Chapter Three
“Hey, Oregon,” Louisiana shouted over her should, firing her pistol and ducking away from a plasma grenade blast as she did. “Remember, like, fifteen minutes ago when I said this might be fun?”
"Yeah,” he called back to her. “Eating your words yet?”
The silver Freelancer grinned under her helmet at her comrade’s naiveté, then popped off a few more shots—taking out two Grunts and a Jackal with pinpoint accuracy. “Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had in months! How you doing with the computer-y shit?”
Louisiana crept to the one open entrance to the room they inhabited, sensing a lull in the enemy’s advance, and peered around the corner. She quickly pulled back as the two remaining Jackals fired their plasma pistols at the convenient target that was her head.
The radio clicked on and she could hear Oregon give a dry, humorless little chuckle. “I’m sifting through terabytes of heavily--hilariously—encrypted information, most of which is jack-shit in the context of what I’m trying to find. How you think I’m doin’, chica?”
“I think you’re doing fabulously,” Louisiana grunted as she tuck-and-rolled halfway across the corridor outside their room, taking cover behind one of the six-foot-tall slabs of rock in the middle of the hall. “Keep up the good work, bro. I gotta say, you really—Ah, hell! Hold on a sec.”
The female agent spotted an opening and took the opportunity, smirking as she slid the Standard Issue field knife from its sheath on her shoulder. She darted around her cover when she heard the steadily decreasing bursts of white-hot plasma cease altogether.
Louisiana managed to clip one Jackal in the head with a well-aimed kick, before sinking her blade up to the hilt into the temple of his companion.
The first one was in a panic by the time she yanked the knife out of his comrade and turned to him—his eyes kept darting from his gun to Louisiana and back, before he gave up and decided to just throw it at her head.
The Freelancer easily plucked it out of the air and watched in a mild state of amused disbelief as the Covenant soldier turned tail and ran, chattering something in its own language. (Considering the little she’d picked up about the Kig-yar and their employment by the Covie higher-ups as mercenaries, Louisiana had the vague sense that he was basically saying, “Fuck it, I don’t get paid enough for this!”)
Unfortunately for the alien merc, Louisiana wasn’t willing to let him get away and consequently take additional information to his superiors aboveground—the ones that had sent him and his squad down there to eradicate she and Oregon in the first place.
With a mental sigh and shrug—usually, she was willing to let infantry troops take off, if they weren’t going to try to kill her anymore; it was the Elites that she had to watch out for—Louisiana kicked the Jackal’s legs out from under him before he made it more than a few steps.
“Sorry,” she apologized as she pinned the Covie soldier to the floor, her boot on his neck. After all, the silver-clad agent did kinda feel a little bad. Not bad enough to stop her from pulled out her pistol again and emptying the rest of the clip into his skull, though.
When the echo of the last round faded away, Louisiana peered around for any sign of additional enemies. Her motion-sensor showed the surroundings as all-clear, but the Freelancer tried not to rely on it too heavily. They could be fooled, and she found that using your own eyes, ears, and intuition was a lot closer to fool-proof than any tech.
Not entirely satisfied, the young soldier dropped the useless M6G, stuffed the now-dead Covie’s plasma pistol into the empty holster on her thigh, and made her way back into the room with Oregon.
Still feeling vaguely uneasy, Louisiana was sure not to put the opening at her back as she approached her burnt-orange companion.
“We clear?” Oregon asked distractedly, his focus mainly on the giant, Forerunner computer set into the column of metal-rock (what the hell was that stuff that the Forerunners always used? Super-rock?) at the center of the room.
“Mmm,” she responded non-committally. The back of her neck was prickling uncomfortably and she had the sudden urge to double-check their surroundings. “Um, I’m gonna go… check the perimeter.”
Something wasn’t right.
Her companion glanced up at the silver soldier, and gave a distracted “Uh-huh”, before looking back at the screen with a “What the—?”
Not particularly reassured by that, Louisiana left the orange-armored Freelancer to it, checking the makeshift barricade they had erected to block the second entrance to the room—directly across from the open one—as she stepped out.
