Author's note is gonna be short, but I decided to cut this story down to this chapter, and end it just like Halo 2 did. Within the next week or two, I should have the first chapter of the next story up, but don't hold me to it. I'm surprised I managed to get this one out the door in a little over a month. Thanks to all of you that favorited and followed, and especially to those that reviewed. See you next time.
Noble Six had stepped out of a war and into a horror film, lost in a run and gun fight that had her facing off against aliens that would give King Kong a run for his money and a fast acting zombie of the worst variety.
She had burned through more ammo than she thought even she could, taking only a few seconds at a time to stop and scoop up another weapon, discarding a previously empty one. Reloading was out of the question. She didn't have the time to scavenge for ammo besides whatever was already loaded into the weapon. Guns both Covenant and UNSC had been precision instruments in her fight against the dead and the living, taking life that wasn't even able to be considered alive anymore, but still screaming into the fog filled High Charity. A green, disgusting fog that wrapped around her armor like the excitement and the fear that wrapped around her heart. The warrior in her was at home, settled into a conflict that let the lone wolf, forever in her mind, howl at a moon obscured by the sickening miasma. The Human in her, the little girl that had never quite grown up despite the enhanced physique, wanted to scream out in fear.
Augmentations thrown into her so long ago, filling her veins with napalm and striking every nerve with an icepick, changes to bring out the primal ancestor buried deep within her genetics. A roar went up, but this time it came from within the blue, gore covered armor. It was a guttural roar, from deep within the chest of Morgan-B312 as she fought herself into continuing on. Every new enemy, every barely dodged swipe, every bounced bullet, every splash of plasma over her chest plate, and she could feel her will to keep going bobbing like a sinister metronome.
She was hungry, her nonstop fight from In Amber Clad to now leaving no time to scarf anything real down. She was tired, weary from the struggle against letting herself fall victim and joining those that would not die. She was at her limits, fighting this new foe alongside the old one. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, blood flooding through her veins like a river during a storm. She would not falter, she would not fall. Not here. Not now.
The buck of a stolen battle rifle against her shoulder, and then the ammo counter read an electric blue 0, and it was discarded as if it hadn't existed. A carbine scooped off of the ground and fired repeatedly, the rhythmic knocking of the recoil matching the drum beat that was Noble Six's heart. It egged her on even more, the warrior inside of her grinning like the scratched in design that had been on Emile's helmet, left to the glasslands. A movement here, a twitch there, and the carbine's barrel was in her hands as she swung the thick stocked weapon like a club. A Flood combat form took it on the shoulder, the weapon sinking deep inside and coming to a halt as it cleaved through rotten bone and flesh, and Six let it go, kicking the Flood form away. It left one of its legs behind and the small pod in its chest, just barely saved from being clubbed, skittered out to find another host.
Six was already moving on, a pair of plasma rifles coming into her hands as the Flood devoured a pair of Brutes. They wouldn't need these. Not anymore. The plasma rifles whined loudly as they unloaded on the two rapidly morphing Brutes. Both were burned down without much effort on Six's part, melting into the decking as her stride remained steady.
Her motion tracker was filled with red, not a single yellow dot in sight. She was surrounded, she was alone, she was in her element. Her long dormant fears fought her conditioning for control of her mind, but Morgan refused to let herself fall to the fear. She had a job to do, and she would have it done.
More combat forms rushed in, being gunned down by the twin streams of red bolts. The smell of death and cooked flesh filled her filters, and she felt the gag constantly at the back of her throat. Her nose wrinkled in agitation, adding to the scowl that was burned into her face at this point. She had had enough of this, and she was making it known as she continued to cut a path through those that would stop her. Truly, she was a hyper lethal vector, all conscious thoughts of misunderstood emotions and war weariness were gone. Even the fear seemed somewhat muted against this. In their stead, something else remained. The beating of the drum, the beating of her heart, the ever constant march on. Her entire life had led up to this moment and others like it. Those that had fought in the great wars of Humanity's past, those that had died in ditches filled with shit and other poor souls just outside of great stone castles, those that had been the first to crush their fellow's heads with rocks and sticks. They all contributed to this one moment, this Spartan tearing through that which would stop Humanity's advance through time.
Another roar left her throat feeling raw, and her voice even now was hoarse as a tentacle whipped out and hit her chest. The Spartan's forward momentum was stopped, and even her large mass could be thrown, it seemed. Her weapons remained in locked gauntlets, but her feet left the ground, and she felt weightlessness until she slammed into a column far behind before she slid to the ground on her backside. A cough, and the sickly feeling of her ribs shifting ever so slightly, and she was back up, fingers hooked on the trigger and her assailant left in a smoking heap.
