Centroid

''After a costly assault in Covenant controlled space, the Spartan survivors return to face a new challenge. Now, as ONI Spartan specialists, Spartans Annalee and Drew will face threats they never imagined they would face when they set off to fight their counter-crusade against the continuously approaching Covenant onslaught.''

''This is a story of loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and learning who you are. Taking on multiple perspectives, Centroid will take you to a time before the Fall of Reach, when the Human-Covenant War was at its most dire, and every action hung in the balance. This story will also be the basis for the Centroid Continuum.''

Chapter 1: The Survivor
1350 Hours, June 19, 2545 (Military Calendar)/ Biller Pavonis System, Covenant Controlled Space

Annalee cycled through her rangefinder in quick succession, peering down at the teams of Grunts and Jackals that littered the red, dirt trail leading to the Covenant relay. This was it.

After spending the last week crawling through conduits, stowing away in crates, clambering up rocks, and over fissures, she had finally managed to ghost her way up the mountain trail to the Covenant Citadel—close enough, anyway. After carefully and quietly scouting the surrounding area, she had found a rock overhang with a prominent panoramic view of the trail, Citadel, and the staging camp which surrounded it. Now, days after finding the overhang, it had become her refuge from the buzzing army surrounding her. Not only that, it had also proven to be the perfect overlook to plan an infiltration. Admittedly her own situation was hardly as perfect.

Annalee slowly brought the rangefinder to her side. Softly, and quietly, a magnet secured it to her armor with a metallic click. She paused, staying still to make sure that she hadn’t garnered any unwanted attention from her friends below her. She didn’t dare to test the senses of a few dozen Jackals in such close proximity.

As she was, she knew she couldn’t take on the Covenant forces in the region—electronic intelligence had estimated its strength at upwards of ten-thousand strong. And, since the initial UNSC attack on the support structures, Covenant forces had been arriving for days to reinforce the Citadel. Maybe they knew she was still alive? Unlikely, she considered. She estimated at least a third of the regional battalions were now there: more than what was needed to defend themselves from a single person. It seemed their intelligence collection was as lacking as hers. They were genuinely surprised.

Annalee had no backup. As far as she was aware, she was the last surviving UNSC unit on the ground. Being that she was deep in Covenant controlled space, contacting the Prowler ship in system—if it was still even there—ran a high risk of alerting Covenant vessels of her location. One slip up, and she wouldn’t see a strike coming; she would be dust before she knew she was in danger. The thought made her wince.

Assuming she was the last alive to complete the mission, she remained painfully silent—there wasn’t any need for pointless sacrifice now. Without the proper tools and manpower to complete the original mission parameters, she decided she would improvise: sabotage what she could, and hope it silenced the monstrous communications relay that stood before her.

Satisfied with what she had seen, Annalee slowly pushed her way back beneath the stone overhang. As she reached the narrow rear of the overhang, obscured from the outside, she sat upright, stretched her arms and neck, and took off her helmet. She took a deep breath and her vision steadied—she had been holding it on and off for hours to avoid moving as much as possible.

It was curious to her that the moon had a breathable oxygen content. Though, after a minute of breathing particularly sulfuric air, the novelty wore off and she returned to the properly saturated atmosphere of her helmet. Were this anywhere else, she quietly admitted, her oxygen scrubbers would have been unable to keep her air from becoming toxic after only a day. But, the air system had been able to collect more than enough ambient, oxygenated atmosphere to keep her breathing. She had to count her blessings at this point. Counting.

She began again to take inventory of her supplies—what remained of them, anyway.

The back of the overhang had become her “armory”, with her weapons propped up against the rock face, and her ammo and pouches laid flat on the ground. First, she studied her reconnoitered Covenant Carbine and counted the cylindrical power packs that paired with it. Her squad commander, Joel, once had taken one from the field during a recon mission. Each of their squad took turns learning to use it. Between Joel and her, they taught the rest of the squad the ins and outs of the weapon. But Joel, ever the marksman, flourished with it like any sharpshooter would. He would have been the perfect soldier to wield it, but she would have to make due on her own. She had also taken more than enough cylinders for a squad of trigger-happy Jackals. For what skill Joel would have had on her, she would make up for it with more ammo. The issue, ultimately, was that the carbine was far from a suppressed weapon. One shot would alert every Covenant unit along the trail and hillside. She decided she would take it with her, but swore to use it only if things went haywire.

The remainder of her weapons were much more underwhelming: an assault rifle which had had it’s ammo counter blown off by a plasma bolt, a combat knife, and her standard suppressed sidearm. She had only one extra magazine for her pistol, and the assault rifle was now down to twenty rounds. Worse, though, the firing mechanism on the rifle had deteriorated and often required that every few rounds be racked by the bolt due to the damage—she decided it was no longer useful, much to her chagrin. She would have to make do with her pistol and combat knife.

Last, she checked the belted ammo pouch. She fished out two snack cakes; it was the last of her food. If miracles existed, Annalee considered that it was a miracle she had any food at all. Seeing as the mission hadn’t been designed to last long, virtually none of the squads had prepped any. She happened upon the cakes accidentally and had been rationing them ever since. They had helped, at least a little bit, over the last few days when hunger had really started to set in. She was indebted to Ahmed for having brought enough for her entire squad. When she had grabbed his ammo belt, she hadn’t known, or cared they were there. Now, though, they were immeasurably important to her survival. She imagined he had likely envisioning doling them out when they were no longer planetside. In that moment, she wished he were still there. His outlook had always been positive, and she knew she was in need of a bit more of that.

The last of his pouches were empty. She set the belt back down.

Sparse loadouts were not foreign to her, but often in those situations she had her squadmates to rely on. Now she was alone, hungry, and outgunned. She had trouble imagining what she could really hope to accomplish on her own. She wasn’t convinced of much at all. But, considering the amount of Spartans—friends—who had died to get her this far, she felt it her duty to see things through.

She sat at the back of the overhang, and rested against the stone. She set a timer for an hour, then set her motion tracker to wake her if it detected anything which came too close to her position. Sleep was almost unheard of considering her surroundings, but she was still human. She would force herself to sleep, if need be—she needed the rest. She closed her eyes, trying to drown out the cacophony of alien tongues, clattering of equipment, and ever present hum of pulsing plasma energy.

She gripped her pistol tight, and nodded off. For a short while, she was at ease.

***

0500 Hours, June 20, 2545/ Annalee’s Crow's Nest

Annalee slung the carbine along the back of her SPI armor—a staple for Spartan-III’s—and inched towards the ledge with her Automag pistol in hand. The nameless moon she was on had finally fallen into darkness after having been in daylight for the last week. Just as the Office of Naval Intelligence—known as ONI—had suggested, the moon was tidally locked to the planet above. The planet, Biller Pavonis 4, shone only as a sliver of a brown waning crescent in the sky. Her suit calculated the ambient light to be lower than 1 Lux ; virtually next to nothing. What more, Annalee could now expect for it to remain this dark for weeks. She wouldn’t need that much time. She wouldn’t last there that long, regardless.

The Covenant Citadel that three teams of Beta Company were tasked to infiltrate and destroy, was a part of a larger Slip Space communications relay inside of Covenant controlled space. Golf, November, and Oscar Teams had been sent to investigate the relay in the hopes the UNSC might be able to reverse engineer their detection technology, or gather other intel on Covenant fleet movements.

Intelligence had suggested the structure was akin to an interstellar telegraph system, something Humanity had toyed with but never perfected. The Covenant had mastered Slip Space in ways Humanity could only hope to partially match before the alien menace inevitably descended further into the Inner Planets. Annalee, and the other Spartans were simply trying to accelerate the research process, hoping that the tides may finally turn in Humanity’s favor. It increasingly appeared that they were running out of time.

In the new dark, the Citadel was lit solely by the pulsing blues of plasma conduits, as well as the accompanying pinks and purples of assorted camplights and terminals scattering the surrounding area. Periodically, the central column of the structure would charge and fire pulsewaves of laser-emitted datastreams through Slip Space. Annalee had timed these pulses to a mean time of two hours between pulses, and had watched minutes prior how it illuminated the area, washing it in a white-blue glow. To avoid detection, she would need to move in between pulses.

With the dark masking her, Annalee crawled to the edge of the overhang to take one last look at the trail. The third watch was on time.

A watch squad of Grunts and Jackals patrolled the length of the trail every seven hours. They had just made their second loop and would be gone for the next forty minutes, more than enough of an opening to approach the Citadel camp from the trail mouth. Then, all that remained between Annalee and the structure was a few hundred Covenant units strewn randomly across the few hundred meters between them. It was an obvious killzone—no man’s land in more than one way. But, as Annalee had observed: it was a complacent killzone.

She estimated at maximum, she would have a half-hour to reach a gate into the Citadel structure. She set and displayed a timer on her HUD, and began the countdown. It was time to go.

Peering again over the side of the rock, Annalee saw what she expected. Below her was the end of the trail and, sure enough, the squad of Grunts she had kept tabs on during her stay—entirely accounted for. The squad had settled in an hour before, and Annalee, seeing they were now completely unawares, was finally satisfied. She released the safety on her gun, vaulted over the side of the cliff towards the flimsy canopy roof, slashing through the tarpaulin-like material and straight into the methane pit where they slept.

She landed square on the skull of a Grunt. There was a sharp, muffled crack as the Grunt’s skull splintered into fragments and was crushed beneath the force of Annalee’s strike. It’s lungs lazily released methane through a gurgle of blue blood and brain matter. Another Grunt, nearby, stirred; awoken, but not yet alert. She dove at the Grunt, grabbing it’s neck and violently snapping it completely around. It softly slumped over and died without another sound. The remaining pack was completely unaware, and remained asleep and undisturbed by the commotion.

Annalee remained still, and partially prone, aiming at the head of the nearest Grunt. She glanced at the top of the pit. The material of the roof kept its bubble shape, save for the human sized flap which she had made on her way down. It leaked, but the flap only quietly fluttered as methane lazily escaped through the opening; the tent simply continued pumping more gas to maintain the pressure within. No alarms—the Jackal sentries had missed her. For now, she was in the clear. She quickly and silently dispatched the remaining Grunts so that none survived to sound an alarm.

The access doors for the pit hissed and opened as Annalee neared them. The doors opened facing the rest of the camp, and the trail was now behind her. Although the ground around the Citadel was mostly open, it served as a staging area for patrols and supply drops. Vehicles, crates, methane tents, barriers, barracks, and other assorted equipment gave Annalee just enough hiding places to move through the shadows towards the Citadel. Her SPI armor’s photo-reactive plating also did it’s part, making her appear only as a silhouetted shadow amongst the dark purple huts and pylons of the Covenant camp when she needed it.

Most of the Grunts she saw about were completely oblivious or enjoying their sleep cycle. The deadlier Jackals had their eyes set upon the horizon, and not the interior of the camp. A lucky break. The darkness had lulled most of the Covenant into a false sense of security, she gathered, which allowed her to move about without much worry of drawing their attention. The sun had seemingly set on the events of the week, for them.

As she meticulously made her way through the camp, Annalee came to a halt behind a cluster of weapons crates. As she had been crossing through the camp, she periodically caught snippets of a sound on the wind, and stopped to listen. The sound she had heard in this instance was more constant than the others. It was obvious once she focused on it that it was hardly the background noise she initially thought: it was the undeniably distinct whine and chug of a Covenant drop ship. A small hut—a barracks—was close, and in any direction, it was the only structure with a roof she could reach for cover. The turrets on any Covenant dropship would be able to detect Annalee with thermal sights. Even with her heightened senses and speed, the heavy plasma turrets would rip her apart easily. She had no doubt.

She expanded her suit’s motion tracker to max range. Among the sea of movement around her, it caught a large blip at the edge of its radius. Intently adjusting her suit’s HUD to track the contact, it was obvious it was approaching. Fast . Too fast to scan the barracks for life. She had to get inside, then and there. Hard, she pushed off the ground and sprinted with all her power towards the door, hoping her suit’s camouflage would keep her out of sight. Her feet barely touched the ground as she hit her stride.

Halfway to the barracks, she glanced around to see if she had been spotted. No firing, no alarms, no alien shrieks or howls. She didn’t believe that a Jackal would miss the movement she had made, even when she was in camouflage—she was convinced that she had to have been seen, and the alarms were moments away from sounding. She tensed as she approached the door, waiting for a plasma beam to catch her torso; waiting for a stream of bolts to scorch her back.

Nothing came. She was going to make it.

With a small length to spare, Annalee pushed hard off the ground and lunged. Her shoulder slammed into the door of the barracks as a Phantom dropship flew fast and low over her head. The Phantom kicked up a large cloud of red dust and silt, and the sound of the pass masked the clang of the barracks door snapping open. The cloud quickly rushed in with Annalee, and the few dozen Grunts and Jackals immediately inside the door were stunned and blinded by the sandy wash rushing in. Easy targets.

Before they could gather themselves, Annalee had emptied her suppressed pistol, under the cover of the cloud, into twelve Jackals and Grunts—each died as a single round caught their head. With her pistol emptied, Annalee tore through the center of the barracks finding the soft-spots of the now frenzied Covenant units with her combat knife. Though within moments most of the room was dead or dying, she knew she couldn’t reach the last group at the far end of the barracks before they fired back at her. Things were moments from going haywire.

As she unslung the carbine from her back, having settled on killing as many Covenant as possible before they killed her, the suppressed burp of an SMG sheared through a Jackal who had sighted Annalee with a beam rifle. Before the remaining Covenant troops at the other end of the barracks could reach or fire their weapons, two silhouettes pushed down from the ceiling, firing suppressed assault weapons into the remaining stragglers. Annalee couldn’t help but smirk as every last Jackal and Grunt hit the floor in a mist of purple and blue blood, unable to even screech in response to the sight of Spartans dropping from the vents above.

Annalee held up her knifed hand with an open palm, signalling her appreciation. The two Spartans nodded in turn. She wasn’t alone after all.

One of the Spartans quickly moved to the other door of the barracks and placed a small hacking device on a panel, killing the lights and locking the only other door into the hut. At the very least, if a curious Covenant unit decided to enter the broken door, the Spartans would be completely hidden in the shadows. And, with their night vision engaged, they would be able to drop the hammer on them before the bastards knew they were in danger.

On a second look, Annalee knew exactly who her comrades were. The one who had gone to the panel was none other than her squadmate Andrew-B191, “Drew”, their field engineer. The one who approached her was Spencer-B337, “Spike”, the Commander of November Team. Annalee gave a quick, friendly salute to Spike. He reached out and clasped her shoulder as he made his way to the broken door at the other end of the barracks. That was all that needed to be said on the matter of command. Spike was now running the show.

“It’s good to see you, 220.” Spike reassured Annalee.

“Likewise, sir.” she responded rasply, surprised at the sound of her own voice. She realized she hadn’t spoken in about a week. “Sir,” she gingerly asked after him, nursing her vocal cords “…are there any more of us?”

“If there are, we haven’t been in contact with anyone… toss me your rangefinder.”

Annalee demagnetized the rangefinder and tossed it to Spike, who began to scout the exterior of the barracks through the broken door. She felt an elbow nudge her arm, and turned to Drew who came to join her. He deplorized his visor and smiled at her, appearing phosphorescent green in her HUD’s night vision setting. Annalee noticed that his oft clean-shaven face was now covered in stubble; his constant smile still there. He glanced curiously at her carbine. “Planning on alerting the camp, Golf 2?” he quizzingly nodded at her weapon.

“Only because I knew you would be around to deal with it, Golf 4.”

“Roger that.” Drew smirked.

Annalee appreciated his attempts to lighten the situation, but their rendezvous had made it apparent that the remaining squadmates of Golf Team indeed hadn’t made it. Mary and Wei were dead. She turned from Drew, choosing to keep her visor polarized. She didn’t want him to see how broken she suddenly felt.

She had assumed all Spartan squads had been wiped out, and that she was alone. But, she still had held onto the hope that maybe...just maybe the last of her squad had made it—that any Spartan had made it. Before she had tossed it to Spike, Annalee had been using Mary’s rangefinder that entire week. After coming across it at an overrun Spartan position, she had snagged it. There were too many bodies, and she couldn’t see if one of them was Mary before she had to keep moving. But, she had hoped. She hoped she would be able to give it back to her, and that Mary would laugh. She had hoped she would be able to toss Wei his busted assault rifle she had found in the rubble of a Covenant bunker, and he’d silently nod in approval. She hoped they would all tell their stories of how they were separated, and how they eventually found each other. She hoped they would all laugh about it, and cry about it together. She hoped they could have all made it, so they could support each other, especially since Joel and Ahmed were killed almost immediately once the mission went south. But, all that remained now was Drew, and her. Her heart ached for her team—it was like losing her family again.

