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Calistra: The Tides of War
Posted By: Jason<promodo@tampabay.rr.com>
Date: 8 October 2003, 4:33 AM
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This story is a one-time shot. If people like reading it, I'll write another. I know that some of my continuity is a bit flawed, but I tried to keep it in touch with the timeline of Fall of Reach. Likewise, please don't jump on my back about any of the details of the story I may have mixed slightly in the writing. I just hope you enjoy this little piece of fan fiction. If you do, send me an e-mail with your comments. If I get enough good response, I'll make another one, likely after the Flood on Halo.
Calistra
1400 Hours, July 29, 2552 / Location Undisclosed by UNSC Headquarters
It always seemed to rain. For the past twelve hundred and eighty-nine days, it had rained, in one form or another. To the high north, it snowed. In the south, a thousand-mile wide hurricane churned against the western coast of the ungodly, barren landmass positioned in a sea of violet water. From high orbit, the place looked like a meteorologist's nightmare. Weather patterns were uncontrolled and erratic, causing the terran colonists settled there to leave behind the terraforming efforts and retreat into the highlands of the ugly planet, in the one true city present-- a dull glow from space. It was unknown as of yet what made the weather controlled atmosphere systems go haywire and bring about this biblical flood on the planet of Calistra, but the Office of Naval Intelligence had reason to believe Covenant involvement was possible.
The Master Chief was called off assignment in route to Reach specifically for this reason. A seventeen hour side-track by high-speed slipstream transport had taken him over 540-million kilometers off-path to his destination. When he reached a high orbit, the ship's onboard AI, Zenith, woke him from cryosleep. After a throaty cough to vomit up the sleep chamber fluid, the Master Chief took a long look out the port window, before turning to the figure of a five foot tall balding Asian man with large black frame glasses in a business suit.
"How long until we make the covert drop, AI?" he said.
The holographic image gave him a squinty eye glance, before looking toward the MJOLNIR armor stationed inside a locking pod. "The name is Zenith, and we are within ten minutes of drop. You had better suit up, Master Chief."
The Master Chief noted the name, but didn't bother speaking to the AI again... he was pulled off a ship with his SPARTANs on short notice because the spooks at ONI hadn't been able to fix their air conditioner. He belonged on Reach, getting ready for the Covenant, and here he was, hours away with a snippy AI for a pilot on a mission he knew little to nothing about. He had read over the report, and remembered exactly what it said, his keen mind playing it over again in his thoughts.
Official UNSC Business. Top Secret.
Master Chief Unit John-117, you are to withdraw immediately from the carrier ship Manales and board long range high-speed transport vessel Haywire. This vessel is currently masking its presence in docking port two of your vessel. You are to rendezvous at planet Calistra, Mark 22.34.3 in the Sigma Octanus system. Reports show a loss of pressure in atmosphere similar to massive object entry from orbit, followed by an influx in the atmospheric weather systems present on the surface. Your mission is to perform light reconnaissance of the area, and report back by 0400 Hours July 30 with information regarding your findings.
The chief recalled it had been signed by a high admiral, and held three verification codes to the signature bond. Whoever sent him on this mission knew what they wanted done.
As the ship reached a lower orbit for covert entry, the Master Chief finished suiting up. He loaded his ammunition light for the mission, taking only a standard M6D handheld pistol with three reserve clips, and an S2 AM Sniper Rifle with a special helmet-intergraded scope link. Upon his side and front belt, a short chain of five confiscated Covenant plasma grenades. He found their ability to stick to a target made a much more effective weapon when a grunt ran toward elites for help. Finally, he packed a single, small HAVOK tactical nuke. You know—just incase.
Seventeen minutes later, and he climbed down to the bottom level of the small transport, to a single strange oval-shaped pod. It looked much to him like a suppository, and that was pretty much what it was, ready to cram him through low atmosphere and drop him down to the surface of the planet. The Master Chief stepped forward into the holding pod, his shoulders locking by the armor plating directly into the frame structure of the inner shell. As he did so, the Master Chief drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.
