Spooks and Shadows

“Just keep running!” yelled Spook. Flood poured out of the walls and great swarms of infection forms chased the group of fifteen down the corridor. One of the Elites tripped and fell behind, not by much, but enough for the Flood to catch him. He screamed as their tentacles bored into his brain.

“Ignore it!” ordered Spook, seeing the looks of terror on the new recruit’s faces. He drew his pistol, turned, and shot the Elite in the head. He kept on running. The next moment proved impossible for the recruits to ignore. Flood tentacles reached down from the ceiling and grabbed at the group. The tentacles snatched Pinkie Pie and an Elite, dragging them up into a vent. Just before they vanished Spook shot them as well. The group turned the corner and found a large door in front of them.

“Hold them off!” ordered Spook. He ran over to the control panel and started pressing symbols on the screen.

“Does it need a password?” asked Rainbow sarcastically.

“Actually…yes.” answered Spook, “Well then, I guess we’re going to die. I suggest shooting yourselves, it’s much quicker than being infected.”

The Flood rounded the corner. There were humanoid Flood now as well. Spook yelled something about combat forms, but no one heard him. The door opened. The Flood stopped moving. The twelve soldiers slowly turned around. Five metal eyeballs were floating in the doorway.

“Spook, what are those things?” asked Alex.

“I think they’re Sentinels.” replied Spook.

“What? I don’t speak science.”

“They’re Forerunner constructs that protect Forerunner installations.”

“Will they attack us?” asked Twilight.

“Not unless the Monitor orders them to.” answered Spook. The Sentinels flew out into the corridor and attacked the Flood. They fired orange beams into the mass of infection forms. The combat forms began jumping to attack the Sentinels, but they couldn’t reach. A few combat forms that had weapons started firing them clumsily at the Sentinels. Unfortunately, one of them was so clumsy that it didn’t even fire at the Sentinels. It fired its SMG at the escaping humans and Elites. Most of the bullets hit Derpy in the back. One of them hit Applejack’s upper right arm, shattering the bone. The door hissed shut. Spook checked Derpy’s pulse, found nothing, and examined Applejack’s arm. He took a small medkit from his belt, then cleaned and bandaged the wound, making sure to splint the arm as he did so.

“It’s the best I can do right now. Just try not to jar your arm too badly.”

“Aren’t we going to do something about Derpy’s body?” asked Fluttershy.

“Like what, bury it? This floor is solid metal.” replied Ryan.

“Besides, we don’t have time. We need to get out of here, and the sooner we do the better.” said Spook. He turned to the Elites and the other recruits, “We never learned any of your names. I suppose extremely quick introductions are in order.”

The Elite major stepped forward, turning his armor a muddy brown color as he walked.

“You may call me Kirl.”

The Elite minor on the right stepped forward, turning his armor the same brown.

“You may call me Viln.”

The second minor stepped forward, his armor also becoming brown.

“You may call me Narv.”

The humans nodded. Spook nodded to the recruits. One of them, who had black hair with a purple stripe, spoke up.

“I’m Twilight Sparkle. My friend with purple hair is Rarity, the one with rainbow hair is Rainbow Dash, the one with pink hair is Fluttershy, and the one with blonde hair and a broken arm is Applejack.”

The others just stood there for a second.

“We’ve got a problem here.” said Spook, “As an ONI agent, I had access to the troop roster aboard the Excaliber. I didn’t see your names there.”

“You probably just forgot them.” said Rarity nervously.

“No, he would have remembered names like yours.” said Alex, stifling a laugh. Ryan punched his arm. Twilight put on a bad poker face and glanced around. Spook squinted at her for a moment before turning towards the rest of the group.

“How they got here is beside the point. We need to keep moving before more Sentinels or Flood come.” he said. Another door hissed open, but there was nothing on the other side. Spook raised his rifle and led the way down the corridor. Halfway down the corridor the group spotted a large amount of blood splattered on the wall. Bloody footprints led down the hall and around the corner.

“Those footprints were left by marine boots.” said Ryan.

“No, those are ODST boots. You can tell because the soles are different.” replied Alex. Spook motioned for them to shut up. He slowly turned the corner, rifle raised.

“All clear.” he said, “Nothing alive here but the metaphorical rats. This one corpse has a sniper rifle though. Dibs.”

“Aw man.” said Alex.

“You’re just going to loot the corpses?” asked Rarity, “Disgusting.”

“Why not? The ammo will just be wasted otherwise.” said Rainbow. She took a hand grenade from a dead ODST. Kirl knelt to examine one of the bodies.

“These wounds were caused by Covenant weapons, probably storm rifles and fuel rod cannons. This man has had his bones almost powdered. Their bodies have not decomposed very much, which leads me to concur that there is a squad of Hunters and Elites patrolling this area. They are probably still close.”

“Alright,” said Spook, “Stay in formation and move forward slowly. We don’t want any surprises.” They entered the next room. There was a large depression in the floor that would have been spanned by a light bridge. However, the control panel had been smashed and burned out. Twilight looked over the edge of the depression and spotted movement at the bottom.

“I see three Elites and two…things.” she reported. Spook looked down into the depression as well.

“Kirl was right, they were still close by. I guess it took them a while to climb down. Now listen, I’ve got an idea.”

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“This is such a dumb plan.” said Narv, “I feel like one of us isn’t going to survive this.”

