Author's Note: Hey fellow Halo fans. Hope all is well in you're life unlike my own. This chapter is my proper length of 5 pages on Microsoft Word so I hope you all enjoy.

Dedication: This story is now dedicated to the memory of Jeremy Hicks, a fellow LaSlle student who passed away May 6th 2005. We'll miss you man.

Chapter 9: The War Underground

The four marines stared in shock, and Lt. Jonathan Wesley stared back at them. For a few seconds the entire room was still, then Nathan grabbed a grenade from his hip, primed it, and chucked it into the room.

"Die you traitorous mother fucker," the Sgt. yelled, and ducked behind the door as the grenade blew.

Elites jumped out of the way, but many of the grunts were torn to pieces, and one of the elites with the carbines was killed by the fragmentations. Nathan opened the door again, and walked in, shooting a grunt in the face. He looked across the room to see Wesley getting out a back door.

"Get back here you fucker," Jim yelled shooting another grunt in the head.

One elite was sneaking up behind Nathan. It raised its carbine above its head, about to smash the Sgt. in the back of the neck, killing him instantly, but Amy entered the room, and fired a single shot. The elite's body sprawled across the floor in front of Nathan.

The last elite began to fire its Plasma rifle, it red armor gleaming in the flashing light of its weapon. Jim, Amy and Nathan had to duck behind tables. The plasma began to eat through the covenant metal, until Mike fired his own plasma rifle.

Mike's bolts hit the elite across the chest, shorting it's shields out, and then Nathan poked his rifle over the table, and fired a burst into it's head, and it spun and fell on its side; dead. Blood began to pool around it's corpse.

Nathan scanned the room, everything that wasn't human had been blown all across the walls, floors and even the ceiling, from which sticky bright blue blood hung in globs. The Sgt. looted the two elites who had carbines, and split their ammo between him and Amy.

"I can't believe that son of a bitch has betrayed his own fucking species," Jim said. Nathan looked over at him, then realized he was talking about Wesley.

"I'll kill him," Amy said, pumping her shotgun, though Nathan got the feeling she would rather use her bare hands.

"That's how the hunters knew we were there," Mike said suddenly.

"What do you mean?" Nathan asked.

"Remember how those two hunters outside the forerunner complex had attacked before it would have been possible for them to even see us?" Mike queried.

"Yeah, maybe they heard us," Jim said

"No, we made no sound," Amy said, and she looked directely at Jim.

"You were with him, did he do anything?" Amy asked him.

"No, he scratched his neck and said that you guys were in position, so I told him to…," Jim trailed off as he realized what he had witnessed just an hour ago.

"Holy shit, he must have had a radio. The son of a bitch gave our position away," Nathan said.

Then he heard an elite scream down the hall from whence they came. Then the growls of Flood combat forms followed it. The four marines looked down the hall then at each other.

"Move," Nathan commanded, and the marines sprinted for the door that Wesley had escaped through.


Wesley was panting as he ran through the metal corridors that blending into each other. He paid no attention to the covenant soldiers who were preparing for battle against the flood which had somehow gotten into the compound.

But Wesley did not fear the flood, something worse was after him. Four really pissed off humans. Over the years Wesley had been feeding critical information to the covenant, because he knew that they would be the eventual victors in the war, and he didn't want to die. The remainder of his species didn't see things so clearly though.

Wesley had given the covenant the location of Reach, and the specs on the orbital MAC guns, and even what little information he could gather on the Spartans. Being inside ONI helped him, no one suspected him.

The only thing he had not given the aliens was the location of Earth, and that was for reasons of personal insurance, but they had found it none the less, and Wesley had somehow found himself on the IN AMBER CLAD.

He managed to get attached to a marine squad. A group of men and women who hadn't trusted him from the beginning, and had fought their way through an entire complex of Covenant, then killed two hunters with a single shotgun shell and a grenade. He realized that maybe these soldiers, these grunts from the lowest levels of human society were brighter, more able, than the rich aristocrats who became the generals and ONI agents.

Now, the four survivors of that squad had managed to hunt Wesley down, and they were going to kill him once they found him, and it wouldn't be an easy death either, Marines tended not to like it when someone shot one of them through the throat.

So, submerged within his own thoughts, Wesley ran right into a red armored elite. He fell on his ass, and the elite looked down at him with it's equivalent of a sneer. It reached down and picked Wesley up by the front of his black ONI uniform, and held the frightened human before it.

"You're cowardice will not go rewarded in the covenant, do not get in my way again or I will personally remove you're entrails," the alien warrior snarled, and threw Wesley back to the ground, then walked away.

Wesley realized at that moment that he hadn't saved himself, he had condemned his soul to eternal hell, and he began to cry.


The creature had walked into the bunker. His warriors were throwing themselves at a barricade constructed by two elites. The green lasers from their carbines tore into the Flood combat forms.

The creature sent out a mental pulse, and the infected elites stopped attacking the barricade. The creature walked forward, and the elites stared for a moment at it in terror. One of them cursed in its ancient Sangheili tongue.

