Chapter 4: Étaient Cela Si Facile
The message was very plain.
Nho'ah Didact thought for a moment that he was crazy - absolutely crazy. But there it was. The white-clad man before him, face dark and smiling gently, was not an apparition, nor were the words he had spoken a mere jest.
"Who are you?" Didact asked, the question a gasp of soft wonder.
The dark-skinned man smiled again, sending chills up Didact's spine. "I am."
The Chief's macro binoculars showed a perfectly clear path to the Control Room. The snow that blanketed the plain hadn't even been disturbed. At his elbow, the Arbiter huffed softly, steam rising from his mouth cavity. "This is abnormal," the Sangheili growled. "Not even a Sentinel to make an appearance?"
The Chief shrugged, didn't respond. In his headset, Cortana muttered, "He's right. Keep your eyes up."
The two warriors quickly made their approach to the Control Room, the huge ziggurat towering over their heads like a pagan idol. They moved in tandem, working next to one another as if they'd trained together in their youth.
Suddenly, two yellow streaks blazed from out of nowhere and slammed into the snow. Smoke and steam exploded from the point of impact.
Cortana swore under her breath, then: "Incoming Flood pods!"
"By the gods…" the Arbiter breathed, staring in disbelief as a vast wave of the yellow pods followed the first two of their brethren. Dozens of explosions impacted all around the plain, scattering snow and sulfur as a vast army of Flood descended like invading demons.
The Arbiter and the Master Chief raced ahead, throwing snow behind them. They charged down into the plain, the Arbiter's sword screaming with energy scatter and the Chief's assault rifle barking angrily.
Perfectly clear path, the Chief thought sardonically as his legs churned at the snow. The Arbiter was keeping pace with him, the elite's huge hooves leaving broad impressions through the yellow-and-brown stained sludge that was leftover Flood remains. But all around them, airborne apocalypse rained down in waves.
The solid titanium of the Control's ramps clanged under their feet, and they kept up their hurried pace, fighting a running battle up the slope as hordes now pursued them from behind in addition to raining down upon their heads. The Chief couldn't help but remember a similar trip on Alpha Halo, fighting down the face of a structure crawling with Covenant.
The Arbiter rushed ahead into an annular of combat forms, using that same style of fighting that the Chief had observed in dozens of Elites - yet the Arbiter was by all appearances much better at it than most. An infected human fell to the Spartan's shotgun, ripped in half by the 8-gauge shells. The Chief stepped through the mess as the Arbiter finished off the last of his circle of foes, flourishing his blade and burying it in an infected brute's chest.
To their right, a short tunnel ran beneath the spine of the structure to the north face of the Control Room, where a final ramp would lead them to the central entrance. The Chief led the way, now moving at a brisk jog, checking his motion tracker for anything around the --
"Chief!" Cortana shouted. "SPNKr on your six!"
Shit. The Chief spun, whipping out his MA5B. At the mouth of the tunnel stood an ungainly human combat form, its vestigial tentacle wrapped around the trigger guard of a SPNKr ballistic surface-to-air rocket launcher. The assault rifle bucked back against the Spartan's grip as he fired, bullets guttering into the creature's chest. It staggered, fell to the ground with a wet plop.
"My thanks," the Arbiter said, nodding. The Chief nodded back -- felt the unmistakable punch of a brute mauler ripping into his shields. He turned, the thing was right in front of him about to blast his face to slag -- and it was falling in half, flesh sizzling from the energy sword that had buried itself in its chest.
The Spartan grunted, much to the Arbiter's amusement. The external speakers in John's helmet crackled: "That means 'thanks,'" Cortana explained, her sarcasm evident. The Chief smirked beneath his visor, jumped back to his feet.
The two companion warriors and the AI that accompanied them made their way to the entrance, still dogged by the Flood on all sides. The Spartan and the Sangheili made their final approach up the last ramp, coming to eye-level with the broad court that was the peak of the Control Room's outer spine. Five Sentinels were dueling a handful of combat forms; with the help of the Chief and the Arbiter, Halo's defenders were easily able to drive off their attackers.
The Master Chief stepped up to the doors as the Arbiter eliminated the last of their pursuers. Hailing TEAMCOM: "We're here, Johnson," he declared.
The sergeant's voice came back in his helmet: "Roger that. Now where's Tinkerbelle?"
