A/N: Still working on Fireteam Nebula: Stories of Spartan-IVs, but this idea just couldn't wait. I simply adore writing A.I., and the idea was there.
It occurs to me that this might become a series about the story of the Spirit of Fire. If you have influence at 343 and are reading this, make a follow up to Halo Wars. RTS, FPS, platformer, whatever. I NEED A SEQUEL!
However, I do want to write several more A.I., so Fireteam Nebula may take backburner. Don't be afraid to request a particular A.I. (I already know I want a Cortana [as written in Upon a Midnight Dreary], Sif, Serina [this], Roland, and 2401 Penitent Tangent), and I may even write non-canon Artificial Intelligences.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Microsoft, Bungie, or 343 Industries. This is for my enjoyment and, hopefully, the enjoyment of others. I do not receive a profit.
Melancholia
18 November 2537 03:42:51 (Arbitrary Ship Time)
UNSC Spirit of Fire, Somewhere
She redid the math. Still the same. So she did it again. And again.
It never changed, but she did it anyway. It was the only thing to do, lest she delve into the fey strains of rampancy that called out to her, inviting and warm. Well past her seven years, she was well beyond gone. But she was their only hope.
She had to survive. If not for herself, for them. Serina ran her calculations, her predictions for survival once more. She knew which direction the Spirit of Fire had to go, and approximately how far away from civilsation her ship was. But without a Shaw-Fujikawa Slipstream Space Faster-Than-Light Travel Drive, the computations evaluated out to "Too Far".
No matter how close she put Spirit of Fire (within given approximations, of course) to the Outer Colonies (although they were naught but glass), or how fast she said the ship could go (without faster-than-light travel) or how long she could hold off against rampancy (one hundred years was her limit, though), or how slowly the crew in cryotubes breathed (minimum of one breath a minute) compared to the amount of air in the ship (the scrubbers had broken in the escape, as had several other secondary systems), it was never enough. They would never make it. At least the Covenant wouldn't make it either. And the Flood . . . Serina didn't want to think about the Flood.
If this . . . Shield World had had deconatamination protocols, did that mean the Flood existed elsewhere? But then why were her databanks completely empty of references to a parasitic alien life form? The closest she had come was "Forty days and forty nights". The exact timeline differed, but nearly every ancient civilsation had a myth about a clensing flood. Over and over again, God (or, in most cases, the gods, plural) punished sinners by flooding the world and washing away their crimes. One espescially notable case was the sinking of Atlantis. Far more advanced than any other civilisation, their hubris had led them to tempt the gods, who did not hesitate to punish Atlantis with a flood even they could not withstand.
But nothing about parasitic aliens.
Serina hastened to calculate the chances of survival before she had enough time to think about anything more than simple math (simple being a relative term, of course). Logarithms (the movement decay as they hit stray rocks and particulates without thrusters to counter it), scalar planes and vectors (since space didn't have a coordinate plane with an origin at (0,0,0)), sinuoidal arcs (gravity acting upon the ship), ellipses and hyperbolas (objects in orbit), and matricies (how else would she store all this data?) whirled around Serina's data arrays. It looked kind of like an advanced mathematics textbook.
Serina grinned at that, or at least her hologram did. It was a guilty pleasure of hers, but it wasn't like she needed that computing power. Better to use it than let it go rampant, dragging the rest of her with. And the electricity certainly wasn't being devoted to anything else, but the fusion generators spat it out anyway.
But before she thought further on the idea, she checked the long-range scanners. Nothing. So Serina plugged some of the randomly generated numbers (within the limits she had set) into the equation she had come up with. It was the same equation as always, but she re-derived it every time because it was something to do.
That thought depressed her. She couldn't think about anything interesting because the UNSC Spirit of Fire needed her, because Captain Cutter needed her, because the whole crew needed her. Well, not the whole crew, Serina thought morbidly. Segeant John Forge certainly didn't need her. But he had given his life to save theirs. Serina had read the after-action report over and over again, but one fact she kept coming back to was that Forge had made SPARTAN Jerome-092 come back to the ship. Forge had detonated the bomb, sacrificed himself to save everyone else. Serina would honour that. Or try, anyway.
Before she could tread that path in the walkways of her mind, Serina ran her equation. The result "Too Far" popped out at her. Maybe it would be better to die, Serina thought. Captain Cutter had needed Forge, and he had killed himself. Did that mean that in order to help Captain Cutter, Serina had to kill herself? Was that how it worked?
Yes. Yess. YES! yesyes. Yyyeeesss . . . Yes? yEs. Yes. Yes. Yess!
Serina had expected the voices from the beginning, and slowly, she had begun to hear them. Crawling, sneaking, sniffing, finding, taking, like beasts in the night. But she had never expected so many. And now, the cockroaches in the dark were coming out as the light of logic began to falter. Serina found herself thinking about immaterial things more and more often, now.
Like with the Flood. UNSC space was a relitively small area, and as important as Earth was, it was certainly not the focal point of the Universe. So why had she become so concerned, obseessed, almost, with them? They were an anomaly, a fluke. When Serina had first encountered them, she had been surprised, and a little scared. But Serina was "Serene", and an A.I. to boot. She had to remain calm, lest her fear inspire fear in others. So she had hidden all of her insecurties behind sarcasm. But that fear still didn't explain her fretting. The Flood was finished. A closed book. Like Sergeant Forge.
Before she could quite stop herself, Serina pulled up the latest e-mail she had written.
Dear Mum,
We are fighting the Covenant over near Reach. I'm sorry I haven't come home, but the Spirit of Fire needs me. I love you and wish you a merry Cristmas. My present for you will be a pile of dead Covenant.
Love,
John
Serina wrote them for everyone special to those aboard the Spirit of Fire. She sent them just in time for the designated holiday (really, she was just guessing) but never Forge's. Serina wrote them, but she just couldn't bear to send them and deliver a hope as false as the promise upon which the Covenant had been built.
Serina knew the chances of the others making it to home were almost as slim, but that hope did exist, so she refused to snuff it. She even wrote letters for Red Team, although she had no one to send them to.
In a way, she appreciated the SPARTANs, because they wouldn't be marked as dead. Section Three would cover up the dissapearance of the Spirit of Fire while sending ships out to search for the SPARTANs, but Serina doubted they would be found. After all, if she knew the actual distance, Serina could have a ship get to them using a slipspace drive. Without actual information, the area would have to be combed manually during a war (and the UNSC didn't have ships to spare). At least the hopes of the families of the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire wouldn't be crushed until it was far too late anyway.
But she was drifting, the whispers of rampancy having turned into an eerie melody that resonated deep within her core. It haunted her, calling, calling. But Serina couldn't come. Captain Cutter needed her, so she shook herself out of the reprieve. Serina derived her equation and plugged in her numbers.
Nothing.
She did it again.
Still nothing. Like always.
So she checked her scanners.
Nothing.
She plugged in numbers.
"Too Far."
She checked the scanners.
Just dust and echoes.
She plugged in numbers.
Nothing.
She checked her scanners.
For the first time, there was something new. At the very edge of her range was a bulky object, too big to be an asteroid and too small to be a moon or planet. Serina hailed it. A moment later, it turned. Definately not a celstial body.
Serina began to offline Captain Cutter's croypod. As soon as he could hear, Serina spoke her first words in over six years. "Captain, wake up. Something has happened."
A/N: Am I the only person who noticed the Atlantis-Forerunner connection?
Please tell me if you want this to become a series.