Chapter 2: Luck

The grassy hilltop had the best view of the night sky that the steppe planet of Sinai IV could offer. John-117 lay on his back, helmet off, watching the stars. Only two hundred yards behind him, FOB Epsilon lay spread like a small city on the outskirts of Nasrah. It was only a day ago that the Covenant had driven them from Sinai III. Tomorrow, the Chief and the rest of Blue Team were supposed to spearhead the drive to retake that planet, bolstered by reinforcements from the neighboring Malach system.

Cortana was there in his neural lace, but she was busy with something else, categorizing some information gained from yesterday's battle. He wondered sometimes if she could hear his thoughts, but he didn't care if she did. These days, most of his thoughts were on war.

War. He looked up at the sky, the stars, beyond the stars. He wondered.

"…if there's someone out there, past the stars, looking at the sky and thinking what we're thinking?"

The voices were soft, quiet, childlike. He sat up when he heard them, realized that they were very nearby, at the foot of the hill. At his movement, Cortana appeared on the palm of his gauntlet, a soft blue glow. "Something wrong?" she asked, hands on her hips.

John smiled. "No," he replied, looking into the foliage. A boy and a girl lay on their backs in the brush, staring up at the stars, oblivious to the presence of the greatest warrior of the human race - humanity's protector.

"Do you think we'll ever get to meet them?"

"I hope so."

At the sound of those words, Cortana smiled. "Oh. I never knew you had a soft spot for the kids."

The Spartan's smile widened. "I was a kid once."

The AI winked, gave him a saucy grin. "Not like most, I reckon. I should know."

John wrapped his arms around his armored knees, held his palm out at eye level so that he could look her in the eye. "Do you, now?"

Cortana's smile softened. "They let me pick, you see. Did I ever tell you that?"

John shrugged. "Guess not," he replied, matching Cortana's gaze.

The AI surveyed the Spartan's pale face, eyes glowing softly in the moonlight. The darkness could not hide the many scars that marked the harsh passage from child to man.

"They let me choose whichever Spartan I wanted," she said, continuing, sounding strangely off somehow. As if… longing for something. "Like the others, you were strong, quick, and brave. A natural leader."

John looked down at the ground between his legs, smiled wanly, embarrassed. "Right."

Cortana reached out a hand, tried to lay it on his arm – but could not touch him, not now, and not ever. He was human, and she was an AI. That was her doom.

So she went on, ignoring the terrible ache. "No, I mean it. You had one thing the others didn't."

"Oh?"

"Luck."

"Oh."

Then, crossing her arms and giving that smile that gave John odd chills of pleasure, she asked him, "Was I wrong?"

He ducked back behind cover as a sizzling rain of plasma scorched the place that his head had been. His shields took a moment to recharge, and he checked the ammo in his precious shotgun.

He examined the situation again, peeping out from behind his cover. Two infected drones dangled from the ceiling like bats, backs bristling with those strange venomous spikes that the Chief had learned to hate so very much. Some hulking Flood… thing… stood in front of the 'door' that would lead to whatever was next in this maze of tunnels, and in front of it were four infected elites and a brute – and two were armed with energy swords.

He was short on plasma grenades, and his shotgun only had five shells in it. He needed a better weapon.

He put his back to the wall, looked around. There wasn't much room to explore around here, but to one side was a hallway that was blocked by huge, cancerous growths. There might at least be a few grenades there.

He made a break for it, leaped to safety. But the second his boot touched the steel, the voice returned, harsh and desperate with urgency: "Don't look at me! Don't listen!"

By now, the Chief knew that this was only a fragment of Cortana's true self, but he winced at the words as he searched.

Her voice was scared, confused, hurt: "I'm not who I used to be."

Behind an empty weapons pod, a panel had been smashed out of the wall, exposing a small chamber within. He struggled not to feel the confused pain, whimpering, soft, pathetic: "I'm just my mother's shadow."

At one end of the panel was a dead ODST, face down. The Chief was puzzled at this, but when he spotted the flame-thrower – "Gas-fed defoliator. Nasty-ass weapon." -- that lay next to the corpse, he didn't even question it. He simply picked up the huge weapon, lit the gas from a sparking halogen plug, and stepped back out, filled with new resolve.

