Author's Note

Bit of a bout of writers block between this chapter and the last, but I'd like to pick up that good pace again and not leave y'all hanging for another month. I'll see how that goes...

Uploaded

11/15/2022

LEGEND BELOW

"Chief, that's not a good idea..." = Normal speech.

''You're you, don't let it control you...'' = Normal thoughts.

Chapter 5

First contact/Reaching the Cartographer

Rated-M

M rating for blood, eventual mentioning of gore and other body parts, and language.

An uneasy quiet had settled in to a small camp of Covenant, the many members of a standard platoon standing guard around their station. Their current place of station was just outside a large Forerunner tower, a tower of which was currently locked, preventing them access.

While one crew worked tirelessly to gain access to the ancient building, the other stood guard outside the field that lay before the building.

And in that group, a stark few members couldn't help but voice their frustrations at being placed at such an odd job.

"Hey… Why are we here anyway…?" A chirpy, raspy voice asked aloud. From the response she immediately gained, it was safe to assume that this wasn't the first time she'd spoken out.

"Quiet Jackal!" The Elite platoon leader snapped, barking out insults at the lesser soldier. "Your voice angers me."

Unfortunately for him, the shield wielding alien was too caught up in not caring to back down. That or, something else pushed her to push him so.

"I mean, come on… There's no one here…" The the foot solder muttered. "What are we guarding this place from? Humans? There are no humans…"

"Do you question the rule of Jul Mdama?" The Elite questioned dangerously.

"Do I have to spell it out for you, big guy?" The avian-esc alien yawned. "I mean sure, he wants this ultimate power or whatever… But, when did that ever work out for the Prophets? The green demon killed them all…"

The Elite was oddly quiet, at least, for one such as him. The Jackal was expecting a rebuttal immediately, but got nothing in response. At least, not right away.

"The Prophets were foolish…" He muttered.

"Oh? And you're saying Jul is big brain smarty guy?" She snapped, eyes narrowed at the back of his blue armored form.

"…"

"Yehuh, that's what I'm saying…" The Jackal sighed. "See, why don't we just get off this dumb dumb planet and run away. Come on, it'll be just the two of us…" She said, tone dipping into something softer.

The Elite didn't know when the Jackal approached him, but he found himself looking down at her armored form. He blinked, blinded by thought for a long moment.

But…

"How would we escape..? There are no humans here. It's safer here then if we went out there." He said.

"Why don't we just run away, then? We don't have to fight those humans anyway…" She said, raising her paw to rest it on the breastplate of his armor. "No one would notice one ship slip away, we could have a whole ship to ourselves." She said lowly, her eye's dipping.

The bigger alien found himself torn by her words. It was traitorous thinking, but, he was not in agreement with his leadership in the first place. When the Covenant first fell, he was assured by Jul's rising that he would restore the honor to the Elites…

But he wasn't so sure of that anymore…

He looked up, turning away in thought. "Maybe you are right. Perhaps we should-" He stopped, eyes widening when he gazed across the open field.

That's when he saw it, falling from the sky. A blurred sparkling orb of energy, electricity sparking and flying around the object's form. And it was coming right for them.

"Get back!" He roared, raising his Storm Rifle plasma weapon. He trained it on the object, watching as it neared them. As it got closer, it stopped bouncing, and instead fell towards the ground. With a hefty crash, it landed on the ground not thirty feet from him. The electric energy vanished, revealing that it was a humanoid of some sort.

It wore very alien green armor, with pulsating red lights cupping the breastplate of the suit, and surrounding the large bladed shoulders. Slowly, the being stood up, staring blankly at him from the short distance.

It didn't shoot at him, nor did it make a move to do so. He felt his resolve shaken by its blank stare.

"Who are you!? Leave here before we make you!" He barked, brandishing his weapon dangerously. The being stared at him for a long moment, almost as if it was seeing right through him.

Then, she spoke, in his own tongue.

"Who I am is not important to you." She spoke, holding a claw to her breastplate. The manner in which she spoke did little to alleviate the strange sense of fear that had suddenly surrounded his heart.

The Jackal and Elite shared a look of uncertainty, before facing her again.

"Who are you? What purpose do you have here?" He asked again, less angry this time.

"I am not here by choice. If you have a ship, I would like to leave." She stated with an annoyed, yet at the same time, monotone voice. He felt as if her eyes were staring straight through him, as if he was nothing to her but a pebble in her path. "If you try to stop me, I will kill you." She blatantly threatened in that same monotone.

But, before he could make a choice, the rest of his platoon that had been lingering around had taken notice of her presence.

"Intruder!" A jackal shouted, taking aim at the woman in armor.

"Kill it! Destroy all who oppose Jul Mdama!" More of the Elite's kinsmen shouted, not hesitating to immediately begin opening fire upon the unmoving target.

"Stop! Hold your fire!" The first Elite warrior shouted, but it was too late. He watched as the plasma from his entire platoon slammed into her unmoving form, kicking up smoke in the process. This lasted for a stark few moments, before they halted their assault.

When the smoke settled, and the wind blew away any obstructions, they were left with a sight that would haunt them into the next life. The enemy stood, unfazed by the all out attack. Her armor smoked lightly, yet was undamaged by the plasma. Held out before her was her hand, glowing a bright pink. It seemed as if she'd gone ahead and completely absorbed the attack in its entirety, leaving her body unscathed.

"I warned you." She sighed, cannon already glowing with a white energy. She snapped forward, firing off a multi missile attack, the blasts landing at the feet of the enemy. Ice froze the members of the Covenant in place, preventing escape. Without saying anything, she stared the closest enemy down, hand glowing as she walked forward.

"Where is your ship?" She asked again plainly, standing close to the Elite, her head only reaching his chest. He snarled at her smaller weaker form, eyes glowing in rage.

"I'd rather die then tell you an-"

"Okay." She cut him off, clamped around his face. He screamed for a moment, before inexplicably turning to dust, his energy becoming absorbed into her body. His weapon dropped to the ground, the only part of him remaining.

The Bounty Hunter had to stop herself from licking her lips at the sensation it gave her, instead turning towards her next target, another Elite. There was a painful urge inside of her that told her, demanded her go forth and feast upon all of their immobile souls.

Kill them all, take their life essence for yourself, you deserve it…

She found it extremely difficult to not give in and do so, instead continuing forth with her interrogation. She turned her baleful red visor to the next target, her almost lifeless and dreary voice setting them all on edge.

"Ship…?" She asked, no further questions. Her dry monotone had the Grunts petrified, shaking where they stood, her balefully red visor sending shivers down their spines.

"I would not debase myself to one such-"

This Elite too, was reduced to ashes. She turned to the next, only to receive an overcharged plasma blast from a plasma pistol. However, before it could even reach her, she seemed to vanish into thin air. The grunt who'd fired the shot looked on in horror when he spotted her twenty feet away, standing unscathed. How she had moved such a distance without anyone being the wiser, he didn't know.

But it wasn't like it mattered, he wasn't going to be alive too much longer anyway.

"Typical." She stated, returning fire with a plasma beam of her own. The unshielded creature was hit directly with a tri-beam of vastly superior hot green plasma, reduced to half a body. A second shot wiped it from existence entirely.

"O-O-Our ship! Behind rocks! We give you ship!" Samus turned around, locking eyes with the Jackal. This one, she noticed, was the one with the Elite, the first to notice her arrival. The alien had dropped her weapons, energy shield and all. She turned to the bulky Elite beside her, urging him to do the same. Begrudgingly, he complied.

"We never hunt humans again! We give up!" The reptile-like alien chirped. "W-We serve your side forever if let us go!" She chirped in a terrified broken language.

Samus stared them down for a long moment, before relenting. "Good."

The jackal closed her eyes as the Hunter began charging up an attack. Multiple explosions filled the air, shaking the ground. Screams of fear and pain filled the air, but it lasted for only a few moments.

When the dust settled, the shield using, now ex-member of the Covenant slowly opened her eyes. Laying around her was the bodies, or what was left of bodies, of her former comrades. In the middle of the chaos stood the person responsible, cannon barrel smoking.

Samus stepped forward, getting too close for comfort. Before either of the two remaining survivors could begin to panic, she raised her foot, dropping it on the ice covering the ground with a devastating heel drop. Both Elite and Jackal fell to the ground, surprised to find themselves alive. Slowly, both survivors glanced up, locking gazes with the black and red eyes of the one who had seemingly decided to spare them her wrath.

"I'm waiting." She said aloud, her words echoing out like a gunshot. The ex-members of the Covenant quickly stood to their feet, intent on not becoming victims of her ire.

