Cath

The Cradle

Freyr gently patted Bishop’s shoulder. He was just sitting back in his seat, eyes staring straight ahead. “Well done, Mr Bishop. Thank you.” She murmured. “You’re uh...you’re welcome.” He replied weakly. Leaving the pistol on the dashboard, Freyr opened her door and jumped out; her legs were so wobbly she nearly fell. She put her hands up and walked slowly forward.

Several soldiers and a medic rushed to greet her. One shone a scanner beam in her eyes and another handed her an oxygen mask which she gladly took a few breaths from. “You’re clear. Name?” One asked. “Dr Freyr Lang. We have wounded in the back.” Freyr said, teeth gritting when the pain from her seared arm returned. “Can i have a burn pack please?” The medic pulled one from her bag and chucked it to Freyr before rushing around to the back of the truck.

Freyr pulled the remains of her jumpsuit sleeve back to reveal charred, red pink flesh. She activated the burn pack and wrapped it quickly around her entire forearm, crying out from the pain. It quickly subsided though, as topical anesthetics in the wrap numbed everything down underneath. She staggered over to the truck in front. Vreta had just jumped to the ground and was waiting to receive the wounded. “Vreta, right? Can we talk?” Freyr asked, stopping alongside the tall alien. “You can both talk to me.” A deep, gruff voice called from behind them.

Freyr turned, and found a severe-looking grey haired man in a smart black uniform standing before them. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he cooly regarded them with augmented eyes that glowed with three light blue points. “Our medics will see to the wounded, thank you Vreta’Sori.” He smiled, as three of them jogged round the sides of the truck and began pulling the wounded down around them. “Please, come.” He urged, gesturing for them to follow him toward the transit station.

Freyr glanced at Vreta. She’d wanted to talk to him about what had happened in that warehouse. The creature with David’s face had been talking to the alien, and Freyr was sure it meant something. But something about this man in the black uniform made her think they didn’t have a choice. Hesitantly, she fell in behind the man as he walked toward the rows of nervous CraSec troops, still scanning the Border as it loomed over them. “Was that Major Osman I saw, slumped over in that truck?” The man immediately asked, turning and looking at Vreta while still walking.

The Cradle

The tendrils rapidly loosened from around Bishop’s arm and neck, and slithered back out of the driver’s side door as the nightmare beetle thudly wetly into the ground. He quickly closed the door, took the wheel back from Freyr and handed her the pistol. “Whoo! Good shooting boys!” He shouted raspily into his comms set. With her hands free, Freyr looked back out of her window. She could just about see the last two beetles racing toward them out of the foggy blackness. “Go go go!” She urged. The Border come to a stop, and was just a few hundred metres away. Just behind the Border veil, Freyr could see the floodlit transit station.

“Come on!” Bishop yelled, arms taut around the wheel as he juiced every ounce of power from the accelerator. Their truck whined and grated, sparks began flickering behind some of the control panels. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that both of the bugs were right behind them. Their outstretched tentacles were reaching for the back of the truck, as energy bolts raked across both of their glassy carapaces. Freyr and Bishop both yelped as they hit a bump, sending the whole vehicle up into the air and careering through the Border at a tilted angle.

As soon as they crashed back through the Border and into colonised space, Freyr could see rows of CraSec vehicles parked around the transit station. Dozens of soldiers hiding behind the vehicles instantly opened fire upon seeing the beetles that’d followed them through. Issuing sharp clicks and squeals, the beetles skidded about and quickly disappeared back through the border.

Bishop slammed on the brakes, and they slid to a stop right behind the truck with Vreta on the turret. Freyr exhaled deeply, her whole body shaking uncontrollably. “Identify yourselves.” A voice demanded over loudspeaker, as a handful of soldiers drifted out from behind cover to surround the trucks. Most had their weapons trained on the clearly visible alien.