He was not claustrophobic, he just hated these drops. He never understood how the UNSC Shock Troops could do this every mission. As the outer shell sealed itself and flooded with suspension foam, the cramped feeling increased, and the Master Chief lost total mobility. As of this point, his life was completely in the hands of Zenith, the little AI unit controlling the craft. The outer shell's balancing gel swam over the pod, creating a clear, three inch layer of jelly between it and the outer shell which now sealed itself around the jelly casing, thick panels with small directional guidance fins along its underside, and a drop gauge thruster at the bottom which secured through the gel to the Master Chief's pod.
A subtle click was heard and felt under the Chief as the chamber closed, and he held his breath for the instant before the drop. The chute opened and the airlock discharged him with a smooth, easy drop, as though gliding through silk. It all changed however, as the master chief started slowly tumbling toward the planet's surface. Quickly hitting atmosphere, his fins adjusted his pitch and stabilized his fall, but they did nothing for turbulence within the pod itself. The inner chamber hummed and vibrated wickedly as the chief descended at a rate of five hundred meters per second with the designated trajectory in sight. His pod automatically lined up, as he literally traveled feet first into hell, as the slogan went. His pod's outer casing peeled away from the thruster unit like a hard boiled egg, the heat stripping away the outer casing in panels. The cooling gel around his shell quickly absorbed the heat of the drop, as the chief fell within two-thousand meters of the surface of Calistra. The world around him was a vibrating mess, his teeth rattling in his skull as he felt a sudden jolt through his entire body. For the Drop Troops it usually felt like being crushed a foot shorter, but for the enhanced chief, it was a hiccup before he felt himself slowing down.... within a hundred meters, his drop jets killed, letting him fall at an acceptable five meters per second, while the ground rushed up below him. Praying for a proper calculation on landing trajectory, the chief watched through the thin view port as the gel on his body finally superheated itself enough that its density increased, letting it slide down quicker than his pod and pool at its base in a large teardrop form. Impact was ten feet away as his pod literally popped in half, the top portion stripping away and instantly allowing the rain of the planet to fall upon the foam-packed master chief. Impact with the surface was at twenty-five miles an hour, the shock of the gel impacting and being forced up under the remaining part of the pod jettisoning the master chief three meters into the air as though shot from a cannon. Moving his form and shattering the solid foam around him, he landed on the ground low in a crouch, and instantly began a swift run toward his target, the city five kilometers in the distance.
The Master Chief made the run in just under ten minutes, and without breaking into a heavy breath. As he caught his wind lightly, he surveyed the area around him, taking in the image of the city walls where thick mud had been pounded up in large drifts to near their tops from harsh wind and rain. This was luckily to the Master Chief's advantage. If not for them, he would have to enter through an exhaust port. While his armor could withstand the temperature, the smell of burning trash on his armor might give him away to any enemy presence.
With a hand out in front to support his form, the Master Chief strode up a hill of mud, glistening violet from the reflected light off one of the planet's aquatic moons. He reached the wall in seconds, and then it was just a two-meter hop to land over it and onto the walking passage of the city's garrison walkway.
He landed with a light click of his boots to the floor, and came face to face with a Jackal, who looked -very- surprised to see him there. Before it had a chance to scream for help, the Chief had already evaluated the situation, and rather than waste a noisy bullet on the ugly little wretch, he drew his pistol and spun it around in his palm, snapping it firmly down on the Jackal's skull. It gave a sick cracking sound as violet blood spilled from the creature's ear holes and its eyes rolled up into its skull. A quick spin of his pistol in his palm and he reholstered it, moving onward now with a precise and careful silence.
The city before him lay completely in ruins. The barrage of rain and heavy cloud cover left a rich fog on the streets and high clouds covered most of the city above the wall. Below, the Master Chief could now see a Covenant Destroyer-class ship, and two smaller ships, one of which he had never seen before in any intelligence portfolio on the Covenant. Using his helmet's built in video recorder, he made documentation of all of this, before continuing on and down into the rubble that was once the city of Calistra Major.
The air ventilators in his helmet, though powerful against toxic clouds of poisonous gas and the most destructive airborne viruses, could do nothing to mask the scent he caught next, which formed a knot in his stomach. Human flesh on fire. The Master Chief unslung his sniper rifle off his back, the scope activated as he targeted a slight orange glow toward the center of the city. His eyes slowly slid closed after he took in the sight the scope allowed him to see five thousand feet away.
