Halo: Agent Alpha | ch 2

14 APRIL 2527; 0545 HOURS / HANGAR BAY OF UNSC SPIRE OF DARKNESS, WAITING TO BOARD PELICAN DROPSHIP L-232

Alpha stood by a wall, patiently watching as the Pelican was loaded with equipment she would not use. Weapons, primarily; she already carried the two she planned on using, her modified sniper rifle and an assault rifle without a name which had been made for her specifically for Solo work. Not, she thought, to forget the combat knife sheathed along her left forearm.

Specially designed ammunition compartments in her armor were empty, because HighCom and ONI wanted to dictate the types of ammunition she could use on this mission. No armor-piercing, no incendiary, no high-explosive rounds. She could have standard ammunition, nothing else. The quartermaster had explained, apologetically, that though she could collect her weapons, she had been barred from collecting ammunition. Alpha didn't care. She had never been one to rely on special bullets anyway.

All in all, she cut a lethal figure, despite the marked lack of anything explosive upon her person. No grenades for this one, either. She had no idea what they expected her to do if her target had locked the doors, though she knew precisely what she would do. She would utilize Frost's hacking talents and have him disable the locks. If the doors were stuck for some reason, she would either have to find another way through, or bash them down. The first option was preferable, because it involved less damage to her armor.

It did not escape her notice that the Marines loading the Pelican gave her a wide berth, and shot uneasy glances at her every so often. The matte black armor, and the Solo insignia of white DMRs crossed in front of a shock of bright red spatter that represented – and resembled – blood, tended to do that to people.

A Helljumper sauntered over. Alpha made no move to acknowledge her presence, until the muscular woman spoke. "Going in alone, eh? Can't say I'd do the same, but I'm no Spartan. If that's even what you are, I mean, you look like some kind of enforcer or something."

"I'm a Spartan," Alpha confirmed.

"That explains everything," the Helljumper said with a laugh. "I've seen you guys in action. One, he was standing there shooting one second, and then the next, he's three feet away and there's a plasma burn on the wall behind where he was. It was incredible. Even as fast as you are, he'd have been moving before the plasma left the barrel."

"Really?" Alpha faked surprise.

"Really. I'd say the same thing under oath, if it ever came up."

The Solo shrugged and moved to inspect the Pelican. If it wasn't loaded properly, she would unpack it and re-pack it herself, and it would be easier to do that if she didn't leave the Marines to work until they were done. Some of the younger Marines took a step or two backwards as she approached, faces a mixture of awe and terror.

"Easy there, lads," the sergeant barked. "Spartan – the Pelican is not ready to board."

"I know," Alpha told him, looking inside. All the supplies were packed tight, all the weapons secured correctly. "Good. Carry on."

As she turned to walk back to the wall, the sergeant stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She could easily have shaken it off, but she turned her attention back to the Marine.

"Spartan. My men have been given specific orders to ensure they load the Pelican properly. They are well aware that there will be consequences for sloppy work."

"I was not aware of any such order. I am satisfied with what I have seen." The Solo smiled to herself. "If I did not know better, I would think this work had been done by a Spartan. Impressive." The clock in her HUD ticked over to 0600 just as the Marines stepped away from the Pelican, hands spread to indicate they were finished.

"You may board. The Pelican will depart once final systems checks have been completed."

"Thank you, Sergeant." Alpha climbed into the back of the dropship and sat in the only empty seat, near the back. She assumed that was to allow for a quick exit. Excellent. I might find this arrangement useful later.

She checked the nearest ammo box, and smiled. She was lucky; this box was filled with sniper rounds. High-velocity armor-piercing rounds would have been better, since they were the sort of thing that would take the head off an Elite with one shot, beyond visual range, but standard rounds were nothing to sneeze at either. It would do. She filled a couple of ammunition compartments and loaded the sniper rifle, and then got up and went over to a box labeled not with UNSC letters and numbers, but 'Alpha'. From that, she took enough rounds for her assault rifle to fill the rest of her storage compartments, and then another magazine with which she loaded the assault rifle.

"I don't know how you expect to carry any food," Frost said.

"I don't. Any space taken up by food is space that could be used for ammunition. I don't expect to need all this, but the last thing I want is to run out of ammo halfway through the mission." Alpha clipped an extra hardcase to her left thigh and filled it with stimpacks and nutrient injections. "These will work just as well, and take up far less room. There should be some biofoam and medigel around here somewhere…"

"In the case directly to your left, eye level. Where do you intend to store that?"

