Twenty-Two: Tsavo Highway

After being knocked unconscious by the bomb's detonation in Crow's Nest, Venera, Kenera, and Dacien were not expecting to wake up with the barrels of assault rifles in their faces, and they reacted instinctively, forcing the lethal openings away from their bodies and getting to their feet as fast as possible. They vaguely realized that they had dropped back into their Forerunner forms when Fred demanded, "Who are you?!"

"We are the Infected," Dacien said finally, reluctantly sliding out of the defensive stance that he had taken and gesturing for the other two to do the same, "Forerunners who were... 'brought over' by the Gravemind a hundred thousand years ago."

"That's impossible. Your bodies would be gone," Linda said firmly, "The combat forms only last for so long before they morph into carrier forms."

"That's only because they are low on energy, and the enemy Gravemind makes no attempt to sustain them. We eat regularly to prevent that from happening." The three of them cued up the self-repair systems of their armor, using some nearby material to provide the mass needed and keeping their eyes on the Spartans, wary of attack. As his armor's tears sealed over, the 3IC of the Fleet of Shadows turned his gaze back to the Spartans and asked, "Is there anything else you would like to know, or shall we get away from the base before the Covenant descends about our heads?"

They reluctantly admitted that he had a point, and the Forerunners offered their help to the severely stressed-out medic underground. They had a direct line to the surface and thus to their own medics, and Forerunner medicine was a lot more advanced than human. "What happened?" Sergeant Reynolds asked, looking back at the burning wreckage of the lift; it was utterly irreparable, but it's not like it had any reason to be fixed.

[You three, status, now.]

'Exposed, Commander. We couldn't hold our forms while unconscious. Other than that, we're all right. Blue Team and a few Marines are here, and some have injuries that we're trying to treat.'

[Hm. Well, it was going to happen anyway. Better now than later. You know what to do from here?]

'Mount up, head for Voi.'

[Get moving as soon as possible.]

'Aye, sir.' The trio made sure that all of the humans were capable of being moved and at least holding a weapon before they headed into the next room to assess the state of the Warthogs. There were just enough of them to carry all of the Marines out of the base, and Venera immediately called shotgun on one of the LRVs, leaving Dacien to the turret and Lil'Ame to the driving.

"The Forerunners've got the right idea. Let's mount up, get the hell out of these caves," Reynolds growled, moving over to another one of the vehicles even as John gave Lil'Ame a brief crash course in driving the Warthog, letting her have access to his memories about it. Also identical to how he remembered it was the fact that there were no foes actually inside the caverns until they reached the exit, and all that there was were a handful of a Unggoy and Kig-Yar, easy to mow down.

Outside of the base, there was a long segment of steel collapsed across the canyon, a crashed Phantom resting against it, and it was only when they killed the Brutes and Grunts that had crawled form the irreparable transport that they were able to skid to a stop at the edge of a cliff and see the long line of steel stretching into the distance. "The New Mombasa Space Elevator," a female Marine said when she caught a glimpse of the Forerunners' confused faces.

"It collapsed when the city got glassed," another added.

"But it was thousands of kilometers high!" the first protested.

"Yeah?" Venera asked, craning her neck slightly to see better, "Well, now it's scattered all over the Savannah." She waved at someone in the distance, and a couple minutes later, a woman with brilliant red-orange hair came into view, sprinting along the remains of the space elevator and coming to a stop next to them but still atop the immense steel structure. "This is Nep'Thalia," Venera introduced her, "the second-in-command of the Fleet of Shadows."

She saluted to them, then called, "We're moving forward to the next phase. The Commander's bringing the Perfect Storm and the Darkest Hour in close so we'll be ready when Truth activates the Portal Generator."

"Wait, what?"

"The artifact that Truth's uncovered - it's not the Ark itself, but a portal generator that leads to the Ark," Nep'Thalia explained, "And our Commander wants to be ready when it's activated." She turned to look at an empty stretch of space over Earth, one that had been cleared of all ships by Truth's fleet - and suddenly a Slipspace portal opened there, two immense black ships transitioning out into realspace. For a moment they hung there, then appeared to ripple and disappear as a form of active camouflage came online; both ships were far enough away to where they wouldn't be sucked in by the Portal but close enough to where they could get to it easily.

"Where from here?" Lil'Ame asked the 2IC, "It's harder to tell now that we're on the ground."

Nep'Thalia pointed, and she waved her thanks, guiding the Warthog in the direction that the other had pointed.

