Halo: Lonely Frontier

{|style="width:100%;" "Not till we are lost...do we begin to find ourselves..."

- Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Chapter 8

" faction are on the march, beginning to bend the galaxy to their whim. And yet, in remote corners of the galaxy, life continues unabated. For one lost Spartan and his questionable AI companion, that means finding a way  and learning to trust in others."

Dramatis Personae

 * Althea
 * Andra Kearsarge
 * Hera
 * Cody-B042
 * Derek Frendsen


 * David Kahn
 * Merlin Ljang Boyd
 * Nao Qoi
 * Richard Foster
 * Ryder Kedar

Part 1: Runit Dome
"In the face of crisis, we're left with two options: fight or flee. Those who run into the fire are likely stupid, but, they will be remembered."

- James P. Baig, Excerpt from The Poltergeist

Chapter 1.1: Insertion Method
Merlin-D032 scanned the inky blackness of space from the reinforced window slits of his atmospherically sealed insertion pod. He saw the twinkling dots and rippling crystalline that marked the presence of stars far beyond the measure of single-digit light-years. Through the slits, the young man found disappointment and difficulty taking in the wonderous, distant beauty of the Milky Way galaxy.

He grumbled to himself out of boredom, the innumerable sequel to many more grumbles in the minutes passed. He experimentally lifted his left heel into the air and planted it back down with a metallic clank against the impact cushioning and metal floor of the pod. The dull, hollow noise reverberated through the titanium bouncing back through the walls and back into Merlin’s ears, or rather, his helmet’s audio suite and then into his ears.

Satisfied with the nice dunk sound the metal beneath his armored foot made, Merlin repeated the action – rapidly. His boot heel bounced repeatedly as he shaped his thigh muscle into a hammering force, beating the floor to some old tune he once heard while listening to an antiquated radio station that still sang true in the rural American Midwest.

Merlin thought to the noise outside his temporary titanium prison cell and considered what others were hearing, maybe it sounded like the beating of a furious woodpecker from inside a tree. Maybe it sounded like meteoroids bouncing harmlessly off the side of a starship. Maybe it sounded like a man beating the wall of a starship with a hammer.

Merlin didn’t get much time to continue as after about a minute of lonely silence and he made it a third way through his antiquated song, one he did not know the name of, a youthfully-sweat female voice spoke into his ear and encapsulated his full attention.

“Merlin?” The girl’s voice asked.

“Yeah?”

“That you? Making that sound?”

“Yeah...” Merlin’s voice trailed off into slight embarrassment even as he smiled into his helmet wistfully, imagining the girl’s blue eyes on the other end rolling in mild amusement. His foot came to a complete pause, parking itself flat on the floor.

A second passed in silence.

Two loud drum-like thumps echoed from somewhere outside Merlin’s insertion pod; it was hard to tell if it came from a distance or up close. All he could distinguish were the ferocity of the impacts, like someone hitting a great Chinese gong with a steel mallet in rapid succession.

“Was that you?” Merlin asked across the radio to his friend.

She responded with a simple “Ow.”

“That hurt you? Really?”

“No, just a little surprised by how much you feel through the armor.”

“Doing what?” Merlin’s face contorted into confusion.

“Punching titanium.”

“Well,” he blinked to himself and quirked one side of his lip in a half-grin. "That’s an interesting thing to do.”

There was a small laugh on the other end, a cute one, that transformed Merlin’s half-grin into a toothy smile as he joined in, chuckling in their united feeling of comradery. He felt his lungs give a few tugs as under-used muscles vibrated in a giddy motion as if happy to have a purpose again.

“Hey! Cut it off.” A stern, commanding voice tore through the cheerful noise.

The young man and woman quickly composed themselves, going dead silent as their mission handler finally filled the period of mundane gibber-gabber with something with substance and value. The mission handler cleared his throat. “Eh-hem. Spartans. Let’s hear the mission brief one more time, just so we’re clear on everything. What is our mission?”

The girl, Andra-D054, spoke up. “Our target is a deep-space facility believed to be operated by members of the insurgent nation-state, the Wealthian Coalition.”

“Merlin?” The handler called for the young man to continue where his teammate started.

“Operation: RUNIT DOME. We’re here to see if a superweapon with magical properties is being made. If so, we’re here to shut it down. If not, we’re still here to shut them down.”

“Close enough. Rumor has it, some Insurrectionists, the Wealthians, got a hold on some alien technology with the ability to evaporate objects from existence like magic. Your mission this time will be to assess this possibility behind enemy lines.”

“Another mission outside UNSC space,” Merlin asked, directing his question toward Andra. “You ready for this?”

“Yep.”

“Now can someone tell me about the insertion method and rules of engagement?”

Merlin responded quickly, filling the information gap as the days of surveillance data and mission pre-planning slipped back onto his conscience. “The structure is built into the side of an asteroid, measured just over 3.4 kilometers in diameter. The base is about half-a-kilometer in length as well. Due to the active combat zone being an asteroid field, it’s believed the base uses either ship-grade pulse lasers or CIWS coilguns to negate environmental hazards.”

“The insertion method? Please.”

“Right...getting to that. Andra and I have modified Orbital Drop insertion pods with increased maneuverability settings intended for a low-gravity insertion. Our drop point is from the base of the asteroid we’ve been using for surveillance for the last week at a general range of hundred-thousand kilometers. The Black Caviar will employ a series of coilguns and anti-gravity plates to break up and direct chunks of rock debris toward the Wealthian space station. Andra and I will follow the rocks in and break through the defense array.”

“And Rules of Engagement?”

“Eliminate any immediate security personnel unless they surrender. Secure the facility and staff, acquire facility intelligence, shutdown external security, take control of facility functions, and make way for the Caviar’s docking.” Andra answered in a monotone voice.

“Hopefully not in that order.” The mission handler warned.

“We know the priority. Don’t worry about it.”

