User:Ahalosniper/Halo: Parley

The cloying smell of processed, recycled air was starting to bother him. It wasn't normally a problem in other parts of the ship, closer to the oxygen greenhouses and especially around the mess hall, but here just under the hull the air had had to travel kilometers of ducts to reach the air lock, and had become stale to Kodiak's heightened senses. The fact that he'd thought it out made him realize just how dull the waiting was, sitting in a small room looking out into the imperceptible gloom of slipspace.

"Well . . . you think this is gonna be a trap?" Dyne asked, breaking their long silence rather bluntly after unsuccessful conversations trying to avoid the matter ahead.

"I don't know." Kodiak said honestly. "The San 'Shyuum led the Covenant in exterminating us, and then disappeared when the war ended. If they're desperate enough to ask the UNSC for help, something must be happening. And if it can give us an edge, it's worth looking into."

His friend's brow furrowed. "So why'd they send us?"

"Because the Themistocles was the nearest ship." Then a darkly humorous thought occurred to him. "Plus, if it is a trap, at least they're not risking much."

"So they're sending their least-favorite expendable supersoldiers to spring the trap." Dyne leaned back and grinned. "Nice to know they think of us sometimes."

The bridge of the UNSC Themistocles ran dark, just as Captain James Harris preferred it, illuminated by nothing but readouts and starlight. It helped his bridge officers concentrate, and made him feel less self-conscious when he needed to be in the moment, focused on guiding his ship through the storms. He had a crew that had been together long enough to function smoothly, translating coordinates and data to movements and firing solutions. Knowing he could trust them to do their jobs gave him more freedom to do his, and he was thankful for it.

But this unexpected mission had disrupted his usual peace of mind. A month ago, one of the remote scanning outposts in the border systems had picked up a Covenant transmission, which quickly came to the attention of High Command not because of tactical value, but because it had been directly addressed to them. The message was recorded in several different human languages, and very formally requested asylum for a group of San 'Shyuum refugees, claiming that in return they could help end the war with the Loyalists.

Naturally, HIGHCOM had been suspicious, but with the Themistocles only three weeks out from the proposed rendezvous point, their conscience had yielded to their curiosity. His ship was an older Magellan-class carrier, not a very precious vessel where the Admiralty was concerned. Just under 3,000 meters long and not even fitted with a MAC, it had been used as a platform for testing anti-gravity plates, a technology that had never worked out. For that reason, some wrote off the ship as nothing more than a floating failed experiment, but shutting down those plates to free up the secondary reactors powering them could be a useful trick. It had in the past.

Firelight pushed back the darkness around a holotank the size of a table in the center of the bridge. A vaguely feminine form appeared, wreathed in flame. "Captain, Ion One and Two report ready in Airlock 3-B to receive the envoys."

"Yes, thank you Match." Harris said absently, and with a nod the light extinguished. Her avatar disappeared with it, though she never truly left the bridge. She'd been another blessing for the old carrier, in the days of the Human-Covenant War when AIs were hard to come by.

Match was only a 'dumb' AI, but every member of the crew was grateful to have her. She'd saved the ship on her first day of activation, with a Covenant destroyer preventing their escape and steadily burning through the hull. Her program had only just been picked up and hadn't been cleared for integration, but Harris had authorized it out of desperation. She'd simply ignited in the holotank, politely introduced herself, and redoubled their engine power, widening their slim lead just long enough to make a randomized slipspace jump.

It was plain that he was as fond of Match as he was the rest of his ship, and when he brushed her off like that, Erin Coney, who'd been leaning against a wall behind him, took notice. "Do you really have to triple-check in with every security team onboard? It's not as if a few diplomats can qualify as boarding action."

Harris straightened his shoulders, forcing a stone-faced mask. "I'm about to let a Prophet freely onto my ship. I think I've a right to be precautious."

"Technically, their species call themselves San 'Shyuum." She corrected, managing not to sound too petty. The Special Forces liaison had been more than unhappy with Harris' decision to drop everything when the call came through.

They'd transitioned to slipspace immediately, leaving Vinh, Sepia, and more than half of the carrier's complement stranded but safe on the planet the exploration carrier had been in the process of surveying. In truth, though, Harris had wanted to bring as few people as possible with him into harm's way. Dyne and Kodiak he'd only learned were aboard after making the jump, and them he could live with endangering.

"I'll be sure to observe the formality when they're on my ship." He murmured, turning away from the holotank and toward the front screen. Like some civilian vessels, the bridge of the pre-Insurrection warship was located in the ship's prow, with windows that allowed its crew to see into space with their own eyes. For the time, though, he'd put the armored blast shields up. "There may not even be any diplomats, just a few Covenant ships waiting to burn us as soon as we exit the slipstream."

Glancing at her, he found her blue eyes weren't boring into his back, but instead aimed high in a thoughtful expression. "I don't think so. If the Remnants were trying to lure somebody into danger, they'd have done something simple like a distress beacon, instead of fabricating a San 'Shyuum asking Humans for help. Call it a hunch, but it's not a smart enough lie to make up."

