RWBY: Pillar of Autumn

Prologue

0103 Hours, September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Cruiser Pillar of Autumn, location unknown

Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom roused him from his fitful sleep. He rubbed his blurry eyes and glanced at the Mission Clock bolted to the wall above his bunk. He'd been asleep for three hours -- his first sleep cycle in thirty-six, damn it. Worse, this was the first time since the ship had jumped that he'd been able to sleep at all.

"Jesus," he muttered, "this better be good."

The Old Man had put the tech crews on triple shifts after the Pillar of Autumn jumped away from Reach. The ship was a mess after the battle, and what was left of the engineering crews worked around the clock to keep the aging cruiser in one piece. Nearly one third of the tech staff had died during the flight from Reach, and every department was running a skeleton crew.

Everyone else went into the freezer, of course -- nonessential personnel always got an ice-nap during a Slipspace jump. In over two hundred combat cruises, Marcus had logged fewer than seventy-two hours in cryostorage. Right now, though, he was so tired that even the discomfort of cryo revival sounded appealing to him if it meant he could manage some uninterrupted sleep.

Of course, it was difficult to complain; Captain Keyes was a brilliant tactician -- and everyone knew just how close they'd come to destruction when Reach fell to the enemy. A major naval base destroyed, millions dead or dying as the Covenant burned the planet to cinder -- and one of Earth's few remaining defenses transformed into corpses and molten slag.

All in all, they'd been damn lucky to get away -- but Sam couldn't help but feel that everyone on the Autumn was living on borrowed time.

The intercom buzzed again, and Sam swung himself out of the bunk. He jabbed the comm control. "Marcus here," he growled.

"I'm sorry to wake you, Sam, but I need you down in Cryo Two." Tech Chief Shephard sounded exhausted. "It's important."

"Cryo Two?" Sam repeated, puzzled. "What's the emergency, Thom? I'm not a cryo specialist."

"I can't give you specifics, Sam. The Captain wants it kept off the comm," Shephard replied, his voice almost a whisper. "Just in case we have eavesdroppers."

Sam winced at his superior's tone. He'd known Thom Shephard since the Academy and had never heard the man sound so grim.

"Look," Shephard said, "I need someone I can depend on. Like it or not, that's you, pal. You've cross-checked cryo systems."

Sam sighed. "Months ago . . . but yes."

"I'm sending a feed to your terminal, Sam," Shephard continued. "It's answer some of your questions anyway. Dump it to a portable 'pad, grab your gear and get down here."

"Roger," Sam said. He stood, shrugged into his uniform tunic, and stepped over to his terminal. He activated the computer and waited for the upload from Shephard.

As he waited, his eyes locked on a small two-dee photograph taped to the edge of the screen. Sam brushed his fingers against the photo. The pretty young woman frozen in the picture smiled back at him.

The terminal chimed as the feed from Shephard appeared in Sam's message queue. "Receiving the feed, Chief," he called out to the intercom pickup.

He opened the file. A frown creased on his tired features as a new message scrolled across his screen

>FILE ENCRYPTED / EYES ONLY / MARCUS, SAMUEL N. / SN : 18827318207-SM.>DECRYPTION KEY: [PERSONALIZED: "ELLEN'S ANNIVERSARY"]

He glanced back at the picture of his wife. He hadn't seen Ellen in almost three years -- since his last shore leave on Earth, in fact. He didn't know anyone on active duty who hadn't been able to see their loved ones for years. The war simply didn't allow for it.

Sam's frown deepened. UNSC personnel generally avoided talking about people back home. The war had been going badly for so long that morale was rock-bottom. Thinking about the home front only made things worse. The fact that Thom had personalized the security code was unusual enough; reminding Sam of his wife in the process was completely out of character for Chief Shephard. Someone was being security conscious to the point of paranoia.

He punched in a series of numbers -- the date of his wedding -- and enabled the decryption suite. In seconds, the screen filled with schematics and tech readouts. His practiced eye scanned over the file -- and adrenaline suddenly spiked through his fatigue like a bolt of lightning.

"Christ," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. "Thom, is this what . . . who I think it is?"

"Damn right. Get down to Cryo Two on the double, Sam. We've got an important package to thaw out - and we drop into real space soon."

"On my way," he said. He killed the intercom connection, his exhaustion forgotten.

Sam quickly dumped the tech file to his portable compad and deleted the original from his computer. He strode toward the door to his cabin, then stopped. He snatched Ellen's picture from his workstation -- almost as an afterthought -- and shoved it into his pocket.

He sprinted for the lift. If the Captain wanted the inhabitant of Cryo Two revived, it meant Keyes believed that the situation was about to go from bad to worse -- or it already had.