Castaways Log13 Halospoilers

He caught up to the hulking mechanical intruder quickly and on first glance wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before.  It resembled a model of the New York City skyline on spider legs.  The system of spires and boxy equipment housings were arranged pyramid-like on a seven-by-seven foot square bed nearly half a foot thick at the base.  Its six spindly legs were attached precariously along the outside of the rig at tiny little hinges daring anyone to believe the mechanism was actually supporting its own weight.  It was walking steadily toward town with a certain lurching motion.  The Chief circled it curiously.  

Cortana scanned it top to bottom, but the MJOLNIR sensors were limited.  “What do you think it is?”

“No clue.”  He said, walking alongside it.  “Any guesses?”

“Hmn...”  She considered it.  “A research robot maybe?”

“You say anything, I’ll believe it.”  He poked the leg of the monster with his assault rifle as it rose for another step.  “I guess it’s been running laps around this planet since before everything died off?”

“That or its on a timer or something.”  Cortana surmised.  “I wonder what it’s for.”

“You want me to stop it and find out?”  He asked.

“No, let’s just observe it.”  Cortana said with deep fascination.  “It might be something really important.”

The Chief followed it for three hours.  It walked its way up the dry banks of grass, it passed the ruin of the flood ship, and veered slightly westward along a predefined course toward Cant.  The Chief walked it into his city with a growing sense of disquiet.  It was far too awkward a machine to be a vehicle of war, at least not a good one, but he’d had bad experiences with local technology trying to kill him before.  He kept his assault rifle trained on the walker as it marched up the gravel path and hung a right through the now non-existent gate in front of the power plant.  

Here it walked itself straight into the wall and stopped, balancing on its straw-like legs.

The Master Chief and Cortana stood and stared at it a second.  “Is that it?”

Cortana was disappointed and it made her angry.  “Did you break it?”  

“I didn’t even touch it.”  He smarted at her.  “You told me not to.”

“If this is all it’s good for then I say dismantle it right here.”  She said with a huff.  “Stupid planet.  Even the new tricks are lame ones.  I don’t know what this machine is for but it’s one of the dumbest creations I’ve ever seen.  It walked for two years to butt itself against our wall and die.  Maybe we can rewire it into a lamp.”

“Think more positively.”  He suggested.  “Maybe its a gift from god.  Some kind of mechanical messiah fate gave us for spare parts.”

“Unlikely.”  She said.  “I like thinking it’s stupid.  It amuses me.”

He advanced slowly on it.  “I’m going to kick its legs out from under it.”

“That sounds fun!  Do it with impunity.”  

“Okay.”

A sudden shudder stopped him short.  The machine puffed a huge cloud of steam out of its sides and settled down to the ground.  Two clunky looking arms unfolded from the sides of the machine and extended forward toward the wall.  At the reduced height, the arms were within reach of a switching terminal set low in the exterior wall for vehicle use.  The appendages reached forward and plugged itself into two of the waiting sockets.  The hum of electricity filled the space.

Cortana’s interest was restored.  “It’s sapping energy.  Recharging itself.”

The Chief walked to the wall to investigate the juncture.  “Will this affect any of our stuff inside?”

“It shouldn’t.”  She said.  “I can access the terminals from here, our levels are fine.  It is pulling a substantial amount of energy from the turbines though.”

The Chief shrugged.  “It was a long walk.”

They watched the machine leeching energy for longer than the Chief found interesting.  The midday sun was high in the graying sky, and he got a new impression of just how small his scrap of life was on this large empty globe.  Cortana had chronicled every nook and cranny of the irregularly shaped walker, but found all vital components encased in sealed black boxes.  There was no way to tell what the machine was doing with all the energy it was drawing.  The Chief leaned back against the wall, amazed how much boredom had become a way of life for him.  He wondered why his attention span hadn’t adjusted to the lapses of inactivity to keep him more easily entertained by this power-hungry monster.  Cortana let out a synthesized sigh in the back of his head.  “So yeah.... This is fun.”

“It’s interesting,” he said, feeling strangely compelled to share.  “We’ve been sitting here on this planet for a long time, we’ve exhausted every conceivable possibility to keep us busy, now here we have a truly unexplained and unexpected phenomenon and I just can’t seem to stay excited about it.”

“I don’t blame you.”  She said.  “Its not doing anything.  Whose to say it won’t stay here forever.”

