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Halo - a parody: 4. Death and Taxes
Posted By: LegendaryMark<mark_likes_cake@hotmail.com>
Date: 19 September 2005, 11:12 am
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Chapter 4: Death and Taxes
"I'll continue on and investigate this stash of treasure" radioed Keys as he dropped the Chef off near Halo's control room. Dollar signs still visible in his eyes, his delivery ship took off towards his destination, leaving the Master Chef alone with Cortonfire.
"We'd better get moving" she said.
The Chef looked slowly at his surroundings. Snowy cliffs stretched as far as the eyes could see. A few trees dotted the landscape, but this was predominately a barren and cheerless place*. Snow blanketed strange installations, the purposes of which the Chef could only guess at. Against the howling of the wind, he heard a couple of encroaching "Warts'n'all" jeeps, probably the same jeeps which were supposed to rendezvous with them when they landed.
"Climb aboard Chef!" cried one of the marines, clearly narcotized. Checking the back of the vehicle for weapons, the Chef was pleasantly surprised to find two peashooters and a mighty Spud Launcher. Feeling a lot safer with such powerful weaponry in tow, the Chef saddled up and the Warts'n'alls moved off in the general direction of the control room.
As they came to a large open area between the cliffs, they encountered the Consonant forces entrusted with guarding the control room. Obviously, the Consonant were not expecting an attack. Elitists were laid back in their leather armchairs smoking their pipes and chatting about the good old days while gnomes sat in circles, drinking heavily and playing idiotic games. Just as one gnome was declaring in a loud voice that everyone was "his bestest mate in the whole wide world", the sense of ease disappeared as one of the elitists sighted the humans through his monocle.
Strange Consonant scout vehicles, known to the elitists as "1935 Bentley convertibles", quickly encircled the hapless party. Elitists tooted their ridiculous horns and prepared to advance.
"The Spud Launcher!" cried Cortonfire.
Loading the launcher with spuds as best he could given that his hands were trembling like leaves, he glanced at the simple usage guide which had a picture of a man holding the launcher and was marked "Hold This Way". The Chef did so, and fired. An explosive spud came flying out of the back of the launcher and hit the Bentley that was currently racing up behind the Chef and his comrades, blowing it to smithereens while producing a nice creamy mash. Hurriedly, the Chef turned the launcher on the other Bentleys, and soon there was nothing left except topping for a shepherd's pie.
"Hedgehogs!" Cortonfire screamed, seeing two blue monstrosities approaching from the distance. The Chef's heart sank, he had seen the videos in training of how these creatures could make the ears of fine servicemen bleed with their incessant childish cries of "C'mon Tails, let's go get Dr. Robotnik!" and "Super Sonic speed!". The two blue specks grew larger as they raced closer. John realised he had little in the way of ammunition, and produced the only thing he could think of. As the hedgehogs stopped in front of the marines, they realised what the Chef had in his hands.
"Eggs! Aiieeee!!" they chorused.
As the Chef rained free-range death down upon the unfortunate hedgehogs, the marines looked on with satisfaction ("All the colours of the rainbow!!"). Golden rings scattered everywhere. A lawyer for Sega rubbed his hands with glee.
With the elitists and the hedgehogs vanquished and the gnomes too drunk to do anything, the Chef found his path to the control centre mercifully clear. Drawing nearer, he saw that it was a huge structure, cut into the face of one of the snowy cliffs. Ramps zigzagged ominously up the face of the installation for hundreds of yards, a tough trek for even the most seasoned of soldiers. The Chef took the elevator. Finding no Consonant forces at the top, and hypothesising that he must have bypassed a spawn trigger, he opened the large door that led into the control centre.
The Chef stood there for several minutes, awestruck by what he saw. A massive spherical room lay before him, with a walkway leading into the centre. Surrounding it was a large hologram, which looked rather like a screen with masses and masses of numbers on it. John could make neither head nor tail of these; he was looking around for some explanation as to what they might mean, when Cortonfire pointed out the terminal in the centre of the room.
"That terminal, try there".
Sceptical, the Chef walked over to the terminal and docked Cortonfire with it, expecting to see the familiar "Hardware not recognised" message. As luck would have it however, she seemed to interface with the terminal with relative ease. She booted up her hologram in a few short minutes and the Chef found himself looking once more upon her purple holographic figure. Why purple, he could only wonder.
"You alright?" he asked as he saw Cortonfire shift uncomfortably.
"Never been worse!" she exclaimed, "the knowledge, so much so fast, I just can't handle it".
"Just stop accessing the useless stuff and tell me something I might actually want to know" said the Chef, wondering if he could find a gas oven somewhere.
"What?"
"Halo. How do we use it as a weapon?"
"This ring isn't a cudgel" said Cortonfire, once again showing her penchant for stating the obvious. "It's something else, something much more important. Accessing data…"
As the familiar progress bar appeared, the Chef snoozed off, knowing he had a bit of time. Cortonfire woke him some hours later.
"Alright, data accessed. Processing data…" The Chef rolled his eyes.
"How much longer will this take?"
"Wait, I'm getting something. This ring, it's a weapon of sorts, to be used against… no, no it can't be".
"What can't be?" asked the Chef, who was getting anxious.
"No, it's too horrible to imagine… wait… the Captain! You've got to stop him; it's not really treasure he's going to find!!"
"What?! I don't understand…" stammered the Chef.
"Just go! Help Keys! I'll stay here out of harms… erm, I mean, bravely processing this data by myself. Just hurry! Before it's too late!!"
