LORC: RTS Act III pt 4

Sector 02

September 12 2555
Massive Forerunner Facility
SpecOps Major Ryau 'Cinotee [MIA]
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Ryau woke up in the straw and needle bed and suited back up in his armor. Naki already was armored up and sitting on a chair taken from the cockpit of a Phantom or Spirit.

"Ah you're up." Naki said after she swallowed the Morla roll from her rations. "Endesa came out of the machine fifteen minutes ago, she's all healed up."

"Oh very good, have you heard anything from the others yet?" Ryau asked. He moved into the other chair and ate some of his own food for breakfast.

"They've decided to take us and try to rescue the other Sangheili and other species captured by that other Monitor." Naki said.

"Didn't Marissa say that was a bad idea?"

"She mentioned that it was not in our best interests, but never said that it was too crazy. We should go to the main room with the others." Naki stood from the makeshift table and headed to the door. "Done with breakfast?"

"Yeah I'm done." Ryau put the left over food in his pack and picked his Carbine off the rack. They headed back into the main room. He spotted Ryka sitting on the Pelican, which Ryau now noticed that it was only the cockpit portion and part of the tail.

When Ryka saw them enter the room he hopped off and walked over. "Major, what is that weapon? It seems different then the one I know."

"Ah, this is a Type-52 B, it's slightly different than the one manufactured at the Iruiru Armory, this was made at the Arica Armory and has a slightly faster fire rate." Ryau pulled the Carbine off his back and handed it to Ryka.

"Hmm constructed during the ninth Age of Reclamation, just a few weeks before the Great Schism according to what you told me. Battle damaged and customized, you've had this longer than a standard weapon." Ryka looked it over pausing at the blue stock.

"Yes, I received it a cycle before the civil war. I've serviced and customized it since then. It has served me very well." Ryau said, taking the Carbine back. "So what is the plan that Naki told me of." He glanced over at the Humans who were loading up a Forerunner style ship that Ryau somehow missed when he first entered the hangar room. It was long and sleek, somewhat resembling a jumbo jet of the twentieth century with the Forerunner design pallet.

Ryka pulled a holographic screen from a slot in the wall. "This is a map of the entire facility. We are here." He pointed to a position on the map. "The Evil one's camp is over here and this is the path we took that ended is disaster." A line appeared on the map. "Now, the Marissa suggests that we travel through green sector and cross around into the Evil one's sector."

"That path should be more clear than the alternative. We lost a good soldier on the first try. We're not going to lose another." Sargent Green said.

"I see, where is my team?" Ryau asked Naki. Before Naki could answer, Shan and the others walked into the room fully armed and ready to go. "Am I the last to know about this plan? I am the leader of my team, I should be one of the first to know."

Naki punched his shoulder, "You need your sleep, and I am the same rank as you. Relax."

"Fine, it's just that no one tells me we're doing anything until they've already planned it." Ryau sat on a crate. "So next time Ryka, wake me up too."

"Let us hope there will not be a next time as well as another time. But lets get on this transport and get on this mission." Ryka took a Needle Rifle and went aboard with Endesa and the others.

Ryau opened a compartment in the supply crate he was sitting on and Needler ammo canisters rained onto the floor "I'm running low on ammo for my Carbine, they don't have any down here." He checked a few other containers around the room but only found ammo for Needlers and Needle Rifles.  

Naki tossed him a Sentinel Beam and shrugged. "I need some too, but take a Sentinel Beam, they're good at taking down shields remember." She said as she boarded the Forerunner drop ship.

Ryau followed her on board and looked into the cock-pit. The Human Pilot from earlier was at the controls. "Can you really fly this thing?"

"Oh yeah, I've been flying it for the past few weeks." The ship lifted off and hit the roof, causing everyone standing to fall over. "Sorry, my fault." The Pilot put his hands in the air defensively. "I'm not good at taking off. But you can't fly one of these since you're an Elite."

"Oh yeah? Move over." Ryau said.

Mike got out of the seat and let Ryau take his the seat. "I doubt that you can fly this, the controls are keyed for Human or Forerunner DNA or something."

"I've got 'or something' in me." Ryau pulled the drop ship out of the hangar and into air above the mountain range. "There we go, we made it out  without bumping anything." He got back out of the seat and gave it back to Mike.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Mike took the controls back and flew towards the other sector of the facility where Marissa said that the enemy had not taken control of yet.

Ryau walked back into the back of the Forerunner drop-ship, though it was more of a shuttle in design and features. There were no built in weapons, just the armament from an Enforcer was haphazardly attached to the exterior. Ryau went into a separate compartment where his Sangheili and Naki's father sat. He walked over and took a seat by Endesa. "How is your arm doing Endesa? That was one of the more painful fractures." Ryau asked.

"It feels just like it did before the injury, if not better." Endesa said. "That machine also healed many other injuries that I sustained during the crash."

"Ah, very good. That pod was a great deal of help it seems." Ryau nodded in agreement. He glanced over to Shan. "Well that's new." Shan's missing arm had been replaced by a forerunner alloy prosthetic arm, probably given by one of the medical machines.

"Oh yes Major. Marissa says that it is made of the same metal she is that allows her to feel." Shan said, flexing his new appendage.

"That's good, I'm pretty sure any replacement arm we could offer you would be nothing compared to that."

"As far as I know we have not reached that level of technology yet." Shan said.

"I don't think we have yet either." Naki commented. The ship could go fast, but Mike kept it slower because they were flying low near tree level to keep of the radar. Less than five minutes after they had taken off they crossed over the massive wall that separates sectors. The area was much more overgrown than the other sector they had just left. Massive trees grew up along the wall and over the mountains while a desert area stretched from the center that was closest to the holographic star.  

"If my memory serves me, the keeper of this region kept herself hidden by the-" Marissa couldn't finish what she was saying because something blew the shuttle in half. As parts of the oad shuttle tumbled out of the air, Ryau caught a glimpse of the eye of a massive Guardian Sentinel.

"Hold on!" Ryau sealed the door to the cabin and grabbed hold of a railing. The tail end of the shuttle fell out of the air and slid through the trees, snapping branches and catching leaves. It smashed into the ground and slid into a large river. The air bubble that was created by the sealed cabins kept the tail afloat and it flowed with the current. Ryau pulled himself up, "Everyone alright?" Everyone responded and was okay, they had all taken a hold of something before the crash. Except for Marissa, who's casing was dented. "Marissa, are you okay? You've got a dent."  

"Yes I am fine. I slammed into the wall upon impact, though it is just a dent." Marissa said, starting to rise off the floor again. The cabin shook and shifted as the tail bumped against rocks and other objects in the deep river. After a few more minutes, the tail end of the shuttle became embedded into a sandbar in the sectors massive ocean.

When Ryau felt that they had stopped moving, he released himself from the handholds and looked out the window to see water. "I think it's time that we get out of this thing."

"Yes, that is a good idea Major." Ryka recovered his Needle Rifle. "It is a good thing that our weapons do actually have safeties. My Human friends believed that we did not."

Naki keyed open the door and about a meter of water rushed into the room. "Well this is salt water. So we're not in any river anymore." Naki said, she crept out and looked out of the hole in the ship. "We're quite far away off shore. We can make the swim though."

"Lets go then. Everyone out." Ryau grabbed his Carbine and jumped in the water after everyone else. They swam to shore as Marissa hovered above. Ryau stood up in the sand and brushed it off his armor. When he looked up into the foliage a green light looked back at him.

"Hello..." It said.

September 6, 2555 0306 hours
Standard IV
Classified ONI Research Lab
[ExCovenant] Tech Kala 'Velamn
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It's been three cycles since Kala was locked in an office by the Special forces that Colonel Hartford had taken down to this mysterious facility. After cycles of pacing around in front of the desk, Kala took a seat and turned on the computer console. The Holographic screen flickered to life and illuminated the room in a bright indigo light. She used the same bypass that she had used to access the console on the surface facility and browsed through the applications on the system. She opened the security camera system and flipped though the cameras that were still operational. One of the cameras showed the two Humans that the Sargent had left at the surface. They were lying motionless in the server room but there was no visible injuries on them. A second screen popped up and displayed the medical signs, from what she could understand, they were still alive.

