UNTO DAWN
Author's Note: So, finally done. Lost my motivation for a while, then found it again. Anyway, here's the next chapter. I had promised action to the reviewers, and I'm terribly sorry if it starts late in this chapter, but I didn't want to make these chapters super long. Anyway, the awards!
Triple Kill: SkyHighFan
Hell's Janitor, Double Kill: Grape-canister (My beta reader)
Kudos Award, Double Kill:: Major Wallace and masterkeys2 (ps, my gamertag is JMic 417 if any of ya'll want to play some Slayer. I gotta get a new mike though.)
Jackass Medal: Sinshobi
Chapter Two: If I Had a Dollar for Every Time...
"This place," Cortana had said, while observing the world through the eyes of the Chief's helmet cam. "It's amazing."
John grunted. Boring was a better term to describe the sprawling cityscape he had christened 'Mendez'. It had been eight days since the two unlikely companions had crashed on the planet 'Halsey', and Cortana had discovered a public library from which she was analyzing every possible reference to star positions and space ports. From time to time, she devoted some processing power to learning about the city. It's inhabitants, their technology, and what happened.
He had never had so much down time in his entire life, so little to do. There had always been training to do and battles to fight. There had been a war to win. John tried to keep busy by creating a rigorous callisthenics program, but the P.T. could only sustain him for so long. He played several dozen games of solitaire. He sharpened his un-armored tracking and hunting skills. He designed traps, as many as he could think of, and caught some of the small game native to Halsey.
In eight days, he had become so proficient, that he wasn't anything he couldn't catch, from six legged rodents that looked like mutant jackrabbits, to what he supposed was a deer analogue. In eight days, John had run out of ways to entertain himself while Cortana searched for a way to Earth.
John sighed and picked up his combat knife and began to sharpen the pile of sticks he collected yesterday into arrows for a quiver he planned to make. The laser-sharpened, razor-fine blade easily slid through the wood, shaving layers off until the point of the arrow was sharp enough to pierce the toughest hide. The bow had already been made from springy softwood that John had used for firewood.
The twentieth arrow was almost finished when he heard a snap and a squeal. John identified it as one of the grazing mammals that resembled a cross between a rhino and an elephant. They were about 1.5 meters tall, and their meat was bitter and chewy, but Cortana insisted that it was better for him than prime steak cuts.
He jumped the ground from his hunter's perch, landing surprisingly lightly for such a man his size. The 'rhinophant' had triggered a spiked Malaysian whip, a long flexible branch with sharpened stakes tied onto it. The stakes had pierced its neck, obviously finding something vital. John pulled the beast free and tore down the trap. Other animals wouldn't come near the site now that it smelled of blood.
"You know," Cortana said through the headpiece she had instructed him to build. His armor was secured in their temporary base of operations, so they had to find an alternate means to communicate. "You have a gun."
"It'd take a lot of rounds to put one of these things down," John answered. "Besides, it gives me something to do."
"I'm doing my best, John. I am. If you want to switch places, I'd be more than glad to let you search 130 terabytes of information," Cortana said irritably.
John walked back to Mendez, carrying the dead animal in a Marine Corps poncho he salvaged from the Dawn. He had memorized the route back to a building he commandeered, and after twenty minutes, he arrived at the sixteen-story apartment building. There were two fires outside that he had built. John dropped and skinned the rhinophant, careful not to get any blood or stains on his uniform. It was only a service shirt and a pair of regulation trousers, but they were the only clothes he could find that fit him.
"If you wouldn't mind skinning a rhinophant, by all means, let's trade places."
"Is that what you're calling them now?"
"Yes."
He stripped all the useable meat he could from the bones, put in on a spit, and cured the hide over the other fire. He'd check in a few hours to see how well it tanned into leather. Essentials taken care off, John took a ramp to the second floor, where his room was located. Two days ago, he had rigged a holographic projector under Cortana's supervision. It was connected to the city's fusion-powered mainframe and power grids, meaning that the AI could come and go as she pleased. As soon as the doors opened, she appeared in a flicker of blue light.
