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High Earth Orbit/ Unknown Forerunner ship/ mission time clock 52:35:21

"Mind telling me what you're doing on that ship," Lord Hood asked, seeming a little puzzled.
"Sir, finishing this fight," John said checking his surroundings and picking up his Battle Rifle from the floor.
"Alright Chief, Good Hunting. Hood out," he said closing the com channel.
John checked the magazine. "Damn," he said to himself as he tossed the empty weapon to the floor. He had always hated fighting in space, preferring the ground beneath his feet and fresh air in his lungs rather than recycled air and 10 inches of titanium separating him from the void of space. The cold firm ground was the battlefield, not the deck of a starship. The battlefield was home, and nothing can ever change that. It has been his home since he started his training on the planet Reach. The starship made him feel vulnerable, which wasn't right for a Spartan. But now, without a weapon, for the first time he just wanted to get his job over with.
John just stood a while listening to the hum of the engines and the dull thuds of explosions as the battle for Earth had finally begun. He quietly walked to a door submerged in the black sea of shadow of the room. He couldn't understand but for some reason he just knew which way to go. The whole place seemed eerily familiar but he knew he could have never been inside any Forerunner ship, so why was he feeling this way? The human instinct of something long forgotten but oddly familiar? The door slid open with little more than a hiss, revealing a long, dark corridor, perfectly symmetrical. He looked to the floor and saw a blue light race along the floor of the corridor followed by another a second after.
He cautiously stepped into the room, not wanting to disturb anything that might be concealed in the shadows. The blue lights suddenly stopped and grew brighter, flooding the corridor with a soft blue glow. The walls glowed silver in the blue light and there seemed to be carvings in the wall. The Chief stopped and looked at hieroglyphics that ran along the corridor. None of them seemed to make any sense, but the strange feeling of familiarity surfaced once again. He followed the glyphs down the corridor and stopped noticing three that he could somewhat make out, one looked, oddly enough, like a human, another was an infection form, and the final one was a ring, obviously Halo.
Suddenly a sound echoed from down the hall and broke him from his trance. Being unarmed he looked for a hiding place, a nook, cranny, or shadow in a corner, but found nothing in the lit and symmetric corridor. He ran to were the corridor intersected another and peered around the corner only to meet a Jackal face to face. The Jackal froze dead in his tracks staring dumbstruck at his own reflection in the Chiefs helmet, while John's fist instinctively clenched and flew crushing the Jackal's skull before it was able to move.
The Chief watched the corpse hit the ground and looked up only to find two more Jackals open their shields and charge their pistols. John grabbed the pistol from the dead Jackal and dove around the corner just as the two started to fire. The firing lulled for a split second. 'Bad mistake,' John thought to himself as he overcharged his plasma pistol, hitting one of the Jackals with the blast and then running out and beating the other with the overheated weapon. John checked further down the corridor making sure there wasn't another threat, not that there wasn't anything he couldn't handle. He ransacked the corpses only finding three plasma pistols and 2 plasma grenades. He pocketed it all, figuring it was better than nothing, and continued down the corridor the Jackals came from. The blue light dying behind him and the blue pulses on the floor leading him on.
He came to a stop at a humongous window over viewing the carnage that lay beyond. Dozens of Covenant capital ships were heading straight to Earth, unleashing plasma bolts at the MAC guns and starships that were the last defense of the human home world. The MAC guns, wonders in their own element, alternated firing and reloading between them keeping the Covenant under a constant barrage of shells. A capital ship came into view from his left side. John watched the shields flicker and die as the colossal vessel took a MAC shell to the aft section. Two longsword fighters appeared above him and dumped a salvo of bombs onto the wounded ship's bridge. And as if a hornet's nest had been kicked, hundreds of seraph fighters left the ship's hangars and followed the two fighters relentlessly and then join in the battle. Spots of blue and orange dotted the battlefield where covenant and human alike met their grave in the black void. John left the window and followed the lights on the floor once again.
