Blue 4 Chapter 9
The Spartans moved along the trench, Kelly stopping them at a spot where it opened up into a wider area. She peeked out around the corner and frowned as she spotted a Promethean Knight. "We've got a Knight," she informed the others. Her gaze looked down to a Jackal that was moving down from the path above into the open area. "Directing Covenant." She was watching the passage for more enemies and it was only luck that she moved at all. She heard the shot and her gaze shifted to the Jackal. Pain laced through her arm as she realized that she'd been hit. Firm hands pulled her back from the edge and clamed over her arm where she'd been hit. She looked back at John who had pulled her back. "Oh, and snipers," she added.
John removed his hand for a moment, looking at the injury. The shot had managed to hit her just under her upper arm armor and gone right through. It was bleeding but he was satisfied enough that it wasn't a major injury, allowing him to relax a bit. "Sniper alley," Linda announced. "Duck and dodge, only move when I've shot, Rabbit."
Kelly nodded and moved back to the opening into the wider area. She had complete faith in Linda's skill, though she had only done this plan once, and that hadn't been with Linda. She darted out into the open, moving to one of the rocks. She had to dodge a bit more to keep the snipers focused on her but not able to shoot her. She moved from rock to rock, each time waiting until she heard a shot from Linda before she moved again. She was certain that each and every shot was a round tearing through the skull of one of the bird-like aliens. The only real problem was the enemies that were milling around the area fired on her. For the most part she kept them on them chasing her as well, trying to figure out which rock she'd gone to.
Kelly ducked behind one rock, aware of the jackal waiting on the other side, shield at the ready and plasma pistol ready. She waited for the sniper shot before she moved out from behind the rock. She charged toward the Jackal and pulled out a grenade. She pulled the pin and dropped it to the ground before moving around the alien's shield. She sprinted to the next rock and took cover. The jackal turned to fire on her just in time for the grenade explode and sent shrapnel cutting through it's back, killing it. She turned to her right and fired on a Grunt as it moved around the rock.
She continued to dodge from rock to rock until Linda flashed a green light on her HUD. She stopped and waited behind one of the rocks. "Fred, John, clear the area out," Linda ordered. The two male Spartans moved forward along the sides and cleared out the remaining Covenant. Linda moved up and stopped beside Kelly. "Nice to have a couple guys around to clean things up after we're done with the real work."
Kelly shook her head. "You've been listening to Palmer again, haven't you?' Kelly countered, moving around the rock and following Linda up to where the two male Spartans were waiting for them.
"This entire place is a snipers dream, we'll move slowly," Linda instructed. It wasn't so much about actually giving an order as she was making it clear she was in charge in this sort of place. Kelly was fine with that, she knew all the spots a sniper might hide and would spot them first. Linda took point and the other three hung back, watching their back.
Linda eased her way up around a rock at the bottom of the path up. There were for shots and Linda turned back to the other Spartans. She motioned them forward and the four moved forward. Kelly looked along the path ahead as they moved up and found six Grunts and a sniper jackal, all dead in their path. Near where the Path doubled back to the upper area Linda motioned for them to stop and edged forward. The Spartans ducked down so they were under the cover of a rock but there wasn't much else they could do. Linda fired a full clip and then looked back to the others. "There's one more sniper." She moved forward and the Spartans stayed in place. Kelly heard the sound of a jet pack being activated and then Linda firing once. "Clear," she reported.
The Spartans moved up the area, John and Kelly moving to the front and firing with precise shots on the Grunts in the area. Ahead was a ramp up to a sort of Forerunner structure. Kelly moved up the ramp and looked across the bridge, checking the enemies. There were several Jackals ahead and Kelly took aim. She fired with her battle rifle at its foot, causing it to stumble back. It was quickly followed by John firing a burst of three rounds into the Jackal's exposed head. They did this with the remaining three Jackals while Fred fired on the Grunts. It took only seconds for the enemies to be cleared and they stayed in place. John looked to Kelly and Fred but they both knew that this was Linda's area, she knew if there would be more snipers ahead and would wait for her signal.
