Concurrence Chapter 8-1

2100-odd words. Sorry for the delay everyone I've caught a bug or something, thank you all for your patience and support and keep on keeping on!

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The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

13 Hours After Rupture

“There it is,” the Major said, holding his weapon by his side as he fiddled with his helmet. The road they’d been following terminated in a rough line, Seela stopping at the precipice as they gazed out into a mostly unimpeded view of their objective.

After their romp in the shower, he and Seela had followed the final few directions left by the kiosks, which had brought them to the base of a towering wall, maybe two hundred feet high and curving gently in both directions. The wall was familiar to the Major, all they had to do was follow the obstacle around until they reached its gate, which was yet another blast door like all the others, except it was already open before they’d even laid eyes on it.

He could feel the wind hammering his front as the gale swept through the area, cold air biting into his exposed forearm. The sensation of feeling a breeze was strange after hours of its absence, as this area was completely void of buildings save for the wall, which created a massive circle of empty space circling hundreds of meters in front of them.

Seela stepped up to the lip of the road, which morphed into black and twisted metal after a few meters, as though a truly massive explosion had raised the ground nearby. Below the broken metal was a huge body of black water, made bright here and there as it reflected the fires that burned the horizon.

Two rows of pillars jutted out of the lake, spaced out in intervals, topped with rebar and cracked concrete. He followed the struts with his eyes until they came to rest on the structure that sat in the epicentre of the walled in lake, the Major allowing himself a moment of relief. At last, his objective was in sight.

At a glance it was a massive cube, or at least what remained of one. Chunks of metal had been ripped out of it here and there, plumes of smoke trailing out of the gaping holes. He could make out metal ribs lining the inside of the gigantic structure, his eyes tracking one as it fell from the ceiling, the crash very loud despite being stood a hundred or so meters away.

The cube was built upon a large artificial island, most of its features hidden behind a perimeter wall, giving it an almost medieval fort-like appearance, the body of water acting as a moat, and the ringing wall an extra layer of protection. There had been a bridge at some point that allowed vehicles and personnel to come and go between the site, but someone had obviously destroyed it, if the columns were any hint.

“Your mission has been obliterated,” Seela said, her gaze turning skyward. The orbital tether loomed in the backdrop, more a tower of fire and smoke than anything else, most of its length obscured by the dark clouds, themselves choked with ash and smoke. “Though, it seems the Covenant are as interested as we are.”

It was obvious what she was talking about. Despite the bridge being destroyed, the island of the site was still connected to the place they were standing. Where there was once a strip of metal and concrete, a band of blue light drew a line over the body of water, roughly the same width as a two lane road.

It was a Covenant light bridge, and he hadn’t seen many of these outside of alien strongholds or ships. He was no scientist, but the light bridge followed the same logic as Seela’s energy sword, where emitters projected a shape of light which hardened enough to become solid. There was an emitter on this side of the bridge, which looked like just a long stretch of thin metal with glowing boxes on either end. There was a soft humming noise coming from these boxes, the Major guessing they were the generators of some sort.

“I suspect they moved vehicles across,” Seela continued. “They would not deploy a bridge otherwise.”

“Least you don’t have to swim,” he noted, patting Seela on the arm as he walked by. “Come on, we’re running late.”

Every bone in his body was telling him that he would fall right through the light bridge as soon as he stepped on it, and its slight transparency did nothing to help settle his nerves. The drop was a good fifty feet, and he could see no boats or emergency ladders ringing the wall, falling in would be a death sentence.

He placed one boot onto the glowing bridge, then the other. If he closed his eyes, his body would be sure he was stepping onto solid ground, but in reality walking onto hardened light was something his mind just couldn’t accept on some base level. He kept his eyes locked on the site ahead of them, trying and failing not to think about it.

He turned to see his companion was having no such trouble. She was standing at her full height, giving him an amused glance as she paused by his flank. “This technology is an echo of the Forerunners,” she said. “it will hold us.”

She took a slight lead, the Major switching his focus from the island to the path behind them. The city had been so clustered with structures, and being out here with massive sight lines was putting him off, and the lack of cover wasn’t helping either.

“Tell me the significance of this place,” Seela asked after a bit of silence. “What was its purpose for the city?”

“This was Alpha Site, the main headquarters of ONI, the group I’m part of,” he explained. “They did some pretty sensitive research here, hence the lake and the lack of ground access. Only visited a couple times myself, but I think I remember the layout.”

“And that giant building over there?” she said, pointing at the towering cube engulfed in flames. “What did it do?”

He realised she was trying to keep him focused on their objective, and not the sheer drop below them. She could read him pretty well by this point, and that didn’t bother him in the slightest.

“That’s the HQ, and it’s filled to the brim with data about the city as well as intelligence for the Navy. It’s mostly made up of offices and storage banks, or was, anyway. Looks like some idiot thought it would be a good idea to blow it all up.”

“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?” she asked. “If the Covenant had access to sensitive data, you would be at a disadvantage.”

“All the important crap is stored below the site, destroying just the surface didn’t erase everything. That’s where we’re going, by the way, we can take one of the elevator shafts down to our objective.”

“And pray the island doesn’t come crashing down on our heads,” she mumbled.