"Our ship is at base of the tower… B-But it can't leave the planet! Planets gravity too strong, keeps us here." The Jackal barked, pointing towards the sky.

Samus turned skyward, easily spotting the large hole in the skybox where she and the Chief had come through. True enough, any ship that had attempted to go near was pulled back in.

Her eyes narrowed.

"A-Also! Our ship is not capable of warp. Only the Carriers are." The Jackal quickly explained, anticipating her next question.

Samus' shoulders slumped slightly at the revelation.

Of course it wouldn't be that simple….

That being said, she still needed their ship. She moved for its location, stopping suddenly as a pain filled her belly. She bit her lips hard enough to draw blood, resting a hand on her armored stomach. Even now, she could tell that they'd grown bigger inside her. The rate that they were growing was staggering, but she knew she had to manage with them.

It was all she could do.

Her legs shook underneath her as she struggled forward, ignoring the sensation that filled her abdomen…

After bringing the attacking force in the area down, the Chief had made his way to a large Forerunner structure not a mile from his location. Unlike the many floating obelisks that littered the sky of the seemingly artificial world, this one was grounded.

That message Cortana had received not too long ago was being obstructed by something local, but it wasn't Covenant jamming technology, that much they both knew. The safe bet was that it was either something here on the planet, or the planet itself jamming signals off world.

Either way, the Spartan had decided to make his way to the tower, fighting off any threat within his path. Eventually, after receiving a hefty resistance from local Covenant forces, he managed to make his way inside the tower. True to both his and Cortana's assumptions, this tower, and to a larger extent, this planet, was Forerunner. Though the outside was worn in many ways, the interior of the tower was immaculate.

Blue glowing lights and large orange shapes met his gaze, the massive ceiling above hidden by hundreds of ancient yet mysterious alien drones. Drones that had likely spent their entire existence working tirelessly to keep the ancient world running smoothly. They were a common sight on nearly all Forerunner installations across the galaxy, and told without words that the site was most likely running entirely autonomously.

Unless intruders, such as himself, made themselves threats to the continued safety of the site, the drones would generally leave most alone. For those Covenant foolish enough to instigate a battle with said drones, well, the battle was most likely to come to an immediate and bloody end, the drones carrying on like nothing happened.

Wisely, the Chief made sure to keep out of harms way, and let the drones scan him whenever he passed. Looking non-hostile was key.

"Cortana, any luck with that signal?" The man asked, keeping his eyes trained on his surroundings. With his history, there was no such thing as being too cautious…

"It's stronger here, I'm seeing if I can't pick something out of it…" The A.I. muttered, clearly busy with doing just that. While she did her magic, the Spartan took this moment in time to turn his attention to the second A.I. within his possession.

"Adam. You've called Samus a bounty hunter once before." The Chief stated, not taking his eyes off his surroundings. "What exactly did she hunt?" The Spartan asked pointedly.

"What is it that you imply by your words?" Adam spoke, his robotic tone differing heavily from Cortana's. "Do you think her a threat against humanity?" He asked. Although Adam's tone was as synthetic as possible, the Chief could pick up a faint sense of defensiveness in the A.I.'s tone.

The Chief went to rebuke the construct's words, but he couldn't. Indeed there was a large part of him that felt that Samus was dangerous, to him, but more importantly, to those around her. If there was one thing he was dreading, it was the help that may or may not arrive. She'd nearly lost her cool around him multiple times.

One person, one man, as the only other living being on a ship. The future that played out in his head with her surrounded by tens of people, hundreds or thousands of people, did not at all seem like a good idea. He'd seen firsthand how she reacted to the presence of the Covenant forces, and when given the moral authority to let loose upon them, she'd throughly preyed upon them without hesitation, without mercy.

During their time alone together on the Forward Unto Dawn, she had attacked him more than once. It had only lasted but a moment, and the time when she'd slid into him was not her fault, but it did bring up something very important.

She seems to struggle heavily with holding these extremely powerful urges and emotions back. But more than that, those urges are amplified by the number of those living around her, and how close she is to them. If, for some reason, she is not given time to get control over herself before being shoved into a close proximity to someone, she lashes out without control.

When the ship lost gravity during their escape, and she crashed into him, he could sense her surprise and fear when she couldn't stop herself from immediately taking the initiative to feast upon his form. He could feel how strong that urge was when he held her back, and how much he had to use to stop her.

