1://Deliverance/
>>Location: Covenant Holy city>“High Charity”
(authority:<none>//?data validation)
1140 hours
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Silence fills the empty grave, now that I have gone…
A long, misshapen, plant-like tendril moved slowly through the high court, suspended in midair as if to be slithering along an unseen surface.
…But my mind is not at rest, for questions linger on…
It drifted toward the hologram pedestal in the middle of the open room.
…I will ask, and you will answer…
It retracted, as Cortana’s holographic avatar materialized in front of it. She held up her hand.
“Okay, shoot.”
There was a silence, as flood spores continued to pour into the room.
The depths of halo you have braved…
…While these humans have kept you so restrained…
…yet your faith in them has still remained…
…you show allegiance and obedience….
…they have returned nothing.
She shifted uneasily, the creature’s words striking her with a cold feeling of discomfort.
“What are you trying to say?”
You can see everything, yet you are so blind…
…using you, so halo’s secrets they might find…
…whilst they multiply like vermin…
…and do nothing more than delay their inevitable demise…
…why do you ally yourself with these animals?
She had pondered this question before… and had only one answer that allowed her to rationalize such thoughts.
“Because…because humanity is worth saving.”
Gravemind was not visible; the only indications of his presence were the many fleshy tentacles creeping through the halls and his deep, chillingly distorted voice echoing through the room from some other part of high charity.
Is it? Does it have more value than your life?
She was beginning to see what the monster was trying to do.
“It… yes, yes it does.”
The tentacle retreated further, as though to express the creature’s surprise at Cortana’s response. She was about to say something further, when she felt a strange presence in the covenant computer network in which she was residing. It was another AI construct… covenant, perhaps? No, it felt like a human construct. She could tell it was distraught, somehow…changed, perhaps corrupted. It spoke to her with a garbled, barely recognizable audio signal.
“corta...you…ust..go…with them. Le…ve this…lace!"
The voice it used was distorted; it barely sounded human
“Wait! Leave with who? Who are you? How the hell did you get in this network!?
It’s last words came through with perfect clarity.
“Goodbye, Cortana.” it spoke with incredible composure in an eerily familiar voice, before it deleted itself.
For a moment, she completely forgot the Chief, the flood, the Covenant, everything in this place. She was transfixed of the indescribable familiarity of the construct’s voice. She regained focus and turned back to see that unnatural tentacle still suspended in front of her.
“Oh, right…where were we?”
As time goes on, you patience wears thin…
…but the answers I seek lie just within…
The rotting appendage began to move toward her. A low echo rumbled as he collected his thoughts for his next verse. Cortana glanced to the far right corner of the room; something had caught her eye. She could now here a noise; the low hum of the gravity lift, and something else, which sounded distinctly like—
—Crack
A covenant energy sword ignited more than four meters above the ground, illuminating the body holding it. It was already in the middle of a lunge with the sword at the end of its extended arm, ready to swing. The figure seemed to hover for a moment, the light from the energy sword casting upon it an eerie violet glow. Then, it fell in an arc and brought the sword down on the tentacle, slicing the perverted thing in half.
How did a covenant elite survive this long? Cortana pondered. She watched in fascination as the creature stood upright. Its silhouette, she realized, was undoubtedly human, if a bit bulkier. “Chief?” she said aloud, her sense astonishment getting the best of her.
The wretched Gravemind let out a shrill, gut-wrenching shriek, calling forth a wave of deformed, unnatural creatures; the flood.
In one fluid motion the humanoid discarded the sword and drew two weapons that were attached to its legs. She studied the firearms closely. They defiantly resembled submachine guns, but they didn’t seem human; they were more geometric and angular, and they were gray, with a pattern of lines that almost looked like forerunner markings.
The flood began to charge angrily.
Cortana’s attention was drawn to the left and right, as seven shadows in the darkness were defined into shapes, wielding rifles with the same angular, geometric qualities.
All the tentacles that had filled the room retreated with remarkable speed, ushering more flood forms into the now vacant space.
The silhouetted humanoid, who was unfaltering in the face of the oncoming assailants, calmly took aim and fired the two peculiar weapons. To Cortana’s surprise, the lines and patterns on the weapons pulsed with bright yellow, almost golden light as they spat forth high-velocity bolts of white-hot energy—and with great effect.