Louisiana’s eyes darted into every corner as she crept through the corridor that wrapped around the room with the giant computer-thing. Or perhaps it was actually a room at the center of a bigger room, and she simply mistook it for a wrap-around hallway.
Whatever.
Forerunner architecture was weird however you looked at it. Everything was so stark and geometric, giving off an air of sterility and a vague aura of disapproving superiority.
The underground section of the Forerunners’ superstructure wasn’t big, but seemed fairly important, if the Covenant’s reaction to their infiltration of it was any reliable indication.
The door that Louisiana and Oregon had entered through was the only entrance into the complex—a large, circular room, about forty-five feet in diameter, with a single continuous hallway about fifteen feet wide surrounding it as a buffer between the computer and the single exit/entrance. One had to walk to either to 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock, once they entered the structure, to even find the openings to the computer-room.
The ceiling was roughly six-and-a-half feet above Louisiana head, and every yard or so there was a gently pulsating light set into the rock. Evenly spaced about every ten feet were the hunks of super-rock that had provided the silver Freelancer cover during her firefight: large rectangles of the things—six-by-five-by-five, Louisiana would guess.
What she couldn’t guess, though, was their purpose.
All they seemed to do was act as an impediment to people trying to move furniture through the space. She shuddered to think of how it might be accomplished if one of the Forerunners had, say, wanted to add a couch to sit at in the computer-room.
The whole place was pretty Spartan, nothing but the harsh glare of the soft lights on the walls and floors. There weren’t even technically doors—the two entrances into the computer-room were just openings, looking as if someone had built the place, then realized they could get in, and cut a section of the super-rock away as a solution.
As she reached the second entrance to the room—blocked by piling those purple, box-like ammo repositories that Covies always brought with them, one on top of the other—Louisiana’s blood went cold.
Instead of the little bleep-bloop noises of her comrade messing around with the Forerunner tech, or Spanish curses being muttered under his breath, she heard Oregon shout, “Shit! Contact; huge fucking contact!”
Alarmed, Louisiana knew that there was no way she could sprint fast enough to make it to the other entrance before the Hispanic Freelancer was either hurt or killed. Instead, she crossed to the opposite wall and used that little ledge that jutted out at eye-level to hoist herself up and hump onto another hunk of super-rock positioned in the middle of the all, just in front of the Covie-purple (as she had dubbed that particular shade of violet) barricade.
Using her momentum, Louisiana jumped again—activating the jet-pack she’d had the foresight to grab on her way off the Mother of Invention in a short burst as she did—and managed to clear the short wall of purple.
The silver agent crashed to the floor, and was able to roll to her feet just in time to see the nearly-invisible force that held Oregon in the air by his throat, drop him to the ground.
Louisiana pulled the plasma pistol from its ill-fitted holster, aimed it at was she guessed was central-mass, and pulled the trigger. She suddenly understood the dead Jackal’s actions from before when all it did was make a single click.
Well, just fuck, she thought, panicking just a little, as she followed that Covenant soldier’s prime example and chucked the useless hunk of metal at the shimmering form’s head.
When the alien gun made contact, it disrupted the field that cloaked the large figure, and the form solidified into a good eight feet of pissed-off Sangheili in dark gold armor.
“Well, just fuck,” Louisiana groaned as she ducked to avoid the three shots of plasma that the Elite sent her way. Unfortunately, she didn’t see that kick it aimed at her until it was too late.
Fuckin’ thing kicks like a goddamned giraffe, the Freelancer thought as she flew back and crashed into the purple barricade with enough force to knock the boxes down on top of her.
Louisiana desperately struggled to right herself, kicking the boxes away from her body, when she saw the huge Covie turn back towards Oregon.
“Oh, no fucking way,” Louisiana grunted as she reached her feet and threw herself on the Elite when he turned his back on her.
Placing one foot on the abnormally high ankles of his digitigrade legs, the silver Freelancer hoisted herself up with the assistance of one hand on the Elite’s shoulder.
Praying (to whomever it was that deigned to listen to murderers, thieves, and alexithymic soldiers), the Freelancer reached her left hand around the Covie’s face to grip the right side of his helmet while her right hand followed it to rest on the left side, and twisted as hard as she physically could. The Elite’s neck snapped and Louisiana jumped off just before his body fell to the ground.
