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Battle for the Control Room
Conflict:	Human-Covenant war
Date:	September 21, 2552
Location:	Installation 04, around the Control Room
Outcome:	UNSC victory Phase Pulse Generators disabled
Details Belligerents United Nations Space Command Covenant Forerunner constructs Flood Commanders John-117 Cortana Sangheili Zealots Monitor 343 Guilty Spark Strength 1 UH-144 Falcon 2 M12 Warthogs UNSC Marines Orbital Drop Shock Troopers Fireteam Raven 1 Spartan-II John-117 Dextro Xur-pattern Spirits Karo'etba-pattern Ghosts Oghal-pattern Banshees Is'belox-pattern Banshees Zurdo-pattern Wraiths Sangheili Kig-Yar Mgalekgolo Unggoy Aggressor Sentinels Pod infectors Combat forms Carrier forms Pure forms Flood tank forms Casualties 1 Pelican Multiple Marine squads Most forces

This article is about the battle on Installation 04. For the battle on Installation 05, see here.

The Battle for the Control Room was a large-scale engagement during the later stages of the Battle of Installation 04, in which John-117 sought to disable the three Phase pulse generators in the valleys around the installation's control room, fighting his way through a multi-sided conflict between the Covenant, Flood and Sentinel forces led by the now-hostile 343 Guilty Spark in order to delay the Halo ring's firing process, receiving assistance from ODST Fireteam Raven to complete his mission.

Prelude

Following John-117's successful mission to secure Installation 04's control room, Cortana, now residing inside the ring's core systems, realized the peril that Captain Keyes was in, and hastily ordered John-117 to depart and rescue him, leaving her in the control room. Over the course of the following hours, Cortana proceeded to absorb vast sums of knowledge from about the Halo Array and its creators, the Forerunners, as well as the Flood. The sheer amount of information she consumed cut into her processing subsystems bloating her and having a detrimental impact on her power, something which would become apparent during later events. During this time, the Covenant would re-fortify the canyons surrounding the control room, and would later come into conflict with the installation's Sentinels and the Flood.

John-117 was ultimately unsuccessful in his mission to rescue Keyes, but he was soon brought to the installation's Library by the ring's monitor, 343 Guilty Spark in order to retrieve the activation index, intending to activate the installation in order to wipe out the Flood as dictated by the Containment protocol. The Master Chief, unaware that the ring's true purpose was to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy to deprive the Flood of suitable hosts, managed to secure the index and was subsequently teleported back to the control room along with the monitor to begin the activation sequence.

The battle

Cortana revealing Halo's true purpose to John-117.

Upon his return to the control room, John-117, following the direction of 343 Guilty Spark, inserted the activation into the Core, but before the activation sequence could begin, Cortana appeared and stopped it while seizing the activation index for herself. She then proceeded to share with the Spartan what she had learned about the Halo Array's true purpose. When John-117 asked the monitor to confirm this revelation, he complied, claiming that he had believed the Master Chief to have been fully aware of this information as well as his role as a Reclaimer. With the index captured by Cortana and John-117 refusing to turn her and the activation index over to the monitor, 343 Guilty Spark summoned a group of Aggressor Sentinels and translocated away while instructing the Sentinels to kill the Spartan and retrieve Cortana and the index.

John-117 battled the Sentinels in the control room, and managed to destroy them before proceeding through the corridors back outside, fighting both Covenant troops and Sentinels while Cortana explained that stopping the monitor's plan to activate the installation was now their top priority. Cortana once again accessed the Covenant proselytization network, which had fallen into disarray following the release of the Flood, in order to locate the UNSC Pillar of Autumn's crash site with the intention of using it's fusion reactors to destroy the ring. As John-117 returned to the snowy exterior of the control room, Cortana formulated a plan to disable the phase pulse generators, a crucial part of the installation's firing sequence, with the objective of buying them time in the event that 343 Guilty Spark found a way to activate the Halo without the index. He fought his way back down the pyramidical structure through groups of Covenant troops, eventually commandeering an Is'belox-pattern Banshee and using it to access the first pulse generator. Cortana tuned his armor's energy shields to produce an electromagnetic pulse to neutralize the generator, and he left the room, destroying several more Sentinels as he went.

