Chapter Seven:

New Carthage wasn't what one might traditionally call a beautiful world. Its sprawling metropolae covered eighty percent of the planet's surface, and the last twenty percent was occupied by the empty mines that had provoked settlement in the first place so many hundreds of years ago, when humanity's expansion was still in its infancy. Now though, the planet was a hub of commerce and corporate research, and its ancient behemoths were of steel and glass, not wood and leaves. At dusk and dawn, entire cities glittered with an orange sheen under the light of the sun.

John recalled that knowledge from the depths of his memory—learned in a history lesson with the AI Déjà so long ago—then stored it away carefully once more after deeming it useless to his current objective.

He paid the glistening sight no further mind as he guided the stealth Pelican down into the lower atmosphere of the world as night began to descend on this half of the planet. All the while, he half-expected Alpha to materialize on the console and wrench control of the Pelican away from him as he had the Warthog back on Earth, but the AI never appeared. In fact, he hadn't said a word since their last conversation just over an hour ago. John would have found the silence a welcome break but...

His implant wouldn't stop burning. In fact, he was almost certain the burn at the base of his skull had only grown hotter since their brief argument.

He grit his teeth. If this was Alpha attempting to extract some petty revenge over their disagreement...well, then John would just have to let the AI figure out on his own that such juvenile behaviour wasn't going to change his mind.

No matter whether Commander Dunroe was in on the Merope's disappearance or not, he was still the best place to start. If he was a traitor then they needed to confirm that for themselves, and that meant investigating the man thoroughly and detaining him for further questioning once they found enough evidence. Tipping the enemy off would be inevitable, yes, but that would require Dunroe to actually contact the enemy after meeting with them in order to inform them of the Chief's arrival.

And that would lead them, if not to the source of the problem, then at least to someone who was a lot closer to the source.

It wasn't long before the Pelican was approaching Fort Romulus, and John—after checking to make sure they had descended well past the sensor and radar ranges of the orbital satellites in charge of supervising incoming planetary traffic—dropped the Pelican's cloaking and began to broadcast. It wouldn't do to startle air control.

"Romulus Air Control, this is Sierra-One-One-Seven, requesting permission to land. Authorization Romeo-Victor-Bravo-Sierra-One-Two-One-Eight, over."

There was a brief warble of noise before someone answered, "This is Romulus Air Control. Permission granted Sierra-One-One-Seven. Turn heading right zero-four-five, squawk five-six-nine-two...you are clear for landing pad C-Two-Nine, over."

"Copy that Air Control."

John adjusted his heading and transponder frequency as requested, and soon the Pelican was descending onto the landing pad. Once it settled, he cut the engine and stood from the pilot seat. He checked his assault rifle to ensure it was still securely attached to his back magnetic plate, and then walked through the cargo bay of the Pelican, past the many cases of weapons and supplies he'd been given for the mission. Slowly, the ramp began to descend to the tarmac.

And still, Alpha said nothing. Even with a helmet on, John made sure to keep the frown off his face as he spoke.

"Alpha, report."

Silence.

"Alpha...Alpha, respond."

The burn was growing even hotter.

"Church."

The burning lessened, returning back to its regular level of pain and discomfort as Alpha's hologram materialized, and John narrowed his eyes at the fuzzy edges that took a little longer than usual to smooth out.

"Huh? What? Did you say something?"

Alpha's voice—it reminded John of those times when he had interrupted Dr. Halsey while she was in the middle of solving a difficult puzzle...like she was struggling to pull herself from some fathomless depth while the tentacles of some elusive answer kept trying to drag her back down. In a human being, it was understandable.

In an AI, it was unacceptable, and seen only in the stages of rampancy. Perhaps Alpha wasn't functioning as well as Hood had believed.

"We're here," John said as he descended the ramp, "You need to focus."

"Focus!? What the fuck do you think I've been—"

"Master Chief!"

John looked up at the call, and, beside him, hidden from the approaching figure's sight by John's bulk, Alpha's hologram vanished with a mutter of "asshole."

John recognized the man easily. He'd seen his personnel file not too long ago, after all, and he didn't need the sight of the flashing bars on his military uniform to know this man outranked him.

"Sir!" John saluted.

Commander Everett Dunroe walked with the same ramrod posture of any military career-man, but John couldn't help but notice that his stance was a little too wide to be casual, as though he was one-wrong-word shy of launching himself into close-quarter-combat. The Commander's eyes slid over John's shoulder to the numerous supply crates and narrowed, but his gaze didn't linger long before he turned to the Chief, standing just far enough away that he wouldn't have to crane his neck to look up at him.

John didn't relax from his salute until the Commander returned the gesture. The shadows of dusk stretched longer around them.

"Welcome to Fort Romulus Chief, I'm Commander Dunroe," The man's voice was gruff, with a permanent hoarse edge to it, as though years of screaming orders and various other mid-battle communiques had gouged and scarred it in ways that could only be heard and not seen, "I wasn't expecting a Spartan on my base."

"I'm here on official UNSC business," John said, and glanced around at the various personnel on the tarmac, many of whom had significantly slowed their pace to send surreptitious glances their way. "Could we discuss this in private, sir?"

Dunroe nodded, "My office is this way."

John followed as the Commander led them into Fort Romulus, eyes carefully noting every door and branching off hallway that they passed. The Commander didn't speak while they walked, and John turned off his external speakers.

"Alpha?"

A vidwindow opened in the top corner of John's HUD, giving him the fabricated image of the Alpha crossing his arms across the chassis of his armour and staring him down in silence.

"Church," John corrected himself, "How many systems can you access from here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I actually allowed to contribute now?"

John kept his eyes on Dunroe's back, looking past the vidwindow entirely as he felt his jaw stiffen. Cortana would've already—

But Cortana wasn't here.

Inhaling deeply, John pried his own teeth apart, ready to remind Alpha—yet again—that there was no room on this mission for his childish attitude.

The AI cut across, clearly seeing the remark coming before it ever passed John's lips.

"—Okay, okay, god...look, every base has its own encrypted network that stops non-authorized devices from linking to it. I could bypass the encryption by force, but not without leaving a trail, which I doubt is something we want. So, best option's to jump to an authorized device that will accept one of my UNSC access codes, and send a virus from there to open a backdoor, like I did on the Infinity. Jumping directly to the network servers would leave even less of a trace, but unless you wanna waste time sneaking into the server room and risk tipping somebody off, then we'll have to settle."

