MetroidxHalo 2 TOM Chapter 1

“I'll give up everything just to find you, I have to be with you, to live, to breathe…you're taking over me…” -Evanescence

Chapter 1: So My Choices Are “Or Death”?

As far as assignments went, a salvage operation was not the most exciting thing that could be given. But if the Prophets said “Run”, the crew of the cruiser Undeniable Truth would say “How far?” So here they were, out on the frontier of Covenant territory, recovering the wreckage of a frigate that had exploded while on a routine patrol. And if a Covenant frigate spontaneously combusting in the middle of nowhere seemed strange, it was precisely why they were collecting its remains; aside from the obvious benefits of recovering equipment that was still salvageable, the Undeniable Truth was to discern the cause of the frigate’s destruction.

While Phantoms made passes through the debris field, Grunts picked their way through the wreckage as it was being deposited to the Truth’s landing bay. An Elite commander made his way over the Grunt in charge of the salvage.

“Found anything yet?”

The Grunt shook his head. “Uh uh! Ship didn’t get shot, ship didn’t get hit…No look like anything happen to outside of ship!”

“The logs we’ve recovered so far are inconclusive as well. There were no signs of the frigate meeting any other ships or encountering anything unusual.”

“Gah, mysteries! Me no like mysteries! Is always making me head hurt!”

None of the Covenant soldiers in the landing bay noticed a slow but steady stream of blue particles emerging from the wreckage and gathering under a large pile. The lead Elite and Grunt didn’t realize anything was going on until one of the other Grunts screamed, the diminutive Covenant soldier pointing frantically at a hand sticking up from the pile. The hand was blue and armored, but ended in wickedly clawed fingers, and with a large eye positioned on the back. The eye danced around the bay, glancing at each startled Covenant in turn, before finally settling on the Elite commander. More blue particles streamed out of the wreckage and at a much faster rate, until the hand became an arm, and then two arms and a head. As the creature grew, its armored body with round shoulders, cylindrical energy cannon on the right arm, and crooked T-shaped symbol on the face struck a disturbingly familiar tone with a few of the Covenant.

“Commander, doesn’t that look like the orange-suited Demon we fought on Halo a few months ago?” one of the other Elites called over.

“Vaguely…but that’s a close enough association for me!”

All of the Covenant soldiers drew their weapons and opened fire. The blue creature seemed unperturbed by the barrage of plasma covering her body. Energy crackled around her weapon, releasing a large, blue beam which engulfed the Elite commander and those around him. Slowly she turned, sweeping the room with the massive beam until the weapons of the Covenant troopers were silenced. They lay still where they had fallen, incapacitated but otherwise unharmed. After all, they were of no use to her dead.

She stretched out her left hand and pointed the fingers to the ground. Thin beams of energy struck the floor from her fingers and spread out to ensnare each of the fallen. Then she clenched her hand, and as one, the Covenant soldiers rose, pulled to their feet as if they were puppets pulled by invisible strings. The creature turned to the Elite commander and spoke without words.

Can you shut down this ship’s self-destruct mechanism?

“Of course.” He replied calmly, as if talking to a familiar comrade.

Do it. I do not want you to suffer the same fate as the previous ship.

He walked over to the nearest control console while the rest of the room watched in an eerie silence. He entered a long series of commands as several minutes passed, before finally turning back to the creature and nodding to confirm his success, and thus her own.

If she had a mouth, Dark Samus would have smiled.

***

You’re going to be in trouble, you know.

“I’m not going to be in trouble.” The Master Chief replied. Even still, he quickened his pace down the space station’s hall.

You were supposed to be there 5 minutes ago; you’re going to miss out on the start of the meeting. Cortana continued in her teasing manner.

“So they’ll give me the cliff-notes version of what I missed. All I need to hear is the reason why they want me at this meeting at all, and then I can get on with more important things.”

Lord Hood certainly thinks this is pretty important.

“He also happens to be someone other than a Spartan.”

The door opened to the briefing room and the Chief walked through without slowing down. The room was dark, save for the large computer display on the opposite wall. Standing next to it was the commanding officer of the UNSC’s entire defense force, Fleet Admiral Hood. He and the collected officers seated around the conference table turned to look at the Master Chief as he entered, and Admiral Hood sighed with exasperation.

“Glad you could make it, Master Chief. We were just about to get tired of waiting for you. Please, take a seat.”

The Chief nodded and complied, silently thankful he couldn’t see the smug look on Cortana’s face. “Sorry, sir.”

Admiral Hood waved it off and turned back towards the computer display. He hit a button on the side of the display, bringing up a map of the Milky Way galaxy and, more specifically, the region of space claimed by the Covenant empire.

“We were waiting for you, Chief, because this meeting is about a mission you will soon undertake.” He gestured towards the area on the edge of the galaxy, now speaking to everyone in the room. “We’ve received new intelligence about a disturbance in Covenant territory. For the past three weeks, a total of nine capital ships have mysteriously been lost in this area. So far, the remains of only one have been found, and the ship that reported sighting its wreckage was also the next one to go MIA. Right now, the Covenant leadership is in an uproar; they have no idea why these ships have been disappearing, and they’re not too happy about it.”