She stared at the dead body and felt a vague sense of déjà vu—but this time, however, the Hispanic Freelancer wasn’t cleverly concealed in the branches of a tree with a sniper trained on any potential threats. This time, he was the one that had nearly died.
Panting from the combination of fear, adrenaline, and exertion, the silver-clad agent held a hand out to her comrade. Oregon grasped her forearm and gave her a grateful nod when she heaved him to his feet.
“What the hell happened?” Louisiana pressed once he’d gotten his balance, caught between relief that he wasn’t dead and irritation that she’d almost let him get that way.
Her burnt-orange companion rubbed his throat almost compulsively as he slowly moved back to the computer and peered at one of the screens.
“I—” He gave a cough, then tried again. “I found something in the Covie data-net, something important that was generating a lot of chatter. I was about to call you when I… heard something, I guess, behind me. I turned around and saw the Active Camo shimmer. I just had time to try and warn you before the bastard picked me up; then promptly tossed me aside like a ragdoll when you came crashing in.”
The male Freelancer looked up from his fiddling with the Forerunner tech, and jerked his head at the now-demolished wall of purple they had hastily created when the two had first entered the structure. “How’d you even get over that thing? It’s taller than you are by at least a foot.”
His young companion gave a superior little smirk, as if to say, Oh, you poor, sweet, foolish boy. “Jet-pack,” she replied easily enough, though. Then added after a moment of silence, “And luck.”
Oregon chuckled at the admission, before the computer made a lot of frantic beeping noises and his attention snapped back to it. “Hijo de puta…”he muttered under his breath.
Louisiana frowned and walked up behind the agent who was now swearing quite colorfully in Spanish. She put a hand on his shoulder as she leaned forward to look at the screen, attempting to make sense of the symbols that ran across it.
“What’s up, buttercup?”
Oregon glanced at the young woman before speaking. “I hacked into the Covenant data-net using the interfaces they brought here themselves, but there’s a ton of interference, so I’m using the Forerunner transmitter in the giant building aboveground to boost the signal.”
“O-kay,” Louisiana said slowly, with him so far. “And that’s… bad?”
“What? Oh. No, most Covie technology has been reverse-engineered from Forerunner artifacts they found on other worlds, so it’s doubtful they’ll even notice,” Oregon replied distractedly, then fell silent.
Louisiana frowned again, and snapped her fingers in front of his helmet. “Yo, Earth to Nutmeg. Er… Arcadia to Nutmeg.”
“Hm? Oh, sorry,” he apologized. “So, anyway, the use of Covenant frequencies means that I have automatic access to low-level, basic-encryption transmissions, and since I’m using that booster, there’s an additional Forerunner signature that gives me access to a lot more high-level and sensitive material because it indicates to them that I’m, like, a general or something with legit Forerunner tech.”
The silver-armored Freelancer held in a sigh. She wanted to snap at him to get on with it, that she didn’t need the entire history of his exploits in the last half-hour, but then again, she really didn’t.
Oregon was Dan O’Hara’s brother, and a good guy besides. He wasn’t trying to annoy her, and he wasn’t strutting about like a peacock preening his feathers—he was just being thorough, and was actually polite enough to tell her his process of discovering… whatever he was getting at.
With that in mind, Louisiana made an effort to pay attention to what he was saying.
“When I was perusing the chatter, though,” the orange Freelancer continued, “I stumbled across something. Like, super-ultra-top-secret kind of shit: the Covies are looking for something here on Arcadia.”
Louisiana blinked twice.
“Seriously?”
Her companion nodded and pulled up some kind of schematic on the screen, certainty and decisiveness in every movement. The female agent squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the characters. “Is that it? What they’re looking for?”