Jackals and Elites stood in revelry above mounds of human bodies, some of which were already burning atop large fires stacked dozens high. Around them, support crafts stood in wait, lain along the sides of the street as though in parade; Banshees, Ghosts, and even two Covenant hovertanks. The citizens of the colony never knew what hit them.
The Master Chief clenched his fist at his side as he slung the rifle over his back again, his shoulders tightening as he took a slow breath. He remembered Chief Petty Officer Mendez, and his words... the mission came first. Assessing himself of the situation, the Master Chief proceeded onward through the shadows of the rubble, avoiding the light of burning fires or Covenant spotlights.
Reaching the apex of the destruction, the Master Chief was intent on taking in the details of the new Covenant ship from different angles for the spooks back at ONI. As he approached, he was aware of an odd, acrid scent on the air, reminding the Chief of ammonia and bile. He turned on the fresh-air circulator inside his helmet through his neural implant, and the scent faded to a light notion of itself as he proceeded onward. The walls of the buildings around him showed strange signs of damage... unlike the cracks and shattered image of plasma damage usually left in a Covenant attack, these were large dents placed, or just wide cavities torn into steel barriers and walls. The lamp posts in the area were likewise damaged, torn down or twisted into oddly curling shapes.
The Chief was considering these oddities, just as the answer to such came literally walking around the bend. From the end of the block, something all together new arrived. In fact, five of them walked in a v-formation, with strange, tubular weapons held perched in their hands. The Chief had seen strange creatures before while fighting the Covenant. He found Hunters to be oddly horrendous, but these new things were smaller, and not nearly as well equipped. Standing at six feet or so tall, each had the same distinctive grey-white armor. It grafted onto their faces in wide, sloping panels, covering the long protruding skulls that arched backward from the rear lobes of their heads in strange cone-like image. Their faces sunk within the helmet, the only sign of their features were writhing, twitching tentacles extending from under their jaws, appearing oddly squid-like in their facial structure. Their bodies bent forward with large protruding shoulder blades, they had what appeared to be natural plating across their forms, the flat, grey structures actually merging into their flesh over their shoulders, chests, arms, forearms, hands, stomachs, hips, thighs, groins, and calves. Their feet, left bare, held large, curving claws from the front, and a shorter from a reversed rear toe.
Closer inspection of the weapons in their three-fingered hands showed a sort of power supply on the back that the Master Chief had seen before. It was very similar to the slipstream generators used on the large carriers and vessels for the UNSC. The only difference was that these were portable and the size of a basketball, and the components were all backwards. The strangely transparent metallic casing showed the inside to be a single point of white light in the center of the casing. It was then that the Chief recalled something Deja had taught him years ago in his youth. Something about how black holes created great amounts of gravity in that light itself gave them away, as a single pinpoint to which all other light flowed.
"My god," he said gently to himself, "a graviton weapon."
As if someone had heard his words and decided to give the Chief a floor demo, a grunt ran through the middle of the street in a queer frenzy as methane jettisoned from his backpack. The facial tentacles on the lead Covenant curled slightly, before it leveled its weapon on the grunt and squeezed the trigger release. A single burst was seen as a fluxuation of the air around the barrel of the weapon, and a near instant later, the little grunt and the wall behind it both imploded on themselves, crushed by the controlled burst of hypergravity. A sick, chortling wet sound came from all five as the first returned his weapon to a passive position and continued on.
The Chief knew what kind of devastation these new creatures could bring down on the people of Reach and Earth if they ever made it off this planet. It would be catastrophic for the Terran marines trying to withstand these new monsters. Orders were one thing, but the chance to even out the playing field was another. When he saw it, the Master Chief took a chance. He only hoped his luck held out.
The sniper rifle was unslung from five-hundred yards away, as he switched the safety silently to 'OFF'. The targeting receptacle appeared on his helmet's display, as he initiated a zoom at ten times normal vision. The tentacle filled face of the rear Octapian—a name later decided by the ONI spooks- came into view. Taking a slow breath in, the Chief held it as he slowly squeezed the trigger of the rifle, a smooth discharge made as the rifle compensated for recoil and sent a fin-guided high speed projectile screaming through the air at the speed of sound. The impact tore through the side of the alien's skull, boring through it and out the other side, where it quickly plunged into the neck of the flanking Octapian soldier. Both dropped in the same time that the others turned toward the muzzle flash, their guns raised and tentacles going wild as they fired dead on toward the Master Chief's crouched sniping position.
