Sergeant Ruben Berne, Haven, Winter 2525
JK :)
There had been four way-stations between Ruben's squad and their prowler, shimmering now , no doubt, miles up in the vacuous expanse above, invisible to all but the most dedicated appraisers of Nimbus' notably honeyed sun-rays, who's tendrils the imperfect cloak oft-times flared and spun, like thread onto a hungry and life-starved canvas. Four workstations, and it was only here and now, huddled in the husk of a rumbled building, that Ruben had attuned himself to the electricity of
rebellion.
When they had first touched down, assembled in a shivering bunker gilded with frost, the planet had seemed to be all it aspired to when it had christened its capital
haven. Then, the sky had been awash in the pulsing amber of Nimbus' twin red-dwarf, which, with the recess of its parent, hung as on orb in the firmament, filaments of violent plasma streaking from its sides and grasping, vine-like, to the vacant sky before breaking into tubes of wispy purple aurora. On Earth, these displays confined themselves to the frosted wastes of the poles, where few people, loving of comfort, who clung tighter and in ever-greater numbers to the country swallowing great-cities, ever contrived to tread. On Nimbus, such views were a birth-right. Nimbus was new, fresh, the lights of Haven, perhaps only a million citizens strong, had glistened subserviently, and, perhaps, Ruben thought, appropriately, then on the shrinking horizon, no match for the heavenly opera that, even in the depths of winter, could be embraced by a man armed with little more than a shawl or coat to ward of the cold. These frontiersmen, sojourning out from the orbit of the inner-worlds and their torch of right-culture were deprived and naive of so many beuatious conceptions, Ruben thought, but with their natural theatre, and the simplistic radiance of the second-sun, it seemed they retained some small measure of the human spirit that, on Earth, seemed to have irreversibly dimmed. Ruben knew first hand, serving years ago at the foot of ONI as a biological science-officer, that to the UEG, there was no sentiment to nature - only consumption, and rage at its denial.
But that had been days ago, and as, with each discreet and slinking pelican drop, the docile glow of Haven grew emboldened to dominate the horizon, to drown out the cosmos wavering above, the peaceful allure of Nimbus drained, as if a torrent, from Ruben's war-wearied eyes. In the streets below burned pyres, stoked and spilled fort from the hearts of the Nimibians themselves and arrayed into patches of choking inferno, sustained by mis-matched oils and petrols, stolen from beneath the glow of house-lights that had once lit wholesome family meals, or providing dimming backdrop to countless, tenderly amorous encounters.
Now, all the lights in the city were ablaze and inferno, the power-stations long since abandoned to strike and to frothing indignation, or themselves consumed by rioting or protest. Beneath his feet, perhaps ten-thousand citizens crammed and milled about the streets. How many, Ruben thought, had simply fled their power-less and frigid homes, and joined the blaze not for ill-contentment, or for contrivances of politics, but for warmth and sustenance? How many cared not for the origin of their refugee-meal, the dispersion of which, itself, had now a cause for riotous conflict, the contenders competing now to paint themselves as forthcoming and benevolent with the piping weapons of stock and of soup.
Ruben rose from his seat, crooked in the sill of a wind-blasted window, from whence he had kept a keen and sympathetic eye on the crowd for these past forty-eight hours. At the crook of his nose pulsed an orange-tinged string of ticking numbers, their filament-heat steaming the clumped recesses of snow from the front of his still-polished visor.
"2h 37m have elapsed, it is 19:00 hours!" The computer intimated over Ruben's private comms. It was an arbitrary sleep-time he had set, but he had known when it had been entered that he would not rest it through. The vibrancy of the self-righteous crowd pulsed within him, a viral and unwelcome proxy, filling him with a verve and excitement Ruben yearned to throw off his shoulders like a shawl, and to retreat, in the way his squad-mates had, slumped as detritus on the once-marbled floor of their vantage point. Ruben knew he had been in a place like this before, he had read his personal logs yearly, like a favourite novel, entranced by the years of movement, his movements, that held no place in his memory, but he could not allow himself to believe that his twitching and irrepressible alertness was a sentiment birthed to him from those times, lost in the recesses of Far-Isle's ashes.
"They were traitors..."Ruben mumbled through the mufflers of his suit, and assured himself again. Pressing one hand to the dusted ground, Ruben lifted the one personal effect he had ever allowed himself, a hold over of his colonial-past - a simple plastic rosary. Ruben had no conception of how it had come his way, tucked, as it had been, into his swaddling clothes whilst he languished in Far-Isle's crumbling refugee-camps, nearly thirty years ago. At one time in its life, the rosary had been shimmering, perhaps real-ivory, ironically hewed from the husk of the nature those who followed its religion were sworn to protect. Now, one side was cast in shadow and in soot, bleached and blackened again by the raining thermo-fire that had levelled Ruben's one-time home and delivered him, trussed and hooded, to the doorstep of the UEG, and a life spent here, amidst the flames of more and more embattled colonies, who numbers rose with each rising and setting of whatever sun he happened to be sitting under.
Leaving memory at the window-sill, Ruben strode, thudding and deliberate, towards the centre of the room and to his make-shift depot.The squad had tinkered long into the night, tinkering malicious and not-un-remarkably cruel military tools into "
weapons of peace" as if, in this dense and choking crowd, a cloud of smoke would be any less deadly when launched from a grenade-silo than a round of napalm-infused explosive. Still, Ruben's conciseness had insisted they be converted - brass was far too gleeful to deploy lethal force against these rioters, that one might think the UEG really did view their outer-colonists, not as dutiful children, but as cash-bags and expendable yokels. As he strode, the floor buckled and creaked in turns, robbing Ruben of any poignancy or grace as he wobbled to steady himself. The building itself was old and crippled, built in the now ancient, and inexpensive, Earth style of concrete and girders, but to Nimbus and its shearing winds and clumps of periodic dust-storms, holdovers from the still un-cemented terraforming process, it may as well have been a ill-planted leaf. According to the brief, it had been abandoned and unlivable for nearly ten years, and had been in miserable and unpleasant condition long before that, becoming a haven with Haven for sweat-addled narcotics abusers, and violent, secretive black-market trade.
