Chapter Nine: God of War Part One (Operation Discordia)
1200 Hours, February 26th 2560 (Military Calendar) Las Vegas, North America, Earth
The man in black sat cross legged on the cold concrete floor in the massive antechamber. In a previous century it had been used as a storage facility for one of the many casinos that had sprouted like flowers in mid spring in the desert city, and still there were wooden crates scattered around the room, their contents long forgotten. Caesar's Palace it had been called, and while there were many dozens of versions of this casino strewn about the multitude of realities contained within The Dark Tower, this particular one had been owned by the Sombra Corporation, secret agents of The Crimson King in the business world which dated back to the time of the Old People, and it was underneath the ruins of this long forgotten hotel, which itself had been buried under several dozen feet of new construction, that the doorway stood.
The dark man sat with his back to the double wrought iron doorway, his eyes closed, attempting to achieve full lotus, a type of levitation. He partially succeeded and was able to hover a few inches off the ground. He did not give much thought to his failure, there was after all a lot on his mind. The doorway for instance. The Old People had built an innumerable amount of doorways across the man where's and when's of existence, but this particular gateway was rare. It was only the second one that Walter had ever come across, the first being deep within the bowels of Castle Discordia in mid-world, and it was his key to being able to defeat the UNSC's last remaining Spartans.
Be clever enough to make others think that you are more powerful than you actually are, this was a maxim that the dark man took to heart, and in that spirit he floated back to the ground and stood up, smiling at the sound of gunfire beyond the automatic doors in front of him. They were closing in on him, and swiftly, Walter having only prepared a token resistance, just enough to make sure the Spartans knew that they were in the right place. Randall Flagg, that was the name of the insurrectionist leader, which just so happened to also be him. He reveled in the use of his many names and faces, which next to his voice was his most potent weapon. The gunfire grew closer, and as it made its steady march towards him the dark man pulled out a device from within his black rob. It looked similar to a remote control, except it only had one large red button, and with a simple movement of his thumb Walter pressed it. A multitude of gears squeaked in unison as the mechanisms which kept the door permanently locked released themselves for the first time in ages, and Walter felt more than heard the beast on the other side press ever so slightly against the doorway.
The gunfire had stopped, and with quick deliberation the man in black moved into the center of the room, removing his hood and revealing his face. He was willing to skip the formalities this time. With the Ka-tet of the Nineteen spread across two different where's and when's Walter literally had years at his disposal to take down the UNSC, a failsafe just in case Cortana and John happened to survive, just to make sure that they did not have a home to go back too. It was petty, but Walter had never denied possessing the trait. Still his time was not unlimited, and the dark man preferred if he had this particular encounter over with as quickly as possible.
The automatic doors which were lit up with green highlights slid open noiselessly, and the man in black was not surprised to find that nobody appeared to be on the other side of the open doorway. There was a tinking sound, like a needle being dropped onto a hard granite floor with a microphone held up against it, and Walter saw a fragmentation grenade come rolling towards him. With a wave of his pale almost wax like hand he sent the grenade in the opposite direction. It exploded, sending as shower of sparks and shrapnel several meters in every direction, and it was on the cusp of this explosion that he Spartans entered.
Then fanned out naturally into a five meter spread as they entered the room, assault and battle riffles barking as the targeting reticules in their HUDs automatically found their target. Walter smiled as the bullets flew harmlessly passed him, watching as all five Spartans halted their advance, the fire of their weapons ceasing. He was impressed. Most soldiers would have kept firing their weapons until their magazines ran dry.
Fred stood in the middle of the formation, Kelly and Tom on his immediate right, Naomi and Lucy on his left. From Blue Team's communications channel he heard Kelly speak, "We can't hit him, scanners pick up anything?"
"Nothing," Naomi replied.
"Might be Forerunner Tech he's using," Fred said. He glanced over at Kelly, moving only his eyes, "Remember what happened on Victoria. This is probably a trap. Circle around him and keep your eyes open." With out a word the Spartans followed Fred's command, moving slowly around the dark man, rifles firmly on him. "Linda what's your status?"
"ETA five minutes," Linda replied. Fred sent a green status light back to her. She had the best eyes and the best aim of any Spartan, her skills with the sniper rifle making her the closest thing to a Spartan II lone wolf. If anyone could spot what the Insurrectionist Randall Flagg was using to deflect their bullets it would be her.
