A/N: OK, this one and the next one will be mostly set-up - not a lot of action. So for those of you who need guns-blazing to get intrigued, just bear with me. I promise we'll get back to the killin' eventually. ;-)
Thanks to all of you who offered to pray; it looks like everything is going to turn out okay.
Now. Say hello to a bucketload of new characters.
Act Two: La Chasse
Chapter 7: La Région Sauvage de Miroirs
Marine Sergeant Major Donald J. Kramer took a long drag from his cigarette and looked up at the huge, glowing ball of plasma, far off in the 'night' sky. He wondered to himself how this installation managed to create an artificial night, but figured it didn't really matter. He did find it interesting that its day-night cycle seemed to be pretty close to twenty-four Earth hours.
Behind him, Private First Class Lance Briggs was trying to stay warm next to the makeshift fire. ODST Lance Corporal Jana Hook was their perimeter guard; Kramer could see her sylphid figure just beyond the light of the fire, silhouetted in the darkness.
Medic Eugene Roe was in the back of the wrecked Pelican, trying to treat Minor Domo 'Ulee Dakol's ugly shoulder wound. The Elite wasn't handling the plasma burns too well, and that bothered Kramer. Dakol was the best soldier in Fireteam Zulu, hands-down.
Overall, though, that was a small matter in a series of much bigger problems.
First, and the worst: they'd been left behind on the Ark.
When the assault on the Cartographer had begun, Fireteams Zulu, Epsilon, and Gamma had been intended for drop-point Alpha. They had deployed straight out of the Forward Unto Dawn, but halfway to the drop zone, a squad of Banshees had latched onto their tail. Gamma and Epsilon had escaped, their two Pelicans and two Phantoms hooking up with the rest of the UNSC assault force, but Zulu's Pelican had been hit hard in the aft sublights.
They had fled the scene, trying to get closer to the Dawn, and thus closer to safety, but the Pelican finally went down on the far side of the lake, right in the middle of this jungle mess. The Phantom… hadn't been heard from since.
The pilot had been killed on impact, along with Kramer's other lance corporal and two Minor Domos. The situation was utterly FUBAR, and to top it all off, these soldiers were entirely relying on Kramer - because he...
…he hadn't told them.
They had no idea that they were trapped here, or, if they did, they didn't show it. Kramer wasn't about to say anything. News like that would hurt both morale and unit cohesiveness, which would in turn damage their chances for survival. And if there was anything Kramer didn't like, it was dying.
He shrugged. It could be worse, he supposed. There was substantial animal life in this area - some familiar things. Deer-like creatures, plenty of birds. The Pelican had been carrying a personnel Warthog that was jettisoned just before the crash, and thus useable. They had plenty of ammo, plenty of fuel.
But that was it.
He turned and sat down on an old, rotted log and looked around again. They were stuck here, period. There was no way they were getting off this Ark. The Halo that had risen from the center of the structure had been the UNSC's endgame - that, he knew - and it had detonated, completely blown to smithereens, and had taken out the center of the Ark along with it. They were lucky the whole installation hadn't fragmented.
Any UNSC that had been here were gone now. The portal had collapsed - he'd seen that four days ago - the day the Halo had gone boom, and one day after their crash.
He figured the only fortunate thing was the fact that they hadn't run into the Covenant.
Lance Corporal Jana Hook didn't like the jungle. As a matter of fact, she fricking hated it. She was an ODST - Orbital Drop Shock Trooper - and she wanted clear, open skies. This… crawling through the muck and the rain didn't appeal to her at all.
But, just like everything else associated with the military, she couldn't do anything about it.
She checked her BR55 once more, just out of nervous habit. Full clip, scope was clean, all that procedural stuff. She looked up again, surveyed the jungle through her gamma-enhanced night-vision HUD.
Nothing. Everything was dark; not a single white -
- blip, low to the ground, moving slowly across the underbrush ahead of her, thirty meters away. Big, hulking thing, vaguely familiar… she slowly raised her rifle to her shoulder, ran a brief still of the thing through her onboard IFF reader.
The scan came back: a brute.
The blip was suddenly joined by something else - something upright, squat, about five feet high. A grunt.
Hook quickly scanned the area for anymore contacts, and quickly opened up a quiet TEAMCOM channel to Sergeant Kramer: "Two contacts north-northeast, sir. A bravo-kilo and a gas-sucker. I think the bee-kay is hurt."
Kramer tensed and checked his M6C. He'd left his shotgun in the Pelican… a firefight was not was his team needed right now. Sighing, he opened up the fireteam's group channel: "Zulu, perimeter reports a wounded bravo-kilo and a chimp."
