Chapter 6
The Prowler descended through the dense cloud layer just as the Covenant Cruiser arrived behind them. With their stealth system engaged, there was no way they had seen them descend. Though it was only a matter of time before the enemy captain sent out a search party. The team would hopefully be gone by then.
It was an eerie atmosphere as the vessel coasted over the decimated ruins of the colony. The Covenant had essentially glassed them on a much smaller scale by setting fire to anything and everything. The eco system was ruined, and there was nothing but scorched earth and ashes as far as the eye could see.
The coordinates brought them to the outskirts of large colony ruins. Buildings sat half destroyed, stagnating in their own rubble from years prior. There was no color left on the entire planet, and the atmosphere was as grim as the grave.
Melecia did a flyover of the area before choosing a landing site, which took longer than expected to select some place hidden, yet large enough to fit the Prowler.
“Have fun out there,” the pilot said, looking over his shoulder at the squad leader. It was their rule to leave someone, usually the pilot, to protect their ride. Melecia was all too happy to stay behind.
Jackson met the rest of his team at the airlock where they stood in line to leave. “Everybody keep your eyes up and spread out around the coordinates. Make sure to check your crossfire, and stay safe,” Jackson said. He then hit the manual release and put his helmet on, then made sure to be first outside.
The stale air filtered roughly through Jackson’s helmet, leaving grit inside his mouth. Where they had landed was inside a blasted out parking garage that had all of its levels decimated, yet its walls were left intact.
As soon as they were clear of their ship’s cover, the eight Spartans split into teams of two and disappeared into the ruins. Jackson and Chase stayed in the street to be the ones to make contact with whoever sent out the distress signal.
It was a long walk through miles of wreckage and battle scars. Though the thing that Jackson noticed first was the lack of corpses. The scale of destruction and the lack of bodies put him on edge, and was constantly checking alleyways and down street corners.
“Contacts coming out of the subway. Eyes up,” Perish warned.
Down the street was an entrance that led underground, and inside of it was a group of humans in loose UNSC fatigues and Assault Rifles held warily in hand. They seemed skittish as their eyes scanned the rubble and seemed to be ready to run at a moments notice.
“Damn they’ve been through the wringer,” Chase commented as the two approached the survivors.
“Agreed,” Jackson said.
The group’s mouths were agape when the Spartans approached them. No one spoke for a good few seconds until someone stepped away from the group to greet them.
“By god, are you really Spartans?” he asked.
“Affirmative. Who’s your commanding officer?” Jackson asked, scanning the heads of the timid group that was staying close to the subway’s entrance.
The man’s expression dropped and he glanced at the clothing he wore. “We’re not military,” he hesitated. “The UNSC left some stuff behind.”
“This changes things,” Chase said. His voice only came through the team’s encrypted channel, as he had muted his external speakers.
Civilians would be more of a liability than trained soldiers. Though if the group was as small as these few survivors, extracting them would still be possible before the Covenant arrived.
“Where is your base of operations?” Jackson asked. He wanted to see how capable these people were before attempting to evacuate anybody.
The man gestured to the subway entrance. “Follow me,” he said, then began to descend the steps.
“Ilos three and four, stay here and keep an eye on the sky,” Jackson ordered the other four Spartans. “If we’re not back in fifteen, evacuate without us.”
With that, the two ducked their heads and descended the lightless steps underground. With their enhanced vision, the soldiers could see perfectly fine, but wondered how the civilians were getting around so well without any source of light.
The subway was virtually untouched compared to what was on the surface. The head of the group led them down the tunnels until it abruptly ended with a collapsed section. Their guide took a left, pulled aside a massive piece of rebar, and revealed a hidden hole that acted as an entrance into a maintenance tunnel. The tunnel finally ended in a chamber filled with flickering light, and a makeshift camp filled with scraggly survivors all fitted in UNSC fatigues.
The returning group was met at the door by a furious looking woman with pale skin and sunken eyes. She slammed into the man and pinned him against the wall. “Why the fuck did you bring UNSC down here?” The woman snarled. Her voice was lowered to avoid being heard, but the Spartans were still listening.
“They can save us, Beth. Give them a chance!” the man responded, pushing the woman off of him.
As the two fought, Jackson noticed all eyes had shifted to the newcomers. There was a variety of expressions that spoke of both hatred and hope. It occurred to the squad leader that some of them may be Insurrectionists, or developed a hatred for the military after losing their planet.
“Is this everybody?” Jackson asked, interrupting the two’s argument.
“There would be more, but you abandoned us, didn’t you?” the woman said.
