With a groan, Kat tried to lift her head. Splintered titanium was stuck in the back of her head and she felt the wounds bleed down her neck. It was hard to remember what happened. She lay on the floor of a bright green forest. She was surrounded by trees and her instincts screamed at her to scan the area for hostile contacts. Ignoring the pain, she stood up, got into firing stance and drew her magnum. Nothing was in sight. She tried to make sense of the proximity sensor to be sure, but the few contacts seemed to be wildlife.

The air was cold and fresh, a far cry from the stale air of UNSC starships.

Kat wasn't all that interested in her environment though...

"How did I get here?", she muttered. It was hard to remember for a moment but then the memory returned, when she saw the radiation warning plate on her wrist. It was tainted almost entirely black. Radiation... Slipspace. The UNSC Bolivar had been an old Charon-Class Frigate. She had tried to repair the failing Slipspace drive. Something had happened...

Kat tried her best to remember and the memory came back. The ship had been hit by an exploding plasma torpedo, just as they had tried to enter slipspace. It had fucked up the drive and things had gone nuts. The overload of the rift had brought the ship way off course and Kat had tried to get the drive to emergency-abort them out of Slipspace. She remembered how the lots of systems had just exploded from the energy overload, crippling the ship. She had thought that would be her end.

Kat was relieved, that she did manage to get the drive to spill the ship back into reality, but the old ship had been ripped apart by the mayhem of random currents in that incredibly crude jump.

"The Drop Pod!", she remembered. Just before the reactor had gone critical, she had made it to the drop pods.

A wave of guilt swept over Kat's outwardly concentrated attitude. She had failed. The Sangheili Marshal they had captured must have died. Beta-Company had lost eight Spartans in that Operation, but they had sucessfully boarded and captured a Supercarrier. Or at least jumped it to a prepared point in interstellar space where multiple Regiments of UNSC-Marines would capture it. HIGHCOM wanted that ship and the Elite-Officer for a future Operation labeled "Red Flag". Kat hoped that the carrier was sufficient. It stung to know that they had failed their goal of perfection. That she had failed. LTC Ambrose had put quite a lot of trust into her and Noble Team by giving them Mjolnir Armor.

There was a more pressing line of thought, however.

Kat knew how she got away, but how was it possible, that there was a planet so conveniently placed and her drop pod ended up in a pefect angle for the landing, steering for a landmass was beyond her.

She wasn't religious, but she didn't have to do any math to figure out, that there was no way this could be coincidence. At least that there was a planet that near. Was this planet supposed to be the evac point for the ship? It just had to be. There was no way she could have this amount of luck without either the very unlikely option of divine intervention or ONI somehow being responsible. Maybe continued interaction with ONI had made her overtly paranoid, but Kat liked to blame everything unexplainable on Margarete Paragonsky.

Focusing her thoughts on the situation again, she holstered her beloved Magnum and flipped on the safety. She had to find out if the planet was harbouring intelligent life. Preferably human, but Kat knew that this would have breached the Cole Protocol. She hated that thought, but the only rational option was, that she was alone. Maybe ONI would send a retrieval team, if the planet actually was the intended destination of the jump.

Kat's drop pod was nearby, stuck in a little pond. She walked up to it and examined the interior. In there were an M392 DMR, a lot of .338 Lapua magazines and an MRE. She still had the simple backpack that she had used to carry around tools and explosives during the raid on the Covenant outpost. Kat only took the MRE and filled the rest of the backpack full of ammo. She didn't know how much she might need and if she could find the pod again. Sattelite connection was completely offline.

It was one of these moments, where she was thankful for the rigorous training regiment of the Spartans. One of the first things for them to learn had been surviving. She would do fine, but hoped ONI wouldn't take too much time searching for the lost ship. If not actually caring for the lives of their pawns, ONI loved their strategic assets and that captured Elite-Officer had been important. Maybe they could pick her up, if she survived long enough groundside. She made sure, there was a beacon active in the pod, after all.

