Hey Everyone, I hope you are all still staying safe, I have a new chapter to distract you all from the shit we call real life, I hope you enjoy!
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A Very Lazy Guy: I'm glad you've returned! I love seeing all the old readers return after these years, i hope you stay around for the completion of the story!
Location: Kapursa, State of Moram, Sanghelios
Date: 23rd February 2558
Time: 0200 hours
In the dead of night, a dark shadow slipped across the palace grounds. Like a whisp, the figure moved with little sound and to any observer, the sound of footsteps would be masked by the gentle wind and noises of the night. The figure had no problem evading the patrols as they had waited several rotations before making their move, ensuring they confirmed the patrols movements. It also helped that the figure knew of the patrol schedule as it was being made. With little effort, the figure made their way across open grounds and through winding corridors with sandstone columns lining each side of the passage, ending with the ceiling many meters above. The figure paused at the room they were looking for: Communications storage. Inside lay a majority of the Sangheili data pads used for long distance communication. The figure moved inside and picked up one of the devices. It was flat and round with the right half of the surface area a dull purple, which lit up brightly when the figure tapped a few alien-like symbols on its touch screen. The figure then selected the 'purge storage' icon and immediately symbols began flickering and disappearing. Seemingly satisfied with the result, the ghostly figure shut down the device, replaced it back among the other data pads and slipped out of the room and dissolved back into the night, slipping by patrols of both human and Sangheili , who in the morning, would have no idea an intruder had slipped past their watchful eyes.
Location: Kapursa, State of Moram, Sanghelios
Date: 24th February 2558
Time: 1200 hours
Mayne collapsed on his cot, tasting salt as sweat dripped bullets down his face. After the events of yesterday's assassination attempt by the Covenant, The Arbiter had confined himself to his quarters as he determined his next move. This gave Fireteam Phoenix an opportunity to rest from the previous day's skirmish. Earlier in the morning, Phoenix and The Arbiter's Wrath had all checked in with Major Zek 'Natam to find him recovering well, aside from his constant complaints about not needing the medicine. It was embedded in the Sangheili from birth that seeking medical assistance for a wound brought great dishonour to the individual and Mayne had observed many Sangheili letting their comrades bleed out and succumb to their wounds on the field of battle rather than deliver medical attention. That ideology seemed to have faded out of the majority of the Sangheili culture, but old habits die hard.
After ensuring their comrade was going to be okay, Catherine gave the team a few hours of R 'n R. Such a word would make any marines day, but Mayne often found it difficult to relax in between missions.
Too much sitting around gave him too much time to dwell on the past. Even though it had been several years since the deaths of his squad mates and dearest friends, he had not given himself time to come to terms with their passing and whenever he found himself thinking about them, he would quickly push them down into the depths of his mind and try to focus on something else. Right now, that was a several kilometre run around the palace grounds. Today he pushed himself, putting more and more energy into his quads, hamstrings, and calves each time he felt that he was faltering. The effort burned though him and, in the scorching Sanghelios sun, he began to feel faint. Just like basic training, where his drill instructors would push him to his breaking point at every opportunity. He hated them for that yet now found himself willingly pushing himself to his limit on his own free will. He grimaced at the irony of it.
Now as he sat on his cot, he gently removed the photo of his previous team; Fireteam Chaos, from the tactical pouch on the front of his torso armour and turned it over in his hands. the corners were slightly crumpled, and the colouring of the photo was the slightest bit water damaged, perhaps from his cliff diving event when they first arrived on Sanghelios.
"Nothing like a bit of wear and tear" he sighed and glanced at his armour, becoming aware of the wear and tear of his own armour lying neatly beside the cot. While the armour itself had been well maintained in terms of structural integrity and overall protection to the user, Mayne noticed several impressive gashes across the torso, shoulder and leg pieces, and sections of the red paint he had added to his armour had flaked off or were scratched to hell and back. He glanced back at the picture in his hands and once again, asked himself the same question.
"Why did I deserve to live while they didn't?" The answer seemed as lost to him as sight was to the blind. He looked at every person in the photo. Avery, Henry, Sarah, Claire. Each had their own history with him at one point.
Banter, insecurities, jokes, secrets.
He glanced at Claire, who had her arm around him on his left.
Love.
Things he knew that could always be shared with others, but never to the extent as with the members of Fireteam Chaos.
