User:Spartan 501/Installation X

{{Property|Dennis Powers} {Under Construction|Spartan 501}

While not technically a Halo, as it carried no sentient life killing superweapon, it was still considered an installation, as it looked similar, ableit smaller, and was a prototype for the Halo rings.



Creation
Installation 00, as far as records permit, is assumed to be a sort of "test" ring. It carried no monitor, as it did not have a superweapon, and was vastly smaller than the other installations. In fact, they were almost twice as large. It is theorized to be some sort of weapons testing ground, or just a general testing facility. It does have an encased flood presence, but not a large one. It carries a highly powerful energy cannon, which it used on the UNSC Fearless. I did have a large collection of AIs, which refered to themselves as GAIA, and have their own sinsister purposes. It is unknown if it has an array of sentinels, as none have ever been seen to have been used. It is located inside a nebula, and orbits a gas giant known as Ab Extra. It's surface is similar to that of Installation 04, and many of the features of these rings are shared. It has several distinctive landmarks, such as the Valley of the Forerunners, an energy cannon, and a large ocean.

Discovery
Installation 00 was discovered by the UNSC Fearless in 2536. The Fearless was serving as a deep space reconsiance and scientific reasearch vessel. It discovered it and sent down a research team, who set up a base camp at a beach near the sea. They took samples, and set up a sattelite network. However, the Fearless had left needed supplies at a moon a half years journey there and half a years journey back. They would be gone for year and needed someone to watch the place and sattelite network.

Cheif Petty Officer Third Class Michael Harrington volunteered to stay behind to get away from the rest of the crew. He had never been a true marine, but was instead a scientist who had been badly injured and had had to be mounted to a BioSuit to save his life. This gave him a similar look to a Spartan, as well as giving him increased protection, but not the enhanced strengh. He had undergone basic training to get enough discipline to control the suit, and was stationed aboard the Fearless after his planet had been destroyed.

He took control of Outpost Rio, a large outpost that had been set up to monitor the satelite network, and was left their for over a year with only a Station AI. Harrington stayed on the ring for over a year studying it, and making logs. As an act of kindness, he gave the station AI acess to more than the usual system. This fed the AIs memories, and 42 days into Harrintons span, the AI began to speak, something that station AIs, considered dumber than most dumb AIs, was usually impossible.

For months more the AI grew in intelligence and Harrinton kept studying the ring, and began to understand many different things about it's biosphere. He learned several things about it, but soon a huge ion strom rocked the outpost's mountaintop perch, and comm links were shot straight to hell. They were without communications for a week straight.

The Stage is Set
However, when they restored them, they found a message from the Fearless, and that a Strike Force had been dispatched to pick him up several days ago. They left immediatly, fueling up a warthog and filling it with supplies. It to several days to travel across the planet to the pickup zone, and during the trip Harrington and the AI bonded. However, at the same time a Covenant cruiser damaged from a battle with the Fearless landed its troops on the ring, deploying hundreds of infantry. The Covenant division, complete with air support and armor was something to something to be reckonsed with.

They finally reached the zone eight days over do, and were horrified by what they found. The entire marine company deployed to guard the dropzone had been wiped out, including a marine named Jacob that Harrington knew closely. In anger, Harrington killed the entire division using surprise. Sickened and greiving, he became even closer to the AI. They decided that their best option was to reach a drop pod, which would most likely be located upspin.

They set out once again, and continued making there way along the rings surface. Meanwhile, a Covenant ship that had followed the Fearless to the ring and deployed its forces and hid began sending Banshee's after them to attack them. The Banshees were not succesful however, due to the station AI jamming the signals and creating a field of interference that kept them off scanners. They finally reached the droppod and found it's damaged shell, which was damaged but still flyable. Harrington began to fix it, but they came under attack by a flight of banshees launched from a nearby Covenant encampment that was using a forerunner structure as shelter. This structure was actually a Foreruner power converter, but it could be used as a crude but powerful energy cannon.

He fixed it as the Banshees soared in, and just barely activated the drop pods booster rockets in time. It streaked upwards into space towards the hovering Fearless, without communications, but in working order. However it was not in the cards. The energy cannon was fired by Covenant troops, sending a huge red blast of energy up into space.

The Fight For Survival
The Fearless caught the outer edge of it, and sustained small casualties. However, the EM wave knocked out the dropod, which began hurtling towards the surface with Harrington and the AI aboard. The pod crashlanded in an icy stretch of the ring, and Harrington was knocked unconscious. However, the AI managed to take control of his suit to transport him to the safety of the cave.

Up in space, the Fearless got together a team of special forces troops, a three soldier ODST squad, to search for Harrington. They also got together a team of marine engineers to go down to the surface to Rio to look around and retreive the data. The two seperate teams headed off. The search and recovery team dusted off in a valley filled with a ton of wildlife. However, one of the ODSTs, a young cocky and arogant kid named Murphy Mclane, left their Hog behind, which contained all of their heavy weapons. Incidentally, the larger coninvore wildlife began to take interest in the warthog, so the ODSTs had to call in air support to lift them out. The engineering team made their way to the outpost and began retreiving the data, as well as Harrington's personal logs, shedding some light into his dark past.

The Covenant began to further entrench themselves, forming a large base at the energy cannons sight. The Fearless detected where the dropod went down, and sent in the Search and Rescue Team with the aid of three M864 A Snow Hogs. They searched around for over six days but found nothing. Harrington and the AI had already moved downspin, and were heading to the location of the old survey sight. The Search and Rescue team was attacked by a Wraith on their sixth day, but the Pelican Eagle One launched a ASGM-10 Missile that destroyed it. The Search and Rescue team, having found nothing, then loaded up onto the Pelican and dusted off, heading back to the Fearless. They decided that they needed to encrypt the sattelite network with battle encryption, so they did.

