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Chapter 1

The Pelican roared over the vast blue ocean, the tech team was scanning for the source. Several years ago, UNSC physicists had discovered a coded fractal signal originating from the base of an underwater structure on this world. Its mere presence suggested something intelligent had put it there. UNSC wanted to know why.

Keyes stowed his gear calmly and deliberately while chewing a spent cigar. He knew what was in store and tried to calm himself. The Bald Eagle had taken heavy debris damage before atmospheric entry; they were going to cut the mission short. Thirty-six hours in a Pelican, one underwater excavation team, seven marines, and six hundred pounds of heavy equipment.

The UNSC had heavily funded this excavation team, and Keyes knew how lucky he was to be a part of it. Preliminary readings showed no signs of civilization or technology on this tiny blue world save the strange underwater structure. No land masses, just one giant ocean of H20.

Biologists at the mission briefing had made it clear they were to enter the water for no other purpose than to examine the target, for which they had a timeframe of no more than ninety seconds spent in the black unknown. An atmosphere similar to earths with less pressure had several unsettling implications about the efficiency of marine predators in this new world. Initial spectroscopy indicated a startling array of biodiversity and aquatic life. Keyes was glad he was not part of the underwater team.

He had heard stories of crews that went down on new planets. It was the stuff horror was made of. Not surprisingly, the discovery of an alien predator often coincided with the disappearance of entire seeding crews. Advanced alien predators, flesh-eating bacteria colonies, artifacts from a long gone civilization radically more advanced than our own. It was all out there, and UNSC could not wait to get their hands on it. It was only recently that mass scale exploration had suddenly stopped. The discovery of intelligent life beyond humanity had become a terrifying new reality. People from worlds everywhere were speaking in hushed tones of this "Covenant". This new enemy was said to be ruthless, cunning, and unstoppable. The marine's armed presence was originally intended to be a matter of policy; now, toting twice their intended arsenal, it was a matter of protection. The UNSC was not taking any chances with alien life encounters. Apparently, the recent destruction of several colony worlds had finally been enough to grab their attention and beef up these expeditions.

The team was never designed to work on a tight timeframe, and the overall mood of the crew was ominous. Sergeant Berg had not spoken since this morning. Keyes wiped the thoughts out of his tired mind. That was not his business now. He made the necessary modifications to the radar lenses on his rifle.

Transmissions from the Bald Eagle had ceased two hours ago. Sergeant Berg made the call to cut their losses and turn around. This had a visible effect on the entire crew. They still were not halfway back to ship and were flying low for the sake of data harvesting; with all this equipment, at least they would not be going back empty-handed.
Berg knew that he should say some words of encouragement, but stubbornly refused to. He wanted his crew to be nervous. Berg thought that among all of them, Keyes was the only one who actually understood the danger they were in right now. If they could not at least establish visible contact with the Bald Eagle, they might as well just jump in the water and die.

The truth is, even Keyes had gradually reached complacency on this seemingly serene aquatic world. He did not snap out of it until the crew began to speak in panicked tones and it was obvious something was happening. Berg gave Keyes a quiet look that told him a thousand things. Keyes did not like any of them.

Berg had not heard everything the techs were shouting back and forth to each other, but he had heard the pilot distinctively say, "slip-space rupture". The last thing they wanted was company.

It happened very quickly; Keyes did not even feel the attack happen. He simply regained consciousness with a painful jolt and saw blood. He ignored it. He saw something worse almost immediately. The Pelican was in the water.

He gave a quick snort in a vain attempt to clear the pulsating nausea. It did not work. Pain was on him like a glove. He only saw one body, unrecognizable. Hamburger meat in a uniform. There was no one else in the ship. An acrid smell stung his nostrils and hung in the air like smoke. An alarm sounded, muffled by the water that was slowly seeping in from the cockpit. The Pelican was sinking.

Keyes remembered Berg's expression just before the ship went down. They had been attacked. He knew that now. Sinking in an unknown ocean was not how Keyes intended to die.

The water began to lap around his head, and he realized that at his position, the water would submerge his head before his body. He tried hard to get up and heard a sickening snap. The pain was astonishing, even to him. He lit a cigar and tried to laugh, but now realized he had broken several ribs as well. He was a corpse, and he knew it.

The ship shrieked and jolted, as something brushed it from underneath, something big enough to jolt an entire Pelican.

