2; NO LUCK

I have no idea how, but the pink floaty thing... the Engineer, excuse me... had done a fairly nice patch job. While I still felt rather nauseated and the now-closed injury still ached, it nolonger kept me off my feet. Upright helped, I guess, with the nausea, as whenever I got below standing height, my guts would churn.

I wondered if that had anything to do with the nature of my repair, or if it was just because of the nature of the injury. I really hoped I didn't become septic and go into shock... and die horribly. The sad truth was I hadn't been sick since the Spartan program had found me, and I was unprepared for all the horrid details of doing it again.

Still, for the immediate moment, I was alright, and I walked up the corridor to the bridge without help. Sasaak turned to look when I came through the door, but he didn't let me mount the command dias, rather coming down from it to greet me. "You look decidedly green, for a being supposed to stay brown."

Without my Mjolnir - and no honest idea where in the world they'd stashed it - I found myself somewhat in doubt of the splitlip's comment. "Brown?" I asked.

He inclined his head. "Come, look at the signal your buoy has been transmitting." He turned away, so I followed him over to the holographic display where the readings were all in that odd henscratch-Forerunner-glyph-combo, and I couldn't read any of it. The glyphs all looked familiar, though... and I got the impression that there was more there than just rendered images that meant nothing to me.

"Looks like a distress call." I mentioned, the words falling out of my mouth without my permission. I grimaced at the screen. What in god's name was wrong with my tongue?

Sasaak looked at me. "Is it? For what, though? There is nothing in this sector. The buoy must have drifted."

A thought struck me. A UNSC comn buoy, way out here...? I looked back at the Elite. "Is it transmitting coordinates, by any chance?"

That earned me a curious look, but Sasaak called down the question, and the sensor readings were recalibrated to find out. When the answer came back, he turned a fairly surprised expression towards me. "How did you know?"

"Feeling." I answered, starting to get that buzz of excited anticipation. I'd found him! I'd really found him! Boy, was I excited... just the idea that I might be able to find him and bring him home... that was enough to erase hours of angst and frustration. For the first time in years, I smiled a happy smile.

"Why are you smiling, Human?" Sasaak asked. He looked at me with one of those suspicious expressions not often appreciated when on one of his kind, and aimed at one of mine.

"You found John." I told him, elated. "You really found him."

G'wi looked grumpy when I saw him next, but he wasn't dirty anymore and he wasn't wearing his black armored outfit anymore, either. He was walking the corridor in a high-collared tucked tunic and leggings with what appeared to be some kind of soft-topped boot or something at the bottom. He looked odd, this being the first time I'd ever seen the guy without his combat gear on.

Even though I felt naked without my armor, I was still smiling. G'wi had never seen me smile, I was pretty sure, given the underlying value of the circumstances which we tended to interact within. But he knew what a Human smile looked like, as his expression softened into quizzical as his head came up, obviously interested to know what I'd gotten into to so effect the change in mood.

I knew I'd never felt this happy before now - not since adolescence, and enduring the seemingly incessant patting on the back I'd gotten for completing my first real mission successfully. Now, though... being able to find and retrieve a fellow Spartan, a brother, that was a high point for me. After my return to Earth too late to get to see him, I had thought I would be the only one around for a long, long while.

Now, though I was never a member of Alpha Team, I would still get to have an old teammate back. That it was John made it even better. Now if I could just find some of the others.

We tended to know without asking which of our number had died and which were truly missing, even though not a single one of our names got listed under 'deceased'. Spartans couldn't die, not in the public eye. It killed morale, or so the brass excused. What would have killed my morale was to see how easily those unkillable folks disappeared... and further, to know that once missing, they never seemed to turn back up.

Really - what good was a Spartan who was still alive if they were missing forevermore, and were never anywhere where they could do any good? A Spartan was only as good as his location permitted him or her to be.

G'wi, though, didn't know any of that. His puzzled expression darkened into a suspicious frown. "Did they inject you with some bizarre chemical?"

I laughed, tickled he'd think I'd ever let them do that - the odds of this lot having drugs engineered for use on Humans was incalculably small. Not that anything tended to do any good on me anyway. "No."

"Then what has erased your brain?"

I offered him an incredulous look. "Erased my brain?"

"In all the long times I have known you, never once have I witnessed you to seem so happy," he explained, gesturing loosely at me. "Yet directly after gutting yourself in the presence of the parasite... you come back from repair with that alien expression on your face."

I cocked a brow at him. "Alien."

He grumbled at me.

"As soon as I can convince him to go there, I'll be able to look for the Master Chief."

G'wi frowned thoughtfully for a moment, seeming to study my feet for the duration before looking back up and pointing a finger at me, with an inquisitive look on his face.

I grinned at him. "Just Chief. John outranks me... he's the Master Chief. Your... demon."

"Ah." He nodded once, considering all I'd told him just now. He honestly looked a little daunted to be going looking for the guy who'd butchered holes in his people's defense network back in the day before the Schism. John could plow furrows through anything, really... but a Halo's worth of Elites hadn't even slowed him down.

I considered that, then, too, and while it didn't dampen my enthusiasm, it did wrinkle my brow. I'd been rubbing elbows with Elites for a long while, pretty much before I really ought to have been. I didn't know enough about the reports from John's last mission to tell if he was even forgiving towards that recent change.

All of us Spartans had spent most of our lives killing Elites. After being told they were our friends, a lot of the unaugmented forces had balked. I had not, I surmised, only because of G'wi, and the terrible amount of mayhem we had been through together before that intel update had come down to us. Having spent much of the following time working with or around or beside them in some manner, whether I spoke with any of them or not, I was long used to their standing concerning my species.

John... might not be. Maybe it really was asking a lot of Sasaak to go and find him with just me to back up the claim that we were friendly. Still, I wasn't a patient sort, and I didn't like the idea of taking the buoy back to UNSC space, handing it to the command, and then waiting for mission clearance to send a cruiser or a frigate to go and look for him some months down the road.

Not a patient sort at all. I offered a glance to G'wi again. "You don't suppose it might be too hard... to convince Sasaak... do you?"

