Chapter One

1107 HOURS, OCTOBER 09, 2545 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ SOL SYSTEM (ERROR/SOURCE UNRELIABLE), PLANET EARTH (ERROR/SOURCE UNRELIABLE) \ STATE OF MISSOURI

The radscorpion scurried along on its numerous legs with a winding pattern, drifting one way and then the next as new things kept occupying its simplistic mind, latching onto whatever was shiny enough or moved even the slightest to catch its attention to either chew on it or grasp the item with an oversized pincer, before invariably losing interest and moving on. As it did, the radscorpion had a feeling that it was being watched by something, or as close to a feeling as can be achieved in the mind of a mutated arachnid roaming the desolate wastelands of Missouri.

Less than twenty yards away, Scott-B124 of Spartan Fireteam Kilo kept track of the radscorpion in the scope of his Spartan Carbine, crosshairs resting squarely on the joint of the oversized pincer where the hardened outer carapace softened to allow flexibility whilst moving. It was still tough and resilient to attack, hence why he had chambered armour piercing rounds, but offered the best chance to break through and cause internal damage. Opposite him was Jack-B110 and Claire-B299, both also armed with Spartan Carbines loaded with AP rounds, and further back was Joan-B040 who hefted a sniper rifle instead.

He watched as the radscorpion continuously paused here and there, pivoting on its eight legs as though looking for something, or could actually sense the four Spartans watching it despite their camouflage systems enabling them to blend in with pretty much every environment. The Semi-Powered Infiltration armour was nowhere near as technologically advanced as Covenant AvCam systems that bent light to render a user invisible to the naked eye, instead relying on photo reactive panels that mimicked the colour and texture of the surrounding scenery to make it appear they were part of the scenery.

The radscorpion came close to his position behind the trunk of a fallen tree, even verged on looking directly at the defiladed Spartan, but changed its mind and scuttled onward in its journey to parts unknown after about a second's deliberation, to which Scott responded by relaxing slightly and taking his finger off the trigger.

'I bet we could have taken it, boss,' Jack said once the radscorpion was gone, speaking over TEAMCOM.

'To what end?' Scott said back.

'I dunno,' Jack said. 'Collected its meat or something, maybe the stinger. People use them here, right?'

'Do you know which parts to take?' Claire asked.

'I dunno,' Jack said again. 'I'd have figured it out.'

'Eventually,' Joan added. 'Jack, leave the thinking to the adults. You're just the muscle here, after all.'

'And that's why you love me.'

The four Spartans broke from cover and formed up again on the road they had been walking along until Joan spotted the arachnid, powering down their camouflage panels to reveal Fireteam Kilo to any casual observer but even then, light seemed to just slide off the suits' edges to make getting a clear image a difficult task. From afar they looked like adults, all four being approximately six feet tall in height with Jack being an inch or two higher and Joan an inch or two shorter, though up close and without their helmets the Spartans of Kilo appeared to be no older than fourteen or fifteen, which was true.

Singled out by ONI at a young age due to them all being war orphans, the members of Fireteam Kilo had volunteered to join the Spartan-III program as a means of getting bloody revenge against those who had killed their parents, almost invariably the alien theocratic alliance known as the Covenant that was pressing inwards on humanity's territory with the express intent of killing them all in the name of their religion. Following a night jump back in 2539 as part of the screening process, the Spartans of what would become Beta Company spent the next six years training in the art of warfare under Lieutenant Ambrose, Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez, and their veritable army of drill instructors made up of the UNSC's best NCOs and Alpha Company washouts, candidates from the previous generation of Threes who went out of their way to make lives for the new batch an absolute living hell.

The express intent of the Spartan-III program was to create a fighting force of augmented supersoldiers that could be thrown at the seemingly unstoppable Covenant in an effort to slow them down, if even for just a few weeks and at a cost of the entire company. The whole of Alpha Company had died to the last during an operation to neutralise a Covenant shipbuilding yard on the peripheries of UNSC space mere months after activation. Scott was certain the same would happen to Beta Company at some point in the future but rather than feel slighted at the UNSC carelessly throwing away so many lives, he would gladly commit to such a mission if it meant killing Covenant soldiers and hurting their war efforts.

