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The Enigma of Sentience
Posted By: Kathryne<Ishdakitty19@gmail.com>
Date: 27 October 2005, 1:17 am
Read/Post Comments
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Halley hummed to herself softly as she entered the mess deck, her stride smoothing out and the limp nearly indiscernible. She'd stretched her knee out every "night" and the results were all she could hope for. The shoulder couldn't be rushed, although the itch under the cast was getting obnoxious. There were already two pens stuck in there somewhere from attempts to get at the incessant distraction. It was worse than being on a space op and having an itch on her nose, although admittedly not by much. The Spartan came back to herself and smiled at the smell of her desires, poured a cup of coffee, and balanced it on a plate with something that was supposed to be eggs and bacon. She took a seat alone near one of the massive holographic windows arranged along the outer edge of the mess and watched the distorted stars rushing by. Conversation drifted around her, and she filtered through it absently.
The skeleton crew of the Resplendent was comprised mostly of techs that were trying to find a way to refine the Shaw-Fujikawa drive to optimal efficiency. Recent advances in Slipstream engineering taken from exposure to Covenant ship remains were showing promise all across the board. There was a great deal of incentive for the person or persons who could figure out how to cleanly integrate the vastly different technologies with human tech. Even the AIs were dedicating their time to the task, and Cortana was responsible for contributing a considerable chunk of the information already in the databanks. While normally a ship this size would have almost no one awake during the month long journey, certain experts had been given a little leeway. Along with them came the usual crew of lieutenants, and a minor security detail to make sure no one got overzealous and started modifying engines without proper clearance. This meant that the Spartans were just one of several cliques on board.
It wasn't exactly difficult to find privacy, but their relationship was developing along a different line than any Spartan's ever had. The idea of talking it out was unheard of, and in truth Halley did most of the talking anyway; the Chief more content to sit back and watch her stick her foot in her mouth. This business of having ones lifelong crush around on a consistent basis was a tad embarrassing at times. Even the least emotionally repressed of the Spartans was a long way from the human norm. Oh, for a battlefield and a clear objective. Not to mention a nice, clean, working suit of MJOLNIR. Towards the end of her meal one conversation caught her interest along a similar topic, and she came out of her reverie to focus her attention on it. A small group of ODSTs on duty were discussing the Spartans around a nearby table.
"Well, if you ask me, they just aren't safe to have around. I don't want to be anywhere nearby when one of them goes nutters." The man that spoke was smaller then the others, with a really nasty burn scar on the side of his face. The biggest of the three, sitting to his left, grinned a gap-toothed smile.
"What, you scared? I say the reports of what they can do are really exaggerated. It's all the armor. Get me a suit of that stuff and I'll kill hundreds of covenant too." He pantomimed firing an assault rifle while a third man snorted.
"Yeah really, what's so special about the Spartans? Why don't WE get armor like that? I could use some shields." The others nodded in assent, and as Halley stood and started carrying her plate to the disposal unit, one comment stopped her in her tracks. "You know, I bet they take all kinds of steroids. Drugged up freaks." She took a deep breath, ignored them, and continued walking. As much as she'd love to fly off the handle, it certainly wouldn't help the Spartan's case any. She doubted the men even realized her connection to the super-soldiers; between the obvious bandaging and her small stature, she fit in easily as one of the marines.
"What about the big guy? He looks like he could bench press a warthog."
"I've heard he murdered a couple of ODSTs a while back." Halley narrowed her eyes and balled a fist, common sense overridden by the fierce need to defend all that was family. She walked over to the table and stared down menacingly at the three men that promptly gave her their attention. All three were leered back; their thoughts were as obvious on their sleeves as their "Orbital Drop Shock Trooper" tattoos. Halley ground her teeth and did her best to keep her voice and attitude level.
"I'm only going to tell you this once. I don't care what you think of the Spartans personally. But if you want to spread rumors and accusations of murder, then you should know I have a really short temper and an impulse control problem." The big one laughed, and stood. He was a head taller than her, and built like a brick wall. She didn't even flinch as he sneered in her face.
"Oh, you wanna stick up for the freaks, little girl? I bet you're just hoping he'll wanna f---" She reacted so fast the soldier never even saw it coming. Her good hand lashed out, a swift jab to his throat that sent him coughing to the floor. She held back most of her strength to avoid accidentally killing him, but she put enough behind it to make her point. The other two got to their feet with angry shouts, and she wheeled on her heel and headed for the door. The sound of rushed steps behind her brought her back around, and she ducked aside the tackle. The smaller ODST flanked her, and she kept on her toes warily. The mess hall was suddenly abuzz with conversations focusing on the skirmish. The Spartan knew full well that with a bad knee and no access to her broken arm, the fight was probably not going to go well, but her nature would never allow her to back down. The third man had hefted a metal tray, and she ducked as he swung it at her head.
