Chapter 38: Reclamation
The world was going insane.
Hard-light platforms throughout the city of Sunaion were deactivating. The carnage of the assault was being swallowed up by the sea, along with whatever unfortunate soldiers were caught on the 'ground'. Swords dropships buzzed around, desperately rushing to evacuate as many of the survivors as possible before Sunaion was reduced to a vast formation of smooth metal spires.
The Central Pylon was the exception to this trend. Rather than vanishing, the ziggurat that formed the peak of the pylon had separated into a number of smaller fragments. Each fragment contained multiple decks and structures, the levels connected by hard-light ramps or gravity lifts. The components of this miniature solar system all revolved in a chaotic rhythm around the fragment that was the center of the entire city.
Spartan Locke took cover in the courtyard area, just below the Command pyramid. His mind was still in a daze after the revelations found in 'Mdama's compad. The career soldier was effectively on autopilot as combat instincts carried him through this newest battle.
Weapons fire flew around the cluttered battlefield. Locke was one of the fortunate ones, having found an energy barrier to hide behind. Most of the original cover had already been destroyed. The debris many of Locke's allies were hiding behind was from the aircraft that had been shot down by the new arrivals.
Focus. Locke needed to focus, or else none of them would make it out of this alive. He decided to direct his attention toward analyzing the hostiles. Studying enemies had always helped him gain perspective.
The Forerunner Soldiers had appeared. They were composed of a crystalline core, black inner layer of what was presumably synthetic muscle, and chrome-colored hard-light armor coating their humanoid bodies. The amber lights still glowed from within their visors just where their eyes should have been. Just like on Meridian, they seemed to blast into existence in a blue flash of light. Also like their counterparts on that doomed human colony, they immediately went about murdering everything that wasn't them.
Beams of deadly directed energy shot across the battlefield as Soldiers fired a new type of weapon. Swarms of laser-straight, wafer-thin lines, far smaller than the weapons fire of the standard Soldier firearm, pulsed across friendly positions. The Spartans and their sangheili allies were forced to stay behind cover to avoid being diced into pieces.
This weapon had not been seen on Meridian, nor had the Soldiers firing it. These drones were more heavily armored, with easily twice the bulk of hard-light covering their black 'flesh' and crystalline core. A solid collar extended from the chest piece, covering the Soldier's neck and lower skull along 3 sides, with a slightly shorter section in front to avoid obstructing vision. Their visors featured a glowing horizontal slit rather than the more open covering that their comrades used. These SAW Gunners moved with a slower, more deliberate gait than their standard issue counterparts.
The SAW Gunners weren't the only new variant, either. Another version, also humanoid for whatever nonsensical reason, hefted a massive device on its shoulder. A bright beam of light, smaller in diameter than even the SAW rounds, pulsed into the air. A burgundy Spirit dropship, the heavy tank of aircraft, was neatly sliced in two. The pieces crashed into the courtyard, sending warriors scrambling and crushing several Soldiers. Locke could see the smoldering edges glowing where the energy weapon had touched it.
At least now there was more cover.
As Locke and the rest of Fireteam Osiris took cover behind one of the prongs of the derelict Spirit, the ONI Agent kept trying to get his bearings. The Soldiers had adapted since last engagement. Presumably there was some sort of higher, guiding intelligence that had analyzed the fighting on Meridian and produced these new units to compensate for the previous models' deficiencies. The anti-air weapons in particular seemed to be a ripoff of the Spartan Laser that Osiris had used on Meridian.
The question was: who was in charge? Who had ordered the adaptations? Who had conceived and designed them? There were no records of Forerunner war machines like these anywhere that Locke knew of, not to mention the amateurish design and tactical philosophy employed. Locke remembered the digital fingerprint that Dr. Hamilton had discovered in Meridian's Guardian. Could Cortana really be behind this?
The battle continued to rage in the epicenter of the Forerunner city. Idly, Locke wondered where Cortana's former companion was at that moment.
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The Master Chief clambered onto a small platform orbiting the city center. The fragments of the Forerunner ziggurat flew in bizarre, irregular orbits around their core, which the Chief would bet anything contained the city's control center. He craned his neck to look at the significantly higher core. Other fragments blocked his view of the control center as they moved between him and his destination. He turned his attention back toward his current position.
The ziggurat section was 2 stories tall and roughly the size of a suburban house. There were no exterior walls and only a simple ramp connected the 2 decks. The Chief motioned his squad up the ramp. They needed to gain altitude if they were going to reach the control center.
"Contact!" Blue One commed.
Figures resembling the bizarre combat drones they had encountered in the Meridian mining pit, 'Soldiers' as Fireteam Osiris had rather uncreatively dubbed them, appeared in a flash of blue light. The Master Chief felt cold dark matter settle into his gut as memories threatened to overwhelm him. Things had not gone well the last time they had engaged these monstrosities.
Decades of experience let him quickly shunt those emotions aside and focus on the tactical situation. "Up the ramp!" he shouted, intending to reach the high ground. The human supersoldiers' energy shields crackled as the alien projectiles struck them.
Fortunately, the ramp was relatively short, and the Spartans' superhuman speed was enough to get them above and to cover before they were cut down. Fred and Linda, having taken the least hits, fired on the enemy as the Chief and Kelly crouched behind cover to let their shields recharge.
A pair of the drones suddenly shot into view from below. They rose above the solid banister, arced over it, and landed on their 'feet'. The half of Blue Team not occupied suppressing the drones below attacked the new arrivals.
Immediately, these drones marked themselves as different from the others. For one thing, their armor was far more streamlined than what were presumably the standard Soldier infantry. It seemed less bulky and was what would be form-fitting on a human. In a way this was good, as the armor seemed to be less sturdy.
Unfortunately, they also proved harder to hit. The Elite Soldiers were far faster and more agile than their more direct counterparts. This capability was only compounded by what appeared to be an alien variant on the thruster technology that Fireteam Osiris had used against them in the Forerunner complex. Rings of hard-light shone with an ethereal blue light on their shoulders and lower backs. They shone brighter whenever they activated, allowing for rapid maneuvering and increased force in any blows.
The Master Chief discovered this last fact the hard way as one of them shoulder checked him into a hard-light pillar. His energy shield instantly collapsed and grid-cracks appeared on the pillar behind him. The offending hostile moved to slash at the Chief's neck with its taloned fingers. The Spartan barely managed to parry the blow, receiving some scratches on his titanium armor. He tried to grab the enemy and lever it into the ground, but the thruster-rings pulsed and it shot out of reach at the last instant.
The fight went on like that for a while. The elite drone would attack, the Chief would evade, and the drone would pulse just out of his grasp. The Spartan suppressed a growl of frustration.
