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Beneath the Sentinel Hive Part 2.
Posted By: Dr Sky Tower<johnnyfive@xtra.co.nz>
Date: 31 October 2006, 1:58 am
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Corporal Dakota Jones jogged alongside the hovering gold armoured Sentinel Major, wielding a bulky yet surprisingly light alien weapon. She could scarcely see in the near darkness of the warren-like passageway, and she noticed uncomfortably the walls closing in. Aside from the gentle hum of her mechanoid companion's propulsion drive, her panting breaths and clomping footfalls of her boots, there was little else to be heard.
"So, Ramases," she said as she paced alongside the large mechanical being. "Why did your masters decide to have four Sentinel hives guard an unobtrusive installation on a backwater planet like this?"
Talking aloud helped her overcome the unfathomable growing terror she couldn't rid herself of. What was the facility beneath them harbouring? It had to be much more than a mere Sentinel memory crystal that would attract the despised Covenant.
"Maybe they wanted to dig up this Forerunner installation, eh, Ramases?" She rambled on. "I heard the Covies troll the galaxy, searching for Forerunner artefacts like they're pots of gold. What a bunch of fanatical creeps. They destroyed my planet and it was all over a Forerunner relic in a museum! Murdering squid-faced bastards."
She peered sideways at the flying entity, but he didn't answer. She wished he could speak. His answers would've been very interesting.
The age-old machine scanned his surroundings, uttering a low growl of what sounded like trepidation. His keen sensors perceived the unmistakable stench of Flood, but then he detected something new, something far more dangerous. He searched his onboard database for records pertaining to this particular installation. He had never been to this place in his entire life of nearly 10,000 years, but his instinctive memory recognised it. It was used as a Forerunner laboratory where vile research was performed. Rumours amongst his kind even pertained to dreadful experiments being executed on his own mechanoid race. Then it had been converted to a Forerunner palace, where the experimentation continued unabated. That logically explained why four Sentinel hives were required to guard the facility.
Perhaps the Sentinel memory crystal the Reclaimer's kind was searching for would provide additional data.
His visual unit swivelled around and glared in Jones' direction. He sent a telepathic thought to her, the same way he would have to his masters had they still been in existence. Much to his annoyance, the human didn't answer. He uttered a verbal sound.
"What, Ramases?" When she received no answer, she sighed. "OK, then. Lead the way. I don't like it here any more than you do."
She found herself almost welcoming the crazed screams of loathsome Flood beasts to the silence of this claustrophobic and foreboding place. It seemed as if it were heralding the arrival of something far worse than the nightmare battle that had slaughtered her entire platoon. The never-ending sense of premonition was physically and psychologically exhausting.
She smelled the stench before she actually saw it.
They emerged into a large artificially-lit cavern, a hub from which nearly a dozen wide, dimly lit corridors traversed. She glanced upward and saw two more tunnels ascending vertically into a putrescent gloom. But what occupied her immediate attention were the remains of a large Covenant encampment. Equipment and supplies were scattered all over the massive high-ceilinged room. Blue and purple blood was splashed across walls and floor. From the state of the place, it appeared to have been abandoned in a great panic. The truncated corpses of Elites and Grunts could be seen lying in meaty chunks around the room.
It seemed the encampment had come under attack by a vast horde of Flood beasts. But if they'd been attacked by Flood, why hadn't the Flood taken the bodies?
She cautiously approached one of the bodies.
Ramases hovered alongside her, indifferent.
Jones had seen enough gruesome deaths during her service as a PFC, but this surpassed any brutal killing she'd ever witnessed. The Unggoy on the floor had been ripped in half. She glanced up, following the trail of blue blood and viscera with her eyes, and saw his other half lying splattered against the rock wall.
"Grief!" she said aloud. "It looks like someone grabbed him and ripped him in two!"
The Sentinel Major uttered a low growl of agitation.
Goddamn! She thought, enthralled by the astonishing violence.
There, lying amongst several destroyed Wraith battle tanks, she noticed an enormous dead thing. It was Flood-like, the bulbous head alone the size of a Flood carrier form. Four spindly tentacles – two of which had been torn away from its massive body – hung limply atop wrecked Covenant vehicles. Two of the limbs carried huge, scythe-like black blades that were smeared with the blood and body parts of unfortunate Covenant victims. Skeletal legs, almost 8 feet long, were broken and splayed across the rock floor.
Is that . . . is that a juggernaut Flood combat form? Dakota wondered, her mouth dropping open.
Ignoring Ramases' increasingly irritated warning calls, she hefted her beam weapon and dared to approach the unmoving behemoth.
Copious amounts of sallow, pus-like fluid pooled around its enormous mass. The stench was unbelievable. She noticed the head was badly damaged. The Covenant had put up a fierce fight against this ferocious beast. She spotted plasma burns scoring the massive carcass. But could plasma weapons – even energy swords – cause the damage she saw inflicted on the head?
