okay. STILL no reviews. this is getting sad. o well, I like this story too much to stop and wait for reviews to come in. the more original part of this fic will be hinted at in this chapter and the chapters to come. ;) just bear with me.
The two Banshees stayed in a loose formation as they headed towards the crashed Pillar of Autumn. There wasn't much talk between them the whole trip. The shock of seeing their mutated Captain was enough to keep them silent most of the trip.
"Gina, what's you Banshee's status?" Cortana asked over the COM. The marine quickly checked all the controls.
"Fine. No engine problems, just getting low on fuel." she replied. She tried to stretch in the cramped space but felt just as sore as before.
"We've got a little engine trouble and low fuel too." MC replied. "It's not that far to the Autumn; we should make it."
"Yes, sir." Gina replied. "Private out."
"Master Chief out." The COM hissed static before their connection was cut again. The rest of the trip was made in silence.
The wide stretch of land to the Autumn was rocky and filled with little canyons and caves. They knew they were getting close when they saw the wide and long trail the ship had left when it crash-landed. At least it didn't blow up on contact. Gina thought to herself.
"We've got some engine problems. We're not going to make it!" Cortana exclaimed through the COM. "Pull up, Chief, pull up!"
"We're fine." Gina heard the Spartan reply the AI. "Lets try the life pods." His Banshee whined and began to loose power. Just as the engines short circuited, the Master Chief jumped out of the craft and grabbed the ledge of the life-boat jettison ramp.
"You two alright?" Gina asked. She got a thumbs up from the Chief. "Alright, I'm gonna come in for another pass and jump out." She pulled the Banshee around and slid in close to the wall. Just as she came up to the pod where the Chief was, she killed the engines and jumped. The Chief caught her hand and helped her inside. Cortana humphed.
"Show off's."
With a grin, Gina followed MC into the ship. She'd never been on a human ship before, and despite it's definite need for repair, the ship amazed her.
"We're going to need to make our way to the bridge. There, I can start a count down to destroy the ship and Halo." Cortana said as the two rounded a corner into and empty corridor.
"Do you think there are Flood here?" Gina asked. She didn't hear any clacking, but with the Flood, you never knew.
"It's possible," Cortana replied. "But don't get your hopes up." Just as she finished her sentence, three Sentinels swooped out of no where and tried to fry them with their lasers. Dodging the robot's fire, the two soldiers brought them down in a quick firefight. They reloaded their weapons and continued on.
"Since the Sentinels are here, the Flood must be too." MC said as they encountered more of the floating robots. "Either that or the Monitor." The last Sentinel dropped like a rock and exploded on the deck.
"Neither are so good." Gina replied sourly, tossing her spent shotgun away. She grabbed up a dead Elite's plasma riffle and followed the Chief into a service corridor. A small group of spores jumped out of the ladder down to another deck in front of MC. A short burst from his assault riffle popped them all, but they both could hear more down at the bottom of the ladder. The grenade bounced a little before exploding, but the sound of the Flood quickly stopped. The two climbed down the ladder and continued on.
The Flood had found the ship and causing havoc for the Covenant who held the Pillar of Autumn. Trying to steer clear of both groups of hostiles, Cortana guided them throughout the ship. There was a small group of Grunts and an Elite in the bridge, but they were quickly brought down and MC was soon sliding Cortana's chip into a data processor. Her hologram appeared in the pedestal.
"You leave home for a few days, and look what happens." she muttered. "Give me a second… Okay, there." A red countdown appeared on the broken screen. "That should give us enough time to get to a life boat and put some distance between us and Halo before it detonates."
"What about the-" Gina hadn't finished her sentence before that sing-songy voice came over the COM.
"I'm afraid that's out of the question."
"Oh, hell." Cortana muttered. MC turned to Gina.
"You had to open your mouth." Gina shrugged.
"It's what I do best." she turned back to Cortana. "What's he doing?"
"This record!" the Monitor was saying, although neither of the humans were paying the Monitor any mind. "I am shocked." The connection was cut and Cortana smiled sadly.
"At least I still have the COM channels. But he's stopped the countdown. He may take the reactors off line, so then we couldn't make the ship go under self-destruct." She sighed. "If he does that, I don't know what to do."
"What if we just blow it up manually?" Gina asked. MC nodded.
"How much firepower would we need to crack an engine shield?" he asked. Cortana shrugged.
"A rocket maybe, or a well placed grenade would do fine." the AI replied. The Chief tossed a grenade up and caught it again. Gina was tossing another back and forth in her hands. "Okay, lets get moving." The light on the pedestal turned green as Cortana's image dissolved. Chief yanked the chip and slammed it into the back of his helmet. Once she was inside his head, she exclaimed, "Sentinels!" Gina ducked behind the control console faster than the Chief did. His shields took a hit, but quickly recharged as he ducked out of the robots fire.
