boosted up, legs swinging wide, armor groaning under the strain.
I reached out..
Boosters screamed.
Hands caught the ledge.
Arms locked.
Pulled.
Swinging with momentum.
Daylight fully welcomed me as I crawled out ahead of kurt and pulled him up.
We dragged the pods up through the hole, sunlight washing over us in a blinding wave of amber and ash.
The moment we cleared the hole, I collapsed—armor scorching from heat and strain.
We were on the surface again. High ground. Fresh air. Real sky.
But no time to breathe.
The drones wouldn't stop.
And we still had to get back to camp.
We lay in the dirt at the summit of a monument built by ghosts.
No time to catch our breath.
No time to slow down.
Phoenix's icon blinked to life on my HUD.
"Construct response increasing. A few hundred drones inbound. Tactical recommendation: Do not reengage. Retreat."
"That's not an option," I said flatly.
I reloaded my VK78—knowing it wouldn't punch through. Didn't matter. I had another plan.
"Phoenix, highlight the drone flight paths. I need timing."
"Understood."
I turned to Kurt and pointed to the sheer edge of the structure. "I will hit hard and draw aggro. You start dragging the pods towards camp. I'll use the ledge to my advantage."
"That's suicide."
"That's command."
He didn't argue.
Spartans follow orders—even if it kills them.
The drop was fast. Like falling into the mouth of hell.
The drones spot me immediately—red halos flaring, weapons charging, formation shifting. I fell straight at them.
I didn't need to win. I just needed to be the biggest target in their sights.
I grunt as I land on the leading drone. My remaining grenades drop.
Rounds rang out. I fired high and wide—distracting, flashing, forcing them to move. Two drones angled toward me while the others hesitated, confused by the assault vector. The grenades explode.
I engaged the thrusters again, launched myself into one of the drones mid-charge, knocking it off-course. It rebounded off a wall and swung around just in time to get a boot to its core.
Didn't kill it. But it bought time.
A beam sliced through the air next to my head. Another burned across my thigh armor, triggering thermal alarms. My body screamed. My heart pounded like a war drum.
I didn't stop.
"Leo! Get out of there" Kurt called, his voice distant
I tackled another drone midair and rammed it into the wall. It thrashed under me.
I took a hit. Square in the shoulder. My armor's hydrostatic gel layer surged to absorb the heat, but I felt it through the burn suppression.
"Leonidas, I recommend retreating now," Phoenix suggests
The drones were now a swarm below me. No longer the vanguards. Stabilizers humming, weapons charging.
"Phoenix, options?!"
"Grapply the ledge."
Thought so.
I am yanked straight up. Daylight welcomes me back
Then a crack of thunder split the air.
A Pelican.
UNSC markings. 901st Recon.
"Visual acquired," Phoenix confirmed. "Extraction now viable."
40mm rounds tear into the drone swarm as they exit the facility. Missile salvos follow. The roof is shredding as debris and dead drones fall on those below.
The rear ramp dropped, and machine gun fire shredded the advancing drones again as Kurt leaps to grab the ledge of the ramp. The weight causes the pelican to shift and the pilot compensates.
My grapple his the top of the pelican.
I hit the bird, mag boots engaging, yelling into the comms, "Go!".
The Pelican's engines roared as it pulled away from the structure—leaving nothing behind but wreckage and ghost machines. Five pods dangle from a spartan pulling himself onto the ramp.
Longswords blur past and drop bombs into the swarm.
I collapsed the pelican's roof—helmet against cool steel, blood pounding in my ears.
Kurt sat on the ramp, chest rising and falling like a freight engine.
"The drones seem to be retreating," Phoenix informs me.
Strength fading.
Relief consumes me.
"Well," Kurt says through grit teeth. "That sucked."
"Yeah," I rasped. "Let's do it again sometime."
The Pelican climbed higher into Onyx's hazy atmosphere, the structure shrinking behind us—its secrets buried deeper than we'd ever imagined.
But we had what mattered.
We got them back.
All five.