Covenant destroyer Reason and Intent

In high orbit above Earth

Ninth Age of Reclamation

Wewaw tiptoed—a difficult thing to do when one's feet were clawed—down one of Reason and Intent's more deserted hallways, keeping to the shadows as much as possible to avoid the ship's internal surveillance system. A chill ran up his spine when he heard footsteps approaching the intersection he was heading to, and knowing he'd never be able to hide completely, he stepped out into full view of the ambient violet lighting. The Jackal whose footsteps he had heard came into view and Wewaw gave the carrion bird-looking alien a hopefully inconspicuous wave. The Jackal gnashed its teeth in a very contemptuous manner before continuing on its way.

Breathing a sigh of relief inaudible behind his methane mask, Wewaw continued on his way. It wouldn't have been the first time a Jackal had attacked a Grunt that was on its own with no Elites around; they thought themselves superior to "gas suckers." And now with the Brutes in charge the Jackals had no reason to fear retribution, for both had an equal love of bloodshed. Frankly Wewaw considered it a miracle he hadn't been attacked just now, though trying to understand why Jackals did or didn't do things was like trying to teach a Hunter to waltz.

Three abandoned corridors and no Jackals later Wewaw found the maintenance hatch 'Romamee had told him to go to. It was a small vertical shaft barely large enough for Wewaw to fit in, and with great difficulty he placed the air bladder borrowed from one of the Engineers at his feet. The Engineer had tried to explain how to use it, but as their race had no way to communicate beyond basic sounds and hand signals, something may have gotten lost in translation. He pushed a small button at one end and the bladder soundlessly filled with lighter-than-air gases, allowing Wewaw to slowly rise.

The plan, as Wewaw understood it, was for him to place a small probe in the vent above the command center so 'Romamee and the other Elites aboard Holy Fortitude could keep an eye on what Callius was up to. After 'Romamee had explained everything Wewaw didn't blame them for spying; the thought of a Brute being in command when a powerful Forerunner structure was about to enter the system was…unthinkable. The Elites may have had their faults, but they, at least, were willing to acknowledge that the Prophets weren't perfect, and could be wrong.

The air bladder had a lot of lift, but was balanced precariously at best. Wewaw only managed to stay up because the shaft was so thin, allowing him to spread his arms and legs to touch the shaft's opposite sides and control his ascent. Finally the shaft turned ninety degrees to the left and Wewaw crawled along it, leaving the air bladder to deflate behind him.

"I'm in the vent, Excellency," Wewaw whispered into the small voice-activated microphone embedded in his mask. "It won't be long now."

"So long as this goes on, you may as well drop the 'Excellency' title and call me by my name," 'Romamee's voice said back. "I doubt we Elites are entitled to that honor at this point anyway."

"Yes, Ex—yes, 'Romamee," Wewaw struggled to say. He crawled along for a few minutes. " 'Romamee?"

"Yes?"

"It's not nice, is it? Being thought inferior?"

There was a deep throttling sound that Wewaw recognized as Elite laughter. "No, it isn't. The last few units seem to have been more enlightening than all the years of Prophets' Decrees."

Speaking of units, Wewaw checked the meter on his methane tank and discovered he

only had a little bit of the heavy gas left before the tank ran dry. This came as somewhat of a shock because there had always been rumors—passed down from Grunt to Grunt over generations—of getting lost within a ventilation shaft of a large starship just like this one until the methane was gone and the little aliens slowly suffocated. However, Wewaw spotted a small emergency methane tank that the Covenant had started placing in these shafts and breathed a sigh of relief. Don't be naïve the Grunt thought to himself. They just don't want dead Grunts clogging up the airways.

After another minute or two Wewaw heard the deep rough voice of Brutes coming from beneath an upcoming vent. It would've escaped his notice, only as he passed over it he saw one of these Brutes shove the other forcefully into the wall. Without thinking Wewaw grabbed the probe from his gear and snuck it through so 'Romamee could see as well.

"Treachery!" the Brute not being held down bellowed. "Such treacherous words, Antioch! I should have you skinned!" His grip on Antioch's throat tightened.

"But you won't, Arius," Antioch managed to gasp back, "because you're no more satisfied with their scum than I am. After such a long time of waiting, we finally have a fleet as our ancestors did, and the blessings of the Prophets! Now is the time to wipe them from the pages of the Covenant roles!"

Arius did not speak for more than a minute. "Our role at the moment is to start the Great Journey," he finally said. "And to destroy the human resistance. After that the Prophets will have no reason to keep the Elites around at all, and you may kill as you please. Now come; Callius is waiting for us at the command center."

