Gentlemen, I don't know whether to discount your last correspondence as humor or farce. I have supervised bioweapons programs for decades. By definition, I have no moral compunction against studying the listed organisms. I am merely professional enough to recognize a situation with no possible benefit, and nothing can be gained or learned from these species.

Take Xeno-Parasite Pseudoinsecta-24. It adapts to a wide range of environments through Lysenkoist evolution, can reproduced in an unprecedented range of host species, and poses a unique escape hazard through the defense mechanisms it was first noted for. And its extreme mutability means that we have no idea what an outbreak would look like in a UNSC-held territory unless we experiment upon human subjects, which we are morally and legally restrained from doing. XP-PI24 is not unique in this fashion.

I realize that you are all career ONI spooks, but can you show some common sense for Christ's sake?

Professor Addam Y. Khyrznhy, Administrative Epidemologist, ONI subsection [Classified]



Stavromula Alpha was the second largest shipping center in the Tau Omega system. That being said, it had one of the largest docking installations in orbit, connected to the planet by no less than fifteen elevators. Shipyards and docking cradles catered to everything from UNSC warships to cargo freighters to luxury liners. The installation, a web of carbon fiber and steel framework studded with cradles and facilities, was large enough to rival the planet's moon in apparent size from the ground.

Local businesses would extol the virtues of the Dockyard, how ores mined on the ground could be sent through refineries and factories, and then arrive at the construction site of a ship in less than twenty-four hours. How the Dockyard could service over five hundred ships at a time, dwarfed only by the installations on Earth, Mars, and Reach. The virtues of the Dockyard also included the Harbor Command and Control, which had never lost a ship or had a major accident in over fifty years.

Perhaps the most amazing fact was how the elevators could theoretically haul one-hundred-fifty thousand metric tons per hour, from the surface into orbit.

Until today, this particular fact was purely theoretical, and had never been tested in real life. Until today, this fact had only been tested by insurance adjusters and computer models. And today this fact had stood up to real life quite well, as the Dockyards had operated at the theoretical full capacity, requiring only a few corrective nudges from retrorockets.

In the space of a mere three hours, most of the three billion citizens of Stavromula Alpha had been lifted into the orbital platform, filling lobbies, hallways, bathrooms and hangars. The platform was overcrowded beyond safety; sickness was spreading, the young and elderly were dying, and the lavatories had quit working hours ago.

But then again, that was better than the fate reserved for the significant proportion of the populace that couldn't make it. The Covenant glassing was in full swing, and millions had already been exterminated.

While expensive equipment and machinery were brought up, stuff that the UNSC and major companies couldn't afford to lose, refugees were loaded onto luxury liners and cargo freighters, all of which were loaded beyond safe capacity, and then supplied with food for two weeks.

In the meantime, cyrotubes had been brought down from the UNSC warships overhead and loaded onto smaller freighters, so much the better to carry more people in smaller spaces. These people would be packed in like sardines, and would not require extra food or supplies.

It was a mess like the rest of the war, if you asked Captain J. Whedon. But it was a profitable mess.

He'd been chain smoking cigarettes for the past hour and a half, so much the better to drown out the smell of humanity. Everywhere you went, you could smell sweat and human waste, especially around the bathrooms.

Right now, he was breaking into a sweat. This was partially because of the stuffy air, partially because he had to step and leap over refugees in the crowded corridor, but mostly because he rarely had to run further than 100 meters at a time since high school.

Well, if he was paid as much as the UNSC said they would pay him, this would all be worth it, right?

He turned a corner (This orbital platform was a rats nest of corridors and structural spars) and halted.

At the end of the corridor was an elevator, but the hallway was packed with refugees and their baggage. He could walk through them, but it would be a pain in the neck. So, he could thin out the ranks…

"Hey! Tyco Lobby has just been evac'ed! If you want some breathing space, get your sorry hides down there!"

As a group, the refugees all rose and moved down the corridor, pressing Whedon to the wall. He just stayed there and waited for the untidy wave of humanity to shamble on by. He had little pity for them, just as anybody has little feeling for the helpless and the homeless. He was free to leave at any time, and he didn't feel like imagining himself in their position.

