Two: Installation Zero-Four
0130 hours (arbitrary ship's time), September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Pillar of Autumn, Threshold System en-route to Halo.
They all were dreaming, they knew that much, but how they were sharing a dream was beyond them. Yet, in the placid place between cryosleep and full awareness, nothing seemed to phase the seventy-five SPARTAN-IIs. Their survival of the augmentation procedures with minor injuries – as in ones that could be corrected by subsequent surgeries – was declared "damn near miraculous" by both CPO Mendez and Doctor Halsey, and their escape from Reach seemed to defy the odds of the universe. At that moment, if that realization couldn't startle them, nothing could.
It seemed as if they were all in one body in their unusual dream, because each individual mind could see the exact same figure standing in front of them. It was mostly invisible, only the characteristic "haze" of active camouflage giving away its position, but they could see that it was around their same height and roughly human-shaped, but with vicious-looking spines protruding from its back and spikes along its outer forearms and knees. And then the figure spoke. Depending on their gender, each of the Spartans heard either "Brother" or "Sister," and then he – its voice was undeniably masculine – turned his back on them, walking away without a sound.
Cortana was standing short distance away, on a platform of sorts so that they could see her over his shoulder. "Love," he said, appearing to pull her into her arms. She gave him a dazzling, delighted smile, tilting her head up as if for a kiss –
And they woke to the hiss of their cryotubes as they unsealed, the unusual dream already fading from their conscious minds. A handful at a time, the Spartans climbed out of their tubes, a few of them shivering slightly to get rid of the pins-and-needles sensation as feeling returned to their limbs. The group of techs in the cryobay led them through the energy shield and targeting test stations. Green Team was getting their weapons diagnostics done when Captain Keyes came over the PA system. "Bridge to Cryo Two, this is Captain Keyes, send Blue Team to the bridge immediately." The head technical officer started to protest, but Keyes snapped, "On the double, crewman!"
"Aye, aye, sir." The tech turned to look at Blue Team, who had stepped forward when Keyes spoke. "We'll find you weapons later."
The four Spartans followed him out and down one hall to a sealed hatch – which exploded toward them just as the crewman reached it. Without the benefit of personal shields, the unarmored tech was killed instantly. The blast hurled what was left of him against the Spartans' shields, causing them to flare with golden light. They were forced to double back and vault over a pair of power conduits into another hall. The hatch at one end was green, and the Spartans made their way through it, their MJOLNIR armor deflecting another explosion as they passed by. The four warriors ducked under a half-shut blast door as the humans successfully forced the Covenant boarders to retreat into another compartment; it was obvious that they were trying to force the aliens into airlocks or single-entrance rooms for dispatching later.
Unfortunately, Blue Team – Fred-104, Kelly-087, Linda-058, and Sam-034 – was needed on the bridge, preventing the warriors from stopping to help and forcing them to avoid firefights that had broken out all throughout the ship. However, they were unable to avert their near-collision with a Covenant Elite. Swift as ever, Kelly sprang and body-slammed the alien into a wall, snapping its neck while it was still stunned and claiming its plasma rifle for her own. The Marines beyond immediately moved to the side to allow the Spartans to pass, and they emerged into the next open hall, reaching the bridge without further incident.
The large viewport gave the four warriors a spectacular view of the immense gas giant that the Autumn was taking cover behind, as well as its moon and the ring shaped construct suspended between the planet and its moon. For a moment the Spartans stared at it before moving fully into the bridge, taking note of the exhausted crew manning the stations. The officers were doing everything from battling Seraphs to monitoring the fluctuations in the ship's reactor, and it was very clear that they had been doing so for some time; they all looked dead on their feet. The captain himself was near one of the main displays, looking just as haggard as the rest of his crew. Fred stepped forward and saluted. "Captain Keyes."
He appeared not to have heard them arrive and turned to face them when the Spartan spoke. "Good to see you, Senior Chief. Things aren't going well. Cortana's done better than any AI I've heard of, but we never really stood a chance," he said, his voice clearly showing the weariness that came with dodging Covenant patrols for hours.
"Twenty Covenant superior ships against a single Halcyon-class cruiser…" the AI said as she materialized her hologram on the pedestal at the bottom right hand corner of Keyes' display, "With those odds, I'm content with seven-"she paused, then corrected, "-make that eight kills." She nodded as if satisfied and turned to face the humans, crossing her arms. Before she could say any more, a blast rocked the ship, sending people staggering. Fred almost lost his footing and regained it in time to stop the captain from doing a rather painful face plant on the steel deck.