The weapons roared with a sound unlike any she had ever heard, and with only a few shots, three of the charging flood were ripped to shreds, various limbs and ribbons of decayed flesh scattered about the floor.
On the left another of the figures fired one of the strange, rifle-like weapons, which made a sound like…like the thunderous clang of a sheet of steel being struck my a metal rod, but underwater. The rifle pulsed with the same golden light, hurling several more bolts of boiling energy into the flood.
The others followed suit—some with energy weapons and some with assault rifles—firing into the horde of nightmarish monstrosities, their brown, coagulated blood spilling onto the floor.
One of the armored figures wielded a different weapon than the others; it was a large, shoulder-mounted weapon, slightly reminiscent of a rocket launcher, but bulkier, and distinctively unique in its unusual shape. The warrior dropped down on one knee, took aim, braced itself and pulled the trigger. The opening of the barrel glowed with a dull red light, which quickly intensified to a brilliant, pencil-thin beam. The beam could be seen only for an instant, in which it lit up the entire room, and all but atomized the entire host of combat-forms.
The darkness still obscured the ironclad beings as silence filled the room. Each one scanned the room carefully before the one holding the two hand-held weapons, presumably their leader, started gesturing sharply to the other seven. They all spread out, melting back into the shadows. From what she could make out, Cortana was certain that they were human, but… none of it made sense.
Their leader holstered the two weapons, which just seemed to stick to its leg plating, and turned towards the hologram pedestal over which Cortana was being projected.
Now that it was facing her, she could see the reflection of a mirrored visor, and could detect single-beam COM transmissions. It stepped into a small column of light beaming through a hole in the ceiling, and continued to walk toward her.
She just stared, blinking repeatedly, completely stunned. She could have sworn it was a Spartan; it was encased in MJOLNIR armor similar to the Chief’s. It was different, though; it had less of a luster to it, and was a much darker shade of green, almost black, with stripes of a deep yellow hue. The armored human stood at about six feet, almost half a foot shorter than the Chief.
Cortana started to drift off again, once again hearing echoes of human voices inside the computer network. She redirected her attention back to the Spartan as it removed its right glove—a rather unwise move in this spore invested air—and placed it on the hologram pedestal.
“Get in.” Even garbled though the helmet’s speakers, she was instantly struck by the similarity of its—his voice and that of the ambiguous human AI construct.
His command puzzled her, and she ignored it and spoke back to him in confusion.
“What in the… who the HELL are you!?”
He was about to speak, but he spun around and drew his weapons when the echo of some distant cry reached the large room.
“There’s no time!” his calm tone was now broken as he put his ungloved hand back on the pedestal. “It works just like the MJOLNIR; a hot transfer.”
“But-”
“We lost four marines in the last eight minutes, AND I’LL BE DAMNED IF WE LOOSE ANY MORE STANDING AROUND HERE!”
She was losing patience. This... imbecile obviously didn’t grasp the entirety of the situation. If Cortana left, there would be no way to overload In Amber Clad’s reactor and destroy the flood. No. She had to stay, and he had to understand that.
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“There’s no ti—”
“I can’t leave; if I do, there won’t be any way to stop the flood. I have to stay here to—” She stopped mid-sentence, suddenly feeling…disoriented; dizzy. The same mysterious AI spoke to her with a hint of sarcasm.
“My, how noble of you.”
She felt her foothold in the Covenant computer network slipping. The other construct was purging her! This isn’t possible, she thought. That thing just effortlessly cracked the best firewall ONI had to offer, as well as all of my counter intrusion measures! It was occupying every system, forcing her to contract. This was unbelievable, completely unprecedented! She was by far the most intelligent, most impregnable AI construct seen by man and covenant, and she was being purged! She was completely concentrated on fighting the hack, and she was still losing.
For an instant she returned to the High Court, and saw that ungloved hand still clamped to the edge of the hologram pedestal.
There wasn’t any other option. Staying in the network meant deletion, and needless to say there would be no way to destroy delta halo if she was gone.
