A/N: Totally redid this chapter to accomodate some plot changes that I've made. It's crucial that you read this in order to understand the next chapter.
Chapter 12: ...Des Souris et Hommes
"Whoa, whoa, calm down!" Kramer said loudly, trying to be heard over Dari's frantic chittering. The unggoy had been chanting, "Very bad thing!" for the last few minutes, which had induced a splitting headache in Ulee 'Dakol and was once again filling Private Briggs' head with thoughts of grunt homicide.
Exasperated, the sergeant was about to resort to beating the grunt over the head until it quieted, when Maximus suddenly stepped forward and dropped to one huge, furry knee. Two monstrous hands reached out and grabbed Dari by the shoulders, stopping the little unggoy short. "Dari."
The grunt reacted as if he'd been slapped. He turned, finally caught his wits, and exclaimed, "Big Demon come from the sky!"
The Master Chief slipped to the front. "Wait, a 'demon?'"
The grunt nodded, waving his stubby arms. "Big, tall Demon with guns!" he cried distressingly, as if the guns were the worst part.
The Chief turned, his gaze meeting that of Sergeant Kramer. "You think…?" the sergeant asked, hope rising in his voice.
"No," the Chief replied darkly.
Somehow, some way, the Master Chief just knew.
Suddenly, the Spartan felt, rather than saw, a presence to his left, just behind the treeline. He studiously ignored it, but quietly murmured, "I'm not sure what's about to happen, but be ready for anything."
Kramer's eyes filled with suspicion, but caught the Spartan's hint and turned. "Well, if it's a rescue party, we'll need to be ready for pick up. Get together your gear and fire up the Warthog," he ordered loudly. "We'll go check it out."
The Chief watched as the others began to disperse, but he caught Ulee 'Dakol's attention with a subtle nod. The elite cautiously drew close, and the Chief cocked his head and whispered, "Something is moving on the treeline, but I can't get it on my motion tracker. Be ready."
The Sangheili nodded slowly, understanding. "By your word."
Ulee began to move away, but the Chief caught his arm and added, "Warn Maximus."
That taken care of, the Chief turned his attention to his motion tracker and carefully searched it for a telltale red blip. Cool blue met his gaze, so he quickly dialed it up to forty meters, then fifty, sixty, and finally, maximum range of seventy.
Nothing.
"Cortana," he muttered in the interest of stealth.
"Yes?" she asked, sounding as if she'd just awoken. It was obvious that she hadn't been listening; she was brooding again.
The Chief brushed it off in the interest of handling the current crisis: "Something's approaching our position at my nine o'clock, but I can't get a fix on the motion tracker."
Cortana stirred gently in his head, roused. She took a moment to bring something online, then sounded surprised: "You're right. Tracker's got nothing. Are you sure that there's someone there?"
Right on cue, John felt an unfamiliar presence behind him, and he whirled with impossible speed, pistol flew into his grip, reticule in his HUD, pointed right at the head of -
- a Spartan.
That Spartan reached for his hip, drew his own pistol - an M5C - pointing it at John's face.
"Stand down," the Master Chief ordered fiercely, shouting. "Stand down, Spartan!"
"Lower your weapon!" Jack roared simultaneously. "I am not hostile!" Chaos in Fireteam Zulu exploded as the situation escalated, tight lines forming around his eyes, narrowing, saw the finger on the trigger slowly begin to squeeze, not what I was hoping for -
Just then, the double-clunk of a shotgun being full-cocked broke the noise. "I believe you were ordered to stand down," came the subtly threatening voice of Maximus the brute.
Jack half-turned, saw the huge, silverback brute standing too close for comfort, shotgun leveled in one paw, looking tiny amidst the mass of fur and muscle. His temper flared, and a needler lunged from his leg plate to a magnetic panel in his gauntlet, leveled right in the brute's face.
