3: Hammer of Thor Chronicles: Lost Blood

by La Aardvark

Deep in the farthest reaches of the stars, a beacon lies adrift, its wailing song all that remains of a once-proud vessel, and her legendary inhabitant... Six years after vanishing, sign of the missing SPARTAN appears at last.

1. Oh Darn

1: OH DARN

I have nothing against Longswords.

Honest.

But they all seem to have something against me. Mine – again – had broken down, though to be fair, this time it was hardly the machine in question at fault. Brutes or other sundry Covenant garbage aside, I was currently chasing what amounted to an Innie. He wasn't – not technically. But he was most definitely not working with Humanity as a whole. His was a pirate ship, and he preyed on everyone. His most recent lucky swipe had landed him in the rat hole, however, as what he'd broken into and stolen from was nothing less than a sleek ONI sloop.

Wow, and I thought ONI was irritable before. How the man had even found the sloop was a very good question, although everyone was pretty sure he hadn't ever actually looked for the thing. Rather, when the sloop had come out of slipspace, his ship had come out pretty much on top of it, right out of the wrong end of a previous raid. Their collective slipspace ruptures had sung to each other for a full minute before closing up, but the resulting eruption so near to one another caused their mass-fed gravity signatures to magnetize.

Or something. It was a rather technical string of words.

The short and nasty was, the two ships collided. Being the lighter and smaller of the two, the ONI sloop came out at the worst end of the deal, and being the pirate he was, the captain of the other ship had to make a grab or risk his reputation. What he'd taken was a report that hadn't even been filed back at ONI HQ yet, so not even the spooks who wanted it back knew what it was. And for ONI, that was really going some.

I entered the scene around about the time when the pirate in question appeared to be heading outsystem about as fast as any mortal being could fly… and I personally had a hunch it was because of something on that report he'd filched. The same gut that told me that much also insisted that whatever it was, it wasn't what he thought it was, and it was very bad. So when I received orders to fill in for the insanely busy Grey Team on this one, I got a sense of urgency the spook actually failed to instill.

Maybe his guts aren't as circumstance-savvy as mine. Either way, I rather betted that his weren't twisting in freefall either. I was not really a bad pilot. In fact, I had graduated the class with fairly high marks. I had a fairly decent gee-force tolerance, for one thing. Riding a curve at mach seven gave me visual distortions, but little else. However, in my defense, this did not necessarily make me the greatest tracker or hunter in the world, and as a result, I was once again stuck in the middle of practically nowhere.

That's layman's terms for "out of signal range". I'd need to drop a slipspace beacon to get any kind of attention, where I was. My bird hung lifeless at the behest of a hidden mine my instruments hadn't been able to detect, but even though my momentum had not been harmed much, my direction had. So now I was flying pretty much at sublight eight on a fifteen-degree curveball out away from the colonies.

Which is layman's terms for "up shit creek". I had been sitting pretty rolling my helmet between my knees and waiting for something interesting to happen for nearly two hours, but even as much as I really and truly wanted to, I couldn't let myself use the excuse to catch up on much-needed sleep.

I had carefully not told the medical staff while back in their clutches, but the honest truth was I was not doing well. Something had hit my hidden hair trigger, possibly way back when, and after a lifetime shooting up aliens often too bullet-butchered to tell the species of afterwards, I had begun to need more inclination than mere boredom to want to nod off.

The nightmares were waking me up, now. And it was getting worse.

Speaking of the medical staff… the reconstruction of my bad shoulder hadn't helped much. It was still weak, though they had surgically closed and more or less smoothed over the old piercing. Now it was a large swath of scar tissue that burned whenever I got it wet.

Finally, the haunting quiet got to me, and I pushed off the main bulkheads to find somewhere to curl up. I was willing enough to get some rest – sleep I could do without, but rest I could manage. Thing was, though your typical Longsword was roomier than a simple cockpit, it did not exactly have a suite with a bed or even a cot. There was the cockpit, the forward drop, the rear engine access, and a stretch of corridor down both sides of the back where a fellow might lie down if he wanted to; but he'd block that hall completely in doing so.

Being alone, I had no fear of being stepped on, although the utter lack of gravity at current within my ship posed a significant problem towards any action involving the word "down". I was just about to call it quits and just let myself hang there in midair when I heard the rumbling start.

It wasn't really an audio sound, but rather one of those noises you feel. The vibrations shook the air, the bulkheads, the very bones of the metal craft I was in, and I could feel the tingle on my skin even beneath my refitted and restored Mjolnir suit. My senses came back online, revived out of boredom, and I shoved my head back into the helmet before swatting at the walls to return to the cockpit.

I got about three feet and then crashed spectacularly – and heavily – to the floor.

"Ugh!" I got my arms underneath me, and shook the stars out of my head before picking myself the rest of the way up. Barely was I on my feet when I heard the decompressive hiss of the rear hatch pulling open. There was also that signature scream of metal stressing and stretching before utterly pulling apart. Whoever was opening my back door, they weren't using a key… nor even the hinges. Shrugging, I abandoned the cockpit destination in favor of moving down the corridor to the engine access, which was directly opposite the hatch, and bumping my fist against the single weapons locker the craft owned.

The door depressed, hissed, then extended outward, and the spring-hinged arms holding the SMG and the MA6B opposite one another popped out. I lifted the rifle free, it traded hands, and the SMG was dropped into the latchkey on my armored thigh.

Dropping the rifle into my hands in a ready-to-use position, I then walked the last couple of feet around the corner of the engine access to meet the opened hatch. I quickly found my one little MA6B rather outgunned when I came into the sightline of my… should I call them rescuers?

Nine t-25 DERs were all pointed back at me, four of the splitlips holding two and one holding one with what looked like some kind of engine tool in his other hand. Still – even minus the wrench, I was outgunned for the moment, and I dropped my aim.

"Hello, boys."

The greeting made them exchange glances – confusion rippled across their features, before one of the dual-wielders dipped his aim, too. He was alone in the motion, however, much to my disappointment. "You claim to know us, Human?"

"Not so much." I admitted, stepping fully out into the hatchway. It might be foolhardy of me considering my reception so far, but it at least would prove that I wasn't joking around with them about it. I ran my tired eyes over their faces, trying to pick one of them out as something familiar. None of them clicked. I sighed. "So who should I expect this time… Anuna?"

The name, and quite possibly the way I so casually tossed it out there in expectation, made them squirm and exchange more glances. It did not, sadly, lower those last seven guns. Not even an inch.

I stood there waiting for at least a denial – I would not have protested a denial – without getting so much as a peep out of any of the five of them, before finally shaking my head and turning halfway to return to the Longsword's interior.

"Stop, Human!" One of them commanded.

Okay. I stopped.

"Come out of that Human fighter vessel. Do it slowly."

Now that… that part served to annoy. Trying not to show it, I turned back around, and tromped about as heavily as I could down the broken hatch to the floor of the bay in front of them. I was back in one of those nondescript, hopelessly purple ship bays one finds in generic Covenant and former-Covenant craft. "Who's running the ship?" I asked, hoping for a familiar name. I hadn't really gotten to know all that many Elites during the fighting on Delta Halo, but right about then I found myself wishing that I had. It would have put me in a bit of a better position about now. But then, that had been nigh going on six years ago.

And the shoulder had yet to fully recover.

"Shipmaster Sasaak 'Vahatimee."

Never heard of him. Aloud, I grunted. "He know anyone I know, by any chance?"

The tool-holder clicked at me. That meant he was either annoyed or feeling impatient with my… shall we say… Humanness. "Name them, and he might."

"Anuna?" I honestly did not know the kid's other name.

Heads shook.

"G'wi?" I think I knew his other name once, but hell, that was six years ago! And I doubted I had really paid attention to it even at the time. He was, and had always been, just G'wi. Strange, crazy, sort of mutated, and a lot weird, even for an Elite. But he'd always just been G'wi.

"G'wi who?" The one not pointing his guns at me prompted, fueling hope. I tried to make it die early, feeling fairly certain that he was just playing with me. Surely G'wi wasn't the Elite version of John. The gods knew there were a whole lot of Humans named that.

My John not the least among them…

"I don't know. He used to be an Honor Guard." I admitted.

"That is now considered a standing of shame, Human, it is not lightly admitted in these dark days. Warriors great and small strive to prove first to themselves that they are still worthy of their honor… even before we prove it to our people."

Gah. I rolled my eyes.

"You still hold that arm strangely, old friend."

The voice turned me bodily around, and sent blood to my face in indignation that he'd snuck up on me. He was clad in black, now, and not yellow, with far smaller pauldrons and without the cape or massive headdress. It made him look smaller… more trim. But the marks across his face were unmistakable. And there seemed a mockery of the word "sin" etched into the left side in English, too. Though… I don't remember that. It was really just a massive tangle of crisscrossed lines, happening to intersect at some of the right points to create the effect.

"Does the old wound still pain you?"

I waited for it… nope. Waited some more… nope. Huh. Apparently he'd either gotten his voicebox fixed or had learned to actually talk right during my absence. But either way, he was speaking with the same manner and inflection as everyone else was. In a way, I was saddened by the development – it had made him unique.