"Alright, what do you need me to do?"

"Pfft, only thing you can do for me is keep walking."

And then, as a corporal holding a commpad walked by with a salute to Dunroe, the burning of John's implant abruptly ceased altogether as the vidwindow shut, and he felt a sudden release of tension, like a taut rubber band being slowly relaxed.

And then it was back, and he felt the slightest flicker across his facial muscles as he winced. The vidwindow popped up again.

"There, done. I've got comms, radar, archives, and the secret recipe for tonight's chil—oh," he paused for just a moment, head tilting just slightly to give the impression of looking off into the distance before his virtual visor turned back to John, "Word of advice? Skip the chili. Seriously, just...just don't."

John felt his teeth pressing tighter together, "The systems, Church."

"Well fine, it's not like I just saved you from...y'know...death by food poisoning or anything," With an exaggerated wave of the AI's hand, several boxes of data appeared on John's HUD, "Anyways, I got my hands on the official reports, and there's nothin' there we don't already know. There's been an increase in ship disappearances for the last four years and the general consensus is pirates, probably Jackal. I'm runnin' an algorithm to see if any patterns turn up connectin' the ships together, but there's no hits yet."

"Four years? If this was pirates, the UNSC would have put an end to it by now."

"Yeah, well, it's hard to put an end to somebody you can't catch."

John looked past the various screens on his HUD to see that Commander Dunroe had opened the door to his office, and was gesturing him inside. John nodded to the Commander, and the boxes of information disappeared from his vision.

The office itself was not particularly large, and was sparsely furnished. A desk, chairs, a computer...

In the vidwindow, Alpha rubbed his hands together.

"Well, hello private computer...see what you can get out of this guy while I take a look inside, yeah?"

Before John could say anything, the burning was gone and the vidwindow had shut once more. With a thought, John's external speakers switched back on just as Commander Dunroe closed the door behind him.

"I would offer you a seat," the Commander shrugged, "but..."

John turned to look at the available chairs, assessing their construction and integrity. Hollow aluminum frames. Padded seats.

There was no way those would hold his weight.

"I'll stand, sir," John said, and settled into a parade rest while Commander Dunroe manoeuvred behind his desk and took a seat in his own high-back chair.

"My apologies, I was never expecting to play host to a Spartan," he leaned forward, fingers interlocking over the desk, his already perpetual frown growing heavy as though weights had been threaded through the skin of his brow, "I'm assuming you're here about the Hand of Merope?"

John's stomach clenched. How did he guess that? Searching for lost starships wasn't usually a mission you would find a Spartan assigned to, and, more specifically, wasn't a mission John would usually be assigned to.

"What gave it away?"

Dunroe's down-turned lips fell at an even steeper angle, head tilting slightly away from John before the man sighed, shook his head, and met his gaze once more. "Why else would a Spartan be here instead of out there kicking Covvie ass?"

Theoretically, there could be any number of highly classified reasons, but with the investigation into the Merope's disappearance being so recently opened—and undoubtedly the most prominent item on Dunroe's SNAFU list—it actually wasn't that much of a stretch to realize the sudden arrival of a Spartan was somehow tied into it all.

"Fair enough," John said, "What can you tell me about the Merope?"

Dunroe leaned back in his chair, "Nothing that's not already in the records. It was a UNSC cargo ship, transporting highly classified equipment. I'm sure you've seen the manifest."

"I have," and John remembered there had been far more items of interest on-board than just the Freelancer equipment. "There were experimental weapons on-board that were supposed to be part of the Infinity's supplies."

"That's right. Developed by Charon Industries, an umbrella corporation with its main office right here on New Carthage. They were manufactured in a plant on Revenant Two. The details on the weapons are classified, of course, and you won't find those on the manifest."

"I didn't expect to," John tilted his head slightly as he leaned forward to place his palms on the desk. It creaked a little under the added weight. "What areas have you searched?"

"Some of my ships are still out there—and there's several stationed in the Revenant System that are assisting the search—but so far they've scoured more than a third of the Merope's scheduled cool-down points and a surrounding six-hundred light-year radius. There's been nothing. No emission trails, no distress signals, no left-over slip-space radiation at all."

"What about the other missing ships?"

Dunroe's head jerked upright, the knuckles of his clasped hands whitening for a brief moment, "You think they're connected?"

"It's my duty to consider all possibilities."

"A fair point," Dunroe said, and reached over to tap at the screen of his computer. It burst to life, and John half-expected to see Alpha's bobbing helmet as the AI made some snarky remark, but he at least had the sense to remain hidden deep within the operating system as Dunroe tapped icons, and then turned the screen so that the resulting holo-map seemed to leap out of the screen and hover between them.

"These are the scheduled cooldowns of ships in the last five years that never made it to Carthage." Hundreds of points lit up, with lines connecting them along specific paths. Several points served as hubs for numerous lines the closer the paths came to New Carthage, but the beginning of the paths otherwise branched off in drastically different directions all along the x, y, and z axis of the map.

"Show me the last known locations of each ship."

Numerous cooldown points remained lit as the rest darkened, indicating places where some sign of the missing ship in question had been found, such as a lingering emission trail or slipspace radiation, or even debris in some cases. Some points were near the very beginning of the ships' journeys, others were closer to their destination. And still others, like the Merope, apparently never made it to their first cooldown at all. In the end, the glowing specks in the map resembled nothing more than the scattered bullet holes from a shotgun blast.

"As you can see, Chief," Dunroe gestured at the map, shaking his head, "there's no discernible pattern as to where the ships disappear."

"Maybe," John straightened his posture just as the burn returned to his implant, and a line of text appeared on his HUD.

/ We need to talk. Wrap it up. /

"Anything else you think I should know, sir?"

The Commander shook his head, "I wish there was something more useful I could tell you. God knows Charon would finally stop breathing down my neck if we could just figure this out."

"I see...thank you sir."

