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Halo: Falling In Place
When the explosion rocked the ship and tore half of us out of our harnesses, flinging people across the room, shattering skulls and snapping spines and bludgeoning bodies, it was hardly even a surprise.
The planet Reach in the Epsilon Eridani System was first attacked by the Covenant on July 23rd, 2552. Just short of a month later, more than seven hundred million people lay dead, and the Covenant armada rolled on, believing Humanity's resistance to be broken with the loss of their fortress world.
While the UNSC would rally in the months ahead, defeating the Covenant against all odds, the damage done by the alien horde was irreversible. The galaxy moved on, healing it's wounds and starting down a new path, but those that died on Reach and the hundreds of colonies beforehand remained a silent reminder of the horror's the universe was capable of.
Of the billions lost in the Human-Covenant War, only a relative handful of accounts remain. Many of these losses are stories of heroism, of daring, of courage in the face of death. These stories tell of individuals who stood up to the might of an impossible enemy, giving their lives, but never doing so quietly. This is not such a story; this is the story of the common fatality of the Covenant, the story of billions of colonists who died afraid, unsure, and without notability.
Falling In Place[]
August 23rd, 2552, 1659 Hours
Reach, Epsilon Eridanus System
New Alexandria, Civilian Transport 6 Echo 2
I read an article once, on what it’s like to drown. That’s what I did for fun, of course. Read. Anything I could get my hands on, anything I could download, anything I could buy. A few Earth classics---enough to say I was cultured, really. Plenty of popular fiction; stories about heroes or detectives or unlucky schmucks who ended up just plain losing at life. Even had a thing for Greek plays, for a little bit. Those I could stomach, unlike Shakespeare or Han Lou Da. Never was a fan, no matter how hard my Literature professor tried to convince me they were some cut above the rest. In recent years, of course, I got wrapped up in the populist non-fiction biographies of the big war heroes just like everyone else.
Part of it was a disbelief that people actually did those crazy things the authors wrote about. It’s one thing to read about in the news, where everything is so dry and basic. It’s another to read a book about them. A book gives you all those juicy, interesting details that get censored or cut out of the sanitized news reports. In a news report, it’s easy to take everything at face value and treat it as a fact. A biography gives you a nice, up close look at things though. Makes it a lot harder to suspend your disbelief. I always thought I was being so smart, skeptically analyzing those stories. Trying to pick out the details that were real, separate them from the fabrications.
God, I really did think I was a smart guy. Sure, I was sure that some of the things the UNSC told us were lies---that’s just to be expected, right? Not a government in history that hasn’t lied to it’s people about something, I always said. But I always thought I was a step ahead, at least, of all those bumbling, ignorant masses. That I could pick out the lies, if I read enough, thought enough, cared enough. Not to change anything, of course---what do I look like, anyway? I’m a sports analyst, not a damned politician. I let other people worry about fixing those big problems, calling the top shots on their lies. It was enough that I knew a little bit didn’t add up, enough that I gave the world it’s proper bit of skepticism, enough that I kept an open mind and didn’t get bogged down with any conclusions.
Trouble is, of course, that I got bogged down with a conclusion just like that. Got caught up in believing that while some amount of lying was intentional, the government couldn’t keep us in the dark about everything. How could they? We had complete, immediate access to information, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. We’d had that access for centuries. There were all these hundreds of powerful, accessible, easy to use interfaces for getting that information. We’d been perfecting the little details since the twenty first century. It was an art form, at this point. I never dreamed the government could hide something really big from us. That just wasn’t feasible, was it?
Except of course it was. Governments have been lying to their people since the first one invented. Not just because they could---they’d never manage that. What government actually does a good job at something---hell, what government does even a passable job at something---without proper motivation? Unmotivated governments just turn into bumbling, bureaucratic nightmares. They spend hundreds of credits building spaceports without enough shuttle docks, roads that lead to nowhere, media accessories that crash on the first uplink, healthcare systems that spend recklessly, military contracts that balloon into the trillions. Unmotivated governments are the worst agents around for doing something well.
A government would never lie to their people just because they could---because they’d never pull that off. They’d just become another apathetic, bumbling mess and fuck things up like they fuck up enforcing safety regulations on interstellar safety inspections. They lie to their people because they have an incentive to do so---always have, always will. And that reality---that’s not something new, or anything. That’s as old as time itself. The methods change, as time goes on, but the dynamic doesn’t. For every advance that makes information transparency a little more feasible---the written word, the printing press, the telegraph, the radio, the television, the internet, the fiber link, the chatter---the government adapts.