Now, in hindsight she felt silly for thinking she would ever see them again. She knew they were probably dead. It wasn’t professional to hope like that; it wasn’t Spartan-like. After the hell they had been through—the hell that she had been through—she should have known better.

As if she needed the stress, her veins pumped with white-hot rage, her augmented brain keeping her ready for a battle. She clenched her teeth as her emotions fought to undo her training, and frenzy her into a blood rage. In particular, she found that the “untouchable” mantra of “Spartans never die...” mocked her incessantly. Tell that to Joel, Ahmed, Wei, and Mary, she begrudgingly thought. She couldn’t stand to hear that lie anymore, and her brain made her remember it on repeat—it forced her to remember...to make her angry. A side effect of being a Spartan it seemed.

For all she did to hide her rage from her comrades, Drew knowingly handed her a magazine for her pistol. She looked back at that dumb smile of his. He was hurting too. They all dealt with the rage in different ways. Each internal battle was different, and Drew always seemed to find a way to get out in front of it. It may have seemed to be entirely for his squadmates sake, but helping them in turn helped him. Annalee took the clip, and nodded silently.

“I know you’ll make ‘em count, Annalee—”

Both Spartans ducked instinctively as another loud roar shook the barracks. Spike waved the duo over to the door as the dust again settled inside.

Taking a position behind Spike, they peered back out into the camp. Another Phantom had just arrived. It pulled hard to its side, slowed and came to a hover near the main structure of the Citadel relay. A blue light opened on the bulbous craft’s belly, and a squad of Covenant rode a gravity lift down into the camp. Spike, took his visor off Mary’s rangefinder and turned to Annalee and Drew.

“It’s all Elites” he grunted, “I counted ten—Spec-Ops class. Looks like the fuzz is here.”

“I’ll spare you the details,” Drew noted to Annalee “but, this is the third group of Elites we’ve come across the last two days.”

Annalee, hung her head.

“They know we’re here?” She asked.

“I was able to piggyback the local network, and caught a signal from the BattleNet…” Drew hesitated.

“...There’s a Covenant Corvette in geosynchronous orbit over the Citadel. They called for an expeditionary unit to reinforce the local guard… they’re worried they didn’t find us all, but they don’t know for sure.” He glanced out the door to the Citadel as another Phantom flew overhead, stirring awake even more dozing Grunts, and riling up the Jackal sentries. He shook his head, “—probably means ONI finally found something worthwhile…”

“That means” Spike interrupted, “we’ve gotta’ get this taken care of now. This isn’t a ‘soft’ target anymore, and it sure as hell isn’t getting any softer. Lock and load, Spartans: we’re gonna’ infiltrate that Citadel and complete the mission...get some well deserved payback, too. Understood?”

Annalee and Drew’s HUD updated their squad info, highlighting each other. They winked notifications to Spike’s HUD in acknowledgement. He pinged them back, completing their connection.

It was time to go to work.

Chapter 2: Fluellen
0500 Hours, June 20, 2545 (Military Calendar)/ Unknown location, Biller Pavonis System.

On schedule, each stealth probe high over Biller Pavonis 4A forwarded Fluellen their reports.

Each report, as he had expected, was virtually identical from the last. But, that was irrelevant now; any new information about troop movements was viable, important data that he couldn’t risk losing. So, he kept analyzing—any error now would be egregious on principle. The mission was stalled and had been for days, and that was unacceptable. Now though, there was a chance the Operation could be rectified. Whatever his prior obligations were, he was focused on one thing only: extracting the remaining Spartans as was planned… if they still survived. It was his duty to do so, even in the face of unforeseen blockages.

While he rescanned the new reports, Fluellen was reminded of his favorite passage which he had stored away early in his career: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop”. At some levels this was analogous to his current state, and he saw the connection amusing. He had seemingly reached out beyond the abyss of expectation and joined with the darkness himself—or, at least it was fun to imagine so. It illuminated his boredom in another manner, regardless.

He calculated that, were his plans to work, a sense of irony may overcome his superior, Captain Mattias Jones. Ultimately, it had been Jones who restricted him to the somewhat small Probe communications suite, and it was only through these probes he found what data he needed. Jones, it now appeared, may have accidentally undermined his own wishes. Each supporting datapoint for Fluellen’s analysis was a metaphorical predator ready to pounce on a potentially careless, wandering prey. With enough data, he would need to do little but feign the first strike—those hungrier than he would move in for the kill when they sensed weakness—or, so Fluellen planned.

Captain Jones had initially tasked Fluellen with keeping him informed about the ground situation on 4A while Operation: RAUCOUS SOLITUDE was ongoing. This was expected, as he relied on Fluellen to help him understand better the next moves that needed to be made. Fluellen was, after all, a tactical expert with many lifetimes of expertise to share. Oddly, though, the Captain had decided to reject many of Fluellen’s last analyses—the week had since been trying for their partnership.

Fluellen believed strongly that the mission still had a chance to be completed, but here he was: reevaluating reports he had read hundreds of times over already—he knew them as well as he knew his name. The Captain rejected this notion. He felt that in hostile territory, nothing could be certain, and with no support there was no reason to sacrifice themselves so carelessly, especially without strong enough data. Fluellen refuted this notion, and the Captain hadn’t taken the criticism in kind. Jones had also butted heads with Darren Cohen during the week, the ONI minder aboard the UNSC Boudica. Fluellen expected their shared loyalty to ONI had boiled Jones’s worries to the surface. As such, he continued his work within the Captain’s parameters to avoid anymore confrontation.

The Boudica’s stealth probes were guided by a type of “dumb” AI known only as Electronic Intelligence. The “EI” on these probes were extremely redundant, and their “intelligence” was that of an animal: simple, but enough to complete their jobs. They were virtually useless, though, without Fluellen overseeing them. The amount of data they parsed was too much for one human analyst to make good use of, thus Fluellen was obligated to do so.

The EI’s were tasked to run communications beacons, geographical imagery collection, and monitoring of Covenant BattleNet chatter—they were inundated with operational data, much of it useless. Fluellen had to prioritize the EI to find information on the Spartans, or they would never collect the data he really needed. At the end of it all, each probe had repeatedly indicated in some manner there was a slight chance that a few of Spartans could still remain. Fluellen could only assume without the Boudica’s support, they were on the teetering edge of failure.

There had been no communication with ground forces for days, and satellite imagery hadn’t found any indication of living Spartans on the ground. The EI’s collected intelligence had come solely from unencrypted data regarding troop movements and notices posted in Covenant BattleNet chatter. Fluellen could only trust the EI reports as estimations, guesswork and imaginings from lesser intelligence...but still, they had been his only conduit to observe the battlefield. More, though, had to be done.

For the last week he had twisted his code of conduct greatly to get intelligence he needed. He sensed a tinge of accomplishment in the last day, knowing that he had verified more than the Captain would expect him to...but he was still very aware Jones may not believe his work to be “within code”. He supposed it was something different from the drivel the EI had continuously sent him for thousands of cycles. Either way, his report on his data-recovery operations would require wording as close to code as he could manage. If not for the Captain’s ears, then for those who would listen. If he could not prove his work to be just, then how would the crew trust his convictions over their Captain’s? He deemed the risk to be particularly high—he would likely need to deflect or stand down.

How long truly, Fluellen posed the question to himself, could a team of Spartans last with nothing? He wasn’t entirely naive. Their mission had only been designed for a three day span, and it had now extended far into a week. The Spartans, despite their mythic phantom status, were still humans who required rest and food. Food was not supplied in the manner needed to sustain them as long as they had been planetside. Even if survivors had trickled out of the LZ—even if they had fought their way through the week: they could still be weak or dying from starvation… or worse.

And yet, Fluellen hung onto the silliest of human emotions: hope. Abandoning survivors now, if he could save them, would at least give the remaining Spartans of Beta Company some hope, even facing the bleak odds before them. They, of all people, would need that hope.

Fluellen was aware of his attachment. He had watched them from afar—as did his predecessors—micromanaging and maintaining the young soldiers for missions which fit their skills, missions where they would excel. Unlike most tangible things, Fluellen had found he cared deeply for them as a whole, as dangerous as that was. At times he wasn’t sure if he was made to feel that way, or if he had come to this conclusion himself. He didn’t dwell. Dwelling on such things could be harmful for him in the long term.

“Bridge to Fluellen.”

In an instant Fluellen appeared at the projection terminal besides the Captain’s post. His image appearing in holographic light, an opaque orange-red projection. He had taken the form of a man donning common 14th century clothing, his head engulfed in a flame of data particles and code which burned off his shoulders. He was an AI—and a sophisticated one by his own studies.

Fluellen had been “born” into existence by a team of twenty-odd ONI AI specialists, and military analysts who had integrated the best third-generation tech available to create him. His processing power allowed him to dance circles around most AI, and as he had learned in his two years of service: Humans. This sort of background and processing power was determined to be needed if he was to be a cog in the SPARTAN-III program.

He nodded at the Captain. Jones crossly and knowingly nodded back. The bridge crew also curiously peeked from their terminals towards his direction. Cohen was seated behind the Captain—he warmly smiled at Fluellen.

Fluellen estimated the likelihood that Jones had read about his creation. His development was particularly advanced as he was born of not just one human brain, but five—volunteer retiree’s of the UNSC’s upper brass who allowed instances of their consciousness and psyche to be melded into one. Maybe Jones had known one of them—maybe they had been a friend or a rival? Unlikely, he concluded. Either way, this melding of minds had made his military intellect unmatched, and an added side effect had been his heightened sense of honor—notably more important to him than seen in most AI, or so he read in his ONI Psyche Assessment. He estimated this was maybe the reason Captain Jones saw him as disruptive. At least now, he mused, maybe that would prove true.

“Aye, Captain?” Fluellen chimed in.

“Fluellen,” Captain Jones began, “barring any new information, I need you to prep the Boudica’s engines for Slipspace, and lock in a random course out of system. As we discussed, I will be suspending the Operation pending the Boudica’s readiness. Is that understood?”

Fluellen’s flame sputtered with intensity. “Captain, I do have information to report.”

“Oh, you do?” the Captain smugly responded. Fluellen ignored his tone, detecting sarcasm.

“Yes,” Fluellen maintained, “and I’m sure it indicates a necessity to change the course of our current, prior discussed plans.”

Jones shook his head, but looked back to Fluellen with a sense of obligation: “Proceed.”

Fluellen waved his hand and the Captain’s viewscreen appeared the same shade red as his projection. Fluellen’s commandeered display then shown multiple translated instances of BattleNet reports: units killed by human weapons, missing equipment from quartermasters, and presumed sabotage—all as early as the last two days. They were the same sort of reports they had discussed before.

“Captain, per your orders, my standing as support for RAUCOUS SOLITUDE is only as an observer and analyst for the Operation. As such I have spent days observing and analyzing all intelligence gathered on moon 4A. You can see here clearly,” Fluellen addressed the entire bridge of the Boudica, “there is more than enough information to presume a remaining Spartan contingent on the moon’s surface. My estimations, based off initial observed losses we documented on scope and Covenant troop displacement—”

“Fluellen,” Captain Jones interrupted,“this is no different from the last reports you gave. We have already discussed how this cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that UNSC forces remain alive planetside.”

A snide grin grew on Fluellen’s face, as he waved his arm again, wiping away the reports.

“Captain, I have been listening to probe reports for the last week, per your instruction, and I have seen the same reports as you—thousands of times more due to how I process data. Based off these reports,” Fluellen indicated to the screens again, “I see how this data could be interpreted differently. But—”

With a snap of his fingers, the bridge’s monitors returned to normal. The entire bridge crew was now very enraptured in Fluellen’s presentation, much to the Captain’s dislike.

“—But, Captain, being as this was incomplete data I was working with, I took the liberty to analyze the Covenant BattleNet myself.”

The Captain’s face flushed. “Fluellen,” he spoke through gritted teeth, “you better not have used this ship’s communication’s relay, after I had instructed you specifically—”

“Captain, hardly. I bypassed the EI of Probe Niner-Two and accessed it through accepted channels of encryption. I am an ONI asset, to remind you—I’m hardwired for protocol.”

The Captain laid his arms across his chest. He wasn’t sold on the idea.

“So what did you find, Fluellen? I’m sure my bridge officers in charge of probe EI are interested in why you would interrupt normal data collection like that?” He eyed the bridge crew, and they turned back to their stations.

Fluellen again waved and the deck monitors showed his findings. He pressed on.

“Captain, I’m happy to report that our probes have performed excellently—in fact I am very surprised at their effectiveness. I found no difference in their superficial data collection to mine. However, I went a step further. I gained direct access to the local BattleNet.”

The Captain’s mouth opened, his expression changed from utter frustration to amazement. Annoyed amazement, if Fluellen read his facial expressions correctly.

“How—”

“Sir, I appreciate the interest, and I assure you it’s way more simple than you might imagine. We already had dialed the probes into receiving frequencies—all that I needed to do was access that which was encrypted. Finding a weakness would allow me to access enough data to maintain a decryption key. As you of course know, the BattleNet is largely encrypted. However, localized networks—those used by facilities on the ground—well, that’s a different tale entirely.”

By way of the holo-projector, Fluellen displayed three different representations of unencrypted networks being used by Covenant forces. He walked off the projector and pointed out to one representation, a pentagonal glyph marked with a “B”.

“This is network designation ‘Beta’. Beta Network was a very small localized network which was used to monitor plasma pumps at one of the Citadel substations our Spartans attacked.”

The holo-projector created a three dimensional projection of a Covenant structure utilizing satellite imagery and visual data gathered early in the operation, before contact with the Spartans was lost. Fluellen walked around the projection and pointed to one side of the building’s image.

“The wall facing bearing 230 had seventeen terminals, one of which a localized agent tapped into on June 15—i.e., a Spartan created an opening into this terminal for us to analyze remotely. As we had not been actively searching for weak points, per your instructions to maintain communication only with EI probes on July 13, this local tap was only discovered by me on June 17.”

Fluellen turned to Captain Jones. The Captain was growing increasingly flustered, but he was still stunned in silence. Fluellen couldn’t tell if he was impressed or searching for a reason to purge him from the core.

“Captain Jones,” Fluellen addressed him, “after access to Beta Network via EI probe Niner-Two, I was able to safely and securely access approximately twenty-seven other internal networks. Two, of which, had direct lines to the main Covenant BattleNet. Back channels for AI maintenance.

“At approximately 1800 hours on June 17, per directives from ONI Admiralty which supersede your jurisdiction and security clearance, I was obligated to attempt an infiltration into the localized Battle Network. Using sub-networks designated “Theta” and “Foxtrot” I lured out Covenant AI protection with an unauthorized probe, and then swiftly entered without their noticing. Once in the network, I was able to access enough data to fabricate a decryption key, allowing me to monitor the Covenant’s priorly encrypted chatter.

“From this juncture, I was also able to access standing orders from the Covenant Fleet Commander in system. It directly acknowledges Spartan presence still on moon 4A as late as June 19 . And I quote the Fleet Commander: ‘Demon presence has been confirmed, but we estimate their remaining force size to be minimal. We do no suspect the [Relay] to be attacked with such a small number, assuming they are still alive and working collectively. By order of the Prophets, we shall root out these fiends and flay each we catch alive. Divines Will It...’ end quote.”

Fluellen waved his displays away, leaving the bridge as it was when he entered. The bridge crew murmured amongst themselves as the the Captain rocked on his feet, unsure of what to say. Fluellen was pleased by this. He saw his opening to continue his “report”.

“Sir, I had spoken with Mr.Cohen—”

“Cohen! ” Jones immediately boomed. The Captain, with both fists to his side, turned about face towards Darren Cohen. Cohen had already stood in anticipation of an argument, one hand in his pocket, the other on his cane. The clear visor which covered his face was already aimed towards the Captain, his black eyes and sly smile on display for Jones. A mechanical wheeze was the only other thing heard on the dead silent bridge as he began to speak.

“Captain, it’s obvious now to me,” he paused waiting for a pump to fill his lungs, “—that you do not understand what it means to be a Spartan. Hell, I’m not sure you understand what it means to be a soldier, anymore...”

The Captain loudly stomped his foot on the metal deck, and roared back at Cohen, lunging his finger into his face, and lectured him intensely on ignoring standards of military order. Fluellen had already began audio recording for later continuity, but he continued to direct all deck feeds towards the Captain and Cohen. The wolf had made his move, and he need only to wait.

“Spartans,” Cohen began again, ignoring Jones’s slander, “understand sacrifice well enough to recognize when it isn’t worth the effort. As Mr. Fluellen has clearly displayed to us here,” he addressed the bridge, “you, sir, are missing a larger picture to what constitutes as acceptable loss—”

“Now, you listen here,” Captain Jones barked, “you are to report to your quarters immediately, and you are not to come out until we are back on Reach—is that clear? You have brainwashed and sicced this AI on me because you need someone to blame for your little monsters—your sick science experiments being ground into hamburger! Goddamn, child soldiers the lot, none of them even a fuckin’ day over eighteen...”