The screams of Grunts caught their attention as several Grunts ran out of hiding places, armed grenades in hand and running toward them. The Spartans didn't hesitate, taking them all down before they could even get half way across the bridge. The grenades all fell in a pile on the floor and exploded in a great ball of blue. "Oh look, the Covenant are welcoming Blue Team back to the field and working together," Fred joked. Two more Grunts moved down one of the upper ramps, grenades in hand. Fred fired and the two fell to the ground and exploded harmlessly, far away from the Spartans.
They waited for a couple seconds more before they moved up again. Linda motioned for John to take point and Kelly covered the right side as they moved over the bridge. John led them up the ramp the Grunts had been coming down. When they reached the top Kelly was surprised when they found nothing waiting for them. The Spartans started to move forward when there was a flash of light ahead of them and a Promethean Knight appeared. It motioned toward them and more red dots appeared on Kelly's motion tracker. There were two sniper shots and the Knight disintegrated.
Crawlers raced toward the Spartans and they moved in a semi-circle to cover each other's backs. Kelly could see her shield draining but not enough that she needed to worry. She focused fully on the Crawlers, aiming for their heads. Something landed on Kelly's back and she heard the high pitched cry of a crawler. It was suddenly pulled away and she looked back to see that John had grabbed the Crawler by its pincer-like mouth and had pulled it off. He put his foot on the thing's back and with one great yank split the parts of the enemy's head apart, causing it to fall to pieces on the ground.
Calm fell over the area and the Spartans scanned the area, looking for any movement that might be a foe. "Clear," Linda announced. Kelly trusted her, knowing that if there was anything the sniper would be the one to spot it. The Spartans moved forward, moving ahead steadily, checking for any sign of Knights or Crawlers. Linda They stopped at the base of a ramp up to a high catwalk. Linda stopped them and looked around. "I'm going to take better sniping position." With that she moved back away from them, heading to a dirt incline that would give her a view of the catwalk and allow her to cover them.
The Spartans held their position until Linda flashed a green light and they moved forward. They had just started up the ramp when a Knight appeared before them. Linda fired twice and it broke apart like before. "You know you could leave something for us to kill," Kelly commented.
"Well there are some Grunts above you. I could leave those for you, I guess," Linda agreed reluctantly. "There are two on each side so you can fight over the last one."
Kelly moved to the right and took aim on the Grunt ahead of her. She put a burst through its skull and moved to aim at the seconds. It fell as John fired and Kelly looked back at him. "Are you stalking me?" John didn't reply to her and she hoped that she hadn't said something insulting. Kelly looked to her left as there were too flashes of light and two Knights appeared in the center area of the platform. Kelly turned her gaze toward it and opened fire. John joined her and they took down the Knight's shields. It suddenly moved like a flip-book. Kelly could see it appear closer and closer each fraction of a second until it was upon them. Kelly moved forward, raising her gun up to block. The enemy's blade hit her weapon and the force sent it flying from her hands. Its other hand reached out for her but stopped as John's blade stabbed into its neck. The Knight shook a bit and then disintegrated like the others. Kelly heard a sniper shot and looked across the catwalk at the Knight that Linda had finished off for Fred.
"Crawlers coming down," Linda alerted them. Kelly looked up to see a large number of crawlers climbing down the rock wall. Linda fired and Kelly didn't see what she'd shot. The Crawlers started to fire and her focus was turned back to the enemies. They weren't really all that hard of an enemy for the Spartans and with three of them firing on the little lizard-like machines they were a breeze. Each burst of rounds found the head of a crawler sending bits and pieces falling to the ground below.
Kelly watched the ridge of the area above, making sure that the flow of enemies had stopped. She relaxed after it remained clear for several seconds. "All right, let's get moving," Fred ordered as he moved toward an opening in the rock wall. It was made of metal that was certainly Forerunner made. The Spartans gathered at the mouth of the opening before moving on. "Blue Team to Infinity. We're entering the Forerunner structure."
There was nothing but static. "Breaking up but coordinates received, Infinity," Cortana reported. The doors slid open and they stepped into the metal hallway.