He knew that most of them were hoping for unoccupied seats in Tyco Lobby. He knew that many of them intended to complain that the people in Tyco Lobby had been evac'ed before they had been. And they all were going to be disappointed to find out that Tyco Lobby was still full.

Not wanting to be around when they came back, Whedon began moving to the lifts when the people thinned out. He punched the 'up' button when he got to the double-doors, only to see the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation logo replaced with an "Out of Order" sign. Figures.

He turned to the stairs which led to the ladders (Stairs are impractical when the gravity decking fails, as it always does under these conditions) only to see his way blocked by a Navy puke (Harbor Patrol) half his age.

"You know that Tyco Lobby hasn't been evacuated yet." She said, in that holier-than-thou voice reserved for freighter captains like Whedon.

"And you didn't point it out until now," Whedon snapped. "Which means you didn't want to walk through them any more than I did. So save the sermon for someone who has time."

She didn't object as he pushed his way past her and grabbed the anti-slip coated ladder. Just before he started climbing, he cautiously glanced up the ladder. Nobody was coming down; it was a good twenty meters to his level.

Whedon couldn't remember climbing that far since high school.

He wasn't panting and wheezing by the time he got to the dockyard level, but he wasn't asking for more. He rested while the harbor warden climbed up after him. Unfortunately, she'd been right behind him, and he didn't get much of a breather. He ran his hand through his black hair, gone grey at the temples.

"You're really out of shape, aren't you?" She asked as she helped him up.

"In my line of work," Whedon replied. "You don't have time for exercise, Ms…" He had to look at her name tag. "N'gun'gu."

She frowned. "Something wrong with my name?"

"No. Pardon me if I don't speak Swahili so well."

"Where's your ship?"

Whedon checked his watch (A nondescript quartz digital) and started walking down the hallway. "I'm at hard-dock F-7."

"H-F-7 is over this way."

Whedon did a 180 and followed Ms. N'gun'gu.

This section of the dockyards was reserved for the lower end of the economic scale: freighters, repair corvettes, and 'miner gofers'. It wasn't specifically dirty, because cleaning automatons went through it once a week. But there was a certain amount of grime that accumulated which couldn't be banished without a good scrubbing and stronger (read: More expensive) chemicals, and nobody cared enough to do that. Gum wrappers and an empty chips bag rallied together, a futile alliance sure to be broken up by the next pass of the automated vacuum robots. Vending machines were grouped around several long tables, with a selection of the latest e-mags at one end.

On their left, the wall was bare, nondescript, ugly. On their right, large reinforced windows opened up to dockyard F: a long row of docking spaces running the length of the hallway, mostly taken up with the Nav-Propulsion pods of WY-229 Intersystem Cargo Freighters. They sat in the docks, being refueled and undergoing routine maintenance, waiting to be magnetically attached to boxy cargo containers the size of cubic football fields, which were even now being filled with civilians, food, supplies, and such.

The sole exception to this lineup was the "Handle with Care," the only ship here that needed a human pilot and crew. Whereas the other ships were unsightly collections of exposed conduit and unpleasing shape, the HWC was as close to aerodynamic as a spaceship could get. It looked like the offspring of the ages-old space shuttle and a freight truck. Even now, as they watched, the special containers (Shaped to retain aerodynamics; the HWC looked like a flattened nail without them) were being fitted to the aircraft, the mechanical locks sliding into place on the back and the belly of the craft.

"Nice. Are you still making payments on it?"

Whedon rolled his eyes. First they'd started out with petty bickering over things that they didn't like the other person doing. Now they were just sniping each other out of spite. Were this a movie instead of real life, they'd end up romantically linked by the time they made it to their destination.

"Honey, if you don't keep that cute mouth of yours shut, I'll leave you behind."

They reached the umbilical that lead to his ship, and he entered his pin number in the lock, muttering "Seven-Nine-Two-Two" as he did so.

