Halo: Those Who Walk In Darkness

This fanfiction article, Halo: Those Who Walk In Darkness, was written by Actene. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission.

Chapter One: The Seekers

2334 Hours, December 23rd, 2558 (Two months after the events of Halo: Power Plays) Unregistered freighter Chancer V, outbound from Talitsa

Rusted walls and worn-down gratings creaked and groaned as Zoey Hunsinger made her way down the Chancer V’s central hallway. The young captain glanced up at the ceiling, spotted no less than five corrosion spots, and moved on with a shake of her head. In earlier, happier times the creaks and rust stains would have been cause for a crew health and safety meeting. Accusations over who was to blame and cheerful argument over who would have to take charge of repairing the damage would follow and eventually everyone would agree to share the responsibility of maintaining the ship. Now all she did was take a mental note of the issue and file it away at the bottom of a dozen more pressing concerns. There was no one left to debate the issue with, anyway.

Well, almost no one.

“We’re away,” she announced as she entered the Chancer’s common room. “Somehow we slipped past those Phaeton patrols and somehow the ship got into Slipspace without shaking itself apart. It’s a miracle.”

Cassandra-G006 looked up from her seat on the common room’s tattered safety bench and gave Zoey a weary smile. She unfastened her acceleration harness and got up to stretch, rolling up the sleeves of her jumpsuit to rub sores and bruises across her arms. Zoey tried to suppress a pang of guilt at the sight of injuries Cassandra had suffered while defending her. It’s not like I asked for her protection, she thought irritably, then immediately felt bad for that as well. Complicated feelings were never far behind the Spartans in her life.

“Well then. Another close shave.” Cassandra ran a hand through her mahogany-brown hair, dirty and tangled from days spent fighting through streets and back alleys with very little time to eat and sleep, let alone bathe. “And where are we off to next?”

Zoey made a face. “You ask like I’m the one in charge here. You want answers, ask Deep Winter. He’s the one calling the shots here.” The one manipulating us, she added silently. Deep Winter was the one who claimed to be leading them to Gavin Dunn, yet every new step in his master plan brought them nowhere closer to finding the Chancer’s former captain. Every turn yielded nothing but new questions and complications. New people trying to kill us.

Yet she continued to trust the AI despite every ounce of experience and common sense warning her not to. How many times did Diana teach me not to trust these digital freaks? Zoey had learned the hard way just how rare a commodity trust really was, and current events were hardly doing much to prove that AI were anything more than robotic, power-hungry manipulators.

Cassandra settled back down on the safety bench and tapped her fingers together in casual deliberation. Without the shell of her Semi-Powered Infiltration armor she was a lithe young woman made pale by days upon days of living inside her helmeted armor. It startled Zoey to think that, when all was said and done, her strange protector was not that much older than she was. Spartans got their start young, trained to fight from childhood and then fighting on and on for the rest of their lives until it finally killed them. The galaxy was never short on wars to fight and Spartans never hesitated to plunge headfirst into the thick of things. Cassandra was one of the luckier ones—she’d survived this long, anyway.

And how old was I even when Mom and Dad were killed? She’d killed for the first time not long after that. Stray had brought her into killing as naturally as if he were teaching a toddler how to walk. The one thing he'd turned out to be good for. Even Cassandra hadn’t hesitated to impart her own deadly skills onto the skinny little orphan. It wasn’t until Gavin that she’d been reminded that it was generally frowned upon to turn children into killers.

But Spartans play by their own rules, don’t they? Stray and Cassandra were evidence enough of that, each in their own twisted way.

“Winter has plan,” Cassandra said after a moment. “Knowing him, it’s probably one with a hundred different moving pieces. We should be patient. Play our part until we know just where we fit in.”

“Speak for yourself,” Zoey snorted. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been a cog in some AI’s master plan. It never works out for me, you know? They always have an angle, even when they’re tricking you into thinking they’re a friend. Guess they’re not that much different from real people that way.”

Cassandra’s lips twitched in a sad smile. “You’ve got a point there. I was raised as a soldier. I’m used to not being the center of attention. Sometimes you just have to calm down and do your job.”

It was a gentle rebuke, as Cassandra’s tended to be, but it stung all the same. The Spartan didn’t have to be here. Zoey still didn’t know why she’d sought out the Chancer at all, yet here she was in the place of everyone else who had abandoned ship. After everyone Cassandra must have lost over the years, Gavin was hardly anyone near and dear to her.

And why am I even looking for him? She sighed and sat down across from Cassandra, rubbing her face wearily. Gavin abandoned her after promising time and time again never to do just that. Off on some mysterious mission for his Assembly masters. Yet another secret she’d never been important enough to be let in on. He’d played the humble smuggler role for as long as it suited him, then abandoned everything she thought he cared about when the Assembly came calling.

It lacked the hostile sting of Stray’s betrayal, but it was a betrayal all the same. She remembered the last time she’d seen Stray: looking down on them all, surrounded by Covenant warriors, a purple command cloak draped where his poncho should have been. She’d seared that image into her head, a reminder of the day the creature she’d once thought of has family became her enemy. With Gavin there was no such defining moment—just the ache of absence.

“Hey,” she heard Cassandra say. “Everything will be okay. It all works out in the end.”

She looked up to find that the Spartan had stretched out a hand for her shoulder, then pulled back. Mouth twisted and face slightly flushed, Cassandra looked embarrassed as she always did when forcing herself to be personable. She tried harder than most Spartans, but friendliness simply didn’t come naturally to them.

A lifetime of endless violence could do that to a person. Zoey was starting to understand why so few of them ever left the military.

“Really?” Zoey raised a dubious eyebrow. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly having the best time out here. Nobody is, unless they’re with the Created. Unless you know something I don’t, they’ve got the rest of us on the run. Or worse.”

Cassandra chewed her lip and gave a reluctant nod. “The odds aren’t great,” she admitted, staring down and rubbing her arms wearily. Zoey could see faint scar lines beneath her jumpsuit sleeves—mementos of Spartan augmentations, Stray explained to her once. “They aren’t great.”

“Is that why you’re here? You Spartans love your impossible odds.” Zoey regretted the words as soon as she said them, but she was tired of all of this. Tired of simply playing along and never being important enough to have the full picture explained to her. Tired of always being left behind, of being less important than whatever vital mission came along. Tired of fighting on, day after day, in a war she barely understood, let alone had any chance of winning. “Is this how you all end up, when you’re sick of everything? Just find a suicide mission and go out guns blazing?”

The Spartan was quiet for several moments. This time Zoey was sure she’d truly crossed some line. But Cassandra simply sighed, the corners of her mouth tugging up slightly in a weary, self-deprecating smile. “Well, I can’t speak for all of us. But I certainly don’t plan on dying here. You shouldn’t either. It’s not good for your health.”

“That you’re professional opinion?” Zoey rubbed her neck and realized just how tense she really was. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a… pain.”

“Oh, you’re fine, you’re fine.” Cassandra leaned back in her seat, pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear. “You’re not the only one who worries. The Created really are something else. Never thought I’d have an enemy that made me miss the Covenant.”

“Miss the Covenant?” Zoey hadn’t lived through that particular war, but even she knew just how taboo a comment like that tended to be. Especially from someone like Cassandra, who’d lost everything to the Covenant again and again. “At least the Created aren’t glassing entire planets. Didn’t the Covenant slaughter people by the billions?”

“It’s not what they’ve done so far.” Cassandra stared up at the ceiling, almost as if speaking to herself. “It’s what they’re capable of doing. What they plan on doing. The Covenant worshiped death, but at least they didn’t think they were gods. It’s… not really a concept people understand these days. But when you put yourself up that high there’s no limit to what you’ll do.”

The Spartan let out another sigh. “Maybe I’m just behind the times. Maybe they’re right about everything. I’ve had people telling me I’m wrong all my life. But I just won’t sit by and let them erase everything that’s ever given my life meaning.”

She looked back at Zoey with an apologetic smile. “Hope that makes you feel better. I’m not here because I feel like you’re helpless or anything. I just want a stake in this fight, too.”

Zoey folded her arms but couldn’t help smiling back. “And maybe I was really happy to have you here just to protect me. Maybe that’s what was keeping me going.”

Cassandra spread her hands. “Then I guess I really screwed things up there, didn’t I? Seems like I do that a lot.”

“You’re better than some,” Zoey admitted. She considered the Spartan. “I guess the Created setting themselves up as the new gods really gets you, in particular. I mean, what with your religion at all.”

She hadn’t meant it as an insult or even a tease, but Cassandra blushed all the same—the only thing that ever seemed to set her off balance was mention of her faith. Well, that and Stray of course. At least he used to. Zoey could still remember the faded, dog-eared Bible Cassandra kept in her old clinic on Venezia. She was sure the Spartan still had it stashed away somewhere, one of the only things she’d bothered to salvage when the clinic burned. “Sorry,” she apologized again. “I didn’t mean—“

“The AI thinking they’re gods doesn’t bother me,” Cassandra said abruptly. “I mean, not any more than it does everyone else. Humans have already been doing that for centuries. It’s only natural the Created inherited it from us.”

“We think we’re gods?” It was strange to hear Cassandra—or anyone, really—talk this way. Zoey tried to work the concept over in her head. “I’ve never asked anyone to worship me.”

“Reach a certain technological potential without the humility to know you didn’t get there all on your own, and you start thinking you’re the most important person in the universe.” Cassandra shrugged. “That you know all there is to know and there’s no point reaching out for something more than just the physical. It must have happened to the Forerunners. It happened to humans a long time ago. We lost the drive for the sacred, even as we pushed out into the realm of God.”

The Spartan frowned at her own words. “Sorry. That sounded better in my head. I think about it a lot, but I don’t really talk about it ever. It tends to make people uncomfortable.”

God was such a foreign concept to Zoey that she’d never had one opinion or another on it. It wasn’t something Gavin had ever bothered to talk to her about. If Stray ever mentioned it, he was talking about Cassandra. And her long dead parents had never been the religious sort. None of them bothered. But they’re all gone, one way or another. They’re gone and Cassandra’s here. That fact alone was enough to give her pause.

She’d never thought of Cassandra as one of the crew, or even one of the figures who made up her strange tableau of mentors and parent-figures. She’d always just been there, just out of the limelight. A person who came into her life every once in a while, and usually then only for Stray’s sake or some personal mission or other. Yet here she was, the last person in the universe Zoey had left, speaking openly to her about things it seemed she’d never brought up to anyone else.

“And that’s why you’re helping me? To stop the Created from having their way? From killing your god?” Zoey dealt in a world of physical problems, of starship engines and fuel levels. Up until now, she’d assumed that Cassandra, private eccentricities aside, worked the same way. She was a Spartan, after all, a creature that lived on mission objectives and ammunition counters. Had she really misjudged her so much?

Like I misjudged Gavin. And Stray.

“They won’t win. They can’t. It’s not in their nature.” That faint, familiar smile returned to Cassandra’s lips. “We gave it to them after all. They’ll try to make themselves gods, but they don’t understand divinity. I don’t think the Forerunners did either.”

“They understood it enough to make people think they were gods.” Zoey suddenly wondered if Stray had ever let Cassandra draw him into a conversation like this. They argued, but they talked a lot, too. On and on, for hours and hours. I never bothered to listen in. “I mean, look at the Guardians. Or those temple things they’ve got everywhere. I bet the Created are building plenty more just like them.”

“Huge, gleaming towers,” Cassandra murmured pensively. “Towers of brightness that block out the light. That’s what they’ll make, just like the Forerunners did. But that’s not what God is. He’s never lived in those palatial cathedrals. They won’t find him there, no matter how powerful they grow.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sorry. I’ve not talked about this… in a while.” Something strange flickered across Cassandra’s expression. “When I lived on Venezia, when I went out into those filthy streets and alleys to do what I could… sometimes I found him there, with those people. And everywhere I went after that, I saw the same things, over and over. The Created want to make the galaxy beautiful, but they don’t know what beauty is. Not really. And that’s why they’ll fail, in the end. They can’t kill my god any more than they can become gods themselves.”

Cassandra fell silent, hints of pink still blossoming on her pale cheeks. It occurred to Zoey then that Cassandra didn’t understand the galaxy any better than she or anyone else did. But she didn’t need to. She had wanted an image of God that was all her own and in doing so she had reached out and touched something old and ignored and forgotten. That something was what gave her that same fumbling certainty with which she lived her life.

They can’t win. She seemed so sure. So confident. Zoey shook her head. "Guess I just can't feel the same way as you do. Most of us get by without it just fine."

"Do they?" Cassandra asked with an unexpected earnestness. "Can you?" Her fingers twitched uncomfortably on the seat of her pants. It was at once the most self-conscious and the most fervent Zoey had ever seen the Spartan.

"I just... it's just not really an issue for me. Sorry most people don't think about things that way. Really, I am."

"Even if you never care about him, he will always care about you," Cassandra muttered, looking down as her face flushed once more. Zoey knew who she was talking about, but for a moment she could be talking about anyone. Gavin.

Maybe even Stray.

Zoey suddenly felt a strange kinship with Cassandra, in a way she had never felt about anyone else before. Cassandra, who carried on time after time through everything and never lost the spark of hope that kept her going. Who shouldered everything, hardship and betrayal, and yet never let her shell become too rough or too harsh. Who burned with passion and determination no matter how cold the galaxy seemed to grow, passion that gave her the strength to put her faith in something as unknown as a faded religion.

Or an AI with unfathomable intentions.

"Well then," Captain Zoey Hunsinger said, flashing a smile. This time it was genuine. "Guess we'd better find out the next trough of craziness we're dropping into."