When Oregon nodded, Louisiana’s mind went into overdrive. “Huh,” she murmured thoughtfully. “I’m sure ONI will be very interested to hear about that…”
“Yeah, we’ll have to report it when we get back,” Oregon said innocently, and she smirked evilly at the thought of simply ‘forgetting’ to tell those fuckers. Seriously, though, there wasn’t a member of the military alive that didn’t grind their teeth at the mention of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Suffice it to say that their spooks were… not nice, to anyone, ever. That kind of superior attitude tends to generate a little ill-will…
Then the Hispanic man turned serious. “That’s not all, though; I found the reason why that Elite upstairs was so anxious. Technically, this little trip of theirs is about as sanctioned as ours—they’ve only got one support Cruiser, and it’s under orders to leave any soldiers groundside and get the hell out of dodge if things go sideways. Now, that big guy upstairs was demanding constant reports from the Grunt techies that were down here because their long-range sensors detected three human ships on-course for Arcadia.”
Oregon stopped everything and turned to face Louisiana fully, looking her straight in the eye, and his voice turned meaningful. “They’re coming from two different directions.”
Agent Louisiana of Project Freelancer swore, loudly and colorfully.
“Hijo de puta! You don’t think—?”
The Hispanic Freelancer nodded. “The lone frigate’s coming this way from the right direction.”
“Shi-i-it,” the young woman groaned, and turned away from the screen. She activated her radio as she walked over to the entrance, hands on hips and staring at the wall without seeing it. “Yo, Care, we got trouble.”
After the initial crackle of static, Louisiana could hear the sound of battle—gunfire from both types of weapons, a couple of grenade explosions, and an (in)decent amount of swearing—before their Glorious Leader responded.
“Oh, good! Can’t ever get enough of that,” Carolina replied, exertion evident in her voice. Over the radio, Louisiana could hear “Carolina! On your six!”, then a brief pause, and a grunt (presumably as she tuck-and-rolled out of the way).
Several seconds later, there was the sound of a plasma grenade exploding and a female voice shouting, “Yeah, three points!”
“Nice arm, Missi,” Carolina congratulated, before turning her attention back to the radio. “What’d you two find out?”
Louisiana glanced at her friend, who had been reabsorbed by the computer, before speaking, not particularly sure how to say it. “Well, it looks like Mom and Pops aren’t too happy with our little field trip, and are coming to pick us up… And it seems they saw fit to bring a couple of the neighbors along with them.”
“Dammit,” she heard Carolina swear. “Are you sure?”
The silver Freelancer looked over at Oregon uncertainly, and spoke when he didn’t. “I don’t think there’s any way we can be sure. Cinnamon says that we’re using Covie tech, so that means Covie frequencies. The only way we can verify is by contacting them and requesting confirmation… Somehow, I doubt that’s a very good idea. Like I said: trouble. How’s it going on your end?”
“Fire in the hole!” Carolina shouted, and Louisiana heard the tell-tale boom of a frag. “It’s going. Not bad, but not good either.”
The younger woman opened up her mouth to express sympathy and promises of back-up, but was cut off by Oregon. “Uh, I hate to ruin your day more, Carolina. But things just got worse.”
While he spoke, the agent in burnt-orange began moving around the room—collecting a lot of grenades and tossing Louisiana a needler to replace her missing M6G—before striding out purposefully.
Blinking in surprise, the young soldier followed Oregon through the corridor, heading for the exit, listening as he spoke.
“Remember when I said that the Cruiser in atmo is under orders to leave if things get hot?” He directed this question at Louisiana, but it was clearly for the benefit of their Glorious Leader. “Well, clearly the Covies flyin’ it aren’t in agreement with their Powers That Be, ‘cause they just dispatched a half-dozen more drop-ships, and a lot more Banshee escorts. And they’re heading our way.”
The two Freelancers paused as Oregon punched in the code to open the door, and started up the incline. Louisiana walked up backwards with her DMR pointed firmly down the ramp, paranoia centered around huge and invisible enemies taking out her Hispanic teammate gripping the silver agent with heart-stopping immediacy.
“Stay cool, chica, ‘cause things are about to get very hot,” he warned when they reached the room aboveground, through which they had originally entered.
“Acknowledged. Carolina out.”
Oregon turned to look at his young comrade.
“Now this, chiquita,” he said, a smile and the threat of something darker in his voice. “This is where the real fun begins.”
Louisiana stared for a moment after he disappeared through the door that led outside, before her lips curled into a vicious smirk. Readjusting her grip on her gun, she followed him through the door.