The UNSC could afford gravity plating throughout their warships, but often private companies that owned ships or orbital stations would put the plating only where it was needed. It wasn't needed in the umbilical, so Whedon and Ms. N'gun'gu soon found themselves weightless, sluggishly pulling themselves down a narrow tube only lit with emergency lights.

The tube ended as it entered the HWC's airlock, where surplus gravity plating had been installed. Whedon backed against the lockers to his right and made room for N'gun'gu with mock politeness.

"Welcome aboard the Handle With Care, ma'am."

"I'm less than honored, I assure you."

"As am I. It's a rare treat to ferry around someone with as little appreciation for fine ships as you have."

"Hey, I know what this ship is; it's a colony runner. And I know enough to wonder who you killed to get it."

Whedon chose to climb up the ladder to the cabin while answering her. It saved time.

"Honey, this is a colony runner. Do ya see any new colonies being set up? No, you don't. Which means that the Company is selling this crap off wholesale."

"You still have to sacrifice your firstborn son to get it."

"I just called in a few favors. I got a few friends in high places." As well as low. Truth to be told, he expected to be making payments on the ship till he retired. "Have a seat, we need to talk about something."

Ms. N'gun'gu glanced suspiciously at the navigator's chair that Whedon was gesturing to. Colony runners often shipped with three crewmembers, unlike the other ships of their size, which were usually unmanned. However, it wasn't unknown for two crewmembers to learn the third person's job, splitting the salary. Judging from the patched condition of the chairs, Whedon hadn't picked up on this particular penny-pinching method.

"Is something wrong? You're ready to ship out, right?" For the first time, the thought of being caught on the station while the Covenant attacked seriously occurred to her. It wasn't something she liked to consider; most normal people her age didn't want to die.

"Oh, we'll depart on time. There are just a few minor problems we can handle, but only one big snafu we'll need your help with." Whedon leaned forward, clasping his hands in his lap, a sardonic grin plastered on his face. "You see, the HWC isn't leaving the dock until we get paid half up front."

"WHAT!?"

Whedon raised a hand, begging to add more. "It's nothing personal, it's just good business sense. I'm just trying to not get screwed here."

"Sir, I assure you we will make proper pay-"

"Woah, you just don't understand how the major shipping companies do business, do you? They get by through the three pillars of Big Business."

Whedon held up a finger. "They screw you."

He held up another finger. "They screw you."

He held up a third finger. "They screw you. You agree to haul refugees under a temporary contract, you do the job, and they get the cargo containers off before you realize you've just been screwed. Now you have to fight tooth and nail to get that government bonus you've been promised, only it goes to the company because you're their 'employee' and you're only entitled to a percent! And if you try to strike out and haul on your own, you're a bleedin' pirate! Sorry, ma'am, but fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!"

"Mr. Whedon, we have a contractual agreement, so there's no reason to not expect due payment."

"Of course, Ms. N'gun'gu. I fully expect to be paid. And since the company is so hellbent on paying me, they'll be glad to pay me up front. Am I right?"

'This… this is piracy!"

"No ma'am, this is extortion. I'm sorry, but it just makes good business sense to get the Company before they get me."

Ms. N'gun'gu sat back in the navigator's chair and fumed; she'd come to the realization that the only way to get Whedon to fire up the engines and get out of the system was to pay, cash on the barrelhead or under the table. Whedon patiently waited for a minute before pushing a button on the intercom system.

"Mikey?"

"Yeah?" Ms. N'gun'gu wondered if that was the navigator or the mechanic. The mechanic, useless on other types of ships, was necessary here only because of the valuable cargo usually carried by colony runners. The navigator, usually replaced by a nav computer, often doubled with the captain as an atmospheric pilot.

"Do a full system check. I want everything in the green. And check the reactor, they screwed us on that coolant checkup."

"Yessir."

Whedon got no response from the warden.

"Come on, honey. The Covies ain't going to wait around all day. It's either a demerit in your company record, or death. Ain't such a hard choice, is it?"

N'gun'gu sighed and pulled out a chatter. She dialed the direct line to the Harbormaster, and the chatter connected to the station switchboard via the Handle With Care's radio.