The Cradle

“I can see the transit station!” Bishop pointed, other hand guiding the steering wheel. Freyr turned to look and could see he was probably right. Though the Border was mostly opaque from the outside, they could still see out. Around a bend in the road, a mile or two away, was a mess of flood lights, marking their exit clearly on the landscape. “All Dagger teams - auxiliary power is in place, we’re ready to receive you.” A voice sounded on the comms set.

“They should be out here getting u-” Bishop began complaining.

“Incoming!” The soldier on the turret shouted.

The driver’s side door clicked open and two thick tendrils entered the cab. One wrapped around Bishop’s neck and the other around one arm. They would’ve pulled him cleanly out of the truck, were it not for his seatbelt. Bishop’s other arm frantically went up to his neck, so Freyr leant over and grabbed the unoccupied steering wheel before they crashed. “Bishop, listen to me. Keep your foot on the accelerator! Take this!” Freyr called over the din, her voice hoarse and croaky. She passed Bishop the pistol, which he used to start shooting the tendrils, his lips pursed and eyes wide. “Fucking die!” She heard someone behind them yelling, as the energy cannon overheated.

Keeping her eyes on the road, Freyr gasped and yanked the steering wheel as another of the beetles rocketed in from their left side, taking fire from the first car, and barreled straight into the second truck. It lurched sideways off the road, a huge dent in the side. “Karos!” Freyr shouted as the vehicle caught something on one of the tires and began flipping over and over through the air. Scraps of metal from the crash flew into the windscreen as Freyr somehow managed to maneuver their speeding truck around the pirouetting wreck. They bounced over something substantial along the way, which Freyr presumed must have been the beetle.

Still leaning over, Freyr used her free hand to activate the truck’s comm unit. “Car in front, help us get this thing off! Please!” She pleaded.

The Cradle

Freyr could hear the hell hounds scrabbling at the armour plate doors above the din of the energy cannon. But she barely saw them in her rear view mirror; her eyes were glued to the rippling Border wall. The lights were out on the road they’d powered onto, but the convoy’s floodlights traced the purple arteries running up that black curtain of night. Gradually, she could see canines appearing in the rearview mirror too, as they failed to keep up with the speeding trucks. The Border caught up with them, sucking them in.

“It’s reclaiming this whole site.” Freyr murmured, fascinated despite everything that was happening. She’d never seen the Cradle react in such a way, no one had. “Cradle Control, come in. We could really use reinforcements at our nearest transit station, over!” Bishop called into his comms unit. “Dagger 7, we’re receiving-”

“Bishop, look out!” Freyr shouted over the reply.

The Border surged forward suddenly, rushing up and swallowing the fourth vehicle in their convoy. For a moment it looked like they may be able to outrun it, but the Border kept gathering speed and enveloped them. Once inside, the sound muffled considerably, and the atmosphere filled with thousands of white flakes. Freyr’s lungs felt the pressure right away, as the Cradle began reducing the oxygen programmed into this previously colonised area.

After a couple of seconds, the truck began alternating between regular engine noise and a shrill whining sound, as though systems were failing. The halo of bright lights around the sides of the truck flickered and died, leaving just the headlights and gun lights. “No no no no no!” Bishop yelled, hitting buttons on the dashboard. “Are we slowing down? What’s happening?” A soldier called in through the hatch separating the cabin from the turret and troop bay. “Yeah! Something is messing with us. I think I can at least get the lights back on!” Bishop replied.

Still peering through the rearview mirror, Freyr let out a surprised yelp when the lights came back on. A large, pale, long-legged beetle with the now synonymous purple tendril extensions was perched on top of the truck behind them, ripping the helpless soldiers aboard it apart with its pincers. Freyr could see several of the tendrils flailing around inside the cabin, grabbing at the driver. The truck veered off the road, into the uncharted ground alongside.

