Without slipspace capability, there was nowhere to go.
Briar piloted them away from Infinity and Sanghelios both, plotting a course which would take them around the planet's silver moon, Qikost. It was the lesser populated of the two massive natural satellites orbiting the Sangheili homeworld and she hoped their presence in its vicinity wouldn't ruffle too many feathers. It wasn't like they could strike off too far when the risk of prowling Jiralhanae ships was still high.
She was just finishing tapping a flight path into the pelican's navigation system, about to engage autopilot, when a luminescent rent opened up directly before the dropship, filling the viewscreen. Hands flying back to the controls, she banked hard, rolling them onto their side.
Neither of them were strapped in and she heard John's feet shift from where he sat in the gunner seat as he braced himself against the sudden maneuver.
Not good. If whatever ship which had created the rupture didn't exit immediately and close it back up, they were going to be sucked inside.
"At this proximity, it's physically impossible for us to avoid the rupture, Lieutenant," the AI spoke up, causing her heart rate to momentarily spike.
"What the fuck are you still doing in here?"
"I was never ejected from your MJOLNIR."
"We aren't equipped to handle the Slipstream."
"Briar?" John ventured from his seat, privy to only one side of the conversation judging from his perplexed tone. Perplexed for him, that was. Which amounted to sounding mildly uncertain.
"The AI, it was never removed," she muttered, and would have reached back and yanked the chip out right then except she was fighting a losing battle with astrophysics too complex for her to comprehend. Even after toggling the thrusters to max, they continued to drift towards the gaping tear, the deck shuddering.
"Lieutenant-"
"Where the hell are these assholes?"
"Nothing is exiting the-"
"I can see that," Briar bit out, having to ease back on the controls, worried she might apply too much force and break something. "There's nothing I can do, John."
They passed into the rupture, the pelican's hull groaning an immediate protest to the shift in atmospheric forces. Warnings began to blare and clutter up the bottom of the viewscreen.
"How long can we last in here?"
"Not very," came the AI's unhelpful answer as a thunderous rumble passed through the dropship, accompanied by the shriller squeals of metal warping.
Without a way to open an exit point, there was nothing to be done.
"Tell me his armor has de-insertion capability," she demanded as her fingers flew across the controls, silencing alarms and struggling to keep the craft steady.
"The Mark VI iteration of MJOLNIR was not equipped wi-"
"Don't tell me about the fucking iteration, tell me about his armor - tell me Halsey upgraded it, tell me-"
"Briar," John calmly cut in, as though the pelican wasn't in the midst of being wrenched asunder, ominous creaks and bangs filling the cockpit.
"Tell me what I want to hear!" she shouted at the AI.
Sparks bathed the cargo hold as the turret-mounted cannon ripped free. More warnings, more alarms.
John's hand closed around her arm a second before the viewscreen fractured, cracks spider webbing outwards rapidly. He hauled her out of the pilot seat and back to the bulkhead separating the hold from the cockpit. "There was no ship. Something else created the rupture."
"It doesn't matter-"
"Something else created it," he spoke over her assertion, planting his feet as tremors coursed through the deck. He hadn't released her arm and his visor reflected her image, to the exclusion of all else. "Think. Why?"
But she couldn't. An all-encompassing fear had taken hold. "I can't lose you." Not someone else. Not again. Not like this.
"Lieutenant, it's possible the artifact-"
"It doesn't matter!" Briar's hand shot up to pull the data chip, but John prevented it.
"No, keep it."
"John, I can't. I can't - whatever this is, whatever's happening - there's nothing left in me that cares," she insisted, needing him to understand. She was done. She was done fixing things, done fighting for everyone else. If that was what was required, if this was another Forerunner or other alien species bent on humanity's destruction, they were welcome to it. She'd already given everything to protect humankind. Her blood, sweat, and tears. Her childhood. Her trust. Her morals. Her dignity. Her brothers and sisters.
This was it - he was it. All she had left.
Power failed, the interior blanketed in darkness, all systems and warnings falling silent. The hull was crumpling. Resounding bangs rocked the pelican.
He could have reminded her of their duty. Instead he lowered his head, the brim over his visor thudding gently against her own helmet, their faceplates almost touching.
Almost.
She was free-floating, no gravity.
"Welcome back, Lieutenant," the AI greeted. "Fortunately your MJOLNIR's integrity wasn't compromised. Can you move?"