Antioch must've felt that, even without the mature "-us" suffix on his name, he was above orders, because his response was a brief growl before following Arius out of the room. Wewaw took a minute to gather himself before collecting the probe and continuing onward.

"So they're going to abandon us and start the Great Journey themselves, are they?" 'Romamee asked hypothetically of no one in particular. "Savage cowards. They fear damaging their mongrel hides in a direct fight."

"I'm sure a direct fight would be of no concern to Callius or his Brutes," another, older-sounding Elite said. "No, this cowardice smells of Prophets. Do not forget it is they that are the puppeteers."

"Yes, Fleet Master 'Ulsamee," 'Romamee replied. "How are things on your end?"

"Nasty. More Brutes are coming, tensions are rising, and conflict is imminent. I don't know how long I can keep the peace. You must hurry, or war will start before we want it to."

"Once the construct gets here peace won't matter," 'Romamee said. "But I hear you, Fleet Master, and we will hurry. Wewaw, status?"

"Nearly there," the Grunt replied, and sure enough a minute later he heard the distant rough baritones of Antioch and Arius greeting Callius in the traditional way: roaring at each other. Once Wewaw was over the vent in question he snuck the probe just far enough in to see completely before retreating back the way he had come.

He hadn't crawled long before he came across an Engineer, floating just above the lower of the shaft on its own air bladder. Wewaw could never figure out how to describe what they looked like, except for the arms, which were long strands of something that resembled putty. Even as he watched the Engineer's arms split into hundreds of fine cilia and snaked through the electrical conduit it was working on. Wewaw, as always, was amazed at the Engineers' technical skill. If it was broken, they could fix it.

The Engineer spotted him, turning one eye toward him and removing an arm from the conduit to speak. Wewaw had never been able to understand the signs perfectly, but he generally got the gist of it. What do here?

Lost pistol down vent, Wewaw signed back, lying. You?

Checking for bugs, the Engineer replied. He used one of the cilia to point to a vent. Their orders. A sound similar to a rolling blurp came from the alien, which Wewaw took as disgust.

The Grunt tried not to panic at the fact that they were already checking for probes, and if he hadn't thought of a way out of it he might've failed to hide his concern. You like not Brutes?

The Engineer gave a flurry of signals, most of which contained numerous profanities so far as Wewaw could tell. So he only bothered to remember the most important of the signals. Duh.

Another important question. Want be with Elites?

Another Duh.

Wewaw pointed back to where he'd come from with one hand and signed with another. Say no probe there, you go to Elites. Yes?

The Engineer hummed appreciatively, signing that he couldn't thank Wewaw enough. But we have hurry, it finished.

Why?

Taking something out of a compartment in his air bladder, the Engineer flicked on a hologram. It showed a large stone, about half a meter long and wide, randomly shifting between dozens of geometric—and seemingly non-geometric—shapes.

We take, it said, or Brutes win.

Scene Transition

Avis had a problem; nay, an irritation. Yes, it was a minor one, but it was an unnecessary grievance all the same. It wasn't that the whine of the Warthog's electric engine was too loud beating against his eardrums, nor that the vehicle rode low enough to nearly scrape his boots and send him shooting out of the vehicle—there were no doors—and onto the hard earth at nearly fifty miles an hour. No, what irritated him was so simple it was almost laughable.

Corporal Tripp was the worst driver in history.

The young marine had managed to hit every rock, pothole and ditch in the Serengeti, or at least made an unconscious yet valiant effort at it. In the thirty or so minutes they'd been driving, Avis figured about twelve years of wear and tear had been added to the Warthog's shocks. It was a miracle they hadn't had a blowout yet.

Still, Avis had to give credit where it was due. Having been unconscious for most of their treatments from the injuries they'd receive aboard the Cairo, Corporals Tripp and Kip had been fortunate enough to be moved to a critical care center in Alexandria before the Slipspace Incident. Once they'd awakened and found out where their platoon was headed, they'd spurned the advice of the doctors and demanded immediate transport. To their surprise they'd gotten it, and arrived at Swamp Rat just in time to volunteer for this little outing.

The rest of First Platoon was back at the base, getting some desperately needed rack time. Avis wouldn't have been able to sleep even if he'd tried, now that Arawn's condition was critical. The AI had been forced to shut down absolutely everything except a few key systems to stave off the brunt of the virus. When Avis had asked how long he had now that it was in his core-logic, Arawn had laughed. "How fast can you count?" he'd answered.

