Free-Stater101 presents.
Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or Fallout they belong to both Bethesda and Microsoft.
In the darkness of space, the remains of a once great ship floated aimlessly onward, one could see the effects of a great battle in the scars scratched across the surface of its hull and the huge clean gouge remaining from where part of the vessel had once been but was no more.
All in all, it had seen better days...
Looking into the ship the signs of its former occupancy were obvious. Packages of food, weapons, sentimental trinkets and writings which showed of an intelligent species were everywhere both floating and not yet none of the former occupants remained...
...Save one...
In a room lined with rows, upon rows, of pods made for the purpose of cryogenic stasis, stood a single holographic pedestal which glowed to life as a picture of a sickly green planet briefly flashed into existence before being replaced with the avatar of a woman with patterns of lively blue circuitry all over her person.
The woman looked confused as the image of the sickly green planet again appeared again before her and her anxiety was rewarded with but the briefest flashes of red of her being which she saw causing her face to change to one of worry.
After a brief millisecond the A.I. shook her head and swiped her hands in the nothingness causing a screen to appear displaying the vitals of the ships sole remaining occupant and the means to release him.
Cortana looked saddened as she swiped the switch which would wake her partner from some of the only real peace he probably would or could ever experience in his life and spoke softly.
"Wake up Chief...I need you..."
Thawing from cryogenic sleep was nothing new to the Master Chief he had been in the freezer more often than he had been out of one in his long military career, but he was never overly fond of it and this time wasn't any different as the frosty glass before him cleared and his sore muscles strained to move.
"-ief" A mumble was heard as he struggled to move.
"C-Chief easy, you have been out for a while." The now familiar gentle voice of Cortana spoke just as his muscles became responsive and he lurched forward into the glass.
"Where are we?" John asked with a tinge of annoyance after a brief half second of respite.
"We are still adrift on the Dawn." Cortana stated as her avatar turned and began using a console.
"Why did you wake me?" John asked as felt his body become more alert. He knew his companion would have only woken him if their circumstances had changed drastically or they were in danger.
"Hang on." Cortana stated holding up a hand. "Bringing your systems on now."
As his HUD came online John internally raised an eyebrow at the stark difference from when it was last used.
"I rewrote your suits firmware while you were out." Cortana casually stated to him as if she had read his mind.
John would have shaken his head if he were more expressive of his bewilderment at the AI's ability to read him but instead, he opted to state. "You have been busy..."
"Activating the ships artificial gravity generators." Cortana spoke swiftly.
The feeling of weight came to him suddenly, and outside the pod objects fell to the ships floor. With that the Spartan reached up and pulled the manual release to the pod.
Cortana smiled as he exited the pod and stated. "Seems like old times."
John didn't miss a beat. "You ready to get back to work?"
"I thought you'd never ask." She stated impatiently with a wry smile as he yanked her, and she found herself back in her usual home in his armor.
"Is there a particular reason you woke me?" John asked.
"Yes." Cortana said her face becoming perturbed on his HUD screen as he exited the cryo area. "We are currently caught in a planets gravity, but there is a kicker which you need to see to believe, head to the observation deck for me so I can get a confirmed visual..."
"That's..." John trailed off looking at the bizarre sight before him unable to comprehend, nor find words to suit it.
"Earth, I know." Cortana stated her image in the corner of John's visor looking much more perplexed as she continued. "I thought the Dawns sensors may have been malfunctioning, but that doesn't seem the case at all, astronomically all stars and planets are in the right position...
"Why is the planet so off in color?" John asked scanning the eerily familiar and sickly green horizon that unnerved him, along with the lack of a space elevator, orbital defense stations or any other trace of the battle which was only recently supposed to have happened.
"Radiation." Cortana answered swiftly. "Long range scans indicate that huge amounts of radiation were released across the planet's surface at some point on par with mass use of nuclear weapons causing the change in coloration."
"The Covenant don't use nuclear armament in that capacity, glassing is much more efficient." John stated as his eye quirked to the image of Cortana in the corner of his visor, who for the first time since he had met her appeared truly lost.
"Covenant weren't around to have done this Chief." Cortana spoke quietly. "The radiation composition suggest that the weapons that released them did so almost two centuries ago..."
