Halo: Resurgence/Reclaim

She pushed a gloved hand against the panel, but the hatch in front of her remained lifeless.

The access panel stayed dark. That was what she’d expected, but all the same she furrowed her brow. She took a backward step, and sighed, her breath lingering on her visor briefly before the filtration system whisked it away.

"Kari, use this," a man's voice said from behind her, and she turned to see three figures stood close by. Like her, they were clad in thick body suits, the dark grey broken only by their semi-reflective, bulbous helmets and robust grav boots.

Behind them, beyond their parked truck, the vast grassy steppe of Aszod stretched away from them in all directions. Beyond that, towering over the flat expanse in the distance, Mount Törött stood, its great peak bisected decades earlier by a Covenant energy weapon of fearful power. Nearer, two kilometres from where she stood, a large, elegant ship squatted on the earth, prefabricated settlements sprawled surrounding it, as if spilling from its underbelly. UNSC Renewal was the first of thirty vessels built solely with recolonising dead worlds in mind, her joint military and civilian crew trained and equipped for the task. Reach was alive with life once more. It was a sight her parents' generation never imagined would be possible. The terraforming had been in progress since she was a child- before, even- but now she was one of the first people to step foot on Reach for almost forty years. Her elation was kept in check, though. Those who died had remained where they fell, save those erased forever by the glass. Reach was a mausoleum of gigantic scale, and they were taking it back for the living.

Kari couldn't remember the war, but she felt keenly the long shadow it had cast on Humanity since. Some foods were still being rationed, though less rigidly than when she was a child. Conscription still demanded ten years from every able-bodied man and woman, and reproduction programs were still in effect. The military had recently announced the existence of Human worlds kept hidden from the rest of the UNSC, and stories of the terrible lengths the UNSC had gone to to stave off annihilation were public knowledge. Humanity as a whole wrestled with the duality of honouring the sacrifice of billions of her children, and looking to a future brighter than the black decades of war and loss. From her mother and father, she had only gleaned clues of their wartime service. They never spoke of it, and she daren’t ask.

"C'mon," the man prompted. "Let's get this done." The letters COLONIST B HOLDEN were stencilled on his chest below the UNSC crest.

Kari realised the closest figure to her was offering her a long bar-like object, arm outstretched. She took it with one hand, then two as the tool was deceptively dense. She pressed it against the dead hatch, above head height, and with a low whir the magnetic clamps activated. Kari took a step back again. The clamps moved in opposite directions along the bar, pulling the hatch open slowly and deliberately.

She took a look up at the dead ship. Armour plate stretched in all directions, the ship's wounds legion and, in spite of the years, still obvious. She was pitted and scorched in places by plasma weapon fire and the heat of uncontrolled re-entry, while huge cracks and fractures in the structure hinted and how she had come to rest there. Portions of the ship's belly were missing, vaporised during the titanic orbital battle, though the injuries were hidden deep below ground level. Off to the North, a deep gouge in the steppe's undulating surface marked where the ship had fallen to earth, despite its reclamation by the flora. UNSC Restless had lain there, where she fell, nearly four decades earlier, together with perhaps three hundred of her crew. In time, their living relatives would be notified, and finally have a body to bury. Forty years too late was more than most families would ever get. Most of those who fell would never be found.

Kari glanced around. The others were solemn and silent, their faces ashen. She grabbed Ben's hand, and he held it tight in return.

The clamps stopped moving as they reached their maximum spread. The hatch now stood, slightly ajar, one metre between its dense panels. Beyond, only darkness.

No one had stepped through the hatch for thirty seven years. The last people who had were still inside.

Kari steeled herself, and disappeared inside.