Eighteen: The Last Remaining Purpose

The Forerunners had dropped off another tank for them to use, and Niken had given Anton a crash course in how to use it, although it was fairly intuitive. It also helped that the tank had reconfigured its cockpit to roughly mimic that of the Scorpion, making it easier to know what did what. The rest of the Spartans followed the tanks in Warthogs through the city of Voi, heading towards the anti-air batteries giving everyone so much trouble.

The Forerunners, meanwhile, had used their armor to attach themselves to the sides of the tanks, letting them ride rather than walk to the combat zone. They had been joined by a few other aliens, including another of the Gultanr, who introduced herself as Tande, and a bat-like alien named Qe'rid (who sadly could only glide rather than fly).

"You all look like those spiders that carry their babies on their backs," Maria commented over the COM, earning a few snickers.

"I'm proud of my hooligan children," said Niken, "and I'm sure the Supreme Commander is as well."

"Absolutely not."

But the aliens just laughed. "We love you too, boss," Sharp called up in the general direction of the ships overhead.

Tande hopped down from the tanks and slapped the door controls, letting them into the empty hall beyond. The Gultanr jogged inside ahead of the tank, tail swishing, then leaped almost twenty feet up to the deck where the next set of door controls was, saving the rest of them the trouble.

There were Unggoy and Kig-Yar beyond the next set of doors, and the vehicles opened up on them, along with everyone else. Someone also shot the holoprojector of the Prophet of Truth, cutting him off mid-word.

The next blast door revealed more of the same, but thanks to the skill of their sharpshooters, the Brutes didn't get to use the Ghosts provided against them. Some of the Spartans commandeered them, and they all plunged into the lakebed beyond, guns blazing. Niken's tank took out one of the Wraiths right off the bat.

"Kilo-23, this is Forward Unto Dawn," Lord Hood said over the COM, "I need a sitrep, Commander."

"Atmospheric disturbance is increasing above the artifact, Admiral," was the reply from the younger Keyes.

"And the Spartans?"

"Moving as fast as they can, sir. I know they'll get it done."

The only true anti-air Wraith had already been taken out, but another normal Wraith was on the far side of the area, bombarding a small but tough structure extending out from the wall. There were humans shooting back from inside - and another team of Spartans, they realized, and Fred directed all of them to focus fire on the Wraith.

Someone had been wise enough to provide Sam-034 with a rocket launcher and a full set of reloads, and he dropped to one knee to steady himself before zooming in. He fired both rockets in quick succession and reloaded automatically, preparing to fire again if he had missed, but he hadn't.

The Brute in the driver's seat seemed not to realize that he was being fired upon by heavy weapons and didn't move until the first rocket hit. Then, instead of moving out of the way, he just brought the tank around to see where the fire was coming from, and was hit full on by the second rocket. The enemy vehicle exploded, letting them mop up the remaining Covenant even as Jade Team emerged from hiding with their Marines.

After a short briefing, they all fell in with the convoy, who had turned their attention on the Ghosts supporting the Wraiths. One of them tried to drive through the legs of Niken's tank, but he dropped the vehicle down on top of it, crushing the Ghost and its driver.

They all came back together at the next building. The blast doors slid open unexpectedly, revealing the building had been taken over by the Covenant. They all lifted their weapons automatically and heard some soldiers inside calling to them, "Check your fire; it's the Spartans! Flush 'em out, we'll nail 'em with the .50!"

A few of the Spartans and Forerunners headed off to do just that, while the rest took care of any aliens unwise enough to charge the convoy, hoping for glory. On the advice of Tande, Sam picked up the plasma turret the Brute Chieftain had dropped and heaved it along.

The reason for it became apparent in the next room. The glass ceiling had fallen in, letting a Phantom release a swarm of Yam'ee to attack, and the broken-off turret and the LAAGs on the Warthogs proved very effective against the flying terrors.

As they entered into the next hall, ground shuddering beneath their feet, another echo of Cortana appeared before their eyes, splintering across their HUDs, saying, "I have defied gods and Demons."