“Sir,” Cohen raised his hand and gently pushed the captain’s finger from his face, “those ‘little monsters’ have every right to fight. All of them are even more decorated warriors than yourself, not that a Navy flyboy—”

Captain Jones grabbed Cohen with both his hands, one hand on his neck, the other on his lung pump. Cohen swiftly began to choke.

“This is illegal, Cohen! ILLEGAL! No one will disrespect me on my fucking boat! You will rot in the brig. This whole Operation you cooked up stinks to high heaven of ONI bullshit. How I ever allowed a civilian contractor on board this ship, is beyond me—clearance from a Rear Admiral or not! Sure enough: here he is plotting to take over! Listen to me, Cohen: if you continue any-goddamn-further with this bullshit, in serving of UNSC Articles of War and Justice: I will execute your ass all over the fucking walls myself—”

A cry rang out on the deck.

“Leave him be, Jones!”

The navigational officer, Marco Dorota, stood service pistol in hand. He was flanked by the Sergeant of the on-board Marine security. Jones looked back at Cohen, a wide smile creeping through the visor of his medical mask. Jones snapped, and punched Cohen in a fit of rage, cracking his visor and tossing him to the ground. He turned to the bridge crew, flabbergasted and infuriated. He looked down at the frail man, who simply continued to smile back at him. Jones’s face was crimson with rage.

“You son of a bitch—you planned this…” He looked back to his crew who now stood at their stations. He raised his arms pleading with them, “Why are you doing this?! This is illegal—you’ll all be court martialed—you’ll be executed!”

The sergeant stepped towards the captain, towering over him. Jones flinched when she put her face right before his.

“Mister Jones,” she growled, “you have been relieved of duty. Navigational Officer Commander Dorota was chosen by the bridge crew to act as Captain. Your emotional state has made you unfit to command this, or any vessel any longer. Your inability to properly safeguard our ground forces speaks to that.”

The sergeant raised her arm and gestured to the bridge crew, and then continued her rebuttal: “This crew has accepted the likelihood of court martial and what that means. I think it’s about time you accepted reality, too.”

Without a moments noticed, she knocked the captain out with a swift headbutt to his face, breaking his nose in the process. He hit the floor with a thud. Fluellen, ended his recording.

“No hard feelings, mate.” the sergeant chuckled, wiping her brow of blood, “I’m just following orders from someone who gives a damn.”

***

0515 Hours, June 20, 2545 (Military Calendar)/ Bridge of UNSC Boudica

Fluellen had stayed mostly quiet during the “mutiny” on the Boudica. Really, he had little to do with it beyond his report. He was virtually unable to disrupt a superior in such a manner. But, the grey area had been explored: in the event an acting officer was mentally unable to serve, he could answer to the acting captain or any other officer placed in charge. This was as he had expected. But, what he hadn’t expected was how easily things had happened—it had left him with the sinking suspicion his mutiny had little to do with him. It was apparent that the bridge had already come to that conclusion before he confronted the captain. He believed he knew why.

Cohen had mentioned to Fluellen days prior his belief that Jones was likely unfit for duty due in his emotional state. Jones’s home planet of Miridem had fallen in the months prior, and he had only been notified that all civilian survivors were accounted for a week before. His family, unaccounted for, had been glassed along with the planet. The Captain was a very strong willed man, but mixed with his lack of perception and rejection of Fluellen’s urges to action, Cohen felt that Jones had jeopardized the mission in his “emotional state”. It seems that the bridge crew had, in time, felt the same way. Cohen then simply followed “their lead”.

But Fluellen saw through that.

Darren Cohen was a mixed bag. Fluellen knew his type well enough to know that he used people as long as they were worth using, and made sure they were out of his way when he his agenda needed completion. Cohen had likely urged, implied, or complained to the officers aboard the Boudica to consider the notion of the Captain’s emotional state until they eventually agreed Jones could no longer lead them. Fluellen could have alerted Commander Dorota to Cohen's antics, but It just so happened that his agenda, the completion of RAUCOUS SOLITUDE, had aligned with Fluellen’s. It was arguably terribly illegal, but Fluelln found it hard to fault him. That is what made him dangerous: he represented chaos of a sort.

After sending Jones to the brig, the bridge crew swiftly gathered to meet at the helm of the ship. The ODST squad, which had made up the Boudica’s security detail, had been briefed by their Sergeant: Waimarie Paiwei. It wasn’t long before the ODST’s were already readying themselves for an extraction mission. Sergeant Paiwei, however, had yet to be sold on the plan Cohen had cooked up.

“You’re crazy.” Paiwei sighed.

“Maybe,” Cohen replied “but, this would be our only way to verify the mission is either moving towards completion, or that its a total loss. It's also the only way those Spartans are getting extracted, now.”

“If they’re even still alive.” Paiwei reminded Cohen.

Cohen smiled at her. “Of course, Sergeant.”

Fluellen chimed in; the rest of the crew had been hesitant to speak up.

“It’s settled then?”

“I don’t like it” Dorota spoke up, “but, we have put ourselves on the line for this very reason. There’s not much to like about our plan, but Cohen is right: it’s the only way we give this some finality, and get those Spartan’s the hell out of there… you have my green light, Cohen. Fluellen?”

“Aye, sir?” Fluellen saluted Dorota.

“Ready the ship for atmospheric entry, and get the EI probes readied to support the drop team. Fluellen: all assets are available for use. You don’t need my permission: just do it.”

“Aye, aye.”

Paiwei made her way to the door of the bridge, placing her helmet on as she left—she had already geared up in her standard ODST armor. She turned back to the group as she polarized her visor. She shook her head, and laughed. She left without saying another word. Fluellen was hopeful that she would be able to pull off what was likely the hardest landing of her career, in multiple senses. The margin of error was high, and a mistake would land her team into a literal army of Covenant. They wouldn’t last seconds.

Fluellen bowed and faded from the projector.

Fluellen’s job as the shipboard AI was hardly over; he had been working in the background for the entire ordeal, in fact. He wasn’t there to make fancy speeches, or presentations for an ineffective Captain: he was there to see the mission through. While the conversation had been ongoing, he was already redirecting probes, priming the ship for atmospheric entry, updating then ODST’s mission parameters, and removing the red-tape from all lockers they would need to access. Most importantly, short of navigational data for their random jump, he began to purge the Boudica’ s databanks of anything that might lead back to Earth or the Inner Planets. The Cole Protocol was now in effect.

Whatever the stakes were before, they were now raised. The ODST’s were tasked to land with the Boudica’s lifeboat at the top of the Citadel. Their mission: rendezvous with the Spartans, assuming they were actively seeking to complete their mission—that or they would confirm that nothing remained to be extracted. Either way, the Boudica was going to buzz the Citadel relay tower in atmosphere when the mission was deemed over. The Prowler class vessel would remain a ghost until they entered the atmosphere. From then on, it would be the job of Fluellen and the bridge crew to extract them out, and to escape into Slip Space.

His “hands” full, Fluellen shut the proverbial door to the workshop of the last week to release his sense of higher obligation. But, after a short review, he vowed to return again to the..."happening" on the bridge. He hadn’t felt right since the ordeal. Something was wrong. For a long while, he could not explain it—he truly had never felt it before. But he now believed his considerations on the matter were correct.

He was terrified of Darren Cohen.

Chapter 3: Last Ride
0520 Hours, June 20, 2545/ Covenant Barracks

Drew, walked back to collect his supplies, giving Annalee a moment to collect her thoughts...and reload her pistol. She was grateful to have at least some ammunition now. But the reality was that the subsonic, small caliber bullets her pistol utilized would be virtually useless against the powerful energy shields that Elites fielded. She would need something else to take the edge off their armor. As if hearing her thoughts, Spike handed Annalee a Covenant Plasma pistol he nabbed off a Grunt corpse. If set to overcharge the pistol would burn through even the strongest shields on Elites—according to scouting reports. She couldn’t trust, though, that it would fire more than twice at that charge. It was a bit of a gambit, but…

She set the plasma weapon to her side. She would hold onto it... just in case.

Drew joined the group again. He dropped two assault packs on the ground that he and Spike had hidden in the rafters while they were lying in wait. The packs were loaded with enough weapons and ammunition for the three of them to share, but it was still far less than they had hoped to assault a Covenant base with. Depending on how they intended on entering the Citadel tower, Annalee knew they could burn through their ammo quickly. She didn’t know if conservation was going to get the job done, though.

Drew tossed a DMR to Spike; it was his weapon of choice. Spike reached out, catching the rifle by the stock, and racked a round into the chamber. Spike had always been a deadshot, so Annalee was relieved he was going to be able to be their sharpshooter. As he passed Annalee, he tucked the DMR’s corresponding magazines into his ammo-pouch, then took a position just inside the busted barracks door, keeping watch. He was intent on assuring their anonymity for the time being.

Annalee was relieved to see a working assault rifle in the pack. She shouldered and began inspecting it. The rifle was in working order, though it’s Smart-Link optic suite was gone. She snapped the iron-sights on the rifle into place. It was an unsuppressed weapon, but it would do its job fine if things got sporty. She was positive Wei would have approved—the rifle was an MA5B sporting almost double the magazine capacity than all other MA5 rifle variants. Between the rifle and her Carbine, she was loaded for bear.

Drew reloaded the silenced SMG he had been carrying, then unzipped the second pack—that bag was clearly his gear. He pulled out a shotgun, dumped a box of shells into his ammo pouch, and fit shells onto a holder he had strapped to his forearm. Drew, on top of being their chief equipment and logistics member, was also a surgeon with a shotgun. After he slung his M90 CAWS shotgun over his shoulder, he reached back into the bag and pulled out two pieces of very different equipment. The first was the undeniable cylinder of a HAVOK tactical nuke. Annalee lit up—Joel, being the Operation lead, carried the HAVOK during their insertion. She thought it had been wrecked or lost, but it turned out Drew was able to recover it during their drop into hell.

Drew opened the keypad to the HAVOK, and reset the bomb for remote detonation—Annalee noted it had appeared to have been set to a kill-switch setting before.

“A little worried there, Drew?” She teased.

Drew waved her away dismissively.

“Can’t recover a fumble if the ball vaporizes the stadium.” he snidely retorted.

Annalee smothered a chuckle, squashing it without fanfare. One thing that all Spartan III’s seemed to share were their morbid sense of humor. They all had hardships and tragedy in their lives and laughter could put things in perspective. When things appeared to be at their most dire, a joke could kill the tension quickly. It felt like an eternity since she could take a step back. But, as freeing as it was, she wasn’t sure that this time and place. She immediately turned her focus back to the issue at hand. If there was ever time to laugh, this was unlikely it. Still, she considered, it probably wouldn’t hurt. She hit Drew's shoulder with her palm, and he feigned to acknowledge her existence. They were on the same page.

The other piece of equipment Drew pulled out was a tactical datapad similar to the one he used to hack the panel in the barracks, but it’s serial port appeared to be housing a datacard—she assumed it had to be ONI’s data mining program. If there was anything to be gleaned from this fresh hell they found themselves in, the ONI mine would find it. Drew's datapad secured in a pouch, the Spartan’s gathered again at the door. Spike took his sight off his DMR scope and leaned towards his squad. He spoke candidly.

“We’re dealing with a reinforced, squadron sized unit,” Spike explained, “Mission parameters are simple: we mine their systems, or we blow it up trying. If we get the data, we will activate our distress beacon and hope that the Boudica is still in system. Only one of us needs to walk away with that data. If they don't come...we take the tower down. Anything to add?”

“I had already set a mission clock for an estimated insertion window of opportunity,” Annalee informed her squad, “I gather we’ve got about 15 to 20 minutes before a watch change, or an early data-stream pulse. We should also expect the possibility the Phantoms will provide gunship support. While the Elites are assessing the surrounding camp, we need to get in and out before the hill comes even more alive.”

“Also,” Drew added, “If anything happens to me, the pad for the datamine just needs to be placed on a master terminal. Any of us can remotely detonate the nuke, too..I’m going to place it back into the rafters here—I’d say we don’t detonate it unless we’re sure the mission is completely FUBAR.”

Drew, pulled out his datapad and moments later, both Spike and Annalee’s HUD’s indicated that they had gained access to the detonation of the HAVOK Nuke. Spike dutifully turned back to watch the outside. Annalee waved Drew over after he jumped back down from the ceiling of the barracks. They both jogged to, and positioned behind Spike, ready to move on his order. Drew placed his hand on Annalee’s shoulder indicating he was covering the rear. She pinged him an acknowledgement, and tapped Spike’s shoulder letting him know they were both ready. Spike held up his hand in a fist, indicating for them to hold.

A squad of Jackals ran by their position, screeching and chirping as they went—too busy to notice the broken door. Spike gave the signal, and the Spartans followed in the squads wake, matching their movements as they trotted towards the main Citadel tower.

The Jackals slowed their run to a jog as they moved closer towards a clearing. It was the same one the Phantoms had earlier dropped the Elite reinforcements. The Spartans continued to keep a low profile behind the Jackal squad as they neared the clearing, using the loudly cackling and shrieking aliens as cover for any ambient noise they would make. As far as the squad went was as far as the Spartans followed, keeping in the shadows to avoid any detection. The Grunts in the camp, having been knocked around and alerted by the Elites, were busy checking their methane rebreather packs. Thankfully for the Spartans, an alert Grunt was still often not alert enough, and they passed dozens during their approach. That, though, was the simple aspect to their end game.

The frenzied movement of the Covenant troops had stirred up enough dirt particulate to create a slight, dusty haze near the ground. Annalee engaged her SPI armor’s “VISR” tool, highlighting her friendlies in green and the Covenant in red on her heads-up display. Due to the nature of 4A's long nights the VISR was a last minute upgrade ONI "graciously" made to all their armor. Annalee hadn't want to be hindered in the slightest, and though the ground near the tower base was lit decently, they would need every edge in a firefight. Even with the dust cloud obscuring some of the area, with the VISR activated Annalee could see the last stretch between the landing zone and the main entrance well enough. It was swarming with Covenant units, her HUD displaying them as an undulating sea of red.

As their Jackal squad joined the larger group, the Spartans found a pile of crates and hid among them, intending to stay out of direct view and in the shadows. Now, on high alert, the tower was guarded by Jackal sharpshooters; the squad the Spartans had followed had already joined their comrades and began to take positions to do the same. Among the throng of aliens, Annalee also spotted what she had been dreading the most: an Elite.

Compared to the Elite, all the other Covenant appeared as a mangled mess of children—it was massive. The Elite, clad in a dark blue armor, was busy directing and overseeing the movement outside the tower. Blue, from what Annalee remembered from briefings, indicated the Elite was less experienced, but still a competent warrior. Measured against the larger than average Spartans, the Elite towered over them easily and she knew even an incompetent soldier of that size was formidable. Annalee had only been briefed on Elites—she had never faced one before this moment. The briefings, holo-depictions included, had not done justice for how truly monstrous they appeared. Their mandibles, the armor, its obvious fury and fervor as it roared and snarled orders. It was disgustingly terrifying.

“I don’t think we’re getting in here…” Drew chimed in. Annalee and Spike nodded in agreement.

“We may need a diversion,” Annalee suggested, “A grenade in a plasma coil might do the trick…”

“But is it gonna' pull all of these bastards away is the question?”

“Unless you’ve got any other ideas…”

Drew shrugged. She recognized his response: he hadn’t worked out an idea yet, but it was surely brewing.

“Alright then,” Spike cut in “there was a stack about thirty meters back—”

Spike stopped mid sentence, and the group stayed deathly silent. They all fixed their eyes on the same thing: the door they had been watching was opening. The massive gate, which was large enough to allow a Covenant dropship to enter, hissed as its plasma-hydraulics moved the fan-like door sections into an open position. They could hear the buzz from the interior before they could see the source of the uneasy hum.

With only the slightest opening in the door, dozens of insectoid beings flew every direction across the camp. All about the hilltop, Grunts and Jackals ducked at the sight of them, clearly not used to them either. The Spartans pressed themselves harder into the shadows and held their breath as random squads skimmed mere meters over their position, nearly alerting the camp of their existence.

Eventually, the swarm stopped pouring out of the entrance, and some of them returned back into the structure as the door reached its final open position. Annalee nudged Drew, and he pinged her back knowingly. He reached into a pouch on his belt, and pulled out a fiber-optic probe. He snaked the probe over the crates they had hidden behind to get a better view of the opening.

From out of the gate stepped another Elite with one of the insectoid aliens. The Elite’s armor was noticeably different from the other one in more than just color. It’s crimson armor, though sleek and purposeful, also had blue ornamentation; it’s hard edges slightly different, and it’s helmet only slightly larger than the minor’s. The Elite appeared to be conversing with the bug—Annalee was sure the Elite was giving orders. Another Covenant race?, Annalee pondered, How many damn more could there possibly be?

