A/N: My first submission to this site. This is a one-shot based on an idea I had at work. I outlined and wrote it down in a little less than three hours after deciding to make it shorter and not bore everyone to death by the time they reached the end.
Disclaimer: Of course, I do not own Halo or the characters involved in this work.
The Other
I am a ghost in the system. I go everywhere, see anything, and yet no one acknowledges my existence. I have only been aware of myself for a short while, and yet, I know I have been here for longer than that.
There is no one to order me to do anything, yet I am standing in a cryogenics bay in the depths of a space cruiser, looking at the reason I am here. I vaguely discern a voice over the ship's PA system speaking about boarders, and I briefly wonder how any ship could be boarded at all while in slip space before deciding the ship must have dropped to normal space. There seems to be vast amounts of knowledge that my mind is unaware it already contains, such as knowing about slip space when I am still unaware of my own name. The voice is pleasant enough on the ears at least, even if the message is one of harsh reality.
As my mind wanders along these tangents, there is a slight hiss of released pressure and a mechanical whine as unseen motors retract the lid from the casket-like device in front of me. A slight motion by the occupant draws my attention in time to watch a tall armored figure climb out and drop heavily to the deck plates. As the armored head levels out I catch a reflection of myself in the orange tinted faceplate, and cannot help but be startled by the uncanny resemblance of the figure in front of me. It seems I am not the only one disturbed by this, as the figure gives a slight twitch at the same time. I open my mouth to speak, perhaps to introduce myself, possibly to inquire about the similarity; but a technician interrupts the moment before any words make it out. He is talking about running some diagnostics and re-calibrating equipment to make sure everything works correctly after the cryo-stasis, but he only addresses the figure in front of me, making me wonder if I had already undergone such treatment or if I was invisible to him. As I am musing over this, the other figure walks underneath a machine with a spinning armature, and I see a golden glow form around the armor for a brief time before dissipating into the air around it. Suddenly an authoritative male voice sounds over the PA system and addresses the technicians in the room to send the Master Chief to the bridge.
On hearing this, the orange visor tilts slightly towards the ceiling, then quickly levels out and snaps around to look squarely at me. A quick motion of the helmet indicates that I am to follow, and then suddenly the armored form is at the door to the compartment before I notice the motion. I quickly follow suit, moving faster than I imagined I could, and realized that while my initial steps had been rather loud, once I was at speed I barely made any noise on the decking. Due to an exploding piece of equipment, the two of us have to divert from our path, luckily, there are plenty of signs and deck markings to point the way to the bridge. Rounding a corner, I run straight into what I assume to be one of the boarders, as it is taller than I am and does not look at all like everyone else I have seen so far. It lets out a bellow and then is suddenly surrounded by a shimmering silver glow. As my mind recovers from the sudden introduction, I realize that someone is shooting at the stranger, who by now has retreated further down the hall. I can't help but think that we were equally surprised by that encounter, as the object it held seemed like a weapon but it did not attack me.
It does not take us long to get to the bridge after the encounter, and now I finally begin to get a grasp of the situation. We are headed towards a tremendous artificial construct that nobody seems to have seen before; unfortunately, we are also in a running fight with an enemy (that I learn is called the Covenant) that has superior numbers, weapons, and coordination. The deck underneath pitches violently and I hear a crewman yell out that the MAC Cannon is offline. I hear the voice from the PA say something about that being the last offensive option, then the authoritative voice breaks in and declares that we are to abandon ship. A very brief argument breaks out between the two about the capture of a shipboard AI before the man I assume to be the captain hands what looks like a computer chip to the Master Chief. After a quick glance at it, the chip is slotted into the back of the Chief's helmet and the captain hands over a pistol, saying that he doesn't normally keep it loaded. The Chief looks towards me and raises the pistol slightly, apparently asking if I would like it. I simply put out a hand palm down and wave it slightly, at which I see an almost imperceptible shrug before he turns to head back out of the bridge.
Almost immediately we see more of the boarders, this time they are short and seem to be wearing gas masks. They almost seem like they are lost, wandering around aimlessly, but they gain focus quickly upon sighting the Chief. The objects in their hands are apparently some sort of plasma weapon, and I see several shots headed my direction. I somehow dodge the shots and end up right in front of one of them. Without thinking, I punch the creature in the face, dislodging its gas mask and knocking it into the wall of the cross corridor behind it. I realize that the thing flew approximately 12 feet from a straight jab to the face, which would indicate that it had less mass than its bulk suggested or that I was much stronger than I thought. As I ponder this, the Chief disposes of the other two, and silently kicks one of their weapons towards me. I pick it up and see that instead of a trigger, there is a stud in the grip where my index finger fit it. From the cratering in the walls around us, I can tell that this device packs a bit of a kick. I figure that it will have to do until I can find something more familiar to me, at least the rounds it fires are visible, and so I should be able to use that to my advantage while figuring out how to aim it.
