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Halo: After the war PREVIEW COPY
Posted By: Justin Icenhour<justin_icenhour@yahoo.com>
Date: 6 December 2007, 3:18 pm
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INTRODUCTION: BACK TO THE CRYOTUBE
"Wake me, when you need me" was the last words that came from Master Chief's lips, before he sat foot back into the Cryotube. He hoped that they would find Cortana and him soon; he really wanted to get back home, to Earth. They have been drifting in Installation 04's debris-field for 3 months now onboard UNSC ship Frigate, hoping and praying the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) would send someone soon to find them.
Meanwhile back on Earth, Commander Hood had just said goodbye and thanked the Arbiter for helping destroy the prophets' great journey, and the Brutes. He also thanked him for his help in destroying the Flood parasites. This war against The Covenant and the flood has been going on now for around 4 years, but Commander Hood could not give the Arbiter full gratitude. When the UNSC fled from planet REACH, the now arbiter was the master over all of the elites and aided the prophets in the finding of the first halo and then Delta Halo.
Cortana is sitting there, in the hologram base looking and remembering the Spartan II she chose back on the planet REACH. She thought back on all the memories from finding the first Halo ring, to destroying the last one and the entire Covenant armada. She remembered those Marines that had fought for Earth and had lost their lives, and the other Spartan II's that had been friends with the Chief and had been lost through the years in the war. She also thought and prayed for the souls of those fallen heroes, and their friends they left behind as well.
Commander Hood watched as the Arbiter boarded the Capital Ship, and headed towards the slip space portal above the hill. He watched until they were out of sight, he turned back towards to the barren hill. He walked up to the memorial and reflected back upon the fallen heroes of the UNSC. He remembered Sgt. Avery Johnson one of the Master Chief's best friends, Cpt. Keyes and his daughter Miranda Keyes. He walked and looked over all the names and faces of the fallen heroes, and stood there remembering why they had come to rest on this monument. He then walked away with watery eyes.
Back on the Frigate Cortana was still going over her thoughts and memories about the war against the Covenant and how long it had taken to deprive the army of aliens' lives. She thought about being locked in High Charity, while Master Chief was on his way back to earth without her, and she just couldn't forget the Grave Mind possessing all of her thoughts and all of the UNSC's data about weapons recovery systems. And the monitors 343 Guilty spark and 2401 Penitent Tangent who had led them straight into a trap to destroy the Halo Rings, and rid the entire galaxy of all sentient life.
CHAPTER 1: A Reclaimers Nightmare
Before the Master Chief had to destroy the halo rings he met up with a floating mechanical device called the Monitor. He called himself 343 Guilty Spark, and was the guard over halo's control center. He had told Master Chief after they met in the swamp where the assault on the flood began, that he would help him destroy the flood parasites. The truth would come out later about this floating device. The Master Chief had been ordered to be careful in dealing with him because the UNSC didn't have any background info on halo or its monitors, so he approached every situation with caution. The Monitor had told the Master Chief that if he would just listen, he would help him destroy the flood and a lot more that Master Chief didn't know at this point in time. But the flood would soon reveal the truth to halo.
The monitor then led Master Chief to a place he called the library, which housed the index to light the ring. With the help of the monitor and his floating sentinels, armed with beam weapons, you fight off the flood that is infesting the structure. This place freaked the Master Chief out, with its long dark corridors and glowing panels, he had an eerie feeling about being in this place with an unknown blue floating ball for starters. There were no marines, or covenant in here to break the monotony and no vehicles, or outdoor areas: not even a window.
While floating through the darkness Master Chief hears the monitor refer to him as the reclaimer, leading to rampant speculation that either humanity themselves are the forerunners, or that the Master Chief goes back in time later in the war against the flood. The monitor demands that the Master Chief use weak weapons, urges him to get a better suit, and indicates the flood would begin to alter the rings atmosphere. The monitor then brings them up to a clearing in a hall and looks at a huge spherical elevator of sorts, then tells him to step up onto it. When the monitor and he reach the top floor there is a floating green device in the center of a platform, the monitor tells Master Chief to retrieve it, and calls it the index.
