SILVER SEA - TRANSPORT DESIGNATE LHIKAN II
ON APPROACH TO METRU NUI
Toa Vakama stood near the prow of the hastily-rigged amphibious Vahki transport as it paddled over the surface of the protodermis sea, making the best speed available to it for terrain that the vehicle itself was never truly built to operate in. Unfortunately, Lhikan II wasn't proceeding nearly fast enough.
A massive tempest had brewed up without warning along the western coast of their island-city, its outer edges slamming the coastline with heavy winds and high waves. And now it was bearing directly down on them.
The Toa had done all they could to speed up their arrival. Using his elemental control of ice, Nuju had frozen the sea directly beneath their makeshift vessel, giving it a proper prow and keel as befitting a watercraft. Nokama had used her control over the element of water to grant the transport a beneficial current. Matau had called upon the wind to push the transport closer to shore. It still wasn't enough.
Matau had suggested to turn back, an option that he had thoroughly rebuked. Every second that they wasted was another second that something might happen to the Matoran, imprisoned beneath the Coliseum in stasis capsules. The incredible bioquake that hit the city could have severely weakened the megastructure's foundations, or it could have opened holes in the underground storage halls connecting them to adjacent potentially-damaged Archive tunnels, or into the nearby sea, thus allowing dangerous Rahi inside. Or something else could have happened in their absence.
Nuju had used the telescopic sight on his Kanohi - an attachment that Vakama himself had forged, back when the two were both Matoran and virtually unknowing of each other's identity - to scout the city for any potential surprises. And the Toa of Ice had undoubtedly found some.
For one, there was a disturbing number of Rahi on the loose in Le-Metru. Rahi and Rahkshi. The presence of the latter on the surface, especially in large numbers, deeply concerned the team. If the Rahkshi had moved out of the Archives in force, then the Vahki were either busy with other threats, had been shut down... or had been subverted entirely to Makuta's control. And if the Vahki had been shut down... then what would keep the Matoran safe from further harm until they got to the Coliseum?
The other troubling issue was the appearance of a vaguely pyramidical structure in Le-Metru, a structure large enough to reach above the district's skyline - or whatever the Toa of Ice could see of its skyline. Most of the view of the district from the sea was obscured by fog and... something else... but the mysterious structure stuck out above whatever was obstructing their view. It also was most definitely not there when they had left the island-city before.
A third complication was the flash of sapphire light in the far-off distance during the previous day. The skies were clear back then, but the permanent half-darkness of the colossal space that housed the island-city and its surrounding ocean had allowed them to notice it, at least more-so than if both suns had been visible.
A wave crashed over the starboard side of the transport, forcing Vakama to hold on to the railing, lest the leader of the Toa Metru lose his balance and fall. Nuju, Onewa, and Whenua were already below, lessening the chances that any of them might be swept away if a larger wave were to strike their vessel.
Before long, the storm had struck them, colossal waves rising up all around the Lhikan II. Every time that they failed to cross over one before it crested, or that it would crush their comparatively tiny vessel, or that it would propel them far away from their intended destination, the wave subsided before it broke, thanks to Nokama's intervention. But the Toa of Water was tiring rapidly, and the storm simply had more raw power than all of the Toa combined. Lightning lanced down all around them, but so far they had been lucky to avoid any direct strikes. That luck would soon run out, and then...
The craft suddenly vibrated as a low rumble echoed through the water beneath them. Nokama and Vakama both froze, glancing at each other, before all Karzahni broke loose.
Four substantial tentacles burst from the surface of the storm-torn ocean, two instantly coiling around the transport. The third slapped from side to side, probing for an entrance into the cabin, while the fourth augured directly for the driver's compartment. The Toa of Fire launched a fireball at the fourth appendage, striking it full-on but doing very little damage. Matau slashed at it with one of his aero-slicers, severing the tip of the tentacle and forcing the Rahi to swiftly retract its injured limb.
