Chapter Two:
Any Landing You Can Walk Away From
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Something here wasn’t right, but for the life of her, Carol couldn’t put her finger on what. She currently stood in the shallow trench cut into the beach by her ‘impromptu’ landing, with the pelican’s bay door closing behind her, and magnum held at the ready.
Slowly scanning her surroundings from right to left, her instincts were screaming at her that something was very fucking wrong. But… hell! What was it? Nothing was immediately jumping out at her…
Alright, she'll start from the top then. To her immediate right, about twenty meters away, was a seemingly normal temperate forest; It was practically indistinguishable from every other forest in north-eastern America.
In front of her, the beach stretched out for several miles to the south before disappearing around the tip of the cape. In the sky, she could still see the slowly dissipating trail of pitch black smoke that had spilled from her plane as it fell; Clearly marking the path the drop ship took as it plummeted towards the ground, before eventually recovering from the dive and snaking its way to the island. She snuck a glance over her shoulder to confirm that- yep, the pelican was still belching smoke from the rear engine pods and into the air.
Shit.
Carol had cut the fuel to the rear engines as soon as she saw the flames back over The ‘Autumn, and knew that the fire suppression systems should have taken care of the worst of it. That didn’t seem to help her here though, something was clearly still smoldering in there. Creating a God damn smoke signal straight to her.
But it wasn't the smoke that was bothering her, there was something else fundamentally wrong about the situation.
To the left was just water, in the far distance she could see the other peninsula, fuzzy and indistinct at this range. Behind her to the north the two peninsulas connected to the island proper, creating a natural bay between them. They let out into the open ocean to the south…
Maybe it was just how normal it all looked? This planet was seemingly identical to Earth, or at least this specific island was. Even the Ring, with all its 'natural' Earth-like beauty, was still clearly the result of intelligent design. The entire megastructure and everything on it fell firmly into Uncanny Valley territory.
Wait…
Carol's head snapped up to stare at the sky again. The open, natural sky.
…The Ring, the thing that had loomed over her for the past four days, a constant reminder of the near God-like beings that created it and the threat they represented- was gone.
She was no longer on Installation Zero-Four.
Her pistol nearly slipped from her limp grasp. She fumbled with it for a second before carefully reholstering it on her leg mount.
Fuck- Ok, she could process this later. Right now she had to go. She unhooked the SRS from her back, and pulled back slowly on the charging handle. Feeling the well oiled machinery in her hands as it glided smoothly over itself, chambering the ridiculously large round.
She was no Rifle Expert, but she had scored a respectable Sharpshooter back in basic. Though, She wasn't tested using an SRS with a SmartLink scope back then either, so hopefully the high tech weapon will help cover her admittedly mediocre marksmanship. Carol mostly wanted to feel the weapon's comfortable weight in her hands anyway.
Feeling slightly more in control of her future now that she held more than thirty pounds of hate and death, Rawley started limping towards the tree line.
As soon as she got under the canopy, she risked one last look at her downed bird. Rawley watched with a strange sense of detachment as smoke continued to curl out of plasma-melted holes in the aft engine pods.
All along the fuselage were craters and scorched armor. She could easily follow the neat lines carved into the titanium alloy by Plasma Cannons as they strafed up and down the plane. As well as some tiny pits and burns scattered around in tight groupings here and there, damage from small arms.
Her emblem, a winged war hammer, was almost completely burnt off from where it used to proudly sit right behind the cockpit. Maybe the one on the other side was still there, but the hammer on the port side was gone.
A glance at the beach itself had her cringing slightly at the obvious footprints she had left behind in the sand.
Needles and leaves crunched underfoot as Foehammer turned on her heel and continued on into the woods.
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Rawley had kept a watchful eye on her motion tracker as she stomped through the underbrush. She had marched at least three miles by now and had not seen so much as a single twitch of motion on it. She hadn't seen any wildlife so far- but she could sure as shit hear them.
Whatever was out there was making one hell of a racket too, chittering, scratching and screeching away just out of sight. Yet there was nothing on the MT. This place was really starting to make the hair on her neck stand straight up…
And it was sure as shit making her trigger finger itchy.
She eventually broke off to the right, heading north. She was planning on making her way towards the some buffs she saw on her way in. The cliffs should give her a clear line of sight on her crash sight, meaning She'd be able to watch from a safe distance to see if anyone came sniffing around.
Even though she should have walked right through where all the noise was coming from, neither she, nor her motion tracker saw a fucking thing.
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The SRS was wedged into the 'V' created by a tree that collapsed into its neighbor, its scope pointed directly at the pelican over four miles away. Carol herself was seated directly below it with her back to the tree. Virtually watching the crash sight through the rifle's SmartLink scope. She was able to open a picture-in-picture on her HUD so she could see through it without directly exposing herself. The only thing that had changed at the beach so far, was that whatever had been burning in the engine compartment must have run out of fuel. Now there was only some light Gray smoke, lazily curling out over the forest.
