Chapter Eight: Brig

POV: Ellen Anders

Date: 2531

Reference: Between and During Chapters 14 and 15 of Chipped

oOOOo

The wreckage of the Scarab was fascinating, and very telling. The Scarab itself was undeniably a Covenant invention, but there was plenty of Forerunner technology patched onto the destroyed behemoth.

I'd taken my camera out to film when I heard Sergeant Forge behind me, brash and sarcastic. "How about one for the scrapbook, professor?"

I turned to look. He was holding up a piece of a Covenant Ghost and had a cocky grin on his face.

I restrained an eyeroll. "If you don't mind, Sergeant, I'm trying to document this area for study."

Checking to make sure it was in focus, I turned the lense towards a Forerunner scrap that looked like some sort of generator. I noticed some damage along the side of it and zoomed the camera in.

I could hear the SPARTAN talking behind me. He was Tawny Clark's minder.

It made me wonder what else she could do, if the UNSC had assigned a SPARTAN to be her minder. I was considered a security threat and they'd stuck me with Sergeant Forge. He was nothing in comparison to a SPARTAN like John-117, who was the one with us.

Sangheili caught my attention. The words were impossible for me to translate but the tone was all wrong; too light, as if spoken by a human.

Tawny Clark was staring at a point in the woods around us.

A deep growl shook the air around us. Something attacked the SPARTAN, bowling him and Tawny Clark into the ground. A colossal Elite in golden armor faded into view and elbowed the falling SPARTAN in the side of the helmet.

Before I could react he'd picked me up by my throat. My air cut off with nauseating suddenness and I tried to pry the leathery hand off of my neck, but it was like trying to punch through a stone wall. Utterly futile.

"Hey!"

Sergeant Forge, I'd almost forgotten about him. He was behind me, sounding confident but woefully outmatched. And without the SPARTAN…

I could see Tawny Clark curled up on the SPARTAN's side, looking inconsequential and rather tiny.

"Why don't you put the lady down, and we'll talk about this," Forge threatened. "Man to freak."

The Elite threw me to the side. I rolled with the momentum and ended up only bruising my shoulder and hip. I heard gunshots.

When I recovered the Elite was invisible. I knew he wasn't gone because Sergeant Forge was aiming around with his pistol, trying to find the invisible soldier.

I could hear Tawny Clark behind me, trying to rouse the SPARTAN. He didn't get up in time to save Sergeant Forge, who was hit by the Elite from behind.

Before Forge could retaliate the Elite pulled his energy sword back and lined up with Forge's heart.

"Stop!" I was moving against my own will, throwing myself in front of Sergeant Forge.

I didn't realize what I'd done until I was staring up at the Elite and his energy sword. Both seemed bigger from this close, and the sword seemed to blister with heat and energy.

Behind me, Forge groaned. "Anders, get out of here!"

Sorry, Forge.

I looked up at the Elite and used my pride to keep my fear hidden. "I'll come quietly if you let him live."

The Elite relaxed and put the energy sword down, tilting his head in thought. The whole while he stared at me with those unnerving, bird-like eyes. His toothy mandibles rippled.

He stepped forward and dragged me along by my throat. I choked again but there was nowhere for my air to go.

He stooped down and grabbed Tawny Clark, too. She gagged, then managed to cry, "No! John!"

All three of us were weightless, and I glanced around to see that the Elite had stepped into a blue beam. A grav lift.

Below us was the roar of an engine. I could see SPARTANs taking aim at us from the forest floor but we were too high to help.

oOOOo

Apparently aliens didn't know how to provide proper lighting.

The xenobiologist in me knew that it was because a lot of the alien species that made up the Covenant saw better in low-light. Their eyes were made differently than ours, and Elites and Jackals specifically could see in near total darkness.

The dim atmosphere, paired with the rabid pack of Jackals somewhere out of sight but well within earshot, made for an intimidating environment. Across the brig from us was an Elite with no armor and a pair of Grunts and all of them stared in my direction with hatred or bloodlust whenever they could.

I knew that Tawny Clark was in the cell beside me. Neither of us spoke much. When we did we kept quiet, because the Elites guarding the brig got pissy when we talked.

Eventually one of them would make good on their threats and kill one of us. According to Tawny they only needed a single human to activate the Forerunner fleet they wanted. Having two humans was redundant.

But the guards weren't nearby. I had listened to them walk away, their Sangheili getting quieter and quieter until I couldn't hear them at all.

"Tawny," I whispered.

