SEE CHAPTER ONE FOR DISCLAIMERS
PLEASE READ & REVIEW, AND TEND TO THE TROPE PAGES
-CHAPTER START-
Realm H4-L0 – Sydney, Australia – United Nations Space Command Headquarters
One day after the defeat of the Ur-Didact and the destruction of Mantle's Approach and the Composer
MCPO John-117 stood before the numerous VIPs of UNSC High Command, as he wrapped up the post-mission debriefing. Of his companions in that epic journey, Cortana was helping Dr. Halsey fine-tune some ideas for future gear for the Spartan-IVs on Infinity, Commander Shepard was helping a UNSC task-force double-check the Sol System to make sure that none of Mdama's people or any surprises left by the Didact were still here, and Teana had already headed off on her next mission. Thus, he'd had to give his report alone.
"And what of the Didact?" a UNSC Army General asked him. "Your helmet-cam footage indicates he was killed…"
"I saw him subjected to a point-blank attenuation-field grenade detonation that knocked him into a slipspace fissure" the leader of the Spartan-IIs replied.
"But you did not see a corpse."
"No sir, General Hogan. The kill was not confirmed."
"Well, that makes the New Phoenix story harder to sell."
"If it's something that could happen again, you mean?" another officer asked.
"Yes. With no confirmed kill-"
"The Composer," the Master Chief interrupted, "the weapon that the Didact used, was destroyed. Earth is safe from any further such attacks."
"I understand that, Master Chief. My concern is selling that finality. To the public, I mean. We should take this offline. Humanity has been through too much. If we know there are no other active Forerunners, then there's no reason to tell people there was ever even one. We'll play it off as a terrorist attack by a belligerent ex-Covenant faction. An attack that the UNSC and its allies fended off via the perfectly-timed actions of our greatest heroes.
-Break-
"Master Chief," FADM Hood called out to the Spartan as he walked through the hall away from the briefing room, "do you have a moment?"
"Admiral Hood, sir. Of course."
"My apologies for the… lack of professionalism in the room back there. A lot of heads are spinning right now, and, well… Very few of our top brass seem the possess the skill of keeping their mouths shut until their brains have figured out what to say."
"Not my place to comment, sir."
Hood smiled wearily. "I wish it were, John. I wish it were. …We could make an officer out of you easily, you know. You'd had 'Admiral' without much of an argument from anyone."
"No offense, sir, but 'The Admiral' doesn't have quite the same ring to it."
"Heh. So you do have a sense of humor."
Hood led the Chief into a small side room with a holo-table.
"Listen," the Fleet-Admiral said, "we've got a problem. And I'd appreciate it if you could 'advise' a team."
"Of course."
"Ivanoff Station was established to study Halo Zero-Three. There was a science team on the ground when the Didact attacked yesterday. The team was escorted by Spartan-II Fireteam Black, who reported all-clear on the Halo."
"Black Team is still operational?"
"Until an hour ago."
He keyed in a command, and a recorded audio file played – numerous panicky voices with the sound of weapons fire in the background:
"GAMMA HALO SCIENCE TEAM TRANSMISSION – ENCRYPTION ALPHA-97-ALPHA:"
"What the hell are these things?-!"
"Not Covenant! Something else!"
"Appearing out of thin air! Slaughtering the Spartans-"
The transmission dissolved into static.
"No images to go with the audio," Hood continued, "but they describe assailants appearing from nowhere…"
"Prometheans?"
"Sounds like."
"I should go with the team you're dispatching to Zero-Three."
"You just got back. I'd prefer you take a moment to catch your breath."
"The Prometheans should be contained to Requiem. If we're encountering them somewhere else, I'd like to see it firsthand."
-Break-
Khaphrae System, Approaching Halo-03
"Gamma Halo science envoy, respond. I repeat, this is Spartan Blue Team calling Gamma Halo science envoy. Do you copy?"
The modified Longsword fighter approached the Halo, passing by the rubble that had once been part of the nearby planet; Ivanoff Station, now a ghost town showing significant damage, dominating one side of the viewport.