"That depends on your choice of words, and what you choose to say on behalf of the manner of this warrior you wish to retrieve." He put up a hand to stall anything I might say to that, even though I hadn't been thinking that fast anyway, and added, "And if it involves more Flood... you may forget the idea completely."

I sighed, my enthusiasm officially dampened. Dropping my brow as far as it would go, I grumbled, "Great."

"The last I heard of the Shipmaster, he seemed content to take you back to your people, and hope to never see you again." G'wi offered, folding his arms across his chest. Seeing him do that without the armor on reminded me of his odd new habit, and again I wondered what had got it started... or what it was that made him do it.

"I get that sentiment from a lot of people." I admitted, nodding. "But now? Can't he let me borrow something small and go after John anyway? I know he's not obligated to help me out, and I do appreciate his cooperation thus far... and that he's got little to no incentive to retrieve the Spartan in question at all... but..."

G'wi shrugged, without uncrossing his arms. "I do not know what to tell you, Flint."

I wondered if there was any way I could twist his culture against him and in my favor, but nothing came to mind. I wasn't very good at manipulation, and even less so with the subtle variety. The truth was, I was stuck, and even the one Elite aboard who might vouch for me didn't know what to say this time. I sighed. My happiness was all but gone, now. Here I had finally found John - a thing I never thought would happen, given the nature of his disappearance - and I was forced to turn my back and leave him out there, in whatever situation, regardless how good or bad it was.

It had been six years... seven? ... six and some change. If he was out there, if he was still kicking, he was likely out of rations, out of places to get anything more, and if the situation was hostile, very likely out of ammo too. My recent encounter with the Flood made my normally pessimistic mind conjure some rather dismal scenarios.

And I could do nothing about it.

"G'wi, if there was someone you would go after, regardless why or when they went missing, who would it be?"

"The Prophets." He answered.

I focused on him.

"To complete their passage into the Great Journey." He explained.

I nodded, then. "Oh."

"But I do understand... in as much as I might... what you are trying to communicate to me." He offered, sounding sympathetic. "But even if I knew of some hero I would wish to retrieve at the cost of all effort or method, I do not know of a similar being in the Shipmaster's eyes... and it would be by his reckoning whether we go or stay."

"I know... the more I try to think about this, the worse it gets."

"You may ask for the loan of a small long-range craft, but beyond that, do not expect much to come of your request." He advised. "Given the nature of the de... your brother's situation, if he is even still alive after all this time, then I agree with your enthusiasm to be hasty in your retrieval of him. Waiting further may only permit you find his remains, rather than an intact warrior."

I squinted crookedly at him. "We are soldiers, G'wi, not warriors."

He unfolded his arms, and spread his hands. "Regardless."

"I don't know how to appeal to this Sassy guy, though," I admitted, resting a hand on my head.

G'wi chortled. "Sasaak."

I frowned at him. "Regardless."

Shipmaster Sasaak 'Vahatimee looked even more wizened and grizzled than ever before, when I found him in that broad chamber where the Elites all took their meals. I felt reluctant to call it a general mess due to the nature of the layout... you sat wherever the hell you could find a seat to sit on, and on one side was an opened area where a couple of the guys were duking it out with their swords.

When one of them scored a smack on his opponent, those watching hooted and laughed, earning a seething humiliated look from the so struck combatant. The fight-play was a little odd, considering they could decapitate each other on those swords all too easily. But Sasaak was sitting there watching it, appearing for all intents and purposes to be enjoying the show, totally unconcerned that his crew was one trembling inch from slaughtering one another.

Maybe that sort of behavior was normal, among his kind.

He did look up, though, telling me his senses were sharp despite the loud ruckus going on right in front of him. I had barely gotten a stride inside the door when he spotted me coming... or maybe it was my smell. G'wi had once mentioned that his kind often identified people, situations, and items more by what they smelled like than anything else. I might smell a little contaminated by all I'd been around recently, but in the end, I was still eating my own food supply, and that would keep me smelling the same old Human scent as I'd had before I got here.

I had no idea where the air vents were on this ship, though.

Once I was close enough to hear him, he spoke first. "You look as though you intend to ask something of me."

"Am I that easy to read?" I asked, coming to a stop.

He crooked his mandibles in a soft smile. "It is good to see your eyes."

My brows bounced up. "It is?"

He inclined his head towards me. "Indeed, it very much is. It allows me to know what you are thinking... and to know that I do not speak to a machine. Also... seeing your face outside that armor you and your brothers wear permits an old warrior to let go of his apprehension of your creed. Yours above all Human castes caused mine the most grief."

I felt a little disconcerted at that admission, but all I could really do was nod. What's a guy supposed to say to that, anyway?

"So. You come to me with your helmet in your hands, seeking aid."

I ran a hand over my head, feeling the short-cropped hair ripple under my touch. "In a sense." Maybe I didn't like being helmetless in front of this guy... he wasn't understating much with the admission of It allows me to know what you are thinking. The way he read me like a book was downright creepy.

"I may have a grasp for the manner of the beings under my command umbrella, 'Zelisee, but I am not telepathic." He cocked his head down and to the side, the way a body would when trying to get a gaze back from the floor's ownership. Thing was, I hadn't looked down.

"I want to follow the buoy's transmission." I told him, pointedly. The less I poked around and beat the bush, the less I'd have to pick up later. Sasaak seemed a body to appreciate directness, anyway. "I need your help to do that."

"The battle over the Flood world was concluded successfully with full maintenance of the quarantine." He told me. "But I took my ship out of that fight for a good reason."

"I'm not asking you to fight." I argued, feeling like he was warming up to a no regardless what I said. Maybe he wasn't so fond of bluntness as I'd thought.

He nodded. "No, you aren't. But I relayed the coordinates through the cartographer database." He set the dish of torrid-looking victuals aside, and dusted his palms together before concluding, "it is inside the same quarantine zone, 'Zelisee. I am afraid I cannot offer you what you would ask of me."

"Then let me borrow something. A Phantom, a Seraph... something to get me there. I need to see, I need to know. If he's down there, I can't leave him to the mercies of whatever infestation might be there with him."

"According to my information, your brother went missing years ago. No warrior could last years alone on a Flood-infected world." Sassak pointed out.

