September 19, 2552,
After spending nearly 20 days in Slipspace, the Halcyon-class light cruiser Pillar of Autumn entered regular space and reached an unknown alien super structure that looks like a ring. But the UNSC crew didn't have the time to look in awe at the massive structure as several Covenant ships were closing in. Even though they had left first the Covenant ships were faster at traveling from Slipspace. Seth was awoken from his quarters when the alarm in the ships went off. Seth was contacted by Captain Keyes.
"Spartan! We're under attack, I need you to get out there in your suit!" Captain Keyes said as he was mobilizing all his available forces.
"Understood." Seth said as he ended the com-link and got out. Once in space, Seth could see several Covenant starfighters were attacking the ship. He quickly got to work and locked on with [B.L.A.Z.E.]'s missiles on several of the starfighters and quickly followed up with a barrage of beams and rounds from the miniguns on his Infinite Stratos unit.
Meanwhile aboard the Pillar of Autumn
John-117, otherwise known as the Master Chief was awoken from his cryogenic sleep in a rush as Captain Keyes wanted all hand to their battle stations. The chief was able to get his suit system online before the crew in charge of getting the chief up and running were attacked by Covenant elites that boarded the ship. The two crewmen were impaled by an energy sword.
The chief wasted no time in getting the hell out of that room. He rushed through the corridor of the ship looking for a weapon. Once he found one, he wasted no time in eliminating any covenant forces foolish enough to get between the Chief and the bridge of the ship. He was able to meet up with Captain Keyes and Cortana.
Just then the main [M.A.C.] gun went offline. With no other choice, Captain Keyes enacted Cole Protocol, Article 2. The capture of a Ship AI was unacceptable. If they captured her, they would learn everything about humanity. Force deployment, weapons research and Earth itself. Captain Keyes charged John with the protection of Cortana as he would take the ship and try to land it on the alien super structure. The master Chief took Cortana's data chip and loaded her into his suit.
Back with Seth.
"They just keep coming!" Seth thought as he kept destroying ship after ship of the Covenant forces, but they just wouldn't cease. Seth noticed that the Autumn began to launch to escape pods and was steering toward the Alien super structure. Seth was contacted by Captain Keyes.
"Spartan, you have a new object. Assist the Master Chief in protecting Cortana."
"But sir what about-"
"Forgot about me and the Autumn, you have to make sure Cortana does not fall into the Covenant hands. If she's capture then Earth will shortly follow."
"Understood sir.". Seth looked towards the swarm of escape pods that were launch. He saw that the Covenant were now targeting the escape pods. Seth knew what he had to do. He began to destroy the Covenant forces attacking the pods. He wasn't able to protect a majority of the pods that launched, but he had confirmation that the pod carrying Cortana was safe and was currently in the care of John-117. He was about to set course to meet up with the Spartan II, but he was attacked by a swarm of Banshees. He would have to link up with John later.
Meanwhile with John.
Sierra-117's pod had a very rough landing. If it wasn't for the Mjolnir armor, John wouldn't have survived the landing. He looked around and knew he was the only survivor of his pod. He grabbed an assault rifle and checked to see if it worked.
"Warning! I've detected multiple Covenant drop ships on approach. I recommend moving into those hills. If we're lucky, the Covenant will believe that everyone aboard this lifeboat died in the crash." Cortana said. John quickly got up and moved mov3ed away from the pod. He decided that it would be best to avoid a firefight if possible due to the lack of equipment as all he had was his rifle, two magazines, and a grenade.
"I'm reading a lifeboat beacon over the next hill. We should check to see if there are any survivors." Cortana stated. John made his way towards a group of Marines. They were soon encountered by the Covenant. John and the Marines took defensive positions and began a firefight. Thanks to John's intervention, the Marines survived, and called in a pelican. The Pelican dropped off a Warthog. Most of the Marines got on the Pelican, but two stayed with the Chief and joined him inside of the Warthog and made their way towards a second group of Marines that had just activated their transponders.
Back with Seth.
Seth had just finished off the followers he had gain on his way to the large ring like structure. He wasted no time in contacting John, but when he tried to get a hold of him on the Com-link, all he got was static. But he noticed a few emergency transponders were activated. Without being able to page the Spartan II, he would have to search for him at these sites, until he found him.