Huge ragged gouges criss-crossed the bulging carrier-form skull. Several of these were so deep parts of the skull had actually caved in. A mixture of green, yellow and deep red blood dribbled continuously, spreading in an ever-widening pool around the partially crushed cranium. Holding back her gorge, Dakota glanced into the meaty maw, and saw parts of infection forms and unfortunate humans and Elites fused into a single mass, resulting in the creation of this juggernaut monster.
What the hell caused these injuries? She wondered, too amazed by the state of its wounds to puke up her ring at the morbid sight. It appears to have been mauled to death by enormous talons!
Her eyes skimmed the room. This looks like they were trying to escape, and not just from the juggernaut. They must've run straight into my company. They fought us in desperation.
Ramases forcibly seized her arm. He snarled something unintelligible, and refused to release her when she tried wrenching her arm free. He ignored her angry protests, instead dragging the human marine to one of the tunnels that ascended into an unpleasant darkness. Now that he was in physical contact with her, she detected the Sentinel's form shuddering. She stared at him. Was that fear? Could Sentinels feel fear? Did he know what killed that giant Flood mutation?
The Sentinel shoved her away from him. He moved off. She hurried after the flying menace.
At first Dakota thought there were Flood infection forms swarming in the passage ahead. But the putrid and sickly glow it gave off revealed nothing moving. It was an enormous mass of puss-like fluid, smeared across one wall. Occasionally, bubbles broke through the surface of this hideous mess, expelling a terrible gassy stench. The odour was so thick and cloying it was like breathing a foul, decomposing liquid. She recognized fragments of body parts inside it. The entire mess uttered sickening, squelching sounds.
Jones covered her face with a trembling, dirt and blood-smeared hand, forcing herself not to retch.
"Grief. . ." she choked. "It's the remains of another juggernaut. . . but this one's been – pulverised – beaten to death. . ."
The Sentinel uttered a warbling sound. His laser weapon dropped to firing position. Without preamble, he open fired. The open wound on the wall was soon incinerated.
"What the hell is killing these mutated freaks, Ramases?" she demanded. Then realised the Sentinel had no way of verbally answering her.
Ramases' sensors did a sweep of the area for more of the rotten fluid seeping from the walls. When he didn't find any, he soared off down the corridor, Jones chasing after him.
After a few minutes of frantic running, she soon came to a halt when she saw the Sentinel Major hovering to a stop ahead of her. The tunnel had arrived at a dead end. She saw no indication of a door in the featureless wall before them.
Exhausted from her exertions both mentally and physically, Jones leaned against the wall to rest. She watched the Sentinel entity face the blank expanse of wall. A brightening azure glow shimmered from his visual sensor, toward a slightly raised indentation in the wall. It bathed the serration in a pale sapphire glow, activating a hidden holo display. It flared to life in shades of cerulean and turquoise.
"Impressive," she admitted. "I take it we're right beneath the Sentinel hive?"
She received an affirming warble.
Then she heard a heavy thud. It shook the entire tunnel. It sounded again.
Dakota quickly straightened, her weariness forgotten. The Sentinel uttered an impatient gurgle.
The reverberation echoed again, louder now, and closer. It was followed by a shrill and rattling intake of air.
Jones backed toward the holo display on the wall. "Christ, I can't see a thing down there. . ." She ignored the jack hammer pounding of her heart as she aimed the Sentinel beam weapon into the blackness.
The tunnel was a murky hole, illumination coming only from Ramases' propulsion unit and the display on the wall. In her fear, she backed herself into the middle of the holo display, impeding Ramases' activating it. The thudding grew louder, and now she heard a whipping, whooshing sound. Finally Ramases uttered an affirming warble and the door yawned open. Jones literally fell through the opening portal while Ramases sped into the wide, dark cavernous room beyond.
As the door automatically sealed, she glimpsed a horrifying sight. It looked like a cross between a combat and a carrier form, and the mutated remains of whatever the dominant predator was on this planet. It was so big it could barely fit into the tight, claustrophobic tunnel. It used four immensely long, whip-like tentacles to haul itself through the small space.
Then it uttered a bone chilling shriek of pain. It twisted madly around in the confines of the corridor. Jones spotted a metallic gleam behind the convulsing juggernaut combat form. Terrible razor-like appendages descended upon the monster's bloated skull. They looked like giant glass fangs. Blood exploded from the Juggernaut's pulsating cranium.
Thick yellow slime, reeking of decomposing flesh, splattered across the floor and Jones.
The door cycled shut. It uttered a heavy clunk.
Dull thumping echoes reverberated through the huge room. The dying screams of the massive Flood warrior could still be heard, even through the three foot thick door. Whatever that was, she could hear it pounding the juggernaut to death, turning it into the same putrid sludge she and Ramases had witnessed further back in the tunnel.
