A/N: Sorry if it seemed like I was procrastinating. I was simply writing my one-shot Behind Her Glasses and just couldn't stop to write this. Sorry, but please, do enjoy.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Microsoft, Bungie, or 343 Industries. This is for my enjoyment and, hopefully, the enjoyment of others. I do not receive a profit.
The Start of Something New?
Brady pulled the trigger and blew away another Flood form. She eyed the clock on her HUD and watched as it counted down. She had a good minute left, but at least she wasn't alone. Raj had pulled guard duty, Marcus had slipped off somewhere, Quin was playing Team Snipers, and Pearlman had been alpha Flood, but Pintelli from Fireteam Opalescent had her back.
Suddenly, her motion tracker went wild, filled with blue dots as a motion tracker jammer created "ghosts" on her radar. Brady whipped around, searching for the telltale rippling of Active Camo. She couldn't see anything but Pintelli doing the same.
A Flood form came through a doorway recessed in the wall and used a Thruster Pack to get up to right in front of Brady. She had just enough time to put up a hard light shield before the Flood cut at her. Pintelli blew it to bits, but it was too late.
The trap had been sprung, and three invisible Flood jumped off the roofs of nearby buildings and cut right through Brady, and then Pintelli.
The scenario finished and the pods began to slide open one by one, admitting the combatants into the open area. A SPARTAN in bright gold Operator armour with a Frost visor stood in the middle of the room. As Juliette climbed out of her pod, the SPARTAN walked over to her and Arianna. He, for his voice was distinctly male, said, "Palmer told me to tell you that she needs Fireteams Nebula and Opalescent for an 'all-quiet' mission."
Arianna took off her helmet and asked, "And what is an 'all-quiet' mission?"
The other SPARTAN nodded and said, "A mission that Lasky wants hushed up so as to avoid a stir or alert the Covenant to our moves. Don't ask me what the mission is, because all I know is that you need to report to hangar 10 for deployment as soon as possible. Good luck." He climbed into Juliette's now vacated pod.
Arianna and Juliette told Blake to come with them and rushed out of the room. Edward and Jesus came out of one of the nearby rooms and met up with the others. The five SPARTANs were soon joined by Marcus, who said a quiet, "Good bye," to Cara as he came upon the group. Raj and Logan ran up from behind a moment later. Logan nodded towards Jesus and held up three fingers. Jesus nodded twice, his deep brown eyes laughing at something. Logan put down one finger, then another. As he put down the third, Whitney ran out of a hallway with Danny trailing behind her, one arm reaching. It would have been funny, considering the fact that both were in full pink or brown armour, but Juliette couldn't laugh when she watched Edward cringe despite his own ice-blue Deadeye armour. Blake leant down and whispered into her ear, his light Italian accent almost tickling her ear. "The pair have been fighting ever since the truth about Danny's past with Edward came to light. It's almost amusing, if it weren't so sad." Whitney and a reluctant Danny joined the group and all ten walked into hangar 10 together.
Commander Palmer greeted them in the hangar. "I have called you all here for this secret mission because we found-" An artificial cough interrupted her and Palmer corrected herself. "-or rather, Roland found an anomaly. Please note that when I say secret, I mean as in those shows from the 1900s with 'For Your Eyes Only'. Don't even tell your handlers about this. This anomaly could create quite a stir. Roland will fill you in."
Roland, complete in his World War One era outfit, popped up on a holo-projector. "I was doing my thing. Deep space scans and so on when I detected an asteroid filled with an oxygen environment. So I did some more professional scans and detected large amounts of organic mass, you know, carbon and such, but no life.
"That isn't impossible, because you know, butter isn't alive, but it is a bit unusual.
"Normally, we would just send a marine squad in, but I am also detecting quite a few ferromagnetic data streams matching the digital footprint of Promethean Knights, Watchers, and Crawlers."
Arianna cocked her head and asked, "How many?"
Roland's avatar shrugged before responding. "I don't know. My data processors weren't equipped to count that high." At Arianna's visible gulp, he simulated a laugh and said, "No, ferromagnetic data streams are hard to get any sort of lock on, especially from long distances like this. I can tell you that they are there and there are several Prometheans, but I couldn't say how many, exactly."
Palmer took over the explanation. "There are a lot of baddies that will need to be exterminated, so we selected Nebula because Pearlman can fly her own Pelican quite well. Since this raid needs to be secret, we went ahead and are having Opalescent come along for the extra firepower that will be needed."
Palmer clapped her hands and said, "Pile into Nebula's Pelican, because this Op is a go!" Ten SPARTANs all tried to squeeze into a single Pelican, but it only seated eight. Palmer groaned and motioned toward the wall. "Some of you will have to jetpack your way to the asteroid. Be careful, because without friction or gravity, even slight miscalculations can be deadly. I will not authorise guns for the jetpackers, because the kick could also kill you since fuel is so limited."
Juliette grinned and stepped forward. "Then you will want me and who else?"
