Halo Spotlight: Nogard

Raj stepped out of the Pelican and turned on his MJOLNIR’s VISR, illuminating the empty base hanger. Motioning with his hand, his teammates moved towards the door in breaching formation as Raj followed. With expert timing, Raj placed and set the breach charge, then moved into position himself. Seconds passed, then with a bang, they were in.

More signaling as the team moved down the darkened hallways, covering doorways and checking corners. Lights flickered dimly in places, but otherwise the place remained dead silent. It was like some kind of ghost town.

Why would a signal be coming from here? Raj wondered to himself as his team entered another hallway, rifles trained for any sign of movement. ''This place looks long abandoned. I don’t understand at all...''

Twenty-four hours ago, Raj had stood in the one of the briefing rooms onboard the UNSC Infinity alongside his team and a half dozen others. The holographic screens had lit the still room as Commander Sarah Palmer explained the situation.

“Five hours ago, an emergency distress signal was intercepted from this planet, Orthus VII,” Palmer had said, “It’s being sent from an old ONI base – Section Zero.”

Whispers rolled through the Spartan-IV’s, but they became sparse as Palmer’s eyes drilled into them. As much as they wondered what Section Zero was doing on an abandoned planet halfway to the edge of UNSC territory, they knew better than to not hush while Palmer spoke.

“Our job is to go in and figure out what happened. We’re far enough out that Covenant are pretty much ruled out, but it could still be rebel trouble, natural disasters or God knows what the eggheads were doing in that facility. Be prepped and ready to drop as soon as we dropped out of slipspace. Dismissed.”

And now they were here. Raj’s team and the other Spartans had been deployed through secondary access points while a small Marine contingent had entered through the two main entrances. Whatever had happened here, Palmer didn’t want to take any chances with it. And Raj was no fool either: whatever had taken place, it was thorough.

Francesca’s voice lit up the coms. “Where is everyone?” she asked. “We should have seen someone by now.”

“They could have all holed up in one saferoom,” replied Vic from the rear, keeping constant check on the team’s six. “But what about the other teams? Anyone else gotten anything from them?”

“Nothing,” said Raj, “Looks like coms are questionable at best in here. They should have checked in already.”

Raj noted a ping mark on his HUD. “Guys, we got a breached bulkhead,” said Angela.

“You and Phillip take point, but hold position,” Raj ordered, “We’ll be there in half a click.”

As Raj and Francesca rounded the corner with Vic not far behind, a slight screeching of metal filled their ears, followed by a slight gasp from Angela over the coms. “Raj,” said Phillip, “You need to see this.”

As Raj walked up to the door, the first thing he noticed was how torn the metal bulkhead was that Angela and Phillip had just pulled open. Despite being six inches thick, the inside was scraped and torn, gash marks running down the metal and almost completely penetrating it, with the torn strips preventing the door from opening all the way. But it was inside the room that had drawn Angela’s gasp: across the entire hallway and seemingly into the adjoining rooms, blood and gore covered the walls, floor and ceiling. Several corpses littered the passage, gored and ripped in disturbing fashions. Worse yet, as Raj looked, he noticed that half of them were armored security, their weapons lying beside them in shambles.

“Dear God...” whispered Francesca. “What happened to them?”

Raj swallowed his bile. “That’s what we need to find out.” He raised his weapon and eyed the broken area for signs of life. “Eyes up everyone; keep a tight formation.”

Raj and Vic moved forward to take point, guns trained on every opening as they navigated the massacre. Carefully they moved around the bodies, muscles tensed for the slightest disturbance. It was eerie: despite all their training and all the war they’d seen, there was no denying the devilish cruelty of this massacre. Walking through another dark doorway, emergency lights twitching slightly, Raj sidestepped to avoid stepping on one corpse’s lacerated neck.

Putting his stomach back in place, Raj pinged Angela. “Angela, check the coms again,” Raj ordered quietly.

The seconds it took Angela to do so were tense. “Still nothing,” she said, “Just dust and echoes.”

Raj cursed under his breath. “Alright,” he replied, “Phillip, activate the rendezvous NAV point.” Within seconds, a bright marker appeared on the team’s HUD’s, giving them the direction of the emergency rendezvous point. “Team, we’re changing tasks. Whatever did this is not to be underestimated. Coms are down, so we’re moving for the emergency rendezvous point. Maintain radio silence unless we engage hostiles and move as quietly as possible.”

Flicking his wrist, Raj doubled his speed, keeping his rifle at the ready as he ran the team down the hallways. Moving with expert silence despite their war gear, the team rounded corner after corner, pushing through abandoned labs and darkened warehouses while the eerie lack of sound haunted them all. Through it all, a part of Raj maintained composure, controlling his reflexes and direction while heading for the rendezvous point, but another part of him was terrified. He was no stranger to war, but what he was seeing unnerved him. The massacre was passed, but gored bodies continued to linger in some of the halls and side rooms, the flickering lights and dark zones hiding the extent of the carnage. It reminded him of his time of Argus, dealing with a Covenant insurgent’s stealth team.

Except on Argus he knew what the Covenant were and what to expect. Here, that was impossible: the Covenant were nowhere near this sector of space, nor did they cause that kind of slaughter. Covenant stealth attacks were swift and silent, their weapons leaving minimalistic, seared wounds. What was Raj was seeing around him – the littered, desecrated bodies and destroyed rooms – this was like the work of an animal.