“Alright, I’m counting on you to make this work. DAEDALUS spoke very highly of you two.” The mission handler sighed, giving up on the pre-mission quiz.

“You two?” Merlin asked in confusion. He tilted his helmeted head in confusion.

“Fine,” The mission handler’s voice returned, higher pitched and a little exasperated. “He only mentioned Andra. He didn’t actually talk about you much; I was trying to be considerate.”

“Don’t worry about trying to be nice, Josh and I have an understanding.”

“More like Josh hates your guts and you just deal with it,” Andra interjected followed by a humorous sigh.

Merlin didn’t respond, simply shrugging his shoulders even though no one could see it.

“Alright, we’ll be entering radio silence then. Arrival time is time-minus two hours and twenty-three minutes. You two catch some shut-eye on the way in; it will get noisy as you get in close. If you two need to communicate, keep it to a minimum. The guidance computers should do most of the work for you.” The mission handler stated, confirming the mission was now beginning. He cut off his communications suite and disappeared with a short buzz of static.

Merlin heard Andra’s radio cutout as well as she also signed off. Merlin did the same, shutting down the radio chatroom.

In the seconds that followed the mission-go order, Merlin watched as the red-glow of his pod night-lights replace the darkened interior of his metaphoric prison of boredom. His augmented hearing noticed the subtle noise of turreted coilguns spinning to life and spitting bullets out into the vacuum. Merlin heard no explosions. In space, there was no sound except that which traveled through connected materials – to his ears, it sounded like fast-spinning fans.

The young man closed his eyes, psyching himself into a sleepy mood. Three distant beeps sounded, counting down the release of the harness clamps holding Merlin’s pod in place.

Merlin’s pod shot off the side of the Black Caviar and out into the darkness of open space. The last thing Merlin heard or felt was the soft vibrations inside his own skull as Andra-D054’s Spartan neural implant reached out to Merlin’s across a secured wireless connection. It was a civilian cybernetic novelty, a technology-oriented toward couples with intimacy issues. Merlin and Andra had taken an interest in it following the dissolution of their former unit.

Andra’s mind sent a series of signals to his nerves, tingling them in a frequency that gave Merlin the uncanny sensation of someone stroking his hair. His neck vibrated with warmth and comfort at the ‘phantom touch’ before he slipped into a soft slumber of his own making.

The darkness was engulfing but inviting, Merlin disappeared into his dreamless nap for a time.

In what felt like only a few minutes, Merlin was wide-awake with the blaring warning alert of passive-scanning radar and other hostile detection systems analyzing the exterior of his insertion pod.

“Merlin! You still with me?” Andra shouted over the radio with the sounds of her own radar-detection alerts chirping in the background.

“I’m good!” Merlin called back, firing off a digital confirmation-green alert through their communications link. Andra’s own green-wink followed in response a second later. A couple of hours ago, her presence hovered inside his mind. Andra’s presence was gone now. Merlin quickly turned his own cybernetics to standalone-mode to prevent entry by potential enemy hackers.

Focusing on the current and immediate, Merlin tuned out Andra for only a moment to get a grasp of his situation. He shifted his armored body around in an attempt to get a better view of what was taking place outside of his insertion pod before settling back in, realizing how stupid he might have looked just now.

The lack of gravity failed to remind Merlin of his orientation; that front, back, up and down were not the same direction as they might be on his colony-of-birth or on Earth. He settled back into his seat and relaxed a bit, allowing the guidance controls to fly him toward the asteroid base in silence.

Even with his settling in for the last, potentially rough section of his journey, and even with the blaring warning sounds from the alarms, he breathed slowly – attempting to lock down his nerves. He squashed any thought toward the million-and-a-half ways he could die as he closed in on the asteroid base.

He clenched at the maneuvering joysticks of his insertion pod. If his suit hadn’t compensated for his over-gripping, he would have crushed them there on the spot. Underneath the armor, his hands were a bone-white.

Andra’s voice called to Merlin over the radio. “I got no hint of flak-fire. At this range, the Rampart guns should be opening up on us. We’ve clearly been detected.”

“Pulse lasers then?” Merlin asked, even though he already considered it a given.

“Yeah,” Andra confirmed.

“Damn.”

Merlin and Andra’s pods closed in, closer and closer toward the station. Guarded by an entourage of tiny, moving space rocks, it still felt as if they were in the clear. Even as the blaring radar detectors continued to scream at the two Spartans.

Nothing happened at first. At first, it was as silent as ever. Then, Merlin heard it. Small objects bouncing off his insertion pod.

He scanned through his forward and side windows and found pebble-sized rock chunks tapping against his insertion pod. Then one, the size of a soccer ball, hit the window with a solid thump. Upon closer inspection, Merlin could see tendrils of gas, possibly water vapor, rushing away from the rock as the frozen water within boiled away.

Heat weapon. Pulse laser confirmed.

Merlin confirmed his findings vocally. “It’s pulse lasers. Prepare for entry. Go to full burn.”

“Don’t get cooked,” Andra responded as her maneuvering thrusters kicked to life as Merlin viewed it out his window’s right side.

“I’ll try not to.”

Merlin noted that he couldn’t see any beams of energy or light passing by his pod or Andra’s pod. Rocks simply exploded into bits of gas and pebbles at random.

“Well, you can definitely tell that these are human laser weapons,” Merlin muttered to Andra.

“And why’s that?” Andra asked.

“Covenant weapons usually have coloration.”

“And these are invisible. Good eye.” Andra responded with a grinding of her teeth, not quite focused on the conversation and more so on her survival.

“Thanks,” Merlin added quickly, continuing to focus on his own survival. He gripped his joysticks and felt the maneuvering thruster located above-behind his head shake to life as he held down the ignition trigger on one of the joysticks.

Finally sick of the blaring noise in his ear, he pressed a large button on the wall console with a closed fist to shut it down. The blaring stopped but the threat was still very much there. Merlin pressed a button on the consoles at chest level and a televised display exploded to life beneath his feet, boot itself up.