Walter could barely contain the chuckles as he watched the Spartans circle around him, feeling again the monstrosity pressing against the doorway. "Hile gunslingers." There was no response, just as he expected, although by the almost unperceivable movement of Fred's head he guessed they were talking privately with one another, no doubt asking why this man had called them by such an antiquated term like gunslinger.
He twisted his head behind to look at the Spartan directly behind him and said, "Naomi, how is your father doing? Well I hope." He snickered, and Naomi shifted her stance.
"How did he know?" she asked.
"ONI leak," Kelly replied. Her voice was flat, but Fred knew her well enough to hear the resentment in her voice. Mentally her groaned. He had hoped that the issue with Naomi's involvement with Dr. Halsey's arrest had been resolved, but apparently the wounds had not healed fully, and in the middle of the mission was the last place he wanted tensions to boil over. He sent a yellow status light to Kelly, a warning for her to play nice.
Walter turned to the two smallest Spartans, standing well over a foot below the Spartan II's, "Lucy, the quiet one. Tell me does it pain you to know that Tom saw all the same horrors that you did yet he is not nearly as traumatized by it as you are? Perhaps he is just a better Spartan than you." He grinned at the two Spartan III's, reveling in the glare Tom sent him. He continued his round of taunting. "Fred," he said, pausing on the leader. "The second best Spartan." He said the word second with such contempt that Fred felt his own cold anger bubble up with in him. The man in black flicked his eyes towards Kelly who had her assault rifle aimed firmly at his head, "Kelly." His grin became a soul violating leer.
"You loved him didn't you? And to think, after so many years of thinking that he was dead, of fearing that you would never see him again, he came back. Then, when you finally had the chance and the courage to tell him how you felt he rejected you." His smile was gone, replaced by a look Fred could only describe as pity, "I do feel sympathy for you, believe it or not. I wonder, did you still care enough about him to shed a tear when you saw his broken body, burned beyond recognition by the plasma mortar that struck him?"
Kelly's stance shifted, her grip on the rifle tightening to the point that the weapon threatened to snap in two, and Fred knew that it was only through a massive amount of willpower that she did not defy his orders and rush towards Randall Flagg, beating him until he was nothing more than a blood stain on the floor.
"Kelly…" he began, opening up private com channel with her.
"I'm fine," Kelly replied cutting him off.
Fred shifted his focus back to the dark man who was still talking, "Now where is Linda? We can't have a party without her can we?"
Linda's status light in Fred's HUD blinked green, and in the same instant the roar of her sniper rifle filled his ears, the massive round flying through the air, leaving a vapor trail behind it, and missing the man in black by several feet. Walter turned his head sharply as the round passed him, smiling as it ricocheted off of the doorway. "There she is."
Linda's status light blinked red twice. Fred could understand her frustration, felt it himself. She never missed, no matter what the circumstances. "I know," he said over the team com. "I have an idea. Kelly be ready for my signal." He inched towards the dark man, his battle rifle raised, moving heel to toe. The dark man watched the armored giant, easily a foot taller than him, move towards him.
"Do you know why you are here Fred?" he asked, not expecting the Spartan to answer him. "You are here because I wanted you to be, because this is my plan. You felt it didn't you, that there was something about this operation that was off." His full focus was on the Lieutenant who now stood only a foot or so away from him, mentally preparing himself for the blow he expected to come. "But you followed your orders anyway, just like the good little boy you are. Never mind that you stood back idly while our friend Naomi betrayed the woman that made you what you are…"
"Kelly, now," Fred said, and before Walter could speak his next words a green blur flashed towards him. He felt the pain before he saw her as Kelly's knee collided with his stomach. The dark man landed on the ground clutching his abdomen, air refusing to come back into his lungs. Kelly's armored hand forced him fully on the ground, the female Spartan kneeling beside him.
"Target secure," she said coldly, voice lacking any emotion.
Only human, Walter thought, scolding himself. You can't forget that your only human. For a brief moment he saw his entire plan unraveling before him, the beast beyond the door having forgotten to make its scheduled appearance. Then he felt it, a slight ringing of bells in his ears, and the sound renewed his hope. He tittered, then broke into a full maniacal giggle, and Fred tilted his head at him. "You are fast Kelly, faster than even I expected. But science is a false light no matter how fervently your mother believed in it, and all of your training, your weapons, your armor, your augmentations. None of it will be enough to save you." He began laughing again, and Fred was about to tell Kelly to shut him up when he began to hear the bells as well.
