"Is that it?" Maddie asked, curiously.
"What do you mean 'is that it?' are you telling me that you can actually do it?" he sputtered like a damaged LAAV
Maddie grinned; he'd clearly underestimated her.
"Good God, where do they find you people?" He asked himself.
"Well?" Maddie asked, grinning like a hungry tiger.
Commander Sterling rolled his eyes, "fine" he said getting to his feet, "follow me."
}{=}{
"We were going to hand it off to ONI anyway, so you might as well handle it for us." He said, the pair of their boots clanged along the ground.
"How long have you had it?"
"We picked it up this morning, scouring the aftermath of an engagement when we found it floating around." Sterling said as we walked along the gantry in a secluded section of the hangar. "It's a big piece of tech, obviously, and we couldn't believe they'd mount an auxiliary power unit so close to the bridge. It's kept the damn thing in working order, for the most part."
If only he knew how incompetent and fallible the covenant truly was.
"Seems like a lucky break." Maddie observed as they descended the stairs to the flight deck, "I'm guessing it's still translating messages?"
"Sort of." He sighed, "our best interpreter was killed in a covenant raid whilst en-route in a Pelican so we don't really know if its transmitting anything useful, and my ship-board A.I. is 'dumb' and specialised for combat and manoeuvres. I stuck one of my more talented guys on it, you'll meet him down there."
"Sounds like a mess, even still, the fact you caught something in at least partial working order is a miracle." Maddie asked, skipping the last step of the stairs excitedly and wincing to herself as pain buzzed in her leg.
Take it easy, Mads, or you'll never go back in the field.
"Embarrassing to admit it but yes. Rear Admiral Reitker doesn't have the time or men to spare ferrying translators around so I was going to ask Captain Drake if he could help instead."
"You'd just hand over that sort of data to ONI?" Maddie asked, amused as she regarded the small listening post that had been constructed around the captured device.
"HIGHCOM aren't going to be able to help in time," he said, crossing his arms, "and winning this war is what is most important to me."
Maddie nodded in agreement, such sentiment was more than enough for her, she realised, as she pulled a chair from under the desk and placed a pair of headphones around her neck.
"I'll do what I can, Sir, but I will need to talk with my CO if we want to get the most out of this."
Commander Sterling nodded firmly in agreement. "Do what you can for now, when the Enigma finishes its patrol, I'll send you over."
Maddie saluted, glad that she might actually get to salvage some of the mess that she was in. Considering Drake's mood, and the way that he had treated her, Maddie wondered if there was still a chance that the agent had not discovered the A.I. hidden in her helmet. Commander Sterling bid her farewell and Maddie looked around, eyeing the lone technician munching on a sandwich before slipping the headphones on and listening into the bursts of static.
It took a moment to adjust to the sounds that she was hearing, but soon Maddie was entranced, leaning forward with eager anticipation as she listened down the headset for the bursts of alien conversation. It was a strange thing to hear, in battle their voices were loud and terrifying. Here, however, they seemed inextricably calm. They spoke with a regimented respect, something none of them had ever shown her.
A few words stood out to her. Words like 'position', 'heading', 'enemy' and 'friendly' cropped up a lot as one would expect but for the most part, following the majority of the conversation was difficult and boring.
She quickly found herself losing interest, and glanced around lazily as she looked for something a little more interesting to do but all was quiet on the deck.
"Any luck?" came a voice from behind her.
Maddie was startled a little but recovered her composure well, realising as she turned, that the technician was looking over at her, yawning.
"Oh, uh, No." Maddie replied, "just a lot of dribbling"
The technician laughed, "I hear you. I was trying to work it all out by wrote but couldn't find anything interesting."
"You speak Sangheili?" Maddie asked, cocking her head to the side.
The technician smiled and shook his head before sipping a latte he'd been nursing. "Nah, I'm just a tech guy. I was noting down repeating patterns of speech." he said, looking around for something.
"And did you find anything?"
"No clue." he said, bluntly, "ah, there it is." he grinned, handing over a book filled with scribbles.