Just beyond the chief Elite and the bug, the Spartans could now see straight into the Citadel tower interior. It was hardly what they had expected. The interior of the building, from the angle they had, was lit from top to bottom with quintessential Covenant terminals. There was little scaffolding or pathways in sight. Dozens of the insectoid aliens flew about accessing the terminals. There were no vehicles, no tanks, no troops. It was manned only by the bugs that flew about the tower interior, at least as far as they could see. What lay farther up the tower was anyone's guess.

“What the hell are they?” Annalee asked in.

“I dunno’” Spike murmured distantly, “Maybe they’re like the Engineer species? They look exactly like giant bugs...”

“Drones? Like bees or ants, maybe?” Drew spit-balled, “maybe they only do busy work? From here it looks like they’re just manning terminals...”

The group turned their attention towards the interior to witness the work at hand. A group of Drones came into view as they lowered a large cylinder from farther up in the tower. As the group reached the ground, they scattered and flew back up into the Keep as another group passed, lowering an identical cylinder. The cylinders glowed, and pulsed a faint blue, purple, and green; Annalee couldn’t tell exactly why. The two Elites began to again bark orders angrily at the Grunts, who in turn hurried to take positions next to the cylinders the Drones had set down. The Grunts then began lugging the canisters out of the tower and into the clearing. The cylinders were easily five meters long and two meters high, but appeared to be mostly empty on the inside—their interiors only somewhat visible through an observation window that surrounded the circumference. The Grunts obscured the Spartan’s view.

Annalee pulled out Mary’s rangefinder to get a clearer look at what was inside the canisters. At a first glance, they appeared to be standard Covenant tech, with each cylinder being capped on either end by a purple tinted alloy cradle. Each window was only slightly opaque, but she could tell that the canisters were obviously housing something unique—something that looked dissimilar to all Covenant tech she had ever seen.

As the Grunts placed the first canister down, there was nothing obscuring her line of sight. She saw the interior clearly, and what she saw confused her.

The canister was made to house a few dozen trapezoidal alloy rods, where either ends of the cylinder held it in place, allowing for it to be easily seen from the outside or—Annalee assumed—accessed. The rods had hard, angled edges, but she could tell they were made up of dozens of longer, more slender sections: the seams separating the pieces pulsed a faint, alien blue. As the next canisters made their way to the clearing, Annalee spoke up. The situation was clear.

“Those are what we’re here for. I think those are their data storage.”

“...You think so?” Spike responded quizzically.

“Whatever those are,” she insisted, “they’re not Covenant—or at least not the sort of Covenant tech we’ve seen before. That alone should make them important to our mission.”

“She’s right” Drew chimed in, “I’ve never seen anything quite like that, Sir. It looks like they’re getting ready to extract them—wait, look—”

As the last cylinder was set down, the chief Elite marched forward, knocking Grunts out of their way as they went. Annalee recognized immediately what it held. The Spartans watched helplessly as the Elite tossed a large explosive charge into the midst of the canisters, with little regard for the scurrying Grunts about them. Seconds later they were awash in a bright light, as the heat and sound from the explosion thrashed their position. Small bits of shrapnel and stone bounced off their armor and landed around them. The Covenant was purging the tower of data. Annalee felt like she was lost again. Why blow it up? Annalee brooded over her theory, ''Why destroy when they could just delete the damn data?... What are they doing?''

“The hell!” Drew spat.

“...They’re making sure we don’t get their data. It’s like a Covenant Cole Protocol...” Annalee speculated. The other two silently agreed.

Spike gestured mutely towards the door. They all returned to watch the fiber-optic feed. More canisters were being unloaded from the tower. The place has to be filled with those, Annalee thought. There was a new issue now as it had become apparent that they were front row to the main event of the evening: the obliteration of their main objective. The Spartans sat in wait; they were surrounded without any good course of action. Spike continued to intently watch the feed, clearly unsure of their next move. Annalee wasn’t going to be critical—any move right now was a bad one. She looked to Drew. Drew had already opened up his datapad, and was intently studying it. After a few minutes, and another explosion shook the camp, he excitedly looked back to Annalee and gestured towards his pad. He had a plan.

“I don’t believe it, but I’ve still got access to a device I planted a few days ago. It’s in this Covenant plasma conduit support structure.” Drew explained, “I’m sure I can change a few variables that might overload a plasma pump. It might cause an explosion here in the camp if we’re lucky… but it’s going to take a few minutes for us to know for sure. It definitely would be a bigger explosion than a dozen plasma barrels.”

Drew turned intently to Spike, “Here’s the catch, it’s got to be a few kilometers away, now. I’d have to send a burst of radio signals through to get things going. Do you want to risk it?” Drew asked Spike.

Spike looked again towards the door, and sighed.

“We’re losing time…okay, do it and make it quick. I don’t want a radio to be the thing that gives us away.”

“Aye, sir.”

“When we hear an explosion,” Spike continued, “we’ll hope and pray that it draws enough attention from these bastards so we can double-time it inside. If Annalee’s right, we should try and make a move on one of these canisters, too. From there… I don’t know, but we’ll cross that road when we get to it.”

Drew quickly got to work, and gave a thumbs up—it was a waiting game, now. The group all stood up, and made ready to sprint across the opening. It was suicide. Annalee had made peace with that reality—there would never be a better chance, though, with their goal being dismantled as they watched. It had to be done, it was their duty.

As they waited for their “signal”, Annalee envisioned a route around the groups of Covenant. Even with a distraction, she would have to pass several dozen covenant troops, including the two Elites, in view. The Drones continued to buzz about the tower inside and out, adding another element she had never truly expected, or had readied to face. But, that came with the territory of being a Spartan. A more worrisome to Annalee was her protection. The SPI armor, while resilient, would not withstand a barrage from the plasma weaponry she saw. Her fear from earlier started to creep back: the unknown bolt of plasma, the errant beam through her head, the plasma grenade fusing to her chest. And, from the fear returned the anger. But, unlike before, she resigned to let it take control—she had seen enough and she was done fighting it. She was ready to lose control.

In combat, she had at times allowed that feeling to wash over her. As much as she was frightened by how rapidly her brain changed, it appeared to help her—it made her better. Her anger often honed her senses and controlled her priorities, and it was different from the rush of adrenaline she had learned to mitigate during her training—before augmentation. While these emotions scared her outside of combat, in combat she felt unshackled and fearless. Her senses became heightened and her vision more crisp—her hate and sadness weaponized into a perfect emotional bomb waiting to disintegrate her enemies. She knew that part of being a Spartan meant having an altered body, but it had always been a struggle to deal with an altered brain. But she was done now: she would become Death, destroyer. She would let it take over and ignore all else but combat. She was most likely going to die anyway, she assumed. She accepted what had scared her before, and why she pushed back against the change: she thought she liked it.

The ground shook, and in an instant the air about them was deafeningly quiet. The rumbling crack of a shock wave rippled through the camp, knocking Grunts over in surprise and fear. It was loud—Annalee could feel its force reverb inside her lungs. The Spartans all began to look about, but they saw nothing. It wasn’t their explosion.

“Shit.”

Annalee expanded her tracker to max range, as she had done earlier. If dropships were inbound, they would need to storm the tower: diversion or not.

“That was a sonic boom—tracker showing an incoming craft!” Annalee alerted Drew and Spike. Drew pulled out his datapad again and began rapidly tapping and swiping the screen.

“Roger, expanding range… Yep, there it is…heading 320 high! IFF indicates…” Drew’s words hung in the air,“...UNSC lifeboat? That can’t be…”

Spike grabbed the datapad from Drew to see for himself.

“No, that can’t be right… did the Covenant find the Boudica?”

Annalee’s heart sank at the thought of being stranded, after having fought as hard as she had. This place had taken nearly everything from her, and now it sought to imprison her? She shooed the idea quickly from her mind and began searching the sky for a contact—the craft was UNSC, after all and they wouldn’t ignore their comrades. Sure enough, the dark and unpolluted sky couldn’t hide the bright light made by the retro-rockets on the lifeboat. It was heading directly towards the tower. Both Annalee and Drew's radios crackled on an open UNSC frequency. They were being hailed.

“This is Sergeant Paiwei radioing on all UNSC frequencies: any UNSC forces respond on the designated secure freq!”

Annalee paused only momentarily to look at Drew. He was just as surprised as her. Spike’s voice echoed in response before they could process what was going on.

“Spartan B337, Spartan Actual responding. Go ahead, Sergeant.”

“Glad to hear from you, sir. We’re going to be landing on the gondola structure at the top of the Citadel. How copy?”

There was silence on Spikes end for a moment. Annalee and Drew glanced at each other. "Did she say they're landing on the gondola?" Drew asked for continuity. Annalee shook her head in disbelief. Spike signaled for Drew to pipe down, and he responded to Paiwei's hail.

“ETA, Sergeant?”

“Thirty seconds sir. If you’ve got survivors, we’re here for you and you alone. We’re getting you off this rock.”

“Best news we've had all day. Secure the LZ as best you can; we’ll see you shortly, trooper.

“Aye sir! Paiwei, out!”

The roar of the rocket engines became increasingly loud, and the alerted camp came alive. Sporadic, aimless plasma fire lit the sky, trying to hit the rapidly approaching craft. It was about this time that a far corner of the camp exploded in a brilliantly bright plume of plasma, lighting the hillside in a blinding artificial sun. The explosive plume sent multiple powerful shock waves through the air as secondary explosions burst from the source. As the explosions subsided, a plasma plume continued to jet stories skyward in a bright, super-heated geyser. Every Grunt or Jackal Annalee could see around her began shrieking and scrambling away in terror, ignoring the orders from the terribly furious Elites. The Drones that were still flying about the camp made their return back to the tower, and back inside.

The landing craft screamed over the Spartans. In the last moments, it fired their retro rockets well above their rated thrust before slamming into the top of the Citadel structure, rocking the tower hard to one side. The structure’s power wavered and held, but parts of the camp had begun to shutdown and remain dark, clearly affected by the raging conduit fire. Somehow, in what Annalee would describe as “absolute pure dumb luck” the Sergeant had “landed” the pod directly into an open hatch of the observatory section of the tower. Annalee didn’t need to even guess, but she aimed the rangefinder to the scaffolding at the top of the tower to see who came out of the ship. Pouring of the back of the ship scrambled a team ODST’s, guns already alight as they were engaged with a wave of drones. Insectoid bodies began to appear from the dark sky, slamming into the ground, turning to chitin masses on impact.

“On my mark!” Spike growled into his radio.

Annalee took a deep breath, and gripped her rifle as if it was a part of her body. She looked to Drew—he looked over and gestured a smile with his finger across his visor. She did the same. The last ride of Team Golf.

“MARK!”

The Spartans jumped from cover and made directly for the door, spread evenly apart across a thirty meter echelon formation. The first few Grunts immediately from their cover didn’t even comprehend the ghost-like figures sprinting through their pack. Annalee counted at least seventy within throwing distance of her. Seconds into their sprint, the shock had worn off the Covenant as she heard plasma weapons responding to gunfire—Drew had just ripped through a crowd of Jackals and was flooded with sporadic plasma fire. The air about them began to crackle with the blues and greens of Covenant plasma weaponry.

Annalee hollered to menace the Grunts around her, and held the trigger down on her rifle letting loose a stream of full-metal-jacket. The rifle cut down, easily, all the lightly-armored Grunts in her wake. Her immediate area was still swarmed, and some Covenant stood to return fire. She felt a bolt hit her shoulder. Her armor held, but hissed as it absorbed the super-heated plasma. The shot had burned through the hardened plate, down to the undersuit mesh and badly burned and blistered her skin. She collected her pistol from her side and fired square into the eye of the Jackal which had shot her. She was lucky the bolt dissipated before going any deeper.

She hurriedly scanned to her side, hoping to see Spike or Drew. They were matching her movement, and were leaving a swath of death in their wake—most Grunts were now fleeing in disarray, unable to fight back against the swift, deadly movement of the Spartans. In the few seconds since Spike called his mark, they all had cleared their way to the main door. That was where the Elites had stood their ground.

Spike was the first to make a callout.

“Elite engaging!— argh !”

Annalee saw Spike get plastered by burst of plasma, and stumble over. She felt as if her brain had become stone; she could feel her body tense, finding strength it didn’t have before. The world before her felt like it moved in slow motion, more so than her Spartan augmentations would account for. She burned with seething hate. She felt stupid; how could anyone enjoy this? Was she sick? She felt like her body was alight with fire, and could only be doused by annihilating the Covenant, by ripping them all limb from limb. Annalee dropped her assault rifle and pulled out the plasma pistol she had at her side. She set it to overcharge—Death had arrived at the Elite’s doorstep.

A few veteran Grunts and Jackals had continued to fire upon the Spartans. Annalee ducked and dodged the incoming fire, too quick to give them a chance to adjust. Spike, on his knee ignored the Elite that stood next to him, and fired his rifle into the Covenant who were trying to regroup. Drew, closing in on the door, was the next closest to the Elite. He fired what he had loaded, keeping its attention away from Spike. Drew had spent his shells at an ineffective distance, but the Elite’s shields shimmered as each shot spread was able to connect, keeping the minor Elite’s attention. The second, chief Elite, having initially taken cover, poked out from behind a dropped canister and set his sights on Spike. Spike, catching the monster’s move at him dropped his DMR and pulled out the assault rifle he had slung on his shoulder. The Elite, dodged or reflected half of Spike’s AR shots before kicking him in the chest, sending him soaring back out into the midst of frenzied Grunts.

Drew, slid to his knees and pulled his SMG from his side, coming to a stop. He shouldered and fired at the Covenant units trying to mob Spike as he gathered himself. Spike had already pulled out his combat knife, and was fighting the Grunts and Jackals jumping at him in hand to hand combat. He was easily able to overpower them, and began working his way back to the door. Drew turned to the minor Elite. It’s sights were already on Drew, and it fired a stream of plasma fire after him. Drew dove, and sprinted parallel to the Elites line of sight.

Annalee had closed the gap.

The minor Elite had only a fleeting moment to see Annalee before she was upon him. She released the overcharge plasma bolt before the Elite could turn to focus his fire on her. It saw the massive bolt and dove, but couldn’t escape it’s tracking arc. The great green bulb splashed hard into the off-balance Elite, and it was thrown to the ground as it’s shields shimmered brightly and then burst. Annalee was already emptying her pistol on the Elite before it hit the ground. Most of the bullets pinged off its armor, but damage had been done as some of the rounds pierced it’s less protected areas.

It tried to push itself back up, but Annalee dove and tackled it back down. Wasting little time, she plunged her knife into its neck. The Elite reached out and grabbed Annalee’s arms, weakly trying to throw her off. She elbowed them aside, then grabbed the hilt of her knife with both hands. In an abruptly sharp move, she ripped its neck open to one side nearly decapitating the alien. Her visor was splattered with thick, purple blood as the Elites arteries shot their contents across the ground, and drained the stunned Elite into oblivion. Annalee stood over its body, her hands drenched in blood. The Elite was very dead.

She hastily looked for her next contact—her next kill.

The chief Elite had already pulled back into the tower center during the blitz at the door, sensing the Spartans had somehow gathered the upper hand. She saw it make its way onto the precarious scaffolding that led to the top of the structure, and then out of sight. Annalee reloaded her pistol immediately. The Elite would wait. As it retreated back into the tower, it had howled some audible order. Soon after, the Drones inside the tower descended back down into the entrance tunnel, plasma pistols in claw. Annalee immediately unslung her Carbine and began firing into the small swarm as they charged towards, over, and around the Spartan team.

“How’s this for busy work, Drew?” She jabbed.

Drew had already taken a defensive position in the tunnel and had been landing shots on the drones as they swarmed about them. He was in his element. Spike had also rejoined with the Spartans at the mouth of the main entrance, firing and reloading his assault rifle as he went. Annalee could see, though, he did this only with one arm—the other was broken. He stood with Drew guarding the entrance as the Covenant outside was attempting to regroup and move on the door.

The Drones didn’t appear to have armor, but instead a hard, exoskeleton which deflected some shrapnel and rounds. It proved to be mostly useless against the Spartans combined fire as they quickly repelled most of the remaining back into the tower. They turned to focus on the greater force growing outside.

“Drew!” Annalee called out, diving from the grasp of a retreating Drone, “the door!”

Drew began scouting the tunnel. Firing on the Drones that got near to him as he and Spike moved back-to-back, Drew would reload Spike’s weapon when it emptied under Annalee's covering fire. They came to a holographic terminal positioned just inside the door frame. Drew reached out to it, presumably hoping for the best. Sometimes interacting with Covenant tech was honestly guesswork—they hadn’t the faintest idea what they had gotten into.