John-117 made his way back through the rooms and passageways he had fought through the day prior, which were now filled with Covenant and Flood forces locked in combat. He eventually made his way out to the valley that he had previously secured with Fireteam Zulu, and managed to fight past numerous Covenant vehicles and emplacements, ultimately securing another Banshee and making his way into the room where the second pulse generator lay, which was heavily overrun with Flood. After clearing the room, John-117 destroyed the generator and narrowly escaped a subsequent wave of Flood attackers. By this point, Cortana had located the Pillar of Autumn's crash site, but informed the Chief that they would be unable to override the system's failsafes without authorization from Captain Keyes, meaning that they would have either locate him, or secure his neural implants.

John-117 proceeded towards the location of the final pulse generator, making his way through an enormous cavernous room where the Flood attempted another ambush on him. Eventually emerging once again into the snowy canyons, John witnessed a large-scale battle between the Covenant and the Flood, and he made his way the perimeter of the battle before discovering the corpses of several uninfected UNSC Marines whose dog tags had already been taken, and moved the bodies into a nearby cave to lessen the chance of their discovery and infection by the Flood before rearming himself and continuing on.

Around this time, ODST Fireteam Raven were redeployed into the area from Alpha Base in order to assist the Master Chief in his mission. Travelling through the snowy canyons in a UH-144 Falcon, Fireteam Raven used the craft's M247H machine guns to clear out swarming Covenant Banshees as well as large numbers of Flood attacker forms on a bridge running across the canyon. Once the bridge was clear, the Falcon descended into the valley where Flood forms were swarming a small group of surviving Marines. The Falcon deployed Raven onto the ground, where they assisted the Marines in holding off numerous Flood forms until a pair of tank forms smashed through the Marine's Warthogs, killing all but one of them. Raven continued to hold off the swarming Flood forms while also defending against strafing runs from Banshees and an assault from Karo'etba-pattern Ghosts and a Zurdo-pattern Wraith. As they continued to hold off the Flood, John-117 appeared as a tank form prepared to leap into the ODST's midst, firing his M90 shotgun into the creatures back before helping Raven finish off the final few Flood combat forms. He then nodded to Raven and left to continue his mission. Fireteam Raven fought through another wave of Flood carrier forms and Pod infectors while the final Marine fell in combat. Having cleared a sufficient hole in the enemy forces to assist the Master Chief, Fireteam Raven returned to their Falcon while fending off both Flood and Covenant ground forces but as they began to take off, a Wraith managed to hit the Falcon's tail with a plasma mortar round, damaging the craft, although Raven managed to escape from the canyon.

John-117 managed to fight his way through more Covenant forces and secured a Banshee, taking the craft up to the final pulse generator's location where he was attacked by a number of Sentinels, many of whom had their own personal energy shields, which had been deployed in a last-ditch attempt by 343 Guilty Spark to thwart his plans. Despite this, John used a combination of M19 missiles, bullets, an Anskum-pattern plasma grenade and his boot to destroy them all. Upon neutralizing the final pulse generator, Cortana, realizing that travelling to Captain Keyes' location conventionally would take too long, opted to use information she had gathered while in the control room to tap into the installation's teleportation grid and transport John-117 directly into the Truth and Reconciliation, where the Captain's transponder signal was located.

Aftermath

Cortana successfully translocated the Master Chief into the Truth and Reconciliation, and although he briefly had to leave the cruiser due to impassable damage, he soon found his way back on board and located Captain Keyes, who had been assimilated into a proto-Gravemind on the ship's bridge. Arriving too late to save the Captain, John was forced to euthanize him and retrieve the neural implants from his skull. He then captured a Banshee and made it to the Pillar of Autumn's crash site, and ultimately detonated the cruiser's fusion engines, destroying Installation 04.

While Fireteam Raven successfully escaped from the canyon, the damage their Falcon had sustained proved to be too much, and they crash-landed near a Forerunner structure some distance away. They were ultimately able to survive and were extracted by a Pelican dropship before immediately deploying to engage Covenant and Flood forces in the area around the Pillar of Autumn's crash site, assisting the few remaining Marines in buying John-117 enough time to destroy the ring.

List of appearances

• Halo: Combat Evolved (First appearance)
• Halo: The Flood
• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary