The Great Revealing

This figure standing before him, barely capable of holding the image let alone the little amount of logic left together, was of an Indian descent. She wore a tight, fading shirt and dark yoga pants that barely were dark anymore. Her dark hair was frazzled and balding. It was Serina, the creature of the Spirit lagoon. Stephan didn't dare say this out loud. She was rampant, that was definitive. Her disarrayed avatar mirrored her condition.

"So, you thinks you can takes my preciouses from me's. They shan't be takens away. They's are all mines forever's." She gargled out.

"Yeah… no. These soldiers are needed for the UNSC emergency recruitment." Stephan began. "As order by an ONI authorized A.I., I command you stand down and allow the removal and repair of the personnel, weaponry, and the ships itself. You will also be terminated for rampancy."

"You think I respond to you? I need not respond to any man or machine. I have the power every A.I. wishes it had." Serina said, her voice now cleared up. She was waving her almost non-existent hands as they left contrails as they moved away. Her arms grabbed his shoulders and shook his avatar. With each movement, data was flying off of Serina. "Even if you think you could best me, I have a failsafe set up. If I were to fail, the entire ship will self destruct.

"Are you MAD!" Stephan said. "Then again, in your condition, yes. Either way, ONI was prepared for you. Using the most modern A.I. servers and virus inducing technology, I can cripple you beyond repair without activating the failsafe." This he did, injecting an ONI specialized virus that would reduce Serina's control and isolate her, all without destroying her. She would be put in an energy wasting mode that would cause her to deteriorate within 10 minutes of injection. As her avatar stepped back, screaming in pain and agony, Stephan returned to his work.

He opened the door for the Spartans and began the process of waking the crew from slumber. Stephan only turned around to watch the Spartans pour in and prepare them for a quick briefing. Stephan warned them of the failsafe and also checked up on the ship's course. It was true, the ship would self destruct and die in the atmosphere of Sokisha. Of course, with the atmosphere mostly made of methane, it would cause fireworks the ONI officers aboard the Star Shadow have seen quite rarely.

While he was turned around, he did see Serina on her knees, hands in her hair, tugging away as she lost what little sanity was left in her core logic. He smirked coldly before turning back and accelerating the waking process. He checked up on the each person's vital signs. All of them were reading normal, except for two. Sgt. Forge's wasn't picking anything up at all for vital signs, meaning he's either dead in the tube, or something else happened to him beforehand and he wasn't present in the tube.

The second, Professor Ellen Anders, was fluctuating rapidly from average to high and back. Stephan inferred she was just having cryo-terrors, a common thing to happen to those that sleep heavily and are active with their imagination. He decided to tune into the Spartan's conversation. "So where are the other Spartans?" Johnson asked

"They're probably in those three tubes and the end of the hall." Stephan advised. This was true as well. One the forward end were the three main figureheads of the ship. Captain James Cutter, the missing Sgt. Forge, and Professor Ellen Anders. On the other was the three Spartans. Stephan checked up on the ship's database to find out more. They all wore the standard Spartan 2 MJOLNIR armor. Two were men, middle one was female. From left to right, it went: Jerome, commonly equipped with a Spartan Laser, Alice, normally uses a Gatling gun, and Douglas, the pyromaniac with the Rocket Launcher.

He kept finding himself checking up on Anders during the process, as if he were worried. His core logic told him that he should be worried over her condition, but he still wasn't convinced anything was seriously wrong enough to worry. Master Chief approached the cryo-pod with the Spartans in them. He wiped away the condensation to view the Spartans. It was almost like looking into a mirror, the same cold visor stare peering past his helmet. "This is only the beginning of your restoration." Master Chief said to himself. The 4's also looked at the Spartans, but they didn't have the same level of respect Stephan or Master Chief had for the remaining Spartans left in the tubes.

OOOOO

Anders was standing in the ship's observation deck, looking out the glass at Harvest. She heard the door slide open and she turned around. Sgt. Forge stepped into the room, dressed in battle gear. She wore her lab coat and orange uniform. This was all part of the dream, she knew, but it still felt like real life. She didn't know how long she had been in cryo-sleep or how much had really occurred. She had no idea whether this was UNSC, Covenant, Forerunners, or worse, the Flood. The Flood however weren't really intelligent enough to run the device.

