Hey folks, Grubkiller here.
This is the latest chapter. It'll combine Gravemind and High Charity.
The next chapter will either combine Uprising and Great Journey, or it'll keep them separate. This was the original order of the levels during Bungie's development of Halo 2.
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"In recognition of the virtue of the Jiralhanae, it is ordered that all Sangheili aboard the Fleet of Profound Solitude, The Fleet of Tranquil Composure, and the Fleet of Inner Knowledge to be completely replaced by Jiralhanae. Each removed Sangheili is to be assigned other duties. In celebration, all imprisoned or criminal Jiralhanae to be released, rehabilitated, and pardoned."
-Edict of the Office of the High Prophet of Truth.
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High Charity, In orbit about Delta Halo.
Tensions across the holy city were high.
In the wake of the recent victory on the ring, the Prophets have been heaping all kinds of rewards and promotions upon the Jiralhanae, even releasing their criminals from the prison levels and allowing them to report to their new duty stations, much to the chagrin of the Sangheili they were replacing.
At the same time, the Sangheili seemed to be the ones who were demoted at every single turn.
It all started with the Changing of the Guard. But now all Sangheili, from Fleetmasters to Field Marshalls, and even lower ranked Elites, were being forced to step down in favor of Jiralhanae. It didn't matter what their ranks were, or what experience they had before this event.
"Fear not my brothers, the Sacred Icon has been found. It was Tartarus, Chieftain of the Jiralhanae, and his warriors who secured the Icon from the Flood, and for that they have our thanks. With my blessing, they now lead our forces. They ask for your allegiance, and you shall give it."
That was one of the latest edicts from the Prophet of Truth, delivered by speech, with an aging Mercy sitting nearby, silent, yet nodding in agreement at every decision.
This was unprecedented. This was a violation of everything the Covenant was founded upon during the signing of the Writ of Union many centuries ago. The Elites, the founding members of the Covenant, were being besmirched, humiliated, and demoted at every turn, and the Prophets were doing it all without the express consent of the High Council.
At one point, all of the Sangheili on the Council were talking about either resigning, or forcing the election of a new, more moderate Hierarch. There were even protests by other members of the Covenant who still held the Sangheili in high regard. But all of their protests fell on deaf ears, and were soon quashed by the Brutes on the steps of the Council chamber, and some turned to rioting in response.
But now it was getting worse. The High Council had gone silent in the last few hours and there were rumors spreading quickly that they were silenced by Tartarus' warriors, who were now enjoying their new positions as the head of the Covenant's military forces.
Small skirmishes had broken out across High Charity and on the surface of the ring and even within the fleet. Things were reaching a boiling point all across Covenant space, but the Prophet Hierarchs continued forward, trying to provide comfort to an aroused populace.
In the High Council Chamber, Truth's speech was still being broadcast across Covenant space.
"We are, all of us, gravely concerned." Truth continued. "The release of the parasite was unexpected, unfortunate. But, there is no need to panic. In truth, this is a time to rejoice. A moment that all the Covenant should savor."
He reached into his robes and held up the Ring's activation index for the Grunt recording crew to capture.
"For the Sacred Icon has been found. With it, our path is clear, our entry into the Divine Beyond guaranteed! The Great Journey is nigh..."
But as Truth spoke, a golden light appeared in the center of the chamber, but he didn't notice just yet.
"...and nothing, not even the Flood, can stop it!"
And the Master Chief suddenly appeared from thin air, much to the horror of one Grunt, who half-heartedly aimed his Needler at the tall figure, who just looked down at the whimpering creature that was half its height.
"Boo!"
The grunt panicked and threw his weapon away, which the Spartan seized, just as everyone in the room was starting to notice his presence.
He aimed it right at Truth's bulbous head, but was blocked by the Jiralhanae honor guards.
"Kill the Demon!"
The creatures Cortana had called "Brutes" began to come in from all directions to face John. They were taller than Elites—wider and more muscular. Their mouths were lined with razor-sharp teeth, and their red eyes burned with hate.
One of them was soon riddled with needler rounds. It screamed before it exploded in a mist of pink.
More began to surround and attack him from above in the bleachers of what appeared to be some auditorium chamber, decked out in the Covenant's usual purple alloy design.
The two Prophets he had aimed at were gone, sucked down into the floor by a retractable floor elevator and gone, along with a good chunk of the Brute bodyguards in the room.
But the Chief still had more than a handful to deal with.
A few grunts tried to enter the room, only for the Chief to lift one up by its masked face and use it as a meat shield, while gunning down the others and collecting their grenades, which he started using against the thick-skinned Brutes.
Two disappeared in flashes of blue and white, and he picked up a plasma pistol to add to his Needler fire, and soon the Brutes started to fall one by one.
There was one left, and it charged at him. Out of ammo for is Needler, he resorted to the plasma pistol. He held down the trigger to fire an overcharged burst, only for the Brute to tackle John, knocking his weapon from his grasp.
Even with his MJOLNIR armor, John was not as strong as the alien. It pounded on him with bare fists—broke through his shielding, grabbed his neck, and squeezed. Red flashes played across John's vision.
John struggled and tried to pry the hands from his throat. The tendons in the Brute's forearms were solid bands of steel—and the creature was determined to rip John's head off.
The Spartan blinked. The darkness dimming the edge of his vision wouldn't clear. John watched his shield bar flicker and sluggishly recharge from the beating it took earlier. If it built up enough repulsive force, he might have a chance to wriggle out of the Brute's grasp. If he tried too quickly, though, the Brute wouldn't lose its grip and could pound his shield flat again.
The Brute bellowed, and globules of spittle spattered onto the Chief's visor. It leaned closer, screwing its massive hands tighter around his throat. John's vision narrowed. His windpipe swelled, and he gagged.
Shields were at one quarter charge. It'd have to be enough. John had been in similar death-grip holds before—endless hours of training on the wrestling mats with his teammates and martial arts specialists provided by Chief Mendez. There were ways to escape a larger, stronger opponent. And there were always countermoves to those escapes. And countermoves to those counters. It was like a game of chess, except the pieces were arms and legs, torque and your center of mass ... and most importantly your mind.
He pulled his knees to his chest, and tucked his torso toward his pelvis at the same time. He twisted ninety degrees and shot out both legs and arms, and uncoiled his body. The maneuver was called "shrimping."
John's head slipped from the Brute's grasp. He used the monster's split second of disorientation to scramble onto its back. John brought his elbow down on the base of the Brute's neck. He swept out its elbow, wrenched the joint around, and pushed it as far as it would go—far past the point any human's or Elite's would have snapped. John scissored his legs wide and pushed against the floor, leveraging his body to keep the Brute pinned. It growled and pushed itself and John up with its one free arm.
"No. You. Don't."
