An Elite's Tale III

Shortly after witnessing the disturbingly graphic carnage take place below, Mar and the Marines followed the path down some ramps and linked back up with the Arbiter and the Demon.

The Arbiter addressed Mar, saying, "Major, lead the way."

"Yes, Arbiter," he accepted.

Mar craned his neck back toward the Marines behind him and nodded, then walked through the next door with the two of them in tow. The Arbiter and the Demon holstered their weapons and followed a paces behind, ready to assist if need be.

"Your goal is just below!" the Oracle happily chirped to the team.

As he marched, Mar had half his focus on the door waiting for him at the bottom of the sloped hallway, the other half focused on the guidance coming from within.

OK little brother, take this next room slow. Do not be overcome by your thirst for vengeance.

The door slid open and all at once, Mar's full, undivided attention was on the Brute Minor standing there.

"They're here!" it yelled out as Mar and the Marines charged down the rest of the hall.

The Minor pulled a spiker from its hip holster and started to raise it eye level, but Mar batted the arm away and delivered a hard uppercut to its chin with a shiny, red armored elbow. The poor Minor was busy looking up at the ceiling, seeing stars, when it stiffened and howled in agony. Mar looked past the Minor into the next room and saw two more holding spikers with smoke rising from the barrels. There was also a Major in there, barking angrily at the trigger-happy Minors.

"Cease fire! You're hitting Derbyis!"

Mar quickly pulled and aimed his plasma pistol over the shoulder of the dazed and wounded Brute in front of him and blasted off a few shots. One of the scorching green blobs struck the Major right in the chest and all of them scattered for cover. The instant Mar saw them fall from sight behind pillars and other various objects, he snatched the Minor's spiker away, turned, and dropped him onto the floor in front go the Marines. They tore into him with their bullets like a pack of hungry piranhas.

Plasma pistol in one hand, stolen spiker in the other, Mar kept the Brutes in the room pinned behind cover by continuing to fire. None dared even returning blind fire under the deadly hailstorm.

"Move up!" he yelled back to his teammates.

One by one, the Marines, the Demon, and the Arbiter filed past him and found their own places of cover in the next room. Mar had all the cover he needed, as well as a good firing angle, so he just held position outside the door. Meanwhile, the others were slowly, cooperatively, professionally, pressing the enemy further and further back.

"Shit!" Mackley suddenly cried as he switched targets from straight ahead to a compact hallway on the right side of the room. "We've got Jackals on our flank!"

Mar equipped and armed his last plasma grenade, then overhand tossed it over to where Mackley was shooting. The grenade landed out of sight, but detonated with a violently bright flash and thump.

"Jackals are history!" Mackley reported.

Mar decided that now was as good a time as any to use the remaining energy in his Sentinel beam, and was retrieving it when he looked up and saw that the Demon and Arbiter had moved in and engaged Brutes in close quarters combat. He wasn't worried; CQC was where they were known to work best. Mar moved in to take up a supporting position near Mackley and Ruiz, but spotted another compact corridor, this time on the left side of the room. Squinting in suspicion, he readied his Sentinel beam and walked over to it.

Knew it.

Instinct, Mar. Always trust it.

Just like the right side, this one too had Jackals. A defender pair, both crouched side by side behind their overlapping yellow and blue gauntlet shields. This time however, he couldn't kill two birds with one stone. He'd have to do this the old fashioned way.

He swung the Sentinel beam around the corner and lazed the entirety of the hallway until the beam ran dry. Then he moved in. What he saw was one Jackal burnt to a crisp and the other in a pain-and-shock induced daze with no shield, absently clawing at the air as it tried to decipher up from down. Mar took three quick, long strides towards the surviving Jackal and lifted the empty, yet still very heavy Sentinel beam up over his head.

The Jackal squawked as the mere sight of this tore it from whatever stupor it was previously in, and instead of trying to flee, raised its arms in a meek defensive gesture that appeared more to Mar like groveling for mercy. It's yellow gauntlet shield snapped back to life as Mar was slamming the beam down and instantly busted again on impact. The Jackal collapsed to the floor from the blow, and was now sadly trying to drag itself away from the bloodthirsty Elite Major.

Mar dropped his heavy weapon onto Jackal's head, crushing it like a rotten grapefruit.

"Everyone form up!" the Demon demanded.

The gunfire had ceased, battle was over. Mar took one last look at the Kig-Yar corpses in front of him, then stepped over them and went to rejoin his team.