Oh, yeah, she thought to herself as the full sound of battle reached her ears. This is definitely what I came here for.
"Yeah,” he called back to her. “Eating your words yet?”
The silver Freelancer grinned under her helmet at her comrade’s naiveté, then popped off a few more shots—taking out two Grunts and a Jackal with pinpoint accuracy. “Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had in months! How you doing with the computer-y shit?”
Louisiana crept to the one open entrance to the room they inhabited, sensing a lull in the enemy’s advance, and peered around the corner. She quickly pulled back as the two remaining Jackals fired their plasma pistols at the convenient target that was her head.
The radio clicked on and she could hear Oregon give a dry, humorless little chuckle. “I’m sifting through terabytes of heavily--hilariously—encrypted information, most of which is jack-shit in the context of what I’m trying to find. How you think I’m doin’, chica?”
“I think you’re doing fabulously,” Louisiana grunted as she tuck-and-rolled halfway across the corridor outside their room, taking cover behind one of the six-foot-tall slabs of rock in the middle of the hall. “Keep up the good work, bro. I gotta say, you really—Ah, hell! Hold on a sec.”
The female agent spotted an opening and took the opportunity, smirking as she slid the Standard Issue field knife from its sheath on her shoulder. She darted around her cover when she heard the steadily decreasing bursts of white-hot plasma cease altogether.
Louisiana managed to clip one Jackal in the head with a well-aimed kick, before sinking her blade up to the hilt into the temple of his companion.
The first one was in a panic by the time she yanked the knife out of his comrade and turned to him—his eyes kept darting from his gun to Louisiana and back, before he gave up and decided to just throw it at her head.
The Freelancer easily plucked it out of the air and watched in a mild state of amused disbelief as the Covenant soldier turned tail and ran, chattering something in its own language. (Considering the little she’d picked up about the Kig-yar and their employment by the Covie higher-ups as mercenaries, Louisiana had the vague sense that he was basically saying, “Fuck it, I don’t get paid enough for this!”)
Unfortunately for the alien merc, Louisiana wasn’t willing to let him get away and consequently take additional information to his superiors aboveground—the ones that had sent him and his squad down there to eradicate she and Oregon in the first place.
With a mental sigh and shrug—usually, she was willing to let infantry troops take off, if they weren’t going to try to kill her anymore; it was the Elites that she had to watch out for—Louisiana kicked the Jackal’s legs out from under him before he made it more than a few steps.
“Sorry,” she apologized as she pinned the Covie soldier to the floor, her boot on his neck. After all, the silver-clad agent did kinda feel a little bad. Not bad enough to stop her from pulled out her pistol again and emptying the rest of the clip into his skull, though.
When the echo of the last round faded away, Louisiana peered around for any sign of additional enemies. Her motion-sensor showed the surroundings as all-clear, but the Freelancer tried not to rely on it too heavily. They could be fooled, and she found that using your own eyes, ears, and intuition was a lot closer to fool-proof than any tech.
Not entirely satisfied, the young soldier dropped the useless M6G, stuffed the now-dead Covie’s plasma pistol into the empty holster on her thigh, and made her way back into the room with Oregon.
Still feeling vaguely uneasy, Louisiana was sure not to put the opening at her back as she approached her burnt-orange companion.
“We clear?” Oregon asked distractedly, his focus mainly on the giant, Forerunner computer set into the column of metal-rock (what the hell was that stuff that the Forerunners always used? Super-rock?) at the center of the room.
“Mmm,” she responded non-committally. The back of her neck was prickling uncomfortably and she had the sudden urge to double-check their surroundings. “Um, I’m gonna go… check the perimeter.”
Something wasn’t right.
Her companion glanced up at the silver soldier, and gave a distracted “Uh-huh”, before looking back at the screen with a “What the—?”
Not particularly reassured by that, Louisiana left the orange-armored Freelancer to it, checking the makeshift barricade they had erected to block the second entrance to the room—directly across from the open one—as she stepped out.
Louisiana’s eyes darted into every corner as she crept through the corridor that wrapped around the room with the giant computer-thing. Or perhaps it was actually a room at the center of a bigger room, and she simply mistook it for a wrap-around hallway.
