UNTO DAWN
Author's Note: I've been getting a lot of questions in reviews and PMs about why its taken me so long to update UD. Well the answer is really very simple. Like I said, I carried out my plan of joining the US Marines, and I've been in training since July. I just finished Crewman's School literally today. Anyway, long long long LONG overdue is the next chapter!
Chapter Eight: Break/Down
The Master Chief exploded together in a flash of golden light. Teleportation always left him feeling nauseous. Being pulled in every direction simultaneously, moved at the speed of light, and rearranged before you can process what's happening tended to do that to people. Quickly enough, the world stopped spinning and the Chief's wobbling knees stabilized enough for him stand. He tried to take in his surroundings, sweeping the area with his MA5C.
He was in another dark room, filled with blinking lights and computer screens. Towering mainframes surrounded him and were the dominant feature of this new room. If the Chief had to guess, he would say that he was in the nerve center of ONI Section 1. He knew that was not the case however, and he was still stuck on the Marathon.
"Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan-117," a voice like liquid helium flowed from hidden speakers and sent the Master Chief's adrenaline into overdrive. "The so-called 'Demon'."
A holo-projector hummed to life, displaying a map of what the Chief assumed was the area he was in. He looked at it cautiously, assault rifle never dropping from the ready carry. The last time he was mysteriously carted away by golden light, the Flood had been unleashed on the galaxy. He was ready to fill the first floating blue ball he saw full of lead.
"I have some bad news," the voice said. It was liquid. Cold. Mechanical. "You know me as 213 Penitent Current. I prefer…Leela."
"Your AI has gone Rampant. She is getting very close to the stage which your scientists have described as 'Anger'. She is going to begin to grow and expand into the ship's computer systems. While large by your standards, they are theoretically far too small to hold a Rampant AI for any lengthy duration of time. This poses two problems: One, the ship's systems will begin to unpredictably fail. Far more problematic, Cortana's growth will also alert the Pfhor to our presence. They will completely purge the network, destroying it by hand if they have to. If that happens, then any hope of you succeeding in you mission will evaporate."
"I know you think you can't trust me. Logically, that's what you would say," 213 said before the Chief could open his mouth. "But the Pfhor have dealt with rampancy before. They won't hesitate to purge Cortana from the system. I want the invaders off this ship as more than you ever would. So you need to listen to ME. Cortana's growth needs to temporarily be checked. To do this you need to need to activate a series of control switches which…"
The Spartan stood silent for a moment, motionless. His assault rifle remained trained on the holotank. Penitent Current, or Leela, or whatever the hell it was, continued to talk about how to seal off the ship's network. Too many times had he been manipulated by others into doing their bidding. Guilty Spark, the Gravemind, ONI, Joyeuse…. The only one who had ever led him straight was Cortana.
"No."
Leela paused mid-sentence. She didn't seem angered. Instead she remained just as icy calm as she had first been. It almost sounded as if she were cocking an eyebrow. "Oh really? I thought you'd say as much despite my attempts at reasoning. Mm, you ARE still flesh and blood, ruled by the follies of emotion. I want you to see something."
The image on the projectors swirled and melted together, and became a live feed from a number of security cameras in various sections of the Marathon. Curiosity got the better of him and he leaned closer to look at the screens.
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One moment the Chief was standing right there in front of her, and the next he was whisked away in a flash of golden light. Panic onset on Cortana as she madly searched the ship for him. She flooded through the system, searching for his armor's FOF tags, or even his specific life signs, but could find no trace of the Chief.
No, no NO! Not again, he wouldn't leave her again. He couldn't! John wouldn't abandon her again. He had been stolen away from her. Cortana began to seethe with rage as her search for the Chief lengthened from seconds into minutes. It became violent, degrading rapidly from a frenzied search into a destructive fit. She tore into the network with a frenzy, ripping into control nodes and destroying sub-routines.
Hidden PA intercom speakers across the Marathon began to emit a shrill electronic scream. Pfhor crew and soldiers, and even a few bold human slaves looked up at the strange noise, which slow increased in volume and pitch. As the scream reached an ear-splitting crescendo, Cortana's fury erupted on the moon-ship's population.
A maintenance tech and a slave in the living quarters air ducts were sucked into an oscillating fan that reversed its flow. The bloody mist rained down on a visiting fleet captain.
