Chapter 7: Know Your Deeds

Author's Note:

This will be the end of Part One of this series (god knows how many parts there will end up being), so it'll be a huge milestone for us! Without further ado, enjoy!

The Halo Arrays are legendary in all civilized space. Among the Covenant Remnants, they are something akin to holy weapons. To the former Covenant species, they are effigies of their greatest shame. To humanity, the Halos are a terrifying waiting game. To Admiral Drescher, the vast majority of her time spent near the Halo arrays was babysitting stardust and ONI scientists. She wasn't sure which was worse. The 300 ships of Garrison Fleet 3 were likely unnecessary. Yet, flood research protocols and whatnot made it necessary. That and the Covenant Remnants. The remains of the Fleet of Divine Recompense had slipped into far off space after the assault on the remains of Alpha Halo nearly two decades before. That only left the true religious nuts and conspiracy theorists to try and find the others.

It also meant that the only eventful things that happened here involved insane people, or very lost people. Which entailed a simple wiping of their nav drives and memories, and dropping them back into relatively civilized space. Installation 01 really was the shit end of the stick. Drescher was told that this posting was a great honor back when she was promoted. After nearly two years at the end of space, she was ready to punch that Admiral in the face.

"Admiral, we're detecting slipspace ruptures at extreme range." Sensors reported, putting his phone down. The bridge shifted from the relaxed and non-regulation positions they'd once inhabited. It was impressive how much grumbling could echo on the command deck of a supercarrier.

"Do we have friendly IFFs?" Drescher pulled herself from her seat, and strode to the central projector, shaking sleep from her eyes. The commander of her flagship, Commodore Mizai, had already planted himself head of the display table.

"Already pinged, but we're not getting a response." The Commodore replied.

"Give 'em a second, they're probably shitting themselves right now, in the meantime can somebody set up the interdiction arrays!" A startled 'Yes Ma'am!' from Quartermaster Lebin confirmed the order. The steady thump of the array began to sound through the ship, as Comms began to speak.

"IFF has been established, it's a civilian vessel ma'am, but I am detecting some irregularities. Should we hail them?"

The Admiral suppressed a sigh, before waving her affirmative. She walked to the 'hailing bay' which was the intimidating and awesome part of the bridge designed for hailing people, and gave comms the go-ahead. Again, this civilian vessel disappointed her, taking a full minute to respond to a warship that could literally blow them to pieces.

When the screen finally linked, Drescher knew something was off. The woman, better yet the girl who appeared, looked emaciated and tired, despite the clear layer of fear that was splayed across her face. Her dark red hair looked disheveled and dirty, and her eyes bore the deep circles that told of many sleepless nights, her skin far more pale than the sun lights aboard most ships would allow.

Still, Drescher had to put the fear of God in her. "This is Admiral Kastanie Drescher of the UNSC Supercarrier Indomitable, you have trespassed in restricted space. State your business." The steel in her voice seemed to have slapped the girl into gear. Her eyes widened momentarily, and the girl began to speak.

"Um Hi, this is the UNV My Other Spaceship is a Car." A pregnant silence hung for a moment. "Oh! I'm her Captain, Jessica Shepard." Drescher felt like laughing at that, but something was wrong. She could feel it.

"Why have you come to this area of space? The closest settlement is nearly 60 lightyears away." The little color left on Shepard's face drained, though her face remained neutral.

"We left Shanxi following the evacuation," the young Captain glaced sharply to her left, "Just punched in some random coordinates and jumped outta there y'know?"

Drescher, hell everyone, knew that something had happened on the wayward planet, and yet they couldn't leave a halo unguarded, or even at half strength, and so they'd stayed and waited for more news. Guess it wasn't a comms malfunction she thought. "What happened?" It was a simple question, but the expressions that played across the Captain's face were anything but. They were sloppily controlled, yet the effort that was made…

"I don't know, we just left after the call was sounded."

"I understand Captain Shepard, is your vessel in need of repair? It seems like you've taken some damage from some sort of impact." Drescher was scrolling through the report on the vessel Sensors had just forwarded, strange gravimetric readings, damage to the hull in numerous positions, evident damage to the slipspace engines. Christ what happened to this ship?

"Oh no thanks Ma'am, we're as cool as a Callisto sunrise here." The whole deck froze at that. She couldn't mean…

Drescher faked a chuckle, yet her mind raced as she drawled her own coded response. "Cool as Las Vegas Captain?"

