The name of the HRP goes here

Teria hoisted him up a second later and started towards the doorway, keeping a close eye on his motion tracker. "Keep your gun ready. I don't know if i got them all."

"Right," Corbin said, hoisting his rifle up though by god was it an awkward way of holding the gun. "Should we move into the hangar, check on the vehicle? Or just head back for Andrea?" He may have wanted to regroup with the other Spartan but that meant backtracking over the base and possibly running into more enemies.

Staying in the hangar would mean fighting somewhere that was hopefully entrenched and hell, if the bird was working, they could always bug out if needed.

Luka pulled the trigger a split-second before Andrea's count had finished, meaning that the Jackals fell at almost the same time. Working from muscle memory and instinct, she charged forwards, covering the distance between her and her target in around a second. She slammed her shoulder into it, and dropped two shots into the remaining enemy. She dropped the pistol, drew her knife, and slammed it into the Jackal's neck twice, reaching for her pistol and leaving her knife behind.

As soon as Luka leapt off to deal with the Jackels, Andrea sees a few red dots moving around on her motion tracker. They were in the eye of a storm now. She hears the call for aid from the second group, but now is not the time to baby them. They'll need to push through without reinforcements coming to help them. She sticks to the wall furthest from Luka and peers into the nearest window to see a small pod of Grunts. She raises her pistol and sends a volley of lead in each of their directions. She hits two while the third scrambles to find cover and one of the first two that had survived takes a reactionary shot.
Her shields drop from the contact of the plasma bolt and she returns to her "safe" spot against the wall. Her shields take another hit from a new Jackel perched above her. In its hands is a needle rifle. Before it can take another shot, she fires at it. A scream is all it takes for her to be satisfied that it won't come back and she reloads her pistol.

Corbin started to feel like a turret, swiveling around with the rifle looking for a target while the Spartan carried him. It was still a weird thought, and he was sure if any of his old squadmates could see this, they'd have never let him live it down.

Andrea allows her shields to build back up before taking the corner and hopping into the room being held by the covenant. The first generator is on this side, and is mirrored by its twin on the opposite side. It's fairly large and could hide any manner of beast on its far side. She finds cover behind a partially destroyed column and searches for the friends she had been shooting at prior. As soon as she peeks out, she is greeted with a hail of plasma fire hitting the column. She returns fire at the source of the plasma at an overturned table, a scream follows. She stays her ground and waits for any more blips to appear on her motion tracker.

"I hear gunfire," Corbin suddenly said. "We must be getting close.....either that or it's some pretty heavy artillery."

Andrea can hear skittering coming from above and behind her on the metal scaffolding on the second floor. She turns around and looks up to see a bigger looking chicken, a Skirmisher, running recon. As her light hits its eyes, it looks in her direction and lets out a screech. Without a second thought, she fires two rounds. Unfortunately, they both manage to miss their mark and the Skirmisher returns fire. Caught slightly off guard, her shields plummet and break from the shots. She moves around her column and more plasma fire comes at her, hitting her right shoulder. Without any shields, her armor takes the brunt of the damage. The heat eats through the armor, and singes her.
With a strained gasp, she slowly turns to face the adversary and tries to fire, only to come up empty. She tosses the pistol aside and grabs for her DMR, she aims and with the added accuracy from the scope, lands three perfect shots on the Grunt she had left behind.

"Sounds close. Radio the others?" Teria asked, looking up at the ship and trying to get an estimate of how fixed up it is. The balloon like creature he shot at earlier was still floundering about, trying to right itself and fix the holes he had caused.

"Sure thing," Corbin said. Putting his rifle down across his chest, he thumbed his headset and said "Andrea, it's Corbin. What's the situation over there, we're hearing a lot of gunfire."

"It's probably because I'm shooting." Andrea says coldly, staring down the Skirmisher that had gotten the drop on her. She readies her rifle, aims it and fires, but as she does the pain in her shoulder flares up, causing the shot to go haywire and miss its mark. She takes a second to compose herself and does it again. She readies, aims and fires, this time the bullet hits the mark and she finds breathing room to reload. "I've been hit, but it's nothing I can't put salve on. Luka and I have been separated for now. We're working on getting the generator room cleared and operational." She informs Corbin of their situation, talking through gritted teeth.

"Alright," he said, blowing off the cold response. "Look, we've managed to secure one of the hangars for now, though I stress for now. I'm wounded in the leg and we're both low on ammo, there's a vehicle here, and we've got a floating alien balloon." He let that hang in the air for a moment, before saying "It's just been that sorta day."

