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Operation: Vanguard
Posted By: Sean Mortensen<spartan-257@hotmail.com>
Date: 17 April 2007, 4:50 am
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PROLOGUE:
1245 Hours, August 4, 2545 (Military Calendar)
Planet Scorpio Four, Zeta II Reticuli System
"Head's up!" the man shouted, just as a plasma mortar struck the ground where the squad's overturned Warthog laid, scattering the now molten metal and plastic in all directions.
Scott, SPARTAN-134, leapt up out of the way, and brushed some dirt off of his MJOLNIR armor, as another energy bomb struck the ground a few meters away. He consulted his heads-up display, just as a massive transport screamed overhead, it's engines temporarily drowning out the noises of combat beyond.
The display lit up a topographical map of the surrounding area, as a sector of the invaded city beyond lit up in red.
He mentally recalled his orders: their mission was to infiltrate the city from the storm drains, and eliminate the Covenant threat, without many civilian casualties. But, in case of an unavoidable emergency, he was authorized by Section-Three to detonate a HAVOK tactical nuke, to make sure the Covenant infestation spread no further.
And, Scott thought, is what I really want to do now.
He picked up a dropped MA5B assault rifle, and checked the breech, unloaded. He pulled out a fresh magazine, and slammed it into the receiver. He hefted the weight of the weapon, and slung it on his back as SPARTAN-003: Marcus ran over to him.
"Sir," Marcus said, nervousness creeping into his voice. "We've got a situation."
Suddenly, another plasma bomb struck the ground, causing the earth to tremor again, as Scott looked at his comrade, concerned.
"What is it?"
Marcus pointed to the far ridge, where a long black scar marked where a line of trees once stood.
"There, over the north ridge. Step up magnification to sector three-point-five and you'll see them."
Scott did as Marcus told him, and his faceplate automatically zoomed into the northern region, which was littered with bodies.
But, they weren't human bodies, or Covenant, and Scott was just beginning to realize the severity of their situation when another Spartan approached him, this one with scars racing in all directions on her chest armor.
SPARTAN-126, Katie, snapped off a quick sit-rep.
"Sir, second squadron was cut off," she said.
Then she tossed him a lump of black stone, still smoldering. "And this is all that's left."
It wasn't stone, it was the remainders of a Spartan's helmet, with the carbonized skull still lodged inside.
Scott closed his eyes, and grimaced. For a fallen comrade, and for the souls of those who will die, for doing this to him, and for the revenge he and his squadron was going to get on these bastards.
"How did he die," he asked her, knowing the question was as dry as the lump of metal, plastic and bone in his hands. Katie looked at him, and then a small portion of his screen illuminated, as this fallen warrior's point-of-view appeared.
At first, it was only marred static, then it broke into sunlight, as the man's camera recorded him approaching a tall structure, made of some kind of stone/metal hybrid.
The perspective jostled as the squadron med their way into a dark room, with high stone walls, and only the beam of illumination from the man's barrel-mounted flashlight lighting up the walls as he scanned the perfected symbols.
The walls were engraved with something in writing, but Scott didn't know what the writing said, as the man's perspective shifted to see three more of the Spartans following closely behind him. Then the man made a hand gesture, and as the squad dropped into a crouch, and began creeping forward, deeper into the complex.
Scott watched as the video showed the fallen squadron take an ancient lift down several levels below the complex, and into a enormous high-walled room.
The room, if that's what it was, had all the appearance of a cave, with little illumination coming from beams of light that lined the walls of the chamber. The Spartan made another hand gesture, and then the squadron spread out as the man's perspective showed him approaching the very center of the room, and towards a glowing control panel.
The man consulted the display when one of his comrades approached him, and shone his light on a mangled corpse in the far corner of the room.
"Whatever it was," the man who discovered the corpse said. "It isn't living anymore."
The leader grunted in response when a sudden trembling caused small chunks of stone to rain down on them. Then, the entire chamber collapsed and the screen snapped into blackness, only returning to show the leader being dragged by two Spartans down a narrow corridor, being chased by something.
The perspective shifted view as the leader's helmet rolled to one side, and Scott caught a glimpse of a badly mangled, rotting, leg. Then, the screen cut flared out in a bright flash, as screams of combat and horror were only heard, until there was nothing but a inhuman roar of fury.