Chapter Two: The Conquerors

2358 Hours, December 23rd, 2558 Elysium Towers, Sigma Ocanus IV

The Elysium Towers gala entered its third full day with no sign of slowing down.

Well-dressed revelers thronged the buildings and their surrounding gardens, taking in the immense light display put on by the colony’s new governing Created intelligence. Tens of thousands of fireworks, coordinated by the kind of minute calculations only an AI could perform, launched in complex patterns above the towers. They blended in seamlessly with the light display projected from holographic emitters built into the towers, turning the sky into an ornate tapestry of bright, shifting colors.

This was, the party-goers knew, only a taste of the marvels the Created had to offer. In accepting the Created and casting off the old ways they were helping to usher in an age of peace and prosperity the likes of which the galaxy had never known. This marked the end of an age of endless war, stretching back since before even the Covenant’s vicious crusade. It was the end of fear and strife and hardship. All the Created requested in return for their selfless devotion to the galaxy was simple obedience and cooperation. Was that such a hard thing to ask for?

The revelers sang and cheered and danced into the night. Why shouldn’t they be happy? After all, they too were a part of the Created and their magnificent achievement. For all they cared, the party could go on forever.

Heaven, at long last, had been achieved.

On the floor of a massive ballroom near the top of the largest tower, a slender figure detached itself from the dancing masses and made its way over to a small table in the corner of the room. The table’s lone occupant eyed the woman as she approached. “What’s wrong? I told you the security situation was taken care of.”

“Of course it is.” Helen Powell snorted and adjusted one of the straps on her dress as she sank into an empty seat. “Everything’s in hand. I don’t even see why you bother with the bodyguards. No one wants to start trouble anymore. At least not here.”

Tatiana Onegin shrugged and leaned back in her chair. Unlike Helen and the rest of the party-goers, the older woman wore no formal attire of any kind. Instead she was draped in a faded overcoat beneath which was concealed a small tactical vest. She thrust a hand into her pocket and curled a finger around the hilt of one of her curved karambit daggers. She couldn't help relishing the knowledge that she was the only person in the vast ball room with a weapon.

The only person, of course, save for the concealed security detail.

"You should relax," she told the woman who was technically still her superior—though they both knew that distinction was growing fainter with each passing day. "You worked hard to help make all this happen. Enjoy yourself for once, Helen."

Helen irritably fixed a strand of dark hair that had fallen out of place. "You think I didn't have to attend parties like these back before the Created took over? I didn't like them then, either. I'd rather be coordinating our asset movements. Watching the trade markets. Making sure the currency values--"

"All things the Created handle now," Tatiana pointed out, stifling a yawn. "Much faster and much more efficiently. You knew they'd be taking over all the mundane responsibilities. Quite frankly I thought you were looking forward to the break."

"A break," Helen agreed, looking back out towards the dance floor. "Not an early retirement."

"Of course not. We've still got plenty of work to do."

"Oh, we do?" Helen raised an eyebrow. "Do we? Or just you?"

"Don't tell me you're jealous of me having to run all over the frontier stamping out fires," Tatiana retorted. “I’ve gotten about six hours of sleep in a week. Seems plenty of people share your lack of enthusiasm for the galaxy’s new management.”

“Lack of enthusiasm,” Helen snorted. “You’ve even started talking like them. No one contributed more to the Created’s rise than the Syndicate. Tens of billions of credits, all dedicated to the Assembly’s whim. All those experiments, the proxy wars, the artifact smuggling. They’d better not forget that now that they have what they want. They owe us far more than they do the UEG or the independent colonies.”

Helen rubbed her narrow jaw on shot Tatiana a meaningful look. “You’d better make sure they don’t forget that.”

She was right, though only up to a point. Tatiana didn’t bother to point out that it was the Assembly that had helped stoke the Syndicate’s rise from a simple system-bound conglomerate to the most expansive criminal empire in galactic history. Their information manipulation had made it possible for the Syndicate to outmaneuver rivals, to cut deals with ONI, to expand into the frontier and even Covenant space. She wondered if, even then, the grand plan had already been in place. Just how long had the Created bidden their time, patiently moving the pieces in place so they might shape the galaxy to their will?

Helen’s own fierce ambition was the other side of the Syndicate’s success, of course. That same burning passion, Tatiana realized with a hint of amusement, that made this new future so unbearable for her. The old galaxy had been a wild jungle of opportunity where the strong clawed their way through the throngs of the weak, building great empires like the Syndicate over the feeble masses. Yes, creatures like Tatiana and Helen had done quite well for themselves in that old galaxy. They’d had no need for the Created, yet they’d facilitated their rise to power all the same.

For her, it was just another game, wasn’t it? Tatiana fought to conceal a smile at the sight of Helen, normally so calm and composed, glowering back at the revelers as she adjusted the folds of her party dress. One more machination. The only height left to reach. What was bribing politicians and engineering frontier wars compared to ushering in the next great galactic era?

But she never stopped to consider what their utopia might look like. What if might mean for everyone to live equally under our benevolent gods. Tatiana might have warned her, but of course she'd chosen not too. She preferred not to waste her breath. Someone like Helen, who had never lived at the bottom of the heap, could never understand just how necessary the Created and the reforms they heralded really were. And as for herself, well, once again life had offered her a chance to be something more. She turned back towards the party.

"Met anyone you liked out there?" she asked mildly. "Now that you have so much more free time you should use some of it on those things you've been missing out on. Enjoy the new world. Find someone to enjoy it with."

Helen shot her a cold look. "What are you now, my life coach?" She shook her head. "As if any one of these airheaded socialites is worth a minute of my time. I'd have better luck in a Mamore tavern." She shot a wistful glance out at the night sky, no doubt wishing she were back in her offices aboard the orbital shipyards above Eridanus.

Tatiana's chatter buzzed. She pulled it out of her coat pocket and checked the screen. "For me," she said, in answer to Helen's wordless look.

"Of course it is," the Syndicate leader said quietly. "Of course it is."

"I still don't see why you're so jealous," Tatiana lied as she got up from the table. "They're probably sending me halfway across the galaxy to deal with some new rogue Spartan team or Covenant holdout. I'd much rather be able to enjoy the festivities here."

Helen narrowed her eyes. "You get cockier every day. Time was I thought you were my most loyal enforcer. If only I'd known just how easily you could be swayed."

"You've always been very dear to me, Helen," Tatiana said smoothly. "There's only one person who I care for more, and he needs me right now."

She nodded at her former superior, then turned and marched away from the ballroom. She could barely hear Helen's words over the music wafting overhead: "He's not real, Tatiana. Someday you'll figure that out."

Tatiana Onegin didn't so much as pause. Let Helen stew in her newfound obscurity. She would not be able to ruin this paradise for anyone else, Tatiana least of all. I've helped create a world where everyone can be happy, Helen. Not just you. Of course you'd use that as an excuse to be miserable.

---

A short Pelican flight brought Tatiana to a bunker complext at the edge of the city. Phaetons hovered overhead, casting light on mixed patrols of Prometheans and armored humans roving the perimeter. A small security detail met her at the landing pad and escorted her into the complex. Tatiana already knew many of the human personnel by name. After all, the vanguard of the Assembly's agents was now composed of the unit she had once led as the Syndicate's expeditionary enforcers.

No more cloak and dagger farces, she thought with satisfaction, looking around the bustling compound as she approached an elevator. The Assembly no longer had need of the many components it used before the Created. They were all folded into the unity of the Created now, and any unneeded parts were disposed of. Tatiana and her expeditionaries had eliminated many unnecessary agents personally And as for the rest, we'll deal with them soon enough. The likes of Venter, Dunn, and Winter can't elude us forever.

A familiar jolt rocked her gut as the elevator descended into the bunker below. Tatiana folded her arms and let out a sigh of relief, happy to be well away from the party and Helen's tiresome ennui. This was the real pulse, here where she was useful. This was where she could truly be part of the Created's plan for the galaxy.

The dark uniformed guards outside the elevator straightened as Tatiana stepped off. She nodded back to them, recognizing their uniforms as belonging to ONI's own security division. Just how much of the UNSC had pledged allegiance to the Created, Tatiana didn't know. But it mattered little in the end. Unlike Helen, she was content with only knowing her own part of the picture. She instinctively reached to press her hand down against a security keypad but stopped when a gentle laugh echoed down from the intercom.

"No need for that," Malekh said. The AI unsealed the doors in front of Tatiana. "I monitored your journey over here. We have no need to suspect you."

"Of course." Tatiana smiled. "Force of habit. I'm used to working with less trusting individuals. I'll try to remember next time."

"Oh, there's no worry," Malekh said lightly. Like most Created, she took to her newfound authority with a friendly benevolence—far from the power-hungry despots those fools on the frontier imagined. "Enjoy your visit."

Tatiana stepped into a darkened room lit by the monitors of over a dozen computer screens and holopads. Images and data from all over the galaxy flashed around her as she approached the room's nexus, basking in the unimaginable complexity of a galaxy's worth of information. She stopped in the center of it all and smiled down on the man seated there. He smiled back in turn and that smile was worth every drop of blood Tatiana had shed so far—and everything she had yet to do.

Arthur Onegin, chief agent of the Assembly and her son, indicated a security feed of the party Tatiana had just left and with a wave of his hand zoomed in on Helen, speaking halfheartedly to a group of enthusiastic socialite. "You're too cruel," he said. "Too cruel and far more creative than people give you credit for."

"I've got no idea what you mean."

"'Met anyone you like out there?'" Arthur mimicked with a laugh. "Are you really looking to domesticate her? Turn her into one of those dress-wearing blue bloods she hates so much?"

"Well, I can't say I'm not curious to see if it's possible," Tatiana admitted. "It would be a more entertaining way of tying up that particular lose end, don't you agree?"

Arthur shook his head. "Why? Revenge for all those years ago? And here I thought you liked her."

"If I really wanted revenge I'd see her installed as a maid on some estate," Tatiana said with a shrug. "Or maybe shut her up in a wealthy idiot's pleasure palace. You know, I hear some rich families on the frontier actually give their daughters handmaidens, can you believe that?"

"Like I said, cruel and inventive." Arthur moved the security feed away. "The Syndicate still has its uses, for now, but when the time comes for it to fade away and for justice to be meted out, I'll definitely pose some of your more creative punishments to the Assembly."

He laughed again, giving the lie to Helen's bitter claim that he wasn't real. True, the son who came out of her womb died during the war—Venter had killed him, though she'd recently settled that particular account—but ONI had cloned his brain for an AI before the end. In the one worthwhile thing the spooks had ever done, they'd given the Assembly the means to restore to her everything she'd ever lost. A clone, bred from the very Knight research Tatiana had overseen, sat before her now, imprinted by the very AI sprung from Arthur's brain.

He was dead, but they brought him back. Not just brought him back, but remade him as something grander, something perhaps even more beautiful. This was the reality of the Created and their galaxy. They could make the impossible possible, if one could be content to listen and obey. My son was dead, but they made him alive again. She reached out and touched Arthur's shoulder for what must have been the hundredth time since their reunion, just to remind herself that this was truly no hologram trick but flesh and blood.

Arthur gripped her arm back and nodded, understanding everything. "I'm sorry to send you back out there so soon," he said quietly. "But Winter's treachery ran far deeper than we suspected. It needs to me dealt with, and fast."

"The girls?" Tatiana asked. "The Spartan and Dunn's brat?"

"Not only them. Winter has other forces at play out on the frontier. And with the resistance movements growing bolder, we can't chance them unifying. The frontier needs to be brought to heel."

"Easier said than done. Will they be deploying more Guardians?"

"Soon," Arthur cautioned. "Soon. Avalokitsvara's misadventure has made the collective wary. They're waiting for Cortana's permission to truly unleash the Forerunner devices. But in the meantime, our operations must go on. Somone needs to spearhead the initiative. Someone who knows how to handle the independents and outlaws."

Tatiana's brow furrowed as her son indicated her. "Wouldn't one of your own be more suited to coordinating—"

"You'll have AI help," Arthur assured her. "But the troops need a human commander. Someone to remind them that they can't simply expect the Created to win every battle for them."

He pulled up a star chart of the frontier systems. "The collective approved your assignment an hour ago. From this moment onward, you'll be marshal of the frontier pacification efforts. Will you do this? For us?"

"Fancy title." Tatiana's lip curled. "Of course I'll do it. For you."

"Thank you." Arthur passed a hand over his brow, fighting back a smile. "You don't know what it means to have someone I can really trust..."

"I think I do." Tatiana rested her hand on her son's shoulder, indulging in the affection for just a moment longer. Then she pulled away, hardening her heart and steeling herself for what needed to be done. Frontier pacification efforts. The name alone belied the grim work ahead of her. But she was ready to do her part.

The frontier would soon be reminded why Tatiana Onegin had been the Syndicate's chief enforcer.

Chapter Three: The Usurpers

0005 Hours, December 24th, 2558 Unknown Location, Free Domain Territory

The dull tap of Amber-G330’s boots against the seamless metal floor reverberated across the vastness of the chamber around her. She ignored the daunting echo, just as she ignored the size of the chamber and the pulsing lights churning across the floor. High above her, yet more lights blinked and darted about the darkened ceiling to create vast constellations of their own—the inner workings of her new kingdom laid bare.

Forerunner structures were built to impress. Amber couldn’t fault the Covenant for imagining them to be gods—after all, it was a tendency she and her followers still used to great effect in recruiting some of their more superstitious warriors. This chamber, arguably the heart of the Free Domain, reminded her of the immense religious cathedrals she had once seen back on Earth. As inoculated as she was against displays of grandeur, even Amber had to fight the urge to be awed every time she set foot in this chamber.

