Disclaimer: What's a Halo? Some kind of angel thing?

A/N: Sorry for the delay, exams and stuff.

Halo 4: Reclaimer

Chapter 2 – Abandon Ship

[ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER] TO [BEGGAR AFTER KNOWLEDGE]

GEAS DETECTED IN PROXIMITY OF [REQUIEM] INSTALLATION.

THE [LOVER'S SLUMBER] IS UNDER THREAT.

ACTIVATING DEFENSE PROTOCOLs.

"You said I could deploy bubble shields, right?" Chief asked.

"Just aim and fire." Cortana confirmed.

Chief aimed his hand at the floor, and fired a small dart with a bulbous rear end. It hit the floor, and a second later a pale gold dome with a honeycomb pattern erupted around him, just as the first lances of plasma and needles were fired from the Covenant weapons. The pink crystalline needles ricocheted off while the bursts of plasma exploded vibrantly. The shield began to dim, and turn towards a shade of red. It wouldn't hold for long.

The Master Chief cursed as he considered his options. If Mendez had known about this, he would've had his head – What the hell were you thinking SPARTAN? Only a sheer fool doesn't check his instruments!

He was outnumbered, outgunned. The shield was about to fall, and there was little decent cover to hide behind. He couldn't fight them head on. Not like this. So he activated the new active camouflage feature that Cortana had designed and sprinted out of the shield just as it collapsed, and hid behind one of the support pillars. The Chief then reached for a grenade, but as he was about to prime it, two of the unidentified aliens turned towards his new location and began to screech; the third leapt away, hidden by the tables. The rest of the Covenant turned and began to fire at him again.

Chief sprinted away again, the camouflage flickered away, and lobbed the grenade into the mass of enemies. It detonated, and took out four Grunts and an Elite, along with one of the unidentified aliens. He noted that it exploded as well, in a shower of green blood and bone. They explode? He decided to take advantage of that and quickly shot the other visible one in the head – it too exploded, sending the others diving away and giving him a short reprieve.

Seven down. Thirteen to go. Prioritise Elites and heavy weapon Grunts. Watch out for the third exploding alien.

Speaking of which…the up-armoured alien leapt on to the table in front of the Master Chief. It raised its arms, and two strands of thick, sticky fluid-like material shot out and adhered to his armour. What the -? The thing screeched with an ear-splitting scream and pulled, trying to force him off-balance. He shot the thing in the head, then rolled away as it exploded. He made a mental note to ask Cortana what those things were.

Twelve to go.

He fell into a pattern of sprinting between pillars, firing his rifle as he transitioned from cover to cover. Three Grunts fell in the first minute. He managed to put a round into another Elite, who went down with a roar, plasma rifle spraying globules of energy up in an arc. Another Grunt went down when a stray shot ruptured its methane tank; gas sprayed everywhere and sent the unlucky alien flying around like a deflating balloon. Another died when he was able to shoot the plasma grenade it had been about to throw, consuming it in blue fire.

One by one, the enemies fell to the Chief's practiced aim. His rifle ran dry as the final Elite charged, slashing wildly with an energy sword. He dropped the gun and flung himself backwards into an awkward roll – MJOLNIR armour, while flexible enough for limited acrobatics, had never really been intended for graceful contact with the floor. – and snatched up a pair of spent shell casings. When the Elite moved to follow up the attack, the Chief flung himself at it and pinned it to the floor, before ramming the casings through its throat. It desperately clawed at them, but fell limp and lifeless quickly after.

That was too close. Mendez would have killed me for that; Not checking the area ahead.

"Well…" Cortana piped up. "Cryo hasn't done your aim any damage then."

"I guess." Chief shrugged, still annoyed at his own lack of attentiveness before entering the hall. Looking at the amount of blood on the walls and corpses, it looked like a far more grotesque battle had gone down. Several of the aliens lay in meaty chunks of blue blood. "What were those exploding aliens?"

"The UNSC called them 'Scorchers'; anatomically we know very little, given the obvious. The Covenant generally used them like sniffer dogs and kamikaze troops." His AI partner replied. Chief nodded in understanding. Scorchers had been one of the Covenant races that had never been encountered in great numbers before; their deployment seemed to vary based on the fleet they were in, and Chief had only ever heard the name mentioned in passing; you could even recite the numbers of battles they had knowingly been used in on one hand: Harvest, Zambai and Blue Gemini.