She needed him.

The hungry flame washed against the walls, burning, immolating the Flood-creature that howled its pain to the unheeding chamber around it. The Chief stood there, letting the flame-thrower dangle as the shadows leapt around him, brought to life by his charred victim. The infected elite squirmed, rolled around on the floor, shrieking and babbling and generally making so much annoying noise that the Chief finally crushed it beneath his boot, just to shut the thing up.

Where does it all end? he thought, tired, exasperated, fearful. It had been hours – or perhaps longer – since he'd landed his Banshee in that god-forsaken chamber. He still had the old map of High Charity in his files, but the Flood had so transformed the city that it was of little use to him. He was wandering blind through years of tunnels and chambers and side-passages.

His shotgun had long ago run out of ammo; he'd switched it for a pair of spikers that now clung to his magnetic leg panels. The brute shot was still strapped around his back by an old leather bandoleer. His armor was covered with new scars from bullet, plasma, claw. And for the first time in the Master Chief's life, he began to doubt. He began to lose hope.

How could he ever find her in this place? He'd been a fool to come.

Suddenly, that thick, awful voice shattered the quiet in his headset, exploding with malevolence:

"Time has taught me patience – but basking in new freedom, I shall know all that I possess!"

The Gravemind again – but it was relatively faint, far off, as if the creature was not even speaking to him. The Master Chief's sharp mind quickly went to work as he rounded the bend. A few infected brutes stood in his way; he sent them back to hell, where they belonged.

His visor exploded with color, blue streaked green, Cortana, a broken transmission -

"I have walked the edge of the abyss! I have seen your future, and I know –"

Interrupted, broken by -

And they were all around him again, at least a dozen drones pouring down from the ceiling above, infection forms, brute, elites exploding out of every crevice, filling the hallway. The Chief desperately backpedaled as plasma and spikes washed and over him, dropping his shields as he spewed hellfire from his weapon.

The high-pitched keening of a firing needler came to his ears. He turned left, saw the infected human standing in a side chamber, broken hand firing the weapon directly at him.

A needler is a Class-1 projectile weapon, carrying 30 needles to a caddy. This means that like human weapons, it fires 30 solid rounds per 'clip.' The difference between a needler and a human weapon, however, is that the needler round contains a form of bio-intelligence that gives it a rudimentary ability to follow a target, like a less accurate version of a heat-seeking missile.

Once the round lodges in its target, it explodes into thousands of tiny shards, creating ghastly wounds. One exploding needle is enough to kill a man if it strikes in the right place.

There were fifteen coming at the Chief.

The Chief's shields were screaming at him to find cover, but there was nothing. As the glowing pink spikes blazed at him with mechanical intelligence, he spun. The first wave rushed past him, buried themselves in the far wall. But that lone Flood agent was pressing its advantage, emptying what was left of its caddy at the Chief, who now had nowhere… left… to go.

Fifteen needles impacted on the chestplate of his armor, penetrating the rubber undersuit, and piercing his flesh. Alarms blared in the suit and he took in a harsh breath – waiting for the –

-- explosion.

He was slammed back against the far wall as, in desperation, he hurled his empty brute shot at the creature. It flipped end over end - the huge blade on the base of the weapon pinned the infected human to the wall, even as the Chief himself slumped to the floor.

"Minor fractures detected," the voice of the suit calmly informed him. Lacking Cortana to let him know such things, the Chief had activated the internal monitor of the suit. Feeling the sharp ache in his chest, the Spartan resisted a groan and wondered, What the hell does it think a major fracture is?

Blood was dribbling from the little holes in his armor, and he found his head whirling, unable to take a deep breath. The suit's internal systems began to pump biofoam into the wounds, but the Chief wasn't sure of just how bad they were.

Feeling consciousness leave him, he quickly hailed the suit's internal medical systems and cued up a stim – a harsh cocktail of methamphetamines, adrenaline, and norepinephrine. It would leave him with the shakes in a few days, but it would keep him on his feet, no matter how much blood he'd lost.

His head began to fall back against his will. He distantly felt a medical needle – a big one – stabbing into his biceps, and the hot, burning rush of chemicals in his veins. Ucky I got it in time, he thought. Yeah. I'm lucky.

