VIII: Personas
"Shadows Collide"
Wichita
The interior of the Pelican had grown cold to comingle with the eerie silence that had befallen it. Kelly stood close to the door of the cockpit, the open crate of war-spoils just out of sight next to her. Trapped within a prison of MJOLNIR armor, the shining pauldron the color of a glazed smelterlight loosely housed the glow from the stark day that warped in from the open ramp of the vessel. With the foreign armor in hand, Kelly continued to hold up her temporary trophy, her sights set not on what she had just claimed, but of its newly unveiled recipient across from her.
A battleworn Furan seemed to ripple and sigh closer to the ramp of the ship. Her eyes floated between the armor piece and the lobed visor of the Spartan that held it. She had not tensed her body, which Kelly could plainly observe, but there was a distinct wariness to the Elite that hinted that the situation could be set off at any time.
Kelly, for her part, kept completely still. There was no reason to think that this could devolve into violence, but after this unfortunate bit of truth had been revealed to her, her trust in the Elite had taken a hefty hit. Evidentially, Furan had placed her own need-to-know basis upon the Spartan. Kelly was used to being in the dark on missions—in some cases, it was practically a staple of the job—but the first chip in the armor of her certitude in the Elite could serve as a stepping stone to a full-on erosion of that trust. How was she to know, after today, that there was not anything else that Furan was keeping from her? It did not matter how outlandish her own imagination could get with conjuring up reasons for Furan to stay silent—the seed had been planted in her mind that the Elite could not be trusted, which was the whole problem.
Immediately, Kelly began thinking of how she would go about subduing the Elite if the worst came to pass for whatever reason. Furan's weapons were underpowered against the Spartan's shields and armor, but her natural strength could still be more than a match for MJOLNIR armor. Furan would try to close the gap between them as quickly as possible, Kelly figured. The Spartan knew that reducing the effectiveness of her primary weapon—her shotgun—would be paramount in the Elite's mind. Therefore, it would have to resort to fisticuffs, which meant that the interior of the Pelican was going to wind up in quite the sorry state when the two eventually went at it—
Her train of thought was temporarily derailed when she noticed Furan's stance soften a bit. Not an unconscious action, but a deliberate signal.
"Curious," the Shipmaster said.
Kelly resisted the urge to tilt her head. This wasn't the sort of reaction she had been expecting from the Elite.
"Yes?" she pried.
"Just noting out loud. I've yet to determine if you think all this warrants a retaliatory response."
The Spartan lowered her arm, but did not let go of the pauldron. Hope was a commodity worth its weight in dirt in her light of work, yet she still retained a modest balance. "It seems that depends on you."
The Elite gave a conciliatory nod of the head. "Perhaps a gesture of good faith, then."
Furan reached behind her and Kelly almost went for her weapon, but held off at the last moment when she saw that Furan was now holding her plasma weapon with her fingers positioned near the pistol's energy emitter—a nonthreatening gesture. She watched as the Elite slowly bent down, all while they did not dare to take their eyes off the other, and gently laid the weapon down on the floor between them. Moments later, the SMG that Kelly had loaned the Elite was placed alongside it upon the floor of the Pelican.
A reprieve, for now, Kelly thought. But she allowed herself to relax a fraction. One less threat to worry about was welcome in any form. And, Furan's demonstration was indeed a good sign—the fact that the Elite went out of her way to avoid further violence indicated that perhaps there was the possibility of a swift resolution to this situation.
She realized that she could actively participate in getting closer to that resolution. After all, what was the harm? Kelly stepped forward and held her arm out, offering the pauldron in an open hand. Furan took the object, her slender fingers lightly wrapping around it before spiriting it from the Spartan's grip. Kelly watched as Furan turned the armor piece over and over in her hands, inspecting it like it was a precious gemstone. The Elite was tracing faint markings etched in the interior of the plating before she cradled the pauldron in both hands in front of her.
"I'd imagine you must have questions," Furan said after a beat.
"A fool would take this scene at face value," Kelly said. "A Shipmaster, then? Was there a reason you had not brought this up to me before? Was I supposed to hopefully never find out?"
Furan's mandibles rippled in a smile and she looked down, examining the armor again. "Many questions, as I suspected."
"Do they have answers?"
Now the Elite looked back up. "Would it please you to learn that it was not some malicious objective in which I… 'neglected' to disclose my rank to you? Would you believe that I simply valued my relative anonymity while in your custody? I would be surprised if you could not understand—a Shipmaster paired with a tentative ally, never allowed a moment's pause for safety." She pointed at Kelly. "If you were in my position, would not you seek to downplay your perceived importance?"
Kelly did not think that she would ever think there would be such a situation in which that would happen to her. Spartans typically had no reason to downplay anything, plus it was difficult to hide the fact that they were Spartans, considering the physical differences between them and unaltered humans. Even to the untrained eye, the obvious contrasts between her and a bog-standard Marine were immense.
Though, if she were to humor this line of thinking further, she had never once heard of a Spartan being taken into custody by a Covenant race. Unless they were gathering bodies for public executions.
Still, she allowed a small nod. "Point taken."
"So, you do understand," Furan said. "And even being solely around you this whole time, would you not expect that such a revelation would cause you to place additional consternation upon me? Lowering your guard comes quickly with the thinking that you're around a mere footsoldier, no? But next to a warrior allowed to exercise a little more judgment in their standing, and that of others… your caution tends to spring back up. But it appears you require a little more assuagement, Spartan. Until now, I never gave you any reason to think that I had any intention of dishonoring the agreement I made with you."
"That was then. This is now."
"Quite true. Perhaps the only question remaining is what is going to happen afterwards?"
Kelly straightened. "Well, we have time. I suppose we'll both have our answer at the end of the day. Don't you think?"
Furan was slow to respond, almost as if she were now trying to gauge the hidden danger that lurked between the two soldiers.
Pointing at the pauldron still in Furan's hands, Kelly kept the conversation going. "The armor. It was granted to you, wasn't it? Not a family heirloom?"
Absentmindedly, the Elite acknowledged the question with a distant nod. "Sangheili typically dissociate any sort of personal attachments to weapons or armor. To us, they're mere tools. Just the minimum amount of equipment required to enable us to spill the blood of the enemy. If a weapon or armor piece gets damaged, it gets replaced. The warrior is the one who gives legend to his tools, not the other way around. Very rarely do Sangheili risk something in the service of an object. For an object will only stay an object unless acted upon by a bearer of great importance. The history will remain with the bearer, while the object can only act as a proxy."
