Chapter Two: Into Hell Once More
Sergeant Guns sighed, looking over the remains of Chief's Mark V armor. There were gashes and scratches and burns and dents. "Well, it looks like you took a hell of a beating out there," he commented. "A239's armor was in better condition. We were actually able to salvage and repair most of it. Took us a week to get the HUD back online, though."
Chief shrugged, swiping his new helmet from the armory's table. "It's just in my job description."
"Yeah, you can say that again." Guns tossed the unidentifiable piece of armor back down to the table, and turned back to Chief. "Do you have any idea how expensive this stuff is, son?"
"Tell that to the Covenant," Chief replied, sliding the helmet over his head, and it sealed there with a pressurized hiss. He looked around the room, adjusting to the new HUD. It was close to the same as his old armor's HUD, although this one had the shield status above the motion tracker, instead of at the top corner.
Guns smiled and nodded approvingly at Chief's new armor. "This Mark V was all obsolete anyway. Your new set is a Mark VI; just came up from Sondheim this morning, along with A239's new armor." He gestured to a large, unopened crate. "We left him a little room for customization."
"Oh, good," Emile said, walking into the armory. He was still in his fatigues, and it was obvious that he wanted to be back inside something with an energy shield installed in it. "My armor's here."
"Yeah, put it on and we can put it through some test," Guns told him. "Chief and I have to go through some preliminary armor tests, and then I'll be over to assist you."
Six walked into the room, clad in his prototype Gen II Mark VI that ONI had supplied him. "Damn, Chief," he commented at the sight of the new armor. "Almost to the same level I'm at." Six motioned to his own Mark VI armor, the newer model.
Chief simply rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Guns. "Come on over to the zapper," Guns instructed him. "We need to make sure the shields will come back online whenever they're drained, and then we need to do some calibration."
Swiping a DMR as he passed, Six walked over to Emile and inspected Emile's new armor. "Wow, that pretty much looks the same," he remarked, noting that it was a suit of armor designed for Spartan IIIs. "It's even got your old helmet and knife shoulder thing."
"Yeah, that's because I made sure I got those back." Emile pulled the undersuit from the crate, stripped off his clothes, and pulled the undersuit on. To Spartans, they rarely cared about decency in front of others. As long as they kicked ass, obeyed their orders, and won the fight, the who cares?
"You want to give me a hand?" Emile asked, as he began to slowly attach the armor. Six shrugged, setting the DMR on his back and began attaching Emile's leg armor. "You know, this looks a little more silver than I wanted it to be."
"Yeah, well, there's hardly any difference between your old dull gray, and this bright silver," replied Six. "So quit your bitching."
"But...just look at it. It's like a freaking mirror! I can see myself in it!"
After another few minutes, Emile was finally suited up in his new armor, while still complaining about the shininess. Most of his armor was the same, but his normal Grenadier chest had been replaced with a HP HALO chest piece, and he now had a Tac-Pad on his left wrist, with his shotgun shells on the right. And it was a nice, shiny silver. He still had his Security Shoulder with the kukri on his right side.
He admired himself, nodding in approval. "Despite the silver, this looks pretty badass," he commented, reaching over and swiping an M90 off a nearby weapon rack and striking a pose. "Pretty badass, huh?"
Six shrugged. "Eh...maybe, but not as badass as I am."
"Oh bullshit."
"My armor is new, and one of a kind," Six retorted. "Generation II."
Emile scoffed. "That doesn't make it better."
A woman walked into the room, carrying a slim briefcase in one hand. She had her blonde hair pulled back into a bun, and dark shades over her eyes to conceal her identity. On her standard gray business outfit, there was a pyramid with a circle shown with pride.
"Noble Six?" she asked, looking over the Spartans as she set her briefcase down on a table. "We need to have a little...chat."
"She's ONI," Emile whispered to Six, taking notice of the emblem. "I would be careful. It could be a trap."
Six shook his head. "What? That doesn't even make sense," he said, walking to the woman and saluting her. "Ma'am."