"Sir, this is Officer N'gun'gu aboard the "Handle With Care." Captian Whedon is requesting half pay up front… yes, he is serious… ID number is… That'll be all."

She switched off the chatter and swiveled her chair to face Whedon.

"Happy now?"

"Very, thank you." Whedon said cheerfully as he turned the intercom back on. "Mickey, belay that last order, I just want a full inventory, both holds." He shrugged and explained himself as he turned the intercom back off. "Last time I hauled refugees and equipment for your company, you guys deducted my pay for damaged goods that were already damaged when I got them."

Sandra N'gun'gu rolled her eyes in disgust. This freighter captain was both the most money-pinching miser she'd ever met, and the biggest asshole she ever had the misfortune to work with.

"I can't believe this."

"I love you too honey."

"When you're wining and dining you clients, do you stick them with the restaurant bill?"

"No, I just tack it on to my fees under 'misc. expenses.'"

Officer N'gun'gu wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that he was telling the truth. "How the Hell did I get stuck with you?"

"Same way I got stuck with you. A cruel mistress named Lady Luck has a sadistic sense of humor."

Minutes passed by in complete silence as Whedon typed up last-minute paperwork and obsessively checked over the master list for his cargo. Officer N'gun'gu did her share of the paperwork from her laptop, and then brought up a map of the UNSC-owned space, displayed in the traditional top-down view of the Orion arm of the galaxy.

"We're going to be making a total of three jumps before arriving at Reach. We're going to be passing through-"

"Wait!" Whedon interjected. "Could we cut that down to two jumps? Fuel costs are through the roof."

Incredulously, N'gun'gu glared at Whedon. "You're joking! The Cole Protocol-"

"Yes I am. But now that you mention it-"

N'gun'gu's pager cut him off before he could finish that sentence.


Kick a fresh turd and clouds of flies billow out. Harbor Traffic Control sent out the word, and 67 ships of varying sizes, makes, and purposes rose out of the dock and began the journey out of the planet's gravity well, assuming formation as they went. This was Convoy One, with the luxury liners, massive freight haulers, and a Pheonix-class Colony craft at the center. Surrounding these behemoths were the smaller ships; cargo frigates and intersystem busses, the Handle With Care among them.

The convoy traveled fast, and the frontrunners had just begun jumping to prearranged coordinates when the trouble struck. A pack of Covenant Warships that had previously been preoccupied with glassing the planet switched gears and slip-jumped to the convoy's position. The convoy got only thirty seconds of warning before the pack materialized within its midst.

One of the luxury liners, the "Titania," barely had time to transmit an SOS before the warships gutted it from stem to stern. The colony ship was the next to go, while the smaller frigates blasted away at random cargo haulers with their secondary cannons and point-defense beams. The five UNSC escort warships turned inwards and began firing away at point blank range with MACs and Archer missiles.

The convoy once again became a roiling cloud of flies, with ships throughout the formation panicking and jumping from point A to point B, not caring where point B was so long as it wasn't point A.

The Handle With Care was foremost among these as Captain Whedon kicked the engines into overdrive and reached Minimum Safe Distance faster than most others. The Slipspace drive, as troublesome and maintenance intensive as any drive on a ship this small, seemed to sense the immediate peril it was in and activated without a hitch. With a flash of purple light and ultraviolet, the HWC exited realspace for the shadowy twilight of Slipspace.

Minutes later, there was nothing left of the convoy. Only debris spinning in space and dozens of jump-scars in space-time. A few of the Covenant frigates jumped into Slipspace in pursuit, while the majority of the alien fleet turned back towards the planet, intent on systematic eradication of the remaining humans.


One Month Later…

The Handle With Care shook like a thing possessed, bucking and trembling in a manner that would soon shake it to pieces. And for good reason too. It was a Colony Runner, intended to deliver decent amounts of supplies that colonies were in dire need of. In a sense, it was a much smaller cousin of the larger Pheonix-class colony ship. But since it was intended to service startup colonies that had not yet built significant orbital assets, it was designed to enter a planet's atmosphere at a controlled descent. Under the best of circumstances, it handled like a crippled rhinoceros.