By the fire, Private Briggs scooped up his assault rifle and looked toward Kramer, rain streaming down his too-pale face. Roe stuck his head out from the back of the Pelican, a worried look on his dark face. "You need me, Sarge?" he whispered into his headset. "'Ulee's still kinda bad off," he drawled.
"Stay here," Kramer whispered back. "But keep your ears open, just in case."
"Roger, Sarge."
Within minutes, the three Marines - Kramer, Hook, and Briggs - had spread in a triangle around the two contacts. They could all see the two white blips on their HUDs through the thick jungle: a 'BK' - baby kong, slang for brute - and a 'chimp' - slang for grunt - were not moving. The brute was lying facedown on the ground, and the grunt was apparently huddling close to the unmoving form. Neither had noticed the three Marines, like black shadows in the close foliage.
"We shooting to kill?" Hook wanted to know.
"Negative," Kramer decided. "Any intel we can get on nearby Covies would be great. If the bee-kay tries anything, blast him. Save the grunt."
"Do the damn things even speak Basic?" Briggs asked, which gratefully interrupted his heavy breathing into his mic.
"If it doesn't, maybe 'Ulee can get something out of him," Kramer answered. "Move in when I give the go."
Dari couldn't help but feel sorry for himself. He was cold, wet, and basically alone. The only familiar presence was the thing that was lying on his face in the mud: the silver-back brute Maximus.
Dari was Maximus' attaché, and a good one at that. He was ranked an Ultra, and wore the white armor thereof. Unlike most Unggoy, he had a good head on his shoulders, and was generally regarded as an anomaly amongst the usually flighty species.
But now… now, none of it mattered. None of what he'd accomplished, achieved, really mattered out here in the middle of nowhere. He had achieved forty kills - which was more than some Minor Domos - and was a hero to the Unggoy. He had been attached to a rarity among brutes, the ancient sub-chieftain Maximus, a creature of good common sense and comparative compassion.
But Maximus was hurt, maybe dying, and Dari had no idea what to do for the brute. Their pack had been ambushed by humans and Sangheili, and the two of them were the only ones who had survived. They escaped to a Covenant base camp, which was overrun by Flood, and lived through that, too. And then, to finally cap their wretched fortunes, as the two of them fled on a Prowler, they were assaulted by a pair of Separatist Banshees.
Maximus had saved Dari's life at the cost of a deep wound to his stomach. And then, in a show of amazing strength and devotion, Dari had gotten incredibly, gods-blessed lucky and shot down one Banshee and severely damaged another.
All that, and now this. The gods must have decided to punish him to balance out his earlier luck.
What was next?
"Go, go, go!"
Humans! Dari drew his plasma pistol, almost panicked as humans seemed to pour out of the foliage. He took one or two wild shots at an oncoming black-clad soldier, when something hard smashed into the back of his skull and he fell into the mud. He rolled over; a boot smashed down on his wrist, knocking away his plasma pistol.
The huge, demonic figure leveled a human weapon at his face, and for a moment, Dari thought he was going to die, so he started to scream.
"Will somebody shut that damn thing up?" Briggs snarled, wishing that he could pull the trigger on his assault rifle and finish the obnoxious little grunt.
"Don't even think about it, Marine," Kramer growled roughly as he checked the brute's motionless body. "We need it alive."
Dari did not fluently understand the human language, but he knew enough to realize that he was going to live, so he slowly quieted down. "You… you no hurt me?" he begged, voice comically high in the Marine's ears.
"Great, the little bastard understands Basic," Briggs grunted. "No, much as I'd like to, I ain't gonna cap you."
Hook moved to Briggs' side and flipped on her headlamp, illuminating the struggling little creature. "Don't be too hard on it," she admonished. "We'll need him lucid."
Briggs rolled his eyes, grinned. "What, you feel sorry for it?"
"Cut the chatter," Kramer snapped, the banter getting on his nerves for some reason. "Let me put one in the BK's head, then we'll get out of here. And get that grunt up out of the mud."
Dari felt the heavy boot on his wrist lift, and he scrambled to his feet, warily watching the barrel of the gun vaguely pointed in his direction. But what worried him more were the words of the human commander. He intended to kill Maximus.
Kramer set the muzzle of his M6C against the back of the brute's head and flipped off the safety. He was about to pull the trigger when he heard two sharp whines that were far too familiar: plasma grenades.
"Shit!" Briggs yelled, and jumped back, his weapon leveled at the grunt.
