Chapter 3

The Rookie – Occupied city center, six hours after drop.

The distinctive sound of a Phantom soaring by overhead greeted the Rookie as he opened his eyes groggily, his head pounding as he looked around the interior of his battered pod. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and what had happened, the memories coming flooding back to him. The slip-space rupture, the crash ... where was the rest of his squad? The monitors and readouts were all either too damaged to make out, or hissing with static, and his comms were completely shot.

Through the cracked glass of his canopy, he could see the street a good distance below him. He was high off the ground, had his drop pod somehow embedded itself into the side of a building? He was almost afraid to move lest he dislodge it. He needed to get clear of the crashed pod as soon as possible, both because it would draw the Covenant to him, and because he wasn’t sure that he would survive a second fall. There was a worrying creak as he tried the manual release on the door, finding that it was jammed shut.

He reached out and armed the explosive bolts that were spaced about the inside of his pod, initiating an emergency hatch release. There was a hiss of escaping air, and then the door blew away with a bang, the force of the ejection sending it careening away to land on the hood of a derelict police car on the road below. The Rookie fumbled for his SMG, finding it mercifully intact, and then peered down at the sheer drop beneath him.

As he had suspected, it seemed that the drop pod had ended up lodged into the side of one of New Mombasa’s buildings, suspending him high in the air. It was a miracle that he wasn’t painted all over the inside of his SOEIV, the chances are surviving a botched drop were slim to none.

The Rookie clutched his weapon in his hand, bracing himself for the jump. It was going to be rough, but there was no other way down...

He dropped from the wreck of his pod, the asphalt rushing up to meet him. He tried to roll when he impacted the ground, but it didn’t do much good, a damage warning flashing on his helmet’s HUD as he felt something give. The landing was hard, and he struggled to his feet, one of his legs almost buckling. Something felt ... wrong, broken, or maybe sprained.

For the first time, he took a good look at his environment, turning his helmeted head as he took in his surroundings. He had landed on a city street, it was impossible to estimate precisely where, and it was completely deserted. It was unnerving in a way, to see a metropolitan area that should be bustling with traffic and pedestrians as quiet as a grave, as if its inhabitants had just up and vanished.

Night had fallen, hours must have passed since the initial drop. The sky above him was overcast with dark, ominous clouds, the crack of distant thunder echoing. The empty streets were lit only by the eerie glow of the street lamps, the neon glare of electronic billboards, and the LED lights that helped drivers to make out road markings in the dark. He reached up and tapped at the side of his helmet, turning on VISR mode. The world around him took on a slightly brighter quality, his onboard computer outlining nearby objects in yellow, helping him navigate in the gloom. If he came across any friendlies, they would be outlined in green, while any enemies that the algorithm recognized would appear in red.

He could see plenty of cars, although their drivers were nowhere to be found. The vehicles had been abandoned, their doors left ajar, some of their engines still idling as if the occupants had fled them in a panic. There were police vehicles too, their flashing lights illuminating the area around them. Some of the cars were billowing plumes of dark smoke, and it looked as though the emergency barricades that rose from the street had been erected in some places, perhaps in a futile attempt to control panicked drivers or to impede the progress of the Covenant.

He stumbled along, keeping a careful eye out for signs of the enemy. As he made his way past the burnt-out wreckage of a bus, he wondered what had happened to its occupants. It was difficult to ascertain whether there had been fighting here or not. There were wrecked and abandoned vehicles everywhere, litter and debris all over the street, but he couldn’t see any bodies or any telltale signs of a gunfight. The damage might well have been caused by the slip-space rupture. Even miles from the epicenter of the explosion, the blast wave would have ripped through the city streets like a tornado.

The Rookie winced as he put weight on his injured leg, the pain making him dizzy. He shuffled over to a nearby public bench, leaning on it as he caught his breath. Right now, he had more to worry about than the Covenant. First, he needed to find a health kit, or maybe a can of biofoam so that he could patch himself up. After that, he needed to figure out where the hell in New Mombasa he was, and where he needed to be. He wouldn’t get anything done if he was wandering aimlessly with a busted leg, he needed to meet up with his squad.