If the chief had been lying down, he would most certainly have been dead. However, the Covenant did not expect their sniper to leap twelve feet vertically in the air after shooting. With a strong jump, the Master Chief avoided the incoming volley of invisible death just as the platform he was on crushed inward, the stone forming the support crippling inward on itself. Drawing his pistol quickly, he discharged ten well-aimed shots in under two seconds. The lead Octapian took seven of the shots off his armor plating with not even a scratch, but the final two found home in the fleshy side of his neck where the plates separated near the head. In a spray of thick, gelatinous blood, his neck erupted and body crumpled twitching to the ground.
The next volley came from the two remaining Octapians, and they were quite effective. Racing forward, they aimed up beneath the Master Chief and fired off two shots. One missed as his rate of fall allowed him to dodge, but the other caught him directly on the left forearm. A sick pressure felt through his entire form as the wave of gravity flooded across the length of his forearm. He watched in horror as the outer casing of the MJOLNIR cracked, the liquid crystal polymer spewing from the armored chamber of his suit before condensing to solid little spheres and flowing along with the run of the liquid as the gravity pulse left his body. The damaged MJOLNIR enhancement systems made his arm feel like dead weight compared to the rest of him, his forearm and hand bending at what felt like a crawl, as though stirring through molasses.
Reaching across his body, he took his pistol from his free hand, and quickly reloaded from a clip positioned on his hip. Firing with one hand, he closed an eye to take clean aim, and dropped the final two Octapian troopers with the fresh clip in a similar fashion to the others, blasting through their vulnerable necks from the raised angle.
Finally touching down on the ground, the entire battle took less than five seconds. These new adversaries had reflexes nearly equal to those of the Chief, which made him question if even the almighty SPARTAN forces, strongest of the UNSC, could take on an army of these things.
The ship high above him, now casting a shadow as the sun shined dully through the thick rain clouds above the city, glowed in a circular disk along its surface as the transporter powered up. Fearful of what might be coming, the chief unslung his bandolier of plasma grenades, thumbing the trigger on one of them as the silhouettes of three-dozen Octapians arrived on the landing pad. He tossed the bandolier toward their center mass and took cover.
A confused look stood on the face of the Octapian who now had a necklace of plasma grenades, before reality set in and it screeched in a loud pitch. A moment later, flaming blue plasma exploded all around it, first a light blip, then the following grenades in a thunderous eruption that vibrated the ground around it. A moment later, the whole world seemed to shiver and flux, and screams were heard from all around. The wind suddenly focused on the detonation point, charging toward it at ungodly gales, as the master chief stuck his head lightly past the corner to look.
A cursory glance was all he needed to know what had happened. A thin crack had appeared in the casing of the gravity weapon held by the grenade catcher from the explosion. The whole world seemed to be pulling itself into the thin line along the casing, a gruesome sight as the few remaining Octapians not killed in the blast were sucked through a nanometer wide sliver in the armoring. The hole did however seal the crack itself, eventually, pulling the plating itself inward and buckling the hole closed.
The street did not look the same. Absent of pavement and dirt about five feet in every direction, including down, it now lacked any form of Covenant at all for thirty feet in any direction. A small pile of gravity weapons now lay at the bottom of the pit formed, the only evidence the Octapians had ever been there. Oddly enough, one surviving structure stood some hundred feet from the detonation sight. A small panel with cryptic Covenant writing on it stood atop a heavy systems box, just outside the range of the landing pad.
The Master Chief knew what he had to do. Sprinting at breakneck speed, he ran toward the control panel while removing the HAVOK nuke from its holding case. Quickly setting a time delay fuse, the Master Chief tossed the small, durable little cube into the transporter's range. Halting before he reached the transporter controls, however, he turned and made a slight detour to the pit in the center of the platform. Tentatively picking up a pair of the heavy gravity cannons, he turned and continued his run back to the controls. Pressing the clearly labeled "up" arrow on the panel, he watched as the small cube of destruction slowly silhouetted, then shot directly up into space, entering the ship far above him.