Nokama drew both her hydro-blades and set to cutting apart the tentacles wrapped around their hull,. With a spray of fluids, both appendages came free and were promptly pulled back beneath the surface. The third tentacle followed suit, its end now covered in a thick sheet of ice.
Onewa was the first out on deck, shouting to be heard over the gale-force winds. "What in Karzahni was that?"
Before either Nokama or Vakama could formulate a response to the now irate Toa of Stone, an answer was given to them. Half of the body of a tentacled whale-esque creature burst from the surface of the ocean, trapped in the jaws of a humongous serpentine monstrosity. A very familiar monstrosity.
The Toa of Stone cursed, instinctively crouching low on the deck as the creature swallowed the remainder of the first Rahi before turning its attention to the transport beneath it. It roared before diving back into the ocean, the resulting surge of water nearly capsizing them. Its passage was visible, moving away from the transport and into the depths once more.
"AS FAST AS YOU CAN, MATAU!" the self-declared leader of the Toa Metru bellowed, striding forward to the driver compartment and violently pointing at the Le-Metru coastline in the near-distance. Whatever Matau would have said in reply was forever lost when lightning struck within mere inches of the vessel's structure, blowing apart one of the Karzahni plant-creature's remains and tilting the transport to port. The Toa of Air began to compensate for the uneven buoyancy, keeping the Lhikan II more-or-less pointed in the direction they needed to go.
Outside of uncountable close brushes with certain doom brought on by colossal waves, nothing else barred their passage for the next ten minutes. The coastline drew closer and closer, the storm seemed to be weakening, and no tentacles had coiled around their makeshift watercraft. And then Matau uttered the fateful words.
"I THINK-HOPE WE'RE GOING TO SAFE-MAKE IT!"
Four occurrences happened at once. A second blue flash lit up the sky to their north-northeast, in much the same manner as the first. A gigantic wave rose up on their port side, large enough to both end all hopes of evading it or surviving the event in which it would break over them. A dull roar echoed through the water and vibrated the repurposed Vahki transport. And a set of very sizable jaws, attached to a body that boiled the water around it, burst out of the sea and vectored towards the doomed vessel.
The oncoming wave exploded. Something emerged from it, something half a kio wide, its surface texture glimmering in the light of the storm. The shape slammed into the Rahi, completely halting its forward momentum and shoving it back in the direction it had emerged from, with the creature subsequently plunging back into the depths. The new Rahi immediately pursued, its frontal section submerging, but then jolting around as something humongous collided with it. The sea turned into froth as three massive serpents, near-identical to the creature that had devoured the whale from earlier, coiled themselves around the mysterious behemoth. In response, the creature began to hum.
The Lhikan II surged past the brawling titans, continuing to close the distance to the shoreline. Everybody on board was keen on getting out of the water before anything else happened. The hum built to a crescendo, vibrations resonating through the transport's hull and forcing the Toa on deck to wrap their hands around their heads in an effort to drown out the noise.
Nigh-on exactly thirteen kios away from the shore, almost directly even with the monstrous battle to starboard, disaster struck. Yet another serpent burst from the surface of the Silver Sea, soaring on a parabolic arc above the repurposed Vahki transport, its terminus point quite potentially being the center of the titanic slugging match between apparant superpredators. The creature was nearly completely out of the water when the unknown Rahi retaliated, a beam of blinding, incandescent energy blazing forth from its center mass and subliminating the fourth serpent's head and upper body. The rest of the aquatic serpentine Rahi simply dropped from the sky like a puppet with its strings severed, its massive bulk slamming into the transport and driving it deep beneath the waves.
Sections of the Lhikan II's hull soon bobbed to the surface, accompanied by fragments of Karzahni trunks, but there was no sign of the doomed vessel's former crew.
UNKNOWN ISLAND-CITY LANDMASS - DESERT REFUGIA
ALPHA BASE
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUB-MODULE #2
Aeona was applying the finishing touches on the second iteration of HOPLITE armor - incorporating various Forerunner Lifeworker technologies gleaned from Director of Vengeance's database after Module Three had been realigned - when the synthetic intelligence's concentration was utterly shattered by an incoming priority message screaming over the quantum 'tightbeam' communication channels that linked each Module to the other by standard.