Then the monitor rips the index from Master Chief's hands and tells him that he would hang on to it, telling the Master Chief that his biological feature makes him vulnerable to the flood, which requires the monitor to keep the index safe for transport. Then out of nowhere, the monitor teleports them again to the Control Room of halo. Upon entering the control room with the monitor, he is mentioning that factors in being susceptible to the flood infection are biomass and intelligence. The monitor then hands the index back to the chief and tells him to insert it into the control rooms' panels, and the system appears to start powering up; at that point, a red eyed "rampant cortana" appears to stop the process. She reveals that activating Halo doesn't kill the flood, but rather all sentient life that sustains the flood habitats. The monitor turns to the Master Chief to confirm that it is true. Cortana grabs the index out of monitors grasp, and when the Master Chief refuses Spark's order to return it and evacuate cortana from the Core.
The monitor summons his sentinels which float up from underneath the holographic map. Master Chief then kills all of the monitors' sentinels and heads for the exit. Cortana then tells the Chief his ultimate mission now is to destroy Halo to prevent its activation. She then tells him he'll need to find and disable three pulse generators located in the canyons around the Control Room. The Master Chief realizes the geometry is the same as the control rooms, but the mood is entirely different; the darkened sky, the falling snow, and the complete lack of any live human marines create this sense of foreboding.
He goes and destroys pulse generator #1 and then gets up the canyon on to #2. When he reaches the 3rd pulse generator the room inside has an eerie quietness to it, then she tells him that she has found a way to access the ring's teleportation grid and would have to power it with his suit. She said she would only try that once, and at that moment she teleports them both into an abandoned covenant Capitol ship, where they find Cpt. Keyes's body engulfed by the flood, Master Chief gets his neural implants and cortana heads to the Pillar of Autumn, which is the horse they rode in on.
They get to the Pillar of Autumn and find that it has been overtaken by the flood, the parasite forms. And there are hundreds of sentinels now on the flood's side trying to destroy the chief and he struggles his way to the engine room. He walks out of the bridge doorway and across the room flood pour into the room from 2 other access doors. He throws a plasma grenade that he found on a dead grunt's body and threw it into the horde. They all were destroyed so Master Chief keeps heading towards the engine room, where he then finds the monitor. He is scanning the POA's control panels stealing the human information on weapons counter attack's and other classified information. He see's Master Chief walk into the room and lets out this high pitched laughter, and tells the chief he can't believe all the wealth of information the humans had provided him. There was nothing the chief could do to stop him so he hurried his way up the walkway to the exhaust coupling's and destroyed them then took the elevator to the vehicle room, jumped into a warthog and raced across the bottom of the ship towards one remaining long sword fighter in the hanger. When he reached the long swords bay door, he closed it and the flood narrowly missed the opening. He ignited the engines and took off out of the hanger, and headed for halo's atmosphere. He shut down the engines and looked back out of the window as Halo exploded into a huge fireball that rocked the fighter. He was on his way home to earth, to the satellite space station Cairo.
Chapter 2: Old Memories: Sgt. Johnson
Sgt. Avery Johnson was a very smart UNSC Marine, and a very kind and loving person to all the UNSC forces. He had come to know Master Chief really well between battles fought on Reach, Halo, Delta Halo, and Earth. It was hard for master chief to watch as the monitor turned on the humans, because they were trying to destroy the ark, and all the other halo rings. The monitor hit Sgt. Johnson in the chest with a powerful laser weapon that came from his eye. Sgt. Johnson fell fast to the floor and the chief hurried over and kneeled at his side. He told Sgt. Johnson that he would help him out of this place and get them back home.
As soon as Sgt. Johnson tried to respond he collapsed, dead on the floor. It got silent as the chief just sat there for a few minutes just staring at the man he had come to know so well. A fellow marine, and a very great friend dead because, of this war. Master Chief grabbed Sgt. Johnsons' Spartan laser, and left his body behind, because he knew when he destroyed this place that this place would be Sgt. Johnson's grave. When the chief and Cortana came to the control rooms giant door it opened and there was exploding metal everywhere, the platform to escape was falling around them.
Chief jumped in Johnsons Warthog and headed off towards the escape route that would lead them to the awaiting frigate. As they drove along the path they squashed all kinds of flood that was in the path, funny how all the flood were trying to go the same way as the Chief and Cortana. They were rounding the last corner when a plate fell before the warthog, Chief had just enough time to lock up the brakes and throw it into reverse. Then they went down a steep incline, and Cortana told the Chief to step on the gas, and as they reached the end, it curved straight towards the sky. They were floating for a few seconds, and then skidded into the bay of the Frigate. The portal that set in the sky ahead, would take them back to earth.
