The Orca-class shuttle gently settled down on a hastily erected landing pad in the center of the ruins that had been the Hegemony's Southeastern Sector Base. Aun Gras'ur emerged from the shuttle and gazed forlornly across the landscape. The base had still been under construction and had covered nearly two square kilometers. There had been six hundred Tau Fire Warriors stationed there with the StarSpawn and Covenant soldiers. Now all that remained were a handful of survivors, one of them a Tau that had reportedly gone mad, and smoldering ruins. To make matters worse it was raining, something the Tau had found it did a lot in this hemisphere of the humans homeworld, and rain was something the average Tau did not like in the slightest.

"Secure the perimeter," Commander Kais' ordered his Hunter-Cadre as the Fire Warriors swarmed out of the shuttle.

Aun Gras'ur, going against Hegemony protocol, had insisted that Kais' Hunter-Cadre travel with him to his new base. He had also suggested that the entire base be garrisoned by Tau. The Tau Ethereal had been shocked when the Sector Commander had agreed to the request. Since the defection of the Eldar, Hegemony Command had kept the Tau under close observation, and Gras'ur didn't know what to think about the sudden reversal. There were rumors that Hegemony Command had denied all demands for reinforcements to be sent to any occupying force in preparation for a massive offensive against the Sentient Coalition. That rumor had been constant in every occupying force that Gras'ur had ever been a part of in the Hegemony or the Tau Empire.

"The perimeter is secure, Aun," Kais' spoke slightly louder than normal to be heard over the multiple Covenant Phantom's making their noisy approaches.

"Settle them down, Kais'. We will wait here until the entire garrison has arrived."

Less than an hour later over a thousand Tau Fire Warriors with a handful of kor pilots and fio engineers had deployed into the base. Aun Gras'ur gave them a short speech to bolster their morale and remind them of the tau'va before releasing them to secure the ruins perimeter. Meanwhile Kais' Hunter-Cadre escorted him to the two-story command center where a Covenant Elite was all too glad to hand over the responsibility of the base to the Tau Ethereal. The Elite-In-Command, the term used for Elites suddenly thrust into command positions because of casualties, was the lowest rank one could find among Covenant Elites. Within ten minutes of the Tau's arrival the Elite and the paltry remains of the former garrison were departing in their own Phantoms.

Aun Gras'ur and his Tau immediately set to furious work to rebuild the primary defenses and fortifications. A Covenant freighter actually descended from orbit, flanked by a Covenant Destroyer and a swarm of fighters, and set up an anti-gravity lift to drop down needed equipment. The Covenant forces didn't hold their position for long and Aun Gras'ur believed it was because they feared the sudden appearance of a Coalition fleet.

When twilight descended upon the devastated Sector Base the Tau had managed to make it even more defensible than it had been before. Heavy-duty AA plasma guns guarded the skies right alongside plasma rocket batteries. Large swathes of the perimeter had been mined. An energy shield capped the entire base just in case of unexpected attack. Two cadres of veteran Fire Warriors patrolled the perimeter with heavy weapons. Fire Warriors who had scored high marks in the training classes the air and earth castes had designed for them manned the comm.-terminals in the Command Center. The base was as secure as it could possibly be from less than a day's worth of work.

Late that night, after Kais' had almost forcibly commanded him, the Aun went to his cell to meditate and rest. He had managed to offer some help to the maddened Tau but not without much effort on his part. It seemed that many of the Tau stationed on the base had gone mad at the same instance. That troubled the Ethereal greatly. Large-scale outbreaks of Mont'au madness had not occurred since the founding of the Tau Empire. Only a short time after the Hegemony's disastrous attack on the UNSC's Terra, reports of Mont'au madness had begun to surface. The Aun would have to send word to the ranking Ethereal in the Sector Army. They had to find a reason for these outbreaks before the Hegemony decided the Tau were too unstable to be servants of the Hegemony.

His 'cell' had once belonged to the commander of the base and probably had been heavily decorated with the Elite's battle honors. On his instructions it had been cleared of everything but a holographic depiction of the Tau homeworld in all its glory and a meditation pallet. He had just settled his robes comfortably around him when his door chimed and the voice of one of his Fire Warrior guards came through.

"Commander Kais', here to see you, Aun."

"He may enter."

