Waiting. That was all Jul 'Mdama seemed to do these days. Wait. The leader of the Storm Covenant, the revitalizer of the faith in the Great Journey, the Hand of the Didact himself, was spending his time waiting for a vermin to give him aid.
"What is the problem?" 'Mdama asked impatiently.
"There are several," the female vermin responded with the air of one who knows she is, for the moment, invaluable. "Would you like to discuss the finer points of casual reconciliation?"
'Mdama growled angrily. "More human sarcasm."
"So you have learned something from me, Jul," she replied impertinently.
This was becoming too much for the proud leader to bear. "You claimed to be able to access-"
"And I can," the human had the audacity to interrupt, "However, I did not claim to be able to access it instantaneously."
'Mdama paced the floor. "The security situation is not stable. There is no time to dither," he warned her. He was already uncomfortable bringing the clever vermin down to the planet. Normally he kept it secure in one of his capital ships, bringing whatever technology or data it needed to it. What lay beneath the crust of this planet, however, could not be moved so easily.
"You will also accord me the respect befitting of the Didact's Hand," he added. This human may be valuable, but her insolence strained even his patience.
"Seems your fingers are in active rebellion, 'Hand'," she scoffed.
"ENOUGH!" 'Mdama shouted. "Resume your work!" He swiftly walked away from the insufferable wretch. This was intolerable. Unacceptable. He was the leader of the Covenant, a prophet of the holy Forerunners themselves! He should not be accepting such behavior from a vermin, a member of a race that had desecrated countless holy sites and earned itself only extermination. Yet, he needed any advantage he could get. Not over any mortal power, of course; those he could conquer on his own. No, 'Mdama's current bane was purely spiritual.
The Sangheili warrior's shoulders slumped slightly. It had all been going so well. After killing that traitor of a Kaidon who had preceded him as leader of the Storm Covenant, Jul had transformed his nation into a force to rival any military in the galaxy. Unlike his predecessors, he recognized the necessity of developing new tactics and strategies to counter the radically different galaxy that their people found themselves in. Guerilla tactics, unconventional maneuvers, even using the humans' filthy weapons against them had all become commonplace. Soon, their power grew to the point where they were able to move openly against the false-Arbiter and his heretical followers.
And then it happened. Requiem, legendary home of the Forerunner general "Didact," had opened to them. Even greater, the mighty Didact himself had appeared and named 'Mdama his hand! Following the Didact, the physical manifestation of a god, Covenant forces had assault Earth, the wretched heart of the human empire. Using a holy weapon that 'Mdama's forces had helped recover, they had annihilated an entire human city, reducing tens of millions of the vermin to ash while leaving all of their technology intact! The salvage from that planet would have financed the Covenant for a millennium and the destruction of their homeworld would have shattered the human empire and made them easy pickings for the Didact's holy armies.
And then it all went wrong. The Didact had not been defeated. No, that was preposterous—a god cannot lose to mortals, even if those mortals have demons working for them. Yet, Jul had seen the flash that had burst forth from the top of the Didact's vessel, had seen the entire ship disappear into slipspace without explanation, had been forced to order retreat when the human ships rallied to push them out of their system. Even Requiem itself had been lost when, without warning, the artificial planet's internal micro-star had gone nova and annihilated the entire construct!
They had become unworthy. That was the only possible explanation. They had somehow failed the Forerunners, and the Didact had left them in response. But why? What could they have possibly done to make their god abandon them right at the moment of final victory? This was a question that haunted Jul 'Mdama. It had occupied his every thought since. He spent most of his time in prayer, and the rest desperately seeking a way to hear from the Forerunners; seeking a way to learn how he had fallen short.
Unfortunately, while he was searching, the Covenant's crusade ground to a halt. Without instructions, his generals were unsure how to prosecute the war against the false-Arbiter, Thel 'Vadam, and his heretical Sangheili warriors. 'Vadam had then begun making strides to regain lost territory and united more Sangheili clans under his banner. Even worse, many began to question 'Mdama's right to lead following the disappearance of the Didact. Not openly, of course. None would yet dare to question his leadership directly for fear of invoking his wrath. But that would change.
Already one Sangheili leader had broken from the Covenant and struck out on his own, attacking a place the humans called "Draetheus V" in order to recover Forerunner relics located on the planet's moon. Ironically, the general's death and the near-total annihilation of his fleet had been a benefit to 'Mdama. Many were discouraged from following the renegade's example upon seeing the results of that catastrophic battle.
But it would not last. 'Mdama needed to regain the initiative in this war quickly if the Storm Covenant was to survive, and to do that he first needed to regain the favor of the Forerunners.
