Yay for pre-shift uploads! Yes, I am doing this at work, and I bring you Chapter 11 of the Declassifieds! This is the original draft of the arrival at Stronghold in Return Home, so some of the things in here will be familiar. Dare you to spot the differences! :D Flames will be used on my idiot coworkers.

Disclaimer: I don't own Halo.

Chapter 11: Stronghold, The Original Draft

The ship shuddered as they took a hit, and the four Spartans had to grab on to something unless they felt like being jostled around. Kelly managed to steady Dr. Halsey with one hand.

"What the hell?" John yelled. "Who's shooting at us?"

The shipwide alarms blared, along with an AI's voice saying "Covenant cruisers inbound. All crew to battle stations."

"That's all well and good," Fred started in, "but what are we going to do? And where's…?"

A woman in a slightly disheveled condition rocketed in the room, bouncing off a wall and ricocheting into a table, cursing as she went.

"…Laura," Fred finished, studying the figure. Dark hair tumbled and tangled down to her waist, a brush was gripped in between her teeth, boots dangled from her hand, and she was definitely not in uniform, unless you counted shorts and a sports bra as a uniform.

"Say a word and you die," she muttered around the brush in her mouth as she plopped into a chair and tugged a boot onto a bare foot.

"Not exactly regulation, though," John ribbed—he knew he was the only one who had the remotest chance of getting away with it.

"Would you rather I'd come in butt naked? It was bad enough that I got rolled out of the top bunk by the captain when we got hit. Be glad I took the time to put something on." Shooting glares around the room, Laura spit the brush out and began yanking it through the tangled brown waves.

"Watching you is giving me a headache," Kelly commented.

"Then don't…fucking…look," she grunted when she hit a particularly large tangle. "Now what the hell is going on here? Thought…ughn…we'd get to Stronghold without trouble."

"That was before we got attacked by the Covenant," Dr. Halsey moved over and took the brush out of Laura's hands. "Let me help while they bring you up to speed."

"Um…yeah...thanks," she replied, fiddling with an elastic band around her wrist. "So can I see what's going on outside? Thought there weren't supposed to be Covenant near Stronghold."

"Tell that to the Covenant," John pointed at the display screen, where three Brute ships were closing on their position. "We have no idea how long they've been here or what they're doing, but Intel didn't pick up on it. Now they're attacking—"

"Those aren't Covenant." Laura pulled forward, her hair sliding out of Dr. Halsey's hands as she scrutinized the screen. "Look at the attack patterns, the lack of evasion tactics. Not even Brutes are this stupid. This is something else…" Her voice trailed off and her face took on a vacant expression.

"She okay?" Kelly asked as she passed a hand in front of Laura's eyes—an activity that normally would've met with some sort of response, but this time went seemingly unnoticed.

"Give her a minute, she'll come back," John replied, watching in case she slipped too far away. Forerunner memories, gotta be, he thought—it was the only thing that could make her go elsewhere like that.

"Myrnia," Laura whispered finally, then shot out of her seat as if her shorts had caught fire. She even scrambled across the table to get to the ship's intercom—everyone in the room was forced to hold back a chuckle as she tumbled off the table, landed in a tangle on the deck, and scrambled up to punch the button on the intercom.

"Captain, keep your distance from those ships. Don't let them get close, don't let them send boarding craft, don't let them so much as breathe in your direction! The minute you do, we're fucked!"

"Laura, what—" She didn't let Fred finish before she cut in.

"Stronghold was a Forerunner science lab, they were researching biological materials there. It was also one of the first worlds to fall in the Forerunner Empire." Glancing meaningfully at John and Dr. Halsey, she continued, "One of the first worlds to fall to the Flood."

"Then those ships…" Dr. Halsey began, her face paling.

"Are loaded with Flood forms," Laura finished. "Those damn Brutes probably got there first, went looting for old Forerunner tech, and let the Flood loose. And if they've infected the ships, then it's a fairly safe bet they're gonna be all over Stronghold. If we want to live we're gonna hightail it in the other direction."

"We can't, Laura," John replied quietly. "ONI had sent a team there already, the only reason we're here is because they lost contact with them."

"Why would ONI send a team…" Laura stopped abruptly and slammed her fist on the table; there was an audible groan as the metal dented significantly. "Damn Ackerson! No better than the Covenant, trying to steal anything that's not nailed down. And now he's put good men in danger for no damn reason!" She stopped and raked a hand through her dark hair, forcing herself into a state of calm. "Guess there's nothing for it—I'll have to go."

"You're not going anywhere—" Fred began.

"I'm the only one who can!" Her voice took on a harsh edge, the kind that usually warned that her temper was rising, and dark eyes burned into everyone in the room. "No one else knows that place as well as I do, trust me. And I'm going alone—no sense anyone else dying needlessly. I'm expendable, you're not."