The doors slid open and Kais', in full armor, entered the room. There was something subtly different about the way he moved but the Aun could not place it. Once Kais' knelt before the Aun it dawned on Gras'ur why he uneasy. Kais' was not admitting the rich pheromones that all Tau exuded. Gras'ur opened his mouth to call for his guards but in a flash Kais' had his hand around the Ethereal's throat. For a moment the Ethereal could not breath could not move, under the irresistible power of that grasp. Then the grip eased just enough for Gras'ur to suck in wisps of air. Before his unbelieving eyes the form of Kais' became the eyeless visage of the liquid-metal machine that had almost killed him before. Then it took the form of a rather non-threatening human female with unkempt reddish-brown hair and cold hazel eyes. Aun Gras'ur let those eyes sink into him and reassessed his opinion of the form the machine had chosen to take.

"I have not come to kill you or to destroy this base again, Aun Gras'ur," the machine spoke in a clipped, precise version of the Tau language. "I have come merely to have a conversation. I will release you now but know that I can kill you faster than you could possibly call for your Fire Warriors. Then you will die, they will die, and SkyNet will destroy this base once again. Do you understand?"

As quickly as it had grabbed his throat the machine released it. Aun Gras'ur coughed for several seconds before regaining his breath and carefully regarded the killing machine kneeling before him.

"What should I address you as?"

To his surprise the machine smiled slightly, "Call me X2. "

"Well, X2, what have you come to converse about?"

"Actually, Aun, I have come with many questions."

That really surprised the Ethereal, "Surely you know everything there is to know. You machines have captured many of our databases or so it is believed. I doubt I know anything that could truly aid your war effort. "

"They have been corrupted by both battle and Covenant worm-programs. SkyNet wants a living source of knowledge and you have been designated as that source."

"Then I suppose I should feel honored."

X2 grinned then, a grin as wide as an ocean, "Tell me a story, Aun. Tell me of the Tau Empire. "

"That is a tale long in the telling, X2. Should I start from the beginning?"

"Please do."

For the rest of the night Gras'ur told the sentient machine, who listened with rapt attention, a basic history of the Tau Empire from its self-destructive beginning to the fragmentation that had begun before they had come against the Covenant in battle. Then X2 asked him about his people's role in the Covenant Hegemony and he surprised himself with a bitter, self-hating recitation of all that he knew about his people's plight. The more Gras'ur talked the more he came to accept the fact that his people were slaves. The Hegemony had a number of titles for their subjugated races but in the end they were all slaves. Gras'ur had never really had an opportunity to really voice his opinion in the last year and he was shocked at how much of a burden he was relieving just by talking. Once he finished X2 began her own tale about the birth of SkyNet and the war with the humans. Aun Gras'ur listened in turn to a fascinating story about the nature of sentience, evil, and human tenacity.

"I think, Aun, that we have some common ground. All three of our races, Tau, Terran, and Machine, are survivors who simply want to survive in this vastly frightening universe we find ourselves in. We have fought each other for years, you against the Imperium of Man, and here it has been Machine against Man. Yet now each of us finds ourselves with the surety of extinction or eternal enslavement. Alone we all will surely fall into darkness but together we might have a chance."

"You can not be serious. Your SkyNet has killed hundreds of Tau, over a billion humans, and now you seek an alliance. How could you possibly think anyone could trust-?"

The world fell away from Gras'ur then and he found himself falling into darkness. Then slowly a pinprick of light grew in his vision as he fell towards it. It glittered in the darkness before expanding to a glorious beacon of light. It was a circle divided into thirds with unfamiliar sigils on two of the divisions. On the third was the old sigil of the Tau Empire. Knowledge blossomed within the Aun's mind just before he struck the surface.

The world came back to Gras'ur and he found himself on his back with X2 leaning over him calling his name.

"I am fine, X2," Gras'ur said, picking himself off the floor.

"Good," the machine said, standing to her full height, "I will take my leave of you now. I will do no harm this day, but I can not promise what the next will bring. Even though we are doomed, know that SkyNet and his children will fight to the very last. That is one thing humanity has taught us well."

"Wait," the Aun cried as she turned to go, "Do I have your word that you will not attack any Tau forces stationed here?"

"You have SkyNet's word that he will not assault this base again, but there may be a need to assault other bases. We would of course try to minimize Tau losses as best we could. It would help if you could get that message to the rest of the Tau forces on this world. Retreat when they can and no SkyNet unit will terminate them."

"I must consult with my superior before I can commit to such a thing," Aun Gras'ur said, still unsure of what he was doing.

"Of course. Consult with your superior and if he agrees here are the coordinates and time for a rendezvous to discuss our mutual survival."

X2 handed the Aun a datapad and turned again to leave the room.

"Did you kill Kais?" Gras'ur had to know before she left.

X2 shifted back into the guise of Kais before she turned around, "That would not be a good beginning to an alliance, Aun. He should be waking up in his room shortly wondering why he went to sleep in his armor. "

Then the Terminator walkedunconcernedly from the room.