/UNSC HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL/
/INTERNAL SUBSYSTEM: MEDICAL/
/MONITORING: ACTIVATED, PATIENT 890 AB/
"Monitor's online… fuck! She's flatlining!"
"She's lost way too much blood! What type is she anyway?!"
"Analyzer can't make heads or tails of it! Just give her all the O negative we've got!"
"Dammit, stay with me! Can we risk CPR with these internals?!"
"Do it! If we don't, she'll die anyway! Hartmann, get that respirator going! Hikowa, get a cryo tube ready in case we need to freeze her!" The sick bay of the Hope Springs Eternal was the picture of controlled chaos. Corpsmen rushed about, attempting to stem the flow of blood from Forward Unto Dawn. Every single bandage, drug, and biofoam canister in the room was being thrown at her in an attempt to keep her massive injuries from killing her.
No matter what they did, the bleeding just wouldn't stop. Bandage after bandage was thrown into the incinerator, soaked through. Biofoam seal after biofoam seal was applied, only for the in built adhesive to fail in the face of the blood flow. The corpsmen couldn't figure it out- in fact, they couldn't figure out how she was still bleeding, or still alive after spending nearly two hours floating unprotected in vacuum.
"Brain activity flatlining!"
"Sir! We've got to ice her, now!"
"We can't, dipshit! Not with these wounds, it'll kill her!"
"Yeah? What do you think's gonna happen if we don't, asshat?!"
"Fuck it! Stick her in, do it now! Give her all the cryo juice we got!" The corpsmen stuck her with a triple cytoprethaline dose and manhandled her into an emergency medical cryo tube, one of several kept in the medical bay for situations just like this. Once in, the adaptive lining inside conformed to her body shape, keeping her immobile. The tube lid sealed shut with a hiss, and biomonitor readouts sprang to life on the control panel. All of them were in the red.
"Shit… shit!" One of the corpsmen punched the wall with a bloodied hand. "What the hell went wrong?! What did we do?!"
"More accurately, what didn't we do?" HM1 Hikowa brought up a holographic tally of the ship's medical stocks. "We used every treatment we have on board. Hell, the only thing we didn't use was the elite medicine!"
"What the shit? Why do we have that hinge-head shit on board?!"
"Command wants it in case of joint ops with the split lips." She closed the display and turned to appraise the cryo tube, now frosted over. "What the hell is she, anyway? The scans are so goddamn weird, it's almost as if she's not even human!"
"Fuck if I know. What about that gear we sent down to the resident eggheads?" Hikowa shook her head.
"It's still sitting in a hangar bay. That shit weighs at least ten thousand tons, according to the scans they've done. They needed a special Pelican to drag it all in." That got the room's attention.
"Holy fuck. Ten thousand? On her?" The corpsman pointed to the lithe figure frozen in the cryo tube.
"More. The equipment they brought on board couldn't figure out the exact density of that stuff. It was like something about the material was messing with the readings. The sensors gave out and just threw out a low-end approximation. They think it might actually be more than five times as heavy."
"Jesus." One man let out an appreciative whistle. "How'd she even move around with this? I saw the footage from captain Garcia's helmet cam, she was dancing around like Pajari during the Olympics of '36."
"Fuck if I know." With the conversation having reminded them all of the patient under their care, the room turned serious. All the corpsmen present turned back to either monitor Dawn's status, run more tests on the abundant blood samples, or simply wrack their brains for any possible treatments they might have forgotten.
Vice Admiral Thomas Lasky ran a hand over his face, feeling the stubble on his chin. Twenty four hours without sleep, five times as long without a shower. There was no down time for a flag officer these days.
He watched emotionlessly as the last Abyssal icon disappeared on his tactical display. Combined fire from the Infinity, several heavy cruisers, four battleships, and three entire frigate squadrons had finally taken down the last three ships. Reach was safe once again.
At the cost of over half the fleet. The final loss counts scrolled down his screen. UNSC King of Kings, UNSC Scorpia, UNSC Harker, UNSC Zeus, UNSC Colossus of Rhodes… the list went on and on. Lasky delegated a dumb AI to perform the standard casualty compilations and send the report off to FLEETCOM. He didn't think he had the will to deal with yet another casualty list.
