EliteCommander

Halo: Aegis Team

As Aegis team disembarked the phantom, they were met immediately with hostile ground fire. The roof of the structure they had been dropped on was large and mostly flat, with little cover for either side, save for some weapon crates that had been dropped where they were when the attack started. There were ten or so armed rebels surrounding a ramp leading down into the interior of the structure, as well as a group of four Brutes that were closer to the edge of the roof on the north side. The rebels were fighting defensively, seemingly to guard the entrance, though the Brutes had started to rush at Aegis team to get in melee range before the first of them had even touched the ground.

When the rockets came in, it was from another squad of rebels that had emerged up the ramp at the center of the structure. They were carrying rockets, fuel rod cannons, and other high explosives, and had likely been sent up as a response to the attack in general. However, they had eneded up in the right place at the right time to deal with Tar’s phantom. There was little chance for meaningful evasion before two rockets struck one of her engines directly. The heavy weapons might have been meant for anti-vehicle roles, but they would still be a massive threat to the members of Aegis.

The Cradle

The Human’s thinly-veiled accusation was apparent, but this was a game to which Vreta was no stranger. He did not give any hint to his thoughts in his reaction, letting out only something of an amused hum. “Well, the simple answer is that I wasn’t.” Vreta replied.

Vreta paused just a moment, letting out a grunt as he shifted his injured arm into a more comfortable position. “Like I said, I’m a representative of the Zuraxi’Synkuur corporation. I am not at liberty to discuss all of the details of our transactions, but suffice to say that we have extensive dealings with the corporation that holds this district. A part of our agreements stipulate that I am permitted to inspect their testing and production facilities to ensure they meet our agreed-upon standards. That was why I came here today. I got wind of a disturbance in one of our partners’ holdings, so I wanted to ensure they were not at fault for whatever was happening. Negligence on their part could affect our contracts with them. This district was not locked down, either by its owner or the Outremer government, and I had full permission to be here. I respected all boundaries set by your men at the crime scene and did not trespass. The shed I investigated was outside the perimeter set by your soldiers. Whether or not they should have restricted access to that building is between you and your officers, but I broke no laws in entering. I can provide you copies of all of the necessary legal documents, once we are out of the Cradle.”

The Cradle

“You can fortify all you want, but don’t underestimate these things. I don’t know what these things are, exactly, but if they’re from the Cradle, then you’re fighting on their territory, not yours. You didn’t create this place.” Vreta warned.

In any case, Vreta followed the man into the transit station. Although, he could not help but to be disappointed that they did not return from the Cradle right away. He had a multitude of reasons for wanting to be rid of this place. He did take a seat on the stool provided for him on the man’s insistence, but Vreta’s general discomfort started to become more and more visibly apparent the longer the man spoke.

Vreta was making a few mental notes on the topic Freyr discussed with the man. While he had guessed this already, their conversation did confirm that the creatures were related to the disturbance at the office building. In his research since he arrived on Outremer, Vreta had heard of the Skinners. Their goals and methods earned them the label of terrorists, though with what Vreta had seen of the Cradle, he personally felt they might have the right of it. Regardless, he did not bring it up. When Vreta was finally questioned directly, he decided to give a show of cooperation with an honest answer. “I can’t be completely sure. When I investigated the shed, I only got a look inside for a few seconds before that thing knocked out the power. Just by its appearance, it might have been some kind of communications equipment.”

Vreta revealed yet more of his discomfort when his grimace showed his bloodstained teeth. Glancing to the side, he put more pressure on his injured arm. “Look, I’m willing to talk about this with you, but I’d really rather not do this in the Cradle. That creature knocked out a few of my teeth, by arm burns like the ninth ring, and frankly, the blood loss is distracting. More importantly, I’m not completely convinced that border isn’t going to come crashing down on us again at any moment. Did those creatures really retreat, or are they just gathering their forces? I promise my cooperation for every one of your questions if we return to the real world. Like I said, my name is Vreta’Sori, representative of the Zuraxi’Synkuur corporation. I’m staying on the twenty-first floor of the Synastar Hotel. You look like a man with the authority to run my identity, so I’m sure you can get confirmation this is all true. Someone as high-profile as me, you know I can’t just escape unnoticed. I’ll go back to my hotel room and wait for you there; you have my word.”

