Chapter: 4.7

Chapter: Zeta-IX

Part: 7

Space Station Zeta-IX

Greybrand cursed under her breath, just when she thought this Throne Damned mission would yield some results, it seemed like all the Imperium's might was dead-set on making her life as miserable as possible. She glanced around at her squad, out of fifteen, seven were injured, six had minor wounds including bruising and concussions, and one lost a limb.

Another glance told her why there hadn't been more casualties, their armor had absorbed most of the damage from lucky shots and stabs. They looked battered and bruised, some were out of ammo and were resorting to their older weapons, and others looked slightly tired.

Half a minute was a joke! If they had half an hour? Maybe they would have made it to the Hangar, some casualties along the way, but most would survive. Now though, once the Space Station enters orbit, all hopes would be lost. They would sink into the planet's atmosphere like a chunk of metal hurtling into a volcano, melting by the second until not even their ashes would remain. 

Well... she might be going a bit overboard but that was the general gist of it.

The Inquisition had a rule, an Inquisitor's value was more than an Astra Militarum Lord Commander, more than a Navis Imperialis Admiral, more than a Senior Ecclesiarch of the sub-sector command, because in every Inquisitor's hand lies the fate of entire worlds. 

Something she read out of an Inquisitorial memoir a decade or so back when she was still in the Scholas.

All nonsense of course, written down to add a bit of arrogance into the Inquisitorial Acolytes before throwing them into the wild world with the words 'Kill me if you can' written in shining letters on their backs.

Suddenly, the entire deck shook violently as the Space Station hurtled into the planet's atmosphere. The lights flickered wildly and the floor began to tremble, momentarily drawing Greybrand's attention from the beautiful medic to the rapidly widening cracks in the floor. Grave plates were getting more and more visible through the gaps and she grew pale,

'Frak! Time to find the sturdiest room around.'

She turned to address the Engineer who had also taken off her helmet and was tweaking its connection hatch, some modification maybe? Just in case they get thrown into the space... 

What was her name again? 

[Minkovski Katerina Leonidovna, Female, 26]

'Thanks.'

Sounds Russian...

'The fraks a Russian?'

Katerina had a pixie-bob-cut, natural jet-black hair. Her piercing blue eyes were set in a rough, round face with a small scar along her cheek. She had a slightly tan complexion, tall, sinewy, and with slight creases along her eyes that didn't fit her age. 

Greybrand felt a pang of guilt run through her as she realized that she knew nothing about her or any of the other members of the said 'UNSC-ONI Escort Team' that she had taken as her honor guard. For all she knew, the void engine had dragged them out of their homeworlds and she had plunged them head-first into combat.

Did they have their baggage? Personal effects? Who to send those effects in case one of them dies?

[Their personal effects have been placed in the dormitory next to your quarters.]

Well... at least that was some small comfort. She squashed the creeping guilt and started to think of something that might increase their chances of survival.

"Can you find a sturdy enough room to survive crashing into the planet?"

She knew it was an absurd question but she asked anyway.

"There's the command center. It has a reinforced adamantium blast door and a couple of other reinforced parts... should be able to survive re-entry."

Katarina finished re-connecting the helmet to the comm-bead, or whatever their armors had for a communication device, and switched to voice communication, it must have detached during the combat. She had a soft, high-pitched voice that seemed quite unusual on someone like her.

Greybrand shook her head,

"Negatory, if what the Battle Sisters said was true then that place is crawling with greenskins. We can't take any more chances."

"Then we're screwed."

Katerina shrugged before looking at the increasing cracks forming on the deck. 

"Damn, we're all gonna die, aren't we?" 

The squad medic, Lynx, chuckled, trying to suppress the growing anxiety in the air. Greybrand noted that they were acting more human than before. 

"We'll make it out there. Just keep a cool head and do something productive, would you?"

Lynx simply nodded, not willing to press the matter further in this dire situation.

The engineer, however, had different ideas. She turned back towards Greybrand and gestured around them before finally speaking,

"Look around, that doesn't leave many options. We could try for the hangar but I'm not too keen on the idea of standing in the middle of a lightly armored area when we finally crash into the planet. At least in the command center, we have some chances of survival."

After a long pause, she added,

"In my humble opinion, of course."

Greybrand frowned, the matter was getting more desperate by the minute and she still couldn't think of anything to do... anything productive of course, after all, screaming curses over the vox channel didn't seem like that good of an idea now that she was going to die. 

Suddenly, she remembered something, something she saw on the structure map of the Space Station a while back,

"What about the escape pods? The drop ship tunnels?"

Katerina took one more glance at the dataslate and gave her opinion on the matter,

"If we survive long enough to reach the escape pods, then we might actually survive this. Let's just hope that the greenskins have enough common sense not to ruin escape pods."

'Then your hopes are vain.'

Greybrand muttered to herself, not giving words to her thoughts. The greenskins weren't exactly subtle in their tact and they most definitely didn't recognize the word 'Common sense.'

"We'd die trying to get to them."

The medic looked up at Greybrand and her expression hardened, an eerie thought that her time was running out. 

Greybrand cursed again, careful not to be heard by anyone. A medic should be the last person to think they're gonna die, and if they panic, who's gonna patch up the rest of them?

The engineer simply shrugged,

"Can't go wrong with emergency systems though, those things are rated for anything."

She was, of course, speaking from her experience and her experience alone, the UNSC Space Ships and not the imperium's. This meant that her assumptions were going to come back and bite her in the ass,

"Fuck."

And she was right.

"The drop-ship deployment tunnels are locked. The ship's defense mechanism locked them when the main engine went up in smoke, and they wouldn't open until we set the emergency engine at full throttle and entered the orbit again."

Greybrand sighed,

"How do we get the escape pods out?"

"Unviable, Ma'am. These data reading states that the escape pods are too exposed to the station's gravitational forces. They would be torn to pieces before we can complete the ejection."

Katerina shook her head, a pained expression forming on her face.

"It seems we're out of options."

Greybrand's gaze drifted off as she spoke, she was beginning to feel more and more despondent with every passing moment like there was nothing else they could do. A bleak scenario was playing out and there wasn't much they could do to change the course of events.

"We... we could head into the command center and pray for the best."

Spoke up Rico, the woman whose arm had just blown to bits, her helmet had also been removed, to administer treatment and Greybrand could see her slightly pale pale and sweat dripping down her face. 

For a moment, she simply stared at them, her 'new' Honor Guard she had named them, and now, she would die with them.

"Damn it!"

Greybrand's temper finally got the better of her, she cursed under her breath before turning back to the engineer and the medic again.

"Any more possible options? Or are we just going to wait for death?"

Even though she was getting anxious, at least she had some sense to keep her voice low until it drifted into a mumble.

She had just struck a jackpot!

A brand new plan!

It was an unofficial practice to install Escape Pods in a heavily armored region where communication is difficult so that they could make a show of safety protocols. In truth, almost 95% of the Naval ships either get blown to bits or ram the enemy in a fanatic charge before someone or anyone could board an escape pod.

They could very well use the escape pods themselves as bunkers!

While it was not the brightest or the most reliable of ideas, it was something!

All of the pieces that hadn't clicked into place before were now lined up and Greybrand's lips twitched with a ghost of a smile. She was getting more excited by the moment.

It was like some sort of sudden flash of inspiration, the feeling of genius. But what if it was stupid after all? What if it all went completely wrong?

And it was probably going to go wrong, the situation was way too desperate for anything to go right. 

But... something was better than nothing!

=*=