Halo: Lonely Frontier

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Chapter 1: On The Ride In
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 countless 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 boot 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 sweet-quiet-young 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 against 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 and thought he heard himself screaming even though no noise escaped his gapped lips behind his helmet visor. His cameras cut out. His shields gave weigh 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 heard 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 pod 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.