With everything packed up, she thought what direction she should go in. To, (what her compass said was) the North, she saw snow covered mountains. It looked promising. From one of those she might be able to get a better picture of the area.

By going through the forest, Kat was able to gather some bits of information about the wildlife and she immediately noticed that the planet whe was on obviously contained the traces of human meddling. Most of the trees she saw were native to Earth. On the way, she also spotted a rabbit, wich made the engineered nature of the ecosystem clear. She could already narrow down the options to a little spectrum: The planet was either in the process of being terraformed or already completely made habitable to terran life.

In turn, this opened up the possibility of the planet being already settled. That would mean the Frigate breached Cole Protocol, though and that was out of question. On a mission of strategic importance, there wouldn't be an unreliable Captain assigned to a ship.

It was strange, indeed. Probably the planet wasn't settled yet.

Then she felt something knock against her knee. It was only slight, but Kat heard something plinging.

She looked down and saw that an arrow had bounced off her armor.

Military reflexes were awakened immediately and she threw herself on the ground. Trying to find the source.

Her armor helped a lot with blending into the environment. It was some old German Woodland camo scheme, that the analysts had determined to be best suited for the original mission. It fit into this new forest perfectly.

The other figures in the forest did not have that privilige and Kat silently gasped when she saw a few blue clad warriors with swords cowering behind trees. They were humans.

Kats thoughts started to work overdrive.

Human soldiers in medieval combat gear. They had taken cover and arrows were flying around them. For a moment she thought this was a movie being shot or civilians doing some kind military-themed recreational activity. But she remembered that those arrows were sharp. There was an intent to kill and that invoked a lot of questions.

She saw the attackers shooting their bows from treetops, into the blues. A few had went down and the wounds were real. From this she deduced, that there was genuinely no modern combat gear available for both sides of the skirmish.

Kat quickly fomulated a quick scenario. She was on a UNSC planet, that was settled. There was a civil war going on, but no conventional firearms available, thus forcing the locals to rely on a low-tech solution. That was the only explaination she could come up with, that didn't involve time-travel and the impossibility to end up on medieval earth.

From the fact that no more arrows were shot her way, she guessed that the archers hadn't detected her and the hit had been accidental.

For a moment she considered joining the fight on side of the blues in the hope they were loyalists, but decied against it. She needed more intel before she could reveal herself.

She observed the fight a little longer while lying in the bushes and one by one the blue soldiers died. They lacked ranged weapons and seemed to favour axes, thus they couldn't fight back effectively.

Kat redirected her attention to the motion tracker. There was a contact behind her. A few metres. She rolled onto her back and a sword struck the ground where she lay a second ago.

The trained responses of CQC training kicked in. Kat kicked gold-clad figure from below. She threw the attacker back a meter, then drew her combat knife while jumping into fighting stance. The enemy swung the sword again from the upper right side. She was too tall to duck, thus she used a technique her comrade Emile taught her. Instead of parrying, she threw herself at the unshielded enemy. He couldn't effectively stab her at zero range, so she just grabbed the small swordsman by the waist. She headbutted him hard, then threw him on the ground hard.

She heard something snap behind her.

Another gold-clad figure in elegant armor swung a one-handed sword at Kat and she dodged. The second attacker was off-balance after the missed heavy blow. Noble Two used the moment to simply drive her combat knife into the spine and the carotid artery. Attacker two was dead instantly.

Not wasting time, Kat ran towards the still lying number one and stomped down on his head. She didn't look, but heard the wet squelching sound.

She knelt down again, raised her Magnum in her left hand and scanned the enviroment. Another three golden attackers surrounded her, but didn't attack. It gave Kat a moment to analyse. The faces of the attackers were clearly humanoid, but abnormally angular and the skin had a golden tone. The armor was artistically crafted, but seemed light and valued agility, further emphasized by it's avian design.

For a moment both sides just stared at each other, analyzing. Kat saw the fear in the eyes of her opponents, though. A natural reaction that she as a Spartan was used to. But there was also a lot of curiosity. That was a good sign.