He handed her the book and Maddie scanned it over. There was an extensive list of words written with varying degrees of accuracy, each with a marker nearby. She recognised most of them but they were meaningless on their own unless they were looking for a word specifically. His scribblings were quite impressive for someone with no experience in alien linguistics and Maddie, realising that Drake and Katya had been right about her crippling lack of friends, smiled warmly at the man.
"This is good work..." she said, waiting for his name.
"Jamaal O'Byron, ma'am" he said, grinning triumphantly. "Can you use it? Will it be useful?"
"On its own it's not much use" she admitted, "but if I can get the resources, I need then we can analyse what's been said and when, which should give us a pretty clear picture of their fleet's priorities."
O'Byron seemed happy with that, and with renewed eagerness he pulled up a chair and sat beside her, helping jot down the words she heard and correct the errors on his document. This process continued for several hours as the pair lost themselves in their work.
"Is that all of them transcribed?" Maddie asked, stretching her arms in a long arc and yawning sweetly.
"Almost" he said, chewing the end of the pen.
Maddie frowned. It had felt like hours and they'd gone through what felt like the whole Sangheili language.
"It's this one" he said, pointing to a circled word in the logbook. "Sit-ah-dahm"
Maddie shook her head, "See-tah-dahm, the stressed syllable is the second one when you add a suffix."
"Mee is a suffix? I thought it was a name."
"Yes and no, it's a suffix for the names who have become recognised as warriors." she explained, pointing to each part of the word in turn.
"So, who is this? He's been mentioned a lot."
Maddie's brow furrowed. "I'm not sure, to be honest. I've heard it mentioned a few times on the live feed but it's never used in the right context to be a name."
"Maybe it's like a mash-up of different words?"
"mee is 'warrior' but Cita means 'egg'" she laughed.
The pair of them laughed for a moment before settling back into the rhythm of noting word frequencies and phrases. Most of it were jumbled status reports and errant garbage. Sometimes they would capture part of an order and relay it to Commander Sterling, who was always eager to learn whatever he could from the enemy.
"What if it's not split that way?" O'Byron asked, out of the blue.
"What are you talking about?" Maddie asked, absentmindedly, her pen tapping lazily to a tune in her head.
"Ci just cropped up again, and you've translated that as 'pre', as in before. Does 'Ta' mean anything?"
Maddie leaned forward so quickly that Jamaal almost jumped in surprise. Her eyes remained fixed on the paper as she scanned the dictionary in her mind.
"Ta is an insult. You would add it to the end of a word to accuse them of heresy." Maddie said, mostly to herself.
"Pre-heretic-warrior?" he asked her, putting the words together out loud. "What does that mean?"
It raised more questions than it solved. Maddie couldn't work out if it were referring to a group of rogue dissidents or to humans or to something else entirely. Without the resources she needed to decipher and record the conversations, she was in the dark about it all.
"Honestly, I can't really say just yet." she admitted with a sigh, "I've never come across it before."
"It's clearly religious" O'Byron said, stretching his legs under the desk, "reckon it's like a fundamentalist spat about the 'God's'?"
"It's not the word for Forerunner" Maddie replied, a note of dejection in her demeanour, "and I can't see them accusing the Gods of heresy" she added with a laugh.
"I guess not" O'Byron grinned, "should I include it in the report?"
Maddie smiled but shook her head, "No, it's just speculation for now, if you can print the rest of the report, I'll take it up to the Captain."
"Ah, top secret stuff, then." he said, jokingly.
"Oh absolutely, so if you tell anyone, I'll be ordered to shoot you." Maddie said, taking the fresh copy of the report in her hand and giving it a skim. "This is good work, Jammy," she said, condescendingly, "you really sold the need for more resources."
"Please don't call me that."
"Too late."
"How is it?"
"Because it has stuck."
He laughed loudly, "I don't think puns are very becoming of an ONI officer."
"Alright, alright" she said, throwing her hands up in mock surrender, "I'll stick with O'Byron, if formality is what you want."