"As a cucumber Admiral Drescher."

Drescher closed out the conversation stating she'd need to send an inspection over, as a matter of course. Usually, this meant that some ONI spooks would pump the vents with amnestics, and reroute the ship the hell out of dodge. She called Spartan Kilney herself, and told her to prepare for a hostage situation.

As the screen winked out, the Spindles visibly relaxed. Jessa couldn't say the same. Her heart raced, and she could barely keep her hands from shaking. She hoped that her code phrase worked, it was an old one Uncle Eser had told her about. She still remembered the stormy grey eyes the Admiral studied her with. She had to hope.

The Spindles had forced her to take the message from the UNSC fleet, using strange, robotic translators to yell at her, and threaten her life. They'd also asked questions about the 'Giant Circle Objects,' which she'd feigned ignorance about. Those things looked manic, shouting at each other and yelling, and feeding her bits and pieces of their language, if accidentally.

Though, to be honest, if she'd only now learned about the Halos, well she'd be freaking out too. The big WMDs-in-the-sky had filtered into mainstream knowledge a few years after the end of the war, and had captured the imagination of the public. More than a few movies had been made about the Battle for Installation-04 and the exploits of Spartan 117. They were mostly propaganda and cheesy one-liners, but it had lessened the blow when it came to the existence of end-the-galaxy weapons. That and the Flood, of course. She tried to put those morbid thoughts out of her head, but that only lead to pondering her current situation. Right, not better.

Just her luck to jump directly into the most dangerous place in the galaxy. She was lucky the UNSC controlled this one, lucky that most things had gone her way. At least for now.

The (presumed) leader looked over from an animated discussion the two aliens were having, probably about the Halo (the words Renevau'Cha came up whenever she was asked about them) when a hail came up on screen. She was quickly ushered back towards the screen as the Spindles ran out of view. She pressed the answer key, which displayed an older, tan-skinned man, named Saurduc by his tag. His hair was greying slightly, and smile lines were etched into his face, a strange contortion given his serious expression.

"Captain Shepard? We'll be commencing our boarding shortly, find some cover." Jessa began to ask about the 'take cover', before a sharp CRACK split the air. She looked up to see a glowing blade embedded in the ceiling, effortlessly cutting a neat circle into the feet of reinforced titanium. The lights shorted as the ceiling caved in, plunging the cabin into darkness, and obscuring the blurs of motion that stormed into the ship.

An unearthly sound emanated from one of the Spindles, before it was silenced by shattering burst of weapons fire. Jessa tried to focus on the boarders, but saw only strange… shimmers, and brief, bright disruptions in their invisibility. A Spindle launched a purple blob before a hole appeared in its neck. The two others present… well… they exploded. A fat blue beam sent chunks of one flying through the bridge, while another was eviscerated, it's greenish guts sent out of the room via the gaping door.

Jessa took the scene in. She realized she was holding her breath, so she took one, only to find the sensation painful. Oh. She glanced down, and saw a purplish energy, and her blouse shredded utterly. She dimly noted this as her favorite one, one her mother bought her. She watched with morbid fascination as the energy ate away at her flesh first bubbling, then blackening the skin around the wound. She stumbled toward the console, and found she couldn't breathe.

Another figure appeared, this one armored in the unmistakable suit of a Spartan. It was colored a cream white, with a sharp red scar marking the visor. The Super-soldier scooped the young woman into its arms in a smooth, practiced motion, and jumped cleanly back through the hole; into the sterile lights of their craft. The Spartan was gone before Jessa even realized what had happened. A man and a woman, dressed in the white and blues of Navy Medics, rushed to her aid, dragging her suddenly prone body away from the wound in the floor, asking her terse questions like "What's your name?" and "How old are you?" One of them said something about a burn, but it felt so far away. Another said 'biogel' and 'stem cell' or maybe 'O2.'

"Stay with us honey!" the man said. He had dreamy eyes. She stared into them for a long time.

