Wow guys… Four reviews. Is that what adding the flood does to semi-decent Fanfictions? Fine by me. Anyway, Thanks guys for all the reviews. I'm surprised that the chapter was a well-liked as it was. I thought it was one of the worst I wrote for this FF. But, ah well, You are your own biggest critic.
Chapter 14: The Setting of the Stage
Flood controlled sector; Nearby long range COM array, February 19th 2553.
Thel opened his eyes and examined his position. He had, too, been knocked from the cliff when the first enforcer had exploded. Now, he was lying atop a hill of Flood biomass. He quickly checked to see if he still had his weapons. His carbine and both of his plasma rifles were still there. However, he'd lost both of the plasma grenades he'd brought along.
He rolled off his back and rose to a knee, examining the area for any signs of Flood. Nothing, just the barrens plains of Biomass. His mission timer informed him that he'd been out for one hour and twenty six minutes.
He shook his head and drew his carbine, inspecting it for damage. It had some minor denting across the rear end of it, but it was still operable. However, he only had three magazines left for the weapon. That gave him just under fifty shots. Both of his plasma rifles were at seventy-seven percent charge.
He stood up and searched the area for any sign of his companions. Nothing, but they could be camouflaged in the biomass if they'd been rolled in it once. He examined his armor, which was covered in the stuff, which had turned from white to a series of Flood-like colours, such as peach, red and green in patches. After several minutes observational searching failed to reveal anything, he activated his COMs reluctantly. Any Flood that had the remains of any COM systems would be able to pick up this message. Oddly, they were blocked from transmitting anything more than two hundred and fifty meters. A jammer must have been at play.
"Hello?" He asked, then added reluctantly, "Anyone?"
Static.
And then... "Arbiter?" It was Cortana.
Thel quickly closed the connection to a two-way channel in order to keep the flood from snooping.
"I'm here." He replied, scanning the area for any sign of her and her Spartan carrier.
"I can see you at about 74 meters away on the motion tracker; John's out cold over here." She sighed.
"Place a waypoint on yourselves and I'll come right over." He said, checking his motion tracker for any sign of them.
"Done." Cortana said. A single arrow appeared a small distance away.
"On my way." Thel grumbled, trekking over the Biomass that made up the ground of the area.
It wasn't a long walk; It took Thel about half a minute. As Cortana had said, The Spartan was lying unconscious, buried slightly in the Biomass. His armor, too, was covered in the stuff.
"Shall I wake him up?" Cortana asked.
"How?" Thel asked suspiciously.
"With a pump of adrenaline, Or alternatively, I could use te shields to shock him into consciousness."
Thel snorted slightly. "Use the adrenaline, please."
"Very well." Cortana replied.
Thel turned away and shook his head. On the few missions and simulations that they had been on, They'd had Vala as the AI for The Squad. Generally, she was very literal with what she said; She had never joked, as far as he could remember.
While he had talked to Cortana at length in the bridge, He hadn't expected to ever have her in a field scenario. He definitely hadn't anticipated her "Colourfull" behaviour.
"How long until he's up?" Thel asked.
"A few more seconds." Cortana answered.
Thel scanned the horizon around them again. The cliff face took up a large amount of that horizon, but then, over the mostly flat Biomass plain, There were two buildings, which both looked Forerunner in design, and the bottom of a downed covenant battlecruiser, the hull slightly altered by biomass as well.
Thel heard the biomass squelch behind him. He turned back to see John pulling himself out of the hole he'd made when he'd fallen. Thel offered his hand to help the Spartan up, which he accepted. He pulled the Spartan to his feet.
John growled slightly, shaking his head. Thel tilted his head enquiringly. John shook his head.
"Just the adrenaline. He'll be fine in a second." Cortana replied.
John straightened and checked his weapons.
"What's our plan?" He asked.
"The closest building to us is a Forerunner long range communication array. It's our best chance to communicate with ONI, or at the very worst, any GA planet. It's also transmitting a COM jammer, which is why we can't contact the Spearhead." Cortana stated. "We need to get there. With your suit's limited sensors, the building does not seem to be heavily covered in Biomass."
Thel glanced at John. The human gave him a brief nod.
"Let's get going, then." John muttered, and the group set off.
UNSC Spearhead of Dawn, Over Halo 06's control room, February 19th, 2553.
While the newcomers were technically in charge, The Shipmaster had left the AI in charge of ship running, so technically she was in charge.
They'd lost contact with the two about two hours ago, and tensions in the bridge were mounting, and the monitor was not improving matters.