He smiled, straightened and saluted, before handing the report to her. Maddie was thankful that he did not begrudge her for what she was or her rank. It was refreshing for someone to know who she was and not treat her differently for it. There was the Commander, who didn't seem to care that she was ONI. He seemed to respect her, which was definitely a first, but even he was wary of her intentions. There was Drake, who neither cared that she was ONI, nor mistrusted her intentions, but their relationship was about mentorship. He was like a father to her, much in the way that she hadn't wanted him to be. Unfortunately for Maddie, the events surrounding Skopje had created a bond between the two of them that was incredibly strong and Drake's treatment of her wasn't the same as the way he treated everyone else. Of course, there was Ms Roberts, who hadn't seemed to care about her rank but, even then, there was something off about her that had left Maddie feeling like there was an ulterior motive behind the way that the girl had engaged with her.
As she left for the bridge, Maddie found herself wondering if she would ever get the respect she wanted, in the way that she wanted, from all the people who mattered to her. She figured it was naive and foolish to want such a thing but it left her feeling a little disheartened as she stepped into the elevator and headed to the canteen for food. As usual, the whispers and conversation soured wherever she walked and Maddie was more than sharp enough to pick up words like 'spook' and 'viper' as she wandered the tables to the short line of sailors waiting for food.
Dinner was the usual fare for a warship. A shameful buffet of different cuisines and dietary requirements, it was utterly uncultured and made Maddie wince when she thought of the vendors on earth who would balk at the sheer efficiency of the food on offer. All of it was processed, all of it was functional, none of it had any style and no one who had made it really cared about it.
Maddie selected the greasiest burger she could find and stacked her plate with fries before wandering to the officers table and sitting at the empty end alone and far from the officers who laughed more quietly as she approached. The reaction was become standard by now but Maddie still resented the fact that it happened. Maddie reasoned that it was only her first mission as a fully-fledged ONI agent, and that she would soon forget about it completely but still, while the feeling remained, it was a difficult one to process.
The glances were fine though, Maddie still saw the caution and reverence in their eyes when they briefly met her own and she would feel at least somewhat bounded by that.
Until I remember that it is the reputation and the job that they respect, not me.
Maddie spent the rest of the hour lazily picking at her burger. She knew she needed her strength, and that she needed to eat if she wanted to get back in the fight but recent events, save for her encounter with O'Byron, had deeply soured her mood. She pushed her plate away abruptly and one of the other officers, a small woman with a taught face jumped a little. This amused the other officers a great deal and after remaining silent for the duration of the icy scowl Maddie shot them burst into laughter as she left the room.
The halls were busier now than they had been at any point previously and Maddie wondered if the Ides was being placed back into rotation. Maddie moved silkily through the crowd, which parted for her like the red sea. The lift to the bridge filled with a handful of officers that Maddie recognised. Evidently, they recognised her as well.
"Good afternoon Lieutenant-" Jessop began, before stalling in his tracks.
"Jessop, right?" Maddie asked, nonchalantly.
"Uh yes, Ma'am." He stuttered before awkwardly saluting.
Maddie bit on her lip in frustration, "at ease" she replied, wanting desperately to mention how differently he had reacted to her.
Martinez didn't even look at her.
"Feeling better, I hope?" Maddie asked them, pointedly.
If they were going to be cold and treat her like she was ONI, then Maddie might as well live up to that image in their heads.
"No more worries about why we're here or what we need to do?" She added, when they elected not to reply.
"Uh, no, Ma'am." Jessop said, quietly.
Thankfully for everyone involved, the elector began to slow and Maddie, wondering why she expected any different from the Swabbies, bit her lip and scowled as she was left alone to walk towards the bridge.
The bridge itself was running a lighter crew, consisting of the Ides of March's most senior bridge staff. The lack of bodies made the room oddly quiet and most turned to look at Maddie as she stepped inside and let the large sliding doors close behind her. Giving them her coldest ONI stare, she made her way towards the comms table, where several figures stood watching each other, talking animatedly about the fleet. Commander Sterling's head hung low, almost defeated until he glanced at Maddie. He held up a hand as Maddie snapped to attention.
"So, I have a final update for you all, regarding the ground situation on Meridian." Said the cool voice of Rear Admiral, "preparations are underway for a final push to secure the continent. OPERATION: DAYBREAK will consist of two phases. The first is a push to the Sun Plateau here. The second is a quick armoured charge at the Mountain with aerial deployment of Marines and another wave of ODST's."
"Sounds like a hail Mary, Ma'am." Came a gruff voice.
