A War Renewed
Chapter 1:
The Stranger"But Chief this is SUICIDE!"
The one called Master Chief turned his head from the Pelican Pilot in the cockpit and looked over the compartment full of Spec Op marines all in black. The particular marine that had spoken was on his feet and with his helmet rested on his seat. The Chief sighed,
"Look marine, we have to find Cortana! If the Covenant or dear god, the Flood find her, then all of mankind is doomed!" he said to the marine somewhat angrily.
The marine nodded and sat down after he picked up his helmet. He put his helmet on without a fuss.
"Sir! We're almost there. Recommend that you take a seat. This might be a rough ride!" A woman's voice sounded over their communicators.
Master Chief shook his head and gripped one of the handles that hung from the ceiling of the compartment. Outside of the rather shaky pelican the High Charity came closer and closer, its massive size dwarfed the pelican like a speck as its shadow fell over it. The pelican began to shake and tremble as they entered the artificial atmosphere of the city. The pilot looked for an entrance and found a huge tear in the wall. She took her chance and flew the pelican into the hole, which led into a large series of ports and landing pads.
She slowed the pelican and began to descend towards one seemingly sturdy pad. The wheels of the pelican gently tapped the pad and were planted firmly onto its flat surface. She tapped her communicator once,
"Alright boys and girls it's time to move out!" She announced and the other end of the compartment began to creak as it slowly opened.
The door became a ramp and landed rather loudly onto the platform. The marines filed out of the pelican and gathered on another platform across a smaller path. The Chief did the same and joined the marines. He recognized this place. Far to the left was a crashed pelican from the Inamberclad and the ship itself was crashed into a tower a little ways further.
There was a loud creak and the very pad the pelican stood on shuddered from the weight. The Chief looked under the path that led to it and saw that the foundation of the pad was eaten away by some acidic material. He looked over at the pelican in a small panic,
"Marine! Get out of there!" He shouted her over the communicator.
The pilot hurriedly rushed down the ramp as there was another loud creak and the pad tilted dangerously towards the ruined covenant city streets below. The pelican slowly began to slide across the pad and fell off into a plunge downwards. The pilot yelped and grabbed at some sort of grounding, anything that could keep her on. There was nothing.
"Marine!" the Chief shouted and ran across the narrow path to the edge of the tilted pad. "Marine hand on!" He shouted and removed one hand from his BR55 battle rifle.
He got on his knees and leaned forward with his rifle extended forward,
"Grab on!" he said to her rather hurriedly.
Another loud creak sounded as the marine reached as far as she could, the barrel of the rifle just out of he reach.
"I can't reach it!" she shouted rather frightened as she slid back further towards the edge.
"Jessi!" He called out her name as he tried to reach further.
Another creak and a snap sounded her doom. The pad collapsed and fell, taking Jessi with it as she screamed and plummeted towards the streets below and created an echo that rang out.
"Damnit!" The Chief cursed and sat up.
Another marine came up behind him,
"Sir, we should probably move on." He said in an attempt to urge the Chief away from this place.
He nodded and stood up, his battle rifle clutched in both hands. He silently walked by the marine and walked over to one of the wrenched open doors. A heavy green fog covered the room and severed parts of the Gravemind's tentacles hung from the rafters and walls.
Large green and yellow blobs of pulsating flood parts extended from the walls and ceiling, but small, yet deep punctures had been made in them. The Chief turned towards the marines,
"Let's move! Stay close and keep your guard up." He ordered to the marines and moved into the room.
The room was rather long, not very wide and had openings at the bottom of the wall with small displays that flickered on and off. A large gray and purple wall rose up ten feet before the door and had a way to go around on both the left and right sides of itself. A single row of dead plants were set up onto each level of the floorings, for the room went down two ramps before reaching the second wall of purple and gray that led around to the next door.
All the while, the Chief and all eight marines glanced around the room as they went down the first ramp and towards the second. One marine suddenly yelped as she slipped and fell onto her back. The entire company whirled around to look at her; lights on their helmets illuminated her,
"I'm ok. I just slipped." She said and brought her hands up, which dripped with purple blood.
She looked at her hands and then to her left to see a dead brute with its head completely torn off and three lash marks across its chest and arms. The sudden site made her hurl on floor beside her, her face suddenly pale. She got onto her feet and held her assault rifle to her side, her left hand placed over her stomach. Master Chief walked over to her with his battle rifle to his side,
"You alright, Marie?" He asked her as he looked at her face.
She nodded,
"I'm…fine. Just a little shaken." She said as her blue eyes showed signs of temporary sickness.
"You look pale. Maybe you should lay down a while." He suggested and had her lay in one of the openings in the wall.
Private Marie proceeded to stare at the wall as her stomach began to settle again. The chief looked at the other seven marines,
"Take five. Koren, Jay, you two watch the doors and keep a lookout for floor or Covenant survivors." He ordered two of the marines. One, Koren, which stood at six feet tall, nodded and walked to the door they just came through. Another, who stood at five feet, eight, with no helmet and lightly tanned skin walked over to the door they had yet to enter. The chief turned his attention back to Marie as the five remaining marines began to chat amongst themselves on the opposite side of the room in front of a vacant opening.
"I warned you this place would be full of things like that. Some even worse." He said to her as he removed his helmet and set it on the ledge beside him.
She sighed, "I know John, but I wasn't about to let you guys have all the fun." She said with a weak smile.
John, as he was rarely called, had not chosen his team, nor did a superior. They were all volunteers. At the time of notification, they had not been informed they were going to the High Charity. Well, not all of them. Marie was one of the marines that the chief had befriended shortly after the war with the Covenant. He shrugged and turned to Jay whom stood at the door they had yet to go through,
"Jay! What does it look like in there?" He shouted with a calm tone.
Jay peered around the corner,
"Same as in here. Tentacles and big blobs everywhere." He announced to the chief.
John tilted his head to the right in confusion. Where was the flood? If the Covenant defeated them, then why did they abandon their flagship? This was getting confusing. Marie stood up and picked up her assault rifle,
"Ok, I'm ready Chief." She said to John who turned to her and nodded before he turned to the five marines that were chattering.
"Ok, Marines, let's move!" He announced and headed towards the door.
All except Jay, whom was already there, followed him to it. When they reached the door, it too had been wrenched open. Half the door collapsed in the hallway, and the other half was jammed into the wall. They followed through the door and down a narrow hall ramp that split into three directions at the bottom. John looked at each path and lifted his right hand, index and middle fingers extended up. Then pointed with these fingers to the two paths on either side.
The marines split into two groups and went to the doors on either side while John went to the one in front of him. He forced the door open and peered into the small room inside. It was a lift, but it was damaged too extensively so it would not activate now. He stepped back from the door and waited for his marines to report back.
"Sir! The left path is a dead end. We're on our way back." Marie's voice sounded over the communicator.
"This one's a dead end too." Jay's voice came next, "We're on our wa- HOLY SHIT LOOK OUT!" He interrupted himself as a loud crash was heard with the agonizing screams of marines mixed in.
The chief tapped his communicator, "Marines! Report! What the hell is going on?" He shouted over his communicator.
Silence.
He attempted contact once more, but failed. The sounds of footsteps coming from the left path told him Marie's group was almost back. She rounded the corner looking rather panicked,
"Chief what happened to Jay and the others?" She asked in a worried tone.
He shook his head, "I don't know. Come on let's go check on them." He said to her and ran down the right path, which had one or two small lights flickering on and off.
When they reached the next door they found the room that was similar to the first, had its roof caved in. He pushed a piece of rubble off the door and stepped inside. His foot suddenly slid forward, but he caught himself on a small ledge. He looked down with his flashlight to see a marine dead with a piece of a rafter impaled into his back.
"Search for survivors." He said to his marines as he stood up again.
He stepped around the corpse of the marine and came to the middle of the room. The other four marines went around the other side of the large block of purple and gray to see it would be almost impossible to get to the next door. The group shined their lights over the floor to see two more marines dead. One was crushed under a pile of metal and the third had smashed his face on his own gun barrel so it impaled his head.
"Ch-chief…help me…"
John flashed his light just beyond the carnage of the two marines to see Jay sitting with his back to the wall; his own gun lay to his side covered in blood. He hurriedly rushed around the wreckage and knelt down beside him,
"How injured are you?" he asked as he pulled a medpak from the pack on his back.
The marine had been clutching his side. When he removed his hand, blood began to pour from a large gash just below his ribs. It looked as if three of his ribs were broken and two more bruised. It also seemed he suffered of massive blood loss. There was no way they'd be able to get him to any medical facility anytime soon.
Jay must have realized it too because he pushed the medpak gently away from him,
"Don't waste it on me. Even with my wounds covered, there's no way I'd survive." He said in a calm, but pained tone.
John shook his head, "We're not leaving you here Jay. We ne-"
He was interrupted when the marine pulled what looked like a small coin on a chain from his left pocket and held it out to him,
"If you guys…get out of this…give this…to Lieutenant Mark Johnese…he'll…know what to do…with…it then…" He began to struggle in his words as his life slipped away.
His head suddenly fell forward and hung limply onto his body, his hand released the trinket and his arm fell limply to the ground as his lifeless body slid to the left and landed softly on its side. His head and helmet tapped the floor, his arms folded strangely over each other and his legs positioned awkwardly to one side.
The chief picked up the trinket and inspected it. On the coin, which was a worn quarter, on the head side was jay's initials: JT and the eagle side had the initials of his wife Amelia Tona. He sighed and put the coin in the pack on his back and turned to the marines behind him,
"Come on, we need to keep moving." He said with a calm tone, his expression hidden behind his visor and a firm grip on his battle rifle.
He looked at the ruined roof and noticed a pile of rubble had fallen into a semi-neat stack that led up to a hole in the roof.
"There. That's our way up." He told them and walked over to the pile.
He then began the hassle of climbing up to the top with his marines close behind him. After almost falling three times and about a half hour of struggled climbing they reached the top. He climbed up into what appeared to be the council chamber. A long room with five foot limps of purple and gray all in two straight rows that adorned the dark gray padding that was seven feet wide and stretched another twenty feet and stopped when it rose up about two feet higher than the ground, were on either side of the room with a large circular platform about three feet away from the small ramp and two gaps in the wall on either side and on the end of the room. Where the circular platform would have been, was a large gapping hole that had more Gravemind tentacles and appendages clinging to the sides. He and the marines climbed out of the hole onto the padded path that led to the smaller platform. It was then that he realized there was a brown cloaked figure and overlooked the gap in the floor.
"Who is that?" Marie asked him as she stood beside him.
The Chief shook his head,
"No idea, but stay here and don't let down your guard." He said and began a walk down the padded path.
The marines kept their hands on their guns and waited to see what this figure intended. As he got closer he could tell the figure had realized their presence.
"Who are you?" He asked as he came closer.
As if without warning, an electric sound of a sword being unsheathed was heard and a thing blue streak of energy appeared to the right of the figure. If the streak had not been so obvious he would have mistaken it for an energy sword. The figure whirled around and thrust his left arm forward. An invisible force suddenly blew John back. He landed seven feet back on the ground on his back with a groan. His battle rifle landed with a rattle on the ground by one of the smaller pillars.
The stranger began to step forward. The weapon in his hand gave off an electric hum and the source of it was revealed to be a semi long hilt of metal with many patterns and a button on it. The end the blade came from was smooth flat and seemed to have no way of creating such a weapon.
"Open fire!" Marie shouted as she and the other three marines took aim on it.
The figure instantly rose its left hand over its head and the bullets were deflected off into different directions. The chief looked to his right to see a dead elite and the hilt to an energy sword. He stood up and ran towards it as the marines opened up on the figure again.
The time, the figure used the blade of his sword to disintegrate the bullets. The chief grabbed the sword and turned it on. Luckily, it still had some energy left. His heads up display read sixty-seven percent left. He charged towards the figure and slashed at it as quickly as he could. It seemed to react as soon as he turned the sword on for he used his own blade to block the blade from striking his head. It jumped back as it spun around and stabbed towards the chief's leg, but he sidestepped to the figure's left and slashed down towards its left shoulder, but was blown back when the figure lifted its hand above its head. The marines had also been blown back and into the wall.
Two of them fell unconscious, but Marie remained awake. She groaned and watched the two go into a dual. The chief caught himself on one of the small pillars and charged it again. He slashed horizontally as he leapt at his opponent who leapt into the air and did a spin in the air, its blade struck against the top of the chief's helmet.
The chief growled angrily and threw it off, a rage apparent on his pale skin with a few freckles on his face, his short brown hair and brown eyes made obvious. When the figure turned to him it suddenly stopped. It stared at him for a moment before it turned off its weapon. The chief cocked his head and raised an eyebrow as the figure reached up to lower its hood. When the hood was lowered he could hardly believe his eyes.
It was an old man.
"I apologize for the attack. Your initial appearance gave me the impression you were intending to attack." The old man said with a crooked grin, the wrinkles on his aged face obvious.
He took his right hand and scratched the back of his head under his white hair and the shine of a semi baldhead was made obvious. The old timer used his blue eyes to look and inspect the face of John's female companion. He placed the hilt of his weapon on his belt. Under the brown cloak was a pair of tan colored pants and long loose-sleeved shirt with brown boots and a white shirt was obvious under all that as the top of it stuck out from under the tan shirt slightly.
"Even in my years of training, I still need to not be so rash." He seemed to be speaking to himself at the time.
"Who are you?" John asked in utter disbelief that an old man could pull off the stunts that guy exhibited earlier.
The old man's grin stretched a bit further,
"My name is Onallen Kinati."