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Halo 2: A New Hope
Posted By: Sephiroth<jbrandon3@cox.net>
Date: 3 November 2002, 2:18 am
Read/Post Comments
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Military Intelligence Station
Sol System
0600 Hours
Dr. Halsey fidgeted in her chair as she watched the last of the group file into the audience chamber. Every one of them held themselves casually but at ease, every step full of confidence, but their eyes betrayed their power. These men and women had been through hell and out the other side, and many had died, but the survivors were good. Very good.
She cleared her throat and stood shakily up. She touched the keypad at her desk and the large screen behind her became dark blue, the signal that it was ready. She pressed another button and the screen started rolling a video. "Thanks to the Covenant cruiser you have intercepted, we have discovered how the Covenant use their plasma technology."
"However, to properly explain how it works, I must first show you the Covenant home system, the location of which and digital pictures of we uncovered from the memory core of the captured cruiser. There are four planets in the Covenant home system. The largest is the Elite and Prophet homeworld. It is also the "capital" planet of the system, the most important. The second largest is the Grunt homeworld, further away from the suns of the system than the other planets, which is why it is frozen and Grunts breathe chilled methane. In between these two are two medium sized planets, the Jackal and Hunter homeworlds."
"All these planets orbit a pair of stars, Astath, the larger, and Erebos, the smaller. The covenant place hundreds of energy collecting metal cells in satellites of some sort, then launch the satellites into space, where they orbit the star pair and unroll the energy cells in long lines. Astath and Erebos both give off furious star winds, which are made of ionized electrically charged gas, or plasma. The energy cells open and consume plasma until they are full, then the cells are drawn back into the satellites and sent back down to the planets. These cells are placed in their guns. The blue plasma of Astath is more potent, and fills the plasma rifles, while the green plasma of Erebos fills the plasma pistols."
"The guns bear a magnetic chamber which can draw out some plasma from the cell and place it under immense pressure. When the trigger is fired the plasma is transported to twin spires on the end of the gun and thrown out in the air in a small cloud of plasma."
"As I speak ONI is launching thousands of satellites to Sol, our star, to get more plasma than we initially collected. We have duplicated the energy cells using designs found in the ships computer, and they will collect plasma winds from Sol. However, analyzation of Sol shows that our star has a different type of plasma, yellow plasma. This plasma is very potent but is more stable than blue and green plasma. ONI has experimented and found that it can be contained in titanium shells, which they have made structurally so that while the shells are very strong to inside stress from the plasma, they are relatively weak to outside stress, meaning that when the shells are shot, upon impact, they discharge the plasma into the target. This means that we now have the power of the Covenant yet we can deliver it faster, for as you all know, bullets travel faster than plasma from their guns."
Someone in the audience whistled, and Dr. Halsey allowed herself a smile before continuing. "We have designed a new assault rifle, the ARP1, which will fire our plasma bullets." The screen showed a picture of a sleek black menacing looking rifle. "It has a scope capable of 2x magnification, holds sixty rounds, and fires at a slightly slower rate than the old assault rifles, but is much more accurate. A sniper rifle has also been designed, the God's Eye, which holds magazines of five bullets, and has a scope capable of 2x, 7x, and 12x magnification, and has normal, thermal, and night-vision operating modes. Also we have the SKP, a pistol with a 3x magnification scope."
"We have made the Cyclops, a large titanium launcher that has a 2x magnification scope, and fires high-explosive rockets with thermite covers, shrapnel, napalm powder, and another thermite sphere in the center that contains yellow plasma. The Cyclops holds two rockets at a time. Someone in ONI said that looking at the business end of a prototype, he saw what looked like a red eye, hence its name. The xo2 (prounouced zoe-two) shotgun is 8 gauge and fires large shells of plasma with plenty of pellets for shrapnel. We saw instructions for making the vibro-swords that Stealth and Commander Elites sometimes carry, and have starting building a prototype vibro-sword of our own. And last but not least, the new grenades are the old explosives with a plasma core."
"And now for the most important information. Shields. It took us a long time to understand the complex instructions surrounding these but we have finally successfully created a shield out of yellow plasma. Shields rely on multiple generators deep inside a ship. These generators send refined plasma to projectors on the outside of the ship, which sends out a beam that breaks apart at a preprogrammed distance from the projectors. The plasma stays in a narrow area vertically but spread out very wide horizontally, creating a bubble of plasma. When a gun mounted on the ship fires the ship's shields in the area where the bullet will hit disappear for the instant it takes the missile or bullet to get through and then reappear. Our shields have the same strength as the Covenant's."
"The shipyards on the moon will recall all our remaining ships and outfit them as soon as possible with shields and plasma-enhanced weaponry. They will also create a new ship or two built from the ground up with our plasma technology in mind. They will create a destroyer, a flagship."
"Massive generators are being built as we speak underground in the Earth that will, in time, create a planetary shield. We can only hope that we will get that shield up in time."
She took a deep breath. "As you can see we have been very busy. With the threat on Earth growing we have been putting out all we have and more into these refinements. Since we have three settlements left, they have been told to fight as best they can to delay the Covenant from getting to Earth until we implement our new technology. Estimates put a Covenant invasion on Earth at less then three weeks from now."
She looked at the people in her chamber, met eyes with each of them. "Make me proud, my Spartan 3s."
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