The woman smiled with a light laugh. "Drop the formalities, Spartan. What I have for you won't take long." She pressed her thumb against a scanner on the top of the briefcase, and several seconds later the latches automatically unlocked.
"Since our department is so fond of giving you experimental technology for testing purposes," the woman said, opening the case to reveal a single, small, rectangle in the middle of the case, "we've brought you a little prototype. A new form of AI."
Six blinked in surprise. He certainly wasn't expecting that. "Wait, you're giving me an AI?" he asked, just for confirmation. "Just like Cortana?"
"No. CTN 452-9 is an older model," the woman replied, handing the AI chip to Six. "This one, CRA 234-4, is much newer; complied from a brand-new technique that, if proven to be worth it, will have revolutionized artificial intelligences as we know it. Cara, as we like to call her, is superior to Cortana."
"I don't think Cortana's going to like hearing that," Emile muttered, slinging his shotgun to his back before searching out as many shells as he could find. "You know, she's always been our AI, and she's not going to like having to share that role."
"Maybe so," the woman said, addressing Emile, "but she'll have to simply deal with it. Cara can do everything that Cortana can do, and more. CTN 452-9 is now obsolete."
Chief, who had simply been watching the event from the armor testing stations, clenched his fists and took a step forward in defense of his AI. He stopped when he realized what he was doing.
The woman cast a glance at the Spartan, before letting out an amused breath. When she was sure that Chief wasn't going to take any further action, she smiled. "It might be hard for some of you to understand that, but that's the truth." She slammed her suitcase and walked out of the room silently.
"Well, that happened," commented Emile, shoving a handful of shotgun shells into his ammo pouch. "To be honest, I don't like her. She's kind of a bitch."
Six nodded, looking down at the chip in his hands. "Yeah, tell me about it." He brought the chip up to his visor, studying it. The chip itself looked exactly like Cortana's, but this one had the AI's name and number written in small black in one corner, and the glowing blue center was a lighter shade of blue.
With a flash of lightish blue, the AI appeared on the chip. "Hello!" she chirped cheerily. Cara was standing causally with her hands folded behind her back, looking as happy as a fat kid with a moa burger. "I'm CRA 234-4," she said, extending her hand to Six. "It's nice to meet you, Sierra B312."
Six looked her over. She had the same texture as Cortana, the whole circuit thing going on there. Her navy hair was longer and more flowing, and she depicted herself as much younger than Cortana; about midteens.
"It's, um...nice to meet you, too," Six replied, holding his finger out to shake her hand. It went through the hologram, but they both didn't care. "Your name is Cara, right?"
"Ah, so ONI gave you my name," she said, as if this were something surprising to her. "That's good. Did they also give you my main functions, as well as everything else that I was tau...programmed to do?"
"Um...no."
Cara's smile just seemed to grow wider. "That's great! For future reference, I was made and designed to assist all Spartan IV personnel in the use of Generation II Mjolnir armor variants. I see you have the standard Mark VI. It looks great on you."
Six shrugged modestly. "Yeah, well. This is just what was given to me."
Emile laughed, and leaned over to Chief. "You remember that date we were going to try to get Six a while back?" he asked. "I think we might have just found a perfect match for him. She seems completely ready to kiss his ass at will." Chief nodded with a half-hearted chuckled, but he was still glaring at the AI.
Cara continued to list what she could do. "I'm also able to calculate slip-space jumps, analyze combat situations to determine the best course of action, translate various Covenant, Human, and I have an algorithm to study the Forerunner glyphs in hope of better translating them. In addition, I can also access terminals and other various interfaces, regulate your armor's settings, relay communications through multiple channels, and provide intellectual support, not to mention someone to talk to. But my main purpose is to collect statistics and information readouts from various parts of your armor, and transmit the results to ONI so they can improve the future models of Generation II Mjolnir."
Six whistled. "Damn. Anything else you can do?"
She shrugged sheepishly. "I can also play solitaire and minesweeper."
"I already have a task for you to complete," Six told her, as he slipped the chip into the empty slot on the back of his helmet. "And trust me, this is something important."
"What is it? I'll do it."