He cocked his long head up on one side, his expression lifting slightly in indication I was expected to speak. I coughed. "Hi."

"Did the young ones bother you terribly?" G'wi asked, waving their guns down past me.

"You look like you've been run through a meat grinder and then reassembled." I blurted.

He gave a soft laugh. "Ah, Flint, my good friend… do not patronize me. You can answer whatever query I might conjure to ask, and you might do so without prejudice." He spread his hands, extending upwards also slightly with the gesture. "I do not work for your people in any sense of the term, and military facts are best shared between us, are they not? We fight the same enemies… Brutes, and Flood. San Shayuun not the least among that mention, of course."

The last on his list made the five kids behind me murmur some rather interesting profanities under their breaths. I suspected it was a rather common thing – someone mentioned the Prophets, and everyone else got temporary permission to spit something colorful with respect for the mention. I almost laughed.

G'wi inhaled, long and slow, then crossed his arms over his armored chest and exhaled as if in another one of his expressive methods of trying to prompt me. I wasn't sure how to perform, though. "I'm working." I offered.

"On a broken Human ship?" He ran his eyes over the thing, noting the utter lack of a left wing, and all the ugly scoring in the metal where said wing met the body. I offered the damage a tentative look of my own, feeling a little awed. I hadn't realized I was missing an entire wing…

"Apparently so." I mumbled, staring at the damage.

"Flint, Flint, Flint." He shook his head slowly, back and forth, like an old sage afraid to rattle his brains too harshly. "You should learn to stay out of those things. One of these days one of them will kill you… and then whom shall I torment, when I have nothing else to do?"

I tore my gaze from the broken ship to stare at the Elite. "So it is deliberate."

He gave a half-nod, half-bow type motion. "Of course." He was quite obviously amused. "It seems I am not the only warrior to find you in your oddly repetitious dire moment of need… I received word from 'Taramee of the incident prior." He recrossed his arms, apparently using the gesture more to rest his arms than to express anything with. "Will no warrior who meets you ever do so while you stand in good health, Flint?"

I pondered that. "I'm working on it."

He uncrossed them again. Boy! He fidgets more than I do. "Work a little harder, Flint, your lack of enthusiasm for your desired end result is showing. Glaringly." Then he waved for me to follow, and turned away.

I cast a glance back at the five stooges who had greeted me, shrugged, and strode off after G'wi. If I didn't know any better, he might have well aged a hundred years or more just in the last six since I'd seen him last. But he was at least not pointing a weapon at me, and the worst he apparently had planned for me was a talk to catch up on lost time.

While never truly friends with the fellow, I had to admit it was not unsavory to find him again under the circumstances. However… I was not particularly interested in catching up with the guy. Elites were… strange. After the utterly traumatizing run with 'Taramee roughly six months before, I was hardly in the mood for more of the same.

Silently I swore to myself if G'wi offered to have me visit his new baby I'd run screaming the other way. He took me up an auxiliary corridor that I understood the connections of simply from memory of the layout of 'Taramee's ship, then made a juncture through the ramp-work over the secondary coolant feeds. I felt odd, knowing what was under the flooring beneath my boots. More so, that no matter where G'wi took me, I'd always know where it was ahead of time.

Being bored and utterly unwilling to nap while trapped on the Unhindered Immolation had led me to explore the thing so many times over that I'd gotten to know the ship almost as well as her Captain… er… Shipmaster. I guessed I would never get lost on another Covenant cruiser ever again.

G'wi looked as if he were examining me, though he never seemed to actually make any decisions about whatever he thought he was seeing. Finally, bored of holding the thing, I threw the MA6B over my shoulder, dropping it into the catches on the battery pack of my armor. The telling clack of engagement let me know the rifle wouldn't hit the floor. I let my arms drop back to my sides.

"What is it about you, I wonder," he began, finally, breaking the silence, "that makes your leaders send you out alone to work?" He tilted his head at me, seeming to look at me with just one of his eyes. I looked back. "You never seem to get them accomplished without some form of aid… so why alone? Why not with some of your Marines?"

I didn't have to think about that answer. "Spartans have always worked alone… ever since the first Halo."

"You were alone when I found you the first time, Flint." He reminded.

"Not at first." I pondered the meaning of this seeming innocuous conversation we were having. What was he really after? Why had the Elites begun to make a habit of coming and picking me up every time I ran into a hitch mid-mission? I had a rather nasty suspicion that whatever I was doing would again be put on hold – or at least modified slightly – in order to fit around whatever other need the Elites had of me.

G'wi sounded unconvinced. "You've an impressive lucky streak."

I scoffed openly at him. "I would not call a ruinous track record lucky. I've hit every stump and hitch and hangup known to Man."

"And yet… you are still here." He folded his arms across his chest again, lending to the budding belief that he did it like a nervous tick or unconscious habit. I wondered if it really had some underlying meaning. Did he do it to conceal some old injury in one of his own shoulders? Did he have something he wanted to cover? Or was he just having difficulty expressing what he wanted to express, given that I was Human and he wasn't? I knew enough about Elites to know that asking would get me nowhere. In a sense, I knew enough about Elites to know that learning anything more about them was going to take pulled hen's teeth to accomplish.

Shy of dying horribly and reincarnating as one of them, that was. I had to admit, though… that particular event was not on my to-do list.

"It has recently come to my attention that a certain Human vessel – a small freighter refitted with a weapons system and shielding – has breached the unspoken barrier between your people's territory and mine."

So that's what this was about. He wanted to bitch to me about how my target was out of bounds. He was in luck, though, given as that ship was hardly in my favor. "I know."

"And is this what you were doing?"

'Doing' could have been construed in any number of ways. I had to take that query with a grain of salt the size of my head. "Yes." If I said more than just, he'd probably riddle me with accusations.

"What is its mission?" He sounded fatally serious; he wanted me to tell him it was an ONI vessel, and that what it was doing was of utmost importance, and that interference in its mission would cause galactic catastrophe. If I said anything less, he seemed of a wont to hunt it down and smash it to bits.

Behind my concealing golden mask, I grinned a death's-head grin. Yes, oh yes. Here we most definitely went again. "You may destroy it if you wish."

That threw him. His step faltered, and he shot me a look of offset confusion. "You are serious?"

I gave a single nod. "But before you do, I want opportunity to go aboard, and reclaim the data center."

"That is all? No request for amnesty of the Humans crewing it?" He sounded honestly astonished. We Humans had a reputation, I suppose, for preserving each other at all costs. But this was a little different. I was supposed to kill the pirates anyway… letting the Elites do it for me wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings, although if information was left out at the wrong political level, it would look mighty awkward.

I shook my head, and by the motion felt the throat seal brush my chin. Oh! I had never sealed my helmet down. That explained a few minor things, like why I could still feel the hot inboard air on my throat. I doubted anyone on the outside could tell it was open, though. All I'd done was drop the helmet over my head, back in the Longsword. If I wasn't dead yet, I didn't figure it meant much.

Still, I did pretend to fumble with one of the latches, to make sure it wasn't going to slouch on me. Maybe later I'd actually seal it down. If I remembered to.

"You are certain your superiors would condone such permission?" He was still probing me, though, apparently unconcerned about my poking myself in the throat.

"Those are my orders." I admitted, finally. "Find the ship, eliminate those onboard, secure the data center and scuttle the boat once I'm off. Then I return to HQ."

G'wi marveled at that for a moment, before nodding. "I shall relay this information at once. It has its aim lain squarely on forbidden territory – a quarantine zone."

"Really?" Now it was my turn to be a little off my balance. "Why is it quarantined?"

"It is a Forerunner research installation, Flint. Any ships going in are at great risk of contamination, and I need not say what with. Those same ships would then be going out loaded with infection, and it would spread out of the quarantine zone."

His words resonated an ill feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was nothing quite so persistent, quite so unwilling to let it drop, as the Flood. And that moronic pirate was diving straight into an open nest! What exactly was on that ONI report, anyway, that he'd feel brave enough to do that? Did he not know it was Flood, by some chance, or did he think the risk worth the profit of a few filched gizmos? Regardless, the level of urgency I had felt upon being handed the mission had just quadrupled. Not only was there ONI intelligence at risk of loss, there was a Flood containment area at risk of being breached.

The last thing I needed was for Flood to have a ship in possession. It was the last thing anyone needed. "How fast can this thing go?"

"There are other ships between it and its destination who can cripple its engines. We will take you to it to make the extraction, since you have been honest with me, but we reserve the right to its destruction." G'wi told me.

"I have no problem with letting you get in a little target practice." I suppose it might not work out so badly after all. Not if they had been tracking the intruder for a while and were already poised to erase it at the word that it was not on a mission to save the galaxy. Anything of less importance, I guess, would elicit the same reaction. Destruction.

I didn't mind that part, though. But coming home without that intel packet would get me hurt in an interesting way. Now, though, I knew the extent of the 'need to know only' part of the mission. I made a mental note to tell the spooks at ONI to word their reports differently from now on. Obviously, their pretend-code ways had very thoroughly shot them in their collective foot.