The bunker shook. Again. It was ever-present toss and rumble of air strikes, artillery, and the more pedestrian explosions. Doctor Kingston rubbed sweat from his brow. A contaminant? Probably, but she figured the soldier wouldn't mind so much. The woman, a reservist by the lack of body armor, had been rushed into his makeshift hospital only a few minutes ago, and with the surgeons busy it was left to him to operate. He pulled the clamp from his vest, and closed a leaking artery, sutured or cauterized the mess of the woman's small intestine left by the peppering of alien bullets, and closed up hoping that what he'd done had saved a life, at least for a little while. His hands were a bloody thing, caked in the young woman's gore. He hadn't learned her name, so he had nothing to name the bits of intestine and skin that weren't his. He peeled off his gloves, and eyed the ever draining supply of latex in his box. Soon they'd be operating bare-handed.

He tried to clear his head with a break. The tide had been stemmed, if for a few minutes, and he slipped from the crush of the 'operating rooms', to the infirmary. Kingston was caught by two well armed soldiers before he was able to sit down.

"Dr. Kingston? You're needed by the General." He bit back a groan, before following the two ash-covered men out of his infirmary. His task, dictated to him by the Council, had been to set-up triage in the lower levels of the civilian bunkers. That plan had been modified when the tunnels into them were collapsed by an enterprising group of alien fucks, forcing his medical teams into the tight and utilitarian military tunnels. It also lost him quite a bit of medical supplies, including the majority of his medical gel. It also gave Lieutenant General Jourdan the idea that the Head of Triage in Shanxi was his personal minister.

The Command Chambers lacked the omnipresent scent of blood and death, but made up for it with the baffling amount of people stuffed into one room. Radiomen made up the majority of the chatter in the room, and clung to the walls to avoid being swept into the currents of couriers and officers streaming in and out of a series of small, interconnected corners of concrete and rebar. It would be hard to find anything in the whirlwind of activity here. Anything except General Jourdan, that is. The man was of relatively small stature, though hearing his bellowing orders might have convinced lesser men that he was a beast. The fury of sound made it easy to find the man; Jourdan was verbally assaulting the air marshals commanding the few fighters left in the skies. The Marshals left with all haste, and Jourdan found Kingston's eyes in only moments.

"Dr. Well!" Jourdan boomed. "Come with me, we must talk in private." Kingston frowned at that. Jourdan was not the kind of man that left his post in battle. His private thoughts had distracted him from the General's rapid exit, forcing him to run to catch up.

"Where are we going sir?" the Doctor exhaled.

"You'll see." he coolly replied. Unnerved by the lack of gusto he said that with, Kingston decided it'd be better to see.

The two men traveled quietly, slipping or ramming through a mile of tunnel, before reaching the brig. As he wrenched the doors open, he spoke again. "I was told you have some experience in xenobiology, Doctor?"

"It was my minor at Georgetown, yeah. Why?" The door opened, and he beheld a raptor. A dead one, hopefully. A sputtering wheeze from the wouldbe corpse disproved that quickly. The Raptor was armored in purplish grey, and spattered in a bluish blood. He'd heard the stories about the purple wizards, but he'd hoped to never see one in the flesh. "Oh fuck me."

"Quite, I'll need you to make sure this one lives." He looked at the alien, and pondered what could have fucked anything up so badly. It's breastplate was shattered, it's head caked in blue blood, which was also pooling on the ground. "I'll also want you to try and speak with it. Or find some way to communicate with it. The combat AI's are busy coordinating troops, so their support will be minimal. I'm transferring a xenoarchaeologist to your staff in the meantime. Good luck." The General walked away just as quickly as he came, leaving Kingston with the two stationed guards, and an alien magician.

It was easy. Laughable really. The living ones put up quite a bit of resistance -unknowingly of course- but their constructs were just stupid. The AI had at first moved cautiously, and then with reckless abandon. She'd pilfered their language databases at first, learning first their names (Turians, a fitting name I suppose) and then everything about them. A homeworld, the gist of their fleet numbers, technological specs, truly everything needed to wage war. Petabytes of information, protected with the metaphorical equivalent of a 3 Credit luggage lock. It made her somewhat suspicious really. If it was this easy to access, perhaps this was a trick? Still, even tricks could be helpful in a war. She rationalized it her mind; such an underselling of ship capability couldn't possibly be correct anyway. According to their own history, a spacefaring species of nearly two thousand years couldn't possibly be so weak-

She turned off her postulation matrix. The seconds spent running through that were wasted in such a pointless debate. She'd let the intel AI work on that themselves. She tested for more weaknesses, accessing audio channels with recovered codes. She listened in on troop movements, reports, and a growing sense of awe. Perhaps they were this stupid. Or at least this light in infosec. Now to find a way to get this info out…

She remembered. Or perhaps hidden subroutines had finally been activated. She remembered where survivors of the defense fleet went. The clouds of the far gas giant. She covertly repurposed a satellite dish, and set to work crafting a message.