Whatever.
Forerunner architecture was weird however you looked at it. Everything was so stark and geometric, giving off an air of sterility and a vague aura of disapproving superiority.
The underground section of the Forerunners’ superstructure wasn’t big, but seemed fairly important, if the Covenant’s reaction to their infiltration of it was any reliable indication.
The door that Louisiana and Oregon had entered through was the only entrance into the complex—a large, circular room, about forty-five feet in diameter, with a single continuous hallway about fifteen feet wide surrounding it as a buffer between the computer and the single exit/entrance. One had to walk to either to 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock, once they entered the structure, to even find the openings to the computer-room.
The ceiling was roughly six-and-a-half feet above Louisiana head, and every yard or so there was a gently pulsating light set into the rock. Evenly spaced about every ten feet were the hunks of super-rock that had provided the silver Freelancer cover during her firefight: large rectangles of the things—six-by-five-by-five, Louisiana would guess.
What she couldn’t guess, though, was their purpose.
All they seemed to do was act as an impediment to people trying to move furniture through the space. She shuddered to think of how it might be accomplished if one of the Forerunners had, say, wanted to add a couch to sit at in the computer-room.
The whole place was pretty Spartan, nothing but the harsh glare of the soft lights on the walls and floors. There weren’t even technically doors—the two entrances into the computer-room were just openings, looking as if someone had built the place, then realized they could get in, and cut a section of the super-rock away as a solution.
As she reached the second entrance to the room—blocked by piling those purple, box-like ammo repositories that Covies always brought with them, one on top of the other—Louisiana’s blood went cold.
Instead of the little bleep-bloop noises of her comrade messing around with the Forerunner tech, or Spanish curses being muttered under his breath, she heard Oregon shout, “Shit! Contact; huge fucking contact!”
Alarmed, Louisiana knew that there was no way she could sprint fast enough to make it to the other entrance before the Hispanic Freelancer was either hurt or killed. Instead, she crossed to the opposite wall and used that little ledge that jutted out at eye-level to hoist herself up and hump onto another hunk of super-rock positioned in the middle of the all, just in front of the Covie-purple (as she had dubbed that particular shade of violet) barricade.
Using her momentum, Louisiana jumped again—activating the jet-pack she’d had the foresight to grab on her way off the Mother of Invention in a short burst as she did—and managed to clear the short wall of purple.
The silver agent crashed to the floor, and was able to roll to her feet just in time to see the nearly-invisible force that held Oregon in the air by his throat, drop him to the ground.
Louisiana pulled the plasma pistol from its ill-fitted holster, aimed it at was she guessed was central-mass, and pulled the trigger. She suddenly understood the dead Jackal’s actions from before when all it did was make a single click.
Well, just fuck, she thought, panicking just a little, as she followed that Covenant soldier’s prime example and chucked the useless hunk of metal at the shimmering form’s head.
When the alien gun made contact, it disrupted the field that cloaked the large figure, and the form solidified into a good eight feet of pissed-off Sangheili in dark gold armor.
“Well, just fuck,” Louisiana groaned as she ducked to avoid the three shots of plasma that the Elite sent her way. Unfortunately, she didn’t see that kick it aimed at her until it was too late.
Fuckin’ thing kicks like a goddamned giraffe, the Freelancer thought as she flew back and crashed into the purple barricade with enough force to knock the boxes down on top of her.
Louisiana desperately struggled to right herself, kicking the boxes away from her body, when she saw the huge Covie turn back towards Oregon.
“Oh, no fucking way,” Louisiana grunted as she reached her feet and threw herself on the Elite when he turned his back on her.
Placing one foot on the abnormally high ankles of his digitigrade legs, the silver Freelancer hoisted herself up with the assistance of one hand on the Elite’s shoulder.
Praying (to whomever it was that deigned to listen to murderers, thieves, and alexithymic soldiers), the Freelancer reached her left hand around the Covie’s face to grip the right side of his helmet while her right hand followed it to rest on the left side, and twisted as hard as she physically could. The Elite’s neck snapped and Louisiana jumped off just before his body fell to the ground.