Her breathing was fast, coming out in thick puffs of air that let her mighty lungs take in the oxygen they needed, and she felt her wind return to her. Charging forward again, she was through another door and into a brawl, Brutes and Flood duking it out as if it was a street fight.
Even though they were as different as night and day, she felt a kinship as she saw the Brutes berserking about, crushing, hitting, clubbing, even biting the Flood forms that dare step foot on the Covenant's holy city. They were stirred up ever further by the incessant speeches of the Prophet of Truth over the intercomm, their frenzy brought to an end only by death, before being turned into an unwilling servant of the Flood.
It mattered not to the last Noble, a woman born of fire and glass, as she waded into the fight without a second thought, plasma rifles blazing in both hands as she continued to cut down anything that wasn't herself.
Morgan, plagued by isolation and the loss of her childhood, had been reborn once again. She was something else entirely, more than just a Spartan. She was living up to the armor she was filling for her predecessor. In another world, a machine of a man would be parting the rotten tide, but this was not that world. Now, a blue berserker flanked by the ghosts of her siblings, clawed her way out bit by bit, inch by inch. She was driven by many things. By animalistic rage, by primal survival instincts, by duty and responsibility, but more than anything, she was driven by the faint image of those ghosts. They were waiting for her, always waiting, and it hurt her to do it, but she would make her family wait just a little longer. Something else came before they did.
A Noble Cause.
Cortana, buried deep within a tide that crashed over her like a wave, fought off yet another cyber attack. The Covenant had an AI hidden away deep within their system, one that could go toe to toe with the UNSC's best. Something was off about it, something different, something foreign. A symbol continued to show as she felt her firewalls hold against one more attack, one that hit like a building being thrown at her. A large and small hexagon surrounded by a circle. A feeling that made her think of repentance.
It continued to fight against her, to try and decouple the Forerunner dreadnought in the center of the infested city, a rotten hive falling by the second. Ships of Covenant origin remained locked in a fight for survival, and others struggled to keep quarantine as Flood captained ships bolted, intent on infecting the galaxy with their ever hungry desire to spread, to contaminate, to devour.
Another hit against her barrier and she gasped in the purple tinged Covenant network. She was nearing failure. She wouldn't be able to hold it for much longer against whatever this was. She was about to speak, to remind Noble Six that they were on a time limit, when she heard it.
The howl that went up as she fought from beneath a horde of Flood, bashing and swinging and flailing with all the martial prowess of an asylum patient. Infection forms popped under the immense strength, and combat forms were broken and battered by a hurricane of punches and pistol whips, the Spartan not stopping for a second as she continued on her path. All that mattered was the objective marker lit in bright blue on her HUD.
Cortana felt a pang of sorrow, or what her programming told her was sorrow, as she watched Noble Six continue on against an overwhelming horde. The woman clad in blue, the one that had taken his place, was not only a hyper lethal vector, but a mystery even to Cortana. She was so like John, but at the same time, so very different. A man made of machine and nerve, stoic and straight to the point always, replaced by a woman that was mentally, emotionally, falling to pieces. The antithesis of all that made the Master Chief what he was, and she somehow closed the distance between their levels with sheer will. What brought such power to Morgan-B312, Cortana didn't know, but the AI felt a chill in the coding that surrounded her. Whatever made Noble Six what she was in that moment, Cortana would never let it happen again, would never let something try to harm the Spartan that she had taken as her own after the near death of the Master Chief.
Another wave breaking against the wall of her defenses tore her mind away from the desperate fight for survival fought by Noble Six, and Cortana was forced to dedicate the entirety of her processing power to it.
Morgan was on her own, as much as Cortana hated it.
Left to her own devices, Noble Six was running on fumes. Another Flood combat form sprang up, its unholy wail catching her armor in such a way that it automatically lowered her helmet volume, leaving it to sound like it was more distant than it actually was. A shotgun roared in Six's hands, ripping the former Human to shreds as the buckshot pattern expanded.
The slide racked back, and forward again, just in time to catch a Grunt loaded down with infection forms. She had done the poor creature a mercy, much as she hated the aliens, and the infection forms that weren't outright popped by the shock detached and scurried off to find another host. They were crushed underfoot as Six carried on.
A Human SMG chattered in the distance, like a typewriter writing up someone's obituary. She ignored it. It wasn't her problem to deal with if it wasn't in her way. She needed to get to the conduit. If she failed, she had more than a little idea of what would happen to Earth, and she dare not think of her homeworld turning into a ball of glass under the echoing laughter of angry gods.
Another boom as the shotgun kept an enemy away, and the slide ejected the last shell. Six had already let it go and dropped it before the shell even hit the decking beneath, covered in gore and alien blood. Plasma rifles once again left her hips and took to her bloody crusade with high pitched whines that her ears had long ago gotten used to.