The Spartan went perfectly still before asking sternly. "Are you sure?"
Cortana shook her head, her face pensive. "The equipment could be malfunctioning or giving me false readings, but we won't know for sure until we are down there ourselves..."
"How long was I out?" John asked.
"Three years, six months, fifteen days." Cortana replied before her face adopted a confused expression adding "Not nearly long enough..."
John continued looking at the planet unnerved by Cortana's uncharacteristically perturbed attitude before asking. "...Are there any lifeforms detected on the surface?"
"I don't know, all of our long-range life form scanners and signal receivers were left on the bow." Cortana responded her eyes turning to look directly into John's. "...It's survivable down there in some areas, but in others radiation levels are still a far cry from what I would call healthy in the kindest sense."
"Noted." John responded. "And we have no means of breaking free from its gravity?"
"Yes, and with most of The Dawn gone maintaining an orbit isn't in the small list of options either." The AI quipped. "Our most likely landing point will be by my estimation on the Eastern Seaboard of the North American Continent, particularly in New England area around the city of Boston."
"Can the ship be landed safely there?"
"Half of it is gone Chief. While I can use our one remaining reactor to engage our emergency anti-gravity units to slow The Dawn's decent, the probability of failure is still astronomically high."
"Then what do you recommend?"
"I am going to create a dummy AI to remotely activate the emergency landing protocols. Meanwhile we will jump ship in an escape pod, hopefully the Dawn won't completely implode due to the stress of it all."
"No Pelicans available?"
"We have two lefts in one of the remaining hangers, but both were damaged back at the Ark and need repairs which we don't have time for given our ETA to atmospheric entry is twenty minutes from now" Cortana responded.
John tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement as he immediately turned away from the view and walked down into the bowels of the ship, heading to the armory now that he had a timeframe to deal with.
"Instruct the AI to place the ship into lockdown upon landing." The Spartan requested as he entered an elevator. He wasn't overtly fond of the idea of abandoning the Dawn, especially on an unknown planet when it wasn't known if any help was coming when it held the lion share of their weapons for defense, no matter how much it may have resembled earth.
"Way ahead of you on that and more Chief." Cortana answered. "The dummy AI will be instructed to land the ship Southwest of Boston before going into lockdown upon landing."
John raised an eyebrow as Cortana snapped her fingers and bought up an orbital image of a large crater in the area, along with a radiation readout that was pretty high, and an almost glowing inhospitable landscape.
"It should keep all but the most determined lifeforms away for the time being. She spoke her avatar looking John in the face. "I am also prepping one of the Dawns emergency Satellites for deployment so we can broadcast a stronger Beacon and have an eye in the sky while we are down there."
"Good." John replied impressed at her work as he entered the armory and immediately got to work sorting out his weapons, starting by replacing his MA5C Assault Rifle with one in better condition than the one he currently had which had been battered from constant combat back on the ARK.
"I recommend you take something with a little more range as your secondary weapon Chief depending on where we land down there the distance back to The Dawn might be greater than expected and who knows what we will find lurking down there."
John followed her advice and glanced around at the weapons surrounding him before grabbing a Battle Rifle off one of the racks, it held a slightly different form than the usual. "New model Cortana?"
"Boys and their toys." Cortana spoke sassily with an eyeroll upon seeing the weapon. "That is a variant of the new 'BR85-SR' it is classified as the 'BR85HB-SR' according to The Dawns manifest, we only had around twelve of these recently bought onboard when we were last upon Earth for security usage and most of them were taken out back at the Ark for combat."
"Any specific differences from the original design?" John asked the slightest intrigue bleeding into his voice as he checked the weapon over for deficiencies.
"The added 'HB' stands for 'Heavy Barrel' the added weight of which along with a slightly modified muzzle break from its contemporary gives it better recoil control and its barrel's rifling is a new design for higher overall accuracy."
John nodded taking the Battle Rifle along would give him at least enough range to get by while ensuring him extra firepower if he ran into anything the MA5C couldn't handle. He stood still for a second before placing the battle rifle unceremoniously on his back and he began grabbing ammunition for both his weapons primaries as well as both fragmentation and plasma grenades.
"An energy sword?" Cortana questioned teasingly as she watched John grab and strap a small cylindrical device to his magnetic hip holster.