The Chief ended up at another door, which didn't open no matter how close he got. He knelt down and set his ear to the door listening to the conversation within, obviously the High Prophet encouraging his troops to 'cleanse the desecrated world', and the heavy shuffle of the Honor Guard. 'Too easy,' he thought to himself, 'a ship loaded with a prophet and only a few Jackals guarding the halls. Someth-. 'A brief scraping like finger nails on a black board came from behind. He stood up and turned quickly, the pistols on his belt banging against the door, but saw nothing behind in the dark. The air in the corridor suddenly grew old, musty, and smelt of decay. He turned back to the door trying to listen, but the voices died.
"Oh crap," he said looking down at the plasma pistols attached to his belt. He stood to run back down the corridor when the door hissed open and flooded the hall with a bright light revealing three Honor Guard Brutes loaded with Brute plasma rifles. John turned to run back down the corridor, but found himself trapped between the Brutes and a torrent of Flood forms.

The Brutes opened fire, their weapons spewing forth red plasma at a ferocious rate. The Chief acted instantly, ducking the first wave of plasma letting the Flood behind him take it. He got up of the floor and ran straight towards the Guards, throwing his shoulder into the one in the middle. He would have sooner jump into a solid brick wall than do those again. There was a snap and a sharp pain shot through the Chiefs arm. He looked down at the brute for a second watching the blue crystalline gel slowly slide down the unconscious beasts side while the others stood dumbstruck, surprised that anyone, even the demon, would dare take on a fully armored brute hand to hand. The Chief ran past the other brutes into the bridge of the ship, the brutes to occupied with the flood to care of the demon, but were soon overwhelmed.
John ran to the center of the bridge, surrounded by holograms that had to be the ships controls. He tried to move his right arm to the small armaments he had on his side, but found it impossible to move his heavy arm. The brutes lay in the doorway surrounded by infection forms digging into their chests. He pulled one of the grenades attached to his belt and armed it, the blue plasma giving it a tail as he lobbed it into the hall he just came through. The door way lit in a bright flash of blue as the grenade detonated and sent bits of flood forms into the room.
The door closed and John was alone in the bridge. He looked out the front window watching Earth grew closer. He was heading back to Africa, back to Mombassa. 'What's with the fascination of this place? They've already leveled most of the city when the cruiser jumped.' he thought to himself. The ruins of the city were surrounded by three covenant cruiser, their massive size easy to tell even from his distance away.
John turned suddenly to faint sound, the gel from his shoulder slung onto the panels in front of him. He had one of his pistols at the ready in the only arm he had movement in. He moved around what he guessed was the captains console. The faint sound came again and he looked underneath the console only to find a grunt cowering in the small gap between the holograms and the floor.
"Hello little guy. I'm going to ask you questions and you're going to answer," he said as the grunt, fearing for his life, was pulled from underneath the console by his mask. He shivered in terror as the Chief tossed him into the "captain's chair", the size of the chair making the grunt seem smaller than he really was.
"Truth is here, correct?" John asked rhetorically, making sure the little thing wasn't going to lie. The grunt only nodded his head as a reply.
"Which way did he go?" John asked, staring at the terrified creature in the huge chair. He couldn't help but feel pity for him.
"He go that way to part of ship," the grunt said pointing a trembling hand to a door that was hidden in a corner to their right, "He go start Great Journey from filthy planet," he added showing a hint of regret from the last bit of his statement.
The ship began to tremble beneath John's feet as the ancient ship finally began reentry, the long triangular tip starting to burn a bright white as it entered the atmosphere. A banging suddenly coming from the door he had entered only a moment ago. John looked down at the grunt, when it jumped with the first pound. He knew what was going to happen just as much as John knew when the door finally gave in to its beating.
"Your coming with me," John said grabbing the grunt by his methane tanks with his good arm and started running for the door earlier pointed out to him, as the door finally giving way to the harsh beating. He ran through the door earlier mentioned and quickly shut it using a panel on his side of the door, an Infection form getting caught between the door and the floor as it closed. John dropped the grunt to the floor, pulled out his pistol and fried the panel, giving him a little time to make his way down the hall. The grunt stood staring at him, surprised that the demon showed him mercy.
"You help me out," the grunt said with his heavy accent," Come. His Holiness finds Great Journey but elites say he lies. Follow, I show way to his Holiness," the grunt said motioning his arm forward into another shadow blanketed hallway.
John watched confused as the grunt vanished into the dark. He stood a second and followed the creature further into the darkness.1.