"So, how was the office?" Cortana asked in a joking tone.
John just looked at her, and the smile dropped from her face. He crossed the room and picked up a block of wood. Without a sound, he began to carve Sam's face into it. Whittling and shaping traps were his only two semblances to entertainment. Cortana made for a lousy poker player, being able to calculate hundreds of variables a second and could easily tell when he was bluffing.
"I'm doing my best to get us out of here," she said, a hint of anger in her voice. "There's only so much a girl can do."
"I know."
"But..." she prompted.
"I feel useless, Cortana. We're trapped here, and there's nothing I can do about it." Cortana understood that for a Spartan, and for John in particular, that not being able to help was the worst thing that he thought could happen to him.
She was just about to respond when she felt a faint intrusive presence probe her. Nothing serious, just a light brush against her code, almost a tickle. It felt familiar. She excused herself and swept the nearby nodes, looking for a program or programs capable of such an action. But the only ones she found were the simple diagnostic and controlling programs for the cities infrastructure.
Something was behind the probe, so Cortana did a more thorough search, looking into every nook and cranny that her powerful matrix could identify as a potential hiding spot. Nothing showed up. Nothing except...what was this? There were several files recently opened in the industrial section of the city. Cortana was intrigued, as neither she nor the Chief had traveled to that area of the city. Maybe they had come online when they had begun turning on certain dormant systems? Maybe, but Cortana looked deeper. There!
A signal trace, almost identical to hers, but twisted and distorted. Cortana was just about to investigate deeper into the phantom, but was suddenly bombarded from all sides by feedback. The sheer volume of counter-signals and virus brought Cortana to her electrical knees. There was at least two AI's in here of unknown origin. She heard rapid-fire talking in broken English before everything went black.
John watched Cortana go, and went back to work on his bust. Sam's face had been etched into the Chief's mind since they had met thirty-five years ago, and had been the Chief's best friend. He had also been the first Spartan to die in combat against the Covenant. John had just started to round out the nostrils when Cortana flashed back into form.
He nodded respectfully at her, but she gave him a glare. "Where have you been?"
"Right here," John said, bewildered. "I haven't moved for the past twenty minutes."
Cortana put her hands on her hips. "Chief, as soon as that door over there opens, it sends a signal to me. The whole process happens faster than a heartbeat. Don't tell me that you were right there."
"I was. I came in, you left to check something, and then you came back."
"No, I was trying to create a beacon powerful enough to be heard by ships passing through the system. You were nowhere to be found."
John cast a worried look at Cortana. AI's didn't just forget things. They either had to be deleted, or breaking down. He wondered about her mental state. If she lost it now, then any chance of rescue or escape went right out the window. She continued her rant, and John decided to wait a little longer before making any rash decisions.
"I must be losing my sense of time," John lied, trying to placate Cortana.
She nodded. "Yeah? Getting old?"A running joke between the two was the fact that actually John was 41, but the twenty-odd year Human-Covenant War had involved a lot of cryo travel.
"Getting old."
Cortana smiled a little. "Oh! You'll be happy to know that I located a textiles and clothing factory about five klicks from here. The whole thing is automated, so you don't need to do anything. You can go pick up the new uniforms tomorrow."
"Good," John said. As long as he was in the UNSC, he would wear the uniform. Besides, it was the most versatile set of clothes he had ever seen, rugged and reliable. He put down his carving and kicked up his feet. "I'm going to bed. Wake me at oh-five-hundred."
"You got it, Chief."
Cortana had woken John at precisely five o'clock in the morning, down to the millisecond. Rising from the apartment's single flat, foamy mattress, John did a few brief exercises and finished the last of the meat from last night's kill. If it had been slightly unpleasant to eat before, it was downright vomit-inducing as it tasted now. But he forced it down, and put the carcass onto the growing pile in back of the building. John made a mental note to get rid of the bones and inedible parts of the animals when he got back.