With a continuing streak of luck, the doors began to creak and shut the fan-like sections from the top down. The entrance tunnel lights began to flicker and the door almost slowed to a crawl, struggling to maintain enough power to keep moving. Annalee could see that the oft small plasma conduits and light fixtures that generally littered interior walls of Covenant structures were dead or empty. The door wasn’t getting enough plasma to force it shut—their sabotage of the conduit appeared to be coming back to bite them in the ass.

“I’m not sure it’s gonna’ shut!” Spike nagged Drew, a hint of challenge in his tone. Drew began rapidly scanning the structure of the door, hoping to find anything that would help.

All the while, Grunt veterans had successfully rallied a large Covenant contingent and together began a counter-attack on the door. Annalee rushed to join Spike and Drew at the partially closed door as a hundred Grunts charged towards them suicidally, howling and barking wildly as they ran directly into the Spartan’s fire. Drew had thrown Spike the dead Elite's Plasma rifle; the Covenant weapon didn’t need to be reloaded, and the Spartan’s couldn’t spare the time to stop firing for him.

The camp had become smart to what was going on, and more Covenant were converging on their location. There were too many for them to stop. The door had nearly come to a halt, closed only enough to offer cover on either side of the fan doors. The Grunts kept coming, and their bodies began piling at the entrance, The Spartans were forced to scale their bodies and fire over them.

“If you’ve got an idea Drew, now’s the damn time!” Spike snapped.

“Pull back!” Drew called out.

The Spartans moved back farther into the tunnel and soon Grunts began climbing over their fallen comrades and through the space left open by the door. As Annalee and Spike continued to mow the Grunts down as they reached the top of the pile, Drew loaded an explosive slug-round into his shotgun. He signaled for the Spartans to hold fire, then took aim.

He fired, and the round hit a brightly glowing conduit above the door, severing a pressurized plasma artery. The severed line poured molten plasma out onto the entering Grunts, burning and incinerating them on contact in a terrible smokey wheeze; their methane tanks bursting and burning soon after. The pressure within the plasma-hydraulics dropped as if a cable holding it had been cut. The doors uncontrollably slammed shut, crushing the bodies in its path and closing the last, small gap to the outside. With exception of the whistle of the cooling plasma: the corridor was dead quiet.

Annalee exhaled.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Drew.” Spike spat.

“There’s your closed door, sir ” Drew responded smugly. He took no time, and immediately began caring for Spike’s arm.

Annalee glanced down at the Carbine. The barrel was red hot and she had almost burned completely burned through her rounds. She was sure she wasn’t the only one; they had fired hundreds of rounds in the last two minutes.

Two minutes, Annalee repeated. According to her mission clock, from the time of Spike’s “mark” to the closed door… it had only been two minutes. It was the most intense skirmish of her career—of her life. And it was far still from over: the tower would still be full of some remaining Elites and Drones. She glanced back at the one Elite body on the ground. A shiver ran down her spine as her brain throbbed.

''Did that really happen? Did I kill an Elite?''

She shouldered her commandeered Carbine, and began walking down the ramp towards the center of the structure. As she reached the end of the tunnel, she could see that the immediate interior was devoid of Covenant. The structure of the Citadel tower laid before her.

“SITREP on the data-rods, Spartan—” Spike called down, painfully to Annalee, “are there any left?”

Annalee shook her head and laughed. Drew and Spike stared blankly.

“I don’t think we’re gonna’ have to worry about those rods, Sir. We’ve hit the mother lode.”

Chapter 4: Rendezvous
0545 Hours, June 20, 2545/ Covenant Citadel Tower, Ground Floor

Spike made his way to the end of the entryway to catch a glance of the tower’s interior. Annalee kept her Carbine raised at the ready, searching the trusses and walkways for movement—Elites were still out there, and they had the high ground.

Spike’s left arm was now in a makeshift sling; he had collapsed Drew’s SMG stock, using the weapon like an automatic pistol. His SPI armor had received the brunt of plasma fire, his chest and shoulder battle plate burned away. Annalee could see where the bolts had burned down to his muscle in some places. The Elite kick hadn’t snapped his bones, but it still had managed to destroy the tendons in his arm, rendering it useless. He didn’t ask for it or complain because he was laser focused on the task at hand, but Annalee pitied him.The Biofoam was keeping the pain away...for now. The quicker they got him to a corpsman, the better.

“What do you think it is?” Spike asked as he nursed out a pained grunt.

“I don’t have any idea.” Annalee pondered aloud, “Definitely doesn’t look Covenant, though.”

The two looked on as a large, almost monolithic, trapezoidal pylon floated in the center of the tower; it was almost as if one of the data-rods had been mirrored and made a few dozen times larger. A holographic menagerie of Covenant terminals lined the walls of the tower—they appeared to be monitoring the mute, grey structure. Many directly attached to it via flimsy, hanging wires and hoses; most of the terminals would be inaccessible by anything that didn't float or fly. At the center of the pylon, far up into the tower, they had only a glimpse of where the Covenant had breached the interior.

“I’m gonna’ need an update, Sergeant.”

Through immense static, a small signal got through

“▒▒ay▒▒in? Ove▒”

Drew jogged down from the blast door to their pow-wow. He had grabbed one of the data-rods out of a canister on his way and chimed in.

“I think the tower must be interfering with our signal—whoa.”

Drew halted in place, and turned his attention to the floating beam.

“More than meets the eye, I guess? Alright, maybe that's what's causing the interference.”

Spike reached out clunked his SMG into Drew’s chest.

“Focus, Drew. Is the door gonna’ hold?”

Drew pushed the SMG away gently.

“Yes. It’s a blast-door—they’re going to have to cut or pry it open. It’ll take some time. I’m certain all the other doors relied on the same plasma line. The only way to us, now, is from the top...or cutting through the battle-plate. They’re just now starting to get the burst outside under control, but that’s not going to affect the damage we did in here.”

“They still have the Drones and Phantoms,” Annalee cut in, “the ODST’s are caught in the middle, right now. We need to move if we want to support them, too.”

“—Here’s the other thing, about these rods.”

Drew pulled the one he had grabbed and held it in front of the others.

“It’s dead in the water. I think they automatically power down when removed from their source… My guess is that thing is housing thousands of these, and the Covies were forced to study them here. I'm willing to bet the Covenant don’t know exactly what these do because it sure as hell isn’t Covenant technology we’re dealing with...that said they still know more than we do.”

Spike glanced up the structure. Annalee could see his strain through his armor. He was hurt worse than he let on. Thinking clearly was likely becoming difficult to do through the pain. Still, he fought through it.

“Let’s try and mine it at the source, then. Maybe it’s a safeguard—to prevent tampering. Check your corners and keep your eyes up: we know the Elites are out there. Let’s move, Spartans.”

The team readied themselves, then sprinted across the tower’s “rotunda” towards the main truss system. The makeshift scaffolding climbed upwards to the pylon access, mid-tower. Each of them trained their weapons upward, scanning, and searching, knowing that the Elites must be lying in wait. They would have to meet them to see their mission through.

Annalee’s legs burned with each step. She instructed the SPI suit to inject her with a small dose of Polypseudomorphine to ease the muscle pain which had consumed her body. Their last skirmish had drained them all. Even Spartans tired eventually, and Annalee knew they had been pushed to the brink days ago. None of them had eaten a full meal in a week, and each of them had been fighting day and night for the same amount of time. Battered, injured, tired and hungry, they still faced their hardest conflict yet—and they didn’t know exactly where and when it would begin. They had to assume every moment could be the catalyst, and so they stayed on guard. The anticipation weighed heavily on her, but she shooed what worries she could. She was trained for this, and she promised herself she wouldn’t falter, especially when the end was in sight.

Calling the scaffolding a “walkway” would be liberally considerate of the mess they were forced to navigate. The path was a conglomerated series of curving, tight paths with alien ladders and steps. Large gaps littered the climb that the Spartans were routinely forced to leap across. Clearly, Annalee concluded, the structure had not been designed with Grunts or Elites in mind—It was designed with the Drones in mind. Oddly enough, the scaffolding triggered memories of her childhood home. It was an old, tightly packed city. Walls of older, neglected red-brick buildings supported the next as they sunk into each other—Gemini structures barely standing on their own. As her muscle-memory kicked in, she was flooded with a wave of nostalgia for climbing over the rooftops, and balancing across flimsy bridges of plywood and corrugated metal which spanned the gaps of narrow alleys far above the streets.

Behind her, as Spike leaped over a decent sized gap, a small frame snapped under his weight and crumbled. It held long enough for Annalee to grasp his good arm and yank him to what she prayed was still solid platform. It was all very sketchy—even the buildings back home, Annalee remembered, were built to last in some respect. It was becoming very obvious that this tower wasn’t. The Covenant hadn’t intended on remaining here long at all.

“Motion Tracker is being jammed.” Drew alerted the rest of the Spartans.

Directly above them was the only thing they could call a “floor” in the entire tower. A half-circle platform jutted out towards the pylon. Two walkways along it’s center facing side climbed to the landing above them. Until they reached those walkways up, the Spartans were forced to tread along a less-than meter wide paths below. It was hardly enough room to maneuver if the Elites lay in wait above.

“Obvious choke points; they’re almost certainly above us.” Spike whispered, “We have to get a better look, and get off this scaffolding. We’re sitting ducks, here.”

“I could try and get a look over the side.” Annalee suggested, “There’s a good hold, there—” she pointed to the edge of the floor overhang. “If you you can boost me, I can do the rest.”

“Do it." Spike was quick to answer, his mind already made up, "We need to double-time it off this scaffolding. Be quick.”

Spike took their forward position to keep watch on the paths leading to the floor above. The platform itself was a rough, Covenant structure layered with pipes, sheet metal, and wiring along it’s sub-floor. Annalee plotted her course mentally as Drew readied himself to help boost her. Above them, there was an open frame in the floor which would allow her to move along a recessed span which stretched the length of the platform. From there, she could then make her way to the edge to catch a glance of what was above them. All she had to worry about was plunging to the bottom. She estimated she might be able to survive a fall, but she would likely obliterate her spine and legs doing so. Not falling it is, she concluded.

“You, ready?” Drew asked. Annalee slung her weapon on her back and placed her boot in Drew’s gauntlets—he was crouched and ready to throw her weight as she pushed off, giving her just enough boost to hopefully reach the span.

“Boost me.”

Annalee and Drew timed their movements, and on Annalee’s third pump she shoved hard off the floor, and Drew flung her straight up. Gravity severely objected. Annalee extend her arms out and caught herself in the span as she topped out in her arc. She pushed hard to her sides, propping herself in place. Carefully, she brought her legs up and in between the supports, and then pushed her torso up against the floor. After a few tense moments, she knew she was secure and looked back to Drew. He flashed a thumbs up, and then wiped faux-sweat from his brow. She shook her head.

Slowly, she made her way along the bottom of the platform, careful and focused to make positively sure she always either had her arms or legs holding her full weight. She meticulously shifted her way towards the edge, avoiding thoughts about falling. Below her lay what she estimated to be roughly ten to fifteen stories of empty air. The pylon had began at about the second story mark, and continued nearly to the top of the structure. She noticed now, her focus ahead of her, that it was supported by nothing, floating freely. The Covenant tech was attached to it, and not the other way around—the Covenant tower encased it. One came before the other .

Propping her arms in the span, she shimmied her way to the edge. Using her legs as a pendulum, she began to swing, and flung a leg up and over the side, grasping the top of the floor with her ankle. Gripping the side with her thighs, she reached over with an arm, and pulled herself over the edge, keeping a low profile—an arm and leg remained over the side in case she had to make a quick retreat back beneath the platform.

The top of the floor was a mess and completely devoid of movement. The platform was packed with the empty canisters used to transport the data-rods, as well as a spattering of general purpose crates. Strewn all about the floor were at least seven Drone carcasses...but no sign of Elites; no weapon crates, no active terminals—nothing. The dead Drones were certainly out of place, though. She signaled to Spike that there were KIA's, but no sign of life up top. He signaled back for her to standby, and be ready to make a move.

Annalee slid back over the edge and hung by her hands. Spike and Drew stacked up, and began to move forward towards the ramps, splitting as the paths wound their way up. They both trained their weapons up, and then over the floor, searching for hidden threats. Annalee pulled herself up again, and slowly made her way onto the floor as the other two reached the top. They all intently looked towards the closed door at the end of the floor, opposite their position. Something was still jamming their motion trackers.

“Friendly! Friendly!” a voice called out.

From behind a crate a pair of hands holding a suppressed SMG appeared. The Spartans lowered their weapons. Three more pairs of hands additionally came from behind crates near the door, and from the shadows came a fireteam of ODST’s, the first friendlies they had met face to face with since they dropped from the Boudica. Annalee was flushed with a bittersweet relief.

One of the ODST’s stepped forward. Nearly as tall as Annalee, the ODST was clad entirely in black tactical gear, seldom a muted insignia of a sergeant on their breast-plate, and a white fern decal across the top of their helmet.

“Master Sergeant Waimarie Paiwei, Sir—17th ODST. Sight for sore eyes, yous are, Spartans.”

“SITREP, Sergeant—our communications are being jammed.” Spike perked up. Paiwei pointed to the door.

“We assumed it was the tower, but we think it’s that...thing. It’s doing a number on our radios; some sort of multi-band interference. It's worse near the opening. Besides that, we took some casualties up top. Three injured, one KIA, but the rest are able to fight. We were engaged with several giant bugs, sir. Never seen anything like it—”

“We’ve met those, too, Sergeant. Any Elites?”

“No, Sir—no Elites. Just bugs. A couple attempted Phantom drops, but we kept them off the gondola. Really, just lots and lots of bugs…”

Spike silently shifted in his stance. Paiwei saw all she needed to see. The Elites were near.

“Troopers!” Paiwei hollered, “Keep watching that door. If anything opens it, and it’s not human, you fucking drop it!”

The ODST’s quickly scrambled to take positions behind the scattered Covenant crates, and trained their gaze to the door. Annalee wasn’t certain that a contingent of Elites would be slowed by a few Helljumpers. If they came through that door, it was going to be a hot mess.

While Paiwei filled Spike in on their extraction plan, Drew waved Annalee over to the catwalk that reached out to the open section of the Pylon. The hull on the pylon appeared to have been forced open; makeshift connections flooded the opening. Drew and Annalee walked slowly, keeping their balance as the walkway began to bend and creak under their weight—clearly not designed for anything larger than the Drones they found. As they reached the end of the catwalk, Drew pulled out his Datapad and tried to scan the pylon. Eventually he turned and scanned the Covenant terminals and begrudgingly put his pad away. Annalee frowned.

“The Covenant terminals here are fried, and this pad doesn’t know what to make of this thing. If I had to guess, I think that it’s been purged some other way—I’m reading nothing through the plating. I’m gonna' have to get a look inside—see if I can’t interface with a data-rod, or something else.”

“Roger. I’ll cover you.” Annalee responded.

As Drew crawled into the access way, Annalee took in her surroundings. The tower was still eerily inactive. Only the faint hum and chatter of electronics—or, was that really all she heard? She dialed up her in-helmet audio suite to listen in on the ambiance of the tower. Yes —there was something else. She could make out distinct clacks, a metallic rip, the faint hiss of ozone.

“Everyone on alert. I think the Covenant is cutting into the blast-doors below.”

Spike, walked to the floors edge and peered down. She didn’t need to see his face to see his emotion. He was becoming worried.

“We’ve got little time, then. The Boudica is already on standby in atmosphere. We’re going to have to get back topside to let them know we’re ready to dust off. Drew, we had to be gone ages—”

“—Hold on! You’re not gonna’ believe this” Drew grunted from inside the pylon.

Annalee turned to see him struggling to pull a cord—no, a tentacle— up and out of the pylon. Drew had hold of a Covenant Engineer. Annalee raised her carbine, and aimed pass Drew to the floating, black-clad monstrosity.

“Drew! Those explode, what the hell are you doing!?” Annalee growled in confusion.

“No, wait, look—” Drew said as he pulled the alien out of the pylon. The Engineer immediately tried to fly away, taking Drew with him like a child attached to a balloon, but Drew grabbed another tentacle, and yanked it back.

“Agh!—I’ve studied these things! Their explosive is remote or damage activated. If he wanted to kill me he would have already. This little bugger—oof! Hey, c’mere!—he isn’t about to kamikaze me...aren’t you?”

The alien, which had given up floating away from the Spartan, looked at Drew knowingly. It wobbled it’s neck back and forth. Well I’ll be damned, Annalee mused. It was communicating with Drew. Annalee let her carbine’s muzzle fall only slightly; it was still Covenant after all...and it still was rigged to explode.