After a few more screens she came across the rest of the Sargent's squad in the cafeteria on this level. They were just sitting around the tables. Small pop-ups told her that the rooms doors were locked. Just before she had been locked in this room, she had seen the Sargent swing at the Colonel. Something the Colonel had said had really enraged the Sargent.

The next camera showed the Colonel and the Special Forces soldiers down a hallway working in a lab room. None of the active camera feeds showed anything of what they were doing. Getting bored she browsed the files on this terminal, though she couldn't fully understand all of the language said.

"Oh I forgot!." She said to herself and face palmed. Kala pulled a small object from her thigh pocket and plugged the Translator device into an adapter. It was used by the Unggoy in the communications office to decipher Human text communications.

The device did its work and started to convert all the documents into her language. A lot of them were documents and logs working with some sort of teleporter system. She didn't catch it as a Forerunner teleporter system until a file showed a room of Forerunner design. Kala flipped thought other holographic files. It appeared to her that there were multiple expeditions though the teleporter but not every group made it though. There were reports of the convoys being attacked by floating machines in a massive underground structure.

Judging by what she heard from returning warriors that were on patrol in the deep forest, these descriptions were very similar to each other. Other documents stated that the Decommissioned Vehicle Facility and Army Regiment was just a cover for all the resources moving to and from this planet they called Standard IV. The other screen switched and displayed a viewpoint in a massive hangar like area. Schematics made it clear that it was on this level.

Moments after the camera activated, Perimeter Breach flashed across the screen. "Uh oh, that's not good."A mass of the Parasite fell from a hole in the ceiling of the hangar, presumably from the old vehicle lift that had gone to the space port at one time. A pair of auto turrets activated but only had a ten percent charge. Kala watched as the turrets opened fire on the Parasite much like they had on the Covenant years before. One of the other screens changed and displayed the Colonel who was moving out of the lab with a hand gun. The Parasite swarmed the turrets and knocked the large weapons to the floor of the hangar.

Kala got up to the door and tried the door controls but got nothing. She glanced back at the screens and saw the Colonel and Special Forces get into the lift and head to the surface. Now that it was just her and the Sargent's squad she bypassed the door controls. The doors slid open and she crept out into the hallway. She found her way to the cafeteria and opened the doors.

The Humans turned to the doorway. "Kala? What are you doing?" The Sargent said.

"The Colonel and his guards are gone and the Parasite has found this place- we must leave." She said. "Follow me to the weapons."

"That bastard ONI Spook. Okay lets go," the Sargent said.

Kala lead them through the halls of the facility on a map she had downloaded onto her data pad. They came to the armory after a few units, the door was open and it was mostly cleaned out. However there were still a few rifles and shotguns on their racks.

The Sargent and his squad rearmed themselves and Dosh tossed Kala a rifle. "I think we can trust you now." He said.

"Ah, thank you Dosh," Kala loaded the rifle adjusted her grip.

"Alright everyone, Kala says that the Flood have breached the facility. Let's make our way to the tram and get the hell outta here." The Sargent said.

Foss lead them down the hallway, towards the tram room. When they got to the tram station the car was still at the top. "Fuck, we've got up to half an hour until the car gets back here" Williams said.

"We'll hold up here, should-" Glass shattered down the corridor and everyone turned with their weapons up. A massive parasite form burst though a door and slammed into the wall. "Oh shit!" Everyone opened fire on the beast and it was down within a few moments. Yet more of the Parasite swarmed around the corner.

Kala unloaded the rifle into one of the Parasite's Carrier forms. The form exploded and Infection forms rained about. She ducked behind a computer cart as a Combat form fired its shotgun. The tram car fell rapidly, on an emergency decent. It hit a set of shocks at the bottom and halted.

"Alright everyone on right now!" The Sargent ordered.

"Throwing a firebomb!" Lee yelled and tossed a grenade. Kala recognized it as the Jiralhanae flame grenade from its glowing red middle. The grenade exploded and filled the corridor with flames. The Parasite caught fire and hissed and popped. Kala jumped into the tram and it shot up along its rail.