All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

12. 1-5: Metal and Flesh

A/N: One thing before you read this chapter: If you haven't, go watch Combat Evolved: Anniversary's 1st Terminal, it'll explain a few things. Anyway, here's a hot and heavy chapter... right after these author's notes.

For those of you confused on the ending of last chapter: Well it's explained this chapter, but generally, Mai holding onto Shepard might've... screwed something up.

For those of you who pointed out lack of polish and editing: I lack a beta reader for the obvious reasons of "hey this chapter is longer than 80% of the fics on this website". But even then, I do try my best to catch stuff. I apologize for the rough sheen, and I'll keep it at the top of my mind from now on since a lot of you pointed it out. Do keep in mind I do have this very frank or... well, I don't know how to describe it but Cormac McCarthy-esque style of writing. It is, inherently, rough and conversational like, but I know, it's not an excuse, I promise to do better from here on in.

enji-benjy said "Also, if the Reaper can 'jam' a video camera, then it can also jam all of their weapons and armour, along with any other electronics within range."

-Yeah this is one of those things I have to reconcile with plot holes that exist in Mass Effect 1. I just have to assume there exists a reason why Shepard didn't record her talk with Sovereign, or even Harbinger in ME1 and 2. Clunky, but it's something I have to lampshade.

D72 - Thanks for all the reviews! And good music ambiance, I made the decision not to pick and choice ambient tracks for this story as I do in my other big one, but I might, from time to time, hint hint nudge nudge people to listen to a song while reading.

Mkoll312 said "As an S3, B312 would have been an orphan created by the Covenant war."

-I do have an explanation for this, but it involves a spoiler. It's a question I'll tackle around the halfway point of ME1.

On Nihlus being alive: Isn't there another character in ME canon that, via injuries, ends up in a coma and yet still, somehow, is able to communicate to the player? And haven't I drawn Andromeda in A LOT in this story already? Really makes you think huh.

Thanks for all the reviews, please enjoy!

---

Section 1-5

Metal and Flesh

---

In another universe…

He made it count. That was the promise he made to Noble Six, to every Spartan on Reach, to Reach itself, as the light faded from him on that landing pad, the Package cradled in his arms as the last remaining Noble in the area screamed in his infernal rage for all time with the MAC Gun, covering the dusty shipyard.

The last thing that Jorge-052 had done, after stabbing a Brute Chieftain in the back and tanking a Gravity Hammer in the chest, his lungs sucking blood, was to roll on his back, take his helmet off, and lay the Package to stand as the Pelican came closer to land, and to acquire it.

Reach was about to fall, and like that, the Spartan that had been born on that planet fell as well, a tank of a man left spread eagle on plasma scorched metal, the shadow of the Pillar of Autumn casting over him as its Captain arrived in that Pelican. The blue light of the Package was a Beacon.

Captain Keyes had seen many a dead Spartan in the last few weeks. His ship had taken on one, thrown her into cryo for her sake. It was pain to see humanity's best fall, but it did not pain him as much as it did-

The Pelican had hovered, bay open and its lip extending to allow his Marines to disembark and secure the perimeter around the Package and the body of 052. He would be the one to step out, to acquire it, but a large hand had extended in front of him, an arm barring him to not do so.

This was his burden now, the giant man in his armor walking out, MA5B in hand and slowly, respectfully, reaching out toward not the package but the dead Spartan. His eyes were wide open, staring up at that stormy sky and the war that had come to Reach, his home. It was tragic that he died like this: as his planet fell.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Keyes had come out much to the dismay of his security detail, the humming sound of Covenant Phantoms nearby.

"They'll be remembered."

He was a Spartan. A II.

The greatest of their kind.

It meant that he had to see those he had called family die before him and it gave him no end of sorrow. It didn't feel right twenty years ago, it didn't feel right now.

He softly shook the Captain's hands off as he palmed the blue package. He knew who this was, and hopefully she would forgive him for not saying hi then and there. Not when Jorge was there, dead before him. The Package was handed off, the Captain retreating back into the Pelican as the MAC gun roared, Covenant bogeys being downed by a Spartan that the titan of a man didn't recognize.

Though it didn't matter, not as he hooked his arms beneath Jorge's giant form and lifted him up. The weight of the world was in his arms.

"I'm sorry, Chief."

John-117 said nothing as he looked to the clouds, the menacing mass of a Covenant cruiser breaking through. Keyes had seen it too as he had held down his comms, speaking to the Spartan on the MAC Gun.

"Covenant cruiser vectoring in to intercept us! We need cover now!"

"You'll have your exit." The voice grated at him back from the MAC Gun.

"We need to go Chief." Keyes had ushered him onboard, the mass of Jorge along his back and set down in the Pelican. It was by his weight alone that the Pelican had hardly shifted when the sound of a plasma cannon too near for safety echoed over their right, the sound of their escorting Pelican taking the hits and falling over into the ravine below.

"Evasive!" The pilot of the surving Pelican screamed out, the men inside thrown against the wall in their dodging.

The Master Chief had been ready with his MA5, poking back out the end of the bay, only to see that Phantom pass them over and head to the MAC gun that was providing them support, depositing a squad of troopers, one that had been happy to scramble over the gun and its occupant. A single Elite had gone over the glass canopy, but the affair exploded from its chest, glass and guts going with a shotgun blast.

Out from it: a sight he had never seen before.

A Spartan he hadn't recognized, his boot on the neck of the still alive Elite, his head wearing the face of death itself.

"I'm ready!" Shotgun blast to the face and the Elite was without its head, emerging out of his glass canopy like a casket. "How about you?!"

The ignition of an Energy Sword was too fast for John to do anything but watch as the blade came in from the back through that Spartan, impaling him whole, but not killing him, the last fight left in him screamed out in rage and fury as he took the kukri mounted on his shoulder and turned it around on the Elite that would kill him.

The MAC gun went silent, and the cruiser was still coming.

Vaguely, he had a thought, that he should've been left behind, to take up that mantle on the MAC gun and made sure the Autumn got out of the shipyard. He did take a step out, scooping up Jorge's machine gun into his own arms and getting ready.

"Chief! Don't go!" Keyes had yelled out to him as he had made his peace.

He turned around. "The Package is secure and the Autumn needs cover." In his deep voice, there was finality.

His finality wouldn't be today however. "The Package was meant for you, Chief! You're mission critical!" Before John could protest Keyes had been on the comms again. "This is Captain Keyes of the Pillar of Autumn on priority tasking from CENTCOM. Request Nomad Flight Contingencies!"

"This is Colonel Holland to all, I back up that request. We need the Autumn escorted out of system now!"

Taking one last glance at the MAC gun perched over them, hearing the death cries of Covenant and man, the Master Chief damned his training, his upbringing, his adherence to orders.

In another life, in another history, he might've discovered what it meant to follow orders, and, consequently, what it meant to go against them. In another life he would go AWOL, commit treason even, in the name of the Package that Jorge and his Noble Team all sacrificed themselves for. What he stood for and what he fought for were two different things. He wouldn't know that yet though, hauling Jorge's machine gun with him as he back pedaled into the Pelican, roaring to escape back to the safety of the Autumn even as the Covenant cruiser approached.

John-117 followed orders, and if he was deemed mission critical, he would have to live with it as he returned to the dark of the Pelican bay with the rest of Keyes' guard and Keyes himself, and awaited their salvation.

---

Supreme Commander of the Fleet of Particular Justice. That's what he was.

For a planet as important to the heretic humans as Reach, there was supposed to be several fleets there. In fact, he wasn't supposed to be the only Supreme Commander there at all. His compatriot would've been the Supreme Commander Rho Barutamee, Shipmaster of the Long Night of Solace, Fleetmaster of the Fleet of Valiant Prudence who also presided over lesser Fleet Master Seylu Karonee and her support flotilla.

Barutamee however had blown the Solace's cover early, and the UNSC, as is usual in their devilry, had been able to destroy both the Solace and its surrounding support. Karonee had been killed in the Slipspace Rupture too, presumably, leaving only adjuncts and second-in-commands in charge until Particular Justice had arrived and ascertained the situation.

So, the Supreme Commander of the Fleet of Particular Justice, Thel Vadamee, had now presided as the single commander responsible for leading Covenant forces over their greatest victory in that decades long war.

But, now, on that day, across that entire planet on fire and in the process of being Glassed, he had focused on what the humans had called the Aszod Shipbreaking Yards.

His long cloak hid the ways his arms crossed, his claws dig into themselves as an overzealous shipmaster moved his cruiser too near to that last human ship, about to launch and take flight probably away. It had been reported that there had been anti-ship defences in the area, but they had fallen silent, and for that Shipmaster's arrogance and impaitence he would be rewarded.

Admiral Vadamee scoffed, looking away from the holographic projection long enough to take gaze over the rest of the ship to ship combat engagements currently taking place.

"Fleetmaster!" One of his bridge officers yelled at him

"What is it?" He paid attention to.

"Human ships have begun disengaging enmasse from us! They're being rerouted to these coordinates apparently!"

"What?!"

Those coordinates had been-

The cruiser's weapons had been powering up to rake across that human ship, slow and steady, and if it hadn't been for the properties of plasma weapons needing to have power charged and diverted perhaps that human ship would've been destroyed.

Seconds were precious, and the human rail guns shot a measure far beyond the speed of sound. Which is why that cruiser took a massive ball of steel through its guts and, unceremoniously, began its explosive fall.

All over Reach human ships had been disengaging, even at their own expense, all turning tail and in one final effort, pointed themselves toward Aszod.

Even his CAS ship, his very own flagship, could do nothing nestled away from battle.

Frigates, corvettes that had been able to evade the major engagements had all appeared on the horizon of Aszod as the last of the human cruisers and battleships were quick to divert along a very specific path.

"Are we picking up any of the human transmissions?!" Admiral Vadamee had yelled out to his electronic warfare operator.

"Yes! It says-"

"Just play it!"

The bridge broke out in a cacophony of man, human language and tactical chatter filling. If the humans had broken communication code and used unsecured channels then this was truly a desperate play at something. A something so sinister it burned Vadamee's nose painfully, looking back at the hologrpahic projection of Aszod only to see that human ship take off and begin its ascent into atmsophere.

"This is Captain Keyes our tactical AI will be assigning you designations and formation planning! Fall in line and give this ship a clear escape corridor!"

"We're abandoning Reach?!" A human captain yelled out in protest.

"Reach is lost, and so will the rest of humanity if we don't deliver this Package!"

A human female voice rung out across the bridge, calm and almost even collected. It was the voice of someone who knew what she was doing.

"This is CTN 0452-9, all ships be advised you're coming with us. We need defense pickets along this route, sending assignments now. Please transfer to secure comm channel Delta-7 and use the security protocols as uploaded to your CIC. Cortana out."

All human comms had went dead, covered by their security protocols. It would take minutes to crack again but they didn't have that time.

That one human ship had risen from the atmosphere of the planet, in the range of only the fewest of Vadamee's frigates. When humans flee'd they usually had no destination. That was the point. Their homeworld would not be found by such randomness. By the way this human ship however had been flying, their destination was clear and their flight was backed by at least a dozen ships.

More had been on the way as a wrecking ball Vadamee had hardly seen before formed. He could, just barely, see it out the viewport of his ship.

Two could play at this game.

"Gather all ships! Their planet has been given up! We must give chase!"

Admiral Vadamee's orders were clear as his fleet lifted off from Reach and whatever they were pre-disposed with, the Autumn's battlegroup vectoring away from the system.

The battle that followed would be filled with heroism on the human's account, and savagery according to the Elites. Ships, civilian ships even, throwing themselves in the way of Covenant cruisers and carriers in order to cover the Autumn. That was the urgency that had befallen the Autumn given its escalated attention to when it dusted off. Mangled ships of both UNSC and Covenant making a debris field that denoted battles ten times as long in a mere ten minutes time as the Autumn, successfully, found its Slipspace route and jumped, leaving behind a trail of destruction in its wake.

The Autumn didn't leave alone that day, the hail mary of the last of the Reach defense group coming with her into the final battlegroup of the UNSC in that system, all trying to make a desperate play at whatever Halsey's package had led them. Inadvertently, it also drew the Covenant away. Not all, but all those predisposed with Glassing. Half the planet was on fire and on its way to glass, but that was that: only half as defenders found a new breath of air, Admiral Vadamee disappearing suddenly into Slipspace chasing after the Pillar of Autumn with most of the Covenant naval forces in play.

The humans had a better deck of cards when it came to the ground, and the Battle of Reach never outright manifested into the Fall. In the words of another Halsey: They found Halo, unlocked its secrets, and shattered the enemy's resolve. But perhaps Noble Six was lucky to never find out how humanity achieved their victory, without her.

Two weeks later, emerging from Slipspace, Keyes had asked the Package this on the bridge of the Autumn, now the flagship of a rag-tag fleet of refugees from Reach: "Cortana, all I need to know is did we lose them?"

They looked at that object in the distance, at that Ring. They certainly weren't in Kansas now.

The purple AI smirked though. This was her creator's plan all along. "I think we both know the answer to that sir."

