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Concurrence Chapter 2-3
🕑 Added 2023-06-22 09:55:00 +0000 UTC2446 words. That'll be it for chapter 2 after I go back and whip any typos into shape.
The Major
Kikowani Station
6 Hours After Rupture
Water splashed onto his shins as the Major stepped into the puddle in front of the kiosk, his gloved fingers tapping at the letters of the touchscreen keyboard. This had been the third kiosk he’d sought for after the first one had bugged out, each one either glitching out or pointing him to the incorrect destination. Maybe the whole city network had bugged out and he was wasting his time trying to find his way round like a damned shopper lost in a mall, but third time was the charm, so they said.
He hit the enter button, cursing as his destination was once again replaced, the navigation waypoint encouraging him to go to some unmarked building. He thumped the side of the kiosk with his fist, watching as the screen sizzled with static, the map replacing with the green face of the city Superintendent.
“Please follow these directions! Warning: fellow passengers may be sharing your designated route, please provide assistance if possible!”
The Major tilted his head, maybe these things weren’t bugging out. Was the city AI trying to point him to his missing squadmates? He took a closer look at where the map was pointing him to. Kikowani Station, the area was called, a train station not far to his east. He would rather not waste any more time than he already had, but if there was a chance one of his team was out there, he had to prioritize them over the mission.
The route pointed him to one of the tunnel access points that would lead below the city, where he could walk right through the subway to Kikowani. His HUD told him he had a full receiver plus thirty spare shells, and he also had his sidearm and the plasma pistol, he’d be as ready as could be if he ran into Covenant down there.
He cut through the nearby building, checking the corners of some kind of reception area for a JOTUN office, their signature logo hanging on the walls in big letters. They made farming equipment from their factories on Mars, that was all he knew about them. There was no telling if there were Covenant in any of the rooms branching off from here, but he didn’t have the time to clear each one, so he kept moving through.
The automatic doors on the other side opened when he got close, the Major emerging out onto a street, with no Covenant in sight. There was a giant billboard on the face of the building across from him, and it shifted into a pair of white arrows pointing down to the left. The glare of the sign would have been blinding if not for his visor automatically dampening the harsh glow.
His eyes followed the arrows until they rested on a small shelter covering a staircase leading below ground, the sign on the arch flashing the word Platform 9in orange letters. He weaved between the cars as he crossed the street, rain sliding down the front of his visor in thick drops.
When he got close, he saw the staircase was in fact an escalator frozen in place, the Major feeling better as he made his way down, the incessant rain finally stopping as the shelter protected him. He wiped his visor clean with his glove, the sound that filled his helmet reminding him of when one wipes a window with a squeegee.
He brought his shotgun to bear as he reached the last step, scanning the subway for threats. The platform was covered in rubble, a pair of support columns having long crumbled to dust from some unknown force, maybe artillery. A flickering lightbulb washed over the front carriage of a train cart that had been derailed, its nose ploughed into the platform and leaving a sizeable wedge in the concrete. The accident should have left dozens dead, but as he made his way over to the cart, kicking stones out of the way with his boots, he was treated to a bodiless sight as he peered through the driver window.
The tunnel leading off to the side drew his attention, the smooth walls were outlined by the dying fluorescent on the platform, but after a few feet they slowly faded to darkness as it curved gently to the left and out of view. Walking through had seemed so trivial back up top, but now it felt like he was about to plunge into an abyss.
Leading with his shotgun, he hopped down from the platform, his boots crunching the rocks between the rails. It was easy to imagine civies running down these tunnels trying to escape the Covenant, it would have been horrible going into all that darkness with a Brute chasing you down.
He activated the night vision on his visor as he stepped into the tunnel, the illumination fighting back the intense darkness. Even after all his years of training and campaigning against the alien, he hadn’t quite outgrown his childhood trepidation of dark places, remembering how Joker had never let the fact go after he’d found out, buying the Major a nightlight to cement his nickname in the squad.
The first bend was painted green by his visor low-light systems, but the fluorescents in this tunnel were black and dead, and soon the fading light behind him grew dimmer until his visor was struggling to outline the curving passage.
Without an outside source of light, his night vision was close to useless, so the Major flicked a thumb over the mounted flashlight on his shotgun. The beam cut through the inky darkness as he swept it over the shadows. The light was strong, but after around thirty feet the circle of illumination blurred into darkness.
He kept walking, at one point his boot slid against the rocks and he almost lost his balance, his hand shooting out to rest against the wall. The thump as his glove met the smooth stone echoed for what seemed like forever, as if there was someone every twenty meters in front of him hitting the wall as well.
He shuffled along, the scraping of rocks below his feet also having an echo, the repeating scratching noise making his heart pound against his chest. The darkness was a perfect canvas to let his imagination run wild, a Brute could be waiting round the next bend, a cloaked Elite could be coming up behind him and he wouldn’t even know it.
He pushed these ideas aside, why would the Covenant be down here after all this time? They were here to destroy all of humanity, not skulk down here in the dark in some random subway tunnel.
He picked up the pace all the same, the circle of his flashlight beating back the swirling darkness, how long did the kiosk say this tunnel was? It didn’t, he remembered, the line just went on until it opened up at Kikowani, yet he couldn’t see any natural light, there must be a few more turns.
Something flittered above his helmet.
He shone his flashlight at the upward-curving walls, cracks splintering along the ceiling where dust occasionally fell down like raindrops of powder. There had been a noise, but he hadn’t made it, and he listened to the echo with his finger ready to pull the trigger. The sound reminding him of the chittering noise of when a beetle flaps its wings.
