Chapter 16
"You have all been brought here today because you are considered the best of the best," said Jewel. She stood on the training course, still wearing a leg brace, before four Spartans.
Angela and another female Spartan were in the group; this one had black and silver armor. Her name was Nova; she was an excellent pilot and not too bad a markswoman, either.
Next to them stood a large Spartan in grey and red armor- Angela's brother Andrew. He was an amazing combat and demolitions expert.
The final Spartan was a medium sized fellow in white and red armor called Prometheus. It wasn't actually his name- it was just what he was called given that he was a brilliant improviser with weaponry.
"We are currently somewhat… low on members of the Noble team, so you all have been promoted," continued Jewel, "Cortana has analyzed your skills, but Colonel Holland wants a test for you. Thus, we have this training course." Jewel gestured to the (by now) infamous Noble Team training course, the same one she had gone through, some weeks before.
"You are to make it through the course uninjured, and please try to work as a team," said Jewel, "Your test begins now."
The new Noble Team recruits looked confused for a moment, but they hadn't gotten here because they were slow. Andrew was the first to run towards the insanely difficult training course. Angela, Prometheus and Nova followed soon after.
Andrew pulled a shotgun off his back as he raced towards the first hungry alien monster that dared cross his path. He leaped onto the monsters head, blew its brains out with the shotgun, and raced along its spine to jump at the first climbing wall.
Angela and the others skirted around monstrous alien and began on the climbing wall as well. They reached the top and looked down the other side to see Andrew tearing apart a group of punching dummies with his bare fists.
"What is it with your brother?" asked Nova.
"Honestly, sometimes I don't know, myself," answered Angela.
Prometheus brushed past them and leaped off the climbing wall, cushioning his fall on a training dummy with its arms torn off.
"Boys," snarled Nova, and jumped off the wall as well. Angela shrugged and leaped off after her.
Andrew finished off the last dummy and marched forwards into an open section of the course. Nothing seemed to be wrong, so he started forwards.
And an arm wearing white and red armor blocked his path. Andrew looked over to see Prometheus.
"If nothing appears to be wrong, then something usually is," Prometheus said in an Asian accent. Then he pulled a grenade off his belt and, without priming it, threw it into the open area. As soon as it hit the ground, the floor exploded.
"See?" he said, "Mines."
Andrew nodded. Now that he knew the place was mined, his demolitions training came to mind. If you could create a big explosion, then it should cause a chain reaction and destroy all the mines. The problem was making a big explosion.
Andrew primed one of his grenades and threw it at the minefield. The explosion triggered three mines, but it didn't cause a chain reaction.
Andrew then primed another grenade and rolled it across the minefield. This series of explosions was enough to cause a chain reaction.
The floor practically blew itself to smithereens.
"C'mon, it's safe to go now," he said to Prometheus. The two of them marched across the minefield safely. Then they stopped.
And looked up.
"Suppose this is the fabled killer climbing wall?" asked Andrew.
"It does look rather 'killer,'" said Prometheus.
The wall stretched up and even further up, and bristled with spikes, fire, lava, alien monsters, and automatic weaponry.
"Whoop-dee-doo," said Andrew in a monotone voice, and started towards the wall. Prometheus sighed and followed.
A few minutes later, Nova and Angela made their way to the killer wall. Nova cracked her knuckles, then started up the wall. Angela started up as well.
They made it halfway up the wall before its Nobody-Ever-Gets-Over-Me program activated, a platform bristling with guided missiles popped out of a section of the wall below the two Spartans.
Angela looked down the wall at a strange roaring noise, and saw the missiles readying to fire.
"MiiiIISSILES!" she yelled and began climbing faster. Nova looked back to see what was the matter, and saw one of the guided missiles streaking towards them.
She pressed herself against the climbing wall and the missile shot past her, but then turned and came back at them.
"Figures," she grunted, and with one hand pulled her DMR off her back and pointed it at the missile. Her bullet hit it dead in the nose, and the guided missile exploded.
Then she pointed the DMR back down at the missile platform, just as it readied to fire again. Then she let go of the wall.
As Nova plummeted towards the missile platform, she carefully readied her DMR, one second too soon, and it wouldn't do anything. One too late, and she would be blown to smithereens.
She fired.
A guided missile launching is a delicate process. The computer has to aim the platform, choose the missile, and then send the order to that specific missile to launch. A bullet in that missile does nothing to help the process. The platform exploded in a ball of fire, propelling Nova up and past Angela- almost to the top of the wall.
Angela looked up at Nova, "Anything you could do to help?"
Nova remembered Jewels instructions- to try and work as a team.
"I'll cover you," she said. The climbing wall's computers recognized this phrase, and immediately began throwing everything it had at the two Spartans.
A phalanx of angry bat-aliens swooped towards Angela, and a hole opened in the wall next to her and began spurting lava.
Nova quickly switched her DMR to semi-automatic and blasted the bat-aliens out of the air. Angela leaped aside of the lava and began climbing faster to escape the heat. A spike shot out of the wall in front of her.
Angela reached up, grabbed the spike and pulled herself up and onto it. Then she stood and jumped farther up the wall.
The wall quickly analyzed this, and turned on the automated flamethrowers.
FWOOSH!
Nova barely leaped aside in time as a long robot arm reached around and aimed a flamethrower at her. The bright yellow burst of flame swept over the wall where she had been, scorching it.
Nova quickly aimed her DMR and shot the flamethrower arm through the nozzle, creating some very interesting pyrotechnics. Then she looked down, and realized that three more flamethrowers had Angela cornered.
"Hey! Your mother was a microwave!" she yelled, and shot one of the flamethrowers. Immediately, the other two turned and aimed at her.
And Angela leaped on one, cutting its fuel line with her combat knife. Nova dodged a burst of flame from the other and shot it.
Angela climbed up past the flaming remains of the flamethrower arms to join Nova a few feet from the top of the climbing wall.
"Let's go," she said. Together, they climbed up the final stretch of the climbing wall, which for some reason, ignored them as they reached the top.
"Hmm," said Nova, as she looked down the other side of the wall, "It's a surprisingly small drop here, and it looks oddly cushy. Do you think something's wrong?"
"Yup," said Angela as she pulled her sniper rifle off her back.
Then a long bar popped out of the wall behind them and pushed them off the edge.
"AUGH!" they both yelled as they plummeted less than ten feet onto a soft rubber floor. There was a metal door at the end of the small room.
"What the heck?" said Angela as she sat up.
"I don't know, but I officially hate this training course," said Nova.
"Oh, it's just something to show that there's always something waiting just before the finish line to surprise you," said Andrew as he walked through the metal door, "It got me and Prometheus, too."
Jewel walked into the small enclosure behind Andrew.
"Come on," she said, "The Colonel wants to speak to you."
"I would like to welcome you all to the New Noble Team," said Colonel Holland as he stood before the four Spartans, "In a short time, Cortana will give you your designations, and then you-"
BOOM!
The door behind the Colonel burst open, and in stomped Dark Wolf.
"And what is going on?" he demanded.