She stared at the dead body and felt a vague sense of déjà vu—but this time, however, the Hispanic Freelancer wasn’t cleverly concealed in the branches of a tree with a sniper trained on any potential threats. This time, he was the one that had nearly died.
Panting from the combination of fear, adrenaline, and exertion, the silver-clad agent held a hand out to her comrade. Oregon grasped her forearm and gave her a grateful nod when she heaved him to his feet.
“What the hell happened?” Louisiana pressed once he’d gotten his balance, caught between relief that he wasn’t dead and irritation that she’d almost let him get that way.
Her burnt-orange companion rubbed his throat almost compulsively as he slowly moved back to the computer and peered at one of the screens.
“I—” He gave a cough, then tried again. “I found something in the Covie data-net, something important that was generating a lot of chatter. I was about to call you when I… heard something, I guess, behind me. I turned around and saw the Active Camo shimmer. I just had time to try and warn you before the bastard picked me up; then promptly tossed me aside like a ragdoll when you came crashing in.”
The male Freelancer looked up from his fiddling with the Forerunner tech, and jerked his head at the now-demolished wall of purple they had hastily created when the two had first entered the structure. “How’d you even get over that thing? It’s taller than you are by at least a foot.”
His young companion gave a superior little smirk, as if to say, Oh, you poor, sweet, foolish boy. “Jet-pack,” she replied easily enough, though. Then added after a moment of silence, “And luck.”
Oregon chuckled at the admission, before the computer made a lot of frantic beeping noises and his attention snapped back to it. “Hijo de puta…”he muttered under his breath.
Louisiana frowned and walked up behind the agent who was now swearing quite colorfully in Spanish. She put a hand on his shoulder as she leaned forward to look at the screen, attempting to make sense of the symbols that ran across it.
“What’s up, buttercup?”
Oregon glanced at the young woman before speaking. “I hacked into the Covenant data-net using the interfaces they brought here themselves, but there’s a ton of interference, so I’m using the Forerunner transmitter in the giant building aboveground to boost the signal.”
“O-kay,” Louisiana said slowly, with him so far. “And that’s… bad?”
“What? Oh. No, most Covie technology has been reverse-engineered from Forerunner artifacts they found on other worlds, so it’s doubtful they’ll even notice,” Oregon replied distractedly, then fell silent.
Louisiana frowned again, and snapped her fingers in front of his helmet. “Yo, Earth to Nutmeg. Er… Arcadia to Nutmeg.”
“Hm? Oh, sorry,” he apologized. “So, anyway, the use of Covenant frequencies means that I have automatic access to low-level, basic-encryption transmissions, and since I’m using that booster, there’s an additional Forerunner signature that gives me access to a lot more high-level and sensitive material because it indicates to them that I’m, like, a general or something with legit Forerunner tech.”
The silver-armored Freelancer held in a sigh. She wanted to snap at him to get on with it, that she didn’t need the entire history of his exploits in the last half-hour, but then again, she really didn’t.
Oregon was Dan O’Hara’s brother, and a good guy besides. He wasn’t trying to annoy her, and he wasn’t strutting about like a peacock preening his feathers—he was just being thorough, and was actually polite enough to tell her his process of discovering… whatever he was getting at.
With that in mind, Louisiana made an effort to pay attention to what he was saying.
“When I was perusing the chatter, though,” the orange Freelancer continued, “I stumbled across something. Like, super-ultra-top-secret kind of shit: the Covies are looking for something here on Arcadia.”
Louisiana blinked twice.
“Seriously?”
Her companion nodded and pulled up some kind of schematic on the screen, certainty and decisiveness in every movement. The female agent squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the characters. “Is that it? What they’re looking for?”
When Oregon nodded, Louisiana’s mind went into overdrive. “Huh,” she murmured thoughtfully. “I’m sure ONI will be very interested to hear about that…”
“Yeah, we’ll have to report it when we get back,” Oregon said innocently, and she smirked evilly at the thought of simply ‘forgetting’ to tell those fuckers. Seriously, though, there wasn’t a member of the military alive that didn’t grind their teeth at the mention of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Suffice it to say that their spooks were… not nice, to anyone, ever. That kind of superior attitude tends to generate a little ill-will…
Then the Hispanic man turned serious. “That’s not all, though; I found the reason why that Elite upstairs was so anxious. Technically, this little trip of theirs is about as sanctioned as ours—they’ve only got one support Cruiser, and it’s under orders to leave any soldiers groundside and get the hell out of dodge if things go sideways. Now, that big guy upstairs was demanding constant reports from the Grunt techies that were down here because their long-range sensors detected three human ships on-course for Arcadia.”
