A/N: I hated writing this chapter. I wasn't looking forward to it when I outlined this story, but now it's over. No promises as it to its quality. ;-)
Digital cash goes to all who guessed the white-clad man of the previous chapter as Morgan Freeman as 'God.' However, the grand prize (digital cash commingled with High Praise) goes to the lucky winner who nailed the fact that Nho'ah Didact is the Didact of the Terminals from Halo 3 -- my compadre MizzStarlight.
Now. Enjoy - or pan - as you see fit.
Chapter 5: Le Pire d'Homme
Johnson somehow managed to look perfectly comfortable as he stood before the yet-closed doors of the Control Room, even with the huge weight that was the Spartan Laser pressing down on his shoulder.
"Do I have any volunteers?" the sergeant major was hollering. Across from him, the four survivors of Fireteam Epsilon were standing at attention, elites included.
The Master Chief watched as the two Sangheili stepped forward without hesitation. N'tho 'Sraom spoke for them both: "We will be honored to hold these doors, my lord."
The corners of Johnson's mouth twitched upward at that. He was about to say something sarcastic, when the two Marines stepped forward, pale with fear, but firm nonetheless. Corporal Allen MacInnis stood ramrod straight next to 'Sraom, saluted, and said loudly, "Sergeant Johnson, sir! If the split-lips can do it, so can we!"
"Damn right, you can," Johnson rumbled. Then, chomping down on his unlit cigar, he turned to the Chief and the Arbiter. "Ready whenever you are," he said. The Chief replied with nothing more than a curt nod.
"Open the door, Spark," Cortana ordered.
Almost instantly, the Control Room's barricades hissed and clicked, then slowly ground open, revealing the darkness within, and exposing the darkness beyond. Guilty Spark's voice echoed through the cavernous hallway: "Greetings, Reclaimers. Proceed through the right-hand hallway to the Control Room."
The three soldiers stepped across the threshold, and behind them, the doors slowly slid shut, leaving Fireteam Epsilon outside. The hallway was sepulchrally dark for a moment, then was slowly bathed in light via glow panels lining the corners of the ceiling and the floor.
They rounded the corner, coming face-to-face with the Control Room. It was almost identical to Alpha Halo's central hub: a single tongue of titanium extending into a huge void of a room. A terminal waited alone beneath a tall hologram of the ring-world, marked with different tags and readouts, monitoring the state of its construction.
The three paused at the door. "Johnson's going to have to be the one to activate it," Cortana explained quietly. "Since he was used in the failed activation of the Ark, the system's going to have him keyed in to this Halo."
"We shall watch for hostiles, then," the Arbiter replied, speaking softly as if in reverence for the vast weight of this chamber.
"Yank me, Chief," Cortana ordered. Obeying, the Chief slowly reached up behind his head and popped out Cortana's matrix. He felt a strange resistance to giving her over to the care of another, but he forced himself to pass the chip to Johnson, who took it very carefully. The marine suddenly looked very old in the Spartan's eyes, as he cradled the matrix in one hand and shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth.
"I won't lose her, too," the sergeant mumbled, then suddenly turned, as if embarrassed, and moved toward the control panel.
The Chief sighed and adjusted his grip on his shotgun, the only weapon he still retained. Miranda Keyes. He'd forgotten, in the whole mess of trying to save Cortana. There was another name lost to this war. The Spartan silently added her to his mental list of the noble slain. Way too many for one war.
Then, as he watched Johnson slowly getting further and further away: Just one would have been too many.
Grumbling under his breath, Johnson noted the approach of the damn light bulb. He tried to ignore the humming Monitor, but the construct swooped in front of him and exclaimed, "Oh, hello! Wonderful news! The Installation is almost complete!"
"Terrific," the sergeant major groused.
The Spark seemed bemused by the marine's apparent lack of enthusiasm. "Yes… isn't it?" Then, continuing as if unshaken: "I have begun my simulations. No promises, but initial results indicate that this facility should be ready to fire… in just a few more days!"
