John slowly maneuvered the prowler towards the designated waypoint. As he entered the atmosphere of the ring, he could see that the environment of this ring was more 'Wild'. It was stormy, with jagged rocky mountain ranges and splashes of green on the 'continents'. There were floating ice bergs and and the oceans were more rough and unyielding. From what he was able to observe, this installation was around 65% water. as he moved under the stormy clouds, he finally caught sight of the island he was requested to land on. It big, not as big as the continents, but big. It was at least 30Km long and 11Km wide. The waypoint was pinging him towards the centre of the island, where a Forerunner structure was visible. He gently landed the Acrisius and exited it. Seconds after which, the monitor of the installation appeared.
"Hello, I am 007 Upper Echelon. Monitor Of Installation 02. Are you here to provide assistance?" She asked.
"I'll see what I can do." He replied, although he was still a little unsure about trusting her, considering nearly all the AI he had interacted with the past few years turned out to be evil in some way, with the exception of Roland and Exuberant Witness.
"Marvelous!" The moment she said that, the sky lighted up as a bolt of lightning struck the tip of the structure.
"You should get in quick, it seems like another storm is approaching. But first let me do a quick scan of the vessel." Before John could protest, Echelon quickly went to the prowler, scanned the thing in less than three seconds and came back.
"Quickly! Reclaimer! The wind is picking up!" She said as she floated towards the building, wanting not to face the storm, John followed her.
As he entered the building, he noticed multiple sentinels guarding the place.
'Shouldn't the sentinels be trying to contain the Flood?' He thought to himself.
'Something's fishy. Better be careful.'
John mentally kicked himself when he realised that he didn't wear his armor. After walking for approximately ten minutes, they reached a familiar room. The control centre. Showing the holographic version of the ring.
The monitor then turned around and faced John.
"I presume you have questions."
"Yes, I do. But first, what is the situation?" John asked.
The monitors sphere drooped downwards and her blue light became dim, as if to show defeat.
At this, John became concerned.
"What's the matter?"
The monitor looked up, and then turned towards the hologram of the ring.
"See for yourself..." She said in a defeated tone.
Soon after, large red splodges appeared on nearly every continent of the ring, with red diamonds appearing in the centre of the four biggest splodges. John's quick mind immediately understood what the red meant.
"Are those..."
"Flood? Yes"
"And the red diamonds?" John asked, even though he had an idea about what they were.
"An intermediate stage between a fully fledged Gravemind and a Proto-Gravemind." She deadpanned.
One of John's worst nightmares had come true.
'This is not your grave, but you are welcome in it'
John felt a chill down his spine when remembered the first time the Gravemind spoke to him. John never truly faced the Gravemind in combat. He knew he couldn't beat it. This time there were potentially four of them.
"How did this happen?" He asked breaking the silence. The monitor did not speak, but simply showed him. A display appeared which showed a massive Covenant fleet exiting slipspace. It consisted multiple CCS and CAS ships. He was sure that they were Covenant as the ships were Purple in color. The video then changed, showing all of the ships landing on the different continents.
"I tried to warn them, the Covenant as they called themselves... But they didn't listen. By the time I deployed the sentinels, a Proto Intermediate Gravemind had already formed, which allowed it to access Neural Physics, although to a lesser degree. But it was enough. It manged to corrupt all the sentinels I sent to its location. Those sentinel then began destroying the sentinels that were trying to contain the outbreak. The Flood was spreading at such a rapid rate that I had no choice but to activate Halo's active defence network and destroy all the vessels, so that it could not escape the ring. After which, I came to the control room along with the remaining sentinels. This place is relatively safe... But I do not know for how long. Every day, the Proto Intermediate Graveminds move toward each other. If any two of them merge, they will have enough organic matter to form a Gravemind. And if all of them merge... They will initiate the first stage of becoming a Keymind. But the worst thing is that the flood managed to use the corrupted sentinels to destroy the frequency emitters required to starve them. The emitters can no longer be repaired unless brought back to the Ark. But I haven't received any signal from Installation 00." She sounded defeated, sad even. Upon hearing this, John felt a little guilty.
"Most of Installation 00 was destroyed... The flood discovered its location, and had already taken over the central part of the installation. We had no choice but to destroy it using an unfinished Halo." John stated.
"Then this installation has lost its purpose." She sounded even sadder. "And so have I."
