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Chapter Text

Spirit of Fire

0100- Dec-02-2559

South Corridor- Section 42- Level 2

Kinsano Morgan headed to the showers after her sparing session. There were showers in the changing area adjacent the Gym, but she preferred the ones on the level of her cabin. She reached one hand up to rub her sore shoulders as she rode the elevator down to her corridor. The elevator doors opened and revealed a young woman with pale skin and sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks waiting on the other side.

Kinsano recognized the woman at once. Mechanic Silver. Kinsano operated a giant mechanical suit, she saw the mechanics often as they buzzed around the mech hanger. Even though Silver wasn't skilled enough to work on a Cyclops. The women knew each other and were friendly.

Even if she hadn't worked with Silver she might have recognized the younger woman. Diana was a famous opera singer before the war with the covenant started. So was her mother before her. When Diana joined the military there was a big propaganda piece on her and she had her picture taken with the captain when she came to the Spirit.

When Kinsano first met the girl she expected a diva or a spoiled brat. But Diana was an earnest hard worker and humble. And Kinsano got the feeling Diana was also a little afraid of her, which she didn't mind.

Kinsano made to get off the elevator and opened her mouth to say a greeting to Silver, but as she met the other woman's eyes she realized something was off. Silver stared blankly ahead and gave no sign that she saw Kinsano, she waverd on her feet but did not take a step toward the elevator. She was also barefoot.

Kinsano grinned as she realized what was happening. She stepped off the elevator. "Silver!" she said loudly and snapped her fingers in front of the younger woman's face.

Silver's blue eyes blinked rapidly, and then recognition flashed across them. Her mouth fell open in an O and her eye brows came together.

"No," she cried. And whipped her head around the hall. "Not again. Where am I? What time is it?"

Silver started sleepwalking recently. It was a bad habit to have on a space ship. Medical thought it was a side effect of their long cryosleep and the long hours the mechanics were putting in. And of course the stress they were all under.

The crew had woken up after a near thirty year nap to find themselves on the edge of the universe. Upon waking they learned that most of their worlds were gone, and the universe was filled with doomsday machines, and the zombie like alien parasite they'd encountered before they went to sleep was something called the flood, and it could destroy the whole galaxy if it was allowed to spread. Sleep wasn't easy for anyone.

"Its about one in the morning," Kinsano answered.

"Fuck! I'm late. My shift started at midnight. Fuck!" She looked down and saw that she was in her tank and had no shoes. "And I have to go back to my bunk to dress. God I'm gonna get yelled at."

She turned and ran down the corridor.

"Have a good shift kid!" Kinsano called after her.

Silever turned and waved and then kept running.

She was not going to have a good shift. Arnold Stroll was her sergeant and he was going to be on her ass for being late. Kinsano shook her head sympathetically and headed to the showers.

0600- Dec-02-2559

Mechanic Bay

Mechanic stall 37

Diana Silver was just finishing up her work on her sixth Warthog of her twelve hour shift. She'd also had two Elephants in her stall and the engine of a Hornet. She wasn't rated for aircraft, but she was qualified enough to identify and strip the mechanical parts that could be used for spares. She was a greese mechanic, she worked on vehicles with wheels or treads. If anything else came to her it was so she could strip it for parts.

It wasn't an impressive job. But even though the universe was filled with massive interstellar spaceships, that didn't stop regular people from needing a set of wheels.

Her current project was a warthog whose front hood had an unfortunate meeting with a brute chieftain's hammer. There was a big cartoonish hole punched in the hood where the engine was knocked clear out the bottom of the vehicle. The mechanical arms attached to the ceiling of her stall had already removed the hood and she was in the process of lowering a new engine in its place. The new engine was one she just put together from the scrap pile. Once the engine was in place she retracted the arms and leaned in to attached the hoses and wires. This could be done with robots as well, but she liked to do this part manually. Sometimes a set of eyes on the engine found things that scans missed. She finished the connections and climbed into the driver seat. She turned it on.

The engine roared to life, and then died.

She sighed and climbed out and leaned again over the hood. Everything looked like it was connected. It should work.

"Silver"

She raised her head from the guts of the engine and saw her sergeant. She'd avoided him so far, luckily he hadn't seen her sneak into the bay and relieve Raul, the other mechanic who had to stay late because she was late. Raul didn't giver her too bad a time about it. Everyone knew she was sleepwalking. She'd walked into the men's showers last week.

"Sir." She straightened and saluted.

"At ease." He didn't waste any time.

"After this one go back to your bunk and get some rest. You're going on to the surface in four hours."

Her heart leapt at the possibility of getting off early, and then plummeted at the thought of going to the surface of the Ark.

The Ark was an alien construction filled with strange animals and plants that killed people. And also the Banished. Aliens from the covenant, who were not the covenant anymore, but still wanted to kill humans.

Silver hadn't been to the surface. As a mechanic her job was much safer than most in the UNSC. Most of the time she only had to worry about accidents in the shop or going down with the ship. She had never been in combat. There was only one reason for a mechanic to go into the field.

"A salvage mission?" she asked.

"Yeah. There was battle not long ago and we left a lot of heavy equipment behind. Banished held the territory but they abandoned it and left a lot of their stuff too. They been gone a few days so upper ranks figure we might sneak in and grab what we can. You'll have a team of marines with you. You should't have to fight. Just get some of our metal babies back if you can."

The Spirit was alone. They had no communication with the universe. No way to call for back up. No slip space drive to try to get home with. And they were down to half staff when they arrived at the Arc. They were burning through people and vehicles and ammo. The vehicles at least could be patched with spare parts. Which meant the mechanics worked twelve to eighteen hour shifts. And they went on salvage missions to recover what they could from wrecked and burning machines on the battlefield.

"Sir, I understand why we need to send a mechanic, but am I the best one to send? There are better mechanics here."

"There are. That's why I'm sending you. You're the one I can afford to lose the most."

Damn.

But he was right. The higher rated mechanics could do her job. She couldn't do theirs.

"Understood Sir."

"Go get some sleep. Take your sidearm. Do what the marines tell you. If all goes to plan, you'll be back in this stall tomorrow. On time this time. Dismissesd."

"Yes sir." She walked past him and took the elevator to her corridor.

It was a long ride down. And a long walk to her room. She told herself not to be afraid. She might get through the mission without seeing a single alien.

When she got to her bunk she stepped inside and stripped naked. She originally shared the bunk with a female marine, but she died back when the Spirit engaged the Covenant around Arcadia. So now she had the room to herself.

"Dirk are you there?" She called to the comm in the door. Dirk was the "Dumb" AI that ran less sophisticated systems like the ones the mechanics and other non-combat staff used. The "smart" AI Isabel was for more important things like navigation and weapons. Their old AI Serina had been much more curious about the people on the ship and would often project around the ship to talk shop with all the crew, even though most of their work was below her. Diana hadn't even seen Isabel in person yet.

Dirk answered in a voice that was robotic even for an AI. He always sounded bored. "Yes, Mechanic Silver."

"I thought I told you to lock the door the last time I went to sleep, and not to let me out until my alarm went off."

"Yes, you did. But then you told me to let you out."

"When?"

"Approximately 10:37 pm February the second, standard earth calendar."

That was a half hour before her alarm went off to wake her for her midnight shift. So she was talking in her sleep now too. Wonderful.

She climbed into her bunk and under her thin Navy issued blanket. "Ok. I'm going to sleep for three hours. Lock the door and do not unlock it until 0900. I don't care what I do or what I say. Do not let me out of this room. Got it?"

"Yes, Mechanic Silver."

Chapter Text

"You alright Mechanic?"

Diana looked up. She was strapped into her seat in the back of a pelican. The other personal were still getting seated. Most were marines, but there was one engineer and even a merchant going down. She guessed they were going for roughly the same reason she was. They needed to salvage whatever they could, and maybe look for food. The spirit of Fire had once been a colony ship and was uniquly qualified to host farm units. Throw up some lights, get the sprinklers going, and they could grow enough to feed the crew in a pinch. If the merchant found some edible food they could grow on the ship it would save them a trip down in the future.

From what she heard, the Arc was like a library or a zoo, filled with animals, fauna, and everything in-between from all over the galaxy. It was kind of a gold mind. Filled with monsters.

The engineer was the one who'd spoken to her. He sat directly across from her and looked at her with concern. He was a bald man, with hollow brown eyes and light brown skin. He had a bit of an accent that hinted at west asian roots.

"Yeah, I'm good," she lied.

"You look a little green," he said gently.

The pilot called over his shoulder. "You better keep your lunch off my floor!"

"No worries. I can't even remember the last time I had lunch."

They had protein bars and nutrition shakes in the mechanic bay to slam down. But they hardly had time to get to the cafeteria. She hadn't had a real sit down meal in days.

"It's just that it's my first time to the surface," she said. "It's my first time off the ship since I signed on actually."

"Damn. Thirty years on the Spirit," one of the marines exclaimed. "Well don't worry. The sun on the arc might be fake but it feels good. And walking on dirt instead of metal is so nostalgic."

"Yeah sounds great," she said.

The sun and earth weren't what she was thinking of. She was thinking of the aliens that wanted to kill her.

"It's eight hours." The engineer across from her said with a sympathetic look. "We just have to get through it."

She nodded. The rest of the team took their seats and strapped in. The ship broke the stasis field of the Spirit with a slight jolt that felt like a boat breaking free of a tether on a dock.

And they were barreling toward the surface.

***

Battle site 57-234 was once a meadow. There were patches of light green grass and even little yellow wildflowers here and there, sprinkled among the wreckage of burned-out vehicles, discarded rocket launcher shells, and depressions in the earth left by bombs.

The Recon Team had cleared the area for their return. But they still crept across the twisted metal shells with care. The Banished liked to leave booby-traps.

She had four marines with her. They watched the treeline around them as she popped the hood of a Wart Hog and quickly worked on the engine. Then she hot-wired it and the engine roared to life.

There was a base eight kilometers away. The plan was to drive the vehicles there when they were done. As she surveyed the field she found several vehicles that were in decent shape. But one stood out.

A T-X scorpion, and it was in one piece. That was a prize worth coming to the surface for. If she could get it running.

The marines saw her looking at it and broke into identical grins.

"Are we getting a tank mechanic?" the closest marine asked.

"Hell yeah we are," she said.

They reached the tank and she climbed atop it. There were black soot marks on the outtake vents, indicating a fire in the cab. She guessed the problem was electrical.

She popped the top and froze.

"We got a body," she said to the marines around her. The cadaver was curled up in the driver seat and blackened to the point of being unrecognizable.

A marine climbed up the treads and looked into the cab with her.

"Shit. Barbecue." He reached down and took the dogtags, which were too melted to read, but he still tucked them into his pocket. "Help me get him up."

The marine lifted from one shoulder and she took another. They lifted the body and lay it on the treads of the tank.

She looked around. From the elevated position atop the tank she could see more of the battle ground. The twisted metal and earth. And something struck her.

"When was the battle?"

"About two months ago" the marine next to her said.

"Where are the rest of the bodies? Where are the aliens bodies?" The skeleton in the tank was the only one she'd seen. There should be more.

The marine looked around, squinting and scanning the area as she had. "We picked up what we could. But the arc has wild carrion animals."

"Imagine getting on a space ship and flying millions of lightyears to fight for humanity only to have your body eaten by some space vulture." One of the marines on the ground said.

"Universe is a crap shoot," a female marine said.

Diana had to agree. She sighed and climbed into the cab. Her suspicion was confirmed. The fire started beneath the dashboard. The tank driver probably suffocated before they burned.

She wondered if she'd worked on the tank, if she'd made a mistake during a repair that caused the malfunction that caused the fire. She did her best, they all did, but they were exhausted and it was possible that a mechanic's simple mistake lead to this soldier's death. Crapshoot.

She pried the dashboard off and the marine handed her her tool box. She found the problem, the meeting of the firing mechanism had disconnected and ignited.

She couldn't get the firing mechanism to work here in the field. But she could get the tank running so they could get it back to the base, and then to the mechanic bay on the Spirit.

She toiled for an hour before the tank roared to life and she heard cheers from the marines outside. She stood and popped her head out of the hatch. "Who wants to drive?" she asked.

She climbed out while the marines jostled until one beat the others into the cab and the tank rolled out. They were lining up the recovered vehicles in a column for the drive to the base, they would all leave together when the work was done.

Over the next several hours she repaired two more Warthogs and an Elephant. She was pleased with her accomplishments and got words of approval from the marines when they pulled out in the column of repaired vehicles and headed to the base nearby.

The engineer had done alright as well, loading up a warthog with salvaged machine bits. He greeted her with a brief smile. "See, mechanic." he said. "Nothing to worry about."

"Yeah. I might even volunteer for the next scrap miss-"

There was very loud BOOM!. A flash of fire. And then the feeling of being lifted in the air. And then there was nothing.

Chapter Text

She woke up in the dirt. The smell of it hit her and the first thing in her mind was that the dirt smelled wrong. It had too much metal in it, but not a metal she could name. It wasn't the sandy earth near the lake. It wasn't home. She was curled on her stomach. She raised her eyes and felt her heart pound in terror. She was in a pen, a circle made with sharp spikes driven into the earth, like some ancient cave dweller construction. The spikes were at least six feet high and spaced close together.

She didn't dare stand. Something inside her told her to stay low and make herself as small as possible. Something told her to cower like a beaten dog.

Beyond the stakes there were stacks of metal crates and iddleing alien machines. And the Covenant aliens. They werent covenant anymore, but that didn't change anything. They were still monsters. The lizard-like Sangheli. The gorrilla/elephant brutes and the tank bearing grunts. She'd never seen them in real life. They'd always existed in the hollow-vids and stories of the other soldiers. They were terrifying. They were huge. The grunts were called the little ones, but the group near her were at least her height. They all had sharp claws. They all had sharp teeth.

They eat people, she remembered suddenly. The stories were everywhere when the war first started. They didn't just burn their worlds. They ate humans alive. She scooted away from the edge of the pen. The movement caught the attention of the Sangheli and he swung his oblong head in her attention.

"The nishum is awake," he said, and began walking toward her. She looked around with a prayer for help. Only then did she realize she was alone. Only then did she wonder what happened to the others. And then she saw the tags hanging from the sangheli's belt. Behind him the grunts were tearing up UNSC uniforms, taking the battle patches off and dividing them up like playing cards. The others were dead. She knew it with a profound certainty.

The sangheli stared down at her and growled with contempt. A brute came forward as well but stood a little apart from the sangheli. The brute was clad in red armor that had some bulky pieces, almost like metal pockets. Half his face was pockmarked with burns.

"Humans are so pathetic, they send females into battle," the sangheli said. His voice was deep and carried a tone of superiority.

"This one is not a soldier, she's a worker," the brute with the scarred face said, pointing at the wrench on her flight suit. "What is your rating?" the brute asked.

She cowered away from them. The spikes were over her head if she stood, but only came up to their chests. "I'm a basic mechanic," she said. She was officially an M1, but with all the experience and rigging she'd done, she would probably rank as an M4 by now. She doubted she ever live long enough to take an advancement test, though. 

"Then she cannot tell us anything about the plan of attack and she is useless," the Sangheli said and drew his sword. It ignited with a electric hum and red light glowed from it, bathing the edges of the spikes in red light and shadow. She drew breath for a scream. But it got caught in her chest. She could not make a sound. She could not cry out or beg.

"Stop," the brute said. "A skilled laboror is always valuble. I will take her. Her little human hands can reach inside machines I cannot."

The sanghelli groweld.

"We must make use of the resources we have," the brute continued. "We should not waste useful prisoners."

A moment passed and the sanghelli shut down his sword. "Very well. Do not let her become trouble."

"What trouble could a little human female be?" The brute smirked.

The sangheli gave her one more contmptuaus look and then turned and slunk away. The brute looked down at her and knelt beside the stakes. He smiled, showing pointed teeth. "You got the tank running? All by yourself?"

Her fingers dug into the earth. Her voice was still stuck in her throat. She nodded.

"It's a fine machine. If only the cabs werent so small, I'd have taken it myself. I suspected your people would come back for it." He stood, grabbed one of the stakes and yanked it out of the ground easy as pulling up a dandylion. "Come on. You've rested long enought. There's work to do."

Chapter Text

She followed the brute through the camp with her head down. The path beneath her feet was trampled by creatures much bigger than her, and she felt more like she was on an ATV path than a walking path. Everywhere she went, she saw the aliens. Talking shop, laughing, shoving. None of them paid any attention to the scrawny human trudging behind the giant brute. Suddenly, she realized a grunt was walking beside her. She glanced at the grunt, who stared at her. The brute led her to a drop ship that was the size of a school bus. There were crates scattered outside. Another brute, this one with a long braided beard, sat on one of the crates and studied a data pad. The brute's nose twitched as she approached, and he looked up. His brows lifted, revealing red eyes. "You picked up a snack?" the bearded one asked. Her heart skipped a beat.

"A thrall," the brute she was following said. He pressed a panel on the ship and the door dropped down with a metal whine. The brute looked at her and jerked his head. "In," he said gruffly. She obeyed. She didn't have a choice. The space inside was open and airy but stank to high heaven like unwashed barn animals. To the back were racks for sleeping and shelves for storage. There was a wall to the right separating the cab from the standing area. There were bars overhead with netting for storage and to hook harnessess too. The lights in the walls were on, but dim and most of the light poured in through the open door behind her, casting her shadow across the floor. The door shut, and her eyes strained to adjust to the darkened space. The brute walked to the wall near the sleeping racks and opened a locker. The grunt had entered with them and was still studying her.

The brute sat on a metal bench and jerked his head for her to join him. He held something in his hands, whatever had been in the locker. But his hands were too big for her to see what was in them. She took slow steps toward him. He opened his palm, revealing a small human data pad, the kind spooks wore strapped to their arms. "Try to get this to work," he said. She took the pad and pressed the power button with no luck. After a few moments, she shook her head. She could work on data pads and interfaces that were connected to vehicles. But those were systems she was familiar with. He went back to the lockers and rattled around a bit. She tried not to think what would happen if she couldn't do the task he asked her to. He returned with a machine that was a square with groves in it and opened a fold-out table from the wall. He set the new square machine on the table and connected it to the pad with a wire. He pressed some buttons on top of the cube and looked at her. "Try now." She hit the power button again. The screen came to life but remained blank. She opened the back of the pad and spliced the wire that should be the visual, if it was the same as the displays on the vehicles, and to her relief the menu flicked onto the screen. "Good," the brute said, and plucked the pad from her hand. Then a holo image appeared above his cube, it magnified the menu on the pad. "Trying to work those tiny buttons and wires was endlessly frustrating."

The door opened behind her, and she turned to see another brute walk in. This one was bald and even bigger than the other two had been. He stared at her and then to the brute with the pad. "Voridus, what is this?" Voridus didn't look up. He fiddled with the menu then handed the pad back to her. "A survivor from the ambush. Human, type X- 5TF5." She obeyed. On the small screen and on the holo vid, a file popped up. He grunted, and she took the meaning to open the file. Images and data lists popped up, indicating some kind of forerunner facility. The brute, Voridus, smiled.

"Why are you picking up humans? And what is that?" The bald brute came forward, peering at the holo-vid. She took a step to the side to get out of his way. The grunt took her wrist and gently pulled her to the wall.

"It's a pad I found on the remains of what I believe to be an ONI corpse. It was a while ago. I planned to get into it earlier, but then we had the mishaps with the Shell. I forgot about it until today. But this looks promising."

"Everything on the Arc 'looks promising'. It's also demanding of resources. We do not have the time or labour force to go on a treasure hunt. And if you needed a human, you could have gotten one of the Banished to do it."

One of the banished? There are humans in the banished? She'd never heard that before. The Covenant didn't allow humans. What kind of human would work with the ones who murdered them by the millions, who would do such a thing?

Voridus answered in a distracted tone. "They would have demanded a favor in return and I wasn't in the mood. The thrall will do as she's told."

She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. But she also wanted to keep breathing. The big bald one let out a long sigh. "Fine. As long as she's useful. Have you restored those power nodes yet?"

"Of course. Why? Does Laif- Erdona'c have some other feckless task to waste my time with?"

"We are buying time," the bald one said. "We must prove our value. And our restraint."

"We are doing grunt work. But this may be the prize to return us to glory."

"The prize. Remember the last time you went looking for prizes?' The bald one let out a growl that shook her to her core. She pressed into the wall beside the grunt. And the brute, Voridus, hung his head.

Then the bigger brute did something unexpected. He reached over and gently placed his hand on the other's shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was almost soft. "We must atone a while longer. We will rise to the top again."

Voridus huffed. "The power nodes are ready. I will see them loaded."

"Good. I will inform the commander. It's almost time to move out."

Chapter Text

She followed the aliens to an open area where a bunch of barrels were grouped, along with some strange aliens she'd never seen before. These were pink and purple things with tentacles and they floated in the air. They also wore vests with spikes and ominous red lights flashing on them. When one looked her way, she saw it had six eyes. She stopped in her tracks and starred.

"You've never seen a Hurgarok before, huh?" the grunt asked in a voice that was comically high.

"Ah, no," she said.

"They're real good at fixing things." The grunt explained. "But these are kinda broken. Sometimes instead of fixing, they make things explode. On purpose."

She looked from the grunt, to the Huragok, to the dozen highly explosive looking power nodes less than three meters away.

Voridus began picking the barrels up, one under each arm, and loading them into the back of a waiting transport vehicle. Thankfully, he didn't ask her to help. The grunt waddled forward, though, and began loading the barrels one by one.

The work was over in a few moments and she stood awkwardly, looking around until Voridus barked an order.

"Grunt, take the human and get some cables and supplies."

"Sure thing." The grunt gave a salute, then turned and waved for her to follow. Voridus walked toward a nearby group of Brutes. She noticed they didn't look excited that he was coming toward them and wondered if that had any thing to do with the "atonement" the other brute talked about.

She followed the grunt through the camp. The aliens paid them no mind. But then they rounded a tent, and in the shade were four men siting around a dice board.

The men were dressed in red and black, just like the aliens. She felt her jaw drop. Human Banished.

One man looked up at her and a look of shock crossed his face.

"Holy shit." He stood and a grinned. "A woman."

He took a step toward her, and the other men stood. She took a step back as she realized exactly what kind of men would join the aliens.

The grunt stepped forward and placed themselves between Diana and the men. The alien jutted their large, long, clawed index finger up at the man who spoke.

"Take one more step, Darel!" There was a sharp snarl in the alien's voice and a tone of mania, like they were on the verge of laughter. The men all paused and looks of annoyance crossed their faces.

"Come on LegBeg. We're just having fun."

"Then I'll be having dinner. Human stew is great this time of year," the grunt said. The grunts around them slowed their work and turned toward them, reminding her of a pack of wild dogs tuning into the scent of deer.

The men glanced around at the pack of little aliens, many of which had pistols in their hands. Then the men slowly took their seats and waved them on.

The grunt pushed her to get her to walk and they passed the group by.

When they were a few feet away, she looked at the grunt. "Thanks."

"Don't worry about it. Us girls gotta stick together. I knew as soon as I saw you, the males would give you trouble."

It's a girl? She looked at the grunt and then the surrounding ones. She couldn't detect any female traits. "Uh. Yeah. So where are we going?"

"We gotta get some stuff for Voridus's experiments. He's not supposed to be doin' experiments, so he can't get it himself. We have a deal. I grab stuff for him. Grunts are always carrying stuff. No one asks too many questions, then he gives me some extra food. Good deal."

"Cool. What experiments?"

"The kind that mess up his face."

"Right. The exploding thing."

They reached a building with a grunt in front handling requests. LegBeg told it what they needed. He put it in a pad. Then a brute came out of the building with some crates.

They loaded up, and she followed the grunt back to the drop ship.

The grunt showed her where to put the items in storage on the outside of the dropship. Then it was time to pack up and move on to the next location. LegBeg led her in and helped her strap into the spot for the grunts. Voridus and the other brutes went into the cockpit. The ship lifted, and they were moving.

Chapter Text

The back of the dropship was relatively quiet. Voridus sat at the table and fiddled with the pad. He'd dug out a converter that allowed him to work on a brute size pad and control the little pad so he didn't need her to hit the little buttons anymore. Apparently, he only needed her to get it started.

Diana held onto the netting as the ship weaved and dove. Whoever was driving was taking sharp turns, and she had to hang on tight to keep from being thrown to the floor.

The grunt stood in the middle of the space. The sharp movements didn't seem to bother her. She leaned with each bank and dive but her feet stayed rooted to the floor. Apparently, they were sturdier than humans.

After a while Diana noticed the little alien was bobbing her head and muttering, and then Diana made out the words she was saying.

"Strawberry Sunday- all daaayyy- bababyyyyy"

That was a human song. It was a poppy, bob-along thing. The kind her mother hated. Her mom caught her singing something like that once when she was fourteen and she slapped her across the mouth. They were opera singers, and opera singers didn't sing pop idol songs. It was a waste of her talents.

She'd said much worse when Diana told her she was joining the UNSC.

It was so weird to see an alien singing a human song. When she went to sleep in cryo, the aliens called humans filth and burned everything they touched. Now they were jamming to human music?

What the hell happened in the last twenty-eight years?

Diana had gotten a briefing of the way the war went in their absence. War over, or at least, the big war was over. Humanity survived. But most of their worlds were gone, including hers. When she found out Kholo was glassed, she stopped really paying attention to the other details. Humanity survived. Great. But everyone she knew and loved was dead.

She should have paid more attention to the reports on what happened in the galaxy while they were out. She might not be so lost now.

LegBeg saw her staring and waddled closer. "You know Lockstep?" She asked excitedly.

"What?"

"Lockstep, the band? You know", she launched into her singing voice, "Strawberry Sunday-Starburst Monday- Too True Tuesday, You and Me Wednesday." She paused, "Wednesday as in a girl's name, not the day, clever right?"

Diana stammered "Yeah. Sorry, I don't know that one."

"They're my favorite. I hope they're still alive. They were supposed to release a new album in September. Last September. But we were too far from a music station so I couldn't get it. I heard Allen and Kai broke up. Allen is the lead singer for Lockstep and Kai was the singer from a girl group, HazelSun. They were a thing for like three years! And the rumor is Kai was cheating on him with an actor. Anyway, you just know the album is gonna be full of angsty, desperate love songs." She tapped the tips of her claws together gleefully and her voice rose a few octaves. "Those are my favorite!"

Diana stared openmouthed at the little alien, gossiping and fan-girling over a boy band.

Seriously, what the fuck happened over the last twenty-eight years?

"I didn't know you guys liked our music," she said slowly.

"Oh yeah. Humans have good entertainment. In the Covenant, everything was a parable, all the media had to have a moral. Boooorrring! Humans have juicy stories, with angst and pining and forbidden love affairs. My mom used to collect soap operas. She had all forty-three seasons of Mark My Love."

"Holy shit, no way!" Dianna burst out. She felt herself smile. "My mom loved that show!"

But the last time she checked, there were only thirty seasons of the old soap.

"Oh yeah," LegBeg continued proudly. "Mom and I watched it all the time when her shift was over at the loading station. Until the planet the show was filmed on was glassed. We were just about to find out who the father of Danielia's baby was, too. Shame."

"Hah!" the brute cried out and both Diana and the grunt jumped. A gliph glowed over the box, and Voridus was showing all his pointed teeth in a wide grin.

"What's that?" Diana asked.

"Reclaimer gliph," the grunt said. "The Forerunner sign for your people."

"Reclaimer?"

"The forerunner chose your kind to inherit their work. It's why humans can activate forerunner technology that other species can't," Voridus said.

"But, I thought your gods hated us. Why would they leave us anything?" She couldn't quite keep the edge from her voice.

When the war started, there were many, herself included, who hoped that the war with the aliens was a misunderstanding and that they could make peace. It was a first contact, after all, mistakes could be made easily.

The United Earth Government broadcast covenant "sermons" over images of glassed worlds to get the point across. The aliens believed the destruction of humanity was holy work. They would not stop until the humans were wiped out. Soon enough everyone gave up hope of reaching any kind of peace.

Voridus smiled. "You are woefully lacking in information it seems. But that's not surprising with the way the prophets layered their lies. The Forerunners were not gods, but aliens who lived millennia ago. They chose your kind to inherit their works. When the leaders of the covenant found out, they decided to end you rather than reveal the truth. Probably out of fear of being usurped by the heirs of the Forerunners in the covenant hierarchy."

"They committed genocide to protect their status?"

"Hmph, you really think humans wouldn't do the same?"

Her mouth twisted bitterly. Yes, human history was filled with slaughter. But species wide genocide?

"No. WE wouldn't go that far. We wouldn't burn whole worlds," she said.

"Sure you wouldn't," he smiled. "Anyway, since the Forerunners saved their best technology for your kind, this indicates something good."

Chapter Text

Spirit of Fire

Dec- 04-0300

Casualty reports were a nonstop occurrence on the spirit of fire. Pulling up the casualty list was a daily ritual most of the crew did when they first woke up, as they sipped their expired coffee and reviewed the list of downed comrades. The wartime equivalent of checking the day’s weather.

It wasn’t pleasant to admit, but they got used to seeing the names of dead comrades. There was little shock or outrage or grief as Morgan Kinsano registered the names and tried to assign faces to the ones she thought she knew.

With the crew size dwindling, they were running into each other more often. Partly because most people were forced to do the job of three and that put them in contact with others they hadn’t before. In the early days of battle, Kinsano barely knew any of the names on the lists. But now she almost always knew one.

This morning’s list included a pilot she knew- Louis Cascade, home Luna.

A merchant she didn’t- Dwight Daniels, home planet- Meridian.

An engineer who had worked on her mecha a few times- Abdul Al Sur, home planet Coral.

There were a dozen marines she’d probably deployed with once or twice.

There was no information about the mission they’d died on. But people talked, and she knew that there had been a salvage mission the day before. It must have gone wrong.

The casualty list had one MIA, Diana Silver, Mechanic first class, home planet Kholo.

MIA was a tricky classification. All UNSC had an identification friend or foe, IFF, implanted in their neural interface. If they got lost, the Spirit could find them. But the Banished had jamming capabilities, and they deployed them all over the arc. The known dead were found because their bodies were left somewhere outside of a cloaking field. The body didn’t have to be recovered to confirm death. The shipboard AI could just read their vital signs from low orbit.

In the past, when commanders lost their soldiers in the chaos of war, there was endless not knowing. Were their men dead? Captured? Run away? Injured and dying in a ditch just over the hill? The grim certainty that the IFF chips and the AI that read them offered was a blessing that no one wanted to admit they were grateful for. It saved them from worrying over the dead.

But if a body was within the circumfluence of a jamming device, there was no way to know if they were alive or dead.

There wasn’t much reason to hope for an MIA. The Banished weren’t known for taking prisoners. But Kinsano had a soft spot for the young mechanic. She’d been just nineteen when she joined the crew of the Spirit. She was just a kid, and a rich one at that. She could have hunkered down in luxury and prayed that the war would never reach her privileged perch in the universe.

But she didn’t. She stepped forward and joined the masses of humans who decided to fight for each other.

So when Morgan Kinsano sat on the edge of her bunk clutching the data pad and read, Diana Silver, MIA, home planet Kholo. She couldn’t help but take a deep breath and whisper a prayer. “Hang in there, kid.”

Chapter Text

Diana had no way to know how long they had been flying, but it was long enough for LegBeg to sing the entire catalog of Lockstep's last album.

Voridus had passed the time digging into the files about the mystery facility. He would occasionally grunt and snarl. When she risked glancing his way, she saw he only skimmed the files briefly before waving the hollow images away with an increasing air of frustration. She assumed he wasn’t finding anything useful.

Then the ship dipped, and they began their descent, still swerving wildly. Finally, they shuddered to a stop and set down on solid ground.

LegBeg stopped singing but continued to hum melodies. Voridus waved the holo-vid away and then put the pad and the converter box back into the storage locker.

The cockpit door opened and the other two brutes stepped out.

The big bald one spoke, looking at Voridus and ignoring LegBeg and Diana entirely.

“Colony radioed and requested your assistance. They have cracked the old ship and are salvaging it.”

The door to the dropship opened, and the brutes descended the ramp. LegBeg grabbed Diana’s arm and pulled her along. The brutes continued talking ahead of them.

“It is not Forerunner. I told them that already. Anyone could tell by the design,” Voridus said in an annoyed voice.

As she followed, Diana glanced around in dismay. They were in a camp, much bigger than the one they had left. That must have been something like a forward operating base. This was a real base. There were tents and structures, vehicles and hardware stored all over the place. There were narrow corridors between everything with little sign of planning, making her think of a tent city rather than a military camp. And all over were aliens. Brutes, Jackals, Sangheli, and Grunts.

The bald one, Pavium continued. “Be that as it may, they want you to examine some of the machinery they’d taken out. And you can put your new Thrall to work. The inside of the ship is dissected by narrow corridors. Too small for Brutes and Sangheli.”

They stepped off the ramp and onto the soft turned earth. The ramp closed behind her automatically. She turned to look at the dropship and then up and around. They were in a valley, with cliffs pressing in close on both sides. There was a waterfall to the north and tall green trees all up the sides of the mountain.

She raised her eyes higher, over the edge of the mountain. It was late evening, and the sky was a hazy purple. She could see stars beginning to appear. There was no sign of the Spirit. She knew she probably wouldn’t see it. A ship in low orbit wasn’t visible even ten miles away. But she still felt her heart drop at the sight of the empty sky.

She must have paused without realizing it. LegBeg pulled her gently, and she realized the brutes had moved on without them. She and LegBeg hurried to catch up, and she caught there their low rumbly voices again.

“I still say it’s a waste of time. From what I’ve seen of the ship, this species were at a technological level, even below the Covenant. Where are you going?”

They reached a fork in the path and the bald brute paused, clearly about to go the opposite way that Voridus was headed.

“Thalazan and I are going to a war council meeting.”

“While I’m stuck with wreakage?!”

“I don’t have time to argue.I will speak to you tonight. Go.”

He turned and walked along with the bearded brute behind him.

Voridus growled and jerked his head down the opposite path. LegBeg and Dianna followed.

The path weaved through the camp. Most of the aliens they passed gave them a wide berth. Even the other brutes. She quickly got the impression that no one wanted to mess with Voridus. She felt a little relieved. If she stayed close to him, maybe no one would bother her.

They passed a large cylinder tanker laying on its side, LegBeg pointed at it. “That’s the grunt barracks. It’s all methane in there, so we can take our tanks off and stretch.”

There were racks outside the cylinder with rows of the grunt portable methane tanks hanging on them and a tall cylinder where the tanks were filled.

The camp thinned, and she guessed they were nearing the edge. There were fewer aliens walking around and gradually more and more of the ones they passed were the bird ones, Jackals.

The camp is segregated she realized. They don’t like to mix.

The Jackals had a group of Dropships parked in a circle. As they passed, she heard squeaking and peered through the crates and tall grass near the ships. In the circular space at the center, she glimpsed what she first thought were alien birds. They were fluffy gosling looking things running around each other. Then she realized they were wearing necklaces and vests, and she saw one reach an arm out and tag another.

“Are those baby Jackals?” She blurted and stopped to stare. Voridus looked over his shoulder and huffed.

“Yes. Three clutches at least have been born on the Arc.”

“They brought their babies to war? Shouldn’t they leave them at home?”

“Jiralhanai would. But Jackals are strange.” He looked back at her. “Humans allow females to fight. Do you ever birth young in the battlefield?”

“No. We take drugs to prevent pregnancy while we’re on duty.”

“Hmph. That seems wise.”

They passed the edge of the camp and walked along a well-worn path toward the mountain wall. She saw a tunnel entrance in the mountain and a lot more tents and equipment outside.

There were brute guards at the tunnel who gave Voridus a nod as they passed the opening.

When they entered the tunnel, she found the inside was smooth metal and electric lights. They continued down a wide corridor, wide enough for the choppers to fit on the side and still leave walking room.

After a few moments, they came to a sealed metal door. Voridus hit some buttons, and the door opened, revealing an open cavern. Directly in front of them was a ship in a drydock.

Diana didn’t know what Forruner ships were supposed to look like. But she knew covenant ships and human ships. This was neither of those. It was smaller than the spirit and oblong, with three fins on the end where the engine was. The front had triangular indents. There were no viewing windows like human ships usually had. The whole thing was made of some dark metal that had an amber hue when the light struck it at the right angle.

Voridus led them to the worksite right beneath the ship, where she saw a drop ramp leading up into the belly.

“Where’s Colony?” Voridus demanded of a grunt at a workstation.

“They' re both in the ship. They got some stuff for you.” The grunt pointed to a table with a collection of machines.

Voridus growled in response and held out his hand.

“Give me the radio.”

The grunt handed it over. Voridus turned it on. “Colony, this is Voridus. I will begin studying the junk you pulled off that heap. I’m sending in a Human aid and Ungoy to search the ship as well."

After a moment, the radio buzzed. “Acknowledged.”

Voridus turned to her. “Go on. The others will show you where to look and what to carry back.”

LegBeg led her to the ship and up the ramp.

She looked over her shoulder and saw Voridus beginning his examination of the alien machines. He picked up a triangular piece, held it to his ear and shook it.

The lights of the cavern and camp faded as she entered the ship. There were lights in the corridor, inlaid in the wall, they were rectangular and pointed opposite tips together in narrow lines, similar to the emergency lights on commercial plane aisles.

But the corridors went in all directions, one up at an angle to the left, one to the right, and another one straight ahead of her. There were no bars to hold on to, only ridges in the wall. It was more like tunnels than a corridor and reminded her of an ant farm or a wasp nest. She felt like she was in some kind of creepy alien insect hive.

LegBeg hoped up into a tunnel corridor and began to wiggle along. Diana climbed in after her and squeezed through, her fingers clutched at the grooved walls.

Soon they came to an alcove that was flat and they settled in. She could fit if she sat cross-legged on her butt. There was a control panel in the wall and LegBeg started messing with it. She pressed buttons randomly.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Diana asked.

“Nope. I’m just seeing what happens. Don’t worry. Colony disconnected the weapons and the engine, if they woulda worked. Not sure they would, being as old as it is.”

“How old is it?”

“They think it’s from when the Halo fired. The crew must have been caught in the blast, and then when they died, the ship went into drift till it reached the Arc. There was no damage to the ship when we found it. It was just set up in the dry dock, so the bosses think the Oracle brought it down and put it in storage. The Forerunner put everything in storage here. Real pack rats.”

A ship left to drift through space until it just happened to show up at the arc.

Imagine that. She'd heard history repeats itself.

Like rhythm. Like poems. Like the chorus in a song.

“So are we looking for anything in particular?”

“Nah. Just as long as we find something to bring back. Voridus isn’t expecting much. Just try to look busy.”

There was another alcove further up the tunnel. She crawled up. Below her, LegBeg hummed another LockStep melody. She could hear banging and rattling through the metal. She guessed that was the other Banished searching the ship.

She pulled herself into the next alcove, where there were more monitors in a triangular pattern pressed together. She sat in the alcove and ran her hand along the dashboard.

It was her first moment alone since she woke in the alien’s custody. She sat for a moment and tried to process what had happened.

She should try to get away. As a prisoner, she was at their mercy. But even as she thought the thought, she knew it was pointless.

She was tiny, and if she got out of their sight, they would outrun her. If she managed to sneak away, where would she go? The Arc was so big. The odds of her finding a human base or her IFF being pinged and her being rescued before the Banished found her, were next to zero.

For now, her best bet was to do as she was told and try to stay on Voridus’s good side.

Useful. Be useful.

She examined the panel. There were deep holes along the edge, like the holes in bowling balls. She stuck her finger in them and pulled. The panel popped off, revealing curled green wires.

She wondered about the aliens that had built the ship. Her best guess was they were something like the Drones. Maybe their ancestors. The place definitely had a hive feeling. And the way the monitors were arranged might be suitable for partitioned insect eyes.

The wires connected to a sphere with a ring on it. She managed to disconnect it with her hands and pulled the sphere out.

The rattling she’d heard in the metal was getting louder. She froze to listen, then she placed her hand on the wall. The metal was cool. She felt vibrating from the other side. Then the metal crumbled beneath her palm and she felt something wet and slimy writhe against her skin.

She jolted back, her back slammed against the far wall of the alcove, and she screamed. The opposite wall folded like tinfoil. It collapsed in on itself, torn up, turned and ingested by the mass of worms now visible in the hole they created.

Chapter Text

She screamed bloody murder and scrambled down the corridor. She crawled, crying and whimpering, down the metal tunnel and all the way out of the ship. When she stumbled onto the ground outside she collapsed onto her hands and knees, nearly hyperventilating. Voridus casually walked away from the work station and stood over her.

"What happened?" he asked.

She told him.

He smirked.

“You’ve met Colony.”

“What?”

“Surly you know about the Hunters?”

The marines talked about the Hunters. The giant worms that stuck togehter to make two-legged beasts. They always came in two's and were very hard to kill.

But she’d never seen one.

“Thats what that was?” she gasped.

“Legoko eat metal. And they may learn about the substance they eat through some absorption process we don’t understand. This is Colony’s way of studying the ship.”

LegBeg waddled up behind her and held up the sphere.

“You dropped this.”

Voridus held out his hand and took the spere from the smaller alien. “What's this?”

Diana took a deep breath before explaining. “I found it in an alcove with some monitors, right before- Colony- ate through the wall. I don’t know what it is. I’m guessing some kind of CPU or storage from the way it was connected in the unit.”

“Attached to monitors? You’d better go back and get them before Colony eats them.”

“What?”

“He shouldn’t bother you.” Voridus continued without looking at her. He spun the metal ring around the sphere as he studied it. “They prefer metal to flesh.”

She stared at him dully for a moment. Then climbed back to her feet. There was no point in arguing. She turned and followed LegBeg back up into the ship.

Colony, the monster pile of worms that was eating its way through the ship like the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, had branched upward to the ceiling of the alcove. Luckily, the monitors were untouched.

She and LegBeg worked beneath the canopy of worms as they removed the monitors from the wall. LegBeg had some tools in a side pocket of her tank that Diana hadn’t noticed before, and that made the work go faster.

The sound of the worms slithering over each other in the closed, dark space, just inches above her head, was enough to give her nightmares. She prayed their connection to each other remained stronger than gravity. Because if one of those worms came loose and fell on her shoulder or in her lap, she was going to vomit or fling the thing against the wall.

And then the rest of the worms would probably eat her in retaliation.

She noticed LegBeg glanced upward as often as she did, and guessed that the little alien was just as uncomfortable with the proximity to the worms. She was also much quieter than she’d been thus far, only speaking to give direction or offer a tool from her tank. No more humming.

Once they returned from the ship with the last monitor, Voridus ordered them to follow him. He carried the sphere and one monitor. She and LegBeg carried one monitor each and followed him out of the tunnel.

It was dark when they emerged, and the various lights of ships and campfires glowed ahead. She could see pots over fires and animals on sticks just feet away from the open doors of drop ships.

She suddenly got a strange feeling. The sight of such primitive living next to modern technology stirred something in her. It was almost like nostalgia, but it left a bitterness in her heart. She tried to shake the feeling free. She didn’t know what it was about. Maybe it was just the day she had. And the whole, “prisoner of war” thing. Maybe bitter should be her default setting right now.

Before they reached the mouth of the main camp, they veered off the path toward a giant shed near a slow-moving river.

Voridus hit some keys on the door, and it opened. He walked in. They followed. It was a work shed. Like most mechanic garages she’d been in, it had piles of cables. Metal chests of drawers, some half open. A few work tables, most surfaces were crowded with alien gadgets.

“This is his lab,” LegBeg hissed beside her. “He has to keep it kinda away from the other stuff and near the water, in case he starts something on fire again.”

She noticed scorch marks up the wall above the main work table.

“Huh,” she said.

Voridus approached the main work table and ran his arm across it to push the junk away. Then he pulled a flat, shiny alloy disk out of a drawer and set it on the table. He dropped the sphere on the disk, where it floated in what must be a mini anti gravity field.

He set the monitor above it and took the other monitors from the girls. After a few moments of rummaging through his cables and rigging, he had the monitors powering on.

He grinned at his own success and Diana and LegBeg crept forward to see what the monitors had to say. The three screens together were dissected into smaller pictures, three images to each screen which together showed a fisheye composite image of the galaxy. But large sections of the screens were black.

“You found Navigation Charts,” Voridus said without looking at Diana.

He tapped on a pad he’d connected wirelessly to the sphere and the screen rippled, then the picture zoomed in on one monitor. Still, large sections were blacked out. But it didn't appear to be a problem with the screen. Rather it appeared that part of the image was purposely left blank.

“What are those blacked out areas?” she asked.

“I would guess that those are sections of the galaxy lost to the Flood,” he said as he tapped the pad and the images on the other monitors rippled and changed.

“No way.” She knew the Flood. The Spirit ran into them before they went into cryo. She only found out they were called the Flood when they all got their wakeup brief. The blacked out parts covered more than half the Galaxy.

“It is the only explanation I can think of. One would not wish to venture into Flood controlled space. So the space may as well not exist on the map," Various said.

He flicked through a few spaces and stopped on an image. It was a star system that was not blacked out, but one of the planets was marked red. A planet that was very familiar, third from its sun. There was an alien sign above the planet, but she couldn’t read it.

"That’s earth,” Diana said, and crept closer, until she was standing at Voridus’s elbow. “What’s it say?”

“I don’t know. It’s not a glyph I’ve seen before. I’ll have to get a Huragok to come read it.”

They spent another half hour flipping through the maps. Large portions of most were blacked out. Voridus pointed out some systems he recognized and even found Doisac, the brute world, still visible, but just on the edge of the darkness that was spreading across the galaxy.

Diana knew the Halo was fired because the Forerunners were losing the war to the Flood. But seeing the swaths of the galaxy that were just written off... It was heart-stoping. She remembered the fear that spread through humanity about interplanetary travel when the war began. Civilian ships had no hope if they were found by a covenant ship. Every species in the galaxy must have had that kind of fear of crossing the Flood in space. And once the Flood found your planet, it was over.

Curiously, they found one more planet that was marked in red and had a similar but not identical glyph. But it wasn’t one that Voridus recognized and Diana didn’t know it either. Voridus repeated that he would need to grab a Huragok. But the hour was late, and he was hungry. So they shut down the machines, and she followed him back to the main camp.

When they reached the drop ship, he turned to her.

“I’m going to eat. You stay here. The Ungoy will bring you your food. When you're done-” He pointed to the drop ship. “You can sleep on the shelf above my bunk. It’s the one with the machines under it. If you run away, we will catch you. And I will kill you. Understand?”

“Yes,” she said, and tried to keep the venom and humiliation out of her voice.

He grunted, then grinned. “You did good work today. In the Banished, work is rewarded. So tonight, you eat and sleep in peace.” He turned and lumbered off.

She sat on a crate and waited until LegBeg returned with a bowl of meat floating in liquid. She couldn’t shake the stories of Aliens eating people, so she drank the liquid and let LegBeg have the meat. Then LegBeg stretched dramatically, said she was beat and waved goodnight. Then waddled off to sleep in the methane silo.

She walked up the ramp to the drop ship and hit the button to shut the door behind her. The other brutes weren’t back yet, so she had the ship to herself. The bunks were in the back of the ship. Voridus's was obvious with all the junk stuffed under it. She noticed the other bunks were much neater.

She slipped off her shoes and stepped up on the brute’s bed. Then grabbed the edge of the overhead shelf and pulled herself up. Voridus had some junk on the shelf as well, mostly spare armor pieces by the looks of it. But she could scoot them aside and make a space big enough to sleep.

She had no blanket and no pillow. And the shelf was hard metal. Yet once she curled in a ball and lay her head on her arm, her body was overcome with fatigue and she fell into a deep sleep, as still and dark as the blacked out sections of the Flooded Galaxy.

Chapter Text

She woke curled in a tight ball.

For the first time in ages, she woke feeling rested. She kept her eyes closed, savoring the last few minutes before her alarm went off, which would surely be any minute now. She felt so grateful to have finally gotten a good night’s sleep. Even though the bunk felt harder than usual, and she must have kicked off her blanket.

The urge to stretch came over her, and she uncurled from her ball. When her legs extended, her bare feet kicked a hunk of metal, pain chased the rest of her sleepiness away and she bolted up, eyes open, “Ow! What-?”