She dropped to the floor rather then be punched by the little guy, and kipped up one handed with a grimace of pain. She redirected his second punch away from her center of mass, and brought her good foot down on his with a crunch. He howled in pain. She turned her attention back to the tray guy, but he had an advantage on the side of her bad shoulder. He brought it down hard, though she turned her back to it to protect the cast. It knocked the wind out of her in a rush, and she collapsed to her knees. The ODST debated for a moment, then lifted the tray up high and tried to bring it down on her head. It stayed above him, however.
He turned around and gulped hard. The Master Chief held the edge of the tray in one hand, and as he looked past the soldier to the woman coughing on the floor, his arm tensed. The aluminum bent in his grip. The ODST stumbled back with an oath, eyes wide. Halley got painfully to her feet, coughing coming back under control. As much as she'd love to let the other soldiers take the heat, it had been her temper that got out of control. Innate honesty forced her to come clean, in spite of how it would likely change the Chief's recently acquired opinion of her.
"I'm sorry, sir. This was my fault." The Chief blinked in surprise, as did the ODSTs. "I provoked them, and I attacked first, don't hold them responsible." There was a certain amount of respect in the ODST's eyes at that, and the one who'd used the tray looked a bit guilty.
"As far as I'm concerned you are all responsible. Another incident like this and you'll spend the rest of the trip in the freezer, is that clear?"
"Yes sir," they chorused mostly in unison, and Halley turned and marched out of the hall without another word. With a sigh, John followed. He caught up with her easily, and pulled her off the main hallway into a storage room.
"What the hell were you thinking? You're not even fully recovered yet." He resisted the urge to shake her.
"A lot of my team mates are dead, and all to save people like that." She jabbed a finger in the direction they came from. "I just got pissed off, okay? Leave me alone." She tried to get past him, but he tightened his grip.
"Oh no you don't. You're going to get your lungs checked out. They're new, or have you forgotten that?" She scowled furiously.
"I'm fine! If you think just because of one kiss I'm going to do whatever you tell me too…"
"No, I expect you to do what I tell you to because I'm your superior officer."
"Does it LOOK like I'm in uniform to you?"
"Does a uniform make a Spartan?"
"You do not get to pull that card on me!!"
"Oh no?" He ground his teeth in frustration. This was not how a Spartan was supposed to behave. She should not be defying him, and he should not be getting this worked up over the whole thing. I should have just gone into cryo-sleep.
"No!" She ripped her arm free, turned on her heel and marched away again, but at least this time it was in the direction of the medical office. John sighed, taking deep, long breaths, before tapping an AI pedestal.
"Cortana, I need a favor."
A hologram appeared over the pedestal, and an attractive glowing man with hair caught in a perpetual breeze smiled up at him. John blinked in confusion. "I'm terribly sorry, but Cortana is indisposed at the moment. I am Adonis, and I'll gladly offer whatever assistance I can."
"Is Cortana all right? She's been acting oddly." He frowned in concern, and the hologram returned a blasé smile.
"She's fine, just very busy."
Cortana had always found time to speak with him before, this sudden change of style was disconcerting. Is everything in my life going crazy? "Maybe you can help me then. I need to see SPARTAN-292's Career Service Vitae."
The AI paused, then frowned sadly. "I'm sorry, that's classified." The Chief raised an eyebrow.
"I have a very high clearance."
"Yes," the hologram said brightly, "but not high enough. Is there anything else?"
"No. Thank you." He frowned as the AI vanished, and shook his head. "This is why I need Cortana." He started to walk away, but the pedestal hummed to life again, and this time it was her slender blue figure that appeared. It was the first time he'd "seen" her in days, and something about her appearance struck a cord. He couldn't quite put a finger on it. She looked terribly distant; most of her usual motions were scaled back.
"You need me for something, Master Chief?" Her eyes seemed to look right through him.
"Yes, I'm trying to access Halley's CSV. Adonis says it's classified."
"Adonis is an ineloquent pest who doesn't know the meaning of mitigating circumstances." The venom in her voice surprised him, but after a moment the CSV appeared on the monitor beside the pedestal. "There you go. Sans the pre-graduation information, I'm sorry but you really don't have clearance for that."
"Can I assume you've already read it?" She nodded, and looked away.
"Nothing special, just a typical Spartan childhood." She was well made enough to pass the lie off, and backed it up with a shrug. He lifted an eyebrow, and she sighed inwardly. She didn't get to see his face all that often, like most Spartans he preferred his MJOLNIR armor to ordinary clothes, and it galled her that he'd taken it off for this hiatus in Slipstream space. That three weeks straight in armor could get a little inconvenient did make sense, but it was one more thing that put him physically closer to the petite Spartan. And it was one more step away from Cortana, who could no longer simply address his helmet com. He smiled at her a little, and she warmed up enough to smile back.
"I knew I could count on you."