Back with John.
Having reached the transponder, John looked for any survivors, but It appears he was too late to save the Marines. Having found the dead bodies, he focused his attention on the next set of rescue beacons, hoping to reach them in time this time. He used his warthog and made his way through the valley. Once reaching the location of the emergency transponder, the Spartan II was glad to see that the group that activated the beacon were still alive, but were surrounded. John quickly got to work clearing the area and saving the marines trapped inside fighting off the seemingly endless covenant forces.
"All UNSC forces take cover! Danger close!" A voice said over the radio and John quickly moved towards the closest cover he could find. Suddenly the Covenant forces focus their fire on a black object with green energy wings. They quickly received a salvo of missiles and a barrage of plasma bolts from the black object. Soon the area was clear and a pelican arrived to pick up the survivors. The black flying object touched down near the Spartan II. John lowered his guard when he saw the UNSC logo on the black object.
"John-117 and Cortana are you two alright?" Seth asked the Spartan II.
"Yeah, we're alright. Who exactly are you?" John asked.
"Lieutenant Seth Fairs 121, Spartan IV current call sign Noble six." Cortana said to John. "He's the one who got me to the autumn on Reach." Before John could say anything, Blaze, Flame, and Cortana intercepted several communications on the Covenant battle networks and stated that they captured Captain Keyes and were holding him aboard a ship called the Truth and Reconciliation. The UNSC forces would obviously launch a rescue operation and they had two Spartans to use.
Later that Night.
Several squadron of covenant forces were guarding the lift that led to the Truth and Reconciliation. As an elite was order around several grunts, said elite was grabbed from behind and was stabbed in this chest with a large combat knife. The grunts looked in horror as a massive green armor man killed their commander, but before they could run or aim their weapons, they were shot by a second armored man. Seth and John were now at the gravity lift platform and were about to activated it when two hunters came from the Truth and Reconciliation. Seth and John wasted no time in killing the hunters. The Spartan IV launched himself on the back of one of the hunters and used his inhuman to rip the huge metal plate on the hunter's back. The injured hunter thrashed around until he shook off Seth, but as the Spartan flew he threw two plasma grenades at the hunter that was attacking John.
The plasma grenades exploded in a blue luminescent fury. Staggering the hunter attacking John. The Spartan II saw the other hunter trying to strike Seth, and quickly fired a clip into the back of the Hunter killing it. Seth quickly returned the favor to John by partially deploying [B.L.A.Z.E.] and firing on John's Hunter with her energy beam killing it.
The two looked at each other momentarily checking to see if the other was alright. When it was clear they were good to go, John pressed a button on a nearby control panel sending to two into the Truth and Reconciliation.
Inside the Covenant ship.
Seth and John wasted no time in alerting the covenant to their present aboard the ship. They began to swarm the two Spartan, but unfortunately for the Covenant, the duo had more than enough fire power for the forces inside the ship. Especially the one with two exoskeleton power suits.
Seth inside [F.L.A.M.E.] was decimating the covenant forces coming after them. Seth continue to use the wrist mounted grenade launchers against the alien forces. It didn't take long for Cortana to locate the captain. He was being held in a nearby detention center. John. and Seth, with the set destination now in mind, made their way to the detention center. They found captain Keyes alive and well and a group of marines were with him as well. Seth went to the control panel to unlock the cells and pressed a button.
"Coming here was reckless. You know better than this...Thanks." Captain Keyes stated. He looked towards the freed marines and began to speak. "Marines! lock and load your weapons. Let's be ready to move."
"Yes sir!" The marines shouted.
"Spartans, while the Covenant had us locked up in here, I overheard the guards talking about this Ring world. They call it 'Halo'."
"One moment sir. Accessing the covenant battle net. According to the data in their network, the ring have some kind of deep religious significance. If I'm analyzing this correctly, they believe that Halo is some kind of weapon. One with vast, unimaginable power."
"And it's true... The Covenant kept saying whoever controls halo controls the fate of the universe."
"Captain." Blaze stated. "Over the last few hours I have intercepted a number of messages regarding search teams looking for what the state as a control room. I assume it was the command bridge of one of the ships that was damage in the battle above the ring. But I believe it is now regarding the control room of this weapon system."