John snapped off another salute just before turning to leave. He reached for the door controls—

"Chief," John turned only slightly at the sound of Dunroe's voice, looking over his shoulder at the officer. The man had risen from his seat, hands folded behind his back and hard eyes darkened. "If you find whoever's behind this...put an extra bullet in them for me."

John held the Commander's gaze for a moment, perfect eyesight picking out the tension in his jaw as they both seemed to hold their breath.

He turned to go once more.

"I will, sir."


"You were right," John said as he walked once more through the corridors of Fort Romulus, his external speakers switched off as he addressed Alpha, "Dunroe's in on it."

"Wha—uh—told ya, mother-fucker!"

John felt his face tighten, teeth aching as his jaw clenched and he tried not to exhale too loudly through his nose. If not for the importance of Dunroe's allegiance, he wouldn't have said a word to Alpha about it. His ego was already big enough.

"So...if I hypothetically had no evidence to prove that, then would you hypothetically have some of your own?"

"No," John stepped out of the base and crossed the tarmac towards the Pelican, "And if you don't have any evidence, then what did you find?"

"Hey, I said that was hypothetical."

John walked up the Pelican ramp in silence. Alpha huffed.

"Okay, so I don't have any fucking evidence, shut up. It's not like you have any either!"

No, no he didn't. Nothing other than what his instincts told him, anyway. Stepping up to the main console, John hit the ramp controls, shutting himself inside the Pelican.

"Dunroe's not incompetent," John said, "his record shows that much. So why was he surprised when I suggested the disappearances were connected by something other than pirates?"

"Hey, you're the ass who said it first," Alpha said, as he jumped from John's implant to the control console, hologram materializing as the Pelican's engines whirred to life under his command, "Ships with old engines like that go missing often enough. Besides, Jackal pirates are a pain in the ass."

John was well aware of what he had said back at the HIVE, but it was an investigator's job to consider all possibilities, regardless of how remote they were. No, Dunroe's surprise had nothing to do with the fact he hadn't considered it, and everything to do with the fact that John had. So...not surprised, perhaps, but afraid. The man had also been no more helpful than he absolutely needed to be, answering when only asked questions directly. And his body language...even if social cues tended to be beyond them, Spartans were still highly-trained students of kinesics, and John knew suspicion when he saw it. That alone, of course, wasn't proof, and most UNSC personnel tended to be suspicious when anyone with any sort of association with ONI showed up on their doorstep, but this...John's gut was telling him it was more than that. And that last, parting remark about the extra bullet...what better way to dispel suspicion was there, then to appear all too eager to have the perpetrator caught?

But Dunroe was no spook, just a straight-forward officer with a head for battle tactics who had gotten himself involved in something shady.

John took his place in the pilot's chair, "So what did you find?"

"Well," Alpha said, "Unfortunately, there were no incriminating emails or memos, but it turns out our dear Commander uses his office computer to pay his bills, which means I just got all his banking information."

"And?"

"And—hands off, I'm flying!—Geez, talk about rude—"

John kept his hands on the controls for just a moment, then—as they began to move, dragging his grip with them—he slowly let go with a deep breath, willing the tightness in his chest to loosen. It didn't, so he swallowed, uncurled his tight knuckles, and waited for Alpha to continue.

"Dunroe's got four dozen accounts between forty-eight different banks. And, if you add all the funds, investments and expensive assets together, Dunroe is sitting on nearly four-point-seven million credits acquired in the last four years. Last time I checked, the UNSC doesn't pay that well...and, hell man, I don't even get paid at all!"

Paid? What would an AI even do with money?

"Anyway, I've checked the deposit history on his accounts. The extra money gets deposited regularly, about twice a month and just under the reporting theshold. So, while each bank thinks he's just getting a regular, small paycheck from a couple dozen different security consulting firms, you combine those payments and he's easily getting paid an extra ninety-six thousand a month."

"So he's taking bribes."

"Looks that way. I've already anonymously flagged his accounts for possible fraud and tax evasion, but this doesn't get us any closer to whoever's pulling the strings."

"Did you tap his computer?"

"What, you think I'm an amateur? Of course I tapped his computer. But unless he's dumb enough to use a UNSC computer to contact these people, that does jackshit for us."

"What about the firms? Any commonalities?"

"I've got another algorithm collectin' data on them from Waypoint, but I haven't found any yet. If they're fronts, then they're damn good ones."

Hmm, so their perpetrator very likely had a corporate background. Not that surprising, honestly. And speaking of corporate...

John leaned forward in the chair, thinking back to his brief conversation with Dunroe as he folded his hands together and let them hang, elbows resting on his knees, "Did you save the maps Dunroe showed us?"

Alpha snorted, and crossed his arms, "Obviously. I'm not an idiot y'know."

John did know. He also knew Alpha was careless. "Show it to me."

"Say 'please.'"

John stared.

"What? It's called being polite, asshole."

"Show me the map. Now."

"Alright, alright, fuckin' cool it," Alpha snapped his fingers and the map of missing ships and their cooldown points appeared again, "Happy now?"

No, he wasn't. Spartans were never happy, never angry, never—it didn't matter. The mission was all that mattered.

John studied the map for a moment, "Do you have the manifests for these ships?"

"No, I left them in my other data-chip—of course I have the fucking manifests."

"How many of them were carrying cargo from a 'Charon Industries'?"

Alpha tilted his head, glancing at the map. He sighed. "Not enough of them to be a pattern. Some of these ships disappeared over four years—"

His hologram abruptly stilled. "Wait a damn second."

"What is it?"

He jabbed a finger and about half the ships and their routes lit up, "There, see these ships? I checked Dunroe's accounts for the earliest payment from these security firms, and these ships all disappeared before he started taking bribes, back in the final months of the war." Alpha swiped his hand and the selected ships vanished. "That son of a bitch was fucking up my algorithm by including disappearances he knew weren't part of whatever the hell's going on here."

"And the ones that disappeared after?"

"Seventy-four percent of them were carrying cargo from Charon Industries."

John leaned back and turned to stare out the window, watching the cities below them pass by. "Any rival companies?"

"You thinking corporate sabotage?"

"It could be. Dunroe mentioned Charon was giving him a hard time."

