Gathering Darkness✔️

Chapter 11: Into the Void

Ever since the Winter's Edge had settled into orbit around Darkholm, Kane had felt a background frequency of fear settle over him like an icy mist. For the most part, it hadn't let up. He'd been stuck with it. But here, now, beneath the earth, in the dark, claustrophobic gloom of the mining operation, it felt so powerful it was almost choking. He had taken point, since he needed his flashlight to see, and Ross was right behind him, an immensely reassuring presence at his back. Kane was embarrassed to admit it, even to himself, but he couldn't imagine having to do this alone. He'd put up with a lot, pushed through a lot.

But this mission was too much for him.

No, he told himself. It wasn't. It wasn't too much. He could handle this, goddamnit. He'd push through it like he'd pushed through everything else in his life. To try and make himself feel better, Kane told himself what he often told himself in bad situations: soon, this will just be a memory. As he thought this, he suddenly wanted to see the sun again. The sun, even an alien sun that this ball of mud and rock orbited, was something he abruptly missed dearly, almost painfully. But he had to get through this, one step at a time.

The nav marker was about twenty meters away now.

To distract himself, or at least keep himself from flipping out, he thought about Mike Ross. When they were on the ground together, boot-deep in the shit, he was all business. But when they were on the ship, or enjoying some R and R, the guy was a party animal. He was one of the few people Kane had met that could match him drink for drink. He also knew that the man had a weakness for gambling, although he had yet to see him lose big. He was always laying bets on the ship. It had actually become a small game for Kane and the others.

What was the most ridiculous thing they could bet Ross to do?

So far, Kane had seen the man drink a bottle of BBQ sauce, attempt to eat a freaking five pound gummy bear, and eat a jar of ghost peppers.

Ross was a source of entertainment all his own.

But beneath it all, beneath the jokes and the drinking and the good times, Kane could sense a great pain in there, and, after several months, had learned the origin of that pain. It had been after a nasty firefight on a moon being overrun by the Covenant. They'd been evacing civilians, the moon was lost and they were pulling out. It seemed like one too many emergency transports had been shot down that day, and after they'd pulled out and made the jump to slipspace, he and Ross had ended up heading down into one of the hundreds of maintenance passageways buried beneath the deckplates, bringing a bottle of powerful booze with them.

They just sat there and passed it back and forth.

And then, without any apparent provocation, Ross started telling him about how his wife was killed in a Covenant raid ten years ago when he was offworld. He said nothing had ever been the same after that, and he'd gone through some pretty dark times. He'd gone a little crazy, and ended up disappearing one day when he was tasked with getting some Marines out of a Covenant occupied city. When he'd arrived, they'd all been dead, and he'd just...lost it. He said there was a gap in his memory. Apparently, for about a week and a half, he'd traveled all over that city, waging a one-man war on the Covenant.

He still didn't know how he'd survived.

After that, he'd come to a kind of realization: his wife wouldn't want him miserable and suffering, even if she was gone, and so he'd done his best to make peace with the hole in his heart, and did what he could to be happy.

Kane hadn't really been sure how to react.

But it helped explain a lot about the stocky demolitions expert.