Human beings are the best damned creatures in the universe, I think, at adapting. That includes governments as well as the people they serve over. Everyone always forgets that governments are just a collection of people---no better or worse, when their motivated at adapting, and with a hell of a lot more power than your average Qiang. Your basic guy on the street thinks that because the government is bad at one thing---one thing where it’s unmotivated---that means it’s bad at everything. That average Qiang forgets that the government is motivated to lie to it’s people. So he doesn’t connect the dots. Doesn’t see that to the government in the enlightenment, the printing press was just as revolutionary to information transparency as the internet was to the post-modern world or the chatter was to the post-interstellar era. Governments always adapt to hide things, because they’re motivated to do so, and when they’re motivated and able, they’re damn near unstoppable.
So if governments are going to lie, it’ll be about the big stuff, not the petty little crap. They don’t lie about things just because---they lie about the big things, because the big things are the ones that matter. They lie about the amount of bloodshed is coming from a war, or about how big a threat terrorism is, or about how little a threat terrorism is, or about how much control they actually have over your life, or about who really runs it, or about how badly their losing a war with an alien conglomerate trying to exterminate our whole species. Because those are the things that matter. Someone who doesn’t know they’re a week from watching their neighbor get gutted by an oversized, ape looking monster with fangs and scales and a stench like death itself won’t panic. They won’t cry themselves to sleep at night with fear. They’ll just go about their business, productively keeping the economy going, the military chugging, and everything stable.
One problem with that, of course. When the monkey monster drops out of the sky with a pants-shitting roar and a gun firing glowing hot spikes and tanks raining glowing orbs of energy that vaporize your boss’ flesh and crush your friend’s bones into dust and ships that darken the sky with the fallout from their bombardment, that panic, that fear, that terror, that absolute unrestrained contents-under-too-much pressure oh-god-I’m-going-to-die horror comes out all at once, and no one---no one at all---can fight it.
Instead they end up sitting in a chair on a crowded transport, too scared to think: smart people reduced to bumbling sacks of meat. Intelligent, analytical people transformed into obedient, terrified sheep. Too sheltered to have any idea what to do. Barely even responding to the panicked, rapid-fire instructions of the soldiers supposed to be guarding them. That’s how I ended up here. I always thought I knew so damn much. Thought I was so fucking smart. I noticed that the UNSC were drafting twice as many recruits as they said they were, and thought it was because the Insurrection was flaring back up, what with the Covenant on the ropes. I saw that the UEG had given up authority to the military, and concluded it was a stupid little power play---not a desperate act of necessity. Because I read a little, here and there.
What was I saying before? That’s right---the article about drowning. I read that a few years ago, I think. Right about the time I got into short net articles. All these fun little tidbits of information, all these short, easy reads. It beat the hell out of struggling through a big, long classical Earth novel or some new, in-depth political piece. Tidy, bite-sized chunks of information. Made me feel smart when I could quote interesting facts, one-up the guys in the office. I remember reading that article late one evening, bored and insomniac. There was a bit of a morbid fascination with death in there, too. What was it like to die? Drowning was just one way to go, but it was a way. I can remember thinking that maybe there was some insight to be found there.
Course, all that article really made me realize was that I didn’t want to die by drowning. There’s a few different ways to die by drowning, sort of. At least that’s what the article said. If you didn’t know how to swim, you’d apparently just go into a sort of automatic response. Lose all your muscle control, do some weird climbing motion, slip underwater, breath in that liquid death, and go dark. Totally uncontrollable; an automatic body response. Like being a stranger in your own skin, with no control. That didn’t sound very appealing. If I go, I kind of want to be in control right up to that last moment.
Of course, the article said that if you did know how to swim, and you get caught in a situation where you run up against your bodies limits on endurance and slip beneath the waves---or in a spot where there’s nowhere to go but water---it’s just pure, icy terror. Complete control, knowing your about to die, able to understand every second of it, as you desperately, frantically try to keep from breathing. Only to open your mouth, because you can’t stop yourself. Can’t fight your body’s urges. Only to inhale, and struggle, and panic, and die.