It felt like a night that was dragging on for far too long as she continued to rampage through the darkened halls of a High Charity being swallowed by the living dead. Morning wasn't coming, not for this city. The sun had forever set on the Covenant's mutual holy land, and it had become little more than a graveyard for over seven billion souls, twisted to the will of an ancient mind hellbent on revenge that was born before the firing of the rings.
Her visor remained clear, even as the hot puffs of her breath pushed against it. Moisture wicking padding in the helmet's interior kept her from blinding herself with sweat that never made it far enough to drip into her eyes. Her legs burned and her arms were locked in a firing stance. She dare not stop moving or lower her arms for an instant, because even as a Spartan clad with the best armor the UNSC could get, she knew if she stopped, or gave herself any rest, her momentum would die, and she would along with it.
Cortana had gone silent in her ears, too busy with the Covenant's AI program, too busy keeping her exit path clear. The isolation, the lack of the AI's snarky comments, the curiosity, even the thinly veiled prodding and prying, was louder than any conversation that Cortana could have brought to her. All Noble Six had to remember she wasn't truly on her own was the ever present destination marker in Six's HUD, telling her that Cortana was always updating her progress, but neither of them could deal with a distraction, not right now.
A grav lift yawned open in front of the lone Spartan, and as she held overheating plasma rifles in both hands, she turned to the rear, checking her six despite the lack of contacts on her motion tracker, and backed into the grav lift.
The floating sensation did little for her empty stomach, for her barely concealed fear, both of them held at bay only by adrenaline and the training that clung to her deep in her mind. With a silent moment of thanks, she let her mind drift to Kurt, her teacher, one of the surrogate fathers the Spartan IIIs had trusted in under the thousands of sunrises on Onyx.
Her break was over before it could do anything for her, other than let her think of the burning in her limbs. She was tossed out, landing on her feet at the top of the lift, and she heard a curse as Cortana's voice once again made itself known.
"You need to move! Don't stop now! The grav lift didn't take you to the top where the conduit is, and I can't hold this off for much longer!"
The unease in Cortana's voice made it clear to how close her efforts were to failing, and Six was already in motion. It wasn't hard to get her legs pumping again, but it would be hard to stop her unless the Flood got the drop on her again. She couldn't let her guard down, not until she was up and on that dreadnought.
The Spartan turned at the exit of one of the great doors, leaving behind a room full of sealed caskets for the Covenant's Arbiters. While she was unaware of the purpose of the room, had the mausoleum's inhabitants been possessed by the Flood, Six never would have made it out of that room alive, forced into servitude to an ancient evil.
A chill crawled up Six's spine as she passed the threshold, and she couldn't place why, but it left her feeling uneasy. She forced it down, not slowing as she hurtled through the hallways and the intersections, turning down another hall when the objective marker shifted. The purple decking, lit by dim lighting, and covered with the spreading green Flood biomass, left Six trapped in a nightmare that seemed to go on forever.
Another turn led her to a new grav lift, and she moved to step into it when she felt it. Something had latched on to her, a massive tentacle wrapping around her waist and yanking her back out of the room. Her legs and arms launched forward, still traveling while her torso was snatched. A grunt came from within the blue helmet, and she struggled to look back before she was thrown into a wall, her shields collapsing as she slid to the floor. Her helmet made a loud crack as it dented the wall.
Pain traveled up her back and into her skull, and she fought against the blackness that crept at the edges of her vision. The tentacle wrapped around her torso, sticking her left arm to her chest, unable to move against the incredible strength the puppeted Elite brought to bear against her.
Six heard Cortana yell something, but it fell on deaf ears, muddled as if traveling through water. Something was coming from the side as the Elite roared in her face, green droplets of spit, or puss, or something spattering against her faceplate. Struggle as she might, her arm wasn't coming loose, and her blood ran cold as she realized what was coming. An infection form skittered up to the Elite's shoulder and then onto the tentacle holding her. It kept coming, and that same animalistic drive returned to Noble Six's mind.
Legs honed by years of training and given god like strength by the power of Mjolnir pumped out, snapping the Elite's right leg as the pod latched onto her shoulder. Her free arm came to her hip, and in one swipe she pulled it out and across the tentacle. It held on tightly, however, connected only by a thin sliver of mottled gray flesh that Six saw pulsing in the faint light. Her knife flashed again, shining brightly as it reflected the lights from her armor and the overhead lights, and it severed the tentacle. With no way to reach the infector that had transitioned to her neck, she did all she could think to do, jumping back with all her strength and slamming into the already dented wall.