“They’re under attack, shoot that thing!” Freyr shouted, her face stuck up against the side window. “Fuck that, we have more incoming!” The soldier on the turret yelled, firing at four more of the beetles as they raced out of the swirling storm of flakes at blistering speed, two either side of the convoy. “How are they going that fast?!” Bishop exclaimed. “Tiger beetles are built for speed!” The biologist in Freyr forced her to answer.

The Cradle

The insectoid nightmare issued the same nails-on-a-chalkboard scream under the hail of concentrated energy, and charged the front truck that Vreta occupied. Lieutenant Rowe, now one of the final surviving soldiers to have not got into a vehicle, saw the creature’s approach and began running toward it. “Get out of here NOW!” He yelled, grabbing a limpet charge from the back of Vreta’s truck just as it began turning to leave the compound. On the run, he shot two canines in his way before dropping the empty pistol and attaching the charge to his chest. With hellhounds diverting their attention from the bright lights of the truck to chase him, Rowe met the charging insect creature about twenty metres in front of the trucks and detonated the limpet. He vanished as a deafening directional explosion sprayed blood over the bonnet of the first truck. The creature was bounced directly through a glass window on the adjacent office building’s first floor.

The force of the explosion knocked Freyr, and the canine trying to bite her face off, to the ground. She could feel the truck she’d previously been pinned against rolling off behind her. She managed to wrestle her way on top of the struggling hound and put a bullet in its snapping snout. Staggering to her feet, she turned around and saw the convoy quickly turning in the car park space, to face the compound exit. Soldiers were standing up in the open back of all the trucks, firing behind her. Their faces were yelling at her to get aboard, but her ears were still ringing from the explosion. She had no idea how to get aboard now they were all in motion, but fortunately, the passenger door of the third truck swung open and she could see Bishop leaning across the seats with his hand outstretched, his dark face slick with sweat inside his helmet. She ran to the side of the truck and grabbed his hand. He immediately hauled her into the cabin, where she managed to tuck herself in and slam the door shut.

With the first truck having completed the U-turn, the four-vehicle convoy sped up considerably, motoring toward the compound exit with canines flooding around the skirts. Freyr realised she was hyper ventilating when she got sat down, and tried to calm herself. The sound of the energy cannon above them was ear-splittingly loud, but she could just about hear Bishop’s bellowing voice as he peered through the rear view mirror. “The Border is coming! Move it!” He shouted, leaning on the truck horn.

The Cradle

The soldier Freyr had latched onto was big and burly, and used his mass to crash through waves of the snapping creatures. One of the canines cut through the thigh of his suit and drew a fountain of blood, until Freyr kicked it off and followed up by stamping on its head. An energy pulse fizzed past, searing the flesh all the way up her left arm. Freyr screamed in pain and stumbled on, falling over a pile of canine corpses. She couldn’t find a purchase on the slippery bodies, until a hand grabbed her armpit and hauled her to her feet. “Time to go, ma’am!” Rowe shouted at her, covered in blood. “I thought you were dead!” Freyr shouted, as they suddenly burst out the other end of the throng.

“Not yet ma’am!” Rowe yelled, sending two rounds through a dog wrestling with the soldier Freyr had been following just moments before. He grabbed the man up off the floor and pushed him toward the trucks. “Bishop, take Doctor Lang to the trucks and get them started right now!” Rowe then worked to free another soldier, firing shots into the skull of a dog with it’s tendrils wrapped around them. “Copy that. With me!” Bishop boomed, pushing Freyr ahead of him as they started to run.

They passed a ragged line of CraSec soldiers, who had managed to free themselves and were now holding back the tsunami of horrors careering toward them. Sprinting now, they passed a thin stream of soldiers variously supporting or dragging other people towards the trucks. Some had smashed helmets and their faces half bitten off. Others were just screaming into the air, their eyes wide. “Back to the trucks, let's move!” Bishop yelled, picking up one of the wounded to free up the soldier dragging them to fight on.