"While you were busy mingling with our guests, I took the liberty of accessing the Covenant's battlenet." Cortana continued cheerfully. "For some reason, their operating systems and databanks are shot to hell; it's almost as if they suddenly forgot how to maintain them."

"Maybe they did." Chief suggested. The technical knowledge of the Covenant had always rested with the Prophet castes; with the death of Truth at the Ark, there was always the possibility that the knowledge had become lost to them. Or the Huragok engineers no longer served them, he supposed as well; the floating techno-organic constructs had been responsible for most of the Covenant repair-work.

"Well, anyways, I've worked out roughly why the Covenant are here." Cortana said. "They're not actually the Covenant; the Sangheili have now adopted most of the other races as client races; there are still some pockets of fighting with the Brutes in the outer rim systems. Now, after the war, the Sangheili had a lot of internal strife; some wanted the humans destroyed while the Arbiter wanted to work with us."

"Let me guess – civil war happened, and these are the Elites that want humans dead." Chief sighed, disappointed that the end of the war hadn't seen the end to hostilities between the races; although he wasn't sure how a month of cease-fire would have washed away thirty years of bloodshed anyways.. At least Thel had survived the portal. That was a hint of good news.

"Got it in one." Cortana replied. "No real information on the post-war UNSC though. Give me a few minutes, I'll see what I can find."

Chief left her to her own devices and began to examine the Covenant weaponry. He could see that their arsenal had been altered in the years he had been out. There was some kind of burst-fire Needle Rifle, the plasma carbine had been bulked up, and as he picked up a far-more angular plasma rifle, he saw three glowing glyphs on the side; pressing the first one opened up a port on the left side of the gun, revealing a green plasma cell, pressing the second opened up a similar port on the right had side, this time revealing a red tube – some kind of heat sink – and the third opened both. They had upgraded the plasma rifle to use magazines – no more recharging and overheating. That could be problematic in the future; it had often been possible to simply wait for the Covenant's plasma weaponry to lull to cool down, which would no longer be possible.

He considered the overall battle. The aliens had definitely been ex-military Covenant. The armour they had been wearing though were distinctly more run-down and haphazard than the Covenant of old. Two of the Elite's armours had been a dull brick red, with a helmet design not unlike those of old Spec Ops soilders, while the others had designs resembling Ultras. The Grunts too, were similarly haphazard. The lowest-rankers – he assumed – had little more than an orange carapace to house the methane tanks and a tube to feed the methane into their nose, leaving their mouths free. There had been an up-armoured one with brick-red armour and a more bulbous methane tank and full mask. The heavy-weapons Grunts had all been wearing similar green armour with a more compact methane tank and face-masks with disk-like eyes for visibility. He could even swear there were physical differences between the new Grunts and the ones he had fought before.

Definitely not the same Covenant he was used to fighting.

Chief sighed. "Anything?"

"Not really." Cortana responded thoughtfully. "Although they keep mentioning something called 'Infinity', like it's a problem for them."

"Any idea where we are?"

"Wild Space." She replied. "The planet we're orbiting is called Requiem in their databanks. Oh, wait, not a planet. Something else…"

"Like?"

"Forerunner."

Requiem has awoken. The Prisoner must be contained.

Find the Reclaimers, show them Those That Came Before.

Find the Didact-Geas, and show him where she rests...

Tremors shook the whole ship. Chief stumbled slightly, before managing to steady himself. "Cortana?"

"That's not more boarders." She replied quietly. "It's the planet."

"Requiem? How…"

"The planet's activated, and its drawing us in." Cortana surmised. Chief frowned. Looks like landing on the surface would be easier than they thought. That is, unless Requiem would destroy whatever it pulled in. Which frankly, was more than a little likely. He wasn't particularly keen on successfully surviving the Human-Covenant War, two and three-quarter Halos, the Flood, the Ark and several years stranded in deep space to die without even being able to fight back.

"Did the Covenant do it?"

"No. And they're not Covenant anymore." She corrected mildly. Chief didn't really care for the technicality. He didn't plan to socialise with the aliens, and it was easier to call them Covenant than something like "Sangheili dissidents." A rose by any other name smells just as sweet, and enemy aliens by any other name still die with enough bullets. If it was the Arbiter and his allies and they weren't trying to kill them, then he'd reconsider his verbiage.

He collected his assault rifle, and popped in a fresh magazine before pulling the loading handle. "Let's get off this ship then."

