- MaxRealflugel
- |
- Elder Mythic Member
Part 8
November 7th 2552 (Forerunner shield world)
Catherine ran down the ramp with so much enthusiasm that she almost fell flat on her face, her arms and legs seemed to cartwheel in an uncoordinated fashion as the gradient of the ramp took hold. Even Kelly was surprised by the doctors sudden burst of speed.
The open chamber where Fred, Olivia and Linda were located was illuminated by a single soft light, emanating from a small dome at the centre of the ceiling. Everything else in the chamber seemed unusually dark apart from the computer console which was illuminated by the alien symbols.
Fred had maintained his distance from the console, so as not to be tempted by curiosity to press anything and accidentally activate some archaic system or thousands of Forerunner sentinels. The last thing they needed was an active threat especially with the doctor around.
Catherine bounded into the chamber with Kelly not far behind, the doctors eyes suddenly widened with barely subdued excitement. Kelly had thought that the whole planet should have been under a giant Forerunner Christmas tree, wrapped in a large red ribbon.
Catherine gazed around the chamber in amazement as though it was her first endeavor into a Forerunner structure, but she was always in awe of the technological feats that were performed by them. They could create whole worlds that would dwarf anything made by the Covenant and their ships could withstand unbelievable damage. Something that Humanity could do with.
Fred snapped the doctor back from her daydream, “Doctor, here’s the console.”
Catherine cleared her throat with a small cough, trying to regain some of her composure, but her childlike enthusiasm was proving difficult to contain.
“Of course Fred,” replied Catherine “Kelly could you bring my case down from the entrance please?”
Kelly nodded and then ran up the slope with her familiar teeth-jarring speed, returning with the heavy carry-case before the doctor had even reached the console.
Catherine stood silently at the console for several minutes before pressing one of the floating symbols on the small holographic display.
The room seemed to dim slightly before a large holographic sphere appeared at the centre of the chamber. To the left of the sphere were eight glowing orbs.
The uppermost orb was brighter than the rest and had a slightly more ornate appearance, whilst the fourth one down glowed less than all the others and was pale red in colour, whereas the remaining ones were all illuminated with a light wash of amber.
Catherine steadily rotated the large sphere and then magnified the image; it quickly became apparent that the sphere was a graphical representation of the world that they were on.
“What are those?” pointed Linda at the smaller orbs.
Catherine reduced the magnification and switched the view to the vertical line of orbs, focusing on the fourth one down. She zoomed in to the orb and then realised that it was not an orb at all, but an illuminated ring.
“It’s Halo,” stated Catherine “well, it’s the one that John destroyed anyway the other orbs must be different Halo’s.”
“Is this some kind of control room?” interrupted Fred
“No it seems to be more of a map room or navigation chamber, this must be how the Forerunners on this construct monitored or coordinated their planned survival against the Flood.”
“But they didn’t survive doctor.” coughed Olivia.
“No, no they didn’t.” replied Catherine with a disappointed tone.
“But we will.” Voiced Fred
Catherine continued her exploration of the hologram, concentrating on the Dyson-Sphere. So far her venture had only succeeded in locating the sections responsible for the power grid, and the artificial star at the centre.
The system and the planet were vast in size and a lot of time would be wasted looking for a control room or something similar, even a maintenance room would have sufficed, but Catherine was having no luck in finding either.
“I sure wish Cortana was here.” Catherine whispered to herself.
March 27th 2553 (Location unknown)
John was thrown onto the floor as the structure seemed to lurch and heave beneath his feet. Cortana activated the view screen at the end of the chamber and the image of an unfamiliar ship appeared.
Unlike all of the Forerunner designs that John had seen before, this craft was more angular in appearance with a series of sharp angled facets on its exposed ventral side. It looked dark and heavily armoured, as though Humans had attempted to build a Covenant capital ship with the UNSC’s entire collection of Titanium, but this was much, much bigger.
Along each side of the ship were a series of pylons and pod like structures, all arrayed on something faintly reminiscent of a delta wing, which gave the ship an eerie but deadly appearance.
“That’s the Forerunners enemy?” shouted John in the drowning noise.
“Yes, it must have been alerted to the planet’s location when I reactivated the systems. All of the nearside weapons platforms are preparing to fire at the alien vessel.”
John regained his balance only to be thrown to the floor a second time when the Forerunner weapons fired. He glanced at the display which showed the alien ship rolling to the side, narrowly avoiding the initial barrage. It returned fire with bright lances of green fire, striking a weapons pylon only 20 miles away.
The ground heaved again with another volley, but this time the barrage found its mark.
Six streaks of blue lightning impacted on the belly of the alien ship, causing its hull to ripple with a series of cascading explosions. Amazingly the ship was still functioning and replied with another deadly lance of green fire, but this time it was much closer to the structure where John and Cortana were.
John thought that the thunderous sound of the blast and the immense vibrations shooting beneath his feet foretold of his imminent death, but somehow the structure survived the detonation. But as they view the carnage outside on the view screen both Cortana and John could see that the surrounding mountains of sand were now molten shapes of glittering glass, and there was no sign of the Pelican.
The Forerunner weapons fired a third time, but this time there was no reply from the alien vessel. Instead its damaged shape started to list violently before slowly succumbing to the gravity well of the planet.
Cortana maintained her observation of the mammoth-sized ship as it plunged through the atmosphere, on a dreadfully close trajectory towards the ground.
“Chief, I’d hold on to something!” yelped Cortana
John ran over to an area near the dormant Forerunner in the throne-like chair and wedged his armoured shape into a gap between the consoles, where he maintained an iron-like grip on the opposing bench.
John watched with gritted teeth as the ship pulled up at the last moment from its steep descent, but the momentum proved too much and the ship’s great belly splashed on the surface, before rolling over a dozen times in a corkscrew effect until it came to rest with a broken back.
The resulting impact had shaken the chamber they were in and the empty cases that were scattered around on the metal floor had been forced to dance and skip with the vibration. In any other situation the sound of the spent cases jumping around on the floor would have been deafening, but the crashing ship was doing a much better job of destroying John’s eardrums.
The sound filtering system in his Mjolnir armour was doing its best to drown out the sound, but the intensity of volume being emitted was too much.
[Edited on 07.22.2008 1:02 PM PDT]