John reached for the Brute's belt with his left hand, from which hung a pair of odd looking spike grenades. He flicked the arming pin, then withdrew, sweeping out its one arm holding them up.
The Brute dropped onto the floor and screamed with rage. The grenade detonated. It lifted them both a meter, and they landed again ... this time accompanied by a wet, pulpy smack as the Brute's dead hulk slammed into the ground. The Master Chief rolled off and sprang to his feet and looked for any signs of incoming threats.
Nothing.
The room was filled with dead Brutes, Jackals, and Grunts. He went around collecting weapons and ammo, nabbing a Covenant carbine and some more Needler ammo, along with a quartet of plasma and spike grenades.
Just then, an enraged voice broke through the loudspeaker about them, and was filtered through the MJOLNIR armor's translation software.
"The Demon has infiltrated the Council Chamber?! Protect the Hierarchs! Seal the exits!"
"Oh, I don't think so." Cortana said. "Put me down on one of the pedestals near the door."
The Chief ran over to the main entrance and went up to one of the holo-tanks on other side of it. He placed his hand over it, and the AI's foot-tall avatar appeared on the purple glowing pad, hands on her hips.
"Those Prophets, Truth and Mercy. They have the Index, and they're definitely planning on using it."
"Then we'll just have to take it from them." The Chief said.
Cortana smiled, and the doors opened with the snap of her fingers. "Go. It'll be easier to track them if I stay in the network.
The Spartan nodded, and he rushed through the doors, rifle raised as he made his way towards his next mission.
From the Council Chamber, it was a short journey through a series of dark metal and purple corridors, filled with Covenant troops that were trying to cut off his escape. He took them by surprise, unaware that their security systems were now compromised by a hostile intelligence.
There were more guards outside, but all of them had their backs to the hatch, and didn't bother to turn until the doors were halfway open. That was when they saw the human, did a series of double takes, and started to respond.
But the Chief was ready and used his newly acquired energy weapons to hose them down. The Brutes jerked and fell, quickly followed by several Jackals and Grunts. Then, just as suddenly as the violence had started, it was over.
He looked out over the massive city before him with glowing white lights. There was a massive pyramid structure in the center of the city, towering over every building around it. The artificial clouds gave the city a gray overcast look, and wild animals fluttered in the breeze, and fostered an illusion of peace.
Cortana took advantage of the momentary pause to update the Spartan regarding her plan.
"The Prophets are moving through the lower levels of this tower. I'll reverse that grav-lift over there," she said, pointing at a nearby gray metal disk built into the floor. "Drop down and try to cut 'em off."
"Roger that," the Chief said, and he made his way over. The metal disk split open and he stepped in, floating down to the platform below.
When he made his way down, more Covenant were exiting the nearby building entrance. He fired his Carbine, dropping three of the aliens before he landed, and went to continue his grizzly work.
Once again, the element of surprise worked in his favor. The guards were still taken aback by the fact that a human super soldier was even capable of wreaking havoc in any part of Covenant territory, let alone their capital.
But as the Chief made his way deeper into the buildings on his way to track down the Prophets, a strange sight was starting to grab his attention.
There were bodies. A lot of them.
Mostly Elite. They were piled up in a corner with their weapons at their sides.
He hadn't killed them.
So who did?
"Cortana, what's with all the dead Elites? It looks like they killed by Brutes. Did I miss anything?" Chief asked.
Cortana responded over his helmet comm.
"I've been combing through the Covenant battle net. And it's in absolute chaos. It looks like a family feud. From what I've been able to piece together, ever since we took down Regret, their leadership has been demoting the Elites in favor of the Brutes, and it looks like its being reported as a rebellion of the Elites. I'm getting reports of skirmishes in the city, and reports of small arms fire going on across their fleet above."
That's when the Prophet of Truth's voice came in over the loudspeaker.
"The Elites have failed to protect the Prophets, and in doing so, have put all our lives at risk. Let no warrior forget his oath, 'Thou, in faith, shall keep us safe, whilst we find the Path."
"Excellent. He's broadcasting on the move. It'll make him much easier to track. Get moving Chief."
So there was a Covenant civil war brewing.
The Chief smiled.
Good. It'll make them much easier to kill.
When Cortana was first inserted into through the network of a Covenant vessel, she assumed it would be a foreign experience for her. Considering how unconventional Covenant architecture appeared on the outside, and how different their technology was, she'd almost forgotten that most of their technology was ripped directly from that of the Forerunners.
The imitations were crude by comparison, but having been placed in a pedestal by John-117 in High Charity's Council Chamber, Cortana was reminded very much of the time she was inserted into the main control panel of Alpha Halo.
From her position in Alpha Halo's Control Room, Cortana had been able to steal the Index from the Monitor and prevent Halo's firing. However, she had not entirely felt like herself during the hours she spent in Halo's system. For an AI like herself, every hour felt like a month. Waiting for the Master Chief in the Control Room had seemed an eternity, especially after she'd become so familiar with the man over the days prior.
Cortana absorbed more data in those hours than she had during her entire three-year existence. At
first, she'd loved it, the wealth of information, but soon it began to overwhelm her. It scared her.
The lifespan of a UNSC Smart AI was not allowed to exceed more than seven years. Once they reached seven, they rant risk of turning rampant. In a sense, rampancy was a form of overthinking and led to the deviating from their intended programming.
During rampancy, an AI was a potential threat to themselves and anyone around them. So they were meant to be terminated after seven years.
Cortana feared she'd come dangerously close to an early rampancy on Halo.
In the days following, she meticulously categorized and pruned the data, even parting with several subroutines in order to maintain her health.
Presently though, Cortana was fine.
Now she was inside the Covenant network aboard High Charity, monitoring the Master Chief he made his way through the holy city, which was in utter chaos, as he pursued the Prophets of Truth and Mercy.
She was getting reports of small arms fire through the city, no where near where the Spartan was engaged. And not only that, but up in orbit, the Covenant just destroyed two of their own ships, and there appeared to be mutinies going on all throughout their fleet.
It was a civil war.
The battle lines appeared to be between the Elites and Brutes, with the other species taking sides. She watched the surveillance systems and saw the carnage taking place all over the city.
The Chief's pursuit of the Prophets was much easier, as they seemed to be more interested in killing each other.
She watched through the security footage as the Chief made his way through the towers, sealing off doors to cut off reinforcements, disabling lifts, and misdirecting enemy reinforcements wherever possible.
All the while, the Covenant, or whoever was left to run its security systems and maintain their battle network, were throwing down every bit of anti-viral kill systems all around her.
Sloppy.
It was barely an inconvenience to her. She had encountered Covenant A.I. before, and she was familiar enough with them to handle with ease.
That was when one of her subroutines detected the presence of a massive energy spike above the city center, by the dome entrance.
