CHAPTER 1: THE PILLAR OF AUTUMN
Location: The starship Pillar of Autumn, coordinates unknown
The Pillar of Autumn, a Halcyon-class United Nations Space Command (UNSC) warship, emerges from slipspace. They had just enacted the Cole Protocol, making a random jump in retreat from battle with the goal of keeping the enemy from discovering the location of Earth. That enemy is the Covenant, a collection of united, xenophobic alien species hell-bent on annihilating humanity for seemingly no particular reason. Their numbers seemed to be greater, their technology definitely superior. Humans were losing the war. The Autumn had just retreated from a Covenant attack on the colonial fortress world of Reach, the most well-defended world in human space aside from Earth. Reach had just fallen, and the Autumn, for all it knew, was all that survived of it.
The Autumn has emerged into an unknown area of space. Before them is a gas giant with a truly gargantuan artificial ring orbiting it.
Captain Jacob Keyes asks the shipboard A.I., Cortana, if they were followed. Of course they were, and the Covenant arrived first because they're faster. They were already sending in small numbers of preliminary recon forces to attack. The rest of the Covenant forces were approaching from the far side of the gas giant where they were hidden. Keyes orders Cortana to prepare the ship for combat, and to "open the hushed casket." All hands were called to prepare for battle.
In another part of the ship, Sergeant Johnson musters his ground troops into action and gives them a spicy drill-sergeant pep-talk.
In yet another part of the ship, some technicians get the command to open the hushed casket. In short order they unfreeze the Master Chief, Spartan super-soldier John-117. While they're checking his Mjolnir powered armor systems, Covenant forces begin boarding the Autumn. Keyes soon orders John to the bridge.
John works his way through a great deal of fighting around him as he makes his way to the bridge. Once there he's told by Keyes that the Autumn has no chance, and that he's initiating Cole Protocol Article Two. The Autumn was to be abandoned and its A.I. (with all its data) removed in case of capture. All hands would try and rendezvous on the strange nearby ring world, and Keyes would attempt to land the Autumn on it. John would upload Cortana into his Mjolnir suit and keep her safe.
The "abandon ship" order was given out over the intercom.
On the way to an escape pod John helps out whatever soldiers he can. Cortana notices that the Covenant are trying to destroy any launched escape pods they can. The Covenant, she guesses, really didn't want humans on that ring.
John, Cortana in tow, soon finds his way into an escape pod (the last one) with some other soldiers and, indeed, escapes from the doomed Pillar of Autumn.
As they fly toward the ring-world, Cortana reports that the Autumn is accelerating. Keyes was going in manually - no computer support!
CHAPTER 2: HALO
The airbags on the escape pod fire too early and the vessel crashes, all hands lost but John. Cortana laments their deaths.
The ring-world appears to be covered on the inside of its surface with an Earth-like environment. But sight-seeing would have to come later: it was time to search for other survivors.
John battles his way through roaming Covenant forces and locates Fire Team Charlie, headed by Johnson. After helping them fend off Covenant forces to secure an LZ, a Pelican dropship heads in piloted by a woman with the call-sign of "Foehammer." (Her Pelican ID is Echo-419.) Cortana suggests she release the Warthog jeep her Pelican is carrying. She and John will head out to search for more survivors and call in for evac when LZs are secured.
So that's just what they did. While locating and defending further survivors and seeing them evac'ed by Foehammer, Cortana makes the following observations:
There are artificial structures all over the places, and of neither human nor Covenant origin. They also employ very advanced and functioning technology, such as bridges made out of light.
The Covenant battle-net revealed that there had been more survivors than Cortana expected.
The Covenant, unafraid of the humans, isn't even bothering to encrypt its comm signals. Cortana was going to listen in.
Cortana reports that the Covenant have located and secured the remains of the Pillar of Autumn. Keyes was still alive. However, he and the rest of the surviving command staff were captured. Covenant chatter revealed their location to be the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation, a vessel disabled by Cortana before the Autumn was abandoned.
Eventually John boarded Echo-419, and they all had a new mission: save Captain Keyes and the command crew. Off to Truth and Reconciliation!
CHAPTER 3: TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION
Foehammer and some other Pelican dropships unload John and a number of other troops for a night infiltration of the enemy cruiser. The goal is to get onboard the ship using its own energy lift. Once inside, they would track down Keyes and the others by their command neural interface (CNI) transponders.
After many battles and much sniping (glorious sniping), John and the troops make onto the Truth and Reconciliation. Inside, many epic battles occur as John and company weave there way through the many corridors and hangars of the alien vessel. Cortana makes herself useful by wirelessly hacking into the ship's systems to do things like open up locked doors.
