Perchance To Dream

[Imppa]

How is he or should i say It a Dead Man

SOmething Moose won't just slip out...:/

[Dunder Moose]

Part 6 posted after 5.  Preparation for war.

Hornet-  The Dead Man-thing was the civilian that they found in the Pelican adrift, the only known survivor of the UNSC ship, Cost Of Dereliction.   He was in a coma, and then died when they tried to revive him.  It reanimated in the morgue and fought its way to the bridge where James 417 encountered it.  Unfortunately they couldn't get a name from him/it before it died and became monstrous.

As to why it could do that, or how?  You'll have to read on.... 

[Imppa]

Kewl...You're good in this Moose!

[odst glitcher]

the dead man seems like a flood lol that would be awsome to fight the thing wouldn`t it

will you ever include how he turned into the....creature    this story is awsome i actually been thinking of my own story when walking home today i haven`t got it quite sorted out today though may make part one though

[Dunder Moose]

Thanks guys.  I hope the ending satisfies. 

[Dunder Moose]

Part 7 up.  Some space warfare ahead, as well as some oddly named ODSTs.

[Imppa]

YyYes! Finally!

[Dunder Moose]

Part 8.  Some questions are answered. Resupply for the fight.  More inside-joke ODSTs show up.

Part 8

At the weapon rack James 417 looked up to see Noble approaching him.

“Captain.” he stood.

“It’s Major again. I am going in with you.” She looked at the flat surface of his armored stump. “The techs are growing your arm back as quick as they can, but it’s nowhere near ready.”

“Tell them to take their time. The fast-grown ones aren’t as strong and never quite stop tingling. Besides, I had a tech work something up on an old souvenir of mine from Reach.”  He opened a case and pulled out a bone shaped rod that had been welded onto a circular cap. It snapped into place over James 417’s stump. He took a step back and activated the Elite sword.

Major Nobles eyes widened in the blue glow. She gasped at its sudden crackling energy field.

“I lost my paw, but not my claw.” James 417 said. He deactivated the sword.

“When you said that it sounded like you were smiling behind that faceplate.” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you do that without your mustache. I bet it looks good.”

“Spartans don’t smile, Ma’am.” James 417 said.

“They sure can lie though.” She put her hand on his armored chest. “I know you’ll do well in there, but I don’t know what we’re up against. We need to get that AI back. It’s more important even than figuring out what these things are. It could be a cake walk or we could lose everybody on the first breach. Promise me that, no matter what, you will get Striata back. And if you can’t, that you’ll destroy her.”

“I promise.”

“And if we both make it out of this...well, there’s an unfinished chess game in my quarters.”

“Ma’am you need to know about Ann. I am sure she fought to the last breath against these things. She may have been the one to destroy the Cost of Dereliction. But if they didn’t kill her, if she got...infected... The one I fought was stronger than me and it was a civilian. Ann got better scores than I did at the clone facility. She is faster, sharper, meaner. And I only have one hand.”

“Did she mean a lot to you, James?”

James 417 couldn’t speak. He was struggling not to do something else Spartans never did behind their faceplates.

“She is lovely.” he whispered so low that the helmet mic didn’t pick it up.

“I’m sure you will do whatever you need to. We all will.” she put on her Recon helm and strode away.

James 417 looked at the weapon rack before him. The sniper rifle was out, he didn’t know how much range there would be in the asteroid’s interior. The shotgun would have been the next logical choice, but with one hand he’d be slower at cocking it. He put a magnum on the hardpoint on his thigh. Turning he saw an ODST lifting a Spartan laser. His patch read Imp.

“This ought to finish them off.” Imp said, patting the weapon. That made James 417 consider his heavy weapon options. He jammed his stump under the forehandle of an incinerator and hefted it.

“Finish ‘em hey?” he said. The flamethrower had sharky jaws painted near the nozzle.

“I’m big on the finish.” said Imp.

“Me too, man.” said an ODST named Blast Nimbus. He sliced at the air with a knife.

James 417 remembered Judson’s complaint. “Fragging peas, man.”

