Empyrean Iris

Chapter 24

Chalan did not expect to leave the holding cell as soon as she had. A part of her was excited to see something new, and to fight alongside other, experienced warriors, though another part of her was wracked with distrust and unease. She knew the human didn't like her, so why he was trusting her out on this mission was another question entirely.

A part of her was almost sure he planned to betray her. Though as of yet, she hadn't figured out how.

She walked onto the shuttle with two of the larger human warriors, and was directed towards a seat by the door, the one furthest away from the Captain.

Sitting down, she struggled to adjust the harness to fit her appropriate size, and surprisingly, one of the marines leaned over to help her. She glanced up at the human: Milky brown skin, spiky black hair, and UV strips that leaned more towards purple than then did towards blue.

Despite being in such close proximity to her, she saw no malice in the human's face. In fact, she wasn't entirely sure what she saw. She wasn't yet comfortable in her ability to read human facial expressions.

The ship rumbled to life below them.

"Ready to launch."

Chalan leaned her head back feeling the alien sensations as the outer hull flexed against the sudden withdrawal of atmosphere. After that the ground shook and the airlock doors slowly slid open.

They didn't bother to open the doors all the way, and – with all the ease of a creature naturally born to flight – the captain threaded them through the opening, passing out into the darkness and leaving their ship behind.

The interior of the shuttle was dark, and only the ambient light from the distant planet managed to light the faces of the half dozen human warriors.

At the back of the shuttle, Chalan's carapace glowed like a lightning blue beacon in the darkness.

One of the warriors: this one short with milk white skin and lightning blue UV stripes craned her head to glance out the window, "Holy shit! That's a lot of red."

The other humans turned to look, urging Chalan to learn forward in her seat with their surprised murmuring.

Captain Vir glanced back over his shoulder, "Congratulations marine, you've been promoted."

"Promoted?"

"Yeah, to Captain obvious."

Chalan felt like she should have understood that sentence, but though she understood the words the true meanings were lost on her. The human was right though, the planet was very, very red, an almost violet red rippling with spectral rainbows from the planet's magnetic field. Other than the glimmering blue of its many lakes and one massive, central ocean, the entire rest of the planet was a bright drop of bulb juice against the universe's skin, hung here and there with slow moving vortexes of white.

After a moment of looking, she was forced to raise her hand against the blinding spot of color, so vibrant that it hurt her eyes.

"And they said that mars was supposed to be the red planet." Another human muttered somewhere in the darkness.

"Switching to short wave radio." The switch made a sharp popping sound as Captain Vir leaned over to engage their long distance communications, and the humans leaned forward eagerly as the copilot adjusted another dial just to the side.

"General Lin'air of the finnari, do your read me, General Lin'air. This is Captain Vir of the UNSC Harbinger on behalf of the GA, do you read?" Chalan heard nothing, though she didn't really expect to. She had only ever witnessed long distance communication on one other occasion.