Jones stood there gasping and shaking all over.
"Ghod!" She breathed. "Ohghods! What have these Covenant bastards done? They opened that Forerunner installation, and woke up whatever the hell guards the place!"
She seized Ramases by the left wing-stabiliser before he could get away from her, and made him face the now sealed door. Forcing the Sentinel Major to do her bidding was difficult, he could've easily shrugged her off. But he allowed her to manhandle him, and his visual sensor gazed at the now unobtrusive wall in front of him.
"What is that thing, Ramases," she demanded.
He uttered a musical warble, the tones sweetly bird-like. It was the first time she'd ever heard a Sentinel make such a sound. Their seemingly mindless aggression and predatory appearance belayed the notion such mechanoids could articulate so beautifully. These harmonious fluting tones were not directed at her, but at something on the other side of the door. She heard an ominous scraping sound, enormous talons gently scouring the door. Then, to her surprise, she heard an answering flute-like call.
The scraping stopped.
All was eerily silent again.
Ramases shook himself free and glided up into the dome around them.
She turned and gazed up toward her Sentinel companion. It was too dark to see anything. But as Ramases flew up, the Sentinel Hive awoke around him. Lights glowed from the walls. Hundreds of holo displays flared to life. Jones recognised the strangely elegant yet functional Forerunner architecture around her. She glanced down at the floor and noticed it was constructed of some unknown obsidian material. Geometric hieroglyphs were etched into every panel. As Ramases ascended further, Jones could see the walls gradually curve inward, like a pointed dome. Platforms lined the inner walls around the wide open inner area.
From her vantage point she spotted porthole-like obtrusions also placed strategically around the walls. These were Sentinel launchers, the teleportation devices used to transport the flying mechanoids from one installation to another when intruders were detected.
Grief, there must be dozens – hundreds of those ports, Jones thought, gazing up in silent awe.
She hurried along the wall and approached something she recognised instantly – a glowing column of sapphire light gently twisting and glimmering in the semi-dark. It was a grav-lift, the same type of device the Covenant used to transport troops and vehicles from their capital ships to planetary surfaces. So this is where they got their technology. She mused as she stepped into the circular space at the bottom of the lift. They stole it from the Forerunners, no doubt. The zero-G elevator took her straight up, through several platforms. Finally she stepped out onto an ebony floor right at the apex of the dome. It ringed a ten storey drop to the floor below.
At strategic points around this level, she noticed partitions in the walls. They opened into rooms, devoid of furniture, merely black domed cubicles that contained more complex, yet unintelligible holo displays. Then, in one of these rooms, she spotted an artefact suspended in the air. It was a multi-faceted, multi-hued sliver of crystal that gently turned on its axis. Jones uttered a pleased hiss as she hurried into the room.
It's beautiful, she thought, reaching out, her hand touching the delicate crystal. And it's mine.
Her fingers brushed the sacred relic. It uttered a sweet musical ping. Only the length of her hand and the thickness of her little finger, the artificially created crystal could power the slip space engines of a ship as large as the SAINT of Honour. They were worth billions of credits, and both the UNSC and the Covenant wanted them.
Sentinel memory crystals.
Ramases hovered cautiously into the room. He and hundreds of his kind used rooms similar to this to download memories stored in their CPUs to identical crystals like the one floating in front of the human Reclaimer. It was extremely necessary, higher classes of his kind used the memories as learning devices. It enabled them to formulate new battle tactics and create more powerful weapons against their Flood enemies. Like biological, intelligent beings, these Sentinels also learned and adapted, changing their behaviour and their physical abilities, to deal with the ever-changing Flood monstrosities. They were the only beings in existence that had any control over the vile Flood disease.
Ramases led me straight to it, she thought, the beautiful crystal reflecting in the pupils of her irises. The Covenant were searching in the wrong place!
As she slipped the crystal into her pocket, she was surprised at the complete lack of a reaction from the Sentinel Major. He didn't seem to give a damn about her taking the precious piece of rock. Perhaps they meant nothing to his race. Maybe there were more hidden somewhere in this ancient Forerunner structure? Was she standing inside a treasure-trove of wealth? Would Ramases lead her to a virtual stockpile of Sentinel memory crystals?
Suddenly the Sentinel Major sensed a familiar presence. He opened his comms channel, broadcasting a hopeful signal. His capital ship was still in the vicinity! It had hidden itself inside a slipstream envelope it formed around itself, to keep it from being detected by Covenant or UNSC sensors. Normally Sentinel capital ships did not engage in combat with the inferior alien species. Their leaders wanted no contact with these war-faring races.
Ramases received a warning signal from his ship, the Tokrah TuPaak.
It was imperative he get the Sentinel Hive fully operational as soon as possible.
To be continued...
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