Johnson leaned his Spartan laser up against the control panel and took his cigar out of his mouth. He took a moment to produce a lighter. "We don't have a few more days," he informed the Monitor as he lit his stogie. Its tip glowed for a second, and he took a few puffs.
"But… but… a premature firing could destroy the Ark!" Spark exclaimed, horrified.
Feeling the cold anger solidifying in the pit of his stomach, Johnson fixed the Monitor with his singularly intimidating gaze: "Deal with it."
With that, the sergeant turned and prepared to insert Cortana's matrix into the panel. "You would destroy this Installation…?" Guilty Spark gasped. Johnson huffed a dark chuckle mingled with cigar smoke as he --
Johnson's scream was bloodcurdling. It was a cry of bitter anger and pain that ripped itself from his throat as the Monitor's blood-red beam seared him and smashed him into the ground.
Guilty Spark was dancing back and forth in the air, babbling, "Unacceptable! Unacceptable! Absolutely unacceptable!" The Master Chief dashed forward, rushing to Johnson's aid --
The Spark's beam blasted out and flattened the Chief, knocking him squarely on his back. The angry construct hovered towards him, its normally cold-blue eye a solid, demonic red. "Protocol dictates action!" it cried. "I see now that helping you was wrong!"
The damn thing's gone rampant! The Chief realized.
Spark suddenly turned away from the Chief and blasted out another huge beam of plasma, blowing the approaching Arbiter right out the door. The Chief tried to take advantage of the distraction by clambering to his feet, but the Monitor whirled on him and blasted him again. The Chief staggered, fell to one knee as his shields failed and began to scream.
The Monitor hovered close again, and the blood-red faded to blue. "You are the child of my makers, inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner! But this ring…"
…that red glow…
"…is mine."
The Chief exploded into a frenzy of action, suddenly somersaulting forward and coming to his feet with his shotgun's muzzle pressed against the Spark's eye. He pulled the trigger - blam -
- and nothing happened.
Instead, Guilty Spark unleashed a wave of amber energy like a force field - a shield, the Master Chief realized - that threw the Spartan back. He skidded across the surface of the Control Room, armor showering sparks.
"I take no pleasure in doing what must be done!" came the Spark's voice.
The Spartan rolled over and stood. He barely had a second to roll aside as the Monitor fired at him again. The heat from the beam skimmed him and scorched a dark line on the ceramic plating of the Mark VI.
"You do not deserve this ring!" Guilty Spark shouted nonsensically as it bobbed through the air toward the Master Chief. His shield was slowly beginning to corner the Spartan, leaving him with no place to go.
The Chief glanced back and forth, surveying his options. He had been forced away from the door - no escape there. And with each step he took back, he drew closer and closer to the rail-less edge of the platform. Guilty Spark stopped short for a moment, and his eye glowed more brightly, apparently preparing a particularly powerful blast. "I have kept it safe! It belongs to me!"
"Not… for long!"
Suddenly, 343 Guilty Spark was pirouetting over the chasm beyond the platform, smoking and spinning like a meteor hurtling through the atmosphere.
Johnson.
The sergeant major was lying on the ground, propping his torso up with the laser. The Master Chief rushed toward him, satisfied that the Spark was not a threat for the moment. One thought filled his mind: being sure that Cortana was safe.
Guilt welled up in his heart at that, realizing that as much as he cared for Johnson's safety, Cortana was again his highest priority. He forced himself back to steel again, insisting to himself that it was simply his instinct to preserve the capability to complete his mission - not a personal need for Cortana's safety.
Drawing near, the Spartan fell to his knees. Johnson was a mess. His eye was still dark and swollen from the beating he'd taken at the Brutes' hands earlier that day, and now, his charred, horrifically burnt skin was exposed beneath the melted, dripping ceramic that had protected his chest.
But Sergeant Major Johnson had kept his wits about him. He shoved the Galilean toward the Master Chief, kept himself upright on one elbow. His one good eye fixed itself on the Chief. Taking in a shallow breath, he gasped out, "Kick his ass," and finally passed out.