"They've an Engineer?" Andrea asks, dumbfounded as to what the Covenant would need to bring those floating squids in for, before her eyebrows raise in despair. "You get away from that thing. Covenant have been known to use those things as suicide bombers." She continues calmly, but with an edge to her voice. She moves from her cover on the column to the end of the generator on her side. It isn't damaged beyond repair, in fact, it may still work. She deduces from a quick scan of the metal on the sides she can see, seemingly forgetting her prior conversation with Corbin altogether.

"It what!? Teria, steer clear of that thing, it's got bombs!" he said to the Spartan. "Andrea, we'll hold back but be advised it's saying away from us as well. It's also still floating above the aerial vehicle we found."

"I don't know much about them besides the stories I've heard. They act docile from what I understand, but yes. There is always the possibility of it nuking itself. Err on the side of caution." Andrea says quickly, poking her head from the cover to check for hostiles on the right side of the generator. She can see a green orb and attached to it, a Grunt. No doubt charging up the pistol shot to eviscerate her shields so its friend can have its way with her armor. She shines the light up to find something even more shocking. An Elite towering over its squad, charged plasma pistol in hand. She counts two grunts from her position. She goes over her current mags and finds she has only one left.

"Well worst comes to worst, we kill the little guy before it explodes," Corbin said hopefully. Looking around, he said "Not sure if there's gonna be anymore hostiles, it's quiet here at the moment. We'll bunker down for now." Looking at Teria, he said "Let's scrounge up whatever alien weapons are around. Maybe see if we can work them."

Andrea lets the words come in, but doesn't respond. She turns out her headlamp, it was foolish to be running around here without thinking of turning it off. This might have sealed her fate, but she keeps her confidence and sticks her DMR to her back and takes her combat knife. She can hear the Elite issue a command to its underlings, no doubt telling them to initiate a pincer attack. That just divides their numbers. She just has to guess at which side the Elite will go on. As her eyes adjust back the the darkness, she takes a deep breath. With a fifty/fifty chance at death, she leaps out to the left and then forward, plummeting her knife into one of the Grunt's small heads. She can see the outline of another small alien and gives it the same treatment.

During the initial firefight, Luka had noticed movement in the room next to them, leading away from the combat. She had left immediately after noticing, moving deeper into Gamma Base. Officially, Gamma Base was nothing more than a UNSC Army base, with only one basement sub-level. In reality, there were a dozen more beneath it. A fully functional research base, complete with a detachment of ONI security. Luka watched the figure go, silently tailing it until it reached a security door, well away from almost everything in the base. He tapped in a code and opened the door, at which point Luka pushed him against the wall.

Andrea grabs the enemy's plasma pistol. There had been multiple times when she had to improvise and use the enemy's weapons against them. This is another one of those times. She stands and pins herself to side of the generator. She scoots to the end away from where she came in at and peers around the corner only to find nothing there. Her prediction of a pincer attack was spot on, which means they would no doubt be approaching her six. She rounds the corner, trying to confuse them and hears a bit of alien chatter from the high pitched Grunts.

With the Spartan's help, they collected the dead aliens weapons, which included the plasma pistols, the bulkier plasma rifles, and the bizarre needle guns. Finding a decent spot to sit down between some crates, Corbin took ownership of one of the plasma rifles, keeping his eyes peeled on the door to the hangar. "Hey, should we try and see if this bird even works?" he asked.

She attaches herself to the generator and as soon as she moves up it feels as though all of the air leaves her body. Something hit her. Something she could not see. She tries going on the offensive, but feels one set of hands grab her and toss her away into a nearby column. Another painful grunt as her body surges. She loses her vision completely for a brief moment as her head had been slammed against the column and her legs begin to feel like jelly. She drops to one knee and shakes her head violently to try to relieve herself from her momentary lack of sight and the now high pitched ringing in her ear.
She feels something hit the side of her helmet and she is dropped completely to the ground facing the ceiling. With her vision blurred once again, she can barely make out what is happening. A vague outline of an alien form approaches her left side and suddenly takes off its active camouflage. An Elite towers over her and raises its plasma pistol. It had gotten the drop on her. She had planned to sneak up behind it and then plummet her knife into its neck, but here she lay. A victim to her own plan.