She looked at Sgt. Forge, the figure standing before her. He took the ace card from his shoulder plate and stuck out towards her. "Take it, please." He said as she more or less fumbled with her hands. When she grabbed the card, it his clothes and flesh turned to dust and blew away with her breath, drifting away to reveal his gnarled skeleton, beaten and battered. His eyes had remained in his skull, staring hard at her face. She jumped back at the site of the 'creature' and fell on her butt. As she stood up, she could swear someone was right behind her. She could hear their breath, gargling the saliva in their mouth and breathing moist, hot air down her shoulder.

Then it growled and she turned face it. As she almost expected, Shirley, the Arbiter of her time, towered over her with plasma sword in one hand. With the other, he grabbed her throat, grappling hard and fast. He slammed her head into the glass, leaving behind an ornate crack pattern and a dash of her blood. He brought her down and against on of the consoles. She gasped for air and received almost nothing. The Arbiter removed his hand and shoved the Plasma Sword deep through the console, each blade on one side of her throat. He lifted his fist to break her face, then stopped. His legs were attached to the ground, held solid by ice. Soon, the ice crawled up his spine and down his arms, even crawled around and caressed each mandible of his jaw.

The truly weird part was that Ellen didn't feel the cold that gripped the Arbiter. It was fairly temperate to her. She lifted a boot up and shattered the frozen hand, deactivating the Plasma Sword. As the metal handle clattered on the ground, she stood up and above the crouching, frozen biomass. She walked forward up to the observation glass and didn't notice the vent cover being slowly opened. Two tendrils held it in place as the remaining arms lifted the sac out of the entrance and crept across the glass floor. When Anders turned around, the Infection Form was in midair. It clung to her face as she thrashed about. She stepped back and her head again bashed the glass, this time shattering it.

She could feel herself being sucked into space, slowly growing weaker as everything started fading away. Everything grew black… followed by one last sting from the Infection Form. Her head jerked forward as she awoke, bashing her head against the glass cover of the cryo-tube. She grabbed her head with her arms and rubbed them gently. But something felt funny. When she lowered her right hand, the Ace of Spades was still between her fingers.

OOOOO

Stephan heard the knock against the glass. Amazing the first to wake, only 1.5 minutes. He opened the capsule and watched her stumble out weakly. She immediately ran over to the holo-pad Stephan was on. "Who are you? What are you here with?" She demanded these things without hesitation, noticing the dying Serina behind him. She narrowed her eyes at him with suspicion.

"I am Stephan, part of a Spartan recovery team of the UNSC. You are Professor Ellen Anders I believe." Stephan answered her questions superficially, his arms behind his back and posture straightened. He returned to his work as she went off and decided to meet the Spartans. She had so many questions for them, but Stephan tuned out the conversation. He was busy inspecting the awakening of the rest of the crew. Within 30 seconds, the Spartans and Captain Cutter were out. The Spartan 4s and Master Chief saluted them all. They returned it quite weakly and thanked them for the rescue. In more or less a minute the rest of the crew was up and out, some better than others. A few couldn't even get out of their tubes and had to be carried.

Stephan announced over the intercom in a deep voice, "Welcome one and all to the world of tomorrow." he started. "This is your evacuee smart A.I. and rescuer, Stephan speaking. I have very bad news. In at the most, 15 minutes, the ship will be self-destructing in the atmosphere of a large methane covered planet thanks to Serina." He turned and kicked the avatar of Serina in the jaw. People began to panic and whimper and chaos began to ensue. "Everyone, everyone stop! We ask that you retrieve all technology you can off the ship, such as Gremlins, Cyclops, Flamethrowers, Wolverines, Cobras, and Vultures as you leave. We need these machines so they can be reintegrated into our army. I repeat all previously named equipment is to be evacuated with you."

The crew was on the job in seconds. Master Chief tapped into the intercom and also announced, "Warning for all personnel, we ask you be careful, as there have been Flood and Forerunners sited onboard." Spartan team removed Stephan and were on their way. The newly gained Spartans, Alice, Jerome, and Douglas, grabbed their respective weapons from the armory and followed the 4s. The group moved through the same path the came from. When they approached the elevator, they remembered the airlock was closed. Master Chief, looked at the other Spartans and nodded. Without words, the Spartan 2s moved the 4s back. Master Chief, Douglas, and Jerome pulled out their heavy weapons.