“You’d think I’d be going stir crazy.”  He pondered.  “That I’d freak out if something like this happened.”

“You don’t freak out, Chief.”  She said.  “I don’t think you can.  I think its against your nature.”

“Still.”  He persisted.  “I guess I’m starting to suspect mind-numbing boredom is becoming my permanent way of life.”

“Not so.”  She said.  “I heard you squealing like a little girl a few minutes ago when you found those tracks in the sand.”

He shifted weight.  “Whatever.”

There was another shudder through the machine followed by a definitive zap as it dislodged itself from the wall.  It struggled back to full height, the legs creaking under the machine’s weight.  It started to walk again, this time stopping in the middle of the courtyard.  There it stood still again.  The Chief stopped a few paces behind it, again disappointed.  Cortana whispered to him, her sensors reading something that his eyes could not.  “Wait Chief, its doing something.”

The robot began to resonate, the structure trembling from its unsure footing to the top of its central tower.  Crackles of electricity rippled along the smooth surfaces.  The Chief watched with the same astonishment he proclaimed he’d never have again.  “What’s it doing?”

“It’s charging up.”

“Charging up for what?”

“I don’t know.”

The machine was shaking violently now.  The tallest spire at the center of the platform began to retract downward into the mess of machinery.  There was a hiss as it locked into position, and a shockwave as it suddenly exploded back upward, sending a cannon-ball of matter up into the cloudy sky.  

The clouds about the epicenter rippled off in to the distance like a silent sonic boom, leaving a hollow directly above their heads where the sky was visible.  The machine stood silent like a statue.  Nothing on the planet moved.  The Chief’s augmented hearing and helmet audio receptors picked up a distant rolling thunder that advanced toward them across the sky from every direction.  A wind picked up and the previously displaced clouds were drawn together and knotted into a growing bulb in the sky.  This bulb thickened and rolled as it collected the incoming air, gaining size and growing darker with each second of evolution.  There was a flash and a vein of lightning coursed across the undulating surface like a beating heart.  The sky went from gray to charcoal to black.

“It’s made a thunderstorm!”  Cortana observed out loud.  “This must be why the rainy season was so predictable!”

“This machine is a rainmaker!?”  The Chief asked, the wind and thunder howling around him. The sound was like a great animal dying overhead.  

“This must be a relic from the original terra-forming project.”  She said.  “It regulates the life cycle.”

“A lot of good its doing now!”  He shouted.  The wind was like a hurricane, tossing gravel and dust about the lot.  Rain began to pour from the slate-rock sky.  Lightning lanced out of the cloud.  It struck the ground at the edge of town with a deafening crack and explosion of sparks.  The wonder of the event quickly gave way to a rush of panic at the dangerously volatile situation they were now in.  The Chief’s massively tall radio antenna was swaying in the maelstrom like bait on a hook for the electrical storm.  

“Chief!  The beacon!”  Cortana shouted.  “The lightning!”

He dashed inside, sliding on one knee under the low door frame and running to their network.  Cortana was babbling in the back of his head.  “Everything is wired to the turbine which is wired into that antenna.  A power surge could completely short out everything we’ve built, the beacon, the holo-pads, the oxygen filters, the cables... Chief, your house is attached to this!”

He ran to the turbine.  A huge crash of thunder shook the walls outside.  He ran to the main power junction.  Cortana’s weather reports were screaming at her.  “Find a way to disconnect-”

He grabbed the mess of cables and began to rip it from the wall.  Outside the storm raged, the roof pounded with the driving rain, the towering black clouds circled the tower, batting it around.  There was a spark, and a crack and a jolt of electricity that threw the Chief backward off the turbine.  Sparks flew throughout the room.  Cortana rushed a check on her host but he scrambled to his feet and hugged the wall to avoid arcing bridges of energy.  The bulbless filaments exploded from the ceiling, and the world around them went dark.  

The Master Chief sank down to the ground among the ruined machinery.  Cortana’s voice was shaky in his head, as if she’d gone into shock.  “It’s gone, everything, nothing is responding.”  He watched the flashes of light outside the high windows.  Lightning continued to rack the tower high above their heads, but he didn’t hear the cracks.  The reality of the loss was as dark as the room around him.  Cortana could feel the weight descend upon him.  

“I’m so sorry, Chief.”