Halo: First Strike: Difference between revisions
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====Section 3: Rescue==== | ====Section 3: Rescue==== | ||
Meanwhile, out in space, [[Master Chief]] and [[Cortana]], along with the last survivors of [[Installation 04]] and [[Sergeant Johnson]], find out that one of the cryotubes that Master Chief found is a SPARTAN-II. The Spartan happens to be [[Linda-058]]. While in the [[ | Meanwhile, out in space, [[Master Chief]] and [[Cortana]], along with the last survivors of [[Installation 04]] and [[Sergeant Johnson]], find out that one of the cryotubes that Master Chief found is a SPARTAN-II. The Spartan happens to be [[Linda-058]]. While in the [[Pelican]] the Master Chief strips off some pieces from the pelican, to reinforce a [[Covenant dropship]] they're going to use. As they walk into the hanger of the ''Ascendant Justice'', the two men (Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson) witness [[Polaski]] practicing how to drive a Covenant dropship. As they enter [[Reach]] in real space, they see what has happened to it after the Covenant glassed the planet. They move the flagship closer as they notice that, during the glassing of Reach the Covenant "missed" a spot. The small fleet - consisting of a dozen cruisers, two assault carriers, and three squadrons of [[seraph]]s - ask why a flagship is at Reach. While on the ship, the survivors hear a UNSC E-band. The E-band is "Oly Oly Oxen Free". No one on the bridge recognizes it - except the Master Chief. The section then returns to the year July 14, 2523. | ||
The memory plays the time when the Spartans played [[capture the flag]] against [[Tango Company]]. Back on Ascendant Justice the human crew debate whether they should go down to Reach in the reinforced | The memory plays the time when the Spartans played [[capture the flag]] against [[Tango Company]]. Back on ''Ascendant Justice'', the human crew debate whether they should go down to Reach in the reinforced Covenant dropship. Cortana looks around to see a spot which can be a extraction site to pick up the people going down to Reach. On the way down, cruisers start to surround them in their dropship. The humans find a canyon with some movement in it. Before landing Master Chief says the code for "Oly Oly Oxen Free" and says to land them in a safe spot where the survivors would find them. The Chief wanders out alone to see if there is a trap - if there is, he wants to trigger it. Haverson backs him up. At the bottom of the ramp Chief senses a single signal. The friend-or-foe tag wasn't working, so the signal isn't working. The Chief drew his pistol and turned to see it was a Spartan. The Spartan was Anton-044 (he had disabled his FoF tag so the Covenant wouldn't attack him). He led the Master Chief to the entrance of a cavern, where two Spartans, Grace-093 and Li-008, were operating chainguns that were bolted to the sides two boulders. The Master Chief and Anton, followed by Grace, went into the cavern. Inside, Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb was standing at foldout card table, which was the headquarters for Camp Independence. | ||
[[Admiral Whitcomb]] asked why | [[Admiral Whitcomb]] asked why the Chief was here, instead of a mission with Captain Keyes deep in Covenant territory. The Chief told him about the events that happened on Halo, and while he was telling the story, Haverson and the others from the dropship arrived. Haverson asked Whitcomb how he was alive, and the Admiral told Haverson that while everyone was evacuating, he had stay behind because the UNSC was working on a new bomb called a Nova. Whitcomb armed the Novas with failsafe tampering detonators and a countdown timer. Whitcomb had a team of Marines, Charlie Company, to help arm the Novas, but they were wiped out, but he then saw Red Team on coded COM and asked to borrow a few Spartans, who armed the Novas and give the Covenant trouble with hit-and-run exercises. | ||
The rest of the Red Team | The rest of the Red Team was trapped underground in the tunnels beneath the mountain in the CASTLE facility. The Chief's group used a Covenant dropship to rescue the remaining Red Team. They entered a huge cavern filled with Covenant forces - a few Elites, Jackals, and mostly Grunts that were clearing a cave-in. They landed the dropship a half a kilometer away from the Covenant forces. They destroyed the Covenant forces and three Spartans, Kelly, Fred, and Will, emerged from cover. Whitcomb asked if that was everyone and Fred replied that was one more. That person turned out to be Dr. Halsey who was holding a fist-sized crystal. They were about to leave when they detected Covenant forces. They were surrounded by ''thousands'' of Covenant forces on each of the 12 levels of the gallery, and crowding the balconies were Grunts, Jackals, Elites and several pairs of Hunters. They all prepared to open fire on them, when a Hunter pair roared with rage and fired their weapons at the Master Chief and his team; the rest of the Covenant forces opened fire a split second later. | ||