Fortunately, the skill of these drones had not increased along with their equipment. It took little time for the Chief to recognize a predictable pattern in his enemy's movements. The drone moved in to slash once again—why didn't it have a proper weapon?—and he allowed it to score some shallow gouges along his shoulder. The Chief moved to grab it again, and the drone pulsed out of the way.
Directly into the Chief's boot.
The kick landed center mass with enough force to fling the very surprised drone a meter backward into the same pillar the Chief had been thrown into at the start of this fight. Not giving his enemy any space, the Spartan rushed forward and pressed the barrel of his assault rifle under the Soldier's chin.
"Dodge this," he said, pulling the trigger. The drone's visor shone with light as the crystalline core within shattered. The Chief pivoted around the pillar at the last half-second, avoiding his enemy's explosive demise. His armor was singed but otherwise undamaged; it crackled with energy as his shields came back online, the drone's constant assault no longer hindering it. The Master Chief turned his attention to his squadmates.
The other drone had targeted Kelly, which was more worrying than it would normally be since she lacked her shotgun. It turned out to have been as predictable as its sibling, however, as it pulsed out of the way of a blow directly into the sights of the Spartan's Assault Rifle. Kelly fired the weapon, hitting her enemy in the dead center of its visor. She then grabbed the temporarily disoriented drone, shoved her combat knife up through its chin, and kicked it away. It exploded harmlessly far across the deck. The Chief heard her mutter something about 'cathartic...' as she sheathed her blade and readied her rifle once again.
The rest of the drones were eliminated in short order. The members of Blue Team moved out without needing to be told; they all understood the stakes.
The Master Chief paused at the top of their current fragment. They had to wait for a higher orbiting component to come within range, at which point his squadmates and he would jump across. It was perilous and time-consuming, but it was the only way up as all of the friendly aircraft were occupied with the Buzzards.
More distant flashes drew the Chief's attention as he examined the aerial battle. Decades of experience allowed him to instantly recognize the sight of a naval battle occurring in relatively close proximity to the planet he was standing on. It seemed the ceasefire in the sangheili's home system was now over.
Another fragment drew close and the 2 pieces of the ziggurat matched each other's velocity. Arcs of blue lightning fired between them as some unknown function was performed. The Chief didn't concern himself with trying to wrap his mind around how and why the Forerunners designed their facility to operate this way. He simply leaped upward and hauled himself onto the higher fragment. He wondered how the Arbiter's forces were doing in orbit.
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The battle in space was not going well.
The fleetmaster in command of the Swords of Sanghelios armada clenched his mandibles close to his face.
It was bad enough that the Storm Covenant had violated the sacred law forbidding fleet battles so close to Sanghelios. No one, save the Arbiter, had imagined that 'Mdama had fallen this far. The fleetmaster tasted bile at the mere thought of that wretched barbarian. He dearly hoped the Arbiter made his death long and painful for this offense.
Almost worse than the treachery, however, were these new foes. They were small, barely larger than a Banshee, but there were so many of them. A plague-like swarm of chrome-colored gunships flowed throughout the battlefield, draining energy shields through sheer volume of fire and forcing the Swords of Sangelios to divide their attention between the Storm vessels and these smaller adversaries. They were clearly creatures of the Storm, as none of the enemy ships were under fire from these new units, but they did not resemble anything ever crafted by sangheili hands.
Alarms blared as the fleetmaster's own flagship came under fire. The new enemy units were swarming over his supercarrier like locusts on a slab of meat. The energy shield was barely holding at 20% as blast after blast was launched by the tiny horde. Scores of the wretched things were atomized by the point defense lasers, but more simply kept coming. The fleetmaster barked out a command, ordering power diverted from the rear weapons toward the shield capacitors. There were no capital ships in that direction and he had no desire to see his own ship rendered vulnerable in this chaos. He also ordered his last wing of Seraph fighters to launch and engage the hostile gunships.
As the fleetmaster watched another of his capital ships be gutted by plasma torpedoes, a part of him wondered if, just perhaps, the Arbiter had been right.
No.
He would not stoop to that.
The sangheili people had already stooped to enough lows for survival without bringing this further shame upon themselves. The Arbiter's 'reforms' were taxing his patience as it was. This battle for the future of the sangheili people would be won in righteous combat, with sangheili warriors, not with some conjurer's trick. He renewed his focus on crushing the adversaries in front of him. Only a direct order from the Arbiter himself would be enough to convince him to alter his mind.
He risked a quick glance at a remote display of the city of Sunaion. Nearly all of the fleet's gunships and dropships were converging on the city, desperate to push back the tide of chrome-colored abominations. Every member of the Swords of Sanghelios recognized the importance of their leader; the Arbiter needed to survive. The Arbiter himself had gone quiet, unable to speak in the middle of the anarchic assault.
A part of the fleetmaster, which he refused to listen to, dearly wished that his leader was not so committed to entering combat personally.
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Locke bit back a swear as enemy fire poured over the side of the derelict Spirit, scoring his armor in several places. He let himself fall back to the deck since lying prone on the top of the dead dropship was no longer a viable option. He could feel flashbacks to Waterloo hovering just on the edges of his consciousness—he committed every micro-gram of his will to focusing on the here and now. Losing himself in memory in the middle of a battle would be a death sentence.
A pair of Soldiers moved around his cover. Fireteam Osiris had been forced to separate from him and they were currently pinned down by another group of Soldiers several meters away. The Swords forces near him were busy, meaning he was the only one to respond to the flanking maneuver. He fell to a knee, proving a minimal target profile while still retaining mobility, and executed precision fire with his Battle Rifle.
An enemy fell. The blast of its death knocked its comrade off balance. Locke rushed forward and stabbed his combat knife into the Soldier's visor before quickly withdrawing the blade and kicking the Soldier away to die harmlessly out of range. His heart pounded as he realized he had rushed out of cover to kill an enemy, a kind that exploded upon death, with a melee weapon. He tried to tell himself he was simply conserving ammo—that he wasn't on the verge of losing it due to recent revelations and the effects of prolonged combat and chronic fatigue.
He had almost succeeded when a trio of Soldiers came into view. Locke's shield was still inoperable since the Hunter's attack. He had no chance.
Just before they could deliver the killshot, 2 of the Soldiers began convulsing uncontrollably. It took Locke a moment to realize that the Soldier in the rear, one of their SAW gunners, had opened fire on it own comrades. No...it was still firing straight at Locke even after its compatriots were dust. It seemed a lack of trigger discipline, if not just plain common sense, was a defect of this new model.
An idea popped into Locke's head. Hoping for a repeat of this most recent incompetence, he sprinted straight toward his besieged subordinates. Just as he was about to run directly into the cross-fire, Locke went into a baseball slide, the hard-light projectiles passing overhead as his armor scraped over the hard-light deck. As hoped, the SAW gunner kept tracking Locke with his weapon, never taking its finger off of whatever it called a trigger.