"Report!" the man barked as he straightened and nodded his thanks to the Spartan.
Cortana's crimson form darkened in anger. "One of their boarding parties," she hypothesized, "Residue indicates an antimatter charge."
One of the weapons officers called, "Fire control for the MAC gun is off-line!" He was typing furiously at his station, trying to get repair crews there as fast as possible. The loss of the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon was crippling to their hopes of holding the Covenant off long enough to make another jump to Slipspace.
"Captain, that gun was my last offensive option," the construct said as she gritted her tiny teeth.
"All right," Keyes growled, "I'm initiating Cole Protocol Article Two; we're abandoning the Autumn. That means you, too, Cortana."
"And am I correct in assuming you're going down with the ship but not really?" She put her hands on her hips, glaring at the man.
"In a manner of speaking. I want to try and land the Autumn on the object we found."
"This war has enough dead heroes, sir," Cortana said.
"I appreciate the concern, Cortana –"
'She isn't concerned; I don't think she even cares,' Fred thought, watching the officers banter back and forth.
"- but it's not up to me. The destruction or capture of a smart AI is absolutely unacceptable; the Protocol is very clear. That means you are leaving ASAP." Keyes appeared to shake his pipe. "Upload your selection of landing zones into my neural lace." He was already turning away when the rampant AI grunted an affirmative. "Which is where you come in," he said to Fred-104, "It is your job to get her off this ship and keep her out of enemy hands-"
'He makes it sound as if I'll go skipping off into the Covenant camp the moment they turn their backs on me.'
"-If they capture her, they'll learn everything: weapons projects, troop deployment… Earth."
The Spartan nodded. "I understand."
'If nothing else, this "flashback" is giving me fantastic insight into how much my Spartan has changed.' Cortana did not even bother to wait for Keyes to ask; she simply dumped herself into her storage chip and waited for the Captain to disconnect her from the ship, her subroutine having already taken over the main functions. Finally, a small eternity later, the human pulled her from the ship, and purely on a whim she compared the time it took to transfer her over to Fred to the time it took for John. Fred's was almost double; it was only through several carefully formatted buffers that she was even able to sync with any of the Spartans at all. Fred saluted, and Blue Team left the bridge a moment later, the Spartans with weapons at the front. It wasn't long before they all had acquired some sort of defense and offense, leaving bodies of aliens scattered in their wake.
Periodically, they met up with groups of Marines and other Spartan teams engaging in one wild bout of castle defense. However, they were steadily losing the fight, being pushed back to life boats, into compartments the way they had been previously pinning down Covenant boarders, getting cornered and killed by the enemy. One by one, the teams were forced to leave the ship via the life boats with the Marines, aiming for the ring far below. Because Fred insisted that all of his men leave before he did, Blue Team had to keep going, weaving through the ship's halls and maintenance access ways to find their own life boats and so make their great escape. However, the walls seemed to grow aliens that spouted plasma fire, downing soldiers all over the place.
That did not stop the Spartans, however, as the very sight of them caused the Grunts to start running around in terror, and the Elite Minors were usually too busy trying to put on a display of alien-ly heroics to inspire their minions to notice that they were about to get their asses shot. Cortana snickered many times at the sheer stupidity of some of the stunts the Elites tried to pull to halt the warriors' progress, but it was like that whole 'unstoppable force, meet immovable object' kind of thing, save the Elites were not as immovable as the Spartans were unstoppable.
Fred scooped up a Marine that had stumbled and fallen just before the entrance to the one free life boat that they had managed to find, and the warrior promptly proceeded to drop the other soldier into one of his buddies' laps, making room for the other three heavily-armored behemoths that would be joining them on their little soiree down to the surface of the ring. "You might want to hang on," Cortana said over the Spartans' private COM, recalling what had happened last time. Disregarding her words, Fred waited until the rest of his men were onboard before he sealed the door and grabbed one of the support handles.