The activation display quickly turned on and transformed into the camera's output from outside Merlin’s insertion pod looking straight down. He could see his pod’s trajectory was at an off-angle and was going to miss the ideal entry point if he did not readjust quickly.

Merlin jerked his joysticks just a little and felt his pod shift in the opposite direction to compensate and take him with it. Blood raced from everywhere towards his head and shoulders, chasing the shifting inertia.

Thirty seconds to impact. Good speed. Merlin watched a countdown clock appear on his heads-up display as he began his final approach in the direction of the station. His mind screamed a silent warning for a moment as every surface and every cell in his body reported a sudden spike of heat that quickly receded.

Merlin grazed the edges of a couple wide pulse laser beams and their extreme heat seeped through his metal pod and through his combat exoskeleton. Every sweat gland in Merlin popped open, evaporated, and left his skin feeling itchy-dry like a hot desert day.

Twenty seconds. Merlin noticed flashes of light erupting from the dark points on the edge of the giant metal space station ahead of him and Andra’s pod. He didn’t have much time to guess what they were because his own pod buffed by concussive energy and little beads of heavy metal shrapnel made contact against the titanium hull like a hailstorm.

“Ramparts are opening up on us!” Andra’s voice called out in warning, referring to the legacy M800 series Rampart point-defense guns. They were an older variant of the M910 and M870 series employed by modern UNSC Navy. Still, they were a sizable threat.

“Bring up hemispheric shielding,” Merlin ordered to Andra then did so himself, pressing down on one of the triggers in his directional joystick controllers. A semi-transparent wall of energized hexagon panels soon blocked Merlin’s camera overlay, absorbing single bullets and proximity-detonated tungsten-buckshot shells. The panels glowed yellow and white, absorbing the hits but cracking and breaking away when the impacts became too much.

Merlin raced forward with Andra still at his side, her own ONI-designed hemispheric bubble shield holding out against the bombardment of point-defense weaponry. 10 seconds.

Large holes were quickly forming in Merlin’s energized bubble shield but he did not worry. The titanium wall of the Wealthian asteroid base was within a couple second’s distance. Then he realized that the wall was slanted.

“Fix your vector! It’s an angled approach!” Merlin shouted to Andra in a late, last-second warning. He jerked hard on the joysticks, first upward, then downwards, hoping that his warning came in time and his reaction was fast enough.

Andra didn’t respond vocally but her pod violently shook as her thrusters bobbed up and down to fix her final approach as Merlin’s clock zoomed to zero.

Three. Two. One. Merlin’s bubble shield gave out with a subtle pop. Andra’s pod disappeared into a gigantic fireball as it crashed through the station wall first. Her pod’s thrusters ignited the escaping atmosphere on her way in and disappeared her insertion pod from view.

Merlin’s eyes made brief contact with a metal floor as he imagined himself screaming even though no noise escaped his gapped lips behind his helmet visor. His cameras cut out. His shields gave way completely under the extreme strain. The metal underneath Merlin crumpled like wet tissue paper even as his head and limbs shook violently from the impact.

Merlin was jostled, thrown around as much as was possible given how tightly locked he was to his impact cushion. His body vibrated, rumbled, Merlin gasped for air as he slid through metal walls without stopping, only slowing with each metaphorical speed bump.

Five bangs in rapid succession. Merlin could hear the distant whistling of air zipping by his pod as his entry point rapidly depressurized the hallways and cabins Merlin’s pod had smashed through. The dim-red-pod lights gave out and bathed Merlin once again in darkness.

Merlin’s pod came to a halt against a titanium bulkhead and settled into its final resting place. Merlin heard the door of his pod hissing, preparing to open.

Thud. Something sharp and metallic zipped past Merlin’s head and letting light pour into his insertion vehicle from the outside. Merlin glanced at the new hole.

Metallic dust. A giant hole, clean through the wall. Fifteen centimeters left of Merlin’s skull. Thud-thud. Two more rounds cracked through the pod.

High-caliber, armor-piercing rounds. Merlin jolted into action. Someone was shooting at him! He unbuckled and pushing himself out of his chair. He slammed himself against the armored door keeping him separated from the asteroid base outside. He had no time to worry about other matters – everything else previously on Merlin’s mind disappeared from his focus, even Andra. Only survival mattered right now.

Merlin smashed the door down and ran into the hostile gunfire.

Chapter 1.2: Early Mission Woes
Two frantic-looking humans dressed in cumbersome atmospheric suits hovered around a large, silver machine gun locked to the titanium floor at their feet. An excessive assortment of power tools and diagnostic equipment dangled silently on their chests and belts. Their voices were inaudible, muffled by their sealed suits and the low-air content of the rapidly decompressing hallway around them.

Outer space had seeped in through the gaping hole in front of them, a shredded insertion point made in the wall on their left side. A large titanium pod was embedded partway into the wall on the right side, marking the trail back to the pod’s point of origin.

Three sizable puncture wounds from a high-caliber machine gun, the very same one sealed to the floor, dressed the pod hideously. The holes were so evident that they left craters with half-meter-length diameters around the points of penetration.

However, this was no time for celebration. The enemy was not dead. The two men in their sealed suits frantically grabbed, twisted, and pressed the weapon’s buttons and switches seeming in a random manner as they tried to dislodge a brass bullet-casing caught in the bolt catch of the weapon. The pseudo-door on the casing exit point locked nastily between a position of eternal closure and eternal openness. Three shots and the machine gun jammed, and at the worst possible time.

A door on the insertion pod hissed in excess then opened, releasing hydraulic-safety clamps to allow the occupant within to exit the titanium shell. Then the door paused. There was a split second of silence, and then the door blasted off its hinges like a rocket ship and crashed somewhere further down the hallway behind the pod. The impact was noisy; enough so that the gunmen felt the jolt of crashing metal vibrate into their feet and knees, even meters away.

