Twenty-Three: The Storm
"According to the... Forerunners," Miranda Keyes said over the COM, "the artifact Truth has found is not the Ark, but it is a portal generator leading to it. They have also confirmed that all of the Halo rings can be fired from the Ark, which makes it all the more important that we prevent him from getting there. Our only chance of stopping him is a surprise aerial assault. Clear this sector of Covenant anti-air defenses. Make a hole for the Admiral's ships. Good hunting. Keyes out."
Said Forerunners were easily keeping pace with the trio of Warthogs as they trundled through the tunnel into Voi, effortlessly leaping around in a display of Flood-enhanced speed, agility, and synchronization. The moment their tiny convoy cleared the tunnel, all six of them leapt up onto the light posts and used them like springboards to cross the parking lot (if it could be called that) in an instant, dropping down in front of the blast door and patiently waiting for the humans to catch up, clearly conversing inside their heads. Venera was humming to herself, fingering the trigger of her Forerunner beam rifle, while her sister checked that her energy sword was fully charged before unlimbering her assault rifle, checking its charge as well.
'They fall in line,
One at a time,
Ready to play.
(I can't see them anyway)
No time to lose,
We've got to move,
Steady your helm.
(I am losing sight again)'
Dacien slapped the door controls as the humans rode up and dismounted, the immense panels of steel sliding apart to reveal an empty hall. A handful of those on foot made to go up the stairs - right before Lil'Ame paced to the next door, flipped forward into a one-handed stand, and launched herself up to the deck where the next set of door controls was, saving them the trouble. The twins stuck out their tongues at her as they passed through the now-open doors; they had never been quite as good at that as she was. Lil'Ame smirked and jumped down as the chain gun on the back of the LRV unloaded hundreds of rounds into the Unggoy and Kig-Yar gathered around a holoprojection of the Prophet of Truth, cutting the bastard off mid-word.
The following blast door revealed much of the same, but thanks to the quick work of the snipers in their group, the Brute captain leading the Grunts and Jackals never got to make much use of the Ghosts that he had been provided. The Spartans commandeered them, naturally, and darted into the lakebed beyond with guns blazing.
"Kilo-23, this is Forward Unto Dawn," Lord Hood came over the COM, "I need a sitrep, Commander."
"Atmospheric disturbance is increasing above the artifact, Admiral," was the reply from the younger of the Keyes.
"And the Spartans?"
"Moving as fast as they can, sir. I knew they'll get it done."
'Fire your guns,
It's time to run,
Blow me away
(I will stay in the mess I made)
After the fall,
We'll shake it off,
Show me the way!'
There was only one true anti-air Wraith there, but another standard Covenant tank was on the far side of the expanse, bombarding a small but strongly built structure extending out from the wall. There were humans firing at it from inside - Red Team and a handful of Marines, they realized, and after a swift conference, the Infected went bounding off after the anti-air tank, leaving Blue and Gray Teams to rescue their siblings. Fortunately, someone had been kind enough to provide Sam-034 with a rocket launcher and a full set of reloads, enabling him to drop to one knee and zoom in on the Wraith, carefully gauging the distance and likelihood of movement before firing both rockets in quick succession. The Spartan was already reloading scant seconds after the last one left the barrels, keeping an eye on the Wraith.
The Brute in the driver's seat seemed not to realize that he was being fired upon by a much higher-powered weapon and didn't move an inch until the first rocket hit. Then, instead of moving out of the way like a smart person would have done, he simply swung his vehicle around to see where the fire was coming from, and was struck full on by the second rocket, blowing the whole thing to hell. The three teams met up in the tiny structure and watch the Forerunners raise hell for a few moments before moving forward and leaving them to it.
'Only the strongest will survive,
Lead me to heaven when we die,
I am a shadow on the wall,
I'll be the one to save us all.'
As they made their way toward the next door, the Spartans took potshots at passing Ghosts, eventually killing all of their drivers because the stupid gits kept coming back for more. The Forerunners joined them at the doors, the Marines jogging along behind to catch up, but the door slid open unexpectedly to let a group of Jackals and Grunts come spilling out. They lifted their weapons automatically and heard some soldiers inside calling to them, "Check your fire; it's the Spartans! Flush them out, we'll nail them with the .50!"
