Disclaimer: I don't own halo or any other TV show or book mentioned in this story
Chapter 9: battle of the Gettysburg
Anderson couldn't believe what he was hearing. A UNSC destroyer fired on them and now his ship was being boarded. His Starfleet tactical training instinctively took over.
"Lieutenant" he said looking at Cheney "assemble your security teams, confine all nonessential personal to the safe areas, and hand out phasers to anyone volunteering for security work. Commander Baker, I want to take over tactical".
"Yes, sir" they said in unison Cheney walked over to the turbolift and got in. And baker got behind the tactical station.
"Do we have internal sensors?" he asked ops.
"Negative sir, they went down just after we were boarded. But we counted 22 transports"
So they were dealing with 22 boarders, or more.
"commander, begin counter-intruder program beta-1" this would isolate the designated safe zones with forcefields and lockdown the main computer, it was an order that all Starfleet captains dreaded given because beta-2 was the self-destruct protocol. Anderson hoped he wouldn't have to order it.
--
Fred and Ash were running down the corridor on deck 8 when they bumped into Cheney. He had two other security officers with them, they all had their phasers pointed at ash.
"What's going on?" asked Fred.
"Ask your friend" said Cheney pointing at Ash, "we've been boarded and from what we just herd, the boarders are wearing the same stealth armor as him!".
"What!" said Ash.
Just then Linda's voice came over the comm. "Linda to Fred, we've been boarded by the rest of SPARTAN III gamma company. Our SPARTAN IIIs are here with us, we're on our way to the armory, is ash with you?".
"Yes he is, we're on our way, Fred out" he turned to Cheney "proof enough?"
"For now, but you'll explain when we get to the armory".
They met Linda and the other Spartans, except John outside the armory. Cheney typed in the access code on the door panel and the doors opened to revel a large room with weapons, contained in glass cases along the wall. One of them was open and a man wearing a UNSC engineer's uniform was picking apart a rifle. Cheney fired his phaser and it caught him in the back. He collapsed and Linda ran over, looked at him and on his arm was an ONI patch.
"Damn I knew it this op smells of them" she said
"Who?" asked Cheney
"The office of naval intelligence" said Fred "a very shadowy agency, they were responsible for creating the SPARTAN program. Of course some parts of this organization will go to extreme lengths to accomplish their goals".
"Just like section 31" Cheney said, he turned to the SPARTAN IIIs but before he could say anything, Ash walked up to him and began to speak.
"I know what you're thinking, that we're going to turn on you. But we're not mindless solders. We do have a sense of what's right and wrong and frankly, we might be able to convince the others to stop what they're doing. I give you my word that we'll support you".
Cheney turned to the ensign on his left "get some weapons for these Spartans".
"That's what I'm talking about" said Kelly "now we just…" she was cut off as a damaged conduit exploded behind Tom and Lucy. Tom pushed Lucy away but he was flown across the room and impacted the wall, he was alive but he clutched his leg which had a piece of metal lodged in it. Lucy ran over to his side as did Kelly. She looked at the wound. "Fred" she said "he needs medical treatment, fast!".
"All right, you and Lucy take him to sickbay"
"I'll send one of my men with him" said Cheney
Kelly and Lucy helped Tom up and they left for sickbay with a security officer.
"Ok, you got a sniper rifle in here?" asked Linda.
"Here you go, the new prototype" Cheney said as he tossed her a modified phaser rifle, it had an advanced red-dot scope equipped with several vision enhancements.
"Nice" she said as she held the rifle. Everyone else took the standard rifle and Fred grabbed an extra.
"Linda take command, I'm going to get John" he said as he left.
--
"Where's that doctor of yours?" said Kelly as they walked into sickbay finding it empty, they set Tom down on the main biobed.
"I'll get him" said the ensign. "Computer, activate the emergency medical program" he said, then the Doctor appeared out of nowhere.
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency?" he asked.
"Doc, he's wounded" said the ensign.
The doctor picked up a medical tricorder, walked over to Tom, and scanned him.
"So you're some kind of AI?" asked Kelly.
"Yes I am, but unlike your friend I only exist as a hologram. He isn't to badly hurt but we'll need to remove this shrapnel".
The large piece pf metal was lodged in his upper leg. It had missed his knee but removing was going to hurt like hell. Lucy was standing near him holding Tom's hand. Kelly grabbed hold of the metal shard and pulled. Tom cried out in pain then passed out. The doctor moved in, used his dermal regenerator on Tom and sealed his wound, then scanned him again.
"He's lost too much blood we need to give him a transfusion. Ensign, prep the blood synthesizer".
