Chapter Nineteen: Into The Lion's Den
November 28, 2552 0700 hours
Williams Airfield
UNSC Reserve Base Camp Hayes
North America
Laura waited to board the modified Chiroptera stealth vessel with the other Spartans; she was amazed that ONI even had one of those relics lying around. Normally a three-person vessel, it had been specially modified and partially enlarged to accommodate the team of five Spartans in full body armor. She was vaguely uncomfortable with the 'new' suit of Mjolnir armor that she'd been issued for the mission, but her unease was more due to the mission itself. Capturing a Covenant warship was practically unheard of, and she had doubts as to the feasibility of her plan; there were simply too many unknowns, and she still wasn't exactly comfortable with the new squad she'd been assigned to for this mission. Unfortunately, there's no other way, and they do know a lot more about Covenant cruisers, she reminded herself. I just wish he could have stayed behind. Her feelings for the Master Chief had grown stronger since she'd been maneuvered into close contact with him on a regular basis, and it was getting harder to hide them. She forced herself to remain calm and cold, focusing on the mission. Looking around, she reminded herself that she was with ONI's best offensive soldiers (which could be as bad as it was a good thing), and scanned the sea of faces on the lift. While few people knew of the mission, there were enough faces nearby to wish the Spartans luck. One face jumped out and the person it belonged to hurried to the edge of the pad. Laura walked over to the edge to meet her, on the pretense of warning her away.
"It's dangerous to be here, miss."
"I'm well aware of the dangers, but I have a three-edged blade to protect me."
Laura smiled inside her helmet because she knew well what this was about, a game of cat-and-mouse she and her friend Nicole played against ONI, always trying to be one step ahead and usually succeeding. Nicole pressed a small yet heavy bag into Laura's armor gauntlet, and grasped the other in both hands.
"Be careful."
"Always. See you in a bit." With that, Laura joined the other Spartans on board the stealth ship. The other Spartans were already squared away, and one of them looked at her as she stowed her gear.
"What was that all about?" She knew him by his voice, a sound that both frightened and thrilled her, and her heart began to pound even though her voice was icy cold.
"A trusted friend brought me a few special items for the mission, and wished me luck. I trust her implicitly, and that should be more than enough for any of you." Even though she knew they couldn't see it, Laura shot them a glare through her helmet.
Once they cleared Earth and entered Slipspace, Laura pulled off her helmet. She had tightly braided her long hair and pinned it to the top of her head to allow the helmet to access her neural net. Her dark eyes looked around once at the fully armored Spartans, then to the empty cockpit.
"Cortana, are you listening?"
Cortana's figure shimmered into view. "When am I not, Blade?"
Laura frowned at the mention of her codename, but composed herself immediately. "Okay, I'm going to outline my plan. I hate to say it, but I hope you can maybe give me a hand with some of the details.
"The basic idea of the plan is based on the fact that most of the Covenant are oxygen breathers, or at least oxygen tolerant. I managed to bribe the lab boys into cooking up a chemical weapon." She produced a sealed metal package with a detonator on the end. "VX poison gas, very popular in the late 1990s, and very lethal. It overloads the nervous system on contact, causing spine-shattering convulsions. If we plant this in their air supply, the detonator will render it into aerosol form; once that happens, it should wipe out most of the Covenant in one blow. The catch is that we could become exposed as well. In theory, the armor should protect us, but I'd recommend we get back here before the detonator goes off. If you are exposed to the gas, inject this directly into your heart." She pulled out a case containing five syringes. "Atropine. It will temporarily stop your heart, long enough to bypass the worst of the effects. Let's hope we don't have to use it."
Fred spoke up. "How are we supposed to get to their air supply without raising alarm?"
"Put these on." Laura handed them each a small belt-like harness, putting one on herself. She smiled for a moment, flipped a switch on the belt, and vanished. Reappearing a moment later, she continued her explanation.
"I've been working with captured camouflage generators to be carried by our Marines, as well as the shields; I believe you saw me test one when I ran the obstacle course before we left. These are designed to interface with your armor's shields, in order to save power and cover the entire suit. It's not as powerful as I'd like yet, but it should be enough to get us to our objective and back. There are still a few minor details that I couldn't work out. First, I'd like to keep the Engineers alive to help run the ship. Then we also have to consider how to filter the gas from the ship's atmosphere so our crews can board it. Plus, I'm not sure the Grunts will be affected by the gas, between the fact of their being methane breathers and the fact of having their own life support systems in their armor. I can't seem to find a solution, and we're running out of time." The Spartans were a bit surprised by this; Laura had never asked anyone for help before, especially not them.