Four days after that, a comm buoy had been returned from the Autumn to Earth:

"TOP PRIORITY: END OF WAR IN SIGHT. SEND SHIPS TO RENDEZVOUS AT THESE COORDINATES. WE HAVE BECOME DEATH. DESTROYER OF WORLDS. -C"

---

Williams and Kaiden had been quick on the draw as they slid their butts back on the cold steel floor, trying to get away from the beacon that threatened to take them moments before. They were on their feet fast, dashing toward JD as he dug his heels into the floor as best he could and tried to tug Shepard and Mai back.

There was no need though, not when a bright flash surrounded them all with an electrical pop.

The beacon exploded in sparks and fire, metal seemingly evaporating as, all at once, it let Shepard go and the two that had been lifted fell to the ground. Mai wasn't the softest thing to land on, but she landed on her nonetheless as she went limp. JD flew back, the tension gone, also on his ass as he quickly shouldered his SMG. The sound of Mai hitting the ground had been heavy with a metallic thwak, her mass not giving her any benefits in the situation.

"Mai!" It was the loudest JD had spoken that entire mission. She was fine, barely feeling the fall as she rotated into a sit, holding Shepard in her arms as she laid her out.

She could see the bulge of her eyeballs behind closed eyelids. They were frantic, alive. Whatever she had been seeing had called her entire self into it.

"JD!" She called for him.

"We good?" Kaiden had assumed command, it was how the hierarchy right as Shepard's form was seen by all: out cold. "We good?!" He yelled again.

"Up!" Williams kicked asides pieces of debris from the Beacon, steaming from their explosion away from Shepard. JD and Mai did not respond as they attended to Shepard and JD got to work, flaring his omni-tool, his gloved hand opening Shepard's eye and finding the woman's eyes tracking a dream.

He looked up to Mai as he took a kneel, tipping it once. Out of his workspace, he said non-verbally. Mai had abided, holding her rifle tightly snapping around to Kaiden.

"You." Her words had cut into Kaiden's ears like the reaper come for him. That was what it felt like when she approached him, freezing in his place as someone he was technically supposed to have authority over took command. "Did that thing react to your biotic abilities? To Commander Shepard's?" She spoke fast, low.

He could only roll with it. "I don't know. I don't know if I did anything, all I did was step toward it and it just-"

"Okay." That was all Mai needed to here. "Can you call for the Normandy for an medevac? I'll secure the area."

Mai had moved off back, looking out toward the city, her intention clear.

"Hold position, Chief Gul." It was an order, and like she was a computer she took a knee without thinking.

Kaiden was impressed. For someone so imposing she was wound tight, her leash short. He was expecting dissent but none came as Mai sucked in her breath and stood, glancing to JD over Shepard. Orders were orders.

"We need to stick together. Hold this position."

"Aye sir." Mai responded flatly, Williams swearing to hear her teeth grind.

"This is Hitman 1-1 to any Hitman or Normandy units on this net. I repeat, Hitman 1-1 to all contacts on this net, come in."

"This is Normandy Actual," It was Anderson. "What the hell happened down there Lieutenant?! Where's Shepard?"

Kaiden looked to JD and Shepard, the shock trooper busy trying to diagnose his new commander frantically. It was frantic, but measured. He'd trained for this, to stop losing comrades. That was the desperation in JD's hands as his entire being shook and his helmet fogged up behind the visor.

No, no, not again. Not here.

He got the front plate of her armor discarded as he unrolled some purpose tubing, his helmet off. The stethoscope he had went into his ears as he pressed down over her heart and lungs.

"Speak JD, what do we got?" Kaiden wanted the status report, but he got none.

The shock trooper had not spoken more in his life than he had in the last three weeks, ever since he came here. He was unused to the tick, the trigger, of people expecting him to speak. At least in the ODST Corps the 'strong but silent type' was respected. He was one, or, at least, assumed to be one. It gave him breathing room as silence tugged at his throat.

"Chief Durante!" Kaiden almost yelled at him.

"It- it." He started stammering, stethoscope out of his ears. "She's fine!" He croaked.

That was a lie but it was the words he had been able to muster on the spot. Nothing was life-threatening it seemed, no shrapnel from the Beacon exploding had come about into her, she wasn't having a seizure and, although elevated, her breathing and heart rate was at the moment within tolerable limits. He could've said all of that, but words escaped him as again he went to her eyes and looked in.

Kaiden couldn't spare any time for this. "Shepard is incapacitated and the package has been terminated. Request immediate MEDEVAC and dust off. How copy Normandy?"

"What?! The Beacon is destroyed?" Anderson's surprise bit at them all.

"It self-terminated sir!" Kaiden waved one arm out to the air. "It nearly grabbed Shepard before it went!"

"What do you mean, Lieutenant Alenko?"

Kaiden struggled to replay the last thirty seconds in his head. He felt the Beacon draw him in, tearing at his skin, like a black hole.

"Sir, forgive me, but I'm gonna have to debrief in person."

"This is Hitman 2-Actual, reading you clear Hitman 1-2. What do you need?"

It was the rest of the Normady's Marines. Based on how clear the message was they were close. "This is 1-1, regroup on my position, we're exfiltrating."

"A lot of work left to do down here sir." Emerson responded over the net, obviously not pleased with leaving a colony still in the thick of it.

"We have our orders."

"...Copy all. Oscar mike. Out."

The mark of the battle in their wake had been left on Shepard, dust on her face, scrapes and burns on her armor from taken hits and kinetic barrier fizzing. It was unkind, but she was relatively untouched, physically. JD had done a quick pat down of himself making sure if that was also the case, still not used to the sensation of having a shield save him. He had been okay though, if not frantic.

This was what he trained for, what he so desperately wanted to avoid: dead comrades.

But he could do nothing as the damage, if there had been any, was internal.

All he could do was monitor her brain activity on his omni-tool until, over the wall, they heard the rumble of a mass of Marines.

They came from where they did, albeit lugging something that had no right being in this area: hopping in on its jump jets.

"Bring her in Loke." The man in front had motioned to the hovering Mako.

It was Hitman: coming up and waving off the rest of them, clearing a space for the Mako to set down. When it did the platform they were on waned, but held.

Emerson had arrived, missing his beret, taking Kaiden's hand in a curt shake. "How you doing, Ell-Tee?" The Marine glanced down at Shepard. Th question was rhetorical.

"Better now that you guys are around. How was the colony?" Kaiden composed back.

Emerson shrugged, looking to Mai and JD intently before putting his rifle onto his back, idle. There was no more threat to them at least. "Nothing we haven't done before."

Kaiden rolled his head once. "Yeah, and here I was a little upset my Marines got swapped out with you guys last second."

"You hurt me." One last time he had glanced down to Shepard before signaling for one of his men. "We have a combat doc with us. Real nifty guy." Emerson and his team finally made contact, within arm's reach, the Normandy's ground teams reunited. The Mako, in its hopping, had as gingerly as it could (not at all), set down next to them all.

The Recon Marine had signaled for a bald man, bereft of any headgear, move over to Shepard motioning for JD to move away. "Not actually a combat medic. But I was a doctor." He stated plainly, calmly, looking down onto Shepard as everyone had. "I hear you're an actual one."

"In process." JD said fast, the Combat Doc kneeling besides Shepard before waving an omni-tool coated arm over her. The same readings. "Applied anything?"

"Adrenaline. 10cc's. Tried to get her out of it first, no response." JD rattled off. "Unconscious, high brain activity, would advise against anything else."

The Combat Doc agreed with a nod, taking his thumb to Shepard's eyelids and opening them. Her eyes were wild, every which way, her body tossing and turning in an experience of its own. "What happened?"

JD didn't say but the combat team's eyes drifted to the broken monument, the broken beacon, hissing before fizzling out entirely like a fire, a flame. "Electrical?" He asked again.

JD shook his head along with the rest of Shepard's team. "Radiation, maybe, but that beacon it pulled some of us toward it… Grabbed us."

"Grabbed you?" Bannon, Emerson's apparent right-hand woman, asked aloud, incredulous. Mai had nodded as an answer.

"As if it was generating its own gravity, pulling us in… then it self-terminated."

Emerson looked at it, the feeling in his gut obliging him to ask. If it was classified he was now implicated in the mission, he had seen it after all, his Commander affected by it. "Was it your objective? The Turian's?"

"Affirmative." Kaiden answered.

"Where is he, sir?"

Shepard's team looked back toward the outskirts, hopefully Jenkin had been still alive, picked up. "He's in real bad, burnt to a crisp, hopefully with Chakwas now."

"Geth did that?"

Kaiden had would've shrugged if it hadn't been so casual in that situation, though he knew what Emerson was asking. Geth were not that cruel, that extra, as to impose that sort of disrespect onto an enemy. It served no purpose. Even those spires had been a means for reinforcement.

"Blue?!" Over their shoulders the ground team turned, seeing more humans peer over cover, down the ramp.

"Blue!" Kaiden shouted back, the brief momentary stress gone away as the Normandy team went at ease, now only concerned for their commander. It was the rest of the Eden Prime garrison, push through to them, surrounding the area and filling it in.

A Captain in the militia had spotted out the ranking man: Kaiden. "Captain Preston, Eden Prime Defense Force."

Kaiden could barely shake the man's hand as they got to business. "How's the rest of the colony?"

Mai had raised her rifle, ready to get back to it, but there was no need as the Captain calmed himself before filling them all in. "Pockets remain but we've got them getting picked apart. Good lot of them are self-destructing too, and we're gonna use these trams to deploy to the outskirts. You guys been through?"

Kaiden nodded quickly. "We met resistance out there but we also have some friendlies holding the fort. So the colony is clear?"

The Captain had been distracted halfway through Kaiden's words, hand motioning for his men to take the cargo trams out the same way Shepard's team had gone in. He processed for a moment before nodding again. "We're sweeping up now and interstellar comms are re-established. 1st Fleet is enroute."

A few of Hitman had clapped to themselves in self-gratification upon the word that 1st Fleet had been coming. If Shepard had been conscious, she would've made comment: It had been the fleet Alec Ryder had been assigned to.

"Do you have an active landing port for a frigate? We need to MEDEVAC ASAP."

"We'll toss you the coordinates now. Not staying around?" It was a tease, soldier to soldier with a battle going their way, obviously. Kaiden couldn't feel the same however, not with his new executive officer on the floor going nuts in her sleep. The Combat Doc had gotten paracord out, restraining her arms and legs as a stretcher from the Mako came out for her.

"We're giving chase, going to see what's the cause of this."

JD looked over to Kaiden. He doubted that. Not with a dead Spectre and a failed objective. He had never been, officially, personally been the cause of a mission failure. He was a good ODST like that, either the mission failed or the circumstances, but never him out of want to either live or to help his men, but even then, he was always called in to fill the blanks.

In a galaxy not at war, where raids like this were, supposedly, common, he figured more hearings would be in his future.

"Hey, Doc," Kaiden called out to the Combat Doctor. "She good for transport?"

Shepard was loaded into the Mako, Doc flashing thumbs up. "Sooner we get her to Chakwas, the better."

"We exfiltrating?" Mai sounded disappointed. It was a question that was an oddity. It was yearning in her voice, disappointment in all of them. She never left a battle without being forced to, without the all clear.

"Affirmative Chief."

"What about me?" Another Chief spoke to Kaiden. It was Williams, without a unit, without a command.

JD knew that feeling. For the UNSC at least, where unit destruction was an often thing, protocol was to fold units in with each other, commanding officer of rank taking charge and going on the fly. He was subject to it too many times. He bore himself as last survivor of a hundred different companies, units, battalions and ships, and he could only, only know all too well what Williams was feeling. She didn't deserve to be left behind.

"Who's this?" One of the Normandy's Marines asked. JD answered.

"Marines with Marines." He said softly, just loud enough for Kaiden to hear, but plenty loud for Mai.

Kaiden agreed, looking to her. "With us Chief Williams. We're taking you in for now, oorah?"

"Oorah." She answered back, heavy breaths.

His omni-tool rang, coordinates to the nearest dock highlighted. "Mount up, we're dusting off in five."

The colonial militia had gone off to the trams that they came here on, the time to get moving upon the Normandy's Marines.

"Full load." Williams had noted. Twenty people in one Mako, and even then, Mai had to count for five.

"It'll be fine." Was all Kaiden could say as he took a knee and awaited everyone to clamber into the back of the Mako, shoulder to shoulder. Mai struggled to fit, but it wasn't anything she hadn't been used to, JD on one shoulder, Kaiden on the other. Across from her on the other side of the Mako, knees barely not touching, had been Emerson.

Kaiden knocked against the steel wall as the back door was closed off, Shepard laid at all of their feet on her back, secured and restrained. He leaned to speak up to the front, a woman at the wheel. "Corporal Loke, is it?"

"Yes sir." The driver responded back.

"Get going."

"Aye sir."

Usually, Warthogs, renowned for their handling and their ability to bounce passengers around had hardened many a UNSC member. As the Mako accelerated, that familiar bounciness returned to them as they braced.

The verticality part of it was new, JD tightening his stomach as he felt the opposite of a drop.