"Damn." Was the only thing John could say. He knew what being left without purpose felt like. He had experienced it during his 'Vacation' after the Phoenix incident. He could empathise with the Monitor to some extent. But this was not a time for melancholy. He had to find a way to stop the flood and the soon to be Graveminds.
'But how?' He asked himself for the third time this week. Everything looked grim... And then, he found a sliver lining. Perhaps he could convince Cortana to form a temporary alliance. This had to work, she knew all too well what the flood could do, even to AIs.
"I think there is a way to stop this. But for that, I need to leave. I'll be back with support as soon as I'm able to."
The monitor perked up, and her light became brighter after hearing this.
"Thank you! Very much!" She exclaimed.
John was about to return to his prowler, but was stopped by Echelon.
"You should wait for a little while. You won't be able to cross the atmosphere due to the storm." John nodded. A sudden thought came to his mind. How come humans never found this installation; considering it was close to multiple human colonies.
"Echelon, before the Covenant, did any human come to this place?" He asked.
"No."
"Strange..."
"What is 'strange'?" The monitor asked.
"This ring should be surrounded by Human colonies. The closest one is around 36 hours of slipspace time away... and the prowler I used isn't the fastest thing."
"No... There must be a mistake. It is protocol that every Halo ring should be located 1000 light years, as you call your unit, away from any planet which isn't a gas giant." She replied.
John, thought about what the monitor had said... He wanted to believe her, but...
"Echelon, do you have some type of a galactic map?" He asked.
"Yes." She replied. Seconds later, a 3D projection of the Milky-way appeared.
"That blue ping is our location." She said.
The moment John saw the ping, his heart dropped. This ring was located in the stellar dead zone between the mid section of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm and the end section of the Sagittarius Arm... More than half a galaxy away from the Orion Spur.
"This... This shouldn't be possible. How did I cover such a large distance so quickly?!" He exclaimed.
"I was in the Orion Spur just a couple of hours ago." He pointed towards the Spur.
Both of them were silent for what seemed to be hours. Until Echelon spoke up.
"Aaha!" She exclaimed.
"You must have entered a slipspace convergence.(Completely made up by me)." She said.
"A what?"
"A slipspace convergence. They are holes, or rather, paths left within slipspace when something very big, in this case a Halo ring, is moved through it. My creators thought about using this method for travel because of its speed, but decided against it as the time durations were inconsistent. From instantaneous to multiple months. But it never exceeded 6 human calendar months. You seemed to have entered one of these convergences when you started your jump."
"Then there is still hope. All I have to do is retrace my steps and go back the way I came."
"I'm afraid, it is not that easy." She said as her light became dimmer like before.
"These convergences are extremely difficult to find. You'd have to be very precise. You could be looking for years and still not find it. They are nearly impossible to locate without the proper sensors." She paused, "This Installation had the required sensors... but they were destroyed by the Corrupted."
"So that's it then..." He muttered.
They were doomed... He was doomed, and with him, the entire galaxy. There was nothing he could do now. The Covenant ships were destroyed, which meant that he couldn't overload the reactors to destroy the ring. Most of sentinels were corrupted. And somewhere far away, the Created are wreaking havoc, blissfully unaware of what was coming. It was not like he could warn them. The prowler wouldn't even make it pass the dead zone, let alone cross the galaxy. He was cornered, without strong backup and without a place to fall back to. So he did what his dad told him all those years ago.
He closed his eyes, balled up his fists and began taking deep breaths. Then, he came to a realization. Resistance against the Created is possible. Resistance against the Flood wasn't. He has to stop the Flood. It didn't matter how he would do it, but he had to... Just like that, the fate of the Galaxy rested upon his shoulders once more, but he didn't care, especially now that he was feeling stronger and faster after his painful little ordeal. Right then, the control room became red. A holographic image of the island appeared, the image zoomed out to reveal a sizable number of Corrupted coming towards them.
"Oh no." Echelon muttered.
"They'll be here in fifteen minutes. We have to run!" She exclaimed, clearly panicking. Run where? Perhaps into the lower levels, or even escape using the Reclaimer's vessel.
It was at that moment when John looked at the monitor, fire and determination filled in his eyes.
"No, we need to fight." He said as he walked towards the exit.
"Get ready."
A/N How and why the covenant were present in the ring will be explained in the next chapter.