PRIORALRT: UNKNOWN LIFE FORMS DETECTED INBOUND TO ISLAND CITY
PRIORALRT: UNKNOWN LIFE FORMS ARE APPROACHING BY WATERCRAFT
PRIORALRT: UNKNOWN LIFE FORMS HAVE WRECKED APPROX. SEVENTEEN POINT EIGHT ONE KILOMETERS FROM SOUTHERN SHORELINE OF URBAN REFUGIA
PRIORALRT: UNKNOWN LIFE FORMS HAVE MADE LANDFALL ON SOUTHERN SHORELINE OF URBAN REFUGIA
PRIORALRT: LIKELIHOOD OF CAPTURE OF UNKNOWN LIFEFORMS BY LOCAL ARACHNID APEX SUPERPREDATOR SPE-
The message abruptly terminated after the sixth line. Once again, its origin point was signed off as Module Four. Aeona frowned, quickly tightbeaming a priority message of her own to Module Three's subordinate intelligence, directing it to investigate Module Four's landing site in greater detail. It would be an excellent test for the general utility capabilities of the new aquatic Sentinel variant she had spun up even before Module Three had been realigned.
With that done, the synthetic intelligence patched into the theater-wide priority communication channel to inform the biological UNSC personnel of this new turn of events.
UNKNOWN ISLAND-CITY LANDMASS - CANAL REFUGIA
D79S-TC PELICAN - GOLF-33
AVERAGE THIRTY-EIGHT KILOMETERS ABOVE SEA LEVEL
Spartan Clarke stared out of the Pelican's open rear hatch, gazing upon the fog-shrouded cityscape below. It was a profoundly disturbing sight, the way that the green mist seemed to suffocate the structures below, reminiscent of the footage from Installation 05 and Voi.
Their situation was considerably different, of course. There was no biosphere-devouring parasite lurking below in the city or under it. Still, it didn't stop his mind from wandering, at times swapping the foreign architecture for that of a more familiar origin and thinking about what could have been, had certain events not occurred.
So engrossed was the Spartan in his thoughts that he heard none of the conversation going on around him until his helmet was abruptly slammed back over his head. His surprised yell went unheard as the component booted back up.
"Quick-note version," Aeona hummed once Fireteam Apex's leader had reconnected to THEAT-TACCOM, "New aliens, possibly native species, numbering six in total. Unknown appearance, but definitely not Covenant. They made landfall on the southern coastline around an hour ago and proceeded into the urban refugia."
"Well, if they went in there, they're dead," Lieutenant Sherman declared. "We dropped an entire section of ship in there with active Sentinel guards and it got taken over within an hour."
"While it is most important to secure a foothold within the industrial refugia during our temporary reprieve in this sector," Aeona stated in response, "time is fleeting if we are to do anything with this new window of opportunity. The apex predator species is gathered on the edge of the conflagaration zone in the industrial district, and the flames will diminish enough for them to make their resurgence in the territory within the next two minutes. However, they can just as easily shift to the south and flow into the urban refugia in response to any incursion there."
"So we split our forces. Again," Clarke said. "I'll do a touch-and-go deployment on Module Five, realign it, then wait for pickup from our Longsword. Apex Four, you continue on with the Pelican and run observation. Don't interfere unless absolutely necessary. We don't know who these new aliens are, or how they might react to us."
The aforementioned Spartan acknowledged the order with a nod before striding to the Pelican's internal armory and drawing out a SRS99-S5 antimateriel rifle. Clarke then directed his attention to the Marine and Trooper in the aircraft's cargo bay. "Specialist Chez, PFC Delve, stay with the Pelican. If the aliens turn out to be hostile, you know what to do. And if they aren't... well, we'll need-."
