Chapter 2
Ground to UNSC Liberty Prime
"Sir, did you get that?" The Master Chief asked through the Coms as he was still on the ground unsure of continuing the mission.
"Yes, obviously we haven't encountered those creatures before and they're extremely aggressive if the attack on you is any indication. But on more important matters, I've found that the planet that you're in is an exact copy of Earth but with a rather... telling difference." Lasky's voice laced with uncertainty.
"Then this is likely what the Forerunners wanted us to find..."
"What exactly are the differences that you mean?" John responded, unfazed.
"Based on the geographical data on the ever-changing positions of the continents, an accurate estimation would be that we are either 500 years in the past, are in a different reality and 500 years in the past or the Forerunners made this exact copy of the Sol System albeit 500 years after they activated the Halo rings, resulting in our civilization becoming 500 years more advanced as scans of the planet show that they are at least a peak 20th century-level technology." Lasky explained.
"So what do we do now?"
"Continue on in the mission Chief, scans show a city nearby, I'll upload the coordinates to you, we might find something and someone there, assuming that humans live in that planet, that could explain things, I sent out our Strident frigates earlier and they reported back saying there was no life on the nearby planets at all and no Forerunner artifacts turned up in the sensors that we borrowed from the Covenant."
"Affirmative, Sierra One-One-Seven out."
–-
After fighting through many of the creatures as well as other unspeakable mutations that he had encountered and massacred. The Spartan continued on as he was rather far from the structure when he noticed other mechs readying to fight the creatures, he activated the Titan's stealth module and approached them, being careful not to step on the creatures that may reveal him.
He could see a number of them in a formation, most being colored white with glowing blue outlines around it with one colored gold and another red. All of them holding larger versions of 20th century weapons on one hand and a shield on the other. He knew that they were mechs as the dumb A.I. was able to hack into the supposedly secured channels and could hear human chatter though he could not understand it, prompting the A.I. to come up with a translation for it as it was a known language in the UNSC.
Once the translation software was complete, John could hear the apparently feminine voices in English.
"All units, fire at will! Let's go!" The Spartan deduced that the voice was from the unit's Commanding Officer. With the Spartan's guess confirmed by the responses of the other pilots. "Roger!"
They ran up to the creatures that the Spartan had previously fought, he contemplated on helping but decided against it to see their combat tactics and gather possible intelligence, though he knew he can't let them all die as he needed someone to explain the situation to him.
The unknowns fired at the creatures, only for the things' shields to shrug off the rounds.
The coms perked up again.
"Remember your training, Shimako!" To which the possible respondent gasped.
"How do you fight a Destroy-class?"
"I-I know!"
Just as the Spartan thought they would be rushing to their deaths as they ran to the newly dubbed Destroy-class creatures. The mechs activated a sort of hoverpacks on their backs and a blue flame trailed them as they flew up and fired on the exposed back area of the monsters, causing some to fall and wither.
An alarm sounded. "Watch out for lasers!"
The lasers that they were referring to were likely the ones that had fired upon the Chief earlier on his way, the output of the lasers were equivalent to a single charge of energy, dozens of which are required to form a full Spartan Laser-damage blast, which would likely destroy the unknowns in a single strike as they lack the advanced energy shields and the near-indestructible alloy of Titanium-A and the same Forerunner metals that survived double-digit gigaton impacts from ODPs which routinely skewered Covenant heavy capital ships, with the Forerunner metals being the dominant of the alloy.
"You're too high!" was the last thing the pilot of a mech that flew to a high enough angle for the beasts to fire at.
Her mech was pierced straight through by the laser and exploded in a brilliant flash, multiple reactions were heard from the other members as their teammate was killed.
"Don't falter, if you get up close to one of them, the lasers won't fire." their CO advised them under fire from the lasers.
"Where's our target Laser-class?"
The Chief dubbed the laser firing ones as the Laser-class in accordance with what the human inhabitants of the planet classified them as.
"Forward-right, 1200. Right in front of the relay station."
"I see them... lock." One of the unknowns said. Though this was interrupted by a scream when one of their teammates was attacked by yet another one of the beasts, it looked to be a scorpion with a head-like sensory organ on it's back, it was not necessarily the head as John theorized as he had taken out a few earlier, he aimed for the head and it still moved, he eventually had to cauterize them with the energy rifle or slice them into bloody ribbons with the hardlight blade.
They fought hard, killing many of the creatures, but it was clear that they were getting surrounded and, as the Master Chief guessed, were running out of ammunition. Little did he know that he was right on the money.
The fighting went on and one of the unknown mechs pulled out a sword after the gun probably ran out of ammo and continued fighting with the creatures at close-range, though they could not compare to the Spartan, the Titan simply looked to be dancing around the BETA as it blurred through and cut down dozens of them in seconds with the glowing orange hardlight sword.
Soon enough, most of the BETA their position had been eliminated with the remaining ones being the Laser-class and they were about to mop and the Chief had planned to approach them, analyzing their battle tactics when suddenly more of the Destroy-class BETA appeared.