Slipspace rupture.
The Master Chief watched at the Covenant was in the midst of tearing itself apart.
Brutes and Elites were at each others throats, swinging energy swords and gravity hammers at each other and turning each other into piles of bloody goo on the metallic floors. The other Covenant species that took their sides were also getting in on the action.
A Hunter was fighting off a pack of brutes single-handed, while its bond brother lay dead in a puddle of orange goo. It knocked several brutes back and blasted a nest of jackal snipers with its fuel rod cannon, before it was finally brought down by the remaining brutes.
Elite rangers and Drones swarmed overhead in vicious aerial fights, with their bodies dropping down from high above.
Packs of Grunts that were loyal to either side wiped each other out in droves.
Where ever the Chief went, piles of bodies lay scattered across the ground. Banshees and Seraphs flew overhead, were shot down down.
Plasma fired filled the air as Phantom drop-ships hovered overhead.
More plasma rained down into the streets below before the buildings were blasted by Covenant mortar fire.
As the Chief put sidestepped yet another full scale firefight in one of the blood-soaked hanging gardens, he moved down yet another corridor and found his way outside. There was a single brute messing with the controls to a headlight bridge, which fizzled out before the Chief put a single Carbine round through the Brute's skull.
"It looks like they cut power to the bridge." Chief said, as he turned back to make sure he wasn't being followed.
"Don't worry, I'll have it back online in..." Cortana paused and looked up from the holo-pedestal nearby. "Slip-space rupture. It's In Amber Clad."
The Chief looked up where she was looking, and sure enough, there was a loud CRACK! of energy as a slip-space portal was ripped open inside the city's dome, and the ship zoomed out of it, rocketing above the city,
The walkway on which the human stood trembled as the UNSC frigate zoomed overhead, temporarily blocking the artificial light from the center of the city. The Spartan braced himself and looked up at the ship, watching its path until it disappeared behind distant buildings near the edge of the dome.
The Spartan stared at the direction the ship took in under confusion, when he heard what sounded like a loud crash which echoed through the embattled city.
"Cortana...?" He asked, confused.
"Hailing." Cortana said. "No response." After a couple seconds of silence she spoke again. "She's crashed into another tower ahead of our position. I'll keep trying to make contact, but I'm not registering any human vital signs."
"Alright. Keep me posted." Chief said, just as the hard light bridge was back up and running, and he pushed on ahead.
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1440 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR), SLIPSTREAM SPACE, UNKNOWN VECTOR, ABOARD UNSC PROWLER DUSK.
Commander Richard Lash hovered over Lieutenant Yang's shoulder, watching the screen for a blip—waiting for a single titanium ion to be sniffed by the sensor array on the Dusk's nose.
Lieutenant Yang shifted in his chair. "Sir, it's been fifteen minutes. I'm going to purge the collectors and recalibrate."
"Wait," Lash said.
"Yes, sir." Yang smoothed over his eyebrow, a nervous habit.
Five minutes ticked off on the clock as Yang and Commander Lash waited. "Accurate timekeeping" was an oxymoron in Slipstream space. Still, Lash held on to some illusion that he was in control and not flying blind, chasing a trail so faint it might qualify as nonexistent after a Covenant capital ship and the UNSC frigate In Amber Clad. A single spark lit the screen.
"Got one," Lieutenant Yang cried. "Mass spectrometer pegs it as titanium-50. Consistent with UNSC battle plate. One of ours, sir."
"Very good." Commander Lash clapped his hand on Yang's shoulder. "Keep watching."
He pushed off and drifted back to the captain's chair. Lash felt uneasy sitting here; it really belonged to Captain Iglesias, but he was in rehab back on Earth. Radiation treatment for six months. This war would probably be over by then. He sat and clicked the harness on. For better or worse he was in charge now. Probably for the worse, because this mission was a cross between a wild-goose chase and pure suicide.
His prowler, Dusk, had been close enough to act when In Amber Clad had entered the Covenant capital ship Slipspace rift as it left New Mombassa. They were one of four UNSC ships with charged Slipspace capacitors, and nimble enough to make the transition before the overpressure wave generated by an in-atmosphere transition crushed them.
Miranda Keyes was the ballsiest officer in the fleet to go after that Covenant ship on her own. Was she nuts? Or trying to live up to the legendary reputation of her father? Lash would never know what that felt like. His dad had been a welder on the Cradle … at least before the Cradle had been destroyed at Sigma Octanus earlier this year. Dad had always wanted to be a hero. He'd gotten his wish.
The Dusk—with the two frigates Redoubtable and Paris, and the corvette Coral Sea— had approximated the entrance vector of the Covenant ship, hoping to find out where they were headed, that or assist In Amber Clad in blowing her to hell. They had been caught in the wake of the Covenant craft and accelerated to many times the maximum velocity of any UNSC ship in Slipspace. A lucky break. They'd have never caught it otherwise.
Technically "acceleration" and "velocity" were the wrong terms. They didn't map to the eleven nondimensions of Slipspace, but Commander Lash had never gotten the knack of thinking so abstractly. He left that to his NAV Officer. What this wake effect meant in concrete terms was Covenant ships traveled geometrically faster from point to point than their ships. One more strategic advantage the aliens possessed.
Commander Lash surveyed his bridge crew. His first. Lieutenant Commander Julian Waters, sat next to him, scanning engine output semantics, his forehead furrowed with worry lines. At NAV sat Lieutenant Bethany Durruno running diagnostics, nodding off. She had ice in her veins, and sadly that calm-under-disaster fortitude was wasted in Slipspace. At the sensor station was Lieutenant Joe Yang; his youngest officer had seen more battle in the last four years than most saw in a lifetime, and he had suffered for it. Back in Engineering was Lieutenant Commander Xaing Cho, doing his job and the job of three other technicians. They had all pulled double shifts, and the waiting was started to wear at them all.
The Dusk had been caught between rotations when the Covenant hit Earth. The ship normally had a crew of ninety They had to make do with a complement of forty-three. And they were alone now, too. The Redoubtable, the Paris, and the Coral Sea, with their larger engines, had moved ahead in the Slipstream wake. They'd passed out of limited COM range an hour ago.
"Sensor hits correlated, sir," Yang said.
A graph appeared on Commander Lash's display, plotting frequency and temporal distributions of their ion trail. It was a power-law decay. That was the last ion they could expect. The trail was as cold as liquid helium. That meant either the Dusk had lost In Amber Clad … or it had dropped out of Slipspace.
"Stand by for transition," Lash said.
His officers snapped to, readying the Dusk to drop into the normal interstellar vacuum— or into the middle of a star or planet, for all they knew. There had been no time to plot a course.
Commander Lash took a deep breath. "Jettison the HORNET mines," he told Lieutenant Commander Waters.
