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| - The Prowler exited slipspace, radiation filling the space around before dissipating. In the bridge, the Captain and Naval Officers sat rigidly in their chairs. "Status Report" "Systems functioning to full capacity. Mine payload is full. Pulse turret charges at 100%" "Location?" "As plotted, sir; Segmenti Orios System." The Captain let off a sigh, held in since the jump. He eased in his chair, relaxing his previously tensed muscles. "Sir, large object coming up on the external sensors..." The Captain's heart skipped a beat. He ground his teeth together; his palms began to sweat. The ship wasn't built for combat. "How large?" "5.7 Kilometres across. Displaying view on the screen now, sir" The Naval Ensign flipped a set of complicated dials and switches on the control panel of the Prowler, and immediately a video feed of the object came through on the large screen in front of the Captain's chair. The Captain's eyes widened. His jaw turned slack in disbelief. His grip on the arms of the command chair tightened. "Mother of God..." They'd found one. The familiar aftertaste of mucus and lime filled Jared's senses as the hatch to his cryopod eased open, hissing as the hydraulics decompressed. The tingle of the warm air against his still-cool skin made his nerves come alive, and he opened his eyes to the dimness of the cryogenics bay deep inside the December's belly. Around him, other cryopods were releasing their sleepers to roam uncertainly about the chamber, stretching their legs after the long trip through space. He felt the last tug of the cryogenic-fluid injector as it pulled out from his bloodstream, and he gingerly pushed himself out of the pod with his elbows. The deck was, to his surprise, made of soft-to-the-touch foam, material that gave way slightly as he put first one foot and then the other down. It must be a new feature in these new Heimdall-class Frigates the Navy had the ship manufacturers cranking out these days. He was glad of it; finally, a design that put some thought into the well-being of the average soldier. Taking a few steps forward, he leaned backwards and stretched out his lats and his arms, popping some vertebrae in the process. Oh, that never lost its good feeling, he thought, smiling inwardly. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one of the females eying him, then turning and whispering something to her friend with a snicker. He caught a flicker of the conversation with his enhanced sense of hearing. "...makes sense, honestly. I mean look at how tall he is! You should have expected as much!" "I just didn't think the rumors were true-- Shh! I think he heard us!" He flushed as it dawned on him what they were talking about, and made his way to the secure locker room with a pace that resembled something between walking and sprinting. Some people never changed, did they? He'd expected that a lifetime of deployments and their mandatory cryo-freeze regulations would have instilled a sense of maturity into the majority of the services. Apparently, he was wrong. Finding his bio-sealed locker, he placed his palm on the scanner and allowed the machine time to process. Lifting the handle, he opened the heavy door and looked inside. There it was, glowing faintly blue in the anti-microbial lights of the storage chamber, its' titano-ceramic solidity imposing and familiar in the same glance. The same weathered lines, the same battle scars that he remembered from his fifty years of using it... His MJOLNIR Mark VI. It had aged just as well as he had, which was to say it appeared ageless. He reached up and adjusted the blue-visored helmet on its stand, straightening it out, then reached for his undersuit. It was a deployment, after all. No sense in getting dressed up for nothing, he thought as he pushed aside his space-black ONI class-A uniform. He glanced at himself before donning the comfortable outer shell. Aside from a few scars and some growing wrinkles near the corner of his eyes, he looked like he was thirty-five and kicking it. Ironic that he was coming up on his eighty-fifth. He grinned. Who wasn't so well-preserved these days? You spend so much time in the freezers, you're not going to change much. And with his SPARTAN enhancements, he got an even more positive side. Rumor had it that the pharmaceuticals, with some newly-released Forerunner tech as help, had a new regenerative process coming out, and he made a note to ask Lauryn about it when he got to see her next. The second skin fit snugly, as it always did, and the armor clamped on within a couple of seconds. He tucked his helmet underneath his arm, and walked back into the bay, where he found that most of the thawed