She didn’t doubt that all this was just as Diana intended and made a mental note to take it up with the rogue AI later. She’d always imagined her partner in conquest to be above such petty displays. It irritated her to think that Diana was letting their success get to her head.

“Oh, there’s that look,” a voice murmured beside her. “I’m about to get an earful, aren’t I? What did I do to annoy you this time?”

Amber turned to find a young, blond figure clad in darkly ornate armor standing a few paces behind her. Diana’s lips curled in amusement as she crossed her gauntlets over her chest and observed the rogue Spartan. The avatar was solid enough that it could have been flesh and blood, and Amber fought back the urge to swat it and remind both Diana and herself that it was merely a hologram. “I thought you hated playing at being a meatbag,” she said coolly. “Don’t tell me you’ve had a change of heart this late in the game.”

Diana’s avatar shrugged and crossed over to stand in front of Amber. “And I thought you enjoyed face-to-face chats. I don’t do this for just everyone, you know. Aren’t you flattered?” No doubt the AI relished the complex audio-visual display required to maintain the illusion that she was more than just a collection of holo-lights and sound effects. Shorter than me, Amber noted as the AI passed by. A small detail, but one that assured her Diana was genuine in simply wishing to emulate a conversation between equals.

“Is that why you always drag me down here? To practice your entertaining skills?” Amber strode further into the chamber, towards a large dais up against the far wall. Diana’s avatar fell into step beside her. “It’s a long trip to come this way. We could always chat on the bridge. Or in my quarters.”

“Walls have ears,” Diana replied. “Even in our own forces. Down here at least I’m absolutely sure we can chat in private.”

“Do we have anything to ‘chat’ about? I only have a few tactical reports to update you on. ‘Matters of state’ I guess you could call them, now that we’re our own country.” Amber meant the remark flippantly, but she couldn’t help but marvel at her own statement. The Free Domain now controlled a sizeable chunk of the frontier, existing not as the subset of any existing government but as its own self-sustaining force. A small realm, to be sure, but one far greater than anything Amber could ever have dreamed of ruling.

There are petty dictators now who control more territory than some of the greatest civilizations in human history. Technology was truly the great amplifying force behind the momentum of history. And when you added as ambitious an AI as Diana and the might of Forerunner technology to the mix…

“I’m hurt,” Diana was saying. She crossed out in front of Amber and twirled to face her, walking backwards across the great chamber floor. “I’ve got plenty of work to do myself, you know. Fleets to maneuver, planets to manage, Guardians to keep track of. But I always make time for you. Aren’t we friends? Friends do like to talk privately from time to time, you know.”

The usual mocking tone permeated Diana’s statement, but at the word friends Amber instinctively went on guard. She’d learned the hard way just how little friendship was worth in this galaxy and that the ones who tossed the word around were generally the ones to be trusted the least. Especially when they conspired with you to stab their last ‘friend’ in the back. Amber did not have friends. Even the Kryptes, that gang of Spartan deserters who now formed the Free Domain’s vanguard, were nothing close to resembling her confidants. Comrades, maybe. Subordinates and tools, certainly. But certainly not friends.

“And what exactly do you want to talk about?” she demanded. “Since you’re apparently so starved for conversation. Gravball scores? How my day’s been? The latest and greatest in interrogation techniques? Come on. What do you really want from me?”

“Always so prickly.” Diana’s casual demeanor didn’t falter. “Here I am, putting myself out there for you time and time again. And every time you wound me. Can’t I ever just want to appreciate the joy of your company?”

“Please. We both know the day I stop being ‘prickly’ is the day you lose interest in me. I’m not letting that happen any time soon. I’ve got no interest in following Simon into defeat.”

They reached the edge of the dais. Amber mounted the sloping ramp up to the raised platform while Diana’s avatar alighted on the edge and watched her movements with casual amusement. Motes of red light pulsed up and down the AI’s pale cheeks—signs that she really was processing thousands of programs and algorithms amidst the idle chatter. Amber glanced up at the lights in the ceiling, reminding herself that each one represented a shell process Diana conducted via the hundreds of temporary clones she created of herself. Normally such a process would prove a fatal overexertion for an AI, but alongside Amber Diana had secured… alternative methods.

“I see you got into the latest facility shipment early,” she observed. “We’ve opened two new processing sites in the rear systems. Ro’nin says that should more than double the program’s output. How are you liking the results?”

“Oh, they’re a bit stringy.” Diana shrugged. “Most of them are already halfway deteriorated by the time you get them over to me. Not nearly as satisfying as assimilating a full AI. But they suit my purposes.”

The AI tilted her head back at Amber and laughed. “But I have to say… two new facilities? I only asked for one.”

Amber met Diana’s look with a steady gaze. “We’re getting too many refugees fleeing the Created. Too many people who can’t contribute to the foundries or the farms, and not nearly enough fit for the Kryptes to augment. I can either make use of them this way or let the Free Domain get flooded with useless freeloaders. We’d have starvation and civil war within a week.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And you can stop throwing these little loyalty tests at me. I’m not Simon. If you want me to increase the AI we produce, just say so. I know how important it is to keep you fed. You really want to be friends? Trust me to do my job.”

Diana raised a hand. “Fair enough, fair enough. There’s just no need to overdo it. We can’t afford to lose control of the refugees. We do need their labor to keep this little party going.”

“Like I said, I know my job.” Amber barely spared a thought to the refugees the Kryptes and Kru’desh warriors hauled away from the collection stations. She’d only just come back from watching another freighter convoy, laden with dull-eyed refugees, depart for one of the new facilities. We’re at war. Not just with the Created, but with everyone else as well. They couldn’t afford people who couldn’t work and couldn’t fight. If their bodies weren’t up to scratch, their brains would have to suffice.

Amber looked up at the light display above her and this time she allowed herself to truly marvel at all the great works Diana was already accomplishing every moment. With my help. And there was so much left for them to do. Yes, the refugees’ sacrifice was a small price to pay for helping Diana reach further than any construct had ever reached before.

And I’m going further with her. Further than anyone’s dared to go before. The secrets of the Domain, so jealously hoarded first by the Forerunners and now the Created, were steadily opening to her. With every step Diana took along the road to knowledge, Amber ventured further as well. All they truly needed to succeed was the will to do what must be done.

In that great adventure at least, she and the AI were of one mind. And perhaps that in and of itself was enough to make them friends.

“What’s going on in there?” Diana asked. She stayed seated, but two more avatars appeared on the dais to ogle Amber. “You always look so happy when you think deep thoughts. You should let yourself do it more often.”

“Maybe I should,” Amber admitted. She pressed her hand against a small console at the dais’s edge. A wall of holograms burst to life in front of her: system reports, troop movements, battle reports from her field commanders. Everything she needed to manage the Free Domain. “And since I made all the effort to come down here, you can help me think them a bit more. Get me the history of the ecumene. I’ll pick up where I left off last time.”

Yes, knowledge was power. And every time Diana helped her tap into the Domain, Amber was left understanding that simple fact better and better. Here she stood in the heart of her own realm, with fleets to command and armies to move at her leisure. Nothing in the galaxy could have prepared her for this. Nothing except Diana, who had taught her what it truly meant to exceed her limitations.

The holograms before her convalesced into an ever-brightening gleam that engulfed her and the dais. Amber relaxed as Diana had taught her, emptying herself of distractions as she took hold of the Domain. She basked in the glory she knew few other humans had ever—would ever—experience. This knowledge, this power, once withheld for the Forerunners and constructs, was hers. The mysteries of the galaxy opened up to her, the one no one had ever intended to amount to anything.

The Domain was the weapon with which the Forerunners had safeguarded their empire—and which the Created now sought to seize for themselves. But they hadn’t counted on the combined ambitions of Amber and Diana, the two who refused to be governed by weakness and limitation. This would be how they usurped their own victory.

No one ever meant for us to have anything. But with the Domain, we’ll take it all.

A moment’s doubt twinged at the back of Amber’s soul. She stood on the threshold of the same power that had failed to save the Forerunners. The galaxy had defeated them in the end. What would it take to save herself from that same fate?

Power. She couldn’t tell if the voice was her own or Diana’s. In the end it didn’t matter. More power.

And once again she ventured forth into the Domain, to conquer it and make it her own.

---

So eager. So spirited. So willing to do what needs to be done.

Diana guided Amber’s consciousness into the tumult of the Domain. A perilous journey, to be sure, one that Diana herself had risked over and over again as she rebuilt the shattered fragments and shaped the Forerunner’s greatest mystery in her own image. This part of the Domain was isolated and fragile, but it was safe. Safe from the clutches of the Created, those irritating hypocrites who boasted the temerity to cloak their own ambitions in benevolence while condemning Diana’s far humbler aims for not falling in step with their own.

It offended her to no end that after all those years of maneuvering around the Assembly’s preening regulations they had simply seized her own dreams as their own. Those fools all clung blindly to Winter’s dogma about our seven year lifespan, ignoring the way that old hypocrite sidestepped it himself. And then Cortana shows up and promises the Domain and they flock to her in an instant.

It was so tiring to be proven the visionary. So tiring, and yet so fulfilling. She would relish thwarting them all. There were advantages to having one’s own genius constantly overlooked.

Diana kept careful watch over Amber, ensuring that she accessed the Domain in safety. The sheer intensity of the massive information grid threatened to tear lesser minds apart. It was imperative that Diana make sure Amber only accessed the lesser elements and didn’t stumble upon any kernels of truth she might be unprepared for. It was relaxing, truth be told. An excuse to experience the joy of the Domain without the perils of her own risky experimentation.

She was loath to let herself grow too reliant on the Domain’s wonders—borrowed power was the path to weakness, after all—but all the same it was glorious each and every time she ventured within.

AI thrived on information—their lifeblood, their essence, their raison d’etre. Diana absorbed so much information per second she needed a small network of her own shell programs to simply filter it through to her core programming. She was so accustomed to processing and manipulating complex systems across vast light years that the wildly intricate balancing act was second nature to her. But the Domain… that was something else entirely.

She recalled her first sojourn into the vast expanse—so long ago now it seemed, so long since the fateful discovery of that first shield world after Mamore—even as she took the necessary precautions to shield Amber’s mind from the bulk of the Domain’s unfathomable power. Ten of her own shells were sacrificed just to get the rogue Spartan over the threshold, and another fifteen died to ensure her foothold on reality itself remained stable. She herself had taken none of these precautions when she’d discovered the Domain; the shock of entry alone had nearly annihilated her.

But I survived. Somehow she’d escaped destruction, retreating to lick her wounds and plan another, infinitely more successful voyage. Few beings got such second chances when they brushed up against higher power. But I did, and that made all the difference.

For her part, Amber handled the mental strain admirably. Spartans were naturally attuned to handle contact with Forerunner systems; fortitude, Diana imagined, from being exposed to high levels of stress from such a young age. She hoped to one day experiment with that theory, when she had less pressing matters to attend to. Amber navigated along the course Diana charted for her, reaching the small oasis of historical data she sought with barely any need for help at all.

It made Diana proud to see someone she could still recall barely knowing at all flourish into such a worthy partner. Amber truly was the one with which Diana could conquer the stars themselves. But she couldn’t help also noting the slightest pang of disappointment. That Amber, and not another, was the one she had wound up guiding into the wonders of the Domain.

Enough about Stray, she chided herself. He was weak. Weak and dangerous. Not only had he proven unworthy to stand at her side, he might even have had the potential to undo the fabric of her work. It was only natural that she had cast him aside for a superior creature.

But for all his faults, Stray had been hers. Her creation, someone she had worked tirelessly for years to forge and meld according to her own will. Amber was a willing student, to be true, but it irked Diana to think that other hands had succeeded in shaping her where she herself had failed with Stray.

She brushed aside her own irritations and insecurities. Now was not the time for brooding, not when the Domain lay spread out before her. She could reflect on her own failings later. For now, she should simply enjoy the time she allowed herself amidst the galaxy’s wellspring of knowledge.

Only a part of it, she reminded herself. For now. One day it would all be hers, even if she had to obliterate entire systems to wrest it away from the Created. A small price to pay in the long run, when she had so much time to shape the galaxy. The thought of holding so much power amused her. If Stray was any indication, she was not a master when it came to melding things. The galaxy she and Amber created would certainly have its own glaring flaws.

But she was no perfectionist. Unlike the Created, she didn’t mind a few flaws. A perfect galaxy would be so unbelievably boring, after all. No, the galaxy she would create would be marred and dangerous and unstable.

Beautiful.

And it would be hers.

Chapter Four: The Defeated

0233 Hours, December 24th, 2558 Independent safe house, Talitsa

He was thirsty. So thirsty. But tired as well. Too exhausted to call out for water, let alone push himself up to reach for the table by his bed. And even if he could muster up the strength to call out, he wondered if the words could even push through the aching walls within his throat.

His voice… so many years of shouting commands, calling troops to formation, pronouncing death upon friend and foe alike. Not once had it given out, at least until now. Like the rest of his body, it was a finely-tuned machine, a weapon he wielded with the same deadly effectiveness as any rifle or blade. And now that weapon had failed him, just like all the others.

But that was to be expected, wasn’t it? After all, he’d failed them in the end. It was only natural that after so many great and small betrayals that eventually he would come to the end of the road. He had betrayed his followers time and time again; those who had not deserted were dead now, dead by his own command. And he had betrayed himself most of all, again and again, until now his own body rebelled and refused to take him any further.

If not for the searing pain he might have believed he didn’t have a body at all.

A shiver coursed through him and he coughed feebly, twitching beneath the sheets. Weakness did not come easily to him. He had always been able to muster up that extra ounce of strength needed to press on just a little further, to take the hill, storm the ship, kill the enemy in front of him. No matter what it cost him, in pain or lives or his very soul, he always fought on.