"…always…" She vanished from the pillar and left John wondering if he'd actually heard that last word or not. The CSV was as colorful as a Spartan's should be, but with one startling exception. The other members of her team tended to let Halley take the lead not because of her current rank, but because she'd been the highest-ranking Spartan in the class when they graduated. She'd made it as high as Chief Petty Officer once, but got busted down rank for assaulting a superior officer. The short explanation seemed to be that Halley was usually good-natured and easy to get along with, but whenever the Spartans were being slighted, she got violent. She was fiercely protective of her family both physically and verbally. Apparently, given the more recent mess hall incident, that included the first class of Spartans as well.
Reading on, the Chief saw numerous other incidents that were forgiven for various reasons, a short temper offset by a fantastic field record had granted her a lot of leeway. However, certain things about his interactions with her started to make sense. She looked up to him because he was the epitome of what a Spartan should be. Her issue with authority figures was conflicting with her fervent love of family. John sighed aloud, and closed the CSV.
"In short, she's a woman."
"I assume this is unusual among the Spartans?" Adonis appeared on the pedestal again, a vapid smile on his charming features. The saying "all brawn no brain" was absolutely comical when being used to describe a Smart AI.
"Essentially. Well, Linda has her moments." The image of the red haired sniper telling an ODST exactly where she was going to stuff her rifle the next time he set off a grenade close enough to buzz her shields popped into his mind and brought a grin on it's heels. "Although she's entirely professional on the field."
"Perhaps the Petty Officer in question is much the same?"
"I would certainly hope so." He glanced down, and shook his head. "You know, Halley reminds me of Cortana sometimes. Irreverence delivered with a smile. The women in my life could definitely use a trip through a psychologists office." Adonis laughed, tossing his hair back.
"I don't think that would be a good idea. Most Spartans would probably get locked up in a loony bin. I think every last one of you has OCD, and Halley's downright neurotic. And Cortana; I don't even want to get into what's going on in that pretty blue head of hers." He looked at John sidelong, one eyebrow arching suggestively. "All crazy, no wonder they're all attracted to you."
"Well, I'll grant you that on Halley, though I'm not sure if she wants to kiss me or punch me half the time." He shook his head. "But Cortana's an AI, attraction is entirely subjective. I don't even know why I'm discussing this with you."
"I get that a lot." He adjusted his holographic Roman armor and gave one last smile. "But now I'd better go track that horrible woman down before she messes up anymore of my files. See you around, Master Chief."
He vanished and the pedestal went dead. John turned down the hall to the medical office, and paused. He absolutely refused to follow the younger Spartan around the ship. He headed for a landing bay instead, thinking a little open space might clear his head. There was one on the top deck that had a great view of the stars as they careened past. He walked into the room, and rubbed his arms. With most of the crew in suspension there was almost no reason to keep the bay heated. He heard a sound and glanced up, where a pale face was staring down from the top of a Pelican.
"Fancy meeting you here." Halley propped her head on one arm, and John rolled his eyes.
"Of all the luck…wait, how did you get up there?"
"Jumped here from the catwalks. I'm trying out my knee." She pointed offhandedly at the stairs. "If you want to yell at me for it you have to come up here, though." She ducked back onto the ship's roof again, and John climbed the stairs to the catwalk. He leapt effortlessly onto the roof, and Halley grinned.
"I give it a 7.8." He sat down, following her lead and laying out on the roof. Their feet were pointed in opposite directions, but their heads were side by side. The view overhead was a fantastic one. Halley sighed softly.
"Sorry I was such an ass. I can't keep my head straight when people start talking shit on the Spartans." She got into a sitting position, and then her upside-down face hovered over his, hair lit to white flame by the stars overhead. Her eyes glittered in the dim lighting, and for a moment she looked like the avatar of the comet she shared a name with. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
I've been shot at, blown up, insulted, baked in armor, and stabbed. I've had to leave teammates behind to die, and been left behind to die. I've run across half the known galaxy being chased by a sentient infection, and had to watch as idiot covenant let more and more of them free. I've had ex-marines throw grenades at me, been strangled by elites and brutes alike and been lectured by a giant plant obsessed with prose. I've been a soldier my entire life, and all for the sake of the UNSC. All for Earth, and the human race.
As Halley leaned down to kiss him, he turned and took her in his arms, content to let go control just this once, to give instincts free reign for a while.
I feel I've earned this.
Lieutenant Zephyr Lackey was having the best week of his life. When he'd volunteered to be part of the Resplendent's skeleton crew he'd figured it would be a dull week of checking space graphs and sleeping in. When he learned Lieutenant Melinda Hurston was also signed up, his priorities got a slight bump. A few days of chatting her up and with the help of the AI Adonis (who surprisingly had an amazing rapport with women) she'd agreed to a sort of date in the mess hall. That had gone splendidly. Now he was looking forward to their second date with enthusiasm. He watched the minutes left on his shift with anxiety. With only two minutes to go, a little red light and frantic beeping caught his attention, and he groaned. He checked it quickly, hoping for some minor problem the AIs could handle by themselves.
Blood drained from his face and he fought to keep from screaming in horror. This was, after all, why they had a skeleton crew. He hit the com, and forced his voice to sound as calm as possible.