One delivery ship ride later (which the author has neither the time nor patience to describe), John was feeling even more nervous as he approached the swampy area in which the captain's ship was located. There had been something in Cortonfire's voice, some ancient terror lurked here and she knew what it was. His thoughts were interrupted by a voice over the radio.
"The last transmission from the Captain's ship was from this area. Here, you can listen to it…"
The pilot played Keys' last transmission (which mostly consisted of a drunken rendition of "We're in the money"), and then continued.
"When you locate Keys, radio in, and I'll come pick you up."
The Chef disembarked at the mouth of a large structure. Just as the Chef was about to move in, Consonant forces came rushing out. Jackdaws fleeing in terror, holding their stashes of gold coins close to their chests, gnomes discarding their pickaxes and making as if they were unemployed. What could drive them so mad with fear? The Chef wondered this as he entered the facility, checking around for any signs of danger. Taking a lift downwards, his sense of dread began to grow.
He pressed on when he reached the bottom of the lift, finding few Consonant troops to impede his progress. He happened upon some elitists lying on the ground, presumably dead, their wallets having been sucked dry. Heartened by the fact that this new terror seemed to prey on the Consonant, he moved onwards. Presently, he came to a short corridor with a doorway in the middle. Pressing the button intended for disabled users, he opened the door. To his horror, a marine fell into his arms, dead. He crept slowly inside the room, keeping his peashooter close. Laying the marine down, he noticed more dead bodies sporting large holes in their pockets. One of the marines had, by chance, been carrying a video camera. Rewinding and playing the footage, the Chef saw the events of Keys' fateful mission unfold before him.
"Why do we have to listen to this old stuff Sarge?"
"What old stuff son? There's no music playing. It's in your head" said Sergeant Johansson who had obviously cottoned on to Keys' little treasure hunt.
The drop ship they were in landed, the marines filed out as best they could.
The Chef fast-forwarded.
The marines were now standing in the room that the Chef was currently in. Milling about and knocking on walls looking for secret doors, they heard the voice of the second squad commander crackle over the radio.
"Captain! We've got contact! Not Consonant, no, no, I'm unemployed! On benefits, I tell you! Stay away! Oh god! Arrrggghhhhhh…"
Obviously regretting their decisions to come on this expedition, the marines started shifting slowly towards the doorway, when they too heard a sound. From the far doorway in the room, they saw emerge a sight more horrible than custard and lard pie.
"Aiieeee!" wailed one of the petrified marines. "Taxmen!"
Twisted by the years spent imprisoned in the facility and lusting for victims, the parasitic taxmen sprinted towards the luckless party of marines. Bowler hats and red briefcases flew everywhere, wallets were ripped out of marines' pockets, and in the blink of an eye several of the marines were bled dry. The video became more and more blurred as the cameraman fled for his life, only to be brought down by a flying audit. As the video cut out, cries of "40%!" and "You owe us!!" were barely audible. Keys was nowhere to be seen.
The Chef discarded the video camera and looked around in fear. Running out of the room and back the way he came, he saw taxmen attacking hapless Consonant troops on all sides. The elitists were particularly hard-hit, it seemed these taxmen were from a non-conservative era. The monetary murderers rampaged around, taxing at will. Their dapper suits were merely slightly stained by the acidic jam of the hopelessly outnumbered elitists, who decided that discretion was the better part of valour and started fleeing for their lives. Coming back to the lift he had previously come down, the Chef's heart sank when he saw "Out of order" on a large sheet of A4 tacked to the perfectly functioning controls. Skipping onto the lift, his fortune changed when he fell backwards onto the control panel and the lift whooshed rapidly upwards, leaving the taxmen fuming and screaming incoherently about "taxes without borders".
Reaching the top, he found more frightened marines.
"Chef! We've gotta get the hell out of here!" screamed one of them.
Agreeing in earnest, the Chef sprinted out the way he had come and started calling for evacuation on his radio. Marines flooded out behind him; obviously the prospect of getting taxed to death had sobered them up somewhat.
"There's a large structure a few metres from your current position, stay there and I'll come pick you up. But let's hurry it up, I have a schedule to keep, you know."
The Chef noticed the large structure that the pilot had been talking about and couldn't think why he hadn't noticed it before. However, he found he had little time to think as taxmen began appearing out of the swampy marshes. The situation looked hopeless, marines were firing upon the encroaching monsters, but their bullets did little to slow the parasite's advance. Suddenly, as if in answer to the Chef's prayers, floating machines started appeared from the structure and started attacking the taxmen. Their brilliant weapons swamped the taxmen with reams and reams of paperwork, leaving the parasites unable to tax anything and rendering them useless. As the marines cheered at their new comrades, the Master Chef came face to face with what was presumably their leader.
"Well hello. Aren't you a handsome devil?"
"What are you?" said the Chef to the floating blue orb that had materialised in front of him.
"What? Don't you mean 'who' darling? I am 343 Gender Suspect. I am the Janitor of installation 04."
Before the Chef had time to decipher what this thing had just said, he found himself encased by a blue light and feeling strange all over, particularly his backside. As he was whisked off to some new location, he hoped to the heavens that he wasn't the first ever human to be sodomised by a floating blue alien AI. As the view in front of him disappeared, he heard a voice over the radio getting fainter and fainter.
"Chef? Chef? Damn tracking equipment, couldn't they pay for anything better? Chef I've lost your signal, I'll remind you that my company is not liable for any loss or damage of…"
The adventures of the Master Chef were not over yet.
* Not unlike northern Wales.
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