A pair of metal gauntlets grabbed the edges of the pod’s doorframe and pulled the armored-humanoid form they attached to out into the open. A golden visor attached to a dull-indigo colored helmet snapped to face the pair of machine gun operators.

The golden visor was not transparent, unlike the helmets of the frantic men whose faces expressed terror in the truest form. The gold visor and the men’s eyes held each other at eye contact, frozen for only a moment before the individual in dull-indigo armor rushed forward, into action.

The armored individual, Merlin sailed through the air, leaping like a track star over hurdles and attempted to close the distance between himself and his fearful adversaries. One of the frantic men reached to his waistline and yanked a large handgun from its plastic holster, a generic M6G magnum. The man moved forward with shaking hands and pointed it at the young Spartan.

He fired wide and missed, three times in a row as Merlin zigzagged quickly, throwing off the man’s aim.

Merlin was up in the man’s face before it registered. The magnum zipped cleanly out of the man’s outstretched hands and slid into Merlin’s as he flipped the gun on its owner. The man who attempted to shoot Merlin had little time to react; all he could do was scream as pain shot up his arm from a broken trigger-finger.

The pistol’s barrel smashed into the injured man’s transparent visor and a moment of clarity passed over Merlin’s opponent. Merlin pulled down on the heavy trigger until it exploded to life in his hand.

The man’s head exploded into the red mist of blood, broken glass, and brain matter as a bullet passed through his skull. The dead man crumpled to the floor, his skin already beginning to harden and dry from contact with the unguarded vacuum of space as water vapor and other gases escaped the corpse, condensing on all nearby surfaces before evaporating into the open vacuum.

Merlin turned to face his final adversary with his stolen, blood-soaked M6G at the ready. He barely registered a weapon barrel in his periphery before a fourth bullet from the high-caliber machine gun sailed past his head. The bullet skimmed the top of his helmet, disturbing his energized shields into a vibrant gold color. A couple inches in one way or another would have killed him.

Merlin growled in agitation behind his visor as he compensated for the renewed threat. The final adversary had unsealed the large machine gun from the floor and was leveling the weapon at him from only a few strides away. The atmospheric-suit man aimed it from the hip like some action movie protagonist and paused for what Merlin could only describe as dramatic effect.

The man with the machine gun screamed something but it was lost in translation in the vacuum. He was clearly inexperienced too; Merlin would have just pulled the trigger. The adversary finished yapping and pulled down on the trigger.

Ready to respond, Merlin threw up his hands in an aggressive-stopping motion and a brilliant-blue hard-light shield sprouted to life, absorbing the large bullets traveling from the man’s heavy machine gun.

The gun roared in a near vacuum and spit rage at Merlin for twenty, grueling seconds. Even though the hard-light material in front of Merlin was sure to protect him, the flashing and metallic chunks pounding, the energized particle field made Merlin consider the imaginary scenario of taking a bullet to the chest. He flinched at his brain’s quick-time conclusion.

Then the gunfire stopped again. Merlin acted quickly, taking advantage of a second gun jam. He rushed forward, pistol out at the front and his shield extinguished with his off hand. Merlin aimed the Magnum at the man and planted a single shot in the man’s chest.

The second body crashed to the ground lifeless, blood seeping away from the head and the exit wound. Merlin took a moment to pause and catch his breath. The adrenaline coursed through his veins so easily and yet his mind felt like it was processing information so quickly, so efficiently. The rush was still amazing, it always was.

He glanced back down the hallway, first in the direction to where his insertion pod had been crash-landed, and then in the other direction where the two bloodied bodies of deceased combatants lay flush to the ground, held in place my artificial-gravity amplifiers. The combat zone appeared clear even as an ocean raged in Merlin’s ear and gunfire crackled in his chest.

The Spartan paused, crouching to the ground. He huffed quickly and acutely on the sterilized air entering from his built-in oxygen tanks. A timer was counting down generously off in the corner of Merlin’s HUD, heads-up display. He didn’t really pay much attention to it, only noting a number like ninety minutes still on the clock. Merlin was unfocused right now, attempting to put off the euphoric fog covering his mind following the withdrawal of combat adrenaline.

Merlin’s drowsy eyes darted to his left where a blinking green light told him Andra-D054 was calling him. He didn’t keep his best friend waiting.

“Hey, give me a minute...” Merlin greeted the girl on the other end as he took another series of rapid breathes.

“You okay?” Her soft, concerned voice called to Merlin. Even though his HUD only featured a noise-detection window, he could imagine her brown eyebrows rising high on her brow.

“Great,” Merlin groaned through a small gasp. “Just fine. Killed a couple hostile engineers over here.”

“Engineers?”

“They got a bunch of power tools. I’m not sure they were combat-trained.”

“Did they surrender?” Andra asked.

“No.”

Andra paused for a moment then spoke, confidently, as if to reassure Merlin, maybe even herself. “Then you did the right thing. They deserved to die. They’re traitors to Humanity anyway.”

“Killing people still feels...weird.”

“I know. It never stops feeling strange,” Andra whispered over the radio, “I took my first human life protecting you in Rio if you remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. That beach was covered in blood...”

“Don’t think about it. Keep your mind here, with and on me. We need to rendezvous; give me a location ping.”

Merlin thought about performing the action then winked with his right eye. A radio signal sparked to life, firing off, and unseen to the world.

An icon appeared on Merlin’s HUD pointing to two floors beneath and about fifty meters in front of him.

“I see you.” Merlin and Andra spoke together to each other.

There was a momentary pause, and light laughter echoed from Andra’s end of the secure chatroom. Merlin smiled silently to himself, feeling his thumping heart slow and his clarity of mind return.

“Alright. I’m coming to you,” Merlin announced to Andra, “I’m all good now.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Thanks for that.”

“I needed it too, to be honest,” Andra responded in a hollow tone, lost in her own world and an indistinguishable emotion.

“You okay?” Merlin asked himself this time.