The Chief took the Spartan laser and was about to look for Cortana's matrix when he heard that voice again: "You… you cracked my casing!"
The Spartan rose to his feet, whirled, just in time to dodge another blast from the Monitor's energy beam. The tenacious construct had approached from the opposite side of the chamber, flying somewhat haphazardly.
The Master Chief quickly brought the Galilean to bear on Guilty Spark, his HUD utilizing the Wyrd III targeting system that the Galilean used. The construct seemed oblivious to the danger it was in, wobbling unsteadily, leaking plasma as it approached, trying to get a better shot at the Spartan.
The charging indicator quickly filled as the Spartan laser 'painted' Spark on John's HUD. A high-pitched whine rang out for a split second, just before John squeezed the trigger. The Spark began to babble, "Think of you-ou-ou-our forefathers --" just as the scintillating beam reached it.
The blast slammed 343 Guilty Spark rebounding across the chamber. He deflected off of the holo-frame, against the ceiling, then halting itself just above the platform, frame shuddering and hissing as plasma poured out of it.
The Monitor's voice slowly deteriorated as its internal reactor went critical: "I a-a-a-am the Monitor of Installation zero-four!" Then, in a shower of blinding sparks and plasma spray:
"Oh, m-m-m-my… ah!"
With those final words, Guity Spark perished in a cataclysmic explosion. His remains crashed down to the platform with an echoing clang, all that was left of hundreds of thousands of years of megalomania.
Ignoring the burning hulk that was now slowly melting into its base materials, the Master Chief sprinted across the gap that separated him from Johnson.
The sergeant major had revived, rolling over onto his back. The Spartan knelt at his side, suddenly feeling an emptiness in his gut. But he tried to push the cold, black knowledge aside, gently raised Johnson so that the sergeant was reclining against the Spartan's arm.
Avery Johnson had seen death before - hundreds of those had been caused by plasma wounds. And he knew that he was dying. That knowledge was conveyed in his good eye as he fixed the Spartan with his gaze, defiant grin splitting his cracked, dry lips. "Good work, boy," he coughed, voice rougher than ever.
"I'm getting you out of here," the Master Chief said firmly, and began to lift the sergeant, suddenly forgetting about activating Halo.
Johnson's grin spread wider; a thin line of blood trickled down his chin. "No… no, you're not." He chuckled, rasped, the sound macabre in John's ears. "You're a Spartan, Chief. You're good at killing things… not saving them."
Johnson's darkly amused words unintentionally sent a spear into the Master Chief's heart. He internally winced as the sergeant began to chuckle darkly, oblivious to the effect his words had on his friend. "Funny…" Johnson mumbled. "Spent twenty years fightin' the best the Covies had… an' I get capped by somethin' named Tinkerbelle."
The Chief sighed - back to business again. Always back to business. "Johnson… Cortana?"
The sergeant's smile softened. His gaze turned to the Spartan's visor. "I kep' her safe, Chief," he growled good-naturedly as he reached down to his pocket. "For your sake as much as anyone's," he added, voice dripping with deliberate meaning.
The Chief wasn't sure how to take those words, but he decided to ignore them for the moment. Johnson grabbed the Chief's hand; John felt Cortana's matrix fall into his palm. Johnson's gaze became intense - he fixed the Spartan with a hard, stern look, and ordered him: "Don't let her go. Don't… ever… let her go."
The Chief quickly popped Cortana's chip into his head; along with the cold rush came a complete silence from the stunned AI.
Johnson coughed; more blood on his chin. He let his head loll back against the Spartan's arm, growing weaker by the second: "Send me out… with a bang."
And with that, Sergeant Major Avery J. Johnson succumbed to his wounds.
The Master Chief was forcing himself not to look back as he stepped over the remains of 343 Guilty Spark. The Arbiter could tell this by his overly rigid posture, his carriage, his bearing.
