Diminish Hope

Josh Hamrick had never known anybody that had died before. Obviously, that wasn't anything to brag about, but it was still a statistical anomaly all the same. 
	After thirty years of war with billions dead and millions more displaced, how couldn't you? Even if you weren't unfortunate enough to live on one of the many worlds the Covenant glassed, a dozen of the surviving worlds began drafting young men and women into the UNSC to bolster the ranks. Because after so many years of fighting they were running out of bodies to throw against the alien menace.
	But not on Trinity. No, Hamrick's home planet had done everything it could to plug its ears and pretend war wasn't raging out there among the stars. And for a while, it worked. At least, until a flock of ancient superweapons appeared and brought humanity to heel. But Hamrick was already gone by then, having signed up in the UNSC Marine Corps a couple years before. Another lucky break.
	"Hamrick!" Sergeant Max Dyckhoff bellowed in his ear, yanking his shoulder to spin the private around. Dyckhoff never looked happy, and today he was redder and angrier than ever. Spittle trickled down his lower lip as he screamed: 
"You got shit in your ears, son? I said get up on the em-forty-six, now! You got five seconds, go, go, go!"
	He hurried off as a bolt of plasma sizzled overhead. He heard the Sergeant curse, and swing his assault rifle around and fire a burst towards the source, but the Grunt, Jackal, or whatever had already melted back into the shadows. A plasma grenade blossomed into a towering blue fireball nearby, peppering Hamrick with burning sand and particulates as he ran up the ramp.
	
	He found the M46 machine gun-- along with Cash's lifeless body strewn over it. His real name was Brent Abrahamsen, but everybody called him Cash. Why, exactly, Hamrick couldn't say. It must have been some in-joke in the squad, from before he had joined. But it didn't matter much now. When he shoved Cash off the machine gun and realized the lanky marine was missing a third of his square jarhead, he flinched in revulsion. If there was anything left in his stomach, he may have retched.
	This was his reckoning. He knew it. Hamrick had never known anybody who had died before. There was a debt here, and the universe was collecting its due. Setting the record straight. Twenty years worth of tragedy, condensed into just a few weeks. This ring, this "Halo" had been hell from the start. And this place, this crude facsimile of a human base, had been the darkest pit of all.
	"Rejoice," The low, rough voice had rumbled from loudspeakers when Charlie Squad had first been shepherded here. It spoke in English, but it forced the words out from vocal chords clearly never meant for them. "What lies before you is a chance for... salvation. Prepare yourselves. Take up arms. Survive the coming storm and walk free. Fail, and die with honor."
	There was a dry, choking rasp that may have been a laugh.
	When they began, the squad of marines had been thirteen strong. At first, the Banished only funneled in a few Grunts at a time, in regular intervals during the day. With the rifles and weapon emplacements the marines had been provided with, the squat, diminutive aliens proved little trouble. They slept in shifts, and rationed what little food had been given to them. 
	There was a Warthog, hanging from a crane at the top of the ceiling, but they gave up pretty quick on trying to get it down. Not like there was anywhere to go. They were sealed in what appeared to be an industrial warehouse, with a raised platform of sand, barricades, and turrets in the center. The letters "UNSC" were stamped across the towering polycrete shelter, among other things. Hamrick didn't want to know where all of this had come from.
	When Jackals came-- so did Charlie's first causality. A young Private like Hamrick, Hoffman had gotten careless and ran out of position-- and caught a radiated Carbine slug in his chest. He didn't die then and there. That would have been a mercy, in hind sight. Instead, Hoffman lingered for a time, wailing for his mother in his agony. When those cries got in the way of the squad's rest between waves, Dyckhoff told the corpsman to hurry up and give Hoffman "the shot". 
	The young private was dead by morning.
	Others followed Hoffman soon after. Brown didn't do anything wrong-- she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a hail Mary plasma grenade blew her to bits. Soloman got torn to bloody ribbons when the Grunts broke through their right flank and fell on him as a wave of flesh and chitin.