The Cradle

Vreta did not care as much about helping the wounded as much as giving the appearance that he wanted to help, so he complied quickly with the man’s request. The Human was not in combat gear, but he was clearly associated with the soldiers regardless. He gave the impression of being someone with some authority among the Humans, so Vreta decided it best not to snub his requests for now. They were heading towards a transit station, which was a direction of which he definitely approved.

Looking down at the man, Vreta tilted his head. “Are you referring to that soldier woman?” He asked, pointing a thumb back towards the truck. “A large creature, one much tougher than the beetles your men saw off, injured her. Crushed its weight against her chest. The beast took well over a dozen rounds, was lit on fire, and still could not be stopped. One of your soldiers eventually sacrificed himself to hit it with an explosive charge, but…I do not know if it died.”

Pausing a moment, Vreta gestured to Freyr. “Myself and Freyr, we did manage to get her out and to the truck. Last I checked she was still alive, though that was before we left. If she is still alive, she needs to be brought back to her body in the real world. In fact, based on what I saw, I would recommend you evacuate everyone from this place. Failing that, at least reinforce your soldiers with the heaviest weapons you can possibly give them. If those monsters attack again, well…even that may not be enough.” He warned.

The Cradle

Once again returning from beyond the border was certainly a relief, though it did not prevent Vreta from remaining on-alert. If he had learned anything over the past half-hour, it was that this place was never safe. His state of intense focus persisted for only a short time, until he was questioned by the soldiers. “Vreta’Sori.” He answered quickly and directly, not that his name would have much meaning to them.

Vreta climbed off of the turret and into the back of the truck. He gave a look around at the soldiers crowded around in their seats. Some had escaped mostly unscathed, but there were others that looked rather badly wounded. The soldiers in his truck had been in a position to witness the help he had been giving them, and many he had personally pulled into the safety of the vehicle. They could be useful to him, he felt. He just needed to approach them with the right attitude.

“Can one of you take over talking to those soldiers? We need to get your wounded out of here quickly if they are to survive this.” Vreta remarked before climbing down the side of the truck, then held his arms up to take the first of the wounded. “Help me unload the injured. We need to hurry.”

The Cradle

The chaos around Vreta was only growing worse the longer this chase went on, and the number of survivors was starting to dwindle. A loud crash and the sound of twisting metal accompanied the truck that lost control and was sent flying. However, one observing Vreta would find him seemingly unfazed by it all. His expression remained constant, and his eyes focused.

There was just a moment where Vreta spared a thought to a part of the training he had received nearly a century ago. He had never been a soldier, but he had received much of the same training for his role in the Rahn’Masser. One aspect of his training had taken place at a facility high up in some of Rothia’s tallest mountains. It was a landscape that was covered in snow year-round, and only even survivable for his cold-blooded body due to a heat-generating implant inside him. The place had seemed much more like a monastery than a boot camp, and the instruction he had received there made him feel more like a monk than a soldier. Yet, they were some of the most important lessons he could learn for his career, far more than any amount of marksmanship or martial arts. Words spoken to him there still echoed in his mind across the centuries.

”In our galaxy, we have discovered half a dozen sapient species, with countless millions of stars left to explore. Some, through wisdom or fear, will maintain peace with us. And some, through greed or desperation, will wage war. They expand and multiply, their numbers unchecked, and their ambitions insatiable. We have been forced to war in the past, and it shall happen in the future. They are many, and we are few. If you are called onto the battlefield, you may face legions with no more than the few at your side. Your enemy may call your fight hopeless, but I tell you…hope is a lie. Hope is the idea that the universe may grant you a miracle to save you. But we are Rothian! We are not given miracles, we create them! Your survival will not be allowed by fate nor chance; it will be guaranteed by your own hand. Our enemies may be legion, but we are Rothian. We do not break, we do not rout, and we do not fail. I will teach you how to forge your mind into a weapon greater than any fusion rifle. No matter your enemy, no matter their number, no matter the chaos around you, I can give you one weapon that will not leave you:…”