"If it works, our campaign will come to an end much quicker, Mossem."
"That's good to hear, Ma'am, are we to provide the troops again?" Mossem asked, his holographic face was stalwart and reserved.
"We are, yes."
Sterling frowned, "I don't have any ODST left" he noted, and a flurry of static, which Maddie assumed was some kind of stifled laugh, echoed through the receiver.
"Your role will remain pivotal. Captain Drake will likely need mission specific tasking for whatever God-forsaken operation he will be planning, and the Ides is more than up to it."
"Has anyone ever seen the Enigma?" Asked another Commander named Rok. "Have we worked out what they're up to?"
Maddie frowned but was utterly intrigued by the speculation that followed. All the captain's remained to gossip and speculate on her mission and Maddie found it amusing how wild some of the speculation was. Commander's Rok, Mallar and Thorne joked about a treasure hunt for a golden egg, which Maddie enjoyed given how close to the truth that it actually was. Mossem and a figure labelled 'Commander: Grissom, Royce (Lord)' made glib projections of genocide and biochemical war crimes.
Maddie frowned.
An actual Lord?
"What about you, Sterling, you've been awfully quiet." Mossem said, pointedly, "not in bed with Drake's two Lieutenants, are you?"
"Ha!" Grissom laughed loudly and haughtily, "those two are rabid animals, especially the Russian. Anyone stupid enough to go near them deserves what they get-"
"You know that we don't hand off HIGHCOM assets to ONI, regardless of whether we can act on them, Commander." The harsh voice of Read Admiral Alice Reitker said over the Comm, interrupting the commander's bickering.
"With respect, Ma'am, it's up to me what happens to it on my ship." He said, rising to his full height. Maddie forced herself not to gawk at him as he towered above most of the room and folded his arms defiantly. "The person I chose for the job and I have..." he glanced at Maddie, "an understanding. I have elected to trust her."
"Then you are as stupid and reckless as I thought" scoffed Lord Grissom with a voice so posh that Maddie wondered if it was even real. Sterling seemed to bristle with rage as his muscles tensed and his knuckles whitened. "You don't trust ONI officers, it's beyond basic." He added, twisting the knife.
"Grissom, can it." The Admiral said, "If Sterling wishes to risk his commission then he's either brave or stupid. Just make sure that we see the data so we might actually save some lives."
"Yes, Ma'am." Sterling conceded, nodding respectfully.
"Good. The consequences are on you, so I hope you know what you're doing. Now, if that's all, return to standard patrol. Admiral Harper is engaging the covenant in a few hours so we'll be without cover for a bit."
The Commander's saluted and clicked off the comm until only Sterling, Mallar, and Thorne remained behind.
"Royce's words are harsh, George, but he is right, you can't trust ONI" Commander Mallar stated. She spoke fondly of him, as though they had once been more than friends. Its annoyed Maddie for the briefest of moments and she reddened, pushing it away from her thoughts and focusing on the conversation in front of her.
"Yeah, we didn't fight for these commissions to just get separated now." Thorne added, jokingly.
"I am aware that it's a risk," Sterling replied, rubbing his eye's a little, "but I have a good feeling about this."
Mallar groaned, "the last time you had a good feeling about something we almost got kicked out of Luna."
Thorne nodded in agreement and Sterling smiled, warmly, placing his hands on the desk.
"It's not liked that time, I need you to trust me, Kiko" Sterling spoke resolutely, which made even Maddie feel reassured.
The Commander's friends nodded, bidding him farewell as Maddie watched them say goodbye from across the room, where she pretended as though she had not been privy to the whole conversation. Sterling remained still for a moment before taking a deep breath and pushing himself away from the comm table.
"Lt. Van Der Blind, you have the deck. Hold fast and keep an eye out, standard patrol."
"Aye, Sir!"
"Follow me, Harper."
Maddie followed closely, noting how he seemed frustrated, and didn't wish for him to revoke her access to the artifact. He entered his office and pointed to a seat opposite his desk, which she took without question.
Sterling poured himself a drink and offered one to Maddie. She shook her head, figuring that he might appreciate the fact that she wanted to remain professional. He sat down and stretched his long legs for a moment before recoiling like a spring into the perfect picture of a naval officer.