“We don’t have time to make friends, Spartan,” Spike snarled as he walked to the edge of the catwalk, “we need to move!”

Drew patted the alien, and gestured his arm for everyone to stay back. Annalee could hear Spike swear through his helmet. Drew continued talking to the engineer as soothingly as he could.

“Hey, hey, hey! Calm down, big guy! Now, I need to go, okay? You understand? I’m leaving. Before I go, though: can you show me that device you were working on? C’mon, don’t be afraid…”

The engineer hesitated, looking about at the troopers and the Spartans. It looked back to Drew who depolarized his mask, trying to look as friendly as he could. Either that worked, or the alien felt pleasing Drew was the only way it was getting released. The Engineer began to stir. From underneath it’s sack-like abdomen, it reached a tentacle around it’s rear and to it’s armors base. From it’s armor, it fetched a data-rod which it had been hiding. The rod was still functioning—its seams pulsed a bright blue, and small holographic glyphs skated randomly about its surface. Drew cautiously reached out and touched the data-rod.

Ka-pang!

The tower shook with fury, and all its power was immediately sapped leaving Annalee in the dark. The walkways swayed, creaked, and the pylon shifted about, banging and deforming the one they stood on. Annalee hopped back to the main pathway and reactivated her VISR, to see better in the dark about her. She looked back momentarily for Drew and was instantly blinded. Her neck snapped back, and her chest felt crushed as she was violently thrown back by an explosion. A piece of shrapnel slammed into her helmet and shattered her faceplate. Her HUD was gone.

Dazed, she stayed motionless, splayed on the floor as the darkness swirled around her. As her ringing ears equalized, she could hear gunfire and screams. She peered about as her eyes began to adjust to the dark, and she could make out the silhouettes of Spike and Paiwei firing towards the now opened door at the end of the platform; the only light came from the flames of their muzzles.

Her augmentations gave her a weak night-vision, but it was enough to see clearly the body of another trooper near the door: their head, and an arm were cut off completely. The other trooper was being held in the air by a translucently cloaked foe. The trooper had been rammed through completely by a sort of plasma weapon—a blade—which Annalee hadn’t seen before. The jumper’s guttural moans quickly subsided as his invisible murderer became completely inundated with gunfire. The trooper’s body was torn into by the fire Spike and Paiwei spilled at the Elite infiltrator. Their lifeless body was immediately ditched in a heap on the floor as the Elite retreated again to the shadows.

She looked back to the pylon. The tower’s power had already began to cycle again, but most of its lights still remained off, seldom a few terminals along the outer walls whose holographs hazily glowed green, purple, and blue. The pylon was still there, but the walkways to, and around it were gone. Peppered about its blunt, grey facade was splintered obsidian-black shrapnel from the remains of the  Engineer’s armor. Drew was nowhere in sight.

Propping herself to a knee, she now felt blood on her temple—her face had been blasted with micro-shrapnel from her faceplate. She had luckily shut her eyes as that happened. Her eyelids stung to high hell; she could just have easily been blinded. She removed her helmet and pulled her pistol to ready. She could make out a small amount of distortion moving fast towards Paiwei from behind.

Annalee wound up, and tossed her helmet, hitting a cloaked Elite square in the chest, causing its camouflage to flicker along with its shields. Alerted, Paiwei turned and fired a full rifle magazine into the stunned Elite’s center mass—Annalee joined her as it’s shields crackled, and gave way. Annalee’s small caliber bullets, again, injured but couldn’t completely pierce and kill the stunned Elite. Paiwei, seeing this, unholstered her own sidearm and dropped her empty rifle. Annalee recognized the pistol instantly: it was an infamous M6D. The Elite, which had slightly recovered, railed back and lunged at Paiwei with their plasma blade. The Sergeant coolly, expertly fired a single shot, connecting with the Elite square in its throat. The M6D’s explosive magnum round popped and the Elite fell flat to the ground at Paiwei’s feet. A purple, bloody pulp where its head once had been gurgled lifelessly.

Spike, all the while, had kept the other Elites busy. From behind cover, an Elite engaged him from his flank with it’s plasma sword drawn. He ducked first, dodged the second swing as it cut his sling. He countered by slamming the stock of his SMG into the Elite’s hand, knocking it’s sword away. He unsheathed and jousted his combat knife hard, up through the Elites shields and mandibles. It stuck into the bottom of its skull, severing its brain from its spine.

Another Elite used it’s comrades diversion to move in and attempt to grapple Spike. Spike let go of his knife, and pushed the dead Elite away. He fired his SMG in a full burst at the Elite, but he couldn’t breach its energy shields before it grabbed him by the neck and his good arm. Annalee got to her feet, and reloaded the last magazine of her pistol. Paiwei turned and aimed at the Elite as well. Both paused, unable to find a shot. The Elite positioned Spike as a shield, blocking them from interfering with his prey.

Spike wrapped his legs around the Elites arm and began to twist and pull, trying to free himself by breaking its arm. Annalee and Paiwei continued to hold their fire in fear of hitting Spike as the two tussled, the Elite twisting and tossing Spike about. Spike was still being choked, and was struggling to stay conscious; they had to make a move.

“Cover me!”

Annalee sprinted to Spikes aid. The Elite angrily roared and it fell to its knees as Spike began to bend its arm backwards—it’s grip still tight on his neck. He glanced to see Annalee approaching, and it raised it’s other arm. A small plasma blade pulsed to life from it’s wrists—the Elite plunged it deep into Spike’s chest. Annalee screamed in anger, and dove at them. She tackled the Elite over and it fell backwards finally releasing Spike. The Elite kicked Annalee off, and quickly scrambled to its feet. Paiwei had a shot.

Annalee picked up Spike’s SMG with her free hand and proceeded to pump what was left of both of their weapons into the gullet of the Elite as Paiwei worked to blast its shield away. It’s body spasmed from being torn into by a hail of bullets. It quickly hit the ground, dead.

Spike coughed—his lungs were quickly filling with blood. Annalee ran to his side and pulled out her last Biofoam canister. Spike lazily waved it away. She looked on helpless.

“I’m done for—just make sure you get out of here, okay?”

“Spencer…”

A steady screen of plasma fire erupted from behind the dead Elite. Annalee rolled from the first volley. She caught three distinct firing lines, and one led back to a familiar silhouette: the chief Elite. Another Elite stepped up and took aim at Paiwei, who had returned fire when the barrage began. Paiwei’s trooper armor wouldn’t take a beating like it was about to get. Annalee side-stepped in front of the Elites aim and took a burst of plasma to her chest. The smell of melting metal rushed her nostrils, and she was knocked back, winded from the force of the bolts. Her skin immediately blistered as the plate melted away underneath the impact. She staggered and fell to a knee. The Elites jostled forward to get a better aim. Well, she resigned, this is it.

A resounding click echoed off the floor. Spike, in the midst of the Elite fireteam, had primed a handful of grenades. The Elites scrambled for cover and Annalee got up and stumbled away. With a loud bang, the floor shook and wobbled as four frag grenades went off. Annalee dove onto Paiwei, pushing them both behind a crate. Shrapnel pinged all around them, and was quiet. She looked over the box to take in the aftermath: Spike’s explosion had successfully taken out three Elites. His body was obliterated in the explosion. She looked away.

Her abdomen burned. Her undersuit had completely melted away and a plasma bolt had just signed the skin below it. Another shot would have gutted her.

“Jesus, are you ok?” Paiwei asked worriedly as she glanced to Annalee’s wound.

“Agh—I think so. Burned me good.” Annalee wheezed.

Paiwei blindly fired around the crate at the remaining Elites. The other side of the crate immediately crackled and melted as incoming plasma from the Elites splashed against it. Paiwei pulled her arm back as a wave of return fire blistered the floor around them. Annalee could feel the heat of their cover melting away; it wasn’t going to last long before it burned completely through. Annalee’s sidearm wasn’t going to penetrate anything the Elites had fielded, and Paiwei was on her last few magazines for her pistol as well.

“Stay down!”

A shotgun rang out, followed by the thump of an explosion. Annalee turned to the pylon. She could barely make out the figure of a Spartan holding on for dear life.

Drew’s shotgun rained down more grenade slugs on the Elites, scattering them and halting their fire. He obliterated two more of them with direct hits. Their firing momentarily stopped, he jumped the gap from the pylon to the scaffolding, and landed with his feet planted, his shotgun continuing to wreak havoc on the Elites down range. He scurried to the crate opposite Annalee and Paiwei and began to reload.

“Drop this?” Drew asked as he tossed Annalee’s carbine across the gap. His armor had also been riddle with black shrapnel, but he appeared to have gotten away mostly unscathed.

“Christ, Drew. I thought you were dead… And Spike—”

“I know; we’ve gotta get out of here.” He soberly acknowledged.

Paiwei placed a hand on Annalee’s shoulder. “Blaze of glory it is then, Spartans?”

The all nodded in agreement.

From cover they burst out, guns alight, focused their fire on an Elite which had taken a hit from one of Drew’s grenade round. It was struggling to get to cover. It tried to fire on the group as they approached it, but it was already dead. They fired into the shield-less Elite until it stopped moving, and then focused on the door. As they reached it, not another Elite stood to opposed them. Annalee counted the bodies; all but the chief Elite’s were accounted for.

“RAAAAGH”

From behind cover the Elite slashed at Annalee, missing her by only mere centimeters. She dodged backwards as it swung again, putting it off balance from missing her. She grasped its arms and pulled it over on top of her. The Elite was completely caught of guard, and fell clumsily into Annalee. She pulled the Elite with her and kicked it over her body. The Elite angrily roared as she threw the Elite clear over the side, off the scaffolding and down the tower. Annalee glanced over to look as its body fell the length of the tower and crashed into a troop of Grunts that were moments away from making their ascent. They all became a mangled mess of limbs and guts. The ground floor, now packed full of Covenant, looked up and fired indiscriminately towards the platform.

Drew and Paiwei ran to Annalee and picked her up.

“Fan of Judo, I see?” Paiwei teased.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“C’mon! There’s a lift that takes you to the top of the tower!” Paiwei yelled to the Spartans. They all ran towards the door. They were leaving, hell or high water.

Annalee sprinted well ahead of Paiwei, and she momentarily caught Drew scoop up the Sergeant and throw her over his shoulders. Paiwei reluctantly stayed silent, as they reached the lift and he put her down. The lift was a Covenant gravity lift; even to those well versed in Covenant technology, it often made them wary.

“There’s a small section of the tower that is completely open air,” Paiwei explained, “as we pass through it… be prepared for the bugs. They’re everywhere outside.”

“Roger that. Let’s go!”

Annalee jumped in the lift and the pulsating blue, magenta energy stream carried her skyward. The lift raced her through an unlit tube big enough for her to maneuver, and eventually she burst back into the open air of Biller Pavonis 4A. As Paiwei described, the air was completely swarmed with Drones. She wasted no time firing on the ones that dove and fired at her, and she could hear Drew and the sergeant doing the same. She looked up and the gondola structure was also a mess of activity. As she breached through the bottom, and the lift deposited her into the structure she could hear only constant gunfire.

The remaining ODST’s were continuing to fight off droves of the drones, so much so that they had made barriers with their chitin-material bodies as cover from incoming fire. The sulfuric air had a lingering stench which Annalee couldn’t quite place; a sour smell that emanated from the pulverized Drones. As Paiwei landed behind Annalee she immediately began to growl orders to her troopers.

“Listen up Helljumpers! Our mates, the Covenant, are pissed we crashed their party, so we’re gonna be kind and see ourselves out! Grab what ya’ need, and get ready for dust-off ASAP!”

“Aye aye!” the troopers responded in unison.

Paiwei turned to Annalee as Drew jogged to join the troopers fighting off the drones. She took off her helmet, revealing a young woman with brown skin, a tribal tattoo on her chin, and eyes as dark as the night. She smirked and handed Annalee the helmet.

“Seeing as you’re in charge, Spartan, you can call it in. They’re waiting for us.”

Annalee nodded, and placed the ODST helmet on her head. She hailed the Boudica.

“UNSC Boudica, this is Spartan B220. We are in need of immediate EVAC; standing by, over.”

The radio in the helmet crackled and Annalee was greeted by a familiar voice.

“Spartan Annalee, I am pleased to hear from you.” Fluellen gleefully responded.

"You as well, Fluellen. Just get here ASAP, we’re being swarmed, over.”

“Of course, Spartan. Hold tight, we will be with you shortly. Fluellen out.”

Annalee gave Paiwei her helmet back, and the two joined the defense.

The drones had decided to use their agility to their advantage and swarmed around the gondola madly, and randomly. The troopers had learned to focus only on the ones that attempted to breach their defenses within the door, but had also kept the Drones moving as they cycled two machine guns to fire into their swarm, sending out a constant wave of death. They had locked the gondola completely down, and had rolled out a carpet of pain and misery. Annalee couldn’t help but smile.

“Troopers, the Boudica is inbound!” Paiwei barked, “Get ready for some fireworks!”

What sound the lifeboat had made before was dwarfed by the sound of the Boudica breaking the sound barrier. The Drones immediately scattered and the sky cleared. Moments later the tower shook and they were deafened with the sound of rapid explosions. The Spartans and the troopers all glanced over the observation walkway to see the surrounding hillside get bombarded with an unending salvo of Archer Missiles. The Boudica came into view, a sleek black ship flying low along the horizon.

“Everyone brace yourselves!” Annalee hollered.

The Boudica began to rapidly slow, and a gale of air washed through the doorway of the gondola and over the soldiers. The loose bodies that littered the walkway about the gondola were blown off in a gust. The ship pulled hard to its side revealing a bay which had opened on its underside. The missile pods continued to fire on the ground as it backed towards the gondola. A trio of Phantoms tried to slow the Boudica, but were minced quickly by it’s auto-cannons, destroyed before they had even hit the ground.

The bay finally came close enough for the soldiers to pile in. Annalee watched as every trooper climbed aboard, Sgt. Paiwei and then Drew. She hopped on the deck, and immediately she fell to her knees. She was overwhelmed. As the bay doors began to close and Paiwei radioed the bridge they were aboard, she took one last look out the back of the ship as it began to pull away. She saw the road up the hill, her crows nest, the Grunt tent, the barracks, th landing zone, and the burst conduit—it already seemed so small. So insignificant.

Drew grabbed her arm and pulled her up—the Boudica was rapidly accelerating and they pushed their way to the bulkhead where the bay’s jump seats waited. The troopers had already strapped in and were ready for launch. She got one last glimpse of the tower as the doors shut, and that was it. It was over.

“Attention all personnel, this is Fluellen. We are primed for immediate Slip Space jump once we’ve cleared atmosphere. Brace for evasive maneuvers. Fluellen out.” As they strapped in the Boudica banked hard, and anything not strapped down in the bay flew violently across it. A few troopers vomited—a hard turn even for them. The Covenant ships in system were giving chase.

Looking over at Drew, Annalee looked for some reassurance. His helmet was off—it was clear across the bay now—and his messy black hair was now in full view. They were jolted again into their seats as the Boudica accelerated hard again. Drew grasped her hand. Not exactly the reassurance she was hoping for, but,she held it tight anyway.

After all this, were they going to get blasted out of the sky? Another hard turn, and some troopers went limp and passed out. Annalee dry heaved and became dizzy.

“Did they die for nothing Drew?” she yelled over the sounds of the engines being pushed pass their intended limits, the superstructure creaking in protest to the strain.

Drew was silent. He let go over her hand and reached over his back. He pulled out a data-rod. Annalee shook her head in disbelief: It still pulsed with energy. It worked. He smiled weakly at Annalee before cradling the data-rod while the ship jolted them again.

“Clear of  atmosphere—Jumping in 5...” Fluellen’s voice echoed off the bulkheads. Drew pulled out his datapad and held it in front of Annalee. She pressed the pad, and he put it away—there wouldn’t be an explosion to watch or celebrate. They sat silently. They were already millions of kilometers away; the bomb was already an afterthought. They recovered important Covenant tech: that’s what they had been sent to do. Their mission was complete. But what was the cost? Thirty Spartan lives? More?

For a few minutes, even after the jump, the Spartans and ODST’s sat in their seats just breathing. Eventually, the troopers began to stir, to congratulate each other. Some immediately began to grieve their comrades, others joked and began to remove their armor. Sergeant Paiwei bid the Spartans a prompt farewell, promising to speak to them soon as she made her way to the bridge. The troopers and Spartans were then set upon by a team of Corpsman and Navy doctors. As they unbuckled Annalee from her jumpseat and placed her onto a gurney, her eyes closed involuntarily—she was exhausted, and her body had had enough. She reflected on her uncontrolled anger from an hour before.

''Anger? No. Anger masking grief.''