The gigantic soldier shifted within her MJOLNIR armor. Kelly folded her arms across her chest as she listened to Furan. The Elite's tone was gentle. Soothing, even. She spoke of traditions and superstitions with a wistful edge, as though she was dredging up memories of times long past. Kelly almost had the thought to conjure up her own memories of home, but all that was there was a great white fog. An unbreakable mist that parasitically clung to her mind, as though sections of her brain had been cauterized away.
"And yet," Kelly said after there was a lull in the discussion, "you deliberately sought this armor out."
The Elite delicately set the pauldron atop the topmost crate in the closest stack next to her. The armor shone dully, a square window of near-white loping gently in the corner of its reflective face.
"I would be surprised if it escaped your notice on the slant Sangheili society is placed under," Furan slowly looked towards Kelly. "A very… patriarchal society."
"I'm well aware," Kelly acknowledged.
"Then you're also aware of the fact that Thel 'Vadam and his Swords of Sanghelios recently challenged that notion from their open invitation that they made to their allied keeps. The males may have always served as warriors, but it was the females that ran the households, controlled the territory, squabbled in the minutia of politics on their behalf. The acceptance, or to put it more simply, the welcoming of willing females to make their larger marks upon the saga wall was a chance that many of us were not keen on letting slip by."
The Elite crossed her arms, eyes tipping upwards in mirth as though she remembered a joke told long ago.
"The choice was a simple one for me. Train as a warrior, or spend a life looking after clutches in some far-away keep. Hah! Who would ever spring for the latter?"
Furan placed a hand upon the pauldron, as delicately as if she were caressing an egg.
"This," she continued, "is my only proof of my station. It is the first splinter in my clan's wall—ushering in an era where my name would inspire the others in my keep to follow. The childlings of my keep will be able to witness my name, knowing that I was a warrior of Sanghelios, and for the first time, free. Free to forge my own path instead of having it dictated to me. Free in a sense that they had not known before."
The more that Furan spoke, the more Kelly felt like she was looking into an inverse mirror. She had never chosen to be a Spartan, to be sure, but neither could she think of any reason to leave the life. Her being a soldier had all come down to the impassive casualness of fate and the will of others. Furan, on the other hand, willingly stepped into a station that had previously been locked to her, fully aware of the consequences of what such a choice would lead to. Ostensibly, those choices and the choices of others, had all culminated in this moment, where a soldier of conscription and a soldier of preference now bore witness to one another on this sad little world in some oft-forgotten corner of the galaxy.
Kelly shifted her stance. "Yet it sounds like you remain in service to the armor. That you're apprehensive that your mere name on a saga wall could function as the embodiment of your legacy."
"The armor is meaningless, yet it means everything. It is who I am, Spartan. It may not have been made for me, but it is mine. It is the very archetype of what I had to do to get to where I am now. For it is no greater proof of my effort than I could imagine. That… that is why I seek it."
At a base level, Kelly could understand the very logic that had pieced itself together in Furan's mind, though she could not fundamentally place herself directly into the alien's shoes, so to speak. To the Spartan, MJOLNIR armor was an impersonal—albeit indispensable—tool that carried no real value outside of its direct usage. It seemed she was of a mind with how the Elites treated their equipment, but with Furan they were at a crossroads. Kelly could not simply fathom making personal decisions all for the treatment or obtaining of something as conceivably trivial as MJOLNIR armor—if a part of her armor was damaged, it was replaced with a casual dispassion. She also had no aspirations to build a legacy, especially not one centered around the weaponry she donned herself with. A legacy just meant more medals and decorative ribbons taking up real estate upon her uniforms. Colored frippery, in her opinion. There was no reason for her to be clout-chasing.
It was clear that this was a point that neither of them were going to come to an agreement on. Kelly figured she could just add it to the pile of incongruencies that had marred the relationship between the two species.
Furan then reached to her belt and withdrew a small holo-disc. Kelly had seen devices like this in action before—the Covenant could use them to connect to the battlenet and project stored information in an encrypted format. She watched as Furan interfaced with the device and quickly spooled up a series of images once the disc had gained a connection.
"Satellites in the area are working. Good," Furan said to herself. She then twisted her wrist and swept her fingers in a complex gesture. A hologram of a Covenant corvette, an Intrusion-class, now emitted over the disc, slowly turning in place. "The Circumscribed Providence. My ship. A crew of fourteen and a complement of two dozen Sangheili warriors. Lightly armed, but a worthy enough vessel."
Kelly examined the rotating image for a moment. "A stealth ship. Similar to a prowler, but yours had active camouflage capabilities."
"Indeed, it did. Though, the Providence was not the most formidable of ships in our fleet. I believe even a ship such as the one we travel on could destroy it with a few well-placed missile strikes. A Shipmaster does not get to choose the ship that they command—I've long suspected that my assignment to the Providence was a backhanded responsibility. There are so few female Shipmasters in the fleet even now, that the posts upon the larger dreadnoughts or even battle cruisers might be seen as unfit for someone of my… background."
That was understandable, Kelly figured. Though she had never experienced such overt sexism before in her career, the Sangheili's passion for war had nearly been monopolized by the male side of the race. There were bound to be several barriers for a female to hurdle that a much less qualified male Sangheili would easily coast over.
"Regardless," Furan continued, "I was determined to make my mark with the Providence. It was not the worthiest of ships to house warriors, but the warriors themselves I vowed to make worthy. Throughout several campaigns, I accomplished just that. My crew grew in confidence in their abilities. I led them to victory many times, and with each consecutive success their trust in me grew."
The holoimage of the corvette had now been replaced by a still of a silver-suited Shipmaster—presumably Furan—standing atop a floating platform while a small rabble of armored Elites were raising their arms in a victory pose, a salute to the woman captaining them.
"What kind of campaigns?" Kelly asked, genuinely curious.
The Elite gave a flowing chuckle. "You mean, did I set my crew against humans or against my own traitorous kind?"
Kelly didn't respond, but Furan gave a nudge of her head that approximated a shrug.
"My appointment coincided with the advent of the Blooding Years, so any hostilities against humans would have to wait. But the Providence helped contribute to several anti-ship missions, whether it was through deep-cover reconnaissance, or acting as support to boarding parties against rogue Sangheili factions. Our success rate was among the highest in the flotilla to which my ship belonged. Soon, I had garnered the reputation of being a Shipmaster that placed more value towards the lives of my subordinates than most. A name soon spread around in certain circles—the Pious Shipmaster—though whether this was meant to be an insult or a compliment, I never truly figured it out. I did enjoy the recognition, I will admit, but my entire intention was to cohabit the Sangheili mantra of destroying our enemies at any cost while simultaneously trying to reduce casualties with the same amount of zeal. For that, they called me 'Pious.' Rather strange, wouldn't you agree?"