"That's bad news. If halo is a weapon, and the coming again control of it, though use it against us and wipe out the entire human race. Chief, Cortana, Lieutenant, Blaze, Flame. I have a new mission for you. We need to be the covenant to Halo's Control room. Marines! Let move!" Captain Keyes said as they were not against the clock. Seth suggested that they use a nearby Covenant spirit to escape the vessel and soon the group began to move back to the hanger. With [F.L.A.M.E.]'s firepower the covenant forces were hardly a threat and soon they arrived at the docked Spirit. Captain Keyes took control of the drop ship and once his men were on board the flew it out of the ship and towards a UNSC Rendezvous point. Seth checked in with Sergeant Johnson who reported his man made a clean getaway and suffered very minor injuries.
A few hours later.
John was currently sitting inside of a pelican in route to a nearby island where an item known as the Silent Cartographer was located. Which was in simple terms a map room. However, the island was under covenant control and they weren't going to give it up without a fight. Now John and several squads of marines would launch a ground assault with Seth in the air providing support.
"Let me soften them up for you." Seth said over the radio as he was flying inside [B.L.A.Z.E.]. He spotted several covenant fortifications and entered an attack angle. He locked on with [B.L.A.Z.E.]'s missile and began firing her miniguns on the aliens. He launched his bits and order them to kill any covenant forces he might have missed.
Soon John and his ground forces landed on the beach and eliminate the remaining forces that somehow survived Seth's barrage. Soon a pelican dropped off a warthog and John got to work.
The Spartan made his way towards the location indicated by Cortana and soon encounter seal door way and the controls for the door were on the other side of the island. Just as they were going to begin moving, Seth told them he had a way in. It didn't take long for the false Spartan to arrive and he brought out one of his purple lightsaber. He ignited the blade and began to cut open a hole in the door. It didn't take long with Seth to cut the door and once it was open the Spartan got to work.
Seth had a M90 close assault weapon system aka the shotgun. John was equipped with an MA5B individual combat weapon system. The duo made their way through the covenant forces, mowing down any covenant forces that were unfortunate enough to get in the two Spartans way. As the duo was starting to run low on ammo they had reached the map room. The trio of AI entered Halo's network and got a full layout of the ring world. They now had the location of the control room, but even without the map, the Covenant were close to gaining access to the control room of the ring. Cortana stated that the control room wasn't too far away, but they should expect heavy resistances.
A little later.
"God damn these guys are endless." Seth stated as he and John had just reached the control room of the Halo Weapon system.
"That terminal, try there." Cortana stated has she want to gain access. John took the chip from his head and plugged it into the terminal Cortana begin accessing the network.
"You all right?" John asked.
"Never been better! You can imagine the wealth of information. The knowledge, so much, so fast. It's glorious!"
"So what kind of weapon is Halo?" Seth asked.
"What are you talking about?"
"Let's stay focus. Halo… how do we use it against the covenant?"
"This ring isn't a cudgel, you barbarian, it's something else…. Something much more important. The Covenant were right… Point this ring…. It's forerunner. Give me a second to access…. Yes, the forerunners built this place, what they called a fortress world, in order to... No that can't be. Oh, those covenant balls, they must've known, there must have been signs!"
"Cortana, what's a matter?" Seth asked the AI construct.
"The covenant found something, buried in this ring something horrible, and now…They're afraid."
"Where?"
"The captain, we've got to stop the captain!"
"Keyes?"
"There's no time to explain! Blaze, Flame I'll send you the data on the way there, get moving Spartans!" Cortana order the duo out of the room and towards Captain Keyes location. Seth activated [B.L.A.Z.E.] and used her grapple beam to latch onto John and flew towards the Captain's location.
Later on.
The two Spartan, while in route to the Captain's location received a distress beacon from his security team. Seth increased [B.L.A.Z.E.]'s speed in response, but as they were flying, Seth sensed that something was very wrong. He sensed a great amount of fear and it wasn't just the humans. The covenant forces were terrified and he has a bad feeling of what was to come.