"It will be useful." John simply stated unwilling to admit to her that he had developed a slight fondness for the Sangheili weapon.
Cortana still looked at him with a slight smile on her face before her avatar shrugged. "Alright then, if you are ready, we better make our way to the SOEIV launch area, we only have a fifteen-minute ETA until we enter the atmosphere."
"Roger." John answered as he quickly double checked his equipment and left the armory for the drop bays entering one of the lifts to the lower decks after a moment asking. "Cortana how are your own systems?"
The AI briefly flickered at the unexpectedly personal question before she replied. "It's nothing, just some minor bugs that I have been ironing out after recent events."
The Spartan paused at her explanation understanding that the Gravemind had done a number on her, but wasn't fully satisfied with the cryptically evasive answer, but he felt there were more pressing matters at hand given the state of the Earth and the dangerous orbital landing the ship was about to undertake.
"Why do you ask Chief?" Cortana asked a puzzled look appearing on her face.
"Just SITREP on our general condition." John answered bluntly but evasively. In truth he didn't want to be rude by implying that she seemed off balance for a number of reasons he had only just barely noticed since waking up, particularly her failure to awaken him sooner. But to her credit the ship was in pieces, and it could just be his mind playing tricks on him.
...But still something felt off...
John filed it away in his mind as he exited the lift into the drop pod bay and yanked Cortana placing her back into the ship's mainframe at a pedestal located in the middle of the bay.
"Okay." Cortana stated as her avatar appeared on the holotank and John walked over to the pods doing a brief physical inspection before they exited the ship. "I am uploading the dummy AI we now have an ETA of eight minutes until atmospheric entry."
"Have the AI remotely deploy a weapons pod midway between our LZ and the Dawns to ensure we have a place to rearm if needed." John ordered feeling that with this many unknowns' precautions needed to be taken.
"Alright and done!" Cortana remarked before looking at John. "Yank me."
John did as he was ordered and strode over to the pod placing both his Battle Rifle and Assault Rifle to either side and climbing in. The pod sealed shut and was lowered, twisting lightly until John could see space and the planet looming outside the glass in the distance getting larger by the second.
They sat there for a few moments neither saying anything. The Spartan continued going over the basic pod controls to ensure a safe drop and Cortana remained silent, although John knew she was probably taking these last few moments to gleam information about the planet below before their departure.
Suddenly there was a lurch as John felt the ships emergency landing gravity generators kicking in and the ship began lightly warp and groan upon decent.
"Cortana status!" The Spartan demanded as he wearily noticed a red gleam start to form around the ship due to atmospheric entry.
"The dummy is going smoother than expected and the Dawn most likely will successfully reach its destination if it stays in one piece." Cortana spoke. "The bad news is that our remaining fusion generator is outputting less energy power for the emergency grav generators than expected and we are going to be entering faster than anticipated."
"Can The Dawn handle that type of stress?" John inquired as he eyed what little he could of the now shaking ship through the pod window while holding the release.
"Barely Chief, although we are liable to lose a piece or two at this rat-" Cortana spoke as a violent oscillation from an unknown source racked the pod.
"Just a piece?" John spoke one of the few times a slight bit of sarcasm or any emotion for that matter entered his words.
"Quiet." Cortana spoke as her avatar gained a far-off look in her eyes before she screamed.
"Chief! Release the pod now!!!""
John didn't question the order as he flipped the manual release and with a clang the pod started falling. Suddenly he realized why Cortana had wanted the pod released so early as the entire pod bay was already falling with the pod itself wedged under it.
"Chief follow my directions and steer the pod southward and out from under the bay's debris." Cortana ordered The Spartan following her orders to the letter. "We won't be anywhere near the Dawn's immediate LZ at this rate, but we will be close enough that it's a bearable trip by walking."
With a jerk the pod maneuvered out from under the debris under John's guidance as he spoke. "Cortana are the readings I am getting on altitude, correct?"
"Yes, the gauges are fine." The A.I. responded hurriedly. "The ground won't be sneaking up on us in the dark."
John returned focus to watching their altitude drop steadily to about 20,000 feet before he initiated the landing sequence and the pod abruptly slowed as expected while a countdown on his HUD curtesy of Cortana began countdown to impact.