"I got right, you take left." he barked. Gina saluted with her plasma rifle and rolled to the left, taking a knee and letting loose a barrage of plasma. One Sentinel fell out of the sky just as her riffle over loaded. She set it on the ground and drew her sidearm in one quick movement and proceeded to blast the second one. The Chief opened fire with his assault riffle, taking one down in a quick and steady fire. The second sentinel on the right side of the bridge fired its laser, but missed and shot the deck over the Chief's shoulder. Ozone was thick in the air when he emptied the rest of his clip into the robot. Reloading, Gina stood and went over to him.
"You're gonna have to lead the way, Chief." she said. "Ready to go." MC nodded.
"Good. Lets get the hell out of here."
"Couldn't have said it better myself."
The Flood massed in bigger waves then, doing everything in their one minded power to stop them. Continuing to Engineering was a tedious task, full of its own surprises, not all of which pleasant ones. By the time they had finally gotten to the arrow that marked Engineering, both the Spartan and marine were out of frag grenades.
"The armory isn't far away." Cortana announced. "I'm marking NAV points on you HUD and uploading one to your eyepiece, Gina." A little red arrow appeared on her eyepiece and Gina followed the Chief towards it.
The armory was dark, a couple of its overhead lights burnt out, and the marines on the floor were all dead. Most of the weapons and ammo, however, looked untouched.
"Take a shotgun and a rocket-launcher," MC told Gina as he stashed four grenades on his belt. "Just in case." Gina did as she was told, grabbing as many extra rockets as she could carry. She exchanged her well-used sidearm for a new shotgun and fed rounds into it. The Chief, armed with a shotgun and crowd-control assault riffle, waited patiently, gun pointed at the door. Gina quickly grabbed four grenades, then turned to the Chief.
"You hear that too?" she hissed. He nodded silently, quietly advancing to the back of the room. Gina cocked the shotgun and followed. The back door hissed, but no one or thing, came through. The sound of gurgling gave the combat form away, though and both the Chief and Gina shot at air. The Flood- once Elite- fell to the deck with two holes in its chest.
"They've found active cammos." Gina muttered. She grabbed a spare shotgun round and shoved it into the weapon for perfect ammo again. The Chief, his weapon still raised, backed away back to the front room.
"Run."
"What?"
"Run. Back to Engineering." He opened fire at the unseen enemy and Gina turned and ran, following the arrows on the floor. She entered the large room, almost intrigued at the sight of the engines, but the urgency of her mission pushed her on. Then she realized: she didn't know what she was supposed to do.
Ignoring this, she tried to figure it out on her own. St least until the Chief caught up. She blasted a combat form away with her shotgun and proceeded up a ramp. She noted the health packs along the way to the next ramp and continued on. She was on the second level when she noticed 343 Guilty Spark. She whacked at it with her shotgun and it staggered in the air.
"You know, that will not injure Me." it told her. Gina shrugged.
"Yeah, but it makes me feel better." She gave it another whack, making it bounce on the ground for a moment, and ran off, to be confronted by more Flood.
"Gina, where are you?" the Chief demanded over the COM. She shot a carrier form and then the spores that poured out of the carnage before replying.
"I just got to the third level, although I have no frigid clue what the hell I'm doing." she replied, obviously frustrated. Cortana jumped in with the instructions.
"Find a control console and activate it. Then jump down and shoot a rocket into the engine core." the AI told her.
"Sounds easy enough." she muttered, shooting another combat form down.
"There are four consoles. I'm on my way up to help." MC told her. Gina punched a random control on a panel, since she couldn't read Basic, and was relieved when there was a loud beep and a construct began to move. She jumped on a pulled out her rocket launcher. Once she had a clear shot, she pulled the trigger. There was a loud explosion and warning alarms went crazy. Gina was climbing back onto the console platform when Cortana announced,
"Good work. Step one complete. Go ahead and move on to second panel." Reassured that she was on the right track, Gina spotted the second panel and rushed to it, hitting the same button as before. Alarms sounded again and Gina jumped on. Her second rocket exploded and the emergency alarms screamed louder. When she climbed back onto the console platform, she was met by MC. He blasted a hole in a combat form and reloaded his weapon.
"Let's go get the second two." he told her. Gina nodded and followed, covering their rear. Flood were now rushing in from everywhere. The Chief punched a button and jumped on while Gina defended his position, shooting a pack of Sentinels with one of her rockets. The whole group exploded and landed in flaming shards on the first deck.
