The Sun Didn't Rise

= The Sun Didn't Rise =
 November 4, 2536 - 10 kilometers from Harbor, New Bermuda - 0800 Local Time
The sun didn't rise. It wasn't going to. That much was clear when the stars faded from the sky. All there was was smoke. Blacker than the night sky it had all but consumed. Oh-Eight-Hundred, Local Time. That was the readout when Corporal Alex Marquez checked her watch. That damn watch. She didn't know how it was still ticking after all this time, some two hundred years of constant wear on the wrist of the oldest child of every generation of her family. Now it was hers, and this might be the worst condition it had ever been in. Her father gave it to her, said something about keeping it safe until she had a family of her own.
Alex packaged up those thoughts and put them in the back of her mind. The last thing she needed to be thinking about was the past or what lay ahead in her future. She needed to focus on the present. Alex looked at the holographic display projected on the goggles of her marine helmet. The fireteam she'd been assigned to lead, all three of them, next to the motion tracker that was supposed to show where they were. She went down the list. 
M. YANG - PFC - K.I.A. 
G. MCCREARY - LCPL - K.I.A.
L. TURNER - PFC - UNKNOWN
Yang and McCreary both lay dead due north of her, marked by two little yellow X's on her motion tracker. She had no way of knowing where Turner was, not in this mess, not at this time. Alex looked up from the holographic display and shut it off. As quietly as she could, she peeked her head out of the crevice she'd been hiding in. She could barely see anything. No sun. She checked her old watch again. Glow-in-the-dark digits came in handy at a time like this. Oh-Eight-Hundred and three. Dawn was-or would've been- right about now. Instead only light she had was the flaming wreckage of a downed starship and the faint bluish-greenish-purplish glows let off from the plasma beams in the distance, beams that were being used to vaporize every living thing in the Covenant's path. Satisfied with the presence of nothing new, she went to settle back into the cramped little crevice she took cover in. 
Another half hour went by. Alex tried her absolute damnedest to stay alert and not slip into idle thought. Bored, but alive, she reminded herself. Now there were footsteps. Clumsy and accompanied by snorts and raspy, high-pitched speech in an alien tongue, there was only one thing they could be. Grunts. Little more than canon fodder to the Covenant, they still had a reputation among the UNSC as a sign of things to come. If the sheer numbers of grunts didn't break you, the Covenant would send better troops when they ran out of cannon fodder to throw your way. These grunts, however, were alone. No bird-like jackals or four jawed elites barked orders at them to shut up or walk faster. They weren't particularly scary on their own, in fact they couldn't hit much of anything and went into a panic at the first sign of resistance, but where there were grunts, there was usually someone to lead them, someone more dangerous. Luckily for her that wasn't the case this time around. 
Alex held her breath. The sound of her breathing wouldn't alert the grunts, but she worried that the gagging that resulted from their alien stench would. They passed by without incident, kicking, sniffing or nudging the bodies left behind from the last firefight. She counted five of them on her motion tracker, inching off the display and heading east. A few more seconds passed. Suddenly, she heard an alien yelp and a gunshot soon after. Four red dots came into view on her motion tracker and clumsily moved in her direction. More gunshots, and one red dot stopped in its tracks and faded away. Another volley and two of them seemingly bumped into each other and faded out. One remained, heading right towards the crevice she was hiding in. 
Alex searched for her rifle in the darkness. No luck, and the grunt was getting closer. Alex decided she'd rather chance it with a knife anyway, no loud gunshots to reveal her position. She reached up to her chest and pulled her knife free from its sheath, readying to strike. Just in time. The grunt scrambled over corpses and tumbled into the crevice right in front of her. Alex lunged at the alien, grabbing a tree root and swinging herself forward. She plunged the knife into its arm and it let out a pained whine before turning to face her. 
"Please! Don't kill me!", the alien whimpered, "Me no want kill human!" 
Alex skipped a beat. "The hell?" She didn't know it spoke English. She shook off the surprise and ripped her knife from the grunt's arm, a spray of glowing cyan blood following. 
The alien whined again and reached for its wounded arm. "No! No! Me no gun! No gun!" 
Alex paused. Maybe she was just tired from hours of sitting out here, but she felt bad for the alien. It was in just as much of a rough shape as she was. Its leathery skin was calloused and bruised and its bare feet were caked in mud. The minimal armor it wore was dented and its paint chipped. Alex felt merciful for a moment, but then she grounded herself. If she let it go, it might squeal to its superiors. 
Alex stabbed at the grunt again, getting it in the arm once more. The grunt pulled back, the knife came free and the alien retaliated with a punch to the side of her helmet. Alex fell back, dazed but not hurt by the punch from the grunt's injured arm. Taking advantage, it scrambled up the side of the trench. 
As it crested the edge of the trench, another burst of gunshots rang out. A spray of bright luminescent cyan mixed with a slurry of grayish-blue erupted from the top of the grunt's head and splattered across the dirt behind it. Alex winced and jumped back, barking an expletive as she watched the grunt's corpse fall into the crevice. 
With the crevice now dimly lit by the alien's bioluminescent blood, Alex managed to find her MA5C rifle and picked it up by the sling. She figured it would be best to move from her cover now when she knew there was at least one human being covering her. She powered on her rifle and it came to life. The ammo counter displayed 36 rounds and the targeting reticle appeared on her heads-up display. Slinging it over her shoulder, she pushed off from the ground and made her way up the wall of the trench. 
The a half second after her head poked out from the trench, another burst of gunfire rang out. She flinched and quickly ducked downwards, barely avoiding the bullets. 
"I'm human!" Alex yelled out from the trench. "Don't fuckin' shoot!" 
A stern, heavily accented voice yelled out in response, "Then come up! Slowly!" 
Alex stuck her hand up first, then the rest of her body. Thirty or so meters away was a marine in a patrol cap and light armor. She didn't recognize him, but since he was the only other human still alive out here, she had no choice but to trust him. He lowered his rifle and beckoned her over. She walked towards him, surveying the area as she approached. 
"What's your name?" She questioned. 
"Private Kota, Eighth Recon." 
Alex nodded. "Corporal Marquez. Forty-Second. The hell were you thinking gettin' all trigger-happy like that? You probably just woke up the whole damn Coven-" 
Kota cut her off, trying to explain himself. "They were going squeal anyway. Or kill me. I did not have a choice." 
"Try being a little quieter next time, Private. What are you doing all the way out here?" 
Kota looked away from Alex and towards the carnage behind her. "We were looking for survivors. Did anyone else make it?" 
Alex took a peek at her HUD's team roster and let out a somber "No." 
Kota sighed and pressed a finger to the earpiece he wore. "Sergeant, this is Kota. One survivor. What is your location? Over." 
He clicked off the earpiece and gestured for Alex to follow while stepping over to the raised edge of the treeline. 
Alex followed Kota, still some distance behind. Kota came to a stop at the ledge and turned towards her. The closer she got to him, the more she made out. Kota was around five foot six with a lanky, athletic build. His skin was a dark coffee brown, complimented by short, curly hair that barely peeked out from under his patrol cap. 
Unslinging her rifle as she walked, she stopped just short of the ledge and tossed the rifle to the top before quickly pushing herself up and over. Meanwhile, Kota groaned, still trying to pull himself up. 
to be continue 
Category:Stories