Oh, screw it. I couldn't help myself.
I'm back! I totally gave in to the wait. You can't just expect me to stop writing this story for three weeks and not have second thoughts! The amount of time that I did take gave me space to do some research on First Strike, write for my Dark Souls II and Walking Dead fanfics, and just generally get myself prepared. Now, the thing about First Strike is that it is already a book, and a very popular one at that. As I did with every chapter in the Halo: CE storyline (exceptions being the OC first few chapters and chapter 13, plus a few others that I can't recall by number at the moment), I'm taking dialogue straight from the book. Of course, the dialogue doesn't belong to me, and neither does the storyline. Both belong to author of First Strike, the fantastic writer Eric Nylund. Give him a big pat on the back for explaining all of the middle stuff in a mere sixteen weeks! Yay! I changed descriptions of things, altered exposition, and I made it my own.
Kind of.
Another thing that I am trying is less of a 3rd person focus on Six and more of a 3rd person on both Six and John. Obviously, I'm not going to give whole chapters to John, but every once and a while there will be a paragraph or two from John's point of view. Kind of like chapter 14! Remember that?
Anyways, I know that everyone wants to read, so get to it, before I bore you to sleep!
Welcome back to the story, Wolfgang! (Not even close to) Right on schedule!
~Husky
"Scan the field again." John said.
"I've already scanned three times, Chief. Like I said, there isn't anything out there but dust and echoes." Cortana said, her tone bordering on irritation.
Six, John and Cortana had been inside of the Longsword for the past hour and a half, floating in space aimlessly for what seemed like a very, very long time. For about an hour of that time, John had been trying to establish a connection between the ship and any other UNSC forces, but alas, it helped with nothing. Now, he and Cortana were searching for essentials. On the ship, they only had a little bit of everything. Even as they sat there, Six ate one of the three MRE rations that were on board. John had eaten just a few minutes ago, leaving only another ration for either of them. The things didn't fill your stomach, either. They were enough to keep a Spartan or marine going, but never enough to fill a stomach.
There were no other ships, either, let alone humans. Not for miles upon miles. Nothing could have possibly survived the gigantic, sky shaking blast of the Pillar of Autumn, and Six believed this to be a cold fact. The only confirmed escapees of the entire ring were them and a small transport unit that left the day before, containing Clancy, Sergeant Johnson, several assorted marines, an ODST, and an ONI representative.
"If you don't find something out there we can use," John said with a patient tone, "We're dead. This ship has no Slipspace drive, and no Cryo. There's no way to get back and report. Power, fuel, air, food, water... we only have enough for a few hours. So scan again. Please."
Cortana sighed, and the scan ran once again. The familiar sight of the mathematical symbols that Six had been seeing for the past fifteen minutes crowded the screen in front of the control sticks, covering up every polygon and pixel with numerical data and equations.
A moment later, the screen shut off, ending the scan. "There's still nothing, Chief. All I'm picking up is a strong echo from the moon... but there are no transponder signals, and no distress calls."
A heavy sigh escaped John's lungs. Great.
"Are you not doing an active scan?" Six asked, popping a piece of dried bacon in his mouth.
Her avatar popped up on the dashboard, her hand over her eyes. "Six, there are trillions of objects out there. If you want, I can start to scan and identify each individual piece. If we sit here and do nothing else, that would take eighteen days." She said, obviously annoyed.
"Alright then. Forget that I asked." Six said, backing off and taking a swig of water.
"What if someone's out there, but they turned off their transponder?" John asked. "What if they don't want to be found?"
"Maybe." Six replied. "I've done it before. Your enemies can't track you if you don't have it on, but neither can anyone else. Not like there's any living Covenant - or Enclave - for miles."
"I don't know. That's highly unlikely..." Cortana said. Her avatar froze for a moment. When it unfroze, she was staring off into space.
"Cortana?" John asked.
"Interesting." She replied.
"What's... interesting?" Six said, finishing his food and standing up. It took him a lot of strength to lift himself up using only one arm. He could still move the prosthetic, as it had only been cut from the elbow down by Guilty Spark's beam, but right now, it was about as useful as a pacifist Unggoy.
"New data." Cortana said simply. "That signal echo, coming off of the moon. It's getting stronger."
"Meaning... what? We're getting closer to the moon?" Six asked.
"Meaning..." She replied. "...it's not an echo."
The screen of the Longsword lit back up as Cortana activated the Longsword's long-range detection system.
"Uh oh." Cortana said.
John and Six peered at the screen. The distinctive outline of a Covenant cruiser moved around the moon's far side, edging into view.
"Power down the holosystem." John said to Cortana, flipping switches as he spoke. He turned to Six. "Kill everything except passive scanners and minimal power to keep Cortana online."
Six opened several small panels and flicked every power switch that he saw off, including the light and gravity systems.
The Longsword darkened to nearly pitch black, the only thing illuminating any part of the ship being the dim lights on the Spartans' Mjolnir armor and Cortana's hologram, which was flickering lightly. John and Six grabbed on to stable support as their feet lifted off of the ground. The Longsword was now floating among the debris around it, hopefully blended in and undetectable by the approaching cruiser.
The cruiser moved into the debris field, pushing asteroids and space junk to the sides as they collided lightly with the hull. Another cruiser appeared behind it. Then another.
Then three more.
"Shit." Six said.