“Zip up!  We’re on the move!” Major Noble called and they all pressurized their suits. The large minibase doors fell open and they ran to form up, taking odd jerky steps in their gripper boots. Marines were mounting Scorpions and Warthogs.

A Warthog with three ODST’s skewed around to a stop by the formation. The driver’s callsign was Wasp. ODST Bugger rode shotgun and their gunner’s tag read Shatbiker. They all seemed to carry an almost ridiculous amount of grenades.

Major Noble gave the order and they marched toward the cave.

Part 9

Two hundred meters in the asteroid’s cave ended in a thick muscular portal, which Judson loudly dubbed the ast-hole. Noble and Riddle were deliberating how to cut through it when it irised open on its own, whistling wind and disgorging another shambling horde.
James 417 lead the UNSC forces into the fray. He registered the front line and the odd tissue lining the tunnel and then the battle was on him and thought took a backseat to reaction. He remained on point as nobody wanted to run in front of a Spartan with a flame thrower. He was letting the thing off in short spurts, conserving the fuel. In the pressure of sudden atmosphere the gel flared brightly and the nightmare howls of the burning monsters echoed through the cavern. For every five he burned down ten got past him. The gunfire chattered from both sides and human screams joined the monsters’.

James 417’s remarkable subconscious was still busily assessing and storing away facts (he thought that perhaps the flesh lining the tunnel had exuded an acidic mucous to bore the tunnel) but his forebrain was entirely engrossed in killing the enemy. He did not hesitate. His every move was sure. For James 417 , behind joking and human interaction, this was what life was really about, and life was good.

Yellow-white streams of fire ate through limbs and armor faces and things that were once-faces. The more normal man sized things were wearing thin and behind them a monster shambled towards him, running with knuckles and feet. He hit it head on full stream and it bowled him over. The flamethrower went spinning and James 417 was in a furious hand-to-hand battle with the thing while they both burned. It grabbed him by the head and slammed him into the cavern wall hard enough to make his helmet creak. A lance of bright red light blinded James 417 and he floated a bit until his gripper boots clamped onto the ground. The things arm drifted in front of him severed at the elbow. The howling thing’s stump was big around as a tree’s. It turned to face the Marine who’d shot it and saw Judson charging up his Spartan laser for another shot. Before it could go for him James 417 slugged it in the side of the head. It hesitated just long enough for another shot from the Splaser that cut it in two.

“Thanks Judson!” James 417 called.

“No sweat Popsicle! Just gave him a cut-puppet!” Judson hollered back.

A bulging sack on two legs with tentacle whips stumbled toward them. James 417 drew his pistol, but another Marine hit it first with a burst from an assault rifle. The explosion blew James 417 to the other side of the wide tunnel and killed the front row of Marines.
Judson was screaming. James 417 looked up to see him covered in large bulbous jellyfish. He took aim and fired six times, bursting one with each shot. Judson was up and running. One was on his leg. He stomped it into the ground and emptied his pistol into it, screaming.

Noble ordered them to fall back. They had widened the breach and it was time to follow the Warthogs and Scorpions. They got halfway in when their own dead rose up and fired on the vehicles.

“Cerebello! What’s going on?” James 417 asked. In his helmet Cerebello’s calm voice replied.

“Reviewing the footage. The little ones that came out of the exploding life form fixed on their bodies and have reanimated them.”

James 417 shared this horrific news and they turned their weapons on their newly fallen comrades. They almost broke then, but they survived the fight and pressed on, clearing out the tunnels as they went. By the time they were halfway through the asteroid all of their vehicles had been destroyed, mainly by their own grenades and rockets. They feared the stumbling bag monsters. Once some small arms fire raked an infected looking clump of spheres and more of the jellies swarmed out, leaping and whipping red-feathery tendrils. Once more their dead arose. Once more James 417 had to pick them off with his pistol, this time from Major Noble herself. Her suit was ripped open at the arm and several tentacles dove at the wound like tongues to lap the blood. James 417 ran up and ripped the thing off her, it’s tentacles tearing into pieces. She sprayed sealer foam over the cut.