"John?" Briar batted away components of the dropship suspended all around her. She was still inside what was left of the pelican, though the interior was more like a crushed tin can than a craft. It was difficult to see owing to all of the debris cluttering up her surroundings. "John?!" She grabbed the bulkhead which had separated the cockpit from the hold, the region of the fuselage which was most structurally sound. He'd moved her there for a reason, of course. Pushing off, she shoved metal and nanoplastic fragments alike out of the way as she floated towards the rear of the cargo hold.
He was face down, unmoving.
Kicking off from what remained of one of the benches, she collided with him, fingers desperately finding purchase on the titanium plating.
He was fine. He would wake up. Just like she had.
She maneuvered him so that his faceplate was towards her, but she couldn't see through the damn thing.
His armor was stiff, locked out. Inoperable.
"You need to fix this," she hissed suddenly.
"I tried to tell you his armor was no-"
"Fix it, or I'll crush you with my own hands, I swear." Not giving the AI further opportunity to protest, she snatched the chip from her helmet and clumsily inserted it at the back of John's. Her breath hitched as she waited. Her own pulse pounded in her ears, her heart racing wildly, throwing up alerts on her HUD.
A blinding blue light seared her eyeballs as it flashed through the decimated pelican, forcing her to squeeze them shut. A scan?
John still wasn't moving.
The primal urge to scream came over her, but her lungs refused to fill with the air necessary to do so. She clutched him to herself as anguish clogged her throat and a terrible cold, all-pervasive numbness seeped into her very bones.
Another light, this time golden, illuminated the wreckage. It enveloped John's armor in diaphanous rings and rapidly suffused her own as well.
Briar's senses were violently assaulted. She clung to John with tenacity as the perception of being hurtled through the vacuum of space at extreme velocity seized her. It might have lasted a millisecond, or an hour, such was the disorientation she experienced, but when it vanished as abruptly as it had begun, her body was wracked with sensations such as she'd never before felt. Her muscles felt as though they'd been flayed apart sinew by sinew and recomposed, her nerve endings were firing uncontrollably, and an ear splitting squeal reverberated through her skull.
When they ebbed, she was trembling in a heap on a dull metallic surface. Weight pressed down upon her, pinning her in awkward repose, and she realized with a sickening start as her eyes adjusted that it was John.
Sitting up, she rolled him aside, noting his MJOLNIR had at least unlocked as his limbs all moved flaccidly. Her head snapped up and she took in their surroundings. Fair sized chamber. Walls and ceiling, approximately five metres above, were made of the same metalloid material as the floor. Apart from her and John, it was empty. An angular doorway resided at the far end, sealed.
No immediate threats. Not that she possessed any weapons. Even her combat knife had been stripped from her armor before she'd been permitted to don it to disembark from Infinity.
Her attention returned to John. A quick check of her HUD revealed the environmental parameters of the space were within the limits of what humans could safely tolerate. Briar risked removing her helmet, setting it within easy reach as she shifted to her knees. She reached for John's, stealing herself for whatever she might find.
"He's unresponsive," the AI supplied, utilizing his MJOLNIR's external speakers to communicate. "But his vitals are returning to within normal range."
Relief flooded her like a punch to the gut. Prying his helmet free, she took in his pale features, relaxed in unconsciousness. A thin line of blood had trickled from one nostril, and more leaked down the side of his neck, seeming to originate from an ear canal.
"What happened?"
"I can't say, Lieutenant. I was able to initiate his armor's survival measures, the de-insertion must have knocked it offline."
Briar sank down, pressing her forehead to his, frowning at the chill of his skin.
Halsey had to have done something to his MJOLNIR or he would not have survived de-insertion from slipspace. An earlier prototype version of the technology which had been applied to Briar's own iteration, most likely. The pelican hadn't been fit to protect anyone or anything, including itself.
"The use of a teleportation grid to translocate us from the dropship suggests Forerunner involvement."
Drawing in a slow breath filled with the scents of sweat, the fleet issued soap pods John would have used in his hair, and blood, she swallowed. "Where are we?"
"I'm unable to establish a link with any of our satellites. We're not in human controlled space anymore, that's all I can tell you."
"You are within a Forerunner Keyship," a disembodied voice echoed through the stark room. The doorway parted and a spherical robotic construct entered, floating towards them.
Briar scrambled up, putting herself between it and John's prone form.
"Greetings! I am the monitor of this vessel," it hailed, the golden photoreceptor at its core glowing in the dull ambience. "I am Abiding Legacy."