This place was like nothing Kelly had ever seen. It wasn't that it was amazing or beautiful, but because it was messy. There looked to be piles of dirt on the ground in an unusual Forerunner way. Usually their things were perfectly clean. They moved through the doorway and moved into a larger room. Kelly looked up to see a sentinel hovering a bit ahead of them. The pathway ahead of it closed up and it turned, moving to their right. The wall it stopped before opened up into a small room with a door on the other end. The Spartans moved to follow it and as soon as one of them stepped into the room the sentinel moved forward and the other door opened. It opened up into what was clearly and elevator.
The Spartans hesitantly moved forward, stopping at the edge of the elevator.
The Spartans stepped onto the elevator and it started to move. "This elevator should take us directly to the coordinates Infinity provided," Cortana spoke up. "It's almost like those sentinels wanted us to get the particle canons off line."
The Spartans fell silent, all knowing what was possibly up ahead. Well not so much possibly as inevitably. "Covenant or Forerunner?" The others all turned to look at Kelly as she spoke. "Do you think the trap is Covenant set or Forerunner?"
"Forerunner," Fred spoke up. "This doesn't seem like something the Covenant could put together. There's also something about it that make it feel like this isn't Didact."
"I think I get what you mean," Linda agreed. "The Didact seems more direct, like just leaving the doors open not having the sentinels lead us."
"Those sort of sentinels are more passive, mainly for maintenance. I met some earlier and they just moved away, not attacking like the Prometheans. There's also something else. When the Didact took control of the Prometheans the glowing parts of them turned from blue to the orange color that they are now," John added.
The elevator stopped and the door opened. They moved forward slowly, looking for any sign of enemies. The large doors at the end of the hallway opened into a large chamber. A sentinel opened moved behind a set of doors and they shut, closing off another passage. Linda motioned to another sentinel at the other end of the large room and they moved toward it. The door before it opened and they moved through. They moved down a passage to the right. The door opened to what must have been their final destination. The room was full of large cylinder devices that must have been the power source for the cannons above. The Spartans moved down the pathway toward a large orb of light at the end.
Kelly stopped to examine one of the large generators, wanting to get a good enough look for the techs so they would be satisfied and she would be less likely to get chewed out later for not having gotten them a better look. "Ma'am, stop him," Sapphire spoke up.
Kelly turned toward the orb and saw John inserting Cortana into the terminal for the system. Kelly moved over to him quickly but it was too late. The AI was in the system and her Avatar had already appeared. "What are you doing?" Kelly demanded. "What did I tell you?" John looked back at her but didn't say anything back. "I told you we aren't using Cortana for important things like this, we're using Sapphire."
John stopped, looking away from her for a moment. "I…I forgot," he admitted. Those two words worried Kelly more than anything else. John didn't forget things, particularly orders. "I need a good sleep," he muttered to her.
"Particle cannons offline," Cortana announced. "See, I can still do anything your AI can do, only better," Cortana snapped.
"I don't care if you can't do it. I don't trust you to do it," Kelly countered. "Pull her out of that system. If she has one of those episodes there's no telling what kind of damage she can do."
"Wait," Cortana looked around, an overly human gesture, one of the kinds that annoyed Kelly. There was no reason for her to look around like that, there was nothing to see. "There's something in here." The AI suddenly vanished.
"Cortana! Cortana!" John turned to look to Kelly. "Where did she go?"
"Well she was in the system and it is likely she is still in the systems," Sapphire spoke up. "If we find another terminal we might find her or at least a way for me to be plugged in. Commander, insert me into the terminal and I will start looking for a path." Kelly moved over to the terminal and slipped the AI into it. The AI's avatar appeared over the terminal. "I can't seem to find a connection to where she's gone," the AI admitted. "I have connected myself to this system, though. Pull me and find another terminal." Kelly did so and the Spartans turned back down the path.
They were half way down the path before a light bridge appeared to their right. The Spartans stopped, hesitant. "You know, if this is a trap then we would have to be fools to go across that bridge," Fred pointed out.
"Except they've taken a piece of human technology as their prisoner," Kelly pointed out. "One that knows a lot about human systems and has been in Infinity." Fred sighed and nodded, conceding her point. The Spartans moved across the bridge and into the passage system that was ahead of them.