The holographic map winked out, and Alpha shrugged, "Biggest competitor for weapons and armor tech is Misriah Armory. They've also got a few other competitors that could be out to steal their tech, but Charon's cargos been going missing for four years, and none of their rivals have started touting anything remotely similar, not even Misriah. And most of them get bought out by Charon or sued out of business as soon as they get anywhere close to catching up."

So who else would stand to benefit from Charon's loss? Insurrectionists, maybe. John had read the reports that showed they were starting to stir again now that the war was over. It was possible that insurrectionist sympathisers had settled on New Carthage as refugees after being driven from their homeworlds during the war. If they worked their way patiently up the corporate ladder, they'd potentially be in a position to direct shipments of military weapons into their brethren's hands instead of the UNSC's.

And what better place would there be to do that, than from within Charon itself? But where were they getting the money to pay Dunroe off from? Embezzlement? Surely Charon's accountants would have noticed that much money disappearing from underneath them. It wasn't like they could just walk in and demand all the information off their servers either.

John's fists clenched and unclenched briefly. It looked like there was only one step left forward, and he would have to be careful not to set off a landmine while taking it.

"Take us to Charon's HQ."


"There's a priority message from Commander Dunroe for you Chairman."

"Thank you FILSS...put him through."

There was no video feed as the message came through, just a voice carried clearly across the many light-years between them.

"We have a problem."

In the privacy of his office aboard the Staff of Charon, with only the defunct Project Freelancer's shackled, dumb AI to see, Malcom Hargrove permitted himself a rare eye-roll.

"Clearly, Commander, or else you would not be calling me."

There was a moment of silence as Hargrove sipped at his coffee, gaze lingering on his trophies as he leaned back in his chair. Agent Maine's bruteshot, the Forerunner Monitor, the shattered helmet of Agent Texas...

...No, not really Agent Texas, but a helmet worn by a mere memory of her. A memory of a memory. What a sad, sad man Dr. Leonard Church had been, to dedicate all his resources to something so pointless when such an impossible phenomenon—and all the glory, fame, and fortune it could have brought him—had been right at his fingertips.

It was such a pity the original Beta AI appeared to be long since gone, Charon would have greatly benefited from studying it...

"It's about the Merope—"

Hargrove set his mug down with an audible clank against the desk, "If one of your ships has merely wandered off the search path again, then—"

"ONI is investigating."

Slowly, Hargrove spun his chair to let the full weight of his narrowed gaze fall upon the monitor displaying the call status. "I highly doubt that."

"Then why don't you tell me," Dunroe's deep, hoarse voice dropped even lower, sounding harsher, like the distant roar of a rockslide, "why in all hell the Master Chief himself is now on Carthage looking for it?"

The Master Chief? Spartan-117? The Saviour of the Galaxy himself? That was...unexpected. Surely the man was more useful out slaughtering the hordes of alien scum still trying to knock on Earth's door? ONI would never assign such an asset to an investigation like this. But if it wasn't ONI...

Then it had to be Lord Hood himself. What a meddlesome, wasteful man.

"It doesn't matter who sent him Commander, what matters is what you told him."

"Nothing useful...there's no patterns in the missing ships, no sign of the Merope, and I've got Charon's top executives breathing down my neck—"

Hargrove felt the brief tingle of his pacemaker kicking in as his heart skipped a beat. "You mentioned Charon?"

"Yes sir."

"So am I to suppose, my dear Commander," Hargrove curled his hands into fists, "that mentioning—to an ONI-trained Spartan no lessone, very specific company out of the hundreds that were affected by the Merope's disappearance, constitutes part of your definition of 'nothing useful'?"

There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line, the silence of a man who had realized the colossal heaps of dirt he had just dug from his own grave was more than six feet's worth.

"...I'll warn security," Dunroe said.

"See that you do."

Hargrove ended the call with a vicious swipe of the screen, and saw his own heavily scowling face staring back at him from the black, now-dormant glass. He inhaled deeply, and waited for his pacemaker to switch off again while he rubbed at his temple. First those damn Sim Troopers surviving the crash and now this? The Sim Troopers, ridiculously lucky fools that they were, were a minor problem in the grand scheme of things, but this? This had the potential to ruin everything.

"FILSS."

"Yes Chairman?"

"Get me Admiral Osman."


"Insurrectionists? Seriously? That's what you're going with?"

John turned slightly away from Alpha's hologram, hand gripping the railing above him tight enough to make a barely audible creak. He didn't like the cautious, half-disbelieving edge to the AI's voice. "It's a possibility we have to consider."

"Hey, I'm just saying that you're the guy who discovered an ancient dooms-day weapon and space-zombies. I figure with that kind of history, plus my fuckin' bad luck, we should at least consider—I dunno—a time-traveling, disgruntled employee with OP cybernetics from the future out to destroy Charon before it can ruin his life? Or, y'know, some kind of Hollywood bullshit."

John swayed with the subtle shifts and adjustments of the cloaked Pelican as Alpha guided its descent onto Charon Industries' landing pad, not even bothering to look back at the AI as he waited for the Pelican to settle. "This isn't a movie Alpha."

"Yeah, tell me about it," the bay door began to lower as the AI muttered, "If it was, I'd have the damn girl already."

There was something...bitter in the words. Enough so that John looked back just in time to see the hologram fade as Alpha jumped to his implant. It seemed to sting a little more this time, like a still-too-raw burn being rubbed against rough cloth. An ache began behind his eyes not long after, and he closed them momentarily to take a breath.

"I'm workin' on the security right now," the AI said as John walked down the ramp from the invisible Pelican, and the ache throbbed with every word, "It's got some pretty damn high encryptions on it, so it might take a few minutes to break through."

"Copy," John said, boots thudding against the roof of the tower. He glanced back briefly to watch the ramp of the Pelican close once again, and the interior of the Pelican was replaced with a view of the distant night sky. Satisfied that the cloak was still in place, John made his way to the locked roof entrance. Holographic lock, but that shouldn't be a problem for Alph—

For a moment, the world slowed down as the door split at the middle and began to separate. John pushed off on one foot, ducking behind a nearby protruding vent.

"What the fuck?" Alpha hissed in his ear, "I thought you were supposed to be lucky!?"

John ignored him, one eye on the yellow dot on his motion tracker as it moved closer, his sensors picking up the security guard's friendly FOF tag.