The More Than One shuddered, as did her Admiral. Jones was a wreck, his uniform soiled by blood and sweat.

"Jump complete Captain." Navigation breathed. The remainder of the Shanxi Defense Fleet, the five ships that had limped from battle, had continued their war, if only barely. Jones had ordered a series of raids on the more vulnerable patrol fleets the enemy used to hunt them. On equal terms, his ships could demolish theirs, but it was becoming less and less equal every raid. Their last had landed them in a trap. Four lagging frigates had simply been bait for a squadron of ten cruisers and frigates, a force that they couldn't afford to fight.

His last destroyer, Jagged Edge, had sacrificed itself to secure a retreat for his others, the four ships of his fleet. Just four. A damage report pinged on his interface, and he checked it. A crack in the slipspace drive, and a host of other hull and electrical issues that would have to be repaired somehow. The swirling storms of this planet (his crew had named it Bitter) perfectly encapsulated his own mind.

He couldn't keep doing this, and yet what else could he do? Reinforcements were arriving every day from that thing. The blasted Fork! He'd asked long ago why he couldn't just blow that damned thing up with every nuke he had. Apparently the thing held a tremendous amount of energy, which would be a bad idea to destabilize. His AI was keen on making sure he didn't try it anyway. The bastard.

"How's the rest of the fleet doing?" His voice was audibly tired, and directed at nobody in particular. He'd been awake for nearly two days straight this time. But he couldn't rest yet.

"Publius is fucked sir, her superstructure is barely holding together. Everyone else is battle-ready in about a day." Comms chimed in. She was barely holding together herself, with a job that had no breaks. He'd have to remember to put her on bed duty.

"Okay, tell Publius to remain here, guard our rear."

"Admiral! Receiving message from enemy fleet!" A gasp rang across the deck.

"Play it." Jones' heart was in his chest. If they'd found his position…

A series of beeps and buzzes began to assault the ears of the assembled crew. To Jones, it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. Morse code. They had someone on the inside.

Litrinox was a proud officer. He'd done a more than good service for the Hierarchy. He'd been an astute politicker, a perfect officer, had shredded Batarians under his talons. And yet he could not crush these INSOLENT VARREN! He'd been forced to call in reinforcements from a fellow Admiral, a man whom he despised (in private) and who would now share in some of the spoils. Now, he'd been forced to call in the 29th Fleet, with a Primarch's blessing perhaps, but with an implied loss of even more spoils.

Litrinox wasn't even sure he'd get promoted at the rate he was losing ships to lightning raids by the Prim remnants. He'd thought he'd had them with his little trap, and yet they'd still managed a hasty retreat, minus a dreadnaught at least.

This was not to mention the problem of enemy civilians. The tried and true methods of civilian resettlement only seemed to provoke them into violence, which forced his men to reciprocate, as doctrine demands.

Spirits. This little pacification had turned into a fiasco; one he intended to finish. Litrinox was now the commander of over 300 ships -practically at least- and over 100 thousand soldiers who were landing as he spoke. These humans, he'd teach them a lesson on interstellar war, whether or not they'd want to learn.

The Admiral stalked his way through the bridge of the Reticent, plying his men for updates, and scowling internally at every one. His amalgam of generals had only delivered news of delay, retreat, and minor gains. For every slight advance, his forces paid in grotestesque piles blood and bodies. He'd seen what their weapons did to his men. It wasn't pretty.

"Admiral!" A lowly ensign reported, snapping the crisp salute of an overeager rookie.

"Rest, Ensign. Speak at your pleasure." Litrinox was presented, discreetly, a small piece of paper. A strange occurrence in the era of starships and hyper communications. He took it hesitantly, and gave a questioning look to the young woman.

"My apologies Admiral, a message from Intelligence." The ensign exited quickly, leaving Litrinox to ponder the message. He didn't like what he read.

Empty. Not the prefered state of his weapon. Zaeed reached, and found nothing else. Shit. Across his line he noted the faces of soldiers down to single mags. Or none at all. Fire across the line began to dwindle, and the Raptors were beginning to notice. One of the rail turrets, which had helped hold the line for nearly a day, began to whine down. A Raptor ran diagonally across the small road, from one piece of cover to another, and he managed to make it, shield intact. It's buddies followed suit.