“Yeah, fine. Fine. Just get over here.” Andra responded, maybe a little too quickly.

“I’ll need a minute to get all my gear.”

“Do it. Hurry up.” Andra went silent but did not turn off the radio as she typically did when a conversation reached its end.

Merlin didn’t say anything regarding the atypical behavior and went to work, moving away from those he murdered in the heat of battle. He slapped the stolen-bloodied M6G on his hip allowing the magnets in his suit to lock it into place. He looked over to the large machine gun and went to pick it up.

Reaching down Merlin felt a noticeable heft to the weapon platform. It was an elongated slab of metal with a box magazine jutting out the side on the right. While clunky-seeming, it appeared to share a more compact size ratio compared to other weapons in the UNSC arsenal. As Merlin had noted earlier, the weapon had failed to dislodge a brass casing and was jammed from a closed bolt-door. It was an older weapon but one Merlin was very familiar with from his training and active service with the UNSC Armed Forces.

The M247 general-purpose machine gun. A contemporary heavy machine gun still available in many UNSC arsenals, however, its time as a squad automatic weapon had come and gone, replaced by the more-popular M739 SAW. Still, the M247 was known as a hose of gunfire. Merlin contemplated taking it with him but noted how it jammed multiple times when fired at him. Deciding it wasn’t worth the risk and maintenance troubles; he took the weapon between his armor-clad arms and squeezed, hard.

The weapon didn’t make any noise, but Merlin could feel the weapon give quickly under the extreme, enhanced pressure applied. At first, it popped apart where the disassembly pins snapped but Merlin continued squeezing until the metal itself was distorted and twisted. In a few seconds, Merlin went from holding a heavy machine gun to holding a crumpled metal tissue bundle.

Satisfied that the weapon was inoperable, Merlin dropped it next to its deceased operators and walked back to his insertion pod.

It had taken some more shrapnel and bullet impacts, but it seemed to be no less for wear. Merlin marched back over to the popped door frame and noted the entire and its contents were also intact. Merlin yanked his personally-modified M395 designated marksman rifle and slipped it on his back. He grabbed the M7 suppressed submachine gun and raised it in his right hand, enjoying how the compact weapon felt as light as a feather and how the accompanied, blue HUD reticle chased where the weapon’s linked smart-scope camera was pointed.

Merlin looked to the last two key items of his settled deep in the back of the container and willed them to turn on with his cybernetically-linked mind. Usually there was a bootup delay, however, the hexagonal-like hover drones, shuttered to life instantly upon receiving the startup order.

Merlin admired the speed at which his equipment responded to his neural commands. He did not fully comprehend why they were so reactive, but he had to chalk it up to his experimentation with his armor’s software suites. INTERCEPTOR, his variant of MJOLNIR assault armor, was considered among the most user-friendly interfaces and platforms in the GEN2 line.

Merlin wasn’t much of a programmer, but he was proud of the work he did, then again, the residential AI for Merlin and Andra’s Spartan seniors from Team Xiphos, Avalokiteśvara, had previously told Merlin his programming efforts were painfully inadequate. So much so that the default settings provided better operational performance, much to his annoyance. Maybe the extra work the AI had put in was the reason. The suit and Merlin’s extra equipment had been performing at top capacity since his last stay on Earth.

Two new names spawned to life on Merlin’s heads-up display, Danny and Zach. Merlin paused at the names and looked at the performance integrity percentages tied to the names applied to the MQ-96 Support Drones. At the suggestion of an ONI Security armorer aboard the UNSC Black Caviar, it was common among drone operators to name their machines. Something about respecting their equipment. The armorer had named the two drones he loaned Merlin, however, the Spartan couldn’t remember and simply plastered on the nicknames of his former teammates instead.

Danny and Zach, short for Daniele-D003 and Zachariah-D111, were far from dead. But they were far away now also, for reasons Merlin didn’t really want to think about it right now. He admits, even though they left him and Andra awhile ago, their leaving still pained them, and missed them. Ferret Team Boson, their unit, had been family. Now only Merlin and Andra were left.

Merlin took one last look at the pod interior before him as his two drones spit compressed air in multiple directions to keep them upright and maneuvering through the vacuum environment. Merlin glanced past his insertion pod out to the endless majesty of dark space. Asteroids danced by in the darkness, their faint outlines barely visible in the faint starlight. If Merlin had more time, he might have just stood there and taken in the endlessness of space and considered the big questions of the Universe, but he had no time for that now.

He tensed up and burst-ran away from his insertion pod. He noted on his armor radar that Danny and Zach were keeping up with him, the two combat drones zipping through the interior hallway space just a meter behind Merlin’s head. Merlin moved to the end of the hallway where a door had been sealed shut to prevent further exposure to other parts of the asteroid space station. He tapped the door lightly and noted that it vibrated against his armored finger, suggesting a thick door – one may be too thick to smash down himself. He reached into a container pouch on his thigh and pulled out a slender stick of XTCC breaching explosives. If there was anyone on the other side of the wall, they’d be hit with the rapid decompression. Those without suits would be suffocated instantaneously, though with suits would be left disoriented.

Merlin set off the electric, internal fuse and backed up two strides. His drones did the same. A faint beep sound clicked inside Merlin’s helmet telling him the explosive was alit. There was a bright light followed by violent shaking from the door being separated from its bulkhead frame. Heavy-set breezes of vacuum and air colliding as they zipped past one another and mixing into the same environment, osmosing into one another.

Merlin rushed through the hole and ducked down and low as he assumed the presence of enemy combatants on either side of him. There was no gunfire as Merlin spun around and cleared his operating field of view with a wide sweep of his submachine gun a quick glance down at his suit radar. No targets. There was no one here.

He found himself inside another corridor, one a bit larger and longer in scope, but painted the same dull-gray that covered the rest of the station’s exterior and interior. There was nobody around, but Merlin knew that the presumption would prove wrong soon if he didn’t continue moving.