It irked him to no end that he was relying on a human, a human of the hated ONI, to unlock the secret to the gods' displeasure. 'Mdama remembered well his time in human captivity, the experiments that their scientists had run on him to determine the best ways to slaughter his people. He would never, could never, forget that; the hatred born of those indignities fueled him in his righteous cause.
'Mdama remembered with pleasure the smell of this white-maned human's flesh burning when he had cauterized the stump of its arm with his energy sword. Oh yes, he would smell it again. Once this vermin had served its purpose he would take great delight in making its death as long and agonizing as possible. He would repay it, and its masters, a thousandfold for what they had done to him, to his people, to his faith.
He was still indulging his deliciously violent fantasies when one of his Phantoms exploded. 'Mdama rushed to the window looking out over the complex, pushing past the vermin, and arrived just in time to see his other two Phantoms go up in flames as well. His eyes were immediately drawn to one of his guard towers by a series of bright, yellow flashes. As he focused on the indigo platform he saw what was unmistakably a human soldier in damnably familiar armor. The demons were here.
The demon in the guard tower moved as if it were a blur. Its weapon spat fire so fast its barrel seemed to breathe flames. When it changed the boxes on its underside that contained its ammunition he could barely follow its movements. 'Mdama glanced at the other towers and realized that all of his sharpshooters had been eliminated. Impossible! He had nearly twenty guard towers and the human vermin had eliminated all of them in the span of ten breaths?
He glanced down and saw one of his Wraith tanks orient to fire on the captured guard tower. Its plasma mortar would reduce the emplacement and the wretched demon to molten slag. At least, it would have, had it not promptly exploded into a bright blue fireball which shook the building to its foundations. Its twin immediately suffered a similar fate, and Jul quickly identified the telltale vapor trail of a human rocket launcher. Damn them!
As if hearing his thoughts, the demon in the tower turned, aimed its weapon directly at 'Mdama...and hesitated. The fraction of a second was all he needed to stab the window's controls with one of his two opposable digits. The window obediently polarized, blocking him from the enemy's vision. Why had it hesitated?
Of course. The white-maned vermin! 'Mdama turned around and grabbed the vermin in question by its remaining arm. Suddenly he heard an explosion from the building's first floor, followed by human and Covenant weapons fire. He ignored the vermin's screeches of protest and hurried to the roof.
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This is taking too long, the Master Chief thought to himself as he lobbed a fragmentation grenade behind a cargo container a pack of unggoy had taken cover behind. The leathery, pint-sized grunts only had a second to shriek before the grenade exploded and blew their shredded corpses out from behind cover.
Fred and the Chief moved quickly through the complex, dodging enemy fire and gunning down any Storm forces that got in their way. Thankfully, Linda softened up the elite Sangheili squad guarding the door. The two of them had little difficulty dispatching the remaining few hiding behind cover. They reached the doors to the enemy command center a few seconds after Kelly did.
"Advise, Blue Lead, I had eyes on both primary and secondary targets on the second floor, north side of the command center. Primary target has polarized the window and I no longer have visual. Spotting additional forces emerging from the mine proper, over," Linda informed the Master Chief.
"Copy, Blue Two. Maintain current position and keep the reinforcements pinned. Blue Lead, out," he responded.
The Master Chief looked at Fred and Kelly and opened a private comm channel to them.
"Execute breach," he instructed.
His team immediately went about executing the plan he had devised before initiating contact with the enemy. Fred placed a breaching charge on the door, just powerful enough to open it without risking injuring Dr. Halsey if she happened to have been moved since Linda spotted her. Immediately upon the charge's detonation the Master Chief tossed a flashbang inside to disorient the enemy. Kelly then rushed in and moved to the most advantageous position inside the room at top speed. Fred and John then followed, exercising precision fire and minimal force in order to minimize potential damage to their secondary objective.
By the time John entered Kelly was already on the other side of the room, firing from behind the cover of a solid, steel crate. Her position forced the enemy to divide their fire between two directions, providing a much needed advantage.
Kelly's shotgun tore ragged holes through the defenders, blowing apart unggoy and dropping sangheili energy shields in single shots. Fred's DMR fired steady, precise shots, each one piercing the skull of his intended target. The Master Chief fired controlled bursts into his enemy, quickly diving out of the way of a thrown plasma grenade. A half-second too late and that grenade would have automatically adhered to his armor and incinerated him, energy shield or no. Said shield would have made the UNSC engineers proud, absorbing the few enemy shots that landed while barely dropping to 50% capacity.