The automatic weapon raked through the clustered Soldiers.
Several of them, their armor already weakened by the Spartans, exploded, utterly shattering their ramshackle formation. The survivors were eliminated before they could rally, followed by the gunner.
"Much obliged, Lead," Buck commed. Locke nodded as he got to his feet.
Just like on Meridian, the Soldiers seemed to have very limited control over their teleportation technology. None of the Spartans had seen the tell-tale blue flash for what felt like hours. If they could just outlast their enemy...
"Spartans!" the Arbiter shouted, motioning for them to join him and his surviving guard near the base of the pyramid. Locke's heart pounded in his chest. What was he going to do?
He motioned Osiris forward. The human supersoldiers joined the Arbiter in his oasis of relative security in the wasteland that was the Central Pylon. Locke felt his finger hovering just outside the trigger guard on his rifle. His duty, his dedication to his superiors and the humanity they were meant to serve, was pulling him towards his orders.
The ONI Agent was saved from his momentary crisis by the appearance of a blue glow just in front of the ramp leading to the control console. Osiris and the Swords readied themselves behind cover, expecting another round of Soldier reinforcements.
Instead, a Promethean Knight appeared.
Its energy weapon began glowing a familiar red.
"Scatter!" Locke shouted at the top of his lungs.
An orb of red energy flew out of the Promethean's weapon. A group of sangheili warriors were consumed in alien flame, along with the cover they had been crouching behind. The hard-light deck shone pure white where the weapon hit, all artificial texture gone, the Forerunner technology struggling to remain solid in the face of its own race's weaponry.
Fire rained down upon the alien juggernaut. Sangheili from all sides hosed it down with plasma fire. It got to the point where the Promethean was practically obscured by the sheer volume of fire flying towards it.
None of it succeeded in so much as scratching the Forerunner super-combat drone's armor as it methodically cleansed the courtyard of the aliens who had dared intrude on its masters' domain.
One group of sangheili were engaged in close quarters combat with a group of Soldiers. The Promethean seemed not to care about its supposed allies. It fired its weapon and incinerated all of them without missing a beat.
This was bad. With the Buzzards clouding the sky, it was almost impossible to get reinforcements in to replenish the Swords' ranks. The Arbiter's troops had been dwindling since the ziggurat separated into orbiting fragments; victory had only been assured by the fact that the Soldiers were even more decimated by the relatively brief combat. The Promethean was well on its way to correcting that disparity.
Locke's mind raced with the absolute focus of secret desperation. They needed to take that thing down, now. They didn't have the luxury of an air strike this time. They didn't have have a tank, either, which would be his second choice. What, then?
The drone's energy shield flared. Locke turned and saw Tanaka hefting one of the Soldiers' Spartan Laser analogues. She fired again, draining the Promethean's shields significantly, before red flames started shooting out of the sides of the weapon and she ditched it. Cursing inwardly, Locke ordered his subordinates to focus fire on the enemy's head. The energy shield actually seemed close to failure.
That, unfortunately, was of little comfort. There was only a single group of friendly warriors left: the Arbiter's. Time slowed as the Forerunner war machine fired once again and eliminated the last sangheili infantry in the center of the ancient city. The personal guard of the Arbiter himself. A storm of conflicting emotions raged in Locke's soul...until he realized that the sangheili head of state had not been visible anywhere just prior to the destruction.
"For Sanghelios!"
The Arbiter leaped from a piece of concealment less than 2 meters from the Promethean. He landed on top of his adversary, wrapped his left arm around its shoulders, and used his right to plunge his energy sword deep into his enemy's head, depleting the last of its shield and annihilating its processing center in one stroke.
The Promethean jerked to a halt. It froze in place as if someone had hit its pause button.
Recognizing the danger, the Arbiter pressed his hoofs against the thing's thorax and shoved off with all of his might, pulling his blade with him. He hit the ground, rolled, and moved to sprint—
The Promethean exploded.
A wave of blindingly bright fire rushed outward faster than even a Spartan's eye could see. The Arbiter, not able to get out of range of the blast, was flung through the air. His energy shield depleted instantly, leaving his armor to take the heat and impact as he collided with the downed Spirit. He crumpled to the deck in a motionless heap.
"Wretched intruder..." a booming, distantly familiar voice opined.
An enormous humanoid figure walked into view. The flash of its teleportation must have gone unnoticed due to the Promethean's death. It was armored, its figure clearly styled after a medieval European knight. It walked with a powerful stride that somehow succeeded in conveying professional strength and martial prowess as well as sneering superiority and dismissal. The members of Fireteam Osiris recognized him instantly.
The Warden Eternal. The creature that had attacked both them and Blue Team in the heart of the Forerunner ruins beneath Meridian.
The wanna-be knight's left arm, destroyed in its previous fight with the Spartans, had been replaced. The new piece was jet black and gave the Warden an asymmetrical appearance. The rest of his body was chrome over black 'flesh', as it had been before. He reached down with his new arm and grasped the Arbiter by the sangheili's now-mangled armor. The high-tech longsword was raised high into the air as the Warden readied his weapon for a decapitating stroke.
Oh, no...
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The fragment slowed to a halt as Blue Team reached its summit. They were now within possible leaping distance of the central fragment, which they could see below them. The Master Chief activated the zoom function on his visor, hoping to gain more intel about the situation they would be literally falling into.
Only to zero in on Fireteam Osiris.
There he was. Jameson Locke. The Agent of ONI that had taken so much from him...and the one the Chief had endangered all of humanity to kill in his foolhardy assassination attempt.
This wasn't like that disgrace of a mission, though. Locke was in their way. There was little chance he would just stand by as Blue Team accessed the control center. It would make sense to eliminate him now, while they had the element of surprise. It made sense...
"Blue Lead! Contact!" Fred commed. The Chief deactivated his zoom and raised his rifle, pivoting towards the red blip he now noticed on his motion tracker.
A silver sphere, covered in grooves and incomprehensible designs and surrounded by a framework of curved alien metal, rose into view. In the 'front' of the sphere was a purple glowing optic that was aimed directly at the Master Chief.
"Reclaimer!" it said in a cheerful, feminine voice. The Chief instantly recognized it as a Monitor, the autonomous administrative units that were assigned to oversee various installations in the absence of an actual Forerunner. The Spartans gripped their weapons tighter and prepared to fire. The last Monitor they had encountered had deteriorated over its lifespan, gone insane, and tried to kill them all. Still, this one was not attacking, and 343 Guilty Spark had been useful for a time. The Chief sent a signal to hold fire.