"Nothing, Chief" a female Spartan with short black hair and the numbers '087' on her armor's chestplate reported. "No response on any band."
"Keep trying, Kelly" John-117 replied.
Soon the Longsword flew in closer, setting down on a desert area of the ring's surface, not too far from the science team's last known coordinates. Four Spartans in full Mjolnir Mark-VII armor stepped out – John-117, Fred-104, Linda-058, and Kelly-087.
"Shame we couldn't bring Will along" Fred remarked.
"He and Grace are busy helping hunt down Husk holdouts on Equestria, from what I hear" Kelly said.
"Chief," Linda called, "tracks. Is there wildlife on this ring?"
"Nothing in the Ivanoff files…" Fred replied.
John looked down at the three-toed footprint in the sand, and his suit's computer found a match.
"Promethean Crawler print" he said. "They're here, alright."
"The tracks come from the north and head south" Linda said.
"The science team is to the south. We'll check there first."
After a while of trekking through the rocks and sand, they arrived at an outpost; there were no signs of life. Moving down into the area, they split, and soon John & Kelly made a gruesome discovery.
"All these corpses…" Kelly murmured. "They used to be the science team."
"Blue One?"
"Go ahead, Fred" the Chief replied.
"John… I found them. I found Spartan Black."
Hurrying over to Fred & Linda's location, John winced inside his helmet as he beheld the remains of four of his old comrades. Margaret-053's and Roma-143's bodies were twisted and broken, their black-colored Mjolnir armor showing multiple instances of significant damage, each of which would have accompanied fatal blows. Victor-101's torso had been blasted open, revealing the half-vaporized remains of his organs, and Otto-031 had his chest caved in and had been decapitated.
"Jesus…" Fred breathed out. "Are Crawlers capable of this?"
"No" John replied. "This was something else. …Kelly, send Ops a sitrep. Science and Black are dead. Unknown assailant. We're investigating."
"On it."
"Everyone on me. Let's find the origin of the Crawler tracks and-"
Suddenly, the Spartan quartet got a very unpleasant surprise as half a dozen tall bipedal constructs warped in all around them, bodies and weapons silver with glowing orange portions.
"Knights!" John warned. "Weapons free!"
Kelly-087 immediately pulled free her M90A shotgun, blasting the Scattershot-wielding Promethean twice to kill it before it could fire its own close-range weapon. At the same time, a Lancer-type Knight rushed in with hardlight blade ready, but Fred-104 withdrew and activated a Sangheili plasma sword, parrying the Knight's blow and lashing out with a low kick that broke the war-mech's leg, and then following that with two slashes across the chest and a stab through the skull, vanquishing the Knight. With a blur of motion Linda-058 shouldered her BR85 rifle, firing burst-shots as fast as the weapon would allow. The Knight roared and swung at her as its shields were pounded, and she ducked and rolled, coming up behind it and continuing her attack. Soon the Knight's shields failed just as it turned to face her again, and it took an M6D round to the face that finished it off.
John-117 fired his MA5D assault rifle at a Knight as he charged at it, letting his shields soak up the fire from its Suppressor. He struck with the butt of his rifle, knocking the Knight back and de-shielding it, and then fired a barrage into its 'face'. As the Knight fell and dissolved, the Chief took its Suppressor, dual-wielding it with his human-made assault rifle against the other two Knights, wearing down their shields even as they wore down his. The other Spartans, having finished disposing of their targets, pitched in, and the wave of bullets quickly brought the last two Knights down.
"Linda," John said, "the Crawler tracks."
"This way."
After Kelly grabbed a fallen Knight's Lightrifle and some ammo, the quartet followed the tracks. After several minutes, they came upon a large pit that had been dug out, and at the center was a huge hole, perfectly square and composed of gleaming bluish-silver metal; from up here, they couldn't see the bottom. The four Spartans slid down the slope to the lower level of the depression.
"This is where they found the Composer and dug it out" Kelly pointed out.