A lieutenant waved at him to get his attention. "Sir. Shall I give the order to cease evacuation?"
Lasky forced his mind to start processing. In his current state, it was proving hard to digest any new information. "Yes. Tell them admiral Lasky said so. If the freighters complain about their pay, forward their complaints to ONI."
"Yes sir." The lieutenant turned back to his console and gave the order for civilian evacuations to cease. Lasky massaged his temples, trying to think of what else he had to do. Years of training and experience asserted themselves, cutting through the fog and telling him what had to be done.
"Roland. How do fleet munitions look?" A small, yellow, holographic WW2 fighter pilot popped up in the holotank.
"Not good, admiral. We don't have enough MAC rounds in the entire fleet to supply a destroyer, missiles stocks are a joke, and don't even get me started on our nukes! Factories on Reach are gonna be working over time, we might even have to call in a couple shipments from Mars."
"Right. What about captain Khalid on the Eternal? Did he pick up the unknown? We need to figure out how it was doing that!"
Roland mimed listening to a radio, putting two fingers against his ear. "Captain Khalid reports recovery complete, says it's a she by the way. He's also putting in a formal request for any available support."
Lasky frowned. This couldn't be good. "What kind of support are they requesting?"
Roland spread his arms in an all encompassing gesture. "Extra security, more medical personnel and equipment, the works. Sounds like they're having a rough time dealing with their guest."
Lasky felt his heart sinking. "Security? On a scale of marine to Spartan, what kind of security do they want? Also, we're stretched thin on meds as it is, Infinity's sick bay is about to start tearing up uniforms for bandages!"
"Apparently, their new friend was dancing around with upwards of 10,000 tons of mystery metal on her back. What kind of security do you think they want?"
It was moments like these that sometimes made Lasky regret not taking that medical discharge back at Corbulo. He pulled up rosters of available Spartan IVs on board Infinity. The list was discouraging, to say the least.
"Roland, are you sure this is all we have?"
"Yes sir, most of our Spartan fireteams are deployed already. In fact, NAVSPECWAR just sent a request for an additional fireteam for Horizon."
The holotable shook as Lasky slammed his fist into it. The bridge crew around studiously pretended not to notice his outburst. "Goddammit! Don't they realize that leaves us with exactly zero Spartans on board?!"
Roland held up his hands in a placating gesture. "There, there now. Horizon is a rather important world, and NAVSPECWAR thinks they actually have a decent chance of pushing the Abyssals back there."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it, you know." Lasky leaned against the table, suddenly feeling very tired.
"Also, just to let you know, we do have one more Spartan on board." That got Lasky's attention. He frowned, trying to remember if a fresh fireteam had come aboard recently. "Well, he's not exactly a Spartan IV, per se."
/REMOTE UAV UPLINK… ESTABLISHED/
The drone buzzed over the cityscape, hugging the ruins of skyscrapers and bridges. Enemy fire licked up at it, but the AI deftly maneuvered around them. In return, it loosed a swarm of micro-missiles from the drone's onboard silos. The onboard tactical procedures evaluated the chances of kills at near zero, but considered the suppression effects of the barrage worth it.
A light tap on the controls told the drone to veer left. It came around the burned out ruin of a spaceport-
-and immediately came under heavy fire. Apparently, the drone had wandered right into an enemy command post. The drone activated automatic evasion procedures, juking frantically as particle beam and plasma shot towards it. Missiles locked in, only to be engaged by an onboard jamming suite and sent crashing into buildings. Inevitably, with the amount of fire coming up, a shot got lucky, blowing out an engine and sending the drone spinning into a nearby building. The last thing the camera saw was a wall of solid instacrete growing larger very quick-
/UAV UPLINK - TERMINATED/
"Dammit!" The marine hit his tacpad in frustration. A full squad crouched behind him, aiming their weapons nervously in every direction.
The squad leader, a corporal, called out."Anything, Hong?"
