Keyes (Level)

Looking for Captain Keyes, or his daughter, Miranda?

Keyes is the ninth campaign level in Halo: Combat Evolved. In this level, the Master Chief returns to the Covenant Battlecruiser to rescue Captain Jacob Keyes. The Master Chief fights his way through the ship and on the ground while trying to survive the bloody engagement between the Flood and surviving Covenant forces. At the end of the level, the Master Chief discovers a horrifying truth: Captain Keyes has been completely taken over by the Flood. With no other choice, the Chief physically removes the Captain's implants which contain the access codes to the. He then hijacks a Banshee and escapes.

Under New Management
{Cutscene}

Opening cinematic-Camera flies through a canyon filled with pools of reactor coolant, under the Truth and Reconciliation.'' The cruiser is resting on the top of the canyon, heavily damaged. Flood and Covenant forces are fighting all throughout the region.''


 * Cortana: "The Covenant network is in absolute chaos! From what I've been able to piece together, their leadership ordered all ships to abandon Halo when they found the Flood, but they were too late. The Flood overwhelmed this cruiser and disabled it. The Covenant are terrified the Flood will repair the ship and use it to escape from Halo. They've sent in a strike team to neutralize the Flood and repair the ship for immediate departure. I've got a good lock on Captain Keyes' CNI transponder signal! He's alive! And the implants are intact! There's some interference from the cruiser's damaged reactor. I'll bring us in as close as I can."

''Master Chief teleports into the end of a corridor in the cruiser. The camera view flips over, upside down, and the Master Chief falls on his head; he was teleported upside down.''


 * Cortana: "Ohh... I see, the coordinate data needs to be— "

The Master Chief whacks the side of his head with his fist as he stands up.


 * Cortana: "Right. Sorry."

{Gameplay}

After walking down the hallway several meters


 * Captain Keyes (COM): (weakly) "Chief... Don't be a fool...Leave me..."


 * Cortana: "Captain? Captain?! I've lost him..."

After getting to a hangar, with a large hole in the floor just past the door, blocking your progress:


 * Cortana: "Analyzing damage... This hole was caused by some kind of explosive. Very powerful if it tore through a ship's hull. All I detect down there are pools of coolant. We should continue our search somewhere else."

After the staying in that corridor for a few moments, Flood begin dropping out of a hole in the ceiling behind you, cutting you off


 * Cortana: "Warning! Threat level increasing!"

After fighting off the increasing horde of Flood for a few more moments


 * Cortana: "That jump into the coolant is looking better all the time, Chief!"

More Flood arrive


 * Cortana: "Trust me! It's deep enough to cushion our fall!"

After continuing to hold your ground


 * Cortana: "Chief, we need to jump now!"

Flood continue to pour out the hole, and from down the hallway, never ending, forcing you into the hole

{Cutscene}

After falling into the hole

''Master Chief falls into a large pool of coolant, which breaks his fall. Camera view begins under-coolant. Covenant and Flood are heavily engaged around the pool''

{Gameplay}


 * Cortana: "Let's get out of here, and find another way back aboard the ship."

While walking down a narrow canyon


 * Cortana: "We should head this way, towards the ship's gravity lift."

Continuing farther down the canyons


 * Cortana: "The crash did more damage than I suspected. Analyzing. Coolant leakage rate is significant. The ship's reactor should already have gone critical."

Farther along in the canyons


 * Cortana: "Power source detected. There's the gravity lift. It's still operational! That's our way back in!"

{Cutscene}

Once you take the gravity lift back inside the ship:

Upstairs, Downstairs
{Gameplay}


 * Cortana: "We should be able to get into the ship's control room from here."

Upon finding an unlocked door:


 * Cortana: "The Covenant Battlenet is a mess. I can't access the ship's schematics. My records indicate that a shuttle bay should be... here."

Cortana marks the spot with a nav point

Upon reaching the nav point, it turns out to be a cargo bay


 * Cortana: "Look, in the corners. The Flood are gathering bodies here."

Continuing on, entering a shuttle bay


 * Cortana: "Looks like another shuttle bay. We should be able to reach the control room from the 3rd level."


 * Captain Keyes (O.S.): "I... gave you an order, soldier! Now pull out!"


 * Cortana: "He's delirious! In pain! We have to find him!"

Upon reaching the door on the 3rd level


 * Cortana: "The control room should be... this way."

She assigns another nav point.

Nearing the Control Room:

The Captain

 * Captain Keyes (COM): (screams of agony) "Waahhhh... Ahhhh... Ohhhh gaahhhhh..."