"Everything's perfectly smooth down here" Fred said. "Armor telemetry doesn't show anyth-"
"Wait" Linda interrupted. "I've got eyes on a tunnel, northwest side."
"Let's have a look" John said.
They moved into the tunnel, taking a very long series of steps. For several minutes they descended, until soon there was a reddish-orange glow up ahead. And when they eventually reached the source of the light…
"Uh… Chief?" Fred said. "Is there anything you'd like to 'advise' us on right now?"
They slowly walked down the walkway down the center of the room – a room whose walls and ceiling were lined with hundreds of human-shaped figures, glowing faintly with an unnatural red light, their individual features erased and their expressions frozen in pain and terror. At the far end of the passage was an active slipspace portal, and cautiously the Spartan quartet passed through. They emerged into what looked like an old Forerunner city, heavily overgrown with plant life.
"We're not on the Halo anymore…" Kelly murmured.
"Forerunner portal system" John replied. "We could be anywhere in the galaxy. But as long as the portal's open, we have a way home."
"There's a light on in that tower ahead" Fred pointed out. "Whatever killed Black Team is probably there."
"Or whoever" the Chief replied.
"What do you mean, whoever?" Linda asked as the quartet leapt and slid down an embankment. "…You don't think the Didact's still alive, do you?"
"Only one way to find out…"
"Aside from the overgrowth," Kelly said as they walked along, "this place seems intact."
"This is odd" Fred spoke up. "A city like this, out in the open… Everything of this scale we've seen so far has been Halos or Shield Worlds."
"I can hear Dr. Halsey in my head" Kelly joked. "She'd be amazed by this place."
"Looks like a bigger avenue here" Linda pointed out.
"Huh… Didn't know the Forerunners went in for art" Fred remarked.
Up ahead were multiple large structures, blue and silver with orange cores, lined up in a row. It didn't take long for the Chief to recognize them.
"Composers…" he breathed out, shocked and with a little horror. "Six Composers… One was bad enough, but this? …Why? Why here?"
"You tread, humans, in the Composer's Forge."
The quartet of Spartans spun around, weapons readied, and John felt less surprised than he'd expected to see none other than the Ur-Didact standing there, a noticeable mark on the left side of his chestplate, and an Activation Index clutched in his right hand.
"Weapons free" the Spartan leader ordered.
As the Spartans fired, however, the shields of the Didact's combat skin withstood the barrage, and the 3.5-meter-tall Forerunner raised an armored boot and then stomped it into the ground, releasing a shockwave that knocked the armored humans off their feet.
"Predictable…" the fallen Forerunner sneered. "See that which you fear, and attempt to kill it… even when your nightmare has already won."
As the quartet got back to their feet, they looked around as dozens – if not hundreds – of Promethean Crawlers, Watchers, and Knights arrived in the courtyard. The Didact stood back, lazily waving an arm forward, and the swarm of war droids charged at the Spartans. The quartet fought ferociously, scrapping several Prometheans per second, but there were always more. Soon, an unexpected new arrival entered the area: a Monitor.
"Oh my…" the floating silver & blue machine said in a rather unhappy synthetic-tinged voice. "This is quite unacceptable. We had an agreement, Didact! You have manufactured more of your Knights in direct violation of our compact."
"They will dispatch to Requiem soon enough, Monitor," the Forerunner General replied, "and your installation will be silent once more."
"This is not about the quietude of the Composer's Forge! These Prometheans are abominations – tortured souls encased against their will!"
As the Spartans continued to fight off the Prometheans, the Didact's clawed hand reached out, grabbing hold of the angry Monitor mid-rant.
"So quickly you accuse me of violating our agreement" the old warrior growled. "Where is your portion of the bargain?"
"A… Arriving now, Didact" the now-frightened Monitor replied.
In the starry sky above, a gigantic slipspace rupture formed, and from it emerged a 10,000-kilometer ringworld – Installation 03.
"Perfect…" the Didact hissed. "Now, to repair the ring."
The Didact floated up onto one of the Composers, and the huge construct then floated free of its mounting, and shot up into the sky.