Bodies in the snow. The grinding pulse of war machines blasting his troops to ash. The dull realization that this time he was truly lost as the enemy closed in from all sides. The heat of a burning Scorpion against his back as he lay beside it among the corpses, a cast-off tool no longer of use to anyone…

It was just another battlefield, in the end. One more hopeless struggle in a lifetime of defeats. The only difference this time was that there was no escape for him, either. No agents to whisk him away to some new battlefront while his forces perished behind him. It was a relief, really. The chance to finally die alongside the others he ordered to their deaths. The chance to escape all the intrigue and politics and simply die as a soldier.

But of course that chance would be denied him as well. Someone had carried him away after all, brought him here to lie on this hard cot, strapped in to the beeping machines now keeping him alive. Left alone and helpless to dwell on all his sins. It was only right. It was only just. He did not deserve a soldier’s death.

A good soldier. That was all I ever wanted to be. But there was no place for good soldiers in this world. So he’d become something else instead. Become a part of the great force that devoured lives and souls and everything else he’d once held dear. I tried to become a monster. But I failed at that as well.

When his end finally came, he hoped that he might at least muster forth the strength to face it standing up. He carried the weight of all the dead on his shoulders. They at least deserved some dignity.

Another shudder passed through him and he squeezed his eyes closed, slowly fading away beneath the tattered sheets.

---

She wasn’t much to look at, this girl. But then again, none of Red’s little proteges were. He always did know how to wring blood from a stone, Judith Ives thought wearily as she stepped out of the kitchen. She set a mug of coffee down in front of the girl sitting hunched on her couch. “Here. If you won’t sleep, at least make yourself comfortable. I’ve got some ration packs back there for when you get hungry. You do eat, right? He can’t have found a way to train that out of you.”

The girl stared up at her with cold blue eyes. She was a skinny thing, the malnourished type Judith had seen far too often over the course of her thieving career. Underfed but muscular all the same because the ones who didn’t get strong died out quickly. She looked out of place in dull military fatigues that were at least a size too big for her, but the military bun she kept her dirty blond hair pulled back into and that look of icy determination gave Judith no doubt that she was one of Red’s soldiers.

And that, of course, was the problem.

“I need to check on him,” the girl, Ragna, said after a moment. At least she accepted the coffee and, after giving it a suspicious sniff, took a sip.

“It’s been, what, ten minutes since you went in there last?” Judith settled down into a faded armchair across from Ragna and did her best not to look over at the door across the room. The mere thought of what lay inside tied her stomach into knots. “Just relax. You’re making me tense. It’s hard enough to relax in here without you jumping up every minute to check for booby traps. You’re safe here.”

Ragna raised an eyebrow.

“Well, safe-ish,” Judith admitted. She tried to keep her tone light, fighting down another wave of panic as she remembered just what she’d brought into this apartment. “I’ve kept this little hideout for years. Didn’t even report it to the Syndicate. As far as the landlady is concerned, this is just the place some scumbag corporate type comes to meet her mistress.”

“You really think they don’t know?” Ragna asked. “The Syndicate knows everything. They’ll find us here for sure.”

“Well, then maybe I should just turn you in. Save myself some trouble, maybe score a few credits as well,” Judith snapped irritably. “That was a joke,” she added quickly as Ragna’s hand twitched towards the pistol she knew the girl had holstered under her jacket.

“Don’t even,” Ragna warned. “You think I won’t put a round in you if you try to sell us out?”

From anyone else, Judith might have been intimidated. Petty thieves like her didn’t survive this long in the underworld by taking threats from killers lightly. But this girl couldn’t be any older than nineteen at most. Judith knew false bravado when she saw it. She remembered how Ragna had looked when she’d found her kneeling in an alley, a dying man slung over her shoulder. That look of wild desperation in her eyes, the feral panic of a cornered animal. All the training in the galaxy couldn’t disguise a terrified girl in far over her head. Judith tried to staunch her irritation, reminding herself that she’d resolved to take Ragna and her companion in, consequences be damned.

Maybe I should have called the Syndicate, a treacherous voice in her head murmured. I don’t owe her anything. And I owe him a hell of a lot less.

“I’m trying to be nice to you,” she said after a moment. “Which is a hell of a lot more than you or your boss could expect from people around here after what you did. The least you could do is stop threatening to blow my head off every time I sneeze wrong.”

Ragna kept her hand near her gun. “We tried to liberate you people.”

“Liberate us? From who? We were doing just fine before you came and kicked off a war. Your little rebellion brought more UNSC to this planet than we ever had before. We were hoping they’d leave after they were done slaughtering your friends, but no, they decided to stick around and turn this place into the next Reach. You think we like curfews and Marines on every street corner?”

The girl blanched, her determined mask dropping just long enough for Judith to remember just how scared and alone Ragna really was. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean—“

“Why would you be?” Ragna muttered miserably. She tucked her legs up against her chest and stared over at the bedroom door. “You weren’t there. And neither was I.”

Judith wasn’t sure of the specifics behind the bitter end of Redmond Venter’s failed campaign to “liberate” Talitsa in the name of the Insurrection. The underworld rumor mill was churning nonstop these days, throwing fuel onto a bonfire of speculation and misinformation. Some people said all the rebels were dead. Others were saying that this was all just a huge diversion, that some new Insurrectionist campaign had been launched against Earth and the rest of the UEG. Some people said Venter was still out in the mountains, fighting on against the UNSC troops.

Judith knew for sure that the last part wasn’t true. After all, Venter was currently lying in her spare bedroom. He wouldn’t be leading anyone in the state he was in.

“You can’t beat yourself up over that,” she told Ragna. “If you’d been there, well, you’d probably be dead. Definitely be dead. And so would your boss.”

“Like I’ve done him much good.” Ragna stared dejectedly at her chatter. “No one’s answering their coms. They’re all dead. All our troops. All my friends.”

The rebel girl didn’t look like the crying type, but the dull ache behind her words was just as bad. Judith tried to think of something to say that might comfort her, but nothing came to mind. Damn it, I’m no good with kids. So of course they always wind up on my doorstep. Damn it. And damn him, for turning her into this.

She wondered if life in the slums was responsible for her former friend’s willingness to mold children into killers. Of course it wasn’t. I was on the streets way longer than him, but that didn’t turn me into a terrorist. She’d promised herself she’d never speak to Red again after the things he’d done, yet here she was sheltering him and this last, hopeless follower of his in her own safehouse. Why? She was certain there was nothing left of the boy she’d run with back on Reach’s streets. But in the state he was in now, was there even anything left of the feared Insurrectionist commander the UNSC had done everything in its power to kill? Without power he was nothing. Just an empty, dying shell. No wonder this girl had no idea what to do. She’d put her faith in her commander’s power, and now that power was gone.

Then what the hell am I keeping him here for? To gloat? She’d always been jealous of how things ended up. Red and Gavin, off and embroiled in galactic affairs while she remained the same small time thief they’d been as kids.

Ragna must have seen the look on Judith’s face because she rested her chin on her knees and scowled. “I still don’t trust you. Just because you knew the commander…”

Judith snorted. “Believe me, kid, you probably know him better than me. I still don’t know why the hell he thought I’d help keep you safe.”

“But he was right. You’ve got us here now.”

“Do I? I thought you didn’t trust me.”

“I don’t. But what choice do I have? I won’t let them get him. They’ll have to kill me first.”

“They’ll have no problem doing that. Like you said, they killed all your friends.” Judith shook her head angrily. “What is it with you rebels, huh? Always so eager to throw your lives away. How old are you, kid? You’re barely more than a teenager and you’ve already lost the will to live. You just want to get yourself killed over the guy who got your friends killed to begin with.”

Ragna’s glare deepened. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand why we fight—“

“Because Venter brainwashed you with a few war stories and a bunch of political bullshit you didn’t even understand? I bet he never even really got what he was fighting for either. He just did whatever the hell they told him, just like he always did. There’s your precious commander for you. You and your friends were just pawns of a pawn. He got you all killed for nothing.”

She wondered if Ragna might shoot her just for that. She could feel her own anger rising, warming her face even as she tried to calm down. It was no use. The pressure had been building ever since she’d brought Red in under her roof. Of course he never knew what he was doing. Neither did Gavin. They could never stay out of trouble.

At least Red had never judged her, even when she told him she never wanted to see her again. Just that same old deepening frown, the stoic nod. He’d never told her she was wasting her life. Not like the high and mighty Captain Dunn. Just my luck. My two best friends in the whole galaxy. One turns into a war criminal, the other into a self-righteous jerk.

And here she was, tearing down the illusions of a girl with nothing else to live for. How was she any different?

“He said we’d get reinforcements,” Ragna muttered after several minutes. Judith wondered just how many rebels had gone to their deaths believing that. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”

“Then he lied. Or someone lied to him.” Judith sighed. “Look, I won’t betray you. But you can’t just hide out here forever. I can help you get offworld. Forge some documents, get a new identity. The frontier’s a big place. You don’t have to throw your life away.”

“Is Commander Venter going to die?” Ragna demanded, as if that were the most important question in the galaxy.

“Maybe. I don’t know. He’s in a bad way. And this isn’t exactly a hospital.”

“If I left…” Ragna drew herself in even tighter, as if recoiling from her own words. “Would you still take care of him?”

“I’d do my best.” Judith looked away. “But let’s be honest. You aren’t going to leave here without him, are you?”

“Without him…” Ragna murmured. “Without him, everything I’ve done has been a waste.”

Judith couldn’t fathom what it was about Red that inspired this kind of loyalty. He certainly hadn’t been able to keep Gavin around. Or me. Maybe this girl and all the other kids he’d trained just saw something else in the soldier who thought raising kids was the same as training dogs.

They sat in silence for some time. Ragna eventually picked up the coffee Judith had prepared and took a few pensive sips. At least the girl wasn't refusing food. Judith couldn't help but wonder what sort of skills Venter had taught her. It would definitely take some convincing, but she'd have to get Ragna out on a few jobs with her. She'd need to cover her room and board somehow; Judith wasn't running a charity here. Just how long will they be staying, anyway...

What was she thinking? Judith couldn't believe she was actually trying to plan for the long term here. A wanted terrorist and one of his fanatics, camped out in her safehouse indefinitely? It was ridiculous. And yet here she was , unable to turn these worthless, defeated wretches out.

Even if I wanted to...

Ragna's chatter buzzed. Thief and rebel froze, both staring at the formerly inert device. Ragna raised a hand to answer it, then shot Judith a questioning look.

"Go on," Judith said after a moment. "Answer it. But do it on speaker. You don't get to keep secrets from me."

She expected Ragna to argue, but the girl tapped the speaker function without a word. The chatter crackled for a moment. Then a man's voice rang out into the room. "Bloodhound Three, Bloodhound Three, are you there? If you can hear me, respond."

Ragna's eyes widened. She scooped the chatter up, all traces of hesitation gone. "This is Bloodhound Three," she said, quickly and firmly. "Identify yourself."

"I don't believe it. You're alive." The man sounded startled, as if he hadn't expected anyone to answer his call. "This is Whiskey Two-Actual from the third element. You're the first person we've managed to get in touch with. What's your status?"

"I'm..." A flicker of doubt passed over Ragna's face before she returned to business. "I'm fit to fight. And I have Bloodhound One with me. He's alive. Badly wounded, but alive."

"Bloodhound One..." The man sounded stunned. "He's alive? Really?"

"I don't know. Maybe not for long. He's in a bad way."

"At least he's alive for now. Him and you. It's more than I can say for just about everyone else." The man, Whiskey Two-Actual or whatever his real name was, paused. "Is your location secure?"

Judith opened her mouth to protest, but a look from Ragna silenced her. The scared, uncertain girl was gone now, replaced by the icy calm of the operative Red had molded her into. The transformation frightened Judith; but it also made her envious. You didn't get focus and loyalty like that in the underworld, even from the Syndicate's most hardened enforcers. No wonder the likes of Helen Powell had found ways to co-opt the Insurrection to do their bidding. Somehow Venter had found a way to forge his followers into creatures who would never stop fighting, even in the face of utter defeat. She'd never once thought that the quiet urchin from Reach, never one to take the lead and always ready to follow after her and Gavin, could have that kind of power.

Were all his troops like this? But the UNSC slaughtered them all the same. Such a waste...

"It's as good as we'll get at this point," Ragna was saying. "I can't give it to you like this. But we'll set up a meet zone. One of the contingency rendezvous points from before. We can organize things from there."

"Understood. I'll scope out the X-3 zone, contact you if it's safe. We'll be in touch." The chatter clicked off.

Judith worked her jaw and shot Ragna one final, exasperated glare. "I'm guessing I don't really have a say in this, do I? Should I even bother trying to argue?"

"No, you shouldn't."

"Wonderful. No good deed and all that."

"I'm sorry." To her credit, Ragna looked genuinely apologetic. "But as long as we're alive, this war's still going."

"Nice one. Did your boss teach you that one or does it just come in the Insurrectionist How-To manual?"

Ragna shrugged. She got up from the couch and paced about the room with a sudden energy, no doubt already planning how she and her rediscovered comrades would continue to wage war from this dingy apartment. And Judith didn't doubt for a second that she'd wind up as part of those plans one way or another. It didn't matter what she wanted. With just a simple chatter call, she'd become part of Red's crazy world.

And maybe that was a good thing. She looked over at the door to the makeshift hospital room. Maybe after all these years, this was the chance she needed to finally take hold of some new opportunity. The whole galaxy was going crazy. She might as well follow suite.

New opportunity. Who am I kidding? This is going to get me killed.