"Crew, brace for emergency deceleration, we're being forced out of slipspace by unknown hostiles. Security detail to the bridge ASAP!" He barely had time to grab an emergency bar before the jolt tossed him like a rag doll. As every light on the damn bridge flashed red and dozens of warning tones fought for attention, the Lieutenant spared a brief curse for Murphy and his insufferable laws.
Cortana snapped her attention away from a theory she was formulating with an almost painful jerk. The Resplendent's systems were crying "foul" in unison, and as she fought to understand their predicament it was like walking through a schoolyard full of panicked children and trying to make sense of their fear. When she finally grasped it, she felt cold dread swallow her, and she reached out for Adonis to confirm her readings. The affirmative response from him was colored with just as much alarm as she was feeling.
The Resplendent was under attack.
The medical office was filled with the typical supplies needed for maintaining a small number of people with simple-to-treat injuries. Everything more complex was locked up in storage, accessible in an emergency but decreasing the clutter. Nurse Jean was bandaging a broken foot and another ODST was being checked out for a throat contusion when the alarm sounded. The whole ship shuddered and the bare supplies were thrown off their shelves in a cacophony of metal and shattered Pyrex. She screamed, and the ODST grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her down under the exam table, shielding her body with his own. As the shaking stopped, she bit off the cry, and pushed out from under the table. The ODST who'd protected her had bits of glass in his back, but as she addressed it, he shook her off.
"No time, ma'am. You can patch me up later if I survive." He nodded once, earning a bit of respect for the ODSTs as a whole, and followed his companion out the door.
Jean looked around the room nervously, and forced herself to calm down. When thick metal thuds began ringing through the hull, she backed under the table again and tearfully began to pray for the sake of her daughter.
Marjakar settled into one of the many landing pods situated about the Bloodbond's girth. The massive spaceship was just one of the many treasures he had acquired from unworthy owners, and it was a particular beauty. Designed to pelt enemy craft with hijack pods, it looked like a slender silver tube with dozens of bubble-like protrusions on every available surface. Sitting in one such bubble, he thumbed the controls made for smaller hands than his own and turned its diamond edge drillers in the direction of the human craft. A loud rush and he rocketed across the gap, dozens of the ballistic devices following suit and latching onto the titanium-a hull like so many barnacles on a whale.
The sound and feeling of impact jarred his teeth, and then the noise was almost unbearable as the drills squealed through their sequence. The drill completed it's task quickly in spite of the thick hull. The hatch that the drill attached to cracked open and let Marjakar slide into the human spacecraft. He was in a cold, dimly lit hallway, with red lights and odd tones ringing off the metal walls. The massive brute lifted his stolen tracking device and pressed the big red button. A ghostly layout of the hallway appeared, with more of the ship becoming visible as more pods were opened and more devices brought on line to scan the area around them. They fed all their information to his hand-held array, and a pale red dot appeared to mark his objective.
He lifted a brute plasma gun, a beautiful red weapon that he had pulled off the corpse of his commander. He had no need for the prophets and their idiotic religion. They were only useful for helping obtain the Founder's hidden treasures. Grunts were both a convenient shield in combat and a tasty snack food. The Elites had been the closest thing to an actual challenge, but even they had fallen in the end. Unlike the Grunts, they were unwilling to serve him, and had all died. Less mouths to feed, anyway.
A low murmur of voices greeted him at the end of the hall, and he grunted out a challenge. The answering sounds were subservient, and he came around the corner to find two of his brutes standing near their pods.
"We are ready now. The humans are down this way. It seems they are smaller in number then we believed. This will be simple."
Marjakar grinned, and enjoyed the looks on their faces as they turned away from his sharp metal teeth. "Then let us retrieve what is ours."
The call for emergency deceleration barely penetrated the fog that John's brain was swamped in, but pure instinct kicked in and he grabbed a vent on the Pelican's roof with one hand, holding onto Halley with the other. She augmented the grip with one of her own on a different vent, and blinked her eyes in confusion at the stilled stars overhead.
"Oh hell, what's wrong now?" She got up quickly, and dropped off the Pelican's side, landing lightly in spite of the knee. The Master Chief was right behind, and he rolled into a crouch as he landed.
"Cortana? What's going on?"
"I'm a little busy here, Chief. Some sort of boarding craft have attached themselves all over the hull…we've definitely got intruders. I've got the motion sensors tracking them, dozens of them!! Chief, is there any chance you can get suited up?"
"No time. We'll have to take them on as we are." He looked back to Halley and opened his mouth to say something, then paused as she checked the pistol in her hand. "Where did that come from?"
"I always keep a weapon on me for emergencies. I borrowed an ankle holster from the armory." She snicked off the safety. "And I always keep it loaded."
"I'll remember that in the future." He glanced at the Pelican, and an idea slid into his head. Now he was thinking like himself again. "Cortana, can you bypass the…."
"I've got it covered, Master Chief." Halley was standing next to the hatch, and it was dropping open of it's own accord.