However, keeping Arawn away from the suspicious eyes of Swamp Rat was only one reason Avis had volunteered for this minor mission. Lord Hood had made it clear the number of troops he could spare to destroy the Forerunner ship was limited at best, intolerably scarce at worst. Since the mission was to liberate a POW camp, Avis wasn't about to sit back while the lives of five hundred marines—five hundred more men to assist the attack—hung in the balance.

"Approaching the canyons," Lieutenant Rodriguez, the man in charge of the mission, said over the COM. "We've got three ways in, four Warthogs to a path. Slow to ten miles an hour once inside, and I'll see you at the target."

As Tripp aimed for the center path, Avis heard something that made his head turn. He saw the tail end of a pack of elephants stumble off across the plain, tall grass barely reaching their knees. That, accompanied by the distant roar of a lion, reminded Avis where he was. After all this fighting he'd almost forgotten this was Earth, but rather just another world the Covenant had marked for destruction.

"Hey Tripp!" Corporal Kip called over the radio from his place manning the Warthog's mounted gun. "You catch those elephants?"

"Yep," Tripp replied. "Figures it took an alien invasion to finally let me on a safari."

The amount of light dropped dramatically as they entered the interconnected canyons, canopy of thick trees shading them from more than a hundred feet above the ground. Avis had been afraid the Warthogs' engines might've been enough to alert Covenant sentries, but he needn't have worried; the squawks from all the tropical birds more than drowned it out.

It didn't take long to reach the POW camp, which was situated in a large depression about two miles into the canyons. While it was certainly large enough to fit all the prisoners, it also happened to be surrounded by cliffs, with three opening that were now UNSC property. In other words, the Covenant were sitting ducks.

With barely a glance at the corpse of the Jackal sentry they'd soundlessly dispatched moments before—though Tripp had made it a point to give it a good kick—Avis grabbed one of the M99 Stanchion rifles from the back of the Warthog, admiring how light it was. Similar to a MAC cannon, the rifles used magnetic coils to accelerate projectiles to almost unheard of velocities. Theoretically, the rifle could send a round through five feet of concrete at five hundred yards and still blow an organism to shreds.

Tripp eased the Warthog to the edge of the cliff—the others in Avis's squad following suit—before grabbing his own M99. Lieutenant Rodriguez's strategy called for using the rifles and Gauss cannons on the modified Warthogs as cover fire while the rest of the group secured the prisoners. "Red Team ready," Avis whispered into the COM, trying to minimize radio chatter.

"Roger," Rodriguez said. "Blue and Green, sit rep?"

"Ready."

"Ready sir."

"Understood. Fire on my go."

Using the rifle's powerful infrared scope, Avis saw a number of Brutes in a series of buildings on the opposite side of the camp. He marked one with the rifle's targeting laser. "Tripp, hit the building to the left of the one I just lit up. Kip, use that cannon to take out the one on the right. I'll get the rest." He didn't need to scope to see the prisoners, though—five hundred men penned up like cattle behind a strong mesh fence. Even from here Avis could see some would need medical attention.

"Yes sir," both men responded. The last thing Avis had time to do was attach a small stand to the rifle's barrel and lay on his stomach to increase stability. He eyed the moving masses through the scope…

"Weapons free. Fire at will," Lieutenant Rodriguez ordered.

Without hesitation Avis squeezed the trigger three times, watching the powerful slugs decimate both the concrete structures and the Covenant inside. All around silvery vacuums opened up as the UNSC ordinance pushed aside air itself to get where it needed to go as fast as possible. In thirty seconds all hostiles visible had been confirmed dead and the POWs cheered as large trucks rolled in to evacuate them to safety.

"Avis…" Arawn's voice crackled over the COM. The staff sergeant grew worried at how weak his voice was. "I've just picked up—a bomb under the camp. I don't know if anything's alive down there, but…se-secure it."

"Will do," Avis replied stoically. "Tripp, Kip, with me. Explosive ordinance detail. Now." The rope and winch that had already served him on the Phantom over Voi did him wonders again as the three marines descended into the camp, assault rifles now the weapon of choice. Buildings were still smoking as they ran through the facility, guided by the NAV point the silent Arawn had put on Avis's datapad. Thankfully the tunnel entrance was in a building that hadn't been leveled by the Stanchion rounds, so the men slipped in undetected and quiet.

The cave was pitch black and had all the charm of a crypt, but light from Avis's (yet again) newly acquired helmet came on and bathed certain parts of the cave in ambient light. Upon ignition twenty bats came alive and flew straight at the men's faces. Avis ducked, feeling the air shutter as the creatures flew over him. "Damn!" Tripp and Kip yelled together, though for different reasons: Tripp hadn't ducked fast enough, and Kip had slipped on the cave's slimy floor.