That being said, he and his team wouldn't actually be able to join such a mission if the UNSC was organising one because they actually had no way of getting in contact with anyone in HIGHCOM, and neither did they have any way of actually confirming where they were. Lieutenant Ambrose had selected Fireteam Kilo to take part in a counter-Insurrection operation on the Outer Colony of Roost where their role was to observe and report any Insurrectionist activity to follow on Marine forces who were going to quell any and all rebel groups before they could grow potent enough to overthrow the government.

Except that something had gone wrong with the drop somehow, and rather than landing on a lush jungle planet the Spartans of Kilo found themselves in a radioactive desert being fought over by a band of slavers styling themselves on Julius Caesar's Roman Legion and a fledgling nation styling itself on the now defunct United States. All points suggested an error had occurred during deployment of their drop pods and the UNSC Pillar of Autumn was off course by a wide margin when launching, and Kilo instead landed on some long forgotten colony that had descended into anarchy and war.

The problem with this theory was the prevailing opinion of the people living here that this planet was actually Earth, humanity's homeworld, and that a great nuclear exchange had taken place some two-hundred years prior between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China and humanity had never made it past landing on the Moon in regards to space exploration and colonisation. By and large the ruins Kilo saw seemed to support this fact with half-rotted billboards advertising things like a vacation destination or a pastime as an American tradition, but at the same time the technology they came across was so antiquated next to what humanity had even two-hundred years ago. Vacuum tubes were still common despite transistors and semiconductors becoming the cornerstone of almost all electronic devices built by humanity, and what few nuclear power plants they came across relied on fission to generate electricity rather than fusion.

Kilo had come up with two possible theories about why this was; one improbable and one impossible. The first held that this still was a UNSC colony, albeit one everybody had forgotten about long ago and where the population suffered from some form of mass delusion that convinced them they actually were on Earth and living in America. The other was that Kilo had somehow crossed over into a parallel dimension, and of the two it was this one that Scott found himself leaning towards more and more.

Jack was the one to suggest the theory in the absence of any credible explanation that didn't hinge on an entire planet regressing their technological level to that of the 1940s and 50s, losing their FTL capable ships, and then suffering the same mass delusion that their planet was actually Earth and they were all living in what had once been the United States of America. It answered one question but raised numerous others, the least of which was how they got here to begin with.

How were they going to get back to their home universe? Could they go back? Which group should they align with until they figured this out? What would they do to keep themselves occupied until such a time they could go home?

The matter of getting home was, as yet, uncertain to the four Spartans but they had found a group they could ally themselves with, if only temporarily, in the form of the New California Republic. In exchange for information and supplies, Kilo assisted the NCR in retaking the Mojave Wasteland back from Caesar's Legion to secure a pivotal source of freshwater and power, and a city that had the potential to generate the necessary revenue to support further expansion. On paper it sounded great, especially given the NCR extolled law and order above all else, though a closer look suggested a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy that trampled the masses underfoot in pursuit of profits for the major companies.

Conditions like this had created the Insurrection and pushed humanity into a civil war that had the potential to plunge humanity into a civil war that would kill billions and create a new Dark Age amongst the colonies and Earth. Rumblings had been spreading amongst some of the frontier settlements of the NCR about unequal representation within the government and Kilo had no intention of participating in a civil war or quelling civil unrest should such a situation arise. Though the Insurrection had genuine grievances against the CAA, their tactics were far too brutal for them to be seen as anything other than a threat that needed to be taken down.

So after helping recapture Vegas and acquiring new weapons, they had slipped away during the night to try and link up with a splinter group of another faction that had come out of California, the Brotherhood of Steel, that was allegedly using the technology they recovered to better the lives of the people living within their sphere of influence in the area surrounding Washington, DC. The actual political situation there was unknown to anyone in the NCR, meaning anything ranging from a peaceful nation state to full on civil war could have happened, so part of Kilo's trek across America was to find a suitable home for themselves if DC fell through.