"Hello Mayne." A smooth voice came from the door. Mayne quickly erased all visual cues of his thoughts and rose up to face the figure standing in the door. Reesha stood facing him, tall and confident. Mayne could not help but release a small smile upon seeing her, she was by far one of the most honest and kind souled people he had ever met. No matter the fact that she was a Sangheili, she was strong yet compassionate, easy to talk to and a confident leader. She had the aura around her that she was a trustworthy individual. Maybe she thought of him the same way? A trustworthy individual. Maybe that was why she felt so comfortable in telling him her personal and sensitive history with her friend, and maybe why she trusted him with the hypothesis she presented to him the day before.
"Can I speak with you?" She did not seem particularly worried, but her voice did betray a tone of concern. He snapped back to a more neutral look, but his smile was clearly not missed by the SpecOps Commander before him, who raised an eye for a short moment before returning to business.
"Yeah of course Reesha, you're sounding like something's wrong." She reached behind her and pulled out a circular object. With a few rapid taps from her claw, half the device came to life in a bright, fluorescent purple. This must be some form of Sangheili data pad. She walked further into the room and faced the device so Mayne could see the symbols sprawled across it.
"After seeing Zek, I went in search of anything that might indicate a traitor in our midst. The data pads were the first thing to come to my mind and by a miracle, I found that one had been tampered with." She tapped a symbol and the holographic screen flickered to another section, like that of accessing an app on a civilian's Holo-phone. Mayne quirked his head to the side when he failed to see any symbols appearing on the screen.
"I… don't know what I'm looking at." He said slowly. Reesha gestured to the blank screen with her free claw.
"Exactly! There's nothing in the storage cache of the device!" The concern had faded slightly from her voice and Mayne could detect a small amount of pride in those words. Mayne glanced up at the Spec Ops Commander, if he was correct in the assumption that data pad regulations were the same for both their species, all history of communication was to remain untouched on the device. This was normally for several reasons, ranging from field reports to evidence in the case of a court martial.
"So, someone has removed the communication history before returning the data pad to the storeroom?" He asked curiously, more to remove any doubts then to genuinely get an answer. Reesha smiled at him, he found the gesture oddly pleasant.
"Correct, but what this Sangheili failed to realise, is that the storage is contained in a purge file that lasts for twenty-four hours before being removed entirely."
"So you've confirmed it's a Sangheili then?" Mayne piped up, getting more into the idea of being a detective, it was better than the train of thought he was going through before she showed up.
"I do not believe many Humans would be able to access our data pads, not many of you know our written language." She paused for a moment. "I believe this is when I should use your term; no offence."
Mayne shrugged the comment off with a scoff and smiled.
"None taken, same can be said 'bout you lot."
"I do actually understand much of the written language the Humans use. English is quite easy to understand after some practice, though understanding your slang can be difficult." Mayne winced.
"Do I want to ask how you got so much practice?" He asked cautiously.
"We should avoid discussing that, I think." She replied, almost in a warning tone that Mayne translated to "It'll just get messy if we talk about it."
"Yeah, ask a Special Operations specialist how they practiced learning their enemy's language, sounds dumb now." Mayne thought stupidly. There was a brief lull in conversation and Mayne felt that they came to a mutual agreement to drop the subject.
"Right." Mayne had the urge to clear his throat. "so who would have access to these data pads?"
"Normally, any Sangheili with the rank of Major and higher would have access to data pads. So, even with this newfound knowledge, we still have a long way to go in terms of identifying a culprit."
Mayne crossed him arms and cocked his head, if the storage was in a purge file and has technically already been deleted, how do they access it?
"I assume you have a way to access the purge file so we can figure out more about our friend?" He asked and this time Reesha looked regretful, her features seeming to drop an inch.
"That is a question I cannot answer. While we have come very far as a race after the great war between the Covenant and Humanity, our species is still trying to readjust to normal life. We are a militaristic race, and in the Covenant we had no need to be farmers or engineers, the San Shyuum required only soldiers from the Sangheili. So for generations we produced soldiers, the Covenant provided us engineers and labourers."
Mayne frowned. It was odd that such a dominant species in the galaxy could be hamstringed by such a lack of basic requirements.
"You mean to say that the Sangheili has to start from scratch? Rebuild your species' skills from the ground up?" He questioned, almost unbelievably.
"Correct." She seemed to bristle slightly which was almost humorous to Mayne, once a proud Sangheili, always a proud Sangheili, regardless of whether they have a grasp of basic skills to maintain life independently or not. "We have very few engineers now due to the civil war and I would not be able to locate one in time to extract the file from this data pad. It requires a substantial amount of precise dismantling in order to access the drive before it's completely destroyed."
Mayne bit the inside of his mouth, trying to figure out what they could possibly do.