But the Covenant had other ideas. They open fired at the Fearless once again with the energy cannon, and this time their aim was better. It hit the Fearless broadside, inflicting heavy damage. The Captain, Richard Banks, had no choice but to withdraw. At the same time, Harrington reached the old survey site, where he hoped some supplies would've been left behind. He was right, an intact Warthog was waiting, but two elites guarded the place. Harrington, with help from the AI, managed to barely take them out. The duo could now transmit, but they did not have the codes. Frustrated, they set off once again.

The EM wave from the energy cannon, which had fried the electronics of the pod earlier, now had another victim. The Search and Rescue team's pelican went down, killing the pilots. The battered ODSTs set off, heading for the cannons and valleys surrounding the energy cannon. They knew that they were easy to spot in the open water where their pelican had crashed, and that the Valleys would offer some protection. They journeyed upwards, but were attacked by a Banshee scout. They managed to destroy it, and hid the wreckage in a water fall.

Knowing that a Covenant reprisal was not far behind, the three ODSTs headed for higher ground, and began to set up for a battle. Meanwhile, the Station AI managed to get part of the satelite net decoded, and they found that the Fearless had withdrawn and that the S and R team was in trouble. Harrington, knowing that they could not send in more troops while the energy cannon was still up, began to head for the cannon with hopes of disabling it.

The Final Battle
However, unknown to him, the Captain was doing just that, and loading up dozens of Pelicans with marines and ODSTs. The Covenant weren't just waiting around to die either. They were regrouping all of their forces at the cannon, preparing their armies for a war. The stage was set for the battle of Installation 00. The ODSTs came under attack from a banshee and two Spectres, but managed to drive the enemy off.

The dropships flew towards the ring at full speed, stripped down to conserve fuel. The cannon fired repeatdly, taking down many transports. By the time they arrived, they had lost nearly half their force. One such transport crashed into the ocean, and only Cheif Petty Officer Alex Hicks, the technician on the ship, survived. He wandered up the coastline, heading for the shore, but did not reach it until everything was over. However, they did not dare send in reinforcements while the cannon was up.

Harrington and the AI made their way to the cannon, sneaking past guards, and while a battle raged outside, the AI interfaced with the computer, but unexpectdly, they were sucked in. The Battle was going poorly for the humans. The covies had armor, and the human formations were being shredded. Covenant forces were advancing, and if something didn't happen fast, everything would be lost. But something was happening. When the AI got sucked into the computer with Harrington, her eagerness to consume all the data almost killed her. However, by clinging to Harrington, she was safe. When they were fully inside, they met GAIA, and persuaded it to shut down the cannon.

The Fearless scambled to send down reinforcements, and dozens more pelicans soared in to help. Armor and infantry were sent in, and groups of Scorpion tanks took on Covenant Wraiths. It was a long and bitter struggle, with much death on both sides, but the humans finally overtook the Covenant troops. The Human forces advanced to the energy cannon, and killed the remaining Covenant there. The three ODSTs joined in the fighting as well, and before long, the battle was over.

Aftermath
The humans then poised themselves to invade the structure and disable the cannon once and for all. However, right before they attacked, Harrington emerged from the structure, much to the disbelief of Murphy. One of the ODSTs then showed him to the Lieutenant, who transported him to meet the captain on the Fearless. After meeting with the captain, a funeral service was thrown for those who had met their end down on the ring. Harrington then went and met with the technicians in the cryo bay and was scanned. They found that the AI had become a part of almost every system in the suit.

After finishing, the Captain and Harrington met up in Hangar Bay Eight, where the Captain gave him a modified Longsword Fighter/Bomber called the Tranquility. Onboard the ship, the AI chose a name: Andrea, after Harrington's dead wife. They then returned to the outpost station with the new station AI, Arthur. Back on the ship, the Captain decided to leave the ship in orbit, as in the battle, their slipspace drive had been damaged beyond repair. The research site was reestablished as a full settlement, and the entire ships crew was sent down, even the AI, Kaylee. However not everyone was there. Cheif Petty Officer Alex Hicks was still at large, the only MIA person of the crew. He made his way to the valley surrounding the energy cannon, and began keeping a log of the events.

However, it was not long before he encountered a Hunter who had survived the battle and was living off the land. He barely escaped, and it began to follow him. Andrea found his log but could not transmit to him directly, and there were no availbe craft to go and pick him up. However, Andrea was able to warn him when the hunter came to close by sending an EM burst, which projected static onto Hick's comm. She tasked a half a dozen sattelites just to track him. Over two weeks the ordeal intensified. The Hunter ran out of ammo for it's fuel rod gun, and this barely saved Hick's life several times.

It became and endless cycle, listen for the static and run, hear the static and run. Eventually, he came up with a plan to trap the hunter in a drop pod and activate a bomb. The plan worked, but the hunter somehow survived. The hunter cornered Hicks by a waterfall, and just when all seemed lost, Harrington arrived in a MJ07-Wasp. Hicks pushed the hunter off the cliff, and sent it flying down the canyon to its death. After the ordeal, Hicks was transported to the survey site, where his wife and daughter were waiting for him.

Time passed, nearly six months in fact, and it was discovered that the long range comm unit was completely destroyed, and could never be recovered. Stranded on the ring, the became a small town, and began to expand. They upgraded the Fearless's weaponry, using technology pioneered from the energy cannon. Since the Fearless was actually a science vessel, many of the crew's family had come along. Scattered Covenant survivors remained, but did not attack; they were disorganized, and fighting for their very survival.