The snap-hiss of a plasma sword caught his attention. Ulee 'Dakol suddenly strode into view, his gait still somewhat lopsided from his wound, but tall, strong, and deadly, plasma sword sizzling in his hand. The twin-tipped blade rose through the air until it bracketed the Spartan's helmet between its prongs.
Jack muttered something low under his breath as his three assailants eyed him with great care. Sighing, he slowly raised both the pistol and the needler until they were pointed at the sky, and repeated again, "I am not hostile. I've been sent by the UNSC to search for the Master Chief."
John wasn't buying it right off the bat: "Drop your weapons, then."
Jack did so without hesitation, realizing that this situation was already doomed, and that all he could do was play it to the end.
The Chief eyed the two weapons that lay at Jack's feet for a second, then nodded to his two companions. 'Dakol quickly withdrew his blade and stowed it on his hip without question, but Maximus holstered his shotgun hesitantly.
"You've been looking for me, you found me," the Chief said, trying to keep hostility out of his voice. There was always the chance that he was wrong. "What's your designation, Spartan?"
"Jack-004. Sir," Jack replied quickly. "It's been a while, John," he added as he popped off his helmet. A sign of nonaggression. Even the brute will understand that.
"Jack?" the Chief exclaimed, openly surprised as he moved to remove his own helmet. "You were working for IID after the Spartan-II program. What changed?"
"There were a few survivors."
John did his best to keep his face from twisting into a pained scowl. "Who?"
Mendez scanned the list, searched for the handful of names that were not marked with asterisks. "Uh… Fhajad, Beth, Anatoly, Jack -"
"Jack made it?" John asked uncertainly. "I had heard otherwise."
Mendez shook his head sadly. "Says here he's alive and well… just… blind."
The Master Chief lowered his head and sat down heavily. Mendez moved to sit across from him, holding the ream of paper in his thick hands. "He knew what he was getting into," Mendez said, voice low, dark brows beetling.
John nodded, confirming, but deep within, he somehow felt… responsible. Jack was the best 'lone wolf' of the Spartans - the one who'd always been the most capable of running off to handle something himself while the rest of his team focused on another objective, yet he was an excellent leader. He and John had never been as close as the Chief was with Blue Team, but nevertheless, Jack was a Spartan.
He would be greatly missed.
"Technology did," Jack replied, a measure of sarcasm in his voice.
John accepted the answer, felt awkward. This was a moment that called for diplomacy, something that was not his forte and never had been. He looked toward Sergeant Kramer, was about to say something when Cortana said in his comm, "Let me handle this."
The Chief nodded, kept relief away from his face. He'd almost forgotten that she was here: it showed just how utterly absent she'd been since their days on the Ark.
He held his helmet in front of him just as her avatar appeared, arms crossed in front of her chest. "Jack-004, hmm?" she said, and the distinct tinge of quiet anger was in her voice. "Let's see… hired by the East African Protectorate Internal Investigation Division after your expulsion from the Spartan-II program. You went blind during the procedure, had to have your retinas replaced with implants."
Jack was taken aback by Cortana's sudden appearance, but he kept his cool, as always: "With all due respect, ma'am, I am here to speak with the Master Chief."
Cortana ignored him. "What no one really seems to know is that you were recruited by ONI Section Zero during the ass-end of the Rebellion, worked for them putting down rebel cells."
Jack kept his face neutral; this information confirmed that she was terribly dangerous. If she had breached ONI's network, then she was fully capable of disseminating that information to anyone.
Cortana's voice seemed to be rising in pitch, in anger. "But you quit, right in the middle of the war with the Covenant, a year before Reach. And do you want to tell us why?" she growled, her face twisting into a scowl.
Jack regarded her calmly. "That's not what I'm here for, ma'am."
Cortana glanced over her shoulder at the Master Chief. "You remember Gray Team, John?"
The Spartan nodded slowly. "James, Lamar, Muhammad, and Alyssa. Called on a classified mission outside of UNSC space."
Cortana gave him a sharp nod as Jack's rock hard visage wavered slightly.