"Drone got taken out, confirmed location of enemy command post, grid 4-kilo, alpha 8!"
"Roger that. Chief! We found it!"
The armored behemoth crouched near the window didn't speak, but gave a small nod in confirmation.
"Hear that, chief? Let's start the music, shall we?"
"Affirmative." Unseen by anyone, CTN-049 smirked. Diving into an inner space only she could know, she began to activate program after program. Digits and data swirled around her, and she deftly manipulated them as only an AI could. A torrent of data flowed through and around her, and she drank it in, greeting the ones and zeros like a human would an old friend. Subroutines split off, some categorizing data, others interpreting it, still others deciding on courses of action, in a finely orchestrated digital dance. And in the middle of all of it, Cortana stood, like a conductor, making sure all worked together and none interfered with anyone else.
Yottabyte level firewalls were torn down with ease, false paths and detection codes disabled or trapped. Billions of subroutines were created and destroyed for the sole purpose of launching overwhelming DDOS attacks. Critical networks were subverted or shut down, Trojan horses masquerading as allied programs infiltrated and wiped out entire sections of program. And through it all, a single program, just a few kilobytes in size, spoofed its way through the electronic chaos and integrated itself into the CPU of the Abyssal command platform. It instantly copied all relevant data from across the local Abyssal battlenet and sent it as a burst transmission, utilizing the alien's own compromised transmitter. Its task done, the penetrator was wiped out along with the remnants of the Abyssal's code when a logic bomb went off.
This electronic duel, this dance of bits and bytes, a ballet of binary, was over and done with within the space of half a second, an eternity for a metastable AI such as Cortana. The enemy armor column was in chaos, all systems dead. That was the marines' cue. They dropped rounds into mortars, and electromagnetic rails launched the ordnance on arcing trajectories. The time on target barrage, coordinated by central computer, dropped all the shells onto the target at the same time. VT and direct impact warheads exploded, cratering armor and scattering shrapnel. The Abyssals barely had time to moan before the second barrage landed.
"Skywatch, this is Obsidian Actual! All targets confirmed destroyed, data retrieval accomplished. Requesting extraction, repeat, requesting extraction!"
"Confirmed Obsidian, extraction is on its way, ETA 25 minutes. Hold tight guys, NAVSPECWAR isn't leaving anybody behind."
"Roger that, Skywatch, we'll buy the drinks! Obsidian Actual, ou-"
"Hey, chief, wake up!"
/UNSC TACSIM END/
The Master Chief blinked twice. Dammit. He'd been too engaged in the simulation, replaying his last mission on Terrador II, trying to learn from it and improve. He'd allowed himself to lose situational awareness. He couldn't do that, especially in these times.
"Hello? Anyone in there? Wink if you hear me, m'kay?"
"What is it, Cortana?"
Cortana made a throat clearing sound. "As I was saying, admiral Lasky just called us to the bridge. You were oh so interested in your video you didn't even notice. Slipping in your old age, huh?"
"Getting snarky in your old age, I see." He pushed back from the terminal in his cabin. The specially reinforced chair groaned as it was relieved of the weight of a fully armored Spartan II.
The Master Chief picked his helmet up from where it lay on the table. He looked at the battered titanium, into that orange visor. To him, that helmet was simply a tool, something to accomplish the mission with but to the rest of the UNSC and the species it represented, it was something more. It was a symbol. A civilian, too exhausted to move, would stand when that visor glowed out of the dark. A marine, too wounded to fight, would charge towards the enemy, howling a wild battle cry, when that visor appeared from the dust. The tides of entire battles had changed when that visor appeared, the troops who had no more fight in them fighting like they never had before.
That had been the Covenant War, and in this war it was no different. That visor, that helmet, seemed to tell everyone who saw it: hey, it's okay now. You got this. We're gonna win this.
He put it on, hearing that familiar hiss as the environmental seals engaged. Displays blinked to life, each one an old friend to him. He was no longer John-117, the person. He was the Master Chief, the Demon, humanity's sword and shield.
"Hey, chief." He turned to look at the holotank where Cortana stood, arms crossed, smirk on face. "Yank me."