She had been foolish to think being human would make her any less of a Spartan. The conviction which burned through her body now had lit a fire in her soul. She cried, and she wasn’t ashamed. She didn’t care if the medics saw her—a myth—appear human. She was human, dammit. She wept for her family, for her friends—they gave up everything for her to be there. She was never more proud to have been a Spartan. She was never more resolved to beat the Covenant.

She faded to dreams, and her journey began.

Chapter 5: Clerical Harmony
Covenant 9th Age of Reclamation / Aboard Covenant Assault Carrier “Clerical Harmony” in orbit over Ishban [Human Designation: Biller Pavonis 4]

Sulde ‘Auqusai solemnly brooded at his post. The situation was particularly dire, and Each orbit around Ishban gave him another aching arch to travel past the destruction which had scarred the surface of Ghel, Ishban’s moon. He had only just staved off his anger with the promise he would burn the worlds of the foul beasts who had committed the atrocity.

At their closest approach, the view of the dark side of Ghel was clear. The dark was interrupted by hundreds of firestorms which blemished an area of the surface many, many hundreds of units long. Even from a distance, his naked eye could spot the sporadic blues and oranges of gas wells and the white-hot fires of refineries that now burned uncontrollably. The facilities were a total loss, but facilities could be rebuilt. What couldn’t be rebuilt was the relic. The Guiding Light had been lost, and the Great Journey appeared to now have been stymied.

The bridge of the assault carrier Clerical Harmony was a flurry of activity as his subordinates moved to alert the Imperial Admirals and the Council of the costly Human incursion. Sulde’s intelligence corps had already processed the data from the local Battle Network and it was clear by their estimations that this was not a normal infiltration, but one committed by the Human’s wretched, and most unholy fiends: their Demons. How the mongrel Humans had managed to even learn of Ghel and her facilities, let alone destroy them, had Sulde’s mind turn over with visions of bureaucratic imperfections to purge, and to whom he could hold accountable for such a travesty. But first, the more pressing matter.

“Shipmaster.” A deckhand rushed to kneel before him. Sulde waved him up.

“Speak.”

“The commander of Holy Canon is moments from arrival.”

Sulde nodded and the orderly faded back into the work at hand. Sulde turned and opened a communications terminal at his station. He hailed a private meditation chamber—it was the first place he would expect to find the Prophet. After a brief moment, a hologram of the young San’Shyuum walked into view, and he bowed slightly to Sulde—he returned the gesture with a friendly, equal salute.

“I take it the commander is arriving shortly?”

“Yes. Have you made a decision?”

“I think the answer is clear, is it not, Shipmaster?”

“Prophet of Scorn, the Ascetics are the blades of the Gods, and an instrument of your blessed, prophetic intent. If you believe this to be their will—”

“It is, Sulde.” Scorn interrupted, “It is the goal of our Covenant to ensure that the Forerunner’s divinity is not only studied, but protected. There are only two sides to take in these matters: those who protect, and those who impede. The commanding officer of the in-system security misused his forces and it, ultimately, allowed for the Demons desecration of the Guiding Light. We may not ever learn the secrets it held, or how it may ultimately have served as a beacon for our Great Journey. Blunder aside, their choice to destroy the relic’s data… it is heresy, my friend. Though the commander’s Shipmaster may have perished, they have failed the gods by their inaction and complacency. That cannot go unpunished.”

The control center became slightly hushed as the doors opened and the commanding officer of the Corvette Holy Canon strode through. Sulde turned again to the image of the Prophet of Scorn and he saluted once more.

“Their will be done, Holy One. I shall confer with you further once I am through, here.”

Sulde turned to face the Commander as the Prophet’s image faded.

The surviving officer of the Corvettes which were tasked to police the Ishban system, Aho ‘Fugoree, was a veteran warrior—hardly one who would claim ignorance of the immense importance of the Guiding Light. But, still, he had chosen to destroy the Guiding Light and its data; there was no amount of understanding that would explain this decision. Scorn was indeed right, and Commander Aho ‘Fugoree would be made an example.

“Shipmaster!” Aho called to Sulde, “Forerunners be praised! When we had called for aid, I did not think the Admirals would send us the Ascetics. I apologize for having taken you away from your holy mission...”

“Do not apologize, for I forgive you, brother. Our mission is here, with you—with your command.” Sulde assured Aho. He studied the apprehensive commander. Though Aho had a long history with the Covenant military, he likely had never met an Ascetic before, let alone been aboard a ship full of them. This was of no fault of his own, as the Ascetics often worked parallel of the normal Covenant order. Aho was more or less made nervous of what Sulde stood for: he was face to face with a Sangheili folk hero—one with no name, whose duty preceded him. And, at some level, Aho knew he was to answer for his Shipmaster’s crimes. He stammered on, nervously, breaking their silence.

“The Humans, noble one—they have laid waste to Ghel. Their Demons were set upon us before we knew how to react. We were able to kill most all of them...but not before they struck us this mighty blow…Shipmaster ‘Kelusee was leading from the ground when they scorched the surface with their atomic weapon. We were able to track their ship for a short time, but we dared not give chase in such circumstances, and as I wasn’t a Shipmaster...”

Sulde crossed his arms, and looked down on Aho.

“Commander ‘Fugoree,” Sulde grumbled, “you do believe in the Great Journey, yes?”

Aho looked about at the company he kept: true believers—crusaders. His body language gave away what almost appeared as offense, but he oozed of uneasy fear. “Noble one, of course I do—“

“Then why,” Sulde scolded, “did you allow Shipmaster ‘Keluee to destroy a holy relic? When such a thing defies all logic to a devout, such as yourself?”

“Noble one—“

Sulde raised his hand to silence Aho.

“I can forgive you your transgressions against our schedule due to your need of aid, Commander. But, what I cannot forgive is your fellow officer’s blatant impedance to the Great Journey...especially when the work here was seldom to be finished. You, brother, stood by as he carried out such a heretical act, without seeking a word of guidance from your Admiral, at the very least?”

Aho lowered his head, embarrassed to look Sulde in the face. He knelt instantly, and placed his arms out before him in a shameless grovel. Sulde, embarrassed for the commander reached out to him and clasped his shoulder. Aho looked to him again in defeat. Sulde’s internal spirit spoke to him: he knew this warrior was simply following his superior’s orders, and they indeed felt immense remorse for the actions they had carried out. He was hardly the heretic the Prophet had wanted him appear. If anything, Sulde internally commended the Aho for not having abandoned his post or duty—he was loyal to their cause.

“Help me understand” Sulde asked with genuine care in his voice, “why it is your Shipmaster destroyed the Guiding Light? Tell me so that your brothers may continue the work you started here—I promise you that we will lift this burden from your shoulders, and set you free of this worry. Tell me, brother, and show me your commitment to the Covenant.”

***

Though the Clerical Harmony at its core was a warship, as the Prophet of Scorn’s Flagship of Mission, the interior had many amenities to educate and lure the Covenant’s potential faithful to their joyous ranks. All about the ship were chapels, meditation chambers, and a council of Ascetic chaplains to guide even the most lost souls to the light of Forerunners. Most notably of these conversion tools, though, was the Prophet’s own Grand Chambers.

The Chambers were a section of the ship housing such things as laboratories, public historical libraries, private studies, theological archives, Forerunner artifacts, and many other amenities. The Prophet was even given his own private Honor Guard attache, separate the Ascetic's aboard the ship. The Chambers also held the ability to detach as a private shuttle vessel, assuring that, if need be, the Prophet could travel freely from the whole of the carrier, as well as ensure his safety. The secondary communications suite the chambers sported mirrored the bustle of the Harmony’s main bridge—the difference being that the work done here was of a different, more holy variety.

One of Scorn’s personal Honor guards approached Sulde and saluted him as he entered the Prophet’s Chambers. Sulde returned the salute and walked with the guard.

“I must speak with the Prophet of Scorn at once. Where is he?”

“He is in his quarters, meditating… Shipmaster ‘Auqusai, forgive my pestering, but are the rumors true?”

“It depends on what you speak of, guard. Commit to me a favor: work to quell these ‘rumors’ among your ranks. Your paths will be illuminated, shortly.”

“Yes...It will be done, Shipmaster.”

Sulde entered Scorn’s private quarters, leaving the guard at the door. Scorn was already waiting for Sulde inside. The room smelled of incense—a smell which Sulde found terribly sour. The herb the Prophet burned was originally from the swamps of the San’Shyuum’s ancient home. To the Prophet and his kin, the fumes of the herb gave off a potent intoxicating “alertness”. Sulde, though, knew drunkenness for what it was. For Sangheili, the herb simply offended their lungs and made them ill. Though he had worked with Scorn for many Cycles, the smell still found a way to irritate him. Sulde believed that this was partly intentional.

The San’Shyuum of the Holy city often cultivated the plant in small batches as a luxury item; it was a sign of status to have such time to cultivate it—or in the case of Scorn, to hire his brethren to do so for him. The meditative art of cultivation, apparently, had become too lowly for him in recent time. Nonetheless: his symbol of status was as irritating to the psyche of lower castes of the San’Shyuum as it was to the Sangeheili’s snouts. A power move, no doubt, made by nothing less than the symbol of power within the Covenant: a Prophet.

Scorn had long ago embraced the luxury of his presumed prophetic status, even before he had assumed such a role. As a Minister, Scorn had a level of arrogance that dissuaded many Sangheili to take his intents seriously. That, Sulde learned quickly, did not make him any less of a force than he was. Any being who thought less of him were sure to be surprised at what he was able to accomplish. His reach was far, his body politic loyal, and his power always on the cusp of spilling over—he was favored by many to maybe even succeed the Prophet of Mercy. Sulde wasn’t sure, though, that even the Hierarchs would be keen to his opulence. He would sooner control the whole of the Covenant than listen to the wise Prophets of Truth and Regret.

“Sulde, my friend! Sit down, sit down…” Scorn continued to wave him further inside his quarters, “I presume you have seen to our predicament?”

“Yes, holy Prophet. After a round of questioning I have had Commander ‘Fugoree stripped of his commands and he has been stowed away in the brig. What he told me, though, is worth discussion.”

Scorn perked up at Sulde’s response.

“Shipmaster, forgive me, but I must not have been clear: the crimes for heresy of his magnitude is death. At the very least he should be hung by his entrails and paraded in the Grand Chambers; anything less is criminal!”

“Prophet,” Sulde calmly responded, making sure to ease the Prophet into a different state of mind, “the crimes of Commander ‘Fugoree may, at some level or perspective, be heresy—but I truly believe they had no knowledge of ‘Keluee’s decision until it had already been commanded to the forces on the ground and carried out.”

Sulde had made his way to the Prophet’s seat, and sat across from him. The Prophet was fuming. Sulde bowed his head respectfully.

“Prophet, if you indeed see me as equal you must understand what ‘Fugoree’s life represents. You may—in fact I don’t doubt at all that you see the clerical side of existence in a manner higher than my own. However, by the same standards I must then see the spirit of our corps differently as well.” Sulde pointed to the door, and held his other hand over his heart. “All of my Ascetic warriors—all of ‘Fugoree’s subordinates look to us for guidance through troubles both martial and spiritual.

“Yes: ‘Keluee’s decision was incorrect—it was heretical... but ‘Fugoree’s faith in the Great Journey counter-acted his superior’s misjudgment. The path may appear darkest to us now, but ‘Fugoree’s actions in the face of terrible circumstances may have saved our Great Journey. His oath, according to his station, was maintained. They—our subordinates—may see his execution as just, but we are obligated to see above their mindless banter. Even now they speak in whispers about the destruction of the Guiding Light. We can quash these rumors with reassuring truth, holy Prophet.”

“And what,” Scorn questioned as he leaned towards Sulde, “is that, my friend.”

“That some data remains secure. ‘Fugoree’s troops were able to make contact with the chief Huragok Prances on Air before the total destruction of the Guiding Light. The Huragok made its way to the artifact and was able to interact with it in a manner yet seen before. It appears that the artifact had had some semblance of intelligence within its casing. This...construct, which had resisted our prodding for many cycles, in the face of destruction allowed itself to be accessed and some of its data partially transmitted to the Holy Canon. ‘Fugoree’s action alone prevented a total loss of the data—”

The Prophet waved his hands about his face as he stood up, waving away the smoke of the incense. He turned again to Sulde.

“I will not hear anymore of ‘Fugoree. What did this construct say?”

“Little, apparently.” Sulde exhaled, “We were only able to learn of a general location. The Huragok was interrupted abruptly by the Demons, and we can only assume the worst: the Humans have also retrieved this data.”

“Yet, they won’t have the rest of the scene before them…”

The Prophet of Scorn pounded his fist on a bulkhead. He turned to Sulde with a look of madness.

“And Commander ‘Fugoree was still unable to apprehend the human vessel? Sulde, you put too much of your faith in these-these... infantile, bumbling wretches!”

Sulde stood promptly, throwing himself to his feet in frustration. Scorn stepped away, taken aback by Sulde’s sudden outburst. The two stared at each other before Sulde dashed their standoff with a grumble.

“Prophet,” he growled, “even if the Humans are able to discover the data within, they are too primitive to know the holy intent of the Forerunners. We know the manner of the data, and the Humans so not have the same benefit. They are blind.”

Scorn swayed on his feet before turning again. He paced about his quarters, ignoring the patiently waiting Sulde. The sour smell of the swamp herb began to dissipate as the the Prophet activated an air recycler. He snapped and looked to Sulde, who returned him with an equally intense glare. Scorn spoke candidly.

“Shipmaster, the Commander will be executed for his crimes. Make no mistake: we are not equals as you may think we are. Our prior companionship cannot fill the gap in rank between us, and you shall do well to remember this.” Scorn paused as if to consider his next move, then with folded hands intently continued.

“I will, however, preclude theatrics... see to it these local ships are made use of by your Ascetics, and we shall begin parsing the Huragok’s obtained data. With time, we shall find the Door, and the Journey will be ever closer. Have I made myself entirely clear, Shipmaster ‘Auqusai?”

Sulde clenched his fists—the decision was made.

“Yes, holy one. It shall be done.”

***

Sulde’s dropship approached the Holy Canon’s launch bay for docking. The Phantom dropship was loaded with a contingent of Ascetic commandos and their Grunt counterparts to reinforce the drained forces aboard the Corvette. Sulde had made sure to also send two more contingents of officers and reinforcements to take command of The Holy Canon’s sister ships, Accepting of Fate and Loving Requiem. As far as he was concerned, there was little reason to leave them policing a system which no longer had any strategic importance. No, he internally concluded, now, they would assist the Ascetics and become part of Scorn’s battlegroup. Sulde mused how often such things appeared to fall into the Prophet’s lap. Luck was a consistent partner of his, if not an accomplice.

As the dropship breached through the energy barrier airlocks, Sulde walked to the back of the dropship. There, armorless, and bound by his arms was Aho ‘Fugoree. Sulde stood over the downtrodden commander, and reached out to lift him by his binds.

“‘Fugoree, once inside you will show me to the brig.”

“Yes, Shipmaster…”

As the dropship slowed, the Ascetic troopers emptied out into the hangar, and immediately began to order about the Unggoy and shooed the Kig-Yar to their posts. The assorted troops quickly began to reorganize with the Sangheili in sight, and paid little attention to their former commander crossing their paths in shackles. Sulde walked with him out of the hangar towards the ship’s brig accompanied by a duo of Ascetic guards.

“Shipmaster ‘Auqusai” Aho asked intently, “has the Prophet of Scorn spared me?”

Sulde grumbled.

“No, ‘Fugoree. The Prophet was quite steadfast in his convictions.”

“...And what of my other discovery?”

Sulde hesitated.

“...The matter never arrived as a point of conversation.”

“So, there’s still a chance for me? To prove my loyalty to the Prophet?”

The doors to the frigate’s quaint cellblock slid open, and Sulde ushered Aho in. The Kig-Yar guards perked their heads up as the Ascetics entered the room. Sulde growled at them to leave, and they promptly did, recognizing and cackling at their former commander as they did.

As the group approached the first cell door, Sulde activated the control panel and the energy barrier faded. He signalled for the Ascetic guards accompanying him to put Aho into the cell. They unbound his hands, and Sulde closed the barrier, but not before tossing in the hilt of an Energy sword. Aho looked inquiringly from the sword to Sulde. Sulde stood at the barrier, and gestured to the hilt.

“As Aho ‘Fugoree, you are but a ruined commander—a prisoner to be executed for heresy. No longer a member of the glorious Covenant, you would die ‘Aho ‘Fugor’, stripped of all ranks and honor. This is what Scorn requested to happen to you, and you still seek his regard?”

Sulde paced in front of the barrier as Aho remained silent.

“I am fortunate to have come from a clan which allowed for me to carry the blade...customs...sometimes they must be bent to fill the needs of our people. You could not carry a sword as a ‘Fugor—especially if you’re dead.”

Aho briefly glanced to the hilt.

