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Foresaken Forefathers Part VI: Island Infiltration
Posted By: Havok and AlphaBravo343<Tactical_Havok@hotmail.com>
Date: 19 June 2003, 1:08 AM
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The night was humid and hot, the air buzzing with unseen insects. The black expanse of water shimmered with the reflection of the planet's seven moons as calm waves broke against the sandy beach. A grunt patrol relaxed in the surf, their tanks of super cooled methane letting them float lazily in the shallow water.
To one side of the beach, jagged cliffs rose straight out of the water for a thousand feet, a vertical impregnable barrier against any covert intrusion, in the unlikely event that some force had landed unseen by the Covenant armada in orbit.
To the other side of the beach, the mouth of a wide river yawned across a split in the beach, spilling fresh mountain water into the salty sea. A single light bridge spanned this gap, with a tower on either side, manned by sleepy grunts. The river stretched far inland, coming from the menacing looking mountain at the center of the small island.
It was from this river that the covert assault group made its infiltration. A Pegasus stealth ship had stole its way into the system, past the Covenant orbital facilities, and was now parked safely on the ocean floor a few hundred meters from the mouth of the river.
The infiltration unit was made up of four Forerunner spec ops soldiers. Genetically enhanced to maximize their stealth and skill, they were clad in the matte black stealth combat skins. These suits maximize speed and agility, while packing no weapons. When and if a stealth warrior came into a confrontation, the problem was always solved with bare hands and immense strength not immediately apparent in their compact forms.
Strung out in a loose and flexible formation, the stealths made their way up the river. Their suits morphed on demand into almost any form for any use. Now, eight feet underwater, the feet had elongated into flexible flippers. The air in the suit could be recycled endlessly without the need to take in more oxygen. With subtle but powerful kicks, the silent warriors sped up the river against the current, their movement making not the slightest ripple on the calm surface.
Their objective lay up the river two kilometers, in a sheltered grove by the river. In that grove was the back entrance to a very extensive and secure Covenant installation. ONI had been trying to find some Covenant intelligence gathering devices of any kind-except the tracking device placed on the Iroquois during the battle for Sigma Octanus. Their hard work and endless efforts had proved to be fruitless, until now.
A combined effort between the Human and Forerunner intelligence services had brought a number of likely candidates for a Covenant intelligence gathering operation. This paradise planet had been at the top of the list for an Intel recon mission. The amount of scrambled radio traffic coming from this planet suggested very valuable information, seeing as the Covenant almost never scrambled transmissions.
The unit's main objective was to find the main computer system and download all available information to disk. This was easier said than done, as the complex stretched underground for untold kilometers in all directions.
The warriors came to a drifting halt at the bend in the river where they could see the back entrance. It was guarded by a lone grunt on a shade turret. The little alien was napping, his snores muffled by his breathing apparatus, but still audible to the keen hearing of the stealths.
The intruders silently stepped from the water onto the bank, careful to not splash around with their flippers. As they stepped onto the sand, the flippers molded and faded back into the soft rubberized soles of the combat suit.
The approach to the entrance was a little tricky due to the overgrowth of vegetation and the sheer number of things that could spell disaster for the mission. Each step was carefully sought out and planned, but done at a surprising speed.
They unit was almost upon the sleeping grunt when the point man stopped short suddenly, his body tense. His had clenched into a fist, and his teammates froze. The leader backed up a step and triggered the thermal imaging system in his helmet. He knelt slowly, and spotted the danger.
A razor thin shaft of infrared energy was being beamed across his path. The energy beam was so thin that it was virtually invisible even with the thermal imagers. He stands back up slowly and spots another one at waist height, and then one at eye level. An energy fence, wired to the security system. Tricky.
The point man backed up, signaled to his comrades, and jumped ten meters straight up and over the fence, landing behind the shade turret without a sound. His team followed him seconds after. One was tempted to kill the sleeping grunt, but they decided to let him sleep, content in his own oblivion.
The corridors stretched for miles, and just about the only thing going for the infiltration team was that the halls were dimly lit and that they hadn't been spotted yet. A quick hack into a data port on the wall brought up a holographic map of the interior. The main computer system looked to be three corridors over and two levels down. After a split second hesitation, the lead stealth took off in a blur down a side passage, headed for a nearby elevator shaft.
The three other stealths streaked after him, every so often, on would pause momentarily and affix a clear sticky membrane onto the wall at a corridor junction. These were cameras, feeding valuable optical information back to the Pegasus ship, where two Forerunner technicians sat tracking the progress of the infiltration.
At a large junction of hallways, the stealths split up, each taking a corridor, the timetable was running short, and they needed to get out of the facility sooner rather than later.
The last stealth reached the main computer mainframe. As he approached the doorway, the doors slid open, revealing two blessed elites clad in the ceremonial loin cloths, their claws clacking on the floor.
The intruder caught the movement of the door and leapt upwards, affixing himself to the dark ceiling ten meters overhead. The elites paused, hideous noses sniffing the air for danger, satisfied the way was clear, they moved out of the doorway, revealing a prophet leaving the control room. The spindly creature nodded to its guard detail, and hummed down the hallway in its antigravity chair.
The stealth took a deep breath and dropped silently from the ceiling and rolled through the doorway. The only other creature in the room was an elite studying the main computer monitor on the far wall. The stealth bounded forward and snapped the warrior's neck with a powerful twist of its arms.
The disk slid easily into the main data port, and a special intrusion software program neutralized the mainframe security system. The huge amount of intelligence information was downloaded to the platinum disk in thirty seconds, countless terabytes of vital information on the vast Covenant military and intelligence network. The stealth slipped the disk into a slot in the back of his helmet, and jetted out the door without a second glance. The other stealths were notified that the objective had been achieved. The Forerunner warriors each made their own way out of the base as fast a possible, streaking down corridors in black blurs that passing Covenant personnel barely had time to notice.
The reason for their quick and less than stealthy departure was soon apparent as the building began to rumble and shake with the detonation of ground penetrating charges dropped from the Phoenix dive bombers that suddenly swarmed over the Covenant radar displays.
The stealths leapt back into the river and the fins protruded from their suits as they muscled their way downriver at a speed that a power boat would envy. They swam back into the cargo compartment of the Pegasus, the pilots closed the hatch and pumped out the water, then lifted through the water and sped away to the safety of the deep dark void of space, the Phoenix dive bombers following them, their job of providing the distraction done. Another infiltration mission accomplished, and a wealth of information obtained.
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