Everyone else seemed to take it with aplomb however, a fact that Emerson had been immediately aware of. He and Hitman knew better however, a truth Mai read behind her helmet as Emerson rose an eyebrow at her, catching her looking at him.

"Why are you here?" It came out the same way one of her knives did, without remorse, without shame.

Hitman as a whole tensed up, but Emerson alone answered as Williams was left in the dark. "I think you know the answer to that, Spartan Mai."

They knew. Of course they did.

Kaiden, more than anyone, caught in between, knew what the implication was. "That wasn't communicated to me by Commander Ryder when he had you transferred."

Emerson clasped his hands together, "I'm sure you would've eventually deduced. You were there over Altis, Lieutenant, after all. You know what she can do."

They spoke in abstractions and vagueness, enough to keep Williams in the dark as she did her best impression of someone who hadn't been listening. She was, but for her sake she wanted to look like she hadn't been.

The eyes on the lieutenant had furrowed, a glare in it that he had to pack away. "This isn't the time or place for this discussion."

"We're still your men, Lieutenant Alenko, just know that we have priorities."

"Don't worry about me. Or him." Mai growled. It was that very growling, her reaction, that justified everything. She still sounded like an animal. Something that could break free from her shell and make everyone pay.

The Covenant was all-encompassing, everywhere. If not that: the human insurrections kept her busy, underwater with an enemy in each direction. To be delicate was not in her purview, and Hitman had been there to make sure, if she went astray, she'd be set in line.

Emerson's point was made as he leaned back, looking away.

JD had wondered, just vaguely, as he sat in Mai's shadow, if the UNSC, if ONI, had been like this with the Spartans. If the Spartans were indeed kids, developmentally incomplete human beings, who would they be without the distraction of the war? Would they have been fit to live among the rest of humanity? Killing was a failure of action. It was the failure of every other choice. Killing was failure. And yet that's what the Spartans were made to do: to act on base instincts that had no place in that modern world.

He thought of human nature, sometimes, more than he would admit. His father had been a detective, and thus those kinds of moral questions were aired at him as his father thought aloud on cases. Who were murders, serial killers, rapists and such but human? It was the only thing they could be. Mai was more than human however.

What that meant, at least to Ryder and his men, was that she was dangerous. Dangerous even amidst the complications of their mission to Eden Prime.

---

The Mako had rolled into the Normandy as it had, for barely half a minute, found its landing spot in a cleared agricultural field just asides from the main colony. It had taken off before the troops dismounted. Even before they had dismounted they found a glaring, if not concerned, Captain at the lip of their IFV. Flanked by Doctor Chakwas and some assisting personnel, there was no reprieve even in the safety of the ship.

Chakwas and several men had rushed to Shepard, being hauled by Doc and Williams, a fact that was immediately picked up on by Anderson as he did one sweep of the Marine crowd and saw him missing one.

He walked to Shepard before making comment, looking down at her. She was still breathin, but he had seen what had concerned them all: the way Shepard seemed so alive in her state, and yet so gone.

When he twisted around it was unkindly.

"Lieutenant Alenko?"

"Yes Captain?"

"Where's Corporal Jenkins? He wasn't there when we picked up Nihlus."

It was nice being XO. It usually meant most of the flak was taken by the COs. Unfortunately, his new one had been out of action and being carted away as they spoke, her head still thrashing back and forth, haunted by a dream.

He sucked in spit through his teeth as he unclasped his helmet and gave the answer that he had been only alerted of minutes before upon getting on comms and asking for Jenkins' status.

"Jenkins volunteered to be left behind with the colonists, assisting relief and SAR efforts. I made that call."

Anderson had glared at Kaiden for a moment before relenting. There were bigger issues to contend with then a soldier leaving his station for his home.

Jenkins stayed behind, and he was now currently fighting Geth on his homefront. Who could be blamed? JD had seen many ODSTs take that death sentence when the Covenant came to their home. He did not blame the man at least, but he could at least imagine Mai seemed annoyed. Anyone going against orders drew her disdain it seemed.

Anderson started back to the elevator. "Anyone who isn't an NCO or an Officer, to duty stations now. Everyone else with me to my quarters." Anderson had addressed that mass of Marines, and their blood had gone cold. Their mission had failed and, even given the circumstances, it was on them.

"I'm sorry Captain, but we get first ride." Chakwas had been at their knees, on her knees, hovering over Shepard like the medics before her. The Captain nodded in understanding as the good doctor rose her stretcher up with help, only now noticing who had been helping her.

"How are you doing you old goat." Doc had history with her. One that went back to med school. If anyone could talk like that in heated situations where lives were on the line, trained medical professionals could, she returning a smirk.

"Same age as you, Decker. Remember that."

"Yeah, and I'm the one out on the field. Anyway, up Williams, nice and steady. Don't need to be given her a concussion as well."

They handled her as if a coffin, her armor adding that weight. Shepard was in good hands however as they with WIlliams disappeared into the elevator and were sent up.

Distantly JD had let out a breath he hadn't known what he was holding. He could count the number of missions with zero casualties on his hand, so he stood there, like a stone, trying to process the battle that had come and gone. Not even the words of his new Captain could knock him straight.

"Alright. Then, come on."

He almost drew Mai's disdain as he stood in the hanger as those the Captain called on had walked with him to the elevator. It was rap against his knuckles with her own as she passed that clued him into something new: he was an NCO now. So he had rushed over, forgetting that his weapon was still in his hand, only to awkwardly drop it and let it fall limp against his chest by its sling.

Five people alone weren't enough to usually make that elevator cramped, but with Mai it had been. The true tightness in all of their lungs had been in the atmosphere as, again, the Spartan felt the drift in her feet of the Normandy hitting FTL.

"I'm not mad at any of you. But you have to understand that this entire mission has turned into a disaster."

Emerson and Alenko had been up front, the two turning over as the NCO Marine spoke out.

"Sir, my mission taskings today were wholly unrelated to anything Lieutenant Commander Shepard tasked with her element."

"I understand that, Sergeant Emerson, but you're one of the first Alliance units to engage the Geth. Your debrief will be as important as the rest."

The entire elevator had caught that from Emerson. Had the man seriously trying to lift blame off himself? Even if his words had been true, it seemed... opportunistic.

The comms on the Captain's omni-tool rang. It was Joker. "We just hit the Relay, Captain. ETA on arrival thirty hours on current drift."

"Roger that Joker. Drop my status update on the next comm buoy you hit."

"Affirmative."

The elevator opened and Anderson had led his pack. There had been no window into Chakwas' sickbay, no way to see what had happened to Shepard or Nihlus. There stead was fast though, for there was something to do. For the first time no one had been overly curious about Mai walking on the ship, even in her armor, there were more familiar curiosities happening as the group came into Anderson's quarters and squared their forms. The second the doors behind them closed, it began.

"Now, tell me, what the hell happened down there?"

There was only one objective: secure the Beacon. They failed at that. The rest was context.

Anderson wasn't a hard-ass, at least, not unnecessarily so. No plan survived contact with the enemy but this situation it was just so out there that he had to treat this like a failure on his team's part. To grill them, to convince himself that the measure of what had been happened, and indeed still happening on Eden Prime, was correct.

"The Geth have something fierce for jamming." Anderson had said as they all wrapped up, for the third time, their overview of the mission, having stood there for two hours on their feet each explaining, corroborating. "Radio transmissions, visual feeds, scrambles all of our sensors. Running through your helmet cams, even yours, Chief Gul, Chief Durante."

A failure of cybersecurity and cyber warfare suites. Even MJOLNIR had its limits, not without an AI in her head. She preferred it, but what that meant was that all of their words was all they had.

They had to describe that leviathan of a Geth ship rise before them, give out its roar, and leave. They had to describe the feeling in their bones that whatever ship it was, the Geth had come for a reason with it. They had to describe the Husks that rushed at them, only cut down by extreme prejudice. They had to say those words then and there so they could say it to a galactic community to try and excuse humanity from a failure of galactic magnitude.

Humanity had dropped the ball, and it had been Prothean in nature.

"You sound hoarse, Chief Durante." Anderson called out his shock trooper. JD's voice had become ragged, the more he talked, damning the fact his BDU hadn't been wired with a hydration pack.

"I'm sorry sir."

An odd apology, one that Anderson immediately tried to wave off.

"We're done here for now," he sat his data pad down. "I know, even before this, this wasn't on any of you. You all performed admirably for a first away mission. I expect nothing less from any of you."

Anderson expected nothing less from the away team from another N7. He expected nothing less of Kaiden. Especially he expected nothing less, and yet was still surprised, by the performance of Mai and JD.

Each, in their own way, nodded or acknowledged.

"But you won't answer to me in the end. Not when Shepard was being vetted for Spectre status. Not when one Spectre is in comatose right now. That's why we're on the way to the Citadel." He paused. He had been pacing for that full time of debriefing, only now finding a chair and feeling that relief on his feet. The debriefing had lasted longer than the actual deployment. That clarity only made him realize that everyone there had been, either by circumstance or security clearance, from having been there over Altis, knew of the peculiarity of the man and woman that did not belong.

Ryder's Hitman Team, they'd been on the ground on Altis, they had helped apprehend Mai and JD. They knew that they were not Systems Alliance outright along with Kaiden.

It hadn't been revealed yet that the Covenant came from a different Milky Way through their FTL, implicating dimensional mistakes that resulted in the crossing of realities. It was known, generally, that their method of FTL had been the reason why for their stranding on Altis, but the nature of it was held. Known only to the Covenant themselves and the Admiralty of the Systems Alliance via those who handled the debrief of the ODST and Spartan.

Anderson saw Emerson and his weariness toward Mai, knowing that she did not represent humanity as he did, but if only he knew...

Even with this, he had risked saying this outright and probably displeasing Ryder. It was no doubt that Emerson would report back to him at some point.

"Chief Gul, Chief Durante, stay here with me. The rest of you are dismissed to your duties until we get to the Citadel."

Kaiden and Emerson bore salute, exiting out cleanly and leaving the still helmeted JD and Mai.

"Off with the cans, Chiefs." Anderson had sorely said. He hoped he hadn't come off as that strict.

Slowly, the two had taken off their helmets, the slick of their sweat curving their hair among the bowl of their helmets as they were slid off. It'd been a long day and it showed on their faces.

They both had had longer though, so they continued to stand.

A pause came and went, time to breath, decompress what they could as they smelled air unfiltered by their helmets.

"How were you two?" Anderson finally asked.

"Condition green, sir." Mai had answered first. Nothing more said. She had no other comment to have. They went over during the debrief that they engaged the Geth with "little difficulty". But what that meant without their own true context was nil. Anderson wanted them to say outright whether or not the Geth were unprecedented. That they were a challenge to them.

"Nothing I couldn't handle, Captain."

"I know." He responded back more than wise. "But please, just give it to me straight. Compared to the Covenant-" Mai's left eye twitched, and they all noticed. It was a question that she wasn't exactly prepared to answer, but had one. "Is there a particular threat to them that is alarming to you, is what I mean."

Mai stared straight ahead, just as she did for the last two hours. Only now did her vision shift, her eyes drifting down and to the right to look at Anderson. "Permission to ask a question, sir?"

"Granted."

"Why do you ask, sir?" She said softly, wearily.

"You know what it's like to fight an enemy that meant the end of the human race. Extinction. Help me understand the Geth through your eyes. If you're concerned, it will help the Alliance, the Galaxy, know what we're up against."

He knew it sounded inconsiderate, but there were no manners when it came to the tactical considerations of a war that seemed to be coming if the Geth would so openly attack an Alliance colony like this.

"I didn't want you caught up with this, of course not, but-" Anderson tried to find words. "Who would've thought that something like this would've happened? What were the chances people like you were to get caught up?"

Mai gave him what he wanted. At least Anderson had tried to placate. "Their shield strength was observed to have been underpowered compared to the average Elite I encountered in the field. Their individual capacity to act as a soldier, weary of threats and otherwise battlefield situations is… limited sir."

JD nodded in agreement. They didn't fight as hard as the Covenant. They fought, and they did pose danger, but they knew what death looked like in the face and it hadn't been the Geth. Death was a Hunter, throwing a Warthog against a barricade before tearing a man in two. Death was the shimmer of light, followed by the ignition of an energy sword through the heart of a grunt. Death was an alien empire who saw them as defiling their gods.

Not machines.

These machines they shot and killed and they were good with that. It was all in preparation and planning that would make the difference, and, perhaps, they both thought, that if the colony was prepared, they would've been able to fight they Geth off better than how they had.

An entire Marine unit, Williams, at the very least had been lost, and that was a failure of defense structure.

"They left…" JD started off. "The fact that they left meant either their objective in the area was completed or they didn't want to stick around due to reinforcements."

"I could've handled the rest." A declaration from Mai. One that surprised Anderson, but not JD. He knew exactly what Spartans were capable of. "From what I observed, if I had the support, I could've done it."

Six had made entire militia groups disappear.

That's what Halsey herself wrote about her.

Hyper-lethal, no matter where she was.

"That wouldn't be your mission, Chief Gul."

Her face had hardly shown any emotion. "But it could be given."