Freyr’s vision was so blurry from running and the Border fog that she didn’t notice Vreta and Osman until Bishop shouted “Who the fuck is that!?” and pointed his pistol at the alien with one hand. He was understandably on edge, with everything going on. “Don’t shoot! He’s with me!” Freyr called as they finally reached the trucks, taking a gamble on the alien’s gender. Bishop didn’t seem entirely convinced, but a scream like fingernails running down slate quickly stirred him back into action. “Ok, move move move!” He shooed Vreta away from the back door before opening it up and securing the wounded soldier inside, before going to the stretcher for Osman.

Freyr looked back toward the cacophony of gunfire between the warehouses. She could see about a dozen soldiers making their way back to the convoy. A desperate rearguard action, led by Lieutenant Rowe, was being brutally pushed back by hordes of hellhounds. Freyr ran over to support the closest of the soldiers, quickly marching them over to another of the trucks. Upon opening the passenger door she was staring down the barrel of a pistol held by Karos Childermass. His hands were shaking and his face was white. Freyr snatched the handgun out of his hand, turned away from the door and was instantly pinned against the side of the truck by one of the hellhounds. It jumped up, it’s dripping jaws snapping at her face. Her gun hand was stuck just holding its teeth away from her throat.

“Oh fuck, It’s back!” Bishop shouted from the other side of the truck, pointing to the corner of the office building they were backed up against. The human-faced insectoid creature had just emerged from the darkness. Just behind it was the Border, now creeping forward at a walking pace. Bishop fired his assault rifle at the creature from the hip, shouting and swearing at the soldiers pouring in around him to get strapped into the vehicles.

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar 'Mdalak

---

Once everyone on the mesa had boarded, Vol closed up the grav lift and Tar activated the internal comms system. “Lock in tight, things could get bumpy.” As she said that, the shockwave from the Brute cruiser crashing into the valley behind the base hit the Phantom, buffeting it backwards. Tar gunned the engines and pushed them swiftly forward while Vol plotted them a course.

Their objective was to insert the team on a flat staging area beneath the main Forerunner structure. Enhanced stills Vol had taken while Aegis was boarding showed it was littered with large crates and lifting vehicles. Between them and this landing zone were an assortment of Brute drop ships and Banshees. However, they were distracted by the teams of Phantoms currently attacking the walls of the compound. There were also a handful of lethal AA guns around the compound, devastating any airship it could find. However, one had just erupted into a towering jet of flames, opening up a gap in their coverage. Tar pointed to it. “That’s the entry point, adjust our approach solution.” Vol obeyed with a cursory “Yes, commander.” They were working well, considering this was their first time together, Tar noted.

Maintaining a breakneck speed, they dropped down to just above the height of the walls and roared past the destroyed AA battery. The courtyard and the IFF tags for the rest of Aegis team zipped past underneath. “Fuel rod round, front left side!” Vol called, pinging it on the nav dashboard. Tar hauled the controls to the right, and the Phantom drastically tilted, throwing them against their harnesses. The round fizzed by close underneath their Phantom. “Can you get a shot off?” Tar asked. “No, they’re above us. Coming in hot!” Tar tugged the controls up and to the left, and the top of their Phantom crushed the wings of the Banshee above. A titanic scraping, clattering sound echoed through the troop bay, the banshee sliding along the length of their vehicle and falling off the end.

Tar cooled the engines slightly as they approached the landing zone. Vol marked a clear space near the ramp up from the courtyard and together they brought the Phantom in. Vol reactivated the grav lift and opened the side doors while Tar addressed the bay’s occupants. “Green light to disembark, go go go!” They both surveyed the area as Aegis team quickly headed out of the Phantom. The landing zone was very hot, and they were taking small arms fire from practically all directions. They only had twenty seconds before someone with the right armaments took notice. “Rockets! Right side!” Vol hollered. “Everybody out NOW!” Tar shouted, tugging the controls sharply. Vol closed the side doors up to increase their protection. If Aegis team hadn’t jumped already, they’d be coming on this evasive maneuver with them.