"This suit has automatic injectors, Frost, you know that. If I have a sufficient supply of each… ah, here they are, good." She slotted two cans each of biofoam and medigel into their respective places in her suit. "I'm sure that HighCom will have techies working to streamline the system. There are rumors that they intend to make this standard issue eventually. It'll take years before the system's efficient enough for that."

"It's bulky," Frost complained.

"I know. But if I were to lose consciousness, the suit could administer first aid. Failing that, you could manually activate the system. The standard system doesn't work so great for Solos. No team to administer the foam and gel. I'll take bulky over dead any day."

"The bulk might restrict your movement, making you easier to hit. You could take a lot more damage."

"Yes, Frost, but nobody can expect not to take at least a few hits. If I'm lucky, they'll be minor. Flesh wounds. If I'm unlucky, they'll be more serious, and without immediate first aid, I could bleed out. Granted, most injuries I could treat myself, but what about head wounds? What if a bullet grazed my head and knocked me out before I had a chance to heal other hits?" Alpha worked while she talked, finding supplies and then finding places to put them. Right when Frost thought she couldn't possibly carry any more, she found another way to increase the amount of storage she had available.

"Only a Solo could possibly carry such a ridiculous amount of supplies," the AI commented.

"That should do it, I think. Weapons, ammunition, stimpacks, nutrient injections, first aid, comms equipment, mini-welder, wrench, soldering iron, and cable splicer. Excellent."

"I don't think anybody else could fix just about anything with nothing more than a welder, a wrench, a soldering iron and a splicer."

"Other Solos, Frost. Perhaps some of the more engineering-minded Teamers."

The Pelican's floor shifted under Alpha's boots; they were taking off. The back hatch closed and the cabin pressurized. She went back to her seat and sat in it, strapping herself in even though the straps could not possibly hold a half-ton of Spartan and armor in the event of a crash.

"I have uploaded a map of the facility and its surroundings to your TACMAP screen," Frost told her. "The target is somewhere within the main building, as best anybody can determine, and seems to have found the most tactically valuable position. He maintains it day and night; goodness knows how, he should have run out of stimpacks by now. There are no supplies inside the facility. No personnel. It has been abandoned for four years."

"Not so abandoned now," Alpha mused. "So. Somehow, we have to flank him. He's armed?"

"Yes, with a sniper rifle and an MA5K. Armor-piercing and High-ex rounds respectively. All stolen from the armory of the facility from which he escaped. He is holed up in a room with one entrance."

"Wonderful. Confronting Joey in a place he can't be flanked. I assume they got their data from his neural interface?"

"They did. From altitude and co-ordinates, they determined the room he is in. He is alive, he is not sleeping. Brainwaves are consistent with Joey's combat baseline. Adrenaline levels are elevated."

"Sounds like I'm going to have to be faster than him. I'll set myself up in the adjoining room, and get you to open the door remotely. What's the cover like?"

"Not great. There's a filing cabinet in there that you could turn on its side, but it won't do anything to stop a bullet. Might make it harder for him to aim, but that's it."

"I'm going to have to not be seen, then. Is the facility still powered?"

"Yes. It is likely to be well-lit, whether you go in under cover of darkness or not. The facility was never connected to the grid, and the generators were neither removed nor disabled when it was abandoned."

"Knowing Joey, the first thing he would have done would be to restore the power supply, even if the generators were switched off by the facility's previous occupants," Alpha agreed. "That makes things harder for me, though, because I need deep shadows. When they eventually reverse-engineer Covenant stealth technology, I will be a very happy Solo."

"And I will be a very happy AI, because you won't bother me with your planning as much." Frost's words were disgruntled, but his tone was playful. "I don't know why you do it. You always go your own way anyway."

"It's called thinking out loud. I have a plan. It's risky, but…"

"…it's the most likely to work out of everything you've thought of. Yes. I know." Frost sighed. "I wish I didn't have to hear it. You know every risk you take puts me in danger as well."

"I know, Frost, and if there was any other way, I would take it. But if we can't flank him, can't snipe him through a window, and can't go for a headshot even if we could, then I will have to take him on directly. I'll need your help to aim, and then once I've got a solid aim on his heart, I'll need you to open the door for me. I'm going to have to get my shot off before Joey can defend himself, and it's going to have to hit. No second chances."