Cortana sliced into the Sangheili dissident fleet's hull cameras, interested in seeing what was going on with their fleet. She watched with fascination as each one of the sleek purple ships were pulled into the glowing maw of Requiem, being turned head over head and spinning wildly in desperate attempts to escape the irresistible gravity well.

She doubted that the Chief and herself would be able to evade them on Requiem, but they didn't particularly have a lot of say on the matter. And unlike on Installation 04, there was no marine and naval crew to work with and create an effective resistance movement. And that was of course assuming that their only problem was the Sangheili dissidents; there was a very strong liklihood of a Flood presence on the world, along with potentially hostile Forerunner constructs as well predator wildlife paradigms.

Another day, another colossal Forerunner world…

Suddenly, Cortana shuddered. Or rather, gave the digital equivalent of a shudder. The battle network the Covenant was using was huge. She could easily see herself taking refuge there, amongst the data and algorithms. So much space, so much room to do and think. She relished the thought. Could she convince John to get her into the Covenant network? AIs couldn't be transmitted like radio waves or data packets, contrary to public belief. They could remotely access systems, but to exist on the actual servers required a manual upload.

Then she 'sighed'. Why couldn't she just be free?

Chief sprinted through the corridors; the ship was being pulled apart by Requiem's gravity well and he had to reach the drop pod bay and load them up before they entered the planet. Thankfully, it seemed that the Covenant's boarding party had been relatively small, since he didn't run into any more enemies. A particularly loud explosion rocked the ship, throwing Chief into the ground – and going by the roar and hissing, had also exposed the ship's atmosphere to the vacuum.

Left, right, two flights of stairs, another left and a climb up a dead elevator shaft. The directions blurred together for Chief, he just knew he had to reach the launch bay. Finally, they found SOIEV Bay 9; complete with an intact armoury, stocked to the brim with all sorts of deadly and dangerous weaponry, from rifles to rockets and explosives.

"Better hurry Chief." Cortana warned, the barest hint of worry in her voice.. "We're running out of time."

"Sir, I think you better take a look at this."

"What is it, Serina?"

"Something has happened…"

All in all, there were seven pods in a condition to be launched. Chief was glad that the UNSC designers had seen the benefit of putting the armoury straight into the launch bay – to allow troops to pick up their weapons and drop without having to make detours , or in his case, make quick back and forth trips, arms full of weapons.

He decided to spread out the arsenal between the pods, rather than putting all the heavy weapons in one pod and so on, so that if one pod failed, he could get similar weapons from another. Into the first he put his trusty assault rifle, along with a M90A shotgun and a M41 rocket launcher. Pod two was made home to a Spartan Laser, BR55 battle rifle along with several pistols. Into pod three he placed an SR99 sniper rifle, MA5K carbine and – after a struggle – a defoliant projector. The three other munitions pods were similarly loaded with various weapons – he had even managed to find a few prototype BR85 rifles and two M395 Designated Marksmen Rifles. Each pod was also loaded with as much spare ammunition, grenades and supplies as he could fit.

"Chief, we're about to enter Requiem…" Cortana muttered. "You're gonna have to…"

The thought went unspoken as the ship passed into the planet. The planet's internal gravity took hold and suddenly the ship went into a sharp free-fall. Chief was thrown back into the ceiling as it plummeted. "I've programmed the weapon pods! Launching now!"

The six drop pods were launched, thrown out into the atmosphere of inside Requiem. The systems would land the pods relatively safely and close to the Dawn's eventual crash site. "Now you go!"

Chief checked his own loadout – M6G pistol, M7 SMG and a M29 Explosive Delivery System; essentially a single-shot grenade pistol – and flung himself at the final pod. He pressed the OPEN button.

Nothing happened. He pressed it again. The keypad flashed red. The pod doors wouldn't open. He struggled to hold on as forces threatened to pull him away and throw around like a rag doll.

"Chief, I can't override it!" Cortana cried. "The detaching mechanism is broken – the pod wont launch."

He growled, trying to think. The Dawn could probably survived the crash relatively intact – well, intact all things considered – but they couldn't survive the landing from inside. They needed to get off the ship. A brief sense of déjà vu jumped at him. Having to get off a ship without proper landing equipment…well, it had worked once, hadn't it?

"Cortana – how far are we from the hull?"

"We're right next to it on the wall to your left." Cortana said. "Why?"

The stress from the sudden temperature and kinetic energy changes would make the hull fragile. Chief pulled out his M29 and levelled it at the wall, and fired it. It collided with the wall, and he pressed a button on the side of the gun barrel. The grenade beeped, and then exploded brilliantly, exposing the drop bay to Requiem's atmosphere and cloudy blue sky.