"Whoa! Wait for us!" Sergeant Reynolds hit the gas and sped off after them, forcing the Spartans and other humans to follow. They tore off across the Serengeti, mowing down the Grunts that dove into the path of the Warthogs by mistake while the gunners killed the Brute leaders. The humans struggled to keep up with the Forerunners as they charged along the highway; the elf-like aliens seemed to know exactly what was around each and every corner, but the uninfected believed that it was just because the trio had access to a lot more eyes than they did.

"I repeat: My convoy's been hit. I've got wounded," Sergeant Stacker suddenly crackled over their radios, the first outside voices they'd heard on the line in a while, "We're on the Tsavo Highway about-" Static interrupted the sergeant, masking the distance he named. "-east of Voi. Someone, anyone, please, respond!"

The group from Crow's Nest skidded onto the highway proper and came across a large pack of Brutes attacking Stacker's convoy. Gray Team was gunning at the aliens from behind a semi-portable housing unit typically used as a waypoint for convoys of soldiers, but the humans were outnumbered and outgunned by the aliens. Lil'Ame snarled a cussword in the Forerunner tongue and power slid into a Brute captain trying to kill off one of the Spartans, swinging the Warthog's back end around and enabling Dacien to get a good bead on a would-be sniper in one of the Covenant's portable towers. A spurt of red let them know that he had scored a hit, and the 3IC swiveled to pick another target as "Lil-chan" slammed the pedal to the floor and send them speeding away.

'Barely ten minutes behind the wheel, and already she's driving like a soldier,' Fred thought as he brought Blue Team's Warthog to a halt next to Gray Team's cover and jumped out to talk with Mike.

"Interesting friends you've made," the other Spartan commented as the Forerunner-controlled LRV went sailing by, Venera swearing at the Covenant in her native tongue as she fired at them.

"You don't know the half of it. Status?"

"Adriana's torn a tendon, and Zadok almost got run over by a chopper, but other than that, we're okay. No one's dead yet."

"It's the 'yet' that worries me."

"FIRTYË SÉ QUALMË!"

"What the...?"

The Forerunners had found new targets: a small flock of Yam'ee that had flown out from behind the vehicle barrier blocking the tunnel. Venera had physically tackled one of them for grabbing her hair, lunging out of the passenger seat and body-slamming the bug to the asphalt. After she made sure that it was dead, she stood up and brushed her hair out of her face, distinctly huffing and turning away from the corpse, clambering back onto her seat.

"Touchy," Jai grunted quietly, moving out from cover and jogging past them toward the barrier. There was a moment in which Fred and Mike exchanged glances through their visor before the former sighed and moved off, heading back to his Warthog as Jai destroyed the power source for the barrier. Everyone mounted up and headed on through, heading up and over the immense pile of dirt that formed when the ceiling collapsed, the debris causing no problems for the Warthogs' huge off-road tires and the Choppers' grinding gears.

Beyond there was an open stretch of road with no enemies on it, and as they followed it around, there was an explosive firing noise from overhead, and a Brute cruiser accelerated toward the Ark's portal generator, causing the ground to shudder and heave beneath the tires. As the cruiser receded into the distance a male voice cam over the COM. "Commander, this is ONI Recon One-Eleven. The cruisers above..." The rest of his transmission was mostly covered by static.

"Say again, Recon?" Commander Keyes replied, "You're breaking up."

"There's something in the crater, ma'am," the man replied calmly, "Something beneath the storm."

The Spartans and humans all simultaneously glanced at the Infected as they skidded to a stop in front of several barricades blocking the way and dismounted, continuing across a broken beam that served as an excellent, almost-whole walkway for them. The trio of Forerunners was acting utterly innocent, as if they had no idea what was going on; however, they did not seem at all surprised when Keyes came on again a few moments later. "Senior Chief? Finally, a good connection. Truth has excavated a Forerunner Artifact, we have to assume it's The Ark."

"Keep pushing to the town of Voi, Chief!" Apparently Johnson was still with her. "Resupply birds will meet you in the next valley."

Immediately beyond a short tunnel was an overturned semi that provided excellent cover for the Spartans and Company. They gunned down the Brute and Grunts harassing a handful of Marines pinned down next to an energy barrier, ducking back into cover when the aliens turned to fire in their direction. After that, the group was forced to tango with aliens hiding in broken pipes from incomplete repairs, but Epheria made the process very entertaining by making the Grunt's head explode into confetti again, letting everyone know that someone had gotten a headshot.

