Chapter 2. I don't own the characters in this story, Bungie and Nintendo do.
"Are you sure about this?" Cortana asked.
"Why wouldn't I be?" the master chief replied. The Master Chief was standing at the edge of an open airlock. He held an assault rifle at his side, and a number of grenades were clipped to his belt. Things hadn't turned out quite as ideally as they'd hoped. The unknown ship had done a real number on the covenant warship. Not only had all the weapons been taken out, but the engines were also non-functional. They had left them dead in the water, and had left several gaping holes in various parts of the ship.
Upon scanning the ship, they had realized there was a problem. In the attack, all of the docking ports on the ship had been blasted shut, or were malfunctioning to the point where they wouldn't work. Making it so no one inside could possibly escape. This also meant that it was almost impossible to get in. The fact that the ship had been caught off guard meant it also had no time to launch its transports and fighters, meaning the bays were still full. This prevented access to the hangars via a pelican drop ship. As a matter of fact, nothing much larger than a fighter craft could fit into the hangars with them still being full.
This was why the Master Chief was standing in an open airlock, about to jump out across space and into the hangar bay of the covenant warship. The marines on the ship didn't possess any kind of spacesuits that they could easily get on and off, or that would be combat worthy if things got nasty. So he was the only one going over, until he could figure out a way to give them access.
As the cruiser pulled into position adjacent to the crippled covenant warship, the master chief quickly judged the distance between the two, the amount of push he'd need, and then with a quick kick of his legs off of the back wall of the airlock, sailed across the void between them. He had judged perfectly, and he smoothly passed through the atmospheric shield of the hangar bay and landed on his feet, once again under the constraints of gravity. Automatically his training kicked in and he brought the rifle up to his shoulder in a firing position, ready for anything.
The hangar bay was a disaster area. Aside from several crates that had fallen over, there were alien bodies everywhere. Bright blue blood was splattered across the deck, pooling under the various elites and grunts that lay unmoving. The master chief did notice a few spatters of fluorescent orange ichor on the walls, but was only halfway surprised not to find the owner in the vicinity. Hunters took a lot of killing. However, whatever had done this clearly had been able to at least survive against them, as he didn't see any corpses that didn't belong to the covenant. That worried him. Not only had the culprits mowed down an entire hangar bay full of covenant troops, but they had survived against a pair of the massive hunters.
He bent down to examine some of the dead, and frowned. The wounds on some of the elites were quite unusual. Based on the number of burns on their skin and armor, the weapon in question was definitely energy based, but was not a plasma weapon. Turning the elite over, he saw that the shield generator built into its armor had overloaded. So the weapon not only had a rapid rate of fire, but also had enough power to cut through an elite energy shield.
He turned to the next corpse and grimaced. It was a grunt, or rather, used to be. The creature had nearly been cut clean in half, but the wound was jagged, clearly indicating some physical force had been involved.
"Cortana" he asked. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"
"No, I haven't. The injuries of that grunt in particular are quite puzzling. Energy blades leave a very clean cut. This one looks like it was physically sliced open. I've never heard of a material blade with that much power behind it."
The Master Chief nodded. "And the elites?"
"That's also unusual. Not nearly enough heat damage for a plasma weapon. The rate of fire that must have taken place would also have overheated any plasma weapon we've seen."
The Master Chief activated his comm. "Captain. Something's not quite right over here. By the looks of it our unknown vessel somehow dispatched boarders. I suggest you hold back on reinforcements for now. I want to check this out a little more."
"Roger that. Be careful"
"Over and out." The Master Chief took one last look around, and then grabbed a plasma pistol and a few grenades off of the ground. He had a feeling he might needing them.
After discovering the massacre in the hangar bay, he followed the trail of orange blood. It was obvious that the hunters had run into whatever had killed all those covenant, and had engaged in combat with them. If he found the hunters, he would find the source of the problems.
It turned out that he was almost correct. The passageway he followed led to another hangar bay. Upon cautiously entering the room, he found the first of the massive creatures slumped across the ground. The armor across its faceplate was heavily scorched by the same type of weapon that had been used on the elites, and closer inspection showed that one of the many shots had found the vulnerable gap in the armor beneath its "chin".
Upon looking up, two things caught his eye. The first was the second hunter. Apparently whatever had killed its partner had retreated down one of the corridors at the end of the hangar bay. Unfortunately for the hunter, the corridor was too small for its massive bulk. In its berserk rage, it failed to notice this, and had become lodged in the doorway, where it apparently was then finished off. The metal around the edges of the door were buckled around the massive armor plates, testament to the incredible strength of a hunter
The second thing that caught his eye was a small spaceship of unknown design in the hangar bay. It was small enough to fit in the hangar bay, even with the covenant drop ships still present. It was painted orange and gold, and vaguely resembled the face mask of a helmet. He didn't even bother asking Cortana if she'd seen it before. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn't covenant.
He turned away from the strange ship and to the back wall of the hangar. Due to the massive carcass blocking the one doorway, there was no way he'd be able get through there. He did see a smaller tunnel, presumably used by grunts or for maintenance purposes, but he decided he'd prefer not to get lost in the bowels of a ship he'd never been in.
"Cortana. Can you get me the layout of this ship?"
"One step ahead of you" she said. A small orange arrow appeared on the inside of his visor, indicating another door in the hangar. "Take that door. It'll eventually lead to the hallway behind that hunter. Not exactly the most direct route, but we clearly don't have a choice."
Upon walking through the doorway, he almost tripped over the corpse of another elite. Looking down, he noticed something unusual. Based on where his weapons had fallen, the elite had been knocked backwards about 10 feet down the hallway. There was a considerable amount of shrapnel imbedded in the walls where he had been standing, and the walls were slightly scorched. It looked like he'd been hit with a missile of some kind. But who in their right mind would waste a missile on a single elite, when there was a massive hunter in the same room? Unless they had a very large supply to justify unchecked usage of such weapons, it didn't make sense.
The Master Chief shook his head. This was getting stranger by the moment. A horde of covenant soldiers and two hunters taken down by rapid fire energy weapons no one had ever seen, a strange ship, and then someone who would use a weapon designed to take out tanks on a single soldier.
Suddenly he snapped his head up. He'd heard something echo down the hallways. It sounded like a cross between a growl and a hiss. He'd never heard anything like it before. He raised the plasma pistol up to an aiming position, and slowly moved down the hallway and around the corner.
Down the corridor was a crossroads, where the hall split off in 4 different directions. Right as he turned the corner, he spotted someone entering the corridor to the right. What he saw made him stop dead in his tracks.
It was unlike anything he'd ever seen. It stood about as tall as an elite. Shiny black chitin covered most of the creatures body. It was insectoid in nature, yet it had the structure of a humanoid, possessing four limbs and walking upright. Orange eyes glowed out of a wedge shaped armored head. A large weapon of some kind was grafted onto its right arm, and the left forearm sported a large scythe shaped blade. The thing failed to notice him, and continued out of sight.
"Well" Cortana said in his head. "I think we just found out what happened to the covenant."
The Master Chief nodded and slowly moved down the corridor. He heard the clicking of the creature's feet on the metal deck plates, and as he neared the hallway where the creature had turned. As he prepared to round the corner and open fire, the radar on his HUD suddenly detected the presence of something almost directly behind him. He heard the sound of crashing metal as one of the doors in the hallway junction exploded outwards in a hail of metal and smoke, and he whipped around, gun at the ready.