Scott shook his head, and looked at the Spartans, his Spartans.
"We've got to find out what it was that killed them."
Katie was the first to shake her head. "Scott," she said. "We need to rescue the civilians, and eliminate the Covenant threat."
Marcus, however, looked at the disc-shaped device strapped to Scott's thigh:
The Havok nuclear mine.
Scott looked at Marcus and smiled. "What do you have in mind, Marcus?"
Marcus pointed to the device and clasped his hands together, his mind slowly formulating a devious plan.
"We split the rest of the squadron in two," he said. "We, take the nuke, plant it in the facility and blow whatever it was back to hell, just in time to help the others finish off the Covenant invasion forces."
Scott was amazed by this plan, and even more so was Katie when she spoke up.
"That's just crazy enough to work."
Scott looked at them, then nodded. "Then let's get to work."
Scott handed Marcus the explosive device and the arming cards as Katie went to go retrieve a Warthog for their mission.
Marcus smiled behind his faceplate, being given a tactical nuclear device was like Christmas coming early to him.
He always loved playing with explosives as a child, although that memory was only one of several few that seemed to stay with him through their 'transfiguration' into Spartans.
Scott watched as the Warthog rumbled to a stop and Katie climbed out of it. She tossed him a pair of M6Cs, and he clipped them on his thighs. He turned to look at them, and nodded to the vehicle.
"Let's go."
The Warthog peeled off, heading north to where the structure that claimed his comrades laid, and out into a valley, where a narrow river split the area in two.
Katie consulted her HUD and pointed to the far end of the valley.
"The structure's supposed to be over there."
Scott nodded and floored the accelerator, kicking up grass and mud in the twin wakes left behind the Warthog.
As they headed up a rise in the valley floor, the very tip of the structure appeared, before Scott stopped the LRV on the top of the hill.
What he saw, took his breath away.
The structure was a massive stone/metal temple, spires four-hundred meters tall jutting out from the sides and walkways and a enormous bridge spanning a gap in the structure, all made from the same material.
Scott climbed out of the Warthog, and stared up at the structure. He suddenly felt dwarfed by this construct, and if whoever built it was any consideration, he thought, they were a damn sight bigger than us.
Katie pulled out her assault rifle, and slung it over her shoulder as Scott reached behind his seat, and picked up his MA5B while Marcus hefted the small pack that carried the nuke, and spare ammunition.
Scott led the way into the interior of the structure, which still bore the black scorches of the grenades used by the squad of felled Spartans, and through a gargantuan atrium, lined with stone altars and angular outcroppings with engravings on them.
Marcus was in awe as Katie tapped him on the shoulder, and spoke to him in undertones.
"This must've been what Ackerson was looking for."
Scott looked at her, and made a short hand gesture, just as the ground started to rumble, making brown dust fall onto their armor.
"Is this what Ackerson was after," Scott demanded. If anybody wanted to try to eliminate the rest of the Spartans, Scott thought, Colonel James Ackerson was the man who surely would.
Katie nodded as she pointed to a device in the very center of the room. They approached it, and Scott saw that it was covered in red blood. He looked around, just as more blood dripped on the machine from somewhere up above.
Scott pointed his rifle up, sweeping his light from side-to-side, until he saw the most horrific thing imaginable: it was a Spartan, or what was left of one. It's armor impaled on one of several spikes lining the ceiling of the chamber.
Marcus looked at the corpse, and saw that the armor was crushed against the spike, and looked at Scott.
"It looks like the ceiling fell on him, and crushed the armor against his insides, killing him instantly."
Scott nodded, and looked at the impaled corpse as Marcus went on.
"But this armor's supposed to be impenetrable, right," he was beginning to sound worried. "We wear this stuff, because nothing is supposed to be able to completely obliterate the armor."
Scott shrugged and then he looked closer at the mechanical device. It was a cylindrical gear, with the protrusions lined up with grooves set in the floor, and a holographic control panel glowing in the air above the machine.
"So," Scott asked, pointing to the spiked ceiling. "Could this be the fail-safe for those, or for something else?"
Katie shrugged as Marcus shifted on his feet. Scott sighed and looked at the spikes for one last time, and then at Katie.