"Descending to disembarkation point on Module Five now," Aeona interrupted as the Pelican tilted forward. "A note of warning. Module Six is currently protected by a Forerunner defensive measure designated as a... the appropriate translation would be akin to "baffler". The... baffler field is highly dangerous to anything that enters it, as local geometry within the field's area of effect no longer intersects properly. The controls to deactivate the field appear to be within Module Five, though I am currently unaware as to their precise location. With the current situation, it would be strategically acceptable to leave the field engaged while we conduct retrieval operations in the urban refugia."
"Copy that."
The Pelican glided to a stop, the view from the rear hatch shifting from the scorched-bare rooftop-level cityscape to that of a half-open semi-large Forerunner doorway.
Clarke turned to face the hatch, equipped his M395 DMR, and strode out of the transport aircraft.
The moment he climbed through the threshold into the module, the Pelican took off again.
METRU NUI - COLISEUM
FIRST TIER OBSERVATION BALCONY
Roodaka, viceroy of the Visorak horde, observed the island-city from the balcony of its most imposing landmark. To the south was her quarry - six Toa, unaware of the danger they had stepped into, so full of confidence that they were blinded to their fragility. If Sidorak knew about their presence, he would have taken the field himself against them; even if only in the hope to regain some measure of glory after his recent defeats. However, Sidorak displayed only brute force in battle, and the potential loss of even a single Toa before she could extract their elemental powers would doom her plan before it could reach fruition.
In that manner, the invaders had become a problem. They had quickly expanded their territory over most of Po-Metru, and were even now conducting the same territorial expansion in Ga-Metru. It was fortunate that the invader tower in Le-Metru had fallen as quickly as it did, for her plans would be stillborn had the district in question been contested.
The viceroy turned her gaze upon Ta-Metru to the east. The firestorm that had ravaged the district had burned down to sparse patches of flickering light in the encompassing darkness. Somewhere within that darkness, Sidorak was leading the Horde to victory - or defeat. Whatever the outcome, it made little difference, as long as the Toa were captured. Preferably alive.
Continuing along the balcony until she arrived on the opposite side of the Coliseum, Roodaka contemplated the shimmering lights in the distance. The Venom Flyers she had sent out to sea to observe the temporarily lost sections of Metru Nui had reported that the invaders were repairing the damage inflicted on the city from the bioquake, reactivating local power grids and reconstructing buildings along the shoreline of Ga-Metru.
It meant little in the end, of course. Once Makuta was free of his protodermic prison, the city would fall back under their complete control. Perhaps the invaders might then be granted a merciful death... or, given their industrious nature and meddling in the Makuta's plan, perhaps not.
UNKNOWN ISLAND-CITY LANDMASS - URBAN REFUGIA
D79S-TC PELICAN - GOLF-33
ONE KILOMETER ABOVE AVERAGE ROOFTOP - HOLDING POSITION
"Hey, Delve."
"What?"
"What do you suppose they're talking about?" the Army Specialist motioned to the screen displaying six armored biomechanical beings clustered around the wreckage of a robot near-identical to the buried unit that the person sitting next to him had tripped over back in Arrival Canyon.
The feed was being broadcast from a floating ONI camera probe hovering near the ceiling of the structure in which the aliens had entered. As Specialist Chez watched, one of the beings - the brown-armored one - tore a receptacle straight out of the wall and set it down for the rest to examine. "...Note for later; don't fight them hand-to-hand."
"Sounds like electronic gibberish to me, Chez," the Marine PFC replied, barely taking a glance at the screen, his focus instead on his new weapon. The Marines and Troopers had been informed that their ordinary service weapons were of little effectiveness against the average biomech animal in the city. Fortunately, the ONI bird had been carrying some weapons of its own, including two forty-mike-mike guided micromissile launchers and six reload cylinders for the same weapon. The UNSC intelligence piloting the Pelican had already downloaded the 'Hydra' specifications and blueprints, and was busy producing more optimized ammunition - as well as an underbarrel version for the new service rifle that was in the design phase - but their small fireteam on the Pelican was very much on their own for now.