"Go hit the next button!" the Chief called to her and Gina quickly obeyed. She practically punched the console before jumping on, rocket launcher trained and ready. There was one last explosion and the ship rocked, making Gina drop the nearly spent launcher. Ignoring that, she climbed back up to meet the Chief. He waved her forward and the two dashed through the ship, which was quickly falling apart.
After following some twisting corridors, the two halted next to a lift. For the first time in a long while, Gina relaxed. There were no hostiles around to bother them and they were getting off the ring. When the lift screeched to a halt, hard realization hit her in the form of Shade plasma fire.
Groaning with the new pain, Gina dropped and rolled away. MC primed and tossed a grenade, quickly moving out of the turret's line of fire as well. Pulling herself to one knee, Gina took out the Grunts that the grenade had failed to kill.
"You okay?" MC asked, helping her onto the lift. The marine grunted and nodded.
"For now." she replied with a small smile. She reloaded her shotgun and tired to ignore the pain of the plasma burns. The Chief nodded absentmindedly and leveled his gun as the lift continued up. Cortana keyed the COM.
"This is Cortana, contacting Foehammer. We are ready for immediate extraction." There was a wave of static and the pilot replied.
"I read you, Cortana. I'm making my way to your position now." There was a short pause. "Is every thing okay in there? Things are getting noisy."
"Negative Foehammer. The Pillar of Autumn is going to blow. We need extraction now."
"I read you, I read you." Foehammer replied. "Meet you at the extraction point." The COM went dead.
"How far is it to this extraction point?" Gina asked as the lift screeched to a halt. She followed the Chief into a bay of Warthogs.
"Not far if we drive." the Spartan replied. "You drive. I've got the gun." Gina nodded and eased herself into the seat. She revved the engines and drove the 'Hog out of the bay. An explosion rocked the area just as they exited and Gina had to fight the controls to keep the vehicle from flipping.
Their escape route was full of obstacles. Gina was constantly pulling at the controls to stop the 'Hog from crashing, although she did find joy in running Flood combat forms over at top speed. The Master Chief was constantly shooting as the targets swarmed around them. Gina had to slam the breaks hard when Cortana announced that they had reached the extraction point. Gina exhaled slowly and climbed out, standing next to the Spartan, gazing out at the orange horizon.
"She not going to make it." he hissed as the smoking pelican came soaring towards them. Two banshees followed it, their guns charged and shooting.
"I'm going down!" the pilot yelled. Static ruled the COM as the Pelican soared over their heads. Gina jumped back into the driver's seat.
"We're not going to make it either if we don't get out of here." she told them. MC jumped in the gunner's again and Cortana tried to contact Foehammer. At last she announced,
"She's gone." There was a short pause. "Calculating next best escape option."
Gina didn't wait for that option before slamming her foot into the accelerator as hard as she could. She hadn't known the pilot for long. But she sure as hell knew her better than she knew any of the other marines. Gina realized she would miss her cheery attitude over the COM.
"There's a long sword still parked in the hangar. We need to get there now if we expect to get off this thing." Cortana announced. Gina tried to press the accelerator harder.
So it was once again a race against time. A countdown in Gina's eyepiece counted down the seconds, all too fast for her liking. She swerved fast and never lightened up on the accelerator. After clearing a wide jump, she figured they were home free to the hangar. A few minutes later, she spotted the barrels.
The 'Hog was going too fast for Gina to slow it down enough. All she had time to do was yell "Jump!" before the run-away vehicle crashed into the fuel barrels. The already flaming barrels rocked with the impact and explosion, rocketing Gina out of her seat. MC had jumped out.
MC quickly searched the wreckage, finding the marine lying on her back on the hood of the car. She groaned when she saw him. Blood ran down out of her mouth and her other injuries were obviously serious. Her helmet had fallen off, leaving her shoulder-length blonde hair to be soaked in her blood.
"Chief…" she groaned. "Get out of here. While you still have time." The Spartan sat her up and looked her in the eye, although she couldn't tell through his visor.
"Private Gina Halsey you will accompany me off this ring."
The name rung in Gina's ears before she blacked out.
The Master Chief swung the unconscious soldier over his shoulder and took a mad dash for the Longsword. Flood, Covenant. They didn't matter at that moment to him. All he was concerned about was getting away from the ship and the ring.
He set Gina in the co-pilots seat and jumped into the pilot's chair. He shoved Cortana's chip into a data processor and simply said, "Punch it." The Longsword closed up and the engines booted up. The small craft quickly pulled away and out of the ring's atmosphere. Seconds later, Halo began to explode to pieces.
There was a long silence after the Chief shut down the engines. Cortana's image popped up in a display.
"Now." She folded her arms across her chest and nodded towards Gina. "What about her?"
muahahahaha… I leave you here, hanging from a cliff to wonder what in the world I'm doing…:) you shall see, you shall see. you just gotta wait awhile. .