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Halo from the Flood's Point of View: Enter the Norah
Posted By: Simpsons Rule
Date: 26 July 2003, 12:35 AM
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Author's Note: Me and Sterfrye36 have gotten together to combine our stories. To fully understand my story, you should read it from the beginning, starting with the Prologue. If you aren't familiar with Sterfrye36's story, Battle for the Norah, I suggest you read it. As always, constructive criticism is welcomed. Enjoy!
The Flood were now spreading all over Halo. No one could ever hope to contain them now. They had just become too powerful. The Covenants' and humans' only hopes to survive were to escape Halo. The Covenant had been long ago issued orders to abandon Halo and maybe if they had all listened then, some would have made it out.
Unfortunately, most of the Covenant only hurried along the repairs to their ships after multiple ships had come under attack. The humans, however, after finding out about the Flood, quickly made plans to leave Halo on the cruiser, the Truth and Reconciliation. The ship was one of the few who were space ready.
Although the Flood had attacked this cruiser and were inside of it, their numbers were quickly fading due to the Covenant's quick response and relatively small number of hostiles. After the Master Chief's removal of a prisoner on the ship, security around the gravity lift had been tripled, which also helped to prevent Flood from entering the ship.
Another ship, The Law of the Forerunner, wasn't so lucky. After a very fierce battle that lasted for hours, the ship had finally come under complete Flood rule. The ship wasn't too badly damaged either. The Flood quickly shut off the gravity lift, closed all the bay doors and locked all exterior doors, leaving the ship virtually impenetrable to anything less than an explosion big enough to blow a hole in the ship's hull. The assimilation form, which contained the Ship Master, stood in the ship's control center. It quickly learned what was wrong with the ship and how to fix it and so, the assimilation form began to give orders to the entire Flood.
With that, the infected Covenant were all brought to the engines to begin repairs. With nothing to challenge them, the Flood completely finished the repairs. The Flood were then all recalled to the docking bays. With nothing left to do, they were ordered, by the assimilation form, to finish the infection process on their hosts.
During the battle for the ship and during the repairs, the Flood hadn't completely infected the Covenant because there hadn't been enough time and all they needed was the host's motor functions. Now, with nothing left to do but wait to enter space, the Flood could take the time and energy required to completely infect their host. That meant turning Elites into combat forms and Grunts and Jackals into carrier forms. Once that process was complete, the ship would attack the closest planet, which was Covenant inhabited.
Not all of the surviving Marines, however, were gathered inside Alpha Base, ready to attack the Truth and Reconciliation. When all of the Helljumpers had landed and made plans to take over a Forerunner complex for a base, most of the Marines who escaped the Pillar of Autumn via escape pods landed within the same area.
During the last few moments before the Pillar of Autumn tried to land on Halo, a few Marines had just made it to the escape pods. They had been busy preparing supply boats to launch from the ship. If the Pillar of Autumn began to go into Halo's atmosphere, the escape pods wouldn't be able to launch. Because of this, all five of the fully loaded escape pods couldn't make the correct adjustments in their trajectory to land near Alpha Base. They launched, hoping that they would land near enough to reach Alpha Base by foot. Shortly after they launched, the supply boats did the same on a matching trajectory.
Since the escape pods flew like ungainly rocks with wings, it was extremely hard to maneuver them, especially with the Pillar of Autumn creating a large amount of heat as it entered halo's atmosphere. Although everyone alive had escaped the Pillar of Autumn, the Covenant were still attacking it with plasma fire because they didn't want it to land on the Forerunner's holy relic. One such plasma bolt ripped a hole in the hull where some Scorpion Tanks and Warthogs were being stored. The Marine had little choice but to leave most of these valuable vehicles in the Pillar of Autumn's belly for the only way to bring them to the surface was by supply boats. These supply boats took a long time to properly secure and launch. The Marines had taken a very large risk in preparing those lifeboats. A risk that they hoped would pay off.
The escape pods quickly descended onto Halo and managed land within short range of each other. The Pillar of Autumn wasn't too far behind as it too began to descend onto Halo's surface. The turbulence caused by the entry into the atmosphere caused some pieces of the hull to fall down and also wriggled loose some tanks and Warthogs. They fell like bricks down to Halo's surface with increasing speed. All of the Warthogs and tanks that fell from the Autumn's hull had been crushed when they dropped onto Halo's surface. One tank had fallen directly on top of an escape pod. When the 66 tons of metal hit the escape pod, it crushed it and instantly killed all of its occupants.
The supply boats stayed close to the escape pods and made crash landings. Most of the vehicles had been attached in a makeshift fashion. During the crash landing, they had been thrown loose and completely disabled. Two tanks and two Warthogs managed to stay firmly onto the supply boat and only sustained minor damages. Although some work would have to be done to them, they would run again.
One supply boat carrying shotguns and assault rifles was completely destroyed by the Covenant. Thinking it was full of humans; the Covenant attacked the supply boat. This would prove to be a very large loss to the Marines indeed. Although they didn't know it, they would be fighting the Flood on Halo much more so than the Covenant. The shotguns and assault rifles worked very well against the Flood. Since that was the only supply boat to carry such weapons in large quantities, the Marines would be stuck with mostly long range weapons. Long range weapons, such as the sniper rifle, were very ineffective against the Flood and would make the Marine's battle that much more difficult.
