(THIS TOOK AGES! I believe this might just be my favourite chapter yet! Absolutely love it. Also, I have a poll for you guys, if you're up for it. The first one is, should I redo the first chapter? I wasn't very proud of it, and I'd like to get more support for the series by redoing it. Considering how long these take me, this will extend the usual wait time for the next chapter. Also, what has your favourite chapter been this far? Whatever chapter is the most loved, I'll start modelling any chapters after it, to increase the quality of my story. Also, all new updates to the story between chapters will be posted in the review section, so if a new review is up but no new chapter, it's probably me. Anyway guys, thanks for waiting!)
Chapter 11: A Reunited Hope
Back-To-Back. Scanning the room. One raising her hand in a swift motion, the other drifting silently to the other side of the room. The second drew a thin, square item off of her belt, typing in a couple of codes as the doors swung open with a light hiss, highlighting the room in front of them in a sick, green colour as the emergency lights flashed on, sending a scurry of the rats scattering in the area. The first woman moved forward, her heavy armour not making a sound as the second crept along the far wall, her pistol scanning the far edges. Two guards emerged from the door, being dropped quickly by two silent puffs as the first woman shot. The second woman proceeded to approach the door, and eventually took off her mask, approaching the first.
"I believe we've set off an alarm," noted the calm voice of Samara, rippling with blue streaks.
"Son of a…" Kelly muttered, reloading her silenced pistol. She was sure they didn't notice them.
"There must be an extra camera we missed. We still need to continue nonetheless."
"Agreed."
The mercenary base was quite large, but their objective was simple: Overload the power generators, send the place into blackness so the Illusive Man could easily bypass the cyber-defences of the mercenaries. Weirdly enough, they seemed to be quite advanced, which led Kelly and Samara to their secondary objective, which they were in the moment of doing, finding out how they got a hold of such advanced anti-hacking software. It could be implemented into the Normandy. Even Cerberus, although Shepard seemed pretty annoyed about that last part.
Moving on, they had learned that although the lights were off, it didn't stop the emergency lighting and emergency procedures was happening, and caused the Blood Pack mercenaries to go into a frenzy of preparation, protecting the more essential parts of their equipment. Luckily, the one thing they didn't think precious was what protected them. Too busy guarding their missiles and tanks and all that crap. There were a couple of Vorcha still guarding this equipment, but they were easy enough. Now that the alarm had been sounded, they'd probably be dealing with Krogan soon enough…
So Kelly and Samara advanced slowly, waiting for anything to approach through the corridor. At the other end, they could see two Krogan and four Vorcha. Kelly unslung the missile launcher she and found on the Normandy slower, and…well, at least she hoped it was a missile launcher. She didn't understand why it needed charging up. Or why it was glowing…or-.
A large pulse of energy emerged from the weapon, slamming into the small group of enemies. She felt the kickback from the weapon slamming into her arm and knocking her off balance as the Blood Pack infantry were decimated under the blast of energy. Samara ran over to her, smiling slightly. She helped Kelly up, who stood an easy head over her with her MJOLNIR armour on. Samara pointed to the weapon.
"That's the M-90 Cain. Basically a mini-nuke gun. It seems you may have selected the wrong weapon when leaving the Normandy, I'm guessing you were aiming for a missile launcher?"
Stubbornly, Kelly nodded. Next time she'd ask about the weapon. They continued down the corridor, watching as their shadows drifted quietly over the blinking red emergency lights that highlighted the long floor. Samara's armour turned into a dark mixture of red and blue, purple to anyone at a distance, but a mixture of the two swirling colours up closer. Kelly's was a sickly looking mixture of red and green, and looked like blood stained with grass. Neither combination was especially good for camouflage, so sneaking was out of the question by now. Still, they pressed on, the never ending sound of klaxons blasting emergency protocols and alarms around them.
Taking the next turn, they found themselves facing a large, heavily bolted door. It had a series of keypads and locks set on it, each one requiring voice recognition, keycodes and several other pieces of equipment and information to get past. Samara approached the door. She held up her omni-tool, scanning it slowly over the metal frame. Kelly watched behind them. The Illusive Man had installed his best decoding software into Samara's omni-tool, and it was working on the door as Kelly looked over the hallway. Samara continued tapping in codes and other information necessary for the door to be opened with.
Kelly's heart rate had slowed down and she could hear her own breathing inside her helmet. It sounded obnoxiously loud, and she switched her aim to every shadow or light that moved in front of her vision. The slightest creak or scuttle of equipment caused her to flinch, her HUD reading the movement of machinery around them as blips on her motion tracker, rendering it useless. It was impossible for anyone to see anything out of the ordinary, and she struggled to keep a cool head as needed.
"How long left?" She called over.