The Cradle

Freyr looked up at the alien, Vreta, she vaguely remembered his name was, and nodded numbly. “Move move move!” the sergeant shouted, shooting at something behind them as Freyr broke into a run, torch shaking across the ground in front of her. Several of the soldiers soon overtook her, their guns up and scanning the path between two more warehouses in front of them. Freyr could just about make out the racks of strong lights mounted on top of the CraSec vehicles a few hundred metres in front of them. They were parked outside the office buildings they’d started their investigations in. That all seemed like a very, very long time ago now.

A few seconds later, a cacophony of gunfire, shouting and other unnatural sounds joined the sporadic shooting from the rear of their group. It was coming from up ahead. In the back of her mind, Freyr knew she’d heard that transition from muffled hum to translatable sounds before. People had just passed back through the Border. Sure enough, she could see numerous torchlights and muzzle flashes from around the corner of the next warehouse. The gunfire and screaming increased as they ran towards the action, until sure enough, it erupted out right in front of them.

About two dozen CraSec soldiers spilled out into the crossroads in front of them from the left hand side and were immediately overrun by a swarm of creatures. They looked like muscle-bound, bald hunting dogs, except for the thin purple tendrils sprouting out all over their bodies. Dozens of them ran amok in the crowd of soldiers, jumping up, all teeth and black eyes, to pull them screaming to the floor.

Freyr skidded to halt as the action exploded across the road in front of her. She could see the Border had advanced even closer to the crossroads here too. Sitting halfway through the opaque surface, she caught a glimpse of a huge, bulbous sack of flesh, covered in purple appendages. It appeared to be pulling itself out of the Border wall by way of these tentacles. More hellhounds ripped their way out of the sack with their teeth and charged into the group. Freyr froze, her hands to her mouth and tears welling in her eyes.

It didn’t last long, as one of the canine-like creatures leapt at her, only to be blown to pieces at close range. “Doctor Lang, follow me!” A man shouted in her face. Freyr realised it was Lieutenant Rowe, holding a bulky shotgun. He turned, shot another canine running at him from behind, dropped the shotgun and shot another with his pistol before being plowed into the floor by three more. Freyr ran through the gap he’d created, toward the halo of lights by the trucks, hands covering her ears. Screaming and shouting mingling with staccato gunfire and in-human snarls on all sides. “Back to the trucks! Back to the trucks!” She heard someone yell nearby, and held onto them as they pushed through the melee. She looked desperately for Major Osman and the alien, both who had saved her, but couldn't see them.

The Cradle

They moved at a steady jog through the darkness between two warehouses. The soldiers advanced with their guns up, torches scanning all around the group. Freyr’s chest began to burn; she’d done almost no proper exercise since being put on leave months ago. Even at a time like this, she admired the Cradle’s attention to detail. The alien’s response didn’t make much sense, but Freyr’s mind was also too scrambled to understand anything right now.

One of the soldiers tripped and fell suddenly. The whole group paused; several took a knee and aimed out into the dark. Shining her torch down on the floor, Freyr could see it was a cable access box jutting a couple of feet from the group that’d caused it. Another soldier helped the fallen man get up. “Is it just me, or has visibility gone to shit?” One of the grunts asked, adjusting the sight on her longer range rifle. “Same here.” Someone else called.

This set alarm bells ringing in Freyr’s head. She had the timings of regular Cradle storms memorised for the next ten years in her head. Even in this frontier sector, there shouldn’t be one for another few months. She shone her torch straight up in the air. “Let’s move, the trucks aren’t far.” The sergeant hollered. “Wait!” Freyr cried. “Look!” Large particles like snowflakes were floating through the torch beam in the air directly above their heads. “These flakes peel off the Border wall...but they shouldn’t be this close…” Freyr murmured, confused. “Sarge, we’ve got a problem!” Another voice yelled. Several of the torches moved to cover the side the voice came from.