Sangheili did not often get credit for their ability to read the body language of nearly any race. But the Arbiter could acutely sense the Spartan's internal turmoil. But he is a warrior. He will never show it.
Adjusting his grip on his carbine, he thought wryly of how useless he'd been to the Master Chief ever since they arrived on this Halo. Twice slammed into submission by a Flood juggernaut, and knocked unconscious by a holy Oracle. The gods must be angry with him.
The Spartan did not need me - or anyone else, for that matter, the elite thought. He could have performed this task on his own. The thought was not self-deprecating - it was a realization of the raw ability of his ally. Then: No. He needs his construct. Without her… he would be half of what he is today.
Realizing: And what a hateful galaxy that would be.
John held the matrix out to the terminal, fighting the lump in his throat. He wasn't sure why he was grieving now - now, after all the hundreds of thousands of deaths he'd observed, why now, after the deaths of his brothers and sisters in arms, after losing almost everything he thought was importantthe Spartans, Officer Mendez, Reach… Earth.
Maybe he'd thought that Johnson was some kind of immutable constant. Ever since Reach, the staff sergeant had been at his elbow, throwing bullets and insults at the Covenant's heads.
Who knew? Certainly not the Master Chief.
He would continue, as he always did. And he would do honor to Sergeant Avery J. Johnson's memory.
As Cortana stepped out of the matrix onto the terminal's holo-emitter, she turned back and fixed the Spartan with a gaze overflowing with sorrow, regret, something distant and foreign. "I am so sorry, John…" she murmured.
Then, silent, she lifted the Index and placed it in its slot. Reaching back to the matrix: "It's all yours."
Spartan-117 re-inserted the chip, then stood before the console for a moment. The key was in the lock, and the door of death itself had now been opened to him. He raised his hand and slowly pressed down on the panel with such a dark sense of finality that he knew:
This was the way the world would end.
Johnson was getting his bang.
The Control Room was crumbling around them. The speed with which Halo had already begun to deteriorate alarmed the AI considerably. Streams of plasma were expanding from the Core, slicing through the holo-emitter and breaching its containment field.
John had already turned and was sprinting back across the titanium platform to the door - which was slowly hissing shut, locking itself down thanks to security measures gone awry. She quickly tapped into Halo's wireless network, sent a priority order to shut down security measures in the control room…
…and nothing happened.
The door was halfway shut.
"I can't stop the door, John!" she warned him as she frantically scrambled for another solution, digging through centuries of files for some kind of fail-safe. Her Spartan pushed himself as hard as he could, moving so fast that the suit was almost more of a hindrance than a help to him.
But the door was faster. There was no way he was going to make it in time -
Suddenly, the sounds of grinding gears screamed in the chamber, so loud that the Master Chief almost instinctively tried to cover his ears. He slowed for a moment - just for a moment - as he and Cortana realized that the Arbiter had interposed himself between the two closing panels and was standing, arms outstretched, hooves braced against the base of the doors.
"Come, Spartan!" the Sangheili shouted, voice twisted with pain.
John made one final effort as the elite's strength flagged, slowly being smashed between the doors. The Master Chief lunged -
- slammed into the Sangheili, knocking them both through the doors just as they came to with a solid, final thud.
There was no time for thanks; the Chief jerked the Arbiter to a standing position, and the two turned and ran for the exit as fast as…
Oh, hell, Cortana thought.
The Control Room doors had been blown open.
The metal had been blasted through by what her processor told her was some kind of large anti-tank plasma-based explosive - Covenant-based weaponry, not human. And, since all the material that they had brought to the site had been human, it could mean only one culprit: the Flood.
And since explosives of that size took time to set, it meant that Fireteam Epsilon must have been…
She shook off that particular datastream. Pushing into the entryway of the Control Room were a few combat forms; the Arbiter took care of them with his carbine, as he was the only one who still had a decent weapon.
They scrambled through the smoking remains of the door into a Flood hell. Hundreds of combat forms were swarming the entire face of the Control Room, and hundreds more lay dead and dismembered along the platforms and ramps.