In time John finds Keyes (who alone among the command crew is still alive at this point), and he chides them on being reckless to save him but was otherwise grateful. He mentions that he overheard the Covenant call the ring-world "Halo," and that they said, "Whoever controls the Halo controls the universe." Cortana reports that Covenant chatter seems to revere Halo as a world of deep religious significance, and a super weapon.
Cortana also reports that the Covenant are searching for a "control room," but she didn't realize what that meant until just now. They were searching for Halo's control room. Keyes takes this as bad news and decides their new mission needs to be getting there first. But, before that, they'd need to get off the ship. It was off to the hangar bay for extraction by Foehammer.
On the way to the hangar Foehammer sends a message that she's pinned down and can't make it to the ship. They'd need to find another way off. Keyes decides to steal one of the Covenant Spirits and pilot it himself. When the group arrives there after shooting their way through the ship again, Keyes won't even let Cortana help him via software, wanting to fly it manually. They escape.
CHAPTER 4: THE SILENT CARTOGRAPHER
Pelican dropships carrying John and other troops are enroute on Keyes' new mission. Cortana informs them that the Covenant are searching for a place called the "Silent Cartographer," which is apparently a map room that will lead them to the the Control Room. John and company are to beat the Covenant there, tearing into the Covenant search parties on the island where the dropships were headed. The Silent Cartographer was said to be under the island.
Once the beach is secured, Foehammer drops a Warthog for use in exploring the island. With it, John quickly locates the crux of Covenant activity and, along with such activity, the entrance to the underground structure that contain the Silent Cartographer. He gets inside it, but discovers that the Covenant appear to have better knowledge of Halo's security subsystems than expected. Cortana is shocked. Impenetrable doors are now locked. They were going to have to disable the security before going any further.
Eventually our heroes, of course, find a security mechanism and unlock the doors. It took a little more exploring of the island and a lot more combat, but the sights were nice. On their way out of the security area Cortana gives a report by radio to Keyes. Keyes informs them that he's on his way to what seems to be a weapons cache, but he might drop out of contact when he gets there. If this occurs then they need to continue with the mission and stop the Covenant from using Halo.
Now, having made his way back to the cartographer structure, John fights his way deep into the surface of the Halo and takes in a lot of the visuals. All around him is vast, heady, almost glowing architecture and drops that go down farther than he can see.
John finds the Silent Cartographer and Cortana uses it to locate the Control Room. When John finds his way topside once more, he radios for extraction from Foehammer. Foehammer disturbingly reports that she's lost contact with Captain Keyes. But John and Cortana know that, despite this, his orders and the mission stand.
Cortana instructs Foehammer to fly Echo-419 them into a large artificial tunnel. The Control Room was deep underground. Foehammer wasn't enthusiastic about this, but would the Covenant expect an aerial insertion underground...?
CHAPTER 5: ASSAULT ON THE CONTROL ROOM
John fights (and fights and fights and fights) his way through the most boring, endlessly Covenant-vomiting series of battles he has ever fought. He proves his mettle as a one-man army a dozen times over as he swims in oceans of alien blood. His warrior ways bring him through no end of repetitive, maze-like inner chambers, up and down elevators, across snow-covered landscapes in various vehicles, and more, as he murder-death-kills his way to the Control Room.
[Good thing John doesn't know that an even worse chapter is coming. The game Halo is, in fact, famous in part because of the sadistic chapter that will soon arrive.]
Along the way, Cortana notes that the snow either meant that weather control was malfunctioning, or the builders of the Halo wanted there to be inclement weather.
Finally, arriving triumphantly from atop an Everest of corpses and Covenant vehicles (well, not literally speaking), John enters the massive chamber that is the Control Room. He inserts Cortana into it. At first she's overwhelmed by the experience, but soon finds her head again. John wants to know how to use it against the Covenant, but Cortana makes him hold on a moment as she analyzes information. She informs him that Halo was built by the Forerunners, and the Covenant were right about that. But then she starts to get frantic as she came across a terrible truth. "The Covenant must have known! How could they not have known?" She's in shock.
Cortana tells John that the Covenant found something, something awful, buried in Halo. Now they're afraid. Suddenly she cries out that John had to stop Keyes! Keyes couldn't be allowed to get into the weapons cache he was looking for! It wasn't really a weapons cache. But she won't explain why to John. She just tells him to go - to run - and stop him. So John took off running...
CHAPTER 6: 343 GUILTY SPARK
Foehammer drops John off in a swamp. By radio she informs him that Keyes went out of contact with them twelve hours before.
John makes his way through the swamp, fighting off some Covenant as he does so. But the deeper he gets into the underground "weapons cache," the more quiet things become and the more Covenant bodies he finds. Was Keyes the cause, or what? But there's no sign of Keyes and his men.
