1122, September 12th, 2547 [MILITARY CALENDAR]/Colonist planet[TUNGSTEN II], onboard Covenant Cruiser Silent Praise
Just as my body begins to slip off of the point of no return, something incredibly heavy slams me back into place. I begin to fall again but a hand shoots out and grabs my forearm. I latch onto the hand and he keeps me from falling. "Hold on!" 211 shouts. He then begins swinging me and finally lets go, sending me shooting towards the access hatch. It has enough of a lip that I can catch before beating it in with my free fist and pull myself inside. 211 comes in behind me and presses himself against the opposite wall.
We sit for a few moments, catching our breaths. "I think you owe me one," 211 says once he can talk. "To say the least," I answer with a chuckle.
From there on out, it's all professional. We get Kia and Parkson on a communications channel and find that they made it in without problems and had watched our ship shoot safely into orbit. But we run into a problem. We have no idea where the others are and we have no defining features to explain to them other than a hallway, which looks the same as all of the others. So we decide to meet up at the bridge which is located in the middle of the Cruiser instead of the traditional front that we as humans use.
Our stealth approach is soon lost once we enter a chamber filled with Grunts. Both of our Mjolnir suits emit an audible alarm and switch to their reserve oxygen as we step into the methane flooded room. The substance billows out around us, making us seem as ghosts as we enter the room and open fire, dropping as many of the stubby little aliens as we can. But unfortunately, someone triggers an alarm which quickly sounds throughout the entire ship.
"So much for stealth," 211 says once we leave through a door that sits opposite of the side we had just come in through. We run into an Elite in blue armor that had heard the commotion and came to investigate. He roars in surprise and ducks into another room. A moment later, four Grunts pop into the hallway and spray us with plasma, forcing us to retreat back into the methane filled room. The misty substance is now spilling out into the hallway, creating a temporary shroud that swirls angrily around the aliens beyond.
After recouperating, we push forwards and take down the opposition and start moving deeper inside of the ship. With each chance we get, we check in with the other two members of our team. As it turns out, we had drawn all of the attention and they hadn't been found yet. 211 tells me that he had been monitoring the Covenant communication net and understood that more reinforcements were being sent our way, and that we have little chance of getting to the bridge with any hint of stealth. Even with that threat behind us, I quickly think up a plan to even out the complications.
"Kia, Parkson, 211 and I will head down to the reactor level. You two will need to assassinate the Shipmaster alone and then find your own ways off of the ship. We'll give you a twelve minute grace period after the Shipmaster is dead, then we'll overload the core and get off of the thing before it blows," I say, issuing the commands quietly as both of us crouch low behind a cluster of pipes and exposed circuits. There is a long delay before either of the two separated Spartans can reply. "Copy that, sir. We'll be outside soon. Good luck," Kia says. She cuts the channel and I have to force the worry and doubt out of my mind. Kia and Parkson are good, experienced, soldiers. If anyone can get such a delicate mission done, they can.
"Reactor is a few levels down. We may have to fight our way through to it," 211 says, looking to me. I then take a moment to evaluate my Spartan, and am proud as to what glares back at me. He's a sturdy minded, brutish, sonuvabitch that can and will do anything without complaint. I have no doubt that he will have my back as we do a potentially suicide rush into the reactor room.
"Lets get moving, then," I say and take lead through the next hallway. The next few minutes are some of the longest I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Wave after wave of enemies push against us, trying to force us off of their ship. Only through pure persistence, pain, and skill do we manage to survive without serious damage. I have to admit, however, that 211 is the main reason we ever made it to the reactor. He kept rushing the enemy lines with his Shotgun and planting buckshot straight into the chest of the biggest target. I backed him up, and only then would we advance.
As we enter the room to the main power supply, we quickly clear the space and find the controls nestled into a corner. I sweep the immediate area with my gaze as I open a communications channel with our other two teammates. "Parkson, Kia, report," I say. There's a burst of static and gunfire floods through the channel. "The Shipmaster's down! We're just outside of the hangars. Go ahead and overload the core. We'll be out soon," Kia answers, raising her voice to be heard over the exchanging gunfire.
"We got the go-ahead," I tell 211 after cutting the channel. I then begin to look at the consoles, thoroughly perplexed by the alien glyphs. "How are we going to overload this thing?" I wonder out loud as my gaze sweeps the alien controls. "Here's a way," 211 says.