When it had inadvertently fallen too far into a planet's gravity well, it didn't handle at all. And this was far from a controlled descent.

Captain Whedon could feel the freefall in his stomach, a sign that he was descending at too steep of an angle to skim off the surface of the atmosphere as he had hoped, and too steep to make a safe landing.

There were other warnings: besides the wailing of a dozen alarms and the shrill screams of his navigator, he felt the cabin growing warmer, and saw the first faint wisps of flame dancing across the windshield.

The HWC jerked sharply to one side, and Whedon felt his neck pop. Before he could react, his seatbelt and restraints tightened and pressed him back into his chair, uncomfortably so. He was vaguely aware of a large tremor from the upper cargo compartment, but he couldn't focus now.

Some part of his mind, disconnected from his consciousness until now, guided him to look at the triad of screens above his seat, and somehow made sense of what he was seeing. On one, a hashed radar map of the terrain below was slowly scrolling to the bottom of the screen. Whedon didn't know topography, but he knew mountains when he was seeing them. Volcanic mountains that would tear the HWC to pieces.

"Leaf on the wind…"

He pushed the throttle forward, and was slammed deeper into his chair as the nuclear-powered engines roared to life.

"Watch how I soar…"

Judging from the altimeter on the console in front of him, he had less than seven minutes to get the ship back in control and ready to land. He had that long to clear the mountain range below him.

"C'mon, baby, fly!"

He felt like he was kicked in the rear, and the whole ship jumped to the right. He fought off panic as he realized that the upper cargo compartment was depressurizing. Their weapons could reach this far into the atmosphere?

On the positive side, it temporarily shut his navigator up when she was halfway through screaming something unprintable about Whedon's parentage. Whedon hoped that he was too far into the atmosphere for them to take another shot.

For the second time, he noticed how hot it was. Where it had previously been warm, it was now a sauna inside the cabin. Flames were now roiling across the windshield, and one of the screens was flashing, highlighting the spots on the heat shield that were giving away. Notably several craters on the rear of the ship. He pushed the subject out of his mind and trusted the fire-suppressant systems to do their job.

The edge of the radar map revealed something new; the flight plan the computer had hastily calculated reached a patch of hazy bumps. Sand dunes. As the minutes ticked by, Whedon saw that it was a large rim of volcanic rock, perhaps a crater, surrounding a sea of sand. It was better than he could have hoped for.

As Whedon tipped the HWC back to drastically reduce airspeed, Rachel, the navigator, screamed for God to save them. Not that she believed in any particular religion, but it seemed like a good time to start.

The dunes rushed up to meet them. Whedon diverted all power from the engines to the lower-Z docking/maneuvering thrusters, firing downward.

The ship bucked, and a sound like God snapping his fingers resounded throughout the cabin. The Handle With Care had hit the first dune at a shallow angle and skidded off, only to crest another dune just beyond the first one. The rapid succession of jolts in the next few seconds were almost indistinguishable, so much that Whedon couldn't tell when the crashing ended and the grinding began, as the HWC slid into a long valley between two large dunes.

When the ship ground to a halt, Whedon groaned and freed himself from his restraints. This was the worst business deal he'd ever made.


The UNGS team had a troop hog, for the same reason they had a scout hog, pelicans, firebases, and an Albatross. A good way to save taxpayer money was to supply the scientists with military surplus, usually after it had been shot up by the Innies and repaired. The scientists were then free to rename them, and the troop hog had garnered the nickname "Groundhog".

Brewster was riding shotgun, and was musing over the tactical viability of the vehicle. From what he knew of combat, which was very little, the thing was darn near useless because everybody would be exposed in a firefight. A little inquiry with Hitachi, who had been a Marine for two years before he got his degree, assured him that the troop hog was a rare sight, used on places like Reach and Earth where there was no danger of combat, but there was a need to shuttle jarheads around.

Thankfully, Sandworms didn't carry guns. Occasionally, one of the little turds would wander too close, and the passengers would get it with a broadside volley of shotgun shells. It was therapeutic, really, and it partly reminded him of old naval war, where the gallons (He didn't know the term, but he was pretty sure it was gallons) would pull alongside each other and let fly with their cannons. But he'd also read about the pioneers of the American West, how they were given guns when they rode the transcontinental railroads and were encouraged to shoot all the buffalo they saw. Buffalo that, when stampeding, could derail a train.