Who was she to do anything else? Not many UNSC Commanders fully understood, at first, what it meant to task Spartans on objectives. They always got the job done, death itself seemingly not in play when they were on the field. They approached the Spartans more as people, knowing of restraints that every SOF unit would have. That wasn't how they were best used however. Spartans lived to operate on that bleeding edge of human comprehension and capability. Only then did they change the war.

James Ackerson understood this. Colonel Ackerson, the very person responsible for the SPARTAN-III Program. She had been Ackerson's personal grim reaper, assigned to him for years, and he had used her appropriately: To kill those who would defy humanity's chance to survive the war.

He understood to use her as a Hyper-Lethal Vector and, secretly, she hoped Anderson, and if not him, someone else, would see it as Ackerson did.

"I'm not going to make you fight a war on your own, Chief Gul."

"But I can, for humanity." She had done once before. She would do it again now. She craved it. Needed it.

JD stepped in. The way this conversation was going, it wouldn't be something Anderson would be able to understand. Not if he was a good, decent man. "The Geth were nothing we couldn't handle sir. The only factor that we can't account for is there use of human bodies for weaponizing… those Husks."

"Yes," Anderson turned to his station and console. "We'll get reports back from Eden Prime soon enough on them… but it's reassuring that you weren't afraid." JD twinged at that thought. Of course he was afraid, but he had long known how to bury that emotion in the face of combat. "Any thoughts on Chief Williams? You two ran with her and seeing as Jenkins saw fit to stay on planet…"

"Acceptable. She operated well with us." Mai spat out, like a report. "She's a good soldier."

Again, JD nodded, but he had to say something else. "I'd… it'd be wise to support her, when we can. She lost her entire unit. It's not an easy feeling."

Anderson saw the flash of familiarity in JD's eyes. "Yes, of course. We will."

"Sir," Mai had cut in. "I'd like to inquire about the inclusion of Sergeant Emerson and the Marine Unit of Hitman on this ship. They have a close relationship with Commander Ryder and… we were not alerted that we'd have them overwatching us."

Anderson had risen one of his gloved hands to his chin, swiping at it before answering. He was as flabbergasted that it had happened as anyone else. "Commander Ryder ensured Prime Minister Shastri that he would take steps at curtailing you in the event that you would... Well, disobey orders. Naturally I said such precaution wasn't necessary, but the Prime Minister saw differently. He sent the order down to the Admiralty and thus Hitman was assigned to the Normandy."

"Is that their only goal?" A bit of grit had been in the Spartan's voice. "Watching me?"

JD stole a glance, noticing her wording.

"I communicated with Ryder about a week ago. Me and him have always had our differences, but he trusts me to not waste Hitman… and that means assuring Emerson and his men that you two aren't a threat. I'm sure you'd like that too?"

They both nodded, understandingly.

"Do they know then?" JD had slowly let out. "About who we really are?"

The whole, complete truth, it was known by a number of people: those who needed to know and those that had been in the room when they told their truths. Secrets never stayed hidden for long, and with the Covenant making moves to reveal their truth in due time, it wouldn't take long.

"They don't. They just think you were Cerberus or some human-supremacist rebels that we just brought back into the fold. If Hitman does know, Ryder breached confidentiality."

Again, the two nodded, but one person remained.

"What about Shepard?" Mai asked.

"If she asks?" JD followed up, making sure Anderson understood what was being asked of him if she woke up.

His face grew a stone-like composure. "Nothing has changed. Defer it to me. If she needs to know, she'll know."

"Why would she need to know?"

Anderson rose one finger meekly. "Nothing stays a secret forever. Especially not from Shepard. She's not that kind of person. Especially after Akuze." They both looked at him, expecting an answer. He gave one, looking to the medals he had used to decorate his desk, held in their own containers or frames. One of them had been awarded for his duties as an N7. Duties he tended to not like remembering. "You must understand that, as SOF yourselves, you must've had a certain amount of… freedom, in your deployments. The discretion to do what needs to be done."

There was a certain darkness in Anderson's words. One that belied a secret.

"Shepard… If she thinks something can be destroyed by the truth, she lets it. She dredges it up, she brings it to light, she fights for it, she-" Anderson cut off, not wanting to say what came next:

She flies out with a N-Warfare Team to a human colony, waves down a sky car full of Cerberus personnel, and guns them down in the street.

JD knew what type of person that was. His father was that type of person, pleading with many a suspect, guilted in their own souls about what they done: "The Truth shall set you free." He would say.

"You're dismissed Chiefs."

The two, automatically, squared their feet, saluting. Anderson returned it, leaving the room immediately afterwards. The rigidness in their adherence, it was nice to have Marines that listened, he admitted, but not like that.

He breathed out stale air he didn't know he was holding in his lungs, head in hands. Much to do, much to think about, and not any time to take it in. He went to his omni and brought up comms to the medical bay.

"Doctor Chakwas?"

---

The Medbay was split in two, effectively. Each in the name of a patient. On one hand: Shepard, laying flat against a table, pads with wires coming out of them into appropriate instruments attached to head, monitoring her brain activity. She had come into that steel medbay relatively unharmed minus a few bruises and burns; her real troubles came within her head. That much Chakwas knew as one of her nurses sat by her, writing down notes.

"Strong one, she is." The nurse said. Chakwas could only nod. Shepard's record was written in commendations and combat. After Elysium she had gone across the borders of human space, saving those who needed saving, avenging those who needed avenging. Perhaps she wasn't as deadly as, say, Commander Ryder, or as effective a naval captain as Commander Anderson, but she had something that couldn't be quantified in words.

It was a force of faith: She cared in people, cared in her men and women, and everything that happened in a mission was based around making sure that the most good came out of it.

"I don't enjoy it. Making that choice, deciding whether or not I have to take someone's life." Shepard said once on the Alliance News Network during an interview after Torfan. "But if it came down to saving someone, anyone, 100% of the time I would do it. My life for yours."

All that the nurses and Chakwas could do was let Shepard lay in the Medbay and let her run out her nightmares.

The other side of the Medbay however, it was much busier. It wasn't that operating and working on Turians was particularly difficulty compared to Human physiology, it's just that, on face, the Spectre Nihlus had no excuse as to why he had been alive in any capacity.

"Is he locked in?" Was one of the first questions that Chakwas wondered aloud as she had been put in a sterile suit and tried to tear his armor off of him where it had melted into his body.

Mercifully, Nihlus wasn't. As in he was still cognitive but unable to move his body: a prisoner in his own flesh. No, it was only a coma. Turians were a hardy species however. Not on the measure of a Krogan, but war had been in their nature. To survive it was natural to them.

He was more ash in the shape of a Turian than anything, crudely, almost like a piece of Jerky. But he was alive and his body was recovered.

His table had been surrounded by an erected sterile bubble, those operating on him trying to get pieces of shrapnel and metal out of his head wearing sterile work suits as if he was a HAZMAT-worthy object. Delicately, tweezers had poked into his head and gotten pieces of what they could only guess was shrapnel out of his skull and skin. Those in his brain needing Chakwas's attention to go at.

Shepard took priority however. That just how it was on a human ship, official or not. That was why the woman only stood over her anxiously.

She would eventually have to don a sterile suit again and head into that bubble to try and save Nihlus from anymore damage, but for now, Commander Shepard needed her eyes on her.

"Keep her restrained, but past that, I don't think we should do anything."

The nurse looked up at her, eyebrow raised. "Inaction kills, you know."

Chakwas could only caringly put her hand on the Nurse's shoulder. "So do mistakes."

"Doctor Chakwas?" Anderson rung her up on comms. She answered swiftly.

"Yes Captain?"

"How's the status on Shepard and Nihlus?"

She took another roundabout look at both of them.

Two Spectres, one a veteran, the other to be. Laid out in her Medbay with their lives held in her hand, both clinging on by threads. It was grim, and she hadn't even known what had happened to Shepard, but they were still breathing.

"We'll get them to the Citadel, Captain."

---

"That was Harvest, you know. Harvest." It was the first time Mai had heard JD stress a word: the name of that planet. Not Eden Prime, as the Alliance knew it, but what it was to them. He said this on the elevator down to the well deck and it surprised her.

"Was Harvest important to you?" She asked him.

It was important to all of humanity, he wanted to say. That was where the war with the Covenant began. Of course it was important.

"No. But, it was still there. It looked like how it did before it happened."

He looked at her but her face would not turn as the elevators door opened and the well deck was revealed back to them, still heavy with post-combat activities. Hitman had been there in force, gearing down, but many of them still held their pistols on their hips.

Some of them had taken cursory glances at them, some hadn't cared, but her presence was recognized as the well-deck froze, only to resume as Mai stepped in and proceeded to her locker and cot.

Her helmet had gone on, only to take a swig of water that had been in a bottle at her locker. JD had been more through, helmet off, followed by his BDU one by one, leaving him only in the rather damp remains of what had been his shipboard uniform in its rather utilitarian affair, blue, so much unlike the UNSC's green.

Only after he had wiped down with a towel had he noticed Mai not do anything to disrobe. Her armor remained as her helmet looked at him, expecting him to continue the conversation.

He asked with a gesture of the hand.

She shook her head. "No need." She could live for months in that armor, and had done so.

He could only shake his head at it, disapprovingly, before moving on. "How many colonies did you offer?" He said in his hushed breath, closing the door, going near her cot and sitting down besides it, against the wall, it tucked behind the Mako. It was more privacy than usual on a ship.

She had joined him, standing over him, her shadow cast over him.

"Really?" He asked softly.

She had stared at him, the connection in her head of what she had been doing to him clicking as she looked back at the general light fixtures above. She moved off a bit, but he had still looked at her expectantly. Moments, seconds, it took her longer than he'd like for her to get the point that he wanted her to sit down.

She gave him a lean as the Mako shifted against her weight. Good enough.

"How many planets did you give them?"

Mai racked her head.

"Several dozen." None too important. Most of them agrarian or relatively unimportant economically. The important thing was that they had been found and habitable. They were planets that she had gone to stomp out the Insurrection at, and she remembered them well.

"Reach? Chi-Rho? Harmony? Arcadia?" JD named the planets off the top of his head that he had been reminded of: important ones, ones that, if found, could expand human resource and control exponentially.

She shook her head and he knew why. It was dangerous to not have their bargaining chips.

"It'll take hundreds of years for the Alliance to know what we did." A future they would never see. But they weren't selfish. JD nodded in agreement. "We still owe ourselves to those worlds."

They owed it to battles that were never fought there, to a history never played out: one they alone remembered.

"We lost the war, didn't we?" A question that was still on their minds as they were on a ship, breaking through to a new one. JD asked because he needed to hear an answer. Mai could not give it though, and her face, if he saw it, could only see her eyes sink in. Everything she knew, everything that she could think of, it all pointed toward a loss beyond anything humanity would ever know.

JD knew they were losing. He wanted to know if it was lost.

"Why do you want to know?"

"I want to know if I would've died."

He wanted to know if he could've really, truly, began again here. Before he could start thinking of the Geth, of Shepard, of Normandy and the Galaxy, he needed to be given some sort of finality.

"It doesn't matter." Mai had barely said, leaning against the Mako so much more now. "War's not over."

It took JD a second to realize what she meant, but he did, eventually, to the distant planet of Altis. The warring parties might've been uneven; the Covenant might've declared peace with that Mankind, but they were not of that Mankind.

---

Saren Arterius stood before God, and begged for his life.

That's what the Matriarch Benezia had thought as the worse-for-wear Spectre floated in what she could only assume was some synthetic-bio-bath that would, in some measure, help him heal. The ship they were on, if they could call it a ship, was not meant for organics. Not meant for those to walk upon its insides, almost as if walking in its memories, in its mind.

Sovereign.

That's what he called this ship. Speaking to it in rambles in his quarters as a voice spoke to him which she could not personally hear. If anything, it, the ship no less, spoke through him.

But however that link was, it was not kind to him. Not now. Not as, missing an arm and his face with holes and shrapnel in it, much of his blood gone, he was screaming in his unconsciousness.

She had exited that healing chamber to the grey corridors of that ship, the vision of it out of a nightmare: where organic horror and the mechanical nature of it collided in a claustrophobic mess of dark color which even she had never seen in her several hundreds years alive. She was alone now, an uncommon thing, not even considering the Geth units around her that were there for… she assumed guarding. It was rare, and, in the several month-long alliance that she had had with Saren, this was the first time it had been like that.

It was the first time, as she walked to the command "bridge" to make sure Sovereign was still en route to its hiding place, that she felt the tug, the pull, the whisper that pervaded this place like a hand on one's shoulder.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, but there was none there when she turned, alone in that hallway, nothing but the lights of the Geth's optical sensors around her glowing. When her head turned she found the cold though, breathing into an ear she didn't knew she had.

"You were there."

It spoke to her. A voice. Speaking her language. Not from sound, but one of thought, words directly being sent into her mind and being forced to comprehend as she felt her skin electrify and she herself held captive by a deep, dark voice.

"We have no history. We are constant. We outlast the stars themselves. All knowledge of your short history will be nothing but a mote of dust within the confines of our memories. Organics mutate, retard, mistaking themselves and destroying themselves in imperfection, worthy of nothing but discard."