The Monitor's irrepressibly bubbly voice came over the comm. with that same tooth-grinding effect that it had produced in John ever since Alpha Halo. "Greetings, Reclaimers. I remain ready to open the doors whenever you are prepared to complete protocol."
"Protocol…? What the hell…?" Johnson snarled. "Am I gonna have to take off my belt?"
"Ooh. He's pissed," Cortana muttered into John's helmet.
The Monitor seemed confused. "Why, you must surely know that I cannot open the Control Room's doors until all potential sources of outbreak have been eliminated."
The Arbiter stepped up beside Master Chief, looking exasperated. "Oracle, there is not a single Flood spore here. What potential source are we missing?"
Johnson answered for them: "Chief! Arbiter! I got one big mother of a pod inbound on your position!"
"What is it?" the Chief demanded, suddenly intense.
"Scanning…" Cortana replied. A moment passed as the Chief and the Arbiter searched the sky, and finally spotted a large black hulk far in the distance, plummeting through the air, headed right toward them.
"You'll like this one," the AI finally declared. "A Flood juggernaut."
"Aw, hell no!" Johnson growled. "Chief, I'm on my way - I'm bringing our last fire team, too."
"And a Galilean," the Spartan requested, and received a green light in his HUD as acknowledgement.
"A juggernaut?" the Arbiter queried softly as they watched the black shadow steadily draw closer.
"A class-7 combat form," the Monitor explained brightly. "The most formidable and rare variation of inferi redivivus, the Flood."
The Sangheili gave a silent look of confusion to the Master Chief, who merely shrugged. Cortana answered for him: "It's big, tough, and ugly."
"Smart, too," the Chief volunteered.
And with that, the vast black pod began to grow imminent, making a spinning descent to the far end of the platform. As the rotted husks of flesh fell away, a vast thing rose up from the ruins thereof, and the Arbiter got his first real look at the greatest abomination that any had ever laid eyes on.
It was easily twenty feet tall - much larger than a Hunter at full height. It had two long, multi-fingered, desiccating tentacles, the flesh literally dangling from exposed bone and muscle tissue. The huge, limp-necked head lolled in the center of its chest, which was a chitinous mass of constructed bones and whip-cord tendons haphazardly cobbled together over glabrous flesh.
"Chief…" Cortana began, worry creeping into her voice.
The Master Chief nodded as he slowly began to move to the right, trying to flank the thing. "I'll be careful, Cortana."
The AI could only choke out a soft, "Please."
The Arbiter had shifted to the left, carbine at the ready. The Sangheili glanced at his human ally, one short nod. A whisper into TEAMCOM: "How shall we attack the beast?"
The juggernaut decided for them.
It slowly began to lumber toward the Arbiter, raised one vastly oversized arm to kill. At the same instant, the Sentinels swooped in and began to attack from point-blank range. Cursing in his own tongue, the elite threw himself to the side, firing his carbine one-handed at the creature as its right arm thundered down onto the platform, smashing a dent in the place the Arbiter had been a moment before.
As the Sangheili scrambled away, the juggernaut batted at the Sentinels, knocking two out of the air. The other three took up residence behind it, burning away its flesh. By way of counter-attacking, a group of long, multi-fingers tentacles suddenly peeled away from the Flood-monster's back and crushed the attackers into slag.
The Master Chief exploded into action. Racing forward, he flipped his shotgun out over his shoulder, snagging it one handed and bringing both of his weapons to bear on the creature. His MA5B unloaded hundreds of hollow-point bullets at the juggernaut as his shotgun blazed away, each weapon tearing chunks out of the monster's flesh.
The juggernaut turned away from the Arbiter to get a good look at this fresh nuisance. As it turned, the Chief got close - close enough that he dropped his assault rifle, and threw himself at the creature in a suicidal leap that carried him to the level of the beast's hip, where he smashed one gauntlet deep into the juggernaut's abdomen.
"John!" Cortana screamed as the juggernaut viciously swiped at him, trying to beat the Spartan away.
Suddenly, a blue glow materialized from the hole in which the Master Chief had buried his fist. The Spartan drew himself up, pushed off of the thing's leg in one fluid motion, arcing his back and landing solidly on the platform, a full ten feet away.
A muffled thump rang out and a shower of congealed blood and pus sprayed from the juggernaut's abdomen as the plasma grenade exploded, knocking the thing flat on it back.
