A/N: Two weeks. Longest update yet. But I'm at a difficult place right now, writing-wise. My original novel came back from the publisher's with a very long list of much-needed improvements. And Pianoman - I missed me, too. ;-)

Chapter 10: La Main Qui Consomme

The room stank of rotting flesh, entrails, urine. The Master Chief's atmospheric scrubbers were working overtime, cycling the odors through six micro-membrane HEPA filters and feeding it back to the forward ports inside the Mk. VI helmet. The Spartan's fellow Marines had pulled up their dust masks, hoping that the armorweave cloth would block some of the nose-punishing ichor, but to no avail.

"What the hell did you do in here?" Briggs growled. "It smells like fifty million Hunters took a shit in this place!"

The Spartan ignored him still, moving over the destruction like a green giant, yet silent even with the huge weight of his armor. In his helmet, Cortana was poring over the record of the last time he was here, reviewing what she had missed, trying to stay busy. An introspective AI was a distracted one, and a distracted AI could often mean death.

They arrived at the central mag-lift without incident. The Master Chief kicked aside a drone's empty carapace and reached toward the --

"Wait -" Cortana said suddenly.

The Master Chief froze. "What?"

The AI was quiet for a moment, and the Chief wondered if she had simply spoken aloud, maybe unintentionally… "Look to your left, eighty-seven degrees."

John did so. His gaze fell on a platform separate from the elevator. A dead brute lay on his back, limbs splayed, the gray spines of spiker rounds embedded in his unarmored chest. Behind the corpse was a…

- You. -

…computer display of some sort: a holographic sphere protruding from a holotank, casting a faint orange glow. Kramer and Briggs stepped up behind the Spartan.

- followed you -

The Spartan noticed the whisper that time, a faint, garbled background noise.

"What's that?" Kramer wanted to know.

"Some kind of Forerunner technology," Cortana explained via the onboard speakers. "A computer port with access to a self-contained memory core."

- through a glass, darkly -

The Master Chief stood straighter, heard the voice murmuring… not in his helmet, but in his head. Voices in his head. I must be going nuts, he thought. Then: "Do these computers put out some kind of EMP feed or something?"

Cortana checked. "Not that I've noticed," she replied. "Why?"

- unable to see, comprehend, understand -

"Nothing." And with that, he moved forward. The gap between the elevator and the side-deck was one of nine feet - a small task for the human warrior. He cleared the gap easily and strode up to the holograph. The glow washed over him, reflected off of his armor.

- I see you. Reclaimer. -

Cortana was saying something, but the Spartan couldn't hear her. His eyes were drawn to the black disc in the center of the orange hologram, which was emitting a faint, melodic hum. It called to him, a stirring in his chest, something warm and disarming flowing into his mind with a gentle, somehow sensuous - We have much to discuss, you and I. - touch like honey on his tongue and - You are safe with me. I promise. - warm, soft hands caressing his…

I'll tell you who I am.

The Spartan knew something was different. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt only that warmth, a sense of buoyancy, as if floating in his mother's womb. Groggy: "How…?"

Mendicant Bias. Pleasure to meet you, Reclaimer.

John faintly felt his body, somewhere distant and removed, nod. The… thing… with him apparently noticed, for it continued to speak to him in low, hushed tones, like a thought more than a spoken word.

You'd be surprised at the gyrations I went through to follow you all over this construct.

"Get to the point." Now that he felt halfway lucid, the Spartan struggled to regain his alertness, figure out what in the world was going on…

I hope you'll pardon me. I've drawn you into what you know as the Forerunner Hand, so that we may have a… private discussion.

"Start talking," the Chief replied.

First, to explain: the Forerunner Hand is a wireless telemetric communications pathway that can be manipulated to draw your consciousness into a connection with another. It is like an… alternate reality of sorts. I believe in some older histories, you had something rather like this that you called 'chat rooms.' These are far more advanced.

Curious: "How so?"

Within the confines of this connection, you may view reality as you see fit. Here, an exercise.