Chapter 2: Old Memories Cont… Cpt. Keyes
Keyes was born on Earth and spent time around the Pacific Ocean during his childhood. It is likely that he attended an Officer Candidate School. During his second year of training, an incident occurred where fourteen ensigns were killed due to an instructor's error during a poorly planned test. Keyes suffered plasma burns during the test and had to be rehabilitated in a hospital for two months. Keyes refused to testify against the instructor and was nearly demoted for it.
In 2517, seven weeks out of the OCS, Lieutenant (Jr. Grade) Keyes was assigned to the UNSC Magellan when those orders were rescinded and he was chosen to assist Dr. Catherine Halsey with her task of searching for usable subjects for her SPARTAN-II project. In order to fool any who were suspicious, they told them that they were looking for a school for their daughter; they began observing the chosen subjects for the program. The first child they chose was SPARTAN subject number 117: John. Keyes never forgot this assignment or the names of each and every one of those children.
As Keyes slowly started learning of the true nature of the SPARTAN-II project, Dr. Halsey immediately sent him back to normal duty with a full Lieutenant commission and he became an excellent strategist when dealing with Covenant. He became a minor hero early in his career when he led a small group of security troops against a Covenant ambush of the frigate UNSC Meriwether Lewis and held the Covenant off long enough for the ship to escape. He later toured on the Frigate UNSC Midsummer Night. He garnered many citations and years of combat experience against the Covenant during these tours. During one of these tours, Keyes went to Charybdis IX. There, he killed his first human being with a pistol during a riot. He later taught at the OCS Academy. Some of the top brass at HIGHCOM disapproved of him and he got the nickname "Schoolmaster" from those detractors, who thought he didn't belong in command of anything but a classroom, if that.
Chapter 2: Old Memories Cont… Cortana
Cortana is a smart A.I., meaning she has the ability to perform processes at blinding speed like a normal AI, but also making her capable of assuming a personality akin to a human civilian. She is a "smart" artificial intelligence, but the drawback is she will over think herself to death once her seven years are up. She is the artificial intelligence behind the Pillar of Autumn, although she does not have absolute control; Captain Keyes retains some exclusive powers, which he can execute through his neural implants. This is likely used as a failsafe should rampancy ever occur. Cortana has no physical body, but she can communicate through comm. systems and project a holographic image of herself from appropriate projectors, such as Holotanks. Her chosen avatar is that of a female human with purplish skin, short hair, and blue to green symbols scrolling down her body. Her appearance changes noticeably from Halo: Combat Evolved to Halo 2; she has longer hair, a more realistic figure, making her more human, a more feminine figure, and a slightly different shade of purple.
Cortana was designed to infiltrate computer systems and she is very good at that task. She has become so intelligent that she understands Covenant technology more than its makers. So far, she has not encountered a security program she was not able to defeat. In addition, she is proficient with UNSC military hardware and can run military ships or stations by herself. Indeed, the UNSC's primary use of AIs is to oversee targeting of point-defense weaponry used in space battles. For Cortana, this is merely an additional capability. One of her primary missions was to assist the Spartans in the capture of the Covenant High Prophets, and then to negotiate either a truce or peace treaty.
Cortana has no physical form, unlike 343 Guilty Spark's avatar. However, she maintains the ability to communicate a strong female voice through available communications systems and, if possible, project a holographic image of herself. Originally, the core of Cortana was contained in a disk which could be inserted into most systems; however, the MJOLNIR Mark VI armor system is apparently equipped to allow her to transfer from system to system with a mere touch of the palm. Cortana was designed to infiltrate any security system, and once she is physically inside, there is little that can stop her from taking absolute control. Cortana was made to share the SPARTANS' MJOLNIR suits. Later the Master Chief is set to escape with her from the attacked ship Pillar of Autumn, guiding him through his various mission tasks on Halo. Master Chief's reaction speed is greatly increased by this, as Cortana resides in the space between his mind and his suit and further boosts his already superhuman reaction speed.
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