...10...
...8...
...6...
John felt a sudden jerk as the exterior drag panels extended and began slowing their decent.
...4...
...2
The breaking rockets activated with a jolt and within seconds John's drop pod impacted the ground violently leaving both him and Cortana at their destination...
"Are you alright Chief?" Cortana asked. "Your vitals seem fine."
"Yes..." The super soldier responded not remotely phased before adding. "Now let's find out where we are and what going on..."
Authors Note: After a while away my muse returns! Will I finish this unlike the rest of my fics or will laziness prevail! Who knows?
Since nobody is apparently capable of writing something like this remotely to my standards, I thought it best to finally make my own attempt.
For those who are wondering for advice on the subject though keeping both Chief and Cortana in character isn't easy neither is it as overtly difficult as one would believe it is.
Cortana is the primary instigator of any conversation between the two in most any given situation while John himself is effectively an introvert who like the Spartan's of old uses as few words as possible to get his meaning across and speaks more through soft cues in his body language as his actions speak louder than his words in most situations and thus unless it's relevant to the situation he rarely talks overtly much.
So, the chapter early on was a bit of a rehash of HALO 4's opening but given this is an AU of HALO 4 with the Master Chief ending up in The Commonwealth of Fallout 4 it's to be expected that's why everything butterflied from their and we ended up with a drastically different outcome.
Another thing people may ask is why Fallout 4 specifically?
Yes, I realize that out of all the mainline games New Vegas probably would have been more popular choice for the Fics location and I can't blame people or thinking that as I agree NV is the best in the series, but a big problem of that is I don't think John or Cortana would have much conflict of choice which is a staple of the series in NV as to what faction to help as opposed to 4 where everyone has skeletons in the closet or some point John would both like and hate.
To be honest however, I think it is obvious in that John if stuck in the Mojave he would just side with the NCR in that situation over the Legion and try to use the promise of future deals with the UNSC to get the heck off world to leverage House to aid them (Assuming the man doesn't have a crisis of identity) which would make for a much more boring outcome.
In any case I hope you enjoy!
Reclaimer of the Wasteland
a
HALO 4 / Fallout 4 Crossover
a
HALO 4 / Fallout 4 Crossover
Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or Fallout they belong to both Bethesda and Microsoft.
In the darkness of space, the remains of a once great ship floated aimlessly onward, one could see the effects of a great battle in the scars scratched across the surface of its hull and the huge clean gouge remaining from where part of the vessel had once been but was no more.
All in all, it had seen better days...
Looking into the ship the signs of its former occupancy were obvious. Packages of food, weapons, sentimental trinkets and writings which showed of an intelligent species were everywhere both floating and not yet none of the former occupants remained...
...Save one...
In a room lined with rows, upon rows, of pods made for the purpose of cryogenic stasis, stood a single holographic pedestal which glowed to life as a picture of a sickly green planet briefly flashed into existence before being replaced with the avatar of a woman with patterns of lively blue circuitry all over her person.
The woman looked confused as the image of the sickly green planet again appeared again before her and her anxiety was rewarded with but the briefest flashes of red of her being which she saw causing her face to change to one of worry.
After a brief millisecond the A.I. shook her head and swiped her hands in the nothingness causing a screen to appear displaying the vitals of the ships sole remaining occupant and the means to release him.
Cortana looked saddened as she swiped the switch which would wake her partner from some of the only real peace he probably would or could ever experience in his life and spoke softly.
"Wake up Chief...I need you..."
Thawing from cryogenic sleep was nothing new to the Master Chief he had been in the freezer more often than he had been out of one in his long military career, but he was never overly fond of it and this time wasn't any different as the frosty glass before him cleared and his sore muscles strained to move.
"-ief" A mumble was heard as he struggled to move.
"C-Chief easy, you have been out for a while." The now familiar gentle voice of Cortana spoke just as his muscles became responsive and he lurched forward into the glass.
"Where are we?" John asked with a tinge of annoyance after a brief half second of respite.
"We are still adrift on the Dawn." Cortana stated as her avatar turned and began using a console.
"Why did you wake me?" John asked as felt his body become more alert. He knew his companion would have only woken him if their circumstances had changed drastically or they were in danger.