Fireteam Epsilon… she quickly fired up her IFF scanner. Two incoming signals from nearby. She checked. The scans came up already tagged in the tiny externals along the helmet of John's suit. One dead elite: M(i)DFC 'Reza Dorrom(ee), UNSC/CS SpecOps - KIA. One dead human: LCPL Darrien Hatcher, UNSC/CS Marine Corps - KIA.
As John and the Arbiter quickly grabbed new weapons, she kept scanning, looking for the remaining survivors, hoping for a miracle. Hoping for something that could save her… and save John.
She got it.
"Arbiter! I have you on our scope! Hold there, and we shall extract you!" It was 'Ntho 'Sraom.
A Pelican's rear-mounted chain gun suddenly spewed a blizzard of steel from out of nowhere, clearing the platform as the hulking shadow carefully descended toward the two warriors. A Marine - Corporal MacInnis - was manning the machine gun, his head wrapped in a makeshift bandage.
The Arbiter and the Master Chief backed toward the Pelican, depending on their own weapons to hold back the wave of Flood that were still oncoming, the last desperate assault of the Gravemind. The Master Chief almost swore he could hear the creature's voice over the whine of the Pelican's engines. It was a dull roar, an undertone in the sounds of battle that rang around him - almost like…
Almost like a launched SPNKr charge.
Apparently MacInnis saw it, because he turned his bandaged head right, stared for a microsecond, and shouted one long, loud profanity at the top of his lungs:
"Shit!"
The rocket slammed against the underside of the blood tray, throwing the corporal out of the personnel carrier. He plummeted down the side of the tower, slammed to the earth below as the Pelican lurched up, thrown by the devastating impact.
"Are you all right?" the Arbiter shouted into TEAMCOM.
"Our vehicle is severely damaged, Arbiter!" 'Sraom replied, his voice shaky and laced with static. "A crash is imminent... Forgive me, my lord - I have failed you!"
"Now's not the time for that!" Cortana snapped, entirely fed up with the elites and their notions of 'honor.' "'Sraom - there's a Warthog attached to the Pelican's carrier. Can you get to the other side of the cliffs?"
The Pelican wobbled crazily in the air, its aft section pouring out billows of smoke. "It - it may be possible, construct," the Sangheili replied hesitantly.
"Great," Cortana replied. "Try to get there and ditch along with that Warthog."
"As commanded," came 'Sraom's infuriatingly formal reply. The Pelican tried to right itself, rose away from the Control Room, and took off at an angle. Within minutes, it disappeared behind the cliffs.
Cortana turned her attention back toward the situation at hand: "John!"
The Master Chief nodded as his two plasma rifles blazed hot energy at the oncoming waves. "Yeah."
"Get to that door in the cliffs. 'Sraom will be waiting for us on the other side. He's got a Warthog."
That was all the encouragement they needed. The two warriors disengaged and ran, leaving the upper platform behind and running along an icy crag to the edge of the cliffs. Perhaps two hundred meters ahead, there was a tall, angular door in the rock - their passage to safety… or, at least the next portion of this hell-ride.
As they ran, the Arbiter suddenly asked, "How many places does this vehicle have?"
The Master Chief suddenly realized the problem. He gritted his teeth in quiet frustration as his boots dug into the ice, and he ground out: "Three."
"Oh, hell no," Cortana muttered.
The Master Chief. That was one.
The Arbiter. That was two.
But then there was the pilot of the Pelican, and N'tho 'Sraom. That made four.
One of the four was not getting off of Halo alive.
The path along the cliff widened as they approached the door. Soon, they would arrive at their destination, and they would have to make a decision. Who would be left behind?
John seemed to be reading everyone's minds. "I'll stay," he said firmly as they entered the cold quiet of the tunnel. He offered no explanation why, no rationale for his decision. He simply said that he was going to stay, and in his mind, that ended the argument.