Dari stood, shaking all over, two plasma grenades warming up in his claws. "No hurt Jiralhanae!" he growled as fiercely as he possibly could, despite the fear that threatened to make him turn and run for his life. But Maximus had protected him when he didn't have to, and Dari knew that one good turn… deserves another. "Or all die!"
"You have got to be kidding me," Kramer growled.
Hook took one hand off of her battle rifle and made a palm-out gesture to the grunt. "Okay, okay, we won't hurt him. What's your name?"
The grunt sniffed, blinked back the tears that were streaming from his eyes at the smell of hot plasma. "I is Dari."
"Okay, Dari. Listen. My name is Jana. I promise, we won't hurt the bru - the Jiralhanae, if you'll just put down the grenades. We'll take you back to our fire, get you warm. You'll both be kept safe."
Dari squinted at the human female, searching for a sign of deception. The mention of a fire was almost enough to convince him, but he remembered that he had to be smart, be wary. He couldn't see her face - it was hidden behind a visor, but something in her voice told him he could trust her. Relaxing, he took his thumbs off of the switches and dropped the grenades at his feet.
Now was the moment of truth.
"I think he's basically harmless," Hook murmured to Kramer. The sergeant major shrugged and watched the little grunt. Dari was sitting as close to the fire as he could get without burning himself. Briggs had his pistol out, and was keeping an eye on the grunt while Roe was busy trying to revive the now-restrained brute.
"I reckon so. But he's smart for a grunt," Kramer noted. "That thing with the grenades… do they usually do things like that?"
Hook smiled, which stretched out a long scar along her chin. "In battle, yeah. But not to save a superior officer. They kind of have a standing policy of 'stay out of the way to live.'"
"What do you think we're looking at?" Kramer wanted to know, turning his gaze upon Hook's cold blue eyes.
The ODST shrugged. "The grunt's attached to the brute somehow. I'd figure they served together; maybe the grunt feels he owes the bee-kay something."
"Odd." Kramer grunted.
Far above, in the night sky, a huge object caught fire in the atmosphere and began a terrible descent.
The Master Chief slowly opened his eyes.
Broken glass.
Ice on his face, cold, so very cold, whole body felt burned.
"Cortana?" he mumbled, and felt water pour out of his mouth, also cold, spilling down his chest beneath his armor.
He tried to move, found that he could only do so with great effort. His armor cracked, hissed, popped, as if he hadn't moved in years.
"John, John, are you all right? Can you hear me? John!"
The Spartan grunted, slowly roused himself to his hands and knees, felt broken glass and metal sliding off of his back to clatter on the deck beneath him. "Yeah," he growled, hissing through clenched teeth. "I hear you."
Cortana's voice, sighing in relief: "You need to stop scaring me like that."
Light - sunlight - was streaming in from somewhere. He rose to his knees, realized that his armor was covered in three inches of ice. "Damn. What's… what happened?"
Cortana sounded disgusted: "We got pulled into orbit around the Ark. It was a long-loop circle that deteriorated way too fast. It's been five days."
"How did…?"
"Our apogee and perigee were irregular. On our seventh cycle around the Ark, we got too close in the perigee and got pulled into the upper atmosphere. The rest is history."
The Chief struggled to his feet, ice crackling and falling from his armor, sounding like hundreds of gunshots. "What happened to me?"
The AI was still at her terminal, the Spartan realized, so he turned to face her as she answered: "On reentry, temperature dropped into pretty dangerous levels in the upper atmosphere, then spiked on reentry. You pretty much frosted right over."
The Chief grunted. It all sounded like great fun. "Where are we at?" he wanted to know.
"Jungle territory," Cortana responded, sounding tired again. "About forty klicks north west from the Ark's control room."
The Chief stretched himself out, trying to break as much ice as possible off of his armor. His suit was doing its best to defrost him; his extremities were already tingling and burning. And his lungs itched. He didn't know why that bothered him so much.
He strode over and popped Cortana's matrix into his helmet. "I'm going to explore what's left of the Dawn," he said. "Take stock of what we've got left."
"Sure," was Cortana's flat response.
The aft section of the Forward Unto Dawn was mostly a series of crewman's quarters, the engineering quadrant of the ship, a sizeable chunk of the engines, the main reactor, the aft hold, and the cryo-chambers. But gratefully, the Chief found something that he'd wished for since Delta Halo: a shower.
The reactor was mercifully still operating, and the Dawn still had a substantial water supply in its vestigial tanks, so the Master Chief was able to enjoy his first hot shower since the Cairo.