Suddenly, a white void appeared, and the Master Chief realized he was standing in nothingness, suspended above nothing yet vertical and on his feet.

Imagine a non-sentient organic… I'm sorry, imagine a flower.

Before the Chief even realized he was a doing it, a red rose appeared in the nothingness in front of him. He took a step back, watched as the rose hovered, floated in vacuum. "I… see."

Now that you understand this much, we may converse in a more comfortable environment -

- the white blankness suddenly grew two chairs. In one sat a man: snow-pale, smooth skin, wearing an elegant white overrobe atop a black tunic and black leggings; bare feet peeked out from beneath the hems. His eyes shone red from his thin yet handsome face, and washed out, albinic hair crowned the top of his head. The rose that floated in midair stopped its gentle spinning and lazily glided into his outstretched hand, shedding a silky petal along the way. He smiled, smelled the rose with a strange level of tender intimacy, laid it in his lap.

"You're Mendicant Bias?" the Master Chief asked, knowing the answer already as he sat in the second chair, entirely out of instinct.

"Quite," the man replied, smiling wanly. "Forerunner Contender-class Artificial Intelligence, serial number 05-032." He stretched out a hand.

The Spartan stared at the outstretched hand before he took it and said, "I take it you aren't a hologram."

Mendicant nodded, obviously amused by the Spartan's confusion and his attempts to disguise it thereof. "Not within the confines of the Forerunner Hand. Outside, you will find that I take the same form - only a bit less substantial."

The Master Chief got right to business. "What did you want to talk about?" he asked, sitting straight-backed and rigid.

"The Flood," Mendicant replied.

"The Flood was destroyed along with the new Halo," the Chief replied evenly.

The AI seemed to take great amusement from this. "Ah, yes, I forget. You attempted to fire a Halo, thus rendering the Flood destroyed. Foolproof plan, utterly foolproof." Then, quickly returning to seriousness: "I'm afraid that this is not the case. The Flood were also on the Ark, if you will recall: my Installation."

"You're saying that they survived," the Chief clarified darkly, vaguely annoyed.

"Exactly. And now, they find themselves on what is easily the greatest feeding ground they could have come across in all the known worlds in Forerunner space," Mendicant intoned, eyes narrowing.

The Chief gritted his teeth. No rest for the wicked. "And you want me to do something about it."

The AI sat back in his chair and laced his thin, bone-white fingers together. "Sadly, yes. I am in need of your assistance."

"Why?" the Chief asked. "You must have millions of Sentinels here. This is what they were made for, isn't it?"

Mendicant Bias looked away from the Spartan and shook his head. "No. They were made to contain outbreaks, not destroy infestations. As we speak, Reclaimer, the Flood is overrunning the zoological observatories on the north-north-west ventral sector of this installation: class-four carnivorous flying creatures, beasts on the wing. They will soon have control of the north-west ventral and the west ventral: class-five and six land-based carnivores. They are building an army anew, and this time it is not just of the fallen warriors of your races."

"But they're isolated here," the Chief replied. "There's no way off the Ark unless you're a sentient creature."

"You're sadly mistaken," Mendicant answered firmly. "I believe you've had contact with their Compound Mind?"

"The Gravemind?"

"He's been called that," Mendicant acquiesced. "He is rebuilding himself here, on the Ark."

Cold thrills rushed through the Master Chief's nerves. He said nothing, but sat forward in his seat. This AI had gained his attention.

"You Reclaimers and the… meddling aliens… fought an aerial battle in the upper atmosphere of my installation," Mendicant noted. "A substantial amount of ships on both sides were destroyed or were forced to crash-land. The Flood could easily have a way off of this installation simply by assimilating those with knowledge of how these ships work, thus achieving a way to repair and pilot these ships off the Ark."

The Master Chief sighed. This again. "Let me guess… the only answer is to fire the Halos."

Mendicant Bias scoffed. "Pft. At this point, to fire the Halos would be foolish. We are outside of the effective radius - which was intended, I assure you - and would only succeed in wiping out your… my… people."

