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ONI: The Return
Posted By: Frightener<Agentsmith54@carolina.rr.com>
Date: 23 August 2004, 7:41 PM
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Operation: Nightfall
September 25, 2552
0504/5:04 a.m.
Entrance of ONI's CASTLE Base
Province of Timberland, Planet Reach
Agent Andrew Newman was taken aback by the size of the entrance. When he had last seen it, six years ago at his official designation of Intelligence Operator, the threshold had been filled with meter-thick Titanium plates. Now, the plates were half-way burned and the calming light that normally would have filled the waiting room was replaced by the weak glow his flashlight provided.
No Covenant ships in system, despite a giant fleet that had just began setting up shop only days before. NOVA, which had been activated, must have been transported elsewhere, or disabled, because Reach was still here. Radar on Andrew's prowler had picked up a few Covenant ground bases that had been abandoned by their fleet, with their confused Elite officers left to die.
These puzzles all crossed Newman's mind as he stepped through a large hole in the metal door. Plasma burns on the walls, he thought, putting together that the Covenant troops must have used their rifles and pistols to burn through the entrance, rather than heavy equipment.
The long-vacant receptionist's desk, which was octagonal and was the workplace of seven secretaries, still had stacks of papers and three of the computers were still on, thanks to the self-sustaining fusion reactor even deeper underground. Andrew could see where one of the receptionists had been playing a hologame, another had been listening to music: his or her disk player was still playing in an endless loop, but made no sound as the headphones had been ripped out.
Andrew quickly downloaded the information off of the computers and stuffed the papers in his backpack for later study, James might have good use for this. The ONI officer walked around the desk and into the hundred-yard long hallway of lifts.
He then encountered the first body. Some poor officer got nailed in the stomach. Holding his breath, Newman crossed the man's arms over his chest, then padded him down to see if he had anything useful. Nothing.
Newman forced one of the lift doors open and got in the derelict elevator. Using a cutting laser, he made a square hole in the lift's floor. Looking down into the abyss, he activated and dropped a few glow-rods into the void. Andrew then tied a carbon rope that was attached to his suit on one end to a jagged piece of metal that stuck out of a ruined segment of wall.
Looking into the dark, broken only by a dim green light, Andrew slowly lowered himself down into the hole. It took an hour, but he finally reached the bottom. He grabbed his flashlight and set off down the giant corridor. After walking a full mile, Newman came to a Y-junction.
"Holosign," he muttered, and in midair, a word appeared over each hall: on the left, the word Section 1 floated, and on the right was Section 3. That was to be expected: ONI Section 2, Public Relations (A friendlier word for Propaganda), had a people-friendly office in Belgrade for their headquarters. The words flickered and went out after a few seconds, after all the base had been badly damaged in the attack.
He headed right, which was where Dr. Halsey's office was. Section 1 of ONI, in Andrew's opinion, was most important for now, as it was the Research and Development division of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and pertained mostly to the Navy. Section 3 was Ground Weapons and Tactics, which was more pertinent to the Marines. It also housed the Medical wing, which was where the young officer was headed.
Thick steel doors, which would have blocked a platoon of marines for hours, were quickly torn down by the Covenant squadrons a few days earlier. They, luckily for the Intelligence Officer, didn't go back to fill in the tunnel. Andrew stepped over the small amount of door that remained on the ground and took in what used to be the medical wing.
Normally a pristine white, only a few dust-stained phosphorent lights remained. They painted the room a dull reddish-brown. Fires burned in some parts of the room, and the officer nearly cried at the destruction of his home. He was in hallway which ran in a circle around a surgery center, which was a hundred meters in diameter. On the outside of this ring-shaped hall were offices of the doctors and military officers who worked here. Circling the hall, he finally found what he was looking for: the office of Catherine Halsey.
Getting into her office was easy, the door was unlocked. She was a surprisingly messy person, with old cups of coffee strewn about the place, as well as papers. A digital readout hung over the doctors desk read:
[Error]
Explosive Sequence Halted
Artificial Intelligence Compromised
Time remaining 00:05
Odd, the clock stopped with five seconds to go. It must have been the failsafe to level the facility. Newman didn't know it, but Halsey and her Spartans heard a rippling explosion at about the time the bomb was to go off, but it was only the Covenant's drilling into the mountain. Someone else must have stopped the sequence, someone who knew how to hack, couldn't have been the Covenant. . .
"Who are you?" A voice demanded Andrew.
The officer turned around at a figure who had to be at least seven feet tall. A Spartan.
"I. . .I thought you all died. . ." Newman was speechless. "What happened?"
"Who are you?" the Spartan asked again.
"Senior Intelligence Officer Andrew Newman, and you?"
"Sir!" The Spartan snapped to attention, presumably at noticing the array of medals and rank indicators Andrew revealed by facing the man. "I am Spartan-29, Joshua."
"Well," the SIO stuttered, "T-tell me what happened."
The two sat down and discussed the events of the previous two weeks. Joshua took off his helmet and started: "Me and two other Spartans had been in an attack on a Covenant ship on the ground, and I was separated from my two teammates when I came under direct fire from the ship and had to pull off, I guess they thought I was dead. I spent the next week-and-a-half scouring the undamaged land for his friends and squadmates but failed to find any of them. Then I found the entrance to CASTLE Base and saw them running down a corridor, away from my direction. Before I could call them an explosion caused the hallway to cave in.