Cortana couldn't help but watch from the safe confines of his helmet. She had almost always associated him with his armor - that military green, the reflective gold visor, gauntlets, armor plating. To see him in his humanity was… disconcerting and attractive at the same time.
It showed how vulnerable he truly was.
For all his Spartanness, John-117 was and always would be fully human.
It showed in the dozens of deep, purple scars that laced his pale skin and shone in the water, underneath the halogen lights. It showed in the odd displacement of the broken ribs in his side, the knotty lumps where bones had knitted together strangely. It showed in the high cheekbones, the austerity of his pale face and washed out gray hair, now grown out longer than it should have been.
He looked… almost normal.
Cortana was relatively new to the business of finally looking at herself as a real person. Thus, she didn't know to feel the strange rush at seeing him in the flesh. All she knew to do was admire him for being as strong as he was in the face of all that he had seen. She looked upon him and loved him, not for carnal reasons, but because…
…he was a human being.
"…handsome, in a primitive, animal sort of way."
She was not ignorant, however, and knew that she was watching something that most human women would have blushed at - and then kept right on looking. But this, this was an intimate moment for her, and something she would never forget: when she looked upon the Spartan and finally realized the secret of his strength.
She did not forget it when he shut off the water after just standing under its warmth for a full half-hour and dried off with a towel found in a nearby locker.
She did not forget when he put on his rubber undersuit and began to replace his armor.
She did not forget when he slipped his helmet back on and the environment seal clicked into place.
She remembered.
ONI HIGHCOM
Langley, Virginia, United North American States
March 8th, 2553 AD, 9:27:47 AM, EST
This was a truly historical place.
The American Central Intelligence Agency was a piece of ancient history, an object of study amongst all modern historians, and a jewel held up within ONI as an example of 'how a covert ops agency ought to be run.'
ONI had been modeled off of agencies like the CIA. As a matter of fact, it had been highly influenced by that darkest arm of the old American Hegemony, and by other older intelligence agencies, such as Britannia's MI-6.
George Mason was fully aware of this history when he stepped into his first ONI HIGHCOM meeting. The brass in the room was way too heavy for George to feel comfortable. The big guns were out in full force - whatever this was, it was a big deal.
Vice-Admiral Margaret O. Parangosky was sitting at the head of the table wearing dress whites. Above her head, the huge logo of the Office of Naval Intelligence - eagle with outspread wings atop a planet overlaid with an eye - was emblazoned on the wall in black and white with the legend Semper Vigilans above and beneath.
Mason thought back to his briefing. Margaret Parangosky. Almost ninety-two years old - the oldest ONI chief ever. Sharp as steel, cold as ice. Covers her ass with as much vigilance as she'll rip off yours if you screw something over.
Rear Admiral Joseph Arnold Rich was sitting at Parangosky's right hand. He was the ONI section chief for the Sol System, and known to be a damn good one.
Across from him was a man in a wheelchair only known as Lieutenant Commander Fhajad. Commander Fhajad was approximately 40 years of age and was known for being quiet, yet exceedingly intelligent and calculating. He was a large fellow, but shook uncontrollably from severe Parkinson's disease. Rumors floated around him - including some pretty wild ones that he'd been part of the SPARTAN-II project. Mason wasn't sure what he thought about that.
These were the 'Big Three' of ONI nomenclature. And Rear Section Chief George Mason had been chosen to meet with them.
When he entered the room, two black-clad moved to the door behind him and sealed it, then turned and stood guard. Mason coughed once, nervously, felt at his collar as he looked toward Parangosky.
The older lady smiled to him and gestured to the seat at the end of the table. Mason sat.
"Welcome to Langley, Mr. Mason," Parangosky greeted, her voice cracking with age. Mason couldn't help but think of cracking parchment. "And what do you think of beautiful Virginia?"
Mason shrugged, grinned in order to appear confident. "It's nice. Kinda cold."
Parangosky made a strange, short nod, as if approving, and kept smiling. She leaned back in her high-backed chair and said, "You're probably wondering why you weren't briefed on the subject of this meeting."
That caught Mason's attention. "Yes, Admiral, I was. Seems kind of… inefficient, even for an alpha-class operation." Moron, you don't criticize the head of ONI to her face. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
That seemed to amuse Admiral Parangosky, but she did not deviate from her chosen course. "The… reason… we neglected a briefing, Mr. Mason, was because this operation is also eyes-only alpha-class."
Those words punched Mason in the gut. He tried his best to mask his reaction. An EOAC generally meant some pretty big things: a promotion, open funding to said operation, and the full back-up support of ONI.
George Mason had just been handed the moon.
He leaned forward on the table, elbows down. "Tell me."
