- Wolverfrog
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- Fabled Legendary Member
Here's Part 22, enjoy, and please comment.
Part Twenty Two: The Ancient One
"Entrance is clear; move out." Mark reported, and as one the unit of Spartans crept towards the great doors of the citadel, under the cover of the night. Few Sentinels were patrolling, and so they reached the entrance with no incident.
"Ash, set a satchel charge on that gate." Fred ordered, and the young man nodded, brining out the explosives from a backpack he wore.
"Gladly." Ash complied, and he moved over to the left door. It stood very tall, but it was of no matter. They only needed to blow a Spartan sized hole to gain access to the citadel.
"Breaching..." Ash breathed, attaching the powerful explosives pack to the door. The device began to beep, and after a few seconds it exploded. Luckily, the whirring noises of the Sentinels above drowned out the noise.
"Move out." Fred spoke, and John complied with the superior officer's orders. He smiled faintly at the situation, and irony of it, "Mark, you stay out here and watch our backs. You see any trouble, hide and tell us."
The Spartan III nodded, taking post outside the door.
The Spartan team swarmed through the hole, and emerged within the citadel. Kelly whistled.
"Pretty fancy place." she said, and the others nodded. It was nothing John hadn't seen before, the architecture was very similar to that of Halo's.
"From my experience, Forerunner architecture, while beautiful, is very linear. They usually have the more important facilities of a building higher up." Cortana remarked out loud, and John agreed.
"Understood Cortana. Everyone move up." Fred announced.
John took a good look around the room. There were no stairs, but instead ramps. John wasn't even sure if Forerunner architecture included stairs, he couldn't remember ever seeing them. The team climbed up the eastern ramp of the room, softly and swiftly. They reached the top, and encountered their first problem.
"Multiple hallways..." Fred remarked, following it up with a curse,"but which is the right one? We're gonna have to split up. Master Chief, you take Kelly, Lucy, and Ash down the left hallway, and we'll take the right one. Keep moving up."
John nodded, and his small team moved over to him.
"I hear you blue leader." he said, and his Spartan team moved after him down the left corridor. Kelly fell in next to him as they moved further along, and further away from Fred.
"So, John," she said, using his real name, "how do you feel about Fred being in charge of the squad?"
John kept moving while he pondered the question.
"He's a good leader." he said simply, not wanting to offend anyone. Kelly laughed.
"Always a man of few words right sir?" she replied, shaking her head slightly, "come on, you're not the commanding officer now. You don't need to keep up appearances."
This revelation did stop him, because he was so surprised to hear the simple truth. Kelly was right, there was no need to stay closed up. Not any more.
"I suppose you're right. Fine, I think Fred's a good leader, like I said before. I just hope he can handle this pressure." John admitted, as they climbed up a ramp. He could sense Cortana listening in on the conversation with amusement.
"You don't feel usurped at all? I'm sure, if you'd been at Onyx, Kurt would have promoted you instead."
"Probably," John replied modestly, "but I wasn't at Onyx was I? If I remember correctly, I abandoned you all to go chasing after Halos."
Kelly laughed once again.
"Perhaps we abandoned you. We should have been there with you Chief, we should have been at Halo, the Ark, High Charity, everything. You're the best soldier I know, you never once forgot our duty. Not like us."
John had no answer to this, but Cortana did.
"If anyone here should be blamed, blame Doctor Halsey. She's the one who got you all involved with this place."
"I suppose you're right." Kelly replied, and John could tell she was troubled. He decided to change the subject.
"So Lucy, what's your story?" he called back over his shoulder, only to have Ash cough awkwardly.
"Ah, Lucy doesn't speak Master Chief. Not any more."
"Oh? Was she injured?" John replied curiously, concerned about her well-being.
"It's nothing physical sir, it's just shock, if Tom told me correctly." Ash replied, glancing over at Lucy whilst he did so.
John needed no further explanation. It was a sad truth that some soldiers, after seeing too much, just snapped. It was surprising that Lucy was still in active duty, and not a mental hospital.
"Well, perhaps one day she'll--" he began to reply, only to cut off in mid sentence, "watch out, Sentinel up ahead!" he whispered over a secure, undetectable channel. The Spartans instantly hit the ground, although it was probably unnecessary for Ash and Lucy to do the same, camouflaged as they were.
The sudden movement alerted the Sentinel however, and it drifted over. It was a lot bigger than the ones John had previously allied, and subsequently fought with.
"Threat analysis level - amber." the Sentinel spoke in a gravelly voice, "scanning hallway."
John hugged the floor, but it was no good. The Sentinel detected him, and floated right up to his face. John wasted no time, firing multiple blasts from his new rifle even as he lay on the surface of the ramp. The beams hit the Sentinel square on, and after a few seconds of sustained fire, it's shields dropped. The Sentinel retaliated with a blast of it's own, hitting John square in the chest as he strove to stand. His improved shields didn't even drop down by half. John smashed the Drone's red lens with the butt of his rifle, cracking it. He drew out a grenade, pulled the pin, and stuffed it within the cracked hollow of the lens.
"Jump!" he ordered the other Spartans, minus Kelly who had blurred past him moments ago, and they all dove out of the way before the grenade exploded in a flash of blue light, destroying the Sentinel.
"Nice move sir, you were nearly as quick as me then." Kelly remarked, standing triumphantly over the shattered remains of another Sentinel further along the hallway. John smiled, Kelly had always been quicker than him, quicker than any other Spartan, or sentient life form. She could outrun a Covenant Banshee if she needed to. She had too, in the past.
The small squad moved through the hallways of the citadel swiftly, dispatching the various Sentinels as they did so. The two Spartan IIIs, Ash and Lucy, worked well together. Better even than the IIs worked together.
"There's a doorway, up ahead." John noted finally, and saw a holographic switch near it. As always, without knowing how, John activated the switch, as if by some primal instinct, and the door slid open. Ash whistled in awe.
"I guess this is the penthouse of the place huh?" he spoke, looking around. It truly was beautiful, a large room announced with decoration: a pond in the corner of the room, with strange fish swimming around in them, alien birds flying beneath the tall, glass ceiling, shrubbery and trees, it was all very nice.
"There must be something in here that can help us get out of this sphere. Ash, Lucy, you go search the left of the room, Kelly, you go look in the right, and I'll head up front. Fred and his team should be hear shortly." John ordered, and the Spartans nodded. He himself slung the rifle upon his back, perceiving no threats, and strode forward.
"If we don't find anything, let's just say I'll be annoyed." Cortana remarked briskly.
"I'm sure we will." John replied reassuringly, and his AI companion was content, for then at least.
The front of the room was rather bare, to say the least. Nothing except a few ornate shrubs, and a small pond in the corner. Nothing that could show them how to leave the Dyson sphere.