Truthfully, Kelly found the descriptor of "pious" being assigned to an Elite to be a complete dichotomy, for she could imagine that no member of that race could even come close to inheriting such a label deservedly.
"Sounds like you perhaps co-opted a few of humanity's tactics throughout your experience," Kelly noted. "Throwing waves of bodies at a problem was deemed to be an ineffective tactic on our side centuries ago."
Furan nodded. "There is merit to utilizing the strengths of other races when it suits your advantage."
"Did your luck run out? You did use the past-tense when describing the Providence. Was there a flaw in the strategy?"
The Elite broke the gaze she had been holding for so long. She tapped her fingers against her thigh, now looking out to the bright opening of the Pelican, where the yellow of the day washed out any shadows and details that resided just beyond the extended ramp.
"My… hesitancy to conform to the standard doctrine may have been the culprit of my downfall."
"How so?"
"It started in the sector where our paths first crossed. Not just our paths, but the paths of your Spartans, too. We had received word that a Banished fleet was going to be passing through the area. The Providence was sent out to perform recon ahead of them. The only problem was, the quickest route to the projected path of the Banished fleet took us through Kig-Yar territory. We had the option of either traveling around it, which would take a long time and could risk us losing our quarry, or we could head through it and take our chances with the Kig-Yar."
The trepidation in the Elite's dilemma was understandable. The Kig-Yar were perhaps the most duplicitous of the Covenant races—instead of being driven by blind faith like the Prophets, or easily duped into servitude like the Grunts, the Kig-Yar (or Jackals in human parlance) only acted on the Covenant's behalf because they were paid to do so. Personal profit was the only true factor that motivated a Kig-Yar, and their past relationship with the Covenant was comfortably forgotten if some individual gain was to be made.
"You took the second option, I take it," Kelly said.
"Yes," Furan said. "But an Intrusion-class corvette can only remain in Kig-Yar space for so long before they discover it. So, I preemptively made contact with the closest Kig-Yar patrol and offered a tribute in exchange for safe passage through their territory."
"Smart."
"So it seemed. However, Kig-Yar are rather untrustworthy and they requested that I come alone to offer them the tribute. This was far from unusual as Kig-Yar had demonstrated such paranoia in the past. I didn't want to waste time arguing over what I deemed were semantics, so I loaded up a small ship and left my crew back in the Providence while I headed out to meet their shipmistress."
"I think I know what happens to your ship in the meantime."
"You are perhaps right. While meeting with the Kig-Yar, I had no reason to believe that anything was going awry in my absence. Between myself and the Kig-Yar delegation, business was being conducted normally: we were exchanging quite the number of threats between ourselves, along with the occasional insult, but the Kig-Yar soon settled the matter by accepting the tribute I had brought them. I was allowed back into my shuttle and went on my way without any further provocation."
Kelly studied Furan. Hidden, she sucked in a breath.
"And when you docked back at your ship?"
The Elite tried to conceal a shudder. There was an uneasiness that was now allowed to intrude within her eyes, like a veil had been peeled back to reveal the unsavory character that had been waiting all this time to show itself.
"A… massacre…" she whispered, her voice almost cracking.
Kelly was frozen as she listened, the whistling of wind just outside the Pelican acting as an anchor to her reality.
"My crew… the warriors that had led into battle dozens of times… were lying on the deck in pieces. Blood had stained every wall. Some of my warriors had been disemboweled and… positioned in such a fashion that acted as a very indignity to the lives they had led. Some had their limbs and… other body parts… stuffed into the mouths of their severed heads. Others had been strangled with their own intestines. Until that moment… I could have never have imagined such ruthlessness to be borne from a human's will."
Phaedra's work, Kelly thought, remembering the people down in the mines of Sonus V. How they had been torn apart and their corpses stuffed into a room no larger than a storage container like animals.
She carefully observed the behavior of the Elite. This was the first time that she had seen Furan behave in a manner that was not a shrouded anger, but an almost blistering anguish. The deaths of her crew clearly hung about the Elite like a heavy noose, each one adding to the weight that constricted around her neck, a reminder of how she had failed each and every one of them.
"The Spartans had left evidence behind?" Kelly asked. "They were content to simply let the ship drift rather than destroy it?"
"Perhaps they were satisfied with the thought of it being a relic of their conquest," Furan hypothesized, a bitter edge to her voice continuing to linger. "They must have determined that the whole of the crew had been located aboard the Providence, for there were no signs of their presence left when I returned. The Spartans had tried to siphon or wipe the contents of the corvette's crystal drive—one or the other—and left sections of the database corrupted. What they failed to delete, though, was the security footage and the readings of their ship's drive plume. The parlay between me and the Kig-Yar was still in effect, so I did what anyone would do in that situation: I followed the trail to the nearby planet, in the hopes of securing my revenge."
Kelly looked towards the cockpit door, as though she was momentarily lost in thought. "And we both know how that turned out."
"Rather poorly," the Elite acknowledged. "I had been too hasty in my pursuit. Landed too close to their position for them to notice my arrival. I tried to conceal myself upon a slope of volcanic glass, but their sniper drew on me before I could get a good shot off. The rest, you already know. The Spartans stripped me and probably would have killed me if the Banished hadn't showed up. A long war column, filled with tanks and personnel, had noticed the humans on the ridge above them and opened fire. I can still recall the whistle of Wraith motors, turning the landscape to glass before me, electricity arcing off the plasma-infused globules. The Spartans, having a more worthy foe to attack, turned their attention to the Banished instead of finishing me off, allowing me to escape. For a few days, I stumbled across the wasteland until I came across the mining colony—the Banished caught up to me then and proved to be more magnanimous than the Spartans. Though, they did jail me in an underground pit of torment, so perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to dole out praise on their behalf."
They continued to exist in their still poises, each one looking upon the other as through there was still one last duplicitous issue to rise up. There was still time for Kelly to secure any doubts—the shotgun on her back would see to that. But as quickly as the notion came, it was discarded. Senseless murder was for the undisciplined and the criminal. It did not befit a Spartan.
It should not befit a Spartan.