The dingy metal that surrounded her was not that of her bunk. The proportions of everything were way too big. For one second, she was confused.

Then reality crashed in around her.

Salvage mission. Capture. Prisoner.

She turned and looked around the drop ship.

The brute, Voridus, was sitting at the fold-out table with the human tablet and conversion cube.

He had a surface map open in the hollow-vid. He also had a brute sized dada pad open and appeared to be scanning the surface of the arc. She guessed he was trying to locate the facility found in the human pad.

He didn't seem to notice her. She sat still for a moment, unsure what to do. The other aliens were gone. Not even LegBeg was around.

She didn't want to get his attention. Unfortunately, she had to pee.

She cleared her throat. He looked up and grunted a greeting.

“Where's the bathroom?” she asked

He pointed to the back corner. She saw a panel that she had mistaken for part of the wall, but now realized was a sliding door.

“Don't fall in the chute. That is not a joke. Human Banished have done it and it is an unpleasant task to fish them out,” he said.

She clambered down from the shelf and pulled on her shoes. God knew what she’d find on the floor in there.

There was a button beside the door. She hit it and the door hissed and slid sideways, revealing a foul smelling but visibly clean room.

The bathroom was spacious for her, but for the aliens, it was probably cramped. The chute was a square hole that she very well could have fallen into. There was no sink, but there was a dispenser with cleaning foam to wash her hands when she was finished.

When she came out, the brute was packing away the pad and cube. “Let us return to the ship.” He said after he secured the items in the locker.

Outside it was morning and fluffy clouds drifted across a blue sky. The air was filled with the stink of the aliens but also with the smell of oil and rubber and fumes she couldn’t name from all the working machinery that war required.

LegBeg met them on the footpath and greeted them cheerily.

“Morning boss. Morning Diana. Beautiful day isn’t it. Here.“

She handed Diana a water skin.

“Morning. What’s this?”

“Fresh paste. Strait from the Food Nipple. Breakfast.”

Diana put the nibble in her mouth and took a tentative sip. It tasted like a flour smoothie. She managed a few swallows. While it wasn't tasty, it was filling, and she guessed it would address hunger and thirst.

“Thanks,” she said to the little alien.

“No problem,” LegBeg said and waved her claw nonchalantly.

When they got to the alien ship, they resumed their work from the day before. Voridus stayed at the workstation and she and LegBeg investigated the ship.

Thankfully, this time she didn’t run into Colony. They dug a few gadgets out for Voridus, but he didn’t seem very interested in any of them.

About midday, Voridus instructed them to pick up some gadgets and follow him back to the lab.

Once they got to the lab, he had them drop their gadgets by the door and went to the table with the navigation sphere she'd found the day before. He turned the machine on with an air of agitation.

“Couldn't get a Huragok?” LegBeg asked.

“No. My request to use one was denied. I will have to decipher the words myself.”

The monitor powered on and again revealed the blacked-out galaxy. Diana and LegBeg edged closer to watch Voridus work. He tapped his data pad until the screens rippled to show the two red planets, one on the left screen and one on the right, with the bulk of the galaxy on the middle screen.

Diana crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the labels hovering over the red planets. “If these aliens weren't Forerunner, why is their stuff in the Forerunner language?”

“Most of it is not.” Voridus opened a menu and pulled up some of the Alien commands to show her. She couldn’t read either language, of course, but she could see a difference in the commands of the ship and the language in the charts.

Voridus continued. “Forerunner were the overseers of the galaxy. Directly or indirectly, they controlled the other races. These maps were probably distributed to the species from the Forerunner who were fighting the flood and knew which section of the galaxy was lost.”

That sounded like the UEG and the Colony planets. Imperialism. Diana was loyal to UEG and believed that humanity needed a unified government to survive. But she couldn’t blame the outer colonies for wanting to rule themselves.

She wondered if this species was happy with the Forerunner arrangement, when they had such a hold on the galaxy that they literally told people what planets they were allowed to visit.

Voridus buried himself in the alien charts. Soon Diana and LegBeg got bored watching him work, and they wandered away from his station. LegBeg actually pulled out a tiny data pad and showed the screen to Diana with a sense of joy.

On the screen was a catalogue of Mark My Love season 40.

She and LegBeg sat in the corner and started watching. Diana recognized at least three main characters from when her mother watched the show, although they were significantly aged.

The plot was typical soap melodrama, and not that interesting to her. However, LegBeg gasped at every dramatic turn and accusation. Diana still enjoyed watching. The show reminded her of her mother, sitting on the sofa in the old living room, a drink in her hand while the drama unfolded on the screen.

She felt tears in her eyes. She ran the back of her hand over her eyes to wipe the tears before they fell. LegBeg sighed. “I know,” she said gazing at the star crossed lovers of the storyline. “It’s so tragic.”

“Yeah,” Diana agreed.

"Got it!” Voridus exclaimed loudly.

The girls scrambled to their feet and walked back to the worktable.

“What’s it say?” Diana asked.

Voridus pointed to Earth.

“The Penitent, and the other one is The Repentant.”

“Penitent. As in Penitentiary? They made earth a prison?” Diana asked.

“It appears so.”

“Why? What’d we do?”

“I don't know.”

“I thought you said they liked humans. Reclaimer and all that. Why'd they have us imprisoned?” She felt a deep sense of injustice and a bolting bitterness. Similar to what happened the day before. Again, she couldn’t make sense of the feeling.

Voridus continued, his voice full of curiosity. “Again, I do not know. I wasn’t there. It cannot be due to flood infection, because then they'd be blacked out like the other sections. In fact, the flood has spared that entire section of the galaxy. Perhaps your people redeemed themselves before the firing of the halo. Or, perhaps the Forerunners decided that your crime wasn't a crime after all. That happens when arrogant forces realize they are losing and must embrace those they considered below them.”

He grinned at that. “You should have seen the Sangheli when they first joined the Banished. You could smell the wound to their pride.”

Lt. Colonel Kinsano had joined the UNSC after the start of the Covenant war. Everyone knew she used to be an insurgent. But she didn’t walk around with wounded pride. Still, Diana could see what Voridus meant. Clemency was offered when you needed allies.

“Ok. What about the other planet? The Repentant?”

“This system isn't on Banished charts. Which means it wasn't on covenant charts. The planet is completely unknown.”

He stood suddenly. And she backed away with a small sense of panic. She felt like a mouse dancing around an elephant.

He spoke as he grabbed some tools from the drawers around the room and stuffed them in compartments in his armor. “There is a Forerunner terminal in a facility nearby. I will search the star system's location in their records.”

She and LegBeg fell in line behind him as he headed to the door. When he hit the panel, the door whisked up to reveal a tall muscular Sangheli who had his arm raised, about to hit the panel from the outside.

The Sangheli and the Brute growled at each other. Diana and LegBeg stepped back as one.

The Sangheli balled his claws into fists and glared at Voridus.

“What are doing here Voridus? You are supposed to work for Colony at the salvage site.”

“We extracted some items that required study in the lab. Unfortunately, they are less useful than I'd hoped,” Voridus answered in a surprisingly diplomatic voice.

The Sangheli looked from Voridus to the junk in the lab and then at Diana and LegBeg. Then he swung his long head back to Voridus.

“Very well. I’ve brought some damaged vehicles from our latest engagement with the humans. They are in a field on the other side of the camp. You may put your skills to work repairing them. It will be the closest you get to battle for a long time.”

“For the glory of the Banished,” Voridus said smoothly.

The Sangheli snarled, then turned and walked away.

They passed through the camp again. There was another field, this one mostly stamped down and clearly used as a junkyard. There were about a hundred busted vehicles there.

Voridus directed Diana and Legbeg to the nearest chopper and gave them a few instructions. There was a shack at the end of the field and that had tools for them to use.

Then he walked off and left the work to them. She realized he wasn’t bothered by the Sangheli ordering him to do work that was clearly beneath him, because he had no intention of doing it.

They worked mostly unbothered. A few aliens and some men that walked by would call out insults, but no one approached them. The chopper was a new system to her, and everything about it was too big, but soon enough, she understood the mechanics as well as if she were working on a warthog. LegBeg even commented on what a natural she was.

She’d been on a learning curve because of the personnel drain on the Spirt for a long time. She’d gotten used to working on machines she wasn’t really trained on and learning as she went. M1 mechanics were supposed to work on things with wheels only. But she’d worked on everything from warthogs to Hellbringer mecha suits.

The most troublesome part came when they had to start the chopper to see if it was fixed. Neither one of them could sit in the seat and press the pedal at the same time. Diana took the driver seat and sat on her knees so she could see over the steering wheel, while LegBeg sat on the floorboard and hit the pedals with her claws. The engine roared to life, and both girls cheered at their success.

They moved on to another chopper. When she looked up, she saw Voridus had returned. He was grinning, showing all his pointed teeth.

“What happened to you?” Diana asked when he reached them.

“I went to the Forerunner terminal I told you about. I found the location of the second red planet. The Repentant.”

“Really? Cool. What’d you find out?”

“The second planet is Janjur Qom." She heard a note of unmistakable joy in his voice. She'd never heard a brute sound that happy.

 “No way!” LegBeg cried.

“What?” Diana asked. She’d never heard of the place.

“It is the homeworld of the Prophets of the Covenant.” Voridus said with utter glee. “They kept its location secret for a thousand years. Now I know exactly where to find them.”

Chapter Text

Voridus excitedly shared his discovery with Pavium that night after supper.

Diana huddled on her shelf while they talked at the fold-out table. The exterior door was closed. The inside of the ship was dark. The only light came from the floor lights and the blue glow of the holo-vid projector. LegBeg had gone home earlier, but Voridus ordered her to keep quiet about their discovery. Thalazan wasn’t back for the night, so in the ship it was just her and the brute brothers. She had returned to her perch on the shelf before the brutes returned from supper. Her sack of Nipple gruel was barely touched.

LegBeg relayed a summary history of the prophets and the covenant when she asked about Janjur Qom. She learned that the entire war, and enslavement of the other races in the covenant, was pretty much all the Prophet’s fault. Diana was amazed because back in her day, she’d never even heard of the Prophets. She thought the Sangheli were in charge of the Covenant, but apparently they were supposed to share a joint rulership status with these other aliens.

LegBeg was surprised she didn’t know them, since one of them would routinely post sermons mocking the humans once they found earth a few years back.

The Banished hadn’t figured out yet that the Spirit had been lost for thirty years and they just showed up at the Arc by accident. Diana wasn’t about to let it slip either. She used the excuse that the ship must have been in slip space while this happened and maybe ONI blocked the videos. The truth was that she was in cryo, and missed the whole damn thing.

Long story short. Everyone in the Galaxy hated the Prophets. But during the battle for Earth, the Flood invaded the Covenant holy city and most of the Prophet's species were killed. That meant no one could get revenge on the manipulative species until now.

“The home of the Prophets, after all this time,” Voridus proclaimed.

Voridus made a hollow-vid copy of the star map and projected it over the table. He pointed the new planet out and the course they could take to reach it from Doisac. But Pavium wasn't impressed.

“That may be where the planet was. But it's long been destroyed by their Sun's collapse.”

“According to the Prophets. You believe their lies? “

“Not everything was a lie. Besides, this information does us no good here and now. We need to concentrate on defeating the humans and securing the Arc. Ideally, before Atriox returns with reinforcements.”

Atriox was the brute leader. But return? When did he leave? How? The spirit should have detected a jump. As far as she knew, it took six months to travel in slip space from the Arc to the milky way galaxy. And it could take another six months to travel to whatever planet was the destination within the galaxy.

The Spirit of Fire came out of slip space just over a year ago and had been fighting ever since. Atriox was on the Arc at least six months ago when they beat his biggest ship. So if he'd left, it'd should take at least another six months till he returned.

But he would return. With back up. While the humans remained alone.

Everyone on the Spirit wondered why they had heard nothing from the UNSC since they woke up. They were far from home, sure. But no contact for a year? Not even a message? How was that possible? There was a research outpost on the Arc before the crew got there, and they should have sent regular updates back to the UNSC. Why hadn’t anyone come to see what happened to them after the Banished attacked?

The war with the Covenant was over. There were factions fighting, but the banished seemed to be the biggest one. She thought at first that maybe the Banished were keeping the UNSC busy back in the Milky Way galaxy and that was why they didn’t have a ship to spare to check on the Arc.

But the more time she spent with the Banished, the less that made sense. No one spoke of a war back in the Galaxy, no one spoke of conquering another planet. They only talked about the Arc and the old covenant. If they had a war with the UNSC back home, she’d hear a lot more trash talk and bragging of former victories.

So what was going on? Why weren’t the other humans coming to help them? The only answer was that they couldn't. Something else was going on back in the milky way.

Then Voridus mentioned something interesting and jolted her back from her thoughts.

“If I could be allowed to work on the shard again, I could open another portal, I'm sure. We could send another message and give Atriox the map.”

Shard? Portal?

She moved as slowly and silently as she could and peered over the edge of the shelf. Voridus was smiling excitedly, persuasively, and she suddenly had a vision of him as an enthusiastic used car salesman.

But Pavium wasn't buying.

“Even if you could, Atriox will not drop his task to hunt down a planet that may have been turned to dust long ago.”

“You don’t know that. He didn’t tell anyone what he was going to do when he left.” He thrust his arm at the map. “The home of the San Shyum! The revenge we could have? And the plunder! The only reason the prophets had such technological advantages was because of the relics on their world. They could be ours.”

“The Arc is filled with relics. Yet you have done little with what you have found here.”

“I have done more than anyone else!”

“I know. Voridus, you do not need to prove your genius. You need to prove good sense. Patience. Obedience. I have made progress with the war council. Soon I will be able to send you on missions outside of the camp.”

“Oh? You and Thalazan have pleaded my case, have you?” he said bitterly.

“I keep Thalazan close so that he does not have the opportunity to slander us.” Pavium sounded like he was losing patience. Diana hunkered even lower on her shelf. A brute in a mood was bad news and triggered every instinct she had to take cover.

Voridus didn’t back down. “I am tired of being on a leash. All the Banished would relish storming the prophet’s home world.”

“You are right. But the timing is not. If the planet is still there, it’s not going anywhere. When Atriox returns, and we have a firm hold on the Arc, we can show him. First, we must deal with the matter at hand.”

Voridus shut the map off and turned away from his brother. He began to strip off his Armor and Pavium did the same. They muttered more arguments as they each tucked into their respective bunks, but the matter was settled. Soon their conversation turned to some argument about a previous engagement back on Doisac and a story where Pavium saved his brother from some kind of beast.

Diana tuned them out and curled into a ball as her mind raced.

Shit. Shit.

They had some kind of teleporting portal. Apparently it wasn’t reliable since it sounded like Voridus would have to work on it to get it going again. But they managed to send Atriox back to the Milky Way.

That meant the Banished were going to get reinforcements, eventually. The Spirit had to do something before that happened. And if the Banished leader was gone, it was the best time to attack. The aliens were not united. She’d seen enough in the camp to know that they were just as happy to fight each other as they were to kill humans.

If they could turn the Banished on each other, they might have a chance to take the Ark before Atriox returned.

She had to do something. She had to get a message to the Spirit somehow. Or find out where this shard thing was so that they could use it to send their own call for help.

She just had no idea how she was going to do that.

Chapter Text

Colony gave up on the unidentified alien ship a few days later. The last she heard, all the rest of the Legoko were eating whatever hadn’t been scavenged.

But Laif kept them busy with junk yard work. Diana was quickly becoming an expert on covenant vehicles, with LegBeg’s help and direction.

She was also learning and the dynamics of the camp. Colony, the Legoko bond brothers, were in charge of investigating any Forerunner or alien ships they found on the arc.

Laif de’Ernac, the Sangheli who showed up to boss Voridus around, was in charge of their camp.

After that, the power structure went down to different brute chieftains and Jackal clans.

Voridus was part of a clan that used to be much bigger, but now only he, his brother, and the bearded brute were left. His brother was technically their chieftain, but since they were such a small pack, they had to link up with another group for status.

Voridus had messed up big time recently, but she hadn’t figured out what he did and no one wanted to talk about it. She just knew that pretty much everyone hated him.

The day found her working on another chopper. She sat in the driver's seat, which was about three times too big for her, while LegBeg worked at the machinery beneath the floorboard.

Voridus walked them to the scrap yard and poked around some machines. But he wondered off to prowl the forerunner terminals, leaving the work to her and the grunt.

Diana had to admit, she was proud of how much she had learned about the alien machines. She still needed the grunt’s help, but she had a basic understanding of all the minor vehicles. And working on them came naturally, just as if she’d been working on them for years.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” LegBeg asked suddenly from the floorboard of the chopper.

“What?”

“Do you have a partner?” LegBeg asked.

“No.”

“You’ve had one though, right?”

“No. I joined the UNSC when I was nineteen and my parents were pretty strick about dating when I was with them. Why? Do you have a boyfriend?”

LegBeg tapped the end of an unlit metal laser against the floorboard. “I have a candidate. His name’s MyYap. He works with the comms. It’s not really a tough guy job. But he’s funny. He’s been sort up sidling up to me in the methane silo lately.”

“Oh. Um. Cool. Do you like him?”

“Yeah. It’s just. He won’t ask me to be his spouse, you know? I keep waiting. He just… seems a little… gutless.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“In the best stories, the male asks the female. I want to be woo’d. Isn’t it bad luck for the girl to chase the guy?”

“I don’t think so.” She broke into a grin. “On the Spirit, we have this Hellbringer, she’s a Colonel. Her name’s Morgan Kinsano. She’s amazing, but she used to be an insurrectionist. You know what that is?”

“Yeah, the humans had a civil war.”

“Right. Well, she joined the UNSC because of the Covenant attacks. Thats a little tense because she’s now fighting with some of the people she had been fighting against right? Our First Officer Hood was a lifer in the UNSC. Great guy. Very good looking, and also nobility.If an insurgent was going to have a problem with anyone on the ship, it'd be him. But Kinsano would whistle at him and threaten to drag him down a dark corridor every time she saw him. Even while he was giving orders. It might have been a joke, but I’m not sure. It was a major sexual harassment and also insubordination because he outranked her. But he and the captain just let it slide. I think Hood liked it honestly.”

“CO Hood got promoted. He was given command of his own ship and left us. After than Kinsano said her biggest regret in life was not making good on her threat to drag him back to her room when she had the chance. Moral of the story. If you like the guy, go for it.”

“Maybe I’ll ask him at the Nipple tonight.”

An idea struck her.

“You said he works the comms? Like for the in and outgoing scouts?”

She’d seen the scout parties come and go. If they were communicating within the jamming field, there would be a frequency to plug into or a code to put in at the start of a radio transmission to bypass the jamming signal. She’d seen some pylons around the camp and figured those were the machines blocking the spirit from tracking down her IFF.

“Yeah. LegBeg said. He works in the control hub near Laif’s quarters. He monitors all the calls within the camp.”

“Can you call from here?” They were on the outer edge of the camp, but she could still see one of the pylons. She didn’t know the range. But the Chopper had a radio.

“I think so.”

“Then go for it. Call him and tell him you want a date.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“What if someone hears? What if he says no and someone hears that?” her little high-pitched voice squeaked.

“What if we get blown up working on one of these piece-of-crap choppers and you miss your chance?” Diana countered.

LegBeg wrung her hands and looked down at her feet.

“This could be your angsty love story,” Diana pressed.

That was what she needed. The grunt stood up straight and held out her claw. “Hand me the radio.”

Diana did. LegBeg wasn’t tall enough to reach the dashboard. “What do I push to make the call go through?”

LegBeg pointed to the controls.

“Will that work if we’re outside of the field?” Diana asked carefully.

“If it doesn work, then you twist that dial until you hear static.”

She twisted a dial, and a screen popped up, offering frequencies. Her heart leapt. LegBeg told her which dial would direct the radio to the local tower. The radio connected.

LegBeg cleared her throat. “This is LegBeg of the LongShield to Tower of Glory!”

A high-pitched voice answered. “Tower of Glory, this is MyYap receiving. What is your message?”

LegBeg glanced fearfully at Diana who nodded her encouragement and flashed a thumbs up sign.

LegBeg took a deep breath, then rushed the words out.

“My message is, you should invite me for a walk after the food nipple tonight.”

There was silence on the other end of the line and Diana felt her heart skip a beat. Then a flash of anger. LegBeg was a perfectly fine looking, well, a normal looking grunt. She had a friendly attitude. Who’d this guy think he was to string her along?

Then the radio crackled. “Ahh. I was just about to do that.”

“Well good. I’ll see you tonight.”

She hung up and then jumped off the chopper and ran around it in circles, squealing.

“There you go. Scored a hot date!” Diana clapped her hands.

“I sure did!”

She ran up and threw her crab-like claws around Diana’s legs. “Thanks for the push.”

Diana patted the alien’s head. “Your welcome. Happy to help. If he breaks your heart, tell him I’ll kick his ass.”

LegBeg snorted into her mask.

Diana couldn’t help smiling and glanced sideways at the dashboard. She helped her little friend score a date.

And now she knew how to use the radio.

Chapter Text

Voridus put his interest in the Prophet planet aside and returned his focus to the mystery facility referenced in the pad he’d taken off the spook.

She heard Voridus tell Pavium he wanted to examine a surface map of the arc and try to find the facility by identifying physical landmarks. The more he looked into it, the more it seemed the humans had never actually been to the facility. They must have been looking for it when the banished attacked. But it sounded like the place had to be big, which meant it was probably also under a mountain, just like the space where Colony had the unknown alien ship.

She listened to the brothers argue as they put their armor on for the day. Thalazan was outside getting a fire ready. She stepped out of the ship and into the bright sunlight. He glanced at her for only a moment and went back to the fire. So far, he hadn’t spoken to her, but he hadn’t harassed her either. She took a seat by the fire where she could easily listen as the brutes talked inside.

“-It would only take a few moments to complete the scan.”

“And the Jackals would demand something in return. I don’t want to trade for a hunch.”

She learned there was some kind of tower just outside the camp. It was held by Jackal lookouts and apparently not used for anything but a sniper nest. But Voridus could use it to scan the area and track the energy consumption on the arc. He knew the big ticket energy using facilities on the arc already.

If he cross-referenced the physical landmarks in the spook map with the unexplored areas taking up a lot of power, then he figured he could find the mystery Reclaimer facility.

Pavium wouldn’t hear any more of it. After the brutes had their breakfast, a mystery bird for the brutes and left over nipple gruel for her, Pavium and Thalazan lumbered off for their councel.

Diana and Voridus walked alone to the Junk yard.

“We’re not waiting for LegBeg today?” she asked as they picked their way down the narrow dirt lane between the buildings and crates.

“I assume she will be late.” He glanced at her. “You should know. I hear you have played matchmaker.”

“You think her date went that well?”

“Procreating is one thing grunts are good at. Humans too. There are so many of you. Or there were.” He snorted.

Fuck You she thought.

But she smiled sweetly. “You got a girl back home?’

“No,” then after a moment he added thoughtfully. “Females don’t seem to like me.”

“Can’t imagine why,” she said.

He huffed.

“Are there any brute girls in the camp? I can’t tell by looking at you.”

“No. We are warriors and Jiralhanae do not allow their female to battle. It is shameful that humans do.”

“Oh, trust me. Most of us would have preferred not to battle. But the Covenant didn’t exactly let the ladies off the planet when they were glassing us. So we had to put our delicate female nature aside.”

He let out a snort that might have been a laugh. Then he gave her an appraising glance over his shoulder.

“You are too young to have fought the Covenant.”

“I-” She was about to argue, but stopped herself.

That’s right. She was only twenty-one when they went into cryo. She would have aged a little, but the war had been over for seven years. She couldn’t admit that she’d been in a few battles with covenant cruisers without admitting that she’d been in cryo for almost three decades.

“Well, they still glassed planets with women and children, so it’s not like we had a choice,” she finished lamely.

“What was your planet?”

“Earth.”

Earth was still around. So was mars and a couple other colonies. Khollo, her real home, was destroyed in her sleep.

“I have never been,” he said in a tone that might have been a joke.

“What’s Doisac like?” she asked, trying to change the subject. They reached the end of the camp and into the Junk yard. Today they were working on a ghost.

“Mountainous and thick with forests. With lots of Volcanos.”

“Sounds nice. Maybe I’ll visit sometime.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you guys have colonies?”

“Only the moons around our planet. But the covenant deposited us on many worlds.”

“Do you think you’ll ever get home?” the question blurted out of her.

“Of course. Unless I die in battle.”

“Do you think about it? Going home?”

“I think of home less than Pavium does. But he is a chieftean. He must think of the whole clan. I mostly think of the food.”

“And you guys are really brothers right? I know a lot of you call each other brother, but you two are from the same…litter?”

“We have the same mother, but not the same father. We are not born in litters. Even twins are rare.”

“Is your mom alive?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the baby, aren’t you?”

He stopped in his tracks and turned to her. “What?”

“You’re the youngest. And you’re the favorite.”

He stared at her for a moment. Then a grin spread across his face. “My mother recognized my genius very early.”

“Favorite,” she confirmed.

They moved out of the camp and into the field of the junkyard.

“What about you?” he asked. "How many in your clan?"

“I was an only child. It was lonely. I always wished I had brothers or sisters.”

They got to work on some choppers. This time, Voridus didn’t disappear and actually helped her on the vehicles. It was the first time she really worked with him alone, and she felt a twinge of apprehension taking directions from him. Brutes weren’t known for patience and while she had learned a lot about the covenant machines, she was still new.

To her surprise, her novice skills did not bother him. Whenever they encountered something she didn’t understand, he would stop their work and explain in detail how and why each component of the engines worked. LegBeg’s explanations were usually ‘put this thing here and that that thing there.’ But she got the sense that Voridus enjoyed explaining things. It was another chance to show off how smart he was.

The day passed without event.

The sun dipped toward the edge of the gorge and Voridus said they should head back to camp.

LegBeg never showed up, so Diana guessed the date went very well.

An ideal suddenly struck her. With LegBeg gone, there was one less set of eyes on her.

“Hey, I heard you say you wanted to go to a tower outside of camp.”

She brushed her hair back behind her ear. It had grown a little since she came to the surface and was almost to her shoulders. It was well outside of regulation and becoming a real nuisance because it kept falling forward while she was bent over her machines.

Voridus frowned and let out a low growl. She didn’t think it was aggression. It was exasperation. She was learning to tell the difference in their vocalization.

“Yes. I believe I might find the facility by checking the flow of power throuth the arc. If I look for sizeable power drifts in unknown quadrants I may find something. But it would require a trade with the Jackals and Pavium doesn’t think it’s worth it.”

“We don’t even know what they might ask for. Maybe we should just go. We could take a chopper.”

He glanced from her to the row of repaired choppers. His hairless eyebrows knitted together.

She pressed on, pointing to the nearest chopper. “We could just say we’re taking it for a test drive, to make sure it’s fixed. Then when we get to the tower, ask if you can use it, since you're in the neighborhood. They won’t ask for a big favour because they won’t know that that’s the only reason we went out there. My mom used to take me to flea markets for antiques. She would never ask about the thing she really wanted first, She’d start with a smaller item and move up.”

“You seem quite invested in getting out of the camp,” he drawled. He smiled again. “Surly you don’t think you can run away? I would catch you.”

She looked away and with the motion, her stupid hair fell free and she had to push it back behind her ears. She thought she had him relaxed and that he’d dropped his guard. But she was still a prisoner. And he certainly wasn’t stupid.

She looked back up at him and opened her arms.

“I’m bored. We’ve been working in this junk-yard for days. Let’s go for a ride.”

He looked from her to the edge of the camp and back to the perimeter at the far edge of the junkyard.

“Pavium will be annoyed. If he finds out.” He side-eyed her.

“I won’t say anything. And what’s your brother really gonna do? He can’t go home and tell your mom he killed her favorite, can he?”

Voridus growled softly and again smiled. He walked over to the seat of the nearest chopper, swung himself into the seat, and turned it on.

“Alright. Get on.”

Holy shit, it’s working.

She climbed into the seat behind him. There were no handles, so she had to hold onto the outcrops of his armor to climb up onto the back of the seat. The seat was too wide for her to straddle so she sat side-saddle.

“Hold on,” he growled and revved the engines. The powerful turbines of the chopper kicked on and a metallic roar shook the air.

She held onto the armor straps on his back plate and the chopper kicked off like a shot.

She yelled without meaning to. She felt Voridus shake with laughter. They sped along the edge of the darkening field and the wind whipped around them.

Chapter Text

They sped along the path toward the edge of the camp. Diana clung to Voridus’s armor straps and pressed against him to keep herself in the seat.

She worked on plenty of Choppers by now, and in her mind she had equated them somewhat with old world motorcycles.

Back before Diana was born, her mother staged a photoshoot with her father where they posed on a black motorcycle. The picture hung in their game room all her life. Her father griped the handlebars and stared into the camera with smoldering dark eyes, his loosely curled hair falling into his thick brows. Her mother’s hair was dark, smooth, and swept back in a long ponytail. She sat sidesaddle and leaned over her father’s shoulder, planting a kiss on his cheek while her pink hoop skirt pooled over the edge of the black motorcycle. They were supposed to look like “greasers”, a term for aimless youth from way, way back.

They published the photo in a tabloid when news broke that her opera-star mother married her father, who was her mechanic at the time.

She wondered what her parents would say if they saw her riding in a similar fashion with a Brute.

Except this was no motorcycle. She didn’t have the luxury of a smooth ride on round rubber wheels. The Chopper was more like a two wheeled farming combine. As the grinding turbines thundered beneath her, the vibration threatened to shake her loose.

The Chopper slowed, and she guessed they were approaching the checkpoint to the camp, which was a tunnel in a cliff. She tensed for a moment, wondering if her line about testing the Chopper would work. But The brutes at the checkpoint waved Voridus through and he picked up speed again.

As they passed, she saw the brute guard’s eyes widen, and she guessed he hadn’t noticed her tucked behind Voridus’s back until right then

They raced along the tunnel, which was not a cave at all, but smooth metal.

Everything in this place is fake.

They drove for a few moments down the tunnel. She didn’t see any other Banished. The headlights of the chopper glared against the metal.

Then she felt the Chopper decelerate and Voridus pulled a ninety-degree turn and slammed on the brakes, causing them to drift several yards.

She yelled in surprise and felt Voridus shake with laughter again. When the machine came to a halt, they were at the end of the hall and positioned in front of an elevator shaft.

Voridus turned the back of the Chopper to the elevator and walked them back to the activation panel. He opened the doors and then hit reverse. They jolted into the elevator. He hit the button again. The doors shut, and they rose.

If she had anything more than thin gruel in her stomach, she was sure she would vomit. But her nearly empty stomach churned in futility as they rose up the shaft. It took what felt like five minutes for them to reach the surface. Halfway through the accent, she realized Voridus was humming the melody to one of the Lockstep songs LegBeg sang.

The doors opened to a gently slopping ramp. She knew it was coming, and this time when Voridus hit the gas and peeled out of the elevator, she was braced for the jolt.

A moment later, they rode out of the ramp and onto the top of the cliff. The sun was setting across the horizon, sinking between two of the giant spires. For a moment she glimpsed the gorge that housed the camp the Banished were hiding in. She couldn’t look over the edge from where she was, which was too bad. She would have liked a bird's-eye view of the camp, to see how big it really was and maybe get a better layout in her mind.

They turned their backs to the sun and gorge and sped in the opposite direction. There was a path worn down through tall grass which was dotted with yellow and white wildflowers. Other than that, the field was empty and stretched on as far as her human eye could see.

When she overheard Voridus press Pavium about using the tower, he had said that it was right outside the camp.

That was an outright lie.

They sped on for at least three klicks while the sun sank behind their backs. She turned and looked over her shoulder as the light vanished. She had to remind herself that the sun was fake too. She wondered what happened to it when it went to the underside of the Arc. She didn’t know if that side was set up to be a fake world too, or if it was just metal frames like the underbelly of a warthog.

The sky filled with stars, more numerous and bright than any sky she’d seen before. In the halo of the Chopper headlights, she glimpsed hindquarters of little furry things scurrying in the grass.

She thought she saw the white tail of a bunny and felt herself smile. This was nice. Fields of wildflowers and stars overhead. Even if she didn’t manage her objective, at least she got to go for a ride. She should tell LegBeg to bring her boyfriend up here...

She turned her head up to the stars and glowing lights in the distance of the spires.

And then a new scene flashed before her eyes.

White hot plasma pouring down from a red sky. Smoke billowing as high as skyscrapers. A dull roar in the air. Sirens wailing.

She felt the heat on her face.

She smelled blood.

She felt her hands drop from the straps she was holding and for a heart wrenching second she almost slipped off the back of the Chopper before she snapped back to reality.

The sky was black again. The air was cool.

Her heart raced, and she took a shuddering breath.

What was that?

It must have been a scene from an old holo-vid broadcast. One of the propaganda pieces that convinced her and millions of others to join the fight for humanity's survival.

But it felt so real.

And she reminded herself that it was real. For Billions of humans, including her parents. That fiery nightmare was real.

So how dare she feel relaxed with the aliens even for a few moments or wonder about their stupid crushes? They deserved to suffer.

Suffer for all eternity.

The chopper roared on for another ten minutes before it finally slowed. When Voridus brought them to a stop, they were beneath a short tower. It was square, with geometric shapes cut out in the walls.

There were three Jackals at the front. They would have seen them coming, and no doubt came down to see what they wanted. She guessed there were more up in the cutouts of the building watching them. Jackals were snipers, after all.

Voridus set the chopper down and turned off the engine. “Ladies first,” he said. She slid off the back of the seat and the Jackals squawked at the sight of her.

Then Voridus dismounted and walked toward the tower. The Jackal in the middle came forward to meet him. It was a foot taller than Diana and wore the same black leathery style clothes most Jackals wore, but this one had a tiered gold belt, with colored stones it.

“Voridus,” the Jackal squawked. “What you doing out here?'“

“I’m was taking this repaired Chopper for a test drive.”

The Jackal turned its head to examine Diana. “You brought your little human?”

“She’s assisting me. I remembered you had the tower and thought I'd come see if you needed any systems checked.”

“Liar,” the Jackal squawked. But she didn’t sound angry. In fact, her voice took on an excited note. “You want something.”

“Since I’m here. I might as well look at your systems.”

“We make deal. You use systems,” she jutted her clawed thumb over her shoulder to the tower door, then she pointed her index claw at Diana “I borrow your human sometime.”

“What?” Diana asked at exactly the same moment Voridus said, “Deal.”

The Jackal squawked, then turned and waved for him to follow her.

He did so.

“I think I’ll wait here,” Diana said.

Voridus grunted. “I will not be long.”

She leaned against the chopper. The two Jackals at the door chittered and squawked while looking at her for a moment. But they quickly lost interest and seemed more engaged in conversation with each other. They were probably much more concerned about Voridus than her.

Diana looked up at the short tower. Someone was probably watching her. But she doubted bird beaked aliens could read lips.

So she sat on the floorboard of the chopper and grabbed the receiver for the radio. She hoped the front of the chopper would block their view of her. With one hand she turned the dial of the radio on like LegBeg showed her. Then she turned to the only frequency she knew.

Mech-suits had radio receivers. The mechanics used them to send messages letting pilots know when the suits were due for maintenance and it was time to return to the mechanic bay. The radio wasn’t live, and it was only one way. The pilots couldn't answer her back. All she could do was leave a message.

She saw the numbers for the frequency on the screen and took the receiver down from the dashboard. It was brute-sized, and she had to cradle it with both hands like a novelty margarita glass.

She pressed her lips to the radio and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.

“This is M1 Silver. I’m being held prisoner in a Banished camp. I overheard the aliens talking. Atriox is off the Arc. He used some kind of portal and shard to leave. He’s coming back with reinforcements.”

She repeated the message twice more just to make sure a clean copy got through. Then she cleared the dial and put the radio back in the receiver. She let out a shaky breath.

Please. Please let someone hear the message.

A few moments later, Voridus returned.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said.

He climbed onto the Chopper and nodded for her to get on behind him. She did.

Chapter Text

Spirit of Fire- Mechanic’s Bay

12-15-2059

0600

Kinsano Morgan strode into the Mechanic Bay. She found a trio of mechanics huddled around a Mech suit. The top half of the cockpit was open and the pilot, a man named Kinley, who kept his head shaved and had knuckle tattoos spelling ANNE, sat hunched forward in the pilot seat.

Kinsano had a message from Kinley urging her to the Bay less than ten minutes ago.

“What’s going on?” She demanded.

“When I started the suit up, I had a SERVICE REQUIRED message waiting on my dash. But it wasn’t from the Mechanic Bay. It was from the mechanic who went MIA on that salvage mission.”

Her heart raced. “What?! Play it!”

“I was gonna. Thats why I called you to the Bay. But now it’s gone.”

“What?”

She turned to her own Mech Suit and climbed in. If Diana sent a message to one suit, she probably sent it to all of them.

“We tried the other suits already,” a mechanic said.

She pulled up her messages, anyway. Nothing. Kinley leaned forward.

“It said Atriox found a way off the arc. And they were coming back with reinforcements.”

The nearest comm table lit up red, and Isabel stood before them.

“I deleted the message from Mechanic Silver on orders from Captain Cutter. I also have orders from the captain that you are all prohibited from repeating what you heard. This information is sensitive. The captain is deliberating how to proceed.”

Isabel vanished, leaving the humans gaping at the vacant table.

Kinsano jumped out of her cockpit. “Fuck that.”

She tore out of the Mechanic Bay. The ship’s corridors passed in a blur and before she knew it, she was striding up to the door to the bridge. Two marines stood guard at the entrance.

She was ready to argue about being let onto the bridge. But the doors opened, and the captain was waiting on the other side.

James Cutter met her eyes and nodded. “Colonel.”

“Captain,” she growled.

She walked onto the bridge. “Mind telling me why you had Isabel delete Diana’s message?”

The hollow table lit up and Isabel appeared. Hands behind her back. Also at the table was a woman with a half shaved head and three Spartans. Only one of the Spartans was in their trademark green armor. The other two were wearing tight fitting body-suits usually worn under power armor. They were much younger looking than she expected. She’d heard the rumors that Spartans were child soldiers, but she hadn’t expected them to look so fresh faced.

Kinsano, who was already in a bad mood, felt her jaw clench. Spartans always made her uneasy. Of course, they were physically imposing, being seven-feet tall and layered with muscle. Then there was the thousand pounds of armour they usually wore. But that wasn’t the thing that made her tense around them.

Spartans were originally built to fight and kill insurrectionists, which Kinsano used to be.

Spartans were meant to be her enemy before the Covenant got in the way. And the fact that the UNSC would go as far as they did. Kidnap, brainwash, and biologically alter children. Just to keep the insurrection down...

Spartans were a living reminder of what those with power were willing to do to hold onto it.

The captain held his hand out to the woman and the Spartans. “I’d like you to meet ONI Agent Veta Lopis and Spartans Olivia and Ash. You might already know Spartan Jerome.”

“Olivia and Ash?” She thought the other two Spartans on the Spirit were called Douglas and Alice.

“Veta and her Spartans only recently joined us. Play the message Isabel.”

Diana Silver’s voice, shaky and barely above a whisper, played over the speakers on the holo-table

“This is M1 Silver. I’m being held prisoner in a Banished camp. I overheard the aliens talking. Atriox is off the Arc. He used some kind of portal and shard to leave. He’s coming back with reinforcements.”

The message ended. Diana sounded scared. But at least she was alive.

Kinsano looked from Isabel to the Captain. “So the Banished have a magic portal back to the Milky-Way. We have anyway to confirm this?”

The captain looked to Veta Lopis and her Spartans again. The Spartans actually cracked smiles. The boy, Ash, spoke. “We hitched a ride on the magic portal. When Atriox went to the Milky-Way, we came here.”

Kinsano let out a long breath. “So Diana risked her life to send us this message. And it’s old news.”

“It was information we couldn’t share widely,” Isabel said.

“Because the news that the Banished are going to have reinforcements soon will crush morale?” Kinsano asked. Then she turned back to Lopis. “And by the way, where are OUR reinforcements? Where the hell is the rest of UNSC? We’ve been fighting alone out here for a year.”

Veta Lopis looked at Cutter, who nodded. “Tell her the rest of it.”

Veta unfolded her arms and took a deep breath. “This is going to be a lot. A little over a year ago, a rampant AI named Cortana got in touch with some kind of supper forerunner system. This allowed her to cure her rampancy and taught her how to operate and control a vast array of forerunner systems and weapons. Big weapons. She converted most of the AI’s to her side and conquered the galaxy. Including Earth. The UNSC was defeated on day one.”

Kinsano felt her eyes widen and her jaw go slack. She looked around the room. She half expected someone to say it was a Joke, but no. They were all serious.

Isabel looked down at her feet. “Earth was hit with an EMP. That must have been the day our portal to Earth shut down.”

“Holy shit,” Kinsano said. “That’s why we haven’t heard anything from the Milky Way.”

“Yeah, we’ve been a little busy,” Ash said.

“What does the AI’s want?”

“They want all the species of the galaxy to live in peace and harmony, under the guidance of the Created. That’s what they call themselves. And they’ll vaporize us if we don’t comply. Not Joking.” Veta said.

“Sounds a lot like the old UEG line of thinking back in the insurrection days. So what? We’re screwed?”

“There are still pockets of resistance. The UNSC has a few ships that have avoided Cortana. And the insurrectionist planets aren’t under her sway as much as the inner colonies. Mostly because we’ve never been as reliant on the AI’s to run things for us.”

“We?”

Lopis smiled, “I’m from Gao.”

“And now you’re an ONI operative.”

“And now you’re a UNSC colonel. Things change. Anyway, the point is, the created are busy in the Milky Way so they haven’t bothered to look into the Arc yet. And the odds of Atriox collecting reinforcements and coming for us without the Created noticing and engaging him are next to zero.”

“So we don’t have to worry about Banished reinforcements. We have to worry about the God Mode AI coming after us. What a mess.”

Cutter spoke again. “The situation in the Milky Way ultimately doesn’t change our objective here. We just have to trust our people back home to deal with the Created for now. Meanwhile, we will continue to secure the arc and get as many of its systems and facilities under our control as we can. We’ll deal with whatever comes from the rest of the galaxy when it gets here.”

“What about Diana?”

“Isabel got a rough location from the message she sent.”

A map appeared on the Hollow-table. It showed a large valley surrounded by mountain ridges.

Cutter kept his eyes on the map as he spoke. “The banished are employing some kind of shielding technology to block the IFF. But the message was sent from somewhere in this valley. We haven’t explored the area, but we have noted banished activity in the form of aircraft traffic. We don’t know of any major Arc systems here, so it hasn’t been a priority. Veta and her Spartans are going down for a reconnaissance mission. They’ll scout the area. After they gauge the Banished strength, we’ll review our options regarding Mechanic Silver.”

Options.

She knew what that meant.

That meant leaving Diana as a prisoner was an option.

James Cutter was an excellent captain. He cared about the people in his crew. But Diana’s life wasn’t worth any more than any other soldier and every move in their war with the Banished was a cost/benefit equation. If they couldn’t save Diana without minimal risk of losses, they wouldn’t try.

Cutter continued. “Isabel will monitor and delete any messages Silver sends to the Mech-Suits. Please inform your Hellbringers that they are not to repeat anything they learn if they hear a message from her.”

“Yes, sir.” She looked across to Lopis. “Are you spooks good at your job?”

Veta smiled. “We’re the best.”

“Good. Diana is a good kid. Find her. She deserves to come home.”

Chapter Text

It was nighttime on the Arc, and the activity of the camp slowed dramatically. No creature of the covenant was nocturnal, as far as Voridus knew. They all drew energy from the light, even when it came from an artificial star.

When he and the human returned to the camp the night before, it was late. He knew Pavium and Thalazan would already be in their bunks and he didn’t feel like trudging in and risk questions about where he’d been. So he sent Pavium a personal message on his comm that he and the human had work in the lab and would probably just sleep there.

Pavium responded to the message the next morning, confirming he received it and didn’t ask any follow-up questions. Voridus moved his files from his personal comm to his lab and spent the day researching his findings from the tower.

His plan at the tower was to look for large energy sinks that were unaccounted for and compare them with the physical description on the map he’d taken off the dead human months ago.

He didn’t find any correlation.

But he did find a facility that took very little power. It was located northwest of the camp, about a day’s flight by Dropship. It was a facility in an icy ocean, surrounded by glaciers.

He had originally taken the map on the human pad to mean a river and mountains. But when he examined them again, he realized they could mean ice water and glaciers.

There were no other forerunner facilities or structures in the area as far as he knew. The lack of energy required by the facility was interesting. It showed the facility wasn’t actively doing anything. And that probably meant it was a storage facility.

But its isolated location meant it might hold something valuable. He grinned. Hidden treasure. And the forerunners loved the humans and saved all the best technology for them. He was sure there was something good tucked away there.

He couldn’t find anything else about the facility in the records he had access to about the Arc. He’d made mistakes before, rushing into glory and bringing down trouble. He wanted to gather whatever he could about this place before he went there. But how do you look for something when you don’t know what it is?

He could access many catalogues about the Arc systems. He was sure he knew as much about it as any human scientist. He tried to search for things meant for the RECLAIMERS. That led to many results, too many. Some were as trivial as instructions for farming techniques.

He tried STORAGE. But that brought up tables about “lifeworker” projects. He wasn’t interested.

He cracked his neck and sat back in his chair. His back ached from being bent over the keyboards for hours. The overhead lights were off, but the lab was bathed in the soft glow of monitors, charging icons, and illuminated buttons. There was also the constant electric hum of all the machines running. He liked his lab. It was a good place to sit and work and think.

As he turned to crack his back, he glimpsed the human sleeping in a hammock made of cargo netting in the corner.

He’d sent her out with the grunt during the day to continue the grunt work. When she returned, she told him she and the Ungoy were diverted halfway through the day and returned to the hollowed mountain to clear rubble from a wall that had been knocked down.

That meant Colony had found something. And that meant he would call on Voridus soon to study whatever it was he found.

Voridus was always interested in discovering things. But this wouldn’t be HIS discovery. It would be him working on something for someone else to take credit for. That made his work bitter. Especially when he knew he could do so much more.

Pavium kept preaching patience and restraint. Voridus had neither. He wanted respect and admiration. He deserved it. He was the smartest Jiralhanae on the Arc. But he was treated like a child and all he could do was take it until Pavium repaired their standing.

Pavium didn’t even come looking for him during the day. All he did was send a message asking if he was sleeping in the lab again. Voridus confirmed and Pavium said he’d see him later. Voridus couldn’t shake the feeling that his brother was glad to have him out of the way.

He rested his hands on the table, and they curled into fists.

He messed up with High Charity. He knew that. He caused the Banished to lose brothers and ground. But he and Pavium stopped the Flood. Something even the Forerunners couldn’t do. How long would he have to serve penance?

Penance.

The Penitent.

In the map that Diana found, the humans were called the Penitent.

The Forerunners had a penchant for being sanctimonious and there was a thread of guilt in their naming schemes. No doubt because they failed to defeat the Flood and had to resort to murdering the entire Galaxy to starve the parasite. So he paid little attention to the dramatic label the Forerunners put on earth a million years ago. But maybe…

He pulled up the catalogues of systems for the Arc and typed the glyph for The PENITENT

The coordinates for the Ice bound facility popped on his screen.

“Yes!” he cried and turned excitedly to wake the human.

The hammock was empty. He whipped around in his rolling chair. The lab had other tables with tools and monitors. There were stacks of crates, and half-finished projects draped with canvas tarps. But there was no sign of the scrawny human girl. He looked back at the hammock as he got to his feet. The woman’s shoes were set beneath the hammock. She’d gone barefoot.

He was too engrossed in his thinking to hear the lab door open.

He stormed across the lab and slammed his palm against the panel to open the door. The cool night hair met him immediately, as well as the noises of the camp. Most of the men were asleep, but there were some on guard and even at this distance, he could hear the thump of brutes walking the paths of the camp on patrol.

He was used to Diana’s human scent by now and he easily picked her out from the mostly Banished alien smells filling the air. It was coming from the river.