"You can tell me what you've been up to these past years." G'wi mentioned.

I smiled. "No, I can't." He knew that. Maybe he was poking fun, in his alien way. Maybe he wasn't. But either way, I had decided that maybe it wasn't so bad after all, to be back in the presence of an old friend.

For the first time, the clamor of old battles in the back of my mind lay silent… a cumulative breath before the storm. I appreciated the stall, but I knew without being told that it would only return. Someday, that mess was going to drive me insane, and then the UNSC would move my name to the list with my brothers and sisters, under the oblique heading of MIA.

And everyone who saw it would know it wasn't the truth. Spartans who were MIA never came home. I was the only exception to that rule, having been publicly executed once, and then somehow managed to live to tell about it afterwards. I had long ago let go of the idea I would ever see John again – my old troop leader had a special place in my heart, as he had for all of us, but we had all thought he'd outlast all of us.

For the moment… that man had turned out to be me.

I felt guilty about stealing that title from him. If anyone deserved to go home one last time, to see the grizzled, grandfatherly face of old Lord Hood during one more medallion ceremony, it was definitely John.

And instead, it had been me.

Maybe Cortana had finally met the end of her projected lifespan, and had gone rampant, leaving John without his striking edge. He was good without her – we all were. But he was better with her, good enough to run a gauntlet across Alpha Halo all by himself to approach the end with barely a few bruises to show for it.

Me? I'd come away from my first Halo barely alive, and most definitely not in one piece. My bum shoulder was testament to that. I would never be able to flip a 'hog or a scorpion with that arm ever again. I would never be able to wrestle an Elite to the floor, never get the best of a bunch of Grunts, never come off the high end of a Halcyon-class frigate in a swan dive and be able to walk away from it.

The truth was, despite my shiny exterior, I was hardly a SPARTAN anymore… my augmentations and my Mjolnir had kept me alive, but they had not spared me the damage report. I was junk… used up and a ragged inch from washing out. Thing was, being as I was the only Spartan the UNSC had to parade before the people anymore, I couldn't take any rest.

Grey Team didn't hardly spend any time at all at home… their faces were not known, their Mjolnir masks not the symbol of planetary valor and hope. No one had seen them. Only ONI and myself, really, knew they were even out there. Truth be told they were not exactly personable to large crowds, either. Trying to get footage of them in action, or even to get them in any kind of capacity to show to the public without jeopardizing some mission or other would be difficult at best.

So again… that left me.

Not that Grey Team was comprised of real Spartans. They were the next generation… they just wore the old armor because most of the SPI outfits had been trashed in combat, too. Mjolnir could take more of a beating before it crumbled, and being out in deep space for very easily years at a time between coming in, Grey Team would need every inch of extra coverage they could get.

I didn't feel alone, not so much. But I did feel like the cripple I was. I could still walk, but that was about as far as I got. Maybe I was one of the ones the augmentations didn't take right in, but they had gotten enough of a good reaction initially that none of the scientists had noticed. It might explain some of the horrifying memories I had of lying awake through that process.

I remember I'd practically had sedative for blood when they began, but it still didn't do anything to me. I was the only Spartan to walk out to the field for my first op who went there with existing mental scarring. I took bullets, fists, collapsing ship structure, even mortar rounds without complaint because of that. I was always comparing the new inflictions to the value of that old one, and even being strung up in front of a crowd of millions of jeering aliens hadn't topped it.

Nothing had.

G'wi showed me to a quarter where I could stay, then turned me loose to either stay in it or get lost wandering. He didn't know – and I didn't tell him – that there was no way I could ever get lost by wandering. I knew the blueprints of the ship already.

I let him wander off, though, feeling tired enough finally to make myself sit down. It felt good, but once the pressure was off, I began to feel the ache bubble up through the relief. Lifting my helmet off, I set it beside me on the low cot set into the wall I'd sat down on. The quarter was small, smaller than the one 'Taramee had granted me, but I suspected it was because it was a cubby against the hull that had not been big enough for much else. In fact, from what I was able to tell about the architecture of the ship I was in, this was more or less the only quarter on the ship too small to bunk more than one Elite inside it.

There were command crew quarters big enough to bunk several, I knew, but not a single one of those did. I was in the proverbial broom closet, so to speak. I wasn't going to complain; it left me isolated from anyone who might report what they saw if they caught me dozing. I had never seen it – never nodded off in front of a camera to know – but I was pretty sure it wasn't pretty. Just by the way my insides always felt each time I came awake high on adrenaline with my heart in my head and my veins on fire. Sometimes, I'd come off whatever I'd dozed off on so fast I knocked it over or back or down.

Once, a Marine had told me he thought I'd sat dead still for too long, and when he came over to slap my shoulder, I'd damn near killed him with my awakening. I do remember finding myself suddenly back in reality, with a strangling man in my grip, but I don't recall how I got that way. I felt rather fortunate in that he chose not to hold it against me at all, though how he'd gotten so unlucky right then had been volunteered. I didn't ask.

That was the only time I'd been left dormant for long enough behind friendly lines for that to happen, though. I didn't run from sleep for image's sake. I ran from it because being down there in the deep recesses of my own brain was beginning to become too frightening for even myself to want to go there.

As I sat on the recessed bunk in the little quarter, my helmet my only companion in the gathering violet gloom, I wondered if I would find peace when I died. Would it end, would I be able to sleep at last without nightmares? Or would I roam the solar winds of the galaxy, a lost and tormented soul, glimpsed by only the least fortunate soldiers and warriors in battles the universe over? I had never seen a ghost… or at least I didn't think I ever had.

I knew my lack of occupying activity was making my eyelids heavy, but as much as I did not want to doze off, my weary carcass was less inclined to lift me up and carry me off to find something to do to occupy my mind than I liked. I wondered if I'd reached the end, and needed to do something besides work before I could venture on. Was this what 'dead on your feet' was like?

What the hell.

I forced myself off the bunk for one final commitment, sparing a minute and five to strip out of the Mjolnir. If that door locked I had no idea. How to make it lock I knew even less. But at the moment, I didn't care. I pulled all of it off, figuring if I needed anything, I could go back down to the bay and get it out of my Longsword. But spending some quality time on the closest thing to a real bed within lightyears of my position wouldn't harm anything.

I folded the combat skin the way I'd been taught, setting the neat square of stiff polymer fabric next to the standing segments of my armor. It came apart, like any good armor suit should, but it was by no means as partial as it appeared when on the wearer. I turned away from the assembly, spilling out across the bunk on my back, and that's where the world stopped.

---

I could feel the mathematically perfect flatness of the surface beneath me, but oddly there was little else there. Inside my armor, the atmosphere was a carefully machine-regulated mix, but it still wasn't getting me air any better. I gasped, wheezed, coughed, all to no effect. My body begged for oxygenation, begged for air. But the harder I inhaled, the less I seemed to draw in. My skin prickled each time I moved, each tiny flex sending racing ripples of worrisome sensation across my exterior.

I couldn't see. Nowhere I turned my eyes earned me visual input. No matter how hard I squeezed them shut, though, the blinding, searing torment would not leave them. In that moment, within my agonizing sensory deprivation, I realized two things.

I was trapped in a place very small… barely bigger in dimensions than I was.

And I couldn't hear that one sound that I had never been able to shut out. As hard as I was fighting for a breath, a gasp of air, as much effort as I was putting into that inward concentration, as much punishing as I was giving my surroundings, and with all the utter lack of outward sound to be had, there was nothing at all to explain why I couldn't hear my heartbeat.

My arms felt sluggish, heavy. My chest felt like a solid brick. But my head wanted to explode like fused atoms caught within an accelerator. I fought it, but finally, my body fell limp, unable to respond to my command or unwilling I was unsure. Then, in the gathering dark, I was only a thought from oblivion.

What is happening to me? I wondered.

I watched as light blossomed above me, both dim and weak, but growing steadily in size and brightness. Finally, it became enough for me to recognize the rolling frost over my prone form, and the source behind the light that had appeared so far away just a moment ago.

Around it was curled the hand of an Elite, his face masked behind a scout helmet, the convex visor plates over each eye shining a deep, light-sucking black against his more moderate armor.

I blinked. The action cleared a slight amount of the fog, allowing me to realize the glow the Elite held was a brightly burning energy blade. The warrior stood there in full battle dress, grenades on his belt and a plasma rifle at his hip, the barrel of a Carbine standing out like a flag pole over his hunched shoulder. The longer he stood there, the more damaged he became, until long scoring and deep gouges marked his once blemishless armor, turning it from what had been an attractive blue to a scorched, horrid black. Soot and blood stained through from the underside of the paint, what remained of it, and seeped down into the gouges, scoring and scratches. Granules of dirt rose from the mess like erupting pimples. Cracks formed, crawling slowly across the armor, until at last, the blast glass fractured and fell from the socket of the visor on the left.

The glass sprinkled across my face, telling me I was not, after all, wearing my helmet. I couldn't do anything except blink, so there was no way to know if the rest of the Mjolnir was gone too.

