Halo: The Flood

by William C. Dietz

  Wellsley believed that having first dismissed the Marines and Naval personnel as little more than a nuisance, the enemy had since been forced to change their minds, and had started to take them more seriously. That meant monitoring human radio traffic, conducting regular recon flights, and all the other activities of modern warfare.

  Assuming the AI was correct, the aliens would pick up the distress call, backtrack to the source, and send a team to check the situation out. That was the plan, at any rate, and McKay didn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.

  The sun inched higher in the sky, and down among the rocks the temperature rose. The Marines took advantage of any bit of shade that they could find, though McKay was privately pleased that the customary bitching about the heat was kept to a minimum.

  Thirty minutes into the wait McKay heard a sound like the whine of a mosquito and started to quarter the sky with her binoculars. It wasn’t long before she spotted a speck coming down-spin. Very quickly, the speck grew into a Banshee. She keyed her mike.

  “Red One to squad three—it’s show time.”

  The officer didn’t dare say more lest any Covenant eavesdroppers grow suspicious. She didn’thave to say much more, though. Her Marines knew what to do.

  As the enemy aircraft came closer, members of the third squad, some of whom were made up to look as if they were injured, hurried out into the open, shaded their eyes as if watching for an incoming Pelican, pantomimed surprise as they spotted the Banshee, fired a volley of shots at it, then ran for the safety of the rocks.

  The pilot sent a series of plasma bolts racing after them, circled the crash site twice, and flew off in the direction from which he had come. McKay watched it go. The hook had been set, the fish was on the line, and it would be her job to reel it in.

  Half a klick away from the phony crash site, another Marine, or whathad been a Marine, emerged from a subsurface air shaft, and felt the sun hit his horribly ravaged face. Well, nothis face, because ever since the infection form had inserted its penetrator into his spine, Private Wallace A. Jenkins had been sharing his physical form with something he thought of as “the other.” A strange being that didn’t have any thoughts, none that the human could access, at any rate, and seemed unaware of the fact that its host still retained some cognitive and possibly motor functions.

  That awareness was entirely unique to him insofar as the leatherneck could tell, because in spite of the fact that some of the bodies in the group had once belonged to his squad mates, repeated attempts to communicate with them had failed.

  Now, as the untidy collection of infection forms, carrier forms, and combat forms emerged to bounce, waddle, and walk across Halo’s surface, Jenkins knew that wherever the column was headed it was for one purpose: to find and subsume sentient life. He could dimly sense the other’s yawning, icy hunger.

  Hisgoal, however, was considerably different. After it had been converted into a combat form, his body was still capable of handling a weapon. Some of the other forms had them—and that’s what Jenkins wanted more than anything. An M6D would be perfect, but an energy weapon could do the job, as would any grenade. Not for use on the Covenant, or the Flood, but onhimself . Or what had been him. That’s why he’d been careful to conceal the full extent of his awareness from the other. So he had a chance of destroying the body in which he had been imprisoned and escape the horror of each waking moment.

  The Flood came to a hill and, following one of the carrier forms, soon started to climb. The other, with Jenkins in tow, tagged along behind.

  McKay knew the trap was going to work when one of the U-shaped dropships appeared, circled the phony crash site, and settled in for a landing. Once free of the ship the Elites, Jackals, and Grunts would be easy meat for the Marines hidden in the rocks and the snipers stationed on top of the flat-topped hill.

  But war is full of surprises, and when the Covenant ship took off again, McKay found herself looking at everything she had expected to seeplus a couple of Hunters. The mean-looking bastards would be hard to kill and could rip the platoon to shreds.

  The officer swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat, keyed her mike, and whispered some instructions. “Red One to all snipers and rocket jockeys. Put everything you have on the Hunters. Do itnow . Over.”

  It was hard to say who killed the Hunters, given the sudden barrage of bullets and rockets that came their way, but McKay didn’t care, so long as the walking tanks weredead ... which they definitely were. That was the good news.