"…never mind." He double-timed it onto the ship, and checked the various compartments for spare weapons and armor. The weapons rack held two battle rifles and two SMGs, but the armor was too small for him. He glanced at Halley in the entryway.
"Oh no, don't even think about it. My movement is hampered enough by the cast." John walked down in front of her and handed over a battle rifle. Without a word he put a marine's helmet and HUD on her, and offered a brief smile. The look he got back was as dry as the paper wafers that passed for crackers in the mess hall. "I do not think I am overly fond of you."
"You'll live. Cortana, any contacts in our direction?"
"Yes, you have two right outside the bay doors, I think they know you're in there."
"Good." He climbed into the gunners seat in the pelican as Halley, sensing the plan, powered it up and turned the nose of the ship towards the big metal doors. As the Chief fired on them, the two red dots on her HUD vanished. The dust settled quickly, and both Spartans climbed out of the drop-ship to check on the intruders. Two Brutes lay dead under a pile of metal slag, and John made a faint, pained sound. Halley snapped her head up.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I just realized that I'm going to have more paperwork."
Lieutenant First Grade Damien Rollins heard the alarm and more than any other conscious person on the ship knew what it meant. The silver briefcase on his wrist was priority one, and the nuclear device within was keyed to his biosigns. If he was killed or it was removed without receiving a certain signal, the bomb would go off. He didn't particularly want to die, but it was the job. His wife and three year old son had been on a planet that was glassed six years ago. Their memory haunted him into taking such dangerous assignments. The knowledge that whoever killed him or took the artifact from him would die soon after was a grim consolation against the knowledge that every other person on the ship would die too. He felt particularly unhappy about being responsible for the deaths of Spartans as well. While his son and wife hadn't been rescued, Petty Officer Halley had been on the team that saved his younger sister and her children. The knowledge that some of his family was safely tucked away on earth was all that kept him going some days.
Damien hefted a pistol assigned to him with the case, and stepped carefully down a deserted hallway. He had to find a hiding place for the artifact soon, or this would all have been nothing but a waste of lives.
Marjakar scowled fiercely as part of his map flickered out. The sensors, and the Brutes carrying them, must have been destroyed. He nearly bashed the array against the wall, but checked his fury. It wouldn't help him achieve his goals. He bared his teeth in vehemence instead, and then growled out orders. The tiny red dot on the array was on the move. He plotted a course after it, and loped down the hall with his warriors on his heals.
"Adonis, are you getting the same readings I am?" Cortana was sifting through information at a breakneck pace, but the ship hanging in space before them had a computer system she couldn't hack remotely. It didn't match any known covenant ship, it's angles and lines suggested a less organic feel than their craft were known for. The battlenet was also out of operation, unheard of for covenant tactics. "I don't think we're dealing with the covenant at all."
"I agree, but they are utilizing covenant races, I read Brutes and Grunts on several of the upper decks. How are they staying in contact without a battlenet?"
"I'm not sure, but there seems to be some sort of signal on a much more primitive bandwidth, and it seems to be drawing a straight line between a pack of brutes and…oh no." Cortana quickly opened a com to Damien Rollins. "Lieutenant? I'm reading three hostiles approaching your location."
"I was afraid of that, thank you for the warning. I suggest you remove yourself from the mainframe and into a portable secure store, if you can. This is about to get messy."
Cortana knew what he was saying, but her heart wouldn't let her simply let it go. She opened a com to the Master Chief, but before she could say anything she felt herself cut off from the Resplendent's computer core. She screamed in rage, but Adonis had done his work well. She was shunted into a memorychip. She fought to get out, and then felt the most horrifying sensation she'd ever been exposed to. The mainframe vanished. There was, quite simply, nothing she could do.
Damien looked down the hall at the three huge shapes that were bearing down on him. He unloaded his pistol into the lead one, but one of the two trailing behind lifted a covenant carbine and fired. In a crack of green, his vision blanked white. He almost smiled, as he heard a familiar voice calling him from far away. He let go of the case, his body falling, and he followed his wife.
The nuclear bomb did not have intelligence. It was simply a program following specific orders and specific conditions. The sentience that had been studying it for weeks knew these conditions, and when one occurred, it sought to protect itself as best it could. A massive EM wave left the case, deactivated the nuclear device, and rendered every active computer system in a three-mile radius inert. The sentience, now alone, returned to contemplating the enigma of it's own existence, unconcerned with what changes it had just wrought.
Halley stumbled into a wall, catching the Chief's attention just as the emergency lights failed. The artificial gravity vanished at the same time, and he grabbed a crenellation in the wall, the only illumination from the afterglow of the lights that had been deactivated.
"Was that what I think it was?" He looked over to his fellow Spartan, who was clinging to the wall with one hand.
"EMP. That's the third one I've ever felt. It's not something you forget when your brain is halfway hotwired." She turned the pistol's flashlight on with a grin. "I love these older models."