 * Cortana: "The Captain! His vitals are fading! Please, Chief, hurry!"

Once in the bridge of the cruiser:

{Cutscene}

''A Proto-Gravemind sits on the command center in the bridge. The Captain's face sticks out of it, with his body dangling below, deformed.''


 * Cortana: (horrified) "No human life-signs detected. The Captain! He's one of... them. We can't let the Flood get off this ring! You know what he'd expect... (quietly) What he'd want us to do."

''Master Chief punches into Keyes' skull, sticking his hand inside. He pulls out the neural implants, shakes the Flood biomass off of them, and inserts them into his helmet.''


 * Cortana: (quietly) "It's done, I have the code. We should go."

{Gameplay}


 * Cortana: "We need to get back to the Pillar of Autumn. Let's go back to the shuttle bay and find a ride."

''Side doors open and a horde of Flood charge into the bridge. At the same time, the doors you entered through open up to reveal a Covenant Spec Ops team. A huge fight ensues.''

Once you reach the shuttle bay, a Covenant dropship enters the hangar, dropping off more troops, escorted by two Banshees


 * Cortana: "Perfect. Grab one of the escort Banshees, and we'll use it to return to the Pillar of Autumn."

{Cutscene}

''Once the Chief get in one of the escort Banshees, he flies out of the hangar, being fired on by the Covenant. The Banshee quickly flies out of range. Fades to black.''

Level ends.

Trivia

 * Strangely, the Grunt with the Fuel Rod Gun in the Spirit will always die upon impact with the ground. Even more strangely, the Fuel Rod Gun's subsequent explosion does not kill any of the nearby Grunts.
 * Strangely, the escort Banshee with the Nav point is actually an ally on your Motion Tracker. This probably is due to Cortana wanting you to use an “ally’s” vehicle. For example, if you board a vehicle, drive fast, and bail out with it still moving, it will indicate a large yellow dot on your motion tracker, even if there is no one inside. However, when an enemy is in a vehicle, they are shown as big red blips.
 * When you get to Captain Keyes, look a bit to the right off the ramp and you should see a tentacle with Captain Keyes' pipe, which has the Marathon logo on it.
 * The sentence "Chief...leave me", was added by Marty O'Donnell, to offer up an explanation for why you are looking for Captain Keyes there, as revealed on the Halo 3 Legendary Edition bonus disc.
 * In the cutscene, "The Captain", where the Master Chief retrieves Captain Keyes' neural implants, the Master Chief was meant to burn Keyes' skull out of the Brain Form with the Flamethrower and retrieve the implants. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the Flamethrower was removed from the final game. Bungie had Robt McLees do research on what burned skulls looked like. When he had finished, he said "he'd done his work too well", as the burned skull was too gruesome.
 * The Banshee that you commandeer at the end of the level, for some reason, makes the same flying sounds a Pelican does, and flies just as fast.
 * The crashed Banshee next to the lift is the only Banshee wreckage to appear in the entire Halo trilogy until Halo 3: ODST. In addition, the crashed Banshee has its own model in the games files, which was made specifically for the level.
 * It is more than likely that the Covenant managed to repair the controls for the Truth and Reconciliation after they were disabled by Cortana due to the fact that the ship is in a completely different location. In addition, the ship could have been moved to an area near a Flood containment facility. Thus, explaining how the ship became once again stationary under extensive damage.
 * If you look through a grille in a corridor at the beginning of the level, you will see the room where you find the brain form.


 * The scenario of Keyes is almost identical to that of the level, Sorry Don't Make It So, from Marathon 2: Durandal. Both of the levels require the protagonist to fight his way through a captured and heavily damaged alien ship during a heated battle between two opposing forces being the Flood against the Covenant in Keyes and the Pfhor against the UESC in the level from Marathon.
 * It's possible to trigger the cutscene on the bridge without first defeating all the Flood. If this happens, then all surviving Flood will transfer over to the cutscene and will continue to attack and eventually "kill" the Master Chief. The scene continues to play as scripted with Cortana speaking and the Captain's face exploding. When gameplay resumes, you're still alive as though nothing happened.
 * The bodies being gathered by the flood in the corners are possibly the beginnings of a Flood Hive.
 * If Flood Infection Forms get to you in the Gravity Lift cutscene, the Chief's blood will spray and the forms will still float in the place.
 * If you manage to skip all the battles with the Flood and the Covenant after you get in the Cargo Bay, you will get to the Proto-Gravemind before the chapter "The Captain" can be triggered.