Chapter IX

Dead or Alive?

James slowly rotated in the vacuum of space, drifting slowly past the remains of their Pelican dropship. Their warhorse that was supposed to ferry them to the Covenant Homeworld was now mauled, ruined, it's engines crushed. The C-12 explosives were still embedded on the craft's nose, however. James knew that they might still have a use for the massive explosives, primarily to destroy that unsecured database within this ship.

"Blue-two, police those explosives," John said. James nodded and pushed himself off towards the nose of the Pelican, puffing his small thruster pack to send him towards the deadly cache of explosive.

Explosions sounded in the background as the Covenant fleet orbiting Reach attacked the UNSC defenders. The Covenant had found Reach, humanity's last stronghold before Earth. As James quickly worked to detach the package from the nose of the Pelican, he wondered just how the Covenant had found them. Perhaps blind luck? He doubted it. None of the UNSC would have cracked, even under interrogation.

Did the Covenant invasion here, at Reach, have anything to do with that odd crystal on Sigma Octanus?

Four loud booms accompanied four long trails of smoke into space. Glancing up, James saw Linda firing her sniper rifle at some odd, floating menace. They looked like men in thruster packs…no, not men. Monsters. Elongated heads, four mandibles, and cobalt-blue armor defined these angry-looking beasts. The one Linda targeted took four shots to the head before finally stopping dead in space. The others turned, snarled, and fired.

"Take cover!" John yelled. Plasma bolts and crystalline needles boiled through the vacuum, bouncing off of the SPARTAN's shields.

James tugged; the explosives were almost free.

Suddenly, a loud thump, accompanied by a sudden jerk, into the void of space, sent James tumbling. One of those creatures must have scored a lucky hit, because James' jetpack was out of control. Straining to re-orient himself, James struggled with the pack's controls, to no avail. The pack was leaking fluid, spraying it everywhere. Without control of the pack, James would continue spinning in space, like a massive gyroscope, until he died. And still, his body would continue to spin, nothing to stop it.

"Blue-two! Come in!" John yelled frantically. James cursed and tried to open a COM channel back to him.

" I can't control my pack anymore, Chief! Get out of here! Those creatures, they're everywhere!" James yelled, as he sped past a group of those creatures, dubbed "Elites" by Dr. Halsey. One of them paused to point at him as he tumbled past, and two bolts of plasma boiled past his head. Potshots.

"Your destruction is the will of the gods. And we are their instrument". The one, taunting message the Covenant had send the UNSC at Harvest bubbled to the surface of James' thoughts; the things were going to take Reach. They were all doomed. And if the Covenant captured the NAV database, they would find Earth. The end of humanity was nigh. And James could do nothing to stop it.

Suddenly, as James spun uncontrollably through space, his spin began to slow, and eventually stop. A familiar feeling filled his gut; the sensation of gravity. Something was pulling him in. A UNSC ship, perhaps? Was it the Pillar of Autumn?

No. James knew it could not be the Autumn. It was another ship. Twisting in space, James was awed by what he saw.

It was some kind of alien ship. Unlike anything James had ever seen before, this ship glowed with an iridescent orange glow. A small hatch on the side opened to admit James, and he floated into the ship's hold.

"Come, human. Events have been set into motion, and we will need your help to unravel this rapid turn of events. This invasion has been foretold, and now, only two can stop the tide from turning," growled a heavily synthesized voice. It resounded and sounded clearly artificial. James looked around, slowly rising to his feet.

"Where am I?" he asked. A shimmer on his left side growled;

"Questions later, human. For now, you will come with us. There is much to be said, and much more to be done," it growled. James suddenly felt pressure on the back of his neck; the last thing he saw was a massive, hulking, meter-tall creature standing before him, before his world melted into darkness.

-

Ellen Ripley slowly paced around the LZ, checking and rechecking her weapon. An antiquated weapon, the M41A Pulse Rifle, it had been the weapon of choice by the UNSC forces centuries ago, and she had been surprised to find a serviceable specimen. This one Ripley had found on the black market. The place had had thousands of weapons, ranging from the Pulse Rifles, to the old UNSC squad-based machine gun, the "Smartgun" as it was nicknamed by the marines at the time. Ripley had settled for the Pulse Rifle, though. She would, however, have preferred grenades instead of the shotgun shells on her bandolier, but, beggars could not be choosers.