A beam rifle round eliminated that 50% and left a black scorch mark on the side of the Chief's helmet. He quickly dove behind the cover of his own heavy crate. Crouching down, he placed his assault rifle on top of the crate and fired, keeping the enemy suppressed, and glanced around the side. He saw the owner of the beam rifle, a Sangheili wearing black spec ops armor, lying prone on a raised platform across the room.
"Blue One, sniper, north side. Take him out." he commed Fred.
The Sangheili sniper's shields flared before abruptly dying, its owner swiftly following.
"Copy Blue Lead, sniper down."
"Blue One advance on west side, I'll take east, over," the Chief instructed.
"Copy, advancing along west."
The Master Chief moved forward along the row of storage units he had taken cover behind. Apparently this building was pulling double duty as storage and administration. He spotted movement on his motion tracker but before he could react a Sangheili burst through the gap between two crates and knocked the Chief into the wall. He nimbly dodged the enemy's attempt to smash his head in, grabbed it, and levered it into the same wall he himself had been knocked into. The Chief then vaulted over a crate and delivered a kick that shoved the box of heavy materials with such force that he could hear the alien's armor crack like an eggshell when it smashed it into the wall. He quickly dove back into cover and made his way to the end of the row. He peeked his head out from cover and was rewarded with heavy plasma fire.
John growled in impatience before finally leaping out from behind cover, jamming his finger down on the trigger of his assault rifle, and charging straight at the surviving Sangheili defending the door to the stairwell. The incoming fire and sheer ferocity of the charge momentarily stunned the Storm warriors, allowing John to close to melee distance. He proceeded to swing his assault rifle at the head of one warrior with such force it shattered the enemy's energy shield. The Chief then followed that up by drawing his combat knife and ramming it into the very surprised Sangheili's eye socket. Another attempted to bash John's head in with its plasma rifle, a blow that the chief nimbly dodged before landing a retaliatory strike to its midsection, thereby dropping the alien's shield. The Chief stabbed his knife through the back of its neck, severing its spinal cord.
He heard the crackle-swish of an energy sword activating behind him and turned just in time to see Fred block the blow with his own energy blade, barely 10cm from the Master Chief's faceplate. The ensuing duel was swift and deadly, Fred moving so fast that he was practically a blur as he easily dodged and parried the Sangheili's broad, powerful swings. Before long the Spartan had sliced off his enemy's sword hand at the wrist and immediately reversed his swing to lop the alien's serpentine head off.
"Come on, we're wasting time!" John shouted before drawing his pistol and smashing through the door into the stairwell. They breached the second floor only to find a room empty of enemies but full of scientific equipment. Some of it was clearly Storm tech, but much of it was also top of the line human analytical devices. The Master Chief had only ever seen such equipment at official UNSC research facilities. Even more surprising, or perhaps less so given the Storm's interest in the place, the room was also full of what were unmistakably Forerunner relics.
None of this occupied the Master Chief's mind for more than a fraction of a second, however, as he sprinted through the room at 60km per hour towards the roof-access stairwell on the far side. Halsey must be up there.
He barely restrained himself from just crashing through the door to the roof, but regained his composure at the last moment. Fred immediately stood to the right of the door while John and Kelly stood to the left. Fred carefully opened the door a crack before throwing his own flashbang through. Once it had detonated he threw the door open, leaning back to avoid the trio of plasma grenades that flew past him, and the three Spartan II supersoldiers dove through the door and resumed their annihilation of the enemy.
The Master Chief immediately spotted 'Mdama headed toward a Banshee, the single-pilot gunship having been concealed from view by a group of carefully positioned crates. The Chief carefully aimed his M6H pistol; a single shot wouldn't take him down, but the rounds packed enough of a punch that a whole magazine should do the trick.
Then he saw her. Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey. His teacher, his creator, his mother. She was currently kneeling on the ground, a Sangheili poised above her about to decapitate her with his energy sword. 'Mdama was almost to the Banshee. Fred and Kelly were occupied dealing with the Storm leader's remaining guards. Linda was still covering the mine entrance. The mission was clear: eliminate Jul 'Mdama at any cost. Killing him would strike a lethal blow to the Storm Covenant. It would potentially end the conflict and prevent the horrors of the Human-Covenant War from repeating itself. His duty was clear...
The Sangheili roared and prepared to slash his blade through the vermin's neck. He was just beginning to bring his blade down when the first of John's pistol shots impacted the elite warrior's energy shield just in front of his ornate helm. The Sangheili whirled, facing his new threat, and was just about to charge when the third-to-last round in the magazine dropped his shield, and the remaining two blew his brains out of the back of his now-ruined helmet.