As I watched, the now raggedly beaten Elite reached up, his empty hand shaking as for pain of injury, and lifted his concealing helmet from his face. Beneath the broken helmet, he proved a war-weary warrior indeed. Blood spiderwove across his face over obvious lacerations and bruising, and the use of the eye behind the broken visor plate was lost.

But I found I knew who I was looking at anyway. G'wi! What happened to you? My tongue felt like a dead weight. At some point I didn't recall, I had stopped gagging for air, and now I lay absolutely still.

I watched as G'wi blinked the one eye he had left, and as he raked the underside of his broken mandibles across the arm of the hand holding his helmet. "I am sorry, old friend." He said, sounding genuinely remorseful. "We could not hold them. We could not push them, and we have been driven back at every front. I come to you now in admittance of something I never thought I would ever say."

He hung his head for a moment, and a droplet of his blood fell from his forehead. I felt it splash beside my bare head, the sound of the tiny amount of liquid hitting like a mortar exploding under me.

"We have lost." G'wi concluded, finally, lifting his head enough to meet my gaze again. He looked farther up, then, over me at something past me that I couldn't see. "We have lost, and we are fewer with every passing moment. Soon they will come to this place, too, and they will burn it to the foundations, as they have done so many times before."

A burning thought presented itself. Who was they?

I couldn't speak it, and G'wi didn't hear my thought. He continued uninterrupted. "It is a sad day, old friend. A sad day indeed, to know that after all this time, it will end in this manner."

Who was they?

He shook his battered head, tucking his mandibles inward slightly with a gravelly sucking noise not unlike a sniffle made with the throat. Again, he wiped his mandibles across that same arm. Something dark and suspicious drooled across the armor, dripping away even before he could lower his arm again. Was he coughing up blood, so badly injured was he? I couldn't ask. I couldn't even move. I wished fervently that my body was operational.

"There is nothing we can do, Flint."

G'wi was the only Elite that knew, who still called me that. Everyone else called me by my honorary Elite name, 'Zelisee. Stubborn to his own ways, and very much like himself, G'wi alone called me Flint. I had often wondered why that was.

"There is nothing anyone can do, now. No time to try." He closed his good eye, and tried to breathe a sigh, but his breath caught and he hiccupped instead, before coughing out once before completing his exhalation. Inhaling a new breath, he concluded, "I know you never meant it to happen this way, Flint. But you fought the hardest to stop this, and in your valor and honor even you could not hold them back… and you of all of us were the first one to die."

Shock rocked my addled brains. First one to die! Fighting what? Why? Why was G'wi telling me this? As much as I tried, I still couldn't make any part of me move. I couldn't protest, I couldn't speak, or move. Didn't he know I was looking right at him? Couldn't he see my eyes were open? That on occasion, while bereft of all other motor function, I would blink? I wanted badly to scream in frustration. That, too, proved impossible.

G'wi inhaled slowly, the expression easily read. He was warming up to something he didn't like, but knew needed to be done. I found I didn't like the way it looked from my angle very soon after, when he raised the hand holding the glowing sword.

Don't… don't do that… no…. don't… don't…!

But he brought it down across me, finally re-igniting my nervous system, my motor function, and everything else. I came flying off the surface on which I lay like I had rockets strapped to my back, the cry erupting from my parched throat striking the stagnant air around me and echoing back beneath the original sound.

I blinked at the sudden rush of sensory information, tasting my lip and finding sweat. Violet walls as quiet and stable as metal sheathing could be adorned the barren room, the armor sitting in the corner just the way I'd left it.

Wham, wham, wham, wham

First, I touched my chest, checking for sword cuts. Finding none, I ran that hand over my head, and exhaled. It was still dark, still quiet. Nothing had changed – nary a dust mote had stirred, and no one was in the room with me. I was alone. Closing my eyes, I dug my knuckles into them, trying to squeeze the images out. It never worked, but the pain of pressure on my eyes always helped to wake me up.

But I knew I was already awake. I was awake, and I'd woken without outside prompting. Again. All my old aches remained, all the old weariness remained. I felt no better for having tried, though my eyelids did feel slightly less heavy.

Absently, as I pulled back into the combat skin, I wondered how long that one had taken. An hour? Less? I never really slept for long. The dreams saw to that. But when I pulled the last of my armor on over the combat skin and secured it down, sealing it in place, I watched my HUD flicker in indignant defiance.

I wasn't going to be knowing what time it was any time soon.

Grumbling, I smacked the wall beside the door with my fist on my way out, allowing the feel of the impact to follow me down the corridor as I made my way along. I was in a particularly irritable mood right then, and needing to tune up my armor's OS did not appeal to me. But it had to be done. The machinery was pretty modern, but it was not without bugs. And while to be fair to the stuff, this was only the second time it had happened, it was still damned annoying when it did.

I just needed a few minutes with the equipment I'd packed on the Longsword, then all would be right again for until the next time. If now was any kind of average to go by, that would happen some eight or ten weeks from now.

I was prepared to be satisfied with that… but if I ever figured out how to unplug the stupid upgrade making it glitch like it was, I'd just yank that, and then never need to deal with it ever again. I could handle being scolded by the techs back at ONI HQ better than I could deal with this sort of thing.

My Mjolnir was my skin, my bones, my lifeblood. If my armor crapped out on me, the event would kill me. Not directly – but then hardly anything was ever direct. I made it to the bay, got across it, and up inside the Longsword without seeing anybody. The one time I peeked out, all I saw was one of those floaty pink things with the trailing tentacles at the far end of the bay. It eventually left, though, without ever coming near me or my bird.

I was about as engrossed in my OS task as one could get, then, when my visitor finally turned up. His arrival about spooked me out of my own body, sending the majority of my equipment and all the connector cables in all directions… mostly to the floor.

I stood there staring at him, feeling torn. Should I grumble at him, or fret that I was losing my edge?

G'wi put up his hands in penance, offering apology wordlessly. The expression on his face told me he was just as alarmed by my reaction as I was – though for different reasons. He might guess correctly that I was pretty high-strung, but he'd never really figure out why until he'd had more time to observe my current condition. "I apologize… it was not my intent to startle you."

I exhaled, and sat down again, turning away from him to gather up the dumped equipment. I'd had to take my helmet off for this, but that was all. I imagined I looked rather bad… not that someone like G'wi would really be able to tell, given that the few times he'd actually seen my face, I'd been less than optimal. Now was little different.

He put his hands down, watching for a moment as I reassembled what I'd been doing. Finally, he asked, "Something is troubling you?"

Resting a hand atop the mass of tangled components and links in my lap, I sighed. "Something always is." I wished he'd drop it, but I knew better than to think that wish would be granted.

He found the copilot's seat, and sat down on the side of it, folding his arms across his knees as he watched me resume my task. Once I got it all untangled from itself, I put it all back the way I'd had it, and got back to the tuning. The last time I'd done this, I had gotten it right almost immediately. Now, though, I was having trouble focusing, and it was eating at my concentration. I couldn't seem to align the numbers right for some reason.

"May I know what it is, this time?" G'wi prompted.

I raised my head, and looked at him, feeling rumpled. I frowned for a moment, trying to come up with a convincing reason why it was none of his business. Honestly, though… the truth was he had every right to ask. Having a Spartan lose it on his ship would not be good for either myself or the crew, as the end result of that event might not be nearly as pretty as anyone might imagine as ideal. I just didn't want to talk about it.

I wasn't really much of one for telling stories anyway… never had been.

His mandibles flexed slightly, indicating he was quite aware of my internal dilemma. He couldn't possibly understand the depth of it, though. This was deeper than even I could quite grasp. What had me concerned was that I couldn't even put my finger on why. It was just something that happened, randomly, gradually, worsening over the years until it had finally become unbearable. When it became evident I wasn't going to answer him, in any fashion other than my look, he spoke again.

"I met a different Human once."

I cocked one brow.

"He was not unlike yourself. Shorter, to be sure. Wore a lesser kind of armor." He sat straight, and crossed his arms. The last I rather expected him to do, though, and paid the gesture no mind. "When he became at last convinced that I was no danger to him or his men, he and I spent several hours in converse." He offered a slight shrug motion. "He told me many things about your people."

I sniffed.

"He had eyes so blue they looked artificial." G'wi said. "And his skin was almost as pale as yours. He had seen enough sun to counter whatever potential for whiteness he might have, though."

"Your point?" I injected, finally, impatient for him to get it overwith. One thing about G'wi that had always annoyed me in the past was his tendency to bait a body, then make them beg on their knees before he'd tell them what he really had to say. I was not in the mood.

"He told me that Spartans were the icon of your people. Said you were the best of their very best. Said to me a thing I found most… interesting." He uncrossed his arms. "He told me Spartans never die."

Okay, that part I did find slightly amusing – for about a tenth of a second. I quirked up one corner of my mouth at him, a half-smirk at best, then turned away again, and returned to my task without comment.

"You disagree."

I didn't answer.

G'wi sighed at me. "Flint… you are not yourself." He insisted. "You have changed… and some of that I can understand, compliment even. But you behave as if you carry the torment of a thousand people upon your shoulders… why? What has made you this way? When I first dug you out of that dead bird on the ground of Kanaeghio, you were not like this. You seem… troubled."

