Starry Night: Black District (Part 1)

New Mombasa, Kenya
Earth, Sol System
October 20, 2552

Dusk. There was something majestic about its light, the intensity of a sun resting upon the horizon, arching its rays overhead, distracting the eye from the impending blanket of darkness on the surface. Even with Kenya’s thick shade of orange, it reminded me of the way Beta Centauri’s double-sun created a soft lavender that met with a deep blue over the Voutean sky before dark. It reminded me of home…and of the very real possibility of losing it.

Someone called my name, bringing me back to the fight against that reality. “Krone.” I ignored it to make time for myself as I caught up on checking the perimeter. Lousy mistake, I knew, but having been dropped into an active combat zone since noon, a little daydream was sure to carry me a long way.

A figure appeared past my shoulder, clad in black with a faceless blue stare just like me. “Hey, Mike.”

The voice belonged to Private First Class Ethan Wilks, a fresh-out-of qualification ODST, but for all I was concerned he knew how to do his job. I had found him in the awkward position of having crash landed in one of Mombasa’s financial towers, and since then we had been a two-man team until recently. Keeping my rifle downrange, I turned my head.

With a free hand, he held out a sealed package of 9.5x40mm rounds lined with a red tag labeled API. “I know you’re fond of incendiary, but this was all I could find. Raider platoon didn’t have much to spare from the last supply drop.”

Biting the inside of my cheek, I slung my BR55, took the package in one hand and tore the seal off before recovering the first empty magazine I could feel from the dump pouch on my waist. Shaking my head, I let my muscle memory take control of the reloading process. “Pickings are getting slim.”

We were joined by Kate Vansen, another PFC soon-to-be Specialist. She was from Ethan’s squad, and from what I could gather, the top thinker of the group. Her visor was depolarized, revealing sweat-bound strands of blood red hair and a weary, narrow face that betrayed her attempt to candy coat an inconvenient truth with her normally photogenic self.

“With evacuation part two in effect, there’s not much reason to keep sending ordnance drops.”

“We can make do,” I said, trying to encourage. It seemed a little late in the day for motivational talk. We were all tired, strung out, but I could probably speak for all of us if I said we were at no shortage of motivation. “Sun’s coming down,” I gestured to the fading light with my gaze.

Wilks acknowledged me with a shrug. “We still got a whole unsecured district between us and a plausible way out of the city.”

The healthy reminder was not without warrant, as the three of us were standing in the middle of an intersection, now orienting our attention away from the plaza and toward the traffic control door separating this district from the next.

“Did we get any intel on this section?”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Kate shake her head. “Covenant presence wasn’t dense enough to draw a whole lot of attention in the initial counter attack, and strategically it doesn’t hold much value.” Her head jerked in my direction. “I wouldn’t bank on us finding anyone, but it does lead to the waterfront.”

“We’ll have clear skies away from this concrete jungle,” Wilks said. “Our comms might be able to radio for an evac near the shipping docks…provided anyone’s still listening. We could split up when we’re inside to widen our sweep, just in case.”

I’m not sure what convinced me to do it, but without a second thought, I approached the massive routing gate and tapped my hand to the control. Maybe it was Kate’s logical assertion with a little of Ethan’s blind optimism bleeding in. The door chimed once, then groaned to life, and as it parted before us I turned once over my shoulder and justified our next move with a shrug.

“It’s not like we’ve got anything else going on.”



I could’ve laughed at the irony, but the sound of the traffic gate closing behind us sent the icy tendrils of regret up my spine. I finally got a better look at the district from this side of the checkpoint, and while I was all for working alone—having more room to maneuver—I wasn’t comfortable with splitting up our ad hoc squad here. There was a reason why Raider Platoon, the last remaining Marine relief force in New Mombasa, had colloquially labeled this zone “Black District.”

The name was not without sentimental depth. Where I initially thought “black” was meant to label this part of the city as a dead zone for communication, it was also referring to its complete and total lack of power. Not a single street light shone, nor any emergency guidance lights or displays. Everything hard-lined to Mombasa’s power grids was dead, and everything that wasn’t showed obvious signs of EMP damage, the by-product of Covenant slip-space jumps.