Parangosky's smile widened. Then she slowly, carefully rose to her feet and reached across the table to press a button. Then, gesturing to Rich: "Admiral?"
The whirr of machinery buzzed from the midst of the table. A small panel separated and the black, glossy dome of a holoprojector elevated itself to the tabletop. The lights in the room dimmed, and the holoprojector fired up.
What first met his eyes was something familiar: a green-armored Spartan labeled 'Master Chief Petty Officer John-117.' Mason could see Admiral Rich's flat green eyes reflected through the hologram's chest.
"You are familiar with the Master Chief, Mr. Mason?" he asked.
George nodded.
"Then you are also likely familiar with his onboard AI."
The hologram changed to that of a… naked blue woman with her hands on her hips. Lines of code made up her body, which glowed iridescent electric blue, with a hint of purple. Mason furrowed his brows. Weird, he thought. Looks like a basic pleasure model, without the… finer details. "I… can't say I am," he admitted.
"Ah. Well." Rich sounded disappointed. "Commander Fhajad?"
The aforementioned wheelchair-bound gentleman nodded shakily. "UNSC AI serial number See-Tee-En zero-four-five-two-dash-nine. A class - cl - class seven arti - artificial intelligence. She's been the M - Master Chief's onboard intelligence since the Alpha Halo incident."
"So she's a near-sentient," Mason said, more of a question than a statement.
"Right," Rich answered. "Highly dangerous in the wrong hands, and pretty flighty even in the right ones."
Mason shrugged again. "What do you want me to do?"
Parangosky bored a hard look into the rear section chief. "We want you to see to her destruction."
Motes of sunlight flitted amongst the trees and danced across the jungle floor. But the Master Chief did not notice this, or any of the other bits of scenery that would have caught an ordinary man's eye.
Behind him, the vast hulk of the Forward Unto Dawn rested in the shadow of the huge trees - at least, the ones that hadn't been ploughed into the ground or incinerated upon the arrival of the wreck. Cortana was back in the ship, trying to get some sub-systems functional, such as FLEETCOM and local motion-tracking.
Until then, the Chief had to do his scouting on his own.
There was nothing within seventy five meters of the perimeter he'd established, according to his motion tracker, so he returned to the front of the ship. The 'front.' That was how he thought of the open mouth of the cargo hold, his universal entrance and exit. As far as he knew, there was no other way to get into the Dawn.
He sat down in a warm spot and extended his motion tracker to eighty meters. That would give him ample warning of any approaching enemies. He sat his assault rifle down next to his feet and leaned back against the titanium-A.
It was peaceful here, which gave the Spartan an odd feeling. His whole life had been about killing. He couldn't say he regretted it - not that he ever knew anything else - but something, some part of him wished that things had turned out differently. That he could have… maybe… been granted a small reprieve like this one a bit sooner in his action-filled life, to get a chance to know the woman - the AI - back in the ship.
He wondered what the hell that meant.
Suddenly, a yellow blip flickered on his tracker, sixty yards away. He jumped to his feet and retrieved his rifle. A UNSC IFF tag.
They weren't the only ones still here.
Making sure to remain immobile - ever cautious - he opened up a local TEAMCOM channel. "This is Spartan-117. Any UNSC personnel in the area, please respond."
He was met with static.
He waited for a few more seconds, and was about to make the request again when the yellow dot on his tracker suddenly became two. The second dot blinked green: "Thunder."
The Spartan tilted his chin up. A handshake protocol. Whoever it was, they weren't stupid. He tapped the button on his jaw and responded with the countersign: "Lightning."
Almost instantly, a fast reply came. "Is that you, Master Chief? This is Staff Sergeant Kramer, Fireteam Zulu."
Zulu? The Chief thought. We lost them during the assault on the Cartographer. The yellow dots were getting closer; soon they would appear on the edge of the trees. "Good to hear from you, Sergeant," the Chief responded. "Are you two all that are left?"
"Nope," came the reply. "Five UNSC, and two Covies. Hope you brought food."
Two Covies. This was getting interesting.
Just then, two figures clad in UNSC black appeared and trotted across the clearing. One was wearing an ODST helmet, complete with reflective visor. They arrived relatively quickly, and jogged up to the Master Chief.
Kramer nodded toward him, looked up at the giant skeleton of the ship towering out of the ground. "I take it you had a rough landing," he said. The Chief just nodded.
Corporal Hook lifted off her helmet and tossed her hair. "What exactly's your status here?" she asked.
The Chief tilted his chin up, then: "Come on in. Cortana can tell you better than I."