Captain Palmer of an exploratory vessel without a name wasn't a part of any formal military. In fact, Captain Palmer wasn't even his real name but he had stopped using his birth name ever since the First Contact War over thirty years ago. These days he was just a nobody who acted as a scout for a secretive organization. Today was turning out like almost every other day of his career. Boring. It was mind numbingly boring to the point that he almost didn't notice the static on the radio. The signal was using an algorithm unknown to Cerberus and that worried him. Cerberus had an information network second only to the Shadow Broker so if they couldn't recognize it then that means it was either the Shadow Broker himself or something previously undiscovered.
"Mr. Green, I want that signal decrypted and translated and I wanted it done yesterday," he ordered his Communications Officer/Cryptologist. Mr. Green wasn't his real name as far as Palmer knew but he didn't particularly care. Who the fuck names their family Green?
"Aye, Captain," Mr. Green replied, "I suggest moving closer to the source so we can get a stronger signal."
Captain Palmer agreed and piloted the ship in the general direction the signal was coming from. Several minutes passed before he heard Mr. Green growling in frustration. "Captain Palmer, the VI can't decrypt this signal. It's too complex."
"What do you mean it's too complex? We have the best decryption equipment Cerberus has," Captain Palmer couldn't believe that the signal couldn't be decrypted. Cerberus doesn't accept failure.
"The VI can't translate the signal," Mr. Green shrugged.
Captain Palmer grimaced, "We're going to have to investigate this thing ourselves." After several hours of traveling just slow enough that they could still pick up the signal, the LADAR scanners picked up the source. It was some kind of massive ship. Not graceful and sleek like most ships he'd known, this thing was ugly, blocky and packed with weapons. This thing was made to take a beating and give one right back. The problem was that the ship was powered down and looked to be cut in half. Captain Palmer immediately sent a preliminary report to The Illusive Man about what they had found and their plans to investigate further. The LADAR didn't tell them anything more until they were in visual range and the cameras picked up writing on the bulkhead. English Writing.
"Well what are the odds that an alien civilization uses English?" Captain Palmer asked nobody in particular.
"The odds are infinitesimally small, Captain Palmer," the ship's VI responded. Both men aboard the bridge looked at the VI with exasperation before ignoring it.
Captain Palmer set out an order to the mercenary team aboard to clear out the ship of any hostile life forms and waited. With any luck, they would find something to shoot and stop making him so nervous with their… twitchiness.
Jack Schwartz used to run with the Blue Suns a lifetime ago before he decided he could make more money freelancing. Cerberus, always a group with an eye for talent, picked him up along with the merry little band he had gathered over the years after they had made something of a name for themselves. There were six of them: Schwartz himself was a weapons specialist; Alco Stephens was a tech specialist; Mitchell Westwood was a biotic specialist; Jack Li was an "infiltrator"; Jim Brown was a sentinel; and finally, Nate Plissken was the team's Vanguard. Between the six of them, they could perform any job. But they were promised action, not months of sitting around doing nothing.
The call to check out the abandoned ship sounded like a lot more nothing but at least they'd be able to stretch their legs. Still, he was hoping to shoot something with his Revenant. They had been given orders to kill anything that moves.
Deep within the ship, a blue light flickered to life on a pedestal before going dark again.
Schwartz had a bad feeling about the place. Some of the doors would open on command, others were unresponsive and he some parts of the ship had atmosphere while others didn't. The team came to a fork in the hallway. One arrow said Cryo and the other said Armory. Why this ship used English but didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before was beyond him. Schwartz sent Li, Brown, and Plissken to go check out the cryo room for any survivors while he and the others checked out the armory.
"So what do you think we'll find on this ship?" Li asked the other two.
"Probably a whole lot of nothing," Brown replied. Plissken was characteristically quiet and the three of them entered the cryo room. The pods were huge, ten feet tall and three feet wide with a roughly hexagonal prism shape. They were all empty except for one, the occupant was massive, covered from head to toe in green and black armor with a bronze visor. In the center of the room, there was a flickering blue light on a pedestal so Li went to investigate. Unsure of how to activate it, he placed his hand on the pedestal and a little blue woman appeared.
"This is CTN 0452-9 of the Forward Unto Dawn. How can I be of assistance?"
"Are you the Virtual Intelligence running the ship?" Li asked.
"That is correct," the blue avatar replied.
"Can you tell me what happened here?"
"Charon-class light frigate UNSC Forward Unto Dawn sustained massive damage when entering a Slipspace portal in an attempt to escape from CLASSIFIED."
"Who is that?"
"I'm sorry, that's classified," the VI responded.
"Is there anybody else on board?"
"CLASSIFIED," the VI responded.
Li activated his team COM, "Schwartz I found a VI that runs this ship. I'm going to bring it back for study. I've found a possible survivor in a cryo pod. Keep an eye out, we may not be alone. It keeps saying that info is classified. Over."
"Good job, the armory is locked down; we're going to see if we can find anything in the engineering room. Out," Schwartz responded.
"Now how do I take you out of here?" Li asked nobody in particular. He was pretty good with tech but it would have been a lot easier had Stephens been here. After some searching, he found some kind of crystal that he guessed was the VI's memory core. Maybe he could…
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," the VI told him. It wasn't a VI, was it?
"Who's going to stop me?" He laughed. Its attempts at intimidation were sad.