“...Focus.” Vreta said under his breath. His lungs breathed deeply of the thin air, and did not struggle for it. One truck had crashed, but he put it out of his mind. It was not important to the task in front of him. His mind grabbed onto only what was important for him, like the pleas for help he could hear over the radio just behind him. He could see the insect latched on to the side of the truck following them, and the radio confirmed they could not deal with it themselves. To kill it was Vreta’s task. Both trucks were moving quickly, sometimes weaving left or right unpredictably, and his turret had enough power to deal serious damage to the truck. Potentially, a missed shot could disable its engine and doom its passengers. He could not fire recklessly. Instead, he traversed the turret to be in-line with the beetle, then waited a moment. He focused on the sights and simply allowed the truck to drift to the side until he found the moment where the sights lined up properly, then fired a single shot straight down the top of the beetle’s head.

The Cradle

It was just never going to end, was it? One crisis after another, a new threat every time one fell. At this point, Vreta was not sure he wanted to know anything more about the Cradle. His growing opinion now was that it was a nightmarish hellscape, and its processor should be glassed from orbit, but that sentiment was not going to make any progress towards his escape.

In the fog beyond the border, it was easy to panic. Several around Vreta were doing just that, and he understood why. He nearly fell into that trap himself, but again, it was his training that saved him. He tightened up his expression, closed his eyes for a moment, and took in a breath. The air was thinner here, though it was not all that different from the mountain air back on Rothia. Just breathe in. Breathe out. Focus. Enemies approached, he still had a gun turret in front of him, and he was reasonably sure it still worked. That was what he could control. That was his task. The monsters were not the true enemy here; panic was. Panic was what he had to push from his mind.

Opening his eyes, Vreta traversed the turret left. It was more sluggish now, as the powered controls were not working quite correctly, but he had the strength to make up for it. He just focused his eyes on the sights, focused on firing when they lined up with the beasts in pursuit. They were quick and the trucks were moving, but that did not matter. Vreta’s steely-eyed visage carried an unusual calm as his only focus went to lining up the sights and firing his weapon.

The Cradle

As they began to accelerate, Vreta turned his turret around and swiveled it to focus on hounds running at them from the side. The insectoid monster, if not dead, was at least prevented from reaching the trucks. The soldier’s sacrifice, he felt, was a brave one, and perhaps necessary for their escape. Despite how quickly most of the rest of these soldiers had crumbled under the pressure from these monsters, he had done well. Vreta had wished it had been another of the soldiers to make the sacrifice; their leader would have been more useful to keep around than any of the others.

The heavy turret Vreta was using could essentially blast apart one of the hounds in a single shot, but even with several of them firing, they could not deal with all of the beasts swarming them. Not before a few of the trucks at the rear of the convoy had hounds reach them and start climbing up the sides. With Vreta’s truck being at the front of the convoy, though, there was little he could do to help. There would be far too much risk of damaging either the trucks, or the people in them, if he tried turning his turret on them. There were still plenty of armed soldiers in the trucks, though, so they would just have to deal with the beasts themselves.

The hounds were not going to be reaching the front vehicle once they were up to speed, so as long as they could continue to outrun the border, it finally started to seem like they had a clear escape ahead of them. He had run out of targets to shoot from the angles available to him, so he was finally able to just lean back in his seat and catch his breath. They were not out of danger yet, but he was feeling calmer…which meant he was also starting to feel some of the sensations his mind had been repressing. His arm was slowly filling with a sharp, burning pain that had him wincing. The bleeding was not alarmingly severe, but it also had not yet stopped. For a moment, he intended to ask someone to bandage him, but looking around the back of the truck, he saw a few Humans that were…far worse off than he was, to put it mildly. For now, Vreta just kept quiet and held one arm under the other to keep pressure on the wound.

The Cradle

Inwardly, Vreta wished they could just get the trucks moving. One of the soldiers had gotten it started, but they were probably going to wait as long as they could get away with to save as many of their people as they could. Without a doubt, Vreta was not going to be able to dissuade them from that; there was no point in even trying. The best he could hope to do was to speed along the process.