If that same situation was repeated in a larger group, he feared the outcome. Because it was clear to him, that something was wrong, and that she seemed incapable of controlling herself. From the way she spoke, he gained the confidence that it wasn't always this way…

"Yes." The man finally replied, after dwelling on his previous experiences with her.

"Chief…" Cortana said, her tone resigned.

"I do think she is a threat, and her presence poses a risk to others around her." He said resolutely, not so soft as to break his feelings on the matter lightly to the other A.I. "However, until she proves my worries true, I have no intention to do anything about her." He finally decided.

Adam was silent, his thoughts on the subject unknown to the two members of the UNSC.

Either way, no more time was allocated for talk, seeing as two platoons of Covenant had appeared from somewhere deeper within the facility.

Unsurprisingly, they took notice of the bane of their existence, standing across from the ancient Forerunner structure.

"Chief, we've got trouble." Cortana stated.

"I noticed." He muttered dryly, ducking as an overcharged plasma bolt wizzed past his head.

Nearly five years of sleep, and he wakes up to the same violent coalition of fanatical aliens he'd spent nearly his whole waking life fighting. He wasn't sure if he should feel upset that it wasn't over yet, or comfortable because it was still the same five years later, and he had plenty of skill handling these sorts of situations.

He thumbed the grenade he had on his back plate, tossing it over his cover without even looking. The Grunts surprised screams was his signal to move.

After cleaning house, the Spartan made his way to the back of the building. His hefty footsteps echoed within the empty halls, the structure having gone quiet after the firefight ended.

"Chief, up ahead." Cortana voiced, directing him to an accessible terminal. The Spartan glanced at the object for a moment, deeming it relatively harmless, before pressing his fingers to it to bring it online. The system fluctuated for a moment, before powering on, a large hologram of a planet appearing before them.

"What is this?" He asked, eyes scanning the image. He couldn't be too sure, but it seemed to resemble the world they'd all crashed into.

"That's interesting…" He heard Cortana mutter from within his head.

"What?" He echoed his previous confusion.

"It's a localized site cartographer in service of the shield world designated as Requiem." She explained, trailing off oddly.

"Requiem? At least we know where we are now." He muttered, glancing down from the hologram.

"Give me a minute, it may be able to tell me what the Covenant are so interested in…" The blue bodied A.I. asked. The Spartan paused for just a brief moment, checking his surroundings before allowing Cortana to insert herself into the Forerunner sub-system.

"Make it quick. I don't know how long we have before hostile reinforcements arrive."

A minute passed in silence, the Spartan letting her do her work. Eventually she managed to find something.

"Chief, when you activated the Cartographer, that phantom signal cleared up. I'm getting it through again." She said, her voice sounding off. There was a distinct hitch in it that wasn't there before.

"Patch us in." He said firmly.

The signal was busy for a long moment, but it eventually came through. The signal was immediately recognizable by his suit's subsystems as the emergency channel for the UNSC Infinity, a partial coms link appearing on his HUD.

"Cortana, can you get a response to Infinity?" Chief asked hastily.

"Let me try." She said. "Mayday, this is UNSC A.I. Cortana to Infinity! Infinity, do you read?" Her voiced echoed. The channel was silent for a moment, but it was apparent either they couldn't hear her, or their response couldn't reach them in return. Something was still in the way of a two way conversation.

"They can't hear us. Either way, with the strength of that signal, they must be close by. I'll keep trying to hail them." Cortana sighed defeatedly. Her hands skimmed over the system, watching as an estimated location of Infinity's signal appeared at hundreds of locations all across the planet.

"What's happening?"

"The Cartographer is acting as if Infinity's signal is being transmitted from everywhere across the planet all at once." Cortana answered almost robotically.

"Can you triangulate its origin?" He asked.

"I'm trying…" She said, sounding struggled.

The entire system flashed for a moment, before it cleared. Once it had, the signal locked onto one location, center of the planet.

"That can't be right. Scan it again." He stated, voice taking on an uncharacteristically annoyed tone. If he was reading it correctly, the cartographer was telling them that the Infinity was inside the planet itself, deep underground. Such a scenario shouldn't have even been possible.

"It's not the craziest thing I've seen… We're already one layer deep, it's not too far stretched to assume someone else made it deeper inside." Cortana chimed in helpfully. The Spartan was silent. Something about the situation didn't sit right with him.

Not at all.