The back of the security guard came into view as he walked past John's hiding place. The man's head tilted and bobbed as though he were speaking. Without his prompting, Alpha hacked the guard's radio.

"—ll him I'm takin' my break."

There was a weary sigh from the other end of the connection, "Lyle said no breaks tonight man."

"Well, tell him to go fuck himself too then. He pulled in more than enough extra hands tonight for me to take a god-damn smoke."

"Look, he said he got a tip—"

"Oh yeah, from who? The fuckin' tooth fairy? Jesus, Mike, nobody's dumb enough to break into Charon fucking Industries. That's why this is the cushiest job in the whole god-damn galaxy. Fancy armour, nice guns, fat paycheck and zero danger."

"You forget about Spiral?"

"Oh please. Nobody is suicidal enough to drop a skyscraper this fuckin' close to Earth. This ain't a science lab in the Outer Colonies."

"I still don't think—"

"Mike, I'm not askin' ya to think, I'm just askin' ya to...look, just tell Lyle I thought I saw some punk hangin' around and I'm checkin' the perimeter or somethin'. You can do that, right?"

"Phil..."

"Hey, who's the guy who convinced Lyle to put you in that nice, comfy chair man?"

There was another sigh, accompanied by a long-suffering groan, "Fine. But if I don't see you back on the cameras in fifteen minutes, I'm tellin' Lyle."

The guard chuckled, "You got it man. Thanks."

With that, the guard popped his helmet off, revealing the back of a buzz-cut. John remained crouched where he was, watching as the guard tucked his helmet under his arm and began rummaging in his pouches.

"What're we gonna do?" Alpha asked in an unnecessary whisper as the guard pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, still mere feet away, "If he turns around—"

"I know," John said, external speakers switched off. If John was careful, then he could get Alpha to hack the lock, and he could sneak inside without alerting the guard. With how close the guard was still standing though, he would more than likely hear the beeping of the lock and the whoosh of the door, and, even if he didn't, there was always the chance the man would walk right into the side of the Pelican while John was gone if he decided to meander about the landing pad. And waiting him out for fifteen minutes wasn't an option, not when all he had to do was look over his shoulder and—

He looked over his shoulder.

John struck. Watched in slow motion as the cigarette began to fall from the man's parting lips, and his own fist slammed into the guard's face.

The man's head snapped back, and, for just one moment, John could see the ODST soldiers he had killed in training so many years ago. Could hear the crunch of their bones under his newly augmented fists, see the slow widening of their eyes and—

The man crumpled and John caught him. Blood was running from his broken nose, and John checked quickly for a pulse with the bioscanner. It was there. Good, he had held back enough then.

A quick search of the guard's pouches produced a standard set of police cuffs, and John carried the man over to the safety railing that ringed the roof, cuffing his hands around it.

"Great, and now we're on a timer," Alpha muttered.

"Then get that door ope—"

The lock beeped, and the door opened.

"You're welcome, asshole."


"So, three guesses who tipped them off, and the first two don't count."

The only response Church got was a hum from deep in the Chief's throat as the man glanced upward. A little black camera above the doorway swung into the Chief's field of vision.

"You're good jackass, I set it on a loop already. Oh, and the answer was Dunroe by the way."

The Chief said nothing, even as he darted to the next corner and crouched down.

"Hallway's clear," Church said, and the Chief peered around the corner, "I said it's clear."

All he got was an acknowledging grunt as the Spartan finally began to move again. What was the point of even telling him anything if he was always just checking for himself? If he thought he was so much better at this job, then Church would like to see him hack through four layers of nine-hundred bit encryptions in two minutes with nothing but his thoughts.

"Have you located the server room?" Chief asked.

Church huffed and said nothing.

"Alpha."

"Oh, sorry, are we actually using words now? I thought we were practicing our cave-man impressions."

Ah, and there the Chief went, glaring again. Church's memories pulled forth such a sharp recollection of eye-rolling—the swinging of vision, the brief pressure of his eyeballs against the top of his sockets—that he almost thought he had a body again.

Ugh, he was so fucking done with this guy. This mission could not possibly end soon enough.

"Three floors down. Do me a favour and trip when you get to the stairs."

The Chief made his way silently down the hall, gaze briefly sweeping over a locked office door, the holographic display proudly announcing it as the office of Malcom Hargrove, CEO.

Something about the name clawed at Church's memories. Hargrove, Hargrove hmmm...wait a second. Wasn't he the Chairman for the UNSC Oversight Sub-Committee? The guy who investigated Freelancer?

Huh, maybe he would know something about who else would be after Freelancer tech.

"Hey wait, stop," Church said.

The Chief's footsteps slowed, but didn't stop, "What is it?"

"We should check that office back there. The CEO might have something on his computer."

The Chief glanced back. Briefly. And then he kept moving, "We don't have time. The servers are a higher priority." And more likely to contain something useful went unspoken, considering the company's wealth of information all had to pass through those servers at some point.

Church swallowed back a retort as the mission timer ticked down to eleven minutes. It was true. And, really, what did a CEO have to gain from making his own products disappear?

"Okay, fine," Church felt non-existent nausea rumbling throughout his digital mind as he pulled his grasping mental fingers away from the holographic lock's encrypted programs. "Just hurry it the fuck up, okay?"

The words weren't even fully formed before the Chief paused once again as he reached the corner to the next hallway. Oh for the love of—

"Look, I will tell you if there's anybo—shit—office, now, get the fuck out of sight!"

For once, the Chief listened to him immediately.

The red light by Hargrove's door flashed green. The door slid open just as the Chief reached it.

He dived through, tucking into an impossibly silent roll. Church watched through the cameras—putting a feed up on the Chief's HUD—and held his figurative breath as the door slid shut and the lock turned red again just a millisecond before the two guards rounded the corner.

In the upper right corner of the Chief's HUD, the mission timer ticked down to ten minutes and kept dropping, while, in the left corner, they both watched the guards pause outside the door.

"You got any idea why Lyle's so wound up?" One guard asked the other. The other shrugged.

"Ain't he always wound up?"

Church tuned out the useless chatter as the Chief glanced around the room, probably searching for another exit or anything that might serve as a useful hiding place for a nearly eight-foot Spartan in the event someone else entered the room unexpectedly.