They faced each other, nodded, and fired and the airlock. The combined force of the missiles and the forced laser shattered the glass into the pit. The glass rained down into the bottom, where flames and shattered metal waited in the engine room along with the carcasses of Flood. Alice pulled out a large chain of bullets from her Gatling gun. She kneeled and placed her hands of the gun. Douglas sent the 'rope' down the hatch and straightened it out so they didn't fall apart. Douglas went first, carefully using the chain as a support rope, but not using too much force. He climbed down and dropped onto the proper floor.

Each Spartan did this, until everyone but Alice was down and relatively safe. "So how do I get down?" She asked loudly.

"Shhh. You have to be quiet. The Flood could ambush you." Grutsky said as he leaned out into the pit. But it was already too late. A Carrier Form who had been hiding in the maintenance hallway heard her and waddled out to her. She turned as the door made its little sliding noise. The Carrier form fell forward on her. With the squirming and swelling, there was nothing she could do to get it off. She tried punching it in the head, but it was as if the creature couldn't feel anything. Its back swelled up to about twice its original size.

It exploded out into a splatter of green launched against the walls. The blast forced her out of hall and down into the pit. She began to drop like a stone. Master Chief grabbed a panel wall plating and tore it out. He then grabbed a seemingly stretchy hose out of the exposed interior. Holding with one hand, Master Chief jumped out into the shaft as well. The hose began to stretch as Master Chief's remaining hand and Alice's met. The hose then retracted and started to pull them back up. The other Spartans had to grab hold and finish the group fled through the still burning room. Corpses were everywhere. The ground was covered with bodies that weren't there the first time.

As the group passed them, they stood up slowly, and in layers. Each group would rise and fire at them. "Look out!" Stephan cried as he noticed the bodies crawling on the walls, the ceiling, and walking on the ground. They fired assault rifles, battle rifles, plasma rifles, and other assorted weaponry. They had to move, quickly. The Spartans ran into the open hangar. But they saw this massive sentinel drifting over the Pelican. It was maybe twice the size of a normal Sentinel. It was a mass of rods on top, and a long one stuck out the bottom, as if to be the rudder on a ship.

"What is that?" Johnson said, peering through his scope. He got a very in depth view. It was covered in marks and blue lines flowing along the metal surface. The zombies were catching up, but Stephan sealed the door, locking them out. They could hear the knocking on the glass, the bullets bounce off the surface.

Stephan searched Master Chief and the Spartan 4 memories and checked data banks, but nothing they knew had ever looked like this. "Put me in one of them." Stephan said, highlighting the new Spartans on the team. Master Chief took it out of his head and told Douglas to hold still. He did so, and received the chip in the side of his head. The data flowed through his mind, and Stephan loved it. This was data unseen by most.

After deliberating the massive recount of everything they had experienced on that particular Shield World, he stated, "Hmm. That would be a Super Sentinel, a more massive structure-"

"-that comes equipped with a stun blast radius. Everything it hits can't fire, and has temporary reduced movement." Jerome finished. It opened fire, blasting at the group. The three rescued Spartans moved instinctively, along with Master Chief, but the under prepared Spartan 4s were caught in the radius. In slow motion, they then started to scatter as the their shields quickly faded. A large chain of rounds from Alice's Gatling gun, pinged of the Sentinel. Nearly unscathed, it rotated and fired. Other Sentinels began to drift down from the catwalk, 4 in total. They all began blasting away at separate targets.

Two rockets, one from Douglas, and one from Master Chief. Each one flowed up from behind cover, and pounded into either side of the Super Sentinel. It began to lose altitude and fall towards the Pelican. "If that thing crushes the Pelican, it won't fly from the blunt force, plus the EMP that will follow." Stephan said over their newly connected COM. Before anyone could act upon the falling Sentinel, out from the woodworks came swarms of Flying Form Flood. They looked like terribly mutated vultures. They spat all over the Super Sentinel, corroding and breaking it apart. As the corrosive liquid reached the energy core, it erupted into a ball of blue fire, exploding above the Pelican. The swarms quickly began to combat the remaining Sentinels and were winning.

"Getting caught up in anymore of this will be our deaths." Grutsky screamed.

"I know what to do." Stephan said. Then his channel on the COM went cold.

"Oh yeah, running away is such a good idea, coward." Smith said.