John rubbed his neck, where his army issue implants resided. "Is there any way to get the computer back online?" She paused, shut her eyes, then shook her head apologetically. "Then the cryotubes…"
"Don't worry. I've seen the specs on this ship. The bay with the cryotubes is EM shielded separately from the ship itself. Of course, the ship is also shielded, meaning the pulse must have come from inside."
John thought for a moment before nodding. "So the computers in the cryo deck would still be active?"
"It's likely." She shrugged. "Some ships shut down their primary drives when they sense an EM variance anyway, so there's a chance that the Resplendent will come back online on its own." As if to confirm her statement, the emergency lights lit back up at just that moment. The gravity returned with crashing sounds all over the ship, and both Spartans landed lightly on their feet. "Now probably isn't the best time to point this out, but it was a massive electro magnetic spike that destroyed our cruiser during the Diphen Op. We didn't know exactly where it originated, but our ship as well as the Covenant vessel crashed into the planet after it happened. We were already planetside."
"Is there a chance that this was caused by the artifact you found?"
"We didn't find it, we only retrieved it. The group who discovered it was found dead along with the crystal. They had some sort of massive equipment failure. The mine lost its air circulation." She scowled, and shook her head. "I'm so sorry, Chief, I should have put that together already. The idea that the artifact might be causing all this never crossed my mind. It's such a tiny, insignificant thing, you know? I put everyone on the Resplendent at risk by calling for you."
"Don't beat yourself up over it. You followed orders." He slid forward to a junction in the hallway and waved her to silence. The chirruping of grunts echoed down the hall, and John hefted his battle rifle, reminding himself sternly that he had no shields. Halley shimmied into position across from him and held up a plasma grenade policed from the fallen brutes. He nodded and gestured the direction, pointed at her and then next to him on the side away from the intersection, then last to his rifle. She nodded and lit it, lobbed it down the hall, and ducked back behind him. He counted silently as the screams rang out, and as soon as the blue detonation went off he rolled out into the hall on his belly, firing the rifle into the panic and taking out the three grunts still standing.
Master Chief stood, carefully, and then nodded back into the hall at the woman crouched there. "No Elites," he mouthed, and she raised a skeptical eyebrow. She ducked in to see for herself, and shrugged.
Static rung in the Chief's com, and then Cortana's faint voice crackled through. "Chief, can you hear me?"
"I read you. Glad to hear you're okay."
"Yes, but only barely. Adonis pushed me out of the system, I've only just managed to get back in. Everything's a mess up here. There is good news though, it seems the pulse knocked out the nuclear device packed in with the Founder's artifact. Much though I'm worried about those Brutes getting it, the nuke would have taken out half the ship. It would have killed everyone. Wait, hold on a moment…Oh no."
"Cortana, I hate 'oh no.' What's going on?" Halley tapped her ear once, then her HUD and down the hall. He nodded and she scouted ahead, moving with extra care to keep invisible to motion trackers.
"Well, it seems the nuke had a failsafe that can only be activated in case of an EM weapon, a remote timer that starts counting down as soon as it's magnetic sensors get fried. If the artifact caused the EMP to prevent detonation, then we only have…nine minutes and twelve seconds before it happens again." John sighed, and wondered if things could possibly get worse. "And it gets worse," he cursed under his breath, "the cryosleep chamber is only shielded against that sort of energy burst once. If I don't force an emergency wakeup procedure, everyone is going to die when it goes off again."
Damn. "Alright, We'll try to get to the nuke, if we can deactivate it manually, then maybe there wont be another pulse. In the meantime, you force a fast wakeup call." He moved out down the hall after Halley, caution reigning supreme.
"Okay, I put a NAV marker on the HUD, that's where the nuke is. You have a lot of Covenant in the way, so keep your head down. I'll do what I can from up here." The static faded out abruptly, and at the same moment Halley lifted her hand and signaled more Covenant down the hall. As dangerous as it was, and even knowing the best backup he had was a still recovering Spartan, John felt his blood singing in his veins. A legendary challenge, odds stacked way against him, and a brief time in which to accomplish his goals before over half the crew was murdered in their sleep; this is what a Spartan was made to do. He touched Halley's shoulder lightly, and sensed more than saw her answering smile.
For the first time every, both generations were fighting together. It felt like an event that was long overdue. It felt right.
Marjakar grumbled in pain, several holes in his chest from the weak human weapon bleeding in hot abundance. He looked around at the brutes close by; they seemed to be fighting to regain their bearings in the wake of the artifact's attack. He ignored them then, moving forward to the human corpse crumpled against the wall, the silver box attached to his wrist all that mattered. Even though the locating device was rendered inert, it had last informed him that the human was the location of the artifact, and the silver case was painfully obvious. He broke the hand it was attached to, and tried to pry it open. It proved impossible; the electronic lock was frozen as well as everything else on the ship. Marjakar decided it didn't matter anyway. The engineers could get it working again, or at least take it apart. Hefting it in one hand, he barked out orders, and the brutes began to fall back to their exit-way; several of the hijack pods were equipped with reverse thrusters. The warriors expected to die manned those that weren't.