"Maybe our technicians could access the drive?" He suggested, bringing the conversation back to its original path. Reesha's shoulders perked up at his suggestion and her eyes seemed to light up. "I'm not sure how much luck they'll have with your technology but surely they can figure something out."
"Then let us go!" She exclaimed as she turned round and headed back to the door, "We do not have too long before the file is completely purged."
Mayne began thinking through the prominent issues. The 24th Infantry Company that Captain Hendricks led had plenty of engineers, how else were the electrical equipment abord the numerous Pelicans, Scorpion tanks, and Warthogs maintained. No, they had plenty of helping hands, but the primary issue was finding someone who knew how to take apart and extract a purge file from one of these alien devices. The only other issue that Mayne deemed prominent was whether the information can be extracted from the purge file intact.
"One problem at a time." Mayne told himself and stood up.
"We might have a problem." He called after the Sangheili. She halted and turned about questionably, her hands out in an almost exasperated way. "Most of our people don't have experience with your tech, so we need to find someone who can get us to the right person." Reesha seemed to be catching on to Mayne's suggestion.
"Your Captain?" She asked.
"And the Arbiter too, we can't be conducting secret investigations while this traitor may have access to him. He should at least know so he can be prepared to defend himself."
"I agree, can you organise to meet with your Captain?" Mayne shrugged and put his helmet on, which always felt odd when he was not also wearing the ODST battle armour along with it. "I'll give it a shot."
Location: Kapursa, State of Moram, Sanghelios
Date: 24th February 2558
Time: 1400 hours
James Hendricks was a busy man, the job that he held was not for anyone, and running an infantry company of three hundred personnel on a mostly hostile world was a daunting task for any Captain and his chain of command. At the ripe age of fifty-two, Hendricks thought that he had seen everything. He had enlisted at the age of eighteen with the thought of fighting insurrectionists that threatened the inner colonies and more specifically his home planet of Mars. Then the Covenant appeared, and he spent the next twenty-seven years battling against them. As a grunt, as a fireteam two IC, then fireteam leader, platoon commander and finally Captain of his own Company. Any man who had experienced as much as he had would believe nothing could surprise them.
He was almost disappointed in himself when he answered his comms and was surprised to hear Corporal Mayne Alexander on the other end. It was so out of the blue, so out of protocol, if he had anything to say, it should have been through a report from his fireteam leader, Sergeant Catherine Myers. The Corporal had insisted that Hendricks meet with himself, Special Operations Commander Reesha Moram and The Arbiter for a strictly confidential talk.
Again, he should have found himself disappointed as he now sat in his own private office in the Kapursa Palace, a very large and elegant room if he must say, with the Arbiter seated by his side, surprised at how his day was turning out. A secret meeting with such a mix matched group of individuals was the last thing he expected so early into their deployment to Sanghelios.
"What do you think Corporal Alexander and Commander Reesha have to say?" He casually asked the enormous Sangheili sitting beside him. Sanghelios's uniter looked down at him. Even though Hendricks stood at six feet, he was still several feet shorter than his elite counterpart and he often found that slightly nerve wracking.
"I do not know, Captain. Though it will be most important if Commander Reesha deems it necessary to bring to our attention." As if on cue, the two figures marched into the room at quite a pace, the Corporal was not wearing his combat armour, instead he donned the standard issue ODST fatigues with the bold white ODST abbreviation on the left chest. The Spec Ops Commander wore her standard Field Marshall styled armour, but Hendricks always noted the spotless reflective black coating of the armour.
"Arbiter. Captain Hendricks." She acknowledged with a closed fist to her chest, acknowledging her senior Sangheili's rank and showing respect to Hendricks's rank. "We apologise for the short notice of requesting this gathering." The arbiter simply nodded and blew off any indication that he was annoyed.
"That is okay, Commander Reesha." He said simply. Hendricks turned to look at Mayne, standing beside the Sangheili.
"I assume this meeting is of importance if it has so blatantly ignored the chain of command, Corporal." He said, sounding more curious than disapproving. As much as he cared for and lived by the chain of command, he liked the young ODST, regardless of his damaged mental health. While most military personnel would be temporarily discharged to seek therapy for the level of impact to the mind such as what Mayne had endured, his file stated that he wanted to stay working on missions albeit on the condition he work alone and if Hendricks didn't know any better, that was damn well harder than leaving for therapy. This man was as tough as marines got.
"Yes sir." He simply replied. "We believe there is a traitor within our ranks."
