Chapter 5: Perilous Journey

As the chief traveled down the hallway towards the Marine Command post, he kept ever vigilant looking out for those things. The further he went the more disgust he came across, human limbs separated from their bodies, or worse bodies without limbs. Blood was smeared on the walls spelling out "we're fucked" along with drawings of pentagrams, of which glowed with a demonically captivating aura.

Down the hallway further there was a locked room, a soft cry could be heard from the room, like someone was lost and confused, and didn't know if help would arrive. The chief opened the security panel on the door, "Cortana, get me in that room." He said as he inserted the memory crystal into the doors interface.

As Cortana slipped into the base's computer system, she discovered the robust security measures and the counter intrusion software that was used here was strictly for ONI use. It wasn't anything that she couldn't handle, but well above what she was expecting for this rundown outpost. The software they used was at least twenty eight years old. Then she encountered something that she didn't expect.

'Access Restricted… you are in direct violation of ONI protocols cease and desist.'

An AI, not just any thing another smart AI, this one has to be late into the stages of rampancy. Communicating with it would help her and the chief discover more about this facility but could they really trust it? She decided she had to take the risk.

"What happened here?" She queried.

'Containment of non-human life forms failed, containment protocols breached, base lockdown initiated three hours after containment failed.'

Cortana was puzzled, on why they waited so long to initiate the base lockdown. Overlooking that fact she proceeded to unlock the door for the chief, deciding that she has wasted enough time. After bypassing the first two security measures on the door, she was stonewalled by the AI.

'Do not proceed any further, or I will have no choice but to purge you from the system.'

"I'd like to see you try" Cortana stated adamantly to the other AI, daring it to attempt such an act.

'As you wish' the AI began to throw kill systems down around Cortana, nothing that she couldn't handle, but it would hinder her progress if she remained in the system for too long. She began bypassing the door's final security measure.

"Okay, doors open, pull me out" she said to the chief.

The chief pulled her crystal from the door and slid it back into place in his helmet. The familiar chill of her synchronizing with him and the suit flooded his mind. "That took you longer than usual." He commented.

"I encountered some resistance" she replied curtly.

"What kind of resistance?" the chief said curious as to what works on this base.

"A rampant AI that ONI left behind, that thing needs to be taken care of if we want any answers about this place." She said.

"Can't you just shut it down?"

"I can't so long as it has control of the systems. It has more resources at its disposal. On top of that its rampant so it could change in such a way that would make it unpredictable."

'Great another thing that can complicate things on this planet, as if there weren't enough things that were doing that.' The chief thought to himself as he entered the newly unlocked room with his rifle leveled. The further into the room he went the louder the crying became. Eventually behind a desk, he discovered a young woman cowering behind the desk. The chief lowered his rifle, and stretched out his arm towards the woman. "Ma'am, are you all right?"

Looking up the woman fell back before realizing that it wasn't something there to hurt her. "yes I'm fine, but may I ask who are you." She grabbed the chief's hand and with his help got up. "I'm Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, a SPARTAN-II." She gasped. "SPARTAN's… so the UNSC is actually taking this seriously."

"Ma'am, Taking what seriously?" the chief was puzzled, there was never a distress beacon that was picked up by Highcom. Not from this area of the galaxy, at least not one that he was informed about.

"We were invaded by those things! Surely you've come across at least one of them if your this far into the base." She fixed an over turned chair and sat down in it. "About three weeks ago their experiments with slipspace teleportation back fired on them and opened a portal to somewhere, and where ever it is you don't get tired, and its hot, at least that's what the reports indicated." Turning around in the chair she accessed a computer terminal, and brought up photographs of the other worldly place. Brownish red rocks in many photos, others had lava, and lots of it.

"We had been trying to develop a way to travel in slipspace faster than the covenant could, through teleportation." We could drop a whole battlegroup on top of a lightly armed covenant controlled world and wipe them out from orbit with minimal resistance the chief thought to himself. It woud also allow us to have ships disengage faster and allow for new battlefield tactics that could be used to eve the odds.

"We don't have to worry about that any more; the Human-Covenant War is over." The chief told the woman. "Covenant leadership was wiped out along with a schism within the covenant."

"I see, so all these deaths were for nothing, needless deaths that occurred during these past three weeks"

"Their deaths will only be meaningless if the report of failure doesn't get back to Highcom." The chief said "but more importantly what happened after the critical failure."

"Right" she said, "getting back to that, when we opened the portal, something dark, demonic and evil came out of it. At first it was just regular people, they changed into lifeless husks of their former selves. They began to attack others rather violently." Turning back to the chief, the woman looked to the floor before continuing. "Then something else came through the portal. They were humanoid, like us, but they were violent and they took more to put down. They began to poor out of the portal, faster than we could contain them. Eventually they overran the base and, took over."

"We need to stop this attempted invasion then" the chief said. "We have to disable the AI make our way to the Alpha Labs and link up with any remaining survivors. Ma'am what is your name?"

"Me? I'm Director Alice Lee Robinson." She said.

"Director, from this point forward this is a military operation, and I am assuming command. I want you to stay here for right now, once I have secured a more fortified location I will come and get you. If you could give me and Cortana updated logistical support for now, that would help immensely." This felt better for the chief, for the first time since he arrived at this facility, he felt like he had control, he knew his objective and what he needed to do to accomplish it.

"I'm going to lock this door before I leave, and take this." Ha handed her his Assault Rifle and his extra ammunition for it, use this if you have to defend yourself from anything. "All right" she said with a nod. "I'll provide you with what I can, but you're going to have to take care of that troublesome AI if you want anything more than just map information."

"Understood" the chief exited the room and locked the door with a manual override that should prevent the AI from tampering with it. The chief pulled his battle rifle from his back and leveled it, the extra punch that the battle rifle had would hopefully put his foes down quicker, maybe he could find a shotgun lying around here somewhere. That would give him the fire power he needed to put most anything down in one hit. The chief continued on his way towards marine command, walking down the limb strewn hallway.