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Oh Thirteen Part 1
Posted By: Stuntmutt<stuntmutt@yahoo.com>
Date: 24 March 2004, 11:54 AM
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The shattered pieces of the structure the Covenant called Halo tumbled slowly through the blackness. What was once an alien construction of awe and mystery was now in need of a tube of crazy glue the size of a small moon. Chunks of wreckage and debris shrouded the ruins in clouds of glittering dust. One such speck of dust headed towards a fragment of Halo at some velocity. The speck was, in fact, a metal tube about ten feet long and four feet wide. Inside it, swathed in wisps of cryogenic gas, was the body of a cybernetically enhanced human. And at the edge of his consciousness, a thought struggled to surface from synapses in suspended animation. That thought was - 'Is it me? Or is it bloody cold in here?'
Onlo 'Utsoree was not used to such travelling conditions. An Elite of his exalted rank would normally command an entire deck of quarters on the flagship of a fleet of cruisers. So being squashed into a cockpit designed for a single Grunt came as the ultimate indignity. It forced him to bunch up with his knees tucked under his chin. Being possessed of four knees, 'Utsoree's discomfort was not inconsiderable. But this was the fastest ship in the whole of the Covenant. It was basically a tiny cabin tacked on to an enormous slipspace engine. And it was the only way to get 'Utsoree to the discovery in time. The ship was still at the experimental stage, hence the Grunt accommodating cockpit - one did not experiment with Elites. 'Utsoree believed the cramped conditions were worth suffering for the sake of speed. Time was against him. A stance 'Utsoree intended to make it regret.
Jonah's eyes opened before consciousness had fully returned. Looking down at him was a striking female face, framed by crimson hair and set against a background of twinkling, spinning stars. Hundreds of years of storytelling dictated that something along the lines of 'Are you an angel?' or 'Is this Heaven?' should be his first words. But they weren't for two reasons. One, angels didn't traditionally wear fishbowl helmets and UNSC issue EVA suits. And two, Jonah really wasn't that lucky.
"Hello," he said.
The woman waved a Scanalyzer over him and seemed satisfied with the readouts. She smiled at him. "Welcome back. What's the last thing you remember?"
Jonah pondered for a second. "We had a spot of bother on Reach. I was wounded early on, put in my cryo-tube and then I seem to recall being a bit chilly."
"Ah," said the woman. "Um, I'd help you up but I don't have a forklift."
Jonah became aware that his feet were above his head. He swung his right leg out of the open tube and attempted to haul himself out. The woman took a step backwards as half a metric ton of Spartan super soldier tumbled out onto metallic wreckage, from which he bounced with little grace onto the ground. The rather odd ground. It was black earth that looked as if it had been recently scorched, yet it sparkled with a covering of frost. Jonah staggered upright. At least, he guessed it was upright. He was somewhat confused by the way the night sky seemed to be spinning around him. It made Jonah dizzy to look at it.
"Er, I think I've got some catching up to do."
The woman introduced herself as Engineer First Class Emma Bean. She rattled through the main points of a bizarre tale involving the utter destruction of the planet Reach, the discovery of an alien world in the shape of a hula-hoop, the demise of the UNSC ship Pillar Of Autumn and the ultimate destruction of Halo.
"Stop me if I'm going too fast," said Bean.
"No, no, with you so far. So we're on one of the pieces of this Halo?" asked Jonah.
"Uh huh. Guess we both crash-landed on it. I couldn't get to a lifepod when the Autumn went down. So I stole a Covenant boarding craft. I was trying to find somewhere to hole up when Halo exploded. I took damage and had to put down for repairs. I took even more damage when I tried to land on a chunk of spinning alien artefact, but here I am." She smiled again. "Guess I'm just lucky."
"Not any more," sighed Jonah.
Doodu's punishment detail was cleaning the food nipples in the mess hall. He reflected that his new life as a convict wasn't actually all that different to his old life as a Silver. The work was the same. The food was the same; it would have been hard to concoct anything worse than what the Covenant already fed Grunts. If anything, his cell in the brig was actually roomier than his old bunk in the crew compartment had been. Of course, the energy leg irons burned a bit, and he had to watch his step in the sonic shower, but prisoners didn't get sent into battle or ordered down to Forerunner Halo worlds that blew to smithereens while you were trying to mind your own business on guard duty. Maybe spending the rest of his life being punished for his part in the loss of a cruiser had an upside. For starters, the lack of combat meant he might actually have the rest of a life to spend. It was all a matter of perspective. The door opened with an electronic whine and a Silver Grunt stomped in.
"I have good news. It has been decided that you will perform no further punishment duties," said the Silver.
Doodu hopped from foot to foot. He had been a model prisoner. Could this be time off for good behaviour? Or maybe even a pardon? Perhaps that cyborg hadn't brought him such bad luck after all.
The Silver produced a plasma pistol and pointed it at Doodu.
"You've volunteered for a suicide mission."
Jonah took in the view. He was standing in a valley that had been burned and frozen in rapid succession. What little atmosphere there was manifested itself as a whipping, howling wind. And then there was that eerie, twisting sky, dotted with cartwheeling sections of a broken artificial world.
Bean stared at Jonah. "You're him aren't you? The one they all talk about?"
"Er, no," said Jonah, "you're thinking of the Master Chief. We share some similarities, I suppose, around the visor. My guess is this is his handiwork. His answer to anything was always to blow it up. Whenever he got asked a problem in math class everybody ducked."
"No, you're Jonah. You took out a Covenant cruiser single-handed. They gave you the designation Oh Thirteen, because if any Covenant cross your path, their luck just ran out," said Bean.
Jonah snorted. His fellow Spartans had actually named him Oh Thirteen because he was the biggest jinx in the universe. He imagined Bean would find that out first hand soon enough.
"So then, let's fix up your boarding craft and get off this thing," he said.
Bean gave him a wry smile. "That might be a bit tricky now." She pointed behind Jonah.
He turned around. The pile of wreckage from which he had clambered was just recognisable as the remains of a Covenant boarding craft. It had been totalled by a severe impact. At the epicentre of the damage sat Jonah's cryo-tube.
"Of course," said Jonah.
"Tough little beauties those cryo-tubes," said Bean. "Scanned it inbound, got suited up and watched you come down from a safe distance."
"Plan B then," said Jonah. "Make camp, set up a transponder, sit it out and wait for rescue." He held up a hand. "No wait. Don't tell me. Your air supply is running out?"
"Oh no, we have plenty of air and my suit can extract more from the atmosphere this structure still retains," said Bean cheerfully. "No, air's not the problem."
Jonah knew a 'but' coming when he heard one.
"But..." said Bean. She detached her Scanalyzer from its hip holster, tapped a couple of keys and held it up.
Jonah looked at the display. Then he looked up at the sky. Every few minutes, the moon Basis and the gas giant Threshold zig zagged through the rotating heavens. Jonah pointed at Threshold.
"We're heading towards that?" he asked.
"Oh yes."
"How long 'til we hit?"
"Oh, months."
Jonah seemed surprised. "That doesn't sound too bad."
"Ah well, of course surface temperatures will be intolerable within a matter of hours. Maybe a day at the outside."
"That's more like it," said Jonah with a sigh.
"On the bright side, things couldn't get much worse," said Bean.
Jonah was about to suggest she wouldn't get particularly good odds on that when her Scanalyzer lit up and began beeping.
"Oh," she said. She looked up past the valley wall. Jonah followed her gaze. A few seconds later, Half a dozen Covenant dropships and a small ship of unfamiliar, yet definitely Covenant design, loomed up over them.
"This," said Jonah, "is why they call me Oh Thirteen."
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