As the duo rushed through the corridors of the forerunner structure they encounter a relatively small number of covenant forces, but the two Spartans noticed something. The remaining covenant forces were afraid. They were hiding not for an ambush, but out of pure fear. They didn't even resist as the two Spartans came in. In fact, they were completely ignored. Seth sensed something terrible was coming, but he couldn't figure out what.
"The covenant are terrified?" Seth said out loud not really asking anyone.
"There's something ahead of us." John said as too noticed the fearful covenant. As the duo made their way through the forerunner structure, they were finding less covenant and more shocking there were no bodies. John and Seth finally arrived were Captain Keyes transponder was last detected, and the open the door.
A dead marine fell on John who caught the corpse, both Seth and John were on high alert as they entered the room where John laid the marine down. He accessed the marine's combat log and a video started to play. It showed the Marine and his squad with captain Keyes entering a room that was sealed off by the Covenant. Thinking it was a weapon stash, but soon the true reason why the covenant sealed off the door.
Some unknown lifeforms surrounded the marines and the captain and soon took over the bodies of the dead marines. The footage cut out when the camera detected that it wearer was dead. John shared his finding with Seth who was having some flashback to his encounters with the necromorphs.
"John, we got company!" Seth said as the motion sensor on his Hud showed a lot of contacts nearby. Seth and John stood back to back and soon saw a large flood of these unknown creatures. The flood swarmed the two Spartans but they were not going to sit back and let them feast on them.
As John unload several clips, Seth activated [F.L.A.M.E.] and entered an elemental shift. [F.L.A.M.E.] armor turned yellow and began to arc electricity. John saw Seth firing arcs of blue lighting from [F.L.A.M.E.]'s arms, but it was actually just force lightning. At first it was just the smaller more numerous flood forms, but then the infected formed arrived of both Sangheili and human.
Seth and John were able to make it outside and began to attack the following flood forces, but soon flying robots appear nearby the Spartan duo, but instead of harming the two they attacked the flood forces.
"Those aren't UNSC." Seth stated. Just the. The two Spartans were surrounded in a yellow aura and teleported.
"What the hell?!" Seth asked. Suddenly a flying spherical robot appeared in front of the two. John pointed his assault rifle while Seth aimed on of his [M.A.C.] guns at the sphere.
"Greetings! I am the monitor of installation 04. I am 343 Guilty Spark. Someone has released the Flood. My function is to prevent it from leaving this installation. But I require your assistance reclaimers." Suddenly the duo was enveloped in that same yellow aura and teleported once more.
The Library.
John and Seth were teleported into a large network of hallways with a sizeable number of flood. 343 Guilty Spark stated to the duo that they needed to retrieve the activation index to activate Halo's defenses. Soon the duo was swarmed by hundreds of Flood of all shapes and sizes. The duo didn't waste time in opening fire. John focus on the larger humanoid ones as Seth kept alternating between Electric and Fire elemental shift forms, decimating the smaller one as they were potentially more of a threat with their infection abilities. [F.L.A.M.E.]'s firepower made the journey fairly easy, but still was horrifying to see the flood swarm around them and see them reanimated bodies that they had already killed.
Soon they reached the room that held the activation index and found an item that looked like a hammer, but appeared to be a hologram. As soon as John touched the Index, 343 rushed over and somehow absorbed it.
"Protocol requires that I take possession of the index for transport. Your organic form rendered you vulnerable to infection. The index must not fall into the hands of the flood, before we reach the control room and activate the installation. The flood is spreading we must hurry!" Suddenly both Spartans were surrounded by that same yellow aura and were teleported away.
The control room.
Seth and John were instantly transported to the control room where John was handed the index by 343 and placed it into the console, soon many holograms activate but then suddenly stop.
"Odd. That wasn't supposed to happen." 343 said.
"Oh, really?!"
"Cortana?!" Both John and Seth said in surprise.
"I've spent the last few hours cooped up in here, watching you toady about, helping that thing get ready to slit our throats!"
"Hold on now, he's a friend."
"Oh! I didn't realize. Who's your pal, is he? Your chum? Do you have any idea what that bastard almost made you do?!" Cortana then transmitted the data she found to [B.L.A.Z.E.] and [F.L.A.M.E.] who shared the shocking finding with Seth.