Luka scanned the man's face, her HUD identifying him as having had a High-Priority Kill Order placed on him. Luka drew her knife and slit his throat in one fluid movement. She replaced her knife, and picked her pistol up from the floor, before searching his body. She found a keycard, wallet and a journal, all of which she placed inside the pouch strapped to her leg. She took a picture of the body through her helmet, and moved into the facility.

Who's the quicker shot? This thought runs through her mind, and she quickly raises her appropriated plasma pistol and aims it at the Elite. The Elite's own plasma pistol begins to shine and shimmer as it begins to charge up. She doesn't take the chance, with a wavering hand, she begins to fire the plasma as rapidly as she can, some shots miss their target, but the ones that hit stun the Elite and forces it back a few steps. She wobbles to her feet and resumes her barrage. The shields break and she slowly retrieves her DMR. In this time, the Elite fires its charged shot, which she just barely manages to dodge by dropping onto the ground once more. From her position, she aims and fires two final shots into the Elite's head, dropping it to the ground.

Luka moved quickly through, scanning the area fervently as she advanced. She knew that if her concentration lasped, even for a second, she could die, or worse, fail her mission. If something got the drop on her, she might not be able to fight it off in her current state. She reached the first security checkpoint, which had been completely locked down by the missing security team, accessed the security logs, and stopped. She began recording on her helmet mounted camera.
"Operative Luka-B-029; Logging mission status," She said out loud as she slowly began to scan the area, recording as much detail as she could, "Current estimation is four hours behind schedule. I have arrived at the mission objective. "Located Target November-Foxtrot-311 attempting to reenter the facility. Primary Objective B: Complete." Luka turned around, scanning the area she had already walked through and continued, "Facility appears abandoned. Both the research team and security detail are missing. Security systems have logged a containment breach, though have not logged any evacuation."

She deactivated her helmet cam, unlocked the checkpoint, and moved on.

Andrea lies there, motionless, staring the ceiling down with her breath held. She begins to hear the stomps of small aliens approaching her nervously. They speak in their gibberish and one of them kicks her. Her body moves from the kick, but she herself stays her hand until they begin to move out.  She reloads her DMR as silently as she can, and as soon as the weapon's clip clicks, the Grunts stop and turn back around to see her lying their, aiming at them. Two loud bangs ring out and they drop to the ground in heaps. She wobbles once again to her feet and turns her headlamp on.

Four Jackals, a lot of Grunts, a Skirmisher and an Elite. Too many units to be guarding this place. She thinks, as her light breaks the darkness. She searches around the power generator to find something to activate it and eventually does. She grabs a lever and with what power she has, yanks it down with a resonating sound.

The sound of the generator breaks the silence as it begins to activate. The lights in the room begin to cast away the darkness as more and more turn on. She moves to the door and it slides open, moving the broken glass on it. She is greeted with a lit hallway and assumes that the base, in full, has regained power.

Corbin looked up suddenly, as he could hear a low hum emanate in the hangar. The light-fixtures above flickered to life, the bulbs shining sterile white light down to the hangar floor. "Guess Andrea pulled through," he said to Teria.

It takes Andrea just now to realize that she had not heard any secondary gunfire during that fight. She rushes to the side she believed Luka to be on, only to come up with dead bodies strewn on the floor. None are missing an arm. She wants to call out for the one armed Spartan, but as soon as she does, something else takes the advantage. A cold, calculating sounding thing breaks over the intercoms.

"Self Destruct Sequence re-initiated. This facility with self destruct in forty-five minutes." A robotic voice blares over the speakers. This is what she wanted to do. This was part of her mission. "If Gamma was to fall, activate the self destruct sequence. There is valuable information here that we do not want falling into Covenant hands." She recalls her Commanding Officer telling her this as she was briefed on the operation. "Eggheads down below have something going on as well. Strict orders are to destroy it all if things go south." Another memory crops up. Unfortunately for her, things did go south. She must be the one to purge this base and all of the contents within.

"Forty-five minutes to destruction. You hear that, everyone?" Andrea calls on open communications as she begins to make a stunted rush to the hangars. "Whatever you have going on now, double time it and head to the hangars."

"OH FOR FUCKS SAKE!" Corbin shouted into the air, startling the floating engineer. "Can we please, just catch a break already?" he begged his Spartan compatriot.

Teria just smiled under his helm, and resumed working. He didn't know diddly about the ships, not at the moment anyway, but continued doing what he could to get the door open. It seemed to be a bit stuck, jammed open from a bit of melted metal. He was able to force it away, slowly. It was taking a while, but it was going, and when it was done hopefully they'd be able to get on the ship.