"Roland, how the hell did the Master Chief come on board without me even knowing?"
"I tried to tell you. He came aboard a day ago, after Ishimura's battle group got back, but you weren't really paying attention. I believe you said something like 'Not now, Roland, kind of a bad time'?"
Lasky grimaced. "I did say that, didn't I?"
"Yes sir." Lasky pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
"What now… oh, right. Prep two marine fireteams, we're sending them over with the Chief. Also, send the meds Eternal requested with them."
"Roger that, sir. You should also know he's at the bridge now."
Lasky stood up, straightened up his uniform, rubbed his eyes, and just generally tried to look presentable in front of humanity's greatest hero. "Let him in."
The doors slid open, silent on their magnetic tracks. "Sir. Reporting for duty."
"At ease, Chief. Let's get down to business. I assume you've seen the recordings by now…"
Dawn floated, seemingly weightless. She looked around, but couldn't tell where she was. Frankly, she wasn't sure if she wanted to. She felt so damn tired. Yeah. She just wanted to sleep…
"My, you sure are a mess, aren't you?" If she could have, Dawn would have tripped in surprise.
"Wha-? Who's there? Show yourself!"
A giggling sound came from the darkness. Normally, a mysterious giggling noise wouldn't have comforted anyone, but this was different. It was a warm sound, one of genuine amusement. It made Dawn feel like she was wrapped in a warm, soft blanket.
"Oh my! Has it really been that long, you don't even recognize your own cousin anymore?"
Her surroundings suddenly transitioned into a warm golden-orange color. A swirling portal manifested in front of her, and out stepped a girl. She looked to be about the same age, if a bit older, as Dawn. She was clad in a UNSC officer's uniform, cap canted to the right. Short brown hair fell around her shoulders, a SMG at her hip.
She grinned at the stunned look on Dawn's face. "You Charons are as cute as I remember! I always preferred you over the Parises, what with their stuck up-edness, going on about how heavy frigates were better than light frigates."
"Wh-who are you?"
The girl waggled a finger, other hand resting on her hip. "A-a-a-a-ah. If I told you that, it would ruin the surprise, wouldn't it? Suffice it to say, you'll be seeing me soon."
Dawn frowned. She was confused as all hell. "Where… where am I?"
Something in the girl's expression changed. It was sadder, more serious. "You… how do I say this… took some bad hits." She seemed to wince at the thought, and Dawn had a sudden thought - exactly how bad was she injured?
"Right now, you're frozen in a cryo tube on the UNSC Hope Springs Eternal. Your vitals are going, you're so weak right now you're halfway back to the Outer Planes. That's how I managed to reach out to you, stabilize you and bring you back a bit, but that's really all I can do."
What kind of injuries would be so bad as to require a deep freeze? She was confused, and, quite honestly, extremely scared. "What do you mean, the rest is up to me? Why are you here in the first place?"
The girl walked closer and put a comforting hand on Dawn's shoulder. "I was the only one close enough to talk to you. The UNSC didn't know how to fix you, so you're going to have to do it yourself."
"Wait, fix myself? I don't know how to fix a toaster! How do I repair myself?"
The girl smiled a sad smile, the look in her eyes changing, distant and reminiscent of someone remembering . "You're the first, you know. You'll be the leader, our symbol. You're the one who's going to save them, when no one else can. You're going to give them hope, lead them through the dark to a new dawn. It's a large burden for a frigate, and you'll want to quit, but remember that I wouldn't have anyone but you shoulder it."
She cleared her throat. "I'll give you a hint, the answer's in your equipment. If you can wake up, fight just a little longer, you'll know what to do. You'll make it, I know you will. Got it?"
"I-I think so…"
"Good." She straightened up now, hands folded behind her back, expression serious. "Break time's over. Go now, they need you." Dawn's surroundings began to fade, turning white. She vaguely heard the sound of frantic, shouting voices, and realized she felt very cold. "If you can make it past this, well… I'll see you in a few."
And then she awoke, to the sound of alarms, the frozen confines of a cryo tube, and the shouts of corpsmen as her vitals flatlined and her body failed.