Keyes noticed and made a mental note. He originally saw no way out of the partially submerged Pelican. Then, he had remembered the rockets. He would have to move fast; the ship was halfway under and there was no way he was firing a SPNKR underwater.

He hummed Mozart as bolts of pain coursed through his body. The distraction was worthless. He gave in and used his Fentanyl pack, huffing it all in one rail. Now he was going to have a mental battle as well as a physical one. At least the drugs made the pain workable. He continued to drag himself upwards toward the aft, his face grinding against the cold steel, the blood sticking to him, the smell of it in his nostrils, the taste in his mouth. He reached the compartment and lunged for it. Keyes ripped the compartment door clear off the hinges and within seconds pummeled the aft door with two explosive rounds as he fell backwards into the water.

Keyes saw stars, and realized he could not hear anything. He was underwater in the cockpit; outside the water was blackish blue. The Pelican was a submarine. He tried his luck at swimming, surprised he could still do it with only one working leg. He swam slowly and deliberately toward the hole he punched in the ship. He closed his mouth, pinched his nose, and blew out hard, an old diver's trick. He grabbed his gear and strapped it to his back. He was deep underwater, and he wondered how long he had been out. He cleared the ship and felt a sharp pang of palpable terror as he entered the open water. Keyes had always hated the water. The Pelican behind him sank like a stone, tugging him under in its wake. He inflated his life vest only to stab it out four seconds later with his knife in a last-ditch decompression stop several seconds before surfacing.

It was close to sunset and the orange sea surface was calm and bleak. Berg was bobbing unconsciously in his life jacket. A chubby technician floated face down next to the pilot. The pilot's name was Wilcox. He was sobbing uncontrollably, but alive. There was no one else.

Keyes unstrapped something from his back and shoved it at Wilcox before saying anything. He had brought the lifeboat from the Pelican.

Keyes swam immediately to Berg; Wilcox did not need any words of encouragement from Keyes. He knew Keyes very well and the situation was no longer hopeless. The Eagle might find them if they could just stay alive long enough.

The lifeboat hissed to life on the ocean, Keyes was glad Wilcox was getting in first; he knew he would not be able to get on without help.

As he swam toward Berg, something brushed his leg. He looked down, but the ocean was dark, the sun setting. He tried to focus on the task at hand. He would never have admitted it, but he was terrified. Keyes cursed Wilcox as he swam to Berg. Wilcox was busy trying to haul the dead technician on to the lifeboat.

"He's dead damn it, Berg might not be, come help me."

"Screw you, we're not leavin' him!"

Wilcox did not know Keyes was injured. Jacob was inches away from Berg. Berg slowly smiled at him, regaining consciousness. Before he could speak, Berg was pulled under.

Chapter 2

The sky was black. The system's twin moons did little to illuminate the ocean; they hung in the sky like a pair of dark eyes, uncaring and infinite. The ocean was still, the lifeboat motionless.

This loose star system was truly in the middle of nowhere; it had taken weeks of slipspace travel to get there from the nearest outer world colony. They were not even technically in the Orion arm. If the Eagle was lost, Keyes and Wilcox were the only humans for light years.

With all his effort, Keyes pulled himself out of the void and into grim reality.
The first thing he noticed when he awoke was the lack of pain in his leg. The only feeling he had was in his gut, the thought of what happened to Berg earlier made his stomach feel like he was in free-fall.

Keyes ignored the swirl of panic and sadness, trying to prop himself up. His body was numb. He knew that if he could not feel anything, he was dying. He tried wiggling the toes in the broken leg; the agony shot through him once again. He felt strengthened by it. At least he was still alive.

After Berg was pulled under, Keyes had scrambled out of the water and immediately lost consciousness. Wilcox had heavily medicated him, without knowing Keyes had already used a full Fentanyl pack. He then proceeded to set Jacob's broken tibia without even waking him.

Wilcox was still awake, shivering uncontrollably. Keyes asked him if his transponder was still working.

"Never stopped man, now just shut up and get some sleep. The Eagle will be here soon"

"Don't lie for my benefit Wilcox."

"Yeah, I guess you're a big boy now, and I can safely report that we are good and screwed. I actually lost contact with her awhile before we went down. That's why we cut the mission short in the first place. Look, I gave you my half my fents and Omnicef after you passed out, you should be numb for a while. In the mean time, got any bright ideas as to what the hell we're gonna do now?"