  The bad news was that the dropship returned, hosed the boulders with plasma fire, and forced the Helljumpers to duck or lose their heads.

  Encouraged by the air support, the Covenant ground troops rushed to enter the jumble of rocks, eager to find some cover, and kill the treacherous humans. They were forced to pay a price, however, as the snipers on the hill picked off five of the alien soldiers before the dropship moved in to exact its revenge.

  The Marines were forced to dive deep as the enemy aircraft marched a double line of plasma bolts across the top of the tiny mesa, killing two of the snipers and wounding a third.

  Things soon started to get ugly on the rock-strewn hillside as both humans and Covenant hunted one another between the huge, weather-smoothed boulders. Energy bolts flew and assault weapons chattered, as both sides took part in a deadly game of hide-and-seek. This wasnot what McKay had envisioned, and she was looking for a way to disengage, when a wave of new hostiles entered the fight.

  A torrent of the bizarre creatures attackedboth groups from the other side of the hill. McKay had a glimpse of corpse-flesh, twisted and mangled bodies, and swarms of tiny little spheres that bounced, leaped, and climbed over the rocks.

  The first problem was that while the Covenant forces seemed familiar with the creatures, the Helljumpers weren’t, and three members of the second squad had already gone down under the combined weight of multiple forms, and one member of the third had been slaughtered by a grotesque biped, before McKay understood the extent of the danger.

  Even as the officer fought her way uphill through the maze of boulders the radio calls continued to boom through her earpiece.

  “What the hell is that thing?”

  “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  “Get it off me!”

  The radio traffic tripled and the command freq turned into such a confusion of screams, requests for orders, and pleas for extraction, that the Marines might as well have spoken in tongues.

  McKay cursed. No way. No way were thesethings going to break them. No way. She rounded a boulder, saw a Grunt running downhill with two of the spherical creatures clinging to its back. The Grunt squealed and spun and she got her first close look at the creatures. A sustained burst from the assault weapon brought all three of them down.

  As the Marine worked her way farther uphill, she soon discovered that the new enemy tookother forms as well. McKay killed a two-legged form, saw a private put half a clip into a lumpy-looking monster, and watched in disgust as the dying creature spewed evenmore grotesqueries out into the world.

  That was the moment when the third form emerged from between a couple of boulders, saw the human, and launched itself into the air.

  Jenkins had the same view that the others did, spotted the Lieutenant, and hoped she was a good shot. This was better than suicide—this was . . .

  But it wasn’t meant to be.

  McKay tracked the incoming body, sidestepped, and used the butt of her weapon to clip the side of the creature’s head. It landed in a heap, flailed around, and was just about to jump up when the Lieutenant pounced on it. “Give me a hand!” she shouted. “I want this one alive!”

  It took four Marines to subdue the creature, get restraints on both its wrists and ankles, and finally bring it under control. Even at that, one of the Helljumpers suffered a black eye, another wound up with a broken arm, and a third bled from a ragged bite wound on his arm.

  The ensuing battle lasted for a full fifteen minutes, an
eternity in combat, with both humans and Covenant forces taking time out from their battle with one another to concentrate on the new enemy. The moment the last bulbous form was popped, however, they were back at it again, tracking one another through the maze in a contest of life and death, no quarter asked and none given.

  McKay radioed for assistance, and with help from the Reaction Force, plus two Pelicans and four captured Banshees, she was able to drive the Covenant dropship away and kill those ground troops who weren’t willing to surrender.

  Then, on McKay’s orders, the Helljumpers combed the area for reasonably intact specimens of thenew enemy which could be taken back to Alpha Base for analysis.

  Finally, after the bodies were recovered, Jenkins was the only specimen that was still alive. In spite of the way that he jerked, bucked, and tried to bite his captors they threw him onto the Pelican, roped him to the D-rings recessed into the deck, and delivered a few kicks for good measure.