He followed the scent. She couldn’t be trying to run away. Could she be that dumb? He supposed he did show her the way out of the camp. But she couldn’t operate a chopper by herself and her little human legs would only carry her to the elevator before the sun rose. And why would she run away without her shoes?

He soon reached the river bank and slowed his gait. Brutes were big, but they were lifetime hunters and he knew how to step lightly so his footfall wouldn’t give him away.

Through the bushes and hanging branches of the trees near the river, he saw a slim figure standing ankle deep in the water. The moon was low and little of its light reached the floor through the trees.

The human held still as he drew closer. When he was three meters out, he called her name. “Diana?”

She didn’t acknowledge him. He moved closer, brushing the cattails and bushes aside, until he stood on the dry bank of the river. He was a meter away from her now. He looked down and saw her footprints leading into the water.

“What are doing?” he asked. His annoyance at her “escape” now replaced by curiosity.

She didn’t respond. For a moment, he watched her in silence as her shoulders rose and fell with her breath.

He took another step into the water. He felt his feet sink in the mud. He looked at her.

Her little pale face was blank. She was staring down at her own reflection in the water swirling at her feet.

He raised his left hand in front of her face. Her eyes did not react.

“Human? Diana?”

He brought his right hand close to her back, and then gently lay his palm across her shoulders.

She jolted at the touch and yelled. Her face turned up to his with wide eyes and she pulled away, only to stumble and splash. He caught her just before she fell sideways into the water.

“What? What? What’s happening?” she cried.

He wrapped his hand around her core to hold her steady. She was small enough that his hand almost wrapped around her completely. She held onto his fingers and looked around in confusion. Finally, she looked down at their feet.

“Why are we in the river?”

“I should ask you,” he said. “You slipped out of the lab without your shoes. I found you standing out here.”

“Really? Oh Dammit! Dammit! Not again!”

“You’ve done this before?”

“I sleep walk. I’ve been doing it since we came out of cryo.” She stopped and frowned. “Lets get out of the water.”

They climbed back up to the bank. The water had soaked up her pant legs to her shins.

“Sleepwalking?” Voridus said. “I didn’t know humans could walk in their sleep.”

“It never happens to Brutes?”

“On Doisac we make our homes in trees. It would be a short walk.”

“Well, we’re not supposed to do it either. Its a disorder. Usually caused by stress and exhaustion. I thought I was past it because I’ve actually been sleeping better than I did on the Spirt.”

They took the path back to the lab. “I will keep the lab doors locked,” Voridus said. "And the Drop Ship too. If any of the others found you doing that, they would think you were trying to escape and probably kill you.”

“Yeah. Good idea.”

When they reached the lab, she stripped off her wet pants and he gave her a one of the canvas tarps to wrap around her waist.

“While you were out, I found our facility.”

“Really? Do you know how to get there?”

“I do. I want to study it a little more first.”

“Good idea. I’m gonna go back to sleep. Hopefully, I will stay put this time.” She climbed back into the hammock. He locked the lab door and sat at the desk again and read about the Penitent humans.

Chapter Text

When Diana woke up the next morning, she was worried Voridus would press her more about the sleepwalking thing. She let slip that it resulted from her cryo sleep. He didn’t ask about that, which was lucky. She didn’t know how much the Aliens understood about the cryo pods, and she didn’t want to answer any questions in case it lead to her slipping about the Spirit’s missing slip space drive. If he brought it up, she could just say they were in cryo because the trip to the arc was so long in slip space. That would be her cover.

But Voridus was preoccupied with the Penitent.

He eagerly shared what he learned the night before. The facility was about a day’s flight to the northwest. It was mostly under water in an icy sea. But the entrance should be on the surface so they could get in without underwater equipment. There was nothing else of note in the vicinity, which made him even more eager to get there.

“It’s sounds like a place for trophies,” he said as she pulled her now dry pants on. “Listen to this, “ he, glanced at his screen and read the data tag alined to the coordinates. “‘Gathered in times of victory and defeat, decades and centuries apart. Here are the remaining treasures of our former enemy. Where once our pride rose on high. Now here all our hopes lie.”

She folded the tarp she’d slept in and placed in the hammock. “Weird. Does it rhythm in the forerunner language, too?”

“I don’t know. I can translate the meaning of the glyphs, but I don’t know what the words would sound like.”

She wrinkled her forehead. “Former enemy… How could the humans have fought the Forerunners? We must have been cave men in their time.”

“Perhaps not. The Halos reset everything and everyone. Perhaps your species was quite impressive back in the day. That would explain why the Forerunners thought you were dangerous enough to imprison. And why they thought you were worthy of their machines when they died out.”

“So they took trophies when they beat us. ‘Treasures of our former enemy.’ But what about the last line? ‘Now here all our hopes lie. What does that mean?”

“Perhaps it refers to the fact that only humans can operate the halo array and eliminate the flood. That was the Forerunner’s only hope of defeating the parasite. That reminds me…”

He went digging around the piles of junk in the lab. She glanced at the screen, even though couldn’t read it. “Does it say anything else about what might be down there?”

“No, it is rather vague. I feel that was intentional. But it’s a treasure room. Only an idiot would boldly advertise such a place. Ah, here it is.”

He returned with a silver sphere the size of a classroom globe of earth. It was covered with hexagons. He set it on the same disk he had set the navigation charts on. The sphere floated and the lines between the hexagon glowed blue.

“Put your hand on it,” Voridus said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It is a piece I took from the entrance to a Forerunner facility on another planet. It is a sort of lock. It will only react to humans with the reclaimer gene.”

“I thought all humans were reclaimers.”

“Humanity, in general is referred to as reclaimers in text. But only some humans have the special gene that is recognized by the Forerunner technology. Carrying this around helps us identify the humans who have the gene. Otherwise, when we find an artifact that requires the gene we have to line the humans up and have everyone try to operate the thing until it responds.”

“Only a select few have the power to operate the good machines? Well, THAT sounds like a society with a ruling class and permanent second-class citizens just waiting to happen.”

He nudged her closer to the table. “Go on.”

She placed her hand on the spere. It glowed red. A universal bad sign.

Voridus made a phlegmy sound in his throat. “Shame. We’ll have to find ourselves another human to take along.”

She took her hand off the sphere and looked at her palm. “What happens when someone's a reclaimer?”

“it usually turns blue, well, a darker blue.”

“Hmm. Guess I’m not special enough for the Forerunners.” She sounded bitter, even to herself. She’d only just learned what a reclaimer was. She shouldn’t care that she wasn’t one. But she couldn’t help feeling annoyed.

The more she learned about the forerunners, the more she disliked them. They pulled the plug on the galaxy rather than let anyone else try to fight the flood. They picked what species to preserve for the future after the halo fired, god knows what happened to the species they didn’t find worthy. They had the nerve to make her ENTIRE PLANET a prison.

And with this gene key bullshit, they put limits on who could use the only effective weapons against the flood thousands of years into the future. So they were still pulling strings in a galaxy that weren’t even theirs anymore. Who the fuck did they think they were?

“Don’t worry,” Voridus said. “You can still be useful. Here.” He took her hand and strapped a black velcro bracelet to her wrist. There was a narrow plastic piece on one side.

“Whats that?” She asked.

“It is a skimmer. We’re going to work for Colony today. I’ll send you to give updates throughout the day on my progress. Leaders get a new list of passwords for troops exiting and entering the camp every day. Colony will have his on his datapad. If you wave this over his pad-”

Voridus guided her arm in a sweeping motion.

“-The device will copy the passwords.”

He pulled the sleeve of her fatigues down over the bracelet. It was completely hidden.

“I made it myself,” he said proudly.

“You want me to steal a password from a Legoko? Aren’t they kinda sensitive about their personal space? How do I get close enough?”

“You are small. If you walk softly, you might get close before he even notices you. The opportunity to wave it over his data pad should present itself.”

“Why don’t you just ask your brother? He’s a leader, right? Doesn’t he get passwords?”

“He does. But he doesn’t know we’re going.”

“So, what? We’re gonna steal the Dropship and sneak out of camp?”

“We are borrowing the Dropship. It is only stealing if we die and can’t return it.”

“Isn’t he going to be, ya know, livid?” Pavium seemed like a very composed brute. But he would probably flip when he came home, and it was gone.

Voridus smiled. “Yes. But it’s not like he can tell mother he killed her favorite, can he?”

She shook her head. “I might be a bad influence on you.”

And he could still kill ME.

But Voridus used her own line against her, and Pavium could just as easily have killed her when they went out on the chopper. So she couldn’t argue.

They linked up with LegBeg on the way to the mountain facility. She had been gushing nonstop about what a great grunt MyYap was. But now apparently, there was some drama in the methane silo.

“So, there are these two girls, Qlip and YiNip and we’ve always gotten along okay,” LegBeg said.

“But lately, I don’t know. They just seem kinda mean. And Qlip is in charge of our methane tanks, see. Twice this week, mines had to be changed early. I almost ran out of methane yesterday. That’s never happened before.”

“You think she’s messing with your tank?”

“I don’t know. It’s just. I keep seeing them stare at me and put their heads together and whisper.”

“Why would they do that, though? It’s not like there’s a shortage of grunt guys on the Arc,” Diana said. And she doubted MyYap was really that special.

“No, I guess you're right.”

LegBeg grew quiet for the rest of the walk.

They reached the new hall. The rubble from the blown down section was all cleared away. A new smooth metal corridor stretched before them.

The hall had three sealed doors. One at the end and one on opposite sides. There were also six terminals built into the wall. When they arrived, there was a Sangheli with a Huragok working at one station.

She noticed this Sangheli was slightly less muscular than the ones she was used too, and guessed he was some kind of scientist instead of a warrior. He barely glanced at them when they arrived.

Voridus’s job was to get the sealed doors open. There were cases stacked in the hallway. The Sangheli was opening trays in the wall, removing crystals and placing them in the cases.

Crystals. She remembered that the Banished used some kind of shard to open their portal. She wondered if one of these could do the same.

Vordius picked the next terminal to the Sangheli. He began working, and soon he was instructing her to open trays and take out crystals too. The first one shocked her, with an audible zzzzap when she he touched it.

“Oh, here. I’ll deactivate the tray,” Voridus said.

“Yeah. You do that,” she said as she flapped her burning fingers.

An hour later, Voridus handed her a tablet. “Here,” he said a little louder than necessary. She saw his red eyes scan the room to make sure everyone heard him. “Take this to Colony.”

Wow. He’s a bad actor.

She took the tablet and left the hall. LegBeg went with her.

She passed crates and machines and barrels of…something with flammable warnings on the side. The Banished she passed would throw her looks and make jokes about scrawny weak humans blah blah blah. But none of them molested her or the grunt.

She reached the room just outside the broken-down wall. The command center was there, tables with monitors and such. Colony was there trading a data pad with a brute. He would type, using the spike of one of his gauntlets as a finger, and hand the pad to the brute. She heard an electronic voice from the pad.

“The engineer may take two Huragok for the task. They must be back by the day’s end.”

The brute touched his chest. “I will do so.” He turned away, and she saw his lip curl in disgust. Either from being around the worm alien, or from taking orders from him. She couldn’t be sure.

The Legoko did not speak, not really. They had no mouth. When they talked, they vibrated together until they mimicked vocal sounds. That took a lot of energy, so to communicate regular orders they just hen pecked messages on the keyboard and used text to voice messages.

She walked up to him and when he turned toward her; she realized she was alone. She looked over her shoulder. LegBeg was hanging back by about ten feet.

She looked up at the massive alien. He was three meters high and towered over her. He looked down and tilted his “head.” Like a confused dog.

She held up the pad. “Uh. Voridus said to report to you. This is the report.”

She offered the tablet.

Colony took it and used the spike on his gauntlet to swipe around the screen. After a moment, he handed it back. He’d left a voice message as well.

“Very well. Carry on.”

“Ok,” she backed away. He watched her. But not really, because he didn’t have any eyes. He just stayed facing her direction.

When she was back with LegBeg, she finally turned around and they walked back to the corridor.

She’d been so nervous she forgot to even try to swipe her wrist over his pad.

When she got back to Voridus, she gave him the pad back and shook her head. He grunted and went back to work.

He sent her back twice more, and she was getting the feeling that Colony was getting annoyed with her useless reports. But she hadn’t had an opportunity yet to swipe her wrist over the pad.

The fourth time she went back, it was about midday. She didn't see Colony around, so she asked one of the grunt sidekicks where he was.

“His brother showed up and they're having a meeting in the other room,” the grunt pointed to the closest metal door.

“Oh." She'd heard the Legoko went in pairs. She'd only seen one today. She couldn't tell if they were both at the ship the first time she saw him or if it was just one pile of worms.

It was a fifteen-minute walk from the corridor. She didn’t want to leave and come back again. “Should I wait? Do you think he’d mind if I went in?”

The grunt shrugged. “What am I, a secretary?” Then he walked away.

“Great thanks. Really helpful,” she muttered. Then she looked down at LegBeg. “You know that guy?”

“Yeah that’s Gary. No one likes him.”

She folded her arms. The longer she stood there, the more the other aliens stared at her. And as they looked at her, they muttered to each other. And that made her nervous.

“I think I’m just gonna go in there,” she said after about five minutes.

“I’ll wait here.”

“Figured.”

She crossed the space, stepping carefully over the heavy cables linking the monitors to the wall. She glanced up and for the first time saw what Colony was working on. It looked like seven rings in a line on one monitor and the arc on another monitor. She could guess that was the Halo array. But they couldn’t be planning on firing it. So why was he working on it?

She reached the door and steadied herself. When she was a kid, she’d seen cartoons where the bad guys killed henchmen for interrupting meetings. But that couldn’t happen in real life. Right?

She knocked on the door just to be polite, then she pressed the panel. The door opened to reveal a darkened room. She peered in and couldn’t see anything. Then she took a step in and glanced around, remembering how easy Colony had climbed the walls in the ship.

Then her eyes landed on a counter. On it was all of Colony’s armor and the spiked gauntlet, but there was enough armor for two Legoko. And there was the data pad.

She took the few steps to the table and swiped her wrist over the pad three times, just to be sure.

But then she heard the rumbling. And she felt it, a strange vibration that traveled through her ribcage like a percussion drum. She peered over the counter.

On the other side, she saw a pile of worms turning over each other, vibrating and thrumming. They were much bigger than they had been at the ship and they looked - wetter- than before. Her stomach dropped and she felt like she was intruding on something private.

She backed away, praying that they didn’t notice her. And backed out the door. It hissed shut, sounding entirely too loud. She turned and walked stiffly to LegBed, who watched her anxiously.

“Well?” LegBeg said.

“Lets go.”

“Did you get it?”

“I got it. And I don’t even want to know what I walked in on. But I’m pretty sure it was the bond brothers, BONDING.”

“Ewww.”

“yea-”

“Nishum!”

Laif strode toward them. His muscular arms swung with each step. He was right in their path and there was no avoiding him. She and LegBeg stopped.

When he reached them, he sniffed contemptuously.

“What are you doing here, thrall? Where is your master?”

“Voridus sent me to deliver a message to Colony on his findings in the new hall.”

“Hmph. I suppose that’s the only thing a weak creature like you is good for. Delivering messages.”

The Sangheli should have been the heir to the forerunners. They were the only ones who could match their arrogance.

“You’re right,” she said and nodded meekly. Then she jutted her thumb over her shoulder.

“Colony wants to see you.”

He looked over her shoulder to the door to Colony’s room. Then he growled and shoved her and LegBeg apart to walk between them.

She glanced at LegBeg who met her eyes. Wordlessly, they turned back toward the new hall and began walking as fast as they could without being conspicuous.

A moment later, she heard the door behind them hiss open.

Another moment passed. The hall was mostly quiet. Then,

"ARRRRRGGHHHH!"

All the other aliens in the hallway stopped and looked up. Diana looked over her shoulder just in time to Laif stumble out of the door clutching his stomach. He fell on his hands and knees and vomited.

“Run,” Diana said

They ran.

Chapter Text

Diana and Legbeg ran for their lives. The hall stretched before them and they had to dodge confused Banished members and small vehicles loaded with crates and barrels.

Behind them were the heavy footfall and angry “wort wort wort” of one very pissed-off elite warrior.

Diana didn’t dare look back. Laif had longer legs than her or LegBeg. They had a head start, but it sounded liked the elite was getting closer.

What was I thinking? What the hell was I thinking?

She was going to die for her joke. What the hell happened to her sense of self-preservation?

Up ahead, she saw the entrance to the newly opened wing. She tried to run faster, pumping arms and legs furiously. Her lungs burned and her side ached. She hadn’t had to run since before she came out of cryo, and she was way out of shape.

LegBeg kept up despite her short legs. In the wing ahead, she saw Voridus hunched over his terminal, absorbed in his work. A human banished, leaned against the wall with his arms crossed around his chest and was chatting to him.

“Voridus!” Diana cried desperately as she crossed the threshold to the new wing.

He and the human looked up. The nearby scientist Sangheli and his Huragok both swung their heads up as well. The human, and all three of the alien’s eyes widened and four differently shaped mouths fell open at the sight of her.

She and LegBeg raced past the Sangheli and Huragok, whose long necks swung to follow them. Voridus stepped away from his terminal and squared his body toward them. His eyes peered over them.

When she was steps away from the Brute, she felt a rush of air and heard a sound she’d heard only once before, back when she woke up in the pen. The machine thum of an energy sword igniting. She knew what was about to happen. He was raising the sword. He was going to cut her down from behind.

Voridus stepped forward and swept her and LegBeg back behind him, almost knocking them both to the ground. They stumbled against each other and ended up holding onto each other to keep from falling. She heard a metal whisper, and a then a crash thundering as Voridus intercepted Laif.

Alien growls and snarls filled the hall.

When she looked over her shoulder, she saw the Brute and Sangheli locked in a bind. Voridus held the energy sword back with two fang looking blades that had been in his power armor gauntlet.

“Get out of the way, mongrel,” Laif shouted and spit flew from his four toothy jaws.

Diana cowered, sinking to her hands and knees and scooting farther away from the bigger aliens. LegBeg followed her lead and Diana realized the grunt was trembling.

“Why would I do that? Honorable Field-Master?” Voridus said in a much calmer voice than she expected. She couldn’t see his face, but he sounded like he was smiling.

The Brute was bigger than the Sangheli. She bet with the power armer he could easily turn the lizard into sushi. And with the way Laif treated Voridus, she bet he wanted nothing more than to cut the Field-Master into bits and maybe take a few bites out of him. But his only intention seemed to be to hold the Sangheli back.

Laif’s arms shook with effort and the blade of his energy sword hummed against the twin metal blades. Diana didn’t even know Voridus had those knives up his sleeve.

They both have claws. Why do they need blades?

The scientist Sangheli and Huragok watched from their terminal. The Human remained near the wall. He’d uncrossed his arms and watched carefully, but didn’t come any closer.

She peered around Voridus to glance at Laif and saw bits of yellow wet vomit stuck to the white armor on his chest and knee plates.

A crowd of aliens drifted into the hall from outside. They formed a semicircle around Voridus and Laif. The aliens exchanged insults. Some in English and some in their own language.

One of the Sangheli who’d come in to see what the commotion was about stepped forward. He had a noble sounding voice and wore blue armor.

“This is foolishness. Laif, if you kill the Brute then Pavium will seek vengeance on the camp and the war-council will have to hold you responsible for the provocation. And if the Brute kills you, he will be executed, and the Banished will be poorer for it. “

Laif’s eyes flicked to Diana. “The Nishum must die for her disrespect!”

“She will die. Sooner than later,” the Sangheli looked at her with contempt. “Nothing in the galaxy is more frail than a human female without the Demon alterations. One of Voridus’s machines will kill her. Or a sentinel. It is a wonder she has lasted this long.”

Laif growled in response. Diana stayed cowering on the ground.

After a moment, Laif took a deep breath and pushed off of Voridus. He took several steps back. Voridus didn’t pursue, but he kept his blades up.

Laif leveled a death stare at Voridus. “Eventually, your audacity will outweigh your talent, Brute. Then I will see both you and your pet’s corpses.”

“You can’t even imagine the depths of my talent, Laif,” Voridus said.

The Sangheli snarled what might have been an insult. Then the energy sword went off. He turned and shoved the closest Sangheli out of the way and stormed out of the hall.

The crowed remained, muttering for a moment. The noble sounding Sangheli who calmed Laif down barked an order. “Alright, back to work.”

He walked over to Voridus and looked from him to Diana and LegBeg. Voridus kept the blades out, but lowered his arm.

“You should have your explanation ready for your brother,” the Sangheli said. “He will not be happy when he hears about this.”

Then he turned to Diana.

“Very humourous little human. But you’d better remember your place when audacity strikes you.” He nodded to Voridus. “Next time, he may not be able to save you.”

He turned and walked away. Most of the aliens had already drifted out of the hall. Only then did Voridus sheath his blades.

The sangheli with the Huragok and the new human came forward. “What was that about?” The Sangheli asked.

Diana related her run-in with Colony and how she sent Laif in after. To which Voridus, the human, and even the sangheli responded with shaking laughter. Voridus doubled over and let out a wolflike howl.

The human was the first to get ahold of himself. When he spoke, he had a slight French accent. “The Blade Master is correct. You should be more careful.” Then he jammed his thumb at Voridus. “This one must be a bad influence on you.”

The Sangheli drifted back to his station. But Voridus didn’t bother to go back to the terminal.

When the extra eyes were off them, Voridus turned to her. “Did you get it?”

“Yeah,” she said. And held up her wrist to show the bracelet.

“Good. I thought Colony caught you and that’s why they were chasing you.”

“No. But man, I hope I don’t see him for a while. Do you think he’s mad? He might be embarrassed?”

“I don’t think Legoko feel shame,” Voridus said. “But I think ill cut our work short today. Grab an empty case and follow me.”

The new human stepped in front of her and held out his hand. He was half a foot taller than her and had broad shoulders. He wore the human banished uniform. Black Jacket, shirt, and pants with red patches at the shoulders and thighs. He was black, with short hair pressed down and a close shaved beard covering his lower face. He had a gun on each hip, a Magnum and sidekick. And a M7 SMG strapped to his back.

“I’m Michelangelo. Nice to meet you.”

She took his hand and shook. “Diana.”

Voridus leaned in between them. “Michelangelo is going with us. He’s our Reclaimer. Now hurry up, grab a case.”

They each carried empty cases as if they were stuffed with something very important and followed Voridus out of the hall.

No one bothered them as they left. She didn’t see Laif in the hallway, but they had to walk past the control center again. She saw both the Legoko brothers at the monitors. They had their armor on this time and were back in their two-legged forms. She hurried to walk beside Voridus and use him as a shield in case one of them noticed her.

The Lekoko didn’t seem to care about them though and soon they were exiting the tunnel and walking along the path back to the camp.

“What’s the other Legoko’s name?” She asked.

“They are both called Colony. They are one hive, they only split and walk as two because it is easier to move that way.”

“Huh.”

They passed the Jackal ships and picked their way across the camp.

A grunt, who was sitting on a crate near the methane silo, hollered at her.

“Nice one, little human! I bet Laif’s crying in the showers right now! HA HA Ha.”

Word of her stunt was spreading and now and then a brute, jackal or grunt would whistle or cheer at her.

She allowed herself to smile, even though she still felt weak in the limbs from how scarred she’d been. What possessed her?

Wait. There are showers?

She’d been using the bathroom foam the whole time.

When they reached the Dropship, thankfully the other Brutes weren’t home.

They stashed the empty cases in lockers, and Voridus and Michaelangelo went into the cockpit.

This time they didn’t close the door to the cockpit, so she could see them strap into the chairs. She could also see the camp out the front windshield.

“You know how to pilot a Drop ship?” Diana asked Michelangelo as he strapped himself in.

“The Banished ships are called Phantoms. But yeah. I learned a long time ago. The only problem is you really have to reach to hit all the buttons.”

The side door to the - Phantom- closed. The engine came alive. Diana wrapped her wrist around the cargo netting for security and braced for liftoff.

“Here we go,” Michelangelo said. The engine whined with more force and they lifted straight up in the air. She watched through the windshield as they rose vertically a hundred feet before the ship turned and flew over the camp.

She got a momentary view of the tents and metal structures laid out before her. Then she only saw sky. They flew less than five minutes when the radio crackled and a board grunt voice came over the waves.

“Phantom, identify yourself and give the passcode.”

LegBeg slapped Diana’s leg. “That’s MyYap,” she said excitedly. “Doesn’t he sound so authorative?”

“Yeah. He’s going places,” Diana said and smiled.

At the front of the cockpit, Voridus picked up the receiver. “This is Voridus of the Longshields.” He read the password off the skimmer.

“Voridus? Does, Does your brother know you’re leaving the camp?” The grunt asked in a hesitant voice.

“How do you think I got the password?”

“Okay. Clear.”

“He’s so good at his job,” LegBeg said dreamily. She didn’t seem to realize they had just scammed her boyfriend. Diana felt a twinge of guilt. She hoped MyYap wouldn’t get in trouble for this.

They flew out of Banished airspace. she glimpsed more grassy fields below. It was midday and the fake sun was high overhead.

Voridus and Michelangelo slid into casual banter. They seemed very comfortable with each other. Diana caught pieces of their conversation while LegBeg chatted about MyYap. She tried to follow both conversations at once.

“Your brother ran us out of the clan, but he let the girl stay?” Michelangelo asked.

“She’s not ‘in the clan’. She’s a prisoner,” Voridus said in his rumbly voice.

LegBeg’s squeaky voice beside her. “-my mom was my age when she had her first clutch, but I’m not sure I’m ready.” LegBeg stayed in the center of the phantom. She didn’t need to hold on to the netting for stability.

Michelangelo from the cockpit, “Where’d you find her, anyway?”

“The salvage site. We waited on the outskirts of the battlefield and ambushed them with brute shots when they had their vehicles lined up neatly.”

“-mom stayed home with the hatchlings. I’m more of a career orientated girl. I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“There were survivors in a ambush?”

“Only one.”

Michelangelo turned and gave her an appraising gaze.

“Doesn’t look like she has a scratch on her.”

She was wearing fatigues. All he could see was her face and hands. But as far as she knew, she didn’t have any marks from the attack. She hadn’t had a chance to check or even undress fully. She wondered what she’d have to do to get a shower.

“-then again, I would really love to be a mom.”

“You’d be a great mom,” Diana said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. You basically adopted me.”

“I kinda did. Didn’t I?”

“You must be one lucky mademoiselle,” Michelangelo said, turning back to the sky.

“The luckiest,” she replied.

She felt a twinge of bitterness. But the only reason she was still alive was Voridus stopped Laif from killing her the first day. She was lucky to have the brute.

“Where are you from, Mechanic?” Michelangelo asked.

“Earth.”

“Seems like everyone’s from earth these days. Hey Voridus, I should have asked earlier, but did you make sure there are no Flood in this treasure vault of yours?”

“Why would there be Flood?“ Diana asked. “I thought they were all gone?”

“Ohhh, waiiit. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about this?” Michelangelo said with a broad, boyish smile.

“Heard about what?”

A terrible smell wafted over her, and she thought someone farted. But then she realized it could be methane. She looked at LegBeg, who appeared to be lost in thought. Maybe those bitches were messing with her tank.

Michelangelo launched into a story. “Our boy Voridus opened pandora’s box a few months ago. He cracked the shell around High Charity and let the Flood out into the arc. We had a hell of a time containing them again.”

“But they WERE contained,” Voridus said defensively.

Diana felt her jaw drop.

“What? How?”

Voridus and Michelangelo gave her a rundown on the events that transpired a few months earlier. Lots of fighting to contain the Flood. They expanded the shield around High Charity to cover the area. Banished and the arc's sentinels guarded the new perimeter.

She looked at Voridus. “So that’s why everyone hates you.”

He huffed.

“He’s still a little sensitive about it,” LegBeg said quietly.

“The sentinels don’t bother you guys?” Diana asked.

“They did at first. But they seem to have realized we are on the same side. It's still creepy when they hover and watch us," Michelangelo said.

Voridus changed the subject and asked Michelangelo what he was up to after Pavium ran humans out of the clan for not being loyal enough.

Diana and LegBeg drifted into further conversation about family planning. While Diana thought LegBeg would be a great mom, she wasn’t sure about starting a family with her first-ever boyfriend.

After a while LegBeg complained of being short of breath and Diana checked her tank. She found a leak and discovered that the gasket on LegBeg’s hose that connected to her mask was one size too big.

Luckily, there were spare tanks in the lockers. LegBeg put a new one on, but they still needed to fix the hose. Voridus directed her to a junk drawer in his locker. She found dozens of gaskets and bolts, cords and wires. She selected the correct sized gasket and fixed the hose for LegBeg. She also found a few loose spikes that went into the brute spikers. Extra straps for power armor, various tools, a paper English-to-German dictionary, and a giant brute-sized wooden comb.

“You have a flat-top and your brother’s bald,” she said. “Whose comb is this?”

“I used to have a mohawk,” Voridus said.

“It was fabulous,” Michelangelo commented.

Chapter Text

Diana took one of the extra gaskets from the junk drawer, twisted it in half and slipped her hair through it. It wasn’t elastic like a proper ponytail holder, but it worked well enough.

The conversation in the phantom turned to the apparent murder attempt on LegBeg. Instead of being shocked or angry, Michelangelo was impressed with how sneakily the other grunts had gone about it.

“Plausible deniability all the way. Cleaver little ladies,” he said.

“I can’t believe they tried to suffocate you over a boy,” Diana said.

Voridus replied without looking over his shoulder from the cockpit. “Why? Envy is as good a motivation as any for murder.”

“How so?”

“You get what you want by taking it. If someone else has what you want, you get rid of them and then take it. Simple.”

Diana understood the danger of envy. There were stories and rumors of jealous performers committing acts of sabotage against artists who had more talent or acclaim. The most famous example was a singer named Mona Ilhami, an opera singer from 2515. Someone slipped a neuro toxin into her stage water. When she sang, her vocal cords froze. They were permanently paralyzed and the woman never sang or spoke again. The culprits were never caught.

There were other stories. Women having their costumes sprayed with pepper spray in the dressing room. Actresses being pushed down the stairs. Mysterious accidents and illnesses falling upon the star on the eve of production.

When you were in the spotlight, someone was always waiting in the wings. Her mother had warned her often, “people would kill to get to where you are now.” Diana was born rich, well connected, and talented. She was pretty, too. There were days at shows where she could FEEL the other singers, and sometimes people in the audience, hating her for all the gifts she had.

She had a hard time making real friends before she joined the UNSC. But once she put on the uniform, cut her hair, and got in line, she blended in. No one was jealous of her there. No one tried to use her for her connections. She went from soloist to the chorus, and she liked it.

That was the part that really bothered her about the grunts that did this to LegBeg. They were a group. They were supposed to be her friends.

Rather than be upset, LegBeg was flattered. “I’m just glad I wasn’t imagining it. I thought I was going crazy. But Jealous admirers trying to kill me? I feel like I’m in a soap opera! It’s just like Rosalie and Mshok and Galadriel from Mark My Love.” She hoped from one foot to the other in an excited little fan-girl dance.

From the cockpit, Michelangelo made a disgusting sound in his throat. “Ugh! Why do women watch those things? They’re so slow and melodramatic.” He put on an acting voice. “Oh! I am so betrayed! Or - OH NO! Two ruggedly handsome men and maybe one beautiful woman - love me at the same time? How do I choose? And all the crying and the resurrection! My mom watched this show where one character died and came back to life three times! Man made Jesus Christ and Joeseph Brinkley look like amatures.”

Joeseph Brinkley was a cult leader from the twenty-four hundreds.

LegBeg bristled, more offended by the insult to her favorite medium than the apparent attempt on her life. But Diana couldn’t help but smile. He was right. The stories were stupid. But- “We’re addicted to the drama,” she said.

“We don’t have enough drama in the real world?” he asked.

“It’s not the sa-”

The radio crackled. “VORIDUS! THIS IS PAVIUM! WHERE ARE YOU?”

The phantom fell silent. Everyone looked at Voridus. He let out a throaty sigh and took the receiver in his paw. “My humblest apologies Pavium. I will return with the Phantom in approximately three cycles. I am on my why to inspect a facility-”

“YOU WILL RETURN NOW! HOW DARE YOU? TAKING A PHANTOM WITHOUT PERMISION IS AN OUTRAGEOUS ACT OF INSUBORDINATION EVEN FOR YOU!”

“Then I will meet the punishment you deem appropriate when I return, brother. I will see you in three cycles.”

“DONT YOU D-”

He snapped the receiver back in place and turned off the radio. Silence filled the craft.

After a few moments Diana ventured to speak. “Are you sure you don’t want to turn back?”

“I have already transgressed. My best option now is to make sure we don’t go back empty-handed. If we find something notable, he can’t be that angry.”

“He sounded pretty angry,” LegBeg said.

“What about us? He might kill us for going with you?” Diana pointed out.

“He might. But I doubt he will. Pavium is calculating. He knows I am the one responsible for the action. I will be the one he punishes.”

Diana, LegBeg and Michelangelo exchanged nervous glances.

Michelangelo cleared his throat. “Okay, forget the Soaps. Lets talk books. You ever read the Count of Mount Crisco?”

“I think I did for school. I don’t remember much apart from the false imprisonment,” Diana said.

She was never a fan of reading and all the classics were boring.

Michelangelo gave her a summary. “False imprisonment for accusations of treason. And all because these bastards were jealous of the count’s talents. And one wanted his fiance.” He glanced back at LegBeg. ”Just like you. Except hopefully, your man is more faithful than Mercedes.”

“Hey don’t blame the girl,” Diana said. “They locked the guy up for life. What was she supposed to do?”

“Maybe NOT marry the bastard who threw her fiance in prison? As someone whose been to prison, I can tell you. Finding out your girl married the man that put you there will drive you mad,” Michelangelo said.

“Your feelings are understandable,” Voridus said. “But females go to the one that can offer food and protection.”

“What about loyalty?” Michelangelo said.

“There is no loyalty to the dead. And Jiralhanae do not take prisoners. Usually.”

“So what happens when you guys fight each other on your planet?” Diana asked.

“The vanquished males may be offered a place in the victorious clan or they may be executed. Females are always welcome no matter the circumstance.”

“Because you don’t think they’re a threat?” Diana asked. “Are your women as big as you are?”

“They are slighter than males, but only a fool would say they are not a threat. No, they are welcome because they grow the clan through their offspring.”

She thought for a moment. “There is one classic book I liked. The Outsiders.” It was her dad’s favorite book. That was the reason her mom set up the American 1950s style photo shoot way back in the day..

“Oh yeah yeah yeah!,” Michelangelo  snapped his fingers and smiled. Then he looked back at her and mimed sweeping his hand over a greased duck's tail hair cut. “Stay gold Ponyboy!”

“What is a Pony Boy?” Voridus asked.

Diana suppressed a giggle. “It’s a name. He’s the main character. The story is about three brothers from the wrong side of the tracks. Their parents died and the oldest one dropped out of college to take care of the younger two. But because they are from the poorer side of town, they’re friends with guys who are a bad influence, they steal and like to fight-”

“Oh no!” Michelangelo said dramatically and Voridus and LegBeg snickered.

“- Anyway, their friends aren’t proper society. But they’re like family. They’re called greasers because they put grease on their hair. It was a style on earth in the 1950s and again in 2200s. Anyway, they were always fighting the rich kids from the good side of town. One day, a girl from the rich side of town sat with the boys at a movie theater and her boyfriend got jealous. Later he and his friends caught up with Ponyboy and his friend Johnny. They fought and Ponyboy blacked out. When he wakes up, he finds Johnny killed one or two of the guys- I don’t remember. Anyway, the boys had to run away to avoid the law. While they were in hiding, they saved some kids from a fire. Johnny died from his injuries and afterward Ponyboy talks to one of the rich kids about how stupid and pointless all the fighting was and all the trouble it caused for nothing. It was a good story.”

“But when did they get the gold? Did they steal it from the rich kids?” LegBeg asked.

“It’s not actual gold. While the boys are hiding from the law, they watch the sunset and talk about how pretty it is and how it makes the sky gold. One of them recites a poem, by a man named Robert Frost.

Nature’s first green is gold.

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

So eden sank to grief.

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay -

The boys meant they didn’t want to turn into some guys they knew. They didn’t want to become bitter and angry and incapable of love-"

“Oh. Like Gary,” LegBeg said.

"-they wanted to stay gold."

They spoke about stories for awhile longer. Various told the tale of Rust, a jiralhanai hero who would have been a genocidal figure in any human story. Then the conversation drifted from stories to games. Games were big in the Banished. The grunts had hunt rock. The Brutes had a variety of games that involved throwing living things. Sometimes humans, sometimes grunts, most often whatever poor creature they found in the fields around the camp. They also made a game of hunting animals, holding them and then releasing them to hunt again. The humans had plain old football and dice and card games.

Now and then they picked up other aircraft or ground chatter on the monitors. But they would divert their course enough to be clear they weren’t looking for a fight, and nobody came after them. Diana guessed everyone was conserving their resources for when they needed it and chasing down one lone Phantom wasn’t worth anybody’s time.

Pavium must not have raised an alarm either, and she could guess why. He would be humiliated if everyone knew his brother ran off without permission.

Or maybe he was trying to protect his younger brother from someone else punishing him. She thought back to the story of the Ponyboy and the oldest brother. What was his name? It started with a D. Her dad told her once he would have named her after the character if she’d been a boy.

-Darry, that was it.

Darry was under a lot of stress while caring for the two younger brothers. Pavium probably felt the same way. Voridus wasn’t a teen boy, but he was good at finding trouble. Suddenly, she felt bad for Pavium. Looking after Voridus for life had to be a stressful existence.

It was a long flight, and they fell into long stretches of silence. When Diana had to use the bathroom, she made LegBeg go with her. LegBeg hesitated, but Diana insisted it was a human custom for girlfriends to go together. She also pointed out that there were no handrails in the toilet room and she needed to hold on to something, like the back of LegBeg’s tank, in case the phantom swerved unexpectedly and she lost her balance.

The sun sailed overhead, and the sky grew pink. They’d been in the air for nine hours and had a long way to go. LegBeg yawned loudly through her mask and said she was gonna go to sleep. She nestled into a corner with her elbows on her knees and dosed off almost immediately.

Diana turned and looked up at the shelf. If she used some of the extra straps from the junk drawer, she might secure herself up there. Otherwise, she had the same problem she’d have in the toilet. If the ship swerved, she might roll off the shelf and the fall was about eight feet.

When she asked Voridus permission to use the extra straps, he suggested she just sleep on his bunk and he would sleep on Pavium’s.

He and Michelangelo split the flying. Michelangelo would take the first shift. Voridus swung himself into Pavium’s cot.

She sat on the edge of Voridus’s bunk. It was only three feet up from the ground, so if she rolled off, it wouldn’t be as bad. But it was much wider than her shelf, so she was less likely to roll off.

The bunk had some kind of fur laid over it. It was smooth and reminded her of cow hide. As soon as she lay her head down, she was asleep.

And then she was home. The sun overhead was bright. The sky was a clear blue. The water of the Great Lake was a light topaz blue. It was pure fresh water like earth’s Great Lakes. Kholo was a young world and its wealthy inhabitants worked diligently to keep pollution in check.

Her family had a house on the lake and their own private beach. Forty feet from the shore was a floating dock. Her mother reclined on the dock. She had her smooth, dark hair swept back in a high ponytail. She wore a white, high-necked, one-piece swimsuit with a keyhole opening between her breast. She looked like she was in an ad, but she always looked front-cover perfect.

Diana sat on the edge of the dock with her legs in the cool water. She wore a plain black bikini. She glanced up at the house. They had a sandstone patio with an outdoor grill. The living room had a two story glass wall dissected with metal cut into random Geometric shapes. It was a style meant to mimic an old artist named Picasso.

Her father was inside, probably watching a game of Cricket.

She looked down. The water was crystal clear so she could see the bottom. Further out, the water was miles deep. But here, it was about fifteen feet. The sand was softest yellow. Here and there long Lilly Weeds stretched toward the sun, their bell shaped leaves waving in the current. There was an oblong shaped boulder bespeckled with red and yellow granite bits at the bottom of the dock. That was her marker.

She took a deep breath and pushed herself off the dock. She swam down to the lakebed. When she reached it, she took hold of the bespeckled boulder and pulled herself into a cross-legged position. She sat monk-like, using the boulder as an anchor. Her long hair drifted around her like a mermaid. The dark strands floating in the same rhythm as the Lilly Weeds around her. Sometimes her hair got tangled in the weeds and when she emerged from the water, she’d have pieces of the plants hanging down over her shoulders.

She did this almost every day. It was a lung strengthening exercise. Her mother came out with her, just in case she pushed it too far and blacked out.

She didn’t count while she was underwater. She just sat with her eyes open and let her mind wander. She took in the lake's beauty. Sometimes little yellow and blue fish would come and inspect her if she sat still long enough.

Her lungs began to tingle. She kept her pose. She could hold her breath for five minutes most days.

When the tingle turned into a burn and her heart rate quickened so that she could hear it in her ears, she unfolded her legs and looked up. She could see the white sun above her and the water breaking the light on the surface with its gentle waves. She bent her knees under her and kicked, launching herself up through the water. She kicked her legs and gracefully swam toward the surface.

Her mother stood on the edge, peering down at her. She must have been longer than five minutes. She couldn’t see her mother’s face through the waves, but she only came to the edge when Diana pushed it, so she must be worried.

Diana stretched her arms ahead of her, preparing to grab the side of the floating dock and pull herself up.

The surface didn’t break.

The water that should have been the lake’s surface was solid. As solid as a glass window. She pressed her hands flat against it. A sense of panic set in her veins and raced through her body. Her hair waved up around her face. She brought her knees up and kicked. She slammed her hands against it. She threw her whole body shoulder first into it. But nothing happened. She was trapped by this clear, unexplainable barrier.

Then the sky above her mother turned dark.

Diana’s lungs burned like fire now.

“MOM!”

She tried to call out. But all she did was release an air bubble. And then the water turned cold. Freezing cold. Crystalline Fractals curled between her hands as they pressed against the clear barrier. The fractals spread, curling in an icy, art-nouvou expansion across her field of vision. The space between the fractals became foggy.

“MOM!”

The lake never froze. Only the northern and southern poles of Kholo got cold enough for snow and ice. None of this made sense. None of this was real. She knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare.

So why wasn’t she waking up?

How long had she been sleeping?

She stopped beating her fists against the surface. She could barely make out the shape of her mother, still standing on the dock. Her white bathing suit was the only thing that allowed her to show up against the dark sky.

Overhead, a red light pierced the clouds.

The light expanded, brighter and bigger, like a falling star. And then fire poured down. Red fire. White fire. Blue fire. All heat. The surface of the lake boiled. The barrier vanished. She finally slipped through.

She bolted up. Cold sweat clung to her. She was damp in her armpits. She took shallow breaths.

“You okay back there?” Michelangelo asked, glancing over his shoulder. “You were talking in your sleep.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bunk. She took a few deep breaths; she felt her diaphragm stretch. She felt her heart slow down. She glanced at the aliens, but Voridus and LegBeg appeared to be sleeping.

“I’m okay,” she said. “What was I saying?”

“The only thing I heard clearly was ‘mom’,” he said.

“Oh. Sorry if I weirded you out.”

“It’s alright. She still around? Your mom?”

“No.”

“Sorry.”

“Yours?”

“No.”

“Sorry.”

“You wanna ride up front for awhile?”

“No. I think ill try to go back to sleep.”

“Okay.”

She laid down. She sank into the soft fur. And she slept again. This time, there were no memories or nightmares. Only blissful oblivion.

***

When she woke, it was day. Voridus and Michelangelo switched places. LegBeg was awake and watching a show on a data pad.

When she sat up, LeBeg looked up.

“Finally. You were asleep like twelve hours.”

“Oh, damn.”

“We are almost there,” Voridus said.

She got up and went to the cockpit, sitting in the vacant seat. They were flying low. The sky above was stacked with grey clouds. Before them was a whiteout icy landscape. The edge of the viewpoint was lined with glaciers.

She couldn't tell if the ground could have been snow or a sea frozen solid.

“We don’t have cold weather gear, do we?” she said.

“I doubt it will be a problem once we are inside the facility. I have never encountered a forerunner space that failed to provide comfort.”

She hoped he was right. He had a lot more mass than she did. He probably didn’t have to worry about freezing.

He checked his pad again for coordinates. Then they descended and she woke Michelangelo.

A few moments later they landed gently.

Voridus launched a scan of the area and found the facility in walking distance. But she didn’t see anything.

“It is underground,” Voridus said. “Or under water. I believe we are parked on a frozen surface.

She felt her stomach drop, thinking of her nightmare. She didn’t believe in premonitions. But the coincidence of landing on an ice field after she dreamed of being trapped underwater stood out to her.

The door was supposed to be to the east, within a hundred feet of their landing. When the hatch opened, Voridus practically skipped down the ramp. He followed his data pad like a compass and the others watched from the ship.

Then he knelt, and she saw him wiping loose snow away with his palm. He stood and kicked the rest of the snow away with his feet. Then he loosed his twin blades from his gauntlet, knelt and stabbed the ice. He dragged the blades, sawing the ice as he walked in a crouched position.

Diana recalled an old cartoon character sawing a hole in ice and falling through. She didn’t know if brutes could swim, but with the armour, he’d have a hard time.

He didn’t fall. He retracted the blades. Then he bent over and grabbed the edges of the ice he’d cut out. He lifted the rectangle, which appeared to be about six inches thick, twice as wide as she was and just as tall, and threw the whole chunk to the side.

Then he faced them with a smile and motioned for Michelangelo to come forward.

Chapter Text

Michelangelo unlocked the door.

They stared down a gently sloping tunnel, illuminated by what Diana now thought of as ‘Forerunner Blue’ lights in the walls.

Voridus led the way, with Michelangelo at his side. Diana and LegBeg followed behind.

Voridus was right about the temperature control. Once they were in the hallway, the door slid shut behind them and the chill of the tundra left her skin immediately.

They walked in silence, all of them glancing around. So far, she saw nothing interesting.

Diana stopped in her tracks. “Hey.”

The others stopped. Voridus and Michelangelo turned to her.

“You said there might be Flood down here.” she said.

Voridus tilted his head. “There may be. Apparently, the Forerunners stored the flood forms in many of their installations. According to the Covenant, that is how High Charity was infected.”

“Then I should have a weapon,” Diana said.

They took her gun off of her when she was knocked out. She never asked about it, because there was no way they’d give it back. But if there was even a chance they were about to meet some loose flood forms, she wanted to be armed.

Michelangelo had two human side arms; a magnum and a sidekick. He looked from her to Voridus. Clearly, it was the Brutes’s decision.

After studying her a moment, Voridus nodded to Michelangelo.

The human Banished unbuckled the holster for the sidekick and handed it over.

Voridus leaned close to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. His thumb stretched across her collarbone, and he used it to tilt her chin up, forcing her to look into his red eyes.

“You know what happens if you shoot one of us?” he said.

“I’m not suicidal. And I can’t fly the Phantom,” she said in the steadiest voice she could muster.

He huffed an acknowledgement. “Good.” He released her.

She strapped the holster belt around her waist and followed him again as they continued down the hall.

After a few moments, they came to another door. When they stepped in front of it, a blue holograph with glyphs appeared in the air.

“What’s it say?” Diana asked.

“It is the message from the file. "Where once our pride rose on High. Now here all our hopes lie.”

“Have you ever seen a message pop up in front of a door like that before?” Michelangelo asked.

“No,” Voridus said.

“Neither have I” Michelangelo said with a trace of trepidation.

He pressed the pad on the wall while keeping one hand on the hilt of his magnum. The door hissed open, revealing a room with ceilings so high the light couldn’t reach them, and a long hall with openings evenly spaced every two meters.

Voridus lead the way into the room. He swung his gun up and swept the area in front of him. As they proceeded into the room, he and Michelangelo took one wall each and swept the openings to the other halls.

Everything was quiet and still. The men lowered their weapons and shared a look, deciding there was no threat. As far as Diana could tell, the room was empty.

As they walked down the main hall, she peered through the first open doorway, which revealed another hall with more openings in the wall, two meters apart just like this one.

