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Halo from the Flood's Point of View: The Attack
Posted By: Simpsons Rule
Date: 1 August 2003, 1:05 AM
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The Ship Master on the Norah was starting to feel a little strange. His limbs were starting to feel numb and he was suddenly very tired. He looked over to the Prophet who was apparently feeling the same way, given how he was swaying left and right atop his anti-grav belt. The Elite pushed the feeling aside, thinking it was just battle fatigue and focused on watching the ship status.
Air was continuously draining from the Flood infected compartments, but too slowly. The Elite pushed the system as far as it could go to speed the process. His eyes began to flutter and he was struggling to stay awake. He started to take long, deep breathes but that only seemed to make it worse. He then looked at the air coming through the vents, it wasn't clear but rather had a green hue to it.
The Elite put two and two together and turned to the Prophet. Although the Elite had some knowledge as to the habits of the Flood, only the Prophets knew everything about them. Since the Elite couldn't remember reading anything in the databases about the Flood releasing anything in the air, he thought maybe the Prophet did.
"The Flood," the Ship Master said, "can they be doing this? Do they release anything in the air?"
"Knowledge about the Flood has been given to us by the Forerunners themselves, only those who know the holy language and can read the scriptures are allowed to know everything." the Prophet responded. The truth was, as only being a minor Prophet, he didn't know much more about the Flood than the Elite did. The Prophet wasn't about to tell the Elite this, however.
The Elite quickly cut the air flow to the control room completely off. He then took his plasma sword from his belt and lit it. What he was about to do went against every religious rule in the book, but he didn't care. He took a swipe at the Prophet and purposely missed by a few inches above his head.
"Tell me if the Flood can do this," the Elite started, "or I swear I will make you die a very very painful death."
The Prophet began to tremble. Being the religious leader, he had no weapons of his own and therefore had no way of defending himself. He tried desperately to remember all he knew about the Flood. He reviewed how they infected hosts, what they did to them...then he remembered. The Flood sometimes released spores into the air to paralyze their victims, which made for an easy infection. "Yes," the Prophet slowly said, "the Flood may have released spores into the air."
"And when the hell were you going to tell me this!" the Elite exclaimed. "You mean to tell me that you suggested we pump the air out of those compartments when you knew the Flood could just release spores?! What do the spores do?"
"We believe that they paralyze whomever breathes them in."
The Elite just stood there, looking at the Prophet with unbelieving eyes. He realized he was gripping his plasma sword very tightly. He turned it off and placed it back on his belt, then turned to the control panel. He shut off the pumps sucking the air. Shit, the Elite thought, there's still 50% of the air left. That was plenty for the Flood to survive in.
The Flood stopped releasing spores. The air was no longer being sucked out of the vents. They began thinking of a way to break through those vents when the ship suddenly tilted up and accelerated.
No choice then, the Elite thought, there's only one way to really get rid of them now.
"What are you doing?" asked the Prophet.
The Elite turned around so fast that it made the Prophet jump. "I'm going to do what you originally suggested." the Elite growled. "I'm going to take this ship out of Halo's atmosphere and vent the atmosphere on the ship."
"But we have our forces on the ground," the Prophet began, "we can't just abandon them."
"I'm not 'abandoning them'." the Elite replied. "About an hour ago, we received a transmission from the Truth and Reconciliation. It said that we could call our forces back from guarding the teleportation grid, the life support hub and the power plant. I haven't been able to contact them recently, but I think they're just preparing to leave as well.
"Our ground forces are on their way now. They'll wait for the ship to return from space where we'll pick them up and leave Halo for good."
This was it, the final fusion cell needed to make the Pillar of Autumn's engines go critical. The Master Chief tossed a fragmentation grenade into the opening and BOOM, it went off.
"That did it! The engines will go critical. We have fifteen minutes to get off the ship! We should move outside and go to the third deck elevator. It will take us to a Class Seven service corridor that runs along the length of the ship. Hurry!" exclaimed Cortana.
The Law of the Forerunner was ready to go. All of the Flood had finished converting their hosts into full-fledged Flood forms (say that 3 times fast). The assimilation form that stood in the ship's control room was motionless. Suddenly, it ejected the Elite's former arms and touched a series of buttons on the holographic control panel in front of it. The engines came to life, and the ship slowly lifted from Halo's surface. It tilted at a 45 degree angle and sped off.
In a matter of minutes, the ship had completely cleared halo's gravity and it just floated there while the assimilation form gathered the necessary data. It then turned on the ship's slipspace engines and headed for a Covenant planet called Decesso. In the blink of an eye, the Law of the Forerunner had vanished and sentenced that planet to hell.
The Norah was still rising towards space went the Autumn blew on the other side of Halo. The initial blast from its engines was least felt on the other side of the ring, but it was a very large explosion. The blast, accompanied by its shockwaves, was enough to knock out the systems of the Norah. Still not half as far as the ship needed to be from Halo, it began to plummet back to Halo's surface.
There was this whistling sound that kept getting louder and louder but where was it coming from? All the Covenant that had been recalled from the life support hub, teleportation grid and power generator were wondering the same thing. They were all gathered close by, waiting for the Norah to return when an Elite looked up. It opened its mouth to scream but it was too late. The Norah landed on top of the Covenant, killing every single one of them.
The blast from the Autumn was too much to handle for Halo as it began to break apart into hundreds of pieces, which collided with one another and ceased to exist. The piece of Halo that the Norah was on broke apart from the rest of Halo as well. It began spinning uncontrollably towards the gas giant.
It was moving at such a velocity that it passed directly through Threshold but got caught in its gravity when it came out the other side. Halo, still rotating on several axes, began revolving around Threshold. 343 Guilty Spark had taken Sergeant Johnson, as well as an Elite, with him to Halo's life support hub just as the Pillar of Autumn blew.
343 Guilty Spark had done some calculations. Whichever piece of Halo contained the life support hub would also contain life. Once disconnected from the rest of Halo, all the other pieces would vent atmosphere and any humans, Covenant or Flood that survived the blast would die. Since Guilty Spark had known that the Flood tried to attack the life support systems, he knew that they would be close enough to it to remain alive.
There was also a Covenant ship on that piece of Halo, which gave the Flood a way to escape. His function was to prevent the Flood from leaving the installation at all costs which is why he took the Sergeant and Elite with him. He had watched Sergeant Johnson fight before and knew he was a hard core son of a bitch.
First thing was first though, Halo was still spinning uncontrollably. Guilty Spark teleported to Halo's systems and sealed off the areas that had been broken off. Then, after no more atmosphere was venting, started firing jets located on the underside of Halo. Slowly, Guilty Spark managed to get Halo level.
The Master Chief and Cortana were within the Longsword accelerating away from Halo.
"Did anyone else make it?" asked the Chief.
"Scanning," after a moments pause, Cortana said "Just dust and echoes. We're all that's left. We did what we had to do...for Earth. An entire Covenant armada obliterated and the Flood...we had no choice. Halo, it's finished."
"No," replied the Master Chief, "I think we're just getting started."
There was a problem with Cortana's scans. She had been expecting to see the Truth and Reconciliation waiting for them in space, full of the surviving Marines. When she couldn't see them, she scanned for the ship itself. Since the Longsword's scanners weren't very powerful, she then searched for any transmissions, but found none. That was why she came to the conclusion that no one had survived the blast.
Half of the Covenant remaining on the Norah had been knocked out and another 20 percent had been killed, including the Prophet, when the ship crashed. The Ship Master stood in the Control Center, already weakened from the spores and shaken up from the crash. He looked over, saw the Prophet's lifeless body still floating and thought to himself, Serves him right.
It was pitch black within the ship. The holographic control panels that used to surround the command deck were no longer activated. The Elite turned on his plasma sword to benefit from the blue light it produced. He tried opening the doors but nothing was working. He keyed the Covenant equivalent to a microphone on his helmet, in hopes that some of his men were still alive.
"This is the Ship Master, can anyone hear me?"
He was replied with a bunch of "Yes Excellency. What happened?"
He left his reply on all frequencies and said "I don't know but unless we can get this ship back up, we're done for. Is anyone there in the engines?"
"Yes, Excellency, 'Kanamee is here."
"What's the status of the engine, are they badly damaged?"
"I don't see any damage whatsoever but they're all offline. I would try to repair them but I can't seem to find my equipment. Is there any chance the doors work?"
"Negative, the ship has no power whatsoever. Unless we can open the doors, I'm afraid we're stuck here. If anyone is equipped with plasma swords, I want you to begin cutting through the doors. Avoid sections 7 through 14 of the ship, we believe that they are Flood infested."
The Ship Master heard a series of acknowledgements and began cutting through his own door. The problem was that even though the plasma sword cut through the door, it would re-melt as soon as he moved the plasma sword away. Because of this, it was necessary for the Ship Master to start at the top of the door and work his way down, letting the metal drip down. It was going to take longer than anticipated.
The Flood were very resilient. Not even a hundredth of their numbers died during the crash. Now, in utter silence and darkness, the Flood started to think. The air wasn't being pumped, they were sure of that. Since they used their tentacles as sensors, being in pitch black didn't hinder their sights much. They knew the doors were locked and the only way to open them was by force. Rather than use up all of their weaponry in trying to open the door, they looked for another way through the ship.
The only other way that presented itself was the vents, plain and simple. Although the opening to the vents wasn't easily undone, with less than half of the required energy to open the doors, they could force themselves into the vents.
The Covenant believed that the Flood possessed little to no organizational skills. They were dead wrong. The Flood were just using what little advantage they had, their numbers. They lacked any shielding that other organisms had and they weren't very accurate with weapons. What they did have was very large numbers, from which they got their name. They would simply overwhelm organisms with sheer numbers.
To do that, they needed to organize attacks where all the Flood went in at once. Although Covenant and humans alike couldn't hear Flood speech, they do communicate with each other verbally, but on a high frequency. Too high of a frequency for most other organisms to hear.
The Flood spread the word, "Through the vents, make your way through the vents." All at once, Flood combat forms began to use their plasma weapons to burn through the grating blocking their way into the vents. Fully infected combat forms then used their strength to knock out the grating, leaving the vent fully accessible. Soon, there were no more Flood within the various rooms in the ship, but instead, inside the vents.
The Flood slowly watched and waited for the signal to attack. All the Flood wanted to attack at once and catch the Covenant by surprise. They had gone for areas around the ship that would come most useful like the control center, the engine room, and the area with the most Covenant, the docking bay. Then they heard the signal. "ATTACK!"
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