God, I really, really don’t want to drown.
Of course, the way things are going, seems kind of likely that that’s what’s going to happen. I’m sitting on this seat in this damned ship, this claustrophobic deathtrap, built for sixty people with ten times that many crammed on board. I can feel the rumbling, the crashing, the tearing and groaning of the hull as we slide underwater. This tub wasn’t made to transport people, it was made to transport cargo; crewmembers all need to hear radio chatter, so in the cargo bay we got to hear the whole exchange. Listen as our pilot desperately asked for help---help that never came. There are alien monsters in the sky, in invincible ships with terrifying weapons, and we tried to get away in a damned cargo hauler. When the explosion rocked the ship and tore half of us out of our harnesses, flinging people across the room, shattering skulls and snapping spines and bludgeoning bodies, it was hardly even a surprise. I’ve watched war movies: the panicky pilot always dies first. It’s cruelly ironic, I suppose, that the holo’s have more truth in them than the damn non-fiction I spent so much time reading. Lesser art form my ass.
Even if it wasn’t a surprise, I can’t say I enjoyed being inside a ship as it exploded. Not an experience I’d elect to repeat, all things considered. The fact that I’m going to die before I have a chance to repeat it isn’t much of a consolation, either. Those few initial seconds where everything shook and screamed and howled---honestly, those were the good parts. At least it went quick. Those long moments that followed, the sickening drop in my gut as the ship fell in place, engines cutting out, gravity taking over, sliding towards the river---those were the worst. Slow is a hell of a lot scarier than quick, I’d say. Something can’t be scary if I happens in less than a second, to be honest. It can shock you, sure, leave you rattled---but it doesn’t terrify. Something that develops slowly---like, say, your shuttle lurching towards a cold, watery grave---has just the right amount of tension.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting. An explosion will do a lot to make an airtight spaceship permeable. When we hit the water, there was a split second where I thought we might float, or at least take a moment to sink---but this thing wasn’t built like that. Old airplanes were supposed to be able to glide a little and took at least a few minutes to sink. But this brick, she was barely supposed to see the atmosphere, much less water. We dropped right away, and now we’re still dropping, the hull groaning, everyone’s yells and screams slowly being drowned out by the rush of all that seawater.
I haven’t even moved from my seat---I mean, what’s the point? Even if by some miracle I squirm out, find a hull breach, swim against the onrush, and actually manage to get clear, I’ll probably just burn to death. I remember reading that, too, in one of those military books. Covenant plasma weapons---and I’m assuming that’s what we got hit with---have a nasty tendency for burning very hot, for a very long time. The outer hull, where we got hit, is probably still on fire, I think. And even though I haven’t read an article on burning to death, I still imagine it’s probably worse. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, right? Plus, if I burn to death, I’ll be doing so underwater. Why burn to death and drown if I can just drown instead? That’s just adding unnecessary hardship.
Or…maybe Covenant weapons don’t really work that way. Shit, was I wrong? Was it the book that’s wrong? It seems like it should be. Fire underwater seems kind of basically counterintuitive. In the dark of this damned ship, I’m really not sure. I forgive myself for that little mental blank. The extenuating circumstances make up for it, I think. My point still stands, honestly. Even if the hull isn’t on fire underwater---and ok, now I think it’s probably not---it’s not like I’ve got that good a chance of getting to the surface. Or even staying alive once I get there. Who knows how deep we are---I think I can still feel us sinking---or what the surface looks like. There could be a hundred of those awful purple Covenant aircraft, or a horde of those vicious little masked aliens that tore Vicky apart. Or that hovering, menacing ship could just be sitting there, waiting to vaporize any of us that make it to the surface.
I’ve only seen a few of these monsters, but all the ones I’ve seen have been sadistic and cruel. They got here a week ago, coming out of nowhere. At first there weren’t as many, and I cooked up another one of my damned conspiracy stories---thought maybe these were desperate raiders, launching a suicide strike to try and turn the tide of a failing war. God, how wrong I’d been. It was hell---a slow boiling, gradual hell. I hid, ran, fled. The aliens came in greater and greater numbers, and the soldiers protecting New Alexandria fell a dozen at a time, never to be replaced. I saw people boiled by energy bolts, speared through by blades, disintegrated like they weren’t even there by green flashes of radioactive light.
