Abandoned Mining Facility
Storage Room B-021
Joshua stood and watched as some mines erupted into fireballs. Just one well-placed shot had set off a chain reaction. Personally, he wouldn't have set them so close together.
Neither would the Brutes.
He thumbed on his thermographic vision to see his suspicions clearly outlined in red. There was one more mine beside the far door.
'Sneaky bastards'
He levelled his Battle Rifle and shot the mine, it blew up, also taking half the door with it. He checked one more time, scanning the room with his camera.
"All clear"
The team of four SPARTANs and two Elites moved towards the far door, which automatically opened thanks to Hysi's sub-routine. Colin moved through the door, his M90 Shotgun sweeping the adjacent room. Joshua lingered around the back with Lora and the injured Elite.
The one handed Elite was twirling his sword around in his right hand, Joshua thought that he seemed pretty efficient even with his prominent hand severed at the wrist. He didn't seem too disappointed; he could probably get a cloned hand to replace his lost one. But his courage was certainly hindered. No longer was he rushing into battle, but staying back to protect their rear.
Joshua still didn't know how the Brute managed to cut the Elite's hand off armed with just a spiker rifle, but then, he didn't know how the same Brute was still alive for over half a minute after its neck veins had popped.
He looked around the room for any terminals like the one in the entrance chamber, he found none. He hadn't found any since. Hysi had been getting increasingly aggravated, muttering random strings of code at Joshua.
If he could just find a single terminal and quench her thirst, he could feel complete about the secondary objective and focus on the mission at hand.
He regretted his choice at the first terminal. It was true, he did want it over a done with now. Maybe he had to pay Hysi's advice more attention.
He followed the rest of the group through the door, checking behind him for good measure. The door shut on cue, and hopefully locked.
'Well, temporarily...they had to get out didn't they?'
He swivelled around and nodded at Colin, who was now at the front of the convoy. Colin walked through the other door and performed checks in the next room, just as Joshua had just done. Then he signalled for them to go through while he stayed beside the door.
It was now N'tho who was at the front. He entered the next door and he scanned the room thoroughly with his Carbine before allowing the rest of the team entrance.
They had been using this monotonous procedure throughout the mine. It had proven well so far, but there hadn't been any more confronts with the Brutes.
Joshua walked past N'tho and waited for Lora to examine the next room, but the door wouldn't open. He saw her walk up to it and test the mechanism by walking in and out of range.
"Err, Hysi?"
"On it. Firewalls are back up. Aaaand...they've found and deleted my sub-routine."
"Can't you leave more?"
"Yes, I can easily make another one, but now they know what to look for. It'll take time to design and embed a new code into the system. Any terminals?"
"None. Don't say we have to walk all the way back."
"No, I can interface wirelessly, but I'll have to open all the heavy lead doors to do so."
"Go on then."
A small whirr, then the door opened behind them. All of the twenty storage rooms where identical in structure, so it looked like one of those mirror illusions. Just opening doors after doors, smaller and smaller until they could vaguely see the heavy blast doors open to the now bright entrance chamber.
"Accessing"
Joshua stared into the chamber. As the bright light in the chamber flickered; he swore he could see displaced air in the doorway. He magnified his visor by ten times, and was able to make out the faint silhouette of...
"CONTACTS!" He levelled his Battle Rifle and shot the displaced air. A clear white outline appeared briefly. Joshua pressed the trigger a couple more times. The outline grew brighter with every impact.
Then it faltered, and collapsed altogether, revealing its true identity, a Brute Stalker. The Brute looked surprised and his hands were up, palms flat on a non-existent surface. It was probably trying to open the doors before they abruptly did so themselves.
Joshua shot again and caught off it guard. Three rounds flew into the Brute's helmet at awkward angles, knocking it off, and driving the Brute to the floor. N'tho and Colin came to Joshua's side and fired a few bursts of plasma at the ambusher.
At such a distance, most of the rounds cleanly missed their intended target, but caught something else entirely. The wounded Brute dove to the side and the plasma flew into more displaced air. Two more Brutes lost their cloaking devices as the plasma overheated them.
Their cover blown, all of the Brutes uncloaked. Joshua couldn't believe his eyes.
"Twelve?" He could count twelve Brutes standing in formation under the large door frame. Then the six at the front lifted their arms and pressed something on their left forearms. Huge, curved rectangular shields of pure orange energy appeared. These rippling shields resembled Jackal Shield Gauntlets, but were a lot larger to compensate for the Brutes' size. They crouched down and overlapped shields to add strength.
The six Brutes behind them levelled their weapons and aimed it over the wall of energy.
Then another Brute uncloaked behind the whole pack. It stood two heads taller than its brethren. It wore obsidian black armour with a pearlescent orange trim, which shimmered wildly as it reached behind its back. It raised a huge hammer made of a radiating vermillion alloy. Red sparks of electricity bounded across the head of the hammer, as if dancing to some unearthly tune.
Then the Brute phalanx slowly started to move forward.
[Edited on 10.25.2011 4:29 AM PDT]