The room was lit softly by the lights of the city streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting sharp shadows that still weren't enough to hide the fact it was a large, opulent office. Church took careful stock of its contents.

A mahogany desk built around a holographic tabletop, a leather chair, and a collection of blueprints from various technologies throughout human history sprawled the wall. The first Shaw-Fujikawa engine, a MAC cannon, the first colony ships...

Outside the office, the guards started to move again. In another minute, they would be out of sight, and the coast would be clear for the Chief to get on the move again. The mission timer ticked down to nine minutes.

Damn it. They still had three floors to go and—Church checked the cameras on the next three floors.

...fucking hell. How many extra people did this Lyle jackass call in!? There was a pair of guards in every corridor. Patrol paths conveniently overlapping at the worst possible places for an intruder. The Chief was a powerhouse, a trained Spook and ONI operative but...he was not currently equipped for stealth. Unfortunately, shooting their way through to the server room wasn't an option either. This was a civilian facility, they would never hear the fucking end of it from Hood.

All of these thoughts took less than a millisecond for Church to consider, and, in that time, he found other strands of thought wandering back to scratch at an itch.

Hargrove...ah, what the hell.

Church stretched out his thoughts, looking for a wireless connection. If he could just hop in the console for a second, take a quick peak...

"Oh god-damn it," Church hissed when his thoughts only grasped at empty air just as the guards disappeared around the next corner. He activated his hologram, hovering over Hargrove's desk, a blue, shining figure in the dark. "Chief—plug me in over here."

"We don't have time."

"Oh bullshit! I can read a thousand books in a millisecond, we have fucking time."

"The servers—"

"Are too damn far away! By the time we get to them, our dear 'Mike' is gonna notice his buddy's not back on patrol yet."

The Chief glanced over at Hargrove's desk, gaze lingering for a moment on Church's hologram—who crossed his arms—then he turned back to the still-locked door.

"We need that data."

They did. And there was no guarantee there would be anything in Hargrove's computer other than numbers from the last business quarter—in fact, the odds were low—but...

Something itched. Hargrove was an upstanding citizen, a savvy business-man and—thanks to his work against Freelancer—was hailed as the Chairman who dragged Freelancer's dirtiest secrets into the light, a humanitarian who heralded a new age of AI rights...and now his company was being targeted by potential insurrectionists? So was it just a coincidence that the Reds and Blues, and Freelancer's tech, were on-board that ship too?

Something...something wasn't right...

"Alpha, the door—"

"No."

"...what?"

The word rumbled in the Chief's throat dangerously, his fingers curling into fists that Church didn't doubt would have crushed anything held within them.

"You heard me," Church said, "I'm not unlocking that god-damn door until you plug me into this fucking console."

For a moment, neither spoke. The timer ticked silently down to eight minutes. Was he really going to fight him on this when there was so little—

The Chief swung around and rose from his crouch in one motion, fists still clenched as he stalked to Hargrove's desk. A hand went up to his helmet, and Church's hologram vanished as the Spartan pulled his AI data chip from its slot.

It slotted easily into the port in Hargrove's desk, and the holographic display sprung to life.

"Make it quick," the Chief said. And, oh yeah, he was fucking pissed as hell if that small suggestion of a growl was anything to go by. So...yeah...there had better be something good in here somewhere.

Church could almost feel his nonexistent brow puckering with concentration as he prodded and poked around in Hargrove's systems, hacking his way through encryptions with difficulty. The man had spared no expense in encryption software, and Church had never seen this particular type of coding language anywhere on the market before.

That was fine, all code had to be converted into binary code somewhere along the way, so if he could just...ah, there. Got it.

"Alpha—"

"I'm busy." And, yes, he knew there were only six minutes left, damn it. What, did he think this was easy? Did he know how many bazillions of back-and-forths he had already had with this damn system in the span of one minute, let alone two?

It didn't matter now though. The hard part was over as the whole of Hargrove's computer was opened up to him. A quick subroutine scanned through the system, copying any files that contained a hastily compiled list of keywords. Comm Buoys, mining colonies, the Hand of Merope...

It was depressingly little. Hardly more than a few memos from Hargrove to the PR staff and shareholders, assuring them that this most recent disappearance wouldn't affect Charon Industries shares any more than the rest of them had. The company's military contracts were still in place, and prospective buyers were still lining up...

This couldn't be it. God damn it, this couldn't be all there was. He drew up another subroutine, scanned the system again with a new set of keywords. Nothing.

So he did it again. And again. And again.

It had to be here! It just had to—

Wait...there was something else in here.

Carefully, Church dug deeper, dipping his mental fingers into the code of the very operating system itself. Something was missing. It was a massive, empty space that, according to the operating system, wasn't actually empty. Just cut off. Blocked. Hidden.

Hargrove had a hidden hard-drive in this system. Now that he knew it was there, all Church had to do was manipulate the code a little and...bingo.

A pathway to the hard-drive opened up. But Church wasn't dumb enough to just reach in and start accessing files. If Hargrove had bothered to hide the hard-drive, then he had probably protected it with it's own separate layers of security and fail-safes in the event it was compromised. Church would have to be careful.

So he was. He wove his way meticulously through the traps and encryptions and file lock-down protocols. The heaviest protections he had yet encountered. Even at speeds faster than thought itself, the back-and-forth with the security systems stretched out, and the milliseconds turned to seconds, and the mission timer kept dropping. There was more than enough time though. Four minutes was more than enough.

In the world outside Hargrove's computer, the Master Chief growled. "I'm calling it. We're aborting the mission."

"What? Fuck no! Look, there's something here, I just need a few more minutes!"

"We're leaving. Now."

No. No, damn it! Church could see the Chief's hand descending in slow motion, reaching to yank the chip out.

He didn't waste another precious moment of thought on formulating a protest. He calculated he had about one-point-seven seconds before the Chief removed his chip. That was one-point-seven seconds to grab what he could. There were still a few defences up, but he would have to take the chance.

He dove in, throwing out query after search query and copying one file after another, not even taking the time to process the information as the last of the hard-drive's defences came to life and—fuck. It was corrupting the files.

The Chief's hand kept descending. Point-nine seconds.

