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Halo 2.5 Chapter 1
Date: 21 May 2005, 8:47 PM
Chapter One
Lord Hood sighed. Too many human ships gone. And the Covenant now knew the location of earth. There had been a terrible battle...the Covenant had arrived with only a few more than a dozen ships. The Chief had defended Cairo Station from hordes of boarders....then gone groundside to defend Earth from the Covenant. From the rumors Hood had heard, the Chief had risen hell down there, until Miranda Keyes had dragged him onto In Amber Clad. They had jumped to slipspace, and lost contact with Earth. Since then, the Covenant ships in the system had all been destroyed or had bugged out.
The only positive outcome was the destruction of the Prophet of Truth, as the Master Chief had ascertained. He had ejected from the Forerunner ship Truth had been on just before it was destroyed by a MAC gun round. He had been picked up by a Longsword interceptor. In Amber Clad had disappeared along with the Covenant cruiser that had fled from New Mombassa a week before.
The Chief was on Cairo Station now, several decks below Hood and helping the repair teams crawling over the station like so many ants. In a few hours, every orbital station would be operational again, and the admiralty could exhale. Hood glanced at the long range radar signature screens again. Nothing. Then it happened. Hood heard the telltale ping that told of enemy contacts. Contacts that were hiding in the rings of Saturn. Contacts that emerged....and revealed themselves to be a single Covenant ship. The ship just hovered in place .
"All hands, report to battle stations, repeat, all hands to battle stations." Hood opened a COM channel to the Master Chief.
"What's going on, sir?" the Chief asked.
"Enemy ship at extreme range: 900 million kilometers," Hood replied. "Hang on....there are signals originating from that ship...detecting Marine signals inside the ship!"
"Hello! Hello? This is Miranda Keyes. I'm onboard the covenant ship. Do you copy?"
The Chief stiffened. "Ma'am?" he said.
"Chief? Good to see that you made it back...I have someone onboard who you thought you left behind..."
Hood was happy...but there was one problem.
"Commander? Can you hear me? You are in direct defiance of the Cole Protocol." He switched COM channels, and broadcast to the Fleet, "Under no circumstances should any gun so much as point at that ship. Stand down. All carriers, launch Longswords. Give them the order to escort that ship behind the Orbital Defense platforms. Understood?"
"Aye sir...launching Longswords now."
A hundred tiny black dots soared through space towards the cruiser. They surrounded it, and it slowly moved toward Earth.
Cortana navigated through Jupiter's gravitational field. It didn't help that if she twitched her ship in the wrong direction, more than 50 Longswords would be destroyed by the impact of her ship. She was being pinged by a thousand different requests, all the same: "Do not make any false movements, or you will be targeted and destroyed." All were the same....all except one. She isolated the signal, and then opened it. The Master Chief's voice floated through her speakers.
Hello, Cortana."
Good to see you, Master Chief. What can I do for you?
"Tell me how you got off of High Charity in one piece."
"Long story," she said, then felt a jolt as her covenant ship docked with one of the several orbital stations, the Cairo.
The Master Chief stood in front of the hangar of the ship, which was conveniently placed right on top off the hangar of the Cairo. The Hangars huge blast doors opened with a hiss, then out came two Elites armed with Energy Swords. The Elites didn't charge, however, they just stood there. Two Marines rose rocket launchers and trained them on the Elites. "Wait, don't fire...they aren't doing anything," the Chief said.
"Cortana, why are there Elites still on your ship? Why weren't they nuetralized?"
"Because, Chief, The Elites, Grunts and Hunters have betrayed the Covenant, and joined the UNSC. Apparently, Brutes have taken control of the Covenant, occupying the same role as the Elites used to," Cortana replied. Miranda Keyes stepped out onto the Cairo, and the Chief saluted sharply. It was hard for him to remain still. His every instinct screamed at him to kill the two Elites. Marines, Grunts, and Hunter filed out of the ship. Then came the Elites. They each nodded as they passed the Chief, whose finge hovered a hairsbreadth away from the trigger of his rifle. Keyes observed all this, then said to the Chief, "Walk with me."
The Chief immediately obeyed. The Covenant just stood at rigid attention in the hangar, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The Chief and Keyes walked up to the bridge for the second time ina week, they were greeted with applause. Lord Hood turned. "Hello, Commander," he said. A bridge officer looked up, scared.
"Sir! incoming contact...it's 300 kilometers wide, sir!"
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