Chapter 4
Three violet phantoms glided cautiously towards the covenant cruiser in the distance. The behemoth of a starship could easily be their salvation, or their annihilation. The alien drop ships held many of the Marine and Rebel survivors from the previous battle.
"Ma'am, we just entered range of the Profound and Extinguishing light's turrets and jamming arrays." Announced a pilot over the speakers in the Cabin.
"Steady as she goes, men" Ordered Miranda boldly, trying to make the situation seem much less perilous then it really was.
The suspense was killing her. She, like everyone else aboard had wondered if they praetor elite had been successful in his daring attempt to take an entire cruiser. The endeavor would have needed a little bit of plasma, and a lot of faith. It was still very unclear by the time they reached the docking bays if they had now owned a fully functional warship. They had to fire their way through the docking bays shields, a very bad sign.
Everyone aboard the crew anxiously awaited enemy fire coming from all directions in the docking bay, but none ever came.
The three drop ships let loose all of their battle eager troops into the pier where the docking bay clamp controls were located.
The Arbiter, who had been deployed first, quickly sprinted behind the nearest cover he could find, and to his embarrassment, he could see no hostile life forms anywhere. He did observe however, signs of fierce fighting.
As soon as the others arrived from their transports, he quickly addressed it to them.
"Look there, by the prophets blood there's carcasses everywhere!"
He was correct, it looked as though there was a squad of brutes that had tried to make their last stand there. The had all been hack to death around a single plasma turret, which was also sparking and bleeding strange fluid, it looked as though a brute shot had been thrashed through the protective shield and rendered it useless. They followed the trail of dead bodies in a very anxious and protective fashion, every passing crate and every hall could be housing trouble just waiting to happen. But none had come. They followed still until it lead to the room Sergeant Johnson could remember with agonizing clarity, the bridge.
"Marines, squidly mofos," he addressed, starting to block the entrance to the bridge "what you got here is your standard covenant bridge"
The marines and covenant alike started to groan and sigh
"Here he goes with his crazy stories" complained a marine who had obviously heard a few of his stories to many.
"…the same kind that almost killed my lily ass the last time I went into a cruiser!" The sergeant exclaimed.
"A bunch those invisible split chinned bastards… no offense", he said to the disapproving looks from the elites, "Well, those invisible guys came in there with the swords and nearly slashed me half-way to death. I was cut within an inch of my life! My marines were cut several inches past it!"
"Oh Lord" sighed an impatient marine and he pushed past him. The bridge door parted automatically and…
The Ark was a reliable ship. It could respond to the mental powers of it's user. The sleek vessel made of almost indestructible "forerunner rocks" as some marines called them.
The ship raced around a battalion of enemy covenant ships in a graceful arc narrowly avoiding dozens of lancing particle beams that just barely grazed the great ship. It dived straight down, covering thousands of miles of space at once and was into the mists of the covenant battalion of ships, all of the Ark's batteries fired at once sending out thousands of tiny blue-white lancing beams of light that holed the frigates, cruisers and drop ships thrice over and seconds later, they all exploded in gassy explosions of blue-green dust, and immediately extinguished in the vacuum of space.
The Master Chief inside laughed manically in an uncharacteristic fashion. It was as though the power of the cosmos themselves were in the palms of his hands, but it was even better, it was safely situated in his thoughts. With each kill his rage and his malice and his hunger for power increased.
He spun the ship on it's axis and point the nose of the ship at another battalion of cruisers, at least 21 of them. He searched his own mind and probed deep into the secrets of the ship. He found the main gun of the vessel nestled deep in his thoughts. Just as the targeted ships were about to fire a devastating volley of fire at the earth, he signaled it to unleash and a thick beam of fire and a magma like substance that erupted from the tip of the ship and consumed them, ignited their hulls in a perpetual fire. They slowly dissolved at first, thousands of pieces withered away until their fuel supplies or weapons ordinances were melted and erupted into a massive fire ball. Where once a deadly armada stood, there was only crisped scrap metal and incinerated passengers.
According to the ship's communication log, almost every ship in the fleet was trying to hail him to try and pry some kind of explanation from his hoarse voice. He deleted all of these signals and went back to his euphoric labor.