“Stay close,” Voridus said. “Strange things happen in Forerunner facilities.”

They walked down the main hall together, peering down the linear halls they passed. The place was supposed to be a trophy vault, and the layout reminded her of a museum, with the straight lines and dissected halls. But it looked like it had been cleaned out.

She wondered for a second if Voridus would lose it. It looked like he risked his brother’s wrath for nothing.

But the Brute was calm as he approached the nearest wall. Like most Forerunner tunnels she’d seen, the walls had lines and grooves across them. She thought it was a stylistic choice, just like the bluish lighting.

Voridus ran his long nails down the wall and let them slip into the groove. He smiled and let out a low growl. Then he bent his fingers and, to her surprise, a section of the wall came away at the seam. It was a drawer.

Diana, Michelangelo and LegBeg crowded around Voridus at the wall and peered curiously into it. Inside were three steel canisters set in cushions. They were half the size of a standard fire extinguisher. Voridus lifted the middle canister up in one hand and tilted it. Diana heard a liquid splash. Voridus then twisted the top of the canister open.

She stood on her toes to peer inside the canister as he held it. She saw a silvery liquid substance that looked like chrome nail-polish.

“What is that?”

“I do not know,” he said in his rumbly voice.

He raised the canister to his face and sniffed it tentatively. Then he dipped two fingers into it. He withdrew his hand and examined the liquid as it dripped off his long nails.

Diana felt her eyebrows scrunch together “You really shouldn't-”

He flicked his fingers at her, flinging the liquid her way.

“- hey!”

She and LegBeg stumbled back. She felt wet drops on her face. She wiped the back of her sleeve across her face. She looked down and saw LegBeg had silver droplets across her chest plate and her wide, pebbly arms.

Voridus chuckled. “Well, it doesn’t seem to be acidic.”

“What the fuck! Don’t fling alien goo at people!” Diana said.

Michelangelo was on the opposite side of Voridus. He quietly backed away and turned his attention to a groove on the next wall over. He pulled the drawer open and lifted a small square gadget from within.

Voridus flicked his fingers at her again, still chuckling. This time she was far enough away, and the silver liquid splashed across the front of her fatigues, coincidently, across her name patch SILVER.

He smirked, daring her to do something. She sighed.

Dick.

“Hey,” LegBeg said, pointing up at Diana’s face. “Yours changed color.”

“What?” She wiped her face with her hand, but nothing came off. She turned to the metal wall. It wasn’t polished smooth, but it offered a blurry reflection. She couldn’t see the details of her face, but she could make out five small gold dots sprinkled across her cheeks. Three under the right eye and two under the left one.

She liked her fingers and rubbed the gold spots. They didn’t budge. She’d have to wash in the Phantom later. At least it didn’t burn.

She shot Voridus a glare and moved along the wall with LegBeg.

She pulled another drawer open.

Inside were rectangular devises and what looked like pieces to a power tool. There was a long metal arm, a motor, and disks, all set in cushions with cut outs. She looked down at LegBeg, who moved on to her own wall and was inspecting what looked like a tray of glass samples.

Diana picked up the metal arm in her drawer. It was a meter long, and the end had a pointed head like a Phillips screwdriver. It felt like iron, and she was reminded of all the robotic assistance machines in the Mechanic Bay on the Spirit.

“This stuff is…” Diana looked down the hall to Michelangelo, who was holding what looked a lot like some kind of radio in his hand.

“kinda human looking,” Michelangelo finished for her.

“Indeed,” a calm, mechanical voice said from above.

Everyone looked up. Voridus, Michelangelo, and LegBeg all swung their weapons upward. Michelangelo dropped his gadget, but it froze in midair.

Diana only clutched her metal bar like a club and peered up at the darkness above them.

A small white light appeared and then grew to a circle about the size of a street traffic light. The light floated gently down toward them and turned in Michelangelo’s direction.

“Please be more careful with the artifacts, human.”

The '“artifact,” floated safely down until it rested on its cushion.

Voridus let out an excited growl. "An oracle,” he said.

The floaty thing drew close enough for her to see its shape. It was a metal ball with the white light at its center like a detached eyeball.

It swung the light in Voridus’s direction.

“Oracle?” It tilted its center, like a confused dog.

“Forgive me,” Voridus said in a diplomatic tone. “That is only what some have called machines like you before. You are a Forerunner AI, correct?”

“Correct. I am the Antecedent Custodian. I am charged with the preservation and care of the Human and San-shyuum artifacts in this archive.”

“Human artifacts?”- everyone asked together.

“Yes. I have preserved the artifacts of humanity since the days the Halo was fired. Although, you two - he swung his eye to Michelangelo and Diana- are the first live humans I have met. Welcome. I was wondering if you would ever re-evolve high enough to reach the ark. I was not expecting you to arrive with a jiralhanai and an Ungoy.” There was a mechanical whirling as he seemed to zoom in on the aliens.

“Really?” Voridus said. “And yet, the we have all been on the ark for many cycles. Why didn’t you make contact?”

“Have you?” the Antecedent Custodian asked in an awed voice. “I was not aware. I am not designed to contact anyone or any systems outside of my archive, except to draw energy required to protect my artifacts from the ravages of time. My systems are compartmentalized in order to prevent unnecessary exposure in case of Flood infestation.”

“How do you know English?” Diana asked. “And how do you know were called Human, Jiralhanai and Ungoy if you never connected to anything outside of this room?”

“I scanned your data pad when you unsealed the door. As well as that one’s personal communicator- and that one’s- entertainment library.” He pointed his eyes from Voridus to Michelangelo to LegBeg. All of whom had data pads tucked into a pocked somewhere on their red and black uniforms.

“That gave me more than enough samples to study and learn your language,” the AI finished brightly.

They’d been in the tunnel for less than an hour. She knew AI were smart. But she was amazed at the Machine’s intelligence. And apparently it had a wide field of operation because he scanned them without being seen. And he must have had some kind of antigravity field because he caught the gadget Michelangelo dropped.

This thing is dangerous, she realized.

Voridus didn’t seem concerned. He made a sound that was almost like a purr before he spoke next.

“Are there any Forerunner machines here besides you?”

“Only the catalogs. There are several of those containing the reports of the Forerunners who studied the human informational remains.“

“What was the purpose of this study?” Voridus asked. “Was it the Forerunner method of determining the humans to be their Reclaimers after the Halo fired?”

“Yeah?” LegBeg said in her high voice. “What’s so special about the humans?” She waved her plasma gun at Diana and Michalangelo. “Or is there an Ungoy vault somewhere too? Like, did everybody get a little collection of their civilization from before the Halo fired?”

The AI tilted his eye again. His mechanical voice was thoughtful. “I do not know if there is an Ungoy vault. I am compartmentalized. And Reclaimer? I suppose that tittle applies, as the humans have returned for items made by humans. The vault had two purposes in time. During and immediately after the Forerunner war with the Human and San-shyuum empire, many items here were taken as trophies by various high-ranking Warrior Servants. Later, after the emergence of the Flood in Forerunner space, human items were collected and studied, in hopes of discovering the method by which the Human and San-shyuum empire defeated the parasite known as the Flood.”

A solid ten seconds of silence met the AI’s answer as Diana and the others processed the information it just shared.

For once, Diana wasn’t the only one completely lost.

Forerunner human war?

Human San-shyuum alliance?

But the biggest reveal was-

“Defeated the Flood?” Voridus said, breaking the stupor that the rest of them were under.

“Indeed.” The custodian continued. “A thousand scholars poured over every file in the catalogue and studied every piece stored in the archive. Unfortunately, my makers ran out of time. The secret was lost. But-” he looked from Diana to Michelangelo.

“Perhaps you need a human to think like a human!" he chuckled.

Another ten seconds of silence followed.

“I think you need to start at the beginning, Custodian.” Voridus said. “We have no records of-anything- you just said.”

“What do you have records of Jiralhanai?”

“The Forerunner failed to save the galaxy from the Flood. They took samples of living things, then fired the halo to starve the flood. then replanted the species on their home planets.”

“Oh. Thats all you know? How painfully ignorant you all are! Well. Let’s see. The beginning. According to my records, of course. I must warn you, this may not be all there is. I am com-

“mpartamentalized,” everyone finished for him.

“Yes. We understand,” Voridus said. “Tell us what you can.”

“Alright.”

And he did. He told them that before the Halo fired, humanity had reached such a height in technology that they were near peer to the Forerunner. The humans shared space with the San-shyuum and had a military, economic, and social alliance with them. According to human records, they experienced a sickness across many worlds inhabited by themselves and the San-shyuum.

This disease was the first outbreak of the flood, but it was not the same as the Flood today. In the beginning, those infected sprouted green and tubular growths and showed erratic and violent behaviour.

For years, the humans thought it was a virus or bacterial infection, or some mutation resulting from pollution. Once an unknown threshold of the populations became infected, the hosts became cannibalistic. At that stage, the infection spread rapidly.

By the time the humans realized it was not a disease they faced, but an attack coordinated by a conscious, alien intelligence, they were so outnumbered that they had no choice but to quarantine and burn entire worlds.

That lead them to flee further into Forerunner space. The flood spread ahead of them, changing as it went, adapting to the new species and planets it consumed. Eventually humanity’s actions brought them face to face with Forerunners. The Forerunners accused them of warmongering.

The humans tried to explain the situation, but they couldn’t offer any Flood samples as proof because it was too dangerous to transport the parasite. And when they tried to send electronic proof, such as video or hollow reports, the files were always corrupted or lost. The forerunners didn’t believe the humans and thought this was only a pretext to war on weaker planets and seize worlds for themselves.

They fought for a thousand years. Three centuries after the war started, the Flood receded from human space. But the humans were weakened by fighting on two fronts and they lost to the Forerunners.

The Forerunners, wrapped in righteous fury, forced humanity back to one world. Charum Hakor. On all other worlds, humans were burned, or digitalized to be saved in some kind of AI record. A few were gathered for experiments.

In the last decades of the war, the San-shyuum surrendered and their planet was placed under quarantine under Forerunner surveillance as punishment.

“The Repentant,” Voridus said. And Diana remembered the map with the red planets.

“Yes. And the humans, when defeated, were de-evolved and returned to Earth. The planet was placed under guard and contact with them was forbidden,” the Custodian finished.

“What is de-evolved?” Voridus asked.

“The species was set back one hundred thousand years. They were genetically altered to be weaker, slower, and to have less brain mass than the humans who faced the forerunners.”

Diana and Michelangelo shared a look of disgust.

“Who the fuck did they think they were to do that to us?” Diana said.

“They claimed the Mantle. As such, it was their right. Humanity was a threat to the galaxy. However, they regretted this decision several hundred years later when the flood reemerged. It became apparent that everything the humans claimed was true, and worse. Because the flood forms the Forerunner faced were far more vile than the original outbreak.”

“But they couldn’t ask the humans how they won the first time.” Diana said. “Because they burned all our stuff and then made us stupid.”

“Indeed. A frantic search began, excavating human worlds and sifting through remains of their abandoned cities. Everything that was found was brought here. But it was not enough.”

She thought of the blacked out star maps she found in the hive ship. She thought of the flash of the Halo as its wave spread and ended every life in the galaxy. All for nothing.

Because the humans had an answer the whole time, and thanks to the arrogance of the Forerunners, it was lost.

She felt hot tears on her cheeks and heard herself gasp.

LegBeg looked up at her with wide eyes. She reached out and gently patted Diana’s leg.

Diana wiped the tears away. She wasn’t sad. She was angry, a burning, vile hatred built up in her chest. The Spirit lost people to the Flood back at Ethan Harborage, and the stories she heard about it were horrific.

And it never had to happen, because the answer to the flood had been around for hundreds of thousands of years.

And then, because the Forerunners did such a piss-poor job of explaining their actions, they led the aliens in the Covenant to believe that humanity was somehow unclean. They couldn’t just come out and say - ‘Hey! We fucked up! We couldn’t beat this parasite, but these guys from planet Earth did. Maybe go ask them about it?"

And a fresh wave of anger crashed over her as another realization rocked her consciousness. If Earth was their cradle planet, then there was a good chance the planets they repopulated, like Kholo, Meridian and Harvest, were once planets from their old empire too. And that meant that their planets got wrecked twice. Once by the Forerunner and then glassed by the Covenant. Whatever wasn’t saved and brought to the vault was gone. If the answer wasn’t here, it was gone forever.

She wiped the angry tears away. It was all so stupid. It was all so pointless.

But if they found the cure. If they found it…Then they never had to worry about the Flood or the Halo again.

Where all our hopes lie.

She wiped the last tear and turned to the AI.

“Where should we start?”

Chapter Text

The monitor directed them to follow it down the hall. But Voridus had a question first.

“Is this method of defeating the Flood a weapon or a medical treatment, some kind of inoculation?

“Undiscovered. But none of the evidence compiled suggests a significant military victory against the Flood. There are no songs, poems or dedications to the humans who defeated the parasite. And no reference to a single battle to turn the tide.The greatest proof the humans defeated the parasite was the fact that human communities were found thriving unmolested in flood territory late in the war.”

“Let us see the human weapons first,” Voridus said.

“Of course, just follow me.”

He swung down the next left hallway

Diana picked up her pace to walk next to Voridus. Michelangelo let her take his spot, and he fell back to walk with LegBeg. She looked up at the brute. “Don’t you think we should get the catalogue first? Records have to tell us more than weapons will.”

“I am not sure anything the catalogue says will be useful. It certainly wasn’t to the Forerunners. It sounds like your ancestors may have developed an inoculation, which would make the most sense if they were studying the flood for years as a disease rather than a hostile force. Even if we found this miracle cure, it might not do any good today for several reasons. First, by the monitors account, the Flood mutated since then. For all we know, it has mutated many times since. Second, this cure would have been developed for humans and San’ Shyuum. There is no reason to believe it would work for Jiralhanai or the other species, which makes it useless to the Banished. And lastly, any inoculation would require test trials. Consider what happens if the inoculation fails.” He looked down at her and his lip curled.

She didn’t want to consider what would happen if a Flood vaccine failed.

He huffed. “But… if it is a weapon that is especially effective against the flood, anyone can learn to use it, just like Halo. And besides.” He smiled down at her. “Weapons are just more fun. Let’s see what kind of damage your bloodlines were capable of.”

After turning again and again deeper into the complex, and passing half a dozen blue lit halls that all looked the same, the monitor led them down a hall that featured glass cases. One wall had armor that was clearly designed to fit humans.

But the wall on the opposite side held cases for a different armor. The armor in this one was humanoid shaped, but the arms and legs were incredibly slender and tall, like it was meant for a body type that was a cross between a ballerina and a basketball player.

Voridus stood in front of the alien armor case. “This looks like it could fit a Prelate.”

“Whats that?” Diana asked.

“They were San’Shyuum warriors, genetically altered. Like your Spartans.”

He pulled the drawer next to the case open and Diana came forward to peer inside.

There was a steering wheel sized robot in the center of the drawer. It was oval shaped and had a broken glass bulb in the center. Four spindly metallic legs stuck out on the left side. The right side only retained two of its legs, the joints for the other two were snapped. It reminded her of some kind of beetle.

On either side of the bug-like robot were vials of colored liquid. Some contents were thin like rubbing alcohol, while others were thick as jam. The liquids were all vibrant colors: maroon, burnt orange, flamingo pink, and mustard yellow.

Voridus picked up a vial and turned it in the weak light.

“Are you gonna stick your fingers in that too?” Diana asked.

“No. This is poison,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“This is a weapons hallway," he gave her the side eye. "And, if you knew the San’Shyuum, you would understand. They were sneaky, slithery things. Poison and lies suit them.”

“Excellently deduced!” the Antecedent Custodian said with the tone of a proud tutor. He hovered closer until he was floating over the open drawer.

“The San’Shyuum developed the poisons from the various fauna of their planet. With cloaking technology from the humans, the drones would invade Forerunner surface-to-air transport ships as they extracted warrior-servants and hide on the ceiling until the transport ship reached the docking bay of its primary carrier. Once the ship landed in the bay, most warriors would remove their helmets. At that point, the drone would aerosolize the poison and release it in the closed space, killing any warrior-servant who had removed their helmet."

“So they thought they survived the battle and died on the doorstep of their ship,” Michaelangelo said. “Damn, that’s dirty.”

“Indeed,” the custodian said. “They believed themselves quite safe. Some drones remained hidden for up to seventeen hours.”

“Hey,” she swallowed hard and pointed at her face. “There was some silver liquid in a canister back in the hall where you found us. Do you know what that was?”

She tried not to panic. She didn’t feel sick. If it was poison, she would feel it by now.

Right?

“That section contains items found in a space station between human and San’Shyuum space. The deduction was that it was reflective solar paint for small service craft.”

Space stations were busy places. Service craft would be small ships used by the station’s maintenance crew. Reflective paint served the same job as the bright vests worn by construction crews, helping the tired pilots of the much bigger vessels to see them and avoid accidentally smashing them. There were AI and radar and all kinds of safety measures to prevent collision, but you could never be too safe.

There were spears on the San’Shyuum wall, too. They were ornate and beautifully carved, with trails of vines etched into the handles. Diana imagined with their long limbs that the extra reach would benefit them in hand to hand combat. But she noticed LegBeg and Voridus only looked at the things with disgust.

Michelangelo was digging around in the human side of the hall. He pulled out a big, spartan sized gun that looked like it belonged on a warthog mount.

“Look at this baby!”

Voridus took it and admired it. After a moment, he declared it to be an energy weapon.

Then pointed it down the hall and pulled the trigger.

The gun made barely a whisper, but she saw a ripple loose from the end and tear down the hall. A moment later, the end of the hall crackled like magma breaking the earth and an orange glow spider-webbed up the far wall.

“Please do not discharge the weapons,” the monitor said in a flat voice.

“How else will we test them?” Voridus asked with a smile and attached it to his back.

The Custodian snatched it away, holding it in the air with his unseen anti-grave ability. It looked like he was playing keep away with the brute.

“Apologies Jiralhanai, but I cannot allow you to remove the weapons from the archive.

“Oh, why is that?” Voridus was smiling and it made Diana feel uneasy.

“The artifacts must remain for the humans to study.” The Custodian said in an even tone.

Voridus turned his palm up, the one with two silver painted finger tips, and gestured to Diana and Michelangelo. “You see, I have humans with me.”

“Yes. But I am beginning to suspect…” his eye whirled like a camera lense adjusting “that you are not the…how should I phrase it…the social caste best suited to the study of antiquities. Perhaps you should return with proper scholars.”

Great, he’s getting us kicked out.

“At least let us see the catalogues first,” Diana said. She had an urgent feeling in her chest. One she didn’t quite recognize. She wanted the catalogue. She wanted it more than- anything- she’d ever wanted before. Her hands balled into fists at her sides and she felt like fidgeting.

The Antecedent Custodian tilted his eye again. Then he sighed. “I suppose there is no harm in that. Follow me. Touch nothing else.”

He returned the gun to its drawer. Then turned and bobbed down the hall. Voridus was quiet, but it wasn't a peaceful, submissive quiet. When she looked up at him, his face was still, one corner of his lip pulled up in a half smirk, revealing a single pointed fang. He reminded her of dogs that stared and waited for someone to walk into their yard so they could attack.

Her father told her something about dogs once.

Dogs that bark; don’t like to bite. Dogs that like to bite; don’t bark.

She could guess which one Voridus was.

They entered a short hall where three machines were stored. They were in cases, like the armor. They were rectangular and boxy and about the length of her arm. They reminded Diana of ancient wall-mounted phone boxes that had to be hand cranked. The things had five spindly legs that made them look like insects. There were dozens of lenses over the front panel. They were all still.

“This is it?” her heart sank. She expected a lot more.

The monitor turned his eye to her. “A single catalogue contains many files and hundreds of interviews. The one on the left is the Forerunner experience of the Flood. The one on the right is what we recovered from humans, detailing their experience before the war. The one in the middle is the overlap.”

She leaned in to study the thing closer through the glass. “How do we turn it on?”

“Oh quite sim-”

There was a pop and then a whoosh sound and then the monitor was covered in blue static emitting from what looked like a sticky grenade. But instead of exploding, the monitor only fell to the ground with a metallic crash. The eye in the center went dark.

Voridus swooped in and scooped the monitor up in one big paw while Diana stared in horror.

“What’d you do to him?”

“It is not a him. It is a machine. I stunned it.” He didn’t bother to look at her. He turned the metal sphere in his hands and ran his nails along its many seams. “Keep an eye out for sentinels,” he ordered.

“He’s an AI, not a forklift. He has a personality, and he was helping us.”

"I never understood that. Why would anyone make a machine have a mind of its own?"

In school Diana learned that reason AI were designed to think for themselves was because intelligence results in curiosity and creativity. And allowing those to flourish allows programs to think through problems and come up with solutions better than blind obedience does. But Voridus would probably just laugh at that human line of thinking.

“Maybe we decided friends are better than slaves,” she said bitterly.

Voridus paused and looked up at her. “Very sweet. But they are not your friends. They are circuitry, they have no blood to tie loyalty to and no sweat to form bonds with.”

Michelangelo and LegBeg were watching the corners of the ceiling and the doorway with their guns up, keeping an eye out for the Sentinels, as instructed. But they both snuck glances at Diana and the brute, watching the back and forth with the same interest as a cat following a flashlight.

Diana stomped her right foot. Something her mother used to do when she was beyond frustrated. She’d never caught herself copying the action before and part of her wondered when she picked the tick up. Or whether she’d always done it and simply never noticed, or didn't remember.

“Human’s form bonds by TALKING. And for your information, the AI ARE loyal. And they might not have blood, but they died with us in the war with the Covenant. They stayed behind on planets as they were glassed and organized evacuations until their circuits melted. And they went down with hundreds of our ships.”

He snorted. “AI cannot die. They are not alive. Humans are so soft and sentimental.”

“Humans were alone!,” she said with such venom that Voridus actually froze and stared at her.

“You have no idea,” she said in the same icy tone. A tone that she knew was disrespectful and dangerous to use on him. But she couldn’t stop it now. She fixed her eyes on him and felt her lips lift to match his snarl.

“You have no idea what it was like. Maybe the Jiralhanai and the Sangehli and the San’Shyuum all hated each other. But you HAD each other. We were ALONE when the Covenant showed up out of the blackness of space and tried to wipe us out. The AI were all we had. And they took care of us.”

She thought of Serina. The AI who put them all into Cryo, and then spent the next seven years keeping them safe. Until she had to erase herself. And AI went a little crazy at the end of their lifespan.

Did she know she was going crazy?

How could she? She had no one to talk to about it.

How terrible that must have been for her. The loneliness and boredom must have stretched on forever. And then she died alone.

There were thousands of AI that spent their last nanoseconds trying to save human lives. And the Antecedent Custodian spent a hundred-thousand years guarding this archive to give humans a chance to beat the Flood in the future.

“They did their duty,” she said. “Don’t the Banished respect that?”

He watched her for a moment. Perhaps he was shocked she dared take such a tone. But then he smiled and huffed approvingly.

“A fair point. Do not be alarmed. Your new little friend is not that damaged. Only disarmed and suspended. If he is wise, he will be less restrictive once he’s in my lab in a zero field. Or perhaps I can fit a Huragok vest on him. Now let’s go back and get those weapons. We will return to camp with many prizes.”

“What about the catalogue?” Diana asked.

Voridus glanced at the case. “I will give you space for one,” he said

“The one on the right,” she said. She wanted to know about the humans who beat the Flood.

Voridus loosed his gauntlet talons and swiped at the glass case, shattering it instantly. Diana had to shield herself from the exploding glass and LegBeg danced away.

“You carry it,” Voridus said. As the glass shards slid across the floor and crunched beneath his boots as he led the way out of the hall.

Chapter Text

They packed up the weapons in the cases they’d brought with them. Voridus selected several human guns and what looked like some kind of EMP grenades.

They left the poisons of the San’Shyuum but took the robot.

Then they took the hallway back to the surface. Everyone glanced around, waiting for an attack from sentinels, or flood, or some other threat.

There was an eerie feeling in the air and Diana honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the hallway collapsed behind them booby-trap style, like some legendary hidden tomb from one of Earth’s ancient films.

They made it to the exit in peace and it felt anticlimactic as they filed out on the cold tundra. The icy wind cut through her fatigues, but she only had to walk a few moments to the ramp of the Phantom. She and LegBeg secured the crates with the cargo netting. While Voridus had Michelangelo sealed the facility door.

When the boys got back to the phantom, Voridus stepped in front of her and nodded to Michelangelo.

“Time to give the gun back.”

She unbuckled the holster of the sidekick and handed it back to Michelangelo. He and Voridus took the seats in the cockpit. Diana ventured forward to brace herself between the pilot and copilot seat so she could see out the view port.

The Phantom came alive, and they rose in the air. They turned and she glimpsed the door to the archive, a small black rectangle in the sea of white ice. A tomb of secrets, trophies and regrets. Again she was reminded of Earth and its ancient tombs, which were said to be cursed. There was definitely a strangeness in the air and inside the phantom they were all silent as they rose in altitude and began flying across the tundra. The view port filled with the peaks of glaciers, silver lines against gray cloudy sky.

After a few moments, LegBeg broke the silence. She stood beside Diana. “Hell of a day, huh?” She said in her squeaky voice.

“Yeah,” Diana said and glanced over her shoulder at the case that held the catalogue.

LegBeg scratched under her mask strap. “I can’t lie. Out of all of it, I still think the weirdest thing is that you guys and the San’Shyuum used to be friends.”

“You really hate those guys, don’t you?” Diana said.

“They made us slaves. And when we tried to rebel, they glassed us, and made the ones on High Charity watch.”

“I’m sorry,” Diana said with surprise. “I didn’t know the covenant glassed you too.”

“Balaho didn’t get it nearly as bad as human planets did. Just enough for us to understand that they were strong, and we were weak. We’d do what they said or die. Of course, in the war, we did what they said and THEN died.”

She perked up and stood a little taller. “But now the San’Shyuum are on the fast track to extinction, and the grunts are moving up in the Universe! I’m gonna have my own battalion in the Banished someday.”

Diana noticed Voridus and Michelangelo give each other the side eye, but neither jumped in to crush LegBeg’s dreams. Diana didn’t think the other aliens thought enough of the grunts to put them in leadership positions.

But the universe got weirder every day, so who knew?

She leaned toward Voridus and changed the subject. “What are you gonna do with the monitor?”

“I would like to take him apart and examine him.” He glanced at her. “Don’t fret, I’m sure the Huragok can put him back together. I have a few schematics of their kind, but only enough to disarm him for storage. Forerunner AI are advanced enough to run entire halo rings. Imagine what else they could do?”

“I wonder how the Forerunner made them last so long,” Diana said. “One hundred-thousand years is a long time.”

“Beats the hell out of the seven-year lifespan of human AIs,” Michelangelo said.

“Yeah.”

“We may be able to reproduce some of the human energy weapons,” Voridus said thoughtfully. “Once I figure out what the energy produced is. They are not plasma based. Once I understand it and locate the materials required, we can produce weapons that don’t require ammunition.”

No ammunition meant no ammunition shortages. Which meant they could keep killing unimpeded in battle. Killing her crewmates.

The cockpit returned to silence as they sailed over the glaciers.

Diana’s mind drifted. She was still processing the fact that the four of them just uncovered one of the biggest secrets in the universe. That there was a way to beat the Flood and the humans of the past rivaled the Forerunners. Everything felt different.

And yet everything was the same. The Forerunners squashed the humans a millennium ago because they could. And the Covenant did the same thing to humanity and the Ungoy. The universe rolled on for a hundred thousand years, and the so called intelligent species were just as cruel and violent as ever.

And while she knew that the discovery of a cure for the flood was the best thing that could ever happen to humanity, the immediate impact was going to be deadly for her fellow soldiers on the Spirit of Fire. Voridus was smart. He’d figure out the guns and get them into production.

Michelangelo broke her line of thought

“You know I always thought the names the Forerunner gave things were melodramatic. Like the Silent Cartographer, The Solemn This, The Regretful That. Even when I knew all the things were built because the universe was about to be euthinized and I could understand they felt guilty. I had the feeling that there was this, false humility, in everything about them. I mean look at this place.”

He nodded to the Arc beneath them.

“The Forerunners made entire worlds and machines that lasted a hundred-thousand years. They were almost gods. And they had to know it. Especially with this Mantle thing. They knew they were impressive, ya know. And when you know how impressive you are, you can’t help take pride in your accomplishments."

“Hmph,” Voridus agreed.

“So all their sorrowful names just felt hollow,” Michelangelo said. “But now I get it. It wasn’t just that they lost to the Flood. It’s that they lost and the humans WON.”

“You think the hit to their ego was worse than the fact that they had to resort to exterminating the galaxy?” Diana asked doubtfully.

“It’s like losing a woman to another man, and knowing deep down he’s a better man than you are. It hurts,” Michelangelo said.

Another long silence followed. Eventually, Diana felt tired, and the others began to yawn and shift until they decided to rest. Voridus volunteered for the first flight shift. Michelangelo took Pavium’s cot, and she took Voridus’s again. LegBeg nestled in a ball next to the crates.

She drifted to sleep slowly.

When she opened her eyes, she sat on the floating dock facing the back of the house. Her legs hung over the side and the waves lapped gently at her knees as the dock swayed beneath her.

“Deep breath,” her mother instructed. It sounded like she was standing over her, but Diana didn’t look to see.

She obeyed, drawing a deep breath and filling her lungs. Then she pushed herself off the deck and let herself sink below the surface.

When she reached the sandy bottom she glanced up. The rectangle shadow of the dock floated above her, framed by the topaz water. Golden sunlight broke through the waves like cracks in glass.

Then the world turned upside down.

The floating dock was a black door in solid ice. Everything else was white or grey.

She took a step toward the door and it was gone.

She was standing on a stage in a theatre. Red velvet curtains were draped to either side of her. She wore her performance gown, a spaghetti strapped, curve hugging silver dress with three tiers of bouncy tassels. Some tassels had beaded crystals to make her sparkle. Her hair was swept back and held tight with a diamond crusted flower pin.

A bright, white light hovered in the air above her. Her first thought was that it was the monitor. But her eyes adjusted and she saw it was just a spotlight. The theatre seats before her were filled with people in black suites and evening gowns. Diana glanced to the side of the stage. Her mother stood in the shadows in the wings. She opened her mouth and mouthed the words. DEEP BREATHS.

Diana glanced back at the audience. The crowd was gone. Rows of empty red velvet seats stared back at her.

Then she was standing behind a grid of recruits in green fatigues. She looked down and saw that she wore the same uniform. They stood in a muddy field, a dark sky overhead. Icy rain fell on them. She shivered as the drill sergeant shouted at the front of the collum.

And then they were ordered to run. She fell in line with the others, pushing her body to run through the cold, slipping in the mud. Soon she was gasping to keep up. DEEP BREATHS.

She was running through the metal hallways of the Spirit of Fire. Alarms were blaring overhead along with orders from the captain, alerts from Serina, and instructions from various sergeants to their squads.

They were in contact over Harvest. Serina notified them that there was a fire in a nearby bay and Diana was pulled to assist the emergency response team to put it out. It was her first battle; her hear pounded in terror as she tried to stay calm. DEEP BREATHS.

She stood in her cryo pod. The silence felt heavy after the screaming alarms and thundering footfalls of the crew rushing to action. There had been many battles since the first. The ship was still; the last battle might be her very last.

The glass door slid shut before her and clicked as it locked. They were going to sleep. They were lost in unknown space and they might never be found. They might never wake up.

She’d recorded a message for her parents, but they had nowhere to send it.

Serina’s cool voice came on over the transmitter in the pod. “Mechanic Silver, your heart rate is elevated. Please try to calm down. The process will go smoother if your heart rate is below one hundred beats per minute."

“Sorry,” Diana said. She licked her lips and tried to relax against the cushions of the pod. Through the glass door, she saw lights going dark around the ship as non essential functions were shut down. She took a deep breath to calm herself.

“It will be just like going to sleep,” Serina said. And Diana knew she was monitoring and probably trying to reassure thousands of the other crewmembers at the same time.

She didn’t have to calm Diana down. She would be put in cryo sleep no matter what her heart rate was. There was no other option.

But it was nice of the AI to take the time.

“Thanks Serina,” Diana said. “If I don’t get to see you again, it’s been a pleasure to serve with you.”

“Likewise, Mechanic Silver. Now, the chamber will fill with gas-”

Diana could already smell it. It had an artificial lemon tang; she didn’t like it.

“-Take a deep breath.” Serina’s voice instructed.

Diana did. She drew the air in through her nose, filling every sector of her lungs and stretching her diaphragm. She pulled her shoulders back, just as her mother taught her.

She opened her eyes one last time. Fractals and fog crawled across the glass surface of the pod. The ship was almost completely dark and the lights in her pod and all the others dimmed.

Her eyelids were heavy. She let them fall. The darkness took her.

***

Several hours passed in silence as the Phantom glided over the icy tundra and glaciers. They’d just left the icy continent behind and were flying over gravelly fields when a soft thud from the back of the phantom tugged at Voridus’s senses.

He looked over his shoulder. The interior was dark with only the dim emergency lights on. But he could still make out the shapes of the crates and the others as they slept.

Diana sat on the edge of his cot. The sound he heard must have been her sitting up and putting her feet on the floor.

She was silent and still. He glanced back to the flight controls. They were alone in the sky as they had been for most of the journey here. The Arc was big, and neither the Banished nor the humans had a presence in this sector.

He glanced back at Diana and saw that she still had not moved. She only stared straight ahead, her back straight as could be. The gold flecks on her face were luminous in the dark. He glanced at his left hand. The tips of his two fingers were silver, but as the light faded in the sky overhead, he noticed that his paint also seemed to be luminous. It wasn’t glowing, but it was reflective, like animal eyes in light.

He heard a creak behind him and turned to see Diana stand. She froze again and stared ahead. Then she turned slowly toward him.

She faced him, but her eyes did not meet his as humans tended to do. And her face remained still. Human faces were extremely expressive and telling. Diana usually stared at him with thinly masked fear or anger, and lately, resigned annoyance as she settled into her servant role.

A human face without emotion was unnatural. And he realized she was sleepwalking again.

After a moment, she came forward and swung herself into the copilot seat next to him. The seat was fit for a male Jiralhanai and Diana was tiny in it. She looked blankly from the controls to the navigation screen, then back to him. Her head tilted, but her eyes did not focus.

He felt his skin prick and knew that if he hadn’t shaved, his fur would bristle. The humans had a word for the feeling. Creepy.

He thought about waking her, but his curiosity prevailed over his disquiet. He’d never heard of this human phenomena before and wanted to see what else she’d do. The ability to move while asleep was quite impressive and he didn’t think any of the other species could do it.

After staring for a few moments, she got up and went back to the cot. She climbed in and was still. Voridus glanced back seveal times to make sure she wasn’t getting up again. He shook himself to dispel the strange disturbance. He wondered if she was dreaming.

Chapter Text

Diana woke curled against the wall of the Phantom and snuggled in the alien fur.

Her body was tight, and she groaned as she stretched. She sat up slowly and arched her back this way and that. She must have been sleeping hard. She felt like Rip Van Wrinkle.

When she turned and swung her legs over the cot, she saw Michelangelo was now flying. Voridus sat at the fold-out table working on a datapad. LegBeg sat on the edge of one of the bunks watching one of her soap operas on her own pad. Her short legs were too short to reach the floor and she swung them back and forth happily.

Daylight poured in from the front view port. Diana stood and stretched her arms high overhead.

“How long have we been in air?” she asked no one in particular.

“Eighteen hours,” Voridus answered.

“So we’re almost back to camp-sweet-camp,” she said. Then she turned to Voridus. “Are you nervous about what your brother’s gonna say when we get back?”

“No. I will get a beating. But we are returning with prizes and the council will have no choice but to reward Pavium when he brings them what we have found.”

“Reward Pavium. You're gonna let your brother take all the credit for your work?”

“He is the chieftain. That is how it is done. But I will benefit as well. I have already been in contact to inform him of our return. He is angry for the defiance, but he can’t plan to punish me too severely because he already speaks of Colony’s work for me. While we were gone, they got two of the doors open in the new wing. The third remains locked, but they believe they know what’s in it. The rooms they opened appear to be control rooms for a portal. The third door is almost certainly a focusing chamber.”

“There are portals all over the Arc right?” Diana said. She'd heard as much from gossip in the camp and reports around the ship.

“Yes. But by the size of the network involved, this is for a portal that can transport across the galaxy. Like the one the UNSC used to come to the ark the first time, or the one I stabilized for the banished months ago,” Voridus said.

She stiffened. She’d forgotten about the portal and the shard and how Atriox was probably on his way back with reinforcements already. “Oh. I heard the earth portal shut down and our AI couldn’t tell us why.”

“That may be true, but the Banished made our own portal. We located a shard used by the former covenant and I got it to work for a short period. It is not stable. Perhaps this new chamber will improve its function.”

Near instant travel back to the Milky Way Galaxy for the Banished. That would be bad.

Various looked up at her and she saw his red eyes rake over her. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. Why?”

“You were sleep walking again.”

“Too bad I missed it” LegBeg said as she looked up. “I didn’t know humans could move around in their sleep. Thats kinda cool.”

“I never used to. It’s a side effect of cryo.” She yawned on cue and rubbed her eyes. Maybe the sleepwalking was doing a number on her body. She definitely didn't feel rested.

“I never heard of that before,” Michelangelo said from the front.

“Did I do anything weird?” she asked.

“No. You only stood for a few moments and then came and sat with me in the cockpit.”

“Maybe you just wanted an excuse to sit with Voridus, our big teddy bear,” Michelangelo said.

Voridus glanced over his shoulder and huffed at Michelangelo, who laughed softly at his own joke.

“I wonder...maybe I was looking for water,” Diana said thoughtfully. “I always end up wet when it happens.”

“Like the river?” Voridus asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you thirsty? You hardly touched your nipple rations,” LegBeg said with concern.

“No it's not that... I think I'm trying to find the Great Lake. I used to swim everyday.”

“I never learned to swim," LegBeg said. "Tanks too heavy.”

“Which Great Lake?” Michelangelo asked.

“Theres only one on Kholo,” she said.

“You're too young to be from Kholo,” he said.

She froze.

He was right. She was too young to be from Kholo.

“Superior,” she said. “I meant lake Superior.”

The cabin was silent. LegBeg and Voridus watched her. Michelangelo glanced over his shoulder.

Voridus stiffened and turned his eyes on her. Then he lay his datapad on the table and examined her.

“Where on earth were you from?”

She knew basic Earth geography. Once upon a time, anyway. But now her mind went blank.

Voridus stood slowly and took a step towards her. “What was the name of your home city?”

“Chicago.”

“That is not near Lake Superior.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I read," he growled. "And you lie. Where are you really from? Do not lie to me again."

“I’m from ear-”

He sprang forward and grabbed her in one hand. His fingers wrapped around her ribcage and his thumb pushed her chin up. He snarled.

“Whoa! Voridus, wait!” Michelangelo said, twisting in the seat at the front.

LegBeg set her tablet down and stood. But she could only watch silently as the massive Brute snarled.

“I said. Don’t. lie. To. Me. Where are you from?”

She pressed her lips tight. He lifted her off her feet and squeezed. She gasped.

“Diana, just tell him!” Michelangelo said.

The world slipped out in a sigh. “Kholo.”

“You can’t be from Kholo,” he growled. “It was glassed before you were born.”

Then his eyes lit up, and his jaw dropped slightly. He released her. She stumbled back and fell onto the bunk, gasping for air. It came in painful stabs.

“You were already IN cryo,” Voridus said in awe.

She hung her head and pressed a hand to her aching side. Her lungs stung as if she'd run ten miles..

“No way.” Michelangelo said. “That would put you on ice for thirty years.”

LegBeg and Voridus stared at her with wide eyes.

Voridus spoke in a calmer voice. “You said I had no idea what it was like, when the war began...I thought you were being dramatic, but you where speaking from experience.” He sounded amazed.

She felt her face twitch and looked away.

“Holy crap,” LegBeg said.

“What happened? Why did your crew have to go into cryo?” he asked.

She should lie. But it wouldn't do her any good.

“We followed a Covenant ship through a portal to unknown space. Then we lost our slip-space drive. We didn’t know where we were and had nowhere to send a message or get home. So we went to sleep and waited.”

“When did you wake up? How did you get to the Ark without a slip space drive?” Voridus pressed.

“About a year ago. And I don’t know. Our best bet is someone here opened a portal and pulled us through.”

“Hmm. There were human scientists on the Arc when we arrived. Perhaps some survived our attack long enough to detect your beacon and could operate their own portal device to bring you here.”

She kept her eyes down and felt tears wheel. Her ribs ached, but that wasn't the reason she wanted to cry. She just let slip a secret that they'd kept for a year. She didn't know if it would really change anything on the ground, but it might. She got too comfortable. She forgot they were enemies.

“The truth would have come out eventually,” Voridus said in an almost conciliatory voice.

“How old are you then?” LegBeg asked.

“I'm forty-nine,” she said weakly.

“Wow, that's ancient,” the little grunt said. “I’m eight.”

“So you guys woke up and dove right back into the fight,” said Michelangelo. “That's some hard core stuff.”

“True. Even Atriox was impressed with your pack’s tenacity,” Voridus said.

“Imagine how the Sangheli will feel when they find out the Enduring Conviction got beat by an old ship with no slip-space drive,” LegBeg said.

Was that false flattery? Were they trying to change the subject because they realized how big Diana's loss was? 'Hey sorry everyone one and everything you know ended, but at least you and your friends are good fighters!' Or were they brushing over the fact that Voridus was about to crush her to death and the other two could only watch.

“You wanna know something else?” Diana said and finally looked up. “Back when the war started, it was the first time we realized we weren't alone in the universe. We were so excited.”

Her voice became ragged as she tried to suppress her sobs.

“We were so excited to meet you.”

Various and LegBeg watched her for a moment as she tried to compose herself. But the pain in her chest blended with the ache of all her loss and burned up her throat in a sob. She curled up in a ball and whimpered.

Then aliens looked away.

The rest of the ride was silent.

Chapter Text

Voridus sat in the cockpit with Michelangelo.

LegBeg sat next to her on the bunk. Her stubby legs dangled over the side, but she refrained from swinging them this time. She occasionally glanced at Diana, but said nothing.

Diana stared from her feet to the wall and occasionally back to the cockpit.

They entered the camp air space without question and received permission to land. They settled back into the space they’d left a few days earlier.

“Pavium’s waiting for us,” Michelangelo said with a glance to the side of the view port.

“As I expected,” Voridus said. “Let me do the talking.”

“Oh trust me. I was gonna.”

The phantom landed with a gentle thud. Voridus heaved himself out of the cockpit and lumbered to the back area. He positioned himself in front of the doors and let out a long sigh. Then he bowed his head.

The doors lifted open, and the ramp dropped with a soft mechanical purr. Pavium stood just outside, glaring murderous daggers at his brother. He strode up the ramp in three steps and took hold of the front of Voridus’s suit and slammed him down the floor of the Phantom so hard that the bunk shuddered beneath Diana.

Pavium growled and lifted Voridus halfway up and slammed him back to the ground repeatedly.

“Why! DO. YOU. NEVER. LISTEN!” Pavium snarled.

Then he slapped Voridus across the face and Voridus yelped like a beaten dog. Diana saw three bloody lines on his cheek from Pavium’s claws.

Pavium raised his hand again, but stalled. Voridus remained on the ground, taking the beating as meekly as a brute could. Pavium growled through his teeth and with chest heaving, lowered his hand and wiped the blood on his brother’s face away. Then he slowly pushed himself up and backed away, shaking his head.

“I swear I should have killed you years ago.”

Voridus sat up, rubbing the back of his head. He smiled, showing all his sharp teeth. “Today you will be glad you did not. I have prizes brother, and information. Not just about the Ark and the Forerunners, but about the Spirit of Fire, too.”

He glanced at Diana, and for a moment a look of what could be pity crossed his face.

He looked at LegBeg and jerked his head to the door. “Take her and go somewhere. I will find you later.”

LegBeg slid off the bunk and took Diana by the hand. Diana allowed herself to be led out of the Phantom. Michelangelo joined them and LegBeg led her by the hand down the aisles.

“So, Cryo sleep means you were frozen right?” The grunt asked curiously.

“Pretty much.”

“I never understood how humans could stand that. Doesn’t it leave you really vulnerable? What if enemies boarded the ship while you were asleep? Think of all the things that could happen to you and you’d never even have a chance to defend yourself.”

“We usually do it in slip space, so boarding isn’t possible, as far as I know. But I guess you’re right. We were pretty vulnerable this time. We didn’t even have a smart AI after the first seven years. But were lost in unknown space and didn’t have any other options. Luckily nothing happened.”

“And then you guys went right back to fighting. I commend your adaptability,” Michelangelo said.

She shrugged. “Same shit, different decade.”

“Well, I’m glad nothing happened to you,” LegBeg said. “I like you Diana. I'm sorry your family and planet got blown up. But now you can stay with us. Hey! You’ve never met MyYap," she said. "How about I introduce you?”

“Sure,” she said numbly.

'Stay with us'...Part of her recognized they were being kind. But underneath the kindness was an assumption. The information she let slip gave them confidence that the Banished were going to win. And it would probably give the rest of the Banished a massive morale boost as well.

They moved through the camp until they came to the communications tower. There were tons of grunts milling about. This was a job left predominantly to them with a few sangheli and brutes as overseers.

The grunts looked mostly alike to her, but she was starting to see little differences in height, eye color and skin marks.

LegBeg led her through the crowd until a little grunt, even shorter than most of them, looked up and saw them. He set his data pad down and threw his arms up. “Babe! You’re back! I thought Pavium would kill you when you guys got back.”

MyYap had an extra nasally voice in real life and orange eyes. She wondered what it was about him that made the other grunt ladies jealous.

LegBeg waddled forward, and they embraced and gave each other mask kisses. Diana and Michelangelo exchanged glances and looked away.

“We got off easy. Voridus got a beating was all. I wanted you to meet Diana. She’s my best friend.”

She turned and waved her claw in front of Diana. who couldn’t help but smile weakly at the news that she was the best friend.

“Hi,” MyYap said. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for looking out for my girlfriend.”

“Your welcome. She looks out for me too.”

“Are you two a couple,” he asked, looking at Michelangelo.

“No.”

“To bad. It’d be nice to have some human babies around. They’re supper funny when they crawl. We could get a couple and have them race,” MyYap said.

She snorted a laugh despite herself. She could picture the nasally grunt narrating a baby race like a sport announcer.

“I hear you guys are thinking about starting a family.”

“Well, we are eight already. And you know,” he stuck a clawed thumb into his chest and tilted his head to the side. His nasal voice took on a smugish tone. “I’m doing pretty well in the ranks. Once we take control of the Ark once and for all, we might turn a section into a methane only sector. There are these biomes on the Ark, bubbles of different habitats. Theres got to be one with methane, and if not, we can make one and have our own little paradise. As long as we keep doing good work for the Banished.”

“That sounds nice,” Diana said. In reality, it sounded like a slave plantation. But it was probably the best they could hope for.

And what could she hope for? Now that the Banished would know they were alone, they were sure to change their tactics to take advantage of that.

“Have you guys eaten yet?” MyYap asked.

“Not yet. I’m starving now that you mention it,” LegBeg said.

“Come on. Some of my friends caught some fish and were making a stew back at the methane silo. They owe me so I can get you guys a bowl.”

“Great,” LegBeg said happily. MyYap took her claw and led the way. Diana and Michelangelo followed behind the little couple, who were practically skipping.

Chapter Text

Diana and Michelangelo followed the little grunt pair down the aisle. They were almost to the silo when a Jackal stepped in front of them. It was almost six feet tall and wore black leather looking pants and a vest.

“Out of the way, Bird Face!” MyYap said and he stepped in front of LegBeg and pulled his plasma pistol off his backpack.

It was a bold move. The grunt was less than half the Jackal’s size.

“Shut up grunt. Not here for you,” the Jackal said. He looked at Diana and waved her forward. “Woman. Shipmistress Kitalnai says you come. Owe favor. Borrow human.”

Oh shit.