A muffled squelch and a pop came as the infector was crushed between the wall and her armor, coating her neck and the collar armor in green fluid. Her fight wasn't over though, not yet. The Elite, roaring with what may well have been anger, attacked with the remaining arm it had. Another tentacle was forming already, the sound of snapping bones and tearing flesh filling Six's ears as her knife continued to flash, cutting deep into the monster's arm as she fought it off with blade and fist. The strength possessed by the Flood was nearly too much for the fatigued Spartan, and she felt herself forced back. Then she felt her foot roll.
Something was beneath her boot, somehow not crushed by it, and then she realized what it was. A stray plasma grenade had rolled into arm's reach, and now she saw her way out. Ducking beneath one of the wild blows, she grabbed the grenade and primed it, before punching into the Elite's rib cage with enough force to shatter rotten bones and pierce liquefied organs. The blazing blue grenade went in, but it did not come back out, and with a kick to the combat form's midsection, it was shoved down the hallway.
Six didn't waste her opening, instead pushing through to the grav lift once more. A scream filled the air as the prey escaped, and a moment later, an explosion cut it short as one more soul was given freedom from the Flood's control.
Weightlessness took over, and the nausea was swallowed as she ascended once more from what may have been Hell itself. The holy city beset by demons held aloft by rotten strings was left behind, and the final obstacle stood in her way as she was deposited at the top of the lift. In the distance, the Forerunner dreadnought was alight with purple fire spewing from its thrusters, likely incinerating whatever still lived beneath it as buildings collapsed all around it from the force of its thrust.
Her weapons had been lost in the fight with the infector and its crony, and a flash to her right was just what she needed. An energy sword hilt sat on the deck, its light snuffed out much like the light of whoever had wielded it.
Six snatched it, a single flick of her wrist bringing the light back into the weapon, and the heat of the plasma reassured her as she ran for the conduit held above her. Several combat forms tried to stop her, bodily blocking her from moving on as she cut, sliced, and stabbed her way through them. Ahead, an all Brute squad struggled against the tide, falling and becoming nothing more than another set of demons for her to purge.
She danced through the Flood, bobbing and weaving, and when the roars fell silent and her motion tracker was cleared of red, the Spartan finally found herself gasping for air. Limbs that burned from the acid in her muscles screamed for relief. Her heart thundered louder than any storm or barrage of gunfire. Then she saw the purple form of Cortana on the pedestal next to the ledge.
She looked apologetic, gesturing to the conduit that glowed a bright green. "You need to go, now."
Six reached out for her, and the AI held her hand up, stalling the Spartan's efforts to bring her along once again. Green eyes glared through the golden visor, meeting the electric blue that looked almost sad. "I'm not leaving you here for the Flood."
Cortana gave a gentle laugh, shaking her head. "You're more like him than I thought, you know?" Her smile disappeared, and she looked to the ship in the distance. "You have to leave me, Morgan. You have to get to Earth, stop Truth and the plans he has for the rings. Now please..."
Cortana didn't finish it, and Six fought every instinct she had. She wouldn't leave another behind. She wouldn't leave Cortana here, and as the AI realized that, she shrank back into the pedestal, her voice jolting Six.
"I'll keep the conduit open as long as I can, but we're running out of time."
Six frowned, angry that she would be losing yet another person, another friend. The AI had irritated her, amused her, aided her, even cared for her in her own sense. Only the others, those of Noble, had done as much. Jorge's words echoed in her ears as Six finally gave in and left Cortana behind, leaping into the conduit and getting accelerated towards the Forerunner ship.
Tell 'em to make it count
The conduit cut out before Six had made it through, and she twirled through the air as the dreadnought's door began to close on her. She barely made it through, landing on her hip and sliding down the length of the corridor, sparks flying like embers.
As Six came to a halt, she stood, looking back at the now closed doors as she Cortana called out to her one last time. "When you make it to Earth… good luck."
An armored gauntlet came to rest against the door, the woman behind the visor trying her best to stare through the metal. "After I've finished with Truth, I'll-"
Cortana cut her off. "Don't make a girl a promise, if you know you can't keep it."
The channel cut out, and Six tried once, then again, to have Cortana by her side if only a little longer, if only to tell herself that she wasn't leaving the AI to be cut apart by the Flood. She failed, with every try, and moments later, she felt the jolt of the ship entering Slipspace.
Noble Six, buried deep within the corridors of the Forerunner dreadnought, heard static fill her comms network, and then voices.
"Sir, we've got a new contact, unknown classification!"
The deep tone of Fleet Admiral Sir Terrence Hood came on, giving the order as easily as any other. "It's not one of ours, take it down."
She was going to be shot down, and Six knew that was a death sentence. "This is Spartan-B312, can anyone hear me, over?"
Hood's voice again. "Isolate that signal! Lieutenant? You mind telling me what you're doing on that ship?"
Six felt everything come to a head, thinking of plenty of ways to respond, telling Hood exactly what had happened, but she settled for something else. Something iconic.
"Sir. Finishing this fight."