"Hang on." Cortana stated holding up a hand. "Bringing your systems on now."
As his HUD came online John internally raised an eyebrow at the stark difference from when it was last used.
"I rewrote your suits firmware while you were out." Cortana casually stated to him as if she had read his mind.
John would have shaken his head if he were more expressive of his bewilderment at the AI's ability to read him but instead, he opted to state. "You have been busy..."
"Activating the ships artificial gravity generators." Cortana spoke swiftly.
The feeling of weight came to him suddenly, and outside the pod objects fell to the ships floor. With that the Spartan reached up and pulled the manual release to the pod.
Cortana smiled as he exited the pod and stated. "Seems like old times."
John didn't miss a beat. "You ready to get back to work?"
"I thought you'd never ask." She stated impatiently with a wry smile as he yanked her, and she found herself back in her usual home in his armor.
"Is there a particular reason you woke me?" John asked.
"Yes." Cortana said her face becoming perturbed on his HUD screen as he exited the cryo area. "We are currently caught in a planets gravity, but there is a kicker which you need to see to believe, head to the observation deck for me so I can get a confirmed visual..."
"That's..." John trailed off looking at the bizarre sight before him unable to comprehend, nor find words to suit it.
"Earth, I know." Cortana stated her image in the corner of John's visor looking much more perplexed as she continued. "I thought the Dawns sensors may have been malfunctioning, but that doesn't seem the case at all, astronomically all stars and planets are in the right position...
"Why is the planet so off in color?" John asked scanning the eerily familiar and sickly green horizon that unnerved him, along with the lack of a space elevator, orbital defense stations or any other trace of the battle which was only recently supposed to have happened.
"Radiation." Cortana answered swiftly. "Long range scans indicate that huge amounts of radiation were released across the planet's surface at some point on par with mass use of nuclear weapons causing the change in coloration."
"The Covenant don't use nuclear armament in that capacity, glassing is much more efficient." John stated as his eye quirked to the image of Cortana in the corner of his visor, who for the first time since he had met her appeared truly lost.
"Covenant weren't around to have done this Chief." Cortana spoke quietly. "The radiation composition suggest that the weapons that released them did so almost two centuries ago..."
The Spartan went perfectly still before asking sternly. "Are you sure?"
Cortana shook her head, her face pensive. "The equipment could be malfunctioning or giving me false readings, but we won't know for sure until we are down there ourselves..."
"How long was I out?" John asked.
"Three years, six months, fifteen days." Cortana replied before her face adopted a confused expression adding "Not nearly long enough..."
John continued looking at the planet unnerved by Cortana's uncharacteristically perturbed attitude before asking. "...Are there any lifeforms detected on the surface?"
"I don't know, all of our long-range life form scanners and signal receivers were left on the bow." Cortana responded her eyes turning to look directly into John's. "...It's survivable down there in some areas, but in others radiation levels are still a far cry from what I would call healthy in the kindest sense."
"Noted." John responded. "And we have no means of breaking free from its gravity?"
"Yes, and with most of The Dawn gone maintaining an orbit isn't in the small list of options either." The AI quipped. "Our most likely landing point will be by my estimation on the Eastern Seaboard of the North American Continent, particularly in New England area around the city of Boston."
"Can the ship be landed safely there?"
"Half of it is gone Chief. While I can use our one remaining reactor to engage our emergency anti-gravity units to slow The Dawn's decent, the probability of failure is still astronomically high."
"Then what do you recommend?"
"I am going to create a dummy AI to remotely activate the emergency landing protocols. Meanwhile we will jump ship in an escape pod, hopefully the Dawn won't completely implode due to the stress of it all."
"No Pelicans available?"
"We have two lefts in one of the remaining hangers, but both were damaged back at the Ark and need repairs which we don't have time for given our ETA to atmospheric entry is twenty minutes from now" Cortana responded.
John tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement as he immediately turned away from the view and walked down into the bowels of the ship, heading to the armory now that he had a timeframe to deal with.
"Instruct the AI to place the ship into lockdown upon landing." The Spartan requested as he entered an elevator. He wasn't overtly fond of the idea of abandoning the Dawn, especially on an unknown planet when it wasn't known if any help was coming when it held the lion share of their weapons for defense, no matter how much it may have resembled earth.
