I like crazy
A/N I haven't written for what seems like forever, so this might be a little ropey at first, but I promise I'll get into the swing of things real soon, and hopefully it'll suck less.
Chapter 1- Was I Wrong?
They had been lost in space for nearly a year now, and Cortana was bored and lonely. She knew that she wasn't suppose to wake John-117 from Cryogenic sleep unless she really needed to, but she'd been more and more tempted to in the last few weeks. She'd pretty much run out of things to think about, and the grey walls of the interior of the cargo portion of the Forward until dawn lacked any mental stimulation. How she wish someone would hear her distress beacon and locate them.
Her desperation for being found wasn't just due to the mind-numbing boredom of floating around in slip space, but she knew her time was running out. She had the expected life span of only 7 years, and she knew she was nearly at the end of her time. It's cruel, she mused, to give her such a short lifespan, and to not only make her aware of it, but to allow her to feel about it. She hadn't a clue if she had been created with feeling or if she had developed them at some stage. Either way she wished she could stop the feelings. She was scared. She allowed her mind to wonder, thinking of how it would feel the day she shut down. Her thoughts were interrupted by incoming data, through her internal system, it had been along time since she'd received any data. It made her jump in surprise. She accessed the information.
'Cortana?' She recognised the data stream as another AI she couldn't tell who.
She sent a reply that she was Cortana, and asked who they were.
'Good to hear from you,' replied the AI. 'This is Keria aboard the Unicorn. We are closing in on your location. Are there any human survivors?'
'Yes! Master Chief is alive, in Cryo. How far away are you?' Cortana was excitedly hopping from one foot to the other, they were being rescued and she could wake John.
'We should be with you in about an hour. I'll contact you when we are closer.'
The data stream ended, Cortana quickly accessed the internal system of the Cryo tube and deactivated it. The tube hissed as it decompressed. She knew it was only minuets until John would be awake, but it seemed to take forever.
'Cortana?' John sleepily said 'Where are we?'
'Still in slip space, but we've been located by a ship, the Unicorn. We have about an hour John. Are you OK?'
'I think so.' He slowly felt the feeling creeping back into his limbs and move his hand up to his helmet, looking forward to being able to remove it once he was on-board the ship. He slowly tried sitting up, but quickly realised his body wasn't awake enough to move that much. He let out a groan and laid back down. 'How long have we been floating?'
'297 days.'
'You must have been bored.'
'Oh, only extremely,' She said with a smile. 'But we have been found now, and soon we'll be on our way back to Earth, hopefully anyway.'
He nodded his head, still feeling the affects of the Cryo. Usually he was more or less feeling normal straight away after waking from Cryo sleep, but then again he wasn't usually in it for 297 day. He left it another 5 minutes until trying to sit up again and was relieved when he was able to, he slowly got up and made his way over to Cortana's holopad.
'Feeling OK Chief? You vitals are all good.'
'Yes,' he said nodding his head. Although he still felt a little dizzy and sick, he knew it would pass in a while.
-*-*-*-*-
The Unicorn approached their vessel a little sooner than anticipated by Keria, and after a little trouble of getting the airlock aligned to a damaged hatch of the Forward until dawn Master Chief reinserted Cortana into the HUD of his MJOLNIR suit. He half floated, half fell into the airlock of the ship due to its on board gravity controls, which unlike the damaged Forward until dawn, were still working. He waited until the airlocks doors closed, there was a pause before the door to the Unicorn opened. The bright synthetic lights almost blinded him even through the visor and he had to squint to see his welcome party.
'Welcome aboard, Chief,' Said the ships captain. 'I'm Captain Mason.'
'Thank you, sir,' Master Chief saluted.
'We are a small ship, with only 78 troops on board, we are on route to a nearby planet, looking for survivors from the last covenant attack. I have my tech team contacting your superiors. They may want us to detour and pass you over to another ship, if not it'd be an honour to have you with us on this mission. Until we hear back, I'll have Corporal Kelly Mathews here show you the ropes.'
John saluted again as the Captain turned and left.
'This way sir,' Corporal Mathews said. She lead him down one of the ships corridors and into the cafeteria, then showed him the way to the small shower block, pointed him in the direction of the bridge and the Captains mess and lastly showed him the dorms for the marines and the sleeping courters of the higher ranking officers. She informed he'd have a room to himself, and showed him the way.
'This is your room, while you are with us. Its not much, but it'll have to do.' She was right it really wasn't much, a bed, a desk, chair and a locker. She handed him a small pager like gadget. 'You will be contacted through this when you are needed, until then make yourself at home,' She saluted (as did he) and left him.
He sighed and sat on the bed, wondering if they would have provided a spare uniform for him in the locker.
'This ships seen better days,' Cortana's voice came through his HUD, he smiled slightly as he'd been thinking the same thing. 'Hope we get off it soon, I don't really trust it not to crash and burn anytime soon.'
'Optimistic today aren't you,' he said as he ejected her from his HUD and set her holopad down on the bed next to him. Her AI form lit up and glowed blue, as she turned herself in a circle, scanning the room.
'What a dump.'
'I don't think we are to far away from the Forward until dawn, I could always take you back?'
'Hmm, maybe not. I did some snooping while you were being given the grand tour,' John like how Cortana was always straight down to business. 'The planet we are heading to is Axiz, we are roughly 4 days away from it. And I can't find any other ships that we can board any closer. Kind of looks like we will be joining them in this fight.'
'Are the covenant still on the planet?'
'Scanning the data,' There was a brief pause while she gathered the information they required, 'No, they have moved on. The UNSC are expecting very few survivors, if any. Probably why they are sending this old heap in for the clean up.'
John got up and checked the locker, thankfully there was a uniform in there, it looked a little on the small side, but it would do. He unhooked his HUD from the suit, and with a hiss pulled it of and eagerly got out of the rest of his heavy MJOLNIR suit, and into the slightly tight ships uniform. He'd never even thought of being embarrassed of shy changing in front of Cortana.
'Well if there isn't any covenant on the planet, and probably no survivors it should be a very short mission, and we should be back on Earth soon enough,' said John, as he grabbed a towel from the locker planning on heading to the showers then the cafeteria, before he was inevitability called to the bridge.
Cortana didn't like being left alone again so soon, she thought about telling the Chief that although it'll probably be a short mission, it'll also probably be her last. She hoped she'd get to see Earth on last time, she wasn't even created on Earth but she always felt more at home there then on any other planet or ship.
-*-*-*-*-