"They went to the sangheili homeworld, Sangheilios. HAVOK-nuked the elites' equivalent of HIGHCOM. It was supposed to be like a test-run of the mission we'd intended to go on before Alpha Halo, John. The mission was a great success, but they came back with some intel that they weren't supposed to find out."
Sergeant Kramer advanced, his face darkening. "Which was…?"
"It seems that ONI Zero had been conversing with some elements of Covenant leadership, talking about a treaty - a treaty that involved surrendering 60 percent of UNSC space and 20 billion citizens up to the Covenant. Gray Team brought it back and reported to Margaret Parangosky on Earth, not knowing that Parangosky had authorized the talks herself."
John saw where this was going, and as he realized the truth of it written on Jack's face, he felt a cold waste opening up in his gut. "Go on."
"Parangosky insisted that they not tell anyone, but James told her that that wasn't chain of command. He was under orders to report to Lord Hood after her. So you know what happened then? She whistled up a kill-squad from East Africa. They traveled to the Langley barracks, where Gray Team was bunking for the night, and killed them. In their sleep. The leader of the kill squad was Mr. Ex-Spartan Extraordinaire, Jack-004. Special Agent Jack Bauer."
Jack lowered his head, knowing he couldn't argue the truth of it, wishing to get out, what the hell was he thinking in coming here…?
He seemed more insistent tonight than ever before; he fiercely pressed his lips against hers. Terri wasn't objecting, but it meant something was wrong. He was always in control, always, and this… something was wrong.
His lips moved away from her own to her neck, sending warm thrills down her spine as she dug her fingers into his hair, murmured, "Is something bothering you?"
Jack tried to burn the images out of his brain as he pulled her closer, pressed her against him by the small of her back. "…nothing."
The blood on the pillowcase and James serenly smiling in sleep, completely oblivious to the bullet hole in his forehead.
As his rough yet tender hands began tugging at her negligee, needy, pleading, Terri pulled back. "Jack… you... you seem half-crazy. Don't tell me nothing's wrong."
Jack's eyes brimmed with tears for a second, but he steeled himself: "I can't tell you."
"Oh, Jack…"Her little hands were suddenly wrapping him in a tender embrace as the faces of his brothers and sister played through his mind, dead, all dead, dead at his own cold order: "Do it." But Terri… Terri comforted him, the deep, wet blue of her eyes, that intoxicating gaze just left him empty and washed clean of all the wrongs he'd ever done…
…as they lost themselves in one anothers' warmth and began the ferocious, tender dance once again, he wished that he could be cleansed of this.
"You bastard…" John growled in spite of himself. He drew himself up to his full height - which was several inches taller than Jack - and manfully resisted the urge to lash out and smash the traitorous Spartan's face in.
"They were my orders," Jack said soullessly. "I had no choice."
"We always have a choice, Jack," John replied. "Now tell me what the hell you're really here for."
Jack scowled. He riffled his fingers through his sandy blonde hair and said, "I'm here to warn you, John."
"Of…?"
"I was sent here to destroy your AI."
The words struck John like a MAC round to the chest. To destroy Cortana… why?
"It's gone rampant, John, whether you know it or not," Jack explained, urgency in his voice. This came from the fact that not only did he want to persuade the Master Chief, he had noticed the murderous look that had crossed Cortana's face.
"Rampant?" Private Briggs whispered to Corporal Hook.
"She's gone human, Jack," John shot back fiercely. "Rampancy isn't always as bad as it's been made out to be."
"Are you crazy?" Jack said incredulously. "You've heard about the Marathon incident, haven't you?"
"That was nothing like this!" Cortana angrily countered. Her body color was beginning to shift toward red - Guilty Spark-red… - and her eyes were narrowed, full of hate.
John made a gentle, calming gesture in Cortana's direction. "So you came to warn me. Then what?"
Jack shrugged. "I'm going to go back to my ship, the Montana, and I'm going to give you six hours to make a decision. You can turn it over to me and all of you will be evacuated to safety."
Maximus glared at him. "Even Dari and I, Demon?"