"What the hell?-!" Fred shouted, until his gazing at the spectacle was interrupted by a Crawler trying to claw his face off; he ripped it off and punted it into a Knight, knocking the larger construct over.
"Hello, humans" the Monitor floated down to the still-fighting Spartans. "I am 859 Static Carillon, keeper of the Composers' Forge. It is here where the Composer was designed and constructed."
"Didact has another Composer" John said as he used a stolen Incineration Cannon to destroy three Knights.
"Oh, he has an entire Halo now" the Monitor replied. "He is repairing it, you see, from damages caused by humans if he is to be believed. Although he seems to blame humans for rather a lot… I understand you have some disagreement with the Didact?"
"He killed millions of our kind-"
"Ah, so you do know the origin of these enemies you fight?"
"The Knights… They're the citizens of New Phoenix?"
"They are – or rather, once were – humans, freshly Composed. And therein lies my complaint. Their memories are being added to the whole… as was, of course, the plan when the Composer was built. But they also bring terror. They bring suffering, rage, and madness. This is unacceptable. Equally unacceptable to you, I imagine, is knowledge that once the Halo is repaired, Didact intends to fire it near your species' homeworld. He will burn your kind from the universe."
The Chief shared a look with his companions. "We need to get back to the portal now – beat Didact to the Halo!"
"Please understand…" Carillon continued, flying alongside the Spartans as they made a fighting retreat through the city. "I do not care about the Human-Forerunner War. It raged centuries before my inception. It may well rage now, and for centuries more. Your world can burn, and while I will sigh at the loss, I will not care. What I do care about is that he broke our compact. He brought his abominations here! He violated the sanctity of my home!"
With that, Static Carillon turned toward the approaching Knights, his blue eye glowing red just before he fired a massively powerful particle beam that punched clean through one Knight and kept going to badly damage a second. With the Monitor's fire added to their own, the Spartans' retreat quickly brought them back to the still-active rift.
"Can you deactivate the portal once we're through?" John asked as he covered Fred's and Linda's retreat through the swirling blue vortex.
"I will do what I can" Static Carillon replied, as a swarm of Sentinels emerged from the buildings and opened fire on the Prometheans. "Now hurry! You must stop the Didact! I will keep these monsters at bay!"
Hurrying through the portal, John joined his three comrades in retreating back through the tunnels, soon reaching the artificial pit that had held the original Composer. They had to then scramble up the sloped walls to get out, escaping just in time before the replacement Composer slammed down into position.
"You are annoyingly persistent, humans…"
Fred, Linda, and Kelly spun around just in time to be knocked off their feet by a telekinetic shockwave. The ground trembled as the Didact's feet stomped forward toward their downed forms.
"I tire of your distraction…"
As the old Forerunner prepared to smite Kelly, John leapt onto his back, and then he cried out as the Master Chief's knife was driven through his helmet and into his right eye. With an angry roar, the Didact spun around and gripped the Chief by the helmet, lifting him up.
"Consistently," the Didact growled as his combat skin worked to stem the bleeding from his destroyed eye, "the opportunity to eliminate you, 'One-One-Seven', has been presented. Yet foolishly, I refused. No more!"
The Didact's massive hand began to squeeze, and the reinforced titanium composite of the helmet began to bend and warped, slowly crushed by the extreme pressure. John's visor cracked, partially exposing his left eye. The other three Spartans charged, but with his free hand the Didact telekinetically blasted them away. He then threw the Chief at Fred, knocking him over. Kelly dashed in, pulling free a Scattershot she'd scavenged, and started blasting the Didact from multiple angles. But then, his hand snapped out and grabbed the weapon, ripping it from her grasp and then using it as a club to bash her away.
"Something's wrong!" Fred reported. "He's shaking off direct hits!"
"I will not tolerate your continued disobedience" the Didact said in a low, fearsome tone as he grabbed Linda and slammed her into the ground so hard that the solid rock shattered beneath her. As he stood over Fred and John, the Didact plucked the titanium combat knife from his helmet's right eyepiece and tossed it away. Fred aimed a Boltshot up at him and fired a charged shot, but it seemed to do nothing.