Nimbus' first ruin...Ruben mused, wondering how many more would fill its wake if he and his team were to fail.
"Bravo Team, what your status?" Ruben motioned a hand to press him comm-button for reply, then lowered it, pausing to recall the particulars of the mission briefing he had dozed through some two days past. There was something about military planning that seemed so aloof, so pontificated - so detached from reality, that made Ruben recoil at the hearing of it. Throughout his decades of training, he had always found solace in academics, carving himself an indispensable place in the UNSC through his mind, and not his ability to be directed and poised, doll-like, to whatever target his superiors inferred, before slinking off to their officers' mess and the rump-steak with all the trimmings that awaited them. That was what was so liberating about the ODST corps - the designs off his superiors never came to fruition, and with his squad, Ruben was, for perhaps the first time in his life, his own master, and that was more liberating than a thousand righteous colonial uprisings.
"Copy that, Alpha-leader. We have completed our...circadian cycles, and are ready for where the crowd might take us! We will contact you once we've facilitated the hand-shake. Bravo-Leader out."Ruben clicked the button again, and cringed. The reply was laced with far too much sarcasm, and the alpha-leader was a noted stickler for the rules, born, as he was, on Reach, in the shadow of the Azod shipyards. A man such as this could not have escaped being imprinted indelibly with compliance and submission.
"I'm good to go, just waiting for the orders. We'll show these fucking rebels a thing or two."Rambunctious group, huh? I like our odds though..."" The rookie's voice crackled over the comms, dripping with irreverent enthusiasm. She was remarkable, in a way, Ruben considered, striding over to her wake, the whirring of her cybernetics pulsing globules of dust in rhythm from the ground, women who had endured such tragedy were regrettably commonplace in the UNSC, but few of them bore it with such poise. To Ruben, her attitude was paradoxically irksome and inspiring, admirably resilient, but tinged with just a hint of sociopath - for is someone was not moved to emotion or to brooding by such a loss, would they be moved by anything, beautious or sorrowful, that life could appoint to them?
"You will show them nothing..."Ruben grumbled, prising off his helmet and raising his brows in an imperative scowl. She was not a diminutive girl, but wagging her pistol flippantly from the window-frame, she looked every inch of her near six-foot frame as though a child would, at play with her father's effects.
"You are far too flippant with your contempt. If you are going to hold that implement, then I suggest you display to me a little more discretion in who is deserving of your use of it." Ruben placed his hand on the pistol with a grimace, skillfully triggering the safety before fixing Luciel with a wordless, smouldering glare.
"Just because they can't see us doesn't mean you should be aiming a pistol down at them."Muttered Fours, his eyes blinking rapidly, still recoiling from the shock of the comm-chanter he was too exhausted to fully process and react to. The man was flippant and contemptuous himself, perhaps even sadistic, but Ruben felt a twinge of respect for him, all the same. Beneath his scarred and greying eyes flickered, it seemed, the brain of a good-soul that, perhaps, needed some light encouragement to come forth. Waddling towards the window frame, Ruben tapped the back of the medic's helmet, in part to stir him from his fractious sleep, in part as a clumsy thanks for his scolding of the rookie.
This will work Ruben thought,
The more I starve the Rookie and her outbursts of affection, the greater the drive to live up to our example. "What's the plan, boss?"Fours implored in response. The question was confirming somehow, if another of the squad had been so dejected in the briefing, then, perhaps, Ruben's little kingdom of six would be more conducive to any off-the-book detours. Gesturing to the rest of the squad, Ruben strolled over once more to the weapons cache, lifting a smoke-converted grenade launcher onto his lap before sitting down clumsily between two half-settled crates.
"The Plan, Fours, went out the window with that crowd. It was consumed in their pyres!" Ruben wagged a hand flamboyantly. In ten years of giving military speeches, he found, for the soldiery, each one of which was endowed with a sense of divine-purpose and of self-importance; everyone appreciated a little theatre.
"Everyone, the ambassadors for the UEG have been holed up in the Capital Building for days, and they haven't done much in the way of their job description!" That was an understatement. The Ambassadors seemed little more than the enablers of a coup-de-etat, riding to the colony on the pretence of concession, before depriving their fellows of legitimacy, and declaring them criminals. It was they who had summoned these riots that entrapped them, and Ruben felt little pity for their predicament, stacked, as they were, with armed guards possessed of dubious morals.
"So, then, if the ambassadors cannot make their entreaties, and leave the capital without being torn asunder by disgruntled protesters..." Ruben paused, summoning all the gravitas he could from the room, crimson tinged now as the sun slipped below the horizon, and the first tendrils of the binary-star grasped the sky.
"Then we shall simply have to escort those with whom they ought to be debating to them! The protesters will not hurt one of their own, if we want this to go over smoothly, we need to find and escort Nimbian government representatives to Capital." Ruben swallowed. Many of his squad were bought-and-sold UNSC fanatics, more like to shoot at Rebels than to facilitate conversation. it would take all his clout and charisma to keep them on task.
"So, I would like to open up the floor. We know there's a very severe risk to the Capital building at this very moment, one which requires urgent addressing before we go on the hunt. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we may proceed? I am all ears." 