Kat lowered her weapons a bit, hoping for a similiar response by the golden troops. She hoped there was a way to talk to them.

They didn't let their guard down, but Kat was confident she could block anytime, one tried to strike at her.

"Who are you?", she asked in a calm voice.

The attackers didn't answer. All of them attacked at once, but Kat was fast. She dodged the first swing like a russian ballerina, did one step to get behind the poor female soldier and grabbed her by the neck. The second tried to attack her with an axe from behind, but Kat swung number 1 at him like a ragdoll, breaking her neck in the process. Two was thrown off balance, but the time-consuming move by Kat granted enemy number 3 a glancing hit at her armor, when she botched her dodge.

Caught off-guard, Kat threw herself on the ground, back first, and shot the man two times with her Magnum. Gore from the exit-wound sprayed over the grass.

When she had to roll over and jump up again, she cursed her impulse-reaction. She had wasted two bullets on a harmless enemy with a metal sword. However, after fighting a Sangheili Marschal only a few hours ago, she still had the tactics of anti-covenant CQB in mind.

Not wasting time, she bull-rushed number two and killed him by punching him so hard, his skull cracked and splinters destroyed his brain.

At this point, she had become the center of all the attention. The blues were all lying on the ground. Curiously, a few of them weren't dead. Instead, they were dragged away by the soldiers as if they were ragdolls. It took a moment before Kat knew what was going on. They used paralyzing arrows. Probably poison-based. She curiously noticed, that they immediately gagged the man who wore more official clothes than the soldiers around him.

The fighting had come to an end and a literal horde of gold-clad soldiers surrounded her, while Archers in leather armor repositioned and took aim at her.

No one made a move. Everyone was too confused by the situation and Kat knew she had probably made an intimidating impression.

She symbolically and slowly started to holster her Magnum and sheath her knife. The mysterious soldiers didn't follow the example, but did not use the opportunity to attack either.

The standoff was interrupted by a group of riders and a carriage arriving. On the wagon, a group of black-robed warriors sat and immediately disembarked upon arrival and got into cover, aiming strange staffs at Kat. They reminded her of a medieval SWAT-Team. Their choice of equipment was strange, though.

What spiked caught her interest was one of the rider's, though. He was obviously human and he was the last hint Kat needed to remember why the leather clad humans looked so familiar. The rider looked exactly like a roman General.

That was a start. She tried to remember if she knew any sentence in Latin, that made sense in her current context, but failed. Instead, she just stood there. At that point Kat knew she could handle an escalation of the situation, if it happened. They had nothing to penetrate her armor and the only thing they could scratch was her paintjob or pride.

Kat was always very perfectionist in her approach of melee-training. In training, she always couldn't help but remember that if the training knifes that managed to hit her were Plasma Swords, she'd be dead. It was a paranoia that kept her alive through an impressive record of missions.

The other rider was a women. Or at least the golden-skinned humanoid looked female. It was sure by now, that they were a different race. Or at least some kind of heavily evolved or mutated kind of human. Again, questions.

For a moment, they both shot the gagged man in fancy clothes a spiteful, but satisfied look and then directed their full attention at Kat.

She saw them observing her, just like she did them.

With the zoom-mode of her helmet, she had a good view on their faces. 'Goldie', as Kat now labeled the female, seemed straight up hostile. Sneering and judging, but calculating too.

The old man looked more curious and worried. It was obvious who commanded whom. He seemed to be in charge of the Legionaires. While the Commander kept her in sight, he looked around at his subordinates in worry.

Her first impression of him was rather positive. He seemed genuinely worried about the wellbeing of his troops and probably willing to at approach the situation diplomatically. Of course Kat was ready to kill him and already mentally prepared a Plan B, but she had to find a way back to the UNSC and a necessary part of that was initiating constructive contact with the locals. Better now than never.

"Who are you?", asked the officer in fluent english.

Kat thought for a moment. Should she use her real name? It always seemed a bit private to her. From the age of her recruitment into the Spartan-III program, she had always learned it that way. She wasn't even sure if Catherine or Katarina was her real name.