"Andrea," Corbin said into the mic, "what should we do with the engineer thing? I know you said stay away from it but.....well if we leave in the bird, should I be worried it's going to try anything?"

"You still haven't killed it?" Andrea asks in a confused tone. "If you kill it, it definitely won't try anything." She gasps in pain from her injury and her breaths come out ragged. No doubt she had a broken rib or two from the impacts she had taken. "What's the status on the bird?" She asks, trying to keep her mind off of the pain.

"Door's closed shut and I'm working on getting it open. Other than that, just paint scratches so far." Teria cut in, the sound of groaning metal cutting into part of his broadcast.

"I thought you said it would blow up," Corbin said, remembering something about explosives. "Look right now it's just.....floating. Should we just leave it to blow in the base?" Even as the words left him, that sounded oddly cruel. Sure it was an alien but so far....the thing seemed harmless. It never once took part in the fight, and it had ignored Corbin and Teria entirely. Plus leaving anyone or anything to die like that just felt wrong.

"I said there's the possibility it might blow. You know, just let the thing go up with the base." Andrea says coldly. "It worked with the enemy on this operation and by my logic, that makes it with them." She didn't mind how cold it sounded. The sack wouldn't suffer any. In fact, it'd go quickly. It probably wouldn't even know what hit it before it actually hit it.

"Teria, keep up the work on the bird. I'll be there soon, hopefully."

Shrugging, Corbin kept a lookout once more for any enemies. He felt a bit sorry for the floating alien but then again.....how many innocent people died at the hands of the Covenant? It was about time some of their own non-combatants were burned to ash, right?

It had to be.

Church shot up abruptly, sucking in as much air as he could and started looking around frantically. Where was he? How did he get here? What happened? More questions and thoughts ran through his head wildly. But he knew he needed to assess the situation first and foremost. The only thing he saw in front of him was scorched, blackened metal. To his left was too bright to look it but he was certain it was fire. When he looked to his right he jumped, the barrel of a scorpion tank pointing directly at him. It was turned on it's side which created a wall of steel in front of him. I guess that's how I lived...?

Much like the first half of her slow advance into the facility, there was absolutely nothing. It was more well lit in here, though. It seemed as though this facility ran on a different generator than the rest of Gamma Base.

Luka didn't drop her guard; the base may have looked fully operational, but of all the personnel stationed here, only one could be accounted for. They shouldn't have evacuated. Usually a special forces team would extract them after the Covenant lost interest in the planet. They should all be here.

As she moved deeper, the lights flickered and died, with only the red emergency lights remaining. The base was bathed in red, casting dark shadows around the room. Luka pressed on, passing through another checkpoint.

Andrea retraces her steps through the base. The once darkened halls now brightly illuminated. No fears of anything coming out from the shadows to end her life and no fears of her own mind trying to drive her crazy. The light brings a sense of peace while the dark brings fear and uncertainty. She allows herself some deep thoughts as she keeps her pace. She passes the many rooms, over the many bodies. She stops once or twice to check any weapons from her fallen comrades. She exchanges her DMR for a Battle Rifle and her plasma pistol for a standard issue pistol. Once satisfied with the changes in her loadout, she continues to make her way to the hangar.

Perhaps it was curiosity. Or maybe it felt the need to fix something. Either way, Corbin heard a sound above him, and looked up to see the alien engineer hovering only a few feet overhead. "Jesus!" he barked, raising his gun immediately. But he didn't fire. The thing was an alien, an ally of the Covenant and to add to it, wearing explosives.

But he didn't fire. And the Engineer either was without fear.....or too innocent to truly comprehend what was being aimed at it, though Corbin doubted it was the latter. "Teria," he said. "Our guest here is getting close."

"Well if it makes any threatening motions you blow it's brains open. It's an easy dilemma Corbin." Teria replied, the piece of metal only barely still in the way.

"This facility will self destruct in thirty minutes. The robotic voice calls out across the base. A grim reminder of Andrea's enduring situation. The beat of her feet pounding against the floor matches the beat of her heart. Without throwing her caution to the wind, she continues the pattern of stopping at each hallway's end and checking for enemy forces. She passes the mess hall where she had met Teria with Corbin and sent them off to obtain their way out.