	Lopez was impaled by a stealth Elite's energy sword, but had managed to blown the monster's hingehead clear off its shoulders with her M90 shotgun before she died. That was when Dyckhoff and the rest noticed that the Elite had weathered gray skin like old leather, and a bad leg that bore a nasty wound that was already scabbed over.
	"They're sending their old, crippled, or disgraced!" Martinez had hypothesized, with an undeserved tone of authority. The man fancied himself an expert on aliens, said he went to school for xenoanthropology-- or was going to when he got out of the Corps, at least. Didn't really matter which. Martinez got his ticket punched the next day, but ever since, Hamrick couldn't help but think that the man was speaking some sense.
	Thompson died too, but Hamrick had never heard how. He just knew that one night, when the day's fighting was done, there was an extra protein bar to go around. Honey hazelnut. His favorite.
	His ears rang as the heavy machine gun turret roared and spewed hot lead, shredding an overly confident Brute and his Grunt escort to pieces. His held the trigger down for so long, numbness crept into his fingers, but he kept firing anyway. Until the belt of ammunition ran dry, and all he heard was a dull ringing in his ears, and the metallic click that warned of an empty chamber.
	Shit, how the hell did you reload this thing?
	Rather than a simple magazine, it looked like the M46 was fed from a massive drum that was as large as Hamrick's chest. He turned to look around for another such drum-- until his vision filled with green luminescence, and a scorching wave washed over him. He was thrown from the rampart by the resulting concussive blast, and hit the floor hard. 
	Pain and disorientation filled him in equal measure as he struggled back to his feet. There was another explosion-- not right next to him, but close enough for him to feel the shockwave thump in his chest. A plume of smoke rose up and over the wall. 
	He spied movement in the corner of his eye, and looked up to see Sergeant Dyckhoff standing on top of the wall. His mouth was moving like he was shouting again, but Hamrick couldn't hear him. Not over the deafening ringing still bouncing around in his head. 
	The Sergeant's face was beet red as he jabbed a finger to Hamrick's left, and mouthed the word:
	"Hunter!"
	
	Hamrick turned, and dove just in time for the fuel rod blast to sail clear over him, and detonate against the far wall of the warehouse. The floor beneath his feet shuddered from the impact.	
	The Hunter was a colossal monstrosity of thick armor plating, long spikes that protruded from its back like quills, and an arm that ended in a heavy cannon, alive with violent green energy. Bright orange blood contrasted with the deep blue plates that gave it form. Something writhing and coiling dropped from its mid section. It was like a huge worm, blackened and charred.
	Hamrick did not so much as hear the Hunter's roar as he did feel it in his bones. He had been frozen in fear before, but the sensation roused him to action. The private scrambled for the trigger of his rifle's grenade launcher, finding it before the Hunter could fire again.
	It raised its shielded left arm to protect its body, but the grenade went wide, and struck the alien in the shoulder of its cannon arm, where the writhing orange flesh peeked out from the exposed joints. The Hunter recoiled, and gave a cry that was half agony, half righteous fury as the cannon arm sagged and drooped before falling to the floor with a heavy thunk.
	But it was too soon to celebrate. The Hunter charged at Hamrick, faster than he ever thought possible for a creature of its apparent size. All that came to Hamrick's mind in that moment was to run in the opposite direction. As hard and as fast as his human legs could carry him.
	Gunfire rang out. The rounds couldn't hope to pierce the Hunter's arm, but it made the beast stop and look up at its new attacker. When Hamrick turned to look, Dyckhoff was already tossing his rifle aside, in favor of an M41 SPNKr rocket launcher.
	"Smile, you son of a bitch!"
	Hamrick hit the deck as the Hunter was consumed in a fiery burst of light, accompanied by another deafening boom. The shockwave rolled over him as he waited for the world to stop shaking. When it did, and the smoke cleared, the Hunter was still standing.
	No way...
	It's shield fell away as molten slag, leaving the arm bare. Very little remained of the armor plating on its right leg, exposing the orange skin. No, that wasn't quite right. Hunters were made up of worms, he remembered. Hundreds of them, each as long and thick as a human arm, coiled and joined together to give themselves shape.