But his mind still drifted, now detached from his body, back on Delta Halo, the Prophet of Regret…

…shouted, "Who could possibly fear this so-called Demon?"

"He's almost as cocky as Truth," Cortana said, but her voice was shaky. The Chief was having a few too many close calls.

The chamber was flooded with Honor Guards, elites wearing the crested orange and black armor of rank. Their supporting grunts – unggoy, the Spartan reminded himself – were scampering all over the room in a paroxysm of fear.

His shields were taking a beating from energy sword and plasma rifle, but he was doing the best he knew how. His shotgun sang the old song of death, blasting trails through the flesh of everything that drew level with his gun barrel – and some things that didn't.

An honor guard made a huge downward slash at him. The Spartan stepped back and spun aside around a pillar as the Sangheili's blade rushed through empty air, stumbling at the lack of resistance. The Chief stepped back up around the corner, kicked the elite's wrist, knocked away the sword. Shotgun up, right between the creature's mandibles. The thing gave one roar of offended disbelief – blam.

From somewhere in the room, the Prophet was shouting, "Incompetents! I shall slay the Demon myself!"

The Chief stepped back up onto the railing. Below him, in the center of the room, the Prophet's mechanical throne was hovering in midair, its plasma core humming angrily. Regret was spinning his seat back and forth, looking for the Chief, searching. The Honor Guard was almost entirely dead with the exception of a handful of terrified, quavering grunts and one wounded elite dragging himself toward Regret and almost weeping aloud with frustration. "Hierarch!" it shouted. "Behind you!"

Regret jerked his throne back, just in time to avoid the flying hulk of the Master Chief, leaping down from the catwalks above. The Chief landed solidly on the deck, spun and threw himself aside as Regret activated his throne's auto-defense systems.

Dual fuel-rod cannons blasted thick, yellow radioactive beams of energy at him, driving huge, melting divots in the titanium. Hot, molten metal spattered against the Spartan's shields, hissing as he twisted away, felt a sudden, awful pain in his ankle.

"John!" Cortana cried, horror in her voice.

"I'm fine," the Master Chief insisted as he pressed himself up against the pillar. He tried to remain as still as possible, in case Regret's little Rolls-Royce of a throne up there had a motion tracker, too.

"You're not," Cortana shot back, and a medical readout popped up on the Chief's heads-up display. "You tore a tendon."

John lowered his head. "I'll be okay, Cortana," he replied quietly, realizing that she was worried about him.

He could almost feel her folding her arms. "I'd… I don't what I…"

A pause, as if reconsidering. Then, in control again: "We all need you. Take care of yourself," she whispered.

"I will," he replied.

So saying, he pumped another round into his shotgun and spun around the pillar…

…as the drugs slammed into his systems, jerking him back to reality.

He shook off the memory, checking his motion sensor to see if the Flood intended to follow him. He found that they had apparently entirely forgotten that he existed – which was their modus operandi, but he found himself nodding relief. He checked his biosigns. Sure enough, he'd apparently sustained hairline fractures in two ribs, coupled with twelve 'minor' puncture wounds in his chest and three major ones. He'd lost a half-pint of blood… which was half-a-pint too much. Way too much. Lucky.

The drugs that he'd injected into himself finally began to take full effect, so he rose to his feet, tried to ignore the pain. His shields were back up and running, and his armor's self-repair systems were already closing the holes in his chestplate.

He wished now more than ever that Cortana was here. She would have taken care of him herself. He shuddered to think what would have happened if he'd lost consciousness before he cued up that shot of stimulants. But she would have done it for him, and checked his motion sensor, and customized the suit's medical systems to provide the best care possible.

Which was just the way she was.

Careful to stay out of sight of the Flood host at the top of the curving passage, he searched for ammunition of any kind – grenades, caddies for a needler, anything. And he wished that Cortana were there to fill his helmet with amused chatter or battle reports.

He was making a lot of wishes these days.

A/N: Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? Wishes? Leave a review. Go ahead - make my day. ;-)

A sidenote: the title, 'Je Mourrais,' means "I would rather die," in English. See the summary for the connection. ;-)