At the top of the traffic ramp, the five of us—Wilks, Kate, myself, a scout sniper from their squad named Ryan, and Adrian, a Marine rifleman from Raider Platoon who had little more option than to stick with us—collectively scanned an intersection fifteen meters down the declining road ahead of us. Verbally, none of us made a sound, but with such a heavy silence I could hear our Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) rattle and click with every turn and adjustment to our formation. When we finally started to move down the ramp, we may as well have been a marching band.

Nevertheless, our initial insertion was clear. Dim and grim looking, but void of anything to suggest immediate hostile activity. “Clear,” I muttered.

One at a time, the others repeated, and then Ryan spoke up. “We should go by twos.”

“There’s five of us,” Kate said flatly, weapon raised.

“One group gets three,” he curtly corrected.

I shifted my stance, aligning myself and my aim with a blackening street ahead. Ten meters ahead, where the previous district’s street lights ended, was a maw of darkness formed by the low street and the surrounding buildings. That’s where I chose to go.

And with my route set in mind, I spoke up. “Anything larger than two is just gonna draw attention out here. We’ll cover more ground if I go alone.”

“You’re taking a risk negating the buddy system,” Wilks said. “You said it yourself: Lone Wolf tactics are unorthodox.”

I shook my head. Damn him for remembering. “We’re way past conventional war.” It was a bland defense that I hoped he wouldn’t contest. However disappointed he was, he didn’t speak out against my appraisal. There was no such thing as orthodox anymore, and I wouldn’t readily admit that any other time. I followed my principles religiously; the structure we were trained with is there for a reason, but when stepping over the line make sure it’s been blurred first.

“I’ll see you at the docks.”



Evening, 2037 hours. I had just started working my way along Usiku Avenue, a main road that swerved through a block of towering residential buildings, when I started to think even the Covenant had given up on this part of the battleground. First fifteen minutes—a quarter of an hour with my boots scraping across unscarred pavement—and I had yet to see a single patrol, much less a straggler. That was until I was about thirty meters to the next intersection, when around the bend in the street I saw the shape of a Covenant Ghost coming into view. Lightly armed and nimble, it was a vehicle better fit for scouting, but against a foot mobile like myself I might as well have been going up against a tank.

My feet stopped at the sight, but I knew it wasn’t a threat—not yet anyway. I would’ve heard the vehicle’s anti-gravity engine running, and on that idea it wasn’t hovering either; it was grounded, sitting in the middle of the street. I thumbed my BR55’s selector to Semi, readying myself nonetheless.

I leaned to adjust my sight around the bend, bringing my rifle up to my less-dominant left shoulder. The stance was uncomfortable and awkward, but it would let me get the first shot off. Clear for the first feet of avenue, I sidestepped graciously to the side, my back just a hair away from the wall behind me. Clear for the next five feet, spotting a back door to a motel. That was another point of interest that made my sidewalk stroll problematic as I soon spotted a skybridge that joined two apartments together about thirty meters down the street; if I had someone else with me I could have had 360 degree security, both covering the door as well as the all-but-perfect sniping vantage ahead. But there I was hoping to keep on my solo track of avoiding drama.

Following the edge of the street, I drew closer to the Ghost, this time with my sights glued to the motel door. Once the skybridge left my sight, I breathed out with relief, knowing that I was cloaked behind tons of polycrete. My eyes flicked to the downed vehicle and I realized that the term “downed” described its status further than simply being without a driver. The whole left half of its frontal shell had been sheered off, gnawed by blast damage.

Assured in the vehicle’s inoperability, I eased my grip and brought my barrel to the ground and let my shoulders relax. Whatever happened here was long since over. Had it been unmanned and untouched, God forbid, I would’ve been plagued with the idea of an invisible patrol in the vicinity. I wasn’t yet satisfied with my findings though, so I carefully edged my way to the corner of the building coverage, glanced the skybridge in the distance one more time, and then darted for the motel door across the street.

After waving the door open, I peered around the corner once, and while the room was in worse shape than I could picture nothing stood out in particular. So I rounded into the room, rifle up and scanning as I stepped in, allowing the door to close behind me. There was obvious blast damage. Ceiling panels were stripped, furniture was reduced to ribbons and dust, and with the way the walls were warped—not to mention the conspicuous burn and shrapnel pattern on the floor that once marked the location of a coffee table that now stood in all four corners of the room—it was safe for me to guess that it came from inside.