The Marines had arrived just a little while ago, telling them that their SPARTAN leaders had gone off to investigate some odd hole. Ripley didn't like it; maybe it was a Xenomorph nest? Had the aliens gotten victims yet? Suddenly, Ripley was almost thrown off balance by a massive explosion. It came several blocks away, and the shockwave sent Marines scrambling for cover. It had come from the direction the Master Chief had gone.

The other SPARTAN, Linda, instantly dropped into a crouch, her sniper rifle at the ready. Glancing around, the area was still clear. What was that explosion?

Ripley didn't like it at all; checking to see if her rifle was set to full-automatic fire, she held it at the ready, finger hovering over the trigger.

And to Ripley's horror, a sound she had never hoped to hear again echoed through the deathly silent alleyways and corridors of New Mombassa, Kenya. A loud screech, like a combination angry cat/wild plains animal. Ripley knew that sound; it was the call of the Xenomorphs. The call they made when they had their enemy on the run.

The sounds of fighting grew closer. Gunfire punctured the air; the aggravated screeches of the Aliens and the unmistakable booming of a fragmentation grenade resounded through Ripley's ears.

A shadow, followed by a massive set of green boots, emerged from the darkness of an alleyway. It was the Master Chief; his armor was battered and scratched in some places, and he was quickly reloading his Battle Rifle. Snapping on his flashlight, he fired a burst of shots into the alleyway. Nothing. If there were Aliens hiding, they were certainly doing a very good job of it.

"John! What happened to Fred?" Linda asked. John shook his head.

"Dead. Those creatures got to him, and he used his last grenade on them…and himself" John reported. Linda and John glanced at each other. Ripley knew that this brought the total number of SPARTAN's down to four; John, Linda, Kelly, and Will. The two new SPARTAN III's, Luke and Rebecca, didn't truly count.

"Let's move out. I don't think Kelly and Will have touched down yet. We have to get to the center of the Covenant operations here" John said. Worryingly glancing into the shadows, Ripley followed the SPARTAN warriors as they snaked through the various twists and turns of the ruined metropolis.

-

Crouching above them, unseen, a low shadow watched as the humans pressed onwards, towards the site where the Great Hunt had begun, those many millennia ago. Nothing betrayed the presence of this Yajuta warrior as he followed his prey. They would find and become food for the Holy Warriors. And then, the Final Hunt would begin; the extermination of either species. The final ships of Yajuta were on their way to the world of the heretics as this Yajuta stalked his prey; his brethren would help in the final hunt.

There was only one obstacle. Nay, three obstacles. The Ancients. The three Ancients, sealed away in their respective caskets after the end of the unsuccessful Great Hunt. They were dead, or at least sealed away, claimed legend. They were no more than myth, specters.

But this Yajuta scout had seen it. Aboard the human ship, the first of the Ancients had been slain by the human warrior calling itself the "Master Chief". Two more Ancients remained, aboard their ship. The ship was still in orbit, mingling with the debris of the battle, adrift. It was too much to hope that the Ancients were killed by the Covenant forces; their soldiers could not last against the Ancients, no matter how powerful they were or how many there were.

Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, the Yajuta followed it's prey. They were close now, very close to the hive. Using his hunting mask to distinguish between humans, Aliens, and fellow Yajuta, the Alien nest was directly below the humans as they neared the center of the city. The scout could see the aliens pacing back and forth, moving eggs into various chambers, where captured humans and Covenant alike were strapped to the walls, awaiting the moment when the Alien would burst from their chests.

The humans had reached the site now. Chuckling in his own guttural tongue, the scout crouched on a rooftop and checked his weapons. His spear, disc, wristblades, and Plasma Caster were all in place. He was ready. Now all he had to do was wait until the Aliens had claimed the humans, and for the rest of his clan to show up in their ships. Smiling as only a Yajuta could, the scout continued to follow his quarry.