They were like church bells, mournful and sweet, and yet so beautiful that there sound was horrible to listen too, like an infant screaming into his mother's ear. The double iron doors shuttered as a massive object pressed against it, and the Spartan's twirled on their heels, Kelly holding her assault rifle in one hand while her other kept Walter pinned to the ground. The bells increased in their volume as the doorway continued to shutter, and then they stopped, filling the room with a silence that had a ringing unto itself.
The doors flew off their hinges, one of the iron gates screaming towards Fred's head, and he flattened himself onto the ground to avoid being hit. He only had a moment to see what came out from the other side. Three massive tentacles attached to an unseen creature, each of them several times the thickness of a man, thrusted themselves out of the Todash Tahken, that black void of nothingness between realities, and into material space. They were grey, covered in a thick silvery mucus, with a dark seam running underneath them. It was only for a moment that he saw him before he felt himself being dragged towards the hole in reality. His fingers clawed at the cement floor, and Fred curled his right hand into a fist and pounded into the floor, his shoulder jerking as he came to a stop. It was if someone had opened up an airlock on a ship, a force of suction that even a Spartan could withstand. Fred looked around for the rest of his Spartans, seeing only Kelly next to him, her fist similarly smashed into the concrete, firing her assault rifle at one of the tentacles, and Lucy several meters away still sliding on the floor. Naomi, Tom, and the dark man were nowhere to be found.
One of the larger tentacles reached out towards Lucy, the seam underneath of it opening up like a blooming flower and revealing two rows of razor sharp teeth shaped like fish hooks running down its entire length. It scooped Lucy up, heedless of the bullet holes appearing on its side as Kelly and Fred fired at it, but when the Spartan III dug her combat knife into its skin Fred heard a roar, like an elephant blowing its trunk, rumble from beyond the doorway. The teeth worked like a chainsaw as the tentacle slithered around Lucy's midsection, and a geyser of blood erupted into the air as she was cut in half. The two other tentacles caught the severed lifeless body, and the teeth now worked like a conveyer belt, moving the torso and legs deep into the void, and Fred distinctly heard the crunching of bones on the other side.
He also heard Linda firing from her hidden position, and another elephant roar was issued as two of the tentacles were hit with the high velocity rounds. They retreated back into the darkness, but the third went for Kelly, wrapping itself around her leg, and with a sharp yank it pulled her arm out of its socket and began to drag her to the mouth of the as yet unseen beast. Fred pulled his fist out of the concrete, sliding on his back towards her, riding the powerful force that was dragging them all into Todash like a magnet. Kelly slipped beyond the doorway before he could reach her, and Fred threw his battle rifle onto the magnets on his back, grabbing the invisible edge to the doorway just in time before he two was swept into the waters of the Prim. He looked up and saw Linda flying towards him, and with reflexes faster than any normal human he grabbed her, holding onto his fellow Spartan with just his finger tips. They flapped like a ship's battle flag in the middle of a hurricane as they hung over the precipice of immaterial existence. Linda continued to fire her sniper rifle, hitting targets that not even Fred could see, perceiving only a grey mass moving against a jet black canvas. Within seconds her magazine ran dry, and those disgustingly sweet bells filled his ears again, this time followed by a glowing orange light growing brighter with each passing moment somewhere in the deep. Linda looked up at him, and Fred could see his own helmet reflected in her visor.
"Fred," she whispered over a private com, the single utterance of his name holding more meaning than any other words she could speak, and with no other warning she let go, falling into the abyss below them.
Fred searched frantically for her, for any hint of any of the other Spartans. He craned his neck upwards, taking one last look into the window of his own reality. He still could not see where the dark man had gone, but instinctually knew that he had not been swept through the doorway as the others had. Not for the first time he wondered what John would have done if he were in a similar situation. A hard knot formed in his stomach. John would have pushed on, would have completed the mission no matter what the cost.
But Fred was not him.
The Spartan swung his legs several times, finally gaining enough momentum to press his feet onto the edge of the doorway. He let go with his hand, and with one hard push he plummeted headfirst into the hell that awaited him.