"I insist that I am doing my utmost to restablish COM links with your crew. However, protocol states tha-"
The human cut of the monitor's speech with a growl.
"Protocol this, Protocol that, stupid things. Why the Forerunners would build such stupid machine to manage their weapons of mass destruction is beyond me." The female Kig-yar muttered.
The human muttered an affirmative.
"Why do we not simply take our ship into the Flood territory and blow them to hell?" Jimaenius asked. "Surely we've got the firepower!"
"We may very well have it, but the Flood may have Forerunner EMP weapons, which would knock us clean out of the sky to be infected by the flood." The Sangheili AI countered.
Jimaenius settled back into his seat, mumbling something. Zhab did not like being useless. Sitting here, waiting for something to happen annoyed the Jackal greatly. He glanced over at a console on the bridge and watched the graphs for power distribution for several minutes.
I+-+-+I
Flood controlled sector; Nearby long range COM array, February 19th 2553.
John and Thel got to about three hundred meters from the the COM array without being noticed or even seeing any Flood forms. However, John appeared to have exhausted his reservoir of luck, and now they were faced with the problem of several Flood forms that wandered in and around the bottom of the array.
The array was about three stories tall and had a significant amount of the bottom floor covered over by Biomass, but the other two floors were pretty much unharmed.
At the moment, John and Thel were hiding behind a slight hill of biomass, scouting the building.
"Any ideas?" John asked, sounding resigned.
John himself could only think of one way to get it. Charge down shooting. He was pretty sure that was what Thel was also thinking.
"Besides running and gunning? Nope." Cortana replied.
"I suppose that I could use by camo system and sneak inside." Thel offered.
"I still have to be there to send the message." Cortana replied.
"I could carry your chip." Thel offered.
"You could, but I imagine that there may not be a compatible point to plug me in. I could try a remote transfer, but that's dicey because there's flood in the network. The Gravemind could probably overpower me if he found me without a chip." Cortana sighed.
There was a few minutes of silence. Then they heard a growl. John and Thel drew weapon and quickly scanned the nearby area. At the foot of the hill they were bidding behind, one combat form had noticed the two crouching.
It was a brute combat form, having clearly come from the covenant battlecruiser. John drew a magnum pistol and fired two shots. There were two sharp cracks, and the combat form fell.
John lowered the pistol and glanced back over the hill. Every single flood form had turned towards the hill and were advancing up the slope. To his right, Thel muttered something in sangheili.
"Well, looks like option one." The Spartan said, switching his pistol for his Assault Rifle.
He opened fire at the closet combat form, and the bullet spread impacted a single infection form, blasting apart a pack of infection forms, stunning the combat form.
John paused, and released a small burst, taking down the initial form.
To his left, Thel starting running down the slope, firing both of his plasma rifles, taking down several combat forms with well placed shots. John sighed and charged forward too.
John quickly caught up with Thel at around halfway down the slope. The two fired small bursts, clearing their path to the forerunner COM array. It took the two about ten seconds to reach the side of the tower, or, at least, the biomass that made up the side of the tower.
Pulling himself up, he rolled onto the second floor of the COM tower and raised his magnums, having exhausted almost all of his assault rifle ammo.
Thel pulled himself in behind him. John surveyed the room, in particular noting the lack of biomass, and that the lights were still working up here.
"Cortana, where do we need to go from here?" He asked quietly.
"Accessing schematics, one second... Head down this corridor and turn right. You'll see the doorway to the control room from there."
John followed her instructions, slowly advancing down the corridor, with Thel covering him from behind. The only sound coming from the building were their footsteps on the metallic surface. Outside, however, they could hear an army of moaning, growling flood forms trying to gain access to the COM tower.
John reached the junction. Carefully checking the other two hallways for hostiles, he quickly spun into the corridor on his right. A quick scan revealed it to be empty. John exhaled, then gestured to the Sangheili to follow him.
To the right of the corridor, there was a doorway, which opened into a large control center. With a quick gesture for Thel to cover him, he stepped up to the central console at Cortana's request.
"Place your hand on the central pulsing light." She ordered.
The Chief complied. When he did so, several holographs burst from the console, forming the standard Forerunner console layout.
"I'm not willing to risk an interface yet. If that Gravemind is in the system, I want to keep him as clueless to my presence as possible." Cortana explained.
"Ok." John muttered. "What next?"
"Do you see that red pulsing light on the left?" Cortana asked.
He nodded.
"Good. Place your hand on it, please."
The Spartan complied. As he did so, several new holographs burst from the red light, replacing the symbols already there.