The Arbiter turned, glanced at the Spartan, who was still looking straight ahead as they sprinted through the darkness. The rumble of the destruction of Halo was all that could be heard for a moment, until Cortana's voice suddenly came through John's external speakers.
"Everyone is getting off this Ring alive," the AI insisted coldly. "We won't leave anyone behind."
The Spartan made an imperceptible shake of the head. "I don't --"
"You don't what?" Cortana interrupted, her voice laced with uncontrolled anger. Both the Spartan and the Arbiter glanced at one another, surprised. She was always so… controlled. The word rampant darkly echoed in John's head.
"I am sick - sick and tired of all the dead heroes. We lost Jacob and Miranda Keyes, Johnson, Locklear, Whitcomb, all of them, all dead. And I could deal with that. But dammit John, I swear I am not going to lose you, too."
Then, suddenly tired, defeated: "I'd… I would break."
The door loomed ahead, glowing softly in the haze from John's headlamps. Silence reigned amongst the three entities as they stepped up to the door. An echoing clank, then they slid wide as the Arbiter prayed to the gods that it would reveal their escape.
N'tho Sraom was sitting, leaning up against the back bumper of the Warthog. His right hand clutched at his abdomen, dark violet blood dribbling between his fingers. He raised his head at the approach of the three, eyes filling with surprise. "Arbiter! We must hurry," he exclaimed, and painfully clambered into the gunner's place on the Warthog. The ground shook for a moment at a far-off explosion.
"What about the pilot?" Master Chief asked, shouting to be heard over the background noise.
'Sraom paused, glanced back at the Spartan, silently nodded toward where the Pelican sat askew on the ground, smoke still pouring from its injured aft section. "He was thrown from the cockpit. Dead."
John looked toward the Pelican as the Arbiter shook his head and climbed into the passenger seat. The Spartan sighed. Part of him was grateful that the decision had been made for them, but another part of him mourned for the loss of yet another of humanity's finest.
He moved to the driver's seat, stepped up on the running board --
-- suddenly, 'Sraom was on his back on the ground, the Master Chief's flying tackle having knocked him from his place. A big, booted foot was pinning him by the chest. The elite was completely taken off guard, mandibles splayed wide in surprise and pain.
"Bastard!" Cortana snapped. "You murdered the pilot!"
"What is the meaning of this?" the Arbiter growled as he jumped out of the passenger seat and stepped toward the Spartan, whose foot dug into 'Sraom just a bit harder than necessary.
"Look at the driver's seat," Cortana said, cold anger making an undercurrent in her voice.
"Human blood…" the Arbiter growled. "'Sraom, what have you done?"
The Spartan reached down and jerked the injured elite upright. One finger probed at the wound, then: "This wound was made by an M6C. Standard sidearm for the UNSC."
Suddenly, another explosion rocked the ground under their feet, much nearer than before. Cortana swore. "Come on, we don't have time for this. Execute him and let's get out of here."
"No," John interrupted. "We need every gun we can get." With that, he shoved 'Sraom toward the passenger seat. "I'll personally put one in his head… later." The bitterness in the Spartan's voice was chilling, almost out of character for his usually calm exterior. The only thing he could think of was that pilot - volunteering to stay behind on Halo instead of fleeing on the Shadow of Intent. That man - John did not know his name - had chosen to stay, knowing that he could die, but wanting to help in any way he could. And, for his sacrifice, he had been murdered. Murdered by the one who now stood before the Spartan, tall and strong and armored, Sangheili, steeped in honor and tradition and code - and completely morally bankrupt.
'Sraom glanced back and forth, anxiety filling his yellow eyes, knowing he'd been caught. He looked for an escape, but as the ground shuddered beneath his feet, he remembered that he was trapped on the equivalent of a galactic time bomb, and he complied. "I suppose I have no choice," he muttered.
The Arbiter jumped up into the gunner's position, and, as the Master Chief gunned the engine, the elite growled, "N'tho 'Sraom, you are not marred by the Mark of Shame, but if any deserved it, it is you."