"I would have tried to follow them but I knew they set the failsafe, I had to go disable it. I managed to get it with five seconds to spare, as you can see."
"But what about the AI?"
"She, I'm sorry to say, self-destructed. She is erased."
"How have you survived? I mean, there isn't exactly an abundance of food here."
"I found some MREs and I even had to cook a few Grunts."
Andrew looked at Joshua incredulously. "You're kidding me?!"
The Spartan just shook his head.
Andrew wasn't really shocked at eating a Grunt, he had been in very stressful combat situations and knew how hard it could be (After trying a variety when penned down and starving for days on Tantalus IV, Newman decided that Jackals tasted better), but he was very shaken by the fact that some Spartan-IIs had survived, as well as Dr. Halsey. That came as a huge twist in the plot of life for him and it would greatly anger James.
A look of fear spread across Andrew's face. Keeping a cool tone, he whispered, "There are five Elite commanders, the gold kind, in the hall right behind you. Get ready to fire."
Joshua whipped around, rifle in hand, and looked for a target.
Andrew, behind him, pulled out his pistol, a powerful weapon, and shot Joshua square in the back of the neck, killing the mighty Spartan instantly.
He didn't feel remorse for the death, Joshua, while a survivor, was obsolete, James had made sure of that. Joshua would only have gotten in the way, would have questioned James's authority. Only because he grew up with Dr. Halsey. Andrew figured the doctor was probably a good person, but he couldn't afford to have one of her children loose back at base.
Andrew quickly activated Halsey's computer, searching through the files and downloading them indiscriminately onto a data pad. He gathered all of the files on her desk and stuffed them in his sack. All of it was potentially UNSC-saving information.
"Araqiel," the Agent said loudly. "She killed you didn't she?"
His question was answered, as the AI activated. However, its neural command lines had been erased. His body, that of a demonized human, hung in the air. It was dead. With a sinister musculature about him, twisting horns, and flames engulfing his body, Araqiel looked like the fallen angel he was named after. The flames had burned out, and he had no more function, but his memory database had not yet been erased. Newman copied all of his files onto the datapad.
Andrew checked and double checked the data pad to make sure every bit of Halsey's hard-drive and Araqiel's artificial brain copied onto it, and then shot her computer.
Taking off down the hallway, Andrew quickly reached the Y-junction again. Standing in the entrance hall, he turned to face the center of the junction, making sure he did exactly what James had told him to do. "King under the mountain," Andrew said clearly.
Metal creaked and then a door in the ground opened to reveal a stair which led under the hallway. Above it a holosign flickered and went out, it had read Section 4.
Section 4 was the Intelligence and Secret Weapons division, which employed Andrew and his cousin, Elias Haverson. Without a second thought, Andrew strode down the stairs, coming to a junction with 6 hallways. Taking the very center, Andrew continued on.
He needed no flashlight in the dark hallway. The stone corridor had glowing symbols etched into the walls. Circles, squares, lines, triangles, Andrew strode past them all, reaching the dead-end of the passage in ten minutes. A glowing gold circle encompassed the wall that stood before him. Inside of the circle was a square, with a triangle inside of that and a vertical line in that.
The Lieutenant ran his finger down the line, painting it in blood. This was his key into the next section: the ground shook and the stone wall in front of him lifted into the ceiling. Walking into this new portion of the base, the SIO took a glance at his surroundings: an ancient city, made of marble buildings and a pristine citadel extended from the ground in front of him. A bright sun reflected off of the domes and rooftops, casting a golden glow onto Andrew. He knew it was all an illusion, but still tried to touch the structures, only to have his fingers tear through the marble.
Fake buildings aside, Andrew moved on, heading for the towing spire a few hundred meters away. Coming to the only real building in the underground cavern, Andrew entered the front door to the citadel and looked up; it was completely hollow. In the center of the room, a glowing blue pedestal rose about a meter, and the floor seemed to have a turquoise and gray color in an almost camouflage-like configuration. Above him, a blood-red crystal hovered, with a dull gray metal wrapping around portions of it.
The officer knew that this was an illusion as well. He walked to the pedestal, extending his hand which groped about for a bit until his fingers formed a fist around an invisible, inch-thick cylindrical object. The crimson shard above disappeared, and reappeared in agent's hand. Andrew proudly held it up, knowing that this would save the UNSC and the human race, pocketed it, and left.
Exiting the citadel, he saw that the city had transformed into a beach, with the golden sun on the horizon marking where the entrance was. Okay, Newman thought, Have a little faith. He walked into the water, which did not in the least bit dampen his clothes. He was waist deep, neck deep, then completely submerged. He could still breathe with ease. He walked a few hundred meters back to the door, which was covered by the holographic sun. Its warmth filled Newman as he walked through it and back into the tunnel. Mission Complete.
Leaving CASTLE Base, Andrew saw his pitch-black prowler on the ground in front of him, landing gear extended. The small vessel, which he had named the Raven, was well armed for a vessel of its size, but that was of no importance as Andrew boarded the craft and took off to get back to James. James would be very pleased at this finding.
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