"Okay... Got it. This tower is sending a jamming signal at a range of A through Y bands... Interesting that the Z band is left open, although that doesn't help us much; We can't access the I bands anyway." Cortana murmured.
"How to we stop it?" Thel asked from across the room, evidently able to hear them, either via COMs or by his ears.
"Hit that green pulsing button at the middle right."
The Spartan complied. He moved his hand over the pulsing light. There was a beep, and then the holographs faded.
"Jammer has been disabled."
Thel grunted from behind them. John exhaled loudly and relaxed. John's HUD flashed, then began broadcasting to the Spearhead, from which it received a confirmation response in less than five seconds.
"Okay, now for contacting ONI?" He asked.
"Very well. Chief, please type the code displayed onto the lime panel on the top left. It's a standard alphanumeric layout. 1 to 0 up top, Qwerty on bottom."
John paused a second to wonder why the Forerunners had a qwerty keyboard, then typed in the sequence that Cortana had given him.
He quickly concluded and tapped the send button, or at least, what Cortana told him was the send button. A bar flashed up and filled immediately.
"Message sent to cluster A-42 to O-1." Cortana informed him.
"What exactly did you send?" Thel asked from behind them.
"Installation number, Emergency breakthrough number, and coordinates." Cortana replied.
Suddenly, the monitor sent a message straight onto their network.
"RECLAIMER! YOU HAVE VIOLATED PROTOCOL-" Barrier roared, until Cortana squelched the channel.
"Well, He's pissed."
Thel snorted from behind them.
"Now, haha... Let's get to the replicator itself and shut it down." He announced.
John turned back and nodded.
"Let's go."
I+-+-+I
Cairo Orbital defence Platform, Earth, February 19th, 2553.
Admiral Terrence Hood had found the last three months extremely boring. With no covenant to fight, All there was to do was sit on board the station and hope that some pirates or Innies would pop up and think it was worth trying to take Earth.
Hood had requested to take part in the Kig-yar civil war, but Admiral Harper had been assigned to that. And then ONI had snapped up Admiral Walker. Now the most interesting things to do was watch the rebuilding progress of the Athens and Malta. They were being rebuilt with some Covenant upgrades. Instead of depleted uranium rounds, they would shoot plasma balls, which would detonate and spread upon impact.
"Sir, we're picking up a message from Admiral Parangosky. She wants to speak with you in private." Announced the COM manager.
"Patch it through to my quarters' COM station." He replied, and rose from his chair.
"Aye, sir."
Hood walked out of the central bridge of the ODP and down the personnel corridor and turned into his personal quarters. He opened the door and walked in. The door closed behind him. He sat at the desk in front of the bed and picked up his tablet.
Parangosky was calling. He swiped to answer.
"Hello, Margaret." He greeted.
Her faced resolved into view.
"Terrence." She responded.
"What did you want to talk about?" Hood asked, all business now.
"We've received a message from one of our squads out in deep space. They've found a Halo." She informed him.
Hood extended the stand at the back of his tablet and placed it on te desk. He clasped his hands together and lowered his head onto them.
"Good Lord, Margaret. Another one?" He sighed.
"Yes." She replied, sounding regretful.
"So, what are we going to do?"
"What makes you think 'We'?"
Hood chuckled. "I think that, seeing as we're talking here about the Halo, I imagine that you need me in some way. It's not like you just call me up to tell me about some event that I probably would eventually hear about."
Parangosky sighed.
"It's one of Admiral Walker's squads, and he's persuaded me to take out the Infinity."
Hood grinned slightly. There it was. Margaret's true intentions. When Hood had discovered the Infinity being built in the Oort Cloud of Sol, Him and Margaret had come to an agreement, which stated that both of them had to greenlight taking the Infinity out of port. She was pretty much finished, and the GA as a whole knew nothing of her.
"Very well, Margaret. I'll give you a yes on my end. But I'd like to come along with the Infinity to ensure that that's why you REALLY want to take out."
"You couldn't just let me have a joyride, could you Terrence?"
Hood shook his head. Margaret sighed in defeat.
"Very well, I'll send a few pelicans to pick you up. They'll arrive in 20 minutes. I'll transfer any reserves to the Infinity's fleet. Based on what we heard, we going to need everything we can spare."
The primary GA offence fleet was in Eayn orbit, landing forces to deal with the Kig-yar civil war, and convening a meeting of the GA council would take far too long. The notion to send a fleet would be passed, definitely, but it would take a week to a month to do so.
Infinity with her new, Forerunner slipspace drives, was the fastest ship in the GA, and generated a slipspace rupture so large, other ships could follow her Along through the rupture, keeping pace with her high speeds.