As nothing had disturbed the crash sight in the half hour she'd been here watching, Carol decided to turn her attention to her flight suit’s computer as it chewed through atmospheric data.
Sixty-one percent nitrogen, thirty percent oxygen, one percent everything else.
Thirty percent is far more oxygen dense than Earth's atmosphere, but still well within acceptable levels. The problem was: the computer couldn't tell what the hell the eight percent left was, it kept running the same tests over and over before reaching some kind of integer overflow and crashing. Damn it, what she wouldn't do for a Smart AI right now.
Her armor was fully capable of recycling and collecting oxygen from its surroundings, but without knowing what a full eight percent of the air around her is made of, taking off her helmet would be one hell of a gamble. The only place that would be safe to do so would be back in the cargo bay of the pelican, and even then only after running a full air evac and scrub…
But, she needed to see to her wounds now. According to her HUD, among other injuries, she was suffering from a moderate concussion and some very minor brain swelling. The symptoms of which were being alleviated by her cybernetics, but there was a limit to how long they could help keep her functioning.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The problem was that she needed to remove her helmet in order to treat herself.
Not willing to toe the nanofiber thin line between a debilitating head injury, or permanent brain damage. Carol decided that if that mystery eight percent turned out pure poison, she would rather find that out now rather than later.
Though, before she went and unsealed her helmet, Foehammer unclipped the magnum from her thigh and set it on her lap. If the unknown in the air ended up being airborne Flood spores or something equally horrible, she wanted a quick way out at the ready.
Alright… She's procrastinated long enough. Without any delay or dramatics, Rawley grabbed the seal release lever at the base of her helmet and pulled it open. The small hiss of escaping air proved that she was no longer sterile. If the air was poisonous, she was already dead.
Carol yanked off her ECH Two-Five-Two EVA helmet and held it just above her head. Breathing heavily, she started a slow countdown backwards from thirty.
At zero, she finally allowed herself to relax; Besides feeling a bit more energetic, nothing seemed to be wrong. The increased energy could easily be explained by the extra oxygen in the air. Whatever it was that the computer couldn’t ID, it apparently wasn't immediately a problem. Whether or not it will be an issue later on is firmly Future Foehammer’s problem.
Setting her helmet down on the forest floor and working the med pack off her harness, Rawley got to work patching herself up. Popping open the white colored box stamped with a blood red Caduceus, Carol started taking inventory of the contents of the pack.
A couple of cannisters of Biofoam, some tins of MediGel™, all different kinds of self-adhesive antiseptic dressings, PPE, a full stitch kit, a bottle of oxygen and accompanying face mask, blood draw kits, IV bags, a few tabs of Polypotassiumiodine, self tightening tourniquets, a whole slew of assorted meds, a ton of burn salves, a few PCK items, enough Polypseudomorphine to kill at least two and a half Jiralhanae Chieftains, and a defibrillator.
Everything a soldier needs to bring their comrades home. Or hell, to bring 'em back from the dead. The UNSC does not muck around with their Healthcare benefits.
Grabbing a Antiswel™ injector and a saline bag, Carol yanked the cap off the syringe with her teeth before jabbing the needle into a valve on the saline bag. Aquamarine colored liquid began to diffuse throughout the salt water. She gave it a good shake to make sure it was mixed properly, before popping open a small port just beneath the breast plate on her A/X CBBDU. Taking the drip from the IV bag, she plugged it into the connector on her armor. A sharp pinch preceded the creeping icy cold sensation of liquid spreading through her veins. Rawley glanced around for something to prop the IV bag up with, before just shrugging and clipping the thing to the swivel stud on the stock of the SRS. It was already dangling above her head, why not make use of it?
That should help with the cerebral edema, there wasn't much she could do for the concussion though. Skimming over her HUD’s medical report again, it seemed like most of her injuries fell into two categories: Either they’re too difficult/inconvenient to treat, or they’re impossible to treat with just a first-aid kit.
On the inconvenient side of the scale, Bruises littered her body, both from blunt force trauma and from blood vessels that had burst from her flying. She’d have to take off her armor and BDU to get MediGel™ on them. Not gonna happen, not alone in uncharted territory at least. She did crack one of the MediGel™ tins and rub some of the miracle goo into the bruises on her face. She was starting to look like a bloody raccoon from the dark blue rings circling her eyes.
On the more severe side… She had at least seven microfractures littering her arms and legs, and one of her ribs was fully broken. Her armor had already administered a micro dose of morphine, and was acting as a brace for her ribs. So there wasn’t much more she could do on that front without an Autodoc to administer calcium resin to the fractures.