I fought for a moment for control of my face - right then I needed to keep my cool, and scowling openly at the commander of the ship I stood on was not going to be conducive to progress. Winning out with a pinched, forced look, I replied, "117 is not a warrior, Shipmaster, and if anyone could wipe out a Flood world by himself, it would be him."

Sasaak studied me for a long time before finally answering me; and when he did, he sounded somewhat distant. "Yours are a strange and mysterious caste of Human, 'Zelisee. Perhaps I will never understand you... but do not doubt I cannot recognize iron determination when I see it."

My tense expression lightened into a cross between my puzzlement in where he thought he was going with that thought, and the tiniest kindling of hope that maybe I might win this argument after all. I hated being so easy to read, but I couldn't really help it... some people had all the luck. I just wasn't one of them. "With or without your help, I'll find some way to go after him... but if I intend to get there any time soon or be able to do much once I get there, I'll need assistance. Right now, you're it."

He cocked his whole head at me, as if expecting me to continue.

At first my brain floundered, but then I took a swag, and ran with it; "G'wi seems to think it's doable."

Sasaak laughed lightly at me. "G'wi's brains are addled from far too many battles lost, and far too many blows to his head."

"I trust him." I blurted. A moment later, I wondered at the wisdom of that admission...

Sasaak displayed its value to me, though; His expression twisted into surprise. "Do you, now? This is news. And would you follow his lead, were he to ask the impossible of you?"

"I tend to be the one to do the asking." I corrected. "But he's never let me down... and when it was him who needed my intervention... well, I haven't heard him complain." I don't know why I was gilding that shaky truce G'wi and I had, but if buttering the relations with gold would soften Sasaak to my cause, I was willing to plate the thing so thickly that it never saw sunlight again. I wanted to go after John badly enough to set that ONI spook loose on the ship, but I wasn't ready to make that move on the basis of not knowing the AI's affiliation or loyalty complex. Cortana complimented John the way she did because she valued him above all other commanders.

The twerp I'd rescued from the pirate's frigate was a whole other story. He was, I supposed, my last-ditch option.

But Sasaak didn't prove to be that stubborn. Maybe he had a soft spot for G'wi, as addled as he proclaimed the guy to be. I don't know. But he alleviated my stewing thoughts with his reply. "We will go to the coordinates, and we will look at what we find."

Before I could react, he added,

"But if it proves rich with infection, or we find indication your brother is not there, we are leaving without setting Phantom to soil. Is that understood? We arrive, we scan, and only then do we decide our next course of action."

Who could ask for better? "Thank you, Shipmaster."

Oop... there went that bizarre urge to salute an Elite again. I fought it down, sufficing with nodding back to his nod to me, and leaving without more. The last thing I needed was to get used to taking situational conditions, or worse, orders, from a splitlip.

Shipmaster or not, I did not answer to these guys.

We just... worked well together.

The next time I saw my Longsword, it looked like a horrid heap of components and parts. Needless to say, I was a little distressed by that. There was nobody around to ask what had happened to it, but I was pretty sure I hadn't authorized them to disassemble my broken ship for parts! More, I was pretty sure that Human ship components didn't cohabitate well with Covenant ones.

So what was the point? I sorted through the heaps of hull plating, skeleton structure beams, and internal computer parts looking for something recognizable, but the only part I could really tell was familiar was the plasma screen that went over one of the forward displays. It had been completely removed from the display attachment, remaining only intact enough to preserve the fact that it was a plasma screen and not a sheet of blank glass.

I turned it over in my hands for a while before putting it back, shaking my head at the mess. Most of the extraneous things had been extricated from the ship components, so I was able to get the rations I'd come for without much trouble. But looking at the heaped remains of what had at one point been a Human Longsword long-range fighter craft made me feel a little trapped.

Now I had to beg a Seraph off of Sasaak, or I would never make it home in my lifetime. Even if they took me all the way to Reach's marbled surface, I'd have to sit there for a while before someone with a Pelican could come and get me.

Not a pleasant thought.

Sasaak proved a curious sort when, upon our eventual arrival at the site of mention, we found a planet whose readings did not immediately betray any active population, be it comprised of Flood forms or otherwise. He did get a strange look on his wizened old face when he was informed of the indigenous non-sentient life.

I didn't ask, but from the looks on a lot of the faces in the room at the time, I got the distinct impression that that animal - or ecosystem of animals - did not belong on this world we were looking at.

The world in question proved to be a large, roughly Earth-and-a-half sized ball of blue and luscious purple-on-yellow, the kind that suggests foliage. It had a larger moon than Earth did, though only one, and it was not the bleached, bleak white I was used to seeing in moons. This one was a bloody red color, like oxidized iron or worse, but it glittered brightly like fiery rubies where the red giant's rays struck it. The orbit was crooked and ovular, though, leading me to think maybe the world wasn't nearly as attractive as first impressions might lend; when we found it at the aphelion of its rotation, it looked to be in an orbit-inspired winter.

Sasaak's reaction to all of this was to ask for further probes and scan details, even going so far as to "brave" a recon drone into the upper atmosphere to test for gaseous conditions. I stood there, mainly bored, with my arms tucked into one another, folded across my chest, trying not to look as bored as I felt.

One thing I did ask, was the location of my Mjolnir... I had envisioned a fate as gruesome for it as my Longsword had endured, but when I got to see it, the pink floating things hovering around it did not appear to be taking it apart. For reasons undisclosed - his claim - to the Elite who'd taken me there, I couldn't seem to get past said pink floaty things, to reclaim it.

Without permission to become harsh with the dratted annoyances - rather, directly informed I was not to harm them in any fashion, be it physical, mental or emotional - I had to let them keep it. So I stood around feeling quite nude in nothing more than my skinsuit... and barefoot.

Nothing quite like tempering one's feet on the corridors long worn smooth by the passage of a billion Elite hooves. I had discovered that the areas around the doors were smoothest, but being bare skin, that was no impediment to traction for me. However, I had long ago grown accustomed to the shielding mechanism affording me a slight slickness to my soles, and being quite well anchored where I stood was a sudden and unexpected shift for me.