He takes his shotgun, turns it over, and smashes its butt into the nearest console. The entire thing explodes with fire and electricity and 211 moves on to another. He beats it up with his fist and weapon until each console looks as if a Spartan had come through and smashed them.
The Soldier steps back to enjoy his handywork and is rewarded with a series of blaring alarms. Having been studying the Covenant languages with Jessica, he picks up the right amount of words to know that the core is overloaded. "We have ten minutes," he says calmly. "Times wasting," I say and lead the way out of the reactor room.
Everyone has started to evacuate the ship per an automated alart. Panicked Covenant soldiers flood through the hallways and only the bravest stop to attack us. But that's enough to slow us down and keep us from escaping.
As we are finishing up a firefight in one of the storage rooms, an explosion rocks the entire ship and the hull bucks underneath our feet, throwing us into the far wall. 211 is first to his feet and helps me up. "First warning," the Spartan says while retrieving his shotgun that had slipped from his grasp.
We ignore the vast majority of gunfire coming our way as more explosions rock through the ship. Circuits, pipes, and all matter of power supplies burst around us like grenades and shower us with fire and venting plasma as we race for the hangar.
We pass through a final set of doors to find a spacious hangar awaiting us. A U-shaped dropship is frantically pulling out of the open door, leaving behind a frenzied crew of alien Soldiers whom we quickly gun down. Two Banshees sit side-by-side on the floor and 211 quickly hops into his. I am about to reach my own as the ship bucks underneath me and dips harshly towards the ground. The Banshee I was just about to enter slides out of the open gap and into the air.
I flip around and try to find purchase but am given none. I too find myself ejected through the open gap and soon enter a free-fall hundreds of feet above the ground.
The ship's engine above me spews fire and is beginning its plunge to the ground. Tiny dots rush out of every opening as its occupants abandon the vessel. I then flip around to face the incoming ground and flare myself out to try and control my fall better.
I spot something banking out of the corner of my eye to find a Banshee watching me. I had first thought it was another fleeing alien, but a voice in my helmet soon tells me otherwise.
"Now what are you doing out here?" 211 says to me. "Don't you know that you're not a bird?" The light glints off of his Banshee's wings and he begins to shoot towards me. "Jackson, I'm going to pass underneath you. Once I do, grab onto the wing. You don't have a long window of time, so just trust me on this."
One comforting thing about having grown up with his insane ideas is knowing that they work. No matter how it turns it, you always come out alive. So I have no choice but to wordlessly go along with his scheme to save my life.
I track his approach and ready myself for the jolt of my life. He angles down in a sharp decline and he is right on top of me out of nowhere.
My arms shoot out and whack into the side of the wing. My fingers then clench down as hard as they can and my arms almost rip out of their sockets as I am jerked into the flightpath of the Banshee.
"Hooah!" 211 cheers once he feels me hit and hold on. I am swept along with the flying vehicle with half of my body propped up on bird and the other half dangling hundreds of feet above the air. "Craziest...thing...yet," I manage to say over the jack hammering in my heart. "You have officially earned your spot in the Air Assault division," 211 says with a laugh.
It takes more than a few minutes to fly around and find where Parkson and Kia had gone to. As it turns out, they stole a Phantom and piloted it to the ground to wait for us. They had watched our stunt VIA a Sniper Rifle's scope and Kia tells me it was the stupidest thing she's seen yet. But there's a sense of relief in her voice that tells me it had her worried. Parkson holds up a recording chip with a smug smile and keeps it away from 211 when he protests and tries to take it away from him.
Instead of setting down a beacon we decide to meet Zeta up in orbit and dock the Phantom with them. After all, we have standing orders to capture any Covenant tech we come across. It's also a new toy to play with.
But something is wrong once we contact them. Instead of Arnold answering, the shipboard AI does. He tells us to dock in the rear hangar. But the thing that really throws me off is the fact that he doesn't ask for our UNSC identification. The AI is very strict about that and asks us for our ID for everything. Plus how he was speaking...he didn't have any of his personality. It's almost as if he had a complete reset.
We cautiously approach the ship but I tell the others to keep their safety off and their fingers on the trigger. But nothing could ever prepare us for what happens next.