"You're not going to jump are you?" Cortana asked dubiously. "That's crazy."

"So…stay here." Chief smiled. If only they had a giant Covenant bomb. Permission to leave the station, sir?

Cortana laughed. "Unfortunately for you, I like crazy."

Chief grinned, then threw himself out of the Forward Unto Dawn, and began his dive towards the world's surface.

James Gregory Cutter, Captain of the now-lost UNSC Spirit of Fire, eyed Serina's avatar warily from across the command center of the ship, while sipping on a steaming cup of hydrated synth-caf. He wished they hadn't gone through the coffee beans so quickly. Or the synth-milk and sugar. "You mean we've got Covenant landing nearby?"

"Not landing per say…more…crashing." She amended dryly, waving her hand in a dismissive manner, as if the distinction was of no real importance. "Looks like they were pulled in, like we were."

"Can we escape through the opening?" Cutter asked hopefully. Already his mind was running through ideas, plans, procedures. Thrust and gravity calculations, flight paths, factors like the Covenant offering resistance - did they have the tonnage to fight back if necessary, and a dozen other variables.

"Uhh…how?" Serina snorted. "The Fire's in no shape to fly."

That much was true. The crashed ship's drive cores were wrecked, the nuclear cell casing had almost been cracked to the extent of venting radiation - they had managed to patch that up, thankfully - and the hull and been torn away in over a dozen places. They didn't have the materials or equipment to effect full repairs, and the planet, or whatever the hell they had ended up on, had yet to supply his crew with any success. The ship's Magnetic Acceleration Cannon was out of commission too, with the magnetic coils beling knocked out of alignment. Thankfully, most of the ship's other weapons - namely Archer missile pods and point-defense systems - were still largely operational.

"We need to get back to humanity somehow, Serina." He pointed out wearily. The parasitic aliens that plagued the Fire, along with the multitude of mechcanical constructs were systematically wearing down the crew's will and resolve. Cutter was running out of ways to keep things in control; supplies, weapons, all were in need of careful management. Attempts to glean resources from the land had proved successful, but only as far as food. Bullets were being spent without any more coming in. Before long, it would be bayonet s and knife charges, which he doubted would be particularly effective against their current enemy roster.

Serina's blue avatar raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "You do know that would mean the rest of the crew knowing you've lied to them?"

"That doesn't matter, Serina." Cutter sighed, running a hand over a well-weathered and wearied face. His UNSC uniform, once crisp and and pressed to miltary perfection had become faded and creased, a poignant reflection of the mind of the man wearing them. Age, a war, and their situation had begun to take a toll on him.

"Just sayin', your decisions are going to catch up with you, Captain."

Chief broke through the layer of clouds, diving head-first towards the ground. His entire HUD was flashing red; warnings, system failures, claims of imminent death. ODST's were infamous for dropping into combat zones feet-first. If Chief continued with his history of jumping from ships, Spartans would become known for going into hell head-first. And without a parachute.

TERMINAL VELOCITY
IMPACT IMMINENT - SLOW SPEED OF DESCENT
USER DEATH OR INJURY LIKELY

He kept going, and going. Blood was pounding in his ears, his heart in his throat. Adrenaline was coursing through his viens. He could hear the air rushing over his armour, and the muffled noise of his own breathing.

"Chief…pull up!" Cortana yelled, just as the first trees could be distinguished from the green around them. By his estimations of gravity, wind resitance and mass, they were descending at well over three hundred kilometeres an hour. He hadn't been going that fast while jumping from the Keyship on Earth; then again, he had only really fallen about two miles, and had a slab of Forerunner alloy to ride down on.

He did just that, spinning himself around so that he was falling feet first. He kicked in the repulsor and thruster systems; the soles of his feet and palms exploded with thrust and his back thursters folded out and roared. Tiny air flaps lifted from the armour to increase his surface area and wind resistance The rapid deceleration threw Chief off-balance, he began to slow, but the ground was still coming far too fast.

He hit the ground hard, and everything went to black.

A/N: Not as long as I'd hoped but meh. What can you do? Still, there's a lot of big things introduced here, and a couple hints dropped. I'm pulling from pretty much every corner of the Halo universe I can think of with this story, so virtual cookies go to whoever picks up on them in reviews.

As always, enjoy, read and review!

Peace.