Her voice was soft from the other side of the wall. "I'm here."

"Good." I rested my head against the wall. "Anything new?"

"No. The taller guard still hates us less."

"Comforting."

A silent beat.

"How's your knee?"

"It's fine," she said. "It's getting plenty of rest."

I couldn't bring myself to laugh.

"We're almost there," she whispered.

"The destination? Do you know where it is?"

"No." I heard her shifting. "They don't know either. Only the Arbiter knows."

I pursed my lips.

"It's close now."

"How close?" I asked.

"A few days… Maybe a week."

I held my hand up to the plasma field keeping me inside the rank cell. When it was a few centimeters away I felt the heat and the static electricity buzzing, waiting to zap me should I come into contact with it.

"Do you know what their plans are for us after the fleet is active?" I asked.

Silence.

"Tawny?"

She didn't respond.

"Tawny, are you there?"

I fell silent and listened. Her breathing was barely audible, and slow. Roughly 13 breaths per minute when I took the time to count.

She was asleep.

A shadow fell over me. I looked up and saw the Arbiter - the Elite in golden armor - glaring down at me. I met his gaze and tucked my fear as far down as I could shove it.

He rippled his mandibles in a hateful, boasting manner and left.

oOOOo

I'd lost count of the days when a team of Elites approached. They opened my cell first and dragged me out. I was put into energy cuffs and held in front of Tawny's cell.

Two Elites were holding my shoulders. One of them had an energy sword out.

"Behave," he warned, pulling my head back to expose my neck.

The message was clear; I was expendable and would be killed if Tawny used any of her abilities to help us.

Tawny knew it too. She was staring up at us with horror, half-recoiled away from the team of Elites.

They opened her cell and she didn't fight them. She was meek as they cuffed her and marched her out of the brig beside me.

She was still dragging her crutch behind her. With the cast her gait was irregular and the plastic foot of the crutch bumped along the metal floor, catching and bouncing instead of sliding smoothly.

I wanted to ask her how her knee was feeling; I could use her rate of healing as a timing method to estimate the date. But with the Elites on all sides - and the standing threat on my life specifically - I found it more important to remain silent.

So I was. We both were. Nobody spoke as we were forced to walk into an alien hangar bay, into a Phantom.

I was tense when the Elites spoke in Sangheili since I couldn't understand them. Tawny hadn't admitted it out loud but I suspected she could understand what they were saying. Why else would she be so calm with their guttural growls that always seemed to sound angry?

The Phantom was something of a reprieve. We were made to sit in slightly-oversized chairs along the wall. There were still Elite guards prepared to shoot us, but I forced myself to keep as calm as possible.

Tawny's booted leg stuck out straight in front of her. Her other leg wasn't much different; the seats were big enough that I could barely bend my knees over the front. Her knees didn't reach the front.

The Phantom landed and we were led outside. I looked around and stumbled in disbelief and awe.

There was a planet curving around us.

We were in the center of the core of a planet, on an artificial floating platform. There was a sun above us. Since I could look directly at it I assumed that it was artificial as well.

We were inside of a dyson sphere.

I was so giddy that I almost forgot about our captors. I was too busy trying to find out how the Forerunners had built a fully-functioning star and dyson sphere. Did it have a functional ecosystem?

The green continents surrounding us on all sides suggested that yes, the ecosystem was self-sustaining.

Then an Elite uncuffed me and placed me on a metal circle. An energy field booted up and trapped me inside. I was entirely frozen, and felt pressure on all sides that may or may not have really been there.

I couldn't move anything in my body. I could barely twitch my fingers, and trying to move anything larger like my torso brought a rush of pain.

To distract myself I theorized about how the containment field worked. Maybe it was an antigrav field coupled with a nervous override machine. Did the Covenant have technology like that?

I thought about it and decided that it was unlikely. If the Covenant had the ability to override the human nervous system and control our movements they would have used it on the battlefield by now.

Or maybe they could only control a human in a controlled and focused environment, like this containment field.

Or perhaps the antigrav field could be adjusted to very specific parameters, and hold a form in cookie-cutter like suspension.

I heard footsteps behind me. The Arbiter walked around to my left side with a cow-eyed alien in a grav chair. Both of them were close to the edge of the floating platform we were on. If I could just move I was sure I could push them over the side.

But I was trapped.

"This is her?" Cow-eyes asked. He was looking at me like I was an interesting specimen awaiting the autopsy tray.