Then they fired. The carbine ammunition tore through the creature's flesh, but it didn't flinch, much less die. It continued forward with long strides. The elites roared, their mandibles stretching out in fury.

The creature's tentacles snapped forward, and wrapped around both the elites, and easily snapped their necks. The bodies could still be used, but the infection forms would have to reconnect the spine with the brain to regain their old memories and skills.

The creature tore the barricade down, and the Flood rushed further into the bunker. The creature turned around, and looked down the other corridor that it could take. Down that corridor were five reclaimers. It began its journey.


Nathan put a burst through the face of a very surprised grunt, and continued his journey. An elite popped out from a alcove behind the Sgt. preparing to send some bolts of plasma from its rifle into the marine's back, but Amy wiped the notion away with a well placed shotgun blast to the head, which destroyed everything above the elite's neck.

Nathan didn't even look behind him to view the mess, but continued running down the corridors, knowing that the Flood were behind them, and that Wesley could very well be somewhere ahead of them, so he pushed himself. He was still tired, he hadn't got much rest, and he could feel weariness and despair creeping back into his Marine's thoughts.

The Flood were after them again, though they hadn't seen them yet, they had heard them and that had been enough.

"I can't wait to catch that fucker," Jim said, and the others just nodded. A Jackal came around the corner, it's shield covering its body, but the marines were too close. Jim took out his fury by kicking the Jackal's energy shield. The alien stumbled backward, blood running from it's mouth.

Jim stood over it, brought his foot up, then down against on the birdlike aliens head with a satisfying crunch. Jim looked down at his handiwork and grinned sadistically. The alien's skull had burst open, and it's brains had spilled out onto the floor.

"Take that you shit munching bitch," Jim said, and when he looked up, and saw the other three had kept going during his spectacle.

"Hey, wait up," he called running after them.

As Nathan was running a familiar scent reached his nostrils: the heavy, damp air of the swamp. They had found the exit.

"Marines, we are out of here," Nathan said.

"What about communications?" Amy asked, almost pleading.

"Fuck it, let the flood play with the Covies while we get away," Mike said.

"Mike's right, I don't want to fight the Flood any more than we have to," Nathan said, and turned up to a ramp that led outside. When they exited, Nathan hoped he hadn't made a horrible mistake.

The four marines looked behind them, seeing that the entrance came out at the foot of a large cliff. They had gone down a long way. Then they heard a rustling in the shrubs.

The four turned at once, and they saw a flash of a black uniform. Nathan smiled, and aimed his rifle. Then a bright blue flash almost blinded him. He realized what it was after a split second.

"Plasma grenade," he called out, and dived to the side as Wesley through the alien explosive. The other dived as well, but Mike had been caught off guard. His reflexes had been stretched tight over the years to the point where he could dodge plasma bolts. But this time, his reflexes betrayed him, quicker than he knew, his leg shot out, and kicked the plasma grenade.

It stuck to the toe of his boot. He looked down in shock, then looked back up to Nathan. Mike snapped a brisk salute, just as Nathan saw the glowing blue ball.

"Mike," the Sgt. called out, and the grenade exploded.

As Alison walked up the aisle, Nathan's military trained eyes scanned the people who had gathered on this wonderful sunny day. In the front seat Mike sat in his only suit, slightly faded through the years, he sat in the second row, behind Hank's family. He had his mischievous smile stretched across his face.

It was a smile that no one had seen him use in uniform, or even in public. It was a smile that Mike only used when in the company of true friends.

Amy got off the ground, not bothering to wipe away the dirt that covered her face, and fired into the woods with her shotgun. Pellets tore through leaves and branches, and pocked the tree branches.

"I'll kill you, you mother fucker," Amy called out, as her weapon began to click on empty.

Mike got to his feet, and grabbed Amy's shotgun by the barrel and lowered it. Amy then fell to her knees and started sobbing. Jim was still laying on the ground, staring at the charred upper body of Cpl. Mike Rogers. The lower half had been incinerated by the blast, or at least seemed that way. Blood was splattered across the ground, and stained the leaves around them.

"Jesus Christ, what is this shit? What does the bastard have to gain by betraying his own race?" Amy said, looking up at Nathan with a tear stained face.

"You might as well start asking questions like why the good ones die young and the grouchy fuckers live to such an old age, or why the Covenant are attacking us in the first place. It's a question we can't answer, and I don't want to know the answer. All I know is that we have to continued on somehow to make sure that their deaths have not been in vain, ensure that they have not died needlessly," Nathan said, putting his hand on Amy's shoulder. It was a cheesy speech, something you'd expect in a really crappy movie, but what else do to say to a person in grief, to a person who has lost people close to them. Nathan shook his head, it was all bullshit.

Jim got to his feet, he had been awakened by his Sgt.'s talk, now he had fury plastered on his face. The almost child-like innocence and humor and been completely incinerated.

"Let's kill the fucker," he said. Amy looked up at him, wiped away her tears, slipped a few shells into her shotgun got to her feet and pumped the gun in her hands.

"Agreed," she said.

The three marines took their weapons, and entered the swampy woods. They had to get out of this alive, but if they didn't, at least they would have taken out the bastard who had sold out his own species.