Marcus signed something to Edward and the said, "I need to be on the Pelican with Edward and Arianna is pilot. Kahn could do it, I guess."
Logan shook his head before saying, "I'll go. Whitney and Danny are far too likely to misfire their packs by accident, while Jesus and Blake can't do any killing without their guns. I bet I am the only other person who has had formal hand-to-hand combat training, in fact."
Juliette grinned as she walked over to the wall. She grabbed two jetpacks. Tossing one to Logan, she responded, "Actually, I haven't had any formal training, either." Logan's grey eyes looked at her disbelievingly for a moment before flicking up as he reached for the jetpack. He caught it, strapped it to his back, and made his way over to the bay doors.
Juliette joined him while the others clambered aboard the Pelican. Palmer shouted, "Good luck!" and Roland's hologram snapped its fingers. The bay doors slid open, revealing bleak empty space. As the Pelican turned on, Juliette leapt, followed closely by Logan.
Roland's voice came over the comm. "All right, this is the asteroid in orbit around the outside of Requiem. Marking now." A blue rhombus popped up on the HUD, and Brady fired her jetpack for just a moment. McCormac followed suit and Pearlman's Pelican thundered silently over their heads. They drifted frictionlessly for some time.
As they got closer, Roland's voice came over the comm again. "Watch out! You are now entering the data streams. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that means that Prometheans may come up to stop your getting to the asteroid." True to Roland's word, a Watcher floating almost aimlessly through space heralded the coming of the Prometheans.
McCormac readjusted himself and depressed the "fire" button. His jetpack's fuel reserves ignited, sending him at the Watcher. McCormac flew unerringly toward the Watcher. The silent tranquility of space lent itself to masking the violence of his approach.
Once he was close enough, McCormac simply grabbed the Watcher. He brought it close to himself and ripped it into pieces. McCormac cast the bits around himself and took the Watcher's boltshot. He fired twice to arrest his momentum before re-angling the gun. A few more shots brought him back on course, leaving only a trail of bent metal and sparking wires as evidence of his deed.
It was an unfortunate truth that the Watcher had got off a message before its core processor was destroyed. A Knight teleported close in front of Brady, who swung at it blindly. She hit, causing a blue veil to wrap the Knight in a hard light energy shield. The Knight fired its suppressor into her stomach, simultaneously lowering her shields to near critical and moving the Knight out of Brady's range.
It appeared that the Knight hadn't counted on her closing the distance again, because when Brady fired her jetpack, the lone Promethean offered no resistance. Once she was moving faster than the Knight, Brady stopped gunning the jetpack's trigger and instead drew her knife. The Knight only had time to ready its blade arm before Brady drove her knife right through the shield and into the Knight's metal plating.
She must have stabbed something vital because the Knight burst like confetti; it dissolved into flaky bits rather like the petals of some glowing flower as they fell gently off of the stem. Nevertheless, Brady grinned, Venator helmet hiding her feral look.
Brady looked around until both the objective and the Pelican were within her vision. She split the distance and shot toward where the Pelican would be. She drifted for a moment before she grabbed onto the Pelican and hastily activated the clamps in her boots. She walked onto the top of the Pelican just in time to see another Knight warp in.
Brady tried to get to it as quickly as she could, but the clamps and a lack of gun slowed her down. The Knight had enough time to bend over and begin to issue a Watcher from its backside. It was disgusting, almost like giving birth.
The Watcher flew out as the Knight pushed, metal flaps on its backside flung open.
Brady finally closed the distance, driving her knife into the Knight's backside as it started the close the flaps that were so like the birth canal of a woman: both stretched and opened up to admit a new "life" into the world. Brady's knife cut right through the shields and slipped between the metal plates. The knife cut right through the elaborate circuits that held the Knight together. The Knight fell apart.
This time, she picked up the gun. A light rifle. She looked up just in time to see the Watcher issuing a brilliant blue data stream. Unaccustomed as she was to the light rifle, Brady's first shots went wide. She readjusted the gun and fired again, but it was a moment too late. The data stream stopped. The Promethean Souls had been sent into the fabric of the Pelican. The Souls assembled themselves by copying the metal.
Brady shifted the gun and steadied herself for the extra kick. She may have clamped herself down, but that did not create gravity to dampen the effects of Newton's third law. She fired on the approaching Crawlers, aiming at the "heads". Really, it had taken the Crawler A.I. just a few seconds to make full use of its mimetic abilities, so the Watcher's single data stream had created a small army of Crawlers led by one with spikes on its back. At this one Brady aimed.
She fired over and over at the Crawlers until they were all broken beyond repair. Then she shifted to fighting the Watcher. As she tracked it, Brady caught sight of McCormac wrestling a Knight Battlewagon a just a few metres from the side of the Pelican. Brady also saw the asteroid getting closer and closer, bigger and bigger.
At last, she found the Watcher and shot the last vestiges of ammunition at the Watcher. But it didn't die. And Brady had seen them hover and change direction suddenly enough to know that chasing the Watcher with her jetpack would waste far too much fuel. So she threw her knife again.