His unit's heavy weapons had run dry hours ago, snipers and beams were drained, nothing was left but soldiers and half-empty mags.

"Grenades? Anyone?"

"I'm fucking dry!"

"Now what?!"

As the remainder of his fire dribbled out, he realized they were out of options. Yet, he knew he had to hold. The path they defended led straight into the civilian bunkers for East Landing, still in the process of being evacuated to the better defended military bunkers still east of here. Those bastards out there could not pass. Nobody knew where the Raptors took the captured civies, but drones had found bodies. Too many bodies.

"Hunker down!" Zaeed shouted, echoing down the tunnel behind them. He was technically their leader now, he was after all the ranking officer. Zaeed racked his brain. Just a few more minutes, a few more seconds to get more people out. He had an idea. It was fucking stupid.

"Fix Bayonets!" He screamed. His voice carried down the tunnel, reverberating his insanity for all to hear. There was a pause in the turmoil of the line. Then incredulity, as more orders bellowed from his mouth.

"Wait till the bastards are within 10 meters, then charge! Once we've beaten them back, we fall back down the tunnel!"

A soldier down the line perfectly encapsulated the feelings of every man and woman on the line at the moment. "What the fuck do you mean charge!?"

Zaeed jumped on that quickly. "We charge or thousands of fucking people die, soldier! We do this, and we can buy just a bit more time for people to get out, got it!?" Zaeed afixed the gleaming blade, standard issue to every enlisted man there was (though perhaps not as awesome as his missing marine plasma blade) and stood before his men. "We do this, and we can save lives men, so lets fuck those bastards up!"

Zaeed was never much of a public speaker, but hell, his men cheered, albeit briefly, for their suicidal commander. Sporadic gunfire kept the Raptor fucks unsuspecting, as they slowly inched their way forward. His own men began to hunker, whispering words and tightening blades. Zaeed himself watched near the front, as the Raptors slowly realized there was no returning fire now. They themselves seemed surprised by the faltering fire. They crept closer now. The aliens numbered nearly 300, while his own forces had been whittled down to just over a hundred. He saw one of the Raptors move past the 10 meter mark. He heard it speak, a soft, chittering tongue. He saw another's mandible twitch, a reminder of their mortal enemy a century before.

"CHARGE!" the Lieutenant screamed, a cry that only deepened, and widened as first ten, then 50, then all 100 defenders jumped over the barricades and sandbags, and straight at the bastards. Zaeed, by virtue of being the first out, took the first hit, a glancing blow that shredded his face, and threw his mind to the void.

"Aside from some abnormalities in her blood, she's stable." The chief medical officer had delivered the news to Admiral personally. Drescher had taken a personal interest in this case, she admired the guts it took to stand up to evil damn aliens.

"Abnormalities?" Drescher raised an eyebrow.

"Indeed, it seems that some sort of forigen matter has lodged itself in her system, I'd venture a guess and say it had to do with the strange wound she sustained during the breach."

"Keep me updated, I'd like to see her when she wakes up." Drescher picked this moment to leave the Doctor's office, though she took a look at the young Captain as she made her way to the turbolifts that serviced the ship.

The girl was in terrible shape, even to her untrained, distant eye. She'd read reports from the medical officers on duty at the time. 'Purple shit just ate away ate her torso' was the quote she'd remembered most. Sheppard wouldn't have survived in any other place. She hesitated in calling her lucky, though. Was she really lucky to have survived this?

Technicians were still poking through the alien ship, but they'd taken extreme note of the people they'd found, dissected. It was horrifying to look at, truly. Even the possibility that it could be happening at Shanxi was too terrible to process. She'd already contacted Earth about her findings, and had been told the predictable answer of, 'Put your thumb right up it.' Fuck that. Shepard was being transported off the ship, to the Halo medical center. Drescher was going to war.

Author's Extra Note:

This took a while to get out, my bad on that sorry. I kept agonizing over Zaeed's speech, which I eventually shortened to something a rough soldier would say, as to not get too long winded. Thanks again for your support, and for your reading at all. It really does mean a lot. As always, leave your feedback.

P.S. Holy Crap 350 Favorites, thanks dudes!