"I didn't ask 'hey, do you understand what they're saying', I asked..." Wilfrom trailed off before shrugging. "Never mind."
"Inbound contacts," Aeona declared as the Pelican shifted to port. "Local robotic purification and sanitation models, six in total, closing in from the southeast and southwest. Also detecting three individuals of the arachnid apex predator species moving into an overwatch position at this location. Likelyhood of overall detection by local groups at 11%."
"Intelligence," the Spartan intoned over the Pelican's internal communication line as the fireteam's HUDs blinked with the updated tactical information. "Shift sixteen meters to the east."
The Pelican conducted the maneuver for the requested distance, then stabilized itself while maintaining its altitude. By the time the airframe had finished its adjustments, the sanitation bots had engaged the six bipedal humanoid biomechs, who subsequently fled to the monumental structure next to the potential former maintenance post for the attacking constructs, entering it through a crack in the building's wall.
The six sanitation bots closed in on the ingress point, only for a seventh slightly-different model to emerge from the hole. Ten seconds passed by before Aeona let out a surprised whistle.
"I do not fully understand how it's doing so, but I'm detecting two overlapping signatures coming from the black-armored sanitation construct. One is obvious, but the other partially matches that of one of the unknown life-forms. It is not just a simple hardlight covering, but something much more intricate. An impressive disguise, to be sure, and one that very much merits further investigation... if we ever have the ability to do so, that is."
Something obviously tipped the robots below off, however, as all six legitimate purification bots promptly raised their weapons and pointed them in the direction of the ersatz construct. Energy levels began to increase, the devices building up enough energy to destroy their target.
A second passed. Two seconds. Abruptly, the silence was shattered with a crack. Two seconds later, one of the sanitization bots' elongated heads split open, circuitry and wires taking flight as the 14.5x114mm APFSDS round found its mark. The construct's optics flashed thrice before going dark forever, and the robot slumped to the ground as its servos ceased to function.
Five pairs of optics swiveled to stare in their direction, only to be immediately cut down to four-and-a-half as a significant portion of a second construct's 'face' was forcibly removed from the rest of its head.
The camouflaged alien quickly retreated inside the structure as the other units turned their weapons in the direction of the Pelican and began to fire. Aeona immediately reduced engine power, severely reducing the D79S' altitude before tilting hard-left and re-energizing the thrusters, swinging the ONI bird around and swiftly repositioning the airframe on the other side of the colossal structure.
Halfway through the maneuver, misfortune struck. PFC Gerald Delve - still partially unfamilar with the HOPLITE MKI armor he had been given - had evidently forgotten to magnetize his armor to the Pelican.
The first evasive maneuver had dislodged him from his seat. The following turn had almost pitched him from it. And the rapid acceleration pulled him right out of the Pelican, the unfortunate Marine flying past the Spartan sharpshooter and out over the city.
UNKNOWN ISLAND-CITY LANDMASS - INDUSTRIAL REFUGIA
MODULE ECHO/FIVE
APPROACHING COMMAND DECK
Spartan Clarke breathed a sigh of relief as he closed in on the security door that led directly into the control chamber. He had entered on the ground level and had been forced to participate in a series of considerably strenuous obstacle courses that increased in difficulty as the soldier had traveled upwards, made worse by the ever-increasing artificial gravity of the higher levels.
Luckily, whatever sub-command intelligence that was in charge here hadn't tried to outright kill him. Yet. Every now and again he caught a glimpse of the construct as it flickered around, offering what some might have considered supportive phrases before dashing off.
The Module Two subcommander was a repurposed gambling AI stolen off of an UNSC officer's TACPAD. Module Three's subcommander had come out of a library. And Module Five had evidentally been a fitness instructor in its previous profession.
At least this was the last door before the command deck, if the schematics on his HUD were to be taken as reliable. 'Reach the command station, realign the module, then... rest until the Longsword comes around to pick me up.' Simple.