Hundreds of alien capitol ships now perceiving him as a bonified threat, raced at him at full speed, desperate to take him out so they could continue their bombardment of earth.
The message was as clear to the chief as it would have been had they spelt it out in the stars.
Despite normally being a double life form that could easily communicate with the presently absent AI conjoined by his armor, the chief wasn't one to talk to himself.
"I'm not going to let that happen.
The Ark bolted forward at full speed at the wall of covenant vessels…
The bridge door slid open to reveal a single white elite, sitting down on the ramp leading to the raised control panel. He was panting heavily and around him were at least fifteen brutes chopped to pieces.
"Holy Shit!" Many of them had yelled in unison.
The elite was covered in blood from head to toe, much of it his own. Where his armor was cracked and shattered, in many places it often oozed blood, He had a long diagonal slash across his chest plate, an ugly mark left by a brute shot blade.
"You… came… just… in time…" he said between vigorous breaths.
"Praetor… what happened to you?" said the Arbiter, finally speaking up.
It was anyone guess how he was still alive after all those wounds and how he could have fought that many people by himself.
"Say my name, say my name" he thought in repetition, obviously peeved that people always called him by his rank rather then formal name.
"Well…" he said, finally deciding after a pause to answer his question, "I killed all the brutes who chose to remain on the ship, there were very few of them".
"How could you have survived?"
"Well, you see, along time ago, I was hit by a volley of near misses from many holy flares, I gained a strange illness that prevented me from being infected by the parasite. Because of the fact that I didn't perish from a failed infection attempt, my body can now naturally repair itself. The parasite passed me up like some over roasted Keryut bird."
"All of that aside, I'm in dire need of a good pilot for this cruiser." he said, suddenly gaining strength and leaping off the ramp unto the ground with his just previously torn leg muscles.
A single golden elite stepped up to the control panel and everyone on board could feel the ship lurch as it lifted itself higher into the atmosphere.
"We shall rendezvous with the Unbidden Foreman on the other side of the ring at a secluded base" he declared in his melodramatic tone.
"There we can pick up some troops and supplies, we'll need them badly if we plan to stop the prophet's ark."
"You see, the ark is a fail safe system activated during a failed manual attempt, it will contact the other rings at super luminous speed and once ordered to do so, will fire" explained a disembodied, business-like and yet cheery voice.
"Jesus Christ, who keeps letting this guy in?" groaned the sergeant.
"Wait, wait, wait" demanded a marine.
After grabbing everyone attention he queried.
"Now what the fuck is halo?" he continued, obviously oblivious to his present location.
"Oh, how splendid, more questions! I will start from the beginning, 400,000 cycles ago. You see the halo installations…"
"This is going to be the longest flight of my life." Johnson sighed, speaking to no one in particular.
He took out a cigar and placed it into his mouth with unsteady hands, then lit it.
His plight in the face of discomfort at the Monitors presence was immeasurably insignificant in comparison to the struggle that took place high above them, away from the furious space battles out side of Halo's atmosphere and inside the mobile city of High Charity. The fierce struggle between the late Pillar of Autumn's AI and the Monument of Sins known as the Grave mind and had come to a close. The Grave mind with his inexplicable, mechanical, dexterity, absorbed computer system after system until there was no where for the AI to hide from his probing tentacles and other extremities. The AI had finally been assimilated in a silent battle in the silent halls of the chaotic city. With her fall came a flood of flowing and rushing data that empowered the King of all Flood. The deity shuddered erratically with pleasure at the new found information that Cortana had been withholding for so long. The embodiment searched wildly through all of the bountiful data. So many planets with so much prosperity. So many opportunities to harvest life forms. He found the coordinates for the home planet of the terrans. A heavenly body with a plentiful well of soon to be corpses, ready to be reaped from their trivial existences and swept into the mighty arms of the flood Overmind. The planet was called Earth.
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A/N I promised longer chapters and all that, but this looked like the perfect place to leave off.
By the way, Keryut scrambled around is turkey, the parallels between Johnson's and the white elite's story are all purposeful.
