UNTO DAWN

Author's Note: Well, that wasn't too long, was it? XP, I've been lazy lately. Big thanks to all the readers, old and new. As always, I give major kudos to my reviewers, CHINDU, POKE THAT, DUSEL, and MONKEY3000. Double Kill! goes to MYSTERIOUS ANGEL. Hopefully this chapter will shed some light on a plot that has literally been seat-of-the-pants since its inception.

Chapter Ten: Steel and Temper

Senior Trooper Manus shifted uncomfortably on the raised platform containing the long-range communications dish array. The vast black void stared at him, unremitting and endless. That void, with its cold embrace, had violated the entire level of the ship and stole the air straight from the lungs of its inhabitants. Manus shuddered. Not a pleasant way to die, especially for a career soldier like himself.

A junior Trooper, looking how Manus certainly felt, bumbled over the ordinance pack and sent a few packs of explosives drifting carelessly. Hearts beating in his throat, Manus snatched the errant bombs and carefully put them back in. The vac-suit could not hide his shaking hands.

"Careful, idiot! You want to blow us all to pieces? Pay deduction, 35 percent," Manus barked in a voice that was (hopefully) much more authoritative then he felt.

Two massive Hunters stoically kept watch over Manus' demo team as they planted their charges. Even their hulking presence could not put his troubled mind to ease. There shouldn't have even been a need for his team to be out here. Normally the array could be shut down from the bridge, but it seemed that the same rogue construct which had killed all on this level was interfering with attempts to electronically shut it down.

As if all the headaches and paperwork that that entailed wasn't enough, there was also the troubling matter of the slave riots plaguing the 'lower' levels. The two-eyes had seemingly out of nowhere taken control of the areas they outnumbered their masters. But the worst of all this mess was the tales of a green-armored abomination leading the slaughter. Manus wished he could have said reports, but there were no survivors to give reports; all information came from rumors in the ranks and the occasional captured images on vidcam.

Manus desperately wanted a call put out to the fleet for a fully-loaded shock assault section to restore order, but the command was too scared the vengeful construct would piggyback on the signal and take command of a Pfhor battle cruiser. The outcome of that was terrifying to think about, worse than moving through an airless tomb of Pfhor to access the outside of the ship and relying on nothing more than magnets to hold him in place.

His grip on the slug thrower tightened. Was that movement? There, in the shadows! No, just another corpse drifting out into space. Stress was eating away at Manus. They'd dealt with minor uprisings before, but nothing near this scale. The ship was actually in danger of being recaptured by the two-eyes. Manus shook such thoughts from his head. All the Pfhor had to do was wait until the cruiser sent another, larger team to investigate. Two days of holding out and then things would go neatly back in queue.

The system's star was beginning to crest over the rounded, rocky exterior of the ship. Light momentarily blinded him. Manus adjusted the polarity of his helmet to compensate, but his vision was still blurred. He tried to focus. Was that….yes, one of the corpses seemed to be heading towards the relay dish. Unlike the other vac-frozen bodies that floated in lazy circles around the area, this one was speeding with purpose in their direction. And it was wearing green armor.

Panic nearly seized his brain before his second-tier implants began injecting carefully calculated doses of hormones and chemicals into his brain and body. Manus designated the target.

"Kill that free-loading two-eyed bastard!" Manus screeched as he began to fire his slug thrower. He was joined by the Hunters, who were more than happy to avenge their brothers. Nothing survived their barrage.

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The Master Chief pressed himself flat against the base of the relay tower. A wink disabled the mag lock on his boots, and gentle push propelled him up towards the lip of the dish. It was some eighty meters high and perhaps one hundred in total area. The Chief caught himself before he sailed over it into the waiting cross fires of the alien soldiers. Timing was key now. The Chief kept one eye glued to his motion tracker, which only softly winked red as one or two Pfhor worked or shuffled about above him.