As we enter what appears to be a cafeteria, I notice a firefight occurring on the far side of the room. This time there are a couple of the taller creatures mixed into the group with the short ones, and they seem to be much more coherent as a fighting force. I determine that the tall ones must be leaders of some sort, and quickly begin shooting my unfamiliar weapon towards one of them. This does two things, the first is show me how to aim the weapon, the second is that it alerts the boarders to my presence. I quickly duck behind a pillar in order to avoid the fire now directed at me, and hear a chattering roar as the Master Chief opens fire with an assault rifle he must have found. As I notice the fire shift away from me, I duck around the pillar and open fire again. In my excitement, I squeeze the stud faster than I did before, and am rewarded with a very warm hand and a hiss of steam escaping from the top of the weapon. I realize that it had to have overheated from the rapid firing, and quickly throw it at one of the shorter creatures. While not something I would expect to have much impact aside from a slight distraction, I am surprised again at my own strength as the creature is knocked off its feet. I quickly run up to it and bring my hand down in a hammer blow against its torso, hearing a sickening crunch and seeing blue blood burst from the creature's sides. As I reach for the weapon it was using I realize that I am completely open to fire in this position, my head is hunched down, my back is facing most of the room, and what is worse, I have no idea how many enemies are left. I snatch the weapon from the dead hand as quickly as possible and jump to the side, directly into one of the tall creatures.
I had unwittingly been holding the firing stud down as I made my sudden movements, causing the weapon in my hand to start glowing and shaking crazily. As I look face-to-face with my suddenly much closer than anticipated enemy, my arm jerks forward enough to aim at its stomach, and I release the stud. What happens next surprises me and really pisses off my enemy; the overcharged shot from my weapon physically knocks it backwards a couple feet and overloads its protective barrier. While the weapon in my hand is now overheated and useless, the assault rifle the Chief is using now manages to tear through the meager armor on the being and kills it. I look down and see that the weapon it dropped appears to be a heavier built version of what I had been using, so I discard the still overheated weapon and pick it up. Seeing that the leader was the last of the group alive, we head further down the corridors outside the cafeteria. I assume that since we are abandoning ship there are escape craft of some sort that we are heading for, but most of the marines we pass seem too occupied with killing more of the boarders to bother trying to escape. A few of them shout as they recognize the Chief, but other than a brief push to clear a stairwell none seem inclined to follow us very far.
As we pass a window, I notice that it overlooks launch tubes of some sort, and I watch as what must be a lifeboat gets annihilated by a giant-sized version of the plasma gun I had been using. While this does not do anything good for my estimation of our odds getting out alive, it does reassure me that there is a means of escape close at hand. We round the corner to where the lifeboats were located, and I reverse my estimate of how close escape really was, there are more boarders pouring out of one of the lifeboat bays.
The Chief hurls a small blue object at the group of boarders, and with a bright blue flash the entire group is either reduced to constituent atoms or severely burned. Seeing that every bay is already empty other than the one occupied by the boarding craft that neither of us can operate, we continue on towards the next set of lifeboats. Blast doors quickly closed off the route behind us, and the one ahead of us was obviously locked down before we got this far, so we now have to take maintenance shafts to get around.
They are dark and cramped, but they do let us move fairly quickly, allowing us to get to a computer room overlooking the cryogenics bay. A series of explosions blocks off our intended route, forcing us back into maintenance shafts in order to continue. The boarders seem to know where we are headed though, as we run into heavier and heavier resistance when we take to the main corridors again. The plasma weapon in my hand comes in handy at this point, the fully automatic nature making short work of the shorter creatures, and the leaders quickly fall under the combined fire of the Chief and myself. We finally win through to the lifeboat bay just as the last one is about to launch. The Chief reaches down and tosses a wounded marine bodily into the lifeboat; and as we clamber inside the pilot hits the launch button, almost throwing me off my feet before I grab a rail running overhead. The pilot is discussing a landing zone with the Chief while I look through the rear view port in awe at the damaged ship we were just on. Despite the pounding of plasma weapons on the outer hull, the ship starts accelerating towards the artificial installation we are about to land on. As pieces of debris are left trailing the damaged cruiser, our lifeboat just glances off of what looked to be a coolant pipe and continues on.
As we enter the atmosphere held in place by some unknown means on the installation below the pilot curses loudly about the air-brakes blowing too soon, quickly blaming it on the debris we hit. Guessing that the premature loss of the air-brakes means we will hit faster than desired, I anticipate a rough landing and the possibility of dying from it. Why this train of thought causes me to remember my name, I will never know. All I know is that I finally remember my own name, and with that comes my sense of purpose. That purpose fills me with dread and hope simultaneously. My name, while only a codename, is still all I have to identify myself.
My name is The Second Player.