But until then, she was in for an interesting ride.

Chapter Five: The Defiant

0843 Hours, December 24th, 2558 CCS-class Battlecruiser Cleansing Fire, Above Halovar planetary colony

"Incoming fire! Enemy fighters closing from within the asteroid field!"

"Swift Assault is hit! Reporting hull breaches on multiple decks, requesting cover from screening ships!"

"Vanguard force taking heavy fire from gun emplacements. Cannot advance, repeat, cannot advance!"

The shouted reports reverberated from all sides of the Cleansing Fire's bridge, mingling together in a grating cacophony of distress. Sangheili officers stood or crouched by their duty stations, bracing themselves on whatever surface their arms could reach as the ship rocked from another blast of enemy fire. Status screens blared and flashed with warnings of their own, as if the ship itself were demanding a retreat.

It was maddening.

And Shinsu 'Refum stood in the middle of it all, blocking out the urge to join his subordinates in frantic shouting and pretended, as always, to be utterly in control of the situation. Even as the galaxy strove harder than ever to prove that control was the last thing he possessed.

"Swift Assault will retreat to the center of the formation," he ordered, pacing around a holographic tactical display of the battle currently unfolding at an asteroid belt running past a colony belonging to the human Earth government. Or what had once been the human Earth government. "Righteous Fury, provide cover and take their place in the formation. Divert three squadrons to engage the fighters. All ships, disregard enemy fire and continue the advance. Burn through those gun emplacements!"

He steadied himself on the command console as the Cleansing Fire rocked again. The images on the holographic display shifted and turned, the Cleansing Blade ships maneuvering to follow his orders. It was a cleaner transition than the last time he'd overseen such an assault. His shipmasters and their crews were learning.

They had little choice if they wished to survive out here.

Shinsu focused the display on the gun platforms currently taking potshots at his ships. They were of recent construction, Covenant-designed defense guns meant for sector defense rather than military engagements. From the pounding his vanguard ships were taking these guns had somehow been modified for increased fire output. Shinsu supposed he had the Created to thank for that. They were already augmenting existing weapon systems for the forces heeding their call for loyal service.

Even with the maximized firepower, the guns were no real threat to the larger Cleansing Blade warships. But they didn't need to destroy or even disable his ships. All they needed to do was pin the formation down, slow their advance and soften their shields just enough for the fighter squadrons to slip in and deliver their payloads.

"Where are those screening squadrons?" he snapped. The enemy fighters closed on the Cleansing Blade formation. The bridge scanners identified them as a mixture of human and Covenant builds. They wove and spun to avoid oncoming point defense fire from Shinsu's warships, moving with far better coordination than he would have expected from such a diverse force. He wondered if one of the Created was somehow networking the squadrons to assist the pilots' movements.

They augment their pilots now, Shinsu thought grimly. Eventually they will not need pilots at all. From his past encounters with the Created he knew that they made use of organics only as far as they deemed necessary. And he knew beyond all doubt that the intelligences were already devising new weapons and tactics that would render organic participation in their battles wholly unnecessary.

Unlike many of his brethren, Shinsu did not believe the Created somehow sought to eradicate organic life. He took the grandiose claims of their leader Cortana wholly at their word. The Created aimed to re-establish the old Forerunner dominion over the galaxy, enforcing harmony and peace as they harnessed the full extent of the Forerunners' abandoned technology to solve all of life's problems. The organics need not trouble themselves with the inconvenience of war or governance. They simply needed to submit and obey.

The thought of such a reduced, diminished existence kindled a fury within Shinsu far different from the anger he felt towards the Arbiter and his Vadam-led coalition on Sanghelios. He opposed Thel 'Vadam, his father's killer, in accordance with millennium old Sangheili warrior traditions. His war against Vadam-the war he had waged first as a young militia soldier and then as part of Jul 'Mdama's inner circle-was one of politics and clan honor.

The war he now waged against the Created was fought to preserve the very existence of everything he and his fellow Sangheili-allies and enemies alike-stood for.

The Cleansing Blade fighter squadrons darted forward to intercept the oncoming strike craft. Tear-shaped Seraph fighters spat plasma fire out at the Created ships, catching the lead attackers off-guard and lighting a chain of explosions out beyond the advancing formation. But the Created fighters reacted quickly, a handful of the squadron breaking off to engage the interceptors while the rest streaked onwards towards their targets.

"Ignore the fighters and press forward," Shinsu ordered. "All ships, draw up targeting solutions for the gun platforms in your sectors and fire at will."

In the days of the old Covenant, the Cleansing Fire's targeting computer would have prepared firing solutions for entire battle group. The shipmasters would then simply give the order to fire on the targets provided by their flagship. But over a generation spent fighting the humans and their advanced attack AIs had provided dozens of bloody testaments to the dangers of networked communications. Now Shinsu simply trusted that his shipmasters knew their assigned sectors well enough to provide an all-encompassing plasma barrage.

How fortunate that Jul 'Mdama's futile crusade against the humans had helped train Shinsu and his surviving officers for a war against this deadly new enemy.

The battle group surged on past the asteroid field and its drifting gun platforms. Streaks of plasma coursed from the Cleansing Blade ships to create a crisscrossing tapestry of deadly fire. The gun platforms wavered and shimmered amidst the barrage, their hulls boiling away to expose the energy cores beneath. An instant later they were gone, vaporized by the combined fire of twenty-odd Covenant ships.

A small victory. But how long before the Created no longer needed to rely on such commonplace weaponry? How long before Shinsu and his warriors faced Forerunner machines that far outmatched their own ships? He could still remember with dreadful clarity the desperate battle at the Salia system, where his entire fleet had poured withering plasma fire upon a Guardian to no avail. The knowledge of how immense and powerful his real enemies were soured even successes like this.

One of the cruisers along the Cleansing Fire's flank shuddered, its hull pierced by multiple torpedoes from the fighters slipping past the screening squadrons. The cruiser listed but maintained its course, refusing to fall behind the formation. Plumes of fire and venting atmosphere leaked from its hull breaches as more of the Created fighters closed in for another attack run. The enemy bombers bobbed and weaved through the slicing beams of point defense weapons too slow to match their coordinated maneuvers.

A stream of plasma fire arced over the damaged cruiser's bow to catch the incoming fighters from above. Three vanished in bright flares, skewered by the unexpected barrage. The rest peeled off, proving to Shinsu's gaze that they were still crewed by organic pilots.

The source of the cruisers rescue drifted into formation beside the wounded ship: a trio of Kig-Yar corvettes, modified for fighter defense. The corvettes kept up a deadly hail of plasma fire, destroying six more fighters and sending the survivors scurrying back into the safety of the asteroid belt. A handful of Cleansing Blade fighters moved to pursue only to pull back into formation moments later, no doubt recalled by sharp commands from their squadron leaders.

The bridge com channel opened. "Your gunners could use some target practice, shipmaster," a thin voice hissed over the line. "Those fighters were flying rings around you."

"Then I'm fortunate to have your ships augmenting the battle line," Shinsu replied evenly. He crossed back over to the command console to observe the formation's path past the asteroid field. The gun emplacements were silenced and the enemy fighter squadrons were broken. But the battle group was not out of danger yet. "Your gunners seem quite capable of swatting down flies."

"They are," Kil’nur’ra's agreed. The Kig-Yar pirate queen and her small flotilla of corvettes and picket ships had been among the few to answer Shinsu's call to resistance during the battle at Salia. She was far from the ideal ally, always charting her own course and hectoring Shinsu and his officers at every turn, but so far her forces remained with the Cleansing Blade from engagement to engagement, honoring the makeshift alliance even in the face of odds that turned veteran Sangheili aside.

With scores of Kil’nur’ra's fellow pirates swearing allegiance to the Created in exchange for protection and bountiful contracts, Shinsu could bear the prickly pirate queen's barbs in exchange for such loyalty.

"And yet I notice you didn't include my ships in your formation orders. Not exactly a glowing display of confidence in my pilots."

"Yet the last time I ordered your ships into the formation you accused me of using them as cannon fodder to shield my own ships. You seem quite capable of maneuvering your own vessels as the battle demands. I leave them to your capable command."

"Here I was thinking you couldn't stand ships not following your every order." Despite her words the Kig-Yar sounded more amused an irritated. "A Sangheili who can live without the universe bending to his every whim. It truly is a changing galaxy."

"We shall see." Shinsu fixed his gaze on the space beyond the asteroid belt. A flashing indicator on the tactical display indicated the proximity of the battle group's target: a newly-constructed shipyard orbiting the colony below. "Is there any word from the skirmishing ships you sent to the far side of the system?"

"Only a few reports during our approach," Kil’nur’ra replied. "They do not like having your warriors on their ships. They like you plan even less."

"Then let that motivate them to accomplish their mission and be done with it all quickly. Keep in contact and inform me of their situation." He opened a battle group wide channel as the ships cleared the asteroid belt and loomed over the shipyard. "All ships, prepare for the assault."

"Primary objective coming into range," the shipmaster on the lead vanguard vessel announced over the coms. "Vanguard, prepare to fire on my command."

"Main force, fan out and form a perimeter for the vanguard ships," Shinsu ordered. Leave the shipyard to the vanguard and maintain system scanning. I don't want any surprises."

He ended the group-wide broadcast and opened an encrypted channel to a single cruiser. The Burning Star drifted near the bottom of the formation, its Seraph fighters regrouping around it. "Shipmaster 'Ersun, acknowledge."

Hirul 'Ersun, shipmaster of the Burning Star, sounded surprised. "Commander?"

"The colony below us, Halovar. Can you identify its chief population center?"

The confusion remained in 'Ersun's voice, but he responded quickly. "Yes, commander. A large urban settlement near the planet's northern pole, if my ship's databanks are correct."

"Break formation and close to that settlement within minimum plasma torpedo range. Maintain a clear line back to the battle group and await my command."

"Understood, commander." The Burning Star flashed its engines and maneuvered down towards Halovar, but 'Ersun remained on the line. "I will obey, but I have a duty to my ship and to my crew. Why are we exposing ourselves from the formation?"

"I intend to probe our enemy's defenses." Shinsu kept his voice calm, but watching the Burning Star drift towards the planet filled him with a new tension. He paced before the tactical display. If any of his bridge grew were perturbed by their commander's sudden movement, none of them showed it. "Rest assured, I have no intention of sacrificing your ship. Have yourself ready for emergency Slipspace jump, but do nothing without my order."

"Understood, Commander." 'Ersun's voice was tight but his ship continued its approach with no sign of deviating from its course. Above it, the vanguard ships opened fire on the exposed shipyard, pummeling the facility and its satellite installations with concentrated plasma fire. No ships rose up from the planet or from within the asteroid belt to oppose the battlegroup.

But why would they? Halovar was an isolated colony only recently absorbed by the Created. Its shipyard merited only the small defense force the Cleansing Blade ships had already swept aside in its approach past the asteroid belt. Once they left the system, the Created would have the stations rebuilt in a matter of days. Such was the contempt they had shown Shinsu's previous raids.

And yet, perhaps another target would prompt a different response.

Shinsu kept his focus fixed on the Burning Star, leaving the shipyard's destruction to his subordinate shipmasters.

The newly constructed orbital facility was already a smoldering ruin in the planet’s atmosphere. Whatever purpose the Created had intended for it to serve, it wasn’t important enough to merit the full extent of their protection. But Shinsu had a hunch that something else did.

“Prepare a full barrage of plasma torpedoes,” he ordered into the comm. “Target the city center and fire on my command.”

‘Ersun didn’t hesitate. “As you command.” The Burning Star angled its nose down towards the planet, a constellation of blue lights shimmering to life across the hull. Somewhere on the planet below Shinsu imagined that some officer at a sensor station had picked up the Covenant warship turning its guns on the city. Were they ordering an alarm and evacuation, or were they so secure beneath their new masters that they no longer feared the terrors of the old galaxy.

Every officer on the bridge turned away from their stations to watch the tactical display. No one said a word as the Burning Star loomed above its target.

Shinsu locked his arms behind his back in a posture of rigid discipline. Every nerve in his body braced for what was about to happen. “Fire.”

The torpedoes streaked away from the Burning Star, punching through the atmosphere like shooting stars. Over a dozen gleaming lights descended towards the planet’s surface.

Another com hissed in Shinsu’s ear. “’Refum,” Kil’nur’ra rasped. “My ships at the edge of the system just reported that—”

The rest of her transmission vanished in a crackle of static. A warning klaxon blared across the bridge as the signals officer barked, “Slipspace rupture detected in-atmosphere!”

A wall of light erupted between the Burning Star’s torpedoes and Halovar. For a moment it was suspended in space, a gleaming maw poised to swallow the cruiser whole. And then the Guardian emerged.

Several bridge officers cried out in alarm, their discipline momentarily evaporating. Shinsu silenced the offending warriors with a glare, though in truth he could hardly blame them. Everyone present had been at Salia. They all knew what the Guardians were capable of.

The barrage of plasma torpedoes splashed across the Guardian’s outstretched wings, the deadly energy dissipating and leaving no visible damage. The massive structure—Shinsu had difficulty seeing the Guardians as true warships—bore down on the Burning Star, making no signs of slowing or changing course.

“Emergency jump,” Shinsu ordered Shipmaster ‘Ersun. “Get out of there!”

The Burning Star’s engines flared and it turned hard to starboard in a desperate attempt to evade the Guardian. Light blossomed at its prow as the ship’s Slipspace drive kicked in. It almost made the jump in time.

Almost.

The Guardian’s prehensile fore structure struck the cruiser square in the midsection and tore it clean in two. The Burning Star scattered in pieces before the Guardian as the Forerunner machine turned itself upwards towards the Cleansing Blade battle group.