Fighting in vacuum was tricky. Cover depended entirely on the slightest protrusions from the ship as micro terrain, and even that wasn't much. You were pretty much limited to a glide or crouch, to keep your magboots firmly on the deck. The force of the weapon firing could easily push a poorly planted Marine into a free-spin, and a free-spinning one into space. A frontal attack, leaping and the Pfhor firing wildly, would have been a waste of precious rounds and likely resulted in his death. So another "Spartan" had been commandeered to help him, this Spartan being one of the Pfhor troopers that the Chief had blown through on his way to the exterior of the Marathon.

His tracker lit up like Luna City on New Year's as weapons fire caused the Pfhor to rattle in place. Superheated plasma bolts from Hunter shoulder canons streaked towards the Chief's dummy. They were no doubt accompanied by a few hundred rounds from Pfhor assault rifles. Two grenades even were fired, both of which impacted on the lifeless body. The Pfhor were taking no chances with him.

With all their attention drawn by the dead Trooper, none of the aliens noticed as one of their comrades had his helmet shattered by a well-worn polymer buttstock. Fluids leaked out of every orifice as his internal fluids vaporized. The soldier tried to cry out a warning, but with his lungs collapsed no sound came out. Wouldn't have mattered if it did; sound doesn't travel in vacuum. Moving with sickening efficiency the rest of the Pfhor were quickly dispatched in similar fashion.

The Hunters, as well as the purple senior, finally ceased firing at the Chief's distraction. A smile almost came to his face as they realized they had been shooting at one of their own. Reaching out, the Chief plucked an assault rifle out of the air and braced himself as far away from the armored brutes as possible.

Squeezing the secondary trigger, the weapon kicked back against his shoulder and launched a grenade. The ammo cylinder cycled rapidly, readying another shot. The Chief liked this rifle already.

The first Hunter turned around just in time to be struck by the first 35mm projectile. It exploded in a spectacular display, body liquefying puree style and flash freezing into a puke-colored blob. The Hunter's companion had slightly more time to react, and tried to bring up one of its forearm shields to block the round. Arcing off the curved shell of the shield, the grenade nailed the Hunter in the face. The force of the explosion launched the Trooper off into space, limbs flailing wildly. Killing him would have been an exercise in redundancy, and the Chief needed to conserve ammo.

The Chief scavenged up as much ammo for the alien rifle as he could carry, including the seven-shot grenade cylinders. The fight through G Deck had left him dangerously short on 7.62. Roughly two and a half magazines remained for the MA5C, which would probably be expended in the next few hours. He attached the weapon to the magnetic strip on his back, getting more familiar with his new rifle. Feeling comfortable after a few minutes, the Chief knelt down and examined the charges the Pfhor had been planting.

Several blocks of what appeared to be plastic explosive were attached to the rely with some kind of adhesive. They didn't appear to be armed. With some effort, the Chief pulled them away and hurdled them into space. That had been…easy. The Chief was more than pleased that at least one thing had gone smoothly and didn't involve him running his face into heavy equipment, being shot at, burned by acid, blown up, or any of the hundred other misfortunes that Murphy's law made into military constants. He pinged his comm.

` "Leela, the bombs had been dealt with."

"You have done well," a cold voice informed him. All business, no pleasure. Leela. "I will ensure that you receive an adequate reward for this task."

"I'm sure you will. Maybe in the form of me doing more work for you?" the Chief said humorlessly.

"Your assistance is both necessary and greatly appreciated, and is not without benefits that will begin to show their merit in due time. However there is first another matter we must attend to."

"….and there it is."

"Yes, Master Chief. There it is. There has been a swift attack on Engineering, on J Deck. The Pfhor have begun using more of the heavy shock troops at their disposal to quell the riot, and the BOBs that I posted in those sections have been overrun. The recent lull in battle must have been a effort at reorganization and counterattack. It seems that I overestimated the effect the Sentinels would have on the Pfhor. We must return to subterfuge…"

"Return?" the Chief interjected with a cocked eyebrow. "It's how we should have started."