I grunted, twisting the calibration the other way.

"Flint."

I raised my head again, but this time I didn't look at him. "G'wi, I'm not going to tell you. So just drop it."

He recrossed his arms. "No."

I looked at him.

He shook his head, stubbornly. "No."

"G'wi – " I protested.

But before I could even form the syllable of the next word, whatever it might have become, he interrupted me. "This isn't about you, nor be it about me. This is about what happened between now and the day I watched your people take you away after the fight for the second Halo was done. This is about what they did to you – whatever it was, it is not good. Not for you, not for them. You are going to die horribly, honorless, forgotten, if you do not let go of it… whatever it is. Do you want that?"

I gave him my best sarcastic laugh. "I have always been all of that. What difference would it make, G'wi, to die unchanged from the norm?"

His features drew together in a Sangheilian scowl. I'd hit a nerve. Honorless was particularly unacceptable to the Elites. Evidently I'd just told him I had never owned an ounce… when in fact he'd testified against that himself at one point. If he paused to think, he'd remember it, too.

He threw me off track when what came out did not match what I'd thought he'd been thinking. "A significant one, Flint. Do not doubt your prowess is well recognized. You are an icon to more than just your own people. Your image, your presence, your capabilities are marked in the histories of many races in this wide 'verse. You cannot tarnish your own image – you would need to show it to too many audiences to make a lasting impact. You would die of old age if nothing else before you reached the halfway point in such an endeavor. Do you not see?"

I scrunched up my face, and shook my head. "Whatever you're trying to say, it didn't come out in English just then."

G'wi outright scowled at me then, for that. But he relaxed the expression shortly after, and crossed his arms. "Flint."

I briefly considered humoring him, and saying 'what?', but instead turned away, looking back down at my work. I tweaked it a little, then a lot. It still wouldn't line up. Now the correlation subroutines were twisted, too. I sighed at it. This would take longer than fifteen minutes.

"Why do they really send you out here alone, Flint?" G'wi asked, his tone softer.

My traitorous mouth answered him without my permission; "I ask them to."

He didn't say anything to that immediately, though, the way I thought he would. Instead he just nodded his long head once, and looked at the floor for several long moments as I struggled with the programming glitch in my lap.

"It's easier this way." I tried to amend, hoping to effect some useful damage control where it might do me some good. "All they have to give me are Marines. They're slow and would get in the way."

"Flint, don't patronize me." G'wi scolded, raising his head to look at me squarely. "I am not simple-minded, nor am I a child."

I dropped my hands across the calibrator hub sitting on my armored knees, and looked back at him, feeling scorned and hurt at once. Why couldn't he just be a good friend and leave me alone? He'd been pretty good to me in the past – sketchily, but good nonetheless. Why not now?

"I was coming to get you when I saw you leave the quarter where I left you." He added, quietly, as if to ensure any prying ears would not hear it clearly. "I saw you strike the door. I saw the way you walked the corridor to get here. I know you owe me nothing, but it is very likely in both of our best interests if I know the source of your agitation. Is it the ship? Have you great difficulty riding Sangheili vessels? Is it myself, an echo of your tormented past?"

I snorted, dropping my gaze back to my lap. "Hardly."

"Then obviously, I require some explanation of you."

I ran a hand over my face, feeling each muscle the action took as they rolled in tandem along my arm and shoulder. It was strange, and haunting, these moments of absolute clarity I kept experiencing. Was it the dreams, doing it? Was it some other symptom of a third source? I could sense everything all at once, with completion. But I couldn't process that much information in such massive quantities, and it always left me blind as a bat for several minutes.

"Flint."

I left the hand over my face.

"Flint."

Behind my closed eyes, I could almost see him bringing that sword down across me, cutting me in half across the chest. G'wi and I had not tried to kill one another since before the capture that had ended with my execution. In the times that we had, he'd never had a sword to have used, let alone ever gotten to use one. I knew that. I understood that. But the line between memory of actual events and memory of dreamed ones was blurring.

I didn't even know if I'd dreamed the escape from High Charity or if that part was real. Or if I had ever really gotten swarmed by an army of Flood while John got away. Or if I had piloted the Phantom that got me into that situation or not. Much of the perception I could recall was detached, oddly, as if I were out-of-body while processing the data my senses had received from each environment.

"Flint…?"

"If I told you," I began, hearing my voice come out slightly weaker than I remembered giving it permission for, "you would only join me."

"You are a Spartan." G'wi countered, as if that alone was any kind of argument. He elaborated, though; "That makes you a part of something bigger than yourself. A part of a group, a fragment of the whole. This, in turn, means that you are not meant to shoulder anything, no matter how great or slight it might be, alone."

I took my hand from my face when I felt weight settle on that shoulder. He'd put his hand on it. I looked at him.

"You are not the extent and breadth of the Human military. You are allowed faults – you are allowed to rest, and recover, while others take up the slack until your return. Take a moment for yourself, Flint. Perhaps no Spartan has ever done as much… but in this case, even in as little as I know about you, about Spartans or Humans in general… I can look at you and tell you what I see is not good."

I wasn't sure how to take that, so I sat silent, staring at him.

He inclined his head towards me. "And you may, should you have need, share what troubles you. Perhaps in the act you might find solution… or at the least, solace."

"If 'Taramee told you about his last mission… why are you even needing to ask?" I countered, feeling weak and impotent. How could someone so alien, so bizarre, know just how to push all the right buttons to rob me of armament and armor at once? I wanted so badly just to argue that he was wrong, to push him away and rebuke him, but it wouldn't come out. I had no ammunition.

G'wi cocked his head at me. "This is about that? I admit I did not receive a great many details. But surely… he described your decay beginning before you parted ways at the conclusion of that run."

Oh… so that might be why he had not expressed any pretense of sympathy for the absent 'Taramee or those he kept close. I didn't want his pity. I didn't even want his condolences. But I didn't know how to tell him that that incident – as terrible as it had been – was hardly the culmination of my problems. How could I explain that I didn't know what was wrong with me?

I shook my head, brushed his hand from my shoulder, and returned to the calibrator. "Not about that." Maybe later, when I had more words. As foolish as the notion had been, I had honestly hoped the mention of 'Taramee and his unfortunate brood might derail this seemingly creepy psychic episode G'wi was having on me. I had, it seemed, failed miserably. Now he wanted grisly details.

I knew if he didn't leave the Longsword soon, I was either going to fall completely apart and be ruined as a Human being forevermore, or I was going to blow up on him, and either he or I would wind up dead for our trouble. Either way, I knew I couldn't stand much more of this. I was at the end of my wits, emotionally exhausted, and left hung in an empty void of weary apathy.

There were days when I regretted having learned to let myself care.

"Flint."

"You keep saying that, and someone is going to think you've a broken component in your head, and your vocals are stuck on repeat." I snapped.

He laughed, startling me.

I stared at him for a moment, puzzled as to what in the world I could have said that he'd find so amusing.

Quieting, G'wi reached over, and lifted the calibrator from my thighs to set it on his own. Once it was there, he adjusted it just once, then held it up and offered it back to me. When I took it, I looked at the meter, and saw that it was all perfectly lined up. I sat still, staring through the readouts, feeling hollow. I was surprised he even knew what I was doing, let alone how to do it, but more so that he could get it so right so fast.

I was also scathing at the spinning ideas that he'd done me that service directly after I had snapped at him. A moment later I would have socked him in the mouth… but then he went and did me this favor.

Weakly, I asked, "What time is it?"

"It has been ten Human-standard hours since your arrival."

"Ten." I echoed, trying to sort that.

Out of my peripheral, I saw G'wi nod his head. "You stayed in the quarter for the majority of those."

I nodded, then, and began to quickly disconnect everything. Once it was free, the first thing I did was pull the helmet back over my head. I wanted environmental anonymity, and I needed that security quickly. I didn't need G'wi to see when I let my tormented expression show. I was good at not moving obvious things – but wearing a dead face had never been a talent of mine.

Right then I just wanted to scream.

---

After spending a few hours hiding behind my armor, I did feel a little better. It was not unlike a part of me – an extension of my body. It responded to me that way, and that was how I liked it. This particular sentiment was fairly common among Spartans, truth be told. For me, though, the Mjolnir was a security blanket I'd never outgrown.

Without it, I was more than just exposed… I hated that. I knew I relied on my tools of war too much, knew it was a growing weakness of mine, but I couldn't make myself let go. They kept me sane for that much longer.

My current condition only made them that much more important to me.

G'wi took me up to see the command deck, where I finally got to meet the aforementioned Sasaak. He was a wiry, bitter-looking old officer, but while I thought he had one of those permanent scowls etched onto his features, he didn't harbor any resentment in his glossy black eyes.

When he spoke, he sounded speculative most of the time, though the one time he directly addressed me – and that only after G'wi informed him that I was 'that Human' who had the Elite name attached to me – he sounded more curious than indignant.

I got the impression that while I was a passing interest as a novelty, I was not necessarily welcome on the bridge. G'wi transformed from in charge of the project to being just one of the ranking grunts. He might be in charge of some of the other grunts, but he was not ship crew, and if they stopped off anywhere they couldn't blast from orbit, it would be G'wi's crowd that departed to ground.