Like the first, it flew straight and true. Unlike the first, it slammed into a Watcher, not Logan McCormac, who was jestpacking his way back to the Pelican and asteroid. Brady could almost see past his Vanguard helmet and into the glint in his eye as her knife disassembled the Watcher.
A moment later, the Pelican slowed and landed on the asteroid, near the objective. Eight SPARTANs dashed out of the bird and met the two waiting outside at the objective. All ten engaged their clamps, although the asteroid seemed to have some sort of Earth-normal gravity, despite its size. The diamond labeled "objective" was situated over a metal hole in the asteroid.
"Hello Nebula and Opalescent!" Roland's voice cut over the comm channel and Brady saw Reynolds begin to signal Quin. Whitshire also tried to make a motion with his hands, but Donnely grabbed his arm. Fancy they're having a private conversation.
"I tagged the airlock that will lead into the asteroid, and also tried to scramble the data links, give you a bit of a breather, but really, I think that we can put the ease of your landing down to pure luck. I would suggest two teams. One to guard your ticket home and one to investigate.
"Good luck. Roland out."
There was a moment of silent deliberation before Pintelli spoke up over the team comm in his beautiful Italian accent. "I volunteer Opalescent to guard the Pelican. Nebula can explore." Several heads nodded their assent and Reynolds signed Quin while Whitshire wasn't looking.
The hatch was heavy. It took two SPARTANs just to lift it out of the ground. It was attached to a hinge in the side. Not the simple swinging kind, but a heavy-duty Forerunner alloy hinge that could probably control a HAVOK-grade nuclear blast.
Brady jumped into the airlock first. For a room built into the floor of an asteroid, it was surprisingly roomy. Kahn dropped in next to her followed by Quin and Pearlman. Reynolds brought up the rear.
As soon as his boots contacted the floor, the heavy metal hatch swung closed again, hinges probably not protesting in the slightest. Once the hatch had sealed, a door in the side of the airlock opened up to admit the SPARTAN strike team. Although the hallway was pristine, a sense of foreboding hung over Brady's head, as though each breath would be her last.
It was the smell, she decided. As soon as the hatch had sealed and her helmet had unsealed to admit fresh air, the smell had come. It was a smell of decay, flesh rotting off of bone, but there was something more. A smell of danger. Brady couldn't describe it, but it brought back memories. Bad ones. Pink flesh turning green. Friends becoming foes or food, all at the whim of . . . something.
Brady quickly shook off the memories of the battling at Voi and advanced down the hall. There were no side halls or sealed doors. Just the one hall.
"What exactly are we looking for?"
"Didn't you hear Roland, Kahn? We are trying to find the source of all the biotic material."
"Oh. I hope it's an off-site food storage facility. I'm hungry."
Brady could just tell that Pearlman wanted to reply with another scathing comment, but was stymied when the hall abruptly ended. A single door, hexagonal in shape, stood recessed in the wall. A red light blinked, signifying that it was locked. Kahn just walked over to it and started pushing at the keypad.
Two minutes later, the door light began to blink before it switched to green. At that moment, all five motion trackers went wild. Reynolds muttered, "I thought Roland said that there was no life down here."
Brady just shrugged and said, "I have invisibility. I'll go in first, scout around. If I'm not back in three minutes, well, go ahead and send in the cavalry." Four SPARTANs backed up, and Brady activated her Active Camo. The door slid open to admit seemingly nothing.
Brady frowned. The smell was stronger here. And worse, the movement had stopped. It was as if whatever was in the room could see through Active Camo and knew a demon was coming.
Wet sounds began to play. Brady looked around, trying to find the source, when she felt something . . . slimy land on her. Even through her armour should have covered up the feeling, she just knew it should feel slimy. Maybe it was the sounds. Maybe it was the weight that was scarily familiar. Maybe it was the mortal terror that had began as soon as she had smelt the inside of the asteroid. Its icy cold grip had been loose, but it was squeezing tighter and tighter now.
With horrible apprehension, Brady looked at her shoulder. A visage that had been forever seared into both her mind and face sat calmly on her shoulder, inspecting her neck. Brady reached for her knife as quickly as possible, intending to pop it and run. But her knife wasn't there. In a flash, she saw it flying out of her hand, thrown at a Watcher. Now, though, the Watcher was welcome. Maybe it would even help. It was certainly better than this.
But as she brought her hand back up to brush the creature off, she felt a sting at the base of her neck. Her last coherent thought before the hunger took her was, 'My second skin is already green.'
A/N: I'm sorry. But something about that Boston Marathon Bombing really put that in there for me. Plus, I have been listening to "Red Like Roses" by Jeff Williams. It really sets the Halo mood. Beautiful and sad with just enough hope to keep going.
Oh, and the jetpacks in this chapter are not armour abilities. They are actual jetpacks designed for space travel, which is why Brady has her Active Camo as well.
Please, please tell me how I handled that last bit, and as always, help me correct misspellings and grammar, as well as general storyline by giving feedback so that I know what I am doing wrong and right.