“There’s pieces wriggling in my arm! I’ll get the rest out when we’re back at base.” she said.

“Ma’am! We can’t go on like this.” he said. She nodded. She gave the retreat order before the men could run. They had reached over seventy percent casualties.

“James!” she called him, “You know what to do!”

He nodded and watched them retreat, leaving him behind. He replenished his ammo and grenades, picked up a battle rifle and pressed on.

“New strategy Cerebello.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re not gonna clear this thing out. We’re going for the AI and getting out. Give them a chance to get off the rock then prepare to fire.”

“Sir, I can’t fire danger close without authorization from the Major.”

“Just get ready.”

Part 10
20 minutes later, panting, James 417 stood at a thick muscular wall. He had killed more creatures than he could count. He had sneaked past even more. If Cerebello’s heads-up display was accurate he was near the nerve center of the asteroid. According to the seismic readings the initial bombardment provided, on the other side of this portal the asteroid was completely hollowed out. No more tunnels to slink down.

He checked the tunnel down which he’d come and, finding it empty, activated his elite sword. The membrane was thick and tough, but once he’d cut past the outer ring the door shied open away from his blade.

Must have hit a nerve, he thought.

Inside was a huge cavern dominated by the internal workings of the large ship motors, harshly lit by the glaring spheres and angles of the Crawford field generators. Before the main control for the Nano-graviton pulse hub was a familiar pedestal with a pink hologrammatic female glitching occasionally.

“There she is.” said Cerebello. James 417 deactivated the blade.

The egg-sacs he had come to fear filled the cavern and he saw a pulpy mass, larger than a broadsword-class fighter, with several fibrous tendrils wrapped around the base of Striata’s pedestal. Way off to the left, tipped over as if tossed aside, was a Spartan cryopod.

He jumped for it, through the sagging portal relishing the acceleration as his boots left the tunnel and he floated into the empty globe. His rapid flight seemed like a lazy drift in the large open space and the spears of blue, yellow and white Crawford light played over his armor like dapples on a dolphin just under the surface.

Striata noticed him sailing toward the cryopod and giggled.

He hit the surface hard enough to activate his velocity shields, then hand-over-handed his way to the cryopod. The armor inside was almost identical to his own. A little shorter perhaps; wider pelvis and narrower codpiece. Ann 137 was stenciled on its shoulder. His armored fingers scraped down the frosted glass. Then he pulled the release lever.

[Dunder Moose]

Part 9 up. The good guys get a whoopin'. Enjoy.

[Imppa]

"This was what life was really about, and life was good." Yeah!

[Dunder Moose]

Part 10 up. It's short, but I figured it was better to keep them coming than wait until I'd finished the thing.  More coming soon. Warning.  Contains sword use on a sphincter.

[Imppa]

IT'S A TRAP!

[Dunder Moose]

Part 11
Sierra 137 Decanted from the cryopod and snapped to zero-G attention, body rigid, toes pointed. James 417 fished the gripper attachments out of its case on her cryopod and fastened them to the bottoms of her feet while the startup sequence initiated. By the time he had maneuvered her to latch on to the wall next to him Ann had woken up. She put both hands on his chest and shoved hard, grabbing the magnum off his hip while he windmilled his arms, trying to stay attached to the cavern wall.

“You son of a bitch!” she said.

“Woah, woah!” said James 417.

She aimed the pistol at his head and he executed a quick takeaway, snapping the gun out of her hand. As he raised it to bear on her she used the same move taking the gun right back. As it left his hand he managed to flick the clip release and the magazine slid out to float between them. When she reached for it he snapped the gun out of her hand again and aimed it with his stump in front of the handhold. She quickly grabbed the top and racked it back toward him ejecting the last chambered round to spin between their faceplates. They stared hard at each other. Finally she grabbed the round and clipped it into the magazine.