Fred moved off to a door immediately to the left of the blast door that they'd entered through and headed up a short set of stairs, pitching a grenade out into the room and killing all the Grunts, dropping the shields of the Brutes and driving them out into the .50's line of fire. On the advice of one of the Infected, Sam picked up the dropped plasma turret that the Brute chieftain had been carrying, brushing off a smear of blood and hefting it up into a better position to lessen the strain on his upper body. They proceeded into the next hall, where a Phantom came into view and released a horde of Yam'ee, explaining why the Forerunners had requested the broken-off turret; it proved very effective against the flying terrors and very amusing in some cases.
Then as they passed into the next hall, ground shuddering beneath their feet - a Flickr of Cortana appeared before their eyes, looking first away, then straight at then as she said, "I have defied gods and Demons."
'There's nothing left,
So save your breath,
Lying in wait.
(Caught inside this tidal wave)
Your cover's blown,
Nowhere to go,
Holding your fate.
(Loaded I will walk alone)'
It faded in moments, their HUDs degaussing automatically to recover from the brief lag, and they continued on, many of them sliding into the driver's seats of the small fleet of Mongooses assembled there in a half-circle. Someone opened the door and released them into the lakebed beyond, where two anti-air Wraiths were busy bombarding the distant human forces to dust. The Spartan guided their vehicles along with expert speed and precision, skidding past the first Wraith one at a time so that their passengers had time to get a good shot in; the Forerunners, meanwhile, skirted the edge of the bed and took cover in the boardwalk opposite Truth's Dreadnought, Venera and Kenera manning the two missile pod launchers there and gunning for the Choppers skittering about.
The second Wraith was destroyed a few moments later, vanishing in an explosion of blue-white light, and it was then that they fnally heard from the Forerunners' Gravemind. "Take cover, there's a Scarab headed your way," he growled over the radio, and even though they couldn't see the ship he was in, the ground shuddered violently as it passed overhead, aiming for the portal generator.
'Fire your guns,
It's time to run,
Blow me away,
(I will stay in the mess I made)
After the fall,
We'll shake it off,
Show me the way.'
"That's an affirmative, Spartans; everybody get some cover!" Johnson called even as those on the ground began hearing the unmistakable humming of its movements and the thuds of its pedes hitting the ground as it climbed over the buildings and jumped to the ground.
The twins began firing at its joints for the Spartans, and Venera shouted, "Commander, I want one of those for the humans' Christmas!"
"Maybe if you're good," was the reply from the black Spartan.
The number of missiles that they launched swiftly reached the double digits, but finally it halted mid-stride and crouched, shuddering. Blue and Red Teams boarded it as swiftly as possible and left its crew as little more than smears of alien guts along the floor on their way to the core. Rather than fire full clips into the shield covering the main core, Fred threw a plasma grenade and made sure that it stuck before spinning out of the line of fire and waiting for the inevitable explosion. They audibly heard the shield dispel and quickly turned to unload their weapons into the Scarab's core; the moment it began flashing red, they all leapt off the nearest edge and began high-tailing it away from the Covenant weapon, desperate to get out of the blast range before it self-destructed.
'Only the strongest will survive,
Lead me to heaven when we die,
I am a shadow on the wall,
I'll be the one to save us all.
You wanted it bad,
Don't make me mad,
Here it comes!
Die!'
The explosion itself sent a pale blue wash over everything, highlighting shadows and making reflective panels absolutely blinding, but the remains crashed to the ground despite the lovely light show it put on. "Well done, Spartans," Miranda said over the COM, "I'm sending in a few Pelicans." She must have been watching from a distance or seen the explosion. Or both.
They made it up to the boardwalk just in time to find Venera apparently trying to figure out how to tear the missile pod from its mount, and Sam stepped up and did it for her, saying, "I'm guessing we'll need this in the near-future?"
"You'd be right," the elder twin stated (though only by a minute and a half), "Conserve ammo. In fact, don't use it at all until the Hunters show up."
Though the Forerunners ignored their obvious curiosity, the three teams all glanced at one another with raised eyebrows. There weren't any Hunters nearby, so how did they know what was coming? Did their ancestors have psychic powers or something?
"Or something," Dacien told them as he jogged by, "and stop talking out loud like that; it makes you look ridiculous."