-

John took point, striding past the wreckage of a Covenant Plasma Mortar. It lay half buried in debris, obviously from Regret's desperate escape to Delta Halo. An entire city block was missing, pulled with In Amber Clad when it had followed the Covenant cruiser into Slipspace. The Chief shook his head; civilian bodies littered the alleyways, crushed by debris or burned by plasma, courtesy of the Covenant. There were even some radiation-scarred corpses, obviously fried when Regret escaped. The Chief seethed; he promised to make up for every death caused by the Covenant crusade, from the beginning, at Harvest, to here, now, at Earth. Reach, Halo, Delta Halo, Mombassa, Sigma Octavus, the souls of millions of human lives, sacrificed for some holy crusade by a technologically superior group of aliens. The Chief knew that even if he was the last human left standing, he would continue to fight until the Covenant had been stopped. Then he could finally rest, in peace.

"Chief? Is that you? It's us, Kelly and Will" called a voice and a NAV icon on John's HUD. Linda had seen it too; she pivoted and turned, spotting a Pelican in the distance. Something seemed suspicious; why was the Pelican down? Where were the Marines?

"We're here, Chief. Please, come to us! We've found something, inside this hole, down here!" Kelly, one of John's best friends, called. Linda slowly shook her head, crouched down, and suddenly screamed;

"NO, John. It's a trap; can't you sense it?" she snarled, snapping her sniper rifle up into firing position. John looked at Linda in confusion; what was wrong with her? Kelly and Will were down there, and they needed help.

"Please, Chief, hurry!" called a voice in the back of John's mind. He could have sworn that the voice belonged to Cortana, but, shrugged it off as stress; Cortana was still in the Covenant home station, High Charity, over Delta Halo. The Chief ignored Linda and charged forward, towards the massive, gaping hole in the ground. Remnants of Covenant drilling equipment lay scattered, like children's toys, around the perimeter of the hole.

"Don't let me die again, John," moaned a new voice. John gasped; it was Sam, SPARTAN -034. He had died shortly after being united with his MJOLNIR armor, decades ago, staying behind on a Covenant cruiser to make sure the bombs he had planted would explode on time. Sam and Kelly had been John's best friends during Basic training on Reach.

"Help me, John. You were our leader. Why did you let us down?" a childish voice called, but John recognized it nevertheless. It was Fhajad, one of the SPARTANS crippled by the augmentation process done to them decades before.

"You let me die. You could have saved me". James. Killed over Reach, before the discovery of Halo.

"You went rouge, son. You let me be captured by the Flood, and there can be no forgiveness for that". Captain Keyes, absorbed by the Flood on Installation 04.

"Your precious doctor made me give my life to save yours. Does that make you happy, Chief?" Corporal Locklear, killed during the escape from Halo.

Thousands of soldiers and fellow warriors John had fought with suddenly emerged from the massive hole in the ground. On point were Sam, Kelly, Will, and the rest of his fellow SPARTANS that had died during the bloody conflicts with the Covenant. They all looked dead; Fhajad was crippled, like the last time John had seen him. He was lying on the ground, dragging himself forwards with his arms, an expression of anger frozen on his face. Sam was missing half of his face; the rest of his body was twisted with rage. Kelly had a massive hole punched in her chest. John felt a surge of guilt; Kelly would not have died if he hadn't stopped Dr. Halsey before she left for that planet, and infected Kelly. Will was missing his left arm and part of his left leg, burned away by plasma. Various soldiers, with wounds varying from plasma burns, to total dismemberment, slowly advanced towards John, all screaming in anger, the betrayals the Chief had caused during the four decades of combat service. John recognized some of them; Private Chipps Dubbo, killed on Halo. Private Mendoza, infected by the Flood. Even Sergeant Johnson and Miranda Keyes marched, all enraged. Their fingers almost looked like claws, and their teeth fangs.

And four wonderful sounds, the cracking of a sniper rifle, broke this illusion. Kelly, Will, Sam and Fhajad all fell, drilled by Linda's rifle. Suddenly, the images of his comrades melted away, to reveal the hissing, snarling horde of Xenomorphs, advancing in a huge column. The bodies of his fellow SPARTANS melted, and turned into four fallen Xenomorphs.