Oregon stopped everything and turned to face Louisiana fully, looking her straight in the eye, and his voice turned meaningful. “They’re coming from two different directions.”
Agent Louisiana of Project Freelancer swore, loudly and colorfully.
“Hijo de puta! You don’t think—?”
The Hispanic Freelancer nodded. “The lone frigate’s coming this way from the right direction.”
“Shi-i-it,” the young woman groaned, and turned away from the screen. She activated her radio as she walked over to the entrance, hands on hips and staring at the wall without seeing it. “Yo, Care, we got trouble.”
After the initial crackle of static, Louisiana could hear the sound of battle—gunfire from both types of weapons, a couple of grenade explosions, and an (in)decent amount of swearing—before their Glorious Leader responded.
“Oh, good! Can’t ever get enough of that,” Carolina replied, exertion evident in her voice. Over the radio, Louisiana could hear “Carolina! On your six!”, then a brief pause, and a grunt (presumably as she tuck-and-rolled out of the way).
Several seconds later, there was the sound of a plasma grenade exploding and a female voice shouting, “Yeah, three points!”
“Nice arm, Missi,” Carolina congratulated, before turning her attention back to the radio. “What’d you two find out?”
Louisiana glanced at her friend, who had been reabsorbed by the computer, before speaking, not particularly sure how to say it. “Well, it looks like Mom and Pops aren’t too happy with our little field trip, and are coming to pick us up… And it seems they saw fit to bring a couple of the neighbors along with them.”
“Dammit,” she heard Carolina swear. “Are you sure?”
The silver Freelancer looked over at Oregon uncertainly, and spoke when he didn’t. “I don’t think there’s any way we can be sure. Cinnamon says that we’re using Covie tech, so that means Covie frequencies. The only way we can verify is by contacting them and requesting confirmation… Somehow, I doubt that’s a very good idea. Like I said: trouble. How’s it going on your end?”
“Fire in the hole!” Carolina shouted, and Louisiana heard the tell-tale boom of a frag. “It’s going. Not bad, but not good either.”
The younger woman opened up her mouth to express sympathy and promises of back-up, but was cut off by Oregon. “Uh, I hate to ruin your day more, Carolina. But things just got worse.”
While he spoke, the agent in burnt-orange began moving around the room—collecting a lot of grenades and tossing Louisiana a needler to replace her missing M6G—before striding out purposefully.
Blinking in surprise, the young soldier followed Oregon through the corridor, heading for the exit, listening as he spoke.
“Remember when I said that the Cruiser in atmo is under orders to leave if things get hot?” He directed this question at Louisiana, but it was clearly for the benefit of their Glorious Leader. “Well, clearly the Covies flyin’ it aren’t in agreement with their Powers That Be, ‘cause they just dispatched a half-dozen more drop-ships, and a lot more Banshee escorts. And they’re heading our way.”
The two Freelancers paused as Oregon punched in the code to open the door, and started up the incline. Louisiana walked up backwards with her DMR pointed firmly down the ramp, paranoia centered around huge and invisible enemies taking out her Hispanic teammate gripping the silver agent with heart-stopping immediacy.
“Stay cool, chica, ‘cause things are about to get very hot,” he warned when they reached the room aboveground, through which they had originally entered.
“Acknowledged. Carolina out.”
Oregon turned to look at his young comrade.
“Now this, chiquita,” he said, a smile and the threat of something darker in his voice. “This is where the real fun begins.”
Louisiana stared for a moment after he disappeared through the door that led outside, before her lips curled into a vicious smirk. Readjusting her grip on her gun, she followed him through the door.
Oh, yeah, she thought to herself as the full sound of battle reached her ears. This is definitely what I came here for.