A cold chill shot up Freyr’s back when she saw it. They were in a crossroads between four testing sheds. Visibility had reduced significantly, but even then she could see the multiple lights trained down the road hitting what appeared to be a solid surface. Except it wasn’t. She could make out the familiar purple arteries running across it, and the gentle ripples moving from the ground up into the sky. It was the Border, come to greet them. It filled the entire road between two of the warehouses, and Freyr could see it slopping over the roofs like the sea encompasses a sand castle. It was barely fifty metres away.

Just then, a shout issued from the Border, and before their eyes a CraSec grunt, helmet removed, emerged from its depths. His eyes were wide, and he appeared to be weaponless. He sprinted toward them as the soldiers all aimed their weapons at him. “Behind!” He screeched, as a long, slick appendage with a spike on the end shot from the Border and impaled him. Everyone, including Freyr, seemed to let out some kind of involuntary sound. For a split second, the soldier was just standing in front of them with the spike protruding from his chest, before it violently opened into an ‘X’ and pulled back, lifting him off his feet and back through the Border.

“RUN!” The sergeant bellowed, pointing the way they’d been going. “Everyone to the trucks right NOW!” Freyr wasted no time as all hell broke loose, grabbing Osman’s stretcher as she began running, to speed it up.

The Cradle

The lead soldier was very still for a moment, presumably as he weighed up this alien...Vreta’Sori’s account. Freyr saw light reflect off a set of cuffs that one of the grunts behind them had pulled out, but the leader motioned for them to stop. He looked at Freyr. “Is this true, Doctor?” She nodded. “As far as i know. The bit about the creature certainly is.” An abrupt sound of rending metal stood out from the gunfire in the distance. Freyr looked in the direction it came from but could see nothing in the pitch black. Several of the soldiers turned to scan the area as well.

The lead soldier considered his options. Grabbing a large, high powered comms device with an aerial off the vest of the soldier next to him, he called into it. “Cradle Actual, come in, over.” Silence. “No good Sarge, Control is still dark. Some kind of interference.” The soldier he’d taken the device from reported. The sergeant groaned, changing tack. “Dagger One, this is Dagger Nine, we have wounded and a UAL, heading back to the rally point now.” He gave the comms device back.

“Ok, we’ll escort you to the trucks and raise Control from there. Don’t make me regret not cuffing you.” He directed the last comment squarely at the alien. “Lets move, eyes on a swivel!” He shouted, turning around. As one, the soldiers began making their way back to the hole they’d made in the side of the warehouse. An automated, hovering stretcher bearing Major Osman passed by Freyr. Soon after that, a firm hand encouraged her to move forward with them.

About one hundred meters from where they’d stood, a large rent in the metal wall of the warehouse had been blown open. They climbed through it all together, the soldiers in formation around the stretcher, Freyr and the alien. They turned left, and headed in what Freyr could only assume was the direction of the office buildings.

She could still hear gunfire, but it seemed more distant now, and muffled somehow. She glanced at the alien. The poor thing seemed to have lost some teeth, and was bleeding from its snout. Now the initial shock had passed, Freyr’s mind drifted back to the beginning of the encounter. She shuddered as she remembered the creature’s composite construction. What did strike her as odd, now she thought about it, was what the alien and the creature were doing together, when she first poked her head around the door. “When i came in...were you talking to that thing too? I heard noises. What did it say?” Freyr asked.

The soldier in front of her tried the massive walkie talkie again. “Dagger One, this is Dagger Nine. What is your status? Over.” This time there were static, and low warbling noises. Then suddenly a faint voice. “krrrrrfall….gotkrrrrrrrr...run!” The comms device went dead again. A few of the soldiers looked at each other. “Pick up the pace!” The sergeant urged.