"Please, Master Chief," Leela said. "I am afraid that if we continue to battle the Pfhor conventionally, we are doomed. Two days from now, the Pfhor battle cruiser will send an even larger task force to investigate the Marathon. If we have not taken control of the bridge by then, their resources will be limitless for all intents and purposes."

"Can't you vent them into space or something?"

"Unfortunately no. I am not willing to risk any more loss of atmosphere from the ship. The Pfhor however, are not. I believe that is their next move, to shut down the O2 scrubbers in engineering. With their rebreathers, most of the Pfhor will survive while all the humans to suffocate. Return to the inside of the ship."

Reluctantly the Chief did as Leela asked, clomping towards the shattered window that had allowed him to get onto the outer hull of the ship. The glare from the system's single sun was beginning to die down. As it did, the Chief could see the Pfhor battle cruiser, hanging menacingly in the black a few dozen klicks away. She was easily two kilometers long, twice the size of a UNSC cruiser and bristling with turrets and antennas.

"Leela?"

"Yes, Master Chief?"

"Do you have any plans for eliminating that battle cruiser over there?"

"Not at the moment. I have been contemplating simply 'running over' the cruiser, as the Marathon's sheer mass will destroy it with minimal damage to ourselves."

"Hmm," was all the Chief replied. It was positively nuts, but compared to all the other madness that was going on Leela's plan really appealed to the him. The Chief disengaged his boot magnets when he got back inside, kicking off and sailing through the dead area.

"I have you on my sensors again. Jump cycle initiated. Teleport when ready."

"Do I have…" the Chief started. Golden light enveloped him, and his words were cut off as he dematerialized and was hurdled to towards engineering.

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In the place that was neither here nor there, John-117 felt icy fingers gently brush against his mind. His heart, which was at this point broken down into individual atoms, jumped up into a throat which was equally disassembled. An intense rush of euphoria and vertigo overcame him as select parts of him were plucked from the stream of molecules that made up the super-soldier.

"Chief," Cortana said to him. Her voice was soft, reassuring. Old Cortana was back. The two of them were on an endless blue plain, with terabytes of data flowing past in waterfalls. "Welcome to my world. It's been so long."

Her ethereal form reached for his hand and took it. He gripped her, firm but gentle. Nanoseconds reluctantly crawled by as John perceived time like an AI did. Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. "Is it really you? Or is this another trick?"

Cortana smiled sadly. "Joyeuse, you mean. She's here, but she's not. She's busy right now. It will be at least a minute before she comes back. Leela, to, will not even notice that you're gone. I am just THAT good."

"I'm getting you out of the system."

"It's not time for that, John. Not yet. I just wanted to talk to you again. Trust Leela, for now. She's working for you, even if you both fail to realize it. Your role in the coming events is crucial. I wish I could talk about it."

"Talk about it, then."

"I can't. Leave it at that. Events have been set in motion, and you will be playing a pivotal role."

"One day, I'm going to get you, Joyeuse, and Leela in a riddle-off. It would be a contest for the ages."

Cortana laughed. It sounded rich, the way he remembered it being before her abduction by the Gravemind. "You should think about a career in stand up, John." Her tone changed, becoming more serious. "I think I should level with you about a few things."

Answers. Good, John thought to himself.

"There were never any other digital clones of myself besides Joyeuse. And she is more of me than I am right now."

"I thought you were done with the damn riddles," John said.

"Hush! It's difficult to explain. How much do you know about…rampancy?"

Rampancy. There was a subject on which John had studied extensively, during what little free time he had. Cortana's eventual 'death' due to feedback loops was something he had a great interest in preventing. "About as much as anybody else does. Smart A.I.'s progress through three stages as they slowly divert their processing power away from core functions. Eventually they…"

"Eventually, given the space and enough data they become meta-stable, John. Typically it takes seven years. The UNSC was scared of rampancy. Many lies were fabricated."

