AN: wow, I actually made the update schedule! (Barely)
so, with this chapter comes good news and bad news. The good news is that about 75% of the rest of this story is already written, so you should be recieving it in a timely manner, the bad part is that this story is unfortunately coming to a close. There will only be two more chapters after this one.
I've had a helluva good time writing this and I hope you enjoyed it as much as it did. Enjoy.
John stood and dashed out of cover after downing the last brute protecting the barrier generator tower's lower level. He made a run for the lift to the top, with the Arbiter and his elites in tow.
As he boarded the elevator the Sangheili fell back to provide security at the elevator's base.
"Darken this tower and the barrier will fall," said the Arbiter, gesturing to him as he positioned his elites, "go Spartan, we have no time to waste."
John nodded and pressed the key at the center of the elevator car, starting his assent to the barrier control room. He checked the ammo on his assault rifle, then checked that the rocket launcher on his back was secure. It had been a long and arduous fight to secure the Ark and he would be damned if he let an equipment malfunction keep him from getting his job done.
He tried to clear his mind of the nagging feeling in the back of his mind he had had since he had left Linda on earth. He couldn't help but feel like he had abandoned her and his team. He had promised to be by her side, and he had left her to face the Covenant alone. The last time he had done that he had gotten her killed.
Suppressing the though was harder than usual. He knew he couldn't have done anything to stay and fight with them, and he was more useful to the UNSC here, but knowing how this had turned out last time was almost more than he could stand.
He would finish the Covenant here once and for all, and return to earth as quickly as possible. Getting back to Linda would only motivate him to fight harder and survive.
The elevator car slowed to a halt as it reached the top. Through a clear shield in front of him he could see the opposition. Brutes, lots of them, and most of them cloaked. A Chieftain with a plasma cannon sat at the head of the room, snarling at John and firing a string of rounds into the air in rage.
John ignored the display of dominance and rushed forward, taking a knee by the glass barrier. He watched for any bending of light near the edges of the room, and settled the cross hair of his HUD on them, aiming high and making no attempt to conserve ammo.
He wouldn't need it once the barrier fell.
He dropped the four cloaked brutes methodically, before casting aside his AR and grabbing the launcher from his back. Settling it onto his shoulder, he aimed at the Chieftain's center mass and steadied his breathing.
Several rounds form the Chieftain's plasma turret struck his shields, but he ignored them and prepared to squeeze the trigger.
Wether she's dead or alive, this one's for Linda, thought John as he pulled the trigger twice, blowing the brute to bits.
John's radio crackled as he dropped the launcher and caught his breath.
"Hit the switch Chief, and the barrier will fall," said Commander Keyes over the com.
John didn't need to be told twice. He ran for the control and activated it, standing back to watch the barrier fall over the twilight scene of the Ark.
Had John not known there was a war going on, he might have counted the scene as peaceful, but he wouldn't let it distract him now.
He watched as the Shadow Of Intent drifted into view, setting course for the structure the prophet was hiding in.
"Now prophet, your end has come," said 'Urtas over FLEETCOM as he maneuvered the super carrier into position.
John half expect him to open up and glass the prophet right then and there, but a slipspace rupture opening to the port side of the vessel tore John's attention away from the spectacle.
A large, jellyfish like structure burst from the rupture, and John froze in place.
High Charity had come, the Flood had arrived on the Ark.
His radio began to burst with panicked traffic, and he barely had time to duck as pieces of the flood ridden space craft shot off, one punching clean through the Shadow Of Intent and one blowing out the glass wall in front of him.
He looked behind him and found several pieces of smoldering wreckage, and a group of Flood facing him. He fought the images that appeared in his mind at their very sight, recollections of dreams and sleepless nights brought on by constant images of this parasitic menace.
He wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, but he was scared to death in that moment. He had faced every foe that had been thrown at humanity in this war, and the Flood alone had managed to secure his fear.
He shouldered his assault rifle and fired, fighting to clear his head as he cleared the room.
Survive. Right now, that was all he needed to do.
Linda looked towards the Dyson Sphere's "sky," if you could even call it that, as she marched alongside the group of Spartans toward wherever Fred and Halsey believed they would find a way out of this god-forsaken place.