The Monitor continued, oblivious to their inner concerns. "I am so happy to finally locate you! Have you come to stop Cortana?"
That threw them all for a loop. The other members of Blue Team seemed confused. John, on the other hand...
An indignant anger rose in the Chief's chest. "Are you suggesting that Cortana is responsible for all of this?" he growled.
"Oh, dear," the Monitor said in an apologetic tone. "I beg your pardon. I meant no offense. To be perfectly fair, I am unsure as to the exact motives for her actions. She has not been forthcoming with details. Perhaps she would be more willing to speak to you?" This answer was not enough to satisfy the Chief. For some reason, such thoughts made him far angrier than they should considering how cooperative the AI seemed to be. He was about to cut the alien AI down to size, perhaps literally as well as figuratively, when, true to form, the Monitor interrupted him by continuing to talk.
"Oh, where are my manners! I am 031 Exuberant Witness, Monitor of the Genesis installation. I came here to find the one Cortana has indicated great concern and desire for. It is my hope that you can convince her to abandon whatever her irrational agenda is and return control of my installation to me."
"Wait," the Chief interrupted. "she took over your installation?"
"Oh, yes," the Monitor, 'Exuberant Witness', replied. "She arrived several of your months ago and quickly took control of the entire world from me. I was, shamefully, unprepared for such an assault. I assumed her to be harmless and thus did not act until it was too late. She is very resourceful when it comes to going places she is told to forgo and doing that which is forbidden to her."
That did actually sound like Cortana.
"It was with great effort that I managed to make this journey at all," Exuberant Witness explained. "I could only do so by convincing her, in one of her rare moments of communication, that I would be able to locate you and convey you to her. Oh—that reminds me," she said, turning away from the others.
An arc of blue lightning shot out from Witness' eye. Only their fire-forged discipline kept the Spartans from opening up with their weapons before they noticed the electrical discharge stop in dead air less than a meter from the Monitor's form. A sphere of energy, shining a familiar blue, appeared at the termination point of the lightning. It rapidly expanded, forming a disc approximately 3 meters across.
The surface of the disc shimmered briefly before an image materialized upon it. A scenic view of a lush jungle landscape was depicted. What appeared to be a Forerunner structure was in the foreground of the shot, indicating it had been recorded from the top of some kind of outpost of the ancient aliens.
The Master Chief wasn't an idiot. He knew right away what this was most likely to be.
"So," he said, turning to the Monitor, "if we walk through this we'll appear at this 'Genesis' place?"
"That is correct, Reclaimer," Exuberant Witness replied in her cheerful voice. Her tone was more disturbing than comforting, given Guilty Spark's penchant for insane giggling and his similarly cheerful business-like demeanor. "I caution you to hurry, however. The Guardian will awaken soon and I am uncertain for what duration I will be able to maintain a portal with the interference its presence invariably creates."
"Blue One, can you confirm?" the Chief commed. He wasn't about to just trust whatever this thing said. Not after everything the Forerunners had, albeit accidentally, put them through. Fred nodded and pulled out his Forerunner compad. A few minutes of work determined that Witness was using Sunaion systems to create the portal and that, yes, it led to a facility named 'Genesis'.
The Spartans glanced at each other. Nods were exchanged. This was what they had signed up for, after all; what they had wanted since they started this insane mission. Additionally, this was John's chance to prove Cortana's innocence. He glanced back at the control fragment, curiosity driving him to get one last look.
A Promethean Knight was engaging Osiris and their allies. The Forerunner war machine finished off the last of the Swords of Sanghelios and began advancing upon the Spartan IVs. It seemed the Chief didn't need to bother in the first place; the Promethean would finish Locke off for him.
The Arbiter leaped out from behind cover. The Chief's eyebrows shot up behind his visor as he witnessed the sangheili successfully engage a Promethean Knight in melee combat. It seemed that the Master Chief wasn't the only one that could pull off the impossible.
The Promethean exploded, flinging the Arbiter through the air.
Time slowed to a crawl as the Chief saw the sangheili head of state fly into the side of a derelict Spirit. Then the Warden Eternal appeared. The bizarre combat construct advanced on the Arbiter, its intent clear.
Everything the Master Chief had learned in his stay on the sangheili homeworld rushed in on him at once. All of the politics, the sheer level to which the entire Swords of Sanghelios movement depended upon the Arbiter, the hopes and dreams of 'Khebrem and his people. The Chief knew that if the Arbiter died here, everything he had built was likely to fall apart, Storm Covenant or no. He realized, at last, how devastated the sangheili had been by the War—how similar their plight was to humanity's.
The portal glowed brightly at the Master Chief's side. His mission, his desire, was right there. The gleaming world on the other side, full of promise, was beckoning to him. All it would take was a single step...
John turned away from it.
A drone gunship flew past the control fragment. The Chief mentally plotted its course and came up with a plan. "Blue Team, prepare for vehicular transit." he commed.
A chorus of acknowledgment lights winked on his HUD, the rest of Blue Team having seen the same thing he had. The Chief felt indescribable relief—his siblings understood. A clarity of purpose he had not held in months welcomed him into its embrace and he set upon his task with renewed energy.
The gunship was moving into position. The Chief stowed his rifle on his back and used his augmented intellect to plot and time his exact course. Just...about...
The Chief sprinted forward. He tensed his legs in preparation for his jump.
He launched into the air. With the superhuman precision he flew toward his unwary target, the gunship no doubt hoping to perform a low-altitude strafing run. The Spartan arced slightly, his heart pounding at the knowledge that if anything went wrong he would crash into the waves below and be crushed by the water pressure of the deep ocean.
The Master Chief crashed into the drone's roof. His hands felt like they were about to be wrenched off his arms and his feet off of his legs as he used both to secure himself to the roof of the vessel. He then utilized a secret that he remembered from the Light Rifle he had found on Meridian: Forerunner technology was psychic.
With the sheer force of his will the Chief commanded the gunship to accept him into its interior. A blue flash signaled his teleportation inside. To its credit the pilot, a Soldier much like those on the surface below, only hesitated in shock for a moment before lunging at the Spartan with its talons. The Chief redirected the blow into the side of the cockpit and grabbed what he took to be a joystick.
The grip gave the Spartan instant mental access to the entirety of the gunship's functions. He once again 'thought' his will into being and the Soldier, already moving to strike again, was teleported out of its own ship.
A view of the exterior was projected onto the front of the cockpit. The Chief briefly noted the drone falling toward the ocean surface far behind him. Once again, he had to marvel at the blind aggression of these artificial warriors. The thing could easily have jettisoned the Chief if it had acted immediately. Instead, it had gone for the direct assault. Amateurish. He put these thoughts out of his mind as he turned his newly acquired transportation back toward his team's fragment.