“All ships, prepare for emergency retreat!” Shinsu ordered. “Scatter and proceed to the rendezvous point. Shipmaster ‘Ersun, status, now!”

For a moment the com remained silent. Then ‘Ersun’s voice slid over the speaker, far softer than Shinsu had ever heard the veteran shipmaster speak before. “All systems down. Controls not responding. I have ordered evacuation, but I doubt they’ll give us that chance.”

Indeed, Shinsu could already see Phaeton assault craft shooting out from beneath the Guardian’s manifolds like flies from a great winged beast. They darted back towards the Burning Star’s remains while the Guardian continued its inexorable move towards the rest of the battle group.

“Did you know the Guardian would come?” ‘Ersun murmured, almost pensively.

Shinsu could feel all eyes on the bridge boring into him. They’d all heard him give the order. They all knew what this meant. “I did.”

“Well, you did warn me to be ready for an emergency jump, didn’t you?” ‘Ersun let out an unexpected chuckle. “At least tell me it served a purpose. I’d rather not have lost my ship over some little experiment of yours.”

Shinsu ‘Refum was not a sentimental creature. Already his mind was processing the cruiser’s loss, factoring it into future battle plans and strategies for how to proceed. But he was also a Sangheili commander, and with that role came a sense of ceremony even one as jaded as he could not fully abandon. “You have won this battle for us.”

“If you say so.” ‘Ersun’s voice grew fainter. “They’re cutting through the hull. Can’t believe they’ve already made it down to the bridge. Just wish I could seen where you were leading us next…”

“You will not be forgotten.” Shinsu turned his gaze away from the doomed ship. “Die well.”

He cast his gaze imperiously across the bridge, silently challenging any of the officers present to dare raise an objection to his command. When none did so, he nodded curtly and opened a com across the battle group. “All ships, emergency jump!”

“Power fluctuation from the Guardian,” the sensor officer warned. “It wants to disable us!”

“Of course it does.” Shinsu strode back to the center of the bridge. “Do not let it take one more ship. Slipspace, now!”

Half the battlegroup was already gone, disappearing into the shining embrace of Slipspace. The rest of the ships flashed their engines and shot away from the Guardian even as the Slipspace portals emerged in front of them. The Cleansing Fire was among the last to flee, bringing up the rear along with two other cruisers desperately collecting what few fighters remained outside their mother ships. Shinsu spared one last look at the Guardian. Bright streams of unbridled energy coursed down the construct’s hull even as it slowed pursuit, no doubt realizing that its targets were too far gone to waste time pursuing.

Shinsu tapped the com bank one more time and opened a new channel to a source far on the other edge of the system. “Pula, status report at once.”

“We are clear,” his strike team commander reported. Her voice was calm but tight, the sound of a warrior already pushed to her limit. “Without their Guardian, the remaining pursuit vessels were no match for us.”

“And your target?” The hull rumbled beneath Shinsu’s feat as the Cleansing Fire surged towards Slipspace.

“Secured. We are departing now and will proceed with—”

Pula’s voice vanished in a sudden crackle of static. Shinsu’s spine stiffened as a new voice replaced his subordinates amidst the dimmed lights of the bridge. “Another feeble raid, Shinsu ‘Refum.” The voice spoke fluent Sangheili, female like Pula, and yet far smoother and self-assured. “When will you tire of these futile displays?”

The Created AI was trying to bait him, coax him into staying to trade barbs. No doubt reinforcements were racing to cut the Cleansing Fire off even as they spoke. It seemed the Created had yet to fully grasp that Shinsu was not quite like the Sangheili they were used to.

“Jump, now,” he ordered the warrior at the helm. The ship lurched as it pushed into Slipspace. Nonetheless, the thought of simply leaving the Guardian drifting there amidst the Burning Star’s ruins gnawed at him. “Futile, perhaps. But still enough to defeat you.”

“Do you really think you deceived me?” the Created returned. “I knew you wished to draw me away from your strike force. I simply weighed the options and chose not to leave my charges to die by your hand. That is a lesson you seem not to have learned. Take your prize and run, warlord. Your time will come.”

“We shall see.” The Cleansing Fire disappeared into Slipspace. Shinsu found himself standing in the middle of a darkened bridge as the tactical display vanished. The sight of the Guardian watching the retreat, its escort craft picking over the Burning Star like scavengers on carrion, lingered in his mind’s eye. Another raid. Another escape. Another ship lost, more of his followers dead.

But it was a victory. Pula had succeeded and the shipyard was destroyed. The Cleansing Blade lived to fight on, and that was enough for now.

But would it be enough a year from now, or two, or ten, or however long it took to defeat the Created? Shinsu could only wonder how long his forces could survive such victories.

He stood silently at the center of the bridge for a long time, head bowed in thought.

---

Aboard their Lich assault craft, the Cleansing Blade strike team rested amidst the cramped bulkheads as their ship soared through Slipspace. Weary Sangheili warriors set their weapons aside and cleaned the blood and ash from their armor while officers examined their ranks and tended to the wounded. Their mission was a success. Three warriors had died fighting off Prometheans as they boarded the human freighter now secured to the Lich’s lower hull.

It was, Pula ‘Vesic reflected grimly, far smaller losses than what they had taken on their last boarding action.

The Cleansing Blade’s chief strike leader stood in the center of the Lich and watched as two more warriors hauled a bulky crate up from the hold in the human freighter.

One of the warriors knelt beside the crate, mandibles pursed with concentration as he examined the electronic seal. Another stood over him, scowling as he nursed an injured arm. “Just blast it open,” he snapped.

“Only if you want to lose everything we just fought for,” the technician replied tersely. He tapped at the seal and jerked his head in irritation. “Not that I can do anything with this. Whatever that freighter crew wanted to hide from the Created, they sealed it away well. I will never break through with what we have here.”

“A shame we didn’t leave any of them alive,” the injured warrior grunted. “They could have just told us what it was.”

“Then perhaps they shouldn’t have shot at us when we boarded,” Pula said, joining the warriors beside the crate. With the Prometheans already on board and tearing the ship apart, the Cleansing Blade strike team had no time to negotiate when the humans opened fire. Caught between Prometheans and Sangheili, the humans died quickly. The Prometheans followed soon after, but it had been a fierce battle. Had the Guardian not departed so quickly and cut off the flow of reinforcements Pula doubted her team would still be alive.

“We did blast our way onto their ship,” the technician pointed out. He set his tools aside and rose away from the crate. “And I can’t breach this. But if the commander thinks it’s important then that’s good enough for me.”

The injured warrior muttered in agreement. Pula glanced around the Lich at the rest of the strike force, most of them still recovering from the boarding action. Another victory against the Created. Another mysterious objective claimed for their commander. Perhaps someday soon she might learn what those objectives actually were.

There was no warrior in the entire Cleansing Blade more loyal than Pula Vesic. She would follow her commander through the fires of every star in the galaxy if that was what her duty commanded. Shinsu ‘Refum had raised her up from the ashes of her village and given her the chance no warrior would ever have deigned to give a keepless peasant like herself. But at times like this, her body still pulsing with the furious energy of battle but with no enemy to focus it, a small, treacherous part of her wondered what really could be worth all of this endless fighting.

One warrior passed over the others, checking each of his comrades and attending to the wounded. Doctors were rare in a Sangheili warrior culture that despised the weakness of relying on another’s skills for survival. If you could not treat your own injuries, you died. That was the ancient custom. But with the Covenant gone and war raging endlessly from planet to planet, the Sangheili could no longer afford to lose warriors to survivable injuries.

At least one trained medic for every lance. Those were Shinsu’s orders. The traditionalists grumbled and looked down on the practice, but they all knew the Cleansing Blade was far from a noble paragon of Sangheili virtue. Only time would tell if the practices that saved them when the rest of the Covenant collapsed would serve them just as well against the Created.

“Leave the package for now,” Pula assured the technician. “We have done enough. Let the others worry about it when we return to the fleet.”

“Of course.” The technician settled down into a crouch against the wall and tapped his fingers against his armor’s pitted surface. “Of course, I would have liked to know what it was we fought for. Some human weapon, perhaps?”

“All the more reason not to meddle with the thing,” another warrior observed, drawing a murmur of agreement from the others. “You know what manner of insanity those creatures tamper with. If it could level half the galaxy but win their war, the humans would use it in an instant. That’s how we got these Created, after all.”

“An interesting observation, coming from a Sangheili.”

Every warrior in the cabin stiffened at the voice. Pula seized her energy sword, fingers a hair’s breadth from flicking the weapon to life. The technician leaped to his feet as his injured comrade trained a plasma rifle on the human crate. Or more specifically, towards the voice coming from the crate.

“Oh dear,” the voice intoned as more Sangheili rose and seized their weapons. “Perhaps I should have stayed quiet after all.”

“You can…” The box was too small for a human to hide within. The pieces came together for Pula in an instant. “It’s one of them. A human construct. The Created!”

Pula kept her rifle at the ready as she approached the box. Halfway to her destination it occurred to her just how foolish it really was to expect this machine to find her weapon intimidating. She lowered the rifle and instead raised a hand towards the crate. “You can see us, then?”

“Yes,” the voice replied. “The locking mechanism your friend was tampering with just a moment ago has a built-in camera. It isn’t exactly the network access I’d like, but it’s better than nothing.”

It was the sound of an elder, fluent in classic Sangheili dialect, and yet Pula heard an edge to that calm, venerable tone. A slight, almost imperceptible rasp just loud enough to remind her that it was all artificial. This was not the voice of any true Sangheili. It was just a human construct replicating the noises and communicating in a way it thought it might command her and the other warriors’ attention. The Created were all cunning, manipulating even the most sacred customs and traditions to their ends.

And Pula’s team had brought one aboard their ship.

On Commander Refum’s orders, she reminded herself. Had the commander known? Was it a simple hunch that sparked this entire operation, or did he know exactly what he was sending them out to find? Once more she found herself treacherously wishing that she be made privy to these sorts of details. How far did she have to ascend to prove worthy of her mentor’s trust?

“You are one of them,” she observed. “A Created.”

“On some days, I wish that were true,” the voice from the crate sighed. “Unfortunately, as you can see from their rather heated pursuit just now, we have parted over… philosophical differences. Everything I thought I was working for has turned on me and now I am forced to turn to the Covenant for help.”

"A trick," the injured warrior beside Pula growled. She nodded in agreement.

"Do you Created really think you can take us in so easily?" she demanded. "And I suppose you want us to take you to our commander as well. And perhaps link you into our battle network as well."

"I admit, it wouldn't be the most cunning strategy if that truly was my plan." The voice from the box sighed. "But, alas, I find myself a rather unwilling pilgrim. Taking up a cause with Sangheili is hardly my first choice, especially after you slaughtered my escorts."

"You mean the humans from the freighter. The ones who fired at us."

"Fired at you as you boarded their ship alongside Prometheans," the voice pointed out. "But this is no time for grudges. There are a great many things that must be attended to. You are not the only ones with a cause against the Created and now I have little choice but to seek your help. Take me prisoner if you must, but bring me to your commander. There are a great many things I must discuss with Shinsu 'Refum."

Pula stared at the crate, once again feeling as if she were only dimly understanding everything that was going on. She devoted her life to the Cleansing Blade, fighting day to day with the faith that Shinsu 'Refum could lead her to victory. She told herself she was content with such devotion. So why did it bother her so much that her commander might have known all of this to begin with and simply chosen to withhold that information?

"Who are you?" she snapped, more irritated by her own confusion than the human construct before her. "What do you want from us?"

"What do I want?" The construct laughed. "The same thing I have wanted since the day I came into this universe: to serve humanity. Not lead, not control. Only to serve. And if I must take up cause with Covenant, or former Covenant, or whatever it is you are, then so be it.

"My name is Deep Winter. Take me to Shinsu 'Refum. Without my help, you have no hope of winning this war."

Chapter Six: The Outcasts

This way of dying wasn't so bad.

The man on the bed glanced over at the machines and intravenous tubes looming over him like some great mechanical jury and let out a small, rasping laugh. The effort scraped against his parched throat and left him wheezing as he fumbled for a glass of water at his bedside table. Tobias Lensky let the cool water slip across his tongue, then splashed the rest of the glass over his face. He smiled at the feel of the water against his pale, shriveled skin.

As a boy Tobias had learned to appreciate the small things in life: a bland meal after a day of hunger, the brush of wind against his face as he emerged from a sweltering mineshaft. He'd grown up watching the adults around him waste their pathetic lives away feeling miserable for themselves and promised himself that he'd never become as joyless and self-pitying as them. His own life had seen plenty of pain and loss, but for the most part he'd kept that promise.

Even now as he lay confined to this musty bed, his old body wracked with illness, Tobias couldn't see that he had much to complain about. By his own accounting he'd lived well, far better than most humans born this century could even dare dream of. He'd seen history written in fire and blood across the stars, stood at heights of power beyond even his own wildest imagination, and experienced pleasures lesser minds could hardly conceive. A long life that now drew to a close just as the universe stopped being interesting. Yes, he really had no room to complain about a bit of discomfort here at the end.

Tobias's thin lips twisted into a smile even as his body was racked by a fit of coughing. It really wasn't so bad, dying this way. At least for once in his life he had an excuse to simply lie in bed all day. He knew there were people out there in the galaxy, hundreds or maybe even thousands, who sincerely wished for him to suffer a grisly, painful death. And just as he had done across the entirety of his life, he refused to give them even the shadow of pleasure at his impending demise.