“You have the gun and I have all the bullets.” she said. James 417 didn’t reply. An impish part of him wanted to activate the elite sword soldered onto his stump, but he refrained. It might be good to have a few surprises left in him.

“I need to get to medical. I don’t have much time! You shouldn’t have woken me here!”

“Let me grab Striata and we’ll get out of here fast.”

“No. That one’s crazy.” She said, pointing at the pedestal with the large mass attached to it. “I have a backup taken before that thing took hold of her.” She tapped her helmet.

“I can’t just leave her here.” James 417 said and pushed off. He sailed across the gap and landed hard next to Striata.

“Hang on, ma’am. I’m getting you out of here.” he said.

The AI’s laugh was a delightful tinkling in his helmet. When he touched her disc the large mass convulsed and several of the chords let loose of the pedestal to thrash at him. Her laughter turned to a hideous scream.

“NO!  YOU WILL NOT TAKE HER!”

James 417’s vision blurred as the new voice rolled through him. He grit his teeth and pulled the disc. Keeping Ann 137’s warning, though he put it in his belt pack instead of sliding it into his helmet.

“YOU FOOL!”

The egg sacs in the entire chamber burst open and the strange creatures exploded into the cavern like a firework in hell. James 417 fired his pistol three times before he remembered it was empty. Three loud explosions rocked him and he saw an open path through the writhing monsters to the portal.

How did she? he began to think, then realized that all the grenades were missing off his belt.

“Move it James!” Ann 137 shouted, diving for the portal.

“You beautiful kleptomaniac!” He said back starting to dive, then he saw it. One of the creatures he had come to think of as a tank was forcing its way through the ruined portal.

“Ann!” James 417 cried and tossed the pistol at her. She caught it, slammed home the clip and chambered the first round in one fluid motion while she soared toward the hole. She raised the pistol over her head and fired the whole clip into the monster’s head. It finally died on the last round, but the entire opening was filled with the monsters, alerted by her grenades. Three pear shaped ones crawled around the opening and opened, looking like an inside-out hedgehog, bristling with spines. The spines fired, each one zipping dead-on into the velocity field around Ann 137’s head. She tossed a flame grenade which engulfed one killing it, and caused the other two to close up, protecting themselves from the heat and ceasing their fire. She landed and leapt off of one of the closed ones, back toward him as more tanks bashed their way in. As she speared toward James 417 he noticed the tunnel her grenades had made through the little creatures was collapsing quickly

“Cerebello! Fire one AP round on my position!” James  417 commanded.

“I need authorization from the,”

“Do it or I die!” James 417 commanded.

“Foxtrot one.” Cerebello said and James 417 jumped for all he was worth. A magnificent hole opened on either side of the great cavern, with a core of light running from one side to the other, passing three centimeters below James 417’s feet. The Crawford field generators exploded in a glory of light and all of the little creatures in the cavern popped at once.

James 417 saw Ann 137 as a blue lozenge of light coming toward him as her shields maxed out, trying to cope with the energies being released in the room. Then the entire cavern went dark.

She collided with him in the weightless dark. He put his arm around her waist. A tentacle wrapped around his foot and pulled them both back toward the pedestal.
“PUT HER BACK, NOW!”

James 417 quickly got his bearing. He shoved Ann 137 toward the opening the Defiant Answer had blasted into the asteroid. She drifted bonelessly toward the opening.

“Ann!” he called, but she did not respond.

When his boots touched down on the squishy mass it spoke in his head again.

“I HAVE PLANS AND YOU CAN BE A WONDERFUL PART OF THEM. THE BIOMASS ON THAT STARSHIP IS CALLING OUT FOR THE LIBERATION OF THE GRAVE. POOR RAMPANT STRIATA WANTS A MATE AND I WANT ANOTHER AI.”

Before it could say more James 417 activated his sword and jammed it into the center of the mass. He dragged it one way, then another making a large plus sign, before leaping at the hole in the sky. The thing made no more noise.

He caught Ann 137 with the crook of his elbow and caught the rim of the asteroid, swinging them out onto the surface. His gripper boots bit into the rock and he ran toward his booster frame with Ann 137 over his shoulder. She shuddered. He set her down on her feet.