As they walked over the halfway mark, Seela shouldered her carbine, the Major dropping to a knee behind her as she aimed at the island ahead of them. When she didn’t open fire, he asked her what she saw.

“Brute vehicles,” she replied. “But they are unmanned.”

They stalked forward carefully, the island soon coming into more detail. There was a perimeter wall compounding most of the island, with a gate that resembled a palisade, further adding to the whole ‘castle’ façade.

There were two hulking shapes in front of the main gate, the Major getting a better look once they were within a stone’s throw of the island. They were Brute Choppers, assault bikes that could ferry up to three Brutes at a time. The front half of the bike was a giant armoured wheel, with a spiked prow mounted on the front, designed for ramming down other vehicles. The back half was a single seat with a control dash, the chair so low against the wheel that only an Elite or Brute could be able to see over the top when piloting one.

Like the kickstands used by human motorcycles, the Choppers listed onto spikes protruding from the bottom of their frames, the design such an accurate mockery of human technology one might assume the Brutes had copied the design.

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief as they neared the edge of the bridge, his boots clocking as he stepped onto paved cement. They approached the pair of identical vehicles, the Major noting the pair of automatic guns sticking out of the middle of the big wheels.

“It is unlike Brutes to leave their vehicles unattended,” Seela said, sweeping her carbine around.

“Probably couldn’t fit them through the gate,” he replied. “Hey, check it out.”

She looked to where he was nodding, a third vehicle sitting off to the side of the gate. Unlike the Choppers, this one was definitely human-made. It was an all-terrain armoured truck, with a flatbed that housed a mounted chaingun, the weapon training into the sky as though its previous user had been aiming at aircraft.

The Warthog looked intact, save for the massive gash cut into driver’s side of the chassis. Maybe one of those Choppers had rammed into it. It was a little beaten up, but as long as the hydrogen fuel tanks weren’t damaged, those things could drive for miles.

Walking over, he peeked into the cockpit, reaching over the wheel and flicking the ignition switch. The lights on the dash lit up, and his suspicions were confirmed as the fuel gauge lit up in green, almost a full tank.

“Finally something good swings our way,” he said, Seela looking over his shoulder as she joined him.

“Are we driving this thing inside?”

“No, this’ll be our ticket out once we’re done,” he said turning the switch back to the off-state. “No more walking around for us.”

That seemed to please her, the two returning to the gate as they made to press on. ONI’s logo was emblazoned on the space above the gate, the Major glancing up at it as they moved into the compound. As he’d expected, there were pylons poking out of the ground bellow the arch to limit foot traffic as well as block vehicles from passing through, Naval Intelligence didn’t skimp out on security.

They passed beneath sheer meters of steel, emerging onto the other side. The compound stretched out before them, stairwells taking up the majority of the area, laced here and there by pine trees that were burnt to cinders, their stumps black and jagged, as though the island had been pounded with napalm.

What few patches of grass around here were brown and decayed, as was most of the pavement, peppered with burn marks and pieces of rubble. There were walls of sandbags standing in front of this side of the gate, the Major moving past one and spotting a dead Marine propped up against the other side of the barrier.

It wasn’t the only dead body he could see. At a glance there were dozens of dead Marines and police officers in the immediate area alone. Covenant were in abundance as well, all the various species splayed out along the steps, including Hunters, their giant bits of armour laying around in clusters of metal.

“This is one distinct battle we missed,” Seela noted. “That’s a wrecked Phantom over there. Your data is more important than I thought if the Brutes threw so much at this place.”

They walked through the thongs of the dead in silence, the towering headquarters built into the far side of the island. They encountered barriers of steel that had no doubt served as ample cover, not big enough to block the way, but giving the defenders an edge over the invading Covenant.

The stairwells sloped up towards the headquarters, and after a few minutes of walking, they arrived at yet another wall. This one hugged the base of the destroyed Alpha Site, the building looming over them, a ball of fire and metal. Parts of the wall had been blown apart, and from the way the metal was shredded, the damage had come from inside the building, further proof the HQ had been set to blow by the Marines.

A stairwell sloped down towards the main entryways into the site, Seela ducking her head as she followed him into one of the curving walkways labelled Administration. The path turned for a ways around the headquarters, terminating at an archway, and through it he got a good look at the inside of the Alpha Site, and the results left by the Marine’s choice to destroy the place.

Most of the ground was gone, leaving a pit of darkness that was just barely illuminated by the fires blooming on the ceiling. He knew from the past that the Site had many elevator shafts leading below ground, and he could still see remnants of them built into the sides of the giant pit, which more resembled a hollowed-out pillar of metal and earth. It was like standing on the top of a landfill, a sea of destruction down and around him.

“You are sure your data survived all this?” Seela asked, leaning over the sheer drop. With so much empty space below the building it was a wonder the rest of the island hadn’t collapsed with it. The building creaked like the hull of an old ship at that moment, the two looking up at the skeletal remains of the headquarters worryingly.

“Have to get down there,” he said, pointing down into the darkness. The rubble filled the shaft with huge pieces of concrete, but there were doors spaced out down the length of the drop, places where elevators would usually stop. The way down looked precarious to put it lightly, but compared to what they’d fought through to get here, it was pretty tame.

“You are mad and I love it, Andrew,” she said. He didn’t know why but hearing his name from her lips, or mandibles, made him smile.