I wondered why nobody had told me about that detail before now, but in the end it wasn't that important. Still, I liked to gather as much data as I could about any given situation – and finding 'Taramee outranked G'wi nowadays had put me a little back on my heels. It was certainly a bit of a shocker, considering G'wi had once been the Honor Guard, and 'Taramee was just the biggest splitlip on the block when I'd first met him.

It occurred to me then that I had never asked him what rank or order he'd been then. Maybe that casual mention that Honor Guardship was something of a black mark meant more than I'd given it credit for. I decided to ask the old guy what black armor meant after we were done taking up space on the command deck, as I knew that Elites used uniform color rather than insignia to denote who was what.

Strange practice.

Somehow, by the time we made it back off the command deck and down into the halls again, I'd forgotten my question. Needless to say, it never got asked. In my defense, this was not because of a lax mind – on the contrary, it was more because my mission was at hand, and I was busily conjuring plans, tactics, and assembling protocol. Getting to a runaway frigate was one thing… getting inside took one of two things; the hatch lock coding, or a cutting torch.

I had neither. G'wi picked four of his black-clad compatriots and went with me, flying the Phantom himself. I turned the exterior sound filters off, unwilling to listen to the machine's pulsing when the sound was closely attributed to the weight of a dead baby in my arms. The last thing I needed right then was to remember that mess.

I elected to sit shotgun – in as much as one can, inside a cockpit – to watch as the stars fell away around a soft, seafoam-green world covered in wispy white precipitation. I spotted a large hurricane in the southern hemisphere, but I couldn't tell land from ocean, so it was hard to tell where that storm was or what it was up to. Tossing the waves around was alright, I supposed, but if it was coming ashore, it might leave some foul weather – and poor sightlines – for my task. The pirate had taken two to the engines, I'd been told, but the explosion of the fuel cores within them had only destroyed their control – and not their speed.

As a result, the ship had nose-dived into its target, and sooner than expected. The ship was going nowhere, but she had still gotten aground. To have stopped that end would have needed a ship as big or bigger than it, with about six times as much structural armoring, and a pilot good enough to get in front and pull back on the throttle until all inertia was gone.

Apparently, the Elites didn't have any such kind of ship on hand. Clouds blew past, then rain slicked over the fore view shield. I sighed. My spirits did lift somewhat when we came out from under the storm's farthest arm before slowing, and a moment later than that, I spotted my target at last. I'd wondered if I ever would, after being caught in the pirate's cunning little trap and blown shy a wing, but now the frigate lay in a trench right before my eyes.

I was certain that at least eight or ten of the lowermost levels were crushed flat floor to ceiling, given the nature of the landing the ship had endured, but the odds of it even landing in the upright position – and not upside down, for instance – were rather slim, given the crew had had no steering when it happened.

"Where are you putting us down?"

"On the top. No sense trying to find a way in through compressed metal." G'wi answered.

I nodded. Seemed sound enough to me. When he'd gotten the Phantom where he wanted it, he put it into park, and dropped the gravity beam sans opening the side doors, and rose from his seat.

Seeing I hadn't moved yet, he hesitated, standing there facing me. "Aren't you coming? Neither I nor my Elites know what it is we are after, in there."

I stuck a gloved finger to my golden visor and rubbed, as if having spied a splotch or spot on the glass that bothered me. In truth, there was no such removable blemish… and I have no idea why I did that. But it gave G'wi something to frown at.

"Flint, get up." He commanded. "You're here, your mission beckons."

"I know." Thing was, now that I was finally there… I felt absolutely no inclination whatsoever to get up and go do it. None at all. It was a really weird feeling…

"Flint." G'wi crossed his arms… this time with meaning. He was annoyed. "Now, Flint."

"Okay, okay." I stood, and turned out of the cockpit, permitting myself a short grumble just for the sake of it, stepping across the back to the iris over the beam and in. I swear I fell faster than I ought to have, but my boots didn't seem to strike harder than they ought, so I didn't comment.

Maybe G'wi was right… maybe I did have some kind of problem that was worth sharing… either way, his proverbial boot in my rear had a magical effect, and the moment my feet touched the outer hull of my target, I was back in the game.

Immediately I circumvented the other Elites, and headed across towards the aft, where I was pretty certain there would be some kind of maintenance hatch or secondary deck seal that I could blast open with a few well-placed stripes of plastic. Carving through the hull itself – any given hull at all – was going to be an all day affair, and I wasn't that patient. I also didn't really like cutting on metal plates all that much, either.

Something I tended to avoid, as much as possible.

Around the raised sensor hub forward of the secondary relays – tall antenna things that had all burned off during entry – I found what I sought. The door proved big enough to permit G'wi to drop his Phantom through to the inside, leading me to believe that there was some kind of work bay, or maybe a storage compartment beneath it.

I dropped to a knee at the main lock, and began to apply a worm of plastic sufficient to get the job done. I didn't need to really open the thing, as it was far too big to wrest manually. It was also a double door, one that latched with teeth in the middle, so all I really had to do was break one of them out of its track bed, and it'd fall in. That would make a sufficiently large enough hole for all six of us to jump in shoulder to shoulder.

With room to spare for another hundred guys or so, too.

Having followed me, the Elites all stood around watching me apply the plastic, and looking at me like I was nuts. Maybe I was, but what I was doing wasn't all that irrational. I had just finished laying the last necessary bit when I realized I was now standing on an emergency personnel hatch built right into the middle of the secondary bay door.

I grumbled at it, and settled for another small circle on that one, which I then blew open. The circle launched upwards, remarkably enough, and one of G'wi's guys had to duck to the side to keep from being brained by it. He called an oath at me, or at least I'm sure that's what it was, because he said it in that guttural Elite language that they speak sometimes.

I just shrugged, and stepped into my new entrance. And then I discovered that it was a mighty long way to the bottom…

My boots struck deck plating with a horrible clang, but while the lights were on at the bottom of that insanely long drop, there was nobody home. What got my attention – and my MA6B into my hands – was the nature of the mess I'd just dropped into. Tools and equipment lay scattered around the place in utter chaos, working machine fluids drooled over the top like some kind of mock sauce. To my left was a lift hauler, smoldering and bent, the smoke still pouring out of its engine compartment even though no flames were anylonger visible.

A battle had taken place in here.

Just a heartbeat before I would have taken a step forward, I was knocked into from behind, and I dropped onto my face. The MA6B got loose of my hands and spun away out of reach too quickly for me to stop it, so I latched onto what had landed on me with what I did still have – both hands.

In the span of about a second I'd torn it off my back, brought it over a shoulder onto the floor in the middle of a glossy black pool filled with loose nuts and washers, and had secured it there under a knee and one hand, with my other drawn back for my first actual hit.

There I paused.

G'wi, poor unfortunate soul that he was, gasped inward, then gagged on it. "Forerunners, Flint! Let me up."

Sheepishly, I dropped my poised fist, and used my grasp on his armored vest to haul him back to his feet. "Sorry." There, I let go, and turned away, seeking what had become of my rifle. As I was retrieving it, and wiping off the goo that was now all over one side of it, I heard the second Elite strike bottom behind me.

Gah… I really was losing my mind.

When I shouldered it for the second time, I heard a noise that did not coincide with the entrance of G'wi's Elites at all. "Wait… you hear that?" I asked.

"Hear what?" G'wi asked, stepping up beside me. "I hear many things… most I do not credit to living intervention."

"That hum." I elaborated, looking around again. I was about to ask him if he had any guesses what it might be when it changed pitch… and then it struck me. "They're bringing the engines back online! There's no way they've repaired two direct hits to the manifolds this fast."

G'wi looked at me squarely, then. "Do not expect to find your kind aboard this craft, Flint… the Flood are neither slow nor impeded by manufactured goods."

To that, I grumbled. Leading out of the bay, I took the first route I could think of that I saw that would lead me and my meager backup to the forward manifest. There, I hoped to find the data center, and hopefully the stolen ONI data was inside it. If it wasn't, then scouring the whole ship looking for it would be a terrible waste of lives and time. Flood, as I had well learned the last time I had met some, were not easy to get through or around.

That they had already come once meant my initially small time window was smaller still, more so than I enjoyed. To their credit, the Elites accompanying me stayed close, and kept scanning the side passages I led them past. At least we'd have forewarning before we were all ripped apart and turned into more Flood…

Now that was a dismal thought.

I spent the next couple of minutes mentally kicking myself for being such a terrible pessimist, but I really couldn't help it – there was nothing ideal about a situation that involved the Flood. We made the messhall, and I took a cut through it, passing huge ugly green puddles of Flood puke, and the occasional splash or smear of Human blood. There were no bodies, at least until I made the entrance to the bridge itself.

There, I found the only soul who had somehow managed to keep himself from becoming Flood food… and that might have had something to do with the stricken expression on his face, the grenade pin in his left hand, and the utter lack of a middle the man had. That was a rather disgusting mess he'd left… stepping through it for lack of anywhere to put my feet that wasn't an inch thick in Human goo, I proceeded to squish for the next ten or twenty strides until the floor grating's texture wore it off my boots again.