"It's no good doc, all the critical sickbay systems are down"
"Use my blood" said a female voice from behind them; they all turned to see Lucy removing her arm section of her suit. "All the SPARTAN IIIs have the same blood type so we could share blood".
"All right" the Doctor said as he removed a case from a drawer and opened it; it was a field transfusion kit. He inserted one line into Lucy's arm and drew the blood he needed, then removed the line and hooked it up to a line all ready in Tom's arm. Lucy sat down on one of the other biobeds felling light headed, Kelly walked over to her.
"Tell me he's going to be all right" said Lucy
"He should be fine" said the doctor
Lucy removed her helmet and Kelly could see fresh tears roiling down her face, "I thought he was going to die" she said.
Kelly put an arm around Lucy.
"He saved my life" she said very softly "during the war. We were the only survivors. That's why I didn't talk. I couldn't, not after what I saw I care about him, he's really the only one I have left".
Kelly knew what she felt like.
--
John was standing near the table where Cortana still laid. The Starfleet program should be finished soon; he knew that the ship was under attack and the captain's voice came over the intercom saying the Gettysburg had been boarded. There was nothing he could do, he didn't have a weapon and what would happen to Cortana if he left?
"John" came a voice from behind him, he turned to find Cortana sitting up on the table. Her body was glowing a bright blue and the lines of code were running across her body at their usual rate.
"Cortana, how are you doing?" he asked as he walked over to her.
"I'm fine, I ran a systems check. What's going on?"
"The ship has been boarded. I don't know how many there are"
"Then we should get out of here" said Cortana, getting off the table and standing up. But just as she did, the doors to the lab opened to reveal a person wearing SPI armor. The Chief realized immediately that it wasn't one of the ones that he met.
"Spartan-117" he said "you need to hand over the AI"
Cortana moved behind him. "not likely" said john
"I'm under orders to retrieve her by any means necessary" said the Spartan.
"Go ahead and try" replied the Chief.
The Spartan raised his rifle, preparing to fire when another blast of energy his him in his side. He toppled over and fell to the ground. Fred came around the corner and into the room, holding a phaser rifle.
"Nice to see the two of you" he said as he tossed John a phaser rifle he had slung across his back. "We need to get to deck 16. Cheney wants us guarding main engineering in case gamma company makes a run at the reactor."
"All right, let's go" said Cortana
The Chief removed the chip from his helmet and held it out in front of her. She touched it and instantly she disappeared and the chip began to glow blue. He reinserted into his helmet and the sense of cold mercury filled his mind. They then left the room and got into a turbolift
--
Ash was walking alone on a corridor on deck 15, scouting for any sign of Gamma Company. According to what the captain told them, the security teams had isolated most of gamma and a few ONI engineers with forcefields. Gamma couldn't gain access to the bridge to disable them, so the next likely spot was engineering where they could go to shut them off. He knew who was leading the assault on engineering, the best commander of them all. Sure enough when he rounded another corridor, there stood Timothy.
"Ash" he said.
"Tim"
"Well you were the last person I would think to join the other side"
"No, I just joined the right side, unlike you"
"The right side" replied Tim "is that what you call not following orders from the proper chain of command".
"Proper chain of command! That's what you call attacking an ally who helped us in our time of need".
"Orders are orders, but it seems that you've made your choice".
Before he could say anything else, Tim disappeared. Ash ran for the nearest turbolift, he had to get to engineering, realizing Tim's orders if things went south, destroy the Gettysburg.
--
John and Fred arrived in engineering, he finally got a look at the ship's main reactor. It was three stories high and had red and blue lights running to a main chamber in the middle.
"Whoa!" said Fred as he got a look at it.
John saw on either catwalk was Linda and Mark, their best sharpshooters.
This thing is a matter-antimatter reactor Collins explained we can't let them get near it. This baby could take out the whole ship and anything within a decent sized radius.
Ash ran in and was beginning to tell them about what he learned. When Cortana spoke up
"Chief, I've got contacts approaching!"
Six Spartans dressed in SPI armor came around the corner, firing their MA5Ks.
"Down" Fred screamed as everyone hit the deck, but one ensign was cut down while trying to duck. Chief Collins ran to a panel on the wall and typed in a command. Then a giant blast door slammed shut in front of them. Sealing off engineering from the corridor.
"Well that was close" said Collins, he was wrong. a section of the door exploded and a decent sized hole was present.
"It must have been a Lotus" said Cortana.