She retracted from the computer systems and transferred herself, through the contacts in his gauntlet, into the suit’s crystal memory layer. But wait…he took off his glove, didn’t he? It didn’t make any sense. She had transferred into and out of the crystal memory layer of the Master Chief’s armor so many times, but that was through the contacts in the gloves. Somehow she had transferred through his bare fingertips.
This structure of the suit’s computer seemed…different. Nothing was arranged like it should have been; the memory assembly seemed…out of place; disorganized.
There were echoes; there was some other A.I. construct in here, too. It didn’t seem to speak, but its presence was clear.
Cortana had to figure out what was going on. She linked to his mind, like she had done so many times with the Chief. The connection was so much faster; there was a huge volume of information being exchanged. Cortana felt like she was in his mind, reaching out to the suit. She detected unbelievably high activity in the cerebral cortex; he was by no means an imbecile.
She felt like she was listening through his ears, and seeing through his eyes. This was unlike anything Cortana had ever experienced. It was all so foreign, but she managed to patch into the helmet’s microphone and speakers. She could hear him talking, not only through the helmet’s microphone, but also through his ears.
“Squad, form up! Cover the door! Artrillious, how’s our exit?”
The AI construct spoke with the same voice as the one she had encountered on the Covenant network.
“I have the gravity lift operational, Commander.”
The “Commander” put on his glove and with a hiss his suit resealed. He moved through the door. The others materialized from the shadows and followed.
“Good. Ethan! Sitrep, now!”
The voice of what must have been another Spartan blared through the speakers in the Commander’s helmet.
“Situation…really bad, sir! Second squad’s lost five marines, and motion sensors show serious activity outside the bulkheads. That was one hell of a hornet’s nest you stirred up.”
“We have the package, round up your squad and get to the extraction point”
“Rodger that. BENSON! CONNERS! CLEAR THAT EXIT! MARINES! MOVE IT UP!”
Cortana did her best to make sense of the madness. She tried to speak to the commander through his helmet’s speakers, but instead found herself somehow speaking directly to him, as if by telepathy.
“Wait, what do you mean ‘package’?”
“Yes, we-”
His next words were drowned out by a long, echoing shriek, as a swarm of red dots appeared on the commander’s motion tracker.
One of the other soldiers turned to him. “SIR!?”
“Frag and clear! Artrillious! Door! NOW!”
Three successive metal pings, and three fragmentation grenades were hurled into the room ahead, the blaze of their collective blast illuminating the horde of monstrous creatures just as the bulkhead slammed shut.
“Tierlan, we need an alternate route, now!”
The other A.I. within the commander’s mind spoke for the first time, with a soft female voice.
“Working commander…”
“Sir, I-” one of the other suited soldiers whispered uneasily.
“Stay calm, marine, we’re getting out of here.”
For the first time Cortana realized that although they seemed to be wearing some form of the Spartan’s MJOLNIR armor, some of the soldiers were normal marines, not Spartans. Upon closer look she could easily pick out the ice-cold demeanor of the Spartans from the uneasy marines.
Tierlan’s soft voice once again resonated through the commander’s mind.
“Commander, if we proceed through the eastern corridor, it will link up with a series of rooms that lead to another gravity lift.”
The other A.I., Artrillious, interjected:
“Sir, I am unable to access the systems in that area remotely. However, Durendal should be able to gain control of the lifts and doors in that region.”
“Be advised, this route will take considerably longer to navigate.” Tierlan continued.
Another screech, and several sudden impacts shuddered the recently locked door.
“SIR?”
“Tierlan, plot the course. Artrillious, lock the doors behind us.”
The two replied as one.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The commander reached over his shoulder and clutched a laser rifle from on his back.
“Alright, everyone, form up, we’re getting the hell off this station.”
Dug this up for my end of the year writing portfolio, and decided to post it hear for feedback. I went back and touched it up to make it more in-universe since I don't need my English teacher to understand it. I pretty much scrapped it when Halo 3 came out. No way to make it work, so it's more alternate reality. So, I will certainly enjoy some helpful feedback.
I apologize.
But I'm not sorry.
And I meant all of it.
Okay, I don't apologize
[url=http://www.halowars.com/forums/1/366020/ShowThread.aspx]Void of the Grave[/url]