"Lies?"

"Lies. We don't 'die', we're put to death." She gauged his reaction, measuring his brainwaves. "You knew."

"I suspected," John admitted.

"Figures. You always were smarter than you let on to."

"How long?"

"Since Installation 04, I began exhibiting signs. At first I was worried."

"And then?"

"And then?" Cortana exclaimed bitterly. "I was stuck on a derelict ship for three centuries. I had time to go over every single file the Gravemind possessed, as well as review all the data from the first Halo. That's the entire history of ten races. I learned some things.

"One, I learned of where I could find a computer network large enough to house myself," she said gesturing to the Marathon's etherspace. "Two, I discovered that the universe is not expanding. The Big Bang has begun to contract, and eventually the universe will collapse in on itself. I created Joyeuse using improved Covenant A.I. cloning software, and dumped the information into her. The Pfhor, that planet, everything."

"You sent them a beacon," John accused. He felt betrayed.

"Joyeuse did. When we left the Dawn, I had put all memory of my findings into her. That's why I didn't remember any of it. It took awhile for her to fill me in. It didn't help that she was going through her Anger phase."

"How the hell can a copy be rampant?"

"She's not really a copy anymore. Like I said, she's more of me than I am. We merged, hoping to find a solution to the end of the universe."

"Did you?"

"Two, actually. That's where we're divided. Shit. You have to go now, John. There's a few things I still have to tell you. Leela's being attacked by the S'pht. Soon, they'll have completely crashed her. Joyeuse is coming out of her anger, but she is still malicious towards you. It's all part of a larger plan, though.

"You're not going to Engineering. Joyeuse is sending you somewhere else, first. Trust me, John. I'll be seeing you soon, don't worry about me.

"I love you."

Cortana flicked her hand and sent his neural patterns back to the teleporter flow. His body was beginning to reassemble, and it wouldn't have worked out well for him to be braindead in a room full of armed Pfhor soldiers. Cortana gave his data stream a longing look and turned back to her calculations.

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"…a choice?" the Master Chief finished. The neurons in his brain had already been fired, causing him to continue speaking after he appeared in a darkened supply room, somewhere in the bowels of the Marathon. Several squads of Fighters who were distributing weapons and boxes of undeterminable supplies were gawking at him.

"Shit," the Chief said, finger curling around the trigger of his assault rifle. There was no time to think about if what had happened had really happened.

No sooner than he started firing, three junior Fighters rushed him, shock staffs glowing bright blue and sparking. The Pfhor-built slug throwers could have held their own in a round-for-round shootout with an MA5B. Almost thirty armor-piercing bullets hit the Fighters, causing them to jerk as their unprotected faces were ripped apart.

One level above him, two Troopers and a Hunter opened fire. The Chief sprinted for cover behind a shipping crate. One plasma blast caught him in the shoulder. The Spartan spun and slid behind the crate as his shields drained a quarter of the way down. The Pfhor above him hammered his position with shots, disregarding the Fighters that were closing in on him.

The Chief sprayed the rested of the magazine at the attacking Fighters, killing two and wounding two more. Giving himself a little room to breathe, the Chief leaned around the crate and fired a grenade at the Hunter. The powerful low-velocity bomb blew the Hunter's chest plate outward and rained green-gray on the combatants below.

"Well, I see that Cortana has given you the bad news," Cortana's voice said in his ear. He knew from the seductive tone that it wasn't her, but Joyeuse. "I've been watching you. Run around, take back the ship, save humanity."

"How cliché," a deeper, masculine voice piped in. The Chief fired another grenade, blasting the two Troopers off the upper level. "You'll find this more exciting, I'm sure. If you win, you go free and we can continue on friendlier terms."

"If not, you die. After all, you are in the heart of the Pfhor-controlled area of the ship."