"And if it is a trap?" He pondered wryly.

Erin smiled as her gaze met his. "Then we fell for it big time."

There was a beat of silence, and then Harris felt the familiar tremble in the deck beneath him. A moment after it began, Match's flame returned to the holotank, and Harris ordered his operations officer, "All hands ready at battle stations, take off the Archer safeties."

"Slipspace departure commencing as expected." Match reported. "Retransitioning in five, four, three, two, one."

As the Themistocles glided out of slipspace, Harris held his breath, waiting to feel the effect of a plasma torpedo or pulse laser burning through the hull. But it never came, and after a few seconds clear in normal space, he relaxed. "All right, I want a report. What have we got out there?"

"Sir!" Lieutenant Landors, sitting at communications, responded. "Hail on a Covenant frequency. Sensors show it's a civilian vessel."

He allowed the transmission to be played through the speakers. The voice sounded feminine and deceptively human. "Hail, Earth ship. We have no weapons and request to come aboard to discuss matters in person. We will wait your consent before approaching."

Lieutenant Commander Myers rushed over to confirm. "He's right. It's a commercial yacht, nothing more than a pleasure craft."

So Command's gamble with their lives might pay off after all. "Well, signal them back and tell them we're ready to dock. Match, tell Ion they'll be making contact soon."

Not long after the stars had reappeared to dot the void outside and Match gave them the heads up, a lavender shape drifted into view and became larger as it approached, drawing alongside the Themistocles. Kodiak had to admit to himself that it was a little unnerving, after witnessing even the smallest of Covenant warships take on entire battlegroups, to have it coming right at him. But he steeled his nerves easily enough, keeping in mind it was unarmed.

Before long, Kodiak saw what he was looking for: an air lock seal identical to the one he and Dyne had installed during the trip in slipstream. Although he was right there watching it all happen, the one ensuring everything lined up was Lieutenant Scotts at operations, remotely using the sensors and tiny thruster bursts to calculate and move them just where they needed to be. A tube extended from the vibrant little vessel to the Themistocles, like a mussel clamping onto a rock, and as the end fastened securely with their air lock the Spartans got to their feet.

Just as Match had said, the room's artificial gravity switched off, and Kodiak grabbed a rail before he was stuck drifting. Dyne likewise anchored himself, then pushed off to punch in the door's codes. As he did so, Kodiak wondered if maybe there'd be a strike team behind that door, and suddenly wished they'd had the presence of mind to don their MJOLNIR armor before. Too late now, but Kodiak spun himself so the wall opposite the door was under him, and he'd be ready to pounce at anything threatening that came through. Then the door split in half and pocketed itself.

What came through the hatch, he found totally disarming. It had some of the features of the San 'Shyuum he'd seen in archived reports, but the resemblance was minor. Its long limbs were covered by layers of a course, bright white garment that ended to reveal delicate tridactyl hands, with skin that nearly matched the robe and would have been deathly pale for a human, almost luminescent in the room's light. The San 'Shyuum's elongated neck rose straight from its shoulders, unbowed by any heavy ornamentation, to a smooth, sleek head. Her, for he decided upon seeing the face that it was female, eyes were exceptionally large; black pools with clouded silver irises.

Her outstretched arms barely needed to touch the walls to change her direction, every movement graceful, navigating with such skill that she appeared to be swimming through the air. By her serene appearance, Kodiak momentarily refused to believe this was an alien, and instead had to be some sort of angel, but all of what he could vocalize was a strained, "Hi."

She gently oriented herself to face him and gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head as two a pair of Unggoy somewhat clumsily entered after her. They had plasma pistols clipped to their sides, evidently some kind of bodyguards. The intercom emitted a short tone, and the antigravity plates in the floor began pulling them down from the air. The San 'Shyuum landed lightly, the Unggoy somewhat less so, and when a door on the opposite side of the airlock opened, she took here eyes off Kodiak and stepped wordlessly through it. It closed behind her guards, and Kodiak had to take a moment to try and make sense of what he'd just seen.

"I saw her first." Dyne blurted without glancing at him, sounding embarrassed to say it at all.

Kodiak stared at him for a moment, stunned, before retorting, "Yeah, well I talked to her first!"

"You said one word!"

"Counts!"

Notes and References

 * Even though it's seven years after Dwindling Flame and I have stories I want to do in between, I realize I'm kind of introducing the Themistocles with this, so going back chronologically I'll have to try to avoid being repetitive. Anyway, you might notice a sort of pattern about the ship's bridge staff (sans Harris and Erin). Points if you get it, and double points if you remember the individuals referenced.
 * I'm not sure if any of the banter between Dyne and Kodiak comes across as funny, here or elsewhere. I'm being more careful from now on to make sure they're amusing without crossing the line into annoying, which can seriously make reading about them painful, so feel free to tell me how I'm doing.