Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:40 pm by Striker-1
“Chief, Chief, are you ok, can you hear me?” No response. I tried rechecking the Master Chiefs vitals. They all seemed in the green. He just would not wake up. I had to keep trying. I went back to scanning the area. What ever it was that we passed through, it must have done something to the instruments. None of the stats matched any known systems I have in my database.
“What’s going on” the chief finally spoke. “Where are we and what happened” he added, still groggy.
“Lie still chief, you’ve had a rough time of it” I replied, while scanning more systems. “You’ve been out for the last twenty four hours, and I’ve been worried about you.”
“You, worried about me, that’s a change” he responded. At least his humor was intact. That meant he would be alright.
“Well, while your were napping, I ran a scan of the area, we are not even in our galaxy, in fact, I haven’t a clue, as to When we are as in any time frame.”
“Well, lets get out of here and try to get back to the Pillar of Autumn II, we have to report in soon” Chief said, knowing they were going no where anytime soon.
Two days later, we were headed towards the nearest system. There had to be come kind of traffic, if it was covenant traffic. We would just have to be prepared for it, but, a pelican would be no match in a firefight. So we kept a low profile and locked in on what was a high energy signal.
The truth be told, the Chief was more interested in what happened to us than I was. I just wanted to get us back to safe ground. There was no telling who we could run into out here. I had not told the Chief that I had dropped a monitoring buoy back where we emerged, from what ever brought us here. I didn’t want to take any chances that we were followed. Now, though, I was getting a warning message, a really bad one. Uh, oh, not good, not good at all. A covenant cruiser popped into our area. It would probably be fully loaded. I had to get us a way from here and now.
I laid a course in for the signal. Yes, I knew the covenant would find it as well, but, we had to get some help.
The Signal turned out to be a large ring, but not like Halo. A lot smaller. It seemed to be a travel devise of some kind. I ran a scan on it and found a code that seemed to activate it . It glowed with energy and I moved our ship into and was launched faster than we could normally travel. It was amazing. This beat the slipstream method. It was only a matter of moments, when we came to the end of the little trip, but, we were closer to the planetary source that I had scanned. And, it seemed a bit of interstellar traffic as well.
As we neared the planet, three small fighter sized craft neared us and asked us to submit to a search, something about artifacts. As we had nothing to hide, we allowed them to search. One, a female stated they found nothing and we could continue on out way. The planet was called Manhattan. Strange name for a world. Never the less, our hail for landing permit was allowed and we headed down through the docking gate tot he surface of the planet. We followed the guide path that took us to the landing platforms.
After the Chief secured the craft, he uploaded me into his armor and we set off in search of answers and for help. His being in armor might attract too much attention, but it would have to be risked. He needed me to assist in getting what we needed to know.
After checking the usual places, I suggested heading to the bar. It seemed to be the best gathering place of the locals. The seemed like humans and I could interpret thier speech for the Chief to understand. We did notice a lot speaking about something called “Credits” which I discovered was a for of payment. That would create a little difficulty, as we had none.
I was able to work with the Chief, to get us some work, hauling supplies to another base, for credits. Tat way, we could obtain the information we needed, and maybe, enlist the help that would soon be needed. The Covenant, would be a force to be reckoned with here.
Our cargo, was basic supplies of water, food and machinery. It would fetch a fair price, and hope fully get us some one willing to answer questions. We were able though, to get an advance to add some weapons to the ship. That way we could at least defend ourselves. There was talk of Rogues that tended to attack traffic in between worlds. The trade lanes would get us to Pittsburgh easy enough. After getting settled in, we lifted off and made our run.
The run turned out to be uneventful. After landing and making the necessary transaction, we headed to the bar with some credits this time. I had to get the Chief to mellow a bit and let me field the questions. After an hour, we were given the name of a man named King, that might be able to help us. He was said to be on a battle ship, called Missouri. We were given the coordinates to the ship and paid the source about half the credits we had. I was able to find out that the Battleship was in need of supplies and we purchased some with the remaining credits to exchange when we arrived. This seemed like it was going to take a lot of time, time we did not have.
These trade lanes, seemed to be a good thing, yet in a time of war, would prove to be a detriment. When we dropped out of them at the battleship, I realized we were in trouble. These capital ships, were one third the size of the covenant ships. They would be no match for them, if they encountered them in battle. This changed things. I needed to come up with an alternative plan, and soon. The transmission from the beacon, showed the covenant ship was beginning to search the area it entered here in this place.
After docking and the Chief loading me up again, I had him grab a holo base to take to the meeting. This King, turned out to be a hero here of a war with some beings called, The Nomads. The data base was easy enough to secure. The encryptions here were little to nothing. It seemed they had just been through a battle against an invading force themselves. I really hated to be the one to bring them more bad news. This group will make the others look like child’s play.
When King arrived at the meeting room, the Chief uploaded me into the holo base and explained who and what I was. Talk about the indignantly of it all. I just shook my holographic head and waited for him to finish.
Edited by - Cortana on 2/10/2005 8:18:31 AM