She decided to try.

"Katarina. B-320.", she answered simply. Of course that opened up more questions by the General to be asked, but Kat needed to provoke him into revealing more bits of information, so she could actually form a plan what to do. Improvising based on gut-feelings was a horribly flawed approach.

"You are a soldier. Who do you serve? And don't waste my time with evasions. You are caught alongside wanted Rebels and killed six Altmeri Soldiers. Either your explaination is good or we execute you on the spot."

Well... That worked. At least he was honest.

"Spartan Company Beta. Naval Special Warfare Command. My exact mission is classfied and breach of operational security is punished by immediate execution. I lost orientation in the forest and tried to reach higher ground. Then I took an arrow to the knee and got attacked by unknown soldiers.", she explained, staring at the Roman Officer.

It was obvious he neither believed her, nor was in any way satisfied with the answer. That in itself was a major piece of intel. A Civil War was going on and the UNSC wasn't involved. An alien species was involved and it was on the side of the loyalists.

The scenario just got a lot more complicated. Really, the only possibility she could think of was a lost colony ship crashed on an alien homeworld and technology regressed. Every other altenative, she placed into the "crazy sci-fi wormhole" category of pseudoscientific speculation.

For a moment the officer was lost in thought, but that changed, as soon as Kat saw the incoming danger.

While both had talked the alien women had done something. There was a visisible electric charge building up in her right hand.

Kat tried to avoid it, but even her Spartan Reflexes couldn't save her from that kind of barrage. The electric arc hit her instantly after release and the sheer strenght of the charge eneabled to attack to get through the safety mechanisms of her suit. It was mildly painful, but caused Kat to drop her quickly drawn Magnum in pain. The initial attack was followed up by the robed Alien-SWAT firing what appeared to be arc-rifles from their cover.

This was too much. So much voltage was overloading the systems, the system started to lockdown and Kat fell to the ground. She tried to push herself back up, but another salvo of a dozen arc-charges knocked her out cold.

"I had the situation under control!", General Tullius snapped at the Elven Ambassador, who was appearently trying to mask her fear with more smugness. "This is an internal Imperial matter."

The Altmer just glared at him both arrogantly and angry.

"This stopped being an exclusively Imperial matter, the moment this monster killed six of my Thalmor Agents.", she sneered. "But I am feeling kind today. The Empire can have the body."

Elenwen turned her horse around and rode to the waiting carriages, but added:

"Let's get these prisoners to... What was is called? Helgen?"

Damn elf knew very well what the name was, but just had to add a petty insult that human culture was beneath her. How much he would love jamming a broadsword in that smug face, he thought while getting off his horse.

"Recruit...", he asked and paused trying to remember the name of the man he was pointing at.

"Tarek, Sir.", explained the Redguard.

"Tarek, get the men to load her on the second carriage. We get those Stormcloak corpses in a second tour.", the General ordered, then grabbed the soldier when he wanted to go.

"And pretend not to notice that she is still alive. As soon as we are in Helgen, I want answers without Thalmor spies breathing down my neck. Store her in a barn or something and shackle her good, when the Elves aren't looking.", he whispered.

The soldier looked taken aback, but didn't mind screwing over the Elves in the slightest.

"How do you know she lives, Sir?", he asked quietly.

"I've seen her twitching. Either she is pretenting to be dead and listening, or she'll have the common sense to play dead until she has an opportunity to escape.", he explained and signaled the soldier to get a few more men. The armor was obviously heavy and up-close Tullius saw that it was sealed perfectly with intricate mechanisms that made Dwemer engineering look simplistic.

He knew that this women was far more than a wanderer who got lost. Far more and he intended to find out what was going on.

AN:

Well... This is another idea that suddenly came to my mind. I think Kat is a really unerappreciated character in Halo Fanfiction, so I thought myself: Why not?

Also, to my followers: I made good progress with rewriting the first chapters of "The Last Prussian" over the last two weeks. I will be finished soon.