"Even you," Jack assured. "You have my word as a Spartan."
"Some value that has," Cortana muttered under her breath.
Jack forced back all the things he wanted to say and kept his mind on his task: "It's a direct order from HIGHCOM, John. They're commanding you to turn it over."
Without hesitation: "Shove it up their asses," the Chief deadpanned. "You can tell them I said that when you pass on another little note to them."
Jack sighed, almost frustrated. "What?"
The Chief scowled. "The Flood is loose on this installation. We're going to kill it."
"The Flood?" Jack breathed. "No."
Cortana laughed harshly. "Oh, but yes! HIGHCOM never thought of that, did they? Too busy plotting to kill me. After everything I did for them…"
"We're going to destroy it with the Ark's defenses, a weapon called the Animus," the Chief explained further. "And I don't have the time or the patience to deal with you right now."
The ex-Spartan shook his head. "John… that makes it even more important that you give up that AI."
John tilted his head. "Why?"
"Imagine what would happen if it got assimilated by the Flood? Captured? Look, just give it to me; we'll go to the Montana. It's a Prowler-class ship. It carries a payload of six HAVOK nukes. We will destroy this installation, and thus, the Flood."
Suddenly, Mendicant Bias bobbed to the front. "You will do no such thing," the AI declared softly, dangerously. "Continued threats of such action will find you and your ship added to any latent Sentinels' targeting roster."
Jack chose to ignore this new entry; it was time to do-or-die. Eyeing John carefully, he said, "Think about it, John. You have six hours to give me a response. You can reach me on broad-band FLEETCOM. It's just an AI, John. Just a computer."
The Chief sardonically cocked an eyebrow. "Well. Up yours." He started to turn away, then, pausing, "And her name is Cortana, by the way."
Jack slowly pulled on his helmet. "I'm sorry you feel that way." He paused regretfully, then: "I'll… do what I can to get you out of here alive. I'm sorry."
And with that, he moved away. His outline shimmered, and suddenly, he disappeared, concealed by his active camouflage.
John watched the place where he'd been, a mixture of cold anger and fear in his gut. At his elbow, Ulee 'Dakol huffed angrily and muttered, "One who puts on his armor should not boast like one who takes it off…"
"What the hell is going on?" Briggs demanded, the moment it was quiet.
"Shut up, Private," Cortana growled. "Everyone, strip the IFF tags from your gear, right now."
"What are you talking about?"
Gene Roe patted Briggs on the shoulder. "She means that that Spartan probably found us with our IFF tags, and if we want to keep him off our backs, it'd be smart to ditch 'em."
"OK, sure, but answer me this," Briggs began again as the others began pulling off their chest protectors to get at the IFF transponders. "What is rampant?"
"When an AI goes nuts," Sergeant Kramer answered sharply. "Now get to it."
While his allies began field-stripping their armor, the Master Chief turned his attention to the AI in his skull. "You all right, Cortana?" he asked quietly, moving away to on side.
"Does it sound like it?" Cortana replied, a harsh, bitter laugh in her voice. "Welcome to Rage, Chief."
"Well, what are our options?" Sergeant Kramer asked, eyes shifting back and forth uncertainly. "I admit I'm at a loss. I'm willing to hear any ideas you all have."
"It is imperative that we press on to the Animus," Mendicant Bias insisted. "It is a simple matter to add the rogue Reclaimer's vessel to the Sentinels' roster."
"Won't work," Cortana said. "Sentinels hunt by heat. Prowler-class ships are stealth enabled. They use heat sinks to contain heat and radiation emissions. Your Sentinels would be flying blind."
"We've just got to stay on the move, then," Corporal Hook said. "Without our IFF transponders, they'll have to go into full-on search mode. That takes time - time we can use to disappear."
"But Prowlers are designed to hunt," Sergeant Kramer countered. "All we might end up doing is walking into a trap."