personnel had followed his lead. ODSTs and Rangers checked and double-checked their equipment, adjusting helmet electronics, and looking over their buddies' load-out. Within a few minutes, they had finished their pre-launch checks, and had filed their way down to the transport and HOPE pod storage bays, visors updating with mission objectives, pertinent data, and other necessary information. The ship's CO appeared in a small chat window in the top right corner of Jared's Heads-Up Display, with a small icon noting that the Spartan was not sending any video feed back. "ORPHEUS, is it? This is Captain Verkarian. I believe we've met before. Since you are the agent in charge of this operation, I am filling you in with the necessary details about this operation. ONI brass may have already explained the situation to you, but we are in this area looking for a missing ship, the Adamant Resolve, who went dark over two weeks ago. We recently received a distress signal tracking back to this area, and it is very likely that the prowler went down around this area. It is imperative that you secure the ship's black box and transfer its contents back to the December for analysis. ONI also would like you to secure the immediate area so that we can send in a small team of Acumen researchers to recover a small amount of technology from the facility. ONI is not sure why the Prowler went dark, but they are almost positive that it was under hostile circumstances. I have informed the ODST and Ranger team leaders of some of the base details, but I want to let you know that ONI, and myself, are suspecting that this is an Insurrectionist-related attack. Respond to any threats accordingly. Captain Verkarian out." The video window winked closed, and with a few steps forward, Jared hefted himself into the HOPE pod alongside an ODST sergeant and a female Lieutenant, both from the 10th Shock Battalion if their color markings and unit flashes were to be believed. "Wolf" and "Lydecker" were combat veterans, their kills displayed in blue hash-marks along their forearm plates, their drop records in red stars on their pauldrons. Three drops each. Obviously they had been in for the same amount of time. He nodded at them in a friendly way as the hatch of his pod sealed shut. Ironic, he thought, in one pod five minutes after getting out of another. He secured the straps and palmed both control sticks. This was it. The Pelican's engines let out a dull drone as it disembarked with the others from the hangar bay. O246 painted in white on its sides, a small image of a grinning shark adorning the left. Inside, Captain Stanislav Skorozy sat in his chair, his eyes closed, lost in thought. A myriad of blues, greys, and reds flitted about across his visor display; tactical maps, life signs, ammunition read outs. "E.T.A. 4 minutes" In the seats opposite and adjacent him, his fellow Rangers polarized their visors; jarred by the noise, he followed suit. He stood, slipping a new magazine from his harness into his MA5, and gripped one of the ceiling handles as the Pelican began to ease down onto the surface. The rear door opened, and the Rangers deployed. Captain Skorozy sighed, and pressed his index and middle finger against COM button on his helmet. "First Platoons have made landfall; repeat; Pelicans have touched down." Skorozy brought up his MA5, and motioned to the Platoon Leaders; they moved forward with their men. The ONI team set to work with their Spoofer, and the huge gates slid open smoothly; vast Forerunner lockwork moved apart and slid away, revealing the massive Forerunner architecture within. It was still a vacuum, however. No breathable oxygen; not quite typical of Forerunner structures. The Army Rangers moved in, scanning the blackness with helmet-mounted flashlights, securing the large chamber. A huge light shined on them from above. The Rangers opened fire. A massive mechanical eye, searchlight dominating the centre, gazed at them from above; the powerful light swept over both Platoons; 64 men in Semi-Powered Armour. The strictly mechanical, monotonous voice boomed overhead once more. Stanislav disregarded the likely-rampant A.I. and walked over to the acting Lieutenants; "Base of operations will be at this location; it'll be marked on the tactical maps for your men. Now, I want an even deployment through the corridors there, there, and there: have your men scour every inch of this place. We're not leaving without the crew." The Platoon Leaders nodded silently, and returned to their units; the Rangers dispersed, and Captain Skorozy looked up at the massive eye-like machine, still sweeping the room with its searchlight. It was familiar.
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