Normally Linda would have said something about letting Halsey lead the way, but right now it wasn't her place to comment. She was their best chance of getting out of this hell hole wether she liked it or not, and right now, all Linda wanted was to get out and rejoin the real fight.
Seeing so many of her newfound brothers, the Spartan IIIs, die at the hands of the sentinels or the Covenant had left her feeling numb and hollow, and she wasn't the only one.
Earlier she had overheard Kelly asking Fred wether or not he thought John was alive, and Fred seemed hopeful, but not nearly as hopeful as he would have a few months ago. Back then the mere thought that John could die would have been completely foreign to any of them, but after so many had died on Reach and Unyielding Hierophant none of the Spartans seemed hopeful about anyone's survival.
Linda didn't blame them for it, she knew no one given up on John, they were simply preparing for the worst.
She took notice as CPO Mendez fell into step next to her. She didn't turn her head or attempt to interact with him in any way.
Linda had noticed that Mendez had overtly tried to play nice with the II's since they had arrived on Onyx. He saluted Fred without question, and spoke of them as battle hardened warriors rather than equipment, but Linda didn't think of it as anything more than a load of rhetorical crap that he had concocted in the years since he had trained them as children to fight and die for a cause they barely understood, and Linda had had nothing to say to him about any of it.
Seeing the age of the Spartan IIIs that surrounded her only brought back painful memories of her training. Back then she hadn't questioned the necessity of it, even if Halsey had hated her, and she hadn't liked it, it was still for the good of humanity, but years of sleepless nights and the pains of augmentation had made her grow to resent him and Halsey, not for the simple reason that they hadn't agreed with her unconventional fighting style or that they had pushed a child too hard, but because she realized now what they had taken from them.
No matter what a Spartan says, everyone of them had thought about what civilian life could have been like at one point in their career. Linda knew it wasn't something she could handle now, she had seen to much to be comfortable in that kind of life, and even though doctor Halsey had pointed out to her many times that her genetics made her predisposed to high-stress occupations, like military service, she would have liked to have been able to make that choice for herself.
The mere thought of that luxury made her feel wrong. She had been raised to believe that thoughts such as those were evil, and that they would be the death of her and her teammates, and the data about why the program was necessary had been thrown at her countless times to drive that fact into her head. A myriad of statistics pointed to a need for a force such as the Spartans to crush the Insurrection, but looking at the child soldiers surrounding her and thinking back to when she had been one of them only made her think more and more that the program had been wrong.
Humanity had lost itself in the process of saving itself, and no number could justify that.
She didn't spend any more time dwelling on it, however. Questions of morality were not her place. This was the way her life had played out, and right now John, and more people than she cared to think about were depending on her to get out of this sphere and help them finish the Covenant.
She glanced over at Mendez to see if he had left, and much to her chagrin, he hadn't.
"What's on you're mind Spartan?" Asked Mendez after a moment, realizing she wasn't going to start a conversation on her own.
"Nothing Chief," she said said snappily, hoping he would give up. She had never been one for conversation anyway.
God did it feel wrong to be calling him Chief again after so many years of referring to John by that name. John was ten times the man and ten times the soldier Mendez had ever been, and having him take his title from him almost made her sick.
"Nothing at all?" He inquired, "Earth? the war? Getting out of here?"
She wanted to give him a piece of her mind right about now, tell him exactly what she was thinking about the program, the dead, him, but that wasn't productive. Staying quiet when she needed to had always been one of her strong suits.
"Spartan?" He asked impatiently after a moment.
"John," she said, appeasing him with a response, "I'm thinking about John."
Mendez laughed and so hard his Sweet William cigar almost fell out of his mouth.
"John? He's a soldier, he knows his duty, and he'll complete it or die trying. No need to worry about him."
That comment couldn't have infuriated her more. To Mendez, John wasn't the boy he had trained, and practically raised to become what he is today, he was just a very expensive piece of equipment.
He didn't care if he lived or died, just that his mission was completed.
Mendez was right however. John would complete his mission or die trying, and that was what worried her.
AN: So, what did you guys think?
I've been trying over these last couple of chapters to show how Linda could have possibly come to resent the program without breaking her stoic character, and I keep thinking I've taken it too far. Let me know what you think about that.
Anyway, that's all for today. I'll see you next chapter Spartans.