Nothing thus far had shown any promise of a stable homestead that could blossom into an organisation or government that might offer stability and protection to the masses of the wasteland at large, the closest yet being the NCR that was edging closer to civil unrest and revolt, but they still had plenty of land to cover with plenty of settlements and post-war factions waiting to be discovered.

1450 HOURS, OCTOBER 09, 2545 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ SOL SYSTEM (ERROR/SOURCE UNRELIABLE), PLANET EARTH (ERROR/SOURCE UNRELIABLE) \ STATE OF MISSOURI

There wasn't much that could stop a determined squad of Spartans from accomplishing their objectives short of orbiting ships that had weapons capable of melting dirt into glass, and even they could be stopped via boarding actions in certain situations, but the one thing that accounted for the most amount of blown missions or failed objectives was the same thing that was also their best friend during operations.

Nature.

Be it a deeply wooded area that denied access to vehicles or low lying hills that screwed with targeting radars, nature was the single largest deciding factor in a battle's outcome after maybe logistics. It dictated the avenues of approach and retreat, provided cover for attackers and defenders alike, or simply provided an obstacle that couldn't be passed easily like a mountain range or swampland, or like now a river.

Kilo stood on the bank of the Mississippi River looking out across the raging floodwaters that composed it, a violent churning of water turned a murky brown by sediments stirred up by the current and who knew what other contaminants that soured the land. Across from them was what remained of the bridge that had once stood here, little more than rusted struts and crumbling asphalt from when the river had swept away the construction, and the road it had served.

'Well,' Jack said. 'Crap.'

'Yeah,' Scott said in agreement, idly nodding his head.

It was barely thirty metres from one bank to another where they stood, an easy feat for even the most novice of swimmers, but the current looked to be wickedly fast and strong enough that even Spartans, especially ones laden down with as much equipment as Kilo, would get swept along without too much hassle to be thrown into any number of rocks or wrecks and suffer grievous injuries they couldn't easily fix. Assuming, of course, they could be fished out in time by somebody else.

There was too much of a risk to try and cross the river here in its current state meaning Kilo could either find another intact bridge, a rarity in this day and age given the lack of care, or wait nearby until the waters calmed and they were able to swim or be taken across by a ferry. As they had no idea how far it might be to the next bridge, assuming there was one, the four Spartans made the unanimous decision to wait it out.

Together they span on their collective heels and began walking back into the town built directly adjacent to the bridge, a rundown place barely ten blocks to a side and half filled by boarded up buildings that hadn't seen a human inhabitant in centuries. The other half was more vibrant and alive but not by much, with most of the people who lived here doing their best to cover up windows and doors with planks of wood as though they were expect a hurricane or tornado to rip through town.

All of them had regarded the Spartans with a mixture of emotions when they first walked through town, curiosity being one of the chief ones but mixed in with that was a healthy dose of pity and worry like they knew something was about to befall the four of them but there was nothing that could be done to prevent it, like the bridge being out and the river being flooded, but at the same time Scott felt it was something else.

He was certain these people were readying themselves for an attack rather than preparing for violent weather, though he couldn't imagine from what as neither he nor his team had seen any evidence of raider gangs operating in the region or even violent mutants like feral ghouls. Perhaps it was a response to seeing four armoured and armed people walk into town, though the level of progress in some areas suggested they had worked on this hours before Kilo's arrival.

It was gnawing at the young Spartan as he entered the town's general store, a dimly lit affair that stocked such a random assortment of goods and junk that Scott was sure this was actually the home of a crazy hoarder rather than a merchant, only to remind himself that everything served a purpose in a wasteland, even if it wasn't the intended use for that item, and he zeroed in on the owner of the store.

'Lookin' fer somethin'?' the owner said, a wizened old man with a stooped back and a flowing white beard that made him look like an old wizard or apothecary, which actually fitted in with the store's general theme of having anything and everything.

'Supplies,' Scott said, directing his team to comb through the racking for whatever they might be short on or felt could be useful in the future. 'And information.'

'On crossin' the Missus?' the shopkeeper said.

'Yes,' Scott said, not even bothering to ask how the man knew what the subject would be. Everyone had watched them walk through town and to where, so conclusions wouldn't be hard to draw.