Smart money said it was an M9 grenade—high explosive, dual purpose; explosives were always amplified by confined spaces. Looking around the room, I quickly noticed the real damage; dried blood on the walls and floor, as well as mangled bodies of Unggoy, the covenant’s lowest of infantry, beneath the debris.

I was never more grateful for my helmet’s air filtration features. Thinking back on it, I don’t remember there being any flies, as though the Covenant dead were repulsive even to them. This was a first for me, seeing the kills this close after hours. The Unggoy, short, bulky and vicious by nature, always made noise of some kind; chattered their teeth or even mumbled to themselves, even in their sleep. Now, they were completely silent, and by comparison, their normally thick, lambent blue blood had lost its luminescent nature, crusted to the room’s surfaces.

I had seen enough to warrant a sleepless night or two when facing off against live Covenant. Deciding that I didn’t need the extra nightmare fuel, I kept moving through the grave, treading silently around broken glass and bodies.

A higher vantage point was my next aim. My earlier method of street level travel was more direct, easier thanks to a definite absence of hostile life. Now the signs were more evident. A fight had broken out, and while I had only seen Covenant kills I was bound to find UNSC casualties too. Total victory happened very rarely, and both sides always had stragglers. I needed to know what I was getting into.



I had taken the stairs, some six minutes of strides that ranged from slow-and-careful to rushed-and-impatient just for the sake of reaching the uppermost floor. I was only six stories above ground level, but it put me at an elevation that gave me a look into the forefront of Black District; the main plaza that acted as a branching for this part of Mombasa. Room by room, I swept the entire floor, rifle slung for my smaller, more compact sidearm—I would have preferred a suppressed M7 submachine gun, a harder hitting arsenal just meant I’d be better stocked for when I would inevitably break silence.

After clearing the rooms, I managed to find one that gave me just the angle I was looking for; proper placement to see most of the plaza, but at the corner of the building’s façade, nearly cloaking me in the darkness provided by the next building across the street I had traveled along.

I put my palm to the rail and peered over, trying to get a glimpse of my previous approach path. Instead of a clear view, I found that it was instead obstructed by the same skybridge that had me paranoid before. Surprisingly, upon closer inspection I found that it linked the two buildings together. That would make my descent to the plaza easier, circumventing the exposed ground through the cover of concrete and darkness.

A sudden glint of purple shimmered from the bridge, causing the hair on my neck to stand. Icy fingers crept up my spine as I dared to stay a moment longer, chancing a better look. Just then, I saw the light come into view, like a match in the dark. Attached to it was the bird-like head of a Kig-Yar sniper as it poked its head from the skybridge’s window, no doubt surveying the plaza.

I pushed off the rail lightly and stepped back, out of his line of sight. I should have known. The Kig-Yar, often known as “Jackals,” were natural spotters but still relied partially on combat optics. The purple light of their monocular headgear gave them away in the dark.

I was safe at this angle, so he wasn’t my concern. I holstered my M6 sidearm at my thigh and oriented myself to the plaza with my rifle ready, all the while wary that my finger was away from the trigger guard. The plaza was dark, near pitch black at that. It might have been a problem some year or two ago, but with the Visual Intelligence System, Reconnaissance (VISR for laymen) that Navy research and development had integrated into the ODST arsenal I may as well be picturing raw, white daylight beating down on the scene.

Activating it required only a thought. First came the illumination, painting the overlook of the plaza with a lime-green hue, all but eliminating the shadows. Then the various edges and corners of concrete, asphalt, the abandoned vehicles and standalone doodads were mapped with distinct lines. Regular surfaces were marked with dull yellow, and anything that resembled complex machinery and compounds, or had UNSC markings, was highlighted in a soft azure.



Looking upon the plaza from this perspective, mapped with Augmented Reality (AR) highlighting its every crack, crevice and would-be ambush point, I slowly came to remember how I've always hated cities. Well, not hated, but definitely disliked. Living in the more rural establishments boasted by Beta Centauri, the skylines, streets, traffic--they were all alien to me. The rare occasion when my father needed to do business with an associate of JOTUN, or my mother convinced us to attend special events for colonial day, I had to try to find comfort in the noise and crowds.