I felt sluggish, without my armor to accelerate my already accelerated and augmented motions, but I could only shake my head; I was spoiled rotten by that thing, but the longer it took those pink aliens to decide to hand it back over, and the more used to being without it I became, the more it made me want it back. I know, I know... I'm a junkie.

I'd admit that much.

But I was no less addicted, and had no more desire to get clean than at any point before now. Knowing there was nothing between my skin and the air I stood in but the Kevlar fabric of my suit made me want to squirm - even without direct need of any armored outfit, without the presence of danger or combatants, I still wanted that old security standby.

It was a little unnerving, worrying about my armor when I should have been focused on the present, my here-and-now that I'd been neglecting for some time. I'd often find I had missed whole conversations, whole paragraphs of speech that was very often directed at me. To be frank, though... I had discovered I was usually in a better mood if I didn't hear their words.

Most of them had seen Humans enough to understand a basic concept about us, and the ones that knew to comment all had to comment. They all tried to tell me how terrible I looked... one of them actually made me laugh, telling me if I got any paler, I'd be transparent. Apparently the depth of their usually brown and sometimes downright black skin-tone was a point of pride for the Elite people.

But he'd been alone; the majority of those who deigned to speak to me or even about me typically commented on the hollowness of my eyes, or how I had dark circles around them... and some said I looked haunted. Others said I looked permanently furious, most of my features a little sunken and some of those showing slight bruising that was my only source of color.

Having spent nearly a week - roughly five days - out of the armor, though, I had discovered a slightly pink complexion appear on my hands. Being in the light had started to reactivate long-neglected pigment cells in my skin, and I was nolonger quite as ghost-pale as I had been. I could still see the dark purple lines where my veins showed over my knuckles, traveling over the backs of my hands to disappear into my wrists, and then reappear to spiral and web over my forearms.

Those, at least, still looked normal... for as long as I could remember, I'd always had visible veins on my hands. Though having been born to a pale-complexioned family, I doubted they would ever disappear under pigment. I might make a light tan someday, but I'd never be brown, or worse, black.

If I ever made black, chances were good I wasn't going to be tanned... I would be char.

My mind wandered some more, deviating from the planet I was looking at to my armor, then myself, heading off down the spiral path down to meet other, more interesting thoughts and ideas, but just when I'd been standing there imagining - or trying to - what John might look like nowadays, G'wi stepped over and interrupted me.

I tried hard not to jerk as though shot, but I still wound up staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights of a 'hog. When all he did was stare back at me, I finally gave up and asked; "What?" this hoping he'd be patient with me and repeat whatever it was he might have just said.

"I moved." He told me, bluntly. "That was all."

I squinted at him. "You moved... and came to a stop an arm's length from me, facing me squarely... and that was all?"

G'wi's mandibles crooked into an amused smile. On him, though, it just made it look like he was ready to bite me. "That was all."

I quirked a brow at that, but looked away, more or less content to allow the alien to behave as alien as he liked... so long as he didn't actually bite me.

"Flint."

I looked back at him, sharply, quickly, and with the same quality, I interrupted whatever thought he might have been about to offer; "Why do you call me that?"

His head drew up slightly, his expression shifting to surprise. I'd taken him aback. "What? What do you mean?"

"You call me Flint. None of the other splitlips call me that. Why?"

G'wi's expression darkened a little, and it occurred to me that I actually said it the way I'd thought it... ah, crap. One thing about the Elites... they really don't like that nickname.

I cleared my throat, feeling exposed now more than ever. "Sorry..."

"I call you Flint, human," he ground out, sounding as if he were still considering whether or not to forgive me the blunder, "because I am the one to whom your life is owed. I therefore rightfully claim the honor of calling you by given name, rather than battle-earned title as capable warrior of a given House."

I pondered that. "Wait... wait... you guys gave me a House?"

"No."

For some reason, even though I had not really liked the idea of being formally adopted as some kind of pseudo-Elite-person, I felt crestfallen at his answer. Part of me cheered in relief; the rest pouted in disappointment.

"But on to more pressing matters." G'wi instructed, his tone affording that I was not going to be allowed any more silly questions for today... or at least for until his temper at me had cooled. I seceded; I didn't really think I could whip him in a fair fight anyway... not anymore. "It has come to my attention that you have not rested in as many days as have passed since you made your request to the Shipmaster."

I frowned pointedly at him; oh, but my slip was not permission for him to go where he was not welcome! "G'wi. Drop it."

He cocked his head at me. "That I have chosen to bring up the matter at all should be of note, Flint, given that I know you understand my culture better than that."

I inhaled through my teeth, my tired brain trying desperately to conjure some way to ward him off; true, I understood enough about his ways and the ways of his kind to know he was really pressing this - even with just a casual mention - but he also knew enough about me and mine that I could not so easily dismiss him. I was, in effect, cornered by that. I briefly pondered shooting him... but dismissed the idea a moment later. I might need him for something more useful than blood-to-floor donation, later.

It didn't occur to me until later that he'd expressed concern for my well-being - in his own, alien way - directly after reminding me why I was still around to be concerned about at all. G'wi was incorrigibly strange, and he would likely die that way.

It wasn't like me to give up without a fight... some kind of fight... but the more I thought, the harder I spun my tired brains... the more I floundered. I just couldn't conjure anything to counter him with. Not this time. My brows met, then peaked slightly, as that feeling of utter and complete defeat began to sink in. He'd not only whipped me, he'd disarmed me, too. How unfair!

Sasaak stepped over to us, interrupting our silent staring contest. "I do not pretend to understand the manner or nature of your relations... but if you two would spare enough visual time to address the current issue." Pay attention, idiots. He was not hard to read. Officers were pretty much all the same.

I looked at him more to break that staring contest with G'wi than because I owed him the respect, but he seemed to nod at me in appreciation - maybe because I'd done it before his own subordinate did. That thought made me grin mentally.

"Returning scans show active swarms of the Parasite." He crossed his arms, rolling his shoulders back to jut his chest out. "They are mainly small-form and indigenous life form based, but dangerous nonetheless. However, there are vast stretches of terrain found to be completely devoid of all life, be they the Parasite or even insectoid. I will allow you one - and I stress one - Phantom." His beady eyes stitched from me to G'wi suddenly. "If it is your wish to accompany the Human, you may. But you may take no more than four of your Elites."