"You brought us here? Through the Slipstream?" she questioned as the AI came to a gradual halt a little ways away, levitating a couple of metres above the deck.
"Indeed."
"Why?" It wasn't behaving in a threatening manner yet, so she decided to attempt to ascertain what the fuck was going on rather than leap onto it and begin tearing components off. That could quickly change.
"Because the beacon was activated, of course. By your ancilla." Legacy began to circle to her left and Briar swiftly sidestepped. "By the ancilla which currently resides with your mate."
"We didn't activate it, that was another human. An accident. We deactivated it after it wiped out all power sources on an entire planet and the ships orbiting above it." She wondered briefly why this thing would refer to John as her mate, but she'd had no prior contact with Forerunners or their AIs. Maybe it didn't have a full understanding of the term.
"Oh my. How unusual." It bobbed up and down slowly. "Serious miscalibrations must have occurred in order for this to have happened. And yet your ancilla must have corrected them, because the beacon's transmission was successfully received."
"What transmission?" Briar was losing patience. She needed to be triaging John's condition, not dealing with this. "What is the beacon for?"
"It is a heralding of the dawn of a new age - humankind's inheritance of the Mantle, of course. You, Reclaimer, and your mate, will lead your species forward. The responsibility and honour of protecting and cultivating all species and all planetary systems within your kind's ecumene now lies with you and with your progeny."
To say her knowledge of Forerunners and their civilization was being stretched well beyond its limits would have been a grave understatement. At the same time, she focused on what was relevant in the here and now. "Why did you bring us here?"
"Long ago, I was assigned to this Keyship in order to ensure it completed its core functions; first, to gather both DNA and living specimens of notable sentient species from the surrounding nebula for safeguard in the Library in the eventuality the Halo Array must be fired, then to reseed the planets of origination with their native species that all life might return to the galaxy, and finally, to wait for the time of the passing of the Mantle to its rightful inheritors. To that end, several beacons were installed on the native planets of the most promising species. Their activation would indicate either the success or failure of the Librarian's grand design. And here you are. Success."
"What would failure have looked like?" Briar couldn't stop herself from asking. Did this thing not understand what an absolute stroke of luck it had been, not only that Phillips had been the one to discover and activate the beacon instead of one of the Sangheili whose homeworld it had been located on, but also that she had been there with the AI to deactivate it?
"Failure," the monitor repeated, its photoreceptor flashing red suddenly, "would have entailed contact with that all-consuming parasite, which would have triggered a countdown to the final firing of the Array. Unfortunately, with the corruption of those samples still stored on the Ark, and the very limited means by which to index and collect more, the subsequent reseeding of the galaxy would have been drastically less diverse."
"Just like that - you'd have fired the rings again."
"Not I, no. It is a failsafe measure. If the Flood is allowed to succeed in subsuming all other sentient lifeforms, there will be no one to uphold the Mantle. This outcome cannot be permitted." The embodied Forerunner AI was shuddering in agitation now.
Best not continue down this line. "You still haven't told me what we were brought here for."
"Ah, yes." The red faded back to gold at this change in topic. "Your ascendance to the role of bearers of the Mantle cannot be completed without understanding of and access to the Domain, that you may know the true nature of your responsibility."
"Lieutenant," the AI spoke into the break as Briar attempted to decipher this latest revelation.
She risked glancing back to spot John's eyes open, his expression dazed as he blinked and attempted to sit up. "Easy," she insisted, returning to his side to steady him.
When his gaze met hers, his brow furrowed. "You're alright." It wasn't a question, but she sensed confirmation was required nonetheless.
"I'm not the one who wound up tango uniform," she pointed out, in case he hadn't noticed. Maintaining her equanimity was much easier when he had a pulse.
"The adaptation to your genetic code the Librarian bestowed upon you which granted you immunity against the Composer does include some other evolutionary benefits," Legacy explained as it floated closer.
John's head had turned towards it, though he said nothing. Instead he reached for his helmet.
Scooping it up before he could, Briar ejected the data crystal chip. He shot her a pensive look as he accepted the helmet from her hands. "Your armor locked out. I needed to make sure you were okay." She wasn't going to defend her actions any more than that with the Forerunner AI watching. Returning the chip to her own helmet, she donned it and stood up, offering her hand to him.
"Where are we?" was all he asked after he'd put his own helmet on and pulled himself to his feet.
"That, I still don't know."