"Way ahead of you on that and more Chief." Cortana answered. "The dummy AI will be instructed to land the ship Southwest of Boston before going into lockdown upon landing."
John raised an eyebrow as Cortana snapped her fingers and bought up an orbital image of a large crater in the area, along with a radiation readout that was pretty high, and an almost glowing inhospitable landscape.
"It should keep all but the most determined lifeforms away for the time being. She spoke her avatar looking John in the face. "I am also prepping one of the Dawns emergency Satellites for deployment so we can broadcast a stronger Beacon and have an eye in the sky while we are down there."
"Good." John replied impressed at her work as he entered the armory and immediately got to work sorting out his weapons, starting by replacing his MA5C Assault Rifle with one in better condition than the one he currently had which had been battered from constant combat back on the ARK.
"I recommend you take something with a little more range as your secondary weapon Chief depending on where we land down there the distance back to The Dawn might be greater than expected and who knows what we will find lurking down there."
John followed her advice and glanced around at the weapons surrounding him before grabbing a Battle Rifle off one of the racks, it held a slightly different form than the usual. "New model Cortana?"
"Boys and their toys." Cortana spoke sassily with an eyeroll upon seeing the weapon. "That is a variant of the new 'BR85-SR' it is classified as the 'BR85HB-SR' according to The Dawns manifest, we only had around twelve of these recently bought onboard when we were last upon Earth for security usage and most of them were taken out back at the Ark for combat."
"Any specific differences from the original design?" John asked the slightest intrigue bleeding into his voice as he checked the weapon over for deficiencies.
"The added 'HB' stands for 'Heavy Barrel' the added weight of which along with a slightly modified muzzle break from its contemporary gives it better recoil control and its barrel's rifling is a new design for higher overall accuracy."
John nodded taking the Battle Rifle along would give him at least enough range to get by while ensuring him extra firepower if he ran into anything the MA5C couldn't handle. He stood still for a second before placing the battle rifle unceremoniously on his back and he began grabbing ammunition for both his weapons primaries as well as both fragmentation and plasma grenades.
"An energy sword?" Cortana questioned teasingly as she watched John grab and strap a small cylindrical device to his magnetic hip holster.
"It will be useful." John simply stated unwilling to admit to her that he had developed a slight fondness for the Sangheili weapon.
Cortana still looked at him with a slight smile on her face before her avatar shrugged. "Alright then, if you are ready, we better make our way to the SOEIV launch area, we only have a fifteen-minute ETA until we enter the atmosphere."
"Roger." John answered as he quickly double checked his equipment and left the armory for the drop bays entering one of the lifts to the lower decks after a moment asking. "Cortana how are your own systems?"
The AI briefly flickered at the unexpectedly personal question before she replied. "It's nothing, just some minor bugs that I have been ironing out after recent events."
The Spartan paused at her explanation understanding that the Gravemind had done a number on her, but wasn't fully satisfied with the cryptically evasive answer, but he felt there were more pressing matters at hand given the state of the Earth and the dangerous orbital landing the ship was about to undertake.
"Why do you ask Chief?" Cortana asked a puzzled look appearing on her face.
"Just SITREP on our general condition." John answered bluntly but evasively. In truth he didn't want to be rude by implying that she seemed off balance for a number of reasons he had only just barely noticed since waking up, particularly her failure to awaken him sooner. But to her credit the ship was in pieces, and it could just be his mind playing tricks on him.
...But still something felt off...
John filed it away in his mind as he exited the lift into the drop pod bay and yanked Cortana placing her back into the ship's mainframe at a pedestal located in the middle of the bay.
"Okay." Cortana stated as her avatar appeared on the holotank and John walked over to the pods doing a brief physical inspection before they exited the ship. "I am uploading the dummy AI we now have an ETA of eight minutes until atmospheric entry."
"Have the AI remotely deploy a weapons pod midway between our LZ and the Dawns to ensure we have a place to rearm if needed." John ordered feeling that with this many unknowns' precautions needed to be taken.
"Alright and done!" Cortana remarked before looking at John. "Yank me."
John did as he was ordered and strode over to the pod placing both his Battle Rifle and Assault Rifle to either side and climbing in. The pod sealed shut and was lowered, twisting lightly until John could see space and the planet looming outside the glass in the distance getting larger by the second.