I knew I'd left tracks. Most everything in the command center was smashed, even the keyboards and the displays, as if someone had come through with a hammer and made a point of chopping down on every flat surface there was to be had. It looked a little odd, to be sure. Even explosive decompression didn't look quite like this. Had someone been playing duck-and-run with a Flood form that had only its fists to fight with?

I shook my head, and went to the main data console, as obliterated as it was, and lifted the shattered sheath off. Setting that aside, I poked through the battered components and wires for a while before finding something I could hook to, and got out my jacks and cords.

G'wi stepped past me, trying to get a feel for the place, but he looked more apprehensive with each passing moment. He knew the longer we stayed, the more manpower we'd need to get back out. And six guys wasn't much of a force when the Flood was involved.

I well imagined he'd calculated we'd need well over a battalion before I was done, but when he turned to look at me with that inquisitive look on his face, it was hard as hell not to shake my head at him. Not to be cruel in humor at his unwarranted tension. More because the equipment was glitzing on and off with power surge after power surge due to the tatty condition of the engine repair the Flood was doing.

With it doing that nonsense, there was no telling what data was in the archives… if any.

G'wi scowled. "This is a waste of time."

"Not to me." I said. Even if he ditched me here, I imagined I could probably find some kind of flying craft in one of the bays to make my exit with, though given that this was a civilian retrofit, I wasn't liable to find much that would get me very far. I had to be nice, I realized, a little too late to stop my comment. "Give me five more minutes," I amended, stepping over to the electronically mangled mess attached to the Captain's chair.

Maybe this wasn't nearly so badly hurt. I found blood drooled all through the components on that setup, though, a dismal state to be sure. Still, by the time I was connected and jacked in, the power had finally stopped fluctuating, and what little I did get was uninterrupted.

"Well?" G'wi demanded, his patience wearing on his temper. Give him an hour and he'd be in one of those murderous rages his kind had from time to time.

"From what I can tell… there's almost nothing left of the memory banks." I admitted, sourly. "But there's no evidence the ONI intel was ever plugged in, either."

"You cannot be serious…" It was something of a cross between a plea and a demand.

"I want to check the command quarters before we go." I told him. "Let's get moving. The sooner I'm done, the sooner we're out of here."

My statement had the desired effect, remarkably, and it soothed his agitation for a moment as I led the way back off the bridge and back through that mangled corpse filling up the only open passageway. I didn't look at it twice. Even Spartans have a sense of gross… and that was a five star yuck laying there.

I had to smash the door to the Captain's quarters open with the butt of my rifle, as it was either stuck or locked, and wouldn't open. I found no one hiding inside, though, making me wonder why it was kept locked. I rummaged for a full minute, shaking things out and turning things over and pulling things apart, before I found the detached air duct grill.

Ah, so that's why the door was locked… someone didn't want to be caught half-out of a duct pipe. I spared the sight a chuckle, and moved on. Standing erect in the reader, but with the reader's contacts disconnected, I finally found a data chip. I looked at it for a moment before reaching back and plugging the thing into the slot in the back of my helmet, but before anything happened, I saw G'wi give me the oddest of looks.

Then my HUD rolled over a sheath of binary coding, and I felt my armor stall out and reboot halfway. This sudden system glitch caused an involuntary stagger on my part, as the armor first locked tight, then dropped me, and then came back online proper like so I could catch my suddenly missing balance again.

There was a cool, liquid feeling pulsing through my skull.

A Spartan? I'm honored.

I balked. "You're an AI?? They didn't tell me you were an AI!"

Calm down, 093. Yes, I am an Artificial Intelligence. My firewalls were sufficient to prevent the Captain from accessing any of my data logs, so everything is still secure. I hope you had an escape plan. The voice was sort of masculine, but I didn't recognize it. The tone, however, told me that the AI recognized me.

Whatever that meant, I'd need to investigate later. "Just stop right there… don't say anything else. You'll distract me." I turned to the door, and with the fourth grumble of my day, started for it.

"Did you find what you sought?" G'wi asked, as I emerged.

"Yeah. Let's beat it." I shouldered my MA6B and made at a trot for that messy secondary bay where we'd come in. Barely had I reached the second bend in the hall when the first of the Flood turned up. What had once been crew began to scream and charge at us, the vast majority of the combat forms coming our way still holding the same weaponry they had held when fighting off the Flood that had turned them. I dropped the first three with well-placed three-round bursts through their unarmored chests, obliterating the controlling organism embedded within. After that, plasma and carbine rounds filled up the corridor, and mowed my path for me.

I was about to believe for a moment that the group had been small, and it would be another few corridors or so before we found more, but barely had the first bunch stopped gurgling on the floor when more showed up to replace them.

Flood forms poured out of every conceivable nook, cranny, side passage and broken door, swarms of the little white pus bubbles pouring past their stomping feet as they came. I fired until my magazine was dry, then hesitated a running step to fall into the middle of my companions while I reloaded. The empty magazine replaced the full one I'd taken out of that ammo pouch, and jacking the action bar, I raised the barrel and went again.

Bullets zinged off our collective shielding, calcite claws raking past fractions of seconds before the owners of the claws were left behind, felled or not. I had neither time nor ammunition to clear the sector, nor did I care to try. But the combat… it was exhilarating.

For the first time in nearly a year, there was no clarity, no chaos, no shaking torment scratching at the edges of my mind. There was only the here, the now, myself and G'wi and his Elites, and the hail of bullets and gore we charged through. Sure was nice to be normal again. Even for just a breath.

Right as I caught myself smiling, that accursed ONI AI piped up… and he didn't do it lightly, either, sufficing only with a sudden, sharp, commanding yell. Down!

I don't know what possessed me to, but down I went. I dropped to my knees, tucked my head in and rolled over my shoulders, and as I came back up, I saw the trail of smoke above me… it soon became evident it was at chest-level, as a loud crunch resonated behind me, followed instantly by a thunderous exhalation, and a heartbeat after, it detonated, throwing me forward onto my face.

I clawed frantically back to my feet, unready to die and unwilling to let the Flood do it to me, but then I had to stand there and blast back the creatures from all sides – and I do mean all sides – while the Elites crawled back upright around me. Sealed within my environmental armor, I suppose I was fortunate in that I missed the one part of being on top of an exploding rocket that the others had not… brilliant purple blood dribbled from every mandible, dizziness obvious in all their glossy black eyes.

I eventually found and took down the one holding that monster of a weapon, before it could launch the other tube, but in my twisting, shooting dance, I saw the first round had blown bits of one of the Elites all over the back half of the Flood coming after us. I imagined that had I not ducked when I'd been told to, it would have creamed both of us.

I ran out of ammo in the clip I had in the gun before the splitlips were ready to get back in the fight, and I instantly got swamped for my trouble. The sudden prompting got their sluggish selves back into the swing, though, even as I hammered at half-rotted heads and limbs with the butt of my rifle, and when that wasn't enough, my fists.

Groping, swinging, striking limbs raked past all of us, the zombies doing their level best to bring us down. Finally, I got the old mag out. I slammed the sharp, open end into the face of a particularly persistent bugger, yanked it out as he fell back, and quickly swapped it with a fresh mag. I didn't have time to slam it home in the gun when one of the Elites ducked a hard punch behind me, and the swing came and got me.

I dumped right into the arms of the Flood forms to my front, mangling a few and crushing pieces of others, as my half-ton armored carcass toppled over. I flailed a little, alarmed that my balance was out again, but before I could swim to the bottom, I felt a hand close around my neck.

I guess I couldn't really complain… it was all he had in reach that he could rightly grab with just one hand…

G'wi hauled me back, standing me upright before shoving me forward again, this time braced for it and more than willing to charge an opening if it meant I still had a spare round or two in my last clip when we made the Phantom. I elbowed the path at first, slamming back an opening through the crush. When I slowed for the thickness of it, the Elites pressed in behind me, and gave me the torque I needed to get through the last of them.

Out the other side, I slammed the magazine home, and jacked the slide. The next Flood form to come up the corridor took three to the chest, and was down before we got to it. I made as much of a straight route as I could, to cut off time from our exit, moving quickly and for as much as the constant gunfire would allow, quietly.

Making the bay where we'd come in didn't help that much, though… and I quickly found it was a rather poor choice of locations to make a stand. The place had filled with Flood that had not started out as crewmen, but were those huge, ugly, almost boneless things that would rearrange themselves when their current shape bored them.

Four pulled down and began to fire bone fragments at us. After the first volley had cut out nearly half my shielding, the next rank back scuttled up to us and lifted their structure into the hulking variation. I grabbed the nearest Elite to me, stuck my boot on his hip, and launched from his brace onto the closest hulk's shoulders, bringing it down. I felt a little heartened when I heard the first sword pop to life, but when I turned, I saw three of the hulking variety lift the sword-wielder from the floor, and between them, pull him apart.

His scream died in a bloody gurgle, and the blade fell from his limp grasp to deactivate on the slimy floor. I dove for it.