“Chief” he said, again turning to the Spartan “I want you to investigate. A cruiser would draw too much attention, so we’re currently looking into ways to manage a one-man transport for that distance.”

“Excuse me, sir.” A familiar voice called out from the collected officers. The Chief turned to see Miranda Keyes sitting across the table from him, and she winked at him before continuing. “One of my R and D teams has been working on such a craft, a heavily modified Longsword fighter. I’m sure it would be able to handle what this mission requires.”

Admiral Hood nodded “We’ll take it under consideration. Back onto the matter at hand, Chief, I want you to find out what’s been happening to these Covenant ships. You’ll have limited supplies and no reinforcements, so keep a low profile. Get in, learn everything you can, then get out. No need to be a hero this time.”

“Begging your pardon, sir.” the Chief said, hesitating slightly. “But why am I doing this?”

The fleet admiral raised an eyebrow. “Come again, Master Chief?”

“Why is this so important to us? The Covenant has something keeping them busy, something that doesn’t involve us, which doesn’t happen every day. Why are we getting involved?”

Admiral Hood nodded. “Because we’re taking the initiative. When we met the Covenant, we were caught with our trousers down. We’re STILL reeling from that initial encounter, even after all this time. If this is a new threat, something that will come looking for us once it’s through with the Covenant, I want to know all I can about it before it gets to that point. We’re not making the same mistake again.”

***

Just one question, Commander. Cortana said as the Chief and Commander Keyes rode the elevator down to the docking bay. The FrankenPelican?

Keyes laughed, remembering the bizarrely reconstructed Pelican the Chief and his team had returned in at the end of the Battle of Installation 06 . “Close.”

They reached the docking bay, and sitting by itself was what looked at first glance like an ordinary Longsword fighter. A second glance, however, would reveal that different odds and ends had been swapped out in favor of brightly-colored Covenant hardware and oddly colored pieces that the Chief concluded must be of Space Pirate design. Engineering crews scurried over the ship, both insides and out, tinkering with machinery and checking and double-checking their work.

Commander Keyes pointed at the fighter as they approached. “Introducing Project Broadsword.”

“Creative title.” The Chief said sarcastically.

Keyes ignored him and continued. “But if you want, you can call it the FrankenLongsword. After Sergeant Fenix’s squad brought back that Pelican, we’ve been working on adapting that acquired technology to other vessels.”

Cortana laughed Excellent, what’s its capabilities?

“You’ll have to ask our lead technician about that.”

As she lead them over to the modified Longsword, they could see a marine sitting on a ladder, his head hidden inside an open panel on the underside of the ship.

“Ok, I’ve got the stabilizer all connected, fire her up and let’s see how I did!” the familiar-sounding marine shouted.

The Chief leaned his head over to get a better look at the marine. “Good to see you again, Private Baird.”

The marine turned as he began to say “Chief?” before the sound of a human head smacking against metal emanated from the open panel and he cursed in response. His head emerged with a hand holding the bruised side.

Quite the creation you have here, Private. Commander Keyes has been telling us that you’ve been doing some impressive work on it.

Baird brightened up almost immediately, seemingly forgetting the lump on his head. “Oh yeah, this has been a bit of a pet project of mine for months! After we brought back that spliced-up Pelican and, you know, after we were out of danger, I was eager to take another look at some of the parts we picked up. The Commander was nice enough to give me materials and a team to work on it and it’s coming along well so far!”

He placed a hand on the side of the ship and gave it a few affectionate pats. “We’ve put in the latest Slipstream drive to come out of the labs, which originally put this baby’s speed at about 6 lightyears a day.”

Not too far from Covenant speeds. Cortana replied musingly, nodding her head to no one but herself.

“Ah, but we didn’t stop there.” Baird said with a grin before continuing. “One of the things the Space Pirates do best is power generators; the stuff we picked up from them has had some of the highest outputs and most efficient processes I’ve ever seen and with relatively small generators too. Hooking some of those up to the Slipstream drive’s bumped the speed up to 7 and a half. But it gets even better.”

The engineer led them around to the rear end of the ship, where the normal grey engines had been swapped out for pale orange engines of a foreign design. “We picked up an engine from the Pirates, and after some tinkering around, managed to get it connected to the Slipstream drive for output. Thing is, they don’t use special drives for intergalactic travel; all of it’s done in realspace. So anyone care to take a guess as to how fast this nimble little lady is now?”

9 lightyears a day? Cortana asked, sounding almost hopeful that they had finally matched Covenant speeds.

Baird stared at the Chief for a moment with a very proud smirk on his face before answering “12.”

12!! Are you sure?!

“As sure as the simulations have been. The Pirate engine actually speeds up the ship’s travel within slipspace itself, giving us that nice boost in speed.”

I’m impressed, Private! Cortana gushed unintentionally. At those speeds, this ship could easily outrun anything the Covenant threw at us!