G'wi inclined his head, apparently satisfied with the fire-team sized insertion team. I rolled that over in my head for a moment, then asked, "Any likely areas to start, Shipmaster?"

Sasaak looked back at me, then. "It seems the keel of one of your battle-ships has crumpled into the southeastern hemisphere. I would, as you might well guess, suggest you start there."

I heard his tone more than his words as he told me that - so in compliance with his obvious wish, I prodded again. "But."

"The area is quite heavily populated." Maybe he'd been fishing for a bit more than just 'but' out of me, but while I could be respectful and perhaps friendly, I wasn't really a part of his little charade and we both knew it. So on occasion I did get to squeak past a little pushiness. It sure made me feel better, knowing I wasn't trapped in the alien starch that G'wi was, given he was in the presence of superior officers. "I recommend you take heavy armament."

"I will see to it, Shipmaster." G'wi assured him.

I tossed G'wi a look. "You're coming?" I asked, more to be sure than anything else.

He gave me one of those looks. "If I do not, Flint, this may well be the last we see of each other."

I frowned. "I'm the pessimist. Don't take that from me."

He just laughed. "Come, Human, let us ready for combat." He dropped one of those odd hands of his on my shoulder and rolled me around on the unwitting balance of one heel, then gave me a push to get me started walking.

I grumbled, but I went. At least he wasn't going to confine me to quarters and make me miss out on the biggest event in SPARTAN history. As we went, I contemplated the soreness of my middle, and wondered if maybe I ought to have tried a little harder to get some more rest.

I hate Flood.

Remarkably, the pink aliens were gone when I again paid a visit to my Mjolnir. I spared a moment to inspect it, just to be sure it was everything I hoped it still was. To my satisfaction, the suit was fine, but to my pleased surprise, it had also been repaired. As I donned it bit by bit, integrating the power feed joints as I went, I found myself recalling the last time an ONI technician had put this stuff on me. That suit had been a long, long time ago, a suit I had long since trashed to fragments.

As the greaves synced with the gauntlets as the system did a self-diagnostic, I pondered what happened to ruined Mjolnir. I belted the throat seal around my head, and seated the cup onto my jaw, tucking the back in so it hugged my head. Once it was locked in place, I felt it charge, awaiting the contacts in my helmet. Taking the crown of the powered armor, I tucked it under an elbow and strode for the door. There was a residual feel of the room, and the quality of the moment, my first reintroduction to my favorite battleground item in a week, but I was too hyped to really appreciate it.

Standing on the bridge, I had been in a bit of a stupor, half distracted by G'wi's pestering. Taking the time to pull my weary carcass into the standard SPARTAN combat gear had reasserted my grounding point, however, and now I was back in my game. I felt like a SPARTAN again, felt like a soldier, ready to drop, ready for anything. If the mood persisted, I felt reasonably assured that I could complete this final op before all hell broke loose.

By that point, though... John could take up any slack I might leave.

I stepped up into the Phantom and walked the line of Elites clad in shimmery black, up to the one foremost in the depth of the bird, coming to a stop right as the enginery hummed to life and I felt the floor move.

"That armor suits you." G'wi mentioned, quietly.

I smiled. If the demons of hell came over today, I could handle it. I cast my gaze over the other Elites, noting each of their returning expressions before rolling my helmet around in my grasp. I caught it in the flat of my other hand before lifting it up to my head and seating it down. I was back in my element, the realization that I had been out of it acute at the edge of my senses. Encased inside my Mjolnir suit, I finally felt safe.

As I watched the HUD come online, the AI symbol popping up next to the motion tracker donut in the bottom left, it occurred to me that I had never thought about any of the more subtle nuances of this killer suicide mission. Behind my glossy, golden mask, I let the smile of enthusiasm and happiness fade as more grim thoughts replaced the previous ones.

If I actually found John at all, the odds of him being dead, or worse, a disfigured Flood form socializing with the other Flood forms down there, were better than any other circumstance. Cortana was long overdue for overhaul, likely rampant now from sheer age. She was, after all, holding the entire history of a long lost culture as well as much of the program surrounding their Halo array.

The girl had shot off a Halo without so much as looking twice, after all. Now, almost seven years later following that event, I was grasping at threads that there even existed the theory that she and her favorite brother of mine were still out there.

Were what I remembered of them.

I closed my eyes, unwilling to focus on the HUD anymore. That image had been the last thing the majority of my varied siblings ever saw, the stencil of situational data and battlefield imagery often fading out with their extinguished lives. Without anything any newer than a comn buoy likely dropped long before the keel had made ground fall, there was no indication that either of them were even on the ship anymore.

Or had even made ground fall with it.

May I request a situational update, 093, or am I in communications lockdown for a reason?

I opened my eyes again, and sighed. "What the hell. Sure. I'm dropping a suicide mission. Welcome aboard."

The AI gave a muted, amused laugh. Alright, I'll bite. What did I do wrong?

"You're a program." I told it. "Makes you hard to wake up when the power goes out."

This got me an audible eye-roll sound. Those always make me grin, and this time was no exception. Please.

I offered a snerk instead. "Got a classification, or a name, or something to that effect that I could use?"

Thor. the AI answered. What's the object of this suicide mission I'm being dragged along on?

"One-one-seven."

Thor seemed to give some pause to that reply before offering a confused sounding answer to it; Are those coordinates, or should I make some reasonable assumptions and draw some other conclusions?

I nodded, earning a look from G'wi. "You recall Cortana."

I recall such an artificial entity, assigned combat position with one of your brothers... you mean to imply that she - and more importantly to yourself - Spartan-117 are the object of our current mission? Are you not aware that the odds of their being alive at this date are infinitesimally small?

"Sure." I offered. "Thought of that already. We're still going in."

Thor sighed, a resigned sound if I had ever heard one. Fair enough. It is illogical and unsound, but an unsurprising reaction given it is between two Spartans. You were always too attached to one another.

"Morale makes up more of the fighting spirit of any given army than any other factor." I said, feeling certain I was quoting somebody... but for the life of me I couldn't recall who had said it first. Maybe it was me, and it just sounded like an old comment due to its nature.

