Chapter 4
Hard landing
Location: unkown
View point, third person: Chief
The beach.... such a calming place it can be. The Chief didn't know how he got here but none the less he was here, walking along side the ocean. He tried to stop and stare at the sea for just a moment but his body wouldn't respond to his thoughts. In a situation such one would think he would panic but he did not. The Chief simply went along with it an-
"John!"
The Chief stopped... that voice... it seemed so familiar. The Chief tried to move towards the source of the voice and this time his body let him. He didn't run nor did he jog, he simply walked towards the source of the voice which was further down the beach. As the Master Chief got closer to the source he heard it again but this time it was different.
"John!"
This new voice sounded desperate almost and it was coming from the same direction as the original. He quickened his pace and soon saw a small boy sitting on the beach, playing in the sand. As the Chief got even closer he stopped... That small boy in the sand... was him.
" Wake up John!"
________________________________________
The chief's eye's slowly opened. He tried to figure out what had happened first he had a weird dream and now he was somewhere dark. John suddenly remembered that he had got knocked out from a piece of the Dawn... which was probably what was sitting on top of him. At first when he tried to ball his hands they were numb. He slowly flexed each of his fingers and finally made a tight fist which took away any numbness left in his hands. The master Chief quickly placed his hands under the metal plating and with his powerful muscles he threw the metal plate off of him as if it weighed nothing more than a person.
Slowly John sat up and looked at what laid before him. Both the Forward unto Dawn and the Covenant vessel were in large broken pieces. Fires burned brightly everywhere as the chief turned his head. He stopped when he realized how much time he had wasted and slowly stood up and looked forward. Hopefully Cortana would know where they were
"Where are we?" He asked his companion who was thankfully unharmed.
A moment passed before she responded. "Checking coordinate impact data."
as soon as the words had left her mouth the Chief was assaulted with a voice he hadn't heard in a long time.
"We've asked you to give up your family, your childhood, your future-"
"what?" The chief shook his head and yanked out Cortana, "Cortana!"
Cortana appeared before him standing and twisting her hands, "I'm sorry. It's the crash. I'm fine."
Now the Chief definitely knew something was up, "Something was wrong even before we left the Dawn.
"Chief, really, i'm fine." Cortana horribly lied as her voice crackled.
The master chief slowly stood up and looked at Cortana with a hard stare, "We're not going anywhere until you tell me what's wrong."
Cortana looked towards the ground and sighed, she knew he wasn't going to take the news easy.
"I was put into service eight years ago."
"Eight years?" The chief thought aloud as he tried to figure out what that was supposed to mean.
"AIs deteriorate after seven, Chief." Cortana said, revealing the horrible truth.
John slowly turned his head back towards Cortana. Cortana was going to die... and it looked as if there was nothing he could do to stop that... unless.
"Halsey." He said with a strained voice.
"Chief-" Cortana began as she closed her eyes.
"We need to find Halsey." He repeated with the same tone of voice.
"Chief-please!" Cortana begged, it was difficult enough to reveal this to him but to now have a supposed source of hope as well...
"She made you. She can fix you." He told her, confidence slowly returning in his voice."
"I won't recover from rampancy, Chief." Cortana told him.
The chief wouldn't take no for an answer, "If we can just get back to earth and find Halsey, she can fix this."
A moment of silence passed between the two as they stared at each other knowing fully well that they had began another adventure.
"Don't make a girl a promise you can't keep." Cortana told him with a sad expression.
The two's conversation was then ended as a Phantom and a pair of banshes soared over their heads.
"We need to move!" Cortana commanded as the Chief inserted her into the back of his helmet.
The first order of business was to find a weapon. The Chief turned around and spied the Carbine that he had taken from the covenant storage rack on the Dawn. He walked over to it and noticed that the front of the Carbine was scorched black, except the barrel, and that the rest of the gun had remained it's purple color. The chief picked up the damaged Carbine and a few extra cartridges that looked intact. The chief then tried to fire a couple of shots, thankfully the gun still worked.
"Guess your lucks still holding out." Cortana said to him with a crackle in her speech.
As The Chief nodded and turned around, Cortana finally took notice of the area, "Doesn't look like the Covenant fared much better than we did."
"How many ships made it through the roof?" The Chief asked her.
"Plenty... Why?" She asked.
The Chief began walking away from the spot he landed, "Cause we still need a ride home."
As the two began making their way through the wreckage Elites and Grunts could be heard wailing in pain. But that was not the only thing that was making noise.
"Chief, up there." Cortana said aloud as she set a waypoint on top of a destroyed Lich.
"What's up there?" He asked her as he made his way around the destroyed vessel and began climbing to the top to find a destroyed console.
"The console still has some power left so I figured we should see if we can find anything that could help us." Cortana explained.
That made sense. The master chief quickly walked over and kenneled down to interact with the console. A few moments after he had done so an elite began to repeat one word over and over again, "Didact.... Didact"
"What does it mean?" John asked his companion.
"It's a message... They played this message every thirty minutes for the past three years..." Cortana informed him.
"Three years?" He asked as he began moving towards the new waypoint which lead to an exit out of the small destroyed canyon.
"Apparently they couldn't get in." She chuckled.
The duo cut their conversation there as the Chief came towards the exit. He gave his radar a quick glance and moved forward once he was satisfied. He also checked his ammo count and noticed he only had thirty Carbine shots and zero grenades left. It'll have to do.
"Chief, I'm picking up a faint transmission on the high-band." Cortana said as she interrupted the Chief's train of thought. She also brought up a display inside his HUD to show it to him.
"Covenant?" He asked her as he vaulted over a piece of debris that had made it's way into the tunnel.
She took away the display,"I don't think so... The pattern's different. I'll try and triangulate it's position"
The master chief nodded as he rounded the corner and saw a blinding white light at the end of the tunnel. As the Chief got closer to the end of the tunnel his visor polarized(?) a few times. The Chief walked through the end of the tunnel and was met with quite a sight. Giant Forerunner structures that loomed thousands of miles high floated hundreds of miles of the ground. The structures began to shift and change their massive parts right before his very eyes and had he not been on an important mission he would have stopped to glance at them. No nothing else was more important to him at that moment than saving Cortana. The Chief turned down the small path that lead away from the cave and saw warthogs, destroyed warthogs.
I need to find something with wheels if I want to get us out of he- The Chief's thoughts came to a screeching halt as he walked past a flaming warthog and spied a perfectly intact warthog... With a purple pony sitting in the drivers seat...