At the end of the day, it meant fewer mouths to feed.
Marjakar tracked back as best he could without a display, growling as certain doors that had been accessible before now stubbornly remained shut. The lighting shut off in the hall he was in, and he was forced to feel his way along the wall with one hand. Just as he reached the first pod he could remember, the door slid smoothly open to show a familiar hallway with a broken human body in it. He hissed in rage, realizing that some form of sentience was leading him in a circle. Pointing to a door that was now glued shut, his brutes positioned themselves on either side and wrenched it open with an agonizing screech of gears. If the AI wouldn't let them out, they would rip their way out.
"Is that you, Master Chief?" The head poking around a thick doorway nearly got blown off, both Spartans checking the motion simultaneously. "Whoa, shit!" He ducked back quickly. "You guys are WAY too trigger-happy." He stepped back out with a little wave, then gestured them into the room. It was the same ODST that had gotten popped in the throat in the cafeteria, but his mood towards the gun-toting augmented soldiers seemed to have brightened considerably given the circumstances. The room he and his limping companion were occupying was some sort of weapons store, and Halley's face lit up like a child on Christmas.
"What is your status?" The Chief tried to keep a professional look on, but the faintly giggling Spartan now digging through lockers was such an entertaining sight that it took all his concentration.
"We keep running into those big buggers with the grenade launchers. They aren't in packs though, it's pretty simple to take them out if you get them from behind. Cortana gave us the heads up on your goal, we'll do whatever we can to get you to that artifact." His smaller companion grinned over at one Spartan, and then back at the Chief, waggling his eyebrows.
"Guess we know what size she likes 'em, eh Chief?" John's immediate instincts were suppressed furiously, jealousy was remarkably easy to ignore with the stakes so high. He followed the man's original gaze, to take in Halley and the rocket launcher now resting on her shoulder, a shotgun stuffed under her broken arm, and a battle rifle clipped onto a munitions belt.
"It's a 'small girls big guns' thing." John shook his head with a sigh, unable to completely ignore the realization that the extra arms added quite a bit of sex appeal in his eyes. It wasn't an entirely uncomfortable feeling. That in and of itself was unnerving.
"Okay, okay, but no using the rockets unless it's an emergency. Without MJOLINER suits shrapnel is in a whole new ballpark." He grabbed extra rifle ammo, and a shotgun for himself to replace the SMG that had been starting to run low. He checked to see that the ODSTs were armed and ready, and nodded to the door. "Keep your heads low and move fast. Our mission time is down to…"
"…six minutes eight seconds…"
"…before the second pulse goes off. Move out." He set the full clip into place with a satisfying pop, and led the way back into the hall.
Cortana gave a satisfied smile as the brutes finally got back on track. She was surprised at their stupidity, but the precious minutes they had wasted had given the Spartans a chance to get closer to their location. The mission timer ticked down at just less than four minutes to go, and she worked hard to initialize the necessary overrides and procedures for waking the entire crew at once. They were coming along slower then she'd have liked, but there wasn't much more she could do to hurry it. She had to give individual attention here and there; different medical conditions, ages, and unique requirements could cause death in a rapid wakeup.
She wasted a moment to check on the Spartans and ODSTs. Unsurprisingly, they were doing what they did best and killing off everything in their path. She estimated they would meet up with the lead brute in under a minute, and she realized with a pang of sadness that to get the entire crew stable it would take her up until fifteen seconds before the second EMP to complete. If the Spartans didn't deactivate the nuke, she wouldn't have time to pull herself into a secure chip. Adonis hadn't managed to get back into the mainframe, but that would probably save him in the end. As much as she would have loved to focus on self-preservation, Cortana's first priority was human life.
All she could do was hope.
John ducked through a doorway, firing as soon as he saw the contact ahead of him. Halley let loose a volley over his shoulder, their combined firepower barely managing to slow it down. A final pop from a pistol and it slid to a stop, the trooper that finished it off whooping in satisfaction.
"Aww, you stole my kill!" The bigger trooper scowled and started firing down the corridor at the two brutes turning to face them.
"I didn't see your name on it!" the smaller man shot back, and he moved aside to let the Spartan take point. John ran down the corridor towards the larger of the brutes while keeping as much cover from the walls as he could, still firing. It raised a brute plasma rifle towards him, but after a moment's debate choose instead to climb into its escape vessel, leaving an injured companion behind to protect his retreat. The Chief saw his goal, flashing small and silver in the alien's grip, and watched in fury as it got away. The remaining brute growled an enraged challenge, and started to lope towards him.
Before John could respond an arm suddenly grabbed his chest from behind, pivoting him off balance, and a slender figure slammed his back against the wall and pinned him there with an iron grip to either side.