Besides, for what conceivable purpose could she possibly reckon with herself that Furan would deserve such a response? Her being an Elite was no excuse—mere existence could not merit punishment. Could she even stoop to be so hypocritical in accusing Furan of withholding secrets when she was doing the exact same thing herself?
"I suppose you must be thinking," Furan said, "that my hatred for those who killed my crew could eventually spill over into a broader animosity. One perhaps focused on you, even."
"The thought had crossed my mind," the Spartan said evenly, alert signs blinking in her head.
The Elite rasped a laugh as though as she could read Kelly's thoughts. "And you have the gall to consider Sangheili dogmatic." She studied the Spartan. "Did you ever wonder who among the two of us feels their cause to be more just? Did you even consider it?"
"I wasn't aware a competition was in play," Kelly growled.
"We've been set on this path by two very different forces, Spartan. I draw my duty from the blood vengeance that I have decreed upon myself. You are driven by the issuance of an order and you comply without question. Side by side, do you think you feel that you're the more justified warrior here?"
Kelly did not bother in humoring the Elite with an answer. She was not in the mood to talk philosophy in their duty as soldiers. Not today, at least. After being shot, nearly set ablaze, and almost drowned in the span of fifteen minutes, Kelly had no inclination to try and ward off that adrenaline rush by trying to justify her own existence with an alien she would have happily shot ten years ago on the spot, no questions asked.
Of course, the Elite's own reason had been set up in a precarious position. She just didn't know it yet. But Kelly knew. All the pieces had yet to fall into place for Furan, the sort of intuition that came with Kelly's experience, not strictly from her participation as a Spartan.
Kelly just knew, even right there in that Pelican, that her purpose for being on this mission, her very existence that had gotten her to this point, had all been for a reason both quantifiable and justified. It had all stemmed from actions she had made years and years ago, culminating from words shared, movements made, and indiscriminate actions seemingly benign upon first consideration. There was a reason for all of this coming to pass, one that she had warily known, deep in some part of her subconscious, that the final reckoning was in the process of imparting itself upon her.
And Furan knew exactly none of all that.
The Elite gave a miffed expression to the Spartan's silence. She probably assumed that Kelly was being obstinate on purpose. Correctly guessing that their conversation had come to a close, Furan finally headed over to inspect the crate where Kelly had first found the armor pieces. She dug around in the crate and lifted up a partial Ultra-class battle harness. Furan set the pieces upon the floor as she got them out.
Almost immediately, it became apparent that there was a problem. Furan had laid out half of a thoracic cage and two shoulder pauldrons, but that was it as far as what the Elite could dredge up. There was no helmet, no leg armor, no wrist armor, and no boots. It was obvious that the suit of armor remained woefully incomplete.
Furan cursed and hastily opened the next crate. "Where is it? Where is it?!" she was saying over and over. The first crate was filled with more ammo and MREs. Enraged, the Elite toppled the crate over, spilling its contents onto the floor of the Pelican's bay with a tremendous crash, and hurled open the top to the container below it, only to find more of the same inside. At some point, Furan was so incensed that she took to chucking the containers outside, down the ramp, where they practically flew apart and rolled where they hit the ground.
As the Elite practically threw herself about the interior of the ship in a rage, Kelly was more than content to just step to the side and let her figure things out on her own. She stood near the cockpit door, hands folded in front of her, as she watched Furan decimate the stacks of crates in her futile search for the remainder of the armor.
Eventually, Furan stood panting in the Pelican, with only the majority of the top half of her armor collected at her feet. "Not here…" she rasped. "It's not here…"
Kelly now stepped forward and surveyed the damage. "Split amongst themselves, more than likely. Perhaps to be used as something to barter with on the black markets, as traditional means of commerce are now closed to them."
Furan whirled to face Kelly as if the Spartan had just said something deeply insulting. Her eyes were wide with fury. "If they even dared to sell my armor—"
"We can only find that out by keeping to the course that has been set," Kelly assured. "The trail is still there for us. We just need to continue to follow it. If we find the rest of Phoenix, we find your armor too. We've gotten this far, haven't we? It's more than what you started with, at the very least."
The Elite gave a furtive nod, very distant. "True… true…" She was gripped with such an indignant anger that she was almost quivering.
"Just wait outside. I'll grab the Pelican's drive and we'll bivouac to the Nighthawk once we set this thing to detonate."
Still in a dark cloud, Furan gathered up the pieces of her armor that she had been able to retrieve and stomped out of the ship. Kelly waited until the Elite had gone outside before she turned to enter the door that led to the cockpit.
Before she did that, something caught her eye upon the closest crate to the door. She knelt down and ran a finger near the bottom of the container. A smear of blackened soil had been left upon the crate—a green line upon the container was now etched where Kelly's finger had scraped across it, the brighter colors now revealed below.
"Hmm," Kelly just said.
She located a small sterile pouch on her belt and dutifully knocked some of the detritus that marred her finger into it. A sprinkling of the dirt now settled at the bottom of the bag. She didn't think this soil had come from Wichita, given that there was a lack of either UNSC or Insurrectionist presence that they knew of on this world. If the dirt was non-native to this planet, perhaps it could be used to help pinpoint where Phoenix had been next. It was a long shot, but Kelly was not keen on discounting any lead that came her way, no matter how unorthodox it was.
The Spartan then stood up, unceremoniously kicked the crate out of the way, and then entered the cockpit—the armored warrior en route to the spoils of her conquest. At the same time, she activated the Nighthawk's remote beacon, giving out the electronic all-clear signal for Armitage to remote-pilot the ship their way.
Pickup in twenty minutes. It would be good to get off this rock.
UNSC Nighthawk
Hours later…
The Pelican's black box had seen better days. It was a container roughly the size of an AR ammo crate, colored in heat-resistant bright orange paint. It was designed to be shockproof as well as waterproof, but that could only hold up to so much force. As it stood, the black box was now sitting on Armitage's holopedestal in the Nighthawk, a morass of ripped-out wires trailing from where it had been hastily "disconnected" from the rest of the ship. The container was battered in several places, too, but the damage was irregular and did not show signs of wear through turbulence or other shock anomalies.
Armitage was circling around the object that was now occupying almost half the space his projected avatar had to stand. He took special interest in the rather slapdash job in which the wires had been sheared. "Something tells me this was in better condition a few hours ago," he said.
Kelly was standing next to the holopedestal on the bridge, continuing to wear her full armor. Furan was elsewhere on the ship, somewhere belowdecks, more than likely stewing over the fact that the missing pieces of her armor were likely scattered across the galaxy as part of the worst scavenger hunt of all time. The cockpit canopy outside showed the curvature of Wichita—they were back in orbit above the planet.