Might I presume your present company will be assisting in this... suicide mission? Thor asked.

"Yes."

Thor fell silent again, but I could still feel him thinking in the back of my helmet. Having him plugged into my suit would do that - the AI was usually an extension of the suit, and being as the suit was an extension of my augmented self, that made him, by some extension, integrated into me as much as the suit.

I am not programmed for this sort of activity. But I will assist where and if I can. he piped up, finishing the trailing thought he'd left with his last question. Given that he was a standard operating ONI AI, I doubted his admission of being out of his element, but I was satisfied in that he was willing to put forth the effort to try despite any claims.

"Hold onto your coding." I advised, as the sound of the Phantom's heartbeat changed. "We're here." And that said, 'here' came up to greet us like a boiling cloud of savage raptors. Everyone danced to the same gravitational pull, then they all dove for a handhold and clung to it. G'wi had to grab me, as I was standing too far from anything handy to save my own self.

"Pilot, what was that?" He demanded, right over my head. If he'd yawned right then, he would have bonked his mandibles off my helmet. I shouldered him away so we weren't so close, the initial shake proving to be the only one thus far.

From the cockpit, I heard the reply; "They appear to be firing on us, leader. I was unprepared for anti-air munitions, and have applied evasive maneuvers to bring us down."

"Damage?" G'wi pressed, almost as if he hadn't heard the last report.

"Negligible, leader. We can sustain much more before any systems critical to flight or operations are impaired."

I listened to all that with a twisted expression on my face, figuring the same could have been said in a handful of words; we've been hit, it won't happen twice. Damage is minimal. How hard was that to say? Maybe their extra eloquence was due to the fact that, for some odd reason, G'wi had chosen to ask for those updates in English... maybe for my benefit, maybe not, but not every splitlip out there really knew the language that well.

And the foremost sign of having poor command of a language was talking funny. I shook my head at the lot of them, though it really couldn't be helped, and stepped sideways over to my own handhold. I had been unprepared for being shaken off my balance, but I was not about to ride down to rescue John while being hugged to death by an Elite... least of all G'wi.

I didn't really have anything against the big guy, but he was still an alien, and that left him weird and strange and bizarre... and not precisely the kind of thing I wanted wrapped around me in casual embrace, either. I managed to suppress the majority of it, so none of those looking would see it, but I still shuddered... creepy!

"How far to the chosen landing area?" G'wi asked, either ignoring me or pretending to. I was happy with either, so I didn't make an issue of it.

"Momentarily, leader, we are almost there."

I couldn't help it - "Leader? Why does he keep calling you 'leader' like it was some form of retarded rank?" It came out as more of a blurt than anything else.

I got a row of bemused looks from G'wi's strike team, and one of unbiased amusement out of the guy himself. "Consider the term akin to the way your people refer to their superiors as sir."

That made me grumble. Either I was making myself look like an idiot, or I was catching myself behaving like one, but neither really made me very happy. "Never mind."

"Leader. We have arrived." The pilot called back. "Deploying gravity lift now."

Ahead of me, I saw the lights around the iris wink on, and then the petals slid back to reveal the man-sized circular hole in the floor. Through it, through the wiggling pink displacement field, I could see a couple of things I didn't really like.

First it was raining out there.

Second... it was dark.

Gods dammit. Raking the MA6C off my back and dropping the fore grip into my other hand as I strode forward, I made first drop through it, shouldering the weapon before my feet had even touched ground. I didn't see anything moving at first, so I called up the all-clear, and moved out.

G'wi didn't come down after me, though he was third out, apparently having gotten shouldered aside before he could jump first. Nobody in his party appeared to even take note of that assembly, but for some odd reason, the longer I spent with that crowd the more I took note of those little oddities.

So and so went first, when theoretically he ought not have. So and so said something, when theoretically it was a risky comment, being in bad company. So and so went to a specific location, and theoretically, he wasn't allowed to do that.

Given what I did know about G'wi and his bassackwards people, the rest of what I had yet to figure out about them made little to no sense to me. I just figured it was my attempting to see and reason through Human means that was throwing me. Either I'd get it eventually, or I wouldn't, but in the meantime, being half-ignorant kept me from being flayed alive for mistakes I didn't realized were bad.

Until G'wi pointed them out. But then, if they started trying to treat me like I was one of them, they'd likely have a whole world of hurt to answer for when the UNSC found out. HQ was not happy to learn about my new name, after all.

I wasn't supposed to be making such good friends with the splitchinned bastards who had fronted the thirty-years-war. Not allowed to kill them, but cozy was discouraged. Them having a special honorific-tagged name for me was apparently too cozy for the UNSC... or anyway, for ONI.

I didn't care one way or the other. It was better, I suppose, than the name I used for them.

Not to interrupt, 093, but I was wondering if you ever stopped thinking long enough to actually get anything done. Thor piped up, interrupting my thought and derailing it, too.

Mentally, I hiccupped, and had to restart just to conjure a response. "Shut up and let me work, will you?" I griped, despondent. The last thing I needed... maybe I should have left my good buddy Thor back on the mothership. ONI would have an absolute cow, but what did I care? I was on a suicide mission, after all! I was risking not only myself, some unnecessarily expended tenuous allies, but that AI I'd been sent after, too! In either situation, the program was in equally dangerous circumstances.

The only standing difference was what he got plugged into, I guess... me, or something some pink floaty thing found that his chip fit into. I would not have had my feelings hurt if Thor had a personality change.

You must be the most demented SPARTAN that ever was. Have you even taken stock of your surroundings, yet? Thor complained.

"Why, got something special to point out?" I snapped back, hitting a corner of something tall, black, and semi-shiny and cutting pie around it. Empty. All empty. Really, if this place was much more than flat, bleak, and desolate in the daylight, I would be surprised. The darkness was deep, deep as in miles and miles. There simply were no features to take note of. Nothing there. As I came around the interruption in that idea, I glanced up at it, and flicked on my helmet lamps briefly to see what it was.

Oh.

Chunk of lost hull plating... probably came free during entry burn, and had stood itself into the dirt like a throwing knife on touchdown. Just when I was about to call back to the Elites following me and ask where in hell that ship aft was, I found it.