Church saved what he could, throwing up hastily-written subroutines to block the security protocol. But it adapted and changed, and damn it, if he just had more ti—

His chip was yanked out, and his consciousness forcibly yanked along with it.

The Chief slammed it into his helmet, and all Church could see was red.

"YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! I HAD IT! I FUCKING HAD IT!"

The Chief stumbled, hand slamming down onto the desk for support hard enough to crack the console's screen. Subroutines screamed at Church that the Spartan's heartbeat had accelerated, but he didn't fucking—

A voice crackled over the guards' hacked comm signal.

"What was that?"

"Is someone in there?"

Shit. He had yelled that on the external speakers too, hadn't he?

The anger simmered, but Church pushed it down long enough to check the camera feed outside the office and—oh god-damn it, when did those two come back? He watched as they raised their guns and crept closer, one on either side of the door.

"Guards outside," Church said as the Chief straightened and shook his head a little. He pulled the camera feed up on the HUD once more, just in time for the two guards to exchange a flurry of hand signals.

The Chief pressed himself flat against the wall next to the door just as one of them opened it. The other charged in, gun raised and—

The Spartan's fist snapped out, cracking the guard's visor. The guard stumbled off-balance. Chief ripped the gun from his hands—spun—and kicked him across the room.

The second guard's magnum was already up—"Holy shit!"—and—BLAM!

A single bullet pinged off the Chief's golden shield, and the guard watched, jaw undoubtedly gaping under his visor, as the flattened bullet rolled down the hallway.

And then a hand bigger than the guard's face gripped his helmet, and slammed his head through the plaster wall.

There was a blessed moment of absolute silence...and then the alarms began to wail.

"Oh-kay," Church said, "now we need to leave."


John's headache was like one tsunami wave after another. Tearing through the streets of his mind with a force that threatened to rip his thoughts from their foundations. But they remained standing through sheer force of will, only to tremble again as the wave receded—trying to pull them out to sea with it—before the next wave came crashing through.

Of course, unlike the waters of Earth's oceans, these waves were boiling.

It was decades of honed instincts and muscle memory that kept John on course even as his vision became a little fuzzy around the edges, and his thoughts a little more eroded. There was just enough clarity left to remind himself these guards were human, and technically civilians, so incapacitate, don't killl.

Another spray of bullets splashed against his shields as he charged forward, knocked the gun aside, and plowed his fist into the guard's gut hard enough to crack the armour, and probably a few ribs beneath. It was enough to knock him out.

"Almost there."

John grimaced, just slightly, at the extra waves of pain Alpha's voice sent through his head. At the way the room brightened far too much.

Another guard rounded the corner, squealed in terror at the sight of the eight-foot behemoth, and then slumped over unconscious with a slightly dented helmet.

John blinked and looked at his curled fist as it retracted. He didn't remember throwing that punch.

Alpha huffed, "We've got more squads heading this way, so would you hurry the fuck up already?"

John sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, fists tightening even as he stepped over the fallen guard and dashed down the hallway to the roof access stairwell. The exit was just at the top of the stairs now, just a little further...just a little...

The edges of his vision were still growing fuzzier, and even the dim lights of the stairwell seemed to drown out the shapes of the world. Alpha spoke, but his voice seemed to come from far away. A little yellow dot moved on his motion tracker, blinking...

Red?

In front of him. Enemy incoming. If he was lucky, it was just a common combat-form, with an injury like this—

...what injury?

Footsteps. They were coming. In front. Down the stairs. Moaning as the voice in his head echoed and throbbed, and the rotting flesh of the walls trembled—

In one smooth movement, John brought up his magnum from his side plate, aimed for the approaching shadow—was that the head?—and—

Black visor. Grey armour. Yellow dot.

No!

His arm jerked just as he finished pulling the trigger. A bullet whizzed past the guard's head. Shot out a light. The man stumbled backwards with a yelp. Broken cuffs jingled.

John spun the pistol in his grip—grabbing it by the barrel—and—CRACK! The visor shattered with the force. Black glass tinkled against the stairs.

He fell back. Slid down the wall, head lolling.

It was the guard from the roof.

Did John break his neck this time? He had to check, had to make sure—

"What the fuck—Put the gun away you bastard, these are civilians!"

John blinked at the slumped figure, bioscanner displaying a steady pulse. "I didn't—"

"Oh shit—just keep moving!"

John did. And damn it, would his head ever stop aching?

"Hey, hey...you okay?"

That was a dumb question. He was fine. It was the mission they should be worried about.

But...they had failed the mission. And now whoever was behind it all in Charon would know the UNSC was on to them and they had no idea who it was.

John burst onto the roof just as the Pelican ramp finished lowering from Alpha's remote command. The burn at the base of his skull disappeared so suddenly that he nearly stumbled as he raced up the ramp. As though he had been bracing himself against a wall that suddenly disappeared.

The engine rumbled to life, and the Pelican lifted, bay door closing as it took off into the night.

John took a moment to just breathe, letting his headache lessen into the ebb and flow of lapping waves. Tolerable, and easily ignored.

All of this...all of this for nothing.

His fists clenched at his sides, and he stalked to the cockpit.

"Alpha," he didn't try to keep back the growl as his gaze landed on the blue hologram. The avatar sat cross-legged above the console, several windows open in front of him with racing lines of binary code. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"What was I thinking!?" The hologram surged to its feet, stomping forward to point a finger at John's visor. "What the hell were you thinking!? I almost had it! I almost had everything!"

Alpha cut through the air with a vicious swipe of his hand. The open files of code snapped shut, replaced by a lazily rotating world.

"You see this? This is fucking Chorus. A planet that—according to the UNSC records—was presumed to have been glassed by the god-damn Covenant after the UNSC pulled out of the Outer Colonies. Well, guess what? It wasn't. In fact the Covenant fucking missed it entirely. And, you want to know something else?" Alpha snapped his fingers, the holographic world grew larger, and a single, blinking light slowly orbited around it. "It's got a fucking illegal commsat in orbit, owned by Charon Industries, that just so happens to have registered the arrival of the fucking Hand of Merope over two god-damn months ago!"

A moment of silence followed. Alpha's avatar remained tightly wound, like a collapsing blue star about to detonate.

"So?" Alpha bit out, voice scathing, "You had something you wanted to say, John?"