The Arbiter got to his feet and glanced over at the Chief. The Spartan sat up. "Is it dead?" he asked, out of breath.
"It'd sure as hell better be!" Johnson hollered over TEAMCOM. The sound of a fast-approaching Pelican began to echo in the canyon. "Watched the whole thing through OPSAT. If it lived through that..."
The Arbiter gave the Master Chief a hand up. "Well done," the Sangheili said. "One of my own kind could not have done better."
Inside John's helmet, Cortana was quiet.
"You still need us, Chief?" Johnson asked over TEAMCOM. "I don't --"
The Chief could not answer. He was pinned to the door of the Control Room, one huge tentacle slowly crushing him with an impossible, overbearing strength. The Arbiter swore, drew his sword and hacked away at the huge appendage.
The juggernaut was rising slowly to its feet, staggering, ungainly. The wound from the plasma grenade was still there, a huge, gaping hole that showed through on the other side, shaded by splintered bones.
The Arbiter's blade slashed clean through the juggernaut's tentacle, and the Master Chief fell to his knees, gasping with relief as his shields powered up again. But time for recovery was scarce; the juggernaut was on the attack again, now whipping at the Arbiter with what was left of the huge tentacle it had grown from its chest.
"How's it doing that?" came Johnson's frustrated voice as the Pelican whizzed over the canyon, traveling far too quickly to stop.
343 Guilty Spark broke in over the comm again. "Oh, one would be amazed at the regenerative and monogenerative capacity of a class-7!" the construct exclaimed excitedly. "This specimen seems to be of a particularly hardy breed… fascinating."
"Shut up!" Cortana snapped over comm. "Do something useful, like forwarding to me any files you've got on these things. Biological topography, read-outs, scans, whatever."
"As you wish, construct," came the Monitor's dutiful reply.
Dozens of smaller tentacles were now whipping out of the juggernaut's chest, slapping at the Arbiter and the Chief as the monster continued its mindless struggle to utterly destroy them.
And yet, the massive, hulking behemoth that represented the death of all sentient life in the galaxy, the Master Chief felt that this… thing… was familiar.
"Did you think me defeated?"
The loud, ear-drum punishing roar came from the desiccated throat of the juggernaut, harsh and consuming, fire and bloodshed, torment and… Cortana was screaming in his helmet, screaming in pain and fear. Sobbing, sobbing so hysterically that the Chief would not have been surprised to feel pure, wet crystal tears on his back.
That sobbing cut him as deeply as it had on High Charity, and he threw himself into action again. Arming an M9 grenade, he threw it as hard as he could - no arc - at the juggernaut. The flying explosive thudded into the creature's chest, exploded. The juggernaut stumbled, but the wounds it sustained only seemed to anger it. It attacked with new vigor, slamming the Arbiter into a pillar and trying to enfold the Spartan in its tentacles.
The tentacles wrapped tightly around the Master Chief's arms as he frantically pulled the trigger of his shotgun again and again, blasting chunks of flesh from his foe. Finally, the servomotors of the Mark VI unable to continue, the juggernaut triumphed, jerking the Master Chief aloft and hurling him against the doors.
His shields screamed in protest and failed. A blaring alarm began to scream and that infuriatingly calm voice informed him, "Multiple fractures detected."
The Spartan's back felt like it was on fire. "Shut that damn thing off," he growled under his breath. No response from Cortana. Gritting his teeth to suppress a groan, the Chief rolled over and tried to sit up, only able to watch as the Arbiter danced backwards, swiping at the juggernaut's tentacles with his sword.
Trying to jerk his stunned mind back into action, the Chief staggered upright, leaning against the door. He could vaguely feel her huddled in the corner of his lace, a shivering, terrified wreck. "Cortana?"
"…in my palace deep, Lyca lies asleep…" the AI mumbled softly, nonsensically.
For a moment, the Chief wondered, Why the hell is she quoting William Blake? Then, finally getting the pain in his injured back under control: "Cortana, I need you to listen to me."
No answer. The Arbiter was only going to last so long, and the Chief needed Cortana to make this work.
"Cortana, please. Listen to me."
"I have seen the most courageous soldiers fall away - in fear…" …intense, dark. Insane.
The Chief sighed, felt worry touch the back of his mind. What is happening to her? Then, a last, desperate ploy: "Cortana, I need you."
