What happened over the next few days, the Master Chief could not recollect with accuracy. Faint memories of familiar voices: "What are they doing to him?", "What the hell?", "They can't possibly do that, can they?"
"Chief...Chief...Can you hear me? At last..." The Master Chiefs vision slowly began to focus. He sat up, and looked around. "Where are we, Cortana?" was his immediate reply. When he saw the plasma screen in front of him, Cortanas' answer seemed obvious. "We're in a Covenant holding cell, Chief. Are you okay? You took quite a beating in that room. It was fortunate that they overlooked the crystal system I'm stored in, otherwise they would probably have taken me off of you. They seem intent on trying to capture any AI's."
The Chief didn't reply; he knew Cortana could read the battle suits self diagnostics, and was only asking out of the politeness she was programmed to have. He felt fine. What bothered him was that the plasma screen that was holding him in his cell was different to the ones he had encountered on the Truth and Reconciliation and a few other ships, but he was unable to determine how.
"How you feeling, Chief?" a Marine in the opposite cell asked, not being able to read his suits systems like Cortana. The Spartan just nodded in answer and walked up to the screen. He looked around it, before thrusting his fist right into it. His shields were brought down instantly, but the plasma screen also failed. An alarm went off, and another plasma screen activated a half foot in front of the first one.
"I wouldn't do that, Chief; the Covenant made this high security cell for you, now that they know your limits." Cortana said into his helmet.
"What do you mean?" he replied, annoyed that Cortana didn't warn him about the security before he did that.
"You don't remember a thing, do you? OK, well, when you were knocked out by that elite, we knew we wouldn't last long against a special operations squad, and surrendered. We were all taken into these holding prisons. Then, the Covenant decided to take what they have referred to as the once in a million chance of seeing what makes Spartans the way they are." The Master Chief cursed at his allowing himself to be used like that. Now all of the questions from his memories made sense.
"They didn't find anything out, though, did they?" he said, already knowing that the answer wouldn't be "no". Though he hated to admit it, he knew the Covenant were smarter than not to try to understand the way things worked.
"Well, actually, the Covenant have decided to start their own version of the Spartan project, one that they have named the Immortus project."
"This doesn't sound good."
Before Cortana could reply, the plasma screen opened up. Five gold elites stood behind it and told him to walk to the door. Since it seemed the Master Chief had no weapons, he didn't try to resist. Training had always taught him to wait for the right moment to strike.
A few corridors later, he was thrown into a large room and the door was locked behind him. Then the walls became transparent, and thousands of elites of all ranks looked in. The Chief noticed a table in front of him, holding up his battle rifle and a deactivated plasma sword. He picked them up, conscious of the hoards of elites watching his every move. As soon as he had done this, the doors at the other end of the room opened, and out stepped what looked vaguely like an elite.
It was about a foot taller than was average for that sort of creature, and its armour was a platinum colour, a colour that the Master Chief had never seen before. It too wielded a plasma sword, but instead of a battle rifle, it held a purple elongated rifle, that the Master Chief didn't like the look of.
Then the elite charged at the Chief. Activating his sword, the Chief started running too, but the elite had already covered twice the ground the he had done in the same time. He lunged with his sword, fell short and was thrown back into a wall due to the amazing power that this super-elite had.
"This isn't good," he muttered to himself bringing out the rifle, and firing a few shots at its head. The elite barely noticed that it was being fired at, as it brought up its own rifle and fired that at the Master Chief, who managed to dodge the superheated plasma and fire a few rounds directly into the barrel of the Elites weapon. The weapon blew up, plasma leaking and burning holes in the floor, but barely making the elites shields flicker. It re-activated its sword and lunged at the Chief.
The Battle rifle was cut in half, as the plasma heated the metal to temperatures it wasn't designed for. The Elite struck again, but was cut short by the Master Chief's own sword.
Time seemed to stand still, as the two super-soldiers held their own. But only one of them had a starship-grade AI in their battle suits. "Master Chief," Cortana said calmly to him, " I have modified your shield generators to send out an electronic pulse that should overload that elites generators when you touch it, since I believe their system is modelled on yours. Although this will take out your own shields, it will give you a better chance at defeating that thing."
"I hope you're right, Cortana" he said, as he ducked under the opponents sword and hit it on the back. All at once, both shields flickered out.
The Elite shouted something in its mother-tongue, and lunged its claw out at the Master Chiefs throat. And held him against the wall, three inches off the ground.
Then, the Master Chief did something that made the entire Covenant crowd gasp as one. He brought the Plasma sword down and pulled it through the elites stomach. The elite let go of him, and both fell to the floor.
Then both got back up. The elite brought its sword down hard, clashing with the Master Chiefs, which was already beginning to overheat. Whatever the elites armour was made of, it took one hell of a beating. A crackling sound was made the Chiefs sword overheated and burnt out. The elite took advantage of this and brought its sword up over its head to deliver the final blow.
The entire Covenant crowd started to cheer at the first being who would single-handedly overwhelm a Spartan-II a few seconds from now.
But the Master Chief knew better. He kicked the elites knees, which snapped backwards with a sickening crunch. The elite dropped the sword, which the Spartan picked up and shoved back into the opening made by his last attack.
Finally, the elite died. None of the crowd moved, as this seemingly indestructible being pulled the sword back out of the Immortus-I, and prised the locked door open with his sheer strength.
"Shouldn't it have died?" an elite from the crowd asked.
"Not today," the Master Chief muttered under his breath. "I have some soldiers to save first."
"WHAT? HOW? WHERE IS IT?" the prophet yelled at the gold elite.
"It is heading back down to the holding bay; reports indicate that it shall attempt to rescue the other captives." The elite replied humbly. The prophet calmed a little.
"Fine. Let it. The humans are of no match for us, but that bastard cyborg is beginning to get on the council's nerves. If they hear of this incident…..no, they must not. I want half of the remaining Immortus-I products to go find it and destroy it. The other half will be used to further this project; for this is but one Spartan we are dealing with. I will not tolerate any more failures, do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir, I shall do as you order right away."
"Good. For your sake, lets hope you don't end up like your predecessor." The prophet pointed to an elites head mounted on the wall.
"Yes sir" the elite replied, once again, and hurried off down the hallway.
And thus concludes another chapter. This one is probably my favourite so far as it shows that the Spartans finally have enemies worthy of their time and skill. What will happen next? Only time and a few reviews will tell :). I wouldn't mind knowing what you people think, so again, I ask you to read and review like I do at the end of each chapter, so that I know whether there are any ways to improve my story that I haven't noticed.