Welcome to Gaia! ::

Seth listened to Koles as he scanned the area. "No Marine, it's not." Seth agreed with Koles' thought. If the Sentinals were going to attack they would have.
"Don't get too comfortable Koles, you may not thing we're going to get ambushed, but if those Sentinels ignored us, they'd probably ignore the Covenant." Unless they tried to pillage the installation.

Seth looked around at the Marines about him, a few glanced nervously at the pair when the planet was mentioned, "What happened on Onyx has nothing to do with this Koles. That was an isolated incident." Seth's voice was hushing but firm.
Seth didn't want Marines to start getting paranoid.

Moving closer and speaking in an even more hushed voice Seth confided, "If the worst happens, you and Karr need to get the men and head back to the Drop off zone." He didn't elaborate.

When one of the marines muttered the word Onyx, Mendez stiffened. He'd heard the reports. Almost an entire generation of SPARTAN IIIs wiped out by Sentinels. If SPARTANs couldn't handle Sentinels, what chance did they have? It nagged at him. One or two sentinels he could handle, max. Three thousand? Not a chance. Everyone would die, and that would be it.

Rory nodded and drew up his Assault Rifle. "I'll take point." He nodded without further comment, and stepped ahea da little ways, holding his gun at the ready. He came up to the building's entrance, and scanned the area quickly. "Premission to move in?"

[I have to go for a bit, be back on later]

Ashton was at the foot of a building within minutes, with the other marines near him panning out to search as well. He felt a sense of foreboding, an ominous dread... The serene outdoors would no doubt be a lie, to cover up the horrors of these structures. The metallic glint off of the metal-alloy skin on the construction he was to investigate gave off a strange pearlescent hue, which was muted by the slightest of taints of rust.

As he neared the door, the outlying ring that lit the edges of the slider-door lit blue, replacing the bloodred glow that was there before. It let out a small Whshhh... as it slid up into its recess, and the inside was black for a moment. He gave thought to hitting his Night Vision, or lighting his BR55's stock lamp, when numerous rows of lights snapped on, revelaing an impeccably clean, yet still alien, interior. Monitors and holographic panels alight with life, slowly starting up after perhaps thousands of years of inactivity. Slowly, but with increasing speed, they began running diagnostics of the interior, giving him incomprehensible scrawls of alien heiroglyphics and graphs.

Mendez edged his way along a building front and neared the door. It opened like the others, with a hiss and automatically sliding back into a recess. He didn't like the feeling of these doors. Peering inside, nothing was there. not even a table. Just..an empty room. Walking in, Mendez noticed something near the corner. It looked like a small computer screen. Touching it, it flashed and a projector flashed to life. It was a camera view of outside the building. Nothing else. "Wierd....." Touching the screen again, the projector went black. "Must've been just a camera."

"Remember, Marines: Comm comunication is a must... If anyone goes down, I can't be right there. Don't be stupid, marines." Ashton sincerely hoped his medical services would not be needed, but anything was possible. Something caught his eye, near the wall closest to him. A passage? Upon further investigation, he noticed a small door that revealded a ramp which lead down.

"Squad leaders, I have confirmation that at least my building has a sub-floor. I'm marking my position now with a Nav Marker. I am investigating" He clicked the Comm off, and proceeded down the dark ramp with his BR55 at the ready. The suffocating darkness was enhanced by an enenrvating mist, which grew constantly more obstructive as he descended. He kept turning to the clockwise, which lead him to believe that the structure was at least modular upon construction, and the assembled unit was similar to a large cylinder.

Descending deeper and deeper, at least 20 meters, he finally came to a halt. He was presented with two options: A door to his right hand, or a further descent, though not much more, for he could see the other door, which terminated the sojourn. He chose to take the door closest to himself, and stepped within its sensor range. It slid open like greased oil.
The mist that had been surrounding him flooded into the room, and cleared his vision. The cold fog still hung loosely around his ankles, but not so much that it obscured the floor.

He raised his light and snapped on his Night Vision, for the lights here seemed damaged and insufficient to give him a good view. Perhaps there were backup lights, but he'd have to find them first. What he beheld was more than disturbing. In multiple transparent shelves were rows and rows of preserved skeletons of various species, all held in secure cryogenic suspension.

"Sirs? Video feed uplink. You want to see this." Ashton paced through the rows and rows of frozen specimens, giving the files and his team members a good look at the corpses.

"Angel, you're getting all of this, I hope?" It took about a second for the signal to bounce back to him, having had to fight through the Installation's thick substructure.

"I am, Lance Corporal. And just when you think its over..."

He neared the back edge of the wall, and found the Station Service Terminal. He assumed he was supposed to place his palm on the palm-sized icon, and as he did so, multiple lights snapped on, and he heard machines hum to life. Just when he thought things good to turn off his personal lights, though, a system short blew out all of the lights, and the room went from mildly dark, to pitch black. Definitely Night vision time.

"Sirs? My station has gone dark, repeat, my section has lost power. I am returning to surface, repeat, getting the Hell out!" Ashton bolted up the circular ramp, and locked the door behind him. The upper levels still had power, but he wasn't about to sit like a good little boy in a black room full of frozen corpses. No, screw that.

He braced himself against his knees, panting from the run. "Yeah" He managed between gasps. "I think I found something mildly interesting..." He checked that the file was saved, and had transmitted to the Squads and the Monterey. It had.