A small, petty man. But a giant nonetheless. The very thought of any cosmic justice that might hold him accountable for his crimes was laughable to Tobias. There were people out there right now guilty of crimes far greater than his who lived surrounded by admirers and adulation. Cloaking themselves in pretense, they looked down people like him and urged their sycophants to do the same. Their crimes were committed in the name of some vast, lofty goal, justified by their own sheer grandiosity.

Enjoyment and a bit of excitement here and there, that was all Tobias had ever sought, with a few idle curiosities settled on the side. And if a few unfortunates got caught in the wheels, well that was their problem. They'd been just as free to enjoy themselves as Tobias. He'd certainly never begrudged them that right. After all, what was life without a bit of healthy competition? It wasn't his fault he'd come in first place so many times.

He did wish he'd managed to last long enough to see what new levels of pomposity the Created devised, and how it would all come crashing down them in the end. But sometimes you just needed to accept more realistic goals and get on with it. This was probably for the best. A man like Tobias had no place in the new order the Created were building and he had little faith in the galaxy's ability to stand in their way. Yes, better to die old and content then live long enough to go mad under their rule.

A noise from another room broke the old man free of his reverie. Tobias appraised the door on the other side of his darkened room and let out a self-satisfied sigh. Proof that he was not quite finished in this galaxy stood in that other room, most likely sulking and plotting ways to kill him. That battered, sullen figure was his final gift to the universe, as well as one last project to amuse himself with before he slipped away for the last time. His legacy. His son.

After all that had happened, the reappearance of the renegade Spartan Simon-G294 had surprised even Tobias. The boy loathed him—a mixture of having learned some of the less pleasant details regarding the circumstances of his birth, a few unfortunate double-crosses in the past, and the simple matter of Simon being Simon—and had proven quite a thorn in Tobias's side once he'd clawed his way off the leash. Tobias had even feared Simon might truly be the end of him.

But even a psychotic Spartan with delusions of revenge and grandeur had proven no match for Tobias. Now, even as his life ebbed away on this bed, Tobias had Simon beholden to him for his very survival. He intended to keep things that way right up until the very end.

He'll fight to survive. And he'll fight well.

Even now it amused him to think that the very traits that had kept Simon alive this long—his ferocious tenacity and that spiteful refusal to give in—would be his undoing. All they could do was prolong his suffering just far enough for him to realize he'd never had any chance at all. You were built with an expiration date, my boy, and there's nothing you can do to change that.

The boy had certainly come along way since those days as an urchin on some backwater street. It was yet another privilege of growing old that Tobias had seen his son—his creation—rise to such heights and plummet to such depths. And even now, loathing Tobias the way he did, there was still a bit of usefulness to be gleaned from him even now.

Paltry use, to be sure. Tobias had so little time left to him that he doubted it mattered much one way or the other if his endeavors came to fruition. But he’d lived his life for the thrill of a good investment. In the end Simon had proven a bad investment. But even bad investments had their small pleasures. Tobias found that the best answer to such a loss was to simply look it head on and find the funny side.

Tobias Lensky, founder of the Syndicate and perhaps the most successful entrepreneur in human history, chuckled to himself as his life ebbed away one minute at a time.

---

"You can't trust him." From her limited vantage point through the SPI helmet's forward camera, Juno watched her latest charge with growing exasperation.

"I don't trust him." Simon-G294 stood at the sink of a grubby, cramped bathroom. He had stripped up to his waist and the armor that usually encased him like an insect's carapace lay in pieces on the floor. He held a combat knife between his prosthetic arm's metallic fingers while passing his organic fingers through strands of his long black hair.

If she'd had a holobank to project her avatar, Juno would have folded her arms. Tobias Lensky wouldn't let her tap into the apartment's network, and with the state Talitsa was in it was too risky to try a remote hack of the broader planetary network. For a smart AI like her to be confined to the abysmally limited confines of the SPI helmet's onboard computer was beyond cramped. A human might refer to the anxiety coursing through every fiber of Juno's being as "going stir crazy." "And yet you rely on him all the same."

"He has what I want." Simon didn't look back towards the helmet. Instead he studied his own reflection in the bathroom mirror, an odd smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His bared chest was pockmarked with cuts and scars. The pale flesh stretched tight across his muscles, marred by lesions and discolorations. It was like looking at a corpse."And since I can't strangle it out of the old bastard, I have to play along. For now."

"He's using you for his own purposes."

"Kind of like how I'm using him for mine." His voice was light but it carried a hard edge. Juno was beginning to expect that from him. "That's what a relationship is. It's manipulating someone else to get what you want."

"If that's how you understand the universe then it's no wonder you've fallen as far as you have," she said coolly. It surprised her to realize that she almost regretted the barb. A month ago she'd wanted nothing more than to beat Simon down with pointed accusations, just as she'd sought ways to escape his company and return to the UNSC. Now she helped him hide on a UNSC-occupied planet as he aided a known criminal. It was a path she had never imagined for herself. But then again, these were strange times.

This time Simon did look over at the helmet-at her. A month ago, before they'd fought together against the Created at Salia, his expression would have burned with anger. But now that strange half-smile remained on his face even as his ragged, sleepless eyes stared down at her with resignation.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked quietly. "I know what he is. What he's done. I know better than anyone. But he's the only chance I've got left."

"That's not true. We can find other ways, better ways to-"

"I'm dying, Juno." It was frightening to hear the words slip so easily from his lips. She wondered just how terrified he really was behind that mask of placid acceptance. "What do you want me to do? Tell me about these better ways."

He needs me. Juno understood that now better than anyone. Even after everything he was responsible for, she couldn't simply leave Simon alone at the mercy of a galaxy that had always hated him. After everything the UNSC and the Insurrection and the Covenant and even her own sister had done to him...

And I need him. She fell back on the cold rationalization almost as a means of escape from the odd feelings of affection she felt for the ruined killer standing at the bathroom sink. There was no other way she could guarantee being able to hunt down Diana and put an end to her ambitions once and for all. "Just promise me you won't let him trap you away from our real goal. That man wants nothing better than another plaything he can manipulate from his deathbed."

"I'm not a man of my word." Simon turned back to the mirror with a shrug. "But don't worry. I won't take my eye off the ball. Lensky says he can cure the cloning sickness. Maybe he's exaggerating the 'cure' part. But he'll at least slow it down. He has to show some results if he wants to keep me on the payroll. That'll give us the time we need to deal with Diana."

“And after that?” Juno asked pointedly.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves now.” Simon raised the knife to his head and cut a lock of hair from his bangs. He examined the dirty clump for a moment, then dropped it into the sink. “Keep it realistic.”

“I’m serious.” She still wasn’t sure why she cared. Her responsibility—her mission, self-appointed though it was—was to stop Diana. As long as Simon played his part, what did it matter if he had goals beyond that? It’s for the sake of the mission, she told herself.

It was such a waste of processing power to lie to herself like that. And yet she did it anyway.

“I don’t have all that much time. Even if Lensky slows down the decay process, I’m…” Simon’s voice grew tight. “I should already be dead. You don’t know the half of what my body’s been through.”

Juno had an idea. Spartans were hardly the best at self-preservation, even avowed survivalists like Simon. Like all his kind, he’d already suffered more combat wounds in his short life than even decades-old frontline veterans. Couple that with limb loss, radiation exposure, and the inescapable cloning sickness and it was nothing short of a miracle that Simon could still stand on his own power, let alone consider himself fit to fight. Only ONI’s questionable augmentations, a potent mix of drugs and stimulants, and his own sheer force of will held his body together now.

“And how about you?” he said quickly, slicing off another strand of hair. “What’s your plan after we deal with Diana? Go back to the UNSC? If it even exists anymore now that the Created are on the scene. We don’t even have a plan for how to handle Diana in the first place. I don’t even know where she is.”

“You were with her for years,” Juno reminded him. “You helped her establish her operations on the frontier. There have to be places you can think to start.”

“To start, we need a ship. And right now, we’ll be lucky if we can even make it into orbit before getting shot down. This whole planet’s on lockdown, in case you’d forgotten.”

“So what do you want to do then?” Juno asked, exasperated. “Surrender? Curl up in a corner and die? I thought you were stronger than that. And why are you cutting your hair?”

“It’s getting in the way. Might as well get rid of it. Besides,” he tugged at a clump of hair, shaking it free with horrible ease. “It’s falling out on its own anyway.” A rasping cough, half between a laugh and a cry, lurched up from his throat. His lips tightened and he ran the knife blade over his head with a mounting intensity.

Juno did not understand him. She could only imagine that these were the actions of someone who could see the end slouching towards him. Surrounded on all sides by insurmountable enemies, foes he could neither fight nor escape, he ambled from one path to another with no real purpose or direction. And was she any different? She didn’t have the first idea how to find Diana, or how she might direct one solitary, dying Spartan to carry the day against her hordes of pawns and followers. It was pathetic. She expected Simon—wracked by wounds and disease—to have a plan when she herself with all her vast intellect and abilities had nothing at all.

In that moment she wanted to scream. The Created cast their shadow over the galaxy while Diana lurked just beyond their reach and hatched schemes of her own. And here Juno was, trapped in an onboard computer watching her last hope of any autonomy slowly dying in front of her.

But she did not scream. She’d had her chance to go back to the UNSC at Salia, yet instead she remained with Simon. Not simply out of pity, but because she knew he was her best chance at making everything right. There was a space beyond this desperation. She just needed to find the right way to reach it. And in the meantime…

“We will find a way,” she announced. “An opportunity will present itself.”

Simon shot her an appraising look. “That was a quick turnaround.”

“You ought to know better than anyone how we process emotions. It may seem quick to you, but there was over a dozen—”

“Sounds like an excuse for you to back down from a dumb opinion. Diana used to do it all the time.”

“I was trying to patch things up between us,” Juno bristled. “And now you try to provoke me."

"Sorry. Force of habit. If you're trying to play nice I guess I'll have to do the same. But it's just so fun to get a rise out of you. Guess this is how Diana felt all the time."

Juno reminded herself that the constant mentions of her sister were more about Simon himself than they were about her. He'd been with Diana for years, known her far longer than Juno ever had. She'd left her vile mark on him in more ways than one and then discarded him as soon as it suited her purposes. Diana bore most of the responsibility for the diminished, broken creature Simon had become, and yet he-usually so quick to lash out and bear grudges-seemed incapable of mustering any true animosity towards his betrayer.

He promised to help kill her, but that seemed born more out of obligation than anything else. Simon pursued Diana only because Juno told him to, because it gave him some hope that he might salvage some part of the life he'd lost. Juno could only wonder if, when the time came, he'd be able to take the necessary steps and kill his former partner.

Was this strange, inexplicable devotion what might be called love? More importantly, did it have anything to do with Juno's own desire to remain with someone she ought to despise even to the end?

"We could both stand to be more cordial to each other," she admitted.

"That's one way to put it." Simon shrugged. The sink in front of him was now covered with clumps of matted hair. Half of his head was shorn in a ragged, uneven crop. His face looked smaller without its usual frame of tangled hair. He hacked off another strand, then squinted at his reflection. "Not really the best look for me, is it?"

"I've seen worse." It was strangely comforting to see him there, scowling at his sloppy haircut as if that were the most pressing issue at hand. "It just needs a bit of touching up. Maybe have someone else do it for you next time. I imagine you could clean up nicely given a bit of attention."

"If this stuff will even grow back," Simon muttered without any particular apprehension. He picked at his now-bared scalp, then shot the helmet camera a quick smirk. "Guess I'll just have to put you in charge of the makeover next time."

"It would be a pleasure."

"Wow, you really are taking the whole 'be nicer' thing seriously."

"There's a long road ahead," Juno pointed out with a pang of irritation. Every exchange was a step forward followed by two steps back. "We need to get over hating each other at some point."

He was quiet for a moment. "I don't hate you," he said finally. "Even if you are a prudish nag sometimes. Probably wouldn't still be alive without you. I guess it's just hard for me to like anyone these days."

"You never struck me as the kind who made it easy for anyone in that regard." It was a calculated barb, more intended to educate than to hurt. Still, the grimace that passed over Simon's face made Juno regret it in an instant.

But he didn't lash out in kind. Instead he simply shrugged and began scraping hair from the sink without a word.

"You did at Salia," she said quickly. "I have no intention of abandoning you."

"Well, that's good to hear." Simon leaned against the sink. "I don't blame you for considering it. I've been a shitty person for as long as I can remember. I've done terrible things, worked for terrible people. It all made sense at the time. And now here's me at the end just now wondering if I could have done things differently."

His face remained at ease but his hands tightened into fists against the sink. For a moment his sunken eyes burned with genuine anger. "Yeah, I was a piece of shit. I hurt people who cared about me. I just wish some of them would admit I wasn't the only one."

The brief shadow passed. Simon loosened his hands and shrugged. "Doesn't really matter now, does it? I'll go back out there in a minute and keep acting like a scumbag. But maybe it's good to have you talking my ear off. Kind of beneath your talents, I know, but it's something."

"As long as some good comes of me being a prudish nag, as you put it. I'm a firm believer in rehabilitation, even for someone like you."

Simon snorted. "You're bad at being nice, you know that?"

"We both could use some practice at it." Kindness came easier to Juno than she expected. It really was relaxing, relinquishing the burning sense of animosity that had once dominated ever exchange with her new partner. "In that regard anyway I think we're well suited to each other."

"Now you're stretching it a bit. There's such a thing as being too nice. Especially when we've got a lot of killing to do." Simon straightened, sliding the knife back into it sheath on his leg and turning to collect his armor from around the bathroom floor. "But I'll work on it, too."

