Chapter 21

As Jack boarded the shuttle, he noticed how quiet the hangar was; usually it was bustling with activity, but today it was unusually quiet. His charge, an Insurrectionist veteran who now led one of its major divisions, was extremely uptight, and it got on Jack's nerves. Ezio was able to relieve Jack's stress by going through some mental calming techniques, but they did little to shut the crotchety old man up.

"You Assassins have no honour; you fight dirtier than we do. Why did we even create an alliance with you people? The way I see it, we would all have been better off if we just killed you when we first met you, it might've gotten the UNSC off our backs for killing one of their enemies."

Jack couldn't stand it any longer. He stood up from his chair, and prepared to make a statement in his defence when Ezio's blue holographic form appeared in front of him, shaking his head. Jack took his seat again.

"Pre-flight checks are showing green across the board. Mount Kallos this is Darter-4, do we have clearance?" said the pilot

"Darter-4 this is Mount Kallos, you are clear for departure. Good luck out there, make sure you bring them back in one piece." Said the radio operator

The Darter shuttle began to hover on its VTOL jets and then began accelerating out of the disguised hangar towards space, where the Jackdaw was waiting to send all the shuttles into slipspace.

"Darter 2, 4 and 5 please standby for slipspace jump. You're the second set to go and each of you have your own paths for getting there, safe travels and Godspeed." Said the captain of the Jackdaw to thee Darter-class shuttles awaiting the go-ahead. The slipspace rift opened in front of them, its blue colour very inviting against the blackness of space. The three Darter shuttles and the Jackdaw sped through slipspace as it closed behind them.

Only a day later did they arrive at their destination, and the Jackdaw immediately went into cloak while its slipspace drive was reset for its new location. The three shuttles separated around the system as to confuse anyone who may be watching. When Jack queried the pilot as to why, the pilot merely shrugged and said "I just do as I'm told, I don't give a damn as to how the orders work, just that I'm expected to make sure they do."

Jack was satisfied that he wasn't going to get any more information out of the pilot and went back to reading in his helmet. The digital copy of Ringworld by Larry Niven held his attention throughout the rest of the uneventful journey to Talitsa's surface. As they touched down, the first thing Jack noticed was the lack of anything at all; the landing zone was completely desolate, hidden within a mountain range. The sun beat mercilessly on them as they entered the hidden subterranean bunker where the summit was being held. Jack escorted his charge through heavily guarded checkpoints, each one of them checking both their IDs and DNA. After a gruelling hour of double checking, they were finally let through into the boardroom. It was nothing like Jack was expecting; there was a corporate feel to the room, and there was a window overlooking what appeared to be a bustling colony world. Ezio confirmed that it was just a screen displaying an image, and Jack nodded with recognition. This wasn't missed by his charge, who raised an eyebrow and said "Did you really think that was real? If they're letting people like you into those suits I'm seriously beginning to question Jiles' judgement."

Jack said nothing but clamped his teeth together hard. He stood and watched the simulated lives of people who had never existed being carried out. He and his charge were the last ones into the room, and his Archons saluted him in the traditional style when he stood behind the chair his charge sat down in. The Agent, a bespectacled middle-aged red-haired woman, entered the room and rest of the Axon group rose. She sat at the head of the table and the Axon group sat down also.

"Welcome, all of you, to the 29th annual Axon group summit. I would like to get straight to the point of the first topic." Said the Agent, after everyone was seated. She pulled out a small datapad from her pocket and unlocked it.

"Alright, the budget for new inter-connecting projects. The Insurrection has begun the construction of several new bases, as many of you will already be aware of, and the Assassins have offered their usual protection and aid, but what is required is money and materials."

A man from the Assassin side of the table raised his hand to interject, "We all understand the need for the basics, but we have not been able to spare all that much materials since the activation of the Ascendance project."

"Ah yes, the Ascendance project." interrupted Jack's charge "I would very much like to discuss that particular expenditure."

"That is all well and good, Tony, but we are currently discussing the construction projects." Said the Agent

"Fine then, I move that the topic of the Ascendance project and all its associated issues be next discussed. All in favour," Tony raised his hand, and three others did too,

"Noted, the next topic for discussion will be the Ascendance project." The Agent rearranged the order of the summit on her datapad,

"Now, as I was saying," continued the Assassin "Since the Ascendance project, we have been somewhat limited in our resources, and we are running dry. During the war it was easy to steal from shipments under the guise of pirates or rebels, which as I recall, was your idea Tony, thank you for that."

"What's your point Eric?" asked Tony

"My point is that we need to focus on acquiring more materials on the whole, now that we have a cease-fire, and Lord Hood is preparing to negotiate a long-term truce with the Sangheili, it will become extremely difficult to appropriate supplies from the UNSC. We will have to start finding backers; colonies who have what we need and are willing to aid us. I recommend contacting some of the surviving outer colonies."

"And we don't have those in buckets either, we had better be quick about it." added the woman on Eric's right. Members around the table nodded in agreement

"There is also the option of colonising our own worlds, or at the very least, mining operations of uninhabitable worlds." Added another member sitting opposite Tony.

"Or we could do both. We could then sell some of it to the colonies for the resources we can't find ourselves." added another. This was followed by much murmuring in agreement

"I think we can wrap this up now, all those in favour of initiating a trade relation with the outer colonies, as well as mining operations for resources on uninhabitable worlds, say aye."

A unanimous 'aye' was heard around the room.

"Alright then," said the Agent, marking the vote on her datapad, "next topic, the Ascendance project and all associated topics, as voted by the group. The Ascendance project was made possible by the combination of Project: Prometheus and the acquisition of SPARTAN-III powered armour. It involved creating our own version of Mjiolnir armour, referred to as ARCHON armour. It has shown to be highly effective in the field, and the project contains both Insurrectionists and Assassins staffing. This is a shared operation and is taking in an estimated 3.5 billion every year, and if the project is allowed to expand, more."

Tony started talking as soon as the Agent stopped

"Now, I don't regard the use of extremely expensive elite soldiers lightly. This project is a waste of time, money and resources that could be used to fund the placement of individual Assassins and Insurrectionists, not these," Tony waved at Jack behind him "robotic freaks." Jack could barely contain his rage, and he could see his Archons having the same problem through their body language. He forced out a discreet order for them to keep their tempers through gritted teeth. The others acknowledged silently as Tony continued his rant,

"And not only that, but I have reason to believe that the UNSC has caught on to your little science project; they have taken advantage of a leak in our security regarding the manufacture of these Archons and they are using this information as we speak to roll out their own line of Spartan-IVs, using adults, making the whole process more cost and time effective." Jack was startled at this news and queried Ezio

"Why wasn't I told of this? It was important."

"Amico, it was while you were being operated on. We had started the project as soon as you brought in that armour, but it had taken us that long to get it moving. Do not be concerned, we plugged the leak as soon as it was discovered."

"And yet, your organisation lost one of our very few Covenant Engineers that we loaned to you. I believe your men just left it in the middle of a room in a skyscraper, surrounded by Covenant weaponry, which is how the interlopers were able to defeat your agents and escape?" said one of the Assassins in response to Tony's argument

"But that still doesn't help us, if the Templars knew about our operations, we could be in serious danger, what else could they know about?" said Jack to Ezio

"I don't know, but all we can do is hope that they choose not to attack us today."