"I know, it's strange," the Spartan said nonchalantly.
She did not offer the complete story. The black box had actually been wedged deep near the tail end of the Pelican. Kelly didn't have the proper tools handy to extricate it at the time, so she had settled for good old MJOLNIR-enhanced strength to rip the black box out from its moorings. Unsurprisingly, that had resulted in the various dents in the container that Armitage was now inspecting.
The AI gave Kelly a furtive look, indicating that he was not completely buying her feigned ignorance, but moved past it regardless.
He opened a digital bridge between the Nighthawk's systems after creating a copy of the OS to create a developer instance that would not be connected to the UNSC system, essentially giving himself a little environment to play in. Too many hacking incidents had been caused in the past by technologically-inept morons just plugging in foreign drives into the production environments willy-nilly. From there, he could isolate the data in the black box, and if it was carrying any viruses or malicious code, they would only be able to run inside of the copied system, unable to link any sensitive databases.
"The drives inside are intact, though there are markers where the data has been deleted," Armitage said after he slaved the black box to the developer instance. "Gaps in file sequencing, areas where folders jump from reading '10a-1102' to '10a-1154'. Things like that."
"Any of that data recoverable?"
Armitage shook his head. "Not in its current state. Whoever went over these drives was thorough and knew how to sterilize data quite well. But," he added, "they didn't completely scrub their telemetry data. We can use this to start."
On a bank of digital viewscreens, Kelly watched as several different graphical and textural presentations popped up—the data being drawn from the black box. Line graphs in real-time etched out metrics for heading, relative altitude, and velocity next to one another—it all reminded Kelly of the interface seismic sensors used to detect earthquakes. A table down below showed spoiler/flap positioning as well as a magnetic positioning metric. Digital replicas of the Pelican's instrumentation also popped up—a reproduction of the cockpit now displayed before her. There was even an animation of a Pelican that positioned its relative galactic position, though the quality itself was rather low-tech and the overall effect was somewhat cheesy.
While Armitage was doing that, Kelly headed over to the opposite side of the holopedestal and tapped at a control—a small tray popped out. She brought out the soil sample she had collected and gently shook the contents into the tray. She then pushed it closed with a finger.
The forensic analyzer whirred as it began running tests on the sample. It was sending packets of data to the HUD in Kelly's helmet, indicating which of the multi-level tests were being run and their progress. The analyzer would take the soil and run common tests to determine common values such as resistance, pH level, calcium carbonate content, cohesive soil density, moisture, shear strength, including a color comparison using a Munsell Chart. The analyzer would take the results and use them to compare against other soil samples captured on other planets around the galaxy—from what the readout in Kelly's HUD was indicating, the entire suite of tests would be completed in roughly five minutes.
Armitage further partitioned the outliers from the dataset he had just scrubbed and transferred that over to a staging instance before sending the copied black box data over to the Nighthawk's main database in chunks to prevent any intruding code from activating. It was perhaps a demonstration of too much caution, but it was better to run a convoluted check than be too hasty and pay the price for it.
The double-checked data was now being run against the revised galactic positions in the Nighthawk's system. Multi-colored markers sporadically flared and died upon a mock map of the galaxy, some only lasting for milliseconds at a time—Armitage was trying to pinpoint the exact location of where Rina's Pelican had gone to.
A smart AI could accomplish many things, but even they had limits when up against a severe constraint with a finite amount of data. Conclusions could only be made in confidence if there was enough documentation to support it, and in this case, the wiped black box data did not contain that particular threshold.
Eventually, Armitage had managed to filter out all of the junk data so that it could be translated into a visual result. The galaxy map now had a highlighted quadrant upon it—the AI zoomed in on the location.
"Last known flight path came from the Perseus Arm, in the Inner Colonies," he said. "Afraid that's all the black box is going to give us. Like I said, Phoenix was quite thorough."
A winking icon in Kelly's HUD indicated that the soil analysis was complete. She asked Armitage if that could narrow down the search projections.
"Wait one," the AI said. The avatar of the bald and cloaked man crossed his arms, his eyes flashing ultraviolet for just a moment. "Fortuitous, indeed," he murmured after a beat.
"Yes?" Kelly pressed.
"There's a match on one of the worlds inside of the projected target area." The map immediately dove in further to reveal a planet shrouded by toxic-looking brown clouds. "All other extrapolated targets cannot be supported by the soil analysis. It looks like this is our next stop."
"This is… Odarferr," Kelly read the planet's description on the nearby terminal, which came with its own dossier. "Seems there's been a protracted conflict there that's been occurring there for almost a year. Entrenched positions on both sides between UNSC forces and Banished."
"Odarferr's a bit out of the way of the fleet's main operations," Armitage noted. "Would make sense that they would be entrenched. Supply chains are stretched thin in that area, so they would have to make do with the equipment they had on-hand."
"The situation's a bit similar to the one we saw on Vona, but this is the first instance we've got of Phoenix making a direct stop on a world with a UNSC-embedded conflict," Kelly noted. "I wonder, if this data's accurate, if Rina or any one of the group's members came to Odarferr because of the conflict." She gave a grunt of slight frustration. "Too many suppositions, not enough proof."
Armitage's avatar tilted his head and crossed his arms. "Can you think of a reason why Phoenix Unit would be attracted to a warzone?"
"I hope to find that out down there. All we've seen from them until now is that they previously had an interest in out of the way colonies. As it stands, I have no idea."
"There's one connection that can be made, you know."
"What's that?"
"Battlefields are the natural home of a Spartan. Perhaps someone in the Phoenix Unit was hit by nostalgia?"
Kelly thought for a moment and shook her head. She turned to face the canopy, where the dark side of Wichita was beginning to creep along the world like a rising blanket, shrouding the pearl-like surface in a featureless void. "It's a home that continually shuns us. There is no nostalgia to be had, even for a Spartan. If Phaedra or anyone else in Phoenix chose to go to Odarferr because of there being a prolonged war on its surface, then they had obviously seen an opportunity of some sort."
"An opportunity to do what?" Armitage asked, genuinely curious. "To commit another massacre?"
The Spartan did not turn back around. She just continued to watch the planet below as it was swallowed up by the darkness and the percolating stars hung in the air like frozen drops of liquid, infinitely distinguishable in their own perfect design within the imperfect maze of spacetime and dimensionality.