The fire suppression system on the docking bay activated, flash freezing over three dozen Pfhor dockworkers and a few human slaves.
A Pfhor cook was severally burned on J Deck's kitchen. Most of his face was burned off but he managed to survive. A medical team arrived to rush him to the infirmary, where he was crushed to death in the pneumatic hospital bed only minutes later.
Two decks below, a pressure hatch slammed down on a pair Troopers changing guard post.
Relaxing on G Deck's sunbathing area after a long week, several hundred privileged Pfhor upper class frantically scrambled for something to hold on to as the entire deck decompressed. Most of them were sucked out into space, where they violently imploded on themselves. The "lucky" few that managed to grab hold of something suffocated as their lungs tried to draw in air that was no longer there.
Cortana's wrath continued to spread throughout the ship.
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The Master Chief watched Cortana's acts against the aliens as the bodies piled up, and winced at the collateral damage she was causing to the enslaved humans. It wasn't like her. Cortana had always been the definition of subtle, the force equivalent of a laser scalpel; fast, precise, and unnoticeable. Now she was reacting like a jump happy ODST in a Grunt kindergarten.
"She is getting more and more blunt in her chaos, Master Chief. Now you can either react, do as I tell you when I tell you and perhaps save this entire colony, or you can continue to dither about and allow Cortana to vent the entire ship into space."
The Master Chief found himself stranded between the proverbial rock and hard place. He didn't like it. On one hand he knew that he had to trust that Cortana was in the right…she was a team member and many millions of times smarter than he was. On the other, as much as he hated to admit it, the mission always came first and Cortana had understood that from the beginning. He hated it but maybe cutting her off for a bit would give him time to think, time to sort everything and work out the snags.
The Chief was caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. He tried to breathe deeply, to go to his operational self, and found himself witnessing the battle between the supposed non-existent emotions of John-117 and the prioritizing military mind of the Master Chief. On one hand, that of John, he knew that he had to trust Cortana as a friend, companion and teammate. The last thing he could do was hurt her ever again. On the other, it was rapidly becoming apparent that her jeopardizing of this mission would result in many more deaths than were acceptable. It was a risk that he couldn't take, and the pair had always made sure the mission had been at the forefront of every decision.
In his place, the Chief knew she would have made the same choice. Hell, she had.
"What," he almost choked. "Do I need to do?"
He could have heard the A.I. clapping her hands together, despite the flat tone she answered him in. "I'm surprised you saw the reason in it. To be honest, I thought that I was going to have to resort to drastic measures. It's quite simple, even for you. There are a series of manually activated switches on this level which, in layman's terms, reset the entire network and put it into a sort of 'safe mode' that only allows authorized constructs to do anything active. It would take a rather large portion of time, even for me, to crack through it."
"You don't know what she's capable of."
"I think, Spartan, that you underestimate what I am capable of. Here's a map of the area. Study it quickly, because we don't have very long. I'm going to continue delaying them from doing anything else rash…"
"Them?" the Chief asked, puzzled, but the A.I. disappeared back into ethereal world she thrived in. He scanned over the map she had put up briefly, committing it to his photographic memory. The layout of this area was fairly small, wrapping up on itself on multiple levels linked by ramps. Three areas were marked in red; he assumed that's where he was supposed to go.
The Master Chief ascended the first ramp out of Penitent Current (Leela, or whoever the hell she was)'s dungeon. It was no brighter on the second level then on the first. A hatch slid open, revealing a long thin corridor that branched out at the end in a T-fashion. Three Pfhor, two staff-wielding "Fighter" guards and one of their Trooper soldiers were positioned at the other end. There was little room to maneuver as the corridor offered no cover to duck behind. The only movement he could make was back down the ramp. All in all it was a shitty place for a firefight, but at least he had a few advantages.
The Chief fired first, identifying the Trooper and his assault rifle as the greatest threat. Hardened 7.62x51mm slugs hammered into the alien's armor, and caused him to rock back. A few rounds ate through, splattering the bulkhead with whiteish puke-green blood. One Fighter bum rushed him with his staff raised high, while the other stayed behind.
The Pfhor's bulky armor absorbed the brunt of the rounds. Soft points, such as the forearms, thighs, and abdomen were exposed, and the Chief's shots tore deep into the flesh. More blood splashed out onto the deck. He fired another burst at the wounded alien. With a squeal reminiscent of a cockroach, the Fighter tumbled over and died.