"Punch it," he growled, and received an affirmative from the pilot just before they exploded out of the airlock and into space. Had they been ordinary humans, the sight of the life boat skimming so close along the Autumn's hull would have made them sick. As it was, they merely saw it as them leaving their only way of completing the Alpha Rendezvous as vengeance for Reach. After a moment, the Spartan killed his external COM system and asked the AI, "What is that thing?"
"Covenant battle networks register it as 'Halo.' It seems to have some kind of religious significance to them, but who cares about that? I want to blow it up to spite them," the construct growled venomously before withdrawing. The Spartans turned the AI's words over in their minds, and they all reached the same conclusion: she was keeping something from them, knew something about the ring that she shouldn't have known and thus was trying to conceal that fact. Because of her rampancy, there was nothing they could do about it, so they let it slide for now.
"This duty station really sucks," one of the Marines grunted. No one saw any reason to contradict him.
-------------------------------------------
Not too far away, the Spartan known to his own world as the Master Chief was perched, invisible, atop a cliff edge, waiting for the lifeboat that he would have been on to show up and slam into the ground. The standard armor all of the Infected were equipped with generated an active camouflage field. As such, it was easy for him and the medics that he had brought to hide before they needed to tend to any injured survivors while they were still unconscious.
The sensors incorporated into his armor shrilled suddenly as they detected a large projectile on an approximate collision course with his location. He was unable to stop himself from grinning at the cheers of his minions when the Autumn finally came close enough to the Halo and space dock to be recognized for what she was. The ship was headed elsewhere, but it was the lifeboat that was almost on top of them that he was really paying attention to, watching as it narrowly cleared the high rock wall ten meters to their right, so close that the group could feel the wash of heat from the braking thrusters.
They were already making their way down to the "forest" floor when the pod impacted. John waited for several seconds before lowering the active camo level to conserve power, beginning to sprint silently despite the immense weight of his armor. They reached the pod in no time at all, and the medics began tending to the humans while the Gravemind carefully turned the Spartans over so that he could see the numbers on their chest plates. "Kelly, Fred, Linda, and Sam," he said aloud for the medics' benefit, knowing that they would already be passing along any identifying features to the other Infected. For a moment he paused, considering. In order to prevent themselves from being picked up by the mics and cameras in the soldiers' gear, John was carrying a null field generator that basically made it impossible for such things to work. That also meant that if Cortana was with them, she was now deaf and blind. However, there were sensors in the armor that registered contact against the plates, and since their shields were down…
He checked the helmet slots on each of the four Spartans, then picked up Fred's arm and drew on his forearm plate, knowing that the AI would pick it up. You know me… when I make a promise…
Within the armor, Cortana indeed picked up the movement of her host when his body was being flipped onto his back and "felt" the shifting of his head before the unknown helper began to write on her host's arm. The moment the statement was complete, she squealed like a six-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert, practically bouncing around in delight within Fred-104's neural lace. After a few more seconds, there was more text written: I'll meet you in the Control Room while they're going after Keyes.
She flashed an affirmative through Fred's HUD and curled up inside his helmet, grinning like an idiot as the medics and her Spartan withdrew, having done their work on the survivors. Gradually, the cameras and mics cleared of the "static fuzz" that the null field had caused. When she switched the audio input to maximum gain, she heard the faintest sounds of passage away from their location: a handful of other, lighter footsteps – the medical team that he had brought with him – and one heavier tread – John in the Forerunner version of his MJOLNIR armor. She squealed again, unable to stop herself from reacting spontaneously to the extreme joy she felt at having her Spartan back in the game.
It was then that Fred began to stir. She turned the audio gain back to so as to not hurt his ears and called, "Senior Chief, can you hear me? Our crash was not subtle, and we need to get out of here soon."
He groaned softly and rolled over, grunting, "I can hear you; there's no need to shout."
"Of course not, not when I'm picking up chatter that indicates the Covie bandwagon is about to show its ugly mug."
The rest of the Spartans and surviving Marines were reacting the same way he was. No one had any severe injuries, despite the fact that the life boat had been ripped open and thrown several people free when it impacted. There were some fatalities that John and his medics had been unable to revive in the very short time allotted to them, but the majority of the soldiers were mostly intact. After a moment of assessment, the small army proceeded across an electric conduit that had been exposed by many years of weathering, forming a very handy bridge that enabled the group to reach the hills on the other side without having to scale rock cliffs that were taller than the Spartans. The warriors took cover behind the nearby trees when a Spirit dropship glided overhead, the Marines darting behind a large rock to the left of the bridge. Linda took down the Banshees encroaching on their territory with a few well-placed sniper bullets. That let the other three super soldiers focus on the aliens exiting the transport on the other side of the bridge.