“That was you?” Andra’s voice crackled on the radio frequency, once again audible.

“Yeah. I’m coming to you.” Merlin replied as he gauged which direction was the best way to reach his friend.

“Alright. I’m moving as well...check the end of the hallway to your left, I’m about there. No need to make any more loud entries since we seemed to be tied to the same hallway.”

A new direction icon winked to life on Merlin’s HUD at the airlock off to Merlin’s left at the end of the hallway he was in.

“I see it, coming now.”

“Roger.”

Merlin shuffled over to the airlock console while glancing behind him to ensure there were no enemy combatants heading his way. He planted an open palm on the door panel and thought about the complex act of seizing local control of the mini-computer on the wall. There was a light fluttering in the back of Merlin’s head as his neural implant communicated between his suit and his brain and then a positive reaction from the door computer as its screen glitched out.

Merlin pulled his hand back as a green-access page popped up on the door computer’s small monitor screen and the two doors that divided the airlock from space and the space station interior zipped open. Merlin didn’t feel the gust of vacuum and air colliding this time, likely due to the collapse of the two environments from Merlin’s explosive entrance.

A petite, skinny Spartan standing at a five-feet-nine-inches stood before Merlin as she calmly stepped into his hallway. She stood only a couple inches shorter than Merlin’s suit and was equipped with the angular INTRUDER-class Mjolnir assault armor but stacked with heavily-integrated equipment from the Marine Corps’ ODST stock and colored black and white. Two more MQ-96 drones hovered at her flanks. Two new names: Roxanne and Shizuko, more Spartans Merlin missed.

“Andra?” Merlin asked concerned. Her voice had seemed off to Merlin since they crashed into the asteroid space station. Now, he attempted to check on her as she had done for him only minutes ago.

She glanced at Merlin then glanced behind her. Andra didn’t say anything but shrugged her shoulders and allowed her BR85 battle rifle to fall limp in her arms. Her HELLJUMPER helmet tilted off to the side as if she was glancing down in forlorn.

Merlin glanced past Andra in the direction where she glanced, and he gawked. Whatever angle she’d enter the space station was far more violent than what Merlin experienced. A violent almost-vertical shaft of twisted titanium and dangling-sparking wiring. There were jagged points in the entrance path, Andra’s pod must have shaken violently on the way in, busting up anything she smashed her way through.

“How many bulkheads did you smash through?”

“Three floors,” Andra responded. She stepped closer to Merlin and pausing, keeping her unseen eyes behind her silver visor on the hallway behind Merlin but it looked like she wanted to be closer to her best friend.

Merlin looked down at her again, and then past her, again. He blinked rapidly in disbelief as he watched a limp human body of a Wealthian woman in a work uniform slowly rise from the darkness of Andra’s insertion point. What happened?

“What happened in there?”

“I-I hit a dormitory.”

“How many?”

“A dozen dead I think. Rapid decompression and suffocation.”

Merlin reached out to Andra and squeezed her shoulder roughly, but, assuring. She glanced up at him. Their visors, gold-met-silver, and a degree of understanding passed between them.

“We’ll talk about this when we get back to the Caviar. Let’s get the mission over with.”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go...” Andra shrugged Merlin’s arm off her, elbowed him with a light tap, and shifted passed him down the hall. Merlin’s eyes remained glued to the dead Wealthian woman floating in the vacuum for only a second later.

He pulled his eyes away, not sure how he felt about it, but he shook his head and got back to the mission mindset at hand.

“I got point,” Andra called from in front of Merlin. She had her BR85 raised at eye level and was shuffling down the hallway, moving to the opposite end where Merlin had yet to go.

“Following,” Merlin replied, and did so. Four combat drones tailed after him.

The pair of Spartans descended deeper into the asteroid space station known as Tsiolkovsky.

Chapter 1.3: The Asteroid Shakes
There was something rather repetitive to performing two-person room-clearing under the cover of light-refracting active camouflage. Merlin and Andra moved slowly and methodically, saying little more than the occasional callout regarding some surveillance equipment or that a relatively important vantage point had been investigated and cleared.

Their four MQ-96 drones whirred lively above the Spartans' invisible heads as they too passively scanned for boobytraps and oncoming threats. The gray hallways, even for a facility almost half-a-kilometer in length, still appeared endless. Low-level, economic lightning hummed in high ceiling canopies. There was a significant lack of colors in the facility — mostly gray and more darkish gray. Minus the significantly taller ceilings that seemed to make the passages seem wider and more imposing, the architecture of the asteroid-imbedded space station shared much in common with other Human starships and orbital facilities, especially the UNSC Navy.

The only pressing difference here was that everything was written in some variation on Colonial Russian, the lingua franca of the Wealthian Coalition. The other notable difference was the apparent lack of upkeep on display.

Scratchy noises coming from distant air conditioning ducts suggested the facility's air filtration system was in need of synthetic oil or cracks were beginning to form in the metal fans and risked becoming debris if the facility was ever violently shaken. Distant whistling suggested that micro-cracks were forming in the bulkheads, either letting air escape into Outer Space outside or, seeping into other compartments. The titanium walls were dressed in a thin, blackened bacteria coat and even hints of maroon beginning to form. While the typical Titanium-A alloy favored by twenty-sixth-century utilitarian architecture was far more resilient against rust and decay than other metals, it was still susceptible. It appeared that a percentile increase in moisture had developed into a greater issue of human-carried bacteria promoting the early development of titanium rust.

"Does this place bother you?" Merlin asked over the radio, addressed Andra shuffling cautiously in front of him.

"In what way?" Andra asked back as she stopped to check a four-way hallway and found all directions clear. She glanced to Merlin and nodded, signaling for the duo to proceed forward with their mission.

"Firstly, the lack of people."

"A little bit. How many sections of the station have we checked?" Andra asked.

"Just the dormitories and the engineering sections. The room you hit was like the only populated dormitory on the station we've seen, every other room is empty of everything."