They sat there for a few moments neither saying anything. The Spartan continued going over the basic pod controls to ensure a safe drop and Cortana remained silent, although John knew she was probably taking these last few moments to gleam information about the planet below before their departure.
Suddenly there was a lurch as John felt the ships emergency landing gravity generators kicking in and the ship began lightly warp and groan upon decent.
"Cortana status!" The Spartan demanded as he wearily noticed a red gleam start to form around the ship due to atmospheric entry.
"The dummy is going smoother than expected and the Dawn most likely will successfully reach its destination if it stays in one piece." Cortana spoke. "The bad news is that our remaining fusion generator is outputting less energy power for the emergency grav generators than expected and we are going to be entering faster than anticipated."
"Can The Dawn handle that type of stress?" John inquired as he eyed what little he could of the now shaking ship through the pod window while holding the release.
"Barely Chief, although we are liable to lose a piece or two at this rat-" Cortana spoke as a violent oscillation from an unknown source racked the pod.
"Just a piece?" John spoke one of the few times a slight bit of sarcasm or any emotion for that matter entered his words.
"Quiet." Cortana spoke as her avatar gained a far-off look in her eyes before she screamed.
"Chief! Release the pod now!!!""
John didn't question the order as he flipped the manual release and with a clang the pod started falling. Suddenly he realized why Cortana had wanted the pod released so early as the entire pod bay was already falling with the pod itself wedged under it.
"Chief follow my directions and steer the pod southward and out from under the bay's debris." Cortana ordered The Spartan following her orders to the letter. "We won't be anywhere near the Dawn's immediate LZ at this rate, but we will be close enough that it's a bearable trip by walking."
With a jerk the pod maneuvered out from under the debris under John's guidance as he spoke. "Cortana are the readings I am getting on altitude, correct?"
"Yes, the gauges are fine." The A.I. responded hurriedly. "The ground won't be sneaking up on us in the dark."
John returned focus to watching their altitude drop steadily to about 20,000 feet before he initiated the landing sequence and the pod abruptly slowed as expected while a countdown on his HUD curtesy of Cortana began countdown to impact.
...10...
...8...
...6...
John felt a sudden jerk as the exterior drag panels extended and began slowing their decent.
...4...
...2
The breaking rockets activated with a jolt and within seconds John's drop pod impacted the ground violently leaving both him and Cortana at their destination...
"Are you alright Chief?" Cortana asked. "Your vitals seem fine."
"Yes..." The super soldier responded not remotely phased before adding. "Now let's find out where we are and what going on..."
Authors Note: After a while away my muse returns! Will I finish this unlike the rest of my fics or will laziness prevail! Who knows?
Since nobody is apparently capable of writing something like this remotely to my standards, I thought it best to finally make my own attempt.
For those who are wondering for advice on the subject though keeping both Chief and Cortana in character isn't easy neither is it as overtly difficult as one would believe it is.
Cortana is the primary instigator of any conversation between the two in most any given situation while John himself is effectively an introvert who like the Spartan's of old uses as few words as possible to get his meaning across and speaks more through soft cues in his body language as his actions speak louder than his words in most situations and thus unless it's relevant to the situation he rarely talks overtly much.
So, the chapter early on was a bit of a rehash of HALO 4's opening but given this is an AU of HALO 4 with the Master Chief ending up in The Commonwealth of Fallout 4 it's to be expected that's why everything butterflied from their and we ended up with a drastically different outcome.
Another thing people may ask is why Fallout 4 specifically?
Yes, I realize that out of all the mainline games New Vegas probably would have been more popular choice for the Fics location and I can't blame people or thinking that as I agree NV is the best in the series, but a big problem of that is I don't think John or Cortana would have much conflict of choice which is a staple of the series in NV as to what faction to help as opposed to 4 where everyone has skeletons in the closet or some point John would both like and hate.
To be honest however, I think it is obvious in that John if stuck in the Mojave he would just side with the NCR in that situation over the Legion and try to use the promise of future deals with the UNSC to get the heck off world to leverage House to aid them (Assuming the man doesn't have a crisis of identity) which would make for a much more boring outcome.
In any case I hope you enjoy!
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