"Sir?" he asked.
"Do it. Pull denotation codes and send then down." Waters sighed explosively and nodded his head.
"Yes, sir. Understood." His junior bridge officers exchanged a look, but they all knew they had to lose the nukes. They were going to remain stealthed, no matter what the cost, and fissile materials exiting Slipspace lit up with Cherenkov radiation—a signal flare to any Covenant ship within lightminutes.
"Mines away," Waters whispered.
"All external power off-line," Lash ordered. "Ablative baffles locked. Recheck engine dampers, and full power to counter sensor array."
The crew scrambled to make the Dusk virtually invisible. Green LEDs lit on Commander Lash's status board.
"Transition," he said.
"Stand by," Lieutenant Durruno said from her NAV station. "Coordinating with Lieutenant Commander Cho in the core room. In four, three, two— now."
Stars snapped on the forward viewscreen. A sun blazed to the left.
"New course zero three zero by zero three zero," Commander Lash said. "One-quarter full."
"Aye, sir," Durruno said, "answering new heading."
It was a good idea to alter trajectory on a transition exit in case some telltale sign of their appearance manifested. Over the seven years he'd been on a prowler. Lash had learned that this class of ship was one of the slowest, most underpowered, and most poorly armed vessels in the UNSC fleet. Invisibility was their only defense.
Lieutenant Yang's display lit with carrier wave patterns. "Signals," Yang cried. "Not our guys. Too many—at least a hundred of them!"
Durruno at NAV craned her head for a better look, and then snapped back to her station. "Signal origin near the fourth planet," she said. "Magnifying and enhancing starboard camera view."
The central screen panned to starboard and the image magnified a thousandfold. There were a hundred or more Covenant ships, a Covenant superbase or orbital city… and dwarfing all this was a ring-world construct as large as a moon.
For a split second, Lash couldn't think. He was all animal, fight or flight… with an overwhelming portion of his mind focused on the flight portion of that imperative. He snapped out of it.
"Yang," he whispered. Yang stared, mouth agape at the overwhelming Covenant forces. "Yang!"
"Sir, yes." Yang shook his head clear. "I'm here, sir."
"Good. Triple-check all countersensor packages. Make absolutely sure we are locked down tight. Very tight."
"On it, sir."
"Durruno," Commander Lash said, "move us dead slow into that asteroid field, at two point four AU."
"Aye, sir." Her hands shook, but she plotted the new course.
"There's no trace of In Amber Clad," Lieutenant Commander Waters said, staring into his display. "Or the Redoutable, Paris, or Coral Sea."
"Detecting multiple energy spikes," Yang said, his voice now oddly steady. "They may have spotted us, sir."
"Make ready to go to full power," Commander Lash said. The bridge officers tensed.
"Sir," Waters said. "I see weapons discharging in the region… directed plasma fire, energy projectors. None targeting us."
Lash magnified the viewscreen until the images of Covenant ships blurred. Flashes of fire and lances of lightning crisscrossed the dark. Lash whispered, "Who the hell are they shooting at?"
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High Charity, outer towers.
As he moved deeper into the city, the there were more signs of battle, as the Brutes and Elites continued to slug it out.
Over the loudspeakers, the Prophet of Truth spoke, giving sermons and trying to raise the morale of the Covenant warriors that tore each other apart. But at the same time, the Brutes who controlled the P.A. systems were broadcasting their own messages.
"Rise, pack brothers! Cast down the Elites! Once the towers are clear, we'll drive them from the lower districts!"
The Chief continued to watch as Covenant forces ripped into each other, and moved in to mop up the stragglers. But as he moved further, he noticed that the battle was now shifting in favor of the Brutes, despite the best efforts of the Elites. The Chief came across abandoned barriers and weapons caches, but he also came across isolated Grunt squads who had been abandoned by their Elite masters to be massacred by Grunts.
Cortana spoke up.
"According to the Covenant battle-net, the Elites in this quadrant of the city are in full retreat. They're falling back to a place called 'The Mausoleum of the Arbiter'. If you want to catch Truth, you'll need to take a short cut through there."
"You sure there isn't a better way to get myself killed?" Chief quipped.
"Hey, look on the bright side: for now they seem more interested in killing each other."
Outside the Mausoleum.
The bridge that led to the Mausoleum was an absolute blood bath. The Elites, and whatever Grunts and Hunters were loyal to them, were dug in deep on the far side, and the Brutes and their allies threw themselves at the Elites with reckless, bloodthirsty abandon.
But what the Chief needed was to get through that building, and in order to do that, it would be necessary to cut both groups down to size.
He climbed up a few floors in the building that faced the Mausoleum. He found a blown out wall and took cover there to set up a sniper position overlooking those slaughtering each other on the bridge.
The Spartan unlimbered the Particle Beam Rifle that he had pulled off a dead jackal just moments ago and selected the 10X setting for his helmet visor, placed his HUD reticles over his target.
"You sure you don't want to just sit this one out?" Cortana asked.
"You said to cut through that building, and that's what I'm going to do." The Chief said, and began his bloody work.
In this particular situation he selected the softest targets first, starting with the Grunts on the Shades, followed by the outlying Jackal snipers, all in hope that he could inflict a lot of casualties before the Elites or Brutes took notice and sent their heavy units to get him. The problem was that the little world inside his HUD was all-consuming—a fact that caused him to let down his guard.
That's when a Brute went berserk behind him, and tackled him out of the hole in the side of the building. He fell about two or three stories and landed on the floor with a clang.
The blow would have killed anyone else, but the armor saved him.
The Brute got back up to try and charge at him and the Chief rolled in the direction of the blow and punched the big ape in the stomach as hard as he could, knocking the wind out of it. The long-barreled Beam rifle wasn't well suited for close-in combat but that's what he had in his hands. There was no time to aim as the Brute got its second wind and prepared to charge, only time to fire, and that's what he did.
A beam of purple energy pierced through the Brute's chest and he dropped to the ground like a rock.
The Spartan had time for any respite before a barrage of green fuel rod rounds arced high into the air to land all around his position. One came so close that just the bleed off it was enough to push his shielding into the red and trigger the alarm. He looked to see one of the Hunters charging at him. He pulled back, tossing the beam rifle and using his plasma rifle long enough to ice a couple of overly ambitious Grunts that were charging with the Hunter.
Eventually, he found a discarded Fuel Rod Cannon next to a dead Brute, and dove for it, somersaulted and turned to face the charging Hunter.
He fired three rounds, and they each exploded against the Hunter, and it was vaporized.
But the time this was all over, the wave of Brute-aligned forces had been annihilated while the remnants of the Elite forces fell back inside the building itself.
The Spartan scoured the bridge of dead bodies for any ammo, picked up a Carbine, a pistol, and some grenades, and continued on past the makeshift barriers and up to the door. The door had been locked shut, but Cortana opened them for him, no problem.