"Pull up the stations schematics, and find the nearest vending machine. Preferably one with Coke."
"On it." Three seconds pass, and Cara has accomplished her mission. "There's none in this sector. The nearest one is on your way to the bridge, where you'll meet up with Fleet Admiral Hood for this ceremony."
Emile groaned as he overheard the reply. "Do we have to go to that?" he asked, folding his arms in annoyance. "I was going to head down to the shooting range, and put some Marines, hopefully some ODSTs as well, to shame."
"Yeah, we need to go to that ceremony," Chief told his comrade. "We should probably start heading over now, just to make sure that we get there in time." As he turned for the door, Sergeant Guns stopped him.
"Wait, before you go," Guns said, typing something into his computer, "I still need to run some more tests on your shields, Chief." He nodded toward a red square on the floor, with various machines around it. "Can you stand there, please?"
With a grunt of agitation, Chief stood in the square as the machines whirred to life around him. There was a high-pitched whine, similar to a charging plasma pistol, and then his shields went down, crackling up and down his armor like yellow lightning.
Chief rolled his eyes at the beeping in his helmet, which alerted him to the loss of shields. He had heard it millions of times, and all it did was piss him off. He hardly ever listened to it, and he was still here, about to get some awards for his action on an alien ring. That had to say something about it.
Guns nodded, checking the readouts on the terminal. "So far so good, he said, as Chief's shields flashed and regenerated. "There we go. We're all good now. Just be sure to find some cover when your shields are down, and you'll be just fine."
"Or, he can hide behind me." Sergeant Avery Johnson walked out of the elevator that had just reached the armory. "How's my boy, Guns?" he asked, looking Chief up and down with a scrutinizing glare. "I don't see any training wheels..."
Guns nodded. "Yeah, but he still needs to get used to the armor." He turned to Chief. "Take it easy, don't do anything strenuous until you're used to the armor. We can't have any problems with the hero of humanity, now can we?"
"Don't you worry about it, Guns," Johnson assured him. "I'll hold his hand." He motioned for the Spartans to get on the elevator. "Come on, we have a ceremony to go to, and hopefully we'll get some nice time on TV while we're at it."
Chief cocked his head to the side. "There's going to be cameras?"
Johnson opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped. He was one of the few people that knew about Chief's aversion to cameras, and no one knew what caused it. "Um...no. I was just trying to be, you know...never mind. Let's go."
The Spartans packed into the elevator, making it quite cramped. There was barely enough room for the three Spartans, let alone Johnson.
"So Johnson," Guns started, as the Sergeant pressed the button. "When are you going to tell me how you got home in one piece?"
Johnson shook his head as the elevator doors began to close. "Sorry, Guns, that's classified."
"Classified my ass!" Guns shouted as the lift began upward. "Well, then you can forget about the adjustments to your A2 scope..." He was cut off as the elevator kept going up, putting him out of earshot.
"Well, he's in a fine mood," Six commented. "Looks like someone got left out of the ceremony. Lost his invitation in the mail, or what not."
Emile chuckled. "This ceremony is only for heroes, and as far as I can tell, he's just a Marine."
The elevator reached its destination, which was an observation deck with an inter-station tram in it, waiting for some passengers. A few Marines passed by, dragging their drunken buddy back to their quarters. The drunk guy vomited on the floor as the Spartans and Johnson walked out of the lift.
"Well, that's classy."
Johnson shook his head sadly, before shouting out at the Marines helping the drunken to clean it up, or they'll have to deal with him later. They didn't need to be told twice, and argued over who was going to get and use the mop.
"Now that that's taken care of," Johnson nodded toward the giant glass window. "Earth. I haven't seen her in years..." He led the Spartans into the tram, and the glass door silently slid shut behind them. "She's beautiful, isn't she?"
Emile stared at the planet, feeling some emotion that he normally bottled up rising in his stomach. He didn't know what it was, but the sight of Earth was amazing. Reach and every other planet had been just the same, but Earth was something else. Nearly ten-thousand years of civilization, the birthplace of his species. Emile was awestruck.