But of all the urban traits, the lights bothered me the most. The countryside was always dark at night. I was accustomed to it, could see in the black. I could tell starlight apart from lamplight and lose myself counting the stars. New Mombasa was no exception, even now. The black sky reflected the odd hue of the city's many emergency lights and the original metropolitan aura was replaced by the prismatic display of burned Covenant war machines now occupying the streets and looming overhead.

Everything they had seemed to glow; their aircraft, their weapons, their armor, which made my little peek the easiest recon ever after acquiring the sign of movement. I switched off my VISR setting just for kicks. Sure enough, the dim glint of Brute power armor was enough to expose a general silhouette of the patrol snaking through the black.

While they lacked subtlety, I wasn't about to blur the line between gaudy versus proficient. Taking an obvious target with an equally obvious approach was a good way to die, if honorable by Covenant standards.

Say what you want, but a more intelligent approach is better deserving of respect and recognition than blunt force trauma. The few times I had heard Covenant speak English, all I could hear was criticism; ridicules of cowardice and hiding, occasionally weakness too.

I'm ready to accept that. We aren't very adept, technologically or physiologically compared to our foes, and I would dismiss the irony of their kind abusing active-camouflage being as one of their most used assets, but we make up for it in prowess. We're not bound by codes, we're not blinded by an unwarranted crusade. Sure, we hide, we hit and run, but what do they have to say when it works?

At any rate, the patrol had potential to be a problem, but it was small enough to slip by if they all stayed single-file as they were, or even if they spread thin to cover the plaza’s partially open ground. The only difference would be that in the amount of effort I had to use in neutralizing the weakest link. On that train of thought, they did look isolated; engaging them was an option too. Feeling the webbing on my thigh, I was reminded of the distance I had to go until I was on my way of getting clear of Black District. My ammo would have to last me through this plaza, and worse yet I had one more block to go.

There was only a handful on patrol; two Brute Minors, and no more than four Grunts waddling ahead of the single-file formation. They streamed along the edge of the plaza, and after a while the lesser in rank began breaking off at the direction of their Jiralhanae superiors. As quick as I was to acknowledge a good decision and take heed, the Brutes were operating with a size too limited to suddenly adopt a new dogma of tactics.

Addressing the security of this plaza was possible with the same number of Marines as there were the number of Covenant in my sights. Seven positions, all spread out and concealed across the street level, overlapping and just within dashing distance of each other in the event of casualties, would have been enough to hold until relieved. Five Grunts could barely hold a one-way street much less an intersection. Short-reached and weighed by heavy methane tanks, they didn’t have the mobility to be an effective, cohesive sentry detail.

With the Covenant lacking eyes on the plaza, and the amount of cover at my disposal, I already felt invisible. There was just one problem to address; that shooter had to go. Daring another peek over the railing, I counted three more stories between my floor and that of the skybridge, the one housing the very problem I hoped to solve. Making my way back inside apartment room, I looked both ways of the hall then stepped out, backtracking the dark halls and the nightmarishly echoing stairs, before reaching the skybridge floor.

Left, then right, I checked for sentries. None; the perch was just a few meters front and their Jackal sniper was completely without security. We did this risky move only when rushing our ops, when manpower was too thin to cover all of the bases. The Covenant wasn’t entirely unlike us, or they were and it was normal to leave supporting snipers exposed. I did see plenty of them operating in packs, manning different positions but never side by side like our sniper-spotter teams.

If the Covenant was spread thin, however, “even odds” were the words that I was looking for. They were down on numbers, I was alone. They had more eyes, I had less legs to make noise. I finally found a balance in my predicament.

I turned left and looked upon a hallway of upturned furniture and scattered debris. The place looked ransacked. He must have at least made sure his roost was secure. The idea of him completely unprotected left me without a sickening doubt. I sidestepped the obstacles with a kind of heel-to-toe grace that would make the Covenant’s stealth equipped envoys jealous. Maybe it was without warrant, but I didn’t want to risk being heard. Silence had become a friend on short notice for this part, but when I felt my foot tug against something firm, reality quickly told me it wouldn’t matter.