"You mean to tell me the planet's hollow?" The Spartan asked. Cortana was silent for a moment, either unhearing of his question, or too busy to respond. Either way, it wasn't how she used to respond to him.

"Let me see if I can find an easier way to these coordinates that doesn't involve us digging a really big hole…" She muttered, mind occupied with scanning through the systems allocated to her via the cartographer.

A few moments passed as she worked her magic, before she brought up the schematics for a transporter system. "There's a relay system on the far side of the terminus, it can get us to the core. We can get there on foot." She said, turning back to him. She looked at him, her face scrunching up in an odd emotion she didn't quite understand herself.

The Spartan didn't like that look at all.

"What? What's wrong?" He asked.

"I… I don't know…" She breathed, sounding suddenly lost. It wasn't like her to act in such a manner. The look on her face made a certain feeling rise up in the Spartan's chest, an oddly defensive energy filling him.

"If we have a shot at getting you back to Infinity, we're taking it." He said resolutely, leaving no room for a debate.

She looked at him, lips trembling slightly, eyes lacking that sturdiness she'd gained over her years in the field. He didn't like how fragile she looked, how wrong she was acting, he felt powerless to do anything about it. It was the same sense of powerlessness that had overcome him once before when he had to leave her behind with the Gravemind during their campaign just before this one.

He hated how it made him feel then, and he hated how it made him feel now. There was a firmness to his movements as he grabbed her data chip from the terminal, placing it safely in the back data port of his helmet once more before taking his leave. Lingering about was not going to get him anywhere, and was only going to leave Cortana in a worse condition.

Too hasty in his actions, neither soldier nor A.I. saw the terminal malfunction behind them, the signal of the Infinity again moving, this time far off world…

"I'm not liking this…"

"Oh, quit your whining Casillas. Conflict is bound to happen, panicking about it now isn't going to help anyone…"

"Dunlap…" Someone else spoke up with an exhausted sigh.

"No, she needs to hear this, Tashi." Dunlap snapped, turning his glare on the map opposite him. His standard issue Recruit-class visor made it impossible to tell what sort of expression covered his face, but Tashi knew it wasn't a good one.

"Listen, I know you're worried about this. You always are worried about something, but just chill, Casillas." Another voice spoke, sounding nonchalant, their tone accentuated by a seemingly uncaring wave of the hand. "You're our best sniper on the team, I think out of everyone here, you have the least to worry about…"

"Way to point out the obvious, Lincoln…" Tashi sighed, turning her blue tinted visor to the other resident female Spartan. "Listen, Casillas, you heard what Captain Del Rio said. This mission is nothing but a reconnaissance trip. We're going to get there, poke our heads in, maybe lay out a temporary site of operations, then leave." She explained, trying to sound casual. Although, for the rather stern sounding demeanor or hers, it came off very forced.

"The Covenant…?" The nervous woman asked. Tashi waved her concerns down.

"They don't even know about this place. We just barely learned not long ago, what makes you think A, they know, and B, they care?" Tashi stated casually.

"It's the Covenant… If it's Forerunner, then they care…" Dunlap stated lowly, a series of clicks echoing throughout the room as he reassembled his magnum.

"Dunlap, you're not helping…" Tashi sighed. The Spartan turned her gaze to the other armored super soldier next to her, noticing her distinctive lack of a voice in the conversation.

"Dunlap's right. There is no reason to not assume that Covenant won't show. Being prepared for them ahead of time can only help your chances of staying alive…" The woman who had up to that point been silent, had finally decided to voice her opinion.

"Estey's right." A new voice pulled all five Spartan's attention to the door of the room, watching as their Fireteam leader stepped in. "Fireteam Castle, Palmer has ordered all Spartan personnel to the armory. It's time to load up. Seems like the Captain is expecting less then friendly company…" The man spoke, the light glinting off of his orange visor. Unlike the rest of his squad, who all wore the same uniform default Generation 2 Mjolnir Powered Assault Armor, Recruit specifically; he wore a suit of Gen 2 Recon, likely due to his ability and presence as a fireteam leader.

"You mean the planet's occupied, Ernst?" Lincoln asked, already suspecting the answer.

"The Captain has detected traces of Covenant forces outside the planet." The man spoke. "He wants to be prepared for the worst."

"See, this is what I was worried about…" Casillas muttered, the Spartan fiddling with her 50 caliber rifle.

"Oh my god, Casillas!" Dunlap felt like screaming…

Chapter

5

End