Of course, like the idiots they were, the Grunts immediately charged over to the bridge and began to cross it. The Spartans and Marines waited for them to get as close as was safe before opening fire on the aliens, sending triangle-shaped Covenant spinning off into the abyss below. Their Elite leader roared and began to fire at them from the opposite side of the gulf, but a swift shot from Linda took care of that problem. "Boom, headshot, anyone?" Cortana chuckled softly, then said, "I'm reading a life boat beacon nearby. Head up along these cliffs and around the bend up ahead, go left."
Fred flashed an acknowledgement at her, and the military personnel proceeded up through the trees, their motion trackers picking up the Covenant soldiers gallivanting about up ahead. Two Elites and seven Grunts joined the body count left in the Spartans' wake before they made the jump down to the lower ground, helping the injured Marines down gently. They rounded the bend as Cortana said and found another platoon of Marines being fired upon by the Covenant. The humans were holed up at the base of a large structure whose upper echelons where shaped like a U. From within, some sort of mechanism seemed to be launching balls of a plasma-like substance skyward at regular intervals. The Marines that had been tailing the armored behemoths quickly scurried behind cover as the Spartans themselves began taking on the waves of Covenant making moves on that side of their "base." It only took a short amount of time for them to clear out the aliens and jog over to meet with Sergeant Johnson.
"What's your status, Sergeant?" Fred asked as they had a mini huddle in the shadow of the structure.
"We're scattered all over this valley. We called for evac, but until you showed up, I thought we were goners."
"Don't worry, Sergeant. We'll stay here until Foehammer arrives; Major Silva has dispatched her to pick you up," Cortana said over her host's external COM.
Then a cry went up from the opposite side of the structure; one of the lookouts on top had spotted a dropship inbound on their position. With the four recent arrivals, it was almost child's play to hold the structure against the waves of Covenant, what with Linda up on the building's one floor and Fred, Kelly, and Sam circling around below. They had just finished repelling assaults from five enemy dropships when a friendly voice broke over the COM.
"This is Echo Four-Nineteen, anybody reading me? Repeat, any UNSC personnel respond!"
"Roger, Echo Four-Nineteen, we read you. This is Fire Team Charlie. Is that you, Foehammer?" Cortana responded over the same frequency, sounding like she was a bored college student doing homework.
"Roger, Fire Team Charlie, good to hear from you." The Pelican swooped overhead and circled the structure, bringing cheers from the Marines at the sight.
Further roars startled them to silence. Multiple life boats went tearing overhead, the force of the sounds sending micro tremors through the ground. "If those lifeboats make it down, the Covenant are going to be right on top of them. We'll need everyone we can get." Over the COM, "Foehammer, we need you to disengage your Warthog. The Spartans and I are going to see if we can save some soldiers." Cortana threw up a nav point over the Warthog as Rawley pulled her bird into a controlled descent to drop the vehicle on a small rise a short distance away from the U-shaped structure. The Spartans made their way towards it, but there were only three seats for four super soldiers. Sam volunteered to go with the Marines to help Major Silva. "Linda will be able to pick off the Covies from a distance, Kelly will be fast enough to take them out before they know she's there, and you need Cortana. I'll go."
So the remaining three set off with Linda in the passenger seat and Kelly manning the turret, and the construct flicked a nav point in the general direction of the transport tunnel, remembering that her Spartan had commented, "Figures you're a backseat driver." She remained silent when Fred sent the Warthog down into the dry lakebed and spun the vehicle around to see the immense tunnel sprawled out before them, curving away into a dimly lit passage. The Spartan proceeded carefully into the dark; there was no telling what kind of unpleasantness existed in the shadowy confines of the tunnel. The construct knew better, however; the danger was beyond a deactivated energy bridge that the Warthog would have to jump. Impatiently she said, "What are you waiting for? The Covenant is further in; it's too exposed here. We're safe for now."
