When It Falls

Chapter Twelve

A few years later

Iowas POV

Months after I had crash-landed with York and Carolina, we had fixed the ship, apparently, it was a lot worse than we had originally thought, but we were in too far to stop when we realized, so we had no choice but to continue. Once the ship was up and running, we packed up all our gear from in the makeshift base and loaded it into the pelican. I sat in the main pilot chair, and Carolina sat behind me, with York standing off to the side, chatting with us, occasionally one of us would start cracking jokes, not being able to take each other seriously, sometimes Tex or Epsilon would join in on the fun, making it less boring of a trip, wherever we were headed.

Suddenly, Tex stopped laughing at the inside joke me and her had. "Tex? You alright?" I asked her, sounding worried, Carolina and York gave me a concerned look. "I'm picking up a distress signal... One of the recovery beacons our armors have." I looked back at Carolina and York, who shrugged, I turned back to Tex. "Do you know who it is??" I asked, and she just looked at me. "You're not going to like the answer..." She said, shifting uncomfortably.

"Probably not, but tell us anyway." Carolina pushed, her tone turning serious. York and I nodded in agreement with Carolina, eager to hear why Tex, or rather Beta, was so hesitant to tell us who she was picking up on her radar. "It's Agent North..." She said grimly, slowly turning her head to look at me. My eyes instantly widened. "North...? Are you sure? Tex, scan it again." I ordered her. "I did, several times actually, before I told you, I'm positive it's him, and I can't detect Theta anywhere." I cursed under my helmet, shifting gears in the pelican to make us drop down to the planet below us. 

"York you better strap in!" Carolina called to our friend behind us, in which he nodded and ran to the back of the ship, sitting down and lowering the harness to keep him from falling out of his seat. I'm actually thrilled that they were installed on this ship, despite it being an older model than the ones we were all used to. I can't describe how many times I've 'accidentally' fallen out of the seat due to one of Tex's sharp turns; I chuckled to myself just thinking about it. 

Once we reached the atmosphere of the planet, which was a rocky trip from the start, seeing as I practically dive-bombed the ship just to get down there, I told Tex to set a waypoint to where North's beacon was setting out the transmission. We were about an hour away, but I was going to make it in 30 minutes, I had to, I wasn't going to lose a teammate, not now. "Iowa, slow down, we can't just rush headfirst into this, we don't know what we're dealing with, or who we're dealing with," Carolina ordered me, but I didn't listen to her. "Shut up, Carolina, I'm not losing a friend today," I said angrily, picking up the speed as much as I could. 

"She's right Iowa, I don't know how much more this ship can take, it's damaged enough," Tex warned me, but I also ignored her. Soon enough we landed about a two-minute walk out from where North was, though me being me, once the pelican landed I raced out of the ship and over to where North was. I could see him dealing with three UNSC jeeps, each packed with their usual mini guns on top. He was currently hiding behind cover, trying to think of a way out of this. 

Instantly, and without thinking, I charged the jeep on the far right, jumping up onto the back part quietly and snapping the dude's neck, throwing him off to the side, unfortunately, that act didn't go unnoticed as the middle turret guy turned towards me, just as I took out the driver of my jeep with a pistol shot to the head. I ducked down just as the middle turret fired at me, almost hitting me in the head but luckily I slid off the back of the jeep and hid behind it. I couldn't see York or Carolina, so either they're hiding or tending to North, leaving me to deal with these two. 

I then ran out from my cover, dodge rolling a large line of bullets and getting behind a tree, which probably was a bad idea, but it was a good thing I wasn't staying behind there for long, I quickly moved from cover to cover, getting closer to the middle jeep with each move I made, before eventually being able to take out the driver of the two jeeps with quick accuracy with just a pistol, surprising, right? Not really for me, just another Tuesday I guess. "Iowa, it's Friday." Tex reminded me, completely missing the point. "Tex, that's not the point, it's just a saying," I responded back to her.