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Legacy Part Two
Posted By: Havok<snayperskaya@hotmail.com>
Date: 15 April 2003, 9:22 PM
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I saw the real purpose of HALO. The blood drained from my face, and I slumped back into the chair, finally understanding. In the pictures were Forerunner scientists, running tests in immaculate laboratories. The Forerunner were undoubtedly human. They were all tall, bronze skinned, and all had raven black hair. Their faces possessed high cheekbones, mystic brown eyes, and thin lips. They were undoubtedly of Aztec origin. An in all of the pictures that I saw, every face had a look of solemn sadness.
I knew the reason for their sadness. From the reports I had just seen, those scientists were dooming their entire civilization. I went back to the main screen, and chose the "history" icon. It was terrible, but I had to find out more.
The Forerunner did originate on Earth millennia ago. The exact date is not known, for their method for keeping time was so different from ours. They took to the stars with ambition and a boldness of any known event in their history. They traveled to the stars, and with them they took the curse of the universe.
Genetic engineering was not a new thing to the Forerunner, who for centuries had constantly improved upon their own genetic structure, the ultimate goal: to make themselves immortal. To make themselves more powerful than the gods they worshipped. Already much had been improved upon. The average Forerunner lifespan exploded from a conservative ninety seven years of age to almost two hundred. Sickness and disease was virtually unheard of, and by this time, their intelligence capacity had tripled. Technology progressed by mind blowing leaps and bounds. Eighty years after the first starship made it to the edge of the solar system; the Forerunner had engineered slipspace generators, and soon scrapped those in favor of gravity drives which, in a manner of speaking, folded space, making the departure point and the destination in the same point in space for a limited time. The Forerunner had discovered instantaneous space travel.
These huge jumps forward in their civilization were made possible by genetic engineering. The Forerunner had become more powerful than their gods. This was also the instrument of their destruction. The HALO installations were constructed for the sole purpose of genetic research. Despite the huge payoffs, there were many failures. A small percentage of the experiments were failures. Mutations in the Forerunner genetic sequence caused unexpected horrors. Decades before the HALO installations were constructed, several planets were lost to failed genetic experiments that wiped out all life on the planet. These planets had to be destroyed due to the threat they posed to the rest of the Forerunner civilization. The Forerunner surmised that the research would be safe on these special containment rings.
For all their intelligence and greatness, the Forerunner reached the end of their path. The flood, while a genetic offshoot of the Forerunner civilization, was not the cause of their demise. In all their fervor to make themselves immortal, the Forerunner genetically engineered themselves out of existence. The combined modifications to their genetic structure were putting too much strain on their DNA. Perhaps if their DNA had more base pairs to support these modifications, the Forerunner might have reached their goal.
I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes, in deep thought. The Forerunner wiped themselves off the face of the universe through their own selfishness and greed. However, they left a legacy of technology and history that is still unrivaled in the universe. The Covenant, have tried to seize this technology to gain their own ends and sit with the Forerunner at the head of history. The covenant see the human race as the Forerunner's children, and in their jealousy, they have chosen to wipe us out to have complete and unrivaled control of the universe.
I got up out of the chair, and as I did so, the hologram shimmered into nothingness. The chair slid out of my way as I left the conference room. I had to get to some sort of communications room to try to contact someone, any UNSC installation.
I made my way back to the elevator and scrutinized the holopanel again. I couldn't read the runic script, but as I concentrated on looking for a level where there might be a communications room, the ring on my finger glowed and the elevator started up.
The elevator stopped and I got out, and through the elevator door there was what could only be the command and control center for this facility. I concentrated again on how I could get a secure transmission to any UNSC ship or base or planet, anything. The ring glowed again and a hologram pulsed to life in front of me.
What is showed was devastating. It showed a landscape, a land that might have once been lush and full of life. All that remained now was a barren, glassy landscape. Grey clouds hung in the air, full of poison. There were the remnants of a city in the distance, broken buildings blackened and charred. It was earth. The covenant had come and gone, leaving only death and destruction. I broke down on the floor, in tears. What could the human race possibly have done to deserve this? I felt the rage boiling within me; I wanted to strike out at this terrible and merciless enemy. I wanted to kill every last one of them, to avenge my kind.
As this bubble of rage rose up inside me, the ring started pulsing a blood red light. I looked up as a large hologram rose up in front of me. What it showed froze my brain in mid thought. What it showed was a cavernous room, somewhere buried deep within the mountain. And in that room I found my tool of vengeance. In the hologram, in crystal clarity, I saw hundreds of thousands of beings, beings in olive green armor that shimmered with a light from within. Spartans.
"Spartans.... Mk XXIVs actually." A voice spoke from behind me. I whipped around, not knowing what to expect. "My name is Thor. I am the Monitor of this facility." The ball of brilliant white light said. "I have been following you for quite some time. I must say that you are quite an ideal representative of your race. Intelligent, intuitive, quick to improvise, physically fit. And all without any genetic enhancements."
The monitor floated towards the hologram. "These are but a fraction of the forces at your disposal. Held in suspended animation, they have survived the millennia, awaiting a commander. Their commander has arrived."
"Commander? Me? How?" I couldn't comprehend all of this.
"Just now, when you saw our beautiful home planet in ruins. The Forerunner originated from there too you know. You saw that desolated landscape and vowed to avenge humankind. Now is your chance. You must seize the moment. You have the technology and the firepower to achieve total domination." The monitor blazed brighter.
"I don't understand, but I will fight." I said with conviction.
"Excellent. Follow me please." The monitor said, then turned and headed for the elevator.
The armor felt strange at first. The MJOLNIR armor the UNSC Spartans had was primitive compared to the capabilities of this armor. An unaugmented human such as myself would have been crushed in the original armor. However, this armor fit me like a glove, and was a hundred times as capable as the original MJOLNIR. And unlike the men under my command, my armor was solid matte black.
I stood on the platform looking out as my soldiers. My Spartans. The feeling was indescribable. "I stand before you today, on the dawn of a new era. My civilization has been destroyed by the covenant onslaught. But in you I find the means to destroy out enemy. I have been named to command you in the war against the Covenant. We will prevail. We will CRUSH THEM!" my words resonated throughout the assembly and I watched as three hundred thousand armored fists were raised in the air in the Forerunner battle cry. The assembly shook with the power of their voices.
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