"It's a little bit strange. What do you think it is?"

"Maybe it's a skeleton crew?" Merlin asked rhetorically, the lack of people and the presence of people on the space station was pointing strongly to a significantly smaller force than the Spartans were expecting.

"It might be. That would explain the lack of anything human in here, and why the place looks like it's about to fall apart." Andra agreed in thought.

"It's starting to feel less like a secret military base, to be honest," Merlin grumbled, he had a general idea where they were now based on whatever loose digital documentation and schematics they could yank from the most ancillary computer systems in the station. They were approaching the CIC, the command intelligence center, or what amounted to the station's ship-bridge.

"Well, looking up," Andra directed Merlin's attention to a dull-red trident painted on one of the high ceilings above the two Spartans. "We can confirm undeniably the Wealthians own the facility. That's their national emblem."

"Makes you wonder if there is any distinction between their military and civilian operations."

Andra shrugged, "You said so earlier before we were in our last briefing that the Wealthians don't have the luxury of having different flags or emblems for different subdepartments."

"Yeah. I do remember saying that," Merlin smiled to himself as Andra reminded him of the bored few days the two had spent helping the ONI surveillance team back on the requisitioned assault corvette, UNSC Black Covair, go over Wealthian communication and data traffic regarding the asteroid base.

"Still, its a bit fascinating. I wonder what that red trident represents, it's a bit distinct. Like, its shaped like a pitchfork but with these jagged edges, it looks borderline-East-Asian. Like something of Shinto-origin or something."

"I'd say you're reaching there, Merlin. You and I are not tippy-top experts regarding colonial customs, especially not Wealthians." Andra bluntly pointed out as she crossed another hallway with no human presence visible at all.

"Well, what do we actually know about them?" Merlin asked his friend quizzically. This situation was getting boring, the prospect of playing some kind of road trip boredom game suddenly seemed viable to stave away with the frustration of not having anything to do but clear pointless, endless hallways.

"They're predominantly of Slavic descent from Earth. Space Russians. They speak a fairly standard variation of Colonial Russian and some limited English. They tend to have outdated gear, and they fear aliens more than the UNSC does by a long shot."

"Spot-on answer there. You sound like a textbook." Merlin grinned.

"Like you've ever owned a paperback book in your life." Andra sniped back.

"I've held one."

"We've both held one," Andra replied in only a pint of annoyance. "Last time was in Baltimore, I hated those mandatory classes just to keep our cover."

"When we were posing as a pair of competitive sharpshooters from a rival school? That PRAMS op, that was an interesting experience but, yeah, definitely bad." Merlin said, confirming Andra's grievances while reminiscing back to another secret mission the two Spartans partook in during the summer time.

"I hated that mission...we got beat by high schoolers. High schoolers Merlin!" Andra growled, as she too thought back to a particular rifle competition at the Patuxent River Academy of Military Science. Her arms twitched momentarily as if she wanted to shoot them skyward were she not holding a weapon and performing point-woman duties.

"We all have bad days, no sweat," Merlin responded diplomatically, he didn't want to piss Andra off. She could function just fine with minute distractions like these but risks were still risks all the same.

"It was really embarrassing. I couldn't aim for a worth a damn, like, all my training went out the window!"

"Uh...Russian, what do you know from the Russian language?"

"Very smooth Merlin," Andra quipped at her friend, catching his poorly-hidden attempt to change the subject. "Not much, mostly curse words."

"Weird. Me too," Merlin noted, surprised, the subject of Russian never really came up in their discussions before — this was a new discovery. "Where did you learn your—?"

"Sergei."

"Team Anion's Sergei?"

"How many Sergei do you know?"

"Just the Delta Company one."

"Yeah. That Sergei."

"Huh. Small world."

"He was an asshole back in training," Andra grumbled, thinking back to the time where she was assigned to Team Anion instead of Team Boson. "Second worst teammate I've ever had."

"You never got along with Anion, huh?" Merlin asked rhetorically, knowing full-well her experience with the aforementioned unit was like.

"They never trusted me and they always made sure I was the outsider."

"Okay. Maybe this wasn't the greatest conversation-changer..." Merlin trailed off.

"We need to work on your conversation skills Merlin, I feel like they've been lacking since...Roxanne left..." Andra paused at the words coming out of her mouth called back to the loss of Team Boson once again.

"Shit."

"We're lousy, aren't we?"

"That is affirmative," Merlin said, smiling sadly behind his helmet.

Andra steps came to an abrupt halt as Merlin's VISR outlined her obscure, semi-invisible form in the hallway lined by titanium. Her left hand was held back in Merlin's direction with an open-palm gesture as if to tell him 'stay still.'

"Alright. We're here. The nerve center." Andra announced.

Merlin glanced up and noted significantly larger doorways along the wall to his left, he shuffled across the hallway immediately so he was against the wall closest to the doors. Andra was in front of him a second later, her back still to him.

"Alright, how do you want to handle breaking and entering?" Andra asked Merlin, still over the radio and still under the cover of her active camouflage.

"Well, what can we assume? I would say it would be right to think they know we're here."

"That's a good place to start. Do you think they know our numbers, our tactics?"

"Honestly. Too many things to consider."

Andra put a hand to her chin in thought. She tilted her head as a realization came over her. She punched the titanium wall as hard as she could with her armor and left a decent sized dent in it. Merlin could hear the vibration all the way into the superstructure of the space station.

"Uhh."

"They'll definitely know we're coming now. But that wall is hollow...hollow enough. We can cut right through with high-explosives."

"What grade?" Merlin asked he wasn't sure slamming the wall was the best way to get measurements on the wall's thickness. Though he admitted to himself it was a quick way to gauge the situation.

"Composition-Seven foam explosives. We'll set remote explosives and blow our way in from four different points and make it appear there's more of us than there are."

"Two drones to each? One entry point for each of us?"

"Yeah, should only take a couple minutes to set up. You take watch—?"