Shortly after the battle with the Brutes, the Spartan and the Elites went through two more doors and found themselves in the map room. The Marines were posted in the hallway to hold off any would be interrupters.

"The Cartographer!" the Oracle suddenly exclaimed at the sight of an ancient computer sitting in front of a massive hole in the center of the room. "Come, it awaits your approval."

Mar holstered his plasma pistol, tossed aside his stolen Jiralhanae weapon, and didn't lower his guard entirely, but relaxed nonetheless. The Arbiter began to slowly amble along the left 'arm' of the floor, which served as an upper tier to the floor below, and peered over the sights of his carbine to the open skies.

Finally.

After everything, after all the irretrievable time and energy spent, after all the lives unforgivably lost at the hands of the crumbling Covenant, they had finally reached their objective. And nothing, not the Hunters or the Wraiths or even the Scarabs had been able to stop them.

Keep your helmet on, little brother. You're not out of this yet.

The Demon placed a hand on some sort of panel, which recognized him as Human and projected a massive hologram of the Milky Way.

"That's... our galaxy," he observed. "We're beyond the rim."

"Two to the eighteenth lightyears from galactic center, to be precise," the Oracle confirmed.

"What is this place?" the Demon asked him as the hologram switched to an outside view of the planet-sized Forerunner construct they'd landed on.

"The Ark."

"This is the Ark?"

"I had always assumed it was a part of a shield installation, but it seems I was mistaken."

"That's a first," the Demon scoffed.

Mar grinned at that.

"Not at all," the Oracle explained earnestly. "While I had a complete understanding of Installation Zero-Four, my makers wisely limited my knowledge of all other strategic facilities. Compartmentalization, in case I was ever captured by the Flood."

Studying the hologram representing the Ark, the Demon then asked, "Can you tell me where we are, exactly?"

"Here," the Oracle declared as an icon in the hologram lit up and pulsed.

"And Truth?"

"Near one of the super luminal computer arrays, I'm afraid. Unfortunate. The Meddler has triggered a barrier. A defensive perimeter around the Ark's core."

Mar looked up as a pair of Banshees flew past the open end of the room. Everyone froze as they soared obliviously by, and the Arbiter, the furthest up, flashed a concerned glance back at his teammates. Mar's hand hovered readily over his sidearm.

The Oracle continued, musing.

"The barrier will be difficult to disable. How odd, that my makers place such a comprehensive defense around a single... oh my."

"What is it?" the Demon wanted to know.

The Arbiter interrupted them, yelling, "Phantom!"

Mar and the Demon split up and ran for cover as a Loyalist troop carrier came into view and started firing into the map room. The Oracle however, stayed put, lost in thought. Luckily, the Arbiter was drawing the Phantom's fire.

"Spark! Move," the Demon cautioned.

The Oracle snapped out of his trance and flew over to him.

"We must get past that barrier, or the Meddler will destroy it all!" he cried.

Johnson's voice came in over the COMs directly after.

"Chief, you've got a whole mess of hostile air inbound."

The Arbiter had just killed the Grunt on the Phantom's side-mounted plasma cannon, but was now running from a Banshee that had given chase. A stream of hot plasma from the Banshee followed behind him as he ran, and was getting closer. Mar drew his plasma pistol. The battery level was at seven percent. He'd have one shot at this.

Though he'd landed trickier shots in the past, he was a bit unsure as he held the trigger down to charge the plasma. The small gun began to overload and became unstable. It took a great deal of strength to hold it steady and the keep the trigger held down, the battery quickly depleting all the while. He let go of the trigger right at one percent and nearly hit himself in the face due to the tension snap.

The Arbiter on the other hand, trusted him completely, and started speaking even before Mar released the plasma charge.

"Follow the Oracle, Spartan," he said to the Demon.

The ball of green plasma smacked headfirst into the Banshee and, temporarily, disabled its electronics and thus brought it crashing to the floor. The Arbiter raced up to it, yanked open the cowling, and ripped the pilot out. He then threw the sorry Brute to the floor and took off in the Banshee.

"I will help your sergeant clear the skies."

Mar watched him fly up and chase after the Phantom, now in retreat, but also saw the Brute on the ground crawling for a spiker lying just a few feet away. Mar was without a firearm to stop him, but not without weapons. He broke into a sprint and leapt into the air. Horizontally. A second or so later, he came down on the back of the Brute's head with a heavy elbow drop, bashing its face hard against the cold floor.