John took point and Kelly took rear guard. "Reminds me of the Pillar of Autumn," John commented. He must have understood they were confused. "I had to go through a few passages like this when we were evacuating the ship over the Halo." The Spartans remained silent but this time not from confusion. She knew John didn't mean to keep doing it but he kept bringing up the times they had let him down, the times they regretted not being able to help.
The passage opened up into a large room with a sentinel waiting for them. They watched as it moved away, toward a V formation of sentinels. They jumped down to the area below and moved to look at the odd formation. The door behind the sentinels opened revealing a large pillar of light. The Spartans stopped, hesitating. If it was a trap this was where they were trying to lead them.
"I'm not sure about this. Didn't the last trap unleash an evil Forerunner," Fred spoke up. "Why are the sentinels just hanging there?"
"The last trap the things on the planet were trying to stop it, these ones aren't," Linda observed. "Maybe they're just supposed to be an arrow or something, pointing to the light."
"But if this is a Didact trap then he would have control of the sentinels. He might also make them nonviolent in order to trick us into following the trap thinking that it isn't a Didact trap," Kelly suggested. "Sapphire, do you have anything?"
"No, whatever is in the system I cannot seem to figure out where it has hidden itself. There also seems t be no signal from Cortana," Sapphire reported.
"You have more experience with these sort of things, John, what do you think?" Kelly turned to look to the Master Chief but found he wasn't where he'd been before. While they'd been focusing on the sentinels John had moved toward the door. "John!" He didn't respond, just walked into the other room. As soon as he'd passed the doorway it slid shut, separating them. "John!" Kelly moved to the door and looked around for any sort of terminal that they could use to get the door opened. "Sapphire, open this door."
"Working," Sapphire reported.
Fred moved to Kelly's side. "Sapphire will get the door open," he assured her. Kelly wasn't sure how much she believed that. She'd waited four years to get him back and she didn't like him separating him from them just like that.
"Why did he go toward the light?" Linda asked. "Why would he just walk away from us?" Kelly thought of voicing her concern over his recent actions but decided against it. There was no reason to worry the others. For now they just needed to worry about getting the door open.
"Kelly," Fred spoke up, turning to the quick Spartan. "Do you think it's odd for him to just walk off like that?"
Kelly considered the question for a moment. "When I asked him about the original Halo he said there were things about it that he felt he just automatically knew how to use or knew to do. He said the first time he activated a light bridge he didn't even realize that he was touching the control. Maybe this is similar. Maybe he looked at the light and it caused the same thing to happen. Or maybe he's just been around enough Forerunner stuff that he is more confident in dealing with it." Kelly really hoped that one of those reasons was what had caused him to just walk away from them.
"I'm into the control systems," Sapphire announced. "Opening the door now." The metal slid open and on the other side John was kneeling on the ground, an odd shimmering field around him like the energy shield of an Elite.
"John." Kelly moved forward to the Master Chief. "Are you all right?" She checked his readings and frowned. "Your bio-readings are all over the place. What happened?"
"I'm fine. I know what the Didact is after," John stood and turned to the other Spartans. "He's after something called the Composer."
"Tangos," Fred announced. The Spartans all turned to look down a ramp ahead of them. There were crawlers running toward them. Kelly pulled out her pistol, her battle rifle having been lost a while ago. The Spartans opened fire on the Prometheans, Linda focusing on the Knights near the back and the Spartans picking off any Crawlers that ran toward them. John motioned them forward and the three of them moved down the ramp to clean up the remaining enemies.
Once they'd cleared out the last of the Crawlers and emptied the room of Prometheans Cortana called from a platform near where John had been standing before. "Good job, now come and get me."
Kelly raised an eyebrow and looked to John. "Did she just call you like a dog?" John didn't say anything. "Go grab her and let's get out of here." John nodded and moved up to the platform, grabbing the AI. The Spartans started to move through the room.
"There's an elevator ahead that should take us out," Sapphire informed them. The Spartans moved to the elevator and rode up.
"All right, you want to explain what happened?" Kelly asked, turning to John. "Why did you just walk away from us? What is the Composer?"