"Threatening motions, got it," Corbin said. He was certain it was looking at him, even though he couldn't see any eyes on it--the helmet it wore blocked them from sight. Extending a tendril out, it reached towards him. He was about to pull the trigger when.....it went past him, and to one of the weapons he had collected, a plasma pistol with a cracked casing, and no lights. At first, he thought it was going to use it, but as he watched he saw the tendril grab the weapon and pull it back to the Engineer. Several other tendrils reached to the weapon, breaking into finer cilia and moving over the weapon

Half a minute later, and the casing looked repaired, and the lights winked to life on the gun. Making a sound that Corbin could only compare to one of satisfaction, the Engineer set the weapon down....and began to drift away. "Hey Teria," Corbin said. "I've got an idea.....and something tells me you're not gonna like it."

Andrea keeps her pace and follows the probable route the first two had taken to the hangars beat for beat. The waypoint growing ever closer and suddenly disappears as soon as she makes it to one of the main entryways. Her body slams against the wall to the door, sending a shock wave of pain through her as her wound is triggered. She grunts to herself and bites her lip to mitigate the pain. She counts down from three and as soon as the count ends, she rounds the final corner with her weapon raised.

Luka stared in shock at the area in front of her, catching movement in all of the shadows surrounding her. At the deepest section of the base, Luka-B029 froze in fear. For the first time in her career, she knew there was no hope of a complete victory. It was possible she might even fail to detonate this base.

Slowly backing away, Luka ran through the protocols she had memorised, stolen months before her mission started, to devise a plan.
"In even of catastrophic containment breach, a single nuclear detonation covering an area of twenty-five miles is authorised to prevent outside contamination."

With that in mind, she mapped a way to the main control room, where she'd likely find a way to arm the failsafe.

She took a breath, and sprinted into the horde of unknown shapes ahead of her, shooting only those that came too close. She avoided looking too closely at what they were, but occaisionally, she would be faced with a distorted head, frozen in a pained shriek. By the time she reached the control room, slamming the security door shut behind her, she had spent all of her ammo and her leg was even worse than before. Still, she approached the console at the front of the room and armed the failsafe without hesitating.

A warning flared out through the entire facility, declaring that the failsafe was active.
Not that it mattered, Luka was the only one there.

One of the other consoles flickered into life, the communications immediately broadcasting both a distress signal, and a warning. All of Gamma base's other functions had been suspended, and Luka had nothing to do but sit and wait for the detonation.

"If you're going to tell me we commit suicide together to not die in the explosion, I'll shoot you but I've got too many questions about my life to die. So that's out of the question." A grunt later and the metal was free and the hatch could open. Teria hits the comms. "Andrea, door's open. Proceeding inside."

"Well, I was gonna suggest we try and get this guy to fix the ship," Corbin said, gesturing uselessly at the Engineer. "I think that's all he wants to do."

"I'm already..." These are the only words Andrea is able to get out before she stops in her tracks as the robotic voice blares once more. However, something more sinister is broadcast over the speakers than the prior warnings. "Primary detonation has been suspended. Secondary Failsafe protocol has been initiated. Nuclear armament has been primed. Detonation time is uncertain."

N-Nuclear armament? What? I already followed protocol. It feels as though lightning strikes her brain. The feeling of despair sends goosebumps running through her body as she remembers Luka muttering about her mission. "Luka!" She yells over communications in a somewhat worried tone. "Get to the hangars!"

As Luka stood waiting for the detonation, another console began to flash. A brief summary of the text-wall that had appeared was "Activity in hangar 4." Having already been briefed on the importance of making sure nothing escaped the lab, and with no way to verify who was trying to leave, Luka did the only logical thing she could.

She sealed the hangar's main doors.

The sound of metal grinding catches her off guard. She looks around and her sight falls on the hangar door slowly sealing. This horrifying sound is isolated in her head, ringing louder than the alarm blaring. Before she knows it, the doors collide with each other and the sound of large tumblers being moved follows. Her breathing becomes erratic as she tries to take in heaps of air to try to calm herself down. Her grip tightens on her Battle Rifle and then the grip lessens. Her weapon clatters to the ground.

She... can't hear me. She's too far down? Interference? She thinks before sprinting back out the way she came, trying communications once more, "Luka-B029. What is your status? Answer me if you can hear."

Luka received most of Andrea's transmission, enough that she could understand it, at least.
"I am enacting protocol seven-four-three-one," She said, not knowing how strong her own signal would be, "The destruction of all organic life within twenty-five miles. All outbound traffic is suspended to prevent the escape and spread of infected individuals."