Fred nodded and gave it a little gas, speeding up through a series of tight turns and ramps before coming to the gap in the road that led to the Covenant. He checked to see that the vehicle could clear the gap before gunning the engine and making the jump, the wheels thudding down heavily on the metal floor. The Spartan was about to put the pedal to the metal again, but Cortana interjected, "Wait! I'm picking up movement around the next bend." And as no lifeboat could punch through that much earth and metal without meeting its maker, it had to be Covenant. Slowly and as quietly as they possibly could, the Warthog was guided around the corner and down a short ramp to hover just inside the tunnel, on the verge of emerging into the "cavern" that they had found.
As their eyes adjusted to the greater darkness, the warriors noticed what Cortana had already detected: Covenant soldiers moving about on the near side of the cavern. The Jackals gave themselves away with their large and brightly lit shields, but the Elites and Grunts were subtler about their presences. There were two of the former pacing under a light to the right of the path, and the Grunts' sleeping bodies cast numerous triangular shadows that were not supposed to be there. Fred backed up the Warthog to the top of the slope leading down into the cavern and glanced at Linda, who was already getting a bead on the two blue-armored Elites as they "patrolled." Two swift shots later, and the bodies hit the ground, the rifle reports near-deafening in the confined space. The Grunts began running around in terror while the Jackals searched for their unknown assailant.
The driver gunned the engine and brought them down into the cavern proper, Kelly opening up on the turret, sending several scores of rounds into the Jackals' bodies; of the remaining races, they were the more dangerous. Linda switched to her assault rifle and began picking off the Grunts when they came out to attack, Fred getting a handful of mow-downs when the aliens came too close for comfort. The three temporarily abandoned the Warthog to flush out the rest of their foes before moving over to examine the deactivated bridge. "Any ideas, Cortana?" the leader asked, still warily sweeping the area with his gun; none of the warriors liked being so exposed.
The AI twitched up another nav point, saying, "While you all were doing the Spartan remake of Rambo, I noticed a hall leading up and along one side of this cavern. Perhaps there's a panel there that can extend the bridge." Fred nodded and moved to check while Kelly drove the 'Hog up to the very edge of the abyss, waiting for her combat brother to return. As he walked up the ramp, gun at the ready, his motion tracker picked up flickers of movement at the very edge of his range, colored the red of an enemy. The Spartan drew out one of the plasma grenades he had picked up off of the Grunts and activated it, hurling it around the corner. There was an infuriated roar, followed by the detonation of the grenade, and he walked around the bend to find the bloody and headless corpse of a veteran Elite; apparently the grenade had attached to its helmet and blown its head up when it went off.
Cortana snickered in the back of his mind. Ignoring her, he proceeded up the ramp, passed the corpse, and toward the end of the path, where a blinking panel was suspended between two steel posts. Fred cocked his helmeted head; the displays were familiar, somehow, so he touched an aqua-colored circle. The display winked once, and in the distance, he saw metallic beams being extended from the walls on either side of the gulf. After a moment, a bridge made of nothing but light faded into view, startling all but Cortana, and it gave her a better view of the cavern.
As well as the movement going on up on a ledge up near the ceiling. A hazy figure was perched there, crouched on a foot-wide ledge. It shifted for a moment, dropping the camouflage to reveal Forerunner armor designed to look like a streamlined version of the MJOLNIR, and she positively beamed within Fred's helmet, much more content than before.
All told, the group rescued almost one hundred Marines and naval personnel, as well as three four-man squads of Spartans, and they climbed into Echo Four-Nineteen's Pelican just as the sun was "setting" behind another part of the ring. Though the sunset was nowhere near as beautiful as those of Earth, the colors were far more intense. The Spartans largely ignored the sight, save for the fact that the cover of darkness would better enable them to sneak up on the Covenant. "I've found Captain Keyes," Cortana said abruptly over the local COM, "He's being held aboard a Covenant cruiser, the Truth and Reconciliation, a ship I disabled before we abandoned the Autumn. The Covenant put her down about three hundred kilometers up spin."
"And I'm correct in stating that we're going to be the ones to rescue him."
"Of course. I'll have to go with you; because of the synchronous requirement, I can't be passed around like a joint, you know."
"A what?"
"Never mind."
**********
I feel it deep within, it's just beneath the skin
I must confess that I feel like a monster
I hate what I've become, the nightmare's just begun
I must confess that I feel like a monster
I, I feel like a monster
I, I feel like a monster
-"Monster," Skillet (Awake)