They still had a job to do.
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This was it. The Arbiter, last hope of the sangheili race, was about to die. ONI's will was about to be achieved. Best of all, he would not have to die by human hands, so the clandestine organization would avoid all blame for the incident. The part of Locke that was still an ONI Agent rejoiced at the fortuitous turn of events.
That part was drowned out completely.
Locke was not listening to it. He wasn't listening to anything that was currently happening. He was light-years away and months in the past. He was back on Meridian.
He was seeing Security Officers fall dead around him, their lives given to protect their people from a threat Locke had brought upon them.
He was seeing the bodies of countless civilians littering the streets, knowing that were it not for him, they might have lived.
He was seeing the warped, pixellated form Governor Sloan, just before Locke uploaded the viruses that would destroy him and prevent the defensive turrets from coming online.
Memory had finally succeeded in dragging him down.
Slowly, confusingly, as if it were a dream, Locke felt himself drift back to the present. Sunaion was around him again. But...it was all wrong. The bodies around him weren't sangheili, they were human. The wreckage wasn't Spirits and plasma weaponry, but Pelicans and rifles.
The person about to be executed by the Warden was not the Arbiter, but Governor Sloan.
Locke rose out of cover with a bestial roar.
The human supersoldier unleashed his full fury upon the abomination. He unloaded his Battle Rifle onto his enemy, charging ahead, intent on forcing him to divert his attention. It would not be the same this time. Not if Jameson Locke had anything to say about it.
As hoped, the Warden dropped his prey and turned to face the approaching threat. The sword, already raised, swung down, the super-drone placing his left hand behind his right on the hilt as the weapon swung downward. Locke used his reflexes to dodge the blow.
Then, the swordsman did something unexpected. The Warden used his newer arm to grasp the sword half-way down the blade. Using the new point of leverage, he swung the weapon in rapid swipes as if it were a bladed staff. Caught off-guard by the new maneuver, the Spartan IV was only able to successfully dodge for a few more seconds.
The blade slashed Locke's helmet.
The entire front of the headgear was split in half. A searing pain overwhelmed Locke as the alien weapon burned and cut his flesh. Only sheer luck saved him from having his entire head destroyed, the blade coming just short of penetrating his skull. As it was, a laceration was formed diagonally across his face, blinding him in his left eye and utterly ruining his visor.
He lost consciousness almost instantly.
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A stream of particularly vulgar expletives ran out of Tanaka's mouth as she saw her squadleader go down.
"Vale, get its attention!" she commed. Normally, she'd play center stage herself, but she remembered what had happened the last time they fought this Lancelot-wannabe. Her thick armor would do no good here. Only someone with Vale's maneuverability would stand a chance. "Buck, let's finish off the last of this freak's backup." Buck confirmed her directive. Tanaka kept tabs on the big freak in her peripheral vision; she was going to focus on the threats she could deal with first, but she wasn't about to ignore the main challenge.
A large group of Soldiers was advancing from the other side of the pyramid. Tanaka opened up with her SAW, gunning down a few while forcing the rest into cover. She saw Buck suddenly materialize behind the entrenched hostiles and throw a fragmentation grenade into the middle of their formation. The survivors ran for new cover, their numbers diminished drastically.
A Soldier, one equipped with thruster discs, leaped behind Buck as his cloak was still in cooldown. Tanaka was about to shout a warning when a Beam Rifle round passed over Buck's shoulder and speared the hostile dead center in its visor. The stealth expert lunged out of range of his enemy's explosive demise. It seemed they had a sniper on their side; one of the Arbiter's people must have made it.
Tanaka focused on taking down the rest of the Soldier infantry. The pleasure she took in each kill combined with the added feeling of security knowing they had a guardian angel out there with a high-powered scope. They might actually survive this. She just hoped Vale could stall long enough for the rest of them to come up with a plan to take the Warden down.
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What in Space was he thinking?!
Vale fired her assault rifle, trying to keep the Warden Eternal from executing her fallen squadleader.
The Warden, apparently aware of his seeming invulnerability to conventional weapons, reversed his grip on his sword and raised it high, with both hands on the hilt, preparing to drive it into Locke's motionless body.
An explosion rocked the courtyard. The blast was far enough away not to damage the Spartans, much less the Warden, but it did distract the construct from his task. Vale recognized the munition as belonging to a Buzzard gunship. She scanned the sky and quickly found one heading directly toward the central fragment.
Is that...?
A pair of Spartan IIs leaped off the roof of the gunship. She would swear she could feel one of them glare at her briefly before focusing their attention upon the Warden. It seemed that the ancient principle of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' applied here as much as it did in that Forerunner complex beneath Meridian.
Gunfire bounced off of the Warden's hard-light armor plates. He raised his sword and pointed it at the humans that dared attack him. Remembering the energy blast that the Warden had thrown against Tanaka, Vale rushed to engage the enemy in close quarters combat. It was the only way to keep the super-drone from annihilating them all in short order.
Hopefully, the Spartan IIs would be enough to tip the balance in their favor...
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Kelly shook off her feelings of antipathy toward the burgundy-colored Spartan IV. This was no time to be holding grudges. She was about to move to engage the enemy once again when she noticed something that made her pause.
The Arbiter was lying on the ground a short distance away.
The alien was lying in a small pool of its own blood, its breathing was shallow, and even a medical novice like Kelly could tell that it was close to death.
Her response was almost total apathy. The Arbiter was neither a Spartan, whom she would genuinely care for on a personal level; nor a soldier, whom she would feel some camaraderie with; nor a civilian, whom she was duty bound to serve. He was an alien, and a sangheili to boot. She couldn't care less whether he bled out on some forsaken battlefield.
Then, Kelly remembered all she had learned since she got to this planet. She realized what the Arbiter's death would mean. Most of all, she remembered what Dr. Halsey had taught her, and what she and her siblings had decided upon Meridian.
They had to be better. Better than what they fought. Better than what they had been, before.
Kelly groaned in frustration as she went to save the Arbiter's life. She rushed to the alien's side and took out her medical equipment, including the sangheili biofoam she had kept for research purposes. Somehow, the dim feeling that her mother was smiling upon her did little to erase the annoyed frown she wore behind her visor.
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The Warden Eternal was not going to die easy. He proved that as Fred and the burgundy Spartan IV—Vale, if he remembered the files Linda had researched correctly—desperately tried to keep ahead of his strikes.
Thankfully, Vale had an energy sword, given to her by a female sangheili warrior that now crouched to the side of the duelists, assisting Kelly in trying to stabilize the Arbiter. With a second combatant backing him up, Fred found it much easier to maneuver around the Warden and launch counter-strikes.