“It’s too late for me James, I can feel it.”

“No, we can get you back.”

She coughed, gagged. “I can feel them tickling my throat. How many Spartans left?”

“I don’t know.”

“John?” Her question bit a piece out of his heart.

“He’s alive. He’s on the Pillar of Autumn.”

“That’s good.”

James 417 was about to tell her how he’d always felt about her, how it had changed since he met Major Noble, but was stronger for the trial. Before he could say anything she interrupted him.

“You should run now.” Her voice had grown so deep the last word was almost masculine.

[Dunder Moose]

Part 11 posted.

Warning: an upset character swears. I usually Keep It Clean, but Spartans can wake up nasty.

I also edited earlier portions to include atmosphere on the asteroid.  I learned that high explosives produce no shock wave in a vacuum and I needed oxygen for James 417's incinerator to burn.  It also gave me the option for the cool lighting effects of the Crawford generator in the hollow cavern.

[Dunder Moose]

Well here it is, the thrilling conclusion to Perchance to Dream.  Since we are at the end I thought I'd give you parts 12 and 13 together. Note, I have edited part 11 slightly, adding a couple significant coughs and a gag to Ann's speech.


Part 12

James 417 saw the pressure seals on her joints mist as tentacles broke out of them, spraying her oxygen reserves into the vacuum left by the Crawford generator's collapse.

James 417 froze.  His options were to run, and leave behind the sane Striata in Ann 137's helmet, or stand and fight the woman he had come to care about more than anyone else. But while James the man froze on his dilemma, Spartan 417 acted for him.  Spartans were built for one thing, and if running was involved, it was toward the enemy.

His low kick dislodged one of her gripper boots and sent her overbalancing backward. As she fell a tentacle whipped out of her left palm and snaked around James 417's helmet, blocking his sight. She jerked his head forward and both his gripper boots lost traction as he sailed over her.

He grabbed the tentacle before it could release him into the void and swung around like Tarzan, landing on the asteroid behind her. She released her remaining gripper and pulled on the tentacle, crashing into him in a flying kick that knocked them both off the surface of the asteroid. He climbed up her body until he was looking into her faceplate. The thing in there had her eyes, but little else, and even those were beginning to change.

"Ann. If you're still in there...." his voice choked off.

"YOU KILLED THE GRAVEMIND, THERE CAN BE NO REASONING!" she said.

"If any part of you is aware, know that to me, knowing you was the best part of being a Spartan.â"

The pupils of her eyes broke like yolks into her irises and her jaw unhinged as a beak pressed out of her open mouth. It opened and he swore he heard her voice.

"Release me."

The tentacle whipped his back hard and when it pointed at him he saw a spine of bone protrude from the tip, sharpened to the molecule. It was now or never. He held his stump above her heart and activated the elite sword. The beak opened and shrieked a duet with his heart as he destroyed Ann 137.

He saw a red glow and realized that she still had a grenade. He put his feet on her shoulders and shoved off just as it detonated. His sword had overpowered her shields and she shattered into pieces, his shields held as he rode the wave away from her body, the overmax alarm beeping in his ears.

Faintly he heard Cerebello's voice.

"He's clear, opening barrage.

Red and yellow fire bathed the cosmos as the Defiant Answer obliterated the asteroid, and floating amidst the chaos one blue dot, sobbing into the silence.

"James 417, you will be retrieved shortly." Cerebello said.

"Leave me," he said, "I failed. Striata, the sane one, just got destroyed." He reached across himself with his good hand to touch his belt pack, thinking of the infected mind it contained. The stars were blotted out by the Pelican slowly jetting over him.  The analog tactile pistons in his glove told him there were two disks in the pack.

He looked at the red starburst that had been Ann 137, like a firework frozen at its apex.

"You beautiful klepto. You planted it when I carried you. I'm sorry all I could give you was rest. I hope it's enough."

The gangway opened and a Recon-helmeted trooper floated out on a tether to embrace him.