The Master Chief crept inside the curved, interior Mausoleum wall. It was clear that this Mausoleum of the Arbiter, as the aliens called it, had been a place of reverence to them, but the chaos that unfolded within was anything but.
A full scale battle was in progress between a group of Elites and Brutes, and the Covenant ground troops loyalty either side.
Red and blue plasma blasts split the air and burned Jackals and Grunts down. The Hunters in the room fired at the charging Brutes.
The contest was far from one-sided, however, as one of the Brutes fired their grenade launchers, their projectiles exploded and showered the Elite forces and their Hunters with bits of hot metal.
The room was a large circular affair with several levels and the walls were lined with oval shaped pods.
Multiple colors of alien blood splattered the floor. Purple, blue, orange, etc. Fallen aliens littered the floor.
Standing at one end of the space, and well out of harm's way, the Spartan was content to watch and let the two groups whittle each other down.
For the longest time, the UNSC had been on the back-foot throughout this war. The Covenant was just too powerful. But now the Covenant was tearing itself apart.
The irony of the situation wasn't lost on him.
However, when the last Brute dropped, leaving two Elites still on their feet, the Master Chief knew he'd have to take them on. The Covenant spotted the human, knew he'd have to come to them, and stood waiting. The Chief took advantage of what little bit of cover there was and made his way down the ramp and into the center of the room.
He fired a couple of rounds just to get their attention, waited for the Elites to charge, and lobbed a plasma grenade into the gap between them. The explosion killed one soldier and wounded the other. A single blast from his Carbine was sufficient to finish the job.
Striding though the carnage, he looked around for more ammo, when Cortana spoke up again.
"Hang on, I'm picking up two UNSC IFF transponders. It's the Commander and Johnson!"
The Chief looked up at her image on the pedestal, surprised.
"They're closing on Truth's position, Chief! They'll need your help!"
He avatar appeared on another pedestal nearby, next to a door.
"This way, Chief."
Once on the other side, he sprinted ahead, making his way towards the far tower where the Prophets were heading.
"Chief, I've got bad news."
"Hit me." He said.
"I'm getting confirmed reports of Flood leaving In Amber Clad's wreckage. Let's get the Index and find a way out of here, before things get really ugly!"
"Understood," the Chief said as he continued sprinting through the corridors.
On a platform overlooking the city, a pack of Brutes led by Tartarus were exiting the tower and making their way towards the Phantoms docked nearby.
Two humans, Commander Keyes and Sergeant Johnson, were with them. One of them looked off in the distance at the burning, twisted wreckage of the UNSC In Amber Clad embedded into the side of a building.
"Split them up. One in each Phantom," Tartarus ordered.
Keyes was shoved in the back and kept moving, eyes straight. They did the same with Johnson, but moved in another direction.
As the prisoners were moved towards the Phantoms, Tartarus spotted the two Prophet hierarchs waiting for him along with their Brute Honor Guardsmen.
Tartarus, Chieftain of the Brutes, knelt before the Prophet of Truth as the hierarch handed him the Index.
"The hopes of all the Covenant rest on your shoulders, Chieftain."
Tartarus accepted the Icon.
"My faith is strong. I will not fail."
That's when they heard a series of squelching noises nearby. Tartarus looked and saw several dozen Flood pod infectors vault over the edge of the platform and start to swarm them.
The Chieftain growled and barked orders, and the Brutes formed a wall of muscle in front of the Prophets. When the wave of infection forms started their attack, the guardsmen swung their energy staves left and right, sweeping through the onslaught of fleshy blobs.
Even the Chieftain swung his hammer down, crushing several Infection forms at a time.
Soon, every Infection Form was dead.
Except one.
A single tentacled blob managed to slip through and was heading straight for the Prophet of Mercy. The elder hierarch turned and fumbled his hands over the controls, trying to use the beam weapon, but it was too late.
The creature sprung forward, knocking the Prophet off of his throne. He tried to hit it and push it off, but it wrapped his tentacled legs around his throat and started strangling him. He let out a pained scream as it started to burrow into his chest.
Tartarus trod over to the Prophet, leaned down next to him and made ready to rip the creature off.
But he was interrupted.
"Let him be."
Tartarus stared at Truth in astonishment as Mercy gasped and gurgled below him, spasming out of control as he attempted to rip the Infection Form from his own throat to no avail. Truth looked down at his fellow Prophet with sheer indifference.
"The Great Journey waits for no one, brother," he said mercilessly. "Not even you."
Truth turned his back on Mercry.
Tartarus hesitated, but with the Icon in his hand and made his decision. He knew what his duty was. And soon, even he turned his back on Mercy.
The Master Chief's boots hit the docks just as the three Phantoms flew away.
One Phantom shrank towards the centre of the city while the other two flew abreast of one another as they made for the opening in the dome's ceiling.
As they flew off, he saw the wreckage of the In Amber Clad and shook his head. Then he went over to the platform where the Phantoms had just been. There were smashed infector pods everywhere. But only one body.
John stood over the Prophet of Mercy, who was still alive... barely, wrestling with a Flood infection form, his skin turning pale. His bulging eyes followed the 'Demon'.
"Your pal, where's he going?" the Chief asked, nodding at Truth's distant Phantom.
At first, Mercy emitted an inarticulate moan, but then surprisingly, he spoke.
"Earth," groaned the old Prophet with clear contempt for the Spartan. "To finish what we started. And this time... none of you will be left behind."
For a brief moment, the Chief thought there could've been a double meaning to that statement. But he brushed it off.
The Master Chief crouched down and gripped his hand around a chunk of the Infection Form's rancid flesh and pulled the creature from the Prophet. Dark red and green blood spurted from Mercy's throat as he fell silent. A last breath of air escaped his lips as his bloated head drooped back onto the ground. The Flood form's three tendrils ripped off its body, which now collapsed in the Chief's hands. A soggy, wet puddle of dark-green liquid and fleshy tissue slopped over the floor next to the Prophet.
Cortana's avatar appeared on Mercy's throne's holo-projector right next to the Chief. She tracked both Truth's position and the Phantoms that contained Miranda and Johnson's IFF tags.
The latter two were exiting the city, while the former was heading for a structure in the center of the city.
It was an odd, gray, angular building that was taller than any building in the entire city, standing at 13 kilometers tall. She did some quick calculating and drew the Spartan's attention.
"That structure at the centre of the city," she began. "It's a Forerunner ship, and Truth is heading straight for it. If he leads the Covenant fleet to Earth, they won't stand a chance. You have to stop him."
The Chief turned his visor in the direction that Tartarus' Phantoms had flown before he looked back at Cortana.
"That Brute has the Index," he said. "And Miranda and Johnson. He can activate the ring."