Captain Keyes was being very stubborn indeed. The assimilation form that was sitting inside The Harboring Mist's control center was having a hard time getting to the navigation data that he had in his memory. The Ship Master 'Berty wasn't a challenge at all since the assimilation form quickly found the location to all of the Covenant worlds. In time, thought the assimilation form. If it had to go through every single memory Captain Keyes had, it would do so. As it turned out, that's exactly what it did have to do because Keyes was resisting very strongly.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK. What?! the assimilation form thought. Not only was Captain Keyes resisting, but he also managed to remember his own name, rank and serial number. Very impressive. While all the other hosts readily gave the information that the Flood wanted, this one seemed very persistent in doing his duty to protect 'Earth.' Where, the assimilation form persisted, where is Earth. But Captain Keyes only held on stronger to the information he had.
Very slowly, the assimilation form was narrowing in on what it sought. There was nothing left to show it now. It had discarded almost all of the Captain's memories. All that remained now were cold hard statistics and navigation information. Then, just as it was about to receive the location of Earth...
WHAM! The Master Chief punched his fist right through the Captain's skull, reached for his neural implants and removed them. The assimilation form had been so preoccupied in searching Keyes's mind that he was unaware of anything that was going around him. A great sense of anger filled the assimilation form and it called out to all nearby Flood to come and get the intruder. Unable to fight itself, all the assimilation form could do was watch as the Master Chief killed every single Flood form that came after him. Unwilling to run the risk of the Master Chief killing all of the Flood warriors he had, the assimilation form decided not to call in more Flood.
Just as the Master Chief was about to leave, some special forces Covenant burst through the door. Although the Flood inhabited half of the ship, the other half was filled with Covenant. Covenant that weren't going down without a fight. If they reached the assimilation form, they would surely destroy it. It was grateful that the same person who had killed his warriors also managed to kill all of the Covenant. After the Master Chief left, it locked the doors leading to the control center so no more surprises would come.
Meanwhile, the Flood located yet another Covenant ship, the Norah. It was in fine working condition. In fact, it was one of the few Covenant ships that were untouched by the Pillar of Autumn. The ship had currently been docked at that location for research on Halo's environmental systems and other various technological marvels that the Forerunners used to build Halo. In fact, Halo's equivalent to a brain, lungs and heart were all contained within a 7-kilometer radius of each other on that piece of Halo.
Determined to learn all that the Forerunners had left for them, the Prophet on the Norah ordered different squads to examine different things. Although aware of the Flood threat, the Prophet was determined to retrieve as much information as possible before they left Halo, maybe for good. One squad would examine Halo's life support hub in hopes of shutting it down where the humans were in order to kill them all quickly. A second squad would look at what appeared to be Halo's teleportation grid. Although all attempts to tap into the grid had failed, the Covenant were hopeful that they might be able to use it with a little more research. Finally, a third squad was sent to the teleportation grid's power plant. The Covenant believed that they needed to extract power from this structure in order to use the teleportation grid.
There was a much bigger reason to go to those structures however. Although it was important to learn as much Forerunner technology as possible, it was more important to stop the Flood. The Flood had gone to these structures to (the Covenant hypothesized) spread their infection. The Covenant have had many encounters with the Flood. They had also learned much about them from ancient scriptures. They knew the Flood released spores to paralyze their victims but in such a large area as Halo, they would have to release trillions upon trillions of spores to have any effect on the humans or Covenant. If the Flood managed to gain access to the environmental systems, however, they could send large concentrations of spores to different parts of Halo. If the Flood could accomplish that, they would own all of Halo in a very short amount of time. Therefore, the Covenant's main goal was to stop the Flood.
With a sizeable portion of the Norah's crew out looking at the Forerunner complexes, it was severely out manned when the Flood attacked. Just as with other ships, the Flood first went up into the ship via the gravity lift. They slowly made their way further and further into the ship until they reached a locked door. Ship Master Faly 'Hunderstood realized what was happening to his ship just in time to lock all the doors before the Flood reached the ship's control center. Without heavy firepower, all the Flood could do was unsuccessfully attempt to force their way through the doors.
The lesser Prophet who accompanied the Ship Master in the control room wasn't higher in the caste structure than the Elite. Therefore, the Prophet couldn't order him to do anything.
"Might I suggest venting the atmosphere in the chambers that contain the Flood," the Prophet said.
The Ship Master gave a short chuckle at the Prophet's inexperience. "Vent the atmosphere you say?" asked the Elite. "We aren't in space, venting the atmosphere won't do anything." Any respect the Elite had for this prophet was quickly fading.
Embarrassed, the Prophet just hovered there, silent until finally he said "Why not suck the air out of the rooms then?" asked the Prophet who wanted to redeem himself.
The Elite considered it, "I suppose we could give it a try." The Elite sealed all doors with an airtight lock. He then began to suck the air out of the Flood inhabited rooms. The ship wasn't exactly designed to suck the air out, however. The best the Elite could do was transfer air from those rooms into other portions of the ship through vents.
The Ship Master slowly watched the progress. Air remaining in the rooms went from 100% to 80% then to 77% at which point it almost stopped completely. Damn the Elite thought, they must be gathering around the vents and blocking the air. Then a horrible thought came to the Elite's mind. If the Flood somehow managed to enter those vents, they would be brought directly into other parts of the ship. Impossible, the Elite reassured himself, they have nothing to force themselves into the vent with.
No matter how much they blocked the vents, the air would soon empty completely. The Elite felt a sense of triumph that he had outsmarted such a dangerous enemy. He was the one being outsmarted however. Sure, the Flood had gathered around the vents to slow down the airflow but they had other reasons as well. They were releasing spores directly into the vents, which they hoped led to other places in the ship. Soon, the spores would take their effect on the Covenant and paralyze them. Then, with a little luck, the Flood could break into the vents and easily infect every Covenant soldier they found.
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