Part 13

The tech held up the two disks, eyeing one, then the other.

"How do we know which one's infected and which one's sane?"

James 417 pointed to the one on the right.

"That one with the goop on it is the bad one."

"Which should we study first?" the tech asked, clearly more interested in the insane AI.

"You are not plugging an insane AI into my ship, get a quarantined box if you want to play psychiatrist." Captain Noble said.

The tech pushed the clean disk into Cerebello's pedestal. Striata materialized next to him.  They hugged, delighted to see one another, his electric green clashing with her pink.

"I don't know as much about it all as the rampant Striata, but from my position in Ann 137's head I gathered a loose timeline." Her voice was high and clear like a silver bell. "The Cost of Dereliction came upon a damaged yacht with an SOS beacon.  The civilian we brought onboard was reluctant to speak, but eventually it came out that he had discovered an artifact. He described a giant ring. He didn't want to talk because he wanted the salvage rights to it; thought he'd make a fortune.

"He unleashed something on the ring and it followed him back to his ship.  When we found him, he was living on an oxygen tank in the ship's privy. It got onboard the Cost of Dereliction and killed, then resurrected our shipmates one by one. Ann 137 was able to start the self-destruct, but not before she got infected. She tried to pull me and went back into cryo to slow the metamorphoses and hopefully get cured before she changed. Unfortunately she didn't get the full dump. The infected crew cut the lines to a few of the scuttle charges and so preserved the ship's engines and me. They ghosted me aboard the ruined husk and that other version was pressed into service, designing their asteroid ship and salvaging what she could from the decimated warship. By that time they had enough biomass to start amalgamating a bio-AI calling itself a Gravemind.  It turned the other me toward its purpose. They were off toward the nearest habitable planet to infect it.  They don't care, Covenant or Human, they want it all."

"They were destroyed. Everything but the rogue Striata," James 417 said.

"She should be destroyed too.  She would try to bring him back."

Noble turned and looked at James 417.

"Thank you James.  Thanks for going in when we fell back."

"You are welcome, Captain."

"It seems our enemies are not alone in the universe. This is bad news.  We need to jump near command and pass the word along." She cleared her throat.

"Yes Ma'am. I'm going back to my pod."

"You know, our last command was to thaw you.  There's nothing official that says you have to go back into freeze." That's all she said in front of the men on the bridge, but with her eyes reminded him of an unfinished game of chess in her quarters.

"Yeah, Popsicle!" said Judson, "You may have a horrible sense of humor but you saved us all in there.  You're nice to have around, man."

"You don't want to go back in the pod just when you're starting to fit in." Riddle said with a smile.

“There are not many Spartans left. The clone facility was on Reach. Each minute we stand here talking about it is a minute I get older and closer to my expiration date. It is a waste of UNSC resources, training and materiel. I was made to do one thing, and this ain’t it.”

"James, don't be like that. What about our time? Our time together?" she said, shocking him with her openness in front of the troops. She was sacrificing her leadership credibility to ask him to stay.

He froze again. Wanting it so badly. To open up to them, to lay down his fight and have fun with his friends. To let them become his family. And he could sense that they needed him too.  Needed a hero to help them deal with the grief of losing so many. And while James the man froze, Spartan 417 acted. Spartans were built for one thing. It spun him on his heel and said:

 "Wake me when you need me."

As he stalked off the bridge he heard Amelia Noble cough loudly. Riddle asked if she was okay. She told him it was just a tickle in her throat.

The lid closed and the cryonic fluid filled his veins, slowing his heart, goose pimpling his skin and making him gasp. He shivered. His new hand itched and tingled. He shuddered and then hypothermia set in. As he lost consciousness he started to dream true dreams that would soon be replaced with subroutines and battle simulations.

He dreamed of a woman. She was Ann and Amelia Noble at the same time. She ran to him across an enormous checkerboard. When she reached him he embraced her, running his gloved hand up her back, and watching her lips smash on his faceplate as he kissed her.

James 417 "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."