"Very well, Margaret, I will see you on the Infinity. Good luck to us all."
He closed the call.
I+-+-+I
Flood Controlled Sector, Halo 06, 19th of February, 2553
"100 meters to Environmental replicator." Cortana announced over the Com.
Thel shouldered through an infection form and discharged his last Carbine round into it. He ducked to the side, avoiding three shots from a ranged form in the distance. He took cover behind a piece of rubble from the Covenant battlecruiser in the distance. John slid into position beside him.
"Almost there." Thel muttered. "But I'm out on everything except energy sword charge."
"I'm out except for a last assault rifle round." The Spartan replied.
There had been very little pickings for weapons on the way to the replicator. Thel ignited his energy sword and scanned behind the barricade. Across the plains, dozens of Flood Combat forms slowly advanced on them.
"We haven't got much longer." Cortana whispered.
John and Thel glanced at each other and nodded. There was one last break they had to do, and then they were home free to the replicator. John had saved two frag grenades for the replicator.
"You go first, take out the ranged form, and then we go." Thel suggested.
John nodded and drew his rifle. Thel twisted to his right and searched for the ranged form.
"Centre, unmoving." Thel reported.
John grunted, then twisted and rose, Firing several short bursts into the ranged form. It fell backwards, curling up into a ball. Thel sprang to his feet and started running towards a gap in the environmental replicator. He heard a sqwelch as John lept over the barricade and sprinted behind him. In the distance, he saw the ranged form suddenly curl and expand.
Changing.
A huge, hulking tank form rose from the remains of the ranged form. It moved with more speed than it should have been capable to be able to, and slammed into the path in front of them. It raised its huge arm, preparing to slam it in the way of the two. Thel twisted to the right and slashed his energy sword straight through the tank's arm. It roared in pain, and Thel withdrew and slammed his sword straight into the tank's head.
With a roar, the tank collapsed. John leapt over the tank's body and slid into the hole to the environmental replicator. Thel quickly followed. The two slid into a dark corridor. The hole slid closed behind them. There was silence. Thel shook his head and rose from the pile of biomass he was lying on.
"Everyone alright?" Cortana asked.
John and Thel both flashed a affirmative light.
"Where are we?" John asked.
"It looks like we're in a passage inside the replicator." Cortana replied.
You came.
Thel reignited his energy sword. It's hum filled the building.
I respect that. You journey into the jaws of what should be death, and yet, you survive.
The two slowly advanced down the corridor, with the way lit by two torches.
You beat us before.
The two reached a doorway which led into a dark chamber.
How?
"On the right." Cortana whispered.
Thel turned to the right and spotted a huge tunnel, which had thousands of doors along the cylinders. The tunnel was untainted by biomass.
"What now?" Thel asked quietly.
"Throw a grenade into there." Cortana said.
John primed a grenade and threw. Suddenly, something smacked the grenade and it fell into a pit on the other side of the chamber.
"What… was that…" Cortana whispered, her voice dying as the sound of something huge moving filled the chamber.
You have not answered my question.
Both John and Thel turned around and raised their torches. The light fell upon a huge spire of biomass. And above that…
No matter.
The new Gravemind lowered himself into view and laughed.
Welcome home, my treasured instruments!
Both John and Thel swore.
I+-+-+I
LOG_76491_MONITOR_RESIGNED_BARRIER
BROKEN_PROMISES
TheSe ReCLAimErs HavE BrOKen ThEIr wORd
BRoKeN.
I ShOUlD NoT hAvE TRuStEd tHEM
thE FOrunNeRS WeRE rIGht ToO nOT TrUSt ThEm
ThEY WiLl pAY
THEy WiLL PaY
THEY WILL PAY
ERROR: LOG ENTRY TERMINATED BY 16807 RESIGNED BARRIER
WILL RETRY IN 10 SECONDS.
WILL RETRY IN 5 SECONDS.
RETRYING…
ERROR: MONITOR STATE QUESTIONABLE; BEGINNING TESTS
WARNING: RAMPANCY POSSBILE
WARNING: DETECTING RAMPANCY; BEGINNING FAILSAFES…
10% STARTUP SEQUENCE, 5% PER SECO-
ERROR: CONNECTION TERMINATED.
WARNING: MONITOR 16807 CONFIRMED RAMPANT
WARNING: MONITOR 16807 HAS DISABLED FAILSAFES
SYSTEM TERNIATED
I+-+-+I
Well, a much better chapter in my opinion. But anyway. The stage is set for the next chapter, and I'm looking forward to it.
So anyway, R&R guys. Plz…