'Oh, she ain't settlin' fer another week or so,' the shopkeeper said. 'She's in one o' them moods.'

He cackled and let loose a wheezing laugh that sounded like he was dying, stooping even lower to slap his knee in merriment before turning back to Scott.

'Can she be crossed?' Scott asked.

'Of course!' the shopkeeper said. 'She's cross now. That's why she's a churnin' an' a turnin'. Ain't nobody crossin' the Missus till she's settled.'

He let out that same laugh and slapped the same knee like his joke was pure comedy gold, which it maybe was but to Scott it was just irritating him. He wanted some kind of information on getting across the Mississippi as quickly as possible so he and his team could continue their onward journey, and to leave town before whatever was supposed to hit the town actually got here, and jokes about rivers getting PMS wasn't helping in that regard.

'Is there a way to get across?' Scott said, his tone clipped and dry to try and let the shopkeeper know this wasn't the time to be joking around.

'Not until she calms down,' the shopkeeper said. 'Used to be a bridge here, as I'm sure ya saw, but that got swept away long afore my time. Now it's down to Ol' Steve an' his raft, but he don't take anyone across the Missus when she's in a mood. Too dangerous.'

'And it's going to be a week before the river settles,' Scott said. 'Isn't it?'

The shopkeeper waved a knowing finger at the Spartan and offered a crooked smile revealing several missing teeth, adding, 'Yer a smart one, fella. Yep, the Missus is gonna be in a mood fer at least a week by my reckonin', which means Ol' Steve an' his raft are staying put until then. Yer in luck, fella. You an' ya group.'

'How so?' Scott asked.

'Cause yer on this side the Missus rather than the other!' The old man laughed. 'Ain't nuthin' that side the Missus but miles an' miles of open land that offer no shelter, no nuthin', against the elements. Yeah, yer lucky to be here, fella.'

'I... see,' Scott said.

The old man's accent was making it difficult at time to discern what it was he was actually saying, a fact not helped by his apparent eccentricity, but he was managing to get the gist of it all. Had they been moving east to west, their accommodations might have amounted to making a lean too against whatever trees were present with anything they could scavenge. Here, on this side, they could choose between an empty house or maybe even a functional motel assuming this town had one.

'Is there anywhere in town we can stay?' Scott asked. 'A motel or hotel, maybe?'

'Course,' the shopkeeper said. 'Wouldn't be much of a stopover town without one, fella. Yer gonna wanna go one block north from here, then two to yer west. Can't miss it.'

'Thank you,' Scott said, turning to look out the front window at a couple hammering nails into place over a window. 'Are you expecting trouble in the coming days?'

'Trouble?' the shopkeeper said. 'Why'd ya say that, fella?'

'People are fortifying their homes,' Scott said, pointing at the couple. 'Either against violent winds or an attack of some kind.'

'That explains why people were comin' in fer nails an' hammers yesterday an' today,' the shopkeeper said. He paused and stroked his beard in deep thought, ruminating on something, then asked, 'Say, fella, ya been watching the moon?'

'To a certain degree,' Scott said slowly, unsure of where this new line of questioning was leading.

'Is it gettin' close to full?'

'I believe so. Maybe three days until it is.'

'An' the Missus is in a mood, yeah?'

'Yes.'

'Ah.'

The shopkeeper went quiet at that and continued stroking his beard, lost in thought as his eyes flickered one way and then the other as he dwelled on something with the occasional look at Scott and his team as they scoured the aisles for supplies, more specifically their weapons. It amounted to four Spartan Carbines, modified marksman carbines that mounted integrated suppressors and reinforced components, a sniper rifle with much the same modifications, and a twelve gauge pump action shotgun. Hardly an arsenal but entirely adequate for a team of Spartans that utilised stealth and coordination to take out enemies.

'Yer a soldier, ain't ya?' the shopkeeper asked.

'Yes,' Scott said.

'A good one?'

'Yes,' Scott said again.

The shopkeeper nodded.

'If yer plannin' on stayin' in town, ya might want to make yer team known to the mayor,' the shopkeeper said. 'Four good soldiers might be just what we need to take on them.'