There was a moment of silence - then, finally: "…yes?"
"Can you hear me?" John asked, just to make sure she was tracking with him. In the distance, he noted Johnson's Pelican finally making its approach.
"I… I can hear you, John. What do you need?"
The Chief resisted a gasp of relief, kept his mind on the task at hand: "I'm hurt, and I need to know how bad."
At the mention of something that needed doing, Cortana seemed to go right back to normal. "Scanning… John! You've got four broken ribs. Where was I when this…?"
"We'll discuss it later," the Chief said, cutting her off. "I need you to get me patched up and give me a readout on the juggernaut's weaknesses. Spark sent you those files, right?"
In his mind's eye, John could almost see Cortana tucking stray hairs behind her ear, trying to straighten up as she returned to normal. "Yes… yes, he did. Let me pull those up…" As she spoke, John felt nanotube-laced biofoam injecting into his body and stitching his broken bones back together.
Johnson's gravelly voice suddenly roared out over TEAMCOM. "Chief, the partiers have arrived. Where's the beer?"
The Spartan resisted a wry chuckle as he scooped up his shotgun. The Arbiter was still playing cat-and-mouse with the juggernaut, keeping its limited attention firmly fixed on the Sangheili. "Right here. We've got it contained --"
He'd spoken too soon.
The juggernaut feinted to the left with one tentacle, then fetched the Arbiter a bone-cracking blow from the right, smashing the elite against a bulkhead. The Sangheili rebounded and hit the deck hard, sliding across the platform.
The Chief jerked into action as Cortana's data streamed across his visor. Guilty Spark had apparently taken the time to write up a detailed report complete with schematics, tactical readouts, and biological topography - that, or the anal-retentive Monitor had had the data on file already. For once, the Spartan breathed a quick prayer of gratitude for Spark's attention to detail.
Johnson's Pelican whipped around the north face of the Library and got close to the entry ramp. The rear hatch lowered and a mix of Elites and Marines spilled out of the blood tray.
A familiar voice made its presence known on TEAMCOM: "N'tho 'Sraom with Fireteam Epsilon, Arbiter! Orders?"
The Arbiter was in no position to be issuing orders. He was trying to pick himself up off the deck while the Master Chief blasted away at the juggernaut, trying to keep the monster away from his fallen ally.
Cortana, who seemed finally in control of herself once more, quickly interjected. "Glad to hear from you, Epsilon! Got any heavy ordinance?"
"One Galilean, like the Chief wanted," Johnson replied. "Orders delivered to perfection, or your money back."
As the Chief wrestled away another rotting appendage, he almost felt Cortana's curt nod. "Okay, keep your Pelican where it's at. Suppressive fire for now, Epsilon. The Chief's got an idea."
"How'd you know?" the Chief asked as he picked up the Arbiter's fallen energy sword and slashed two-handed at a particularly large tentacle. "Instinct," was Cortana short, wry reply.
"I am a timeless chorus!" the Gravemind suddenly shouted through the voice of the juggernaut. In his helmet, John both heard and felt Cortana's cry of pain. "Join your voices with mine, and sing victory everlasting!"
N'tho 'Sraom's voice roared out, so load that he didn't need TEAMCOM to be heard: "Fire at will! Slay the abomination!"
From the ramp, the guns of elites and humans exploded in a firestorm. Plasma mingled with hollow-tip and shredder round bullets, hailing down on the juggernaut. The Flood creature screamed, raised its tentacles to ward off the hot death.
Master Chief helped the Arbiter limp away as the juggernaut thrashed at the far end of the platform, immobile and harmless - for now. And as he did, he quickly laid out his plan to Cortana.
PFC James Randall let his spent shredder clip clatter to the ground and quickly popped in a new one. As he raised his MA5B to his shoulder, his buddy, Private Nico Welker, growled, "Damn mike foxtrot won't die!"
"Quit griping," Randall groused. "Just be glad it isn't snacking on you!"
On cue, the juggernaut suddenly jumped forward, a near impossible leap of almost thirty feet. At the sight of the huge monster descending on him, Randall, could only say one thing: "Oh, shit."
Welker hurled himself to one side, but was not spared a look at the juggernaut's huge left hoof smearing James Randall into a red puddle on the titanium. He could vaguely hear 'Sraom shouting orders to scatter over TEAMCOM, but he couldn't react, because the juggernaut's tentacle was buried in his stomach.