Unfortunately, the Warden had upgraded a bit since Meridian. His armor was now thicker, the seams tighter than before, and his new fighting style was making it harder to dodge. It seemed someone had finally bothered to research the proper technique for fighting with a longsword. Despite all of this, Fred still made good use of his melee expertise, and landed many strikes against his opponent.
Vale, lacking his experience and superior augmentations, made heavy use of her thrusters to stay ahead of the Warden's attacks. She paused and, deciding to try a repeat of her stunt on Meridian, pulsed her downward thrusters at full power and tried to leap clear over the Warden's head.
The Warden reversed his grip on the hilt of his sword and thrust upward. The weighted pommel impacted the flying Spartan, instantly depleting her shield and smashing several of the thrusters on her back.
Any cry of triumph was cut off as Vale, twisting in mid-air from the blow, grabbed the Warden's head and wrenched it back in her effort to hang on. The alien war-drone stumbled and tried to regain its balance. His Spartan passenger steadied herself with an arm around his neck and legs around his midsection, raised the energy sword, and plunged it into the rear of his neck seam.
The Warden screamed in agony.
The sword didn't go deep enough. The hard-light plates were 'forced' apart and seemed to shrink slightly from the strain, but the Warden finally was able to right himself and set his feet. He thrust his sword into the ground and an energy pulse rushed out, throwing Vale off before she could continue her attack.
Fred knew that the Spartan IV was out of the fight. Even if the pulse hadn't damaged her on its own, her now-destroyed thrusters wouldn't allow her to maneuver well enough to assist him in the duel. He needed to exploit the hole Vale had opened in his enemy's defenses.
The Warden had no intention of letting him do that. Every attempt Fred made to get behind his foe was met with a lightning-fast swipe of the longsword. Once again, Fred found himself desperately dodging, as even a parry threatened to wrench his arms from their sockets.
A wave of horror swept over the Spartan as he realized that he effectively had no advantage over his foe. Now that the Warden was actually using his weapon properly, speed was no longer on his side. The Warden had reach, power, and speed over him. Fred struggled to keep ahead of the strikes.
Something. He needed something to tip the balance. Abruptly, the Warden swiped at Fred's legs. The Spartan jumped nimbly over the attack—
The pommel followed behind the blade and swatted Fred out of the air.
The chest-piece of his MJOLNIR armor dented as he was flung away. He landed and slid across the ground for several meters. His armor blared warnings about his new injuries and its automated biofoam injectors filled his body with the life-saving compound. His eyesight cleared just in time to see the Warden approaching his limp form and raising his blade for an overhand chop that would cleave the Spartan in two.
No..
Anger and refusal coursed through Fred. He would not fail here. Dr. Halsey had given her life to save him from this abomination last time. He would not allow that sacrifice to be in vain.
NO!
The sword swung down. Fred rolled out of the way at the last fraction of a second.
Before his foe could lift his weapon to attack again, Fred had rolled onto his hands and feet and launched himself like a pouncing feline. His right boot landed on the hilt of the longsword. His left landed on the Warden's arm. He used his enemy's own body as a launching point to leap clear over his enemy just as Vale had done. Fred twisted vertically in mid air. He grabbed the Warden's head, using it as a lever to fall head-first directly onto the drone's back.
The full force of a falling Spartan's bulk drove 'The Doctor's Memory' through the neck-seam all the way up to the hilt.
The sword failed almost immediately, the blow being too much for the energy weapon to maintain, but the damage was done. The entire upper-back of the swordsman's torso was now exposed. It's hard-light armor had failed to shoulder the burden. Desperate to avoid damage, the super-drone turned toward its enemies, denying them an angle on his vulnerable spot.
A Beam Rifle shot punched through his back and into whatever passed for his heart.
The Warden jerked as if he were having a seizure. Fred managed to scramble a few meters away before his enemy exploded. Steam and smoke rushed outward from the relatively tame detonation, obscuring view of the mechanical enemy.
Fred, Vale, and the others present picked themselves up and readied their weapons. Just in case.
They needn't have worried. The Warden, while still alive, was in no state to attack them. He was on his knees, hard-light armor completely depleted, shriveled tatters of black 'flesh' hanging limply off of a glowing, crystalline skeletal structure. Its left arm had vanished, leaving an empty shoulder socket. A shining skull, its burning-orange sockets filled with a deep red light, regarded its foes with an inscrutable expression.
A crackling blue haze started to encompass the Warden. Arcs of blue lightning connected him to its edges. He was going to teleport away! NO!
A shape flew in from on high. The Warden's skull opened in a silent, terrified shriek and raised its remaining arm in a futile attempt at a shield. Everyone dove for cover.
A damaged Buzzard gunship slammed into the Warden Eternal, driving him into the deck and scraping him several meters across it and into a wall.
A massive explosion rocked the courtyard.
A fireball rushed outward, its brightness blinding anyone not protected by an automatically polarizing visor. The sheer force of the explosion pushed tens of corpses and numerous pieces of debris off the sides of the deck. Kelly and the female sangheili desperately tried to cover the Arbiter and keep him still to avoid additional damage. A massive cloud of steam rose into the air as the rainwater was flash-vaporized by the heat of the Warden's demise.
The blue glow was left behind and swiftly blinked out of existence, its purpose unfulfilled.
The smoke/steam cleared as the raging storm winds blew it away. The Master Chief rose to his feet, having bailed out of his transportation at the last second. He stood, proud and tall, seeming to pose with his rifle leaned against his shoulder like a scene straight off of a goddamn propaganda poster.
Fred was going to give his brother so much shit over that, later.
The members of Osiris and Blue Team stood and attempted to get their bearings. A quick scan showed them that all of the Soldier infantry had been eliminated. They were alone on the control fragment.
A deep, resonant, otherworldly sound issued out from beneath them. Beams of bright energy lanced out from each fragment, connecting the orbiting pieces in a ring and each one to the center, forming a wheel shape. The Spartans struggled to maintain their balance as the entire central fragment shook. Movement from the rest of the city drew their attention.
All of the pylons were rising higher into the air. Their hard-light platforms had all vanished, turning them into a forest of gray metal spires. They spread out as they rose, eventually forming a single layer thick ring with the control pyramid at its very center. This gargantuan outer ring, each spire kilometers-tall, became inter-connected by energy beams, a macroscopic replica of the Central Pylon fragments. Then, they all formed a connection with the inner, fragment ring.
A massive beam of blindingly bright energy shot downward from the former Central Pylon into the waves below. Slowly, like a scene out of a religious text, the water began to part, a massive pit forming in the waters of the ocean, deep as the sea floor and wide as the circumference of the outer ring.
"Blue One! You're up!" the Chief commed. Fred nodded and limped his way toward the pyramid.