Cortana broke in, filling the sudden awkward silence. "I think I have a solution to your first problem. If we can get all the Engineers to one area of the ship, I can reprogram the environmental controls to make that a secondary area. That should protect them from the VX poison gas. Then, if there is a suitable planet listed in the Covenant database, we can exchange the atmosphere. As far as the Grunts are concerned, without an Elite they're fairly undisciplined and easy to bring down."
The Master Chief spoke up, his voice grim. "We may still have to deal with Covenant troops, if they can figure out a way to escape the gas. This isn't a good idea."
"No shit, Sherlock." Laura's voice was laced with the usual supply of sarcasm. "Unfortunately it's the best I could come up with. There's a strong chance that we'll be able to catch most of them off guard and even the odds. Personally, I'll take anything that'll help tip the odds to my side. Unless anyone has any better ideas?" She looked at each of them in turn. No one answered.
Cortana's voice came out through the intercom. "Exiting Slipspace in three…two…one…mark!"
They came out in an area of Covenant-controlled space, near an asteroid field. Laura approved, since this would help provide cover from radar scans. Now all they had to do was wait. She pulled her helmet back on and waited for the go-ahead. If a Covenant ship happened to come near the asteroids, it would have to power down its shields to blast a path clear, which gave them a clear opportunity: they could slip inside the ship's shields and into the docking bay.
"Ship incoming," Cortana announced. "Detecting plasma powerup. Standby for landing."
Laura braced herself against the bulkhead of the ship, half-expecting instant death. She tried to cross her fingers, but the armor gauntlet prevented the gesture. The other Spartans were busy doing final checks on their armor, but Laura kept her back to the bulkhead, not really trusting them completely even though she'd been around them for over a month before this operation.
The ship landed hard inside the docking bay of the Covenant warship, tossing them into the bulkhead; after picking themselves up from wherever they'd wound up landing, the Spartans grabbed their weapons. Laura switched on her camouflage and stepped out of the ship, and the other Spartans followed her lead. They had to clear out the docking bay before they could proceed, but it didn't take long; their port was actually a repair bay, and almost deserted. Cortana, from inside the Master Chief's helmet, directed her to the main air supply, where she planted the nerve gas and set the detonator for ten minutes; she was surprised at how easily they'd made it there. It's not over yet, Laura, don't get cocky, she thought. On the way back to the ship, Cortana halted the group.
"There's a data port here. Slot me in, and I can take care of the plan's loose ends from inside the network."
"Just watch your digital ass in there, Cortana. I saw the mission report on the Ascendant Justice's AI. We don't need anymore of those little surprises." While her tone was harsh, Cortana detected a note of concern in Laura's voice.
As the Chief slotted Cortana into the port, an alarm sounded and all hell began to break loose; none of them knew what had set it off, but there was no time to speculate. Abandoning all pretense of secrecy, and deactivating their active camouflage to save power for their shields, the team made its way back to the landing bay, Laura acting as a rearguard. They were almost there when she turned to try and delay the pursuing Covenant forces.
"Blade, what the hell are you doing?" Fred yelled. On her motion tracker, Laura saw the Spartans turning around; a round from Linda's sniper rifle flew past her head and took out an Elite.
"Get going, there's not much time left! Don't worry about me, I'll catch up, just go!"
She continued to fire at the oncoming Covenant, buying time for the others to get back to the ship. Backing into the landing bay, she realized that she was running out of ammo for her rifle, and had no time to reload. There were simply too many Covenant coming after her, so she tried to turn and run just as a plasma grenade landed nearby. The detonation was too far away to kill, but it was enough to break her shields and send her flying into a protruding deck strut, jarred loose from a fragmentation grenade's earlier detonation. The shoulder armor was penetrated and she felt her shoulder pierced by the metal. It's too late, she realized as she wrenched her shoulder free of the strut and rolled over to face her killers. The timer's almost up. She activated her external speakers as well as the COM in her suit. The Covenant soldiers surrounding her as well as the Spartans heard her defiance as she gripped the syringe.
"You're too late. The warriors of Earth will live to stop you again and again. Humanity is safe."
As she injected herself with atropine, the timer reached zero; she watched the Covenant around her begin to jerk uncontrollably as the gas began to hit them. Closing all other COM channels, she forgot that one was still active, and the Master Chief heard her murmur one word as she succumbed to the atropine, a word that seemed to cause him more pain than any battle wound; it was all he could do to keep himself from running out of the ship.
"John."