By now, a good thirty seconds had passed, and the Covenant he had passed on his way toward the Octapian ship were now coming toward him in full force. Both heavy tanks tore along the rain soaked roadway, as blue plasma spheres lofted high into the air and came down sizzling atmosphere on either side of the Chief, causing the world to rumble. Behind them, ghosts sped toward him, and Banshees began to circle overhead while a stampede of Grunts rushed on foot behind, with Jackals flanking on both sides and Elites thrown in amongst the mix in general, plasma rifles spouting off green lightning in his direction.
Gripping the oddly positioned stock of the three-fingered weapons, the Chief began a hard run forward, directly into the fray. Aiming the two cannons directly at the tanks, he squeezed off a round. Both seemed to suddenly reel backward as though they hit a wall, before crumpling inward as though being stepped on by a giant foot, crushing like aluminum cans.
As soon as he passed these, the chief squeezed off rapid succession rounds with the cannons, turning the tide of the Grunt flood in an instant as they began a retreat from the death bringing weapons. Methane canisters burst into flame that absorbed into the gravity spheres as they flew through the ranks, now appearing as great flaming balls of death that absorbed the grunts and left crumpled piles of flesh and machinery behind.
Turning the weapons on their sides, the chief cold-cocked a pair of elites with a running lunge, their skulls crushed by the impact as the chief landed and continued running, flanking to the left as he discharged his weapons further, targeting the ghosts. A blue plume appeared from each as their plasma engines erupted and spewed outward from their masses, their pilots being contorted into wads of flesh and armor as the ammunition passed by. To be honest, the Chief was starting to like these things.
As he reached the wall, a small internal counter appeared on his helmet's heads up display. Five minutes ticked away on the corner of his vision, as he leapt over the wall and rolled down in the mud toward the ground below, sliding to his feet and quickly picking up a sprinting run that took him at forty-five kilometers per hour away from the city. Turning toward it, he felt a pang of regret, if there had been any survivors in that devastation. His helmet went near-black a second before the timer finished, and on the climax of the countdown, he watched a sharp white flash appear as the city wall disintegrated a half a kilometer away. The shockwave shook his armor and made his left arm throb viciously. He watched as the Covenant ships rocked in the turbulence—the destroyer falling to the ground as its power died from the electromagnetic pulse, crushing the Octapian vessel below it before they both detonated in a brilliant display of white and blue on the planet's surface, visible from space. The Chief turned, and just kept running. Minutes turned into an hour, and no pursuant craft were in the vicinity... it was safe to assume the Master Chief got them all.
At 0400 Hours July 30, the vessel Haywire locked in on the Master Chief's radar signal, and came in for a fast-motion removal in which the Chief literally hopped aboard during a flyby.
Zenith was waiting for him, a stoic expression worn on his face as he spoke with a smart tone, "Light reconnaissance, eh?"
The Chief actually grinned at the AI hologram as he removed his helmet, and simply sighed as he stepped through him and on into the cryosleep compartment of the vessel. It was seventeen hours to Reach, and he planned to get some rest during it.
*User Identification:
SANDECKER
*Passcode:
***************
One Moment Please..........Approved.
User Protocol Allowance: Full System Access/Top Secret Allowance
System Search: Calistra
One Moment Please...........4 files located.
System File Access List:
500001 - Calistra Colony Facilities and Schematics
500002 - Calistra Meteorological Disturbance
500003 - Calistra Planet Mission Log:
Master Chief Unit John-117/UNSC Service
No.:3402-0003-2031-0001 SPARTAN
500004 - Calistra Press Release on Generator Disaster.
Access File 500003.
One Moment Please...........Authorized.
File Loaded.
It was found that unit John-117 came in contact with hostile enemy forces which could threaten the very existence of humanity. In a direct violation of orders, the Master Chief detonated a HAVOK nuclear weapon, destroying the Octapian vessel as well as all other Covenant presence on the planet. 1900 Hours July 30, 2552, planet completely terracided by nuclear bombardment from space by UNSC Vessel George Washington. For analysis information on Octavian Gravity-Repulsor weapons, see attached indexes i.ii.e and i.ii.f.
----- End of File -----
System Command: Logoff.
Goodbye, SANDECKER.
Account Logged Off.
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