Johnson went on. "When I shipped out for basic, the Orbital Defense Grid was all politics and theory. Now, the Cairo is one of three hundred Geo-Sync platforms. Each one of those MAC guns could put a round through a Covenant Capital Ship."
"There's no need to tell us this," Six said, trying to pass off his wonder of Earth. "Cortana already told us this about a hundred times, but she went into much more detail. And let me tell you one thing. History is not my strong suit." He gestured to his armor. "This is my strong suit."
There was a light laughter between the few of them, before it was all business again. "Ships have been arriving all morning," Johnson said, "and nobody's saying much, but everyone's got the feeling that something big is about to happen."
The tram door slid open, allowing them access to the short walkway to the command center of the station, where the ceremony was to take place. Some Marines loitered around outside the door, and there were a few camera drones flying around.
One of the drones swooped in and got a close up shot of Chief before the Spartan swatted it away. "I thought you said that there weren't going to be any cameras," he said, glaring down at Johnson.
"And you said that you were gonna wear something nice," Johnson replied, gesturing to Chief's armor. Despite it being new, there were several scratches on it, and the paint had chipped in some places. "Folks need heroes, Chief. Gives them hope. So smile will ya? All three of you. Smile while we still got something to smile about."
Inside of the bridge, Marines were standing in neat, organized rows, saluting as the Spartans passed. Occasionally, one would whistle or cheer, and some others would laugh at this, but other than that it was professional.
"You know," Six said, looking over the Marines. Each one seemed to be thankful and considerate of the Spartans, and none had made any of their usual remarks about them being robots or freaks. "They really respect us. If this is what happens when we save the world, we need to do it more often."
Admiral Terrance Hood met them at the stage, hands folded behind his back, and a weak smile on his stressed face. Looks like he read the few reports of the Flood. "Gentlemen, due to your brave actions and true heroism in the line of duty, we are pleased to welcome you aboard the Cairo Station."
Several Marines cheered and clapped, and somewhere along the line a confetti cannon was set off. Little, multi-colored pieces of paper floated to the ground. "Seriously, Jensen? What the hell?" a Marine muttered.
Hood waited until the troops had settled down, and went on, pacing back and forth on the stage. "On behalf of the UNSC, I sincerely wish to thank you for your service to humanity, and for your destruction of a Covenant armada."
More cheers erupted from the crowd, this time mainly from the people who hadn't heard about the Spartan's exploits, and were only there because their date somehow talked them into it.
"While your actions, Serria 117, Serria A239, Serria B312, and Sergeant Major Avery Johnson were unable to save most of the crew of the Pillar of Autumn, the destruction of the Covenant armada has slowed their progress against us, buying humanity valuable time."
Hood looked over to his second in command, who stood off to the side with a large box in his hands. The Admiral motioned to him, and the stout little man came running over. Hood selected a medal from the box and walked over to the Sergeant Major.
"Avery Johnson, the Colonial Cross is awarded for acts of daring and devotion," Admiral Hood said, as Johnson puffed out his chest, proud to be a Marine, as Hood pinned on the medal. "For a soldier of the United Earth Space Corp, there can be no greater honor."
Marines burst into a round of applause, and Johnson smiled to himself.
Admiral Hood went back to the box, and retrieved another medal. A Marine ran up to him, and began whispering in Hood's ear. "...and you're sure?" the Admiral asked, several seconds later. "...alright. We'll make this fast. Get the cameras out or off. We don't want to start a panic."
Six and Emile shot each other a look. "Start a panic?" Emile asked, keeping his voice low so only his fellow Spartans could hear. "You know what that means. The Covenant found another one of our planets."
"Yeah, but which one?" Six said back. "I hope it's not some heavily populated place. Chances are, that's where we'll be sent next, and I don't want to relive my experiences as a civilian evac guy." The Spartan shuddered as horrible memories came flooding back to him. The little girl still haunted his mind from time to time, but Six wasn't having hallucinations anymore.
Admiral Hood sighed, and his face told the story. Somewhere, a ton of humans were about to lose their lives and the UNSC couldn't do anything to stop it. "I apologize to everyone, but we're going to have to make this fast," he said, addressing the concerned crowd. "Something has come up."