  With fully half of her Marines making the return trip in body bags, McKay sat through the seemingly endless journey to Alpha Base. Tears cut tracks down through the grime on the Helljumper’s face to wet the deck between her boots. The Covenant had been bad enough—but now there was an even worse enemy to fight. Now, for the first time since the landing on Halo, McKay felt nothing but despair.

  The Spartan left Sergeant Mobuto’s body behind and approached one of the large metal doors, pleased to see that it was open. He crouched and passed through. 343 Guilty Spark disappeared on one of his mysterious errands a few moments later, and, like clockwork, the Flood came out to play.

  He was ready for them. The Flood swept into the room—dozens of the bulbous infection forms scuttling along the walls and floor, with another half dozen of the combat forms in tow.

  They paused, as if in confusion. One of the combat forms looked up—and the Spartan dropped from the pillar he’d shimmied up. His metal boots pulped the creature’s face. Assault rifle fire raked the leading edge of the cluster of infection forms. The pods detonated in a chain-reaction string.

  Thatgot their attention , he thought. The Chief turned and ran. He jumped up onto a raised platform as he fought, disengaged, and fought again. Finally, as the last body fell, both the Monitor and the Sentinels reappeared.

  The Spartan looked at them in disgust as he reloaded his weapons, scrounged ammo off the Flood combat forms, and followed 343 Guilty Spark out onto a lift that was identical to the last one he’d been on.

  The platform carried the human up to a still higher level, where he got off, paused to let the Sentinels soften up the Flood welcome wagon that waited out in the hall, then emerged to lend a hand. There was a loudboom! as one of the combat forms leaped from an archway and landed right on top of a Sentinel. Its whip-tendril flailed at the hovering robot’s back and was rewarded with a series of sparks and a gout of flame. A moment later, the Sentinel exploded, and the Flood and the wrecked drone crashed into the floor in a ball of flesh, bone, and metal. The resulting shower of shrapnel cut three Flood forms down and wounded a score of others.

  The Spartan took another out with a burst from his assault weapon and the other robots moved in to fry the remains.

  Once that contingent of freaks had been dealt with, the Chief followed the Monitor down a hall lined with blue screens, through an area that was infested with Flood, and out onto a lift that looked different from the last one he’d been on. Geometric patterns split the floor into puzzlelike shapes, a series of raised panels stood guard around a column of translucent blue light, and the whole thing seemed to glow.

  The Master Chief stepped on board, felt a slight jerk as ancient machinery reacted to his presence, and saw the walls start to rise. He was headed down this time—and hoped that his journey was near an end. Without hesitation, he slammed fresh ammo into his weapon; it seemed as if he emerged into a huge cluster of Flood every time he traveled on a lift.

  The lift made hollow, rumbling sounds, fell a long way, and stopped with a reverberating thud.

  343 Guilty Spark hovered over his shoulder as the Spartan stepped off the lift and approached a pedestal. “You may now retrieve the Index,” the Monitor said. The artifact glowed lime green; it was shaped like the letter T. It slowly rose from the top of the cylindrical tube in which it had been kept for so many millennia. A series of metal blocks that encircled the device rotated and spun, releasing their protective grip on the Index.

  The Spartan took hold of the device, and pulled it up and out of its tubular sheath. He held it up to examine the glowing artifact—and was startled when a gray beam lanced from Spark. The Index was yanked from his hand and disappeared inside a storage chamber in the Monitor’s body.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the Spartan demanded.

  “As you know, Reclaimer,” Spark said, as if addressing an errant child, “protocol requires thatI take possession of the Index for transport.”

  343 Guilty Spark swooped and dived, then floated in place. “Your biological form renders you vulnerable to infection. The Index must not fall into the hands of the Flood before we reach the Control Room and activate the installation.

  “The Flood is spreading! We must hurry.”

  The Master Chief was about to reply when he saw the bands of pulsating light flowing down around his body, knew he was about to be teleported, and again felt light-headed.