I know that’s all that’s out there for me. A burning city and dying people. So here I sit, in a ship that’s slowly filling with water. I never thought of myself as a coward, as a weak man. I played all the hard contact sports and went rafting down the falls like all my buddies dared me too. I was always more scared of asking a pretty girl to dance than I was of jumping out of a plane or rope swinging from a cliff. So is it cowardice that’s keeping me here, or just an acceptance? I know I don’t want to die, but I’m staying, when I know that’ll kill me---does that make me brave? Or just stupid? I’m wondering whether now is the best time to ponder these questions, too. It seems like my predicament is probably affecting my judgment. Then again, maybe a situation like this is the only time I’ll ever think clearly about all these things.
I feel something wet sloshing against my feet, and all of a sudden, a lot of those deeper thoughts vanish. Maybe it’s not really possible to be calm and accepting towards death, after all. The lead up is one thing, but once it actually greets you, maybe it’s human nature to fight it relentlessly. Come to think of it, that’s probably something I should have already realized. I didn’t manage to get on this ship by sitting in one place waiting to die, after all. Sure, there was a bit of luck, but I contributed too. It took days for the Covenant to find me, but they eventually did, and I didn’t sit there patiently waiting to die when they did. I bolted, ran and ran and ran and ran and ran some more, through streets choked with smoke and lined with bodies. The fumes burned my nostrils and more than one sight made me gag, but I didn’t care. I just cared about surviving.
So I start moving, unbuckling from my harness, lurching out into the water, stumbling around in the darkness. I bump into walls, chairs, people, bodies, trying to find the exit. The fear in me, the panic---it’s primal. Devouring. I wonder if I’m already drowning, because I can feel my mind disconnecting from my body, instinct taking control. It’s odd, to finally experience one of the sensations I’ve read so much about. It really is like I’ve become a foreigner in my own body.
But as I stumble, I start to panic. Remember that the out-of-body sensation, the disconnect, is a bad thing. A signal that I’ve lost control, that my natural automatic responses are kicking in. The articles always talked about that once you panic, once your body takes over on it’s own, you’re finished. Your logic disappears, you start reacting instead of thinking, and you die.
God, I really don’t want to die. Please, don’t let me die.
I repeat all the calming things to myself I can manage, but it’s not working. I can feel the water at my chest, rising to my shoulders. God, there’s nowhere to go. There’s still screaming, but I almost can’t hear it. My own heartbeat is too loud. The water is to loud. The groans of the ship are too loud. God, help me please, everything is too loud. The water is at my shoulders now, coming faster, faster, oh god, oh god, oh god.
I bump a body, and somehow it calms me. I don’t even want to stop and consider the dark ramifications of that. It’s a young man, I think, though in the darkness I can’t tell. I have to hold back an apology, remind myself that he’s gone. Such a strange thing, a body. Stranger still to contemplate with death minutes or seconds away, but so intriguing nonetheless. So close to life, yet simply…not. An empty shell. Featureless in it’s morbidity. I can’t recall looking at a body and seeing the person’s eyes, or chin, or nose, or hair, and identifying them based on that. All I can think of is the way they died; that cause is their new identity. Is that what I’ll become? Will my identity be simply that of a drowning victim? Or will it be even broader, a casualty of Reach? One death among millions. One death among billions.
I don’t know if I hated the Covenant before now. Feared them, of course, despised them, but not hate. But for this I hate them. Maybe it’s small and petty and dumb---but it’s uniquely me. In their killing of me, they’ve turned me into a number. Lumped me into a pool of trillions of lost lives. Erased my identity by sheer force of numbers. I’ll be just one of the masses, in a few moments. Not a man with water at his neck sucking for air, just a number. Just a footnote.
I slip under, my mouth and nose losing their last bit of space. My ears hammer with pressure. The terror in me is cold, metal in my gut. This is what it feels like to die, isn’t it? This is the brutality the articles never taught me. The nonsensical randomness. The coldness. The emptiness. The terror---the falling in place. My lungs are burning, screaming at me for air. I hold back. Back. Back. Back. Please, back.
I inhale. There are small mercies, at least. The articles were right. Once I give in, I really do lose control. I don’t mind becoming a footnote. All I mind is how bright the world is. The black, the fading, is so much kinder.