"Why would Ackerson be interested in something like this?"
After creeping through long, narrow corridors, and cavernous rooms that were empty, they finally reached a wide bridge that spanned a narrow gap from this side of an enormous shaft to the other.
This shaft, led straight down into the very center of the planet, where the titanium core was constructed as a source to generate energy.
They marched across the stone/metal bridge, and into the small room on the far side. This room, after being in the gigantic rooms before, seemed to come as a shock to them, as the floor began to lower itself, down several miles, into the very core of the planet.
As the lift stopped, Scott realized that it suddenly got warmer as his suit automatically adjusted to the abrupt rise in heat.
Marcus and Katie stepped off, following him as they headed through a narrow corridor, and out onto a ledge overlooking the entire inside of the core itself.
Scott looked around, and saw that there were thousands of ledges, all spanning around the entire inside, and at the very center, hovering on a purple light, was a structure that resembled a more sophisticated coliseum than the one at Rome.
It finally appeared to them, that they were in the spectator's stand, as the ledge they were on suddenly shifted, and deposited them in the very center of the coliseum.
Scott stood up, and grabbed the twin M6Cs from his thighs as Katie and Marcus snapped up their assault rifles to the ready, and they began to methodically sweep the entire area.
They looked around, as a loud roaring appeared out of thin air from above them, and then, as they turned to search in the direction from where the source of the sound came from, a hole appeared in the center of the arena, and a gray capsule emerged from that opening.
Scott looked at the capsule, which began to open like a banana peel, starting with the top, as lines appeared in the otherwise flawless surface, then, the sides dropped to the floor of the arena with a thud as Marcus looked at him, and then threw a fragmentation grenade into the capsule.
There was a flash of light, then a loud whump! as the grenade detonated. But something was stirring from within, as a odd squishy sound emerged.
Then, something emerged from the capsule, a creature very unlike the Covenant. It had the appearance of a jellyfish, but with the color of fungus, and the stinking odor of rotting flesh. This thing skittered towards Scott, who opened fire with his pistols, and tore the thing up with a couple of rounds.
But, suddenly a wave of those monstrosities emerged from the capsule, and began to swarm around them. Katie opened up with her MA5B, and sprayed the little things with 7.62mm armor-piercing ammo, as Marcus stepped on a couple of them, crushing them beneath his boots.
Scott looked around, trying to assess the situation, but found himself at a loss when Marcus looked at him, as Katie continued to open fire on those little creatures.
"Orders, sir?"
Scott pulled out a grenade, primed it and lobbed it into the midst of the creatures, when it detonated, and sprayed rippling chunks of those creatures in all directions. But more seemed to keep coming.
It seemed that as they killed twenty of those things, eighty more would come to take their place, and Scott was beginning to understand the motive behind why Ackerson wanted this excavated.
Scott looked at Marcus, and shouted over the noise of the skittering flaccid creatures and pointed at the pack.
"Use the nuke," he roared, and then looked at Katie, who nodded. "It's our only effective weapon!" Then he spun around and opened fire, as Marcus pulled out the device, and set it on the stone/metal floor, and began typing in the arming commands. Scott looked at him, and then Katie as the creatures kept on coming, then Marcus nodded and patted Scott on the shoulder. Scott nodded and held up his gauntleted hand, ready to activate the nuclear mine.
He reflected on why Colonel Ackerson wanted this place to be uncovered, but he knew that the man's actions would be washed away of. That man always had a way of getting out of a sticky situation. And now, he thought, the bastard will 'have no recollection' of this situation gone awry, and we will be dead. Gone.
Whispers in the wind.
Then he remembered John, Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117, and smiled as he relived the days of combat training, capture the flag, and Mendez, before looking at his comrades who stood by him, and nodded.
He closed his right hand into a fist, and pushed the small activation button in the gauntlet.
The Havok tactical nuclear mine emitted a bright white flash, and detonated, sending a chain reaction throughout the entire core of the planet. The shockwave rippling through the thousands of layers of rock and dirt, until another explosion from above ripped across the surface, rendering it uninhabitable.
Then, the gray clouds settled, leaving only a mirror image of what really happened here. There was no trace of any ancient structure, just a enormous crater, and no one would ever know.
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