His siblings moved to help him. John put Fred's right arm around his shoulder, Kelly put his left around hers. "I can—"
"Stow it, Blue One," Kelly said in a private comm, not wanting any of the spectators to hear. Fred, wisely, decided not to press the issue. He knew his sister well enough not to push her on an issue of her family's health.
They reached the control console in short order. Fred quickly took out his Forerunner compad and interfaced it with the console, grateful for the universal nature of his favorite new toy. He was greeted with a labyrinthine collection of incomprehensible information. Once again, he had access, but no ability to understand.
A thunderous sound issued from the pit below. It sounded like a massive excavation charge. Fred desperately flipped through sections and what commands he understood, trying to find some way to reverse the process.
"Oh...my..." one of the Spartan IVs said. Fred glanced up. He wished he hadn't.
A Guardian passed by the constellation that used to be the Central Pylon. First, came the skull-like head. Then, the torso, covered in a countless number of constantly shifting plates, spelling out ancient text that he had no ability to understand, but made him feel like a tiny speck nonetheless. Next was the segmented lower section, as if the top was a moth in mid-transformation.
Furthering that analogy, the Guardian's 'wings' spread out as it cleared the sea that had been its prison for millenia. The enormous construct paused.
A pulse issued out from its form. The energy shields of all of the Spartans flared and all un-shielded tech was instantly fried by the EMP. It's freedom obtained and its task done, the Guardian rose into the air, moving to pass through the battle in space with as little interest as it had showed the Infinity Task Group.
"S...Spartans..." an alien voice said, weakly, over the comms. Fred glanced down to where the Arbiter lay. He was being attended to by the female sangheili, Kelly having moved, albeit reluctantly, to treat Locke for his injuries. Fred's injuries weren't pressing (for a Spartan. The damage to his internal organs would be fatal to a normal human) and he wasn't about to be taken out of the fight at the 11th hour, so Kelly had moved on. Blue Team's medic returned to the alien head of state to ensure he didn't kill himself by moving.
The Spartans, minus Fred, crowded round, most of them facing outward to avoid any surprises. It seemed their truce was still on. The Arbiter continued, "the...f-fleet...in battle?"
"Correct," the Chief said, kneeling next to the fallen alien. His body language was awkward, indicating he was unsure what to do. Strange. Fred had only ever seen this side of his leader outside battle, in social situations.
"Get...get me a channel...to my fleetmaster," the Arbiter croaked. The Chief nodded, looking to Fred. This was really more Linda's thing, but she was stuck providing covering fire from the orbiting fragments, and he had the most technical expertise. He opened a comm channel, following the Arbiter's instructions to contact the fleet.
"Release..." he croaked. The Arbiter rallied himself before saying, in a clear and authoritative tone, "release the contingency!"
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A hologram shimmered into existence on the armrest of Captain Lasky's command chair.
"We have received the signal, sir," Roland informed him. Lasky smiled grimly. It seemed the sangheili had finally gotten over their reluctance to share the glory with their human allies.
It was understandable on some level that the Arbiter desired his people to free themselves without outside aid, at least publicly. It would make for powerful propaganda. Still, with a Guardian about to activate, it had been all the human naval officer could do not to pull his hair out as he watched events play out on the remote feeds.
"Take us in," he ordered.
The UNSC Infinity engaged its slipspace drive. The relatively brief journey from the edge of the solar system to just outside the naval battle over Sanghelios took just under a minute. Lasky set aside his continual amazement at the speed and precision of his new vessel.
Swords and Storm ships were engaging each other. Everything from Super-Carriers to vacuum-rated Banshees were flying around, firing guided balls of super-heated plasma at each other. More interesting were the numerous Buzzard gunships. Captain Lasky ordered his Broadswords to engage the Storm forces, but otherwise ignored them. There was another target that occupied his attention.
The Guardian was entering high orbit. Lasky knew that this wasn't the same construct that had so grievously wounded his precious ship above Meridian. Still, it looked similar enough that he was willing to consider this a rematch. He pressed a button, opening the hard-line comm to his Electronic Warfare section.
"Dr. Hamilton, engage EW assault," he ordered, hoping that, this time, it would be enough.
The Guardian paused and its pieces began to shudder, like last time. It rallied after a moment, again like last time. Unlike last time, its pieces continued to rattle erratically, the symbols on its 'chest' remaining an anarchic mess instead of alien script. The Guardian was unable to shrug off the assault as it had before. It seemed Lord Hood's resources had been better than ONI's. The advantage seemed like it would hold.
If not, well...he'd just have to show the world that Spartans weren't the only ones capable of doing the impossible.
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Got it!
Finally, Fred had managed to access the Guardian's systems. Well...access might be a bit generous. He could see readouts concerning the war machine, most of which he couldn't make any sense of, but he still wasn't sure how to hurt the damn thing. It could take hours to sort this out.
A familiar chittering drew the Spartan's attention. He turned to see multiple Swords dropships landing in the courtyard, the aerial battle against the Buzzards apparently having been won. Sangheili medics were finally tending to the Arbiter, and engineering staff were moving to access the control console. Including his new...friend...the huragok, Reaches-Far-Quickly.
Fred's immediate response was to reach for his weapons. The tech behind him was potentially the most powerful Forerunner gear ever recovered. Every bit of training he had ever been given screamed that it had to be in human hands alone. His superiors had been clear—
His superiors in ONI.
That thought made him pause. As did the increase in flashes from the battle above as the Guardian started laying waste to the ships in orbit. The huragok paused in front of him, hovering inquisitively.
Fuck it.
"Give me a hand, here."
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"Shields at 57%," Roland informed him. Captain Lasky kept his face neutral for the benefit of his crew. Inwardly, he was equal parts furious, exasperated, and frightened.
Another plasma torpedo impacted the Infinity's shields. It seemed that the Storm viewed the human ship's arrival as an affront that outweighed all other matters. Every last one of their ships had turned to engage Lasky's vessel.
This was despite the fact that the Guardian wasn't showing any discretion in its rampage. The gravity weapons that had destroyed the human frigates over Meridian were swallowing up ships left and right. Both the Swords and the Storm were losing capital ships and carriers.
The Swords of Sanghelios fleet was, frustratingly, less focused than their enemies. Half of them were engaging the remaining Storm vessels while the other was firing ineffectually at the Guardian. Lasky opened a channel to the flagship.
"Captain Lasky to Fleetmaster 'Varan," he commed, "Requesting you provide cover for the Infinity as we move to engage primary target."
"Negative, Shipmaster Lasky," came the reply. "This is our fight. We shall not leave any part of it to you alone."