"Then what do we do?" the Chief asked, noting to himself that he'd already started to use the meaningful word 'we.'

Mendicant Bias smiled. "Glad you see it my way." He gestured to the side, and a map of the Ark appeared from nothing, much like the huge map on the Cartographer. "There is a weapon that can be used to destroy the Flood, but the opportunity to use it to never arose. Not once have the Flood ever been so efficiently contained in a single area."

The map shifted, and the viewpoint closed in to a structure on the eastern ventral. It was unremarkable, unassuming. But Mendicant seemed to think that it was important. "Within this building is housed a weapon called the Animus."

"And what does it do?" the Chief asked. "Specifically."

The Forerunner AI smiled, nodded. "It creates an auditory harmonic frequency on a particular level that is paralyzing to the Flood. All Flood on the Ark would be rendered immobile and thus, easily destroyed by my Sentinels."

"Will it affect the Gravemind?" the Chief asked.

Mendicant Bias sat back, gave a thin smile and raised a brow. He was silent for a time, but the Chief see that he was not thinking. He was… gloating.

Then the AI leaned forward, eyes burning like embers, intense, dark, powerful: "It will be the last thing he ever hears."

Then, suddenly smiling and pleasant as before: "Now, let's meet your friends, shall we?"

Cold ice water running down his back and a fleeting desperation, didn't want to leave it was so perfect and while he was in there, maybe she could be real - war is life - lost his brothers and sisters all over the galaxy in hundreds of battles - death is the only true peace - jerking sensation, as if he was in a giant vacuum -

"John! John!"

I'm back.

"Cortana?"

"Dammit, Spartan, don't scare me like that!" she cried. "Why didn't you answer?"

The Master Chief took in a deep breath. The cascade of strange mixed emotions left him tired and drained. "Sorry, Cortana. I… went into the terminal…"

"…and talked to me," came a newly-familiar voice. The Spartan turned.

Mendicant Bias's avatar - projected from the holo-tank - was standing across from him, right next to a shocked Private Briggs. It was obvious that the AI was non-corporeal now, as he stepped right through Briggs to get closer to the Spartan. "Tell them what I told you, please," he requested politely.

John swallowed. And he did.

"The Flood has returned?" 'Ulee Dakol growled, the sound almost as low as the dark rumble coming from Maximus' throat.

"Not back," Kramer said. "Just survived."

Jana looked up. "I've heard of the Flood before, but no one ever told me just what it is."

Briggs shot her a look. "What rock have you been living under?"

Corporal Hook arced an eyebrow at the man, but quickly came back to attention when Maximus began to speak. "A Parasite, an abomination to all life. It is a virulent spore that takes your body and turns it into a warrior for its kind."

"He makes it sound so pleasant," Gene Roe muttered.

Kramer glanced over at the Spartan, standing next to the AI - Mendicant Bias. The Forerunner construct apparently possessed a body very similar to that of 343 Guilty Spark - an orb shape. It was larger than those of the Monitors, and the eye glowed a soft green.

He didn't know why he was taking the Master Chief's word for it, let alone that of the construct - he always made it a habit to check information out for himself. But this man was a Spartan, and known to be the best of the best. The sergeant just hoped that he wouldn't be making a mistake - again.

"Here's the word, soldiers! This is the AI that runs this station, and he's given us a fix on a weapon that can take out the Flood," Kramer explained loudly. "In exchange for our assistance, he'll send out a deep-space signal to the UNSC."

"Where we going? Where we going?" Dari chittered softly to Maximus. The big brute patted him on the shoulder. "Listen."

"Mendicant Bias, will be leading us to where this weapon is housed. So saddle up, Marines. First, we go back to the Dawn, then it's off east. Let's move!"

The Dawn's aft section was short on supplies, but when all you had were half a Fireteam of Marines, an elite, a brute, a grunt, and a Spartan, your needs were slim anyway - and you likely had bigger worries than whether you had enough undergarments for the next week.

The Master Chief led the party through the gutted skeleton of the derelict ship, already showing signs of being assimilated by the forest. They scrounged whatever they could get their hands on: clothing, medical supplies, ammunition, weapons, and tossed all of it into cargo bins.