Flood both large and small swarmed in, crushing one another in their over eager need to get at us. We were down two, and our exit was blocked by too many. I refused to despair, churning my mind for something, anything, that I could use.

Then it hit me.

I yanked the pin on a frag, and tossed it at the door to the corridor where we'd come in a moment ago, and when it erupted and cleared a significant circle in the crowd, I reached for two of the remaining three Elites and hauled ass for that spot.

It filled in, but not fast enough, the third Elite bringing up my rear as I pushed the other two ahead. There, we formed a circle, hacking chunks off of the ones too close to shoot, and shooting down the ones too far to hack chunks from. When I had what I hoped was a good footing, I piped up;

"You're an ONI spook, right?"

The AI made an indignant noise. Strictly speaking, so too are you.

"Find the detonator switch for the active bud and punch it for me, will you? My hands are full." I told it.

There was a pause, then the loudest thunderous bang I'd ever heard happened over our heads. In the span of time it took to blink, the near half of the bay's ship door cracked loose, and in the instantaneous split second following, smacked spectacularly into the floor below it. Every Flood standing in that area was immediately rendered as flat, vomit-colored soup, leaving us home free for our exit…

We just had to make it up the darn thing without getting pulled back down by our ankles. The three Elites broke for it before I did, leaving me to bring up the rear. I ran backwards, hammering the enemy line with every shot I had. When one of the forms in back got impatient and took a flying leap at me, I just sliced it in half and kept shooting at its buddies.

I found it slightly awkward to wield my MA6B in one hand and an Elite's sword in my other, but the combination worked rather nicely for what I was up against at the moment. I expended the next five magazines with my back against the ladder, unable to turn and ascend it due to the proximity of the pressing Flood. Infection forms swarmed around the stomping, mincing feet of the bigger kind, those kept at bay only an arm's length and only by the energy blade I had in my left hand.

When I had to hack hard and brutal against the seemingly impervious skin of one of the boneless variety to get through it with the blade, though, I threw out that shoulder. Pain lanced down that arm and across my collarbones, the spasm resulting causing me to stab myself with the bottom rear point under my hand when I tucked in that arm.

While having been able to grit my teeth against my annoyingly bum shoulder's antics, I was completely unprepared to be gored on an energy blade, and when I curled over the wound, the Flood hammered in. Claws raked me at every angle, fists smacking off my armor the instant the last of the simmering shield gave up.

I tried to fight them, waving the blade wildly above me, but the more of them I cut down, the more of them filled in, pressing the ones unable to fight on out of the way. All of them wanted a piece of me, it seemed, and none of them were willing to wait their turn. I felt it when one of the big ones caught a tentacled hand around my good arm, dragging me almost forcibly out from under the seething mass of tangled Flood forms, hauling up on my heavy carcass until I was loose of the majority of them.

The thing gurgled madly at me, but it, like the one before it, took some serious hacking to get chopped up. The blade flickered when I was dropped, letting me know I'd just about expended the thing's power source. That meant I was in trouble…

Where the thing I'd just hacked apart lay suddenly lit up in a bright, shimmering purple, lines of goo and dribbles of Flood guts heading upwards within it. I swung the last of the blade's power through the six vying behind me, and leapt into the beam, hurtling upwards out of reach a fraction of a second before the next Flood up would have snagged me.

I reached the interior of the Phantom and rolled to my side off the iris, and just as I caught sight of the pursuing Flood beneath it, the seal closed, and the beam cut out. Doubtless that form would fall to its gory death far below… the drop was not a short one.

The only two Elites in the back with me were standing there looking down at me, the exhausted sword of their fallen brother in one hand, the utterly disgusting rifle still locked in my other grasp… but I stayed on my side on the floor, heaving for breath through my permanent grimace.

Not only was my shoulder still screaming at me, now my guts were on fire, too. I let the dead hilt slide out of my grasp, wishing with all my heart that I could just put some pressure on that wound, but I couldn't seem to make my bad arm move anymore… had I really gotten it out of socket? Releasing the rifle as well, I hauled downward with that arm instead, and tucked it around my seeping middle.

I guessed I was glad I hadn't wound up lying on the old wound… but having it agitate like this really had me ticked. If I hadn't brought a bad shoulder to that fight, I would never have stuck myself in the guts, and I would still have been standing right now.

Worse…

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the expanding clarity remained. Sounds once soft became thunderous, sights once dim became brightly contrasted and detailed. Most of all, feeling once subtle now screamed at the top of its metaphorical lungs, right into my poor battered brains.

---

I spent most of the ride back to Sasaak's ship in a daze, the unnatural amplification of the pain putting me in a disoriented delirium. I was only vaguely aware that I was moved once the Phantom finally docked, but I'm sure I heard someone say something about a ship-to-ship battle going on outside.

I didn't get any details, but I guessed the Flood did get the pirate's frigate off the ground, likely shortly after I'd left it behind, and then come after me. Being little more than limp, that left Sasaak and his bridge crew to handle the situation. By the tone of the words exchanged, I guessed it was a frightening prospect, the Flood having a ship, but a non-threatening battle, being as the ship I was on now was a war bird, and the pirate hadn't even had a MAC.

Some minor shielding, and a few rail guns, but nothing going to hurt a fully powered ex-Covenant cruiser like this one. I lay where I was put for what felt like a year, my mind broiling in unexpressable agony, before anyone came back through.

This person, whoever they were, looked pink and floaty, but though I couldn't really see who or what it was, it seemed to know just exactly how to disassemble my Mjolnir, and get it off of me. I didn't understand the mechanics of motor function at the time, but I did feel it when something glanced off the wound in my side, and also when my body convulsed in response.

Right about then, I was introduced to a flavor that tasted far too strange to be anything I'd ever known before… but it remained naggingly familiar. I wondered if I was dreaming again, but almost as soon as the thought suggested itself to me, the clarity began to fade as reality the way it was meant to be experienced checked back in.

I let go a ragged breath, blinking dizzily at my new surroundings. Where was this? Not to say it was strange inherently – the architecture was old-Covenant, the color scheme was purple, and there was pretty much nothing at all in the way of decoration or embellishment to the otherwise plain picture. But it was a large, almost bay-like room, and for consideration to a race who didn't really value medical technology that much, I was almost convinced it was just that – a medical bay.

I'd been sprawled across something of a cross between a high bunk and a low exam table, but I couldn't remember why my armor was missing. It was just me up there, in my skinsuit. Three Elites wearing a dun pearl outfit – it wasn't armor – were present, but I didn't know who any of them were. They also appeared very strange in a way I couldn't put my finger on. One was nearby, the other two a ways off.

And practically above me on my other side, was that floaty pink thing. ONI called them Engineers… gaseous tentacleoid creatures who had a real knack for machinery and the guts thereof.

So what was this one doing, floating over me? I wasn't a machine.

When I tried to sit up, the Elite grabbed me to stop me, but I relaxed back to the surface I was on more for the shooting knives in my side than for the alien's recommendation. Tasting my teeth, I realized I did know, after all, what that strange flavor in my mouth was… it was that unmistakable metallic protein flavor every soldier knew.

My blood.

I had just frowned at the implications that that wrought when a door I couldn't see hissed, suggesting it had opened. Still in his armor, and still covered in smears of Flood pudding, G'wi appeared around the edge of my peripheral, drawing nearer at a walk until he was standing next to the other Elite beside me.

The other guy looked… small… narrower, smaller, shorter… with far fairer facial feature construction, too. I guessed that that was why he looked so odd. Maybe he was a kid, or something… not done growing up.

"Are you lucid?" G'wi asked, interrupting my musings.

I got out the first syllable of the word I had in mind when I realized speaking hurt as much as trying to sit up did… so I shut my mouth and nodded.

"Good." The lights changed, switching from a blue to a yellow, far dimmer as well, and the sound of the ship's pulse switched rhythms. "The Shipmaster discovered more of a fight than he was prepared for, when the Flood followed us into orbit. They built more than just the broken ship's engines, and the fight was… shall we say… brutal."

I had something to say to that, but I didn't feel inclined to say it.

"Shipmaster Sasaak determined the depth of the damage his vessel could take and then withdrew; he found it within honor to do so given that you and your package were aboard. Risking angering your people for the sake of the conclusion of a battle at this time was not considered wise."

I offered my best inquisitive look. It was more to make him get to the point.

He crossed his arms. "I am telling you this, Flint, because we made a random jump through slipspace to prevent the Flood's meager tracking skills from netting them more food." He paused for a moment, then added, "and we have found something."

Oh, boy, not again. I grimaced at him.

"Do not look at me like that, human." G'wi grumped, frowning back at me. "It is only a transmitter beacon… given our location it was considered an unusual discovery."

Keeping the grimace, I cocked one eyebrow at him. What did that have to do with me?

"We identified it as a Human device." G'wi answered. "When you are done here, the Shipmaster wishes to speak with you."

Now that… that I deemed worth a grunt. It was probably all I would have done even without my current impediments, anyway. When it was out, I braced for the pain, but the punishment I got was less than last time, making me wonder just what that small fry was doing to me… or if it was that pink floaty thing doing it.

Either option was equally as creepy.