“We can just leave them. Would definitely be easier,” Chase said privately.
Jackson took a deep breath and turned to address the man, who seemed willing to work with them. “I want a count of who is willing to be rescued, and who doesn’t,” the Spartan said. “You have fifteen minutes.”
The group left them to speak with their people, and Chase shook his head. “There’s going to be Innies in here. If we’re taking them, they’re going to be quarantined.”
Jackson didn’t answer, but rather wondered what they would do with all of them. This put a kink in their hunt, and it would take a long time to get back to UNSC space to drop off the survivors. Having ripped out most of the cryopods to conserve unused power, they didn’t have enough to stick them in pods for the remainder of their mission. And definitely didn’t have enough resources.
Ten minutes passed and only the man returned, looking even more tired than before. “Looks like Beth and her people are staying. There are still about fifty people who want to leave,” he said.
“Okay. Have your people ready in fifteen minutes, and meet us up top,” Jackson said, then left with Chase.
They walked in silence until emerging from the subway where the other three Spartans were waiting for them. “How’d it go?” Charlie asked. The squad leader could see his rifle’s scope poking out from the top of a building between two pieces of stacked rubble.
“We’ve got fifty evacuees to board,” Jackson responded.
“Think this through, squad leader. We can’t fit that many,” Perish said sternly.
“We can’t just leave them,” Janet countered. “They’d die in just a year.”
In that moment, a decision was made. Taking in the lives of civilians was something any good soldier would risk their lives to do.
Fifteen minutes later, the group of survivors came pouring out of the subway. They were each fitted with weapons of all kinds, each of which were in poor condition. If a serious firefight occurred, they wouldn’t be reliable.
“Stay behind me and keep your head on a swivel,” Jackson declared. “If a firefight starts, keep your heads down.”
It was a mere minute and a half into their march when Charlie called attention to the skies, and the Spartans turned to watch as the skies turned pink, and the Covenant Cruiser slipped through the clouds.
“Time’s up,” Jackson told his team. To Melecia he said, “336, warm up the engines. We’ve got incoming.”
The civilians caught notice of the ship, and started to panic as purple specks spilled out of its belly and descended upon the city. Seraphs and Banshees began a search pattern that started at the far end and swept in close.
“Stay close!” Jackson called and pulled the group closer to the building walls and picked up the pace. There was a brief window of time before the group was spotted. Then a Banshee swooped low through the streets and opened fire with its plasma turret and gunned down two of the stragglers. The two Spartans opened fire on the Banshee and it went down in the street trailing flame.
The destruction caught the attention of a passing wing who alerted the rest of the fleet and disappeared from view.
Jackson stopped in the middle of an intersection with very little cover and turned to face the civilians. As he did this, there was the crunch and sliding of metal, and two buses and one semi-trailer were pushed into the street corners, forming an impassable barricade. Chase, who had fallen behind, kicked in a barrier on the open side just down the street. The civilians were penned in. The three other Spartans climbed atop their barricades and looked down on the confused group.
“What’s happening? We need to get out of here!” their leader exclaimed.
Jackson said nothing as Chase passed them by and climbed the barricade next to Perish. It was then that the civilians began to realize what was happening.
The Spartan looked to the sky as a swarm of Banshees and Seraphs grew in the distance. “You can’t do this,” the leader said with desperation growing in his voice. “You can’t leave us to die!”
The squad leader turned away, and the leader pulled his gun. The sound of it cocking made the Spartan pause. “What happened to the honor of the UNSC?” the man cried. “I thought you were the good guys?”
Jackson turned around and stared the man dead in the eyes. “I don’t answer to the UNSC,” he stated.
It was then that the leader realized his mistake. “God damn it, you liars!” he exclaimed. He fired on the Spartan, hitting his cuirass with a single bullet before the others on the barricade gunned him down.
He fell in a spray of blood, causing the rest of the civilians to panic and run away. Jackson joined the rest of his team and disappeared into the city to make their way back to the Prowler.
The sounds of pursuit overhead was directed solely at the fleeing survivors. The Covenant hadn’t seen the Spartans. Only the helpless civilians.
They were unseen as they made their way back to the Prowler, and the vessel rose from its hiding place. Melecia was betting on the fact that the Cruiser wasn’t fast enough to follow them out of orbit, and would be too distracted with the annihilation of the survivors. And he was right. The Cruiser didn’t give chase as the ONI vessel climbed out of the atmosphere and pulled away from the planet.
Taking in the lives of civilians was something any good soldier would risk their lives to do. Jackson was not a good soldier.