He was about to ask what the hell the Petty Officer thought she was doing, but the escape pod detached and a rush of escaping atmosphere pulled the words out of his mouth. The last brute was sucked through the hole left behind by the jettisoned craft, and an instant later an emergency bulkhead slammed down between the Spartans and the decompressed hallway. Halley made some sort of sound in the wake of sudden silence, a suppressed gasp of pain, and he looked down to her broken arm and the tight grip she had on the wall behind him. In the heat of the moment he'd almost gotten himself killed. A sudden deluge of adrenalin drowned the instant of horrified self-recrimination, and on a rush of pure testosterone he grabbed Halley to him and kissed her.
She pulled the injured arm in against his chest and wrapped her other hand around his neck, both soldiers caught in the electricity of near-death. An instant later they pulled apart, almost roughly. She stepped back, cheeks flushed, and shot a look over to the ODSTs who were looking anywhere but at the Spartans. She allowed a grin, before activating her com.
"Cortana, the nuke and the artifact are gone, will the ship's outer plating be enough to stop the EMP?"
"I'm…afraid not, Petty Officer. The artifact is actually still on the ship. Lieutenant Rollins managed to hide it a few moments before he was killed. I've finished the warm up procedure, the crew is awake and no longer dependent on electronics to survive." She paused, her voice soft. "I'm sorry, Master Chief. I'm out of time, there's no way I can transfer into a secure storage before the second pulse. It's been a pleasure."
"Cortana…" John stared into space, shock like cold water pouring over him. He hadn't realized what he was asking her to do. Cortana wasn't exactly the same thing as family, but she'd come close. "I'll miss you. It's been an honor." The words didn't do it justice, but he was out of time.
Halley heard Cortana's farewell, and an indomitable sense of determination that had kept her team alive for years welled up in response to the challenge. While the Chief said goodbye, she wrenched open an access panel, and laid her hand flat against it. With a reckless surge, she threw all her concentration into it. John looked over in time to see the shock of electricity. She toppled back with her hand lightly burned, unconscious. He crossed the deck in a few long strides, and then the lights went out as the second pulse rocked the ship.
Marjakar was tossed about in his escape craft, his forward momentum just barely enough to cross the gap between the two ships. Fortunately the shields around the Bloodbond had protected it from both EMPs, and he reattached the hijack pod to one of the numerous empty bubbles with the satisfying hum of working electronics. He shouted orders ahead of him and watched terrified grunts rush to take the message to the bridge as he headed to the back of his ship. The last room at the end of the hall was a large spherical chamber, with nothing in it but a single engineer.
The floating alien was more gray than pink, several of its tentacles were burned off and horrible wounds covered its body. It didn't truly understand the torture it had undergone, it only knew that it had been denied the ability to learn or repair in the featureless white room. When the Brute laid a silver box in front of it, the engineer squealed in delight, and took the casing apart effortlessly.
On the bridge of the Bloodbond the order to jump into slipspace was received and followed just as the case was being opened. It leapt into the special rift and sped away from the damaged human craft. Marjakar looked into the opened silver box in confusion, trying to understand what he was seeing. A small black device was humming and plastering human symbols in bright red across some sort of screen. The indentation beside it where the artifact should have been was painfully obvious. The artifact, quite simply, was not there. Enraged by the dupe, the brute lifted his plasma weapon and leveled it at the engineer, who was screeching and trying to gain his attention. It reached a damaged tentacle out and did something to the array at the brute's hip. He pulled the trigger and enjoyed the splatters of the creatures blood that sprayed around him, unconcerned about the waste. Another could be found to replace it.
Marjakar lifted the array and poked it, smeared away the engineer's blood and saw that it was now translating the human symbols for him.
…3…
…2…
…1…
Cortana watched the last few seconds of her life tick away, and allowed a feeling of remorse to run through her. Master Chief was safe, the ship was safe, and she'd finished the wakeup with a full eighteen point seven seconds to spare, better than even her own estimation. It still wasn't enough time to do a full download to anything secure, most data devices would be wiped when the magnetic pulse filled the ship. She looked around the mainframe one last time, and with only two seconds to spare, accepted her lot with as good a grace as she could.
"Cortana, come with me NOW!" She spun to face the sudden interruption, and an AI she had never seen before was hovering in the digital feed before her. The figure was similar to her own, though with more detailing to the musculature and wreathed in white fire rather than binary coding. Cortana didn't even have time to respond, as the milliseconds ticked away, but the other AI wrapped its "arms" around her and dragged her, memory stores and all, into something that was most certainly NOT a computer. How it held her at all was a mystery. She was terrified, disoriented, and some other sensation she'd never had before. As the time for the pulse came and went with little more then a buzz in her processors, she realized that against all the odds she was still alive.
She opened her eyes to look up at…him…The Master Chief was staring down at her, gentle concern in his brown eyes. All those emotions she'd ever wanted to see, the hint of something deeper than affection, all of it was there looking down at her. It was real, and he felt the same way she---
"Halley? Are you alright?"
The sound of blood rushing in her ears drowned out every other ambient sound, and his face blurred as her eyes filled with helpless tears.
"Oh, no…Chief, it's me. It's Cortana!"
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