John 117: The Second Coming Part Two: Trained to attack with any vehicle?
Posted By: WildebeestNZ<wildebeest_nz@hotmail.com>
Date: 11 October 2002, 6:24 am
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"So how do we fly this thing?"
"Give me a second to access..."
"I don't know what I'd do without you sometimes." John smiled underneath his helmet.
"Right. There are hundreds of those bastards out there. And there are thousands of their fighters. What can we do Cortana?"
"Well Chief, if you can overcharge the main plasma cannons you should be able to create a big enough explosion with each shot do destroy scores of them at once. It's risky though."
"You mean like a giant Covenant mortar gun? OK. What do I need to do?"
"You need to make your way to the ship's fusion drive core. Inside you should be able to fiddle around with the controls and divert the current to the ship's main cannon. After I fire though, the ship will be rendered immobile for about a minute. In that time those bastards will probably realise what's happening and open fire on the ship. You'll need to be able to get out fast once I've fired. There are plenty of fighters docked in docking bays 3, 4,5 and 7."
"And what the hell am I going to do about you?"
"Since my last upgrade I've been given the ability to load from any control port on a human ship, no matter where I was originally loaded. It should work the same here. In other words, you've uploaded me here, and if you take the disk, you can go and download me at another control panel on the ship."
"Why can't you just do the overload thing from here, by yourself Cortana?"
"It has to be done manually. I'll keep in touch with you via CommLink."
John picked up his rifle. The door opened and he sprinted down the corridor.
He wasn't surprised to encounter the battle group: two elites, seven grunts and a solitary jackal. They were facing the other way. He crept up behind the first elite (at the back of the group) and swung the butt of the rifle at his head. The sound of its skull cracking alerted the others.
John hurtled towards them, opened fire and pierced the second elites head twice.
Then he proceeded to kick a grunt square in the jaw, which flew straight down the corridor, and splattered on a wall like lumpy paint. The next grunt was grabbed by the leg and hurled down the corridor like a baseball. It hit one of its comrades so hard that they were both killed by the impact. A third grunt was squished by a flying fist. The rest of them dived around the corner of the corridor, scared to death. The grenade bounced after them. A roar, and bodies flailed down the corridor, one of them stopping short at his feet. The Jackal however, had managed to dodge the explosion, and was cowering in front of him.
He kicked the shield out of the way and picked up the Jackal by the neck, holding it against the wall.
"Dodge this, motherf**ker!"
He swung his right arm towards the Jackal's head with a similar amount of force to that of a car travelling at 110km/h.
Its entire skull exploded and its brains were forced into a football sized hole in the wall. All of this took 0.3 seconds.
Back on the Command System, Cortana was worrying as she watched John.
Ten down. He didn't normally fight so ruthlessly, so aggressively. Something was clouding his head. For the first time in his life, John was experiencing true anger.
Whether or not that was a good thing was another story.
About 10 minutes later, it stood tall over him. The ship's fusion core. It was huge, blue and glorious. A canister of raw limitless energy, with gigantic proportions. And he was going to use it in one big blast against his enemies.
He fiddled with the control panels, and Cortana came on the CommLink.
"Hey Chief, nice work. You'll need to reroute the power via the control panel you're standing in front of."
He fiddled around for a few moments, then heard a huge roar as all the energy was channelled into one conduit.
"This won't hold for very long Cortana, you'll need to be fast."
The main cannon shimmered bright blue, the entire ship was lit up by its fierce glare.
On the human warships, all the men and women froze at their posts as they saw the intense ball of light taking form.
"What the fuck is that!?" roared the Admiral.
Then it discharged. Had it been possible to hear this sound, any human's ears would have exploded. The giant blue firebolt hurtled towards the major group of Covenant warships. The explosion tore through space, a seemingly endless inferno which lit up the entire surface of Earth with it's sheer power. The cries and screams of the Covenant crews & troops as they were incinerated could be heard all over the Covenant Battle Network, the combined noise almost as loud as the explosion itself would've been.
The shockwave rippled through space and knocked the human ships around like toys.
They were lucky that none of them collided.
All the control panels and computers went blank on the human ships, the Covenant ships and even the lights went out for a few seconds.
The only AI that was untouched was Cortana. John's HUD flickered.
Then it was done.
As the various ship's computers came online, and the Admiral saw the scattered and broken Covenant assault fleet on the main screen, only two words escaped from his mouth.
"Chief's back."
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