Rawley could already tell though… Once the good stuff wore off, she was in for a world of hurt. She could always hit herself up with another dose of polypseudomorphine… but she only had the full injectors left, and those would leave her down and out for hours.
As tempting as a nice chemically induced coma sounded right now, one look back at the creepy ass forest dissuaded her of the notion.
She popped a couple of antibiotics, just in case her wetware missed some of the local pathogens, And followed them up with potassium iodine tabs. While her flight suit was shielded against radiation, you could have cooked a full course meal a click away from the Autumn on the rads it was venting out at the end there. Hopefully she wouldn't be needing a blood transfusion, but there are some bags of cloned O negative back on the pelican if that becomes necessary.
Having done everything she could, Rawley packed up the medkit and reattached it to her combat harness. She simply chucked the trash and used syringes over the cliff, it was all biodegradable anyway, probably.
Redonning and sealing her helmet, Foehammer settled in for a long night.
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Movement. Carol was shaken from her stupor by an alert from the SRS's scope. The tree line in front of her was clear, but something was moving in the picture-in-picture from the SmartLink. Grabbing the sniper rifle's stock above her head, she kept her eyes on the forest while slowly panning the weapon to the right.
There, dipping and bobbing through the trees, was a flickering string of warm orange lights. The light was ruining the scope's night vision, so she flicked it to thermal. Through the tiny gaps in the tree cover, she was able to make out about a dozen unknowns marching single file; Carrying what appeared to be paper lanterns of all things. Any details were obscured by distance and the black and white nature of thermals, but they at least seemed to be humanoid in nature.
Their destination, however, was as obvious as it was discerning. They were making a beeline towards her pelican.
Rawley grabbed the rifle in both hands and yanked it out the tree, before getting down on her belly and Leopard crawling towards the edge of the cliff.
Resting the gun on its bipod and resighting on target, Carol watched as they reached the tree line before the beach. They seemed to hesitate slightly at the sight of the D Seventy-Seven, but they eventually stepped out into the open.
Whatever she was expecting to see, Carol definitely was not expecting her uninvited guests to be a group of fourteen or so human sized figures, covered head to toe in giant black cloaks.
Like something straight out of an old horror flick, the cult looking fuckers ghosted across the beach, holding their paper lanterns out in front of them on long wooden poles.
Rawley watched enraptured as the light from the group reached the drop ship proper, causing the strangers to visually recoil in shock at the sight of it. One of the creatures down there turned towards her position as it spoke to its fellow. With a shiver up her spine Carol noted that all their faces were hidden behind crude, evil looking carved masks.
The Illuminati cosplayers seemed to have gathered their courage, as they broke up into little groups and began to circle around the crash sight. They poked and prodded at the titanium armor with their wooden poles, excitedly pointing and gesturing towards the scorched and pitted armor. She almost missed the three that had split off towards the cockpit. The three of them examined the broken windshield with their lanterns, gesturing wildly with each other.
What the hell made them so excited? Carol knew that the pelican was locked up tight, even if they could get into the cockpit, the door was locked. Unless they have the code, they'd need a breaching charge to get at the goodies inside.
It took one of them sticking his lantern pole in the sand and putting his hands on the nose of the plane for her to remember.
Frye was still in there.
Pure, unadulterated, rage flooded her veins. Foehammer already let her copilot down once. She'll be damned before she does so again.
When the cloaked fucker climbed up onto the bow of Echo Four-Nineteen, Rawley shot so far past rage that she settled on cold, hard, hate. The slight tremors in her hands, the shaking either from withdrawal or anger, vanished. The SmartLink's circle shaped cross hair, distance and wind already calculated by the computer, fell right on the fucker's chest. Before he went for the hole in the windshield, however, he turned around to say something to his compatriots that had gathered around him.
In either a moment of mercy or simple pragmatism, Carol panned the cross hair slightly to the right.
The blinding muzzle flash illuminates the night for a split second; While the deafening bark of the rifle silences the mysterious chittering creatures of the forest. The free floating barrel slams back into the recoil spring, only slightly dampening the painful punch to her shoulder. Dust and gravel is sent flying in an almost wing shaped pattern from the concussive force leaving the tanker style muzzle brake.
A second later, the lantern that was stuck into the ground exploded spectacularly. Flaming debris rocketed outwards, pelting the onlooking crowd with shards of wood and fiery pieces of paper.
Their reaction was predictable at first. The crowd recoiled in shock, some even dropped their own lanterns in fright. The guy standing on the pelican was level with the target, and was therefore the most affected. The dude got scared so bad he slipped off the nose cone, landing in a heap on the sand.
All pretty normal reactions for people suddenly coming under sniper fire.
What was not normal behavior was what they did next. The Death Eater wannabes, one and all, went down on their knees in a circle around the pelican. Their hands clasped together and held out in front of them the only hint as to what they could be doing.
They were praying.
What. The. Fuck.