Wilcox tried to stop shivering. It was not possible. He was stark white, and his lips were blue. Both of the marines had stage one hypothermia, and had no idea how long the night would stretch on. The dead tech was still lying on the side of the boat, his body bloated and scorched from plasma, his outer clothing stripped and divided between them.

"Wilcox, I was knocked out before the Pelican went down, I don't even know what the hell happened? Were we attacked?"

"I thought you knew at least that much. A flight of Covie scouts cut us down in about ten seconds flat, then came about and picked off the survivors in the water. Luckily you were in the ship and I was submerged when that happened. You and Stevens were still onboard, so I shut the aft doors and bailed through the cockpit while it was sinking."

"You're sure it was Covenant that did this?"

"Yeah, I got a good look, I would even recognize a Banshee blind, anytime, anywhere. You can hear em."

"You've dealt with them em' before I take it?"

Wilcox had been stationed on the Bald Eagle, picking up geologists from Durban when Biko was glassed a year earlier. Forced to fly a prototype Albatross full of survivors through heavy fire, Wilcox's evasive maneuvers had become legend in the UNSC. Not surprisingly, moments after his dramatic arrival at the Eagle, Captain Wu took the vessel through slipspace in retreat. Apart from small contingents of Skyhawk Jumpjets and Longswords, the Bald Eagle had a completely inadequate amount of firepower. The ship's primary function was exploration and excavation of unexplored systems.

The Eagle had the most sophisticated detection systems available to the UNSC. They should have been monitoring the Pelican throughout their entire mission, arriving with the ship's squadron of Skyhawks moments after the attack.

Both of them assumed the worst had happened. They knew that the Banshees had to have come from a larger vessel. A larger vessel in orbit of this system would have easily identified and engaged the Eagle. They also knew they had lost contact with their ship.

"I hope Wu put up a good fight."

"You know they didn't have a chance."

Keyes was getting angry, he snapped at Wilcox.

"Listen Wilcox, you either wipe all of that hopeless crap out of your brain while we're still alive, or get in the water and start splashing erratically. I'm sure you would rather die quickly like Berg, than die of dehydration two days from now."

"Seven, there was water in that crate you brought up, and these things."

Wilcox held up a pair of large, bulky boots. They were prototypes designed for the underwater crew. They were connected to one other by a thin four foot cable. One held a vastly larger amount of electrical energy than the other, when activated, they would fry anything that touched them within a biomass range of one thousand kilos. The right materials and controlled magnetic fields completely insulated the wearer from damage, even underwater.

"Do we have a sidearm Wilcox?"

Wilcox gave Keyes his custom MD-3. Keyes examined it, finding a full clip. In the morning, he planned on firing off a few shots. If the Bald Eagle was not detecting them due to atmospheric interference or system malfunction, then using the gunshots to go after the ship's seismic or civ/tech detection systems was their only option. They had to assume the Eagle was still out there.

Keyes thought of Earth and the Covenant. The boat began to rock gently while they slept.

Chapter 3

The violet lights barely lit the narrow hallway. Paul Dyson woke up wounded and alone on a CSS Covenant Battle Cruiser. The crew of the Bald Eagle had been decimated. Of the fifty-six crewmembers on board, Dyson was one of three that were actually captured alive.
He was scheduled for interrogation today.

The Blade of Conversion had completely crippled the Eagle before the UNSC had even detected their presence. The Eagle never even launched a fighter.

The boarding craft came next. The Covenant's intention had clearly been to take prisoners, but Wu's orders had been clear over the intercom,

"Defend this ship, marines!"

The crew knew what this meant; fight to the death. The battle that resulted after Wu's defiant order had felt like Armageddon to Dyson. He had killed four, each one of them felt like it would be his last. The Bald Eagle and her crew did not go down easily. For five hours, the crew waged battle in a stubborn defense of their broken starship.

Dyson was on the bridge when their barricade finally cracked. Of the remaining crew, Captain Wu was the first to die, standing too close to the door when charges blew through it. Dyson's skull was grazed by shrapnel and his world went black, waking up in a purple cell. The other two survivors, the crew biologist Davis, and an engineer, Hutchens, had no choice but surrender.

Hutchens had been taken to the interrogation cell yesterday. In the night, Dyson thought he heard screaming coming from the room. He had looked across into Davis's cell. The look on her face told him that she heard it too.

