Perdition's Flames – Halo-Diablo X-over

In the blackness the shattered hull of the Forward Unto Dawn drifted, tumbling silently to invisible winds. It had been a long time since its severing from its forward half, and many of the vessel's internal systems were decayed and dying, despite an AI's silent ministrations. Cortana had done what she could, but time and entropy makes fools of us all.

The view shifts. The blackness with twinkling white specks in the rear is replaced by a circular blackness, one which the Dawn is tumbling towards. The black sphere is revealed to be a world, and the Dawn kisses the upper atmosphere and ceases its tumbling, but begins to tear itself apart as the stress and heat mount.

Inside the cryo-chamber Cortana was preparing long-asleep systems to activate. She had known of this world only for a short while, and as the ship began to tear itself to pieces she activated the modular disassembly program. With luck this would explosively blow away the armory, the cryo-chamber, and most especially its sole occupant.

With a silent prayer she triggered the program, and uploaded herself into the cryo-chamber's main CPU assembly. Over the long times she had discovered ways of compressing herself, ways of manipulating her data storage capacities which to her knowledge no UNSC scientist or programmer knew of. She had pondered the implications, but had abandoned her thoughts, enjoying the revelry of melding and manipulating the energy patterns of her soul to her whims.

Now she used every data-compression skill she possessed, and she barely made it as the armory and the cryo-chamber, sealed together in a modular assembly, shattered from the dying ship's frame. Brilliant red flames sheathed both of the metallic frames as they fell, one breaking apart and one not, landing somewhere to the south of a congruence of warrior refugees, in the middle of the main continent of the world of Sanctuary.