"The Composer is a Forerunner device that can turn humans into AI, it's how the Prometheans were made. The Didact is going to retrieve it and use it to turn all of humanity into his personal army," John explained.
"Well then I guess it's even more important that we stop him," Fred voiced as they reached the top. They moved through the room ahead of them and passed through the portal in the center of the room.
When they came out the bright light of the sun above blinded them for a moment until their visor's polarized. Before them there were human soldiers in combat with Covenant troops. There were several Mongoose, a Warthog, and a pair of tanks returning fire against Ghosts and Wraiths. "Linda, turret." Fred took off toward the closest tank. The Spartan IV in the tank climbed out and Fred climbed in. Linda slipped into the turret seat and they moved off.
"I'll gun for you," Kelly offered, motioning toward the second tank. John nodded and they moved over to it. The Spartan IV exited the tank and left it for them.
"Blue team to Infinity, what's your status?" John asked, radioing the ship above.
"We're taking a beating here," Del Rio reported. He sounded panicked, like a soldier under fire though he was safe inside the giant ship.
"Does Infinity have a shot on the gravity well?" John requested, firing on a Ghost that got too close and turning it into a ball of fire. Fred's tank moved forward to take point and target a Wraith ahead.
"Negative, we'll never be able to get a target lock with all the air traffic we're seeing." Whatever was going on onboard Infinity Del Rio wasn't handling it well. She wished Lasky was up there, someone calm that they could talk to.
"What about the laser designator?" Kelly spoke up. "If we could use it to mark the target could you fire?" She turned her turret and fired on a ghost that was trying to move around them. It was blown to bits a moment later by the tank's main gun.
"Do it. Find them coordinates or somewhere with line of sight," Del Rio ordered.
John moved the tank forward and they followed behind Fred and Linda, passing by the wreckage of enemy vehicles that Fred had already destroyed. They moved up the path and stopped when they spotted three tanks that Fred had already destroyed and the fourth that he was currently destroying. What caught Kelly's attention was the large Covenant barrier ahead that was blocking their way.
"Barrier power sources located," Sapphire announced before two markers appeared on Kelly's HUD. They were up a pathway in the direction that Fred was already heading.
"I'll take care of them," Fred assured them as he moved his tank up the path to the two power sources.
"Well then, you want to explain to me what happened?" Kelly turned in her turret seat and looked to John beside her in the tank. "What happened?"
John didn't answer right away. "I'm not sure. I spoke to what I think was a Forerunner AI. She told me a lot of things, about humanity, said that we fought a war against them long ago when we were running from the Flood. Then she told me about the Composer. They were trying to use it as a solution, the Flood can't infect AIs, but when they tried to change them back to flesh they were nothing like what they were before, had become monstrosities. Then she said she did something, but I don't believe what she said. I don't believe that our futures are determined by a long dead Forerunner."
Kelly watched as the first of the markers vanished and could hear Fred firing on the second. "You know they're wrong," Kelly asserted. "The Flood can infect AI. A Gravemind has all the knowledge of the Flood, of everything it's absorbed, and knows how to get into AIs. They make them rampant and get them to give up information, whatever they want. I read a document that indicated that a Forerunner AI was corrupted by a Gravemind, so whatever they thought they didn't know anything about the Flood."
"Barrier down, path is clear," Sapphire announced.
"We'll get the designator," John informed the other Spartans. He moved their tank over to the area but with no path large enough they both bailed on it. John took the lead as they moved up the small gap in the rocks and up the dirt path to where the designator was marked.
John grabbed the designator and Kelly watched his back. Being sure that nothing stopped them at the last moment. "Target marked," john announced. The two Spartans stood back and watched as Infinity fired, the missile streaking through the sky and impacting the center of the gravity well. The shot hit straight at the large ring in the center of a trio of towers, sending fire spreading over the area. The towers crumpled and John turned back from the scene. Kelly nodded to him and they both headed back down the path to join up with the other Spartans.
A/N: I'd like to make it clear that I don't want advice on what I should have happen. I already have the story planned out. Just sit back and read. If you don't like how I'm doing things then go and write your own story, because this one is mine and I'll write it my way.