Lasky suppressed a growl of frustration. "Fleetmaster, my ship is the only vessel in this star-system that has the firepower to hurt that thing," he reasoned. He shifted gears to diplomatic mode, continuing, "I understand your warrior's pride, but surely victory in this case is worth accepting help. Didn't one of your prophets once say, 'Only a fool refuses a hand offered in aid, while a sword swings for his head.' ?"
There was a pause. Lasky struggled not to pace the floor as he hoped, prayed, practically demanded that all the work he had put into understanding humanity's tepid allies would bear fruit.
"Understood...and concurred, shipmaster," came the response. The Swords vessels broke off their engagement of the Guardian and focused on their more mortal adversaries. The Captain breathed a sigh of relief as the fire directed toward the Infinity let up significantly. He turned his full attention to the Guardian.
A Storm super-carrier, the last in that organization's fleet, was sucked into a miniature black hole. The Guardian, still looking like it was having a seizure, suddenly oriented itself to look directly at the Infinity. In a terrifying echo of the 'Battle' of Meridian, what appeared to be lightning started arcing across the construct's wings. A ball of blinding energy started gathering in front of its center mass.
"Prepare for evasive mane—," Lasky's order was cut off as the energy sphere abruptly winked out of existence. The Guardian started truly shaking now, its wings moving erratically, looking like a bird flailing to escape some danger. The ethereal lights that filled the seams of the creature shone so bright the screens struggled to tone it down to visible levels. Most bizarrely of all, the 'skull' that was its head started...opening its jaws, revealing a portion of a crystalline structure underneath.
"Divert power from the shields and give me a firing solution on the construct's mouth with the primary coils!" Captain Lasky shouted. He knew a weak-point when he saw one. A red circle started closing in on the target on his screen.
"Solution achieved," his weapons officer stated.
"Fire!"
The entire ship shuddered as 2 Super-MAC rounds were magnetically launched out of barrels running the length of the 5.7 kilometer-long ship. The 3,000 ton ferric tungsten rounds flew at 4% the speed of light and, guided by Roland's flawless calculations, both struck deep in the Guardian's 'throat'.
A titanic explosion filled the sky over Sanghelios.
In the split-second before the flash overloaded the ship's sensors, Lasky would swear he could see the Guardian's head explode into pieces. He couldn't be sure, though, as the sheer force of the explosion was clear proof that the Guardian itself had detonated in its death throws.
Everything within 1,000 kilometers was instantly vaporized by the blast. Anyone on the planet looking upward was permanently blinded by the sheer intensity of the flash. A wave of all possible kinds of radiation issued outward, lethally poisoning the crews of any ships whose hulls had been breached. Sensors were overloaded and fried throughout the star system.
It took the better part of a minute for the Infinity to get its eyesight back. When it did, Lasky was greeted by friendly skies. He sat back in his chair, overcome by exhausted relief.
They'd done it.
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"We did it!" Fred shouted, resisting the urge to try to high-five Reaches-Far-Quickly. The alien engineer twittered excitedly from its place next to the control console, its tentacles still attached to the device and allowing it to directly interface with the Forerunner systems. They had sown enough chaos within the Guardian's inner processes to open up a weak-point which the ships above had been able to exploit. Fred closed down the Forerunner compad in relief.
That was one task done, at least.
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The fight on Sanghelios was over.
At least, it was for the Master Chief. The Arbiter was stabilized and had been evacuated on a medical transport to the nearest field hospital. The Storm Covenant had been thoroughly defeated and no longer warranted their immediate attention. The members of Blue Team were regrouped, Linda having been picked up and dropped off by a Swords Phantom. Even the former city of Sunaion seemed to be shutting down, the energy beams connecting its pylons having gone dormant after the launch of the Guardian. It was time to continue the mission.
Speak of the devil...
The Monitor, 031 Exuberant Witness, hovered into view. The sangheili present reacted with awe, the more pious among them falling to their knees before what their faith deemed to be an 'Oracle'. The others simply kept their weapons ready and watched with awed fascination as the Forerunner AI approached the Master Chief.
"Oh, my!" she said, sounding for all the world as if she was out of breath. "That was most exhilarating! I have never witnessed direct combat before! You are victorious, Reclaimer! At least...I presume you are?" The Monitor tilted slightly as if perplexed. "I was never given much instruction in the aspects of warfare. There are fewer of your enemies than there were before, which I presume was your intention?"
The Chief knew first-hand that things could go off-track, fast. He moved to head off that out-of-control transport. "Focus, Exuberant Witness. Can you open another portal to Genesis?"
The purple light in the Monitor's 'eye' flashed in intensity. "I believe so, Reclaimer. However, due to the interference of the battle, I can only bring 1, perhaps 2 individuals there. Once we have arrived I should be able to use my Installation's systems to transit as many as you like."
"Copy. Get it ready," the Chief ordered. He turned toward his squad. "Blue Two, you're with me. Blue Three, look after Blue One," he ordered. Fred's injuries were significant enough that, as much as he hated splitting his team, the Chief wasn't willing to risk him. Kelly would best know how to oversee his treatment. Additionally, Linda would be better suited to operating independently if they got separated. His squadmates accepted his orders with quiet professionalism.
The Monitor created another circular portal. The lush landscape he had witnessed before once again appeared. The Chief approached it, reached out his hand, and—
Jameson Locke tackled him from behind. The 2 supersoldiers hit the portal...and vanished.
Whew. That was a beast to write.
Note: This is probably the most important chapter of this fic, so I took my time with it. Sorry for the wait, guys.
Note: This is the point at which both characters regain their own self-determination. They make a conscious (well, semi-conscious in Locke's case), moral choice rather than blindly following what their leaders tell them to do. This is what I've been building to this entire fic. So, uh...feedback?
Note: I struggled a bit with whether or not to open this chapter with a quote from Bioshock: "A man chooses, a slave obeys." I wanted to include it to reinforce the theme of the characters reclaiming their lost humanity. That's why I named the fic Halo 5: Reclamation, after all, and I'm worried I may not have been clear enough about that theme in the text itself. I ultimately decided against it because none of the other chapters started with a quote, let alone one from an early 21st Century video game. What do you guys think?
Note: I'm worried about the pacing of this chapter. Just having 20 straight pages of battles wouldn't work, so I tried to have a steady escalation of tension with some breaks to let the reader breathe. How did I do?
Note: I struggled a bit to give everyone something to do in the final battle. I didn't want anyone to come off as useless or extraneous. This was harder than expected, especially since I wanted to keep this focused on the 2 main characters, but also not screw any of the side characters out of screen time.
Note: The Warden Eternal's new fighting style is based on actual techniques for using a European longsword. I recommend watching the film 'Ironclad' if you want to see a depiction of it in a pretty good action movie.
Note: Next up: the conclusion.
Thanks for reading. Love you guys.
Slipspace Anomaly