'Only the strongest will survive,
Lead me to heaven when we die,
I am a shadow on the wall,
I'll be the one to save us all.
'Save us all!'
[I think that's quite enough of Halo: the Musical right now, Venera.]
The Pelican Miranda sent dropped off the Arbiter and another handful of Marine reinforcements for the super soldiers, enabling them to continue on with a fresh complement of backup. The area that they headed into was essentially a heavily-armed field hospital; there were Marines with dressings on all over the place, some of those with less severe injuries working on the defenses of the area to keep the Covenant out until they could transport the wounded to a proper hospital. Just as they were passing through a second room, the ground shuddered, and once again they felt as if they were walking through thick jello as their armor lagged. Cortana materialized on their HUDs again, saying, "I am your shield; I am your sword."
"What are these?" Fred growled as they emerged into what must be a warehouse, seeing a Brute pack terrorizing the flank guards off to their left.
"The Commander says that they're redundant, data-stripped copies of Cortana that have escaped High Charity's systems and come here," Lil'Ame supplied as she dropped to one knee and took a shot at a Brute captain whaling on some Marines on an upper level, trying not to hit the humans at the same time.
"...why did she copy herself?"
"It's one of her first lines of defense against the enemy Gravemind." Lil'Ame finally gave up with firing at the Brute and leapt up to the higher level, hitting the Brute with enough force to bend the battle rifle she was using as a temporary weapon while the microreactors in her assault rifle recycled. She blinked at the now-unusable weapon and sighed before tossing it away and picking up the spiker that her prey had dropped when it died. She and her infected siblings were extremely effective against the Jiralhanae, letting them pass through the warehouses without a single casualty, but just as they reached the exit, they saw what Venera meant about the Hunters.
A pair of them fired their fuel rod guns at a group of fleeing Traxus employees, killing four instantly and virtually melting their clothes to their skin. Immediately, the Spartans and Forerunners gave way for Sam, who was still carrying the missile launcher, and it only took one shot per worm colony to blast them into oblivion. "Are you sure you're not psychic?" Kelly demanded as she switched her assault rifle out for the rocket launcher she was carrying and let fly both of the fuel-propelled explosives at the Chieftain twenty meters away; no one wanted to get cloe to the Gravity Hammer it carries.
"Positive," Venera replied, "or, at least, I'm not psychic. The Gultanr have what we call 'predictive resonance.' It's kind of like an intuition that is never flipping wrong, whether they like it or not, and they passed that ability on to the rest of us when they were infected. The Commander has it the worst; his body gives him symptoms when great losses of life are about to happen somewhere in the galaxy – killer migraines, nosebleeds, seizures… If he has something else to occupy his mind, he can ignore those symptoms, though. That's how he got through the first Flood War without getting killed accidentally."
"Any really negative effects?" Linda put in, sticking a spike grenade to a Brute's helmet and darting out of the way when it exploded, spraying spikes everywhere.
"He was out of commission during the Fall of Reach, massive migraine and a pretty heavy nosebleed if I remember correctly. It took his almost a week and a half to get some color back into his face, cause if he wasn't already dead, it would have killed him." All three of the Forerunner females pitched grenades into the knot of Grunts and Jackals immediately around the bend and blew them all away, leaving the humans free to advance unhindered.
There was a hologram of Truth beyond the defenders, giving occasional speeches to inspire courage in his men. "Darkened skies and lashing fire are all that remains for them when we, the worthy, have passed beyond," it said, and the Arbiter jogged over to it.
"I will not be shamed, not again, not by you," the Sangheili said firmly and turned off the holoprojector, lifting his dual plasma rifles and continuing on with the others.
"If it's any consolation, Arbiter," Kenera said, falling in next to the Elite, "in our language, the character Truth had branded into your chest means 'Brave,' not 'Shame.'"
"Truly?"
"It is the truth, on mine honor as one of the Infected."
"Then I am honored to bear it." The Sangheili nodded in thanks as they rounded the final bend, the great gun coming into view just as it fired, and a Longsword plummeted to the ground, its pilot struggling at the controls. As it passed overhead, a couple of the Covenant guarding the gun fired at it as if to mock the pilot's fighting the inevitable. Sam manned a chain-gun behind a layer of sandbags that had once been the sight of a Marine standoff, bringing the gun around to fire on the visible aliens.