"So, have you got something for me?" He asked, getting straight to the point.
Maddie placed the dossier on the table and sort of shrugged at him. "It's promising, but without the resources I have on the Enigma, we can't make much sense of it."
"What is this?" Sterling asked, skipping through the pages.
"A frequency chart mostly. We figured the best thing to do was establish what sort of communications are passing through that transmitter."
"A lot of religious scripture?"
"Hard to say, Sir, there's religious mantras mentioned obviously but without my gear I can't translate fast enough to work out if it's the focus of these messages yet."
"Alright, alright, I get it. I'll send for Drake." He seemed resigned a little, as though he knew he was sprinting face first into a wall of trouble.
"Don't worry, Sir, I'll make sure you have something to go on."
He raised a curious brow at her.
"You know, to keep the Admiral off your back." She added, referring to the conversation she'd just heard.
Sterling smiled, almost painfully, before leaning back in his chair.
"I'll hold you to that." He said, finally.
Maddie nodded, knowing full well that she had no obligation to do it. She knew that ONI might even ask her to hold onto everything, in fact, and stop her from helping him at all. She was desperate to avoid that if she could, she'd given him her word and that should mean something. Grandpa Joey always said it was all that mattered with most people.
A man is only ever worth his word.
She didn't think it was the whole truth, there was a lot of value in lies and deception, value that would save her race from extinction. Maddie wondered for a moment if the Forerunners would agree with her or her grandfather. They were likely so wise that they needn't even consider the question. At least, that was the thought that Maddie clung to. What would it mean if they were less than God's? What if they were just as fallible and human as us? Maddie really didn't want to think about that. She took a deep breath and cast it away from her mind as she glanced longingly at Sterling's drink.
"Are you sure that you don't want some?" He asked, a wry grin on his face.
Maddie nodded enthusiastically, "please" she said, as Sterling stood and picked up a second glass.
"It's no problem, if I didn't need the distraction earlier, I definitely do now."
"Problems in the fleet?" She asked, watching him as he poured her a healthy double and slide the glass over to her. "Thanks." She added, sipping the liquid eagerly. The syrupy mix of sweets and charred oak pushed the thoughts of Drake's impending reprimand for Walsingham and her failure to secure the data from the CDS building and stop Erin further from her mind.
"Good, right?" Sterling said, noting the look of enjoyment sweeping her face.
Again, Maddie nodded, a smile broke out on her face as she swallowed. "Just what I needed." She replied, putting the glass down.
Sterling smiled as well, but it was a little forced. "There's nothing going on that I'm not used to by now, to answer your question." He sighed, "This deployment just has more history wrapped up in it than I would like."
"Ah, inter-fleet politics." Maddie suggested.
"Something like that, yes." He paused, "Kiko and Petr-" he corrected himself, "Commander's Mallar and Thorne, came through the academy with me. This was supposed to be our dream assignment."
"What went wrong?" Maddie asked, taking another sip and watching Sterling as his face screwed up for a moment.
"Family." He said bluntly, "Commander Grissom is my Brother-in-law."
Maddie snorted, "you're related to that guy?"
Sterling winced, "by marriage, yes" he reaffirmed.
This Maddie found incredibly amusing, "do the accent, then" she asked, knocking back more than a sip of the drink.
"I don't know what you're talking about" he said, suppressing a grin.
"I didn't go through all this ONI training just to fail to put two and two together, Sir. How long did it take to unlearn the accent?"
Sterling looked around the empty quarters for a moment, as though he expected someone to be there to mock him. "A while" he said, relaxing properly for the first time since they had met.
"I get why you did it" she laughed, "Swabbies definitely wouldn't have taken you seriously."
"No, it wasn't that" he replied, knocking back the remainder of his drink. "Damn it. If we're talking about this, I'm going to have to have something stronger."
"That bad is it?" Maddie teased, crossing one long leg over the other as she too began to relax.
"Oh, I think I've had too many advantages in life for it to be all bad. I just needed a reason to drink that wasn't depressing."
Maddie raised her nearly-empty glass and polished it off, "Amen, Sir" she grinned.