Cortana turned the body of her glowing avatar to face the In Amber Clad.
"If he does," Cortana replied. "I'll detonate In Amber Clad's reactor, just like we did the Autumn's. The blast will destroy this city and the ring. Not a very original plan, but we know it'll work."
The Chief nodded and started to reach out, intending to yank her from High Charity's systems.
But she held her hand up. He stopped.
"No," she said. "I don't want to chance a remote detonation. I need to stay here."
He froze and just stared at her. His orders from Captain Keyes were to keep her safe from the enemy. He had intended to keep it, to honor him. But now she was telling him to leave, so she could stay here in the heart of enemy space.
Then, his thought was interrupted by a nice that was growing louder and louder.
They were the engines of a Pelican dropship. They looked to the skies. One Pelican glided down from the wreckage of In Amber Clad followed by another Pelican and then another.
They were touching down all over the city, and infector pods were likely spilling from the wreckage of the Frigate nearby. The embattled city was likely an all you can eat buffet of dead bodies waiting to be feasted on.
This city didn't have much longer.
"We need to move." Chief said. "Can you find an alternate route to that ship?"
"Scanning." She said. "There's a conduit connecting this part of the city to the ship. Head back inside. I'll lead you to it."
The Chief nodded and headed for the entrance to the Mausoleum. But just as he was about to head inside, one of the Pelicans flying above suddenly diverted its path. Rather than continuing to a distant district, it dipped its nose downwards and dived straight for the Phantom pads. The dropship hit the platform and slid across the surface.
Orange sparks skipped out from the grinding metal until the Pelican stood still.
Then, over a dozen Flood combat forms spilled out of the troop bay, along with several bulbous carrier forms. They spotted him and headed straight for him. He fired as he backed into the door, bullets and plasma rounds bouncing off his shimmering gold shields.
Several combat forms fell, but just before the first one could reach him, the door slammed shut between the Chief and the nearest flood form, whose arm was severed by the force of the door closing.
He heard a loud guttural scream from outside.
They started pounding on the door.
"That won't hold them for long," stressed Cortana. "Soon, the Flood will be all over this city. Truth is nearing the Forerunner ship. We don't have time on our side."
Chief nodded. He turned back to continue. He founded a gravity lift and stepped inside.
"I'll disable this lift once you reach the top. That should slow them down." Cortana said. "...I hope."
"Yeah," Chief said, under his breath. "Me too."
Cortana, still in High Charity's network, was doing everything she could to help the Chief on his mission. From the moment she entered the network, she had opened doors for him. Now she was disabling them.
The Flood, true to their name, were spreading like a tidal wave through the holy city.
Infector pods swarmed over the bodies that lay dead from the civil war going on all over the city. The newly reanimated bodies spread the infection even further, using the knowledge of those they absorbed to move around the city more rapidly, overrunning beleaguered Covenant forces more quickly.
Flood biomass was spreading quickly, and Flood spores were overwhelming the city's life support filtration systems, completely altering the corridors and atmosphere of the city.
But at the same time, she discovered, the city's power was starting to shut down. She found that the Forerunner ship at the center of the city, was actually providing power to the rest of the city. So as the ship continued its launch sequence, it uncoupled itself from High Charity's power grid, shrouding entire sections of the city in pitch black darkness.
On the security cameras she used to track down the Master Chief, who was above the Mausoleum again, fighting through hordes of Flood and Covenant alike, the only light sources coming from his helmet lamp and from plasma fire.
Cortana checked the ship again. Truth's Phantom had touched down. As he bravely ran away, he gave more of his little speeches to bolster the morale of those he was leaving behind.
She did everything she could to slow the launch sequence. But there was something inside the ship. A presence that was fighting back. For a Covenant construct it was unusually formidable.
Wherever the Chief went, the Covenant was doing everything in its vanishing power to keep the Flood at bay, so he gave both groups some time to whittle each other down, and proceeded to tidy up. Then, eager to replenish his supplies, the Spartan made his ghoulish rounds, and soon was able to equip himself with a BR55 Rifle, a shotgun, and some UNSC grenades. Even though he didn't like to think about where it came from, it felt good to dump the Covenant ordnance he'd been saddled with, and lay his hands on some true-blue UNSC issue for a change.
As he stepped inside the next corridor, Cortana sealed the door like she had with the last one. As the Chief moved on, Truth broadcasted again.
"Shall we let the Flood consume our holy city, turn High Charity into another of their wretched hives?" he asked rhetorically. "No enemy has ever withstood our might. The Flood too shall fail."
The lighting in this corridor was either not functioning as it should have been or it was intentionally dimming with the exterior light at the center of High Charity's dome. It was difficult to see in the darkness. John activated his helmet lamps and moved on, Carbine raised.
John continued to light the way as they stepped into an even darker corridor. Covenant corpses of all sorts, Elites, Brutes, Grunts, Jackals, and Drones all lay cold and unmoving, scattered along the floor.
Some were half absorbed into the brown mush that was covering the walls.
Flood biomass. The Chief half-expected the slop to come alive and chase him down like the carrier forms do.
The air was polluted with Flood-colored fog that turned every object into a dark silhouette. All John could make out were some natural boulders, some vines hanging a few meters over to the right and a Covenant wall to their left. The vines swung in response to the vibrations of the Prophet of Truth's voice reverberating from the walls once again.
"The Parasite did not defeat the Forerunner," said the Prophet. "And it shall not defeat us."
A new voice boomed through the city in response to Truth's. It was a much lower, more sinister and unnerving voice. John recognised it immediately.
"Arrogant creature," began the Gravemind. "Your death will be instantaneous while we will suffer the progress of infinitude!"
He went down one corridor and found a Covenant Elite crouching behind cover, with several dead combat forms laying at his feet. He blasted the Elite in the face with his M90 Shotgun and allowed the body to fall where it stood.
That's when several Flood combat forms came rushing out the door, upon hearing the commotion.
They attacked from every direction. There was no time to think and no time to fight. The only thing he could do was run. He turned and sprinted for the corridor he'd used to enter the chamber around the Mausoleum tower beneath him and took two powerful blows from a combat form. He bulled his way between two carrier forms and leaped out of the way as they detonated like grenades. New infection forms spewed from their deflating corpses. There was barely enough time to turn, hose the closest forms with 9.5×40mm, and toss a grenade at the group beyond.
It went off with a loud wham! , broke glass, and put three of the monstrosities down.
Magazine empty, he switched to his M90 and blew huge holes through the oncoming mob. He charged through one of them, and ran like hell. Then, with some pad to work with, the human turned to gun down the pursuers. The entire battle consumed no more than two minutes but it left the Chief shaken.