"We…" the Didact said, raising his boot "are done here."
"I agree wholeheartedly."
A red-tinged particle beam crashed into the Didact's back, knocking him away. Before he could recover, Static Carillon initiated an involuntary emergency teleport, warping the Didact away. As the Spartans helped themselves to their feet, the Monitor turned to them.
"If you are going to fight a Warrior-Servant," he told them, "you must not give him the opportunity to attune his armor to your weapons!"
"Where is he now?" John asked.
"I suppose I must admit I have committed a… severe tactical error…" the Monitor said sheepishly. "I have placed him in the most secure location on the Halo."
"The control room…" the Master Chief sighed.
"It was that, or watch him slaughter you all. You would be dead and he would still reach the control room. I have expedited the inevitable by skipping the preventable."
"You said his armor adapted to the weapons" John remarked as he knelt down and picked up the Index that Didact had dropped. "I know a weapon he can't adapt to."
-Break-
Installation 03 Control Room
The Didact groaned as he got to his feet, looking around and recognizing his location.
"The Monitor pretends to aid the humans," he spoke to himself, "but advances my plans instead? No… Too simple. There is something I do not yet comprehend."
"You're right" the Master Chief replied as he walked in, Index in hand.
"Where are your brethren?"
"They went ahead to our ship" the Chief replied as he walked past, heading up to the control panel. "This is between me and you."
"You carry no weapon."
"I carry your weapon. I thought we might take a moment to talk."
"Diplomacy in your final hour?"
"You killed millions of people. You killed four of my 'siblings'. You tried to kill me. I've tried to end you with blades, with guns, with explosives, by knocking you into slipspace… None of it has worked. …I'll bet this does."
And then, before the Didact could react, the Master Chief slotted the Index into Halo-03's control panel.
"You would fire the Halo…" Didact spoke with slight shock, "just to eliminate me?"
"Yes. But then the Monitor reminded me that would also kill all animal life within 25,000 light-years. So he suggested a better plan…"
"What game are you playing, human?"
"Two-step process: first, I manually deactivate the safety protocols. Second… Carillon! Eject us, right into the planet!"
The entire Halo shook and rumbled as a perfectly-square chunk of the ring installation broke free and separated from the rest, heading down toward the dead Forerunner colony-world below. The Didact turned, preparing to lash out at the Chief, but the Spartan vanished in rings of golden light. Within seconds, the ejected control room slammed down into the planet… right on top of the five Composers, which all released their energy at once. The Didact's scream was cut off as his physical form was annihilated, turned into raw data and Composed.
Inside the Longsword watching from orbit, Static Carillon and the Master Chief appeared in two pulsing pillars of golden light.
"All according to plan…" the Monitor remarked. "Though, there were severe gravimetric anomalies following the ejection. Had I not taken a moment to stabilize the ring, it would be lost."
"Thank you for your-" John-117 started.
"No, thank you. After endless years overseeing a dead facility, I have found new meaning thanks to you. Farewell, Reclaimer. I will take the Halo now for repairs and safe hiding."
"Wait," Fred spoke up as the Monitor began to teleport out, "taking it where?"
But Carillon was already gone.
-SCENE BREAK-
"We don't know where it went, Fleet-Admiral."
"Chief, you sound like you think you've failed. You got the Didact! That's a damn fine day's work."
"I suspect it is safest to call him 'contained'."
"How about you? You okay, son?"
"Yes, sir."
"Hmm… Why don't you and Blue Team take a couple days' R&R? You've been at it nonstop for almost a week, and right on the heels of the Reaper War at that. Rest for a little while; you've earned it."
"…Understood, sir."
-BOOK 28 END-
And that's the end of that little adventure. Next time, we rejoin Teana as she and a few friends travel to yet another Earth in peril, to aid in the fight against a parasitic lifeform that threatens to consume the world.
Next time: Book 29 – Red Threads of Fate, in the Lyrical Nanoha / Kill la Kill crossover section. See you then!