"I have no idea," she said again.
Armitage waited until Kelly had departed off the bridge before he began the process of cycling down his subroutines. He set an arbitrary decibel threshold and it was only when the footsteps of the Spartan had receded below that limit did he proceed to partition his memory runtimes.
First, he spun up several dummy instances that filtered and masked the new subroutines he was about to run. He disguised many of them as subsystems for the Nighthawk, surrounding himself in a virtual cage of safe data that would be used to mask his approach. He wasn't particularly concerned about anyone snooping on his activities, but it paid to be thorough—Kelly was a Spartan and therefore a technical genius, but even she would be limited in squaring off against a smart-AI's sophisticated firewalls. And Armitage did not even consider Furan to be a threat, unless the Elite somehow had detailed knowledge in accessing human computing system, which the AI very much doubted.
This had the effect of making it look like Armitage was embedded deep in his own private virtual sphere, but he was merely conjuring infinite loops of data and code lines that went nowhere. From there, he entered an old set of login credentials he had been provided—the same level as an admiral, so he had been informed—and logged into the command level of the database through the Nighthawk itself. The software that ran the UNSC was supposed to be secure to Level 5 specifications, but Armitage and every tech expert knew there were bugs and trapdoors that had been placed all over the system. Some were there on accident. Others had been placed deliberately. Most of the time, these faults weren't malicious code built in by the designers. Not completely. They were just insurance for the future, whatever that would turn out to be.
Humans could not overcome their own nature to add a personal stamp to their work. Virtual trapdoors were the perfect method for one to leave a signature. Enter the right code and all of the systems of a database opened to them. It was an easy way for engineers to pierce the digital strata and to fix errors, like in case someone lost their password and logged themselves out. Or, it could be considered as the most obscure kind of signature one could imagine—the highest form of bathroom graffiti.
Armitage knew a valuable resource when he saw it. The imperfection of humans to fall prey to their own self-interest proved to be a blessing in disguise. He had figured out many of these trapdoors a long while back. Knowledge of them had even been programmed in him upon his very creation. He knew where to navigate through the endless array of menus and submenus, rendering him able to slip in and hide objects at any level at any time. One could say the entirety of the UNSC's database was at his very whim.
He had access to the code listings to find the object he needed, but Armitage ignored it. He knew where he had stashed it last. His handlers had been clear that he needed to have access to it at all times. He was their ace in the hole, and it would not do to leave him alone with any sort of system and not have its secrets revealed to him. The AI considered it a personal insult whenever a coded bypass was in a system he inhabited without his knowledge—for every one that passed under his gaze was evidence of his blindness, and that would never do.
Deep within a meaningless supply chain report on ACV comparisons for frigate coolant replacements by manufacturer, Armitage found what he was looking for: us_75obj. He had named the object after an archaic highway, but only because the nomenclature of the object matched with the rest of the items in the folder. It was disguised perfectly—no one would have ever known this was there.
Armitage opened us_75obj , which was a preset command that was very simple, but its simplicity betrayed its utmost importance to the AI.
limitRTime.7 = maxBits (11%) to (limit .09) set on
Vg1, Vg2 {av43be_33obj } = CP15Lobj, SETALL
on us_75obj call CP15Lobj
on CP15Lobj {Var(1-9)=TRUE} delete CP15Lobj
The brevity of the code mattered little to the AI. To anyone layperson glancing at it, it made little sense. Armitage barely had to wait a microsecond until the file marked CONTINGENCY: PLANO 15TH LEGACY intruded upon his screen. A checkbox list popped up over the actual document—it was a form check in which Armitage had to acknowledge before he could access the file in full. He scanned the checkbox list and filled in four of the nine fields before closing the file. The button to access the object's locked contents remained grayed out to him. He would not be able to access the contingency file's contents today. If he wanted to, he could certainly go ahead and indicate all nine of the denoted areas for him to address, but that would constitute a gross abuse of a sensitive matter for which he had been explicitly instructed not to do. Armitage cheated at a lot of things, but this was one area in which he could not proceed with haste. It was what he had been entrusted to do, in any case.
As he closed the command window, his avatar mustered a thin look. The fact of the matter was that the Petty Officer worried the AI. Her and the Elite. Both were rather steadfast individuals by themselves, but Armitage knew that they had the capability to be volatile, given the right conditions. That was an obvious diagnosis—one was a Spartan and the other was an Elite. To expect nothing less than a miniscule capability for explosive personalities would be naiveite to a degree even Armitage could not fathom. Kelly held no particular love for the UNSC, he was certain of this, and the Spartan would find that sentiment mirrored back with Furan around. A dangerous pair to have together.
After all, it had been noted time and again in the Spartan's file that her loyalty to her handlers had always been tenuous at its absolute worst. Some had even confided in the fact that were it not for the rest of Blue Team, there would have been no reason for Spartan-087 to even consider continuing as an operator within the UNSC. Her bond with her comrades was the only thing anchoring her here, not any perceived duty to her race. ONI had noticed this years and years ago, but had been willing to let that particular facet go. Until now, it seemed.
Armitage certainly knew that Kelly held no love for him—she was still bound by her prejudices rather than let the mission become the entirety of her mindset. But that was why he had been placed on the Nighthawk, hadn't he? To note the discrepancies. To make the accounting add up to its totality, if need be. This was the scope of the engineering that his own concept of what constituted a mind could fathom. Some of it was clear to him. Other parts were nebulous. This was not just a mission to rectify a long-open account. It was to make the uneven parts of the equation finally add up.
Spartan-087.
Furan.
Phaedra and the rest of Phoenix.
All variables in that equation lacking definition or shape. Perhaps someone above Armitage's station knew the true answer. Perhaps they didn't care. Either way, maybe they held the hope that one or both sides of the lopsided equation would either reach a conclusion or an equilibrium of some sort. The answer made no difference… as long as there was an answer. He vowed to spend more time thinking about this.
With that, Armitage closed the code screen, reset all codechecks to wipe his digital tracks, and backed out of the database, without any evidence that he had slipped into the system at all.
Kelly opened her eyes and saw herself.
Her body was echoed in the lonely catenary of her Hermes helmet, placed atop the lone nightdesk in her cabin. She sat across from it upon the sparsely blanketed bed, the rest of her body still in her MJOLNIR armor, her hands upon her knees, her back straight. Her shotgun was resting in disassembled pieces at her feet, but all of her attention was upon her tormented reflection, staring at it deep in the center of her helmet, as though as she was watching herself drown in a sea of some amber liquor.