"Sniper rifle, then?"

"Of course. The assault rifle would take too many rounds to kill him, and he could get a shot off in the meantime."

"Do you have a plan B?"

Alpha laughed at that. "Snap Frost, I always have a plan B. Which I will explain, as ever, if we need it. Do you think it would be possible to draw him out somehow? Don't answer that. It won't be. Joey's brilliant, he'll know that his best bet will be to wait for me to come to him. He's safer where he is than he would be if he put himself in a situation where it would be possible for someone to flank him."

"There's an EMP generator in here. If I opened the door and you threw it in, you might disable his suit's systems long enough to take him out."

"That won't work. Spartans are trained to handle situations like that. Any of us can shoot without targeters, from the shoulder or from the hip, with accuracy almost as good as it is with the targeting system working at optimal capability. EMPs won't freeze up our armor completely. It would work if I was fighting Elites – take down the energy shields, allowing me to kill more quickly. But Joey's a Spartan, and we haven't reverse-engineered Covenant shield technology yet."

"Fair enough. I doubt there is anything I could say to discourage you from the plan you have formulated, so I shall hope your Spartan luck holds out." Frost sounded less than confident.

"Entering atmosphere in five," the pilot said over the onboard intercom. Alpha braced for the familiar jolt. One of the straps snapped anyway.

"Damn," she muttered. "Hope they don't count that when they count the cost of this mission. Not that there's much chance of my hope coming to anything. ONI have always been tight, and they aren't about to stop now."

"I'll modify the logs once we've dropped so that they think the strap was broken before this mission," Frost offered. "What ONI doesn't know, won't hurt them."

Alpha smiled at that, shoulder shaking in silent laughter. "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't much fancy arguing with an ONI-based AI again."

"That was not my fault," the AI protested.

"Suuuuure it wasn't."

Frost ignored her, and they lapsed into silence, riding out the usual turbulence without so much as a grunt or a squeak of surprise, even when the Pelican dropped ten feet, the last few straps of the harness snapped, and Alpha nearly hit the roof.

"Easy there, girl," the pilot said. Alpha fought back a snort of laughter; clearly the pilot was leaning on the intercom button accidentally as she talked to her bird.

"It'd be chaos back here if it wasn't just us," Alpha said to Frost. "Marines, Helljumpers, other Spartans, they'd all be asking what the hell that was about."

"Sorry about that," the pilot said, as if she had heard. "Hit a downdraft. Air currents around here are squirrely at the best of times."

"It's fine. I might have been strapped in, and the straps might have decided they couldn't hold a Spartan in her seat..." Alpha broke off, trying not to laugh.

"Dear God," the pilot said. "Not again. Only just had those straps replaced because I had one of you on board, and he'd strapped himself in, and we got blasted sideways by an unexpected crosswind. Bout the same place as the downdraft, too."

"Here?" That came as a surprise.

"Yeah. Big guy, strong Reach accent, matte black armor just like yours. Same insignia. Last I heard from him was a call for urgent evac, but he never arrived. No idea what happened to him – cause Spartans don't die, right?"

"So," Alpha said privately to Frost, "they sent someone else, and whoever it was, Joey killed him. Reach accent – that has to have been Bravo. Damn. I liked Bravo."

"Alpha is better than… whoever that was," Frost said through the intercom. Alpha knew him well enough to hear the concern behind the confident assertion. He was worried. Bravo was a very skilled Solo, and if he wasn't enough… "We will return."

"You can count on it," Alpha added. Get over it, Frost, you'll put me off my game.

"I hope so. I'd hate to lose another of you guys out there. And ONI got on my ass about the AI, which I couldn't have retrieved even if I'd known where to look for it."

"ONI gets on everybody's ass about everything," Alpha said. "It's their job."

The pilot laughed. "That's true. All right, approaching LZ. You ready?"

"Put us down." Alpha stood and waited for the rear hatch to open. When it did, she watched the thick forest pass below her. Soon, the Pelican was all but skimming the trees, and then suddenly the trees gave way to a flat, grassy field, and the Pelican stopped moving forward and started its vertical descent.

"Good luck out there, Spartan," the pilot said. Alpha jumped out, assault rifle in hand, and sprinted for the cover of the forest.

"Roger that. We're Oscar Mike, status green. Alpha out."