He then turned back to another person, a woman standing off to the side of the stage, looking rather nervous. "Commander Miranda Keyes," he dressed her, walking over to her. "Your father's actions were keeping with the highest traditions of military service. His bravery in the face of impossible odds reflects great credit upon himself and the UNSC. The Navy has lost one of its best."
Commander Keyes took the medal with a solemn look in her eyes. Six squinted at her, noticing something strange. "Hey Emile, doesn't she look familiar from somewhere?"
"Um...to me? No."
"She looks kinda like Halsey..."
"Six, they're not related," Emile told him. "They have different last names. And maybe they do look alike, but that's only coincidence."
"Really?"
"Of course. I've always said that I look like Samuel L. Jackson, and I'm not related to him."
"...who the hell is-"
"We just picked up another whisper, sir," Cortana said, appearing on the pedestal next to the stage. "This one was near Io. I've already sent some probes to scope it out, Admiral, but things are not looking good."
Admiral Hood sighed, and lowered his head. He couldn't bear to look at the Marines. If what looked like it was about to happen actually happened, most, if not all, of the Marines would be dead within a week.
When the Admiral didn't reply, lost in his thoughts, Cortana turned to the Spartans and Johnson. She smiled, looking them over. "You look nice."
"Thanks."
"Thank you."
John and Johnson looked at each other, while Six and Emile face-palmed.
That's when everything went to hell.
Alarms went off, encompassing the room in a red light. Marines started cursing, and preparing their weapons as Cortana ran a scan. "Admiral. I've got fifteen Covenant capital ships on the long-range. They're holding their position just outside of the kill box." She brought the screens behind Hood online, showing the events so far.
Some UNSC ships began moving toward the Covenant ships, priming their weapons. "This is Admiral Harper," a voice crackled over the comms. "We're moving to engage the enemy."
"Negative," Hood said. "Fall back and form a defensive perimeter around the cluster." The Admiral turned back to the crowd and began barking orders. "Commander Keyes, get to your ship. Cortana you have the gun; hit them when they're in range. Marines, to your battle stations!"
Cortana smiled deviously, rubbing her hands together. "Don't worry, you can count on me, sir. I'll gladly blast them out of the sky."
The Spartans stood idle, looking around as the chaos ensued. "I don't know about you," Emile said, pulling his shotgun off his back, "but I'm in the mood to kick a little ass today."
"So am I," Six joined, grabbing his DMR. "Chief, it'll be just like old times. Running around, shooting the Covenant, saving the day. You in?"
"I just don't get it," Hood mused to himself, looking over the screen. "The fleet that destroyed Reach was fifty times this size...why did they-"
"Sir!" a Marine shouted, running up to the open door, Battle Rifle in hand. "We've got additional contacts. They sent boarding crafts! I suggest that we get you to safety immediately!"
Hood waved him off. "They want to get the MAC guns offline," he realized, piecing it together. "Then they'll have a clear shot at Earth." He whirled around to face the supersoldiers behind him. "Spartans, defend this station! If you let them take out the guns, then I don't think any of us will come out of this alive."
Chief nodded. "Yes sir." Then he noticed that he was the only one of the three without a gun. "I need a weapon," he said, looking over to Johnson.
"Right this way," Johnson said, running out of the room and toward a weapons cache. Chief followed, while Six and Emile looked at each other.
"I knew that something would ruin our vacation," Six muttered. "I just wish that it was something less...Covenanty."
Emile smacked him on the back of the neck, and went off into battle. Some Marines were setting up a barricade to ambush any Covenant trying to get through to the command center.
Six shrugged. "Well, into hell we go."
A/N: This chapter was un-betaed, so there's bound to be a few errors in it. If you see any, let me know and I'll fix them.
But yeah, I'm sure that you all agree that this is much better than the original version. I personally think I did much better with the ceremony time part. Anyway, there's not much more to say now, other than the fact that I'm having some issues with another author on this site...but I'm not going into details at the moment.
Peace out!