Vreta climbed up onto the open back of the truck. There were plenty of seats in the back, but he did not try to squeeze into any of them just yet. He remained standing in the back, alternating between firing off shots at any approaching hounds and helping to hoist up soldiers into the back with him. He did not much like putting more stress on his injured arm, but he just kept reminding himself that it was not his actual arm.

If there was one thing Vreta could be relieved about with these hounds, it was that they would actually die when shot, which could not be said about the first creature they saw. He had not been terribly impressed with these soldiers so far, but now that they were being backed into their final “corner”, into these vehicles they had to defend, their desperation was inspiring a decent defense. As they were loading up the trucks, soldiers in the back joined in laying down fire on the advancing hounds. The situation was far from “good”, but it was actually seeming somewhat better for a time…until it very suddenly became much worse.

The first of the creatures, the monstrous insect that had simply refused to die, had returned. “Damn it…we need to leave!” Vreta shouted, though he would not be surprised if he was not heard in the chaos. At the very least, there was something new he had to work with, this time around. All of the trucks had a mounted turret on top, and they looked stronger than the standard rifles. His truck was nearly full in any case, so Vreta quickly transitioned from helping up the others and moved behind the turret. He might not have been the most familiar with their vehicles, but he had spent more time learning about their weapons. The turret’s controls were intuitive enough, so he traversed it left until he could bring the muzzle to bear on the insectoid. From there, he opened fire with no intent to stop until something was dead. The heavy energy projectiles were larger, brighter, and certainly sounded more hefty than those of the rifles. He supposed he would see soon if the extra energy was actually meaningful.

The Cradle

Unlike some of the others, Vreta did not lose focus on his destination in his sprint towards the trucks. He was quick on his feet and could see well, even in this strange fog. His hearing might not have been as sharp as the Humans’ but in this cacophony of gunfire, screams, and howling, that was not terribly relevant. He just had to keep his objective in sight and avoid panicking. Were it not for the hovering, frictionless stretcher, Vreta likely would have been forced to abandon the wounded soldier, but as it stood, pushing her around did not meaningfully slow him down. Besides which, even incapacitated, she still did have a use or two to him.

The arrival of the hounds had been a moment of genuine fear for Vreta. Until that point, salvation had been ahead of them, with death chasing behind. He just had to let the soldiers fight and get to their escape. Now, creatures were swarming everywhere, including the path ahead. Now, there was much less certainty for him and his own survival. He could not guarantee, or even somewhat ensure, his own safety. For a Rothian, there were few things more terrifying than the loss of their eternal lives. It was only due to his training that he did not panic. He still had a way out; he just had to make sure he reached it.

For most of his dash towards their escape, Vreta steered clear of the soldiers and let them take the attention of the growing horde of monsters. As fast as he was, he was among the first to reach the trucks, but he was not alone. The hounds were quick, and some were moving to cut them off. One climbed over the roof of the very truck he wanted to enter, while another started to circle around from his right. Fortunately, that was where his first use for his injured charge came into play. From the holster on her hip, he grabbed her sidearm and quickly fired a burst of three rounds at the hound on top of the truck. It was a fast draw, and at least one shot found its mark on center mass, but the second of the hounds was already barreling towards him as he was transferring his aim to it. The beast leaped at him, going for his throat, so Vreta guarded himself with his arm. The hound bit down hard on his forearm, but Vreta kept his composure enough to press the barrel of his pistol against the creature’s own neck and pull the trigger.

Vreta managed to avoid getting knocked off his feet and dropped the dead hound to the ground. He grimaced at his bloody arm, but with his adrenaline pumping, he would not feel it. Yet. The greater concern would be his escape. As he moved towards the driver side door, he realized another problem. These trucks were primitive compared to Rothian vehicles, and he had seen them driven enough in his time here that he had every confidence he could drive them as well. However, he had not yet driven one, and the thought came to mind that he did not actually know how to start their vehicles. He had no doubt that he could figure it out, but it would be much quicker for a Human to do it instead.

Letting out a growl of his own, Vreta moved up to one of the rear doors of the vehicle and turned around, shouting in his distinctive voice and holding his pistol ready to fend off anymore hounds that came his way. “Over here!”