While they worked, Cortana and Mendicant Bias went to work executing Section 1 of the Cole Protocol: wiping all evidence of Earth out of the shipboard computers. The Flood would gain no knowledge from the Dawn.

The Chief examined a box of 8-gauge shotgun shells with a practiced eye. The flimsiplast container was dripping wet from a broken pipe in the ceiling, but the contents were fine. He tossed it into the large crate in the center of the room.

Behind him, he could tell that Corporal Hook was discreetly attempting to watch him with a gaze bordering on fascination. He did not make it known that he had noticed her, and merely walked over to a stack of footlockers standing in the ankle-deep water.

"So… what's it like?"

The Chief stopped short, turned. "What?"

Corporal Hook sheepishly looked down from his golden visor to the bundle of wet BDUs in her hands. "Sorry. What's it… like, being a Spartan?"

The Master Chief was completely taken aback. He stood still for a moment, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening. Hook finally looked up, stared, blushed. "I'm sorry, I just…"

"I couldn't tell you," the Chief replied, interrupting.

Hook's embarrassment at her impulsive question was quickly replaced with curiosity. "What do you mean… sir?"

"This is all I've ever been," John explained easily, turning to get back to work. Despite the fact that he'd presented his Mjolnir-clad back to the Corporal, she continued to pursue the issue.

"You mean you couldn't tell me because you don't have anything to compare it to," Hook replied wisely.

A sharp nod as a reply.

Hook caught herself, seemed to rethink her curiosity. "I apologize for snooping, sir. I just remember when the Spartan-II program was publicly announced…" She paused, considered, then: "My brother joined the Marines because he saw a holovid of you, sir, and some other Spartans."

At that, the Chief straightened up. He kept his back to Hook almost instinctively, as if afraid that she would see the regret in his eyes right through his visor. He turned, glanced at her sidelong, then stepped across the room and began rummaging through a series of lockers. "Who was he with?" the Chief wanted to know.

"305th Infantry, sir: the Spades. He… died on Jericho VII."

The Chief remembered the fateful campaign that spanned the Jericho system, and he certainly remembered the 305th. "That place was hell," he answered softly, remembering.

"Bloody, bleeding hell!"

"Aw, shut up, you stinkin' Limey. It's just a little cut. You'll be fine."

The Master Chief ignored the medic and his wounded charge and instead directed his attention to the broad steppe that extended to the four o'clock of their trench. He activated his suit's macrobinoculars and carefully watched the squad of Wraiths that had taken a position on the nearby rise designated 'Hill 40' in his HUD.

To his seven, another unit of Wraiths had been bombarding their position for the last ten minutes, catching the Chief and a group of Marines in a hotbox of mortar fire. To make matters worse, the main body of Covenant force was being directed in a wedge assault toward HQ, which was at eleven. Their only escape was to their one o'clock, and that was certainly still teeming with roving Covenant kill squads, looking for survivors.

"You really should read a book on tactical positioning sometime," Cortana told him, a smile in her voice.

The Chief grinned beneath the helmet despite the disquiet he felt. "I shoot things. I'm not a general."

"But you always have a plan," the AI countered. "And what's your plan this time?"

The Chief closed his macrobinoculars and jacked another clip into his MA5B. "You get three guesses. And the first two don't count."

This was the Spartan way.

Corporal Hook eyed his unmoving figure as she stuffed the BDUs she'd found into her bag, then: "My kit's full sir. You?"

The Chief nodded, jerked himself out of reverie. "Let's go."

A few minutes later, they had returned to the rear barracks, where Kramer was packing food into a crate, looking tired. "Where's the others, sir?" Hook asked.

The sergeant looked up. "'Ulee and Briggs are guarding the perimeter with the brute. Dari's somewhere around here..."

A dull thud made the Chief whirl on the foreign noise. But Corporal Hook began to chuckle. "Look," she said.

