“That wasn’t your fault,” Cortana said gently. “Now be careful – there’s another Hunter up on the platform.”
The words were like a bucket of cold water in the face. “Mental combat,” that’s how his teacher, Chief Mendez, had referred to it, always stressing the importance of a cool head.
Slowly, methodically, the Master Chief worked his way up the slope, killing Covenant soldiers with machine precision. The small groups of Grunts were irrelevant. The real challenge waited above.
Hurru heard the firing, knew he was being flanked, and welcomed it. Rage, sorrow, and self-pity all churned around inside him causing him to fire his fuel rod cannon again and again, as if to obliterate the human by the weight of his barrage.
The human made good use of what cover there was, put his left arm against the cliff face, and inched his way forward. The Hunter saw him and attempted to fire, but the fuel rod cannon hadn’t had time to recharge after the last shot. That left the human free to fire, which he did. Hurru felt warm relief.
He was about to join his bond brother.
The rocket was a hair high, hit Hurru in the head, and blew it off. Orange blood fountained straight up, splashed the alien metal around the Hunter, and splattered his body as it collapsed.
The Spartan paused, switched to his assault weapon, and waited for the feeling of satisfaction. It never arrived. The Marines were still dead, would always be dead, and nothing would change that. Was it fair that he remained alive? No, it wasn’t. All he could do was accomplish what they would want him to do. Forge ahead, find the map, and make their deaths count for something.
With that thought in mind, the Master Chief reentered the complex on foot, made his way through halls still slick with alien blood from his last visit, turned down the ramp, proceeded to the lower level, and passed through the door he had worked so hard to open.
The Master Chief moved into the bowels of the structure. From outside, the spires stood several stories high, which was misleading. The interior of the structure plunged deep below the surface.
He wound down a curving ramp. The air was still and slightly stale, and thick pillars of the first large chamber he moved through made the room feel like a crypt.
He slipped through heavily shadowed rooms, padded down spiral ramps, passing through galleries filled with strange forms. The walls and floors were made of the same burnished, heavily engraved metal that he’d encountered elsewhere on the ring. He clicked on his light and noticed new patterns in the metal, like the swirls in marble – as if the material were some kind of metal-stone hybrid.
The tomblike silence was shattered by the squalling of several Grunts and Jackals. There was opposition, plenty of it, as the human was forced to deal with dozens of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. “It’s as if they knew we were on the way,” Cortana observed. “I think someone is tracking our progress, and has a pretty good idea of where we’re headed.”
“No kidding,” the Master Chief replied dryly as he shot a Grunt and stepped over the body. “I hope we reach the Cartographer before I run out of ammo.”
“We’re close,” the AI assured him, “but be careful. There’s bound to be more Covenant ahead.”
The Master Chief took Cortana’s counsel to heart. He hoped that he would find a way to bypass whatever the Covenant had in store, but that wasn’t to be. As the Spartan entered a large room, he saw that two Hunters had been assigned to patrol the far side of it. He slung his rifle and readied the rocket launcher. It was the right weapon for Hunters, no question about that – so long as he didn’t allow either one of the monsters to get too close. A rocket fired under those conditions would kill him if it detonated nearby.
One of the spined aliens spotted the intruder and bellowed a challenge. The Hunter was already in motion when the rocket flashed across the room, struck him in the right shoulder, and blasted him to hell.
A second Hunter howled and fired his fuel rod cannon. The Chief swore as the wash from a slightly off-target plasma bolt set off the audible alarm, and the indicator in the upper right hand corner of his HUD morphed to red.
The Spartan turned, hoping to put the second Hunter in his sight, but the massive alien slid behind a wall.
Unable to fire, he backed off. The Hunter lunged forward, and the deadly razor-spines raked across his already-weakened shields.
The Chief grunted in pain as the tip of the uppermost spine spiked through his armor’s shoulder joint. He felt a sickly tearing as the meat of his arm parted beneath the scalpel-sharp limb.
He spun, and the spine wrenched free.
The Master Chief felt a rising sense of frustration as he switched to the assault weapon, backed up a ramp, and used his greater mobility to circle behind the alien. Then he had it, a brief glimpse of unprotected flesh, and the opportunity he needed. He put a quick burst into the warrior’s back, spun away, and barely escaped a blast from the plasma pistols of the Jackals that had dropped into view and opened fire.
The Master Chief hurled three grenades over a divider. One of them scored a direct hit, sprayed the walls with chunks of alien flesh, and finally brought the frantic firefight to an end.
Cortana, whose life had been on the line as well, and who had been forced to watch as the Spartan fought for both of them, processed a sense of relief. Somehow, against all odds, her human host had come through again, but it had been close, very close, and he was still in something akin to shock, his back pressed into a corner, his vital signs badly elevated, his eyes jerking from one shadow to the next.
The AI hesitated as she processed the dilemma. It was difficult to balance the need to move ahead and complete the mission with her concern that she might push the Master Chief too hard, and possibly endanger them both. Cortana’s affection for the human, plus her own desire to survive, made it difficult for her to arrive at the kind of clear, rational decision that she expected of herself.
Then, just as Cortana was about to say something, anything, even if it was wrong, the Chief recovered and took the initiative. “All right,” he said – whether to himself or to Cortana wasn’t exactly clear. “It’s time to finish this mission.”
Working carefully, so as not to walk into an ambush, the Master Chief left the large room, found his way onto a downward slanting ramp. He backed into a corner and, satisfied that the area was reasonably secure, disengaged the shoulder plates of the MJOLNIR armor.
The wound was ragged, and blood flowed freely. The Chief could ignore the pain, but the blood loss would take its toll and jeopardize the mission. He made sure the motion sensor was still active, then slung his weapon.
He dug into his equipment pack and drew out his med kit. The Spartan had been wounded before, and had on several occasions performed first aid on injured comrades and himself. He quickly cleaned the wound, sprayed a stinging puff of bio-foam into the wound, then applied a quick-adhesive dressing.
In minutes, he had suited up, popped a wake-up stim, and moved on.
“Foehammer to ground team: You’ve got two Covenant dropships coming fast!”
The Master Chief stood at the edge of a massive chasm and monitored his allies’ radio chatter. In the distance, he could barely see the twinkling of the luminescent panels that Halo’s creators had left behind to illuminate these subterranean warrens. Below him, the abyss yawned and appeared to be bottomless.