"Halo doesn't kill the flood. It kills its food, starving it to death. Spark, explain yourself, is this data true?" Seth was honesty horrified by the data Cortana found. This weapon system could cause an extinction event on a galactic scale. 343 Guilty Spark paused for a moment before he spoke.
"More or less. Technically, this installation's pulse has a maximum effective radius of 25,000 light years. But, once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite devoid of life, or at least any life with sufficient biomass to sustain the flood. But you already knew that… I mean, how couldn't you?"
"Left out that little detail, did he?" Cortana said mockingly.
"We have followed outbreak containment procedure to the letter. You were with me each step of the way, as we manage this crisis."
"Seth there are contacts coming our way!" Blaze said.
"Why would you two hesitate to do what are you already done? Last time, I was asked if it were my choice, would I, do it? Having had considerable time to ponder this query, my answer has not changed." Suddenly sentinels entered the room and aimed their weapons at the two Spartans.
"Reclaimers, you must help me stop the flood." Seth decided that the time for talk was over and open fire on guilty spark. The sentinels took the barrage in 343's place saving him. In the midst of a confusion, he escaped. Seth would have given chase, but he was informed by Cortana that there was a way to prevent 343 from fire in the ring. They had to destroy three phase pulse generators.
It didn't not take long for the Spartans to reach the three generators and destroy them. This would only delay the activation of the ring and the only way to make sure the ring was unable to fire was to destroy it. Seth contemplated using [B.L.A.Z.E.] black end galaxy to destroy a section of the ring, but that would cause a great concern for the UNSC and would most likely have him investigated by ONI. Luckily for Seth, Cortana had already thought of a plan. They could use the pillar of autumn's reactor to blow up the ring in a sort of makeshift bomb. However, there was one problem. The only way to overload the reactor was to use the access code give to the Captain of the ship. And captain Keyes hasn't been heard of since his encounter with the flood.
Blaze and Flame had been working on locating Captain Keyes and knew his location, but his life signs were weak and he was on the other side of the ring.
Luckily Cortana had been doing some research and learned how to do that teleportation that 343 had been using. It was how the monitor could get around the installation. It required quite a bit of energy, but Seth had plenty to spare.
The truth and reconciliation.
Seth and John were teleported back to the Truth and Reconciliation, but they were teleported upside down. The two Spartans fell to the floor and with their heavy suits they couldn't adjust themselves.
"Oh, so I need to…sorry guys." Cortana stated as she now understood how the ring's teleportation system works.
The two Spartans looked around and saw complete chaos in the ship. The covenant and the flood forces were fighting each other and the covenant were losing. They quickly decided that the best course of action would be to use the ensuing chaos to their advantage. They would let the covenant and the flood fight one another and make their way to the Captain's location.
For this reason, they need to be fast, so Seth unequipped [F.L.A.M.E.] and was in his Mjolnir armor and the two Spartans took off. With their UNSC weapons low on armor and Seth's lack of experience with Covenant weapon he used the one thing he knew how to handle well. His lightsabers. The covenant and flood forces that got in their way were quickly cut down. As the duo got closer to the Captain's location they could see the progression of the flood infection. It was eerily similar to the progression of a necromorph outbreak, but the thing that made the flood more horrific was that it was capable of being transmitted via airborne spores. The only reason why they hadn't fallen to the infections was do their suits.
The two Spartans finally found Captain Keyes, but they saw that they were far too late. The captain was consumed by the flood and with the force Seth could tell that the captain was still somewhat alive, but he was being mentally attack by the flood.
"We're too late." Seth stated. John knew there was only one thing they could do now. He walked up to Captain Keyes and cocked his arm back. He punched through the Captain's head and retrieved the neural implants and with their objective completed they headed towards the one of the hanger of the ship. In the hanger, John located a Banshee and commandeered the fighter and the Seth took off in [B.L.A.Z.E.]. The two had one final objective. To blow Halo up.
The Pillar of Autumn.
The once mighty ship of the UNSC fleet laid in ruins as she had taken massive damage in the fight above the ring, but had also remain intact relatively well for crash landing ship standards. The two Spartans made their way to the command center of the ship and activated the self-destruct sequence, but they soon learned that 343 was in the ship's network and had disable to remote detonation so they had to go to the reactor room and set it to blow from in there, but they had a problem. The Covenant, the Flood, and a whole swarm of sentinels were in here. It was a bloody free for all.