It faded in moments, their HUDs degaussing automatically to recover from the brief lag. "What's that thing doing to her?" Sam demanded, mounting up behind Caleb on one of the Mongeese at the end of the hall, "You said the Gravemind's got her - what's it doing to her?!"

"...We don't know the specifics," Shields answered over the COM as they all entered the next lakebed, "The Flood is… somehow able to interface with technology directly, without outside aid like your neural laces. We think it's… we think it's torturing her. Or trying to, anyway; trying to extract information. The Gultanr have foreseen that she will be rescued, and Miss Cortana knows this, so she's spinning off data-stripped copies to protect herself long enough for us to get to her."

"'The Gultanr have foreseen'," Daisy repeated, disbelief clear in her tone.

"Our people are unique," said Niken, "in that we have something akin to precognition. We call it 'predictive resonance'. Most of the time, it functions as a very, very well-honed intuition of sorts. We know things without knowing how we know, including the course history will take with a fair degree of accuracy."

He blew up another Covenant tank with his own. "For example, one hundred thousand years ago, we knew the Forerunner-Flood War was coming before it had even begun. We divided ourselves up by testing our abilities against one another, and those adults with the strongest gifts took all of our children - juveniles, nestlings, even eggs - to the Librarian to be indexed as part of the Forerunners' Conservation Measure, and then we went on to the Fleet of Shadows to serve under our Commander.

"The rest of our people - one and all - committed species-wide suicide, in order to deny the Flood our abilities.

"That was fifty years before first contact."

Some people gasped, but most were stunned to silence.

"Even we don't know exactly how their power works," Sharp added, "although I understand that there are a number of theories, running from quantum entanglement with the universe itself to sensing vibrations on the time strings in what you call string theory, all the way to straight up magic."

That got a laugh from them. "I'm sure Doctor Halsey would love to hear all about it," said Sam.

"She's welcome to contribute," said Tande, "because not having an explanation is driving more than a few people insane. But that's not all our precognition does. On admittedly extremely rare occasions, our people have been known to receive true visions of the future, albeit not very far in advance, cosmically speaking. That's how we knew about the Flood War, and that's how we know Miss Cortana will be rescued - and not just because our Commander's a stubborn bastard."

"Your Commander," said Fred, "Sergeant Smith."

"Indeed," Tande replied, lying flat on top of Niken's tank to shoot an enemy Ghost's driver, "He… Well. Saying his history is complicated is like saying the Pacific Ocean has a bit of water. But the Gultanr are hardly the only weird ones; the Tuavan, like Qe'rid, are naturally telepathic."

"That's wild."

It can be. But it can also be very useful.

"Shit damn hell!" More than a few of the Marines jumped at the sudden voice in their minds.

Sorry.

"You can talk more about weird biology later," the Commander said over the COM, even as the last of the line of AA batteries was destroyed, "There's a Scarab headed your way."

"That's affirmative! Everybody get some cover, now!" Johnson said right behind him.

Everyone on foot scrambled for cover, even as the vehicles raced for shelter on the edges of the buildings. Not too long after, they heard the thud of the machine's pedes, and then it climbed down into the lakebed, even as dozens of people and vehicles swarmed it from above and below. With so many people gunning for it at once, it didn't actually take very long to destroy it.

The explosion itself sent a pale blue wash of light over everything, banishing shadows and making reflective panels absolutely blinding, and the remains crashed to the ground. "Well done, Spartans," Miranda said over the COM, "I'm sending in a few Pelicans." She must have been watching from a distance or just seen the explosion. Or both.

The Spartans made it up to the boardwalk to find Tande trying to tear the missile pod from its mount. Sam stepped up and did it for her, saying, "I'm guessing we'll need this in the near-future?"

"You would be correct," she answered, "Conserve ammo. In fact, don't use it at all until the Hunters show up."

"Hm." He hefted it, then followed her through the buildings ahead, while the Forerunner tanks went to climb over the buildings a la the Scarab.

They entered a sort of field hospital, where a pair of Lifeworkers were tending to a dozen or so injured Marines and civilians, and Ambience immediately slowed his pace to offer aid. The Spartans and the others kept moving, meeting up with the Arbiter, and as they headed through a second room, the ground shuddered, and once again Cortana materialized on their HUDs. "I am your shield; I am your sword."