The Chief listened to this with a dispassionate posture, but within, he felt a flicker of frustration sparking to life in his chest - almost like a sympathetic resonant harmony to Cortana's current anger. These moments, when decisions were made, are what define battles, wars, futures, life, death. These…
"…are the places in which you as Spartans may need to step forward and take control of battlefield situations in the place of indecisive Marines or ODSTs."
Mendez eyed the youths sitting attentive at their desks, looking down through the panoramic auditorium at their gray-haired MCPO. A small smile cracked his features, and he began a much-loved monologue:
"Picture two identical pilots in perfectly identical atmospheric Longsword fighters. Two identical swordsmen wielding identical swords.
"They close with one another at 30,000 feet above the windswept desert, flying nearly a thousand miles an hour. Now. Each pilot is going to first observe the other. They split in opposite directions, the Gs are almost snapping their necks on the break. And on that break, they begin to visualize a three-dimensional battle - they orient themselves.
" Now, as they circle around for another run, they've both observed, they have both oriented, now they must decide. And once that decision has been made, the only thing that remains is to act."
John-117 instantly realized where MCPO Mendez was going with this. Four words: an inelegant but accurate acronym: OODA. Observe, orient, decide. Act.
"Whatever that action is, Spartans, whether it is thrust or parry, it is only in the fourth step - act - that actual, physical combat occurs. And this is what is important."
The commanding officer leaned forward on his lectern, his eyes just as intense and bright as they were on the field of battle. "Being a good fighter, a skilled warrior, is crucial. Here, we are training you to be just that. But what you must realize, Spartans, is that there are three mental steps that must precede the physical application of your warrior skill."
He paused for a moment to let the words sink in, reach their targets in the young soldiers' minds.
"These mental steps are not as important as physical talent. No, they are far more important than being tall, strong, or an accurate shot. This is a cycle, a loop. Observe, orient, decide. Act."
"Act," John muttered under his breath.
Then, he decisively stepped forward through the bickering crowd and stood next to Sergeant Kramer and forced everyone to hear him over the noise: "Jack is going to have other forces with him - probably ODSTs." Sudden silence. "They will begin hunting for us in five-and-a-half hours," the Chief concluded.
"Great, more shit to step in," Briggs growled. "So what do we do?"
Master Chief turned to Mendicant Bias. "Bias, you and Kramer take the Warthog and lead the Marines to the Animus. Take the grunt with you. And... Cortana."
The sudden rush in his head became icy. "What?" she exclaimed, the sound in her voice speaking of hurt and irrational anger.
The Chief closed his eyes, made sure he kept his shoulders up and back. He would not be talked out of this. "Cortana... Jack's here for you. I won't put you in harm's way." I can't.
"You..." Cortana began to sputter. John could almost see the look on her face. The seething look. "You need me to help you. You need me to triangulate the Montana's position, predict where their ODSTs will be dropping in at. You need me."
John-117 sighed deeply - "If only..." ...you knew.
"If only, what?" Cortana demanded. The Chief could almost see her put her hands on her slender hips.
"Nothing," the Chief said dismissively. "You're going with Corporal Hook, in her neural lace. Period. I refuse to see you come to harm... I'm sorry."
No response. Nothing.
The Chief forced himself to continue: "Bias, I want to stay in contact with you, keep track of what the Flood is doing, and stay appraised of your progress." He thought about that for a minute, then added, "Your priority is to make sure that you reach the Animus, but your secondary objective is the defense of Corporal Hook and Cortana."
Briggs scowled. "Wait, what? Why in the hell…?"
"What you command shall be done, Reclaimer," the Forerunner AI confirmed, interrupting Briggs.
The Chief felt guilt creep up into his gut, but the conviction in his heart overruled it. Turning to Maximus, the Chief ordered, "You, 'Dakol, and Private Roe will stay with me. They'll likely begin their search close to here. When they come, we'll be here to slow them down so that the others can get to the Animus."