"Spartans, Hood's ships are closing fast! Destroy that gun; we're out of time!" Keyes sounded uncharacteristically desperate over the line, and the Spartans began running up the slope towards the anti-air gun, their assault rifles' bullets preceding them. They split into their teams and swept independently over the outcropping, gunning down the rather large contingent of Covenant soldiers holding the base of the structure. With some appropriate cover fire, Linda's sniper rifle proved especially effective against the multitude of Grunts running about while the other Spartans double- and triple-teamed their Jiralhanae commanders.
"Chief, that gun's been firing non-stop," Johnson came over the COM, "it's gotta be running hot! It's gonna be opening up its access panel!"
The Spartans flashed an affirmative at him and turned all of their weapons skyward, waiting... The access panel to the core dropped open, and they unloaded everything they had into it, though not fast enough. The panel slid closed again, and they turned their attention to the pair of Banshees that had noticed the commotion and come over to assist. The chain gun that Sam had broken off was worth its weight in gold; the bullets from it penetrated the fuselage of the airborne vehicles and destroyed vital components, sending the two plummeting to the ground just as the plasma vent opened up again. S-034 unloaded the rest of the bullets into the core, finally destroying it and barely darting out of the way in time to escape the collapsing panels of the gun.
Explosions rippled the length of the gun, the actual barrel exploding off of the base as they paced away from it, the Arbiter right behind them as they moved to the cliff edge, gazing out over the portal generator with the Dreadnought where Truth was hiding. It was then that they heard the roars of Hood's ships on approach, scores of Longswords racing overhead in formation, attacking the Dreadnought directly with their on-board nukes. The explosions were perfectly visible even at the distance they were at, and the single ships peeled away from the area as the full-size ships approached, their MAC guns at the ready. The immense slugs slammed into the Dreadnought with no visible effects just as John shouted, "All ships, fall back! The Portal Generator is coming online!"
It was too late; the main platform retracted slightly, fourteen stabilizing panels unfolding from the structure itself even as the central platform, where Truth's Dreadnought stood, was swiftly pulled down into it, an energy field racing up over it and projecting upward from the tip of the Dreadnought in a thin beam of pale blue light. The ancient machinery groaned and moaned as it was activated for the first time in one hundred thousand years, the sound sending shivers down the Spartans' spines.
The energy field intensified slowly, the light growing brighter, then pulsed up to an even higher intensity, the output of force shaking all of the ships before it began to pull them in towards the central platform. The Spartans, Infected and Arbiter were slammed backwards against a rock outcropping and looked up just in time to see the field intensity begin to increase again, whiting out their surroundings.
"This," a copy of Cortana whispered in their ears, "is the way the world ends."
When their vision finally cleared of spots, the Spartans shook their heads to clear the last bits of their blackouts and staggered to their feet, blinking up at the Portal. It had a deep black core, fading to a misty electric blue at the edges, and the Dreadnought was accelerating towards it even as the UNSC ships seemed to fall slowly away from it, temporarily dead.
Coughing, Lord Hood came on the line and demanded, "What did Truth just do? Do he activate the rings?"
"Negative, Admiral," John broke in before Keyes could say something, "We debriefed Commander Keyes but did not have enough time to get our intel to you as well. The structure that the Covenant uncovered is a generator that creates a portal that leads to the Ark, not the Ark itself." The Brute ships followed Truth's through the portal, leaving the humans behind.
"Thank heavens for small mercies, then."
"Not necessarily. We've got a new contact Slipping in on our radar, confirmed enemy Flood presence on board." The Gravemind rattled off the exit location, and the Spartans turned just in time to see the Flood-controlled ship transition out of Slipspace before it flew alarmingly close overhead, trailing smoke and spores, finally going down in a flash of light beyond the line of buildings behind them.
"What is it?" the Arbiter asked, having not been privy to the conversation between John and Lord Hood, "More Brutes?"
"Worse," Fred growled in reply, lifting his battle rifle in preparation for the new and far more terrible fight ahead.
**********
And behold a Cowboy came into town, dirty and worn.
He had Black eyes, long hair and lines that cut deep into his frown.
He had the right hand of the devil strapped tightly to his side.
And you could tell fear abandoned this outlaw in a previous life.
-"The Last Cowboy," In This Moment (A Star-Crossed Wasteland)