"Shut it!" Avis whispered, not unkindly, but it was still an order. Kip, on your feet. Tripp…" Avis tried not to laugh, but a smile still escaped him, "clean up your helmet."

Tripp looked, and discovered a large amount of guano on his helmet. "Ah shit," he said, all too appropriately.

They moved on.

The cave twisted and turned underground in all sorts of directions, and Avis had the feeling that they were under the cliffs a lot more of the time than the camp. It also appeared to have been recently excavated, which made sense if the Covenant had wanted to plant a bomb where it couldn't be found. The path was mostly level, but at seemingly random points it sloped downhill for a good hundred yards. Just when Avis's ears began to pop, the three marines turned a corner and a light appeared in the distance, where a few short Grunt barks could be heard.

Turning his helmet lights off by thumbing a small switch, Avis signaled his men to do the same, adding the signs for trouble ahead and be cautious. Now among the shadows, they crept toward the opening the light originated from, spotting one sentry at what appeared to be a tunnel slightly smaller than the one they were currently in. The light appeared to be focused in one direction—down the smaller tunnel—which allowed Avis to get close enough to the sentry that he took out his knife.

A flick of the wrist later and the Grunt was no longer a problem.

The tunnel was low, low enough that Avis had to crouch to enter it, but it was also satisfyingly short. What he emerged in he only had seconds to see before being attacked yet again, it was well worth the glimpse.

He had entered the largest room he had ever seen, at least half a mile across and a hundred feet high; Avis hadn't realized they'd walked that deep underground. The room was cylindrical in shape, almost natural enough to look as if it belonged there, but it was too perfectly crafted to be anything but artificial. The only other clue to that fact was the wall—all the way around and all the way up, it was all covered in large glyphs, each glowing blue-white and casting long shadows everywhere.

Avis only stopped looking when a Brute grabbed his throat.

Lifted off his feet and gasping for air, Avis found himself eye to eye with the monstrous alien. While kicking reflexively Avis's boots connected with thick armor plates of orange and gold, and his attacks apparently did no damage whatsoever. The Brute also wore a headpiece the same color as his armor, a decorative thing with a large crest that sloped backwards in the center and two spikes on either side. How ironic such beautiful armor was being worn by such an ugly creature.

The Brute lifted Avis so close to its face he felt every cloud of hot moist breath in his face. The thing reminded Avis of a cross between a rhino and a gorilla, a row of long pointed teeth visible as it growled, long and deep. A bead of saliva dripped down its jaw, and with the tips of its claws poking his throat he sniffed Avis, turning his maw into a grin. "Meat tender, good meal," it said in broken English.

Panic from this statement allowed Avis to feel his hands again, and he realized he was still holding the knife. He saw the Brute preparing to lick him, to get the first taste of its prize before it struck, and it was his turn to smile. "Sorry," he gasped. "First date, no tongue."

And he plunged the knife into the Brute's temple.

With a thud Avis hit the floor as the Brute roared and clutched its head. The assault rifle he'd slung across his back earlier now bit into his spine as he slammed against it. A moment later something hit Avis's stomach and adrenaline rushed through his body because he thought he'd been dealt a fatal blow, but no. The Brute had merely dropped his weapon as he struggled to see through his own blood and remove the knife.

Bringing the weapon up vertically so he could use it as an impromptu staff, Avis saw it was a hammer of some kind, a handle at one end and a heavy, carved head that emitted blue light not unlike the glyphs he was surrounded by. The thing must've been nine feet in length, and Avis was already questioning whether he could lift it when he heard his knife clatter to the ground and saw the Brute lunge for him, decorative armor now smeared with blood.

Avis had no time to do anything but grab the handle of the hammer and swing. He'd been right: it was too heavy for him, but centrifugal force aided him and the massive head collided with its master's jaw. There was a snap as the Brute's neck broke, and the hammer released a loud thud and a blue force field of some sort that sent the Brute's carcass flying in one direction and Avis tumbling in another. When he stopped rolling Avis stared at the weapon—now a few feet away—in wonder. The device appeared to have some effect on gravity.

He walked over to the Brute's body and stared at it loathingly, picking his knife up off the floor and cleaning it on the Brute's white fur. "I'm no one's entrée," he said simply.

"The bomb Avis," Arawn said, actually sounding a bit stronger than before. "For God's sake connect me to the bomb!"

"Right," Avis said, noticing as did so that Tripp and Kip were finishing off the last of the Grunts; he'd been so engaged with the Brute and the gravity hammer he hadn't even heard them. The bomb was an ugly thing: a spike, curved burrito shape encased in what appeared to be a white-rimmed transparent case. Avis shattered the case with the butt of his rifle and plugged Arawn's processor-matrix tube into a spot above some winking blue and green lights. The lights suddenly flashed rapidly and all at once, and then stopped just as suddenly. It was over in less than a second.