"More?"
"What's going on? It was supposed to be a single group!" Their CO said, apparently they had not expected any more of the creatures to attack.
"Command Post, respond... these trainees won't hold them off, what on Earth are the regular soldiers doing?"
The mention of Earth caught the Spartan by surprise, they had called their planet Earth too. But he had more immediate concerns to deal with, the supposed trainees were probably low on supplies as they had not expected more of the creatures to attack.
The Commanding Officer then proceeded to give out a withdrawal order and eventually they flew off. Leaving the Spartan with the creatures.
As soon as the BETA turned to follow the TSFs, another one appeared on their midst and all of them were met their end in the next few seconds by the hardlight sword.
–-
After clearing the area of the creatures, the lone Titan proceeded to follow the mechs to their fallback position as evidenced by their coms, a few of them were destroyed when they hovered over a field including their squadron commander, they proceeded to deploy a smoke screen and continued running.
The Super black-colored Titan stood back and turned around to face the BETA just before it entered the smoke screen, then fired a salvo of hardlight missiles at them, though a few more lasers were fired and took out two more of the mechs before the missiles broke apart.
The hardlight missiles weren't missiles per se, they acted more like a terrible mix between a shotgun and a needler, when a single missile is launched, it targets the enemy with a tracking system based on the amount of light and brakes apart when it is close, sending a large amount of hardlight spikes impaling into the target and exploding when three of the spikes hit the target, one or two of the spikes weren't any more lethal than two needler rounds, but three would cause the target to disintegrate completely in a bathe of orange light.
The 12 missiles fired turned hundreds of the BETA into nothing but free-floating molecules.
"What was that?" the Spartan heard over the coms.
"I-I don't know, but it looks like it saved us, we can thank whoever fired that later, we need to get to the ridge for cover."
A few moments later, the mechs all made it to the ridge, safe from the BETAs as more of the bright orange missiles were launched and wiped the area clear of the BETA that were once pouring in.
They looked on in surprise and awe as the BETA did not stand a chance as the missiles split into smaller halves and impaled the BETA, making them vanish out of existence in a orange light, though for some reason, they could not find whoever launched it.
That is, until the shooter revealed himself.
Suddenly, out of the darkness, a mech looking no different from another TSF revealed itself. Though they knew that it was not an ordinary one as it had just slaughtered a huge amount of the BETA.
"Are you alright?" A deep sounding voice in perfect Japanese resonated through their cockpit as it came from the communication system.
"Y-yes, thank you for your assistance." Yui responded.
"Who is the acting commander here?" The new TSF's pilot asked.
"I am, Yui Takamura, nice to meet you." She replied casually for the moment.
"Call me Master Chief, where are you headed?"
The trainees were puzzled by the guy who called himself "Master Chief", but they complied nonetheless seeing as he was easily older and more experienced than they were if his discipline and the BETA that they had trouble with was easily taken out by the TSF was destroyed swiftly.
"We're falling back to Line 8, the BETA has already overtaken this area."
"Beta... must be what they call the creatures." The Spartan thought to himself before replying.
"Lead the way, I'll be following you." The remaining survivors proceeded to activate their thrusters and flew up, with the Master Chief in the rear, watching for any of the newly-dubbed Beta creatures.
He proceeded to upload his video feeds to the Liberty Prime to keep the Captain update on the mission. Master Chief would imagine that Lasky would like to see what had happened so far, with the advent of seeing mechs armed with larger versions of 20th century weapons and pretty much a replicate of his own Titan mech minus the energy shields as he was seeing so far.
"So what nation are you from? I don't think I've ever seen the TSF that you have or those weapons before." one of the surviving members of the unit asked the Spartan.
"Of course, they only have Earth as a colonized planet, TSF must be what they call those mechs."
"Classified." The only response came.
This puzzled the trainees even more.
"What?" they dumbly replied.
"I may as well say half the truth."
"You could say that I'm a special operative, I was on a reconnaissance mission when the BETA attacked me."
"Reconnaissance? But the BETA are invading, recon would be suicide!"
"Which is why I'm going with you."
–-
A few minutes of pushing forward and nothing but death and destruction in sight, the pack of survivors and unknown to them, one of humanity's best, reach the city of Kyoto, only to be treated with the sight of more death and destruction as well as screams of agony as the people were being consumed by soldier-class BETAs in the darkness.
"This is Arashiyama Flight 2, somebody please respond, we are cut off and isolated on line 3, orders please."
Well, add distress calls to that list.
"Everyone is going to be eaten."
"Eaten?"
"You saw it in lecture, didn't you? The BETA eat people! They'll eat us too!"
The last sentence caught the Spartan's attention immediately, being eaten may be relatively more merciful than being consumed and turned against your entire species, but it is still a terrible fate nonetheless.
"Izumi, get it together! We've all survived the eight minutes of death and we have a special operative with us, so what's the next thing we should be doing?"
"I want revenge... for him, for everyone." came the difficult reply.
"You can have it, live on in their stead and fight the BETA."
"Yes..."