"He is," she pointed towards the giant in the cryo pod.
He laughed again, "Too bad he's on ice, isn't it?" Li then moved to take the crystal when there was a loud crash and a quick burst of gunfire. He turned around to find Plissken and Brown had their skulls smashed onto the floor but he couldn't see anyone. The giant was missing and glass of the cryo pod was shattered. He drew his submachine gun and looked everywhere for the intruder.
"I tried to warn you," she said apologetically.
When he looked up, he saw a green armored behemoth looking down at him before it dropped and crushed his spine.
Schwartz was bored out of his mind. This mission didn't have anything to shoot at so he was stuck playing babysitter to Stephens as she tried to interface with the dozens of terminals. She couldn't access any of the data, every time she tried, it would lock her out. She had perked up considerably when Li had told them about the VI. It would probably help the science team that was sure to follow them to access whatever data was stored in the ship. Still they were nervous about the idea that they might not be alone. None of them had seen anything but apparently that data was classified.
Satisfied that they had found what they came for, nothing, Schwartz gave the call to head back to the ship. Li never responded. "Bravo team, come in. I say again, Bravo team, come in." Nothing. "Everybody, weapons free! We've got hostiles!" As if on cue, the ship lights went out so they had to turn on their helmet lights. The three of them formed a circle facing outwards so nobody could sneak up on them. Schwartz readied his Revenant and the three of them slowly moved towards the exit. This was above their pay grade and Schwartz wasn't going to risk the rest of his team; Cerberus could take care of it themselves. Before they got back to the ship, they needed to either rescue or recover the bodies of their comrades.
Schwartz was the first one to enter the cryo room and the door shut behind him ensuring that he'd be alone. He was a little scared but very pissed off that whoever was doing this thought they could intimidate him with cheap parlor tricks. Upon seeing the state of his comrades, he was a little sick. Two of their skulls were pulverized, leaving headless bodies and a gory mess. Li looked like somebody dropped a Mako on him. Now he was seething. Somebody was going to pay for this.
From the other side of the wall where his team was, he heard hail of gunfire and the roar of a bigger weapon as well as the sound of biotic explosions. He wished he could be there to back his team up but knew they could take care of themselves. Now he simply had to figure out whether or not he was alone. Within a minute, the noise of battle had ceased so he called out to his teammates on his COM piece. There was no answer. Alone again, he waited for the door to open so he could kill whatever came through.
He wasn't really prepared for somebody to kick the door down and throw it at him. His shields protected him from the worst of the damage but he was dazed long enough for the man- no, the machine- to disarm him and lift him by the throat. If he weren't wearing armor, he's sure his neck would have broken right there. Sadly, it looked as if the machine had some questions. Well, tough because Schwartz was having a little trouble breathing.
"Who are you?" the machine growled more than spoke.
"C- br-!" he managed to gasp out. The machine let him down and trained his assault rifle on him. "We're mercenaries; we were here to scout the ship out for any salvageable tech."
"Why did your men attack?"
"Our employer doesn't pay for survivors," he knew he was fucked. It was just a matter of how long he could make himself useful.
"Who is your employer?"
"If I tell you, will you let me live?" he asked, not allowing himself to be hopeful.
"It can't hurt your chances," the machine told him as he flicked the safety off.
"Cerberus," Schwartz answered truthfully.
"Cerberus… Where are we?" The machine asked.
"On a ship," the smartass in him replied before his self-preservation could do anything about it. The machine pressed the assault rifle against his jugular. "We're in the Terminus systems, pretty far from any major colonies. Omega is a few light-years away!" This guy really needed a sense of humor.
"I need a ride back to UNSC controlled space," The machine let him fill in the rest. The problem was that Schwartz had never heard of a UNSC. Wasn't that something to do with history? Eh, he had failed that class.
"Listen, buddy. You're a long way from home, I've never even heard of this UNSC."
"Earth?" the machine asked. What did the UNSC have to do with Earth?
"Yeah we can do that," Schwartz couldn't go back now that he had told the machine that he worked for Cerberus. Black Ops are black ops because they stay secret and nobody talks about it. "First, I need to call my friends on the ship and tell them that we're coming, okay?" The mercenary pressed a few buttons in his Omni-tool that would send a copy of the mission's video back to the ship.
The machine nodded and brought the assault rifle back a few inches away from his face.
"You've got to leave now!" Schwartz yelled into his COM before the assault rifle tore him to shreds.
"Well that could have gone better," Cortana told him. The Master Chief nodded, he was preoccupied with the fact that the man had never heard of the UNSC.
"How long have we been drifting?" he asked.
"Four years, five months, and ten days," Cortana answered. Meaning she was at least five years old and possibly older. Is she going rampant? She seems fine for now but he would have to keep an eye on her. Five years is a long time but not long enough for somebody to have heard of Earth but not the UNSC.
"I don't understand," The Master Chief said. Cortana understood the unspoken question.
"It's possible that we were launched forward in time. Slipspace is funny like that sometimes and with the energy that the Halo set off, who knows what it did to the portal?" Well that's comforting.
"Ideas?"
"Go check out their gear; it'll give me something to do and we might have an idea of what kind of technology we're dealing with here," Cortana told him. That told him that she didn't know what to make of the situation either. Master Chief Petty Officer 117 got to work.