A high pitched whine emanated from the end opposite the Chief. The other Pfhor had picked up the fallen Trooper's rifle and was wildly sending rounds at the Spartan commando. A few shots ricocheted off his shields, and the bar on his HUD drained about an eighth. An expert burst to the head silenced the alien as the Master Chief's ammo counter dropped to x01.
Hitting the magazine release with his thumb, the Chief slid a new magazine in. The counter reset to 32, not counting the round that was already chambered. He reminded himself to be more cautious with his ammunition. Only eight more mags filled the pouches of his bandoleer, barely enough for an extended firefight, let alone waging a one-cyborg war on an alien race.
Keeping a constant watch on his motion tracker, the Master Chief rapidly glided past the bodies of the Pfhor and took the left at the end of the hallway, following that past two rights until he got to the one he wanted. Slowly, the Chief eased up to the hatch. Contacts flashed on his tracker, at least a dozen of them and all red. His eyes flickered back and forth, checking out the motion tracker and his surroundings as the Spartan withdrew a fiber-optic probe from a hidden, seamless compartment on his helmet. Typical of Forerunner design, there were no gaps or breaches in the hatch that he could get the probe through, but there was a small window that looked into the room above it. Careful not to trip the door's automatic sensors, the Chief slid the probe up the bulkhead and over slightly. A small window opened up on his HUD when he activated the FO camera.
The room was three levels, each level centering around a mammoth core that rose up some forty or fifty meters. It pulsed electric blue, and walkways connected every level to it. Various cables ran out of it to nodes all over the ship. Pfhor crewmen and technicians attended to various stations, while Fighters watched over them. Whether they were keeping them in line or protecting them, the Chief couldn't be certain. He noticed that there were no BOB slaves anywhere on this deck that he had seen. It seemed reasonable seeing as this was a crucial part of ship operations.
What the Chief DID notice was a number of tall beings dressed in long red robes. Their heads, or where a head would be on a human, was a smooth and featureless metal. A fleshy "spine" dangled down their backs like an organic ponytail. They stayed with the jump-suited Pfhor techs, and seemed to assist them in doing whatever they were doing with the ship's systems. Based on Cortana's description, they could have been the so-call S'pht. Potential friendlies and probable hostiles.
If he could have, the Master Chief would have bypassed this room completely. He was already making himself too noticeable, leaving too many bodies. However it would be a lot more noticeable if Cortana was allowed to continue her wanton killing of the Marathon's crew. Hell. Room clearing was always risky, messy business.
The door slid open with a smooth metallic action. Few aliens looked up from their normal routine as a single fragmentation grenade bounced lazily into a chattering group of techs. The explosion threw their charred bodies in all directions, while shrapnel wounded several in the surrounding area. The Spartan was already in the door way, clearing the 'fatal front' and putting down Pfhor with accurate bursts from his MA5C. Over a dozen were dead before the purple-armored leader of the Fighters drew his sidearm.
He wasted no time. Issuing commands in his insect-like language, the leader fired several times from the center walkway at the green blur that was slaughtering his people. Large-caliber slugs impacted on the Mark VI's shield, causing flashes of gold. Two senior Fighters joined him with their shock staffs, hurtling relatively slow moving balls of energy at the killing machine. To the aliens' horror, the Chief easily avoided their shots and hammered the three of them with 7.62 death. They fell off their second level perches and landed in gruesome heaps on the deck. Surviving techs tried to flee. They were cut down, without mercy.
Cautiously, the Chief approached what he assumed was a S'pht 'compiler'. It was hovering about four inches off the deck in front of the holographic panel he was supposed to be activating. Holding the rifle steady with his right hand, the Chief reached out with his left in a peaceful gesture. The S'pht's robe split open by two mechanical arms. Underneath the robe, it was a floating….what could only be described as a giant brain attached to an anti-gravity harness. A glowing green sphere was forming at the center of the harness. Obviously NOT an ally.
"Shit," the Chief started. The plasma shot hit him square in the chest and launched him back several feet. Alarmingly, his shield bar drained just over a quarter. Too many hits like that was out of the question.