Her bones shook as the sound of its words, its messages, claimed the very breath in her lungs and held her hostage.

"Anything of note, shall be noted. The rest discarded if useless. You will tell us what you know of them."

She was there, over Altis, briefly. She was there with the delegation speaking to the Prophet of Destiny, to the "Fleetmistress" Seylu Karonee. She had born witness to the Covenant and what they revealed themselves. And because of that, in that ship's million, million-year history, she would be the messenger to communicate that there existed something beyond their knowledge.

Saren Arterius begged God for his life, and for now, he was given it, as he screamed awake hours later, another objective on his mind.

---

Where JD would go, Mai would. Wherever Mai would go, JD would too. They were each other's shadow, out of habit, or out of security. To any rational person, they understood: the Marine contingent hadn't been trusting of them, and they were, at least, acquaintances with one another. After all they had lived with each for two weeks in a hotel, and that by itself, JD figured, meant something. He was unsure of using that word with her though: friend.

Of course, on the face, he could call her that: Friend. Someone he would want to help. To save. To have her back in a firefight. He knew that she would do the same to him. Though he knew better. Friend meant more, it meant that there existed an understanding of each other beneath it, and JD did not understand her, for as much as he knew.

The Normandy was equipped with a rather clean chow hall. Not meant to entertain the entire crew at once, but it was central. No actual kitchen, kiosks and lockers which spat out pre-packaged food that were the same here as they were in any Navy, regardless of the reality. He wasn't upset that, of his luck, he ended up in the universe where freeze-dried fish and chips tasted the same as the one he had left, but it was something to mull about alongside the topic of Mai on his mind, sitting there with a tray and a vaguely satisfying meal being eaten at.

Again, she stood, this time against the dividing wall, just behind him, arms crossed as she scanned those who would come through and by. She alone had been a rather good deterrent for anyone to join him. He liked being alone, but not being repulsive, which Mai had been displaying enough of an aura of.

They had no duties there on the Normandy, and he recognized the reason. He might've been SOF-capable in the UNSC, but not outright SOF. Here he had been designated as such, and because of that everything he would need to do was to just get ready for his next taskings.

The crew also settled into the mundane and routine of a new ship posting after the battle. The ground team had pressed for information on Shepard, but Chakwas would turn them away. The ship still had to be run, and whatever happened on Eden Prime, happened. Now was the after, and they were going to be as usual until they arrived at their destination:

The Citadel.

Anderson had announced this at some point. The Council had called them, and it would be the only place a Spectre could truly be treated, Nihlus clinging to life.

"I'm bored."

Words he would've said, but didn't, and he was surprised. It had been Mai. It was a common thing: to be bored as Spartan. Activity often included warfare, and she could not practice it here. The Normandy had no such rooms meant to be able to help sustain her: no gym, no range, no private quarters for her as a Spartan. It was the same with many of the smaller frigates she had used to transit from one AO to another, but here, it was now her posting.

She was bored, and she said it aloud in her armor.

"Could try making small-talk." JD thumbed some fries into his face as he turned over in his chair to look at her, still surprised to see a Spartan shadowing him. He was never that special to deserve the attention of someone like her.

Her helmet tilted at him, unbelieving. The adrenaline hadn't exactly drained out of her, having been hours since they dusted off from Eden Prime, however JD had found his sleep well enough by her cot, sitting against the steel wall. She found solace in being his guard as he slept so easily, so quietly, arms crossed on his stomach and head held down.

Even then however he couldn't sleep forever. He still needed his routine.

He still needed to eat. So did she, he figured.

He offered a rather stale fry at her, and she looked at it with a tilt of the head before, silently, shaking her head.

JD could only frown as he ate it instead. "Did you like anything we made when we were in Buffalo?"

To be fair they only had a hotel room and its appliances to make meals with, locked in and desperately trying to learn as much as they could of their new world. The offerings hadn't been great, but, in a way, it had been better than what they had now on the Normandy.

"You chose it all." She reminded him, flatly.

He shrugged. "Fair enough."

She had picked up the hint of insult she had accidentally hit him with, cringing internally. "Never really had the choice." She followed up fast, almost awkwardly.

"You have one now, you know."

"Hm?"

"A choice."

Williams had appeared out of the corner of their eyes as JD answered, leaving Mai silent as she approached, uncaring, setting herself down at the table with a barely occupied tray. She just needed something to touch, to hold onto, an excuse to do something other than let the adrenaline drain out of her and experience the truth:

She was a sole survivor.

JD knew it too well as he turned over to her and saw her blank faced, eyes empty, lost in her own thoughts and lost to hours ago.

He was alone when Persei fell, when he had saw the Covenant ships begin their glassing and desperately made for the cave systems which sheltered him and hundreds of others world wide on the jungle planet. No one had come with him, and so in the dark with nothing but chemlights and fire, the unceasing rumble of the glassing above, he had lost himself as he was buried alive in the darkness. He began intimately familiar with what it was like to survive: not only a genocide, but himself.

With all the knowledge he and Mai brought, some could never be understood by the Alliance until it happened. The First Contact War had been fading from memory, but there, on Eden Prime, the Alliance would remember that the Galaxy could be unkind.

Ashley Williams bore the brunt of that.

It was seldom that JD had ever met other survivors, but then, and only then, when he did, they would speak the silent language of horror.

JD rested both his elbows on the table, crossing arms, looking into William's blank stare into the table before she realized he had been looking at her. In that moment they spoke that language of horror.

One where nothing was needed to be said to know that someone knew pain.

"Williams?" JD said raspily, his voice still sore from more use than he had been used to.

"Ashley." She said, softly. "Ashley. Just Ash if you can."

Mai slackened her shoulders as Ashley looked to her. Even as a Spartan she understood the intimidation she could bring. Her armor had been darker than it had originally been, the wolf-grey turning into a darker shade that made her more a shadow than a wolf. She didn't know why she had chosen wolf-grey in the first place, upon requisitioning her armor. Maybe it was because she knew she had been a wolf in the guise of a woman. Maybe it was because she didn't care. In the end what had happened though was every iota of her being reeked of the ability to harm, something Ashley had been witness too as her eyebrows still spoke to some unsaid fear.

With one unclasp of a lock, her helmet had come off. Ashley had seen Mai's face for the first time.

"At ease, Marine." Mai had said, slowly, very slowly, lowering herself into one chair. She couldn't quite sit in it without collapsing it, but she kept enough weight off to be presentable.

JD was pleased that she did sit down, finally.

"You two, you're those Navy spooks, right?" She was jittery, trying to pick up her spoon. It rattled in her grip and she knew. "Hah. Heh- I'm sorry it's just th-" She dropped the utensil back onto the tray, palms wiping at her head. "You guys must be used to shit like this but-"

War changed people. The recoil of a gun that seemed tame and controllable on a range turned into the most violent event in life in combat, not even to think using said gun in anger. The hand would always remember that feeling now, when it happened.

JD raised one hand faintly off the table. There was nothing to worry about. "Are you okay?"

She looked up at the shock trooper. If her mouth was to open it would've been a lie.

The Spartan studied her face as she struggled to answer, and, in her meticulous historical readings in those prior two weeks she was reminded of one thing, looking at her. A coincidence maybe but-

"You're General Williams granddaughter?" Mai stated. Less a question. A fact.

Her social timing and cues had been non-existent, and JD could only curse within himself as he too knew what that meant. Williams seemed to shrink down upon that revelation, a confirmation upon itself.

She had the blood of a coward within her. That's what Mai recognized as Ashley flashed between shocked, offended, and still shaken.

Mai had noticed around from the Hitman Marines that they would give Ashley a wary eye when they passed. Almost the same as the ones they gave the herself. Marines were a fickle bunch, superstitious and believing in their faiths and fairy-tales. For the ODSTs, it had been the bad blood that existed between them and the Spartans. JD hadn't fed into it, but he wasn't the typical character in the corps. Here, the example before them had been the heir of the shame, brought upon by the only human commander to formally surrender to the Turians during the First Contact War.

The blood of Shanxi had been in this woman's birthright.

"I know, I know." She said hurriedly. "Please, just tell me how you it's unsurprising a Williams is the only survivor of her squad." She dared them, fire in her teeth from a past she had to bare.

Mai was cool, but didn't recognize what she had said. "Just a question."

JD had shook his head, grabbing both of their attention as he let his inner cringing out, hands motioning for both of them to cool it. "Past don't matter, Williams. What matters is now, so you alright?"

She calmed down a breath, a few cold breaths coming in and out of her. She hadn't had a change of BDUs so she still stank of battle. Only the filtrated air of the Normandy hid her.

"I'll be fine." She would be, JD knew, she seemed like a tough one, looked like a tough one. Female Marines in the UNSC were, that far into the war, no more different or no more lesser than males. Mai, and all those like her, were the very height of that statement. Here, JD could assume the same if Shepard had been the way she was.

"So not now?" He spoke like his father when he did talk: mostly in questions.

"Who would be?" JD tilted his head one way: a visible recognition of "you're right". Mai had sat frozen however, her face honed in on Williams, unused to hiding her facial expressions given her helmet. "I have to be, anyway. Captain Anderson just put in to Marine HQ back on Arcturus for my transfer onto the Normandy."

Taking a fry he had subtly offered it to her. She waved it off, finally looking down at her meal.

"Been in your place, few times." JD said, biting into the fry. Ashely raised both her eyebrows at him.

"I didn't know we suffered casualties like that before…?" JD felt the sharp knuckle of Mai against his thigh once; a warning. Ashley had been fast to overlook JD's words however as semantics as she realized instead something more important: "I'm sorry."

JD flinched only a little as he shook his head. 'Don't be'. He mouthed it. His eyes were kind, but Ashley saw a tiredness in them; in both of their eyes actually as she returned Mai's blank stare.

"Never seen armor like yours before… What's your name?"

"Chief Gul, Chief Williams." Mai answered back. Williams expected a follow up, explaining her armor, but got none as Mai simply moved her gaze around the room, looking at the Hitmen and the ship crew. It was in this she had caught Kaiden walk over. The pair had seen him walk into the Captain's Quarters minutes ago, only to come out now. Apparently, they weren't the only ones who needed a private word with Anderson.

Kaiden had caught Ashley's question to Mai and he could only join in measuredly. "It's not anything we'd seen before. Prototype, right?" The man said, good natured, taking a seat next to Ashley.

Mai nodded. That much she could give. "Do you need something, Lieutenant?"

He seemed no worse for wear. For being an XO it was a relief that he had not lost any men in the complement, even if the loss to Jenkins in replacement for Ashley was unusual. Kaiden only shook his head. "Just saying hi." He explained simply. "Apparently I'm gonna have to get reacquainted with all my men because they just got changed out by," he gestured over to some of the Marines on guard duty now. "Some other N7's fireteam. Gonna have to update the roster and all that."

"I see." Mai had said gratingly.

"Don't approve of them Chief Gul?"

"Do I have to?"

The way Mai spoke, the coldness that came from her words, it was something JD had taken time, and forced himself, to get used to. He understood, on some measure, where it came from, but her hard edges were the sharpest seen by any in the Alliance. Even Commander Ryder himself, in the end, couldn't compete as Ashley and Kaiden seemed to shrink underneath the Spartan's gaze. They only wondered why JD hadn't been like her.

JD preferred silence. He did, and with Mai there it seemed to force it between her and the situation they all just came from. It all let them, albeit awkwardly, sit there at the chow table silently and eat their food. Kaiden and Ashley exchanged pleasantries, apologies, condolences, as per typically, but JD, for all of his attentiveness: following what sparse conversations there was, it had been undercut by Mai, just sitting there, running thumb over thumb, biding her time for… something. Some unknowable something.

"Lieutenant?"

"Yes Chief Williams?" Kaiden responded as both she and JD had finished their meal.

"Do you mind showing me a locker? I did just kinda, end up here."

"Ah, right." A way out, to bow out. "Follow me."

Ashley had given a slight wave to JD, and he returned it with a nod as he sat back in his chair, Mai getting nothing, and giving nothing as she stood up when they left, returning to the wall, returning her helmet to her face.

'Jesus.' No sound came out of the Shock Troopers mouth, but Mai had caught it.

"What?" She asked him, the man twitching as if he was caught, already half way grabbing the box of cigarettes that had been hidden on an inside pocket of his shirt, his omni-tool lit to light. The stick had been in his mouth and lit when he answered, slowly, carefully.

"You come off a bit…" What was the word? "Strong."

He turned to her again, arm against the back of chair halfway turned. She tilted her head like a dog, questioning the world she was in.

"I mean," he continued. "We just got out of a fight. You make them feel… tense."

He sucked in his breath, blew smoke, and interestingly the smoke was drawn down. The filtration system filtered down to the floor. Normally, on ships like these after battles with the Covenant, grown men would be crying, Marines brought to the bone by the horror of a losing war. If they were as lucky to have evacuated civilians they were disassociated with themselves, questioning their very existence as their homes burned, escaping from where they were. Only the veterans, like JD, who had seen too many planets burn, knew that they could do nothing to help anyone process. Each person had to deal with their horrors themselves, and otherwise, all they could do was just sit there and smoke to deal with themselves.