The grunt's head could be seen peeping out from behind a stack of footlockers. The Chief stepped over and found that the grunt had crawled behind the storage crates and sat down, fallen asleep, and now slumped over to the deck.

"Ordinarily, I'd kill the damn thing," Kramer muttered, which received a hurt look from Corporal Hook.

Suddenly, Cortana's avatar appeared on a nearby terminal. "Cores are sterile," she said in a near-monotone. The look in her eyes was narrow, stressed, tired. Kramer and Hook waited for more, but she just looked away, wrapped her arms around herself.

The Chief spoke for her: "That means we're ready to go."

Kramer nodded, eyed Cortana suspiciously, sighed again. "All right. Somebody go get Briggs and the others, and wake up that damn grunt."

Hook gave the Master Chief a pleading look and stepped over to wake Dari. The Spartan didn't get the meaning behind the hint, but quickly went to the cargo hold to fetch his companions.

Within, he found Briggs, Dakol, and Maximus all standing outside in the rain. The brute seemed to be enjoying it; his thick, matted fur received the water well, revealing a glossy, silver coat.

"We're moving out," the Chief said simply.

Briggs jumped in out of the wet, nearly slipping on the slick floor and skidding into a wall. He turned, and the Chief instantly realized that something was very wrong. Briggs' face was lit by an unnaturally bright grin, his movements clumsy and exaggerated.

The son of a bitch is drunk.

That was one thing the Master Chief had never understood - Marines' penchant for booze. He turned off his atmospheric scrubbers for a moment to check - the wave of odor hit him so hard that he visibly recoiled, and quickly cycled the filters on again.

Then, the brute and 'Ulee Dakol came striding in after him, a look of disgust in their eyes. Embarrassing. Covenant has better sense than our own Marines.

"Sir!" Briggs shouted and saluted broadly. "Request permission to dry off, sir!"

The Spartan felt a claw of anger pierce his spine for the first time since the Halo. "Get some dry things on, soldier," he said, low, dangerous. "You've broken more protocols than I can count."

That apparently got through to the addled brain of the Private, and he quickly - if clumsily - skinned into a new set of BDUs, ignoring the fact that he was still soaking wet underneath.

This has got to be a joke, the Chief thought. Trapped on the Ark, stuck out in deep space, maybe going to die - and this Marine was sampling contraband liquor.

Kramer was not surprised. Angry, certainly. Surprised? Not by any stretch of the imagination. He'd seen this before. He'd seen it with Briggs, he'd seen it… elsewhere.

When Briggs stepped up to his commanding officer and saluted, the Sergeant caught a whiff of the homemade liquor on his breath and scowled. "I see you found it. You want to tell me the meaning of this, Private? Why the hell you're getting smashed at a time like this?" Kramer asked darkly, jaw set.

Briggs shakily straightened up and gave another watery salute. "Sir. I… sir. Knew this girl from Songnam, sir. Korean. Prettiest little girl you ever saw. But she wasn't… wasn't… normal, sir. Wouldn't go out with me - 'cause she said she was a lesh… a lez… a…"

The private stopped, confused. He reoriented himself, opened his mouth: "…anyway, sir. She liked girls. Wouldn't take money, gifts, nothin'. Her mother didn't approve, neither. Tried to help me, but this girl… she liked dames. Damn. Dames."

Kramer felt his temper getting the best of him, but he controlled it for a moment, looked around. The Master Chief was standing to the side, stoic as always. Corporal Hook had a disgusted look on her face, and Dari evidently just didn't get it.

"And what does that mean, Private?"

Briggs clicked his heels together, stuttered, and finally managed to get out, "It means I'm drunk. Sir."

Suddenly, Briggs was lying on his back, smashed to the floor, blood covering the front of his face. Kramer was standing over him, his fist speckled with the Private's blood. The Sergeant was screaming, "Briggs, if you ever do anything that half-assed, that irresponsible again, I swear I will personally put a bullet in your brain and save the Flood the trouble!"

And with that, Kramer turned away, wiped blood on his pants. "Pack up," he snarled to Dari and Hook. "We're moving out."