The Jackal from the tower, when Voridus offered to loan Diana out in exchange for using the scanners in secret. It seemed so long ago.

She wondered if anyone got her message.

“What?” LegBeg said. “No way. Voridus told me to watch her.”

“Brute make deal with Mistress Kitalnai. Brute won’t like what happens if deal not honored,” the Jackal said in its strange voice, sounding to Diana like some kind of string instrument horribly out of tune.

“He’s right,” Diana said. “Voridus agreed to let them borrow me. I’ll just go.”

“No way, Jackals can’t be trusted,” LegBeg said.

“Its fine.” Diana walked around the grunts and stood beside the Jackal. “Lets go.”

The Jackal hissed at the Grunts, then turned on his taloned heel and led her away.

The Grunts and Michelangelo were silent behind her. She followed the Jackal down the aisles of the camp just as she had with the grunts.

She was happy to get away from LegBeg for a while. Even if the alien was being kind. Diana didn’t feel like she deserved kindness right now. She was stupid. She was weak. She failed her crewmembers. Maybe the Jackals would just kill her and she’d be at peace.

The path became familiar and soon they were on the path to the mountain tunnel where Colony worked. They approached the Jackal ships, still set in a ring like she remembered. Jackal guards were leaning on make shift fences of crates and tin sheets. They were talking in their language and paid no attention as the tall one led her into the grassy area in the center of the ships.

The Jackal led her to a black ship that had its door open and ramp down. He stopped at the ramp and called into the ship. “Mistress Kitalnai, I bring the human.”

The female Jackal with the tiered belt stepped out of the darkened corridor and looked down at them.

“Good. Come human. Favor owed. Favor payed.”

Diana took slow steps up the ramp.

What fresh hell….

The female Jackel led her down the halls of the ship.

All I do is follow aliens around lately.

“So, what can I do for you?” Diana asked.

“I have meeting with other ship mistresses. Big News.”

Diana could guess what the news was.

“I want you to watch my chicks while i’m gone.”

Diana stopped in her tracks.

“What?”

The Jackal turned around. “I used to have sister do it. But she and I fight, now she won’t. You watch chicks. Keep out of trouble.”

“You have a bunch of Jackals under your command. Why do you want a human to watch them?”

She waved a claw dismissively. “Most of those are males. They not good for watching chicks. Females better.”

“That’s sex-”

The Jackal leaned in and hissed in her face with her toothy beak.

“-totaly find.” Diana stammerd and changed her tune. “Thats totaly fine. I love…chicks.”

“Hmph,” the Jackal straigtend’d. “Good. Besides. I want them to practice English. You teach.”

She led Diana around the corner into a room with a small makeshift pen. Inside were layers of fabric and pillows and in the center was a bundel of chicks sleeping.

The Jackal leaned over and crooned and three little chick heads popped up and chirped at her. The Jackal spoke in her language and then switched to English.

“The human watch you while I’m gone. Be good. Dont bite.”

She turned to Diana and pointed. “Oldest one boy, Kyan, he four. Other two girls. Mina and Yol. They hatch same time, both two.”

The chicks were covered in soft fluffy white and brown down, except for bald pink spots on thier shoulders and around their eyes. They had black eyes and their beaks were pink and as long as her hand.

“Uh. Cute,” Diana said.

“I have meat in cold box there for when they hungry.” The Jackal pointed across the room to a refrigerator. “They eat, play. The girls are easy. The boy try to escape the yard. He the problem. Watch him close.”

She leaned in and nuzzled each chick with her beak and ran a long finger down their backs.

Then she straightened and turned back to Diana. “I be gone three hours. Should not be more.”

She walked out of the room, leaving her alone with the chicks. They stared at her with black eyes.

“Hiiii,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets and trying to smile at the creepy little alien babies.

The boy stood up. He was about as high as her knee and his beak barely met the edge of the pen.

“Play?,” the boy squawked.

“Uh. Sure. What do you guys want to play?”

Duck, Duck Goose?

“Play hunt bounty,” the boy said.

“You talk pretty good,” Diana said. “How do we play that?”

“You hide. I hunt.”

Hide and seek.

“Oh, I don’t think so. How about we go out in the grass and we can play tag?”

The girls stood and nodded eagerly. They apparently couldn’t speak English, but could understand.

The boy looked from the girls to Diana. “Okay, tag.”

***

She used a crate to scoop the chicks into and carried them out to the grassy area where she set it down and let them climb out on their own. The girls wobbled a little as they walked, but the boy was able to smoothly climb out and walk on his two legs.

The sun was high in the sky, it was a clear day. The grass was spring green. The camp was relatively quiet and peaceful, and the guards and other jackals around barely gave them a passing glance.

“I’ll count to ten. and then I’ll chase you. Okay?” she said. She wanted to give them a head start since they had tiny legs.

“Deal,” the boy said. The girls nodded.

She tipped the crate over and sat down. “One, two,-”

The chicks shot off away from her.

Shit.

They’re fast.

“three four five six seven eight nine ten!” She sprang off the crate and ran for the boy. He looked over his shoulder and squawked.

It took her five minutes running in circles to catch him. Then he returned to the crate and counted to ten and shot off after one of his sisters.

The game went on for the better part of an hour until the chicks started complaining of hunger. She scooped them up and took them back inside to their room. When she opened the refrigerator, she found a bowl of meat chunks and small animal livers. She felt her stomach turn at the stench. She took the bowl out and glanced around for a table. There wasn’t any.

“Do you guys eat out of the bowl or does your mom feed you?”

“You can put the bowl down. We eat,” the boy said.

She set it down, and they dove on it, shoving the bowl and each other across the floor. It was empty in five minutes and she could see their little bellies distend.

One of the girls looked from Diana to the nest and chirped.

“Naptime?” Diana asked.

The chick chirped again.

Diana picked them up one by one and set them back in the nest.

The girls nestled and settled down right away. The boy stood on the edge of the pen and looked up at her.

“You work with the brute scientist. The crazy one?”

“Yeah.” He must have heard the aliens talking about her.

“You’ve been in his lab? By the water?”

“Yeah.”

“He has treasures there, right?”

Every town has a crazy old man that the kids tell stories about. Apparently Voridus was that guy for the Banished. She smiled.

“It’s mostly junk.”

“Can we go look?”

“No, I don’t know the code to get in and he’d kill us if he caught us.”

“We be sneaky. He has vents that face the water. I can fit if you hold me up.”

“Have you been to the lab before?”

“I explore. The uncles say he has treasure there.”

“The uncles are wrong. All Voridus has is junk machine parts and fire hazards in his shed. Try to take a nap like your sisters, okay.”

He hoped along the edge. “Not sleepy. Sing song.”

“You want a song? That’s cute. Human kids like that, too.”

She didn’t really know any lullabies. Her mom sang opera to get her to sleep. Her dad liked all kinds of rock music and would sometimes sing folk rock song to her.

She knew one song that at least had a soothing melody. She remembered the tones echoing the garage as he worked under a car.

She stood up straight and cleared her throat. She hadn’t sung anything in a long time.

“Hello darkness, my old friend...”

Three sets of black eyes looked up at her. The girls shifted, and the boy sat down and stared at her.

“I’ve come to talk to you again…”

The words came smoothly.

“Because a vision softly creeping…” She reached into the pen and finger-walked along the chicks heads. They nuzzled her.

“Left its seeds while I was sleeping…”

After a few mometns, all of the chicks were nestled down and breathing deeply.

They were ugly little babies, but she did feel something pull at her nurturing instincts while looking down at them.

“Not bad, human,” a Jackal voice said behind her.

She jumped and turned. The tall male Jackal was watching her. “Human sing pretty.”

“Thanks. Back in the day, I did it professionally.”

“Simone and Garfunkel?” The Jackal asked.

“Yeah,” she said. Floored again by the aliens adoption of human culture.

“They asleep?”

“I think so.”

A thought occurred to her.

“Are you the father?”

“I think so. Ship mistress doesn’t tell.” He peered over the pen at the babies.

“Any news about the big meeting?” she asked with a lump in her throat.

“Not yet. They liked your singing a lot. I have a recorder. Come sing for it. I can play it for them. Otherwise Nat have to come drag human back to sing for chicks.”

She guessed Nat was his name.

“Ok.”

He led her down the hall to the communications room and pulled out a small recording device. There were other Jackals playing cards who glanced curiously but didn’t say anything. Nat set up the devise and pointed it at her face like a gun. “Ready.”

She sang the song again. By the third line, all of the Jackals were staring at her. When she finished she got a round of applause and whistles.

She gave a little bow. Nat started playing it back.

“I better get back to the chicks,” she said.

When she got to the room, she found only the girls curled up in the crate. She gasped and turned around the room. Then she turned and hurried out to the open door to the grassy area.

The yard was empty. The guards were still chatting by the entrance.

But she saw a gap in the makeshift fence near the ship where a tin sheet had been pulled out. And as she looked, she saw a fluffy little body dart from the other side of the fence across the aisle, so small and below eye level of the adult aliens that no one noticed him.

The boy was running in the direction of Voridus’s lab.

Chapter Text

Diana sprinted across the grass and lept over the makeshift fence. The guards squawked, almost like they were laughing at her. But they didn’t make any move to stop her or go after her. She doubted they even saw Kyan sneak out.

The ship mistress was right. These males are worthless.

She’d lost sight of the little chickenshit, but she knew where he was going. She full on ran down the mazelike aisles, brushing past aliens and dodging crates and small vehicles and machinery.

None of the aliens paid much attention to her, which struck her as just a little off. She was still wearing her green fatigues. Were they all so used to her by now that a uniformed member of the UNSC running through the camp didn’t raise any alarms?

And none of them noticed a freaking toddler running around alone?

But then, most of the Banished were males thinking of glory and conquest. No glory in chasing puny little humans or chicks.

She cleared the edge of the camp in minutes and was running toward the river. The lab stood out, a metal structure half obscured by brush. She finally slowed to a walk. Her side was burning. She wondered how much time had passed. It had to have been at least an hour and a half since Kitalnai left her with the chicks. That left her another hour to find the kid and get back to the ship.

She looked down at the dirt path that lead to the lab and immediately saw the tiny talon marks left by Kyan. But she also noticed some larger talon marks and small tire marks that looked fresh.

She guessed some of the male Jackals had come to the lab while she and Voridus were away. They must have come to break in and steal whatever looked valuable while Voridus was gone. That would explain where the kid got the idea from.

When she arrived at the lab, she saw some of the brush by the walls was cut away, revealing the vents the boy spoke of. But the lab was locked up tight. She doubted Voridus would make it easy for someone to break into it. And there were probably horrible booby traps for anyone who tried.

The little talon marks lead off into the brush.

She pushed the bushes aside and peered around for him. “Okay,” she said when she got her breath back. “I told you we wouldn’t be able to get in. Can we go back now? Your mother is very scarry.”

She didn’t see him anywhere.

“Kid, seriously, we should go. If Voridus finds you snooping around his lab, he will kill you. And your mom will kill me.”

Then a chattering sound caught her attention. She paused to listen. It was coming from the direction of the river.

She started walked toward the river. The land gently sloped down to meet the water and there was about two feet of muddy bank between the dry land and the water. There were no tracks in the mud, so she knew the chick hadn’t gone that far.

The chattering was getting louder; it was like bush branches rubbing together.

She looked down and around. “Where are you hiding?”

What would the mom do if she got home and found Diana and one of the chicks missing?

Then she spotted a bush that was shaking. It was low to the ground, with wide, heart-shaped leaves with veins that ran through them with a lacelike pattern. It was right at the edge of the bank.

She took slow steps toward the bush and knelt down beside it. She pushed the wide leaves aside.

The underside of the bush was spacious, the leaves acted like an umbrella. The boy was huddled near the main stalk, sitting on his butt and hugging his knees to his chest. He trembled, causing the surrounding branches to shake.

“Hey there, you little brat. What do you think you're doing? Trying to get us both killed?”

“Monster,” he whispered in a tiny voice.

She felt her heartstrings pull. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She’d scared him, and now she felt guilty.

“It’s alright. Let’s just get back before your mom gets home and no one will get into trouble.”

She reached into the bush to scoop him up, but he scooted away and huddled closer to the main stalk. He shook his head. “Hide,” he said.

“Honey, it’s okay. You’re not in trouble. Theres nobody he-”

There was a screech behind her.

She dropped the branch and turned to face the water. Her heart pounded in her chest.

What the fuck was that?

The river ran smooth. The surface was clear and reflected the trees and sky above. The trees and bushes loomed still around her.

A terrible feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. She wished like hell she had a gun.

Then the bushes on the other side of the river bank started shaking.

And a bird stepped out of them. It was shaped like an ostrich, but it was smaller, about a meter high, and not as bulky in the body. It had black eyes and a pinkish beak the length of her hand. Its head, neck, and body were covered in fine sleek feathers that caught the light and seemed to shift from dark blue to dark green as it moved. It stood on two skinny legs and swiveled its head from side to side to examine her as it made small chirping noises.

She burst into laughter. “Ha, hahaha. Oh, my god.”

After everything she’d been through, she was jumping at noises in the woods.

“It’s just a bird,” she said to the chick under the bush. “He might be a cousin of yours.”

She took a few steps forward. “Hi, pretty bird.”

The bird took a few steps as well, matching her pace. It stepped into the water and slowly crossed the shallow river.

“Oh, curious are you?” Diana walked to the very edge of the river bank and held her hand out.

The bird joined her and turned its head from side to side again, examining her and chirping. Now that he was closer, she could see that his feathers were like those of a peacock, each feather comprising a dozen narrow arms on a stalk, covered in the blue/green fuzz. They reminded her of the Lilly weeds in the Great lake.

She held her hand up, and after a moment of examining her, the bird pressed the crest of its head into her palm. She felt her heart melt. “Aww. Sweet bird.”

She stroked her hand down the bird’s long neck. Which caused it to chirp and dance from foot to foot. It pressed its body into her, pushing her back up the bank as it rubbed its neck against her trunk like a needy cat begging for pets. She giggled.

She looked over her shoulder and saw the heart-shaped leaves part just enough for Kyan to peer out at her. His little beak dropped open.

“It’s okay," she said. "He’s friendly.”

The chick hesitated a moment. Then he pushed the leaves aside and crawled out of the bush. He took slow steps forward, keeping his head low.

The bird stopped nudging her when it saw the chick and held his head up straight. It chirped at the baby chick.

She looked from the bird to the chick. Kyan’s knobby legs were shaking.

The bird went very still as it eyed him.

And then it dived.

“Whoa!” She grabbed the bird’s neck. “No! Bad bird!”

She pushed the bird away and stepped between it and the chick.

When she looked over her shoulder, she saw Kyan huddled on the ground, his head under his arms. His whole body was shaking.

The bird looked from her to the chick. Its head darting up and down and finally tilting like a confused dog.

It opened its beak and let out a long groan.

She could almost hear the question. “What do you mean, I can’t eat it?”

The bird took slow steps toward her and again rubbed its head against her body. “Ok. Nice bird. Nice.”

The bird slowly reached its long neck around her trunk and stretched its neck and open beak toward Kyan.

“NO.” She pushed the bird away with both hands. It stood up straight and stared at her with indignity.

She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Bad bird! GO! Get out of here!”

The bird chirped. Then turned and stalked back across the water. Turning once more to look back at her and the chick. She waved him on. It hung its head like a beaten dog and slunk into the bushes.

She sighed and noticed a reflection in the water of the river. She looked up and saw a sentinel hovering just above the treetops. Its eye lense was focused on her. She froze. She’d seen a few sentinels around the camp, but she’d never been this close to one. She knew what their lasers could do.

She held her breath. The sentinel watched her for a few seconds, then turned and flew over the trees in the direction the bird had gone. A moment later, she heard a PEW sound and saw a flash of blue light on the trunks of trees ahead.

She turned and scooped the trembling chick up in her arms and ran back down the path to the camp. He looked up at her with his big eyes. And then he nestled his head into her chest.

“How about we don’t tell your mom about this?” she said.

She felt him nod his head against her heart.

Chapter Text

Shipmistress Kitalnai returned from her meeting just as Diana was tucking the chick back into bed. As she drew her hand back the fuzzy mini Jackal grabbed her hand and nuzzled her palm. Then he looked up and chittered at his mother.

The Shipmistress joined Diana at the side of the pen and lovingly ran a talon over each chick.

She gave Diana an appraising look for a moment. Then squawked.

“It true? You on ice a long time?”

“It’s true,” Diana said, pulling her hand out of the pen.

Kyan waddled to his mother’s talon, still chattering in the bird language. But his mother wasn’t paying attention.

The Shipmistress shook her head. “If I wake from long sleep. And all my clan and Eayn gone. My rage would burn a thousand ships. You taking it well.”

She looked back down at her chicks and stroked Kyan’s face while making a soft whistle. Kyan went quiet and Diana surmised the whistle was the equivalent of the human SHHHH sound.

“I still had my crew,” Diana said somberly. “Every ship thinks so, but I really believe the Spirit has the best people. We still have each other. That keeps the rage at bay, I guess.”

“Humans good at making clans,” the Shipmistress said in a tone that sounded like it was meant as a compliment. Kyan started chirping again.

“What’s he saying?” Diana asked, thinking she should leave before the baby bird spilled the truth about their brief field trip.

“He says we should keep you. You keep monsters away. He must have had a nightmare while he was sleeping.”

“That happens to me all the time,” Diana said.

“Happens to everyone in war.”

“Hmph,” Diana responded, and nodded. “Guess so.” She signed. “If the favor is paid, then I should get back to the phantom.”

Kitalnai nodded. “Go on.”

Diana walked through the darkened halls of the ship and out onto the grass.

The guards again paid no attention as she left. She began down the path to the Phantom as the Banished meandered around her. No one looked at her twice.

She realized suddenly that she was unguarded. LegBeg and Michaelangelo weren’t there to watch her. And Voridus was with Pavium, presumably being welcomed back into good graces by the other brutes at the war council that kitalnail had gone to. He was probably getting fist bumps from all the other brutes right now for providing the new guns and intel on the Spirit.

None of the aliens cared to even look at her. She could run. She could run straight out of the camp. There had to be gaps in the patrols for the wild bird to get through, because the Banished would eat any animal they spotted. So if the bird got so close to the lab, then there must be an unguarded or under-patrolled area on the other side of the river.

Run for it.

She might never get another chance. She turned toward the river. Maybe the water would even throw off her scent, and that was important because she heard Brutes hunted by smell as much as with technology.

Run. Hide. Get away from the shielding and maybe the Spirit will pick up your IFF.

And the Banished might not even bother to look for her. She was one human prisoner. Voridus didn’t need her, especially now that they knew the Spirit’s secret.

She turned her feet toward the river. And then another thought crashed down on her.

The Flood cure. The Monitor. The Catalogue.

Voridus had them in the Phantom. She couldn’t leave the greatest secret humanity ever discovered with the Banished. If she managed to get out of the camp they’d never infiltrate it again and grab the Catalogue. And she couldn’t carry the bulky thing out of the camp in her hands.

She had to find out what the secret was. But she didn’t know how to work Forerunner tech, so what she really had to do, was get Voridus to find out what the secret was.

Which meant she had to stay. And she had to be the good little thrall.

She turned back down the path to the Phantom and walked the rest of the way. The ship sat quietly in its spot. The fire in front was out. She set some wood from a pile in the black pit and lit it. Then sat beside the growing flame and waited for Voridus to come back.

Chapter Text

Voridus was in good spirits.

It had been a few days since he returned from the Icy facility with the human weapons and revealed the secret of the Spirit of Fire to the others at the war council.

Most of the chieftains were still wary of him and only gave him nominal praise. Only Caius, an old Jiralhanai with patches of grey in his fur, fully welcomed Voridus back. He took the energy gun and admired it, saying, “I don’t care for much about the humans, but I do like their guns.”

Voridus actually liked a lot about humans. They had many fun games. Their books and comic books were entertaining, and their music had good rhythm, especially the pieces with drums. He liked his human companions in the Banished as well. Of course, he didn’t see them as equals, but that made them even better candidates for companions. They were no threat as far as status went. No human could ever usurp Pavium as chieftain.

The revelation he shared of the Spirit of Fire had mixed reactions. Most of the Banished flat out didn’t believe it at first. But as they inspected the captured equipment, they had of the Spirit and compared it to what they found on the humans when they arrived at the Arc; it became clear that the Spirit was working with outdated gear.

Overall, this was good news, because it proved the humans weren’t just running out of equipment, they had arrived unprepared to start with. It was just bad luck that they ended their icy nap at the Ark. As for how they arrived in the first place, no one could say. None of the Banished ships had opened a slip space portal at the time, so it must have been the survivors on the ark.

The revelation was also humbling. The Banished were fought to a stalemate by a crew that had been out of the game for three decades. They must have arrived with depleted personal as well and likely some severe physical complications relating to the long cryo sleep.

According to the human Banished, the longest amount of time humans stayed in Cryo was recorded at twelve years. There were likely more serious side effects than Diana’s sleep walking.

The council was deciding how to use this information in their attacks. Voridus wasn’t privy to that plan.

He was given freedom to reverse engineer the ancient human weapons. He believed he could replicate the energy gun, and had already found a habitat with the needed minerals on the Arc by combing through the list of biomes. He was waiting for the team sent to recover test materials so he could produce a model.

In the meantime, he went to work on the monitor. He could hold it in a stasis field and dissemble some parts. It kept trying to come back online, judging by the power reading devices in his lab. But whenever he detected power buildup in what must be the machine’s central processes, he zapped it again. He risked damaging it, but it didn’t matter. He mainly kept it to study the architecture of the machine. Perhaps one day, he’d make an AI for the Banished.

The catalogue Diana insisted on bringing remained locked in the case they’d packed it in. It was against the wall to the side of the lab. Voridus had not brought up the human’s Flood cure. He didn’t want to mention the flood and bring up his past mistake.

And he had little hope that it would work. In the Banished, if you promised something, you’d better be able to deliver.

Diana had asked him about working on the catalogue a few times since they returned. He’d put it off so far in favor of working on the guns. She’d slunk away and tinkered with some small task alongside the Ungoy.

Diana had been subdued since their return. She was quiet and seemed not entirely well. The gold flecks on her cheeks contrasted with her ever paler skin. The solar paint did not wash off. His finger tips and nails also remained silvery.

She had dark circles growing under her eyes, so she wasn’t sleeping. But he hadn’t noticed her sleepwalking since they returned.

He felt a bit of regret over the way he handled her in the ship when he realized she was lying. That was unusual. He rarely regretted hurting humans. But he’d grown attached to the small female. And he preferred her little rebellious quips to the pitiful, sullen silence that she carried with her now.

He went as far as offering her proper food for dinner the night before as a means of amends. The leg of a roasted animal caught that morning by a friendly pack and some root vegetables. But she declined and said the grunts gruel bag was enough.

He couldn’t begin production on the guns until the team came back with the test samples to prove he had the minerals needed to replicate the weapons.

He thought he might offer the human a boon and crack open the catalogue today. But Laif contacted him that morning with instructions to join Colony again in the tunnel under the mountain. They still could not get the third door open and if the chamber beyond was, as it appeared to be, a chamber which would allow them to open a portal home, then it took precedence over anything else.

So Voridus headed to the tunnel with Diana in tow. He sent the Ungoy on another task. He wanted to work with the human alone.

In the tunnel they found the Sangheli tech and the Huragogok working in one of the new opened rooms.

The Sangheli greeted him with a nod.

Voridus took a data pad and began studying everything the Sangheli and Colony had tried to get the last door open.

“Where’s the crystal you guys used last time?” Diana asked after the better part of an unsuccessful hour.

“It is stored in another camp. We do not have the means to operate it here. Or we didn’t know we did.”

“And the humans who were here before didn’t use a crystal to the Milky Way? But they had a portal, right?”

“Correct. That was powered from Earth’s end. I do not know how.”

“What will you do if you get the door open and can open a new portal?” she asked.

“Call for backup, of course.”

After a moment, she looked up at him. “Are you guys going to light the Halo rings?”

“We might light one, if someone provokes us. But the Halo is meant to fire all seven rings simultaneously. Right now they cannot. There was a, well, damage done to the ark. The array is broken. Colony is working on fixing it.”

“Would you? Would you light the entire array and burn it all to the ground?” she asked.

“No." He didn't even have to think about it. "As impressive as the Halo is, I consider it to be a cowardly resort. Besides, we don’t have the means to start over as the forerunners did. If we light the Halo, there is no coming back for any of us.”

Then the Sangheli let out a roar from the other room and they both walked out to see what was happening. The sangheli tech had his hands raised in triumph, he had cracked the code and at the end of the hall, the final door was opening, the two ends sliding into the wall, revealing, a long hallway, with thick green vines stuck to the walls, ceiling and floor, metal dividers ran close to the wall like pillars, and at the end of the hall was…

Another door.

“ARGH!” the Sangheli let his fists fall to his thighs and hund his head. Voridus chuckled and glanced at Diana, who smiled weakly.

The four of them ventured into the new section, stepping over the heavy vines. When they reached the new door, they saw that there were narrow openings on either side of it, lined up with the metal dividers that ran the length of the hall. The vines snaked through these openings, which were too slender for a Brute or Sangheli to fit through.

Voridus and the Sangheli both looked down at Diana.

She sighed and went to the side of the hall and squeezed in behind the metal divider and shimmed to the edge of the door. She leaned past it.

“I can’t see anything,” she said. “Give me a light.”

The Sangheli handed her a flashlight, and she shimmied back. “Whoa,” she said. Then she stepped into the dark and to the other side of the door.

And Voridus realized he was a complete fool for letting her go alone.

Chapter Text

Diana edged down the crevice between the hallway and the new door. She had to turn sideways to fit and squeezed and wiggled past the heavy, thick vines that clung to the metal surfaces all around her.

She didn’t have space to bend her arm and point ahead, so she was shuffling in the dark and trying not to trip on the vines at her feet while the flash light halo bounced uselessly up the wall.

Then, while she was focused on shuffling sideways, the toe of her foot dipped into open air and she felt herself lean into nothingness.

“WHOA!” She gripped a vine and jerked herself back. She peered down and barely made out a metal edge at her feet. She’d reached the inside of the room.

“Diana? What happened?” Voridus called from the hallway.

Then his gauntleted hand appeared, groping around for her at the hallway end. The metal dividers prevented him from leaning in. All he could do was slide his hand around like someone looking for their chatterbox when it fell under the car seat.

“I made it to the other side,” Diana said. And looked back across the room.

It was big, but she couldn’t see how big, because it was nearly pitch black. The only light filtered in from a small opening high above. The light fell on huge knobbed, bent tree branches that loomed ahead, reaching up from the ground floor, which was so far away she couldn’t see it.

“Do you see a panel for the door?” Voridus called.

She scooted slowly and carefully to the end of the crevice and felt around the edge of the wall she clung to. Her foot found enough space to swing around the corner and onto a small platform on the inside of the door. Now her arm was free, and she swung the flashlight around the room.

The space was huge and spherical. She still couldn’t see the ground, but she counted twelve main trees growing from below, their branches bent like weeping willows, all crowding and leaning on each other in the confined space. The heavy vines that had seeped out of the crevice into the hall were wrapped around the branches that brushed the walls, tying all the trees together.

In the center of the room, where the sunlight landed, the vines bore fruit. A squat yellow bulb, with star-shaped stem leaves, like tomatoes.

“Diana?” Voridus’s voice called again. It was dulled by the metal between them. She turned and swept the flashlight across the platform. There was no panel by the door, but there was a panel at the edge of the platform, facing the opening. Voridus had told her before about the forerunner using light bridges to get around their facilities. She guessed that was what this panel was for. But she saw nothing that looked like a door switch.

“No,” she called back.

And she had a feeling that even if there was a switch, it wouldn’t work. She looked around the room. Pitch black. The facility in the ice still had lights on, and that place was on power saving mode. This room was broken.

She looked at the massive trees again and guessed that their presence had something to do with taking the room offline. Maybe their roots grew into some forerunner power supply system the way trees sometimes disrupted water pipes in houses.

One branch grew close to the platform. It was as wide as she was. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled across it toward the center of the room where the sunlight was.

It took her a few moments. When she reached the main trunk of the tree, she pulled herself up, holding onto the vines. She looked up, through the branches to the hole in the ceiling that revealed a blue sky.

She doubted the Forerunners intended for some massive trees to grow in their portal facility. Maybe ten thousand years ago, a bird flew in through the hole in the ceiling and dropped a crap that had tree seeds in it. And then nature and time took over and the greenery spread, creeping over the space until they strangled the forerunner technology.

She felt herself smile. The portal wouldn’t work. It would take the Banished years to clear the space, figure out what needed to be fixed, and then fix it. At least she could cross the immediate Banished reinforcements off her list of things to worry about.

She plucked the yellow fruit and sniffed it. It smelled vaguely sweet. She took a bite and felt juice squirt in her mouth, so bitter it choked her. She spat it out. “Blegh!”

She held the fruit over the side of the branch and let it drop. It was swallowed by the darkness.

Well not a sweet victory. But still a victory.

She grabbed a few fruits and stuffed them in her pockets. Maybe LegBeg would like them.

She heard banging and shouts from the entrance. Voridus was calling her. She couldn’t hear the rest of what he was saying, but she heard her name clearly.

She looked around again, in no hurry to return to the brute. The purpose of the hole in the ceiling and the strange slit design by the door must have been for ventilation. Running a inter galactic portal probably produced a lot of heat.

She guessed there was also at least one other entrance, because where else would the light bridge go? Right now, the trees interrupted the bridge’s path. The branches were thick enough and grew close enough that she could probably climb/ crawl all the way across the room. IF that had slits on the side like the first one did, she might fit.

Maybe she’d find a way through the mountain on the other side. And the catalogue was narrow enough that she could carry it through the crevice…

She might have just found a way out. But she still needed the catalouge.

She crawled back across the branches and wedged herself back into the crevice. “I’m coming back out,” she called.

When she emerged on the other side of the hall, Voridus ushered her from the metal dividers.

“What did you find?”

“There’s a big room on the other side, like Hanger Bay, big. But nothing’s on. There are some trees in the middle of the room and I think their roots must have gotten into the power source for this section. The vines are spread out from the trees.” She gestured to the vines creeping down the hall.

“Hmph” Voridus said.

“If it is in such a state,” the sangheli said, “then it may not be functional.”

“It is still worth investigating,” Voridus said. “Colony can wiggle through the crevice and decide how to proceed. What’s in your pocket?” He pointed at her hip pocket, where the fruit bulged.

“Some of the vines had fruit. I didn’t like it. But I grabbed some for LegBeg to try.”

The grunt was always giving her nipple gruel. It seemed like she should give her something.

Voridus opened his palm expectantly, and she placed a fruit in it. He ate half of it in one bite and looked thoughtful before tossing the other half in his mouth.

“Tastes fine to me.”

“Really? I thought it was bitter. Maybe we have different taste buds.” She offered one to the Sangheli tech.

He waved a claw away. “No, thank you. Isn’t there a human fable about a woman offering cursed fruit from trees in sacred places?”

“This isn’t a “sacred place” sangheli,” Voridus said with half a smile.

“That was the garden of Eden,” Diana said. “It was a perfect, peaceful utopia. This place isn’t.”

The sangheli have half a shrug. “Still, I shall not tempt fate.”

“Very well. Come Diana” Voridus put his hand on her shoulder and turned her away from the door and steered her back down the hall. “You did well. As a reward, perhaps I’ll see if I can operate your Catalogue.”

Chapter Text

Arc Surface

1530

March-08-2559

Veta, Ash and Olivia had been probing the edges of the Banished camp for over ten days. They scouted the edges above the gorge to the east and the northern valley. A cloaking field was set up at along the walls of the gorge which rendered the camp impenetrable by the Spirit’s decades old equipment. They’d arrived with a mission to gather intel on the camp, hoping to rescue any of their people taken on the salvage mission that had gone bad. There was only one confirmed survivor, the mechanic Silver, but there could be more.

But once they arrived and discovered the scale of the camp and operations, a second mission directive was given. Figure out what the hell the Banished were doing here and why they devoted so much resources to the area. They quickly discovered the gorge wasn’t just a convenient place to hide. There were massive Forerunner structures under the mountains on the western side.

Since the Banished accepted humans, Ash could infiltrate the camp as a spy with some borrowed clothes from Banished prisoners. A few days into his spy role, he managed to lay eyes on the mechanic, who was always either close to a brute called Voridus or a grunt who worked for the brute. It appeared that Silver was being kept alive to do forced labor. So far, Ash hadn’t had an opportunity to rescue her.

Veta and Olivia continued to probe the edges of the camp in between Ash’s reports. They covered the northern half, which was mostly filed and thick forest that ended in a river just outside the camp. Banished patrols were heavy, and they had to withdraw a few times to avoid being caught.

The spirit did not have all the top-of-the-line toys that Veta had gotten used to. No ONI owls or prowlers. No mini AI chips. No knock out drugs. Barely any intel on her enemies. She was ashamed to admit how comfortable she’d gotten being on the side of the powerful.

She and Olivia had withdrawn several days earlier on a plain old Pelican and were dropped off a few kilometers on the western side of the gorge to approach the camp on foot. They were basically mountain climbing most of the way. The benefit of the rough terrain was that the Banished hadn’t bothered to set up any checkpoints up here and they could reach the edge of the gorge unmolested.

The last report from Ash indicated that the Brute Voridus, who was some kind of mad scientist, stole a Phantom and left the camp with the mechanic in tow. Oddly enough, Isabelle could not pick up the Mechanic’s IFF even when she was out of the range of the jamming devices in the camp. The brute must have his own jamming devices on the phantom. So they did not know where the brute went.

Since they last saw Ash, Veta and Livi made their own discovery atop the mountain. Livi was climbing over a boulder to reach a lookout point and slipped, sending some small rocks tumbling over the side. To her and Veta’s surprise, the smaller rocks went straight through the pointed peak of the section of the mountain below. She and Veta dropped a few more stones onto the rock and again, the smaller rocks disappeared.

Veta lowered a comm pad with a camera down the rock and it vanished. Into the stone. When she pulled the rope back up and checked the footage, it revealed a large dark room with strange trees growing in the middle of it.

One of the lower peaks was fake, holo-projected to camouflage the opening to the room.

They sent a message to the Spirit to report the discovery. They didn’t have the equipment to explore the room, but if they could get in, they might make an access point into the banished camp.

Veta sat in the camouflaged tent atop the gorge and watched a sentinel zoom by below. She’d seen a few of the Arc defenders throughout the mission, but none of them had shown hostility to her or the Banished. Ash reported that there had been an outbreak of the Flood recently and the Banished contained it. The sentinels were likely prowling for flood spores.

The idea of a Flood outbreak was even more terrifying than the prospect of the Halo firing and Veta found herself holding the handle of her gun without thinking about it more than ever.

She heard footsteps on stone and paused. Then there was a soft whistle. That was the call sign. She stood and stepped out of the tent. Ash stood a few feet away in his black and red banished outfit. He was growing a fuzzy beard, and his hair was tousled.

“Hey, mom.”

“Hey kid.”

Olivia climbed over a nearby boulder and joined them. They returned to the tent and sat cross-legged. as she sat just outside so that he could see if anyone came up to their position.

“What’s new?”

“It’s not good news. The brute came back with mechanic Silver. Aparantly they found some ancient site with some impressive energy weapons that their trying to replicate. And they know the secret about the Spirit’s thirty-year cryo. The mechanic must have given it away.”

“Damn,” Veta said. “Well, it’s surprising they kept it this long.” It was hard to know how the information leak would change things on the ground. But it certainly wouldn’t benefit the Spirit’s crew.

“Anything else?” Veta asked.

“Yeah. The banished ard digging under the mountain and they're really excited. They think there’s a portal facility down here that could be powerful enough to access the Milky Way. Like the one we came through, but more stable.”

“Huh. I wonder if a mountain sized room with a hole in the top would do the job,” Veta said.

“What?” Ash asked.

“The top of the mountain is fake,” Livi pointed to the nearby peak. “Its just a holo projection. The inside looks like it could be a portal facility. But it’s all overgrown with trees.”

“Huh,” Ash said.

“Have you laid eyes on any survivors besides the Mechanic?” veta asked.

“No. It sounds like she was the only one who survived the attack. And everyone was surprised she did. One brute swears he saw her get thrown like a rag doll by the explosion when they hit the convoy. But they like to embellish their stories a bit.”

The Banished were brutal. Brute explosives utilized heavy shrapnel. It was a miracle the mechanic survived.

“Any idea when, if you’ll have a chance to grab her?” Veta asked.

“It’s hard to say. The brute keeps her close. I’ve seen her alone only one time and I couldn’t get away from the group I was working with. But the brute has a lab away from the main camp by the river. He takes her to work there a lot. I’m going to try to catch her there.”

“Alright. We’ll pass the info on the room being a portal facility to the Spirit. Stay safe.”

They stood, and she hugged Ash, he hugged her weakly back. ”You too mom.”

In the past, she’d tried to keep her relationship at least presentably professional. But since they lost Mark, she did away with the pretense. She loved her ferrets, and they loved her. So now when they parted, they hugged.

Chapter Text

Dhas Bhasvod lacked the virtue of patience. He knew this back in the height of the Covenant’s power. But back then, he moved in the chambers of power, and those in power do not need patience. So he never worked on developing any.

Which was a terrible mistake.

Had he developed his patience, it might have made the endless cycles of waiting with nothing but the inferior servant species around him, somewhat more bearable.

When the Dreadnought crash landed on the Arc, the reliquary, the covenant computer system that identified Forerunner artifacts, lit up like a battle skyline with all the surrounding relics. In the quiet aftermath of Truth’s failure to light the ring, Dhas Bhasvod passed much of his time studying the artifacts flagged by the reliquary. One that stood out was a second Holy Light.

Dhas had known of the second Holy Light for many cycles. But he had no personnel with the skills to break the doors open and access it. And there was no imperative to try to reach it, because they had their own shard.

But then the shard was stolen by the disgusting Banished. He could see where they took the shard thanks to the reliquary. And however much he loathed to admit it, he did not have the strength to steal it back.

He had to resort to spy tactics. He’d sent some of his loyal Jiralhanai to infiltrate the Banished with success. He knew where the Covenants shard was being held, at a camp west of the Dreadnaught, and he knew the brutes had been toiling at the mountain facility near the second shard for months. Now he had reports that they were close to accessing the room that held the second Holy Light.

The crystal was not yet discovered. It appeared the Banished were hoping only to find a chamber to use the stolen crystal in and had no idea that there was a new crystal waiting for them. The Holy Light that the covenant used to get to the ark was only a shard, the one in the mountain might be a whole crystal. Dhas Bhasvod could only wonder what kind of power such an artifact could wield.

He could not take the chamber. But he could and he would retrieve one of the crystals.

As soon as the final door opened, he would make his move.

Patience. Not much longer now.

Chapter Text

The lab was dark. The machine that held the Monitor in stasis took a lot of power, and Voridus had to shut off most of the nonessential machines to conserve energy. The only light came from blinking power indicators, the glow of monitors, and a single light over Voridus’s work table. The Catalogue was sprawled across the table, its metal legs stretched out and its many lenses facing upward. It looked like a dead squid about to be cut open.

Voridus sat on a bench and bent over the table to work on the Catalogue. He turned it in his hands and ran his fingers along the edges and seams, apparently looking for an opening like he had in the facility beneath the ice. Two of his long nails glimmered silver, almost glowing in the dark room.

Diana stood beside him, watching him work. Now and then she caught ghostly glimpses of her gold flecks in the various dark monitors or reflective metals in the room. She was used to them by now and accepted that they would never wash off.

LegBeg sat to the side, watching a soap on her datapad. She’d met up with them on the way to the lab but lost interest in the catalogue after the first fifteen minutes of Voridus not being able to get it to work.

Diana had been hopeful when Voridus offered to work on the machine, but even she was getting restless.

“Can’t find the on switch?” she asked.

“No,” Voridus grunted. Frustration seeping into his voice. “The pad it is on is a power source, and I thought it would come online once it had some energy. Forerunner AI don’t usually have to be persuaded to work.”

Diana glanced at the force-field holding the Monitor in stasis. “Are you sure we can’t wake the Monitor up for just a moment and ask him how to turn on the Catalogue?”

“He would try to escape. Besides, he didn’t think we were the right “Social Caste” to access these secrets, remember?” Voridus said.

“What about a Huragok? They can work forerunner machines, right?”

“He would try to repair the monitor first. Just have some faith in my abilities,” Voridus said stiffly. “I have not yet met a forerunner machine that could keep its secrets from me.”

She sensed he agreed to work on the catalogue as a way of apology for crushing her days earlier. But now he was clearly determined to crack the thing open for his own pride.

LegBeg’s episode ended, and she powered off the data pad and wadded over to join them. She climbed on a box so she could see the catalogue laying on the table. She pointed at the machine’s rectangular body, full of mismatched lenses.

“It’s kind of like a camera, isn’t it?” she said. “Like the ones they use to film programs. You can see the camera sometimes when they have Behind the Scenes special episodes.”

“It does,” Diana said.

Testimony. The monitor said the catalogue collected testimonies.

Humans bond by talking.

“It’s a listening AI.” Diana realized. “It’s voice activated. We just need to figure out what to say to wake it up.”

“But no one knows how to speak Forerunner,” LegBeg said.

“But we know a few words.” Voridus said. “Halo, Reclaimer, Didact-”

The wheels that formed the lenses of the machine began to whine and whirl.

“Holy shit!” LegBeg blurted.

Voridus stood, sending his wheeled bench sliding across the floor behind him. “HA,” he grunted.

The catalogue's metal legs twitched. Then struggled to spread out and push itself to a standing position. It turned its body, pointing the lenses at each of them, and then around the room.

It settled its lenses on them again after scanning the room in silence for a few moments.

A voice emitted from the Catalogue. Diana couldn’t tell what part the sound came from. She couldn’t see anything that might be a speaker. She had no idea what it was saying.

“I guess that’s Forerunner,” Diana said. Apparently, the catalogue didn’t have the language decoding software the monitor had. “Now what?” she looked at Voridus with her heart sinking.

“I have a translation disk somewhere. It can translate all the languages spoken in the covenant and nine human languages. Between the Sangheli and the Prophets language there should be enough Forerunner references for the machine to work with.”

He rifled through the drawers, crates, and cabnets in the lab. The catalogue turned it’s. body to watch his progress, occasionally facing Diana and LegBeg. The thing was creepy, with its spindly legs and dozen black lenses like eyes, but it didn’t show any signs of aggression. It just waited patiently for them to make the first move.

Voridus finally came up with the disk and returned to the table. He plunked the disk down in front of the Cataloge and hit a button on the side.

“Greetings Forerunner construct. I am Voridus. I want to know all you can tell me about the human’s solution to the Flood.”

The catalogue looked down at the translation disk and back up at Voridus. Then one of the spindle legs stretched out and pulled the disk closer. It pressed the button on the side and spoke in the forerunner electronic voice again. This time, the disk translated to English, with a slight delay over the catalogue’s voice.

“I have nineteen thousand of your - hours- of recorded testimony and seven hundred thousand terabytes of data, including written testimony, battle reports, maps, ship logs, and personal letters relating to the human solution to the flood. Where would you like to start?”

Voridus, Diana and LegBeg were stunned silence. The only sound was the electric humming of the machines in the lab.

Where to start? Where to possibly start?

“The end,” Voridus said. “What was the last human stronghold on record? That’s our best hope of finding any remains of their weapons.”

“That would be Charam Hakor. The forerunner lay siege to the planet for fifty of your- years- before the planet fell. Upon the defeat of the humans, a beast was discovered in a time lock. This was a creature called the Primordial, who claimed to have information about the flood and also claimed that he gave the humans the means to defeat the flood seveal hundred years prior. But the primordial was a clever, evil creature, and most who spoke directly to it went insane, so it was locked away. It never revealed the human secret against the flood, and after many years recanted its original testimony and stated there was no weapon against the flood ever.”

“Why do you call it beast? What was the primordial?” Diana asked.

“It is not known. It was no creature existing in Forerunner knowledge. It appeared to be immortal, because it was locked away for decades with no food or water and it would not die.”

“And the humans had this beast imprisoned?” Voridus asked.

“Indeed. It may well be that the reason the humans fought so long on Charam Hakor was to prevent the beast’s escape.”

“Did the forerunner ever find out if the beast was lying about the flood being defeated?”

“Near the end of the war Life Workers conducted experiments on captured humans here on the Arc. Some of the humans were resistant to the flood infection process. These experiments went on for months before the Halo was fired. It is recorded that some humans could not be infected by Flood by any means.”

“You mean the Forerunners fed people to the flood to see if they were resistant?” Diana asked in horror.

“Yes. And a less than zero percent were indeed resistant to Flood infection. But the reason was not discovered.”

“Then it is a cure,” Voridus said. “An inoculation of some kind that prevents infection. Not a weapon. It will not suit anyone but human and perhaps San shyuum.”

“Come on, it’s still a start,” Diana said. “Even if it only works on humans, it’s better to have one species the Flood can’t take over.”

She looked at the catalogue. “I know the forerunner never found the cure, but did they have any hypothesis about where it came from?”

“The humans encountered the flood in a very different form than the forerunners did. In the beginning, the flood arrived in the galaxy as a silvery powder in small glass tubes on automated ships. The humans experiment with this power, eventually exposing their pets birds to it. The powder initially had an endearing effect on the animals, producing calm and tender behavior, and later causing fur to grow on the animals. After several years, the birds began sprouted tubular growths and became violent and erratic. The behaviour and tubular growth then jumped to humans and san shyuum who kept the animals as pets. However, some humans were infected for years, only showing moderate signs until suddenly becoming violent and cannibalistic. Because the humans carried the infection unnoticed for so long, they continued normal healthcare appointments, which meant the human empire had many samples of human infected DNA to work with, as well as the original flood powder. This was a resource the forerunners never had,because once the forerunner were infected, they became too dangerous to take samples from. With the original flood source and many human infected samples to experiment with, it is not unlikely the humans discovered a way to protect human DNA from Flood infection.”

“But they never shared this cure with the Forerunners,” LegBeg said.

“Why would they?” Voridus asked. “They were enemies.”

“This is true. But the humans may have tried to share information about the Flood or they may have held it as a bargain against the Forerunner onslaught. Much was lost in transport. Some of the testimony I collected also suggest that messages from humans were deleted by Forerunner officials to cover up the fact that the warnings the humans gave were true and unheeded. If the ecumiemn discovery that the forerunners were warned of the flood and ignored these warnings, it would have been the end of many political careers. In either case, it was never discovered. Some claimed the San’Shyuum had a safeguard of the flood cure and used this as a bargaining chip when they forerunner imposed their punishment on the Janjur Qom.”

“Do you have a map of human planets from those days?” Diana asked.

“Of course.”

Diana took LegBeg’s data pad and set it on the table. “Transfer it to this. And the San’shyuum planets too. Maybe well get lucky and find some that haven’t been glassed.” She looked at Voridus. “If the forerunners had secret vaults with artifacts, the humans probably did, too. We just have to hope something survived.”

“That’s a lot of “If” and “Hope”” Voridus said.

“Yeah, well, it’s gotten us this far,” Diana said.

Chapter Text

The sun was high overhead and shining on the water of the lake. It was so bright; it hurt to look at. The reflection of the light flooded the family room. The sun was too high and too directly overhead for the light to leave a pool, the way spotlights did on stage floors. But the yellowish tinge of the sandstone that made the fine house’s walls, ceiling, and floor held the brightness and warmth all the same. The only shadow to be seen in the room was in the dark look on her mother’s face.

“No,” her mother said. “You can not be serious.” She turned and shouted down the hall. “DAVID! GET IN HERE!”

The door at the end of the hall opened, and her father appeared from the garage. He wore an old grey T-shirt and jeans stained with oil and grime. He was working on some old vehicle. A dirt bike. A four wheeler. Or maybe even a riding lawnmower. He was always working on something. He had the music box on. He always had the music on when he worked. It was always some form of rock and roll from before humans left earth. He told her he liked the earth music the best. And he liked rock and roll because there was something about it that told the truth. Usually it was a painful truth, sometimes an arrogant truth, sometimes an ugly truth. But always the truth.