"I'm sorry." She said to him. He was confused for a moment. Drag, blow, the taste of tobacco got rid of the fish.

He shook his head at her and that, immediately, got a reaction. Her eyes widened just for a moment as JD explained. "Not to me. And… don't apologize."

"I wasn't helping."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Did you really have to mention who she was to her?" Mai stared blankly at JD as he said that question, the light in her eyes questionative, her pupils staring down for but a moment, before looking up at him.

"No." She said; admitted.

JD straightened his mouth. "Yeah."

There were no such things as cowards, dead Spartans, or Insurrectionists in the war against the Covenant. Only heroes.

The fact that there had been a galaxy where a human general could surrender to an alien threat it was preposterous to the two.

"Heavy."

Mai tilted her head again. "Hm?"

"You're heavy to be around. I can feel it." What that meant was that to everyone else she was like a black hole: an exclusion zone around her that clawed at any passerby. "Armor's not helping."

Untouched by battle, the kinetic barrier and the shields left her armor pristine. She wasn't affected at all by Eden Prime, and that by itself had been scary.

"Won't take it off." She stated.

"You should." JD said back, almost as if an order. He was surprised the way his voice rose, moving the smoke in front of it. He spoke like that to Spartan. "Why won't you?"

Mai depolarized her visor, her eyes blank, narrowed, at JD. Once or twice she had gone to open her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. No answer came. None that she, for the first time in her life, wouldn't feel ashamed for using.

The Covenant War was no longer a threat. Humanity was not at risk of extinction. Her singular purpose was gone.

She never answered, her arms limply hanging by her sides as she and JD held their gaze. This was how they talked: short bursts, and if not that, with eyes and with hands.

JD felt the impulse to raise his hands, even with a cigarette in between the fingers of one. She would get used to dealing with people. She had to. She was a Spartan, she was stronger than any awkwardness between them all.

"Did you see Nihlus get on?" He posed, curious.

She shook her head with the subject. They both froze when he had appeared in the docking bay. Not a human, an alien, the way his mouth moved, his beady eyes scanned and cast themselves upon them. If it hadn't been for the sparse encounter back in New Buffalo they would've done something worse, but they trained themselves to handle the inevitable.

They both looked to the Medbay. Nihlus and Shepard were now hanging by a thread, but they could do nothing. Chakwas cared for both of them.

"Do you think-" JD paused, stopped himself. It was dangerous to think the thought he was to say. His teeth shut close before his mouth and Mai caught him. Raising one finger up she had wiggled it a bit. He recognized it, a Spartan Sign: Private comms.

She leaned in, taking a seat again. She wanted to hear what he was to say and pressed him on it almost physically.

"Do you think I did my best for Commander Shepard?" He relented, quietly, like a whisper, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm before taking a drag in the same motion. Mai could never get used to the smell of tobacco, thankful for the helmet's filtration system, her nose scrunched.

"You didn't know what was wrong with her. No one does."

JD breathed a breath filled with ash and smoke. "I know." He nodded to himself. "I know."

To take care of people. Mai saw that in JD. He wanted to take care of people, and he had definitely done that with her. He was patient with her, and, briskly, she could hardly think of any other Marine who would've treated this whole situation, her, with as much grace as he did. He was still a Marine, but he had been measured in a way that spoke to a temperament that betrayed his age.

Shepard had been older than them, Mai had the luxury of a mask and her very being as a Spartan, but JD alone seemed world weary on his face. He understood that people needed help, for he had seen too many lost.

That's what Mai thought of him as he gazed out toward the Medbay and let the cigarette burn through its white, barely singing his finger as he shook his head out of it.

She knew something pertinent for him to learn.

"Want to know the Spartan Sign for taking care of?"

JD had looked at her a second, ash flicked away into his consumed food's tray, considering. "How do Spartans use it?"

Mai's eyes flashed back to a memory. A lifetime ago, and yet only a few weeks.

They were on the beaches, running up to the Sabre launch facility. Covenant had been laying siege to it and they had come in from behind. Only the Jackals had any foresight to look behind surprisingly, and when they did, they had caught Kat, B320, in her robotic arm.

Mai knew Kat, a long time ago, from their time at Onyx. Not on a personal basis, but they had bumped shoulders and acted in concert during training ops they were teamed with on. She was tough, but not tough enough to fully wave off a Needler Carbine shot to her mechanical arm, having caught her with her shields down.

"Cover!" Carter had yelled, faster than Mai had ever seen. "Cover!"

Jorge had moved up with his gun suppressing fire as Carter dove for Kat behind cover, the woman trying to get the pink shard out of her arm's body. Mai had noticed this barely as she was busy lobbing a grenade with one hand and firing her AR with the other. Jorge looked and expected an answer. Carter had given him an answer, his dominant hand almost at his chin, palm up and curved as if a cup, only to gesture toward Kat as he had helped her clear the jam in her arm.

Mai had wondered how many IIIs, or personnel other than IIs, had been privvy, or in a more general sense, in on Spartan Signals. She wondered if Jorge had been the first Spartan-II on NOBLE, and that if Carter had been taught them before. Kurt had entrusted in her the secrets of the IIs, and if someone else of his caliber had entrusted Carter, she had imagined back then, serving in Noble, he could be relied on.

Those were the hoops she had to jump through mentally to acclimate to operating in a team.

Hoops she had to go through now with the ODST before her.

"For first aid, medical attention. If they're attending to someone."

She did it before him, and JD had, almost like a mirror, copied. This was how he learned sign language after all.

She nodded, his copy good. It was grisly but JD could imagine where he could use this. Most of them involved Shepard bleeding out, Mai providing cover fire.

JD laid his right hand against his chest before moving it flat next to his ear and then forward, transitioning then to her sign, cradling over his chest. An odd combination, but one he was familiar with. It was directed at her.

For her short time in Noble, her status as Lone Wolf hung over her. Kat had been the only one who would've been qualified to say anything of their new number six: having seen her before on Onyx.

"Lone Wolf, eh?" Emile prodded at her on their way to Sword Base to stave off the initial attack. "I'm sure the trainers loved you back on Onyx."

"They didn't." Kat had responded fast and hard, one leg held out of the Falcon. "Then again… it was only fair you were given no teammates during our force-on-force exercises, right?"

She wasn't used to being taken care of, and she was hung up as the sign sent at her was translated into word in her mind. She scoffed, turning her head away, not even considering it.

JD hadn't noticed as he repeated the action a few times before settling, running his right hand then through letter signing, just to see if he remembered the alphabet as best he could.

"She'll be fine." Mai looked at his hands as they shuffled, A through Z. He had paused at M, looking up to her.

"Hope so." Leaning back in his chair his mood had changed, given something to do. "If you're bored, I can teach you to sign."

She nodded once and that was that, damning the fact she still wore her armored gloves. "Alphabet first. Alpha through Zulu."

He learned sign language when he was young, but it was not his first language. His first had been the UNSC Standard: English. His mother had wanted him to learn like his peers, normally, but when the school day was over and when he was old enough, this was how he would spend time with his mother in the kitchen of their apartment on Luna.

It brought him back to better times as he balled his hands into a fist, his free hand waving Mai down. "Just watch."

Like the Spartan she was during a briefing, she watched, she examined, and she learned her ABCs all over.

---

She knew what a Medbay felt like. Or rather, she knew what a Medbay smelt like. That was the first thing that hit her senses as her eyes tore themselves open from the black and remembered what she was doing:

Running.

She woke up as men of action always do: With a hard breath, the seizing of their arms and a bite. With one fluid motion, despite her best interests, she had tried to sit up a moment after she was cognitive again only to end up on the hard metal floor, feeling around her hip and praying to god there was a weapon. Going on sense alone, there was none, and so she had done the next best thing, pulling her fingers into her designated touch map, the orange omni-tool around her arm glowing as a blade came out.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" A familiar voice was heard as she felt for cover, finding the platform she had just been on and crunching herself against it.

She opened her mouth finally, getting in as much air into her as her vision cleared. "Who?! Who is that?!"

"Shepard! Shepard!"

"You won't get me you fucking Batarian-!" Her cry, a way cry no less had been heard as the door to the Medbay was opened and several men came flooding in, the metallic footsteps of a metal monster coming in.

A shrill voice, and older voice. "You're on the Normandy!"

She finally opened her eyes and saw sanctity, rising up and over.

She was on the Normandy: in front of her, her new XO.

"Kaiden." She said, breathlessly, unsure of herself, now only realizing her omni-tool had been lit and exposed with a blade. Eyes wide open, standing up, her first truly lucid moments of wake had been immediately hit back by a throbbing in her head. An ache that hurt but she could break through.

She felt the light touch behind her, a flash of grey as she turned around. It was Doctor Chakwas giving her a motherly look, one that writ concern on it as, using her own vision, drew hers down. Right down to the weapon she had drawn.

"You had us worried there, Shepard." Chakwas was prompt, the woman in question deactivating her blade, her face coming to a forced laugh.

"Sorry." Was all she could say, turning back around, seeing her men and women.

"You good there, Commander?" Kaiden looked at her with a concern that was less about her and more about what had been done to her. They all knew the legend of Commander Shepard. They hadn't known what she had been through however, and this was a hint they never wanted as, just one last time, Shepard patted her hip for a pistol.

The commander nodded yes, trying for a smile, leaning forward and finding the bed in the Medbay she was at. She knew the drill. Even as a dumb teenager she had seen enough Medbays to know what to do and what the process was.

There was a different smell however, and it smelled like-

She glanced behind her fully now, catching a bubble she had only seen before vaguely on leaked images from the Migrant Fleet and their medical procedures. This was the human equivalent, made for-

"Oh my god."

She knew she had been knocked out. She recognized the fuzzy feeling that permeated her temples and gave her cotton mouth, but there was a measure of darkness that came from being knocked out on a bunk that was right next to a set up burn ward for a special agent that had seen more combat than years she had been alive.

And yet he laid there, like a burnt stick figure, tubes stuck into at least three holes of him and his natural plates either gone, ripped off, or stuck to his figure in the same way some metal from his arm was welded onto his flesh. There was a man in that bubble with him, cloaked in a sterile, one body suit, slowly applying specialized medigel to him. He hadn't paused to look at the fanfare of Shepard.

She'd seen worse, but wouldn't wish this on a pirate.

"Brain activity shows he's alive. In fact it was the same as you, for a bit: a trauma induced coma." Shepard looked away from Nihlus and back to Chakwas and her crew, news of her waking spreading fast and hard as Kaiden tried to corral them back.

"I was in a straight up coma?" She shook her head in disbelief. "How long was I out?"

"Fifteen hours." Chakwas answered, going to her omni-tool and passing them over Shepard before going to her more physical instruments. "Can you feel this?"

A small syringe drew blood from her forearm's vein. With one twinge, she nodded. It felt normal. There were still tests to run on her, and it'd help the more… intrusive ones that she was awake to consent.

"Something happened down there, Commander." Kaiden had approached her after he had settled the crowd. Some Marines had just wanted a look see, to see if Shepard had indeed been awake, falling back into duty. Some had stayed, if not only to grab a look at Shepard, but also Nihlus. Of all of them however, it was Chief Gul that stuck out like a sore thumb, her armor still on and heads and heads taller than the rest.

Shepard's face had gone straight. "Was the objective completed?" Some more Marines bowed out, not wanting to see what happened when Shepard got the truth and the debrief. Kaiden had shrunk, but sprung back out as he gave the answer.

"Mission failed, Commander."

"Eden Prime?"

A smirk at the corner of Kaiden's mouth. "Safe now. Hopefully, 1st Fleet is over there now and even before we left, the rest of our fireteams helped secure and fortify the colony and its defenders."

"Then that's a victory in my book." Shepard looked around, hoping Anderson hadn't been there to hear that. In that glance she caught the face of Ashley. She was here now, she had lived, and that was good to hear and see. "Sergeant Emerson?" She called.

"Yes ma'am?" The dark Marine stepped forward from the crowd, besides Kaiden.

"You were transferred from the 1st, correct?"

"Yes ma'am." She nodded her head, pleased.

"Good to hear… Alright then, everyone who wasn't on my fireteam dismissed, back to your duties."

A thunderous sync had roared out, over a dozen men repeating: "Yes ma'am!" At once. They were obviously have been glad to see Shepard okay. She was loved throughout the Alliance. Perhaps, in some way, as a figurehead, but more as a reliable leader. One not weighed down with vanity or politics. Those that remained felt that as the crowd that had, at once, filtered into the Medbay filtered out.

"Where's Jenkins?" Shepard seized up again, looking around at those who remained. He hadn't-

"Back on Eden Prime, ma'am." Kaiden reported, leaning on one table. He had been holding in a breath unknowingly, glad that Shepard was alive, one that, for but a briefest of moment, also let JD breath easy. "He's acting as Alliance liaison. Technically insubordination, but he wouldn't leave his home. It's alright though, we're still at full strength."

In one gesture Kaiden had pointed to the new addition. "Chief Williams?" Shepard asked aloud.

