Unsung Hero

Keyes

Under New Management

View flies through a canyon filled with pools of reactor coolant under the Truth and Reconciliation. The Ket-pattern battlecruiser is resting on the top of the canyon, heavily damaged. The Flood and Covenant forces are fighting all throughout the region.

Cortana is speaking. "The Covenant network is in absolute chaos! From what I've been able to piece together, their leadership ordered all ships to abandon Halo when they found the Flood, but they were too late. The Flood overwhelmed this cruiser and disabled it. The Covenant are terrified the Flood will repair the ship and use it to escape from Halo. 

They've sent in a strike team to neutralize the Flood and repair the ship for immediate departure. I've got a good lock on Captain Keyes' CNI transponder signal! He's alive! And the implants are intact! There's some interference from the cruiser's damaged reactor. I'll bring us in as close as I can."

Suddenly the two Spartans and ODSTs teleport into the end of a corridor in the cruiser. But they are upside down.

The four fall onto the ground with a rough thud.

Ruby lands on top of Rose as Ash falls onto his head.

"Oh, get off me!" Rose yells. "You're heavy!" Ruby punches him in the head, very hard. "OW! Bitch!"

Ruby gets off  Rose and undims her helmet and glares down at her older brother. "That was very rude!"

Rose looks up at his sister as he undims his helmet. "Well it's true!" She punches him again. "OW!"

Ruby crosses her arms and pouts.

Ash gets up and rubs his head.

"Ohh..." Cortana starts. "I see, the coordinate data needs to be--"

The Master Chief whacks the side of his head with his fist as he stands up.

"Right. Sorry." Cortana apologizes. 

"Rose Two, are you alright?" Auntie Dot asks.

Rose stands up and rubs his head. "Yeah." He dims his helmet.

Ruby dims her helmet.

"You okay, Ash?" Xi asks.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Ash responds. "I've suffered much, much, much worse."

"Let's move out." Chief orders.

"Right." The three others acknowledge. 

The group begins to walk down the hallway.

Suddenly Keyes weakly speaks over coms. "Chief... Six... Don't be fools. Leave me..."

"Captain?" Xi calls out. "Captain?! I've lost him..."

The group keeps moving and they encounter a small group of Unggoy fighting the Flood; they are soon overwhelmed. The group eliminates the Flood, continues down the hallway, and gets to one of the hanger bays. A large hole in the floor is just past the door, blocking their progress. Several Elites are present in the area beyond, fighting more flood.

"Analyzing damage..." Cortana starts. "This hole was caused by some kind of explosive. Very powerful if it tore through a ship's hull. All I detect down there are pools of coolant. We should continue our search somewhere else."

"Uh... Sirs." Rose calls out.

"We have a problem." Ruby finises.

The two Spartans turn around to see Flood begin dropping out of a hole in the ceiling, cutting them off.