"Done," Arawn said once Avis had slung the processor-matrix tube across his back so it once again hung from right shoulder to left hip. "Took your sweet time, didn't you? Do you realize you'd need a calculator the size of a Pelican to figure out how much time was left? Trilliseconds, damn it. Trilliseconds!"

"So," said Avis, signaling Tripp and Kip to keep an eye out for any sign of trouble—the room was huge, after all, with endless places for enemies to set up an ambush, "how much time was really left?"

Arawn said nothing at first, but his processor-matrix tube hummed and he eventually managed to spit out a sentence. "Ten minutes." He sounded dreadfully embarrassed. "A little more, to be completely honest. I'm sorry…you just seemed a bit nonchalant about the whole thing…bomb threatening to kill lots of people, you know, and…"

"It's fine," Avis said, cutting Arawn off. He knew neither of them wanted to admit that Arawn's outburst was probably a by-product of his degrading health, so he just let it slide. "I was acting a bit casual, I s'pose. But next time just talk to me if you're upset, alright?" He didn't wait for an answer. The glyphs began to glow more brightly. "Wow, this place is amazing…"

"Let me see," Arawn said, and a wire connection later he'd tapped into Avis's helmet camera. "Oh my…and they continue up all the way…" if Arawn had been able to breathe, he would've been breathless at the spectacle. "Alright, prop your datapad up somehow—hold the thing for all I care—and let me see as much of the room as you can manage. Don't worry about distance—I can magnify the images."

Avis did as instructed, though he was unwilling to let go of the assault rifle in light of what had happened with the Brute, so instead he leaned the datapad up against part of the wall.

It took only a few minutes to store all the glyphs in the datapad's hard drive—he didn't trust his own anymore—and Arawn could hardly speak from excitement when he was done. When he finally calmed down a little bit, he said, "This is it! The last puzzle piece! It's not perfect, to be sure—there are some dissimilarities that need to be addressed—but holy crap, this is it!" He was so happy he actually activated his holographic self, which looked more sickly than ever but happier too. Happier than Avis had ever seen him.

"Slow down," Avis advised. Arawn was talking very fast, almost slewing his words together. "Let's start at the beginning. These glyphs, what are they? Covenant?"

Arawn smiled at Avis like a first-grade teacher smiling at a pupil. "My dear staff sergeant, these aren't Covenant symbols, but Forerunner glyphs! Direct artifacts from beings that died over a hundred thousand years ago! There have been other findings, of course, but nothing so perfect, so complete…" he gazed at the glyphs again, awestruck.

"Okay," Avis replied simply, clearly not understanding the importance and his excitement much lower than the AI's. "So what do they say?"

Smile shrinking a few teeth, Arawn half sighed, half coughed. "That's the snag. This is no Rosetta Stone, Avis; everything is in Forerunner, and we've never been able to translate. The closest resemblance is the Prophet's code, but it's not exact. Take this symbol for example." A hologram appeared that resembled a target superimposed on a treble cleft. "It can be broken into two Prophet symbols." The image broke apart. "One means 'holy' and the other means 'room.' I assume it's referring to a temple, but it could easily mean a church, altar or just a prayer area. See what I mean?"

Avis did, at least in part, and said as much. "But it's a start," Arawn said reassuringly. "With so many glyphs, I'll get the knack of it." He looked toward one section in particular. " 'The hum of the Portal will lead to the Ark'…yeah, knew that…wait, what's this…but I thought it was…oh damn…"

Avis was about to ask Arawn what he was talking about when a crackle came in over the COM. "Staff Sergeant Hughie, where the hell are you?" a very angry Lieutenant Rodriguez asked over the airwaves.

"In a compound under the POW camp sir," Avis answered honestly. "We got word of a bomb down here, to sabotage our operation. The two corporals and I have disarmed it." Better to leave Arawn out of it. Out of sight, out of earshot, out of mind.

"Well get your ass topside and back to Swamp Rat ASAP," Rodriguez ordered. "Lord Hood has asked for you three specifically."

"Did he say why, sir?"

"You know that ship you and your platoon were talking about? Well, it just exited Slipspace, and the Covenant are crawling all over it."

With one shout Avis, Tripp and Kip were running back up the tunnel. It was finally here, what could turn out to be the most dangerous and most important battle of the war, where casualties would be high and perilous duties abound.

None of them wanted to miss the fun.