John's lips curled back in a silent, almost snarl at the mocking use of his name. How dare he, after John had made it clear that he didn't have the right—

"It's Church, asshole. Nobody gets to call me Alpha."

The Spartan looked away, stared at the back of his own fist as it pressed against the door-frame of the cockpit. He swallowed. "We were running out of time."

"No we weren't! I only needed one more minute!"

...and the now-frozen mission timer on John's HUD said they had two left to spare. John didn't doubt that Alpha had paused it as soon as they reached the Pelican. Just so he could make a point.

Something uncomfortable and unfamiliar settled in John's chest, and that mysterious ache returned to it, thumping in time with his heartbeat. He took a deep breath, willing it away. Now was not the time.

"You took a gamble," John said, keeping his voice carefully empty. Neutral.

"No, I followed a hunch. And I was right you jackass. Why can't you just fucking admit that!?"

John tasted acid in his throat. Felt the words 'fine, you were right' get stuck at the bottom and refuse to crawl out. John wasn't used to being wrong. His instincts had never failed him.

Ah, said a voice that sounded so, so like Dr. Halsey delivering a lecture, but it wasn't your instincts you were listening to, was it?

Something heavy dropped into John's gut as he remembered the cold fury, the irritation, the frustration as he plugged Alpha into the console—cornered, blackmailed, the mission at risk because of Alpha's need to control—and, no...it hadn't been his instincts.

Something was wrong with him.

"I—" his fists clenched tighter, and the words he knew he had to say seemed to choke him, but he dragged them up anyway. Because, as much as he hated losing—and as much as admitting it felt like losing—he had been wrong. "I'm sorry."

Alpha laughed, "Oh, you're sorry? For what exactly? Ignoring everything I say? Treating me like a fucking tool? Oh, or how about for being a god-damn hypocrite?"

"Alph—Church—"

"No, y'know what? How about you save your fucking sorry for someone who gives a shit, shut up, do your job and let me fucking do mine!"

The Pelican tilted and John stumbled back. The cockpit door slammed shut.

"Alpha!" John banged a fist on the door, vibrations shuddering through it, but the AI didn't respond.

Beneath the undersuit of his armour, Cortana's empty data matrix seemed to press even more tightly against his chest.


In the vast darkness between stars and worlds, a ship floated. There was no light to illuminate the name written across its side, and the ship itself was hardly more than a shadow.

Onboard, a woman dressed in the uniform of an Admiral stood on an observation deck, looking down into a laboratory where various scientists bustled about. Beside her, a holographic box hovered.

"She's almost finished," Black Box said, "it'll be about a week before she's up and running."

"A week?" the voice of Malcolm Hargrove said from a nearby console, "We don't have a week. The UNSC's oh-so-beloved attack dog is likely on his way to Chorus as we speak."

"Most likely," the AI said, "And my calculations of his Pelican's slipspace capabilities put his arrival at about a week as well, Chairman."

"Like I said then," Hargrove all but growled, "We don't have a week."

"Do you always get so upset when things go wrong, Chairman?" Osman leaned forward, pressing her hands against the ledge as she leaned closer and peered down at the piece of Forerunner tech sitting innocently in the midst of the lab. It resembled a box, with the glowing orange lines that seemed to be appearing on more and more of the Forerunners' technology as of late. The change in aesthetics hardly seemed important to her, but one of her scientists had been simply fascinated by its supposed implications of a cultural schism among the Forerunners. Perhaps to do with the Didact? Or something else?

They needed to know more, eventually, but, for now, such questions weren't high on the priority list.

"Perhaps I would be less upset," Hargrove began, and she could hear the tremor of indignation in his voice, "if I knew what you wanted me to do about it? With the tracking information you gave me, I can have Locus and Felix shoot him down—"

"That is not advisable," Black Box said, monotone, "Sierra-One-One-Seven's track record suggests he would survive."

Of course he would. Because he was John, the perfect little brainwashed soldier who couldn't even feel the pain of a broken bone unless someone gave him permission to. It made him unstoppable, and Osman had every intention of making sure Hood burned for daring to appropriate one of ONI's greatest weapons for his own agenda.

"BB is right, as usual," she said, and could almost feel the Chairman glowering at her. What a child. "And then One-One-Seven would know your men are his enemies. For now, we'll have to stall him for as long as possible once he arrives...I hear Felix is a talented liar?"

Hargrove huffed, "He is."

But was he talented enough to lie to an ONI-trained Spartan? That remained to be seen.

Osman straightened, folding her hands behind her back as she followed the cables attached to the Forerunner device with her eyes, leading her to a holo-tank where the scientists clustered. A blue sphere glowed within the glass, shifting.

"Then tell him to start rehearsing, Chairman."

"...very well, Admiral."

The connection died, and Osman spent just a moment watching the blue sphere shift.

"Well," Black Box said, "I think Charon's going to need a new CEO soon."

"Is our agent still on the board of directors?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. See to it he gets the position when this goes south. And make sure nothing can be traced back to us."

"Already done."

"And Hargrove?"

"We've already put together enough evidence to have him incarcerated, and to prove he was acting alone. There's also a team onboard the Staff of Charon to...take care of things, if he decides to talk."

"Good. The last thing humanity needs right now is Hood getting his hands on anything that could implicate ONI." The damn fool, didn't he know ONI was the only reason humanity had any breathing room to recover from the war? The only reason it even survived the war?

The Master Chief wouldn't exist if not for ONI. Osman's fists clenched. Proof that good things could be born of atrocities. That the ends justified the means. Whatever it took, to keep humanity safe...

Osman straightened her shoulders a little more, even as her jaw clenched and the old scars from her failed augmentations ached with phantom pain under her uniform. She cast one last look down into the laboratory, where the blue sphere now resembled a human figure.

She looked away.

"Keep me informed on her progress."

"Of course ma'am."


I have to admit I'm nervous about this chapter. I'm not sure I did justice to the blow-up between Chief and Church that I've spent so long building up to. (And them trying to figure out where they stand with each other next chapter? Ohhh boy). On a positive note, Chorus is in sight!

As always, please review! Tell me what you enjoyed and what you think I need to work on improving, whether or not anyone was in character. Thanks!