The Arbiter was staring at me, too, but more like I was a piece of meat. Not a piece of meat like a human would see me as; this was entirely un-sexual. He was literally looking at me like he wanted to digest me.

But he nodded. "Yes, Hierarch, this is the one I observed."

'Hierarch'? Was Cow-eyes one of the Covenant's leaders? I wondered why he looked so mammalian. Was his species remotely compatible with humans, to have to many visual similarities?

"And this?" The Hierarch turned to Tawny's containment field. "The one who destroyed the company on Harvest?"

"The very one," the Arbiter confirmed.

Cow-eyes held Tawny's terrified eyes. "So frail, both of them. You'd hardly think them a threat."

I wasn't frail! Especially not in comparison to Tawny. How dare he?

My wounded pride overrode my impulse control and I cried, "I demand to know why I'm being held!"

The Arbiter's deep and mocking laugh sent terror sliding down my spine like ice. His footsteps thundered closer and he leaned into my field of view.

His eyes were alight with dark amusement. "'Demand'?"

Another Elite spoke up somewhere behind me. "Arbiter, another human ship has arrived, and is closing in on the entrance portal!"

The Arbiter roared and jerked away from me. I heard something clatter onto the ground but I couldn't turn my head to see what.

"Get the Hierarch to High Charity," the Arbiter instructed. "Intercept that human ship and destroy it at once!"

I was almost certain that the human ship he was talking about was the Spirit of Fire. What other human ship would be out here? I knew we had to be far away from colonized space; if there was a dyson sphere within our reach I would have definitely known about it.

Hopefully the Spirit of Fire would be able to repel the Covenant. I didn't know how concentrated the Covenant was here; was this a planet near their home systems or was it far away, even for them?

I didn't know.

And all of this wondering and theorizing had overlapped and shorted out my concentration. The lack of mobility was bugging me again and the worst part was the lack of escape. I couldn't make a fist, I couldn't kick my leg, I couldn't move my neck.

A knot formed in my back and I tried to jerk out of the containment field. It was useless and painful.

"I can- I can see if I can short out the fields, like I did on Arcadia," Tawny offered in a tentatively hopeful voice.

I didn't immediately see anything to be hopeful for, but my heart jumped at the thought of freedom. Still I scowled. "Why didn't you do that earlier?!"

"Because they would have killed us!" she cried.

And she was right. More specifically, they would have killed me.

The field disappeared from around me and my heart soared. But my body was sore when I hit the ground, and I moaned.

There was a familiar leathery hand around my throat.

What?!

The Arbiter paid no mind to my gags as he walked across the platform. "Your judgement has waited long enough."

"No!" Tawny screamed.

The Arbiter dropped me and wrapped his hand around my wrist. He pulled me up by my hand and my shoulder strained.

Then he slammed my hand down on the holographic globe in front of me.

A primal sense of horror filled my stomach. Whatever he's just done, it was very bad.

Had he activated the Forerunner fleet?

No...had I activated the Forerunner fleet? What had I done?!

Floating metal forms around us began shifting. I realized that they were the ships...and they were coming to life.

I saw a flash in the corner of my eye. Tawny's containment field had cut out. She was floating on her own, her hands curling like claws and her eyes breathlessly wide. Her mouth was gaping as if she was overwhelmed by something.

Had the activation of the fleet done something to her? I'd read Dr. Halsey's studies on her - the dated ones, anyway, since Halsey was barring access to her recent research - and I knew that they were speculating that Tawny's powers originated from the Forerunners somehow.

I waited for an Elite to kill her, or disable her somehow, but none of them did. None of them were paying us humans any attention. They were staring up at the shifting Forerunner ships in awe.

We had a chance.

I ran up and plucked Tawny out of the air by her ankle. She seemed to collapse at the interruption and her full weight slammed into me. I staggered, but recovered quickly enough and adjusted her to lay over my left shoulder.

There was a blue circle on the ground. Something inside of me knew what it was for and I stood atop it with a quick heartbeat.

My voice was soft, but sure. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

I glanced up at the planet around us. My mind was throwing possibilities at me, some good and some catastrophically horrible.

But the most certain one was death, and we would die for sure if we stayed here.

So I steeled myself and commanded, "Surface."

We dissolved in a flash of blue.

oOOOOo

Author's Note: I'm sorry I didn't update this story last week! I decided to write this chapter last minute and I wanted it to be good! Also! The CT scan went well (did you know they put you on an IV for those? I sure didn't! Needles are Great..) and we're awaiting the results. Hopefully they'll come in on Monday :)