Standing in front of the door, the Spartan used his interface device to open it, not even the slightest bit tempted to humor the asshole intelligence by attempting to solve the puzzle put before him. SIV-311 smirked as the puzzle crackled away and the heavy doors slid open, the standard command deck layout greeting him as he entered. Striding to the control node, he pulled up the relevant menu on the interface device and began the activation trapezoidal columns began to tilt, as was usual. The decorative lighting started to flow down their respective segments, faint wisps of energy emanating from the bases of each section and consolidating in the center. All standard fare.
What wasn't standard fare was the set of active consoles on the other end of the chamber, now visible after the segment blocking his view had angled itself out of his line of sight. That explained where the baffler field controls were.
Thirty seconds later, the node had activated, the protective physical shielding had deployed, and the module was realigned to the greater network. Aeona's voice abruptly sounded over his helmet's comms, urgency readily apparent in her tone.
"-ted all attention to urban refugia. The enemy has pivoted its theater-wide attention to the urban refugia. SIV-322 is on the ground conducting rescue and retrieval mission."
"Wait, what? Aeona, repeat your last?"
"Private First Class Gerald Delve took insufficient precautions and was ejected from D97S Golf-33 while the aircraft was conducting emergency maneuvers to avoid being shot down. The PFC's thruster pack slowed the fall to within survivable metrics, but he was still injured upon contact with the ground. The enemy has arrived in force in the surrounding area, and performing an aerial extraction in the immediate vicinity is now impossible without heavy loss of life and available assets."
"You mentioned that Martinez-"
"SPARTAN-IV-322 performed an aerial insertion after enemy forces began a strategic shift in the direction of the unknown alien party. Both UNSC personnel on the ground in the zone of activity have taken cover in a structure to the southeast of UR/LS3," the synthetic intelligence explained as Apex LEAD sprinted out of the control node chamber and down a passageway. "The enemy has not yet discovered their presence in the zone, and have as of now, not attempted to enter any structure in the area. They seem content with trapping the unknown aliens within UR/LS3, and have not yet attempted entry themselves."
"Aeona, mark navpoints for roof access and get our Longsword in the air, ASAP. Tell them to load incendiary ordnance if they have any. Get the Broadswords to poke the enemy from the rear, see if we can pull attention back to us. Can we count on any Sentinel support?"
"Not enough to matter. Our Sentinels are spread thin as is. I have prioritized rapid expansion-"
"We'll have to make do with what we got, then," Clarke huffed, entering the marked gravity lift and keying his armor's jetpack attachment to gain altitude quicker. "Current battle plan?"
"Observe the behavior of the enemy. SPARTAN-IV-322 and PFC Gerald Delve have not yet been detected by the enemy despite their substantial numerical presence in the vicinity, and this is unlikely to change unless the enemy begins to search nearby structures. Forcing a confrontation with our current force carries a high risk of personnel and unit loss. We have the opportunity to move assets to the zone of activity in the urban refugia, which is being done. Bravo Zebra has been embarked on AV-14s and will be overhead in approximately six minutes. This module's closest extraction pad has been marked as their LZ. Be there in five or wait for Delta-11 to finish maintenance."
METRU NUI - KO-METRU
RESISTANCE COMPOUND
"A Toa team? You are certain of this?"
"Mirek was, and I trusted his word."
"Where is Mirek now?"
"He was... taken on our way back to deliver this report. One of the Visorak's monsters caught him, and his screams... they still haunt all of us."
"We've lost contact with our brothers in Ta-Metru. Their last message detailed a plan to make contact with the swarmers. They are either no longer able to report on the outcome, or the Visorak have intercepted their couriers. Both possibilities are... troublesome. Sarna, too, has not yet reported back from her reconnaissance mission in Po-Metru. And the Rahaga seem more concerned with saving Rahi than with helping our campaign. If what Mirek saw was true... then the Toa are our only hope of salvation. And if we fail to save them... then at least we will go down fighting together."