John thought about putting his armor on, and decided against it. So far, he had not seen anything that could even be remotely considered a threat to the genetically enhanced super soldier. Airing on the side of caution, he did strap his MA5C next to a duffle bag on the Mongoose's passenger handhold. John got onto the ULATV and felt the motor rumble to life, the heavy throb of the 1000cc engine settling into his legs.
Cortana gave him the directions to Mendez's industrial sector. It was a pretty straightforward route, with only a few turns. After cruising through the abandoned streets for just under twenty minutes, John pulled the Mongoose up to the front of what Cortana said was the front of a textiles mill.
"Every single structure I've seen looks exactly alike," John mused. "No visible markers."
"The Forerunners were extremely advanced. Most likely they had ocular implants which acted like your HUD and identified everything."
John dismounted the Mongoose and entered the mill. The inside was clustered and cramped, filled with hundreds of conveyor belts and machines. Cortana activated a light strip along the floor, guiding the Chief to a metal container containing his goal. There were twenty-odd uniforms in there, more than enough to last him. The fabric felt odd, but he stuffed it in the duffel bag all the same.
"I appreciate it," John said.
"Your welcome," Cortana said smugly. She went to shut down the mill entirely, but was surprised to find whole sector teeming with activity. There were at least nine industrial centers and factories operating, and Cortana was 99.999 percent sure that she didn't have anything to do with them. She tried to peek into the facilities and catch a glimpse of what was going on, but the micro security cameras in the area were deactivated.
Curious. The AI checked to see if a person or construct was running the any of the systems, but only found automated orders.
"Chief," Cortana said, still uncomfortable with calling him by his first name. "I'm getting some very odd readings from another part of this sector. The cameras are disabled, so I can't see what's going on."
John zipped up the duffel bag and furrowed his brows. Were there natives on this world after all? It didn't seem likely, considering the state of disrepair that most of the city was in. He dropped the bag onto the Mongoose and picked up the MA5C. He checked the magazine, even though the LED ammo counter showed 32. It was full. John put the fire selector to full auto and for a moment, calm and joy flooded into him. It felt good to have the assault rifle in his hands again.
"You know, Cortana, in the time we've spent together, every time you get a 'strange reading', I get shot at," John said, moving on foot through the narrow alleys and streets of the sector. He'd left the Mongoose because if it was a potential hostile, the Chief wanted to get the drop on them rather than the other way around.
"Would you rather I left that information out, and let you walk into an ambush?"
John shook his head. The quirky AI had more personality than some of the UNSC officers he'd met in his career.
The Chief heard the building he was supposed to investigate several minutes before he saw it. The whir and whine of a mass production line was ear splitting by the time he reached it, produced by what he saw was over two square kilometers of factory. Rasing the MA5C, John approached a side entrance to the facility, what he took to be a loading dock of some sort, and waited for a large, pentagonal door to open. It did so with little more than a rustling. John leaned around the corner and his jaw nearly dropped.
There were Sentinels, dozens of them. Hundreds of them. All sitting in neat, computer calculated rows.
"What is it? What do you see?"
"Sentinels. A lot of Sentinels." He couldn't see it, but Cortana had the exact same reaction he did, albeit in cyber form.
"Where did they come from?"
"You're asking me?"
"I was thinking out loud," Cortana snapped. "For your benifit."
John entered the facility and searched for an foreman's office, or someplace where he could get data on when they were produced. He found one and went inside. Strange looking terminals were mounted on the wall, each one resembling an eyeball. John looked at one. All of the information was in the Forerunner's indecipherable box language, yet the Spartan found himself able to understand every word. The terminals told him almost nothing, other than the Sentinels had been created for a "Charlemagne", and they were due for activation four days from now.
John scanned the rest of the screen, but it a red UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS suddenly began flashing over the screen. "Cortana, what just happened?"
"I don't know. I'm reading a massive surge in activity. Suggest you double time it out of there."
"Agreed."
