HALO

Operation: Flood Drain

0700 Hours
July 6, 2554
Halo Installation 05

  Row after row off orange liquid pillars encased by glass went by, with an end fifty meters away. Each case held its own specimen of a mutated, demonic organism that once resembled a normal creature.

  Five Marines, lit orange from the ceiling above made entirely of tinted florescent lights, marched quickly down the center; their rifles were up and shouldered.

  The same number of Helljumpers quickly went for the other side of the room as well, each one covering an exposed area of their fire. Behind the two teams was a trio of scientists, carrying a titanium box.

  “Mission time?” The Shock Trooper sergeant asked, his eyes beaming from one Flood container to the next; he was vigilant for any movement that didn’t look right.

  “Four minutes, thirty seconds,” his rear guard yelled over from behind the only civilians in the group.

  Perfect. The mission was running smoothly. Only a few seconds later, they reached the end of the containment center. Another triple-piece door was sealed in their way, and a marine explosives expert quickly assembled the picklock gear to the door.

  “Three, on that that door. Everyone else, cover.”

  Two “Jarheads” kneeled in the center of the soon-to-be-open passage, and an ODST stood behind them, his ten gauge semi-automatic shotgun aimed in the direct center. Several clicking sounds echoed through the eerily quiet room, filled by breathing and the gloomy movement of the liquid holding the infestation.

  One final click sounded, and the code breaker turned green. The Marine grabbed it off the door and stepped away. He reached for the panel and waited for the ‘go’ command from his leader.

  He opened the door.

  The three point men rushed in, covering their flanks. The sarge was right on them, covering their heads.

  “Clear!”

  “Clear!”

  “Immediate area secure; move forward!”

  Three large panels sat immediately in front of the UNSC personnel; the walls stretched nearly two hundred meters up above their heads into the blackness. Automatic lights were supposed to activate and illuminate the entire room; they never turned on.

  The black suited soldiers illuminated the area with helmet flashlights and proceeded deeper into the room. The Marines flanked the panels in every direction as the scientists set up shop, bringing up illuminated Forerunner text. One grabbed an Artificial Intelligence unit and uploaded it into the system.

  The hologram of a shadowy, cloaked man sat next to the text in the air as it shifted at a blurred rate.

  “Accessing Forerunner laboratories, conclusions, and attempted chemical restorers,” a deep voice plainly answered to the quiet human experts. “This is the right database. There’s a good amount of intel, but—damn.”

  “They never found a way to reverse the Flood’s infection?” One of the chemistry technicians asked.

  “The Forerunners went through one hundred thousand plus possible vaccines,” the ONI spook replied in artificial frustration. “They came to the near-concrete conclusion that the Flood is the only virus incapable of being cured. The organism responsible isn’t a single-celled organism that kills cells as it multiplies; it’s a large “packaged poison” that enters the host and mutates it until it can be controlled by the ‘infector’. Once you become a Flood victim,” he turned to the scientists, but his face was blackened from his hood, “the only way out is for the host or the infector to become too damaged to continue.

  “There is also no vaccine that makes a person immune before it happens. The Flood infected every subject they put in their way, even if their body was pumped full of anthrax.”

  The AI turned around without warning and looked in the direction of the door. He noticed a blip; a movement larger than the rest on his motion scanner.

  “Marines…” He growled. “We have a guest.”

  As a pair of the soldiers motioned toward the door, they could hear glass shatter. Water fell to the floor, and a thud was barely audible through the door. Everyone stopped moving and the marines swung their assault rifles to the door.

  One of the scientists reached for his collar COM. “ODSTs, return to the door now.”

  “Understood, sir.” The sarge replied and motioned his team to fall back, and they made a run through the dark.

  They closed half the distance when his rear guard came to a halt, swinging around with his finger on the trigger.

  The shock troops came to a halt, and swung their rifles around, letting the attached flashlights illuminate the area. “I heard something, sir.” The private calmly answered the unanswered question.

  The sarge spent five seconds inspecting the area. “We need to get back—“

  A landslide of puss-filled insects the size of heads erupted from behind every piece of cover. There was so many that their short-distance motion trackers filled with red. The Marines more than two hundred meters away from the helljumper squad heard their profanity over the automatic weapons’ discharge.

  “Scrub the mission, we need to get the hell out of here!” The sergeant screamed into the COM link.

  The ONI spook looked back at the wall of Forerunner intel. This didn’t fit what they had learned; it took years for a gravemind to form—before the Flood could reorganize themselves and begin to learn again. Somehow, they had coordinated an ambush.

  One of the scientists ripped the AI from the system and inserted the chip into his pocket.

  The Marines rushed the door; it automatically slid open.

  A large parasitic alien swung madly at them; all the leathernecks sprayed a combined fifty rounds into the unstructured marionette. The wrong move. Most of the rounds shot all the way through, and into the chamber filled with more Flood. The full metal jackets were enough to shatter the containers.

  The creatures inside- awoken and free- went for the first smell they could find.

  Quickly, more and more were awakened. Many broke free from their containers, while others were too weak to be of use. Glass shatter quickly rivaled the rifle fire for being noisiest. Then a new sound rose over both; an earsplitting roar of hundreds of tortured souls.

  The sarge yelled profanity without delay as he finished the last magazine he carried. He pulled out his sidearm pistol and shot futily at one infection form at a time. Occasionally several would pop nearby, but another one hundred seemed ready to take their place. At one point they even began to fall off the roof above; They swarmed across the sides of the walls, trying to get around to their back side.

  All this time the ODSTs were slowly moving back. The sarge’s back soon hit another’s; he titled his head to the Marine behind him, shooting toward their rear back at the door.

  “They’re f***ing everywhere! I’m the last one!”

  The Sarge turned around and saw the human-sized monsters circling around them, gaining ground with every lost second. The helljumpers moved back to back to back, and they shot every round they had in literally every direction except below them.

  One by one and within moments of each other, they ran out of ammo. They reached for their last weapons; foot long combat knives. They screamed one last battle cry, but was drowned out by their enemy; a deafening roar was the last sound.