There had to be a first-aid station around here somewhere, they were all over the place in most cities, self-serve kiosks that dispensed medkits. He limped along for a few minutes longer, taking in the devastation around him. Even if he couldn’t determine whether there had been fighting in this area of the city, the smoke that rose into the cloudy sky, and the glow of fires on the horizon told him that not all areas of New Mombasa had been so lucky. There were pieces of jagged metal resting atop some of the buildings and blocking areas of the street. Could they be fragments from the orbital elevator?

“Need immediate medical assistance? Choose Optican!”

The Rookie almost jumped out of his skin as the robotic voice blared, and he turned his head to see one of the kiosks that he had been searching for. He hobbled over to it, the company’s logo flashing on the built-in monitors. There were two health kits in sockets on the front of the machine, and he snatched one, sitting down beside the kiosk as he opened the container and disgorged its contents onto the ground. He had expected to see a green canister of biofoam that resembled a grenade, a stitch kit, adhesive dressings, and a few doses of painkillers. Instead, there was only a transparent packet of what looked like green gel. He turned it over in his hands, reading off the label and the included instructions. It was ‘MediGel’, some kind of proprietary alternative to biofoam that was produced by the company that operated the kiosks. The instructions said that it had to be applied locally.

The Rookie removed his boot gingerly and detached his shinguard, rolling up the leg of his BDU to inspect the damage. His ankle was already red and swollen, even the gentle breeze that was blowing the dust and litter felt like a thousand tiny knives against the tender flesh. He tore open the packet and began to rub the gluey gel on the swelling, wincing as a jolt of pain shot through him.

The MediGel was already doing its work, however. It must include a local anesthetic because the skin was quickly going numb, and it was pleasantly cool. He applied more of it, leaning back against the wall and breathing a sigh of relief. There was no way for him to know if his ankle was broken, but he could still move his toes, and the gel was taking the edge off the pain.

After waiting a few minutes for the painkiller to do its job, he put his gear back on and rose to his feet, noting that he could walk well enough. It didn’t hurt too much anymore, the sharp pain had been replaced with a dull ache, and the swelling had already gone down considerably. He stashed the rest of the gel packet in his pocket and made his way out into the street. Time for step two...

There must be a terminal around here somewhere that would let him connect to the Superintendent, the dumb-AI that managed the city’s infrastructure, and download a map of the area. With that, he could start figuring out where he was and how to find his way back to friendly lines.

A flash of lightning illuminated the roiling clouds above him, followed by the far-off echo of thunder. As he looked up at the sky, droplets of rain began to fall, rolling down his visor. Great, just what he needed.

The Rookie set off along the street, dodging past traffic cones and bollards, his boots splashing in the growing puddles. The rain gave everything a shiny, slick quality, the bright neon of the city’s lights reflecting off the wet asphalt. He hugged the overhang of a nearby building, staying undercover, seeing the world through shades of yellow as his VISR picked out the details of derelict vehicles and palm trees that had lost most of their fronds in the blast. He leaned into the windows of nearby cars and chanced a look through the open doors of the buildings that he passed, searching for bodies or survivors, and finding neither. It was looking more and more like there had been a moderately successful evacuation, which was his hope.

A sudden splash of red gave him pause as he rounded a corner, and he took cover behind one of the ever-present planters, peering through the foliage of a shrub as the droplets of rain made its leaves bounce. His VISR was picking something up, and as he focused on the red outline, he recognized it.

Perhaps a hundred feet down the road was a Covenant patrol, the aliens emerging from behind an abandoned semi-trailer. There were three squat Grunts waddling along at the front of the group, he could make out the triangular shape of the methane tanks that they carried on their backs, and they were tailed by a hulking Brute.

The creature was nine feet tall, resembling a cross between a rhinoceros and a gorilla, the blue power armor that it wore glinting beneath the streetlamps. Between the ornate armored plates, and the rubbery underclothes that it was wearing beneath them, he could make out its skin. Its hide was tough and leathery like that of an elephant, grey in color, the creature shaved almost clean save for a scruffy beard that reminded him of a goatee that protruded beneath its helmet. Its tusk-like teeth jutted from between its thick lips, its face contorted into a perpetual snarl. It was broad-shouldered, with long, powerful arms that held a wicked looking weapon that was adorned with bayonet-like blades. The Rookie recognized it as a Spiker, a carbine that fired super-heated, metal nails.