Andra and Merlin glanced down at the ground then up at the ceiling and back at the floor again as violent rumbling traveled through every surface and structure in the entire space station. It was so violent, it felt like even the air around the two Spartans was electrified. The rumbling went deep, into their blood and bone. It lasted only ten seconds but it was a 'long' ten seconds.

"What-what was that?" Andra stammered, whatever that noise had surprised her in a really bad way.

Merlin paused then took a long breath, composing himself. "Forget the setup, whatever that was, it's large. We'll have to push up the time table. We'll breach at the corner of the room and go straight for room securement. Forget subtlety."

Merlin strode four steps back as Andra followed him so they were at a corner-point to the wall that encircled the hostile command intelligence center. Andra kept in step and took an audible breath with each footfall and calmed herself.

"Be-beginning breach, setting explosive," Andra shakily announced and pulled a single cylinder-canister of C-7 Foam Explosive and directed it to the wall. She pressed down on the pressure trigger on its top and sprayed a pale-yellowish liquid on to the wall in front of her and Merlin. It reacted with the stale air of the space station and quickly hardened into an amber-like material.

"Ready?"

"Do you think that noise was a response to me hitting the wall?"

"I really doubt it. Something else is going on here," Merlin grimly thought out loud. "Ready?"

"Ready," Andra confirmed, her silver visor staring up into Merlin's gold one as she hefted her battle rifle.

Merlin readied himself, preparing to use his larger frame to draw fire.

"I got point with a hard-light shield. We'll throw two stuns through the entry point and follow with drones as our vanguard. You'll follow me in and eliminate anyone that poses an immediate threat. Understood?"

"Got it. On your count." Andra responded equally grim in tone.

"Two. One. Breach."

Andra raised her left, support arm so that it was next to the pinky on her rifle arm and tapped a button on her wrist computer.

A sharp zap popped on Merlin's audio feed before a large light flashed and a bang crackled out. Merlin flinched slightly on instinct, blinking but he trusted his voice to carry over the noise as he used his mind to guide the four combat drones into action.

The kite-like combat drones zoomed by Merlin and Andras' heads into the smoke, blowing the grimy-gassy residue out of the way and rushed forward into the grand chamber passed the blown-out wall. Merlin counted internally to two seconds and stepped forward into the hole, smoke obscuring his vision only temporarily.

He brought his left arm up to eye-level and opened his right palm forward in the manner that was taught to him for using the Z-90 Photonic Coalescence Emitter/Aegis. Or when not spoken as a mouthful, simply the 'hard-light shield.'

A brilliant blue wall burst to life in front of Merlin as super-cooled photons hardened to form a shield-like apparatus in front of him. Merlin listened intently to the noise around him: the sounds of Andra's footfalls slowly following his own into the smoking entryway, the soft hum of the hard-light shield and the drones, and the new noise of groaning adults recovering from the unexpected entry.

A metal cylinder clinked out of Andra's free arm as she tossed her stun grenade over Merlin's head and shield at the enemy forces inside the room.

A second passed and the grenade thundered to life, crackling somewhere beyond the smoke. While the dark gas subdued the noise and flash minimally, Merlin's armor reacted immediately, deafening his ears and polarizing his visor to protect against the stun weapon's worst.

The smoke cleared and Merlin got his first glimpse at a group of floor-ridden scientists in lab coats over a thin-style of vacuum suit without a helmet. A quartet of kneeling human soldiers in heavily armored gear and vacuum suits painted in dark browns and blacks stood in a loose formation around the scientists. However, like the scientists, the combatants, Wealthian Marines, had also suffered greatly from the well-thrown stun grenade. They did not move nor fire for fear of hitting their allies.

"Good throw, Andra." Merlin complimented his partner as he watched his combat drones hover and analyze the potential hostiles.

The group was rather small, between Marines and scientists, there was barely twenty people in the room. Their groans had also gotten louder after Andra hit them with her stun grenade, they'd be feeling the effects for the next few hours to days. Painful but non-lethal and efficient, just as preferred by ONI's rules of engagement.

"Relieve them of their weapons, keep an eye on the scientists for secondary weapons. I think there may be too many people to properly detain." Merlin ordered to Andra as he extinguished his hard-light shield and ordered one drone to retreat back to the entry point to maintain security. The other three drones remained, hovering overhead ever vigilant for further threats.

Andra quickly sauntered over two of the groaning guards and yanked their rifles out of their arms with mild yelps of pain from the blinded men. Merlin performed the same action and received a similar result.

Throwing the enemy weapons across the room to negate the Wealtians'standoff options, Merlin and Andra took three large steps backward simultaneously to spread themselves out across the room and separate themselves from their new captives

And then they waited. Another stroke-inducing tremor shook the facility and Merlin felt the hairs on the back of his neck, pushing against the professional skin-tight apparatus of Merlin's MJOLNIR armor tech suit.

A primal fear coursed through Merlin's veins. He shivered anxiously as every nerve in his body told him something very bad was coming. The metal beneath Merlin's armored legs rumbled and groaned and twisted continuously under the strain of an asteroid-quake.

A half-concussed Wealthian whimpered from among the group of scientists sprawled our on the floor in a heavily-accented, breathy voice. "You come here at the worst time possible. You ONI dogs..."

The scientist didn't get to finish his sentence as a pressing force seemed to condense into an invisible existence from nothing. It was foreboding and suffocating and Merlin instinctively clutched at his skull as a mild pain ebbed within. It sent violent chills down his back and he swore he felt Andra's emotional signals pour uncontrollably from her interlinked neural implant into Merlin's as their senses of terror mixed into a soup of shock.

The Spartans froze in place but the shaking did not stop. Merlin wanted so badly at that moment to roll up into a ball and die. The disembodied voice spoke from nowhere and everywhere.

"Humans... All the living creatures in the galaxy, hear this message."

Chapter 1.4: The Peacemaker
WIP