Frost posted a nav marker in her HUD. Alpha calculated the time it would take to cover the distance at a fast march at roughly seven hours. She settled into rhythm, assault rifle leveled, and let herself focus on her surroundings. This kind of running was almost meditative to her; she could lose herself entirely in the rhythm and her ever-changing surroundings. It was the closest thing to sleep she could ever manage in a combat zone.

"Going hot," she said. "Safety off. Confirm no friendlies in the area."

Frost paused a beat. "Confirmed. Your suit's sensors indicate no contacts within range."

"Commencing radio silence." Alpha smirked. Radio silence would not affect her on this mission regardless. Frost didn't count because she didn't need comms to speak with him.

"Pointless thing to mention," Frost commented, "considering you wouldn't be using comm channels anyway."

"It's procedure, Frost."

Alpha tuned out to the sounds within her helmet and watched her surroundings pass her by. Vigilance would serve her well, and with the forest so thick she couldn't zone out completely, else she would run into a tree. She ducked through a narrow gap barely wide enough for her armored shoulders, then leapt over a fallen tree, and skirted around a boulder.

She was quite glad she was working alone. Other Spartans might have been able to keep up, but she would have been greatly slowed down by Marines or Helljumpers. The going was so tough that ordinary humans would have had to move at a slow march, and indeed so tough that Alpha had to revise her estimates. Seven hours was simply unrealistic. It would be closer to ten.

---

14 APRIL 2527; 1715 HOURS / ABANDONED UNSC TRAINING FACILITY, CLASSIFIED PLANET OF CLASSIFIED SYSTEM

"We rest here for a while," Alpha said, "and then we're going in. Hit me with a nutrient pack, would you? I'm hungry."

"If I must," Frost replied. The familiar sting came in the crook of her elbow, and a few minutes later, the gnawing in the pit of her stomach vanished. Alpha was, uncharacteristically, out of breath, and her muscles burned.

Damn, that was tough. "What a run! They should incorporate some terrain like this into the facility on Reach. I don't mind which facility. I'd like to train over difficult terrain more often."

"If this is your definition of difficult, I'd hate to see your definition of hellish."

Frost was right. Difficult was a log here, a cliff there, trees to get around, and the odd rockslide to scramble up. Difficult was a piece of cake. This was not quite hellish, though; hellish was swampland that sucked at the boots and was difficult to slosh through in the easy parts, with vines, raised roots, and branches to contend with for the rest of it. In short, hellish was anything that actually physically slowed a Spartan down to the point where they would struggle in a combat situation. That, or lacked any type of cover, like a desert or a wide open plain. On the whole, Spartans avoided that kind of terrain.

"Hard to believe this place has only been abandoned for four years," Alpha mused, looking at the crumbling outer wall. "Looks stronger inside. Shame, that. I could bash a hole in this outer wall if I had to."

"You could," Frost agreed. "The inner walls are barely decayed at all, so although I have no doubt you could get through them without explosives, it would take a lot of time and make a lot of noise."

"Ultimately defeating any effort to flank the target, because by the time I got through, he would have his weapon trained on me."

"Exactly."

Alpha re-checked her assault rifle to mask her surprise. "Now you agree with me."

"I had hoped that the forest might have reclaimed some more of this facility. I only have the schematics from when the place was operational. I see now that projections were inaccurate."

"So what was this place, anyway?" It was an irrelevant piece of data, but Alpha wanted to know anyway.

"It used to be a training facility. The UNSC used it to train Marines and Helljumpers, up until roughly four years ago when the facility the target disappeared from was completed. This facility was superseded, so it was left for the forest to reclaim."

Alpha nodded and committed the information to memory. "All right. Find me the nearest intact staircase or working elevator. Preferably one that will take me to the floor the target is on."

"Roughly thirty meters from the main entrance is a janitorial corridor. I will mark the entrance in your HUD. If you follow it, it will commence an upward slope. Along its length, there are doors. You are to ignore them and follow the corridor to the end. You will find yourself on the top floor, where your target is. I will help guide you to him."

"Let's go then. Keep watch for traps. I don't want to step on a trip mine, I don't want to get close to a trip mine at all, so if I don't see it, I need you to warn me about it." Alpha took a deep breath and marched towards the large glass sliding door. It remained shut. She leveled her rifle at it.

"Don't bother. That's completely bulletproof. Give me a second. Ah – got it."