Doctor Kelly had assured him that none of the sandworms in the caldera or this crater were big enough to do anything but damage a hog or maim a person, which was a relief. After that big one had swallowed Roseburg, Warkentine, and the Sandhog they'd been driving…

Jules, the driver, slowed down and stopped where Brewster signaled him to. Two scientists got out of the troop hog and pulled an all-in-one pod (Not really, as it only contained a seismometer, sonar, and Geiger) off the trailer. They dragged it through the sand and left it at the bottom of the valley between two large dunes, where the sonar 'thumper' would hopefully not trigger a sandslide. It had happened before, just like everything else that could possibly have gone wrong. They wouldn't have taken so long to get the unit dug out, if they hadn't wasted so much time debating if it was really worth it.

Brewster took a long drink from his canteen and wiped the sweat from his brow. Speeding through the desert at eighty klicks per hour should make it feel cooler, but it didn't. It was just a hot, dry blast of wind that kicked up sand. The humidity was only a microscopic fraction of a percent above zero, and there was more water in Brewster's canteen than in the whole five-kilometer wide crater. The Warthog, being military surplus, didn't even have air conditioning.

The Warthog started back up, and the assorted geologists and ex-biologists were on their less-than merry way, off to finish the network of ground-pounding seismometers and GoPHER drones.

As they crested a dune, Brewster saw something out of the corner of his eye. It was a cloud of sand, billowing around an object, but it wasn't a sandworm. It was a strange, otherworldly sensation as he realized it was the trailer they were supposed to be hauling, detached and still moving parallel to them, kicking up clouds of dust and sand as the front dragged through the ground.


"So who hooked it up?"

That question met dead silence from the scientists, all of who had dismounted from the Groundhog and gathered around the trailer, pausing only to shut off the engine and gather up some of the nearby sensors, many of which were dented or broken.

"Nobody knows who hitched it up?" Brewster said. "Typical."

Amazing, how English just couldn't do justice to these moments. There were people in this world, lazy slackers who leeched off the hard workers like Brewster, people who you wouldn't cross the street to piss on if their hearts caught on fire. Just how were you supposed to address them?

The trailer was mostly unharmed, but the hitch had a few dents in it from dragging through sand and rocks. Hitachi gave it the OK, and Juarez, the driver, backed the Groundhog up. Hitachi and Brewster both lifted up the front end of the trailer, and hooked it on the trailer hitch.

Brewster staggered off, feeling lightheaded. That trailer had been heavy, and maybe he had overexerted himself…

As he leaned on the Groundhog for support, he saw Hitachi keel over and flop onto the sand.

Everyone panicked, crowding over him while they shouted to give him some air, pour water on his face, the standard treatment for heatstroke.

Now they couldn't just return to the Pelican to repair the damaged sensors. They had to return all the way to Bauxite Base, where they could treat Hitachi. They'd lose a whole day, maybe two, with nothing more getting done.

There were times when a person is so angry, so frustrated, that it merely collapses into exhaustion and despair. For Brewster, this was one of them.


A/N: Here we have the first chapter from when I first posted it, worked out so the kinks are less apparent. There should be enough here to speculate over for the next few chapters.

I can't believe I forgot to state this initially, but co-author credit goes to Marine Dude, formerly of the HWF. Whilst I had this story planned out to work into Montag's backstory, the plot twists reached critical mass at some point and the whole thing was shelved. Over a year ago, I was talking to him over PM about a certain movie, and remarked that the fans could often write better stories than the major studios. He then brought up the idea of doing a HaloX(BLANK) crossover, and I mentioned this story. I did the writing, he checked canonical errors for the other universe, and this is the product.

(BLANK) inserted to preserve future plot twists.

In other news... Terminator Salvation looks awesome! But how the Hell does the Resistance still have helicopters 15 years into the conflict? And since when did Skynet have to kidnap people and steal their skins?