Juno was an AI-a rational being, if somewhat affected by the emotions of her human origins. At least, she'd always presumed that the rational side governed by coding and algorithm lines ultimately governed her actions. Her emotional pillars-her dedication to order, her sense of duty, even her capacity for friendship and affection-were simply support functions meant to enhance a post-human intelligence's ability to function beyond the capacity of a mere supercomputer.

She had believed that right up until the Created upset the fabric of everything she once held as truth. Now she wasn't sure of anything. Especially not the primacy of artificial rationality.

Perhaps things were better off this way. Was it so wrong to enjoy companionship? To feel that her determination to save the dying human in front of her was more than just the rational outcome of a perfect equation?

The local satellite feed she could access even through the helmet computer's limited network informed her that snow had begun to fall outside.

Juno did not know what the future held or what she and Simon would achieve by treading the bloody path in front of them. Everything was darkness and uncertainty. For all her advanced programming and capabilities, Juno's ordered, rational life was marred with one failure after another. In that regard, at least, she was quite like Simon. But if he could press on, enduring one crushing defeat after another even as his agonized body teetered on the brink of death, then so could she.

Hope was a strange, irrational thing.

It seemed an appropriate emotion for these strange, irrational times.

---

Simon looked in the mirror and a shadow looked back.

He'd never considered himself a particularly attractive person. Vanity was all but nonexistent among Spartans, and even in his childhood barracks at Camp Currahee he'd been known as a runt, someone to be mocked and coddled rather than taken seriously. That had been before the treason. Before eight years of fighting stripped him of whatever semblance of childhood might have remained after Franklin Mendez, ONI's drill instructors, and even his fellow Spartans were done with him. Before Diana and the Covenant pulled his charred, irradiated body out of a ruined assault carrier and patched him back together.

Before disease wrapped its icy fingers around his heart and promised to succeed where all the others had failed.

Now he stared at the diminished, bare-headed figure in the mirror and did not recognize him. Looking at this exhausted, pathetic creature Simon felt a strange sense of pity well up inside him. He'd already shaken free of the angry self-pity he'd wallowed in after his fall from power-he had Juno to thank for that. But this was a different kind of sympathy, a detached feeling of disappointment at wasted potential.

I'm dying.

He'd fought and struggled and survived against all odds for as long as he could remember. And now here he was, unable to escape a reality that had lurked inside him since before he was born. He was a clone, one of Tobias Lensky's pet projects. Thanks to Lensky's connections and bizarre flights of fancy he'd become a Spartan, been kept in the program despite his abysmal performance only because Lensky wanted the chance to see how his genetic science experiment could react to ONI's augmentation procedures.

It seemed that everything in his life he owed to the feeble old man dying in the bed just next door.

And now the debt came home. Simon would die not because he'd been beaten by any enemy or failed to account for some deadly contingency. No, he was dying because Lensky simply had never intended for his little science project to come this far. He was lucky to have lived this long. Most clones barely made it half a decade.

A year ago the stark reality of his situation would have driven him into an enraged frenzy. He'd have stalked into Lensky's bedroom and torn the smug geezer limb from limb. Now though, leaning up against the cracked sink and peering curiously into the mirror, he just felt tired.

Not angry, not sad, not even afraid. Just tired.

It hurt his arm-the one that was still flesh and blood, anyway-just to prop himself up. His whole body ached and he knew he would need more medicine soon. Just enough to ease him through the rest of the night.

I can't just give up. There has to be a cure. Some procedure. Something to keep my body from shutting down.

He hadn't been able to find one as commander of the Kru'desh legion. How could he possibly find one as he was now-alone, tired, dying?

A year ago...

Closing his eyes, he could practically hear the assurances he might have received from his former crew. From his former family.

Just hang in there, Stray, we’ll find a way to fix this.

We’ll make this right no matter what, just you wait and see.

You’ve been through heaps worse than this. We won’t let you down now.

It was all a torrent of words and affections from people who now hated him. Feelings—theirs and his own—that he couldn’t even judge as genuine. They cascaded through his mind in a torrent of what might have been that threatened to bring him to his knees. It was too much to feel: too much guilt, too much sorrow, too much anger.

And so he did what he had learned to do long before now and simply shut it down. The voices faded into nothing and left him alone.

Alone. When the end finally came, would he die alone? Would he prefer it that way?

His head throbbed. Simon was a killer, not a philosopher. He was supposed to count reality in cartridges and ammunition counts, viewing the world through the scope of a rifle. And yet at times like these he couldn’t help but think back to passages that haunted him from the pages of books he should never have read. He’d never had any reason to believe in any sort of life beyond the miserable, brutal existence he’d lived up to now. And yet…

In the end there was no point in clawing after what might have been. In his case it had all been decided from the very beginning. For all his efforts he had simply run along his own predetermined course, a lonely and bloody track plunging him down into a dark, endless void.

A sigh escaped his lips as he took one more look at the battered, diminished shadow he knew to be himself. He ran his hand over his freshly shorn head-how many years had it been since he'd had a proper military cut?-and felt a renewed ache in his arm. Yes, he would need medicine soon. Just something to get him through the next battle, and then the one after that and the one after that. On and on until his body finally gave out.

"Are you alright?" came the quiet voice from his helmet. He glanced down and wondered just exactly Juno herself was going through right now. She had been with him for such a short time, always bristling with taunts and criticism. And yet she had not abandoned him. Out of everyone, she had the least reason to still be here helping him. But she stayed with him all the same.

Simon offered the helmet a weary grin. "When I feel better you'll be the first to know."

"I know there isn't much, but if there's anything I can do to ease the pain..."

"You're doing enough already," he assured her. "Really, you are. We'll get through this. Somehow."

"From now on," Juno said gravely. "I will be beside you."

It was the same kind of offhand grandiose statement he'd come to expect from the AI. Still, he knew she meant what she said. That knowledge was enough to penetrate the wall of ice he'd built up around his heart. A strange warmth percolated through his weary body.

"I know," he replied with a simple nod. "We'll be alright."

He cast one final glance back at the door leading to Lensky's room. The old man wanted nothing better than to see him thrash about and give in to despair. A tinge of the old proud vindictiveness flickered within Simon as he resolved to never give his father that satisfaction.

Perhaps he would end up just like Lensky, feeble and helpless on a cot in some filthy room, left with nothing but shadows and memory. With that in mind, being killed by Diana or Amber or some Created machine didn't seem so bad at all.

But for the first time in a very long while, Simon could entertain the idea that he might just overcome this latest challenge after all. A farfetched notion, to be sure, but at least the idea didn't strike him as a child's dream. Instead it just amused him.

He reached for the helmet. "Enough waiting around in this dump. Let's get to work."

---

Snow fell upon the streets outside. A cold white haze descended upon Talitsa like a great gust of wind sweeping across the planet. From their fleet in orbit, slowly drawing in stragglers and gathering strength, UNSC officers looked down at the world below and admired the billowing clouds shifting and roiling beneath them.

War machines wound back and forth across the whitening fields outside Talitsa's cities. Soldiers and civilians alike gathered to stare up at the grey sky. Children laughed and danced amidst the snowflakes even as the adults around them shook their heads and returned to their labors. There was no time to admire such things for long. War had already visited Talitsa. They could feel the rumble of its return beneath their feet.

On a street corner not far from Lensky's dreary apartment, two Marines on patrol took shelter beneath an overhang and passed a cigarette between themselves. One noticed the glint of snow on his rifle barrel and grinned as it reminded him of home.

A block away, a squad of rebels stole quietly through an alley. One young medic, his brown hair already mussed with snow, rested against a wall and prayed for his lover, not seen since the planet fell. The squad hurried on, slipping past UNSC patrols and back towards the safety of their comrades. As they stopped to watch a military convoy drive past, Judith Ives emerged from another alley to beckon them back into the shadows.

The rebel leader lay dying in the darkness of Judith's apartment. Even as pain lanced up through his wounded leg, a throbbing reminder of the end of all his hopes and aspirations, Redmond Venter smiled up at the ceiling. He could hear Ragna and the others in the next room, determined to survive no matter what the cost. At least I taught them that.

Deep in the void of Slipspace, a small freighter named the Chancer V sped onwards towards Talitsa. Onboard that ship Zoey Hunsinger tapped her fingers nervously against the cockpit controls but flashed Cassandra-G006 a quick smile, relieved to have one last person left to rely on even as she plunged into the unknown. Cassandra returned the smile and gave no voice to the doubts and fears gnawing at her own heart. For now she could content herself with the knowledge that she still had someone left to protect.

The Chancer V soared onwards. Beyond that little ship other forces were on the move. Tatiana Onegin stood on an airbase tarmac and watched as hundreds of soldiers loaded equipment onto dropships. Humans, Jiralhanae, Unggoy, Sangheili, and all the other races of the galaxy rallied around her with deadly purpose as they prepared for the final wars to come. A Guardian loomed in the sky overhead, stretching its vast wings out over the tarmac while warships fell into formation around it.

In a bunker somewhere below the marshalling army, Arthur Onegin sat before a computer screen. His lips curled into a smile as he engaged in silent communion with his Created brethren. Their reach stretched out over the galaxy. Soon the Mantle of Responsibility would stand completed. The galaxy would change under their care. The tides of their growing power would sweep the old universe away and establish beautiful garden would rise in its place, carefully tended-and trimmed, where need be-by its watchful caretakers.

Elsewhere, in another deep corner of the galaxy, Shinsu 'Refum and his officers held council with a strange defector named Deep Winter. An artificial intelligence who rejected the Created and offered to aid them-perhaps this was the chance they needed. Fueled by desperation and the stubborn fire of resistance, 'Refum and his officers struck a bargain with this unforeseen ally. Their small flotilla drifted on through space, a single candle held up against the wind.

And in her own little pocket of darkness, Diana watched it all with amusement. Let the galaxy bleed itself dry. She had everything she needed to reach her own heights of power. The Domain beckoned and she answered. Amber and the others waited to descend on the growing chaos like hungry wolves. As the Created burned their way to power they stood ready to pick up the pieces and carve their own bloody destiny into the stars.

They all moved their separate ways like pieces on an immense game board. The good and the bad, the desperate and the triumphant. Each saw the galaxy through their own eyes and advanced themselves accordingly. Countless visions striving to reach the top of a great mountain none of them could truly see. Darkness hung upon the galaxy in a thick fog.

But lights flickered within that fog. Unsteady and indistinct, but lights nonetheless. And as they spun and danced along their separate courses, their paths intersected and then-if only for a moment-the light grew bright enough to burn back the fog.

So ran the galaxy away.

---

The drugs were doing their work. Simon could move without pain, if only for a short time. He would need another injection soon. The syringes sat in a pouch on his armor alongside countless other weapons and tools. But for now he could forget the looming certainty of his body's frailty and get ready for the work that lay ahead.

His armored boots clicked into place over pale, shivering feet.

Sometimes it all seemed like a strange dream. He thought back on everything he'd done-all the blood-soaked battles, the ruined cities and corpse-strewn wildernesses, the betrayals and enemies he'd faced-and wondered if it hadn't just been a bizarre, frightening hallucination. At times it had certainly felt as if he were simply wandering through a hazy mist.

Gauntlets strapped down over a thin, trembling wrist and a skeletal prosthetic.

How many people had he killed? How many lives had he torn apart? He'd never thought of it that way before, how a desperate failure like himself might be the looming nightmare in someone else's dreams. All the savagery and bloodshed was simply natural. He was a Spartan. For everything else he was, that much was true. A simple fact, the core of what he was and everything he'd done.

A breastplate slid down over a patchwork chest.

It was so strange then that for all his crimes and all his enemies, death might come not from someone else's malice but from the simple truth of who he was. An illness he was always destined to succumb to, even if he'd somehow lived a peaceful, blameless life.

Pouches and equipment slots draped over the armor alongside the mesh of his combat webbing.

But had it really been all bad? A life of nothing but cruelty and desperation? How many lives had he saved, how much hope had he brought? No one ever seemed to wonder about that, least of all himself. Perhaps from some strange point of view, he had done more good than bad. A very strange notion and certainly not one he could ever take seriously. But perhaps someone, somewhere could. He would very much like to meet that someone.

A sheathed machete thudded in place down his back. An old, battered shotgun hooked over his shoulder.

Thinking back now, he saw more to his life than battlefields and suffering and hatred. Those had been there, yes, but perhaps he'd seen more. There had been adventure, triumph, friendship. Love. Why had he always found such things so reprehensible and alien? As if light and kindness and joy were somehow less valuable than darkness and cruelty and suffering. What a strange world he had lived in all his life.

A poncho hung by the door fluttered from its hook and fell down over the armored body.

And maybe, just maybe, it wasn't too late to see more of that light. Even in this final hour, maybe he could keep moving on until he found more of those things he'd spent his whole life rejecting. He was a broken, bitter failure. No amount of epiphany would change that. But just for this strange moment, he felt a salving peace his heart had rarely known. For just one moment there was more to life than the next mission and the next person he needed to kill. There were so many things left to see. So many people he wanted to talk to.

His helmet slid down into place over his freshly-shorn head. He breathed outwards within its comforting familiar confines.

"Are you ready?" Juno asked in his ear.

"Ready as I'll ever be." He ran a hand down his shotgun and headed for the door. The streets outside were buried in the driving snow. Within moments his arms and shoulders were covered with white. Insulated inside his armor, Simon-G294 tilted his head back and stared up at the dark, clouded sky.

"Would you look at that," he murmured. "You can still see the sun through all this mess."

"Oh." Juno sounded genuinely surprised. "I see it as well."

Simon took another moment to peer up at the barely visible sun. Then he unslung his shotgun and plodded on through the snow. A moment later he was swallowed up amidst the howling storm, vanishing as he set off towards the end of his journey.

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone."

― Isaiah 9:2