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Halo 2.5 chapter 2
Posted By: SPARTAN 117<smfessant@aol.com>
Date: 26 May 2005, 10:19 PM
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The atrium on the Cairo was silent as the personnel onboard waited for the Keyes to come through the door. Lord Hood looked out at them all and was strongly reminded of a week before when the Chief had just returned from his ordeal on Installation 04. He waited for Keyes to walk in and debrief him of the events since the Chief and Cortana had returned
Miranda Keyes walked towards the door at the far end of the tram station. It was flanked by a pair of MPs, who stiffened as she neared the door. She clutched Cortana's memory-processing matrix a little tighter as she neared the room; she knew that the two MPs would shoot her if she twitched in the wrong direction. With all that had been happening, ONI and FLEETCOM had been getting more paranoid every day.
The doors hissed open. Miranda Keyes walked into the room. Hood stood at the far end, and he watched her.
"Tell me what happened. Everything that happened."
"Sir! When the Arbiter killed Tartarus, I retrieved the Index from the gravity beam. Penitent Tangent can tell you about the battle against Tartarus. Anyway, After we exited the control room, there were dozens of Phantoms circling above us. 'We' is myself, Arbiter, a dozen Elites, Penitent
Tangent and Sergeant Johnson. A Phantom swooped down to our platform, and a white Elite popped out.
He pointed to a cruiser on the horizon. 'we must take that ship', he said.
"We moved towards it in Banshees and Phantoms and stormed the ship. There were only a few Brutes in it, and they quickly fell. We commandeered the ship, jumped t slipspace, and here we are. That's the good news. The bad is that all the Halo rings are now ready for remote activation from an 'Ark'. Tangent says that the 'Ark' is here. The coordinates he gave matched the Earth exactly.
Hood sat back and mulled over all this. "So, what you are saying is that if the Covenant get to this Ark then Halo will be activated? All sentient life destroyed?"
"Yes, sir, it looks that way," Keyes replied. Hood sighed.
"Well then it's only a matter of time. At least the Covenant aren't here, though."
The Master Chief was listening to all this through a wire he had threaded through the ventilation duct. He had an idea of where the Ark was...New Mombassa. Why else would the Covenant land there, and only there? It made total sense...and he intended to share this view with Keyes and Hood. He strode past the MPs and through the doors.
"Sir, I believe the Ark is somewhere in New Mombassa. The Covenant, on their previous assault, landed there. The carriers all went straight towards the city. They also said they didn't predict any human presence here....which logically means they came here for some other reason. They probably got coordinate data from the first Halo ring."
"Very good, Chief. Very Good indeed," Hood replied.
The Chief looked out at the blackness of space. He knew the Covenant were out there, waiting to attack.
"Sir? Permission to speak?" asked Keyes.
"Permission granted. Say anything you want."
"Well, we haven't destroyed Delta Halo. However, we have incapacitated it. I have a very valuable artifact, the Index. Without this object, Halo cannot fire. Also, with this Index, we may figure out a way to stop the Flood without activating Halo. I have placed the index in the hands of the Arbiter, an Elite. He is coming here to deliver it to us."
The Doors at the end of the chamber opened and the Arbiter, along with six Elites and Penitent Tangent, walked into the room. The Chief, once again, was uncomfortable. He had killed dozens, maybe even hundreds, of Elites, and it was taking a lot of self control to allow them to be so close to him. He breathed out. The Arbiter said something, but the Chief had become distracted by something he had seen outside. Motes of white light gathered a billion kilometers away. Space shimmered, then separated to reveal five hundred covenant ships.
They moved forward, towards Earth, And The UNSC fleet moved to engage them.
"Wait! All ships pull back and defend the orbital guns.....we can't let them fall!!" Lord Hood said. The ships gathered near Mars to begin a defensive action. The Covenant moved on Earth. When they reached the moon, a thousand single ships poured like an evil cloud from the hangars of every carrier. They streaked towards Earth....towards New Mombassa.
The Chief watched all this, and new that he would have to go groundside to defend the Ark. He requested permission from Hood.
"Sir? Permission to go groundside and defend the Ark?" he asked.
"Permission Granted. Chief? Don't die. That's an order."
The Chief and a small detail of Marines suited up and moved onto their pelican. It screamed out of the hangar on Cairo Station and headed towards Earth. The pilot dodged this and that as the Pelican began to burn in Earth's atmosphere. The Chief shuddered as the Pelican hit an air pocket, drooped 50 feet, then righted itself. Then, all at once, there was a flash, the Chief's shields dropped to none, and he saw the Pelican disintegrate around him.
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