The door slid open. Alpha stepped through and swept the room with her rifle. Her target might have been on the top floor, but all the intelligence she had on this mission was based on data from his neural ace, or from what was known to have been stolen. For all she knew, he could have corrupted other soldiers. Not other Spartans, but perhaps Marines.

"Clear," she announced, and trotted towards the nav marker. As she approached, what she had initially thought to be a wall panel slid aside to reveal a corridor. It was very dark inside, every single light smashed. Alpha activated her night vision, and shut her eyes for the instant she knew her vision would otherwise flash bright green. That first moment was always blinding.

She came to a left-hand bend and paused, back to the wall on the left, before stepping out with her rifle aimed down the connecting corridor. It was clear, as expected, but it paid to be vigilant. She set off once more, her pace even, deliberately slow enough to minimize the noise her boots made against the floor.

"Watch it," Frost said. "Motion sensor. Let me disable it."

"Go right ahead." Alpha stopped in her tracks and waited.

"Got it. Let's keep moving."

The Solo said nothing, but once again picked up the same steady jog. A panel slid open to her left, and she glanced through the gap to make sure there were no contacts inside. Her motion tracker was clean, but its range was nothing special, and it was not difficult to move little enough, or slowly enough, to avoid detection. All her specialist training had opened her eyes to her own weaknesses as well as giving her strategies with which she could take down rogues.

"I will tell you if there are any contacts, Alpha," Frost told her. "Just keep moving. The sooner this is over, the better."

"Amen," Alpha agreed, "but sensors are easy to fool. Eyes, not so much. Constant vigilance, Frost, nothing less."

Solo and AI lapsed into silence once more. Alpha felt the gradient of the floor change to a mild upward slope. Just enough, she suspected, to go up one floor each time she circled the building. That meant a lot of running before she could get eyes on the target. This was the boring part of the mission. It couldn't all be challenging.

More panels slid open, and each time, Alpha glanced through the opening as she trotted past, body half-turned and ready to explode into the room preceded by a hail of lead. Each time, there was nothing there. It was almost disappointing, but because it was an entirely expected result, Alpha ignored the small but growing bead of hope that she might get to engage a contact before she set herself up to take out her target.

"Trip mine up ahead," she said to Frost, before letting off a controlled burst of three rounds into the mine. It exploded, briefly filling the corridor ahead with flames. As they dissipated, Alpha ran through the space where they had been, reloading as she went. Twenty-nine out of thirty-two rounds, in a weapon that could empty a clip in a matter of less than ten seconds, could mean the difference between life and death. Enemy dead before reload, or Solo dead because she had to reload in the middle of combat.

"Slow up a little now," Frost told her. "You're almost at the end of the tunnel."

Alpha dropped out of her slow jog. Each stride as she walked was cautious and deliberate, and she slid into a slight crouch, leaning forward into her rifle, which was still at her shoulder. As she moved, she watched the panel directly in front of her, above which Frost had just placed a nav marker. It slid open, and in the same moment Alpha hit the deck, commando-crawling forward beneath a long gout of flame.

"Classic Joey," she said. "Flamethrower traps always were his favorite."

"How'd you know that was coming?" Frost asked her.

"I didn't. Spartan-sense, remember?" Alpha cleared the flamethrower as she spoke, and was back on her feet in a flash. "All right, where to from here?"

"Follow the nav marker. I'll place another when you reach it."

The Solo trotted off across the room, and the marked door slid open as she approached. The nav marker moved another twenty-three meters away. "Roughly how much farther?"

"As the Pelican flies, he's right in the next room. We have forty meters to go before the door that will allow us onto the most direct route to the target. Forty meters, one door I will have to unlock for you, and several rooms with no doors at all," Frost informed her. A large amount of the information was completely irrelevant, but that was Frost, always sharing whatever snippet of data crossed his 'mind' in the moment.

Alpha paused at every doorway and swept each room with her rifle before continuing on. She approached the locked door above which Frost had placed the nav marker, and stopped in front of it. Frost said something vague which she paid no attention to. The Solo placed her left hand against the door. It was vibrating lightly, the way all working doors did. The vibration was not enough for an ordinary human to notice, and so subtle, in fact, that Alpha's sharp eyes caught no hint of it, but her sense of touch was so advanced that, even through the MJOLNIR gauntlet, she could feel it.