Finally, the Covenant were all dead, but that didn't stop a Phantom from swooping in and dropping off still more aliens to soak up the Spartans' bullets. Despite the new foes, the Marines were cheering over the fact that they now had eight Spartans on the front lines, and they caused many a spray of alien lifeblood before the Pelican arrived. "Brutes have plenty of armor between here and Voi, Chief," Johnson told them, "but this Warthog should help you punch on through."

The LRV hit the ground and rocked on its shocks; unfortunately the Pelican was only able to bring one for them, but the Wraith that had showed up earlier was still operational. The rest of the motley crew continued after them on foot, namely Linda and Venera so that they could snipe enemies from a distance while simultaneously having the added bonus of a distracted enemy. They followed a tunnel around a locked down section of the road and ran down two Brutes patrolling a short distance away from their Choppers.

"Up ahead," Venera said calmly, "There are two Wraiths, two Shades, and approximately ten Choppers."

The Spartans didn't even bother to question her knowledge, assuming that the Gravemind must have been watching from somewhere. Rather than risk all of them getting shot and dying, the group decided to have those on foot hang back and fire on the Wraiths, the pair in their Wraith stay at a distance but fire on everything, and the Warthog zoom around as a semi-distraction because of its speed and maneuverability as compared to the other vehicles.

It was a good, sound plan, and one that worked, too. With fire coming seemingly from every direction at once, it was easy to make the Covenant collapse in a puddle of their own guts and die, which left their vehicles ripe for the taking. The small convoy moved on to thoroughly bombard the minuscule blockade that the Brutes were attempting to hold against the Spartans and the Forerunners, which meant that they were doomed to fail from the very beginning. There was a brief moment wherein they stocked up on ammo from a few pods that had not been deployed correctly from a Pelican, giving them pause. These were the pods. So what happened to the Pelican...?

It was around the bend, crashed into the highway itself, complete with the bodies of its dead crew. Some of the crew bore plasma burns, a sure sign that they had been alive after the crash but had been gunned down by the pack of Brutes holding the entrance to Voi. Rather than bomb the place to hell, the group decided that they would like it a lot more if they got to personally kill those responsible. One by one they dismounted and darted into cover, sliding through the shadows the crashed Pelican and cargo modules provided to better stalk their enemies.

The Brutes struggled in vain against their far-superior enemies; Fred caught one jump pack Brute off guard and slammed its nose up into its brain with a well-placed palm strike; Linda got a point-blank headshot, and Kelly swept one Brute's legs out from under it, slammed her knee into its gut, and broke its neck with a single swift twist. The Forerunner trio also went for similar methods of condoned murder, Venera even going so far as to claw one Jiralhanae's throat open with her bare hands when she saw that a few of the corpses had been desecrated by that particular Brute.

As the Spartans destroyed the power source for the tunnel's barrier, the three Infected went around and collected the dog tags from the bodies of the Marines, handing them to Fred while Jai inspected Venera's most recent kill. "Quite fiery when someone gets you riled, aren't you?" he commented, nudging the corpse with his boot as if he was expecting it to spring to life as a combat form.

"We don't like people disrespecting our sibling race," Lil'Ame said as she took exaggerated aim at the holopedestal generating an image of Truth, firing at it and destroying it in a blue-white explosion. As she did that, Commander Keyes' Pelican landed a short distance away.

"Lord Hood," the only daughter of Jacob Keyes said, undisguised relief in her tone, "we made it."

"Music to my ears, Commander. What about the Ark?"

"Fully uncovered, sir."

"Then we don't have much time," the Fleet Admiral sighed, "Marines, the Prophet of Truth doesn't know it yet, but he's about to get kicked right off his throne." An assault carrier passed overhead as the Spartans approached the Warthog Keyes had dropped off. "We will take our city back. Drive our enemies to the graves they've been so happily digging. One final effort is all that remains."

[Status.]

'At Voi, Commander. We're getting ready to enter the city.'

[Good. You're doing great.]

'Can we start singing the Spartan Theme?'

[Maybe later. I'm sending a few more to join your crew of merry men, and tell the Spartans that Red Team will be waiting for them inside.]

'You got it, sir.'

**********

When you gonna wake up and fight... for yourself?

When you gonna wake up and fight... for yourself?

When you gonna wake up and fight... for yourself?

-"Sound of Madness," Shinedown (The Sound of Madness)

**********

Glossary

Firtyë Sé Qualmë: Die in Agony