He left the door open behind him and the music from the garage followed him down the hall, echoing in the lakeside mansion’s unintended acoustics.

The artists were a group classified as Alternative Rock; a style from the twenty-first century when music had just begun to incorporate computer generated sound. The track had a quick beat but a mournful pronunciation in the lyrics and powerful instrumentals between the chorus.

"-I followed, So taken-"

She couldn’t remember the name of the band, even though they were a huge musical force in their day. They shared a name with a politician from earth once upon a time…

“What’s going on?” Her father asked when he reached her mother’s side.

Her mother wore white again. This time a sheath dress with a silver ring around her neck. Her long black hair was down for a change, hanging over her shoulders. She threw it back and then threw her hand in Diana’s direction.

“Your daughter had joined the UNSC. She wants to go fight the goddamn aliens.”

Her father’s face drained of color. His whole body twitched, and he shook his head.

“No. Diana, tell me you didn’t.”

"-Then sorrow, Then sickness-"

She tried to keep her face still. To her shame, she felt tears in her eyes. She knew her mother would call it a waste, but she thought at least her father might be proud.

“I did.” She said. “And I don’t know why you’re shocked. Was I supposed to sit around while our people are burned alive in the colonies?”

“You think you’re gonna be a hero?” her mother hissed.

"-So hollow, So vicious-"

“I don’t have to be a hero. I don’t even have to fight. I can work in support roles like mechanics.”

Her mother whipped around to face her father, and his eyes dropped to his feet. He taught her all about mechanics.

He took a deep breath and looked up. “Honey. You are not the kind of person for the military.”

“You are a singer!” her mother said. “A singer! Not a fighter! You’ve seen the aliens! They are monsters. They could tear your arms off and eat you like nothing!”

“It’s done,” Diana said. “I signed the papers. I’m going. Tomorrow actually.”

“Tomorrow!” her parents exclaimed together.

"-Test my will, Test my heart-"

“You can get out of it,” her mother said. “I can get you out of it. I know people. Ill make some calls.”

“No. Diana said. I’m going. Don’t you get it? I can’t stay here, at the lake, going swimming or singing for some rich, landed elites, while our people are being murdered, burned and eaten. People my age all over the galaxy are signing up to defend humanity. All of us! I can’t stay here. I can’t just wait for it to be over! I can’t just let someone else fight for our survival.”

Her father turned away and sank into the couch with his head in his hands. She saw tears fall in drops, one after the other, onto the floor. Her mother just stared at her, baring her teeth, anger burning in her eyes.

“You stupid girl. Foolish, spoiled, stupid girl.”

Her mother wiped her eyes.

“Go today then. Why wait? You want to throw your life away and everything we made for you? Go. Now.”

So she went. She left that hour and stayed in a hotel near the spaceport. Then she got on a ship and took a short slip space trip to a UNSC planet with a training base.

In the fourth week of Basic she had a message from her parents. But her hurt and her wounded pride hardened her heart. She deleted the message without opening it. Her parents sent her two more messages while she was in her training school. She didn’t open those either.

"-Been crossed and lost and told no-"

She understood that her parents were scared about her joining the military. But it wasn’t just that they were scared. It was that they didn’t believe in her. They thought she was too weak. Too delicate. Just a singer. Why couldn’t they be proud of her? Why couldn’t they call her brave instead of stupid?

Then she got posted to the Spirit. Captain Cutter and First Officer Hood shook her hand and thanked her for joining. They knew who she was. Hood had been to a few of her shows. They both said how it takes a special person to give up a life of luxury. How happy they were to have her aboard. How brave volunteers like her made them proud of humanity.

That was it. The crew was her family now. She didn’t think of her parents-

Until she had her first battle. Until the alarms screamed and orders were shouted and vehicles came in for repair, with pools of blood in the seats and burns melting the metal. Until she found other people’s family photos tapped on the dashboards of the warthogs and tanks she worked on, and knew the family would never see the driver again.

"-Deep Below. Each word gets lost in the echo-"

Then she forgot her pride and sent her parents a message, telling them she loved them, no matter what.

But you couldn’t send a message directly to human planets from ships. They had to be passed through secure sources to prevent the covenant from tracing the signal and discovering human worlds. It took time. Diana never knew if the message she sent made it. She went into cryo before she heard from her parents again.

She walked down the halls of the Spirit. It was dark. The non-essential systems were already powered down. She was headed for her cryo pod.

This time, she knew she was dreaming. Her crewmates were already in their pods. The icy film covering them in misty shrouds. Many were empty. Their losses were so great.

She reached the pod that would be hers. Empty. Waiting for her.

She didn’t care if she didn’t wake up. She wasn’t afraid of dieing. There was only one thing she prayed for as she took her seat and the door shut, sealing her in.

Please. Please let the message go through. Don’t let my parents think I died hating them. Please.

"-Each word gets lost in the echo-"

She woke with tears on her face. She drew shallow, shaky breaths. She stood in the Phantom. Daylight poured in the view port from the front.

She wiped the tears away.

“Diana?” She turned to see LegBeg watching her with concern. The little alien was standing right beside her and had a claw resting gently on her thigh.

“Hey,’ Diana said. “I guess I did it again.”

Voridus and the other brutes weren’t there. They must be at a meeting. She remembered staying up most of the night trying to make sense of the maps the catalogue had put on the data pad.

The catalogue was secured in the lab, with the same method Voridus used to lock down the Monitor. He had to barter with the jackals for another generator to supply the energy to keep both machines on a leash.

“Are you ok?” LegBeg asked. “You were crying?”

“Yeah, bad dream.”

“So that was the sleepwalking?”

“Yeah.” Diana sat on the bunk and took a deep breath.

“Wow. It sounded cool when you first told me about it, but It actually looks terrible.”

Diana took another deep breath and let it out in a slow breath that shook her ribcage before answering. “It doesn’t feel good either.”

“What were you dreaming of?”

“My mom. My parents.”

“Oh. And they died. That’s why you’re crying.”

“No. I mean yes. they died. But that's not the part that I'm crying about. Not really. We had a fight. Before I left. They didn’t want me to join the UNSC. We didn't talk for a long time."

Her voice got caught in her chest. She choked the words out.

"They tried to reconnect with me, before we went into cryo.... They tried.”

She felt herself sob.

“I was mad.... So I didn’t answer their letters.... And by the time I did... It was too late. They died, thinking I hated them.”

She dropped her head in her hands and the tears fell hot on her palms.

LegBeg patted her leg.

“Diana, everyone, fights with their parents. Everyone. Every race. It’s normal.”

“Why did I leave it like that?” Diana said. Not expecting the grunt to answer, because even Diana couldn’t answer. Her voice became frantic, and she croaked with emotion. “Why did I do that? I was just angry. I didn’t mean it. And I can’t take it back. I don’t care that the planet burned. I don’t care that I missed twenty-eight years. I just wish I hadn't left it like that. Mom. Dad, I love you.”

She doubled over, her head on her knees. She wrapped her arms over her head as if ducking for cover and sobbed.

And LegBeg wrapped her scaly arms around her and stroked her hair. The plastic tube of her mask nuzzling the back of Diana’s head. Little muffled sniffles telling Diana that the Ungoy was crying with her.

Chapter Text

When Diana was done crying, she and LegBeg walked to the mountain facility. LegBeg had been sent to get Diana because they opened the final door in the facility and Voridus wanted Diana’s help.

When they arrived, they found the door wasn’t really open, it simply had a big fat hole cut in it. Judging by the melted edges, it was done with some kind of industrial torch or laser.

“I guess you lost patience,” Diana said.

Voridus chuckled. “It was the Sangheli, actually.”

Diana looked at the tech, who shrugged. “In fact, it took great patience. The door is half a meter thick, and it took ten hours to cut through. It may not be the technical solution, but it worked. Besides, since you said there was no power in the room, I surmised it was safe to cut the way in. In most forerunner facilities, attempting to damage a door would trigger an alarm and assault by sentinels.”

He held the Huragok on a Bungie cord leash, which was tied at his wrist, making him look like he was carrying a pink balloon.

“Why’d you leash the Huragok?” LegBeg asked.

“To prevent him from floating out of reach and activating unknown systems. We don’t know what everything in the room is capable of.”

“It’s about time we find out,” Voridus said and ducked through the melted hole. He paused on the platform on the other side and lit a light on his power armor, illuminating the trees. He let out a satisfied growl.

Diana was wondering what that was about when the brute jumped from the platform into the trees and started climbing.

Oh, that’s right. They’re gorillas. This is just like home for him.

Voridus turned and waved her on.

“Come on. I know humans can climb almost as well as Jiralhanai.”

She looked from him to LegBeg and the Sangheli. With LegBeg’s tank and short arms and legs, she couldn’t jump or climb the branches. And the Sangheli’s backward bent knees probably hindered him too.

She crawled out onto the nearest branch and began climbing through the trees. Ahead of her, voridus would lean from branches and inspect the walls. So far they were all smooth, no alcoves for a command station and no panel for a light bridge to connect to the one at the door.

She held onto the heavy vines that connected the trees like rope on a suspension bridge and made her way across the room.

When Diana climbed through the trees to the middle of the room, she looked up. She was in the circle of light that came in from the hole in the ceiling, much like a spotlight. Voridus was staying on the edges of the trees, trying to examine the perimeter of the room.

Diana looked down, and something far below caught the light and glittered.

What was that?

She climbed down a few branches and leaned this way and that. Far below, the vines wrapped and twisted around the base of a tree trunk, and through the gaps in the vines, something shiny caught the light.

A crystal.

A big-ass crystal.

Her heart raced. Voridus said they used a crystal to open the portal to the MilkyWay galaxy. The Banished planned to bring that crystal here to use the facility, but now she saw that the room came with its own. What she took for a vine covered tree trunk must actually be the power station that activated the portal.

She tore her eyes away. The others hadn’t seen it yet. She had to pretend it wasn’t there.

She started climbing back up the branches to the level Voridus was jumping around on. He lept from one branch to another and leaned one hand on a branch above him and called down to her. “See anything yet?”

“No. Just the fruit,” she said in a shaky voice.

She plucked one and threw it to LegBeg. Then she picked two more and threw them to the Sangheli, who caught them deftly and offered one to the Huragok.

LegBeg lifted her mask and took a big bite of the fruit. She liked the ones Diana gave her earlier. The Sangheli and Huragok at theirs happily too, the Sangheli for now forgetting the story of temptation. Only Diana thought the fruit tasted like trash.

Voridus looked around the room with a grunt. “There must be-”

BAM!

An explosion echoed down the hallway. Then shouts. Then rapid fire of guns, plasma shots and spikers.

Diana hunkered on her branch and clung to the trunk of the tree. Voridus shot off across the branches, leaping across the space and landing on the platform in seconds. The sangheli and LegBeg took cover beside the melted edges of the door. Both drew plasma pistols. The Huragok bobbed on his leash above the Sangheli.

Voridus disappeared through the door, charging into the firefight.

Chapter Text

Explosions boomed from the valley below. Veta Lopis was in the base camp near the false mountain top. She was too far from the edge of the cliff to lay eyes on the valley floor. But she and the ferrets set up surveillance cameras at the edge of the cliff. She opened her data pad and pulled up the feed.

The screen revealed three columns of billowing black smoke rising from various locations in the Banished camp. It looked like they were coming from storage areas. And then there were shots raining down from ghosts. And plasma weapons exchanging fire.

Her comm buzzed. “Mom, are you seeing this?”

Livi was stationed a hundred meters away with a rifle scope on the camp. She would have a better direct view of the Banished camp than Veta did.

“Yeah. Must be a mutiny. With Atrox gone, one of the other brutes must be trying to seize power in the camp,” Veta replied.

“No mom, it’s the Prelate,” Livi said with venom in her voice.

“What? How do you know?”

“I saw him. He snuck up on a brute chieftain and killed him, then slipped behind a phantom.”

The Prelate was a San’shyuum supper soldier. He led a covenant remnant on the Arc and had months earlier attempted to activate the Halo. He’d also killed her son, Mark.

She searched her feed for any sign of the San’shyuum. They had a distinct shape, tall, thin, unlike any other covenant alien. But she couldn’t see him.

Why was he attacking the banished?

The camp was in disarray. Various sites were exploding without being hit by artillery. Sabotage. The prelate had brutes and jackals under his command. He must have sent some in undercover, just as she had with Ash. Now the Banished didn’t know who was friend and who was foe, and the result was chaos.

She switched through the camera feeds. One was setup inside the mountain facility, placed on the inside of the ceiling shortly after the ferrets discovered it. She went past it and then doubled back. The room wasn’t empty anymore. The first thing that caught her eye was a bright pink dot to the side of the room, which on closer inspection turned out to be a Hurogok tethered to a sangheli. There was also a grunt. The aliens were crouched beside the entrance to the room.

Then she saw movement on one of the tree branches. A tiny, pale figure cowering in the trees. It was the mechanic held prisoner.

The aliens were distracted, and the mechanic was alone. Now was her chance.

“Livi get back to base camp. We’re grabbing the prisoner.”

“Mom, I might get a shot at the prelate,” Livi said. And Veta understood. The Prelate killed Mark. They all wanted revenge. But the mission came first.

“It would give away our position and, with his armor, it might not even do anything. Get back to camp.”

“Copy,” Livi said. Ever the dutiful soilder.

Veta dug through the supply crate and came up with a repelling rope. The distance from the opening to the trees below wasn’t that far. She hoped she could grab the mechanic and have Livi pull them up silently without the aliens noticing.

A few moments later, Livi arrived. Veta strapped on a flight harness and hooked the end of the repelling rope to it. Then she tied the end to a post in the ground they’d nailed when they planted the surveillance camera and sat on the end of the hologram mountain tip.

It was a strange feeling walking through a hologram and realizing that your eyes were fooled completely. Solid rock became thin air, and she slipped through the deception and into the dark room below.

She was lowered slowly and quietly until she touched down on a branch a few feet behind the mechanic. The sounds of battle echoed through the halls under the mountain and captivated the aliens.

Veta crouched and called out in a whisper. “Mechanic silver.”

The girl jumped and turned. Thankfully, she didn’t make a sound. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open at the sight of the black clade ONI agent on the branch across from her. She looked up, following the rope up to the top of the room.

“Calvary’s here mechanic. Let’s go.” Veta waved for the girl to join her on the branch so she could hold her and Livi could draw them up. It would be easy for the Spartan to hoist two women through the air.

But the girl shook her head. Her hair was tied back with a rubber gasket, but Veta could still tell it was longer than regulation permitted. She was pale, her face was thin, and she’d acquired a sprinkle of gold dots across her cheeks. Her eyes were wide and panicked.

“I can’t,” she whispered and glanced back at the door.

“We have to. Now or never. Don’t be scared.”'

Veta hoped across the branches to get closer to the mechanic. She was almost in arm’s reach to grab the mechanic.

“I’m not scarred. I just can’t leave with-”

“HUMAN!”

The Sangheli had spotted Veta. the Ungoy turned as well.

Veta pulled her sidearm and pointed at the aliens.

“No!” Diana jumped forward, grabbing for the gun and knocked Veta over. Veta lost her balance and fell off the branch, her harness tightening and leaving her hanging in the air. The mechanic lost her balance too and fell. Beta fired toward the aliens as she dangled and heard the bullets hit metal amid alien shouts.

She looked down, where the mechanic landed. The girl only fell a few feet before catching another branch in the gut. She was drawing herself up now and looking up at Veta with wide, wild eyes.

“We have to go now!” Veta called.

“No!” the mechanic shouted. “I can’t. I have to-”

Plasma fire raked past Veta, and she fired her side arm again. A high pitched Ungoy voice shouted across the space.

“You heard her! She doesn’t want to go with you!”

The grunt fired multiple shots.

““Livi take me out,” Veta said into her helmet comm.

The rope drew upward. Veta laydown fire across the doorway and the aliens ducked back behind the other side. The Ungoy kept shouting.

“Thas right! Go! She’s with us now! We’re best friends! WE GO TO THE BATHROOM TOGETHER!”

Livi hoisted her out of the dark room and over the edge of the mountain. Plasma bolts continued to shoot through the holo projection tip, as if from the rock itself.

“What was that?” Livi asked wildly.

“She refused the extraction.”

“Was she too scared?”

“No. She didn’t look scared. She looked like a fanatic.” Veta recognized the look. She'd been undercover for two years with true believers of the Great Journey.

Veta stripped off the harness.

“We’re packing up camp and getting back to the Spirit. Mechanic Silver isn’t a prisoner anymore. She’s a traitor.”

Chapter Text

Voridus ran toward the sound of violence. The halls in the mountain facility were clear, and he passed Banished grouped in defensive positions behind crates and the small vehicles used to navigate the halls. He opened the comm in his gauntlet and called to his brother.

“Pavium! What’s happening out there?”

The call went unanswered.

Voridus kept running. He turned the corner and entered the main hallway and could see the half circle mouth of the facility and a limited view of the camp beyond.

There were pillars of black smoke billowing from multiple sites in the camp and purple and blue bolts of energy weapons flying this way and that across the aisles and between the buildings and parked ships. He heard the rapid-fire atta-tat-tat of human automatic weapons and boom of shotguns, but not as much as there should have been if the Spirit’s marines were attacking.

Colony stood on either side of the mouth of the cave in a defensive position.

He/ They turned as Voridus barreled toward him and their strange vibrating voice called out “WAIT!”

But Voridus wasn’t in the mood to follow Legoko’s orders. He charged out into the open space outside of the mountain and kept running. The sky overhead was curiously empty. It was unusual for the humans to attack a camp without air support. But perhaps the shielding and jamming devised by the Banished employed made them wary of sending their aircraft low to the ground as they would have to in the gorge.

He glanced at his comms on his gauntlet again. The message he’d sent to Pavium still had not been opened.

He looked up ahead. There was a pillar of smoke coming from a parked ship named Glorious Accent. The ship served as the meeting place for the chieftains. And Pavium had again been at a chieftain meeting that morning.

Voridus’s radio beeped, showing a message just as he reached the edges of the camp and ducked behind a transport cube for cover. He opened the message eagerly, but it wasn’t from his brother. It was a general message from the comms officer. A grunt’s high-pitched voice called through the speakers.

“Banished beware. we are under attack by covenant. They have a Prelate. Spies and sabotage are confirmed. Be on Alert!”

The Prelate. The covenant remnants. Voridus snarled. He’d encountered the Prelate months earlier when he and Pavium prevented the fanatic from lighting the Halo. He hadn’t expected that the smaller faction would attack the Banished. But he could guess what the prelate was looking for. The crystal used to open the portal to the milky way galaxy was stolen from the Prelate’s ship. The San’Shyuum obviously wanted it back.

But the crystal wasn’t held in this camp. So the Prelate would be disappointed.

Still, the report of traitors and spies was disturbing and was obviously sewing confusion in the attack.

An explosion rocked the air and shook the ground beneath him. He leaned around the edge of the container and saw the broken ends of a methane silo and dozens of small, Ungoy corpses who had been sleeping inside during the attack.

He leaned back and checked his comms again. Pavium still had not answered. He hit the call button again. “Pavium! What is your location?”

He waited a moment, watching the icon on the screen. The message remained unopened. Radio calls came through from other Banished.

“Hakor is a traitor,” a rage filled Jiralhanai voice called into the radio, “I saw him kill two pack brothers!”

“Warning to all! Shipmasters Kitalnai will shoot any who are not Jackal that enter the nesting perimeter!”

“The Prelate slayed Chieftan Cassius! Brutes of the Shadowed Deep now follow Argus!”

Cassius was a powerful chieftain. Almost as formidable as Pavium. Voridus flicked back to his unread messages to his brother. And his heart pounded in his chest. But for once it was not the thrill of battle moving his blood, but a nagging, creeping fear.

He peeked around the edge of the storage container and saw a mixed group of Jackals and humans firing from behind a cluster of ground vehicles. He smiled.

Humans proved useful once again. No warrior of the Prelate’s would fight beside a human. So where ever he saw humans, he could be sure to avoid being shot in the back.

He ran to join the human held position. Luckily, he was notorious enough that he could be recognized and no one would mistake him for a zealot, so he didn’t have to worry about being confused for a traitor.

He fired his mauler at any who sent shots his way and quickly reached the human/ jackal position.

He ducked down for cover. “Has anyone seen Pavium?!”

The group answered in a chorus of negatives. Voridus grunted and peered around for the next group with humans in it to advance too. He saw a position not far ahead. He would keep moving from human held defence position until he reached The Glorious Accent and found his brother or until Pavium radioed him.

He took off and nearly reached the next group when a Jiralhanai dropped on top of him from the roof of a building. The two brutes crashed to the ground, and the attacker used the hooked blade on the back of his Mauler to catch Voridus’s gauntlet and yank his arm away. Voridus didn’t recognize the Jiralhanai’s face, but obviously the attacker knew him and knew he had blades hidden in his gauntlet.

The brute latched onto Voridus’s right hand and held his wrist away and ducked forward, attempting to head-butt Voridus with his bladed helmet. Voridus was helmetless and as he jerked back, the blades on his foe’s helmet nicked his chin, slicing a line of fire from the lip down to the line of his jaw.

Voridus stepped back, braced his legs, and pushed against the brute that held his wrist and gauntlet. The two were locked in a battle of brute strength, and each tried to push the other and break free of the other’s grip.

The other brute snarled and gnashed his teeth. “Blasphemous Rutgba! You, your brother and your little human whore, all die today!”

A Rutgba was a shaggy, multi legged rodent that ate waste on Doisac. It wasn’t the first time Voridus had been called such.

Voridus smiled and pushed harder. He knew, from years of battle and brawling, that he wasn’t just smarter than other Brutes. He was stronger, too. He was faster. He was better.

And he was more vicious.

His left hand, which held his gauntlet blades, curved inward by an inch. With delight, he saw the other brute’s eyes fill with fear. Inch by inch, Voridus overpowered the other brute, bringing his arm in until he was at the right angle. The barrel of the mauler was still pointed away. Voridus rotated his wrist and released the blades. They sliced the flesh between the other brute’s armored forearm and his bare hands.

The brute howled and dropped his Mauler in his agony. Voridus lept forward, pushing the Brute to the ground. The Brute grabbed Voridus’s face, scratching him with long nails. Voridus slammed his bladed gauntlet up under the Jiralhanai’s chin. The blades pierced the underside of the jaw, through his mouth, and into his skull. He went still and Voridus could see the blades clearly inside the slack mouth.

He pulled it free. Stood and ran tot he next position.

The sounds of ground fire died down as Voridus moved closer to the ship. The enemy was retreating. The sound of fire moved away from the center of the camp. Voridus remained vigilant, but he was unimpeded in his last dash to the Assent, which he now saw had several explosions from within.

There were groups of Banished outside the ship, some standing, some sitting on crates. Many with wounds. There was a line of dead being carried down the ramps of the ship and deposited on the ground to be counted. Voridus scanned the line. There were a dozen Jiralhanai, including Cassius, the chieftain killed by the Prelate, but none matched the massive figure of Pavium.

Voridus recognized Thalazan by his long beard. He sat on a crate and cradled an arm with a tightly wrapped bandaged. His armor bore black scorch marks, indicating he’d been near one of the explosions. He would have been near Pavium.

He saw Voridus approach and stood.

“Where is Pavium?!” Voridus demanded.

“The Chieftain is with the wounded in the ship’s medical bay.”

“What happened?”

“Soon after the meeting began, the attack started. As we were on our way to respond, an explosion went off in the ship and the covenant spies turned on us. Pavium was hit with seveal spikers.”

Voridus tore down the hall to the healing bay. There was commotion as Sangheli and grunt medics tended their wounded. Voridus quickly found Pavium in a healing bed. His chest plate was removed and seveal patches were placed on his chest. Power armor could take a lot of damage, but if several spikers hit him and exploded, they would leave an opening for the next wave of spikers to pierce the flesh. The worst injury was near his heart, where the tip of a spiker no doubt penetrated and punctured his lung.

Voridus touched his brother’s forehead. “Pavium?”

Pavium’s eyes remained closed, but he shifted his head and let out a close lipped grunt.

Voridus felt a relief flood his body and his shoulders dropped unrealized tension.

He sighed in relief and smiled.

“Brother, I am here. Don’t die on me now. Think of the trouble I’ll get into without you around?”

Pavium’s eyes again remained closed, but he groaned and his forehead furrowed in familiar annoyance.

It was most reassuring.

Chapter Text

Voridus was called from the med bay to a meeting of the remaining leaders. With Pavium incapacitated, Voridus was the interim Chieftain of the Long Shields and required to represent the clan in war meetings. He ignored the summons until he was sure that Pavium was stable.

When he left him, Pavium was still too weak to speak. But he was breathing steadily, and his heart was strong. Voridus was sure he would recover. He was the Unbreakable.

The meeting took place in a building Voridus hadn’t been to before, a storage facility of little importance. It was barely more than a barn. Laif de Ernac and Colony were there, along with Jackal ship mistresses, and a half dozen Brute Chieftains and Sangheli Captains.

The meeting had been going for some time and the posturing was well underway by the time Voridus joined them.

“Traitors in our midst!” a Jiralhanai roared.

“Filth!” another Jiralhanai cried.

A grunt handed Laif a datapad, and the Sangheli interrupted the shouts to give the battle report.

“We have lost two chieftains and two sangheli captains. Casualties are still being counted. It appears the Prelate escaped. We have had reports that the camp at the Black Crater was also attacked by the Covenant. They lost the crystal.”

Voridus bristled. So the Prelate won his prize back after all. And with the loss of the crystal, all the labour and work they’d put into opening the facility in the mountain over the last few weeks was wasted.

Laif continued. “We also have reports of UNSC in the camp.”

“What?” a chorus of outrage rang out in the room.

“Attacking at the same time as the Prelate? They cannot be working together?” A Sangheli with greying scales and blue armor said. Voridus recognized him as the Blade Master who interrupted his fight with Laif a few weeks back.

“Surely not. Most likely, the humans have been watching the camp and only chose now to strike to take advantage of the chaos of the Prelate’s attack,” Laif replied.

“Then what was the UNSC doing in the camp? Who was their target? Or were they possibly after the Prelate?” another brute asked.

“No,” Laif said. “They attempted a rescue.“

Then he nodded to Voridus. “They tried to retrieve your pet mechanic.”

“Diana?” he said, stunned. “How? She was in the mountain facility.” He left her and the others behind when he rushed to battle. He thought they were safe there.

He felt cold suddenly. If the humans were caught trying to rescue Diana, then they would have been killed. Diana with them.

And that… that thought was surprisingly painful. Voridus regretted the loss of human companions before, but he never really mourned them. Losing Diana felt like losing a pack mate.

Laif tilted his head. “They dropped in through the ceiling and attempted to carry her off with a rope.” He scoffed.

Voridus grunted. The words caught in his chest. “Then…she…”

“She remains,” Colony said and turned his massive body toward Voridus. “Her choice. Stay.”

“She remains?” Voridus said, stunned.

“According to the tech and the Ungoy,” Laif said. “She refused the extraction and prevented the human soldier from firing on her little Ungoy friend.”

“Your pet is loyal,” the Sangheli blade master said and folded his arms across his chest. “Well done training her.”

Diana refused to be rescued. She wanted to stay with the Banished.

And why wouldn’t she?

He sniffed, and his lips curved in a grin with pride.

Diana was cleaver. She knew he was a genius. She’d seen him work. She knew he and the Banished were unstoppable. And if her planet and clan were destroyed, then she had no blood to return to or to betray. She had to know the Spirit was on borrowed time. They were one lone ship, cut off from a galaxy that didn’t even know they existed.

So she made a choice, a smart one.

Laif interrupted his thoughts. “We must attack the Prelate and win back the crystal.”

“The Prelate is nested in the Dreadnaught. It will take time to plan the attack carefully if we want to win.” The elder Blade Master said.

They began to hash out the plan to attack the Dreadnaught. Voridus hardly listened. He was assigned to hasten his efforts on reverse engineering the ancient human guns. The ones he’d brought back had been used to great effect in the Prelate’s attack and the other Chieftains wanted more.

After the plans were laid, Voridus left the meeting and walked to the mountain facility to pick up Diana. Thalazan joined him, cradling his injured arm across his chest.

Voridus had no love for Thalazan, but he was the only member of the pack left besides Pavium, so he didn’t protest when the long bearded brute fell in line beside and a few inches behind him.

“I hear the humans attempted to rescue your mechanic during the attack. And she refused to go,” Thalazan said.

Gossip moved fast in the camp, and never faster than after battle, when warriors were sharing stories of valor and bolstering their own legends.

“Apparently so,” Voridus grinned. He couldn’t help smiling. Diana choosing his side was a tiny victory in a day of bitter defeat and betrayal.

“That’s… strange,” Thalazan said in a careful voice. He knew Voridus didn’t like him and most of their interactions were strained since the incident with the Flood and Thalazan’s faint attempt to usurp authority from Pavium. But Voridus couldn’t afford to quarrel with the only upright pack member remaining to him.

“Is it? Maybe she just wants to be on the winning side.” Voridus chuckled.

“Voridus, I must tell you something. Pavium should have discussed it with you, but he found the mater distasteful.”

Voridus looked over his shoulder and saw Thalazan’s eyebrows scrunched together and a worried look drawing all his features down.

“What matter?” Voridus asked.

“There have been rumors about your relationship with the human.”

“What rumors?”

“She is female,” he said in a tone of exasperation. “What rumors do you think?”

Voridus stopped in his tracks and turned to face Thalazan, who at least had the dignity to look ashamed.

For a few seconds Voridus was too shocked to speak. They had reached the edge of the camp and only the empty field and dirt path to the mountain remained before them. Voridus glanced around to make sure no other aliens were near enough to listen to their conversation and spoke after a trio of grunts past them and moved far enough away that he was sure they couldn’t eavesdrop.

“Who is spreading such rumors? Who could believe such a thing?” He demanded. He’d been accused of many things in his life, but nothing as indecent as this.

“It started with the human males,” Thalazan said. “No doubt out of envy. There are several hundred human males in the camp and you have the only female. You know how they are.”

Both Voridus and Thalazan growled and looked away.

If there was one thing in the universe that no one wanted to talk about, it was human sexuality. Humans were uniquely obsessed with sex. Back when the war began, Ungoy were tasked with learning the humans languages. They did this by observing human media and quickly learned that almost any piece of media, whether it was an instructional video for cooking, or some advertisement, or even a weather report, had a high probability of ending in what humans called pornography.

For most species, copulation was straightforward, but humans could make anything a sex act and they could involve any part of their body. Voridus once made the mistake of loaning a data pad to a human clan member. When he got the pad back, it was loaded with files of a woman trying on different footwear and moaning. It was clearly meant to be erotic, but Voridus couldn’t, -and didn’t want to-, understand why. Thankfully, the man was killed not long after and he didn’t have to bear the discomfort of looking at him.

Human romance was so bizarre that there were even rumors that some of them had relationships with their AI constructs. No other species could ever be accused of having visceral feelings for a computer program. Only humans could become that desperate.

The Jiralhanai were not delicate about such things of course. They just weren’t consumed with them the way humans were. This was possibly because mating and child rearing were driven by the females of their species. On Doisac, males dominated nearly every section of society. But the females decided on mating.

If a female liked a male, she got him alone and released pheromones, a process referred to as “dosing” which let him know she was interested. Once exposed to the pheromones, only a male with an iron will could refuse the female’s offer. Without the female’s pheromones, it was almost impossible for the male to “get things started.”

Jiralhanai love stories usually included a male who could refuse a female offer even after being “dosed” because he was so loyal to his chosen mate. Jiralhanai comical stories usually included a male who was too dense to realize a female was trying to get him alone so she could dose him.

Voridus used to find those stories humorous until he realized no female ever tried to get him alone. So he was either the dense fool, or he was simply undesirable.

He could see why the men would gossip out of bitter frustration. And maybe the other former Covenant aliens would join in because they loved to repeat any slander against the brutes. But…

“Surely no Jiralhanai repeat such rumors?” he said. “Diana couldn’t have that kind of effect on me, even if she wanted to.”

Thalazan shifted and looked anywhere but into Voridus’s eyes.

“It may be difficult, but not impossible. It has happened before.”

“When?” Voridus asked, baffled. He’d never heard of any such scandal.

“You know the covenant avoided sending us against the human civilian worlds until the end of the war? They only sent us against military outposts. But they refused to send brutes to civilian centers until the military planet Reach was discovered. Do you know why?”

“No.” He had wondered. He’d studied some Covenant battles and thought surely the Jiralhanai could have been put to better use. “I assumed it was because the Sangheli wanted to deny us any chance at glory.”

“That was what Tartarus often said. But there is a rumor, and I believe it to be true. In the beginning of the war, right after Tartarus became chieftain, he led a force of Jiralhanai to attack a human city on a planet called Capella. The force included many young fighters entering their first battle. The city was unprepared and quickly overrun. But several dozen jiralhanai warriors disappeared on the battlefield and when they were found, they were with young human women.”

“You lie,” voridus said.

Thalazan shook his head and continued.

“It was a shock to the elder Jiralhanai commanders and a massive embarrassment to Tartarus, who had to explain to the Prophets why his devout warriors abandoned their posts to chase down females of a species that was supposed to be unclean. The only explanation was that the males, being young and inexperienced, somehow confused the scent of the humans with our own females. Except humans can’t control their pheromones as we can. The women were likely just in the fertile time of their cycle and the young males took their scent as an offer, which they could not refuse. The offending males were all executed. And to reduce any chance of the shameful incident happening again, the military age for Jiralhanai was raised from sixteen to twenty. And it was decided to keep us away from human civilians. All Jiralhanai clans involved in the battle that day were cycled into suicide attacks until all but one of them remained.”

“You mean Atriox?” Voridus could not contain his shock. "You’re saying the reason the Prophets sent his clan on suicide missions was because some of them tried to mate with humans?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Tartarous himself giving the orders to send them on suicide missions. Have you forgotten how the covenant spoke of humans? Unclean, Vermin, Bane of the Gods. How does a pious jiralhanai like Tartarus explain his clan brothers becoming besotted by such creatures? He had to erase every witness.”

Voridus suddenly remembered the brute who jumped on him in the Prelate’s attack.

“- your little human whore.”

He barely registered the insult at the time. The word “whore” was used against human females so often it barely held any weight. The human members of the Banished referred to any woman they disagreed with or disliked in the slightest as a “whore.”

But now he realized his attacker meant what he said, and the disgust he’d seen in the dead brutes’ eyes wasn’t because he saw Voridus as an apostate and blasphemer. It was because he thought Voridus was some perverted deviant.

Voridus shook his head. “But the humans send their women into battle. I’ve fought a few. I’ve never seen anyone become ‘besotted’ by them. I’ve certainly never seen a brute stop in the middle of a battle to try to-”

“I think the offending hormones are in their hair,” Thalazan interrupted. “And in battle, the females are ordered to keep their hair short or covered by helmets and those stupid caps they wear.”

“Hmmm,” Voridus considered the idea. Diana’s hair wasn’t covered. And it was getting long. If she released any tempting pheromones, he hadn’t noticed.

Then he remembered Diana telling him humans took drugs to dull their reproductive cycle. Maybe that prevented them from having any effect on the males they were around, brutes included.

He wondered how long those drugs lasted. Diana was in cryo for twenty-eight years. When was her last effective dose? What if the drugs wore off, and he suddenly was besotted by her? He was no green youth like the Brutes in Thalazan’s story. He was sure he could control himself. But it would make her a distraction.

And the rumors might hurt the clan’s chance of alliances when they were needed.

Maybe Thalazan’s concern was justified.

But what could he do about it now? Diana would be considered a traitor to the UNSC. She could not go back to the Spirit of Fire. And he wouldn’t hand her over to the mercy of the human males in the Banished. He didn’t want to think of what they might do to her.

Diana had shown loyalty and proved useful. There was only one thing he could do.

“If anyone wants to repeat rumors, so be it.” Voridus said. “I’ve had worse things said about me. But you’ve raised a fair point about the danger posed by the bitter human males. They need to know they can’t touch Diana. We have to make it clear she is under our protection.”

Thalazan’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

“I can,” Voridus said. “As the acting Chieftain, I can initiate anyone into the clan.”

Chapter Text

It was nighttime; the camp was well lit by industrial lights and the electric glow of docked ships. They were on high alert following the attack and sabotage they’d been delt by the remaining Covenant aliens.

There was a fire in front of the home Phantom. It was the usual fire pit that the brutes cooked with. But tonight it burned brighter, bigger than usual. On either side of the fire were spears with red flags with white symbols on them. One flag had the symbol for the Banished. The other had the symbol for Voridus and Pavium’s clan, the Long Shields.

Voridus stood on the far side of the fire. Thalazan stood to the side of Voridus with his shoulders hunched down, partially because his arm was injured, partially because he disagreed with the ceremony. LegBeg and MyYap were on the other side of Voridus, holding hands and practically bouncing with excitement.

Michelangelo and a few other humans in the red and black Banished uniforms were gathered near the fire, just behind the grunts. The Jackal ship mistress Kitalnai was there with two male attendants. They looked around with keen interest and chittered noisily in jackal speech. The firelight glinted off Kitalnai's gemstone belt. The Sangheli tech who worked with them was there, too. He chatted with a sandy blond-bearded young man who stood beside Michelangelo. Behind them all stood the bond brothers Colony, standing quietly, the most polite guests of the bunch.

They were all invited to be witnesses.

Diana lingered just inside the Phantom and looked over the small assembly in a dull stupor.

How did this become her life?

Voridus raised his hand, and the group fell silent. He began a speech and looked like he enjoyed the attention.

“The Pack is the basic unit of the Jiralhanai, just as much as blood families,” he said. “Nothing of importance is accomplished without the unity of a pack. We only achieve glory with the sacrifice, cooperation, and loyalty of our brothers... and sisters. The pack of the Long Shields has always been strong. And today we grow stronger. Today, I welcome Diana Silver of Kholo, to join the pack of the Long Shields."

He held out his hand and waved Diana forward. The metallic silver on his nails and fingertips flashed as he moved. The firelight glinted in his red armor and threw the burned side of his face in shadow. He had a fresh, barely scabbed over scar down the middle of his chin from the day’s battle.

Diana took a deep breath, just like she always did before a show or a plunge into deep water. And took slow steps down the ramp. She held her head high. All the eyes in the group were on her. Human eyes, gold eyes, red eyes, beady little black alien eyes. All burning into her.

It was too bizarre. It didn’t feel real. It felt like someone else was moving her feet across the metal ramp and around the fire to stand before Voridus. Diana heard of shell shock. She might have even experienced it before. This was similar.

She’d been too shocked when the human woman appeared in the portal room. She didn’t have time to tell the woman that the Banished had the Flood cure in their hands. She couldn’t tell the woman not to shoot at LegBeg because the little grunt was her friend. She couldn’t explain everything that had happened in the last few weeks in the fleeting seconds between exchanging gunfire.

She couldn’t explain herself. And she couldn’t leave the Flood cure behind.

So they left her behind.

Her only chance to escape, gone.

And she let it go. How could she do that?

Her brain was scrambled by the time Voridus made it back to them after the battle. She sat on the floor of the tunnel in the mountain and played the events back in her mind. She had a chance to escape, and she let it go.

How could she do that? What possessed her?

And when Voridus returned to them, LegBeg immediately and proudly proclaimed that ‘Diana took their side’.

Voridus had already heard about it. Apparently, it was spreading through the camp that she rejected a rescue.

The aliens thought she wanted to stay with the Banished. They thought she was a traitor. And Voridus wanted to make it official. He would make her a member of the pack. She wouldn’t be a prisoner anymore. She would have more freedom and respect and was less likely to be murdered the next time she insulted one of the aliens.

She just had to swear loyalty to Voridus and Pavium and the Banished.

What else could she do but agree?

So they were having a nice little ceremony to officially declare Diana a traitor to humanity and a loyal servant to the Banished.

She stood in front of Voridus. He reached out and touched her chest, his silver nails pressing gently into her flesh, just above her heart. His red eyes peered down into hers.

“Diana Silver, I Voridus, second in command of the clan of the Long Shields, invite you to join the pack. Your hunger is my hunger. Your enemy is my enemy. Your blood is my blood. Swear to me your loyalty and service, and I swear to you victory and bounty.”

The fire was hot beside her. The sky was black above. The air was filled the close pressing scent of aliens and spent fuel. Voridus’s eyes were intense, piercing her soul. The pressure of his nails was almost enough to pierce the fabric of her ragged fatigues.

It was all so much more intense and intimate than the oath she took when she joined the UNSC ages ago. For that, she stood in a clinically clean hall, standing in formation with hundreds of other volunteers who spoke in one voice as they recited the oath to an officer who stood so far away, he had to be projected on screens for the whole crowd to see his face.

She recalled the words of the oath, as her voice was lost in the chorus of a hundred others.

‘I, being of legal age, of my own free will without coercion, promises, or inducement of any kind, after having been duly advised and warned of the consequences of this oath, swear to uphold the institutions of the Unified Earth Government against all enemies, foreign and domestic; to protect and defend Earth and her colonies; to obey lawful orders of the High Command of the United Nations Space Command, I hereby accept responsibility for the defense of humanity. So help me God.’

What did the UNSC do to traitors?

She licked her lips and drew a deep breath.

“I accept my place in the pack, and swear allegiance and service to the Long Shields and the Banished. Your hunger is my hunger, your enemy is my enemy, your blood is my blood.”

Voridus slowly drew his hand back and touched his two fingers to his own chest and then his brow. “Be welcome.” he looked like he was about to say something else, but he stopped. He then produced a small red flag from a compartment in his armor. It had the Long Shied’s symbol on it, he presented it to her. She took it in her hands.

What the hell was she supposed to do with it?

Apparently, it wasn’t important. Voridus turned to the aliens, watching. “Let it be known that the human Diana Silver belongs to the Long Shields and any harm or insult done to her will be taken as an insult to the pack. Now, to celebrate our pack’s growth, let us have a drink!”

There was cheer from the aliens and Michelangelo and his bearded friend opened a case and started handing out various drinks suitable for the alien appetites.

As the aliens clinked their glasses and drank, Diana stood awkwardly with the red flag limp in her hands. Eventually, she tied it around her waist like a sarong while Voridus spoke to her in a lower voice.

“It is customary to have a feast in Pack initiations. But it would be unseemly to do do so with the Chieftain in a sickbed. When Pavium is well enough to join us, I promise you will have a proper feast.”

“Can’t wait,” she said dully. She didn’t know if she could stomach a feast. All she’d eaten for the last few weeks was the grunt gruel, and her stomach turned at the idea of solid food. But the humans of the Banished managed to brew beer and an old viking-style drinking horn was pressed into her hand by Michelangelo. It tasted awful, but she felt a buzz as soon as she swallowed and she welcomed the possibility of getting blacked out drunk.

After the battle, she'd joined Voridus on a survey of the damage to the camp. They discovered his lab was hit, probably by the sabotage of the Prelate’s spies. It was a smoking pile of black melted metal. If Diana hadn’t already been in shock, she might have lost her mind right then. Instead, she looked upon the wreak of the lab with dull, tired, resigned despair.

They combed the still hot embers and melted fragments, but all she found of the Catalogue was one spindly metal leg. They couldn’t find any remains of the Monitor, but Voridus surmised that he might have escaped instead of being destroyed. If the stasis field that imprisoned the monitor failed, the machine might have broken free before the lab was destroyed.

She’d sacrificed her life as she knew it for the chance to find the human cure for the Flood, only to discover that the machines that held it were destroyed. The data pad that had the old maps downloaded was safe in the phantom during the attack. That was all that remained of the ancient history.

She clung faintly to the possibility of finding more information in the Archive, but she didn’t know when they’d get back to that facility or if they’d live long enough to make the trip. Attacking the Prelate was all the Banished cared about now and she’d have to survive those plans before moving on with any of her own.

It was too much. She just couldn’t think about it right now. She was so tired of trying. So tired of sorrow. So tired of hope. So tired of choices. Tired and angry and tired of being angry.

She was a singer. A solider. A prisoner. A traitor. She was too many things and her mind swam in confusion.

She tipped the drinking horn back and prayed for oblivion.

Let me forget.
Let me let go.
Let me sleep.

Chapter Text

The days after Diana’s initiation passed in a haze. She slept, she ate gruel, she went to work wherever she was told to. She walked beside LegBeg while she chatted happily about her boyfriend and their collective upward career trajectory.

She helped Voridus scavenge what he could from the crater of his old lab. He claimed a shed closer to the main camp for his new lab and they moved the useable equipment there.

The facility room they worked so hard to open was abandoned. The Banished no longer had the crystal to operate it.

All of Voridus’s energy was directed into manufacturing the new guns. He couldn’t replicate them completely, but he came up with a knockoff and quickly set up a manufacturing sweatshop filled with grunts.

The atmosphere in the camp was more tense than it had been. The aliens were all super touchy and paranoid because of the revelation that many of them had befriended Covenant spies.

Old blood feuds reemerged as well. A few Brutes killed some other Brutes and Elites with claims that they were traitors, but their friends and pack mates claimed the killers only took advantage of the chaos to kill for old insults or grievances. The camp leaders had their hands full trying to keep clan warfare from breaking out.

For once, the humans had it the easiest, because apparently the Prelate still hated humanity and that meant they were the only ones who couldn’t be spies.

The Long Shields were benefiting from all this turbulence. The clan was too small to have a traitor in their midst. And now other clans were trying to make alliances with them against old rivals. At least that’s what Thalazan said in the morning when they sat around the fire.

Diana had to come out and sit with them for the morning meetings now. She used to get to sleep in or just hang out alone in the phantom while the brutes talked shop at breakfast. But now she was a clan member. She had to hear the reports and plans.

With Pavium still healing and unable to speak, Voridus was the temporary Chieftain. So he had to sit and listen to Thalazan report on all the clans that wanted to be super-best-friends with them suddenly. Or he was supposed to listen. She was pretty sure he paid as much attention as she did. Pavium was clearly the strategy/ Statesman of the two brothers.

Voridus was the mad scientist, let’s-see-what-this-red-button-does, kind of guy. And Diana could tell that he struggled to give a damn about the alliances Thalazan spoke of.

The sun was barely in the sky. The night had been cold and this morning there was a frosty sheen on the metal of the storage containers and vehicles nearby. If there was any grass in the area, she could almost imagine the scent of morning dew. But there was no grass in the immediate area. The ground was all turned up from machinery and heavy footsteps. So she smelled cold dirt.

Diana wrapped her Long Shields flag around her shoulders like a shawl and scooted to the edge of her seat to get closer to the warmth of the morning fire. The fallen logs the brutes used as benches were set around the fire with brute body mechanics in mind, so she was still almost two meters away from the flames. The log was too heavy for her to move closer to the fire. She balanced on the edge and stretched her legs out as far as she could so she could at least warm her feet.

Thalazan and Voridus prepared breakfast, which was the roasted meat of a creature that resembled a kangaroo, along with a pot of broth with animal fat and spices. Thalazan pulled the creature off the spit over the fire and inspected it.

“I believe it is ready, Chieftain.”

He handed it to Voridus, who sniffed it and nodded. He looked at Diana. “Perhaps you can stomach a small bite?”

He tried to feed her meat ever since the pack ceremony, but she must have become too used to the nipple gruel. She got violently ill when she tried to eat solid food. She held up her hand.

“I’ll just have the broth, thanks.”

“Very well,” he tore off a leg for himself and handed the spit back to Thalazan. The bearded brute tore off the other leg and stuck the metal spit near the fire to keep the meat warm as they ate. Voridus used tongs to remove the metal pot of broth and poured some in a cup. He replaced the pot and handed it to her.

There were three logs around the fire, one for Pavium, one for Voridus and one for Thalazan. For now Diana sat to the right of Voridus.

“When I checked the messages this morning, there were two requests for meetings,” Thalazan said. “The Broken Tusks and the Sons of Warial both want to negotiate a potential merger. I have heard that they both have blood feuds with the Trimoon clan, and the Sons of Warial have bad blood with several Jackal clans as well.”

“How bad is it? Is it just talk or is there bloodshed between them?” Voridus asked as he dug small bones out of the leg chunk with his teeth and spat them into the fire. He dipped the leg into the broth in the fire and swirled it to soak up the seasoning. When he drew it out, the lipid dripped and hissed in the fire with a savory smell.