The Chief stared at them, unwilling to believe what had happened. Even as Linda fired round after round of sniper shots into their midst, and as the Marines fired their weapons, desperately trying to stem the tide of advancing, hissing, black death. As the hellish nightmare began to unfold around the Chief, he stood stock still, staring at the corpses of the fallen Aliens.

What was that?

Shaking his head, the Chief rose, and fired his rifle at the advancing creatures. Priming a grenade, he chucked it into the sea of obsidian. The loud thump of the grenade sprayed green acid everywhere, showering the sea in hissing, steaming columns of smoke. The air reeked of ozone.

Ripley suddenly charged ahead of John, firing her rifle indiscriminately. Aliens exploded and thrashed, slowly melting into pools of acid blood. More Aliens charged, only to get shredded to pieces by the shotgun mounted under her rifle's barrel. The Marines and Linda laid down a hellish cross-fire, quickly and effectively slaughtering the Xenomorph horde.

Finally, the assault was over. The humans had won; barely. Marines grunted as they checked their ammo pouches; completely empty. There were only three Marines with loaded weapons, and even these were half-full. Ripley's bandolier was torn and tattered, the result of frantic scrabbling for her shotgun shells during the battle. Her rifle had jammed some time ago, and another marine had offered to un-jam it, an offer she had agreed to.

The Chief was still shaken by the illusion of his comrades. How did the Aliens accomplish this feat? Maybe telepathy, but the Chief did not believe in such things.

The NAV marker was still on the Chief's HUD. It had stayed there during the course of the battle; the things could fool his mind, but not his machinery. Opening his COM frequency, John whistled a six sing-song tune.

"Oly oly oxen free. We're in the free. All in the free" he muttered. No response. John tried again; still no luck. Either Kelly and Will were hiding, or were dead.

No. They weren't dead. Even though he knew it wasn't true, Dr. Halsey's words came back to John, the propaganda and lies the UNSC had spread to promote hope for humanity.

SPARTANS never die.

Sprinting over to the downed Pelican, it was only then that the Chief saw the bodies.

Dozens of Marine bodies lay scattered, broken and shattered. Bloody trails indicated that the Aliens had intended to use these fallen Marines as incubators, until the Chief and his team had interrupted them. Noting that none of the Marines were dead, the Chief walked over to one soldier, who was slowly sitting up.

"Wh-wh-what? Sergeant? Is that you?" he asked, dazed. His eyes rolled in his head. A massive bruise adorned his forehead, and he still clutched a Shotgun in a death grip.

"Easy, son. What happened here?" the Chief asked. The marine groaned.

"Hell, sir. Those things came out, masquerading as our loved ones…Simmons and Blake bought it first. They ran out, screaming about their long lost family, before they were torn to pieces. I saw my brother turn into one of those creatures, before it got me. I took some of the little bastards down, but there were too many…one got me from behind, I think" he said.

"What happened to Will? And Kelly?" the Chief asked. The marine shrugged.

"I don't know. They got out of the dropship with us, said something about 'contacts', and were still fighting when I got hit. I'm sorry, sir; I don't know" the marine groaned before he fainted again.

The Chief cursed. His comrades could already be bug food. He had to get to them.

"Did you get anything?" Linda asked. John shook his head.

"I don't know. I think they're somewhere down in that hive. We have to get to them" the Chief said. Linda nodded.

"I've got your back, Chief" she said, reloading her Sniper Rifle. Three marines, including Ripley, jogged up to the two SPARTANS as they advanced towards the hole.

"Wait. We're going, too" the lead Marine said. The Chief knew this one; the one who had saved him from the Demon.

"You aren't going. You could get killed" the Chief said.

"And so could you" Ripley retorted. Her face was set, determined. The Chief knew her past and determination to stop the Aliens.

"Ok. But you three, get going" Linda said, motioning towards the other Marines.

"You're gonna need help down there, like it or not, sir" a marine chimed in.

"What's your name?" the Chief asked the first marine. She snapped to attention and replied;

"Lieutenant Anna Cameron, sir!" she said. The Chief grinned under his helmet.

"Welcome aboard, Anna" he said, sliding a new clip into his Battle Rifle as he descended into the darkness.