Back in space, the ''Ascendant Justice'' emerged from Slipspace into a frozen Oort cloud to hide from the Covenant forces because they knew that the ''Ascendant Justice'' wasn't one of theirs. Cortana eavesdropped on the data streams of the Covenant, using the dissected Covenant AI to help. Cortana discovered that the Covenant forces were heading to Earth. | |||
====Section 4: Gambit==== | |||
As it turned out, the Covenant forces ''weren't'' shooting at the group, but rather the ''Hunters''. They had had orders not to harm Dr. Halsey's crystal, and they risked harming it by shooting at the Master Chief and the others around him. The Covenant then proceeded toward the group. Whitcomb signaled for Polaski to pick them up; they got whisked out in the nick of time. However, while going up the grav lift, the Covenant begin to use it to push them back down. Suddenly, the crystal changed shape, and the grav lift reversed polarity, pulling them ''upward''. Once out of the lift, the crystal resumed its usual form. However, when they reached the rendezvous point, Cortana wasn't there. | |||
In the ''Ascendant Justice'', Cortana had used Engineers to combine the Covenant ship with another ship - the [[UNSC Gettysburg]]. She needed two reactors for her manuever. She jumped into Slipspace, and jumped out right in the middle of the Covenant fleet, at the rendezvous point. The Chief's men got into the ''Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice'' (''G.A.J.''). However, when Cortana jumped back into Slipspace, they didn't go into normal Slipspace, and they dragged the Covenant fleet with them. The fleet opened fire, but the plasma behaved erratically - doing loops, curving, teleporting, etc. During the fight, Elites that had survived the purge of the ''Ascendant Justice'' blew a small hole in its hull. The Spartans and Polaski went out to repair it, but run into the Elites. They fought, but Polaski, Li, and Anton were killed and Kelly was critically wounded. Desperate to escape, Cortana attempted to jump back into normal space. She succeeded, leaving the Covenant stranded in Slipspace. | |||
====Section 5: Massacre at [[Eridanus Secundus]]==== | |||
In the ''G.A.J.'', Halsey told the Chief that Linda would live. She then talked to him about Johnson and his survival against the Flood. She revealed that Johnson has [[Boren's Syndrome]], the only known defense against the Flood (see full article for details). After he left, Halsey and Cortana discussed the crystal and found that it can warp space, gravity, and even time. When her group had found the crystal, the Chief and his group were transported back in time. | |||
For repairs, the group headed to the Eridanus Secendus astroid belt, home of a rebel resistance. During not-too-friendly negotiations, a Covenant ship dropped out of Slipspace (it found them because the crystal emits radiation upon exit from Slipspace). Despite malfunctioning plasma turrets, the crew of the ''G.A.J.'' decided to engage it. When Cortana informed them that the magnetic coils used to shape the plasma aren't working, the Chief came up with the idea to use the magnetic coils of the ''Gettysburg'''s [[MAC gun]] to shape it. During the fight, Halsey took Kelly away for a [[Spartan-III|secret project]], and Locklear, whom she had given the crystal to to protect, blew it (and himself) up so the Covenant couldn't get it. | |||
====Section 6: [[Operation: FIRST STRIKE]]==== | |||
While the crew of the ''G.A.J.'' were able to retrive a few shards of the crystal, they had more important things on mind: the Covenant invasion of Earth. Cortana knew that they were gathering at a battle station called the ''[[Unyielding Hierophant]]''. The Chief came up with a daring plan to blow up the station and put a sizable dent in the fleet: he and the Spartans will go to the station in a modified dropship, infiltrate the station, and blow up the reactors, with help from a copy of Cortana. | |||
The Spartans made it to the station without incident, but were forced to take a detour through a temple complex. There, they encountered [[Brutes]] for the first time. The Chief grappled with a Brute, and barely made it out alive. Grace was killed by a [[Brute shot]]. They still managed to make it to the reactors, and they were successfully rigged to explode. The remaining Spartans exited the station, but only saw the ''Gettysburg'' when they made it back to the ''G.A.J.''. The crew had taken the ''Ascendant Justice'''s Slipspace engine and installed it on the ''Gettysburg'', while Whitcomb and Haverson had taken the Covenant ship. They broadcasted a message to the fleet that if they wanted the crystal's shards (which they had for proof), all they had to do was come and get them from the ''Ascendant Justice'' - which they had parked very close to the ''Unyielding Hierophant''. When the ''Unyielding Hierophant'' exploded, it destroyed a huge amount of the Covenant force. The human survivors of the operation proceeded to Earth. | |||
====Section VII: Harbinger==== | |||
In the epilogue, [[Tartarus]] gives shards of the Forerunner crystal to the [[High Prophet of Truth]]. The prophet gives Tartarus orders to exectute all others involved in finding the shards, and punish the [[Arbiter (character)|incompetent who lost ''Ascendant Justice'']]; "make sure his fate matches the magnitude of his failure". | |||
== Trivia == | == Trivia == | ||