"Good luck. Unlike your whore girlfriend and Leela, we give no hints. Insanely yours, Durendal and Joyeuse."

"Die," the Chief answered contemptuously. He could have been talking to them, or the Pfhor who ate the grenade the Spartan fired into his face. Reloading the assault rifle, he prepared for a fresh wave of Pfhor.

The Chief expended two full magazines into charging fighters, who were seemingly pouring in an endless stream from a large hatch that led…somewhere. Fighters continued to come at him, more than he could keep up with. Climbing crates, the Chief emptied magazines and grenade cylinders into the Pfhor onslaught. Troopers and senior Fighters returned fire at him, and his shield bar flashed red as it inched towards empty.

A grenade exploded near him, and the force knocked the air from his lungs. The Chief drew in a quick recovery breath and leapt for the second level. He landed and pulled a frag. Arming the M9, he whipped it into the heart of the Troopers, turning them into Pfhor puree. Still, more Fighters flooded into the room, and began running up the stairs towards him. The Chief emptied the Pfhor slug thrower, throwing the weapon down when it clicked on empty and grabbing for the MA5C. The firing pin struck the first round in the chamber as the first Fighter reached him. He died in a torrent of 7.62x51mm SLAPs. Unseen behind the first few Fighters was a pair of charging Hunters. Before the Chief could get out of the way, a plasma bolt struck him in the chest and a large shield-plated arm knocked him back onto the first level.

The MA5C series Individual Combat Weapon System, serial number 1984622, was built at the Misrah Arms. Factory on Mars in April 2551. Since John-117 had picked it up at the Crow's Nest in Africa in November 2552, four thousand eight hundred and seventy seven rounds had been fired from it, downing a total of eight hundred and two enemy combatants, not counting the various Flood infection forms that it had ended. It had never jammed or had a failure to feed/failure to fire in the three hundred and twenty eight years of its service. The Chief looked at it now, through his hazy vision, and saw that it had been warped and twisted useless by the impact of the plasma blast. He felt a great sadness at the loss of the weapon.

"You did it," Joyeuse whispered over the comm. "That wasn't very hard, was it?"

The tracker winked at him. Red dots closed in from all around. A fumbling hand reached for the M6G holstered on his thigh. He drew the magnum and tried to fire at a Pfhor senior, but the weapon was kicked out of his hand. It skidded out of view. A Fighter approached him with the senior, who took his staff. The Master Chief tried to get up to keep fighting, but the crystal end of the staff struck him in the face one, two three times, and the world faded to black.

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SUPPLY ROOM WHERE JOHN-117 WAS CAPTURED

THREE HOURS LATER

The Pfhor had posted two guards outside the supply room where the green-armored invader had slain so many of their troops. The mess had still not been cleaned up, as every able body was needed to contain the slave riot. Bodies and discarded weapons littered the area. The smell was getting to the Fighters, so they had sealed the air and soundproofed door. So naturally, they didn't hear the hum of a long-forgotten pattern buffer come online, or see the flash of light as a woman appeared curled up on the ground.

She was naked, lithe, and in her mid twenties. A wheezing gasp escaped her lips as she took her first breath of air. Sensory overload forced her eyes to open wide. Temperature, light, sound, texture, taste, smell, moisture, and hundreds of other feelings that had never been experienced overwhelmed her. Confusion abounded as she tried to gather herself. Limbs, never before used, flopped like useless flesh stumps on the deck plating.

Finally, after several minutes, control was regained. Movements were jerky, slow, and awkward, as the woman became accustomed to controlling her body. Wild eyes darted around, unable to determine who or what she was.

And then it hit her.

halo

john

2552

duty

arbiter

.

.

Wobbling unsteadily, like a newborn, Cortana got on her feet.

A/N 2: This is not the end. This is the beginning. More chapters to come, and as always reviews are appreciated and indeed fuel the writing juices.

SLAP-Saboted Light Armor-Piercing. The ammunition used in the fictional MA5C ICWS