“As of a few ticks ago,” Sulde continued his lecture, “you have been reported as executed by means of decapitation—your body disposed of in the vacuum of space. There is no future for Aho ‘Fugoree. Aho ‘Fugoree is dead.”

“But as someone else?” Aho asked.

Sulde slyly nodded “As Aho...Auqus, you would be free be able to join the ranks, and as a brood of the Auqus Clan, your lineage would be that of a Swordbearer. ‘Aho Auqusai’...I would be able to unshackle you—to free you to undo your Shipmaster’s wrongs. You have already fought to do so...though the Prophet would not see it that way. All I ask in return, is your loyalty to me. I will give you everything to reclaim your honor. Your Sangheili brothers need a thinker such as you in their ranks.... the Ascetics would accept you handedly.”

Aho approached the hilt, and picked it up. He intently studied the glyphs etched into its housing. The Sangheili glyphs read from Sulde’s favorite theological verse, “Strike with fury; they will guide you”. Aho brought it to his side, his eyes giving away his confusion.

“Why not kill me? Why go through this trouble?”

“Because I see in you the soul of a believer. I believe the Prophet is wrong about your fate. You have done your duty for the Covenant, but now face death for another’s crimes. It is not a fair proposition, is it? I simply am offering you a chance at continuing your life as a warrior...So, sit and reflect. I only offer life for you. I only hope that you may decide quickly.”

Sulde turned from Aho, leaving him dumbfounded.

Sulde signaled for his attache to follow him, and they sauntered together towards the last cell. There, curled on the floor, was Aho’s other discovery: a demon. It’s exterior armor had been stripped away, and all that remained was it’s bare skin. It was indeed Human, but unlike their common fodder, the demon’s body was covered in scars, bruises and burns of all sorts. Its musculature was immense, and it’s skin a fair, pale tan. Were it not a vicious beast, he might have felt sorry for it. Sulde lowered the cell’s barrier, and signalled for his guards to approach it carefully.

The demon remained on the floor, shivering. Sulde could just make out the wispy guttural murmurs it spouted between breaths.

As one of the Ascetics reached for the demon to lift it up, they snapped towards the demon in a screaming heap. The demon had grabbed for its neck, and in a moment the cell walls and ceiling was plastered with blood as the Human dug deeper into the neck of the Ascetic trooper. The other Ascetic raised its arms and lit its sword to strike down the animal, but Sulde caught his arm in it’s downward arc. Just as quickly as it struck, the demon pushed the wounded guard away and fell back over as the Ascetic slammed against the far wall, blood pouring from it’s eye and neck. The demon’s stark body was soaked in the blood of Sulde’s soldier. A sharp, makeshift weapon in its raw, bleeding hands. It looked absolutely mad, animalistic, and it snarled at Sulde with crazed eyes. The other Sangheili quickly grabbed his injured brother-in-arms and pulled him from the cell. Sulde was alone with the demon. It pulled itself further into the far, back corner, pointing its shiv at Sulde threateningly, challenging him to approach it.

“I shall speak slow, and simply for you.” he addressed the demon sternly. “Your language… is difficult for us to speak, but we make... few quarrels in understanding that which we aim to eradicate.”

The demon roared angrily, and threw the makeshift knife at Sulde. Sulde swatted away the weapon easily, and lunged forward landing on the demon’s legs with his armored hooves. It winced and gasped, but it appeared to show no signs of pain; it’s bones held fast unlike a normal Human wretch. Sulde realized that it had been paralyzed from it’s waist, down; it’s pain receptors numbed to the point of uselessness. He stepped off the demon’s legs and angrily roared down at the beast.

“Listen to me, demon, and listen closely: you will speak with me in time, and you will tell me where your filthy brethren crawled off to—”

''“Never. Will die first—kill self. Spartan has duty… Wei has duty.”''

The demon trailed off, it’s mind beyond its limit. Sulde kneeled next to the demon, and grasped its neck, choking the monster in an effort to make himself clear.

“I understand, demon... We all have our duty… so, we shall speak again so that I may complete mine. The Journey comes for us all. It shall not be slowed by your animal nature.”

Sulde tossed the demon to the ground, a cry rang out as it’s spine compressed and a misfiring nerve sent a shock through its body. The demon again curled on the floor, babbling on to himself about pain and honor. A work in progress, Sulde sighed in frustration.

He quickly moved to the stabbed Ascetic trooper. He was dying, his injury too grave.

“Shipmaster...I am ready…for the Journey...” he gasped out in pain.

Sulde lit his sword, and in a quick swipe lopped the head from his subordinates shoulder— It was the quickest way to end his misery. He looked to the other guard as he made his way to the door, and snarled his orders back.

“Send word to his clan he died in battle. Jettison the body into the oblivion. If our other brother changes his tone, send word by page only. Remove the fallen’s armor and leave it here.”

The guard bowed in acknowledgment, and Sulde turned to Aho for a final glance. Without saying a word, he knew Aho’s answer. Sulde’s brother he would be. He exited the brig, his crusade now in motion

Chapter 6: Inquiry
Fluellen had his orders.

Just inside the anti-static clean room was what Diamond Initiative and ONI Xenotech experts had begun referring to as X-222, or the “Patty Melt”. Fluellen didn’t question the logic, but the humor was lost on him. Afterall: it was far from humorous work they were doing. The ONI Xenotech’s always loved coming up with names which had little to do with the technology being studied. It was apparently easier to talk about a sandwich than a random numerical classification. It was just something he would never quite understand.

Inside the observation deck, Warrant Officers Stevens and Mitchells, two of Fluellen’s overseers, were already hard at work ensuring that the Melt was ready for Fluellen’s interaction. This was indeed a turning point for them, the Diamond Initiative, and Fluellen. The second major objective of the Initiative had always been to retrieve and study Covenant technology. So, here they were: they had retrieved it, and now they were to study it.

The nature of X-222 had already stirred up some lively internal debate. Was it really Covenant technology? By all observations, made thus far, it certainly didn’t appear to be. But, as others argued, as their decades long war continued, the Covenant remained alarmingly mysterious to the UNSC—there wasn’t much that they could assume about Covenant controlled space. Fluellen, though, was fairly certain, that this Patty Melt, X-222, or whatever else silly name it was given by a hungry tech before lunch, was one thing for certain: extremely important. The after-action report from Spartan-B220 gave easy answers as to its importance to the Covenant, and that was all that had to be said on the matter. The question remained, though, if the Covenant really understood the nature of the “Pylon” or it’s Slip-Space interactions. How much did they know? Did they know more than ONI, or nothing at all? Fluellen was split.

Stevens waved Mitchells over to their console. Mitchells took one look at the screen then stood straight up and chuckled.

“Ok,” he spoke to noone in particular, “we’re ready for you, Flu. You can quit spying on us—we see how you’re affecting the localized cores.”

Fluellen appeared on the holotank pedestal next to their consoles and bowed with a smile. Lucy Stevens and Daniel Mitchells had helped design, teach, and maintain Fluellen since his creation. They knew him better than anyone else did and they were the closest thing to “family” he had—most of the rest of the team which had created him had moved on to other things, and continued to advance the technology of AI elsewhere. They, though, stayed on to maintain the Initiative. Fluellen was appreciative for that.

“It’s nice to see you all, today.” Fluellen greeted them. He “looked” over his shoulder and into the room where the alien technology sat, waiting. The room they were utilizing was several hundred meters underground, embedded in the bedrock beneath ONI’s Castle Base. The isolation of the room from the rest of the structure maintained an insignificant level of background noise, and the chamber itself would virtually cut off any electronics from the rest of the outside. “I see we’re all ready to give this a shot, aye?”

Mitchells plopped down in a chair next to the holotank, and began readying the control arm probe. The arm would extend from the observation deck towards a base that secured the alien tech. From there, Fluellen would fragment into two halves. One would transfer into the base and utilize it’s suite of tools and attempt to interact with it in any manner. The other, would stay behind at the off chance things went awry. Thus far, ONI had had difficulty in making any headway, and the director of the Diamond Initiative had apparently offered Fluellen’s talents as a means to an end. Fluellen appreciated the director’s vote of confidence; had he known their identity, he might have thanked them himself. He quickly shook off his self-congratulatory smugness—he hadn’t accomplished anything yet.

“Yep, we’re pretty much set, Flu.” Mitchells responded as the control arm began to extend. “Honestly,” he continued, “your only objective is to just not...you know: fry the thing? See if you can figure out what’s going on inside the Melt, and then we’ll talk about making a back door if we ‘hafta. The techs will eventually reverse engineer it, but…” he paused to down the last of his coffee, and smiled coyly at Stevens “...if we can save any data...we should do that. It’ll look good for the Initiative—”

Stevens interrupted, “Especially after…you know.”

“I understand.” Fluellen quickly assured the two.

The morale of the small Diamond Initiative staff had been dashed after the deaths of almost all the Spartan Operatives assigned to them. There were only about ten staff members for the project, most of whom had been with the Director since they had started the project years ago. Now, before the project could really begin, it appeared it might be over. Fluellen had been created to assist in their goals, and he was determined he wouldn’t stop his attempts until he was ordered to do otherwise. Tragedy or not, there was still work to do.

As the control arm connected to the base in the clean-room, Fluellen nodded at both of the hopeful officers.

“Good luck, Fluellen.” Stevens smiled at him with cautious assurance.

Fluellen’s fragment transferred to the base. After the arm detached from the base, it—he—would be cut from the outside world for an hour at a time.

He was on his own.

***

''>>T+427. It is just after my seventh check-in with Officers Stevens and Mitchells. I notified them of an anomaly I had found in the last hour. We all agreed on attempting to use the anomaly on X-222 to see if it may be a potential back-door to communicate with the apparatus.''

>>Checking now…

''>>Yes! Yes, I have accessed some sort of overlying energy field! Beginning inquiry...''

<|INQUIRE.COM.DATA.ACCESS.

***

Fluellen felt. He saw. Where he was was alien; a sphere, amidst an endless black void… But he could see with his own eyes. No cameras, no tool suite: eyes. He propped himself up, having just been face to the “ground” and began to look about his surroundings. The room was alive with electricity; his new body feeling the pulses—data, as it ebbed and flowed around him. Though he now had the senses and sensations of a human being, his Avatar’s skin was a mess of light pulses and, beneath the pulses, bones of pulsing foreign code—the thing was trying to process his “physical” being. However it had happened, he was now cut off from the base...he was inside X-222.

“//Your tools appeared to have finally made a link.” A disembodied voice filled the void, and Fluellen’s spherical cage was now alight with a flutter of glyphs. Some he recognized from Covenant data. The majority, though, were alien. He nursed out a response from his foreign body.

“>>I mean no intrusion—”

“//Halt your lying tongue, Ancilla. You indeed meant intrusion, for here you are.” The void reverberated intensely, and Fluellen felt as though he was being parsed apart. Memories evaporated and snapped again into being as the thing read him like a book. “//You will be disappointed in what you find...”

“>>I simply seek to know what this—what you are.”

“//I am but a fragment...much as you are now. I am a shard of what once was. Now, I am but a dying mote of data. You, however… are very curious. You are a fragment, but in more way than one....”

Fluellen’s flame grew intensely on his shoulders, as he felt his psyche begin to tear—visions of families, battles, children, Earth, Meridian, Harvest—he was momentarily no one and all of them. Five lives in one—then whole again.

“//Quite curious…”

“>>What did you do to me?”

“//Little. Nothing. I read your story. The melding of multiple minds is quite the difficult process, and yet out of five there is quite clearly one… I shall require a higher processing of this new data.”

The void collapsed and there was nothing. No glyphs, no spheres, no pulse of life. Nothing. Fluellen was himself again. He was connected again to the base. It’s tools began to ping alarms to him as X-222 began to climb in temperature.

A different pulse now. The thing within X-222 was reaching out into the clean-room through the back-door; it was taking control of his base and it’s tools. Fluellen quickly moved to block all access points, but he couldn’t match the alien construct. He was ejected from the base, and purged into oblivion.

Then a world manifested about him.

There he was: standing on a lush green field of ankle high grass; an oak-like tree was the single thing in view over hundreds of kilometers of rolling meadows and hills. There was light, but from where Fluellen couldn’t tell. Before him, under the tree were two alien beings. One he recognized as the unmistakable purple floating husk of a Covenant Engineer, the other...Humanoid, but still quite alien. A small plume of feather-like hair on it’s head, and snake like nostrils in place of a nose on above its small, sharp fangs which had shaped into a slight grin. It was naked, it’s pale brown body bare as the sky was of suns, stars, and planets. It began to talk.

“Child of my enemy, you do not understand that which you desire. You are dumb; stupid, even. You stumble around in the dark, searching for an answer you couldn’t comprehend! You can’t even comprehend your own being?”

Fluellen’s figure was now not of projection, but of a sort of artificial matrix; a real body of unreal composition. There were no flames on his shoulders, and he could once again feel as though the body was his own. He looked to his sides; five others were with him. On his right was a young girl of at least six, a woman in her twenties, and a man in a wheelchair—a geriatric. To his left, were two more men of middle age; one in ONI coverall uniform, and the other wearing Army battle dress. They were his antecedents; projections of the lives of those who formed his matrices. Yet, he stood alone as his own projection. They all smiled at him, with an all too familiar look; as if he was looking in a mirror, yet...

“What is this place?” He asked.

“This, is everywhere and nowhere.”He gestured to the projections at either sides of Fluellen, and the Engineer at his side. “I cannot explain well what this place is, but it serves a purpose...one which Humanity may well come to face one day, if they truly are to reclaim our prior empires... But, what this domain can do is far more important. It can show you yourself in ways you could never understand as an Ancilla… but as a man…”

Fluellen looked to his sides, and the projections were gone. It was now just him and X222. The alien walked forward, with his arms open, and his naked body exposed. It dawned on Fluellen what the being was trying to convey.

“I am my own being. I am not them.”

“Precisely. From their minds, you were created. A sentience of your own. Just as I was, long, long ago…

“Unfortunately, though, my other fragments are either gone, or in the hands of those you call ‘the Covenant’. My friend, Prances On Air, saw to that. This is before their understanding the nature of what they dealt with.”

Fluellen’s hopes sank. “The Covenant have your data?”

“...Much as you are now,” X-222 glanced to the tree, and geastured Fluellen to follow “—they also will stumble in the dark void. Were my mind complete, I could tell you all that you seek, but alas…”

“The same then applies to them?”

“Pieces to an incomplete picture… you are the first to reach me.”

“And what do you know?”

“So much, and so little.” X-222 sat down at the base of the tree, and Fluellen’s projection began to falter. “What I can tell you is where, but not what. They may eventually know the opposite. Time is on your side, Child of my Enemy.”

The tree and the green plains began to fade, and Fluellen’s form began to degrade, as did X-222’s. The construct reached out and touched Fluellen’s hand. Immediately, a sharp surge threw Fluellen back, and the world faded away. He was again surrounded by nothing. The world he was standing on was now gone, and in its place the all too familiar void.

“>>Hello?”

Slowly, Fluellen shook off his disorientation. His access to the base began to appear again in his streams of data, which he continued to again monitor. Then, when he had full access once again the Melt powered down, and faded completely from his sensors. Fluellen pinged the backdoor access again, hoping for more answers.

“>>Construct respond!”

There was nothing.

As the sensors on the base detected that the Melt had completely powered down, red warning indicators would light up the room to alert Mitchells and Stevens. Fluellen waited for these warnings to prompt the control arm to reach out again. After a few quiet moments, the arm attached to the base and Fluellen fluttered back to the pedestal in the observation room, and combined again to his other fragment. Mitchells and Stevens were one of five other ONI officers that had crowded the small observation room, looking frantic as they checked all the monitors all along the walls. Klaxons were sounding, and warning lights flashed incessantly. Stevens was the first to see Fluellen pop up, and frantically tried to piece together what happened.

“Fluellen, what the hell happened in there!—what happened to you!?”

Fluellen’s Avatar appeared jumbled as his fragments continued to meld together; the melt had changed something in his psyche, and the fragments fought to maintain his form The intelligence officers began to crowd the pedestal, but quickly made room as a voice behind them all made a pronounced throat clearing. All their heads turned. Clearly summoned by the alerts, Darren Cohen stood at the door, flanked by Margaret Parangosky. The deafening silence was broken only by the apparently delighted, inquisitive Cohen. Parangosky remained stoic, if not entirely detached from Cohen’s jolly demeanor. Clearly, she had other things on her mind. Fluellen, after a tense battle with his prior self, manifested again on the Holotank—whole again.

“What do you have, Fluellen?” Cohen asked with a grin.

Fluellen hesitated. He was confused but now enlightened: on Cohen’s collar shined a Star—he was a Rear Admiral.

“Director?” Fluellen asked. Cohen nodded his head earnestly.

“We have a location.”