A salute. Not a formality, but one of respect. "Reporting to duty Commander. Captain Anderson is clearing me for my posting here."

Shepard warmly smiled. She'd seen Ashley in action. She could keep up. No, she figured, it was more of a question if anyone could keep up with- "And what about you two, how you two Frogmen like running with us Marines?"

"Glad you're up, ma'am." Was all JD could say, shaking off the jab to a branch he would never truly be a part of.

Mai only stood there, silent, a simple nod the only clue that she had been listening to her at all.

"Still armored up, Chief Gul?" Shepard asked, concerned almost. Was there some threat still there?

"Yes ma'am."

"Why?"

"Personal preference."

In the same way Shepard would feel for a gun upon waking up, she could not fault Mai if her abilities clued her into the life she lived. With a nod, the Commander dropped it.

"I'm sorry about the Beacon, Commander-"

"Is it destroyed?"

Kaiden nodded regretfully. "I must've set off something. Maybe it detected my Biotics; tripped the security system when I approached it… It grabbed both me and Chief Williams and-"

"Yes, yes," Shepard held her face in her hands, feeling the failure of the mission just now hit her. "I remember that… Remember shoving you two out. I remember you, Chief Gul, trying to pull me out." Mai nodded again, hands behind her back. "You were gonna rip my damned arm for my socket, Christ."

Rolling her arm a bit, Shepard massaged what she could, but it was sore. "I'm sorry, ma'am."

Shepard raised her hand. "No need. Thank you, Chief Gul." No one ever thanked her for what she did. Not Ackerson. Not ONI. Not Mendez or Kurt.

It felt… nice?

Yeah, Mai decided, it felt nice to be thanked in such a warm voice, sincere and grateful.

"Me too, Commander, I should've-"

Again. "No need, Chief Williams. You two had no way to know that was going to happen… sheesh, when did Marines get so polite?"

Shepard could only lighten the mood so much with a burn victim in the room, her bearings returning to her as she felt Chakwas sneak her hands beneath her uniform's shirt and attach a sensor to her.

"We don't even know if that's what set it off, Commander," Chakwas said as she attached the necessary equipment to Shepard. "Unfortunately, there's not much left of the Beacon to find out what happened."

"It overloaded," Kaiden continued. "Blast knocked you out cold, and me and the rest of Hitman had to drag you back on the ship."

Shepard could smile for but a briefest second, thankful for her men. "I appreciate it, all of you." She cast her gaze onto all those present as JD and Mai, slowly, walked forward, all of them surrounding Shepard on that table.

A few beeps had emanated from some nearby medical equipment the sensors on Shepard's flesh were connected to. It didn't take more than a few scans for Chakwas to deduct this: "Physically, you're fine. But I detected some unusual brain activity, abnormal beta waves." The good doctor went back to work unhooking Shepard, letting her stand, the commander more than happy to get on her two feet again. "I also noticed an increase in your rapid eye movement, signs typically associated with intense dreaming…" Chakwas looked to JD, the medic on site.

Doc was the man in the bubble with Nihlus, more than happy to apply his academic medical upbringing with Chakwas onto the Turian. It meant that he couldn't comment, but JD could, and he did. "Started the second we got you down, Commander, your eyes were crazy since the first moment."

It was in that moment Shepard was liable to let her eyes run wild again, remembering the echoes of a- not a dream…

She had realized she had seen a vision inside of her head.

From the office section of the Medbay another nurse arrived, showing data from Shepard's test in a form to Chakwas. Hushed words were whispered from the doctor to the nurse's ear, telling him to stay and to note. Anything was noteworthy right now as Shepard fell back, leaned on the table. Details coming back to her she wasn't quite ready to process, emotionally, cognitively, and even sanely.

"I was dreaming." She said, eyes looking beyond everything and everyone, into an unknowable image. "Death, destruction. Metal and flesh. Do…" She hesitated. "Do any of you know H.R Giger? He was an artist back on Earth, last century."

All of them, even JD and Mai, looked back into their memories.

They all shook their heads, none knew the name. With a huff, Shepard continued: "He was a horror artist, I think. The only reason why I know of him was because, when I was in Europe as a teen, I went to this, well, art show with art dedicated to his style."

"What's it like, Commander?" Ashley leaned in. She didn't know the name, but she convinced herself it sounded familiar. Perhaps her love of old books, of old English authors, would actually come in handy. H.R Giger was the furthest thing from it however.

"Horror." She said. "Metal shaped in the way of flesh. Biomechanical corridors that no living thing was ever meant to traverse. Grotesque, like the inside of a bug, but all of it- all of it-" She went on, losing her words. "Imagine pulling apart this ship, and instead of gears and machinery, you saw flesh, and blood, and organs and-" She stopped herself. She imagined the flesh of man, torn apart, by metal hands, for all eternity, screaming through mesh until it became cold and steel. Her head darted around, looking for a bucket, a trash can. When she did find one she flew for it, sticking her head into it before her mouth erupted.

The assistant nurse saw it all, recorded it all in her notes.

Voices whispered into her ears like hallucinations, describing what she saw to her in a language she could not afford to know, but understood anyway like metal nails against stone.

Minutes passed, her stomach emptied, and they all stood there and bore witness as a nightmare brought Commander Shepard to her knees.

Chakwas knelt down besides her after the retching stopped and the dry heaving began, a glass of water in her hand Shepard clung to and set down her gullet like a cure.

Slowly, shakily, she rose herself back up.

She was a spectacle all to herself that kept even JD and Mai focused on her, not noticing when Captain Anderson slunk in.

"She saw a vision." Was all Chakwas could say as Shepard tried to regain her bearings, staring up at the ceiling, forcing herself to relive what she saw because it was too important not to take. She had that vision for a reason. Those visions meant something as she clawed at her own memory and, all at once, spoke more.

"I saw… a city. I saw a city." Shepard continued, slowly. "Not one I've ever seen before... All humans."

Chakwas looked down at the notes her assistant was keeping and, forwarding to Anderson. They all leaned in in some way as Shepard looked into her memory, remaining with her, only to look up and blankly stare at the ceiling still as the words eased out of her mouth like the water she just put in. "New Jerusalem."

The next sound in that room had been Mai sucking in air into her lungs through her nose. Words spoken that meant the world to her. Her face remained blank, and both Anderson and JD desperately tried to not take a glance at her. They succeeded, but if they had seen Mai's face they would've seen the furrow in her brow, concern written on her face that only deepened as Shepard went on, none the wiser.

"I saw a girl, teenager maybe, get kidnapped. A- a van. Black van. Clandestine."

Mai's eyes sunk deeper still and JD held his breath.

"Then what happened?" Chakwas wanted her to go on.

"Whoever those people were, they saw me, knew I saw it… then they chased me. I ran through those streets and, and- I saw a city." She repeated.

Mai remembered her home in her dreams. She remembered it when seen from below: towers that erupted from the grounds and into the heavens so impossibly far. Streets she was never allowed to walk on and paths forbidden to her to go down by her mother. Neon lights and the roar of the populace arguing within itself creating a war that hadn't been the Insurrection or the Covenant.

She remembered the cold.

She remembered who she once was.

"I've been to Elysium and Timbuktu." Shepard started, sweaty palm on a sweaty forehead, cold herself. "I've walked across Russia and invaded planets. Sumatra, France, the Ivory Coast, Novaya Zelmya and Buenos Aires… I've been to Cavalry and Masada and Mecca. But I've never been to a New Jerusalem."

One of Chakwas' nurses looked into their omni. "No such settlement exists." He reported.

"Was this all one vision? One dream?"

"No." Shepard said at first, unsure, but nodding to herself. "No. I think this was separate."

After Beta Company was sent to die and she was made the first Headhunter, Mai knew what had happened to New Jerusalem. The nurse was correct in what he said, both now and in their own galaxy. New Jerusalem had been attacked by the Covenant five years after she was taken. The planet wasn't taken, but it was partially glassed before a UNSC fleet drove them off. Apparently, the Covenant didn't find anything of value the first time around and backed off. It was enough for the main colony to go up however; destroyed. When Mai discovered this, that was when she decided to secretly make her necklace. Her Mother couldn't have possibly been alive. Not after that long. Not after the war.

"Fighting. I saw fighting. Civil riots. Secular in nature." Shepard went on, almost unbelieving of herself. "They were burning flags, books, hurling rocks at each other as the police did nothing... That flag I've never seen before."

Shepard seem hung up on it, and JD and Mai dreaded the answer. Despite this, it still came.

"What was it?"

Shepard paused, and then remembered. "Earth, with an eagle perched on it."

The emblem of the United Nations Space Command.

---

They had made a bee-line back to their lockers, the only place they could conceivably get privacy, and when they had gotten there Mai had for once, put herself into a sit against the Mako. JD leaned into the steel wall, Mai sitting there, blankly staring vaguely down at the floor. "How were you taken?" She looked up at him, daggers in her eye, but her face sad. She tilted her head. "She saw you, didn't she?"

Mai's eyes were empty. She alone could barely remember that night, that is if she even wanted to. It was buried for a reason, deep in the corner of her mind that Chief Mendez and Ambrose had wanted her to tuck away. If she could barely recall it, it was something else, something terrible, that someone else had to bear witness to it.

Anderson had stayed in and thrown everyone but medical staff and Shepard out of the Medbay. She was due her debrief, and she had skirted a line very close to humanity's greatest secret. It was a quarantine on coincidence it felt like, but it just felt so, so-

"I don't know." Mai answered flatly. "I don't know if she saw my memories."

By itself, it was a stupid prospect: that their new XO had seen the memories of a woman from a literal different universe all on a fluke from a barely understood ancient alien piece of tech.

"You would know, Mai." He kept saying her name, in times like this, when they weren't being cloaked by their disguise as System Alliance Navy personnel. He hadn't heard her name spoken this much in years, and yet JD had spoken it as if it was normal. It wasn't normal to her. "I knew ONI was into some real... choice stuff, but I didn't think that they still did the literal van and black bagging routine."

She didn't regret, at all, what had happened to her. Not one bit. But that belief did not stand as well, as sturdy, when someone saw how she was taken with their very eyes. In the end, no matter who spun the story of the Spartans, it was wrong.

"Tell me, then, JD," she started, unsure of where she was going. "How was I supposed to be recruited? How did you?"

JD leaned back, eyes closed for a moment as he remembered that day, long ago. Running his hand through his messy hair he had very much known it.

"Well, uh, I was seventeen. Dad had just died because of some toxicity thing, ate something he shouldn't have. The inner colonies were just beginning to fall under siege..." He didn't know why he had let the conversation fall, but Mai needed it. For someone to interrogate this to her, it was… It wasn't right.

One of Hitman had walked back absentmindedly, going up the elevator to get some chow. They kept their silence as the man did, their history being their held secret.

The relationship between the inner and outer colonies in the UNSC had never been stellar or great. For years before the Covenant the UNSC had fought another war: the one which Mai had sometimes waged on her lonesome. The Insurrection: Colonies who wanted to form away from the rule of Earth and would do so with violence. Some argued without the Insurrection humanity, via its ability to test space warfare in it, wouldn't have been able to put up any fight against the Covenant.

Regardless though, it still meant hostility and tensions remained, and the fact that the Outer Colonies bore the brunt of it offered a separation to those who lived on Earth and on the Inner Colonies. When the first Inner Colonies were hit, that was, for the first time, the war became real and extinction stared at all of humankind.

"There was a recruiting station, near Dad's police station. I'd been talking to them for weeks, even before Dad died. The Corps would offer my Mother a stipend and benefits for being a widow, and her only son being enlisted." JD paused, listening to himself. Mai caught this, her head tilting ever so slightly as if to listen in more, to hear something that she missed. "And uh, Dad, before he died, he signed a waiver for me to enlist. He didn't want me to, but he knew- he just knew."

"A waiver?" Mai asked.

"Yeah," JD started carefully. "The requirement for enlistment is that you have to be eighteen years of age... usually that is." He referred to her. "I was seventeen."

Only now did Mai realize she had never, other than her other Spartan-IIIs, seen a trooper younger than eighteen. She wondered what type of person she could've been, if she had been allowed to, even in her pitiful existence, live to eighteen, but that had been lost to her.

He made motions with his fingers, unconsciously. "Anyway, It was as simple as handing in papers, waiting for your ship date, and then getting corralled into a shuttle and sent off to a boot camp. Luna had one. Was there for like, a quarter of the year."

"You were a Marine first, right?"

"Still am." He said softly. It was a joke, a dig at her to know better. A flash of annoyance came by her face but he continued. "I was a usual Marine for one tour. Green and all that."

After that he became as she saw him now: an ODST, clad in black armor, the best of the UNSC, beat only by her and people like her.

"Why'd you do it?"

"Hm?"

"Join, I mean. I think you knew that joining the Corps wasn't good for you, even back then."

Words came easy when speaking to Mai, he had realized then and there. He looked down at his hands, catching them about to sign the word for-

"Selfish." He said to himself, more than her. Suddenly Maai had heard what she was looking for.

He spoke easily to Mai, he had told himself, because she wouldn't judge him. He abused her sense of social understands in that way, vaguely, and he felt bad. But she listened, and it meant a lot for a man that many in his unit assumed was mute.

She looked at him with those piercing blue eyes, her problems disregarded for a moment, again forgetting who she was, and how she had become who she was. They were questioning.

In the words of an old Colonel, from a different war, from a different history: It was judgement that defeated them.

"I didn't want to be there when the Covenant invaded my home. If I was going to die, I'd do it on the front."

Silence filled in the moments, the hum of the Normandy around them enveloping them like a cacoon. This was their metamorphisis.

Mai's eyes had been on the smaller side, her eyes almost like that of the cats spoken in Egpytian folklore. When they widened a bit, as if taking JD in more, her gaze cast on him, he noticed, holding her gaze for one moment before going for the squashed box of cigarettes in his back pocket, straightening one out with his teeth and holding it.

"That doesn't sound selfish at all." She noted.

He paused, flicking on his omni-tool and bringing it close to his face. He shrugged, lighting the cigarette.

Sucking in air through the filter Mai had, without her helmet, become aware of just how foul cigarettes were as he blew out. Her face scrunched, but she hid her reaction as JD closed his eyes, trying to savor the hit.

"More than that, if I'm being honest." Again, Mai tilted her head, finally sitting down herself, back against that same steel. "I left Mom." There was guilt in it, using his palm to rub his eye, cigarette held still.

Mai had remembered something very distinct as she had looked at JD's hands and the words he could talk with them.

JD's Mother was deaf.

"Could she-"

JD cut her off. "Yeah, she could live well enough on her own. We had nice neighbors, and the precinct was always fond of her. She grew up independent despite it all."

"But then why do you feel selfish about it?"

It was so easy to admit when his mother was dead and his universe was gone. It felt like cheating. He felt dirty, almost as dirty as the cigarette he was puffing on.

"Just left her. I didn't want people to rely on me. I didn't think I could take care of people." He said fast, hard, knowingly. He felt weight on his chest and he was sure as hell that it hadn't been what he was smoking. How many men and women had he been left alone to remember?

Sadie Kassul. 13th UNSC Army division. Corporal. Mother disowned her for joining the military. But that was okay, she didn't talk to her mother. She died during the evacuation of New Persia. Plasma Pistol overcharge blast. JD saw her armor melt into her flesh, into her heart.

Captain Avery Blaszko. UNSC Frigate Yesterday's War. May or may not have had an affair with JD's ODST platoon sergeant at the time, but was otherwise a dependable, personable captain. As far as JD could recall the Yesterday's War was posted over Reach, and that meant what it did.

"Seriously? You smoke?"

The two looked up, a shadow over them. Older man, average military cut, eyes sunken deep but heavy with duty and observance. It was Chief Engineer Adams.

JD had tried to find a place to put it out upon seeing the engineer of the Normandy above him.

"Hey hey, not on the floor." He said raggedly, JD stopped just short using his pants before Adams rose his hand. "I don't got a problem with smoking, Frogman, just try to keep it away from the core."

JD nodded up at him, opening his mouth, but it wasn't his voice that came. "I'll make sure he's down there, next time."

Adams had given a glance at Mai, the woman averting her eyes, hands held in each other.

"Ah, right, thanks." Adams had waved off.

JD sucked in another drag before looking back down to Mai. "Does it bother you, at all? That Shepard saw your home? Saw yo-"

Mai cut him off. "How could she?" She asked a question she was sure she was going to hear again and again in the following days from Anderson or whoever was assigned to them.

"She said the name of your colony, Mai. She saw you get taken."

"That's impossible." Her teeth ground together like chalk.

"So is the reason why we're here."

They crossed realities to get to this point. One more stretch of the imagination was by no means an insincere gesture to them.

"She saw nothing but a dream."

"A nightmare, it sounded more like."

They sat there for a long while, JD going through a moral battle he had thought he had dealt with with himself. It wasn't up to him to reconcile what had been Mai's very nature, her upbringings, but he had to if only because he now bore the weight of what it was like to be a citizen of the UEG and know his very existence hinged on the existence of her, a Spartan.

If he were still living the life he was born into, if he had known what Mai had told him about the Spartans, would he had been okay with that given what they did for humanity?

He never answered that question, only put it away, let the problem of acclimatizing to this new world take him. But now, with that question brought up again, he had to answer that question.

"You were wronged Mai." It came out thicker than any cigarette or cigar could've. "You were wronged."

The Spartan jerked, almost as if to leave, but she didn't, instead staying her ground, saying nothing.

"I know you're at peace with who you are now. I know you would've chosen this life again, but the fact remains that what was done to you was wrong." It was the fastest he'd ever spoken in his life, because he feared Mai would up and leave, would not take what he was saying, but in her armor, behind her helmet, she was like a statue.

"Please Mai, do you know why I'm saying this?"

It was worse than being built on a lie. She was built on a wrong: a sin. She was the result of sin.

She should've been okay with that. She should've, Mai thought, biting her lip, just shy of breaking skin and drawing blood. She couldn't though, she couldn't even admit that to herself. She had killed more men and women and children then any Spartan before or after her would ever admit. The Master Chief would never be able to go as low as her because she had been there first. All done in the name of ending the Insurrection so Humanity could devote more lives to stopping the Covenant. She knew she did bad things, horrible things, and she knew that whatever death delivered her to her mother, it wouldn't be a good death.

She took this all willingly, and she'd do it all again because she knew, her own truth, was that it was important. That if it wasn't her it'd be someone else.

However then and there she couldn't say the words that JD wanted to hear:

I know.

It was to admit that what Shepard saw was wrong and that her very beginnings owed her all the good and salvation in all the galaxy: the price of her ability to wage war too high for humanity, from an individual to as a whole, to pay.

It was to see it how JD saw it, and how he decided.

"I would've killed them if I had the chance." If he were in Shepard's shoes. If he were actually there with a gun in his hand. If he could've done something, anything.

"You would've stopped me from becoming… me?" Mai finally said, still unmoving. "From becoming a Spartan?"

Another drag, longer, half the damn cigarette as he considered the question. Did the effectiveness of one Spartan justify it all? Especially if humanity was doomed anyway?

He looked at her, turned his head and she looked back. He wanted to tear off her helmet and speak to her, her bare ears listening, her eyes taking him not through glass but through her corneas. He was a man of actions, not words, silence was his tongue until he was forced to do otherwise. Thus, every word carried weight and what came out of his mouth carried the weight of who he was as a human.

"Who would I be if I didn't?"

---

A space station the size of which they had never seen before, buried inside of a cloud of stardust. It emerged from behind the space particulates as it sat, graceful among the stars.

The military personnel on the ship emerging from FTL could hardly comprehend it as it sat in the white light. The names for it rolled off the tongues of every species that saw it, and all of them were grandiose: The Keep, The Menagerie, The Altar, The Throne for Dead Gods, The Citadel. There was hardly a unifying light as the men and women of that ship looked at it and stood in awe of something that no one in that galaxy could've possibly made.

When it was discovered, the very implication of it was broad, was scary, was a cosmic horror story that, if thought about, harkened back into a galactic perspective they could not comprehend at all. Perhaps that's why they gave the space station such an elaborate name. It deserved it.

Why was it built? Why was it left like this? What happened to those that made it? Just how did they make it?

These questions, or rather, the pursuit of these questions, was what kept some who did dare ask them sane. Every question, no matter how mythical or ancient, had an answer.

There is danger however. A danger in secrets. Both in seeking, and in knowing. Somethings were meant to be hidden from view.

These questions, these secrets to this space station and those who made it and all like it, were answered.

The path humanity took now, forever changed.

For all the names that aliens and humans alike gave this construct, the name that stuck was the name that was the most comprehensible.

For many that had come with them, the captain of that ship recognized he was one of a few who had seen it before, and in fact, rather recently. At the bridge of his ship as the crowd gathered around, replacements for those he had lost just days ago, he spoke about the station before them:

"They call it: Halo."

The Pillar of Autumn made it to the Soell System with coordinates given to Cortana by Halsey, extracted by Noble Team as their dying act. She made it with a flotilla of ships tasked to protect her as the defenses in Aszod failed and the desperate measures were called.

In another universe, another story, timeline, reality, the Pillar of Autumn, overwhelmed by Thel Vadamee's fleet, would crash on Halo, bereft of their proper introduction as the Forerunners themselves wanted. Humanity, against the lie the Covenant was based on, were the true Reclaimers: the heirs to the Mantle of Responsibility.

Though this was not that story.

The Pillar of Autumn made it to Halo, its custodian welcoming them, the pitch and presence of the Geas of one-man restoring humanity's rightful place in the universe. The Librarian's plan fulfilled, the Didact left cold forever on a lost planet, soon to be rediscovered. Installation 04 sheltered the survivors of Reach, and all of its defenses brought to bear destroyed the Fleet of Particular Justice. Corpses were pushed aside, secrets uncovered, and, in the end, Operation RED FLAG was modified ultimately.

The last of the UNSC's offensive fleet came to the coordinates the Pillar of Autumn and its flotilla delivered, and before them stood a gun pointed at the head of the Covenant.

"Is Sanghelios in range of this installation?" Captain Keyes turned around, and asked not a man, but a construct.

343 Guilty Spark. The Monitor of Installation 04. A floating lightbulb. Tinkerbell if she was a male-oriented ancient construct in charge of a superweapon.

He floated onto the bridge, Installation 04 left in Reclaimer hands, the UNSC setting up station there as the Autumn led itself to the end of the war.

"Yes!" The AI answered cheerily. "The planet you know as Sanghelios is very much in range of this installation. If you would like to use Installation 03 as a staging point for the Reclaimer counterattack, I will contact 049 Abject Testament immediately!"

The bridge cleared as a metal mess of a man walked forward, held on one arm, at his hip, was another weapon inherited: a massive machine gun, dirty and bloodied by Covenant. He would've very much liked to end the life of every single Elite with his own hands, but humanity did not have that luxury.

That was why he was here…

He was here for two reasons, technically, one of them more prudent then the other. He had an object in his hand, but Guilty Spark never noticed. Not as the purple projection of a woman appeared at the Autumn's station for her, her glowing irises looking at the Halo solemnly. Even as an AI, thinking on a measure a million times faster than any human could, she stared at the Installation far longer than she was comfortable with, turning to Guilty Spark.

"Will this…?" She held out her hand, and a T-shaped object appeared. "Work for any Installation?"

The Activation Index? "Why… yes? How did you acquire this?"

The Monitor sounded worried as Captain Keyes shot a look to the Master Chief, the Spartan setting down his adopted machine gun onto the floor, the disc in his hand ready.

Cortana shimmied her hips a bit, proud of herself. "While you were awfully occupied with consulting with me about human history and our ability to be "Reclaimers" we… reclaimed something on our own."

343 Guilty Spark never noticed the bridge fill with Marines, or why the humans had been so dodgy with him, secretive, ever since they had left his Installation after getting information on 03 and its capabilities. He hadn't even been able to brief the humans on the Infestation!

But alas, once, long ago, he had been a man, vulnerable to the failures of man still. He was curious then, he was curious now, and it killed him as Keyes refused to regard him and instead push a tactical plan for landing on Installation 03 to the other UNSC ships jumping in from Slipspace.

"Thank you, for everything, Guilty Spark." Cortana had said. "Chief?"

Before Guilty Spark had even been able to respond he felt hands clamp around him, a great magnetic, electrical force bringing him down to the ground in a clatter of metal.

It was the Master Chief himself, and what he had put on him was-

"Armor restraint. Short circuits much of any system. To be used for rampant Spartans… Then again I don't think the Master Chief here worries much of any of us." She coyly commented, hand at her cheek as the Spartan knelt down to secure Spark. The Monitor, for all of its will, could not move, his repulsors frozen, locked up. This was a fate worse than death if he was left like this, but fortunately humans knew mercy.

This entire thing, what they were doing here, it was defined by mercy. Not by the abundance of, but by the lack. After thirty years, no mercy was to be given as every human there who knew what Halo did saw, behold, a pale horse. They were the riders, and its name was death.

Guilty Spark struggled pitifully, and for a moment, the Chief hesitated. He sounded so much like a man.

"What will you do? Please, tell me that at least." He begged.

John-117 only had one thing to say as he leaned in to disable the Monitor. "Light it."

The horror in 343 Guilty Spark's eyes was palpable, even as he, a construct, could put off.

"A tactical pulse would eradicate any life in 25,000 light-years around this installation! The Rings were not meant to-!"

The Halos were never meant to be used as weapons against mortals. Only against the horror of Flesh, against the Flood. The Librarian never intended for the Mantle of Responsibility to be taken like this, to confirm every fear her husband, the Didact, confided in her about humanity.

The Covenant War was never supposed to end this way.

Every protest, and more, would not be heard from 343 Guilty Spark as the UNSC fleet moved in to Installation 03. Its range was perfect: skirting human territory, just barely, but encompassing all of the Covenant. What human colonies that did fall in range? Acceptable losses.

If 343 could've screamed, he would've, but instead he was put into stasis, and the genocide that came was one that the Guardians themselves could not stop.

One day later, humanity won the war.