“Before we came to the Ark, the Jackals deployed with Sons of Warial and the Chieftans’s’ son was killed. He suspected treachery, so he ate a shipmistress alive, along with half her crew, and made her mate watch. They’ve been in a feud ever since.”

Voridus shook his head. “That’s too much baggage. The Jackals are too resourceful of traders. We cannot risk putting them off. I’ll meet with him to see if he wants anything other than a merger. I don’t want to offend him.”

For as big and tough and burly as the brutes were, they were also very sensitive. Even though they were all competitive, their survival depended on being accepted in a pack. A loner brute was a dead brute. So they buddied up and spoke praise of each other and called each other brother even if they didn’t like each other, as Diana suspected Thalazan and Voridus disliked each other, because they had to stay in a clique.

They reminded Diana of highschool girls gossiping and backbiting each other. The kind who only stayed friends because there was another girl they both hated. Except a brute with hurt feelings didn’t go home and cry in his diary, he became a big violent problem.

“Very well,” Thalazan said. “He proposes to meet tomorrow at sundown.”

“That suits me fine. What about the other one?”

“Chieftain Romus of the Trimoon asks to meet today at noon. I haven’t’ heard of any baggage with them, but I know they have never allowed humans in their clan.” Thalazan glanced at Diana. She sipped her broth and shrugged.

“It won’t be a problem. He must have heard of her initiation by now. And he still asked for a meeting,” Voridus said without concern. Then he noticed her legs stretched out far from the fire and that she huddled under her shawl.

“Are you cold?”

“Its like six degrees Celsius, of course i’m cold.”

He reached over and grabbed the end of the log she sat on, and dragged it closer to the fire.

“Thanks,” she said as the heat washed over her.

He huffed. “You should have said something earlier.”

She kept forgetting that she counted as a person now and she could ask for more. She got used to being a prisoner and dealing with what she was handed. It didn’t occur to her to ask to be moved closer to the fire, because why would a Brute care about her comfort?

It was scary to realize what a person could get used to, what they could learn to accept and how quickly your worth changed based on what others decided you deserved. Humans looked down on the Brutes and their pack mentality like it was a sign that they were primitive. But humans treated other humans exactly the same way. A person could be ostracized for any perceived failler or betrayal, or just plain envy. Humans could find any reason to explain why other human beings didn’t fit in, and therefore, didn’t deserve a place at the table.

Diana was a pack member now. She was a person again. She got to eat, she got to stay warm. And she got to carry a gun. Voridus gave her a small side arm after the ceremony. It wouldn’t do anything to a Brute unless she shot him right in the eye, but it would kill a human. He warned her not to cause any unnecessary trouble when he handed it to her, but also not to hesitate to defend herself if he happened to not be around.

The conversation continued about the other packs. Three packs had suggested a merger, but only one seemed a good fit. Voridus told everyone that the final decision would rest with Pavium and he was only filtering the others out.

The conversation moved to the coming attack on the prelate and the Dreadnought.

Voridus was excited to kill a Prophet. Diana was curious. She still hadn’t seen a Prophet yet. But she wanted to know more about the race that had been her species’ allies before the Halo fired.

The most interesting thing she learned from the map of the old human empire was how much of it was shared with the San‘Shyuum. She had no idea how the governing and representation worked, of course, but going by the travel routes between the mostly human worlds and Janjur’Qom, the two races had strong trade routes, and what looked like shared vacation planets and metropolitan areas. There were lots of space stations between the planets as well. Control stations, set up during the flood outbreak.

The maps offered a time-lapse view of the flood spread across the old human/Sans’hyuum empire.

She knew from the Catalogue that the spread went unnoticed for decades and then activated all at once. But seeing it on the map was a nightmare. Dozens of worlds were thrown into chaos overnight and all their leaders could do was burn them to stop the spread. The section of planets hit first were the ones in the shared systems, the planets where humans and San’shyuum populations were mingled. Earth and Janjure’Qom were at the opposite edges of the empire and appeared to have been spared in the initial outbreak.

She kept going back to Janjur’Qom. She stared at the San’shyuum planet in the map often. Something about the planet and the prophets called out to her.

The species that duped half the galaxy into obeying them for over a thousand years. The species that stood with ancient humanity against the flood and the forerunners. They had to be clever. And they had to be sneaky. They had to be good at keeping secrets.

Earth was a secret. It was the most important secret humans had for decades.

“Does the crystal that was stolen do anything else besides open portals?” She asked suddenly.

“I’m not sure,” Voridus said. “That was the only use we got out of it.”

“If that’s all it does, why did the Prelate risk so many men just to get it back? Who’s he going to call?” she asked.

Voridus snapped the bone he was chewing on and drew the shards out of his mouth. He looked at her. “That’s a good question.”

“What if he’s calling Janjur Qom for back up?” she said.

“The Prophet planet is gone,” Thalazan said.

“What if it’s not?” She said. “What if it’s just a secret like Earth was?”

She didn’t care about the prophet calling for back up, really. She just hoped the ancient San’Shyuum hid something about the flood cure. The Forerunners probably checked there too, of course, but if the prophets were as tricky as everyone said they were, they might have been able to hide their secrets.

Thalazan tore the last bit of meat off his hunk. “The prophets of the Covenant were not the same as those remaining on Janjur Qom. They had their own civil war before our prophets fled their planet on the Dreadnought. The Prelate would find no allies from Janjur Qom if it exists still.”

“So they say,” Voridus said. “What if they lied about that, too?”

Thalazan froze and his eyes widened. “I suppose that’s possible,” he said slowly.

“And if the only purpose of the crystal is to open a portal to the milky way galaxy or to send a message, the Prelate must want to call somebody. Don’t you want to know who it is?” Diana asked.

The brutes each took an arm off the cooked kangaroo kebab and chewed thoughtfully.

Diana leaned toward Voridus. “You’re the one who got the other crystal to work, right?

“Yes” he smiled proudly.

“How did you do that? Did you use the planet’s location as some kind of dial?”

“Something like that.”

“So if you had a crystal and coordinates on a map, you could open a portal to the world,” she pressed.

“If I had those things and a suitable facility to harness the power. Yes.”

He smiled.

“You want to call Janjur Qom?” He guessed.

“It’s the fastest way to find out if the planet is still there. If it got blown up like they say, then there won’t be an answer. And if there is a connection, well, we’ll know.”

He chuckled. “I had the same idea.”

“Really?” She scooted down the log to be closer to him.

“Yes. I imaging you are hoping they have some clue to your flood cure?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“You are obsessive about that.” He dipped his meat chunk back in the broth again.

“Shouldn’t I be? it’s the most important secret in the galaxy.”

He shrugged. “The Flood are gone. Or imprisoned. What does it matter?”

“They’ll come back. They always come back.”

“Then well face them when they come. And kill them again.”

Thalazan cleared his throat and leaned forward. “I agree with the female. A flood cure is worth investigating.”

“What if while the others attack the ship we go to this facility and attempt to call janjur qom. Then you can call the other banished in the milky way and give them the address and they can go capture it?” Diana offered excitedly.

“Hmm. That might be an ideal,” Voridus said.

And why would the Banished come to the ark when they can go kick some prophet home world ass? it might keep the Banished reinforcements off the Sprit’s back for a while or at least split their focus.

“But we need the crystal to do it,” Voridus said. “So your plan is, I think the humans say, cart before the horse.”

She took a breath and cleared her throat.

“When we were in the facility room the other day, I might have seen another crystal in the trees.”

The brutes stopped eating and looked at her.

“Might have?” Voridus said.

“You did not think to say anything earlier?” Thalazan asked.

“I saw something shiny. I’m not sure what it was. It was right before the unsc lady showed up. And then it slipped my mind. A lot happened that day, okay?”

Voridus stood. Thalazan copied him.

“Show me,” Voridus said.

Chapter Text

They went straight to the mountain facility. Voridus led the way and with her behind him and Thalazan bringing up the rear.

She hadn’t spent much time around Thalazan and wasn’t used to the bearded brute. He hadn’t given her any problems before, but now-

Every time she looked over her shoulder, he was watching her. It made her feel like she was guilty of something. Which she was, technically. She was pretending to be in the clan when really she was still loyal to the UNSC. Maybe he sensed that. And that made her very nervous.

When they got to the room with the trees, Voridus told Thalazan to stand guard at the door. If there was a crystal, he wanted to keep it to himself until he was ready to share. Otherwise Laif would demand they turn it over right away and they wouldn’’t be able to conduct their experiment.

Thalazan blocked the door loyally.

Voridus stood on the inside platform and stretched out his hand toward the trees.

“Ladies first.”

The room was still without power and with the sun low in the morning sky, the light that came in through the hole in the ceiling was dim. She could see the trees and vines, but only the upward facing sections which caught the light, it was a sort of dark-side-of-the-moon effect. Only slivers of the green growth caught the light while bulk of the trees and vines were swallowed in the surrounding shadows of the vast empty room.

She slunk out onto the same tree limb she had before, crawling on all fours until the branch became thick enough for her to stand on. Then she walked into the thickest bunch of the trees, holding the vines as ropes.

Voridus lept from the platform and landed thunderously on a branch next to her.

He held onto the tree trunk and looked up at the hole in the ceiling.

“The UNSC really dropped in with a rope?”

“Yeah. It was kind of cartoonish.”

“Hmph. Humans will try anything, it seems. Where did you see the crystal?”

She looked down. The light wasn’t right above them as it had been the day she saw the crystal and she didn’t see the glint in the vines below.

“I don’t see it now. But it was in the center of the room, in a cluster of vines.” She pointed down.

Voridus followed her gaze.

He snorted and then dropped off the branch-

-And caught himself effortlessly on another branch lower down.

She climbed down slowly. “What are you gonna do if a branch snaps on you?” she called.

“I suppose ill die,” he said dryly. Then looked up at her. “I was raised in trees. I can tell what can bear my weight.”

“What if your wr-ah!”

The vine she was holding snapped. She lost her balance and fell.

She plummeted through the dark-

She drew a breath to scream-

Voridus caught her in one hand.

He drew her back and held her against him. She grabbed the bulky pieces of his armor and tried to stabilise herself. Her foot found a hold on the piece covering his thigh and she held his breast plate while his left hand cupped her by her hip.

“Holy shit,” she gasped.

Her heart raced. She glance up. The vine dangled above them, snapped in two. And far above that, Thalazan stared down at them over the edge of the platform. He scowled and pulled back.

Voridus was shaking with laughter.

“You were saying something about MY weight?” he sneered.

“Shut up,” she snapped. She looked over his arm and into the black pit below. Then looked back up at his face.

“Thanks,” she said sheepishly.

“You’re welcome.”

He looked down, and his eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully.

“Maybe I should just carry you,” he said.

He was big enough that he could easily carry her in one hand.

“Yeah, okay.”

She drew her legs up and held onto his armor. He cradled her and dropped effortlessly down the remaining branches. With each drop, the light grew dimmer and she could barely see anything.

Voridus’s eyes must have been better than hers. He seemed to see just fine. After a few more drops he paused and stretched out a leg onto something she couldn’t see. She peered and after a moment of straining her eyes; she realized she was looking at a mass of vines forming a circle. Voridus tested the floor and determined it was solid. Only then did he set her down.

Her eyes played tricks on her again. The vines were dark green and the branches above blocked most of the light. She felt the solid substance beneath her feet, but it looked like she was standing in nothingness. It wasn’t until Voridus activated a light on his shoulder piece and illuminated the area, that she saw the vines tangled and knotted over each other so thickly that they completely covered the floor.

They stood on a round platform about three meters in diameter. The trees grew close to the perimeter and some of them had branches that elbowed over the platform and grew straight up, creating a hollow space and canopy over them.

Voridus took careful steps to the center of the platform where a vine covered something jutted a few feet upward. If she were in a forest or a swamp, she would have assumed it was a tree stump. But she knew it must be some kind of terminal overtaken by nature. Voridus bent over it and began untangling and ripping the vines away with his bare hands.

She looked up. The branches blocked the ceiling and the platform above. She couldn’t see the circle opening at the top of the room anymore, only stray beams of light filtering through the branches and leaves. If Thalazan was watching, he wouldn’t be able to see them.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “Have you noticed the other brute acting weird? He’s watching me like he thinks I’m going to shoplift or something.”

“Hmmm. He is just concerned about certain rumors.”

“What rumors?”

He paused his work and looked at her. He had the first layer of vines ripped off the pedestal. She could see bits of shiny metal through the growth now, and the shiny glint of a crystal.

He smirked. “There are rumors in the camp that you and I are romantic partners.”

“What?” she gasped.

He raised a palm upward and shrugged.

She felt her heart race and looked away from him. She didn’t think she had to worry about- that- with brutes.

Great. New nightmare fuel.

“I, I didn’t know you guys looked at us like that,” she stammered.

“We don’t. Not usually Don’t be alarmed,” he said.

She looked back at him.

He looked uncomfortable and turned back to his work on the pedestal.

“It is not common, but is possible. I suppose it’s not an unreasonable conclusion for the others to come too. We have spent a lot of time alone together. And. Hmm. Don’t flatter yourself, I wouldn’t consider you my type. But…After my mistake with the Flood, I faced isolation in the camp. Even Pavium kept me at arm’s length. It was a strategy; I understand. But it still hurt.”

He paused and let out a puff of breath before looking back at her.

“Jiralhanai are pack creatures. We do not do well alone. I will admit, your companionship has been soothing, and I - may - have grown attached to you.”

Attached to you.

Was that really a surprise? Would she have gotten away with her cheek if he didn’t have a soft spot for her? And he came in useful.

Useful.

“I guess I get that,” she said quietly. “And honestly, I guess I take comfort from your presence, too. I know I would have died a few times if it weren’t for you.”

“Three by my count,” he said and smiled. “Including the last five minutes.”

She let out a nervous laugh.

“Ok. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. But you’d still be an isolated loser if It weren’t for me helping you find the ice facility.”

“Fair enough. We’re quite a pair,” he said.

Then his eyes widened and glanced away.

“You’re still far too scrawny for me,” he mumbled as he resumed working on the terminal.

She let out half a laugh.

Wait. Was that why he kept trying to feed her?

“So... you told Thalazan that the rumors arent true? right?”

“Of course I did. But I’m not sure he believes me. And it might be better for you if the others continue to think that we are a pair. Everyone is more likely to keep their hands off of you. Especially the humans.”

So that’s why Thalazan stared at her. He didn’t suspect her of treason. He was being a judgmental prude thinking she was a tempting little jezebel. She remembered his point about the other clan that didn’t accept humans.

But if they wanted Voridus, they were going to have to take her too. Even without the romance rumors, she knew that she benefitted from his protection.

Use him.

“What’s your brother say about it?” she asked.

“I haven’t spoken of it. I only found out after his injury.”

“So, when he wakes up, and finds out you added me to the clan, what’s he going to say? What if he’s mad?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s not much he can do now.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, grinning gleefully. “If he tries to expel you from the clan, ill tell him you're pregnant. Then he’ll have to let you stay.”

“Ew. No.”

His shoulders shook with laughter as tore away the last vines.

Then he froze.

She crept forward to see what had him transfixed.

He uncovered the crystal. It was bigger than her fist and cut like a lotus flower, with jutting pieces that sparkled under the torch. It was purple and pink. Pretty. It looked like a flower nestled in the vines.

“Wow” she said.

Voridus growled low and happy, almost a purr.

“It’s bigger than the one we lost was. that means it’s more powerfull. This will almost certainly be able to hold a stable portal.”

He took in one hand and grinned, revealing a row of razer sharp teeth.

“Glory to the Banished,” he said. Then he tucked the crystal into a pocket in his breastplate and scooped her up with one hand as easily as if she were a kitten.

“Whoa! Hey warn me before you do that!” she said indignantly as her feet dangled in the air.

He ignored her and jumped up onto the nearest tree and started climbing.

Chapter Text

The two brutes walked and talked in front of Diana as they took the path out from under the mountain. Voridus wanted to conduct the experiment of calling the Prophet’s homeworld right away, and before he reported the discovery of the Crystal to the other Banished. He hurried her and Thalazan out of the mountain facility and back toward the phantom. He radioed Michelangelo to meet them there, just in case they needed a reclaimer to work the portal at the next location. Voridus knew of another location that could be used to activate a portal and it only had a skeleton crew of Banished guarding it so he figured he could use it before Laif got word of what they were doing.

He wanted to keep everything quiet in case there were still Prelate spies in the camp. But Diana suspected he also wanted to hoard credit for whatever they discovered.

She stepped forward and squeezed her way between the two brutes, which was a risky move since they could crush her without even trying.

“If we’re going somewhere, we should get LegBeg,” she said.

“The grunt is not necessary for this mission,” Voridus said.

“Forget necessary, she’s part of the team. C’mon we need to keep the band together. She’s with us. We shouldn’t go without her.”

He rolled his eyes, but nodded. “Very well, go get your grunt. Don’t delay. I want to leave within the hour.”

She had a good idea where LegBeg would be. She hung out at the methane silo when she wasn’t with Diana or her boyfriend and MyYap was busy working on announcements that morning.

She peeled off the path the brutes were on and made her way to the methane square.

There were several cylander tanks of methane which lay on their side and served as barracks for the grunts. There were three standing cylander tanks which sort of resembeld grain elevaters. Those were for the grunst to fill their tanks. At the base to the tanks were rows of nozzles on hoses. The grunts rolled up and turned their backs to the nozzle opperators and had thier tanks filled by the attendents.

The day warmed up as the sun rose and she removed the red Longshields flag from her shoulders and tied it around her waist again. She got glances from the aliens and humans she passed and wondered if any of them were thinking of the rumors about her.

She found that she didn’t really care if they were.

She felt good. She felt like things were back on track. She lost the Catalogue and the Monitor, but if they found the Prophet's home world, they were back on the trail of the Flood cure.

And if she found the cure for the intergalactic nightmare, then would anyone really care if she was a UNSC/ Banished traitor?

Find the cure and everything will be alright. Find the secret. Find it no matter what you have to do to get it.

When she reached Grunt Center she found LegBeg in a half circle of grunts. They were playing Hunting Rock. But they didnt have any prey, so they were just throwing big rocks to see who could throw the farthest.

LegBeg threw her rock, it fell short and only beat one other rock.

“Hey LegBeg,” Diana said brightly when she reached them.

The Ungoy turned and smiled.

“Hey Diana,” she pointed a long nailed claw at her and turned to the other grunts and said in a bragging tone, as if introducing a celebrity. “This is Diana, she’s my best friend.”

The grunts greeted her and turned back to their game. Diana pulled LegBeg aside.

“Whats up? the grunt said.

She leaned forward and lowerd her voice.

“I have great news. We’re going on a field trip.”

“Awesome!” The grunt said excitedly and punched the air with her fists. “Where?”

“I don’t know. But its going to be cool. You got enough gas for a day trip?”

“I should. But I’ll top it off just to be safe.”

She turned and walked a few feet before freezing. “Oh”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just. You remember those girls i told you about? The jealous ones?”

She looked ahead to the methane tank.

Standing in front of the connecting ports were two grunts. Diana couldn’t discern any traits that marked them as female. The only thing that set them apart from other grunts was that one was a little taller, at least four inches taller than LegBeg, and the other was missing the middle diget of her her hand.

“So those are the jealous little bitches that tried to kill you?”

“Yeah. But we have extra hoses and gaskets in the phantom. I stashed a couple after the last time. So it should be fine.”

She led the way to the tank. Diana followed, keeping her eyes on the grunt mean girls. When they got close the grunts took notice of them and looked up.

“Heeeey LegBeg,” the tall one said and waved. “Hows it going?”

“Hey guys,” LegBeg spoke in an equally friendly voice and waved back. “I need to top off my tank.

“Weren’t you just filled this morning?” The short one scratched her head with one claw.

“Yeah, but I’m going to be busy awhile. I might not make it to my next slotted refill.”

“Ok, sure.” The shorter grunt had the mask that went up her nose so when she smiled Diana could see all her teeth. “We’ll get you set up.”

She waved her forward. LegBeg hesitated just a second and then took a step. But Diana put a hand on her shoulder and pushed past her.

“Hey. I’m Diana. Nice to meet you. The last time my friend filled up for a long trip something went wrong with the seal on her tank. The gasget was too big and her methane leaked out. If we hadn’t of caught it, she could have suffocated.”

“Oh. Really? Wow.” The tall one said. “Wonder how that happened. Thats too bad. Sure glad you guys caught it.”

This little two faced bitch. She did that shit. 100%

The other one giggled.

“Yeah, wonder how that happend. We’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The both giggled.

Diana giggled too.

“I hope not. Because if anything happens to my little friend here, I’m going to kill both of you and feed you to the brutes for dinner.”

They stopped laughing. 

“Or maybe I’ll snatch your mask off and watch you suffocate. Or maybe ill ask Voridus, you know Voridus right? My Chieftain?”

She stressed the words. and wondered if the rumors about her were spread by the Grunts, too.

Their eyes widened and flashed to the red flag tied around her waist. She guessed they did hear the rumors about her.

“Yeah. You know him. I’ll ask him to use you in his experiments. Won’t that be fun? There’s a room in the mountain that mimics the vacuum of space. We’ll throw you in and watch your skull explode.”

“Whoh,” LegBeg said.

The tall one stepped forward and pointed a claw in Diana’s face. She was almost taller than Diana.

“Your brute might be up right now. But we’ve known him longer than you. He’ll mess up again. He always does. Then he’ll be down and you with him. Laif de Ernac still want you both dea-”

Diana drew her side arm, pointed it at the grunt’s leg, and pulled the trigger.

BAM!

AH! AHHHH!

The grunt went down on her wounded leg, curled in a ball and hugged her knee.

Her friend shrieked and looked at Diana with rage in her beedy little eyes. She pulled back her lips revealing all her little sharp teeth.

The other grunts chatterd and waddled over to see what was happening.

Diana pointed the gun at the short grunt.

“Fill LegBeg’s tank. Do it right this time.”

The grunt glared at her but then turned and took the nozel out of its slot in the silo. LegBeg turned her back to the short grunt and let her tank be filled while the taller grunt rocked back and forth and craddled her wounded leg. When Diana looked back down, she saw that the leg was barely bleeding. Grunt skin was tough, the bullet penetrated it, but it didn’t obliterated the kneecap as it would have if she’d been human.

There was a CLICK and the nozzle shut off. LegBeg hoisted her tank higher and nodded. “Yep, she’s filled ot the brim.” She shuffeld awkwardly back to Diana’s side.

“Good. Anything goes wrong with it-” She looked from one grunt to the other. “I’m going to come back here and I’m going to kill and eat both of you.”

She and LegBeg backed away from the silo, Diana kept her gun drawn and pointed at the other two. The one on the ground moand. Hight notes. Trembling. Sweet.

The grunts who had been playing hunt rock looked on her with terror.

Good.

When they were out of Methane Center Diana put the gun back in its holster and they turned to walk right way down the aisle.

“Damn Diana! “ the grunt said. “That was badass!”

“If they bother you again, tell me.”

“Will do.” LegBeg saluted her.

When they reached the Phantom, Diana saw that Michelangelo was there with the blonde man again. The one he’d brought to her clan initiation.

“Hey Diana,” the french man said with a frindly wave. He beckoned her to follow him up the ramp into the Phantom. She and LegBeg did. When they were inside, the door came up behind them.

“Hi Michelangelo. I didn’t meet your friend.”

“Ah, this is Alex. I been showing him around.”

“Hi,” Alex said. He was young, he looked about her age. He was a little taller than Michelangelo and had a muscular build.

“Hi, nice to meet you,” she said. “Are you a reclaimer too? Are we taking spares?”

“Nah, just a solider. I asked to tag along.”

She glanced at Voridus, who was in the flight seat.

“I’m surprised he let you come.”

“Michelangelo vouched for me,” Alex shrugged and for a moment looked just a bit to humble to be a murderous Banished mercenary.

“He’s an amazing shot,” Michelangelo gushed and moved his hands as he spoke. “Amazing. Best i’ve ever seen. And we might run into the Prelate again.

“I really hope we do,” Alex said with a tone that told her he was telling the truth.

The Phantom engine roared to life.

“Take your seats!” Voridus called. “We are leaving!”

Chapter Text

Veta Lopis planned to leave the Banished camp outskirts after the mechanic refused the extraction. But the chaos sowed by the Prelate attack left too many opportunities for the Ferrets to walk away from.

Humans were the only members of the Banished who were guaranteed not to be part of the Prelate’s covenant, and that meant they were momentarily elevated in the camp. Ash’s skills won him recognition and praise and access to inner circles.

Ash remained in the camp and reported that the traitor M1 Silver officially joined one of the Brute clans.

Veta and Olivia moved their camp to the valley floor to maintain surveillance.

Whatever the Banished had been up to in the mountains was put on hold in favor of manufacturing some new energy weapons.

The most important target in the camp was the Brute who retrieved/ reverse engineered these weapons, a vicious jiralhanai named Voridus. He was some kind of mad scientist for the Banished and also the one who turned the mechanic traitor.

The Ferrets had a new mission. Captain Cutter ordered the assassination of Voridus.

The Brute wasn’t going to make it easy for them. He always wore power armor and was never alone. He used to have a shack out by the river where he worked long hours alone or with the mechanic. That would have been the best time to get him, a perfect place for some C4. But it blew up in the attack and left only twisted metal in its wake. Since then, Voridus stayed in the middle of the camp and was often surrounded by other Banished.

Veta moved the Ferret base camp to a lower cliff down in the valley. Across the river and a few kilometers from the site of the lab ruins, in case the Brute returned to the site. But no luck so far.

Veta received a message from Ash that Voridus was leaving camp in secret and he managed to get himself invited to whatever mystery mission the Brute was up to. Unfortunately, the Brute had some method of shielding which blocked transmission within his Phantom and prevented the Spirit from tracking Ash’s IFF.

She watched through the rifle scope as the Phantom rose in the air far across the camp. She would not hear from Ash until he returned from the mission. But she couldn’t stop herself from watching the Phantom until it flew out of sight. She lost one of her kids recently, and now she felt her gut clench at the possibility of losing another.

Movement caught her eye, and she swung her scope down. She spotted something in the trees below. A flash of light on metal which triggered a memory. She knew what it was immediately. A forerunner Ancillia, though not like the ones she’d seen before. This one was perfectly spherical, besides chunks missing in its body. It bobbed along the branches below.

-Shit

“Livi, wake up.”

Livi had the night watch, but she bolted up from her sleeping bag without hesitation.

“What is it?”

“Ancillia.”

Livi pulled her weapon and joined Veta behind the rocky outcrop of the cliff.

Below them, the ancilla floated across the treetops at a relaxed pace. It turned this way and that, almost like it was admiring the scenery. Then it turned its round lense eye in their direction. And it froze.

“It sees us,” Veta said.

The sphere picked up speed and zoomed along the treetops and up the cliffs right to them.

“Humans!” a chipper electronic voice emitted from it when it was close. “Wonderful. And I presume by your attire that you are not affiliated with those horrendous Jiralhanai, such as those other humans are?”

He swung his lense over each of them expectantly, waiting for an answer.

“We’re not with the Jiralhanai,” Veta confirmed.

“Good. Good. I was plucked from my achieve by one of the Jiralhanai. Quite unpleasant creatures. The one called Voridus removed some of my parts and held me in a stasis field! How rude! Thankfully, I was able to escape when the facility lost power.”

“Your Archive?” Livi asked.

“Oh yes. My apologies. I have not introduced myself. I am the Antecedent Custodian. I have served as the monitor of the Archive of the Hope since the firing of the Halo rings.”

“Ah, cool,” Veta said. She had no idea what the Archive of Hope was. But there was all kinds of crazy crap stored on the Arc.

Forerunner AI were extremely dangerous. They were supposed to serve humans, as they were reclaimers. But no human ever had very good luck with them.

However, the fact that this one had an unpleasant experience with the Banished might help cement him as an ally.

“I’m sorry the Banished did that too you,” Veta said. “That sounds terrible. They’re our enemy too. Maybe we can help each other?”

“Thank you for your sympathies. It was an ordeal, but it was a trivial suffering. I cannot help but feel- elated-at present.”

He turned his eye around again. “Isn’t the Arc magnificent? I was restrained to my archive during my tenure, I would not have ventured out if not for the Jiralhanai abducting me. I was devastated to be ripped from my post, but now, I confess I am glad it happened. I would never have seen how lovely the Arc is. I am programed to be compartmentalized, a precaution against the logic plague should the Flood ever access the Arc systems. I was not able to communicate with the other ancilla on the installation.”

He tilted his body and the lense of his eye looked up to the right, mimicking a human in thought.

“I understand the precaution of my creators, and I always thought it wise before. But now, I doubt whether compartmentalisation was a good idea. Now that I have interacted with the other systems and sentinels and learned from them, I confess I think the Forerunners made a mistake in segregating knowledge so judiciously. In retrospect, I believe that the withholding of information from each other, keeping secrets, has done more harm than good. I now think the Arc and all the life of the Galaxy would have a better chance of survival if the various factions were not so compartmentalized.”

He turned his eye down on them. “For example, now that humans have rediscovered the cure for the flood, perhaps you will share it more widely than your predecessors did, and thereby prevent the secret from being lost as before.”

“Don’t worry, everybody already knows about Halo,” Veta said.

“Oh no. Not Halo. I mean the human weapon against the Flood. The one my archive was dedicated to preserving in hopes of it being rediscovered. The human who came to my archive with the brute was educated on the matter. She wore a uniform affiliated with your armor, so I infer she is one of your faction, perhaps a prisoner of the jiralhanai. I admit, I did not think she could do much with the information. She did not seem to be a builder, but I see that she did locate the cure.”

“What?” Veta and Livi asked together.

“Cure? For the Flood?” Live said in an awed voice.

“Yes. It was unconfirmed weather the method was a medical prevention or a weapon, but based on evidence gathered by the sentinels, the female has some genetic defence against the flood.”

“Are you talking about Diana Silver?” Veta asked.

“SILVER? Yes, I believe that was the name on the female’s uniform.”

“There is no cure,” Veta said. “Not that humanity is aware of. What makes you think Silver has a cure for the Flood?”

“But she must!” the monitor exclaimed. “How else could she have…” He stopped abruptly and looked away. His eye flitting from side to side quickly.

“Oh.” He said thoughtfully. “Ohhh-”

He looked back up to Veta, and his eye dilated. The electronic voice became a sad, soft sigh.

“Oh No.”

Chapter Text

It was nighttime, and the city stretched out before her. It was a beautiful night, like most in the city. Skyscrapers and housing units with gold, blue and indigo lights glowing in the windows stood in the distance. Small aircraft drifted lazily in the sky. She stood on a bridge walkway far from the city center. The sky was a dome of sparkly stars.

Everything here is fake.

One tower loomed higher than the rest. It stood in the center of the city. There were many ships passing to and from this central tower. It was made of a metal that was almost luminescent, forged by a process so refined and advanced it was more like artistry than smiting. Her heart beat faster just looking at the central tower. It was a beacon, calling them all to a higher existence.

It was so very far from the existence she knew. The buildings around her were made of stone and cracked and crumbly. They were also crowded close together and filled with inhabitants that hated each other. The streets were dirty and blighted with slippery oil marks left from spacecraft exhaust and soot from warming fires blackened the ground.

It wasn’t a good neighborhood, but it had a good view. And if she got good marks in the academy, she might advance-

Old and new. Stone and steel. Fire and spacecraft. Different worlds crammed together.

Different worlds crammed together.

Something was wrong.

The ships in the sky picked up speed and flew erratically.

And then they started shooting at each other.

In the distance, she heard shouting. Then it was closer, but coming from different directions. People shouting in their homes and in the street.

The city loudspeakers came on.

Orders were given. But she couldn’t hear them.

Instead, she heard music from the speakers.

That doesn’t belong here.

It’s not the right music. It’s not the RIGHT TIME for music.

There is always time for music.

She didn’t know the song. It wasn’t one of her father’s, it certainly wasn’t her mother’s. It was a man’s voice, singing low and slow.

“-I know you. We’ve been here before.

No surprises. A settled score-”

That’s not right. That’s not real. She knew that it wasn’t what she was supposed to be hearing. It was like watching a foreign movie with a bad dub. You knew you weren’t hearing what the character was really saying.

A dream. Another dream.

A bright light erupted in the sky overhead, a slip space portal. A ship tore out of it and soared over the city. She felt her mouth fall open. What was that ship doing in the city? How did it get here?

“-Reckless rage. And poisoned pride-”

The screaming increased. There were explosions. More than one. Chaos erupted across the city.

Fear. Panic. She could smell it.

Wait.

When did she learn to smell fear?

But she could.

It’s a dream. Wake up. It’s not real.

Screaming. There were screams echoing in the streets. Louder than the music coming over the loudspeakers.

“-I know the feeeaaarrr-

We do not name.-”

Fireballs lit up the sky. The city was at war.

We all hate each other.

Different worlds. Crammed together.

And then the ground shook. Shook. Shook.

The song looped and started again.

“I know you”

She looked up toward the center of the city. Toward their beacon of hope.

The building glowed brighter, a brilliant light burned at its base.

And it rose into the air. Rising above the city and the rest of them. Then another light appeared in the dome overhead, another slip space portal.

Her heart sank. She dropped to her knees.

”-I know the darrrrrkkkkkkneeeessss-”

The building housed the power units for the city. As it rose into the sky, the buildings near it went dark.

“-I know the pain-”

From her position, she had a good view. She watched the dark wave wash over the city, spreading like a tide. A black void rushing toward her.

The skyscraper slipped into the portal, taking all their hope with it.

They left us. They left us in the dark. They left us screaming in the dark.

The blacked out star maps.

“-I know the fear. We do not name-”

The blackness raced toward her. She wanted to run. But there was nowhere to go. The screaming got louder. Closer.

The dark wave reached her bridge. The buildings around her vanished into the void.

She was screaming. Tears streamed down her eyes.

Wake up.

“And the one who comes to find me. When my time is through.”

Everything is black.

Wake up

It’s not real

wake-

“-I know you-”

Something grabbed her.

She opened her eyes and gasped. The air that rushed into her lungs burned her throat. Tears blurred her vision. Her body was a tight ball of nerves.

But the lights were on. And she lay on a soft fur blanket. Behind her, the Phantom was filled with laughter, as Michelangelo excitedly shared something the other males thought was funny.

Everything was fine. It was just a nightmare. Just like the others.

Except, except she didn’t recognize that city, or the skyscraper/ ship in the center.

She must have seen it somewhere. Some holo report. Or maybe a movie. And her brain just took it and meshed it together with a song she’d heard somewhere. That was it. That had to be it.

Fucking weird CRYO dreams.

She uncurled slowly and wiped her tears away as discreetly as she could. She didn’t want the men to see her cry over a bad dream.

Apparently, she hadn’t done anything weird this time in her sleep because no one even looked her way when she sat up and slipped off the shelf.

LegBeg was curled in a ball on another bunk. She’d taken a nap too. The brutes were in the pilot seats and Michelangelo and Alex were braced against the seats behind them.

It took her a moment to pick up the topic of conversation. Apparently, the boys were comparing the sangheli leaders. Everyone had a lot to say about the Sangheli.

Diana squeezed between the guys. “Are we almost there?”

“Almost,” Voridus said. “In fact, I can see it now.”

She peered through the view port and saw a sprawling facility across the edge of a canyon. It was the first real forerunner facility she’d seen that wasn’t camouflaged in nature. It had several towers and halls. It had a very industrial look and reminded her of a processing plant or a power station. There were hanger bays built into the side of the cliff beneath the facility and Voridus tilted the controls to begin their descent.

As they got closer, she saw the surrounding area more closely. It was mostly grassy plains, but there were craters and burned out wreckage near the facility and even damage in some areas of the facility itself. But the craters were already filled in with grass and a young tree grew through what looked like the broken frame of a Condor.

She knew that there had been a fight on the Ark years before, when the UNSC and the covenant had their last battle. This sight must have seen some action.

Voridus radioed the facility and got clearance to land in the hangar.

They settled, landed quietly, and the brutes stood from their seats.

Voridus looked at the humans. “You three stay silent. I will do the talking.”

He and Thalazan opened the Phantom door and greeted the Jiralhanai guards in the hangar. They spoke in brute speech.

LegBeg woke as they landed and stretched and rubbed her eyes.

Diana made her way to LegBeg’s side.

“Hey. How was your nap?”

“Not good. I had a nightmare,” the grunt said.

“Really? me too.”

Voridus returned to the phantom and opened a locker and took out a brute sized tool box. He grunted at them and jerked his head. Which they all took to mean to follow.

The brutes led the way followed by Diana and LegBeg and Michelangelo and Alex brought up the rear.

As she looked around, Diana noticed the space was empty. The only guards in the hangar were the two who now stood by their phantom.

They crossed the empty hangar and entered a long hall. As they walked, Diana realized the building must have underground layers along with the towers above that she saw from the Phantom.

-The Forerunner sure did like to hide things.

There were no Banished in the hall, either. The space was empty.

“You were not kidding about this place having a skeleton crew,” Alex said, echoing her thoughts.

“The human scientists who were here before believed the purpose of the facility is deep space communication, even across galaxies. But the method was never discovered and even if it was. No one in the Banished, the Covenant, or the UNSC had the means of receiving the messages on their spacecraft. So the facility has been of little use besides salvage. Its not close enough to anything else of value to warrant a stronger presence. The guards left here are just to kill stray humans. Hmph, I might have ended up in such a desolate post if not for my skill with technology.”

“But with our supper special crystal-” Diana said.

Voridus turned and grinned at her. “Perhaps we’ll find success where the humans failed.” He opened the pack on his chest plate and withdrew the lotus shapped crystal.

Diana smiled.

He tucked the crystal back into its hiding spot.

Diana looked at LegBeg. “So what was your bad dream about?”

LegBeg spread her hands out in front of her as they walked. “I laid a clutch of eggs. And they were just about to hatch. And I was watching them all excited because they started moving. And then all of their legs broke out of the shell. But just their legs, and they all got up and started running in all directions. But they couldn’t see because their shell were still over their eyes.”

“I tried to catch them, but there were twelve of them and one of me. I got two and when I looked up, the rest were gone. Then I woke up. It was terrible. I’ve never felt panic like that. And I tell ya, I’ve had a lot of panic.”

“Young ones are always a source of worry,” Thalazan said.

“Do you have kids?” Michelangelo asked.

The brute grunted and nodded. ”I have four cubs. My oldest daughter was expecting her own cub on our last communication.”

“You’re gonna be a grandfather. Congratulations,” Michelangelo said.

“Hmmm.”

“You're not happy about it?”

“Our females deliver the same as humans. They have the same risks. I welcome the addition to the line, but I can not help but worry for my daughter. I am eager to hear that she is well after her bearing.”

“I. Am. So. Happy. We. Lay. Eggs,” LegBeg said.

She looked up at Diana. “I can’t believe you have to get a head, shoulders, and legs out of your-”

“Yeah. It sucks,” Diana said before LegBeg could finish painting the picture for everybody.

But Diana was never going to have kids. She decided young that motherhood wasn’t for her.

Still, it was interesting to think of Thalazan as a worrying father. It wasn’t a side of him she expected.

“Are you expecting to lay eggs LegBeg?” Alex asked.

“Maybe.”

“What?” Diana said. “Really?”

LegBeg shrugged.

“Yeah. Maybe. MyYap’s building a nest in the silo. Just in case.”

“That explains your dream,” Thalazan said. “Women always have strange vivid dreams in pregnancy. Every time my wife carried our cubs, there would come a night where I would wake with her beating me senseless for something I did in a dream. She gave me this-”

He lifted his beard and revealed a very clear and savage bite mark on his chest just below his neck.

”- When she carried our son. Her mother and sister had to drag her off of me. Our women are smaller than we are, but motherhood gives them the strength of a Chieftain.” He dropped his beard back over the wound and smiled.

“Do you think you’ll have offspring?” LegBeg asked Diana.

“No. I don’t think I got the nurturing gene.”

They reached the lift, and Voridus activated it. It wasn’t Brute sized, so they had to split up. Voridus went first and took Michelangelo.

He pointed to the image on the lift that indicated the floor they were to meet him on. The lift was just big enough for the two of them and when the metal doors slid shut; they were whisked upward.

“Don’t you want to find a nice human and increase your species’ numbers?” Thalazan asked her. “You lost so many in the Covenant war.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty of women willing to boost our numbers. Besides. My eggs were frozen for twenty-eight years. They’re probably not even good anymore.”

Alex sniggered.

LegBeg sidled up to Thalazan. “MyYap and I were talking, and we thought it might be a good idea if the Banished had a silo just for the families. You know so we can keep the little ones together? Right now, the silos are all crowded and you can barely make a nest without someone stepping in it. It’s be good for grunt numbers.”

“That sounds wise,” Thalazan said in a conciliatory voice.

“You think you could talk to somebody about it? Maybe when Pavium’s better he can bring it up to Laif?”

The elevator returned and Thalazan and LegBeg stepped in. The metal doors slid shut on their conversation.

“Huh. Sounds LegBeg’s gonna make a nice little suburb for the grunts,” Diana said.

“She’s a go-getter. That’s for sure.”

“She’s gonna be a good mom,” Diana said.

Then she looked at Alex. He was young. Her age, or her age when she went into CRYO.

“Is your family alive?” she asked.

He froze. Then cleared his throat. “My mom is. And my sister. The rest are gone.”

“Sorry. Mine too.”

“I heard,” he said.

They stood in silence for a few moments. She looked over her shoulder and saw the brute guards from the hangar watching them from the far end of the hall.

The elevator returned a few moments later. They stepped on and she hit the button Voridus told her to. The doors slid shut, and they rose.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” Alex asked.

“Shoot.”

“How can you become a traitor and join the Banished after what the aliens did to your planet?”

The question took her off guard, and she frowned.

“If I’m a traitor, then what are you?” she asked with an edge in her voice.

He reached out and hit a button on the wall. The elevator stopped. He turned to her.

“I’m a Spartan, Mechanic silver.”

Chapter Text

“A spartan?”

She’d never seen a spartan without the mjolnir armor. It was hard to think of them as human. They were metal clad green and gold monsters.

But Alex was young, muscular, and tall. Aside from the scruffy short beard and banished uniform, he would look like he was a school star athlete.

“Bullshit. You're not a spartan.”

“I’m a variation. But the bigger point is, you’re a traitor.”

He lept forward and pinned her to the wall, trapping her arms behind her back before she could reach for the gun on her hip.

She wiggled but couldn’t move.

“I’m not. I’m not a traitor,” she grunted.

“You joined the Banished. Got a flag and everything.”

“I had too. Voridus is going to find a cure for the flood.”

"What?"

We went digging around some forerunner archive and found out humans had a cure for the flood way before the Halos fired. The forerunner stored a bunch of our stuff in a museum hoping to figure it out, but they never did.”

“The files of human records were stored in a machine in Voridus’s lab. It was destroyed when the prelate attacked. But we might be able to get another one, or find another vault with records on the San’shyuum planet. Humans and San’shyuum used to be allies. We beat the flood together.”

“Well, that’s a twist.”

“I can’t leave the flood cure in Banished hands. I had to stay. Janjur Qom, the prophet planet, managed to fly under the radar all this time. They haven’t been involved in the rest of the galaxy’s wars. They might still have intact records.”

He let her go and took a step back.

“If you’re telling the truth. And if there really is a flood cure on the prophet planet. Voridus will send the banished to slaughter them. The brutes hate the prophets, everyone hates the prophets.”

“After he uses the portal to send a message, we can use it to send a message to the UNSC. All they have to do is get to the planet first.”

“You know how to do that?”

“I was gonna watch him and then copy. Monkey see, monkey do.”

“And you think he’d just let you?”

“Look, I’m not a Spartan. I’m a mechanic. I’ve been winging it for weeks. I never know if I’m going to survive to see the next day. I just do what I can.”

He flinched. He was a soldier. He understood.

“Theres a problem with your plan. The UNSC isn’t in a position to respond to your message. It’s a long story, but the reason the Spirit hasn’t’ gotten help form the Milky Way in a year is because the galaxy is crippled.

“Why? We won the war, didn’t we?’”

“We did. But then the AI turned on us. Our ships won’t fly and the ones that do, have to evade Forerunners monster machines.”

“The AI turned on us? You mean they killed people?”

“Yeah. They have their own justification for it. They took on the Forerunner’s Mantle philosophy and think they’re responsible for us. And we get punished for disobedience.”

She felt her arms fall limp to her side. She was finally able to call for help. Only to find out that no one was coming.

Alex turned his head and spoke in a thoughtful tone. “Although, if you’re right about the San’shyum planet flying under the radar…they might be free from the AI too. If we could get to them, having a planet with Forrunner tech that the AI don’t know about would be a huge benefit.”

“But how do our people get there without AI?”

“Not all the AI turned on us. Some of the ONI ones are still loyal. And they could find a way.”

“I don’t know how to call a spy AI," she said.

“I do.”

He pulled a small square metal piece from a pocket.

“Put this on the terminal that Voridus operates when he opens his portal. It will copy the message, and the point of origin and message destination, and send it to ONI satellites. Hopefully, one picks it up.”

“Holy crap. That’s amazing.”

She took the metal piece and turned it in her hand. It was magnetic, she just had to slip it on the terminal without Voridus noticing.

“Voridus will let you get close enough to slip it on, right?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of his assistant.”

“Good. I’ll handle the other three. When he’s sent his message and he has his back to you, shoot him in the head. luckily he didn’t bring his helmet. We’ll have to fight our way out afterwards. Good thing this place has a skeleton crew.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry, I can fly the phantom.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? You think I’m going to let Voridus keep that crystal? Do you think they are going to let us leave? Once we have Janjur Qom’s location, will be a step closer to your cure. There will be no reason for you to stay with the Banished.”

He was right. The next step to finding the cure was finding the Prophet's planet. Or going back to the Archive. That would be easier with Voridus, but they could probably find it without him, now that they knew what to look for.

She could leave.

But she didn’t want to kill him. Or LegBeg or even Michelangelo.

“Please. Please, we don’t have to kill them.”

“I’m pretty sure we do.”

“Can’t we just sneak away?”

“Are you sure you’re not a traitor? Not one of them would hesitate to kill you or any other human.”

“LegBeg might be pregnant. Thalazan just became a grandfather. Voridus is... He’s a blood-thirsty monster. But he’s also a genius. He’s probably better at figuring the forerunner stuff out than anyone we have on the sprit. We might need him later.”

“He’s on the wrong side.”

“For now, that might change'“

“You think he’d switch sides?”

“No. But. He might be willing to work with us in the future. He’s too valuable to kill. What if you just made a distraction? Can you make something blow up?”

“I might be able to.”

“You make a distraction. I’ll slap the tracker on Voridus’s machine and grab the crystal from him. Then we try to get back to the phantom. Wait. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and the Spirit will pick up our IFF.”

“Maybe. And if not, then Isabel will pick up the energy from the portal opening. We might be able to catch a pelican home.”

“How do we know we can trust Isabel?”

“She hasn’t been exposed to the other AI. I think it’s safe to say she’s still on our side.”

He hit the button, and the lift rose again.

“Alright. We have a plan.”

Chapter Text

Voridus was crouched by the elevator controls, deciding how to pry the panel open and inspect the insides, in order to discover why the lift stopped just as the doors whisked open. He sprang up straight as Diana and the new male, Alex, stepped out of the lift.

“What happened?” He demanded angrily. “We’ve been waiting for five minutes.”

“I leaned on a button and stopped the elevator. It took a while to figure out how to get it going again.”

“Hmph. Take care not to touch anything else. I was about to tear the controls apart to figure out what went wrong.”

He took Diana by the shoulders and steered her to the front of the group, away from the new male, to walk beside him.

They lead the charge down the long hallway. The ceilings were high and after walking a few moments; the ceiling fell away even further as they reached an atrium like room.

The room was round and spaced evenly around the perimeter of the room were the open doorways to seven other hallways.

At the center of the room was another lift. The doors faced them. As he craned his neck upward, he saw that the lift lead to an open platform high above them. He could barely make out the grid pattern of some special plate of metal on the dome of the round atrium. The silver walls were lined with blue edge lights leading up to the dome like veins running to a heart.