The Master Chief reloaded his weapon and trained it back on 'Mdama in less than 1.5 seconds, but the self-styled prophet had already boarded his craft and was flying it away at top speed. The Chief's augmentations and the weapon's precision aside, he was not Linda, and it was not Nornfang. Jul 'Mdama had escaped. Blue Team, had failed.
"J-John?" a weak, female voice whispered, as if afraid to believe what it was saying.
The Master Chief immediately sprung into action, drawing a stripped down medical scanner from a pouch at his belt and running it over the doctor. "It's alright, you're safe now," he tried to assure her. Once he was assured she was safe to move, he immediately scooped her into a bridal carry and brought her back to the second floor, hopefully safe from sniper fire.
Dr. Halsey quickly recovered, if her insistence that he put her down at once was any indication. John ignored her.
"Blue One, send a priority message to the Infinity. Let them know we have recovered Dr. Halsey," the Chief barked.
"No! Belay that order!" the doctor shouted, squirming in John's arms with surprising energy for a woman her age and in her condition.
He tried to calm her, assuming she was delirious. "It's okay, we're just going to get you somewhere safe."
"Safe?" she responded in an incredulous voice. "Oh, John, you've seen so much, yet you're still so naive."
John had no idea what to say. The med scan and the doctor's appearance suggested she was in perfect mental condition. But, then what was she talking about? He set her on her feet carefully.
"ONI doesn't want to keep me safe, John," she said in a comforting tone, like an adult telling a child about an unfortunate fact of life. "They want to kill me."
So, I cranked this one out faster than expected. I was originally going to make this chapter longer, but this was the first time I ever seriously attempted to depict an action scene and I'm eager for some feedback. I tried to emphasize the experience and efficiency of Blue Team while also showing just how personal this mission has become for John in particular.
Note: I decided from the beginning that I was going to keep Jul 'Mdama alive. While it's true that killing him wouldn't automatically dissolve the resurgent Covenant, in a story it's generally better to have a face that an audience can put on an enemy faction. A person is someone we can visualize and, to an extent, relate to. An army is more of a mass of faces, with less emotional impact. A nation, more so. I also tried to have the events of Halo 4 have more of an impact on him than they seemed to in canon. I mean, the guy's god seemingly abandoned him. You'd think that would be a big deal, right? Oh, and don't worry—we will be seeing Jul again. Let's just say I've got big plans for him for when our heroes reach Sanghelios. laughs evilly
Note: The renegade Covenant leader 'Mdama mentions is a reference to the mobile game Spartan Assault. I got it on Steam a while back and was surprised at the quality of the story. It's mostly told through brief text descriptions of each mission and a few lightly animated cutscenes, but I felt it really nailed the bleak tone of the Halo universe. Noone wins in that story; they just survive. Seriously, I love immersing myself in Halo fiction, but it would be a nightmare to actually live in that universe :(
Note: The dialogue between Halsey and 'Mdama at the beginning is lifted word for word from the opening level of Halo 5. I don't want it to seem that I think Halo 5's story is all terrible. This is no Aliens: Colonial Marines we're talking about. I'll try to incorporate what I thought worked and expand on what I thought held promise as I go.
Note: I want to make it clear from the start that I will be doing something radically different with Cortana than was done in the canon story. She will not become the cackling supervillainess bent on world domination that the game tried to convince us was Cortana. One of my favorite parts of Halo 4 was this exchange between Cortana and the Didact at the end:
Didact: You're compassion for mankind is misplaced.
Cortana: I'm not doing this for mankind.
I felt that this established Cortana as a person who cared most about the people close to her, rather than some abstract concept like "world peace." This also parallels
SPOILER ALERT
Halsey's character arc over the original Nylund novels, in which she went from an ends-justifies-the-means mentality to one that places moral value on everyone. It's more complicated than that, of course, and I'm probably not describing it particularly well, but the point is that Halsey herself was never comfortable with the horrible things that she did over the course of her career. Cortana is supposed to be Halsey without the self-restraint. She's basically Halsey if she ever let her hair down and decided to just live life as best she can rather than placing the weight of the universe on her own shoulders. Maybe you don't agree, but that's just how I've always interpreted it.
END SPOILER ALERT
Note: In response to DinomyteHero: I actually hadn't thought of bringing CPO Mendez in, but I like the idea. I doubt he'll play a major role since it would be pretty hard to justify him taking part in the action, but maybe a brief role later on...
Note: Someone tried to send me a PM but there was no text in it. If you've got questions or suggestions I'll try to answer them. The only exceptions are questions I've answered before, demands (you'd better do this or I'll stop reading, etc.), non-constructive insults, and threats.
Thanks for reading. Love you guys.
Slipspace Anomaly.