	The worms at the bottom of the exposed leg squealed and popped as the Hunter stood to it's full height, it's molten shield now grasped in its armored claw. It reared back, in a motion that reminded Hamrick of a professional baseball pitcher.
	"Aw, hell..." Dyckhoff muttered.
	
	The Hunter roared with effort, launching the slab of red hot metal with all its strength. It sung as it sliced through the air-- right at Sergeant Dyckhoff, separating his top half from his bottom, before it imbedded itself upon the wall. Red dripping down the cold gray metal in wet goopy fingers.
	Hamrick wanted to scream, but all that came out was a pathetic, breathless squeak. But that may have been enough, for the Hunter craned its neck, and angled its faceless head plate in the marine's direction. It limped towards him. It had no weapon, but there was no doubt in his mind that the monster could kill him a dozen different ways regardless.
	The rifle in his hands had been forgotten until now. He fired at the monster, but it was difficult to control the weapon in full auto in his position, and the rounds either missed entirely or were deflected by what remained of the Hunter's armor. The bolt of his rifle locked back. Empty.
	He may have given up right then and there, toss the rifle aside and surrender to his fate. Until he noticed the Warthog, dangling overhead. A chance.
	Hands working as fast and deftly as they could, he grabbed his last 40mm grenade from his vest, and slid it into the launcher. When he took aim, it wasn't the Hunter he had in his sights, but the crane keeping the Warthog suspended. He gave a silent prayer to whatever higher power there may or may not have been, and fired.
	The grenade soared from the barrel of the launcher with a pop, clear over the Hunter's head, blowing the crane to smithereens. The Hunter stopped, and looked up. Right before the seven thousand pounds of human engineering fell upon it like a great hammer. All that remained was a puddle of bright orange blood that seeped out from beneath the totaled vehicle.
	For a long while, he just sat there, staring at the wreckage, waiting for the Hunter to reveal itself, uninjured by the gambit. But when it didn't, Hamrick fell back, and let go of the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding
	"I'm alive..." He said to himself, just to feel the words on his cracked lips and hear it with his own two ears.
	"I'm alive!" He said again, louder. But as he returned to the polycrete shelter, it was clear that nobody else from Charlie could say the same.	
	Doc. Ray. Chen. Miller. Dyckhoff...
	He listed their names off in his head as he found their bodies. Along with Hoffman, Brown, Soloman, Lopez, Martinez, Thompson and Cash, that meant Hamrick was all that was left.
	The Sergeant died trying to save me. And how many died because he had to waste time trying to cover my ass instead of protecting them?
	He had felt relief earlier, but that soon turned to an overwhelming guilt. 
	Hoffman. Brown. Soloman. Lopez. Martinez. Thompson. Cash. Doc. Ray. Chen. Miller. Dyckhoff. All better soldiers than me. But the universe let me live. How's that fair?
	"Congratulations are in order," The loudspeaker crackled, making Hamrick spin, rifle at the ready. "You have survived."
	The large thick bulkhead at the end of the room peeled apart for the first time that Hamrick had ever seen. During their first week, they had attempted to blast their way out a dozen times, but they couldn't so much as dent it. And now here it was, leading into a new passageway.
	There was a part of him that was hesitant to go, but what did he have left to lose? Maybe he hadn't deserved to live, but if nothing else, the world deserved to know how his squad-- his friends, had fought to the bitter end. And that would have to be enough.
	The bulkhead sealed behind him as he entered. A hologram of an old bald Brute sizzled to life before him, burning a harsh red that stung his eyes.
	"You have done well. Now, you may proceed..." The alien's peeled its lips apart and bared its fangs in what could have passed for a smile. It spoke with the same voice as the one over the loudspeaker. It waved a hand towards an elevator, bidding Hamrick forward, before fading.
	He knew something was amiss when the elevator lurched and rode upwards instead of down. 
	When he stepped out, and was faced with a nearly identical arena, his heart sank and his eyes welled with tears.
	"Now, we may begin the second trial."
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories