Garrett suited up in the combat armor for infantry that was in the armory. The stuff was pretty bulky, but once it was activated, the armored panels became form fitting. He checked the rest of his gear. An XMC-90 Gauss rifle primarily used for sniping, a sub-machine cannon as a sidearm, ad vibro knife for close defense, and a few phase grenades that looked interesting. He also was carrying some pitch auto turrets to cover his back and provide some backup, plus a packed up mine replication system, which was permanent by the way because of being made by Ilana. He had picked up some unusual coms from a solar system named Togrus Prime. It was currently just a farming colony, with rich jungle areas and many rivers. There was also some interesting archeological digging happening there supervised by the UNSC and he intended to find out what. He knew he was rogue, and knew that they would kill him if they found out he was there, but what he also knew was few people knew that he could mask himself from detection.
Along with the equipment he brought to phase cloak himself and ignore IR, radar, motion sensing and molecular printing, he was also trained as an OSA, and Optional Sensory Agent, or Psionic. He was one of the lower class ones, not very capable in his abilities, and he didn't much train in those arts. He much more preferred the quick punch of a rifle than cryokinesis which you had to concentrate on to fire a shot off. Now that Auron had modified his body, he was on par with some of the best, and far ahead in ability, though he didn't have any training in the top tiers. Garrett dropped a relay beacon at his equipment stash he dropped earlier on the planet's surface, and he was getting ready to go too.
"So exactly what is in the complex below?" He asked both Auron and Ilana. "The complex is Zorago complex, a library for data print and file storage. It holds blue prints for military projects, and capable of making breakthroughs for researchers possible with the chaos computer inside" Auron said. "The, the digging team hasn't yet found the complex yet, but you might get a better chance, if you, find the entrance to the complex that is. I'll keep scanning the area, b-but I don't know how effective that will be. T-the complex was made with similar technology to this ship, you know" Ilana said next. "So, what, we like, find the place, download all the files, and then grab the super chaos computer thing and run?" Garrett asked. "That would be the most logical solution. I will activate the self destruct sequence once we have the items. You should also place teleportation markers on objects you believe should be moved as well. Ilana should be able to bring them up" Auron said. "T-that's right. Leave it to me. Good luck!" She said somewhat cheerfully. "Any tips on the tactics the troops down below are using at the moment Ilana? So I don't fall right in the middle of them." There was some silence. "I-I'm sorry, but I don't know much about full combat. I know aerospace combat, not ground. Please forgive me." He chuckled. "Don't worry about it. Auron should be able to help me on that field then, right?" He asked. "Roger. We should get moving" Auron confirmed.
Garrett stepped into the airlock opening, engaged the armor, and had the locking systems close and depressurize. The outside doors opened and space was right in front of him. The planet Togrus Prime turned in front of him, and he jumped out to meet it. After ten minutes of boosting towards the planet, the atmosphere started heat up around him. "Are you sure this is such a good idea?" He asked. "All sensor breaking systems are on full, with holo screen systems showing you as a falling meteor. Once through the atmosphere, you should engage the cloaking systems." He acknowledged, felt the rumbling of the atmosphere ripping by him, the shield on his left arm poised in front of him as a defensive gesture, just to be on the safe side. The twin flux multi phased shields and Heat dampers were holding with little trouble, and all systems were showing green.
He finally broke through the atmosphere with a formidable rocking of his body, with a triple pod drop chute popping from his back to slow him down, then disconnecting after ten seconds and melting to ash. His boosters kicked in, the cloaking device was activated, and the anti-grav systems engaged, to lower the chances of anyone seeing the slight energy signature from the invisible soldier from the sky. He landed with a dull thump, recoil compensated with his legs, and surveyed his surroundings. The valley nearby seemed to be mostly swamp with three rivers flowing through it, and two large jungle forests on opposite ends. Large mountain blocked off about a quarter of the valley from other places, but the rest was just small hills. He had landed on one the hills to the south, with the mountains to his right and north. The base camp for the UNSC was right in the middle of the valley, protected on one side by a dense forest and the behind them a river. Auron immediately place waypoint beacons at key openings he saw in the defensive perimeter of the camp, along with waypoints at escape points in red, a few evac points in green in case the mission had to be scrubbed and multiple possible entrances to the complex they were looking for in blue. Apparently, from monitoring the communications from the base, the complex hadn't even been found yet. Lady luck is on our side for the moment he thought. He moved up the mountains, having Auron scanning for the entrance areas to the complex while he checked patrol routes of warthogs and other marine squads. ECM interference was heavy, but easily broken through with the frames' equipment.
Garrett shot a grappling repel launcher to the top of a large cliff, not wanting his energy signature to go higher than was necessary, though Auron told him it wasn't needed. "Better to be on the safe side for now. I don't want to tip my hand just yet, not without getting what we came for." He thought about what he was doing. He was basically becoming an artifact scavenger, though for a better purpose than money. It was revenge. Revenge against the factions that wanted his him to assume room temperature on a metal slab for dissection. If he could gather all the artifacts in the Nexus and maybe even take over a base of operations, he might show that those bastards shouldn't have played around with him. If worst comes to worst, he could always destroy the stuff.
"I have found a viable opening" Auron said as a patrol group was 300 meters away and moving back to base. Garrett sat latched onto the mountain cliff, the frame off so that he could fit into small holes in the wall to check the blue waypoints for possible entrances. The gauss rifle was clicked in at a fair zoom, and watching the point man. He was still cloaked, though he was careful to stay still in case it did stop functioning. I don't know enough about this stuff to expect it to work all the time, even if Ilana and Auron say so. I was trained not to always rely on the gear given to me. He moved up the repelling rope, climbed the edge of the cliff and looked around. The vantage point was beautiful, overlooking the entire valley and the delta the three rivers connected into. Birds flew about and he could see a herd of some animals at the edge of the northern valley ridge. He turned, looked down the other side, and saw a small sponge opening in the ground. He could shimmy himself down and find out of the spot was indeed an entrance.
He unlatched the repelling equipment from himself, noting that the rope would catch on too many jagged rocks along the way. He climbed into the opening, and put his feet into the sponge holes on the side. Some of them were quite fragile, and broke under his weight. He regained balance as he kept a smaller repel attachment and gravity boots to hold on, with some grip gloves in case, though it certainly wasn't easy. He was suddenly called up by Ilana dust from up above fell on his goggled face. "Garrett? I think we might have a problem." He spit down, trying to get the dirt from his mouth and wiped away some of it from his goggles. "What sort of problem?" He looked up. "There is a number of UNSC capital ships moving into orbit. They seem to be sending down troop transports. I, I've scanned the ships and, well, their holding what you called Spartans." His eyes widened. The major was here probably. "How many ships?" He pushed his foot down on another hole, having it crumble under, and he regained his foot hold on the previous hole. "Um, well, there are over 20 Pelican transports, and four of them are carrying the Spartans. What should I do?"
Garrett stood there for a moment. "They can't detect us?" He asked. "No. They can't. B-but they might try and search the mountains your in. They have, they have climbing gear. Should I stop them?" She asked. "No. Don't do anything. Just get ready for the teleporting of whatever we find. Once we have what we grab, lets get the hell out of dodge. The Spartans can be delt with another day." He did mean that. He didn't hold anything against the major for turning him in, but he was kinda pissed off about the fact that he saw Garrett as a hot headed fool at that time. He knew what he was doing, and the major could have ignored it and let it go, as things didn't go badly at all. He nearly cost Garrett's life, and he now knew that Spartans were always upholding military rule. He had to be wary around them if he ever was allowed back.
He found a foothold below him, and continued down. He reached halfway, when the hold he had slipped as sand cascaded down from his hand holds and he fell. He dropped twenty feet, and with the cushioning in his armor, didn't hurt anything aside from a few bruises and cuts. "Yep, that was a fond memory relived" he said to himself, remembering how he got the battle frame in the first place. He rubbed his back, wincing as the sore muscles ached. No matter how much sleep he got, his back seemed to hurt. He didn't seem to realize it was because of all the hard work he had put in.
He clicked on the goggles flashlights and looked around. The area seemed to be an enclosed cave, with a fairly hard ground with lots of sand covering it. He looked behind him to find a few skeletons of small animals, probably falling in by misstep, and a door. He walked up to it and checked for any access panels. "Auron can you activate this thing?" He asked. "Negative. All power in area is offline. You will have to use the direct approach." He sighed, looked around for any symbols or manual override, then took his pack off. He pulled a C20 packet from the bag and was gonna rub it into the seam between the doors, but couldn't find it. "Molecular re-bonding… Ilana, is that bonding used on doors too?" He asked. "Um, yes, on fortified doors at least. Why?" He pulled three more packets from his bag. "Never mind. Don't worry." He placed the C20 on each corner of the door, moved back to a large boulder in the cave, pulled two stolen jackal shields out and placed them on each wrist, then activated the personal shield that was similar to the MJOLNIR Mark VI. He ducked and covered as best he could and hit the detonator. The explosion hit hard, rocking the boulder so hard he had to push against it to keep it from rolling. One of the jackal's shields went out, and the energy shield lowered to 30%, but other than that he was fine. He peeked up over the boulder to find the door still there. "Crap! How do I get through it? The explosives didn't make a dent!" He walked up to the door and placed a gloved hand lightly against the armor. It wasn't even warm, which normally happened. He sat down and pulled out a chocolate bar and munched on it. "If this thing ignores heat, resists explosives, and probably has no power working it, how the hell can I open it?" He asked himself. At that moment he had an idea. The plastique used in the C20 was volatile with citric acid, which there was plenty of in the Pepsi he brought along with his water. If he could thin the Pepsi out enough to keep it fizzy with the water, and use it on the C20, it would act as an acid against the door. Hopefully it would work before someone reaches the hole. Everyone and their mother had to hear or see the explosion rip from the opening up above him.
"Major, I'm detecting a small explosion in the mountains. I don't know if it was blasting from the techs or not, but we might want to check it out" Cortana said. The major turned and looked at the mountains, staring for anything that could have been visible. He motioned for three other Spartans, one of them Marie, to follow. At that moment, a navy captain walked up. "Where are you going? We need help with unpacking the pelicans." The major turned around. "The was and explosion detected in the mountains. We were going to check it out." The captain looked up at the big cliffs in the distance. "Naw, probably core samples were being taken by the record crew. They are coming down from there." The major shrugged, and the captain called up the recon team. "Was that you guys blowing the crap out of the mountain side?" He asked. "Yes sir, we did detonate some explosive. Pretty big blast if you ask me. I guess it's the hollow sponge like rock that echoes it. Sorry to scare you navy scanks." The captain grumbled something about civilian recon crews, and turned back to the pelican. The Major followed, and the other three Spartans helped move new equipment out. "We'll check it out once we finish setting up the new equipment for the science staff."
Garrett poured the watered down pepsi on the hotdog sized pieces of C20 he slapped onto the door in a square shape, connecting each part to allow a small hole for him to climb through. The C20 bubbled away, melting into the armor. The problem was, he used almost all of the remaining packets he had. He only had two left, and he might need them for getting through other doors. He finally burned his way through the opening after an hour, and waited another twenty minutes until the opening could be moved through. He squeezed his way through enough so that he could turn around and grab his gear, and then slid it through after him. He turned around to see something scuttle on along the ground and disappear around the corner. A squeaking sound followed. "I hate rats" he whispered. He walked forward through the hallway to find two more doors at a T-intersection. Both were non-operable. He looked around for any place he could squeeze through a break in the door. He saw a flat grate like object in the wall high above. Garrett thought it could be a ventilation system. "Auron, can you give me a map layout through by goggles?" He asked. A map layout appeared as a HUD display, showing where he was in the complex. "Alright. This is a ventilation system. And it leads to the power stations! Even better." He grabbed the grate and tried to move it, but it wouldn't budge. He hit it a couple of times with the butt of his rifle, but no effect. He pulled out a small laser torch, not very powerful in terms of cutting through bulkhead doors, but strong enough to cut thin metal. He spent another ten minutes cutting away the grate, and moved through, towards the power stations.
He kicked at another grate, this one old and bent out a bit on one corner, and it eventually broke away. He moved out and fell on the other side, already expecting it as he rolled. He turned to his left to find a long ramp leading to a large terminal and power system, with a large core in the middle. He walked up to it, found the control panels, and placed a nifty power gizmo on the panel given by Ilana. The panels woke up with a greenish glow, and he activated the power grid. The lights flickered to life, and the core in front of him started to hum to life. "Alright. Now we're in business." Garrett walked to a bulkhead door, and the blockade metal opened for him. He moved from room to room, inspecting things, mostly junk that couldn't be used or things he could easily identify, so that would mean the camp wouldn't care about it. He came to an armory, with weapons and armor in carriages as well as vehicles. The place was huge, and definitely required a transport beacon. He placed it in the middle, the little thing blinked to life, scanned everything in the room, and the items disappeared soon after. He picked it up, and moved to the next room.
"Holy shit." He walked into a semi-dark room, completely covered in cryo tubes… or what he thought were cryo tubes. Humanoid beings were inside most of them, a few empty. "Where are we?" Garrett asked. "Genesis room, experimental archive of alien species." Garrett whistled, walking down a row of pods, looking into each one of them. He saw a human woman, with brown hair and pink skin, and then he saw next to her an African American man that wasn't very tall. He continued down the line, seeing a grunt, a marine, an elite, some tentacle alien he didn't know the name of, and multiple other beings. "All species in the room have no life signs. They are dead. We are fortunate to have reached the area before cleaning." Garrett paused for a moment. "What do you mean cleaning?" His answer came quickly with the bodies in the pods starting to dissolve as nanites crawled along the bodies and disassembled the molecules. "Holy crap!" He yelled, backing away from the pods. "Do not worry. None of the pods are open or damaged. There is one, however, that does not belong."