Eugene Roe moved in to Briggs, already preparing a bandage for the Marine's face. The Master Chief squatted next to the medic as he examined Briggs' nose.

"I take it this has happened before?" the Spartan asked quietly.

Roe nodded, his face wrinkled by stress. "Sure has. Sonny-boy here can be a nice kid, but he's got a taste for booze."

As Corporal Hook walked by, arms full of gear, she added, "The sergeant's had some run-ins, too."

The Chief sighed. He had never had to deal with this amongst his Spartans before, and it troubled him - much as everything else seemed to, these days. "Define 'run-ins,'" he requested, keeping any readable emotion carefully out of his voice.

Roe looked up, frowned. "Story floats around that once, out on Athena Station, he had some trouble with drinking in his unit. Put out a blanket order: no more booze."

The Chief raised a brow behind his helmet. Seemed reasonable.

"Then, rumor has it, one day a drunken non-com walked up to him, gave him some lip about the drunk thing. They say Sarge shot him right between the eyes with his M6C. And he never had any trouble with drinking after that."

The Chief held his sardonic expression, though no one could see it. Rising wordlessly, he turned and began to help Corporal Hook load their Warthog with supplies. Damn.

Maximus nodded approvingly at the story. Certainly the way he would have handled it, though shooting the insolent one in the head seemed almost too restrained.

Huffing, he slung the large crate in his arms into the trailer hitched to the Warthog and examined the results. They struck him as rather ironically amusing: his own packing job was neat and controlled, while the humans' seemed rather messy to him: straps not tightened well, boxes haphazardly shoved into corners. Brutes had reputations for being mangy, slovenly drunks. Nearby, a slovenly drunk of a human was barely coming back to consciousness.

He silently thanked the human - if there weren't small problems like these to distract them, they might spend more time wondering why in the name of the Divines they had taken their closest enemy into their bosom.

Maximus himself was not entirely sure what he thought of the humans. Dari seemed to have grown somewhat attached to the female, which was enough to mean that Maximus trusted her. Dari had excellent instincts.

Maximus himself found the human sergeant an interesting case study of humanity. The human obviously had some kind of baggage that he was carrying - which was something one would expect from an elite, not someone as uncouth as a human.

The Demon, too, he found intriguing. For all the fear the Covenant gave him, Maximus' powers of observation easily told him that the green-armored thing was not the emotionless creature he had been made out to be.

Briggs seemed much like the archetypical human: loud, dirty, and loutish. But then, the sangheili seemed to think of the brutes in the same way.

The medic, Row, was a quiet one. He smiled often and spoke little. Maximus generally dismissed his presence as he would a newborn jiralhanae cub.

That, of course, made him think of his lone grandchild, a young cub by the name of Domian back home on Doisac. The little one had been born a mere ten cycles ago, yet already he was learning the Prophets' lies, learning to hate the humans, the sangheili, learning to hate.

Maximus forced the thought aside. His own mate believed the Prophets' blasphemies, as did all his kind. He quietly promised himself that if he survived this and was allowed to return, he would devote his time to undoing the damage the Prophets had done to his people. For that, he had the humans to thank.

And in ways such as these, he owed the humans much. They had opened his eyes to the lies of the Prophets and the truth of the Divines - what the humans called 'Forerunners.' And as many of their kind as he had slain…

…but that was something to ponder at another time.

Dari, too, was doing his own assessment of the humans. But unlike Maximus, he was not a philosophical creature. He was very practical. In his mind, the list looked something like this:

Jayna and Maximus - good.

Everything else - scary.

Briggs frightened him with his constant homicidal overtones. The Demon's solid silence unnerved him. Kraymer's loud, rough voice put him in a terror generally reserved for sangheili Zealots. 'Ulee Dakol was an elite, and that was enough.

Really. It was all too much for one unggoy to take in at once. The squat little alien pushed the last crate into the trailer and wheezed for another breath. Byproducts of methane hissed from his breather. He wondered what his matron would have said about this, then decided that it was better not to think about it.

Life really was so unfair.