Author's Note: If you have any tips writing tips, please feel free to comment.
Again, I gratefully accept constructive criticism as a means to help me develop my skills further as a writer.
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Chapter 70: Difficult Decision
Location: Captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace, en route to Eridanus system
Revised Date:Time Stamp Anomaly Error
Estimated Date: September 12, 2552
Estimated Time: 0450 hours
Dr. Halsey buzzed the door open, and Matt entered the clean room.
"You wanted to see me, Doctor?" He quickly looked the room over—taking in the adjoining surgical suites, and the strange orange sterile-field lamps set every meter into reflective recessions in the tiled walls.
Dr. Halsey had clamped five displays onto the arm of one of the contoured examination chairs in this room. She sat cross-legged in the chair and balanced a large alphanumeric-symbolic keyboard on her lap. Perched precariously on the side tray were Styrofoam cups of half-drunk coffee.
She waved Matt forward. "I see you are ignoring sound medical advice by moving before you have fully healed."
"I'm fine, ma'am," he replied.
She snorted in disbelief. "Matt—I've never known you to tell an outright lie. I'm picking up telemetry from your armor, right now." She swiveled one of the monitors on her chair so he could see erratic biosigns pulsing on the screen. "What with the burns, contusions, fractures, and internal bleeding, you should be in shock. The only sleep you've gotten in a week was unconsciousness brought on by your wounds. And you say you're 'fine'?"
He stood and said nothing. "Very well. I suppose you know your limitations better than anyone else." She turned the display back around. "I wanted to speak about yours and John's report on the alien construct—Halo. I've pieced together a bit of the story based on Admiral Whitcomb's recounting of your adventures, Cortana and Crystal's debriefing, and the mission logs of Locklear, Johnson... and the curious partial mission log of one PFC Wallace Jenkins."
Matt shifted uneasily.
"There are inconsistencies that I must resolve before we get back to Earth." She pushed her glasses higher onto the bridge of her nose. "One of them is Sergeant Johnson." She tapped in commands on her keyboard. "Please step closer, Matt. I want you to see this with me."
Matt moved alongside her chair. His massive weight thudded through the thick deck plating. Two meters tall and half a ton of metal and somehow Dr. Halsey couldn't help thinking of him occasionally as the same little boy who had lost his parents at such a young age and stolen him from that hospital bed on Earth.
No. Matt had changed. She hadn't. She was the one who still carried the three-decade-old festering guilt.
She took a deep breath and refocused her attention on the video records before her. On screen played mission logs that showed Covenant and Marines in firefights, the odd Forerunner architecture in the interior of the Halo construct, and the terrifying omniparasitic life-form known as the Flood."
She replayed the mission record of Private Jenkins and the first Flood attack.
Matt stiffened as Captain Keyes appeared on screen and as the Flood consumed the Captain and his squad. Sergeant Johnson was there, too, fighting and cursing... until the hordes of tiny, podlike Infection Forms swarmed over him.
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Matt-038 (Halo Fanfiction)
फैनफिक्शनSpartans never die... They're just missing in action. These are the infamous words said about Spartan II supersoldiers. The Spartans are the last hope to stop the alien race known as the Covenant from wiping out the entire human race. This is the st...