A flash of movement to his left struck his eyes before vanishing just as fast. Raj’s mind jerked back into consciousness as soon as he saw it. For a moment Raj wondered if he’d imagined it: perhaps the rapidly passing power generators had created an illusion, as his radar noted nothing.

Then it flashed again.

“Unknown contact, 8 o’clock,” Raj whispered.

“Orders?” asked Phillip.

“Maintain our heading and do not fire. Only 200 meters to the rendezvous.”

Every muscle and nerve of the Spartans was tensed, ready to hammer into their triggers at the slightest moment’s notice. The target, whatever it was, remained an illusion on the edge of Raj’s field of vision. It took all the willpower Raj could muster not to turn and face it, to find out what was hunting them. He knew if he changed focus even for a second it could spell disaster.

“Can anyone hear us?” Angela asked over the com, practically begging for someone to answer. “Anyone?”

For a moment, it seemed like there was a thin voice trying to speak through the static, but static was quick to dominate their ears instead. The meters ticked away as the team closed in, but as they passed through yet another warehouse, this one graciously devoid of corpses, Raj noticed that the target had vanished from his peripheral vision. Immediately, he could feel that something was wrong.

“Team, eyes on contact?”

Four negatives replied immediately and Raj briefly wondered if they been lucky enough to disengage their pursuer. It was a thought he knew better than to entertain.

With a sudden fury, Raj heard the sound of metal tearing and bending as something immense barreled towards the team. Raj spun, aiming for their six, and time seemed to slow down as he witnessed the warehouse being torn apart behind them. And then, from the flurry of material and scraps flying away, their pursuer finally revealed itself.

The creature was unlike anything that Raj had ever seen. Reptilian in nature, it stood at least ten feet tall, thick muscles covering its entire body. At the ends of powerful looking arms and legs it sported long talons. A sturdy tail trailed behind it while large, spike-tipped appendages rose from the creatures back. As it leapt through the darkness toward them, the beast opened its maw and released a spine-chilling roar. Raj knew in that instant that this was not a battle he wanted to wage.

“Scatter!” Raj yelled as he landed and loosed several rounds into the oncoming brute. Despite lodging into the creatures’ shoulder, it did little to stop the charge, leaving Raj mere seconds to leap sideways onto a large shelving unit. With his team hiding amidst the other storage equipment and making their way to the rendezvous point under cover of darkness, Raj fired at the beast again, trying to draw its attention.

Unfortunately, the abomination was not interested in games. Reaching for a nearby forklift, the creature picked it up and lobbed the vehicle through the air directly at Raj. Augmented reflexes and MJOLNIR armor kicking in simultaneously, Raj leapt up and over the airborne machine, grabbing ahold of one of the ceiling joists and propelling himself further down the room towards his destination. Landing on a catwalk on the upper level, Raj continued to run, all while arming a detonation pack. Hoping it would be enough to at least delay the creature, the Spartan dropped the pack below, even as the beast charged smashed its way through the warehouse below.

Leaping down and running alongside the rest of his team, all five Spartans made a mad dash down the last few dozen meters to the exit. As the beast closed in, each moved in formation slowing its progress: first a burst from Vic’s battle rifle, then a few rounds from Francesca, then by Phillip kicking a motorized cart into its path. Each time it would attempt to focus on one of them, one of the other Spartans would draw its attention, frustrating it movements and actions. They worked as a single unit, honed through combat and now using their abilities like clockwork.

At last Raj caught sight of the exit to this nightmare. Ahead was the final doorway they needed to use, with the rendezvous point on the other side. Light flowed through it, and with a spark of hope Raj dropped his second det pack and readied his remote trigger. He signaled his teammates, and as they passed through the doorway, Raj clicked the trigger.

The second det pack went off first, ripping through the end of the warehouse in a super heated shockwave and throwing the creature back into the room just as the first det pack exploded. With that, the room crumbled in an instant, collapsing in on itself as the supports gave way and the weight of the mountain bore down on it.

They were free at last. Standing there in the sunlight, and breathing a sigh of relief, Raj turned to look at their gathered allies at the rendezvous point… and was struck by the somber sight in front of him.

The Pelicans the Spartans and Marines had arrived in were waiting for them at edge of the cave they had entered, but in front of them was an ad hoc med station, with dozens of wounded receiving attention. MJOLNIR was scraped or battered in the least worrying cases, limbs were missing in the worst, and Raj counted several body bags laid out and being checked over. Palmer stood in the midst of it, giving orders and directing different units to aid or guard others. When she spotted Raj’s team, she immediately moved towards them with purpose. Raj could tell she was coming to ask for details, but right now the Spartan knew his commander needed to hear about their defeat of this nightmarish beast.

“Spartan Raj, you–” Palmer began, but Raj cut her off.

“Commander Palmer, let me just say–”

And so would have begun his explanation, had everything not immediately changed.

Behind Raj and his team, the rubble exploded. The dust swirled violently in the sunlight, and out of the sandstorm burst a violent visage Raj had never wanted to see again: the creature. With a burst of speed, it crashed through his team and Commander Palmer, then ran ramrod through several other Spartans on a reckless course towards the cliff edge. And then, as if to spite all present who thought they had come to sort kind of understanding of what this thing was, it leapt off the cliff... and opened its spikes into a pair of large wings.

Raj watched for a brief moment, utterly confused, as this abomination flew out into the jungle below. Furiously, he snapped out of his confusion and turned to Commander Palmer. “What is that!?” he demanded.

“That,” she replied simply, “is classified.”