******************
A few days earlier...
"Alright, Captain, please step into the golden ring at the center of the room."
Harbin heard the voice come from a speaker mounted on the steel walls of the semicircular enclosure. A few steps led to a platform surrounded by machines holding various pieces of equipment. Harbin was in a black wetsuit-like thing. He placed his feet into two metal soles. Machines whirred, and the Captain squirmed as bits and pieces of metal plates began to surround him and close around his close-fitting black gel suit. Screws and bolts twisted into sockets, and sparks flew. A second layer of plates, this time white, covered the first. Other various singular parts danced around Harbin, held by rusty mechanical arms.
Finally, a purple-and-white angular box descended down on the Captain, enclosing Harbin in darkness. He tried to slow his breathing and stop his wandering eyes. Suddenly, flashing red lights popped into place on a screen. They slowly cooled to blue, calming Harbin down a bit. A motion tracker floated into place in the bottom left, and a health status detector popped on in the right. A small 'x' materialized in the middle, and a picture of a fist in the top right along with it. With a low hum, the armor relaxed around Harbin. A large 'T' of green lights lit up on the other side of the room. The COM system in the suit cracked and fizzled.
"Okay, Mr. Harbin, can you look at the green lights when they flash?" The lights blinked before Harbin could respond, and the x lit up red when it hovered over the lights.
"Great. Alright, now lets take some baby steps." The scientists had him start shuffling across the floor, then he slowly built up to running. Harbin had thought the suit would feel big and clunky. Instead, it fit like a jacket and pants. His legs were a little sore. But, he could deal with it.
For the next four days, the trainers put him through the paces. At one point, they even had him flip over a Warthog. The fibers and plates of the armor could tense and hold a weapon in one place, allowing for Harbin to target with amazing precision. That, plus the new MA5C, which was super accurate (though it now was actually an assault rifle, not a machine gun, and with that came less ammunition). Then, on the fifth day, the observers didn't have him lift weights or shoot targets.
Metrenko stood by the open bay of a Pelican.
"We're taking a little trip today, Captain."
Harbin was suspicious. "Sir?"
Metrenko nodded as he licked his lips. "Well... we're going to test GUNGNIR's orbital re-entry capabilities."
"You mean a HEV pod?" Harbin raised an eyebrow.
"No. The suit is the pod." Metrenko cleared his throat.
"Oh." Harbin said curtly.
They stepped into the crew bay, and lifted off. Harbin tried to take deep breaths, but found that his heart was pounding.
"Don't worry, Captain," Metrenko tried to reassure him. "It's honestly probably a lot safer than a HEV pod anyways. I wouldn't let you do the test if I wasn't sure you could handle it. After all, you are the only man with the right genes to handle the augmentations. At least, until we improve them. We can't lost you."
It seemed to Harbin that 'yes' had disappeared from the human vocabulary and been replaced with 'probably'. To most civilians, probability and statistics were the only way they ever experienced war before. Now that would all change. It had changed--it would always be changing with the Covenant. For twelve years life had changed. And Harbin had a feeling that it wouldn't end until the Covenant found Earth.
And brought her to her knees.
***********************
Vilok felt his stomach flip, then it flew out and came back in upside down. He tried to vomit and scream but that only brought pain. The world was black, with flashes of color. Then a final, intense, brutal explosion, and slowly, Vilok's senses returned to him.
The ground beneath him was soft and squishy. A soft whistling began in his ears, and his vision returned, doubled for a moment.
Then it focused.
The other ODST was sitting up, and slowly shaking Vilok.
"Sergeant, come on. Wake up, Gunney." Vilok fumbled, and managed to bring his knees to his chest in an upright fetal position.
"What happened?" Vilok mumbled.
"Not really sure, Sarge. The Warthog didn't make it. Best I can tell, we're in some jungle. My electronics are shorted out. You?" Carter examined his weapon.
Shaking his head, Vilok replied, "Mine are a little scrambled, and my radio's out, but everything else is okay." Taking his rifle, he continued, "Come on. Let's see if we can find out where the hell we are."
They walked north (according to the rifle's compass) for about two hours, when slowly the sun began to set, and Carter suddenly stopped to look at his antique watch.
"Gunney... the watch says... it's the 9th, universal time." Vilok stopped in his tracks.
"What? How can that that be? We entered that cave on the 6th." Vilok sat down and thought when he looked at his helmet's environmental display. "Holy mother of god." He made a cross of his torso and head with his hand. He slowly shook off his helmet.
"Sarge, no!" Carter reached out a hand, when he saw that Vilok wasn't choking on carbon dioxide. "I don't understand," Carter was puzzled. "How the hell did we get to another planet, with oxygen, in three days? The closest inhabited colony to Falatea is Miridem III. But a conventional drive would take weeks to arrive."
"Obviously our situation is not conventional, Carter." Vilok took a deep breath. "That means we're probably on Miridem." He checked his system library for records on Miridem.
"Yes, the jungle fits... so does the oxygen. Even the plant life is the same." Vilok said as he examined a leafy cousin of the eucalyptus.
They conversed for a little while longer about what to do with this new information. Carter wanted to walk and find civilization, but Vilok shot it down. The sergeant believed the jungle probably extended for thousands of miles. After all, only one continent of Miridem was heavily populated, since most of the resources were there. Carter told Vilok he was being cynical and bitter, and said that they'd only find out if they kept walking.
And so, they did.
For miles, hours, deep into the night they walked without rest, hoping to find an inkling of human civilization. Anything would be preferable to their current situation.
Suddenly, the compass on Vilok's rifle went haywire. A loud beeping sound started, pulsing with a heavy vibration beneath the pair. The trees shook, and the earth below heaved upward, and suddenly collapsed down. The soldiers fell for what felt like hours to Vilok, and then when he landed on a soft cushion of snow it seemed like he'd just stepped into the pit. He scrambled up, and lit his flashlight. Carter stood as well.
Under the thin sheet of white snow was a metallic, carved floor. When Vilok moved forward, his feet made a soft clicking noise, like a woman's heels on a polished wood floor. He walked with Carter for a few minutes into an ever extending chamber, when they came back to the hole in the ground, and they could see their previous tracks.
It got stranger and stranger. This time they walked right, and ended up in a massive cavern at least a kilometer in height from the bottom of its deep chasm to the barely-visible stalactites on the roof, shrouded in mist. Two even bridges of harsh blue light crossed the deep gorge in the crust. After descending a small slope Vilok found that the bridges were completely solid and could hold his and Carter's weight.
"Across?" Carter looked to Vilok like a son looking to his father for help.
"As I walk through valley of the shadow of death..." Vilok started moving with his rifle in one hand at his side. Massive pillars of rock and glowing metal alike populated the space between the bridges and the invisible far walls.
"What the hell is this place?" Carter said.
"Hell," Vilok replied over his shoulder. He resumed looking ahead. "Probably."
**************************