He had spent the rest of the night pacing his cell like a caged animal. He was waiting for them. A large man, Dyson had practiced hand-to-hand combat for years. When they came, he would be ready to die fighting.

His military history was sketchy at best. He was no stranger to captivity, having spent three years moving through military prisons for "losing" a sizeable shipment of self-guiding nanowires. Although he had indeed secretly sold these on Jericho VII for enough money to retire comfortably, he was still UNSC property for five more years.

In the night, he had removed both metal shanks from his boots. Every time the guards spoke to one another, he would shapern the pieces by grinding them together.

He had removed both socks, and put his boots on without them. The socks were tied neatly around his wrists, and fashioned in such a manner as to house the deadly points just under his sleeves.

The footsteps began to echo down the corridor. They were coming for him. Davis gave him a sad smile from across the hall. It would have melted his heart in a different world.

He thought only of killing.

The guards quietly left the room as their Commander entered. Tago Savume was taller than most Sangheili and commanded immediate respect amongst the Covenant. He stood in between the occupied cells, towering over the humans. Amazingly, Dyson understood the language when the tall creature spoke.

"The one you call Hutchens is dead. You are abominations, and must also die. It is only a matter of how you wish to die. The content of your revelations shall determine the speed of your death."

His jet-black skin glistened in the eerie light. His green eyes darted back and forth between them. They reminded Davis of a shark's eyes.

Being near the humans disgusted Savume, but it was duty. This was his ship, and the actions of his crew were equivalent to his own. The Prophets wanted information from these humans, and now there were only two left. The truth was he needed them alive.

He had decided on making a personal appearance to the holding cells, hoping to interrogate the prisoners in tandem. He needed a cross-reference to the results of Hutchen's interrogation, and wanted to use them against each other. He knew that humans did not like to see one another get hurt.

"What do you know of the Forerunners, humans?"

His mandibles clenched in anger as Davis stood up and looked him square in the eye.

"Nothing"

"Than why did you come to this place?"

"Why don't you ask Captain Wu? We were not given mission details. Dyson is a marine I'm a biologist. We're not told things like that."

"Your Captain is dead, and I don't believe you."

Savume extended his plasma sword and reached for the control panel. Dyson's stomach was in knots. Davis spoke quickly.

"Wait! First Officer Meverden is on a Pelican on the surface, he can tell you what you need to know."

It was a lie; Meverden was a corpse floating in space. She was trying to buy them time, or save the surviving Pelican crew. She knew that she risked exposing them to torture and probable death, but they stood a better chance on this ship than they did down there. She knew what lurked under the ocean on the planet below them.

Savume turned and left the room. The Blade of Conversion had detected three more human life signatures after his Banshees had downed the Pelican. He had decided to leave them to their demise. Now, he needed them alive. He had expected much more survivors from the human vessel. Anger seethed through him and he walked towards the lift in powerful strides.

"Bridge, scan coordinate group five for remaining human signatures."

"Right away, commander."

If there were survivors left, that would add to their resource pool. Perhaps the human was telling the truth, and they would get actual answers from this Meverden. He wanted to know what had brought the humans here of all places.

The blue system they were orbiting, known as Chydanne to the Covenant, was incredibly dangerous. They had been drawn here by the underwater Forerunner structure ten years ago, only to be denied access at every turn. They eventually left the system in frustration, never excavating. They had lost entire dropships to the "Chydis". Massive creatures, on any biological scale. The Chydis would explode out of the water in vertical attacks and simply bite their ships in half. It was horrifying to witness. One such ship was even swallowed completely.

In the water itself, most of the Elites did not last more than a minute. Translucent tube-like predators, the Elites termed "Stingers" were as large as a Lekgolo, with speed that seemed unnatural. Their name was aptly given. To defend themselves against larger predators, they had evolved three-foot barbed stingers at their tail end. Stingers would eat anything that moved. They had circular mouths with rows of razor teeth that actually rotated. How they were able to move so quickly was a mystery that continued to evade Huragok biologists.

Savume seriously doubted any humans were left alive on the planet below.

Nevertheless, the humans had proved quite resourceful in the past. Perhaps they had survived the night. The intercom chimed.

"Two human signatures left commander, "I've got visual. They are on an emergency floatation device."

"Excellent. We're going down there."

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