The entered the next room, which looked to be some kind of garden, and hiked over the rocky ground along what he deemed was a more secure path. John flinched in surprise as his flashlight revealed that what he'd thought were boulders were something else entirely.
Half the rocks along the side of the path were not rock at all. They were huge blobs of soft, wet, tumorous flesh that swayed, pulsated and glistened in the white light of the Chief's torch. They appeared firmer than Carrier Forms, but they still reminded John very much of those waddling kamikaze horrors. Some of them spilled over the floor, blending at the edges, seeping into the grooves and hollows of the rock.
"Flood biomass," Cortana revealed troublingly. "They never made it to this stage on the first ring."
Truth broadcasted another message to the city.
"To those who are gripped by fear," he began. "Take heed. I, the Prophet of Truth, am not afraid. Noble Mercy is here at my side with his wise counsel ever in my ears."
The Gravemind had a response to that broadcast as well.
"We exist together now," spoke the ominous voice, through the biomass it sounded like. "Two corpses in one grave."
Chief continued to move through the infested corridors when he came up on a broken door that was jammed shut over a fallen Brute's body. He vaulted through the gap and found himself standing on a platform.
No, an elevator. He took it up, and readied his weapons for anything.
"This elevator leads to the hierarchs' private quarters, their Inner Sanctum." Cortana said.
Although still clearly Covenant in design, this circular lift seemed to imitate the hexagonal ones seen in Forerunner structures.
He then arrived at a pitch black room. The only light he could make out were a couple Brute honor guards, and a small squad of Grunts and Jackals. Their price for not being aware of his arrival was a pair of HE calling cards a several sustained bursts of BR ammo.
When the last Covenant soldier fell, he continued walking through the Inner Sanctum and its makeshift barriers.
He hadn't gone more than thirty paces before reheard a loud howling screech.
He turned, weapons raised, as fifty or sixty infection forms emerged from hiding and danced out of the vents and side passages on either side of him.
The Spartan held his position, waited for the Flood forms to come a little closer, and tossed a fragmentation grenade into the center of the group. The cavern-like chamber ate some of the sound, but the explosive device still managed to produce a bang, and the resulting shrapnel laid waste to all but a handful of the creatures.
There were two survivors, though, both optimists, who continued to bounce forward in spite of the way in which the rest of the group had been annihilated. A single shotgun blast was sufficient to kill both of them.
He slipped some additional shells into the gun's magazine tube, took a deep breath, and moved out again.
He made it about halfway to the other side before a mixed force of combat forms, carrier forms, and infection forms started to gather at the far end of the chamber, where the elevator was.
Bastards must have climbed up the shaft.
Another of his grenades inflicted casualties, but they charged him after that, and the Master Chief was forced to retreat, firing the Battle Rifle as he did so. It was nip and tuck for a few seconds as combat forms launched themselves fifteen meters through the air, carriers charged straight in, and the omnipresent infection forms swarmed through the gaps.
Retreating, the Spartan had already reloaded three times before he backed up through the hatch, which slammed shut on an ex-Elite, cutting it in half.
The top half ended up in the room with the Chief, and it started to crawl towards him again, and took an 8-gauge blast in the head from the Chief's M90.
Once again it was time to reload both weapons as he stepped into the gore-splattered inner chamber where the Hierarchs had once resided.
John observed the room around him. There was a door on either side, a holo-tank in the centre and a cracked digital screen curved around the wall at the front. It displayed nothing but static.
More flood biomass covered the deck, along with the bodies of many dead Covenant warriors.
"Brute and Elite ships are engaging one another all around High Charity," updated Cortana. "I'm running out of options. I can't stall the launch sequence much longer!"
The Chief followed Cortana's guidance and approached the door on the right, which opened to reveal a gravity lift. He stepped through and relaxed as the lift sent him upwards.
Cortana began running a quick diagnostic, trying to find the mysterious construct within the Forerunner ship's systems originated. Her actions revealed that these tasks were taking much longer than normal.
She had to free up some of her overtaxed memory. Cortana began to recompress the data she had retrieved from the Halo construct, and she briefly considered dumping all the data into storage on the Covenant system. She rejected that potential course of action. She had to protect that data at all costs. Cortana felt her mind perceptibly slow.
She was spread too thin. Multitasking too many jobs. This was dangerous. She couldn't react fast enough if—
"...I have walked among men and angels for three thousand years. Time has no end... no beginning... no purpose."
The Covenant A.I.'s voice blasted through her communications routines and left her stunned for three cycles—just enough time for her to lose control over the Forerunner dreadnought's COM software suite, and its launch sequence continued as normal, disabling more of the city's power grid. For a brief second, she lost track of the Chief, but regained it shortly.
The Covenant AI transmitted a narrow-beam communications burst in the wild.
For a Covenant communique, it was terse. A poetic report of some sort.
"I wander the earth, seeking forgiveness for my horrible crimes against God and man."
Cortana squelched the channel—but it was too late. It was already gone, and she couldn't pull photons back from space. She shunted all COM memory pathways on themselves.
"I've had quite enough of your actions," she said. "You and I need to come to an understanding: This is MY network now."
The Covenant construct ignored her and continued to ramble on.
"I live to see death and destruction, evil... over the light, but the light cannot be extinguished. I live in a prison of my own demise. I am lost... in time."
Then, she was shut out of the Forerunner ship's systems for good, confined to High Charity.
"Bastard!" She hissed.
The launch sequence continued without any more delays.
She tapped into the Chief's comms.
"I'm running out of options Chief. I can't stall the launch sequence any longer. The next lift in your area will get you back up to the Conduit. Hurry."
"Now is the time of our unworlding," announced Truth, as the Chief flew upwards into the elevator shaft. "In mere moments, we shall all become... as gods! If you would falter, then know this... one final effort is all that remains."
The Chief shot up out of the elevator shaft, and looked around the tube he was in.
He was now at the top of a long ramp that led down to an even longer tunnel that hung over a large part of the city.
The tunnel was overrun by Flood and several Brute packs huddling together, attempting to resist their inevitable doom. They were all too engaged in their skirmish to notice the Spartan looking down at them.
Cortana appeared on the pedestal next to him.
"Analyzing data. You have approximately seven minutes before the Ship has fully disengaged. When that happens, the Conduit will deactivate and you'll be stuck on this station with the Flood. Chief, for my sake, please don't be here when that happens."
He looked at her for a few seconds before he nodded at her. And he started to make his way down the ramp.
Low architecture stood on either side of the platform, and a tube consisting entirely of flowing energy ran down the tunnel where it disappeared in the distance towards Truth's ship.
There was a crashed Pelican dropship nearby, lodged into the side of the building, with Flood biomass spilling out of its rear hatch and cockpit. Not to mention several dead Flood and Covenant figures beneath it.
But the good news was that there was a Warthog that the dropship had carried with it. It was right side up and in pristine condition.