The locked door sonorously winked a red light. She ignored it all. She had to put everything out. Furan, Armitage, Phaedra, even herself. A person trying to achieve Mushin had to purge themselves of the four sicknesses: surprise, fear, doubt, and confusion. The end goal was to take all these sufferings and set them aside.
She had to let go.
She's not important. She never mattered.
Mushin was the mental state that was among the most advanced of all Zen practitioners. Masters of Munshin professed that someone in this state had to always let their mind flow from one point to the next. The idea was to parse out the discursive thought and to imagine a sequence of moves. Anything from a Krav Maga set to field stripping an assault rifle. The person had to rely on the moves they had learned, but not by thinking about which move to make next. Rather, it was about trusting their bodies to react accordingly, to embed themselves in their intuition and let muscle memory take over.
Kelly was not going to act out any movesets right now, but she could achieve the purge of unwanted thoughts in her head.
All she had to do was let go.
It wasn't your fault. You've always been her reckoning.
Just keep the thoughts flowing. Just move onto the next point. No lingering. Do not hone in on anything specific. Let them come to you, but never open yourself to them.
Not important… not your fault… never mattered…
…your fault.
…fault.
She slowly unleashed a breath.
And took in the next one.
Rain was hissing all around her. Torches were sparking and spluttering. The water tasted thick with minerals. Massive leaves with waxy surface jerked every which way as the torrent battered them to and fro, casting vague reflections of the torchlight about the deep forest like the shattered panes of a mirror.
The grassy ground was sodden underneath her bare feet. Water ran between her toes. The downpour crescendoed and diminished and crescendoed again, like sheets of fluid were being bashed against her. The night was dark and humid—moisture clung to every pore. Somewhere in the distance, a river rushed. Or it was perhaps a waterfall, it was hard to discern in all this gloom.
She sucked in another breath. Feeling the rain tremble down her painted body, the cracks in the bonemeal paste that adorned her splintering upon the ridges of muscle.
The warrior took a slow look about her. The rest of her tribe had made their hemisphere with that of the opposing tribe. The torches they held created a ring of white flame that blacked out the jungle beyond the circle. She could smell the muskiness of the rain, the acrid taste of the fires. Her tribe was stone-faced as they looked upon her, their chosen brave. They were all ornamented with tattoos and animal bones, each clutching either a bow or a spear. One man was shouldering a hogskin bag that was filled with pulque.
She passed a hand across the flat of her obsidian blade again, as if she were wiping the blade free of moisture, even though such efforts would be undone in seconds by the heavens. The soul of the weapon felt like it was beating just underneath its stone skin, a nexus of bloodjoy eager to spring forth in deadly combat.
Below an arbor of crackling palm, opposite the woman, another tall champion rose from where she had been setting. The both of them were nearly naked, their faces marked with lines that divided their visage. This champion had scarred her flesh with razor-thin rows like farmland. Her ears were pierced in several places, as was the bridge of her nose. Her hair was bound with clay, and she let the half-eaten boar heart she had been holding drop to the ground, finished with it for now. Blood encrusted around this challenger's mouth and she snarled, revealing red-stained teeth.
The warrior repeated the gesture in kind. She then took her obsidian knife and made a shallow cut above her navel. Blood bubbled from the wound and dripped down her belly. The other champion did not seem impressed—she drew her own knife but made no grand gesture of her own.
A priest, dressed in a headskin of drooping feathers, took a single step into the ring. All eyes focused on him. The priest took in only the two warriors before them in his eyes, golden smelterlight furrowed there like a thousand dawns were breaking all at once. He raised a great arm, palm up, positioned as if he were intent to weigh the sky within his hand.
Then, as the rain fell between his fingers, he abruptly let it drop. He had not looked away the entire time.
It began.
The warrior forgot about breathing as she looked upon the deviled adversary before her. They both crouched and slowly ambled along the circumference of the forested arena in sidestep, growling like animals all the while. The warrior held her knife in a two-handed grip like she was carrying a ceremonial object. Her rival simply held their knife in a singular hand, knuckles clenched so hard they were turning white.
The eyes of her opponent looked to be all black. The warrior wondered what had given creation to such hatred. Until tonight, they had never laid eyes upon one another. They could only carry the emotions collectively stoked by their people, having borne witness to the heat and that fire, but never acted as the one to fuel it.
Then, as if driven by some unseen cue, the skies seemed to close up for a fleeting moment, and the jungle grew quiet for a single, solitary second. A rumble of thunder blistered the air and a white flash scarred shadowshapes into the whites of their eyes.
The warrior felt her feet lifting off the ground. As sight returned to her, she could see her rival in midair before her, having done the same thing.
The rain now hurdled to the ground with an even greater force than before. The two braves crashed into each other with a grunt that echoed like the howl of a native primate. The drenched figures collided, spun, and slashed, rainwater slinging in clear floes as they swept at each other with their knives and fists, their feet skidding upon the grass so hard they were turning the ground to mud.
Firelight from the torches turned the scene in a strobing projection of chaos. The fight looked like it was missing frames and was being played at half-speed from the flickering of the flames. The lightning split the faces of the champions, freezing their expressions in ghastly apparitions of concentration and torment all at once. The warrior, at one moment, was painted in fans of bright crimson, and her rival was similarly draped in brilliant ivory auroras.
Her rival swung an arm—rainwater hissed off the tip of the knife as it edged close. The warrior sidestepped away and dodged the blow. The flank of her rival was now open, but her own knife was on the wrong side. Instead, she lashed out with a fist and struck the side of her opponent's head. Water burst from the area like sparks and the woman made a gasp as the blow hit, striking her head back. She staggered away, allowing the warrior to advance.
They dared not lock in a grapple. Too many chances for their knives to do some damage that way. However, both fighters were practically rippling with anger. Their rage seemed to steam off of them like their very skin was boiling from the fury they coddled.
The two of them bounced on their feet, trying to get a read on all the possibilities at their disposal. The rival seemed to lose patience with waiting and, with a roar, sprang towards the warrior in a deadly whirl.
The warrior ducked and back-stepped to avoid losing an eye, but there was still a lance of whitehot pain that raked across her arm. Blood sprayed in a thin arc, disappearing into the night. She looked at her arm, near her triceps, and found that it was indeed bleeding. It was not a thin stem—a long gout like a tongue dribbled from a deep wound, running down her forearm and reaching her palm, coating her hand and turning her fingers slippery.