Whang!

"Forerunners, Flint! Are you blind?" G'wi exclaimed.

I staggered back, unbalanced, certain that that spot had been empty... by all rights it still looked that way. I stuck a hand out, and found a solid wall, however, proving what I had already determined with my head was indeed really there. "I hope not." I answered, feeling sheepish.

I was not wrong. Thor commented dryly.

"Shut up, before I yank you out, throw you down and stomp on you some for good measure!" I complained, through my teeth. I smacked my fist off the hull I'd run into once, regripped my gun, and moved along its length looking for a way in. Now I'd convinced myself it was there, I could almost see it, where the rain wasn't falling, and I could follow its warped and twisted contours without needing to run a hand along it to do so. G'wi followed me a little closer now, apparently of the mind that I needed better looking after than he'd at first thought.

How humiliating.

"Do you see a possible entrance?" he asked, alleviating some of my seething embarrassment by reinstating my position as the guy in front.

Unfortunately, I could have been anywhere in the pack and had the same answer for him. "No." I had said the word, closed my mouth, and got started thinking again when the truth of it changed on me. And suddenly, too.

Hull fell away before I could get my legs to stop running under me, but I did get my gun swiveled around in time to keep from looking like a brainless idiot. Dim, half-crusted-over lights flickered or buzzed all up and throughout the massive hole in the frigate's side, some of them bright enough to illuminate more than just their own existence. Floor grating had been swept up in curly queues to meet the ceiling, wall panels sloughed off into a large, almost ovular pool of since-cooled metal carpeting custom fitted to the churned ground beneath the broken ship.

There was nothing left that looked flammable, except perhaps some unseen electrical insulation, but aside from the massive melted-out cavity, the entrance looked good to me. "Okay, I take it back." I said, able to see the Elites gather up beside me in my peripheral. "Yes."

G'wi huffed. "Two take upper right. Two take straight. The Spartan and I will use the opening on the left. If you reach an impassable dead end, return and join the next party up. Move out."

I briefly considered asking him when he got a UNSC rank and thus authorization to order me around like that, but then shrugged it off - why not go left? What was special about any of the other options? At the least, it did give me backup that I had worked with before, and knew a smidgen about. If the shit hit the fan, I wouldn't notice until I got covered in it. Given anyone else to work with, I was usually the one that made it hit said fan.

Not my most glorious trait.

I led the way, moving first again without even realizing nobody else had started yet. G'wi fell in behind me again, apparently satisfied with keeping me where he could see me. The dim halogen lighting helped the depthless pitch I'd been running through before, but I still didn't like what I was seeing.

At first the melted, slumped corridor features had me worried that most of the ship looked this way. It seemed the deeper inside we got, the more everything looked the same. But the truth was, if that hole had been there when the ship hit atmo, the fire would have come up the halls for quite a ways, thus generating the conditions I was walking through.

But logical derivative was not exactly easily conjured out of a head like mine, so I spent most of the trip through the mess wondering when it ended. Finally, forced around bends innumerable due to restructuring, we came to the dead end G'wi had mentioned. I placed a hand on the welded door, running my gaze over the edges.

"We should move back, and look for another way." G'wi told me, impatient with my scrutiny.

But I just shook my head, and stepped back from the sealed door. Metal had been melted and splashed across its exterior, effectively welding it shut with an additional layer of steel, but getting something like steel to reshape under fire without ruining the integrity of the metal was a tenuous process; and no entry burn could generate the right forging conditions to get it right.

So back from the door, I shouldered my MA6C and put two bursts into it; one on the upper left, into the recoil gyros, one into the lower right, where the control module had been. Just as I had guessed, none of the rounds bounced, both shots blowing chunks out of the impromptu welding. A moment later, the majority of the sheath shattered, lightning cracks popping into being all over the steel weld sheath, and the door's two halves leapt apart almost a foot before stopping. The extra layer had ruffled at the lip on the walls, preventing it from opening much farther on its own.

"It's not impassible, if you know what you're doing." I mentioned, stepping forward again. I heard G'wi grunt, but he took the other side of the door from me and hauled back on it with possibly more power than I had to offer on my end. Between the two of us, though, we got the door open enough for us to slip through. He went through first, but after making the next juncture, he paused.

Catching up to him, I looked around, too. Nothing here was burnt, nothing was melted, everything still looked just the way the inside of a standard UNSC frigate ought. There was six years of dust on everything, however, and it was that feature that stopped me from just going ahead blindly looking through the place.

The dust had been disturbed in several places... scuffed tracks layered hundreds upon one another on the floor, drifts of dirt in the corners sometimes featuring a complete print. I didn't recognize any of the shapes, but I imagined G'wi might, given that the indigenous life was something his people recognized.

Flood didn't usually bother to alter the shape of the feet of their host forms... just the rest of the body. I didn't see anything that looked like boot prints, but it only occurred to me after I'd looked that the Forward Unto Dawn had been emptied of personnel before that final flight that landed her keel here, and her prow in the Atlantic. There would be no formerly Human Flood-forms here. Likely, no forms I'd ever seen before. They'd just look like roughly mangled something or other with legs.

"There is another opening." G'wi voiced, the thought already acknowledged.

I let the barrel of my MA6C drop halfway. "He's not here anymore." I felt like sagging in defeat already; if the ship had already been run through a few hundred times by the Flood - moreover, if it was badly enough mangled that they couldn't just weld it shut and take it for a flight run, then there was quite obviously nothing left here. Nothing at all.

G'wi threw me a look. "Dare I disagree with you, Flint; I smell something that is not the Parasite."

That earned him a return look. "You and that nose of yours." But it did make me feel a little better; I wasn't wasting my time, chasing after rainbows and shadows that I could never catch. "What's it smell like?"

"Let us investigate, and find out." Again, he took point, so I followed him this time. We took the left up the junction in the corridor, passing the LEVEL 5 plaque on the wall. Those were in certain places, and it told me where I was; when G'wi hit a passage and paused, trying to consider which way to go, I hooked around him and headed left.