In the short time that Mayne had known Captain Hendricks, he was impressed with how the grizzled veteran was able to manage such a complex operation. Not only did he have the trust of every man and woman to keep them safe and alive, he had to conduct the operation on the very home world of the species that had almost driven Humanity to extinction just five years prior. Although the truce established in 2552 between their species shortly after the conclusion of the Human-Covenant war remained, there was always going to be some distrust between the two races. It has been a miracle that things have gone as smoothly as they have so far. Now as Mayne dropped the bombshell on his superiors, he noticed the Captain's shoulder tense up and his eyes widen slightly. The arbiter did not show much outward reaction, though Mayne saw his eyes narrow slightly.
"What brings you to this conclusion, ODST?" The Arbiter said in a low voice. Mayne could not tell if the Sangheili's tone showed agitation or he was simply questioning.
"Yes, Corporal. This is quite the statement." Hendricks had recovered from his early shock and was now leaning forward, his arms folded on the pop-up field desk. Mayne gestured to Reesha.
"Well we found something that may indicate it."
Reesha stepped forward, taking the data pad from her armour and presented it to the leaders. She turned the device on, opened the storage cache and put the device on the desk. Immediately the Arbiter sat forward and picked up the pad. After a moment he made a low guttural sound in his throat, almost as if sighing in concentration.
"This is indeed concerning." He finally said after he finished swiping through the device, opening and closing different icons.
"What is? Is something wrong?" Hendricks seemed like he was trying to decrypt the icons on the device, though Mayne suspected he knew nothing of Sangheili language.
"Data pads are not meant to be purged, for security reasons, but there is nothing here." The Arbiter showed the empty storage cache to the Captain, who looked dumbly at the blank screen.
"If you say so, but what can we do about this?" he asked and Mayne decided it was his time to step in and try to explain things in way that the Captain would understand.
"The device has a purge file, which is imbedded within the device and can be extracted. It contains the information we need." Mayne looked at Hendricks expectantly, who nodded for Mayne to continue. "The Sangheili don't have any engineers who can access the file without potentially corrupting the data and losing it for good." Hendricks put a hand to his grey stubble and his eyes narrowed.
"But you think our engineers may be able to get the file out intact?" Mayne nodded intensely.
"Yes sir, I believe our engineers may be the only ones capable of extracting the data intact, but we need your help to get in touch with one. Doing it ourselves might raise questions and will only cause delays." Hendricks nodded again.
"very wise, Corporal." He looked towards the Arbiter, who was watching on intently. "What do you think of this Arbiter? Could one of our engineers crack this file?"
"It would hold the best chance for success, Captain." He handed the device over to Hendricks. "And exposing this double-crosser, if there so be one, would be in our best intentions. For both our sakes." So, the Arbiter agreed with them, that was a step in the right direction. He also raised a good point. If the traitor found out that the ambush failed and the Arbiter lived, which they most certainly knew at this point. What was to stop them from attempting the assassination themselves? And what was to stop them from targeting Henricks as well?
"Very well, thank you Commander, Corporal." He addressed Reesha and then Mayne before stashing the data pad in a satchel beside his desk. "I'll get this to an engineer and contact you when the file has been extracted, or as much as we can extract." Mayne gave a stiff salute.
"Thank you, Sir. anything extracted will be helpful." He turned about with Reesha quick to follow after a quick salute. Mayne walked a few meters down the high ceiling hallway before stopping to let Reesha catch up.
"That went better than I thought it would." Mayne said with a thin smile.
"I agree, though I hope there is enough time to extract the data before the file is permanently destroyed." Reesha did not sound confident. "It could already be too late to extract the data, or maybe it will not contain anything useable anyway." The more she went on, the more Mayne wanted to help reassure her, to comfort her and put her mind to rest. He suddenly found an urge to put a hand on her arm as a kind of calming gesture that one would do for another when they worried about something irrational. Although Reesha's worries were completely logical and very valid. While there was a chance that any information they recovered from the purge file would get them nowhere, Mayne needed to hold out on there being something of use in order to uphold their mission: to protect the Arbiter. Almost in an instinctive motion, even though the darkness in him told him not to, Mayne found himself reach out and touch Reesha's arm reassuringly. The action shocked him, and he found himself unable to speak. It was only Reesha's confused look that made him find his words.
"Stressing about these things won't get us any closer to finding this turncoat. It'll just make things harder than they already are. Just have hope, we can do this." He took his hand away and let it fall by his side. Reesha seemed to look at the sandstone floor in consideration, then looked back up, a new confidence emerging from those green eyes.
"Thank you, Mayne. You are very correct. Hope can get us a long way."
Apologies that there wasn't any combat in this chapter, but i hope you all enjoyed the character interaction 3