Sterling poured them both a drink that smelled distinctly stronger than the last one and leaned forward, eagerly. "Bella and Anton got married almost four years ago" he said, slipping into his normal accent. It was a miss-mash of some incredibly well-to-do Lord speech, and his slightly vaguer Captain's voice, "although I had been causing trouble for the family long before that, that was when my pariahship really began."
"Now, we're talking," Maddie shot back, curious as to what kind of trouble a young Lord might even get up to.
"Oh," he said, reddening, "it's relative, of course, high society has a lot less time for deviancy than the likes you" he joked.
Maddie almost spit out her drink, "excuse me?" She laughed, trying not to snort, "I've only been in like three fights, thank you very much."
Sterling bobbed his head as though he was considering something, "well I guess that mummy won't mind me talking to you. Just please, stay six feet away at all times."
"Jesus, was it that bad?" Maddie asked, taking a healthy gulp of Sterling's scotch.
He shook his head, "no, not quite that bad." He looked a little sheepish to Maddie though; she figured that it was closer to the truth than he was currently willing to admit. "Though she didn't approve of me dating a lawyer's daughter - too middle class for her liking."
"So it was that bad, huh."
"It was suffocating." He admitted, with a little shrug.
"So where is home?"
"Ballast."
That caught Maddie's attention. It was where Duggan had been from and it was where her mother now lived, and from what she had heard from Duggan, Sterling was a part of that crushing socio-political system.
"How could living the high life be so suffocating? I know most would do anything for a shot at it." She said casually.
"They would," Sterling agreed, "that's the problem. They do even worse to keep it, too, trust me."
"Ah, that Dickensian sort of thing."
"Yes, well I had my eyes opened in more ways than one and decided I wanted nothing more to do with it. I had already left for the academy to get away but the last time I was home I renounced my right to everything my family could offer me."
Maddie suspected it might have something to do with the uprising's and the civil unrest caused by Duggan's father but Sterling, and Maddie herself were in good spirits and she didn't really want to push it.
"Well, it's not like we don't get paid enough, is it?" She mused, "I don't remember the last time I paid for something on my chit."
"Yes, definitely a perk of the military life" he admitted, "not a scratch on what was on the table for me, though."
"Do you regret walking away from it all?" Maddie asked as she ran her thumb around the rim of the crystal glass she was holding.
"No. Never." He said firmly, "Morality is a bit like art-"
"You have to draw the line somewhere." Maddie interjected.
"Ah, a fan of Oscar Wilde, too, are we?" He asked, the smallest hint of a challenge lay in the way that he looked at her and Maddie knew instantly that it was bait.
"No," she smirked, "Chesterton."
Sterling looked a little shocked for a moment, before smiling gingerly.
"You are well-read, aren't you?"
"Not bad for my kind, am I?" She teased.
Sterling laughed, "Not bad at all, Harper" his eyes remained fixed on her as he finished the last of his drink
"Nah, in all honesty, I just got lucky that you picked a quote from an era I know." Maddie blushed, though she felt the alcohol might be getting to her, she wondered if it was a little more than that as the pair of them stared at each other for a moment before Sterling swallowed and spoke up.
"Humility doesn't suit you ONI types" he chuckled, "and I already know you're brilliant."
Maddie's heart sank a little at the mention of ONI, it brought everything back to her in a fell swoop. She tried to find positives in her situation, but silver linings weren't quite enough when everything you had worked towards for years had been put at risk.
"What would you prefer to hear from me? Arrogance? Ominous Silence?"
"More of a stereotype would be nice" he laughed, the slight tension abetting as laughter filled the room again.
"I'm making you uncomfortable, aren't I?" She teased.
"Yes, I feel dirty just for laughing with you," he said, exhaling deeply, "Kiko and Petr would kill me if they knew about this."
"Well, I won't tell if you won't. If there's one thing you can trust ONI to do, it's keep a secret."
"I suppose that's true," he grinned.
A chime sounded and Sterling frowned, leaning forward.
"What's wrong?" Maddie asked, putting her glass down.
"Nothing, it's just the Enigma. Captain Drake said he needs to speak with you urgently."
Maddie swallowed, and cursed her rotten luck.
It'll be fine, Mads, it'll be fine.
Hopefully.