Baird nodded, but almost hesitantly. “Sure…provided it does, um…blow up first.”

The Master Chief, who had only been half-listening to all of this technical talk, suddenly realized what had been said and turned to stare at Baird. “Blow up?”

The blond engineer nervously scratched the back of his head and looked away. “W-Well, yeah, we still haven’t quite worked all the kinks out of it yet. See, the sims show that it can get up to 12 lightyears rather comfortably, but the increased pressure on the ship is kinda pushing things to its limits. We’ve reinforced the hull with the Pirate plating; they do high-speed travel in realspace all the time, so their ships are built to handle those kinds of velocities. But 12 lightyears in Slipspace, well…most of the sims, the poor thing’s torn itself apart after about a week of travel. Not to mention the fact that none of these systems were designed to be compatible with each other, so we haven’t quite got everything to work as it should 100% of the time.”

A new voice caught everyone’s attention as Admiral Hood walked over to them. “And about how long until this ship is at 100%, Private?”

“Sir! Erm…not quite certain on an a time of completion, sir.”

“Give me an estimate.”

Baird glanced up at the ship for a moment before responding. “Maybe a week or so, sir?”

“I’ll take it.” The admiral said. He then turned to Miranda Keyes. “Commander, I’m impressed with the work that’s been done here as well. If you’re willing to put this prototype at risk, I’ll assign to the mission.”

Keyes grinned. “It’s why we’ve been working on it, sir.” As Admiral Hood walked off, Baird looked around seemingly thunderstruck.

“Um…mission? What mission?”

The Chief shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh, some mysterious third party is stealing Covenant ships, so the Admiral’s sending me to go check things out.”

Baird’s face drooped. “And…and you want to send my…our project into the danger zone?”

“That’s right, Private.” Keyes answered. “Which means you’re also going to have to outfit the craft with whatever the Master Chief might need during his trip.”

As she and the Chief left, Baird placed a hand on the side of his head, suddenly remembering the bruise along with a handful of other things. “Y…Yes ma’am…”

***

“Private Baird.”

“Give me five more minutes, ma’am!”

“Private, the Master Chief needs to get going.”

“He’s a patient guy, isn’t he? He can wait five more minutes if it means he’s gonna have a piece of equipment that works as intended! Give him a tour of the ship while he waits or something!”

Commander Keyes sighed as she turned to the Master Chief with a sympathetic expression. Although Baird’s team had exceeded the estimated week by a few days, the Broadsword was finally ready for departure…or, atleast, would be in another five minutes. As she walked over to Chief, casting another glance at Baird as he tinkered with an open panel next to the pilot’s seat, Keyes said “I suppose I can give you a quick briefing of the features we’ve added to the Broadsword since getting the green light.”

I was going to do that myself Cortana said but I’m perfectly willing to let you do it if it means the Private can finish his work.

The Commander first led them over to a shield-charging station. “We’ve modified this standard charger to give you an Overshield boost. Unfortunately, it’s not finished, so it’ll only give you that extra layer of protection each time you use it; once your shields go down, they'll only recharge to their standard levels. It’s not as much as we wanted to give you, but it should give you alittle bit of extra insurance if you run into unexpected trouble.”

“Oh, you know me; my missions are usually pretty boring.” The Chief replied with a hint of sarcasm.

Miranda gave him a friendly smirk and led him next to the weapons locker, which had been expanded into a veritable armory; every hand-held weapon the UNSC had access to had been stuffed inside, along with an impressive stock of grenades. The Chief looked it over wordlessly before turning back to the Commander. “I could use to having something like this.”

“Just don’t be hasty; we’re expecting this to be a relatively quick assignment, but if you get drawn into extensive fighting, these are all the munitions you’re going to have access to. Unless you manage to pick something up from your adversaries, once this supply runs out, you’re going to have to get creative.”

Don’t worry Commander; with me around, he won’t have to.

Finally looping back around to the Broadsword’s entrance, Keyes opened a small compartment that was revealed to hold a single Mongoose inside. “In case you ever have a need to get around in a hurry.” She said simply.

She shouted back over to Baird. “What’s your status, Private?” There was a moment of silence as they waited for a response. “Private?”

Baird, looking as if he’d gotten very little sleep during the previous week and a half, hobbled over to them, wringing his hands. “Well, it’s about as good as it’s going to get. Just wish we had another few months to work on her before sending her off, I had so many ideas I wanted to try…”

The Commander placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “We still have some leftover parts, Private, and all the notes your team’s used; I’m sure we’ll find something to keep you busy.”

“Yeah…yeah, I’d like that…” he said as he left the ship. The Chief walked over to the pilot’s seat and started bringing the ship online.

“Finally. Let’s get this over with so I can go back to doing more important things than play babysitter for the Covenant.”

Like killing them? Cortana asked with a laugh.

"That works."

Miranda Keyes laughed as well as she exited the ship and took hold of the outside hatch. “Good luck, Chief. And good hunting.” She said, before closing the hatch.