At the first sound that wasn't ours, my MA6C came up, but I passed a great length of corridor without seeing anything animate at all. Finally, fully a minute after the sound, I heard explosives go off, and taking that turn, G'wi and I came upon one of the other Elite pairs. We spared one another a look before moving on, but I didn't bother to look and see if they went their own way or fell in behind G'wi.

The ship was empty; and the way most frigates were built, no amount of grenades would make a noise significant enough to signal the Flood wandering around outside the hull. So unless some of the forms had wandered inside with us, we could throw a hoedown and nobody but us would know. Approaching the end of a bent hall, I came around to find sign of a Flood combat form losing it all over a doorway. The door itself had been ripped brutally out of the cradle and left on the floor beyond, but the claw marks etched into the metal all around the doorway was testament to the fact of what had opened it. Beyond, I found myself looking into a cryo bay.

I felt my heart stop.

"What is this place?" G'wi asked, sounding puzzled. My earlier question was answered when I saw an Elite step up next to me, and when I looked over at the guy, I knew it wasn't G'wi standing there.

"Cryogenics." I answered, feeling hollow. Turning away, I walked into the room, making a quick assessment of each pod as they came within sight. Sure as fire, I found several had been smashed, but at the far end, one stood open. Open. There was only one reason it would be standing open like that.

"That one looks open." One of the other Elites mentioned, pointing.

"He's not here." My mind spun as I conjured the logical progression of events. Broken free of the prow, this part of the Dawn had likely come to a stop in orbit. Given nothing else to do, John would have found a working pod, and curled up in it to kill time. Cortana had likely been the one that dropped the buoy, but after crashing here, the Flood had come to investigate a possible food source. So Cortana had woke John, and now both were long gone from here.

I was too late.

Plug me in. Thor told me.

"What?" I asked, startled. Looking around, I found an AI port just across the way from the open pod. Of course he'd pick one close to an AI port. I reached back and yanked Thor out of my helmet, and slid his chip home into the port. With the Elites all watching, a blue figure formed out of streams of computer coding on the projection disc atop the port. Thor looked like the Norse god he was named for, clad in shiny copper armor with Gaelic runes stamped around the edges of each plate, and a relatively small hammer held perched nonchalantly against his shoulder pauldrons. Long wavy hair and a beard protruded from his bucket helmet, which was cocked just slightly back, the horns adorning it short and thick. He stood there for a moment before crossing his arms, apparently sorting through program ghosting.

"How long have you carried this around?" G'wi asked.

"Picked him up off the last ship you and I visited." I answered, not bothering to look up from the projection. It was almost a full minute before Thor finally moved. He uncrossed his arms and looked up at me, completely ignoring the Elites surrounding both of us.

"They were here." He told us. "Cortana was in this very port."

"When?" I asked, hoping for a recent date.

Thor considered my question before answering; for a program like him, his answer must have taken some serious thought. "Two years."

I cringed. "Any sign of where they went, or where they might be now?"

Thor shrugged openly. "None of the ship sensors work anymore. Nearly all systems remaining after the breakage were fried on entry. All I can tell you is that the proper system algorithms were used to thaw that pod, and the AI in this port was removed willingly from it."

I sighed, and reached down for his chip. The projection flickered, then vanished, and a moment later, the chip self-ejected far enough out for me to grab it. I restored the chip to my helmet, and turned away, conflicted. I didn't know if I wanted to fume or collapse in defeat. I had been so certain he was here - alive - and so assured of that that I'd dragged G'wi and several of his buddies along on this mission.

At least the suicide part hadn't come into play yet. Maybe we could leave without it. I had just turned to head back for the door when the Elite between me and that destination suddenly moved. In the following heartbeat, while everyone else followed suit, the first red blotch appeared behind me on my motion tracker donut. Needless to say, I moved with them.

I turned to see, bringing my rifle up, to see the biggest mass of Flood flowing out of the far end of the cryo bay towards us. The front rank was hard to distinguish until they broke away from the rest of the writhing mass, charging us with everything they had. Behind them, the ones that had raided the frigate's rear weapons locker came, waving the guns like they didn't know how to use them. The Elites all shot first, though, mowing down that front rank of weaponless Flood even as we all made for the exit by which we'd come.

I tried to aim, but in the end it was just a glorified spray and pray regardless what my intention was. We clamored at the door for a second before we got sorted and through it, as trying to run backwards through a bottleneck proved more than we were equipped to handle on the fly; when one of the Elites wound up in the back, I let myself look forward.

Right as I got turned around, my MA6C trailing my swinging gaze, I smacked the action of the gun right into the midsection of another Flood form. It was something that resembled some kind of ugly lizard-monkey thing that had once had scales. Now the extended fangs hung against its breast like limp noodles, and they swung about when I hit the thing. That Flood went down, revealing the side corridor ahead was packed with its friends. Even before the first one was fully on the floor, the next one back swung out at me, raking calcite claws across my shielding and making them sizzle in protest.

Watch it, Spartan! You're looking out for more than just yourself, now, remember! Thor complained.

"Shut up!" I shot back, plowing into that attack and breaking the fragile, half-rotted thing into shreds as I brought the butt of my rifle down across its head. Juices squirted from between the broken, thinned bones, and the infection form controlling it was smashed under the collapsing body frame. Irritated more at the AI in my head than the Flood attacking me, I took it out on the nearest available.

That position cycled out too fast to be one form in particular for more than a moment, but I managed to carve myself a path with just my fists, my combat knife, and my MA6C. Somehow I managed to operate through the tangled masses without needing to fall back to reload.

As Flood forms too bizarre and too mangled to really describe poured at me, I cut them across and pounded them down, shot them full of holes and trod them under. Though I never felt anything hit me in the back, I never saw a single open spot on my motion tracker appear. If I was picking up the motion upstairs and down, though, it was going to be disorienting very soon.

As the last immediate combatant crumpled before me, and I was allowed a moment to wipe the excess goop off my rifle and look around, I realized two things. Neither made me feel any better about my situation;

First... the Flood was consolidating at the ends of the hallways.

Second... I was alone.

Slamming the next magazine of .308 home, I jacked the action bar and shouldered the rifle. Inhaling my next breath, I let some of it go in comment to opinion. Here they came.

"Oh, shit."