At last John finds a clue, and it's not a happy one: he finds a man still alive, but he's gone crazy and is shooting at anything, even John. He's in extreme shock, screaming something about monsters and how everyone was dead. John is forced to put him down. Not long after, John finds a human body. He takes the dead man's helmet and views recorded video on it.
The man's name was Jenkins. He was with Johnson and other men. Johnson was to scout out the place, make sure it was safe, before the Captain arrived. Inside they found some strange Covenant bodies. It looked like something had scrambled up their insides. While they were talking about it, Keyes showed up and was given an update. Just then man who had been stationed at the entrance to the structure reported being under attack, but not from Covenant! Their transmission went dead after screams.
Johnson and Keyes soon found themselves under attack by swarms of strange little creatures that looked like walking jellyfish. They were latching onto soldiers and killing them. There were too many! Then Jenkins went down, and the video feed died.
In short order John himself is overrun with the things! His Mjolnir suit proves to be a great defense against them, but in too many numbers matters might be different. And those numbers come. Swarms and swarms. He does the best he can and finally manages to get away. But there are more of them as he fights his way back to the surface, and also much worse: dead bodies come to life again, now twisted and hideous monstrosities of what they once were! They all seem to have one aim: kill him.
In time John emerges victorious from the onslaught. As he approaches the surface he gets a transmission from Foehammer. She says that he went dark after entering the structure, and that she'd be waiting at some provided coordinates. John meets up with some troops on the surface lead by Johnson(!), and together they do their best to break through the now berserking monsters and jellyfish-like creatures. (There's no time to debrief Johnson.) All the men but Johnson go down, one by one, until John and Johnson are alone in their quest to reach the extraction point.
And then, out of nowhere, strange robotic sentinels appear and start culling the creatures. They ignore him, going only for the monsters.
John suddenly finds himself face to face with a little floating square-ish device that looks like it has a blue, glowing robotic eyeball in the middle of it. In a very happy, metallic voice it tells him that its name is 343 Guilty Spark, and that it is the monitor of Installation 04. It notes that someone has released "the Flood," and that its job is to keep it contained on the installation. But to do that, it needed help. And just like that, it and John teleported away as Foehammer called out...
CHAPTER 7: THE LIBRARY
John doesn't realize it, but he's just entered Hell. Hell is a Library.
Guilty and John appear in a huge, monolithic chamber. Guilty informs John that something called the "Index" is nearby. It's required to activate the installation for Flood control. They must reach it, therefore John spends what feels like a horrifying eternity combating an endless flood of, well, Flood. Guilty brings John through ten security-locked giant doors, each with a lot of space between them and scores and scores of weapon-wielding Flood monsters coming from everywhere, half of them exploding like giant grenades when they die. And the whole time, mind you, Guilty is just happily humming, while occasionally commenting to itself that it's a genius. It seems quite insane, really. However, it does say some interesting things:
> The Flood consumes any creature with a great enough biomass and cognitive ability, and each creature creates new spores to consume more creatures.
> The Flood, despite its parasitic nature, is actually intelligent, hence its need not just for biomass but also cognitive ability. It is apparently hard at work repairing the Pillar of Autumn.
> The Halo was created to study and contain the Flood.
> The Flood will eventually change the atmosphere.
> Guilty isn't impressed with John's Mjolnir armor. He rates it as class 2, while class 7 is the only safe minimum for this sort of work.
> Guilty is annoyed by the Covenant because they seem to want to get everywhere, even restricted places.
> Because of the uncontained Flood outbreak, mass sterilization must again occur. Samples of the Flood were kept on the installation after the last sterilization for the purposes of study. Guilty is glad that some of the Flood managed to survive long enough to reproduce. Their survival as a species depended on it.
John makes it in one piece to the Index. He picks it up, and it turns out to be kinda like a big, futuristic-looking key. Guilty takes it from him, citing that John could potentially be infected with the Flood, and the Index must not fall into their hands. Once this is done, they both teleport away...
CHAPTER 8: TWO BETRAYALS
Guilty and John appear in the Control Room. Guilty confesses that he cannot unite the Index with the Core, as this is something only a flesh-and-blood creature can do. It tells John that, as a "reclaimer," he is suited to the task. (It doesn't explain what that means.) John inserts the Index into the Core and... nothing happens. Guilty is confused. The Halo should have activated.
Just then, Cortana appears, and she's very angry. She informs John that the purpose of the Halo isn't to destroy the Flood, but only their food, namely all sentient life! John asks Guilty if this is true, and Guilty is confused that John didn't know that. It's also very annoyed that a construct is in the Core.
Guilty goes on to say that the range of this particular installation is only 25,000 light years, but when combined with the others it should cover enough area. Then it adds that it's confused as to why John is refusing do something he's already done once. It says, "Last time you asked me if it were my choice, would I do it? Having had considerable to time to ponder your query my answer has not changed. There is no choice. We must activate the ring."