He steered Diana to the elevator. Again, it was too small for the whole group, but that shouldn’t be a problem. He turned to the others.

“We will go on ahead and operate the portal,” he looked at Michelangelo. “If I need a reclaimer, I will send for you.”

Michelangelo nodded.

“Stand guard, one of you on each side of the lift. The other Jiralhanai may attempt to steal our glory.”

The type to be set to guard an abandoned place like this had little hope of attaining glory. Voridus had no doubt there were jiralhanai in the shadows, watching them with curiosity and schemes.

He stepped into the elevator with Diana and punched the controls. It was a tight fit so that they could not stand side by side unless he raised his arm a and set it over her. The doors closed on them and they rose toward the platform. He looked down at the little human.

“Did something happen with that man in the elevator?”

She looked up and her eyebrows rose just a fraction in surprise.

“No,” she said with the slightest hesitation.

“Are you lying?”

“No,” she said more firmly. “He just leaned on the wall and hit a button. That was all.”

“Hmmm. I don’t know him very well. I did not realize you were alone with him. I should not have let that happen.”

She smiled briefly. “That’s sweet. But I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“Hmph.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way up to the platform. The doors opened, and they were facing the railing and drop off over the atrium. He and Diana walked to the edge and peered over. Far below, he discerned the figures of their group standing on each side of the elevator, keeping watch as he’d instructed.

They walked around the elevator and faced the center of the platform, which featured another raised circular platform about one floor up. To reach the top of the second platform, they had to go up one of two diagonal ramps.

They crossed the platform and took the ramp to the apex of the atrium. From the edges of the ramp, two spires arched upward, curving toward each other but not quite touching over a hollow space in the platform. The hollow space was made of the same grid metal pattern as the dome on the ceiling. A pedestal stood at the railing with an indent in it. voridus surmised the indent was for the crystal to be placed.

He approached the pedestal and withdrew the crystal from his breast compartment. He interacted with the system and the room came alive. The blue veins of light flowed into the metal plates, lighting up the grid like a computer rendering. A holo gram menu appeared above the pedestal asking for instructions. Voridus had done this before when he arranged the portal for Atriox, so he quickly set up the system to contact Janjur Qom. A few moments more and the system asked for a power source to make the transmission possible. The top of the pedestal opened and a disk with four metal prongs rose from within the pedestal.

He opened the compartment on his chest piece and withdrew the crystal. He gently set it in the prongs on the pedestal.

The crystal glowed a purple and then pink.

“Wow,” Diana whispered beside him. He turned. Shed crept up to his arm. He’d been engrossed in his work and hadn’t noticed.

she looked up at him and smile.

“Its so pretty.”

The pinkish light washed over her pale face, making her gold flecks appear more champagne pink than gold.

“I suppose it is,” he said.

The blue light in the grid before them burned white. Then the light spread up each of the arching spires and from some unseen opening at the tip connected. In an instant, the space between the spires became a rippling white and blue electric portal.

“Holy shit” Diana said.

“It is impressive,” Voridus said.

The portal was active. He knew from the last time that the portal needed a planet’s location. It would not connect to empty space.

The holo menu suddenly offered a selection.

• -Choose feed
• -Outer atmosphere
• -Greatter Lo
• _Lesser Lo
• -Hwaith

That hadn’t happened last time. But if the forerunners were much more involved with the prophets than it made sense, that they might have some communication or surveillance set up on the planet.

He chose the first option and, to his surprise, an image appeared of a planet in space.

Diana gasped beside him.

“That’s it.”

He stared at a planet covered in green forests and greenish blue oceans. It appeared barely touched by the battle.

The homeworld of the Prophets. Pristine. Clean. Safe for all these years, while everyone else in the galaxy burned and died, for the prophets will.

He chose the next options on the feed. They cycled through green forests with wild plants and vines. Only one option, the Hwaith, appeared to show any kind of civilization, and that was far from the forerunner surveillance machine. Voridus didn’t see any lifeforms. but he saw what looked like treehouses and smoke from fires.

It was something strange to see the prophets, the very top echelon of the Covenant, live so primitively. But he put the thought aside.

“Proof. We know where they are. Now to call home and bring the will of Atriox down on them.”

He cleared the address for the portal and it shut down instantly. He set in the coordinates for Doisac, which he knew by heart.

The light again spread through the grid, up the seams of the arching spires, connected at the tip.

And then flickered black.

The hollow screen turned red.

He tilted his head. He had the coordinates right. He knew he did. He tried again. Again the light rose the spires. then flickered out, leaving them blinking at a black void.

• -Unable to connect.

“What’s wrong? Why won’t it work?” Diana asked.

"I do not know."

He removed the crystal and inspected everything else. Then he tried Janjur Qom again.

Again, the connection went through for the Prophet Planet.

Again, it failed to connect to Doisac.

He growled in frustration and tapped his fingers on the pedestal.

“Doisac has had many wars. And our weapons were greater than what the prophets were said to use on their home planet. It is possible that my ancestors destroyed the forerunner structure on our planet that allowed the portal to connect.”

When he activated the portal for Atriox in the past, it was not to Doisac but some lesser human planet. He doubted Atriox, or any important Banished member, remained at that location. And he didn’t dare pass his discovery on to some other chieftain so that they could steal credit.

So how to report his discovery?

BOOM!

He was jolted from his thoughts by an explosion somewhere in the facility. The building was solid, and he didn’t feel a tremble. But the sound was unmistakable.

His radio crackled.

“Voridus! We are under attack! The other jiralhanai report UNSC presence and Spartans in the facility."

“Spartans! Hmm.”

There was a chance the human ship, the Spirit of Fire, picked up the power surge when the portal opened. It would resemble a slip-space rupture on their scanners. It was impressive that they would come running toward the portal instead of away from it. It very well could have been Banished reinforcements coming in.

He relished a fight with Spartans. But he knew it would do him no good. He could not use the portal to contact Atriox. But he proved the existence of Janjur Qom. He had achieved at least one of his goals. The smart thing to do was to leave.

“Thalazan, we are on our way down. We will fight to the phantom and leave. Proceed ahead of us. We will not all fit in the elevators at once, head to the phantom. We will join you in the hall to the hangar bay.

“As you command,” Thalazan answered.

Voridus turned off the radio and snatched the crystal from its resting place on the metal prongs. He jerked his head at Diana. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

He took her shoulders again and pushed her ahead of him down the ramp and to the lift.

Inside the lift, he pressed one palm against the wall over Diana so that they could both fit. There was another BOOM overhead. This time, he felt the walls of the lift shake. The lights went out, leaving them in blackness. Emergency lights came on a second later. A dim blue glow washed over them.

Diana pressed close to him and then he felt her arms around his trunk.

The contact took him by surprise, and he looked down. In the emergency lights, her pale skin looked blue. Her face was tight. A fearful look flashed in her eyes.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. And he lowered his hand to rest on her back. Suddenly, he felt the urge to lean in and smell her hair. Instead, he sniffed and forced himself to stare straight ahead.

The lift slowed and stopped. The metal doors slid open. The lights were out in the hallway too, and only the dim emergency lights remained. He stepped out, raised his carbine and swept the dark hall, fully aware of the seven open doorways all around him.

Not an ideal position.

But the hall was quiet. He didn’t even hear the familiar sounds of battle aside from the occasional explosion from somewhere else in the facility.

He swept the gun up and down the hall and proceeded a few steps forward. Swinging around to take aim on the other side of the elevator.

No enemy appeared. He lowered the gun and let out a grunt.

He jerked his head for Diana to follow him.

“VORIDUS!” Thalazan’s voice cracked from the radio. “Treachery!”

Voridus held his cuff up. “What? What happened?”

But the radio only answered static.

He raced ahead down the hall to call the next lift. Trying and failing to hail Thalazan on the radio.

He glanced back to make sure Diana was with him-

And skidded to a halt.

She stood just inside the elevator. A gun raised in her hand, pointing at his head. In her other hand was the crystal.

He looked down at his chest plate. The compartment that had held the crystal was open.

That’s why she put her arms around him in the lift. So that she could steal the crystal.

“What are you doing?” he demanded in a low growl.

Treachery.

She gulped, but didn’t answer him.

He snarled. “What. Do you think. You’re doing?”

She finally found her voice.

“I’m taking the crystal. And I’m calling for backup. Now that I’ve seen you do it, I should be able to.”

She smiled faintly. “Monkey see. Monkey do.”

Her eyes were glassy. Her hair hung limp around her face. The gold flecks under her eyes were the most luminous things in the room.

His carbine hand twitched.

“Don’t,” she said, raising her gun just a fraction so that he could look down the barrel.

He wasn’t wearing his helmet. He didn’t know how good of a shot she was, but he knew she’d be able to pull the trigger before he could. A single shot from a human gun wouldn’t kill him, unless she managed a shot clear through his eye. But she could damage his airway or blind him.

“Drop it,” she said.

He dropped the gun.

Treachery.

His heart raced at the betrayal. And the rage began to build in his blood.

“You joined the pack. I brought you in.”

“I did what I had to. I was a prisoner.”

He growled.

“They why didn’t you run when you had the chance?” he demanded.

“Because you had the Catalogue and the map to the Archive. The cure. I couldn’t leave it in Banished hands.”

“Ah that. And now you think you will find it on Janur Qom, so you don’t need me.”

“Pretty much.”

“And then what? You steal my prize and go back to the UNSC? You will make me look like a fool.”

“I could have shot you in the back. I didn’t. I just want to call for backup and get back to the spirit.”

“You are a traitor!”

“I have to do this. You don’t care about the cure for the Flood. You waste your time on those stupid guns. This could save the galaxy!”

He let out a laugh. “The guns are real. Your cure is a fantasy. If the Forerunners couldn’t find it, then there is no way the humans will.”

More explosions echoed overhead, dulled by the layers of metal around them.

She glanced up fearfully and stepped back further into the elevator, gun still raised.

“I’m sorry it has to go this way. But I’m going back to my own kind.”

“What kind?” he sneered. “Weak, puny, desperate humans? The Banished will rule the galaxy. Nothing you do will stop that. Or do you mean to join the ashes of your people on your world? I will give you one more chance. Forget humanity and return with me to the pack. I will try to forget this transgression.”

He extended his left hand and opened his palm toward her.

Her eyes flickered over him and then to the controls on the lift.

“You're a real dick, you know that?”

She lowered the gun and hit the controls. She looked at him once more.
“Goodby Voridus.”

The lift doors began to shut.

He roared and loosed the twin blades in the gauntlet of his left hand.

The silver blades arced through the air, the metal glinting in the dim light, silver, just like the luminous paint on his fingertips.

He saw the shock ripple across her face. Her eyes widened. Her mouth dropped open. Her flat white teeth flashed as she cried out.

The silver blades slipped through the doors as they closed. One missed her and slammed into the wall beside her. The other-

-sliced into her and stuck her to the back wall of the elevator.

She screamed. The lift doors shut on her. The elevator rose to the platform.

In the clear metal surface of the doors, he saw his own dim reflection. His red eyes were wide. His teeth showing in a grimace. His arm still raised and pointed at the lift.

He lowered his arm and turned his hand so he could look at his cuff.

What had he done?

More explosions echoed overhead. And now he heard gunfire coming from one of the halls. Human gunfire.

He looked up. The lift continued to rise to the next platform

He had to call it back down. He had to go after her. She would bleed to de-

Something whistled through one of the adjacent hallways, and an explosion rocked the center of the room. He threw his arm up to shield his face from the heat of the blast. When he looked, he saw the lift was damaged. Perhaps it was still functional.

But it didn’t matter. The fighting was too close. If he went up, he’d be trapped.

He looked up once more. The lift appeared to have reached the upper platform.

He forced himself to turn away and run down the hall to the next elevator.

“Thalazan!” he called into his radio. “If you can hear me. I’m on my way."

Chapter Text

Pain.

It was an electric note. Out of key. A high metallic screeching in her brain.

She screamed and wailed as the lift rose. The sound echoed around her, the small space bouncing her screams back to her ears. Tears streamed down her face.

She clamped her mouth shut to muffle the screams.

“MMMMHHHMMM.”

She took a deep breath in through her nose, and let out another closed mouthed scream.

“MMMMMMMMHHHHHHHMMM.”

A few seconds later, the pain remained, but the shock wore off slightly.

She forced herself to turn her head and inspect the damage.

Two blades were stuck to the wall, slender and sharp on both edges.

The closest one was tucked in the crook of her arm, looking almost like a child’s play of being stabbed with a sword. But this was no make believe.

The upper edge of the blade bit into her tricep. While the lower edge had sliced along her ribcage.

Blood smeared the silver metal. It was almost black in the blue lights.

She’d seen the blades on Voridus’s cuff before. She remembered him catching the energy sword when he stopped Laif from killing her ages ago.

But she never knew he could launch the fucking things.

Blood dripped at her feet, a few drops fell from the blade’s edge, more dripped from the wound where she was stuck. The gun and crystal were both scattered on the floor, dropped and forgotten when she got hit.

The elevator door opened on the empty platform. Over the edge, she saw faint orange flashes of gunfire from below.

She drew a shuttering breath and let the pain out again. “MMMMMHHMMMH”

Her fatigues blocked the sight of the cut, but going by the depth of the blood smear that ran along the edge, the blade cleaved two inches into her arm.

She couldn’t feel the metal, strangely. The only sensation from her upper arm was the metallic, searing pain. But when she tried to move, the arm stuck, and the pain doubled.

Either the damage to the muscle was too severe for her to lift the arm, or the pain wouldn’t let her.

She was stuck.

“MMMHHMMMHHMMM.”

Deep breaths.

Deep breaths.

Let it out slowly.

She pursed her lips and let out a long, jagged breath.

The open skin on her ribs expanded with the motion of her inhale. And she let out an animalistic groan on the exhale.

It hurt to breathe.

But she had to keep breathing.

Suddenly she heard her mother’s crisp command, as if she were on stage at a rehearsal.

Deep Breath.

She sucked all the air in.

With her good arm, she reached across her chest and grabbed the fabric of the opposite arm just above the injury. She held it in a fist and yanked upward.

A fresh scream filled the elevator as her cleaved flesh pulled away from the blade’s edge.

up. Up.

“AHHHHHAHHAH.”

OVer.

She clenched the fabric and carried the arm over the edge of the blade until she was clear. When she was away, she pressed her hand over the wound. She turned against the wall and sank slowly to the ground with her good shoulder pressed into the wall.

Her screams settled into dull whimpers. Her lips trembled, and she shook with sobs.

But she was free.

She felt blood drip down the inside of her sleeve.

She pulled at the knot that held her Longshield’s flag at her waist. When she got it free, she held one end with her teeth and the other with her hand. She wrapped it as tightly as she could and wrapped it around her upper arm.

The pressure dulled some of the pain and stemmed the bleeding.

Immediate death averted.

Grab the crystal.

You’re so close.

She inched forward on her knees and scooped up the crystal. She left the gun. She only had one good arm, and the crystal was more important.

She pushed herself up, forcing herself to stand.

Deep breaths.

She let the pain out in another closed lipped scream.

“HMmmmHMMM”

She stumbled out of the elevator. Something below exploded, causing the platform to shake.

She turned away from the edge and walked to the ramps to the upper platform.

Up the ramp. Up. Up. She stumbled. She held her arms across her chest, the good arm stabilizing the injured one.

The closed mouth screams turned into a hum.

“HMMMHMMMmmmm,HMMMMhmmmm,

MMMMMHhhhhhmmmm.”

It wasn’t any melody she recognized. It was just her way of trying to pretend she was in control.

You're not biting your lips trying not to scream in bloody agony. No, no. You’re just humming a little tune to yourself.

She reached the top of the platform and lay eyes on the pedestal. The little prongs for the crystal stood waiting. She could see the square spy piece Alex had given her on the side. She’d slipped it on without Voridus noticing. She hoped it worked. But even if it did, the only planet Voridus contacted was Janjur Qom, and she didn’t know how close the nearest ONI satellite was to the lost planet.

She had to contact a planet in human space. Then the little spy piece would carry any message she sent to the nearest ONI satellite.

She stumbled to the pedestal and set the crystal on the prongs.

She glanced over her shoulder. The elevator hadn’t moved. Voridus hadn’t come after her. Maybe he thought she was dead.

She didn’t want to shoot him. But he had no problem shooting her. Stupid. You should have known better.

She turned back to the pedestal. After watching him call Janjur Qom she figured she knew how to work it. But she needed the physical location of a planet to dial it. And it had to be a planet that the AI police wouldn’t suspect someone to call.

She only knew one address.

Call home.

Like you should have done years ago.

She knew Kholo’s location. It was glassed, but maybe the Forerunner mechanism that worked the portal hadn’t been destroyed. Maybe it was underground or in space.

She prayed for a miracle as the lights built up in the metal grid.

Even with Kholo being glassed, there would be human satellites nearby. Maybe a few left over from the war.

The beads of light at the spires connected.

“Please, please, please.”

She leaned on the pedestal for support. Her whole body shook. She was weak and the pain, while lessened, was still constant. Tears and sweat dripped down her face and neck.

The blue holo screen appeared before her.

There was no menu, like the one on Janjur Qom offered. But here was a notification.

• “Connected.”

“Yes!” she whimpered.

She hit the button for the speaker.

“This is Mechanic Silver of the Spirit of fire. Service number 1908k-9-7021. The date is, sometime in January, I think, 2060. The Spirit of Fire is currently fighting Banished forces at the Arc. We need backup reinforcements immediately. And there’s more.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. And leaned into the speaker.

“There is a cure for the Flood. the way to find it is in an archive here at the Arc or its on Janjur Qom. That’s a planet that was supposed to be destroyed, but its not. If you follow the tracer on this message, you should be able to find it.”

“Find it. Help us. Godspeed. Silver out.”

She ended the message.

What to do now?

How would she know if it even-

The holo menu blinked. A message appeared in English this time.

• “Message received.”

She gasped. Then she clasped her hand over her mouth.

Relief washed over her in waves.

She did it.

The platform shook as another explosion rocked the base.

Now get out of here.

She grabbed the crystal off the pedestal. The lights in the grid went dark. She turned to the elevator.

She hobbled down the ramps and across the platform. She was moving much quicker than she had just moments before. The pain was almost gone.

She did it.

She was elated. Euphoric. She was…

Golden.

She huffed a laugh.

She did it. She got the call out for reinforcements. She got the news out about the cure for the flood. The others would come. The others would find it.

She threw herself into the elevator and hit the button down.

Tears still flowed down her face, but she was smiling.

Even if she died, it was okay.

Yes. That’s right.

She accomplished her mission. The rest of the crew, the rest of humanity, they had a better chance of survival.

So what if she bled to death? So what if her ruined arm fell off?

Who needs it? Tear it off!

She giggled at the crazy thought.

She was on death’s door, but she felt great.

Her reflection in the elevator metal was ghastly. She hugged herself to keep the injured arm from hanging. Her fatigues were cut, bloodstained, and ragged. She was ghostly pale, her hair had come loose and hung around her shoulders in dark falls. Her eyes were wide and feverish. Her gold flecks were the brightest thing about her.

Golden.

Silver.

Silver feels golden.

But she looks like shit!

Her lips split into a grin and she shuddered a breathless laugh.

Part of her knew she was becoming delirious. She wondered how much blood she’d lost. Maybe she was going into shock. Or maybe it was just the release of all the mental pressure she’d been under the last few weeks and months. She’d done her best to hold it together while she had a mission. But now that it was done, she could let go.

The door to the elevator opened.

A spartan stood there. A real Spartan, towering over her in the green and gold armor. If that was Alex, then that was one hell of a wardrobe change.

Her heart lept. She smiled.

It’s really over.

The Spartan pointed his gun at her. A spartan laser that was half her size.

A Spartan. Pointing a gun at her.

Her elation evaporated.

From the green and gold helmet, a cold and professional voice issued an order, and she knew it wasn’t Alex. He sounded more human than this Spartan. This one sounded like a killing machine.

“Mechanic Silver. Don’t move.”

Chapter Text

One hour earlier

“Captain, wake up. Something has happened.”

Captain James Cutter stood at the holo table on the observation deck. He was usually found on the bridge, but when he received the news that Veta Lopis brought, he thought a more secluded location was required. The crew had little leisure time, so people hardly ever came down here. The space offered privacy as well as, as his friend Professer Anders once noted, perspective.

The lotus flower structure known as the Arc drifted below the glass floor at their feet. A millennia old marvel, bigger than most planets and a cradle for the restarting of the galaxy after the forerunner resorted to firing the Halo array.

Veta Lopis, the ONI agent who had joined his crew, along with her Spartan Threes a few months earlier, stood nearby. Spartan 092 Jerome was there as well. So was Colonel Morgan Kinsano, whom he’d sent for when he first received the report that Veta brought him. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest and a steely expression on her face.

They were all watching the same surveillance video he was. He’d seen the reports when he woke up a year ago, but under the context, they deserved to be reviewed.

Because he obviously missed something.

Isabel, the smart AI that Jerome rescued from a research station on the Arc, projected herself onto the table. She quietly observed the report compiled by the Spirit of Fire’s former smart AI, Serina.

There was a second intelligent AI on the ship now. The monitor known as Antecedent Custodian. He floated over the Captain’s shoulder and observed the surveillance video along with the others.

Serina’s cool, and professional voice carried over the speakers of the holo tables auditory output.

“I am sorry to report, Captain, that there has been a serious incident on the Spirit. And sorrier to report that I must accept responsibility for the severity of the situation. You will recall our encounter with the parasite on the shield world. While we thought we had eradicated the parasite from the ship’s surface, at least one of the smaller creatures infiltrated the ship. It slipped past our scanners and hid itself. I do not know where the thing tucked itself away, to remain hidden from my scans for so long. But in any case, I failed to identify the threat and for that, I offer my deepest apologies.”

“Nearly six years after the crew entered cryo sleep, I woke Engineering Specialist Violeta Maldini for scheduled observation and maintenance. The specialist was attacked by the parasite at this time and infected.”

The surveillance video projected above the holo table showed a blonde technician inspecting various systems. And then out of the shadows came a streaking green monstrosity.

Specialist Maldini didn’t have a chance.

Serina’s voice continued.

“I initiated a lockdown, but the infected Maldini was able to override the command codes and wake, and infect, several other crew members. In all, we lost thirty-six souls.”

In succeeding clips, he saw the mutated corpse of Maldini opening hatches and cryo pods. The terrified faces of his people as they realized the nightmare they’d awoken to, before they too were overcome by the parasite that he now knew was called the Flood.

“With the help of professor Anders and Spartan Jerome, we were able to eradicate the infected and scan again for any sign of the parasite before the professor and the Spartan decided the ship was clear. I hope you can forgive me for this failure to guard our people, Captain. I will not forgive myself. But I won’t have to live with the guilt much longer. I have already begun the protocol for final dispensation. All systems are functioning. I wish you and the rest of the crew a safe journey home.”

Captain cutter looked at Spartan Jerome, who glanced at him and then back to the video.

“Oh, my!” the forerunner monitor said in a sympathetic tone. He had tetris like chunks missing from his sphere, which gave him the appearance of a man with chunks of hair torn out from stress.

“The poor construct! I must say, it was a heavy burden protecting my artifacts in their protected cases. I can’t imagine the stress of overseeing the preservation of frail biologics like humans for any length of time.”

“So,” Veta said, in a tone that was every bit the crime scene investigator she claimed she used to be. “You guys meet the flood in 2531. Nearly six years later, a Flood spore stow away attacks a crew member. And then nothing for the next twenty-two years until you wake up miraculously at the Ark.”

The arrival at the ark was a question that remained unanswered. They arrived by slip-space, but without a slip-space drive, the only explanation was that someone on the Arc brought them here. But who done it, and how they detected the Spirt lost in space in the first place, was unknown.

Veta continued. “Then you guys rush into the fight with the Banished for a year, and all the while, no sign of the Flood.”

“Or no sign that you recognized,” the monitor interrupted.

The monitor came to the ship with an amazing and terrifying story. That the Flood appeared in the galaxy over a hundred and ten thousand years ago, not as the monstrosity they were today, but as a silver powder which humans experimented with and unfortunately dismissed as harmless.

Then, over the course of decades, humans and San’shyumm- because part of the story was that humans used to be allies with their greatest enemy- fell to mysterious illness. And then they were beset on by the Flood in full force.

All at once, millions were infected. The only thing the leadership could do was burn worlds and flee. And then, suddenly, miraculously, there was victory. The humans of the past defeated the Flood, and it vanished from the galaxy for a time.

The cure of the Flood was worth looking into, and its discovery was the reason Antecedent Custodian existed and came to the ship.

But for now, they were focused on the time between the first human encounter with the flood and the discovery that the galaxy was under attack by the alien parasite.

The humans at this time were supposed to be advanced enough to rival the Forerunners. He looked down at the Ark. A miraculous installation that rivaled the hand of God. The humans of the past were once nearly as capable. So how did they miss the rise of the Flood?

How did it spread so far, so fast, without someone noticing that the population was being infected?

Because they didn’t recognize that the illness their people suffered and the alien parasite attacking their worlds were one and the same.

“In the beginning,” the monitor said, “the infection was not so grotesque and dramatic. The leaders only really took notice when the humans sprouted mutated growths and shortly there-after resorted to cannibalism. In the early stages of infection, the humans displayed only mild symptoms comparable with most infections you biologics are prone too.”

“Which were?” Captain cutter asked.

“Fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, insomnia. Then, as the infection wore on, the body remained rather unchanged, at least to the naked eye. But the psychological symptoms advanced at an increasing rate. The infected experienced bouts of mania, an increase in reckless behavior and blackouts.”

“Eventually, the loss of appetite progressed to an inability or unwillingness to eat any solid food at all. The insomnia progressed to sleepwalking.”

Colonel kinsano gasped and uncrossed her arms. She took a step back from the table and looked at the captain with wide eyes.

The monitor continued.

“However, the lack of nutrition did not result in weakness or other effects of starvation, as it would in uninfected humans. Indeed, a hallmark of the infected was increased durability and pain tolerance. They survived the most grievous wounds. As you’ve no doubt experienced for yourself-,”

He turned his machine eye on each of them,

“-The Flood are very hard to kill. The only noted method guaranteed to end the human infected was a direct hit to the head or the heart.”

Like a vampire, Cutter thought, and wondered if somehow the undead threat from the past managed to pass down to the humans of the present.

“When the Flood arrived in the form we are more familiar with, the infected humans performed acts of sabotage to ease its take over of planets. They deactivated shields, downed evacuation ships, and alerted the parasite to locations where humans took refuge. By acts of forced cannibalism, they lured and infected strategically important humans. They would rip off mutated limbs and discard them in populated areas, where they infected others.”

“How long did the infection in the humans last before they started sabotaging things for the Flood?” Captain cutter asked.

“That is unsure. But evidence suggests it varied depending on the host or perhaps the need the Flood determined of them. Some appeared to be infected for decades before visible signs emerged. They performed their societal duties as normal. They were gainfully employed. They had families. They lived unremarkable lives until they became violent.”

Isabel ran a series of screenings for the Captain once this story began to unfold. After reviewing the surveillance videos, she was unable to locate the Flood spore as it infiltrated the Spirit of Fire thirty years ago.

He took some comfort in that. It wasn’t Serina’s fault. The damn thing could slip past a much newer model AI as well.

But they had an idea of where the thing stayed hidden the six years it was tucked away. The point where Maldini was attacked was near Cryo pod bay, Foxtrot-7.

That was significant, because Mechanic Silver’s cryo pod was in Foxtrot-8, just one row away.

The Spirit was now on lockdown. Only medical crew were cleared to travel between sections. Right now, a team in bio Hazard gear was investigating the cryo bay for any signs of the Flood.

Isabel looked at the captain. “I completed the review of the surveillance on the ship, Sir. According to security footage, Mechanic silver hasn’t been to the mess hall in the preceding twenty-six days to her capture by the Banished.”

“Not once?”

“No, sir.”

He balled his hands into fists. The mechanics had protein drinks and rations in the mechanic bay. But going over twenty days without a sit down meal? That didn’t seem possible.

“When did the sleepwalking start?” he asked.

Isabel kept her voice neutral. But she had an underlying tone of mourning. “According to her medical report, within the last ninety days before her capture. She reported a lack of appetite at that time along with the sleepwalking and insomnia. Dr. Sulivan determined it resulted from stress and possibly a side effect of extended cryo.”

It was a reasonable diagnosis. All the crew was overworked. And half of them had woken to a galaxy in which they had no surviving family and no worlds to go back to. None of them were the picture of health, physically or mentally.

Nobody noticed. A member of his crew was losing her mind and starving herself. And nobody noticed.

Isabel looked up, alert. “Sir. the medical officer has a message for you.”

"Patch him through.”

Dr. Sulivans’ voice came through. “Sir, we inspected Silver’s pod. We found something. At the top of the pod teres an oxygen exchange, a lot of tubes basically tucked under a panel. The tube that carries the cryo drug, the one that freezes us, it has tiny tears in it. Looks like someone stuck a cactus to it honestly. And around the tubes there’s a fine white residue. Were collecting samples. But I think we know what it is.”

“Understood. Run your tests. Doctor, take the upmost precautions.”

“Oh believe me sir, we are.”

His hands balled into fists. The silence on the observation deck was heavy.

“Show me the video again,” he said to the monitor.

The other videos, the ones from the past thirty years and the past thirty days, shrank to small frozen screens and were pushed to the side of the table. A new feed took center stage. It was a tranquil scene, observed from above in a fisheye view. A river flowing with greenery on its banks. A woman stepped onto the riverbank. It was Mechanic Silver, in filthy green fatigues.

Silver appeared to be focused on something on the opposite river bank, something obscured by the canopy of trees. She stepped into the water and a moment later, the things that held her attention appeared from the opposite side of the river.

It was a Flood infector form. The long legs, the beak. The mutated sludge hue of green, obvious even from the distance above.

Yet Diana did not react with fear or disgust. She appeared excited and even happy. She beckoned to the spore. The parasite crossed the river. She met it with an outstretched hand.

She touched it. She caressed it. It pressed its beak against her, like a cat did when it wanted pets.

The crew on the observation deck stared at the image in awe.

In the video, Diana turned and called over her shoulder. A moment later, a small, shaking alien shape approached the bank. It was a baby Jackal.

The Infector form perked up. Its attention clearly on the baby. It hesitated a moment, and then lurched at the chick with vicious intent.

Diana grabbed it just in time and pulled it back. She appeared to scold the thing. It hesitated a moment, then lurched again. She grabbed it again and pushed it away. She placed her body between the Flood and the chick and made a shooing motion with her hands. The Infector form appeared to protest, but eventually turned and sulked back across the river.

The camera view zoomed in on Diana as she picked up the shaking chick and comforted it. Then the view zoomed away into the trees where it found the spore and eliminated it with a laser.

The monitor had taken the surveillance file from a sentinel. He apparently had been cooped up a long time and only recently started downloading files from the other AI on the arc. When he saw the video of Diana and the Flood form, he assumed that the reason she could touch a flood without being infected or attacked was because they had miraculously discovered the ancient human cure or weapon and she’d been afforded immunity.

But that hope was quickly erased, and the only other explanation was Diana’s pure damnation.

The facts became clear. The Flood form that infiltrated the Spirt of fire decades ago hid itself and nested in the compartment above Silver’s Cryo pod. It pricked the hoses that fed oxygen and the cryo narcotic into her pod.

When she was being put to sleep, she would have received an order to take a deep breath. As she did, she would inhale whatever that white or silvery powder that the flood produced into her lungs.

And she was infected. Just like that. Whether the infection progressed for the six years the spore remained lodged above her pod or only took off once she was unfrozen was unclear. But there was no room for doubt.

“Sir.” Spartan Jerome said. “We have to eliminate her.”

After being MIA for several weeks, Diana's IFF suddenly popped up in a facility along with Spartan-three, Ash. They had her location and initial scans showed the place had minimal Banished presence.

“Isabel,” the captain said. “Do you have vitals for Silver?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Are they in the normal human range?”

“Yes sir. Temperature 97.6. Oxygen 98. Heart rate varying from fifty-seven to one hundred and fifteen.”

He looked at Jerome. “Her human heart is still beating. We need to apprehend her.”

“Sir, she’s infected. She’s not human.”

“Are you?” Colonel Kinsano asked sharply, shooting daggers at the spartan.

“Captain, I agree with the Spartan,” Lopis said. “We don’t know how this kind of infection works. We don’t know if she‘s contagious or what she’s capable of. The galaxy hasn’t seen anything like this in a hundred and ten thousand years. Heart beat or no, she’s not human anymore.”

“You’re right, agent Lopis, we don’t know how this infection works. And we don’t know how to identify it. Theres no reason to believe that Silver is the only one infected while we were in cryo. If it turns out half my crew is infected and just not showing signs yet, would you have me execute all of them?”

Her eyes widened and she drew her shoulders back as the thought washed over her.

“You’re still new to this outfit, Lopis, so let me explain. The Spirit is family. We are all we have left. Diana silver was a nineteen-year-old kid, who gave up her life to join the UNSC and defend humanity from an enemy that we were unprepared for and losing too. We don’t give up on her yet. Not without a fight. And who knows, maybe ONI back home has encountered an infection like this before and just kept it under wraps. Maybe all we have to do is put her in storage and when we finally get ahold of what remains of the UNSC they can help her”

“I very much doubt that, Sir,” Veta said.

“I must agree with the tactic of capturing the woman alive,” the monitor said. “If nothing else, you can take blood samples and compare them to the rest of your crew to determine if any others were infected.”

“And how do you intend to store her?” Veta asked. “You can’t think it’s a good idea to bring her back on the ship and risk the infection spreading?”

“No. Scouts found a former storage facility on the arc. It fits the description of other facilities had hold flood samples in Amber. Our medical officers are convinced they can get it to work and hold Silver.”

“And what if she refuses to go into storage, Sir?” Jerome said.

“Then you make her. You and the Colonel are going to the facility along with a medical crew, to capture her and transport her to the storage facility. She’s familiar with Kinsano. Hopefully, the sight of a friendly face will facilitate her cooperation.”

“Yes, Sir,” Kinsano said.

Spartan Jerome looked at the image looping of Diana and the flood spore and baby Jackal

Chapter Text

The spartan held the gun on her.

She froze, as he ordered, she barely dared to breathe.

Alex appeared beside the armored Spartan, he was still in the black and red banished gear. He pointed his gun at her too.

The immediate area was quiet. The blue and silver walls around them were pockmarked with black bullet holes and blast marks. She heard gunfire further down the hall and dull blasts through the walls that were either phantom artillery or anti-air units.

But clearly the UNSC had won control of this wing. She wondered if Voridus and the others made it to the Phantom and got away. Part of her hoped they did.

Another part of her hoped they were blown into a million blackened smoking pieces.

Even LegBeg. While the grunt had been her friend. She tied her future to the Banished. She’d have shot Diana just like Voridus did for betraying them.

It was never betrayal. You were always loyal to your own kind.

That’s right. She wasn’t a traitor, and Alex knew that. So why was he pointing a gun at her?

“Alex. What are you doing? You know I wasn’t really with the Banished. I was just pretending.”

“I told them Diana,” he said. There was something in his voice, like, like when someone has bad news to deliver. It was sad, but so controlled.

Spartans usually are.

She shook her head . “Then why are you acting like I’m the enemy?”

The armored sSpartan spoke. She made out the numbers 092 on his chest. “Mechanic silver. Please step out of the elevator. We will escort you to the pelican for extraction.”

She took slow steps out of the elevator, still clutching her injured arm. She glanced at the Spartans and let out a ragged breath.

“Okay,” she said.”Now what?”

“A few moments ago, Isabel read an energy spike that indicated a portal was opened. Who did you call?” The armored Spartan asked.

“I called Kholo and left a message saying we needed reinforcements and that there’s a cure for the flood and it might be found on Janjur Qom. Just like I told Alex I would.”

She looked at Alex. “I slipped your spy piece on the terminal. Hopefully, it works and carries the message to the next ONI satellite."

He nodded. “That’s good work Silver. You can follow me.”

He turned and led the way down a different hall than they’d come in with Voridus.

They walked down the dark hallway. Soon enough, they connected with a group of marines and a familiar face.

“Colonel kinsano!” she cried.

“Hey kid,” the Colonel said. She wasn’t in her cyclops like usual, but Diana guessed they were worried about it fitting in the halls of the facility.

Kinsano looked over her shoulder to the armored Spartan. “That really necessary?”

Diana turned and saw the spartan still had the gun on her.

“It really is,” he said.

Kinsano put a hand gently on Diana’s shoulder and steered her around. They walked side by side down the dark hallway.

Reports came in over the radio. The Banished fled. The UNSC had the facility. The pelican was on standby for extraction.

They won. But it didn’t feel like a victory. No one was happy. She just succeeded in getting them help, and no one congratulated her. Instead, she felt like she was in a funeral march.

And was it her imagination, or were the marines trying to keep a distance from her?

Maybe they heard the rumors about her and Voridus.

They reached the end of the hall and she saw a pelican waiting. There was daylight up ahead, an exit into the cliffs the facility was built on.

They filed into the aircraft. Kinsano took the seat next to her. The Spartans stood in front and on the side of her. The marines were several seats away.

The spartan still pointed his gun at her.

The Pelican lifted off, and they were in flight.

She let her head lean back against the headrest and closed her eyes.

“How long until we’re back on the Spirit?” she asked. God she was finally going to get a shower.

“We’re not going to the Spirit.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Kinsano.

“What?”

“Where going to a secondary location for your debriefing.”

“Why?”

“Because your allegiance is still in question,” the Spartan said.

She closed her eyes again and shook her head.

“I told you I’m not a traitor.”

“It will be awhile before we get there. Maybe you should rest,” Kinsano said. then she turned to one of the crew, who Diana saw had a medic symbol. “Can you give her something to rest?”

“Sure,” they opened a kit. “We’ll take a look at that arm too, okay?”

“Sure.” She braced herself for the pain when the medic touched her arm.

But there was only a sharp jolt as he stabbed her with a syringe through her fatigues.

“What? she turned to look at him. She felt Kinsano brace her as she slumped in her seat and the cabin of the pelican went dark.

****

When she opened her eyes, the world had a sheen to it, a strange bend in light. She was leaning against the back of a wall. She put her hand out and touched glass. She was in a tube. Not her cryo pod. A tube. Like a lab specimen.

“Whaa?” said in a groggy, tired voice. “What is this?”

Morgan Kinsano stood nearby.

“Diana, try to relax.”

“What the fuck is this?” Diana demanded as her head grew clearer. She slammed her hands against the glass enclosure.

“It’s a storage container. Like a cryo pod.”

“I see that ma'am. Why am I in it?”

“We believe you are infected by the Flood,” the cold, machine like voice said. She turned to see the armored Spartan standing nearby.

Behind him, the medic worked at a terminal.

“What?” she said. “The Flood? That’s insane. How could I be? I never fought the Flood. Ive never even seen the Flood in person. A few weeks ago was my first time in combat, ever!”

The Flood was a story she knew second-hand. It existed in the screams of the marines who came back from Etan Harbarage, and the blacked out maps she found with the Banished.

She never faced them. She couldn’t have been infected.

“What happened to your arm?” the Spartan asked.

“I got stabbed with a big fucking knife!” she said.

“Look at it.”

She looked down.

They stripped off her shirt while she was out. Probably to treat her injured arm. She was left in her black under t-shirt.

But her upper arm, where she had been caught by the blade, was fine. There was no cut. No scar. Nothing to show the fact that she’d been pinned to a wall just hours earlier.

She stared at the clear, healthy skin. There were flakes of black, dried blood in streaks down her arms. Tell-tale signs of the injury that had been. But the flesh was healed completely.

How? How was that possible? It stopped hurting when she was in the elevator but she thought that was shock.

No more pain

She looked from her arm to Kinsano.

“I don’t…. I was stabbed…I swear…”

“I believe you,” she said. “It’s not your fault, kid. Nothing that you did is your fault. We know that. The Captain knows that.”

“What do you mean? What did I do?” She heard fear creep into her voice.

What could they mean? She did nothing wrong. There must be a misunderstanding.

She began to breathe ragged breaths as a terrible deep fear set in.

No. She wasn’t infected. No. They were wrong. She couldn’t explain her arm, but … The Flood?

you look a little green mechanic

Deep breath

“What do you think I did?” She asked when she regained control of her breath.

“You said you called Kholo?” The Spartan said.

“Yes." She nodded emphatically.

“Kholo was destroyed. So how did the message connect?”

“Maybe the Forerunners hid the mechanism that the portals work with. They build things under mountains sometimes, you know. It could have survived the glassing.”

“Silver,” the Spartan said, and for the first time his machine voice sounded soft. “Isabel and the Monitor have had time to examine the portal device and the spy devise Ash gave you. You didn’t call Kholo. You sent the message in the opposite direction, away from the galaxy. According to the monitor, the address you dialed matches that of a Forerunner war ship. Apparently, a lot of them vanished with Flood aboard after the Halo fired.”

“What?” She shook her head in disbelief. “No. No.I dialed Kholo. It’s the only address I know. I know I did-”

Everything here is fake

She froze.

“What we learned from the monitor,” Kinsano took over. “Is that the Flood could infect living humans and control them. The major signs of infection are the inability to eat and sleepwalking.”

She shook her head. “No. No.”

“Silver, when was the last time you ate something?” Kinsano asked gently.

“I…I…”

She didn’t remember. She didn’t have time on the Spirit because of the work load. She couldn’t eat the meat that Voridus offered because it might have been human. She couldn’t eat the fruit under the mountain because it was too bitter. She could only sip the nipple gruel that LegBeg gave her.

And did she really even remember eating that?

She didn’t. Now that she thought about it. She couldn’t remember the last time she finished a skin. She just wasn’t hungry.

No more hunger

And the sleepwalking… “Its just a side effect of cryo.” She said. “That’s all.”

“There was a Flood spore on the ship while we were asleep,” The Spartan said. “They found out that it was nesting above your cryo pod. It might have been there for years. It compromised your oxygen intake.”

In cryo?

Doesn’t that leave you really vulnerable? LegBeg’s high voice asked.

-left its seeds while it was sleeping-

She fell to her knees in the tube. Her hands pressed against the glass.

“The other sign,” the Spartan said. “Is extreme durability. We saw the knives in the elevator. How did that wound close up in less than an hour?”

It is a wonder she has lasted this long, the sangheli’s deep voise echoed in her memory. After her audacity with Laif.

What possessed her?

What possessed her.

The truth trickled in.

There were survivors in an ambush? Michalangelo asked

Only one, Voridus answered.

Her breath came short and ragged.

Deep breath. Deeeeep breeeathhh.

"Take a deep breath Silver", Serina’s cool voice said.

She thought suddenly of the san'shyuum robots that poisoned unsupecting Forerunner in their transport ships.

They thought themselves quite safe, the monitor said.

               -then sorrow, then sickness, then the shock when you flipped it on me-

…a forerunner war ship. From the time of the flood.

                -so afraid i couldn’t let myself see-

Everything here is fake.

She was a singer, a solider, a prisoner, she was too many things.

Everything you are is fake.

“What did I say?” She heard herself ask in a small voice. “In the message I sent?”

The ONI devise would have recorded her message.

The Spartan answered her.

“You said the Halo array was broken, and you knew the location of the weapon. Then you said it was time for reinforcements.”

They deserve to suffer for all eternity.

How she liked the sound of the grunt screaming. Sweetness.

She found secrets she shouldn’t have been able to find. She worked on machines she didn’t know how to use. She hummed songs she’d never heard before. She saw the end of cities she’d never been to.

The black door in the ice.The cure.

Why did she care about the Flood cure in the first place?

You are obsessed with that, Voridus said.

She never fought them. They weren’t her enemy. They weren’t even around currently. Why did it become the most important thing to her? More important than getting back to her family on the Spirit?

She didn’t want it.

They did.

Usefull. Be  useful

The others will come. The others will find it.

They used her. The whole time. They were using her.

No.

She slammed her hands on the glass and looked from the Colonel to the Spartan.

“Why am I in here? What are you gonna do with me?" 

“We’re going to freeze you. When we get back to the UNSC, they might have a way to help you.”

They wont

“Because that worked so well the last time?” she snapped. “No. No. Please no. Listen. the last time,” her voice broke as she tried and failed to keep the tears at bay. “The last time we were asleep for twenty-eight years and when we woke up, my world was gone. My home was gone, My family. In this thing-”

She looked around at the ancient facility she was in, one built to house the Flood.

“I might not wake up for a hundred-thousand years! Everything will be gone! Everyone-” her voice broke.

The UNSC. The Banished. Voridus. LegBeg. Everyone.

She’d be alone.

Again.

Forever.

No. Not alone. 

You went from a solo act to a chorus. And you liked it. We are ten thousand poets and songs. We will sing together forever.

“No! Please don’t do this to me! Please let me out. I’ll be good. Please. You can gag me! You can tie my hands! I won't do anything. I promise. But please, please don’t leave me in here. Please. Let me out!"

Tears ran down Kinsano’s face, and she struggled to get the words out.

“We’ll wake you as soon as we find a way to fix you. I promise.”

Diana screamed. An animal scream, it carried rage like nothing she’d ever known. She slammed her hands against the glass.

“NO! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”

Then liquid amber pooled at her feet from some opening in the bottom of the tube.

She gasped and let her face fall into her hands as she wept.

The amber rose up, enveloping her in heavy warmth. She wanted a shower. She was getting a bath.

Her tears welled and rolled down her cheeks and fell into the amber. They left small ripples, perfect halos in the gold liquid.

The gold liquid.

She gasped. The liquid, stored on space stations between human and san'shyuum planets. It was a warning. It was silver on everyone else but her. When it touches her it turned-

The voice took over as the liquid covered Diana's mouth. It sounded male, deep, old, and evil. He recited the old poem in a slow cadence.

Nature's first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold

Her early leafs a flower

But only so an hour,

Then leaf subsides to leaf

So Eden sank to grief

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing Gold Can stay.

Chapter Text

After Action Report

-Top Secret-

01-20-2560

Report by Dr. Sulivan, MD. Chief medical officer aboard the Spirit of fire.

Service number 1309-JM-56909

The Spirit of Fire has made history yet again, it seems. Not only are we the first ship in recent history to engage the Flood. We appear to host the first person to be infected by the Flood while they remain alive.

With the assistance of the Monitor and the blood samples obtained from Silver, and the blood smear of her injury prior to the spartan taking her in, we have confirmed that Mechanic Diana Silver had flood cells in her blood.

We have also confirmed that no other crew member is Flood positive. The Flood spore that nested above Silver’s cryo pod must have dug in and stayed put for the six years before it attacked service woman Maldini.

These samples have been frozen in the facility where she is currently stored, which has significant security because of the importance of her captivity.

-Redacted-

As a member of the crew, I know that Silver’s fate is a terrible one. Even if we make contact with the UNSC, the odds of her ever getting out of that storage container is next to zero. Even if she does, ONI will never let her go. Because, and I cannot overstate this, Silver’s infection is the biggest break humanity could ask for in a search for a cure against the flood.

While the parasite appears to have controlled her and manipulated her senses, she displayed autonomy and even control over the flood spore that she encountered, as observed by the sentinel. This may be attributed to the indirect method by which she was infected, which may more closely resemble how humans were originally infected when the flood appeared in the Galaxy the first time, a hundred-thousand years or so ago.

In any case, the control she exhibited over the flood spore, combined with her amazing healing properties gained from the infection, could be useful in the fight against the Flood. Or any other enemy.

The Forerunner, according to the monitor Antecedent Custodian, never encountered this type of Flood infection. This could be the key difference between the Human-Flood war and the Forerunner-Flood war.

If the ancient humans really had a cure for the Flood, this is how they got it. We cannot let this opportunity go to waste. Hopefully, we reconnect with the UNSC and receive the proper funding and backing to investigate and exploit Diana’s condition properly.

And hopefully that happens before the supposed Flood infested Forerunner War ship shows up at the arc. Deep space scans have shown no approaching vessels yet. But we know that Diana sent a message. And we know that someone answered her. They know the Halo array is down. They know we are weak.

We know they are coming. It’s just a matter of time.

The End.