The chief wasn't interested, he had bigger things to worry about. Everyone else had been too close to the explosion and was knocked unconscious by the blast, Fred was pinned by a piece of debris, and The Spartans were pouring through the hole. The Chief scooped up his phaser rifle and began firing. He brought down half of them, but by this time the others had their guns trained on the Chief. Then, two shots rang out, it was Linda and Mark. Two of them dropped to the floor and the Chief fired on the last one. But before his blast hit the Spartan, he primed a plasma grenade and tossed it at the core. The Chief was powerless to stop it. But then a phaser blast hit the grenade and vaporized it. The Chief turned to see who had fired, it was Collins. He looked like hell but he was standing.
--
"sir, report from engineering weapons and internal sensors are online" said Baker.
"Good" said Anderson, "Baker scan the ship, see if we got the boarders".
Baker was still manning the tactical station "sir, with the addition of the team neutralized in engineering. We have contained all the boarding parties".
"Good. Beam them to the surface, find a nice desolate area".
"Aye, sir". she typed a few more commands "transport complete... wait, sir. The destroyer is powering up its MAC gun!"
"Disable it"
The Gettysburg fired its main phaser bank and sliced the MAC gun clean of the destroyer. It continued to move toward, but suddenly it exploded.
"What the hell happened?" asked Anderson "did our hit do that much damage?"
"No, sir" reported the ops officer "it looks like a self-destruct. Sir, multiple ships are approaching. Their weapons are hot".
"It looks like they fooled them into thinking we destroyed that ship" said Baker "what are your orders?".
"Helm... set a course for the area where we left the odyssey, maximum warp. We can't stay here"
The Gettysburg shot into warp before the frigates could get a lock, but one thing did get through.
--
Anderson was sitting in the observation lounge with his senior staff. He had just gotten the casualty list: 7 dead, 15 wounded including one Spartan. He was weighing his options. 30 minutes ago, Cortana found a message from lord hood embedded in the computer. In it, Hood explained he only found out about the op when it was too late to stop it. Apparently the head of ONI had authorized it. They were supposed to kill or capture the SPARTAN IIIs and terminate Cortana. Then raid his ship and destroy it. Hood had also sent the schematics for the ONI headquarters, he said he couldn't act directly against them so it was up to his ship and the Spartans to stop them.
"Sir, we need to do something" said Cheney.
"I agree with him, captain" said Baker "we need to fight back. We can't just take this lying down, regulations or not".
The captain was standing up, looking out the window at the stars wising by. "I happen to agree with you both but we can't just throw regulations out the window. But these are desperate times. Starfleet never created a regulations about being stranded in a parallel universe and since I've already violated the prime directive, once more couldn't hurt. I've decided to attack ONI. We'll still need time to repair the ship but with the Odyssey's help I think we can do it" he walked over to the table. "Starfleet exists to help those that are in need and to stop those that do harm to others. Its time that we started doing something instead of waiting on the sidelines and watching while innocent people are harmed. I want this ship prepared for battle, Chief" he said looking at Collins, he was worse for wear but the doctor cleared him for duty. "I want that hole in my ship sealed and I want the Gettysburg prepped for combat as soon as possible".
--
All the Spartans were on the holodeck checking out the reach program Cortana had made. She thought they could all use some cheering up considering they were just framed as traitors by ONI.
"This brings me back" said Fred, looking around at the night time sky.
"So you all grew up here?" Olivia asked.
"Yep, they trained us all here. It was the only real home we ever had" said Kelly. She was thinking about everything that had happened, Fred had decided to incorporate Tom and Lucy into blue team and was surprised when Lucy actually said thank you to him. She was sitting with Tom who made a quick recovery thanks to the Starfleet equipment, they were out of earshot of the others but she could only guess what they were talking about. Fred had also mentioned adding one other person to blue team.
John and Cortana were sitting only a few feet away. He had an arm around her and she was resting her head on his shoulder. John had told her about the plan to make her human she seemed excited enough, and she also had her own news to tell.
"John, listen. After you told me about the plan to make me human, Fred approached me with an offer. And I wanted to make myself useful so..."
"Just what did he ask?" said John. He had a fairly good idea about what she was talking about.
"He asked me to become one of you, become a Spartan. And I know what you're going to say but I don't want to be on the sidelines while you risk your life. I want to help you just like always and you could use someone like me someone with my abilities".
"Cortana, I don't want to put you in that kind of danger. I care about you too much".
"John, If I do this. I'll be able to defend myself. I don't want you to choose me over completing the mission. This is my choice, I don't expect you to understand".
"I understand why you're trying to do this... and what ever you decide, I'll support you".
"Thanks, John" she said.