Chapter One: The Unsolvable Tangent
John walked up on the main deck of Cairo Station. The deck looked like an anthill as soldiers scurried around their different stations. In the middle of the room was a new set of armor. It was green like the current Mk. VI that was on his muscular body now. Personally, he was relieved. The Mk. V was a better suit than the VI, but the Chief learned long ago not to complain. He just walked up to the middle of the room and let the technicians replace his armor. Once the Mk. VI armor was removed, John felt he was exposed but hid this well behind a mask of unreadable expression. Once the new Mark VII was completely equipped, John felt at home again, but then, a part of his mind felt cold and icy. The strange presence in his mind seemed to make itself at home and seemed to smile. "There's a lot of room in here." The AI said with a hint of amusement in her voice. John just glared at her in his mind. Then, there was an explosion. "Covenant forces have infiltrated the station!" John looked around as Johnson handed him an M-9 pistol. "Give them hell, Chief." He said with a faint smile. John just nodded and walked down the passage out to the air locks. As he walked, John ran through the slew of enemy with a little trouble. As John was running, he looked over into the hanger bay and saw a strange spiked elongated oval. The AI scanned the odd looking device and cursed. "It's an antimatter bomb." John sighed and ran to the bomb as it ticked down. John put his hand on the blinking red light. It turned blue. "How much time was left?" John asked calmly. Cortana sighed. "You don't want to know." She said with a grave tone. "Let's give it back to them." Cortana's code flickered inside herself, similar to a human holding their breath. John pulled the bomb to the air lock and pushed it through. As he fell out with the bomb, John reactivated the bomb and pushed off of it back to the Cairo Station. The bomb exploded and wounded the enemy flagship.
The shockwave knocked Master Chief out and sent him tumbling to Earth. With the new Mr. VII, Cortana was no longer helplessly trapped in the suit with nothing to do but hope her human currier and his unrealistic luck allowed for him to survive. She tapped into the suit's micro thrusters wired into the nuclear generator as one of the new upgrades to the MJOLNIR Armor and slowed their decent enough so John would only suffer a little bruising upon impact. "Three…two…one…" She grunted as the landing made her consciousness flicker as her chip vibrated in its supposedly firmly locked slot in the back of the armor's helmet. Cortana checked John's vials, just in case her rushed, even for a "smart" AI such as herself, calculations proved to be wrong. She was intrigued when she read John's brainwaves. Her AI mind reduced everything to complex mathematics. Even though her mind was the computer version of a human brain, she still processed data as dizzyingly complex formulas. So, when a wave in John's mind was rendered as an undefined function of Tangent, or so Cortana perceived it to be, she was understandably baffled and worried. Had Cortana been listening, instead of fretting over John's physical state, she would have heard John mumble her name right as the unlikely function appeared.
John sat up and looked around. His body felt as if it had been thrown through two brick walls and finally stopped at a third by an Elite. His hand instantly flew to the slot in the back of his head. Good. Package is safe. The Chief thought to himself. Unbeknownst to John, Cortana was glaring at him from inside his head but kept her peace. She hated being thought of as just a disposable device no different from a portable storage drive. John got up and started walking as Cortana checked their position. "Civilization is-" She was cut off as the sound of Wraith plasma cannons echoed in John's ears. He glared in the direction of the blasts and started sprinting to the site as pictures of destruction flashed through his mind. Even with John's advanced augmentations, it took the Spartan nearly half an hour to reach the battlefield.
Once there, John found a hide behind a slab of broken reinforced concrete, the ends of exposed rebar scorched and melted to show it had been grazed by the fury of a Covent plasma turret. From this spot, Master Chief surveyed the field. A squad of marines was pinned by Grunts who had taken cover behind another section of concrete. Their blue-armored Elite taskmaster was looking around for stragglers who appeared to be shooting from above. Cortana smiled to herself. She had found some interesting new toys in the suit when she discovered the thrusters that saved the Chief's life. She quickly programmed the thermal crystals in the suit and deployed them. All John saw was a pinkish purple flurry of projectiles shoot out from the top of his vision. John quickly whirled to face in the direction of the Needler rounds but saw no one behind him. When John turned back around, he saw the squad of Grunts ripped to shreds by the mystery Needler rounds. Blue blood coated the ground in puddles around the fallen Unggoy. The Elite turned toward the sound of his annoying underlings and growled in frustration before he ran at the marines as they fired their weapons at the creature, but the Elite's energy field kept the warrior from harm. Just as the blue clad alien was about to finish of the marines who were out or low on ammo, two shots rang out in rapid succession. The first shot was a through and through of the alien's temple. As the creature started to fall, the second ripped into the Elite's chest.