“Be quiet. That Human is smarter than most of them. He knows what he’s doing.” replied Viln. Kirl gestured for silence, and then approached the Covenant. The three Separatists had changed their armor back to the regular Storm Covenant colors.

“Halt!” ordered the Elite Major, “Identify yourselves!”

“I am Major Kirl. This is Minor Viln and Minor Narv.”

“It is good to see a few friendly faces. The Flood and the Humans have already decimated and scattered our forces. There is a sizeable outbreak of the parasite on this installation.” The Major turned back to his troops and Spook gave raised his hand and slashed it downwards. Kirl, Viln, and Narv raised their carbines and shot all three Elites in the head at once. The Hunters roared in surprise and charged the Separatists. Kirl and Viln dodged out of the way but Narv was too slow. A Hunter smashed him with its shield, sending him flying into the side of the depression. There were several sharp cracks as his bones shattered, and blood stained a large part of the wall. Spook turned to the other soldiers.

“Slide down the side and roll at the bottom! It should prevent you from breaking your feet!” The marines slid down, bombarding the Hunters with frag grenades as they went. They all managed to roll when they hit the bottom, and Applejack cried out with pain as her arm hit the ground. Spook, Ryan, and Alex were on their feet immediately. The others took a few more seconds to recover. Now the Hunters started to waver. They were badly outnumbered and might not be able to withstand such a large attack. Then one Hunter charged the Humans. Its bond brother, automatically attuned to it, attacked the Elites. Chaos ensued.

Spook removed his helmet and wiped orange blood off of his face. Rainbow had managed to stick a plasma grenade to a Hunter’s “face”, and the creature had splattered everywhere. The other Hunter had been felled by a few sniper rifle rounds to the back. Alex threw his rifle on the ground.

“Damn it, I’m out of ammo.” he said.

“Well maybe if you hadn’t shot from the hip like a moron…” replied Ryan impatiently. Spook, Twilight, and Rarity dropped their assault rifles as well.

“We’ll need to conserve whatever ammunition we have left.” said Kirl, “Hunters are very resilient, and we may encounter more of them. Now, there are two ways out of this chamber. Shall we take left or right?”

“Well, thay always say ya should keep left in a maze.” said Applejack, “Maybe we should do tha’”.

“Alright,” said Spook, “Any volunteers for point?”

“Me!” yelled Rainbow. Spook nodded and Rainbow led the way down the left corridor.

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“I think it’s time we admitted that keeping left is getting us nowhere.” said Rarity.

“Yeah, we’ve been walking for about two hours.” said Twilight.

“How can you tell if there’s no sun?” asked Rainbow.

“There’s a clock on the helmet readout…”

“Oh…shut up.”

The group walked up to another intersection. There was a hallway going to the left and right and another door to the front. This door had lines of glowing green light snaking their way across the metal. Spook tried the panel, but the door wouldn’t budge. He tried the panel again, but this time the door opened. There was a spherical green floating eye hovering there.

“You rang?” it said, “My name is 16807, oh, do come in. I just made tea, would you like some?” The eye turned and floated back into the room.

“That’s the installation’s Monitor, but it’s obviously gone insane.” said Spook.

“Don’t AIs go rampant instead of insane?” asked Ryan.

“There’s a theory that Forerunner Monitors are actually created by putting a Human consciousness in a Forerunner made shell. Based on this theory Monitors would go insane rather than rampant. Either way, he’s completely nuts.”

“He sounds British.” noted Alex. The Monitor reappeared in the doorway.

“Please come in, you’ll get dreadfully cold out there in the snow.” he said. Spook shrugged and followed the Monitor into the room.

“I believe there was a promise of tea?” asked Rarity.

“Oh yes.” replied the Monitor, “Just place your hands on those two panels and the tea will appear!”

Rarity looked at Spook, who shook his head.

“Oh, please do it.” continued the Monitor, “Or else the tea will get cold!”

The group noticed the Sentinels gathering around them. Spook stepped forward and placed his hands on the panels. They began to glow. Then the floor in front of him opened and a giant sphere lined with green light rose out of the pit. It cracked open and a voice boomed out of the darkness inside it.

“16807! WHERE ARE YOU!?”

“Right here your majesty!” answered the Monitor, “I am so pleased with your return, oh the happiness!”

“That is definitely not tea.” muttered Spook.

“WHAT!? WHO’S THERE!? IS IT HUMANS!?” yelled the voice.

“Yes my lord, there are eight Humans in this room right now!”

“I hate those vermin! I gave them technology because they were so nice, and what did they do!? They attacked us Forerunners and got me locked up! KILL THEM IMMEDIATELY!” The Monitor turned to the Humans.

“I’m sorry about this, but I have my orders from Lord Prometheus. Sentinels, kill th-wait, where did they go?”

“16807!!! FIND THEM YOU MORON!” yelled Prometheus.

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“We used to think the Forerunners liked Humanity, but now I think we were probably wrong…” said Spook.

“Gee, ya’ think?” asked Applejack.

“We need to get out of here very, very, soon. We should break into Fireteams of two and recon the area for a ship. A pelican or phantom would do, but a Covenant lich would be preferable. Twilight and I will be Alpha, Ryan and Alex will be Beta, Rainbow and Applejack will be Charlie, Fluttershy and Rarity will be Delta, and Kirl and Viln will be Foxtrot. Move out and watch for hostiles!”