The lights on the door went green and it slid open with a cheerful ringing tone. Alpha wished for the hundredth time that doors would open silently, and trotted towards the new nav point, which was through another empty doorway and above an unlocked door.

As she warily approached the unlocked door, it too chimed, and then exploded with such force that Alpha was thrown backwards into the opposite wall. The impact hurt, and she was dazed just long enough to slide to the floor. The Solo leapt back to her feet, coughed once, and then grimaced at the fine red spray across her visor.

The sting of biofoam spread through her abdomen, but she ignored the pain and trotted through the mangled door.

"That's the one," Frost said when she glanced to her right to see another door, also unlocked. "Scanning… it's clean."

"Joey wouldn't trap that door with explosives. It's too close to him, and he would be injured in the blast as well. Ugh. Hydraulic shock, I think." Alpha moved with her shoulders curled forwards, the poor posture because it was the least painful way for her to hold herself. She walked in a straight line until she was in line with the closed door, then turned towards it, and forced herself to walk backwards a few strides. That was pure agony. She coughed again, and the spray of blood was thicker this time. "Mark me a target. Where's his heart?"

A little crosshairs appeared in her HUD. She switched to her sniper rifle and watched as her weapons monitor in her HUD blinked out, and then came back up, showing the rifle. Alpha dropped to a crouch and lined up the targeter with the crosshairs Frost had marked.

"Hit the door."

It opened, and Alpha squeezed the trigger. An almighty crack sounded, too loud for just one rifle, and her vision in her left eye went black. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Her body tipped backwards from both the impact and the recoil from her own rifle, and she watched as, painfully slow, Joey's body crumpled and his rifle clattered to the floor.

Next moment, she was flat on her back, and her head felt like it had been split open. She tried to sit up, and couldn't, so she rolled over and dragged herself towards her target's body on her elbows.

"No, Alpha, you need to get to the roof," Frost told her. "Call for evac."

"The data," she choked out, then coughed again, spitting a big glob of blood. There was not far to go now. Her right eye locked determinedly onto Joey's body, her left still completely blind, Alpha forced the pain aside. She still had one very important objective.

Something stung the crook of her elbow. Moments later, she felt stronger.

"Wha-?" she started to ask.

"Stimpack. The chemicals are all that's keeping you conscious. Get the data, then get to the roof. NOW." Frost's voice was urgent. Alpha thought for a moment it was even panicked, but AIs didn't panic, so she dismissed the thought. She couldn't turn Joey's body over – he was flat on his back the same way she had been – but she reached behind his head, and her fingers found the slot in his helmet where the data chip was. She pulled it out, and slotted it into her own helmet.

Another sting told her that Frost had injected her with something else.

"On your feet."

Numb, the Solo did as she was told. She followed a nav point up onto the roof, and Frost opened a comm channel to Lima-232 for her. Alpha coughed. "Lima two-three-two, this is Solo Agent Alpha requesting immediate dustoff at el-zee Bravo. Over."

"This is Lima two-three-two, roger that. What's your status, over?"

"Mission complete. Agent status orange." She coughed again. "You might need heavy lift gear. Over."

"On my way. Lima two-three-two, out."

Frost was yelling something frantic, but his words were too fast for Alpha to understand. She stood, swaying, and watched the sky with her right eye. Her left still gave her nothing, other than horrible pain. The Pelican came into view and set itself up where she could walk to it and step straight on. She lifted her left foot to walk forwards, and then the world went black. She barely felt the impact with the roof.

The big Spartan waiting in the Pelican watched her fall. He was fully six inches taller than average, for a Spartan, and solid. His HUD displayed Alpha's vitals in a small window by his motion tracker. As the Marines either side of him panicked, he calmly stepped off the Pelican and lifted the stricken Solo over his shoulder.

He, too, was clad in the matte-black MJOLNIR only Solos were allowed to wear, and he, too, had the crossed-DMRs-and-blood-spatter insignia. Solo Agent Charlie set his comrade down in one of the chairs and strapped her in so she would stay upright, then stood back to examine her mangled armor. Fully a quarter of her helmet was simply gone, and through the gap he could see that every blood vessel in her left eye had burst from the impact, evidently of a sniper round. She would lose that eye.

Of more concern was her drastically lowered blood pressure and racing pulse. She was suffering from severe internal bleeding. Probably, Charlie thought, from hydraulic shock, considering the blast damage on the front of her armor.

"Snap Frost," he said, "I want to know what happened. Every single detail."