The marine squad turned toward the shots as John stated to walk toward the men. Most of them stood, mouths agape, at the seven foot tall super soldier. The ones that didn't stand started whispering among themselves. "That's a Spartan." One whispered. Another said, "I heard they're machines, like T-800s." The leader of the squad glared at the man. "This isn't a movie, Hollywood. Now, shut up!" The man dubbed Hollywood shut his yap, but John could see searching eyes in the squad leader now, as if the man were mentally testing his fellow marine's theory in his mind. "Let's move." The Chief ordered as he looked around. "Sir?" The squad leader asked as he looked at one of his men who seemed to be held together with biofoam and field dressings. "Radcliff, give this to my wife." The critically injured marine reached in and weakly grabbed a note and a ring from a pocket on his fatigues before he handed it to Radcliff. The squad leader glared at his fallen brother-in-arms as if to say, "No man left behind". The solder gave a slight, respectful nod. The squad leader understood and regrettably looked away before he looked back. "Godspeed…" He said calmly with an angry look in his eyes.
The squad moved on and followed the path of carnage the Wraith left in its wake. John's mind remained alert to his surroundings, but the Spartan had been struck hard by what the dying marine told his CO. Contrary to popular belief, John was human. He just ignored his emotions because he was trained to think they hindered battle performance. Now, he saw the truth. These men were fighting for more than the UNSC. Each one had a personal emotional stake in this war with the ideology-crazed Covenant. They had someone back home, waiting patiently for the hopeful return of the soldier fighting now in this hell hole for something bigger than a single government entity. John suddenly felt shame at this realization. The marines that marched behind him had someone to look forward to when this war was done and nothing but a black mark against the scheme of human history. John, on the other hand, knew nothing but combat and suddenly found that he was wishing for more than just the life of a soldier as he marched on through the destroyed, but largely clear, path left by the Covenant tank.
The men had been walking for close to an hour when John heard the whine of Wraith engines. He balled up a held fist in a "halt" motion. The men quickly took position behind various hides, and John bent into a crouch behind a felled wall and waited for the war machine to pass him. Before Cortana could stop the Spartan, he jumped onto the Wraith. The marine platoon took that signal and started to fire on the tank from all directions. The confused operator didn't know where to fire first and didn't have time to figure it out before the "Demon" kicked his ass. John yanked the Elite operator out of the tank and threw him to ground as the Elite cursed The Human Demon until the marines gladly mopped up with cold eyes. "My, you work fast." Cortana told him. His face turned into a dark scowl. "I'm the best at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice." He told her calmly. John could feel the AI's sadness somehow when he said that, and it caused him to stop and think. Am I still human? The thought generated an emotion John rarely felt: fear. The Spartan had seen a lot of scary shit in wartime, but the thought of sacrificing his Humanity for the UNSC was perhaps scarier than facing down any army of Hunters and/or gold Elites.
A tender voice brought the Spartan back from the brink. "John…" At first, the Chief thought it was Dr. Catharine Halsey, his surrogate "mother". The voice sure sounded like her. When John came to himself again and cleared his mind, however, the voice became more defined in his ears, and he recognized Cortana's voice as the sound blasted at him from his helmet speakers. "Damn it, John! Get your ass up!" John blinked. If he didn't know for a fact Cortana was a computer program, he would swear she was crying. It was then John realized how Cortana saw him. She did not see him as a mindless beast with only a single directive of "Kill the enemy." She saw him as more, much more. For the first time since his childhood, John felt his lips form into a smile. I do have someone to fight for, John thought to himself. Her name is Cortana.
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Author's Note: I just wanted to try my hand at a Halo fic. I do not eat, breath, and sleep Halo, so nit picky Trolls will have Carrier Forms sent after them with no mercy.