“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.
He recognized the next voice as belonging to Gunnery Sergeant Waller, the Helljumper in charge of their LZ. “Okay, people,” Waller drawled, “we got company coming. Engage enemy forces on sight.”
“It’ll be easier to hold them off from inside the structure,” Cortana put in. “Can you get inside?”
“Negative!” Waller replied. “They’re closing in too fast. We’ll keep ’em busy as long as we can.”
“Give ’em hell, Marine,” the AI said grimly, and broke the connection. “We’ll all be in a tight spot if we don’t get out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive.”
“Roger that,” the Master Chief replied, as he pushed his way down a ramp, through a pair of hatches, and into the gloomy spaces beyond. He marched over some transparent decking, crossed a footbridge and killed a pair of Grunts he found there, followed another ramp to the floor below, tossed a grenade into a group of enemies that patrolled the area, and hurried through a likely looking opening. There was a roar of outrage as an Elite fired up at him from the platform below while some Grunts barked and gibbered.
The Spartan used a grenade to grease the entire group and hurried down to see what they had been guarding. He recognized the Map Room the moment he saw the opening, and had just stepped inside when another Elite opened up on him from across the way. A sustained burst from his assault weapon was sufficient to drop the alien’s personal shields, and he put the alien down with a stroke of his rifle butt.
“There!” Cortana said. “That holo panel should activate the map.”
“Any idea how to activate it?”
“No,” she replied, her tone arch. “You’re the one with the magic touch.”
The Master Chief took a couple of steps forward and reached a hand toward the display. He seemed to know instinctively how to activate the panel – it almost seemed hard-wired, like his fight-or-flight response.
He banished the random thought and returned to the mission. He slid his armored hand across the panel and a glowing wire-frame map appeared and seemed to float in front of him. “Analyzing,” the AI said. “Halo’s Control Center is” – she highlighted a section of the map in his HUD – “there. Interesting. It looks like some sort of shrine.”
She opened a channel. “Cortana to Captain Keyes.”
There was silence for a moment, followed by Foehammer’s voice. “The Captain has dropped out of contact, Cortana. His ship may be out of range or may be having equipment problems.”
“Keep trying,” the AI replied. “Let me know when you reestablish contact. And then tell him that the Master Chief and I have determined the location of the Control Center.”
Captain Jacob Keyes tried to ignore the incessant slam-bam beat of the Sergeant’s colonial flip music that pounded over the intercom as the pilot lowered the dropship into a swamp. “Everything looks clear – I’m bringing her down.”
The Pelican’s jets whipped the water into a frenzy as the ramp was lowered and the cargo compartment was flooded with thick, humid air. It carried the nauseating stench of rotting vegetation, the foul odor of swamp gas, and the slight metallic tang typical of Halo itself. Somebody said, “Pe-euu,” but was drowned out by Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, who shouted, “Go! Go! Go!” and the Marines jumped down into the calf-deep water.