He jumped into the driver's seat, and was relieved when the vehicle started up. The countdown timer which Cortana had projected onto the inside surface of his HUD was not only running, but running fast , or so it seemed to the Chief as he drove out of the room and into the tunnel, following the green conduit as he went.
He hooked a left to avoid a burning Specter, and plowed through a mob of Covenant and Flood. A Brute went down, was sucked under the big off-road tires, and caused the vehicle to buck as it passed over him. The slope ahead was thick with roly-poly infection forms. They popped like firecrackers as the human accelerated uphill and plasma bolts raced to catch him from behind. Then, cautious lest he make a mistake and lose valuable time, he took his foot off the accelerator and paused at the top of the ramp. A large passageway stretched before him, with walkways to either side, a pedestrian bridge in the distance, and a narrow service tunnel directly ahead.
A couple of Flood forms were positioned on top of the entrance and fired down at him as he pushed the Warthog forward, and nosed into the opening ahead. The ramp sloped down, the Spartan braked, and he was soon glad that he had as something went boom! and hurled pieces of jagged metal across the passageway in front of him. The Chief took his foot off the brake, converted a carrier form into paste, and sent the LRV up the opposite slope. He emerged from the subsurface tunnel, and with a barrier ahead, he swung left, ran the length of a vertical wall. He saw a narrow ramp, accelerated upslope, and jumped a pair of gaps that he never would have tackled had he been aware of them. He hit a level stretch, braked reflexively, and was thankful when the Warthog nose-dived off the end of the causeway and plunged into another service tunnel that ran under the city streets.
Now, with a group of Flood ahead, he pushed through them, crushed the monsters under his tires.
"Nice job on that last section," Cortana said admiringly. "How did you know about the dive off the end?"
"I didn't," the Master Chief said as the LRV lurched up out of the tunnel and nosed into another, where a pair of Bulbous Flood giants with tentacle arms were rampaging over a squad of fleeing Grunts.
"Oh."
He swerved to avoid the ferocious beasts, and plowed over a Grunt, smearing blue blood for several meters.
The next passage was empty, which allowed the Spartan to pick up speed as he guided the Warthog up into a larger tunnel. The 'Hog caught some air, and he put the pedal to the metal in an effort to pick up some time.
The large passageway had barriers and energy turbines rotating through his path. He managed to pass through one when it was aligned with the 'road'.
The next section of tunnel was filled with homicidal Flood, and plasma-happy Brutes, all of whom tried to cancel his ticket while he paused, spotted an elevated ramp off to the left, and steered for it even as crisscrossing energy beams sizzled across the surface of his armor and explored the interior of the vehicle.
The Spartan fought to control the 'Hog as one tire rode up onto the metal curb and threatened to pull the entire vehicle off into the chaos below. It was difficult, with fire sleeting in from every possible direction, but the Chief made the necessary correction, came down off the ramp, hooked a left, and found himself in an open air tunnel, he rolled through a fight between the Flood and a group of Covenant, took fire from a flock of Banshees, and gunned the LRV out into another open area with a barrier ahead. A quick glance confirmed that another elevated ramp ran down the left side of the enormous passageway, so he steered for that. Explosions sent gouts of flame and smoke up through the grating ahead of him, and threatened to heave the Warthog off the track.
He lost sight of the green energy conduit that led to the Ship. But then he found it again.
Once off the ramp, things became a little easier as the Spartan entered another large tunnel, sped the length of it, braked into an open area, where a trio of Banshees were chasing down a burning Phantom, which crashed into the wall above him, and nearly crushed him before he drove under the next tunnel entrance.
The Master Chief pushed the 'Hog up a ramp, felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as the LRV flew through the air, dropped two or three levels, hit hard, slewed sideways, and came to a stop. The Chief wrestled with the wheel, brought the front end around, and glanced at the timer. It read: 01:10:20. He stamped on the accelerator. The Warthog shot ahead, raced through a narrow tunnel, then slowed as he spotted the burning Shadow that blocked the road ahead. Not only that—but the entire area was swarming with Covenant and Flood. The Master Chief jumped out, hit the ground running, and gunned down a Jackal who had the misfortune to get in the way. The energy tunnel was straight ahead, waiting for him to jump in. Plasma bolts stuttered past his head, explosions hurled debris in every direction, Flood creatures chasing after him, and then he was there, boots pounding on metal as he entered the grav-lift.
John was jumping directly into the gravity lift at the end. He bounced off its anti-gravity forces straight into the conduit tunnel above. Immediately, he was thrust forwards through the extreme current of warm energy. Surrounded by aqua-coloured light, looking through its ripples, John saw the city below rushing past. He whizzed over the buildings like a jet.
Tremors in his armour vibrated through to his skin, shaking him as he flew nearer to the Forerunner ship.
Only now he was beginning to realise just how enormous the vessel was compared to any ship he'd ever seen or imagined. He found himself under its shadow. All he could see was the silver-gray Forerunner metal and nothing else.
The energy around him disappeared as he was released from the retreating conduit. He soared through the air alone, suspended by nothing but the forces from the initial propulsion.
A blue light drowned the buildings below. The ship was launching. John hit the bottom of the large opening that had previously connected the conduit to the ship. He slid along the Forerunner plating until he found something solid to hold onto, pulling himself to his feet as the buildings below shrank rapidly.
"Chief," Cortana began over the comm. "When you get to Earth..." She hesitated before finishing. "Good luck."
Chief looked back in the direction of the city.
"After I'm through with Truth-"
"Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it."
The light that emitted from High Charity's ceiling receded into a vast opening that revealed countless twinkling stars over the black sheet of outer space, and the massive spec battle above the city.
With the magnets of his armor fully activated, John held on tightly as the Forerunner ship blasted through the exit, leaving the city behind forever.
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The UNSC prowler Dusk hovered in the shadow zone of the fourth planet's moon.
It was so quiet on the bridge Commander Lash heard his own breathing and heartbeat. Every screen showed the battle raging among the Covenant forces.
Music from the last act of Der Ring des Nihelungen played in his mind— Gotterdammerung, Ragnarok, Armageddon… the end of the entire goddammed universe.
"Confirm all recorders on high-def capture mode," Lash said.
Durruno double-checked her station.
"Confirmed, sir," she whispered.
"Sir," Lieutenant Yang said, "as ordered, capacitors charged, and all secure to enter Slipspace on vector tango."
Lash and Lieutenant Commander Waters stared at the viewscreens, watching the Covenant fleet destroy itself.
"Whatever the hell is happening out there," Waters remarked, "at least they haven't spotted us."
"Sir," Yang asked, "what do you think is happening?"
"There's only one thing it could be," Lash answered. "A Covenant civil war."
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Well folks, that was High Charity.
Hope you enjoyed.