Guilty asks for the Index back, but Cortana refuses. Guilty starts to get truly miffed. Cortana observes that it's time to leave, and John returns her to his armor. Guilty politely demands that Cortana be given to him. John, of course, refuses. That's when sentinels appear and Guilty tells them to save John's head but to dispose of the rest of him. It could always find someone else.
John battles his way out of the Control Room as Guilty teleports away. Outside again, Cortana tells him that Halo can't fire if its pulse generators are neutralized. That needed to be their new goal: take them out, especially if Guilty finds a way to activate the weapon without the Index.
As John makes his way back over familiar terrain to find the pulse generators he witnesses a sight both good and bad: the Covenant, Flood, and sentinels are all duking it out with one another! Everything is chaos, a war on three fronts thanks to four opposing forces.
In time Cortana reports that she's located the Pillar of Autumn. The good news is that its reactor is still online. The bad news is that they need Keyes, or at least his neural implants, to overload the reactor core. They were going to have to locate him, dead or alive.
When the last pulse generator goes down, Cortana reveals to John that she's worked out how to use the teleportation system. But since she wasn't quite clear on some things they could only try it once in safety. Off to the Captain!
CHAPTER 9: KEYES
Cortana teleports the two of them into a Flood-overwhelmed Covenant cruiser. She informs John that the Covenant battle-net is in chaos. The Covenant had been ordered to abandon Halo as soon as the Flood was unleashed, but this cruiser had been overwhelmed. Fearing that the Flood would repair and steal it, the Covenant have sent in a strike team to neutralize the Flood onboard and repair the ship themselves.
In better news, Keyes' CNI transponder reveals that he's alive and his implants are intact. In fact, Keyes, who seems to have discovered that they're coming for him, repeatedly orders John to leave over radio. Cortana, however, urges John to continue as the Captain's vitals are weakening and it sounds like he's in pain.
John fights his way through the vessel on his way to Keyes. He's forced to leave the ship for a bit and find another way back on, but he manages it. Along the way he notices that the Flood is gathering bodies and making piles of them.
Eventually John makes it through a flood of Flood (and Covenant) and locates Keyes. What he finds is horrifying: Keyes is dead, and he's been absorbed into the Flood. It grieves both John and Cortana to do it, but they rip Keyes' neural implants out of his head (having to go through his face), and Cortana secures the code to self-destruct the Pillar of Autumn.
John escapes via a stolen Banshee in the shuttle bay. It's off to the Autumn for the final confrontation.
CHAPTER 10: THE MAW
Cortana tells John that she needs to be inserted into the computer console on the bridge. John, ever the Cortana-pleaser, fights his way to Autumn's bridge. On the way he runs into all three enemy forces: Covenant, Flood, and sentinels, but no other humans.
John inserts Cortana into what's left of the bridge computer system, and she activates the self-destruct sequence. Just then, the countdown stops, and they hear 343 Guilty Spark speaking through a comm channel. It's onboard, and it's disturbed that John and Cortana would seek to destroy the Halo. It's also confused as to why the UNSC would give a warship a construct that was so full of knowledge and ability. What if it got captured? But, at any rate, Guilty is most concerned with activating Halo and, newly in addition, cataloguing all of human history through the Autumn's computer. (He finds it fascinating.)
Guilty happily tells John, calling him "reclaimer," that it's useless to fight. He needed to hand over the construct, i.e. Cortana, and would be rewarded a painless death if he did so. That's when Cortana cuts Guilty off. The new plan, suggested by John, is to blow the reactor manually. The goal would be to use explosives to destabilize the reactor couplings, and then hopefully get off the ship in time. Cortana agrees to the idea and has John put her back into his armor.
John battles his way to the engineering section. Guilty is there, and it's having a hay-day flitting between computer terminals. Flood and sentinels are all over the place as John gets to his task. As he does so, Guilty keeps expressing some degree of confusion as to why John, a reclaimer, wants to destroy the Halo and not wipe out the Flood.
Eventually the core goes critical thanks to John's explosive touch. Cortana signals Foehammer for evac, and John guns his way to the rendezvous location. But, when he gets there, he's greeted only with the sight of Foehammer getting shot down by Banshees! He and Cortana let a moment of silence pass, but then speed off to the ship's Longsword dock. It's the only space-worthy ship left. If they hurried they would make it!
A few minutes later the Pillar of Autumn explodes as John (with Cortana) speed off into space onboard a Longsword. A whole section of the ring is blown out with it, and the rest of the ring starts to crumple.
Cortana notes with sadness that she's getting no signals from any survivors, human or Covenant. They were alone. They were the only survivors. At least, she says, it's over. But John can only say, "No. I think we're just getting started."
TO BE CONTINUED IN HALO 2 ~
No comments:
Post a Comment