The hairs on his neck stood on end, the circle of light too small for him to scan everywhere at once. He wasn’t sure how long he waited, only that a part of him began to doubt he’d heard anything at all, that the vapours of the dark were playing tricks on his eyes.
He began to move again, moving his attention back to the rails so he didn’t lose his footing. The tunnel bent to the right now, every meter of the tunnel looking the same as the last, only the cracks in the tiles beside him holding any sense of change. He wondered what made them, Covenant artillery, explosions up on the streets, perhaps?
Something heavy landed on his back.
He yelled out, a stinging sensation adding a snarl to his scream as something sharp slipped between the plates on his BDU, the Major feeling warm blood trickle down his spine. He whirled around, but the weight on his shoulders followed his movement, whatever it was it was clinging to him hard.
He turned and thrust his back against the wall of the tunnel, a clicking sound that almost came off as a scream joining the echoes racing down the railway. A pair of bony hands slapped against his visor, four fingers, no, claws beginning to rake at his helmet. They were made up of plates of chitin rather than flesh, the underside of the hand and wrist made up of angular sections of what looked like hard plastic.
The arms were backlit by his flailing flashlight, the orange plates of bone glinting in its light. He couldn’t take a shot with the thing so close, so he reversed the grip on his shotgun, swinging it like a club over his shoulder.
The stock hit something hard, and judging by the following thump he’d hit the wall. Something thin, long and covered in fine hairs brushed over his gauntlet, the Major shivering as he turned his head to see a pair of antennae poking out of a rounded head.
Through the claws scratching at his visor, a pair of glowing, green eyes stared back. They were arranged on the sides of a flat, disk-shaped head, a pair of serrated mandibles that flexed and twitched in the place a mouth would be on a human. Its head and back were layered over with thick plates of chitin or maybe armour, he couldn’t be sure. The thick torso tapered into a pair of skeletal hips, the legs and thighs covered in little barbs, ending into a pair of feet with two massive toes that were currently hooked into the waist of his BDU.
The thing looked like a giant, overgrown mantis, the Major recoiling in alarm as it gave up trying to pry his helmet off with its arms, going in instead with its jaws. Its mandibles wriggled as it latched onto his visor like a leech, the Major looking clear down its throat to see it was layered with barbs all the way down as far as he could see.
He grabbed it by one of its antennae, snarling through his teeth as he fought to pull it off. It let go, but not before slicing him across the chest with its claws, the sound off fabric tearing as it cut through his pouches, the Major feeling its claws narrowly miss cutting into his skin.
He threw it to the ground, flipping his shotgun back into its correct position in one fluid movement. Now that he had it in his sights, he saw that two pairs of translucent wings extended from its back, the protective casings folded up over its shoulders twitching as the alien shifted on its thin legs.
It was a Drone, a flying race of insects the Covenant used to soften up positions before the elite troops rolled in. They weren’t the strongest race individually, but they travelled in such massive groups they could overpower even a Spartan. Why this one was alone he didn’t know, but he wasn’t about to question his luck.
His butt of the shotgun rocked into his shoulder as he fired of a shell. At such close range, the kinetic energy simply disintegrated the bug, parts of its exoskeleton flying apart like fragments from a grenade, yellow ichor trailing out to splotch against the Major’s front. In such a small space the blast from his weapon was very loud, the roar bouncing up the walls the way he’d come, the splatter of the Drone’s limbs following it.
Snarling through his teeth, he realised it had stuck something in his pack, reaching up and giving what felt like a hilt a tug. He winced as he pulled it out, bringing to his face to examine what looked like a dagger right out of the medieval ages. The blade was crooked, much like the Drone’s claws had been, almost an exact approximation.
He threw it to the ground where the Drone had formerly been, the black blade reflecting the light of his flashlight as he lowered the receiver, replacing the spent shell. It didn’t feel like the stab had gone all that deep, but he’d rather be safe than sorry and look around for a medkit when he got out of this damned tunnel.
He moved on for a few more minutes until he saw something. Up head was a small ball of glowing light, gradually expanding with every step he took, shining on the pair of rails, the fist-sized rocks casting shadows against the rest of the ground. It was probably light born from the burning city, but he wasn’t about to led morbidity stop him from feeling relief.
He moved faster, the mouth of the tunnel opening up into a huge expanse of open air. The tracks stretched on into what seemed like a bridge, and there was a train three carriages long further along, what sounded like sloshing water reaching his ears, overwhelmed by the rapid echoes of plasma fire.
He took a knee by the tunnel’s end, sticking to the shadows. There was indeed a river the bridge extended over, its salty breeze filtering through the gaps in his helmet, but he was focused more on the gunfight on the other side of the bridge.
He could see six or seven Brutes off to left of the tracks, where a platform merged into a sloping set of platforms joined by staircases, the aliens taking cover behind planters and pillars as they fired at the train below them. One of the Brutes broke cover, the Major watching as he sprinted through the open, bee-lining it for the train. The barrel of a Covenant carbine poked out of the train windows, cutting the alien down with a quick burst of rounds, his shields and then his body collapsing.
The dead brute joined what looked like dozens of Jackals and Grunts and even a few other Brutes, whoever was in the train setting up a nasty kill-zone. He couldn’t see which of his squadmates it was at this angle, only that they probably deserved a promotion after such an amazing kill count.
“I’m coming,” he muttered, shouldering his shotgun as he crossed the bridge.