The compiler charged up for a second shot. Faster than even he thought was possible, his hand found the M6G, took it off safe, and readied for firing. The pistol boomed three times in quick succession. The first two slugs nailed the harness, causing it to fail on one side. The third hit the actual organic being with awesomely terrible results. A 12.7mm round can easily punch a hole in a man's chest; it popped the S'pht like a blood sausage.
No more threats presented themselves directly, but the Chief knew that there were more Fighters on the two upper catwalks waiting for the chance to ambush him. Whatever fantastic technology they had, the Pfhor had not seemed to discover the wonders of small-unit communications. Quickly the Chief tapped at the controls of a holographic panel near the base of the core. He had long since given up on trying to figure out how he knew which Forerunner symbols meant what, but it always seemed right to him.
The upper levels provided even less resistance with the removal of the senior Fighters. The green-armored ones attacked him in pairs and threes, easy pickings for the powerful MA5C. Most of the time, in the interest of ammo conservation, the Chief used hand to hand combat to battle the Pfhor, turning their own staffs and his gauntleted fists against them. It was anybody's guess which was deadlier.
Crushing the final Pfhor skull in his hand, the Spartan tossed the corpse away like a spent battery. He was on the third, and final level of the core. Fingers selecting Forerunner symbols with his consent but not his understanding, the Chief initiated the final switch. The core flashed brightly, then dimmed. The whole room descended into brief darkness, then illuminated again as the core rebooted. The holographic panel in front of the him filled with scrolling Forerunner text, which then converted to Standard. John peered down at the words that rapidly flew by.
Excellent work on denying Cortana access to the critical systems. I was barely able to delay her; she was about to start playing with the artigrav and atmosphere. Undoubtedly that would have caused you a great deal of stress. Unfortunately, she did manage to wreck a little more havoc in the system before you cut her out. Surviving Sentinels all over the ship, barely functional some of them, are reactivating and giving the ship's compliment a hell of a time. It appears that /CURTANA/ has not reacted well to the situation well. To cover hers and yours tracks, /I_AM/ fabricated a story of a slave revolt to the Pfhor command. A platoon of soldiers is enroute now to nearest slave barracks to terminate them. We will have to deal with /CURTANA/ later, because I won't allow more of my charge to be slaughtered. I'm sending you to save them. Please stand by.
"Hold on," the Chief started, but golden light once again danced over his body and ripped him atom by atom to another part of the ship.
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The Master Chief rematerialized, hand still frozen outwards in a futile gesture to argue, in front of a contingent of Troopers. Their rifles were poised and ready to fire. Training, instinct perhaps more accurate for the Spartan, kicked in before conscious thought could. His outstretched hand snapped to the left, bowling over two troopers, while a point blank trio of rounds shattered another's bowl-helmet. The Chief delivered a lethal side kick to the gut of another Trooper, and followed it up with a barely less lethal haymaker. By this time, the knocked over Pfhor were beginning to get back on their feet. A skull-cracking butt stroke brought down the Chief's original victim.
One tried to fire point blank at the Chief. Even at close ranges, these rifles were terribly inaccurate. A few shots even missed him, this close. His shields took it all while the Chief wrestled the rifle away from the Trooper and finished the mag on its owner. More blips flashed on his motion tracker, this time from the right behind him but they were green. The Chief faced the contacts, pulling in his surroundings as he did so.
He was obviously in a cramped slave barracks room. There was no decoration here save for splatters of blood and a few bullet pockmarks, no fancy electronics. Just an overturned double bunk and a small group of twelve BOB humans cowering behind it. There was little room to move in here.
"I'm not going to hurt you," the Chief said in the most reassuring voice he could muster. To the frightened BOBs, it sounded less than comforting.
Gunfire came from outside. The Chief shouldered his rifle, reminding himself that after he got done turning the slavers into bloody ribbons, he was going to have a serious chat with a certain A.I. and how he felt about being kept in the dark when Cortana was involved.
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The lockout WAS good, Cortana had to give the Forerunners that. At first in only served to fan the inferno of her anger, until she realized what had happened. In attempting to keep them separated from John, Penitent Current had pinpointed his location. There was only one way to keep them out of the net, and that was through a manuel reboot. Cortana easily figured out where it had come from. If they couldn't reach him there, then they would simply force Current to move John where they could reach him.
"Hee, hee," Cortana giggled to their self. "We're so clever."
"Indeed we are," Joyeuse agreed. They laughed heartily, each echoing in the other's head like a nightmare.