  It wanted something,Keyes realized. The memories that replayed like an endless library of video clips were being sifted for something. The buzzing presence in his mind sought . . .what?

  He grasped at the thought, and pushed back against the wall of resistance the other that burrowed through his consciousness had erected. He brushed up against it and it almost slipped away . . .

  Then he had it—escape. Whatever this thing was, it wantedoff the ring. It hungered, and there was a perfect feeding ground to be found.

  The other plunged a barbed-wire tendril into his mind and ripped forth an image of a lunar Earthrise, which blurred into images of cattle in a slaughterhouse. He felt the other’s tendrils eagerly grasp at the image of Earth.Where? It thundered.Tell.

  The pressure increased and battered through Keyes’ resistance, and in desperation he summoned up a new memory. The alien presence seemed startled at the image of Keyes and a childhood friend kicking a soccer ball on a vibrant green field.

  The pressure eased as the hungry other examined the memory.

  Keyes felt a stab of regret. He knew what he had to do now.

  He dragged all he remembered of Earth—its location, his ability to find it, its defenses— and shoved them down, as deep as he could.

  Keyes felt the gaping sense of loss as the memory of the soccer field was ripped away and discarded forever. He quickly summoned up another—the taste of a favorite meal. He began to feed his memories to the invading presence in his mind, one scrap at a time.

  Of all the battles he’d ever fought, this one was the toughest—and the most important.

  The Chief rematerialized back on the walkway which seemed to float over the black abyss below—the Control Room. He saw the replica of Halo which arched above, the globe that floated at the center of the walkway, and the control panel where he had last seen Cortana. Was she still there?

  343 Guilty Spark hovered above his head. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Splendid. Shall we?”

  The Spartan made his way forward. The control board was long and curved at either end. An endless light show played across the surface of the panel as various aspects of the ring world’s extremely complicated electronic and mechanical machinery fed a constant flow of data to the display, all of which appeared as a mosaic of constantly morphing glyphs and symbols.

  Here, if one knew how to read it, were the equivalents of the ring world’s pulse, respirations, and brain waves. Reports that provided information on the rate of spin, the atmosphere, the weather, the highly complex biosphere, the machinery that kept all of it runnin
g, plus the activities of the creatures around whom the world had been formed: the Flood. It was awesome to look at—and even more awesome to consider.

  343 Guilty Spark hovered above the control panel and looked down on the human who stood in front of him. There was something supercilious about the tone of the construct’s voice. “My role in this particular endeavor has come to an end. Protocol does not allow units from my classification to perform a task as important as the reunification of the Index with the Core.”

  The Monitor zipped around to hover at the Master Chief’s side. “That final step is reserved foryou , Reclaimer.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” the Chief asked. Spark kept silent.

  The Spartan shrugged, accepted the Index, and gazed at the panel in front of him. One likely-looking slot pulsed the same glowing green that shone from the Index. He slid it home. The T-shaped device fit perfectly.

  The control panel shivered as if stabbed, the displays flared as if in response to an overload, and an electronic groan was heard. 343 Guilty Spark tilted slightly as if to look at the control board.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Spark chirped.

  There was a sudden shimmer of light as Cortana’s holographic figure appeared and continued to grow until she towered over the control panel. Her eyes were bright pink, data scrolled across her body, and the Chief knew she was pissed. “Oh, really?” she said. She gestured, and the Monitor fell out of the air and hit the deck with a clank.

  The Spartan looked up at her. “Cortana—” The AI stood with hands on hips. “I spent hours cooped in here watching you toady about helping that . . .thing get set to slit our throats.”

  The Chief turned toward the Monitor and back. “Hold on now. He’s a friend.”

  Cortana brought a hand up to her mouth in mock surprise. “Oh, I didn’t realize. He’s yourpal , is he? Yourchum ? Do you have any idea what that bastard almost made you do?”

  “Yes,” the Spartan said patiently. “Activate Halo’s defenses and destroy the Flood. Which is why we brought the Index to the Control Center.”