My stride hitched before I finished putting my step ahead of the other. Against my greave was a thin wire that twanged with every faint movement, running from one side of the hall to the other. To the right, I saw it anchored into the wall, and to the left, it met with a plasma grenade housed in a shell that looked like a roll cage. Every plasma grenade’s detonator—that I knew of—was a one-use, dedicated switch. Flicking the primer meant the grenade was destined to go off; no disarming it, just me hitting the deck and rethinking an escape path from the attention that it was destined to bring.

“Smart little bastard,” I muttered, grounding my foot and stepping over the line.

In a knelt posture, I made sure to get a good look at the device for my VISR to catch and record for future reference. The roll cage was barely held together with a clapper that hovered over the primer, held back by the tripwire that I swore was monofilament—fishing line. The UNSC’s xenology division would love to see something that proved the theory that not all Covenant specie followed widely accepted field tactics, and the bigotry against human technologies. I thought to disarm the device, but having no idea how it worked I decided I’d rather not tempt the damn thing.

I grounded my foot, pushed up, then stepped over the line. The trap looked, for lack of a better word, ghetto enough to be something absent from Jackal cook books, which almost made me believe this would be an isolated event with a slim chance of repeats. Even with the surprising clarity of the rest of the hall, I didn’t think my paranoia was unwarranted, but I was thankful to find I didn’t have to hop over anymore fish bombs.

Skybridge access was a double automatic door, fortunately propped open by emergency evacuation protovol. I formed myself to the corner after catching a glance of the sniper. His eyes were locked to his rifle: a slick, blade-like hock of purple alloy that had a horizontal split running the length of its barrel, and, at the rear handle, a wheel that glowed a vibrant pink array of heat sinks and power cells. Hurdling myself to the other side of the door, I opted to stay out of his peripheral vision before making my approach. Low and slow, I kept my BR55 snug to my shoulder, knees bent in the universal fighting position as I shuffled against the parallel side of the bridge. The patrol would hear the shot if I had to fire, but having to relocate and throw off their search was worth the price of smoking this bastard if I had to.

Hunched uncomfortably, I stalked along the wall, knowing that a good stretch would be in my favor. Once I was behind the vulture, I assisted my rifle to a hanging posture and drew the knife from the small of my back. He must have heard the noise, because his head just started to turn as my hand crept closer to the feathered head. Too late.

I leapt forward, closing the distance. With one boot to his crooked, supporting leg, I grabbed his elongated snout with a free hand, wrenching his whole head up and back while ramming my knife into his arm, depriving him control of his weapon. Pulling him away from the window was a lot easier after that. The bird-lizard tried to give off a cry, but as I righted my grip down to his throat with my elbow nothing came out. With that, I brought my knife down on the gap between its jaw and its collar bone, twisting it until I felt a grotesque pop. I was rewarded with an ample fountain of maroon blood that punctuated its last moments of campaign time on Earth, against humanity, against me. By reflex, its still-active hand clawed at my thigh, scraping against the Titanium-A plating harmlessly. I responded with another wrench of the knife, and after another second of thrashing, he went limp.

I set the body down, following it to the floor until I was resting on a knee, and after a quick blood cleaning scrape of my knife to his suit, I addressed his weapon. The device wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be. Tilting it to either side, I tried to familiarize myself with it. I was never fond of alien weaponry, mostly because I heard about the radiation poisoning it had on people after long term exposure. What with a family history of cancer on my mother’s side, to me I always felt a question of how long I had until my case began, or if it would ever.

Best not to increase the odds, I thought. Reaching into the power source, I manually turned the weapon’s dial until it whined in protest, then continued, turning back and forth until the wheel dislodged in my hand. Leaving the now inoperable weapon at the Jackal’s feet, I threw the power cell over the catwalk. It made an audible ring on the asphalt below as it rolled down the street I had followed here. Peering over the edge, it was apparent that the patrol heard it too. One at a time, they turned to the source, but it wasn’t until one of the Brute Minors directed two of his Unggoy subordinates to investigate.

Not like they’d find anything. Or at least that’s the idea I was banking on.