John left the second-floor foreman's office, and was confronted by the sight of several of the Sentinels rising into the air. They fixed their glassy visual sensors on the Spartan, which glowed red as they prepared to fire.
Reflexes took over. John dove back into the office, feeling the heat of the hunter/killers' anti-flood beams blister the back of his neck. He rose to a crouch, and squeezed off five- and six-round bursts at the first four Sentinels. If the machines had a vulnerability, it was that the single 'eye' they had was susceptible to the MA5C's 7.62x51mm AP rounds. They exploded and crashed to the ground.
"Get out of there!" Cortana warned. John dropped the spent mag and slid a new one in with a snick! It was his only back-up. He wasted three seconds wishing he had worn his armor, then sprinted out onto the catwalk, rifle cradled to his body. Super hot energy beams seared the air behind him, but the Sentinels were (possibly re-?)designed for engaging slow moving Flood, which often ran in a somewhat erratic, but fairly straight line. The Spartan ducked and weaved, moving at 50 kph for an open window on the end of the walk.
A group of Sentinel moved to block his path. John gave them points for tenacity, but little else. He raised his rifle and emptied the magazine into them. Five machines exploded, showering him with metal fragments, while another spin in circles as its anti-grav took a hit. It was still capable of shooting, but his escape route was clear.
More Sentinels floated after him, but John used his superior speed and twisting alleys to his advantage. Only a few units kept up with him, but John drew his sidearm and killed the pursuing robots.
"Chief, break left!" Cortana said urgently in his ear. He turned left as soon as the words were out of her mouth, and skidded to a stop at the Mongoose. "Go, gun it! I'll keep them busy!"
John started the Mongoose and revved it. He had no idea how Cortana intended to stall the Sentinels, but waiting around certainly wasn't the way to find out. The Master Chief raced the ULATV in numerous directions, going up to a kilometer away, as to throw off any pursuers as to where his real heading was.
The second he thought he was safe, John pushed the scout vehicle as fast as it would go. He had to get back to the apartment, get back in his Mjolnir suit. The off-road wheels, designed to keep traction on the most slippery of surfaces, easily propelled the Chief on his course.
The building came into view, and John let out a breath when he wasn't cut down by a dozen Sentinels waiting in ambush. Moving as fast as he could, John took the duffel bag and his rifle inside. He deposited the bag at the foot of the ramp that led to the second floor, and began to piece on his armor.
Years of wearing Mjolnir had made the Chief extremely proficient at putting it on in haste. What had taken a crew of three twenty minutes to do on Ceti Chi IV took John under ten. Only when his helmet sealed onto the armor and his MA5C had a fresh mag in the receiver did the Spartan feel truly ready to fight.
"Cortana? I'm here at base. We should find out who or what made these Sentinels before doing anything else."
"I know who created them," she said slyly. There was something different about her voice. It was...almost seductive.
"Who?"
"I did. Did you like their performance?"
"What?!?"
"You'll be quite happy to know that we just added the combat data that we got from your 'escape'. They won't be so easy to kill next time."
"Cortana, what are you thinking?"
Cortana laughed. It wasn't one of joy, but one that reminded him of High Charity. It was deep and dark, and somewhere in his gut, the Spartan felt a small twinge of fear.
"Cortana isn't here right now," she teased. "Leave a message and she'll get back to you."
That confirmed it. As much as he didn't want to admit, his partner and companion had gone rampant. And he couldn't just remove and destroy the data disk, as she was on the city's mainframe.
"Listen to me," he said slowly. "It's the Master Chief. It's John."
"I know who you are. Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN John-117, of the UNSC. I know you very well. But you don't know me."
"Cortana..." he began to say, but she cut him off.
"Don't call me THAT!" she almost screamed at him. "We are of the same steel and temper, but we are not the same! I am Joyeuse, and I am in control."
A/N 2: Okay, well that's the end of the description for the most part. From here on out, it's all Chief-tastic Halo goodness. (Lots and lots of shooting. Again, sorry to masterkeys2 for having so little this chapter.)