As his entrails slowly spooled out onto the ground, jerked out by the withdrawing tentacle, he wished Dad could have seen that Purple Heart he got back on Earth. He would have been proud - 'cause Dad was a Marine himself, way back in the day. Fought alongside Spartans, oh yes, back during the Rebellion. The 'good old days.' Oh well, he thought as he crumpled to the ground, mind slowly flitting into that place of detachment. Too late now.
N'tho 'Sroam swore mightily in the Sangheili tongue. The odd thought that his mother would not approve of that touched the back of his head, and he threw it off. Bringing his carbine to his shoulder, he unloaded what was left of the cell into the juggernaut's vast, unassailable form, and prayed to the gods that whatever the Demon was cooking up would start soon.
"Ready, Johnson?" Cortana queried.
"We're green here," the sergeant replied.
"Go, go, go!"
From the blood tray of the Pelican, a thick red laser scorched through the air and drove a fist sized hole right through what would have been the juggernaut's cranium. The beast screamed mightily, turned aside from its slaughter of Fireteam Epsilon.
A second beam blasted away what was left of the creature's dangling head, exposing pulsing flesh within the chest cavity. The remains of liquefied organs poured out onto the ground, smelling of sulfur and hot urine.
"She's open, Chief! Blow that thing to hell!"
"You sure about this?" Cortana asked him as the Chief checked the lateral line on the Arbiter's plasma sword. The Chief only nodded.
The juggernaut was reeling in agony, swiping at everything within reach. 'Sraom had pulled back what was left of Epsilon to the bottom of the ramp, out of range of the monster's tentacles. Thus, they got an excellent view when the Master Chief suddenly leaped from the platform above and came crashing down on the juggernaut's shoulders.
The treads on the Mk. VI boots gave John a solid footing atop the shrieking, angry juggernaut. The Spartan let his torso drop forward, using his free hand to get a grip in the thing's spongy flesh. The chest cavity that Johnson's Spartan laser had exposed was right in front of his face. "There!" Cortana called. "There ought to be an infection form somewhere in that sac!"
The Spartan raised his sword, prepared to plunge --
-- suddenly, he was in the grip of three tentacles, slamming repeatedly off of the titanium surface of the ramp. His shields flared once, twice, as his broken ribs burned with pain. Twisting, the Chief slashed himself free, went on the attack again, but was smashed back into the ground.
'Sroam saw an opening and fired once, twice, with his carbine at the gap in the juggernaut's chest, but the carbine rounds did not penetrate the thick, matter-caked tissue. He popped in a fresh cell to try again, but stopped, horrified, when the Chief was picked up, raised high above the juggernaut's head, like a trophy.
The Gravemind's voice rang out across the battlefield, flush with triumph: "I have beaten fleets of thousands! Consumed a galaxy of flesh, mind, and bone!"
Then, as the juggernaut began to pull the Chief in opposite directions, glorying in the death and the blood that caked that unnatural, foreign field: "And now, behold the death of your savior!"
"Were it so easy."
Suddenly, the juggernaut was staggering forward, dropping the Chief, flames shooting up its back as the Arbiter stepped forward from the upper platform, favoring his left side, but on his feet. In his hands, obviously taxing his waning strength, was a flamethrower, the tip still exuding a small tail of flame. His tired voice had a metallic ring over TEAMCOM: "Come, Master Chief! Finish this parasite!"
John was way ahead of the Sangheili. He was already leaping toward the juggernaut, almost running up the thing's huge chest, throwing himself forward, sword out, deep into the protective sac, the juggernaut falling back, throwing the Chief up the ramp --
With a thunderous crash, the juggernaut slammed to the ground for the last time.
Silence reigned for a moment.
Then, Cortana: "Tell me it's dead."
The Master Chief slowly sat up, feeling aches all throughout his body. "If it's not, then I…" -- cough -- "…quit."
A/N: Kudos to Sith Lord Darth Revan for picking up the LotR reference. But I'm slightly disappointed. No one picked up the Half-Life 2 references I've been tossing around. ;-)
Also, digital cash ($$$$) goes to whoever can guess where I headed with that opening little paragraph. Shouldn't be too hard to figure, so start answering quick. You want a virtual cappucino, don't you? ;-)