"Around five minutes. The door is mostly hardware locks connected to electrical pulses, so the anti-hack software can't protect it. There are five different areas on the door, each of them containing a deadlock trap set to cause the door to shut down on its hinges. If that happens, we'll need a nuke to get through this door," Samara replied, typing the occasional string of numbers.
"So…slow and steady?"
"Very slow and steady," was the reply.
Two minutes later, nothing had changed and Kelly was inspecting a clip of the new ammunition brought in by Jacob and Mordin. To compensate for the smaller bullet size, the ammunition had a small electrical pulse embedded into the ammo, causing a small EMP every time it hit, knocking out less critical systems on armour, like shielding on armoured areas. Every little helped she supposed. Each Spartan had had a pistol equipped during the crash, but Kelly had the only silencer. An ODST special operative designed pistol with explosive rounds. The Spartans were costing the Illusive Man a lot of money for their requirements, but they were showing results, and that was all that mattered.
She was broken out of her dazed thoughts by the sound of heavy stomping throughout the corridor. She grabbed her rifle, aiming it downwards as Samara looked back over her shoulder. Cursing, she hid behind a crate as the omni-tool continued deciphering the code. She couldn't shoot with her omni-tool deciphering; it might throw off the hacking. Kelly fired a small burst as the first silhouette rounded the corner, the sound of Krogan yelling as the first one stumbled backwards from the stopping power of the bullets. From the sound of the yelling, there were a lot of them.
Kelly threw a grenade, sprinting as the smoke exploded around the Krogan, they stumbled, confused, as she placed her rifle against the jaw of the first one and held down the trigger. The clip emptied into its jaw, and she slammed the butt of the rifle against a second one, its mouth wide open as its jaw-bones were completely crushed by the sheer force of the rifle impacting. Unfortunately, it also broke the rifle.
She drew her knife, kicking the chest of a third Krogan into a wall, and slamming her elbow into a forth. She dropped a drag grenade, rolling backwards as it exploded between the two. She stood up, but felt only the shoulder of a Krogan slamming her into the wall. Her shields dropped quickly, continuing to drop as the Krogan hammered his fists into her chestplate, stunning her with a heavy punch to her helmet. She felt blood in her mouth but she summoned her strength, headbutting the Krogan as hard as she could, stunning the dinosaur like beast. She jump-kicked it, watching as it smashed through some boxes. It tried to stand up, but barely had time to register the sound of the pistol impacting through its skull.
Two remained, and the first charged the tired-Kelly, who barely had time to notice it, and it knocked her across the room, she stood up shakily, and the Krogan roared, smashing a fist against the wall. Kelly raised her hands weakly, feeling the adrenaline failing in her body. The Krogan took a step forward, along with the second one that raised its jaw.
Kelly had to think quickly. But how could she? She could barely breathe without coughing up blood! There was intense denting in her armour and she lacked the strength to raise her arms. Then, her mind registered it all at once.
Basically a mini-nuke gun.
She drew it from its space on her back, charging it up before it even left its holster. The Krogans walked forward with a swagger, feeling victory in their clutches. Then they would go and kill the rest of this giant's teammates, because she couldn't have been a part of just one squad, right? But their joy was short lived, as the red blinding light from the M-90 Cain completely annihilated the cells of their body, feeling the absolute power of such a gun destroying their outer and inner biology.
Kelly didn't celebrate however, she felt her consciousness fading as Samara rushed over to her aid. The armour's automatic First-Aid systems kicked in, but they were only able to keep Kelly semi-conscious, and Samara was forced to drag her over to beside the vault door, where she handed Kelly her pistol.
"We're almost done Kelly, just hold on," was the echoing voice of Samara. Samara returned to the vault, watching as the last lock slid out of place. The door opened with a creek, and unbeknownst to them, somewhere out there was the leader of the Blood Pack watching his desk blink in warning lights that the vault had been open, but the leader was too busy winning his earnings from a Vorcha that thought it had enough balls to challenge the Blood Pack leader. All according to plan.
As the door slid open, the room was exposed. It was dark, with a single podium in the middle raise dup about a meter and a half. On it was a small chip glowing a dark orange, bringing the only light from the room that wasn't from the doorway. Samara approached it slowly, Kelly hobbling after her, breathing painfully. But Kelly reached the podium first, because she knew what the chip was. She knew what it represented. She knew how the anti-hacking software had been so powerful, and she now remembered what was missing from the ship they crashed in. The component that should have seen the Slipspace rupture. The piece of equipment that should have warned Fred but chose not to.
The greatest technological advancement of the UNSC.
Samara approached it slowly, watching Kelly pick it up as gently as possible. "Kelly…what the hell is that?"
"This Samara…" Kelly started, but found it hard to say. How did the Blood Pack find it? How did they manage to implement it? "This is Roland. The AI of the UNSC Infinity."