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Chapters 1 & 2
Posted By: LostRock<The1lone2outlaw3@aol.com>
Date: 9 March 2003, 8:02 PM
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0736 Hours, September 11, 2552 (Military Calendar)/
UNSC Longsword #3346, Sol System
The Master Chief awoke...and immediately started gagging. Cryo fluid was still lodged in his throat. He spat it out quickly, and got out of the cryotube.
He remembered dreaming...which was odd, since no one dreamed while in cryosleep. He dreamed that he was back on Halo, in a foggy and otherwise nondescript area. He was in MJOLNIR armor, but realized he had no weapons on him. He panicked.
Suddenly, there was the sound of children laughing and playing. He ran toward where he thought the children were. Sure enough, there they were. But these were no ordinary children. They were the Spartans. Linda, Kelly, Sam, everybody was there in front of the Chief.
They grinned at the Chief. And, strangely, the Chief found himself grinning back at the children. But without warning, the children started running. The Chief, startled, tried to keep up with the children, but he couldn't. They faded away into the fog. The Chief, running faster, reached out and cried, "No wait! Come back! Don't leave me alone!" But he tripped and fell to the ground, and everything went black...
Tears silently rolled down the Chief's cheeks. He still remembered how his teammates had been taken away from him by the Covenant. He still vowed vengeance on them.
After wiping the tears from his eyes, the Chief walked to the bridge. He smiled. He could see the blue ball of Earth rapidly approaching outside the view port. Almost home, he thought. But something was wrong.
He squinted with his enhanced eyes at Earth. Yes, there was something wrong. The clouds were gray and mixed with...explosions.
Oh God.
The Chief quickly grabbed his helmet and put it on. Cortana piped up as soon as it was secure. "Chief!" She said cheerfully. "It's good to see you awake! I've been bored as hell and--what's wrong?"
"Look out the view port," the Chief murmured.
There was a pause. Then Cortana whispered, "No..."
"The Covenant must have destroyed the rest of the colonies," the Chief growled, his clenched fist trembling. New tears now came from his eyes. Not another tragedy.
Then the audio communications console chirped. The Chief tore himself away from the spectacle of the Earth after the console chirped five times. He walked towards it.
"M-master Ch-chief Spartan 117 reporting," the Chief mumbled after turning on the mike.
"Sweet Georgia Brown! A Spartan! I heard you guys hit the extinct list!"
The Chief sighed, annoyed, and heard the communications officer being scolded by someone of a higher rank. Cortana was still strangely silent.
"Er.. Sorry. This is the UNSC destroyer Relentless. Did you just arrive in the system, sir?"
"I believe so, yes."
"Good, we need all the help we can get. The Covenant arrived here about 6 hours ago and sent thousands of dropships to the Earth's polar regions, at least that's what I've heard. I'm going to patch the captain through, one moment."
After the communications officer signed off, a new voice came on. "This is Captain Liskman. It's good to hear from you, Master Chief. I heard that you and the Pillar of Autumn were off on a mission to infiltrate the Covenant homeworld. What happened?"
"Snags," the Chief replied. "And I'm sorry to say that Captain Keyes or any of the crew did not make it. I am the sole survivor."
"I don't understand, Chief. Did the Autumn try to handle 5 destroyers? Even so, there should be survivors."
"Just dust and echoes," Cortana suddenly interrupted. "And hello, Captain. I am the UNSC A.I. Cortana."
"Hello," said Liskman. "Tell me, how could there be no survivors?"
"It's a long story that we need to tell in the security of your own ship, Captain Liskman. It's rather cramped in here. Could we please come aboard?"
The captain, who sounded startled and a bit annoyed, replied, "Of course. Liskman out."
And after punching in the coordinates to the Relentless, the Master Chief and Cortana stared at the Earth for the longest time.
1014 Hours, September 11, 2552 (Military Calendar)/
UNSC destroyer Relentless, Sol System
"It was a day after Reach fell," Cortana said, now comfortably in a holotank. "We made a blind jump into an unknown system. As always, the Covenant were hot on our tail, and there was a definite chance that the Autumn would fall. But it wouldn't fall to system's planet, no. Instead, it would fall to a ring-shaped world called Halo."
"Fascinating," Captain Liskman exclaimed, his eyes wide. He and the Master Chief were seated at the senior staff room's table.
"You haven't heard anything yet," said Cortana, her expression dead serious. "The Master Chief was awoken and he raced to the bridge. There Captain Keyes briefed him. Keyes knew that the Autumn had no chance of surviving; it was already damaged from the battle of Reach. So he did the only thing he could do: manually pilot the Autumn down to Halo's interior, which strangely had a surface much like that of our own Earth: landforms, oceans, everything."
"Impossible!" Captain Liskman cried. "Could it be a long-lost UNSC station?!"
"Please, Captain," Cortana held up her slightly translucent hands. "Like I said before, this is a long story, and you still know nothing yet."
"Sorry," Captain Liskman said, blushing. "I've just been so very jumpy from all the battles around Earth. Please, continue."
"Anyway, Captain Keyes gave my processing core to the Master Chief for safekeeping in his helmet. The Chief was to get off the Pillar of Autumn before it went down. We managed to fight our way through the ship to the last lifeboat.
"We also went down to the interior of Halo. We broke the atmosphere too quickly, and hit the surface hard. We survived. As for the marines onboard, some were dead, some we couldn't distinguish if they were just unconscious.
"We ran. Along the way we met many Covenant warriors. They had unloaded their warriors onto this world quickly. The Chief and I went to looking for survivors, and we found many, near these odd cannons pointing directly into the sky. I never found out what they were for, but they were firing the whole time.
"On the Covenant battle net, I found out that Keyes was still alive, but imprisoned onboard one of the Covenant ships. We staged a successful rescue mission for him. We then found out that Halo was some sort of weapon. The Covenant were looking for the control room of Halo, and we had to get there first.
"We attacked an island where there were many Covenant signals. We found a secret underground passage that was so large we needed to take a dropship down. When we got to the end of the passage, we found there was a group of snowy valleys, which was odd, since snow was not supposed to be natural. The ring world was supposed to be artificial; there was no reason for precipitation to occur.
"The control room was at the end of the valleys. We got there just in time, because the Covenant were only a few steps away from it, and we easily eradicated them. The Master Chief put me into the control room's console, and I learned everything about it, knew everything that was going occurring on the ring world, and so on. I found out that aliens known as the Forerunner built Halo. I inspected all the information I had from Halo?and saw something very, very bad."
TO BE CONTINUED
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