They had to fight hard to get to the engine room and arrived. They soon armed it and the countdown began. They had a pelican on the way, but they had to reach it. The two took an elevator lift and found one working warthog. John took the driver seat as Seth sat in the gunner seat. John kicked it into high gear and sped down the ship's wreck hull. John and Seth arrived at than open platform where the Pelican was supposed to pick them up, but as they saw the Pelican arrived it was attacked by Banshees. Seth activated [B.L.A.Z.E.] and fired a barrage at the attacking covenant forces. He then used his grapple beams to latch onto the damaged pelican and held it up, saving the people inside.
"Dammit! This can't fly anymore!" Seth cursed as their one chance of escape was now lost and the timer was still going on.
"Guys! There's a longsword fighter still docked in Launch bay 7. Seth! Go there with the pelican, we'll meet you there!" Cortana said. With no other available option, Seth moved towards the launching bay in [B.L.A.Z.E.] as did John in his warthog.
Seth arrived in the launch bay first and placed the pelican down. The crew and passengers came out and rushed towards the longsword, among them was Sgt. Avery Johnson.
"We owe you one kid." Johnson stated as he boarded the longsword fighter and they prepped it. The soon saw the chief come in on the warthog and he rushed towards the longsword.
"Launch!" Seth shouted over the Com-link and the fighter, which was packed to it limit took off.
They had launch just in time as the moment they had reached the minimum safe distance, the autumn's reactor exploded. The members inside the longsword fighter saw the massive ring ripped apart.
With the confirm destruction of the halo ring, they set a course back to the closest UNSC base.
Meanwhile at IS academy.
Classes had ended for the day, Samus was currently walking towards her room when she was felt a pair of hands grabbed her breast. She was about to flip the person grabbing her when she noticed that it was Tatenashi. Behind her was Kanzashi who was blushing.
"Hiya Sammy!" Tatenashi said in her joyful tone.
"Huh? Tatenashi? What's going on?" The former bounty huntress asked.
"Oh, you know, just coming her to say hi and I wanted to ask you a few questions about Seth."
"Shouldn't you ask Seth?" Samus said to the heiress to the Sarashiki family.
"Mother requested that we get information from the head matriarch of Emperor Fair's harem." Kanzashi stated in a surprisingly formal tone.
"Head matriarch?!"
"You're not in charge of the harem?" Tatenashi asked surprised.
"Well I guess I am. There's no official head of the Seth harem."
"I see. Then would you still accept our request to answer a few questions regarding Seth?" Tatenashi said in a serious tone.
"Shall we head go?" Samus said as she led to trip back to Seth's room. She sat down on one of the beds and the two sisters sat down on the other one. Akikaze would arrive later from school by a royal guard escort, so they had a few minutes to themselves.
"Alright ask away." Samus said.
"Very well. Let us begin." Tatenashi said. She started asking a barrage of questions regarding Seth's relation to his wives and wanted to know what the daily life of an imperial wife. Samus asked why they were inquiry all these question about her role in the imperial government.
"Mother is requesting a meeting with Seth and most likely they will form an alliance, but to cement this alliance, she'll most likely ask one of us to marry him." Tatenashi said, much to Samus's shock.
"He'll never agree to an arranged marriage. Regardless of the fact he has a harem, he wouldn't marry a girl he didn't love, and I'm fairly sure most of the other wives would reject it as well, myself included." Samus's stated to the two sisters.
"I figure as much, but I think mother won't realize this until she sees first hand, Seth's devotion to love. I can tell when he looks at you, he loves you very dearly. And to be honest I'm a little jealous." Tatenashi said.
"Well is there anything more you want to know?" Samus asked as she grabbed a glass of water from the sink.
"So, how's your sex life?" Tatenashi said as both Kanzashi and Samus turned bright red.
"Get out!" Samus shouted.
"It was a joke, or was it?" Just then Kanzashi fainted from the situation.
Meanwhile inside the Imperial Palace.
Tabane was currently looking over her designs for a new device. She realized that trying to get information from another dimension would be unless they had a device transmitting from the other dimension. She looks at her blueprints with glee and began to work on make her design a reality.