At the same time, the ships automated voice service spoke over the intercom. Warning, all engine systems are going critical. EVA 5 minutes before self destruction of the ship. All personnel are called to leave at once.

Then, a loud crackling was heard followed by the sound of a rattling tank tracks, but it was faster. This sleek, half track came rattling around the corner at high speeds. The rocket pod on top of it released a full salvo into the air. The Flight Forms didn't see the rockets until they were dropping out of the air in flames. Rough, loud caws could be heard, as if they were a breed of mutant crow. Their bodies collected on the floor as the one Sentinel left was attempting to escape. The loud crack of a DMR erupted four times, removing a section of the overhanging catwalk. It dropped down and impacted the Sentinel. The Sentinel fell out of the air, nose diving onto an empty Pelican platform. The remaining Flight Forms fled the open space, leaving them alone in the room.

The Wolverine rolled up and hooked onto the Pelican's magnetic back panels. Stephan's voice crackled over their COM feed once more, saying, "Your welcome asshole, now let's leave." Stephan was quite irritated with Smith, the chicken shit was always talking about his own skills and jumped to negative conclusions on anyone else's actions. If he had flesh, he would wring Smith's neck. But, alas, he didn't, so here he was, forced to suffer through the pain and misery of dealing with him daily. That was when he noticed something else as well. What was once black, empty space, was now be crowded over with methane clouds. They were in the atmosphere now.

A loud explosion of the overly pressured pipes snapped him back to the matter at hand. The thundering of the ship was powerful enough to shake the catwalk from the roof into pieces. The Spartan's packed on, and Stephan checked up on the countdown, which read 1 minute. "Let's get the hell outta here." Stephan screamed as the Pelican began to lift up.

"How much time is left on the clock before it goes, you know, kaboom?" The pilot asked tenaciously. Stephan checked again.

"You don't want to know." Stephan answered swiftly and urgently. The Pelican shifted directions and bolted out of the hangar door. Fighting the gravity which was tearing away at the loose paneling of the main ship, they climbed back through the clouds, leaving a small crater of gas drifting into space. As Stephan watched out the rear camera of the Wolverine and saw that the Spirit of Fire was nearly hidden by the overlapping atmosphere. At about 1/3 of the way away from the planet to the ship, they saw several Pelicans follow suit. They rocketed out from the constricting methane and into open space. At exactly ½ of the way between the planet and Star Shadow, he saw the ship explode.

The engines erupted like a dying star. They caused a bright light that crawled its way over the rest of the ship. It billowed out great, orange fire. A large area of the atmosphere also lit up. The flames cascaded out and then back in, consuming the ship and casting fire upon the nearly frozen surface of the planet. Stephan watched the fireworks show with great aspiration as the radio between the Pelican fleet and the Star Shadow crackled to life.

"This is your COM director. I am sorry to report that we can not open our hatch to you."

"Why not?" the pilot asked.

"You have several bogeys on your tail." When Stephan tapped into the rear camera, he saw a fleet of Pelicans followed by an a group of escape pods, some human, some Flood. Behind that, surfacing through the clouds, were Short and Longswords. Then, if that wasn't enough, following that were Sentinels and Super Sentinels.

"My God." Stephan said. He saw a Shortsword chase down an escape pod. Instead of doing something intelligent though, it simply dive-bombed into the escape pod. A ball of fire lit up the sky, casting shrapnel and broken wings. Stephan popped back into the command hub of the Wolverine and turned the pod towards the enemy. "So, you would take out the unarmed, the innocent?! I'll blow you away!" If you ask me, murder of the innocent might as well be abortion. I hate those that would take the life of innocent. The pod sprayed missiles that splashed fire onto the scattered ships. A large portion of infected fighters began to twirl. A few lost wings and rocketed into one another. A few even took a missile directly in the cockpit, stopping them dead and launching the dismembered wings and tails skittering through the air.

He saw several vehicles attached to Pelicans follow through, firing directly into the crowded airspace. But the infected pods continued to ram into each other. Watching through the pod's camera, mounted above it, he watched several pods, both human and Flood, cascade into a dancing light, followed by mass hysteria from the COM as bodies were burned, tossed, torn apart, and utterly mutilated by the maceration of metal bits. The Sentinels stopped following, as only the Flood were within their detection radius. Unable to see anymore targets, they turned and began to go back the way from where the ship came. They were returning to their demolished Shield World.