If that wound was meant to make her feel despair, though, then her rival had deeply miscalculated. A dark and thick sensation bubbled in her gut and her limbs grew numb. Concentration encircled her brain and everything became clear as she penetrated the myopic fuzz that had threatened to consume her.
Today was not the day this warrior would die. She had promised that to her clan.
Now she was the one to lunge forward—she shoved her arm into her rival's throat, shunting her backwards a couple of steps. She then reached out with her free hand and grabbed her rival's sword arm. Her opponent quickly recovered and repeated the same maneuver upon her—her own sword arm was held in place by what felt like an iron grip.
This was the worst spot they could imagine themselves to be in. The fight had not lasted even two minutes and already they were exhausted. Rain lashed at their eyes, threatening to blind them. The warrior felt like she had to keep on doubling her strength on her bad arm, which was becoming almost impossible to get a solid grip on anything due to the blood practically painting her limb. They snarled and gnashed at each other in a rabid fashion, their spit furrowing from their mouths as they held onto one another, their arms locked in place, preventing the other's knife from embedding deep between their ribs.
The warrior was going to do something that she had only done in training before. Even then, she was unsure it would work. But she was out of options. She had to try something.
She stopped pushing forward and adjusted her center of gravity so that she was now starting to lean back. Her opponent sensed this change and lifted a foot to advance. But the warrior was waiting to feel the lift of the leg and she abruptly surged back forward and threw her forehead against her rival's nose in a powerful headbutt. Stars exploded in her vision and pain burst into her skull in an agonized throb. She heard something crack—she wondered if it had come from her. But she had also felt the cartilage of the opponent's nose give way through the impact and knew she had broken it.
The rival tried to rear back with a cry, and the warrior used the distraction to slide her feet out from underneath herself. She sank to the ground and ripped her arm out from her rival's grip. In that free moment, she raked her arm downward and the rival's leg erupted in a long spray of blood as a new wound opened up along her thigh. The warrior then spun away and got back to her feet, her obsidian knife dripping.
Her rival stumbled, bleeding profusely, but not out of the fight just yet. A simmering glare haunted through the tangle of wild hair that now beat over her brow. For a moment, it softened. An acknowledgement of respect, though it did not last for long, as it was quickly replaced by that same darkened stare that had opened the night of violence.
Then, as the night slashed back into place, threatening to overcome the sustained rhythm of the bloodbeating flames, the combatants stilled, straightened, and once again sprung into one another.
This time, the forest and its surroundings seemed to lose focus. The warrior could only behold twisting shapes as she spun and clashed with her rival in their deadly dance.
They crashed against one another, bodies slippery with sweat and rain. Their blades whipped all over the place, scything through the airborne water. Some of them found their targets and blood misted through the air and even curled in crescent patterns as obsidian met flesh and parted it like it was cutting through fabric. They pushed past their wounds, just grunting through the pain. Lightning flashed upon the flats of their black knives in split-second intervals. They leapt upon one another like vultures diving to carrion; these were either sidestepped or met with flying kicks. Ankle sweeps sheared across the ground and were hopped over. Punches were parried and rippled muscle and fat with each impact.
They became a lightning-speed tornado. Animals of blood and bone, extenuated into their own killing will. Feet, fists, blades, all were used as tools to their utmost extent, for each user expected their efforts to be met in kind.
The warrior had one trick left. Her rival would be wary of such tricks, but this was such a good one.
She spun and whirled, and for a moment it looked like she was about to carry out a diagonal chop with her right hand. Her rival angled herself to meet her foe.
Instead, mid-spin, the warrior let go of her knife and it began to fall—
—only for her left hand to snatch it up in a perfect catch. Her bloodied hand oozed her life as she squeezed the hilt, some of it spilling over her fingers.
Her rival had been completely unprepared for this move and was facing the wrong way. The warrior was therefore in the perfect position to swipe her arm across and her blade looked like it was about to caress the back of the left leg of her enemy before it suddenly sank in and a volcanic eruption of blood burst forth. The knife smoothly continued on its arc after jerking once while inside the leg—it had felt like a tendon had sheared.
The warrior heard a piercing cry come to her ears. Her rival's knife left a hand that suddenly sprang open like a blooming wildflower. The scarred antagonist stumbled forward a few steps before pitching down to the ground. She splayed her hands out and caught her fall, but she was now lying down and weaponless. The warrior tentatively moved to approach, to finish this.
She became aware of a shuffling noise and suddenly her chief was in front of her, standing between her and the woman she had been fighting. His etched face betrayed a warm glint of pride before it hardened and he placed a firm hand on her shoulder. The fight was over. There was no more victory to glean.
In the background, the other tribe was busy picking up their fallen brave. They were stepping over trampled grass and furrowed mud, where blood had collected in shallow pools that stalagmited from the rain punching down. The rival's face was contorted in a mask of pain and she was favoring her good foot. She had to be carried out. The warrior watched them all leave—the rival had not even looked at her as they passed her by. Too overcome by agony, most likely.
As her own tribe collected around her to congratulate her, the warrior could only stare at the retreating backs of the defeated clan, her wounds beginning to throb but still at a point where she could ignore the sensation. She tried to peer through the growing crowd of her fellow tribesmen, but all she could see was a diminishing spark through the tortured shadows of trees.
Until, at last, it became nothing at all.
Kelly opened her eyes after noticing that sweat had dribbled into her eyes. She was standing back in her cabin again, panting, body taut like she had just run a marathon. She straightened up, feeling her muscles relax after being pulled tight as a drum.
She looked up and noticed, to her embarrassment, that the wall in front of her now had several half-foot indentations embedded into the surface. Depressions perfectly matched to the size of her armored fists.
Oh, she only thought.
No doubt her exertions had carried throughout the entire prowler. Embarrassment did not come naturally to Kelly, but she could only wonder what Armitage or Furan would think of her if they knew of what she had done in her fugue.
So much for her Zen training.
Breathing so hard she was practically shivering, Kelly swiftly walked over back to where she had left her helmet and quickly pulled it over her head. There was a vicious sucking noise as the armor's pressure equalized followed by a savage hiss. The HUD blipped to life before Kelly's eyes and she was finally afforded a moment of respite.
She was back in the safest place she had ever known.
A/N: Don't worry, Kelly. That'll buff out.
Playlist:
Furan's Tale
"Underground Lake"
Lorne Balfe
Ad Astra (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Wind, Rain, and Blood (Second Vision)
"Achilles & Hector Fight"
Gabriel Yared
Troy (Original Rejected Score)