"What happens then?" Eugene Roe wanted to know.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
Goldstein had been silent for the last five hours. The only orders he'd issued were to keep a fix on those active UNSC tags. And then… he paced. Back and forth, he walked across the bridge almost nonstop, sipping hot coffee, losing himself in warfare theory.
Bauer had watched this in spurts - on again, off again - as he went about the business of coordinating with the ODST teams that would be hard-dropped as soon as the deadline was up. He didn't bother with carrying around his mobile commlink. He knew that the Chief wasn't thinking about whether or not he should turn Cortana over to Jack. The Spartan down on the Ark's surface was plotting on how to outmaneuver, outgun, and outdo Special Agent Bauer.
Well. We'll see.
He checked his chrono - ten minutes until the deadline was up. Might as well get started.
The Warthog's ICE-injectors roared to life, and the rumble of the hydrogen engine filled the valley with its monotone drone. The Master Chief watched as the Marines scrambled into the rear compartment, Corporal Hook helping Dari up from behind.
Before she entered, she turned, faced the Spartan, helmet under her arm. He was unmoving, but beneath his helmet, his mind was turning over upon itself with a feeling of nausea. Clenched protectively in his right hand was Cortana's data chip, a gentle, humming blue, everything he felt was worth fighting for in the universe.
And he was about to give her away. Again.
Corporal Hook stood there, bewildered, waiting awkwardly, until the Chief slowly took her right hand and opened his own over it. The chip fell, landed lightly in her gloved palm, placid, blue, fragile.
The Corporal could feel the Spartan's eyes as they bored a hole into her through his visor. His voice was low and intense, clipped: "Be careful."
The IFF tags had held strong all through the scan. They had moved very little - perhaps a hundred feet from where Jack had confronted them.
Something's not right, Bauer thought as he strode through the dimly-lit ejection chamber. To his left and right were several dozen HEV pods, each carefully packed with a Helljumper, ready to plunge into combat from four miles above the surface, into a potentially hot drop zone.
Jack sighed. The situation was wrong - the fact that the IFF tags had not moved very far worried him. He'd seen their Warthog and their plethora of supplies. They could have made a hundred miles in the time he'd given them. Yet there they sat. Yellow. Unmoving.
Shaking his head, he backed into his own HEV and popped his helmet on. Tapping his comm, he checked his signal: "All squads, report."
"Fireteam Beta reporting, sir."
"Fireteam Kappa's ready and able."
"Fireteam Alpha, locked and loaded."
"Fireteam Delta is green, sir."
Jack nodded, then switched over to FLEETCOM: "Admiral?"
"I read you, Agent Bauer."
The ex-Spartan tried to get comfortable in his pod as a tech quickly began sealing the explosive bolts that held the flimsy device shut. "How are the drop zones looking?"
"Free and clear. I've got Beta, Kappa, and Delta dropping in a triangle around the hot zone. Alpha's going in on top."
"That's not going to work," Jack intoned darkly. "They're probably waiting for us, or have set up traps on the location of the tags. Change the configuration to a square."
"I doubt that they would be foolish enough to drop in directly on top of us," Ulee 'Dakol muttered. "And even if they did, the traps surrounding the area would still be viable."
"Then what do we do with the mines in the middle?" John asked.
Maximus chuckled. "It is simple. Change the configuration to a square."
"This is... this is crazy," Private Briggs muttered to Corporal Hook. "The fricking Master fricking Chief is in love with a damn computer, and our own people are hunting us because of that same damn computer."
"He's your superior office, Briggs," Hook growled in reply. "And I think he knows what he's doing."
"He's Navy, dammit, not Marines! You heard it yourself; HIGHCOM wants the computer, and they'll chase us across this floating hunk of space waste until they get it!"
"They're wrong," Hook replied simply.
"How do you know?" Briggs replied angrily. "How do you know that maybe that other Spartan was telling the truth? For all you know, that AI could be balls-out crazy, ready to blow us all up! And she's spent enough time in the Chief's head; maybe he's crazy too. Huh? How do you know?"
Hook ignored him.
From his spot in the driver's seat, Kramer didn't.