They emerged in a Traxus Factory warehouse, where a Brute pack was terrorizing a group of Marines, who were trying to defend the entrance to the field hospital. The Spartans took over, and Sam hung back with the missile launcher while the others advanced to take them out. The allied aliens guarded their flanks while they wove through the shipping containers - and finally saw what Tande meant about the Hunters.

A pair of them fired their fuel rod guns at fleeing Traxus employees, killing four instantly and vaporizing most of their bodies. The Spartans and Forerunners immediately gave way for Sam, who was still carrying the missile launcher, and it only took two shots per worm colony to blast them into oblivion.

They kept moving, heading out the way the Hunters had come in. There were Brutes and Grunts beyond, along with the odd Jackals, and they started firing the moment they came in view. Sam used his last four missiles on a Brute Chieftain, then claimed his gravity hammer and led the way through the storage facility beyond. As they went, they found a holoprojector with the image of Truth, saying, "Darkened skies and lashing fire are all that remains for them when we, the worthy, have passed beyond."

"I will not be shamed, not again, not by you," the Arbiter said firmly and destroyed the holoprojector.

They rounded the final bend, the last gun - an anti-aircraft cannon nicknamed the "Mantis" - coming into view just as it fired. A Longsword plummeted past them, its pilot fighting at the controls. Sam manned a chain-gun behind a layer of sandbags, swinging the gun around to target the Covenant upslope.

"Spartans, Hood's ships are closing fast! Destroy that gun; we're out of time!" said Keyes, and Sam ripped the chain-gun off its mount before leading the charge up to the gun. They split into their teams and swept independently over the outcropping, gunning down the contingent of Covenant soldiers guarding the gun.

"Chief, that gun's been firing nonstop!" Johnson said, "It's gotta be running hot! It's gonna be opening up its access panel!"

The Spartans flashed an affirmative and got out of the way as Anton brought his Scarab-tank in, anchoring its pedes on the rock. When the access panel opened up, he fired, and destroyed the gun in that one shot.

Explosions rippled the length of the gun, the barrel itself falling off the base as they walked away from it. The Spartans all looked out over the Portal Generator toe the Anodyne Spirit at its heart, where Truth was hiding. Then they heard the roar of Hood's ships, scores of Longswords in formation racing ahead to hit the keyship with every nuke they had onboard.

They were too late. The Commander shouted, "All ships, fall back! The Portal Generator is coming online!"

There were other ships right behind the Longswords, just starting their attack runs, but they managed to break off just in time.

Fourteen emitter panels unfolded from the structure, and the central platform where the keyship lay anchored retracted into the generator. An energy field raced up over it and into the sky, projecting up from the tip of the Dreadnought in a thin beam of blue light. The ancient machinery clanked and groaned, and the energy field jumped to an even higher intensity, releasing a shockwave that knocked them all backwards right before it started trying to drag them back in.

The world went white, and Cortana whispered, "This is the way the world ends."

When their vision cleared, the Spartans looked up at the Portal. It was black at its heart, like the void of Slipspace proper, bound at the edges with tethers of energy and hard light. The keyship accelerated upward into it and disappeared, the Brute ships right behind.

Lord Hood was calling for a status report, but the Spartans' attention was on something much more immediate. The Gultanr stiffened as one and went deathly still, the Forerunners and Qe'rid right behind them, and they turned to look at an empty patch of sky fifteen seconds before a Slipspace portal opened there, releasing a Covenant ship trailing smoke - and something else. It thundered overhead and crashed back in the city, making the ground shudder under their feet.

"What is it?" the Arbiter asked, "More Brutes?"

"Worse," Tande answered.

**********

A/N: I'M SHIPPING SAM-034 AND TANDE SOMEONE STOP ME also her name is pronounced kind of like "Tahn-deh" (ah like in father, eh like in breath) if anyone cares

Also does anyone else read words differently when they're combined or separated differently? Like "Windchaser", "Wind-chaser", and "Wind chaser" are all different to me, even if only a little.