"Status?" John asked, his hands quite literally hovering over the weapons controls as he floated. "Have they spotted us?"
"They're using the same scanning frequencies as our system." Cortana said. "How strange. There's no mention them ever doing this in any of the UNSC or ONI files on the Covenant."
"Do you think that it might be the Enclave? We already know that they use Covenant and Human technology." Six said.
"Never mind that." the Chief said. "They're here, and they're looking for something. Like I said before, if there are survivors out there, they'd be powered down."
"I can listen to their echoes." Cortana said, sounding a bit more mechanical than she had before. Operating at lower power levels seemed to limit her behavior a bit.
"Do it." John said.
"Process active: analyzing Covenant signals. Piggybacking their scans. Diverting more runtime to the task... I'm building a multiplex filtering algorithm..." She said in monotone. "Customizing the current shape-signature recognition software..."
A seventh ship rounded the horizon of the moon, much bigger than the others.
"Whoa." Six said.
It was, by far, the largest Covenant ship that Six had ever seen, even bigger than the CSS Battlecruisers, Corvettes or even the Truth and Reconciliation. It had the appearance of a normal Covenant destroyer vessel, but it must have been tens of thousands of feet long, four or five miles at least. Several large and powerful looking plasma cannon turrets were mounted on its sides, more than enough firepower to destroy any ship.
"Picking up encrypted transmissions from new contact." Cortana announced. "Descrambling... Lots of chatter. Orders are being given to the cruisers. It appears to be directing the Covenant fleet operations in the system."
"A flagship." the Chief said, his eyes narrowing. "Interesting."
"We have to do something about this." Six said. "We can't just wait to be caught."
"Scan still in progress, you two. Stand by." Cortana replied.
Six scoffed, softly enough for no one to hear. Although he respected Cortana and trusted her, particularly because of the fact that she was almost never wrong, there wasn't a chance that he was going to sit back and wait to be found by the Covenant. He wanted to be ready for it, at least. Little did he know, John was thinking the exact same thing. He floated towards the back of the room, pushing his legs off of the wall for distance. Six followed closely behind, moving fluently through the air as John pried open the weapons locker. Six grabbed a bar on the wall and stopped himself, pulling himself to the ground, and stopped at the area where the Cryogenic chambers usually were. Replacing their spot near the back was a terminal, the only other thing on the ship aside from Cortana that was turned on.
"Nothing in here." John said, closing the weapons locker. He checked his own clip as Six read the information displayed on the screen.
MORAY SPACE-MINE LAUNCHING SYSTEM
Six read a few lines of information, and gathered a few nice details. The chemical drives inside of the mines acted like homing missiles, so if anything got near an active mine, they would be dust in the wind. Thankfully, this didn't include the Longsword, as an I.D. chip implanted in the ship's hardware prevented it from being targeted.
Of course, the chip, along with countless other bits of machinery and larger systems, were offline. It wouldn't be a good idea to launch the system right now. Hell, it probably wouldn't be a good idea anyway.
"Got something." Cortana said.
John glided across the ship and back to the pilot's seat, anxious to see what she had found, while Six read up on more information regarding the MORAY system. It wasn't a complex mechanism to use. All he had to do was open a few safety locks and enter a PIN code, then he could direct the mines either manually or automatically.
John grabbed the back of the pilot's seat, bracing himself from aimlessly floating around the ship. "Show me." He said.
On the dashboard's smallest screen, which Cortana had routed only a slight amount of power to, a new silhouette entered view from the other side of the ship, approaching from the back instead of the front, like the Covenant cruisers. The silhouette was shaped like the bullet of a rifle, but much larger. There were thrusters on the bottom end, but they were inactive, allowing the small craft to float in a near stationary position.
"It could be a cryotube. Thruster and power packs can be affixed on their aft sections for emergencies." Cortana said. "If a ship has to be abandoned, for example."
"Move us toward it. Docking thrusters only."
"Course plotted," Cortana said. "Thrusters engaged."
The ship hummed forward pathetically, slowly enough not to be detected by the Covenant's scans, but not necessarily as fast as they needed to be going.
"ETA twenty minutes. But given the Covenant cruisers' current search pattern, I estimate they will encounter the cryo-pod within the next five minutes."
"Then we need to move a whole lot faster, but without firing the engines." Six said. "If we did, we would show up like a flare on their sensors. Can you find a way to do it?"
"Hang on," Cortana said. "I'll get us there. Helmets on, you two."
Six picked his helmet up off of the ground, putting it back on his head and twisting it to lock it closed. John did the same. Six's visor filled with the familiar features of his HUD, including his radar and shielding, as he took a breath of the metallic air inside of his suit.
"Ready?" John asked.
Six nodded. "Do it, Cortana."
"Alright, you two. Hold on to something." She said.
Six grabbed a bar on the wall as John locked himself into the pilot's seat.
Six narrowed his eyes.
"Wait a minute..." He said. "Why-"
The hatch at the rear of the Longsword slammed open, sucking oxygen out into the vacuum of space. The ship shot forward like a rocket, Six's head slamming into the back of his helmet.
"Adjusting course," Cortana said calmly. "ETA two minutes."
Six wrapped his entire arm around the bar as his feet lifted off of the ground, the force of gravity tempting him to fly from the ship.
"You're crazy, woman!" He yelled, grinning.
It was nice to get back to business.